The Dutchman, named Janssen, led Croniamantal to the region of Aix, where there was a house which the people of the neighborhood called le Chateau. Le Chateau had nothing lordly about it other than its name and was nothing but a vast domicile having a dairy and a stable. Mr. Janssen possessed a modest income and lived alone in this dwelling which he had bought in order to live in solitude, a suddenly broken off betrothal having rendered him rather hypochondriac. He devoted all his energies now to the education of the son of Macarée and Vierselin Tigoboth: Croniamantal, heir of the old name of des Ygrées.
The Dutchman, Janssen, had travelled much. He spoke all the languages of Europe, Arabian, and Turkish, not to mention Hebrew and other dead languages. His speech was as clear as his blue eyes. He soon made the friendship of several scholars of Aix whom he would visit from time to time and he corresponded with many foreign scientists.
When Croniamantal was six years of age, Mr. Janssen would often take him to the country. Croniamantal came to love these lessons along the paths of wooded hills. Mr. Janssen would often stop and show Croniamantal the birds hopping about or butterflies pursuing each other and fluttering together among the wild rose-bushes. He would say that love reigned over all of Nature. They would also go out on moonlit nights and the master would explain to his pupil the hidden destinies of the heavenly bodies, their regular course, and their effects upon the life of man.
Croniamantal never forgot how one moonlit night his master led him to a field at the edge of a forest; the grass bubbled with milky light. Fireflies fluttered around them; their phosphorescent and jagged lights gave the site a strange aspect. The master called the attention of his disciple to the sweetness of this May night.
"Learn," he said, "learn to know all of Nature and to love her. Let her be your veritable nurse, whose salutary mammals are the moon and the hills."
Croniamantal was thirteen years of age at this time and his mind was quite ripe. He listened attentively to Mr. Janssen's words.
"I have always lived in her, but I must say, lived badly, for one should not live without human love as companion. Do not forget that all is a sign of love in Nature. I, alas! am damned for not having observed this law whose demands nothing can withstand."
"What," said Croniamantal, "you, my teacher, who know so many sciences did not recognize this law which every country lout and even the animals, the vegetables, and inert matter observe?"
"Happy child who at your age can put such questions!" said Mr. Janssen. "I have always known that law, from which no human being should rebel. But there are some luckless men destined never to know the joys of love. That often happens to poets and scientists. Their souls are vagabond; I am always conscious of existences preceding my own. This knowledge has never stirred any but the sterile bodies of scientists. (You should not be astonished in the least at what I say.) Whole races respect animals and proclaim the principle of metempsychosis, a most worthy belief, self-evident but fantastical, since it takes no account of lost forms and of their inevitable dispersion. Their worship should have extended to the vegetable kingdom and to minerals. For what is the dust of roads but the ashes of the dead? It is true that the Ancients did not concede life to inert matter. But rabbis believed that the same soul inhabited the body of Adam, Moses and David. In fact, the name, Adam, is composed in Hebrew of the letters Aleph, Daleth and Mem, the first letters of the three names. Your soul like mine, inhabited other human forms, other animals, or was dispersed and will continue so after your death, since all things must serve again. For perhaps there is nothing new any more, and creation has ceased, perhaps... I affirm that I have not desired love, but I swear that I would not begin such a life over again. I have mortified my flesh and suffered severe punishment. I should like your life to be happy."
Croniamantal's master made him devote most of his time to the sciences, keeping him au courant with all recent inventions. He also instructed the boy in Latin and Greek. They often read the Eclogues of Virgil or translated Theocritus in an olive grove. Croniamantal had learned a very pure French, but his master taught him in Latin. He also taught him Italian, and at an early age Croniamantal received the poems of Petrarch, who became one of his favorite poets. Mr. Janssen also taught Croniamantal English, and made him familiar with Shakespeare. Above all he gave the boy a taste for old French authors. Among the French poets he admired chiefly Villon, Ronsard and his pléiade, Racine and La Fontaine. He also made him read translations of Cervantes and of Goethe. On his advice, Croniamantal read the romances of chivalry which might have made part of the library of Don Quixote. They developed in Croniamantal an unquenchable thirst for experiment and perilous love adventures; he devoted himself to fencing and to horseback riding; at the age of fifteen he declared to anyone who came to visit them that he had decided to become a celebrated and peerless cavalier, and already he dreamed of a mistress.
Croniamantal was, at this time, a handsome youth, thin and straight. The girls at the village fêtes, when he touched them lightly, would stifle little bursts of laughter and redden, lowering their eyes under his regard. Habituated to poetic forms, his mind thought of love as a conquest. Thoughts of Boccacio, his natural daring, his education, everything disposed him to take the final step.
One May day, he went out for a long ride. It was morning, everything was still fresh. The dew hung from the flowers of the hedges, and on either side of the road stretched the fields of olive trees whose gray leaves trembled gently in the sea breeze and compared agreeably with the blue sky. He arrived at a place where the road was being mended. The road menders, handsome boys in bright colored caps, worked lazily, singing the while, and stoppi............