And Yves took in everything, marvelling that no recollection of his early childhood came back to him, seeking, seeking in the dim background of his memory, recognizing nothing, and then, little by little, becoming disillusioned.
On the grand'place of Saint Pol the crowd of the Sunday was assembled. It seemed a picture of the Middle Ages. The cathedral of the old bishops of Léon dominated the square, overwhelming it with its dark denticulated mass, throwing over it a great shadow of bygone times. Around were ancient houses with gables and little turrets; all the drinkers of the Sunday, wearing aslant their wide felt hats, were sitting at table before the doors. This crowd in its Breton dress, living and alert here, this, too, might have been a crowd of olden days; in the air, one heard vibrate only the harsh syllables, the northern ya of the Celtic tongue.
Yves passed rather distractedly into the church, over the memorial stones and over the old bishops asleep beneath.
But he stopped, suddenly thoughtful, at the door, before the baptismal font.
"Look!" he said. "They held me above this. And we must have lived quite near here; my poor mother has often told me that, on the day of my baptism, on the day, you know, when they so cruelly insulted us by not ringing the bell for me, she had heard, from her bed, the singing of the priests."
Unfortunately Yves had omitted to obtain from his mother, at Plouherzel, the information necessary to identify the house in which they used to live.
He had reckoned on his godmother, Yvonne Kergaoc by name, who, he understood, lived quite close to the church. And on our arrival we had asked for this Yvonne Kergaoc: "Kergaoc." . . . They remembered her well.
"But from where do you come, my good sirs? . . . She is dead these twelve years!"
As for the Kermadecs no one had any recollection of them. And it was scarcely to be wondered at: it was more than twenty years since they left the town.
We climbed the tower of Creizker; naturally it was high, it seemed never to end, this point in the air. We greatly disturbed the old crows who had their nests in the granite.