ou must leave the wood by
the two cottages of yellow stone, about twenty miles beyond St. Pol, and
go down to the right, around the old stone quarry; then, bearing to the
left by the little cliff path, you will, in a moment, see the pointed
roof of the tower of Notre Dame, and, later, come down to the side porch
among the crosses of the arid little graveyard.

It is worth the walk, for though the church has outwardly little but its
sad picturesqueness to repay the artist, within it is a dream and a
delight. A Norman nave of round, red stone piers and arches, a delicate
choir of the richest flamboyant, a High Altar of the time of Francis I.,
form only the mellow background and frame for carven tombs and dark old
pictures, hanging lamps of iron and brass, and black, heavily carved
choir-stalls of the Renaissance.

So has the little church lain unnoticed for many centuries; for the
horrors and follies of the Revolution have never come near, and the
hardy and faithful people of Finisterre have feared God and loved Our
Lady too well to harm her church. For many years it was the church of
the Comtes de Jarleuc; and these are their tombs that mellow year by
year under the warm light of the painted windows, given long ago by
Comte Robert de Jarleuc, when the heir of Poullaouen came safely to
shore in the harbor of Morlaix, having escaped from the Isle of Wight,
where he had lain captive after the awful defeat of the fleet of Charles
of Valois at Sluys. And now the heir of Poullaouen lies in a carven
tomb, forgetful of the world where he fought so nobly: the dynasty he
fought to establish, only a memory; the family he made glorious, a name;
the Chateau Poullaouen a single crag of riven masonry in the fields of
M. du Bois, mayor of Morlaix.

It was Julien, Comte de Bergerac, who rediscovered Notre Dame des Eaux,
and by his picture of its dreamy interior in the Salon of '86 brought
once more into notice this forgotten corner of the world. The next year
a party of painters settled themselves near by, roughing it as best they
could, and in the year following, Mme. de Bergerac and her daughter
Heloise came with Julien, and, buying the old farm of Pontivy, on the
highway over Notre Dame, turned it into a summer house that almost made
amends for their lost chateau on the Dordogne, stolen from them as
virulent Royalists by the triumphant Republic in 1794.

Little by little a summer colony of painters gathered around Pontivy,
and it