“Look well at that jacket,” I said to R., “did you ever see one like it before?”
“Why, it is our Breton jacket!”
You perhaps remember that at the old yellow house where R. lives there is a trunk full of “dressing up things,” the theatrical wardrobe of the children, largely made up of the old finery of three preceding generations!
“Did you ever see that cap before?” I asked R.
“Why it’s grandmama’s cap!”
“Long ago, when you were only a baby, grandmother and I passed a summer in Brittany. At Quimper, where we spent some happy weeks, a jacket like that was made for me, and we found the one and only model for grandmama’s cap.”
The little old peasant woman carried a large blue cotton umbrella, with time-yellowed ivory handle and points, a perfect ark, under which three even four generations might take refuge from a deluge. I looked at her so intently, with such a passion of longing memory, that she must have seen something more than common curiosity in my glance, for she gave me a second look less preoccupied, more gentle than the first, and then paused. I grasped the opportunity, and going up to her asked in French how things were at Quimper? She listened patiently, politely, understanding nothing of what I said till I pronounced the magic word “Quimper.” Then the old eyes grew keen and intent. She put out a hand and answered me in a flood of kindly Breton, whose sound only was familiar to me. For some minutes we stood there in the middle of the Borgo St. Angelo, shaking hands, looking intently at each other, first one, then the other repeating the word “Quimper!” To her it meant home; to me, the one thing dearer! Then with a last tightening of the hands we parted. We recognized other of the Breton costumes, from St.-Pol-de-Leon, Douarnenez, the Morbihan, we remembered having seen some of them at the great pardon of Ploërmel. The caps of Quimper are quite distinct from the caps of Quimperle, you understand, though the towns are not far apart!
That afternoon, with a roll of thunder drums and a flash of lightning, the deluge descended upon the Borgo. I rushed to the watch-tower—our upper terrace, to see the storm. From the four quarters of the sky the lightning swords smote at each other; from the soft white clouds above the Castle St. Angelo came rose-colored lightning with a growl; from a purple rack over St. Peter’s a piercing yellow zigzag, like a Saracen blade, followed by the crack of cannon. Veils of rain fell, mixed with the white spray of the fountains, and were driven in smoky sheets across the square. The piazza was alive with pilgrims coming away from St. Peter’s, where service was just over, the steps were black with people. The pilgrims scattered like leaves before the storm; the skirts of women and priests were blown about, like the bewitched draperies of the Bernini statues on the façade of the church. In the midst of the hurrying, scurrying crowd I made out the blue umbrella ark of Quimper, valiantly held up by a tall young peasant; my little old woman—perhaps his mother—paddled along on one side, a stout wench—perhaps his wife—on the other. The cabs were all snatched up in a moment. Down in the Borgo I could see the gobbo waiting for me at our door. I had to keep a pressing engagement and dared not delay till the tempest passed, lest the gobbo and his cab be ravished from my sight. As we rattled along the Borgo Nuovo, I recognized the parroco; he was without an umbrella and was getting soaked to the skin. As we would pass his door it seemed the part of friendship to give him a lift.
“Stop!” I cried to the gobbo; “the parroco is going our way, we will take him home.”
“There is no use in stopping,” said the gobbo. I insisted. Sulky and grumbling he drew up just outside the hospital of the Santo Spirito. The water was rushing through the gutter like a small millstream.