IITHE DESIRE
FINE weather had come. Three months still lay between us and the long vacation. Father, agreeing with the timid little colleague whom he had again called in to support his own opinion, declared that I was not to return to school until the end of the vacation next October.
“The child needs out-of-door air. The first thing is to build up his health.”
I was pained by this decision, which wounded my pride. If I were not in school during the last quarter, I could not hope for a wreath at the distribution of prizes. For I was full of emulation, and loved to take the first place, though this brought down upon me grandfather’s ridicule.
“Those classifications mean nothing. First or last it’s all one.”
Father laid out for me a very simple plan of life. A country walk morning and evening, far from the microbes of the town, where you can breath fresh air uncontaminated by human beings. Thus I should recover strength and appetite. But who would walk with me and be my guide? Who would undertake a peripatetic preceptorship of this sort? Father,already behind in his duties because of my long illness, belonged to his absorbing profession; mother, whose presence was certainly required by the whole family, especially the little ones, could hardly ever leave the house except to go to church. Aunt Deen had no out-of-door legs, a deficiency which did not prevent her going up and down stairs, from kitchen to tower, a hundred times a day. There remained grandfather. He always took a walk morning and evening on his own account; what would it cost him to take me along? This would suit all round; the plan was evidently the best possible.
I perceived, however, that it met a serious resistance, for I overheard my parents discussing it in the calm and confident tone which they always used when regulating, in perfect accord, all questions concerning us.
“I would not have him turn him against the house,” said my father.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if it were wrong to admit such a thought, “he wouldn’t do that! You don’t think that of your own father, surely! Of course he has his whims, and his ideas are not always ours. What he needs is God. But he is good hearted; he will be grateful to you for your confidence. And we could not ask such a thing of a stranger.”
“I am not quite satisfied with the plan,” said father.
A little later he resumed the subject. “I will speak to him; there seems to be no other way.”
When this proposition concerning me was broached to him, grandfather acceded to it without either enthusiasm or hostility, with an indifference that wounded me.
“I’d just as soon. It’s the same to me whether I take my walk alone or with some one.” (Naturally!) “Children ought to live out of doors. Study does no good. No more do medicines.”
Father no doubt had an interview with him at which I was not present, and the affair was decided. How would he act toward his new companion? He always treated my brothers and sisters and me, even the two youngest, like reasonable persons, though a little more interesting than others, lending to our remarks as much attention as to those of grown persons; but we had an impression that he couldn’t always tell us apart, and that he would cheerfully have dispensed with us all, which seemed to us an affront.
Why had father told mother that he was not quite satisfied? On the morning of my first walk with grandfather he was waiting for us at the door on our return. He inspected me, looking me over from head to foot, then, as if resolved, he took my hand and placed it in grandfather’s with a certain solemnity—as a reigning king might do, I thought.
“Here is my son,” he said; “I entrust him to you; he holds the future of our house.”
Grandfather received the precious trust indifferently, replying in a slightly sarcastic tone, thus at once putting the incident upon anevery-day footing:
“Don’t worry, Michel; no one is going to rob you of him.”
I smiled, standing between the two. How could grandfather rob my father of me?
The smallest details of that walk are present with me now. And rightly, so great was its importance in my life. But everything is important when one is little. After a rain the drenched fields seem to draw nearer to one another, and the plants reflect the sunlight from all their pendant drops. My eyes, purged by illness, must have thus shone.
“Where are we going, grandfather?”
I inclined to the direction of the town, where we should find attractions of all sorts, shops, bazars, show-windows, faces, noise and movement.
At the outset we were stopped by the closed gate, the key of which we had forgotten to bring.
“Run and get it, child. But why the devil should they barricade the gate?”
It was one of Aunt Deen’s thousand precautions; the previous evening, or the one before, she had seen from afar a gipsy waggon, and since then she had been keeping prudent guard over the household. I ran, somewhat scandalised by grandfather’s remark. Wasn’t it necessary to guard the house against enemies? A kingdom has frontiers which must be respected; was it not enough that shadows crossed them every evening in spite of gates and bolts?
