There were seven of us on a drag, four women and three
men; one of the latter sat on the box seat beside
the coachman. We were ascending, at a snail’s
pace, the winding road up the steep cliff along the
coast.
Setting out from Etretat at break of day in order
to visit the ruins of Tancarville, we were still half
asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the morning.
The women especially, who were little accustomed to
these early excursions, half opened and closed their
eyes every moment, nodding their heads or yawning,
quite insensible to the beauties of the dawn.
It was autumn. On both sides of the road stretched
the bare fields, yellowed by the stubble of wheat
and oats which covered the soil like a beard that
had been badly shaved. The moist earth seemed
to steam. Larks were singing high up in the air,
while other birds piped in the bushes.
The sun rose at length in front of us, bright red
on the plane of the horizon, and in proportion as
it ascended, growing clearer from minute to minute,
the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself
like a young girl leaving her bed in her white robe
of vapor. The Comte d’Etraille, who was
seated on the box, cried:
“Look! look! a hare!” and he extended
his arm toward the left, pointing to a patch of clover.
The animal scurried along, almost hidden by the clover,
only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across
a furrow, stopped, started off again at full speed,
changed its course, stopped anew, uneasy, spying out
every danger, uncertain what route to take, when suddenly
it began to run with great bounds, disappearing finally
in a large patch of beet-root. All the men had
waked up to watch the course of the animal.
Rene Lamanoir exclaimed:
“We are not at all gallant this morning,”
and; regarding his neighbor, the little Baroness de
Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to
her in a low tone: “You are thinking of
your husband, baroness. Reassure yourself; he
will not return before Saturday, so you have still
four days.”
She answered with a sleepy smile:
“How stupid you are!” Then, shaking off
her torpor, she added: “Now, let somebody
say something to make us laugh. You, Monsieur
Chenal, who have the reputation of having had more
love affairs than the Due de Richelieu, tell us a
love story in which you have played a part; anything
you like.”
Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very
handsome, very strong, very proud of his physique
and very popular with women, took his long white beard
in his hand and smiled. Then, after a few moments’
reflection, he suddenly became serious.
“Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for
I am going to relate to you the saddest love affair
of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my friends
may ever pass through a similar experience.
