CHAPTER XLVI

The June night was falling slowly, bringing peace and silence over the Breton countryside. In the sunken lanes it was becoming difficult to see.

Old Corentin Keremenen had in fact returned from his work in the fields and was waiting for us at his door. He had had time even to change his clothes: he was wearing now his large silver-buckled hat and his feast-day jacket of blue cloth ornamented with metal spangles and, on the back, with an embroidery representing the Blessed Sacrament.

There is an air of joyous movement in the cottage, an air of celebration. The copper candlesticks are on the table which has been covered with a handsome cloth. The presses, the stools, the old oak woodwork shine like mirrors. One guesses that Yves has been busy.

The candles illumine only the centre of the room, leaving the rest in gloom. There are movements of large white things which are the wide-winged coifs and pleated collarettes of the women; but otherwise the backgrounds are dark; the light dies as it flickers on the granite of the walls, on the irregular and time-blackened beams which support the thatch of the roof. This thatch and this rough granite still preserve in the Breton villages a note of the primitive epoch.

Supper is served and we take our places, Yves on my left, Anne on my right.

It is a plenteous repast: chickens served with different sauces, wheaten cakes, savoury and sweet omelettes; and wine and golden cider which foams in our glasses.

Yves says to me aside in a low voice:

"He is a very good man, my father-in-law; and my mother-in-law Marianne, you cannot imagine what a good woman she is! I am very fond of them both."

During the evening a girl brings from the village clean starched things of voluminous dimensions. Anne hastens to conceal them in a press, while Yves, with a glance of intelligence, says:

"You see what preparations are being made in your honour!"

I had guessed what they were: the ceremonial head-dress and the immense, embroidered, thousand-pleated collarette, with which she was going to adorn herself for to-morrow's festival.

And I, on my side, have a number of little packets which I want to bring out, unperceived, with Yves' help from my trunk: sweets, sugar-plums, a gold cross for the godmother. But Anne has seen it all from the corner of her eye and starts to laugh. So much the worse! After all it is difficult to succeed in making mystery in a dwelling which has only one door and only one room for everybody.

Little Pierre, round as ever, a little bronze baby, continues to sleep in the same position, his closed fists under his chin. Never was a new-born baby so beautiful and so good.

When I take my leave of them, Yves gets up also in order to accompany me as far as the village, where I am going to sleep at the inn.

Outside, in the sunken lane, under the branches, it is now pitch dark; we are enveloped by a double obscurity, that of the trees and that of the night.

It is a kind of peace to which we are not accustomed, the peace of the woods. And there is no sea; the country of Toulven is far away from it. We listen; it seems to us still that we ought to hear in the distance its familiar sound. But no; all about is silence. Nothing but scarcely perceptible rustlings in the thick greenery, soft sounds of wings opening, slight quiverings of birds dreaming in their sleep.

There is still the perfume of honeysuckle; but, with the night, have come a penetrating freshness and odours of moss, of earth, of the dampness of Brittany.

All this sleeping countryside, all these wooded hills which surround us, all these slumbering trees, all these tranquillities oppress us. We feel rather like strangers in the midst of it all, and we miss the sea, the sea which, after all, is the great open space, the great unconfined field over which we are accustomed to run.

Yves suffers these impressions and tells me of them in a naïve way, a way peculiarly his own, which would scarcely be intelligible to anyone but me. In the midst of his happiness, an uneasiness troubles him this evening, almost a regret that he should unthinkingly have fixed his destiny in this remote little cottage.

And presently we come upon a calvary, stretching out in the darkness its two grey arms, and we think of all these old granite chapels which lie here and there around us, isolated in the beech woods . . . in which the souls of the dead keep vigil.