“You are a queer fellow,” said M. Goefle. “Well, be quick, and give an eye to my horse at the same time. He’s worth more than your ass—no offence to you. But are you going out to the stable in my dress-coat and silk stockings?”
“I shall be back in a moment.”
“No, no, my boy, that won’t do at all. Besides, you will catch cold. Take my furred boots and pelisse, and be quick!”
Cristiano thankfully obeyed, and found Jean in very good case, coughing less than on the day before, and eating contentedly in company with Loki, whom Ulph had brought back from the new chateau.
Ulph was looking at the ass in stupid wonderment. He was beginning to recover a little from his drunkenness, and to suspect that it was not a horse that he had so quietly groomed in the morning. Cristiano, who had learned on the previous evening, while hunting after his supper, what a superstitious poltroon he had to deal with, addressed him at once in Italian, accompanying his remarks with fierce looks and absurd and terrifying gestures. In this fantastic style, he ordered the poor fellow to respect the ass like a mythological divinity, and threatened him with the most fearful punishment in case of disobedience. Ulph, in a great fright, retired in silence, after saluting both the ass and his master, his brain full of indistinct notions that he could not carry forward to any intelligible conclusion, but which the spirituous indulgences of the coming evening would be sure to develop into new alarms and imaginations more and more strange.
“Very well,” continued Cristiano, returning and resuming his pipe, his story, and his position astride of a chair, in the bear-room; “Madame Goffredi’s ass was my first friend. I believe no donkey in the world, not even my own, ever had such beautiful ears and such an agreeable gait. Perhaps, Monsieur Goefle, the reason I think so is, that the first time that quiet pace and those two long ears attracted the attention of my poor little undeveloped mind, I was at the same moment instinctively impressed by one of the most beautiful sights in the universe. It was on the shore of a lake. Lakes, you see, play an important part in my life. But what a lake this was! The lake of Perugia—the ancient lake Thrasymene! Were you never in Italy, Monsieur Goefle?”
“No, very much to my regret. But as to lakes, we have some here in Sweden that would make your Italian ones look like wash-basins.”
“I have nothing to say against your lakes. I have already seen a number of them. Very likely they are beautiful in summer, and even in winter, with their mjelgars—is not that the name of those immense avalanches of earth that slide down to the water’s edge with their green trees standing, their rocks and strange fractures?—I admit that they are very remarkable. The hoar-frost and ice that cover so many strange forms, and make a wreath of diamonds out of the smallest blade of grass; these inextricable net-works of brambles that might be taken for immense and elaborate pieces of work in cut-glass; the glorious red sunlight over it all; the jagged peaks above, glittering like shafts of sapphire against the purple of the morning—yes, I confess the grandeur of all this scenery. Even what I can see out of this window is a picture which dazzles me. Dazzles: that is the word; and that is really the only criticism I have to offer upon it. It excites me—carries me beyond myself. Enthusiasm is good, no doubt; but is there nothing else in life? Has not man an immense need for repose, for contemplation, without any sense of effort; for that sort of soft, delicious revery that we call far niente? Well, it is down in the south, at such a place as lake Thrasymene, that one feels a glorious consciousness of mere vegetating. It was there that I grew up in perfect quiet, without any violent changes; a poor little weed, transplanted, from some unknown region, to those shores, blessed by the sunshine, shaded by the ancient faint-hued olive-trees, and, as it were, bathed always in warm fluid gold.
“We had—it is a sad we—a little country-house, or villetta, on a small stream called the Sanguineto, or Bloody Brook; in memory, it is said, of the blood that once ran down its bed from the field of the famous battle of Thrasymene. Here we passed all the pleasant summer weather in a delicious rural paradise. There were no more corpses in the stream; the waters of the Sanguineto were as clear as crystal. However, my dear adoptive father used to be absorbed by his quaint occupation of searching for bones, medals, and remains of armor, of which great quantities are still found among the grass and flowers along the shore of the lake. His wife, who adored him—and with good reason—always accompanied him; and I, by this time a great careless boy, whom also, in their loving kindness, they adored—I used to roll about on the warm sand, or ride dreaming along on my dear mother’s lap, rocked by Nino’s even pace.
“Gradually I came to perceive and understand the splendor of the days and nights in that lovely country. The lake is immense. Not that it covers so much space as even the smallest of yours, but grandeur is not the same as dimension. The curves of its outlines are so grand, and its atmosphere is so soft, that its luminous distances give an impression of infinity. I cannot remember, without emotion, certain sunrises and sunsets that I have seen there, over that broad mirror, filled with reflections of headlands crowded with tall, thick trees, and of distant islets, showing as white as alabaster among the rosy waves. And at night, what myriads of stars hung quivering in the tranquil water! How lovely were the mists that climbed the silvery slopes, and how mysterious the harmonies that seemed to creep unobtrusively along the shores, with the slight ebb and flow of that great mass of waters that seemed afraid of disturbing the sleep of the flowers! With you, you must confess, Monsieur Goefle, that nature is violent, even in its winter’s repose. In your mountains everything carries the marks of the perpetual floods of your spring and autumn. But there, all the terrestrial outlines are certain of preservation for a long time, and every plant of maturing in the place where it was born. In breathing such an air, we breathe in with it some similar kindliness of instinct; the eternal happiness of nature diffuses itself in the soul without overpowering or confounding it.”