The Fortune of the Rougons | Page 6

wood is placed on two high tressels, and a couple of sawyers, one of
whom stands aloft on the timber itself, while the other underneath is
half blinded by the falling sawdust, work a large saw to and fro for
hours together, with rigid machine-like regularity, as if they were
wire-pulled puppets. The wood they saw is stacked, plank by plank,
along the wall at the end, in carefully arranged piles six or eight feet
high, which often remain there several seasons, and constitute one of
the charms of the Aire Saint-Mittre. Between these stacks are
mysterious, retired little alleys leading to a broader path between the
timber and the wall, a deserted strip of verdure whence only small
patches of sky can be seen. The vigorous vegetation and the quivering,
deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path. In all the
country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with languor,
solitude, and love. It is a most delightful place for love-making. When
the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have been heaped up in
this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens that one's foot comes
across some fragment of a skull lying concealed in the damp turf.
Nobody, however, now thinks of the bodies that once slept under that
turf. In the daytime only the children go behind the piles of wood when
playing at hide and seek. The green path remains virginal, unknown to
others who see nought but the wood-yard crowded with timber and
grey with dust. In the morning and afternoon, when the sun is warm,
the whole place swarms with life. Above all the turmoil, above the
ragamuffins playing among the timber, and the gipsies kindling fires
under their cauldrons, the sharp silhouette of the sawyer mounted on
his beam stands out against the sky, moving to and fro with the
precision of clockwork, as if to regulate the busy activity that has
sprung up in this spot once set apart for eternal slumber. Only the old
people who sit on the planks, basking in the setting sun, speak
occasionally among themselves of the bones which they once saw
carted through the streets of Plassans by the legendary tumbrel.
When night falls the Aire Saint-Mittre loses its animation, and looks
like some great black hole. At the far end one may just espy the dying

embers of the gipsies' fires, and at times shadows slink noiselessly into
the dense darkness. The place becomes quite sinister, particularly in
winter time.
One Sunday evening, at about seven o'clock, a young man stepped
lightly from the Impasse Saint-Mittre, and, closely skirting the walls,
took his way among the timber in the wood-yard. It was in the early
part of December, 1851. The weather was dry and cold. The full moon
shone with that sharp brilliancy peculiar to winter moons. The
wood-yard did not have the forbidding appearance which it wears on
rainy nights; illumined by stretches of white light, and wrapped in deep
and chilly silence, it spread around with a soft, melancholy aspect.
For a few seconds the young man paused on the edge of the yard and
gazed mistrustfully in front of him. He carried a long gun, the butt- end
of which was hidden under his jacket, while the barrel, pointed towards
the ground, glittered in the moonlight. Pressing the weapon to his side,
he attentively examined the square shadows cast by the piles of timber.
The ground looked like a chess-board, with black and white squares
clearly defined by alternate patches of light and shade. The sawyers'
tressels in the centre of the plot threw long, narrow fantastic shadows,
suggesting some huge geometrical figure, upon a strip of bare grey
ground. The rest of the yard, the flooring of beams, formed a great
couch on which the light reposed, streaked here and there with the
slender black shadows which edged the different pieces of timber. In
the frigid silence under the wintry moon, the motionless, recumbent
poles, stiffened, as it were, with sleep and cold, recalled the corpses of
the old cemetery. The young man cast but a rapid glance round the
empty space; there was not a creature, not a sound, no danger of being
seen or heard. The black patches at the further end caused him more
anxiety, but after a brief examination he plucked up courage and
hurriedly crossed the wood-yard.
As soon as he felt himself under cover he slackened his pace. He was
now in the green pathway skirting the wall behind the piles of planks.
Here his very footsteps became inaudible; the frozen grass scarcely
crackled under his tread. He must have loved the spot, have feared no

danger, sought nothing but what was pleasant there. He no longer
concealed his gun. The