There was about her a tinge of romance, whichmade her heart an easier thing to reach for such a lover than for onewithin her own grade; and as the voyage itself was a world of romance, alittle more or less of the romantic was an easy thing to add. MeanwhileMadame de Noailles read her breviary and told her beads and took littlenaps, wholly ignorant of the drama that was beginning its perilousunfolding before her. When the Sieur de Roberval returned, the shipbuilderbecame a mere shipbuilder again.Three tall ships sailed from Honfleur on August 22, 1541, and on one ofthem, _La Grande Hermine_,--so called to distinguish it from asmaller boat of that name, which had previously sailed with Cartier,--werethe Sieur de Roberval, his niece, and her _gouvernante_. She also hadwith her a Huguenot nurse, who had been with her from a child, and caredfor her devotedly. Roberval naturally took with him, for future needs, thebest shipbuilder of St. Malo, Etienne Gosselin. The voyage was long, andthere is reason to think that the Sieur de Roberval was not a good sailor,while as to the _gouvernante_, she may have been as helpless as theseasick chaperon of yachting excursions. Like them, she suffered the mostimportant events to pass unobserved, and it was not till too late that shediscovered, what more censorious old ladies on board had already seen,that her young charge lingered too often and too long on the quarter-deckwhen Etienne Gosselin was planning ships for the uncle.
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