WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



CARHAIX is a very primitive town, and, so long as railways keep 

 their distance, is likely to continue so for many a year to come. 

 Beyond a couple of water-mills, to grind corn for the people, 

 here are no other mills nor manufactories to induce commercial 

 visits and increase the wealth of the place ; nor, beyond the 

 company of the Juge de Paix and the Doctor, both of whom 

 had travelled beyond the precincts of their native department 

 the latter, indeed, even so far as Algeria was there any society 

 to which a stranger could fly for recreation when the business of 

 the day was done, and night had drawn its dark curtain over the 

 sombre town. There was one billiard-room in the place, it is 

 true, but the seamed surface of its cloth indicated too plainly 

 how many a game the moths had played on it, and scarcely 

 would a schoolboy have been tempted to try his cue on such a 

 table ; and one cafe within a stone's-throw of the hotel ; but, with 

 the exception of an occasional commis-voyagtur, and that, too, 

 only after the breakfast meal, it was a rare occurrence indeed to 

 see even the idlest lounger of the town cross its threshold. 



So, a man sojourning at Carhaix, without resources of his 

 own to fall back upon, either mental or muscular, literary or 

 mechanical, sedentary or sylvan, would inevitably feel the worst 

 horrors of isolation, and surfer the tortures of ennui to an 

 unlimited extent ; but to him who could be contented and happy 



