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 plastered walls
dripping with saline ooze. From the roof depended three or four
rudely carved ships, hung there _ex voto_ by parishioners preserved
from various perils of the deep. He narrated their histories at
length.

"The roof leaks," he said, "but we are to remedy that. At length the
blessed Mary of Lezan will be housed, if not as befits her, at least
not shamefully." He indicated a niched statue of the Virgin, with
daubed red cheeks and a robe of crude blue overspread with blotches
of sea-salt. "Thanks to your England," he added.

"Why 'thanks to England'?"

He chuckled--or perhaps I had better say chirruped.

"Did I not say I had been visiting your country on business? Eh?
You shall hear the story--only I tell no names."

He took snuff.

"We will call them," he said, "only by their Christian names, which
are Lucien and Jeanne. . . . I am to marry them next month, when
Lucien gets his relief from the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant.