WANDERING in the west of France in the summer of 1850, circumstances induced me, when I was at Nantes, to extend my peregrinations into that corner of Brittany which lies between the estuaries of the Loire and the Vilaine, and which, offering no attraction to the ordinary traveller, is very rarely visited. I, however, had a motive, and a sufficient one; it was to see the singular old town of Guérande, and the no less singular tract of country by which it is surrounded. If I wished to behold a perfect relic of medieval times, there was no such specimen, I had been assured, as Guérande; and being so near, I resolved not to neglect the opportunity.

After inquiring about the readiest mode of reaching the place, I found that it was most accessible by water, as at that season the service between Nantes and St. Nazaire, which may be called the port of Guérande, though distant from it some leagues, was daily performed by steamboats, which started at a very early hour.

The morning was wet, dull, and dreary, and the churchclocks were chiming "four," when the Armoricain, which was the name of the boat I went by, got clear of the city; nor was it until we had passed the island of Indret that the weather began to improve, and the sun shone out. Up to this point I had not ventured to leave the deck; for I hold that it is better to be rained upon than stifled, and suffocation seemed a probable fate if I had gone below with the numbers who crowded into the cabin; but when the first ray of sunshine brought back the refugees, when the cabin-windows had been thrown open, when the odour of newly-made coffee, hot cutlets, fried potatoes, and other comestibles, began to pervade the air, a most voracious

appetite awoke within me, and relinquishing my seat, I descended in search of breakfast. I shall not enumerate the dishes that were set before me, lest it excite present hunger; but I am bound to mention one,-the last that was brought; it was a dish of quails, delicately wrapped up in vine-leaves, in which envelope they had been roasted, the crispness of each leaf attesting the service it had rendered in preserving all the juices of the delicious little birds, which one could never have the heart to kill if one did not always long to eat them.

I was not breakfasting alone in the cabin. At a small table exactly opposite to me sat another traveller similarly occupied, -that is to say, eating his breakfast, but more frugally; for he had simply ordered coffee and a pistolet, whereas I had given the waiter carte blanche. He was an odd-looking little man, with a wizened face and small, black, sparkling eyes; and he wore a very large fur cap with an immense peak that projected horizontally, and threw half his face into shadow. Pleasantly, and I may say steadily, as I was occupied with my meal, I could not help noticing that the eyes beneath the large peak were constantly directed towards me, as if their owner took more interest in my proceedings than in his own. This might well be, for it seemed to me very poor work, moistening a dry chip of a roll, nearly as long as a flute, in order to make it eatable. However, the gentleman in the hairy cap went on munching his pistolet with infinite content until my quails were brought in. Then he paused, his little black eyes twinkled more brightly than ever, and addressing the waiter, he said,

"Ah! so the quails are in!"

"Yes, sir," was the reply, "but they are scarce; these two," pointing to the dish as he set it on the table, "are all we had." "Diable!" exclaimed the little wizen-faced man, with an air of vexation.

I hope I shall obtain some credit for self-denial when I say that, on hearing this exclamation, I at once made up my mind to a great sacrifice.

"You are very fond of quails, sir," I inquired of my fellow traveller.

"At this season of the year," said he, "they are to me everything!"

"In that case," I observed, "permit me to offer you one of these; they are very fine."

"You are too good," he said; "I thank you infinitely, -but," he smiled, after a melancholy sort of fashion, “what could I do with it now?"

"Eat it,” I returned, rather surprised at the question.

He smiled again, though still in the same melancholy way. "Ah! it is not to craunch those little beings that I love them. Pray finish your breakfast, sir; I never eat them."

"You must think me very inhuman, then, to enjoy them so much. I think them exquisite; quite as fine as ortolans. I wish you would change your mind."

He shook his head, and I went on with the second. "I love ortolans, too," he continued.

"In the same manner, perhaps?"

"Precisely. My celebrity, indeed, would not have been gained had I not shown the devotion of a life to those animals."

I was puzzled. What sort of a mania was this? A man who wouldn't eat quails or ortolans! And then his "celebrity." What could such a strange little fellow be celebrated for? I resolved to ask him who he was, and why he didn't eat roasted quails.

He answered me by a question: "You have been in Paris ?" I had.

"Without doubt, then, you have heard of the name of Roqueplan?"

I had not, and was obliged to acknowledge the fact.

The little man made a grimace of discontent; but, gulping down his disappointment with the remainder of his coffee, he left his seat, advanced into the middle of the cabin, drew himself up to his full height,-about five feet one,-and smiting himself on the left breast, exclaimed, in a loud voice,

"Sir, I am Roqueplan!"

He then took off his cap, and made me a low bow.

I returned it; but, though I knew now who Roqueplan was, I was no nearer the mark as to what constituted his celebrity. "A foreigner,—a mere traveller," I observed apologetically, "with pursuits which shut him out of the great world, often remains in ignorance of the most distinguished characters that adorn it."

