“You may have left it at Morlaix,” I suggested.  “Now I come to think of it—­”

“The next compartment,” he interrupted.  “I distinctly remember putting it up in the rack, and thinking how quaint and pretty the crane’s head looked as it gaped through the netting.”

It is always so.  The fateful crossness of events pursues us through the world.  The only time when he should have been absent-minded and oblivious, his memory served him well.  At the next station he got out for his umbrella, and returned after quite a long interval, not looking exactly triumphant; rather flushed and uncomfortable; but in proud possession of the horror.

“I had quite a difficulty in getting it back,” he said.  “They had actually put it up and were sitting under its shade.  He complained of the glare of the sunshine.  You see, although these are first-class compartments, there are no blinds to the windows.  So very public.”

“But the morning is grey,” I observed.  “There is no sunshine.”

H.C. looked out; he had not observed the absence of sunlight.

“Oh, well,” he returned, doubtfully, “perhaps it was the draught they complained of.  You know I am rather dull at French, and have to make a shot at a good deal that’s said.  Any way,” he added, with a frank look of innocence, “I am sure they are only an engaged couple, not married.  Married people wouldn’t sit in a railway carriage under one umbrella.  She’s very pretty—­I wonder whether she’s very fond of him?  It looks like it.  One compartment—­one umbrella.  It was my umbrella—­then I ought to have had his place,” he added dreamily, as if in some way or other he felt that something was wrong and the world was a little out of joint.

The priest looked up from his breviary.  I should have thought he understood English, only that his expression was rather comical than reproving.  I changed the subject and asked him a question.  He immediately closed his book and disposed himself for conversation We found him an extremely intellectual and entertaining companion He intimately knew both Brittany and the Breton character.

“I am not a Breton,” he said in reply to a remark, “but I have lived amongst them for thirty years.  My early days were passed in Paris, and to live in Paris up to the age of twenty-one is alone an education.  My father was X——­, the great minister of his time.  My grandfather went through all the horrors of the French Revolution.  He saw the beautiful head of Marie Antoinette roll into the sawdust; heard the last footfall of Charlotte Corday as she ascended the scaffold.  He always said that she was one of our most heroic martyrs, and as she walked patiently and full of courage to her doom, the expression of a saint upon her features.  She was a saint, more worthy of canonisation than some who are found in the calendar.  He was a young man in those days, but its horrors turned his hair white.  Later on he was of great assistance to Napoleon, although we have always been Royalists.  But he held that it was well to sacrifice private opinion for the good of one’s country.  It is of no use fighting against the stream.  Life is short, the present only is ours; therefore why waste the present in vainly wishing for what is not?”