The near and the heavenly horizons

Introduction

—Dante.

HE 'night is far spent; many of the stars that shone in the sky have disappeared behind the mountain, the dawn pales those that remain. My thoughts revert to the early hours of evening, and rest on some simple figures whose path my steps have crossed. From those hours rise spring-tide emanations, rise I know not what scents, what dewy freshness that revives my heart. The figures I speak of are not all young, not all beautiful ; no ; they have merely the charm of reality. Their sober, simple outline stands out after the manner of the old masters from a clear and transparent ground.

I am one of those who love the things that are past ; things that, quitting as it were our terrestrial region, rise to mid-heaven in a limpid atmosphere that lends them an infinite charm.

About to emerge into the brilliant light of day, I linger for an instant; my gaze follows shadows soon to be effaced; profiles, some frank and fair, others a little sad; these singing on in their spring, those dreaming on in their winter; some full of mystery, others very simple, and such as we see every day. And there are landscapes too ; sometimes two trees and a few leaves, vividly green against the blue, like those in which Perugino framed his holy families ; sometimes the thick forest, the vigorous growth of the July grass, the woodland songs, the flowers in full blossom.

It is all this that I would contemplate, muse on a little during that short uncertain hour which folds back its veil before the splendours of the morning.

There is nothing here for utilitarians, nothing for so-called realists, for lovers of the dramatic, for acute connoisseurs ; nothing, indeed, I believe, for any but me and those like me — dreamers, satisfied with little, whom a great poem scares, but a flower half-opened, a holiday bee, a rustic outline, can throw into infinite reverie.

If this once begins, there is hardly any end to it. It is not a series of pictures, it is still less romance. What, then? Truly, I do not know. It is that unknown something which sings within, the wide undulations of whose voice expand as we advance, and sometimes blend ideal melodies with the most common details of the most prosaic life. It is that something which is artist too \ whose pencil can, while our bodily eyes turn from the grocer's shop to the tavern at the corner, flash out upon us the green of the meadow, the darker green of the forest, the ruddy gold of the sunset, the pale gold of the sunrise, passing over the spirit of life with the spirit of poetry. And it is, besides, that hidden poet who, as we are moving on wearily through life as it has been made to us, keeps repeating in the depths of our soul strange words, words replete with wild harmony, words that the gentleman with whom you are

INTRODUCTION. 5

chatting would hardly understand, nay, that you yourself, alas ! in your common-sense business hours, would treat as mere fancies, although they charm you, soothe you, transport you into serene regions where you would live, where you would gladly die.

It is just this that I have to impart to you. The hand will be inexpert, the voice often trembling ; the poor poet, frightened at his own boldness, will perhaps stop short; the play-bill is promising, the piece poor. What matters it ! The reader is the true author. I may stammer ; your genius will sing : I may let you fall on the way ; your imagination, light- winged messenger, will bear you further than my steps could reach.

Every book is, in fact, a journey ; a journey in which we find little more than we ourselves bring; the richly provided, richly acquire. I do not possess very much ; if you have kindliness, some love for God's nature, the dower of capacity for simple pleasures, come, let us take our way through this meadow, by the side of that stream ; we two together, our fortune is made.

LISETTE'S DREAM.

jT was by that very meadow, and by that stream, I took my way, one fine May morning.

The grass was thick and tall, the starry primroses were over, the blue clusters of the squill withered long ago, the last petals of the fruit-trees were lost in the thicket as they fell, — the summer gained the victory over the spring. But this had not been without some sharp encounters ', tussles, as our peasants say.

The blackthorn, the first, had had many a tussle then with drifts of soon melted snow, the hawthorn with cool showers that soaked the red twigs of the hedges, the cuckoo and the blackbird with a return of cold winds blowing over the scarcely unfolded leaves ; but, spite of storm and frost, the April days — beautiful lengthening days, pressing back with both hands the shades of morning and evening — had marched on young, triumphant, crowned with lilacs ; while, at the touch of their fingers, the hedges, the apple-trees, the ground, burst into blossom. And now summer was at hand ; her warm breath was already felt on the buttercupcovered meadows ; while, from the neighbouring mountains, from the snowy summit of the Jura, came still a keen, reviving breeze, the virgin kiss of the departing spring.

