Gulf of
Sagone.

As evening was drawing on they went through Cargese, the Greek village
founded so long ago by fugitives driven from their country. Round a
fountain was a group of tall, handsome and particularly graceful girls,
with well formed hips, long hands, and slender waists; Julien cried
"Good-night" to them, and they answered him in the musical tongue of
their ancestors. When they got to Piana they had to ask for hospitality
quite in the way of the middle ages, and Jeanne trembled with joy as
they waited for the door to open in answer to Julien's knock. Oh, that
was a journey! There they did indeed meet with adventures!

They had happened to appeal to a young couple who received them as the
patriarch received the messenger of God, and they slept on a straw
mattress in an old house whose woodwork was so full of worms that it
seemed alive. At sunrise they started off again, and soon they stopped
opposite a regular forest of crimson rocks; there were peaks, columns,
and steeples, all marvelously sculptured by time and the sea. Thin,
round, twisted, crooked, and fantastic, these wonderful rocks nine
hundred feet high, looked like trees, plants, animals, monuments, men,
monks in their cassocks, horned demons and huge birds, such as one sees
in a nightmare, the whole forming a monstrous tribe which seemed to have
been petrified by some eccentric god.

Jeanne could not speak, her heart was too full, but she took Julien's
hand and pressed it, feeling that she must love something or some one
before all this beauty; and then, leaving this confusion of forms, they
came upon another bay surrounded by a wall of blood-red granite, which
cast crimson reflections into the blue sea. Jeanne exclaimed, "Oh,
Julien!" and that was all she could say; a great lump came in her throat
and two tears ran down her cheeks. Julien looked at her in astonishment.

"What is it, my pet?" he asked.

She dried her eyes, smiled, and said in a voice that still trembled a
little. "Oh, it's nothing, I suppose I am nervous. I am so happy that
the least thing upsets me."

He could not understand this nervousness; he despised the hysterical
excitement to which women give way and the joy or despair into which
they are cast by a mere sensation, and he thought her tears absurd. He
glanced at the bad road.

"You had better look after your horse," he said.

They went down by a nearly impassable road, then turning to the right,
proceeded along the g