1
i arrived at neufchatel at the gracious hour when the sun is paling; and i was at once charmed with the kindly aspect of this little norman town.
the house-fronts gleaming with fresh paint, the pigeons picking their way across the streets, the grass growing between the cobble-stones, the flowers outside the windows and doors, a cleanliness that adorns the smallest details: all this is so calm and so empty that our life at once settles there as in a frame that takes with equal ease the happy or the sad picture which we propose to fit into it.
it reminds me of bruges, whose infinite, patient calm is a clean page on which the visitor's life is printed, happy or distressful at will, since there is nothing to define its character. it also has the silence of the little flemish towns, with their streets without carriages or wayfarers. the gardens look as though they were artificial; and in the frame of
the open windows we see interiors which are as sharp as pictures.
leading out of the main street is a mysterious little alley, dark and badly paved. it runs upwards and ends in a clump of trees arching against the blue of the sky. there is no visible gate or doorway. i turn up it. all along a high wall hang old fire-backs, bas-reliefs of cracked, rusty-red iron, once licked by the flames, now washed by the rain.
i loiter to examine the subjects: coats of arms, trophies of weapons, or allegories and half-obliterated love-scenes. it is curious to see these homely relics thus exposed in the street, conjuring up the peaceful soul of families gathered round the hearth. from over the wall, the air reaches me laden with hallowed fragrance. i picture the box-bordered walks on the other side.
then i climb higher; and, when i come to the trees, i find a charming surprise. the public gardens lie in front of me. in the shade of the public gardens we seem to find the very spirit of a town; it is to the gardens or to the church that our curiosity always turns in the first place. here is the walk edged with stone benches on which old men and old women sit coughing and gossiping; here mothers
bring their work, while their children run about; and in the centre, at the junction of the paths, is the platform where the regimental band plays on sundays.
the neufchatel gardens are in no way elaborate: a number of avenues have been cut out of an ancient wood; and that is all. there are no shrubs; just a patch of dahlias, with a ridiculous little iron railing round them. but its whole charm lies in its picturesque situation up above the town. in between the tall trees with their interlacing boughs, one can see the slopes of the hills, the plains, the meadows, the gleaming roofs and the church with its twin spires piercing the blue of the sky. then, in the foreground, i see, behind the houses, the little gardens whose breath reached me just now. they are there, divided into small plots of equal size, simple or pretentious, sometimes humble kitchen-gardens, but sometimes also a patchwork adorned with grottoes, arbours and glass bells.
rose mentioned a garden which brightens her little home. suppose it were one of these!... a woman appears over there: she is tall and fair-haired. she stoops over a well; i cannot make out her features. she draws herself up again. oh, no, her
figure is clumsy, her hair looks dull and colourless and her clothes vulgar. rose would never dress like that, in two colours that clash! rose would never ...
i wander into a delicious reverie. how infinitely superior rose is to all these people whose lives i can picture around me. two women sit cackling beside me on the bench: they are at once guileless and bad, with their mania for eternally wagging tongues that know no rest. a little farther on, a good housewife is shaking her troublesome child; a stout, overdressed woman of the shop-keeping class is flaunting her finery down one of the walks; a priest passes and, while his lips mumble prayers, his eyes, held in leash by fear, prowl around me; one of his flock curtseys to the ground as she meets him.
a protest rises in my heart at each of the little incidents: is not rose rid of all that? rose long ago gave up going to mass and confession. she has lost the hypocritical sense of shame, knows neither envy nor malice and is a stranger to all ostentation.
i often used to reproach her with her extreme humility. how wrong i was! i now think that this humility can achieve the same result as pride itself. one looks too high, the other too low; but both pass
by the petty vanities of life and either of them can keep us equally indifferent to those vanities.