In our country each flower in succession has its own absolute reign. The sun, looking through the windows of the fantastical dwellings assigned to him in almanacs — the sun, according as he inhabits the sign of the Earn, the Bull, the Twins, or the Scorpion, covers our valleys, far as eye can reach, with white crocuses, then yellow primroses, then hyacinths, then lilac-tinted cardamines, then golden ranunculuses. There is almost always one sheet of colour, splendid in its uniformity. It is true that in March, by the hedge side, balmy violets and fumitories ; along the brooks, and at the foot of the oak-trees, rosy white anemones j do what they can to blossom in tufts. The observant eye may, indeed, detect them in their nests, but they do not affect the general aspect of the valley, which always presents a dazzling carpet of one single shade, till towards the end of June it is enamelled with every hue, radiant with every kind of brightness, each flower opening, displaying itself, scattering fragrance on its own account.

There is, indeed, in May — at the very time I was taking this particular walk — a short season when green is the dominant tone; a harsh, crude, uncompromising green, without any softening touch of red or yellow, or any delicate silvery light. This green is somewhat oppressive, I might almost say sad.

It was so that morning. The grass I walked on had such a glaring brightness ; the leaves of the hedge, whether hawthorn leaves, sweetbrier, willow, or alder, were all so varnished and brilliant, you could hardly look at them. On the mountain side, the bright verdure of the beech so prevailed over the sombre foliage of the pines, spread so lustrously and positively on every side, rose so boldly up to the pasture-land, itself so decidedly verdant too, that, apart from the cupola of snow upon the very summit, one could see nothing but this intense green, which seemed to repress thought.

And yet there were the walnut-trees, the great walnut-trees, which were not green. They, at least, protested;

opening out, at the extremity of their smooth, whitish branches, bunches of purple and aromatic leaves.

Then there was the brook, whose perfectly pure waters ran over a now smooth, now stony bed, sometimes encountering a little moss-covered block, round which they broke, singing those eternal songs that ears like mine could listen to by night and day.

Then, again, there were the bees ; young bees, of a lighter brown, a more delicate velvet ; inexperienced, lost in some flower-chalice, intoxicated, and overtaken, far from the hive, by the dew and the evening chill.

Ah ! how many of those thoughtless ones did I save, fishing them out from the eddies of the brook, in a large leaf or the hollow of my hand ! How many I collected at sunset, wings wet, benumbed, half dead, placing them in some warm shelter, safe from the lizard, or else on some dry bough looking to the east, that the early rays might restore them to life ! How many I took back to the hives, and tried to get them admittance there ! Alas ! it is the same with bees as with us ; the ladies of the hive came out, felt the intruder all over, turned her round and round, and pushed her out of their community. The more suffering the creature, the more severe the reception ; while the latest comers, those belonging to the last swarm of the last hive, boldly thrust the victim through with their stings ; then, dragging her by her legs to the edge of the platform, let her fall into the field of death below, amidst the drones, their defunct husbands.

Whether it was owing to the green or the drones, I know not; but that morning I went on my way sadly. The glory of the spring did nothing for me.

Do you know hours when the demon of analysis, the bad angel of our age, brushes against you with his cold wings % Do you know what it is to explore your affections, your thoughts, and to say of them all, What do they profit ?

The young are more subject to this complaint than the old. Which of us has not descended those desolate slopes, has not seated himself weeping in that sterile valley, which the sun has forsaken, has not remained there, counting his wounds, finding a fatal pleasure in saying to himself that all is over, that happiness is wrecked, faith extinguished, faculties weakened, tenderness dead ; that life, like a faded flower, has let fall petal after petal, and that there is nothing more to be done but to let old age come, and then death.

