THE SCHOOLBOY: SAINT-LÉONS
To know a pupil thoroughly, it is not enough to study him in class; one
must watch him at play, for it is then especially that his nascent
tastes reveal themselves, and the outlines of his future personality
are more plainly discerned.
We have seen Jean-Henri bending over his task under the eye of the
schoolmaster, or of his father; now let us follow him in the free play
of his activities, absorbed in intimate communion with the children of
nature. He himself will tell us what were his favourite pastimes in the
garden, by the pond, or in the fields.
All the reminiscences of the little Jean-Henri’s schooldays pall before
the memory of his father’s garden:
A tiny hanging garden of some thirty paces by ten, situated right
at the top of the village. The only spot that overlooks it is a
little esplanade on which stands the old castle [16] with the four
turrets that have now become dovecotes. A steep path takes you up
to this open space. From my house on, it is more like a precipice
than a slope. Gardens buttressed by walls are staged in terraces on
the sides of the funnel-shaped valley. Ours is the highest; it is
also the smallest.
There are no trees. Even a solitary apple-tree would crowd it.
There is a patch of cabbages, with a border of sorrel, a patch of
turnips, and another of lettuces. That is all we have in the way of
garden-stuff; there is no room for more. Against the upper
supporting-wall, facing due south, is a vine-arbour which, at
intervals, when the sun is generous, provides half a basketful of
white muscatel grapes. These are a luxury of our own, greatly
envied by the neighbours, for the vine is unknown outside this
corner, the warmest in the village.
A hedge of currant-bushes, the only safeguard against a terrible
fall, forms a parapet above the next terrace. When our parents’
watchful eyes are off us, we lie flat on our stomachs, my brother
[17] and I, and look into the abyss at the foot of the wall bulging
under the thrust of the soil. It is the garden of monsieur le
notaire.
There are beds with box-borders in that garden; there are
pear-trees reputed to give pears, real pears, more or less good to
eat when they have ripened on the straw all through the late
autumn. In our imagination, it is a spot of perpetual delight, a
paradise, but a paradise seen the wrong way up: instead of
contemplating it from below, we gaze at it from above. How happy
they must be with so much space and all those pears!
We look at the hives, around which the hovering Bees make a sort of
russet smoke. They stand under the shelter of a great hazel. The
tree has sprung up all of itself in a fissure of the wall, almost
on the level of our currant-bushes. While it spreads its mighty
branches over the notary’s hives, its roots, at least, are in our
soil. It belongs to us. The trouble is to gather the nuts.
I creep along astride the strong branches projecting horizontally
into space. If I slip, or if the support breaks, I shall come to
grief in the midst of the angry Bees. I do not slip, and the
support does not break. With the crooked stick which my brother
hands me, I bring the finest clusters within my reach. I soon fill
my pockets. Moving backwards, still straddling my branch, I recover
terra firma. O wondrous days of litheness and assurance, when, for
a few filberts, on a perilous perch we braved the abyss! [18]
I confess I love this little sketch of the garden, which gives evidence
of a singular clearness of perception in the gaze which this child
already turns upon the things about him.
But I like still better the history of the duck-pond, graceful as an
idyll and touching as an elegy, the idyll of a rustic childhood which
becomes aware, simultaneously, of the family secrets and the secrets of
nature; the elegy of a father’s tenderness and a son’s piety cramped
and mortified by poverty, the elegy of intelligence, nay, of genius,
ready to spread its wings and fettered in its flight by the heavy
chains and harsh necessities of material existence:
How shall a man earn his living in my poor native village, with its
inclement weather and its niggardly soil? The owner of a few acres
of grazing-land rears sheep. In the best parts, he scrapes the soil
with the swing-plough; he flattens it into terraces banked by walls
of broken stones. Pannierfuls of dung are carried up on donkey-back
from the cowshed. Then, in due season, comes the excellent potato,
which, boiled and served hot in a basket of plaited straw, is the
chief stand-by in winter.
Should the crop exceed the needs of the household, the surplus goes
to feed a pig, that precious beast, a treasure of bacon and ham.
