GABRIELLE'S SEANCE
It was only a few minutes later that, shaking off the dreary
sluggishness of my grief, I started out of the house for a brisk walk.
Down through the village, out into the broad highway towards Briois,
where the Diligence from Paris then shot past me, with salutations
shouted from its windows, and handkerchiefs waved from its Imperial and
still on, along the fields growing verdant, while the warm tremulous
air, with its procreative touch, unclasped the glutinous envelopes of
the buds in the alders and poplars, and afar towards Bienne, and the
ruined chateau, the massed background of the walled forests spanned the
horizon with a palpitating purple haze, as of an arrested atmosphere or
emanation, and in the very zenith above me a creamy rosiness, like an
etherial colored lymph, dripped from cloudlet to cloudlet.
How wonderfully beautiful it all was; its tenderness, the auroral
lights of the sky, and the definite joy of the returning life; it
renewed my courage, rather it put to flight the dull meanness of
sottish fears and regrets. The verses of ---- came to my mind, and
aloud, on the straight road that was now darkening, as the day fled
to the empyrean, and thence must fly over the great ocean to the
wonderland of America, I repeated them:
_O renouveau! Soleil! Tout palpite, tout vibre
Tout rayonne, et J'ai dit, ouvrant la main; "Sois libre,"
L'oiseau s'est évadé dans les rameaux flottants,
Et dans l'immensité splendide du printemps;
Et J'ai vu s'en aller au loin la petite âme
Dans cette clarté rose ou se mêle une flamme,
Dans l'air profond, parmi les arbres infinis,
Volant au vague appel des amours et des nids,
Planant éperdument vers d'autres ailes blanches,
Ne sachant quel palais choisir, courant aux branches,
Aux fleurs, aux flots, aux bois, fraîchement reverdis,
Avec l'effarement d'entrer au paradis....
Alors, dans la lumière et dans la transparence,
Regardant cette fuite et cette deliverance,
Et ce pauvre être, ainsi disparu dans le port,
Pensif, je me suis dit: "Je viens d'être la morte."_
Then my thoughts reverted to the strange things Gabrielle had told
me, to the mysterious experience she promised to lead me through,
_that night_, and, as the stars stole one by one timorously out of the
filmy shadows of the east, into the grey dark sky, I speculated on
our relations with the unseen, and whether we might be so attuned,
as Gabrielle seemed to be, to respond and feel that numerous company,
and their thoughts, and wishes, their influences, and their designs? I
knew, everyone knows, that the scale of sound runs beyond the coarse
mechanism of our ears at either end of the gamut, as indeed there are
rays of light which our eyes do not catch in the ultra-violet end of
the spectrum. Could it be that actually we are immersed in a vast
ocean of spiritualized animation, which we cannot apprehend--most of
us--which touches us on every side, and is yet as unapproachable as the
stars I was looking at, but, unlike the stars, is not even suspected.
But perhaps--so I mused--there were hierophants, translators of its
mysteries, souls enriched with some finer sense, who felt it, saw it,
or, like pulsating membranes that record the varying pressure of the
air, were so marvellously made as to feel its pressure too. They were
pendulums, swinging in two worlds, and passing from one to the other,
as one might pass from darkness to light, from discord to harmony,
from confusion to order, from the apparent and back again to the real.
Of these was Gabrielle. Or they were doorways, windows, passages,
that afforded access to us, the corporeal prisoners of the earth,
through which they came back--_les revenants_--when they too dearly
loved us to find even happiness in their new abode unless they might
occasionally regain our company. Ah could it be so with Blanchette! And
then the queer book of Du Maurier's (that was the name of the English
artist who wrote it) came into my head, and the impossible fancy of the
Martian woman living in the body or the brain of Barty Joselin, and the
death of the girl Marty who had become the second home of the beautiful
demon woman--the Martian sprite.
I half wondered whether Blanchette could come and tenant my own body,
with me, or was she inhabiting Gabrielle? Ah--_la folie_--but should
I indeed see her tonight? I hurried along the familiar road, now in
a growing tempest and terror of mind, almost with, I cannot describe
it, a queer sense of disembodiment, as if I, myself, were not in my
flesh and blood, but some ghost of myself, with an engagement to meet
the ghost I had loved--and yet loved. Thus I hastened backward in the
night, and entered my home, where the lights burned most cheerfully,
and found my parents and sister waiting for me, and Hortense--still
with us, with her flagging energies helped out by a pretty brunette
waitress Gabrielle had brought from Paris--impatient, at the table, for
our evening repast.
