The poem has four verses, using the rhyme scheme 1 1 2 3 3 2. The music for each verse varies, with verse 4 being a varied version of verse 1, thus musically the setting is ABCA'. The point of interest for this blog is in a wedge figure at the end of verse 3. More on that below. Otherwise, Chaminade works with the same ^5-^8 interval as she does in "La fiancée du soldat." Notice at the beginning that the lower element shifts up a step to end the first idea (E4-F#4)—see the arrow—and the upper element moves down a half-step to end the varied repetition (A4-G#4; see the second arrow).
A register change takes the interval to an upper fourth, B4-E5, which turns to a fifth, B4-E4, and then contracts to its original fourth E4-A4.
The wedge is a very prominent and dramatic passage that might have been played for humor (the line in the third bar of the example below has the companion Ninon stamping through mud puddles) but instead is transfigured with octave leaps and long held notes for "elle sourit": "she smiles."
Here are two versions of the voice leading: at (a), a simplification of the piano's chords; at (b), a reduced, registrally compressed four-voice version.
The end of the song could be said to be framed by a descending line—see the scale degree numbers—but the F# substitution for ^2 in the antepenultimate bar (boxed) leaves open an easily imagined E5 and a possible proto-background ^1/^5 as A4-E5 (boxed) in the penultimate bar.
