As between them, the wits are with
Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been
through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur
simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no
means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne
that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the
moment Lucien was trying to say it to me.
"They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and
Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an
understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of
sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan
and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the
lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to
Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel
with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way
spot--what is he?
"However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on,
for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long
families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially;
accidents at the fishery keep down the men.
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