WINTER

There are dreadful mornings in January that chill one’s heart.  I awoke on this particular day with a vague feeling of anxiety.  It had thawed during the night, and when I cast my eyes over the country from the threshold, it looked to me like an immense dirty grey rag, soiled with mud and rent to tatters.

The horizon was shrouded in a curtain of fog, in which the oak-trees along the walk lugubriously extended their dark arms, like a row of spectres guarding the vast mass of vapour spreading out behind them.  The fields had sunk, and were covered with great sheets of water, at the edge of which hung the remnants of dirty snow.  The loud roar of the Durance was increasing in the distance.

Winter imparts health and strength to one’s frame when the sun is clear and the ground dry.  The air makes the tips of your ears tingle, you walk merrily along the frozen pathways, which ring with a silvery sound beneath your tread.  But I know of nothing more saddening than dull, thawing weather:  I hate the damp fogs which weigh one’s shoulders down.

I shivered in the presence of that copper-like sky, and hastened to retire indoors, making up my mind that I would not go out into the fields that day.  There was plenty of work in and around the farm-buildings.

Jacques had been up a long time.  I heard him whistling in a shed, where he was helping some men remove sacks of corn.  The boy was already eighteen years old; he was a tall fellow, with strong arms.  He had not had an uncle Lazare to spoil him and teach him Latin, and he did not go and dream beneath the willows at the riverside.  Jacques had become a real peasant, an untiring worker, who got angry when I touched anything, telling me I was getting old and ought to rest.

And as I was watching him from a distance, a sweet lithe creature, leaping on my shoulders, clapped her little hands to my eyes, inquiring: 

“Who is it?”

I laughed and answered: 

“It’s little Marie, who has just been dressed by her mamma.”

The dear little girl was completing her tenth year, and for ten years she had been the delight of the farm.  Having come the last, at a time when we could no longer hope to have any more children, she was doubly loved.  Her precarious health made her particularly dear to us.  She was treated as a young lady; her mother absolutely wanted to make a lady of her, and I had not the heart to oppose her wish, so little Marie was a pet, in lovely silk skirts trimmed with ribbons.

Marie was still seated on my shoulders.

“Mamma, mamma,” she cried, “come and look; I’m playing at horses.”

Babet, who was entering, smiled.  Ah! my poor Babet, how old we were!  I remember we were shivering with weariness, on that day, gazing sadly at one another when alone.

Our children brought back our youth.

Lunch was eaten in silence.  We had been compelled to light the lamp.  The reddish glimmer that hung round the room was sad enough to drive one crazy.