The Mountain Pool

by Guy de Maupassant

　　

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MY DEAR FRIEND:You asked me to write to you often and to tell you in particular aboutthe things I might see. You also begged me to rummage among myrecollections of travels for some of those little anecdotes gathered froma chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from some strange travelingacquaintance, which remain as landmarks in the memory. With a landscapedepicted in a few lines, and a little story told in a few sentences youthink one can give the true characteristics of a country, make it living,visible, dramatic. I will try to do as you wish. I will, therefore,send you from time to time letters in which I will mention neither younor myself, but only the landscape and the people who move about in it.And now I will begin.Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to me, to drink and eatthe landscape. It is the season of chills, just as autumn is the seasonof reflection. In spring the country rouses the physical senses, inautumn it enters into the soul.I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange blossoms and I set outfor the South of France just at the time that every one else wasreturning home. I visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of Meccaand Jerusalem, without leaving any gold in any one else's pockets, and Iclimbed the high mountain beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olivebranches.Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange trees in flower?The air that one inhales with delight is a quintessence of perfumes. Thestrong yet sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to blend with ourbeing, to saturate us, to intoxicate us, to enervate us, to plunge usinto a sleepy, dreamy torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by thehands of fairies and not by those of druggists.This is a country of ravines. The surface of the mountains is cleft,hollowed out in all directions, and in these sinuous crevices growveritable forests of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep gorgeis interrupted by a sort of step, a kind of reservoir has been builtwhich holds the water of the rain storms.They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing for any one tograsp hold of should they fall in.I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys or gorges,glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued fruit that remained on thebranches. The narrow gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still morepenetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it. A feeling of lassitudecame over me and I looked for a place to sit down. A few drops of waterglistened in the grass. I thought that there was a spring near by and Iclimbed a little further to look for it. But I only reached the edge ofone of these large, deep reservoirs.I sat down tailor fashion, with my legs crossed under me, and remainedthere in a reverie before this hole, which looked as if it were filledwith ink, so black and stagnant was the liquid it contained. Downyonder, through the branches, I saw, like patches, bits of theMediterranean gleaming so that they fairly dazzled my eyes. But myglance always returned to the immense somber well that appeared to beinhabited by no aquatic animals, so motionless was its surface.Suddenly a voice made me tremble. An old gentleman who was pickingflowers--this country is the richest in Europe for herbalists--asked me:"Are you a relation of those poor children, monsieur?"I looked at him in astonishment."What children, monsieur?"He seemed embarrassed and answered with a bow:"I beg your pardon. On seeing you sitting thus absorbed in front of thisreservoir I thought you were recalling the frightful tragedy thatoccurred here."Now I wanted to know about it, and I begged him to tell me the story.It is very dismal and very heart-rending, my dear friend, and verytrivial at the same time. It is a simple news item. I do not knowwhether to attribute my emotion to the dramatic manner in which the storywas told to me, to the setting of the mountains, to the contrast betweenthe joy of the sunlight and the flowers and this black, murderous hole,but my heart was wrung, all my nerves unstrung by this tale which,perhaps, may not appear so terribly harrowing to you as you read it inyour room without having the scene of the tragedy before your eyes.It was one spring in recent years. Two little boys frequently came toplay on the edge of this cistern while their tutor lay under a treereading a book. One warm afternoon a piercing cry awoke the tutor whowas dozing and the sound of splashing caused by something falling intothe water made him jump to his feet abruptly. The younger of thechildren, eight years of age, was shouting, as he stood beside thereservoir, the surface of which was stirred and eddying at the spot wherethe older boy had fallen in as he ran along the stone coping.Distracted, without waiting or stopping