CHAPTER XLVII

On the following day, Thursday, the 16th of June, 1878, in radiant weather, the baptismal party gets ready in the cottage of the Keremenens.

Anne, her back turned towards me in a corner, adjusts her coif before a mirror, a little embarrassed to be obliged to do so in my presence; but the cottages of Brittany are not large, and they have no other separations within than the little cupboards in which one sleeps.

Anne is dressed in a costume of black cloth, the open corsage of which is embroidered with different coloured silks and silver spangles; she wears an apron of blue moire, and, overflowing her shoulders, a white thousand-pleated collarette which remains rigid like a ruff of the sixteenth century. For my part, I have put on a uniform with bright gold facings and, certainly, we shall make a pretty picture presently, arm in arm, in the green lane.

In attendance on the baby this morning is a new personage, a very ugly and very extraordinary old woman, who assumes an air of much importance and receives general obedience: she is the nurse, it appears.

"She looks rather like a witch," says Anne, who guesses my thought. "But she is really a very good woman."

"Oh! yes, a very good woman indeed," confirms old Corentin. "Her appearance is not attractive, it is true, but she is attentive to her religion and in fact, last year, obtained great blessings in the pilgrimage of Saint Anne."

Bent double like Hecate, with a nose hooked like the beak of an owl and little grey eyes rimmed with red, which blink very rapidly in the manner of those of fowls, she goes this way and that, very busily, in her large stiff ceremonial collarette; when she speaks, her voice startles like a sound of the night; you might imagine you heard the brown owl of the tombs.

Yves and I at first did not like this old woman's attentions to the newcomer; but we found consolation in the thought that, for fifty years, she had been presiding at the birth of children in this region of Toulven, without having brought harm to any one of them. Quite the contrary in fact. Besides, she observes conscientiously all the ancient rites, such as making the little one drink before the baptism a certain wine in which its mother's wedding ring has been dipped, and many others which must on no account be neglected.

In this little cottage, deep-sunken in the ground and very much in shadow, one sees just as much as is necessary and no more. A little daylight enters by the door; at the back there is also a dormer Window sparingly contrived in the thickness of the granite, but the ferns have invaded it. They are seen, in transparency, like the intricate figurings of a green curtain.

At last little Pierre's toilet is finished and without so much as a cry. I should have liked him better dressed as a little Breton; but no, this son of Yves is all in white, with a long embroidered robe and bows of ribbon, like a little gentleman of the town. He looks more vigorous and browner than ever in this doll's dress; the poor little town babies, who go to their baptism in similar attire, are not, as a rule, so strong and lusty.

Nevertheless, I am constrained to recognize that at present he is not a beauty; probably he will improve as time goes on; but at the moment he has the bloated look of a new-born kitten.

Outside, in the fern-clad lane, under the green vault, are moving already several large white coifs and embroidered cloth bodices similar to those of Anne. They belong to young women who have come out of neighbouring cottages and are waiting to watch us pass.

Anne and I set out, arm in arm. Little Pierre leads the way, in the arms of the old woman, with the birdlike beak, who hurries on with short quick steps, waddling strangely like some old hag. And big Yves brings up the rear, in his wedding clothes, very serious, a little surprised to find himself at such a ceremony, a little shy, too, at having to walk alone as custom, however, prescribes that he must.

In the fine June morning we make our way gaily down the Breton lane; above our heads the covering of the oaks and beeches sifts little rounds of light which fall in thousands, like a white rain, through the verdure. The hanging clematis is intertwined with honeysuckle, and the birds are singing a welcome to this little sea-gull who is making his first appearance in the sun.

We are now in Toulven which is almost a little town. The good people are at their doors and we pass slowly along the main street on our way to the church.

It is very old, is Toulven church. It stands up all grey in the blue sky, with its tall perforated granite steeple, which in places is yellowed by lichen. It overlooks a large pond, motionless and water-lilied, and a series of uniformly wooded hills which form, in the background, an immemorial horizon.

All around, an ancient enclosure: the cemetery. Crosses border the sacred pathway; they emerge from a carpet of flowers, carnations and white Easter daisies. And in the more neglected parts where time has levelled the little mounds of turf, there are still flowers for the dead: silenes, and the foxgloves of the fields of Brittany; the ground is pink with them. The tombs are thick near the door of the age-old church, as on the mysterious threshold of eternity; this tall grey thing rising up here, this steeple uplifted in eager aspiration, it seems as if it does in fact protest a little against annihilation; in raising itself into the sky, it appeals, it supplicates; it is like an eternal prayer immobilized in granite. And the poor tombs buried in the grass await there, with greater confidence, at this threshold of the church, the sound of the last trump and the voice of the Apocalypse.

