Country life -- Fiction; France -- Fiction; Love stories
"I don't know how pleasure in a thing like that could make me cry,"
she said. "Don't ask me if I feel pain or pleasure; all that I know
is that I can't help crying."
"But what were you thinking of while I played?" said Joseph, looking
fixedly at her.
"So many things that I can't give account of them," replied Brulette.
"Well, tell me one," he said, in a tone that was impatient and
dictatorial.
"I did not think of anything," said Brulette, "but a thousand
recollections of old times came into my mind. I seemed not to see
you playing, though I heard you clearly enough; you appeared to be no
older than when we lived together, and I felt as if you and I were
driven by a strong wind, sometimes through the ripe wheat, sometimes
into the long grass, at other times upon the running streams; and I
saw the fields, the woods, the springs, the flowery meadows, and the
birds in the sky among the clouds. I saw, too, in my dream, your
mother and my grandfather sitting before the fires, and talking of
things I could not understand; and all the while you were in the
corner on your knees saying your prayers, and I thought I was asleep
in my little bed. Then again I saw the ground covered with snow, and
the willows full of larks, and the nights full of falling stars; and
we looked at each other, sitting on a hillock, while the sheep made
their little noise of nibbling the grass. In short, I dreamed so
many things that they are all jumbled up in my head; and if they made
me cry, it was not for grief, but because my mind was shaken in a way
I can't at all explain to you."
"It is all right," said José. "What I saw and what I dreamed as I
played you saw too! Thank you, Brulette. Through you I know now
that I am not crazy, and that there is a truth in what we hear within
us, as there is in what we see. Yes, yes," he said, taking long
strides up and down the room and holding his flute above his head,
"it speaks!--that miserable bit of reed! it says what we think; it
shows what we see; it tells a tale as if with words; it loves like
the heart, it lives, it has a being! And now, José the madman, José
the idiot, José the starer, go back to your imbecility; you can
afford to do so, for you are as powerful, and as wise, and as happy
as others!"
So saying, he sat down and paid no further attention to anything
about him.
FIFTH EVENING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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