The sailors sang. And the women, their fingers itching for the pieces of gold—agitated, dishevelled in this great excitation of the sailors' homecoming—mingled their shrill voices with the deep voices of the men.
The latest arrivals from the sea might be recognized by their deeper tint of bronze, by their freer carriage; and then they carried with them objects of foreign origin; some of them passed with bedraggled parakeets in cages; others with monkeys.
They sang, these sailors, at the top of their voices, with a kind of naïve expression, things that made one shudder, or perhaps little airs of the south, songs of the Basque country, and, above all, they sang mournful Breton melodies which seemed like old bagpipe airs bequeathed from Celtic antiquity.
The simple, the good, sang part songs together; they remained grouped by village, and repeated in their native tongue the long laments of the country, preserving even in their drunkenness their fine resonant young voices. Others stuttered like little children and embraced one another; unconscious of their strength they smashed doors and knocked down passers-by.
The night was advancing; only places of ill-repute remained open; and in the streets the rain continued to fall on the exuberance of these wild rejoicings.
[CHAPTER V]
Six o'clock on the following morning. A dark mass having the form of a man in the gutter—by the side of a kind of deserted street overhung by ramparts. It is still dark. The rain still falls, fine and cold; and the winter wind continues to roar. It had "watched," as they say in the navy, and passed the night in groaning.
It was in the lower part of the town, a little below the bridge of Brest, at the foot of the great walls, in that locality where sailors commonly find themselves, who are without a home and who have had the vague intention, blind drunk as they were, of returning to their ship and have fallen en route.
There is already a kind of half light in the air; a wan, pallid light, the light of a winter's day rising on granite. Water was streaming over this human form which lay on the ground, and, right at its side, poured in a cascade into the opening of a drain.
It began to get a little brighter; a sort of light made up its mind to descend along the high granite walls. The dark thing in the gutter was now clearly seen to be the body of a tall man, a sailor, lying with arms outstretched in the form of a cross.