It was in the evening, after supper, that Yves' mother solemnly recommended her son to my care. It was a trust that has endured until now.
She had understood, with her mother's instinct, that I was not what I appeared to be, and that I should be able to exercise over the destiny of her last son a very important influence.
"She says," translated her daughter, "that you are deceiving us, sir, and that Yves, too, is deceiving us to please you; that you are not one like ourselves. . . . And she asks, since you voyage together, if you will look after him."
Then the old woman began to tell me the story of Yves' father, a story which I had heard long before from Yves himself. I listened to it willingly, nevertheless, recited by this young girl, before the wide Breton fireplace where the flames danced over a beech log.
"She says that our father was a very handsome sailor, so handsome that no one in the country had ever seen so handsome a man walk the earth. He died, leaving thirteen of us, thirteen children. He died as many sailors of our country die. One Sunday when he had been drinking he put to sea at night in his boat, in spite of a strong wind that blew from the north-west, and he never returned. Like his sons, he was a man without fear; but his head was not good. . . ."
And the poor mother looked at her son Yves.
"She says," continued the daughter, "that my parents lived at Saint Pol-de-Léon, in Finistère, that Yves was one year old, and that I was not yet born when our father died, that she then left Saint Pol and returned to Plouherzel in Goëlo, her native country. My father left his affairs in great disorder; almost all the money that at one time we had had been spent in the tavern, and my mother had no longer wherewithal to feed us. It was then that my two elder brothers, Gildas and Goulven, left to become ship-boys on ocean-going ships.
"We have not seen much of them in the country here since their departure, and yet it cannot be said that they have ceased to care about us. They many times surrendered their sailors' pay in order to help my mother to bring us up, us younger ones, Yves, my sister who is here, and me.
"But Goulven deserted, sir, more than fifteen years ago, in a fit of temper."
"They, too," said the old woman, "are handsome and brave sailors, their heart is true as gold. . . . But they have their father's head, and already they have taken to drinking heavily."