turned towards him with a trusting smile. He took her by the hands, but almost without looking at her, as though scrutinising things absent, or at a distance, even closing his eyes to fathom these baffling scenes; and pushed her, unresisting, without a word, towards the bed which had just been remade. She, quivering and ravished, continued to smile, and surrendered herself as though to a new vagabond.
Why did he recollect, before the spasm, the accordion music in the twilight, across the lilac-flowers in bloom and the youthful villagers putting on their blue smocks over their faded working clothes? Was it because these country lads might have come from his mistress's village? He gloried to be in touch through her with an entire rustic humanity; it was the strength, the savour, the rough and carnal gesture, the fleshly passion redolent of the soil, which he loved in Blandine on this nuptial evening. This time, as well as those that followed, he possessed her in the thought of the desires which she would have excited in sturdy rural labourers, who might embrace her in one of those impetuous, savage onslaughts, smoking hot, with clothes all undone and
