passed into a country road with high hedges. This soon led us to a
pathway across the fields. About a mile in the distance the steeples of
Lesneven rose up and served us as beacons. The day was still young and
the sun was high in the heavens. Small white clouds chased each other
rapidly, driven by the strong wind that blew. We soon reached the quiet
town and found it quiet with a vengeance. Not knowing the way to the
inn where our coachman had put up, it was some time before we could
discover an inhabitant to direct us. At length we found a human being
who had evidently come abroad under some mistaken impression, or in a
fit of absence of mind. At the same time a child issued from a doorway.
We felt quite in a small crowd. It was a humble child, but with a very
charming and innocent expression; one of those faces that take
possession of you at once and for ever. For it does not require days or
weeks or months to know some people; moments will place you in intimate
communion with them. You meet and suddenly feel that you must have known
each other in some previous existence, so mutual is the recognition. But
it is not so, for we have had no previous existence. It is nothing but
the freemasonry of the spirit; soul going out to soul. For this reason
the "love at first sight" that the poets have raved about in all the
ages, and in all the ages mankind has laughed at, is probably as real as
anything we know of; as real as our existence, the air we breathe, the
heaven above us.

But we were at Lesneven, in the midst of the little crowd of two--we
must not keep it waiting. And although the day is still young, yet the
golden moments will fly, and the sun sinks rapidly westward.

So we inquired our way and were politely directed, and the little child
declared it would be her pleasure to accompany us: "_il étoit si facile
de s'égarer_," she declared, in very grown-up tones, and in her peculiar