And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that,

as it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in

very gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened;

but gave herself a shake, and said: ‘That was really nice. It was quite

like being in a carriage.’

Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he

stood there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. ‘One tumbles

down from trees every day,’ she exclaimed, ‘but there is never any harm

done. Look more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger

and rub it upon my neck. I have scratched it.’

Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.

‘There, I am all right again now,’ she cried, as she bounded off. ‘Let

us play at hide and seek, shall we?’

She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the

depths of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not

possibly find her, she called, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo.’ But this game of hide

and seek did not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees.

Breakfasting went on in all the nooks and corners where the two big

children sought each other. Albine, while gliding beneath the branches,

would stretch out her hand to pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with

apricots. Then in some of her lurking-places she would come upon such

rich discoveries as would make her careless of the game, content to

sit upon the ground and remain eating. Once, however, she lost sound of

Serge’s movements. So, in her turn, she set about seeking him; and she

was surprised, almost vexed, when she discovered him under a plum-tree,

of whose existence she herself had been ignorant, and whose ripe fruit

had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly rated him. Did he want to eat

everything himself, that he hadn’t called to her to come? He pretended

to know nothing about the trees, but he evidently had a very keen scent

to be able to find all the good things. She was especially indignant

with the poor tree itself--a stupid tree which no one had known of, and

which must have sprung up in the night on purpose to put people out. As

she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a single plum, it occurred to

Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a shower, a regular hail, of

plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst of the downfall, received

plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on the very tip of her nose.

At this she could no longer restrain her laughter; she stood in the

midst of the deluge, crying ‘More! more!’ amused as she was by the round

bullet-like fruit which fell around her as she squatted there, with

hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.

It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou.

Albine and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and

sporting with each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in

what a delicious spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with

undiscoverable hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never

possible to be serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges.

In this happy orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes,

such fresh and appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like

kindly grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the

recesses green with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them

to creep the one behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young

folks never succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble

touched them in that happy wood.

And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees

and the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating

green almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in

the grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.

Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge,

who was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees,

leaping over their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw

them behind her in her companion’s face. In a few strides she had

cleared the clumps of arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way;

and it was in the jungle of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that

Serge lost her. At first he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate;

but found that he had mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy

roundness of her wrists. Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees,

rejoicing in their beauty and perfume, and thinking that he must have

reached the abode of the fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he

caught sight of Albine, who, not believing him so near her, was peering

inquisitively into the green depths.

‘What are you looking for?’ he cried. ‘You know very well that is

forbidden.’

She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.

Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times

there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then

be all golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow

sparks the arching green.

When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every

wild-growing fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and

bitter plums, saying that they would be good to eat on their way. They

would prove a hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted

before. Serge was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the

grimaces he made at each bite. And eventually they found themselves

indoors again, tired out but feeling very happy.

X

A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned

to extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left

through the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel

several miles over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they

happened to lose themselves.

‘I will take my knife,’ said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant’s

knife.

She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread,

matches, a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles.

Serge took a rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and

reached the ruins of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that

he hid it beneath a piece of fallen wall.

The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by

her extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped

along side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty

paces at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to

talk.

‘I never can wake up,’ began Albine. ‘I slept so soundly last night. Did

you?’

‘Yes, indeed, very soundly,’ replied Serge.

‘What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?’ the girl

resumed.

‘I don’t know. What did your bird say to you?’

‘Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of

them sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You

sha’n’t get it, you sha’n’t get it!’

And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,

outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about

victoriously. She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing,

but feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.

Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he

asked: ‘Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?’

‘No, no.’

She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she

turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.

‘I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won’t

let me go. Come and unfasten me.’

When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.

Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this

fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.

Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here

and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and

downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into

lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath

the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like

pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing

dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle

breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on

the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of

little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,

like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark

grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which

the touch of a fly’s wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely

poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,

spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced

aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away

at every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly

feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog’s-tail,

creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine

filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished

forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin

broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to

left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like

the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever

seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the vegetation

was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.

Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass

reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and

then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a

stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then

there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,

which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,

their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week

before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple

arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream

which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and

slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only

her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then

she called to Serge: ‘Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one

had green water all over one.’

Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and

they both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their

onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild

cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected

like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge

followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for

a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow

upon the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare

brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half

uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their

roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,

rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of

youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible

upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,

was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,

as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.

Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and

some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old

trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed

upon three stakes by the water’s edge, beside a rolling prairie.

‘This is the place,’ cried Albine, ‘this is the place;’ and she glided

beneath the willows.

Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced

round him, and murmured: ‘You know everything, you know all the best

spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right

in the middle of the sea.’

‘Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,’ she replied, as she gleefully

drummed the grass with her fists. ‘It is altogether our own, and we are

going to do everything ourselves.’ Then, as if struck by a brilliant

idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him

joyously: ‘Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.’

He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be

her husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself.

Then Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a

housewife.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘that it is I who will have to give the orders. We

will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.’

She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the

various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one

of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags

supplied the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette

necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the

explorers’ clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little

bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She

had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook

the fish they were going to catch.

When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the

centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation

that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders

with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a

severe tone, ‘I will catch the fish; you can watch me.’

For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some

of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats

and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced

quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When

she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple

of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought

her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then

broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank,

indignant. She told him that he had no business to laugh at her.

‘But,’ he ended by asking, ‘how are we going to cook your fish when you

have caught it? There is no wood about.’

That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish

in that stream didn’t seem to be good for much; so she came out of the

water and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.

‘See,’ she suddenly exclaimed, ‘here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.

Now we shall have a feast.’

Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on

the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was

much better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the

establishment, and cut Serge’s bread for him, for she would not trust

him with the knife. At last she made him store away in the ‘cupboard’

the few drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was

also ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.

‘We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.’

He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air,

and saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a

while, however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their

heads as if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence

which had fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: ‘I love you very much.’

It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive

love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the

sight of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around

them all open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the

other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the

blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows,

and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads

was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that

it wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have

done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all

the freshness of the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves

of flowers; while, at their feet, the stream, childlike as they were,

flowed idly along with a gentle babbling that sounded to them like the

laughter of a companion. Ah! happy solitude, so tranquil and placid,

immensity wherein the little patch of grass serving as their couch took

the semblance of an infant’s cradle.

‘There, that’s enough; said Albine, getting up; ‘we’ve rested long

enough.’

Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their

sleep. He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to

draw her near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees

he grasped her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse

he was yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to

her feet, he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and

which still retained the warmth of her body.

‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘it is time to get up,’ and then he rose from

the ground.

They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on

and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like

a young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy

glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big

trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all

kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the

tall herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore

her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their

joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first

flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely

planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of

falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge’s knees,

however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the

opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black

with shade beneath a lofty canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward

with the gentle rustling and rippling of the satin train of some lady,

dreamily sauntering through the woodland depths. It was a deep, cold,

and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched

from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding

the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the

water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly

hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of

the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream

which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, it flowed

more slowly at certain bends, whence it started off again with merry

ripples, past piles of big stones, into the shelter of some clump of

trees, and grew calmer once more. It exhibited every humour as it sped

along over soft sand or rocky boulders, over sparkling pebbles or greasy

clay, where leaping frogs made yellow puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled

about in delight, and even walked homewards through the stream in

preference to remaining on the bank. At every little island that divided

the current they landed. They conquered the savage spot or rested

beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed to grow there expressly

as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they made a delightful

progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks, enlivened by the

merry humour of the living current.

But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine

was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among

the plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to

go and pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad

leaves set _collerettes_ around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook

his finger at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in

arm, like young people after a day’s outing. They looked at each other,

and thought one another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a

certainty their laughter had a different ring from that with which it

had sounded in the morning.

XI

‘Are we never going out again?’ asked Serge some days later.

And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added,

in a teasing kind of way, ‘You have got tired of looking for your tree,

then?’

