"So things went on for about a year. The probability is that the
priest saw nothing, so firmly do our clergy adhere to the resolution
of living in an atmosphere of their own. This only added fuel to the
fire. Her love became a worship, a pure adoration, and so she gained
comparative peace of mind. Her imagination took quite a childish turn,
and she wanted to be able to fancy that she was employed in doing
things for him. She had got to dream while awake, and, like a
somnambulist, to perform acts in a semi-unconscious state. Day and
night, one thought haunted her: she fancied herself tending him,
counting his linen, and looking after all the details of his
household, which were too petty to occupy his thoughts. All these
fancies gradually took shape, and led up to an act only to be
explained by the mental state to which she had for some time been
reduced."

What follows would indeed be incomprehensible without a knowledge of
certain peculiarities in the Breton character. The most marked feature
in the people of Brittany is their affection. Love is with them a
tender, deep, and affectionate sentiment, rather than a passion. It
is an inward delight which wears and consumes, differing _toto caelo_
from the fiery passion of southern races.

The paradise of their dreams is cool and green, with no fierce heat.
There is no race which yields so many victims to love; for, though
suicide is rare, the gradual wasting away which is called consumption
is very Prevalent. It is often so with the young Breton conscripts.
Incapable of finding any satisfaction in mercenary intrigues,
they succumb to an indefinable sort of languor, which is called
home-sickness, though, in reality, love with them is indissolubly
associated with their native village, with its steeple and vesper