CHAPTER IV.

FIRST ASPIRATION OF THE SEA.

It is a great and sudden transition to leave Paris in the beautiful month of June when the great city is resplendent with its magnificent gardens and its chestnut trees in bloom. June would be delightful on the coast if one had a single companion and the crowd had not arrived. But when one is alone on the deserted, with the great sea, we are touched with a sort of melancholy.

On a first visit to the coast the impression made is not very favorable. There is aridity, there is wildness, and yet there is a certain monotony. The novel grandeur of the spectacle makes us feel, by contrast, how weak and small we are, and that thought thrills the heart. The delicate chest that so lately was confined in a chamber, and now finds itself suddenly removed to this vast open chamber of the universe, with the sun shining so brightly and the sea breeze blowing so strongly, feels oppressed. The child comes, goes, and the mother sits down, shivering in the free fresh breeze. The warmth of the home she has but just left comes to her mind and she saddens. But her boy frolics gaily and that soon consoles her.

All this will soon pass away Madame. Be resolute; your impressions will be very different when you become better acquainted with the Sea and think of its myriads of inhabitants. And that painful constriction of the lungs will pass away too, when you become accustomed to the free atmosphere of the sea. You require time to accustom yourself to it, by and by, not thinking about it, as your boy plays with you in sheltered nooks, you will breathe freely and your chest will dilate without pain and without conscious effort. But, just at first, I advise you not to stay too long at a time on the beach, but rather to take your walk inland.

The land, your accustomed friend, recalls you. The pine woods rival the sea in healthful emanations; and theirs have less of harshness. They penetrate all our being, enter by every pore, modify and purify the blood, and perfume us with their subtle aroma. In the Landes behind the pine woods, the herbs and even the coarse grass on which you tread, yield perfumes not enervating or intoxicating as the dangerous roses, but agreeably bitter. Seat yourself among them and you, like them, will be sheltered by this slight slope of land. Might you not, now that you are thus sheltered, fancy yourself a hundred leagues from the sea? Drink in the sweet breathings, the pure spirits, the very soul of these wild flowers--that, in purity, are your very sisters. Gather them if you will, Madame; they ask for nothing better. Somewhat rude, perhaps, and yet so beautiful; and in their virginal perfume they have that singular mystery of calming and strengthening. Do not fear to hide them in your fair bosom and upon your beating heart.

Let us not forget that these sheltered landes are, at certain hours, burning hot. They so absorb and concentrate the rays of the sun. The weak woman is wilted there. The young girl, full of vigorous life, feels her pulses boiling and has redoubled power; her brain swims and she has strange and dangerous day dreams. If you wish to go there let it be on some moist and rather cloudy day; or, still better, rise at a very early hour when all is cool, when the wild thyme still keeps somewhat of its dew, and while the Hare is still abroad.

But let us return to the Ocean. At ebb-tide he manifests, and, in some sort, presents to you, the rich life that he nourishes. You must follow, step by step, the retiring waves, though the wet sand will sink some little beneath your feet. Fear not. The gentle wave will, at the most, kiss your feet. If you look closely you will perceive that the sand is not, as you at first thought it, dead, but is here and there moved by numerous lingerers that the ebb-tide has left behind. On certain beaches, small fish are thus hidden in the sand. At the mouth of the rivers the Eel's writhing movement, throws up the sand in mimic earthquakes. The Crab, too eagerly engaged in feeding, or fighting, has now to hasten back to the sea, and in his flight he leaves an odd mosaic, a zigzag line marking his oblique travel, and at the end of that line you will find him lying in wait for the coming in of the tide. The Solen (_Manche de Couteau_), that razor-shaped shell fish, has plunged deep into the sand, but betrays himself to you by the breathing holes that he has left. The Venus you can just as certainly trace by the fucus attached to its shell, but floating on the surface; and the undulations of the soil betray to you the covered ways of the warlike annelides, and viewing them with the aid of your microscope you will be charmed with the rainbows of their changing colors.

