After the ineffaceable impression left by that first fright and that
first dance before the winter fire many months passed during which
no other events were engraven upon my memory, and I relapsed into a
twilight state similar to that at the commencement of my life. But the
mental dimness was pierced now and again with a bright light; as the
gray of early morning is tinged by the rose-color of dawning.
I believe that the impressions which succeeded were those of the summer
time, of the great sun and nature. I recall feeling an almost delicious
terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of tall June
grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret working of self
consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me
to explain it.
We were visiting at a country place called Limoise, a place that at
later time played a great part in my life. It belonged to neighbors
and friends, the D----s, whose house in town was directly next to ours.
Perhaps I had visited Limoise the preceding summer, but at that time I
was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken wrapping.
The day that I now refer to is the one in which I was able to reflect
for the first time, in which I first knew the sweetness of reverie.
I have forgotten our departure, the carriage ride and our arrival. But I
remember distinctly that late one hot afternoon, as the sun was setting,
I found myself alone in a remote part of a deserted garden. The gray
walls overgrown with ivy and mosses separated its grove of trees from
the moorland and the rocky country round about it. For me, brought up in
the city, the old and solitary garden, where even the fruit trees were
dying from old age, had all the mystery and charm of a primeval
forest. I crossed a border of box, and I was in the midst of a large
uncultivated tract filled with climbing asparagus and great weeds. Then
I cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that I might
be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently already, and I
remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with quickening spirit,
half afraid, half enraptured. The feeling that I experienced in the
presence of these unfamiliar things was one of reflection rather than of
astonishment. I knew that the bright green vegetation closing in about
me was every where in no less measure than in the heart of this
forest, and emotions, sad and weird and vague took possession of me
and affrighted but fascinated me. That I might remain hidden as long as
possible I crouched lower and still lower, and I felt the joy a little
Indian boy feels when he is in his beloved forest.
Suddenly I heard someone call: “Pierre! Pierre! Dear Pierre!” I did not
reply, but instead lay as close as possible to the ground, and sought to
hide under the weeds and the waving branches of the asparagus.
Still I heard: “Pierre, Pierre.” It was Lucette; I knew her voice, and
from the mockery of her tone I felt sure that she had spied me. But I
could not see her although I looked about me very carefully: no one was
visible!
With peals of laughter she continued to call, and her voice grew merrier
and merrier. Where can she be? thought I.
Ah! At last I spied her perched upon the twisted branch of a tree that
was overhung with gray moss!
I was fairly caught and I came out of my green hiding place.
As I rose I gazed over the wild and flowering things, and saw the corner
of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed the garden. That wall was
destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for on
the Thursday holidays during my college life I spent many a happy hour
sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and there
I mused, to the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those distant
countries fairer and sunnier than my own. And upon that summer day those
gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather, and overgrown
with mosses, gave me for the first time an indefinable impression of the
persistence of things; a vague conception of existences antedating my
own, in times long past.
Lucette D----, my elder by eight or ten years, seemed to me already a
grown person. I cannot recall the time when I did not know her. Later I
came to love her as a sister, and her early death in her prime was one
of the first real griefs of my boyhood.
And the first recollection I have of her is as I saw her in the branches
of the old pear tree. Her image doubtless begets a vividness from the
two new emotions with which it is blended: the enchanting uneasiness
I felt at the invasion of green nature and the melancholy reverie that
took possession of me as I contemplated the old wall, type of ancient
things and olden times.