Over Strand and Field | Page 7

the period which has preceded ours. Bad
taste at the time of Ronsard was represented by Marot; at the time of
Boileau, by Ronsard; at the time of Voltaire, by Corneille, and by
Voltaire in the day of Chateaubriand, whom many people nowadays
begin to think a trifle weak. O men of taste in future centuries, let me
recommend you the men of taste of to-day! You will laugh at their
cramps, their superb disdain, their preference for veal and milk, and the
faces they make when underdone meat and too ardent poetry is served
to them. Everything that is beautiful will then appear ugly; everything
that is graceful, stupid; everything that is rich, poor; and oh! how our
delightful boudoirs, our charming salons, our exquisite costumes, our
palpitating plays, our interesting novels, our serious books will all be
consigned to the garret or be used for old paper and manure! O
posterity, above all things do not forget our gothic salons, our
Renaissance furniture, M. Pasquier's discourses, the shape of our hats,
and the aesthetics of La Revue des Deux Mondes!
While we were pondering upon these lofty philosophical considerations,
our wagon had hauled us over to Tiffanges. Seated side by side in a sort
of tin tub, our weight crushed the tiny horse, which swayed to and fro
between the shafts. It was like the twitching of an eel in the body of a
musk-rat. Going down hill pushed him forward, going up hill pulled
him backward, while uneven places in the road threw him from side to
side, and the wind and the whip lashed him alternately. The poor brute!
I cannot think of him now without a certain feeling of remorse.
The road down hill is curved and its edges are covered with clumps of
sea-rushes or large patches of a certain reddish moss. To the right, on
an eminence that starts from the bottom of the dale and swells in the
middle like the carapace of a tortoise, one perceives high, unequal walls,
the crumbling tops of which appear one above another.

One follows a hedge, climbs a path, and enters an open portal which
has sunken into the ground to the depth of one third of its ogive. The
men who used to pass through it on horseback would be obliged to
bend over their saddles in order to enter it to-day. When the earth is
tired of supporting a monument, it swells up underneath it, creeps up to
it like a wave, and while the sky causes the top to crumble away, the
ground obliterates the foundations. The courtyard was deserted and the
calm water that filled the moats remained motionless and flat under the
pond-lilies.
The sky was white and cloudless, but without sunshine. Its bleak curve
extended far away, covering the country with a cold and cheerless
monotony. Not a sound could be heard, the birds did not sing, even the
horizon was mute, and from the empty furrows came neither the scream
of the crows as they soar heavenward, nor the soft creaking of
plough-wheels. We climbed down through brambles and underbrush
into a deep and dark trench, hidden at the foot of a large tower, which
stands in the water surrounded by reeds. A lone window opens on one
side: a dark square relieved by the grey line of its stone cross-bar. A
capricious cluster of wild honeysuckle covers the sill, and its maze of
perfumed blossoms creeps along the walls. When one looks up, the
openings of the big machicolations reveal only a part of the sky, or
some little, unknown flower which has nestled in the battlement, its
seed having been wafted there on a stormy day and left to sprout in the
cracks of the stones.
Presently, a long, balmy breeze swept over us like a sigh, and the trees
in the moats, the moss on the stones, the reeds in the water, the plants
among the ruins, and the ivy, which covered the tower from top to
bottom with a layer of shining leaves, all trembled and shook their
foliage; the corn in the fields rippled in endless waves that again and
again bent the swaying tops of the ears; the pond wrinkled and welled
up against the foot of the tower; the leaves of the ivy all quivered at
once, and an apple-tree in bloom covered the ground with pink
blossoms.
Nothing, nothing! The open sky, the growing grass, the passing wind.

No ragged child tending a browsing cow; not even, as elsewhere, some
solitary goat sticking its shaggy head through an aperture in the walls to
turn at our approach and flee in terror through the bushes; not a
song-bird, not a nest, not a sound! This castle is like a ghost: mute and
cold,