"Do not fall back into those thoughts," said the rector sternly, though with indulgence still. "The misfortune of this forest is that it has never been cut. Do you see the phenomenon these ma.s.ses present?"

Veronique, to whose mind the singularities of the forest nature suggested little, looked obediently at the forest and then let her eyes drop gently back upon the rector.

"You do not notice," he said, perceiving from that look her total ignorance, "the lines where the trees of all species still hold their greenness?"

"Ah! true," she said. "I see them now. Why is it?"

"In that," replied the rector, "lies the future of Montegnac, and your own fortune, an immense fortune, as I once explained to Monsieur Graslin. You see the furrows of those three dells, the mountain streams of which flow into the torrent of the Gabou. That torrent separates the forest of Montegnac from the district which on this side adjoins ours.

In September and October it goes dry, but in November it is full of water, the volume of which would be greatly increased by a partial clearing of the forest, so as to send all the lesser streams to join it. As it is, its waters do no good; but if one or two dams were made between the two hills on either side of it, as they have done at Riquet, and at Saint-Ferreol--where they have made immense reservoirs to feed the Languedoc ca.n.a.l--this barren plain could be fertilized by judicious irrigation through trenches and culverts managed by watergates; sending the water when needed over these lands, and diverting it at other times to our little river. You could plant fine poplars along these water-courses and raise the finest cattle on such pasturage as you would then obtain. What is gra.s.s, but sun and water? There is quite soil enough on the plains to hold the roots; the streams will furnish dew and moisture; the poplars will hold and feed upon the mists, returning their elements to the herbage; these are the secrets of the fine vegetation of valleys. If you undertook this work you would soon see life and joy and movement where silence now reigns, where the eye is saddened by barren fruitlessness. Would not that be a n.o.ble prayer to G.o.d? Such work would be a better occupation of your leisure than the indulgence of melancholy thoughts."

Veronique pressed the rector's hand, answering with four brief words, but they were grand ones:--

"It shall be done."

"You conceive the possibility of this great work," he went on; "but you cannot execute it. Neither you nor I have the necessary knowledge to accomplish an idea which might have come to all, but the execution of which presents immense difficulties; for simple as it may seem, the matter requires the most accurate science with all its resources. Seek, therefore, at once for the proper human instruments who will enable you within the next dozen years to get an income of six or seven thousand louis out of the six thousand acres you irrigate and fertilize. Such an enterprise will make Montegnac at some future day the most prosperous district in the department. The forest, as yet, yields you no return, but sooner or later commerce will come here in search of its fine woods--those treasures ama.s.sed by time; the only ones the production of which cannot be hastened or improved upon by man. The State may some day provide a way of transport from this forest, for many of the trees would make fine masts for the navy; but it will wait until the increasing population of Montegnac makes a demand upon its protection; for the State is like fortune, it comes only to the rich. This estate, well managed, will become, in the course of time, one of the finest in France; it will be the pride of your grandson, who may then find the chateau paltry, comparing it with its revenues."

"Here," said Veronique, "is a future for my life."

"A beneficent work such as that will redeem wrongdoing," said the rector.

Seeing that she understood him, he attempted to strike another blow on this woman's intellect, judging rightly that in her the intellect led the heart, whereas in other women the heart is their road to intelligence.

"Do you know," he said after a pause, "the error in which you are living?"

She looked at him timidly.

"Your repentance is as yet only a sense of defeat endured,--which is horrible, for it is nothing else than the despair of Satan; such, perhaps, was the repentance of mankind before the coming of Jesus Christ. But our repentance, the repentance of Christians, is the horror of a soul struck down on an evil path, to whom, by this very shock, G.o.d has revealed Himself. You are like the pagan Orestes; make yourself another Paul."

"Your words have changed me utterly," she cried. "Now--oh! now I want to live."

"The spirit conquers," thought the modest rector, as he joyfully took his leave. He had cast nourishment before a soul hunted into secret despair by giving to its repentance the form of a good and n.o.ble action.

XII. THE SOUL OF FORESTS

Veronique wrote to Monsieur Grossetete on the morrow. A few days later she received from Limoges three saddle-horses sent by her old friend.

Monsieur Bonnet found at Veronique's request, a young man, son of the postmaster, who was delighted to serve Veronique and earn good wages.

