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Rh While I was thinking:

"Perhaps she is dressing now. Maybe she is still sleeping, worn out during the night."

I used to go out, walk through the village and seat myself on a stump on the Quimper road, at the foot of a long acclivity, waiting for the postman to arrive. The road, laid out in the midst of rocks, is flanked on one side by a long embankment topped by fir trees, on the other side it dominates a small arm of the sea, which winds round the heath, bare and flat, in the midst of which puddles are shining. Here and there cones of grey rock rise up in the air; a few pines spread their blue crowns in the foggy atmosphere. Over my head, ravens never cease flying, strung out in a black and endless line, hastening toward I know not what voracious feasts, and the wind brings the sad tinkling of bells hung on the necks of the scattered cows, grazing upon the niggardly grass of the heath.

As soon as I would see two little white horses and a coach with a yellow body descending the hillside in the clatter of old iron and bells, my heart would start beating faster. . . "There is perhaps a letter from her in that coach!" I would say to myself. And that old, dilapidated vehicle creaking on its springs appeared to me more splendid than a royal carriage, and the driver with his crush hat and his red face looked to me like a deliverer of some kind. How could Juliette write to me when she did not know where I was? But I was still hoping for a miracle! Then I would go back to the village, walking hastily, assuring myself by a succession of irrefutable arguments, that on that day I was going to get a long letter, in which Juliette would let me know of her coming to me, and I was reading in advance, her tender words, her passionate phrases, her repentance; on the paper I saw