It was an out-of-the-way place, this village where Yves' mother lived. The diligence in which we sat was due to take us in four hours from Guincamp to Paimpol, where we counted on spending the night; and from there we should have a long way to go on foot. On we went, jolted over a rough little road, plunging deeper and deeper into the silence of the mournful countryside. The winter's night descended on us slowly, and a fine rain obscured things in a grey mist. We passed trees and more trees, showing one after another their dead silhouette. At wide intervals we passed villages also--Breton villages, dark thatched cottages and old churches with slender granite steeples--little groups of homesteads, isolated and melancholy, which quickly disappeared behind us in the night. "Do you know," said Yves, "I came this way, at night, eleven years ago--I was then fourteen--and I wept bitterly. It was the first time I had left home, and I was travelling alone to Brest to join the navy." I was accompanying Yves on this journey to Plouherzel partly for want of something to do. The leave granted me was short, and I had not time, on this occasion, to visit my home, so I was going to visit his, and to see this village of his which he loved so well. And, at the moment, I was rather sorry I had come. Yves, absorbed in the happiness of his return, kept up a conversation with me out of deference, but his thoughts were elsewhere. I felt that I was a stranger in this world for which we were bound, and this Brittany, which I had not yet learned to love, oppressed me with its sadness. _Paimpol!_ We roll over cobbles, between old dark houses, and the diligence stops. People are waiting there with lanterns. Breton words and French words are interchanged. "Are there any travellers for the Hôtel Pendreff?" pipes a small boy's voice. The Hôtel Pendreff! Surely the name is familiar to me. And now I remember that nine years before, during my first year in the navy, I had rested there for an hour, on a day in June, when my ship, by chance, had anchored in a bay near by. I recollect it well; an old manor house, turreted and gabled, presided over by two aged sisters named Le Pendreff, both alike, in large white bonnets, making a picture of bygone days. We will get down at the Hôtel Pendreff. In the house itself nothing is changed. But one of the Le Pendreff sisters is dead. She who remains was already so old nine years ago that she can scarcely have grown older since. Her type, her bonnet, the placid dignity of her bearing, are of a past generation. It is good to dine before the great roaring fire, and cheerfulness returns to us. Afterwards, the good dame Le Pendreff, armed with a copper candlestick, leads the way up a stone staircase and ushers us into a very large room, where there are two beds of an old-fashioned type hung with white curtains. Yves, however, undresses himself very slowly and without conviction.