United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Each Beguinage door bore the name of some saint, and often in a moss-covered niche in the old walls was seen a small statue of some saint, or holy personage, draped in vines. The heavy, barred door was nail studded, and furnished usually with an iron-grilled wicket, where at the sound of the bell of the visitor a panel slid back and a white-coiffed face appeared.
The big gendarme tramped around the corner to the stable and presently returned mounted on a strong gray horse, his sabre shone on his saddle; his pale yellow and white facings were spotless. The little crowd of white-coiffed women with their children fell back as Durand touched spurs and clattered away followed by his two troopers.
The whole village seemed gathered at the harbour-side; children and old men, lads and women, eager, yet with the patient quietness that is the way with the Breton folk. Here a demure group of white-coiffed girls stood waiting with scarce a word passing among them, waiting at the quay-side for the fathers, brothers, or sweethearts, that for months had been facing the perils of the northern seas.
He was turning with a mocking sign to Antoine to follow, when from the left of the rock beside which they stood, there darted forward the white-coiffed figure of a girl, who with extended arms and agonized face, rushed up to Geoffroi, crying, "Take me away I have seen Them! Take me away." She clung to Geoffroi's arm, and screamed when Antoine would have touched her.
Gildas cemetery, on the cliffs to the east, where already a knot of white-coiffed women stood in attitudes of prayer; and I saw the somber robe of a priest among the crosses of the little graveyard. "They were thieves and assassins; they are dead now," muttered Max Fortin. "Respect the dead," repeated the Mayor of St. Gildas, looking after the Bannalec men.
I asked them why they were wasting their energies, since the fish were ready to be eaten straight from the tins. "We know," they replied; "but it smells like home." I suppose with the odour of the cooking fish, in the blue haze of the smoke, they saw visions of their cottages and the white-coiffed Bretonnes frying the fresh sardines that they had caught.
I rang, and, when 'Fine appeared, Lys gave her some orders in a low voice, and Josephine trotted away, bobbing her white-coiffed head with a "Bien, Madame!" After a few minutes she returned, bearing a tattered, musty volume, from which the gold and blue had mostly disappeared. I took the book in my hands and examined the ancient emblazoned covers. "Lilies!" I exclaimed.
Along the straight, white road there came, in the early dawn, a little silent procession: the silent road, that was ever bringing tidings, good or evil, to the auberge: though now no white-coiffed girl with a patient face was waiting at the door.
I asked them why they were wasting their energies since the fish were ready to be eaten straight from the tins. "We know," they replied, "but it smells like home." I suppose with the odour of the cooking fish, in the blue haze of the smoke, they saw visions of their cottages and the white-coiffed Bretonnes frying the fresh sardines that they had caught.
But the great bulk of the crowd was massed behind the black-robed, white-coiffed figures of the Sisters, kneeling rigid and immovable about the second open grave, where the Mother-Superior lay in her snow-white coffin, fully habited and mantled, her Rosary in the marble hand on which the plain gold ring of her Divine espousals shone, the parchment formula of the vows she took when admitted to her Order nineteen years before, lying under those meekly-folded hands upon her breast.
Word Of The Day