There were seven of us in a break, four women and three men, one of
which latter was on the box seat beside the coachman, and we were
following, at a foot pace, the broad highway which serpentines along the
coast.
Setting out from Etretat at break of day, in order to visit the ruins of
Tancarville, we were still asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the
morning. The women, especially, who were little accustomed to these
early excursions, let their eyelids fall and rise every moment, nodding
their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the emotion of the breaking
of day.
It was autumn. On both sides of the road, the bare fields stretched out,
yellowed by the corn and wheat stubble which covered the soil, like a
beard that had been badly shaved. The spongy earth seemed to smoke. The
larks were singing, high up in the air, while other birds piped in the
bushes.
The sun rose at length in front of us, a bright red on the plane of the
horizon; and in proportion as it ascended, growing clearer from minute
to minute, the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself,
stretch itself, like a young girl who is leaving her bed, in her white
vapor chemise. The Count of Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:
"Look! look! a hare!" and he extended his arm towards the left, pointing
to a piece of hedge. The animal threaded its way along, almost concealed
by the field, raising only its large ears. Then it swerved across a
deep rut, stopped, pursued again its easy course, changed its direction,
stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, undecided as to the
route it should take; when suddenly it began to run with great bounds of
the hind legs, disappearing finally, in a large patch of beet-root. All
the men had woke up to watch the course of the beast.
René Lemanoir then exclaimed:
"We are not at all gallant this morning," and regarding his neighbor,
the little Baroness of Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to
her in a subdued voice: "You are thinking of your husband, Baroness.
Reassure yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you have still
four days."
She responded to him with a sleepy smile: "How rude you are." Then,
shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let somebody say something that
will make us all laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have the reputation of
possessing a larger fortune than the Duke of Richelieu, tell us a love
story in which you have been mixed up, anything you like."
Léon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very
strong, very proud of his physique, and very amiable, took his long
white beard in his hand and smiled, then, after a few moments'
reflection, he became suddenly grave.
"Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale; for I am going to relate to you
the most lamentable love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that
none of my friends have ever passed through a similar experience."
I
I was at the time twenty-five years of age, and I was making daubs along
the coast of Normandy. I call "making daubs" that wandering about, with
a bag on one's back, from mountain to mountain, under the pretext of
studying and of sketching nature. I know nothing more enjoyable than
that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which one is perfectly free,
without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation,
without thinking even of to-morrow. One goes in any direction one
pleases, without any guide, save his fancy, without any counselor save
his eyes. One pulls up, because a running brook seduces one, because one
is attracted, in front of an inn, by the smell of potatoes frying.
Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides one in his choice,
or the naïve glance of the servant at an inn. Do not despise me for my
affection for these rustics. These girls have a soul as well as feeling,
not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips; while their hearty and
willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love always has its price,
come whence it may. A heart that beats when you make your appearance, an
eye that weeps when you go away, are things so rare, so sweet, so
precious, that they must never be despised.
I have had rendezvoux in ditches in which cattle repose, and in barns
among the straw, still steaming from the heat of the day. I have
recollections of canvas being spread on rude and elastic benches, and of
hearty and fresh, free kisses, more delicate and unaffectedly sincere
than the subtle attractions of charming and distinguished women.
But what one loves most amidst all these varied adventures is the
country, the woods, the risings of the sun, the twilight, the light of
the moon. These are, for the painter, honeymoon trips with nature. One
is alone with her in that long and tranquil rendezvous. You go to bed in
the fields, amidst marguerites and wild poppies, and, with eyes wide
open, you watch the going down of the sun, and descry in the distance
the little village, with its pointed clock tower, which sounds the hour
of midnight.
You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out from the foot of
an oak, amidst a covering of fragile herbs, upright and redolent of
life. You go down on your knees, bend forward, you drink that cold and
pellucid water which wets your moustache and nose, you drink it with a
physical pleasure, as though you kissed the spring, lip to lip.
Sometimes, when you encounter a deep hole, along the course of these
tiny brooks, you plunge into it, quite naked, and you feel on your skin,
from head to foot, like an icy and delicious caress, the lovely and
gentle quivering of the current.
You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the verge of pools, exalted when
the sun is crowned in an ocean of blood-red shadows, and when it casts
on the rivers its red reflection. And, at night, under the moon, which
passes across the vault of heaven, you think of things, and singular
things, which would never have occurred to your mind under the brilliant
light of day.
So, in wandering through the same country where we are this year, I came
to the little village of Benouville, on the Falaise, between Yport and
Etretat. I came from Fécamp, following the coast, a high coast, and as
perpendicular as a wall, with its projecting and rugged rocks falling
perpendicularly into the sea. I had walked since the morning on the
shaven grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. And singing
lustily, I walked with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and
ambling flight of a gull, with its short, white wings, sailing in the
blue heavens, sometimes on the green sea, at the brown sails of a
fishing bark. In short, I had passed a happy day, a day of listlessness
and of liberty.
I was shown a little farm house, where travelers were put up, a kind of
inn, kept by a peasant, which stood in the center of a Norman court,
which was surrounded by a double row of beeches.
Quitting the Falaise, I gained the hamlet, which was hemmed in by great
trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.
She was an old, wrinkled and austere rustic, who seemed always to
succumb to the pressure of new customs with a kind of contempt.
It was the month of May: the spreading apple-trees covered the court
with a whirling shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon
people and upon the grass.