“And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth!”
Besides reading the Bible with the family every evening, I read a chapter from it each morning before rising.
My Bible was a very small one, with exceedingly fine print. Pressed between its pages were some flowers that I was very fond of; especially was I of the spray of pink larkspur, which had the power of bringing very distinctly before my mind's eye the stubble fields (gleux) of the Island of Oleron where I had gathered it.
I do not know exactly how to explain the word gleux, but it means the stubble which remains after the grain is harvested, and those fields of short pale yellow stalks that the autumn sun dries and turns a bright golden. In these fields upon the Island, overrun by chirping grasshoppers, late corn-flowers and white and pink larkspur come up, grow very high, and blossom.
And upon winter mornings, before beginning to read, I always looked at the spray of flowers which still retained its delicate color, and there appeared to me a vision of the Island, and I longed for the summer time and for the warm and sunny fields of Oleron.
“And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth!
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”
When I read my Bible for myself, having then my choice of passages, I either selected that grand portion of Genesis wherein the light is separated from the darkness, or the visions and the marvels of Revelation. I was fascinated by its imaginative poetry, so splendid and yet so terrible, which has, in my opinion, never been equalled in any other book of mankind. . . . The beasts with seven heads, the signs in the heavens, the sound of the last trumpet were well-known terrors that haunted and enchanted my imagination.
In a book, a relic of my Huguenot ancestors, printed in the last century, I had seen pictures of these things. It was a “History of the Bible,” and the weird pictures illustrating the visions of the Book of Revelation, invariably, had dark backgrounds. My maternal grandmother kept this precious book, which she had brought from the Island, under lock and key in a cupboard in her room; and as it was still my habit to go there at the sad hour of dusk, it was then that I usually asked her to lend me the book, so that I might turn over its leaves as it lay upon her lap. In the dim twilight until it was too dark to see, I gazed at the multitude of winged angels who were flying rapidly under the curtain of blackness which presaged the end of the world. The heavens were darker than the earth, and in the midst of the great cloud masses, there was visible the simple and terrifying triangle that signified Jehovah.
Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine. I saluted as old acquaintances two gods with hawk heads that were cut in profile upon a stone and placed at each end of a strangely depicted Zodiac, and although I saw the picture for the first time upon an overcast day, there came to me, and of that I am sure, a sudden impression of great heat given out by a pitiless sun.
During the winter following the departure of my brother, I passed many of my leisure hours in his room painting the pictures in the “Voyage to Polynesia” which he had given me. With great care I first colored the flowers and the groups of birds. After that I painted the men. When I came to color the two young Tahitian girls who were standing at the edge of the sea (the illustrator had been inspired to depict them as nymphs) I made them white, all white and pink like a pretty little doll—I thought them very beautiful done so.
It was reserved for me to learn later than their color is different, and their charms quite otherwise.
My ideas of beauty have changed a great deal since that time, and it would have astonished me very much if I had then been told what faces I was to find most charming in the strange course of my later life. But almost all children are under the dominion of some fancy which dies out when they become men and women.
The majority of people, during the period of their innocence and youth, similarly admire the same type; sweet, regular features, and the fresh pink and white tints. Only at a later time does their estimate of what constitutes beauty vary, then it accords with the culture of their spirit, and especially does it follow in the wake of their developing intelligence.
I do not exactly remember at what period I started my museum which absorbed so much of my time. Just above my Aunt Bertha's room there was a tiny garret-chamber that I had taken possession of; the chief charm of the place was the window that opened to the west, and commanded a view of the ramparts and its old trees. The reddish spots in the distance, that broke the uniform green of the meadows, were herds of wandering oxen and cows. I had persuaded my mother to paper this attic room, and she had covered its walls with a pinkish chamois paper which is still there; she also put a what-not and some glass cases there. In these latter I placed my butterflies which I looked upon as rare specimens; I also arranged therein the birds'-nests that I had found in the woods of Limoise; the shells I had gathered upon the shores of the Island, and those others (brought from the colonies at an early time by unknown ancestors) that I had found in the garret at the bottom of old chests where they had lain for years and years, given over to dust and darkness.
I spent many tranquil hours in this retreat contemplating the tropical mother-of-pearl shells, and trying to image to myself the strange coasts from which they had come.
