l strength.
She had learned to swim in a fortnight, and often, when they raced
together, he had seen her stem the current with a stroke as rapid as his
own. He, who delighted in strength and bodily exercises, felt a
thrill of pleasure at seeing her so strong, so active and adroit. He
entertained at heart a singular admiration for her stout arms. One
evening, after one of the first baths that had left them so playful,
they caught each other round the waist on a strip of sand, and wrestled
for several minutes without Silvere being able to throw Miette. At
last, indeed, it was the young man who lost his balance, while the girl
remained standing. Her sweetheart treated her like a boy, and it was
those long rambles of theirs, those wild races across the meadows, those
birds' nests filched from the tree crests, those struggles and violent
games of one and another kind that so long shielded them and their love
from all impurity.

Then, too, apart from his youthful admiration for his sweetheart's
dashing pluck, Silvere felt for her all the compassionate tenderness of
a heart that ever softened towards the unfortunate. He, who could never
see any forsaken creature, a poor man, or a child, walking barefooted
along the dusty roads, without a throb of pity, loved Miette because
nobody else loved her, because she virtually led an outcast's hard life.
When he saw her smile he was deeply moved by the joy he brought her.
Moreover, the child was a wildling, like himself, and they were of the
same mind in hating all the gossips of the Faubourg. The dreams in which
Silvere indulged in the daytime, while he plied his heavy hammer round
the cartwheels in his master's shop, were full of generous enthusiasm.
He fancied himself Miette's redeemer. All his reading rushed to his
head; he meant to marry his sweetheart some day, in order to raise her
in the eyes of the world. It was like a holy mission that he imposed
upon himself, that of redeeming and saving the convict's daughter. And
his head was so full of certain theories and arguments, that he did not
tell himself these things in simple fashion, but became lost in perfect
social mysticism; imagining rehabilitation in the form of an apotheosis
in which he pictured Miette seated on a throne, at the end of the Cours
Sauvaire, while the whole town prostrated itself before her, entreating
her pardon and singing her praises. Happily he forgot all these fine
things as soon as Miette jumped over the