About three o’clock in the afternoon, we arrived at the chapel of Kerfeunteun, near the entrance to Quimper.  At the upper end of the chapel is a fine glass window of the sixteenth century, representing the genealogical tree of the Holy Trinity.  Jacob forms the trunk, and the top is figured by the Cross surmounted by the Eternal Father with a tiara on His head.  On each side, the square steeple represents a quadrilateral pierced by a long straight window.  This steeple does not rest squarely on the roof, but instead, by means of a slender basis, the narrow sides of which almost touch, it forms an obtuse angle near the ridge of the roof.  In Brittany, almost every church has a steeple of this kind.

Before returning to the city, we made a detour in order to visit the chapel of La Mere-Dieu.  As it is usually closed, our guide summoned the custodian, and the latter accompanied us with his little niece, who stopped along the road to pick flowers.  The young man walked in front of us.  His slender and flexible figure was encased in a jacket of light blue cloth, and the three velvet streamers of his black hat, which was carefully placed on the back of his head, over his knotted hair, hung down his back.

At the bottom of a valley, or rather a ravine, can be seen the church of La Mere-Dieu, veiled by thick foliage.  In this place, amid the silence of all these trees and because of its little Gothic portal (which appears to be of the thirteenth century, but which, in reality, is of the sixteenth), the church reminds one of the discreet chapels mentioned in old novels and old melodies, where they knighted the page starting for the Holy Land, one morning when the stars were dim and the lark trilled, while the mistress of the castle slipped her white hand through the bars of the iron gate and wept when he kissed her goodbye.

We entered the church.  The young custodian took off his hat and knelt on the floor.  His thick, blond hair uncoiled and fell around his shoulders.  It clung a moment to the coarse cloth of his jacket, and then, little by little, it separated and spread like the hair of a woman.  It was parted in the middle and hung on both sides over his shoulders and neck.  The golden mass rippled with light every time he moved his head bent in prayer.

The little girl kneeled beside him and let her flowers fall to the ground.  For the first time in my life, I understood the beauty of a man’s locks and the fascination they may have for bare and playful arms.  A strange progress, indeed, is that which consists in curtailing everywhere the grand superfetations nature has bestowed upon us, so that whenever we discover them in all their virgin splendour, they are a revelation to us.

CHAPTER VII.

PONT-L’ABBE.

At five o’clock in the evening, we arrived at Pont-l’Abbe, covered with quite a respectable coating of mud and dust, which fell from our clothing upon the floor of the inn with such disastrous abundance, every time we moved, that we were almost mortified at the mess we made.