BOOK III

As for Rabbit, he had prudently taken flight at sight of the heavenly

pack of hounds. While Francis had remained near him he had trusted in

Francis. But now, even though he was in the abode of the Blessed,

his distrust which was as natural to him as to the suspicious peasant

gained the upper hand again. And since he did not yet feel himself

entirely at home in this Paradise, tasting neither perfect security,

nor the thrill of familiar danger against which he could battle,

Long-Ear became bewildered.

Accordingly he strayed hither and thither, ill at ease, not knowing

where he was, nor finding his way. He sought in vain for that from

which he fled and that which fled from him. But what was the reason

for this? Was not Heaven happiness? Was there any stillness that

could be more still? In what other resting-place could Cleft-Lip have

dreamed a sleep more undisturbed than on these beds of wool that the

breeze spread beneath the flower-covered bushes of the stars?

But he did not sleep here, because he missed his constant uneasiness

and other things. Crouching in the ditches of Heaven he no longer

had the feeling beneath the whiteness of his short tail of the chilly

dampness penetrating through and through him. The mosquitoes, who had

withdrawn to their own Paradise of shallow pools, no longer filled

his always open eyelids with the sharp burning sensation of summer.

He longed regretfully for this fever. His heart no longer beat as

powerfully as it had beaten when on knolls in the flame-colored heath

a shot scattered the earth like rain about him. Under the smooth

caress of the lawn-like grass hair grew again on the callous parts

of his paws where it had been so sparse. And he began to deplore the

over-abundance of heaven. He was like the gardener who, having become

king, was forced to put on sandals of purple, and longed regretfully

for his wooden shoes heavy with clay and with poverty.

* * * * *

And Francis in his Paradise heard of Rabbit's troubles and of his

bewilderment. And the heart of Francis was grieved that one of his

old companions was not happy. From that moment the streets of the

celestial hamlet where he dwelled seemed less peaceful to him, the

shadows of the evening less soft, less white the breath of the lilies,

less hallowed the gleams of the carpenter's plane within the sheds,

less bright the singing pitchers whose water radiated like fresh

sheaves and fell cooling upon the flesh of the angels seated on the

curb-stones of the wells.

Therefore Francis set out on his way to find God, and He received him

in His Garden at the close of day. This garden of God was the most

humble but also the most beautiful. No one knew whence came the

miracle of its beauty. Perhaps because there was nothing in it but

love. Over the walls which the ages had filled with chinks dark lilacs

spread. The stones were joyous to support the smiling mosses whose

golden mouths were drinking at the shadowy heart of the violets.

In a diffused light which was neither like that of the dawn nor

like that of the twilight, for it was softer than either of these, a

blue-flowered leek blossomed in the center of a garden-bed. A sort of

mystery enveloped the blue globe of its inflorescence which remained

motionless and closed on its tall stalk. One felt that this plant was

dreaming. Of what? Perhaps of its soul's labor which sings on winter

evenings in the pot where boils the soup of the poor. Oh divine

destiny! Not far from the hedges of boxwood the lips of the lettuce

radiated mute words while a low light clung about the shadow of the

sleeping watering-pots. Their task was over.

And full of trust and serenity, without pride or humility, a

sage-plant let its insignificant odor rise toward God.

* * * * *

Francis sat down beside God on a bench sheltered by an oak round which

an ivy twined. And God said unto Francis:

"I know what brings thee hither. It shall never be said that there was

any one, whether maggot or rabbit, who was unable to find his Paradise

here. Go therefore to thy fleet-footed friend, and ask him what it is

that he desires. And as soon as he has told thee, I shall grant him

his wish. If he did not understand how to die and to renounce the

world like the others, it was surely because his heart clove too much

to my Earth which, indeed, I love well. Because, Oh Francis, like this

creature of the long ears I love the earth with a profound love.

I love the earth of men, of beasts, of plants, and of stones. Oh

Francis, go and find Rabbit, and tell him that I am his friend."

* * * * *

And Francis set out toward the Paradise of beasts where none of the

children of man except young girls had ever set their foot. There he

met Rabbit who was disconsolately wandering about. But when Rabbit saw

his old master approaching he experienced such joy that he crouched

down with more fright in his eye than ever and with his nostrils

quivering almost imperceptibly.

"Greeting, my brother," said Francis, "I heard the sufferings of your

heart, and I have come here to learn the reason for your sadness. Have

you eaten too many bitter kernels of grain? Why have you not found

the peace of the doves, and of the lambs which are also white...?

Oh harvester of the second crop, for what do you search so restlessly

here where there is no more restlessness, and where never more will

you feel the hunting-dogs' breath on your poor skin?"

"Oh my friend," answered he, "what am I seeking? I am seeking my

God. As long as you were my God on earth I felt at peace. But in this

Paradise where I have lost my way, because your presence is no longer

with me, Oh divine brother of the beast, my soul feels suffocated for

I do not find my God."

"Do you think, then," said Francis, "that God abandons rabbits, and

that they alone of the whole world have no title to Paradise?"

"No," Rabbit replied, "I have given no thought to such things. I would

have followed you because I came to know you as intimately as the

earthly hedge on which the lambs hung the warm flakes of snow with

which I used to line and keep warm my nest. Vainly I have sought

throughout these heavenly meadows this God of whom you are speaking.

But while my companions discovered Him at once and found their

Paradise, I lost my way. From the day when you left us and from the

instant that I gained Heaven, my childish and untamed heart has beaten

with homesickness for the earth.

"Oh Francis, Oh my friend, Oh you in whom alone I have faith, give

back to me my earth. I feel that I am not at home here. Give back to

me my furrows full of mud, give back to me my clayey paths. Give back

to me my native valley where the horns of the hunters make the mists

stir. Give back to me the wagon-track on the roadway from which I

heard sound the packs of hounds with their hanging ears, like an

angelus. Give back to me my timidity. Give back to me my fright. Give

back to me the agitation that I felt when suddenly a shot swept the

fragrant mint beneath my bounds, or when amid the bushes of wild

quince my nose touched the cold copper of a snare. Give back to me the

dawn upon the waters from which the skillful fisherman withdraws his

lines heavy with eels. Give back to me the blue gleaning under the

moon, and my timid and clandestine loves amid the wild sorrel, where

I could no longer distinguish the rosy tongue of my beloved from the

dew-laden petal of the eglantine which had fallen upon the grass. Give

back to me my weakness, oh thou, my dear heart. And go, and say unto

God, that I can no longer live with Him."

"Oh Rabbit," Francis answered, "my friend, gentle and suspicious like

a peasant, Oh Rabbit of little faith, you blaspheme. If you have not

known how to find your God it is because in order to find this God,

you would have had to die like your companions."

"But if I die, what will become of me?" cried he with the hide of the

color of stubble.

And Francis said:

"If you die you will become your Paradise."

* * * * *

Thus talking they reached the edge of the Paradise of beasts. There

the Paradise of men began. Rabbit turned his head, and read at the top

of a sign-post on a plate of blue cast-iron where an arrow indicated

the direction

Castétis to Balansun--5 M.

The day was so hot that the letters of the inscription seemed to

quiver in the dull light of summer. In the distance, on the road,

there were clouds of dust, as in Blue Beard when Sister Anne is asked:

"Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anything coming?" This pale

dryness, how magnificent it was, and how filled it was with the bitter

fragrance of mint.

And Rabbit saw a horse and a covered cart approaching.

It was a sorry nag and dragged a two-wheeled cart and was unable to

move except in a jerky sort of gallop. Every leap made its disjointed

skeleton quiver and jolted its harness and made its earth-colored

mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish, like the beard of an ancient

mariner. Wearily as though they were paving-stones the animal lifted

its hoofs which were swollen like tumors....

Then a doubt, stronger than all the doubts which hitherto had assailed

the soul of Rabbit, pierced him.

* * * * *

This doubt was a leaden grain of shot which had just passed through

the nape of his neck behind his long ears into his brain. A veil of

blood more beautiful than the glowing autumn floated before his eyes

in which the shadows of eternity rose. He cried out. The fingers of

a huntsman pinioned his throat, strangled him, suffocated him. His

heart-beat grew weaker and weaker; this heart which used to flutter

like the pale wild rose in the wind dissolving at the morning hour

when the hedge softly caresses the lambs. An instant he remained

motionless, hollow-flanked and drawn-out like Death itself in the

grasp of his murderer. Then poor old Rabbit leaped up. He clawed in

vain for the ground which he could no longer reach because the man did

not let go of him. Rabbit passed away drop by drop.

Suddenly his hair stood erect, and he became like unto the stubble of

summer where he formerly dwelled beside his sister, the quail, and the

poppy, his brother; and like unto the clayey earth which had wetted

his beggar's paws; and like unto the gray-brown color with which

September days clothe the hill whose shape he had assumed; like unto

the rough cloth of Francis; like unto the wagon-track on the roadway

from which he heard the packs of hounds with hanging ears, singing

like the angelus; like unto the barren rock which the wild thyme

loves. In his look where now floated a mist of bluish night there was

something like unto the blessed meadow where the heart of his beloved

awaited him at the heart of the wild sorrel. The tears which he shed

were like unto the fountain of the seraphs at which sat the old fisher

of eels repairing his lines. He was like unto life, like unto death,

like unto himself, like unto his Paradise.

