hing is so cruelly painful as to have powerless desires," I
answered. "Those two poor creatures, the father and son, will never know
how keen our sympathy for them is, any more than the world will know
how beautiful are their lives; they are laying up their treasures in
heaven."

"Oh, how poor this country is!" she said, pointing to a field enclosed
by a dry stone wall, which was covered with droppings of cow's dung
applied symmetrically. "I asked a peasant-woman who was busy sticking
them on, why it was done; she answered that she was making fuel. Could
you have imagined that when those patches of dung have dried, human
beings would collect them, store them, and use them for fuel? During the
winter, they are even sold as peat is sold. And what do you suppose the
best dressmaker in the place can earn?--five sous a day!" adding, after
a pause, "and her food."

"But see," I said, "how the winds from the sea bend or destroy
everything. There are no trees. Fragments of wreckage or old vessels
that are broken up are sold to those who can afford to buy; for costs
of transportation are too heavy to allow them to use the firewood with
which Brittany abounds. This region is fine for none but noble souls;
persons without sentiments could never live here; poets and barnacles
alone should inhabit it. All that ever brought a population to this rock
were the salt-marshes and the factory which prepares the salt. On one
side the sea; on the other, sand; above, illimitable space."

We had now passed the town, and had reached the species of desert which
separates Croisic from the village of Batz. Imagine, my dear uncle, a
barren track of miles covered with the glittering sand of the seashore.
Here and there a few rocks lifted their heads; you might have thought
them gigantic animals couchant on the dunes. Along the coast were reefs,
around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance
of great white roses, floating on the liquid surface or resting on the
shore. Seeing this barren tract with the ocean on one side, and on the
other the arm of the sea which runs up between Croisic and the rocky
shore of Guerande, at the base of which lay the salt marshes, denuded of
vegetation, I looked at Pauline and asked her if she felt the courage to
face the burning sun and the strength to walk through sand.

"I have boots," she said. "Let us go," and she pointed to the tower of
Batz, which arrested the eye by its immense pile plac