Colaquet grazing
September11th.
No news.
September12th.
Still no news. What can be going on? Are they forced to retire? Really, this suspense is unbearable.
September13th.
I have only bread enough for two days. I found this out in the morning, on opening the chest where Mother Guillard placed my week’s provisions—six largefloury and golden loaves, that she baked for me every Sunday. What shall I do? I have, it is true, an oven and a kneading-trough, but not an atom of flour. Perhaps I should find some at the farm at Champrosay, if Goudeloup has remained there as he intended. But how can I get so far in my present weak condition? Seated on my garden bench in front of my door, I was absorbed in these melancholy thoughts, when I heard the sound of an animal galloping in the keeper’s field. It was Colaquet. Colaquet, generally so lazy, was gambolling round the orchard, kicking up little tufts of grass with his hoofs and rolling over on his back, with a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure in living. In two bounds he came at my call, and leant his head, no longer swollen, but now of normal size, on the wooden trellis; the rapid motion of his long ears, whose language I am beginning to understand, telling me of his happiness at being free and delivered from his pain and infirmity. Lucky Colaquet! he is cured before I am; and while I looked at him with an envious eye, I remembered that there—over there, under the shed—was an old conveyance that Guillard formerly used on fête-days to drive parties of Parisians through the forest. If I harnessed Colaquet,we might go and fetch some flour . . . So I set to work rummaging under the shed. Amongst the rusty pickaxes, hay-rakes, and dilapidated harrows I finally discovered a worm-eaten spring-cart, forgotten and unused, its two shafts lying on the ground. By means of some pieces of rope and a few nails I put it into a tolerable state of repair. It occupied me till the evening; but what an interesting piece of work! I was amused in turning over those old nails, those worn-out pegs. Once or twice I surprised myself by whistling over my work. Pretty cool, considering I was expecting the Prussians . . . Now everything is ready, the cart and the team. To-morrow morning, if in the meanwhile nothing happens, we shall start for Champrosay!
The old spring-cart
The farm work-shop
On the road to Champrosay
September14th.
I have made a compact with myself to keep a very exact diary of the strange and terrible life I have been drawn into; if I have many days as exciting and tragic as this, I shall never be able to live through them. My hand shakes, my brain is on fire. However, I must make the attempt . . .
At first starting all went well. The weather was beautiful. I had placed a bundle of hay in the cart,and although Colaquet’s eyelids were still swollen from the bite, he managed to take us tolerably straight—he had so often made this journey, carrying bundles of linen to the riverside. In spite of the slight jolting, I found the drive delightful. Not the point of a helmet nor the glitter of a gun-barrel to be seen. Only, on arriving at Champrosay, the deep silence that had so impressed me in the woods appeared still more striking. The peasants’ cottages hardly seemed to me the same: no pigeons on the roofs, the doors closed, and the courtyards deserted. The silent belfry of the little church, with its defaced dial, stood above like a faithful guardian. Farther on, all the villas along the road, their grounds extending to the forest, were also carefully shut up. Their summer wealth of flowers continued to bloom, and, under the shade of the clipped trees, the yellow sandy paths were but lightly strewn with a few dead leaves. Nothing could give a more vivid idea of sudden departure and flight than the sight of these deserted houses, decked out as usual behind their high iron gates. There seemed still a kind of quiver and warmth of life; and at times, at the turn of the path, visions rose up in my mind of straw hats, upraised parasols, and ofgoats tethered on the grass-plots in their accustomed place.
Colaquet managed to take us tolerably straight
What, however, really seemed deathlike was the road, the highroad to Corbeil, that I had left so full of life, with a continual flow of vans, mail-coaches, market-gardeners’ carts, perambulating poultry-yards full of cackle and prattle; carriages borne along through the whirlwind of their own speed, on which float, even in the calmest weather, the veils and ribbons of the occupants; and the tall waggons laden with fresh hay and scythes and pitchforks, casting long shadows across the road. And now nothing and no one. In the filled-up ruts the dust has the still look of fallen snow, and the two wheels of my spring-cart glide on noiselessly. At the end of the village the farm appears in the distance, closed, and silent from the foot of its walls to the highest tile of its tall dark roof. Has Goudeloup also taken flight? . . . Here I am before the gateway. I knock—I call. A window above the dairy opens cautiously, and I see the cunning, somewhat unkempt head of the farmer appear, with his untrimmed beard, and his small round, suspicious eyes hidden under bushy eyebrows.
