One day, on the jetty, I met a young lady in the company of an old gentleman. Tall, slender, she looked pretty under her veil of white gauze which covered her face and whose ends, tied at the back of her grey felt hat, fluttered in the wind. Her graceful and supple movements resembled those of Juliette. Indeed in the way she carried her head, in the delicate curves of her waist line, in the way her arms fell, in the ruffling of her dress in the air, I recognized something of Juliette. I looked at her with emotion and two tears rolled down my cheeks. She walked to the end of the pier. I sat down on the parapet and, pensive and fascinated, followed the silhouette of the young lady. As she was moving away, I felt affected more and more.... Why had I not known her before I met the other one? I would have loved her perhaps! A young girl who has never felt the impure breath of man upon her, whose ears are chaste, whose lips have never known lewd kisses, what a joy it would be to love her, to love her as angels do!
The white veil was fluttering above her like the wings of a sea-gull. And suddenly she disappeared behind the lighthouse. At the bottom of the jetty the sea splashed back and forth like a child's cradle rocked by a nurse who hums a lullaby, and the sky was cloudless; it was stretched above the motionless surface of the water like a huge flowing curtain of light muslin.
The young lady was not long in coming back. She passed so near that her dress almost brushed against me. She was blonde; I should have liked it better if she were dark as Juliette was. She walked away, left the jetty, took to the village road and pretty soon I saw only a white veil which seemed to say: "Good-bye, goodbye! Don't be sad, I shall come back."
In the evening I asked Mother Le Gannec about her.
"That's demoiselle Landudec," she replied, "a very excellent and well deserving girl, friend Mintié. The old gentleman is her father.... They live in the big château on the Saint Jean road. You know which one I mean.... You have been there several times."
"How is it that I have never seen them?"
"Ah! Lord!... That's because the old man is always sick and the girl stays at home to take care of him, the poor thing! Undoubtedly he must have felt better today and she took him out for a walk."
"Hasn't she got a mother?"
"No. Her mother has been dead for quite some time."
"Are they rich?"