The Castle of Enchantment....
When I was a child the Castle of Enchantment meant—the Future; the great mysterious Future, away, away there, beneath the uttermost horizon, where the sky is luminious with tints of rose and pearl; the ineffable Future, when I should be grownup, when I should be a Man, and when the world would be my garden, the world and life, and all their riches, mine to explore, to adventure in, to do as I pleased with! The Future and the World, the real World, the World that lay beyond our village, beyond the Forest of Granjolaye, farther than Bayonne, farther even than Pau; the World one read of and heard strange legends of: Paris, and Bagdad, and England, and Peru. Oh, how I longed to see it; how hard it was to wait; how desperately hard to think of the immense number of long years that must be worn through somehow, before it could come true.
But—tirala-tirala!—my little broken bar of music was a touchstone. At the sound of it, at the thought of it, the Present was spirited away; Saint-Graal and all our countryside were left a thousand miles behind; and the Future and the World opened their portals to me, and I wandered in them where I would. In a sort of trance, with wide eyes and bated breath, I wandered in them, through enraptured hours. Believe me, it was a Future, it was a World, of quite unstinted magnificence. My many-pinnacled Castle of Enchantment was built of gold and silver, ivory, alabaster, and mother-of-pearl; the fountains in its courts ran with perfumed waters; and its pleasaunce was an orchard of pomegranates—one had no need to spare one’s colours. I dare say, too, that it was rather vague, wrapped in a good deal of roseate haze, and of an architecture that could scarcely have been reduced to ground-plans and elevations; but what of that? And oh, the people, the people by whom the World and the Future were inhabited, the cavalcading knights, the beautiful princesses! And their virtues, and their graces, and their talents Î There were no ugly people, of course, no stupid people, no disagreeable people; everybody was young and handsome, gallant, generous, and splendidly dressed. And everybody was astonishingly nice to me, and it never seemed to occur to anybody that I wasn’t to have my own way in everything. And I had it. Love and wealth, glory, and all manner of romance—I had them for the wishing. The stars left their courses to fight for me. And the winds of heaven vied with each other to prosper my galleons.
To be sure, it was nothing more nor other than the day-dream of every child. But it happened that that little accidental fragment of a phrase of music had a quite peculiar power to send me off dreaming it.
I suppose it must be that we pass the Castle of Enchantment while we are asleep. For surely, at first, it is before us—we are moving towards it; we can see it shining in the distance; we shall reach it to-morrow, next week, next year. And then—and then, one morning, we wake up, and lo! it is behind us. We have passed it—we are sailing away from it—we can’t turn back. We have passed the Castle of Enchantment! And yet, it was only to reach it that we made our weary voyage, toiling through hardships and perils and discouragements, forcing our impatient hearts to wait; it was only the hope, the certain hope, of reaching it at last, that made our toiling and our waiting possible. And now—we have passed it. We are sailing away from it. We can’t turn back. We can only look back—with the bitterness that every heart knows. If we look forward, what is there to see, save grey waters, and then a darkness that we fear to enter?
When I was a child, it was the great world and the future into which my talisman carried me, dreaming desirous dreams; the great world, all gold and marble, peopled by beautiful princesses and cavalcading knights; the future, when I should be grown-up, when I should be a Man.
Well, I am grown-up now, and I have seen something of the great world—something of its gold and marble, its cavalcading knights and beautiful princesses. But if I care to dream desirous dreams, I touch my talisman, and wish myself back in the little world of my childhood. Tirala-tirala—I breathe it softly, softly; and the sentiment of my childhood comes and fills my room like a fragrance. I am at Saint-Graal again; and my grandmother is seated at her window, knitting; and André is bringing up the milk from the farm; and my cousin Elodie is playing her exercises on the piano; and Hélène and I are walking in the garden—Hélène in her short white frock, with a red sash, and her black hair loose down her back. All round us grow innumerable flowers, and innumerable birds are singing in the air, and the frogs are croaking, croaking in our pond. And farther off, the sun shines tranquilly on the chestnut-trees of the Forest of Granjolaye; and farther still, the Pyrenees gloom purple.... It is not much, perhaps it is not very wonderful; but oh, how my heart yearns to recover it, how it aches to realise that it never can.