with her work; but when she came close, all at once she turned her head and shot a look at me. Ouch!--I can still feel the hook in my gills, and the net around me. “A woman’s eye catches the fly,” as the proverb has it. I struggled of course, but what was the use? There was the silly fly on the wall, with his wings stuck together. She paid no more attention to me, and squatted down on her heels to plant her cabbage, but from time to time she stole a look to make sure that her prey was still there. There was no use in my saying to myself, “She is trying to make a fool of you, my lad!” I could see her snickering, and that made me grin too:--what an ass I must have looked! At last up she jumped, ran across the garden, came back, stuck her feet wide apart over the edge of the border, caught at a floating spray of bloom, and said, waving her arm at me, “Another good fellow gone!” As she spoke she thrust her flower in the front of her dress. “That’s where I should like to be,” said I, for though I may have been a fool at that age, I was no laggard in an affair of this kind. She put her arms akimbo and burst out laughing. “Not for the likes of you,” cried she. “Greedy!”... That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the pretty gardener Belette, on a warm August evening. The nickname of “Weasel” suited her long body, with the small head and pointed nose, and wide prominent mouth; just the mouth to crack nuts and hearts, and made too for laughter. Oh, her eyes! dark blue like thunder-clouds, and her wildcat smiling lips!--What chance had the poor prey, once in her toils? I did very little work after this, but spent most of my time gawking over the wall, till Master Lagneau would come behind, and dislodge me with a vigorous kick. Belette got tired of me sometimes, and would tell me to stop staring at her and get out; but I often told her, with a wink, that you cannot know either a woman or a melon just by looking. How much I should have liked to try a slice of her! But perhaps another fruit would have served my turn then equally well; for I was at the age when a man could fall in love with the eleven thousand virgins. Did I love Belette really?--there are times when a boy like me will love anybody;--but no, Breugnon, that is all humbug, and you know it; your first love is the real article, your fate, marked out for you by the stars in their courses, and it is perhaps because I missed my destiny that my whole life long I have gone unsatisfied.