At such times it seems as though we were wandering in one of those ruined planets, those extinct worlds whose lurid light still traverses the sky. Then we see things as they are, or rather as they would be, if the wondrous brightness of day, if perfume, harmony, blue atmospheric depths were all taken away from us, and our earth left bare. Everything becomes dry, hard, resolvable into problems, the positive solution of which destroys our last illusions. The task which charmed me with its timespeeding magic, it has no use, teaches nothing, is worth nothing ! Those melodies which wafted me into realms of serenity, they are flat, monotonous, wearisome ! My pencil, nothing either ! My friends, my beloved, that image closest to the heart; oh, it is here that the abyss yawns; here there is dead silence, and the demon speaks in his doubting voice : — Your father, your child, your wife ! you are their treasure, you are the breath of their soul, the days they live away from you are days of heaviness ; if you are late, they are anxious ; if you suffer, they are sad ; if you died, they would die too % No ! they would not die ; they could do without you ! You believe yourself essential, you are not ; you believe that you give happiness, others would give more ; you think that were you taken out of their life, that life would be shattered. Not so. It would resume its course, would pass through other regions, other flowers, to blossom under other skies. The thought of you, passionately cherished at first, would recede towards the distant horizon, would remain suspended there, and only rare intervals and hours of sadness would lead them back to you.

No one is indispensable to any other ; there is but one thing imperishable, and that is the need we have of being happy at any cost.

We have more vitality than the hydra. Cut, cut away, lop off here and there, strew the ground with our limbs, leave only a bleeding trunk ; it will writhe, then it will stanch its wounds, then it will glide into some new path, under the leaves, amidst the grass, it will find some shady retreat, and it will live.

This is worst of all, to own to ourselves that we can be mutilated and yet survive ; that after such severance the wound can close ; after the thunderbolt the sky grow clear ; that with the heart torn out we may walk on without any unbearable pain; that failing a life interpenetrated with love, we can create for ourselves a narrow quiet existence, where mere mind or matter prevails according to individual temperament, that the day may come when we honestly confess to be better off after than before the storm, and to journey on more comfortably alone ; a day when a horrible egotism may sit a victor on the ruins of all our past. This is the supreme misfortune ; to find ourselves at last alone, self-contemplating, self-satisfied, self-conscious that self is our all in alL This is the source of mortal disgust and sovereign disdain.

I was going along, a bitter smile upon my lips, a bitter indifference at my heart, reduced to despair, as negation after negation fell on me like blows from an axe; when I chanced to raise my eyes and saw the country, saw it magnificent, exuberantly fresh ; saw the barley fields that promised harvest, the young bunches of grapes that promised the vintage ; saw the tufted fields, the orchards, laden with fruit, the bees and the butterflies flying off in quest of pillage, the peasant going to his work. The earth is beautiful, I said to myself, the earth is good ! Then I raised my glance up the mountain side, higher than the beeches, higher than the pines, higher than the chalets, than the pastures, up, up to the snow, up to that sparkling cupola whose white outline sharply cuts the deep blue sky, up to that region of Paradise ! ye heavens, ye are great and glorious ! My God, thou art the mighty One, the Eternal ! — Love ! It is only that which I have been ignoring all this while ! The love of God, the love which came down to us, the love which defies time and space, the immortal, imperishable love Thou hast put into the heart of man !

Our years will pass, our faculties fade, our loved ones depart ; nothing of us will remain save poor old withered bodies that drag themselves into the sunshine ; all will die. No, all lives, love though buried beneath the snows of age, love glows unextinguished. It breathes in wordless prayers, it looks back to cherished memories, forward to the land of promise. The cheeks are wrinkled, the lips wear a smile the vigorous call childish, the eye is dull ; we seem to have merely a pale effigy, aimlessly wandering amidst a new generation. Do not think so; below the surface there are tears, strong hopes, there is a whole vast world, there is a human heart, there is the Infinite.

