ABOVE the inner arch of the Grande Porte at St. Malo, there is a wide niche where candles burn and a tall painted figure stands; a quaint archaic figure with a Child sitting primly on her outstretched arm, and her full eyelids drooping in an eternal meditation. On either side there are the huge squat towers and the great retreating wall; beneath, there is a little square, with cafés at every corner, and a constant crowd coming and going all day long.

The Virgin is there, because she is the guardian and patroness of St. Malo, the watcher at her door; and because in the little square below she can look down upon her children month after month, season after season, in their home-comings and their out-goings, in the autumn that brings them back, in the spring that sends them forth again. She is the protectress of St. Malo, the guardian of the town, as sacred as she is dear and familiar to every true Malouin. But to those whose calling leads them into the constant peril of the sea, she is infinitely more; she walks before them on the waters, her hand is stretched out to them in danger, to save if it may be; she is for them indeed the Star of the Sea, the Gate of Heaven.

It is autumn, and already the Newfoundland fishing-boats are coming back, one by one. There is a saying. here, that it is " "The wind of St François that brings home the Terreneuvas; "1 and surely on the 4th of October, the fête of St. François d'Assisi, there is a fair strong wind

1 Terreneuvas, the local name for the Newfoundland fishermen, as also for their boats.

blowing from the west. In many of the villages round St. Malo, and inland where one can no longer catch sight of the sea, there will be those who turn their faces westward to-day, to greet the wind that has filled the returning sails; in many of the cottages, the goodwife will look to her cider, and tell herself that it must be ready against the gars comes home. Perhaps the gars is indeed a boy, as the word signifies perhaps, also, he is a gray-haired man; but to the goodwife who waits for him at home, he is always the gars. And she brings out the great arm-chair from the corner, where it has stood unused all the long summer, and sets it by the fire; it is empty still, but she fills it for the present with hope. Outside, the sun shines broadly golden, and the trees wave in the wind; one hears the thud of falling apples, and the ground beneath is variously yellow, or green, or red with them; in the yard there is a scented shining heap of fruit, and the cider mill is at work. Everywhere there is the rich strong smell of apples in the air; it is autumn, and the Terreneuvas are coming home.

In the dock the quay is clear, waiting for them; it has been empty, save for a stray visitor or so, all the summer. All this month they come in slowly, but the weather is not yet fair for them; perhaps there are storms against which they can make no way, or windless days when the sea is white and still and swims in silver mists: it is not till after All Saints' that each day the Terreneuvas gather and wait in the bay to come in on the tide. They bring with them an overwhelm

ing stench of salt: everywhere there is salt, the stones, the decks, the waiting carts, are white with it; and everywhere, too, there are unending piles of salted fish.

And now the great steamer is due; the steamer that brings a swarming mass of fishermen back from the Banks, blackening her decks and climbing on to her rigging for the first sight of home. First it is a cluster of black spots on the horizon; then the land draws back on either side, and St. Malo ahead lifts its single spire like a beckoning finger; then the lighthouse is past and the bay opens, and the steamer sweeps round the breakwater under the walls of the town over which the tall chimneys rise and peer. St. Malo to-day has emptied itself upon the quay, and there rises thence a roar of welcome; the Terreneuvas,- -save for the laggards and the storm-stayed, and those who are waited for, but do not come are home.

The goodwife is there from her little inland village; she has tramped in, in her sabots that are pointed high at the toes and bound with brass, with her Sunday coiffe that is trimmed with lace. She has put on her flowered kerchief and the apron with the wide silk ends; she wore them all, perhaps, at her marriage, and she brings them out of the chest where they lie, on the great church festivals and for the return of her gars. The cider is ready at home, the room swept, and the great arm-chair set close to the fire, the high two-storied box beds have little curtains draped neatly at their windows; everything is ready and clean and waiting.

And

before the little plaster Virgin on the chimney shelf there is a bunch of coloured leaves and late flowers or berries, and two tiny tapers which to-night must be lit; for the good Virgin, the Star of the Sea, has No. 437.-VOL. LXXIII.

watched over the gars, and has brought him once more safely home.

And there is perhaps a young wife, with a bundle in her arms; this time last year she was married, and now there is something for her man to see that he has never seen before. She will put it into his arms presently, and he will look at it with a half alarmed delight, and then he will call his mates to come and see, and tell them that it is a boy, parbleu! And he will call it Mousse and talk of taking it with him to the Banks, presently, in a year or two. There are fathers and mothers, friends, sweethearts, children, all waiting eagerly, all there to meet the men that have come home in the great steamer; and there are some, also, who wear their coiffes hanging loose, and covered with a square of black cloth, some, with their eyes dim, who are there to meet those who have not come home. "He would have been in the steamer too if-" they say brokenly; and the people about them nod and understand. There are so many, always so many, who do not

return.

though it is not to-day, when they have just landed, that one would think of it.

