“I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my life.  What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this?  Was I never to feel on my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness?  Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer’s night?

“And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman.  I heard something stirring behind me.  A man stood there, gazing at me.  When I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said: 

“‘You are weeping, madame?’

“It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom we had often met.  His eyes had frequently followed me.

“I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to think of the situation.  I told him I felt ill.

“He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip.  All that I had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he understood perfectly, better than I did myself.  And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset.  I felt myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion.  It seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things ineffably sweet.

“And it happened, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, in a sort of hallucination.

“As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.

“He gave me his card!”

And, sinking into her sister’s arms, Madame Letore broke into groans —­almost into shrieks.

Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very gently: 

“You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself.  And your real lover that night was the moonlight.”

THE FIRST SNOWFALL

The long promenade of La Croisette winds in a curve along the edge of the blue water.  Yonder, to the right, Esterel juts out into the sea in the distance, obstructing the view and shutting out the horizon with its pretty southern outline of pointed summits, numerous and fantastic.

To the left, the isles of Sainte Marguerite and Saint Honorat, almost level with the water, display their surface, covered with pine trees.

And all along the great gulf, all along the tall mountains that encircle Cannes, the white villa residences seem to be sleeping in the sunlight.  You can see them from a distance, the white houses, scattered from the top to the bottom of the mountains, dotting the dark greenery with specks like snow.