The ewes supply butter and curds; the garden boasts cabbages,
turnips, and even a few hives in a sheltered corner. With wealth
like that one can look fate in the face. But we, we have nothing,
nothing but the little house inherited by my mother, and its
adjoining patch of garden. The meagre resources of the family are
coming to an end. It is time to see to it, and that quickly. What
is to be done? That is the stern question which father and mother
sat debating one evening.
Hop-o’-my-Thumb, hiding under the woodcutter’s stool, listened to
his parents overcome by want. I also, pretending to sleep, with my
elbows on the table, listen, not to blood-curdling designs, but to
grand plans that set my heart rejoicing. This is how the matter
stands: at the bottom of the village, near the church, at the spot
where the water of the large roofed spring escapes from its
underground weir and joins the brook in the valley, an enterprising
man, back from the war, [19] has set up a small tallow-factory. He
sells the scrapings of his pans, the burnt fat, reeking of
candle-grease, at a low price. He proclaims these wares to be
excellent for fattening ducks.
“Suppose we breed some ducks,” says mother. “They sell very well in
town. Henri would mind them and take them down to the brook.”
“Very well,” says father, “let’s breed some ducks. There may be
difficulties in the way; but we’ll have a try.”
That night I had dreams of paradise: I was with my ducklings, clad
in their yellow suits; I took them to the pond, I watched them have
their bath, I brought them back again, carrying the more tired ones
in a basket.
A month or two after, the little birds of my dreams were a reality.
There were twenty-four of them. They had been hatched by two hens,
of whom one, the big black one, was an inmate of the house, while
the other was borrowed from a neighbour.
To bring them up, the former is sufficient, so careful is she of
her adopted family. At first everything goes perfectly: a tub with
two fingers’ depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days the
ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye of the hen.
A fortnight later, the tub is no longer enough. It contains neither
cresses crammed with tiny Shellfish nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty
morsels both. The time has come for dives and hunts amid the tangle
of the water-weeds; and for us the day of trouble has also come.
True, the miller, down by the brook, has fine ducks, easy and cheap
to rear; the tallow-smelter, who has extolled his burnt fat so
loudly, has some as well, for he possesses the advantage of the
waste water from the spring at the bottom of the village; but how
are we, right up there, at the top, to procure aquatic sports for
our broods? In summer we have hardly water to drink!
Near the house, in a freestone recess, a scanty spring trickles
into a basin made in the rock. Four or five families have, like
ourselves, to draw their water there in copper pails. By the time
that the schoolmaster’s donkey has slaked her thirst and the
neighbours have taken their provision for the day, the basin is
dry. We have to wait for four-and-twenty hours for it to fill. No,
this is not the hole in which the ducks would delight, nor indeed
in which they would be tolerated.
There remains the brook. To go down to it with the troop of
ducklings is fraught with danger. On the way through the village we
might meet cats, bold ravishers of small poultry; some surly
mongrel might frighten and scatter the little band; and it would be
a hard puzzle to collect it in its entirety. We must avoid the
traffic and take refuge in peaceful and sequestered spots.
On the hills, the path that climbs behind the château soon takes a
sudden turn and widens into a small plain beside the meadows. It
skirts a rocky slope whence trickles, level with the ground, a
streamlet, which forms a pond of some size. Here profound solitude
reigns all day long. The ducklings will be well off; and the
journey can be made in peace by a deserted footpath.
You, little man, shall take them to that delectable spot. What a
day it was that marked my first appearance as a herdsman of ducks!
Why must there be a jar to the even tenor of such joys! The
too-frequent encounter of my tender skin with the hard ground had
given me a large and painful blister on the heel. Had I wanted to
put on the shoes stowed away in the cupboard for Sundays and
holidays, I could not. There was nothing for it but to go barefoot
over the broken stones, dragging my leg and carrying high the
injured heel.
Let us make a start, hobbling along, switch in hand, behind the
ducks. They, too, poor little things, have sensitive soles to their
feet; they limp, they quack with fatigue. They would refuse to go
any further if I did not, from time to time, call a halt under the
shelter of an ash.
We are there at last. The place could not be better for my
birdlets: shallow, tepid water, interspersed with muddy knolls and
green eyots. The diversions of the bath begin forthwith. The
ducklings clap their beaks and rummage here, there, and everywhere.
They are happy; and it is a blessed thing to see them at work. We
will let them be. It is my turn to enjoy the pond.