This young fellow, small but active, with a round face, black eyes and hair, and named Maurice Champion, pleased Veronique very much and was immediately inducted into his office, which was that of taking care of the horses and accompanying his mistress on her excursions.

The head-forester of Montegnac was a former cavalry-sergeant in the Royal guard, born at Limoges, whom the Duc de Navarreins had sent to his estate at Montegnac to study its capabilities and value, in order that he might derive some profit from it. Jerome Colorat found nothing but waste land utterly barren, woods unavailable for want of transportation, a ruined chateau, and enormous outlays required to restore the house and gardens. Alarmed, above all, by the beds of torrents strewn with granite rocks which seamed the forest, this honest but unintelligent agent was the real cause of the sale of the property.

"Colorat," said Madame Graslin to her forester, for whom she had sent, "I shall probably ride out every morning, beginning with to-morrow. You know all the different parts of the land that belonged originally to this estate and those which Monsieur Graslin added to it: I wish you to go with me and point them out; for I intend to visit every part of the property myself."

The family within the chateau saw with joy the change that now appeared in Veronique's behavior. Without being told to do so, Aline got out her mistress's riding-habit and put it in good order for use. The next day Madame Sauviat felt unspeakable relief when her daughter left her room dressed to ride out.

Guided by the forester and Champion, who found their way by recollection, for the paths were scarcely marked on these unfrequented mountains, Madame Graslin started on the first day for the summits, intending to explore those only, so as to understand the watershed and familiarize herself with the lay of the ravines, the natural path of the torrents when they tore down the slopes. She wished to measure the task before her,--to study the land and the water-ways, and find for herself the essential points of the enterprise which the rector had suggested to her. She followed Colorat, who rode in advance; Champion was a few steps behind her.

So long as they were making their way through parts that were dense with trees, going up and down undulations of ground lying near to each other and very characteristic of the mountains of France, Veronique was lost in contemplation of the marvels of the forest. First came the venerable centennial trees, which amazed her till she grew accustomed to them; next, the full-grown younger trees reaching to their natural height; then, in some more open spot, a solitary pine-tree of enormous height; or--but this was rare--one of those flowing shrubs, dwarf elsewhere, but here attaining to gigantic development, and often as old as the soil itself. She saw, with a sensation quite unspeakable, a cloud rolling along the face of the bare rocks. She noticed the white furrows made down the mountain sides by the melting snows, which looked at a distance like scars and gashes. Pa.s.sing through a gorge stripped of vegetation, she nevertheless admired, in the cleft flanks of the rocky slope, aged chestnuts as erect as the Alpine fir-trees.

The rapidity with which she advanced left her no time to take in all the varied scene, the vast moving sands, the quagmires boasting a few scattered trees, fallen granite boulders, overhanging rocks, shaded valleys, broad open s.p.a.ces with moss and heather still in bloom (though some was dried), utter solitudes overgrown with juniper and caper-bushes; sometimes uplands with short gra.s.s, small s.p.a.ces enriched by an oozing spring,--in short, much sadness, many splendors, things sweet, things strong, and all the singular aspects of mountainous Nature in the heart of France.

As she watched these many pictures, varied in form but all inspired with the same thought, the awful sadness of this Nature, so wild, so ruined, abandoned, fruitless, barren, filled her soul and answered to her secret feelings. And when, through an opening among the trees, she caught a glimpse of the plain below her, when she crossed some arid ravine over gravel and stones, where a few stunted bushes alone could grow, the spirit of this austere Nature came to her, suggesting observations new to her mind, derived from the many significations of this varied scene.

