Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.8 #46 (Mar 1854).
In an excursion I once made in Brittany, I arrived one evening at the little town of Pontaven in Lower Cornwall—for Cornwall is on both sides of the channel—with all its Tors, Tres, and Pens, as well on the French as on the English land, which goes far to prove that the two countries of Great and Little Britain were once united.
It was a beautiful summer, and the charming country in that point of projecting land between the Bay of Douarnenez and the inlet of Benodet, had never looked more smiling and agreeable. I was on my way to Quimper, the capital of the district, and need not have ventured on such fare as the very shabby inn offered; but I had a fancy to stop in order to have an opportunity of visiting the ruins of a castle which I had observed on my way, crowning a hill rising above a Village called Nizon, a short walk from Pontaven.
As I was well aware that to view a ruin aright, one should "go visit it by the pale moonlight," and the moon being-then "in her highest noon," I meditated an excursion with my companions—one of whom was a Breton born, and the other a brisk little native of Normandy—to the Castle of Rustéfan, as soon as our supper had a little restored us after a day's journey over bad roads.
The walk was extremely pretty through deep shaded lanes, across which the clear rays of the moonlight danced as they escaped through the leaves, stirred by a soft breeze. We soon reached the village, and mounted the steep hill, at the highest point of which rose the numerous walls and towers of what must once have been a large castle. In what had been the inner court the ground was covered with soft turf; where, formerly, the village fêtes and dances were held.
One night, a merry party of young people were dancing on this green, and had not yet ceased, when the clock of the chapel of Nizon tolled twelve. Exactly at that moment, although the weather had been beautiful until then, for it was a warm summer, a sudden chill came over all, the moon became obscured, and the wind rose in sharp gusts which violently shook the thick ivy garlands on the wall. The party stopped in the midst of their dance, for every one had felt the influence of the change, and, as the sky grew darker and the wind louder, they clung to each other in actual fear. Presently those who had courage to look round them were aware that, gazing at them from the pointed ruined window of the donjon, stood a figure in the dress of a monk with a shaven crown and hollow lustrous eyes. As the Great Revolution had long since cleared the country of monasteries, and as no monk had ever been seen in the locality except in a picture, the general astonishment was great. The terror increased when the figure, slowly moving from the window, reappeared at a lower one, as if descending the broken stair, and finally was seen to emerge from beneath the stone portal into the interrupted moonlight, and appeared—still fixing his lustrous eyes upon them—to be advancing. With a general cry of terror, and with a rapidity which only fear could give, all rushed toward the opposite entrance, and, nearly falling over each other in their eagerness to escape, darted from the castle and made the best of their way to the bottom of the hill, nor stopped until they had regained the cottages.
After this, the ruins were never visited by night; but occasionally it happened that a stranger, coming from a distance, would have to cross the lower part of the hill, which the castle crowned, and, if he looked up from the marshy lake into which drains all the water from the heights round about, and which is one of the most dismal, dreary-looking spots in the neighborhood, he was sure to see, mounting the hill and advancing slowly to the chief entrance to the castle, a funeral procession conducting a bier covered with a white cloth, and having four tapers at the corners, just as is usual on the coffin of a young girl. This would enter the castle gate and disappear.
Others have heard, as they passed under the walls, the sound of weeping and lamenting, and sometimes of a low melancholy singing, and have been witnesses to the appearance on the walls of a female figure, as of a very young girl, dressed in a robe of green satin strewn with golden flowers, who walks mournfully along uttering sighs and sobs, and occasionally singing in a tearful voice, words which no one has been able to comprehend.
My Breton friend, to whom all the legends of his country were familiar, finding that I was interested in the account of these apparitions of the castle, thus satisfied my longing to know how the belief could have arisen of these appearances of monk and lady.
"I suppose it was to give a gloomier horror to the legend that our friends the peasants of Nizon fixed upon a monk for their ghost. The fact is, it is a priest who appears, with shaven head and brilliant eyes; one of those whom you may meet any day in the parish; indeed, the real hero of the tale filled that very office. You may have observed two names frequently repeated over the shops, both in the village below and at Pontaven—both Naour and Flécher are common hereabouts; the first are extremely proud of their name, for it proves them to be descendants of the once powerful lord of the castle of Rustéfan, in days when lords were people who had the command of all the country and all the peasants within their ken. As for Flécher, it was never more illustrious than it is now, yet it is connected with the history of these old ruins as much as the other.
"The peasants of Brittany are very ambitious that their sons should enter the church: it removes them from evil habits and hard labor, it gives them education and a certain superiority which every mother wishes her child to attain: moreover, in their opinion, it secures them heaven, and provides prayers for their kindred, and if the priest should happen to turn out a saint, the whole family is made immortal in fame.
