The Fear of Living by Henry Bordeaux

A family meal before a departure reminds us in its sadness of the first meal we have together after the final disappearance of an habitual guest. If no one is missing as yet, still joy has fled. Everyone tries vainly to brighten it, and of this touching, fruitless effort is born a deeper sadness.

Thus the dining-room at Le Maupas, in spite of the October sun which shone into it, was silent and mournful. Marcel was going away at nightfall in Trélaz's carriage to catch the six o'clock train at the station. When the conversation languished nobody thought of taking it up again. With a few unimportant words, spoken without enthusiasm, it would falter back to life, only to die out once more. Marie, the old servant, had prepared Marcel's favorite dishes. Carrying them back to the kitchen almost untouched, she murmured in a cross voice which expressed her own sorrow:

"It isn't right -- it isn't right. They want to starve themselves to death!"

After lunch, Marcel went out with his sister.

"I want to see our old walks again," he said.

Through the vineyards on the hill they climbed up to the chestnut-trees at Vimines, under the shade of which grows thick moss where as children they used to gather mushrooms. From the border of the woods they looked out on Lake Bourget in its mountain basin. To appreciate its wild beauty at its best one must see it in the evening.

"Now let's go and see the waterfall," said Marcel.

He wanted to assure himself, as it were, before leaving, of the existence of all those quiet and lonely places which had helped to form his character. From Vimines, whose pointed steeple commands the hill, one comes down through the vineyards and orchards to the waterfall at Coux by a zig-zag path from which are to be seen several very fine views. Opposite lies a chaos of mountains, boldly scaled by rows of pines; on the left, the Nivolet with rocky peaks bathed in a bluish light; on the right, the openings of the valley of the Echelles and La Chartreuse. Marcel stopped short when he saw, between two golden-leaved beeches which framed a picture of savage loveliness, the long waterfall, slender and white, which fell a hundred feet and shone again in a silvery dust in the sunshine. He smiled happily.

"It is beautiful in its lonely surroundings," he said. "Don't let us go down any further. We have still to go to the Montcharvin woods and the ravine of Forezan."

These were some of the old possessions of Le Maupas, which had been given up when the crash came. Because they were nearer home and, from time immemorial, familiar sights to him, he loved them best. And now though they were sold, they had not lost their charm for him. The beauty of the earth is not to be bought and sold. It belongs to the discoverer who can understand it and enjoy it.

Le Forezan is a deep valley whose steep sides are covered with a ragged growth of brushwood. Here and there the sides are less abrupt, and it is possible to climb down to the stream which runs at the bottom. There, under a far-stretching arch of greenery, are peace, silence, and forgetfulness.

Marcel, who was walking ahead, turned back and saw that his sister was caught in the creepers which crossed the path. Before coming to help her he cried:

"How pretty you look in those bushes!"

"Come and help me instead of talking nonsense," said Paule. But he did not hurry. The girl's natural grace harmonised wonderfully with this fresh virgin landscape. He could not help admiring the suppleness of the movements she made to disentangle herself, and the bright flush of health that the exercise brought to her cheeks. When he came up to her, she was quite free from the snare which had held her. "Too late! " she cried.

"Bravo, Paule! You wouldn't be afraid in Cochin-China or the Tonkin forests. You will see them some day. You belong to the same race as your brothers."

"What, I? " she said, the fire in her eyes dying out. "I shall live and die at Le Maupas."

They came back from the valley through the ash wood. These trees with their light trunks reared their heads proudly on high, wearing as a crown the mass of branches from which the autumn wind was tearing the leaves. Half stripped, they showed their shapeliness in all their youthful health and strength, and thousands of uplifted arms waved peacefully. Like naked hamadryads they betrayed the secret of their forms. The scanty leaves which still adorned them, were ruddy gold, almost as rich as the fallen ones which thickly carpeted the soil below. Evening came on and all the wood was bathed in a violet mist, which gave to it the mysterious aspect of a sacred grove.

Turned to the west on one side, on the other looking over meadows and vineyards, the farm of Montcharvin reflected in its windows the glow of the setting sun. This spacious house was built amid the ruins of an old castle, of which one dismantled tower and a Romanesque portico were all that remained. This portico, unprovided with a door and now quite useless, looked on to a roofless shed where old plough-shares were kept, and beyond, by reason of an abrupt descent, to a distant landscape which was framed in its arch. This arrangement called to mind the pictures of the old Italian masters, who, in order, doubtless, to sum up the multiform beauty of the world, used to supplement their human figures with a scene from nature, glimpsed between the columns of a palace or under the arches of a cloister.

Marcel and Paule skirted the old building and, following a screen of trees at the edge of a field which hid the deep valley of Forezan, they stopped in front of a fallen trunk, a natural bench which had been left there for years. Of one accord they sat down.