It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable to the
old man as he had been to me.
The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or two below me
in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut farmers, it was a very
solitary march all afternoon; and the evening began early underneath the
trees. But I heard the voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless
ballad not far off. It seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her
handsome sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain and
answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like
Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told
her? Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives
and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again
into distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which
makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,' outwears the
accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and
death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and
grateful to believe!
We struck at last into a wide white high-road carpeted with noiseless
dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining for a long while
upon the opposite mountain; when on turning a corner my donkey and I
issued ourselves into her light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florac,
for I could bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous
and scented Volnay; and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the
road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth
unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. Even Modestine
was inspired by this purified nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her
little hoofs as to a livelier measure. The road wound and descended
swiftly among masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and
flowed away. Our two shadows--mine deformed with the knapsack, hers
comically bestridden by the pack--now lay before us clearly outlined on
the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the ghostly
distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. From time to time a
warm wind rustled down the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling
their bunches of foliage and fruit; the ear was filled with whispering
music, and the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had
gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our travelling feet.
On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the mountain
were faintly designed in the moonshine; and high overhead, in some lone
house, there burned one lighted window, one square spark of red in the
huge field of sad nocturnal colouring.
At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute angles, the
moon disappeared behind the hill; and I pursued my way in great darkness,
until another turning shot me without preparation into St. Germain de
Calberte. The place was asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night.
Only from a single open door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to
show me that I was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips of
the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. The
landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already out, and
had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled; half an hour later, and I
must have gone supperless to roost.