We are off at last, and grandfather at once turns his back upon the town:
“Child, I don’t like towns.”
Good-bye to shops and people! We had not walked ten minutes when he took it into his head to leave the highroad, along which we were walking at our ease, quite properly, without hurry, and took a footpath which crossed the fields haphazard.
“You’re taking the wrong road, grandfather.”
“Not at all. Child, I detest roads!”
Well, well! he was more surprising than when he used to come down to the dining-room in his dressing gown and Greek cap. I had always supposed that roads were made to be used, not despised. And besides, how could one get along without them when one went out?
The hardly perceptible path which we had taken obliged us to walk single file. I went first, in the capacity of scout. The wheat on one side was already tall, on the other side were oats, quivering on their slender stems. I had learned to know the various grains from our farmer. Wheat and oats soon mingled fraternally before me.
“Grandfather, there is no more path.”
We might have expected it. Our path had vanished. Grandfather quietly passed before me, appeared to take his bearings, snuffed the wind, trampled down a few stalks, and reached a hedge which he overleaped with an ease that was surprising at his age.
“My boy,” he said, helping me to scramble through it, “I abhor fences.”
Our comradeship was beginning well! No roads, no fences! We soon entered a chestnut wood, not in the least like the four or five trees which were the pride of our domain. Here, above us, was a great vault supported by trunks and intermingled branches like so many colossal columns. I saw grandfather stoop and gather from the moss a mushroom that looked like a little white umbrella, wide open.
“This is a sort of amanita,” he said. “It is supposed to be poisonous, whereas it is edible.” (He tasted it to prove his words.) “It isn’t the season, yet. I will teach you to know all the cryptogams. There are very few noxious ones. Nature is good, and never wishes us harm. It is men who spoil her. I know a priest who lives on Satan bolets, and is never the worse.”
He laughed to himself at the priest who could swallow the devil without indigestion.
At last we reached an open space whence no house was to be seen, nor even a cultivated field,—not a trace of humanity. The woods separated us from the town and the lake, upon which a few craft were always sailing. At our back was a rocky hill, half covered with furze and brambles. A slender cascade fell from the summit and was transformed at our feet into a clear, noiseless rill. We were tramping through bracken and a coarse grass, starred with all the flowers of spring. The brook had given a rare exuberance to all this vegetation. The monotonoussound of the waterfall by no means disturbed the solitude of the spot, at once wild and gentle and so secluded. One might have thought oneself at the very end of the earth—or at its beginning. I felt at once happy and desolate.
I had of course taken many a walk with my father. But he always took us to heights that commanded a view; he would point out by name the mountains on the edge of the horizon, the villages in the plain below, the ports on both sides of the lake. He made us feel that the earth was inhabited, and that it was interesting and beautiful because it was inhabited. Now I suddenly discovered the charm of wild nature.
“What is its name?” I asked grandfather to reassure myself.
“The name of what?” he asked, not comprehending.
“The place where we are.”
The question surprised him, and provoked a little laugh that I did not enjoy.
“It has no name.”
“Who owns it?”
“Nobody.”
Nobody! That was very strange. Just as the house must always have belonged to us, I had supposed that the whole earth was divided into properties.
“To us, if you like,” grandfather went on.
And his laugh, his terrible little laugh, began to undermine my notions about life, my beliefs. It produced upon me the effect of the touch of the finger that I used to give when I erected great buildings with my blocks. The edifice grew higher, higher,—I barely touched with my finger one of the columns at the base, and down it all came.
“Oh, to us!” I protested.
People were not to take possession of other people’s property like that, simply because they did not know the owner’s name. Everything that I had been taught protested.
“Why, yes, little simpleton,” he replied. “Every one takes his own in the world. Do you like this bit of land? It is yours,—like the sun that warms us, the air that we breath, the loveliness of these early spring days.”
I was not convinced. Dim resistances awoke within me, shivering; I found no words to express them, and could only bring forward the poor objection:
“Yes, but I couldn’t take anything from it.”
