CHAPTER X

THE PARDON AT FOLGOAT

I was taken while I was a child at Loch-ar-Brugg to the famous _Pardon de Folgoat_, to which people came from all Brittany. In Folgoat was the summer residence of Anne de Bretagne, and in the vast hall of the château she had held her audiences. The château is now the presbytery, and is opposite the church, of which there is a legend. A poor child, Yann Salacin, who was devoid of reason, spent hours every day before the altar of the Virgin, which he decorated with the wild flowers that he gathered in the fields, and wandered in the forest, swinging on the branches of the trees, always singing Ave Maria, the only words he was ever heard to pronounce. He begged for food from door to door and slept in the barns. The peasants became impatient with him and began to whisper that he was possessed of an evil spirit, and at last they drove him out of the village. The curé, who was a good man, missed him in the church, sought vainly for him, and at last heard what had happened. He was filled with indignation, and told the peasants that they had committed a crime. Then he set out to look for poor Yann, and found him at last in a distant forest, dead with hunger. He brought the body back to Folgoat and buried it near the church, and one day he saw that a tall white lily had grown up from the grave; when he opened the grave he found that the lily sprang from the lips of the little innocent, and on the petals of the flower one could read in letters of gold Ave Maria. This legend is believed in all Brittany, and a stained-glass window in the church tells the story.

Behind the church is the Well of Love, so called because not a day passes that lovers do not come to test their fate by trying to float pins upon the surface of the water. If the pins float, all promises well, and they go away happy. Astute ones slightly grease the pins, and thus aid destiny.

But to return to the _pardon_. I remember that on this occasion an old cook in the family had permission to start two or three days before the _pardon_, so that she might go all the way on her knees, and during those days one met many such devout pilgrims making their way on their knees along the dusty roads. Some of them came from far distances. We children were called before dawn on the August morning, and it was a sleepy, half-bewildered dressing by candle-light. As a closed carriage made me sick, I was put into the coupé with papa and _maman_. Eliane, Ernest, their nurses, and all the other servants, followed in a sort of omnibus, and behind them came all the horses, trotting gaily along the road to share in the blessings of this great day of the Assumption of the Virgin. The horses of Brittany, it will be conceded, are a specially favored race. Although I was in the coupé and had all the freshness of the early air to invigorate me, I remember of the journey from Loch-ar-Brugg to Folgoat only that I was deplorably sick, and the greatest inconvenience to my parents. Fortunately, I was restored the moment I set my feet upon the ground.

We were to be entertained for the day at Folgoat by the curé, and to lunch with him and with the bishops at the presbytery; but we were already ravenously hungry, so, although papa and _maman_ must continue to fast until after taking communion at the early service, we children had a splendid picnic breakfast in the presbytery garden, and a jellied breast of lamb is my first recollection of the day at Folgoat! Then we went out to see the great festival. Seventy-five years or more have passed since that day, and it still lives in my mind with a beauty more than splendid, a divine beauty. In the vast plain, under the vast, blue sky, six bishops, glittering with gold and precious stones, celebrated mass simultaneously at six great altars among thousands of worshipers. It was a sea of color under the August sun, and the white _coiffes_ of the women were like flocks of snowy doves. There was an early mass, and the high mass at eleven. When this was over, we assembled at the presbytery to lunch with the bishops. The table was laid in Anne de Bretagne's council-chamber, its stone walls covered with archaic figures, and it must have been a picturesque sight to see the bishops sitting in all their splendor against that ancient background; but what I most remember are the stories they told of Louis XI and his misdeeds, which seemed to me more interesting and more cruel than the Arabian Nights and Ali Baba and his forty thieves. In the church itself was shown a superbly carved bench where, it was said, while praying, he ordered with a nod the death of a Breton noble who had refused to do him homage. When we went into the church after lunch to see this bench, I sat down on it, and my long golden curls were caught in the claws of the interlaced monsters on the back, and I hurt myself so much in wrenching myself free that I hated still more fiercely the wicked king who condemned men to death while he prayed. O the horrid monster!

Then at three came the great procession. First went the six bishops, mitered and carrying their croziers; then followed the children of the _noblesse_, we among them, all in white, with white wreaths on our heads; then all the vast multitude, twenty or thirty abreast, singing canticles, a stupendous sight and sound, all marching round the plain, from altar to altar, under the burning sun. I remember little after that. The Marquis de Ploeuc was there, his hair tied in the _catogan_, and wearing his black silk suit: I think he must have lunched with us at the curé's. It was arranged that he and his two eldest daughters were to drive back to Loch-ar-Brugg with _maman_ and spend some days with us, and so, though I must have been very tired, I was to ride back beside papa on my pony, which had been duly blessed. It was already night when we started, and what a wonderful ride it was! I remember no fatigue. I still wore my white dress, and _maman_ swathed my head and shoulders in a white lace shawl, and all the way back to Loch-ar-Brugg papa told me stories of hunts, of fairies, of saints, and of escaped convicts. Every group of trees, every rock, every turning in the road, had its legend or its adventure.