Sortez, sortez de ces lieux,
Soucis, chagrins, et tristesse;
Venez, venez, ris et jeux,
Plaisirs, amours et tendresse.
Ne songeons qu'à nous réjouir,
La grande affaire est le plaisir.
It was pleasant to hear; the voices, sharp trebles, stabbing the quiet air with their keen accents, like vocal poignards, and running on with us under the first short group of walnuts—just opposite Privat Deschat's—whose lower branches were draped in the bronzed leaves of escaped vines. We moved along altogether in, to me, a curious sad emblematic way of the past happinesses and peace. The song breathed the pensive reminder of a remote dalliance and serenity, lost now behind the rolling clouds of belching cannon and smoking bombs.
The swinging melody put to flight immediate fears, yet like an incantation and, like dreamers, we surrendered to the transient forgetfulness:
Aimons jusques au trépas;
La raison nous y convie.
Helas! si l'on n'aimait pas,
Que serait—ce de la vie!
Ah! perdons plutôt le jour
Que de perdre notre amour.
Well! that was fitting enough, and as I glanced at Quintado his ingenuous bliss under this vocal stimulation of his natural feelings was boundlessly agreeable. How very handsome he was; excitement had thrown into his flat cheeks a becoming color, and the lingering pallor, elsewhere, bestowed upon him an enticing interest, quite pleasing. His deep eyes glowed with pleasure, and the black hair escaping from beneath his pompon lay like ebony fingers on his white temples. Really for example, he was angelic, though of the darker hue and deeper temperament of angels, and there glinted from his eyes a stubborn tender maliciousness of animal joy. He knew that Dora waited for him.
And so we came decorously, with manifold lingerings, where the brisk people pressed against the carriage wheels, and almost stood under the horse's feet, up to our house, the one—you remember—next to that of Privat Deschat's and there, Mon Dieu, how I see it now! There was a beautiful arcade of branches of yews, and amongst them red, red roses, like ruby stars, and over the path beneath the arch were strewn vine-leaves. We alighted very slowly, for Quintado had again become weak, and the people were most respectful, and considerate, and, because it might have jarred him, withheld their cheers, and just hailed him with uncovered heads. Ah! it was most pathetic I think.
And up the path we went to that porch, where later, much later, Gabrielle and I sat, overwrought and stricken with wonder and dread, and on it stood father and mother, trembling, but gracious, and tenderly sympathetic, and then—
Then Deschat and I took him up the stairs, on the chair made of our crossed hands—the chair children make for each other—with Quintado's good arm about my neck, and brought him to the bed-chamber, so dainty and white, and sweet-smelling, and clean, and on the great broad bed we laid him so gently down and, from where he lay, his eyes could see the sky, blue like a pea-blossom, with the trellised vapors spun across it, and the window framed in Virginia creeper, with, at that very moment, a wren whisking through its tendrils. And then Gabrielle brought Dora to the door, and softly we went away, and the two lovers were left there, and—Helas! I was just envious perhaps, with some illy stirred remembrance, some indefinable despair—I looked back, and the two faces clung together and the whispering voices mingled, in the inarticulate ecstacy of that meeting.
I stepped again to the porch; the people were drifting away, still softly singing, but I did not see them. I saw only the field of battle, sodden with the dead; I heard only the menacing whisper of the ascending shell; I thought only of one Divine Figure—He of the Cross—weeping before His Father in Heaven for the sins of the world.