You must understand, my dear Claude, that I met these advances with a frigidity of manner that left no doubt as to my intentions.

“I repeat, my cousin,” said I to her, “I attach to all this very little importance,” and I emphasized my words by a firm and icy look.  Then only, for I had not before cast my eyes on her, did I notice the peculiar elegance of her toilette, an elegance for which, unhappily, the perishable beauty of her person served as a pretext and an encouragement.

Her arms were bare, and her wrists covered with bracelets; the upper part of her neck was insufficiently veiled by the too slight fabric of a transparent gauze; in short, the desire to please was displayed in her by all the details of her appearance.  I was stirred at the aspect of so much frivolity, and I felt myself blush for pity, almost for shame.

We reached, at length, the verge of the stream.  She loosed my arm and unceremoniously slid down, I can not say seated herself, upon the grass, throwing back the long curls depending from her chignon.  The word chignon, in the language of society, denotes that prominence of the cranium which is to be seen at the back of ladies’ heads.  It is produced by making coils or plaits of their long hair.  I have cause to believe, from certain allusions I have heard, that many of these chignons are not natural.  There are women, most worthy daughters of Eve, who purchase for gold the hair—­horyesco referens—­of the wretched or the dead.  It sickens one.

“It is excessively hot, my dear cousin,” said she, fanning herself.  “I tremble every moment in such weather lest Monsieur de Beaurenard’s nose should explode or catch fire.  Ha, ha, ha.  Upon my word of honor I do.”

She exploded with laughter at this joke, an unbecoming one, and without much point.  Monsieur de Beaurenard is a friend of the Marquis, who happens to have a high color.  Out of politeness, I forced a smile, which she, no doubt, took for approbation, for she then launched out into conversation—­an indescribable flow of chatter, blending the most profane sentiments with the strangest religious ideas, the quiet of the country with the whirl of society, and all this with a freedom of gesture, a charm of expression, a subtlety of glance, and a species of earthly poesy, by which any other soul than mine would have been seduced.

“This is a pretty spot, this charming little nook, is it not?”

“Certainly, my dear cousin.”

“And these old willows with their large tops overhanging the stream; see how the field-flowers cluster gayly about their battered trunks!  How strange, too, that young foliage, so elegant, so silvery, those branches so slender and so supple!  So much elegance, freshness and youth shooting up from that old trunk which seems as if accursed!”

“God does not curse a vegetable, my cousin.”

“That is possible; but I can not help finding in willows something which is suggestive of humanity.  Perpetual old age resembles punishment.  That old reprobate of the bank there is expiating and suffering, that old Quasimodo of the fields.  What would you that I should do about it, my cousin, for that is the impression that it gives me?  What is there to tell me that the willow is not the final incarnation of an impenitent angler?” And she burst out laughing.