The day is over. A great restfulness descends into poor minds
that the day's work has wearied; and thoughts take on the
tender and dim colours of twilight.
Nevertheless from the mountain peak there comes to my balcony,
through the transparent clouds of evening, a great clamour,
made up of a crowd of discordant cries, dulled by distance into
a mournful harmony, like that of the rising tide or of a storm
brewing.
Who are the hapless ones to whom evening brings no calm; to
whom, as to the owls, the coming of night is the signal for a
witches' sabbath? The sinister ululation comes to me from the
hospital on the mountain; and, in the evening, as I smoke, and
look down on the quiet of the immense valley, bristling with
houses, each of whose windows seems to say, "Here is peace,
here is domestic happiness!" I can, when the wind blows from
the heights, lull my astonished thought with this imitation of
the harmonies of hell.
Twilight excites madmen. I remember I had two friends whom
twilight made quite ill. One of them lost all sense of social
and friendly amenities, and flew at the first-comer like a
savage. I have seen him throw at the waiter's head an excellent
chicken, in which he imagined he had discovered some insulting
hieroglyph. Evening, harbinger of profound delights, spoilt for
him the most succulent things.
The other, a prey to disappointed ambition, turned gradually,
as the daylight dwindled, sourer, more gloomy, more nettlesome.
Indulgent and sociable during the day, he was pitiless in the
evening; and it was not only on others, but on himself, that he
vented the rage of his twilight mania.
The former died mad, unable to recognise his wife and child;
the latter still keeps the restlessness of a perpetual
disquietude; and, if all the honours that republics and princes
can confer were heaped upon him, I believe that the twilight
would still quicken in him the burning envy of imaginary
distinctions. Night, which put its own darkness into their
minds, brings light to mine; and, though it is by no means rare
for the same cause to bring about opposite results, I am always
as it were perplexed and alarmed by it.
O night! O refreshing dark! for me you are the summons to
an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the
solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city,
scintillation of stars, outburst of gas-lamps, you are the
fireworks of the goddess Liberty!
Twilight, how gentle you are and how tender! The rosy lights
that still linger on the horizon, like the last agony of
day under the conquering might of its night; the flaring
candle-flames that stain with dull red the last glories of the
sunset; the heavy draperies that an invisible hand draws out of
the depths of the East, mimic all those complex feelings that
war on one another in the heart of man at the solemn moments of
life.
Would you not say that it was one of those strange costumes
worn by dancers, in which the tempered splendours of a shining
skirt show through a dark and transparent gauze, as, through
the darkness of the present, pierces the delicious past? And
the wavering stars of gold and silver with which it is shot,
are they not those fires of fancy which take light never so
well as under the deep mourning of the night?
"Anywhere out of the World"
Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the
desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the
fire, and another is certain that he would get well if he were
by the window.
It seems to me that I should always be happy if I were
somewhere else, and this question of moving house is one that I
am continually talking over with my soul.
"Tell me, my soul, poor chilly soul, what do you say to living
in Lisbon? It must be very warm there, and you would bask
merrily, like a lizard. It is by the sea; they say that it is
built of marble, and that the people have such a horror of
vegetation that they tear up all the trees. There is a country
after your own soul; a country made up of light and mineral,
and with liquid to reflect them."
My soul makes no answer.
"Since you love rest, and to see moving things, will you come
and live in that heavenly land, Holland? Perhaps you would be
happy in a country which you have so often admired in pictures.
What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts,
and ships anchored at the doors of houses?"
My soul remains silent.