followed him as he walked away along the platform, and to all of which he instantly responded with his ribald vitality of coarse humour, that in its lusty ebullience was somehow like the intoxication of a sound, rich wine.
The boy saw him for an instant as he passed by the window of the compartment. He was a strong, stocky figure of a man, wearing leggings, with blue eyes, a brown moustache, and a solid face full of dark, rich colour. But even after he had disappeared from sight, the boy could hear him shouting to the other people, the sanguinary vitality of his instant, ribald—“Parbleu! Why not?”—a tone, a voice, a word that had evoked the past of France, in all the living textures of her earth and blood, and that, in future years, would bring this scene to life again—all of the faces, voices, lives of these people—as no other single thing could do.
At one of the little stations near Orléans a girl opened the door and climbed up into the compartment, which was already crowded. The country people, however, made room for her, crowding a little closer together on the wooden bench, and telling her to wedge herself in, with the rough but good-natured familiarity that characterized their conduct towards one another.
The girl sat down opposite the boy, beside the window, and put the market basket which she was carrying on her knees. She was cleanly but plainly dressed, a very lovely and seductive girl with a slender figure which seemed, however, already to have attained a languorous and sensual maturity. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat of blue that shaded her face, from which her eyes looked out with a luminous, troubling, and enigmatic clarity. She said nothing, but sat silently listening to the rude jovialities of the peasant people around her and to the ribald shouts and yells and roars of laughter that came from the nearby compartment.
All the time, the girl gazed directly at the young man, her lovely face traced faintly with a tender, enigmatic smile. It seemed certain to him that if he spoke to her she would not rebuff him. The sensation of an impossible good fortune, of some vague and unutterable happiness that was impending for him in this strange and unknown town, returned. Desire, slow, sultry, began to beat, throbbing in his pulses and through the conduits of his blood. He felt certain that the girl would not rebuff him if he spoke to her. And yet he did not speak.