They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn’t exist.

It was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight

feeling of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to

the far end of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which

Serge had not yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them.

They breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat

of the sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor,

and they sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of

sheltering shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard,

through which they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness

beneath the big trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and,

without a word, but with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief

to escape from the glare of day, they pushed on into the forest’s

depths. And when they had nothing but cool green leaves about them, when

no glimpse of the sunlit expanse was afforded by any gap in the

foliage, they looked at each other and smiled, with a feeling of vague

uneasiness.

‘How nice it is here!’ murmured Serge.

Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat

prevented her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round

each other’s waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along

without touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the

ground.

But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine’s

cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.

‘What is the matter with you?’ he exclaimed; ‘are you in pain? Have you

hurt yourself?’

‘No, don’t you see I’m smiling? I don’t know how it is, but the scent of

all these trees forces tears into my eyes.’ She glanced at him, and then

resumed: ‘Why, you’re crying too! You see you can’t help it.’

‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘all this deep shade affects one. It seems so

peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must

tell me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done

anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?’

She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.

‘Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?’

‘Oh! no, we can’t race,’ she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And

when he went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or

gathering strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: ‘We

are too big for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing.

Doesn’t it please you better to walk on quietly by my side?’

She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear

the pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never

before had he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the

sweep of her skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was

happiness never to be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by

his side, for he was ever discovering some new charm in the lissom

suppleness of her limbs.

‘You are right,’ he said, ‘this is really the best. I would walk by your

side to the end of the world, if you wished it.’

A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and

hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.

‘We might sit down for a few minutes,’ he suggested in a stammering

voice.

‘No,’ she replied, ‘I don’t want to.’

‘But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other

day. We should be quite comfortable.’

‘No, no; I don’t want to.’

And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms

outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to

catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such

an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.

‘I have hurt you?’ he said.

She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,

and already smiling at her own alarm.

‘No; leave me, don’t worry me;’ and she added in a grave tone, though

she tried to feign jocularity: ‘you know that I have my tree to look

for.’

Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He

conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm

her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed

her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,

and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful

awe, which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The

perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through

the leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with

tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead

them to some perilous happiness.

And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their

reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,

though they never left each other’s side, but went together through the

darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle

of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child’s wrist. They had to

push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender

shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The

saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,

and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,

and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary

waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more

than three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last

found themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to

discover. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow

paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,

twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and

stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on

tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would

willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,

without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the

proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their

shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some

vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty

trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line

by line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,

with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,

whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely

chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A

religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay

hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,

nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened

to their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic

solitude of this temple.

Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose

shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,

such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of

those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,

full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at

them one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their

majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might

grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples,

the ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a

multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the

fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of

the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,

scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the

alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to

which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the

locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes

shot up regularly with glossy tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments

fell. Down a gentle slope descended the larches, resembling a band of

barbarians, draped in _sayons_ of woven greenery. But the oaks were

the monarchs of all--the mighty oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out

conquering arms that barred the sun’s approach from all around them;

Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck, thrown back in postures like

those of unconquered wrestlers, with scattered limbs that alone gave

birth to a whole forest.

Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal

oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale,

maidenly birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still

plodded on, unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees.

For a moment they thought they had found the object of their quest in

the midst of a group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell

so cold a shadow that they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt

another thrill of emotion as they came upon a little wood of chestnut

trees, green with moss and thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on

which one might have built an aerial village. But further still Albine

caught sight of a clearing, whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the

midst of a carpet of fine turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of

greenery, a foliaged Babel, whose ruins were covered with the strangest

vegetation. Stones, sucked up from the ground by the mounting sap, still

remained adhering to the trunk. High branches bent down to earth again,

and, taking root, surrounded the parent tree with lofty arches, a nation

of new trunks which ever increased and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared

with bleeding wounds, were ripening fruit-pods; the mere effort of

bearing fruit strained the old monster’s skin until it split. The young

folks walked slowly round it, passing under the arched branches which

formed as it were the streets of a city, and stared at the gaping cracks

of the naked roots. Then they went off, for they had not felt there the

supernatural happiness they sought.

‘Where are we?’ asked Serge.

Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.

They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering

blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. ‘We are quite lost,’ she

laughed. ‘I don’t know these trees at all.’

‘But the garden must come to an end somewhere,’ said Serge. ‘When we get

to the end, you will know where you are, won’t you?’

‘No,’ she answered, waving her hands afar.

They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled

them with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in

so far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its

limits.

‘Well, we are lost,’ said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he

inquired: ‘You are not afraid, are you?’

‘Oh! no. There’s no one except you and me in the garden. What could I

be afraid of? The walls are very high. We can’t see them, but they guard

us, you know.’

Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, ‘But a little time

ago you were afraid of me.’

She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least

faltering in her glance. ‘You hurt me,’ she replied, ‘but you are

different now. Why should I be afraid of you?’

‘Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the

trees.’

‘Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we’ll

walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.’

He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they

sauntered back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose

arching vaults they slowly went, with love awakening within them.

Albine said that she felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge’s

shoulder. The fabulous tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw

their faces nearer together that they might smile in one another’s eyes.

And it was the trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft

green shade, that whisperingly suggested to them the first words of

love.

‘I love you!’ said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that

clustered round Albine’s temples. He tried to think of other words, but

he could only repeat, ‘I love you! I love you!’

Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her

heart was in accord with his.

‘I love you! I love you!’ she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft

young voice.

Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,

she asked, ‘How do you love me?’

Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,

the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.

‘I love you beyond everything,’ he answered. ‘You are more beautiful

than all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I

look at you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be

perfectly happy.’

She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of

music. ‘I love you,’ he went on. ‘I know nothing about you. I know

not who you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my

sister; and yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole

heart and kept nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of

yours, so soft and satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath;

I love your eyes, in which I see my own love reflected; I love even

your eyelashes, even those little veins which blue the whiteness of your

temples. Ah! yes, I love you, I love you, Albine.’

‘And I love you, too,’ she answered. ‘You are strong, and tall, and

handsome. I love you, Serge.’

For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them

that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came

from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter

became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading

their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista

of the colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a

procession of white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal

ceremony amid the low strains of an organ.

‘And why do you love me?’ asked Albine again.

He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, ‘I

love you because you came to me. That expresses all.... Now we are

together and we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on

living if I did not love you. You are the very breath of my life.’

He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.

‘One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one’s heart

grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong.... Do you remember how

we loved one another though we didn’t speak of it? One is childish and

silly at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts

out. You see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another

because our love and our life are one.’

Albine’s head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she

scarce drew her breath. Serge’s caressing words enraptured her: ‘Do you

really, really love me?’ she murmured, without opening her eyes.

Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing

further to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered

over her rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of

sleep. Her eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a

bewitching smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below

her hair. He would have liked to give his whole being with the word

which seemed to be upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again

he bent over her, and seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair

face he should whisper the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he

only breathed a little sigh. Then he kissed Albine’s lips.

‘Albine, I love you!’

‘I love you, Serge!’

Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.

She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips

protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a

blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power.

It was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they

beheld themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a

moment they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault

of greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if

seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of

the forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers’ gaiety, full of

all the tenderness now born.

‘Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me

that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell

out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your

arms to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took

hold of me round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?’

‘Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;

did you?’

Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word

‘love,’ in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They

brought it into every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely

for the pleasure they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not

think of pressing a second kiss to Albine’s lips. The perfume of the

first sufficed them in their purity. They had found their way again, or

rather had stumbled upon it, for they had paid no attention to the paths

they took. As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon

was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a

delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary

peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that

the moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with

stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge

listened, thinking: ‘They are talking of us.’

When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of

sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer,

more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.

‘Good night, Serge.’

‘Good night, Albine.’

They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,

without entering the room where they usually wished each other good

night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated

on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine’s every movement in the room

above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.

