A dear old-world, typically Breton town is Vannes. We arrived at night, and gazed expectantly from our window on the moonlit square. We plied with questions the man who carried up our boxes. His only answer was that we should see everything on the morrow.

That was market-day, and the town was unusually busy. Steering for what we thought the oldest part of Vannes, we took a turning which led past ancient and crazy-looking houses. Very old houses indeed they were, with projecting upper stories, beams, and scaly roofs slanting at all angles. At Morlaix some of the streets are ancient; but I have never seen such eccentric broken lines as at Vannes. At one corner the houses leant forward across the street, and literally rested one on the top of the other. These were only the upper stories; below were up-to-date jewellers and pÂtisseries, with newly-painted signs in black and gold. In the middle of these houses, cramped and crowded and hustled by them, stood the cathedral. Inside it was a dim, lofty edifice, with faintly burning lamps. Hither the market-women come with their baskets, stuffed to the full with fresh green salad and apples, laying them down on the floor that they may kneel on praying-chairs, cross their arms, and raise their eyes to the high-altar, pouring out trouble or joy to God. It was delightful to see rough men with their clean market-day blue linen blouses kneeling on the stone floor, hats in hand and heads bowed, repeating their morning prayers.

The people were heavily laden on this bright autumn morning, either with baskets or with sacks or dead fowls, all clattering through the cobbled streets on their way to market. Following the crowd, we emerged on a triangular-shaped market-place, wherein a most dramatic-looking mairie or town-hall figured prominently, a large building with two flights of steps leading up to it, culminating in a nail-studded door, with the arms of Morbihan inscribed above it.

One can well imagine such a market-place, let us say, in the days of the Revolution: how some orator would stand on these steps, with his back to that door, haranguing the crowd, holding them all enthralled by the force of rhetoric. Now nothing so histrionic happens. There is merely a buzzing throng of white-capped women, haggling and bargaining as though their lives depended on it, with eyes and hearts and minds for nothing but their business. Here and there we saw knots of blue-bloused men, with whips hung over their shoulders and straws in their mouths, more or less loafing and watching their womenfolk. The square was filled with little wooden stalls, where meat was sold—stringy-looking meat, and slabs of purple-hued beef. How these peasant women bargained! I saw one old lady arguing for quite a quarter of an hour over a piece of beef not longer than your finger. Chestnuts were for sale in large quantities, and housewives were buying their stocks for the winter. The men of the family had been pressed into the service to carry up sack after sack of fine brown glossy nuts, which were especially plentiful. No one seemed over-anxious to sell; no one cried his wares: it was the purchasers who appeared to do most of the talking and haggling.

There were more Frenchwomen here than I have seen in any other town; but they were not fine ladies by any means. They did not detract from the picturesqueness of the scene. They went round with their great baskets, getting them filled with apples or chestnuts, or other things. Most of the saleswomen were wrinkled old bodies; but one woman, selling chestnuts and baskets of pears, was pretty and quite young, with a mauve apron and a black cross-over shawl, and a mouth like iron. I watched her with amusement. I had never seen so young and comely a person so stern and businesslike. Not a single centime would she budge from her stated price. She was pestered by women of all kinds—old and young, peasants and modern French ladies, all attracted by the beauty of her pears and the glossiness of her chestnuts. Hers were the finest wares in the market, and she was fully conscious of it, pricing her pears and chestnuts a sou more a sieveful than anyone else. The customers haggled with her, upbraided her, tried every feminine tactic. They sneered at her chestnuts and railed at her pears; they scoffed one with the other. Eventually they gave up a centime themselves; but the hard mouth did not relax, and the pretty head in the snow-white coif was shaken vigorously. At this, with snorts of disgust, her customers turned up their noses and left. Ere long a smartly-dressed woman came along, and all unsuspectingly bought a sieveful of chestnuts, emptying them into her basket. When she came to pay for them, she discovered they were a sou more than she had expected, and emptied them promptly back into the market-woman's sack. I began to be afraid that my pretty peasant would have to dismount from her high horse or go home penniless; but this was not the case. Several women gathered round and began to talk among themselves, nudging one another and pointing. At last one capitulated, hoisted the white flag, and bought a few pears. Instantly all the other women laid down their bags and baskets and began to buy her pears and chestnuts. Very soon this stall became the most popular in the market-place, and the young woman and her assistant were kept busy the whole day. The hard-mouthed girl had conquered!

