Then all would take their seats noisily at the table. It
was Madame Poulard who would then bring us news of the party. At the
end of a fortnight Charm and I felt ourselves to be in possession of
the hidden and secret reasons for all the marrying that had been done
along the coast that year....
One morning, as we looked toward Pontorson, a small black cloud
appeared to be advancing across the bay. The day was windy; the sky
was crowded with huge white mountains--round, luminous clouds that
moved in stately sweeps. And the sea was the color one loves to see
in an earnest woman's eye, the dark blue sapphire that turns to
blue-gray. This was a setting that made that particular cloud, making
such slow progress across from the shore, all the more conspicuous.
Gradually, as the black mass neared the dike, it began to break and
separate; and we saw plainly enough that the scattering particles were
human beings.
It was, in point of fact, a band of pilgrims; a peasant pilgrimage was
coming up to the Mont. In wagons, in market carts, in "char-a-bancs,"
in donkey carts, on the backs of monster Percherons--the pilgrimage
moved in slow processional dignity across the dike.
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