Book account

The jewels, linen, cloth,
ribbon, and hats are made elsewhere, but to those who buy them they
are from Guerande and nowhere else. All artists, and even certain
bourgeois, who come to Guerande feel, as they do at Venice, a desire
(soon forgotten) to end their days amid its peace and silence, walking
in fine weather along the beautiful mall which surrounds the town from
gate to gate on the side toward the sea. Sometimes the image of this
town arises in the temple of memory; she enters, crowned with her
towers, clasped with her girdle; her flower-strewn robe floats onward,
the golden mantle of her dunes enfolds her, the fragrant breath of her
briony paths, filled with the flowers of each passing season, exhales
at every step; she fills your mind, she calls to you like some
enchanting woman whom you have met in other climes and whose presence
still lingers in a fold of your heart.
Near the church of Guerande stands a mansion which is to the town what
the town is to the region, an exact image of the past, the symbol of a
grand thing destroyed,--a poem, in short.


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