What is this? On the mud lie some loose, knotted, soot-coloured
cords. One might take them for threads of wool like those which you
pull out of an old ravelly stocking. Can some shepherdess, knitting
a black sock and finding her work turn out badly, have begun all
over again and, in her impatience, have thrown down the wool with
all the dropped stitches? It really looks like it.
I take up one of those cords in my hand. It is sticky and extremely
slack; the thing slips through the fingers before they can catch
hold of it. A few of the knots burst and shed their contents. What
comes out is a black globule, the size of a pin’s head, followed by
a flat tail. I recognise, on a very small scale, a familiar object:
the Tadpole, the Frog’s baby. I have seen enough. Let us leave the
knotted cords alone.
The next creatures please me better. They spin round on the surface
of the water and their black backs gleam in the sun. If I lift a
hand to seize them, that moment they disappear, I know not where.
It’s a pity: I should have much liked to see them closer and to
make them wriggle in a little bowl which I should have put ready
for them.
Let us look at the bottom of the water, pulling aside those bunches
of green string whence beads of air are rising and gathering into
foam. There is something of everything underneath. I see pretty
shells with compact whorls, flat as beans; I notice little worms
carrying tufts and feathers; I make out some with flabby fins
constantly flapping on their backs. What are they all doing there?
What are their names? I do not know. And I stare at them for ever
so long, held by the incomprehensible mystery of the waters.
At the place where the pond dribbles into the adjoining field are
some alder-trees; and here I make a glorious find. It is a
Beetle—not a very large one, oh no! He is smaller than a
cherry-stone, but of an unutterable blue. I put the glorious one
inside an empty snail-shell, which I plug up with a leaf. I shall
admire that living jewel at my leisure, when I get back. Other
distractions summon me away.
The spring that feeds the pond trickles from the rock, cold and
clear. The water first collects into a cup, the size of the hollow
of one’s two hands, and then runs over in a stream. These falls
call for a mill: that goes without saying. Two bits of straw,
artistically crossed upon an axis, provide the machine; some flat
stones set on edge afford supports. It is a great success: the mill
turns admirably. My triumph would be complete, could I but share
it. For want of other playmates, I invite the ducks.
Everything palls in this poor world of ours, even a mill made of
two straws. Let us think of something else; let us contrive a dam
to hold back the waters and form a pool. There is no lack of stones
for the brickwork. I pick the most suitable; I break the larger
ones. And, while collecting these blocks, suddenly I forget all
about the dam which I meant to build.
On one of the broken stones, in a cavity large enough for me to put
my fist in, something gleams like glass. The hollow is lined with
facets gathered in sixes which flash and glitter in the sun. I have
seen something like this in church, on the great saint’s day, when
the light of the candles in the big chandelier kindles the stars in
its hanging crystal.
We children, lying, in summer, on the straw of the threshing-floor,
have told one another stories of the treasures which a dragon
guards underground. Those treasures now return to my mind: the
names of precious stones ring out uncertainly but gloriously in my
memory. I think of the king’s crown, of the princesses’ necklaces.
In breaking stones, can I have found, but on a much richer scale,
the thing that shines quite small in my mother’s ring? I want more
such.
The dragon of the subterranean treasures treats me generously. He
gives me his diamonds in such quantities that soon I possess a heap
of broken stones sparkling with magnificent clusters. He does more:
he gives me his gold. The water from the rock falls on a bed of
fine sand which it swirls into bubbles. If I bend towards the
light, I see something like gold-filings whirl where the fall
touches the bottom. Is it really the famous metal of which
twenty-franc pieces, so rare with us at home, are made? One would
think so, from the glitter.
I take a pinch of sand and place it in my palm. The brilliant
particles are numerous, but so small that I have to pick them up
with a straw moistened in my mouth. Let us drop this: they are too
tiny and too bothersome to collect. The big, valuable lumps must be
farther on, in the thickness of the rock. We’ll come back later;
we’ll blast the mountain.
I break more stones. Oh, what a queer thing has just come loose,
all in one piece! It is turned spiral-wise, like certain flat
Snails that come out of the cracks of old walls in rainy weather.
With its gnarled sides, it looks like a little ram’s-horn. Shell or
horn, it is very curious. How do things like that find their way
into the stone?
