The Story of a Child Part 16

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 pa.s.sed the dream-structure vanished.

Soon after this I sketched a new scene for the "Donkey's Skin;" it was one representing the lia.s.sic period. I painted a dismal swamp overshadowed by lowering clouds, where, in the shave-gra.s.s 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.

CHAPTER LVIII.

That hard winter pa.s.sed under the ferule of the "Bull of Apis" and the "Great Ape," finally came to an end and spring returned; it was always a troublous time for us, the scholars, for the first mild days gave us a great longing to be out, and we could scarcely hide our restlessness.

The roses budded everywhere upon our old walls; my beloved little garden, bright and warm under the March sunshine, tempted me, and I would tarry there a long time to watch the insects wake up, and to see the early b.u.t.terflies and bees fly away. Even the revised "Donkey's Skin" was neglected.

I was no longer escorted to and from school, for I had persuaded my family to discontinue a custom that made me ridiculous in the eyes of my companions. Often, before returning home, I would take a long and roundabout way and pa.s.s by the peaceful ramparts from where I had glimpses of other provinces, and a sight of the distant country.

I worked with even less zeal than usual that spring, for the beautiful weather that tempted me out of doors turned my head and made study almost impossible.

a.s.suredly one of the things for which I had the least apt.i.tude was French composition; I generally composed a mere rough draught without a particle of embellishment to redeem it. In the cla.s.s there was a boy who was a very eagle, and he always read his lucubrations aloud. Oh! with what unction he read out his pretty creations! (He is now settled in a manufacturing town, and has become the most prosaic of petty bailiffs.) One day the subject given out was: "A Shipwreck." To me the words had a lyrical sound! But, nevertheless, I handed in my paper with only the t.i.tle and my name inscribed upon it. No, I could not make up my mind to elaborate the subjects given to us by the "Great Ape"; a sort of instinctive good taste kept me from writing trite commonplaces, and as for putting down things of my own imagining, the knowledge that they would be read and picked to pieces by the old bogey made it impossible for me to compose anything.

I loved, however, even at this time, to write for myself, but I did it with the greatest secrecy. Not in the desk in my room that was profaned by lessons and copy-books, but in the little old-fashioned one that was part of the furniture of my museum, there was hidden away a unique thing that represented my first attempt at a journal. It looked like a sibyl's conjuring book, or an a.s.syrian ma.n.u.script; a seeming endless strip of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of this there were two varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic star drawn in red ink,--and under these mysterious signs I wrote down, upon the full length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention, daily events and reflections. A year later, however, because of the labor involved in transcribing the cryptographic characters I had chosen I discarded them and used the ordinary letters; but I continued my work with the greatest secrecy, and I kept my ma.n.u.script under lock and key as if it were an interdicted book. I inscribed there, not so much the events of my almost colorless existence, as my incoherent impressions, the melancholy that I felt at twilight, my regret for past summers, and my dreams of distant countries. . . . I already had a longing to give my fugitive emotions a determinative quality, I needed to wrestle against my own weaknesses and frailties and to banish, if possible, the dream-like element that I seemed to discover in all the things about me, and for that reason I continued my journal until a few years ago. . . . But at that time the mere idea that a day might come when someone would have a peep at it was insupportable to me; so much so indeed that if I left home and went to the Island or elsewhere for a few days, I always took care to seal up my journal, and with the greatest solemnity I wrote upon the packet: "It is my last wish that this book be burned without being read."

G.o.d knows, I have changed since then. But it would be going too far beyond the limits of this story of my childhood to recount here through what changes in my life's view-point it chances that I now sing aloud of my woes, and cry out to the pa.s.sers-by, for the purpose of drawing to myself the sympathy of distant unknown ones; and I call out with the greater anguish in proportion as I feel myself approaching nearer and nearer to the final dust. . . . And who knows? perhaps as I grow older I may write of those still more sacred things which at present cannot be forced from me,--and by that means try to prolong beyond the bounds of my individual life, memory of my being, of my sorrows, and joys, and love.

CHAPTER LIX.

The return that spring of little Jeanne's father from a sea voyage interested me greatly. For several days her house was topsy-turvy with preparation, and one could guess the joy they felt over his approaching arrival. The frigate that he commanded reached port a little earlier than his family expected it, and from my window I saw him, one fine evening, hurrying along the street alone, on his way home to surprise his people. He had arrived from I know not which distant colony after an absence of two or three years, but it did not seem to me that he was the least altered in appearance. . . . One could then return to his home unchanged? They did come to an end after all, those years of exile, which now I find, in truth, much shorter than they seemed in those days!

