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News from the Duchy by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 54 of 243 (22%)
"They are an excellent couple. As between them, the wits are with
Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been
through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur
simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no
means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne
that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the
moment Lucien was trying to say it to me.

"They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and
Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an
understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of
sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan
and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the
lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to
Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel
with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way
spot--what is he?

"However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on,
for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long
families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially;
accidents at the fishery keep down the men. Still, and allowing for
that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother
alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents
survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be
maintained.

"No one builds on Ile Lezan. Luden and Jeanne--on either side their
families crowded to the very windows. If only the smallest hovel
might fall vacant! . . . For a week or two it seemed that a cottage
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