Every peasant, sailor, and husbandman owns a little white cottage with a garden; among the vegetables, the currant-bushes, the roses, the irises, the marigolds of this garden, you find a shoot of Cayenne tea, a stalk of Virginian tobacco, a Chinese flower, some kind of souvenir of other shores and another sun: they compose the chart and the itinerary of the owner. The occupiers of these coast holdings belong to a fine Norman race; the women are tall, slender, active, and wear grey-woolen bodices, petticoats of calamanco and striped silk, white stockings with colored clocks. Their foreheads are shaded by an ample dimity or cambric head-dress, the flaps of which stand up in the shape of a cap or float like a veil. A number of silver chains hang in a bunch at their left side. Every morning, in the spring, these daughters of the North, stepping from their boats, as though they were coming once again to invade the land, carry to market baskets of fruit and shells filled with curds: when, with one hand, they hold on their heads black jars full of milk or flowers, when the lappets of their white caps set off their blue eyes, their pink faces, their fair hair pearled with dew, the Valkyrs of the _Edda_, of whom the youngest is the Future, or the Basket-bearers of Athens, were less graceful. Does the picture still resemble the original? Those women, doubtless, no longer exist; nought remains but my recollection of them. * I left my mother and went to see my two elder sisters, who lived near Fougères. I stayed a month with Madame de Chateaubourg. Her two country-houses, Lascardais[299] and Le Plessis[300], near Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, famous for its tower and its battle[301], stood in a country of rocks, moors, and woods. My sister's steward was M. Livoret[302], formerly a Jesuit, who had met with a strange adventure. When he was made steward at Lascardais, the Comte de Chateaubourg, the elder, had just died: M. Livoret, who had not known him, was installed as care-taker of the castle. The first night that he slept there alone, he saw a pale old man come into his room, in a dressing-gown and night-cap, and carrying a little light. The apparition went to the hearth, placed the candlestick on the mantel, lit the fire and sat down in a chair. M. Livoret trembled all over his body. After two hours spent in silence, the old man rose, took his light again, and left the room, closing the door behind him.