END OF THE ROMANCE OF THE RABBIT

TALES

PARADISE

The poet looked at his friends, his relatives, the priest, the doctor,

and the little dog, who were in the room. Then he died. Some one wrote

his name and age on a piece of paper. He was twenty-eight years.

As they kissed his forehead his friends and relatives found that he

was cold, but he could not feel their lips because he was in heaven.

And he did not ask as he had done when he was on earth, whether heaven

was like this or like that. Since he was there, he had no need of

anything else.

His mother and father, whether or not they had died before him, came

to meet him. They did not weep any more than he, for the three had

really never been separated.

His mother said to him:

"Put out the wine to cool, we are about to dine with the _Bon Dieu_

under the green arbor of the Garden of Paradise."

His father said to him:

"Go down and cull of the fruits. There is none that is poisonous. The

trees will offer them to you of their own accord, without sufferance

either to their leaves or their branches, for they are inexhaustible."

The poet was filled with joy in being able to obey his parents. When

he had returned from the orchard and submerged the bottles of wine in

the water, he saw his old dog. It too had died before him, and it came

gently running toward him, wagging its tail. It licked his hands, and

he patted it. Beside it were all the animals he had loved best while

on earth: a little red cat, two little gray cats, two little white

cats, a bullfinch, and two goldfish.

Then he saw that the table was set and about it were seated the _Bon

Dieu_, his father and mother, and a lovely young girl whom he had

loved here-below on earth. She had followed him to heaven even though

she was not dead.

He saw that the Garden of Paradise was none other than that of his

own birthplace here on earth, in the high reaches of the Pyrenees, all

filled with lilies and pomegranates and cabbages.

The _Bon Dieu_ had laid his hat and stick on the ground. He was garbed

like the poor on the great highways, those who have only a morsel of

bread in their wallet, and whom the magistrates arrest at the town

gates, and throw into prison, since they know not how to write their

name. His beard and hair were white like the great light of day, and

his eyes profound and black like the night. He spoke, and his voice

was very soft:

"Let the angels come and minister unto us, for to serve is their

happiness."

Then from all corners of the heavenly orchard legions were seen to

hasten. They were the faithful servitors who here on earth had loved

the poet and his family. Old Jean was there, he who was drowned while

saving a little boy, old Marie who had fallen dead under a sunstroke,

and lame Pierre was there and Jeanne and still another Jeanne.

Then the poet rose to do them honor, and said unto them:

"Sit down in my place, it is meet that you should be near God."

And God smiled because he knew in advance what their answer would be.

"Our happiness is service. This puts us close to God. Do you not serve

your father and mother? Do they not serve Him who serves us?"

And suddenly he saw that the table had grown larger and that new

guests were seated about it. They were the father and mother of his

mother and father, and the generations that had gone before them.

Evening fell. The older of the people slumbered. Love held the poet

and his sweetheart. But God to whom they had done honor, took up his

way again like the poor on the great highways, those who have only a

morsel of bread in their wallet, and whom the magistrates arrest at

the town gates, and throw into prison, since they know not how to

write their name.

CHARITY CHILDREN

One day the souls of the charity children cried out to God. It was on

a stormy evening when their fevers and wounds made them suffer more

than ever. They lay white with grief in their rows of beds, above

which ignoble science had hung the placards of their maladies.

They were sad, very sad, for it was a day of festival. Their tiny arms

were stretched out on the coverlets, and with their transparent hands

they touched the meager toys that pious grand ladies had brought them.

They did not even know what to do with these playthings. A President

of the Republic had visited them, but they had not understood what it

meant.

Their souls cried out toward God. They said:

"We are the daughters of misery, of scrofula, and of syphilis. We are

the daughters of daughters of shame."

"I," said one, "was dragged out of a cesspool where in her distraction

my mother, the servant of an inn, had thrown me." Another said: "I

was born of a child with an enormous head that had a red gap in the

forehead. My father killed my mother, and he killed himself."

Still others said:

"We are the survivors of abortions and infanticides. Our mothers are

on the lists. Our fathers, cigar in mouth, saunter smiling amid the

tumult of business and the markets. We are born like kings with a

crown on our heads, a crown of red rash."

And God, hearing their cry, came down toward these souls. He entered

the hospital of more than human sorrows. At his approach the fumes

rose from the medicaments which the good sisters had prepared, as

though from censers by the side of the child martyrs, who sat up in

their narrow cots like white, weary flowers.

The sovereign Master said to them:

"Here I am. I heard your call, and am waiting to condemn those that

caused you to be born. What torment do you implore for them?"

Then the souls of the children sang like the bindweed of the hedges.

They sang:

"Glory to God! Glory to God! Pardon those who gave us birth. Lead us

some day to Heaven by their side."

THE PIPE

Once upon a time there was a young man who had a new pipe. He was

smoking peacefully in the shade of an arbor hung with blue grapes. His

wife was young and pretty; she had rolled up her sleeves as far as her

elbows and was drawing water from the well. The wooden bucket bounded

against the edge, and shed tears like a rainbow. The young man was

happy smoking his pipe, because he saw the birds flying hither and

thither, because his dear old mother was still among the living,

because his old father was hale, and because he loved with all his

heart his young wife, and was proud of her lithesomeness and her firm

and smooth breasts that were like two ripe apples.

The young man, as I have said, was smoking a new pipe.

His mother fell very ill. They had to operate, and it made her cry out

aloud, until after thirty-four days of horrible suffering she died.

His father, who was always so hale, was talking one day with a workman

at the door of the little village church, which was undergoing repair,

when a stone became detached from the arch and crushed his head.

The devoted son wept for these, his best and oldest friends, and, at

night, he sobbed in the arms of his pretty wife.

The young man, as I have said, was smoking a new pipe.

But I have forgotten to say that he had an old spaniel of whom he was

very fond and whose name was Thomas.

A very great illness had fallen on Thomas, since the good mother's

and the good father's deaths. When he was called he could barely drag

himself along by the paws of his fore-legs.

One day a man of the world took residence in the little village where

the young man was smoking a new pipe. He wore decorations and

was distinguished and spoke with an agreeable accent. They became

acquainted, and once, when the young man still smoking his new pipe

entered his house unexpectedly, he found this fine fellow abed with

his pretty wife whose firm and smooth breasts were like two ripe

apples.

The young man said nothing. He placed a poor old collar around the

neck of Thomas, and with a line which his mother had once used to

hang clothes upon, he dragged him along to a huge town, where the two

dwelled together in sorrow and want.

The young man had now become an old man, but he was still smoking his

new pipe which too had become old.

One evening Thomas died. People came from the police department, and

carried off his carcass somewhere.

The old man was now all alone with his old pipe. A great cold fell

upon him and a terrible trembling. And he knew that his time had come,

and that he never would be able to smoke again. So from the wretched

bag which he once had brought with him from his home, he took a sad

old hat, and in this he wrapped his pipe.

Then he threw a cape, greenish with age, about his feverish shoulders,

and dragged himself painfully to a little square near by, taking care

that no policeman should see him. He knelt down, and dug in the earth

with his finger nails, and devoutly buried his old pipe underneath a

tuft of flowers. Then he returned to his dwelling-place and died.

MAL DE VIVRE

A poet, Laurent Laurini by name, was sick unto death with the illness,

called weariness of life. It is a terrible malady, and those who have

fallen prey to it are unable to look upon men, animals, and things

without frightful suffering. Great scruples poison his heart.

The poet went away from the town where he dwelled. He sought out the

fields to gaze at the trees and the corn and the waters, to listen to

the quails that sing like fountains and to the falling of the weavers'

looms and the hum of the telegraph wires. These things and these

sounds saddened him.

The gentlest thoughts were bitterness to him. And when he picked a

little flower in order to escape his terrible malady, he wept because

he had plucked it.

He entered a village on an evening sweet with the perfume of pears.

It was a beautiful village like those he had often described in his

books. There was a town square, a church, a cemetery, gardens, a

smithy, and a dark inn. Blue smoke rose from it, and within was the

sheen of glasses. There was also a stream which wound in and out under

the wild nut-trees.

The poet with his sick heart sat down mournfully on a stone. He was

thinking of the torment he was enduring, of his old mother crying

because of his absence, of the women who had deceived him, and he had

homesickness for the time of his first communion.

"My heart," he thought, "my sad heart cannot change."

Suddenly he saw a young peasant-girl near by gathering her geese under

the stars. She said to him:

"Why do you weep?"

He answered:

"My soul was hurt in falling upon the earth. I cannot be cured because

my heart is too heavy."

"Will you have mine?" she said. "It is light. I will take yours and

carry it easily. Am I not accustomed to burdens?"

He gave her his heart and took hers. Immediately they smiled at each

other and hand in hand they followed the pathway.

The geese went in front of them like bits of the moon.

