III


And there, indeed, the sunlight was. When Albine had opened the
shutters, behind the large curtains, the genial yellow glow once more
warmed a patch of the white calico. But that which impelled Serge to sit
up in bed was the sight of the shadowy bough, the branch that for him
heralded the return of life. All the resuscitated earth, with its wealth
of greenery, its waters, and its belts of hills, was in that greenish
blur that quivered with the faintest breath of air. It no longer
disturbed him; he greedily watched it rocking, and hungered for the
fortified powers of the vivifying sap which to him it symbolised.
Albine, happy once more, exclaimed, as she supported him in her arms:
'Ah! my dear Serge, the winter is over. Now we are saved.'

He lay down again, his eyes already brighter, and his voice clearer.
'To-morrow I shall be very strong,' he said. 'You shall draw back the
curtains. I want to see everything.'

But on the morrow he was seized with childish fear. He would not hear of
the windows being opened wide. 'By-and-by,' he muttered, 'later on.' He
was fearful, he dreaded the first beam of light that would flash upon
his eyes. Evening came on, and still he had been unable to make up his
mind to look upon the sun. He remained thus all day long, his face
turned towards the curtains, watching on their transparent tissue the
pallor of morn, the glow of noon, the violet tint of twilight, all the
hues, all the emotions of the sky. There were pictured even the
quiverings of the warm air at the light stroke of a bird's wing, even
the delight of earth's odours throbbing in a sunbeam. Behind that veil,
behind that softened phantasm of the mighty life without, he could hear
the rise of spring. He even felt stifled at times when in spite of the
curtains' barrier the rush of the earth's new blood came upon him too
strongly.

The following morning he was still asleep when Albine, to hasten his
recovery, cried out to him:

'Serge! Serge! here's the sun!'

She swiftly drew back the curtains and threw the windows wide open. He
raised himself and knelt upon his bed, oppressed, swooning, his hands
tightly pressed against his breast to keep his heart from breaking.
Before him stretched the broad sky, all blue, a boundless blue; and in
it he washed away his sufferings, surrendering himself to it, and
drinking from it sweetness and purity and youth. The bough whose shadow
he had noted jutted across the window and alone set against the azure
sea its vigorous growth of green; but even this was too much for his
sickly fastidiousness; it seemed to him that the very swallows flying
past besmeared the purity of the azure. He was being born anew. He
raised little involuntary cries, as he felt himself flooded with light,
assailed by waves of warm air, while a whirling, whelming torrent of
life flowed within him. As last with outstretched hands he sank back
upon his pillow in a swoon of joy.

What a happy, delicious day that was! The sun came in from the right,
far away from the alcove. Throughout the morning Serge watched it
creeping onward. He could see it coming towards him, yellow as gold,
perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners, at
times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow
deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden
limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous
lingering, which roused intense desire. At length, towards two o'clock,
the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the
coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair. To its
glowing fondling Serge surrendered his wasted hands: with his eyes
half-closed, he could feel fiery kisses thrilling each of his fingers;
he lay in a bath of light, in the embrace of a glowing orb. And when
Albine leaned over smiling, 'Let me be,' he stammered, his eyes now
shut; 'don't hold me so tightly. How do you manage to hold me like this
in your arms?'

But the sun crept down the bed again and slowly retreated to the left;
and as Serge watched it bend once more and settle on chair after chair,
he bitterly regretted that he had not kept it to his breast. Albine
still sat upon the side of the bed, and the pair of them, an arm round
each other's neck, watched the slow paling of the sky. At times a mighty
thrill seemed to make it blanch. Serge's languid eyes now wandered over
it more freely and detected in it exquisite tints of which he had never
dreamed. It was not all blue, but rosy blue, lilac blue, tawny blue,
living flesh, vast and spotless nudity heaving like a woman's bosom in
the breeze. At every glance into space he found a fresh surprise
--unknown nooks, coy smiles, bewitching rounded outlines, gauzy veils
which were cast over the mighty, glorious forms of goddesses in the
depths of peeping paradises. And with his limbs lightened by suffering
he winged his way amid that shimmering silk, that stainless down of
azure. The sun sank lower and lower, the blue melted into purest gold,
the sky's living flesh gleamed fairer still, and then was slowly steeped
in all the hues of gloom. Not a cloud--nought but gradual disappearance,
a disrobing which left behind it but a gleam of modesty on the horizon.
And at last the broad sky slumbered.

'Oh, the dear baby!' exclaimed Albine, as she looked at Serge, who had
fallen asleep upon her neck at the same time as the heavens.

She laid him down in bed and shut the windows. Next morning, however,
they were opened at break of day. Serge could no longer live without the
sunlight. His strength was growing, he was becoming accustomed to the
gusts of air which sent the alcove curtains flying. Even the azure, the
everlasting azure, began to pall upon him. He grew weary of being white
and swanlike, of ever swimming on heaven's limpid lake. He came to wish
for a pack of black clouds, some crumbling of the skies, that would
break upon the monotony of all that purity. And as his health returned,
he hungered for keener sensations. He now spent hours in gazing at the
verdant bough: he would have liked to see it grow, expand, and throw out
its branches to his very bed. It no longer satisfied him, but only
roused desires, speaking to him as it did of all the trees whose
deep-sounding call he could hear although their crests were hidden from
his sight. An endless whispering of leaves, a chattering as of running
water, a fluttering as of wings, all blended in one mighty, long-drawn,
quivering voice, resounded in his ears.

'When you are able to get up,' said Albine, 'you shall sit at the
window. You will see the lovely garden!'

He closed his eyes and murmured gently:

'Oh! I can see it, I hear it; I know where the trees are, where the
water runs, where the violets grow.'

And then he added: 'But I can't see it clearly, I see it without any
light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the
window.'

At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And
on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes
gleaming with curiosity.

'Where have you been?' he would call to her, taking hold of her arms,
and feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. 'You smell of all
sorts of nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?'

At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.

'You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!' he then
exclaimed delightedly. 'I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a
large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.'

He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she
came back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes.
These he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she
brought him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected
that he wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms.
But when they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to
gather any more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as
balmy; and she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always
fragrant. At last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her
not to come back before an hour.

'In that way,' he said, 'I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till
to-morrow.'

Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine
her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had
she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down
behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump
of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden
to him, he would put his hand to her lips.

'No, no,' he said gently. 'It is wrong of me. I don't want to know. I
would rather see it myself.'

Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which
he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that dream
alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more
distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed his
veins seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties
multiplied. He could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right,
whether the water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some
great rocks were not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all
this to himself. On the slightest indication he would rear wondrous
plans, which the song of a bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a
flower, would suddenly make him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket
of lilac in one spot, and in another to place flower-beds where formerly
there had been a lawn. Every hour he designed some new garden, much to
the amusement of Albine, who, whenever she surprised him at it, would
exclaim with a burst of laughter: 'That's not it, I assure you. You
can't have any idea of it. It's more beautiful than all the beautiful
things you ever saw. So don't go racking your head about it. The
garden's mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy, it won't run away.'

Serge, who had already been so afraid of the light, felt considerable
trepidation when he found himself strong enough to go and rest his
elbows on the window-sill. Every evening he once more repeated,
'To-morrow,' and 'To-morrow.' He would turn away in his bed with a
shudder when Albine came in, and would cry out that she smelt of
hawthorn, that she had scratched her hands in burrowing a hole through a
hedge to bring him all its odour. One morning, however, she suddenly
took him up in her arms, and almost carrying him to the window, held him
there and forced him to look out and see.

'What a coward you are!' she exclaimed with her fine ringing laugh.

And waving one hand all round the landscape, she repeated with an air of
triumph, full of tender promise: 'The Paradou! The Paradou!'

Serge looked out upon it, speechless.

IV


A sea of verdure, in front, to right, to left, everywhere. A sea rolling
its surging billows of leaves as far as the horizon, unhindered by
house, or screen of wall, or dusty road. A desert, virgin, hallowed sea,
displaying its wild sweetness in the innocence of solitude. The sun
alone came thither, weltering in the meadows in a sheet of gold,
threading the paths with the frolicsome scamper of its beams, letting
its fine-spun, flaming locks droop through the trees, sipping from the
springs with amber lips that thrilled the water. Beneath that flaming
dust the vast garden ran riot like some delighted beast let loose at the
world's very end, far from everything and free from everything. So
prodigal was the luxuriance of foliage, so overflowing the tide of
herbage, that from end to end it all seemed hidden, flooded, submerged.
Nought could be seen but slopes of green, stems springing up like
fountains, billowy masses, woodland curtains closely drawn, mantles of
creepers trailing over the ground, and flights of giant boughs swooping
down upon every side.

Amidst that tremendous luxuriance of vegetation even lengthy scrutiny
could barely make out the bygone plan of the Paradou. In the foreground,
in a sort of immense amphitheatre, must have lain the flower garden,
whose fountains were now sunken and dry, its stone balustrades
shattered, its flight of steps all warped, and its statues overthrown,
patches of their whiteness gleaming amidst the dusky stretches of turf.
Farther back, behind the blue line of a sheet of water, stretched a maze
of fruit-trees; farther still rose towering woodland, its dusky, violet
depths streaked with bands of light. It was a forest which had regained
virginity, an endless stretch of tree-tops rising one above the other,
tinged with yellowish green and pale green and vivid green, according to
the variety of the species.

On the right, the forest scaled some hills, dotting them with little
clumps of pine-trees, and dying away in straggling brushwood, while a
huge barrier of barren rock, heaped together like the fallen wreckage of
a mountain, shut out all view beyond. Flaming growths there cleaved the
rugged soil, monstrous plants lay motionless in the heat, like drowsing
reptiles; a silvery streak, a foamy splash that glistened in the
distance like a cloud of pearls, revealed the presence of a waterfall,
the source of those tranquil streams that lazily skirted the
flower-garden. Lastly, on the left the river flowed through a vast
stretch of meadowland, where it parted into four streamlets which winded
fitfully beneath the rushes, between the willows, behind the taller
trees. And far away into the distance grassy patches prolonged the
lowland freshness, forming a landscape steeped in bluish haze, where a
gleam of daylight slowly melted into the verdant blue of sunset. The
Paradou--its flower-garden, forest, rocks, streams, and meadows--filled
the whole breadth of sky.

'The Paradou!' stammered Serge, stretching out his arms as if to clasp
the entire garden to his breast.

He tottered, and Albine had to seat him in an armchair. There he sat for
two whole hours intently gazing, without opening his lips, his chin
resting on his hands. At times his eyelids fluttered and a flush rose to
his cheeks. Slowly he looked, profoundly amazed. It was all too vast,
too complex, too overpowering.

'I cannot see, I cannot understand,' he cried, stretching out his hands
to Albine with a gesture of uttermost weariness.

The girl came and leant over the back of his armchair. Taking his head
between her hands, she compelled him to look again, and softly said:

'It's all our own. Nobody will ever come in. When you are well again, we
will go for walks there. We shall have room enough for walking all our
lives. We'll go wherever you like. Where would you like to go?'

He smiled.

'Oh! not far,' he murmured. 'The first day only two steps or so beyond
the door. I should surely fall---- See, I'll go over there, under that
tree close to the window.'

But she resumed: 'Would you like to go into the flower-garden, the
parterre? You shall see the roses--they have over-run everything, even
the old paths are all covered with them. Or would you like the orchard
better? I can only crawl into it on my hands and knees, the boughs are
so bowed down with fruit. But we'll go even farther if you feel strong
enough. We'll go as far as the forest, right into the depths of shade,
far, far away; so far that we'll sleep out there when night steals over
us. Or else, some morning, we can climb up yonder to the summit of those
rocks. You'll see the plants which make me quake; you'll see the
springs, such a shower of water! What fun it will be to feel the spray
all over our faces! . . . But if you prefer to walk along the hedges,
beside a brook, we must go round by the meadows. It is so nice under the
willows in the evening, at sunset. One can lie down on the grass and
watch the little green frogs hopping about on the rushes.'

'No, no,' said Serge, 'you weary me, I don't want to go so far. . . . I
will only go a couple of steps, that will be more than enough.'

'Even I,' she still continued, 'even I have not yet been able to go
everywhere. There are many nooks I don't know. I have walked and walked
in it for years, and still I feel sure there are unknown spots around,
places where the shade must be cooler and the turf softer. Listen, I
have always fancied there must be one especially in which I should like
to live for ever. I know it's somewhere; I must have passed it by, or
perhaps it's hidden so far away that I have never even got as far, with
all my rambles. But we'll look for it together, Serge, won't we? and
live there.'

'No, no, be quiet,' stammered the young man. 'I don't understand what
you are saying. You're killing me.'

For a moment she let him sob in her arms. It troubled and grieved her
that she could find no words to soothe him.

'Isn't the Paradou as beautiful, then, as you fancied it?' she asked at
last.

He raised his face and answered:

'I don't know. It was quite little, and now it is ever growing bigger
and bigger---- Take me away, hide me.'

She led him back to bed, soothing him like a child, lulling him with a
fib.

'There, there! it's not true, there is no garden. It was only a story
that I told you. Go, sleep in peace.'

  V


Every day in this wise she made him sit at the window during the cool
hours of morning. He would now attempt to take a few steps, leaning the
while on the furniture. A rosy tint appeared upon his cheeks, and his
hands began to lose their waxy transparency. But, while he thus regained
health, his senses remained in a state of stupor which reduced him to
the vegetative life of some poor creature born only the day before.
Indeed, he was nothing but a plant; his sole perception was that of the
air which floated round him. He lacked the blood necessary for the
efforts of life, and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil,
imbibing all the sap he could. It was like a slow hatching in the warm
egg of springtide. Albine, remembering certain remarks of Doctor
Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him remain in this state, 'innocent,'
dull-witted like a little boy. She had heard it said that certain
maladies left insanity behind them. And she spent hours in gazing at him
and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make him smile. But as yet he
had not laughed. When she passed her hand across his eyes, he never saw,
he never followed the shadow. Even when she spoke to him, he barely
turned his head in the direction whence the sound came. She had but one
consolation: he thrived splendidly, he was quite a handsome child.

For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him. She
patiently waited for him to grow. And as she marked various symptoms of
awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think that
time might make a man of him. When she touched him now he started
slightly. Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh. On the
morrow, when she had seated him at the window, she went down into the
garden, and ran about in it, calling to him the while. She vanished
under the trees, flitted across the sunny patches, and came back
breathless and clapping her hands. At first his wavering eyes failed to
perceive her. But as she started off again, perpetually playing at
hide-and-seek, reappearing behind every other bush, he was at last able
to follow the white gleam of her skirt; and when she suddenly came
forward and stood with upraised face below his window, he stretched out
his arms and seemed anxious to go down to her. But she came upstairs
again, and embraced him proudly: 'Ah! you saw me, you saw me!' she
cried. 'You would like to come into the garden with me, would you
not?---- If you only knew how wretched you have made me these last few
days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me or hearing me!'

