I lived at the end of the village with Mother Le Gannec, an excellent woman who took care of me as well as she could. The house which opened on the main road was clean, well-kept, furnished with new and shining furniture. The poor woman strove to please me, worked desperately to invent something that would smooth my brow, that would bring a smile upon my lips. She was really touching. Every time I came down in the morning I would find her, knitting stockings or spinning, finished with her housework, alive, alert, almost pretty in her flat cap, her short black shawl, and her apron of green serge.
"Friend Mintié!" she would exclaim, "I have cooked some nice shell-fish fricassee for supper for you.... If you like sea-eel soup better, I'll make you some sea-eel soup."
"Just as you please, Mother Le Gannec."
"But you always say the same thing. Ah! by Jesus! Friend Lirat was not like you at all. 'Mother Le Gannec, I want some oysters and some periwinkles.' To be sure I gave him some oysters and some periwinkles!... But he was never as sad as you are. Why no, indeed!"
And Mother Le Gannec told me some stories about Lirat who stayed with her a whole autumn.
"And he was so lively and so intrepid!... He would go out in the rain 'to take some views.' It did not hurt him a bit. He would come back drenched to the bones but always gay, always singing!... You ought to have seen that fellow eat! Ah, he could swallow the sea in the morning!"
Sometimes, to distract me, she told me her misfortunes, simply, without complaining, repeating with sublime resignation:
"Whatever the good Lord wishes, we must wish also. To cry over it all the time won't help matters a bit."
And in a musical voice which all Bretons possess, she used to say:
"Le Gannec was the best fisherman in Ploch and the most daring seaman on the entire coast. There was none whose fishing boat was better equipped, none who better knew reefs abounding with fish. Whenever a fishing boat dared out in stormy weather it was sure be the Marie Joseph. Everybody held him in high esteem not only because he was courageous but because his conduct was beyond reproach and worthy. He shunned the cabarets like a pest, detested drunkards, and it was an honor to be of the same mind as he was. I must also tell you that he was the commander of a life boat. We had two boys, friend Mintié, strong, well-built and able, one was eighteen years old and the other twenty, and the father expected both to be brave seamen as he was.... Ah! If you had only seen my two handsome boys, friend Mintié! Things were coming along nicely, in fact so nicely that with our savings we were able to build this house and buy this furniture. And so we were contented! One night, it was two years ago, the father and the boys did not return! I was not alarmed at all. It often happened that he had gone out far, as far as Croisic, Sables or Herbaudière. Was it not his business to follow the fish? But days passed and none showed up! And the days were still passing.... And not one came back! Every morning and every evening I used to go to the harbor and look at the sea.... I used to ask the fishermen whom I happened to meet: 'Have you seen the Marie Joseph yet?' 'No,' someone would answer, 'I wonder why they haven't come back?' 'I don't know.' 'Do you think some misfortune happened to them?' 'It's quite possible!' And while saying this the fisherman would cross himself. Then I burned three candles at the Notre Dame du Bon Voyage!... Finally one day, they came back, all three of them, in a big cart, black, swollen, half devoured by crabs and starfishes.... Dead.... Dead ... all three of them, my man and my two handsome boys. The keeper of the Penmarch lighthouse had found them washed upon the rocks."