Shortly afterwards she fell into the heavy slumber that usually terminated these attacks.  On the next day, she seemed to have forgotten everything.  She never again spoke to Silvere of the morning on which she had found him with a sweetheart behind the wall.

The young people did not see each other for a couple of days.  When Miette ventured to return to the well, they resolved not to recommence the pranks which had upset aunt Dide.  However, the meeting which had been so strangely interrupted had filled them with a keen desire to meet again in some happy solitude.  Weary of the delights afforded by the well, and unwilling to vex aunt Dide by seeing Miette again on the other side of the wall, Silvere begged the girl to meet him somewhere else.  She required but little pressing; she received the proposal with the willing smile of a frolicsome lass who has no thought of evil.  What made her smile was the idea of outwitting that spy of a Justin.  When the lovers had come to agreement, they discussed at length the choice of a favourable spot.  Silvere proposed the most impossible trysting-places.  He planned regular journeys, and even suggested meeting the young girl at midnight in the barns of the Jas-Meiffren.  Miette, who was much more practical, shrugged her shoulders, declaring she would try to think of some spot.  On the morrow, she tarried but a minute at the well, just time enough to smile at Silvere and tell him to be at the far end of the Aire Saint-Mittre at about ten o’clock in the evening.  One may be sure that the young man was punctual.  All day long Miette’s choice had puzzled him, and his curiosity increased when he found himself in the narrow lane formed by the piles of planks at the end of the plot of ground.  “She will come this way,” he said to himself, looking along the road to Nice.  But he suddenly heard a loud shaking of boughs behind the wall, and saw a laughing head, with tumbled hair, appear above the coping, whilst a joyous voice called out:  “It’s me!”

And it was, in fact, Miette, who had climbed like an urchin up one of the mulberry-trees, which even nowadays still border the boundary of the Jas-Meiffren.  In a couple of leaps she reached the tombstone, half buried in the corner at the end of the lane.  Silvere watched her descend with delight and surprise, without even thinking of helping her.  As soon as she had alighted, however, he took both her hands in his, and said:  “How nimble you are!—­you climb better than I do.”

It was thus that they met for the first time in that hidden corner where they were destined to pass such happy hours.  From that evening forward they saw each other there nearly every night.  They now only used the well to warn each other of unforeseen obstacles to their meetings, of a change of time, and of all the trifling little news that seemed important in their eyes, and allowed of no delay.  It sufficed for the one who had a communication to make to set the pulley in motion, for its creaking noise could