Shortly afterwards she fell into the heavy slumber that usually
terminated these attacks. On the next day, she seemed to have forgotten
everything. She never again spoke to Silvère of the morning on which
she had found him with a sweetheart behind the wall.
The young people did not see each other for a couple of days. When
Miette ventured to return to the well, they resolved not to recommence
the pranks which had upset aunt Dide. However, the meeting which had
been so strangely interrupted had filled them with a keen desire to
meet again in some happy solitude. Weary of the delights afforded by
the well, and unwilling to vex aunt Dide by seeing Miette again on the
other side of the wall, Silvère begged the girl to meet him somewhere
else. She required but little pressing; she received the proposal with
the willing smile of a frolicsome lass who has no thought of evil. What
made her smile was the idea of outwitting that spy of a Justin. When
the lovers had come to agreement, they discussed at length the choice
of a favourable spot. Silvère proposed the most impossible
trysting-places. He planned regular journeys, and even suggested
meeting the young girl at midnight in the barns of the Jas-Meiffren.
Miette, who was much more practical, shrugged her shoulders, declaring
she would try to think of some spot. On the morrow, she tarried but a
minute at the well, just time enough to smile at Silvère and tell him
to be at the far end of the Aire Saint-Mittre at about ten o’clock in
the evening. One may be sure that the young man was punctual. All day
long Miette’s choice had puzzled him, and his curiosity increased when
he found himself in the narrow lane formed by the piles of planks at
the end of the plot of ground. “She will come this way,” he said to
himself, looking along the road to Nice. But he suddenly heard a loud
shaking of boughs behind the wall, and saw a laughing head, with
tumbled hair, appear above the coping, whilst a joyous voice called
out: “It’s me!”
And it was, in fact, Miette, who had climbed like an urchin up one of
the mulberry-trees, which even nowadays still border the boundary of
the Jas-Meiffren. In a couple of leaps she reached the tombstone, half
buried in the corner at the end of the lane. Silvère watched her
descend with delight and surprise, without even thinking of helping
her. As soon as she had alighted, however, he took both her hands in
his, and said: “How nimble you are!—you climb better than I do.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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