She was standing there motionless, gazing at the transparent water lying at the bottom of the dead volcano. She was standing as though she would peer beneath it, into its unknown depths, peopled, it is said, by trout of monstrous size who have devoured all the other fish. As I passed close to her, I fancied that two tears welled in her eyes. But she walked away with long strides to rejoin her guide, who had stopped in a tavern at the foot of the rise leading to the lake.
I did not see her again that day.
Next day, as night was falling, I arrived at the castle of Murol. The old fortress, a giant tower standing upon a peak in the centre of a large valley, at the crossing of three dales, rises towards the sky, brown, crannied, and battered, but round from its broad circular base to the crumbling turrets of its summit.
It is more impressive than any other ruin in its simple bulk, its majesty, its ancient air of power and austerity. It stands there solitary, high as a mountain, a dead queen, but still a queen of the valleys crouching under it. The visitor approaches by a pine-clad slope, enters by a narrow door, and stops at the foot of the walls, in the first enclosure, high above the whole countryside.
Within are fallen rooms, skeleton staircases, unknown pits, subterranean chambers, oubliettes, walls cleft through the middle, vaults still standing, none knows how, a maze of stones and crannies where grass grows and animals creep.
I was alone, roaming about this ruin.
Suddenly, behind a piece of wall, I caught sight of a human being, almost a phantom, as if it were the spirit of the ancient ruined building.
I started in amazement, almost in terror. Then I recognised the old woman I had already met twice.
She was weeping. She was weeping big tears, and held her handkerchief in her hand.
I turned to go. She spoke to me, ashamed at having been discovered unawares.
“Yes, monsieur, I am crying. … It does not happen often.”
“Excuse me, madame, for having disturbed you,” I stammered in confusion, not knowing what to answer. “Doubtless you are the victim of some misfortune.”
“Yes—no,” she murmured, “I am like a lost dog.”
And putting her handkerchief over her eyes, she burst into sobs.
I took her hands and tried to console her, touched by her very moving grief. And abruptly she began to tell me her history, as if she did not want to be left alone any longer to bear her grief.
“Oh! … Oh! … Monsieur. … If you knew … in what distress I live … in what distress. …
“I was happy. … I have a home … away in my own country. I cannot go back again, I shall never go back again, it is too cruel.
“I have a son. … It is he! It is he! Children do not know. … One has so short a time to live! If I saw him now, I might not know him! How I loved him! How I loved him! Even before he was born, when I felt him stir in my body. And then afterwards. How I embraced him, caressed him, cherished him. If you only knew how many nights I have spent watching him sleep, thinking of him. I was mad about him. He was eight years old when his father sent him away to boarding-school. It was all over. He was no longer mine. Oh! My God! He used to come every Sunday, that was all.
“Then he went to college, in Paris. He only came four times a year; and each time I marvelled at the changes in him, at finding him grown bigger without having seen him grow. I was robbed of his childhood, his trust, the love he would never have withdrawn from me, all my joy in feeling him grow and become a little man.
“I saw him four times a year! Think of it! At each of his visits his body, his eyes, his movements, his voice, his laugh, were no longer the same, were no longer mine. A child alters so swiftly, and, when you are not there to watch him alter, it is so sad; you will never find him again!
“One year he arrived with down upon his cheeks! He! My son! I was amazed … and—would you believe it?—sad. I scarcely dared to kiss him. Was this my baby, my small wee thing with fair curls, my baby of long ago, the darling child I had laid in long clothes upon my knee, who had drunk my milk with his little greedy lips, this tall brown boy who no longer knew how to caress me, who seemed to love me chiefly as a duty, who called me ‘mother’ for convention’s sake, and who kissed me on the forehead when I longed to crush him in my arms?
“My husband died. Then it was the turn of my parents. Then I lost my two sisters. When Death enters a house, it is as though he hastened to finish as much work as possible so that he need not return for a long time. He leaves but one or two alive to mourn the rest.
“I lived alone. In those days my big son was dutiful enough. I hoped to live and die near him.
“I went to join him, so that we might live together. He had acquired a young man’s ways; he made me realise that I worried him. I went away; I was wrong; but I suffered so to feel that I, his mother, was intruding. I went back home.
“I hardly saw him again.
“He married. What joy! At last we were to be united again forever. I should have grandchildren! He had married an English girl who took a dislike to me. Why? Perhaps she felt that I loved him too much?
“I was again forced to go away. I found myself alone. Yes, monsieur.
“Then he went