A good old great uncle of mine, who was very fond of me, encouraged me in these diversions. He was a physician, and in his youth he had lived for a long time upon the coast of Africa; he had a collection of natural history specimens almost as valuable and varied as any found in a city museum. His wonderful things captivated me: the rare and exquisite shells, amulets and wooden weapons that still retained their exotic odor, with which I became so surfeited later, and indescribably beautiful butterflies under glass enchanted me.
He lived in our neighborhood and I visited him often. To get to his cabinets, it was necessary to go through his garden where thorn-apples and cacti grew abundantly, and where they kept a gray parrot, brought from Gaboon, whose vocabulary consisted of words learnt from the negroes.
And when my old uncle spoke of Senegal, of Goree, and of Guinea, the music of these names intoxicated me, and conveyed to me vaguely something of the sad languor of the dark continent. My uncle predicted that I would become a great naturalist,—but he was as mistaken as were all those others who foretold my future; indeed he struck farther from the centre than any one else; he did not understand that my liking for natural history was no more than a temporary and erratic excursion of my unformed mind; he could not know that the cold glass and the formal, rigid arrangements of dead science had not power to hold me for long.
In the meantime, alas! I had to spend many long and wearisome hours in going through the form of studying my lessons.
Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in boarding schools; second, those who do all their studying at home at a window which overlooks a gloomy courtyard containing a twisted old fig tree; third, those who also study at home in a bright little room whose window commands a view of the street.
I belonged to that third class whom Topffer considers extraordinarily privileged, and as likely, in consequence, to grow up into happy men. My room was upon the first floor, and it opened into the street; it had white curtains, and its green paper was embellished with bouquets of white roses. Near the window was my work desk, and above it, upon a book-shelf, was my very much neglected library.
In fine weather I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my idleness seen, and reported by a meddlesome neighbor. Morning and evening I glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its sunny length between the white country houses and lost itself among the old trees growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the occasional passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood cats that prowled within doorways or upon house-tops, the swifts darting about in the warm air, and the swallows skimming along the dusty street. . . . Oh! how many hours have I spent at that window feeling like a caged sparrow, my spirit filled with vague reverie; and meantime my ink-blotted copy-book lay open before me, but no inspiration would come, and the composition that I was engaged upon got itself finished very laboriously,—often not at all.
And before long I began to play tricks upon the pedestrians, a fatal result of my idleness over which I often felt remorseful.
I am bound to confess that my great friend Lucette was usually a willing assistant in these pranks. Although now almost a young lady sixteen or seventeen years of age, she was at times almost as much of a child as I. “You must never tell any one!” she would say with an irrepressible smile of mischief in her merry eyes (but I may tell now after so many years have passed, now that the flowers of twenty summers have bloomed upon her grave).
Our pranks consisted of taking cherry stems, plum stones and any sort of trash, and wrapping them neatly into white or pink paper parcels that looked very attractive to the eye; we then threw these bundles into the street and hid ourselves behind the shutters to see who picked them up.
Sometimes we would write letters, impertinent or incoherent ones, with accompanying drawings to illustrate the text; these we addressed to the different eccentric people in our neighborhood, and, with the aid of a thread, we lowered them to the sidewalk at about the same time these persons were in the habit of passing. . . .
Oh! how merrily we laughed as we composed these hodge-podges of style! With no one else have I ever laughed so heartily as with Lucette,—and we usually roared over things that no one except ourselves could possibly have considered funny. Over and above the bond of little brother and grown sister there was between us a sympathy springing from our appreciation of the ridiculous, and our notions of what constituted fun were in complete accord. She was the sprightliest person I ever knew, and sometimes a single word would start us to laughing at our own or our neighbors' expense, until our sides ached and we almost fell upon the floor.
This part of my nature was not, I must confess, in harmony with the gloomy reveries evoked by the pictures of the Book of Revelation, and with my ascetic religious convictions. But I was already full of strange contradictions.
Poor little Lucette or Lucon (Lucon was the masculine for Lucette, and I used to call her “My dear Lucon”); poor little Lucette was also one of my professors, but one who caused me neither fear nor disgust. Like “Mr. Ratin” she also kept a book wherein she would inscribe “good” or “very good,” and I showed it to my parents every evening. Until now I have neglected to say that it had been one of her amusements to teach me to play upon the piano; she taught me by stealth so that I might surprise my parents by playing for them, upon the occasion of a family celebration, the “Little Swiss Boy” or the “Rocks of St. Malo.” The result was she had been requested to go on with lessons that had had such a favorable beginning, and my musical education was entrusted to her until it came time for me to play the music of Chopin and Liszt.
