Soon they arrived at this spot; and, as the light fell through the irregular gaps on the green herbage, Frederick, turning his head on one side to speak to Louise, noticed the shadow of the leaves on her face.
She had in her red hair, stuck in her chignon, a needle, terminated by a glass bell in imitation of emerald, and, in spite of her mourning, she wore (so artless was her bad taste) straw slippers trimmed with pink satin—a vulgar curiosity probably bought at some fair.
He remarked this, and ironically congratulated her.
“Don’t be laughing at me!” she replied.
Then surveying him altogether, from his grey felt hat to his silk stockings:
“What an exquisite you are!”
After this, she asked him to mention some works which she could read. He gave her the names of several; and she said:
“Oh! how learned you are!”
While yet very small, she had been smitten with one of those childish passions which have, at the same time, the purity of a religion and the violence of a natural instinct. He had been her comrade, her brother, her master, had diverted her mind, made her heart beat more quickly, and, without any desire for such a result, had poured out into the very depths of her being a latent and continuous intoxication. Then he had parted with her at the moment of a tragic crisis in her existence, when her mother had only just died, and these two separations had been mingled together. Absence had idealised him in her memory. He had come back with a sort of halo round his head; and she gave herself up ingenuously to the feelings of bliss she experienced at seeing him once more.
For the first time in his life Frederick felt himself beloved; and this new pleasure, which did not transcend the ordinary run of agreeable sensations, made his breast swell with so much emotion that he spread out his two arms while he flung back his head.
A large cloud passed across the sky.
“It is going towards Paris,” said Louise. “You’d like to follow it—wouldn’t you?”
“I! Why?”
“Who knows?”
And surveying him with a sharp look:
“Perhaps you have there” (she searched her mind for the appropriate phrase) “something to engage your affections.”
“Oh! I have nothing to engage my affections there.”
“Are you perfectly certain?”
“Why, yes, Mademoiselle, perfectly certain!”
In less than a year there had taken place in the young girl an extraordinary transformation, which astonished Frederick. After a minute’s silence he added:
“We ought to ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ each other, as we used to do long ago—shall we do so?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because—”
He persisted. She answered, with downcast face:
“I dare not!”
They had reached the end of the garden, which was close to the shell-bank. Frederick, in a spirit of boyish fun, began to send pebbles skimming over the water. She bade him sit down. He obeyed; then, looking at the waterfall:
“ ’Tis like Niagara!” He began talking about distant countries and long voyages. The idea of making some herself exercised a fascination over her mind. She would not have been afraid either of tempests or of lions.
Seated close beside each other, they collected in front of them handfuls of sand, then, while they were chatting, they let it slip through their fingers, and the hot wind, which rose from the plains, carried to them in puffs odours of lavender, together with the smell of tar escaping from a boat behind the lock. The sun’s rays fell on the cascade. The greenish blocks of stone in the little wall over which the water slipped looked as if they were covered with a silver gauze that was perpetually rolling itself out. A long strip of foam gushed forth at the foot with a harmonious murmur. Then it bubbled up, forming whirlpools and a thousand opposing currents, which ended by intermingling in a single limpid stream of water.
Louise said in a musing tone that she envied the existence of fishes:
“It must be so delightful to tumble about down there at your ease, and to feel yourself caressed on every side.”
She shivered with sensuously enticing movements; but a voice exclaimed:
“Where are you?”
“Your maid is calling you,” said Frederick.
“All right! all right!” Louise did not disturb herself.
“She will be angry,” he suggested.
“It is all the same to me! and besides—” Mademoiselle Roque gave him to understand by a gesture that the girl was entirely subject to her will.
She arose, however, and then complained of a headache. And, as they were passing in front of a large cart-shed containing some faggots:
“Suppose we sat down there, under shelter?”
He pretended not to understand this dialectic expression, and even teased her about her accent. Gradually the corners of her mouth were compressed, she bit her lips; she stepped aside in order to sulk.
Frederick came over to her, swore he did not mean to annoy her, and that he was very fond of her.
“Is that true?” she exclaimed, looking at him with a smile which lighted up her entire face, smeared over a little with patches of bran.
He could not resist the sentiment of gallantry which was aroused in him by her fresh youthfulness, and he replied:
“Why should I tell you a lie? Have you any doubt about it, eh?” and, as he spoke, he passed his left hand round her waist.
A cry, soft as the cooing of a dove, leaped up from her throat. Her head fell back, she was going to faint, when he held her up. And his virtuous scruples were futile. At the sight of this maiden offering herself to him he was seized with fear. He assisted her to take a few steps slowly. He had ceased to address her in soothing words, and no longer caring to talk of anything save the most trifling subjects, he spoke to her about some of the principal figures in the society of Nogent.
Suddenly she repelled him, and in a bitter tone:
“You would not have the courage to run away with me!”
He remained motionless, with a look of utter amazement in his
