“Pardon me, madame,” I stammered, “might I go through your garden—in memory of—old friends?”
“Certainly, monsieur, go where you will.”
Further on a girl was on a ladder gathering pears. I bowed and passed on, pushing my way through the bushes, now so neglected, and cutting a branch of syringa to hide next my heart. As I came to the open door, I paused on the threshold to look in. The maiden of the pear tree, no doubt warned by her mother, came forward and courteously asked me in.
That little room, looking over the wide valley, that she had so proudly shown me when I was twelve years old—the same furniture, the same——I tore my handkerchief with my teeth. The girl watched me uneasily.
“Do not mind me, mademoiselle. All is so strange—I have not—been here for forty-nine years!”
And, bursting into tears, I fled.
What could those ladies have thought of that strange scene, to which they never got a key?
Reader, do I repeat myself? In sooth it is always so; remembrance, regret, a weary soul clutching at the past, fighting despairingly to retain the flying present. Always this useless struggle against time, always this wild desire to realise the impossible, always this frantic thirst for perfect love! How can I help repeating myself? The sea repeats itself; are not all its waves akin?
That night I reached Lyons and spent a sleepless night thinking of my meeting with Madame F.
I decided to go at noon, and to send the following letter to prepare her for her visitor: