VI

One morning she at last succeeded in helping him to the foot of the steps, trampling down the grass before him with her feet, and clearing a way for him through the briars, whose supple arms barred the last few yards.  Then they slowly entered the wood of roses.  It was indeed a very wood, with thickets of tall standard roses throwing out leafy clumps as big as trees, and enormous rose bushes impenetrable as copses of young oaks.  Here, formerly, there had been a most marvellous collection of plants.  But since the flower garden had been left in abandonment, everything had run wild, and a virgin forest had arisen, a forest of roses over-running the paths, crowded with wild offshoots, so mingled, so blended, that roses of every scent and hue seemed to blossom on the same stem.  Creeping roses formed mossy carpets on the ground, while climbing roses clung to others like greedy ivy plants, and ascended in spindles of verdure, letting a shower of their loosened petals fall at the lightest breeze.  Natural paths coursed through the wood—­narrow footways, broad avenues, enchanting covered walks in which one strolled in the shade and scent.  These led to glades and clearings, under bowers of small red roses, and between walls hung with tiny yellow ones.  Some sunny nooks gleamed like green silken stuff embroidered with bright patterns; other shadier corners offered the seclusion of alcoves and an aroma of love, the balmy warmth, as it were, of a posy languishing on a woman’s bosom.  The rose bushes had whispering voices too.  And the rose bushes were full of songbirds’ nests.

‘We must take care not to lose ourselves,’ said Albine, as she entered the wood.  ’I did lose myself once, and the sun had set before I was able to free myself from the rose bushes which caught me by the skirt at every step.’

They had barely walked a few minutes, however, before Serge, worn out with fatigue, wished to sit down.  He stretched himself upon the ground, and fell into deep slumber.  Albine sat musing by his side.  They were on the edge of a glade, near a narrow path which stretched away through the wood, streaked with flashes of sunlight, and, through a small round blue gap at its far end, revealed the sky.  Other little paths led from the clearing into leafy recesses.  The glade was formed of tall rose bushes rising one above the other with such a wealth of branches, such a tangle of thorny shoots, that big patches of foliage were caught aloft, and hung there tent-like, stretching out from bush to bush.  Through the tiny apertures in the patches of leaves, which were suggestive of fine lace, the light filtered like impalpable sunny dust.  And from the vaulted roof hung stray branches, chandeliers, as it were, thick clusters suspended from green thread-like stems, armfuls of flowers that reached to the ground, athwart some rent in the leafy ceiling, which trailed around like a tattered curtain.