The Chateau d'Argol Read Free Page A

out in a semicircle as far as the eye could see: a wild and gloomy forest, a sleeping forest whose absolute stillness seemed to clutch the soul. It encircled the castle like the coils of a heavily inert serpent whose mottled skin was almost imitated by the dark patches of cloud-shadow as they ran over its rugose surface. These clouds in the heavens, flat and white, seemed to be floating at an enormous height over the green abyss. And the sight of this green ocean filled one with an obscure disquietude, giving Albert the curious feeling that this forest must be alive, and that, like a forest in a fairy tale or in a dream, it had not yet said its first word. Toward the west, high rocky barriers covered all over with trees, ran parallel; a brimming river flowed through these deep valleys, its surface roughened by a gust of wind, like skin by the cold, and suddenly thousands of bright facets reflected the blinding sunlight with a radiance that was curiously immobile. But the trees remained mute and menacing up to the blue heights of the horizon.
    Albert opened a low door leading into the round tower that overlooked the terrace. He found it furnished as a study with shelves of precious woods and with four oval windows from which the eye could view all the divers landscapes of the countryside around the castle. In the bed chambers situated in the upper portion of the edifice, that sumptuous prodigality of furs, so noticeable the moment one entered the castle, became a sort of haunting leitmotif, reiterated everywhere. They were scattered in profusion on the floor, while the walls were hidden by fur panels made into a chequered design of richly worked skins of the snow leopard and the polar bear, alternating regularly. A lavish negligence seemed to hold sway everywhere; even the beds appeared to consist simply of a heap of furs. The long low anomalous openings, which Albert had noticed in the façade, were here made use of to procure a particular effect: each room was lighted by these long horizontal apertures only three feet high and not more than one foot from the floor, extending the whole length of the wall against which the bed was placed, so that on waking the sleeper was forced to plunge his eyes into the abyss of trees below, and might fancy himself wafted on a magic ship over the deep billows of the forest. In the corner of the room opposite the bed, a basin of light-coloured marble was sunk in the floor, and toilet accessories, shining with the clean brightness of surgical instruments, offered a pleasing contrast to the long silky whiteness of the furs.
    The library occupied the top of the square tower. Wooden panels carved with scenes from Works and Days ran all around the walls, but without extending to the ceiling they left a large frieze of dull white stone visible above them, and this refuge of thought was lighted by panes of thick green glass, symbols of the all-powerful and living hope of knowledge, and was furnished with lecterns of carved oak. Albert lingered there, fingering the pages of many of the curious ancient volumes with iron clasps, but a noise as of leaden grains pelting against the window-panes made him look up; the rain was beating on them violently, and anxious to witness the alteration of the landscape the elements now offered, he hastened to make his way to the terrace again.
    The storm was raging over Storrvan. Heavy clouds with jagged edges rushed out of the west, almost brushing against the tower, and at moments enveloping it in streamers of vertiginous white mist. But the wind, above all the wind filled space with its unbridled and appalling power. Night had almost fallen. The tempest, passing as though through a head of fragile hair, opened quick fugitive furrows through the masses of grey trees, parting them like blades of grass, and for the space of a second one could see the bare soil, black rocks, the narrow fissures of the ravines. Madly the storm twisted this grey mane! Out of it came an