The Grip of Desire | Page 5

He wished to be alone, completely alone, so as to dream at
his ease. Then he stretched himself in the sun on the warm grass,
opened his breviary, the discreet confidant of all wandering thoughts,
the screen for the priest's looks and thoughts, and listened to the insects'
hum.
He followed the goings and comings of an ant or the capricious flight
of a bumble-bee; then with his eyes lost in space, immersed in the
profundity of nature, he dreamed....
One could have seen by his smile that he was wandering in spirit in the
laughing and limit-less garden of hope, pausing here and there on rosy
illusions and fair chimeras like a butterfly on flowers.
They were delicious hours which he passed thus, full of forgetfulness
and indolence. He enjoyed the present moment, the present, poor,
humble and obscure, but which held neither disquietude nor care.
Sometimes regrets for a past of which no one was aware came and
knocked at the door of his dreams, but he drove them for away, saying

like Werther:
"The past is past."
The hand of time revolved without his giving heed, and often night
surprised him in his fantastic reveries. The good country-folk bad been
sorely puzzled by these solitary walks in the depths of the woods.
They talked at first of some scandalous intrigue, and the Curé had no
difficulty in discovering that he was followed and watched by rigid
parishioners, anxious about his morality and his virtue. More than once
through the foliage he believed he saw vigilant sentinels who watched
him carefully.
Lost labour! Never did those who tried with such unwearied
perseverance to detect his secret amours, have the pleasure of
beholding that mistress whom they would have been so happy to cover
with shame and scorn.
They were obliged to renounce it, for his mistress then was that
admirable fairy, invisible and dumb to the common herd, who displays
her beauties to the gaze of a chosen race alone, as she murmurs her
divine and chaste sonnets in their ear.
It was nature all radiant, which caressed his brow with the breeze,
which sang by his ear with the mysterious harmony of the woods,
which gladdened his sight with the flower of the fields, the verdant
meadow, the golden harvest. His loves were the hollow path which is
lost in the mountain, the old willow which leans over the edge of the
pool, the sparrow which chatters among the leaves, the splendours of
the starry sky, the magic mirages of the evening.
They were all the melodies which poets have made to vibrate on the
strings of lyres, and in those moments of delicious ecstasy he forgot the
vexations, the littlenesses and the miseries of the world, and if anyone
had asked him what was the aim of his life, he would have replied like
Anaxagoras:

"To love Nature, and to contemplate the sky."
But among his uncouth surroundings, who would have been capable of
understanding these sweet pleasures and that over-excitement of soul
and brain, by means of which he sought to benumb his senses and to
change the current of his heart, that heart which like the body has its
imperious needs.
He had reached that fatal epoch when man experiences an insatiable
hunger for love, and for want of a woman will nourish some monstrous
fantasy, or even, like the prisoner of Saintine, become enamoured of a
flower.

V.
THE MEETING.
"Skilled physicians have remarked that an emanation of infinitely
projectile forces continually takes place from the eyes of impassioned
persons, of lovers or of lascivious women, which communicates
insensibly to those who listen to or behold them, the same agitation by
which they are affected."
RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE (Le Paysan perverte).
One afternoon, while returning to the village, the Curé chanced to meet
a young girl who was unknown to him. She was but poorly dressed,
and her shoes were white with dust; but youth and gaiety shone forth
beneath the glow of her cheeks, her blue eye sparkled under the dark
arch of her eyebrows, and the voluptuous opulence of her shape made
one forget the poverty of her dress. From her straw hat with its faded
ribbons escaped heavy tresses which shone like gold.
Bending over his breviary, the Curé passed, casting a sidelong look,
one of those priestly looks which see without being seen; but the
stranger compelled him to raise his head. She had stood still and was
fixing on him smiling a bright and confident look.

On seeing this, the Curé stood still also.
Certainly, in the white flock of his congregation he counted just as
lovely creatures every Sunday, he encountered just as provoking smiles.
Nevertheless, he was troubled; he felt a secret flame course through his
veins;