RETURN.
In order to return to Quiberon, we were compelled, on the following day,
to arise before seven o'clock, a feat which required some courage. While
we were still stiff from fatigue and shivering with sleep, we got into a
boat along with a white horse, two drummers, the same one-eyed gendarme
and the same soldier who, this time, however, did not lecture anybody.
As drunk as a lord, he kept slipping under the benches and had all he
could do to keep his shako on his head and extricate his gun from
between his feet. I could not say which was the sillier of the two. The
gendarme was sober, but he was very stupid. He deplored the soldier's
lack of manners, enumerated the punishments that would be dealt out to
him, was scandalised by his hiccoughs and resented his demeanour. Viewed
from the side of the missing eye, with his three-cornered hat, his sabre
and his yellow gloves, the gendarme presented one of the sorriest
aspects of human life. Besides, there is something so essentially
grotesque about gendarmes that I cannot help laughing at them; these
upholders of the law always produce the same comic effect on me, and so
do attorneys for the king, magistrates, and professors of literature.
Tipped to one side, the boat skimmed lightly through the foaming waves.
The three sails were comfortably swelled; the masts creaked and the wind
rattled the pulleys. A cabin-boy stood at the helm singing. We could not
catch the words, but it was some slow, monotonous lay which neither rose
nor fell and was repeated again and again, with long-drawn-out
inflections and languid refrain. And it swept softly and sadly out over
the ocean, as some confused memory sweeps through one's mind.
The horse stood as straight as it could on its four legs and pulled at a
bundle of hay. The sailors, with folded arms, looked absently at the
sails and smiled a far-away smile.
* * * * *
So we journeyed on without speaking a word and as best we could, without
reaching the edge of the bay, where it looked as if Plouharnel might be.
However, after a while we arrived there. But when we did, we were
confronted by the ocean, for we had followed the right side of the coast
instead of the left, and were forced to turn back and go over a part of
the route.
A muffled sound was heard. A bell tinkled and a hat appeared. It was the
Auray post. Again the same man, the same horse, the same mail-bag. He
was ambling quietly towards Quiberon; he would be back directly and
return again the next day. He is the guest of the coast; he passes in
the morning and again at night. His life is spent going from one point
to another; he is the only one who gives the coast some animation,
something to look forward to, and, I was almost going to say, some
charm.
He stopped and talked to us for a few minutes, then lifted his hat and
was off again.
What an ensemble! What a horse, and what a rider! What a picture! Callot
would probably have reproduced it, but it would take Cervantes to write
it.
After passing over large pieces of rock that have been placed in the sea
in order to shorten the route by cutting the back of the bay in two, we
finally arrived at Plouharnel.
The village was quiet; chickens cackled and scratched in the streets,
and in the gardens enclosed by stone walls, weeds and oats grew side by
side.
While we were sitting in front of the host's door, an old beggar passed
us. He was as red as a lobster, dirty and unkempt and covered with rags
and vermin. The sun shone on his dilapidated garments and on his purple
skin; it was almost black and seemed to transude blood. He kept
bellowing in a terrible voice, while beating a tattoo on the door of a
neighbouring house.