uietly, as a hint that
she should do the same. She would shake the house with the thunder of
her most intimate confidences, bellowed after the fashion of the
peasants, who are accustomed to keep up a conversation from one end of a
field to the other. As I obtained no result, I had to speak to her
about it; and, because I did so as delicately as possible, in order not
to wound her feelings, she burst into a roar of laughter which showed me
that her rustic life had robbed her of all sensitiveness.

Being now authorised to admonish her at all times with regard to her
gestures, her voice and her accent, I often make her repeat the same
sentence; and, when I at last hear her natural voice, her original sweet
and attractive voice, to which the music is beginning to return, shily
and timidly, my heart overflows with joy. But, two minutes after, she is
again bawling out her most trivial remarks, with a cheerful unconcern
that disarms my wrath. Then I plead for silence as I would for mercy,
draw her down upon my lap, take her head in my arms and nurse her as I
would a child.

2

The stillness is so intense in the grove where we are sitting side by
side, I am so anxious for her to feel it, that I become impatient and
irritable. When I am with her, I am in a perpetual ferment. Her beauty
and her coarseness hurt me, like two ill-matched colours that attract
and wound the eyes. I calm myself by scattering all my thoughts over her
promiscuously; and, though most of them are carried away by the wind, I
imagine that I am sprinkling them on her life to make it blossom anew.

"I am nursing you in my arms to wake you, my Roseline, just as one
nurses children to put them to sleep. See what poor creatures we are! As
a rule, it is the conventions and constraint of our upbringing, with all
its artificiality and falsehood, that divide us. To-day, it is the
opposite that rises between you and me and spoils our happiness! I have
often longed to meet a woman who was so simple as to be almost
uncivilised; and, now that you are here, I dread your gestures and your
voice, which grate upon me and annoy me!"

"But am I not simple?" Rose asks, ingenuously.

"People generally confuse simplicity with ignorance, too often also with
silliness--which is not the case with you," I added, with a smile.
"Real, that is to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; and,
when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar minds a danger that must be
avert