"Do me the favor, ma belle, to accept it--for my sake," said I, thankful to find her so easily entertained. I was lying in a shady angle of old wall, puffing away at a cigar, with my hat over my eyes, and the soles of my boots levelled at the view. It is difficult to smoke and make love at the same time; and I preferred the tobacco.
Josephine was enchanted, and thanked me in a thousand pretty, foolish phrases. She declared she saw ever so much farther and clearer with the glass, now that it was her own. She looked at me through it, and insisted that I should look at her. She picked out all sorts of marvellous objects, at all sorts of incredible distances. In short, she prattled and chattered till I forgot all about the washing-tub, and again began to think her quite charming. Presently we heard wandering sounds of music among the trees at the foot of the hill--sounds as of a violin and bagpipes; now coming with the wind from the west, now dying away to the north, now bursting out afresh more merrily than ever, and leading off towards the village.
"Tiens! that must be a wedding!" said Josephine, drumming with her little feet against the side of the old well on which she was sitting.
"A wedding! what connection subsists, pray, between the bonds of matrimony, and a tune on the bagpipes?"
"I don't know what you mean by bagpipes--I only know that when people get married in the country, they go about with the musicians playing before them. What you hear yonder is a violin and a cornemuse."
"A cornemuse!" I repeated. "What's that?"
"Oh, country music. A thing you blow into with your mouth, and play upon with your fingers, and squeeze under your arm--like this."
"Then it's the same thing, ma chère," said I. "A bagpipes and a cornemuse--a cornemuse and bagpipes. Both of them national, popular, and frightful."
"I'm so fond of music," said Josephine.
Not wishing to object to her tastes, and believing that this observation related to the music then audible, I made no reply.