Those Thursdays at Limoise when the fierce heat of the noon-day sun
overwhelmed everything, and the country side lay asleep and silent under
its pitiless rays, it was my habit to clamber up to the top of the old
wall that enclosed the garden, and there I sat astride and immovable for
a long time. The branching ivy reached to my shoulders and innumerable
flies and locusts buzzed around me. From the height of this observatory
I had a view of the hot and lonely region lying beyond, of the moorland
and woodland, and from there I saw a thin white veil of mist that was
agitated ceaselessly by the waves of heat, as the surface of a tiny lake
is ruffled by the least wind. Those horizons seen from Limoise still had
for me the strange mystery I had endowed them with in the first summers
of my life. The region visible from the top of the wall was a rather
solitary one, and I tried to make myself believe that the waste land
and woodland was a veritable untrodden country that stretched out
indefinitely; and although I now knew well that about me everywhere
there were roads; cultivated fields, and prosperous villages, I
succeeded in clinging to the illusion that the surrounding country and
contiguous lands were wild and primitive.
And the better to deceive myself I took care to shut out, by looking
through my fingers folded together spy-glass fashion, all that would
have spoiled for me the impression of loneliness; an old farm house, for
instance, with its bit of cultivated vineyard and smooth road.
And there all alone, in that silence murmurous with the buzzing of many
insects, distracted by nothing, always turning my hollowed hand towards
the most desolate portion of the landscape, I succeeded in gaining an
impression of distant, tropical countries.
I had impressions of Brazil particularly, but I do not know why in those
moments of contemplation the neighboring forest always suggested that
country to me.
In passing I must describe this forest, the first one of all the earth's
forests that I knew, and the one I loved the best: the straight, slim
trunks of the ancient evergreen oaks, of sombre foliage, were like the
columns of a church; not a particle of brush grew under them, but the
dry soil was covered all the year with the most exquisite short grass,
soft and fine as down, and here and there grew furze, dropwort and other
rare flowers that thrive in the shade.
CHAPTER LXV.
The Iliad was being explained to us in class,--no doubt I would have
loved it, but our master had made it odious by his analysis, his
difficult tasks and his parrot-like recitals;--but suddenly I stopped,
filled with admiration of a famous line, whose end is musical as the
murmur of the waves of the incoming tide as they spread their sheets of
foam upon the pebbly shore.
“Observe,” said the Big Ape, “observe the inceptive harmony.”
Zounds! Yes, I had observed it. Little need to take the trouble to point
out such a sentence to me.
I also had a great admiration, less justified perhaps, for some lines
from Virgil.
Since the beginning of the Ecloque I had, with the greatest interest,
followed the two shepherds as they made their way across the fields
of ancient Rome. I could picture it to myself so vividly, those Roman
meadows of two thousand years ago: hot, a little sterile, with thickets
of almost petrified shrubs, and evergreen oaks like the stony moorland
of Limoise, where I had experienced precisely the pastoral charm that I
discovered in this description of a past time.
Onward went the two shepherds, and suddenly, they perceived that their
journey was half over, “because the tomb of Bianor was immediately below
them . . .” Oh! how vividly I saw that tomb of Bianor disclose itself to
their view. Its old stones, that made a white blot on the reddish road,
were covered with tiny sun-scorched plants, wild thyme or marjoram, and
here and there grew stunted dark foliaged shrubs. And the sonority of
the word Bianoris with which the sentence ended suddenly and magically
evoked for me the musical humming of the insects that buzzed around the
two travellers who, upon that bygone day in June, walked onward in the
great silence and serene tranquillity of the hot noon enkindled by a
younger sun. I was no longer in the schoolroom; I was in the meadows
with the shepherds walking with them this radiant summer day through the
sun-scorched flowers and grass of a Roman field,--but still all seemed
softened and vague as if looked at through a telescope that had the
power to draw into its line of vision ages long past.
Who knows? Perhaps if the Big Ape could but have divined the causes
that led to my momentary inattention it might have brought about an
understanding between us.
CHAPTER LXVI.
One Thursday evening at Limoise, just before the inevitable hour for my
departure, I went up alone to the large, old room on the second floor in
which I slept. First I leaned out of the open window to watch the July
sun sink behind the stony fields and fern heaths that lay towards the
sea, which though very near us was invisible. These sunsets at the end
of my Thursday holidays always overwhelmed me with melancholy.
During the last minutes of my stay I felt a desire, one I had never
known before, to rummage in the old Louis XV bookcase that stood near
my bed. There among the volumes in their century-old bindings, where
the worms, never disturbed, slowly bored their galleries, I found a book
made of thick rough old-fashioned paper, and this I opened carelessly.
. . . In it I read, with a thrill of emotion, that from noon until
four o'clock in the afternoon, on the 20th of June, 1813, south of
the equator, in longitude 110 and latitude 15 (between the tropics,
consequently, and in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean) there was
fair weather, a beautiful sea, a fine southeast breeze, and in the
sky many little clouds called “cat-tails,” and that alongside the ship
dolphins were passing.
He who had seen the dolphins pass, and who had recorded the fugitive
cloud forms had doubtless been dead for many years. I knew that the
book was what is called a ship's log-book, one in which seafaring people
write every day. Its appearance did not strike me as strange, although
I had never before had one in my hand. But for me it was a wonderful
and unexpected experience to thus suddenly come into a knowledge of the
aspect of the sea and sky in the midst of the South Pacific Ocean, at
a given time in a year long past. . . . Oh! for a glimpse of that
beautiful and tranquil sea, of those “cat-tails” that dotted the deep
blue arch of the sky, and of those dolphins that swiftly traversed the
lonely southern waters!
