Our Letters
Night hours in the train induce sleep in some and insomnia in others. With me, any journey prevents my sleeping on the following night.
I had arrived, about five o’clock, at the estate of Abelle, which belongs to my friends, the Murets d’Artus, to spend three weeks there. It is a pretty house, built by one of their grandfathers in the latter half of the last century, and it has remained in the family. Therefore it has that intimate character of dwellings that have always been inhabited, furnished, animated and enlivened by the same people. Nothing changes; none of the soul evaporates from the dwelling, in which the furniture has never been moved, the tapestries never taken down, and have become worn out, faded, discoloured, on the same walls. None of the old furniture leaves the place; only from time to time it is moved a little to make room for a new piece, which enters there like a newborn infant in the midst of brothers and sisters.
The house is on a hill in the centre of a park which slopes down to the river, where there is a little stone bridge. Beyond the water the fields stretch out in the distance, where cows wander slowly, pasturing on the moist grass; their humid eyes seem full of the dew, mist and freshness of the pasture. I love this dwelling, just as one loves a thing which one ardently desires to possess. I return here every autumn with infinite delight; I leave with regret.
After I had dined with this friendly family, by whom I was received like a relative, I asked my chum, Paul Muret: “Which room did you give me this year?”
“Aunt Rose’s room.”
An hour later, followed by her three children, two tall little girls and a great lump of a boy, Madame Muret d’Artus installed me in Aunt Rose’s room, where I had not yet slept.
When I was alone I examined the walls, the furniture, the general aspect of the room, in order to attune my mind to it. I knew it, but not very well, as I had entered it only once or twice, and I looked indifferently at a pastel portrait of Aunt Rose, who gave her name to the room.
This old Aunt Rose, with her hair in curls, looking at me from behind the glass, made very little impression on my mind. She looked to me like a woman of former days, with principles and precepts, as strong on the maxims of morality as on cooking recipes, one of these old aunts who are a wet blanket on gaiety and the stern and wrinkled angel of provincial families.
I never had heard her spoken of; I knew nothing of her life or of her death. Did she belong to this century or to the preceding one? Had she left this earth after a calm or a stormy existence? Had she given up to heaven the pure soul of an old maid, the calm soul of a spouse, the tender one of a mother, or one moved by love? What difference I did it make? The name alone, “Aunt Rose,” seemed ridiculous, common, ugly.
I picked up a candle and looked at her severe face, hanging far up in an old gilt frame. Then, as I found it insignificant, disagreeable, even unsympathetic, I began to examine the furniture. It dated from the period of Louis XVI, the Revolution and the Directoire. Not a chair, not a curtain had entered this room since then, and it gave out the subtle odour of memories, which is the combined odour of wood, cloth, chairs, hangings, peculiar to places wherein have lived hearts that have loved and suffered.
I retired but did not sleep. After I had tossed about for an hour or two, I decided to get up and write some letters.
I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed between the two windows, in hope of finding some ink and paper; but all I found was a quill-pen, very much worn, made of a porcupine’s quill, and chewed at the end. I was about to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my attention: it looked like the yellow head of a nail, and it formed a little round lump at the corner of a tray. I scratched it with my finger, and it seemed to move. I seized it between two fingernails, and pulled as hard as I could. It came toward me gently. It was a long gold pin which had been slipped into a hole in the wood and remained hidden there.
Why? I immediately thought that it must have served to work some