He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain
that made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.

'You are better now, however,' she went on. 'Well enough to come down
whenever you like---- Why don't you say anything? Have you lost your
tongue? Oh, what a baby! Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!'

And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of
the things he touched. He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables,
and failing to utter a single word plainly. However, she began to walk
him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the
window--quite a long journey. Two or three times he almost fell on the
way, at which she laughed. One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and
she had all the trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again.
Then she made him undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by
the way on the sofa and the chairs--a tour round a little world which
took up a good hour. At last he was able to venture on a few steps
alone. She would stand before him with outstretched hands, and move
backwards, calling him, so that he should cross the room in search of
her supporting arms. If he sulked and refused to walk, she would take
the comb from her hair and hold it out to him like a toy. Then he would
come to her and sit still in a corner for hours, playing with her comb,
and gently scratching his hands with its teeth.

At last one morning she found him up. He had already succeeded in
opening one of the shutters, and was attempting to walk about without
leaning on the furniture.

'Good gracious, we are active this morning!' she exclaimed gleefully.
'Why, he will be jumping out of the window to-morrow if he has his own
way---- So you are quite strong now, eh?'

Serge's answer was a childish laugh. His limbs were regaining the
strength of adolescence, but more perceptive sensations remained
unroused. He spent whole afternoons in gazing out on the Paradou,
pouting like a child that sees nought but whiteness and hears but the
vibration of sounds. He still retained the ignorance of urchinhood--his
sense of touch as yet so innocent that he failed to tell Albine's gown
from the covers of the old armchairs. His eyes still stared wonderingly;
his movements still displayed the wavering hesitation of limbs which
scarce knew how to reach their goal; his state was one of incipient,
purely instinctive existence into which entered no knowledge of
surroundings. The man was not yet born within him.

'That's right, you'll act the silly, will you?' muttered Albine. 'We'll
see.'

She took off her comb, and held it out to him.

'Will you have my comb?' she said. 'Come and fetch it.'

When she had got him out of the room, by retreating before him all the
way, she put her arm round his waist and helped him down each stair,
amusing him while she put her comb back, even tickling his neck with a
lock of her hair, so that he remained unaware that he was going
downstairs. But when he was in the hall, he became frightened at the
darkness of the passage.

'Just look!' she cried, throwing the door wide open.

It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow snatched aside, revealing
the joyousness of early day. The park spread out before them verdantly
limpid, freshly cool and deep as a spring. Serge, entranced, lingered
upon the threshold, with a hesitating desire to feel that luminous lake
with his foot.

'One would think you were afraid of wetting yourself,' said Albine.
'Don't be frightened, the ground is safe enough.'

He had ventured to take one step, and was astonished at encountering the
soft resistance of the gravel. The first touch of the soil gave him a
shock; life seemed to rebound within him and to set him for a moment
erect, with expanding frame, while he drew long breaths.

'Come now, be brave,' insisted Albine. 'You know you promised me to
take five steps. We'll go as far as the mulberry tree there under the
window---- There you can rest.'

It took him a quarter of an hour to make those five steps. After each
effort he stopped as if he had been obliged to tear up roots that held
him to the ground.

The girl, pushing him along, said with a laugh: 'You look just like a
walking tree.'

Having placed him with his back leaning against the mulberry tree, in
the rain of sunlight falling from its boughs, she bounded off and left
him, calling out to him that he must not stir. Serge, standing there
with drooping hands, slowly turned his head towards the park.
Terrestrial childhood met his gaze. The pale greenery was steeped in the
very milk of youth, flooded with golden brightness. The trees were still
in infancy, the flowers were as tender-fleshed as babes, the streams
were blue with the artless blue of lovely infantile eyes. Beneath every
leaf was some token of a delightful awakening.

Serge had fixed his eyes upon a yellow breach which a wide path made in
front of him amidst a dense mass of foliage. At the very end, eastward,
some meadows, steeped in gold, looked like the luminous field upon which
the sun would descend, and he waited for the morn to take that path and
flow towards him. He could feel it coming in a warm breeze, so faint at
first that it barely brushed across his skin, but rising little by
little, and growing ever brisker till he was thrilled all over. He could
also taste it coming with a more and more pronounced savour, bringing
the healthful acridity of the open air, holding to his lips a feast of
sugary aromatics, sour fruits, and milky shoots. Further, he could smell
it coming with the perfumes which it culled upon its way--the scent of
earth, the scent of the shady woods, the scent of the warm plants, the
scent of living animals, a whole posy of scents, powerful enough to
bring on dizziness. He could likewise hear it coming with the rapid
flight of a bird skimming over the grass, waking the whole garden from
silence, giving voice to all it touched, and filling his ears with the
music of things and beings. Finally, he could see it coming from the end
of the path, from the meadows steeped in gold--yes, he could see that
rosy air, so bright that it lighted the way it took with a gleaming
smile, no bigger in the distance than a spot of daylight, but in a few
swift bounds transformed into the very splendour of the sun. And the
morn flowed up and beat against the mulberry tree against which Serge
was leaning. And he himself resuscitated amidst the childhood of the
morn.

'Serge! Serge!' cried Albine, lost to sight behind the high shrubs of
the flower garden. 'Don't be afraid, I am here.'

But Serge no longer felt frightened. He was being born anew in the
sunshine, in that pure bath of light which streamed upon him. He was
being born anew at five-and-twenty, his senses hurriedly unclosing,
enraptured with the mighty sky, the joyful earth, the prodigy of
loveliness spread out around him. This garden, which he knew not only
the day before, now afforded him boundless delight. Everything filled
him with ecstasy, even the blades of grass, the pebbles in the paths,
the invisible puffs of air that flitted over his cheeks. His whole body
entered into possession of this stretch of nature; he embraced it with
his limbs, he drank it in with his lips, he inhaled it with his
nostrils, he carried it in his ears and hid it in the depths of his
eyes. It was his own. The roses of the flower garden, the lofty boughs
of the forest, the resounding rocks of the waterfall, the meadows which
the sun planted with blades of light, were his. Then he closed his eyes
and slowly reopened them that he might enjoy the dazzle of a second
wakening.

'The birds have eaten all the strawberries,' said Albine disconsolately,
as she ran up to him. 'See, I have only been able to find these two!'

But she stopped short a few steps away, heart-struck and gazing at Serge
with rapturous astonishment. 'How handsome you are!' she cried.

She drew a little nearer; then stood there, absorbed in her
contemplation, and murmuring: 'I had never, never seen you before.'

He had certainly grown taller. Clothed in a loose garment, he stood
erect, still somewhat slender, with finely moulded limbs, square chest,
and rounded shoulders. His head, slightly thrown back, was poised upon a
flexible and snowy neck, rimmed with brown behind. Health and strength
and power were on his face. He did not smile, his expression was that of
repose, with grave and tender mouth, firm cheeks, large nose, and grey,
clear, commanding eyes. The long locks that thickly covered his head
fell upon his shoulders in jetty curls; while a slender growth of hair,
through which gleamed his white skin, curled upon his upper lip and
chin.

'Oh! how handsome, how handsome you are!' lingeringly repeated Albine,
crouching at his feet and gazing up at him with loving eyes. 'But why
are you sulking with me? Why don't you speak to me?'

Still he stood there and made no answer. His eyes were far away; he
never even saw that child at his feet. He spoke to himself in the
sunlight, and said: 'How good the light is!'

That utterance sounded like a vibration of the sunlight itself. It fell
amid the silence in the faintest of whispers like a musical sigh, a
quiver of warmth and of life. For several days Albine had never heard
his voice, and now, like himself, it had altered. It seemed to her to
course through the park more sweetly than the melody of birds, more
imperiously than the wind that bends the boughs. It reigned, it ruled.
The whole garden heard it, though it had been but a faint and passing
breath, and the whole garden was thrilled with the joyousness it
brought.

'Speak to me,' implored Albine. 'You have never spoken to me like that.
When you were upstairs in your room, when you were not dumb, you talked
the silly prattle of a child. How is it I no longer know your voice?
Just now I thought it had come down from the trees, that it reached me
from every part of the garden, that it was one of those deep sighs that
used to worry me at night before you came. Listen, everything is keeping
silence to hear you speak again.'

But still he failed to recognise her presence. Tenderer grew her tones.
'No, don't speak if it tires you. Sit down beside me, and we will remain
here on the grass till the sun wanes. And look, I have found two
strawberries. Such trouble I had too! The birds eat up everything. One's
for you, both if you like; or we can halve them, and taste each of them.
You'll thank me, and then I shall hear you.'

But he would not sit down, he refused the strawberries, which Albine
pettishly threw away. She did not open her lips again. She would rather
have seen him ill, as in those earlier days when she had given him her
hand for a pillow, and had felt him coming back to life beneath the
cooling breath she blew upon his face. She cursed the returning health
which now made him stand in the light like a young unheeding god. Would
he be ever thus then, with never a glance for her? Would he never be
further healed, and at last see her and love her? And she dreamed of
once again being his healer, of accomplishing by the sole power of her
little hands the cure of the second childhood in which he remained. She
could clearly see that there was no spark in the depths of his grey
eyes, that his was but a pallid beauty like that of the statues which
had fallen among the nettles of the flower-garden. She rose and clasped
him, breathing on his neck to rouse him. But that morning Serge never
even felt the breath that lifted his silky beard. The sun got low, it
was time to go indoors. On reaching his room, Albine burst into tears.

From that morning forward the invalid took a short walk in the garden
every day. He went past the mulberry tree, as far as the edge of the
terrace, where a wide flight of broken steps descended to the flowery
parterre. He grew accustomed to the open air, each bath of sunlight
brought him fresh vigour. A young chestnut tree, which had sprung from
some fallen nut between two stones of the balustrade, burst the resin of
its buds, and unfolded its leafy fans with far less vigour than he
progressed. One day, indeed, he even attempted to descend the steps, but
in this his strength failed him, and he sat down among the dane-wort
which had grown up between the cracks in the stone flags. Below, to the
left, he could see a small wood of roses. It was thither that he dreamt
of going.

'Wait a little longer,' said Albine. 'The scent of the roses is too
strong for you yet. I have never been able to sit long under the
rose-trees without feeling exhausted, light-headed, with a longing to
cry. Don't be afraid, I will some day lead you to the rose-trees, and I
shall surely weep among them, for you make me very sad.'

VI


One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the
steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a
way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few
yards. Then they slowly entered the wood of roses. It was indeed a very
wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as
big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young
oaks. Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of
plants. But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment,
everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of
roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled,
so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the
same stem. Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while
climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in
spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at
the lightest breeze. Natural paths coursed through the wood--narrow
footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled
in the shade and scent. These led to glades and clearings, under bowers
of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones. Some
sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright
patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an
aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a
woman's bosom. The rose bushes had whispering voices too. And the rose
bushes were full of songbirds' nests.

'We must take care not to lose ourselves,' said Albine, as she entered
the wood. 'I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able
to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at
every step.'

They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out
with fatigue, wished to sit down. He stretched himself upon the ground,
and fell into deep slumber. Albine sat musing by his side. They were on
the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the
wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue
gap at its far end, revealed the sky. Other little paths led from the
clearing into leafy recesses. The glade was formed of tall rose bushes
rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle
of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and
hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush. Through the tiny
apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace,
the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust. And from the vaulted roof
hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended
from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the
ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around
like a tattered curtain.

Albine meanwhile was gazing at Serge asleep. She had never seen him so
utterly prostrated in body as now, his hands lying open on the turf, his
face deathly. So dead indeed he was to her that she thought she could
kiss his face without his even feeling it. And sadly, absently, she
busied her hands with shredding all the roses within her reach. Above
her head drooped an enormous cluster which brushed against her hair, set
roses on her twisted locks, her ears, her neck, and even threw a mantle
of the fragrant flowers across her shoulders. Higher up, under her
fingers, other roses rained down with large and tender petals
exquisitely formed, which in hue suggested the faintly flushing purity
of a maiden's bosom. Like a living snowfall these roses already hid her
feet in the grass. And they climbed her knees, covered her skirt, and
smothered her to her waist; while three stray petals, which had
fluttered on to her bodice, just above her bosom, there looked like
three glimpses of her bewitching skin.

'Oh! the lazy fellow!' she murmured, feeling bored and picking up two
handfuls of roses, which she flung in Serge's face to wake him.

He did not stir, however, but still lay there with the roses on his eyes
and mouth. This made Albine laugh. She stooped down, and with her whole
heart kissed both his eyes and his mouth, blowing as she kissed to drive
the rose petals away; but they remained upon his lips, and she broke
into still louder laughter, intensely amused at this flowery caressing.

Serge slowly raised himself. He gazed at her with amazement, as if
startled at finding her there.

'Who are you? where do you come from? what are you doing here beside
me?' he asked her. And still she smiled, transported with delight at
marking this awakening of his senses. Then he seemed to remember
something, and continued with a gesture of happy confidence:

'I know, you are my love, flesh of my flesh, you are waiting for me that
we may be one for ever. I was dreaming of you. You were in my breast,
and I gave you my blood, my muscles, my bones. I felt no pain. You took
half my heart so tenderly that I experienced keen inward delight at thus
dividing myself. I sought all that was best and most beautiful within me
to give it to you. You might have carried off everything, and still I
should have thanked you. And I woke when you went out of me. You left
through my eyes and mouth; ay, I felt it. You were all warm, all
fragrant, so sweet that it was the thrill from you that has made me
awake.'

Albine listened to his words with ecstasy. At last he saw her; at last
his birth was accomplished, his cure begun. With outstretched hands she
begged him to go on.

'How have I managed to live without you?' he murmured. 'No, I did not
live, I was like a slumbering animal. And now you are mine! and you are
no one but myself! Listen, you must never leave me; for you are my very
breath, and in leaving me you would rob me of my life. We will remain
within ourselves. You will be mine even as I shall be yours. Should I
ever forsake you, may I be accursed, may my body wither like a useless
and noxious weed!'

He caught hold of her hands, and exclaimed in a voice quivering with
admiration: 'How beautiful you are!'

In the falling dust of sunshine Albine's skin looked milky white, scarce
gilded here and there by the sunny sheen. The shower of roses around and
on her steeped her in pinkness.

Her fair hair, loosely held together by her comb, decked her head as
with a setting planet whose last bright sparks shone upon the nape of
her neck. She wore a white gown; her arms, her throat, her stainless
skin bloomed unabashed as a flower, musky with a goodly fragrance. Her
figure was slender, not too tall, but supple as a snake's, with softly
rounded, voluptuously expanding outlines, in which the freshness of
childhood mingled with womanhood's nascent charms. Her oval face, with
its narrow brow and rather full mouth, beamed with the tender living
light of her blue eyes. And yet she was grave, too, her cheeks
unruffled, her chin plump--as naturally lovely as are the trees.