In this sailor's life, in this profession so terrifying (a career
forbidden to me), how many delightful things happened! I had never until
this evening realized it with such intensity.
The memory of that hasty little reading is the reason why, during my
watches at sea, whenever a helmsman signals a passage of dolphins, I
have always turned my eyes in their direction to watch them; and it
has always given me a peculiar pleasure to note the incident in the
log-book, differing so little from the one in which the sailors of June,
1813, had written before me.
CHAPTER LXVII.
During the vacation that followed, our departure for the south and the
mountains enchanted me more than did my first trip there.
As in the preceding summer we started, my sister and I, at the beginning
of August. While it was no longer a journey of adventure, the pleasure
of returning and again finding there all the things that had formerly so
delighted me surpassed the charm of going forth to meet the unknown.
Between the point where the railroad ended and the village in which
our cousins lived, in the course of the long carriage ride, our little
coachman, in venturing to take what he supposed a short cut, lost his
way, and he carried us into the most exquisite forest nooks. The weather
was beautiful and radiant. With what joy I saluted the first peasant
women whom I saw walking along with great copper water-jars upon their
heads, and the first swarthy peasants conversing in the well remembered
dialect, how I rejoiced when we rolled along over the blood-colored
roads, and when the mountains junipers came into view.
At about noon-time we stopped in a shady valley in a sequestered village
called Veyrac to rest our horses, and we seated ourselves at the foot of
a chestnut tree. There we were attacked by the ducks of the place, the
boldest and most ill bred in the world. They flocked around us in an
unseemly manner, uttering shrill cries and quacking hideously. As we
departed, even after we were in our carriage, these infuriated creatures
followed us; whereupon my sister turned towards them, and with all the
dignity of an old-time traveller outraged by an inhospitable population
exclaimed: “Ducks of Veyrac, be ye accursed!” And for several years
I could not keep a straight face when I remembered the foolish and
prolonged laughter that I indulged in at the time. Above all I cannot
think of that day without regretting the resplendence of the sun and the
blue sky, a resplendence that I never see now.
As we drew near we were met on our way at the bridge spanning the river,
by our cousins and the Peyrals. I discovered with pleasure that my
little band was complete. We had all grown taller by several inches; but
we found immediately that we were not otherwise changed, we were still
children ready for the same childish games.
At night-fall there was a terrific storm. And while the thunder boomed
around us as if it was bombarding the roof of my uncle's house, and when
all the old stone gargoyles in the village were pouring forth torrents
of water that rushed tumultuously over the black pebbles in the street,
we took refuge, the little Peyrals and I, in the kitchen, and there we
made a racket and joyously danced around in a ring.
It was a very large kitchen, furnished in an old-fashioned way with a
perfect arsenal of burnished copper utensils; every variety of pan and
kettle, shining like pieces of armor, hung on the halls in the order of
their size. It was almost dark, and from the moist earth came the fresh
odor one usually smells after a storm, after a summer rain; and through
the thick iron-barred Louis XIII windows the lurid, green lightning
flashed incessantly and blinded us and compelled us, in spite of
ourselves, to close our eyes. We turned round and round like mad beings,
and sang together: “The star of night whose peaceful light.” . . . It
was a sentimental song, never intended for dance music, but we scanned
it drolly and mockingly, and thus made of it an accommodating and
tuneful dance measure. We continued our joyous sport for I do not
know how long a time; we were excited by the noise of the storm and
we whirled around like little dervishes; it was a merry-making in
celebration of my return; it was a fitting way of inaugurating the
holidays; it was a defiance to the Big Ape, and it was an appropriate
prologue to the series of expeditions and childish sports of every kind
that were to recommence, with more ardor than ever, the next day.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
The following morning at daybreak when I awoke, a noisy cadence, to
which I was unaccustomed, fell upon my ears; the neighboring weaver had
already commenced, even with the dawn, to work his ancient loom, and the
musical to and fro of its shuttle had roused me. Then after the first
drowsy, dreamy moment I remembered, with overwhelming joy, that I was
at my uncle's in the south; that this was the morning of the first day;
that I had before me the prospect of a whole summer of out-of-door
life and wildest liberty--had August and September, two months that at
present pass as quickly as if they were but two days, but which then
seemed of a fairly respectable duration. With a feeling of rapture,
after I had wholly shaken off my sleep, I came into a full consciousness
of myself and the realities of my life; I felt “joy at my waking.”
The preceding winter I had read a story of the Indians of the Great
Lakes, and one thing in it had impressed me so deeply that I always
remembered it: an old Indian chief, whose daughter was pining away
because of her love for a white man, had finally consented to give her
to the alien so that she might once more feel “joy at her waking.”
Joy at her waking! Indeed, for some time I had myself noticed that the
moment of waking is always the one in which I had the most distinct and
vivid impression of joy or sorrow; and it is then, at the waking hour,
that one finds it so particularly painful to be without joy; my first
little sorrows and remorses, my anxieties about the future, were the
things that usually obtruded themselves cruelly--however the feeling of
sadness vanished very quickly in those days.
At a later time I had very gloomy and sad awakenings. And there are
times now when I have moments of terrifying clearness of vision during
which I seem to see, if I may so express it, into the depths of life;
it is at such moments that life presents itself to me without those
pleasing mirages that during the day still delude me; during those
moments I appear to have a more vivid realization of the rapid flight
of the years, the crumbling away of all that I endeavor to hold to, I
almost realize the final unimaginable nothingness, I see the bottomless
pit of death, near at hand, no longer in any way disguised.
But that morning I had a joyful awaking, and unable to remain quietly
in bed, I rose immediately. So impatient was I to be out that I scarcely
took time to ask myself where I should begin my first day's round of
visits.
