"You love me fondly, do you not?"
"I! who told you that?"
"My uncle Lazare."
She stood there in confusion. Her hand began to tremble in mine. As she
was on the point of running away, I took her other hand. We were face to
face, in a sort of hollow in the hedge, and I felt Babet's panting breath
running all warm over my face. The freshness of the air, the rustling
silence of the night, hung around us.
"I don't know," stammered the young girl, "I never said that--his
reverence the curé misunderstood--For mercy's sake, let me be, I am in a
hurry."
"No, no," I continued, "I want you to know that I am going away to-morrow,
and to promise to love me always."
"You are leaving to-morrow!"
Oh! that sweet cry, and how tenderly Babet uttered it! I seem still to
hear her apprehensive voice full of affliction and love.
"You see," I exclaimed in my turn, "that my uncle Lazare said the truth.
Besides, he never tells fibs. You love me, you love me, Babet! Your lips
this morning confided the secret very softly to my fingers."
And I made her sit down at the foot of the hedge. My memory has retained
my first chat of love in its absolute innocence. Babet listened to me like
a little sister. She was no longer afraid, she told me the story of her
love. And there were solemn sermons, ingenious avowals, projects without
end. She vowed she would marry no one but me, I vowed to deserve her hand
by labour and tenderness. There was a cricket behind the hedge, who
accompanied our chat with his chaunt of hope, and all the valley,
whispering in the dark, took pleasure in hearing us talk so softly.
On separating we forgot to kiss each other.
When I returned to my little room, it appeared to me that I had left it
for at least a year. That day which was so short, seemed an eternity of
happiness. It was the warmest and most sweetly-scented spring-day of my
life, and the remembrance of it is now like the distant, faltering voice
of my youth.