1
Rose is already almost happy. Hope is penetrating her life; and the
moments of rest filter into her days of wearisome toil like the cool
water trickling through the rocks.
As soon as she can get away on any excuse, she runs across to me.
Flushed and laughing, she hurls herself into my arms with all the
violence of a catastrophe; she crushes my cheek with a vehement kiss
which waits for no response; and my hair catches in the rough hands
squeezing my head. Smiling, I cannot help warding off the attack, while
she pours out a torrent of incoherent words at the top of her voice....
During our early talks, I tried speaking very quietly, as a hint that
she should do the same. She would shake the house with the thunder of
her most intimate confidences, bellowed after the fashion of the
peasants, who are accustomed to keep up a conversation from one end of a
field to the other. As I obtained no result, I had to speak to her
about it; and, because I did so as delicately as possible, in order not
to wound her feelings, she burst into a roar of laughter which showed me
that her rustic life had robbed her of all sensitiveness.
Being now authorised to admonish her at all times with regard to her
gestures, her voice and her accent, I often make her repeat the same
sentence; and, when I at last hear her natural voice, her original sweet
and attractive voice, to which the music is beginning to return, shily
and timidly, my heart overflows with joy. But, two minutes after, she is
again bawling out her most trivial remarks, with a cheerful unconcern
that disarms my wrath. Then I plead for silence as I would for mercy,
draw her down upon my lap, take her head in my arms and nurse her as I
would a child.
2
The stillness is so intense in the grove where we are sitting side by
side, I am so anxious for her to feel it, that I become impatient and
irritable. When I am with her, I am in a perpetual ferment. Her beauty
and her coarseness hurt me, like two ill-matched colours that attract
and wound the eyes. I calm myself by scattering all my thoughts over her
promiscuously; and, though most of them are carried away by the wind, I
imagine that I am sprinkling them on her life to make it blossom anew.
"I am nursing you in my arms to wake you, my Roseline, just as one
nurses children to put them to sleep. See what poor creatures we are! As
a rule, it is the conventions and constraint of our upbringing, with all
its artificiality and falsehood, that divide us. To-day, it is the
opposite that rises between you and me and spoils our happiness! I have
often longed to meet a woman who was so simple as to be almost
uncivilised; and, now that you are here, I dread your gestures and your
voice, which grate upon me and annoy me!"
"But am I not simple?" Rose asks, ingenuously.
"People generally confuse simplicity with ignorance, too often also with
silliness--which is not the case with you," I added, with a smile.
"Real, that is to say, conscious simplicity is not even recognised; and,
when it becomes active, it appears to vulgar minds a danger that must be
averted. The better to attack it, they disfigure it. It is this proud
and noble grace that I want you to acquire. Look, it may be compared
with this diamond which I wear on my finger. The stone is absolutely
simple; and yet through how many hands has it passed before becoming so!
How many transformations has it undergone! How magnificent is its bare
simplicity when set off by the plain gold ring! It is the same with us.
For simplicity to be beautiful in us, we must have cut and polished our
soul and person many times over. Above all, we must have learnt the
harmony of things and become fixed in that knowledge, like the stone
which you see held in these gold claws."
She asked, with an effort to modulate her voice:
"Oughtn't I to take you for my model?"
"No, Rose! You frighten me when you say that! You must not think of it.
Listen to me: if ever we are permitted to imitate any one, it is only in
the pains which she herself takes to improve herself. As for me, I
wanted to achieve simplicity and I looked for it as one looks for a spot
that is difficult to reach and easy to miss. For a long time, I wandered
beyond it. Rather than stoop to false customs, to lying conventions, I
followed the strangest fancies.... Now it all makes me laugh."
"Makes you laugh?"
"Yes, past errors are dead branches that make our present life burn
more brightly. But, when I see how I judge my former selves, I become
suspicious as to what I may soon think of my actual self; and therefore
I do not wish you to take me as an example."
Rose was still lying in my arms; and her beautiful eyes were looking up
at me. I raised her head in my hands and whispered, tenderly:
"I feel that you understand me, that my words touch you, that you trust
me and that you love me deep down in your heart; I feel that you also
will soon be able to speak and unburden yourself freely, to be silent
amid silence and peaceful amid the peace of things...."
3
The girl rose to her feet, with a glint of emotion animating her
features; and, as though to escape my eyes, she took a few steps in the
garden. While she was hidden by the bend of the narrow path fenced by
the tall sunflowers, my heart was filled with misgiving: her step was so
heavy, so clumsy! Would she ever be able to improve her walk? Judging by
the ponderous rhythm of her hips, one would always think that she was
carrying invisible burdens at the end of each of her drooping arms....
But she soon returned; and her fair countenance was so adorable amid the
golden glory of the great flowers that I could not suppress a cry of
admiration. She came towards me smiling; and, to protect herself a
little from the blinding sunlight, she was holding both hands over her
head. Was it simply the curve of her raised arms that thus transfigured
her whole bearing, that reduced the unwieldiness of her figure and made
its lines freer? It was, no doubt; but it was also the soft breeze which
now blew against her and accentuated the movement of her limbs by
plastering her thin cotton skirt against them. And the heavy gait now
seemed stately; and the excessive stride appeared virile and bold. I
watched the humble worker in the fields, the poor farm-girl; and I
thought of the proud _Victory_ whom my mind pictured enfolding all the
beauties of the Louvre in her mighty wings!