Part 3 In The Shadow Chapter 15

At Paimpol lives a large, stout woman named Madame Tressoleur. In oneof the streets that lead to the harbour she keeps a tavern, well knownto all the Icelanders, where captains and ship-owners come to engagetheir sailors, and choose the strongest among them, men and mastersall drinking together.

　　At one time she had been beautiful, and was still jolly with thefishers; she has a mustache, is as broad built as a Dutchman, and asbold and ready of speech as a Levantine. There is a look of thedaughter of the regiment about her, notwithstanding her ample nun-likemuslin headgear; for all that, a religious halo of its sort floatsaround her, for the simple reason that she is a Breton born.

　　The names of all the sailors of the country are written in her head asin a register; she knows them all, good or bad, and knows exactly,too, what they earn and what they are worth.

　　One January day, Gaud, who had been called in to make a dress, satdown to work in a room behind the tap-room.

　　To go into the abode of our Madame Tressoleur, you enter by a broad,massive-pillared door, which recedes in the olden style under thefirst floor. When you go to open this door, there is always someobliging gust of wind from the street that pushes it in, and the new-comers make an abrupt entrance, as if carried in by a beach roller.

　　The hall is adorned by gilt frames, containing pictures of ships andwrecks. In an angle a china statuette of the Virgin is placed on abracket, between two bunches of artificial flowers.

　　These olden walls must have listened to many powerful songs ofsailors, and witnessed many wild gay scenes, since the first far-offdays of Paimpol--all through the lively times of the privateers, up tothese of the present Icelanders, so very little different from theirancestors. Many lives of men have been angled for and hooked there, onthe oaken tables, between two drunken bouts.

　　While she was sewing the dress, Gaud lent her ear to the conversationgoing on about Iceland, behind the partition, between MadameTressoleur and two old sailors, drinking. They were discussing a newcraft that was being rigged in the harbour. She never would be readyfor the next season, so they said of this /Leopoldine/.

　　"Oh, yes, to be sure she will!" answered the hostess. "I tell 'ee thecrew was all made up yesterday--the whole of 'em out of the old/Marie/ of Guermeur's, that's to be sold for breaking up; five youngfellows signed their engagement here before me, at this here table,and with my own pen--so ye see, I'm right! And fine fellows, too, Ican tell 'ee; Laumec, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, young Keraez fromTreguier, and long Yann Gaos from Pors-Even, who's worth any three on'em!"The /Leopoldine/! The half-heard name of the ship that was to carryYann away became suddenly fixed in her brain, as if it had beenhammered in to remain more ineffaceably there.

　　At night back again at Ploubazlanec, and finishing off her work by thelight of her pitiful lamp, that name came back to her mind, and itsvery sound impressed her as a sad thing. The names of vessels, as ofthings, have a significance in themselves--almost a particular meaningof their own. The new and unusual word haunted her with an unnaturalpersistency, like some ghastly and clinging warning. She had expectedto see Yann start off again on the /Marie/, which she knew so well andhad formerly visited, and whose Virgin had so long protected itsdangerous voyages; and the change to the /Leopoldine/ increased heranguish.

　　But she told herself that that was not her concern, and nothing abouthim ought ever to affect her. After all, what could it matter to herwhether he were here or there, on this ship or another, ashore or not?

　　Would she feel less miserable with him back in Iceland, when thesummer would return over the deserted cottages, and lonely anxiouswomen--or when a new autumn came again, bringing home the fishers oncemore? All that was alike indifferent to her, equally without joy orhope. There was no link between them now, nothing ever to bring themtogether, for was he not forgetting even poor little Sylvestre? So,she had plainly to understand that this sole dream of her life wasover for ever; she had to forget Yann, and all things appertaining tohis existence, even the very name of Iceland, which still vibrated inher with so painful a charm--because of him all such thoughts must beswept away. All was indeed over, for ever and ever.

　　She tenderly looked over at the poor old woman asleep, who stillrequired all her attention, but who would soon die. Then, what wouldbe the good of living and working after that; of what use would shebe?

　　Out of doors, the western wind had again risen; and, notwithstandingits deep distant soughing, the soft regular patter of the eaves-droppings could be heard as they dripped from the roof. And so thetears of the forsaken one began to flow--tears running even to herlips to impart their briny taste, and dropping silently on her work,like summer showers brought by no breeze, but suddenly falling,hurried and heavy, from the over-laden clouds; as she could no longersee to work, and she felt worked out and discouraged before this greathollowness of her life, she folded up the extra-sized body of MadameTressoleur and went to bed.

　　She shivered upon that fine, grand bed, for, like all things in thecottage, it seemed also to be getting colder and damper. But as shewas very young, although she still continued weeping, it ended by hergrowing warm and falling asleep.