"Alfred, we have been waiting for you. Tonight your mother and myself
must go to Briois. There is to be a meeting there of the Protestant
Union, and I am expected to say something on the needs of our
country-side for religious instruction. I hope to be able to bring
about the building of a little church where our people may have the
consolations of their religion;" it was my father speaking.
"Ah pardon, I _am_ late, but the night is heavenly, and the spring
comes on divinely. I have been just now towards Briois, and I could
have walked, I think, on to La Ferté without fatigue. My legs do
improve in these pleasant days, and the warmth stirs my blood. I am
glad, father, you will have a church. Are you sure it is best to build
it in St. Choiseul?" I answered.
"Why not, Alfred?" asked mother.
"Well there are not so many here who would need it and _pas d'abeilles
pas de miel;_" I said laughing.
"But, Alfred, we are to have a new visitor to live with us in
St. Choiseul, a rich man from Bordeaux, who is a leader of our
congregations there. He is too what the English call, an exhorter, _un
homme qui exhorte_; very eloquent, a great preacher in his way. If the
church is built in our village he will help us, and then it might be
that he will be willing to be our pastor too. He is a relative of _le
Capitaine_, and now he has suffered a great sorrow. His daughter--the
apple of his eye--died on the same day that Blanchette left us, _nous
laissait_. The captain begged him to come to St. Choiseul, and he
consented. It will be good for the captain, good for St. Choiseul--good
for all of us. Is it not so?"
"Yes, mother," said Gabrielle, and she leaned towards her with her
gentle smile of reassurance--there had been growing between sister and
myself, and our parents, since Blanchette's death, a severer feeling of
religious estrangement--"It _will_ be good. I have heard Père Grandin.
I heard him in the wards of the hospital, and he is a good man,
_parlant le plus beau? français avec une voix délicieuse_."
Mother and father were delighted; it was a great surprise, and during
our evening meal we talked of nothing else than the coming of Père
Grandin. They asked Gabrielle about him with an increasing pleasure,
as they saw how really admiring sister was of the excellent man's
skill and sweetness. It was a pleasant time, and in the domestic glow
of confidence, that the Père Grandin would become an instrument of
propitiation, rather than of discord, while Julie placed before us one
of Hortense's masterpieces--_chefs d'oeuvres_--_le ragout de mouton_,
with garnishments of peppers and haricots, with her hot cakes--_pains
de seigle_--and the melting _chou-fleur_ and the inspiriting Burgundy,
we bloomed, so to say, into a renewed affection. It was admirable. I
recall it--shall I ever forget that wondrous night?--almost as if it
had been a moment ago. I was soothed and quieted, and the rising frenzy
of my blood subsided, and a most ingratiating blissfulness invaded me,
and we lingered long at the table. Gabrielle was so gay and reminiscent
it seemed as if she loved the hospital, now she was well free of it,
and, as I listened in astonishment, I slowly realized that Gabrielle
was responding to some hidden elation, and that--Was it her ecstacy
to show me her strange power? Ah, yes, there was, too, her gladness
that mother and father were to be away that night, and so--_Voila, la
diablerie sans bornes!_ Bah, I will confess I was displeased, and felt
a little disgusted amazement at Gabrielle.
An hour later our parents were tucked in the cabriolet, the short
snapping strokes of the horse's hoofs passed away into silence, and
Gabrielle and I were alone. We faced each other as the door closed,
and Gabrielle seized my arm, and speaking very slowly, with her face
covered by her other hand, with all her late show of spirits vanished,
said:
"Alfred, I feel the power; it thrills me. I cannot explain, but as the
time comes on, I am crowded with a multitude--_un essaim_--of motions
within me, as if I might be slowly dissolved into air, or something
else light and floating. You thought that I was careless at dinner.
I know, I watched your eyes. You thought I was glad that father and
mother were going away, so that I could show you my power when I call
Blanchette (I shuddered) back to meet you. But that was not true. I
felt disengaged and well, most well, and my heart was contented. There
was no deception, no guiltiness as of escaping detection. None, I was
myself, that was all. And Alfred I shall _tell_ father and mother. Why
not?" at my gesture of discouragement.
"Gabrielle, promise me you will reveal nothing about this to anyone,
until I have consented. Remember--_the Hospital_. Father and mother
will be appalled. They cannot understand as I do your mysticism--and
then, who knows what the power leads to? Be silent."