* * * * *

She said to him:

"I know that you are wise, and that I cannot know what you know. But

I know that I love you. You are from elsewhere, and you must have been

born in a wonderful cradle like that I once saw in a cart. It belonged

to rich people. Your mother must speak beautifully. I love you. You

must have loved women with very white faces, and I must seem ugly and

black to you. I was not born in a wonderful cradle. I was born in the

wheat of the fields at harvest time. They have told me this, and also

that my mother and I and a little lamb to which a ewe had given

birth on that same day were carried home on an ass. Rich people have

horses."

He said to her:

"I know that you are simple, and that I cannot be like you. But I know

that I love you. You are from here, and you must have been rocked in

a basket placed on a black chair like that which I have seen in a

picture. I love you. Your mother must spin linen. You must have danced

under the trees with strong handsome laughing boys. I must seem sick

and sad to you. I was not born in the fields at harvest time. We

were born in a beautiful room, I and a little twin sister who died at

birth. My mother was sick. Poor people are strong."

Then they embraced more closely on the bed where they lay together.

She said to him:

"I have your heart."

He said to her:

"I have your heart."

* * * * *

They had a sweet little boy.

And the poet, feeling that the illness which had so weighed upon him

had fled, said to his wife:

"My mother does not know what has become of me. My heart is wrung with

that thought. Let me go to the town, my beloved, and tell her that I

am happy and that I have a son."

She smiled at him, knowing that his heart was hers, and said:

"Go."

And he went back by the way he had come.

He was soon at the gates of the town in front of a magnificent

residence. There was laughter and chatter within for they were giving

a feast, one to which the poor were not invited. The poet recognized

the house, as that of an old friend of his, a rich and celebrated

artist. He stopped to listen to the conversation before the latticed

gate of the park through which fountains and statues could be seen.

He recognized the voice of a woman. She was beautiful, and once had

broken his boyish heart. She was saying:

"Do you remember the great poet, Laurent Laurini?...They say he has

made a mésalliance, and has married a cowherd...."

* * * * *

Tears rose to his eyes, and he continued his way through the streets

of the town until he came to the house where he was born. The

paving-stones replied softly to the words of his tired steps. He

pushed open his door and entered. And his old dog, faithful and gentle

as ever, ran limpingly to meet him; it barked with joy, and licked his

hand. He saw that since his departure the poor beast had had some sort

of stroke or paralysis, for time and trouble afflict the bodies of

animals as well.

Laurent Laurini mounted the stairs, keeping close to the bannisters,

and he was deeply moved, when he saw the old cat turn around, arch her

back, raise her tail, and rub against the steps. On the landing the

clock struck, as if in gratitude.

He entered her room gently. He saw his mother on her knees praying.

She was saying:

"Dear God, I pray unto Thee, that my son may still be among the

living. Oh my God, he has suffered much...Where is he? Forgive me

for this that I have given him birth. Forgive him for this that he is

causing me to die."

Then he knelt down beside her, laying his young lips on her poor gray

hair, and said:

"Come with me. I am healed. I know a land where there are trees and

corn and waters, where quails sing, where the looms of the weavers

fall, where the telegraph wires hum, where a poor woman dwells who

holds my heart, and where your grandson is playing."

THE TRAMWAY

Once upon a time there was a very industrious workman who had a good

wife and a charming little daughter. They lived in a great city.

It was the father's birthday and to celebrate it they bought beautiful

white salad and a chicken made for roasting. Every one was happy that

Sunday morning, even the little cat that looked slyly at the fowl,

saying to herself: "I shall have good bones to pick."

After they had eaten breakfast, the father said:

"We are going to be extravagant for once, and ride in a tram to the

suburbs."

They went out.

They had many times seen well-dressed men and beautiful ladies give a

signal to the driver of the tram, who immediately stopped his horses

to permit them to get on.

The honest workman was carrying his little girl. His wife and he

stopped at a street-corner.

A tram, shiny with paint, came toward them, almost empty. And they

felt a great joy when they thought of how they were going to enter it

for four sous apiece. And the honest workman signaled to the conductor

to stop the horses. But he seeing they were poor simple people looked

at them disdainfully, and would not halt his vehicle.

ABSENCE

At eighteen Pierre left the home in the country where he had been

born.

At the very moment when he left, his old mother was ill in bed in

the blue room, where there were the daguerreotype of his father and

peacock-feathers in a vase and a clock representing Paul and Virginia.

Its hands pointed to the hour of three.

In the courtyard under the fig-tree his grandfather was resting.

In the garden his fiancée stood among roses and gleaming pear-trees.

* * * * *

Pierre went to earn his living in a country where there were negroes

and parrots and india-rubber trees and molasses and fevers and snakes.

He dwelled there thirty years.

* * * * *

At the very moment when he returned to the home in the country where

he had been born, the blue room had faded to white, his mother was

reposing in the bosom of heaven, the picture of his father was no

longer there, the peacock-feathers and the vase had disappeared. Some

sort of object stood in the clock's place.

In the courtyard under the fig-tree where his grandfather, who had

long since died, had been accustomed to rest, there were broken plates

and a poor sick chicken.

In the garden of roses and gleaming pear-trees where his fiancée had

stood, there was an old woman.

The story does not tell who she was.

THE HIGHWAY OF LIFE

One day a poet sat down at a table to write a story. Not a single

idea would come to him, but nevertheless he was happy, because the sun

shone on a geranium on the window-sill, and because a gnat flew about

in the blue of the open window.

Suddenly his life appeared before him like a great white road. It

began in a dark grove where there were laughing waters, and ended at a

quiet grave overgrown with brambles, nettles, and soapwort.

In the dark grove he found the guardian-angel of his childhood. He had

the golden wings of a wasp, fair hair, and a face as calm as the water

of a well on a summer's day.

The guardian-angel said to the poet:

"Do you remember when you were a child? You came here with your father

and mother who were going fishing. The field near by was warm and

covered with flowers and grasshoppers. The grasshoppers looked like

broken blades of moving grass. Do you wish to see this place again, my

friend?"

The poet answered: "Yes."

So they went together as far as the blue river over which there were

the blue sky and the dark nut-trees.

"Behold your childhood," said the angel.

The poet looked at the water and wept and said:

"I no longer see the reflection of the beloved faces of my mother and

father. They used to sit on the bank. They were calm, good, and happy.

I had on a white pinafore which was always getting dirty, and mamma

cleaned it with her handkerchief. Dear angel, tell me what has become

of the reflections of their beloved faces? I no longer see them. I no

longer see them."

At that moment a cluster of wild nuts dropped from a hazel-tree and

floated down the stream of water.

And the angel said to the poet:

"The reflection of your father and mother went on with the stream of

water like those nuts. For everything obeys the current, substance

as well as shadow. The image of your beloved parents is merged in the

water and what remains is called memory. Recollect and pray. And you

will find the dearly loved images again."

And as an azure kingfisher darted above the reeds, the poet cried:

"Dear angel! Do I not see the color of my mother's eyes in the wings

of that bird?"

And the divine spirit answered:

"It is as you have said. But look again."

From the top of a tree where a turtle-dove had built her nest a downy

white feather fell soaring and eddying to the water.

And the poet cried:

"Dear angel! Is not this white down, my mother's gentle purity?"

And the divine spirit answered:

"It is as you have said."

A light breeze ruffled the water and made the leaves rustle.

The poet asked:

"Is not that the grave sweet voice of my father?"

And the spirit answered:

"It is as you have said."

Then they walked along the road which left the grove and followed the

river. And soon under the glare of the sun the road became white, very

white. It was like the linen at Holy Communion. To the right and left

hidden springs tinkled like pious bells. And the angel said:

"Do you recognize this part of your life?"

"This is the day of my first communion," answered the poet. "I

remember the church and the happy faces of my mother and grandmother.

I was happy and sad at the same time. With what fervor I knelt!

Thrills ran through my hair. That evening at family supper they kissed

me and said: 'He was the most beautiful.'"

And in recalling this the poet burst into sobs. And as he wept he

became as beautiful as on the day of the blessed ceremony. His tears

flowed through his hands like holy water.

And they went on along the road.

The day waned a little. The supple poplars swayed gently along the

ditches. At a distance one of them in the center of a field looked

like a tall young girl. The sky tinted it so delicately that it was

pale and blue like the temple of a virgin.

And the poet dreamed of the first woman he had loved.

And his guardian-angel said to him:

"This love was so pure and so sad that it did not offend me."

And as they walked along, the shade was sweet. Lambs passed by. And

seeing the sadness of the poet the divine spirit had on his lips a

smile, grave and gentle like that of a dying mother. And the trembling

of his golden wings pursued the whispers of the evening.

* * * * *

Soon the stars were lighted in the silence.

And the sky resembled a father's bed surrounded by wax tapers and dumb

sorrows. And the night seemed like a great widow kneeling upon the

earth.

"Do you recognize this?" asked the angel.

The poet made no answer but knelt down.

* * * * *

Finally they reached the end of the road near the small quiet grave

overgrown with brambles, nettles, and soapwort.

And the angel said to the poet:

"I wished to show you your way. Here you will sleep, not far from the

waters. Every day they will bring you the image of your memories:

the azure of the kingfisher like your mother's eyes, the down of the

turtle-dove like her sweetness, the echo of the leaves like the grave

calm voice of your father, the reflected brightness of the road white

as your first communion, and the form of your beloved supple as a

poplar.

