"The wolves didn't wound you on the mountain, did they?" he asked playfully. "You 
haven't become a werewolf, have you, Monsieur, unbeknownst to the rest of us?" He stroked 
the furred edge of the velvet cloak I still had over my shoulders. "Remember what the 
good father said, that they had burnt a good number of werewolves in those times. They 
were a regular menace."
  
  I laughed.
  
  "If I turn into a wolf," I answered, "I can tell you this much. I won't hang around 
here to kill the children. I'll get away from this miserable little hellhole of a village 
where they still terrify little boys with tales of burning witches. I'll get on the road 
to Paris and never stop till I see her ramparts."
  
  "And you'll find Paris is a miserable hellhole," he said. "Where they break the bones 
of thieves on the wheel for the vulgar crowds in the place de Greve."
  
  "No," I said. "I'll see a splendid city where great ideas are born in the minds of the 
populace, ideas that go forth to illuminate the darkened comers of this world."
  
  "Ah, you are a dreamer!" he said, but he was delighted. He was beyond handsome when he 
smiled.
  
  "And I'll know people like you," I went on, "people who have thoughts in their heads 
and quick tongues with which to voice them, and we'll sit in cafes and we'll drink 
together and we'll clash with each other violently in words, and we'll talk for the rest 
of our lives in divine excitement."
  
  He reached out and put his arm around my neck and kissed me. We almost upset the table 
we were so blissfully drunk.
  
  "My lord, the wolfkiller," he whispered.
  
  When the third bottle of wine came, I began to talk of my life, as I'd never done 
before -- of what it was like each day to ride out into the mountains, to go so far I 
couldn't see the towers of my father's house anymore, to ride above the tilled land to 
the place where the forest seemed almost haunted.
  
  The words began to pour out of me as they had out of him, and soon we were talking 
about a thousand things we had felt in our hearts, varieties of secret loneliness, and 
the words seemed to be essential words the way they did on those rare occasions with my 
mother. And as we came to describe our longings and dissatisfactions, we were saying 
things to each other with great exuberance, like "Yes, yes," and "Exactly," and "I know 
completely what you mean," and "And yes, of course, you felt that you could not bear it," 
etc.
  
  Another bottle, and a new fire. And I begged Nicolas to play his violin for me. He 
rushed home immediately to get it.
  
  It was now late afternoon. The sun was slanting through the window and the fire was 
very hot. We were very drunk. We had never ordered supper. And I think I was happier than 
I had ever been in my life. I lay on the lumpy straw mattress of the little bed with my 
hands under my head watching him as he took out the instrument.
  
  He put the violin to his shoulder and began to pluck at it and twist the pegs.
  
  Then he raised the bow and drew it down hard over the strings to bring out the first 
note.
  
  I sat up and pushed myself back against the paneled wall and stared at him because I 
couldn't believe the sound I was hearing.
  
  He ripped into the song. He tore the notes out of the violin and each note was 
translucent and throbbing. His eyes were closed, his mouth a little distorted, his lower 
lip sliding to the side, and what struck my heart almost as much as the song itself was 
the way that he seemed with his whole body to lean into the music, to press his soul like 
an ear to the instrument.
  
  I had never known music like it, the rawness of it, the intensity, the rapid glittering 
torrents of notes that came out of the strings as he sawed away. It was Mozart that he 
was playing, and it had all the gaiety, the velocity, and the sheer loveliness of 
everything Mozart wrote.
  
  When he'd finished, I was staring at him and I realized I was gripping the sides of my 
head.
  
  "Monsieur, what's the matter!" he said, almost helplessly, and I stood up and threw my 
arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the violin.
  
  "Stop calling me Monsieur," I said. "Call me by my name." I lay back down on the bed 
and buried my face on my arm and started to cry, and once I'd started I couldn't stop it.
  
  He sat next to me, hugging me and asking me why I was crying, and though I couldn't 
tell him, I could see that he was overwhelmed that his music had produced this effect. 
There was no sarcasm or bitterness in him now.
  
  I think he carried me home that night.
  
  And the next morning I was standing in the crooked stone street in front of his 
father's shop, tossing pebbles up at his window.
  
  When he stuck his head out, I said:
  
  "Do you want to come down and go on with our conversation?"
  
       5     
  From then on, when I was not hunting, my life was with Nicolas and "our conversation."
  
  Spring was approaching, the mountains were dappled with green, the apple orchard 
starting back to life. And Nicolas and I were always together.