But a small bell rang for breakfast, and they went in.
The meal was eaten in silence. A heavy July noon pressed on the earth and oppressed the dwelling thereon. The heat was almost tangible, paralysing both mind and body. The sluggish words would not leave their lips; every movement was an effort, as though the air had acquired power of resistance, and was more difficult to thrust through.
Yvette alone, though silent, was animated, and possessed by impatience. As soon as dessert was finished she said:
“Supposing we went for a walk in the woods. It would be perfectly delightful under the trees.”
“Are you mad?” murmured the Marquise, who looked utterly exhausted. “How can one go out in weather like this?”
“Very well,” replied the young girl slyly, “we’ll leave you here with the Baron to keep you company. Muscade and I will scramble up the hill and sit down and read on the grass.”
She turned to Servigny, saying: “That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“At your service, Mam’zelle,” he replied.
She ran off to fetch her hat. The Marquise shrugged her shoulders and sighed: “Really, she’s quite mad.” Indolently she held out her beautiful white hand in a gesture of profound and seductive lassitude; the Baron pressed a lingering kiss upon it.
Yvette and Servigny departed. At first they followed the river, then they crossed the bridge and went on to the island, and sat down under the willows on the bank of the main stream, for it was still too early to go to La Grenouillère.
The young girl at once took a book from her pocket and, laughing, said:
“Muscade, you’re going to read to me.” And she held out the volume for him to take. He made a deprecatory gesture. “I, Mam’zelle? But I can’t read.”
“Come, now, no excuses, no arguments,” she replied severely. “You’re a nice lover, you are. ‘Everything for nothing’—that’s your creed, isn’t it?”
He took the book and opened it, and was surprised to find that it was a treatise on entomology, a history of ants by an English author. He remained silent, thinking that she was making fun of him.
“Go on, read,” she said.
“Is this a bet,” he asked, “or just a joke?”
“Neither. I saw the book in a shop; they told me it was the best book about ants, and I thought it would be nice to hear about the lives of the little creatures and watch them running about in the grass at the same time. So read away.”
She lay down face downwards at full length, her elbows resting on the ground and her head between her hands, her eyes fixed on the grass.
“ ‘Without doubt,’ he read, ‘the anthropoid apes are of all animals those which approach most closely to man in their anatomical structure; but if we consider the habits of ants, their organisation into societies, their vast communities, the houses and roads which they construct, their custom of domesticating animals and even at times of having slaves, we shall be forced to admit that they have the right to claim the place next to man on the ladder of intelligence.’ ”
He continued in a monotonous voice, stopping from time to time to ask: “Isn’t that enough?”
She signed “no” with a shake of her head, and, having picked up a wandering ant on the point of a blade of grass she had plucked, she amused herself by making it run from one end of the stem to the other, turning it upside-down as soon as the insect reached either end. She listened in silence and with concentrated attention to all the surprising details of the life of these frail creatures, their subterranean establishments, the way in which they bring up, keep, and feed little grubs in order to drink the secret liquor they secrete, just as we keep cows in our byres, their custom of domesticating little blind insects which clean their dwellings, and of going to war in order to bring back slaves to serve the victors, which the slaves do with such solicitude that the latter even lose the habit of feeding themselves.
And little by little, as though a maternal tenderness had awakened in her head for this creature at once so tiny and so intelligent, Yvette let it climb about her finger, watching it with loving eyes, longing to kiss it. And as Servigny was reading how they live in a community, how they play together in a friendly rivalry of strength and skill, the young girl, in her enthusiasm, tried to kiss the insect, which escaped from her finger and began to run over her face. She shrieked as violently as though a deadly peril threatened her, and with wild gestures she slapped at her cheek to get rid of the creature. Servigny, roaring with laughter, caught it near her hair and, at the spot where he had caught it, pressed a long kiss, from which Yvette did not recoil.
She got up, declaring: “I like that better than a novel. Now let’s go to La Grenouillère.”
They reached a part of the island which was laid out like a park, shaded with huge trees. Couples wandered under the lofty foliage beside the Seine, over which the boats were gliding. There were girls with young men, working girls with their sweethearts, who were walking in shirtsleeves, coats on their arms and tall hats on the back of their heads, looking weary and dissipated; citizens with their families, the wives in their Sunday best, the children running round their parents like a brood of chickens. A continuous distant buzz of human voices, a dull rumbling clamour, announced the nearness of the establishment beloved of boating parties. Suddenly it came into view, an enormous roofed barge moored to the bank, filled by a crowd of men and women who sat drinking at tables or stood up, shouting, singing, laughing, dancing, capering to the noise of a jingling piano, out of tune and as vibrant
