“But why is this wood so deserted?  It is so pleasant here.”

He almost reproached himself for not having brought Adrienne.  She would have been so happy for this advanced spring day.  She required so little to make her smile:  mere crumbs of joy.  She was better than he.

He excused himself by reflecting that he would not have been able to talk to Ramel.

And then it would have been necessary to talk to Adrienne, whereas the joy of the present moment was this solitary silence, the bath of warm air taken in the complete forgetfulness of the habitual existence.

The sight of the blue, gleaming lake before him, encircled with pines, like an artificial Swiss lake, compelled him to look out of the window.

The coachman slowly drove the carriage to the left in order to make the tour of the Lake.

Vaudrey looked at the sheet of water upon which the light played, and on which two or three skiffs glided noiselessly, even the sound of their oars not reaching his ears.

At the extremity of the alley, a carriage was standing, a hackney coach whose driver was peacefully sleeping in the sunshine, with his head leaning on his right shoulder, his broad-brimmed hat, bathed in the sunshine, serving him as a shade.

It was the only carriage there, and a few paces from the border of the water, standing out in dark relief against the violet-blue of the lake, a woman stood surrounded by a group of ducks of all shades, running after morsels of brown bread while uttering their hoarse cries.

Two white swans had remained in the water and looked at her with a dignified air, at a distance.

At the first glance at this woman, Sulpice felt a strange emotion.  His legs trembled and his heart was agitated.

He could not be mistaken, he certainly recognized her.  Either there was an extraordinary resemblance between them, or it was Mademoiselle Kayser herself.

Marianne?  Marianne on the edge of this Lake at an hour when there was no one at the Bois?  Vaudrey believed neither in superstitions nor in predestination.  Nevertheless, he considered the meeting extraordinary, but there is in this fantastic life a reality that brings in our path the being about whom one has just been thinking.  He had frequently observed this fact.  He had already descended from his carriage to go to her, taking a little pathway under the furze in order to reach the water’s edge.  There was no longer any doubt, it was she.  Evidently he was to meet Mademoiselle Kayser some day.  But how could chance will that he should desire to take that promenade to the Lake at the very hour that the young woman had driven there?

As he advanced, he thought how surprised Marianne would be.  As he walked along, he looked at her.