CHAPTER I
THE terrace was in a ruinous state, overgrown with grass and brambles and acacias. The girl was leaning on the parapet, eating mulberries. She displayed her purple-stained hands and laughed. M. Hervart looked up:
"You've got a moustache as well," he said. "It looks very funny."
"But I don't want to look funny."
She walked to the little stream flowing close at hand, wetted her handkerchief and began wiping her mouth.
M. Hervart's eyes returned to his magnifying glass; he went on examining the daisy on which he had found two scarlet bugs so closely joined together that they seemed a single insect. They had gone to sleep in the midst of their love-making, and but for the quivering of their long antennae, you would have thought they were dead. M. Hervart would have liked to watch the ending of this little scene of passion; but it might go on for hours. He lost heart.
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