[CHAPTER II]
HAPPY DAYS
A delightful life commenced for Jeanne, a life in the open air. She
wandered along the roads, or into the little winding valleys, their
sides covered with a fleece of gorse blossoms, the strong sweet odor
of which intoxicated her like the bouquet of wine, while the distant
sound of the waves rolling on the beach seemed like a billow rocking
her spirit.
A love of solitude came upon her in the sweet freshness of this
landscape and in the calm of the rounded horizon, and she would remain
sitting so long on the hill tops that the wild rabbits would bound by
her feet.
She planted memories everywhere, as seeds are cast upon the earth,
memories whose roots hold till death. It seemed to Jeanne that she was
casting a little of her heart into every fold of these valleys. She
became infatuated with sea bathing. When she was well out from shore,
she would float on her back, her arms crossed, her eyes lost in the
profound blue of the sky which was cleft by the flight of a swallow,
or the white silhouette of a seabird.
After these excursions she invariably came back to the castle pale
with hunger, but light, alert, a smile on her lips and her eyes
sparkling with happiness.
The baron on his part was planning great agricultural enterprises.
Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On
several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by
moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved
to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts
of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long
time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof
of a belfry or the Fécamp lighthouse, he delighted to remain
motionless beneath the first gleams of the rising sun which made the
slimy backs of the large fan-shaped rays and the fat bellies of the
turbots glisten on the deck of the boat.
At each meal he gave an enthusiastic account of his expeditions, and
the baroness in her turn told how many times she had walked down the
main avenue of poplars.
As she had been advised to take exercise she made a business of
walking, beginning as soon as the air grew warm. Leaning upon
Rosalie's arm and dragging her left foot, which was rather heavier
than the right, she wandered interminably up and down from the house
to the edge of the wood, sitting down for five minutes at either end.
The walking was resumed in the afternoon. A physician, consulted ten
years before, had spoken of hypertrophy because she had suffered from
suffocation. Ever since, this word had been used to describe the
ailment of the baroness. The baron would say "my wife's hypertrophy"
and Jeanne "mamma's hypertrophy" as they would have spoken of her hat,
her dress, or her umbrella. She had been very pretty in her youth and
slim as a reed. Now she had grown older, stouter, but she still
remained poetical, having always retained the impression of "Corinne,"
which she had read as a girl. She read all the sentimental love
stories it was possible to collect, and her thoughts wandered among
tender adventures in which she always figured as the heroine. Her new
home was infinitely pleasing to her because it formed such a beautiful
framework for the romance of her soul, the surrounding woods, the
waste land, and the proximity of the ocean recalling to her mind the
novels of Sir Walter Scott, which she had been devouring for some
months. On rainy days she remained shut up in her room, sending
Rosalie in a special manner for the drawer containing her "souvenirs,"
which meant to the baroness all her old private and family letters.
Occasionally, Jeanne replaced Rosalie in the walks with her mother,
and she listened eagerly to the tales of the latter's childhood. The
young girl saw herself in all these romantic stories, and was
astonished at the similarity of ideas and desires; each heart imagines
itself to have been the first to tremble at those very sensations that
awakened the hearts of the first beings, and that will awaken the
hearts of the last.