But, as soon as he was outside, the heavy, scorching air of the plain oppressed him still more.  The sun, still high in the heavens, poured down on the parched soil waves of burning light.  Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves.  Every beast and bird, even the grasshoppers, were silent.  Renardet reached the tall trees and began to walk over the moss where the Brindille produced a slight freshness of the air beneath the immense roof of branches.  But he felt ill at ease.  It seemed to him that an unknown, invisible hand was strangling him, and he scarcely thought of anything, having usually few ideas in his head.  For the last three months only one thought haunted him, the thought of marrying again.  He suffered from living alone, suffered from it morally and physically.  Accustomed for ten years past to feeling a woman near him, habituated to her presence every moment, he had need, an imperious and perplexing need of such association.  Since Madame Renardet’s death he had suffered continually without knowing why, he had suffered at not feeling her dress brushing past him, and, above all, from no longer being able to calm and rest himself in her arms.  He had been scarcely six months a widower and he was already looking about in the district for some young girl or some widow he might marry when his period of mourning was at an end.

He had a chaste soul, but it was lodged in a powerful, herculean body, and carnal imaginings began to disturb his sleep and his vigils.  He drove them away; they came back again; and he murmured from time to time, smiling at himself: 

“Here I am, like St. Anthony.”

Having this special morning had several of these visions, the desire suddenly came into his breast to bathe in the Brindille in order to refresh himself and cool his blood.

He knew of a large deep pool, a little farther down, where the people of the neighborhood came sometimes to take a dip in summer.  He went there.

Thick willow trees hid this clear body of water where the current rested and went to sleep for a while before starting on its way again.  Renardet, as he appeared, thought he heard a light sound, a faint plashing which was not that of the stream on the banks.  He softly put aside the leaves and looked.  A little girl, quite naked in the transparent water, was beating the water with both hands, dancing about in it and dipping herself with pretty movements.  She was not a child nor was she yet a woman.  She was plump and developed, while preserving an air of youthful precocity, as of one who had grown rapidly.  He no longer moved, overcome with surprise, with desire, holding his breath with a strange, poignant emotion.  He remained there, his heart beating as if one of his sensuous dreams had just been realized, as if an impure fairy had conjured up before him this young creature, this little rustic Venus, rising from the eddies of the stream as the real Venus rose from the waves of the sea.