blue
or brown eyes. The young men, who were the objects of their melancholy
and desires, were remote, fishing on the northern seas.

But it was a spring-time for all that--warm, sweet, and troubling, with
its buzzing of flies and perfume of young plants.

And all this soulless freshness smiled upon the poor old grandmother,
who was quickly walking along to hear of the death of her last-born
grandson. She neared the awful moment when this event, which had taken
place in the so distant Chinese seas, was to be told to her; she
was taking that sinister walk that Sylvestre had divined at his
death-hour--the sight of that had torn his last agonized tears from him;
his darling old granny summoned to Paimpol to be told that he was dead!
Clearly he had seen her pass along that road, running straight on,
with her tiny brown shawl, her umbrella, and large head-dress. And that
apparition had made him toss and writhe in fearful anguish, while the
huge, red sun of the Equator, disappearing in its glory, peered through
the port-hole of the hospital to watch him die. But he, in his last
hallucination, had seen his old granny moving under a rain-laden sky,
and on the contrary a joyous laughing spring-time mocked her on all
sides.

Nearing Paimpol, she became more and more uneasy, and improved her
speed. Now she is in the gray town with its narrow granite streets,
where the sun falls, bidding good-day to some other old women, her
contemporaries, sitting at their windows. Astonished to see her; they
said: "Wherever is she going so quickly, in her Sunday gown, on a
week-day?"

"Monsieur le Commissaire" of the Naval Enlistment Office was not in just
then. One ugly little creature, about fifteen years old, who was his
clerk, sat at his desk. As he was too puny to be a fisher, he had
received some education and passed his time in that same chair, in his
black linen dust-sleeves, scratching away at paper.

With a look of importance, when she had said her name, he got up to get
the official documents from off a shelf.

There were a great many papers--what did it all mean? Parchments, sealed
papers, a sailor's record-book, grown yellow on the sea, and over all
floated an odour of death. He spread them all out before the poor old
woman, who began to tremble and feel dizzy. She had just recognized two
of the letters which Gaud used to write for her to her grandson, and
which were now returned to her never unsealed. The same thing had
happ