My sister lifted her face, and stared almost stealthily into my
eyes. I, the _soi-disant_ critic of her "delusions"--that was my
word, was now masking her concealment, and urging her to continued
secrecy, intending--what did she think?--to use her potency for the
gratification of my mad cravings?--to make her the servile means of
communication with Blanchette, more and more, that thus my awakened
desires might be stilled with the apparitional image of possession?
I did not answer the mute question. I could not. An unopposed, a sudden
quenchless need of Blanchette, frustrated all honesty of speech,
and I really caught at, snatched, the proffered chance--_diablerie_
or no _diablerie_--to see again the face, the form, the flesh--Was
it indeed materialization as the mediumistic parlance had it?--of
Blanchette. The more I thought of it, the more I coveted the vision.
Its quality should be tested. That I swore. And my connivance became
more cautious. We would try nothing, until Hortense and Julie had
retired. A sudden tension of almost ravenous expectancy rose within me,
utterly surprising, and _now_, I was the exhilarator, and prompter,
and accomplice, more desirous, more credulous, than Gabrielle herself.
The delay for _the thing_ to begin seemed insufferable, but there must
be no interruption, and the sceptic, the half believer, the moderating
protestant, at the unreasonableness and danger of the indulgence,
moved now in its preparation with an unresisting acceptance of its
realization, hungry for its fulfillment, every scruple banished!
"Gabrielle, go to your room. We will not begin until Hortense and
Julie have gone to bed; then, when the house is all ours," my voice
was strained and unnatural, and perhaps my features were themselves
distorted with excitement, for Gabrielle slightly withdrew from me,
"then, let us go to the library, and there we will unite our minds and
hearts, and--_bring Blanchette back_!"
Only a violent self-control withheld my tongue from shouting the
words, so monstrously grew within me the insatiable passion for
the coveted design, a passion, half orgiastic, half a maddened
curiosity, and within which, I know now, not a trace of spiritual
feeling, or aspirations, or tenderness, or beauty, reigned, or had a
part. So variously are we composed, and thus from the waters of our
souls, when stirred, or clouded, darkened by the overturning prods
of the rebellious body, which disturb its slimy sediments, rise
the exhalations of unworthy motives. In that instant, as I waited
afterwards for the hour agreed upon for our nocturnal incantations--the
word suits the debased frame of my mind--just one overpowering
conception ruled my heart, the possibility of clasping Blanchette to
my breast as a physical presentment. Whither had flown the beautiful
boundless dreams of our beatific, immaterial union, bathed in the
everlasting lights of celestial choirs? Alas--whither?
It was about eleven o'clock, when Gabrielle tapped at the door between
our rooms, and I opened it. Gabrielle had changed her dress somewhat.
She had put on a dark serge gown that fitted quite closely, and she had
opened the waist at the throat slightly, and discarded all collar. The
sleeves closed about the wrists; in her hair, loosely piled up above
her temples, were three silver combs, and they formed the only light
touch in her apparel. We both wore slippers, as almost instinctively
the association of lightness and noiselessness with the work in hand
came to my mind. We said nothing, but passed out of my room, and
stepped swiftly down the stairway to the library. I glanced out of
the window hastily, and found the sky clear, mistily studded with the
stars, and with strips of cloud strung along the western limits of the
firmament.
Gabrielle asked me to light the lamp for a minute's instruction;
otherwise we would proceed in complete darkness; that she averred was
best. I lit the lamp, and was a little disturbed by Gabrielle's pallor
which in the yellow light of the lamp appeared deathly. I asked her if
she felt unwell. She smiled and said, "No, not at all," and then she
motioned me to a seat near her, at the centre of the room, where she
had chosen a chair, quite detached from any other article of furniture.
Behind her were simply the unillumined corners of the apartment. I sat
down and waited for her instructions, which however I fully understood
as the manner of this seance had been in words rehearsed between us.
"Alfred, take my hands in your own, and bend your forehead forward upon
my knees, and then just THINK of Blanchette, and remain so, no matter
how long it seems. When the soul of Blanchette comes it will be light,
but do not release my hands."
I recall the absolute precision of certainty in Gabrielle's words,
in her voice, and then that she leaned back, shut her eyes, and just
perceptibly drew her shoulders upward, while her lips moved as if in
prayer. I put out the light. I pressed her hands in mine; they were
supremely warm, and soft, and unresisting, and then I knelt and bowed
my head and--endowed, as I have in this narrative many times intimated,
some visualizing or occult force--brought to my eyes the very figure,
color, expression, and voice of the dead girl. It was not so much a
feeling of solemnity--that does not express it at all--as a feeling
of mystery, of indefinite approach towards the incredible, with the
mingled half delirious anticipations in myself of actually again seeing
the live Blanchette, that held me rigid.
