As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said in French to a companion:  “Heavens! didn’t the fellow stink!  He is almost completely mortified!  It isn’t surprising, though, after being in the water three weeks!”

* * * * *

One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough; but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass that way.

A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends from Carnac to the village of Po.  A boat was waiting for us; we entered it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off.  Our sailor, an old man with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let his peaceful boat go its own way.  There was hardly any wind; the blue sea was calm and the narrow track the rudder ploughed in the waters could be seen for a long time.  The old fellow was talkative; he spoke of the priests, whom he disliked, of meat, which he thought was a good thing to eat even on fast days, of the work he had had when he was in the navy, and of the shots he had received when he was a customs officer....  The boat glided along slowly, the line followed us and the end of the tape-cul hung in the water.

The mile we had to walk in order to go from Saint-Pierre to Quiberon was quickly covered, in spite of a hilly and sandy road, and the sun, which made our shoulders smart beneath the straps of our bags, and a number of “men-hirs” that were scattered along the route.

CHAPTER IV.

QUIBERON.

In Quiberon, we breakfasted at old Rohan Belle-Isle’s, who keeps the Hotel Penthievre.  This gentleman had his bare feet stuck in old slippers, on account of the heat, and was drinking with a mason, a fact which does not prevent him from being the descendant of one of the first families of Europe; an aristocrat of the old stock! a real aristocrat! Vive Dieu! He immediately set to work to pound a steak and to cook us some lobsters.  Our pride was flattered to its innermost fibre.

The past of Quiberon is concentrated in a massacre.  Its greatest curiosity is a cemetery, which is filled to its utmost capacity and overflows into the street.  The head-stones are crowded together and invade and submerge one another, as if the corpses were uncomfortable in their graves and had lifted up their shoulders to escape from them.  It suggests a petrified ocean, the tombs being the waves, and the crosses the masts of shipwrecked vessels.