The Story of a Child Part 13

I read Telemaque in very small doses; two or three pages a day was generally enough to satisfy my curiosity and to ease my conscience for the day; that task over, I went down hurriedly to find my little friends, and we would set out on a trip to the woods and vineyards.

My uncle's garden, my other place of retreat, was not attached to the house, but was situated, as were all the other ones in the village, beyond the ramparts of the town. It was surrounded by very high walls, and one had entrance to it through an old arched gate that was unlocked with an enormous key. Upon certain days, armed with my Telemaque and my b.u.t.terfly-net, I isolated myself there.

In the garden there were several plum trees, and from them there fell, onto the warm earth, over-ripe plums of the same variety as those drying on the ancient roofs. The old arbor was trellised with grape vines, and legions of flies and bees feasted upon the musky, fragrant grapes. The extreme end of the garden, for it was a very large one, was overgrown like an ordinary field with alfalfa.

The charm of this old orchard lay in the feeling it gave one of being greatly secluded, of being absolutely alone in a wilderness of s.p.a.ce and silence.

I must not forget to speak of the old arbor that two summers later was the scene of the most momentous act of my childhood. It backed against the surrounding wall, and its lattice-work was overspread with muscadine vines that the sun scorched and withered.

In this garden, for some inexplicable reason, I had the impression of being in the tropics, in the colonies of my fancy. And in truth the tropical gardens that I saw later were filled with the same heavy fragrance and had much the same appearance. From time to time rare b.u.t.terflies, such as are not often seen elsewhere, flitted through the garden. From a front view they looked like common yellow and black b.u.t.terflies, but a side view showed them to be as glistening and as beautiful a blue as the exotic ones from Guinea that I had seen under gla.s.s in my uncle's museum. They were very wary and difficult to ensnare, for they rested only for a second at a time upon the fragrant muscadel grapes before fluttering away over the wall. Sometimes I would place my foot in a crevice of the stone wall, and scramble up to the top to look after them as they flew across the hot and silent fields; and often I remained there on the coping for a long time, propped upon my elbows, and contemplated the distant landscape. Every where upon the horizon there were wooded mountains surrounded here and there by the ruins of feudal castles. Before me, in the midst of fields of corn and buckwheat, was the Bories estate. Its old arched porch, the only one in the neighborhood that was whitewashed, looked like one of those entry-ways that are so common in African villages. This estate, I had been told, belonged to the St. Hermangarde children, who were destined to become my future comrades. They were expected almost daily, but I dreaded to have them come, for my little band composed of the Peyrals seemed all sufficient and extremely well chosen.

CHAPTER XLV.

Castelnau! This ancient name brings to me visions of glorious suns.h.i.+ne and of clear light s.h.i.+ning upon n.o.ble heights; it evokes the gentle melancholy that I felt among its ruins, and recalls to me my dreams before the dead splendors buried there for so many centuries.

The old ruin of Castelnau was perched on one of the most heavily wooded mountains in the neighborhood, and its reddish stone turrets and towers stood out boldly against the sky.

By looking over and beyond the wall surrounding my uncle's garden I could see the ancient castle. Indeed, it was a conspicuous point in the landscape, and one immediately saw its rough red stones emerging from the interlaced trees; one instantly noted the ancient ruin crowning the mountain all overgrown with the beautiful verdure of chestnut and oak trees.

Upon the day of my arrival I had caught a glimpse of it, and I was attracted by this old eagle's nest which must have been a superb place of refuge during the stormy middle ages. It was a common custom in my uncle's family to go up there two or three times a month to dine and pa.s.s the afternoon with the proprietor, an old clergyman, who lived in a comfortable house built against one side of the ruin.

For me those days were like a revel in fairy land.

We started very early in the morning so that we should be beyond the plains before the hottest period of the day. When we arrived at the foot of the mountain we were refreshed by the cool shade of the forest, enveloped in its mantle of beautiful green. As we went up and up, by zig-zag paths, afoot, and in single file, under lofty arching oaks and intertwined foliage our line of march resembled a huge serpent. I was reminded of Gustave Dore's engravings of mediaeval pilgrims making their way to isolated abbeys perched on mountain heights. Tiny springs oozed out here and there and trickled across the red earth; between the trees we had momentary glimpses of beautiful and extensive vistas. At last we reached the summit, and after pa.s.sing through the very quaint village that had perched on this height for many centuries, we rang the bell at the priest's tiny door. The castle overhung his miniature garden and house; both were built under the shadow of the crumbling walls and the sinking, almost tottering, red stone towers. A great peace seemed to emanate from those aerie ruins, and a deep silence reigned there.

The dinners given by the old priest, to which several of the notabilities of the neighborhood were invited, always lasted very long.

The ten or fifteen courses had an accompaniment of the ripest fruits and the choicest wines of that country so excelling in exquisite vintages.

