Beatrice think you
bear her animosity. Be civil and friendly to her whenever you meet; then
give her, as a wedding present, this belt and box of bonbons." So
saying, she handed him a beautiful belt composed of the skin of some
wild animal and fastened with a gold buckle, and a box of delicious pink
and white sugarplums. "Do not give her these things till the marriage
eve," she added, "and directly you have given them come and see
me--always observing the greatest secrecy." She then kissed him, and he
went away brimming over with passion for her, and longing feverishly for
the hour to arrive when he could be with her again.

All day and all night he thought of her--of her gay and sparkling
beauty, of her kisses and caresses, and the delightful coolness of her
thin and supple hands. His mad infatuation for her made him oblivious
to the taunts and jeers of the villagers, who seldom saw him without
making ribald allusion to the poem.

"There goes Sansfeu! alias Monsieur Grosnez!" they called out. "Why
don't you cut off your nose for a present to mademoiselle? She would
then have no need to buy a kitchen poker. Ha! ha! ha!" But their coarse
wit fell flat. Henri hardly heard it--all his thoughts, his burning
love, his unquenchable passion, were centred in Mere Maxim: in spirit he
was with her, alone with her, in the innermost recesses of the grim,
silent forest.

The marriage eve came; he handed Beatrice the presents, and ere she had
time to thank him--for the magnificence of the belt rendered her
momentarily speechless--he had flown from the house, and was hurrying as
fast as his legs could carry him to his tryst. The shadows of night were
already on the forest when he entered it; and the silence and solitude
of the place, the indistinct images of the trees, and their dismal
sighing, that seemed to foretell a storm, all combined to disturb his
fancy and raise strange spectres in his imagination. The shrill hooting
of an owl, as it rustled overhead, caused him an unprecedented shock,
and the great rush of blood to his head made him stagger and clutch
hold of the nearest object for support. He had barely recovered from
this alarm when his eyes almost started out of their sockets with fright
as he caught sight of a queer shape gliding silently from tree to tree;
and shortly afterwards he was again terrified--this time by a pale face,
whether of a human being or animal he could not say, peering down at him
from the gnarled an