e people to work, and their motto was 'The
Cross and the plough, labour and prayer.' They introduced apples, now
the principal fruit of Brittany. Much cider is made and drank; and in
old times they got their wine from France in exchange for wax and
honey, as they were famous bee-keepers. Great fields of buck-wheat still
afford food for the 'yellow-breeched philosophers,' and in many cottage
gardens a row of queerly shaped hives stand in sunny nooks.

These monks were the model farmers of those days, and their abbeys were
fine farms. One had twenty piggeries, of three hundred pigs each, in its
forests. The monks also reared sheep and horses, and bred fish in their
ponds.

Many were also brewers, weavers, carpenters, and so on. Evidently they
lived up to their motto and laboured quite as much as they prayed, and
doubtless were saved by works as well as by faith.

The little Place Du Guesclin, with a stumpy statue of the famous knight
in the middle and chestnut trees all around, was a favourite
resting-place of the ladies--especially when the weekly fair was held
and booths of all sorts were raised at one end. Here Amanda bought a
remarkable jack-knife, which would cut nothing but her fingers: Matilda
speculated in curious kinds of cake; one sort being made into gigantic
jumbles so light that they did excellently for grace-hoops; another sort
being used by these vandals as catch-alls, so deep and tough were they.
Lavinia examined the various fabrics, and got bits of linen as samples,
also queer earthen pots and pans impossible to carry away.

The church of St. Sauveur, a dim and ancient little place with Du
Guesclin's heart buried by the side of his wife, was another haunt. The
castle, now a prison, contained the arm-chair in which Duchess Anne sat,
and the dungeons where were crammed two thousand English prisoners of
war in the last century. The view from the platform of the keep was
magnificent, extending to Mont Dol and the distant sea.

The sunny promenade on the _fosse_, that goes half round the town, was
very charming, with the old grey walls on one side, and, on the other,
the green valley with its luxuriant gardens, and leafy lanes, winding up
to the ruined _chateau_, or the undulating hills with picturesque
windmills whirling on the heights.

On the other side of the town, from the high gardens of the church, one
looked down into the deeper valley of the Rance, with the airy viaduct
striding from hill to hil