the hero of a ballad, German or Russian, I forget which, her sleep
seemed to her the happy life; her waking hours a bad dream. She had
just had her only pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of
her childhood had sung their melodious ditties in her soul. The first
couplet was heard in a dream; the second made her spring out of bed;
at the third, she doubted her ears,--the sorrowful are all disciples
of Saint Thomas; but when the fourth was sung, standing in her
night-gown with bare feet by the window, she recognized Brigaut, the
companion of her childhood. Ah, yes! it was truly the well-known
square jacket with the bobtails, the pockets of which stuck out at the
hips,--the jacket of blue cloth which is classic in Brittany; there,
too, were the waistcoat of printed cotton, the linen shirt fastened by
a gold heart, the large rolling collar, the earrings, the stout shoes,
the trousers of blue-gray drilling unevenly colored by the various
lengths of the warp,--in short, all those humble, strong, and durable
things which make the apparel of the Breton peasantry. The big buttons
of white horn which fastened the jacket made the girl's heart beat.
When she saw the bunch of broom her eyes filled with tears; then a
dreadful fear drove back into her heart the happy memories that were
budding there. She thought her cousin sleeping in the room beneath her
might have heard the noise she made in jumping out of bed and running
to the window. The fear was just; the old maid was coming, and she
made Brigaut the terrified sign which the lad obeyed without the least
understanding it. Such instinctive submission to a girl's bidding
shows one of those innocent and absolute affections which appear from
century to century on this earth, where they blossom, like the aloes
of Isola Bella, twice or thrice in a hundred years. Whoever had seen
the lad as he ran away would have loved the ingenuous chivalry of his
most ingenuous feeling.