Nobody who passes by that shabby little house in a back street in the poorest quarter of the fishing port of Concarneau would suspect that two rooms on its first floor make up the ‘monastery’ of a small contemplative religious community. None of the many summer visitors to what is also a popular Breton holiday resort would ever guess that the four young men, garbed as labourers or fishermen, who might be Noticed entering or leaving this house are professed religious, following a rule of life which, in its own way, is as strict as and perhaps harder than that of Carthusian or Cistercian monks.

One of these Little Brothers of Jesus was waiting for me at the barrier of Concarneau station when I arrived there on a July evening this summer. I managed to spot him in the crowd because of a small badge, composed of a red cross and heart, pinned on to the much washed open-necked khaki shirt he was wearing.