Nothing that has ever truly lived is lost, nothing useless ; not a sigh, a joy, or a sorrow which has not served its purpose. Our tears are numbered, the fragrance of our innocent pleasures mounts heavenward as a sweet-smelling savour. Let us take courage ; honest labour, upright thoughts, healthy emotions endure. Let us give, love, become as little children, so shall we reach self-forgetfulness, that supreme possession, that dominion over the universe.

Yes, so it is ; in our day there are young people who are old, . having exhausted everything ; who are indifferent, sceptical, weary as a traveller at nightfall. And there are old people who are young, ready-witted, with sparkling eyes and energetic hearts, easily pleased, open to innocent enjoyments. And such as these, — this spring blossoming so near death, this union of simplicity and native dignity, this green intellect, this indulgent benevolence, this ready cheerfulness, have a charm for my nature which almost excites emotion.

It was just such an old woman as this that I was going to see.

Before entering the village, I stopped a little on the hill. On one side, the valley stretched out in its green attire very far below to the blue lake; further still, full of vapour, to the white Alps. On the other side, behind the village, the mountain sloped down to the highest houses, all dotted with beech and fir, with orchards intermixed ; and as I had climbed to some height, I found those trees still blossoming which had done flowering below.

There was no longer that glaring green which had thrown me into such a strange train of thought. The dome of the apple-trees rounded itself rosy-white, relieved here and there with crimson buds ; the pear-trees rose in silver pyramids, immaculate, almost hard in their brilliancy. There was an infinite variety of hues. The branches, laden with garlands, surrounded with humming bees, stooped down into the grass ; the topmost flowers kissed the lowest ; not a leaf dared to shew. The hawthorn displayed all around its small stars spotted with purple stamens ; through its gaps you saw roofs ; bright panes of glass ; and on the hill, near those lazy rocks sunning themselves up there, blackened spaces shewed where the woman had been beating out the hemp last autumn.

The goats were just setting out for the mountains; little boys driving them along the wood-paths ; you could hear their bells ; a kid, perched in the middle of a bush, gave a startled glance at the grand procession, then returned eagerly to nibble the young shoots about him. The peasants were all at work in the country ; the village was deserted.

How charming a village is ! how charming those fountains, with wooden basins ! if the village be rich, with stone ones, with the water trickling down and running over.

In the evening, the cows come heavily by, drink slowly, and return to their stalls, scattering sparkling drops from their cool, wet muzzles. The pleasant smell of hay is wafted from the open barns. Women come and go, and wash vegetables at the fountain ; men, seated before their houses, sharpen their scythes, and fill the air with metallic notes ; children sing and dabble, and heap up handfuls of fine sand ; hens seek their food with that little, anxious, monotonous cluck, that protest of a good housewife, who sighs each time she puts by a millet seed ; cocks, proudly thrown back on their tails, send forth a warlike cry, which gets repeated by all the sultans near.

But on the day I speak of, it was morning ; the village was silent ; you only heard beneath a heap of fagots, in

U THE FEAR HORIZONS.

some mysterious corner, the self-complacent cackling of the laying hen.

To reach Lisette's house, (it was to her I was going,) I had to pass through a barn. Now, barns give me untold satisfaction ; I feel at home in them ; my heart expands. My hand is scarcely on the latch of the little door, with its two separate halves ; my foot has hardly touched the floor, covered with newly-mown grass; I have hardly inhaled the perfume of last year's hay, heaped up on both sides of me, when I feel a perfect flood of happiness. Am I related to the cattle ? Perhaps so ; to those oxen, for instance, whose noses are pushed right and left through the open rack, into the hay-loft, enjoying as well as I the sweet smell of the new grass. I have not the least objection to claim kinship ; but so it is, that my heart leaps again, and I thank God, who has made meadow, skies, oxen, barns, and me. Everything is beautiful, everything is wondrous ! Life is an ineffable gift : death, a triumph. Men are brothers : the poor, precious friends. To give pleasure, to dry tears, — it is heaven on earth ! Ah ! for once good-bye to analysis ; this is not to be defined, scarcely to be understood ; it is a sudden radiance, the illumination of the soul ; it is a hymn that bursts out at once in all directions. I have often thought that woods, fields, nests> moss-covered hollows, sent up just such an anthem to the Lord.

