lowered no banners; and
after rides through forests, and halts at farmhouses, dinners on
oaken tables, covered with centenary linen, bending under Homeric
viands served on antediluvian dishes; after drinking the choicest
wines in goblets to volleys of musketry, accompanied by cries of
"Long live the Guenics!" till I was deafened; after balls, where
the only orchestra was a bagpipe, blown by a man for ten hours;
and after bouquets, and young brides who wanted us to bless them,
and downright weariness, which made me find in my bed a sleep I
never knew before, with delightful awakenings when love shone
radiant as the sun pouring in upon me, and scintillating with a
million of flies, all buzzing in the Breton dialect!--in short,
after a most grotesque residence in the Chateau du Guenic, where
the windows are gates and the cows grace peacefully on the grass
in the halls (which castle we have sworn to repair and to inhabit
for a while very year to the wild acclamations of the clan du
Guenic, a _gars_ of which bore high our banner)--ouf! I am at
Nantes.

But oh! what a day was that when we arrived at the old castle! The
rector came out, mother, with all his clergy, crowned with
flowers, to receive us and bless us, expressing such joy,--the
tears are in my eyes as I think of it. And my noble Calyste! who
played his part of seigneur like a personage in Walter Scott! My
lord received his tenants' homage as if he were back in the
thirteenth century. I heard the girls and the women saying to each
other, "Oh, what a beautiful seigneur we have!" for all the world
like an opera chorus. The old men talked of Calyste's resemblance
to the former Guenics whom they had known in their youth. Ah!
noble, sublime Brittany! land of belief and faith! But progress
has got its eye upon it; bridges are being built, roads made,
ideas are coming, and then farewell to the sublime! The peasants
will certainly not be as free and proud as I have now seen them,
when progress has proved to them that they are Calyste's equals
--if, indeed, they could ever be got to believe it.

After this poem of our pacific Restoration had been sung, and the
contracts and leases signed, we left that ravishing land, all
flowery, gay, solemn, lonely by turns, and came here to kneel with
our happiness at the feet of her who gave it to us.

Calyste and I both felt the need of thanking the sister of