Treasures and curiosities make my pockets bulge with pebbles. It is
late, and the little ducklings have had all they want to eat. Come
along, youngsters, let’s go home. My blistered heel is forgotten in
my excitement.
The walk back is a delight. A voice sings in my ear, an
untranslatable voice, softer than any language and bewildering as a
dream. It speaks to me for the first time of the mysteries of the
pond; it glorifies the heavenly insect which I hear moving in the
empty snail-shell, its temporary cage; it whispers the secrets of
the rock, the gold-filings, the faceted jewels, the ram’s-horn
turned to stone.
Poor simpleton, smother your joy! I arrive. My parents catch sight
of my bulging pockets, with their disgraceful load of stones. The
cloth has given way under the rough and heavy burden.
“You rascal!” says father, at sight of the damage. “I send you to
mind the ducks and you amuse yourself picking up stones, as though
there weren’t enough of them all round the house! Make haste and
throw them away!”
Broken-hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold-dust, petrified ram’s-horn,
heavenly Beetle are all flung on a rubbish-heap outside the door.
Mother bewails her lot:
“A nice thing, bringing up children to see them turn out so badly!
You’ll bring me to my grave. Green stuff I don’t mind: it does for
the rabbits. But stones, which ruin your pockets; poisonous
animals, which’ll sting your hand: what good are they to you,
silly? There’s no doubt about it: some one has thrown a spell over
you!”
Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your simplicity: a spell
had been cast upon me; I admit it to-day. When it is hard enough to
earn one’s bit of bread, does not improving one’s mind but render
one more meet for suffering? Of what avail is the torment of
learning to the derelicts of life?
A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and
knowing that the diamonds of the duck-pool were rock-crystal, the
gold-dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite, and the sky-blue Beetle
a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of
knowledge: let us dig our furrow in the field of the commonplace,
flee the temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave to
others, more favoured by fortune, the job of explaining the world’s
mechanism, if the spirit moves them.
And yet no! Alone among living creatures man has the thirst for
knowledge; he alone pries into the mysteries of things. The least
among us will utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain
unknown to the brute beast. If these questionings come from us with
greater persistence, with a more imperious authority, if they
divert us from the quest of lucre, life’s only object in the eyes
of most men, does it behove us to complain? Let us be careful not
to do so, for that would be denying the best of all our gifts.
Let us strive, on the contrary, within the measure of our capacity,
to force a gleam of light from the vast unknown; let us examine and
question and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth. We shall
sink under the task; in the present ill-ordered state of society,
we shall end, perhaps, in the workhouse. Let us go ahead for all
that: our consolation shall be that we have increased by one atom
the general mass of knowledge, the incomparable treasure of
mankind.
As this modest lot has fallen to me, I will return to the pond,
notwithstanding the wise admonitions and the bitter tears which I
once owed to it. I will return to the pond, but not to that of the
small ducks, the pond aflower with illusions: those ponds do not
occur twice in a lifetime. For luck like that, you must be in all
the new glory of your first breeches and your first ideas.
Many another have I come upon since that distant time, ponds very
much richer and, moreover, explored with the ripened eye of
experience. Enthusiastically I searched them with the net, stirred
up their mud, ransacked their trailing weeds. None in my memories
comes up to the first, magnified in its delights and mortifications
by the marvellous perspective of the years. [20]
His excursions to the pond and the garden were little more to our
little Jean-Henri than the preface to rather more distant excursions in
the neighbourhood of Saint-Léons. The edge of the brook, the crest of
the hill and the skirts of the beechwood which limit his horizon are
the chosen spots to which his curiosity leads him, and the favourite
scene of his childish rambles. It is really delightful to watch him
taking possession of these unknown territories and making the first
inventory of the wealth that he will explore later on.
