Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Yet now the park was entirely their own. They had taken sovereign
possession of it. There was not a corner of it that was not theirs to
use as they willed. For them alone the thickets of roses put forth their
blossoms, and the parterre exhaled its soft perfume, which lulled them
to sleep as they lay at night with their windows open. The orchard
provided them with food, filling Albine's skirts with fruits, and spread
over them the shade of its perfumed boughs, under which it was so
pleasant to breakfast in the early morning. Away in the meadows the
grass and the streams were all theirs; the grass, which extended their
kingdom to such boundless distance, spreading an endless silky carpet
before them; and the streams, which were the best of their joys,
emblematic of their own purity and innocence, ever offering them
coolness and freshness in which they delighted to bathe their youth. The
forest, too, was entirely theirs, from the mighty oaks, which ten men
could not have spanned, to the slim birches which a child might have
snapped; the forest, with all its trees, all its shade, all its avenues
and clearings, its cavities of greenery, of which the very birds
themselves were ignorant; the forest which they used as they listed, as
if it were a giant canopy, beneath which they might shelter from the
noontide heat their new-born love. They reigned everywhere, even among
the rocks and the springs, even over that gruesome stretch of ground
that teemed with such hideous growth, and which had seemed to sink and
give way beneath their feet, but which they loved yet even more than the
soft grassy couches of the garden, for the strange thrill of passion
they had felt there.

Thus, now, in front of them, behind them, to the right of them and to
the left, all was theirs. They had gained possession of the whole
domain, and they walked through a friendly expanse which knew them, and
smiled kindly greetings to them as they passed, devoting itself to their
pleasure, like a faithful and submissive servitor. The sky, with its
vast canopy of blue overhead, was also theirs to enjoy. The park walls
could not enclose it, their eyes could ever revel in its beauty, and it
entered into the joy of their life, at daytime with its triumphal sun,
at night with its golden rain of stars. At every moment of the day it
delighted them afresh, its expression ever varying. In the early morning
it was pale as a maiden just risen from her slumber; at noon, it was
flushed, radiant as with a longing for fruitfulness, and in the evening
it became languid and breathless, as after keen enjoyment. Its
countenance was constantly changing. Particularly in the evenings, at
the hour of parting, did it delight them. The sun, hastening towards the
horizon, ever found a fresh smile. Sometimes he disappeared in the midst
of serene calmness, unflecked by a single cloud, sinking gradually
beneath a golden sea. At other times he threw out crimson glories, tore
his vaporous robe to shreds, and set amidst wavy flames that streaked
the skies like the tails of gigantic comets, whose radiant heads lit up
the crests of the forest trees. Then, again, extinguishing his rays one
by one, he would softly sink to rest on shores of ruddy sand,
far-reaching banks of blushing coral; and then, some other night, he
would glide away demurely behind a heavy cloud that figured the grey
hangings of some alcove, through which the eye could only detect a spark
like that of a night-light. Or else he would rush to his couch in a
tumult of passion, rolled round with white forms which gradually
crimsoned beneath his fiery embraces, and finally disappeared with him
below the horizon in a confused chaos of gleaming, struggling limbs.

It was only the plants which had not made their submission. Albine and
Serge passed like monarchs through the kingdom of animals, who rendered
them humble and loyal obeisance. When they crossed the parterre, flights
of butterflies arose to delight their eyes, to fan them with quivering
wings, and to follow in their train like living sunbeams or flying
blossoms. In the orchard, they were greeted by the birds that banqueted
in the fruit-trees. The sparrows, the chaffinches, the golden orioles,
the bullfinches, showed them the ripest fruit scarred by their hungry
beaks; and while they sat astride the branches and breakfasted, birds
twittered and sported round them like children at play, and even
purloined the fruit beneath their very feet. Albine found even more
amusement in the meadows, where she caught the little green frogs with
eyes of gold, that lay squatting amongst the reeds, absorbed in
contemplation; while Serge, with a piece of straw, poked the crickets
out of their hiding-places, or tickled the grasshoppers to make them
sing. He picked up insects of all colours, blue ones, red ones, yellow
ones, and set them creeping upon his sleeve, where they gleamed and
glittered like buttons of sapphire and ruby and topaz.

Then there was all the mysterious life of the streams; the grey-backed
fishes that threaded the dim waters, the eels whose presence was
betrayed by a slight quivering of the water-plants, the young fry, which
dispersed like blackish sand at the slightest sound, the long-legged
flies and the water-beetles that ruffled into circling silvery ripples
the stagnant surface of the pools; all that silent teeming life which
drew them to the water and impelled them to dabble and stand in it, so
that they might feel those millions of existences ever and ever gliding
past their limbs. At other times, when the day was hot and languid, they
would betake themselves beneath the voiceful shade of the forest and
listen to the serenades of their musicians, the clear fluting of the
nightingales, the silvery bugle-notes of the tomtits, and the far-off
accompaniment of the cuckoos. They gazed with delight upon the swift
flight of the pheasants, whose plumes gleamed like sudden sun rays
amidst the branches, and with a smile they stayed their steps to let a
troop of young roebucks bound past, or else a couple of grave stags that
slackened their pace to look at them. Again, on other days they would
climb up amongst the rocks, when the sun was blazing in the heavens, and
find a pleasure in watching the swarms of grasshoppers which at the
sound of their footsteps arose with a great crepitation of wings from
the beds of thyme. The snakes that lay uncoiled beneath the parched
bushes, or the lizards that sprawled over the red-hot stones, watched
them with friendly eyes.

Of all the life that thus teemed round them in the park, Albine and
Serge had only become really conscious since the day when a kiss had
awakened them to life themselves. Now it deafened them at times, and
spoke to them in a language which they did not understand. It was that
life--all the voices of the animal creation, all the perfumes and soft
shadows of the flowers and trees--which perturbed them to such a point
as to make them angry with one another. And yet throughout the whole
park they found nothing but loving familiarity. Every plant and every
creature was their friend. All the Paradou was one great caress.

Before they had come thither, the sun had for a whole century reigned
over it in lonely majesty. The garden, then, had known no other master;
it had beheld him, every morning, scaling the boundary wall with his
slanting rays, at noontide it had seen him pour his vertical heat upon
the panting soil; and at evening it had seen him go off, on the other
side, with a kiss of farewell upon its foliage. And so the garden had no
shyness; it welcomed Albine and Serge, as it had so long welcomed the
sun, as pleasant companions, with whom one puts on no ceremony. The
animals, the trees, the streams, the rocks, all continued in an
unrestrained state of nature, speaking aloud, living openly, without a
secret, displaying the innocent shamelessness, the hearty tenderness of
the world's first days. Serge and Albine, however, suffered from these
voluptuous surroundings, and at times felt minded to curse the garden.
On the afternoon when Albine had wept so bitterly after their saunter
amongst the rocks, she had called out to the Paradou, whose intensity of
life and passion filled her with distress:

'If you really be our friend, why, why do you make us so wretched?'

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