'S'ils tu te mordent, mords les,' is the proud device of the town of Morlaix, and the glorious pages of her chronicles justify the motto. Morlaix has from all time been dear to the hearts of the Dukes of Brittany for her faithfulness, which neither reverse nor failure has ever altered. Even during the Wars of the Succession, after the most terrible calamities, she still maintained a stout heart and a bold front. She espoused the cause of Charles of Blois, which cost her the lives of fifty of her finest men, whom the Duc de Monfort hanged under false pretences.

Morlaix is a quaint little town—all gables, pointed roofs, and projecting windows. There are streets so narrow that in perspective the roofs appear to meet overhead. They are of wonderful colours. You will see white houses with chocolate woodwork, and yellow houses, stained by time, with projecting windows. In some cases there are small shops on the ground-floor. The town seems to be built in terraces, to which one mounts by steps with iron railings. You are for ever climbing, either up or down, in Morlaix; and the only footgear that seems to be at all appropriate to its roughly cobbled streets is the thick wooden nail-studded sabot of the Breton.

Most of the houses on the outskirts have gardens on the tops of the roofs; it is odd, when looking up a street, to see scarlet geraniums nodding over the gray stonework, and, sometimes, vines meeting in a green tracery above your head.

There are in Morlaix whole streets in which every house has a pointed roof, where all the slates are gray and scaly, and each story projects over another, the last one projecting farthest, with, on the ground-floor, either a clothier's shop or a quincaillerie bright with gleaming pots and pans and blue enamelled buckets. This lowest story has always large wooden painted shutters flung back.

The houses are unlike those of any other town I have seen in Brittany. There are always about five solid square rafters under each story, and each rafter is carved at the end into some grotesque little image or flower. There is much painted woodwork about the windows, and criss-cross beams sometimes run down the whole length of the house. There are still many strange old blackened edifices, sculptured from top to bottom, which have remained intact during four centuries with a sombre obstinacy. At the angles you often see grotesque figures of biniou-players, arabesques, and leaves, varied in the most bizarre manner, and so delicately and beautifully executed that they would form material for six 'MusÉes de Cluny.' These vast high houses are very dirty, crumbling like old cheeses, and almost as multitudinously alive. Each story is separated by massive beams, carved in a profusion of ornaments; each window has small leaded panes. The rest of the faÇade is carved with lozenge-shaped slates.

Morlaix, of course, has her Maison de la Reine Anne, of which she is proud. It is a characteristic house, with straight powerful lines. The door, greenish-black, is of fluted wood. The whole building is covered with an infinity of detail—ludicrous faces, statuettes, and carved figures of saints. Inside it has almost no decoration. The white walls rise to the top of the house plain and unadorned, save for a very elaborate staircase of rich chestnut-coloured wood very beautifully carved, with bridges, branching off from right to left, leading to the various apartments. At the top is a sculptured figure—either of the patron saint of the house or of some saint especially beloved in Brittany.

The town is a mixture of antiquity and modernity. Though her houses and streets are old, Morlaix possesses the most modern of viaducts, 284 metres long, giving an extraordinary aspect to the place. When you arrive at night you see the town glistening with myriads of lights, so far below that it seems incredible. You do not realize that the railway is built upon a viaduct: it seems as if you were suspended in mid-air.

When we arrived at Morlaix, a man with a carriage and four horses offered to drive us to Huelgoat for a very modest sum; but I vowed that all the king's horses and all the king's men would not tear me away that day. There was much to be seen. One never wearies of wandering through the streets of this fine old town, gazing up at the houses, and losing one's way among the ancient and dark by-ways. Morlaix is in a remarkable state of preservation. The houses generally do not suggest ruin or decay. The town seems to have everlasting youth. This is principally owing to the great love of the people for art and the picturesque, which has led them to renovate and rebuild constantly. For this reason, some of the structures are of great archÆological value.

The religious edifices are few. Indeed, I saw only the little church of St. Milaine, its belfry dwarfed by the prodigious height of the viaduct. It is a gem of architecture. The stonework is carved to resemble lace, and both inside and out the building is in the pure Gothic style.

Storms are very sudden in Morlaix. Sometimes on a sunny day, when all the world is out of doors, the wind will rise, knocking down the tailors' dummies and scattering the tam-o'-shanters hanging outside the clothiers'. Then comes rain in torrents. How the peasants scuttle! What a clatter of wooden-shod feet over the cobbles as they run for shelter! Umbrellas appear like mushrooms on a midsummer-night. Once I saw some old women in the open square with baskets of lace and crotchet-work and bundles of clothes stretched out for sale. When the rain began they fell into a great fright, and strove to cover their wares with old sacks, baskets, umbrellas—anything that was ready to hand. I felt inclined to run out of the hotel and help. As suddenly as the storm had risen, the sun came out, clear and radiant. I never knew the air to be so invigorating and bright anywhere in Brittany as it is in Morlaix.