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others."
My reply did not please him; he frowned and changed the subject. He was
charged with a commission; his uncle, the cure, had spoken to him of a
poor devil who was unable to earn his daily bread. He lived in such and
such a place; he had been there himself and was interested in him; he
hoped that Madame Pierson--
I was looking at her while he was speaking, wondering what reply she
would make and hoping she would say something in order to drown out the
memory of the priest's voice with her gentle tones. She merely bowed, and
he retired.
When he had gone our gaiety returned. We entered a greenhouse in the rear
of the garden.
Madame Pierson treated her flowers as she did her birds and her peasants,
everything about her must be well cared for, each flower must have its
drop of water and ray of sunlight in order that she might be gay and
happy as an angel; so nothing could be in better condition than her
little greenhouse. When we had made the round of the building she said:
"This is my little world; you have seen all I possess, and my domain ends
here."
"Madame," I said, "as my father's name has secured for me the favor of
admittance here, permit me to return and I will believe that happiness
has not entirely forgotten me."
She extended her hand and I touched it with respect, not daring to raise
it to my lips.
I returned home, closed my door and retired. There danced before my eyes
a little white house; I saw myself walking through the village and
knocking at the garden gate. "Oh! my poor heart!" I cried. "God be
praised, you are still young, you are still capable of life and of love!"
One evening I was with Madame Pierson. More than three months had passed,
during which I had seen her almost every day; and what can I say of that
time except that I saw her? "To be with those we love," said Bruyere,
"suffices; to dream, to talk to them, not to talk to them, to think of
them, to think of the most indifferent things, but to be near them, it is
all the same."
I loved. During the three months we had taken many long walks; I was
initiated into the mysteries of her modest charity; we passed through
dark streets, she on her little horse, I on foot, a small stick in my
hand; thus, half conversing, half dreaming, we knocked at the doors of
cottages. There was a little bench near the edge of the wood where I was
accustomed to rest after dinner; we met here regularly as though by
chance. In the morning, music, reading; in the evening, cards with the
aunt as in the days of my father; and she, always there smiling, her
presence filling my heart. By what road, O Providence! have you led me?
What irrevocable destiny am I to accomplish? What! a life so free, an
intimacy so charming, so much repose, such buoyant hope! O God! Of what
do men complain? What is there sweeter than love?
To live, yes, to feel intensely, profoundly, that one exists, that one is
man, created by God, that is the first, the greatest gift of love. We can
not deny, however, that love is a mystery, inexplicable, profound. With
all the chains, with all the pains, and I may even say, with all the
disgust with which the world has surrounded it, buried as it is under a
mountain of prejudices which distort and deprave it, in spite of all the
ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love,
is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as
that which suspends the sun in the heavens. What is this mysterious bond,
stronger and more durable than iron, that can neither be seen nor
touched? What is there in meeting a woman, in looking at her, in speaking
one word to her, and then never forgetting her? Why this one rather than
that one? Invoke the aid of reason, or habit, of the senses, the head,
the heart, and explain it if you can. You will find nothing but two
bodies, one here, the other there, and between them, what? Air, space,
immensity. O fools! who fondly imagine yourselves men, and who reason of
love! Have you talked with it? No, you have felt it. You have exchanged a
glance with a passing stranger, and suddenly there flies out from you
something that can not be defined, that has no name known to man. You
have taken root in the ground like the seed concealed in the blade of
grass which feels the motion of life, and which is on its way to the
harvest.
We were alone, the window was open, the murmur of a little fountain came
to us from the garden. O God! would that I could count, drop by drop, all
the water that fell while we were sitting there, while she was talking
and I was responding. It was there that I became intoxicated with her to
the point of madness.
It is said that there is nothing so rapid as a feeling of antipathy, but
I believe that the road to love is more swiftly traversed. Of what avail [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]