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Alamontade
by
The last ray of the sun grew pale on the distant mountain tops; the world was plunged in a gray twilight. The spirit of my father had freed itself from the frail frame of its beloved body, which now lay in my arms.
Our faithful servant–whose name has escaped my memory–being directed, by the last wish of my father, to take me to my uncle, on my mother’s side, Etienne, held me by the hand when we were pacing through the dark and narrow streets of the city of Nismes. I trembled. An involuntary shudder seized upon my mind. “You are trembling, Colas,” said the servant; “you look pale and anxious; are you not well?”
“Alas!” exclaimed I, “do not bring me to this dark, stony labyrinth. I am as terrified as if I were going to die here. Let me be a common labourer in my verdant native village. Look only at these walls, they stand here like those of a dungeon; and those men look as confused and troubled as though they were criminals.”
“Your uncle, the miller,” replied he, “does not live in this city; his house stands outside the Carmelite-gate in the open green fields.”
Men are apt to believe that the soul possesses a secret faculty for anticipating its future fate. When I became a fellow-sufferer in that horrible misfortune, the history of which has filled with shuddering every sensible heart of the civilised world, I remembered the first apprehensive anxiety which I felt in the streets of the gloomy Nismes, on entering the city, and which I then took for an omen. Even the most enlightened man cannot entirely divest himself of a superstitious fear when his despairing hope gropes about in vain for help in darkness.
The impression that Nismes had made upon me remained permanent within me. This was natural. Accustomed to live in and with nature, solitary and simple, the stirring crowd of the busy town had a terrifying effect upon me. My mother had rocked me under the branches of the olive trees, and my childhood I had dreamed away in the green, cheerful shade of chesnut groves. How could I bear living within the narrow, damp, walls, where only the thirst for money brings men together? In solitude the passions die away, and the heart assumes the tranquillity of rural nature. The first sight, therefore, of so many faces, in which anger and care, pride and avarice, debauchery and envy, had left behind their traces, and which were no more perceived by him who saw them daily, made me tremble.
Outside the Carmelite-gate was the house of my uncle, and by the side of it his mill. The servant pointed with his hand to the fine building, and said, “M. Etienne is a wealthy man, but alas–“
“And what then–alas?”
“A Calvinist, as people say.”
I did not understand him. We entered the beautiful building, and my anxiety vanished. A tranquil, kind spirit spoke to me, as it were, from every thing I beheld, and I felt as happy as if I were in my native place.
In a neat room, marked by simplicity and order, the mother was sitting at the table, surrounded by three blooming daughters, busy with domestic work. A boy of two years’ old sat playing in his mother’s lap. Kindness and tranquillity were on every countenance. All were silent, and directed their looks to me. My uncle stood at the window and was reading. His locks were already gray, but a youthful serenity beamed from his looks. His air was that of piety. The servant said to him, “This is your nephew, Colas, M. Etienne. His father, your brother-in-law, died in poverty. He ordered me, therefore, to bring his son to you, that you might be a father to him.”