What I Remember, Volume 2 | Page 8

prevailed; and my companion wished to add a sketch of it to his
fast-increasing collection of Breton costumes. With this view, he had
begun making love to the maid a little, to induce her to do so much
violence to her maiden modesty, as to sit to him for a few minutes,
when a far better opportunity of achieving his object presented itself.
"The landlady's daughter, a very pretty little girl about fourteen years
old, was going to be confirmed, and had just come down stairs to her
mother, who was sitting knitting in the salle à manger, for inspection
and approval before she started. Of course, upon such an occasion, the
art of the blanchisseuse was taxed to the utmost. Lace was not spared;
and the most recherché coiffure was adopted, that the rigorous
immutability of village modes would permit.
"It would seem that the fickleness of fashion exercises in constant local
variations that mutability which is utterly denied to it in Brittany with
regard to time. Every district, almost every commune has its own
peculiar 'mode' (for both sexes) which changes not from generation to
generation. As the mothers dress, so do their daughters, so did their
grandmothers, and so will their grand-daughters." [But I reckoned
when writing thus without the railroad and its consequences.] "If a
woman of one parish marries, or takes service, or for any other cause
resides in another, she still retains the mode of her native village; and
thus carries about her a mark, which is to those, among whom she is a
sojourner, a well-recognised indication of the place whence she comes,
and to herself a cherished souvenir of the home which she never ceases
to consider her own country.

"But though the form of the dress is invariable, and every inhabitant of
the commune, from the wealthy farmer's wife to the poorest cottager
who earns her black bread by labour in the fields, would as soon think
of adopting male attire as of innovating on the immemorial mode du
pays, yet the quality of the materials allows scope for wealth and
female coquetry to show themselves. Thus the invariable mode de
Broons, with its trifling difference in form, which in the eye of the
inhabitants made it as different as light from darkness from the mode de
St. Jouan,' was equally observable in the coarse linen coiffe of the maid,
and the richly-laced and beautifully 'got up' head-dress of the daughter
of the house.
"A very slight observation of human nature under a few only of its
various phases may suffice to show that the instinct which prompts a
woman to adorn her person to the best possible advantage is not the
hot-house growth of cities, but a genuine wild flower of nature. No
high-born beauty ever more repeatedly or anxiously consulted her
wax-lit psyché on every faultless point of hair, face, neck, feet, and
figure, before descending to the carriage for her first ball, than did our
young Bretonne again and again recur to the mirror, which occupied
the pier between the two windows of the salle à manger, before
sallying forth on the great occasion of her confirmation.
"The dear object of girlish ambition was the same to both; but the
simplicity of the little paysanne showed itself in the utter absence of
any wish to conceal her anxiety upon the subject. Though delighted
with our compliments on her appearance, our presence by no means
prevented her from springing upon a chair every other minute to obtain
fuller view of the tout ensemble of her figure. Again and again the
modest kerchief was arranged and rearranged to show a hair's breadth
more or a hair's breadth less of her brown but round and taper throat.
Repeatedly, before it could be finally adjusted to her satisfaction, was
the delicate fabric of her coiffure moved with cautious care and dainty
touch a leetle backwarder or a leetle forwarder over her sun-browned
brow.
"Many were the pokings and pinchings of frock and apron, the

smoothings down before and twitchings down behind of the not less
anxious mother. Often did she retreat to examine more correctly the
general effect of the coup d'oeil, and as often return to rectify some
injudicious pin or remodel some rebellious fold. When all was at length
completed, and the well-pleased parent had received from the servants,
called in for the express purpose, the expected tribute of admiration, the
little beauty took L'Imitation de la Vierge in her hand, and tripped
across to a convent of Soeurs Grises on the other side of the way to
receive their last instructions and admonitions respecting her behaviour
when she should be presented to the bishop, while her mother screamed
after her not to forget to pull up her frock when she kneeled