第4章

"But see,"I said,"how the winds from the sea bend or destroy everything.There are no trees.Fragments of wreckage or old vessels that are broken up are sold to those who can afford to buy;for costs of transportation are too heavy to allow them to use the firewood with which Brittany abounds.This region is fine for none but noble souls;persons without sentiments could never live here;poets and barnacles alone should inhabit it.All that ever brought a population to this rock were the salt-marshes and the factory which prepares the salt.On one side the sea;on the other,sand;above,illimitable space."We had now passed the town,and had reached the species of desert which separates Croisic from the village of Batz.Imagine,my dear uncle,a barren track of miles covered with the glittering sand of the seashore.Here and there a few rocks lifted their heads;you might have thought them gigantic animals couchant on the dunes.Along the coast were reefs,around which the water foamed and sparkled,giving them the appearance of great white roses,floating on the liquid surface or resting on the shore.Seeing this barren tract with the ocean on one side,and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up between Croisic and the rocky shore of Guerande,at the base of which lay the salt marshes,denuded of vegetation,I looked at Pauline and asked her if she felt the courage to face the burning sun and the strength to walk through sand.

"I have boots,"she said."Let us go,"and she pointed to the tower of Batz,which arrested the eye by its immense pile placed there like a pyramid;but a slender,delicately outlined pyramid,a pyramid so poetically ornate that the imagination figured in it the earliest ruin of a great Asiatic city.

We advanced a few steps and sat down upon the portion of a large rock which was still in the shade.But it was now eleven o'clock,and the shadow,which ceased at our feet,was disappearing rapidly.

"How beautiful this silence!"she said to me;"and how the depth of it is deepened by the rhythmic quiver of the wave upon the shore.""If you will give your understanding to the three immensities which surround us,the water,the air,and the sands,and listen exclusively to the repeating sounds of flux and reflux,"I answered her,"you will not be able to endure their speech;you will think it is uttering a thought which will annihilate you.Last evening,at sunset,I had that sensation;and it exhausted me.""Oh!let us talk,let us talk,"she said,after a long pause."Iunderstand it.No orator was ever more terrible.I think,"she continued,presently,"that I perceive the causes of the harmonies which surround us.This landscape,which has but three marked colors,--the brilliant yellow of the sands,the blue of the sky,the even green of the sea,--is grand without being savage;it is immense,yet not a desert;it is monotonous,but it does not weary;it has only three elements,and yet it is varied.""Women alone know how to render such impressions,"I said."You would be the despair of a poet,dear soul that I divine so well!""The extreme heat of mid-day casts into those three expressions of the infinite an all-powerful color,"said Pauline,smiling."I can here conceive the poesy and the passion of the East.""And I can perceive its despair."

"Yes,"she said,"this dune is a cloister,--a sublime cloister."We now heard the hurried steps of our guide;he had put on his Sunday clothes.We addressed a few ordinary words to him;he seemed to think that our mood had changed,and with that reserve that comes of misery,he kept silence.Though from time to time we pressed each other's hands that we might feel the mutual flow of our ideas and impressions,we walked along for half an hour in silence,either because we were oppressed by the heat which rose in waves from the burning sands,or because the difficulty of walking absorbed our attention.Like children,we held each other's hands;in fact,we could hardly have made a dozen steps had we walked arm in arm.The path which led to Batz was not so much as traced.A gust of wind was enough to efface all tracks left by the hoofs of horses or the wheels of carts;but the practised eye of our guide could recognize by scraps of mud or the dung of cattle the road that crossed that desert,now descending towards the sea,then rising landward according to either the fall of the ground or the necessity of rounding some breastwork of rock.By mid-day,we were only half way.

"We will stop to rest over there,"I said,pointing to a promontory of rocks sufficiently high to make it probable we should find a grotto.

The fisherman,who heard me and saw the direction in which I pointed,shook his head,and said,--"Some one is there.All those who come from the village of Batz to Croisic,or from Croisic to Batz,go round that place;they never pass it."These words were said in a low voice,and seemed to indicate a mystery.

"Who is he,--a robber,a murderer?"

Our guide answered only by drawing a deep breath,which redoubled our curiosity.

"But if we pass that way,would any harm happen to us?""Oh,no!"

"Will you go with us?"

"No,monsieur."

"We will go,if you assure us there is no danger.""I do not say so,"replied the fisherman,hastily."I only say that he who is there will say nothing to you,and do you no harm.He never so much as moves from his place.""Who is it?"

"A man."

Never were two syllables pronounced in so tragic a manner.At this moment we were about fifty feet from the rocky eminence,which extended a long reef into the sea.Our guide took a path which led him round the base of the rock.We ourselves continued our way over it;but Pauline took my arm.Our guide hastened his steps in order to meet us on the other side,where the two paths came together again.