I had all the nooks and corners of the village to see again, the gothic
ramparts and the lovely river; and my uncle's garden to revisit, where
probably, since last year, the rarest butterflies had become domiciled.
I had visits to make to the ancient and curious houses in the
neighborhood, where lived all the kind old women who, in the past
summer, had lavished upon me their most luscious grapes as if they were
my feudal due;--there was in particular a certain Madame Jeanne, a rich
old peasant, who had taken so great a fancy to me that she liked to
humor my every whim, and who, for my amusement, every time she passed on
her way, like Nausicaa, from the washing-place, looked comically out of
the corner of her eyes towards my uncle's house. And, too, there were
the surrounding vineyards, and woods, and mountain paths; and beyond,
Castelnau, rearing its battlements and towers above the pedestal of
chestnuts and oak trees, called me to its ruins! Where should I run
first, and how could I ever weary of so beautiful a land!
The sea, to which I was now scarcely ever taken, was for the moment
completely forgotten.
After these two happy months school was to re-open. I could not bear
to think of it, but its monotony would be broken by a great event, the
return of my brother. His four years were not quite completed; but we
knew that he had already left the “mysterious island,” and we expected
him to arrive home in October. For me it would be like becoming
acquainted with a stranger. I was somewhat anxious to know whether he
would love me when he met me, if he would approve of a thousand little
things I did,--how, for instance, my way of playing Beethoven would
please him.
I thought constantly of his approaching arrival; I was so overjoyed, and
I anticipated with so keen a delight the change his coming would make in
my life, that I did not feel a particle of the melancholy which usually
beset me in the autumn.
I meant to consult him about a thousand troublous matters, to confide to
him all my anguish and uncertainty in regard to the future; I knew also
that my parents depended upon him to give them definite advice about me,
and expected him to direct me towards a scientific career: that was the
one dark spot upon his return.
Awaiting his dread decision, I threw aside all care and amused myself
as gayly as possible; I put even less restraint than usual upon myself
during the vacation which I regarded as likely to be the very last of my
childhood.
CHAPTER LXIX.
After the noon dinner it was the custom in my uncle's house to sit for
an hour or two in the entry-way of the house, that vestibule inlaid with
flagstones and ornamented with a large, burnished, copper fountain, for
it was the coolest place during the heated period of the day. Here
it was almost dark, for everything was closed; two or three rays of
sunshine, in whose light the flies danced, filtered in through the
cracks of the massive Louis XIII door. In the silent village no one
was astir, and one heard there only the everlasting clucking of the
hens,--all other living creatures seemed asleep.
I, however, did not remain long in the cool vestibule. The bright
sunshine lured me out; and, too, scarcely had I installed myself there
in the circle before I heard a knocking at the street door: the three
little Peyrals had come to fetch me, and to apprise me of their presence
they lifted the old iron knocker that was hot enough to burn their
fingers.
Then with hats pulled over our eyes and equipped with hammers, staffs
and butterfly-nets we would start out in search of new adventures. First
we passed through the narrow gothic streets paved with pebbles, then we
struck into the paths that lay just beyond the village, paths that were
always covered with wheat-chaff that got into our shoes, and into which
we sank ankle deep; finally we reached the open country, the vineyards,
and the roads that led to the woods, or better still those that brought
us to the river which we forded by means of the flower-covered islets.
This wild liberty was a complete avengement for the monotony of my
cribbed and cabined home life, ever the same all the year through; but I
still lacked the companionship of little boys of my own age, I needed to
clash with them,--and, too, this freedom lasted only a couple of months.
CHAPTER LXX.
One day I had a great desire, wherefore I do not know, unless out of
pure bravado and the spirit of perversity, to do something unseemly.
After having searched all of one morning for this something I found it.
It is well known that the swarms of flies which one finds in the south
during the summer, and which contaminate everything are a veritable
plague. I knew that there was a trap set for them in the middle of my
uncle's kitchen. It was a treacherous pipe of a special shape, at
the bottom of which, in the soapy pan of water there, the flies were
invariably drowned. Now on the particular day in which I felt so
devilish I bethought me of that disgusting blackish mass at the bottom
of the vessel, made up of the thousands of flies drowned during the past
two or three days, and I wondered what sort of toothsome dish I should
make of it, a pancake, perhaps, or better still, an omelette.
Quickly and nervously, and with a loathing that almost made me vomit, I
poured the pasty black mass into a plate and carried it to the house of
old Madame Jeanne, the only one in the world willing to do anything and
everything for me.
“A fly omelette! To be sure! Why not! That is very simple!” she
exclaimed. She went immediately to the fire with a frying pan and some
eggs. She gave the unclean mess a good preliminary beating, and then she
placed it on her high and ancient fireplace. As I watched her procedure
I was dismayed and surprised at myself.
But the three little Peyrals, whom I had met unexpectedly, went into
such ecstasies over my idea, a thing they always did, that I was
fortified; and when the omelette, at just the right time, was turned out
hot upon a plate we started forth triumphantly to carry the exhibit
home to show to our families. We formed a procession in the order of our
respective heights, and as we marched we sang, “The Star of Night” in
voices loud and hoarse enough to summon the devil to earth.
CHAPTER LXXI.
In the mountains the end of summer was always a beautiful season, for
the meadows lying at the foot of the hillside forests, already yellow,
were purple with crocuses. Then, too, the vintage commenced and lasted
for about fifteen days,--days of enchantment for us.
We now spent most of our time in the shady nooks of the woods and
meadows in the neighborhood of the Peyral vineyards; there we had
play-dinners consisting of candy and fruits. We would spread out on the
grass what we considered a most elegant cloth, and this we decorated,
after the old fashion, with garlands of flowers, and we put on it plates
made of yellow and red vine leaves. The vintagers brought us the most
luscious grapes, bunches chosen from among a thousand; and, with
the heat of the sun to aid, we sometimes became a little tipsy, not,
however, made so by sweet wine, for we had drunk none, but by the juice
of the grapes merely, in the self-same fashion as did the wasps and
flies that warmed themselves upon the trellises. . . .
