Along the sunken lanes, in the green night, we met women who were going into Toulven to hear the early morning mass. From the end of these long corridors of verdure, we saw them coming with their collarettes, their tall white head-dresses, the sides of which fell symmetrically over their ears, like the bonnets of the Egyptians. Their waists were tightly compressed in bodices of blue cloth which resembled the corselets of insects and on which were embroidered always the same designs, the same rows of butterfly eyes. As they passed they gave us good-day in Breton and their tranquil faces wore an expression of primitive times.
And at the doors of old grey granite cottages which were almost hidden in the trees, we found old women sitting and minding little children; old women with long unkempt white hair, in tattered blue cloth cut in the fashion of long ago, with the remains of Breton embroideries and rows of eyes: the poverty and primitiveness of olden times.
Ferns, ferns, all along these lanes—ferns of the most elaborate kind, the finest, the rarest, which have flourished there in the damp shade, forming sheaves and carpets—and pink foxgloves, too, shooting up like pink rockets, and, pinker even than the foxgloves, the silenes of Brittany, scattering over all this fresh verdure their little carmine-coloured stars.
To us, maybe, the verdure seems greener, the woods more silent, the perfumes more penetrating, to us who live in wooden houses in the midst of the sound of the sea.
"It seems to me very pleasant here," said Yves. "A little later on when little Pierre is big enough for me to lead him by the hand, we will go together to pick all kinds of things in the woods—and, later again, we can shoot. To be sure! I will buy a gun, as soon as I have saved a little money, to kill the wolves. I don't think I shall ever be bored in this country here."
I knew well, alas! that sooner or later he would weary of it; but it served no purpose to tell him so and it was better to let him, as one lets children, cherish his illusion.
Besides, he also was about to depart; two days after me, he was due at Brest, to embark once more. This was only a very brief rest in our life, this sojourn at Toulven, only a little interlude of Brittany, after which we must resume once more our business of the sea.
We were in the heart of the woods. No pathways now, no cottages. Nothing but a succession of hills following one another into the distance, covered with beeches, with brushwood, with oaks and heather. And flowers, a profusion of flowers; the whole countryside was flowered like an Eden: honeysuckle, tall asphodels with white distaffs and foxgloves with pink distaffs.
In the distance, the song of cuckoos in the trees, and, around us, the humming of bees.
The berries grew thick here and there, on the stony soil, mingled with flowering heather. Anne always found the best and gave them to me in handfuls. And big Yves watched us with a grave smile, conscious that he was playing, for the first time, a kind of rôle of mentor, and finding it very surprising.