[Illustration: OLD STAIRCASE IN THE GRAND' RUE, MORLAIX, SHOWING
LAVOIR.]

One other house in Morlaix has also a very wonderful staircase; still
more wonderful, perhaps, than that in the Grand' Rue; but it is not in
such good preservation. The house is in the Rue des Nobles, facing the
covered market-place. It is called the house of the Duchesse Anne, and
here in her day and generation she must have lived or lodged.

The house is amongst the most curious and interesting and ancient in
Morlaix, but it is doomed. The whole interior is going to rack and ruin,
and it was at the peril of our lives that we scrambled up the staircase
and over the broken floors, where a false step might have brought us
much too rapidly back to terra firma. Morlaix is not enterprising enough
to restore and save this relic of antiquity.

The staircase, built on the same lines as the wonderful staircase in the
Grand' Rue, is, if possible, more refined and beautiful; but it has been
allowed to fall into decay, and much of it is in a hopelessly worm-eaten
condition. H.C. was in ecstasies, and almost went down on his knees
before the image of an angel that had lost a leg and an arm, part of a
wing, and the whole of its nose; but very lovely were the outlines that
remained.

"Like the Venus of Milo in the Louvre," said H.C., "what remains of it
is all the more precious for what is not."

It was not so very long since we had visited the Louvre together, and he
had remained rapt before the famous Venus for a whole hour,