and forgot our
existence; our hope was in Madame.

[Illustration: MORLAIX.]

We waited in patience; the short quarter of an hour developed into a
long half-hour, when tea arrived: small cups, small tea pot, usual
strainer, straw-coloured infusion; still, it just saved our reason. H.C.
felt that he should never write another line of poetry; the tobacco
fumes had taken an opium effect upon me, and I began to see visions and
imagined ourselves in Dante's Inferno. We looked with mild reproach at
the waiter. He quite understood; a guilty conscience needed no words;
and explained that the chef had let out the fire. As the chef was at
that moment in the cafe playing cards, as absorbed and excited as
anyone, no wonder that he had forgotten his ordinary duties.

"And our rooms?" we asked. "Are they ready?"

"The theatre is not yet over," replied the waiter. "Madame is on the
look-out. The play is extra long to-night in honour of the fair."

That miserable fair!

The tea revived us: it always does. "I feel less like expiring,"
murmured H.C., with a tremulous sigh. "But this place is like a furnace
seven times heated, and the noise is pandemonium in revolt. What would
Lady Maria think of this? Why need that frivolous butcher-woman have
gone to the theatre to-night of all nights in the year? And why need all
these people have stayed away from it? Why is everything upside down and
cross and contrary? And why are we here at all?"

H.C. was evidently on the verge of brain fever.

We waited; there was nothing else for it. It was torture; but others
have been tortured before now; and some have survived, and some have
died of it. We felt that we should die of it. Half past eleven had come
and gone; midnight was about to strike. Oh that we had gone on with that
wretched omnibus, no matter what the end. Yes; it had come to that.

At last human nature could bear it no longer: we appealed to the
landlord. He looked up from his game, flushed, startled and repentant.

"What! have they not taken you to the bouchere!" he exclaimed. "Why the
theatre was over long ago, and no doubt everything is arranged. You
shall be conducted at once."

Misery, looking himself more dead than alive (he informed us presently
in an access of confidence that he had had four teeth taken out that day
and felt none the better for it), was told off to act as guide, and
shouldering such baggage as we needed for the night, stepped forth. We
pitied him, he see