2
i rose from my seat with a happy heart. the time had come for me to go in search of her. i would kiss her in all gratitude. had she not enlarged my will to the extent of making it admit her little existence?
i went through the silent streets, in search of the charming, old-world name that was to tell me where the aged spinster lived. rose had said that i should see it written over the door in blue letters and that it was opposite a place where they sold sportsmen's and anglers' requisites, a shop with a sign that would be certain to attract my attention.
i therefore walked along with a sure step and suddenly, at a street-corner, saw a great silver fish flashing to and fro in the breeze at the end of a long line. soon i was in a quiet backwater of the town. there it was! opposite me, the last gleams of the setting sun shed their radiance on a very bright little house covered with a luxuriant vine. on one
side, in the same golden light, the name of isaline coquet smiled in sky-blue letters.
the shop was white, with pearl-grey shutters; and on the ledges were bunchy plants gay with pink, starry flowers. in the window, a few starched caps looked as if they were talking scandal on their respective stands.
i walked in. the opening of the door roused the tongue of a little rusty bell, but nobody came. on a big grandfather's chair, near the counter, were a pair of spectacles and a book. perhaps mlle. coquet had run away when she caught sight of me through the panes; rose said that she was shy and a little frightened at the thought of my coming visit. and i had the pleasure of looking for my rose as i followed the mysterious turns of a primitive passage.
the walls were spotless and the red-tiled floor shone in the half-light. i crossed a neat little kitchen, just as a cuckoo-clock was chiming five, and found myself on the threshold of a small room opening on a garden. rose was sitting in the wide, low window.
the noise of the clock no doubt deadened the sound of my steps, for the girl did not turn her head. the room exhaled a faint perfume as of incense and
musk; and i seemed to hold all her peaceful little life in my breath and in that swift glance. all that i could see of her face was one cheek and the tips of her long eyelashes. placed as she was in front of the light, a golden haze shaded the colours of her beautiful hair; and i lingered in contemplation of the long and graceful curve of her figure bending over her work. she was sewing in the midst of floods of stiff white muslin, which formed a chain of snow-clad peaks with blue reflections around her. i looked at the low-ceilinged room with its whitewashed wall and its rows of bodices, petticoats and shiny caps hanging on lines stretched from one side to the other. a grey tom-cat lay purring on a corner of the table; and, near it, in a well-scrubbed pot, a pink geranium displayed its sombre leaves and its bright flowers.
rose was sewing. at regular intervals, her right arm rose, drew out the thread and returned to the spot whence it started: an even and captive movement symbolical of the amount of activity permitted to women! but was she not to choose that movement among all others?
3
we dine in her bedroom. what a surprise her room held in store for me! rose had arranged it herself, in harmony with the simplicity which i loved.
brightly-painted wooden shelves make patches of colour on the white walls; the furniture is rustic; and the curtains of white muslin with mauve spots complete the frank and artless harmony of the room. how little this was to be expected from mlle. coquet's shop!
then, on rose's table, the books i gave her fill the place of honour. i dare say that she never reads them; and yet i am glad to see them here.
rose goes to and fro between our little table and the kitchen. she looks pretty, she smiles. the slowness of her movements is no longer lethargic; it simply exhales an air of repose, a perfume of peace that suits her beauty. her eyes have fastened on me at once and, as in the old days, never leave me.
is it the tyranny of habit that used to prevent me from reading anything in them? now, those eyes that ingenuously drink in my life as the flowers do the light, those eyes not veiled by any shadow, constantly
bring the tears to mine. she sees this and fondly lays her head on my shoulder, whispering:
"i did nothing but expect you, darling, only i had given up hoping...."
this term of endearment, which she addresses to me for the first time, as if, being no longer subject to any effort, she were at last yielding to the sweets of friendship, this expression and my christian name, which she utters lovingly, complete the pleasantness of the evening.
i feel happy amid it all. we who were brought up in the country never lose our appreciation of its peaceful charm. it bows down our lives as we bow our forehead in our hands to think beyond our immediate surroundings; and from its narrow circle we are better able to judge the expanse which has become necessary to us.
4
the night rises, things fade away. the sky is a deep blue in the frame of the open window. rose brings the lamp:
"it was the first companion of my solitude," she says, reminiscently; then, laughing, "the companion
of my boredom, the companion of those long, long evenings...."
"but now, dearest?..."
"ah, now, the days are too short: i have a thousand duties to perform, my dear little old woman to look after, my customers, my flowers, my animals; then, in the evening, we often have a caller: the priest, the notary, the neighbours...."
then, suddenly fearing that she has hurt me, she adds, in a caressing tone:
"when i am with them, i am always talking about you, so as to comfort myself for the loss of you; for that is my only sorrow."
