“You, like me, are come to see if the yield is good; but you have more reasons than I for curiosity, mademoiselle,” said the Baron to Camille, “for you have property here.”
“Mademoiselle is the richest owner of them all,” said one of the marshmen; “and God preserve her, for she is a very good lady!”
The two parties bowed and went their way.
“You would never suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to be more than thirty,” said the good man to his wife. “She is very handsome. And Calyste prefers that jade of a Parisian Marquise to that good daughter of Brittany?”
“Alas, yes!” said the Baroness.
A boat was lying at the end of the jetty; they got in, but not in high spirits. Béatrix was cold and dignified. Camille had scolded Calyste for his disobedience, and explained to him the position of his love affair. Calyste, sunk in gloomy despair, cast eyes at Béatrix, in which love and hatred struggled for the upper hand.
Not a word was spoken during the short passage from the jetty of Guérande to the extreme point of the harbor of le Croisic, the spot where the salt is shipped, being brought down to the shore by women in large earthen pans, which they carry on their heads, holding them in such a way as to look like caryatides. These women are barefoot, and wear a very short skirt. Many of them leave the kerchief that covers their shoulders to fly loose, and several wear only a shift, and are the proudest, for the less clothes they wear the more they display their modest beauties.
The little Danish bark was taking in her cargo. Thus the landing of these two beautiful ladies excited the curiosity of the salt-carriers; and partly to escape them, as well as to do Calyste a service, Camille hurried on towards the rocks, leaving him with Béatrix. Gasselin lingered at least two hundred yards behind his master.
On the seaward side the peninsula of le Croisic is fringed with granite rocks so singularly grotesque in form that they can only be appreciated by travelers who are able from experience to make comparisons between the different grand spectacles of wild nature. The rocks of le Croisic have, perhaps, the same superiority over other similar scenes that the road to the Grande Chartreuse is admitted to have over other narrow gorges. Neither the Corsican shore, where the granite forms very remarkable reefs, nor that of Sardinia, where nature has reveled in grand and terrible effects, nor the basaltic formations of northern seas, have quite so distinctive a character. Fancy seems to have disported itself there in endless arabesques, where the most grotesque shapes mingle or stand forth. Every form may be seen there. Imagination may, perhaps, be weary of this vast collection of monsters, among which, in furious weather, the sea rushes in, and has at last polished down all the rough edges.
Under a natural vault, arched with a boldness only faintly imitated by Brunelleschi—for the greatest efforts of art are but a timid counterpart of some work of nature—you will find a basin polished like a marble bath, and strewn with smooth, fine white sand, in which you may bathe in safety in four feet of tepid water. As you walk on you admire the cool little creeks, under shelter of porticoes rough-hewn but stately, like those of the Pitti palace—another imitation of the freaks of nature. The variety is infinite; nothing is lacking that the most extravagant fancy could invent or wish for.
There is even a large shrub of box,1 a thing so rare on the shore of the Atlantic that perhaps this is the only specimen. This box-shrub, the greatest curiosity in le Croisic, where trees cannot grow, is at about a league from the port, on the utmost headland of the coast. On one of the promontories formed by the granite, rising so high above the sea that the waves cannot reach it even in the wildest storms, and facing the south, the floods have worn a hollow shelf about four feet deep. In this cleft, chance, or perhaps man, has deposited soil enough to enable a box, sown by some bird, to grow thick and closely shorn. The gnarled roots would indicate an age of at least three hundred years. Below it the rock falls sheer.
Some shock, of which the traces are stamped in indelible characters on this coast, has swept off the fragments of granite I know not whither. The sea comes, without breaking over any shoals, to the bottom of this cliff, where the water is more than five hundred feet deep. On either hand some reefs, just beneath the surface, form a sort of large cirque, traceable by the foaming breakers. It needs some courage and resolution to climb to the top of this little Gibraltar; its cap is almost spherical, and a gust of wind might carry the inquirer into the sea, or, which would be worse, on to the rocks below. This giant sentinel is like the lantern towers of old châteaux, whence miles of country could be scanned and attacks guarded against; from its height are seen the steeple and the thrifty fields of le Croisic, the sand-hills that threaten to encroach on the arable land, and which have invaded the neighborhood of le Bourg de Batz. Some old men declare that there was, long ago, a castle on this spot. The sardine fishers have a name for this headland, which can be seen from afar at sea; but I must be forgiven for having forgotten that Breton name, as hard to pronounce as it is to remember.
Calyste led Béatrix towards this height, whence the view is superb, and where the forms of the granite surpass all the surprises they can have caused along the sandy margin of the shore.
It is vain to explain why Camille had hurried on in front; like a wounded animal, she longed for solitude;