One morning at the end of September, when the weather was rainy and it
was chilly enough for me to realize that melancholy autumn was near
at hand, I was attracted into the kitchen by the bright wood fire that
leaped gayly in the high, old-fashioned chimney-place. And as I stood
there, idle and out of sorts, because of the rain, I amused myself by
melting a pewter plate and plunging it, in its liquid state, into a pail
of water.
The result was a shapeless, bright, and silvery-gray lump which very
much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the mass thoughtfully for some
time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amusement
which became our most delightful pastime during those last days of
vacation.
That same evening we held a conference on the steps of the great
stairway, and I told the Peyrals that from the aspect of the soil and
the plants I had come to the conclusion that there were silver mines in
this part of the country. As I spoke I assumed the knowing and bold
airs of one of those venturesome scouts, who is usually the principal
personage in old-fashioned stories of American adventure.
Searching for mines fell well into line with the abilities of my
little band, for often, armed with pick and shovel, they had set out to
discover fossils or rare stones.
The next day, therefore, half way up the mountain, when we arrived at
a path chosen by me for its appropriateness, for it was lonely
and mysterious, shut in by forest trees and embedded between high,
moss-grown, rocky banks, I stopped my little band peremptorily, as if I
were endowed with the keen scent of an Indian chief. I pretended that
I had here recognized the presence of precious ore-beds; and, in truth,
when we dug in the place I indicated we found the first nuggets, the
melted plate that I had buried there the day before.
These mines occupied us constantly until the end of my stay. The Peyrals
were convinced and full of amazement, and although I spent some time
each morning in the kitchen melting plates and covers to feed our vein
of silver, I very nearly deluded myself into believing in the reality of
the mine.
The isolated silent spot, so exquisitely beautiful, where these
excavations took place, and the melancholy but enchanting serenity of
the end of summer, gave a rare charm to our little dream of adventure.
We were, however, most amusingly secret and mysterious in regard to
our discovery; we considered it a tribal secret, and we cherished it as
such.
Our riches, mixed in with some of the red mountain soil, we hoarded in
an old trunk in my uncle's attic as if the latter were an Ali Baba's
cave.
We pledged ourselves to leave it there during the winter, until the next
vacation, at which time we counted on making additions to our treasure.
CHAPTER LXXII.
In the first week of October we received a joyous telegram from our
father bidding us leave for home as speedily as possible. My brother,
who was returning to Europe by a packet-boat on its way from Panama, was
to disembark at Southampton; we had but just time to reach home if we
wished to be there to welcome him.
We arrived the evening of the third day just in time, for my brother was
expected a few hours later on the night train. I had barely time to put
into his room, in their accustomed places, the various little trinkets
that he had four years previously confided to my care, before the hour
set for our departure to the station to meet him. To me his return,
announced so unexpectedly, did not seem a reality, and I was so excited
that for two nights I scarcely slept at all.
This is why, in spite of my impatience to see my brother, I fell asleep
at the station; when he appeared it seemed a sort of dream to me. I
embraced him timidly, for he was very different from my mental image of
him. He was bronzed and bearded, his manner of speech was more rapid,
and, with a slightly smiling, slightly anxious expression, he regarded
me fixedly, as if to ascertain what the years had done for me, and to
deduce from that what my future was to be.
When I returned home I fell asleep standing; it wad the dead sleepiness
of a child fatigued by a long journey, against which it is futile to
struggle, and I was carried to my bed.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
I awaked the following morning with a feeling of joyousness that
penetrated to the very depths of my being, and as I remembered the cause
for my happiness my eyes fell upon an extraordinary object standing on a
table in my room. It was evidently a very slim canoe with a balance beam
and sails. Then my gaze encountered other unfamiliar objects scattered
about: necklaces of shells strung on human hair, head-dresses of
feathers, ornaments appertaining to a dark and primitive savagery; it
was as if distant Polynesia had come to me during my sleep. My brother,
it seems had already begun to open his cases, and while I slept he had
slipped noiselessly into my room and grouped around me these ornaments
intended for my museum.
I jumped out of bed quickly so that I might go and find him, for I had
scarcely seen him the evening before.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
And it seems I hardly saw him during those hurried weeks that he spent
with us. Of that period, which lasted so short a time, I have very
confused visions, similar to those one has of things seen during a
rapid journey. I remember vaguely that we lived more gayly, and that
his presence among us brought many young people to our house. I remember
also that he seemed at times to be preoccupied and absorbed by things
entirely outside the family sphere; perhaps he had longings for the
tropics, for the “delicious island,” or it may be he dreaded his early
departure.
Sometimes I held him captive near the piano by playing for him the
haunting music of Chopin which I had but just begun to understand. He
was disquieted however by my playing, and he said that Chopin's music
was too exuberant and at the same time too enervating for me. He had
come among us so recently that he was better able to judge of me than
were the others, and he realized perhaps that my intellect was in danger
of becoming warped through the nature of the artistic and intellectual
effort it put forth; no doubt he thought Chopin and the “Donkey's
Skin” equally dangerous, and considered that I was becoming excessively
affected and abnormal in spite of my fits of childish behavior. I am
sure that he thought even my amusements were fanciful and unhealthy. Be
that as it may, he one day, to my great joy, decreed that I should learn
to ride horseback, but that was the only change his coming made in my
education. Cowardice prompted me to defer discussion of those weighty
questions appertaining to my future which I was so anxious to talk over
with him; I preferred to take my time, and, too, I shrunk from making
a decision, and thus by my silence I sought to prolong my childhood.
