On one side was the ocean with its breakers foaming around the
lower rocks; on the other, the straight, unrelenting, impassive coast.
Tired and bewildered, we looked about us for some issue; but the cliff
stretched out before us, and the rocks, infinitely multiplying their
dark green forms, succeeded one another until their unequal crags seemed
like so many tall, black phantoms rising out of the earth.
We stumbled around in this way until we suddenly perceived an undulating
series of rough steps which enabled us to climb up to flat land again.
It is always a pleasure, even when the country is ugly, to walk with a
friend, to feel the grass under one's feet, to jump over fences and
ditches, to break thistles with one's stick, to pull leaves from the
bushes and wheat from the fields, to go where one's fancy dictates,
whistling, singing, talking, dreaming, without strange ears to listen to
one's conversation, and the sound of strange footsteps behind one, as
absolutely free as if one were in the desert!
Ah! Let us have air! air! And more space! Since our contracted souls
suffocate and die on the window-sill, since our captive spirits, like
the bear in its cage, turn around and around, and stagger against the
walls of their prison, why not, at least, let our nostrils breathe the
different perfumes of all the winds of the earth, why not let our eyes
rove over every horizon?
No steeple shone in the distance, no hamlet with thatched roofs and
square yards framed by clusters of trees, appeared on the side of a
hill; not a soul was to be seen, not even a peasant, a grazing sheep, or
a stray dog.
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