mobile, staring at
the sea.

The little Cure, however, was vivacious enough for ten. It was
impossible to avoid making friends with him. He had nothing to do,
he told me, with his companions, but was just a plain parish priest
returning from an errand of business.

He announced this with a fine roll of the voice.

"Of business," he repeated. "The English are a great nation for
business. But how warm of heart, notwithstanding!"

"That is not always reckoned to us," said I.

"But _I_ reckon it . . . _Tenez_, that will be Ile Vierge--there,
with the lighthouse standing white--as it were, beneath the cliffs;
but the cliffs belong in fact to the mainland. . . . And now in a few
minutes we come abreast of _my_ parish--the Ile Lezan. . . . See,
see!" He caught my arm as the tide raced us down through the Passage
du Four. "My church--how her spire stands up!" He turned to me, his
voice shaking with emotion. "You English are accustomed to travel.
Probably you do not guess, monsieur, with what feelings I see again
Ile Lezan--I, who have never crossed the Channel before nor indeed
have visited any foreign land. But I am glad: it spreads the mind."
Here he put his hands together and drew them apart as though
extending a concertina. "I have seen you English at home.
If monsieur, who is on tour, could only spare the time to visit me on
Ile Lezan!"

Well, the end of it was that before we parted on the quay at Brest I
found myself under half a promise, and a week later, having (as I put
it to myself) nothing better to do, I took the train to a little
wind-swept terminus, whence a ramshackle cart jolted me to Port
Lezan, on the coast, whence again by sail and oar a ferry-boat
conveyed me over to the Island.

My friend the Cure greeted me with something not far short of
ecstasy.

"But this is like you English--you keep your word. . . . You will
hardly believe," he confided, as I shared his admirable dejeuner--
soup, langouste, an incomparable omelet, stuffed veal, and I forget
what beside--"you will hardly believe with what difficulty I bring
myself back to this horizon." He waved a hand to the blue sea-line
beyond his window. "When one has tasted progress--" He broke off.
"But, thanks be to God, we too, on Ile Lezan, are going to progress.
You will visit my church and see how much we have need."

He took me to it: a bleak, decayed building, half ruinated, the
slated pavement uneven as the waves of the sea, the