XII

For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of

embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath

the trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their

confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed

their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness.

When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love’s

awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours

which they had spent, with their arms around each other’s waist, and

their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a

feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked,

in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least.

Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a

tone full of anxiety: ‘You are ill?’

But she shook her head as she answered, ‘No, no. It is you who are not

well; your hands are burning.’

The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they

could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some

by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about

these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them

the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One

morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to

Serge: ‘It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill

again.’

Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. ‘Bah!’ he muttered, ‘we have

been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.’

But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, ‘No, no, we don’t

know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I

warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to

be actually alive.’

The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they

set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where

the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest

stones, Serge remarked: ‘We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel

quieter afterwards.’

The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not

ventured to clasp each other’s waist; but stepped along, one behind the

other, glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening

of the path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath

upon her neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad

tiers, storeys of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They

first came upon golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other

balsamic plants, with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary,

whose strong scent made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed

in by holly, that grew in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal

work, gratings of blackened bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper,

elaborately ornamented, covered with prickly _rosaces_. And before

reaching the springs, they had to pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow

seemed to weigh upon their shoulders like lead. The dry needles crackled

beneath their feet, throwing up a light resinous dust which burned their

lips.

‘Your garden doesn’t make itself very agreeable just here,’ said Serge,

turning towards Albine.

They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs.

The sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did

not hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the

plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber

idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity

in the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water

with green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths

the sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And

they darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded

like nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall

whose curve suggested a woman’s breast.

‘Dip your hands in,’ cried Albine; ‘the water is icy cold at the

bottom.’

They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over

their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from

the streaming springs.

‘Look,’ cried Albine; ‘look, there is the garden, and there are the

meadows and the forest.’

For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.

‘And you see,’ she added, ‘there isn’t the least sign of any wall. The

whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.’

By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each

other’s waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish

disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall

something and led Serge back again, saying:

‘Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.’

‘But there is nothing to be seen,’ replied Serge, turning a little pale.

‘Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other

side of those bushes.’

Then, on feeling Serge’s arm tremble, she added: ‘But perhaps I am

mistaken.... Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I

left the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little

afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There

was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country

outside.’

Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug

of her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: ‘But I stopped the hole

up; I have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up

at once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and

rolled up some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way

through. If you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and

then you will be satisfied.’

But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each

other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed

down askance at Albine’s face, and she felt perturbed beneath his

glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape

the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though

impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached

a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full

sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic

plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they

were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,

penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,

clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,

dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they

reeled and tottered one against the other.

‘Shall I hold you up?’ Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning

heavily upon him.

He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his

grasp, and drew a long breath.

‘No; you stifle me,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone. I don’t know what is the

matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there

I feel the pain.’

She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned

quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in

their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think

of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to

die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?

‘Come and sit down in the shade,’ said Serge. ‘It is these plants which

are poisoning us with their noxious odours.’

He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and

trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,

whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that

she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with

soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and

solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of

sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;

evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery

verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a

weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular

arms resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with

imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In

this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The

atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume

that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the

odorous trees.

‘Are you not going to sit down?’ said Albine.

And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped

back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped

upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: ‘No, I am more

feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn’t afraid of

hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that

we should no longer feel any pain.’

He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.

‘Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which

I see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be

some wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am

now quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you

over my shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.’

He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep

adoration. And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine’s skirt. But at

this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received

the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and

stammering forth: ‘Don’t! don’t! I beg of you. Let us go on.’

She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly

on, stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still

clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled

her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over

ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was

squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous

nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,

caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with

bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many

had sickly limbs--dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms--sprawling

around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had

spines bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated

skeletons. Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of

greenish tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were

stiffer than iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested

nests of young writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere

excrescent red-haired growths that made one think of huge insects rolled

into balls. The prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with

ruddy spikes that resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias

sprawled about like big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs,

with long-speckled and striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family

showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated

soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding

their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous. Among them

one found every possible tint of green, pale green and vivid, yellowish

green and greyish, browny green, dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep

green, fringed with pale gold. And the shapes of their leaves were as

varied as their tints. Some were broad and heart-shaped, others were

long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled with spikey thorns,

while yet others looked as though they had been cunningly hemmed at the

edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty, with flower stalks that

towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy coral; and there were

tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the same stem, and

throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and quivered like

adders’ tongues.

‘Let us go back to the shade,’ begged Serge. ‘You can sit down there as

you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.’

Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if

the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it

to his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge

for support.

But the moment they felt each other’s touch, they fell together without

even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as

though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other

caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience

that they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different

direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,

and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in

his heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping

in a corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not

returned home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three

days they kept apart, feeling terribly unhappy.

XIII

Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign

possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to

use as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their

blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them

to sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard

provided them with food, filling Albine’s skirts with fruits, and

spread over them the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was

so pleasant to breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the

grass and the streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their

kingdom to such boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet

before them; and the streams, which were the best of their joys,

emblematic of their own purity and innocence, ever offering them

coolness and freshness in which they delighted to bathe their youth. The

forest, too, was entirely theirs, from the mighty oaks, which ten men

could not have spanned, to the slim birches which a child might have

snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its shade, all its avenues

and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which the very birds

themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as they listed,

as if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might shelter from the

noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned everywhere, even among

the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome stretch of ground

that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had seemed to sink and

give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet even more than

the soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange thrill of passion

they had felt there.

Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and

to the left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole

domain, and they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and

smiled kindly greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their

pleasure, like a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its

vast canopy of blue overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls

could not enclose it, their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it

entered into the joy of their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun,

at night with its golden rain of stars. At every moment of the day it

delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning

it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was

flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the

evening it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its

countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at

the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the

horizon, ever found a fresh smile. Sometimes he disappeared in the

midst of serene calmness, unflecked by a single cloud, sinking gradually

beneath a golden sea. At other times he threw out crimson glories, tore

his vaporous robe to shreds, and set amidst wavy flames that streaked

the skies like the tails of gigantic comets, whose radiant heads lit up

the crests of the forest trees. Then, again, extinguishing his rays

one by one, he would softly sink to rest on shores of ruddy sand,

far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some other night, he

would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that figured the grey

hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only detect a spark

like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his couch in

a tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which gradually

crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared with him

below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling limbs.

It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and

Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered

them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights

of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering

wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying

blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted

in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles,

the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry

beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds

twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even

purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more

amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs

with eyes of gold, that lay squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in

contemplation; while Serge, with a piece of straw, poked the crickets

out of their hiding-places, or tickled the grasshoppers to make them

sing. He picked up insects of all colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow

ones, and set them creeping upon his sleeve, where they gleamed and

glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby and topaz.

Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed

fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was

betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which

dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged

flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples

the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which

drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so

that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding

past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they

would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and

listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the

nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off

accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift

flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays

amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a

troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that

slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would

climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens,

and find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the

sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from

the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched

bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched

them with friendly eyes.

Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and

Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had

awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and

spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that

life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft

shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point

as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole

park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every

creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.

Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned

over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;

it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his

slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon

the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other

side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had

no shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed

the sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony.

The animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an

unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a

secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of

the world’s first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these

voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt minded to curse the garden.

On the afternoon when Albine had wept so bitterly after their saunter

amongst the rocks, she had called out to the Paradou, whose intensity of

life and passion filled her with distress:

‘If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?’

XIV

The next morning Serge barricaded himself in his room. The perfume from

the garden irritated him. He drew the calico curtains closely across the

window to shut out the sight of the park. Perhaps he thought he might

recover all his old serenity and calm if he shut himself off from that

greenery, whose shade sent such passionate thrills quivering through

him.

