All that afternoon we had walked through the forest, stick in hand, our bags slung over our shoulders, through that magnificent forest of Tronsays, which covers one half the St. Amand country, and one half of Nevers. The little village of Ursay, squatting on the bank of the Cher, in the rent of the valley which cuts through the centre of the forest, was our last halting-place for the day. We dined with an old friend, the modest doctor of five or six neighboring communes; and after dinner we sat musing on the stoop, with our cherry pipes between our lips.
The shadows fell around us, over the dense blue mass of forest that encircled the horizon with all the solemn slowness of night in June. The sky was streaked with flights of swallows. The nine o'clock Angelus scattered its notes with intervals of silence from the height of a snuffer-like steeple which emerged from among the roofs. From distant farms came the barking of dogs calling and answering one another.
A woman, still young, in a red woollen skirt and a white linen shirt, came out of a house near by, and walked down toward the river. With her left arm she pressed a baby against her bosom. A little boy held her other hand, and gave his in turn to a still smaller brother. When they reached the bank of the Cher, the young woman sat upon a great stone; and while the two boys, hastily undressed, were paddling and splashing about like ducks in the stream, she nursed her last-born.
One of our party, who was a painter, said, "There is a picture that would be popular at the Salon. How splendidly built and well-lighted that woman is! And what a pretty bright spot that red skirt forms in the blue landscape!"
A voice behind us called out,—
"The girl you see there, young men, is Solange, the wolf-girl." And our host, who had been detained by a consultation, came out to join us. As we asked him who was this wolf-girl, and how she had come by so strange a nickname, he told us this story,—
"This Solange, the wolf-girl, whose real name is Solange Tournier, wife of Grillet, was the prettiest girl in the whole Tronsays country about ten years ago. Now, of course, working in the fields as she does, and having had five children, she looks hardened and worn. Still, considering her thirty years, she is handsome enough, as you see. At the time of the adventure whence she derived her strange nickname she was living with her parents, who were farmers of the Rein-du-Bois, some fifteen kilometres from here. Although very poor, she was much sought by all the boys, even by the well-to-do; but she accepted the addresses of only one,—a certain Laurent Grillet, on whom she had set her heart when she was a wee bit of a girl, when the two kept the sheep together in the neighborhood of Rein-du-Bois.
"Laurent Grillet was a foundling, who had nothing in the world but his two arms for a fortune. Solange's parents felt no inclination to add poverty to poverty, especially as the girl had so many wealthy suitors.
"So Solange was forbidden to see her friend. Naturally, the girl never failed at a tryst. Living in the same commune, with the forest at hand, they never lost an opportunity of meeting there. When the father and mother Tournier realized that scoldings and blows were of no avail, they determined upon a radical step. Solange was accordingly sent out to work at Ursay, on the model farm of M. Roger Duflos, our deputy.
"Perhaps you think our two lovers ceased to see each other. Not in the least. They now met at night; they slept no more. After nightfall they both left the farms where they were employed and started toward each other; and then they remained together until nearly dawn in the maternal forest, the accomplice of their young love.