There is no spot in a forest which does not have its significance; not a glade, not a thicket but has its a.n.a.logy with the labyrinth of human thought. Who is there among those whose minds are cultivated or whose hearts are wounded who can walk alone in a forest and the forest not speak to him? Insensibly a voice lifts itself, consoling or terrible, but oftener consoling than terrifying. If we seek the causes of the sensation--grave, simple, sweet, mysterious--that grasps us there, perhaps we shall find it in the sublime and artless spectacle of all these creations obeying their destiny and immutably submissive. Sooner or later the overwhelming sense of the permanence of Nature fills our hearts and stirs them deeply, and we end by being conscious of G.o.d. So it was with Veronique; in the silence of those summits, from the odor of the woods, the serenity of the air, she gathered--as she said that evening to Monsieur Bonnet--the certainty of G.o.d's mercy. She saw the possibility of an order of deeds higher than any to which her aspirations had ever reached. She felt a sort of happiness within her; it was long, indeed since she had known such a sense of peace. Did she owe that feeling to the resemblance she found between that barren landscape and the arid, exhausted regions of her soul? Had she seen those troubles of nature with a sort of joy, thinking that Nature was punished though it had not sinned? At any rate, she was powerfully affected; Colorat and Champion, following her at a little distance, thought her transfigured.

At a certain sport Veronique was struck with the stern harsh aspect of the steep and rocky beds of the dried-up torrents. She found herself longing to hear the sound of water splashing through those scorched ravines.

"The need to love!" she murmured.

Ashamed of the words, which seemed to come to her like a voice, she pushed her horse boldly toward the first peak of the Correze, where, in spite of the forester's advice, she insisted on going. Telling her attendants to wait for her she went on alone to the summit, which is called the Roche-Vive, and stayed there for some time, studying the surrounding country. After hearing the secret voice of the many creations asking to live she now received within her the touch, the inspiration, which determined her to put into her work that wonderful perseverance displayed by Nature, of which she had herself already given many proofs.

She fastened her horse to a tree and seated herself on a large rock, letting her eyes rove over the broad expanse of barren plain, where Nature seemed a step-mother,--feeling in her heart the same stirrings of maternal love with which at times she gazed upon her infant. Prepared by this train of emotion, these half involuntary meditations (which, to use her own fine expression, winnowed her heart), to receive the sublime instruction offered by the scene before her, she awoke from her lethargy.

"I understood then," she said afterwards to the rector, "that our souls must be ploughed and cultivated like the soil itself."

The vast expanse before her was lighted by a pale November sun. Already a few gray clouds chased by a chilly wind were hurrying from the west.

It was then three o'clock. Veronique had taken more than four hours to reach the summit, but, like all others who are harrowed by an inward misery, she paid no heed to external circ.u.mstances. At this moment her being was actually growing and magnifying with the sublime impetus of Nature itself.

"Do not stay here any longer, madame," said a man, whose voice made her quiver, "or you will soon be unable to return; you are six miles from any dwelling, and the forest is impa.s.sable at night. But that is not your greatest danger. Before long the cold on this summit will become intense; the reason of this is unknown, but it has caused the death of many persons."

Madame Graslin saw before her a man's face, almost black with sunburn, in which shone eyes that were like two tongues of flame. On either side of this face hung a ma.s.s of brown hair, and below it was a fan-shaped beard. The man was raising respectfully one of those enormous broad-brimmed hats which are worn by the peasantry of central France, and in so doing displayed a bald but splendid forehead such as we sometimes see in wayside beggars. Veronique did not feel the slightest fear; the situation was one in which all the lesser considerations that make a woman timid had ceased.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"My home is near by," he answered.

"What can you do in such a desert?" she said.

"I live."

"But how? what means of living are there?"

"I earn a little something by watching that part of the forest," he answered, pointing to the other side of the summit from the one that overlooked Montegnac. Madame Graslin then saw the muzzle of a gun and also a game-bag. If she had had any fears this would have put an end to them.

"Then you are a keeper?" she said.

"No, madame; in order to be a keeper we must take a certain oath; and to take an oath we must have civic rights."

"Who are you, then?"

"I am Farrabesche," he said, with deep humility, lowering his eyes to the ground.

Madame Graslin, to whom the name told nothing, looked at the man and noticed in his face, the expression of which was now very gentle, the signs of underlying ferocity; irregular teeth gave to the mouth, the lips blood-red, an ironical expression full of evil audacity; the dark and prominent cheek-bones had something animal about them. The man was of middle height, with strong shoulders, a thick-set neck, and the large hairy hands of violent men capable of using their strength in a brutal manner. His last words pointed to some mystery, to which his bearing, the expression of his countenance, and his whole person, gave a sinister meaning.

"You must be in my service, then?" said Veronique in a gentle voice.

"Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Graslin?" asked Farrabesche.