Besides, I did not consider it a pressing matter after all, inasmuch as
he was to be with us for some years. . . .
But one fine morning, although we had reckoned so largely on keeping
him, there came news of a higher rank and an order from the naval
department commanding him to start without delay for a distant part of
the orient, where an expedition was organizing.
After a few days which were mainly spent in preparing for that
unforeseen campaign he left us as if borne away by a gust of wind.
Our adieus were less sad this time, for we did not expect him to be
absent more than two years. . . . In reality it was his eternal farewell
to us; whatever is left of his body lies at the bottom of the Indian
Ocean, towards the middle of the Bay of Bengal.
When he had departed, while the noise of the carriage that was bearing
him away could still be heard, my mother turned to me with an expression
of love that touched me to the very innermost fibre of my being; and as
she drew me to her she said with the emphasis of conviction: “Thank God,
at least we shall keep you with us!”
Keep me! . . . They would keep me! . . . Oh! . . . I lowered my head and
turned my eyes away, for I could feel that their expression had changed,
had become a little wild. I could not respond to my mother with a word
or a caress.
Such a serene confidence upon her part distressed me cruelly, for the
moment in which I heard her say, “We shall keep you,” I understood, for
the first time in my life, what a firm hold on my mind the project of
going away had taken--of going even farther than my brother, of going
everywhere upon the face of the earth.
A sea-faring life terrified me, and I relished the idea of it as little
as ever. To a little being like me, so greatly attached to my home,
bound to it by a thousand sweet ties, the very thought of it made my
heart bleed. And besides, how could I break the news of such a decision
to my parents, how give them so much pain and thus flagrantly outrage
their wishes! But to renounce all my plans, always to remain in the same
place, to be upon this earth, and to see nothing of it--what a squalid,
disenchanting future! What was the use to live, what the good of growing
up for that?
And in that empty parlor with its disordered chairs, one even
overturned, and while I was still under the dark spell of our sad
farewells, there beside my mother, leaning against her with eyes turned
away and with soul overwhelmed with sorrow, I suddenly remembered the
old log-book which I had read at sunset last spring at Limoise. The
short sentences written down upon the old paper with yellow ink came
slowly back to me one after the other with a charm as lulling and
perfidious as that exercised by a magic incantation:
“Fair weather . . . beautiful sea . . . light breeze from the south-east
. . . Shoals of dolphins . . . passing to larboard.”
And with a shudder of almost religious awe, with pantheistic ecstasy, my
inward eye saw all about me the sad and vast blue splendor of the South
Pacific Ocean.
A great calm, tinged with melancholy, fell upon us after my brother's
departure, and to me the days were monotonous in the extreme.
They had always thought of sending me to the Polytechnic school, but
it had not been decided upon irrevocably. The wish to become a sailor,
which had obtruded itself upon me almost against my will, charmed and
terrified me in an almost equal degree; I lacked the courage necessary
to settle such a grave matter with myself, and I always hesitated to
speak of it. The upshot was that I decided to reflect over it until my
next vacation, and thus by my irresolution and delay I secured to myself
a few more months of careless childhood.
I still led as solitary a life as ever; it was very difficult for me to
change the bent that my mind had taken in spite of my mental distress
and in spite of my latent desire to roam far and wide over the earth.
More than ever I stayed in the house and busied myself painting stage
scenery, and playing Chopin and Beethoven; to all appearances I was
tranquil and deeply absorbed in my dreams, and I became ever more and
more attached to my home, to its every nook and corner, even to the
stones in its walls. It is true that now and again I took a horseback
ride, but I always went with a groom and never with children of my own
age--I still had no young playmates.
My second year at college was much less painful than my first; it passed
more quickly, and moreover I had formed an attachment for two of my
classmates, my elders by a year or two, the only ones who had not the
preceding year treated me disdainfully. The thin ice once broken, there
had sprung up between us an ardent and sentimental friendship; we even
called each other by our baptismal names, something that was contrary
to school etiquette. Since we never saw each other except in the
schoolroom, we were obliged to communicate in mysterious whispers
under the teacher's eye, our relations, consequently, were inalterably
courteous and did not resemble the ordinary friendship between boys. I
loved them with all my heart; I would have allowed myself to be cut into
bits for them; and, in all sincerity, I imagined that this affection
would endure throughout my life.
My excessive exclusiveness caused me to treat the others in the class
with great indifference and haughtiness; still a certain superficial
self, necessary for social purposes, had already begun to take shallow
root, and I knew better now how to remain on good terms with them, and
at the same time to keep my true self hidden from them.
I generally contrived to sit between my two friends, Andre and Paul.
If, however, we were separated we continually and slyly exchanged notes
written in a cipher to which we alone had the key.
These letters were always love confidences: “I have seen her to-day; she
wore a blue dress trimmed with gray fur, and she had a lark's wing on
her turban, etc.”--For we had chosen sweethearts who became the subject
of our very poetical prattle.
Something of the ridiculous and whimsical invariably marks this
transition age in a boy's life, and for that reason I have thought it
worth while to transcribe the boyish note.
Before going further I wish to say that my transition periods have
lasted longer than do those of the majority of men, and during them I
have been carried from one extreme to another; and, too they have caused
me to touch all the perilous rocks along life's way,--I am also fully
conscious of the fact that until almost my twenty-fifth year I had
eccentric and absurd manners. . . .
But now I will continue with my confidences respecting our three love
affairs.
Andre was ardently in love with a young lady almost six years older than
himself who had already been introduced into society,--I believe that
his affair was a case of real and deep affection.