5
an hour or two later, sitting in the garden, we watched the stars appearing one by one. our arms were round each other; our fair tresses were intermingled. we were at the far end of the town. we heard the sounds of the country ringing in the transparent air; and the crystal voice of the frogs, that small, clear note falling steadily and marking time to our thoughts. we were quiet, like everything around us, unstirred by a breath of wind.
rose spoke of her happiness; and i never wearied of inhaling that delicious tranquillity. i had been thinking of settling her future for her. and what an inestimable lesson i was learning from her! rose was one of those whose road must be marked from hour to hour by a little duty of some kind or another. it is thus, by limiting themselves, that these characters arrive at knowing and asserting themselves. she said, blithely, "my room," "my garden," "my house;" and i smiled as i reflected that i had once struggled to rid that mind of all useless bonds.
6
what a mistake i had made! in order to find her life, she had had to earn it and to recognise it in the very things that now belonged to it, to mark every hour of it with humdrum tasks, to create for herself little troubles on her own level, difficulties which her good sense could easily overcome. there was nothing unexpected, nothing far-reaching in her life, never an event beyond the tinkle of the shop-bell announcing a customer, a little bell with a short, sharp, cracked ring, stopping on a single note without
vibration, as though it were the very voice of the little souls which it excited.
in contrast with this humble destiny, i considered my own full of difficulty and agitation, so crowded and yet doubtless equally empty; i followed in my mind's eye the lives of my friends; and i reflected that the nature of us women, alike of the most wayward and the most direct, is too delicate and too complex for us easily to keep our balance in a state of complete liberty.
"when we achieve it," i said to rose, "it is thanks to a close and constant observation of ourselves; for woman never has any real moral strength. self-sacrifice and kindness alone lend us some, because our capacity for loving knows no limit: our strength is then a loan which we make to ourselves at difficult moments by a miracle of love. once the crisis is over, we have to pay ... with interest!"
"in paris," said rose, "even from the very first, i had a feeling that i should never dare to move in the absolute liberty that was offered me. you are not angry with me?"
"how could i be? we were both wanderers, you and i, where circumstances led us, both of us with a passion for sincerity, both of us with the best of
intentions. a cleverer mind than mine would doubtless have saved you from going out of your way. it had many unnecessary turnings. but perhaps they had their uses...."
"yes," replied my friend, wisely, "for without them, i should not have been so certain that my choice was right...."
7
around us the mysterious life of the night was gradually awaking. all the animals that shun the daylight were beginning to stir. a hedgehog brushed against my skirt. in the grass, two glowworms summoned love with all their fires. the smell of the garden became overpowering. our movements and our words throbbed in a scented air. rose leant towards me:
"there is one thought that troubles me," she said. "have i discouraged you? will others better equipped than i still find you ready to lend them a helping hand?"
"why not, roseline?" and i would have liked to put my very soul into the kiss which i gave her. "no, you have not discouraged me. the only thing that matters is to have the power to choose what
suits us. then alone is it possible for us to develop ourselves without restraint. with your limited horizon, you are freer, darling, than when you were living with me, at the mercy of all the fancies which you did not know how to use. everything is relative; and instinct makes no mistakes. yours, by placing you here among the lives which i can imagine, gives you the opportunity of excelling. you felt that you needed to live under conditions in which the effort and the merit would lie in not changing, in which action would be immobility. you know, rose, there is always some common ground in human beings; to reach it, if you do not stoop, the others will raise themselves. with your beauty which is the wonder of every one you meet, with that gentleness which wins all hearts and with your soul which no longer knows either malice or prayer, you will be a new example of life to all around you."
rose was sitting on a higher chair than mine; and this allowed me to let my head sink into her lap. i no longer dreamt of looking at the splendour of the night, for was it not throbbing in my heart, where a star woke every moment? and i thought out loud:
"you were always asking me the object of my
efforts. do you now understand that i could not explain what i myself did not understand perfectly until you revealed it to me?"
i reflected for a moment and continued:
"we can wish nothing for others nor force anything on them: we can only help them to clear the field before and within themselves...."
she murmured:
"i understand."
and i cried:
"ah, my dearest, how grateful i am to you! in looking for you, i have found myself a little more; and it is always so; and that, you see, is why we must love action. however tiny, however humble, it may be, it brings us at the same time the knowledge of others and of ourselves. we appear to fling ourselves stout-heartedly into the stream whose currents we cannot foresee; we are hurt, we are wounded, we struggle; but, when we return to the bank, we feel invigorated and refreshed."
roseline stroked my forehead lightly with her hands and softly whispered:
"there was nothing lacking to my peace of mind but your approval. now i am happy and i can begin my life without anxiety."