"At last the waters will bring you the great luminous Night."

INTELLIGENCE

One day the books which contained the wisdom of men disappeared by

enchantment.

Then the great scholars assembled: those who were engaged in

mathematics, in physics, in chemistry, in astronomy, in poetry, in

history, and in other arts and letters.

They held counsel and said:

"We are the custodians of human genius. We will recall the noblest

inventions of the wisest of men and the greatest of poets and have

them graven in immortal marble. They will represent only the supreme

summits of achievement since the beginning of the world. Pascal shall

be entitled to but one thought, Newton to but one star, Darwin to

but one insect, Galileo to but one grain of dust, Tolstoi to but one

charity, Heinrich Heine to but one verse, Shakespeare to but one cry,

Wagner to but one note...."

Then as the scholars summoned their thoughts to recall the

masterpieces indispensable to the salvation of man, they realized with

terror that their brains were void.

THE TWO GREAT ACTRESSES

I wish I could find new words to depict the gentleness of a little

prostitute whom we met one evening in the center of a large, almost

deserted square. The little prostitute was wearing wretched boots that

were too large and soaked up the water. She had a parasol covered like

an umbrella, and a little straw hat, the lining of which surely bore

the words: _Dernière mode_.

She had a weak little voice, and she was intelligent. She was

recovering, as the expression goes, from pleurisy. Moreover, she had

the air of being as frail morally as physically.

I encountered her many times, after ten o'clock, when she was weary

with seeking, often in vain, for any first-comer who would go with

her.

She sat down on a bench in the shadows, beside me, and rested her poor

pale head against me.

I knew that when she did this it was somewhat with the feeling of

slight consolation, like that of a poor animal when it no longer feels

itself abused. I was held by an infinite pity for this friend. I knew

that she looked at her trade as an important task, however ungrateful

it was. For a long time she waited thus for the train to the suburb

where she lived.

One evening she asked if she might go with me to the end of the

street.

We came to a great lighted square where there was a large theater. On

one of the pillars of this edifice was a brilliant, gilded poster. It

represented Sarah Bernhardt in the costume of Tosca, I believe. She

wore a stiff rich robe and held a palm in her hand. And I called to

mind the things I had been told of this famous woman: her caprices

that were immediately obeyed, her extravagances, her coffin, her

pride.

I felt the poor little sufferer trembling at my side. She saw

this barbarous idol rise up and throw unconsciously upon her the

splattering flood of her golden ornaments.

And I had a desire to cry out with grief at this meeting face to face

of the two. And I said to myself:

"They are both born of woman. One holds a palm, and the other an old

umbrella so shabby that she does not dare to open it before me.

"The one trails an admiring throng at her feet, and the other tatters

of leather. The one sells her sorrow for the weight of gold and not

a sob comes from her mouth that does not have the clinking sound of

gold. Not a single sob of the other is heard."

And something cried aloud within me:

"The one is a human actress. She is applauded because she is of the

same clay as those who listen to her. And they have need of the lie on

which the most beautiful roles are builded.

"But the other, she is an actress of God. She plays a part so great

and so sorrowful that she has not found one man who understands her

and who is rich enough to pay her.

"And the great actress has never attained, even in her most beautiful

roles, the true genius of sorrow which makes the little prostitute

rest her forehead upon me."

THE GOODNESS OF GOD

She was a dainty and delicate little creature who worked in a shop.

She was, perhaps, not very intelligent, but she had soft, black eyes.

They looked at you a little sadly, and then drooped. You felt that

she was affectionate and commonplace with that tender commonplaceness,

which real poets understand, and which is the absence of hate.

You knew that she was as simple as the modest room in which she lived

alone with her little cat that some one had given her. Every morning

before she went to the shop, she left for her a little bit of milk in

a bowl.

And like her gentle mistress the little cat had sad, kind eyes. She

warmed herself on the window-sill in the sun beside a pot of basil.

Sometimes she licked her little paw, and used it as a brush on the

short fur of her head. Sometimes she played with a mouse.

One day the cat and the mistress both found themselves pregnant,

the one by a handsome fellow who deserted her, and the other by a

beautiful tom-cat who also went his way.

But there was this difference. The poor girl became ill, very ill,

and passed her days sobbing. The little cat made for herself a kind of

joyous cradling-place in the sun where it shone upon her white, drolly

inflated abdomen.

The cat's lover had come later than the girl's. So things happened

that they were both confined at the same time.

One day the little working-girl received a letter from the handsome

fellow who had deserted her. He sent her twenty-five francs, and spoke

of his generosity to her. She bought charcoal, a burner, and a sou's

worth of matches. Then she killed herself.

When she had entered heaven, which a young priest had at first tried

to prevent, the dainty and delicate creature trembled because that she

was pregnant and that the _Bon Dieu_ would condemn her.

But the _Bon Dieu_ said to her:

"My dear young friend, I have made ready for you a charming room. Go

there for your confinement. Everything ends happily in heaven and you

will not die. I love little children and suffer them to come unto me."

And when she entered the little room which had been made ready for her

in the great Hospital of Divine Mercy, she saw that God had arranged a

surprise for her. There in a box lay the cat she loved, and there was

also a pot of basil on the window-sill. She lay down.

She had a pretty, little, golden-haired daughter, and the cat had four

sweet, delightfully black kittens.

THE LITTLE NEGRESS

Sometimes my imagination is fascinated by the yellowing of old ocean

charts, and in my feverish brain I hear the roaring of monsoons.

What then? Must I, in order to have an interest in this present life,

exhume that which, perhaps, I led before my birth, between two black

suns?

It was a vague region, abounding in stars and in the diffused sobbing

of an ocean. There was a scratching at my door, and I said, "Come in."

A young negress in a loose blue loincloth, reaching halfway down her

thighs, entered. She crouched down on the ground, and held out her

thin clasped hands toward me. And I saw that her bare arms were

covered with the blows of a lash.

"Who did this to you, Assumption?" I asked.

She did not answer, but all her limbs trembled, for she did not

understand, and wondered, perhaps, whether I too was about to inflict

some brutality upon her.

Gently I removed her garment, and saw that her back also was wounded.

I washed it. But she, frightened by such kindness, fled for refuge

under the table of my cabin. My eyes filled with tears. I tried to

call her back. But her glance, like that of a beaten dog, shrank from

me. I had a few potatoes, and a little butter. I mashed them to a pulp

with a wooden spoon, and placed it in a bowl at some distance from the

crouching Assumption. Then I lighted my pipe.

At the end of an hour the poor creature began to move. She put one arm

forward, then the other, and then a knee. I thought she was directing

her attention toward the food in order to eat. But to my astonishment,

I saw her crawl on hands and knees toward a corner of the room, where

I had left a few flowers lying. She rose up quickly, and with a sudden

movement seized them.

* * * * *

It was perhaps a hundred and fifty years after this adventure

occurred, that I met Assumption again. At least I was convinced that

it was she. It was in Bordeaux at the _Restaurant du Pérou_. She

was drying the glass of a gloomy student who had not found it clean

enough.

THE PARADISE OF BEASTS

Once on a rainy midnight a poor old horse, harnessed to a cab, was

drowsing in front of a dingy restaurant from whence came the laughter

of women and young people.

And the poor spiritless animal with drooping head and shaking limbs

made a sorry spectacle, as he stood there waiting the pleasure of the

roisterers, that would at last permit him to go home to his reeking

stable.

Half asleep, the horse heard the coarse jokes of these men and women.

He had long since grown painfully accustomed to it. His poor brain

understood that there was no difference between the monotonous

unchanging screech of a turning wheel and the shrill voice of a

prostitute.

And this evening he dreamed vaguely of the time when he had been a

little colt that had gamboled on a smooth field, quite pink amid the

green grass, and how his mother had given him to suck.

Suddenly he fell stone dead on the slippery pavement.

He reached the gate of heaven. A great scholar, who was waiting for

St. Peter to come and open the gate, said to the horse:

"What are you doing here? You have no right to enter heaven. I have

the right because I was born of a woman."

And the poor horse answered:

"My mother was a gentle mare. She died in her old age with her blood

sucked out by leeches. I have come to ask the _Bon Dieu_ if she is

here."

Then the gate of Heaven was opened to the two who knocked upon it, and

the Paradise of animals appeared.

And the old horse recognized his mother, and she recognized him.

She greeted him by neighing. And when they were both in the great

heavenly meadow the horse was filled with joy in finding again his old

companions in misery and in seeing them happy forever.

There were some who had drawn stones along the slippery pavements of

cities, and they had been beaten with whips, and had finally fallen

under the weight of the wagons. There were some who with bandaged

eyes had turned the merry-go-rounds ten hours a day. There were mares

killed in bullfights before the eyes of young girls, who, rosy with

joy, watched the intestines of these unhappy beasts sweep the hot sand

of the arena. There were many more, and then still more.

And they all grazed eternally in the great plain of divine

tranquillity.

Moreover, the other animals were happy here also.

The cats, mysterious and delicate, did not even obey the _Bon Dieu_

who smiled upon them. They played with the end of a string patting

it lightly with an important air, out of which they made a sort of

mystery.

