Led Astray and The Sphinx | Page 3

the left, they
spread out until they become merged in the deep and somber masses of

a vast forest. The valley is thus closed on all sides, and offers a picture
of which the calm, the freshness, and the isolation penetrate the soul.
The ruins of the abbey stand with their back against the forest. What
remains of the abbey proper is not a great deal. At the entrance of the
court-yard, a monumental gateway; a wing of the building, dating from
the twelfth century, in which dwell the family of the miller of whom I
am the guest; the chapter-hall, remarkable for some elegant arches and
a few remnants of mural painting; finally, two or three cells, one of
which seems to have been used for the purposes of correction, if I may
judge from the solidity of the door and the strength of the bolts. The
rest has been torn down, and may be found in fragments among the
cottages of the neighborhood. The church, which has almost the
proportions of a cathedral, is finely preserved, and produces a
marvelous effect. The portal and the apse have alone disappeared; the
whole interior architecture, the copings, the tall columns, are intact and
as if built yesterday. There, it seems, that an artist must have presided
over the work of destruction; a masterly stroke of the pick-ax has
opened at the two extremities of the church, where stood the portal and
where stood the altar, two gigantic bays, so that, from the threshold of
the edifice, the eye plunges into the forest beyond as through a deep
triumphal arch. In this solitary spot the effect is unexpected and solemn.
I was delighted with it. "Monsieur," I said to the miller, who, since my
arrival, had been watching my every step from a distance with that
fierce mistrust which is a peculiarity of this part of the country, "I have
been requested to examine and to sketch these ruins. That work will
require several days; could you not spare me a daily trip from the town
to the abbey and back, by furnishing me with such accommodations as
you can, for a week or two?"
The miller, a thorough Norman, examined me from head to foot
without answering, like a man who knows that silence is of gold; he
measured me, he gauged me, he weighed me, and finally, opening his
flour-coated lips, he called his wife. The latter appeared at once upon
the threshold of the chapter-hall, converted into a cow-pen, and I had to
repeat my request to her. She examined me in her turn, but not at such
great length as her husband, and, with the superior scent of her sex, her

conclusion was, as I had the right to expect, that of the præses in the
Malade Imaginaire: "Dignus es intrare." The miller, who saw what
turn things were taking, lifted his cap and treated me to a smile. I must
add that these excellent people, once the ice was broken, tried in every
way to compensate me, by a thousand eager attentions, for the
excessive caution of their reception. They wished to give up to me their
own room, adorned with the Adventures of Telemachus, but I
preferred--as Mentor would have done--a cell of austere nudity, of
which the window, with small, lozenge-shaped panes, opens on the
ruined portal of the church and the horizon of the forest.
Had I been a few years younger, I would have enjoyed keenly this
poetic installation; but I am turning gray, friend Paul, or at least I fear
so, though I try still to attribute to a mere effect of light the doubtful
shades that dot my beard under the rays of the noon-day sun.
Nevertheless, if my reverie has changed its object, it still lasts, and still
has its charms for me. My poetic feeling has become modified and, I
think, more elevated. The image of a woman is no longer the
indispensable element of my dreams; my heart, peaceful now, and
striving to become still more so, is gradually withdrawing from the
field of my mind's labors. I cannot, I confess, find enough pleasure in
the pure and dry meditations of the intellect; my imagination must
speak first and set my brain in motion, for I was born romantic, and
romantic I shall die; and all that can be asked of me, all I can obtain of
myself, at an age when propriety already commands gravity, is to build
romances without love.
Up to this time, ennui has spared me in my solitude. Shall I confess to
you that I even experience in it a singular feeling of contentment? It
seems as though I were a thousand leagues away from the things of the
world, and that there is