CHAPTER III.
After the ineffaceable impression left by that first fright and that
first dance before the winter fire many months passed during which no
other events were engraven upon my memory, and I relapsed into a
twilight state similar to that at the commencement of my life. But the
mental dimness was pierced now and again with a bright light; as the
gray of early morning is tinged by the rose-color of dawning.
I believe that the impressions which succeeded were those of the
summer time, of the great sun and nature. I recall feeling an almost
delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of
tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret
working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things
of the past for me to explain it.
We were visiting at a country place called Limoise, a place that at
later time played a great part in my life. It belonged to neighbors
and friends, the D----s, whose house in town was directly next to
ours. Perhaps I had visited Limoise the preceding summer, but at that
time I was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken
wrapping. The day that I now refer to is the one in which I was able
to reflect for the first time, in which I first knew the sweetness of
reverie.
I have forgotten our departure, the carriage ride and our arrival. But
I remember distinctly that late one hot afternoon, as the sun was
setting, I found myself alone in a remote part of a deserted garden.
The gray walls overgrown with ivy and mosses separated its grove of
trees from the moorland and the rocky country round about it. For me,
brought up in the city, the old and solitary garden, where even the
fruit trees were dying from old age, had all the mystery and charm of
a primeval forest. I crossed a border of box, and I was in the midst
of a large uncultivated tract filled with climbing asparagus and great
weeds. Then I cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that
I might be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently
already, and I remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with
quickening spirit, half afraid, half enraptured. The feeling that I
experienced in the presence of these unfamiliar things was one of
reflection rather than of astonishment. I knew that the bright green
vegetation closing in about me was every where in no less measure than
in the heart of this forest, and emotions, sad and weird and vague
took possession of me and affrighted but fascinated me. That I might
remain hidden as long as possible I crouched lower and still lower,
and I felt the joy a little Indian boy feels when he is in his beloved
forest.
Suddenly I heard someone call: "Pierre! Pierre! Dear Pierre!" I did
not reply, but instead lay as close as possible to the ground, and
sought to hide under the weeds and the waving branches of the
asparagus.
Still I heard: "Pierre, Pierre." It was Lucette; I knew her voice, and
from the mockery of her tone I felt sure that she had spied me. But I
could not see her although I looked about me very carefully: no one
was visible!
With peals of laughter she continued to call, and her voice grew
merrier and merrier. Where can she be? thought I.
Ah! At last I spied her perched upon the twisted branch of a tree that
was overhung with gray moss!
I was fairly caught and I came out of my green hiding place.
As I rose I gazed over the wild and flowering things, and saw the
corner of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed the garden. That wall
was destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for
on the Thursday holidays during my college life I spent many a happy
hour sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and
there I mused, to the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those
distant countries fairer and sunnier than my own. And upon that summer
day those gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather,
and overgrown with mosses, gave me for the first time an indefinable
impression of the persistence of things; a vague conception of
existences antedating my own, in times long past.
Lucette D----, my elder by eight or ten years, seemed to me already a
grown person. I cannot recall the time when I did not know her. Later
I came to love her as a sister, and her early death in her prime was
one of the first real griefs of my boyhood.
And the first recollection I have of her is as I saw her in the
branches of the old pear tree. Her image doubtless begets a vividness
from the two new emotions with which it is blended: the enchanting
uneasiness I felt at the invasion of green nature and the melancholy
reverie that took possession of me as I contemplated the old wall,
type of ancient things and olden times.