—Ah! it is you, Mr. Robert . . . Wait a moment. I am coming down.
Goudeloup appears at a window
Together we enter the little, low room where the carters, harvesters, and threshers usually come in theevening to receive their day’s pay. In a corner I perceive two loaded guns.
—You see, says Goudeloup, I am ready for them . . . If they leave me alone, I shall not stir . . . But if they are imprudent enough to meddle with the farm . . . Let them beware!
The shattered Champrosay bridge
We were talking in low tones, as if in an enemy’s country. He let me have a few loaves and a sack of flour; then having loaded my cart, we parted, promising each other soon to meet again, . . . Poor man!
Before returning home, no traces of Prussians being visible, I was tempted to go down the lane which passes under the walls of the farm and leads to the Seine. It was the whim of an artist. A river is the soul of a landscape. Animating the scene with its ceaseless movement, it gives life to all the changes of the day, and imparts grandeur to Nature by the reflection of its mirrored banks, and of glowing sunsets sinking into tranquil depths of liquid fire. Now its water faithfully reflects the surrounding melancholy. The shattered bridge, the crumbling piers piled up on either side in white heaps of stone, the iron chains dangling in the river, all this seems like a great rent in the landscape, the cruel work of the invader. No boats, no rafts—the river has returned to its wild, natural state, its surface furrowed by unfettered currents and swirling pools eddying round the ruins of the broken bridge, and bearing on its way nothing but drifting tufts of grass and roots, on which the water-wagtail, wearied out with its long flight, abandons itself to the course of the stream. On the slopes of each bank the corn and vines still stand, and the newly-mown fields are yet overshadowed bythe high haycocks; a whole harvest lost and left to its fate . . .
I had stood there for a moment looking at this scene of disaster, when I heard two shots, followed by shrieks and groans, which seemed to come from the direction of the farm. I hastened to see what was the matter, and as I approached the cries of “Help—Help” were redoubled. I recognised the voice of the farmer amongst others raised in anger, a hideous jargon of sound. I whip up Colaquet, but the hill is steep and Colaquet moves not. One would almost say he was afraid. He lays back his ears and runs up against the wall; besides this, the road takes a turn, and I cannot see what is taking place on the highroad above. Suddenly, through a breach in the wall that the fall of the neighbouring bridge has made, as if expressly for me, the whole interior of the farm comes into view: the yard, the sheds, men, horses, helmets, long lances, flour sacks burst open, an unhorsed cavalry soldier lying before the well at full length in a pool of blood, and the unfortunate Goudeloup, pale, scared, a hideous object, howling and struggling between two gigantic Uhlans, who have tied a rope round his neck, and are about toswing him up by the pulley outside his hayloft. It is impossible to describe my sensations. I am filled with feelings of indignation, pity, horror, and anger . . . I forget that I am wounded and unarmed. I prepare to spring over the breach and throw myself on these wretches . . . But my foot slips . . . I hear something like the snap of a stick in my leg, followed by horrible pain. Everything goes round with me, the yard, the sheds, the pulley . . .
Uhlans hanging Goudeloup
When I recovered consciousness, I was lying stretched on the hay in my cart before the gate of the Hermitage. The sun was setting and the wood was still. Colaquet was quietly nibbling the grass from out of the cracks in the wall. How had I got home? How had I been able to avoid the Uhlans, who swarmed on the highway. Perhaps Colaquet had the idea of coming across country and reaching the forest by the quarry road? . . . And, in truth, the good creature proudly tossed his head and moved his ears, as if to say, “I have saved you from a dangerous pass!” . . . I was in great pain, and it really required some courage to step out of the cart, unharness the donkey, and go into the house. I thought I had for the second time broken my leg. However,after an hour’s rest, I was able to rise, take a little food, and write these few pages. The pain is already less sharp, and nothing remains but a great weariness . . . Nevertheless, I do not think I shall sleepmuch to-night. I know they are prowling around me, that they are still there, and I have seen them at work . . . Oh! that unfortunate peasant, murdered in his farmyard, dragging himself, clutching at the walls! . . .
