“I don’t know,” stammered the young girl, “I never said that—­his reverence the cure misunderstood—­For mercy’s sake, let me be, I am in a hurry.”

“No, no,” I continued, “I want you to know that I am going away to-morrow, and to promise to love me always.”

“You are leaving to-morrow!”

Oh! that sweet cry, and how tenderly Babet uttered it!  I seem still to hear her apprehensive voice full of affliction and love.

“You see,” I exclaimed in my turn, “that my uncle Lazare said the truth.  Besides, he never tells fibs.  You love me, you love me, Babet!  Your lips this morning confided the secret very softly to my fingers.”

And I made her sit down at the foot of the hedge.  My memory has retained my first chat of love in its absolute innocence.  Babet listened to me like a little sister.  She was no longer afraid, she told me the story of her love.  And there were solemn sermons, ingenious avowals, projects without end.  She vowed she would marry no one but me, I vowed to deserve her hand by labour and tenderness.  There was a cricket behind the hedge, who accompanied our chat with his chaunt of hope, and all the valley, whispering in the dark, took pleasure in hearing us talk so softly.

On separating we forgot to kiss each other.

When I returned to my little room, it appeared to me that I had left it for at least a year.  That day which was so short, seemed an eternity of happiness.  It was the warmest and most sweetly-scented spring-day of my life, and the remembrance of it is now like the distant, faltering voice of my youth.

II

SUMMER

When I awoke at about three o’clock in the morning on that particular day, I was lying on the hard ground tired out, and with my face bathed in perspiration.  The hot heavy atmosphere of a July night weighed me down.

My companions were sleeping around me, wrapped in their hooded cloaks; they speckled the grey ground with black, and the obscure plain panted; I fancied I heard the heavy breathing of a slumbering multitude.  Indistinct sounds, the neighing of horses, the clash of arms rang out amidst the rustling silence.

The army had halted at about midnight, and we had received orders to lie down and sleep.  We had been marching for three days, scorched by the sun and blinded by dust.  The enemy were at length in front of us, over there, on those hills on the horizon.  At daybreak a decisive battle would be fought.

I had been a victim to despondency.  For three days I had been as if trampled on, without energy and without thought for the future.  It was the excessive fatigue, indeed, that had just awakened me.  Now, lying on my back, with my eyes wide open, I was thinking whilst gazing into the night, I thought of this battle, this butchery, which the sun was about to light up.  For more than six years, at the first shot in each fight, I had been saying good-bye to those I loved the most fondly, Babet and uncle Lazare.  And now, barely a month before my discharge, I had to say good-bye again, and this time perhaps for ever.