soil, dry and thirsty, floods of ardent light. Not a breath
of wind stirred the leaves. Every beast and bird, even the grasshoppers,
were silent. Renardet reached the tall trees, and began to walk over the
moss where the Brindelle sent forth a slight, cool vapor under the
immense roof of trees. But he felt ill at ease. It seemed to him that an
unknown, invisible hand, was squeezing his neck, and he scarcely thought
of anything, having usually few ideas in his head. For the last three
months, only one thought haunted him, the thought of marrying again. He
suffered from living alone, suffered from it morally and physically.
Accustomed for ten years past to feeling a woman near him, habituated
to her presence every moment, to her embrace each successive day, he had
need, an imperious and perplexing need of incessant contact with her and
the regular touch of her lips. Since Madame Renardet's death, he had
suffered continually without knowing why, he had suffered from not
feeling her dress brush against his legs every day, and, above all, from
no longer being able to grow calm and languid between her arms. He had
been scarcely six months a widower, and he had already been looking out
through the district for some young girl or some widow he might marry
when his period of marrying was at an end.

He had a chaste soul, but it was lodged in a powerful Herculean body,
and carnal images began to disturb his sleep and his vigils. He drove
them away; they came back again; and he murmured from time to time,
smiling at himself:

"Here I am, like St. Antony."

Having had this morning several besetting visions, the desire suddenly
came into his breast to bathe in the Brindelle in order to refresh
himself and appease the ardor of his heat.

He knew, a little further on, a large deep spot where the people of the
neighborhood came sometimes to take a dip in summer. He went there.

Thick willow trees hid this clear volume of water where the current
rested and went to sleep for a little while before starting its way
again. Renardet, as he appeared, thought he heard a light sound, a faint
smell which was not that of the stream on the banks. He softly put aside
the leaves and looked. A little girl, quite naked in the transparent
water, was beating the waves with both hands, dancing about in them a
little and dipping herself with pretty movements. She was not a child
nor was she yet a woman. She was plump and formed, while preserving an