The good mother-dogs spent their time nursing their little ones. The

fish swam about without fear of the fisherman. The birds flew without

dread of the hunter. And everything was like this.

There were no men in this Paradise.

OF CHARITY TOWARD BEASTS

There is in the look of beasts a profound light and gentle sorrow,

which fills me with such understanding that my soul opens like a

hospice to all the sorrows of animals.

They are forever in my heart, as when I see a tired horse, his nose

drooping to the ground, asleep in the nocturnal rain, before a café;

or the agony of a cat crushed beneath a carriage; or a wounded sparrow

who has found refuge in a hole in a wall. Were it not for the feeling

that it is undignified for a man, I would kneel before such patience

and such torments, for I seem to see a halo around the heads of these

mournful creatures, a real halo, as large as the universe, placed

there by God Himself.

Yesterday I was at a fair, and watched the merry-go-round. There was

an ass among the wooden animals. The sight of it almost made me weep,

because I was reminded of those living martyrs, its brothers.

I wanted to pray, and to say to it: "Little ass, you are my brother.

They say that you are stupid, because you are incapable of doing evil.

You go your slow pace, and seem to think as you walk: 'See! I cannot

go any faster...The poor make use of me, because they need not give

me much to eat.' Little ass, the goad pricks you. Then you go a little

faster, but not a great deal. You cannot go very fast...Sometimes

you fall. Then they beat you, and pull at the rein fastened to the bit

in your mouth. They pull so hard that your lips are drawn back showing

your poor, yellow teeth which browse on miseries."

* * * * *

At the same fair I heard the shrilling of a bagpipe. F. asked me:

"Doesn't it remind you of African music?"--"Yes," I answered, "at

Touggart the bagpipes have the same nasal note. It must be an Arab

who is playing."--"Let us go into the booth," he said...Dromedaries

were on exhibition there.

A dozen little camels, crowded like sardines in a can, were stupidly

going round and round in a sort of trench. These creatures which I

have seen in the Sahara undulant like waves with only God and Death

surrounding them, I now saw here, Oh sorrow of my heart! They went

round and round again in that narrow space. The anguish which passed

from them to me filled me as with nausea toward man. They went on

and on, always on, proud as poor swans, hallowed as it were by their

desolation. They were covered with grotesque trappings, and the butt

of dancing women. They raised their poor verminous necks toward God,

and toward the miraculous leaves of some imaginary oasis.

Ah! what a prostitution of God's creatures. Farther along there were

rabbits in a cage. Then came goldfish, that were offered as prizes of

a lottery. They swam about in blown glass bowls, the necks of which

were so narrow that F. said to me: "How did they get in?"--"By

squeezing them a little," I answered. Still farther on were living

chickens, also lottery prizes, spun around in a whirligig. In the

center a Tittle milk-fed pig, mad with fear, was crouching flat on his

stomach.

Hens and pullets, overcome by vertigo, squawked and pecked frantically

at one another. My companion called my attention to dead, plucked

chickens hanging beside their living sisters.

My heart swells at these memories. An infinite pity overcomes me.

Oh poet, receive these poor suffering beasts into your soul. Let them

warm themselves, and live there in eternal joy.

Preach the simple word which bestows kindness on the ignorant.

OF THINGS*

*Some of the instances here are purely imaginary. I invented them so

that I might more deeply penetrate into the heart of these things.

I enter a great square of stirring shadow. Here close beside a red and

black candle a man is driving nails into a shoe. Two children stretch

their hands toward the hearth. A blackbird sleeps in its wicker cage.

Water is boiling in the smoky earthenware pot from which rises a

disagreeable soupy smell which mingles with that of tanner's bark and

leather. A crouching dog gazes fixedly into the coals.

There is such an air of gentle peace about these souls and these

obscure things that I do not ask whether they have any reason for

being other than this very peace, nor whether I read a special charm

into their humility.

The God of the poor watches over them, the simple God in whom I

believe. It is He who makes an ear of grain grow from a seed; it is

He who separates water from earth, earth from air, air from fire, fire

from night; it is He who blows the breath of life into the body; it

is He who fashions the leaves one by one. We do not know how this is

done, but we have faith in it as in the work of a perfect workman.

I contemplate without desiring to understand, and thus God reveals

Himself to me. In the house of this cobbler my eyes open as simply

as those of his dog. Then _I see_, I see in truth that which few can

see--the essence of things, as, for example, the devotion of the

smoky flame without which the hammer of the workman could not be a

bread-winner.

Most of the time we regard things in a heedless fashion. But they are

like us, sorrowful or happy. When I notice a diseased ear of wheat

among healthy ears, and see the livid stain on its grains I have a

quick intuitive understanding of the suffering of this particular

thing. Within myself I feel the pain of those plant-cells; I realize

their agony in growing in this infected spot without crushing one

another. I am filled with a desire to tear up my handkerchief, and

bandage this ear of wheat. But I feel that there is no remedy for a

single ear of wheat, and that humanly it would be an act of folly

to attempt this cure. Such things are not done, yet no one pays

any special attention if I take care of a bird or a grasshopper.

Nevertheless I am certain that these grains suffer, because I feel

their suffering.

A beautiful rose on the other hand imparts to me its joy in life. One

feels that it is perfectly happy swaying on its stem, for does not

everybody say simply, "It is a pity to cut it," and thus affirm and

preserve the happiness of this flower?

* * * * *

I recall very distinctly the time when it was first revealed to me

that things suffered. It happened when I was three years old. In my

native hamlet a little boy, while playing, fell on a piece of broken

glass, and died of the wound.

A few days later I went to the child's home. His mother was crying

in the kitchen. On the mantelpiece stood a poor little toy. I recall

perfectly that it was a small tin or leaden horse, attached to a

little tin barrel on wheels.

His mother said to me: "That is my poor little Louis's wagon. He is

dead. Would you like to have it?"

Then a flood of tenderness filled my heart. I felt that this _thing_

had lost its friend, its master, and that it was suffering. I accepted

the plaything, and overcome with pity I sobbed as I carried it home.

I recall very well that I was too young to realize either the death of

the little boy or the sorrow of his mother. I pitied only that leaden

animal which seemed heart-broken to me as it stood on the mantelpiece

forever idle and bereaved of the master it loved. I remember all this

as if it had happened yesterday, and I am sure that I had no desire

to possess this toy for my own amusement. This is absolutely true, for

when I came home, with my eyes full of tears, I confided the little

horse and barrel to my mother. She has forgotten the whole incident.

The belief that things are endowed with life exists among children,

animals, and simple people.

I have seen children attribute the characteristics of a living being

to a piece of rough wood or to a stone. They brought it handfuls of

grass, and were absolutely sure that the wood or stone had eaten it

when, as a matter of fact, I had carried it off without their noticing

it.

Animals do not differentiate the quality of an action. I have seen

cats scratch at something too hot for them for a long time. In this

act on the part of the animal there is an idea of fighting something

which can yield or perhaps die.

I think it is only an education, born of false vanity, that has robbed

man of such beliefs. I myself see no essential difference between the

thought of a child who gives food to a piece of wood and the meaning

of some of the libations in primitive religions. Do we not attribute

to trees an attachment to us stronger than life itself when we believe

that one planted on the birthday of a child that sickens and dies will

wither and dry up at the same time?

I have known things in pain. I have known some which are dead. The sad

clothes of our departed wear out quickly. They are often impregnated

with the same disease as those who wore them. They are one with them.

I have often considered objects which were wasting away. Their

disintegration is identical with our own. They have their decay, their

ruptures, their tumors, their madnesses. A piece of furniture gnawed

by worms, a gun with a broken trigger, a warped drawer, or the soul of

a violin suddenly out of tune, such are the ills which move me.

When we become attached to things why do we believe that love is in us

alone, and afterwards regard it as something external to us? Who can

prove that things are incapable of affection, or who can demonstrate

their unconsciousness? Was not that sculptor right who was buried

holding in his hand a lump of the same clay that had obeyed his dream?

Did it not have the devotion of a faithful servant; did it not have a

quality which we should admire all the more, because it had the virtue

of devoting itself in silence, without selfish interest, and with the

passiveness of faith?

Is there not something sublime and radiant in the thing that acts

toward man, even as man acts toward God? Does the poet know any more

what impulse he obeys, than does the clay? From the moment when

they have both proved their inspiration, I believe equally in their

consciousness, and I love both with the same love.

The sadness which disengages from things that have fallen into disuse

is infinite. In the attic of this house whose inhabitants I did not

know, a little girl's dress and her doll lie desolate. And here is an

iron-pointed staff which once bit into the earth of the green

hills, and a sunbonnet now barely visible in the dim light from the

garret-window. They have been abandoned since many years, and I am

wholly certain that they would be happy again to enjoy, the one the

freshness of the moss, and the other the summer sky.

Things tenderly cared for show their gratitude to us, and are ever

ready to offer us their soul when once we have refreshed it. They are

like those roses of the desert which expand infinitely when a little

water brings back to their memory the azure of lost wells.

