Short Stories, vol 12 | Page 9

for some water to wash the spots.
Meanwhile it had grown unbearably hot, the sparkling river looked like
a blaze of fire and the fumes of the wine were getting into their heads.
Monsieur Dufour, who had a violent hiccough, had unbuttoned his
waistcoat and the top button of his trousers, while his wife, who felt
choking, was gradually unfastening her dress. The apprentice was
shaking his yellow wig in a happy frame of mind, and kept helping

himself to wine, and the old grandmother, feeling the effects of the
wine, was very stiff and dignified. As for the girl, one noticed only a
peculiar brightness in her eyes, while the brown cheeks became more
rosy.
The coffee finished, they suggested singing, and each of them sang or
repeated a couplet, which the others applauded frantically. Then they
got up with some difficulty, and while the two women, who were rather
dizzy, were trying to get a breath of air, the two men, who were
altogether drunk, were attempting gymnastics. Heavy, limp and with
scarlet faces they hung or, awkwardly to the iron rings, without being
able to raise themselves.
Meanwhile the two boating men had got their boats into the water, and
they came back and politely asked the ladies whether they would like a
row.
"Would you like one, Monsieur Dufour?" his wife exclaimed. "Please
come!"
He merely gave her a drunken nod, without understanding what she
said. Then one of the rowers came up with two fishing rods in his
hands, and the hope of catching a gudgeon, that great vision of the
Parisian shopkeeper, made Dufour's dull eyes gleam, and he politely
allowed them to do whatever they liked, while he sat in the shade under
the bridge, with his feet dangling over the river, by the side of the
young man with the yellow hair, who was sleeping soundly.
One of the boating men made a martyr of himself and took the mother.
"Let us go to the little wood on the Ile aux Anglais!" he called out as he
rowed off. The other boat went more slowly, for the rower was looking
at his companion so intently that by thought of nothing else, and his
emotion seemed to paralyze his strength, while the girl, who was sitting
in the bow, gave herself up to the enjoyment of being on the water. She
felt a disinclination to think, a lassitude in her limbs and a total
enervation, as if she were intoxicated, and her face was flushed and her
breathing quickened. The effects of the wine, which were increased by
the extreme heat, made all the trees on the bank seem to bow as she
passed. A vague wish for enjoyment and a fermentation of her blood
seemed to pervade her whole body, which was excited by the heat of
the day, and she was also disturbed at this tete-a-tete on the water, in a
place which seemed depopulated by the heat, with this young man who

thought her pretty, whose ardent looks seemed to caress her skin and
were as penetrating and pervading as the sun's rays.
Their inability to speak increased their emotion, and they looked about
them. At last, however, he made an effort and asked her name.
"Henriette," she said.
"Why, my name is Henri," he replied. The sound of their voices had
calmed them, and they looked at the banks. The other boat had passed
them and seemed to be waiting for them, and the rower called out:
"We will meet you in the wood; we are going as far as Robinson's,
because Madame Dufour is thirsty." Then he bent over his oars again
and rowed off so quickly that he was soon out of sight.
Meanwhile a continual roar, which they had heard for some time, came
nearer, and the river itself seemed to shiver, as if the dull noise were
rising from its depths.
"What is that noise?" she asked. It was the noise of the weir which cut
the river in two at the island, and he was explaining it to her, when,
above the noise of the waterfall, they heard the song of a bird, which
seemed a long way off.
"Listen!" he said; "the nightingales are singing during the day, so the
female birds must be sitting."
A nightingale! She had never heard one before, and the idea of listening
to one roused visions of poetic tenderness in her heart. A nightingale!
That is to say, the invisible witness of her love trysts which Juliet
invoked on her balcony; that celestial music which it attuned to human
kisses, that eternal inspirer of all those languorous romances which
open an ideal sky to all the poor little tender hearts of sensitive girls!
She was going to hear a