might drop in their way; but it happened to be what you call
picturesque, and a rich man snapped it up. He was a stranger from
Paris, and called himself an artist; but in truth he painted little,
and that poorly--as even _I_ could see. He was fonder of planning
what he would have, and what not, to indulge his mood when it should
be in the key for painting. Happening here just when the cottage
fell empty, he offered a price for it far beyond anything Lucien
could afford, and bought it. For a month or two he played with this
new toy, adding a studio and a veranda, and getting over many large
crates of furniture from the mainland. Then by and by a restlessness
overtook him--that restlessness which is the disease of the rich--and
he left us, yet professing that it delighted him always to keep his
little _pied-a-terre_ in Ile Lezan. He has never been at pains to
visit us since.

"But meanwhile Lucien and Jeanne had no room to marry and set up
house. It was a heavy time for them. They had some talk together of
crossing over and finding a house on the mainland; but it came to
nothing. The parents on both sides would not hear of it, and in
truth Jeanne would have found it lonely on the mainland, away from
her friends and kin; for Lucien, you see, must in any case spend half
his time on the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant. So many weeks on duty,
so many weeks ashore--thus it works, and even so the loneliness wears
them; though our Bretons, being silent men by nature, endure it
better than the rest.

"Lucien and Jeanne must wait--wait for somebody to die. In plain
words it came to that. Ah, monsieur! I have heard well-to-do folk
talk of our poor as unfeeling. That is an untruth. But suppose it
were true. Where would the blame lie in such a story as this?