On that day, wealthy and leisured, with an apple for my lunch and
all my time to myself, I decided to visit the brown of the
neighbouring hill, hitherto looked upon as the boundary of the
world. Right at the top is a row of trees which, turning their
backs to the wind, bend and toss about as though to uproot
themselves and take to flight. How often, from the little window in
my home, have I not seen them bowing their heads in stormy weather;
how often have I not watched them writhing like madmen amid the
snow-dust which the north-wind’s besom raises and smooths along the
hill-side! What are they doing up there, those desolate trees? I am
interested in their supple backs, to-day still and upright against
the blue of the sky, to-morrow shaken when the clouds pass
overhead. I am gladdened by their calmness; I am distressed by
their terrified gestures. They are my friends. I have them before
my eyes at every hour of the day. In the morning the sun rises
behind their transparent screen and ascends in its glory. Where
does it come from? I am going to climb up there; and perhaps I
shall find out.
I mount the slope. It is a lean grass-sward close-cropped by the
sheep. It has no bushes, fertile in rents and tears, for which I
should have to answer on returning home, nor any rocks, the scaling
of which involves like dangers; nothing but large, flat stones,
scattered here and there. I have only to go straight on, over
smooth ground. But the sward is as steep as a sloping roof. It is
long, ever so long; and my legs are very short. From time to time I
look up. My friends, the trees on the hill-top, seem to be no
nearer. Cheerly, sonnie! Scramble away!
What is this at my feet? A lovely bird has flown from its
hiding-place under the eaves of a big stone. Bless us, here’s a
nest made of hair and fine straw! It’s the first I have ever found,
the first of the joys which the birds are to bring me. And in this
nest are six eggs, laid prettily side by side; and these eggs are a
magnificent blue, as though steeped in a dye of celestial azure.
Overpowered with happiness, I lie down on the grass and stare.
Meanwhile the mother, with a little clap of her gullet—“Tack!
Tack!”—flies anxiously from stone to stone, not far from the
intruder. My age knows no pity, is still too barbarous to
understand maternal anguish. A plan is running in my head, a plan
worthy of a little beast of prey. I will come back in a fortnight
and collect the nestlings before they can fly away. In the
meantime, I will just take one of those pretty blue eggs, only one,
as a trophy. Lest it should be crushed, I place the fragile thing
on a little moss in the scoop of my hand. Let him cast a stone at
me that has not, in his childhood, known the rapture of finding his
first nest.
My delicate burden, which would be ruined by a false step, makes me
give up the remainder of the climb. Some other day I shall see the
trees on the hill-top over which the sun rises. I go down the slope
again. At the bottom I meet the parish priest’s curate reading his
breviary as he takes his walk. He sees me coming solemnly along,
like a relic-bearer; he catches sight of my hand hiding something
behind my back:
“What have you there, my boy?” he asks.
All abashed, I open my hand and show my blue egg on its bed of
moss.
“Ah!” says his reverence. “A Saxicola’s egg! Where did you get it?”
“Up there, father, under a stone.”
Question follows question; and my peccadillo stands confessed. “By
chance I found a nest which I was not looking for. There were six
eggs in it. I took one of them—here it is;—and I am waiting for the
rest to hatch. I shall go back for the others when the young birds
have their quill-feathers.”
“You mustn’t do that, my little friend,” replies the priest. “You
mustn’t rob the mother of her brood; you must respect the innocent
little ones; you must let God’s birds grow up and fly from the
nest. They are the joy of the fields, and they clear the earth of
its vermin. Be a good boy, now, and don’t touch the nest.”
I promise; and the curate continues his walk. I come home with two
good seeds cast on the fallows of my childish brain. An
authoritative word has taught me that plundering birds’ nests is a
bad action. I did not quite understand how the bird comes to our
aid by destroying vermin, the scourge of the crops; but I felt, at
the bottom of my heart, that it is wrong to afflict the mothers.
“Saxicola,” the priest had said, on seeing my find.
“Hullo!” said I to myself. “Animals have names, just like
ourselves. Who named them? What are all my different acquaintances
in the woods and meadows called? What does Saxicola mean?”
Years passed; and Latin taught me that Saxicola means an inhabitant
of the rocks. My bird, in fact, was flying from one rocky point to
the other while I lay in ecstasy before its eggs; its house, its
nest, had the rim of a large stone for a roof. Further knowledge
gleaned from books taught me that the lover of stony hill-sides is
also called the Motteux, or Clodhopper, [21] because, in the
ploughing season, she flies from clod to clod, inspecting the
furrows rich in unearthed grub-worms. Lastly, I came upon the
Provençal expression Cul-blanc, which is also a picturesque term,
suggesting the patch on the bird’s rump which spreads out like a
white butterfly flitting over the fields.