Gate at the Hermitage
Prussians on the march
September20th.
From the four corners of the horizon, in the murmur of the distant road, which the passing wind quickly snatches up and bears to my ears, there is a ceaseless and confused rumbling, a noise as of the heavy and monotonous sound of waves, which, enveloping the whole forest, slowly flows on towards Paris, to die away at the point where the wide roads are lost in the immense encompassing zone. Till now the inundating masses have spared me, and hereI remain cowering in the Hermitage, listening to the advancing tide, like a shipwrecked man on a rock surrounded by the sea.
Cavalry patrols close by
Luckily for me, if the country is invaded, it is not yet regularly occupied by the troops. They pass through and do not make any stay. Nevertheless, two or three times I have heard at night the cavalry patrols skirt the walls of the Hermitage. Often, when the shooting season was near, the forest rangers would thus pass by, pausing for an instant under the gateway to call out a loud “Good-night” to the keeper’s little home. The dogs would bark and sniffat the kennel railings, then a door opened, and old Guillard brought out a large jug of sparkling wine, in which a ray of moonlight danced, and without dismounting they drank it down. How different from these ghostly patrols, whose very approach makes my heart beat! They pass by in silence. Only from time to time the clink of a sword, the neigh of a horse, a few low-spoken words in a harsh and barbarous language, jar on the stillness of the air. This effectually drives away sleep for the rest of the night.
“Old Guillard brought out a large jug of sparkling wine.”In the daytime the clear, shrill notes of the bugles come in gusts to the little garden, with the beating of dull and discordant drums, marking the tune in a jerky, singular rhythm, which seems to accompany a cannibal’s war-dance. It is to the sound of these barbarous drums that all the northern races, the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, are advancing over our magnificent roads of theIle-de-France, the glorious autumn weather dazzling them by the unaccustomed brilliancy of its sun and sky. During this time I live as unobtrusively as possible. I no longer light my fire, in order to avoid the smoke which gives light and life to the roof. I do not even go out into the orchard. I am sure that already the grass is growing across my threshold, and that the invading forest is hemmingme closely in. Lastly, by way of precaution, I have killed my cock. That was a cruel sacrifice. I like that abrupt awakening at dawn, that call to life and work, which the cock gives forth to the surrounding country, drawing himself up for the battle with a great flapping of wings. But the Prussians might have heard him . . . Now I have only three or four quiet and silent hens in my poultry-yard, and a few rabbits, who are not likely to betray me.
. . I have killed my cock
Robert writing by the light of a small fire
September21st, 22d,and23d.
I am writing this at night, by the glimmer of a small turf-fire—a sort of brazier burning on the flags in a corner of the room. I have neither oil nor candles. It is raining. On all sides of the Hermitage I hear the water streaming over miles of foliage. The wind blows. My revolver and a gun loaded with buckshot are ready by my side, and I await the return of the ruffians, for they have already been here.
Their first visit took place three days ago, in the afternoon of the 21st. The sound of heavy steps onthe pavement of the cloister made me peep out of my attic window, and I saw five or six hulking fellows in forage-caps, with ruddy faces and low, brutal countenances, like those of Goudeloup’s murderers. They spoke in hushed voices, timidly advancing, like cowardly plunderers. If I had been able to fire at them, I should have put them to flight, but once the alarm given, they would return in greater numbers. I waited. Owing to the neglected look of the house, and thanks to the vines and ivy, that gave it the aspect of a ruin, the ruffians have passed by without stopping. And yet the last of them bent down for a moment to the keyhole. Standing behind my door, revolver in hand, I heard his breathing while I held my own breath. Perhaps he had caught sight of the glimmer of the dying cinders of my fire. However that may be, the wretch did not go away, and began to rummage in my keyhole with his bayonet. Fortunately his comrades called out to him:—Hartmann . . . Hartman . . .
Enemy soldier trying the keyhole
He went off to rejoin them, and I was able to look into the enclosure through the attic window.
“They began drinking out of their caps.
