In preceding chapters I have not said much about that Limoise which
was the scene of my initiation into nature and its wonders. My entire
childhood is intimately connected with that little corner of the world,
with its ancient forests of oak trees, and its rocky moorlands covered
here and there with a carpet of wild thyme and heather.
For ten or twelve glorious summers I went there to spend my Thursday
holidays, and I dreamed of it during the dreary intervening days of
study.
In May our friends the D-----s and Lucette went to their country home
and remained until vintage time, usually until after the first October
frost,--and regularly every Wednesday evening I was taken there.
Nothing in my estimation was so delightful as that journey to Limoise.
We scarcely ever went in a carriage, for it was not more than three and
a half miles distant; to me, however, it seemed very far, almost lost in
the woods. It lay toward the south, in the direction of those distant,
sunny lands I loved to think of. (I would have found it less charming
had it been towards the north.)
Every Wednesday evening, at sunset, the hour therefore varying with the
month, I left home accompanied by Lucette's elder brother, a grown boy
of eighteen or twenty, who seemed to me a man of mature age. As far as
I was able I tried to keep pace with him, and, in consequence, I was
obliged to go more rapidly than when I walked with my father and sister;
we went through the quiet streets lying near the ramparts, and passed
the sailors' old barracks, the sounds of whose bugles and drums reached
as far as my attic museum when the south wind blew; then we passed
through the fortifications by the most ancient of its gray gates,--a
gate almost abandoned, and used now principally by peasants with flocks
of sheep and droves of cattle,--and finally we arrived at the road that
led to the river.
A mile and a half of straight road stretched before us, and this path
lay between stunted old trees yellow with lichens whose branches were
blown to the left by the force of the sea-winds that almost constantly
came from the west, sweeping over the broad and level meadows that lay
between us and the ocean.
To those who have a conventionalized idea of country beauty, and to whom
a charming landscape means a river winding its way between poplars, or a
mountain crowned by an old castle, this level road would look very ugly.
But I found it exquisite in spite of its straight lines. Upon the left
there was nothing to be seen but grassy meadow land over which herds of
cattle strayed. And before us, in the distance, something that resembled
a line of ramparts shut in the plains sadly: it was the edge of a rocky
plateau at whose base flowed the river. The far bank of this river was
higher than the side that we were on, and was, in some respects, of
a different character, but for the most part it was as flat and
monotonous. And it is just this sameness that has so much charm for
me, an attraction appreciated seemingly by few others. The great level
plains with their calm and tranquil straight lines are deeply and
profoundly inspiring.
There is nothing in our vicinity that I love any better than the old
road; perhaps I have an affection for it because during my school-boy
days I built so many castles-in-Spain upon those flat plains where, from
time to time, I find them again. It is one of the few spots that has not
been disfigured by factories, docks and railways. It seems a spot that
belongs peculiarly to me, and certainly no one has the power to contest
my spiritual right to it.
The sum of the charm of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an emanation
from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for himself
according to his power, and we have it back again in the measure of our
out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the deep meaning of
this well-known truth. . . . During my childhood and youth the charm
seemed to reside in the thing itself, to have its habitation in the old
walls and the honeysuckle of my garden; I thought it lay along the sandy
shores of the Island and upon the grassy meadows and rocky moorland
about me. Later on, in pouring out my admiration every where, as I did,
I drew too heavily upon the well-spring--I exhausted it at the source.
And, alas! I find the land of my childhood, to which I will no doubt
return to die, changed and shrunken, and only for a moment, in certain
spots, am I able to recreate the illusions I have lost;--there I am for
the most part weighed down by the crushing memories of bygone
days. . . .
As I was saying before my digression, every Wednesday evening I walked
with a light and joyous step along the road that led towards those
distant rocks lying at the boundary of the plains, I went gayly
towards that region of oak trees and mossy stones in which Limoise was
situated,--my imagination greatly magnified it in those days.
The river we had to cross was at the end of the straight avenue
of lichened trees so harried by the west winds. The river was very
changeable, being subject to the tides and to all the moods of the
neighboring ocean. We crossed in a ferry-boat or a yawl, always having
for our oarsmen old sailors with bleached beards and sunburnt faces whom
we had known from earliest childhood.
When we reached the other bank, the rocky one, I always had a curious
optical illusion: it seemed to me that the town from which we had come,
and whose gray ramparts we still could see, suddenly drew very far
away from us, for in my young head distances exaggerated themselves
strangely. Upon this side all was different, the soil, the grass, the
wild flowers and even the butterflies that hovered over them; nothing
here was like those approaches to our town in whose fens and meadows I
took my daily walk. And the differences, which perhaps others would
not have noticed, thrilled and charmed me, for it had been my habit to
spend, perhaps to waste, my time in observing the infinitesimally small
things in nature, and I had often lost myself in contemplation of the
lowliest mosses. Even the twilights of these Wednesday evenings had
about them something distinctive and peculiar which I cannot express;
generally we reached the far shore just as the sun was setting, and we
watched it, from the height of the lonely plateau, disappear behind the
tall meadow-grass through which we had but newly come, and as it sunk
its great ruddy dish seemed uncommonly large.
