Croniamantal was, at this time, a handsome youth, thin and straight. The girls at the village fêtes, when he touched them lightly, would stifle little bursts of laughter and redden, lowering their eyes under his regard. Habituated to poetic forms, his mind thought of love as a conquest. Thoughts of Boccacio, his natural daring, his education, everything disposed him to take the final step. One May day, he went out for a long ride. It was morning, everything was still fresh. The dew hung from the flowers of the hedges, and on either side of the road stretched the fields of olive trees whose gray leaves trembled gently in the sea breeze and compared agreeably with the blue sky. He arrived at a place where the road was being mended. The road menders, handsome boys in bright colored caps, worked lazily, singing the while, and stopping occasionally to drink from their flasks. Croniamantal thought that these handsome fellows had sweethearts. It is thus that they call a lover in that country. The boys say "my sweetheart," the girls, "my sweetheart," and in fact they are both sweet in that lovely country. Croniamantal's heart leaped and his whole being, exalted by the springtime and the riding, cried for love. At a turn in the road, an apparition increased his trouble. He arrived close to a little bridge thrown across a river which cut the road. The place was isolated, and across the hedges and the trunks of poplars, he saw two beautiful girls bathing, quite naked. One was in the water and held herself up by a branch. He admired her brown arms and abundant beauties, hardly concealed by the water. The other, standing on the bank, dried herself after her bath and exposed ravishing lines and graces which inflamed the heart of Croniamantal; he decided to join them and mingle in their pleasures. Unluckily, he perceived in the branches of a neighboring tree two youths spying on this prey. Holding their breath and watching the least movements of the bathers, they did not see the equestrian, who, laughing uproariously, threw his horse into a gallop and cried aloud as he crossed the little bridge.