IV.
Going down the Valentin, on the slope of the Montagne Verte, I found landscapes less austere. You reach the right bank of the Gave d’Ossau. A pretty streamlet slips down the mountain, encased between two walls of rounded stones all purple with poppies and wild mallows. Its fall has been turned to account in driving rows of saws incessantly back and forth over blocks of marble. A tall, bare-footed girl, in rags, ladles up sand and water for wetting the machine; by the aid of the sand the iron blade eats away the block.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
A foot-path follows the river bank, lined with houses, huge oaks and fields of Indian corn; on the other side is an arid reach of pebbly shore, where children are paddling near some hogs asleep in the sand; on the transparent wave, flocks of ducks rock with the undulations of the current: it is the country and culture after solitude and the desert. The pathway winds through a plantation of osiers and willows; the long, waving stalks that love the rivers, the pale pendent foliage, are infinitely graceful to eyes accustomed to the intense green of the mountains. On the right may be seen the narrow rocky ways that lead to the hamlets scattered over the slopes. The houses there lean their backs against the mountain, shelved one above another, so as to look down upon the valley. At noon the people are all absent. Every door is closed; three or four old women, who alone are left in the village, are spreading grain upon the level rock which forms the street or esplanade. What more singular than this long, natural flag-stone, carpeted with gilded heads of grain. The dark and narrow church ordinarily rises from a terraced yard, enclosed by a low wall; the bell-tower is white and square, with a slated spire. Under the porch may be read a few epitaphs carved in the stone; these, for the most part, are the names of invalids who have died at Eaux Bonnes; I remarked those of two brothers. To die so far from home and alone! It is touching to read these words of sympathy graven upon a tomb; this sunlight is so sweet! the valley so beautiful! you seem to breathe health in the air; you want to live; one wishes, as the old poet says, “Se réjouir longtemps de sa force et de sa jeunesse.” The love of life is imparted with the love of light. How often, beneath the gloomy northern sky, do we form a similar desire?
At the turn of the mountain is the entrance into an oak wood that rises on one of the declivities. These lofty, roomy forests give to the south shade without coolness. High up, among the trunks, shines a patch of blue sky; light and shade dapple the gray moss like a silken design upon a velvet ground. A heavy, warm air, loaded with vegetable emanations, rises to the face; it fills the chest and affects the head like wine. The monotonous sound of the cricket and the grasshopper comes from wheat-land and meadow, from mountain and from plain; you feel that living myriads are at work among the heather and under the thatch; and in the veins, where ferments the blood, courses a vague sensation of comfort, the uncertain state between sleeping and dreaming, which steeps the soul in animal life and stifles thought under the dull impressions of the senses. You stretch yourself out, and are content with merely living; you feel not the passage of the hours, but are happy in the present moment, without a thought for past or future; you gaze upon the slender sprigs of moss, the grayish spikes of the grasses, the long ribands of the shining herbs; you follow the course of an insect striving to get over a thicket of turf, and clambering up and down in the labyrinth of its stalks. Why not confess that you have become a child again and are amused with the least of sights? What is the country but a means of returning to our earliest youth, of finding again that faculty of happiness, that state of deep attention, that indifference to everything but pleasure and the present sensation, that facile joy which is a brimming spring ready to overflow at the least impulse? I passed an hour beside a squadron of ants who were dragging the body of a big fly across a stone. They were bent upon the dismemberment of the vanquished; at each leg a little workwoman, in a black bodice, pulled and worked with all her might; the rest held the body in place. I never saw efforts more fearful; at times their prey rolled off the stone; then they had to begin over again. At last, fatigued by the toils of war, and wanting power to cut up and carry off the prey, they resigned themselves to eating it on the spot.