Bird's-eye view of the forests--The student's visit to his uncle in
the country--Sallies forth in the early morning--Meets a
cuckoo--Follows him--The cuckoo too much for him--Gives up the
pursuit--Finds he has lost his way--Agreeable vespers--Night in the
forest--Wolves--Up a beech tree--A friend in need--The student bids
adieu to Le Morvan.
We have alluded in the opening chapters to the inexhaustible wealth
drawn by the inhabitants from the woods of Le Morvan, though we have as
yet touched but slightly on their beauties. To see them at one _coup
d'oeil_, in all the splendour of their extent, one ought to call for
the veteran, Mr. Green, and, safely (?) lodged in his car, with plenty
of sandwiches and champagne, fly and soar above these forests of La
Belle France. By St. Hubert, gentle reader, your eyes would be feasted
with a glorious sight. Beneath your feet you would, in autumn, behold a
verdant expanse in every variety of light and shade--a sea of leaves,
which, though sometimes in repose, more often moan and murmur, while the
giant arms they clothe rock to and fro in the gale, like the restless
waves of the troubled deep.
Here Nature displays all her sylvan grandeur; here she has scattered,
with a liberal hand, every charm that foliage can give to earth, and
many a lovely flower to scent the evening breeze. Descend, and in this
immense labyrinth you will find a tangled skein of forest paths, in
which it is never prudent to ramble alone; as will be seen by the
following adventure, which befell a young student who once went to Le
Morvan, anticipating infinite pleasure in spending a few weeks at the
house of an old uncle, a rich proprietor and owner of a large farm in
the forest of Erveau.
Residing from his infancy in the department of the Seine, he was quite
ignorant of a forest life; and the morning was yet early when he arose
from his bed and sallied forth to enjoy the fresh and fragrant air, of
which he had a foretaste at his open window, and take a ramble till the
hour of breakfast summoned him to his uncle's hospitable fare. All
without was life and sweetness; every bush had its little chorister; the
sun brilliant, but not as yet high in the heavens, threw his bright rays
in chequered light and shade between the trees, and made the pearly
tears of night, which hung quivering on each bending blade of grass,
sparkle like diamonds of the purest water. The student was in raptures,
and after a brief survey of the garden, he cast a longing eye upon the
woods which he so much wished to penetrate. On he walked, stopping
occasionally to muse on the enchanting scene around him, when all at
once he espied, on the lofty branches of an ash, a cuckoo! At the sight
of this splendid bird, our Parisian sportsman felt his heart pit-a-pat
and jump like a girl's in love; and without stopping any longer to
admire the marvels of Nature, he turned hastily back to his uncle's
abode, in search of a gun, with which to annihilate the luckless
harbinger of spring. He soon found one, ready loaded, in the hall; and,
with his heart full of hope and his legs full of precaution, he glided
mysteriously from one tree to another, endeavouring, by all possible
means, to conceal his approach from the wily cuckoo, which, perched on
high, was throwing into space his two dull notes, regular and monotonous
as the tick-tick of an old-fashioned clock.
Warily and stealthily did the student approach; bent nearly double, he
scarcely drew his breath, as his distance from the tree grew less; but,
says the song of the poacher,--
"If women smell tricks, cuckoos smell powder."
And again,--
"'Tis a difficult thing to catch woman at fault,
More difficult still, an old cuckoo with salt."
Without appearing to do so, from the height of his leafy turret, the
prudent cuckoo kept a wary eye upon the tortuous movements of his enemy;
but as he saw at a glance what sort of a customer he had to deal with,
he evidently did not feel any particular hurry to shift his quarters:
only every time he saw the double barrel moving up to the Parisian's
shoulder, and that hostilities on his part were about to be opened, he,
as if just for fun, dropped his own dear brown self on the branch below
him, flapped his wings, and soon perching himself on a tree a little
further off, gravely re-opened his beak and resumed his monotonous
chant.
The young student, piqued and mortified at this discreet behaviour of
the cuckoo, which, like happiness, was always on the wing, perseveringly
followed the provoking bird--one walked, the other flew, the distance
increased at every flight, and thus they got over a great deal of
ground; the young man still believing his uncle's farm was close behind
him--the cuckoo perfectly easy, knowing full well he could find his
leafy home whenever he might please to return to it. So, for the
fiftieth time, perhaps, the cuckoo was vanishing in the foliage, when a
sudden thought cramped the legs and cut short the obstinate pursuit of
the young lawyer; he then, for the first time, remembered the wholesome
advice his uncle had given him on his arrival.--"Beware, my fine fellow,
beware of going alone in the forest, for to those who know not how to
read their way, that is, on the bark of the trees, the mossy stones, and
dry or broken twigs, the forest is full of snares and danger, of
deceitful echos and strange noises that attract and mislead the
inexperienced sportsman."
"By Juno," thought our hero, "as it is most certain that in Paris they
are not yet clever enough to teach us geography on the bark of trees, I
am an uncommonly lucky fellow to have just remembered the dear old
gentleman's warning. Hang the infernal cuckoo! Go to the devil, you
hideous cuckoo! Good morning, sir, my compliments at home." And then,
with his terrible carbine under his arm, he retraced his steps,
expecting every moment to see peeping through the trees in front of him,
his uncle's large white house and lofty dove-cote.