'Sept sous la demi-douzaine! Sept sous la demi-douzaine!' cried a shrill-voiced vendor. It was a man from Paris with a great boxful of shiny tablespoons, wrapped in blue tissue-paper in bundles of six, which he was offering for the ridiculous sum of seven sous—that is, threepence halfpenny. Naturally, with such bargains to offer, he was selling rapidly. Directly he cried his 'Sept sous la demi-douzaine—six pour sept sous!' he was literally surrounded. Men and women came up one after the other; men's hands flew to their pockets under their blouses, and women's to their capacious leather purses. It was amusing to watch these people—they were so guileless, so childlike, so much pleased with their bargains. Still, it would break my heart if these spoons doubled up and cracked or proved worthless, for seven sous is a great deal of money to the Breton peasants. I never saw merchandise disappear so quickly. 'Solide, solide, solide!' cried the merchant, until you would think he must grow hoarse. 'This is the chance of a lifetime,' he declared: 'a beautiful half-dozen like this. C'est tout ce qu'il y a de plus joli et solide. Voyez la beautÉ et la qualitÉ de cette merchandise. C'est une occasion que vous ne verrez pas tous les jours.'

The people became more and more excited; the man was much pressed, and selling the spoons like wildfire. Then, there were umbrellas over which the women lost their heads—glossy umbrellas with fanciful handles and flowers and birds round the edge. First the merchant took up an umbrella and twisted it round, then the spoons, and clattered them invitingly, until people grew rash and bought both umbrellas and spoons.

There is nothing more amusing than to spend a morning thus, wandering through the market-place, watching the peasants transact their little business, which, though apparently trivial, is serious to them. I never knew any people quite so thrifty as these Bretons. You see them selling and buying, not only old clothes, but also bits of old clothes—a sleeve from a soldier's coat, a leg from a pair of trousers; and even then the stuff will be patched. In this market-place you see stalls of odds and ends, such as even the poorest of the poor in England would not hesitate to throw on the rubbish heap—old iron, leaking bottles, legs of chairs and tables.

A wonderful sight is the market on a morning such as this. The sun shines full on myriads of white-capped women thronging through the streets, and on lines of brown-faced vegetable vendors sitting close to the ground among their broad open baskets of carrots and apples and cabbages. There are stalls of all kinds—butchers' stalls, forming notes of colour with their vivid red meat; haberdashery stalls, offering everything from a toothbrush or a boot-lace to the most excruciatingly brilliant woollen socks; stalls where clothes are sold—such as children's checked pinafores and babies' caps fit for dolls. Most brilliant of all are the material booths, where every kind of material is sold—from calico to velvet. They congregate especially in a certain corner of the market-square, and even the houses round about are draped with lengths of material stretching from the windows down to the ground—glorious sweeps of checks and stripes and flowered patterns, and pink and blue flannelette. It is amusing to watch a Breton woman buying a length of cloth. She will pull it, and drag it, and smell it, and almost eat it; she will ask her husband's advice, and the advice of her husband's relations, and the advice of her own relations.

In this market I was much amused to watch two men selling. I perceived what a great deal more there is in the individuality of the man who sells and in the manner of his selling than in the actual quality of the merchandise. One man, a dull, foolish fellow, with bales and bales of material, never had occasion to unwrap one: he never sold a thing. Another man, a born salesman, with the same wares to offer, talked volubly in a high-pitched voice. He called the people to him; he called them by name—whether it was the right one or not did not matter: it was sufficient to arrest their attention. 'DÉpÊchons nous. Here, Lucien; here, Jeanne; here, Babette; here, my pigeon. DÉpÊchons nous, dÉpÊchons nous!' he cried. 'Que est ce qu'il y a? personne en veux plus? Mais c'est Épatant. Je suis honteux de vous en dire le prix. Flannel! the very thing for your head, madam,—nothing softer, nothing finer. How many yards?—one, two, three? There we are!' and, with a flash of the scissors and a toss of the stuff, the flannel is cut off, wrapped up and under the woman's arm, before the gaping salesman opposite has time to close his mouth.

The stall was arranged in a kind of semicircle, and very soon this extraordinary person had gathered a crowd of people, all eager to buy; and the way in which he appeared to attend to everyone at once was simply marvellous.

'What for you, madam?' he would ask, turning to a young Breton woman. 'Pink flannel? Here you are—a superb article, the very thing for nightgowns.' Then to a man: 'Trousering, my lord? Certainly. Touchez moi Ça. Isn't that marvellous? Isn't that quality if you like? Ah! but I am ashamed to tell you the price. You will be indeed beautiful in this to-morrow.'