My companion took the compliment to himself, his brow became smooth, he smiled, and made me another bow.

"I may, therefore, be pardoned, I continued, "if I inquire the specialty of Monsieur Roqueplan."

He put down his cap, and thrusting his hand into the breast of his redingote, drew forth a bulky and somewhat greasy pocket-book, tied round with tape to keep it from bursting; it seemed as if all the archives of the house of Roqueplan must be contained in it. Indeed, in a certain sense, they were; for after turning over a number of documents,-amongst them, no doubt, those "papers" which every Frenchman is always ex

pected to have "upon him,"-he fished out a stiff yellowish card, very closely printed within a classic border, and put it in hand.

my

There, sir," he said, triumphantly, "do me the honour to read that."

The card ran as follows:

"Rue du Carrousel, 2, près le Louvre. Ci-devant quai de la Mégisserie, 66, Ancienne Maison Pibrac. ROQUEPLAN, Successeur."

The rest may as well be translated: "Purveyor of living game for sport. Keeps an assortment of French and foreign pigeons, as well as parroquets and birds from the islands; every description of domestic and wild fowl, pheasants, pointers, ferrets, poodles, and lou-lous." [The last are untranslateable dogs with tails that can't uncurl;-great sport with them, no doubt, as well as with poodles.] "Swans and ducks for ornamental waters, decoy-birds, implements for capturing game, et cetera.” So, then, Roqueplan was a game-purveyor; and it was not so very strange, after all, that I who am only an antiquarian, hunting down the Past amid musty parchments and mouldering walls, should never have heard of him.

"I have composed that description of my profession," said Monsieur Roqueplan, " for the convenience of the public."

It struck me that the description was no less convenient for himself, but I refrained from saying so, observing only:

"You are at some distance from Paris, Monsieur Roqueplan; it is the dull season now, and you travel for recreation ?" "For pleasure, yes-a little; for health too; but, chiefly, for business. Attendez, monsieur, je vais vous expliquer un peu."

There is a certain class of persons, and Monsieur Roqueplan was one of them, who will communicate their private affairs to you. Divided as property is in France, people there are always coming in for a "petite succession." This was my fellow traveller's lot; the death of a relation at Guérande had brought him down into this part of the country. It was not his native place, he took care to inform me, but his mother's; she having been a Breton, his father a native of Tours, and himself a vrai Parisien." He was going to He was going to "recueillir" his "succession,' to recross the Loire, and then pursue his journey into the Bocage of La Vendée, to obtain a supply of quails, red partridges, and 66 vanneaux," -a kind of tufted heron.

Monsieur Roqueplan's fondness for quails was now explained, also his abstinence: if he ate them, of course, he could not sell them, and he preferred his pocket to his appetite.

"If it were not," he said, "for the property that I am going to inherit, I should not go near Guérande, for the country thereabouts does not tempt me. For leagues and leagues there are nothing but salt marshes; no game of any description, not a quail, not even a golden plover,-conceive a country without game! Higher up, indeed, when you cross the Vilaine and get into the forests, then there is sport,-wild boars and pheasants; but there are also too many grands seigneurs! The gentlemen of Brittany find their own game, they do not come to my establishment. And you, sir," he continued, "do you mean to make any stay at Guérande?"

Only long enough to see the town and neighbourhood," I replied; "two or three days, I suppose, will-suffice for that?"

"I should think so!" he returned; "I have not been there since I was a boy, but I recollect well that the place was very triste. To me, however, it will be gay enough now."

Having touched upon matters personal to himself, Monsieur Roqueplan loquaciously pursued his theme. It was natural to him to descant upon his own affairs to strangers, and the consciousness of his newly acquired fortune was too glorious a fact to admit of concealment; so that if I had been his own man of business he could scarcely have been more communicative. I got tired at last of hearing about family matters-including Heaven only knows how many quarrels, which did not in the least interest me-and, taking advantage of the descent of some more people into the cabin, I went on deck, leaving Monsieur Roqueplan engaged in conversation with one of the new comers, to whom, I doubt not, he unbosomed himself as freely as he had done to me; for I observed him afterwards sitting in deep confab with the stranger-a very ill-looking fellow in a blousein a remote part of the vessel. Our conversation, indeed, was not renewed, while I remained on board, though I wished him good-bye as I stepped out of the boat at St. Nazaire, leaving him to follow as best he might. At that moment I caught sight of him amongst the crowd who were disembarking, with a carpet bag, a hat-box, and a red umbrella in one hand-how he held them all seemed a miracle-and with the other arresting the progress of a large trunk, his property (such a trunk! Iachimo and his brother, if he had one, might have slept in it), which a sturdy fisherman was making off with in expectation of the accustomed fee. Though evidently in some perplexity, lest his trunk should suddenly vanish, his habitual politeness did not desert him, for, on hearing my salutation, he relinquished his grasp for an instant to raise his fur cap, and cordially