“Why, nothing at all. Nothing is the matter with me.”
I leaped over the cannas, flew to the orchard like a run-away chicken, and threw myself, breathless, against a young apple tree. The trees were in blossom—it was springtime. The branches trembled at the shock, and a shower of rosy petals rained down upon me.
I was far from suspecting that I was also gathering the blossom of love, the love that does not ripen.
At school the Marinetti circus had become the object of all our interest and conversation. In the playground, between two games of prison-bars, the big boys discussed sometimes the flying trapeze, which had dazzled the lovers of sport, and sometimes the little horsewoman, preferred by the clan of philosophers. I would catch fragments of their remarks as I passed, and I was burning to arouse the envy of my elders with the superiority which I had achieved over them. Thus torn between my secret and my vanity, it was the latter which won out, and one day, with feigned modesty, I admitted that I had spoken to her. My object was at once attained and even exceeded: they all crowded around me, congratulating me, plying me with questions. I was forced to embroider the truth a little, in order to satisfy their curiosity.
“You are a lucky fellow,” said Fernand de Montraut, whose jealousy I divined.
Fernand de Montraut was the ornament of the rhetoric division and at the same time the lowest in the class. He passed for the most elegant fellow in school because of his cravats, and every one bowed to his superior experience in all matters of sentiment, for he boasted the friendship of several girls. Unfortunately, he added,
“Then you are in love?”
Not knowing until that moment what it was to be in love, I at once learned its meaning from his question, and gave myself up to the melancholy which I deemed the proper thing.
Grandfather having struck up an acquaintance with the circus folk, whom he supplied with tobacco, I found myself again in Nazzarena’s presence. The desire to give her something tortured me, the more so because Fernand de Montraut, an acknowledged judge, had assured me that one always gave presents to ladies. The only embarrassment was the choice of gift. Now I had in a drawer a collection of cornelian marbles which I treasured as if they had been jewels. There were spotted red ones, and black ones with white circles. Nothing that I possessed was more precious to me. For a moment I hesitated at so great a sacrifice, and thought of at least keeping back that flame-coloured agate that the light shone through and which was my favourite. But it was clear to me that if I kept back that one my offering would be worthless. In a moment of resignation rather than of enthusiasm I gathered up the whole lot and ran to my new friend, awkwardly presenting them to her without a word of explanation. She seemed somewhat surprised, but accepted them without hesitation.
“Zat’s pretty,” she said, “you ’z cute.”