a skylight. This is
an arrangement now peculiar to Brittany. The staircase occupies one side
of the space, and you may trace the windings to the very summit,
curiously arranged at the angles. These singularly-constructed rooms
have given to the houses the name of _lanternes_. Every room has an
enormous fireplace, in which you might almost roast an ox, built partly
of wood and stone, richly carved and ornamented. But let the eye rest
where it will, it is charmed by rich carvings and mouldings, beams
wonderfully sculptured, statues, ancient niches and grotesques.

In one of these houses is to be found a wonderful staircase of carved
oak and great antiquity, that in itself would make Morlaix worth
visiting. It is in the Flamboyant style, and was probably erected about
the year 1500. For Brittany is behind the age in its carvings as much as
in everything else, and this staircase in any other country might safely
be put down to the year 1450. It is of wonderful beauty, and almost
matchless in the world: a marvel of skill and refinement. It possesses
also a _lavoir_, the only known example in existence, with doors to
close when it is not in use; the whole thing a dream of beautiful
sculpture.

[Illustration: OLD STAIRCASE IN THE GRAND' RUE, MORLAIX, SHOWING
LAVOIR.]

One other house in Morlaix has also a very wonderful staircase; still
more wonderful, perhaps, than that in the Grand' Rue; but it is not in
such good preservation. The house is in the Rue des Nobles, facing the
covered market-place. It is called the house of the Duchesse Anne, and
here in her day and generation she must have lived or lodged.

The house is amongst the most curious and interesting and ancient in
Morlaix, but it is doomed. The whole interior is going to rack and ruin,
and it was at the peril of our lives that we scrambled up the staircase
and over the broken floors, where a false step might have brought us
much too rapidly back to terra firma. Morlaix is not enterprising enough
to restore and save this relic of antiquity.

The staircase, built on the same lines as the wonderful staircase in the
Grand' Rue, is, if possible, more refined and beautiful; but it has been
allowed to fall into decay, and much of it is in a hopelessly worm-eaten
condition. H.C. was in ecstasies, and almost went down on his knees
before the image of an angel that had lost a leg and an arm, part of a
wing, and the whole of its nose; but very lovely were the outlines tha