to think what was best to do, thetutor jumped into the black water and did not rise again, having struckhis head at the bottom of the cistern.At the same moment the young boy who had risen to the surface was wavinghis stretched-out arms toward his brother. The little fellow on land laydown full length, while the other tried to swim, to approach the wall,and presently the four little hands clasped each other, tightened in eachother's grasp, contracted as though they were fastened together. Theyboth felt the intense joy of an escape from death, a shudder at thedanger past.The older boy tried to climb up to the edge, but could not manage it, asthe wall was perpendicular, and his brother, who was too weak, wassliding slowly towards the hole.Then they remained motionless, filled anew with terror. And they waited.The little fellow squeezed his brother's hands with all his might andwept from nervousness as he repeated: "I cannot drag you out, I cannotdrag you out." And all at once he began to shout, "Help! Help!" But hislight voice scarcely penetrated beyond the dome of foliage above theirheads.They remained thus a long time, hours and hours, facing each other, thesetwo children, with one thought, one anguish of heart and the horribledread that one of them, exhausted, might let go the hands of the other.And they kept on calling, but all in vain.At length the older boy, who was shivering with cold, said to the littleone: "I cannot hold out any longer. I am going to fall. Good-by, littlebrother." And the other, gasping, replied: "Not yet, not yet, wait."Evening came on, the still evening with its stars mirrored in the water.The older lad, his endurance giving out, said: "Let go my hand, I amgoing to give you my watch." He had received it as a present a few daysbefore, and ever since it had been his chief amusement. He was able toget hold of it, and held it out to the little fellow who was sobbing andwho laid it down on the grass beside him.It was night now. The two unhappy beings, exhausted, had almost loosenedtheir grasp. The elder, at last, feeling that he was lost, murmured oncemore: "Good-by, little brother, kiss mamma and papa." And his numbedfingers relaxed their hold. He sank and did not rise again . . . .The little fellow, left alone, began to shout wildly: "Paul! Paul!" Butthe other did not come to the surface.Then he darted across the mountain, falling among the stones, overcome bythe most frightful anguish that can wring a child's heart, and with aface like death reached the sitting-room, where his parents were waiting.He became bewildered again as he led them to the gloomy reservoir. Hecould not find his way. At last he reached the spot. "It is there; yes,it is there!"But the cistern had to be emptied, and the proprietor would not permit itas he needed the water for his lemon trees.The two bodies were found, however, but not until the next day.You see, my dear friend, that this is a simple news item. But if you hadseen the hole itself your heart would have been wrung, as mine was, atthe thought of the agony of that child hanging to his brother's hands, ofthe long suspense of those little chaps who were accustomed only to laughand to play, and at the simple incident of the giving of the watch.I said to myself: "May Fate preserve me from ever receiving a similarrelic!" I know of nothing more terrible than such a recollectionconnected with a familiar object that one cannot dispose of. Only thinkof it; each time that he handles this sacred watch the survivor willpicture once more the horrible scene; the pool, the wall, the stillwater, and the distracted face of his brother-alive, and yet as lost asthough he were already dead. And all through his life, at any moment,the vision will be there, awakened the instant even the tip of his fingertouches his watch pocket.And I was sad until evening. I left the spot and kept on climbing,leaving the region of orange trees for the region of olive trees, and theregion of olive trees for the region of pines; then I came to a valley ofstones, and finally reached the ruins of an ancient castle, built, theysay, in the tenth century by a Saracen chief, a good man, who wasbaptized a Christian through love for a young girl. Everywhere around mewere mountains, and before me the sea, the sea with an almostimperceptible patch on it: Corsica, or, rather, the shadow of Corsica.But on the mountain summits, blood-red in the glow of the sunset, in theboundless sky and on the sea, in all this superb landscape that I hadcome here to admire I saw only two poor children, one lying prone on theedge of a hole filled with black water, the other submerged to his neck,their hands intertwined, weeping opposite each other, in despair.And it seemed as though I continually heard a weak, exhausted voicesaying: "Good-by, little brother, I am going to give you my watch."This letter may seem rather melancholy, dear friend. I will try to bemore cheerful some other day.

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