'And how I love you!' said Serge, drawing her to himself.

They were wholly one another's now, clasped in each other's arms! They
did not kiss, but held each other round the waist, cheek to cheek,
united, dumb, delighted with their oneness. Around them bloomed the
roses with a mad, amorous blossoming, full of crimson and rosy and white
laughter. The living, opening flowers seemed to bare their very bosoms.
Yellow roses were there showing the golden skin of barbarian maidens:
straw-coloured roses, lemon-coloured roses, sun-coloured roses--every
shade of the necks which are ambered by glowing skies. Then there was
skin of softer hue: among the tea roses, bewitchingly moist and cool,
one caught glimpses of modest, bashful charms, with skin as fine as silk
tinged faintly with a blue network of veins. Farther on all the smiling
life of the rose expanded: there was the blush white rose, barely tinged
with a dash of carmine, snowy as the foot of a maid dabbling in a
spring; there was the silvery pink, more subdued than even the glow with
which a youthful arm irradiates a wide sleeve; there was the clear,
fresh rose, in which blood seemed to gleam under satin as in the bare
shoulders of a woman bathed in light; and there was the bright pink rose
with its buds like the nipples of virgin bosoms, and its opening flowers
that suggested parted lips, exhaling warm and perfumed breath. And the
climbing roses, the tall cluster roses with their showers of white
flowers, clothed all these others with the lacework of their bunches,
the innocence of their flimsy muslin; while, here and there, roses dark
as the lees of wine, sanguineous, almost black, showed amidst the bridal
purity like passion's wounds. Verily, it was like a bridal--the bridal
of the fragrant wood, the virginity of May led to the fertility of July
and August; the first unknowing kiss culled like a nosegay on the
wedding morn. Even in the grass, moss roses, clad in close-fitting
garments of green wool, seemed to be awaiting the advent of love.
Flowers rambled all along the sun-streaked path, faces peeped out
everywhere to court the passing breezes. Bright were the smiles under
the spreading tent of the glade. Not a flower that bloomed the same: the
roses differed in the fashion of their wooing. Some, shy and blushing,
would show but a glimpse of bud, while others, panting and wide open,
seemed consumed with infatuation for their persons. There were pert, gay
little things that filed off, cockade in cap; there were huge ones,
bursting with sensuous charms, like portly, fattened-up sultanas; there
were impudent hussies, too, in coquettish disarray, on whose petals the
white traces of the powder-puff could be espied; there were virtuous
maids who had donned low-necked garb like demure _bourgeoises_; and
aristocratic ladies, graceful and original, who contrived attractive
deshabilles. And the cup-like roses offered their perfume as in precious
crystal; the drooping, urn-shaped roses let it drip drop by drop; the
round, cabbage-like roses exhaled it with the even breath of slumbering
flowers; while the budding roses tightly locked their petals and only
sent forth as yet the faint sigh of maidenhood.

'I love you, I love you,' softly repeated Serge.

Albine, too, was a large rose, a pallid rose that had opened since the
morning. Her feet were white, her arms were rosy pink, her neck was fair
of skin, her throat bewitchingly veined, pale and exquisite. She was
fragrant, she proffered lips which offered as in a coral cup a perfume
that was yet faint and cool. Serge inhaled that perfume, and pressed her
to his breast. Albine laughed.

The ring of that laugh, which sounded like a bird's rhythmic notes,
enraptured Serge.

'What, that lovely song is yours?' he said. 'It is the sweetest I ever
heard. You are indeed my joy.'

Then she laughed yet more sonorously, pouring forth rippling scales of
high-pitched, flute-like notes that melted into deeper ones. It was an
endless laugh, a long-drawn cooing, then a burst of triumphant music
celebrating the delight of awakening love. And everything--the roses,
the fragrant wood, the whole of the Paradou--laughed in that laugh of
woman just born to beauty and to love. Till now the vast garden had
lacked one charm--a winning voice which should prove the living mirth of
the trees, the streams, and the sunlight. Now the vast garden was
endowed with that charm of laughter.

'How old are you?' asked Albine, when her song had ended in a faint
expiring note.

'Nearly twenty-six,' Serge answered.

She was amazed. What! he was twenty-six! He, too, was astonished at
having made that answer so glibly, for it seemed to him that he had not
yet lived a day--an hour.

'And how old are you?' he asked in his turn.

'Oh, I am sixteen.'

Then she broke into laughter again, quivering from head to foot,
repeating and singing her age. She laughed at her sixteen years with a
fine-drawn laugh that flowed on with rhythmic trilling like a streamlet.
Serge scanned her closely, amazed at the laughing life that transfigured
her face. He scarcely knew her now with those dimples in her cheeks,
those bow-shaped lips between which peeped the rosy moistness of her
mouth, and those eyes blue like bits of sky kindling with the rising of
the sun. As she threw back her head, she sent a glow of warmth through
him.

He put out his hand, and fumbled mechanically behind her neck.

'What do you want?' she asked. And suddenly remembering, she exclaimed:
'My comb! my comb! that's it.'

She gave him her comb, and let fall her heavy tresses. A cloth of gold
suddenly unrolled and clothed her to her hips. Some locks which flowed
down upon her breast gave, as it were a finishing touch to her regal
raiment. At the sight of that sudden blaze, Serge uttered an
exclamation; he kissed each lock, and burned his lips amidst that
sunset-like refulgence.

But Albine now relieved herself of her long silence, and chatted and
questioned unceasingly.

'Oh, how wretched you made me! You no longer took any notice of me, and
day after day I found myself useless and powerless, worried out of my
wits like a good-for-nothing. . . . And yet the first few days I had
done you good. You saw me and spoke to me. . . . Do you remember when
you were lying down, and went to sleep on my shoulder, and murmured that
I did you good?'

'No!' said Serge, 'no, I don't remember it. I had never seen you before.
I have only just seen you for the first time--lovely, radiant, never to
be forgotten.'

She clapped her hands impatiently, exclaiming: 'And my comb? You must
remember how I used to give you my comb to keep you quiet when you were
a little child? Why, you were looking for it just now.'

'No, I don't remember. Your hair is like fine silk. I have never kissed
your hair before.'

At this, with some vexation, she recounted certain particulars of
his convalescence in the room with the blue ceiling. But he only
laughed at her, and at last closed her lips with his hand, saying with
anxious weariness: 'No, be quiet, I don't know; I don't want to know any
more. . . . I have only just woke up, and found you there, covered with
roses. That is enough.'

And he drew her once more towards him and held her there, dreaming
aloud, and murmuring: 'Perhaps I have lived before. It must have been a
long, long time ago. . . . I loved you in a painful dream. You had the
same blue eyes, the same rather long face, the same youthful mien. But
your hair was carefully hidden under a linen cloth, and I never dared to
remove that cloth, because your locks seemed to me fearsome and would
have made me die. But to-day your hair is the very sweetness of
yourself. It preserves your scent, and when I kiss it, when I bury my
face in it like this, I drink in your very life.'

He kept on passing the long curls through his hands, and pressing them
to his lips, as if to squeeze from them all Albine's blood. And after an
interval of silence, he continued: 'It's strange, before one's birth,
one dreams of being born. . . . I was buried somewhere. I was very cold.
I could hear all the life of the world outside buzzing above me. But I
shut my ears despairingly, for I was used to my gloomy den, and enjoyed
some fearful delights in it, so that I never sought to free myself from
all the earth weighing upon my chest. Where could I have been then? Who
was it gave me light?'

He struggled to remember, while Albine now waited in fear and trembling
lest he should really do so. Smiling, she took a handful of her hair and
wound it round the young man's neck, thus fastening him to herself. This
playful act roused him from his musings.

'You're right,' he said, 'I am yours, what does the rest matter? It was
you, was it not, who drew me out of the earth? I must have been under
this garden. What I heard were your steps rattling the little pebbles in
the path. You were looking for me, you brought down upon my head the
songs of the birds, the scent of the pinks, the warmth of the sun. I
fancied that you would find me at last. I waited a long time for you.
But I never expected that you would give yourself to me without your
veil, with your hair undone--the terrible hair which has become so
soft.'

He sat her on his lap, placing his face beside hers.

'Do not let us talk any more. We are alone for ever. We love each
other.'

And thus in all innocence they lingered in each other's arms; for a
long, long time did they remain there forgetfully. The sun rose higher;
and the dust of light fell hotter from the lofty boughs. The yellow and
white and crimson roses were now only a ray of their delight, a sign of
their smiles to one another. They had certainly caused buds to open
around them. The roses crowned their heads and threw garlands about
their waists. And the scent of the roses became so penetrating, so
strong with amorous emotion, that it seemed to be the scent of their own
breath.

At last Serge put up Albine's hair. He raised it in handfuls with
delightful awkwardness, and stuck her comb askew in the enormous knot
that he had heaped upon her head. And as it happened she looked
bewitching thus. Then, rising from the ground, he held out his hands to
her, and supported her waist as she got up. They still smiled without
speaking a word, and slowly they went down the path.

VII


Albine and Serge entered the flower garden. She was watching him with
tender anxiety, fearing lest he should overtire himself; but he
reassured her with a light laugh. He felt strong enough indeed to carry
her whithersoever she listed. When he found himself once more in the
full sunlight, he drew a sigh of content. At last he lived; he was no
longer a plant subject to the terrible sufferings of winter. And how he
was moved with loving gratitude! Had it been within his power, he would
have spared Albine's tiny feet even the roughness of the paths; he
dreamed of carrying her, clinging round his neck, like a child lulled to
sleep by her mother. He already watched over her with a guardian's
watchful care, thrusting aside the stones and brambles, jealous lest the
breeze should waft a fleeting kiss upon those darling locks which were
his alone. She on her side nestled against his shoulder and serenely
yielded to his guidance.

Thus Albine and Serge strolled on together in the sunlight for the first
time. A balmy fragrance floated in their wake, the very path on which
the sun had unrolled a golden carpet thrilled with delight under their
feet. Between the tall flowering shrubs they passed like a vision of
such wondrous charm that the distant paths seemed to entreat their
presence and hail them with a murmur of admiration, even as crowds hail
long-expected sovereigns. They formed one sole, supremely lovely being.
Albine's snowy skin was but the whiteness of Serge's browner skin. And
slowly they passed along clothed with sunlight--nay, they were
themselves the sun--worshipped by the low bending flowers.

A tide of emotion now stirred the Paradou to its depths. The old flower
garden escorted them--that vast field bearing a century's untrammelled
growth, that nook of Paradise sown by the breeze with the choicest
flowers. The blissful peace of the Paradou, slumbering in the broad
sunlight, prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a
temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched
to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was
mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths
decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot
of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the
depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint
aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty
gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons strange nosegays
not meant for any hand to pluck. A rabid fury seemed to impel her to
overthrow whatever the effort of man had created; she rebelliously cast
a straggling multitude of flowers over the paths, attacked the rockeries
with an ever-rising tide of moss, and knotted round the necks of marble
statues the flexible cords of creepers with which she threw them down;
she shattered the stonework of the fountains, steps, and terraces with
shrubs which burst through them; she slowly, creepingly, spread over the
smallest cultivated plots, moulding them to her fancy, and planting on
them, as ensign of rebellion, some wayside spore, some lowly weed which
she transformed into a gigantic growth of verdure. In days gone by the
parterre, tended by a master passionately fond of flowers, had displayed
in its trim beds and borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And
the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such
numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the
whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very
walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups of
verbena and pinks.

Though to outward seeming Albine had yielded her weaker self to the
guidance of Serge, to whose shoulder she clung, it was she who really
led him. She took him first to the grotto. Deep within a clump of
poplars and willows gaped a cavern, formed by rugged bits of rocks which
had fallen over a basin where tiny rills of water trickled between the
stones. The grotto was completely lost to sight beneath the onslaught of
vegetation. Below, row upon row of hollyhocks seemed to bar all entrance
with a trellis-work of red, yellow, mauve, and white-hued flowers, whose
stems were hidden among colossal bronze-green nettles, which calmly
exuded blistering poison. Above them was a mighty swarm of creepers
which leaped aloft in a few bounds; jasmines starred with balmy flowers;
wistarias with delicate lacelike leaves; dense ivy, dentated and
resembling varnished metal; lithe honeysuckle, laden with pale coral
sprays; amorous clematideae, reaching out arms all tufted with white
aigrettes. And among them twined yet slenderer plants, binding them more
and more closely together, weaving them into a fragrant woof.
Nasturtium, bare and green of skin, showed open mouths of ruddy gold;
scarlet runners, tough as whipcord, kindled here and there a fire of
gleaming sparks; convolvuli opened their heart-shaped leaves, and with
thousands of little bells rang a silent peal of exquisite colours;
sweetpeas, like swarms of settling butterflies, folded tawny or rosy
wings, ready to be borne yet farther away by the first breeze. It was
all a wealth of leafy locks, sprinkled with a shower of flowers,
straying away in wild dishevelment, and suggesting the head of some
giantess thrown back in a spasm of passion, with a streaming of
magnificent hair, which spread into a pool of perfume.

'I have never dared to venture into all that darkness,' Albine whispered
to Serge.

He urged her on, carried her over the nettles; and as a great boulder
barred the way into the grotto, he held her up for a moment in his arms
so that she might be able to peer through the opening that yawned at a
few feet from the ground.

'A marble woman,' she whispered, 'has fallen full length into the
stream. The water has eaten her face away.'

Then he, too, in his turn wanted to look, and pulled himself up. A cold
breeze played upon his cheeks. In the pale light that glided through the
hole, he saw the marble woman lying amidst the reeds and the duckweed.
She was naked to the waist. She must have been drowning there for the
last hundred years. Some grief had probably flung her into that spring
where she was slowly committing suicide. The clear water which flowed
over her had worn her face into a smooth expanse of marble, a mere white
surface without a feature; but her breasts, raised out of the water by
what appeared an effort of her neck, were still perfect and lifelike,
throbbing even yet with the joys of some old delight.

'She isn't dead yet,' said Serge, getting down again. 'One day we will
come and get her out of there.'

But Albine shuddered and led him away. They passed out again into the
sunlight and the rank luxuriance of beds and borders. They wandered
through a field of flowers capriciously, at random. Their feet trod a
carpet of lovely dwarf plants, which had once neatly fringed the walks,
and now spread about in wild profusion. In succession they passed
ankle-deep through the spotted silk of soft rose catchflies, through the
tufted satin of feathered pinks, and the blue velvet of forget-me-nots,
studded with melancholy little eyes. Further on they forced their way
through giant mignonette, which rose to their knees like a bath of
perfume; then they turned through a patch of lilies of the valley in
order that they might spare an expanse of violets, so delicate-looking
that they feared to hurt them. But soon they found themselves surrounded
on all sides by violets, and so with wary, gentle steps they passed over
their fresh fragrance inhaling the very breath of springtide. Beyond the
violets, a mass of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with pale
mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of
nemophila, the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones of
sweet rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and
onward, a fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy
the delights of that first walk together without fatigue. But the
violets ever reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round
them, shedding the sweetest perfumes beneath their feet and wafting in
their wake the breath of their leaf-hidden flowerets.

Albine and Serge quite lost themselves. Thousands of loftier plants
towered up in hedges around them, enclosing narrow paths which they
found it delightful to thread. These paths twisted and turned, wandered
maze-like through dense thickets. There were ageratums with sky-blue
tufts of bloom; woodruffs with soft musky perfume; brazen-throated
mimuluses, blotched with bright vermilion; lofty phloxes, crimson and
violet, throwing up distaffs of flowers for the breezes to spin; red
flax with sprays as fine as hair; chrysanthemums like full golden moons,
casting short faint rays, white and violet and rose, around them. The
young couple surmounted all the obstacles that lay in their path and
continued their way betwixt the walls of verdure. To the right of them
sprang up the slim fraxinella, the centranthus draped with snowy
blossoms, and the greyish hounds-tongue, in each of whose tiny
flowercups gleamed a dewdrop. To their left was a long row of columbines
of every variety; white ones, pale rose ones, and some of deep violet
hues, almost black, that seemed to be in mourning, the blossoms that
drooped from their lofty, branching stems being plaited and goffered
like crape. Then, as they advanced further on, the character of the
hedges changed. Giant larkspurs thrust up their flower-rods, between the
dentated foliage of which gaped the mouths of tawny snapdragons, while
the schizanthus reared its scanty leaves and fluttering blooms, that
looked like butterflies' wings of sulphur hue splashed with soft lake.
The blue bells of campanulae swayed aloft, some of them even over the
tall asphodels, whose golden stems served as their steeples. In one
corner was a giant fennel that reminded one of a lace-dressed lady
spreading out a sunshade of sea-green satin. Then the pair suddenly
found their way blocked. It was impossible to advance any further; a
mass of flowers, a huge sheaf of plants stopped all progress. Down
below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the
midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and
clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia
of some barbarous order. Higher up still, bloomed the rosy viscaria, the
yellow leptosiphon, the white colinsia, and the lagurus, whose dusty
green bloom contrasted with the glowing colours around it. Towering over
all these growths scarlet foxgloves and blue lupins, rising in slender
columns, formed a sort of oriental rotunda gleaming vividly with crimson
and azure; while at the very summit, like a surmounting dome of dusky
copper, were the ruddy leaves of a colossal castor-bean.

As Serge reached out his hands to try to force a passage, Albine stopped
him and begged him not to injure the flowers. 'You will break the stems
and crush the leaves,' she said. 'Ever since I have been here, I have
always taken care to hurt none of them. Come, and I will show you the
pansies.'

She made him turn and led him from the narrow paths to the centre of the
parterre, where, once upon a time, great basins had been hollowed out.
But these had now fallen into ruin, and were nothing but gigantic
_jardinieres_, fringed with stained and cracked marble. In one of the
largest of them, the wind had sown a wonderful basketful of pansies. The
velvety blooms seemed almost like living faces, with bands of violet
hair, yellow eyes, paler tinted mouths, and chins of a delicate flesh
colour.

When I was younger they used to make me quite afraid,' murmured Albine.
'Look at them. Wouldn't you think that they were thousands of little
faces looking up at you from the ground? And they turn, too, all in the
same direction. They might be a lot of buried dolls thrusting their
heads out of the ground.'

She led him still further on. They went the round of all the other
basins. In the next one a number of amaranthuses had sprung up, raising
monstrous crests which Albine had always shrunk from touching, such was
their resemblance to big bleeding caterpillars. Balsams of all colours,
now straw-coloured, now the hue of peach-blossom, now blush-white, now
grey like flax, filled another basin where their seed pods split with
little snaps. Then in the midst of a ruined fountain, there flourished a
colony of splendid carnations. White ones hung over the moss-covered
rims, and flaked ones thrust a bright medley of blossom between the
chinks of the marble; while from the mouth of the lion, whence formerly
the water-jets had spurted, a huge crimson clove now shot out so
vigorously that the decrepit beast seemed to be spouting blood. Near by,
the principal piece of ornamental water, a lake, on whose surface swans
had glided, had now become a thicket of lilacs, beneath whose shade
stocks and verbenas and day-lilies screened their delicate tints, and
dozed away, all redolent of perfume.

'But we haven't seen half the flowers yet,' said Albine, proudly. 'Over
yonder there are such huge ones that I can quite bury myself amongst
them like a partridge in a corn-field.'

They went thither. They tripped down some broad steps, from whose fallen
urns still flickered the violet fires of the iris. All down the steps
streamed gilliflowers, like liquid gold. The sides were flanked with
thistles, that shot up like candelabra, of green bronze, twisted and
curved into the semblance of birds' heads, with all the fantastic
elegance of Chinese incense-burners. Between the broken balustrades
drooped tresses of stonecrop, light greenish locks, spotted as with
mouldiness. Then at the foot of the steps another parterre spread out,
dotted over with box-trees that were vigorous as oaks; box-trees which
had once been carefully pruned and clipped into balls and pyramids and
octagonal columns, but which were now revelling in unrestrained freedom
of untidiness, breaking out into ragged masses of greenery, through
which blue patches of sky were visible.

And Albine led Serge straight on to a spot that seemed to be the
graveyard of the flower-garden. There the scabious mourned, and
processions of poppies stretched out in line, with deathly odour,
unfolding heavy blooms of feverish brilliance. Sad anemones clustered in
weary throngs, pallid as if infected by some epidemic. Thick-set daturas
spread out purplish horns, from which insects, weary of life, sucked
fatal poison. Marigolds buried with choking foliage their writhing
starry flowers, that already reeked of putrefaction. And there were
other melancholy flowers also: fleshy ranunculi with rusty tints,
hyacinths and tuberoses that exhaled asphyxia and died from their own
perfume. But the cinerarias were most conspicuous, crowding thickly in
half-mourning robes of violet and white. In the middle of this gloomy
spot a mutilated marble Cupid still remained standing, smiling beneath
the lichens which overspread his youthful nakedness, while the arm with
which he had once held his bow lay low amongst the nettles.

Then Albine and Serge passed on through a rank growth of peonies,
reaching to their waists. The white flowers fell to pieces as they
passed, with a rain of snowy petals which was as refreshing to their
hands as the heavy drops of a thunder shower. And the red ones grinned
with apoplectical faces which perturbed them. Next they passed through a
field of fuchsias, forming dense, vigorous shrubs that delighted them
with their countless bells. Then they went on through fields of purple
veronicas and others of geraniums, blazing with all the fiery tints of a
brasier, which the wind seemed to be ever fanning into fresh heat. And
they forced their way through a jungle of gladioli, tall as reeds, which
threw up spikes of flowers that gleamed in the full daylight with all
the brilliance of burning torches. They lost themselves too in a forest
of sunflowers, with stalks as thick as Albine's wrist, a forest darkened
by rough leaves large enough to form an infant's bed, and peopled with
giant starry faces that shone like so many suns. And thence they passed
into another forest, a forest of rhododendrons so teeming with blossom
that the branches and leaves were completely hidden, and nothing but
huge nosegays, masses of soft calyces, could be seen as far as the eye
could reach.

'Come along; we have not got to the end yet,' cried Albine. 'Let us push
on.'

But Serge stopped. They were now in the midst of an old ruined
colonnade. Some of the columns offered inviting seats as they lay
prostrate amongst primroses and periwinkles. Further away, among the
columns that still remained upright, other flowers were growing in
profusion. There were expanses of tulips showing brilliant streaks like
painted china; expanses of calceolarias dotted with crimson and gold;
expanses of zinnias like great daisies; expanses of petunias with petals
like soft cambric through which rosy flesh tints gleamed; and other
fields, with flowers they could not recognise spreading in carpets
beneath the sun, in a motley brilliance that was softened by the green
of their leaves.

'We shall never be able to see it all,' said Serge, smiling and waving
his hand. 'It would be very nice to sit down here, amongst all this
perfume.'

Near them there was a large patch of heliotropes, whose vanilla-like
breath permeated the air with velvety softness. They sat down upon one
of the fallen columns, in the midst of a cluster of magnificent lilies
which had shot up there. They had been walking for more than an hour.
They had wandered on through the flowers from the roses to the lilies.
These offered them a calm, quiet haven after their lovers' ramble amid
the perfumed solicitations of luscious honeysuckle, musky violets,
verbenas that breathed out the warm scent of kisses, and tuberoses that
panted with voluptuous passion. The lilies, with their tall slim stems,
shot up round them like a white pavilion and sheltered them with snowy
cups, gleaming only with the gold of their slender pistils. And there
they rested, like betrothed children in a tower of purity; an
impregnable ivory tower, where all their love was yet perfect innocence.

Albine and Serge lingered amongst the lilies till evening. They felt so
happy there, and seemed to break out into a new life. Serge felt the
last trace of fever leave his hands, while Albine grew quite white, with
a milky whiteness untinted by any rosy hue. They were unconscious that
their arms and necks and shoulders were bare, and their straying
unconfined hair in nowise troubled them. They laughed merrily one at the
other, with frank open laughter. The expression of their eyes retained
the limpid calmness of clear spring water. When they quitted the lilies,
their feelings were but those of children ten years old; it seemed to
them that they had just met each other in that garden so that they might
be friends for ever and amuse themselves with perpetual play. And as
they returned through the parterre, the very flowers bore themselves
discreetly, as though they were glad to see their childishness, and
would do nothing that might corrupt them. The forests of peonies, the
masses of carnations, the carpets of forget-me-nots, the curtains of
clematis now steeped in the atmosphere of evening, slumbering in
childlike purity akin to their own, no longer spread suggestions of
voluptuousness around them. The pansies looked up at them with their
little candid faces, like playfellows; and the languid mignonette, as
Albine's white skirt brushed by it, seemed full of compassion, and held
its breath lest it should fan their love prematurely into life.

VIII


At dawn the next day it was Serge who called Albine. She slept in a room
on the upper floor. He looked up at her window and saw her throw open
the shutters just as she had sprung out of bed. They laughed merrily as
their eyes met.

'You must not go out to-day,' said Albine, when she came down. 'We must
stay indoors and rest. To-morrow I will take you a long, long way off,
to a spot where we can have a very jolly time.'

'But sha'n't we grow tired of stopping here?' muttered Serge.

'Oh, dear no! I will tell you stories.'

They passed a delightful day. The windows were thrown wide open, and all
the beauty of the Paradou came in and rejoiced with them in the room.
Serge now really took possession of that delightful room, where he
imagined he had been born. He insisted upon seeing everything, and upon
having everything explained to him. The plaster Cupids who sported round
the alcove amused him so much that he mounted upon a chair to tie
Albine's sash round the neck of the smallest of them, a little bit of a
man who was turning somersaults with his head downward. Albine clapped
her hands, and said that he looked like a cockchafer fastened by a
string. Then, as though seized by an access of pity, she said, 'No, no,
unfasten him. It prevents him from flying.'

But it was the Cupids painted over the doors that more particularly
attracted Serge's attention. He fidgeted at not being able to make out
what they were playing at, for the paintings had grown very dim. Helped
by Albine, he dragged a table to the wall, and when they both had
climbed upon it, Albine began to explain things to him.

'Look, now, those are throwing flowers. Under the flowers you can only
see some bare legs. It seems to me that when first I came here I could
make out a lady reposing there. But she has been gone for a long time
now.'

They examined all the panels in turn; but they had faded to such a
degree that little more could be distinguished than the knees and elbows
of infants. The details which had doubtless delighted the eyes of those
whose old-time passion seemed to linger round the alcove, had so
completely disappeared under the influence of the fresh air, that the
room, like the park, seemed restored to pristine virginity beneath the
serene glory of the sun.

'Oh! they are only some little boys playing,' said Serge, as he
descended from the table. 'Do you know how to play at "hot cockles"?'

There was no game that Albine did not know how to play at. But, for 'hot
cockles,' at least three players are necessary, and that made them
laugh. Serge protested, however, that they got on too well together ever
to desire a third there, and they vowed that they would always remain by
themselves.

'We are quite alone here; one cannot hear a sound,' said the young man,
lolling on the couch. 'And all the furniture has such a pleasant
old-time smell. The place is as snug as a nest. We ought to be very
happy in this room.'

The girl shook her head gravely.

'If I had been at all timid,' she murmured, 'I should have been very
much frightened at first. . . . That is one of the stories I want to
tell you. The people in the neighbourhood told it to me. Perhaps it
isn't true, but it will amuse us, at any rate.'

Then she came and sat down by Serge's side.

'It is years and years since it all happened. The Paradou belonged to a
rich lord, who came and shut himself up in it with a very beautiful
lady. The gates of the mansion were kept so tightly closed, and the
garden walls were built so very high, that no one ever caught sight even
of the lady's skirts.'

'Ah! I know,' Serge interrupted; 'the lady was never seen again.'

Then, as Albine looked at him in surprise, somewhat annoyed to find that
he knew her story already, he added in a low voice, apparently a little
astonished himself: 'You told me the story before, you know.'

She declared that she had never done so; but all at once she seemed to
change her mind, and allowed herself to be convinced. However, that did
not prevent her from finishing her tale in these words: 'When the lord
went away his hair was quite white. He had all the gates barricaded up,
so that no one might get inside and disturb the lady. It was in this
room that she died.'

'In this room!' cried Serge. 'You never told me that! Are you quite sure
that it was really in this room she died?'

Albine seemed put out. She repeated to him what every one in the
neighbourhood knew. The lord had built the pavilion for the reception of
this unknown lady, who looked like a princess. The servants employed at
the mansion afterwards declared that he spent all his days and nights
there. Often, too, they saw him in one of the walks, guiding the tiny
feet of the mysterious lady towards the densest coppices. But for all
the world they would never have ventured to spy upon the pair, who
sometimes scoured the park for weeks together.

'And it was here she died?' repeated Serge, who felt touched with
sorrow. 'And you have taken her room; you use her furniture, and you
sleep in her bed.'

Albine smiled.

'Ah! well, you know, I am not timid. Besides, it is so long since it all
happened. You said what a delightful room it was.'

Then they both dropped into silence, and glanced, for a moment, towards
the alcove, the lofty ceiling, and the corners, steeped in grey gloom.
The faded furniture seemed to speak of long past love. A gentle sigh, as
of resignation, passed through the room.

'No, indeed,' murmured Serge, 'one could not feel afraid here. It is too
peaceful.'