“You take your pleasure from it, that’s the important thing.”
Confident of victory, he clinched it by invoking the testimony of a third party.
“Jean-Jacques would explain to you better than I can, that nature holds within itself the happiness of man. Jean-Jacques would have loved this retreat.”
He uttered the nameJean-Jacqueswith devout unction, pursing his lips. He spoke of him as Aunt Deen spoke of the best known and most useful saints, Saint Christopher, for example, who protects against accidents, or Saint Antony, who helps to find lost objects. Puzzled, I at once asked:
“Who is that—Jean-Jacques?”
“A friend; a friend whom you do not know.”
Why, I knew, or thought I knew, all grandfather’s friends. He received few visits, mostly from other old men, who appeared older than he, who seemed to be sad and who soon bored him. There was one who would sit down without saying a word, and would just sit a long time, motionless and mute. One day grandfather forgot that he was there and left the room. On his return he found him in the same place, fast asleep. Grandfather would complain openly about the visits of all these “old fogies” as he called them, not one of whom, I was certain, was named Jean-Jacques. On the other hand, he always liked to come down to the drawing-room when he thought he might meet ladies there.
Time pressing, we returned through the chestnut grove, but went out on another side, passing through a second hedge, this one of young acacias. It was with manifest pleasure that I saw houses and cultivated fields again.
“Come! here are private properties for you,” said grandfather when we reached the cultivated grounds. His lips curled with disdain. Not atall disconcerted I asked for landmarks.
“Where is ours?”
“I don’t know. Look over there, at the left. You’ll see it all right as we go on. As for me, when I take a walk I go where fancy leads me. One always gets home somehow.”
When we reached the highroad a strange and disquieting apparition presented itself. I clung to my new preceptor:
“Grandfather, look up the road!”
It seemed to be coming toward us from over the hill, with a slow uniform motion. In a few minutes it would be here. Grandfather shaded his eyes with his hands, the better to concentrate his vision, and explained the phenomenon:
“It’s the sheep that leave Provence every spring and go up to the high pastures. They are led there by easy stages. Let us get to the side of the road, beyond this pile of stones, and watch them go past.”
Thus instructed, I was soon able to distinguish between the almost white road and the yellow-grey and brown flock which composed a single moving mass,—repeated above all those regularly swaying backs by a thin cloud of dust which spread over the fields on either side. At once I saw again the picture in my Bible which showed Abraham travelling to the land of Canaan.
In front of the flock marched a shepherd, wrapped in a great capewhich must have been many a time exposed to wind and rain, for it was of the greenish colour of a thatched roof over which many winters have passed. Notwithstanding the sun, his ample covering appeared not to inconvenience him. No doubt our sun was not as warm as that which he had left behind. His hat pulled down over his eyes cast a dark shadow over the upper part of his face, only his grey beard being distinctly visible. He was an old man, and he advanced slowly with a slight swaying of the whole body. He might have been taken for a beggar but for an unconscious air of majesty which covered him like his cloak—that of a captain leading his company, that of a sower sowing his seed. He took no one step faster than another, and the rhythm of his regular advance seemed to communicate itself to the entire column. It gave an impression as of the whole landscape following, obeying in cadence a law which he fixed, the oxen tracing the furrows, the reapers laying bare the fields, the morning and the evening obedient to the time of returning, and even the stars at night traversing, unhastingly, a part of the sky which I had thought I could see moving in grandfather’s spy-glass.
He seemed to me so important that I bowed to him, but he did not return my salutation, nor deign to detach his attention from his absorbing task. Grandfather began a sentence:
“Tell me, shepherd ...” but deemed it useless to go on, recognisingthe intense seriousness of the man.
A black dog walked almost under his feet, and behind came, in a triangular group, three lean, hairless donkeys, laden with objects which could not be seen since they were covered with an awning. Their heads hung almost to the ground as if they would fain have snuffed it up, or browsed upon it. The main body of the army followed them, the sheep-people, crowding close to one another, eight or ten in a row when one could manage to count them, but most of the time the rows were indistinct, subject to flux and reflux, the great mass of wool undulating as if it were that of a single rampant and interminable animal, over which continual shivers passed.
