A year later I came back again, but this time alone. I had learned my lesson. My physician, somewhat alarmed by certain symptoms of overwork—physical overwork—had prescribed a rest cure.
“You need a place where you will bore yourself,” he had said, “where you can stay a good month without any distraction. If I knew some thoroughly uncivilised spot I should send you there.”
“Ah,” I said, “don’t look. I have the thing you want, my chateau in the Sleeping Woods.”
He agreed, after some explanation, that it was perfect, and so behold me established in my own house by order of the doctor. Being distrustful of me the Mairieux family extended no invitations. They remembered my previous visit and maintained their reserve. But after all a superintendent is a superintendent, and I was certainly not going to cringe before him. My physician had condemned me to boredom; I was having it in abundance. There was no one to see, no one to talk to, and the length of the days made one believe that the sun had forgotten itself.
* * *
But—Spring was in the woods!
I thought I knew her, and I soon found that I had not known her at all. Each morning in the forest paths I discovered some new manifestation of her presence. New buds appeared on the trees, and little garlands of green leaves seemed to creep from branch to branch like insects, and little by little made a robe of themselves. On the sward and in the moss she opened the bells of the lily of the valley, and in the hedges the wild roses. In the orchards she powdered the apple and cherry trees with white and pink snow, stolen from the mountains already re-covered with a new supply and glistening in the sunlight before God! How charming were all these daily details! And before, had I delighted in this spectacle, or rather, to be more accurate, had I ever followed so closely the joyous and wonderful march of Springtime?
But at last I met Spring herself.
I met her on her fête day, which in some of our provinces is still celebrated on the first of May. Those of us who spend the greater part of our lives in the city, where one day is like another, are ignorant of the things that it is important to know, beginning with the earth’s renewal.
There are customary ways of celebrating the coming of Spring, and these ways, differing in various parts of the world, reveal the delicate or coarse tastes of the people. I recall one night, many years ago, being awakened by a frightful tumult. It was at Saint Moritz, whither I had gone for the skating and coasting. Hunting horns, fifes, clarions, trumpets, tambourines, cowbells, gongs, cymbals, rattles and castanets, as well as cans tied to the tails of maddened dogs;—there was all this in this imperial charivari. I jumped out of bed, convinced that the hotel was afire, and ran to the window. In fact, there was a red glow shaking and moving about beneath me. In the glare of torches triumphing over the night, I saw from fifty to a hundred young boys capering around like demons, blowing horns with the full strength of their lungs or drumming with their arms. The light was sufficient for me to distinguish their triumphant faces. They passed by and little by little the tempest which they had unchained died away. I looked at my watch, it was five o’clock in the morning. What could be the meaning of all this music? I was furious at such a premature reveille, but, not understanding the reason for it, I put off the search for an explanation. At a more suitable hour I attempted to obtain some information. Nobody at the hotel, however, seemed surprised by the performance.