But Albine came closer to him and said: 'There is something else that
only a few people know, and that is that the lord and the lady
discovered in the garden a certain spot where perfect happiness was to
be found, and where they afterwards spent all their time. I have been
told that by a very good authority. It is a cool, shady spot, hidden
away in the midst of an impenetrable jungle, and it is so marvellously
beautiful that anyone who reaches it forgets all else in the world. The
poor lady must have been buried there.'

'Is it anywhere about the parterre?' asked Serge curiously.

'Ah! I cannot tell, I cannot tell,' said the young girl with an
expression of discouragement. 'I know nothing about it. I have searched
everywhere, but I have never been able to find the least sign of that
lovely clearing. It is not amongst the roses, nor the lilies, nor the
violets.'

'Perhaps it is hidden somewhere away amongst those mournful-looking
flowers, where you showed me the figure of a boy standing with his arm
broken off.'

'No, no, indeed.'

'Perhaps, then, it is in that grotto, near that clear stream, where the
great marble woman, without a face, is lying.'

'No, no.'

Albine seemed to reflect for a moment. Then, as though speaking to
herself, she went on: 'As soon as ever I came here, I began to hunt for
it. I spent whole days in the Paradou, and ferreted about in all the
out-of-the-way green corners, to have the pleasure of sitting for an
hour in that happy spot. What mornings have I not wasted in groping
under the brambles and peeping into the most distant nooks of the park!
Oh! I should have known it at once, that enchanting retreat, with the
mighty tree that must shelter it with a canopy of foliage, with its
carpet of soft silky turf, and its walls of tangled greenery, which the
very birds themselves cannot penetrate.

She raised her voice, and threw one of her arms round Serge's neck, as
she continued: 'Tell me, now; shall we search for it together? We shall
surely find it. You, who are strong, will push aside the heavy branches,
while I crawl underneath and search the brakes. When I grow weary, you
can carry me; you can help me to cross the streams; and if we happen to
lose ourselves, you can climb the trees and try to discover our way
again. Ah! and how delightful it will be for us to sit, side by side,
beneath the green canopy in the centre of the clearing! I have been told
that in one minute one may there live the whole of life. Tell me, my
dear Serge, shall we set off to-morrow and scour the park, from bush to
bush, until we have found what we want?'

Serge shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. 'What would be the use?' he
said. 'Is it not pleasant in the parterre? Don't you think we ought to
remain among the flowers, instead of seeking a greater happiness that
lies so far away?'

'It is there that the dead lady lies buried,' murmured Albine, falling
back into her reverie. 'It was the joy of being there that killed her.
The tree casts a shade, whose charm is deathly. . . . I would willingly
die so. We would clasp one another there, and we would die, and none
would ever find us again.'

'Don't talk like that,' interrupted Serge. 'You make me feel so unhappy.
I would rather that we should live in the bright sunlight, far away from
that fatal shade. Your words distress me, as though they urged us to
some irreparable misfortune. It must be forbidden to sit beneath a tree
whose shade can thus affect one.'

'Yes,' Albine gravely declared, 'it is forbidden. All the folks of the
countryside have told me that it is forbidden.'

Then silence fell. Serge rose from the couch where he had been lolling,
and laughed, and pretended that he did not care about stories. The sun
was setting, however, before Albine would consent to go into the garden
for even a few minutes. She led Serge to the left, along the enclosing
wall, to a spot strewn with fragments of stone, and woodwork, and
ironwork, bristling too with briars and brambles. It was the site of the
old mansion, still black with traces of the fire which had destroyed the
building. Underneath the briars lay rotting timbers and fire-split
masonry. The spot was like a little ravined, hillocky wilderness of
sterile rocks, draped with rude vegetation, clinging creepers that
twined and twisted through every crevice like green serpents. The young
folks amused themselves by wandering across this chaos, groping about in
the holes, turning over the debris, trying to reconstruct something of
the past out of the ruins before them. They did not confess their
curiosity as they chased one another through the midst of fallen
floorings and overturned partitions; but they were indeed, all the time,
secretly pondering over the legend of those ruins, and of that lady,
lovelier than day, whose silken skirt had rustled down those steps,
where now lizards alone were idly crawling.

Serge ended by climbing the highest of the ruinous masses; and, looking
round at the park which unfolded its vast expanse of greenery, he sought
the grey form of the pavilion through the trees. Albine was standing
silent by his side, serious once more.

'The pavilion is yonder, to the right,' she said at last, without
waiting for Serge to ask her. 'It is the only one of the buildings
that is left. You can see it quite plainly at the end of that grove of
lime-trees.'

They fell into silence again; and then Albine, as though pursuing aloud
the reflections which were passing through their minds, exclaimed: 'When
he went to see her, he must have gone down yonder path, then past those
big chestnut trees, and then under the limes. It wouldn't take him a
quarter of an hour.'

Serge made no reply. But as they went home, they took the path which
Albine had pointed out, past the chestnuts and under the limes. It was a
path that love had consecrated. And as they walked over the grass, they
seemed to be seeking footmarks, or a fallen knot of ribbon, or a whiff
of ancient perfume--something that would clearly satisfy them that they
were really travelling along the path that led to the joy of union.

'Wait out here,' said Albine, when they once more stood before the
pavilion; 'don't come up for three minutes.'

Then she ran off merrily, and shut herself up in the room with the blue
ceiling. And when she had let Serge knock at the door twice, she softly
set it ajar, and received him with an old-fashioned courtesy.

'Good morrow, my dear lord,' she said as she embraced him.

This amused them extremely. They played at being lovers with childish
glee. In stammering accents they would have revived the passion which
had once throbbed and died there. But it was like a first effort at
learning a lesson. They knew not how to kiss each other's lips, but
sought each other's cheeks, and ended by dancing around each other, with
shrieks of laughter, from ignorance of any other way of showing the
pleasure they experienced from their mutual love.

IX


The next morning Albine was anxious to start at sunrise upon the grand
expedition which she had planned the night before. She tapped her feet
gleefully on the ground, and declared that they would not come back
before nightfall.

'Where are you going to take me?' asked Serge.

'You will see, you will see.'

But he caught her by the hands and looked her very earnestly in the
face. 'You must not be foolish, you know. I won't have you hunting for
that glade of yours, or for the tree, or for the grassy couch where one
droops and dies. You know that it is forbidden.'

She blushed slightly, protesting that she had no such idea in her head.
Then she added: 'But if we should come across them, just by chance, you
know, and without really seeking them, you wouldn't mind sitting down,
would you? Else you must love me very little.'

They set off, going straight through the parterre without stopping to
watch the awakening of the flowers which were all dripping after their
dewy bath. The morning had a rosy hue, the smile of a beautiful child,
just opening its eyes on its snowy pillow.

'Where are you taking me?' repeated Serge.

But Albine only laughed and would not answer. Then, on reaching the
stream which ran through the garden at the end of the flower-beds, she
halted in great distress. The water was swollen with the late rains.

'We shall never be able to get across,' she murmured. 'I can generally
manage it by taking off my shoes and stockings, but, to-day, the water
would reach to our waists.'

They walked for a moment or two along the bank to find some fordable
point; but the girl said it was hopeless; she knew the stream quite
well. Once there had been a bridge across, but it had fallen in, and had
strewn the river bed with great blocks of stone, between which the water
rushed along in foaming eddies.

'Get on to my back, then,' said Serge.

'No, no; I'd rather not. If you were to slip, we should both of us get a
famous wetting. You don't know how treacherous those stones are.'

'Get on to my back,' repeated Serge.

She was tempted to do so. She stepped back for a spring, and then jumped
up, like a boy; but she felt that Serge was tottering; and crying out
that she was not safely seated, she got down again. However, after two
more attempts, she managed to settle herself securely on Serge's back.

'When you are quite ready,' said the young man, laughing, 'we will
start. Now, hold on tightly. We are off.'

And, with three light strides, he crossed the stream, scarcely wetting
even his toes. Midway, however, Albine thought that he was slipping. She
broke out into a little scream, and hugged him tightly round his neck.
But he sprang forward, and carried her at a gallop over the fine sand on
the other side.

'Gee up!' she cried, quite calm again, and delighted with this novel
game.

He ran along with her for some distance, she clucking her tongue, and
guiding him to right or left by some locks of his hair.

'Here--here we are,' she said at last, tapping him gently on the cheeks.

Then she jumped to the ground; while he, hot and perspiring, leaned
against a tree to draw breath. Albine thereupon began to scold him, and
threatened that she would not nurse him if he made himself ill again.

'Stuff!' he cried, 'it's done me good. When I have grown quite strong
again, I will carry you about all day. But where are you taking me?'

'Here,' she said, as she seated herself beneath a huge pear-tree.

They were in the old orchard of the park. A hawthorn hedge, a real wall
of greenery with here and there a gap, separated it from everything
else. There was quite a forest of fruit trees, which no pruning knife
had touched for a century past. Some of the trees had been strangely
warped and twisted by the storms which had raged over them; while
others, bossed all over with huge knots and full of deep holes, seemed
only to hold on to the soil with their bark. The high branches, bent
each year by weight of fruit, stretched out like big rackets; and each
tree helped to keep its fellows erect. The trunks were like twisted
pillars supporting a roof of greenery; and sometimes narrow cloisters,
sometimes light halls were formed, while now and again the verdure swept
almost to the ground and left scarcely room to pass. Round each colossus
a crowd of wild and self-sown saplings had grown up, thicket-like with
the entanglement of their young shoots. In the greenish light which
filtered like tinted water through the foliage, in the deep silence of
the mossy soil, one only heard the dull thud of the fruit as it was
culled by the wind.

And there were patriarchal apricot trees that bore their great age quite
bravely. Though decayed on one side, where they showed a perfect
scaffolding of dead wood, they were so youthful, so full of life, that,
on the other, young shoots were ever bursting through their rough bark.
There were cherry trees, that formed complete towns with houses of
several stories, that threw out staircases and floors of branches, big
enough for half a score of families. Then there were the apple trees,
with their limbs twisted like old cripples, with bark gnarled and
knotted, and all stained with lichen-growth. There were also smooth pear
trees, that shot up mast-like with long slender spars. And there were
rosy-blossomed peach-trees that won a place amid this teeming growth as
pretty maids do amidst a human crowd by dint of bright smiles and gentle
persistence. Some had been formerly trained as espaliers, but they had
broken down the low walls which had once supported them, and now spread
abroad in wild confusion, freed from the trammels of trellis work,
broken fragments of which still adhered to some of their branches. They
grew just as they listed, and resembled well-bred trees, once neat and
prim, which, having gone astray, now flaunted but vestiges of whilom
respectability. And from tree to tree, and from bough to bough, vine
branches hung in confusion. They rose like wild laughter, twined for an
instant round some lofty knot, then started off again with yet more
sonorous mirth, splotching all the foliage with the merry ebriety of
their tendrils. Their pale sun-gilt green set a glow of bacchanalianism
about the weather-worn heads of the old orchard giants.

Then towards the left were trees less thickly planted. Thin-foliaged
almonds allowed the sun's rays to pass and ripen the pumpkins, which
looked like moons that had fallen to the earth. Near the edge of a
stream which flowed through the orchard there also grew various kinds of
melons, some rough with knotty warts, some smooth and shining, as oval
as the eggs of ostriches. At every step, too, progress was barred by
currant bushes, showing limpid bunches of fruit, rubies in one and all
of which there sparkled liquid sunlight. And hedges of raspberry canes
shot up like wild brambles, while the ground was but a carpet of
strawberry plants, teeming with ripe berries which exhaled a slight
odour of vanilla.

But the enchanted corner of the orchard was still further to the left,
near a tier of rocks which there began to soar upwards. There you found
yourself in a veritable land of fire, in a natural hot-house, on which
the sun fell freely. At first, you had to make your way through huge,
ungainly fig trees, which stretched out grey branches like arms weary of
lying still, and whose villose leather-like foliage was so dense that in
order to pass one constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted
from the old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees
with verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries
which suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then there
came a jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which
pomegranates skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter,
big as a child's fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms,
fluttering at the ends of the branches, looked like the palpitating
wings of the humming birds, which do not even bend the shoots on which
they perch. Lastly, there was a forest of orange and lemon trees growing
vigorously in the open air. Their straight trunks stood like rows of
brown columns, while their shiny leaves showed brightly against the blue
of the sky, and cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow,
figuring the palms of some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside
which that of the European orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm
joy of sunlight, softened into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty of
evergreen foliage; the penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more
subdued fragrance of fruit; all helping to fill the body with the soft
languor of tropical lands.

'And now let us breakfast,' cried Albine, clapping her hands. 'It must
be at least nine o'clock, and I am very hungry.'

She had risen from the ground. Serge confessed that he, too, would find
some food acceptable.

'You goose!' she said, 'you didn't understand, then, that I brought you
here to breakfast. We sha'n't die of hunger here. We can help ourselves
to all there is.'

They went along under the trees, pushing aside the branches and making
their way to the thickest of the fruit. Albine, who went first, turned,
and in her flute-like voice asked her companion: 'What do you like best?
Pears, apricots, cherries, or currants? I warn you that the pears are
still green; but they are very nice all the same.'

Serge decided upon having cherries, and Albine agreed it would be as
well to start with them; but when she saw him foolishly beginning to
scramble up the first cherry tree he found, she made him go on for
another ten minutes through a frightful entanglement of branches. The
cherries on this tree, she said, were small and good for nothing; those
on that were sour; those on another would not be ripe for at least a
week. She knew all the trees.

'Stop, climb this one,' she said at last, as she stopped at the foot of
a tree, so heavily laden with fruit that clusters of it hung down to the
ground, like strings of coral beads.

Serge settled himself comfortably between two branches and began his
breakfast. He no longer paid attention to Albine. He imagined she was in
another tree, a few yards away, when, happening to cast his eyes towards
the ground, he saw her calmly lying on her back beneath him. She had
thrown herself there, and, without troubling herself to use her hands,
was plucking with her teeth the cherries which dangled over her mouth.

When she saw she was discovered, she broke out into a peal of laughter,
and twisted about on the grass like a fish taken from the water. And
finally, crawling along on her elbows, she gradually made the circuit of
the tree, snapping up the plumpest cherries as she went along.

'They tickle me so,' she cried. 'See, there's a beauty just fallen on my
neck. They are so deliciously fresh and juicy. They get into my ears, my
eyes, my nose, everywhere. They are much sweeter down here than up
there.'

'Ah!' said Serge, laughing, 'you say that because you daren't climb up.'

She remained for a moment silent with indignation. 'Daren't!--I!--' she
stammered.