After crossing the river we turned off the high-road and took an
unfrequented way that led through a region called “Chaumes,” a very
beautiful place at that time but horribly profaned to-day.
“Chaumes” lay at the entrance of a village whose ancient church we saw
in the distance. As it was public property it had kept intact its native
wildness. This “Chaumes” was a sort of table-land composed of a single
stone, and this rock, which undulated slightly, was covered with a
carpet of short, dry fragrant plants that snapped under our feet; and a
whole world of tiny gayly-colored butterflies and tinier moths fluttered
among the rare and delicate flowers growing there.
Sometimes we passed a flock of sheep guarded by a shepherd much more
countrified looking and tanned than those seen in the meadows about our
town. Lonely and sun-scorched, Chaumes seemed to me the very threshold
of Limoise: it had its very odor, the mingled scent of wild thyme and
sweet marjoram.
At the end of the rocky moor was the hamlet of Frelin. I love this
name of Frelin, for I think of it as being derived from those large
and fierce hornets (frelons) that build their nests in the heart of a
certain species of oak tree found in the forests of Limoise; to get rid
of these pests it is necessary, in the springtime, to build great fires
around the infested trees. This hamlet was composed of three or four
cottages. They were all low, as is the custom of our country, and they
were old, very old and gray; above the little rounded doorways were
half-effaced ornamental Gothic scrolls and blazonments. I scarcely ever
saw them except at dusk, as twilight was falling, and the hour and
the quaint little houses themselves awoke in me an appreciation of the
mystery of their past; above all these humble dwellings attested to the
antiquity of this rocky ground, so much older than the meadows of our
town which had been won from the sea, and where nothing that dates
before the time to Louis XIV is to be found.
As soon as we left Frelin I commenced to look eagerly along the path
ahead of me, for after that we usually spied Lucette, either afoot or
in a carriage, coming to meet us. As soon as I caught a glimpse of her I
would run ahead to embrace her.
On our way through the village we passed the tiny church, a wonder of
the twelfth century, built in the rarest and most ancient Romanesque
style;--and then as the shadows of evening deepened we saw, in the
semi-darkness before us, something that had the form of tall dark
legions: it was the forest of Limoise, composed almost wholly of
evergreen oaks, whose foliage is very dark and sombre. We then came into
the road leading directly to the house; on our way we passed the well
where the patient, thirsty cattle awaited their turn to drink. And
finally we opened the little old gate, and traversed the first grassy
courtyard which the shadowing trees, a century old, plunged into almost
total darkness.
The house lay between this courtyard and a large uncultivated garden
that extended to the edge of the oak forest. As we entered the ancient
dwelling, with its whitewashed walls and old-fashioned wainscoting, I
always looked eagerly for my butterfly-net that was usually to be found
hanging in the place where I had left it, ready for the next day's
chase.
After dinner it was our custom to go to the foot of the garden, and
there we sat in an arbor that was built against the old wall encircling
the yard,--this bower faced away from the unfriendly darkness of the
woods where the owls hooted. And while we were seated in the beautiful,
mild, star-bespangled night, suddenly upon the air, musical with
the chirping of myriad crickets, there was heard the tolling of a
bell,--heard very clearly by us although it came from afar off,--it was
the church bell in the village announcing the evening service.
Oh! the vesper bell of Enchillais heard in that beautiful garden long
ago! Oh! the sound of that bell, a little cracked but still silvery,
like the once beautiful voices of very old people which still retain
something of their sweetness. What charm of past times, and half sad
meditations of peaceful death, were awakened by that music which spread
itself into the limpid darkness of the surrounding country! And we heard
the bell chiming for a long time, but its sound reached us fitfully;
one while it seemed to be near, and then again it seemed far away, as it
obeyed the will of the soft night wind that was stirring. I bethought
me of all those who, on their lonely farms, were listening to it; I
bethought me, too, of all the unpeopled places round about where it
would be heard by no one, and a shudder passed through me at the thought
of the near-by forest, where the sweet vibrations of the bell would die.
The municipal council, composed of very superior spirits, after having
first put its everlasting tri-colored flag upon the steeple of the
little Roman Catholic Church, then suppressed its vesper bell. Its day
is done; and we shall never again, upon summer evenings, hear that call
to prayers.
Going to bed there was always a very enlivening proceeding, especially
when there was the prospect of a whole Thursday of play before me. I
would, I am sure, have been very much afraid in the guest chamber,
which was on the ground floor of the great, isolated house; but until my
twelfth year I slept on the floor above, in the spacious room occupied
by Lucette's mother;--with the aid of screens they had made for me a
little room of my own. In this retreat there was a book-case with glass
doors that belonged to the time of Louis XIV; this was filled with
treatises, a century old, upon navigation, and with sailors' log-books
that had not been opened for a hundred years. Tiny, scarce visible
butterflies, that entered by the open windows, were to be found here all
summer long, sleeping with extended wings upon the whitewashed walls.
And often the most exciting incident of the day happened just as I was
falling asleep; sometimes then an unwelcome bat found his way into the
room and circled wildly about the lighted candles; or an enormous moth
buzzed in and we would chase him with a cobweb-broom. Or again a storm
descended upon us and the great trees lashed their branches against the
house, and the old shutters slammed back and forth, and we waked with a
start.