CHAPTER XXXIV.
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.
