Inside it was still cool, in the slightly green half-light, under the low black roof of the old beams.
Dinner was on the table, and Yves' wife, who had got up for the first time, was awaiting us, seated in her place, in her brave holiday dress. In the course of the last few days, her beauty had deserted her, and she was pale and thin. Yves looked at her with an air of disillusionment which did not escape her; and, realizing that this was not as it should be, he went over to her and kissed her affectionately with rather a lordly air. And I augured sad things from this glimpse of disenchantment.
Nevertheless this baptismal dinner was a gay affair. It consisted of a great number of Breton dishes and lasted a very long time.
During the dessert, we heard outside two voices murmuring a kind of litany very rapidly, in the language of lower Brittany. It was two old women, two old beggar-women, linked arm in arm and leaning on sticks, in the manner of the fairies when they take decrepit shape for the purpose of disguise.
They asked to be allowed to enter, having come to wish good luck to little Pierre. At the oaken cradle in which he was being gently rocked they predicted very fortunate things, and then withdrew with a blessing for everyone.
Generous alms were given them, and Anne cut them slices of bread and butter.
[CHAPTER XLVIII]
In the afternoon there was a scene: my poor brother Yves was tipsy and wanted to go to Bannalec and take train to rejoin his ship.
We had wandered some considerable distance and were in a wood, Anne, Yves, and I, when suddenly, without apparent cause, the idea seized him. He had turned back and left us, saying that he was going away for good; and we had followed him in some anxiety fearful of what he might do.
When, a few minutes after him, we reached the cottage of the old Keremenens, we found that he had thrown off his fine white shirt and his wedding clothes, and, stripped to the waist, in the usual style of sailors on board ship during the morning, he was looking everywhere for his jersey which had been hidden from him.