Saint Agnes, May 6.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You asked me to write to you often and to tell you in
particular about the things I might see. You also begged me to rummage
among my recollections of travels for some of those little anecdotes
gathered from a chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from some strange
traveling acquaintance, which remain as landmarks in the memory. With
a landscape depicted in a few lines, and a little story told in a few
sentences you think one can give the true characteristics of a country,
make it living, visible, dramatic. I will try to do as you wish. I will,
therefore, send you from time to time letters in which I will mention
neither you nor myself, but only the landscape and the people who move
about in it. And now I will begin.
Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to me, to drink and eat
the landscape. It is the season of chills, just as autumn is the season
of reflection. In spring the country rouses the physical senses, in
autumn it enters into the soul.
I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange blossoms and I set
out for the South of France just at the time that every one else was
returning home. I visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of Mecca
and Jerusalem, without leaving any gold in any one else's pockets, and I
climbed the high mountain beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olive
branches.
Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange trees in flower?
The air that one inhales with delight is a quintessence of perfumes. The
strong yet sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to blend with our
being, to saturate us, to intoxicate us, to enervate us, to plunge us
into a sleepy, dreamy torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by the
hands of fairies and not by those of druggists.
This is a country of ravines. The surface of the mountains is cleft,
hollowed out in all directions, and in these sinuous crevices grow
veritable forests of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep gorge
is interrupted by a sort of step, a kind of reservoir has been built
which holds the water of the rain storms.
They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing for any one to
grasp hold of should they fall in.
I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys or gorges,
glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued fruit that remained on
the branches. The narrow gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still
more penetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it. A feeling of
lassitude came over me and I looked for a place to sit down. A few drops
of water glistened in the grass. I thought that there was a spring near
by and I climbed a little further to look for it. But I only reached the
edge of one of these large, deep reservoirs.
I sat down tailor fashion, with my legs crossed under me, and remained
there in a reverie before this hole, which looked as if it were filled
with ink, so black and stagnant was the liquid it contained. Down
yonder, through the branches, I saw, like patches, bits of the
Mediterranean gleaming so that they fairly dazzled my eyes. But my
glance always returned to the immense somber well that appeared to be
inhabited by no aquatic animals, so motionless was its surface. Suddenly
a voice made me tremble. An old gentleman who was picking flowers--this
country is the richest in Europe for herbalists--asked me:
“Are you a relation of those poor children, monsieur?”