holds to Brittany only by the beaches which connect it with the
village of Batz (barren quicksands very difficult to cross), it may be
more correct to call it an island.

At the point where the road from Croisic to Guerande turns off from
the main road of /terra firma/, stands a country-house, surrounded by
a large garden, remarkable for its trimmed and twisted pine-trees,
some being trained to the shape of sun-shades, others, stripped of
their branches, showing their reddened trunks in spots where the bark
has peeled. These trees, victims of hurricanes, growing against wind
and tide (for them the saying is literally true), prepare the mind for
the strange and depressing sight of the marshes and dunes, which
resemble a stiffened ocean. The house, fairly well built of a species
of slaty stone with granite courses, has no architecture; it presents
to the eye a plain wall with windows at regular intervals. These
windows have small leaded panes on the ground-floor and large panes on
the upper floor. Above are the attics, which stretch the whole length
of an enormously high pointed roof, with two gables and two large
dormer windows on each side of it. Under the triangular point of each
gable a circular window opens its cyclopic eye, westerly to the sea,
easterly on Guerande. One facade of the house looks on the road to
Guerande, the other on the desert at the end of which is Croisic;
beyond that little town is the open sea. A brook escapes through an
opening in the park wall which skirts the road to Croisic, crosses the
road, and is lost in the sands beyond it.

The grayish tones of the house harmonize admirably with the scene it
overlooks. The park is an oasis in the surrounding desert, at the
entrance of which the traveller comes upon a mud-hut, where the
custom-house officials lie in wait for him. This house without land