Then in fancy he once again walked with her through the Paradou.  He remembered the little curls that waved behind her neck as she ran on before him.  She exhaled delicious scent, and the touch of her warm swaying skirts seemed like a caress.  And when she clasped him with her supple curving arms, he half expected to see her, so slight and slender she was, twine herself around him.  It was she who went foremost.  She led him through winding paths, where they loitered, that their walk might last the longer.  It was she who instilled into him love for nature; and it was by watching the loves of the plants that he had learned to love her, with a love that was long, indeed, in bursting into life, but whose sweetness had been theirs at last.  Beneath the shade of the giant tree they had reached their journey’s goal.  Oh! to clasp her once again—­yet once again!

A low groan suddenly came from the priest.  He hastily sprang up and then flung himself down again.  Temptation had just assailed him afresh.  Into what paths were his recollections leading him?  Did he not know, only too well, that Satan avails himself of every wile to insinuate his serpent-head into the soul, even when it is absorbed in self-examination?  No! no! he had no excuse.  His illness had in no wise authorised him to sin.  He should have set strict guard upon himself, and have sought God anew upon recovering from his fever.  And what a frightful proof he now had of his vileness:  he was not even able to make calm confession of his sin.  Would he never be able to silence his nature?  He wildly thought of scooping his brains out of his skull that he might be able to think no more, and of opening his veins that his blood might no longer torment him.  For a moment he buried his face within his hands, shuddering as though the beasts that he felt prowling around him might infect him with the hot breath of temptation.

But his thoughts strayed on in spite of himself, and his blood throbbed wildly in his very heart.  Though he held his clenched fists to his eyes, he still saw Albine, dazzling like a sun.  Every effort that he made to press the vision from his sight only made her shine out before him with increased brilliancy.  Was God, then, utterly forsaking him, that he could find no refuge from temptation?  And, in spite of all his efforts to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust itself up by Albine’s skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.  Even the perfumed atmosphere of the Paradou floated round him, and well-remembered sounds came back, the repeated call of a bird, then an interval of hushed silence, then a sigh floating through the trees.