Over Strand and Field | Page 4

a while. To sleep in the bed of Diane de Poitiers, even
though it be empty, is worth as much as sleeping in that of many more
palpable realities. Moreover, has it not been said that all the pleasure in
these things was only imagination? Then, can you conceive of the
peculiar and historical voluptuousness, for one who possesses some
imagination, to lay his head on the pillow that belonged to the mistress
of Francis the First, and to stretch his limbs on her mattress? (Oh! how
willingly I would give all the women in the world for the mummy of
Cleopatra!) But I would not dare to touch, for fear of breaking them,
the porcelains belonging to Catherine de Médicis, in the dining-room,
nor place my foot in the stirrup of Francis the First, for fear it might
remain there, nor put my lips to the mouth-piece of the huge trumpet in
the fencing-room, for fear of rupturing my lungs.
CHAPTER II.
CHÂTEAU DE CLISSON.
On a hill at the foot of which two rivers mingle their waters, in a fresh
landscape, brightened by the light colours of the inclined roofs, that are
grouped like many sketches of Hubert, near a waterfall that turns the
wheel of a mill hidden among the leaves, the Château de Clisson raises
its battered roof above the tree-tops. Everything around it is calm and
peaceful. The little dwellings seem to smile as if they had been built
under softer skies; the waters sing their song, and patches of moss
cover a stream over which hang graceful clusters of foliage. The
horizon extends on one side into a tapering perspective of meadows,
while on the other it rises abruptly and is enclosed by a wooded valley,
the trees of which crowd together and form a green ocean.
After one crosses the bridge and arrives at the steep path which leads to
the Château, one sees, standing upreared and bold on the moat on

which it is built, a formidable wall, crowned with battered
machicolations and bedecked with trees and ivy, the luxuriant growth
of which covers the grey stones and sways in the wind, like an
immense green veil which the recumbent giant moves dreamily across
his shoulders. The grass is tall and dark, the plants are strong and hardy;
the trunks of the ivy are twisted, knotted, and rough, and lift up the
walls as with levers or hold them in the network of their branches. In
one spot, a tree has grown through the wall horizontally, and,
suspended in the air, has let its branches radiate around it. The moats,
the steep slope of which is broken by the earth which has detached
itself from the embankments and the stones which have fallen from the
battlements, have a wide, deep curve, like hatred and pride; and the
portal, with its strong, slightly arched ogive, and its two bays that raise
the drawbridge, looks like a great helmet with holes in its visor.
When one enters, he is surprised and astonished at the wonderful
mixture of ruins and trees, the ruins accentuating the freshness of the
trees, while the latter in turn, render more poignant the melancholy of
the ruins. Here, indeed, is the beautiful, eternal, and brilliant laughter of
nature over the skeleton of things; here is the insolence of her wealth
and the deep grace of her encroachments, and the melodious invasions
of her silence. A grave and pensive enthusiasm fills one's soul; one
feels that the sap flows in the trees and that the grass grows with the
same strength and the same rhythm, as the stones crumble and the walls
cave in. A sublime art, in the supreme accord of secondary
discordances, has contrasted the unruly ivy with the sinuous sweep of
the ruins, the brambles with the heaps of crumbling stones, the
clearness of the atmosphere with the strong projections of the masses,
the colour of the sky with the colour of the earth, reflecting each one in
the other: that which was, and that which is. Thus history and nature
always reveal, though they may accomplish it in a circumscribed spot
of the world, the unceasing relation, the eternal hymen of dying
humanity and the growing daisy; of the stars that glow, and the men
who expire, of the heart that beats and the wave that rises. And this is
so clearly indicated here, is so overwhelming, that one shudders
inwardly, as if this dual life centred in one's own body; so brutal and
immediate is the perception of these harmonies and developments. For

the eye also has its orgies and the mind its delights.
At the foot of two large trees, the trunks of which are intersected, a
stream of light floods the grass and seems like a