I had chosen Jeanne for my sweetheart, and my two friends were the only
beings who knew my secret. To do as they did, although I considered it a
little silly, I wrote her name in cipher on the covers of my copy-books;
in every way and manner I sought to persuade myself of the ardor of
my passion, but I am bound to admit that the whole thing was a little
artificial, for the amusing coquetry that Jeanne and I had indulged
in early in our acquaintance had developed into a true and great
friendship, a hereditary friendship I may call it, a continuation of
that felt by our ancestors long before our birth. No, my first real
love, of which I will soon speak, was for a being seen in a dream.
As for Paul--alas! His heart affair was very shocking to me, for it did
particular violence to the ideas that I then had. He was in love with
a little shop-girl who worked in a perfumery store, and on his Sunday
holidays he gazed at her through the show-case window. It is true that
she was named Stella or Olympia, and that raised her somewhat in my
esteem; and, too, Paul took pains to surround his love with an ethereal
and poetic atmosphere in order to make it more acceptable to us. At the
bottom of his cipher notes he constantly wrote, for our benefit, the
sweetest rhymed verses dedicated to her, wherein her name, ending in
“a,” recurred again and again, like the perfume of musk.
In spite of my great affection for him I could not but smile pityingly
over his poetic effusions. And I think that it is partly because of them
that I have never, at any epoch in my life, had the least inclination to
write a single line of verse. My notes were always written in a wild and
free prose that outraged every rule.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
Paul knew by heart many verses of a forbidden poet named Alfred de
Musset. The strange quality of these verses troubled me, and yet I
was fascinated by them. In class he would whisper them, in a scarcely
perceptible voice, into my ear; and although my conscience accused me, I
used to allow him to begin:
Jacque was very quiet as he looked at Marie,
I know not what that sleeping maiden
Had of mystery in her features, the noblest ever seen.
In my brother's study, where from time to time, when I was overwhelmed
with sorrow over his departure, I isolated myself, I had seen on a shelf
in his book-case a large volume of this poet's works, and often I had
been tempted to take it down; but my parents had said to me: “You are
not to touch any of the books that are there without permission from
us,” and my conscience always gave me pause.
As to asking for permission, I knew only too well that my request would
be refused.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
I will here recount a dream that I had in my fourteenth year. It came
to me during one of those mild and sweet nights that are ushered in by a
long and delicious twilight.
In the room where I had spent all the years of my childhood I had been
lulled to sleep by the sound of songs that the sailors and young girls
sang as they danced around the flower-twined May-pole. Until the moment
of deep sleep I had listened to those very old national airs which the
children of the people were singing in a loud, free voice, but distance
softened and mellowed and poetized the voices as they traversed the
tranquil silence; strangely enough I had been soothed by the noisy mirth
and overflowing joyousness of these beings who, during their fleeting
youth, are so much more artless than we, and more oblivious of death.
In my dream it was twilight, not a sad one however, but on the contrary,
the air was soft and mild and overflowing with sweet odors like that of
a real May night. I was in the yard of our house, the aspect of which
was not changed in any particular, but as I walked beside the walls all
abloom with jasmine, honeysuckle and roses, I felt restless and troubled
as if I was seeking for some unnamable something; I seemed to have a
consciousness that someone, whom I wished ardently to see, awaited
my coming; I felt as if there was about to happen to me something so
strange and wonderful as to intoxicate me by its very advance.
At a spot where grew a very old rosebush, one that had been planted by
an ancestor and for that reason guarded sacredly, although it did
not bear more than one rose in two or three years, I saw a young girl
standing motionless with a seductive and mysterious smile upon her lips.
The twilight became a little deeper, the air more languorous.
Everywhere it became darker; but about her shone a sort of indeterminate
light, like that coming from a reflector, and her figure outlined itself
clearly against the shadows in the background.
I guessed that she was very beautiful and young; but her forehead and
her eyes were hidden from me by the veil of night; indeed, I could see
nothing very distinctly except the exquisite oval of her lower face,
and her mouth which was parted smilingly. She leaned against the old
flowerless rosebush, almost in its branches. Night came on rapidly. The
girl seemed perfectly at home in the garden; she had come I knew not
from where, for there was no door by which she could have entered; she
appeared to find it as natural to be here as I found it natural to find
her here.
I drew very close in order to get a glimpse of her eyes which puzzled
me; suddenly, in spite of the darkness that became ever thicker, I saw
them very distinctly; they also were smiling like the lips;--and they
were not just any impersonal eyes, such, for instance, as may be found
in a statue representing youth; no, on the contrary they were very
particularly somebody's eyes; more and more they impressed me as
belonging to someone already much beloved whom I, with transports of
infinite joy and tenderness had found again.
I waked from sleep with a start, and as I did so I sought to retain the
phantom being who faded away and became more and more intangible and
unreal, in proportion as my mind grew clearer through the effort it made
to remember. Could it be possible that she was not and had never been
more than a vision? Had nothingness re-engulfed and forever effaced her?
I longed to sleep again so that I might see her; the thought that she
was an illusion, nothing more than the figment of a dream, caused me
great dejection and almost overwhelmed me with hopelessness.
And it took me a very long time to forget her; I loved her, loved her
tenderly, and the thought of her always stirred into life an emotion
that was sweet but sad; and during those moments everything unconnected
with her seemed colorless and worthless. It was love, true love with
all its great melancholy and deep mystery, with its overwhelming but sad
enchantment, love that, like a perfume, endows with a fragrance all it
touches; and that corner of the garden where she had appeared to me
and the old flowerless rosebush that had clasped her in its branches
awakened in me, because of her, agonizing but delicious memories.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
And again came radiant June. It was evening, the exquisite hour of
twilight. I was alone in my brother's study where I had been for some
time; the window was opened wide to a sky all golden and pink, and I
stood beside it and listened to the martins uttering their shrill cries
as they circled and darted above the old roofs.
