And that, with the blue eyes, is Soeur Hyacinthe. She walks with me--
this is I--as she always did. And what do you think? With the fifteen
dolls that you have brought I am going to have a real Pardon, and
townspeople and fisher people to stand and worship at the altar of the
Virgin, there in the corner. I made it of wax, and stamped the face
with a seal that Charles gave me. He was to have been my husband when I
left the school."
"Indeed, mademoiselle?"
"Yes, but the soldiers burnt his house. It was but a week after I left
the school, and the Chateau Sant-Ervoan lay but a mile from my mother's
house. He fled to us, wounded; and we carried him to the coast--there
was a price on his head, and we, too, had to flee--and escaped over to
England. He died on this bed, Yann. Look--"
She lifted a candle, and there on the bed's ledge I read, in gilt
lettering, some words I have never forgotten, though it was not until
years after that I got a priest to explain them to me. They were
"C. DE. R. COMES ET ECSUL. MDCCXCIII."
While I stared, she set the candle down again and gently drew the
curtains round the bed.
"Rise now and dress, dear child, or your supper will be cold and the
farmer impatient. You have done me good. Although I have written the
farmer's letters for him, it never seemed to me that I wrote to living
people: for all I used to know in Brittany, ten years ago, are dead.
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