Claude's Confession by Émile Zola

Oh! my remembrances, faithful companions, I cannot take a step in this world but you rise before me! When, with Laurence on my arm, I cast from a gallery a rapid glance around the ball-room full of noise and light, I saw again, in a sudden and sad vision, the smooth, stone-paved floor upon which the girls of Provence dance, in the evening, to the music of the fife and tambourine! How we used to ridicule them! The peasant girls, not those of our dreams, those who had the faces and the hearts of queens, but poor creatures whom the ardent soil had faded before their time, seemed to us to bound heavily, casting us silly smiles as they lumbered by. We closed our eyes against reality. We saw, beyond the horizon, immense palaces, halls paved with marble, with lofty and gilded roofs, filled with a whole nation of young women, who danced with the utmost harmony, in a cloud of lace spangled with diamonds. Truly, we were foolish children.

Now, brothers, the peasant girls have taken vengeance for our disdain.