Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag (Vol. 1-6). Louisa May AlcottЧитать онлайн книгу.
relic within. The names and dates of the deceased are inscribed outside.
Saint Ives or Yves is a favourite saint, and images of him are in all churches and over many doors. He was one of the remarkable characters of the thirteenth century. He studied law in Paris, and devoted his talents to defending the poor; hence, he was called 'the poor man's advocate:' and so great is the confidence placed in his justice, that, even now, when a debtor falsely denies his debt, a peasant will pay twenty sous for a mass to St. Ives, sure that the Saint will cause the faithless creditor to die within the year or pay up.
His truthfulness was such that he was called 'St. Yves de vérité.' He was the special patron of lawyers, but he does not seem to be their model.
The early monks taught the 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 château, 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 hill, and the old part of the town nestling at its base.
Soft and summery, fertile and reposeful, was the scene; and the busy peasants at their work added to the charm. Pretty English children with Breton nurses, each in the costume of her native town, played under the lindens all abloom with odorous flowers and alive with bees. Workmen came to these green places to eat the black bread and drink the thin wine that was all their dinner. Invalids strolled here after their baths at the little house in the rose-garden below. Pretty girls walked there in the twilight with long-haired lovers in knee breeches and round hats. Nuns in their grey gowns went to and fro from hospital and the insane asylum or charity school; and the beautiful old priest sometimes went feebly by, smiling paternally on his flock, who rose and uncovered reverently as he passed.
Flowers were everywhere—in the gardens of the rich, at the windows of the poor. The stalls in the market were gay with plumy lilacs, splendid tulips, roses of every shade, and hyacinths heavy with odour. All along the borders of the river waved the blossoming grass; every green bank about the mills at Lehon was yellow with dandelions, and the sunny heads of little children welcoming the flower of the poor. Even the neglected churchyard of the ruined abbey, where the tombs of the stately Beaumanoirs still stand, was bright with cheerful daisies and blue-eyed forget-me-nots.
The willows in the valley were covered with fragrant tassels, and the old women and children sat all day on door-stones and by the wayside stripping the long, white wands for basket-making. Flax fields were blooming in the meadows, and acres of buckwheat, with its rosy stems and snowy blossoms, whitened the uplands with a fair prophecy of bread for all.
So, garlanded about with early flowers and painted in spring's softest, freshest colours, Brittany remains for ever a pleasant picture in the memory of those who have been welcomed to its hospitable homes, and found friends among its brave and loyal people.
III.
FRANCE.
'Girls, I have had a scintillation in the night: listen and approve!' said Amanda, coming into the room where her comrades sat upon the floor, in the first stages of despair, at the impossibility of getting the accumulated rubbish of three months' travel into a couple of immense trunks.
'Blessed girl! you always bring a ray of light just at the darkest moment,' returned Lavinia, with a sigh of relief, while Matilda looked over a barricade of sketch-books bristling with paint-brushes, and added anxiously—
'If you could suggest how I am to work this miracle, you will be a public benefactor.'
'Behold the amendment I propose,' began Amanda, perching herself on one of the arks. 'We have decided to travel slowly and comfortably through France to Switzerland, stopping where we like, and staying as long as we please at any place we fancy, being as free as air, and having all the world before us where to choose, as it were.'
'The route you have laid out is a charming one, and I don't see how you can improve it,' said Lavinia, who, though she was supposed to be the matron, guide, and protector of the younger girls, was in reality nothing but a dummy, used for Mrs. Grundy's sake, and let the girls do just as they pleased, only claiming the right to groan and moan as much as she liked when neuralgia, her familiar demon, claimed her for its own.
'One improvement remains to be made. Are these trunks a burden, a vexation of spirit, a curse?' demanded Amanda, tapping one with her carefully cherished finger-tips.
'They are! they are!' groaned the others, regarding the monsters with abhorrence.
'Then let us get rid of them, and set out with no luggage but a few necessaries in a shawl-strap.'
'We will! we will!' returned the chorus.
'Shall we burn up our rubbish, or give it away?' asked Lavinia, who liked energetic measures, and was ready to cast her garments to the four winds of heaven, to save herself from the agonies of packing.
'I shall never give up my pictures, nor my boots!' cried Matilda, gathering her idols to her breast in a promiscuous heap.
'Be calm and listen,' returned the scintillator. 'Pack away all but the merest necessaries, and we will send the trunk by express to Lyons. Then with our travelling-bags and bundles, we can follow at our leisure.'
''Tis well! 'tis well!' replied the chorus, and they all returned to their packing, which was performed in the most characteristic manner.
Amanda never seemed to have any clothes, yet was always well and appropriately dressed; so it did not take her long to lay a few garments, a book or two, a box of Roman-coin lockets, scarabæ brooches, and cinque-cento rings, likewise a swell hat and habit, into her vast trunk; then lock and label it in the most business-like and thorough manner.
Matilda found much difficulty in reconciling paint-pots and silk gowns, blue hats and statuary, French boots and Yankee notions. But order was at length