in any higher ideas, that would be heavenly!’ She would remain motionless for whole afternoons upon her chair, nursing this idea.  She could see him and picture herself with him, loading him with attentions, keeping his house, and pressing the hem of his garment.  She thrust away these idle dreams from her but after having been plunged in them for hours she was deadly pale and oblivious of all those who were about her.  Her father might have noticed it, but what could the poor old man do to cure an evil which it would be impossible for a simple soul like his so much as to conceive.

“So things went on for about a year.  The probability is that the priest saw nothing, so firmly do our clergy adhere to the resolution of living in an atmosphere of their own.  This only added fuel to the fire.  Her love became a worship, a pure adoration, and so she gained comparative peace of mind.  Her imagination took quite a childish turn, and she wanted to be able to fancy that she was employed in doing things for him.  She had got to dream while awake, and, like a somnambulist, to perform acts in a semi-unconscious state.  Day and night, one thought haunted her:  she fancied herself tending him, counting his linen, and looking after all the details of his household, which were too petty to occupy his thoughts.  All these fancies gradually took shape, and led up to an act only to be explained by the mental state to which she had for some time been reduced.”

What follows would indeed be incomprehensible without a knowledge of certain peculiarities in the Breton character.  The most marked feature in the people of Brittany is their affection.  Love is with them a tender, deep, and affectionate sentiment, rather than a passion.  It is an inward delight which wears and consumes, differing toto caelo from the fiery passion of southern races.

The paradise of their dreams is cool and green, with no fierce heat.  There is no race which yields so many victims to love; for, though suicide is rare, the gradual wasting away which is called consumption is very Prevalent.  It is often so with the young Breton conscripts.  Incapable of finding any satisfaction in mercenary intrigues, they succumb to an indefinable sort of languor, which is called home-sickness, though, in reality, love with them is indissolubly associated with their native village, with its steeple and vesper bells, and with the familiar scenes of home.  The hot-blooded southerner kills his rival, as he may the object of his passion.  The sentiment of which I am speaking is fatal only to him who is possessed by it, and this is why the people of Brittany are so chaste a race.  Their lively imagination creates an aerial world which satisfies their aspirations.  The true poetry of such a love as this is the sonnet on spring in the Song of Solomon, which is far more voluptuous than it is passionate.  “Hiems transiit; imber abiit et recessit....  Vox turturis audita est in terra nostra....  Surge, amica mea, et veni.”