No one knew that I was there, and never before had I felt so isolated at
the top of the house, nor more tempted by the unknown.
With a beating heart I opened a volume of De Musset's poems: his Don
Paez.
The first phrases were as musical and rhythmical as if sung by a
seductive golden-voiced siren:
Black eyebrows, snow-white hands, and to indicate the tinyness
Of her feet, I need only say she was an Andalusian countess.
That spring night when the darkness fell about me, when my eyes,
although never so close to the book, could no longer distinguish
anything of the enchanting verses save rows of little lines that showed
gray against the white of the page, I went out into the town alone.
In the almost deserted streets, not yet lighted, the rows of linden and
acacia trees all abloom, deepened the shadows and perfumed the air with
their heavy fragrance. I pulled my felt hat over my eyes and, like
Don Paez, I strode along with a light supple step, and looked up at
balconies and indulged in I know not what little childish dreams of
Spanish twilights and Andalusian serenades.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
Vacation came again, and for the third time we took the journey to
the South, and there in the glorious August and September sunshine all
passed off in the same fashion as during preceding summers; the
same games with my loyal band, the expeditions to the vineyards and
mountains; in the ruins of Castelnau, the same brooding over mediaeval
times, and, in the sequestered woodland path where we had struck our
vein of silver, we still eagerly turned up the red soil, putting on
meantime the airs of bold adventurers,--the little Peyrals, however, no
longer believed in the mines.
These beginnings of summer, always so alike, deluded me into thinking
that in spite of my occasional fears my childhood would be indefinitely
prolonged; but I no longer felt “joy at waking;” a sort of disquietude,
such as oppresses one when he has left his duty undone, weighed upon me
more and more heavily each morning when I thought that time was flying,
that the vacation would soon be over, and that I still lacked the
courage to come to a decision in regard to my future.
CHAPTER LXXX.
And one day, when September was more than half over, I realized, because
of the particularly torturing anxiety I felt when I waked, that I must
no longer defer the matter--the term which I had allotted to myself was
over.
In my heart of hearts I had more than half determined what my decision
was to be; but before it could be rendered effective it was necessary
for me to avow it, and I promised myself that the day should not pass
away without my having, as courageously as possible, accomplished that
task. It was my intention to first confide in my brother; for although
I feared that in the beginning he would oppose me with all his power, I
hoped that he would finally take my part and help me carry the day.
Therefore, after the mid-day dinner, when the sun was hottest, I carried
my pen and paper into my uncle's garden, and I locked myself in there
for the purpose of writing my letter. It was one of my boyhood habits
to study or write in the open air, and often I chose the most singular
places--tree-tops or the roof--for my work.
It was a hot and cloudless September afternoon. The old garden, silent
and melancholy as ever, gave me, strangely enough, more than the
customary feeling of regret that I was so far away from my mother, that
all of summer would pass without my seeing my home and the flowers in
the beloved little yard. And then, too, what I was upon the point of
writing would result in separating me farther from all that I loved, and
for that reason I felt extraordinarily sad. It seemed to me that there
was something a little funereal in the air of the garden, as if the
walls, the plum trees, the vine-covered bower, even the very alfalfa
fields beyond the garden, were vitally interested in this, the first
grave act of my life which was about to take place under their eyes.
For the purpose of writing I hesitated between two or three places,
all blazing hot and almost shadeless. It was my way of gaining time, an
attempt to delay writing that letter which, with the ideas I then had,
would render my decision, once I had announced it, irrevocable. The
sun-baked earth was already strewn with red vine branches and withered
leaves; the holly-hocks and dahlias, grown tall as trees, had a few
meagre blossoms at the tops of their long stalks; the blazing sun
perfected and turned to gold the musk-scented grapes that always ripened
a little late; but in spite of the excessive heat and the exquisite
limpid blue of the sky one felt that summer was over.
I finally selected the arbor at the end of the garden for my purpose.
Its vines were stripped of their leaves, but the steel-blue butterflies
and the wasps still came and posted themselves upon the tendrils of the
grape-vines.
There in the calm and tranquil solitude, in the summer-like silence
filled with the musical chirp of insects, I wrote and timidly signed my
compact with the sea.
Of the letter itself I remember very little; but I recall distinctly
the emotion with which I enclosed it in its envelope--I felt as if I had
forever sealed my destiny.
After a few moments of deep reverie I wrote the address--my brother's
name and the name of a country in the far Orient where he then was--on
the envelope. There was now nothing more to do save to take it to the
village post-office; but I remained seated there in the arbor for a long
time in a dreamy mood. I leaned against the warm wall where the
lizards ran back and forth, and held upon my knees, with a feeling of
uncertainty and dismay, the little square of paper wherein I had settled
my future. Then I was seized with a longing to look towards the horizon,
to have a glimpse of the great spaces beyond the garden; and I put my
foot into the familiar breach in the wall by means of which I often
mounted, in order to watch the flight of elusive butterflies, and, with
the aid of my hands, I raised myself to the top of the wall and leaned
there propped up by my elbows. The same well-known prospect greeted me:
the hillsides covered with red vines, the wooded mountains whose trees
were rapidly being stripped of their yellow leaves, and above, perched
high, the noble reddish-brown ruin of Castelnau. And in the nearer
distance was Bories with its old rounded porch white with lime-wash; and
as I looked at it I seemed to hear the plaintive refrain: “Ah! Ah! the
good, good story!” sung in a strange voice, and at the same time there
appeared to me the vision of the pinkish-yellow butterfly which two
years before I had pricked with a pin, and placed under glass in my
little museum.
