I walked between the cornfields and the sea, along a road no better than a path. The corn was quite motionless, and the waves lifted very gently. The air was filled with the fragrance of ripening fields and the salt scent of the seaweed. I walked without a thought in my head, straight forward, continuing a journey begun fifteen days before, a tramp round the coast of Brittany. I felt gloriously fit, content, light of feet and light of heart. I just walked.
I thought of nothing. Why think of anything in hours filled by an instinctive happiness, a profound physical happiness, the happiness of the beasts of the fields and the birds soaring in the blue spaces beneath the sun? I heard the far-off sound of hymn-singing. A procession perhaps, since this was Sunday. Then I rounded a little headland, stood still, amazed with delight. Five large fishing-boats came into sight, filled with people, men, women, and children, on their way to the Indulgence at Plouneven.
They hugged the coast, moving slowly, helped scarcely at all by the soft, hardly breathing wind which swelled the brown sails faintly and then, as if wearied out, let them fall, all slack, round the masts.
The clumsy boats moved slowly, filled with such a crowd of folk. And the whole crowd was singing. The men standing against the sides of the boats, their heads covered with wide hats, sang their deep notes lustily, the women shrilled the treble air, and the thin voices of the children pierced that devout and monstrous uproar like the tuneless squeak of fifes.
The voyagers in all five boats shouted the same hymn, whose monotonous rhythm rose to the quiet sky, and the five boats sailed one behind the other, close together.
They passed close by in front of me, and I saw them draw away, I heard their song sink and die upon the air.
And I fell dreaming delightful dreams, as youth will dream, absurd divine dreams.
How swiftly it is gone, the age of dreams, the only happy age in a whole lifetime. No one is ever lonely, ever sad, ever gloomy or cast down, who bears within himself that most wonderful power of wandering, as soon as he is left to himself, into a world of happy dreams. What a faery world, where anything may happen in the audacious imagination of the dreamer who roams therein! How adorable life appears covered in the gold dust of dreams.
Alas, those days are done!
I fell dreaming. Of what? Of all that a man never ceases to hope for, all that he desires, riches, honour, women.
And I walked on, taking great strides, my hand caressing the yellow locks of the corn which bowed itself under my fingers and thrilled my skin as if I had touched living hair.
I made my way round a little promontory and saw, at the end of a narrow open beach, a whitewalled house built above three terraces that came down to the shore.
Why does this house send through me a shiver of delight? Do I know it? Sometimes, in such wanderings, we come upon corners of the country that we seem to have known for a very long time, so familiar are they to us, so do they wake a response in our hearts. Is it possible that we have never seen them before, that we have not lived in them in some former life? Everything about them stirs us, fills us with the most profound delight, the gentle swell of the horizon, the ordered trees, the colour of the soil.
A charming house, rising from its high steps. Large fruit-trees had established themselves along the terraces which came down to the water, like giant stairs. And on the rim of each terrace, like a crown of gold, ran a border of Spanish broom in full flower.
I halted in my tracks, possessed with a sudden love for this dwelling-place. How I would have liked to own it, to live there, forever!
I drew near the door, my heart beating quickly with envious desire, and saw, on one of the pillars of the gate, a big placard: “For Sale.”
I felt a sharp thrill of delight, as if this dwelling had been offered to me, as if I had been given it. Why, yes, why? I do not know.
“For Sale.” Then it no longer belonged to any special person, could belong to anyone on earth, to me, to me! Why this joy, this sense of utter delight, deep incomprehensible delight? I knew well enough, however, that I could not buy it. How could I pay for it? No matter, it was for sale. The caged bird belongs to its owner, the bird in the air is mine, not being man’s.
I went into the garden. Oh, what a delightful garden, with its terraces lifted one above the other, its espaliers with arms stretched out like crucified martyrs, its clumps of golden broom, and two old fig-trees at the end of each terrace!
When I stood on the last, I looked all round me. The shore of the little bay stretched at my feet, curved and sandy, separated from the open sea by three massive brown rocks, which closed the entry to the bay and must have acted as a breakwater on rough days.
On the headland, right opposite, two great stones, one upright, the other lying in the grass, a Menhir and a Dolmen, like two strange beings, husband and wife, turned to stone by an evil spell, seemed to watch unwinkingly the small house that they had seen built—they who for centuries had known this onetime solitary cove—the small house that they would see fall, crumple, vanish little by little and altogether disappear, the little house that was for sale.
Oh, old Dolmen and old Menhir, how I love you!
I knocked at the door as if I had been knocking at my own door. A woman came to
