On seeing this, the Cure stood still also.

Certainly, in the white flock of his congregation he counted just as lovely creatures every Sunday, he encountered just as provoking smiles.  Nevertheless, he was troubled; he felt a secret flame course through his veins; a kind of charm emanated front this girl.  He remembered reading that magnetic currents flow forth from certain women which inflame the senses, and he took a step backwards; but the charm operated in spite of himself, his eyes remained fixed on the seductive outlines of the figure of the unknown.  She enquired of him politely the way to the Mairie.  In pointing it out to her the Cure perhaps displayed more earnestness than was necessary, he even took a few steps with her as far as the entrance to the village, then he returned home, thinking of this pretty girl.

During supper his servant told him that some mountebanks had arrived in the village, and that they were going to give a performance the same evening in the market-place.  In fact a drum was heard beating the call, and the hoarse voice of the clown announcing “a grand acrobatic spectacle, accompanied with dances and followed by a pantomime.”

Involuntarily the Cure’s thought turned to the stranger; he went upstairs into his study and behind his half-closed shutters he could take part in the spectacle.

As he expected, the pretty girl was there, and seen from this distance in the night, half-lighted by a few smoky lamps, with her little bodice of velvet, her gauze skirt spangled with gold, her flesh-coloured tights, she was really charming.  At that moment she was dancing, with wonderful lightness and grace, some lascivious fandango, while she accompanied herself with the castanets.

She was smiling at the crowd, delighting in the effect which she knew how to produce with her sparkling eye and her white teeth and her rosy lips, and the Cure was intoxicated by that smile.  Then he cast his eyes over the rough crowd, and ha was grieved at so much cost for such an audience:  Margaritas ante porcos, he murmured, Margaritas ante porcos.

In order to admire her better, he had taken a field-glass and lost none of her gestures.

Her bosom was boldly bared, and he feasted his eyes upon the sweet furrow of her breasts, he followed the delicious outline of her leg, and found his heart melting before the undulating movements of her graceful bust and her sturdy hips.

He abruptly left the window, took up a book at random and tried to read.

But this was in vain; his eyes only were reading, his thoughts were elsewhere; they were in the market-place which was in frolic with the dancer.

He wished to stop this libertine thought; he read aloud:  “The fall is great after great efforts.  The soul risen so high in heroism and holiness falls very heavily to the earth....  Sick and embittered it plunges into evil with a savage hunger, as though to avenge itself for having believed.”