And Yves was at the other side of the world, in the great ocean. How strange it was to feel that he was so far away and that I was here without him in these Toulven lanes!
We rushed about, all three, like people possessed, in the green lanes, under the grey sky, the large coifs of Marie and Anne blown back by the wind. For night was closing in and we wanted during this last hour to gather the harvest of ferns and heather, which, on the following morning, I was going to carry off to Paris. Oh! these departures, always coming too soon, changing everything, casting a sadness over the things you are about to leave, and plunging you afterwards into the unknown!
This time again, there was the pervading melancholy of the late autumn: the air was still mild, the verdure admirable, with almost the intense green of the tropics, but the Breton sky was there, grey and sombre, and already the savour of dead leaves and of winter. . . .
We had left little Pierre in the house so that we might walk more quickly. On our way we picked the last foxgloves, the last red silenes, the last scabious.
In the sunken lanes, in the green darkness, we passed long-haired old men, and women in cloth bodices embroidered with rows of eyes.
There were mysterious crossways in the woods. In the distance one could see the wooded hills ranged in monotonous lines, the unchanging ageless horizon of the country of Toulven, the same horizon as the Celts must have seen, the farthest planes losing themselves in the grey obscurities, in bluish tones tending to black.
And with what pleasure I had greeted my little Pierre, as I came along this road of Toulven! I had seen the little fellow in the distance and failed to recognize him; and he had run to meet me, skipping like a young goat. They had told him: "That is your godfather coming yonder," and he had rushed off at once. He had grown and improved in looks and had a more enterprising not to say boisterous air.
It was at this visit I saw for the first and last time little Yvonne, Yves' little daughter who was born after our departure, and who made on this earth only a brief appearance of a few months. She was very like him; the same eyes, the same expression. It was strange to see this resemblance of a small girl-baby to a man.
One day she returned to the mysterious regions whence she had come, called away suddenly by a childish malady, which neither the old nurse nor the learned woman brought in from Toulven had understood. And they laid her in the churchyard, the eyes that were so like Yves' closed for ever.
We had spent in the woods our two hours of daylight. It was not until after supper that Marie and I went to see, in the moonlight, what was to be their new home.