At Paimpol lives a large, stout woman named Madame Tressoleur. In oneof the streets that lead to the harbour she keeps a tavern, well knownto all the Icelanders, where captains and ship-owners come to engagetheir sailors, and choose the strongest among them, men and mastersall drinking together.

　　At one time she had been beautiful, and was still jolly with thefishers; she has a mustache, is as broad built as a Dutchman, and asbold and ready of speech as a Levantine. There is a look of thedaughter of the regiment about her, notwithstanding her ample nun-likemuslin headgear; for all that, a religious halo of its sort floatsaround her, for the simple reason that she is a Breton born.

　　The names of all the sailors of the country are written in her head asin a register; she knows them all, good or bad, and knows exactly,too, what they earn and what they are worth.

　　One January day, Gaud, who had been called in to make a dress, satdown to work in a room behind the tap-room.

　　To go into the abode of our Madame Tressoleur, you enter by a broad,massive-pillared door, which recedes in the olden style under thefirst floor. When you go to open this door, there is always someobliging gust of wind from the street that pushes it in, and the new-comers make an abrupt entrance, as if carried in by a beach roller.

　　The hall is adorned by gilt frames, containing pictures of ships andwrecks. In an angle a china statuette of the Virgin is placed on abracket, between two bunches of artificial flowers.

　　These olden walls must have listened to many powerful songs ofsailors, and witnessed many wild gay scenes, since the first far-offdays of Paimpol--all through the lively times of the privateers, up tothese of the present Icelanders, so very little different from theirancestors. Many lives of men have been angled for and hooked there, onthe oaken tables, between two drunken bouts.

　　While she was sewing the dress, Gaud lent her ear to the conversationgoing on about Iceland, behind the partition, between MadameTressoleur and two old sailors, drinking. They were discussing a newcraft that was being rigged in the harbour. She never would be readyfor the next season, so they said of this /Leopoldine/.

　　"Oh, yes, to be sure she will!" answered the hostess. "I tell 'ee thecrew was all made up yesterday--the whole of 'em out of the old/Marie/ of Guermeur's, that's to be sold for breaking up; five youngfellows signed their engagement here before me, at this here table,and with my own pen--so ye see, I'm right! And fine fellows, too, Ican tell 'ee; Laumec, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, young Keraez fromTreguier, and long Yann Gaos from Pors-Even, who's worth any three on'em!"The /Leopoldine/! The half-heard name of the ............