dscape is seen in its rich magnificence through the loop-holes of the
casemates once occupied by halberdiers and archers, which are not unlike
the sashes of some belvedere arranged for a point of view.

It is impossible to walk about the place without thinking at every step
of the habits and usages of long-past times; the very stones tell
of them; the ideas of the middle ages are still there with all their
ancient superstitions. If, by chance, a gendarme passes you, with his
silver-laced hat, his presence is an anachronism against which your
sense of fitness protests; but nothing is so rare as to meet a being or
an object of the present time. There is even very little of the clothing
of the day; and that little the inhabitants adapt in a way to their
immutable customs, their unchangeable physiognomies. The public square
is filled with Breton costumes, which artists flock to draw; these stand
out in wonderful relief upon the scene around them. The whiteness of the
linen worn by the _paludiers_ (the name given to men who gather salt in
the salt-marshes) contrasts vigorously with the blues and browns of the
peasantry and the original and sacredly preserved jewelry of the
women. These two classes, and that of the sailors in their jerkins and
varnished leather caps are as distinct from one another as the castes
of India, and still recognize the distance that parts them from the
bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the clergy. All lines are clearly marked;
there the revolutionary level found the masses too rugged and too hard
to plane; its instrument would have been notched, if not broken. The
character of immutability which science gives to zoological species is
found in Breton human nature. Even now, after the Revolution of 1830,
Guerande is still a town apart, essentially Breton, fervently Catholic,
silent, self-contained,--a place where modern ideas have little access.

Its geographical position explains this phenomenon. The pretty town
overlooks a salt-marsh, the product of which is called throughout
Brittany the Guerande salt, to which many Bretons attribute the
excellence of their butter and their sardines. It is connected with
the rest of France by two roads only: that coming from Savenay, the
arrondissement to which it belongs, which stops at Saint-Nazaire; and a
second road, leading from Vannes, which connects it with the Morbihan.
The arrondissement road establishes communication by land, and from
Saint-Nazaire by water,