“Will you permit me to kiss you, mademoiselle?”
The little girl lifted up her head and replied:
“I will!”
But the stick-hedge separated them from one another.
“We must climb over,” said Frederick.
“No, lift me up!”
He stooped over the hedge, and raising her off the ground with his hands, kissed her on both cheeks; then he put her back on her own side by a similar process; and this performance was repeated on the next occasions when they found themselves together.
Without more reserve than a child of four, as soon as she heard her friend coming, she sprang forward to meet him, or else, hiding behind a tree, she began yelping like a dog to frighten him.
One day, when Madame Moreau had gone out, he brought her up to his own room. She opened all the scent-bottles, and pomaded her hair plentifully; then, without the slightest embarrassment, she lay down on the bed, where she remained stretched out at full length, wide awake.
“I fancy myself your wife,” she said to him.
Next day he found her all in tears. She confessed that she had been “weeping for her sins;” and, when he wished to know what they were, she hung down her head, and answered:
“Ask me no more!”
The time for first communion was at hand. She had been brought to confession in the morning. The sacrament scarcely made her wiser. Occasionally, she got into a real passion; and Frederick was sent for to appease her.
He often brought her with him in his walks. While he indulged in daydreams as he walked along, she would gather wild poppies at the edges of the cornfields; and, when she saw him more melancholy than usual, she tried to console him with her pretty childish prattle. His heart, bereft of love, fell back on this friendship inspired by a little girl. He gave her sketches of old fogies, told her stories, and devoted himself to reading books for her.
He began with the Annales Romantiques, a collection of prose and verse celebrated at the period. Then, forgetting her age, so much was he charmed by her intelligence, he read for her in succession, Atala, Cinq-Mars, and Les Feuilles d’Automne. But one night (she had that very evening heard Macbeth in Letourneur’s simple translation) she woke up, exclaiming:
“The spot! the spot!” Her teeth chattered, she shivered, and, fixing terrified glances on her right hand, she kept rubbing it, saying:
“Always a spot!”
At last a doctor was brought, who directed that she should be kept free from violent emotions.
The townsfolk saw in this only an unfavourable prognostic for her morals. It was said that “young Moreau” wished to make an actress of her later.
Soon another event became the subject of discussion—namely, the arrival of uncle Barthélemy. Madame Moreau gave up her sleeping-apartment to him, and was so gracious as to serve up meat to him on fast-days.
The old man was not very agreeable. He was perpetually making comparisons between Havre and Nogent, the air of which he considered heavy, the bread bad, the streets ill-paved, the food indifferent, and the inhabitants very lazy. “How wretched trade is with you in this place!” He blamed his deceased brother for his extravagance, pointing out by way of contrast that he had himself accumulated an income of twenty-seven thousand livres a year. At last, he left at the end of the week, and on the footboard of the carriage gave utterance to these by no means reassuring words:
“I am always very glad to know that you are in a good position.”
“You will get nothing,” said Madame Moreau as they reentered the dining-room.
He had come only at her urgent request, and for eight days she had been seeking, on her part, for an opening—only too clearly perhaps. She repented now of having done so, and remained seated in her armchair with her head bent down and her lips tightly pressed together. Frederick sat opposite, staring at her; and they were both silent, as they had been five years before on his return home by the Montereau steamboat. This coincidence, which presented itself even to her mind, recalled Madame Arnoux to his recollection.
At that moment the crack of a whip outside the window reached their ears, while a voice was heard calling out to him.
It was Père Roque, who was alone in his tilted cart. He was going to spend the whole day at La Fortelle with M. Dambreuse, and cordially offered to drive Frederick there.
“You have no need of an invitation as long as you are with me. Don’t be afraid!”
Frederick felt inclined to accept this offer. But how would he explain his fixed sojourn at Nogent? He had not a proper summer suit. Finally, what would his mother say? He accordingly decided not to go.
From that time, their neighbour exhibited less friendliness. Louise was growing tall; Madame Éléonore fell dangerously ill; and the intimacy broke off, to the great delight of Madame Moreau, who feared lest her son’s prospects of being settled in life might be affected by association with such people.
She was thinking of purchasing for him the registrarship of the Court of Justice. Frederick raised no particular objection to this scheme. He now accompanied her to mass; in the evening he took a hand in a game of “all fours.” He became accustomed to provincial habits of life, and allowed himself to slide into them; and even his love had assumed a character of mournful sweetness, a kind of soporific charm. By dint of having poured out his grief in his letters, mixed it up with everything he read, given full vent to it during his walks through the
