I turned round to go to sleep again, but Rollo was very restless, and a glorious full moon was flooding the kitchen with light, her silver rays forming fantastic patterns on the stone floor, broken as they were by the little lead divisions of the casement and by the flower-pots, bottles, and various nondescript articles on the window-sill.
"I wish you would come to bed, and not stand there as if you were moon-struck," I said at last.
"That's just what I am," he replied. "I wish you would come and be so too."
"As-tu fini?" I growled. "Va te coucher, imbécile,"[4] and with that I dozed off.
But Rollo, I dreamed or I felt it, was sitting gravely by my side and wondering how I could be so rude, his tail all the while beating the ground at regular intervals. I roused myself once more; there stood Dupont as before.
"Hang it all," I said, "I do wish that blessed dog and you would shut up and turn in."
"I wish you'd open up and turn out," he answered. "Come along, don't be an épicier;[5] get up and let's tramp it. It's a splendid night."
"What's the matter, messieurs?" here broke in the old man, whose head and nightcap appeared at the glass door which separated his sleeping-nook from the kitchen, and—"What's the matter?" echoed the wife's voice. When he saw Claude, he simply said, "Oh, c'est ce jeune homme qui souffre de la lune; c'est tout comme Rollo."[6]
I burst out laughing, and—I suppose lunacy is catching—I too felt that I could not lie still, and that a moon that could make that pattern on the floor was not the Philistine orb of the Boulevards, but a heavenly body well worth getting up for.
Soon we were on the move. Every cloud had vanished; Nature was in her most peaceful mood; all was at rest. We walked on, Dupont a little ahead of me, whilst Rollo, who had come with us, never budged from his side. We must have gone some miles when the moon, gradually descending towards the horizon, went down behind a potato-field. We sat on the banks of a ditch and watched it.