soil, which had been searched and robbed to build these temples to men, to kings and to God. The city explained the plain; Paris had at its threshold the desolation which all grandeur causes. I know of nothing more mournful or more lamentable than those unconfined lands which surround great cities; they are not yet a part of the town and they are no longer the country; they have the dust, the mutilations of man, and have no longer the verdure or the tranquil majesty given them by God.
We were in haste to flee. Laurence had bruised her feet; she was afraid of this disorder, of this melancholy which reminded her of our chamber. As for me, I found in this wretched spot my love, my troubles and my bleeding life. We hurried away.
We descended a hill. The Bièvre river flowed along at the bottom of the valley, bluish and thick. Trees, here and there, bordered the stream; tall houses, sombre, narrow and pierced with immense windows, loomed up lugubriously. The valley was more discouraging than the plain; it was damp, oily and full of disagreeable smells. The tanneries there emitted sharp and suffocating odors; the waters of the Bièvre, that sort of common sewer open to the sky, exhaled a fetid and powerful stench which gave me a choking sensation. It was no longer the sad and gray desolation of Montrouge; it was the disgusting sight of a gutter, black with mud and refuse, bearing away with its waters horrible odors. A few poplar trees had grown vigorously in this reeking soil, and, above, against the clear sky, were pictured the long white lines of the Hôpital de Bicêtre, that frightful abode of madness and death, which worthily towers over the unhealthful and ignoble valley.
Despair seized upon me; I asked myself if I should not stop where I was and pass the day upon the borders of the sewer. I could not, it seemed, quit Paris, I could not escape from the gutter. Filth and infamy followed me even into the fields; the waters were corrupted, the trees had an unhealthy vigor, my eyes encountered only wounds and suffering. This must be the country which God now reserved for me. Each Sunday, I would come, with Laurence on my arm, to promenade upon the banks of the Bièvre, beside the tanneries, and to talk of love in that sink; I would come, at the noontide hour, to seat myself with my sweetheart on the oily ground, yielding to the awful influence of that dead creature and of the wretched valley. I paused in terror, ready to return to Paris on a run, and glanced at Laurence.
Laurence had her weighed down look, her look of want and premature old age. The smile she wore at her departure from the city had vanished. She seemed weary and dull; she looked around her, calmly, without disgust. I thought I saw her in our chamber; I realized that this slumbering soul needed more sunlight and nature of a gentler aspect to restore the innocence of a young girl’s fifteenth year.
Then, I grasped her tightly by the arm; without permitting her to turn her head, I dragged her along, reascending the hill, always pushing straight ahead, following the roads, crossing the meadows, in quest of the young and virgin spring. For two hours we went along thus, in silence, rapidly. We passed two or three villages — Arcueil, Bourg-la-Reine, I believe; we hurried over more than twenty paths, between white walls and green hedges. Then, as we were about to leap across a narrow brook, in a valley full of foliage, Laurence uttered a childish shout, a burst of laughter, and escaped from my arm, running among the grass, all gayety, all innocence.
We were upon a large square of turf, planted with trees, with tall poplars, which arose like a jet of water, majestically, and balanced themselves languidly in the blue air. The turf was close and thick, dark in the shade and golden in the sunlight; one might have called it, when the wind agitated the poplars, a broad carpet of silk with changing reflections. All around extended cultivated lands, covered with shrubs and plants: there was a sea of leaves at the horizon. A white house, low and long, which was in the shade, at the edge of a neighboring grove of trees, stood out gayly against all this green. Further away, higher up, on the edge of the sky, across the shadows, were seen the first roofs of Fontenay-aux-Roses.
The verdure was of recent growth, it had virgin freshness and innocence; the young leaves, pale and tender, in transparent masses, seemed like light and delicate lace placed upon the great blue veil of the sky. The tree trunks themselves, the rough old trunks, appeared as if newly painted; they had hidden their wounds beneath fresh moss. It was a universal song, a bright and caressing gayety. The stones and the lands, the sky and the waters, all appeared neat, vigorous, healthy and innocent. The recently awakened country, green and golden beneath the broad azure sky, laughed in the light, intoxicated with sap, youth and purity.
And amid this youth, this purity, ran Laurence in the full light, amid the flowing sap. She plunged into the grass, drank in the pure air; she had again found her fifteenth year upon the bosom of this country which had not been green fifteen days. The young verdure had refreshed her blood; the young sunlight had warmed her heart, given roses to her cheeks. All her being had awakened in this awakening of the earth; like the earth, she had resumed her innocence under the mild influence of the season.
Laurence, supple and strong, ran wildly about, carried away by the new life which was singing in her being. She lay down, she arose, with vivacity, bursting out laughing; she stooped to pick a flower, then fled between the trees, afterwards returning all in a rosy glow. Her entire face was animated; its features, unbent and rendered supple, had a healthful expression of genuine joy. Her laugh was frank, her voice sonorous and her gestures caressing. Seated, with my back against the trunk of a tree, I followed her with my eyes, white amid the grass, her hat fallen upon her shoulders; I was pleased with the pretty dress, so neat and light, which she wore chastely, and which gave her the air of a turbulent schoolgirl. She ran to me, threw me, stalk by stalk, the flowers she had gathered — marguerites and gold buttons, eglantines and lilies of the valley; then, she started off again, shining in the sunlight, pale and dim in the shade, like an insect buzzing in the light, without the ability to pause. She filled the grass and leaves with noise and motion; she peopled the secluded corner in which we were; the spring had assumed more brightness, more life, since this woman, who had as if by enchantment become a spotless child, had been laughing amid the verdure.
Fresh, blooming, all of a quiver, Laurence came to me and seated herself at my side. She was moist with dew; her bosom rose and full quickly, full of young and fresh breath. From her came a delightful odor of grass and health. I had at last beside me a woman who lived abundantly, purely, looking straight at the light. I leaned over and kissed Laurence on the forehead.
She took the flowers, one by one, arranging them in a bouquet. The sun was ascending, the shadows were darker; around us reigned complete silence. Lying flat on my back, I gazed at the sky, I gazed at the leaves, I gazed at Laurence. The sky was of a dead blue; the leaves, already languishing, were sleeping in the sunshine; Laurence, with her head bent down, calm and smiling, was hurrying through her task with quick and supple movements. I could not take my eyes from that partially reclining woman, lost amid her skirts, her forehead in gilded shade, who seemed to me innocent and active, restored to her fifteenth year. I felt such peace, such deep joy, that I feared either to stir or speak; I lived in the thought that spring was in me, around me, and that Laurence was purity itself; I lost myself in this dream of the spotlessness of my sweetheart and the worthiness of my love. At length I loved a woman; that woman laughed, that woman existed; she possessed the healthful color and the frank gayety of youth. The miserable days of the past were no more, the future appeared to me with a calm and splendid brightness. My dreams of innocence and my love of light were about to be satisfied; from this hour, a life of ecstasy and tenderness would commence. I thought no more of the Bièvre, that black sewer upon the borders of which I had had the frightful temptation to sit down and embrace Laurence. I now wished to inhabit the white dwelling, down there, at the edge of the grove of trees, to live in it forever with my sweetheart, with my wife, amid the dew, amid the sunlight, amid the pure air.
Laurence had finished her bouquet and tied it with a sprig of grass. It was eleven o’clock, and we had not yet eaten anything. It was necessary for us to quit these trees, beneath which my soul had loved for the first time, and go in quest of an inn. I walked on ahead, across the country, through narrow paths bordered with fields of strawberry plants. Laurence followed me, holding up her skirts, forgetting herself at each hedge.
