And at night,
especially when the mill slept, without a light at any of its windows,
there was nothing of more dreamy, more gentle charm.
"Why!" remarked Mathieu, lowering his voice, "there is somebody under the
willows, beside the water. I heard a slight noise."
"Yes, I know," replied Marianne with tender gayety. "It must be the young
couple who settled themselves in the little house yonder a fortnight ago.
You know whom I mean--Madame Angelin, that schoolmate of Constance's."
The Angelins, who had become their neighbors, interested the Froments.
The wife was of the same age as Marianne, tall, dark, with fine hair and
fine eyes, radiant with continual joy, and fond of pleasure. And the
husband was of the same age as Mathieu, a handsome fellow, very much in
love, with moustaches waving in the wind, and the joyous spirits of a
musketeer. They had married with sudden passion for one another, having
between them an income of some ten thousand francs a year, which the
husband, a fan painter with a pretty talent, might have doubled had it
not been for the spirit of amorous idleness into which his marriage had
thrown him. And that spring-time they had sought a refuge in that desert
of Janville, that they might love freely, passionately, in the midst of
nature.
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