TO MADEMOISELLE LÉONIE BERNARDINI
DAWN
The Cours-La-Reine was deserted. The green banks of the Seine, the ancient pollarded beeches whose shadows began to stretch out towards the east, the calm azure of the sky, cloudless, breezeless, unthreatening but unsmiling, all were wrapped in the deep silence that marks the summer day. A pedestrian coming from the Tuileries made his way slowly towards the hills of Chaillot. His figure was of the agreeable slightness characteristic of early youth, and he wore the coat, breeches, and black stockings indicative of the bourgeois, whose supremacy had at length come round. Yet his countenance was rather that of the dreamer than of the enthusiast. He had a book in his hand; and his finger between the leaves marked the place he had reached, but he had ceased to read. Now and then he stopped and strained his ears to catch the faint yet terrible murmur which rose up from Paris, and in this muffled noise, feebler than a sigh, he fancied he could distinguish cries of death and hate, joy and love, drum-beats, the sound of firearms—all the din, in fact, of insensate fury and sublime enthusiasm which ascends heavenward from crowded streets at the outbreak of revolution. At times he turned his head and shuddered. Everything reported to him, everything he had seen and heard for some hours past filled his brain with confused and terrible pictures: the Bastille captured by the people and already denuded of its battlements; the provost of the merchants' guild slain by a pistol-shot in the midst of a furious crowd; the governor, the venerable de Launay, hewn down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville; the dreadful populace, pale as famine or as deathly fear, drunken, beside itself, dazed by the vision of blood and glory, reeling from the Bastille to the Grève, and above the heads of a hundred thousand deluded people the bodies of the victims swinging from a lamp-post, and the oak-crowned brow of one of the exultant clad in a uniform of blue and white; the conquerors with the registers, the keys and the silver plate belonging to the ancient fortress, mounting amid acclamation the blood-stained steps; and at their head the popular magistrates La Fayette and Bailly, overwrought, uplifted, amazed, their feet dabbled in blood, their heads touching the clouds with pride! Then, fear still paramount with the unleashed rabble, at the scattered noises customarily attendant on the return of the Royal troops to the town at night, the tearing down of the palace railings for conversion into pikes, the pillage of the arsenals, the construction by the citizens of street barricades, and the transportation by the women to the roofs of houses of stones to hurl down on the foreign regiments!
These scenes of violence were reconstructed in his dreamy youthful imagination in subdued tones. He had taken his favourite book, an English work entitled[entitled] Meditations Among the Tombs, and made his way along the Seine, under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, towards the white house which, night and day, filled his thoughts. All was calm around him. On the river bank he noticed the anglers sitting with their feet in the water, and he followed the course of the stream in an abstracted mood. When he reached the slopes of the hills of Chaillot he met a patrol party, keeping an eye on the communications between Paris and Versailles. This troop, armed with guns, muskets, and halberds, included artisans wearing their aprons of leather or serge, lawyers dressed in black, one priest, and a bearded, bare-legged giant in a shirt. They challenged every would-be passer-by: communications between the Court and the governor of the Bastille had been detected and a surprise was feared.
But this pedestrian was young and of ingenuous appearance. He had scarcely uttered a word or two before the troop smilingly permitted him to continue his journey.
He ascended the slope of a lane odorous of flowering elder, and stopped half-way up in front of a garden gate. This garden was but little, but by means of winding alleys and abrupt turns the space for exercise was considerably extended. Into a pool where ducks were disporting themselves, willows dipped the tips of their branches. At the corner by the street a light alcove had been constructed, and a grass plot spread its freshness in front of the house. Here, on a rustic bench, with her head bent, a young woman was seated; her face was hidden by a large straw hat wreathed with natural flowers. Over her dress, which was of white and rose colour, in stripes, she wore a fichu, fastened at the waistline, this latter a trifle high, giving the skirt an added length that was not unbecoming. Her arms, encased in tight sleeves, were at rest. A basket of an antique pattern, which lay at her feet, held balls of wool. Close by her a child was piling up heaps of sand with his shovel. His blue eyes shone through a tangle of golden hair.
The young woman remained motionless and, as it were, spell-bound, and the young man standing at the gate could not bring himself to break so sweet a spell. At length she raised her head and disclosed a youthful, almost infantile face, with pure rounded lines which imparted a natural expression of gentleness and friendliness. He bowed before her, and she held out her hand.
“How do you do, Monsieur Germain? What is the news? ‘What news do you bring with you?’ as the song says. I don’t know very much, except songs.”
“Pardon me, Madame, for having disturbed your dreams. I was gazing at you. Alone, motionless, your head resting on your hand, it seemed as though you must be the angel of meditation.”