Painting and music were the only things I worked at industriously and faithfully.
My sister taught me painting; I do not, however, remember when I commenced it, but it must have been very early in my life; it seems to me that there was never a time when I was not able, with my pencil or my brush, to express in some measure the odd fancies of my imaginations.
In my grandmother's room, at the bottom of the cupboard where she kept “The History of the Bible,” with the terrible pictures illustrating the visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics. In particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was extremely tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a marvel of the printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they told me, so that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the persecutions our ancestors had often carried it about with them, concealed in their clothing. There was also, in a paste-board box, a bundle of letters written on parchment and marked Leyden or Amsterdam. Those written between the years 1702 and 1710 were secured by a large wax seal stamped with a count's coronet.
They were letters of our Huguenot ancestors, who, at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had quitted their country, their home and their dear ones, rather than abjure their faith. The letters had been written to an old grandfather, a man too aged to go the way of the exile, who was able, for some inexplicable reason, to remain unmolested in his retreat upon the Island of Oleron. The letters testified to the fact that the exiles had been submissive and respectful towards him to a degree unknown in our day; the wanderers wrote asking his advice or his consent before undertaking anything,—they even asked whether they might wear a certain wig which was fashionable in Amsterdam at that time. They spoke of their troubles, but without murmuring over them, with a truly Christian resignation; their goods had been confiscated; they were obliged to follow uncongenial trades in order to maintain themselves; and they hoped, they said, with the aid of God always to make enough to keep their children from starving.
Together with the respect that these letters inspired, they had also the charm of age; it was a novel experience to enter into the life of a bygone time, to know the inmost thoughts of those who had lived a century and a half before me. And as I read them I was filled with indignation against the Roman Church and Papal Rome, sovereign during the many past centuries.—Surely it was she who was designated, in my opinion at any rate, in that wonderful prophecy contained in Revelation: “And the beast is a City, and its seven heads are Seven Hills on which the woman sitteth.”
My grandmother, always so austere and upright looking in her black clothes, a type of a Huguenot woman, had been fearful for her own safety during the Restoration, and although she never spoke of it, we felt that she must have very depressing memories of that time.
And upon the Island, in the shade of a bit of woodland that was encircled by a wall, I had seen the place where slept those of my ancestors who had been excluded from the cemeteries because they had died in the Protestant faith.
How could I be anything but faithful with such a past? And it is certain that had the Inquisition been revived in my childhood, I would have suffered martyrdom joyfully, like one filled to overflowing with the spirit of God.
My faith was a faith that kept watch upon the theological errors of the time, and I did not know the resignation felt by my ancestors; in spite of my distaste for reading I often plunged into books of religious controversy; I knew by heart the many passages from the Fathers and the decisions of the first councils; I could have discussed the dogmas of the church like a doctor of divinity, and I considered my arguments against the papacy very shrewd.
But notwithstanding my fervor a distaste for all of these religious things would often take possession of me; sometimes at church especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,—how early I divined its hollowness,—and how deep was my disappointment, and how cruel the disillusionment—oh! the disheartening formalism of it all! The very appearance of the church disconcerted me: it was a new cityfied one, meant to be pretty without, however, meaning to be too much so; I especially recall certain little efforts at wall decoration which I held in the greatest abomination, and shuddered when I looked at. It was that disgust in little which I experienced in so great a degree when later I attended those Paris churches that strive so for elegance, where one is met at the door by ushers whose shoulders are tricked out with knots of ribbon. . . . Oh! for the congregation of Cevennes! Oh! for the preachers of the wilderness!
Such little things as I have mentioned did not shake my faith which seemed as solid as a house built upon a rock; but doubtless they made the first imperceptible crevice through which, drop by drop, oozed the melting ice-cold water.
