"_Mon Dieu!_ there he is!" "He has become tiresome," said Aristide. She rose, displaying to its full advantage her supple and stately figure. She had a queenly poise of the head. Aristide contemplated her with the frankest admiration. "One would say Juno was walking the earth again." Although Zette had never heard of Juno, and was as miserable and heavy hearted a woman as dwelt in Nîmes, a flush of pleasure rose to her cheeks. She too was a child of the South, and female children of the South love to be admired, no matter how frankly. I have heard of Daughters of the Snows not quite averse to it. She sighed. "I must go now, monsieur. He must not find me here with you. I am suffering enough already from his reproaches. Ah! it is unjust--unjust!" she cried, clenching her hands, while the tears again started into her eyes, and the corners of her pretty lips twitched with pain. "Indeed," she added, "I know it has been wrong of me to talk to you like this. But _que voulez-vous?_ It was not my fault. Adieu, monsieur." At the sight of her standing before him in her woeful beauty, Aristide's pulses throbbed. "It is not adieu--it is _au revoir_, Mme. Zette," he cried. She protested tearfully. It was farewell. Aristide darted to his rejected hat and clapped it on the back of his head. He joined her and swore that he would see her again. It was not Aristide Pujol who would allow her to be rent in pieces by the jaws of that crocodile, M. Bocardon. Faith, he would defend her to the last drop of his blood. He would do all manner of gasconading things. "But what can you do, my poor M. Pujol?" she asked. "You will see," he replied. They parted. He watched her until she became a speck and, having joined the other speck, her husband, passed out of sight. Then he set out through the burning gardens towards the Hôtel du Luxembourg, at the other end of the town. Aristide had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with Provençal fury. He had done the same thing a hundred times before; but this, he told himself, was the _coup de foudre_--the thunderbolt. The beautiful Arlésienne filled his brain and his senses. Nothing else in the wide world mattered. Nothing else in the wide world occupied his mind. He sped through the hot streets like a meteor in human form. A stout man, sipping syrup and water in the cool beneath the awning of the Café de la Bourse, rose, looked wonderingly after him, and resumed his seat, wiping a perspiring brow.