At length Gabrielle's fingers twitched slightly, and she half
released them, but I held them tightly, and then Gabrielle seemed to
be murmuring aloud. I still held my face downwards, forcing to my
eyes the image of Blanchette, recalling her voice, and straining my
mind outward as it were, in my effort to impress all of this upon
Gabrielle. The voice of my sister grew slightly louder, and the words
were at intervals coherent and intelligible, and then I lifted my head.
At first I could see nothing but soon I became conscious of some
diffused light or glow, a kind of absorbed brightness, as if it
escaped from the darkness itself, perhaps faintly bluish. It arrested
my attention, and the thought of Blanchette died away as I actually
saw the brightness increase around me. It was a strange indescribable
light. It was not only seen by the eyes; it was felt by the mind,
if I may put it that way. Looking more cautiously and intently it
became evident that it lay in lines proceeding through the blackness
of the room, from a point somewhere at our side, and it still grew
slowly stronger, with a soft interior palpitation, as if the source
of the emanations pulsed regularly, sending out the luminous streams
in waves. With this increasing intensity--though intensity hardly
expresses it, it was so vaguely dispersed and yet obviously confined in
radial directions--with the increasing intensity, the mental influence
deepened also, and it was only by a supreme effort that I retained my
position.
The inclination with me was to allow myself to float, from the
unmistakable sense of buoyancy that invaded all my body, and with
that came to my sensorium a most peculiar incomputable sensation of
diffusion. I cannot put it into words. It felt like a dissolution,
as if the material substance of which I was composed were undergoing
dispersion or extension, and the solvent was this strengthening light.
But the sensation was also peculiarly delightful so that, while you
felt yourself as it were vanishing, there was no sickness of fear with
it, nor any, the slightest, physical resistance. I feel certain it was
the prelude to unconsciousness. Some residual wakefulness, springing
from my curiosity, saved me from the invited surrender, and I slowly
rose to my feet, still holding Gabrielle's hands.
Then I looked at my sister, and, so it seemed, in that gloom there had
developed around her head a half nebulous curtain or aureole of light
also, which, in its turn, was emitting the peculiar light beams. It was
at that moment I dropped her hands, that had become almost lifeless to
my feeling. In an instant the previous sense of dematerialization left
me, and with a shock, absurdly like the flying back of widely distended
or separated limbs, I became keenly conscious, and concretely centered.
I remember the faint thrill of amusement that this _réassemblage_
caused to me. And now--there was not much desire on my part to be
ratiocinative--the other point, the emergent initial centre of the
emanations grew, not only brighter, but greatly larger, and I divined
with a sudden consternation of heart, that there were forming before me
the outlines of a human figure. I shrank backward for an instant, and
for an instant only, and then bent forward and moved forward with the
increasing light, for now the adjutant centres--that about the evolving
apparition, and that around my sister--both increased, filling my eyes
with the radiance, and yet administering no particular illumination to
the objects in the room. These latter were perhaps more visible than
they had been. That I think was incontestable, but the light might have
been described as self-centered, in this sense, that it was entirely
refluent on its source and confined in its illuminating effect to that.
And now--I lost sight of everything else, so concentrated was my
thought upon the spectacle--the light to the side and in the depth
of the room expanded rapidly, and the shape that it made was that
of a naked phosphorescent figure, whose configuration, while it was
discerned, was not really revealed, so bathed it seemed to be in the
billowy light that encumbered it, and yet exposed it. Only the arms
of the figure escaped that luminous envelope, and, stretching outward
beyond it, put on the semblance of white flesh. I put my hand to my
head. It was wet with the dew of perspiration, that may have been the
sweat of amazement, or of excitement.
The intention so dearly formed of seizing my restored Blanchette
died away before this immaculate phenomenon, for in it there dawned
no reminiscence of the earthly charm I had called by that name.
That loveliness whose perishable garb of color and of matter I had
worshipped was not suggested here; the showery lightness that seemed
tremulous with a thousand interior responses had its wonderfulness
indeed, but it only left me wonder-stricken. Neither did it appall me.
I became chilled into immobility, although every nerve was shaking
with the impressed realization of a miracle. I was standing before the
resurrected DEAD.
