A la ville des Baux, pour un florin vaillant
Vous avez un tablier plein de fromages
Qui fond au gosier comme sucre fin.[8]
Like the shepherdesses sung by Virgil, each day my mother, carrying on her hip the earthenware pot and skimmer, descended to the dairy and filled up the various moulds with the fine flaking curds from her pot. The cheeses made, she left them to drain upon the osiers, which I myself delighted to cut for her down by the stream.
So on this occasion we partook with these young girls of a bowl of curds. One of them, about my own age, with a face which recalled those Greek profiles sculptured on the ancient monuments in the plains of Saint-Rémy, regarded me tenderly with her great dark eyes. Her name was Louise.
We visited the peacocks, with their rainbow-hued tails outspread, the bees in their long row of sheltered hives, the bleating lambs in the fold, the well with its pent-roof supported by pillars of stone—everything, in fact, which could interest them. Louise seemed to move in a dream of delight.
When we were in the garden, while my mother chatted with hers, and gathered pears for our guests, Louise and I sat down together on the parapet of the old well.
“I want to tell you something,” began Mademoiselle Louise. “Do you remember a little frock, a muslin frock that your mother took to you one day when you were at school at St. Michel de Frigolet?”
“Yes—to act my part in the piece called Les Enfants d’Edouard.”
“Well then—that dress, monsieur, was mine.”
“But did they not return it to you?” I asked like an imbecile.
“Oh yes,” she said, a little confused, “I only spoke of it as—one might of anything.”