Part 14 (1/2)
Thirsty plants were straightening their bowed stems--each leaf seemed to be drinking in through all its pores all the dewy freshness of the night. I, too, began to feel a soothing influence at work. My heart was still beating violently, but regularly. I was filled with a vague hope; the image of Edmee floated before me on the paths through the meadows, and no longer stirred the wild agonies and frenzied desires which had been devouring me since the night I first beheld her.
I was crossing a spot where the green stretches of pasture were here and there broken by clumps of young trees. Huge oxen with almost white skins were lying in the short gra.s.s, motionless, as if plunged in peaceful thought. Hills sloped gently up to the horizon, and their velvety contours seemed to ripple in the bright rays of the moon. For the first time in my life I realized something of the voluptuous beauty and divine effluence of the night. I felt the magic touch of some unknown bliss.
It seemed that for the first time in my life I was looking on moon and meadows and hills. I remembered hearing Edmee say that nothing our eyes can behold is more lovely than Nature; and I was astonished that I had never felt this before. Now and them I was on the point of throwing myself on my knees and praying to G.o.d: but I feared that I should not know how to speak to Him, and that I might offend Him by praying badly.
Shall I confess to you a singular fancy that came upon me, a childish revelation, as it were, of poetic love from out of the chaos of my ignorance? The moon was lighting up everything so plainly that I could distinguish the tiniest flowers in the gra.s.s. A little meadow daisy seemed to me so beautiful with its golden calyx full of diamonds of dew and its white collaret fringed with purple, that I plucked it, and covered it with kisses, and cried in a sort of delirious intoxication:
”It is you, Edmee! Yes, it is you! Ah, you no longer shun me!”
But what was my confusion when, on rising, I found there had been a witness of my folly. Patience was standing before me.
I was so angry at having been surprised in such a fit of extravagance that, from a remnant of the Hamstringer instinct, I immediately felt for a knife in my belt; but neither belt nor knife was there. My silk waistcoat with its pocket reminded me that I was doomed to cut no more throats. Patience smiled.
”Well, well! What is the matter?” said the anchorite, in a calm and kindly tone. ”Do you imagine that I don't know perfectly well how things stand? I am not so simple but that I can reason; I am not so old but that I can see. Who is it that makes the branches of my yew shake whenever the holy maiden is sitting at my door? Who is it that follows us like a young wolf with measured steps through the copse when I take the lovely child to her father? And what harm is there in it? You are both young; you are both handsome; you are of the same family; and, if you chose, you might become a n.o.ble and honest man as she is a n.o.ble and honest girl.”
All my wrath had vanished as I listened to Patience speaking of Edmee.
I had such a vast longing to talk about her that I would even have been willing to have heard evil spoken of her, for the sole pleasure of hearing her name p.r.o.nounced. I continued my walk by the side of Patience. The old man was tramping through the dew with bare feet. It should be mentioned, however, that his feet had long been unacquainted with any covering and had attained a degree of callosity that rendered them proof against anything. His only garments were a pair of blue canvas breeches which, in the absence of braces, hung loosely from his hips, and a coa.r.s.e s.h.i.+rt. He could not endure any constraint in his clothes; and his skin, hardened by exposure, was sensitive to neither heat nor cold. Even when over eighty he was accustomed to go bareheaded in the broiling sun and with half-open s.h.i.+rt in the winter blasts.
Since Edmee had seen to his wants he had attained a certain cleanliness.
Nevertheless, in the disorder of his toilet and his hatred of everything that pa.s.sed the bounds of the strictest necessity (though he could not have been charged with immodesty, which had always been odious to him), the cynic of the old days was still apparent. His beard was s.h.i.+ning like silver. His bald skull was so polished that the moon was reflected in it as in water. He walked slowly, with his hands behind his back and his head raised, like a man who is surveying his empire. But most frequently his glances were thrown skywards, and he interrupted his conversation to point to the starry vault and exclaim:
”Look at that; look how beautiful it is!”
He is the only peasant I have ever known to admire the sky; or, at least, he is the only one I have ever seen who was conscious of his admiration.
”Why, Master Patience,” I said to him, ”do you think I might be an honest man if I chose? Do you think that I am not one already?”
”Oh, do not be angry,” he answered. ”Patience is privileged to say anything. Is he not the fool of the chateau?”
”On the contrary, Edmee maintains that you are its sage.”
”Does the holy child of G.o.d say that? Well, if she believes so, I will try to act as a wise man, and give you some good advice, Master Bernard Mauprat. Will you accept it?”
”It seems to me that in this place every one takes upon himself to give advice. Never mind, I am listening.”
”You are in love with your cousin, are you not?”
”You are very bold to ask such a question.”
”It is not a question, it is a fact. Well, my advice is this: make your cousin love you, and become her husband.”
”And why do you take this interest in me, Master Patience?”
”Because I know you deserve it.”
”Who told you so? The abbe?”
”No.”
”Edmee?”
”Partly. And yet she is certainly not very much in love with you. But it is your own fault.”
”How so, Patience?”