As we upward go!”
And the heavens and earth seemed like one big orchard full of fruits all singing, “Grow with me!”
Then I stuck my arms into the soft warm earth up to the elbows, and sank down till I was all enfolded from head to heel, as if on my mother’s breast. From the July night rose the Song of Songs, the bright bunches of stars swung before my eyes, and the deep voice of St. Martin’s struck the hour; twelve o’clock, fourteen, sixteen o’clock? Surely there was something strange in the old time-piece! And the star fruit above and below began to strike too, or was it chiming? with such celestial sounds that they pierced my heart, and vibrated in my ears like distant thunder. Then it seemed as I lay that a tree of Jesse was growing from me and I mounted with it, up, up among the chiming branches towards a bright planet dancing on the highest tree-top, and that I stretched out my arms to reach it, singing:
“You are mine,
Star wine,
Spirit of the living vine,
Halleluia!”
I must have kept on climbing for the greater part of the night, and from what they tell me I sang for hours, all sorts of songs, sacred and profane, some edifying and some very much the reverse; I also played on the dulcimer as well as on the drum and trumpet, till at last all the neighborhood came out to listen and to say, “Poor old Colas, he is dying, and mad as mad can be.”
The next morning the sun was out of his bed long before I was, for I never opened my eyes till near midday, and my first thought was, “Good, here I am still living!”—not but what my couch was hard enough, and I still had those horrible pains in the gizzard, but I was glad enough that my body was there to put a pain in. “Breugnon, old man,” said I, “it is a pleasure to see you; if you had died last night, I should never have got over it. Good-morning, dear garden, and everything in you!”
And while I was gloating on my beautiful melons, I heard some one hailing me from the other side of the wall. “Breugnon, are you dead yet?” And there were Paillard and Chamaille weeping and wailing, and prepared already to proclaim the virtues of the dear departed.