Little Jeanne had come over to spend the day at our house; it was at the
end of May during that spring in which my expectations were so great--I
was twelve years old at the time. All the afternoon we rehearsed with
our tiny jointed china dolls, and painted scenery, we had in fact been
busy with the “Donkey's Skin,”--but with a revised and grand version of
it, and we had about us a great confusion of paints, brushes, pieces of
cardboard, gilt paper and bits of gauze. When it came time for us to go
down into the dining-room we stored our precious work away in a large
box that was consecrated to it from that day forth--the box was a new
one made of pine, and it had a penetrating, resinous odor.
After our dinner, at dusk, we were taken out for a walk. But, to my
surprise and sorrow, we found it chilly and the sky was overcast, and
every where there was a sort of mist that recalled winter to my mind.
Instead of going beyond the town, to the places usually frequented by
pedestrians, we went towards the Marine Garden, a much prettier and more
suitable walk, but one usually deserted after sunset.
We went down the long straight street without meeting any one; as we
drew near the “Chapel of the Orphans” we heard those within chanting a
psalm. When that was finished a procession of little girls filed out.
They were dressed in white, and they looked very cold in their spring
muslins. After making a circuit of the lonely quarter, chanting
meanwhile a melancholy hymn, they noiselessly re-entered the chapel.
There was no one in the street to see them save ourselves, and the
thought came to me that neither was there any one in the gray heavens
above to see them; the overcast sky seemed as lonely as the solitary
street. That little band of orphaned children intensified my feeling
of sorrow and added to the disenchantment of the May night, and I had a
consciousness of the vanity of prayer, of the emptiness of all things.
In the Marine Garden my sadness increased. It was extremely cold, and we
shivered in our light spring wraps. There was not a single promenader
to be seen. The large chestnut trees all abloom and the foliage, in
the glory of its tender hue, formed a feathery green and white
avenue--emptiness was here too; all of this intertwined magnificence of
branch and flower, seen of no one, unfolded itself to the indifferent
sky that stretched above it cold and gray. And in the long flower beds
there was a profusion of roses, peonies and lilies that seemed also to
have mistaken the season, for they appeared to shiver, as we did, in the
chill twilight.
I have found that the melancholy one sometimes feels in the springtime
usually transcends that felt in autumn, for the reason, doubtless, that
the former is so out of harmony with the promise of the season.
The demoralized state into which I was thrown by everything about me
gave me a longing to play a boyish trick upon Jeanne. There came to me
a desire (one that I frequently felt) to have some sort of revenge
upon her, because her disposition was so much more mature and yet more
sprightly than mine. I induced her to lean over and smell the lovely
lilies, and while she was doing so I, by giving her head a very slight
push, buried her nose deep in the flowers and it became covered with
yellow pollen. She was indignant! And the thought that I had acted so
rudely tended to make the walk home a very painful one.
The beautiful evenings of May! Had I not cherished memories of those of
preceding years, or had they in truth been like this one? Like this one
in the cold and lonely garden? Had they ended so miserably as did this
play-day with Jeanne? With a feeling of mortal weariness I said to
myself: “And is this all!” an exclamation which soon afterwards became
one of my most frequent unspoken reflections, a phrase indeed that I
might well have taken for my motto.
When we returned I went to the wooden box to inspect our afternoon's
work, and as I did so I inhaled the balsamic odor that had impregnated
everything belonging to our theatre. For a long time after that, for
a year or two, perhaps longer, the odor of the pine box containing the
properties of the “Donkey's Skin” recalled vividly that May evening so
filled with poignant sorrow, which was one of the most singular feelings
of my childhood. Since I have come to man's estate I no longer suffer
from anguish that has no known cause, doubly hard to endure because
mysterious, I no longer feel as if my feet are treading unfathomable
depths in search of a firm bottom. I no longer suffer without knowing
why. No, such emotions belonged peculiarly to my childhood, and this
book could properly bear the title (a dangerous one I well know): “A
Journal of my extreme and inexplicable sorrows, and some of the boyish
pranks by which I diverted my mind from them.”