NOTES FROM A DIARY 127 



selves the while she made hot fragrant 

 coffee. Such tales they were — un- 

 varnished, Breton, coarse and clean. I 

 wish that I might tell them in her inimit- 

 able way : portray the whole background, 

 the smouldering peats, the dark smoke- 

 scented cabin, and most of all the play of 

 light and shade across old Chouan's face 

 in her narration of one " Marthe Marker." 

 It was not a pretty story. At its grim 

 end Jean Pierre spat softly : " Bon Dieu," 

 said he, "c'est bien vrai — la vie." But, 

 then, Jean Pierre is out of date. He 

 would not like or understand our modern 

 ways of Ufe. Our quibbling plays of 

 covered vice made comic would leave 

 him cold or shocked. But give him the 

 real thing uncoated, true, Jean Pierre 

 would sit it through long after our Church 

 and State had stalked out pink and 

 scandalised. 



Here have we reached the very confines 

 of irrelevancy, to place our friend Jean 

 Pierre, incongruous, within a London 

 theatre stall. Perforce we must leave him 

 to find his own way out while we creep 

 quickly back to solid ground — the diary. 



