pretty little mountaineer,
but you are blistering your white hands, and in spite of your hobnailed
shoes, your stick and your martial air, I see that you must be carried."

We arrived at the rock breathless; about my body was strapped a leather
belt to which was attached a wicker bottle. When we were seated on the
rock, my dear Brigitte asked for the bottle; I had lost it, as well as
a tinder-box which served another purpose: that was to read the
inscriptions on the guide-posts when we went astray, which occurred
frequently. At such times I would climb the posts, and read the
half-effaced inscription by the light of the tinder-box; all this in
play, like the children that we were. At a crossroad we would have
to examine not one guide-post but five or six until the right one was
found. But this time we had lost our baggage on the way.

"Very well," said Brigitte, "we will pass the night here, as I am rather
tired. This rock will make a hard bed, but we can cover it with dry
leaves. Let us sit down and make the best of it."

The night was superb; the moon was rising behind us; I looked at it over
my left shoulder. Brigitte was watching the lines of the wooded hills as
they began to outline themselves against the background of sky. As
the light flooded the copse and threw its halo over sleeping nature,
Brigitte's song became more gentle and more melancholy. Then she bent
over, and, throwing her arms around my neck, said:

"Do not think that I do not understand your heart or that I would
reproach you for what you make me suffer. It is not your fault, my
friend, if you have not the power to forget your past life; you have
loved me in good faith and I shall never regret, although I should die
for it, the day I gave myself to you. You thought you were entering upon
a new life, and that with me you would forget the women who had deceived
you. Alas! Octave, I used to smile at that precocious experience which
you said you had been through, and of which I heard you boast like a
child who knows nothing of life. I thought I had but to will it, and all
that there was that was good in your heart would come to your lips with
my first kiss. You, too, believed it, but we were both mistaken.

"Oh, my child! You have in your heart a plague that can not be cured;
that woman who deceived you, how you must have loved her! Yes, more
than you love me, alas! much more, since with all my poor love I can not
efface her image; she must have de