What happiness there had been in those days! What freedom! What hope! What an abundance of illusions! She had none left now. Each new venture had cost her some of them, each of her successive conditions: as virgin, wife and mistress; she had lost them all along the course of her life, like a traveler who leaves some of his wealth at every inn along the road.
Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur.
Sometimes they opened a book and closed it again; what was the point? On other days they had the idea of tidying up the garden, but after a quarter of an hour they felt tired; or of looking at their farm, but they came back sick at heart; or doing household jobs, but Germaine cried out in protest; they gave up.
What he then saw was like an apparition. She was seated in the middle of a bench all alone, or, at any rate, he could see no one, dazzled as he was by her eyes.
It was not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires.
There’s a fundamental stupidity in mankind which is as eternal as life itself.
So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.
And he was beginning to feel that discouragement which is engendered by a life of repetition, when no interest guides nor expectation sustains it.
Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly; ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling than to conjure away the burden and bitterness.
Coming delights, like tropical beaches, send out their native enchantment over the vast spaces that precede them – a perfumed breeze that lulls and drugs you out of all anxiety as to what may yet await you below the horizon.
What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul’s life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love – thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road.
It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.
Anyway, what was the use? Women’s hearts were like those desks full of secret drawers that fit one inside another; you struggle with them, you break your fingernails, and at the bottom you find a withered flower, a little dust, or nothing at all!
The head-master made a.
Why don’t you go grind some almonds?
I like snow and roses, calm and storm; I like to love, I like to hate. Every contradiction, every absurdity, every folly–I harbor them all.
Anyone who lacks respect for religion comes to a bad end.
In de muziekles zong zij liedjes over niets dan engeltjes met gouden vleugels, madonna’s, meren, gondeliers: rimpelloze romances die haar tussen de beuzelachtige woorden en de onbeholpen klanken door een korte blik vergunden op de betoverende wereld van de werkelijke sentimenten.
However, all this reading had disturbed their brains.
Un infini de passion peut tenir dans une minute.