A sudden shudder ran through me, not a shudder of cold but a strange shudder of anguish.
I quickened my pace, uneasy at being alone in this wood, unreasonably, stupidly, terrified by the profound solitude. Abruptly I felt that I was being followed, that someone was on my heels, as near as near, touching me.
I swung round. I was alone. I saw behind me only the straight open walk, empty, high, terrifyingly empty; it stretched out in front of me too, as far as the eye could see, as empty, and frightening.
I shut my eyes. Why? And I began to turn round on my heel at a great rate like a top. I almost fell; I opened my eyes again; the trees were dancing; the earth was swaying; I was forced to sit down. Then, ah! I didn’t know now which way I had been walking. Strange thought! Strange! Strange thought! I didn’t know anything at all now. I took the right-hand way, and found myself back in the avenue that had led me into the middle of the forest.
June 3. The night has been terrible. I am going to go away for several weeks. A short journey will surely put me right.
July 2. Home again. I am cured. I have had, moreover, a delightful holiday. I visited Mont-Saint-Michel, which I didn’t know.
What a vision one gets, arriving at Avranches as I did, towards dusk! The town lies on a slope, and I was taken into the public garden, at the end of the city. A cry of astonishment broke from me. A shoreless bay stretched before me, as far as eye could see: it lay between opposing coasts that vanished in distant mist; and in the midst of this vast tawny bay, under a gleaming golden sky, a strange hill, sombre and peaked, thrust up from the sands at its feet. The sun had just sunk, and on a horizon still riotous with colour was etched the outline of this fantastic rock that bore on its summit a fantastic monument.
At daybreak I went out to it. The tide was low, as on the evening before, and as I drew near it, the miraculous abbey grew in height before my eyes. After several hours’ walking I reached the monstrous pile of stones that supports the little city dominated by the great church. I clambered up the steep narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic dwelling made for God on this earth, as vast as a town, with innumerable low rooms hollowed out under the vaults and high galleries slung over slender columns. I entered this gigantic granite jewel, as delicate as a piece of lace, pierced everywhere by towers and airy belfries where twisting stairways climb, towers and belfries that by day against a blue sky and by night against a dark sky lift strange heads, bristling with chimeras, devils, fantastic beasts and monstrous flowers, and are linked together by slender carved arches.
When I stood on the top I said to the monk who accompanied me: “What a glorious place you have here, Father!”
“We get strong winds,” he answered, and we fell into talk as we watched the incoming sea run over the sand and cover it with a steel cuirass.
The monk told me stories, all the old stories of this place, legends, always legends.
One of them particularly impressed me. The people of the district, those who lived on the Mount, declared that at night they heard voices on the sands, followed by the bleating of two she-goats, one that called loudly and one calling softly. Unbelievers insisted that it was the crying of sea birds which at one and the same time resembled bleatings and the wailing of human voices: but benighted fishermen swore that they had met an old shepherd wandering on the dunes, between two tides, round the little town flung so far out of the world. No one ever saw the head hidden in his cloak: he led, walking in front of them, a goat with the face of a man and a she-goat with the face of a woman; both of them had long white hair and talked incessantly, disputing in an unknown tongue, then abruptly ceased crying to begin a loud bleating.
“Do you believe it?” I asked the monk.
He murmured: “I don’t know.”
“If,” I went on, “there existed on the earth beings other than ourselves, why have we not long ago learned to know them; why have you yourself not seen them? Why have I not seen them myself?”
He answered: “Do we see the hundred thousandth part of all that exists? Think, there’s the wind, the greatest force in nature, which throws down men, shatters buildings, uproots trees, stirs up the sea into watery mountains, destroys cliffs and tosses the tall ships against the shore, the wind that kills, whistles, groans, roars—have you seen it, can you see it? Nevertheless, it exists.”
Before his simple reasoning I fell silent. This man was either a seer or a fool. I should not have cared to say which; but I held my peace. What he had just said, I had often thought.
July 3. I slept badly; I am sure there is a feverish influence at work here, for my coachman suffers from the same trouble as myself. When I came home yesterday, I noticed his strange pallor.
“What’s the matter with you, Jean?” I demanded.
“I can’t rest these days, sir; I’m burning the candle at both ends. Since you went away, sir, I haven’t been able to throw it off.”
The other servants are
