This bridge I crossed in all its glamour of sad enchantment. One of its arches was broken, and made a dangerous gap above the broad, quiet waters. There were no lamps, no visible indication of life about. I saw that it led to an island encircled by a battered and decayed dark wall, with little castellated ornaments that gave it the look of a feudal fortress of unusual extent and dimensions. Midway I stood upon the bridge, and wondered what sort of land might be before me. At first I believed it to be uninhabited, until much gazing discovered a thin curl of blue smoke far away, beyond a square tower. It was nearing sunset now, and the island lying west, showed out more darkly from a broad band of reddish glory. It wore all the more dead and desolate air because of the floating and quickened light above it.
Have you ever, in some quaint French town washed by a wide river, watched these lovely sunset contrasts on the blackened greyness of stone masses and on the sombre placidity of water? The best effects you will find upon the Loire, and if you can recall them, you will see, better than words of mine can paint, the salient features of that river-view set with towers and a decayed, old grey wall.
I was saturated with the sadness of it, and my glance was still wedded to its dead charm, when a bloused peasant came out of the under shadows and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful commonplace note in the picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not in the least like a ghost from other centuries. Prosperous, too, as befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and mayhap clink free and fraternal glasses with them through an ocean of blood. He came along, whistling a patriotic tune, with his hands in his pockets, and his hat in villainous emphasis cocked over one ear.
‘Can it be,’ I asked myself, in a pang of disappointment, ‘that this enchanted island contains the ubiquitous cabaret, and that the impossible legend of liberty, equality, and fraternity has penetrated, with its attendant train of horrid evils, into this home of silence and poetic decay?’
I interrupted my gloomy moralising, for which, like all persons naturally gay, I flatter myself I have a decided turn, and hat, metaphorically, in hand, sued this roadside rascal for information.
‘Yes, people lived upon the island, not many—mostly women: laundresses upon the side that ran unprotected down to the water edge. I might see their sheds if I made the round of the wall. There was a large Benedictine convent at one end, and a cemetery eastward—but no hotel accommodation, no shops, no vehicles of any sort, and but one miserable little wine-shop, where they sold the worst brandy in all France.’
Of this liquid I concluded the fellow had been drinking somewhat copiously, and left him to push inquiries for myself.
I know not why, but the moment I set foot upon the island, and heard the slow swish of the eddying river against its projecting base, thought was checked upon mild and pleasurable suspense. Something unexpected must surely happen, I believed, and step by step destiny seemed to impel me forward in its pursuit. My footfall rang sharply upon the empty path, and I felt it would be ignominy to leave this strange spot until fate had spoken, and its voice been interpreted adequately for me by circumstance.
How still everything was, and how softly the day’s heat was stealing out of the atmosphere! One bright star shone like a lamp over a noble ruin, and for this I made. No sound of living voice, no clang of wooden shoe or beat of hoofs broke the heavy silence, and by this fact I knew that I must still be remote from the washerwomen’s quarter. There was a fearful look about the low rocks that reached behind the ruins down to the black water, whose perilous stillness was unwholesomely revealed by the margin of quivering light shed from the rosy sky.
A few yards farther brought me to the open cemetery gate. Here I entered with a shuddering sense of the romantic appropriateness of its aspect. Did ever churchyard wear so solemn, so forsaken an air of death? Death was breathed in the profuseness and dankness of the weeds that sprawled over and almost enveloped the tombstones; in the grassy walks unworn by tread of foot; in the graves that showed no sacred care of hand, no symbol of fond remembrance or bereaved heart. Who were these dead so forgotten and so alone? So near a busy city, and so remote from living man?