Musing on Negresses—and Can-Can dancers in particular—she strolled along a strand all littered with shells and little jewel-like stones.
The sun shone down more fiercely now, and soon, for freshness sake, she was obliged to take to the fields.
Passing among the silver drooping olives, relieved here and there by a stone-pine, or slender cypress-tree eternally green, she sauntered on, often lured aside to pluck the radiant wild-flowers by the way. On the banks the pinkest cyclamens were in bloom, and cornflowers of the hue of paradise, and fine-stemmed poppies flecked with pink.
“Pho! A Negress ...” she murmured, following the flight of some waterfowl towards the opposite shore.
The mists had fallen from the hills, revealing old woods wrapped in the blue doom of Summer.
Beyond those glowing heights, towards this hour, the nuns, each in her cool, shuttered, cell, would be immersed in noontide prayer.
“Ursula—for thee!” she sighed, proffering her bouquet in the direction of the town.
A loud splash ... the sight of a pair of delicate legs (mocking the Law’s requirements under the Modesty Act as relating to bathers).... Mademoiselle de Nazianzi turned and fled. She had recognised the Prince.[5]
IX
And in this difficult time of spiritual distress, made more trying perhaps because of the blazing midsummer days, and long, pent feverish nights, Mademoiselle de Nazianzi turned in her tribulation towards religion.