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 ma.s.ses, 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 bal.u.s.trades 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 gra.s.sy 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. n.o.body 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage.

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

It was like a sudden dawn, a curtain of shadow s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.