Where I still knew true meditation, and felt the deep sweet peace one should feel in the house of God was in an old church in the village of St. Pierre Oleron; my great grandfather Samuel had, at the time of the persecutions, worshipped and prayed there, and my mother had also attended it during her girlhood days. . . . I also loved those little country churches to which we sometimes went on Sunday in the summer time: they were generally old and had simple whitewashed walls. They were built any where and every where, in a corner of a wheat field with wild flowers growing all about them; or in more retired places, in the centre of some enclosure at the far end of an avenue of old trees. The Catholics have nothing, in my opinion, which surpasses in religious charm these humble little sanctuaries of our Protestant ancestors—not even do their most exquisite stone chapels hidden away in the depth of the Breton woods, that at a later time I learned to admire so much, touch me so deeply.
I still held fast to my determination to become a minister; it still seemed to me that that was my duty. I had pledged myself, in my prayers I had given my word to God. How could I therefore break my vow?
But when my young mind busied itself with thoughts of the future, more and more veiled from me by an impenetrable darkness, my preference was for a church which should be a little isolated from the noisy world, for one where the faith of my congregation should ever remain simple, for one receiving its consecration from a long past of prayers and sincerest worship.
It would be in the Island of Oleron perhaps!
Yes; there, surrounded upon every side by the memories of my Huguenot ancestors, I could look forward without dread, indeed with much contentment, to a life dedicated to the service of the Lord.
My brother had arrived at the Delightful Island. His first letter dated from there was a very long one, it was written on thin paper that had been stained a light yellow by the sea, for it had been upon its way four months.
It was a great event in our family, and I still recall that as my father and mother broke its seal, I sprang joyously up the stairs, two steps at a time, in my haste to reach the second floor and call my grandmother and aunts from their rooms.
Inside the plump-feeling envelope, which was covered over with South American stamps, there was a note for me, and enclosed in this I found a pressed flower, a sort of five-petalled star which, though somewhat faded, was still pink. The flower, my brother wrote, was from a shrub that had taken root and blossomed beside his window, almost within his Tahitian hut, which was actually invaded by the luxuriant vegetation of the region. Oh! with what deep emotion;—with what avidity, if I may express it thus, did I gaze at and touch the periwinkle which was almost a fresh and living part of that unknown and distant land, of that voluptuous nature.
Then I pressed it again with so much care that I possess it intact to this day.
And after many years, when I made a pilgrimage to the humble dwelling in which my brother lived during his stay in Tahiti, I saw that the shady garden surrounding it was rosy with these periwinkles; they had even pushed their way over the threshold of the door to blossom within the deserted cabin.
After my ninth birthday my parents, for a time, spoke of putting me into boarding-school, so that I might become habituated to the harder ways of life, and since the matter was talked over by all the members of the family, I went about for several days feeling as if I were on the eve of being sent to prison, for I imagined that a boarding-school had high walls and windows guarded by iron bars.
But, upon reflection, they considered that I was too frail and delicate a human plant to be thrown in contact with those others of my kind who, in all probability, would play roughly, and have bad manners; they concluded, therefore, to keep me at home a little longer.
At any rate I was delivered from “Mr. Ratin.” The old professor, rotund of figure and kind of manner, who succeeded him, was less distasteful to me, but I made just as little progress under his care. In the afternoon, at about the time for his arrival, I would hastily begin to prepare my lessons. I was then usually to be found at my window, hidden behind the venetian blinds, with my book open at the page containing the lesson; and when I saw him come into view at the turning near the bottom of the street I commenced to study it.
And generally by the time he arrived I knew enough to receive, if not to merit, a “pretty good,” a mark over which I did not grumble.
I had also my English professor who came to me every morning,—and whom I nicknamed Aristogiton (I do not now recall why). Following the Robertson method, he had me paraphrase the history of Sultan Mahmoud. Outside of that, the only thing that I am sure of is that I accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing, less than nothing; but he had the good taste not to growl at me, and in consequence I have an almost affectionate remembrance of him.
During the extreme heat of the summer days it was my custom to study in the yard; I took my ink-stained copy and lesson books and spread them upon a table that stood in the summer house made shady by the vines and honeysuckles that grew over it. And when I was nicely settled there I felt that I might idle to my heart's content. From behind the lattice-work, green with trellised vines, I kept a lookout in order to see any danger that threatened in the distance. . . . I was always careful to bring with me to this retreat a quantity of cherries and grapes, whichever happened to be in season, and truly I could have passed there hours of the most delicious reverie but for the remorse that tormented me almost every moment, a remorse born of the fact that I was not busying myself with my lessons.
