Читать книгу A Tale of Brittany (Mon frère Yves) - Pierre Loti - Страница 4

The 28th of August, 1851, was, it seems, a fine summer's day at Saint Pol-de-Léon, in Finistère.

The pale sun of Brittany smiled and made festival for this little newcomer, who later on was to love the sun so much, and to love Brittany so much.

Yves made his entrance into the world in the form of a large baby, very round and very brown. The good women present at his arrival gave him the name of Bugel-Du, which in English means: little black boy. This bronzed colouring was, for that matter, characteristic of the family, the Kermadecs from father to son, having been ocean-going sailors and men deeply bitten by the tan of the sea.

A fine summer's day in Saint Pol-de-Léon is a rare thing in this region of fogs: a kind of melancholy radiance is shed over everything; the old town of the Middle Ages is, as it were, awakened out of its mournful slumber in the mist and made young again; the old granite warms itself in the sun; the tower of Creizker, the giant of Breton towers, bathes in the blue sky, in the full light, its delicate grey fretwork marbled with yellow lichens. And all around is the wild moorland, with its pink heather, its golden gorse, exhaling a soft perfume of flowering broom.

At the baptism were a young girl, the godmother; a sailor, the godfather; and, behind, the two little brothers, Goulven and Gildas, holding by the hand the two little sisters, Yvonne and Marie, who carried flowers.

When the little company entered the old church of the bishops of Léon, the verger, hanging on the rope of a bell, made ready to start the joyous carillon called for by the occasion. But the Curé, coming on the scene, said to him harshly:

"Be quiet, Marie Bervrac'h, for the love of God! These Kermadecs are people who never give anything to the Church, and the father wastes all his substance in the tavern. We'll have no ringing, if you please, for people of that sort."

And that is how my brother Yves made his entrance into the world in the guise of poverty.

Jeanne Danveoch, from her bed, listened with uneasiness, waited with a foreboding of ill, for the vibrations of the bell which were so slow to begin. For a long time she listened and heard nothing. Then she understood the public affront and wept.

Her eyes were wet with tears when the party returned, crestfallen, to the house.

All his life this humiliation weighed upon the heart of Yves; he was never able to forgive this unkind reception at his entrance into the world, nor the cruel tears shed by his mother; and as a result he preserved for the Roman clergy an unforgetting rancour and closed his Breton heart to Our Mother the Church.