find me again; young staddles greeted me with a
joyous rustle as I passed by; they seemed to say to
me: "Look how big we grew, how smooth and strong
our trunks are, how good the air in which we spread
out our slender, swaying boughs, how bountiful the
soil in which we sink our roots always full of life—giving sap."The moss and peat mould called me:
"We have prepared a nice bed for you, little fellow,
a nice fragrant little bed such as you won't find in
the miserably gilded houses of the big cities. . . .
Stretch yourself out, roll on it if you are too warm,
the fern will sway its gentle fans over your head,
the beech trees will spread their branches open to
let through a sunbeam which will gladden your heart."
Alas! ever since I fell in love with Juliette these
voices have gradually become silent. These memories
no longer came back like guardian angels to lull me
to sleep and to gently stir their white wings in the
agitated azure of my dreams! . . . My past had become estranged from me, ashamed of me! . . .
The train sped on; it had cleared the plains of Beauce, even more melancholy to look at than in the grim days of the war. . . . And I recognized the small, humpy fields, their hedges of brushwood, the scattered apple trees, the narrow valleys, the poplars with their tops bent in the shape of hoods, which in the fields resembled a strange procession of blue penitents, the farms with high mossgrown roofs, highways deep cut and rough, bordered with girdled trees, which slanted down in the midst of sturdy verdure, the woods down yonder, black against the setting sun. . . . It was getting dark when I arrived at Saint-Michel. I liked it better so. . . . To cross the streets in full daylight, under the gaze of all these excellent people who had known me as a child, would have been too painful for me. . . . It seemed to me that I was laden with so