Then, having gathered up her skirts, she tightly grasped the tree and
pulled herself up the trunk with a single effort of her strong wrists.
And afterwards she stepped lightly along the branches, scarcely using
her hands to steady herself. She had all the agile nimbleness of a
squirrel, and made her way onward, maintaining her equilibrium only by
the swaying poise of her body. When she was quite aloft at the end of a
frail branch, which shook dangerously beneath her weight, she cried;
'Now you see whether I daren't climb.'

'Come down at once,' implored Serge, full of alarm for her. 'I beg of
you to come down. You will be injuring yourself.'

But she, enjoying her triumph, began to mount still higher. She crawled
along to the extreme end of a branch, grasping its leaves in her hands
to maintain her hold.

'The branch will break!' cried Serge, thoroughly frightened.

'Let it break,' she answered, with a laugh; 'it will save me the trouble
of getting down.'

And the branch did break, but only slowly, with such deliberation that,
as it gradually settled towards the ground, it let Albine slip down in
very gentle fashion. She did not appear in the least degree frightened;
but gave herself a shake, and said: 'That was really nice. It was quite
like being in a carriage.'

Serge had jumped down from the tree to catch her in his arms. As he
stood there, quite pale from fright, she laughed at him. 'One tumbles
down from trees every day,' she exclaimed, 'but there is never any harm
done. Look more cheerful, you great stupid! Stay, just wet your finger
and rub it upon my neck. I have scratched it.'

Serge wetted his finger and touched her neck with it.

'There, I am all right again now,' she cried, as she bounded off. 'Let
us play at hide and seek, shall we?'

She was the first to hide. She disappeared, and presently from the
depths of the greenery, which she alone knew, and where Serge could not
possibly find her, she called, 'Cuckoo, cuckoo.' But this game of hide
and seek did not put a stop to the onslaught upon the fruit trees.
Breakfasting went on in all the nooks and corners where the two big
children sought each other. Albine, while gliding beneath the branches,
would stretch out her hand to pluck a green pear or fill her skirt with
apricots. Then in some of her lurking-places she would come upon such
rich discoveries as would make her careless of the game, content to sit
upon the ground and remain eating. Once, however, she lost sound of
Serge's movements. So, in her turn, she set about seeking him; and she
was surprised, almost vexed, when she discovered him under a plum-tree,
of whose existence she herself had been ignorant, and whose ripe fruit
had a delicious musky perfume. She soundly rated him. Did he want to eat
everything himself, that he hadn't called to her to come? He pretended
to know nothing about the trees, but he evidently had a very keen scent
to be able to find all the good things. She was especially indignant
with the poor tree itself--a stupid tree which no one had known of, and
which must have sprung up in the night on purpose to put people out. As
she stood there pouting, refusing to pluck a single plum, it occurred to
Serge to shake the tree violently. And then a shower, a regular hail, of
plums came down. Albine, standing in the midst of the downfall, received
plums on her arms, plums on her neck, plums on the very tip of her nose.
At this she could no longer restrain her laughter; she stood in the
midst of the deluge, crying 'More! more!' amused as she was by the round
bullet-like fruit which fell around her as she squatted there, with
hands and mouth open, and eyes closed.

It was a morning of childish play, of wild gambols in the Paradou.
Albine and Serge spent hours, scampering up and down, shouting and
sporting with each other, their thoughts still all innocence. And in
what a delicious spot they found themselves! Depths of greenery, with
undiscoverable hiding-places; paths, along whose windings it was never
possible to be serious, such greedy laughter fell from the very hedges.
In this happy orchard, there was such a playful straggling of bushes,
such fresh and appetising shade, such a wealth of old trees laden like
kindly grandfathers with sweet dainties. Even in the depths of the
recesses green with moss, beneath the broken trunks which compelled them
to creep the one behind the other, in the narrow leafy alleys, the young
folks never succumbed to the perilous reveries of silence. No trouble
touched them in that happy wood.

And when they had grown weary of the apricot-trees and the plum-trees
and the cherry-trees, they ran beneath the slender almond-trees; eating
green almonds, scarcely yet as big as peas, hunting for strawberries in
the grassy carpet, and regretting that the melons were not already ripe.
Albine finished by running as fast as she could go, pursued by Serge,
who was unable to overtake her. She rushed amongst the fig-trees,
leaping over their heavy branches, and pulling off the leaves to throw
them behind her in her companion's face. In a few strides she had
cleared the clumps of arbutus, whose red berries she tasted on her way;
and it was in the jungle of nettle-trees, medlars, and jujube-trees that
Serge lost her. At first he thought she was hiding behind a pomegranate;
but found that he had mistaken two clustering blossoms for the rosy
roundness of her wrists. Then he scoured the plantation of orange-trees,
rejoicing in their beauty and perfume, and thinking that he must have
reached the abode of the fairies of the sun. In the midst of them he
caught sight of Albine, who, not believing him so near her, was peering
inquisitively into the green depths.

'What are you looking for?' he cried. 'You know very well that is
forbidden.'

She sprang up hastily, and slightly blushed for the first time that day.
Then sitting down by the side of Serge, she told him of the fine times
there would be when the oranges should be ripe. The wood would then be
all golden, all bright with those round stars, dotting with yellow
sparks the arching green.

When at last they really set off homeward she halted at every
wild-growing fruit tree, and filled her pockets with sour pears and
bitter plums, saying that they world be good to eat on their way. They
would prove a hundred times more enjoyable than anything they had tasted
before. Serge was obliged to swallow some of them, in spite of the
grimaces he made at each bite. And eventually they found themselves
indoors again, tired out but feeling very happy.

X


A week later there was another expedition to the park. They had planned
to extend their rambles beyond the orchard, striking out to the left
through the meadows watered by the four streams. They would travel
several miles over the thick grass, and they might live on fish, if they
happened to lose themselves.

'I will take my knife,' said Albine, holding up a broad-bladed peasant's
knife.

She crammed all kinds of things into her pockets, string, bread,
matches, a small bottle of wine, some rags, a comb, and some needles.
Serge took a rug, but by the time they had passed the lime-trees and
reached the ruins of the chateau, he found it such an encumbrance that
he hid it beneath a piece of fallen wall.

The sun was hotter than before, Albine had delayed their departure by
her extensive preparations. Thus in the heat of the morning they stepped
along side by side, almost quietly. They actually managed to take twenty
paces at a time without pushing one another or laughing. They began to
talk.

'I never can wake up,' began Albine. 'I slept so soundly last night. Did
you?'

'Yes, indeed, very soundly,' replied Serge.

'What does it mean when you dream of a bird that talks to you?' the girl
resumed.

'I don't know. What did your bird say to you?'

'Oh, I have forgotten. But it said all kinds of things, and many of them
sounded very comical. Stop, look at that big poppy over there. You
sha'n't get it, you sha'n't get it!'

And then she sprang forward; but Serge, thanks to his long legs,
outstripped her and plucked the poppy, which he waved about
victoriously. She stood there with lips compressed, saying nothing, but
feeling a strong inclination to cry. Serge threw down the flower.
Nothing else occurred to him. Then, to make his peace with her, he
asked: 'Would you like me to carry you as I did the other day?'

'No, no.'

She pouted a little, but she had not gone another thirty steps, when she
turned round smiling. A bramble had caught hold of her dress.

'I thought it was you who were treading on my dress purposely. It won't
let me go. Come and unfasten me.'

When she was released, they walked on again, side by side, very quietly.
Albine pretended that it was much more amusing to stroll along in this
fashion, like steady grown-up folks. They had just reached the meadows.
Far away, in front of them, stretched grassy expanses scarce broken here
and there by the tender foliage of willows. The grass looked soft and
downy, like velvet. It was a deep green, subsiding in the distance into
lighter tints, and on the horizon assuming a bright yellow glow beneath
the flaring sun. The clumps of willows right over yonder seemed like
pure gold, bathed in the tremulous brilliance of the sunshine. Dancing
dust tipped the blades of grass with quivering light, and as the gentle
breezes swept over the free expanse, moire-like reflections appeared on
the caressed and quivering herbage. In the nearer fields a multitude of
little white daisies, now in swarms, now straggling, and now in groups,
like holiday makers at some public rejoicing, brightly peopled the dark
grass. Buttercups showed themselves, gay like little brass bells which
the touch of a fly's wing would set tinkling. Here and there big lonely
poppies raised fiery cups, and others, gathered together further away,
spread out like vats purple with lees of wine. Big cornflowers balanced
aloft their light blue caps which looked as if they would fly away at
every breath of air. Then under foot there were patches of woolly
feather-grass and fragrant meadow-sweet, sheets of fescue, dog's-tail,
creeping-bent, and meadow grass. Sainfoin reared its long fine
filaments; clover unfurled its clear green leaves, plantains brandished
forests of spears, lucerne spread out in soft beds of green satin
broidered with purple flowers. And all these were seen, to right, to
left, in front, everywhere, rolling over the level soil, showing like
the mossy surface of a stagnant sea, asleep beneath the sky which ever
seemed to expand. Here and there, in the vast expanse, the vegetation
was of a limpid blue, as though it reflected the colour of the heavens.

Albine and Serge stepped along over the meadow-lands, with the grass
reaching to their knees. It was like wading through a pool. Now and
then, indeed, they found themselves caught by a current in which a
stream of bending stalks seemed to flow away between their legs. Then
there were placid-looking, slumbering lakes, basins of short grass,
which scarcely reached their ankles. As they walked along together,
their joy found expression not in wild gambols, as in the orchard a week
before, but rather in loitering, with their feet caught among the supple
arms of the herbage, tasting as it were the caresses of a pure stream
which calmed the exuberance of their youth. Albine turned aside and
slipped into a lofty patch of vegetation which reached to her chin. Only
her head appeared. For a moment or two she stood there in silence. Then
she called to Serge: 'Come here, it is just like a bath. It is as if one
had green water all over one.'

Then she gave a jump and scampered off without waiting for him, and they
both walked along the margin of the first stream which barred their
onward course. It was a shallow tranquil brook between banks of wild
cress. It flowed on so placidly and gently that its surface reflected
like a mirror the smallest reed that grew beside it. Albine and Serge
followed this stream, whose onward motion was slower than their own, for
a long time before they came across a tree that flung a long shadow upon
the idle waters. As far as their eyes could reach they saw the bare
brook stretch out and slumber in the sunlight like a blue serpent half
uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their
roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks,
rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of
youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible
upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below,
was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface,
as though it were surprised to find even this light veil cast over it.
Between the three willows the meadow-land sloped down to the stream, and
some crimson poppies had sprung up in the crevices of the decaying old
trunks. The foliage of the willows looked like a tent of greenery fixed
upon three stakes by the water's edge, beside a rolling prairie.

'This is the place,' cried Albine, 'this is the place;' and she glided
beneath the willows.

Serge sat down by her side, his feet almost in the water. He glanced
round him, and murmured: 'You know everything, you know all the best
spots. One might almost think this was an island, ten feet square, right
in the middle of the sea.'

'Yes, indeed, we are quite at home,' she replied, as she gleefully
drummed the grass with her fists. 'It is altogether our own, and we are
going to do everything ourselves.' Then, as if struck by a brilliant
idea, she sprang towards him, and, with her face close to his, asked him
joyously: 'Will you be my husband? I will be your wife.'

He was delighted at the notion, and replied that he would gladly be her
husband, laughing even more loudly than she had done herself. Then
Albine suddenly became grave, and assumed the anxious air of a
housewife.

'You know,' she said, 'that it is I who will have to give the orders. We
will have breakfast as soon as you have laid the table.'

She gave him her orders in an imperious fashion. He had to stow all the
various articles which she extracted from her pockets into a hole in one
of the willows, which bole she called the cupboard. The rags supplied
the household linen, while the comb represented the toilette
necessaries. The needles and string were to be used for mending the
explorers' clothes. Provision for the inner man consisted of the little
bottle of wine and a few crusts which she had saved from yesterday. She
had, to be sure, some matches, by the aid of which she intended to cook
the fish they were going to catch.

When Serge had finished laying the table, the bottle of wine in the
centre, and three crusts grouped round it, he hazarded the observation
that the fare seemed to be scanty. But Albine shrugged her shoulders
with feminine superiority. And wading into the water, she said in a
severe tone, 'I will catch the fish; you can watch me.'

For half an hour she strenuously exerted herself in trying to catch some
of the little fishes with her hands. She had gathered up her petticoats
and fastened them together with a piece of string. And she advanced
quietly into the water, taking the greatest care not to disturb it. When
she was quite close to some tiny fish, that lay lurking between a couple
of pebbles, she thrust down her bare arm, made a wild grasp, and brought
her hand up again with nothing in it but sand and gravel. Serge then
broke out into noisy laughter which brought her back to the bank,
indignant. She told him that he had no business to laugh at her.

'But,' he ended by asking, 'how are we going to cook your fish when you
have caught it? There is no wood about.'

That put the finishing touch to her discouragement. However, the fish in
that stream didn't seem to be good for much; so she came out of the
water and ran through the long grass to get her feet dry.

'See,' she suddenly exclaimed, 'here is some pimpernel. It is very nice.
Now we shall have a feast.'

Serge was ordered to gather a quantity of the pimpernel and place it on
the table. They ate it with their crusts. Albine declared that it was
much better than nuts. She assumed the position of mistress of the
establishment, and cut Serge's bread for him, for she would not trust
him with the knife. At last she made him store away in the 'cupboard'
the few drops of wine that remained at the bottom of the bottle. He was
also ordered to sweep the grass. Then Albine lay down at full length.

'We are going to sleep now, you know. You must lie down by my side.'

He did as he was ordered. They lay there stiffly staring into the air,
and saying that they were asleep, and that it was very nice. After a
while, however, they drew slightly away from one another, averting their
heads as if they felt some discomfort. And at last breaking the silence
which had fallen between them, Serge exclaimed: 'I love you very much.'

It was love such as it is without any sensual feeling; that instinctive
love which wakens in the bosom of a little man ten years old at the
sight of some white-robed baby-girl. The meadow-lands, spreading around
them all open and free, dissipated the slight fear each felt of the
other. They knew that they lay there, seen of all the herbage, that the
blue sky looked down upon them through the light foliage of the willows,
and the thought was pleasant to them. The willow canopy over their heads
was a mere open screen. The shade it cast was so imperceptible that it
wafted to them none of the languor that some dim coppice might have
done. From the far-off horizon came a healthy breeze fraught with all
the freshness of the grassy sea, swelling here and there into waves of
flowers; while, at their feet, the stream, childlike as they were,
flowed idly along with a gentle babbling that sounded to them like the
laughter of a companion. Ah! happy solitude, so tranquil and placid,
immensity wherein the little patch of grass serving as their couch took
the semblance of an infant's cradle.

'There, that's enough; said Albine, getting up; 'we've rested long
enough.'

