My Twenty-Five Days
I had just taken possession of my room in the hotel—a narrow slip between two papered partitions through which I could hear everything my neighbours were doing—and was arranging my clothes in the wardrobe when I opened the middle drawer and noticed a roll of paper. I straightened it out and read the title:
My Twenty-Five Days.
It was the diary of a visitor at the watering-place, of the last occupant of my cabin-like room, forgotten at the last moment.
These notes may be of interest to the wise and healthy who never leave their homes. It is for their benefit that I am making this copy without altering a single line.
Châtel-Guyon, 15 July.
At the first glance this country is not gay. However, I am going to spend twenty-five days here for the good of my stomach and my liver, and to get thinner. The twenty-five days of anyone who takes the waters are very like the twenty-eight days of the reservist; they are spent entirely in drudgery, and at its worst. I have done nothing today except settle down, meet the doctor, and look around. Châtel-Guyon consists of a stream of yellow water flowing between several low hills dotted about with a casino, houses, and stone crosses.
On the bank of the stream at the end of the valley there is a square building with a small garden; this is the Bathing Establishment round which sad-faced beings—the sick—wander. A great silence reigns in the walks shaded by trees, for this is not a pleasure resort, but a real health centre where you make a business of taking care of yourself, and you get cured, so it seems.
Those who know even affirm that the mineral waters work miracles, but no votive offerings hang in the cashier’s office.
Occasionally men and women go up to the slate-covered pavilion which shelters a sweet, smiling woman, and where a spring bubbles in a cement basin. No words are exchanged between the invalid and the custodian of the healing water. The latter hands a little glass in which air bubbles sparkle in the transparent liquid, to the visitor, who drinks and departs with solemn steps to resume the interrupted walk under the trees.
There is no sound in the little park, no breath of air in the leaves, no voice passing through the silence. A notice should be put up: “No one ever laughs here, care of the health is the only diversion.” Those who do talk look like the dumb who move their lips in imitation of speech, for they are afraid of allowing their voices to be heard.
In the hotel the same silence reigns. It is a big hotel where you dine solemnly between well-bred folk who have nothing to say to each other. Their manners show good breeding, and their faces reflect the conviction of a superiority that it would perhaps be difficult for some of them to justify.
At two o’clock I go up to the Casino, a little wood hut perched on a hillock reached by a goat path, the view from which is magnificent. Châtel-Guyon is situated in a very narrow valley right between the plain and the mountain. To the left I can see the first big rolling waves of the mountain-range of Auvergne covered with trees, and extensive grey patches dotted about here and there: hard masses of lava, for we lie at the foot of the old volcanic craters. To the right through the narrow cut of the valley I can see a plain vast as the sea, bathed in a bluish mist that leaves one to guess at the presence of villages, towns, fields gold with ripe corn, and the green stretches of meadow-land lying in the shadow of apple trees. It is Limagne, an immense fertile plain always enveloped in a light mist.
Night has fallen, and after dining alone I am writing this beside the open window. From the other side of the road I can hear the little orchestra of the casino playing tunes like a stupid bird singing its lonely song in the desert.
Now and then I hear a dog bark. The great stillness does one good. Good night.
16 July.—Nothing. I took a bath and after that a shower-bath. I drank three glasses of water and I have tramped the paths in the park, allowing fifteen minutes between each glass and half an hour after the last. I have begun my twenty-five days.
17 July.—I noticed two pretty women who take their baths and their meals when all the others have finished.
18 July.—Nothing.
19 July.—Again saw the two pretty women. They have style and an indescribable air that fills me with pleasure.
20 July.—Long walk in a charming, wooded valley as far as the Hermitage of Sans-Souci. The country is delightful although melancholy; it is so peaceful, so sweet, so green. On the mountain roads you meet narrow wagons laden with hay, slowly drawn by two cows or curbed with great difficulty by their heads, which are yoked together, when going down the slopes. A man wearing a big black hat leads them with a thin stick by tapping either their flanks or their heads; and often with a simple, energetic, grave gesture he brings them to a halt when the over-heavy load pushes them down the very steep slopes.
The air is refreshing in these valleys and when it is very hot the dust has a faint, vague odour of vanilla and cow-byres, for so many cows are pastured on these routes that you are reminded of their presence all the time; and this odour is a perfume, whereas it would be a stench if it came from any other animal.
21 July.—Excursion to the valley of Enval, a narrow gorge enclosed between superb rocks at the foot of the mountain, with a stream running in and out of the piles of stones.
