Meanwhile at your elbow some one tunes up a song,
words of Ronsard to a pathetic tremulous air, of how
the poet loved his mistress long ago, and pressed
on her the flight of time, and told her how white
and quiet the dead lay under the stones, and how the
boat dipped and pitched as the shades embarked for
the passionless land. Yet a little while, sang
the poet, and there shall be no more love; only to
sit and remember loves that might have been.
There is a falling flourish in the air that remains
in the memory and comes back in incongruous places,
on the seat of hansoms or in the warm bed at night,
with something of a forest savour.
‘You can get up now,’ says the painter;
‘I’m at the background.’
And so up you get, stretching yourself, and go your
way into the wood, the daylight becoming richer and
more golden, and the shadows stretching farther into
the open. A cool air comes along the highways,
and the scents awaken. The fir-trees breathe
abroad their ozone. Out of unknown thickets
comes forth the soft, secret, aromatic odour of the
woods, not like a smell of the free heaven, but as
though court ladies, who had known these paths in ages
long gone by, still walked in the summer evenings,
and shed from their brocades a breath of musk or bergamot
upon the woodland winds. One side of the long
avenues is still kindled with the sun, the other is
plunged in transparent shadow. Over the trees
the west begins to burn like a furnace; and the painters
gather up their chattels, and go down, by avenue or
footpath, to the plain.
As this excursion is a matter of some length, and,
moreover, we go in force, we have set aside our usual
vehicle, the pony-cart, and ordered a large wagonette
from Lejosne’s. It has been waiting for
near an hour, while one went to pack a knapsack, and
t’other hurried over his toilette and coffee;
but now it is filled from end to end with merry folk
in summer attire, the coachman cracks his whip, and
amid much applause from round the inn door off we rattle
at a spanking trot. The way lies through the
forest, up hill and down dale, and by beech and pine
wood, in the cheerful morning sunshine. The
English get down at all the ascents and walk on ahead
for exercise; the French are mightily entertained at
this, and keep coyly underneath the tilt. As
we go we carry with us a pleasant noise of laughter
and light speech, and some one will be always breaking
out into a bar or two of opera bouffe. Before
we get to the Route Ronde here comes Desprez, the
colourman from Fontainebleau, trudging across on his
weekly peddle with a case of merchandise; and it is
‘Desprez, leave me some malachite green’;
‘Desprez, leave me so much canvas’; ’Desprez,
leave me this, or leave me that’; M. Desprez
standing the while in the sunlight with grave face
and many salutations. The next interruption is
more important. For some time back we have had