Serge seemed a little surprised at this speedy termination of their
sleep. He stretched out his arm and caught hold of Albine, as though to
draw her near him again; and when she, laughing, dropped upon her knees
he grasped her elbows and gazed up at her. He knew not to what impulse
he was yielding. But when she had freed herself, and again had risen to
her feet, he buried his face amongst the grass where she had lain, and
which still retained the warmth of her body.

'Yes,' he said at last, 'it is time to get up,' and then he rose from
the ground.

They scoured the meadow-lands until evening began to fall. They went on
and on, inspecting their garden. Albine walked in front, sniffing like a
young dog, and saying nothing, but she was ever in search of the happy
glade, although where they found themselves there were none of the big
trees of which her thoughts were full. Serge meanwhile indulged in all
kinds of clumsy gallantry. He rushed forward so hastily to thrust the
tall herbage aside, that he nearly tripped her up; and he almost tore
her arm from her body as he tried to assist her over the brooks. Their
joy was great when they came to the three other streams. The first
flowed over a bed of pebbles, between two rows of willows, so closely
planted that they had to grope between the branches with the risk of
falling into some deep part of the water. It only rose to Serge's knees,
however, and having caught Albine in his arms he carried her to the
opposite bank, to save her from a wetting. The next stream flowed black
with shade beneath a lofty canopy of foliage, passing languidly onward
with the gentle rustling and rippling of the satin train of some lady,
dreamily sauntering through the woodland depths. It was a deep, cold,
and rather dangerous-looking stream, but a fallen tree that stretched
from bank to bank served them as a bridge. They crossed over, bestriding
the tree with dangling feet, at first amusing themselves by stirring the
water which looked like a mirror of burnished steel, but then suddenly
hastening, frightened by the strange eyes which opened in the depths of
the sleepy current at the slightest splash. But it was the last stream
which delayed them the most. It was sportive like themselves, it flowed
more slowly at certain bends, whence it started off again with merry
ripples, past piles of big stones, into the shelter of some clump of
trees, and grew calmer once more. It exhibited every humour as it sped
along over soft sand or rocky boulders, over sparkling pebbles or greasy
clay, where leaping frogs made yellow puddles. Albine and Serge dabbled
about in delight, and even walked homewards through the stream in
preference to remaining on the bank. At every little island that divided
the current they landed. They conquered the savage spot or rested
beneath the lofty canes and reeds, which seemed to grow there expressly
as shelter for shipwrecked adventurers. Thus they made a delightful
progress, amused by the changing scenery of the banks, enlivened by the
merry humour of the living current.

But when they were about to leave the river, Serge realised that Albine
was still seeking something along the banks, on the island, even among
the plants that slept on the surface of the water. He was obliged to go
and pull her from the midst of a patch of water-lilies whose broad
leaves set _collerettes_ around her limbs. He said nothing, but shook
his finger at her. And at last they went home, walking along, arm in
arm, like young people after a day's outing. They looked at each other,
and thought one another handsomer and stronger than before, and of a
certainty their laughter had a different ring from that with which it
had sounded in the morning.

XI


'Are we never going out again?' asked Serge some days later.

And when he saw Albine shrug her shoulders with a weary air, he added,
in a teasing kind of way, 'You have got tired of looking for your tree,
then?'

They joked about the tree all day and made fun of it. It didn't exist.
It was only a nursery-story. Yet they both spoke of it with a slight
feeling of awe. And on the morrow they settled that they would go to the
far end of the park and pay a visit to the great forest-trees which
Serge had not yet seen. Albine refused to take anything along with them.
They breakfasted before starting and did not set off till late. The heat
of the sun, which was then great, brought them a feeling of languor, and
they sauntered along gently, side by side, seeking every patch of
sheltering shade. They lingered neither in the garden nor the orchard,
through which they had to pass. When they gained the shady coolness
beneath the big trees, they dropped into a still slower pace; and,
without a word, but with a deep sigh, as though it were welcome relief
to escape from the glare of day, they pushed on into the forest's
depths. And when they had nothing but cool green leaves about them, when
no glimpse of the sunlit expanse was afforded by any gap in the foliage,
they looked at each other and smiled, with a feeling of vague
uneasiness.

'How nice it is here!' murmured Serge.

Albine simply nodded her head. A choking sensation in her throat
prevented her from speaking. Their arms were not passed as usual round
each other's waist, but swung loosely by their sides. They walked along
without touching each other, and with their heads inclined towards the
ground.

But Serge suddenly stopped short on seeing tears trickle down Albine's
cheeks and mingle with the smile that played around her lips.

'What is the matter with you?' he exclaimed; 'are you in pain? Have you
hurt yourself?'

'No, don't you see I'm smiling? I don't know how it is, but the scent of
all these trees forces tears into my eyes.' She glanced at him, and then
resumed: 'Why, you're crying too! You see you can't help it.'

'Yes,' he murmured, 'all this deep shade affects one. It seems so
peaceful, so mournful here that one feels a little sad. But you must
tell me, you know, if anything makes you really unhappy. I have not done
anything to annoy you, have I? you are not vexed with me?'

She assured him that she was not. She was quite happy, she said.

'Then why are you not enjoying yourself more? Shall we have a race?'

'Oh! no, we can't race,' she said, disdainfully, with a pout. And when
he went on to suggest other amusements, such as bird-nesting or
gathering strawberries or violets, she replied a little impatiently: 'We
are too big for that sort of thing. It is childish to be always playing.
Doesn't it please you better to walk on quietly by my side?'

She stepped along so prettily, that it was, indeed, a pleasure to hear
the pit-pat of her little boots on the hard soil of the path. Never
before had he paid attention to the rhythmic motion of her figure, the
sweep of her skirts that followed her with serpentine motion. It was
happiness never to be exhausted, to see her thus walking sedately by his
side, for he was ever discovering some new charm in the lissom
suppleness of her limbs.

'You are right,' he said, 'this is really the best. I would walk by your
side to the end of the world, if you wished it.'

A little further on, however, he asked her if she were not tired, and
hinted that he would not be sorry to have a rest himself.

'We might sit down for a few minutes,' he suggested in a stammering
voice.

'No,' she replied, 'I don't want to.'

'But we might lie down, you know, as we did in the meadows the other
day. We should be quite comfortable.'

'No, no; I don't want to.'

And she suddenly sprang aside, as if scared by the masculine arms
outstretched towards her. Serge called her a big stupid, and tried to
catch her. But at the light touch of his fingers she cried out with such
an expression of pain that he drew back, trembling.

'I have hurt you?' he said.

She did not reply for a moment, surprised, herself, at her cry of fear,
and already smiling at her own alarm.

'No; leave me, don't worry me;' and she added in a grave tone, though
she tried to feign jocularity: 'you know that I have my tree to look
for.'

Then Serge began to laugh, and offered to help her in her search. He
conducted himself very gently in order that he might not again alarm
her, for he saw that she was even yet trembling, though she had resumed
her slow walk beside him. What they were contemplating was forbidden,
and could bring them no luck; and he, like her, felt a delightful awe,
which thrilled him at each repeated sigh of the forest trees. The
perfume of the foliage, the soft green light which filtered through the
leaves, the soughing silence of the undergrowth, filled them with
tremulous excitement, as though the next turn of the path might lead
them to some perilous happiness.

And for hours they walked on under the cool trees. They retained their
reserved attitude towards each other, and scarcely exchanged a word,
though they never left each other's side, but went together through the
darkest greenery of the forest. At first their way lay through a jungle
of saplings with trunks no thicker than a child's wrist. They had to
push them aside, and open a path for themselves through the tender
shoots which threw a wavy lacework of foliage before their eyes. The
saplings closed up again behind them, leaving no trace of their passage,
and they struggled on and on at random, ignorant of where they might be,
and leaving nothing behind them to mark their progress, save a momentary
waving of shaken boughs. Albine, weary of being unable to see more than
three steps in front of her, was delighted when they at last found
themselves free of this jungle, whose end they had long tried to
discover. They had now reached a little clearing, whence several narrow
paths, fringed with green hedges, struck out in various directions,
twisting hither and thither, intersecting one another, bending and
stretching in the most capricious fashion. Albine and Serge rose on
tip-toes to peep over the hedges; but they were in no haste, and would
willingly have stayed where they were, lost in the mazy windings,
without ever getting anywhere, if they had not seen before them the
proud lines of the lofty forest trees. They passed at last beneath their
shade, solemnly and with a touch of sacred awe, as when one enters some
vaulted cathedral. The straight lichen-stained trunks of the mighty
trees, of a dingy grey, like discoloured stone, towered loftily, line by
line, like a far-reaching infinity of columns. Naves opened far away,
with lower, narrower aisles; naves strangely bold in their proportions,
whose supporting pillars were very slender, richly caned, so finely
chiselled that everywhere they allowed a glimpse of the blue heavens. A
religious silence reigned beneath the giant arches, the ground below lay
hard as stone in its austere nakedness; not a blade of green was there,
nought but a ruddy dust of dead leaves. And Serge and Albine listened to
their ringing footsteps as they went on, thrilled by the majestic
solitude of this temple.

Here, indeed, if anywhere, must be the much-sought tree, beneath whose
shade perfect happiness had made its home. They felt that it was nigh,
such was the delight which stole through them amidst the dimness of
those mighty arches. The trees seemed to be creatures of kindliness,
full of strength and silence and happy restfulness. They looked at them
one by one, and they loved them all; and they awaited from their
majestic tranquillity some revelation whereby they themselves might
grow, expand into the bliss of strong and perfect life. The maples, the
ashes, the hornbeams, the cornels, formed a nation of giants, a
multitude full of proud gentleness, who lived in peace, knowing that the
fall of any one of them would have sufficed to wreck a whole corner of
the forest. The elms displayed colossal bodies and limbs full of sap,
scarce veiled by light clusters of little leaves. The birches and the
alders, delicate as sylphs, swayed their slim figures in the breeze to
which they surrendered the foliage that streamed around them like the
locks of goddesses already half metamorphosed into trees. The planes
shot up regularly with glossy tattooed bark, whence scaly fragments
fell. Down a gentle slope descended the larches, resembling a band of
barbarians, draped in _sayons_ of woven greenery. But the oaks were the
monarchs of all--the mighty oaks, whose sturdy trunks thrust out
conquering arms that barred the sun's approach from all around them;
Titan-like trees, oft lightning-struck, thrown back in postures like
those of unconquered wrestlers, with scattered limbs that alone gave
birth to a whole forest.

Could the tree which Serge and Albine sought be one of those colossal
oaks? or was it one of those lovely planes, or one of those pale,
maidenly birches, or one of those creaking elms? Albine and Serge still
plodded on, unable to tell, completely lost amongst the crowding trees.
For a moment they thought they had found the object of their quest in
the midst of a group of walnut trees from whose thick foliage fell so
cold a shadow that they shivered beneath it. Further on they felt
another thrill of emotion as they came upon a little wood of chestnut
trees, green with moss and thrusting out big strange-shaped branches, on
which one might have built an aerial village. But further still Albine
caught sight of a clearing, whither they both ran hastily. Here, in the
midst of a carpet of fine turf, a locust tree had set a very toppling of
greenery, a foliaged Babel, whose ruins were covered with the strangest
vegetation. Stones, sucked up from the ground by the mounting sap, still
remained adhering to the trunk. High branches bent down to earth again,
and, taking root, surrounded the parent tree with lofty arches, a nation
of new trunks which ever increased and multiplied. Upon the bark, seared
with bleeding wounds, were ripening fruit-pods; the mere effort of
bearing fruit strained the old monster's skin until it split. The young
folks walked slowly round it, passing under the arched branches which
formed as it were the streets of a city, and stared at the gaping cracks
of the naked roots. Then they went off, for they had not felt there the
supernatural happiness they sought.

'Where are we?' asked Serge.

Albine did not know. She had never before come to this part of the park.
They were now in a grove of cytisus and acacias, from whose clustering
blossoms fell a soft, almost sugary perfume. 'We are quite lost,' she
laughed. 'I don't know these trees at all.'

'But the garden must come to an end somewhere,' said Serge. 'When we get
to the end, you will know where you are, won't you?'

'No,' she answered, waving her hands afar.

They fell into silence; never yet had the vastness of the park filled
them with such pleasure. They joyed at knowing that they were alone in
so far-spreading a domain that even they themselves could not reach its
limits.

'Well, we are lost,' said Serge, gaily; then humbly drawing near her he
inquired: 'You are not afraid, are you?'

'Oh! no. There's no one except you and me in the garden. What could I be
afraid of? The walls are very high. We can't see them, but they guard
us, you know.'

Serge was now quite close to her, and he murmured, 'But a little time
ago you were afraid of me.'

She looked him straight in the face, perfectly calm, without the least
faltering in her glance. 'You hurt me,' she replied, 'but you are
different now. Why should I be afraid of you?'

'Then you will let me hold you like this. We will go back under the
trees.'

'Yes, you may put your arm around me, it makes me feel happy. And we'll
walk slowly, eh? so that we may not find our way again too soon.'

He had passed his arm round her waist, and it was thus that they
sauntered back to the shade of the great forest trees, under whose
arching vaults they slowly went, with love awakening within them. Albine
said that she felt a little tired, and rested her head on Serge's
shoulder. The fabulous tree was now forgotten. They only sought to draw
their faces nearer together that they might smile in one another's eyes.
And it was the trees, the maples, the elms, the oaks, with their soft
green shade, that whisperingly suggested to them the first words of
love.

'I love you!' said Serge, while his breath stirred the golden hair that
clustered round Albine's temples. He tried to think of other words, but
he could only repeat, 'I love you! I love you!'

Albine listened with a delightful smile upon her face. The music of her
heart was in accord with his.

'I love you! I love you!' she sighed, with all the sweetness of her soft
young voice.

Then, lifting up her blue eyes, in which the light of love was dawning,
she asked, 'How do you love me?'

Serge reflected for a moment. The forest was wrapped in solemn quietude,
the lofty naves quivered only with the soft footsteps of the young pair.

'I love you beyond everything,' he answered. 'You are more beautiful
than all else that I see when I open my window in the morning. When I
look at you, I want nothing more. If I could have you only, I should be
perfectly happy.'

She lowered her eyes, and swayed her head as if accompanying a strain of
music. 'I love you,' he went on. 'I know nothing about you. I know not
who you are, nor whence you came. You are neither my mother nor my
sister; and yet I love you to a point that I have given you my whole
heart and kept nought of it for others. Listen, I love those cheeks of
yours, so soft and satiny; I love your mouth with its rose-sweet breath;
I love your eyes, in which I see my own love reflected; I love even your
eyelashes, even those little veins which blue the whiteness of your
temples. Ah! yes, I love you, I love you, Albine.'

'And I love you, too,' she answered. 'You are strong, and tall, and
handsome. I love you, Serge.'

