When the spring came, Germinie said to Jupillon almost every evening:
"Suppose we go as far as the beginning of the fields?"
Jupillon would put on his flannel shirt with red and black squares, and
his black velvet cap; and they would start for what the people of the
quarter call "the beginning of the fields."
They would go up the Chaussee Clignancourt, and, with the flood of
Parisians from the faubourg hurrying to drink a little fresh air, would
walk on toward the great patch of sky that rose straight from the
pavements, at the top of the ascent, between the two lines of houses,
unobstructed except by an occasional omnibus. The air was growing cooler
and the sun shone only upon the roofs of the houses and the chimneys. As
from a great door opening into the country, there came from the end of
the street and from the sky beyond, a breath of boundless space and
liberty.
At the Chateau-Rouge they found the first tree, the first foliage. Then,
at Rue du Chateau, the horizon opened before them in dazzling beauty.
The fields stretched away in the distance, glistening vaguely in the
powdery, golden haze of seven o'clock. All nature trembled in the
daylight dust that the day leaves in its wake, upon the verdure it blots
from sight and the houses it suffuses with pink.
Frequently they descended the footpath covered with the figures of the
game of hop-scotch marked out in charcoal, by long walls with an
occasional overhanging branch, by lines of detached houses with gardens
between. At their left rose tree-tops filled with light, clustering
foliage pierced by the beams of the setting sun, which cast lines of
fire across the bars of the iron gateways. After the gardens came
hedgerows, estates for sale, unfinished buildings erected upon the line
of projected streets and stretching out their jagged walls into empty
space, with heaps of broken bottles at their feet; large, low, plastered
houses, with windows filled with bird-cages and cloths, and with the Y
of the sink-pipes at every floor; and openings into enclosures that
resembled barnyards, studded with little mounds on which goats were
browsing.
They would stop here and there and smell the flowers, inhale the perfume
of a meagre lilac growing in a narrow lane. Germinie would pluck a leaf
in passing and nibble at it.
Flocks of joyous swallows flew wildly about in circles and in fantastic
figures over her head. The birds called. The sky answered the cages. She
heard everything about her singing, and glanced with a glad eye at
the women in chemisettes at the windows, the men in their shirt sleeves
in the little gardens, the mothers on the doorsteps with their little
ones between their legs.
[Illustration: Chapter XII
_But at the fortifications her pleasure returned. She would go with
Jupillon and sit upon the slope of the embankment. Beside her were
families innumerable, workmen lying flat upon their faces, small
annuitants gazing at the horizon through spy-glasses, philosophers of
want, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coats
characteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their red
beards._]
At the foot of the slope the pavement came to an end. The street was
succeeded by a broad, white, chalky, dusty road, made of debris, old
pieces of plaster, crumbs of lime and bricks; a sunken road, with deep
ruts, polished on the edges, made by the iron tires of the huge great
wheels of carts laden with hewn stone. At that point began the things
that collect where Paris ends, the things that grow where grass does not
grow, one of those arid landscapes that large cities create around them,
the first zone of suburbs _intra muros_ where nature is exhausted, the
soil used up, the fields sown with oyster shells. Beyond was a
wilderness of half-enclosed yards displaying numbers of carts and trucks
with their shafts in the air against the sky, stone-cutters' sheds,
factories built of boards, unfinished workmen's houses, full of gaps and
open to the light, and bearing the mason's flag, wastes of gray and
white sand, kitchen gardens marked out with cords, and, on the lower
level, bogs to which the embankment of the road slopes down in oceans of
small stones.
Soon they would reach the last lantern hanging on a green post. People
were still coming and going about them. The road was alive and amused
the eyes. They met women carrying their husband's canes, lorettes in
silk dresses leaning on the arms of their blouse-clad brothers, old
women in bright-colored ginghams walking about with folded arms,
enjoying a moment's rest from labor. Workmen were drawing their children
in little wagons, urchins returning with their rods from fishing at
Saint-Ouen, and men and women dragging branches of flowering acacia at
the ends of sticks.
Sometimes a pregnant woman would pass, holding out her arms to a yet
small child, and casting the shadow of her pregnancy upon the wall.
