with a vengeance.  Not knowing the way to the inn where our coachman had put up, it was some time before we could discover an inhabitant to direct us.  At length we found a human being who had evidently come abroad under some mistaken impression, or in a fit of absence of mind.  At the same time a child issued from a doorway.  We felt quite in a small crowd.  It was a humble child, but with a very charming and innocent expression; one of those faces that take possession of you at once and for ever.  For it does not require days or weeks or months to know some people; moments will place you in intimate communion with them.  You meet and suddenly feel that you must have known each other in some previous existence, so mutual is the recognition.  But it is not so, for we have had no previous existence.  It is nothing but the freemasonry of the spirit; soul going out to soul.  For this reason the “love at first sight” that the poets have raved about in all the ages, and in all the ages mankind has laughed at, is probably as real as anything we know of; as real as our existence, the air we breathe, the heaven above us.

But we were at Lesneven, in the midst of the little crowd of two—­we must not keep it waiting.  And although the day is still young, yet the golden moments will fly, and the sun sinks rapidly westward.

So we inquired our way and were politely directed, and the little child declared it would be her pleasure to accompany us:  “il etoit si facile de s’egarer,” she declared, in very grown-up tones, and in her peculiar patois. Il etoit.  We had not heard the old-fashioned expression since our childhood, in the villages of our native land.

We accepted the escort, and the little maiden chatted as freely as if we had been very old acquaintances.  “She supposed that, like all strangers, we had been to see le Folgoet?  It was a fine church, but its miraculous fountain was the best of all.  Once, when she hurt her foot, grandpere carried her across the fields to the fountain.  She bathed her foot in the water and said a prayer and offered a candle, and—­vite, vite!—­the foot was well.  In three days she could run about.  But that was two years ago, when she was a very little girl; now she was quite big.”

“How old was she now?”

“She was twelve, and very soon would do her first communion, dressed all in white, with a beautiful veil over her head.  Should we not like to see her?”

“We should, very much.”

“Could we not come again next year, when it would take place?  She should so much like us to see her.  La! voila l’hotel!” she cried, passing rapidly from one subject to another, after the manner of childhood.  “Now she must run back home.  And we were to be sure and come again next year.”

And before we could turn, the child had darted away, evidently to prevent the possibility of reward:  a refined instinct for which we should scarcely have given her credit.  She may have been a Bretonne, but not a true Bretonne; her gracefulness and intelligence almost forbade it.  Yet there are exceptions to every rule, and Nature herself delights in occasional surprises.