Before daybreak he was taken to the chapel of the saint who
exercised the healing power. A blacksmith arrived at the same time
with his forge, nails, and tongs. He lighted his fire, made his tongs
red hot, and held them before the face of the saint, threatening to
shoe him as he would a horse unless he cured the child of his
fever. The threat took immediate effect, and my father was cured.
Wood-carving has long been in great favour in Brittany. The statues of
these saints are extraordinarily life-like, and in the eyes of people
of vivid imagination they may well seem to be actually alive. I
remember in particular one good man, who was not more daft than the
rest, who always made off to the churches in the evening when he got
the chance. The next morning, he was invariably found in the building,
half dead with fatigue. He had spent the whole night in detaching the
figures of Christ from the crosses and drawing the arrows out of the
bodies of St. Sebastian.
My mother, who was a Gascon on one side (her father was a native of
Bordeaux), told these anecdotes with much wit and tact, passing
deftly between what was real and what was fanciful, so as to leave
the impression that these things were only true from an ideal point
of view. She clung to these fables as a Breton; as a Gascon she
was inclined to laugh at them, and this was the secret of the
sprightliness and gaiety of her life. This state of things has been
the means of giving me what little talent I may have for historical
studies.
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