Saint Agnes, May 6. My dear
friend: You asked me to write to you often and
to tell you in particular about the things I might
see. You also begged me to rummage among my recollections
of travels for some of those little anecdotes gathered
from a chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from some
strange traveling acquaintance, which remain as landmarks
in the memory. With a landscape depicted in a
few lines, and a little story told in a few sentences
you think one can give the true characteristics of
a country, make it living, visible, dramatic.
I will try to do as you wish. I will, therefore,
send you from time to time letters in which I will
mention neither you nor myself, but only the landscape
and the people who move about in it. And now
I will begin.
Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to
me, to drink and eat the landscape. It is the
season of chills, just as autumn is the season of
reflection. In spring the country rouses the physical
senses, in autumn it enters into the soul.
I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange
blossoms and I set out for the South of France just
at the time that every one else was returning home.
I visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of
Mecca and Jerusalem, without leaving any gold in any
one else’s pockets, and I climbed the high mountain
beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olive branches.
Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange
trees in flower? The air that one inhales with
delight is a quintessence of perfumes. The strong
yet sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to
blend with our being, to saturate us, to intoxicate
us, to enervate us, to plunge us into a sleepy, dreamy
torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by
the hands of fairies and not by those of druggists.
This is a country of ravines. The surface of
the mountains is cleft, hollowed out in all directions,
and in these sinuous crevices grow veritable forests
of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep
gorge is interrupted by a sort of step, a kind of
reservoir has been built which holds the water of
the rain storms.
They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing
for any one to grasp hold of should they fall in.
I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys
or gorges, glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued
fruit that remained on the branches. The narrow
gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still more
penetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it.
A feeling of lassitude came over me and I looked for
a place to sit down. A few drops of water glistened
in the grass. I thought that there was a spring
near by and I climbed a little further to look for
it. But I only reached the edge of one of these
large, deep reservoirs.
