We started out in a group with a street-organ, generally
played by Le Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton
nightcap on his head. Two men carried lanterns.
We followed in procession, laughing and chattering
like a pack of fools.
We woke up the farmer and his servant-maids and farm
hands. We got them to make onion soup (horror!),
and we danced under the apple trees, to the sound
of the barrel-organ. The cocks waking up began
to crow in the darkness of the out-houses; the horses
began prancing on the straw of their stables.
The cool air of the country caressed our cheeks with
the smell of grass and of new-mown hay.
How long ago it is! How long ago it is!
It is thirty years since then!
I do not want you, my darling, to come for the opening
of the hunting season. Why spoil the pleasure
of our friends by inflicting on them fashionable toilettes
on this day of vigorous exercise in the country?
This is the way, child, that men are spoiled.
I embrace you. Your old aunt,
Genevieve
de L.
For a long time Jacques Bourdillere had sworn that
he would never marry, but he suddenly changed his
mind. It happened suddenly, one summer, at the
seashore.
One morning as he lay stretched out on the sand, watching
the women coming out of the water, a little foot had
struck him by its neatness and daintiness. He
raised his eyes and was delighted with the whole person,
although in fact he could see nothing but the ankles
and the head emerging from a flannel bathrobe carefully
held closed. He was supposed to be sensual and
a fast liver. It was therefore by the mere grace
of the form that he was at first captured. Then
he was held by the charm of the young girl’s
sweet mind, so simple and good, as fresh as her cheeks
and lips.
He was presented to the family and pleased them.
He immediately fell madly in love. When he saw
Berthe Lannis in the distance, on the long yellow
stretch of sand, he would tingle to the roots of his
hair. When he was near her he would become silent,
unable to speak or even to think, with a kind of throbbing
at his heart, and a buzzing in his ears, and a bewilderment
in his mind. Was that love?
He did not know or understand, but he had fully decided
to have this child for his wife.
Her parents hesitated for a long time, restrained
by the young man’s bad reputation. It was
said that he had an old sweetheart, one of these binding
attachments which one always believes to be broken
off and yet which always hold.
Besides, for a shorter or longer period, he loved
every woman who came within reach of his lips.
Then he settled down and refused, even once, to see
the one with whom he had lived for so long. A
friend took care of this woman’s pension and
assured her an income. Jacques paid, but he did
not even wish to hear of her, pretending even to ignore
her name. She wrote him letters which he never
opened. Every week he would recognize the clumsy
writing of the abandoned woman, and every week a greater
anger surged within him against her, and he would
quickly tear the envelope and the paper, without opening
it, without reading one single line, knowing in advance
the reproaches and complaints which it contained.
