I
What man, tell me, what man, were he suddenly delivered from disgust with himself, from terror of the world, from the sadness of an age that is without pity, from remorse for a thing he has done, from the fear of things he has to do, what man, suffering from one of these evils, or from several of them or from all at once, would not experience an immense relief, would not feel a certain absolution for the errors of the universe, a certain alleviation of his own in the contemplation of this little osier-bed which I descry this evening, at the turning of a lane?
What is there so profound, so divine in that scene?
Nothing, nothing, no doubt. Everything, perhaps. For who would venture to maintain that there is anything in the world that might not be a sign for my heart and yet be nothing more? I was following a stone wall, an indecipherable wall at present, without significance, without compassion, an enemy. It shut in my view and my thoughts, it was covered with cold mosses and all the dampness of winter. And then, all at once, the wall ended and there was a little valley crowned with these osiers. Yes, I mean crowned, for it seemed as if all its desires had been granted, all its aspirations satisfied, all its prayers fulfilled.
Thousands of crimson branches rose in a chorus toward heaven, like clusters of some smooth, straight, up-springing coral. All the branches rose together, with one brotherly impulse, like the desires of a world freed from ambitions and vowed to the one, the noblest ambition of all. But why seek for words, why strive to paint it? Surely it was not the flaming sap of the young shoots any more than the little rivulets smoking like censers at their feet,—it was neither of these things that promised relief and deliverance. It was the entire world that manifested itself in this, its smallest fragment, just as the most secretive man will betray himself by the trembling of his little finger or the flutter of an eyelash.