Through the foliage I saw, close to me, the cool-looking pond with its tiny grottoes which, since my brother's departure, I almost worshipped. The little fountain in the centre stirred the waters and made the sunlight that fell on its surface dance joyously; and the sun's rays pierced the green verdure surrounding me—I seemed to be in the midst of luminous water that quivered all about me with a ceaseless motion.
My arbor was a shady little retreat that gave me a complete illusion of country; from the far side of the old wall came the song of the tropical birds belonging to Antoinette's mother, and I heard the rollicking warble and twitter of the swallows perched on the house-top, and the chirp of the common sparrows as they flew about among the trees in the garden.
Sometimes I would throw myself face-upward full length upon the green bench that was there, and through the tasselled honeysuckle I had a view of the white clouds as they sailed across the blue of the sky. There, too, I was initiated into the habits of the mosquitos who all day long poised themselves tremblingly, by means of their long legs, upon the leaves. And often I concentrated all my attention upon the old wall where the insects acted out their tragical drama: the cunning spider would come suddenly from his nook and ensnare in his web the heedless little insects,—with the aid of a straw, I was usually able to deliver them from their peril.
I have forgotten to mention that I had, for companion, an old cat called Suprematie, who had been my faithful and beloved friend since infancy.
Suprematie knew at what hour he would find me there, and he used to slip in quietly upon the tips of his velvet paws; he never stretched himself beside me without first looking at me questioningly.
The poor creature was very homely; he was marked queerly upon only one side of his body; moreover, in a cruel accident he had twisted his tail, and it hung down at a right angle. He was the subject of Lucette's continual mockery, for she had a lovely Angora cat that had usurped Suprematie's place in her affections. It was my habit to run out to see her when she came to inquire after the members of my family; she rarely failed to add, with a funny air of concern, which made me burst out laughing in spite of myself: “And your horror of a cat, is he in good health, my dear?”
During all this time my museum made great progress, and it soon became necessary for me to have some new shelves put up.
My great uncle continued to take a very deep interest in my taste for natural history, and among his shells he found a number of duplicates, and these he presented to me. With indefatigable patience he taught me the scientific classifications of Cuvier, Linne, Lamarck or Bruguieres, and I was astonished at the attention with which I listened to him.
In a very old little desk, that was a part of the furniture of my museum, I had a copy-book into which I copied, from uncle's notes, and numbered with the greatest care, the name of the species, genus, family and class of each shell,—also the place of its origin. And there by the dim light that fell upon the desk, in the silence of that little retreat so high above the street, surrounded with objects what had come from distant corners of the earth and from the depths of the sea, when my mind wandered, and I became fatigued because of the mysterious differences in the forms of animals, and because of the infinite variety of shells, with what emotion I wrote down in my book, opposite the name of a Spirifer or a Terebratula, such enchanting words as these: “Eastern coast of Africa,” “coast of Guinea,” “Indian Ocean.”
I recall that in this same museum I experienced, one afternoon in March, a peculiar feeling indicative of my tendency towards reaction, that later, at certain periods of self-abandonment, caused me to seek the rough and uncouth society of sailors, and made me revel in noise and change and gayety.
It was Mardi-Gras time. At sundown I had gone out with my father to see the masqueraders who were in the streets; and having returned rather early I went immediately to my attic-room to classify some shells. But the noise of the revellers and the clashing of their tambourines reached even to the retreat where I was occupying myself with scientific matters, and the sounds awakened in me a feeling of inexpressible sadness. It was the same emotion, greatly intensified, that I had when I listened, of winter evenings, to the old cake vendor, and heard her voice die away into those far-off squalid streets near the harbor. I experienced an unexpected anguish very difficult to define in words. I had a vague impression, which was the cause of my suffering, that I was imprisoned; and for the moment, I thought that my liking for dry classifications and nature study shut me away from the little boys of every age who were in the streets below mingling with the sailors, more childish than they, who tricked out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked and sang coarse songs. It goes without saying that I had no desire to be one of them; the very idea of jostling against them filled me with distaste, and I disdained their rude sport. And I sincerely felt that it was better for me to be where I was, occupied with putting the many-colored family of the Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the Gastropoda in order.
