Has it ever happened to you, when you were walking alone and in contemplative mood, to lie flat on your face in the grassy underbrush of a forest, amid the peculiar vegetation, of many and varying species, that grows between the fallen autumn leaves, and to let your eyes stray along the level of the earth before you? Gradually the idea of height vanishes, the interlaced branches of the oaks above your head form an inaccessible sky, and you see a new forest stretching out beneath the other, opening its long avenues pierced by a mysterious green light and lined by slender or tufted shrubs ending in round tops of exotic or wild aspect, stalks of sugar-cane, the graceful rigidity of palms, slender cups holding a drop of water, girandoles bearing little yellow lights which flicker in the passing breeze. And the miraculous feature of it all is that beneath those slender stalks live miniature plants and myriads of insects whose existence, seen at such close quarters, reveals all its mysteries to you. An ant, staggering like a woodcutter under his burden, drags a piece of bark larger than himself; a beetle crawls along a blade of grass stretched like a bridge from trunk to trunk; while, beneath a tall fern standing by itself in a clearing carpeted with velvety moss, some little blue or red creature waits, its antennæ on the alert, until some other beast, on its way thither by some deserted path, arrives at the rendezvous under the gigantic tree. It is a small forest beneath the large one, too near the ground for the latter to perceive it, too humble, too securely hidden to be reached by its grand orchestra of songs and tempests.
A similar phenomenon takes place in the Bois de Boulogne. Behind those neat, well-watered gravelled paths, where long lines of wheels moving slowly around the lake draw a furrow by constant wear throughout the day, with the precision of a machine, behind that wonderful stage-setting of verdure-covered walls, of captive streams, of flower-girt rocks, the real forest, the wild forest, with its luxuriant underbrush, advances and recedes, forming impenetrable shadows traversed by narrow paths and rippling brooks. That is the forest of the lowly, the forest of the humble, the little forest under the great. And Paul, who knew nothing of the aristocratic resort save the long avenues, the gleaming lake as seen from the back seat of a carriage or from the top of a break in the dust of a return from Longchamps, was amazed to see the deliciously secluded nook to which his friends escorted him.
It was on the edge of a pond that lay mirrorlike beneath the willows, covered with lilies and lentils, with great patches of white here and there, where the sun's rays fell upon the gleaming surface, and streaked with great tendrils of argyronètes as with lines drawn by diamond points.
They had seated themselves, to listen to the reading of the play, on the sloping bank, covered with verdure already dense, although made up of slender plants, and the pretty attentive faces, the skirts spread out upon the grass made one think of a more innocent and chaste Decameron in a reposeful atmosphere. To complete the picture of nature at its loveliest, the distant rustic landscape, two windmills could be seen through an opening between the branches, turning in the direction of Suresnes, while, of the dazzling gorgeous vision to be seen at every cross-road in the Bois, naught reached them save a confused endless rumbling, to which they finally became so accustomed that they did not hear it at all. The poet's voice alone, fresh and eloquent, rose in the silence, the lines came quivering forth, repeated in undertones by other deeply-moved lips, and there were murmured words of approval, and thrills of emotion at the tragic passages. Grandmamma, indeed, was seen to wipe away a great tear. But that was because she had no embroidery in her hand.
The first work! That is what Révolte was to André—the first work, always too copious and diffuse, into which the author tosses first of all a whole lifetime of ideas and opinions, pressing for utterance like water against the edge of a dam, and which is often the richest, if not the best, of an author's productions. As for the fate that awaited it, no one could say what it might be; and the uncertainty that hovered about the reading of the drama added to his emotion the emotion of each of his auditors, the white-robed hopes of Mademoiselle Élise, M. Joyeuse's fanciful hallucinations and the more positive desires of Aline, who was already in anticipation installing her sister in the nest, rocked by the winds but envied by the multitude, of an artist's household!
Ah! if one of those pleasure-seekers circling the lake for the hundredth time, overwhelmed by the monotony of his habit, had chanced to put aside the branches, how surprised he would have been at that picture! But would he have suspected all the passion and dreams and poetry and hope that were contained in that little nook of verdure hardly larger than the denticulated shadow of a fern on the moss?
"You were right, I did not know the Bois," said Paul in an undertone to Aline, as she leaned on his arm.
They were following a narrow sheltered path, and as they talked they walked very rapidly, far in advance of the others. But it was not Père Kontzen's terrace nor his crisp fritters that attracted them. No, the noble verses they had heard had carried them to a great height, and they had not yet descended. They walked straight on toward the ever-receding end of the path, which broadened at its extremity into a luminous glory, a dust of sunbeams, as if all the sunshine of that lovely day awaited them at the edge of the woods. Paul had never felt so happy. The light arm resting on his, the childlike step by which his own was guided, would have made life as sweet and pleasant to him as that walk upon the mossy carpet of a green path. He would have told the young girl as much, in words as simple as his feelings, had he not feared to alarm Aline's confidence, caused doubtless by the feeling which she knew that he entertained for another, and which seemed to forbid any thought of love between them.
Suddenly, directly in front of them, a group of equestrians stood out against the bright background, at first vague and indistinct, then taking shape as a man and woman beautifully mounted and turning into the mysterious path among the shafts of gold, the leafy shadows, the myriad specks of light with which the ground was dotted, which they displaced as they cantered forward, and which ran in fanciful designs from the horses' breasts to the Amazon's veil. They rode slowly, capriciously, and the two young people, who had stepped into the bushes, could see perfectly as they passed quite near to them, with a creaking of new leather, a jangling of bits tossed proudly and white with foam as after a wild gallop, two superb horses bearing a human couple compelled to ride close together by the narrowing of the path; he supporting with one arm the flexible form moulded into a waist of dark cloth, she, with her hand on her companion's shoulder and her little head, in profile—hidden beneath the tulle of her half-fallen veil—resting tenderly thereon. That amorous entwining, cradled by the impatience of the steeds, restive under the restraint imposed upon their fiery spirits, that kiss, causing the reins to become entangled, that passion riding through the woods in hunting costume, in broad daylight, with such contempt of public opinion, would have sufficed to betray the duke and Felicia, even though the haughty and fascinating appearance of the Amazon, and the high-bred ease of her companion, his pallid cheeks slightly flushed by the exercise and Jenkins' miraculous pearls, had not already led to their recognition.
It was not an extraordinary thing to meet Mora in the Bois on Sunday. He, like his master, loved to show himself to the Parisians, to keep his popularity alive in all public places; and then the duchess never accompanied him on that day, and he could draw rein without restraint at the little châlet of Saint-James, known to all Paris, whose pink turrets peering out among the trees school-boys pointed out to one another with whispered comments. But only a madwoman, a shameless creature like that Felicia, would advertise herself thus, destroy her reputation forever. The sound of hoofs and of rustling bushes dying away in the distance, bent weeds standing erect, branches thrust aside resuming their places—that was all that remained of the apparition.