During the long hours they spent together, Albine and he never now spoke

of the rocks or the streams, the trees or the sky. The Paradou might no

longer have been in existence. They strove to forget it. And yet they

were all the time conscious of its presence on the other side of

those slight curtains. Scented breezes forced their way in through the

interstices of the window frame, the many voices of nature made

the panes resound. All the life of the park laughed, chattered, and

whispered in ambush beneath their window. As it reached them their

cheeks would pale and they would raise their voices, seeking some

occupation which might prevent them from hearing it.

‘Have you noticed,’ said Serge one morning during these uneasy

intervals, ‘there is a painting of a woman over the door there? She is

like you.’

He laughed noisily as he finished speaking. They both turned to the

paintings and dragged the table once more alongside the wall, with a

nervous desire to occupy themselves.

‘Oh! no,’ murmured Albine. ‘She is much fatter than I am. But one can’t

see her very well; her position is so queer.’

They relapsed into silence. From the decayed, faded painting a scene,

which they had never before noticed, now showed forth. It was as if the

picture had taken shape and substance again beneath the influence of

the summer heat. You could sea a nymph with arms thrown back and pliant

figure on a bed of flowers which had been strewn for her by young

cupids, who, sickle in hand, ever added fresh blossoms to her rosy

couch. And nearer, you could also see a cloven-hoofed faun who had

surprised her thus. But Albine repeated, ‘No, she is not like me, she is

very plain.’

Serge said nothing. He looked at the girl and then at Albine, as though

he were comparing them one with the other. Albine pulled up one of her

sleeves, as if to show that her arm was whiter than that of the pictured

girl. Then they subsided into silence again, and gazed at the painting;

and for a moment Albine’s large blue eyes turned to Serge’s grey ones,

which were glowing.

‘You have got all the room painted again, then?’ she cried, as she

sprang from the table. ‘These people look as though they were all coming

to life again.’

They began to laugh, but there was a nervous ring about their merriment

as they glanced at the nude and frisking cupids which started to

life again on all the panels. They no longer took those survivals of

voluptuous eighteenth century art to represent mere children at play.

They were disturbed by the sight of them, and as Albine felt Serge’s hot

breath on her neck she started and left his side to seat herself on the

sofa. ‘They frighten me,’ she murmured. ‘The men are like robbers,

and the women, with their dying eyes, look like people who are being

murdered.’

Serge sat down in a chair, a little distance away, and began to talk of

other matters. But they remained uneasy. They seemed to think that all

those painted figures were gazing at them. It was as if the trooping

cupids were springing out of the panelling, casting the flowers they

held around them, and threatening to bind them together with the blue

ribbons which already enchained two lovers in one corner of the ceiling.

And the whole story of the nymph and her faun lover, from his first peep

at her to his triumph among the flowers, seemed to burst into warm life.

Were all those lovers, all those impudent shameless cupids about to step

down from their panels and crowd around them? They already seemed to

hear their panting sighs, and to feel their breath filling the spacious

room with the perfume of voluptuousness.

‘It’s quite suffocating, isn’t it?’ sighed Albine. ‘In spite of every

airing I have given it, the room has always seemed close to me!

‘The other night,’ said Serge, ‘I was awakened by such a penetrating

perfume, that I called out to you, thinking you had come into the room.

It was just like the soft warmth of your hair when you have decked it

with heliotropes.... In the earlier times it seemed to be wafted to me

from a distance, it was like the lingering memory of a perfume; but now

I can’t sleep for it, and it is so strong and penetrating that it quite

stupefies me. The alcove grows so hot, too, at night that I shall be

obliged to lie on the couch.’

Albine laid her fingers on her lips, and whispered, ‘It is the dead

girl--she who once lived here.’

They sniffed the odorous air with forced gaiety, but in reality feeling

very troubled. Certainly never before had the room exhaled such a

disquieting aroma. The very walls seemed to be still echoing the faint

rustling of perfumed skirts; and the floor had retained the fragrance

of satin slippers dropped by the bedside, and near the head of the bed

itself Serge thought he could trace the imprint of a little hand, which

had left behind it a clinging scent of violets. Over all the furniture

the phantom presence of the dead girl still lingered fragrantly.

‘See, this is the armchair where she used to sit,’ cried Albine; ‘there

is the scent of her shoulders at the back of it yet.’

She sat down in it herself, and bade Serge drop upon his knees and kiss

her hand.

‘You remember the day when I first let you in and said, “Good morrow,

my dear lord!” But that wasn’t all, was it? He kissed her hands when the

door was closed. There they are, my hands. They are yours.’

Then they tried to resume their old frolics in order that they might

forget the Paradou, whose joyous murmur they heard ever rising outside,

and that they might no longer think of the pictures nor yield to the

languor-breathing influence of the room. Albine put on an affected

manner, leant back in her chair, and finally laughed at the foolish

figure which Serge made at her feet.

‘You stupid!’ she said, ‘take me round the waist, and say pretty things

to me, since you are supposed to be in love with me. Don’t you know how

to make love then?’

But as soon as she felt him clasp her with eager impetuosity, she began

to struggle, and freed herself from his embrace.

‘No, no; leave me alone. I can’t bear it. I feel as though I were

choking in this room.’

From that day forward they felt the same kind of fear for the room as

they already felt for the garden. Their one remaining harbour of refuge

was now a place to be shunned and dreaded, a spot where they could no

longer find themselves together without watching each other furtively.

Albine now scarcely ventured to enter it, but remained near the

threshold, with the door wide open behind her so as to afford her an

immediate retreat. Serge lived there in solitude, a prey to sickening

restlessness, half-stifling, lying on the couch and vainly trying to

close his ears to the sighs of the soughing park and his nostrils to

the haunting fragrance of the old furniture. At night he dreamt wild

passionate dreams, which left him in the morning nervous and disquieted.

He believed that he was falling ill again, that he would never recover

plenitude of health. For days and days he remained there in silence,

with dark rings round his sleepy eyes, only starting into wakefulness

when Albine came to visit him. They would remain face to face, gazing

at one another sadly, and uttering but a few soft words, which seemed to

choke them. Albine’s eyes were even darker than Serge’s, and were filled

with an imploring gaze.

Then, after a week had gone by, Albine’s visit never lasted more than

a few minutes. She seemed to shun him. When she came to the room, she

appeared thoughtful, remained standing, and hurried off as soon as

possible. When he questioned her about this change in her demeanour

towards him, and reproached her for no longer being friendly, she turned

her head away and avoided replying. He never could get her to tell him

how she spent the mornings that she passed alone. She would only

shake her head, and talk about being very idle. If he pressed her

more closely, she bounded out of the room, just wishing him a hasty

good-night as she disappeared through the doorway. He often noticed,

however, that she had been crying. He observed, too, in her expression

the phases of a hope that was never fulfilled, the perpetual struggling

of a desire eager to be satisfied. Sometimes she seemed quite

overwhelmed with melancholy, dragging herself about with an air of utter

discouragement, like one who no longer had any pleasure in living. At

other times she laughed lightly, her face shone with an expression of

triumphant hope, of which, however, she would not yet speak, and her

feet could not remain still, so eager was she to dart away to what

seemed to her some last certainty. But on the following day, she would

sink again into desperation, to soar afresh on the morrow on the pinions

of renewed hope. One thing which she could not conceal from Serge was

that she suffered from extreme lassitude. Even during the few moments

they spent together she could not prevent her head from nodding, or keep

herself from dozing off.

