The same day on which the Marquis wrote to his brother Caroline wrote to
her sister, and sketched, after her own manner, the country where she
was.
SÉVAL, near CHAMBON (CREUSE), May 1, '45.
At last, my sister, we are here, and it is a terrestrial paradise. The
castle is old and small, but well arranged for comfort and picturesque
enough. The park is sufficiently large, not any too well kept, and not
in the English fashion--thank Heaven!--rich in fine old trees covered
with ivy, and in grasses running wild. The country is delightful. We are
still in Auvergne, in spite of the new boundaries, but very near to the
old limits of La Marche, and within a league of a little city called
Chambon, through which we passed on our way to the castle. This little
town is very well situated. It is reached by a mountain ascent, or
rather, through a cleft in a deep ravine; for mountain, properly
speaking, there is none. Leaving behind the broad plains of thin, moist
soil, covered with small trees and large bushes, you descend into a
long, winding gorge, which in some places enlarges into a valley. In the
bottom of this ravine, which soon divides into branches, flow rivers of
pure crystal, not navigable, and rather torrents than rivers, although
they only whirl along, boiling a little, but threatening no danger. As
for myself, having never known anything but our great plains and wide,
smooth rivers, I am somewhat inclined to look upon all here as either
hill or abyss; but the Marchioness, who has seen the Alps and the
Pyrenees, laughs at me, and pretends that all this is as insignificant
as a table-cover. So I forbear to give you any enthusiastic description,
lest I mislead your judgment; but the Marchioness, who cannot be accused
of an undue love of nature, will never succeed in preventing me from
being delighted with what I see.
It is a country of grasses and leafage, one continual cradle of verdure.
The river, which descends the ravine, is called the Vouèze, and then,
uniting with the Tarde at Chambon, it becomes the Char, which, again at
the end of the first valley, is called the Cher, a stream that every one
knows. For myself, I like the name Char (or car); it is excellent for a
stream like this, which in reality rolls along at about the pace of a
carriage well under way down a gentle slope, where there is nothing to
make it jolt or jar unreasonably. The road also is straight and sanded
like a garden walk, lined too with magnificent beeches, through which
one can see outspread the natural meadows that are just now one carpet
of flowers. O, these lovely meadows, my dear Camille! How little they
resemble our artificial plains, where you always see the same plant on
ground prepared in regular beds! Here you feel that you are walking over
two or three layers of vegetation, of moss, reeds, iris, a thousand
kinds of grasses, some of them pretty, and others prettier still,
columbines, forget-me-nots, and I know not what! There is everything;
and they all come of their own accord, and they come always! It is not
necessary to turn over the ground once in every three or four years to
expose the roots to the air and to begin over again the everlasting
harrowing which our indolent soil seems to need. And then, here, some of
the land is permitted to go to waste or poorly tilled, or so it seems;
and in these abandoned nooks Nature heartily enjoys making herself wild
and beautiful. She shoots forth at you great briers which seem
inexhaustible and thistles that look like African plants, they flaunt
such large coarse leaves, slashed and ragged, to be sure, but admirable
in design and effect.
When we had crossed the valley,--I am speaking of yesterday,--we climbed
a very rugged and precipitous ascent. The weather was damp, misty,
charming. I asked leave to walk, and, at the height of five or six
hundred feet, I could see the whole of this lovely ravine of verdure.
The far-off trees were already crowding toward the brink of the water at
my feet, while from point to point in the distance rustic mills and
sluices filled the air with the muffled cadences of their sounds.
Mingled with all this were the notes of a bagpipe from I know not where,
and which kept repeating a simple but pleasing air, till I had heard
more than enough of it. A peasant who was walking in front of me began
to sing the words, following and carrying along the air, as if he wanted
to help the musician through with it. The words, without rhyme or
reason, seemed so curious that I will give them to you--
"Alas! how hard are the rocks!
The sun melts them not,--
The sun, _nor yet the moon!_
The lad who would love
Seeketh his pain."
