I.
On the eighth of August, at nine o’clock in the morning, the piercing note of a flageolet was to be heard at half a league’s distance from Eaux-Bonnes, and the bathers set out for Aas. The way there is by a narrow road cut in the Montagne Verte, and overhung with lavender and bunches of wild flowers. We entered upon a street six feet in width: it is the main street. Scarlet-capped children, wondering at their own magnificence, stood bolt upright in the doorways and looked on us in silent admiration. The public square, at the side of the lavatory, is as large as a small room; it is here that dances take place.
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Two hogsheads had been set up, two planks upon the hogsheads, two chairs upon the planks, and on the chairs two musicians, the whole surmounted by two splendid blue umbrellas which did service as parasols; for the sky was brazen, and there was not a tree on the square.
The whole formed an exceedingly pretty and original picture. Under the roof of the lavatory, a group of old women leaned against the pillars in talk; a crystal stream gushed forth and ran down the slated gutter; three small children stood motionless, with wide-open, questioning eyes. The young men were at exercise in the pathway, playing at base. Above the esplanade, on points of rock forming shelves, the women looked down on the dance, in holiday costume; a great scarlet hood, a body embroidered in silver, or in silk with violet flowers; a yellow, long-fringed shawl; a black petticoat hanging in folds, close to the figure, and white woollen gaiters. These strong colors, the lavished red, the reflexes of the silk under a dazzling light, were delightful. About the two hogsheads was wheeling, with a supple, measured movement, a sort of roundelay, to an odd and monotonous air terminated by a shrill false note of startling effect. A youth in woollen vest and breeches led the band; the young girls moved gravely, without talking or laughing; their little sisters at the end of the file took great pains in practising the step, and the line of purple capulets slowly waved like a crown of peonies. Occasionally the leader of the dance gave a sudden bound with a savage cry, and recalled to our mind that we were in the land of bears, in the very heart of the mountains.
Paul was there under his umbrella, wagging his great beard with a look of delight. Had he been able, he would have followed the dance.
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“Was I right? Is there a single things here out of harmony with the rest, and which the sun, the climate, the soil, do not make suitable? These people are poets. They must have been in love with the light to have invented these splendid costumes. Never would a northern sun have inspired this feast of color; their costume harmonizes with their sky. In Flanders, they would look like mountebanks; here they are as beautiful as their country. You no longer notice the ugly features, the sunburnt faces, the thick, knotty hands that yesterday offended you; the sun enlivens the brilliancy of the dresses, and in that golden splendor all ugliness disappears. I have seen people who laughed at the music; ‘the air is monotonous,’ they say, ‘contrary to all rule, it has no ending; those notes are false.’ At Paris, that may be; but here, no. Have you remarked that wild and original expression? How it suits the landscape! That air could have sprung up nowhere but among the mountains. The frou-frou of the tambourine is as the languid voice of the wind when it coasts the narrow valleys; the shrill tone of the flageolet is the whistling of the breeze when it is heard on the naked summits; that final note is the cry of a hawk in the depths of the air; the mountain sounds too are recognizable, hardly transformed by the rhythm of the song. And then the dance is as primitive, as natural, as suitable to the country as the music: they go wheeling about hand in hand. What could be more simple! It is thus that the children do at their play. The step is supple and slow; that is as the mountaineer walks; you know by experience that you must not be in too much haste if you would climb, and that here the stiff strides of a town-bred man will bring him to the ground. That leap, that seems to you so strange, is one of their habits, hence one of their pleasures. To make up a festival they have chosen what they found agreeable among the things to which their eyes, ears, and legs were habituated. Is not this festival then the most national, the truest, the most harmonious, and hence the most beautiful that can be imagined?”