For a moment or two they remained silent, enraptured. It seemed to them
that soft, flute-like music went before them, that their own words came
from some dulcet orchestra which they could not see. Shorter and shorter
became their steps as they leaned one towards the other, ever threading
their way amidst the mighty trees. Afar off through the long vista of
the colonnades were glimpses of waning sunlight, showing like a
procession of white-robed maidens entering church for a betrothal
ceremony amid the low strains of an organ.

'And why do you love me?' asked Albine again.

He only smiled, and did not answer her immediately; then he said, 'I
love you because you came to me. That expresses all. . . . Now we are
together and we love one another. It seems to me that I could not go on
living if I did not love you. You are the very breath of my life.'

He bent his head, speaking almost as though he were in a dream.

'One does not know all that at first. It grows up in one as one's heart
grows. One has to grow, one has to get strong. . . . Do you remember how
we loved one another though we didn't speak of it? One is childish and
silly at first. Then, one fine day, it all becomes clear, and bursts
out. You see, we have nothing to trouble about; we love one another
because our love and our life are one.'

Albine's head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she
scarce drew her breath. Serge's caressing words enraptured her: 'Do you
really, really love me?' she murmured, without opening her eyes.

Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing
further to say to prove to her the force of his love. His eyes wandered
over her rosy face, which lay upon his shoulder with the restfulness of
sleep. Her eyelids were soft as silk. Her moist lips were curved into a
bewitching smile, her brow was pure white, with just a rim of gold below
her hair. He would have liked to give his whole being with the word
which seemed to be upon his tongue but which he could not utter. Again
he bent over her, and seemed to consider on what sweet spot of that fair
face he should whisper the supreme syllables. But he said nothing, he
only breathed a little sigh. Then he kissed Albine's lips.

'Albine, I love you!'

'I love you, Serge!'

Then they stopped short, thrilled, quivering with that first love kiss.
She had opened her eyes quite widely. He was standing with his lips
protruding slightly towards hers. They looked at each other without a
blush. They felt they were under the influence of some sovereign power.
It was like the realisation of a long dreamt-of meeting, in which they
beheld themselves grown, made one for the other, for ever joined. For a
moment they remained wondering, raising their eyes to the solemn vault
of greenery above them, questioning the tranquil nation of trees as if
seeking an echo of their kiss. But, beneath the serene complacence of
the forest, they yielded to prolonged, ringing lovers' gaiety, full of
all the tenderness now born.

'Tell me how long you have loved me. Tell me everything. Did you love me
that day when you lay sleeping upon my hand? Did you love me when I fell
out of the cherry tree, and you stood beneath it, stretching out your
arms to catch me, and looking so pale? Did you love me when you took
hold of me round the waist in the meadows to help me over the streams?'

'Hush, let me speak. I have always loved you. And you, did you love me;
did you?'

Until the evening closed round them they lived upon that one word
'love,' in which they ever seemed to find some new sweetness. They
brought it into every sentence, ejaculated it inconsequentially, merely
for the pleasure they found in pronouncing it. Serge, however, did not
think of pressing a second kiss to Albine's lips. The perfume of the
first sufficed them in their purity. They had found their way again, or
rather had stumbled upon it, for they had paid no attention to the paths
they took. As they left the forest, twilight had fallen, and the moon
was rising, round and yellow, between the black foliage. It was a
delightful walk home through the park, with that discreet luminary
peering at them through the gaps in the big trees. Albine said that the
moon was surely following them. The night was balmy, warm too with
stars. Far away a long murmur rose from the forest trees, and Serge
listened, thinking: 'They are talking of us.'

When they reached the parterre, they passed through an atmosphere of
sweetest perfumes; the perfume of flowers at night, which is richer,
more caressing than by day, and seems like the very breath of slumber.

'Good night, Serge.'

'Good night, Albine.'

They clasped each other by the hand on the landing of the first floor,
without entering the room where they usually wished each other good
night. They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated
on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine's every movement in the room
above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs.

XII


For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of
embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath the
trees. They had not again kissed each other, or repeated their
confession of love. It was not any feeling of shame which had sealed
their lips, but rather a fear of in any way spoiling their happiness.
When they were apart, they lived upon the dear recollection of love's
awakening, plunged into it, passed once more through the happy hours
which they had spent, with their arms around each other's waist, and
their faces close together. It all ended by throwing them both into a
feverish state. They looked at each other with heavy eyes, and talked,
in a melancholy mood, of things that did not interest them in the least.
Then, after a long interval of silence, Serge would say to Albine in a
tone full of anxiety: 'You are ill?'

But she shook her head as she answered, 'No, no. It is you who are not
well; your hands are burning.'

The thought of the park filled them with vague uneasiness which they
could not understand. They felt that danger lurked for them in some
by-path, and would seize them and do them hurt. They never spoke about
these disquieting thoughts, but certain timid glances revealed to them
the mutual anguish which held them apart as though they were foes. One
morning, however, Albine ventured, after much hesitation, to say to
Serge: 'It is wrong of you to keep always indoors. You will fall ill
again.'

Serge laughed in rather an embarrassed way. 'Bah!' he muttered, 'we have
been everywhere, we know all the garden by heart.'

But Albine shook her head, and in a whisper replied, 'No, no, we don't
know the rocks, we have never been to the springs. It was there that I
warmed myself last winter. There are some nooks where the stones seem to
be actually alive.'

The next morning, without having said another word on the subject, they
set out together. They climbed up to the left behind the grotto where
the marble woman lay slumbering; and as they set foot on the lowest
stones, Serge remarked: 'We must see everything. Perhaps we shall feel
quieter afterwards.'

The day was very hot, there was thunder in the air. They had not
ventured to clasp each other's waist; but stepped along, one behind the
other, glowing beneath the sunlight. Albine took advantage of a widening
of the path to let Serge go on in front; for the warmth of his breath
upon her neck troubled her. All around them the rocks arose in broad
tiers, storeys of huge flags, bristling with coarse vegetation. They
first came upon golden gorse, clumps of sage, thyme, lavender, and other
balsamic plants, with sour-berried juniper trees and bitter rosemary,
whose strong scent made them dizzy. Here and there the path was hemmed
in by holly, that grew in quaint forms like cunningly wrought metal
work, gratings of blackened bronze, wrought iron, and polished copper,
elaborately ornamented, covered with prickly _rosaces_. And before
reaching the springs, they had to pass through a pine-wood. Its shadow
seemed to weigh upon their shoulders like lead. The dry needles crackled
beneath their feet, throwing up a light resinous dust which burned their
lips.

'Your garden doesn't make itself very agreeable just here,' said Serge,
turning towards Albine.

They smiled at each other. They were now near the edge of the springs.
The sight of the clear waters brought them relief. Yet these springs did
not hide beneath a covering of verdure, like those that bubble up on the
plains and set thick foliage growing around them that they may slumber
idly in the shade. They shot up in the full light of day from a cavity
in the rock, without a blade of grass near by to tinge the clear water
with green. Steeped in the sunshine they looked silvery. In their depths
the sun beat against the sand in a breathing living dust of light. And
they darted out of their basin like arms of purest white, they rebounded
like nude infants at play, and then suddenly leapt down in a waterfall
whose curve suggested a woman's breast.

'Dip your hands in,' cried Albine; 'the water is icy cold at the
bottom.'

They were indeed able to refresh their hot hands. They threw water over
their faces too, and lingered there amidst the spray which rose up from
the streaming springs.

'Look,' cried Albine; 'look, there is the garden, and there are the
meadows and the forest.'

For a moment they looked at the Paradou spread out beneath their feet.

'And you see,' she added, 'there isn't the least sign of any wall. The
whole country belongs to us, right up to the sky.'

By this time, almost unawares, they had slipped their arms round each
other's waist. The coolness of the springs had soothed their feverish
disquietude. But just as they were going away, Albine seemed to recall
something and led Serge back again, saying:

'Down there, below the rocks, a long time ago, I once saw the wall.'

'But there is nothing to be seen,' replied Serge, turning a little pale.

'Yes, yes; it must be behind that avenue of chestnut trees on the other
side of those bushes.'

Then, on feeling Serge's arm tremble, she added: 'But perhaps I am
mistaken. . . . Yet I seem to remember that I suddenly came upon it as I
left the avenue. It stopped my way, and was so high that I felt a little
afraid. And a few steps farther on, I came upon another surprise. There
was a huge hole in it, through which I could see the whole country
outside.'

Serge looked at her with entreaty in his eyes. She gave a little shrug
of her shoulders to reassure him, and went on: 'But I stopped the hole
up; I have told you that we are quite alone, and we are. I stopped it up
at once. I had my knife with me, and I cut down some brambles and rolled
up some big stones. I would defy even a sparrow to force its way
through. If you like, we will go and look at it one of these days, and
then you will be satisfied.'

But he shook his head. Then they went away together, still holding each
other by the waist; but they had grown anxious once more. Serge gazed
down askance at Albine's face, and she felt perturbed beneath his
glance. They would have liked to go down again at once, and thus escape
the uneasiness of a longer walk. But, in spite of themselves, as though
impelled by some stronger power, they skirted a rocky cliff and reached
a table-land, where once more they found the intoxication of the full
sunlight. They no longer inhaled the soft languid perfumes of aromatic
plants, the musky scent of thyme, and the incense of lavender. Now they
were treading a foul-smelling growth under foot; wormwood with bitter,
penetrating smell; rue that reeked like putrid flesh; and hot valerian,
clammy with aphrodisiacal exudations. Mandragoras, hemlocks, hellebores,
dwales, poured forth their odours, and made their heads swim till they
reeled and tottered one against the other.

'Shall I hold you up?' Serge asked Albine, as he felt her leaning
heavily upon him.

He was already pressing her in his arms, but she struggled out of his
grasp, and drew a long breath.

'No; you stifle me,' she said. 'Leave me alone. I don't know what is the
matter with me. The ground seems to give way under my feet. It is there
I feel the pain.'

She took hold of his hand and laid it upon her breast. Then Serge turned
quite pale. He was even more overcome than she. And both had tears in
their eyes as they saw each other thus ill and troubled, unable to think
of a remedy for the evil which had fallen upon them. Were they going to
die here of that mysterious, suffocating faintness?

'Come and sit down in the shade,' said Serge. 'It is these plants which
are poisoning us with their noxious odours.'

He led her gently along by her finger-tips, for she shivered and
trembled when he but touched her wrist. It was beneath a fine cedar,
whose level roof-like branches spread nearly a dozen yards around, that
she seated herself. Behind grew various quaint conifers; cypresses, with
soft flat foliage that looked like heavy lace; spruce firs, erect and
solemn, like ancient druidical pillars, still black with the blood of
sacrificed victims; yews, whose dark robes were fringed with silver;
evergreen trees of all kinds, with thick-set foliage, dark leathery
verdure, splashed here and there with yellow and red. There was a
weird-looking araucaria that stood out strangely with large regular arms
resembling reptiles grafted one on the other, and bristling with
imbricated leaves that suggested the scales of an excited serpent. In
this heavy shade, the warm air lulled one to voluptuous drowsiness. The
atmosphere slept, breathless; and a perfume of Eastern love, the perfume
that came from the painted lips of the Shunamite, was exhaled by the
odorous trees.

'Are you not going to sit down?' said Albine.

And she slipped a little aside to make room for him; but Serge stepped
back and remained standing. Then, as she renewed her request, he dropped
upon his knees, a little distance away, and said, softly: 'No, I am more
feverish even than you are; I should make you hot. If I wasn't afraid of
hurting you, I would take you in my arms, and clasp you so tightly that
we should no longer feel any pain.'

He dragged himself nearer to her on his knees.

'Oh! to have you in my arms! In the night I awake from dreams in which I
see you near me; but, alas! you are ever far away. There seems to be
some wall built up between us which I can never beat down. And yet I am
now quite strong again; I could catch you up in my arms and swing you
over my shoulder, and carry you off as though you belonged to me.'

He had let himself sink upon his elbows, in an attitude of deep
adoration. And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine's skirt. But at
this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received
the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and
stammering forth: 'Don't! don't! I beg of you. Let us go on.'

She did not hurry away, but let Serge follow her as she walked slowly
on, stumbling against the roots of the plants, and with her hands still
clasped round her head, as though to check the excitement that thrilled
her. When they came out of the little wood, they took a few steps over
ledges of rocks, on which a whole nation of ardent fleshy plants was
squatting. It was like a crawling, writhing assemblage of hideous
nameless monsters such as people a nightmare; monsters akin to spiders,
caterpillars, and wood-lice, grown to gigantic proportions, some with
bare glaucous skins, others tufted with filthy matted hairs, whilst many
had sickly limbs--dwarf legs, and shrivelled, palsied arms--sprawling
around them. And some displayed horrid dropsical bellies; some had
spines bossy with hideous humps, and others looked like dislocated
skeletons. Mamillaria threw up living pustules, a crawling swarm of
greenish tortoises, bristling hideously with long hairs that were
stiffer than iron. The echinocacti, which showed more flesh, suggested
nests of young writhing, knotted vipers. The echinopses were mere
excrescent red-haired growths that made one think of huge insects rolled
into balls. The prickly-pears spread out fleshy leaves spotted with
ruddy spikes that resembled swarms of microscopic bees. The gasterias
sprawled about like big shepherd-spiders turned over on their backs,
with long-speckled and striated legs. The cacti of the cereus family
showed a horrid vegetation, huge polyps, the diseases of an overheated
soil, the maladies of poisoned sap. But the aloes, languidly unfolding
their hearts, were particularly numerous and conspicuous. Among them one
found every possible tint of green, pale green and vivid, yellowish
green and greyish, browny green, dashed with a ruddy tone, and deep
green, fringed with pale gold. And the shapes of their leaves were as
varied as their tints. Some were broad and heart-shaped, others were
long and narrow like sword-blades; some bristled with spikey thorns,
while yet others looked as though they had been cunningly hemmed at the
edges. There were giant ones, in lonely majesty, with flower stalks that
towered up aloft like poles wreathed with rosy coral; and there were
tiny ones clustering thickly together on one and the same stem, and
throwing forth on all sides leaves that gleamed and quivered like
adders' tongues.

'Let us go back to the shade,' begged Serge. 'You can sit down there as
you did just now, and I will lie at your feet and talk to you.'

Where they stood the sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if
the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it to
his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned to Serge
for support.

But the moment they felt each other's touch, they fell together without
even a word. It was as though the very rock beneath them had opened, as
though they were ever going down and down. Their hands sought each other
caressingly, embracingly, but such keen anguish did they experience that
they suddenly tore themselves apart, and fled, each in a different
direction. Serge did not cease running till he had reached the pavilion,
and had thrown himself upon his bed, his brain on fire, and despair in
his heart. Albine did not return till nightfall, after hours of weeping
in a corner of the garden. It was the first time that they had not
returned home together, tired after their long wanderings. For three
days they kept apart, feeling terribly unhappy.