Thus did the vocabulary come into being that would one day allow me
to greet by their real names the thousand actors on the stage of
the fields, the thousand little flowers that smile at us from the
wayside. The word which the curate had spoken without attaching the
least importance to it revealed a world to me, the world of plants
and animals designated by their real names. To the future must
belong the task of deciphering some pages of the immense lexicon;
for to-day I will content myself with remembering the Saxicola, or
Wheat-ear.
On the west, my village crumbles into an avalanche of
garden-patches, in which plums and apples ripen. Low, bulging
walls, blackened with the stains of lichens and mosses, support the
terraces. The brook runs at the foot of the slope. It can be
cleared almost everywhere at a bound. In the wider parts, flat
stones standing out of the water serve as a foot-bridge. There is
no such thing as a whirlpool, the terror of mothers when the
children are away; it is nowhere more than knee-deep. Dear little
brook, so tranquil, cool, and clear, I have seen majestic rivers
since, I have seen the boundless seas; but nothing in my memories
equals your modest falls. About you clings all the hallowed
pleasure of my first impressions.
A miller has bethought him of putting the brook, which used to flow
so gaily through the fields, to work. Halfway up the slope, a
watercourse, economising the gradient, diverts part of the water,
and conducts it into a large reservoir, which supplies the
mill-wheels with motor-power. This basin stands beside a frequented
path, and is walled off at the end.
One day, hoisting myself on a play-fellow’s shoulders, I looked
over the melancholy wall, all bearded with ferns. I saw bottomless,
stagnant waters covered with slimy green. In the gaps in the sticky
carpet, a sort of dumpy, black-and-yellow reptile was lazily
swimming. To-day I should call it a Salamander; at that time, it
appeared to me the offspring of the Serpent and the Dragon, of whom
we were told such blood-curdling tales when we sat up at night.
Hoo! I’ve seen enough; let’s get down again, quick!
The brook runs below. Alders and ash, bending forward on either
bank, mingle their branches and form a verdant arch. At their feet,
behind a porch of great twisted roots, are watery caverns prolonged
by gloomy corridors. On the threshold of these fastnesses shimmers
a glint of sunshine, cut into ovals by the leafy sieve above.
This is the haunt of the red-necktied Minnows. Come along very
gently, lie flat on the ground and look. What pretty little fish
they are, with their scarlet throats! Clustering side by side, with
their heads turned against the stream, they puff their cheeks out
and in, rinsing their mouths incessantly. To keep their stationary
position in the running water, they need naught but a slight quiver
of their tail and of the fin on their back. A leaf falls from the
tree. Whoosh! The whole troop has disappeared.
On the other side of the brook is a spinney of beeches, with
smooth, straight trunks, like pillars. In their majestic, shady
branches sit chattering Rooks, drawing from their wings old
feathers replaced by new. The ground is padded with moss. At one’s
first step on the downy carpet, the eye is caught by a mushroom,
not yet full-spread and looking like an egg dropped there by some
vagrant Hen. It is the first that I have picked, the first that I
have turned round and round in my fingers, inquiring into its
structure with that vague curiosity which is the first awakening of
observation.
Soon I find others, differing in size, shape, and colour. It is a
real treat for my prentice eyes. Some are fashioned like bells,
like extinguishers, like cups; some are drawn out into spindles,
hollowed into funnels, rounded into hemispheres. I come upon some
that are broken and are weeping milky tears; I step on some that,
instantly, become tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are
crumbling into rot and swarming with worms. Others, shaped like
pears, are dry and open at the top with a round hole, a sort of
chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their underside
with my finger. These are the most curious. I fill my pockets with
them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I exhaust the
contents, which are at last reduced to a kind of tinder.
What fun I had in that delightful spinney! I returned to it many a
time after my first find; and here, in the company of the Rooks, I
received my first lessons in mushroom lore. My harvests, I need
hardly say, were not admitted to the house. The mushroom, or the
Bouturel, as we call it, had a bad reputation for poisoning people.
That was enough to make mother banish it from the family table. I
could scarcely understand how the Bouturel, so attractive in
appearance, came to be so wicked; however, I accepted the
experience of my elders; and no disaster ever ensued from my rash
friendship with the poisoner.
