On the following day, Thursday, the 16th of June, 1878, in radiant
weather, the baptismal party gets ready in the cottage of the
Keremenens.
Anne, her back turned towards me in a corner, adjusts her coif before a
mirror, a little embarrassed to be obliged to do so in my presence; but
the cottages of Brittany are not large, and they have no other
separations within than the little cupboards in which one sleeps.
Anne is dressed in a costume of black cloth, the open corsage of which
is embroidered with different coloured silks and silver spangles; she
wears an apron of blue moire, and, overflowing her shoulders, a white
thousand-pleated collarette which remains rigid like a ruff of the
sixteenth century. For my part, I have put on a uniform with bright gold
facings and, certainly, we shall make a pretty picture presently, arm in
arm, in the green lane.
In attendance on the baby this morning is a new personage, a very ugly
and very extraordinary old woman, who assumes an air of much importance
and receives general obedience: she is the nurse, it appears.
"She looks rather like a witch," says Anne, who guesses my thought. "But
she is really a very good woman."
"Oh! yes, a very good woman indeed," confirms old Corentin. "Her
appearance is not attractive, it is true, but she is attentive to her
religion and in fact, last year, obtained great blessings in the
pilgrimage of Saint Anne."
Bent double like Hecate, with a nose hooked like the beak of an owl and
little grey eyes rimmed with red, which blink very rapidly in the manner
of those of fowls, she goes this way and that, very busily, in her large
stiff ceremonial collarette; when she speaks, her voice startles like a
sound of the night; you might imagine you heard the brown owl of the
tombs.
Yves and I at first did not like this old woman's attentions to the
newcomer; but we found consolation in the thought that, for fifty years,
she had been presiding at the birth of children in this region of
Toulven, without having brought harm to any one of them. Quite the
contrary in fact. Besides, she observes conscientiously all the ancient
rites, such as making the little one drink before the baptism a certain
wine in which its mother's wedding ring has been dipped, and many others
which must on no account be neglected.
In this little cottage, deep-sunken in the ground and very much in
shadow, one sees just as much as is necessary and no more. A little
daylight enters by the door; at the back there is also a dormer Window
sparingly contrived in the thickness of the granite, but the ferns have
invaded it. They are seen, in transparency, like the intricate figurings
of a green curtain.
At last little Pierre's toilet is finished and without so much as a cry.
I should have liked him better dressed as a little Breton; but no, this
son of Yves is all in white, with a long embroidered robe and bows of
ribbon, like a little gentleman of the town. He looks more vigorous and
browner than ever in this doll's dress; the poor little town babies, who
go to their baptism in similar attire, are not, as a rule, so strong and
lusty.
Nevertheless, I am constrained to recognize that at present he is not a
beauty; probably he will improve as time goes on; but at the moment he
has the bloated look of a new-born kitten.
Outside, in the fern-clad lane, under the green vault, are moving
already several large white coifs and embroidered cloth bodices similar
to those of Anne. They belong to young women who have come out of
neighbouring cottages and are waiting to watch us pass.
Anne and I set out, arm in arm. Little Pierre leads the way, in the arms
of the old woman, with the birdlike beak, who hurries on with short
quick steps, waddling strangely like some old hag. And big Yves brings
up the rear, in his wedding clothes, very serious, a little surprised to
find himself at such a ceremony, a little shy, too, at having to walk
alone as custom, however, prescribes that he must.
In the fine June morning we make our way gaily down the Breton lane;
above our heads the covering of the oaks and beeches sifts little rounds
of light which fall in thousands, like a white rain, through the
verdure. The hanging clematis is intertwined with honeysuckle, and the
birds are singing a welcome to this little sea-gull who is making his
first appearance in the sun.
We are now in Toulven which is almost a little town. The good people are
at their doors and we pass slowly along the main street on our way to
the church.
It is very old, is Toulven church. It stands up all grey in the blue
sky, with its tall perforated granite steeple, which in places is
yellowed by lichen. It overlooks a large pond, motionless and
water-lilied, and a series of uniformly wooded hills which form, in the
background, an immemorial horizon.
All around, an ancient enclosure: the cemetery. Crosses border the
sacred pathway; they emerge from a carpet of flowers, carnations and
white Easter daisies. And in the more neglected parts where time has
levelled the little mounds of turf, there are still flowers for the
dead: silenes, and the foxgloves of the fields of Brittany; the ground
is pink with them. The tombs are thick near the door of the age-old
church, as on the mysterious threshold of eternity; this tall grey thing
rising up here, this steeple uplifted in eager aspiration, it seems as
if it does in fact protest a little against annihilation; in raising
itself into the sky, it appeals, it supplicates; it is like an eternal
prayer immobilized in granite. And the poor tombs buried in the grass
await there, with greater confidence, at this threshold of the church,
the sound of the last trump and the voice of the Apocalypse.
