“I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that
vast, melancholy, and fascinating lake, and a strange
feeling arose in me; I was seized with an insatiable
need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness
of my life. What! would it never be my fate to
wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a moon-kissed
bank like this? Was I never to feel on my lips
those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which
lovers exchange on nights that seem to have been made
by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent,
feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer’s
night?
“And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman.
I heard something stirring behind me. A man stood
there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round,
he recognized me, and, advancing, said:
“‘You are weeping, madame?’
“It was a young barrister who was travelling
with his mother, and whom we had often met. His
eyes had frequently followed me.
“I was so confused that I did not know what
answer to give or what to think of the situation.
I told him I felt ill.
“He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful
manner, and began talking to me about what we had
seen during our trip. All that I had felt he
translated into words; everything that made me thrill
he understood perfectly, better than I did myself.
And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred
de Musset. I felt myself choking, seized with
indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the
mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were
singing to me about things ineffably sweet.
“And it happened, I don’t know how, I
don’t know why, in a sort of hallucination.
“As for him, I did not see him again till the
morning of his departure.
“He gave me his card!”
And, sinking into her sister’s arms, Madame
Letore broke into groans —almost into shrieks.
Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious
air, said very gently:
“You see, sister, very often it is not a man
that we love, but love itself. And your real
lover that night was the moonlight.”
The long promenade of La Croisette winds in a curve
along the edge of the blue water. Yonder, to
the right, Esterel juts out into the sea in the distance,
obstructing the view and shutting out the horizon with
its pretty southern outline of pointed summits, numerous
and fantastic.
To the left, the isles of Sainte Marguerite and Saint
Honorat, almost level with the water, display their
surface, covered with pine trees.
And all along the great gulf, all along the tall mountains
that encircle Cannes, the white villa residences seem
to be sleeping in the sunlight. You can see them
from a distance, the white houses, scattered from the
top to the bottom of the mountains, dotting the dark
greenery with specks like snow.