In my modest drawing-room there is a child's chair. My father played

with it during his passage from Guadeloupe to France when he was

_seven_ years old. He remembered distinctly that he sat on it in the

ship's saloon, and looked at pictures which the captain lent him. The

island wood of which it was made must have been stout for it withstood

the games of a little boy. The piece of furniture had drifted into my

home, and slept there almost forgotten. Its soul too had been asleep

for many long years, because the child who had cherished it was no

more, and no other children had come to perch upon it like birds.

But recently the house was made merry by my little niece who was just

_seven_. On my work-table she had found an old book with plates of

flowers. When I entered the room I found her sitting on the little

chair in the lamplight, looking at the charming pictures, just as once

a long time ago her grandfather had done. And I was deeply touched.

And I said to myself that this little girl alone had been able to

make live again the soul of the chair, and that the gentle soul of the

chair had bewitched the candor of the child. There was between her and

this object a mysterious affinity. The one could not help but go to

the other, and it could be awakened by her alone.

Things are gentle. They never do harm voluntarily. They are the

sisters of the spirits. They protect us, and we let our thoughts rest

upon them. Our thoughts need them for resting-places as perfumes need

the flowers.

The prisoner, whom no human soul can any longer console, must feel

tenderly toward his pallet and his earthen jug. When everything has

been refused him by his fellows his obscure bed gives him sleep and

his jug quenches his thirst. And even if it separates him from all the

world without, the very barrenness of his walls stands between him and

his executioners. The child who has been punished loves the pillow on

which he cries; for when every one of an evening has hurt and scolded

him, he finds consolation in the soul of the silent down. It is like a

friend who remains silent in order to calm a friend.

But it is not only out of the silence of things that is born their

sympathy for us. They have secret harmonies. Sometimes they weep in

the forest which René fills with his tempestuous soul; and sometimes

they sing on the lake where another poet dreams.

* * * * *

There are hours and seasons when certain of these accords are most to

the fore, when one hears best the thousand voices of things. Two or

three times in my life I have been present at the awakening of this

mysterious world. At the end of August toward midnight, when the day

has been hot, an indistinct murmur rises about the kneeling villages.

It is neither the sound of rivers, nor of springs, nor of the wind,

nor of animals cropping the grass, nor of cattle rubbing their chains

against the cribs, nor of uneasy watchdogs, nor of birds, nor of the

falling of the looms of the weavers. The chords are as sweet to the

ear, as the glow of dawn is sweet to the eye. There is stirring a

boundless and peaceful world in which the blades of grass lean toward

one another till morning, and the dew rustles imperceptibly, and the

seeds at each moment's beat raise the whole surface of the plain.

It is the soul alone which can apprehend these other souls, this

flower-dust joy of the corollas, these calls, and these silences that

create the divine Unknown. It is as if one were suddenly transported

to a strange country where one is enchanted by langorous words, even

though one does not understand very clearly their meaning.

Nevertheless I penetrate more deeply into the meaning whispered

by these things than into that hidden in an idiom with which I am

unfamiliar. I feel that I understand and that it would not require a

very great effort to translate the thought of these obscure souls, and

to note in a concrete fashion some of their manifestations. Perhaps

poetry sometimes actually does this. It has happened that mentally I

have answered this indistinct murmur, just as I have succeeded by my

silence in answering distinctly a sweetheart's questions.

But this language of things is not wholly auditory. It is made up

of other symbols also, which are faintly traced on our souls. The

impression is still too faint, but, perhaps, it will be stronger when

we are better prepared to receive God.

It is objects which have been my consolation in the grievous events of

my life. At such moments some thing will catch my eye particularly.

I who know not how to make my soul bow before men have prostrated it

before things. A radiance emanates from them which may be outside the

memories that I attach to them, and it is like a thrill of love. I

have felt them. I feel them now living around me. They are part of

my obscure realm. I feel a responsibility toward them like that of an

elder brother. At this instant while I am writing I feel the souls of

these divine sisters leaning upon me with love and trust. This chair,

this chest of drawers, this pen _exist_ as I do. They touch me, and

I feel prostrated before them. I have their faith ... I have their

faith, which is beyond all systems, beyond all explanations, beyond

all intelligence. They give me a conviction such as no genius could

give me. Every system is vain, every explanation erroneous, the moment

I feel living in my heart the knowledge of these souls.

When I entered this cobbler's home I knew at once that I was welcome.

Without a word I sat down before the hearth near the children and the

dog and I opened my soul to the thousand shadowy voices of things.

In this communion the falling of a half charred twig, the grating of

the poker with which the fire was stirred, the blow of the hammer,

the flickering of the candle, the creak of the dog's collar, the

round bulging spot of blackness which was the sleeping blackbird,

the singing of the cover of the pot, all combined to form a sacred

language easier for me to understand than the speech of most men.

These noises and these colors are only the gestures and expressions

of objects, just as the voice or the glance are among our means of

expression and gesture.

I felt that a brotherhood united me to these humble things, and I knew

it was childish to classify the kingdoms of nature when there is but

one kingdom of God.

* * * * *

Can we say that things never exhibit to us manifestations of their

sympathy? The tool grows rusty when it no longer serves the hand of

the workman, even as the workman when he abandons the tool.

I knew an old smith. He was gay in the time of his strength, and the

sky entered his dark smithy through the radiant noondays. The joyous

anvil answered the hammer. And the hammer was the heart of the anvil

beating with the heart of the craftsman. When night fell the smithy

was lighted by its single light, the glance of the eyes of the burning

coal which flamed under the leather bellows. A divine love united the

soul of this man to the soul of these things. And when on the Lord's

days the smith retired into pious contemplation, the forge which had

been cleaned the night before prayed also in silence.

The smith was my friend. At his dim threshold I often questioned him,

and the whole smithy always answered me. The sparks laughed in the

coal, and syllables of metal fashioned a mysterious and profound

language which moved me like the words of duty. And I experienced

there almost the same feelings as in the home of the humble cobbler.

One day the smith fell ill. His breath grew short, and I noticed that

now when he pulled the chain of the bellows, formerly so powerful, it

also gasped and gradually caught the sickness of its master. The man's

heart beat with sudden jumps, and I heard plainly that the hammer

struck the iron irregularly as he brandished it above the anvil. And

in the same degree as the light in the eyes of the man faded, the

flame of the hearth grew dim. In the evenings it wavered more and

more, and there were long intervals when the light vanished on the

walls and ceiling.

One day while at work the man felt his extremities turn to ice. In the

evening he died. I entered the smithy. It was cold as a body deprived

of life. One small ember glowed alone under the chimney, humble

and watching, like the praying women that I found later beside the

death-bed.

Three months later I went into the abandoned workshop to help evaluate

his small amount of property. Everything was damp and black as in a

vault. The leather of the bellows was filled with holes where it had

rotted. When we tried to pull the chain it came loose from the wood.

And the simple people who were making the appraisal with me declared:

"This forge and these hammers are worn out. They ended their life with

the master."

Then I was _moved_, because I _understood_ the mysterious meaning of

these words.

TO STONES

Brilliant sisters of the torrents that I find on the shore of the

Alpine lake: you are the stones loved by the rainbow and the azure

cold, on you falls the white salt which is licked up by the lambs, you

are mirrors whose light is iridescent as the pigeon's breast, you

have more eyes than the peacock, you are crystallized by fire and your

veins of snow have become eternal, you have been the companions of

primordial cataclysms, you were washed by the sea and then rocked by

it until the dove from the ark cooed with love at sight of you....

The gleaming grain of your flesh at times has the blue-veined

whiteness of a child's wrist, at times it has the golden coppery hue

of the thigh of a heavy and beautiful woman, sometimes it is silvered

with mica like a cheek in the sunlight, sometimes it is brown like the

complexion of those in whom the dead blondness of tobacco is blended

with the gold of the mandarin orange.

You are stones that have been broken by the heart of the torrent, you

have been dashed against each other and have been tossed about amid

the daphnes of the ravine, you have been whipped by hailstorms and

tempest, buried under the avalanche, uncovered by the sun, loosened by

the feet of the chamois, you are cold and beautiful but above all else

you are pure.

I know little of your sisters of the Indies: either of her whose

transparency rivals water gushing from marble, or of her who makes

me dream of the clear meadows of my native valley, or of her who is a

drop of frozen blood, or of her who resembles the solid sun.

I prefer you to them, even though you are less precious. Sometimes you

support the beams of thatched roofs while you gaze at the star-dotted

sky, sometimes it is on you that the sheep-dog stretches himself as he

mournfully guards his flock.

At the heart of the ether where you rest upon the summits may you

continue to receive the nourishment with which your peaceful

kingdom is endowed, may the light bathe your cells which are still

unrecognized, may buoyant flakes and curves steep them, may they

resound to the vibration of the winds, may they receive at last that

harmonious manna which stilled the hunger of Mary Magdalene in the

grotto.

Around you will bloom your sweethearts, the purest flowers of the

world, but they are already less chaste than you for they have a

perfume of snow.

