Beyond, the monotonous plain of the ferns, bathed in light, stretches away as far as the eye can reach. Their green fans expand beneath the sun which colors, but does not cause them to fade. Upon the horizon a few scattered trees lift their slender columns. You see now and then the silhouette of a herdsman on his stilts, inert and standing like a sick heron. Wild horses are grazing half hid in the herbage. As the train passes, they abruptly lift their great startled eyes and stand motionless, uneasy at the noise that has troubled their solitude. Man does not fare well here,—he dies or degenerates; but it is the country of animals, and especially of plants. They abound in this desert, free, certain of living. Our pretty, cutup valleys are but poor things alongside of these immense spaces, leagues upon leagues of marshy or dry vegetation, a level country, where nature, elsewhere troubled and tortured by men, still vegetates as in primeval days with a calm equal to its grandeur. The sun needs these savannas in order properly to spread out its light; from the rising exhalation, you feel that the whole plain is fermenting under its force; and the eyes filled by the limitless horizon divine the secret labor by which this ocean of rank verdure renews and nourishes itself.
Night without a moon has come on. The peaceful stars shine like points of flame; the whole air is filled with a blue and tender light, which seems to sleep in the network of vapor wherein it lies. The eye penetrates it without apprehending anything. At long intervals, in this twilight, a wood confusedly marks its spot, like a rock at the bottom of a lake; everywhere around are vague depths, veiled and floating forms, indistinct and fantastic creatures melting into each other, fields that look like a billowy sea, clumps of trees that you might take for summer clouds,—the whole graceful chaos of commingled phantoms, of things of the night. The mind floats here as on a fleeting stream, and nothing seems to it real, in this dream, but the pools which reflect the stars and make on earth a second heaven.
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Bayonne is a gay city, original and half Spanish. On all sides are men in velvet vest and small-clothes; you hear the sharp, sonorous music of the tongue spoken beyond the mountains. Squatty arcades border the principal streets; there is need of shade under such a sun.
A pretty episcopal palace, in its modern elegance, makes the ugly cathedral still uglier. The poor, abortive monument piteously lifts its belfry, that for three centuries has remained but a stump. Booths are stuck in its hollows, after the manner of warts; here and there they have laid on a rude plaster of stone. The old invalid is a sad spectacle alongside of the new houses and busy shops which crowd around its grimy flanks. I was quite troubled at this decrepitude, and when once I had entered, I became still more melancholy. Darkness fell from the vault like a winding-sheet; I could make out nothing but o o worm-eaten pillars, smoke-darkened pictures, expanses of greenish wall. Two fresh toilettes that I met increased the contrast; nothing could shock one more in this place than rose-colored ribbons.
