e
narrow sides of which almost touch, it forms an obtuse angle near the
ridge of the roof. In Brittany, almost every church has a steeple of
this kind.

Before returning to the city, we made a detour in order to visit the
chapel of _La Mere-Dieu_. As it is usually closed, our guide summoned
the custodian, and the latter accompanied us with his little niece, who
stopped along the road to pick flowers. The young man walked in front of
us. His slender and flexible figure was encased in a jacket of light
blue cloth, and the three velvet streamers of his black hat, which was
carefully placed on the back of his head, over his knotted hair, hung
down his back.

At the bottom of a valley, or rather a ravine, can be seen the church of
_La Mere-Dieu_, veiled by thick foliage. In this place, amid the silence
of all these trees and because of its little Gothic portal (which
appears to be of the thirteenth century, but which, in reality, is of
the sixteenth), the church reminds one of the discreet chapels mentioned
in old novels and old melodies, where they knighted the page starting
for the Holy Land, one morning when the stars were dim and the lark
trilled, while the mistress of the castle slipped her white hand through
the bars of the iron gate and wept when he kissed her goodbye.

We entered the church. The young custodian took off his hat and knelt on
the floor. His thick, blond hair uncoiled and fell around his shoulders.
It clung a moment to the coarse cloth of his jacket, and then, little by
little, it separated and spread like the hair of a woman. It was parted
in the middle and hung on both sides over his shoulders and neck. The
golden mass rippled with light every time he moved his head bent in
prayer.

The little girl kneeled beside him and let her flowers fall to the
ground. For the first time in my life, I understood the beauty of a
man's locks and the fascination they may have for bare and playful arms.
A strange progress, indeed, is that which consists in curtailing
everywhere the grand superfetations nature has bestowed upon us, so that
whenever we discover them in all their virgin splendour, they are a
revelation to us.

CHAPTER VII.

PONT-L'ABBE.

At five o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Pont-l'Abbe, covered with
quite a respectable coating of mud and dust, which fell from our
clothing upon the floor of the inn with such disastrous abundance, every
time we moved, that we were almost mortifie