But the Clerk of the Court was really
unsophisticated, or he would have seen that Carmen played the guitar
badly because she was not interested in Jean Jacques' singing. He would
have known that she had come to that stage in her married life when the
tenure is pitifully insecure. He would have seen that the crisis was
near. If he had had any real observation he would have noticed that
Carmen's eyes at once kindled, and that the guitar became a different
thing, when M. Colombin, the young schoolmaster, one of the guests,
caught up the refrain of A la Claire Fontaine, and in a soft tenor voice
sang it with Jean Jacques to the end, and then sang it again with Zoe.
Then Carmen's dark eyes deepened with the gathering light in them, her
body seemed to vibrate and thrill with emotion; and when M. Colombin and
Zoe ceased, with her eyes fixed on the distance, and as though
unconscious of them all, she began to sing a song of Cadiz which she had
not sung since boarding the Antoine at Bordeaux. Her mind had, suddenly
flown back out of her dark discontent to the days when all life was
before her, and, with her Gonzales, she had moved in an atmosphere of
romance, adventure and passion.
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