Serge, recognising that she was unwilling to reply, had ceased to

question her; and, when she now entered his room, he contented himself

with casting an anxious glance at her, fearful lest some evening she

should no longer have strength enough to come to him. Where could she

thus reduce herself to such exhaustion? What perpetual struggle was it

that brought about those alternations of joy and despair? One morning

he started at the sound of a light footfall beneath his window. It

could not be a roe venturing abroad in that manner. Moreover he could

recognise that light footfall. Albine was wandering about the Paradou

without him. It was from the Paradou that she returned to him with all

those hopes and fears and inward wrestlings, all that lassitude which

was killing her. And he could well guess what she was seeking out there,

alone in the woody depths, with all the silent obstinacy of a woman who

has vowed to effect her purpose. After that he used to listen for her

steps. He dared not draw aside the curtain and watch her as she hurried

along through the trees; but he experienced strange, almost painful

emotion, in listening to ascertain what direction she took, whether she

turned to right or to left, whether she went straight on through the

flower-beds, and how far her ramble extended. Amidst all the noisy life

of the Paradou, amidst the soughing chorus of the trees, the rustling of

the streams, and the ceaseless songs of the birds, he could distinguish

the gentle pit-pat of her shoes so plainly that he could have told

whether she was stepping over the gravel near the rivers, the crumbling

mould of the forest, or the bare ledges of the rocks. In time he even

learned to tell, from the sound of her nervous footfall, whether she

came back hopeful or depressed. As soon as he heard her step on the

staircase, he hurried from the window, and he never let her know that

he had thus followed her from afar in her wanderings. But she must have

guessed it, for with a glance she always afterwards told him where she

had been.

‘Stay indoors, and don’t go out,’ he begged her, with clasped hands,

one morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the

previous day. ‘You drive me to despair.’

But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with

Albine’s footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever

upon Serge. The pit-pat of her feet was yet another voice that called

him; an imperious voice that echoed ever more and more loudly within

him. He closed his ears and tried to shut out the sound, but the distant

footsteps still echoed to him in the throbbings of his heart. And when

she came back, in the evening, it was the whole park that came back with

her, with the memories of their walks together, and of the slow dawn of

their love, in the midst of conniving nature. She seemed to have grown

taller and graver, mellowed, matured by her solitary rambles. There

was nothing left in her of the frolicsome child, and his teeth would

suddenly set at times when he looked at her and beheld her so desirable.

One day, about noon, Serge heard Albine returning in hot haste. He had

restrained himself from listening for her steps when she went away.

Usually, she did not return till late, and he was amazed at her

impetuosity as she sped along, forcing her way through the branches that

barred her path. As she passed beneath his window, he heard her laugh;

and as she mounted the stairway, she panted so heavily that he almost

thought he could feel her hot breath streaming against his face. She

threw the door wide open, and cried out: ‘I have found it!’

Then she sat down and repeated softly, breathlessly: ‘I have found it! I

have found it!’

Serge, distracted, laid his fingers on her lips, and stammered: ‘Don’t

tell me anything, I beg you. I want to know nothing of it. It will kill

me, if you speak.’

Then she sank into silence with gleaming eyes and lips tightly pressed

lest the words she kept back should spring out in spite of her. And

she stayed in the room till evening, trying to meet Serge’s glance, and

imparting to him, each time that their eyes met, something of that which

she had discovered. Her whole face beamed with radiance, she exhaled a

delicious odour, she was full of life; and Serge felt that she permeated

him through all his senses. Despairingly did he struggle against this

gradual invasion of his being.

On the morrow she returned to his room as soon as she was up.

‘Aren’t you going out?’ he asked, conscious that he would be vanquished

should she remain there.

‘No,’ she said; she wasn’t going out any more. As by degrees she

recovered from her fatigue he felt her becoming stronger, more

triumphant. She would soon be able to take him by the hand and drag him

to that spot, whose charm her silence proclaimed so loudly. That day,

however, she did not speak; she contented herself with keeping him

seated on a cushion at her feet. It was not till the next morning

that she ventured to say: ‘Why do you shut yourself up here? It is so

pleasant under the trees.’

He rose from her feet, and stretched out his arms entreatingly. But she

laughed at him.

‘Well, well, then, we won’t go out, since you would rather not....

But this room has such a strange scent, and we should be much more

comfortable in the garden. It is very wrong of you to have taken such a

dislike to it.’

He had again settled himself at her feet in silence, his eyelids

lowered, his features quivering with passionate emotion.

‘We won’t go out,’ she repeated, ‘so don’t worry. But do you really

prefer these pictures to the grass and flowers in the park? Do you

remember all we saw together? It is these paintings which make us feel

so unhappy. They are a nuisance, always looking and watching us as they

do.’

As Serge gradually leant more closely against her, she passed her arm

round his neck and laid his head upon her lap, while murmuring in yet a

lower tone: ‘There is a little corner there I know, where we might be

so very happy. Nothing would trouble us there; the fresh air would cool

your feverishness.’

Then she stopped, as she felt him quivering. She was afraid lest she

might again revive his old fears. But she gradually conquered him merely

by the caressing gaze of her blue eyes. His eyelids were now raised, and

he rested there quietly, wholly hers, his tremor past.

‘Ah! if you only knew!’ she softly breathed; and seeing that he

continued to smile, she went on boldly: ‘It is all a lie; it is not

forbidden. You are a man now and ought not to be afraid. If we went

there, and any danger threatened me, you would protect me, you would

defend me, would you not? You could carry me off on your back, couldn’t

you? I am never the least afraid when I have you with me. Look how

strong your arms have grown. What is there for any one with such strong

arms as yours to be afraid of?’

She caressed him beguilingly as she spoke, stroking his hair and neck

and shoulders with her hand.

‘No, it is not forbidden,’ she resumed. ‘That is only a story for

stupids, and was invented, long ago, by some one who didn’t want to be

disturbed in the most charming spot in the whole garden. As soon as

you sat down on that grassy carpet, you would be happy and well again.

Listen, then, come with me.’

He shook his head but without any sign of vexation, as though indeed he

liked thus being teased. Then after a short silence, grieved to see her

pouting, and longing for a renewal of her caresses, he opened his lips

and asked: ‘Where is it?’

She did not answer him immediately. Her eyes seemed to be wandering far

away: ‘It is over yonder,’ she murmured at last. ‘I cannot explain to

you clearly. One has to go down the long avenue, and then to turn to

the left, and then again to the left. We must have passed it at least a

score of times. You might look for it for ever without finding it, if

I didn’t go with you to show you. I could find my way to it quite

straight, though I could never explain it to you.’

‘And who took you there?’

‘I don’t know. That morning the trees and plants seemed to drive me

there. The long branches pushed me on, the grass bent down before me

invitingly, the paths seemed to open expressly for me to take them. And

I believe the animals themselves helped to lead me there, for I saw a

stag trotting on before me as though he wanted me to follow; while a

company of bullfinches flitted on from tree to tree, and warned me with

their cries whenever I was about to take a wrong direction.’

‘And is it very beautiful?’

Again she did not reply. Deep ecstasy filled her eyes; at last, when she

was able to speak again, she said: ‘Ah! so beautiful, that I could

never tell you of it. I was so charmed that I was conscious only of

some supreme joy, which I could not name, falling from the leaves and

slumbering amid the grass. And I ran back here to take you along with me

that I might not be without you.’

Then she clasped her arms round his neck again, and entreated him

passionately, her lips almost pressed to his own.

‘Oh! you will come!’ she stammered; ‘you must come; you will make me so

miserable if you don’t. You can’t want me to be miserable.... And even

if you knew that you would die there, even if that shade should be fatal

to both of us, would you hesitate or cast a regretful look behind? We

should remain there, at the foot of the tree, and sleep on quietly for

ever, in one anther’s arms. Ah! would it not be bliss indeed?’

‘Yes, yes!’ he stammered, transported by her passionate entreaties.

‘But we shall not die,’ she continued, raising her voice, and laughing

with the laugh which proclaims woman’s victory; ‘we shall live to love

each other. It is a tree of life, a tree whose shadow will make us

stronger, more perfect, more complete. You will see that all will now go

happily. Some blessed joy will assuredly descend on us from heaven! Will

you come?’

His face paled, and his eyelids quivered, as though too powerful a light

were suddenly beating against them.

‘Will you come? will you come?’ she cried again, yet more passionately,

and already half rising to her feet.

He sprang up and followed her, at first with tottering steps and then

with his arm thrown round her waist, as if he could endure no separation

from her. He went where she went, carried along in the warm fragrance

that streamed from her hair. And as he thus remained slightly in the

rear, she turned upon him a face so radiant with love, such tempting

lips and eyes, which so imperiously bade him follow, that he would have

gone with her anywhere, trusting and unquestioning, like a dog.

