The Story of a Child Part 21

I will end these reminiscences here, because what follows is not yet distant enough from me to be submitted to the unknown reader. And besides it seems to me that my childhood really came to an end upon the day in which I announced my decision in regard to my future.

I was then fourteen and a half years of age, and that gave me, therefore, three years and a half in which to prepare myself for the naval academy, consequently I had time to do it thoroughly and properly.

But in the meantime I had to encounter many refusals and all sorts of difficulties before my admittance to the Borda. And later I lived through many troublous years; years replete with struggles and mistakes,--I had many a Calvary to climb; I had to pay cruelly and in full for having been reared a sensitive, shy little creature, by force of will I had to recast and harden my physical as well as my moral being. One day, when I was about twenty-seven years of age, a circus director, after having seen my muscles that then had the elasticity and strength of steel, gave utterance, in his admiration, to the truest words I have ever had addressed to me: "What a pity, sir," he said, "that your education commenced so late!"

CHAPTER Lx.x.xII.

My sister and I had expected to visit the mountains again the next summer.

But Azrael pa.s.sed our way; terrible and unexpected misfortunes disrupted our tranquil and happy family life.

And it was not until fifteen years later, after I had been over the greater part of the earth, that I revisited this corner of France.

All was greatly changed there; my uncle and aunt slept in the graveyard; my boy cousins had left, and my girl cousin, who already had threads of silver among her dark locks, was preparing to quit this part of the country forever, this empty house in which she did not wish to live alone; and the t.i.ti and the Marciette (whose names were no longer prefaced by the article) had grown into tall young ladies whom I would not have recognized.

Between two long voyages, in a hurry as always, my life hastening feverishly upon its way, in remembrance of bygone days, I made this pilgrimage to my uncle's house to see it once more, and for the last time, before it was delivered into the hands of strangers.

It was in November, and the cold gray sky completely changed the aspect of the country, which I had never seen before except under the glorious summer sun.

After spending my only morning in revisiting a thousand places, my melancholy ever augmented by the lowering winter clouds, I found that I had forgotten the old garden and the vine-clad arbor in whose meagre shade I had come to so momentous a decision, and I wished to run there, at the last moment, before my carriage took me away from this spot forever.

"You will have to go alone," said my cousin, who was busy packing her trunks. She gave me the large key, the same large key that I carried in the warm and radiant days of old when I went there, net in hand, to catch the b.u.t.terflies . . . oh! the summers of my childhood, how marvellous and how enchanting they were!

For the last time of all, I entered the garden, which under the gray sky appeared shrunken to me. I went first to the arbor, now leafless and desolate, in which I had written the portentous letter to my brother, and, by means of the same breach in the wall that had served me in days gone by, I lifted myself to the coping to get a hasty glimpse of the surrounding country, to bid it a last farewell. Bories looked singularly near and small to me, it was almost unrecognizably so, and the mountains beyond seemed diminished also, appeared no higher than little hills. And all of these things that formerly I had seen flooded with sunlight, now looked dull and sinister in the wan, gray November light, and under the dark and wintry clouds. I felt as if with the commencement of nature's autumn, my life's autumn had also dawned.

And the world, the world which I had thought so immense and so full of wonder and charm the day that I leaned on this same wall, after I had made my decision,--the whole wide world, did it not look as faded and shrunken to me now as this poor landscape?

And especially Bories, that under the autumnal sky looked like a phantom of itself, filled me with the deepest sadness.

As I gazed at it I recalled the pinkish-yellow b.u.t.terfly still under its gla.s.s in my museum; it had remained there in the same spot, and had preserved its fresh bright hues during the time that I had sailed all round the globe. For many years I had not thought of the a.s.sociation between the two things; but as soon as I remembered the yellow b.u.t.terfly, which was recalled to my mind by Bories, I heard a small voice within me sing over and over, very softly: "Ah! Ah! the good, good story!" . . . The little voice was strange and flute-like, but above all it was sad, sad enough for tears, sad enough to sing over the tomb where lie buried the vanished years and dead summers.