Loch-ar-Brugg, which means Place of Heather, was an old manor and property that my father had bought and at that time used as a hunting-lodge, and Ker-Eliane was a wild, beautiful piece of country adjoining it, a pleasure resort, called after my mother's name. To reach Loch-ar-Brugg we all went by the traveling carriage to my father's native town of Landerneau. I dreaded these journeys, since inside the carriage I always became sick; but on this occasion I sat outside near an old servant of my grandmother's called Soisick, the diminutive of François, and was very happy, since in the open air I did not suffer at all. Soisick was an old Breton from Brest. He wore the costume of that part of the country, a tightly fitting, long, black jacket opening over a waistcoat adorned with white-bone buttons, full knee-breeches of coarse, white linen girded over the waistcoat with a red woolen sash, with white woolen stockings, and black shoes. One still sees very old Bretons wearing this costume, but nowadays the peasants prefer the vulgar, commonplace dress of modern work-people. My father was waiting for us on the quay of Landerneau. What joy I felt when I saw him! When he climbed up beside me and Soisick my happiness was complete. [Illustration: "The Château de Ker-Azel near by, where we were to stay"] Loch-ar-Brugg at that time was not suitably arranged for our habitation, and we drove on to the Château de Ker-Azel near by, where we were to stay with my _tante_ de Laisieu. This elder sister of my mother's was a fat, untidy, shiftless woman who had once been a beauty, but whose abundant fair hair was now faded, and who went about her house and gardens in the mornings _en camisole_. When dressed for the day her appearance was hardly more decorous, for she wore no stays, and fastened the slender bodices of her old dresses across her portly person in a very haphazard fashion, so that intervals of white underclothing showed between the straining hooks. She was a singular contrast to my mother, always so freshly perfect in every detail of her toilet. The château was partly old and partly new and very ugly, though the park that sloped down to it was fine. Near the château stood a very old and beautifully carved font that must have belonged to a church long since destroyed. Later on, in the days of her descendants, it was kept filled with growing flowers and was a beautiful object, but my aunt merely used it as a sort of waste-paper basket for any scraps she picked up in the park. We children used to conceal ourselves in it in our games of hide-and-seek. I enjoyed myself among my many cousins, for I was at this time so young and so naughty that they tended to give way to me in everything. One of them, however, a singularly selfless and devout boy called France, was fond of me for myself, and though I never paid much attention to him, victim rather than play-mate as he usually was in the games of the