There is always something mysterious in peasant songs, and the music, as
defective as the verses, is also mysterious, often sad and inducing
revery. For myself, condemned as I am to do my dreaming at lightning
speed, since my life does not belong to me, I was forcibly impressed by
this couplet, and I asked myself many times why "the moon," at least,
did not melt the rocks; did this mean that, by night as well as by day,
the grief of the peasant lover is as heavy as his mountains?
On the top of this hill, which appropriately bristles with these large
rocks, so cruelly hard,--the Marchioness says they are small as grains
of sand, but then I never happened to see any such beautiful sand,--we
entered upon a road narrower than the highway, and, after walking a
little way amid enclosures of wooded grounds, we found ourselves at the
entrance of the castle, which is entirely shaded by the trees, and not
imposing in appearance; but on the other side it commands the whole
beautiful ravine that we had just passed through. You can see the deep
declivity, with its rocks and its bushes, the river too with its trees,
its meadows, its mills, and the winding outlet through which it flows,
between banks growing more and more narrow and precipitous. There is in
the park a very pretty spring, which rises there, to fall in spray along
the rocks. The garden is well in bloom. In the lower court there is a
lot of animals which I am permitted to manage. I have a delightful room,
very secluded, with the finest view of all; the library is the largest
apartment in the house. The drawing-room of the Marchioness, in its
furniture and arrangement, calls to mind the one in Paris; but it is
larger, not so deadening to sound, and one can breathe in it. In short,
I am well, I am content, I feel myself reviving; I rise at daybreak, and
until the Marchioness appears, which, thank Heaven, is no earlier here
than in Paris, I am going to belong to myself in a most agreeable
fashion. O, how free I shall be to walk, and write to you, and think of
you! Alas! if I only had one of the children here, Lili or Charley, what
delightful and instructive walks we could take together! But it is in
vain for me to fall in love with all the handsome darlings that I meet,
for it does not last. A moment after I compare them with yours, and I
feel that yours will have no serious rivals in my affections, and in the
midst of my rejoicing at being in the country, comes the thought that I
am farther from you than I was before!--and when shall I see you again?
"Alas! how hard are the rocks!" But it's of no use to struggle against
all of those which cumber the lives of poor people like us. I must do my
duty and become attached to the Marchioness. Loving her is not
difficult. Every day she is more kind to me; she is really almost like a
mother to me, and her fancy for petting and spoiling me makes me forget
my real position. We expected to find the Marquis on our arrival, since
he promised to meet his mother here. It cannot be long before he comes.
As for the Duke, he will be here, I think, next week. Let us hope that
he will be as civil to me in the country as he has been lately in Paris,
and not oblige me to show my temper.
At another time Caroline reported to her sister the opinions of the
Marchioness on country life.
"'My dear child,' said she to me not long since, 'in order to love the
country one must love the earth stupidly, or nature unreasonably. There
is no mean between brutal stupidity and enthusiastic folly. Now you know
that if I have anything excitable or even sanguine in my composition, it
is for the concerns of society rather than for what is governed by the
laws of Nature, which are always the same. Those laws are the work of
God, so they are good and beautiful. Man can change nothing in them. His
control, his observation, his admiration, even his descriptive
eloquence, add nothing at all to them. When you go into ecstasies over
an apple-tree in bloom, I do not think you are wrong; I think, on the
contrary, that you are very right, but it seems to me hardly worth while
to praise the apple-tree which does not hear you, which does not bloom
to please you, and which will bloom neither the more nor the less, if
you say nothing to it. Be assured that when you exclaim, "How beautiful
is the spring!" it is just the same as if you said, "The spring is the
spring!" Well, then, yes, it is warm in summer because God has made the
sun. The river is clear because it is running water, and it is running
water because its bed is inclined. It is beautiful because there is in
all this a great harmony; but if it had not this harmony, all the beauty
would not exist.'
"Thus you see the Marchioness is nothing of an artist, and that she has
arguments at her service for not understanding what she does not feel;
but in this is she not like the rest of the world, and are we not all
acting like her, with respect to any faculty we may happen to lack?