There is a pilgrimage, in these early days of November, to St. Jouan des Guérets. It starts from the great church of St. Servan, where the men gather about the door; they have come in from St. Malo, from Dinard, from all the nearer inland villages, where the gars have come back safe from the terrible Banks. There are some of them that are gray-haired and weather-worn, and must soon learn to sit at home; there are young men, there are even boys, who have not yet had time to forget how Brittany smiles in summer; and there are women, who will have their share in thanksgiving to the Good Lady who has heard their prayers. And here, as on the quay when the steamer comes in, there are also those that come to weep, and who see in all the crowd of men only the one that is not there.

Presently with a shuffle and a clatter, the procession starts upon its way. A young priest from the church and an acolyte bearing the crucifix are leading, and the men follow in an interminable line, their eyes vague with the long-sightedness of the sea, their caps in their hands, and their feet bare, tramping rhythmically; last of all the women carrying the sabots of their men, the great sabots that they wear on board the schooners, that they wear even aloft, the great heavy sabots of the Terreneuvas. "Hail, Mary, full of grace!" says the young priest in a rapid, business-like monotone, glancing behind him to see that the crowd is following decently and in order; and along the road rolls the response: "Pray for us, now, and at the hour of death." The sun is shining with the peculiar brilliance of this still autumn weather, the road

men's voices, hoarse from the fogs and the winds, rise and fall in the ever recurring responses; there is a constant tinkle as the chaplets pass through every hand, and the soft rhythmical thud of bare tramping feet.

Half-way, just where the road to St. Jouan des Guérets turns off and climbs the hills that edge the river, there is a tiny ivy-covered chapel, which thrusts a quaint gable upon the road. Upon its steps the acolyte rests the crucifix, and the young priest takes his place beside it; the men kneel down, bare-headed and bare-footed, and a little further off the women in a white-capped cluster upon the road. Then the hymn rises, the hymn which is peculiarly their own, the hymn of the Terreneuvas; the one which they sing in joy and in trouble, in life and in death: Ave! Maris Stella, Dei Mater Alma! And on the steps of the little chapel the young priest sings lustily as one whose business it is, and the acolyte steadies the crucifix that glitters in the sun.

Then the line forms again, and the procession winds its way along the river bank, climbing the hill on which St. Jouan des Guérets is set amid trees; and presently they come in sight of the little church, to which they are making pilgrimage. And all down the line runs a thrill of relief and satisfaction; the feet that ache step out more briskly, the vague eyes brighten, and there is a movement and a stir, as the chaplet finishes and the litany begins, with its cheerful air and its thundering response, that peals magnificently across the fields. Sancta Maria! chants the young priest; and loudly, almost triumphantly, rings out the answer, Ora pro nobis ! Then the crowd passes, singing still, into the church, where a quaintly

painted Virgin stands upon her altar looking down, with a slight wise smile as of one who remembers all things; about her hang strange offerings, ancient pictures and banners and variously rigged boats, set there by those who come to pray at her feet. But most of all there are boats, of all shapes and sorts, brought by her children, the Terreneuvas. And she looks down, smiling wisely, upon the men that kneel before her, and upon the mass of their up-turned faces, bronzed and worn by the usage of the sea; and upon the women behind, the white-capped women who carry the great sabots of their men, and here and there one who comes empty-handed and has no sabots to carry. And perhaps too, in her wisdom, she sees those who are not there, who have stayed behind in the fogs and the storms of the Banks. As the sunshine rushes in at the open door, and the boats and banners about her lift and stir; as she looks down, wisely smiling, the singing begins again, sweetly, familiarly,-Hail, Star of the Sea!

The winter passes on, slowly enough; but to all whose men go to the fishings, too fast. It is February now, and in the villages about St. Malo there is a commencing stir and movement. The time for love-making and marriage is over; already one has to think of making ready to depart. The last month will pass so inconceivably fast in a whirl of work, of excitement, even of amusement; for the Terreneuvas must go, but so long as may be, the Terreneuvas must laugh, or else

It begins with the Review. Some morning towards the end of February one finds St. Malo full of life and movement, a movement that directs itself steadily towards the Mairie in a constant unending stream. The streets are crowded with a busy, bustling

swarm of men, women, and children; one looks along them and perceives a bobbing surface of flat blue caps and white coiffes of every shape and size. One can count by the shapes of the coiffes a score of districts that have emptied themselves upon St. Malo; everywhere there is noise, bustle, excitement; this is the beginning of the end, the beginning of the departure.

