ON BOARD THE _Sèvre, May_, 1881.
Yves, who will soon be thirty years old, begs me to bring him from the
town a bound manuscript book in order that he may commence to record his
impressions, after my manner. He regrets even that he can no longer
recall very clearly dates and past events so that he might make his
record retrospective.
His intelligence is opening to a crowd of new conceptions; he models
himself on me and perhaps makes himself more "complex" than he need. But
our intimacy brings in its train another and quite unexpected result,
namely that I am becoming much simpler in contact with him; I also am
changing, and almost as much as he.
BREST, _June_, 1881.
At six o'clock, on the evening of the feast of St. John, I was returning
with Yves from the "pardon" of Plougastel on the outside of a country
omnibus.
In May the _Sèvre_ had been as far as Algiers, and we appreciated, by
contrast, the special charm of the Breton country.
The horses were going at full gallop, beribboned, with streamers and
green branches on their heads.
The folk inside were singing, and, on top, next to us, three drunken
sailors were dancing, their bonnets on one side, flowers in their
button-holes, with streamers and trumpets, and, in mockery of those
unfortunate enough to be short-sighted, blue spectacles--three young
men, smart of bearing and intelligent in face, who were taking a last
French leave before their departure for China.
Any ordinary man would have broken his neck. But they, drunk as they
were, kept their feet, nimble as goats, while the omnibus careered at
full speed, swinging from right to left in the ruts, driven by a driver
who was as drunk as they.
At Plougastel we had found the uproar of a village fête, wooden horses,
a female dwarf, a female giant, a fat lady, and a boneless man, and
games and drinking stalls. And, in an isolated square, the Breton
bagpipes played a rapid and monotonous air of olden times, and people in
old-fashioned costume danced to this age-old music; men and women,
holding hands, ran, ran like the wind, like a lot of mad folk, in a long
frenzied file. It was a relic of old Brittany, retaining still its note
of primitiveness, even at the gates of Brest, amid the uproar of a fair.
At first we tried, Yves and I, to calm the three sailors and make them
sit down.
And then it struck us as rather comical that we, of all people, should
assume the rôle of preacher.
"After all," I said to Yves, "it's not the first sermon of the kind
we've preached."
"To be sure, no," he replied with conviction.
And we contented ourselves with holding on to the iron rails to prevent
ourselves from falling.
The roads and the villages are full of people returning from the
"pardon," and all these people are amazed at seeing pass this
carriage-load of madmen with the three sailors dancing on the top.
The splendour of June throws over this Brittany its charm and its life;
the breeze is mild and warm beneath the grey sky; the tall grass, full
of red flowers; the trees, of an emerald green, filled with cockchafers.
And the three sailors continue to dance and sing, and at each couplet,
the others, inside, take up the refrain:
"Oh! He set out with the wind behind him,
He'll find it harder coming back."
The windows of our carriage rattle with it. This air, which never
changes and is repeated over and over again for some six miles of our
journey, is a very ancient air of France, so old and so young, of so
frank a gaiety and so good a quality, that in a very few minutes we too
are singing it with the rest.
How beautiful Brittany looks, beautiful and rejuvenated and green, in
the June sunshine!
We poor followers of the sea, when we find spring in our path, rejoice
in it more than other people, on account of the sequestered life we lead
in the wooden monasteries. It was eight years since Yves had seen a
Breton spring, and we both had long grown weary of the winter, and of
that eternal summer which in other parts reigns resplendent over the
great blue sea; and these green fields, these soft perfumes, all this
charm of June which words cannot describe held us entranced.
Life still holds hours that are worth the living, hours of youth and
forgetfulness. Away with all melancholy dreams, all the morbid fancies
of long-faced poets! It is good to sail, in the face of the wind, in the
company of the most lighthearted among the children of the earth. Health
and youth comprise all there is of truth in the world, with simple and
boisterous merriment and the songs of sailors!
And we continued to travel very quickly and very erratically, zigzagging
over the road among these crowds of people, between very tall hawthorns
forming green hedges, and under the tufted vault of the trees.
And presently Brest appeared, with its great solemn air, its great
granite ramparts, its great grey walls, on which also grass and pink
foxgloves were growing. It was as it were intoxicated, this mournful
town, at having by chance a real summer's day, an evening clear and
warm; it was full of noise and movement and people, of white
head-dresses and sailors singing.