For several hours we remained at the table afflicted by the August or September midday heat, and I, the only child in the company, became very restless; I was disturbed by the thought of the crus.h.i.+ng nearness of the castle, and after the second course I would ask to be permitted to leave the table. An old serving-woman used always to go with me and open the outer door in the wall of the feudal ramparts of Castelnau; then she confided the keys of the stately ruin to me, and I plunged alone, with a delicious feeling of fear, into the familiar path, and pa.s.sed through the gate of the drawbridge superposed on the ramparts.

There I might remain for an hour or two sure of not being disturbed; I was at liberty to wander about in that labyrinth, and I was master in the majestic but sad domain. Oh! the sweet memory of the reveries that I have had there! . . . First I would make a tour about the terraces overhanging the forest lying below; a panorama infinitely beautiful unrolled itself to my sight; rivers winding here and there in the distance looked like streams of silver; and, aided by the clear and limpid summer atmosphere, I could see almost as far as the neighboring provinces. A great calm pervaded this sequestered corner of France; no line of railway penetrated it; and in consequence, it led a life entirely apart from the big world, a life such as it had known in the good old time.

After visiting the terraces I would go into the ruined interior, into the courts, up the stairways and through the empty galleries. I climbed to the old towers and put to flight flocks of pigeons, and disturbed the sleep of bats and owls. On the first floor there was a suite of s.p.a.cious rooms, still roofed over, and very dark because of the shuttered windows. I penetrated into these chambers, and I felt an almost delicious terror when I heard my footsteps echoing through the sepulchral stillness of the place. Then I would pa.s.s in review before the strange Gothic paintings and the half-effaced frescoes that still retained traces of gilt ornamentation; the fabled monsters and garlands of impossible flowers had been added at the time of the Renaissance.

This magnificent, pictured past, fantastic and barbarous to the point of being terrible, seemed to me, at that time, very vague and dim and distant; I could not realize that it had been lighted up by the same midday suns.h.i.+ne that warmed the red stones of the ruins about me. And now that I am better able to estimate Castelnau, when I recall it to my memory, after having seen most of the splendors of this earth, I still think the enchanted castle of my childhood, as it stands upon its glorious height, one of the most superb ruins of mediaeval France.

In one of the towers there was a room whose ceiling was painted a royal blue over-strewn with exquisite gold tracery and blazonry. In no place have I realized feudalism so well as in that tower. There alone, in the silence as of a city of the dead, I would lean out of the little window cut in the thick wall and contemplate the green verdure lying below me, and I tried to imagine that I saw coming along the paths, given over to the flight of birds, a cavalcade of soldiers, or a procession of n.o.ble knights and ladies. . . . And, for me, reared in a level country, one of the greatest charms of the place was the view I had of blue distances visible from every loophole and crevice, every gap and opening in the rooms and towers of Castelnau, for then I realized its extraordinary height.

CHAPTER XLVI.

My brother's letters, written close on very fine paper, continued to reach us from time to time; he could only send them to us by sailing vessels bound in our direction which lay-to in that part of the world where he was stationed. Some of them were written particularly for me, and these were long, and filled with never-to-be-forgotten descriptions.

I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as does a chimerical realm, ardently desired, but as inaccessible as if situated upon another planet.

During my visit to my cousins my father forwarded me a letter from my brother addressed to me. I went up to the garret roof, on the side where the plums were drying, to read it. He wrote of a place called Fataua which was situated in a deep valley and surrounded by steep mountains.

"A perpetual twilight," he wrote, "reigns here under the great exotic trees, and the spray of the cascade keeps the carpet of rare ferns fresh." Yes; I could picture that scene to myself very well, now that I had about me mountains and moist glens luxuriant with ferns. . . . He described everything fully and vividly: my brother could not know that his letters exercised a dangerous spell over the child who, at his departure, appeared to be so tranquil and so attached to the home fireside.

"The only pity," he wrote at the end, "is that this delightful island has not a door opening into the home-yard, into the beautiful arbor overgrown with honeysuckle, for instance, that lies behind the grottoes and the little pond."

This idea of a door in the wall at the foot of our garden, and especially the a.s.sociation between the little lake constructed by my brother and distant Oceanica, struck me as very singular, and the following night I had this dream:

I went into the yard and found it enveloped in a sort of deadly twilight that gave me the impression that the sun had been extinguished forever.

Every where there seemed to be an inexpressible desolation that is known only in dreams, and which it is almost impossible to conceive of in the waking state. When I arrived at the bottom of the garden near the beloved little lake, I felt myself rising from the ground like a bird about to take flight. At first I floated aimlessly as thistledown, then I pa.s.sed over the wall and took a south-west direction, the direction of Oceanica; I had no trace of wings, and I lay on my back in an agony of dizziness and nausea as I travelled with frightful rapidity, with the swiftness of a stone shot from a sling. The stars whirled madly in s.p.a.ce; beneath me oceans and seas faded into the pallid and indistinguishable distance, and as I journeyed I was ever enwrapped in that twilight bespeaking a dead world. . . . After a few minutes I suddenly found myself encompa.s.sed by the darkness of the n.o.ble trees in the valley of Fataua.

