It was so wonderful, so unexpected, after his past bad conduct!
I had been to Paris to ask this favour, intriguing hard for my adopted brother, and making myself answerable for his future conduct. A woman friend had been good enough to exert in my cause her very powerful influence, and, with her help, the promotion of Yves was carried by assault, difficult though it was.
And Yves could not cease from contemplating his good fortune in all its aspects. . . . First, instead of asking for a short leave which might perhaps have been given to him very grudgingly, now, with his gold stripes he could depart straightway for Toulven; he would be put on the reserve list for three months at least, perhaps for four; he would have the whole summer to spend with his wife and son, in the little house which was now completed, and where they were only waiting for him to enter into occupation. . . . And secondly, they were quite rich, which was by no means a drawback. . . .
Never in the life of this poor wandering toiler had there come an hour so happy, a joy so deep as that which his brother Pierre had just sent him by telegraph. . . .
[CHAPTER XCIX]
When the winds brought me back to Brittany again, it was in the last days of May, when the Breton spring was at its fairest.
Yves had already been six weeks in his little house at Toulven, arranging my room, and preparing everything for my arrival.
The ship on which I had embarked had left the Mediterranean and was going north in the Atlantic, bound for the northern ports and Brest where it was to be laid up.
18th May, at sea. Already one feels that Brittany is near. It is fine still, but the day is one of those fine Breton days which are calm and melancholy. The smooth sea is of a pale blue, the salt air is fresh and smells of seaweed; over everything there is a veil of bluish mist, very transparent and very tenuous.
At eight o'clock in the morning we round the point of Penmarc'h. The Celtic rocks, the tall sad cliffs become visible little by little and draw nearer.