traces of tears wet as yet, for all this while, I thought,
Juliette was passing her time in crying. Alas!
Nothing came from her. Sometimes there was a letter
from Lirat, admirable, fatherly in its contents, which
bored me. With heavy heart, feeling more than ever
the crushing weight of loneliness, my mind excited
by a thousand projects, one more foolish than the
other, I would return to my dune. From this shortlived
hope I would pass to keenest sorrow, and the
day would pass in invoking Juliette, in calling her,
in begging for her from the pale flowers on the sands,
from the foam of the waves, from all this insensible
nature about me which denied her to me and which
ever revealed her indistinct image, marred by the
kisses of everybody.
"Juliette! Juliette!"
One day, on the jetty, I met a young lady in the company of an old gentleman. Tall, slender, she looked pretty under her veil of white gauze which covered her face and whose ends, tied at the back of her grey felt hat, fluttered in the wind. Her graceful and supple movements resembled those of Juliette. Indeed in the way she carried her head, in the delicate curves of her waist line, in the way her arms fell, in the ruffling of her dress in the air, I recognized something of Juliette. I looked at her with emotion and two tears rolled down my cheeks. She walked to the end of the pier. I sat down on the parapet and, pensive and fascinated, followed the silhouette of the young lady. As she was moving away, I felt affected more and more. . . . Why had I not known her before I met the other one? I would have loved her perhaps! A young girl who has never felt the impure breath of man upon her, whose ears are chaste, whose lips have never known lewd kisses, what a joy it would be to love her, to love her as angels do!
