When we entered we found ourselves in a vestibule flagged with pinkish
stones and ornamented with a large fountain of burnished copper. A
staircase of the same stones, as imposing as a castle staircase, with a
curious balustrade of wrought-iron, led to the old-fashioned wainscoted
bedrooms on the second floor. And these things evoked a past very
different from that I had brooded over upon the Island, at St. Ongeoise,
the only past with which I was at this time familiar.

After dinner we went out and sat together upon the bank of the noisy
river; we sat in a meadow overgrown with centauries and sweet marjoram,
recognizable in the darkness because of their penetrating odor. It was a
very still, warm evening and innumerable crickets chirped in the grass.
It seemed to me that I had never before seen so many stars in the
heavens. The difference in latitude was not so great, but the sea
air that tempers our winters also makes our summer evenings hazy; in
consequence we could see more stars here in this southern country with
its clear atmosphere, than at our home.

The majestic mountains surrounding us, from which I could not take my
eyes, looked like great blue silhouettes: the mountains, never seen
until now, gave me the feeling, so much longed for, of being in a
distant country, they gave me the assurance that one of the dreams of my
childhood had come true.

I spent several summers in this village, and I made myself enough at
home to learn the southern dialect spoken by the people there. Indeed
the two provinces I became best acquainted with in my childhood was this
southern one and that of St. Ongeoise, both of them lands of sunshine.

Brittany, which so many take to be my native place, I did not see until