I did not at first distinguish anything in this uniform and agitated mass. Then I noticed little black spots that were ears. By degrees, as I got used to them, certain individualities emerged from the compact, monotonous throng. There were rams, generally taller, with long horns rolled in a circle, and bells hanging from their necks by a wooden horseshoe shaped collar. There were sheep with white or black coats, better cared for than the others, walking with a certain ostentation. There were also vagabond animals, capricious as goats, which would gladly have escaped from the road but for the vigilance of the dogs that operated on the flanks of the procession, long-haired grey dogs, with eyes shining from cavernous depths under overhanging brows,attentive and active, not to be by any means distracted from their duty as sergeants. One of the sheep climbed upon the stones that protected us, and was immediately imitated by several of her companions. One of the guardians, open-mouthed, cut short the escapade, and forced them to return to their proper place.
They passed and they passed. I thought they would never be done, estimating their number at several thousands. Perhaps there really were three or four hundred of them. At last the flood slackened, the ranks grew thinner, seven or eight isolated sheep closed the procession. Last of all came the rearguard, composed of four pack mules and a second shepherd, less august and solemn than the first. When he had come opposite us grandfather, grown braver, put the question to which the other one had paid no heed:
“Well, shepherd, where are you going like that?”
He was a young man, supple, thin and muscular, wearing a short jacket, red sash, and hat on the back of his head,—one who cared neither for heat nor cold. His bronzed face was exposed to the full rays of the sun. He was whistling to pass away the time, and smiling while he whistled, as if he enjoyed his music—though perhaps it was the curve of his lips that made him look as if he were smiling.
At grandfathers question he burst into a frank laugh; his teeth shone between his lips—such teeth as I had seen in wolves or other wildbeasts in a menagerie to which I was once taken. He simply replied:
“To the mountain.”
How strange the resonance that certain syllables have for us! He might have designated by its name the mountain where his flocks were to pasture, and I should not have noticed it, but the unexpected lack of precision communicated to me by some sorcery a longing for the heights. It attacked me as suddenly and unexpectedly as a lightning shock. I had not felt the charm of the wild, bare place from which I was returning with grandfather; but now I was not only instantaneously initiated into it,—I augmented its wildness and isolation. I felt upon my brow a colder, sterner breath, the wind of summits which I had never seen. Later in my life poems and symphonies have given me this imaginary sensation, though more faintly. In each discovery that it makes the heart, like a virgin, gives of its freshness.
Before the passing of the sheep I had managed to discover where we were. Notwithstanding its surrounding trees, I had proudly recognised the house below us in the edge of the town. It had always appeared very large to me, vast as a kingdom, and now I seemed to find it small and insignificant, simply because I had heard within me the music of three words, “To the mountain.”
A few years later it was my lot to climb over mountains, those that are covered with pines and larches, and those whose only vegetation isice, those that are carpeted with grass, soft as rosy flesh, those that are all bone and muscle, like Michel Angelo’s figures, and again those whose treacherous whiteness only loses its immobility under the warming glow of the setting sun. They have taught me patience, calmness, and perhaps also contempt, though one of the most difficult of Christian precepts obliges us to despise no man. There I have met and tasted by turns war and peace, struggle and serenity, the intoxication of solitude and the glory of conquest in the blinding splendour of the snow. They have never given me anything that was not contained in germ in the shepherd’s reply.
On our return home, when we opened the gate, there were Tem Bossette and his two acolytes digging, their faces bent on the ground. One of them having perceived us, they rested with one accord, sure of our complicity.
Aunt Deen congratulated me on my red cheeks; mother thanked grandfather for his care of me. Father asked:
“Did you enjoy it?” and rejoiced when I answered in the affirmative. No one suspected, I least of all, that that little boy, till then contented, and never dreaming of anything outside of The House, had brought desire home with him from his walk.