But time and tide wait for no man.  Our hour was up; the omnibus had rumbled past us, and we had to depart.  We reluctantly turned away from this interesting group.  The rift within the lute was probably busy with household matters above, and no discordant element marred our farewell.  But we were sad, for we felt that somehow here was being lost and wasted a great deal of that true talent which is so rare in the world.

The train rolled away from Morlaix.  We had a long journey before us; a journey right through the heart of Finistere.  The first portion of it as far as Landerneau had already been taken; the remainder was new ground.  The trains are slow and lingering in Brittany; this goes without saying, and has already been said; but patience was an easy virtue.  In spite of Catherine, new ground must always be interesting.

The guard had put us into a compartment at Morlaix containing two people; a young bride and bridegroom or an engaged couple; we could not be quite sure at which stage they had arrived.  The train was almost in motion and we had no time to change.  The gentleman glared at us, and we felt very uncomfortably in the way.  At the next station we left and went into the next compartment, which contained nothing but a priest reading his breviary; a dignified ecclesiastic; proving once more that there is only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime.  We carefully removed all our small traps, including H.C.’s numerous antique parcels.  But he forgot his umbrella, which he had placed up in the rack.  A dreadful umbrella, which had been a martyrdom to me ever since we had left England.  An umbrella that was only fit for a poet or a Mrs. Gamp; huge, bulky, tied round like a lettuce, with half a yard of stick above the material, and a crane’s head for a handle with a perpetual grin upon it that was terribly irritating.  H.C. called it one of his antiquities, and was proud of it.  When he had first bought it he had offered it to his aunt, Lady Maria, for a carriage sunshade, who straightway went off into one of her fainting fits, and very nearly disinherited him.  At Quimper I could stand it no longer, and when his back was turned, I quietly put it up the chimney.  There it no doubt still remains, unless it has suffered martyrdom in the flames, in return for the martyrdom it had inflicted upon others.  But I am dating forward.

This horrible apparition he left in the rack of the first compartment.  I saw the omission, and was delighted to think that we had at last got rid of the encumbrance.  Had I only remembered the tale of the Eastern Slippers I might have taken warning.  The train went off; he took a sketch of the priest, and then hastily looked round.

“My umbrella!” he exclaimed in an agony.  “Where is it?  You have not thrown it out of window?”

My will had been good to do it many a time, as the familiar saying runs; but he carried a stick as well as an umbrella, and he was five times as strong as I.