I soon realized that solitude instead of curing me was doing me harm, and
so completely changed my system. I went to the country and galloped
through the woods with the huntsmen; I rode until I was out of breath, I
tried to break myself with fatigue, and when after a day of sweat in the
fields, I reached my bed in the evening smelling of powder and the
stable, I buried my head in the pillow, I rolled about under the covers
and I cried: "Fantom, fantom! are you not tired? Will you leave me for
one night?"
But why these vain efforts? Solitude sent me to nature, and nature to
love. When I stood in the street of Observation I saw myself surrounded
by corpses, and, drying my hands on my bloody apron, stifled by the odor
of putrefaction, I turned my head in spite of myself, and I saw floating
before my eyes green harvests, balmy fields and the pensive harmony of
the evening. "No," I said, "science can not console me; I can not plunge
into dead nature, I would die there myself and float about like a livid
corpse amidst the debris of shattered hopes. I would not cure myself of
my youth; I will live where there is life, or I will at least die in the
sun." I began to mingle with the throngs at Sevres and Chaville; I lay
down in the midst of a flowery dale, in a secluded part of Chaville.
Alas! all these forests and prairies cried to me:
"What do you seek here? We are green, poor child, we wear the colors of
hope.
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