The poet with his sick heart sat down mournfully on a stone.  He was thinking of the torment he was enduring, of his old mother crying because of his absence, of the women who had deceived him, and he had homesickness for the time of his first communion.

“My heart,” he thought, “my sad heart cannot change.”

Suddenly he saw a young peasant-girl near by gathering her geese under the stars.  She said to him: 

“Why do you weep?”

He answered: 

“My soul was hurt in falling upon the earth.  I cannot be cured because my heart is too heavy.”

“Will you have mine?” she said.  “It is light.  I will take yours and carry it easily.  Am I not accustomed to burdens?”

He gave her his heart and took hers.  Immediately they smiled at each other and hand in hand they followed the pathway.

The geese went in front of them like bits of the moon.

* * * * *

She said to him: 

“I know that you are wise, and that I cannot know what you know.  But I know that I love you.  You are from elsewhere, and you must have been born in a wonderful cradle like that I once saw in a cart.  It belonged to rich people.  Your mother must speak beautifully.  I love you.  You must have loved women with very white faces, and I must seem ugly and black to you.  I was not born in a wonderful cradle.  I was born in the wheat of the fields at harvest time.  They have told me this, and also that my mother and I and a little lamb to which a ewe had given birth on that same day were carried home on an ass.  Rich people have horses.”

He said to her: 

“I know that you are simple, and that I cannot be like you.  But I know that I love you.  You are from here, and you must have been rocked in a basket placed on a black chair like that which I have seen in a picture.  I love you.  Your mother must spin linen.  You must have danced under the trees with strong handsome laughing boys.  I must seem sick and sad to you.  I was not born in the fields at harvest time.  We were born in a beautiful room, I and a little twin sister who died at birth.  My mother was sick.  Poor people are strong.”

Then they embraced more closely on the bed where they lay together.

She said to him: 

“I have your heart.”

He said to her: 

“I have your heart.”

* * * * *

They had a sweet little boy.

And the poet, feeling that the illness which had so weighed upon him had fled, said to his wife: 

“My mother does not know what has become of me.  My heart is wrung with that thought.  Let me go to the town, my beloved, and tell her that I am happy and that I have a son.”

She smiled at him, knowing that his heart was hers, and said: 

“Go.”

And he went back by the way he had come.