Whether it was this thought or the resuscitated passion of my
heart, rebelling against the incandescent splendor, I do not know,
but I suddenly stepped towards the scintillating object and spoke:
"Blanchette! Blanchette! Blanchette!" My voice was instinct with the
note of human passion, the earthly cry of love for the reality of
warmth, and softness, and breath, and fragrance, the concomitants of
the living body--and, as my words were repeated, and again repeated,
and my arms were outstretched, while my face, bathed in the sepulchral
light, perhaps might have showed my yearning, this marvellous and
stupendous reality occurred:
The phosphorescent configuration with the extended arms grew paler
and paler, and as its extreme blurry splendor died away, there sprang
forward from within it, the real similitude of Blanchette, a pallid
figure of light, and in it the dear face of the girl, tender, divinely,
to my eyes, beautiful, with now a compassionate wistfulness of
prettiness, O! so faintly expressed, in the dim radiance that seemed
yet to stream with undulous waves through the room from the relaxed,
motionless body of my sister. And--so it appeared to me--the figure
advanced towards me with the same outstretched arms, with which I
leaped forward to receive it.
I clasped the empty air and fell headlong in a convulsion, that rattled
my very bones, while sharp strokes of pain severed my muscles, and
throbs, like the intermittent knocks of a hammer, beat within my brain.
It was an utterly unnatural collapse; the strained attitude of the
last few hours, with the previous anticipation--unsuspectingly untying
the resistance of my nerves--did not clearly explain it. There was
something else. I was still quite conscious and, more than that, I was
wrathful with disappointment, as if caught in a trick of deception, the
hocus-pocus of a mere _niaiserie_. My eyes watched the faded spot of
light from which the transfiguration had started. It actually flitted
unevenly for some moments over my fallen body, and then it moved
slowly--now contracted into a mere ball of luminosity--towards my yet
unawakened sister. There it increased in brilliancy, and the former
glowing outline, with the resumed extended arms, reappeared, and then
came the last denouement. In an instant there was a flashing collision
between the light of the vision and the light, seemingly emitted by my
sister, when the entire room became vivid with light--everything seen,
with absolutely nothing there but my sister and myself, and then the
darkness again more profound by contrast, and swimming--the word is
exactly descriptive--upward, and then sideways a ball, a mere star, of
brightness, sparkled for one second in the fire-place, and vanished.
There was no sound, there had not been an audible word, and now there
was the undisturbed apartment with myself spread out in pain on the
floor, and my sister still in her unbroken trance. I struggled to my
feet and seized Gabrielle's hands and drew her up. She awoke, dazed,
and also in pain, standing at my side in a benumbed speechless way
that startled me. I lit the lamp hurriedly, and led her to the couch,
where she again fell into unconsciousness. I chafed her hands. I wet
her temples. Finally she slowly responded to the treatment, and I was
able to lead her to her room. She had by that time become normal, but
reticent and oppressed, and begged me to leave. I went away.
My own distress lasted some hours, but slowly improved, the jolts
of pain growing less, and at longer intervals, and succumbing to my
complete restoration.
The next day found Gabrielle and myself talking in the garden at the
same spot where we had conceived of the seance; we had both been almost
feverishly waiting the opportunity to rehearse our experience. We met
almost as if by agreement, walking down the garden, on opposite sides
at the same time, as to a _rendez-vous_.
I related everything to Gabrielle as I had seen it, and asked her about
her own experience. I said, "Gabrielle, I think that it is best not to
indulge this power of yours any longer. It was a disappointment every
way, and the results only unhealthy and stupid."
"Alfred," she replied, "I have often brought back the spirits of the
dead, not by my own will but because they came to me willingly, and it
has never hurt me. It seemed a delight rather, and the sensations were
blissful. But it was all different last night. It was spoiled somehow.
There was some discord, something improper in our thoughts--_in yours_,
_Alfred_?"
"Gabrielle, just what happened to yourself, when you fell away in the
trance?"
"I seemed to be rising upward on wings, with sunny lights shining upon
me, and the endless shimmering of spirit bodies about me, and then came
a darkness with a despairing feeling of loneliness and of desertion,
and then a slow, consuming pain until you waked me."
"Gabrielle, have you ever actually seen the spirits? Were they, as the
jargon goes, materialized before your eyes?"
"Not exactly, perhaps. They came to me in my sleep, but I have
indeed--so it seems to me--awakened and found the air about me filled
with shapes. They did not last, wavering away with swingings this way
and that, but their faces smiled as they went off, and a low pleasant
light remained; that too gently--_doucement_--fading away."
