Ah, I saw her at last! It was she, there, bareheaded--her clear-cut face and golden tint. She was herself driving one of the waggons. A mission of importance had been entrusted to her. She held her whip upright in the air, but she loved animals too much to strike them. She was sitting very straight, holding her head proudly--how lovely were the lines of her throat! Why had I never noticed that before? I had never really seen her, so to speak--I must see her, I must see her! When she emerged from the shadow of the chestnuts the sun made a golden nimbus through her curly hair, that seemed to blend with the light, so that one could not tell where her curls began or the light ended. Beside her on the seat sat a little boy. They were talking to one another, laughing together. I saw her white teeth, but her glance, her golden glance, would she not turn it toward me? Nazzarena, Nazzarena, don’t you feel that I am here, so close to you, perched upon the wall, this wall just above you? She laughed, she was passing, she had passed. Now the roof of the _roulotte_ hid her. I had not called her, she had not looked at me. Was it possible that I no longer saw her face, nor her eyes, nor her golden colour? Is it possible that so tremendous a thing lasted only a tiny little minute? My heart was bursting in my breast, and I sat there motionless. Why did I not leap from the wall to the road? Why did I not run after her? Was I nailed to my place? Now I knew that she was lost to me; now I knew that she was always lost to me. Like the shepherd leading his flock to the mountain, whose chance word taught me to know desire, so she, only by going away, taught me the pain of love-partings. The pain of love-partings is fixed for me in that picture, a little boy astride of the wall of his ancestral home, and a little girl who in the morning light goes away along the road, goes away without turning her head.... How fast we hold to our memories! Long after, when I had become the master, the farmer came to ask permission to cut down that tree which had covered her with its shadow that last time. “Monsieur,” he urged, “the leaves are rusty, it is all rotten inside, it bears no more fruit, it is losing value every day, and before long it won’t bring anything.” I resisted his entreaties, alleging vague reasons. How make an honest farmer understand that one would preserve a dead chestnut tree merely because a little gipsy passed under it, so many years ago that one dares not count them? If there are inexplicable things, this surely is one. My man wouldn’t give up. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days it will fall and break down the wall.” I opine that a wall may be replaced. “Monsieur, Monsieur, one of these fine days it will crush some one passing by.” Come, that’s more serious. A passer-by can’t be made over again. Oh, well, let’s be reasonable. If it falls, it will crush nothing but my heart.