A knock at the outer gate given firmly in military fashion echoed through the stillness of the ancient mansion.  Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel’s page went gravely to open the door, and presently the long, lean, methodically-clothed person of the Chevalier du Halga, former flag-captain to Admiral de Kergarouet, defined itself in black on the penumbra of the portico.

“Welcome, chevalier!” cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

“The altar is raised,” said the abbe.

The chevalier was a man in poor health, who wore flannel for his rheumatism, a black-silk skull-cap to protect his head from fog, and a spencer to guard his precious chest from the sudden gusts which freshen the atmosphere of Guerande.  He always went armed with a gold-headed cane to drive away the dogs who paid untimely court to a favorite little bitch who usually accompanied him.  This man, fussy as a fine lady, worried by the slightest contretemps, speaking low to spare his voice, had been in his early days one of the most intrepid and most competent officers of the old navy.  He had won the confidence of de Suffren in the Indian Ocean, and the friendship of the Comte de Portenduere.  His splendid conduct while flag-captain to Admiral Kergarouet was written in visible letters on his scarred face.  To see him now no one would have imagined the voice that ruled the storm, the eye that compassed the sea, the courage, indomitable, of the Breton sailor.

The chevalier never smoked, never swore; he was gentle and tranquil as a girl, as much concerned about his little dog Thisbe and her caprices as though he were an elderly dowager.  In this way he gave a high idea of his departed gallantry, but he never so much as alluded to the deeds of surpassing bravery which had astonished the doughty old admiral, Comte d’Estaing.  Though his manner was that of an invalid, and he walked as if stepping on eggs and complained about the sharpness of the wind or the heat of the sun, or the dampness of the misty atmosphere, he exhibited a set of the whitest teeth in the reddest of gums,—­a fact reassuring as to his maladies, which were, however, rather expensive, consisting as they did of four daily meals of monastic amplitude.  His bodily frame, like that of the baron, was bony, and indestructibly strong, and covered with a parchment glued to his bones as the skin of an Arab horse on the muscles which shine in the sun.  His skin retained the tawny color it received in India, whence, however, he did not bring back either facts or ideas.  He had emigrated with the rest of his friends, lost his property, and was now ending his days with the cross of Saint-Louis and a pension of two thousand francs, as the legal reward of his services, paid from the fund of the Invalides de la Marine.  The slight hypochondria which made him invent his imaginary ills is easily explained by his actual suffering during the emigration.  He served in the Russian navy until the day when the Emperor Alexander ordered him to be employed against France; he then resigned and went to live at Odessa, near the Duc de Richelieu, with whom he returned to France.  It was the duke who obtained for this glorious relic of the old Breton navy the pension which enabled him to live.  On the death of Louis XVIII. he returned to Guerande, and became, after a while, mayor of the city.