_August 24th_.
It is nearly five days since I have abandoned my home and
Chrysanthème.
Since yesterday we have had a storm of rain and wind--(a typhoon that
has passed or is passing over us). We beat to quarters in the middle
of the night to _lower the top-masts, strike the lower yards_, and
take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer
hover around us, but everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the
steep slopes of the mountain, the trees shiver, the long grasses bend
low as though in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound;
branches, bamboo leaves, and earth are showered down like rain upon
us.
In this land of pretty little trifles, this violent tempest is out of
all harmony; it seems as if its efforts were exaggerated and its music
too loud.
Towards evening the big dark clouds roll by so rapidly, that the
showers are of short duration and soon pass over. Then I attempt a
walk on the mountain above us, in the wet verdure: little pathways
lead up it, between thickets of camellias and bamboos.
Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an
old temple half-way up the hill, buried in a wood of centennial trees
of gigantic branches; it is reached by granite steps, through strange
gateways, as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens. The trees
have also invaded this yard; the daylight is overcast with a greenish
tint, and the drenching rain that pours down in torrents, is full of
torn-up leaves and moss. Old granite monsters, of unknown shapes, are
seated in the corners, and grimace with smiling ferocity; their faces
are full of indefinable mystery that makes me shudder amid the moaning
music of the wind, in the gloomy shadows of the clouds and branches.
They could not have resembled the Japanese of our day, the men who had
thus conceived these ancient temples, who built them everywhere, and
filled the country with them, even in its most solitary nooks.
* * * * *
An hour later, in the twilight of that stormy day, on the same
mountain, I chanced upon a clump of trees somewhat similar to oaks in
appearance; they, too, have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts
of undulating grass at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every
direction. There, I suddenly have brought back to my mind, my first
impression of a strong wind in the woods of Limoise, in the province
of Saintonge, some twenty-eight years ago, in a month of March of my
childhood.
That, the first storm of wind my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the
landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world,--and many
years have rapidly passed over that memory,--since then the best part
of my life has been spent.
I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am foolishly fond of
it. But it seems to me that then only did I truly experience
sensations or impressions; the smallest trifles I then saw or heard
were full of deep and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of
oblivion, and reawakening memories of prior existence; or else they
were presentiments of existences to come, future incarnations in the
land of dreams, expectations of wondrous marvels that life and the
world held in store for me,--for later, no doubt, when I should be
grown up. Well, I have grown up, and have found nothing that answered
to my undefinable expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and
darkened around me, my vague recollections of the past have become
blurred, the horizons before me have slowly closed in and become full
of a gray darkness. Soon will my time come to return to eternal rest,
and I shall leave this world without having understood the mysterious
wherefore of these mirages of my childhood; I shall bear away with me
a lingering regret, of I know not what lost home that I have failed to
find, of the unknown beings ardently longed for, whom, alas, I have
never embraced.