CHAPTER XX

When it was time to go, I found that Yves was much more tipsy than I could have believed. Outside he stumbled up to his knees in puddles of water, and reeled from side to side. To get him home I put my right arm round his waist and his left arm over my shoulder and almost carried him. We could see nothing but the intense blackness of the night; a strong wind lashed our faces, and, in the dark lanes, Yves no longer knew where he was.

They were uneasy in his cottage and were sitting up for him. His mother scolded him, in her stern way, speaking loud and angrily as one might to a naughty child; and he went very crestfallen and sat down in a corner.

However, we were forced to partake of a second supper; it is the custom and there was no escape. An omelette, more pancakes, and slices of brown bread and butter. Afterwards we proceeded to retire for the night, the men first and then, the light having first been extinguished, the women. Under our mattresses there were thick litters made of a mass of branches of oaks and beeches; these subsided with a crackle of dry leaves when we lay down, and we felt ourselves sink into a little hollow, which kept us warm.

"Hoo! hoo-oo-oo! Hoo! hoo-oo-oo!" sang the wind outside, with a voice like an owl's, as if it were angry, as if it were indignant, then as if it were complaining and dying.

When the candle was put out and the cottage was in darkness, came the sound of a small voice beginning a Breton prayer; it was the voice of a little girl of four who had been adopted by the family; she was in fact the child of Gildas by a girl in Plouherzel, begotten during his last visit to his home.

A very long prayer, broken by solemn responses of the old grandmother; all the Saints of Brittany: Saints Corentin and Allain, Saints Thénénan and Thégonnec, Saints Tuginal and Tugdual, Saints Clet and Gildas were invoked, and then there was silence.

Quite near me, the scarcely perceptible breathing of Yves, already sunk in deep sleep. At the foot of our bed the hens at roost dreaming on their high perch. A cricket giving out from time to time, in the still warm hearth, a mysterious little crystal note. And outside, around the solitary cottage, the continuous noise of the wind: an immense groaning which swept over all the Breton country: an unceasing pressure which came from the sea with the night and stirred the country to a monotonous dark movement, at the hour when the dead appear and ghosts walk.