A Memory
How many memories of my youth came to me under the gentle caress of the earliest summer sun! It is an age wherein all is good, glad, charming, and intoxicating. How exquisite are the memories of lost springs!
Do you recall, my old friends, my brothers, those years of gladness in which life was but triumph and laughter? Do you recall the days when we roamed disreputably about Paris, our radiant poverty, our walks in the woods newly clad in green, our revels under the open sky outside the taverns on the banks of the Seine, and our love-adventures, so commonplace and so delicious?
I should like to relate one of those adventures. It dates from twelve years ago, and already feels so old, so old, that it seems now at the other end of my life, before the turning, the ugly turning whence suddenly I saw the end of the journey.
I was twenty-five in those days. I had just come to Paris; I worked in a government office, and Sundays seemed to me extraordinary festivals, full of exuberant happiness, although nothing remarkable ever happened on them.
Every day is Sunday now. But I regret the times when I had only one a week. How good it was! I had six francs to spend!
I awoke early, that particular morning, with that feeling of freedom well known to clerks, the feeling of deliverance, rest, tranquillity, and independence.
I opened my window. The weather was glorious. The clear blue sky was spread above the city, full of sunshine and swallows.
I dressed very quickly and went out, eager to spend the day in the woods, to breathe the odour of the leaves; for I came of country stock, and spent my childhood on the grass and under the trees.
Paris was waking joyfully, in the warmth and the light. The fronts of the houses shone, the concierges’ canaries sang furiously in their cages, and gaiety ran down the street, lighting up faces and stirring laughter everywhere, as though a mysterious happiness filled all animate and inanimate life in that radiant dawn.
I reached the Seine, to catch the Swallow, which was to take me to Saint-Cloud.
How I loved waiting for the boat upon the landing-stage! I felt as though I were off to the end of the world, to new and wonderful countries. I watched the boat come into sight, away in the distance under the arch of the second bridge, very small, with its plume of smoke, then larger, larger, always growing; and to my mind it took on the airs and graces of a liner.
It came alongside the stage, and I embarked.
A crowd of people in their Sunday clothes were already on board, with gay dresses, brilliantly coloured ribbons, and fat scarlet faces. I placed myself right in the bows, and stood there watching quays, trees, houses, and bridges go by. And suddenly I saw the great viaduct of Point-du-Jour barring the stream. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and at once beyond the double line of arches the Seine widened out, as though space and liberty had been granted to it, becoming suddenly the lovely peaceful river that flows on across the plains, at the foot of the wooded hills, through the meadows, and along the edge of the forest.
After passing between two islands, the Swallow followed the curve of a slope whose green expanse was covered with white houses. A voice announced: “Bas-Meudon”; then, farther on: “Sèvres,” and, still farther on: “Saint-Cloud.”
I disembarked. And I hurried through the little town along the road to the woods. I had brought a map of the suburbs of Paris, lest I lost myself on the paths which run in every direction across the woods where the people of Paris go for their expeditions.
As soon as I was in the shade, I studied my route, which seemed perfectly simple. I was to turn to the right, then to the left, then to the left again, and I should arrive at Versailles by nightfall, for dinner.
And I began to walk slowly, beneath the fresh leaves, drinking in the fragrant air, perfumed with the odour of buds and sap. I walked with short steps, unmindful of the stacks of old paper, of the office, of my chief and my colleagues, and of files, and dreaming of the happy adventures that must assuredly be waiting for me in the stretches of that veiled, unknown future. I was filled with a thousand memories of childhood awakened in me by the scents of the country, and I went on, sunk in the fragrant, living, throbbing loveliness of the woods, warmed by the powerful June sun.
Sometimes I sat down by a bank and looked at the little flowers of every kind, whose names I had long known. I knew them all again, just as though they were the very ones I had once seen in my own country. They were yellow, red, and violet, delicate and dainty, lifted on high stalks or huddled close to the earth. Insects of every colour and shape, short and squat or long and thin, extraordinary in their construction, frightful microscopic monsters, peacefully mounted the blades of grass, which bent under their weight.
Then I slept for some hours in a ditch, and went on again, rested and strengthened by my sleep.
In front of me opened a delightful alley, whose rather sparse leafage allowed drops of sunlight to shower everywhere upon the soil, and gleamed on the white
