“Ay, Benoit,” Victor answered; “see that Jean gives them a good rubbing at once.  They have been hard ridden, poor beasts!” While Victor was speaking these words his eyes said to Benoit, “Bah!  It is even so; but we dare not do otherwise than treat him fair.”

“Will you be pleased to walk in, gentlemen; and what shall I have the honor of serving for your supper?” he continued.  “We have some young pigeons, if your worships would like them, fat as partridges, and still a bottle or two left of our last autumn’s cider.”

“By all means, landlord, by all means, let us have them, roasted on a spit, man,—­do you hear?—­roasted on a spit, and let your cook lard them well with fat bacon; there is no bird so fat but a larding doth help it for my eating,” said the elder man, rubbing his hands and laughing more and more cheerily as his companion looked each moment more and more glum.

“No, I’ll not go in,” said Willan, as Victor threw open the door into the bar-room.  “It suits me better to sit here under the trees until supper is ready.”  And he threw himself down at the foot of the great pear-tree.  He feared to see Jeanne sitting in the bar, as she had threatened.  The ground was showered thick with the soft white petals of the blossoms, which were now past their prime.  Willan picked up a handful of them and tossed them idly in the air.  As he did so, a shower of others came down on his face, thick, fast; they half blinded him for a moment.  He sprung to his feet and looked up.  It was like looking into a snowy cloud.  He saw nothing.  “Some bird flying through,” he thought, and lay down again.

  “Ah! luck for the bees,
    The flowers are in flower;
  Luck for the bees in spring. 
    Ah me, but the flowers, they die in an hour;
  No summer is fair as the spring. 
    Ah! luck for the bees;
  The honey in flowers
    Is highest when they are on wing!”

came in a gay Provencal melody from the pear-tree above Willan’s head, and another shower of white petals fell on his face.

“Good God!” said Willan Blaycke, under his breath, “what witchcraft is going on here? what girl’s voice is that?” And he sprang again to his feet.

The voice died slowly away; the singer was moving farther off,—­

  “Ah! woe for the bees,
    The flowers are dead;
  No summer is fair as the spring. 
    Ah me, but the honey is thick in the comb;
  ’Tis a long time now since spring. 
    Ah, woe for the bees
  That honey is sweet,
    Is sweeter than anything!”

“Sweeter than anything,—­sweeter than anything!” the voice, grown faint now, repeated this refrain over and over, as the syllables of sound died away.

It was Victorine going very slowly down the staircase from her room into Jeanne’s.  And it was Victorine who had accidentally brushed the pear-tree boughs as she watered her plants on the roof of the outside stairway.  She did not see Willan lying on the ground underneath, and she did not think that Willan might be hearing her song; and yet was her head full of Willan Blaycke as she went down the staircase, and not a little did she quake at the thought of seeing him below.