"These country nobles were mere peasants,[1] but the first of their
class. At one time there was only one in each parish, and they were
regarded as the representatives and mouthpieces of the inhabitants,
who scrupulously respected their right and treated them with great
consideration. But towards the close of the last century they were
beginning to disappear very fast. The peasants looked upon them
as being the lay heads of the parish just as the priest was the
ecclesiastical head. He who held this position at Tredarzec of whom I
am speaking, was an elderly man of fine presence, with all the force
and vigour of youth, and a frank and open face; he wore his hair long,
but rolled up under a comb, only letting it fall on Sunday, when he
partook of the Sacrament. I can still see him--he often came to visit
us at Treguier--with his serious air and a tinge of melancholy, for
he was almost the sole survivor of his order, the majority having
disappeared altogether, while the others had come to live in towns. He
was a universal favourite. He had a seat all to himself in church, and
every Sunday he might be seen in it, just in front of the rest of
the congregation, with his old-fashioned dress and his long gloves
reaching almost to the elbow. When the Sacrament was about to be
administered he withdrew to the end of the choir, unfastened his hair,
laid his gloves upon a small stool placed expressly for him near the
rood screen, and walked up the aisle unassisted and erect.
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