XV

They went down and out into the garden without the smile fading from

Serge’s face. All that he saw of the greenery around him was such as was

reflected in the clear depths of Albine’s eyes. As they approached, the

garden smiled and smiled again, a murmur of content sped from leaf to

leaf and from bough to bough to the furthest depths of the avenues. For

days and days the garden must have been hoping and expecting to see them

thus, clinging to one another, making their peace again with the trees

and searching for their lost love on the grassy banks. A solemn warning

breath sighed through the branches; the afternoon sky was drowsy with

heat; the plants raised their bowing heads to watch them pass.

‘Listen,’ whispered Albine. ‘They drop into silence as we come near

them; but over yonder they are expecting us, they are telling each other

the way they must lead us.... I told you we should have no trouble about

the paths, the trees themselves will direct us with their spreading

arms.’

The whole park did, indeed, appear to be impelling them gently onward.

In their rear it seemed as if a barrier of brush-wood had bristled up

to prevent them from retracing their steps; while, in front of them, the

grassy lawns spread out so invitingly, that they glided along the soft

slopes, without thought of choosing their way.

‘And the birds are coming with us, too,’ said Albine. ‘It is the tomtits

this time. Don’t you see them? They are skimming over the hedges, and

they stop at each turning to see that we don’t lose our way.’ Then she

added: ‘All the living things of the park are with us. Can’t you hear

them? There is a deep rustling close behind us. It is the birds in

the trees, the insects in the grass, the roebucks and the stags in the

coppices, and even the little fishes splashing the quiet water with

their beating fins. Don’t turn round, or you will frighten them. Ah! I

am sure we have a rare train behind us.’

They still walked on, unfatigued. Albine spoke only to charm Serge with

the music of her voice, while Serge obeyed the slightest pressure of her

hand. They knew not what they passed, but they were certain that they

were going straight towards their goal. And as they went along, the

garden became gradually graver, more discreet; the soughing of the

branches died away, the streams hushed their plashing waters, the birds,

the beasts, and the insects fell into silence. All around them reigned

solemn stillness.

Then Albine and Serge instinctively raised their heads. In front of them

they beheld a colossal mass of foliage; and, as they hesitated for a

moment, a roe, after gazing at them with its sweet soft eyes, bounded

into the thickets.

‘It is there,’ said Albine.

She led the way, her face again turned towards Serge, whom she drew with

her, and they disappeared amid the quivering leaves, and all grew quiet

again. They were entering into delicious peace.

In the centre there stood a tree covered with so dense a foliage that

one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk

that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs

that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there

beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden,

the father of the forest, the pride of the plants, the beloved of the

sun, whose earliest and latest beams smiled daily on its crest. From its

green vault poured all the joys of creation: fragrance of flowers, music

of birds, gleams of golden light, wakeful freshness of dawn, slumbrous

warmth of evening twilight. So strong was the sap that it burst through

the very bark, bathing the tree with the powers of fruitfulness, making

it the symbol of earth’s virility. Its presence sufficed to give the

clearing an enchanting charm. The other trees built up around it an

impenetrable wall, which isolated it as in a sanctuary of silence

and twilight. There was but greenery there, not a scrap of sky, not a

glimpse of horizon; nothing but a swelling rotunda, draped with green

silkiness of leaves, adorned below with mossy velvet. And one entered,

as into the liquid crystal of a source, a greenish limpidity, a sheet

of silver reposing beneath reflected reeds. Colours, perfumes, sounds,

quivers, all were vague, indeterminate, transparent, steeped in a

felicity amidst which everything seemed to faint away. Languorous

warmth, the glimmer of a summer’s night, as it fades on the bare

shoulder of some fair girl, a scarce perceptible murmur of love sinking

into silence, lingered beneath the motionless branches, unstirred by the

slightest zephyr. It was hymeneal solitude, a chamber where Nature lay

hidden in the embraces of the sun.

Albine and Serge stood there in an ecstasy of joy. As soon as the tree

had received them beneath its shade, they felt eased of all the anxious

disquiet which had so long distressed them. The fears which had made

them avoid each other, the fierce wrestling of spirit which had torn

and wounded them, without consciousness on their part of what they were

really contending against, vanished, and left them in perfect peace.

Absolute confidence, supreme serenity, now pervaded them, they yielded

unhesitatingly to the joy of being together in that lonely nook,

so completely hidden from the outside world. They had surrendered

themselves to the garden, they awaited in all calmness the behests of

that tree of life. It enveloped them in such ecstasy of love that the

whole clearing seemed to disappear from before their eyes, and to leave

them wrapped in an atmosphere of perfume.

‘The air is like ripe fruit,’ murmured Albine.

And Serge whispered in his turn: ‘The grass seems so full of life and

motion, that I could almost think I was treading on your dress.’

It was a kind of religious feeling which made them lower their voices.

No sentiment of curiosity impelled them to raise their heads and scan

the tree. The consciousness of its majesty weighed heavily upon them.

With a glance Albine asked whether she had overrated the enchantment of

the greenery, and Serge answered her with two tears that trickled

down his cheeks. The joy that filled them at being there could not be

expressed in words.

‘Come,’ she whispered in his ear, in a voice that was softer than a

sigh.

And she glided on in front of him, and seated herself at the very foot

of the tree. Then, with a fond smile, she stretched out her hands to

him; while he, standing before her, grasped them in his own with a

responsive smile. Then she drew him slowly towards her and he sank down

by her side.

‘Ah! do you remember,’ he said, ‘that wall which seemed to have grown up

between us? Now there is nothing to keep us apart--you are not unhappy

now?’

‘No, no,’ she answered; ‘very happy.’

For a moment they relapsed into silence whilst soft emotion stole over

them. Then Serge, caressing Albine, exclaimed: ‘Your face is mine; your

eyes, your mouth, your cheeks are mine. Your arms are mine, from your

shoulders to the tips of your nails. You are wholly mine.’ And as he

spoke he kissed her lips, her eyes, her cheeks. He kissed her arms, with

quick short kisses, from her fingers to her shoulders. He poured upon

her a rain of kisses hot as a summer shower, deluging her cheeks, her

forehead, her lips, and her neck.

‘But if you are mine, I am yours,’ said he; ‘yours for ever; for I now

well know that you are my queen, my sovereign, whom I must worship

on bended knee. I am here only to obey you, to lie at your feet, to

anticipate your wishes, to shelter you with my arms, to drive away

whatever might trouble your tranquillity. And you are my life’s goal.

Since I first awoke in this garden, you have ever been before me; I have

grown up that I might be yours. Ever, as my end, my reward, have I

gazed upon your grace. You passed in the sunshine with the sheen of

your golden hair; you were a promise that I should some day know all the

mysteries and necessities of creation, of this earth, of these trees,

these waters, these skies, whose last secret is yet unrevealed. I belong

to you; I am your slave; I will listen to you and obey you, with my lips

upon your feet.’

He said this, bowed to the ground, adoring Woman. And Albine, full of

pride, allowed herself to be adored. She yielded her hands, her cheeks,

her lips, to Serge’s rapturous kisses. She felt herself indeed a queen

as she saw him, who was so strong, bending so humbly before her. She had

conquered him, and held him there at her mercy. With a single word

she could dispose of him. And that which helped her to recognise

her omnipotence was that she heard the whole garden rejoicing at her

triumph, with gradually swelling paeans of approval.

‘Ah! if we could fly off together, if we could but die even, in one

another’s arms,’ faltered Serge, scarce able to articulate. But Albine

had strength enough to raise her finger as though to bid him listen.

It was the garden that had planned and willed it all. For weeks and

weeks it had been favouring and encouraging their passion, and at last,

on that supreme day, it had lured them to that spot, and now it became

the Tempter whose every voice spoke of love. From the flower-beds, amid

the fragrance of the languid blossoms, was wafted a soft sighing, which

told of the weddings of the roses, the love-joys of the violets; and

never before had the heliotropes sent forth so voluptuous a perfume.

