-wrack, which caresses the odor of the wild flowers, caresses
the potato with its marine flavor, caresses the soul with a penetrating
sweetness. We were going to the brink of the abyss, which overlooked
the vast sea, and which rolled past us at the distance of less than a
hundred meters.

And we drank with open mouth and expanded chest that fresh breath which
came from the ocean and which glided slowly over the skin, salted by its
long contact with the waves.

Wrapped up in her square shawl, inspired by the balmy air and with teeth
firmly set, the English woman gazed fixedly at the great sun ball, as it
descended towards the sea. Soon its rim touched the waters, just in rear
of a ship which appeared on the horizon, until, by degrees, it was
swallowed up by the ocean. It was seen to plunge, diminish, and finally
to disappear.

Miss Harriet contemplated with a passionate regard the last glimmer of
the flaming orb of day.

She muttered: "Aoh! I loved ... I loved ..." I saw a tear start in her
eye. She continued: "I wish I were a little bird, so that I could mount
up into the firmament."

She remained standing as I had often before seen her, perched on the
river's banks, her face as red as her purple shawl. I should have liked
to have sketched her in my album. It would have been an ecstatic
caricature.

I turned my face away from her so as to be able to laugh.

I then spoke to her of painting, as I would have done to a fellow
artist, using the technical terms common among the devotees of the
profession. She listened attentively to me, eagerly seeking to define
the sense of the obscure words, so as to penetrate my thoughts. From
time to time, she would exclaim: "Oh! I understand, I understand. This
has been very interesting."

We returned home.

The next day, on seeing me, she approached me eagerly, holding out her
hand; and we became firm friends immediately.

She was a brave creature who had a kind of elastic soul, which became
enthusiastic at a bound. She lacked equilibrium, like all women who are
spinsters at the age of fifty. She seemed to be pickled in vinegar
innocence, though her heart still retained something of youth and of
girlish effervescence. She loved both nature and animals with a fervent
ardor, a love like old wine, fermented through age, with a sensual love
that she had never bestowed on men.

One thing is certain, that a bitch in pup, a mare roaming in a meadow
with a foal at its side, a bir