One saw life-sized ladies and gentlemen dancing in stately rounds or laughing under trees and among flowers and butterflies. The great dining-room was paneled with dark wood carved into frames around the portraits of ancestors that were ranged along it. The coffers and the sideboards, where the silver stood, were of the same carved wood. I remember once going down to peep at the kitchen in the basement, and the dark immensity, streaming, as it were, with cooks, servants, kitchen-boys, and maids, so bewildered and almost frightened me that I never ventured there again. The old marquis was a widower, and his married daughters, the Marquise de L---- and Mme. d'A----, usually lived with him and his unmarried daughter Rosine, who became a nun. He was a splendid old gentleman, tall, with a noble carriage and severe, yet radiant, countenance. In the daytime he dressed always in gray coat and knee-breeches, with gray-and-black striped stockings and buckled shoes. At night his thick, white hair was gathered into a _catogan_,--a little square black-silk bag, that is to say,--tied with a bow, and he wore a black-silk suit. On festal occasions, Christmas, Easter, or his fête-day, he became a magnificent figure in brocaded coat and white-satin waistcoat and knee-breeches; he had diamond shoe- and knee-buckles, diamond buttons on his waistcoat, and golden _aiguillettes_ looped across his breast and shoulder. The diamond buckles he left to me, to be given to me on my first communion, and in his lifetime he had made for me a beautiful missal bound in white parchment and closed with a diamond and emerald clasp; inside were old illuminations. In his youth M. de Ploeuc had been an officer of the Chouans, and he was, of course, a passionate royalist. He always wore the Croix de St. Louis, a fleur-de-lis, with the little cross attached by blue ribbon. I asked him once if it was the same sort of decoration as my Grandfather de Rosval's, which, I said, was larger and was tied with red, and I remember the kindly and ironic smile of my old friend as he answered, "Oh, no; that is only the Légion d'honneur." [Illustration: "He was a splendid old gentleman"] Brittany had many marquises, some of them also old and distinguished; but he was the _doyen_ of them all, and was always called simply _le_ marquis. Any disputes or difficulties among the local _noblesse_ were always brought to him for his decision, and on such occasions, if the discussions became heated, he would say, "_Palsan bleu, mes seigneurs, il me semble que vous vous oubliez ici_," using the dignified oath already becoming obsolete. His French was the old French of the court. He never, for instance, said, "_Je vous remercie_," but, "_Je vous rends gráce_."