The Free lance.
Published Monthly during the College Year by the Students of
The Pennsylvania State College.
Vol. XI
(From the French of Francois Coppde.)
SOME years algo I passed some weeks in a sea-faring village
on the Breton coast. Such a hole, but so picturesque. A
bad beaching place for ten or more boats, a single very steep
street, parallel to the bed of a torrent, and on the plateau above
the cliff a strange Gothic church, surrounded by a cemetery full
of wild oats, from where one commanded a view of the ocean.
Finding much to interest me, I remained in this little corner
until the end of the month of September, which, by a chance very
rare in rainy Finisterre, was this year exceptionally clear and
pure.
In the single inn of the place I occupied a great whitewashed,
well-furnished room, whose window opened on the sea. Here,
seated on a straw-bottomed chair before a table of unpainted
wood, I had written a poem on the solemn lullaby of the great
breakers, which seemed to tell me, without ceasing, that rhyme
is a law of nature.
But one cannot always make verses and write, and walks were
my exercise and amusement. Very often I walked along the
beach, having on my right the arid and monumental cliff and to
my left the immense desert of sand laid bare by the low tide and
relieved only by some groups of black rocks. The solitude was
complete. Scarcely more than two or three times had I ex
changed salutes with the coast guard on his beat. I was such a
regular and peaceable walker that the sea swallows had no fear of
my red cloak and hopped around within a few feet of me, im
printing their star-like footprints on the moist sand. Each day I
thus made six or eight kilometers, and I returned with my pockets
DECEMBER, 1897.
“ DIED AT SEA ”
No. 6.