They had just broken open the door of the keeper’s house. Poor mother Guillard! it was indeed lost trouble to have given me her key. Soon after, shouts of joy told me that they had discovered the cellar. They brought out a barrel of wine into the orchard, so as to drink it more at their ease, and hoisted it on to a wide stone bench. Having staved in the barrel, they began drinking out of their caps and hands, shouting and jostling each other. The bent heads disappeared in the cask, and came out smeared with dregs, while others greedily took their place. The thin new wine, made of small, sour black grapes, soon intoxicated all these beer-drinkers. Some of them sang and danced round the barrel, while the others re-entered the keeper’s house, and as they found nothing tempting there to satisfy their craving for pillage, they threw the furniture out of the window, and set fire to a walnut cupboard, whose dry and time-worn shelves blazed up like a bundle of straw. At last they went off, reeling through the driving rain. In front of the gateway there was a quarrel. I saw the flash of bayonets, a man fallheavily into the mud and rise up again covered with blood, his uniform all stained with the yellow-coloured soil of the quarries. And to think that France is at the mercy of these brutes! . . .
The next day the same party returned. I understood by that, they had not mentioned their windfall, and I was a little reassured. However, I am a complete prisoner. I dare not stir from the principal room. Near at hand, in a little wood-shed, I have fastened up Colaquet, whose galloping might have betrayed me. The poor animal patiently bears his captivity, sleeps part of the day, and at times gives himself a good shake, surprised at the loss of his freedom . . . At dusk the Prussians depart, more intoxicated than on the evening before.
To-day I have seen no one. But the cask is not yet empty, and I expect them again.
Plundered wine-barrels
Prussians firing on Paris
September24th.
. . . This morning a furious cannonading is taking place. They are fighting before Paris. The siege is begun. It has given me a feeling of pain and anger impossible to describe. They are firing on Paris, the wretches! It is the intellect of the whole world that they attack. Oh, why am I not there with the others? . . .
Instantaneously all yesterday’s apprehensions have vanished. I became ashamed of my mole-like existence. For the last week I have drunk nothing but the water from the cistern, but now, I hardly know wherefore, I went out on purpose to fill my jug at the cloister well, and it seemed to do me good to run some kind of risk. I looked into the Guillards’ houseas I passed by, and my anger increased at the sight of this humble home ruthlessly pillaged, the furniture destroyed and burnt, the window-panes broken. I could not help thinking of the fate of Paris if they enter it . . .
Robert peering through his windowI had just closed my door when I heard footsteps in the enclosure. It was one of those rascals who came the other day, the identical one who had so long rummaged at my lock. He looked if there was any wine left in the cask, and then, having filled his flask, began drinking, sprawling at full length on the stone bench, his head resting on his hands. He sang while drinking;his young fresh voice rang through the cloister with a song about the month of May, in which the words—Mein lieb,lieb Mai—were constantly repeated. He was just opposite my attic window, within easy reach of my revolver. I looked at him for a long time, asking myself if I should kill him. In the direction of Paris the cannon still thundered, filling my heart with terrible anguish . . . After all, perhaps by killing this fellow I should be saving some of my own people now fighting on the ramparts . . .
Soldier drinking and singing
I do not know whether my unseen glance and the intense hatred I was feeling towards him, did not at last disturb him and put him on his guard; but all of a sudden he raised his head, a head covered with thick bristling hair, the eyes of an albino, and red moustaches, showing a grinning set of cruel-looking teeth. For one moment he threw a suspicious glance around him, and having rebuckled his belt and refilled his flask, he went off. As he passed in front of my window, I had my finger on the trigger. Well, no; I could not do it. To kill for the sake of killing, with such certainty, and so little personal danger, was beyond me. It is not such an easy thing as one fancies, to take a fellow-creature’s life in cold blood.
Once outside the precincts of the Hermitage, and having shaken off his undefined sensation of fear, the rascal again took up his song, and I heard him getting farther and farther away, giving forth to the forest his “Mein lieb,lieb Mai. . .”
Sing away, sing away, my lad! you have had a narrow escape of never seeing again your sweet month of May . . .
Soldier walks off singing
The approach of Autumn
October. . .