But nevertheless the gay and merry people in the street troubled me strangely. And, as was usual with me when I felt distressed, I went down to look for my mother for the purpose of begging her to come up to keep me company. Astonished at my request (for I scarcely ever asked any one into my den), astonished especially by my anxious manner, she said with an air of pleasantry that it was silly for a boy of ten to be afraid to stay alone; but she consented to return with me, and when there she seated herself close to me and occupied herself with a piece of embroidery. Oh! how reassuring was her sweet and darling presence! I returned to my task without concerning myself further about the noise of the maskers, and as I worked I glanced up now and again to look at her beautiful profile cut in silhouette, because of the darkness without, upon my tiny window pane.
I am surprised that I cannot recall whether my desire to become a minister transformed itself into a wish to lead the more militant life of missionary, by a slow process or suddenly.
It seems to me that the change must have come at a very early period. For a long time I had taken an interest in Protestant missions, especially in those established in Southern Africa, among the Bassoutos. During my childhood we subscribed for the “Messenger,” a monthly journal that had for frontispiece an interesting picture which, very early in my life, made a forcible impression upon me.
This picture held a higher place in my regard than those of which I have already spoken, but by no means because of its execution, its color or background. It represented an impossible pine tree growing at the edge of a sea, behind which a resplendent sun was setting, and, at the foot of the tree, there was a young savage who was watching the approach of a ship, from a distant point upon the horizon, that was bringing to him the glad tidings of Salvation.
Early in my life, when from the warm depths of my soft and downy nest, I looked out upon a yet formless world, that picture evoked many dreams; later when I was more capable of appreciating the extreme crudity of the design, that huge sun, half-engulfed in the sea, and that tiny mission boat sailing towards the unknown shores still had a very great charm for me.
Now when they questioned me I replied: “I expect to be a missionary.” But I spoke in a low voice, in the voice of one not sure of himself, and I felt that they no longer believed in my asseverations. Even my mother, when she heard my response, smiled sadly.
Doubtless my answer exceeded what she expected from my faith;—probably she said to herself that it was never to be; no doubt she thought that I would become something very different, in all probability something less desirable, that it was impossible at this time to foresee.
This determination of mine to become a missionary seemed to solve my every problem. It would mean long voyages and an adventurous, perilous life,—but journeys would be undertaken in the service of the Lord, and the dangers endured for His blessed cause. That solution brought me great tranquillity for a long time.
After having thus won peace for my religious conscience, I feared to dwell upon the thought lest it should disclose some unexpected weaknesses. But still the chill waters of commonplace sermons, with their endless repetitions and stock phrases, continued to flow over and wash away my early faith. My shrinking from life increased rather than diminished. There seemed to hang between me and the years to come a great curtain whose heavy folds it was impossible for me to lift.
In preceding chapters I have not said much about that Limoise which was the scene of my initiation into nature and its wonders. My entire childhood is intimately connected with that little corner of the world, with its ancient forests of oak trees, and its rocky moorlands covered here and there with a carpet of wild thyme and heather.
For ten or twelve glorious summers I went there to spend my Thursday holidays, and I dreamed of it during the dreary intervening days of study.
In May our friends the D——-s and Lucette went to their country home and remained until vintage time, usually until after the first October frost,—and regularly every Wednesday evening I was taken there.
Nothing in my estimation was so delightful as that journey to Limoise. We scarcely ever went in a carriage, for it was not more than three and a half miles distant; to me, however, it seemed very far, almost lost in the woods. It lay toward the south, in the direction of those distant, sunny lands I loved to think of. (I would have found it less charming had it been towards the north.)
Every Wednesday evening, at sunset, the hour therefore varying with the month, I left home accompanied by Lucette's elder brother, a grown boy of eighteen or twenty, who seemed to me a man of mature age. As far as I was able I tried to keep pace with him, and, in consequence, I was obliged to go more rapidly than when I walked with my father and sister; we went through the quiet streets lying near the ramparts, and passed the sailors' old barracks, the sounds of whose bugles and drums reached as far as my attic museum when the south wind blew; then we passed through the fortifications by the most ancient of its gray gates,—a gate almost abandoned, and used now principally by peasants with flocks of sheep and droves of cattle,—and finally we arrived at the road that led to the river.