* * * * *

Poor gray sisters of the brook that I find on the plain, you are

tarnished stones, on you falls the shower of rain that the sparrow

may drink, you are struck by the foot of the she-ass, you are the

guardians that form the inclosures of miserable gardens, it is you who

are the concave threshold and the stone at the edge of the well worn

smooth by the chain of the bucket, you are servants, poor things

become shiny like the blades of implements of husbandry, you are

heated in the hearth of the poor to warm the feet of old women, you

are hollowed out for mean needs and become the humble table for the

dog and the sow, you are pierced so that the singing harvest may be

ground beneath the millstone, you are cut, you are taken, you are

tossed aside, on you the wanderer will sleep, Oh, you under whom I

shall sleep....

You have not guarded your independence like your alpine companions.

But, Oh my friends, I do not despise you for that. You are beautiful

like the things which are in the shadow.

NOTES

Then, behold me on my return to this old parlor where I look upon

the least object with tenderness. This shawl belonged to my paternal

grandmother whom I never knew and who rests amid flowers in a humble

cemetery of the Antilles. May the humming-birds glitter and cry above

her deserted grave, and the tobacco-plants with their rosy bells

delight her memory ... I have never seen the portrait which represents

her. But I know she had a reputation for goodness and beauty. I have

read admirable letters that she wrote from there to my father when he

was a child. He had been brought back to France to be educated here,

and had remained here.

How often have I dreamed of reviving this past. How beautiful it

would be if God gave us, once a year, the festival of seeing our dear

departed return. I love to imagine it as occurring on Twelfth Night

during a season of snow. The modest dining-room would be opened at

the stroke of eight, and seated about the enlarged table, adorned

with Christmas roses, I would find all those for whom my soul mourns

beneath the cheery light of the lamps.

It seems to me that this meeting would be entirely natural with

little of the uncanny, and not at all like a fairy tale. My paternal

grandfather, the doctor of medicine who died at Guadeloupe, would

occupy the place of honor, and about his shoulders would be a little

traveling cloak on which grains of frost were shining. His steely blue

eyes behind the enormous gold-rimmed spectacles, which he wore and

which my mother uses to-day, would make him appear as he was, at the

same time severe and good. In a grave and melodious voice he would

speak of the Great Crossing, of the wind of the Eternal Ocean, of

earthquakes in unexplored countries, of shipwrecked men whom he had

saved.

And all would listen; and, death being eternal, it would be wonderful

to see each one again at the particular age which we with singular

obstinacy always attribute to our dear departed.

The cousins from Saint-Pierre-de-la-Martinique, there were four of

them I believe, would not be more than eighteen years old, and would

be dressed in white muslin gowns. They would laugh at some cake that

had not come out right. And my great aunts who were Huguenots, rigid

but happy, with long chains of gold about their necks, would interpret

the revelations of the Prophets to one another. And five and seventy

years would quaver in each of their cracked voices. And my maternal

grandsire at nineteen, with the green coat of a romantic student, all....

But the dream fades and the wind weeps.

* * * * *

In moss full of sunshine and transparent as an alga or an emerald, I

have covered the roots of these first daisies of January. They and the

rare periwinkles and the furze are the only flowers of this season.

It is too much love doubtless which fills them. They must be born in

spite of the ice. The white little bands of their flower-heads are

tinged with violet at the ends, and surround the flowers which are

greenish yellow like the under side of an old mushroom. The muddy

roots feel the plowed fields. I have been so cruel as to pluck these

flowers and now they are wretched; they are as wounded as animals

could be; and see how, slowly as if they were moved by a terrible

fear, the petals of the flowers curve in to cover and protect the

sheathes of the minute corollas that I can no longer see. Tenderly I

try to raise these petals, but they resist me and I only succeed in

murdering the plant. Fool! Why could I not let these flowers live

on the edge of their ditch? There they would have felt the fresh

shrivelling of drinking in the sun, a bird would have touched them

lightly, the proboscis of the mosquitoes would have sucked up their

pollen, and they would have died gently by the side of their friends.

* * * * *

The stars of winter are beautiful when they are dusted on the

slate-colored sky, and when in the hazy blue depth they light up the

shreds of clouds. I passed through the little town at six o'clock,

when the candles behind the window-panes make square shadows move

within the shops and shine upon the reddish mud of the pavements.

A dog trots by sniffing under the doorways. A wagon whose oxen have

slipped makes a grating noise. A lantern flickers, a voice is heard.

The angles of the roofs are clear-cut. The rest is consumed by the

darkness. Here and there, still, at great distances, a window of smoky

rose, and I am at the top of the slope.

At the left an enormous star trembles. It seems to breathe and its

rays alternately elongate and withdraw again. Its white fire appears

to flow. I look upon the constellations, behind which there are other

spaces of constellations, which hide still more constellations, until

the glance is lost in luminous embers like those of a hearth.

I am in no wise troubled by these stars. I do not see in them worlds

infinitely great or small according to the one with which we compare

them. They are in my thoughts, such as I see them: the largest like

hummingbirds the smallest like wasps. The space which separates them

one from another does not seem any greater than the pace with which I

measure the road. It is simply the sky of January above a little town.

* * * * *

A peasant-woman has sold me some mushrooms. They are very rare

nowadays. Their odor captures me, and I dream of the edges of

the meadows, of the elves who, according to Shakespeare, make the

mushrooms grow beneath the spell of the moon. They have been moistened

by the melting frost, and fine and long grasses have become attached

to their humidity. They bear within them the quivering mist of the

nights. The first, they came forth from the earth under their

umbels of ivory to find out whether the feet of the hedge were still

surrounded by moss. They must have been deceived. They could not have

seen the periwinkles or the violets, but only the irritating and fine

gray rain in the gray sky.

* * * * *

Often I have visualized Heaven for myself. That of my childhood was

the hut an old man had built at the top of a climbing road. This hut

was called _Paradise_. My father brought me there at the hour when the

dark mist of the hills became gilded like a church. I expected, at the

end of each walk, to find God seated in the sun which seemed to sleep

at the summit of the stony pathway. Was I mistaken?

It is less easy for me to imagine the Catholic Paradise: the harps of

azure, the rosy snow of legions in the pure rainbows. I still cling

to my first vision, but since I have known love I have added to the

divine kingdom a warm, sloping lawn in front of the old man's hut. On

it a young girl gathers herbs.

* * * * *

I have simultaneously the soul of a faun and the soul of an

adolescent. And the emotion which I feel on looking upon a woman is

quite contrary to that which I feel on gazing at a young girl. If one

could make one's self understood by the aid of fruits and flowers,

I would offer to the first burning peaches, the rosy blossoms of the

belladonna, heavy roses; to the second, cherries, raspberries, the

blossoms of the wild quince, eglantine, and honeysuckle. I find it

difficult to have any feeling which is not accompanied by the image of

a flower or a fruit. When I think of Martha, I dream of gentians.

With Lucy I associate the white anemones of Japan, and with Marie the

lilies of Solomon; with another a citron which should be transparent.

To the first meeting that a sweetheart has granted me, I have brought

a spray of gladiolus whose throats have the rosy hue of an apricot.

We placed them on the window during the night when I forgot them to

remember only my love. To-day I would forget my loved one, to recall

only the gladiolus.

My memory is therefore, if I may so express it, vegetal. Trees as well

as flowers and fruits symbolize for me beings and emotions. Plants

as well as animals and stones filled my childhood with a mysterious

_charm_. When I was four years old I remained rapt in contemplation

of the broken stones of the mountain, lying in heaps along the roads.

When struck they gave forth fire in the twilight. When rubbed against

one another they felt the burning heat. I gathered pieces of marble

from among them which seemed heavy with a water they had concealed

within themselves. The mica of the granite held my curiosity in a way

which nothing could satisfy. I felt that there was something that no

one could tell me--the life of the stones.

At the same age I was scolded because I carried away the artificial

beetles from a hat of my mother. I had the passion of collecting

animals, I felt toward them so great a love that I wept if I thought

them unhappy. And I still endure a deep anguish when I remember the

little nightingales which some one gave me and which pined away in the

dining-room. Still at the same age, in order to make me go to sleep,

they had to place not far from me a bottle containing a tree-frog.

I knew that here was a faithful friend who would protect me against

robbers. The first time that I saw a stag-beetle, I was so overcome

by the beauty of its horns that the longing to possess one became an

actual torment.

The passion for plants did not develop until later, about the age of

nine years, and I did not really begin to understand their life until

about the age of fifteen. I remember the circumstances under which it

happened. It was in summer, one Thursday, on a scorching afternoon.

I was passing through the botanical garden of a great city with my

mother. A white sun, dense blue shadows, and perfumes so heavy that

one could almost feel them cling, made of this half desert spot a

kingdom whose portal I crossed at last.

In the tepid and reddish-brown water of the ponds plants vegetated;

some were leathery and gray, and others long, soft, and transparent.

But from the very heart of these poor and sad algae there rose into

the very blue of the sky itself, green lance-like stalks whose

rose and white umbels challenged the ardent day with their grace;

water-lilies slept on their leaves as in a trustful afternoon sleep.

To the plants of the water, the plants of the earth answered. I recall

an alley where students, a handkerchief about the neck, were as if

buried beneath the beauty of the leaves. It was the alley of the

_umbelliferae_. The fennel and the ferula raised their crowns upon

their stems with glistening sheaths. The perfumes spoke to each other

in the silence. And one felt that a silent understanding went from

plant to plant, and that over this isolated realm there hovered

something like resignation.

