And the shore glided past, a long, triumphant march past, now threatening and sinister, now happy and smiling, but always new, endowed with eternal youth.
He was the helpless sport of gloomy dreams; he was pressed in between houses in narrow, dark streets; he was at the bottom of a well; he was trying to creep through a tunnel and was held fast; bricks were being heaped on his breast, when he was awakened by a loud knocking at the window shutters. He jumped up, but the room was pitch dark; he opened the shutters and a sea of light and green greeted his eyes. Oh, Nature! Reality which surpasses all dreams!
Behold, you dreamer, your brain could never invent such a dream, and yet you would talk of cold reality!
The morning sun was shining on an August landscape. He put a piece of bread in his pocket, slung his drinking-cup across his shoulder, took a stick and a basket and went out in search of sport—sport, not bloodshed.
His path lay between oak trees and hazels; autumn flowers grew here, flowers which had waited until after the passing of the scythe before they appeared, so that they could enjoy life undisturbed until the frost killed them. He crossed the stubble field, climbed over the fence, and the sport began.
On the short, springy turf, woven of reed-grass and stunted mudwort, the mushrooms lay scattered like new-laid eggs, waiting for the sun to enable them to fulfil their destiny before they decayed; but that was impossible now, since fate had decreed that they should die in their youth.
He left the battlefield and entered the forest with its odour of turpentine—health and sick-room—balm for the wounded breast, as the saying is; he walked below the branches in a dead calm, while twenty yards above his head the tempest shrieked. A woodcock flew up; the branches rattled. If only he had a gun!
Why does a man long for a gun whenever he happens to come across a harmless creature of the woods? There are many occasions in life when a gun would be much more in its place.
Here was a cart track; the wheels of the cart, drawn by oxen, had cut deeply into the turf; nevertheless, a red species of the poisonous spit-devils had shot up in the ruts; maybe they required strake-nails and kicks from the hoofs of oxen before they could enter into material existence.
The wood opened out and the path ceased at a place where many trees had been felled; before him lay what remained of the giants of the forest, cut down by the axe because it had been impossible to dig them-up with the roots. He gazed at a huge stump which had been attacked by a host of fungi of all sizes; they had settled on it as a swarm of flies settles on carrion, but their crowd was densest round the decayed parts which they could overcome more easily; they looked starved, pale and bloodless; they were neither pretty nor poisonous, like the spit-devils; they were merely useful.