"I was not twenty-one years old when I was married; but I had already loved, or thought that I loved. I was impulsive and passionate. I come from a region where women do not know how to conceal their sentiments, where they sometimes anticipate a declaration; and in my case, 'the accent of the province is in the heart as well as in the language,' as La Rochefoucauld says. At eighteen, I fell in love with a very comely youth--at eighteen, a girl thinks a good deal of physical beauty; and that is natural enough, for we pass judgment first of all on what we see. My rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, blue-eyed young man was two years older than I; but he had the manner of a sixteen-year-old schoolboy: awkward, shy, embarrassed; he did not know what to say to me, and was content to stare at me; but, as his eyes were fine, I considered myself fortunate in having them always fastened on my face. 'He loves me,' I said to myself; 'he must be very much in love with me, to stand in rapt contemplation before me as he does.'--Still, I should not have been sorry to hear a word or two of love from his lips. I tried to furnish him with opportunities to be alone with me; I thought that he would finally speak out. But Gabriel--his name was Gabriel--didn't know enough to seize an opportunity. When he came, and I had a girl friend with me, I would motion to her to leave us for a moment; young girls understand each other very readily. But when she had invented some excuse for leaving the room, Gabriel always felt called upon to take his hat and go with her. You can judge whether I used to fret and fume. But one day, when Gabriel started off on the heels of a peddler I had just dismissed, I detained him by his coat tails, and he was compelled to remain; which he did, blushing to the whites of his eyes, and saying: "'Have I got anything on my back, mademoiselle?' "'No, monsieur, there's nothing on your back, but I want to talk with you; that's why I detained you. I was driven to resort to this method, because you always run away as soon as I am alone.' "Gabriel looked at the floor, playing with a little bamboo cane that he usually carried. I invited him to sit down on a sofa beside me; he did so, but moved as far away from me as possible, and continued to keep his eyes averted, gazing sometimes at the ferrule and sometimes at the head of his stick. "'Monsieur Gabriel,' I cried at last, irritated by his silence, 'haven't you anything to say to me? Do look at me, at least; before to-day, when you were not speaking, you always had your eyes on me; why, pray, do you gaze at your cane all the time to-day? Come, monsieur, look up, and tell me just what you're thinking about; and come a little nearer; anybody would think you were afraid of me, that I was scolding you.' "Gabriel made up his mind at last to look at me and to move a little nearer. He was as red as a cherry. He acted like a schoolboy who is afraid of the birch; but he was such a handsome boy!