A mile and a half of straight road stretched before us, and this path lay between stunted old trees yellow with lichens whose branches were blown to the left by the force of the sea-winds that almost constantly came from the west, sweeping over the broad and level meadows that lay between us and the ocean.
To those who have a conventionalized idea of country beauty, and to whom a charming landscape means a river winding its way between poplars, or a mountain crowned by an old castle, this level road would look very ugly.
But I found it exquisite in spite of its straight lines. Upon the left there was nothing to be seen but grassy meadow land over which herds of cattle strayed. And before us, in the distance, something that resembled a line of ramparts shut in the plains sadly: it was the edge of a rocky plateau at whose base flowed the river. The far bank of this river was higher than the side that we were on, and was, in some respects, of a different character, but for the most part it was as flat and monotonous. And it is just this sameness that has so much charm for me, an attraction appreciated seemingly by few others. The great level plains with their calm and tranquil straight lines are deeply and profoundly inspiring.
There is nothing in our vicinity that I love any better than the old road; perhaps I have an affection for it because during my school-boy days I built so many castles-in-Spain upon those flat plains where, from time to time, I find them again. It is one of the few spots that has not been disfigured by factories, docks and railways. It seems a spot that belongs peculiarly to me, and certainly no one has the power to contest my spiritual right to it.
The sum of the charm of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an emanation from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for himself according to his power, and we have it back again in the measure of our out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the deep meaning of this well-known truth. . . . During my childhood and youth the charm seemed to reside in the thing itself, to have its habitation in the old walls and the honeysuckle of my garden; I thought it lay along the sandy shores of the Island and upon the grassy meadows and rocky moorland about me. Later on, in pouring out my admiration every where, as I did, I drew too heavily upon the well-spring—I exhausted it at the source. And, alas! I find the land of my childhood, to which I will no doubt return to die, changed and shrunken, and only for a moment, in certain spots, am I able to recreate the illusions I have lost;—there I am for the most part weighed down by the crushing memories of bygone days. . . .
As I was saying before my digression, every Wednesday evening I walked with a light and joyous step along the road that led towards those distant rocks lying at the boundary of the plains, I went gayly towards that region of oak trees and mossy stones in which Limoise was situated,—my imagination greatly magnified it in those days.
The river we had to cross was at the end of the straight avenue of lichened trees so harried by the west winds. The river was very changeable, being subject to the tides and to all the moods of the neighboring ocean. We crossed in a ferry-boat or a yawl, always having for our oarsmen old sailors with bleached beards and sunburnt faces whom we had known from earliest childhood.
When we reached the other bank, the rocky one, I always had a curious optical illusion: it seemed to me that the town from which we had come, and whose gray ramparts we still could see, suddenly drew very far away from us, for in my young head distances exaggerated themselves strangely. Upon this side all was different, the soil, the grass, the wild flowers and even the butterflies that hovered over them; nothing here was like those approaches to our town in whose fens and meadows I took my daily walk. And the differences, which perhaps others would not have noticed, thrilled and charmed me, for it had been my habit to spend, perhaps to waste, my time in observing the infinitesimally small things in nature, and I had often lost myself in contemplation of the lowliest mosses. Even the twilights of these Wednesday evenings had about them something distinctive and peculiar which I cannot express; generally we reached the far shore just as the sun was setting, and we watched it, from the height of the lonely plateau, disappear behind the tall meadow-grass through which we had but newly come, and as it sunk its great ruddy dish seemed uncommonly large.
After crossing the river we turned off the high-road and took an unfrequented way that led through a region called “Chaumes,” a very beautiful place at that time but horribly profaned to-day.
“Chaumes” lay at the entrance of a village whose ancient church we saw in the distance. As it was public property it had kept intact its native wildness. This “Chaumes” was a sort of table-land composed of a single stone, and this rock, which undulated slightly, was covered with a carpet of short, dry fragrant plants that snapped under our feet; and a whole world of tiny gayly-colored butterflies and tinier moths fluttered among the rare and delicate flowers growing there.
Sometimes we passed a flock of sheep guarded by a shepherd much more countrified looking and tanned than those seen in the meadows about our town. Lonely and sun-scorched, Chaumes seemed to me the very threshold of Limoise: it had its very odor, the mingled scent of wild thyme and sweet marjoram.
