When young Cardonnet turned his eyes toward the small pavilion occupied by the last scion of a once wealthy and illustrious family, he felt a thrill of compassion as he reflected that there was in that pavilion a young woman whose ancestresses had had pages, vassals, fine horses and packs of hounds, whereas this inheritress of a ghastly ruin was destined perhaps, like the Princess Nausicaa, to wash her own linen at the fountain.
As he made this reflection he saw a little round window on the upper floor of the square pavilion open gently, and a woman's head, supported by the loveliest neck imaginable, lean forward as if to speak to some one in the courtyard. Emile Cardonnet, although he belonged to a generation of myopes, had excellent sight, and the distance was not so great that he could not distinguish the features belonging to that graceful blond head, whose hair the wind tossed about in some confusion. It seemed to him what in fact it was, an angel's head, arrayed in all the bloom of youth, sweet and noble at the same time. The tone of the voice was fascinating and the pronunciation was remarkably elegant.
"So it rained all night, did it, Jean?" she said. "See how full of water the courtyard is! All the fields I can see from my window are like ponds."
"It's a regular deluge, my dear child," the peasant, who seemed to be an intimate friend of the family, replied from below, "a genuine water-spout! I don't know whether the worst of the storm broke here or somewhere else, but I never saw the fountain so full."
"The roads must be all washed out, Jean, and you had better stay here. Is father awake?"
"Not yet, Gilberte, but Mère Janille is up and about."
"Will you ask her to come up to my room, my old Jean? I have something to ask her."
"I will go at once."
The girl closed the window without apparently noticing that the traveller's window was open and that he was standing there looking at her.
A moment later he was in the courtyard, where the rain had transformed the paths into little torrents, and he found Sylvain Charasson in the stable, cleaning his horse and Monsieur Antoine's, and discussing the effects of such a terrible night with the peasant whose Christian name Emile Cardonnet had learned at last. The night before, this man had caused him a sort of indefinable uneasiness, as if there were something mysterious and fateful about him. He had noticed that Monsieur Antoine had not once called him by name, and that, on several occasions when Janille had been on the point of doing so, he had warned her with a glance to be careful. They called him only friend, comrade or old fellow, and it seemed that his name was a secret which they did not choose to divulge. Who could this man be, who had the outward aspect and the language of a peasant and who, nevertheless, carried his gloomy anticipations so far, and his severe criticism to such a point.