Then came another laugh, and once more they all took up the song of Cinderella on her way to the palace of Prince Charming.

It was at the bridge over the Yeuse that the first drops of rain, big drops they were, began to fall.  The big livid cloud, urged on by a terrible wind, was galloping across the sky, filling it with the clamor of a tempest.  And almost immediately afterwards the rain-drops increased in volume and in number, lashed by so violent a squall that the water poured down as if by the bucketful, or as if some huge sluice-gate had suddenly burst asunder overhead.  One could no longer see twenty yards before one.  In two minutes the road was running with water like the bed of a torrent.

Then there was a sauve-qui-peut among the procession.  It was learnt later on that the people of the rear-guard had luckily been surprised near a peasant’s cottage, in which they had quietly sought refuge.  Then the folks in the wagon simply drew their curtains, and halted beneath the shelter of a wayside tree for fear lest the horses should take fright under such a downpour.  They called to the bicyclists ahead of them to stop also, instead of obstinately remaining in such a deluge.  But their words were lost amid the rush of water.  However, the little girls and the page took a proper course in crouching beside a thick hedge, though the betrothed couple wildly continued on their way.

Frederic, the more reasonable of the two, certainly had sense enough to say:  “This isn’t prudent on our part.  Let us stop like the others, I beg you.”

But from Rose, all excitement, transported by her blissful fever, and insensible, so it seemed, to the pelting of the rain, he only drew this answer:  “Pooh! what does it matter, now that we are soaking?  It is by stopping that we might do ourselves harm.  Let us make haste, all haste.  In three minutes we shall be at home and able to make fine sport of those laggards when they arrive in another quarter of an hour.”

They had just crossed the Yeuse bridge, and they swept on side by side, although the road was far from easy, being a continual ascent for a thousand yards or so between rows of lofty poplars.

“I assure you that we are doing wrong,” the young man repeated.  “They will blame me, and they will be right.”

“Oh! well,” cried she, “I’m amusing myself.  This bicycle bath is quite funny.  Leave me, then, if you don’t love me enough to follow me.”

He followed her, however, pressed close beside her, and sought to shelter her a little from the slanting rain.  And it was a wild, mad race on the part of that young couple, almost linked together, their elbows touching as they sped on and on, as if lifted from the ground, carried off by all that rushing, howling water which poured down so ragefully.  It was as though a thunder-blast bore them along.  But at the very moment when they sprang from their bicycles in the yard of the farm the rain ceased, and the sky became blue once more.