Of course he would never see France again, unless the boy died. If this
happened he would go and give himself up, because nothing would matter
any more. So many of his shipmates had gone to lands of black and yellow
people, and had never returned. They were dead, and some day he also
would be dead, and it made no difference.
I really think, Auntie dear, that he had quite forgotten me as he spoke,
low, haltingly, in mingled French and English words. He was just
rehearsing to himself something that had been all of his life, because
everything that had happened before, and the struggle for a living
afterwards, were of no moment. Through the poor man's ignorance, through
his wondrous folly, I could discern an immense love that had overpowered
him and broken him forever. He was an exile from his beloved land of
Brittany, and would never see its heather and gorse again, or the flaming
foxgloves that redden some of its fields.
And all this because of a little child that was the only thing left that
had belonged to the woman he had loved so greatly! He said that perhaps
that Virgin on the hills might still be looking far out over the waters,
and he knelt before a little crucifix which hung from a nail in the rough
boards of the walls. I heard him repeating, in a low voice, in soft quick
words, the prayers his faith led him to hope might be hearkened to by the
Lady of Sorrows, as she watched from that little hill on the other side
of the great sea.
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