There, also, no doubt, when I am dead or broken by old age, there also will they lay my brother Yves; he will give back to the Breton earth his unbelieving head and the body which he had taken from it. Later again little Pierre will find there his last resting-place--if the great sea shall not have kept him from us--and, on their tombs the pink flowers of the fields of Brittany, the wild foxgloves, the luxuriant grasses of June, will flourish as they do to-day, in the warm summer sunshine.

In the porch of the church were all the children of the village looking very solemn. And the parish priest was there too, awaiting us in his ceremonial vestments.

The architecture of the porch was very primitive, and the stones had been worn by many Breton generations; there were shapeless saints, carved in the granite, who were aligned like so many gnomes.

There was a protracted ceremony at the door. The owl-faced old woman had placed little Pierre in our hands and we held him between us, the godmother, according to prescribed usage, holding the feet and I the head. Yves, leaning against a granite pillar, watched us with an air of reverie, and indeed Anne looked very pretty, in this grey porch, with her handsome dress and her large ruff, caught in the full light of a ray of the sun.

Little Pierre made a slight grimace and passed the end of his tiny tongue over his lip with an air of distaste, when the salt, the emblem of the sorrows of life, was put in his mouth.

The priest recited long _oremuses_ in Latin, after which he said in the same language to the little seagull: _Ingredere, Petre, in domum Domini._ And then we entered the church.

The saints there, in niches, dressed in the costume of the sixteenth century, watched little Pierre make his entry, with the same placid and mystic air with which they have seen born and die ten generations of men.

At the baptismal font there was again a very long ceremony and then Anne and I had to take our places before the screen of the choir, kneeling like a newly-wedded pair.

Finally it fell to me to take unaided this son of Yves, whom I was fearful of breaking in my unaccustomed hands, and, climbing the steps of the altar with this precious little burden, to make him kiss the white cloth on which the Blessed Sacrament rests. I felt very awkward in uniform; it seemed as if I were carrying a weight of great heaviness. I had not imagined that it would be so difficult to hold a new-born babe; and yet he was asleep: if he had been moving I should never have been able to manage it.

All the children of the village were waiting for us as we came out, little Bretons with shy looks, round cheeks and long hair.

The bells sounded joyously from the top of the old grey steeple and the _Te Deum_ burst out behind us, sung lustily by little choir boys in red cassocks and white surplices.

We were allowed to pass, still tranquil and devout, along the flowered alley bordered by the tombs--but, afterwards, when we were outside!

Little Pierre, the cause of all this commotion, had gone on ahead, carried away more and more quickly by the hook-nosed beldam and sleeping still his innocent sleep. And the assault fell upon Anne and me: little boys and little girls surrounded us, shouting and jumping; there were some of these little girls who could be no more than five years old, and who yet wore already large collars and large head-dresses similar to those of their mothers; and they skipped around us like very comical little dolls.

It was a strange thing, the joy of these little Breton people, pink-cheeked with long curls of yellow silk; mere buds of life, and dressed already in the costume and fashion of olden times--bubbling over with a heedless joy--as once upon a time their forbears, and they are dead! Joy of a new overflowing life, joy such as kittens have, and kids, and, after ten years, they die; puppies and lambkins know this self-same joy and gambol as these children here--and time passes and they are killed!

We scattered among them handfuls of sugarplums, and our whole route was sown with sweets. The baptism of the little sea-gull will be remembered in Toulven for many a long year.

Afterwards, we found once more the quiet of the Breton lane, the long green alley, and, at the end of it, the primitive hamlet.

It was now near noon; butterflies and flies made merry in the air all along our road. The day was very warm for Brittany.

In broad daylight the roof of the cottage of the old Keremenens was a veritable garden: a quantity of little flowers, white, yellow and red, were installed there with a great variety of ferns, and the whole was sprinkled with sunlight, which filtered through the overhanging oaks.

Inside it was still cool, in the slightly green half-light, under the low black roof of the old beams.

Dinner was on the table, and Yves' wife, who had got up for the first time, was awaiting us, seated in her place, in her brave holiday dress. In the course of the last few days, her beauty had deserted her, and she was pale and thin. Yves looked at her with an air of disillusionment which did not escape her; and, realizing that this was not as it should be, he went over to her and kissed her affectionately with rather a lordly air. And I augured sad things from this glimpse of disenchantment.

Nevertheless this baptismal dinner was a gay affair. It consisted of a great number of Breton dishes and lasted a very long time.

During the dessert, we heard outside two voices murmuring a kind of litany very rapidly, in the language of lower Brittany. It was two old women, two old beggar-women, linked arm in arm and leaning on sticks, in the manner of the fairies when they take decrepit shape for the purpose of disguise.

They asked to be allowed to enter, having come to wish good luck to little Pierre. At the oaken cradle in which he was being gently rocked they predicted very fortunate things, and then withdrew with a blessing for everyone.

Generous alms were given them, and Anne cut them slices of bread and butter.