Oh, but the braves! I raised a little pæan to them on the spot, but I took care not to shout it. Suddenly the beasts turned tail and went yelling back into the wood. I did not rise at once. I left the victors time to congratulate themselves and to settle down. And at last I was too diffident to pester them with my gratitude, and I waded sheer across the pool (that was nowhere more than three feet deep) and landed on its farther side.
* * * * * * *
One day I happened upon Carinne!
That is the high note of this droning chant of retrospection.
I was walking aimlessly, the hot thirst upon me once more, when I came out from amongst trees into a sort of forest amphitheatre of considerable extent, whose base, like the kick in a bottle, was a round hill, pretty high, and scattered sparsely with chestnut-trees. I climbed the slopes toilfully, and getting a view of things from near the summit, saw that to the north the circumference of green was broken by the gates of a hazy valley. It was as beautiful a place as I had ever chanced on; but its most gladdening corner to me was that whence a little brook looped out of the forest skirt, like a timid child coaxed from its mother’s apron, and pattering a few yards, fled back again to shelter.
Now I would take it all in before I descended, postponing the cool ecstasy like an epicure. I mounted to the top, and, peering between the chestnut trunks down the farther slopes, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A herd of swine was peacefully feeding against the fringe of the wood, and, even as I looked, one of them, a mottled porkling, crashed through a little rug of branches spread upon the ground and vanished into Tartarus. Immediately his dismal screeches rebuked the skies, and, at the sound, a girl came running out of the wood, and, kneeling above the fatal breach, clasped her hands over her eyes and turned away her face—a very Niobe of pigs. Seeing her thus, I descended to her assistance; but, lost in her grief, it seemed, she did not hear me until I was close upon her. Then suddenly she glanced up startled,—and her eyes were the cold eyes of Carinne.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CHEVALIER DU GUET.
The eyes of Mademoiselle de Lâge were a merciless grey; her face was gold-white, like a dying maple-leaf. She wore no cap on her tumbled hair, and a coarse bistre-coloured jupon was her prominent article of attire. I knew her at once, nevertheless, though her cheeks were a little fallen and her under-lids dashed with violet. She stared at me as she knelt; but she made no sign that she was afraid.
“Mademoiselle is in tribulation?”
“You need not speak a swineherd so fair,” she said.