20_th October_, 1882.
I remember very well this day passed in Brittany. We three, under the
grey sky, roaming the woods of Toulven, Marie, Anne and I.
My eyes still dazzled by sun and blue sea, and this Brittany, seen again
so quickly and so suddenly for a few brief hours, absolutely as in the
dreams we had of it at sea. . . . It seemed to me that I understood its
charm for the first time.
And Yves was at the other side of the world, in the great ocean. How
strange it was to feel that he was so far away and that I was here
without him in these Toulven lanes!
We rushed about, all three, like people possessed, in the green lanes,
under the grey sky, the large coifs of Marie and Anne blown back by the
wind. For night was closing in and we wanted during this last hour to
gather the harvest of ferns and heather, which, on the following
morning, I was going to carry off to Paris. Oh! these departures, always
coming too soon, changing everything, casting a sadness over the things
you are about to leave, and plunging you afterwards into the unknown!
This time again, there was the pervading melancholy of the late autumn:
the air was still mild, the verdure admirable, with almost the intense
green of the tropics, but the Breton sky was there, grey and sombre, and
already the savour of dead leaves and of winter. . . .
We had left little Pierre in the house so that we might walk more
quickly. On our way we picked the last foxgloves, the last red silenes,
the last scabious.
In the sunken lanes, in the green darkness, we passed long-haired old
men, and women in cloth bodices embroidered with rows of eyes.
There were mysterious crossways in the woods. In the distance one could
see the wooded hills ranged in monotonous lines, the unchanging ageless
horizon of the country of Toulven, the same horizon as the Celts must
have seen, the farthest planes losing themselves in the grey
obscurities, in bluish tones tending to black.
And with what pleasure I had greeted my little Pierre, as I came along
this road of Toulven! I had seen the little fellow in the distance and
failed to recognize him; and he had run to meet me, skipping like a
young goat. They had told him: "That is your godfather coming yonder,"
and he had rushed off at once. He had grown and improved in looks and
had a more enterprising not to say boisterous air.
It was at this visit I saw for the first and last time little Yvonne,
Yves' little daughter who was born after our departure, and who made on
this earth only a brief appearance of a few months. She was very like
him; the same eyes, the same expression. It was strange to see this
resemblance of a small girl-baby to a man.
One day she returned to the mysterious regions whence she had come,
called away suddenly by a childish malady, which neither the old nurse
nor the learned woman brought in from Toulven had understood. And they
laid her in the churchyard, the eyes that were so like Yves' closed for
ever.
We had spent in the woods our two hours of daylight. It was not until
after supper that Marie and I went to see, in the moonlight, what was to
be their new home.
On the site of the oat field which we had measured in June of the
preceding year stood now the four walls of Yves' house; it had yet no
shutters, no floor, no roof, and, in the moonlight, looked like a ruin.
We sat down on some stones inside, alone together for the first time.
It was of Yves we talked, needless to say. She asked me anxiously about
him, about his future, imagining that I knew better than she this
husband whom she adored with a kind of fear, without understanding him.
And I reassured her, for I was very hopeful: the sea-rover had a good
and honest heart; and if we could touch him there, we ought in the end
to succeed.
Anne appeared suddenly, having approached noiselessly in order to
startle us:
"Oh, Marie!" she said, "move away quickly! See what an ugly shadow you
are making behind you!"
We had not noticed it, but in the moonlight her head, with the wings of
her coif moving in the wind, cast behind her, on the new wall, a shadow
in the form of a very large and very ugly bat. It was enough to bring us
misfortune.
In Toulven there was a music of bagpipes. To reach the inn, to which
they were both escorting me, we had to pass through an unexpected fête,
going on in the moonlight. It was the wedding of a well-to-do couple and
there was dancing in the open, on the square. I stopped, with Anne and
Marie, to watch the long chain of the gavotte whirl and pass, led by the
shrill voice of the pipes. The full moon made whiter the coifs of the
women which flitted past us as if carried away by wind and speed; on the
breasts of the men we caught the fleeting glitter of embroidered gorgets
and silver spangles.
At the farther end of Toulven we came upon another concourse. It did not
seem natural, this animation in the village, at night; more coifs again,
hurrying, pressing forward in order to get a better view; for a band of
pilgrims was returning from Lourdes. They entered the village singing
hymns.
"There have been two miracles, sir; we heard so this morning by
telegraph."
I turned round and saw that it was Pierre Kerbras, Anne's sweetheart,
who vouchsafed us this information.
The pilgrims passed, their large rosaries about their necks; behind came
two infirm old women, who, for their part, had not been cured, and who
were being carried in men's arms.
The following morning old Corentin, Anne and little Pierre, in their
Sunday clothes, accompanied me in Pierre Kerbras' wagonette to the
station at Bannalec.
In the compartment I entered two English women were already installed.
Little Pierre, his happy face the colour of a ripe peach, was lifted up
to the carriage window to kiss me good-bye, and he burst out laughing at
the sight of a little bulldog which the women carried in their blazoned
travelling-bag. He was sorry enough that I was going away; but this
little dog in the bag seemed to him so comical that he could not get
over it. And the old ladies smiled also, and said that little Pierre was
"a very beautiful baby."
And this was the last of Brittany for a long time; I had spent some
twenty hours there, and, on the following morning, it was already far
away from me.