When the weather was beautiful, she jumped over this low window-sill to wait for him outside, and their long meetings, almost without words, occurred on the garden bench. Between them there were not even those continual whisperings familiar to lovers; no, there were rather silences. At first they did not dare to talk, for fear of being discovered, for the least murmurs of voices at night are heard. And then, as nothing new threatened their lives, what need had they to talk? What could they have said which would have been better than the long contact of their joined hands and of their heads resting against each other? The possibility of being surprised kept them often on the alert, in an anxiety which made more delicious afterward the moments when they forgot themselves more, their confidence having returned.--Nobody frightened them as much as Arrochkoa, a smart, nocturnal prowler himself, and always so well-informed about the goings and comings of Ramuntcho--In spite of his indulgence, what would he do, if he discovered them?-- Oh, the old stone benches, under branches, in front of the doors of isolated houses, when fall the lukewarm nights of spring!--Theirs was a real lovers' hiding place, and there was for them, every night, a music, for, in all the stones of the neighbors' wall lived those singing tree-toads, beasts of the south, which, as soon as night fell, gave from moment to moment a little, brief note, discreet, odd, having the tone of a crystal bell and of a child's throat. Something similar might be produced by touching here and there, without ever resting on them, the scales of an organ with a celestial voice. There were tree-toads everywhere, responding to one another in different tones; even those which were under their bench, close by them, reassured by their immobility, sang also from time to time; then that little sound, brusque and soft, so near, made them start and smile. All the exquisite, surrounding obscurity was animated by that music, which continued in the distance, in the mystery of the leaves and of the stones, in the depths of all the small, black holes of rocks or walls; it seemed like chivies in miniature, or rather, a sort of frail concert somewhat mocking--oh! not very mocking, and without any maliciousness--led timidly by inoffensive gnomes. And this made the night more living and more loving-- After the intoxicated audacities of the first nights, fright took a stronger hold of them, and, when one of them had something special to say, one led the other by the hand without talking; this meant that they had to walk softly, softly, like marauding cats, to an alley behind the house where they could talk without fear. “Where shall we live, Gracieuse?” asked Ramuntcho one night. “At your house, I had thought.” “Ah! yes, so thought I--only I thought it would make you sad to be so far from the parish, from the church and the square--” “Oh--with you, I could find anything sad?--”