WHITEWASH
"Over here. Follow me; it's a sight; Boston and I have been prospecting."
Elbowing their way across the "place," by the medal-sellers, and the mushroom villages of candlemongers, they became involved in a temporary street of cider tents, wherein, bronzed and bedecked, the men of Brittany, like men the world over, comforted first the body before grappling with that illusive and unsatisfactory thing—the soul. Under the brown sail awnings they sat, on long oak benches, drinking gravely and without noise, as is the fashion of that strange race, that takes all its pleasures, even dancing, as if Weltschmerz were the impulse. They regarded the foreigners with amiable curiosity, commenting aloud and unabashed in their rough, guttural Celtic, which is identical with the ancient and fast-disappearing language of Cornwall. To the right of the Scala Santa, the four came upon the fountain, a large and inartistic stone monument, presenting to the public a huge sign, "Beware of pickpockets," and four granite shells, from which the water flowed through sunken cisterns, resembling the tanks of a natatorium. Wide stone steps