Mingled with the soft air which arose from the orchard were all the

exhalations of ripe fruit, the vanilla of apricots, the musk of oranges,

all the luscious aroma of fruitfulness. From the meadows came fuller

notes, the million sighs of the sun-kissed grass, the multitudinous

love-plaints of legions of living things, here and there softened by

the refreshing caresses of the rivulets, on whose banks the very willows

palpitated with desire. And the forest proclaimed the mighty passion of

the oaks. Through the high branches sounded solemn music, organ strains

like the nuptial marches of the ashes and the birches, the hornbeams

and the planes, while from the bushes and the young coppices arose noisy

mirth like that of youthful lovers chasing one another over banks and

into hollows amid much crackling and snapping of branches. From afar,

too, the faint breeze wafted the sounds of the rocks splitting in their

passion beneath the burning heat, while near them the spiky plants

loved in a tragic fashion of their own, unrefreshed by the neighbouring

springs, which themselves glowed with the love of the passionate sun.

‘What do they say?’ asked Serge, half swooning, as Albine pressed him to

her bosom. The voices of the Paradou were growing yet more distinct.

The animals, in their turn, joined in the universal song of nature.

The grasshoppers grew faint with the passion of their chants; the

butterflies scattered kisses with their beating wings. The amorous

sparrows flew to their mates; the rivers rippled over the loves of the

fishes; whilst in the depths of the forest the nightingales sent forth

pearly, voluptuous notes, and the stags bellowed their love aloud.

Reptiles and insects, every species of invisible life, every atom of

matter, the earth itself joined in the great chorus. It was the chorus

of love and of nature--the chorus of the whole wide world; and in the

very sky the clouds were radiant with rapture, as to those two children

Love revealed the Eternity of Life.

XVI

Albine and Serge smiled at one another.

‘I love you, Albine,’ said Serge.

‘Serge, I love you,’ Albine answered.

And never before had those syllables ‘I love you’ had for them so

supreme a meaning. They expressed everything. Joy pervaded those young

lovers, who had attained to the fulness of life. They felt that they

were now on a footing of equality with the forces of the world; and with

their happiness mingled the placid conviction that they had obeyed the

universal law. And Serge seemed to have awakened to life, lion-like,

to rule the whole far expanse under the free heavens. His feet planted

themselves more firmly on the ground, his chest expanded, there was

pride and confidence in his gait and demeanour. He took Albine by the

hands, she was trembling, and he was obliged to support her.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said; ‘you are she whom I love.’

It was Albine now who had become the submissive one. She drooped her

head upon his shoulder, glancing up at him with anxious scrutiny. Would

he never bear her spite for that hour of adoration in which he had

called himself her slave? But he smiled, and stroked her hair, while

she said to him: ‘Let me stay like this, in your arms, for I cannot

walk without you. I will make myself so small and light, that you will

scarcely know I am there.’ Then becoming very serious she added, ‘You

must always love me; and I will be very obedient and do whatever you

wish. I will yield to you in all things if you but love me.’

Serge felt more powerful and virile on seeing her so humble. ‘Why are

you trembling so?’ he asked her; ‘I can have no cause to reproach you.’

But she did not answer him, she gazed almost sadly upon the tree and the

foliage and the grass around them.

‘Foolish child!’ he said, laughing; ‘are you afraid that I shall be

angry with you for your love? We have loved as we were meant to love.

Let me kiss you.’

But, dropping her eyelids so that she might not see the tree, she said,

in a low whisper, ‘Take me away!’

Serge led her thence, pacing slowly and giving one last glance at the

spot which love had hallowed. The shadows in the clearing were growing

darker, and a gentle quiver coursed through the foliage. When they

emerged from the wood and caught sight of the sun, still shining

brightly in the horizon, they felt easier. Everything around Serge now

seemed to bend down before him and pay homage to his love. The garden

was now nothing but an appanage of Albine’s beauty, and seemed to have

grown larger and fairer amid the love-kisses of its rulers.

But Albine’s joy was still tinged with disquietude. She would suddenly

pause amid her laughter and listen anxiously.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Serge.

‘Nothing,’ she replied, casting furtive glances behind her.

They did not know in what out-of-the-way corner of the park they were.

To lose themselves in their capricious wanderings only served to amuse

them as a rule; but that day they experienced anxious embarrassment. By

degrees they quickened their pace, plunging more and more deeply into a

labyrinth of bushes.

‘Don’t you hear?’ asked Albine, nervously, as she suddenly stopped

short, almost breathless.

Serge listened, a prey, in his turn, to the anxiety which the girl could

no longer conceal.

‘All the coppice seems full of voices,’ she continued. ‘It sounds as

though there were people deriding us. Listen! Wasn’t that a laugh

that sounded from that tree? And over yonder did not the grass murmur

something as my dress brushed against it?’

‘No, no,’ he said, anxious to reassure her, ‘the garden loves us; and,

if it said anything, it would not be to vex or annoy us. Don’t you

remember all the sweet words which sounded through the leaves? You are

nervous and fancy things.’

But she shook her head and faltered: ‘I know very well that the garden

is our friend.... So it must be some one who has broken into it. I am

certain I hear some one. I am trembling all over. Oh! take me away and

hide me somewhere, I beseech you.’

Then they went on again, scanning every tree and bush, and imagining

that they could see faces peering at them from behind every trunk.

Albine was certain, she said, that there were steps pursuing them in the

distance. ‘Let us hide ourselves,’ she begged.

She had turned quite scarlet. It was new-born modesty, a sense of

shame which had laid hold of her like a fever, mantling over the snowy

whiteness of her skin, which never previously had known that flush.

Serge was alarmed at seeing her thus crimson, her face full of distress,

her eyes brimming with tears. He tried to clasp her in his arms again

and to soothe her with a caress; but she slipped away from him, and,

with a despairing gesture, made sign that they were not alone. And her

blushes grew deeper as her eyes fell upon her bare arms. She shuddered

when her loose hanging hair stirred against her neck and shoulders.

The slightest touch of a waving bough or a passing insect, the softest

breath of air, now made her tremble as if some invisible hand were

grasping at her.

‘Calm yourself,’ begged Serge, ‘there is no one. You are as crimson as

though you had a fever. Let us rest here for a moment. Do; I beg you.’

She had no fever at all, she said, but she wanted to get back as quickly

as possible, so that no one might laugh at her. And, ever increasing her

pace, she plucked handfuls of leaves and tendrils from the hedges, which

she entwined about her. She fastened a branch of mulberry over her hair,

twisted bindweed round her arms, and tied it to her wrists, and circled

her neck with such long sprays of laurustinus, that her bosom was hidden

as by a veil of leaves.

And that shame of hers proved contagious. Serge, who first had jested,

asking her if she were going to a ball, glanced at himself, and likewise

felt alarmed and ashamed, to a point that he also wound foliage about

his person.

Meantime, they could discover no way out of the labyrinth of bushes, but

all at once, at the end of the path, they found themselves face to face

with an obstacle, a tall, grey, grave mass of stone. It was the wall of

the Paradou.

‘Come away! come away!’ cried Albine.

And she sought to drag him thence; but they had not taken another twenty

steps before they again came upon the wall. They then skirted it at a

ran, panic-stricken. It stretched along, gloomy and stern, without

a break in its surface. But suddenly, at a point where it fringed a

meadow, it seemed to fall away. A great breach gaped in it, like a huge

window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been

the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had

blocked up with brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered

around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some

distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by

some furious hand.

XVII

‘Ah! I felt sure of it,’ cried Albine, in accents of supreme despair.

‘I begged you to take me away--Serge, I beseech you, don’t look through

it.’

