Shall I confess to you a singular fancy that came upon me, a childish
revelation, as it were, of poetic love from out of the chaos of my
ignorance? The moon was lighting up everything so plainly that I could
distinguish the tiniest flowers in the grass. A little meadow daisy
seemed to me so beautiful with its golden calyx full of diamonds of
dew and its white collaret fringed with purple, that I plucked it, and
covered it with kisses, and cried in a sort of delirious intoxication:
"It is you, Edmee! Yes, it is you! Ah, you no longer shun me!"
But what was my confusion when, on rising, I found there had been a
witness of my folly. Patience was standing before me.
I was so angry at having been surprised in such a fit of extravagance
that, from a remnant of the Hamstringer instinct, I immediately felt
for a knife in my belt; but neither belt nor knife was there. My silk
waistcoat with its pocket reminded me that I was doomed to cut no more
throats. Patience smiled.
"Well, well! What is the matter?" said the anchorite, in a calm and
kindly tone. "Do you imagine that I don't know perfectly well how things
stand? I am not so simple but that I can reason; I am not so old but
that I can see. Who is it that makes the branches of my yew shake
whenever the holy maiden is sitting at my door? Who is it that follows
us like a young wolf with measured steps through the copse when I take
the lovely child to her father? And what harm is there in it? You are
both young; you are both handsome; you are of the same family; and, if
you chose, you might become a noble and honest man as she is a noble and
honest girl.
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