I
Jean had inherited from his father a little field close beside the sea.
Round this field the branches of the pine trees murmured a response to the
plashing of the waves. Beneath the pines the soil was red, and the crimson
shade of the earth mingling with the blue waves of the bay gave them a
pensive violet hue, most of all in the quiet evening hours dear to
reveries and dreams.
In this field grew roses and raspberries. The pretty girls of the
neighborhood came to Jean's home to buy these fruits and flowers, so like
their own lips and cheeks. The roses, the lips, and the berries had all
the same youth, had all the same beauty.
Jean lived happily beside the sea, at the foot of the hills, beneath an
olive tree planted near his door, which in all seasons threw a lance-like
blue shadow upon his white wall.
Near the olive tree was a well, the water of which was so cold and pure
that the girls of the region, with their cheeks like roses and their lips
like raspberries, came thither night and morning with their jugs. Upon
their heads, covered with pads, they carried their jugs, round and slender
as themselves, supporting them with their beautiful bare arms, raised
aloft like living handles.
Jean observed all these things, and admired them, and blessed his life.
As he was only twenty years old, he fondly loved one of the charming girls
who drew water from his well, who ate his raspberries and breathed the
fragrance of his roses.
He told this younger girl that she was as pure and fresh as the water, as
delicious as the raspberries and as sweet as the roses.
Then the young girl smiled.
He told it her again, and she made a face at him.
He sang her the same song, and she married a sailor who carried her far
away beyond the sea.
Jean wept bitterly, but he still admired beautiful things, and still
blessed his life. Sometimes he thought that the frailty of what is
beautiful and the brevity of what is good adds value to the beauty and
goodness of all things.