THE ENTRANCE TO THE EARTH
Rather than assail the escarpments of the mountain with the iron point of my stick I should prefer to see, from this low, flat plain across which I wander, the mountains seated around me like a hundred ancient men in the glory of the afternoon. The sun of Pentecost illumines the earth, swept and garnished and impressive as a church. The air is so cool and so clear that it seems as if I walked naked. All is peace. One hears on all sides, like the cry of a flute, the notes of chain-pumps in unison, drawing water from the fields (three by three, the men and women beat upon the triple wheel, their arms hooked to the beam, their laughing faces covered with sweat), and a friendly territory opens before the steps of the walker.
I measure with my eyes the circuit I must follow. I know how, from the top of the mountain, the plain with its fields will resemble an old stained-glass window with irregular panes set in a network of lead. By straight footpaths of the earth that frames the rice-fields, I finally begin on the paved way.
It crosses the rice-fields, the orange groves, the villages,—guarded at one outlet by their great banyan (the Father to whom all the children of the country are brought for adoption) and at the other, not far from the wells of water and pits of manure, by the fane of the local gods who, both armed from head to foot with bow at belly, painted on the gate, roll their tri-colored eyes toward each other. And, as I advance turning my head from right to left, I taste slowly the changes of the hours, because, as a perpetual wayfarer, a wise judge of the length of shadows, nothing of the august ceremony of the day escapes me. Drunk with beholding, I understand it all. This bridge still to cross in the peace of the lunch hour, these hills to climb and to descend, this valley to traverse; and already I see, between three pines, the steep rock where I must take up my post to assist at the crowning ceremony of that which was a day.
It is the moment of solemn reception when the sun crosses the threshold of the earth. Fifteen hours ago it passed the line of the illimitable sea; and, like an eagle resting motionless on its wings to examine the country from afar, it has gained the highest part of the sky. Now it declines its courseand the earth opens to receive it. The gorge to which the sun sets its mouth disappears under the level rays as if it were devoured by fire. The mountain where a conflagration has flared up like a crater, sends toward the sky an enormous column of smoke. And below, touched by an oblique ray, the line of a torrent flashes. Behind spreads out the earth of all the earth, Asia with Europe; like the central height of an altar, an immense plain; and then, far beyond that, like a man flat on his face on the water, France; and, in the thickest of France, joyous and fertile Champagne. Only the top of the golden targe can be seen now, and at the moment it disappears the evening star sends across the sky a dark and vertical ray. It is the time when the sea which follows it, lifting itself from its bed with a profound cry, hurls its shoulder against the earth.
Now I must go. So high that I must lift my chin to see it, the summit of Kuchang, detached by a cloud, is hung like an island in the exquisite spaces; and, thinking of nothing else, I walk as though my head were detached from my body,—like a man whom the acidity of too strong a perfume has satiated.