We walked slowly back again towards the house, quite silent. I, buried
in a reverie of self-dissatisfaction, Gabrielle doubtless in one of
afflicted wonder. At length I said, stopping abruptly, and turning
Gabrielle towards me, as I often did, with my two hands clasping her
shoulders, "Gabrielle, let us agree to banish these practices. It may
cost you an effort, but I believe it is best for both of us. We shall
lose our wits with these devilments." Gabrielle resented that, and her
face showed her protest. "Well, not that exactly," I added quickly,
"let us call them illusions. Some scientific wiseacres call them
_hypnagogic_ illusions. It is not altogether normal and reasonable
and--" I hesitated a moment, and Gabrielle added, "You mean improper,
unhealthy, unsafe?"
"Yes I mean all that, and then I think by some occultism we cannot
define, or even recognize, they will torment us, and actually drag us
into lunacy."
"Alfred, did you see Blanchette?"
"Why, yes, I saw something that brought her distinctly before me for an
instant--but, Gabrielle," I was ashamed to betray my hope for some sort
of bodily incarnation, "it was only a madness of the brain--only that."
"But, Alfred, you did see the light; they always come in
light-clouds--_les voiles de lumière_."
"Oh, yes, I saw the shining figure--so it seemed--and the light,
Gabrielle, that seemed to stream from your head in rays. All
that I saw, but whether it was an actual light, or some infernal
hallucination, or just some mesmeric phenomena, and we both were
asleep, I fear to say. But it has left me queerly disgusted and
upset. At any rate I will have nothing more to do with it--nothing.
My work (Redaction of the Code Législatif for Court Practice) will
be interfered with, and then perhaps my poor brain will leave me
altogether."
We laughed, and at length Gabrielle answered, liberating herself from
my hold and musingly watching the sparrows twittering and flying
spasmodically in swarms from the thicketed ampelopsis on the house. Her
voice was low, and its accent firm, and half persuasive too.
"Alfred, I will go half way. I will do nothing to bring back the
visions, but if they come I shall not scare them away. And as for
séances--well, we both have had all we want of them. Eh?"
"Truly Gabrielle, I think that if we continued these visitations, if
they are that, it would be with us as it was with Argan in _Le Malade
Imaginaire_, who was threatened by Dr. Purgan, you know, after a long
line of disorders, _avec la privation de la vie, ou nous aura conduit
notre folie_."
I never again spoke about the spirits to Gabrielle. I grew strangely
fearful of them, the thought of them made me shudder--until the war
brought upon us the awful visitation that I have written this book to
describe, and which--Well, what it did is now the common knowledge of
the world. Nor did Gabrielle allude to them until the gathering terrors
of the dead broke her silence. And to describe that moment and its
undreamed of marvels, its vast resurrections from the holocausts of
the battle fields, the fathomless panorama of the endless dead, with
the stupefying and convulsing climax of the horrid warfare, choked by
their immitigable hosts, is now my dangerous and difficult task.
* * * * *
Father and mother returned from Briois most radiant over their success.
Père Grandin was superb, a wonderful man, _un homme de sagesse, de
piété, et, ma Foi, un homme des affaires; enfin, un homme eloquent et
fin aussi_. He would come to St. Choiseul, and it was certain that Père
Grandin and Père Antoine would get on well together.
The spring was all about us; each day added to the charm of the
country-side and the gardens of St. Choiseul grew gayer and gayer with
the snowy and carmine splendor of the tulips, the purple glories of the
hyacinth, the blossoming trails of periwinkle, leading at last to the
zenith loveliness of the blushing roses, when St. Choiseul sent its
fragrant breath far and wide over the green meadows, and far into the
thick-set and shadowed woods.
The _bienséance_ of nature was seen too in the overflowing happiness
of the country, its peace and increasing wealth, with the flow towards
it of the gracious friendliness of the peoples, and the establishment
among us of the pure principles of liberty. Indeed we were all gay.
Privat Deschat's hideous predictions that evening so long ago--how long
ago it indeed seemed, as if in another age; that was before I went
to America--were all forgotten, or if recalled just laughed at--and
yet there had been the Agadir affair and there had been disturbances
in Alsace and cruel muttering elsewhere; the Cassagnac matter and
the German correspondents. But that was nothing--_une bagatelle
simplement_--and so the bright years rolled along, braided with
delights, illustrious with hopes, serene with gifts, not altogether
free from acquiescent tears, while the inevitable CALAMITY came closer
and closer, and like a thunderbolt crashed suddenly from the peaceful
skies, and darkened all the world with its despair and misery.