It was a little gray old chapel in the midst of the barren.

A clump of trees, gray too, and almost leafless, seemed like hair to it, pushed by some invisible hand all on one side.
It was that same hand that had wrecked the fishers' boats, the eternal hand of the western winds, and had twisted all the branches of the coast trees in the direction of the waves and of the off-sea breezes.

The old trees had grown awry and dishevelled, bending their backs under the time-honoured strength of that hand.
Gaud was almost at the end of her walk, as the chapel in sight was that of Pors-Even; so she stopped there to win a little more time.
A petty mouldering wall ran round an enclosure containing tombstones.
Everything was of the same colour, chapel, trees, and graves; the whole spot seemed faded and eaten into by the sea-wind; the stones, the knotty branches, and the granite saints, placed in the wall niches, were covered by the same grayish lichen, splashed pale yellow.
On one of the wooden crosses this name was written in large letters: "GAOS .-- GAOS, JOEL, 80 years." Yes, this was the old grandfather--she knew that--for the sea had not wanted this old sailor.

And many of Yann's relatives, besides, slept here; it was only natural, and she might have expected it; nevertheless, the name upon the tomb had made a sad impression.
To waste a little more time, she entered to say a prayer under the old cramped porch, worn away and daubed over with whitewash.

But she stopped again with a sharp pain at her heart.