As business became slack for the moment, he would take up some cheap print and slap it on his knee, crying:

'One sou—one sou the yard! Figure yourself dancing with an apron like that at one sou the yard!'

And so the man would continue throughout the day, shouting, screaming, always inventing new jokes, selling his wares very quickly, and always gathering more and more people round him. Once he looked across at his unfortunate rival, who was listening to his nonsense with a sneering expression.

'Yes: you may sneer, my friend; but I am selling, and you are not,' he retorted.

Endless—absolutely endless—are the peeps of human nature one gains on a market-day such as this in an old-world Breton town. I spent the time wandering among the people, and not once did I weary. At every turn I saw something to marvel at, something to admire. We had chanced on a particularly interesting day, when the whole town was turned into a great market. Wherever we went there was a market of some sort—a pig market, or a horse market, or an old-clothes market; almost every street was lined with booths and barrows.

Outside almost every drinking-house, or CafÉ Breton, lay a fat pig sleeping contentedly on the pavement, and tied to a string in the wall, built there for that purpose. He would be waiting while his master drank—for often men come in to Vannes from miles away, and walk back with their purchases. I saw an old woman who had just bought a pig trying to take it home. She had the most terrible time with that animal. First he raced along the road with her at great speed, almost pulling her arms out of the sockets, and making the old lady run as doubtless she had never run before; then he walked at a sedate pace, persistently between her feet, so that either she must ride him straddle-legs or not get on at all; lastly, the pig wound himself and the string round and round her until neither could move a step. A drunken man reeled along, and, seeing the hopeless muddle of the old lady and the pig, stopped in front of them and tried to be of some assistance. He took off his hat and scratched his head; then he poked the pig with his cane, and moved round the woman and pig, giving advice; finally, he flew into a violent rage because he could not solve the mystery, and the old lady waved him aside with an impatient gesture. The air was filled with grunts and groans and blood-curdling squeaks.

Everyone seemed to possess a pig: either he or she had just bought one or had one for sale. You saw bunches of the great fat pink animals tied to railings while the old women gossiped; you saw pigs, attached to carts, comfortably sleeping in the mud; you saw them being led along the streets like dogs by neatly-dressed dames, holding them by their tails, and giving them a twist every time they were rebellious.

Vannes is the most beautiful old town imaginable. Everywhere one goes one sees fine old archways of gray stone, ancient and lofty—relics of a bygone age—with the arms of Brittany below and a saint with arms extended in blessing above. When once you reach the outskirts of the town you realize that at one time Vannes must have been enclosed by walls: there are gateways remaining still, and little bits of broken-down brickwork, old and blackened, and half-overgrown with moss and grasses. There is a moat running all round—it is inky black and dank now—on the banks of which a series of sloping slate sheds and washhouses have been built, where the women wash their clothes, kneeling on the square flat stones. How anything could emerge clean and white from such pitch-black water is a marvel. Seen from outside the gates, this town is very beautiful—the black water of the moat, the huddled figures of the women, with their white caps and snowy piles of linen, and beyond that green grass and apple-trees and flowers, and at the back the old grayish-pink walls, with carved buttresses.

There is hardly a town in the whole of Brittany so ancient as Vannes. These walls speak for themselves. They speak of the time when Vannes was the capital of the rude Venetes who made great CÆsar hesitate, and retarded him in his conquest of the Gauls. They speak of the twenty-one emigrants, escaped from the Battle of Quiberon, who were shot on the promenade of the Garenne, under the great trees where the children play to-day. What marvellous walls these are! With what care they have been built—so stout, so thick, so colossal! It must have taken men of great strength to build such walls as these—men who resented all newcomers with a bitter hatred, and built as if for their very lives, determined to erect something which should be impregnable. Still they stand, gray and battered, with here and there remains of their former grandeur in carved parapets, projecting turrets, and massive sculptured doorways. At one time the town must have been well within the walls; but now it has encroached. The white and pink and yellow-faced tall houses perch on the top of, lean against and cluster round, the old gray walls.