But Serge, in spite of himself, stood rooted to the ground, on the

threshold of the breach through which he gazed. Down below, in the

depths of the valley, the setting sun cast a sheet of gold upon the

village of Les Artaud, which showed vision-like amidst the twilight in

which the neighbouring fields were already steeped. One could plainly

distinguish the houses that straggled along the high road; the little

yards with their dunghills, and the narrow gardens planted with

vegetables. Higher up, the tall cypress in the graveyard reared its

dusky silhouette, and the red tiles on the church glowed brazier-like,

the dark bell looking down on them like a human face, while the old

parsonage at the side threw its doors and windows open to the evening

air.

‘For pity’s sake,’ sobbed Albine, ‘don’t look out, Serge. Remember that

you promised you would always love me. Ah! will you ever love me enough,

now? Stay, let me cover your eyes with my hands. You know it was my

hands that cured you. You won’t push me away.’

But he put her from him gently. Then, while she fell down and clung to

his legs, he passed his hands across his face, as though he were wiping

from his brow and eyes some last lingering traces of sleep. It was

yonder, then, that lay the unknown world, the strange land of which he

had never dreamed without vague fear. Where had he seen that country?

From what dream was he awakening, that he felt such keen anguish

swelling up in his breast till it almost choked him? The village was

breaking out into life at the close of the day’s work. The men were

coming home from the fields with weary gait, their jackets thrown over

their shoulders; the women, standing by their doors, were beckoning to

them to hasten on; while the children, in noisy bands, chased the

fowls about and pelted them with stones. In the churchyard a couple of

scapegraces, a lad and a girl, were creeping along under the shelter of

the wall in order to escape notice. Swarms of sparrows were retiring

to roost beneath the eaves of the church; and, on the steps of the

parsonage, a blue calico skirt had just appeared, of such spreading

dimensions as to quite block the doorway.

‘Oh! he is looking out! he is looking out!’ sobbed Albine. ‘Listen to

me. It was only just now that you promised to obey me. I beg of you to

turn round and to look upon the garden. Haven’t you been very happy in

the garden? It was the garden which gave me to you. Think of the happy

days it has in store for us, what lasting bliss and enjoyment. Instead

of which it will be death that will force its way through that hole,

if you don’t quickly flee and take me with you. See, all those people

yonder will come and thrust themselves between us. We were so quite

alone, so secluded, so well guarded by the trees! Oh! the garden is our

love! Look on the garden, I beg it of you on my knees!’

But Serge was quivering. He had began to recollect. The past was

re-awakening. He could distinctly hear the stir of the village life.

Those peasants, those women and children, he knew them. There was the

mayor, Bambousse, returning from Les Olivettes, calculating how much

the approaching vintage would yield him; there were the Brichets, the

husband crawling along, and the wife moaning with misery. There was

Rosalie flirting with big Fortune behind a wall. He recognised also the

pair in the churchyard, that mischievous Vincent and that bold hussy

Catherine, who were catching big grasshoppers amongst the tombstones.

Yes, and they had Voriau, the black dog, with them, helping them and

ferreting about in the dry grass, and sniffing at every crack in the old

stones. Under the eaves of the church the sparrows were twittering

and bickering before going to roost. The boldest of them flew down and

entered the church through the broken windows, and, as Serge followed

them with his eyes, he recollected all the noise they had formerly made

below the pulpit and on the step by the altar rails, where crumbs were

always put for them. And that was La Teuse yonder, on the parsonage

doorstep, looking fatter than ever in her blue calico dress. She was

turning her head to smile at Desirée, who was coming up from the yard,

laughing noisily. Then they both vanished indoors, and Serge, distracted

with all these revived memories, stretched out his arms.

‘It is all over now,’ faltered Albine, as she sank down amongst the

broken brambles. ‘You will never love me enough again.’

She wept, while Serge stood rooted by the breach, straining his ears

to catch the slightest sound that might be wafted from the village,

waiting, as it were, for some voice that might fully awaken him. The

bell in the church-tower had begun to sway, and slowly through the quiet

evening air the three chimes of the _Angelus_ floated up to the Paradou.

It was a soft and silvery summons. The bell now seemed to be alive.

‘O God!’ cried Serge, falling on his knees, quite overcome by the

emotion which the soft notes of the bell had excited in him.

He bent down towards the ground, and he felt the three peals of the

_Angelus_ pass over his neck and echo through his heart. The voice of

the bell seemed to grow louder. It was raised again sternly, pitilessly,

for a few moments which seemed to him to be years. It summoned up

before him all his old life, his pious childhood, his happy days at the

seminary, and his first Masses in that burning valley of Les Artaud,

where he had dreamt of a solitary, saintly life. He had always heard it

speaking to him as it was doing now. He recognised every inflection of

that sacred voice, which had so constantly fallen upon his ears, like

the grave and gentle voice of a mother. Why had he so long ceased to

hear it? In former times it had promised him the coming of Mary. Had

Mary come then and taken him and carried him off into those happy green

fastnesses, which the sound of the bell could not reach? He would never

have lapsed into forgetfulness if the bell had not ceased to ring. And

as he bent his head still lower towards the earth, the contact of his

beard with his hands made him start. He could not recognise his own self

with that long silky beard. He twisted it and fumbled about in his hair

seeking for the bare circle of the tonsure, but a heavy growth of curls

now covered his whole head from his brow to the nape of his neck.

‘Ah! you were right,’ he said, casting a look of despair at Albine.

‘It was forbidden. We have sinned, and we have merited some terrible

punishment.... But I, indeed, I tried to reassure you, I did not hear

the threats which sounded in your ears through the branches.’

Albine tried to clasp him in her arms again as she sobbed out, ‘Get up,

and let us escape together. Perhaps even yet there is time for us to

love each other.’

‘No, no; I haven’t the strength. I should stumble and fall over the

smallest pebble in the path. Listen to me. I am afraid of myself. I know

not what man dwells in me. I have murdered myself, and my hands are red

with blood. If you took me away, you would never see aught in my eyes

save tears.’

She kissed his wet eyes, as she answered passionately, ‘No matter! Do

you love me?’

He was too terrified to answer her. A heavy step set the pebbles rolling

on the other side of the wall. A growl of anger seemed to draw nigh.

Albine had not been mistaken. Some one was, indeed, there, disturbing

the woodland quiet with jealous inquisition. Then both Albine and Serge,

as if overwhelmed with shame, sought to bide themselves behind a bush.

But Brother Archangias, standing in front of the breach, could already

see them.

The Brother remained for a moment silent, clenching his fists and

looking at Albine clinging round Serge’s neck, with the disgust of a man

who has espied some filth by the roadside.

‘I suspected it,’ he mumbled between his teeth. ‘It was virtually

certain that they had hidden him here.’

Then he took a few steps, and cried out: ‘I see you. It is an

abomination. Are you a brute beast to go coursing through the woods with

that female? She has led you far astray, has she not? She has besmeared

you with filth, and now you are hairy like a goat.... Pluck a branch

from the trees wherewith to smite her on the back.’

Again Albine whispered in an ardent, prayerful voice: ‘Do you love me?

Do you love me?’

But Serge, with bowed head, kept silence, though he did not yet drive

her from him.

‘Fortunately, I have found you,’ continued Brother Archangias. ‘I

discovered this hole.... You have disobeyed God, and have slain your own

peace. Henceforward, for ever, temptation will gnaw you with its fiery

tooth, and you will no longer have ignorance of evil to help you to

fight it. It was that creature who tempted you to your fall, was it not?

Do you not see the serpent’s tail writhing amongst her hair? The mere

sight of her shoulders is sufficient to make one vomit with disgust....

Leave her. Touch her not, for she is the beginning of hell. In the name

of God, come forth from that garden.’

‘Do you love me? Oh! do you love me?’ reiterated Albine.

But Serge hastily drew away from her as though her bare arms and

shoulders really scorched him.

‘In the name of God! In the name of God!’ cried the Brother, in a voice

of thunder.

Serge unresistingly stepped towards the breach. As soon as Brother

Archangias, with rough violence, had dragged him out of the Paradou,

Albine, who had fallen half fainting to the ground, with hands wildly

stretched towards the love which was deserting her, rose up again,

choking with sobs. And she fled, vanished into the midst of the trees,

whose trunks she lashed with her streaming hair.