There, also, no doubt, when I am dead or broken by old age, there also
will they lay my brother Yves; he will give back to the Breton earth his
unbelieving head and the body which he had taken from it. Later again
little Pierre will find there his last resting-place--if the great sea
shall not have kept him from us--and, on their tombs the pink flowers of
the fields of Brittany, the wild foxgloves, the luxuriant grasses of
June, will flourish as they do to-day, in the warm summer sunshine.
In the porch of the church were all the children of the village looking
very solemn. And the parish priest was there too, awaiting us in his
ceremonial vestments.
The architecture of the porch was very primitive, and the stones had
been worn by many Breton generations; there were shapeless saints,
carved in the granite, who were aligned like so many gnomes.
There was a protracted ceremony at the door. The owl-faced old woman had
placed little Pierre in our hands and we held him between us, the
godmother, according to prescribed usage, holding the feet and I the
head. Yves, leaning against a granite pillar, watched us with an air of
reverie, and indeed Anne looked very pretty, in this grey porch, with
her handsome dress and her large ruff, caught in the full light of a ray
of the sun.
Little Pierre made a slight grimace and passed the end of his tiny
tongue over his lip with an air of distaste, when the salt, the emblem
of the sorrows of life, was put in his mouth.
The priest recited long _oremuses_ in Latin, after which he said in the
same language to the little seagull: _Ingredere, Petre, in domum
Domini._ And then we entered the church.
The saints there, in niches, dressed in the costume of the sixteenth
century, watched little Pierre make his entry, with the same placid and
mystic air with which they have seen born and die ten generations of
men.
At the baptismal font there was again a very long ceremony and then Anne
and I had to take our places before the screen of the choir, kneeling
like a newly-wedded pair.
Finally it fell to me to take unaided this son of Yves, whom I was
fearful of breaking in my unaccustomed hands, and, climbing the steps of
the altar with this precious little burden, to make him kiss the white
cloth on which the Blessed Sacrament rests. I felt very awkward in
uniform; it seemed as if I were carrying a weight of great heaviness. I
had not imagined that it would be so difficult to hold a new-born babe;
and yet he was asleep: if he had been moving I should never have been
able to manage it.
All the children of the village were waiting for us as we came out,
little Bretons with shy looks, round cheeks and long hair.
The bells sounded joyously from the top of the old grey steeple and the
_Te Deum_ burst out behind us, sung lustily by little choir boys in red
cassocks and white surplices.
We were allowed to pass, still tranquil and devout, along the flowered
alley bordered by the tombs--but, afterwards, when we were outside!
Little Pierre, the cause of all this commotion, had gone on ahead,
carried away more and more quickly by the hook-nosed beldam and sleeping
still his innocent sleep. And the assault fell upon Anne and me: little
boys and little girls surrounded us, shouting and jumping; there were
some of these little girls who could be no more than five years old, and
who yet wore already large collars and large head-dresses similar to
those of their mothers; and they skipped around us like very comical
little dolls.
It was a strange thing, the joy of these little Breton people,
pink-cheeked with long curls of yellow silk; mere buds of life, and
dressed already in the costume and fashion of olden times--bubbling over
with a heedless joy--as once upon a time their forbears, and they are
dead! Joy of a new overflowing life, joy such as kittens have, and kids,
and, after ten years, they die; puppies and lambkins know this self-same
joy and gambol as these children here--and time passes and they are
killed!
We scattered among them handfuls of sugarplums, and our whole route was
sown with sweets. The baptism of the little sea-gull will be remembered
in Toulven for many a long year.
Afterwards, we found once more the quiet of the Breton lane, the long
green alley, and, at the end of it, the primitive hamlet.
It was now near noon; butterflies and flies made merry in the air all
along our road. The day was very warm for Brittany.
In broad daylight the roof of the cottage of the old Keremenens was a
veritable garden: a quantity of little flowers, white, yellow and red,
were installed there with a great variety of ferns, and the whole was
sprinkled with sunlight, which filtered through the overhanging oaks.
Inside it was still cool, in the slightly green half-light, under the
low black roof of the old beams.
Dinner was on the table, and Yves' wife, who had got up for the first
time, was awaiting us, seated in her place, in her brave holiday dress.
In the course of the last few days, her beauty had deserted her, and she
was pale and thin. Yves looked at her with an air of disillusionment
which did not escape her; and, realizing that this was not as it should
be, he went over to her and kissed her affectionately with rather a
lordly air. And I augured sad things from this glimpse of
disenchantment.
Nevertheless this baptismal dinner was a gay affair. It consisted of a
great number of Breton dishes and lasted a very long time.
During the dessert, we heard outside two voices murmuring a kind of
litany very rapidly, in the language of lower Brittany. It was two old
women, two old beggar-women, linked arm in arm and leaning on sticks, in
the manner of the fairies when they take decrepit shape for the purpose
of disguise.
They asked to be allowed to enter, having come to wish good luck to
little Pierre. At the oaken cradle in which he was being gently rocked
they predicted very fortunate things, and then withdrew with a blessing
for everyone.
Generous alms were given them, and Anne cut them slices of bread and
butter.