The pilgrims pass the night in tents erected on the plain, and do not retire to repose until a late hour, remaining to listen to the long narrative poems on sacred subjects which the popular bards wander singing from tent to tent. This first day is wholly consecrated to religion, but secular pleasures awake with the sound of the hautboy on the following morn. The lists are opened at noon. The tree of the prizes, laden with its strange variety of fruits, rises in the centre, while at its foot lows the chief prize of all--the heifer--with its horns gaily decked with ribbons. Numberless competitors present themselves. Trials of strength or skill, wrestling, racing, and dancing, continue without intermission until the evening is far advanced. The first two nights of the _Pardon_ are devoted to wandering singers of every description, such as the millers, the tailors, the ragmen, beggars, and _barz_; but the last is exclusively the right of the _kloer_ or _kler_, of whom, as well as of the first-named personages, we will mention a few particulars. The chief difference between the miller and the other popular minstrels is that he returns every evening to his mill; but, like them, he makes the round of the country, passing through the cities, towns, and villages, entering the farm-house and the manor, going to fairs and markets, and hearing news, which he puts into rhyme as he goes on his way; and his songs, repeated by the beggars, who are rarely the composers of ballads themselves, soon find their way from one end of Brittany to the other. The tailor's special characteristic is caustic wit and raillery. "His ear is long," says the Breton proverb, "his eye open day and night, and his tongue as sharp as his needle." Nothing escapes him. He makes a song upon everybody without distinction, saying in verse that which, he would not dare to say in prose, and yet often so disguising his satire that it is keenest where at first sight least evident. All the value of his songs depends upon their actuality. He is learned in all the gossip of the place, and if perchance on his homeward way he lights upon a couple of lovers, happy in the seclusion of a wood, they find themselves next day the subjects of his malicious muse, and their mutual appreciation proclaimed to all the neighborhood. Of the miller and the ragman much the same may be said; and yet it is but just to add that, with all the pleasure they find in laughing at their neighbor, they are never guilty of calumny against him.