The Fortune of the Rougons | Page 9

embrace in which love showed the innocent tenderness of fraternal
affection.
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 gaiety, her cheeks round like those of a child,
her teeth large and white, her twists of woolly hair tossed by every
outburst of merriment, and waving like a crown of vine leaves. To
realise that she was only a child of thirteen, one had to notice the
innocence underlying her full womanly laughter, and especially the
child-like delicacy of her chin and soft transparency of her temples. In
certain lights Miette's sun-tanned face showed yellow like amber. A
little soft black down already shaded her upper lip. Toil too was
beginning to disfigure her small hands, which, if left idle, would have
become charmingly plump and delicate.
Miette and Silvere long remained silent. They were reading their own

anxious thoughts, and, as they pondered upon the unknown terrors of
the morrow, they tightened their mutual embrace. Their hearts
communed with each other, they understood how useless and cruel
would be any verbal plaint. The girl, however, could at last no longer
contain herself, and, choking with emotion, she gave expression, in one
phrase, to their mutual misgivings.
"You will come back again, won't you?" she whispered, as she hung on
Silvere's neck.
Silvere made no reply, but, half-stifling, and fearing lest he should give
way to tears like herself, he kissed her in brotherly fashion on the cheek,
at a loss for any other consolation. Then disengaging themselves they
again lapsed into silence.
After a moment Miette shuddered. Now that she no longer leant against
Silvere's shoulder she was becoming icy cold. Yet she would not have
shuddered thus had she been in this deserted path the previous evening,
seated on this tombstone, where for several seasons they had tasted so
much happiness.
"I'm very cold," she said, as she