It drew near the hour for the ancient country diligence, that took the
letters away from the village, to depart, and I scrambled down from
the wall, and after locking the garden gate, I slowly directed my steps
towards the post-office.
Like one with eyes fixed upon a vision, I walked along without taking
notice of anything or any one. My spirit was wandering far away, in the
fern-carpeted forests of the delicious isle, along the sands of gloomy
Senegal where had lived the uncle who had interested himself in my
museum, and across the South Pacific Ocean where the dolphins were
passing.
The assured nearness and certainty of these things intoxicated me; for
the first time in my existence the world and life seemed to open before
me; my way was illuminated by a light altogether new to it: it is true
the light was a little mournful, a little sad, but it was powerful
nevertheless, and penetrated to the far distant horizon where lie old
age and death.
Many little childish images obtruded themselves from time to time into
my lofty dream; I saw myself in a sailor's uniform walking upon the
sun-blistered quays of tropical lands; and I prefigured my home-comings,
after perilous voyages, bringing with me cases filled to the brim with
wonderful things out of which cockroaches escaped as they had done
formerly in Jeanne's garden when her father's boxes were unpacked.
But suddenly a pang went through my heart: those returns from distant
countries could not take place for many years--the faces welcoming me
home would be changed by time! Instantly I pictured those beloved faces
to myself; in a wan vision I saw them all together. Although its members
received me with smiles of joyous welcome, it was a sad group to look
upon, for wrinkles seamed every brow, and my mother had white curls such
as she has to-day. And my great aunt Bertha, already so old, would
she, too, be there? With a sort of uneasiness, I was rapidly making a
calculation of my aunt Bertha's age when I arrived at the post-office.
I did not hesitate, however; with a hand that trembled only a little I
slipped my letter into the box, and the die was cast.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
I will end these reminiscences here, because what follows is not yet
distant enough from me to be submitted to the unknown reader. And
besides it seems to me that my childhood really came to an end upon the
day in which I announced my decision in regard to my future.
I was then fourteen and a half years of age, and that gave me,
therefore, three years and a half in which to prepare myself for the
naval academy, consequently I had time to do it thoroughly and properly.
But in the meantime I had to encounter many refusals and all sorts
of difficulties before my admittance to the Borda. And later I
lived through many troublous years; years replete with struggles and
mistakes,--I had many a Calvary to climb; I had to pay cruelly and in
full for having been reared a sensitive, shy little creature, by force
of will I had to recast and harden my physical as well as my moral
being. One day, when I was about twenty-seven years of age, a circus
director, after having seen my muscles that then had the elasticity
and strength of steel, gave utterance, in his admiration, to the truest
words I have ever had addressed to me: “What a pity, sir,” he said,
“that your education commenced so late!”
CHAPTER LXXXII.
My sister and I had expected to visit the mountains again the next
summer.
But Azrael passed our way; terrible and unexpected misfortunes disrupted
our tranquil and happy family life.
And it was not until fifteen years later, after I had been over the
greater part of the earth, that I revisited this corner of France.
All was greatly changed there; my uncle and aunt slept in the graveyard;
my boy cousins had left, and my girl cousin, who already had threads
of silver among her dark locks, was preparing to quit this part of the
country forever, this empty house in which she did not wish to live
alone; and the Titi and the Marciette (whose names were no longer
prefaced by the article) had grown into tall young ladies whom I would
not have recognized.
Between two long voyages, in a hurry as always, my life hastening
feverishly upon its way, in remembrance of bygone days, I made this
pilgrimage to my uncle's house to see it once more, and for the last
time, before it was delivered into the hands of strangers.
It was in November, and the cold gray sky completely changed the aspect
of the country, which I had never seen before except under the glorious
summer sun.
After spending my only morning in revisiting a thousand places, my
melancholy ever augmented by the lowering winter clouds, I found that
I had forgotten the old garden and the vine-clad arbor in whose meagre
shade I had come to so momentous a decision, and I wished to run there,
at the last moment, before my carriage took me away from this spot
forever.
“You will have to go alone,” said my cousin, who was busy packing her
trunks. She gave me the large key, the same large key that I carried
in the warm and radiant days of old when I went there, net in hand,
to catch the butterflies . . . oh! the summers of my childhood, how
marvellous and how enchanting they were!
For the last time of all, I entered the garden, which under the gray
sky appeared shrunken to me. I went first to the arbor, now leafless and
desolate, in which I had written the portentous letter to my brother,
and, by means of the same breach in the wall that had served me in days
gone by, I lifted myself to the coping to get a hasty glimpse of the
surrounding country, to bid it a last farewell. Bories looked singularly
near and small to me, it was almost unrecognizably so, and the mountains
beyond seemed diminished also, appeared no higher than little hills. And
all of these things that formerly I had seen flooded with sunlight, now
looked dull and sinister in the wan, gray November light, and under the
dark and wintry clouds. I felt as if with the commencement of nature's
autumn, my life's autumn had also dawned.
And the world, the world which I had thought so immense and so full of
wonder and charm the day that I leaned on this same wall, after I had
made my decision,--the whole wide world, did it not look as faded and
shrunken to me now as this poor landscape?
And especially Bories, that under the autumnal sky looked like a phantom
of itself, filled me with the deepest sadness.
As I gazed at it I recalled the pinkish-yellow butterfly still under
its glass in my museum; it had remained there in the same spot, and had
preserved its fresh bright hues during the time that I had sailed all
round the globe. For many years I had not thought of the association
between the two things; but as soon as I remembered the yellow
butterfly, which was recalled to my mind by Bories, I heard a small
voice within me sing over and over, very softly: “Ah! Ah! the good, good
story!” . . . The little voice was strange and flute-like, but above all
it was sad, sad enough for tears, sad enough to sing over the tomb where
lie buried the vanished years and dead summers.