The castle of Verton is situated on the highest point of the park, and fronts the sea. The view from the second story is admirable. At night one can see the lighthouse of Berck. I never went to bed without looking at the great lantern lighting up the sea.
Madame Liénard did everything to please me, and spoiled me as if I belonged to her. The Comte de Lafontaine inspired me with sudden affection, for he took me seriously and wished to be my friend. I made several morning rendezvous with him in the park, and confided to him the great secret of my life—my inconsolable sorrow at the loss of my large garden. I talked to him of my trees with tears in my eyes; he seemed touched, and I remember how grateful I was to him when he answered:
“Love my trees a little during your stay here, as if they were your own.”
I had loved Monsieur Lafontaine’s trees before he said this. They were the brothers of my own trees. When I shut my eyes in certain paths, I seemed to see my lost ones. They grew warm and shone in the sun like mine; they made the same noise in the wind. How very unhappy I was, to be sure, to have my great garden no longer!
The cows, the sheep, the horses and dogs of the farm interested me greatly. I wanted them all to grow fond of me, to know and love me. I was, as a child, as desirous to please animals as people. There were several donkeys, but they did not bray like Roussot, and they disdained my advances, devoted as they were to the farm children.
Our first long excursion was to Berck. After having left the Abbeville road and entered that of Berck, we saw scarcely any more cultivated fields. It looked to me like the desert, as I imagined it. There were hillocks of shifting sand, amid which were very small hamlets. Berck came last, and was the most lamentable of all. The village was composed of miserable huts, inhabited by poor sailor-fishermen, whom Liénard called “primitive men,” and who lived solely by the product of their fishing. These huts, spread out at distances, were in a forlorn condition and falling to pieces.
One thing struck me at Berck: the market, like that at Blérancourt, where the weavers of the neighbourhood brought for sale the rolls of linen they had woven.
My father thought the beach of Berck magnificent, and he said that hospital refuges could certainly be built there, for the gentle and regular slope of the sands down to the sea would be an excellent place for children to play.
“The people of the place, although very rude and ignorant, are good and are hard workers,” Liénard said. “They are excellent workmen. We are blessed and loved as benefactors in all the region—except at Montreuil, because we bring more wealth here. They curse us,” he continued, “at Montreuil, the principal town of the country, for the making of the railway will deprive it of its animation. Crossed by the Calais route, as it is now, all the traffic passes through it; but before six months have passed, nothing will go that way, neither travellers nor merchandise. Its triple line of fortifications alone will remain, isolating it more than ever.”