It seems strange to live in a town where the custom of couvre-feu is still observed by the inhabitants—in a town where no sooner does the clock strike nine than all lights are out, all shutters closed, and all shops shut. This is the custom in Vannes. It is characteristic of the people. The Vanntais take a pride in being faithful to old usages. They are a sturdy, grave, pensive race, hiding indomitable energy and hearts of fire under the calmest demeanour. The women are fine creatures. I shall never forget seeing an old woman chopping wood. All day long she worked steadily in the open place, wielding an immensely heavy hatchet, and chopping great branches of trees into bundles of sticks. There she stood in her red-and-black checked petticoat, her dress tucked up, swinging her hatchet, and holding the branches with her feet. She seemed an Amazon.

In Vannes, as in any part of Brittany, one always knows when there is anything of importance happening, by the clatter of the sabots on the cobble stones. On the afternoon when we were there the noise was deafening. We heard it through the closed windows while we were at luncheon—big sabots, little sabots, men's nail-studded sabots, women's light ones, little children's persistent clump, clump, clump, all moving in the same direction. It was the Foire des Oignons, observed the waiter. I had imagined that there had been a foire of everything conceivable that day; but onions scarcely entered into my calculations. I should not have thought them worthy of a foire all to themselves. The waiter spoiled my meal completely. I could no longer be interested in the very attractive menu. Onions were my one and only thought. I lived and had my being but for onions. Mother and I sacrificed ourselves immediately on the altar of onions. We rushed from the room, much to the astonishment of several rotund French officers, who were eating, as usual, more than was good for them.

Everybody was concerned with onions. We drew up in the rear of a large onion-seeking crowd. It was interesting to watch the back views of these peasants as they mounted the hill. There were all kinds of backs—fat backs, thin backs, glossy black backs, and faded green ones; backs of men with floating ribbons and velveteen coats; plump backs of girls with neat pointed shawls—some mauve, some purple, some pink, some saffron.

At the top of the hill was the market-square—a busy scene. The square was packed, and everyone was talking volubly in the roughest Breton dialect. Now and then a country cart painted blue, the horse hung round the neck with shaggy black fur and harnessed with the rough wooden gear so general in Brittany, would push through the crowd of busily-talking men and women. Everything conceivable was for sale. At certain stalls there were sweets of all colours, yet all tasting the same and made of the worst sugar. I saw the same man still selling his spoons and umbrellas; but he was fat and comfortable now. He had had his dÉjeuner, and was not nearly so excited and amusing. Fried sardines were sold with long rolls of bread; also sausages. They cook the sardines on iron grills, and a mixed smell of sausages, sardines, and chestnuts filled the air. Everyone was a little excited and a little drunk. Long tables had been brought out into the place where the men sat in their blue blouses and black velvet hats,—their whips over their shoulders, drinking cider and wine out of cups,—discussing cows and horses.

There was a cattle market there that day. This was soon manifest, for men in charge of cows and pigs pushed their way among the crowd. On feeling a weight at your back now and then, you discovered a cow or a pig leaning against you for support. A great many more animals were assembled on a large square—pigs and cows and calves and horses. One could stay for days and watch a cattle market: it is intensely interesting. The way the people bargain is very strange. I saw a man and a woman buying a cow from a young Breton. The man opened its eyelids wide with his finger and thumb; he gazed in the gentle brown eyes; he stroked her soft gray neck; he felt her ribs, and poked his fingers in her side; he lifted one foot after the other; he punched and probed her for quite a quarter of an hour; and the cow stood there patiently. The woman looked on with a hard, knowing expression, applauding at every poke, and talking volubly the while. She drew into the discussion a friend passing by, and asked her opinion constantly, yet never took it. All the while the owner stood stroking his cow's back, without uttering a word.

He was a handsome young man, as Bretons often are—tall and slim, with a face like an antique bronze, dark and classic;—he wore a short black coat trimmed with shabby velvet, tightly-fitting trousers, and a black hat with velvet streamers. The stateliness of the youth struck me: he held himself like an emperor. These Bretons look like kings, with their fine brown classic features; they hold themselves so haughtily, they remind one of figure-heads on old Roman coins. They seem men born to command; yet they command nothing, and live like pigs with the cows and hogs. The Breton peasant is full of dirt and dignity, living on coarse food, and rarely changing his clothes; yet nowhere will you meet with such fine bearing, charm of manner, and nobility of feature as among the peasants of Brittany.

On entering the poorest cottage, you are received with old-world courtesy by the man of the house, who comes forward to meet you in his working garments, with dirt thick upon his hands, but with dignity and stateliness, begging that you will honour his humble dwelling with your presence. He sets the best he has in the house before you. It may be only black bread and cider; but he bids you partake of it with a regal wave of his hand which transforms the humble fare.

IN A BRETON KITCHEN