There in the valley my dream continued, for I ceased to believe in it,--the utter impossibility of really being there impressed itself upon my mind,--for very often I had been duped by such illusions which always vanished when I awoke. My main concern was lest I should wake wholly, for the vision, incomplete as it was, enchanted me. At least the carpet of rare ferns was really there. As I groped in the night air and plucked them I said to myself: "Surely these plants are real, for I can touch them and I have them in my hand; surely they will not disappear when the dream vanishes." And I grasped them with all my strength to be sure of keeping them.

I awoke. A beautiful summer day had dawned, and in the village was heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh, the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed of the impalpable stuff of dreams.

CHAPTER XLVII.

I had very quickly attached myself to my grown cousins, and I felt as well acquainted with them as if I had always known them. I believe it is necessary that there should be the bond of blood for the creation of those intimate relations between people, who but the day before were almost ignorant of each other's existence. I also loved my uncle and aunt; my aunt especially, who spoiled me a little, and who was so good and still so beautiful in spite of her sixty years, her gray hair and her grandmotherly way of dressing herself. In these levelling days, wherein one person is so like another, people of my aunt's type no longer exist. Born in the neighborhood, of a very ancient family, she had never been away from this province of France, and her manners, her hospitality, and her exquisite courtesy had a local stamp, every detail of which pleased me greatly.

In direct contrast to my sheltered home life, here I lived almost entirely out of doors. I roamed about in the streets and highways, and often I went beyond the gates of the town. The narrow streets paved with black pebbles like those in the Orient, and bordered with gothic dwellings of the time of Louis XIII, had a singular charm for me. I already knew all the nooks and corners, public highways and the byways of the village, and I was well acquainted with many of the kind country people who lived about us.

The women, peasant women with goitres, who pa.s.sed my uncle's house on their way to and from the surrounding fields and vineyards, carried baskets of fruit on their heads, and they always paused to offer me luscious grapes and delicious peaches. I was delighted with the southern dialect, and with the songs of the mountaineers; and, best of all, my unfamiliar surroundings ever reminded me that I was in a strange country.

And now when I see any of the little things that I brought from there for my museum, or when I look over the brief letters that I wrote to my mother every day, I suddenly feel the warm suns.h.i.+ne, I experience again the strange newness, I smell the fragrance of ripe southern fruits, and I feel the keen freshness of the mountain air; and at such times I realize that in spite of the long descriptions in these dead pages they inadequately express all I felt.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

The little St. Hermangardes, of whom every one spoke so often, arrived about the middle of September. Their castle was situated in the north upon the bank of the Carreze, but they came every year to pa.s.s the autumn in their very old and dilapidated mansion near my uncle's house.

Two boys, both a little older than I, came this time, and contrary to my expectation I took a fancy to them immediately. As they were in the habit of spending a part of each year at their country place they had guns and powder and often went hunting. Thus they brought an entirely new element into our games. Their estate of Bories became one of the centres of our operations. Everything there was at our disposal, the servants and all the animals in the stables. One of our favorite amus.e.m.e.nts was the construction of enormous balloons, nine or ten feet high, and these we inflated by burning under them sheaves of hay; we then watched them rise and sail away and away, until they were lost to our sight high above the distant fields and woods.

The little St. Hermangardes were unlike other children; they had had all their instruction from a tutor, and their ideas were different from those one imbibes at boarding schools. When there was any disagreement between us in regard to our games they always courteously gave in to me, and therefore my contact with them did not help me to meet the painful experiences of the future.

One day they came over and with much grace made me a present of a very rare b.u.t.terfly. It was of a pale yellow color, almost merging into light green, the yellow of a very ordinary b.u.t.terfly, but its front wings were a shaded and exquisite pink, similar to the delicate rosy tints sometimes seen at daybreak. They had captured it, they said, in the late-ripening autumn grain fields of Bories,--they had caught hold of it so deftly and carefully that their fingers had made no impression upon its brilliant coloring. When, at about noontime, I received it from them I was in the vestibule of my uncle's house, a place always kept tightly closed during the hours of intense heat. From the wing of the house I heard my cousin singing in the thin and plaintive falsetto of a mountaineer; he often sang in that manner, and when he did so his voice always gave me a feeling of unusual melancholy as it broke the stillness of the late September noons. He sang over and over the same old refrain: "Ah! Ah! The good, good story. . . ." Here he always broke off and recommenced. And from that moment Bories, the pinkish-yellow b.u.t.terfly, and the sad little refrain of the "good, good story" were inseparably a.s.sociated in my memory.

But I fear that I have said too much about the incoherent impressions and images which came to me so frequently in days gone by; this is the last time that I will speak at length of them. But it will be seen, because of what follows, how important it is for me to note the a.s.sociation existing between the dissimilar things mentioned above.