Since then I have understood the flowers and that their _families_

belonged together and have a natural affinity, and are not merely

divided into classes as an aid to our slow memories. Toward what

solution do these geometries in action, which are plants, progress?

I do not know. But there is a fascinating mystery in considering that

even as species correspond to certain geological periods and thus

group their sympathies, even so to-day they group themselves according

to the seasons. What correspondence is there between the character

of the shivering and snowy liliaceous plants of winter and the

purple solanaceous plants of autumn? And then there are still other

delightful dispositions which are due far less to the artifice of

man than to the consent of certain species to regard others as their

friends and not to pine away beside them. How sweet is the village

garden where the gleaming lily, like those gods who often visit the

humble, lives amid the cabbages, the blue leek, and the scallions,

which boil in the black pot of the poor! How I love the peasant

gardens at noonday when the mournful blue shadow of the vegetables

sleeps in the white squares of granular earth, when the cock calls

the silence, and when the buzzard, slanting and wheeling, makes

the scuttling hen cluck! There are the flowers of simple loves, the

flowers of the young wife who will dry the blue lavender to scent

her coarse sheets. And in this garden grows also the flower of the

rondel--the humble gilliflower with its simple perfume. There is also

the faithful box, each leaf of which is a small mirror of azure, and

the hollyhock in which the sweet and pure flame of melancholy

corollas burns; they are the flowers of religion vowed to silence and

austerity.

And I love also the flora of the meadows: the meadow-sweet swayed by

the breezes, rocked by the murmur of the brook. Its perfumed crown is

adorned like the water-beetles, more iridescent than the throats of

humming-birds.

It is the beloved of the greensward, the bride of the grassy borders.

But it is in the deep recesses of old deserted parks that the plants

are most mysterious. There dwell those which we call _old

flowers_, such as the ground-lilac, the belladonna-amaryllis, the

crown-imperial. Elsewhere they would die. Here they persist, guarded

by the favor of the age-old trees, strange trees, the names of which

have disappeared. And these affected and distinguished blossoms raise

their swaying heads only when, murmuring across the liquadambars and

the maples, the wind moans like Chateaubriand.

* * * * *

The very mournfulness of the little town is pleasing to me; I love its

streets of dark shops, the worn thresholds, and the gardens. In the

fine season they seem to float against a background of blue mist which

is a confusion of hollyhocks, glycins, trellises; or again they seem

patchy as the skin of asses, with drying rags above the hedges

of battered boxwood. The tanner's brook drifts by with the pale

mother-of-pearl of the sky, and reflects sharply the rooftops amid the

slimy plants; the mountain torrent, which hollows the rocks, gleams,

twines and flows away.

The little place is charming when the grasshopper shrills in the

summer's elms and the autumn wind scours it, or when the rains streak

it. There is a little public garden that Bernardin de Saint Pierre

would have loved; in May the night there is dense, blue, and soft in

the chestnut-trees.

For years I have lived here, whence my grandfather and a great uncle

departed toward the flower-covered Antilles. They listened to the

roaring of the sea; robes of muslin glided upon the verandas, and they

died perhaps looking back with regret on these streets, these shops,

these thresholds, these gardens, this brook, and this mountain

torrent.

When I go to my little farm I say to myself that this is where they

once were. They brought their luncheon in a little basket, and one of

them carried a guitar. And young girls surely followed swiftly. Song

stirred among the damp hedgerows. An unutterable love frightened the

birds, the mulberries were green. They kept time as they walked. A

young girl's cry stirred the air, a big hat turned the corner of the

road, a clear laugh rose from the rain-torn eglantines; then hearts

beat when, in the bright dog-days, the black barns softened the

clucking of the hens under the scarlet sky of the south.

...This guitar or another I heard in the courtyard of my Huguenot

great-aunts, one summer's evening when I was four years old. The

courtyard slept in the white twilight, the roofs shed an unimaginable

tenderness upon the climbing rosebushes and the bright paving-stones.

Some one sitting on a beam was making merry at the expense of my

childhood and my white apron. My great uncle sang some melody from the

capital. I can see him again, standing upright with his head thrown

back. The air trembled softly. At the end of a roulade he made an

exaggerated and charming bow.

I bless you, oh humble town where I am not understood, where I shelter

my pride, my suffering, and my joy, where I have hardly any other

distraction than that of listening to the barking of my old dog and

watching the faces of the poor. But I reach the hillside where the

prickly furze is spread, and in musing upon my difficulties I am

filled with a beneficent gentleness. To-day it is no longer the

coarse and disdainful laugh of the public, nor the terrible doubt of

everything, which disturbs me. The laugh of my detractors has grown

wearied, and I have become indifferent to what I am. Yet I have become

grave toward myself and others. It is with an apprehensive joy that I

regard the heedlessness of the happy. I have learned what misery

may spring from love, what blindness is born of a glance. And it is

because of what I have suffered that I would bestow a sad and slow

caress on those who have not yet known anything but happiness.

* * * * *

The open door, the blue sky, the watering of the grass and the

gilliflowers, and the hyacinths, and a single bird which chirps, and

my dogs stretched on the ground and the rosebushes with their thick

stems, the verdure of the lilacs, and a clock that is striking, a wasp

which flies straight and marks the meadow with the lines of its golden

vibration, and stops, hesitates, sets off again, is silent and buzzes....

Hearts and choirs of primroses in the moist, shadowy mosses of the

woods; long threads of rose and blue dew floating and swinging and

suspended--from what?--in the immaterial morning; tree-frogs with

golden eye-lids and white throbbing throats; furze whose perfume of

faded peach and rose follows along the roads, already torrid....

Iris, cries of jays, turtledoves, mountains of blue snow which are

rocks of azure, green fields laid out in squares, brook rolling

a golden pebble in the silence; first foliage of the waters, icy

trembling of the body beside the springs when the sun lies burning on

your hands....

* * * * *

Slender alders; fiery marshes where toward noonday puffing out their

throat, the hoarse gray frogs climb up on the coriaceous plants,

while slowly from the deep of the shady and gilded mire rises a bubble....

Dry and twisted vines; swarms of insects from the blossoms of rosy

peach-trees, in slanting flight into the azure; pear-trees and roses

of Bengal....

* * * * *

Setting of the cherry sun; nocturnal snow of a fruit-tree; green and

transparent shadowing of the lanes; summit of little hills at seven

o'clock where the trees are like sponges which little by little blend

into the severity of the uniform curve which swells and rises sharply.

Starless night; violet night in which the white sandals of a beloved

pagan can hardly be distinguished, and dense bristling of slender, dry

trees; pallor of a limestone slope, and water in which something casts

two long and deep shadows....

Night; fire; lines of shadow blended with shadows of lines; fire;

humid thickness of fields; fire; crimsoning and reddening of clouds;

poplars; whiteness which must be a village. Water again, water, and

shadows of water....

A wagon passes. The lantern lights up only the rear of the horse,

all else is night. When I was a child it was this which astonished

me--this light which was quenched again. Another wagon...One sees

only the rosy bust of a girl. It slips into the night....

* * * * *

I return from a journey. The recollection of a maroon reflection of a

boat in the canal, the color of gray fish, makes my memory quiver. I

dream of white tulips.

I have returned at night. The croaking of frogs has greeted me from

the depths of the damp meadow. My heart, do not burst!... Do not burst

like the lilacs of the flower-garden whose fragrance I alone have

touched....

Will hope be born again? I am afraid. Is this one more disillusion?

The wasp has hummed. I love none but the violet lilacs, I love none

but the blue violets. It is Sunday, and I hear in the depths of my

soul the droning of the harmoniums of poor churches.

My life, behold my life, ardent and sad like a flame which

burns through too warm a summer night beside the open window. An

imperceptible breeze has suddenly swelled out the curtain of muslin

like my heart.

* * * * *

In the garden the perfume of the lilacs suddenly make me feel ill

because I am horribly sad.

Nevertheless, lilacs, you are dear to me since childhood. Then I

thought your clusters were the beautiful polished images of a box of

toys.

And you, oh lilacs, have also haunted an orchard which I knew well in

my youth. In this orchard there were hedge-hogs. They glided along old

beams. How innocent and gentle the hedge-hogs are in spite of their

quills! I remember my emotion one winter's evening, when I found one

of them at the threshold of the kitchen; it had taken flight from the

snow, and was poking its little nose into the refuse left there....

* * * * *

I love the creatures of the night, the screech-owls with their

graceful flight, the bats, the badgers, all the timid beasts which

glide through the air or in the grass and of which we know so little.

What festivals do they hold amid the plants, their sisters?

At the hour when man is at rest, the rabbits, silvered by the dew,

bound over the mint of the furrow and hold their conventicles; the

frogs croak in the marsh and make it ripple; the glowworms filter

their soft and humid yellow light; the mole bores the meadow; the

nightingale sobs like a fountain; the owl utters sad laughter as if it

too, however timidly, were trying to have a share in the joy of God.

How I would like to be a creature of the night, a hare trembling in

a hedge of hawthorn, a badger grazed by the leaves of the juicy green

corn. My only care would have been to safeguard my physical being. I

would not have loved. I would not have hoped.