The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
beautiful girls, with rounded hips, long hands and slender waists, and singularly graceful, were grouped beside a fountain. Julien called out, “Good evening,” and they replied in musical tones in the harmonious language of their own land.
When they reached Piana they had to beg for hospitality, as in ancient times and in desert lands. Jeanne trembled with joy as they waited for the door to be opened after Julien knocked. Oh, this was a journey worth while, with all the unexpected of unexplored paths.
It happened to be the home of a young couple. They received the travellers as the patriarchs must have received the guest sent by God. They had to sleep on a corn husk mattress in an old moldy house. The woodwork, all eaten by worms, overrun with long boring-worms, seemed to emit sounds, to be alive and to sigh.
They set off again at daybreak, and presently stopped before a forest, a veritable forest of purple granite. There were peaks, pillars, bell-towers, wondrous forms molded by age, the ravaging wind and the sea mist. As much as three hundred metres in height, slender, round, twisted, hooked, deformed, unexpected and fantastic, these amazing rocks looked like trees, plants, animals, monuments, men, monks in their garb, horned devils, gigantic birds, a whole population of monsters, a menagerie of nightmares petrified by the will of some eccentric divinity.
Jeanne had ceased talking, her heart was full. She took Julien’s hand and squeezed it, overcome with a longing for love in presence of the beauty of nature.
Suddenly, as they emerged from this chaos, they saw before them another gulf, encircled by a wall of blood-red granite. And these red rocks were reflected in the blue waters.
“Oh, Julien!” faltered Jeanne, unable to speak for wonder and choking with her emotion. Two tears fell from her eyes. Julien gazed at her in astonishment and said:
“What is the matter, my pet?”
She wiped away her tears, smiled and replied in a rather shaky voice:
“Nothing — I am nervous — I do not know — it just came over me. I am so happy that the least thing affects me.”
He could not understand these feminine attacks of “nerves,” the shocks of these vibrant beings, excited at nothing, whom enthusiasm stirs as might a catastrophe, whom an imperceptible sensation completely upsets, driving them wild with joy or despair.
These tears seemed absurd to him, and thinking only of the bad road, he said:
“You would do better to watch your horse.”
They descended an almost impassable path to the shore of the gulf, then turned to the right to ascend the gloomy Val d’Ota.
But the road was so bad that Julien proposed that they should go on foot. Jeanne was delighted. She was enchanted at the idea of walking, of being alone with him after her late emotion.
The guide went ahead with the mule and the horses and they walked slowly.
The mountain, cleft from top to bottom, spreads apart. The path lies in this breach, between two gigantic walls. A roaring torrent flows through the gorge. The air is icy, the granite looks black, and high above one the glimpse of blue sky astonishes and bewilders one.
A sudden noise made Jeanne start. She raised her eyes. An immense bird flew away from a hollow; it was an eagle. His spread wings seemed to brush the two walls of the gorge and he soared into the blue and disappeared.
Farther on there was a double gorge and the path lay between the two in abrupt zigzags. Jeanne, careless and happy, took the lead, the pebbles rolling away beneath her feet, fearlessly leaning over the abysses. Julien followed her, somewhat out of breath, his eyes on the ground for fear of becoming dizzy.
All at once the sun shone down on them, and it seemed as if they were leaving the infernal regions. They were thirsty, and following a track of moisture, they crossed a wilderness of stones and found a little spring conducted into a channel made of a piece of hollowed-out wood for the benefit of the goatherds. A carpet of moss covered the ground all round it, and Jeanne and Julien knelt down to drink.
As they were enjoying the fresh cold water, Julien tried to draw Jeanne away to tease her. She resisted and their lips met and parted, and the stream of cold water splashed their faces, their necks, their clothes and their hands, and their kisses mingled in the stream.
They were a long time reaching the summit of the declivity, as the road was so winding and uneven, and they did not reach Evisa until evening and the house of Paoli Palabretti, a relative of their guide.
He was a tall man, somewhat bent, with the mournful air of a consumptive. He took them to their room, a cheerless room of bare stone, but handsome for this country, where all elegance is ignored. He expressed in his language — the Corsican patois, a jumble of French and Italian — his pleasure at welcoming them, when a shrill voice interrupted him. A little swarthy woman, with large black eyes, a skin warmed by the sun, a slender waist, teeth always showing in a perpetual smile, darted forward, kissed Jeanne, shook Julien’s hand and said: “Good-day, madame; good-day, monsieur; I hope you are well.”
She took their hats, shawls, carrying all on one arm, for the other was in a sling, and then she made them all go outside, saying to her husband: “Go and take them for a walk until dinner time.”
M. Palabretti obeyed at once and walked between the two young people as he showed them the village. He dragged his feet and his words, coughing frequently, and repeating at each attack of coughing:
“It is the air of the Val, which is cool, and has struck my chest.”
He led them on a by-path beneath enormous chestnut trees. Suddenly he stopped and said in his monotonous voice: “It is here that my cousin, Jean Rinaldi, was killed by Mathieu Lori. See, I was there, close to Jean, when Mathieu appeared at ten paces from us. ‘Jean,’ he cried, ‘do not go to Albertacce; do not go, Jean, or I will kill you. I warn you!’
“I took Jean’s arm: ‘Do not go there, Jean; he will do it.’
“It was about a girl whom they were both after, Paulina Sinacoupi.
“But Jean cried out: ‘I am going, Mathieu; you will not be the one to prevent me.’
“Then Mathieu unslung his gun, and before I could adjust mine, he fired.
“Jean leaped two feet in the air, like a child skipping, yes, monsieur, and he fell back full on me, so that my gun went off and rolled as far as the big chestnut tree over yonder.
“Jean’s mouth was wide open, but he did not utter a word; he was dead.”
The young people gazed in amazement at the calm witness of this crime. Jeanne asked:
“And what became of the assassin?”
Paoli Palabretti had a long fit of coughing and then said:
“He escaped to the mountain. It was my brother who killed him the following year. You know, my brother, Philippi Palabretti, the bandit.”
Jeanne shuddered.
“Your brother a bandit?”
With a gleam of pride in his eye, the calm Corsican replied:
“Yes, madame. He was celebrated, that one. He laid low six gendarmes. He died at the same time as Nicolas Morali, when they were trapped in the Niolo, after six days of fighting, and were about to die of hunger.
“The country is worth it,” he added with a resigned air in the same tone in which he said: “It is the air of the Val, which is cool.”
Then they went home to dinner, and the little Corsican woman behaved as if she had known them for twenty years.
But Jeanne was worried. When Julien again held her in his arms, would she experience the same strange and intense sensation that she had felt on the moss beside the spring? And when they were alone together that evening she trembled lest she should still be insensible to his kisses. But she was reassured, and this