The works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 5. Guy de Maupassant
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it passed through his lips.
Daylight came, dim at first, then brighter, then pink, then radiant. Julien opened his eyes, yawned, stretched his arms, looked at his wife, smiled, and asked:
"Have you slept well, dear?"
She noticed with great surprise that he said "thou" to her now, and she replied:
"Oh, yes; have you?"
"I? Oh, very well indeed," he answered, turning and kissing her. Then he began to talk, telling her his plans, and using the word "economy" so often that Jeanne wondered. She listened to him without very well understanding what he said, and, as she looked at him, a thousand thoughts passed rapidly through her mind.
Eight o'clock struck.
"We must get up," he said; "we shall look stupid if we stay in bed late to-day;" and he got up first.
When he had finished dressing, he helped his wife in all the little details of her toilet, and would not hear of her calling Rosalie. As he was going out of the room, he stopped to say:
"You know, when we are by ourselves, we can call each other 'thee' and 'thou,' but we had better wait a little while before we talk like that before your parents. It will sound quite natural when we come back after our honeymoon." And then he went downstairs.
Jeanne did not go down till lunch-time; and the day passed exactly the same as usual, without anything extraordinary happening. There was only an extra man in the house.
V
Four days after the wedding, the berlin in which they were to travel to Marseilles arrived. After the anguish of that first night, Jeanne soon became accustomed to Julien's kisses and affectionate caresses, though their more intimate relations still revolted her. When they went away she had quite regained her gayety of heart, and the baroness was the only one who showed any emotion at the parting. Just as the carriage was going off, she put a heavy purse in her daughter's hand.
"That is for any little thing you may want to buy," she said.
Jeanne dropped it into her pocket and the carriage started.
"How much did your mother give you in that purse?" asked Julien in the evening.
Jeanne had forgotten all about it, so she turned it out on her knees, and found there were two thousand francs in gold.
"What a lot of things I shall be able to buy!" she cried, clapping her hands.
At the end of a week they arrived at Marseilles, where the heat was terrible, and the next day they embarked on the Roi Louis, the little packet-boat which calls at Ajaccio on its way to Naples, and started for Corsica. It seemed to Jeanne as if she were in a trance which yet left her the full possession of all her senses, and she could hardly believe she was really going to Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon, with its wild undergrowth, its bandits, and its mountains. She and her husband stood side by side on the deck of the boat watching the cliffs of Provence fly past. Overhead was a bright blue sky, and the waves seemed to be getting thicker and firmer under the burning heat of the sun.
"Do you remember when we went to Etretat in old Lastique's boat?" asked Jeanne; and, instead of answering her, Julien dropped a kiss right on her ear.
The steamer's paddles churned up the sea, and behind the boat, as far as the eye could reach, lay a long foaming track where the troubled waves frothed like champagne. All at once an immense dolphin leapt out of the water a few fathoms ahead, and then dived in again head foremost. It startled Jeanne, and she threw herself in Julien's arms with a little cry of fear; then she laughed at her terror, and watched for the reappearance of the enormous fish. In a few seconds up it came again, like a huge mechanical toy; then it dived again, and again disappeared; then came two more, then three, then six, which gamboled round the boat, and seemed to be escorting their large wooden brother with the iron fins. Sometimes they were on the left of the boat, sometimes on the right, and, one following the other in a kind of game, they would leap into the air, describe a curve, and replunge into the sea one after the other. Jeanne clapped her hands, delighted at each reappearance of the big, pliant fish, and felt a childish enjoyment in watching them. Suddenly they disappeared, rose to the surface a long way out to sea, then disappeared for good, and Jeanne felt quite sorry when they went away.
The calm, mild, radiant evening drew on; there was not a breath of air to cause the smallest ripple on the sea; the sun was slowly sinking towards that part of the horizon beyond which lay the land of burning heat, Africa, whose glow could almost be felt across the ocean; then, when the sun had quite disappeared, a cool breath of wind, so faint that it could not be called a breeze, came over the sea. There were all the horrible smells of a packet-boat in their cabin, so Jeanne and Julien wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down side by side on deck. Julien went to sleep directly, but Jeanne lay looking up at the host of stars which sparkled with so bright and clear a light in this soft Southern sky; then the monotonous noise of the engines made her drowsy, and at last she fell asleep. In the morning she was awakened by the voices of the sailors cleaning the boat, and she aroused her husband and got up. The sea was still all around them, but straight ahead something gray could be faintly seen in the dawn; it looked like a bank of strange-shaped clouds, pointed and jagged, lying on the waves. This vague outline gradually became more distinct, until, standing out against the brightening sky, a long line of mountain-peaks could be seen. It was Corsica, hidden behind a light veil of mist.
The sun rose, throwing black shadows around and below every prominence, and each peak had a crown of light, while all the rest of the island remained enveloped in mist.
The captain, a little elderly man, bronzed, withered, and toughened by the rough salt winds, came up on deck.
"Can you smell my lady over there?" he asked Jeanne, in a voice that thirty years of command, and shouting above the noise of the wind, had made hoarse.
She had indeed noticed a strong, peculiar odor of herbs and aromatic plants.
"It's Corsica that smells like that, madame," went on the captain. "She has a perfumed breath, just like a pretty woman. I am a Corsican, and I should know that smell five miles off, if I'd been away twenty years. Over there, at St. Helena, I hear he is always speaking of the perfume of his country; he belongs to my family."
And the captain took off his hat and saluted Corsica, and then, looking across the ocean, he saluted the great emperor who was a prisoner on that far-away isle, and Jeanne's heart was touched by this simple action. Then the sailor pointed towards the horizon.
"There are the Sanguinaires," he said.
Julien had his arm round his wife's waist, and they both strained their eyes to see what the captain was pointing out. As last they saw some pointed rocks that the boat rounded before entering a large, calm bay, surrounded by high mountains, whose steep sides looked as though they were covered with moss.
"That is the undergrowth," said the captain, pointing out this verdure.
The circle of mountains seemed to close in behind the boat as she slowly steamed across the azure water which was so transparent that in places the bottom could be seen. Ajaccio came in sight; it was a white town at the foot of the mountains, with a few small Italian boats lying at anchor in the harbor, and four or five row-boats came beside the Roi Louis to take off the passengers. Julien, who was looking after the luggage, asked his wife in a low tone:
"A franc is enough, isn't it, to give the steward?"
The whole week he had been constantly asking her this question which she hated.
"When you don't know what is enough, give too much," she answered, a little impatiently.
He haggled with every one, landlords and hotel-waiters, cabmen and shopmen, and when he had obtained the reduction he wanted, he would rub his hands, and say to Jeanne: "I don't like to be robbed." She trembled when the bills were brought, for she knew beforehand the remarks he would make on each item, and felt ashamed of his bargaining; and when she saw the scornful look of the servants as her husband left his small fee in their hands, she blushed to the roots of her hair. Of course he had a discussion with the boatmen who took them ashore.
The first tree she saw on landing was a palm, which