CHAPTER LVI.
On my Thursday holidays during the winter, after having finished my
duties and accomplished all my school tasks, I felt the greatest
homesickness when I mounted to my museum. It was always a little late
when I finished my lessons, and the light was usually fading when I
looked down at the great meadows that appeared inexpressibly
melancholy as they stretched before me enwrapped in a grayish-pink
mist. I was homesick for the summer, homesick for the sun and the
south, all of which were suggested by the butterflies from my uncle's
garden that I had arranged and pinned under glass, and by the mountain
fossils that the little Peyrals and I had collected in the summer
time.
It was a foretaste of that longing for somewhere else which later,
after my return from long voyages to tropical countries, spoiled my
visits to my home.
Oh! there was in particular the pinkish-yellow butterfly! There were
times when I experienced a bitter pleasure in seeking to understand
the great sadness that it caused me. It was in the glass case at the
far end of the room; its two colors so fresh and unusual, like a
Chinese painting, or a fairy's robe, were exquisite foils for each
other; the butterfly formed a luminous whole that shone out brightly
in the gray twilight, and it caused the other butterflies surrounding
it to look as dull as dun-colored little bats.
As soon as my eyes rested upon it I seemed to hear drawled out lazily,
in a mountaineer's treble, the refrain: "Ah! ah! the good, good
story!" And again I saw the white porch of Bories in the midst of the
silence and the hot sunshine of a summer noon. A deep regret for past
and gone vacations took possession of me; I felt saddened when I tried
to recreate days belonging to a dead past, and tried to imagine
vacations still to come; but mingled in with sentiments that I can
name, there were those other inexpressible ones that well up from the
unfathomable deeps of one's being.
This association between the butterfly, the song and Bories caused me
for a long time an extreme sadness that, try as hard as I may, I
cannot explain satisfactorily; and the feeling continued until stormy
and tempestuous winds swept over my life and carried away with them
the small concerns belonging to my childhood.
Sometimes, upon gray winters evenings, when I looked at the butterfly
I would sing to myself the little refrain of the "good, good story;"
to accomplish this I had to make my voice very flute-like; and as I
sang, the porch of Bories appeared to me more vividly than ever, as it
stood, sunny but desolate, under the dazzling light of the September
noon. This association was a little like the one that later
established itself for me between the sad falsetto of the Arab songs,
the snowy splendor of their mosques and the winding-sheet whiteness of
their lime-washed porticos.
That butterfly in all the freshness and radiance of its two strange
colors, mummified, it is true, but as brilliant looking as ever under
its glass, retains for me a sort of old-time charm which I cherish.
The little St. Hermangardes, whom I have not seen for many years, and
who are now attached to an embassy somewhere in the Orient, would
doubtless, should they read this, be much astonished to learn what
value circumstances has given to their little present.
