for it
now but to answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over,
wherever there are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated,
which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic
obstinacy, to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."

"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as
a tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
people."

"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem
to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality
which would have been corrupted and ruined by the gift of life. Perhaps
it is a castle which you encounter upon the cliff's edge; standing there
by the roadside, where it has halted to contemplate its sorrows before
an evening sky, still rosy, through which a golden moon is climbing;
while the fishing-boats, homeward bound, creasing the watered silk of
the Channel, hoist its pennant at their mastheads and carry its colours.
Or perhaps it is a simple dwelling-house that stands alone, ugly, if
anything, timid-seeming but full of romance, hiding from every eye some
imperishable secret of happiness and disenchantment. That land which
knows not truth," he continued with Machiavellian subtlety, "that land
of infinite fiction makes bad reading for any boy; and is certainly
not what I should choose or recommend for my young friend here, who is
already so much inclined to melancholy, for a heart already predisposed
to receive its impressions. Climates that breathe amorous secrets and
futile regrets may agree with an old and disillusioned man like myself;
but they must always prove fatal to a temperament which is still
unformed. Believe me," he went on with emphasis, "the waters of that
bay--more Breton than Norman--may exert a sedative influence, though
even that is of questionable value, upon a heart which, like mine, is no
longer unbroken, a heart for whose wounds there is no longer anything
to compensate. But at your age, my boy, those waters are
contra-indicated.... Good night to you, neighbours," he added, moving
away from us with that evasive abruptness to which we were accustomed;
and