"Nous y sommes," said the farmer, pulling up his horse to allow me to get down, "nous sommes maintenant en pleine Crau."
I knew now for certain where the silence came from that had brooded over the country all the way!
He thinks he knows what silence is who has lived in some remote spot in the heart of the English country, who has stood, on some breezeless evening, by the shores of an inland lake, or alone on far-away moorlands when the birds have gone to their rest and the night is coming up over the sky.
But that is not silence!
In the woodlands there is the tremor of a leaf, not perhaps quite heard, but not unknown to the finer consciousness; by the lake-side the water noiselessly stirs against the bank; on the moors the creatures are breathing in their holes and hiding places, the tiny bells of the heather ring an inaudible chime——
But on the Crau——
To say that there is not a sound is meaningless. There are strata upon strata of silence, deep as the deep sea; one hesitates on the verge, half dreading to advance.
Here at last is a realm untouched by human passion. It belongs utterly to the kingdom of physical "Nature," Nature in her heaviest mood, without the smallest thrill of manifested life or emotion.
To understand this to the full one must tramp over its hard stones and feel its lonely breath in one's face.
Turning one's steps humanwards again, one hastens with the eagerness of an exile to claim as dear friend and brother the first, humblest creature, animal or human, for sheer sympathy of the living with the living, for sheer relief after the meeting face to face the cold white Spirit of the Wilderness.