"Listen!" he said; "the nightingales are singing during the day, so the
female birds must be sitting."

A nightingale! She had never heard one before, and the idea of listening
to one roused visions of poetic tenderness in her heart. A nightingale!
That is to say, the invisible witness of her love trysts which Juliet
invoked on her balcony; that celestial music which it attuned to human
kisses, that eternal inspirer of all those languorous romances which open
an ideal sky to all the poor little tender hearts of sensitive girls!

She was going to hear a nightingale.

"We must not make a noise," her companion said, "and then we can go into
the wood, and sit down close beside it."

The boat seemed to glide. They saw the trees on the island, the banks of
which were so low that they could look into the depths of the thickets.
They stopped, he made the boat fast, Henriette took hold of Henri's arm,
and they went beneath the trees.

"Stoop," he said, so she stooped down, and they went into an inextricable
thicket of creepers, leaves and reed grass, which formed an
undiscoverable retreat, and which the young man laughingly called "his
private room."

Just above their heads, perched in one of the trees which hid them, the
bird was still singing. He uttered trills and roulades, and then loud,
vibrating notes that filled the air and seemed to lose themselves on the
horizon, across the level country, through that burning silence which
weighed upon the whole landscape. They did not speak for fear of