As my visits to the beech-clump were repeated, I managed to divide
my finds into three categories. In the first, which was the most
numerous, the mushroom was furnished underneath with little
radiating flakes. In the second, the lower surface was lined with a
thick pad pricked with hardly visible holes. In the third, it
bristled with tiny spots similar to the papillæ on a cat’s tongue.
The need of some order to assist the memory made me invent a
classification for myself.
Very much later there fell into my hands certain small books from
which I learnt that my three categories were well known; they even
had Latin names, which fact was far from displeasing to me.
Ennobled by Latin which provided me with my first exercises and
translations, glorified by the ancient language which the rector
used in saying his mass, the mushroom rose in my esteem. To deserve
so learned an appellation, it must possess a genuine importance.
The same books told me the name of the one that had amused me so
much with its smoking chimney. It is called the Puffball in
English, but its French name is the Vesse-de-loup. I disliked the
expression, which to my mind smacked of bad company. Next to it was
a more decent denomination: Lycoperdon; but this was only so in
appearance, for Greek roots sooner or later taught me that
Lycoperdon means Vesse-de-loup and nothing else.
How far off are those blessed times when my childish curiosity
sought solitary exercise in making itself acquainted with the
mushroom! “Eheu! Fugaces labuntur anni!” said Horace. Ah, yes, the
years glide fleeting by, especially when they are nearing their
end! They were once the merry brook that dallies among the willows
on imperceptible slopes; to-day, they are the torrent swirling a
thousand straws along as it rushes towards the abyss. [22]
Can one imagine a more picturesque and original fashion of sketching
the outline of one’s earliest memories? We have collected these
memories, which he has scattered so profusely over the pages of his
books, with pious care, because they so delightfully reveal a soul and
a life that are akin to our own, more especially in their beginnings,
and because they so wonderfully evoke an age and a country that were
once ours and are still the possession of our grand-nephews.
At the age of ten the time came for the child to bid a fresh farewell
to his native village. His father was the first of his race to be
tempted by the town, and he removed his home to Rodez. Jean-Henri was
never again to behold the humble village where he lived “his best
years,” but he bore its image indelibly stamped upon his mind, upon
that part of it in which are formed those profound impressions that
grow more vivid with the years instead of fading. He left it at first
with a light heart, but later on he was homesick for it; and as the
years went by he felt more than ever its mysterious attraction, so that
one of his last wishes was to see his grave dug in the shadow of his
cradle. But we will not wrong feelings so delicate by seeking to
interpret them; we will let him speak for himself.
Leaving our native village is no very serious matter when we are
children. We even look on it as a sort of holiday. We are going to
see something new, those magic pictures of our dreams. With age
come regrets; and the close of life is spent in stirring up old
memories. Then, in our dreamy moods, the beloved village reappears,
embellished, transfigured by the glow of those first impressions;
and the mental image, superior to the reality, stands out in
amazingly clear relief. The past, the far-off past, was only
yesterday; we see it, we touch it.
For my part, after three-quarters of a century, I could walk with
my eyes closed straight to the flat stone where I first heard the
soft chiming note of the Midwife Toad; yes, I should find it to a
certainty, if time, which devastates all things, even the homes of
Toads, has not moved it or perhaps left it in ruins.
I see, on the margin of the brook, the exact position of the
alder-trees whose tangled roots, deep under the water, were a
refuge for the Crayfish. I should say:
“It is just at the foot of this tree that I had the unutterable
bliss of catching a beauty. She had horns so long ... and enormous
claws, full of meat, for I got her just at the right time.”
I should go without faltering to the ash under whose shade my heart
beat so loudly one sunny spring morning. I had caught sight of a
sort of white, cottony ball among the branches. Peeping from the
depths of the wadding was an anxious little head with a red hood to
it. Oh, what unparalleled luck! It was a Goldfinch, sitting on her
eggs.
I know my village thoroughly, though I quitted it so long ago; and
I know hardly anything of the towns to which the vicissitudes of
life have brought me. An exquisitely sweet link binds us to our
native soil; we are like the plant that has to be torn away from
the spot where it put out its first roots. Poor though it be, I
should love to see my own village again; I should like to leave my
bones there. [23]