The Church of St. Eloi was very ancient, and adorned with strange old statues of clumsily carved stone painted in garish colors. One was of a Christ waiting for the cross, His hands tied before Him. It was a hideous figure, the feet and hands huge and distorted, the eyes staring like those of a doll; yet it had an impressive look of suffering. There were no benches in the church except for our family, near the choir. The peasants, the men on one side, the women on the other, knelt on the bare earth during the office. They had used, always, when they entered the church, to pass round before _les maîtres_, bowing before them; but even my mother objected to this, and the curé was told to give out from the pulpit that _les maîtres_ were no longer to be bowed to in church, where there was only one master. _Maman_, however, did not at all like it that my father should insist on us children kneeling with the peasants, and it was the one subject on which I remember a difference of opinion between my grandfather Rosval and papa. But the latter was firm, and Ernest on the side of the men, Eliane and I on the side of the women, we knelt through mass. This was no hardship to us, for the kind peasants spread their skirts for our little knees and regaled us all through the service with _crêpes_. [Illustration: "All the Breton women smoked"] _Crêpes_ seem to be present in nearly all my Breton memories. The peasants made them for us when we went to visit them in their cottages, and it would have hurt their feelings deeply had we refused them. We children delighted in these visits not only on account of the _crêpes_, but on account of the picturesque interest of these peasant interiors. The one living-room had an earthen floor and a huge chimney-place of stone, often quaintly carved, and so large that chairs could be set within it about the blazing logs. The room was paneled, as it were, with beds that looked, when their sliding wooden doors were closed, like tall wardrobes ranged along the walls. They were usually of dark old wood and often beautifully carved. A narrow space between the tops of these beds and the ceiling allowed some air (but what air!) to reach the sleepers, and, within, the straw was piled high, and the mattress and feather bed were laid upon it. It was quite customary for father, mother, and three or four children to sleep in one bed, several generations often occupying a room, as well as the servants, who were of the same class as their masters. The beds were climbed into by means of a carved chest that stood beside them. These were called _huches_, and contained the heirloom costumes, a store of bread, and the Sunday shoes! Potatoes were kept under the bed. In the window stood the table where the family and servants all ate together, and above it hung, suspended by a pulley and string from the ceiling, a curious contrivance for holding spoons. It was a sort of wooden disk, and the spoons were held in notches cut round the