Читать книгу Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois - Gérard de Nerval - Страница 7

These memories, recalled in my dreamy revery, explained everything. This hopeless passion for an actress, which took possession of me nightly from the hour when the curtain rose until I fell asleep, was born of my remembrance of Adrienne, the pale moon-flower, as she glided over the green, a rose-tinted vision enveloped in a cloud of misty whiteness. The likeness of a face long years forgotten was now distinctly outlined; it was a pencil-sketch, which time had blurred, developed into a painting, like the first drafts of the old masters which delight us in a gallery, the completed masterpiece being found elsewhere.

To fall in love with a nun in the guise of an actress!.. suppose they were one and the same! – it is enough to drive one mad, a fatal mystery, drawing me on like a will o' the wisp flitting over the rushes of a stagnant pool. Let us keep a firm foothold on reality.

Sylvie, too, whom I loved so dearly, why had I forgotten her for three long years? She was a charming girl, the prettiest maiden in Loisy; surely she still lives, pure and good. I can see her window, with the creeper twining around the rose-bush, and the cage of linnets hanging on the left; I can hear the click of her bobbins and her favourite song:

She is still waiting for me. Who would wed her, so poor? The men of her native village are sturdy peasants with rough hands and gaunt, tanned faces. I, the "little Parisian," had won her heart in my frequent visits near Loisy, to my poor uncle, now dead. For the past three years I have been squandering like a lord the modest inheritance left by him, which might have sufficed for a lifetime, and Sylvie, I know, would have helped me save it. Chance returns me a portion, it is not too late.

What is she doing now? She must be asleep… No, she is not asleep; to-day is the Feast of the Bow, the only one in the year when the dance goes on all night… She is there. What time is it? I had no watch.

Amongst a profusion of ornaments, which it was then the fashion to collect, in order to restore the local colour of an old-time interior, there gleamed with freshly polished lustre, one of those tortoise-shell clocks of the Renaissance, whose gilded dome, surmounted by a figure of Time, was supported by caryatides in the style of the Medici, resting in their turn upon rearing steeds. The historic Diana, leaning upon her stag, was in bas-relief under the face, where, upon an inlaid background, enameled figures marked the hours. The works, no doubt excellent, had not been put in motion for two centuries. It was not to tell the hour that I bought this time-piece in Touraine.

I went down to the porter's lodge to find that his clock marked one in the morning. "In four hours I can be at Loisy," thought I.

Five or six cabs were still standing on the Place du Palais Royal, awaiting the gamblers and clubmen. "To Loisy," I said to the nearest driver. "Where is it?" "Near Senlis, eight leagues distant." "I will take you to the posting station," said the cabman, more alert than I.

How dreary the Flanders road is by night! It gains beauty only as it approaches the belt of the forest. Two monotonous rows of trees, taking on the semblance of distorted figures, rise ever before the eye; in the distance, patches of verdure and cultivated land, bounded on the left by the blue hills of Montmorency, Ecouen and Luzarches. Here is Gonesse, an ordinary little town, full of memories of the League and the Fronde.

Beyond Louvres is a road lined with apple-trees, whose white blossoms I have often seen unfolding in the night, like stars of the earth – it is the shortest way to the village. While the carriage climbs the slope, let me recall old memories of the days when I came here so often.