She would have adored him without knowing him, like a Prince Charming come from afar to expire with love beneath her window. But, stupid oaf that he was, he had broken the spell. Now she knew he was as thickset as an ox at the plough, and never again would she like his music!

So it turned out: he repeatedly played his tenderest tunes, chose warm nights balmy with the odour of the foliage: it was all in vain, Thérèse wouldn’t listen, didn’t hear. She came and went in her room, leaned at the window as if he hadn’t been right opposite, expressing his love in humble little notes. One day, she even exclaimed: ‘Good God, that out-of-tune flute is getting on my nerves!’

Then, in despair, he flung his flute into the back of a drawer and played no more.

It has to be said that young Colombel also made fun of Julien. One day, as he was going to his office, he had seen Julien at his window, studying one of his pieces, and every time he passed by on the square, he laughed maliciously. Julien knew that the lawyer’s clerk received invitations to the Marsanne house, and it broke his heart – not that he was jealous of that little pipsqueak, but because he would have given his right arm to be there for an hour in his place. The young man’s mother, Françoise, who had been with the family for years, now looked after Thérèse, whom she had nursed. The noble lady and the little peasant boy had, once upon a time, grown up together, and it seemed natural for them to have kept up something of their old camaraderie. This did not make Julien suffer any the less, however, when he met Colombel in the street, with his pinched, thin-lipped smile. His revulsion grew the day he realised that the little pipsqueak was not bad looking: he had a round head like a cat’s, but finely featured, impishly attractive, with green eyes and a sparse beard curling down his snug little chin. Ah! if only he could have got him up against the wall of one of the ramparts, how he would have made him pay dearly for the happiness he enjoyed in seeing Thérèse at her home!

A year went by. Julien was deeply unhappy. He now lived entirely for Thérèse. His heart was imprisoned in that glacial grand house, opposite which he was dying away for clumsiness and love. As soon as he had a free moment, he would spend it there, his eyes fastened to the stretch of grey wall, on which he knew every last patch of moss. He had done all he could, for months on end, to keep his eyes sharp and his ears pricked, he still knew nothing of the inner life of that solemn house into which he projected his whole being. Vague noises, flickers of light left him feeling perplexed. Were they throwing a party, or had someone died? He didn’t know, life was on the other side of the house. He would dream as his fancy took him, depending on his moods, grave or gay: Thérèse and Colombel romping noisily, the girl going for a stroll beneath the chestnut trees, balls in which she was twirled in the dancers’ arms, sudden occasions of grief that would lead her to sit weeping in dark rooms. Or perhaps all he heard were the light footsteps of the Marquis and Marquise trotting like mice across the old polished floors. And, in his ignorance, he always saw only one window, Thérèse’s, piercing that mysterious wall. The girl would appear there, every day, more silent than the stones, but her appearance never gave him the slightest grounds for hope. She threw him into consternation, so unknown and distant did she remain.

Julien’s times of greatest happiness came when the window stayed open. Then he could see into the corners of her room, while she was out. It took him six months to discover that the bed was on the left, an alcove bed, with pink silk curtains. Then, after another six months, he realised that opposite the bed was a Louis-Quinze chest of drawers topped by a mirror in a china frame. Opposite that, he could make out the white marble fireplace. This bedroom was the paradise he dreamt of.

His love did not spare him immense struggles. He would hide away for weeks, ashamed at his ugliness.