thought him mistaken, and asked the old antiquarian the
plain question. He smiled; the nearest approach we ever saw him give to
a laugh.

"No, sirs," he replied; "I have not so far erred. We do not make those
mistakes. Besides, you have too much love and veneration for the
beautiful. Indeed we know with whom we have to deal, and in our little
way possess a knowledge of the world."

But time and tide wait for no man. Our hour was up; the omnibus had
rumbled past us, and we had to depart. We reluctantly turned away from
this interesting group. The rift within the lute was probably busy with
household matters above, and no discordant element marred our farewell.
But we were sad, for we felt that somehow here was being lost and wasted
a great deal of that true talent which is so rare in the world.

The train rolled away from Morlaix. We had a long journey before us; a
journey right through the heart of Finistere. The first portion of it as
far as Landerneau had already been taken; the remainder was new ground.
The trains are slow and lingering in Brittany; this goes without saying,
and has already been said; but patience was an easy virtue. In spite of
Catherine, new ground must always be interesting.

The guard had put us into a compartment at Morlaix containing two
people; a young bride and bridegroom or an engaged couple; we could not
be quite sure at which stage they had arrived. The train was almost in
motion and we had no time to change. The gentleman glared at us, and we
felt very uncomfortably in the way. At the next station we left and went
into the next compartment, which contained nothing but a priest reading
his breviary; a dignified ecclesiastic; proving once more that there is
only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime. We carefully removed
all our small traps, including H.C.'s numerous antique parcels. But he
forgot his umbrella, which he had placed up in the rack. A dreadful
umbrella, which had been a martyrdom to me ever since we had left
England. An umbrella that was only fit for a poet or a Mrs. Gamp; huge,
bulky, tied round like a lettuce, with half a yard of stick above the
material, and a crane's head for a handle with a perpetual grin upon it
that was terribly irritating. H.C. called it one of his antiquities, and
was proud of it. When he had first bought it he had offered it to his
aunt, Lady Maria, for a carriage sunshade, who straightway went off into
one of her fainting fits, and very nea