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And if this human nature was interesting, what about the natural world around us? The boat loosed its moorings when time was up, and the grey walls of St. Malo receded; the innumerable roofs, towers and steeples grew dreamy and indistinct, dissolved and disappeared. The water was still blue and calm and flashing with sunlight. To the right lay the sleeping ocean; ahead of us, Dinard.
Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.
"Why, Jerry, I am not quite so certain that those are vessels," I remarked; "just observe them attentively. Hillo! they have disappeared! Stay, we shall soon rise to the top of the swell again. There they are! They are as steady as church steeples. Those are not the masts of vessels. They are cocoa-nut and palm-trees, depend on that.
The birds of passage seem to have marked it with a cross on their maps, and when the long wedges of wild duck, heading for the Camargue, see far off the town's steeples, the whole flight veers away. In short there is nothing left by way of game in this part of the country but an old rascal of a hare, who has escaped by some miracle the guns of Tarascon and appears determined to stay there.
The North Sea might foam over them and they would not be disturbed. Nearly all of them are without steeples, and the bells are hung outside between two beams. The service was over, and the congregation passed out into the churchyard, where not a tree or bush was to be seen; no flowers were planted there, and they had not placed a single wreath upon any of the graves. It is just the same now.
In the upward distance, at which the journeyers looked, the loftier roofs and steeples lifted themselves dim out of the livid atmosphere, and far up and down the length of the street swept a stream of tormented life.
When the officer returned he informed the general that it was not the volunteers, but Mexicans, who were firing from the roofs of houses. Orders were at once issued to place soldiers in the steeples of churches and on the roofs of houses as sharpshooters, to sweep the streets with artillery if necessary, and to break open and enter all houses from which the troops were fired upon.
Senza Moccolo!; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back delicate arms and bosoms graceful figures glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o! when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant put out like a taper, with a breath!
The minutes passed, we were moving rapidly, and yet the three steeples were always a long way ahead of us, like three birds perched upon the plain, motionless and conspicuous in the sunlight.
The small old country churches of Essex County are not distinguished for fine carving or other ornamentation, and still less by the costliness of their material, for they are mostly built of white pine, but they have an indefinable air of pleasantness about them, as if they graced the ground they stand on, and their steeples seem to float in the air above us.
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