Finally it fell to me to take unaided this son of Yves, whom I was fearful of breaking in my unaccustomed hands, and, climbing the steps of the altar with this precious little burden, to make him kiss the white cloth on which the Blessed Sacrament rests. I felt very awkward in uniform; it seemed as if I were carrying a weight of great heaviness. I had not imagined that it would be so difficult to hold a new-born babe; and yet he was asleep: if he had been moving I should never have been able to manage it.
All the children of the village were waiting for us as we came out, little Bretons with shy looks, round cheeks and long hair.
The bells sounded joyously from the top of the old grey steeple and the Te Deum burst out behind us, sung lustily by little choir boys in red cassocks and white surplices.
We were allowed to pass, still tranquil and devout, along the flowered alley bordered by the tombs—but, afterwards, when we were outside!
Little Pierre, the cause of all this commotion, had gone on ahead, carried away more and more quickly by the hook-nosed beldam and sleeping still his innocent sleep. And the assault fell upon Anne and me: little boys and little girls surrounded us, shouting and jumping; there were some of these little girls who could be no more than five years old, and who yet wore already large collars and large head-dresses similar to those of their mothers; and they skipped around us like very comical little dolls.
It was a strange thing, the joy of these little Breton people, pink-cheeked with long curls of yellow silk; mere buds of life, and dressed already in the costume and fashion of olden times—bubbling over with a heedless joy—as once upon a time their forbears, and they are dead! Joy of a new overflowing life, joy such as kittens have, and kids, and, after ten years, they die; puppies and lambkins know this self-same joy and gambol as these children here—and time passes and they are killed!
We scattered among them handfuls of sugarplums, and our whole route was sown with sweets. The baptism of the little sea-gull will be remembered in Toulven for many a long year.
Afterwards, we found once more the quiet of the Breton lane, the long green alley, and, at the end of it, the primitive hamlet.
It was now near noon; butterflies and flies made merry in the air all along our road. The day was very warm for Brittany.
In broad daylight the roof of the cottage of the old Keremenens was a veritable garden: a quantity of little flowers, white, yellow and red, were installed there with a great variety of ferns, and the whole was sprinkled with sunlight, which filtered through the overhanging oaks.