She was a real mother to the sailors, was this Madame Creachcadec; all who knew her could vouch for it. And she was very exact, too, in the prices she charged for their dinners and their feastings.
Besides, she knew them. Her large red face flushed already with alcohol, she tried to repeat their names, which she heard them saying among themselves; she remembered quite well having seen them when they were boatmen on board the Bretagne; she even thought she could recall their boyhood, when they were ship-boys on the Inflexible. But what tall, fine fellows they had grown since those days! Truly it was only an eye like hers that could recognize them, altered as they were. . . .
And, at the back of the tavern, the dinner was cooking, on stoves which already sent out an appetising odour of soup.
From the street came sounds of a great uproar. A band of sailors was approaching, singing, scanning at the top of their voices, to a frivolous air, these words of the Church: 'Kyrie Christe, Dominum nostrum; Kyrie eleison. . . .
They entered, upsetting the chairs, and at the same time a gust of wind laid low the flame of the lamps.
Kyrie Christe, Dominum nostrum. . . . The Bretons did not like this kind of song, brought no doubt from the back streets of some great city. But the discordance between the words and the music was so droll, it made them laugh.
The newcomers, however, were from the Gauloise, and recognized, and were recognized by, the others; they had all been ship-boys together. One of them hastened to embrace Yves: it was Kerboul who had slept in the next hammock to him on board the Inflexible. He, too, had become tall and strong; he was on the flagship, and, as he was a steady sort of fellow, he had for a long time worn red stripes on his sleeve.
The air in the tavern was oppressive and there was a great deal of noise. Madame Creachcadec brought hot wine all steaming, the preliminary to the dinner that had been ordered, and heads began to swim.
There was commotion this night in Brest: the patrols were kept busy.
In the Rue de Sept Saints and in the Rue de Saint Yves, singing and shouting went on until the morning; it was as if barbarians had been loosed there, bands escaped from ancient Gaul; there were scenes of rejoicing that recalled the boisterousness of primitive times.