IX. Ermenonville

I hadn’t the slightest desire to sleep, so I went to Montagny to see my uncle’s house once more. Sadness took possession of me when I caught sight of its yellow front and green shutters; everything was just as before, except that I had to go around to the farmhouse for the key, and then the shutters were thrown open, and I stood among the old bits of carefully polished furniture, all in their accustomed places: the high walnut cupboard, the two Flemish pictures, said to be the work of our artist grandfather, some large engravings after Boucher, and a series of engraved illustrations from Émile and La Nouvelle Héloïse by Moreau. The stuffed dog on the table had been my companion during his lifetime for many tramps through the woods; he was an Italian pug, perhaps the last of that forgotten race.

‘The parrot’s still alive,’ the farmer told me, ‘I’ve got him over at my house.’ And I looked out across the garden, a mass of luxuriant weeds; but over in the corner I could still see traces of the little patch that had been my own garden as a child. Trembling with emotion, I entered the study with its little bookcase of carefully chosen volumes, old friends of the man whose memory they evoked, and on his desk I saw the old Roman vases and medallions he had dug up in his garden, a small but greatly treasured collection.

‘Let’s see the parrot,’ I said, and on entering the farmhouse we could hear him demanding his lunch as stridently as ever. He turned his gaze on me, and his round eye in its circle of wrinkled skin made me think of a calculating old man.

My belated visit to this well-loved spot filled me with gloomy thoughts, and I longed to see Sylvie again. Sylvie was not a memory, she was alive and young, the only person who could keep me in this country of my childhood. At midday I set out along the Loisy road, and since everybody would be sure to be resting after the dance, I decided to walk two miles and a half through the woods to Ermenonville. The sun scarcely penetrated the interlacing branches of the trees above me, and the forest road was as deliciously cool as an avenue in some great park. Scattered among the tall oaks were birches with their white trunks and quivering foliage; no birds were singing, and the stillness was complete but for the tap- tap of a green woodpecker building its nest. The directions on the finger-posts were often quite illegible, and once I very nearly lost my way, but at last, leaving the Désert on my left, I came to the dancing- green and found the old men’s bench still in existence and I stood before this graphic realization of Anacharsis and of Émile, beset by memories of an ancient philosophy revived by the previous owner of the estate.

A little farther on when the glistening surface of a lake shone through the branches of the hazels and willows, I knew it was to this spot that my uncle had so often brought me. Here in a grove of pines stands the Temple of Philosophy, unhappily never completed by its founder. This unfinished structure, already in ruins, resembles the temple of the Tiburtine sibyl, and upon it are the names of great thinkers, beginning with Montaigne and Descartes and ending with Rousseau; graceful strands of ivy hang down among the columns, and the steps are covered with brambles. I remember being brought here as a little child to witness the awarding of school prizes to white-robed maidens. Raspberry and dog-briers have killed the roses now; and have the laurels been cut, as they were in the song of the maidens who would not go into the wood? No, those delicate Italian shrubs could not live in our misty country, but Virgil’s privet still blooms as if to emphasize his words inscribed above the door: Rerum cognoscere causas! Yes, this temple is falling away like so many others; tired and forgetful men will pass it by unnoticed, and Nature will carelessly reclaim the ground that Art sought to take from her, but a desire for knowledge will persist for ever as the strength-giving incentive to every action.

I turned and saw the island with its grove of poplars, and the tomb of Rousseau which no longer contains his ashes. Ah! Rousseau, we were too weak to avail ourselves of what you set before us; we have forgotten what you taught our fathers, and we have wrongly interpreted your words, those last echoes of ancient wisdom. Still, we must take courage, and, as you did at the moment of your death, turn our eyes to the sun.