The Chateau d'Argol Read Free Page B

immense rustling; the trunks of the trees, before hidden by the frothing leaves, were bared now by the wind's furious blasts; one could see their frail grey limbs as taut as a ship's rigging. And they yielded, they yielded—a dry crackling was the prelude to the fall, then suddenly a thousand cracklings could be heard, a cascade of resounding noises drowned by the howling of the storm, and the giants were engulfed. Now the shower let loose the icy chill of its deluge like the brutal volley of handfuls of pebbles, and the forest answered with the metallic reverberation of its myriad leaves. Bare rocks glinted like ominous cuirasses, the liquid yellowish splendour of the wet fog crowned for an instant the crest of each forest tree, for an instant a yellow and luminous and marvellously translucid band shone along the horizon against which every branch of every tree stood silhouetted, and made the drenched stones of the parapet, Albert's blond hair soaked by the rain, the cold wet fog rolling around the tops of the trees, shine with a golden gleam, icy and almost inhuman—then went out and night fell like the blow of an axe. The horrible violence of this savage nature, in an instant so different from what it had appeared at first, filled Albert's soul with sombre forebodings. Drenched with rain, he retraced his steps through the deserted rooms. The ruddy glow of a stained glass window, the far-off sound of a clock lost in some distant and lonely corridor made him shudder for a moment like a child. He shrugged his shoulders at these commonplace snares of terror but was, nonetheless, unable to shake off the weight of a persistent anxiety. Perhaps really something had happened! Turning the corner of a corridor his foot struck a sleeping form: it was the servant who had come to meet him, and who was now lying asleep, stretched out on the flagstones in the pose of an animal overwhelmed by a sickening fatigue—and involuntarily Albert shuddered. At last he reached the heart of that anxiety with which all afternoon he had been investing the landscape, and deservedly no doubt in many respects. In the middle of the great drawing-room a square of paper lay on a copper tray. He broke the seal of the message and read: "I shall arrive at Argol Friday. Heide will come with me."

THE GRAVEYARD
     
    T HE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were for Albert, like vacation days, capricious and profound. He was as pleased as a child with his mysterious dwelling and gave himself up to the charm of virgin nature. Brittany was lavish with her meagre seductions, her humble flowers: gorse, broom and heather covered the moors over which Albert took interminable rides on horseback every day.
    Sometimes a heavy shower surprised him in the midst of this countryside; he sought refuge in poor granite huts, under dolmens thickly overgrown with moss. Only into the forest of Storrvan he dared not venture, and the terror that the storm on the evening of his arrival had awakened in him still persisted in his heart.
    He nevertheless worked ardently deciphering the difficult pages of that Logic from which the whole Hegelian system seems to rise on august and angelic wings. For the myths that have cradled humanity throughout its long history, Albert had always evinced abounding curiosity, searched passionately for their secret significance; and one morning he was surprised to find that Hegel, in spite of his professed aversion to examples, had seen fit to give an explanation of the myth of the Fall of man:
    "Examining more closely the story of the Fall we find, as we have said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings of knowledge upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and natural form, spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and trustful simplicity: but the very essence of spirit implies the absorption of this immediate condition into something higher. Spiritual life is distinguished from natural life, and more especially from animal life, in that it does not continue a