What day, what date can it be? I have completely lost count. My brain is all confused. Yet it seems to me that it must be October. The monotonous days get shorter and shorter, the wind colder, and the foliage of the large trees around me becomes thinner at each gust of wind. The sound of incessant cannonading in the direction of Paris, makes a lugubrious accompaniment to my everyday life, a deep, low bass, always mingling in my thoughts. I thinkthe Prussians must have their hands full over there, for my marauders have not reappeared. I no longer even hear the long, slow rumbling of the ammunition waggons, nor the rolling of drums, which used to resound on the roads outside the forest. So I have again lighted the fire in the large room, and I walk openly about in the orchard.
From day to day the difficulties of life increase. I have nothing left, neither bread, wine, nor lamp-oil. A month ago, with the sunshine, the house well aired, and the comfort of warmth, these privations were bearable, but now they seem very hard. In the poultry-yard there are only two hens left; always hiding under the rafters to escape the continual driving rain. I make faggots with the branches of the fruit-trees, which, brittle and no longer protected by their leaves, snap off and fall to the ground. The apple-trees have golden moss, the plum-trees long streaks of light-coloured gum under their resinous bark, and they make large, bright fires, throwing a sunshine into their warmth. I have also gathered the last apples, all reddened by the breath of the first frost, and I have made a poor kind of cider, which I drink instead of wine. With my bread I have beenless successful. I tried, with the unfortunate Goudeloup’s flour, to knead some dough in the bottom of a cupboard drawer which I used as a trough; and then, under the ashes on the bricks, I made as well as I could, thick cakes, of which the outsides were burnt, and the insides hardly done enough. They reminded me of those little round bits of dough that, as a child, I held in the tongs, and made into rolls about the size of a lozenge.
From time to time I get a windfall. For instance, the other day, as I was rummaging in the keeper’s house, I found on a damp and mouldy cupboard shelf a few bottles of walnut-spirit that had been overlooked by the plunderers; and another time I found a large sack, which I opened with a beating heart, thinking it contained potatoes. I was quite startled on pulling out from it magpies’ beaks, vipers’ heads, dry and dust-coloured, squirrels’ tails, with their bushy red fur, and field-mice’s tails, as delicate as silken twist. These are the keeper’s perquisites, as they are given so much for the head and tail of destructive animals. They therefore keep these trophies of the chase very carefully, as they are paid for them by Government once a month.
—It always buys tobacco, as good old Guillard used to say.
Robert exploring cupboardsI must confess that at this moment I would willingly have given up all these old bones in exchange for a few rolls of tobacco. I have only enough to last me two or three days, and that is really the only privation I dread. To me the forest is an inexhaustible larder. When my poultry-yard is empty, I shall be able to snare some of those fine cock-pheasants that come round the Hermitage to pick up the grains of buckwheat hidden in the wet soil. But tobacco! tobacco! . . .
I read a little, and have even tried to paint. Itwas a few mornings ago, in the light of a beautiful red sun, shining through the air thick with mist; under the shed was a heap of apples, tempting me by their lovely colouring of all shades, from the tender green of young leaves to the ardent glow of autumnal foliage. But I was not able to work for long. In a few minutes the sky became overcast. It was raining in torrents. And large flocks of wild geese, with outstretched necks and beating against the wind,passed over the house, announcing a hard winter and the approach of snow by the white down shaken from their wings.
Robert working on a picture
Wild geese over the house
Deserted roads in Champrosay
The same month. . .
To-day I made a long expedition to Champrosay. Reassured by the stillness around me, I harnessed Colaquet in good time, and we started. Failing the sight of a human face, I longed to gaze on roads and houses.
Damaged door in houseI found the country as deserted and silent, and far more dreary than before. The Prussians have only passed through, but they have left their mark everywhere. It seemed the very picture of an Algerian village after a swarm of locusts, a bare, devastated,devoured, and riddled scene; the houses with doors and windows all wide open, even to the little iron gates of the kennels and the latticed shutters of the rabbit-hutches. I went into some of the houses . . . Our peasants are rather like the Arabs. They are seen in the fields, in the courtyards, on their thresholds, but they do not often admit a Parisian inside their doors. Now I could thoroughly search into these unknown lives, these forsaken homes. Their habits still clung to them, and could be traced in the mantelpieces dark with soot, the hanging ropes in the courtyards where the washing is dried, the now empty nails driven into the walls, and on the walnut table, by the marks idly cut with a knife, and the notches made between each mouthful. All those village households were alike—I came upon one, however, that possessed one luxury more than the others—aparlour, or at least what was intended for a parlour. In a small brick-floored room behind the kitchen, a green paper had been put up, coloured glass had been let into the window, and a pair of giltfire-dogs, a round tea-table, and a large arm-chair covered with worn chintz, had been placed in it. The ambition of a peasant’s lifetime could be felt there. Certainly that man had said to himself, “When I shall be old, when I shall have slaved and laboured hard, I will become abourgeois. I will have a parlour like the mayor, and a comfortable arm-chair to sit in.” Poor devil! They have made a fine mess of his parlour!