My brother himself was to return the following autumn, and it would doubtless then seem as if he had never been away from us.

And what joyous events those home-comings were! And what a distinction surrounded those who had but newly returned from so great a distance!

The next day in Jeanne's yard I watched them unpack the enormous wooden boxes that her father had brought from strange countries; some of them were covered with tarpaulin cloth,--pieces of sails no doubt, that were impregnated with the agreeable odor of the ship and the sea; two sailors wearing large blue collars were busy uncording and uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them; and they took from them strange looking objects that had an odor of the "colonies;" straw mats, water jars and Chinese vases; even cocoanuts and other tropical fruits.

Jeanne's grandfather, himself an old seaman, was standing near me watching from the corner of his eye the process of unpacking; suddenly, from between the boards of a case that was being broken open with a hatchet, there crawled out hastily some ugly little brown insects that the sailors jumped on with their feet and destroyed.

"c.o.c.kroaches are they not, Captain?" I inquired of the grandfather.

"Ha! How do you know that, you little landlubber?" he laughingly responded.

To tell the truth, I had never seen any such insects before; but uncles who had lived in the tropics often spoke of them. And I was delighted to make the acquaintance of these tiny creatures that are peculiar to ships and to warm countries.

CHAPTER LX.

Spring! Spring!

The white roses and the jasmine bloomed on our old garden wall, and the deliciously fragrant honeysuckle hung its long garlands over it.

I began to live there from morning until night in closest intimacy with the plants and the old stones. I listened to the sound of the water as it plashed in the shade of the majestic plum tree, I studied the gra.s.ses and the wood mosses that grew at the edge of my little lake; and upon the warm side of the garden where the sun shone all through the day, the cactus put out its buds.

My Wednesday evening trips to Limoise commenced again,--and it goes without saying that I dreamed of the beloved place from one week to the next to the detriment of my lessons and my other duties.

CHAPTER LXI.

I believe that that spring was the most radiant and the most ravishingly happy one of my childhood, in contrast no doubt to the terrible winter spent under the rigorous care of the Great Ape.

Oh! the end of May, the high gra.s.s and then the June mowing! In what a glory of golden light I see it all again!

I took evening walks with my father and sister as I had done during my earlier years; they now came to meet me at the close of school, at half-past four, and we set out immediately for the fields. Our preference that spring was for a certain meadow abloom with pink amourettes, and I always brought home great bouquets of these flowers.

In that same meadow a migratory and ephemeral species of moth, black and pink (of the same pink as the amourettes) had hatched out, and they slept poised on the long stalks of the gra.s.s, or flew away as lightly as the flowers shed their petals when we walked through the hay. . . . And all of these things appear to me again as I saw them in the exquisite, limpid June atmosphere. . . . During the afternoon cla.s.ses, the thought of the sun-dappled meadows made me more restless than did even the mild air and the spring odors that came in through the open windows.

I cherish particularly the remembrance of an evening in which my mother had promised, as a special favor, to join us in our walk to the fields of pink amourettes. That afternoon I had been more inattentive than usual, and the Great Ape had threatened to keep me in, and all during my lessons I firmly believed that I was to be punished. This keeping in after school, which shut us away from the beautiful June day an hour longer, was always a cruel torture. But to-day my heart felt particularly heavy as I reflected that mamma would, doubtless, come at the appointed hour and expect me,--and with some bitterness I thought that the springtime was so very short, that the hay would soon need to be cut, and that perhaps there would not be, the whole summer long, such another glorious evening as this one.

As soon as school was over I anxiously consulted the fatal list in the hands of the monitor; my name was not there! The Big Black Ape had forgotten me, or had been merciful!

Oh! with what joy I rushed away to join mamma who had kept her promise and who, with my father and sister, smilingly awaited me. . . . The air that I breathed in was more delicious than ever, it was exquisitely soft and balmy, and the atmosphere had a tropical resplendence.

When I recall that time, when I think of those meadows all abloom with amourettes, and of those pink moths, there is mingled, to my regret, a sort of indefinable pain whose intensity I cannot understand, an anguish I always feel when I find myself in the presence of things that impress and charm me with their undercurrent of mystery.

CHAPTER LXII.

I have already said that I was extraordinarily childish for my years.

If the personage I then was could but be brought into the presence of the little Parisian boys of twelve or thirteen, educated according to the more perfect modern method, who at so early an age declaim, discuss and harangue, and entertain all sorts of political ideas, I would, I am sure, be struck dumb by their discourses, and how singular they would find me and with what disdain they would treat me!