"My name is Edouard."
"Very well; until to-morrow, Monsieur Edouard, as you will not rest a moment under my roof to-day."
As she spoke, the girl curtsied gracefully to Edouard, then entered the house singing. The young man retraced his steps to La Roche-Noire, dreaming of the little goatherd.
"She is charming!" he said to himself again and again; "her manners, her voice, her artlessness—all are fascinating!—Oh! I am not going to fall in love with her—that would be foolish; but she is so interesting that I wish it were to-morrow morning already.—I won’t tell Alfred that I have been to see her; he would be quite capable of doing the same thing. Alfred is a reckless fellow; he would begin making love to the child at once. That would be an outrage, and I certainly would not permit it."
Poor Edouard! he did not propose to fall in love, and he was jealous already!—Ah! what is the sense of trying to resist a passion so natural at his age? Only when the age of reason comes must we be on our guard against love, which, like the smallpox, is the more virulent the later in life it attacks you.
XIII
THE VAGRANT AGAIN
Edouard returned to the Château of La Roche-Noire, unmindful of the length of the walk he had taken. When a man is falling in love, he is so preoccupied that he is never bored; that is some slight recompense, at all events, for the torments which love sometimes causes.
Edouard met Alfred in the courtyard.
"You went out very early, did you not?" observed young De Marcey, gazing fixedly at his friend; "when I got up I asked for you, and they told me that you had been gone more than an hour. The devil! you are an early bird! I confess that last night’s ball tired me a little; there’s no end to those bourrées, and the damsels of Auvergne are no light weights.—I’ll wager that I can guess where you’ve been—toward the White House, eh? You wanted to see little Isaure again?"
"No, I haven’t been in that direction; I have been walking about the neighborhood; it’s a lovely country.—Indeed, what is the sense of trying to see that young girl again? It seems to me that it is useless, to say the least."