A parlour in an abandoned house
I left Champrosay sad at heart. The desolation of those abandoned houses had struck and chilled me like the cold damp falling from the walls of a cellar. Instead of going straight hack to the Hermitage, I went a long way round by the woods. I felt a craving for air and Nature.
Unluckily all this side of the forest bears an aspect of wildness and neglect, which is not very inspiriting. Old and now unused quarries have left there piles of rocks, and a scattering of pebbles, which make the soil both dry and barren. Not a single blade of grass is to be seen on the paths. Wild stocks, brambles, and ivy alone spring up from out of these large gaping holes, clinging by all their roots to the uneven edges of the stones, and through thebare and interwoven branches, the quarries appear still deeper. For a short time we had been winding our way among the rocks. Suddenly Colaquet stopped short, and his ears began to tremble with fear. What is the matter with him? I lean forward and look . . . It is the body of a Prussian soldier that has been pitched down head-foremost into the quarry. I must confess it gave me a shudder. Had it been on the highway or in the plain, this corpse would not have horrified me so much. Where there are so many soldiers and so many guns, the probability of death seems ever present; but here in this hollow, in this out-of-the-way part of the wood, it bore an appearance of murder and mystery . . . Looking more attentively, I thought I recognised my robber of the other day, he who was singing so lustily about the month of May. Has he been killed by a peasant? But where could the peasant have come from? There is nobody left at Champrosay, Minville, or the Meillottes. More probably it is the result of some drunken quarrel between comrades, like the one I saw from the windows of the Hermitage . . .
I went home very quickly; and all through the evening I was haunted by the idea that my onlyguest, my only companion in the whole of the dreary forest, was that dead body stretched out on the red sand of the quarries . . .
Overgrown quarry
Robert gathering wood
Unknown date. . .
It is raining—it is cold. The sky is dark. I go to and fro in the Hermitage, tying up faggots and making bread, while the cannon thunders incessantly, and by a strange phenomenon disturbs the earth even more than the air. With my prison labour, my selfish and silent life in the midst of such a terrible drama, I compare myself to an ant, busily groping about on the surface of the soil, deaf to the sounds of humanity around it, all too great for itsinsignificance, and which surround without troubling it. From time to time, to divert my thoughts, I take a journey to Champrosay without any fear of meeting the Prussians, who have decidedly abandoned the Corbeil road, and are making their descent on Paris by way of Melun and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Once or twice, however, a horse’s gallop obliged me to take refuge in some shed, and I saw a rapid and hurried bearer of despatches riding across the country as if merely to unite it to headquarters, to take possession of the road, and mark it with the hoofs of the Prussian horses.
This deserted village, with its wide-open houses, interests and charms me like a sort of Pompeii. I wander through and examine it. I amuse myself by reconstructing the lives of these absent ones . . .
Prussian despatch rider
Champrosay washing-pond
Another day. . .
. . . Something strange is going on around me. I am not alone in the forest. There is evidently some one hiding near here, and some one who kills. To-day, in the washing-pond of Champrosay, I found a second corpse. A Saxon was stretched out there, only his fair head visible above the water, lying on the damp stone ledge. Moreover, he was well hidden away, thrust into oblivion in this small pond surrounded by brushwood, as securely as that otherone over there, in the quarry in the wood. I had by chance taken Colaquet to drink there. The sight of that long, motionless body startled me. Were it not for the pool of blood which stained the stones round his head, and mingled with the reflection of the purple sunset in the water, it might have been supposed that he was asleep, so quiet and peaceful were his features. I have often noticed that expression on the face of the dead. For the space of a brief moment there is something about them more beautiful than life: a solemn peace, a breathless slumber, a renewal of youth in the whole being, which seems like a pause between the agitations of life and the surprises of the unknown world opening before them.