But, alas! no such thing met his hungry eyes; still on he walked, trees
after trees were passed, glade after glade, and many a long avenue, but
neither white farm-house nor gay green shutters greeted his anxious
sight. "How odd," thought he, "how very odd; this, I feel confident, is
the identical spot near which I first noticed that odious cuckoo; here
is the self-same little regiment of white daisies that my feet pressed
not half an hour ago; see now, this chestnut, this immense chestnut,
whose monstrous roots lie twisting about the ground like a black brood
of ugly snakes--certainly this was the way I came, surely I saw these
roots, and yet no house appears." And thus, from time to time, he
reasoned with himself, looking on either side for some object that he
could recognize with certainty; at last, grown thoroughly hungry and
impatient, he hallooed and shouted, but no voice replied, not the
slightest sound was floating in the air. It was then he felt he had lost
his way,--that he was alone, yes, alone in the forest of Erveau, in a
leafy wilderness stretching many miles.
Many a vow he made and many a blackberry he picked as he walked hither
and thither, in every direction. The day wore on, the sun had long
passed the meridian, and with the coming evening rose a gentle breeze,
which moaned in the dry ferns; and this and the rustling of the giant
creepers that reached from tree to tree, and swung between the branches,
fell mournfully on the student's ear. A vague fear, a fatal
presentiment of evil began to creep over him; again he shouted, the echo
from a dark wild ravine alone replied; he fired his gun again and again,
the echo alone answered his signal of distress, and nothing could he
hear, except at intervals, far, far away in the green depths of the
forest, the notes cuckoo--cuckoo.
Faint and weary, from hunger and fatigue, the young man, no longer able
to proceed, fell down at the foot of a spreading beech, and gave way to
an agony of grief; drops of cold sweat stood upon his brow; the clammy
feeling of fear took possession of his heart, and though, perhaps, he
would have had no objection to try the fortune of the pistol or the
sword, in any college broil or senseless riot of the populace, the
circumstances under which he then stood were so new to him, that he was
quite unmanned and incapable of further exertion.
In blood-red streaks sank the setting sun, his large yellow orb glancing
through the trees like the dimmed eye of some giant ogre; twilight came,
and soon after every valley lay in shadow; the breeze, as if waking from
its gentle slumbers, whistled in the highest branches, and, increasing
in force, rocked the lower limbs, which moaned mournfully as the night
closed in.
Hungry and alarmed, and now quite worn out with his lengthened walk, the
young Parisian lay stretched on the moss, listening with painful anxiety
to this melancholy conversation of the woods, when, suddenly, and as
night fell, spreading over the earth her sable wings and shaking from
the folds of her robe the luminous legions of stars, he heard a
prolonged and sonorous howl in the distance--a strolling wolf--
"Cruel as Death! and hungry as the grave!
Burning for blood! bony and gaunt and grim,"
had scented the Parisian and was inviting his good friends with the long
teeth, to come and sup on the dainty morsel. Touched as if by a hot
iron, up got the terrified youth, and striking his ten nails into the
friendly tree near him like an Indian monkey, he was in an instant many
feet above its base. Here, astride upon a branch, shivering and shaking,
each hair on end, and murmuring many a Pater and Ave Maria, unsaid for
years, he passed the most horrific night that any citizen of the
department of the Seine had ever been known to spend in the middle of
the forest of Erveau.
The following morning, but not until the sun had already run nearly
half his course, for he never dared to leave his timber observatory
before, _le pauvre diable_ dropped down from his perch like an
acorn--and, marching off with weary steps, and scarcely a hope that ere
another night fell he should gain the shelter of some cottage, he
dragged himself along. On he rolled from side to side, torn with the
thorns and bitten by the gnats that swarmed around him, sometimes
calling upon his mother, sometimes upon the saints--when a wood-cutter
happily met, and seeing his exhausted condition, threw the slim student
over his shoulders like a bundle of straw, and carried him to a
neighbouring village. There, he was put to bed and attended with every
care, when he soon recovered--and received the charming intelligence
that he was about forty miles from his uncle's house--that he had been
wandering for that distance in the most beautiful part of the forest of
Erveau, and that if by any chance he had deviated a little more to the
right in his unpleasant steeple-chase across the woods, he would have
gone, in a straight line, eighty-six miles without meeting house or
cottage or human soul until he found himself at the gates of Dijon,
chief town of the Côte-d'Or, where he might and would, no doubt, have
been able to refresh himself with a bottle of Beaune and inspect the
Gothic tombs of the great Dukes of Burgundy.
Grateful was the unlucky lad to think that he had not taken this road,
and truly glad was he when, under the woodcutter's care, he reached his
uncle's white house. No sooner, however, was he fairly recovered from
his misadventure, than he packed up his superb cambric shirts, his Lyons
silk socks, patent leather boots, and white Jouvin gloves; squeezed the
hand of his aunt, gave a doubtful shake to that of his uncle, and
started in the _malle poste_ for the capital. His father's brother and
Le Morvan never saw him more.
Such adventures, however, as these are rare, and you must have, indeed,
a double dose of bad fortune to be lost in such a woful way, and spend,
without meeting any mortal soul, thirty long hours in the woods: for
though the tract of forest is very extensive, there are strewed, here
and there, several merry villages, large farms, and hunting-boxes,
snugly hidden, it is true, beneath the trees,--but which an experienced
huntsman very soon discovers when he stands in need of assistance or a
night's lodging.