Somewhat sad and perplexed, I wandered about until dinner time, and I entered the farm house just when the soup had been served up.
I sat down at the table, as usual. Miss Harriet was there, munching away solemnly, without speaking to anyone, without even lifting eyes. She wore, however, her usual expression, both of countenance and manner.
I waited, patiently, till the meal had been finished, when, turning towards the landlady I said: "See here, Madame Lecacheur, it will not be long now before I shall have to take my leave of you."
The good woman, at once surprised and troubled, replied in a quivering voice: "My dear sir, what is it I have just heard you say? you are going to leave us, after I have become so much accustomed to you?"
I regarded Miss Harriet from the corner of my eye. Her countenance did not change in the least; but the under-servant came towards me with eyes wide open. She was a fat girl, of about eighteen years of age, rosy, fresh, as strong as a horse, yet possessing the rare attribute in one in her position--she was very neat and clean. I had embraced her at odd times, in out of the way corners, in the manner of a mountain guide, nothing more.
The dinner being at length over, I went to smoke my pipe under the apple trees, walking up and down at my ease, from one end of the court to the other. All the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange discovery of the morning, that grotesque love and passionate attachment for me, the recollections which that revelation had suddenly called up, recollections at once charming and perplexing, perhaps, also, that look which the servant had cast on me at the announcement of my departure--all these things, mixed up and combined, put me now in a jolly humor of body, recalling the tickling sensation of kisses on the lips, and in the veins, something which urged me on to commit some folly.
Night having come on, casting its dark shadows under the trees, I descried Céleste, who had gone to shut the hen coops, at the other end of the enclosure. I darted towards her, running so noiselessly that she heard nothing, and as she got up from closing the small traps by which the chickens got in and out, I clasped her in my arms and rained on her coarse, fat face a shower of kisses. She made a struggle, laughing all the same, as she was accustomed to do in such circumstances. Wherefore did I suddenly loose my grip of her? Why did I at once experience a shock? What was it that I heard behind me?