'Come,' said the enchantress.
'I think Othmar was right. It is cruel,' murmured Béthune.
'Men are always so timid,' said Nadine with her customary indulgent contempt for them. 'Ignorance is not bliss, my dear friend, although the copybooks say so.—Come, my pretty demoiselle, come and see our enchanted coasts; we will not harm you, and we will only give you a little spray of moly such as Ulysses gathered; and perhaps a magic ring and a wishing-cap, nothing worse.'
The child hesitated still; she knew that she was doing very wrong; she knew that if what she was doing were discovered, her grandfather's chastisement would be pitiless; but curiosity, imagination, interest, were all enlisted on the side of disobedience, and she had a certain turbulence and ardour of self-will in her nature which had brought her many hard words from Catherine, and even blows from Jean Bérarde. All these together conquered her conscience, her judgment, and her prudence; the gates of the enchanted world stood open; she might never pass through them, or see what was beyond them unless she went now.
With that reasoning she sprang down the first ledges of the stone staircase, and as lightly as a kid would have done leaped from one step to the other till she reached the edge of the sea.
She allowed her feet to be guided into the barge, and felt it dance beneath them with a strange thrill; it seemed all to be as unreal as a chapter of 'Sintram;' the lovely lady who wooed and tempted her appeared like a being from another world; the gilded prow, the embroidered flag, the rich awnings fringed with silver wavered before her in the sunlight.
Before she had known what she had actually done, the oars of the men cleft the sunshiny water, letting it flow in streams of diamonds off their blades, and the vessel had already glided away from her home.
Clovis, who was accustomed never to leave the island, but never failed to give voice to his grief when he saw her leave him for the sea, either by swimming or sailing, stood on the strip of sand beneath the rocky steep of Bonaventure and howled in dismal solitude. She put her hands to her ears not to hear him; it seemed as if he reproached and rebuked her.
Soon he became but a little white speck beneath the red sandstone of the cliff, and the boat had reached the side of the stately schooner which awaited them in the midst of gay sunshine and azure water, whilst a flute-player discoursed sweet music from some unseen retreat.