And then he added: ‘But I can’t see it clearly, I see it without any light. I must be very strong before I shall be able to get as far as the window.’
At times when Albine thought him asleep, she would vanish for hours. And on coming in again, she would find him burning with impatience, his eyes gleaming with curiosity.
‘Where have you been?’ he would call to her, taking hold of her arms, and feeling her skirts, her bodice, and her cheeks. ‘You smell of all sorts of nice things. Ah! you have been walking on the grass?’
At this she would laugh and show him her shoes wet with dew.
‘You have been in the garden! you have been in the garden!’ he then exclaimed delightedly. ‘I knew it. When you came in you seemed like a large flower. You have brought the whole garden in your skirt.’
He would keep her by him, inhaling her like a nosegay. Sometimes she came back with briars, leaves, or bits of wood entangled in her clothes. These he would remove and hide under his pillow like relics. One day she brought him a bunch of roses. At the sight of them he was so affected that he wept. He kissed them and went to sleep with them in his arms. But when they faded, he felt so keenly grieved that he forbade Albine to gather any more. He preferred her, said he, for she was as fresh and as balmy; and she never faded, her hands, her hair, her cheeks were always fragrant. At last he himself would send her into the garden, telling her not to come back before an hour.
‘In that way,’ he said, ‘I shall get sunlight, fresh air, and roses till to-morrow.’
Often, when he saw her coming in out of breath, he would cross-examine her. Which path had she taken? Had she wandered among the trees, or had she gone round the meadow side? Had she seen any nests? Had she sat down behind a bush of sweetbriar, or under an oak, or in the shade of a clump of poplars? But when she answered him and tried to describe the garden to him, he would put his hand to her lips.
‘No, no,’ he said gently. ‘It is wrong of me. I don’t want to know. I would rather see it myself.’
Then he would relapse into his favourite dream of all the greenery which he could feel only a step away. For several days he lived on that dream alone. At first, he said, he had perceived the garden much more distinctly. As he gained strength, the surging blood that warmed his veins seemed to blur his dreamy imaginings. His uncertainties multiplied. He could no longer tell whether the trees were on the right, whether the water flowed at the bottom of the garden, or whether some great rocks were not piled below his windows. He talked softly of all this to himself. On the slightest indication he would rear wondrous plans, which the song of a bird, the creaking of a bough, the scent of a flower, would suddenly make him modify, impelling him to plant a thicket of lilac in one spot, and in another to place flower-beds where formerly there had been a lawn. Every hour he designed some new garden, much to the amusement of Albine, who, whenever she surprised him at it, would exclaim with a burst of laughter: ‘That’s not it, I assure you. You can’t have any idea of it. It’s more beautiful than all the beautiful things you ever saw. So don’t go racking your head about it. The garden’s mine, and I will give it to you. Be easy, it won’t run away.’