"Where is Frank?" asked Tommy. "He is to spend the night in Chateaubriand's room," said Master Lewis. "Visitors at St. Malo are allowed to sleep there on paying a small sum." "Is Chateaubriand living yet?" asked Tommy. "I thought you said he came to our country after the Revolution." "No, he died many years ago. Frank and I have just been looking from the windows of his birthplace at his tomb on one of the little islands." "But Frank is not going to stay all night in the room of one that is dead! What good will that do?" "It is the respect that appreciation pays to genius," said Master Lewis. Ernest Wynn wished to spend the night with Frank, and received Master Lewis's permission. "Why, Ernest!" said Tommy, "I thought you had more sense. I am glad I am not literary. This is the strangest thing I have met with yet." Chateaubriand's birthplace is the Hotel de France. His room is among those offered to visitors, at a little extra cost. Master Lewis had stopped at the hotel during a previous tour. If Tommy was surprised at the "respect appreciation pays to genius," in the incident of sleeping in Chateaubriand's room, he was more so by a conversation which took place next day, when Master Lewis made his plans for the last zigzag journeys. "The last place we will visit," he said, "is Nantes. We will go by rail to Rennes, and by diligences the rest of the way, which will afford you a fine view of Brittany. At Rennes, we will make, if you like, a détour to Vitré." "What shall we see there?" asked Tommy. "The residence of Madame de Sévigné." "Is _she_ living?" asked Tommy. "Oh, no." "What did she do?" "She wrote letters to her daughter," said Frank. "Who was her daughter?" "The prettiest girl in France." "Is _she_ living?" "Oh, no," said Frank, impatiently. "Why, did you never hear of the Letters of Madame de Sévigné?" "I never did. Are her letters there?" "No." "What is?" "The room where she wrote them," said Master Lewis. "They must be very wonderful letters, I should think," said Tommy, "to make a traveller take all that trouble." "They are," said Master Lewis. "Lord Macaulay says, 'Among modern works I only know two perfect ones; they are Pascal's Provincial Letters, and the Letters of Madame de Sévigné.'" The Class was now in Brittany, a province old and poor, whose very charm is its simplicity and quaintness. Normandy smiles; Brittany wears a sombre aspect everywhere. Normandy is a bed of flowers; Brittany seems to be a bed of stone. Here and there may be seen a church buried in greenery, but the landscape is one of heath, fern, and broom. The people are as peculiar as the country. Their costumes are odd, some of them even wear goat-skins. Many of them lead a sea-faring life; it is the Bretons who chiefly man the French navy.