But the finest sights are caused at the first low ebb, which always follows the high Spring tide. At such ebbs, immense and unexplored spaces are left bare, and we can survey that mysterious bottom of the sea, on which we have so often speculated and dreamed. There you discover, in motion, in life, in all the secrecy of their retreats, astonished populations, which fancied themselves secure, and which rarely, if ever before, had been looked upon by the sun, and still more rarely by the eye of man. Be not alarmed, swarming populations of minute creatures, you are seen only by the inquisitive but compassionate eye of a woman; it is not the cruel and coarse hand of a fisherman that invades your retreat. But you ask, what does she want with you? Nothing but to see you, salute you, show you to her boy, and leave you in your natural element, and with every kindly wish for your health and prosperity. At times we need not wander far; at such times in a cleft of the rock, we may find every minute species, old Ocean having diverted himself with lodging a whole world of minute creatures within the space of a few square feet. We sit and we watch, and the longer and the more closely we watch, the more do we see of life, at first imperceptible. And so interested are we that we should sit there for an indefinite time, were we not chased to shore by that imperious master of the beach, the flood Tide.

But to-morrow, at ebb, she will return to the beach, that school, that Museum, that inexhaustible amusement for both mother and child. There the delicate and penetrating sense of woman and the tenderness of her heart seize and divine all. Maternity tells her all the secrets of increasing, diminishing, and recreating life. Do you ask why her instinct so quickly reveals creation to her; why she enters as one so thoroughly at home, into the great mystery of Nature? It is because she is Nature herself.

In the depths of the unctuous waters the small algæ, small, but unctuous and nourishing, and other little plants of delicate and pretty figures, form a miniature prairie which is browsed by a vast herd of molluscæ, Limpets, Whelks, and a hundred other species, watch, wait, feed, there, and to-morrow you will find them there still. But do you therefore suppose that they are utterly inert? That they have no confused idea of Love and the Unknown? Of some benevolent thing which at certain hours returns to refresh and nourish them? Oh yes, they both think of it and expect it; those widows of the great Ocean well know that he will return to caress the earth. Anticipatively they look towards the Ocean, and even those which have a fixed abode, turn from the rock and open their shells towards the incoming tide. And if it come in somewhat strongly they are all the more delighted; too happy to hail that living wave that advances so strongly, as in haste to caress them.

"See my child" says the young mother, "at our approach the motionless ones remain, but the quicker have fled. Now see, they take courage again. The active shrimp, with its fine feelers, rainbowed by the water, creates a great commotion in that mimic and miniature sea, and the slow and hesitating sea spider, at once timid and daring, saves herself by ascending to the warm surface, and the crab advancing and surveying, suddenly returns into his miniature forest of sea weed.

"But what do I see now? What _is_ that? A large, motionless shell suddenly takes life, and moves. Oh, but that is not natural, and the impostor betrays himself by his awkward gait and his many stumbles. Yes, yes, we detect you now, you most cunning of all cunning crabs, Sir Bernard the Hermit, who would fain pass yourself off for an innocent mollusc! Your bad conscience agitates you too much."

On the shore of our ocean, strangers to these movements, the animated flowers expand their corollæ. Near to the heavy anemone those charming little annelides appear in the sunlight. From a tortuous tube rises a disc, an umbrella, white or lilac, sometimes flesh color. Thrown, itself, a little on one side, it casts off from itself an object which has nothing comparable to it in the whole vegetable world. Not one of these is like its sister, and all are admirable for their velvety delicacy.

See one of them, without umbrella, which throws off a whole cloud of light cottony threads, scarcely tinted with a silver grey, while five longer filets are of the richest cherry color. They wave, they entwine, they untwist, and their silvery heads form beautiful images in the water. To the coarse senses of man, such a sight as that would suggest no serious thought; but to the nervous and delicate woman, it is much. At those colors, by turns flashing and fading, she reflects on her own young life that now flashes, now fades, and now threatens to expire. Affecting thought! Again she looks into the pretty miniature Ocean of a few feet square, and there she better discerns Nature, the fertile mother, but the stern mother too.

And our fair patient is plunged into an oppressive reverie. Woman would cease to be woman, that is to say, the charm of the world, if she had not that touching gift of _Tenderness for everything that lives_; _pity, and loving tears_.

She has not wept as yet, our fair patient, but she has been so near to doing so! Her boy perceives it. Being already attentive and quick, he remains silent; and, silently they return. That was the amiable first day when she first began to spell with her heart the language of Nature. And at her very first lesson that language had so stirred the tenderness of that poor heart! The daylight was dying, the sea bird, on rapid wing, approached the shore and sought his nest. And as our patient and her boy entered their already dark garden, the cry of the night bird was heard. But the aviary was well closed, and the innocent little refugees within were asleep with heads under wings. Having herself seen that all was thus safe, she relieved her heart with a sigh, and embraced her son.