At the end of the rocky moor was the hamlet of Frelin. I love this name of Frelin, for I think of it as being derived from those large and fierce hornets (frelons) that build their nests in the heart of a certain species of oak tree found in the forests of Limoise; to get rid of these pests it is necessary, in the springtime, to build great fires around the infested trees. This hamlet was composed of three or four cottages. They were all low, as is the custom of our country, and they were old, very old and gray; above the little rounded doorways were half-effaced ornamental Gothic scrolls and blazonments. I scarcely ever saw them except at dusk, as twilight was falling, and the hour and the quaint little houses themselves awoke in me an appreciation of the mystery of their past; above all these humble dwellings attested to the antiquity of this rocky ground, so much older than the meadows of our town which had been won from the sea, and where nothing that dates before the time to Louis XIV is to be found.
As soon as we left Frelin I commenced to look eagerly along the path ahead of me, for after that we usually spied Lucette, either afoot or in a carriage, coming to meet us. As soon as I caught a glimpse of her I would run ahead to embrace her.
On our way through the village we passed the tiny church, a wonder of the twelfth century, built in the rarest and most ancient Romanesque style;—and then as the shadows of evening deepened we saw, in the semi-darkness before us, something that had the form of tall dark legions: it was the forest of Limoise, composed almost wholly of evergreen oaks, whose foliage is very dark and sombre. We then came into the road leading directly to the house; on our way we passed the well where the patient, thirsty cattle awaited their turn to drink. And finally we opened the little old gate, and traversed the first grassy courtyard which the shadowing trees, a century old, plunged into almost total darkness.
The house lay between this courtyard and a large uncultivated garden that extended to the edge of the oak forest. As we entered the ancient dwelling, with its whitewashed walls and old-fashioned wainscoting, I always looked eagerly for my butterfly-net that was usually to be found hanging in the place where I had left it, ready for the next day's chase.
After dinner it was our custom to go to the foot of the garden, and there we sat in an arbor that was built against the old wall encircling the yard,—this bower faced away from the unfriendly darkness of the woods where the owls hooted. And while we were seated in the beautiful, mild, star-bespangled night, suddenly upon the air, musical with the chirping of myriad crickets, there was heard the tolling of a bell,—heard very clearly by us although it came from afar off,—it was the church bell in the village announcing the evening service.
Oh! the vesper bell of Enchillais heard in that beautiful garden long ago! Oh! the sound of that bell, a little cracked but still silvery, like the once beautiful voices of very old people which still retain something of their sweetness. What charm of past times, and half sad meditations of peaceful death, were awakened by that music which spread itself into the limpid darkness of the surrounding country! And we heard the bell chiming for a long time, but its sound reached us fitfully; one while it seemed to be near, and then again it seemed far away, as it obeyed the will of the soft night wind that was stirring. I bethought me of all those who, on their lonely farms, were listening to it; I bethought me, too, of all the unpeopled places round about where it would be heard by no one, and a shudder passed through me at the thought of the near-by forest, where the sweet vibrations of the bell would die.
The municipal council, composed of very superior spirits, after having first put its everlasting tri-colored flag upon the steeple of the little Roman Catholic Church, then suppressed its vesper bell. Its day is done; and we shall never again, upon summer evenings, hear that call to prayers.
Going to bed there was always a very enlivening proceeding, especially when there was the prospect of a whole Thursday of play before me. I would, I am sure, have been very much afraid in the guest chamber, which was on the ground floor of the great, isolated house; but until my twelfth year I slept on the floor above, in the spacious room occupied by Lucette's mother;—with the aid of screens they had made for me a little room of my own. In this retreat there was a book-case with glass doors that belonged to the time of Louis XIV; this was filled with treatises, a century old, upon navigation, and with sailors' log-books that had not been opened for a hundred years. Tiny, scarce visible butterflies, that entered by the open windows, were to be found here all summer long, sleeping with extended wings upon the whitewashed walls. And often the most exciting incident of the day happened just as I was falling asleep; sometimes then an unwelcome bat found his way into the room and circled wildly about the lighted candles; or an enormous moth buzzed in and we would chase him with a cobweb-broom. Or again a storm descended upon us and the great trees lashed their branches against the house, and the old shutters slammed back and forth, and we waked with a start.