The young man began to sigh and tap the floor with his foot, as he kissed a pretty hand and bare arm that she held out to him.
“Oh! Laurette, my Laurette!” he said, “when I think that, if we had delayed our marriage for four days, I should have been arrested alone and should have departed alone, I cannot forgive myself.”
Then the little beauty stretched out of the hammock her pretty white arms, bare to the shoulders, and stroked his brow, his hair, and his eyes, taking his head as if she would carry it away and hide it in her bosom. She smiled like a child, and said to him a lot of little womanly things, the like of which I had never heard before. She closed his mouth with her fingers so that only she could speak. She said, playfully taking her long hair like a handkerchief to wipe his eyes:
“Tell me, is it not much better to have with you a woman who loves you, my beloved? I am quite pleased, myself, to go to Cayenne; I shall see savages and cocoa-palms like Paul and Virginia’s, shan’t I? We shall each plant our own. We shall see which will be the better gardener. We’ll make a little hut for us two. I will work all day and all night, if you like. I am strong; see, look at my arms;—see, I could almost lift you. Don’t laugh at me; I can embroider very well, besides; and is there not a town somewhere thereabouts where they need embroiderers? I will give lessons in drawing and music if they want them too; and, if they can read there, you will write.”
I remember that the poor fellow was in such despair that he gave a great cry when she said that.
“Write!”—he exclaimed,—” write!”
And he grasped the wrist of his right hand with his left.
“Oh! write! why did I ever learn to write? Write! why it’s a madman’s trade!...—I believed in their liberty of the press!—Where did I get my brains! Eh! and for what? to print five or six poor commonplace ideas, only read by those who like them, thrown in the fire by those who hate them, of no use but to cause us to be persecuted! It doesn’t matter for me; but you, lovely angel, become a woman scarcely four days ago! Explain to me, I beg of you, how it was I allowed you to be so good as to follow me here? Do you know at all where you are, poor little one? And do you know where you are going? Soon, child, you will be sixteen hundred leagues from your mother and sisters ... and for me! all that for me!”
She hid her head for a moment in the hammock; and I from above saw that she was crying; but he below did not see her face; and, when she withdrew it from the sheet, it was with a smile to make him cheerful.
“It’s true, we’re not rich just now,” she said, and burst out laughing; “see, look at my purse, I have no more than one single louis left. What have you?”