Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/86

62 of roses and the sweet beer. Half-somnambulant, well-nigh swooning from pure felicity, she takes her place with the others in the "Roseland" for the journey homewards, and the chorus ever-more repeated contributes to her half-sleepy condition.

However, across the country, the chariots, roofed over with white canvas, and festooned with flowers, roll along more slowly. The valets and maid-servants hear a rustle and feel something akin to a light equinoctial breeze run along their necks. It is the warm breath of the couples behind them leaning in their direction away on the benches at the back. They sigh; they pant! The little girl falls at last asleep, stupefied by the hot, amorous atmosphere, much more heady than the scent of the hay-fields.

Nobody offers to accompany her home, yet it must surely be time for her to descend from the waggon, and start to get back home, for the others have no thoughts yet of return, and the "Roseland" is still as far from its last stage of pilgrimage as from its last drinking chapel. For, truth to tell, the band of gay sparks know well enough that the real pleasure is now only about to commence.