CHAPTER LVII.
The chief event of these winters, so poisoned by my college life, was
the gift-giving festival that we had at New Year.
At about the end of November it was our custom, my sister's, Lucette's
and mine, to make out a list of the things we desired most. Everybody
in the two families prepared surprises for us, and the mystery
surrounding these gifts was our most exquisite pleasure during the
last days of the year. Between parents, grandmother and aunts there
occurred, to excite my curiosity still further, conversations full of
mysterious hints, and whisperings that were hastily discontinued as
soon as I appeared.
Between Lucette and me it became a real guessing game. As in the play
of "Words with a double meaning," we had the right to ask certain
pointed questions,--for example we asked the most ridiculous ones,
such as: "Has it hair like an animal?"
And the answers went something after this fashion:
What your father is to give you (a dressing-case made of leather) had
hair, but it has none now, except on some portion of its interior
(brushes), and that is false. Your mamma's present (a fur muff) still
has some hair. What your aunt is to give you (a lamp) will help you to
see the hair on the others better; but, let me see, yes, I am sure
that that has none.
In the December twilights, in that hour between daylight and darkness,
we would sit upon our low stools before the wood-fire, and continue
our series of questions from day to day. We grew ever more eager and
excited until the 31st, and in the evening of that momentous day the
mysteries were revealed.
That day the presents for the two families, wrapped, tied and labeled,
were piled upon tables in a room closed against Lucette and me. At
eight o'clock the doors were thrown open and we filed in, the elders
going first, and each one of us sought for his own gift among the heap
of white parcels. For me the moment of entry was an exceedingly joyous
one, and until I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I could not
refrain from jumping and leaping like a kid long before it came time
for us to cross the threshold.
We had supper at eleven, and when the clock in the dining room struck
the midnight hour, tranquilly, in harmony with the sound of its calm
stroke, we separated in the first moments of those New Years that are
now buried under the ashes of many succeeding ones. And on those
evenings I fell asleep with all my gifts in my room near me. I even
kept the favorite ones upon my bed. The following morning I always
waked earlier than usual so that I might re-examine them; they cast a
spell of enchantment over that winter morning, the first one of a new
year.
Once there was, among my presents, a large illustrated book treating
of the antediluvian world.
Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the
mysteries of prehistoric creations. I knew something about those
terrible creatures that in geologic times shook the primitive forests
with their heavy tread; for a long time the thought of them disquieted
me. I found them all in my book pictured in their proper habitat,
surrounded by great brakes, and standing under a leaden sky.
The antediluvian world already haunted my imagination and became the
constant subject of my dreams; often I concentrated my whole mind upon
it, and endeavored to picture to myself one of its gigantic landscapes
that seemed ever enveloped in a sinister and gloomy twilight with a
background filled in with great moving shadows. Then when the vision
thus created took on a seeming reality I felt an inexpressible sadness
that was like an exhalation of the soul,--as soon as the emotion
passed the dream-structure vanished.
Soon after this I sketched a new scene for the "Donkey's Skin;" it was
one representing the liassic period. I painted a dismal swamp
overshadowed by lowering clouds, where, in the shave-grass and the
gigantic ferns, strange extinct beasts wandered slowly.
The play of the "Donkey's Skin" seemed no longer the same Donkey's
Skin. I discarded one by one the little stage people who now offended
me by their uncompromising doll-like stiffness; they were relegated to
their card-board box, the poor little things, where they slept the
sleep eternal, and without doubt they will never be exhumed.
My new scenes had nothing in common with the old fairy spectacle: in
the depths of virgin forests, in exotic gardens, and oriental palaces
formed of pearls and gold I tried to realize, with the small means at
my command, all my dreams, while waiting for that improbable better
time that ever lies in the future.