"As she was thus talking, seated on a garden bench much fatigued with
the 'exercise' she had taken,--namely, a hundred paces on a sanded
walk,--a peasant came to the garden gate to sell fish to the cook, who
was bargaining with him. I recognized this peasant as the one who had
walked before me on the day of our arrival, singing the song about the
'hard rocks.' 'What are you thinking of?' asked the Marchioness, who saw
that I was observing him.
"'I am thinking,' I replied, 'of watching that stout fellow. It is no
longer an apple-tree or a river, you see, and he has a peculiar
countenance, with which I have been struck.'
"'How, pray?'
"'Why, if I were not afraid to repeat a modern word of which you seem to
have a horror, I should say that this man has character.'
"'How do you know? Is it because he is obstinate about the price of his
fish? Ah! that's it; but pardon me. Character! the word, you see, has
become a pun in my mind. I have forgotten to think of it as used in
literature--or art. A piece of dress goods, a bench, a kettle, have
character now; that is to say, a kettle has the shape of a kettle, a
bench looks like a bench, and dress goods have the effect of dress
goods? Or is it the contrary, rather? Have dress goods the character of
a cloud, a bench that of a table, and a kettle that of a well? I will
never admit your word, I give you warning!'--and then she began to talk
about the neighboring peasantry. 'They are not bad people,' said she;
'not so much given to cheating as to wheedling. They are eager for
money, because they are in want of everything; but they allow themselves
nothing from the money which they make. They hoard up to buy property,
and, when the hour has come, they are intoxicated with the delight of
acquisition, buy too largely, borrow at any price, and are ruined. Those
who best understand their own interests become usurers and speculate on
this rage for property, sure that the lands will return to them at a
lower price, when the purchaser shall have become bankrupt. This is why
some peasants climb up into the citizen class, while the greater number
fall back lower than ever. It is the sad side of the natural law, for
these people are governed by an instinct almost as fatal and blind as
that which makes the apple-tree blossom. So the peasant interests me but
little. I assist the lame and the half-witted, the widows and children,
but the healthy ones are not to be interfered with. They are more
headstrong than their mules.'
"'Then, Madame, what is there here to interest one?'
"'Nothing. We come here because the air is good, and because we can
benefit our health and purse a little. And then it is the custom.
Everybody leaves Paris at the earliest possible moment. One must go away
when the others do.'"
* * * * *
"You see, dear Camille, by this specimen of our conversation, that the
Marchioness looks gloomily upon the present age, and you can, too, by
the same means, now form some idea of this 'talking life' of hers, which
you said you could not understand. Upon every subject she has an
intelligent criticism always ready, sometimes bright and good-natured,
sometimes sharp and bitter. She has talked too much in the course of her
life to be happy. Thinking of two or three or thirty people,
continually, and without taking time to collect one's self, is, I
believe, a great abuse. One ceases to question one's self, affirming
always; for otherwise there could be no discussion, and all conversation
would cease. Condemned to this exercise, I should give way to doubt or
to disgust of my fellow-creatures, if I had not the long morning to
recover myself and find my balance again. Although Madame de Villemer,
by her wit and good-humor, throws every possible charm about this dry
employment of our time, I long for the Marquis to come and take his
share in this dawdling oratory."
The Marquis did really arrive in the course of a week or ten days, but
he was worried and absent-minded, and Caroline noticed that he was
peculiarly cold toward her. He plunged directly into his favorite
pursuits, and no longer allowed himself to be seen at all till the hour
of dinner. This peculiarity was the more evident to Mlle de
Saint-Geneix, because the Marquis seemed to be making more effort than
he had ever done before to stand his ground in discussions with his
mother,--to the very great satisfaction of the latter, who feared
nothing in the world but silence and wandering attention; so that
Caroline, seeing herself no longer needed to spur on a lagging
conversation, and getting the impression that she paralyzed the Marquis
more than she assisted him, was less assiduous in profiting by his
presence, and took it upon herself to withdraw early in the evening.