Having passed through the barn, here we are at Lisette's, in her dark, flagged kitchen, with a large chimney, into which the fowls sometimes adventure themselves ; then we pass in her bright, cheerful room, with a window looking on the street. It is here Lisette is to be found.

Close to the lighted stove, (for it is still cold, and one is glad of fires in the morning, before the sunbeams shine through the cloudy panes of glass,) — close to the stove, sits Lisette's old husband, half sleeping, half musing, his hands resting on the iron pot about to boil, his head on his hands, his white knitted cap drawn over his eyes.

Generally, when he sees me, Lisette's husband rises, stretches himself, scratches his forehead, says — " One must be looking after the cows," and goes away.

I think that his wife and I — taken in combination, that is to say — weary him. His wife is a thinker : he can excuse this, as long as she is silent; when I arrive, we talk. This worthy man, who, during the whole of his fourscore years, has discerned little more than the four seasons succeeding each other ; hay-time, harvest, vintage, then ploughing and sowing, then finally death, repose, not to say annihilation, — this good man of ours mistrusts us. He perceives vaguely that we speak a strange language ; thoughts stir there which disquiet him, questions that embarrass ; a certain consciousness of inferiority comes over him, — he never has it at other times. The humble old woman has never been aware of the keen intelligence, the depths of thought within her. " Stuff and nonsense !" mutters the good man to himself; opens the door, and disappears.

Lisette, as well as her husband, has run her fourscore years or thereabouts. Lame of one leg, but erect and well made, there she is on her old, straight-backed arm-chair. Pretty children — her grandchildren — surround her, f ormidable hunches of cake in hand. "Just go and play out there in front," says she ; and they disappear, like a flight of starlings.

There is nothing now in the room but the bed with chintz curtains, with, great blue branches, on a red ground ; some walnut chairs, well polished; the stove, the table with turned legs, the great press, carved in a former age, and the old woman seated near the window, close to her pot of green marjoram, close to her rose geranium which bushes out in a cracked earthen pan.

Poor as are the adjuncts, the figure is charming. Slender, as I said, rather thin, with noble features, a pale complexion, colourless without being withered; gray hair almost hid under a cap of the thick lace our great-grandmothers used to wear ; black eyes, as young as they were at twenty, soft, limpid eyes, which look into, and allow you to look into the soul. A smile completes the face. It is not an inadvertant, it is not a triumphant smile ; it is a smile in which blend such freshness, such exquisite delicacy, such sweet graciousness, that, once seen, it floats eternally in the memory. I shall be laughed at, but I have never seen more than one mouth that reminded me of Lisette, and that was the mouth of the Joconda. Lisette's had the same sudden brightness, and ineffable fascination, minus the wild flash, plus the angelic goodness.

Lisette was a spiritualist • there are such in villages. She had been an excellent manager in her day ; had baked, fed her cattle, worked hard in hay-time. She had taken her part in the vintage, wielded the rake, dug the garden, spun enough to fill all the presses in her cottage from top to bottom. On washing-days, the hedges round were rich with her treasures ; no one more apt to labour, more prudent as to expense, but while her arms were employed her brain was active. And now that all she could do to amuse herself was to mend clothes, or wind thread, thought had got the upper hand.

