So then, it was twilight, just after sunset on a raw, foggy, rainy
day, the 21st of December, 1908--my last day of life. And around me
was the hill of the strangely significant name: _Le col de la Mort de
Gauthier!_ A cry of terror had escaped me:
“Madeleine!”
It was she--Madeleine, the girl I loved, alone, afoot, on that deserted
heath, on that raw, foggy, rainy, wintry evening--Madeleine, hurrying
along that solitary trail through the sweet-fern and the cat-briar, in
her afternoon costume, as she would dress for a tea at a fashionable
hotel ... and twenty miles from home!
“Madeleine!” I called. And she seemed not to hear me, and not to see
me; but hurried on, on, on, rapidly, with unerring step, over that
rough and broken and rain-soaked ground.
My heart stopped beating. For ten, fifteen, twenty seconds I stood
there paralyzed, rooted to the trail. Then I came to myself; and in a
mad dash down the incline, I went off in pursuit of her.
Ahead of me I could see her figure already ascending the slope of the
third knoll. She moved easily, rapidly, experiencing no difficulty from
the matted underbrush and cat-briar. She was following the trail. But
at the top of the hill she turned--to the eastward, with her back to
Toulon, that is. There a thick curtain of night seemed to have fallen
before the taller underbrush. I saw her skirt as it vanished across the
line of darkness into shrubbery that reached above her head. A second
later I caught a glimpse of her ermine collar farther in, and then once
more and then for a third time.
I was running with all the headlong speed I could muster. My foot
caught in a snarl of cat-briar. I plunged forward, scraping across a
flat stone. But I barely touched the ground. I was on my feet in an
instant. “Madeleine! Madeleine!” I called.
I thought I caught sight of her ermine collar again as she hurried
across a clearing. Then she was gone. The wet moss was thin above the
solid ledging of the knoll. It slipped under my feet, on the brink
of a ditch such as that which had cost Siegfried his life. I fell a
second time. Again I was on my feet. And now, against the sky over the
hill-top ahead of me, profiled on the leaden but much darker clouds,
I saw the same mysterious figure I had seen at first--save that now it
was of hazier, more indistinct outline.
“Madeleine! Madeleine!” I shouted desperately. And I dashed on.
Step by step the figure sank behind the crest of the hill. When I
reached the place, I found one of her footprints in the mud on the edge
of a stone. But she had disappeared completely. The soft moss preserved
no record of her passage. Before me lay the silent, deserted slope of
the Col de la Mort de Gauthier; to the right the escarpments of the
Maurras range; to my left the approaches to the Grand Cap. And no signs
of any human being!
In anguished desperation I tore out into the underbrush, on which night
had definitely fallen. I was determined to overtake the fugitive, get
to the bottom of this prodigious mystery. I ran and ran, all my heart
bent on finding the slightest trace of her ... all my heart and all my
bewildered mind. I mounted great boulders with one bound, and was over
them in another. I went forward springing from rock to rock, falling at
times, turning my ankles, forcing thickets of briars by sheer weight
of impact, tearing my clothes, scratching my face and hands, but
running, running, running. I thought I saw a light off to the left. I
turned in that direction, and again ran on. I must have spent hours
in this fruitless, aimless, despairing search. I remember that finally
I sank to the ground, breathless, exhausted, utterly unable to move. I
don’t know where I fell. I know simply that I lay there, insensible,
corpse-like, dead; and, as happens when one had gone beyond his
physical and spiritual resources, a deep, dreamless, annihilating sleep
came over me.