And everyone moved tranquilly, blissfully, at a pace that told of the
wish to delay, with the awkward ease and the happy indolence of those
who walk for pleasure. No one was in a hurry, and against the unbroken
horizon line, crossed from time to time by the white smoke of a railroad
train, the groups of promenaders were like black spots, almost
motionless, in the distance.
Behind Montmartre, they came to those great moats, as it were, those
sloping squares, where narrow, gray, much-trodden paths cross and
recross. A few blades of shriveled, yellow grass grew thereabout,
softened by the rays of the setting sun, which they could see, all
ablaze, between the houses. And Germinie loved to watch the wool-combers
at work there, the quarry horses at pasture in the bare fields, the
madder-red trousers of the soldiers who were playing at bowls, the
children flying kites that made black spots in the clear air. Passing
all these, they turned to cross the bridge over the railroad by the
wretched settlement of ragpickers, the stonemasons' quarter at the foot
of Clignancourt hill. They would walk quickly by those houses built of
materials stolen from demolished buildings, and exuding the horrors they
conceal; the wretched structures, half cabin, half burrow, caused
Germinie a vague feeling of terror: it seemed to her as if all the
crimes of Night were lurking there.
But at the fortifications her pleasure returned. She would go with
Jupillon and sit upon the slope of the embankment. Beside her were
families innumerable, workmen lying flat upon their faces, small
annuitants gazing at the horizon through spy-glasses, philosophers of
want, bent double, with their hands upon their knees, the greasy coats
characteristic of old men, and black hats worn as red as their red
beards. The air was full of rich harmonies. Below her, in the moat, a
musical society was playing at each corner. Before her eyes was a
multi-colored crowd, white blouses, children in blue aprons running
around, a game of riding at the ring in progress, wine shops, cake
shops, fried fish stalls, and shooting galleries half hidden in clumps
of verdure, from which arose staves bearing the tricolor; and farther
away, in a bluish haze, a line of tree tops marked the location of a
road. To the right she could see Saint-Denis and the towering basilica;
at her left, above a line of houses that were becoming indistinct, the
sun was setting over Saint-Ouen in a disk of cherry-colored flame, and
projecting upon the gray horizon shafts of light like red pillars that
seemed to support it tremblingly. Often a child's balloon would pass
swiftly across the dazzling expanse of sky.
They would go down, pass through the gate, walk along by the Lorraine
sausage shops, the dealers in honeycomb, the board _cabarets_, the
verdureless, still unpainted arbors, where a noisy multitude of men and
women and children were eating fried potatoes, mussels and prawns, until
they reached the first field, the first living grass: on the edge of the
grass there was a handcart laden with gingerbread and peppermint
lozenges, and a woman selling hot cocoa on a table in the furrow. A
strange country, where everything was mingled--the smoke from the
frying-pan and the evening vapor, the noise of quoits on the head of a
cask and the silence shed from the sky, the city barrier and the idyllic
rural scene, the odor of manure and the fresh smell of green wheat, the
great human Fair and Nature! Germinie enjoyed it, however; and, urging
Jupillon to go farther, walking on the very edge of the road, she would
constantly step in among the grain to enjoy the fresh, cool sensation of
the stalks against her stockings. When they returned she always wanted
to go upon the slope once more. The sun had by that time disappeared and
the sky was gray below, pink in the centre and blue above. The horizon
grew dark; from green the trees became a dark brown and melted into the
sky; the zinc roofs of the wine shops looked as if the moon were
shining upon them, fires began to appear in the darkness, the crowd
became gray, and the white linen took on a bluish tinge. Little by
little everything would fade away, be blotted out, lose its form and
color in a dying remnant of colorless daylight, and through the
increasing darkness the voices of a class whose life begins at night,
and the voice of the wine beginning to sing, would arise, mingled with
the din of the rattles. Upon the slope the tops of the tall grass waved
to and fro in the gentle breeze. Germinie would make up her mind to go.
She would wend her way homeward, filled with the influence of the
falling night, abandoning herself to the uncertain vision of things
half-seen, passing the dark houses, and finding that everything along
her road had turned paler, as it were--wearied by the long walk over
rough roads, and content to be weary and slow and half-fainting, and
with a feeling of peace at her heart.
At the first lighted lanterns on Rue du Chateau, she would fall from her
dream to the pavement.