Lisette had a soul; she was conscious of it, nay, she was anxious about it. This is not common in our days, in the country any more than in towns. Lisette belonged to that austerely-brought-up generation, kept under by their fathers — grand, grave men, who governed by a look, without waste of words. They had strong natures, and lived soberly in their sheltered nooks. No network of good roads joined, as now, hamlets to villages, villages to cities. Local papers had scarcely an existence. Ten years might pass without a new book drifting into their dwellings. Nevertheless, the peasant read on Sunday winter nights ; read the Bible, that history of nations, that philosophy of the neart, that divine poetry, that speech of God to man ; and he made his children read it, their little fingers following each word, and that generation, growing up thus be» neath the shadow of Judea's palm-trees, in direct relation to the God of heaven, fed on faith, early subject to duty; that generation had a character at once gentle and courageous, calm and reflective, poetical and ideal, such as our age most certainly will not transmit to its children.

Lisette had grown up under that system, had breathed the very air of the East. For her, Ruth and Naomi, Sarah, Moses, and Eachel who would not be comforted, were personages more living, more real than the great Napoleon and his twelve marshals.

She had no very distinct recollection of the Revolution of '89 ; its terrible echoes had but faintly shaken the mighty wall of the Jura. All the noise made in France, the days of July ; many other glorious days ; insurrectionary cannonades ; popular cry of a Republic ; acclamations of the Empire, — all these died away on the moss of the forests, in the thick tangle of the beech-trees. The winter blasts through the pines had a louder voice, an eternal wail that prevailed over them all.

Above the beautiful region she inhabited, and beyond the limits of her actual life, a world had opened out to

Lisette, even from her earliest days. It was the Hebrew world. There the camels and caravans of the Ishmaelitish merchantmen passed through the desert; there Hagar wept under the palm-tree ; there the transparent waters of the Ked Sea stood on a heap ; there more golden sheaves and richer ears of corn waved on the fields of Bethlehem beneath a softer breeze which had kissed the pomegranates in blossom. There, too, smoked Mount Sinai ; there stood Moses, his face bright with mysterious radiance, breaking the tables of the law before the dancing and delirious people.

Even as a child, when she used to take the cows to feed in the forest glades, the wild strawberries having been once gathered, and small gardens planted here and there, Lisette would sit down beneath some spreading pine, on the smooth surface made by its falling spikes, her eyes wandering from the black to the brindled cow, and in that wood-enclosed pasture she would begin to dream. She dreamed of Jacob's flocks, of Leah, of the wondrous ladder; with the intense gaze of her soul fixed on the depths of past ages, deriving thence the simple faith, the fresh purity of the time when man was young upon the earth. She spoke to God ; God spoke to her.

Had an angel, palm in hand, appeared before her there under the great pine, it would not have surprised her ; she would have prostrated herself; would humbly have laid her basket of strawberries at his feet. Oh, if it might but have been !

How often Lisette had steadily contemplated the infinite sky, to catch some golden beam descending on her straight from Paradise ! If the juniper bush that shadowed her strawberry plants had suddenly kindled with supernatural flame, Lisette would have approached as did Moses;

putting her shoes from off her feet, she would have received the divine command with a simple heart.

Was Lisette then a visionary 1 By no means ; she had too much common sense for that. With her bodily eyes she never saw anything but the fields, the cows, and the blue sky overhead ; but she believed, moved, and lived calm and thoughtful in the realm of faith.

Her piety had a touch of austerity and timidity ; there was a reserve about her which rather reminded you of the women of the Old Testament than of the New. She had a great fear of offending God ; she loved from afar, very humbly, reverence almost veiling love. Brought up rather on the precepts of Moses than the revelation of Christ, you would have taken her for one of the Israelitish women who followed Miriam when, sounding the cymbal with a triumphant hand, she celebrated Pharaoh's defeat. Or again, she resembled that Shunammite intent on hospitably receiving the servant of the Lord : modest, with burning heart beneath all her reserve, who, when her son died, laid him on the prophet's bed, then boldly went to seek the man of God, and say, " Did I desire a son of my lord 1"