Miette was enveloped in a long brown hooded cloak reaching to her feet, and leaving only her head and hands visible.  The women of the lower classes in Provence—­the peasantry and workpeople—­still wear these ample cloaks, which are called pelisses; it is a fashion which must have lasted for ages.  Miette had thrown back her hood on arriving.  Living in the open air and born of a hotblooded race, she never wore a cap.  Her bare head showed in bold relief against the wall, which the moonlight whitened.  She was still a child, no doubt, but a child ripening into womanhood.  She had reached that adorable, uncertain hour when the frolicsome girl changes to a young woman.  At that stage of life a bud-like delicacy, a hesitancy of contour that is exquisitely charming, distinguishes young girls.  The outlines of womanhood appear amidst girlhood’s innocent slimness, and woman shoots forth at first all embarrassment, still retaining much of the child, and ever and unconsciously betraying her sex.  This period is very unpropitious for some girls, who suddenly shoot up, become ugly, sallow and frail, like plants before their due season.  For those, however, who, like Miette, are healthy and live in the open air, it is a time of delightful gracefulness which once passed can never be recalled.

Miette was thirteen years of age, and although strong and sturdy did not look any older, so bright and childish was the smile which lit up her countenance.  However, she was nearly as tall as Silvere, plump and full of life.  Like her lover, she had no common beauty.  She would not have been considered ugly, but she might have appeared peculiar to many young exquisites.  Her rich black hair rose roughly erect above her forehead, streamed back like a rushing wave, and flowed over her head and neck like an inky sea, tossing and bubbling capriciously.  It was very thick and inconvenient to arrange.  However, she twisted it as tightly as possible into coils as thick as a child’s fist, which she wound together at the back of her head.  She had little time to devote to her toilette, but this huge chignon, hastily contrived without the aid of any mirror, was often instinct with vigorous grace.  On seeing her thus naturally helmeted with a mass of frizzy hair which hung about her neck and temples like a mane, one could readily understand why she always went bareheaded, heedless alike of rain and frost.

Under her dark locks appeared her low forehead, curved and golden like a crescent moon.  Her large prominent eyes, her short tip-tilted nose with dilated nostrils, and her thick ruddy lips, when regarded apart from one another, would have looked ugly; viewed, however, all together, amidst the delightful roundness and vivacious mobility of her countenance, they formed an ensemble of strange, surprising beauty.  When Miette laughed, throwing back her head and gently resting it on her right shoulder, she resembled an old-time Bacchante, her throat distending with sonorous