I was leaving Paname at dawn, as one slips away from an oppressive dream in the manner of Charles Baudelaire. Five in the morning. The city, at last freed from its usually congested arteries, still held within its walls the murmur of that confused agitation in which men chase mirages they call necessity. I left behind that theater of ambitions, carrying with me a more ancient, deeper desire, that of returning to a land that does not lie.

The sky, barely awake, was tinged with a fragile light. A silvery pallor drifted over the rooftops like Bella Rosenfeld, the eternal fiancée of Marc Chagall. It was as if the day still hesitated to take possession of the world. Yet my mount trembled with impatience, and when the flat-six stirred to life, its rumble severed the last tie binding me to the capital.

The road opened before me like a promise. As I moved farther away, Paris faded in my mind, like a dream forgotten upon waking. Speed set me free; it was no longer an escape, but a surge forward. With the top down, the rising warmth of an early summer caressed my face, and scents rose to meet me.

The landscapes slowly transformed, straight lines yielding to curves, and each bend seemed to erase an illusion, each horizon revealing a forgotten fragment of myself. It felt as though I was not merely heading toward Brittany, but toward a part of my soul left behind, like an open book whose final page I had never turned.

In the bends of Domfront, I slowed for a moment. A Romanesque church stood there, austere and unchanging. Its stones, marked by centuries, still bore the trace of a faith time had not entirely erased. I contemplated this silent witness, and felt within me a nearly forgotten reverence for what endures beyond men.

Then I resumed my course. Already, the air was changing, a fresh and subtle scent announcing the nearness of the ocean, like a breath from another world. And soon, Brittany appeared. There are journeys that are not escapes but returns, and like a surge, I do not seek to leave the world, but to rejoin it in its most naked truth.

FM