"Marie Flécher, a widow with an only son, lived at Pontaven, and, every time her pretty little boy Ivan came home from the hills after tending the flocks of the farmer who employed him, she sighed to think that so promising a child should have no better occupation. As he grew older, her regret increased, until at last she became quite unhappy, and imparted to her son her desire that he should go to school at Quimper and study to be a priest, instead of wasting his time in keeping sheep, and dancing and flirting with the young girls of the village. 'This is not a life for you,' she said. 'I have had a dream, in which the Blessed Virgin directed me to dedicate you to her service: she hates idleness and ignorance, and you must go to the good father at Quimper, who will give you an education for nothing. You will first become a clerc, then a priest, have a salary, be able to keep your poor mother when she can work no longer, and pray for the soul of your father.'
"'But,' said Ivan, laughing and caressing her, for he was very gay, 'I don't want to be either a priest or a monk; I have lost my heart to the prettiest girl in the parish.'
"Marie started and looked disturbed: 'This will not do, Ivan,' she said; 'you are too poor for that. You must leave your sheep and the young girls, and come with me to Quimper to learn to be something more than a clown, and to gain heaven by becoming a priest. You shall study, and shall be a clerc.'
"The most beautiful girls in that part of the country were the daughters of the lord of the Castle of Rustéfan, whose name was Naour, and whose lady was the godmother of Ivan Flécher: no one could look at any one else when these young ladies came down on their white ponies to the Pardon of Pontaven, clattering along the stony street, and dressed in green silk, with gold chains round their necks. They were all handsome; but the youngest, Géneviève, was far beyond the others, and every body at Pontaven said she was in love with the handsomest young man of the village, and he was Ivan Flécher, who was now a clerc, studying for the priesthood.
"It was at the Pardon of Pontaven that Géneviève and Ivan met, only for a moment, after his absence at the school of Quimper. 'Ivan,' said the young girl to him, 'I have had four lovers who were clercs, and each of them has become a priest: the last of them is named Ivan Flécher, and he intends to break my heart.'
"The young lady rode on, and Ivan did not dare to reply, for it had been arranged, without his consent being asked, that he was to take holy orders. On the day when he was to go through the ceremony of being received into the church, he passed the village castle, and there was the beautiful Géneviève sitting at the gate embroidering a chalice cloth in gold thread. She looked up as he passed, and said, 'Ivan Flécher, if you will be advised by me, you will not receive orders, because of all that you have said to me in former days.'
"I can not withdraw now,' replied he, turning as pale as death, 'for I should be called perjured.'
"You have then forgotten,' said Géneviève, 'all that has been said between us two; you have lost the ring I gave you the last time we danced together?'
"'No,' replied he, trembling; 'but God has taken it from me.'
"'Ivan Flécher!' cried the young girl in accents of despair, 'hear me! Return! All I
possess is yours. I will follow you to any fate. I will become a peasant like you, and work like you. If you will not listen to me, all that remains is to bring me the sacrament, for my life is ended.'
"'Alas! alas!' sobbed Ivan, 'I have no power to follow you; I am in the fetters of Heaven: I am held by the hand of Heaven, and must become a priest!'
"It was not likely that the father of the beautiful Géneviève should favor their loves. He was therefore extremely glad when he found that the handsome young clerc had taken orders, and received him in the most friendly manner when he came to the castle to beg that he would assist at his first mass. The favor was immediately granted with a promise that his godmother, the Lady Naour, should be the first to put an offering into the plate.
"But on the day when Ivan was to say his first mass, there was a sad confusion in the church; he began it well enough, but faltered in the middle of it, and burst into a violent flood of tears, so that his book was as if water had flowed over it. A sudden cry was heard in the church, and a girl with her hair disheveled, and with frantic gestures, rushed up the aisle, in sight of every one, and throwing herself on her knees at the feet of the young priest, cried out:
"'In the name of Heaven, stop! You have killed me!'
"When they lifted her from the pavement, where Ivan Flécher had fallen in a fit, the beautiful Géneviève was dead.
"Ivan, who had sacrificed his love to the prayers of his mother, recovered after a time, and rose in the church; but he never smiled again; and the only recreation he ever allowed himself, was to wander about the gardens of the castle, where, unknown to her parents, he had been formerly, before he went to Quimper to study, in the habit of seeing the young lady of Naour. He passed most of his time when disengaged from his duties, in praying on her tomb. Some years afterward, he was found one morning lying there, dead; embracing the stone which covered her remains.
"A ballad relating the history of these unfortunate lovers, was composed in Breton, and is still popular, both in Tréguier and in Cornwall, and those who have heard it, do not doubt that the spectres occasionally seen among the ruins of the Castle of Rustéfan, are those of Ivan and Géneviève."
I passed some hours of a beautiful moonlight night, after listening to this legend, in the scene of the tragedy; but, except the lustrous eyes of a large gray owl, nothing startled me in the deep shadows of the towers; and, except the sighing of the breeze, no sound disturbed the solitude.