Colaquet about to drinkWhile I was contemplating the unfortunate creature, night began to close in. In the clear and mellow twilight a great softness reigned over everything.The roads, already lighter than the sky, stretched out straight and regular. The forest spread out in dark masses, and beneath me a small vineyard path was faintly lighted up by a ray of moonlight. Overall Nature, reposing after the day’s labour—on the silent fields, the hushed river, the peaceful landscape gently fading into night—there was the same calm, the same grand peace that rested on the face of the dead soldier.
Saxon corpse in the pond
River scene in the park
Another day.
. . . Between Champrosay and the Meillottes, in the middle of a park which skirts the Seine, there stands a mansion built in the style of Louis XV. of the period of the Marquis d’Etiolles and Madame de Pompadour. Two thick straight rows of trees slope down to the river, showing, in summer-time, at the end of the arch of green foliage, a mirror of blue water blended with a blue sky. All the darkness of the old avenues seems to escape through these two vistas of light. At the entrance near the gates, a wide moat surrounding the lawns, a circle ofmoss-covered lime-trees and curbstones grazed by carriage-wheels, all combine to show the antiquity of this quiet old place. A fancy took me, and the other day I went in there.
By a winding path I reached the front of the steps. The doors were open, the shutters broken. On the ground-floor, in the large drawing-rooms, where the walls were all covered with white carved panels, not a single piece of furniture was left. Nothing but straw, and on the façade, between the stone carving of the balconies, were fresh marks and scratches, showing how the furniture had been thrown out through the windows. The billiard-room only was untouched. The Prussian officers are like our own, they are very fond of playing billiards. Only these gentlemen had amused themselves by making a target of a large mirror, and with its scratches, its chipped fragments, its small round holes looking black in the light, the mirror seemed like a frozen lake cut and furrowed by sharp skates. Inside, the wind rushed through the large windows battered down by bayonets and butt-ends of rifles, scattering and sweeping in the dead leaves on to the floors. Outside, it dashed under the green-leafed aisle, rocking aforgotten boat on the pond, full of broken twigs and golden-coloured willow-leaves.
I walked to the end of the avenues. There, at the end of the terrace, is a summer-house of red bricks overlooking the river; it is buried in the trees, and the Prussians have probably not seen it. The door, however, is ajar. I found a little sitting-room inside, hung with a flowery chintz, which seemed the continuation of the Virginian jasmine climbing through the latticed shutters; a piano, some scattered music, a book forgotten on a bamboo stool in front of the view over the Seine, and in the mysterious light of the closed shutters, the elegant and refined portrait of a woman looked out of a golden frame. Wife or maiden, who can tell? Dark, tall, with an ingenuous look, an enigmatic smile, and eyes the colour of thought—those Parisian eyes that change with each passing emotion. It is the first face I have seen for two months, and is so living, so proud, so youthful in its seriousness! The impression this picture has caused me is singular . . . I dreamt of the summer afternoons that she had spent there, seeking the solitude and freshness of this corner of the park. The book, the music, spoke of a refined nature; andthere lingered in the twilight of this little nook a perfume of the past summer, of the vanished woman, and of a tender grace left only in the smile of the portrait.
Mansion in the park
Portrait in summer-houseWho is she? Where is she? I have never seen her. I shall in all probability never meet her. And yet, without knowing wherefore, I feel less lonely as I gaze at her. I read the book which she was reading, made happy by its being marked.And since then, not a day passes without my thinking of her. It seems to me that if I had this portrait here, the Hermitage would be less desolate, but to complete the charm of the face, one ought also tohave the climbing jasmine of the summer-house, the rushes at the water’s edge, and the little wild plants of the moat, whose bitter aroma comes back to me as I write these lines.
Sitting-room containing portrait
Dead Prussian in ditch
One evening,on returning home.
. . . Found another dead Prussian. This one was lying in a ditch by the side of the road. That makes the third . . . And always the same wound, a horrible gash at the nape of the neck . . . It is almost like a signature of the same hand.
But who can it be? . . .
River scene