I crossed next a wood of cork trees, where, a year ago, I had experienced a shock of strong and moving surprise.
It was on a grey day of October, at the time when they strip the bark of these trees, to make corks of it. They strip them thus from the foot to the first branches, and the denuded trunk becomes red, a blood red as of a flayed limb. They have grotesque and twisted shapes; the look of maimed creatures writhing in epileptic fits, and I suddenly fancied myself transported into a forest of tormented beings, a bleeding and Dantesque forest of hell, where men had roots, where bodies deformed by torture, resembled trees, where life ebbed incessantly, in never-ending torment by these bleeding wounds, which produced upon me the tension of the nerves and faintness that sensitive people feel at the sudden sight of blood, or the unexpected shock of a man crushed, or fallen from a roof. And this emotion was so keen, this sensation so vivid, that I imagined I heard distracting cries and plaints, distant and innumerable; I touched one of these trees, to reassure my fainting spirit, and I fancied, I beheld my hand, as I drew it back, covered with blood.
To-day they are cured—till the next barking.
At length the road appears, passing near the farm which has sheltered the long happiness of the non-commissioned officer of hussars, and the Colonel's daughter.
From afar, I recognize the old man walking among the vines. So much the better; the wife will be alone in the house.
The servant was washing in front of the door.
"Your mistress is here," I said.
