she should be offended, and he showed in the
expression of his face so mute a prayer of submission that the next day
she pardoned him, and opened her window at the usual hour.

But although expectation was delightful, it was not sufficient for him,
and he began again. Now he seemed to be everywhere at once: he filled
the Clos-Marie with his restlessness; he came out from behind every
tree; he appeared above every bunch of brambles. Like the wood-pigeons
of the great elms in the Bishop's garden, he seemed to have his
habitation between two branches in the environs. The Chevrotte was an
excuse for his passing entire days there, on its willowy banks, bending
over the stream, in which he seemed to be watching the floating of the
clouds.

One day she saw that he had climbed up on the ruins of the old mill,
and was standing on the framework of a shed, looking happy to have thus
approached her a little, in his regret at not being able to fly even so
far as her shoulder.

Another day she stifled a slight scream as she saw him far above her,
leaning on an ornamented balustrade of the Cathedral, on the roof of the
chapels of the choir, which formed a terrace. In what way could he have
reached this gallery, the door of which was always fastened, and whose
key no one had a right to touch but the beadle? Then again, a little
later on, how was it that she should find him up in the air among the
flying buttresses of the nave and the pinnacles of the piers? From these
heights he could look into every part of her chamber, as the swallows
who, flying from point to point among the spires, saw everything that
was therein, without her having the idea of hiding herself from them.
But a human eye was different, and from that day she shut herself up
more, and an ever-increasing trouble came to her at the thought that her
privacy was being intruded upon, and that she was no longer alone in
the atmosphere of adoration that surrounded her. If she were really not
impatient, why was it that her heart beat so strongly, like the bell of
the clock-tower on great festivals?

Three days passed without Angelique showing herself, so alarmed was she
by the increasing boldness of Felicien. She vowed in her mind that she
would never see him again, and wound herself up to such a degree of
resentment, that she thought she hated him. But he had given her his
feverishness. She could not keep still, and the slightest pretext was
enough for an excuse to leave