The men go to the Mairie, where they enter, leaving the square outside full of waiting women and children; through the windows one can see nothing inside but a dense crowd of blue figures. If one pushes into the vestibule, one hears an official voice reading over the conditions of engagement and the lists of the ship-owners, with whom, in the little cafés about the Grand Porte or elsewhere, they have signed bonds. And all who have. signed must be here to-day, each to accept the conditions, and to answer, when he hears his name, Présent. Slowly, laboriously, list after list is gone through; first it is perhaps the turn of the Anne-Marie, then of the Dieu-Aide, the Marie-Mère, the BelleEtoile,-goëlette after goëlette, schooner after schooner, list after list, a long monotonous succession of names, quaint uncouth Breton names that trip strangely on French tongues; and always the answering Présent. When the lists are called over, not here, but some day next summer, on the AnneMarie or the Dieu-Aide, or another, there will be those, perhaps, who will not answer to their names. But tomorrow, and every day till the end of the month, the Mairie will be full of men, and the monotonous voice will go on incessantly, reading the lists till all have been gone over, all the five or six thousand names of the men that the Clos-Poulet 1 sends to the Banks.

Those who have answered, who

1 Clos-Poulet, the local name for the district round St. Malo.

have "passed the Review," and whose engagements are formally ratified and registered, go out into the square where the women and children are waiting, and move on again, not in a single stream but in diverging groups to the various offices of the shipowners to receive their advance. The advance is calculated on an average season; when the ship-owner finds himself out of pocket in the autumn after a poor fishing, he makes it up by beating down the men on their next agreements; it is always the year after a bad season that the men gain less. But ordinarily the advance is covered by the result of the fishings; and not seldom there is even a little more to be distributed among them when they return home. It is a serious matter, this, of receiving the advance; a sum of £16, £18, or £20 is to the Terreneuvas a fortune. Out of it he must get what he needs, to add to, or renew, his outfit for the Banks; the rest goes to the mother, the wife, the children, for them to live on during the summer, and to put by, if they can, a little for next winter, when the gars will be at home again, hungry, to be fed. And it is partly to buy what is necessary, and partly to watch over the remainder lest too much of it find its way into wineshop or café, that the women come always with their men to the Review. can watch them in little groups of threes and fours, the gars with his wife or mother, and perhaps a couple of children trotting behind, going from shop to shop bargaining, cheapening, spending an hour to save a single sou ; and the shops make ready for them by hanging out temptingly all their wares. Consequently the streets are gay; here are great yellow oilskins and sou'-westers ; brilliant green blankets and striped rugs; there are the stout cottons to make the bags of chaff which are all their bedding, in

One

gaudy checks of orange, red, and blue. There are blue jerseys, flat woollen caps, huge knitted comforters, and padded gloves; there are high boots coming up to the knee, and green or scarlet socks, and piles of great heavy sabots. And all the smaller shops have set out shelves spread with cheap sweetmeats and oranges, coloured paper flowers and common toys; or with bright ribbons and gaily-coloured pins and rings and brooches; while up and down the street men pass, bearing trays or baskets and selling trifles of all sorts, which they cry monotonously. Kikiri-Ki! chants the merchant of caramel apples, with his forest of scarlet balls, perched on slender sticks, Kikiri-Ki! and the seller of berlingots, which are sweetmeats, responds,

À la vanille pour les p'tit's filles, Au citron pour les garçonsenumerating his wares in a rude but tuneful rhyme; and there are all the other odd trifles which are sold at a Brittany fair; "Japanese eggs," "tongues of my mother-in-law," lobsters, perhaps, in scarlet wool, and black Madagascar monkeys dancing at the end of a string; dolls that are mere shapeless wedges of wood; serpents for throwing, confetti, bunches of paper flowers; and certainly somewhere, perhaps in the arching of the gate, a long row of pictures set up against the wall, indescribably religious, and an open umbrella full of small ones, splendidly red and blue and green,-"All at a sou, la Bonne Vierge, la Vierge des Terreneuvas."

And outside on the quay the fair has begun there are booths, lotteries, roundabouts; there are huge baskets of cimereaux, the quaintly shaped biscuits that have been made without change for something like a thousand years in this corner of High Brittany; there are sausages smoking hot, and