The chief event of these winters, so poisoned by my college life, was
the gift-giving festival that we had at New Year.
At about the end of November it was our custom, my sister's, Lucette's
and mine, to make out a list of the things we desired most. Everybody in
the two families prepared surprises for us, and the mystery surrounding
these gifts was our most exquisite pleasure during the last days of the
year. Between parents, grandmother and aunts there occurred, to excite
my curiosity still further, conversations full of mysterious hints, and
whisperings that were hastily discontinued as soon as I appeared.
Between Lucette and me it became a real guessing game. As in the play of
“Words with a double meaning,” we had the right to ask certain pointed
questions,--for example we asked the most ridiculous ones, such as: “Has
it hair like an animal?”
And the answers went something after this fashion:
What your father is to give you (a dressing-case made of leather)
had hair, but it has none now, except on some portion of its interior
(brushes), and that is false. Your mamma's present (a fur muff) still
has some hair. What your aunt is to give you (a lamp) will help you to
see the hair on the others better; but, let me see, yes, I am sure that
that has none.
In the December twilights, in that hour between daylight and darkness,
we would sit upon our low stools before the wood-fire, and continue our
series of questions from day to day. We grew ever more eager and excited
until the 31st, and in the evening of that momentous day the mysteries
were revealed.
That day the presents for the two families, wrapped, tied and labeled,
were piled upon tables in a room closed against Lucette and me. At eight
o'clock the doors were thrown open and we filed in, the elders going
first, and each one of us sought for his own gift among the heap of
white parcels. For me the moment of entry was an exceedingly joyous one,
and until I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I could not refrain
from jumping and leaping like a kid long before it came time for us to
cross the threshold.
We had supper at eleven, and when the clock in the dining room struck
the midnight hour, tranquilly, in harmony with the sound of its calm
stroke, we separated in the first moments of those New Years that
are now buried under the ashes of many succeeding ones. And on those
evenings I fell asleep with all my gifts in my room near me. I even
kept the favorite ones upon my bed. The following morning I always waked
earlier than usual so that I might re-examine them; they cast a spell of
enchantment over that winter morning, the first one of a new year.
Once there was, among my presents, a large illustrated book treating of
the antediluvian world.
Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the
mysteries of prehistoric creations. I knew something about those
terrible creatures that in geologic times shook the primitive forests
with their heavy tread; for a long time the thought of them disquieted
me. I found them all in my book pictured in their proper habitat,
surrounded by great brakes, and standing under a leaden sky.
The antediluvian world already haunted my imagination and became the
constant subject of my dreams; often I concentrated my whole mind upon
it, and endeavored to picture to myself one of its gigantic landscapes
that seemed ever enveloped in a sinister and gloomy twilight with a
background filled in with great moving shadows. Then when the vision
thus created took on a seeming reality I felt an inexpressible sadness
that was like an exhalation of the soul,--as soon as the emotion passed
the dream-structure vanished.
Soon after this I sketched a new scene for the “Donkey's Skin;” it
was one representing the liassic period. I painted a dismal swamp
overshadowed by lowering clouds, where, in the shave-grass and the
gigantic ferns, strange extinct beasts wandered slowly.
The play of the “Donkey's Skin” seemed no longer the same Donkey's Skin.
I discarded one by one the little stage people who now offended me by
their uncompromising doll-like stiffness; they were relegated to their
card-board box, the poor little things, where they slept the sleep
eternal, and without doubt they will never be exhumed.
My new scenes had nothing in common with the old fairy spectacle: in the
depths of virgin forests, in exotic gardens, and oriental palaces
formed of pearls and gold I tried to realize, with the small means at
my command, all my dreams, while waiting for that improbable better time
that ever lies in the future.