As I was reaching the bottom of the ravine I heard women’s voices, and caught sight of the two mysterious ladies of the hotel, seated on a boulder, talking.
It seemed a good opportunity, so I introduced myself without hesitation. My advances were received quite naturally and we returned together to the hotel. We talked about Paris; apparently they know many people I know too. Who can they be?
I shall see them again tomorrow. There is nothing more amusing than such meetings.
22 July.—Spent nearly the whole day with the two unknown. They are, indeed, very pretty, the one dark, the other fair. They say they are widows. H’m?—I suggested taking them to Royat tomorrow and they have accepted the invitation.
Châtel-Guyon is not so melancholy as I thought when I arrived.
23 July.—Spent the day at Royat. Royat is a collection of hotels at the bottom of a valley near to Clermont-Ferrand. Lots of people. A big park full of life. A superb view of the Puy-de-Dôme seen at the end of a series of valleys.
My companions attract a great deal of attention, which is flattering to me. The man who escorts a pretty woman thinks he is crowned with a halo, all the more so, then, when he is accompanied by two pretty women. Nothing is so pleasant as to dine in a well-frequented restaurant with a woman friend that everybody stares at, besides which nothing is more likely to raise a man in the estimation of his neighbours.
To drive in the Bois behind a broken-down horse or to walk in the Boulevard accompanied by a plain woman are the two most humiliating things in life to anyone sensitive about public opinion. Of all luxuries, woman is the rarest and the most distinguished, the one that costs the most and that is the most envied; therefore the one that we prefer to exhibit to the eyes of a jealous world.
To appear in public with a pretty woman on your arm arouses all the jealousy of which man is capable; it means: see, I am rich because I possess this rare and costly object; I have taste because I discovered this pearl; I may even be loved by her—that is to say, if she is not deceiving me, which, after all, would only prove that others consider her charming, too.
But what a disgrace to be seen with an ugly woman!
How much humiliation it implies!
On principle she is supposed to be your wife, for you can’t admit that you have an ugly mistress? A real wife may be ill-favoured but her ugliness is the cause of all kinds of disagreeable incidents. To begin with, you are taken for a notary or a magistrate, the two professions that hold the monopoly of grotesque, well-dowered wives. Well, is that not painful for a man? Besides, it seems like shouting aloud that you have the appalling courage, and even are under legal obligation, to caress that ridiculous face and that misshapen body, and that doubtless you will be so lost to shame as to make this undesirable being a mother—which is the very height of absurdity.
24 July.—I never leave the two unknown widows, whom I am beginning to know quite well. This country is delightful and our hotel is excellent. A good season. The treatment is doing me an immense amount of good.
25 July.—Drove in a landau to the Lake of Tazenat. An unexpected, exquisite treat, decided upon at lunch. Hurried departure on leaving the table. After a long drive through the mountains we suddenly caught sight of a lovely little lake—very round and very blue, as clear as glass—tucked away at the bottom of an extinct crater. One side of this immense basin is arid, the other is wooded. There is a little house surrounded by trees, where a man lives who is both lively and kind: a wise soul who spends his life in this Virgilian spot. He made us welcome. An idea came into my head, and I exclaimed:
“Supposing we bathe!”
“Yes—but—what about costumes?”
“Bah! We are in the desert.” So we bathed—!
If I were a poet I would describe the unforgettable vision of the two young, naked bodies in the transparent water. The shelving, upright cliff enclosed the still waters of the lake, round and shining like a silver coin; the sun poured into it a flood of warm light, and by the rocks the blonde swimmers glided about apparently suspended in the air, by the hardly visible waves. Their movements were reflected on the sand at the bottom of the lake.
26 July.—Some of the people seem to regard my rapid friendship with the two widows with disapproval and condemnation! There are evidently people so constituted that they think the right thing in life is to be bored. Everything that appears amusing at once becomes either a breach of good manners or of morality. For them duty is subject to rigid and deadly gloomy rules.
I would like to point out with all humility that the standard of duty differs for the Mormons, Arabs, Zulus, Turks, the English or the French, and that good people are to be found amongst them all.
I will give an example. In regard to women, a sense of duty is developed at the age of nine in England, whereas in France it does not exist until the age of fifteen. As for me, I take a little from each country, the result being on the lines of the teaching of the saintly King Solomon.
27 July.—Good news. I have lost over a pound in weight. Excellent, this Châtel-Guyon water! I am taking the widows to dine at Riom, a melancholy town whose anagram makes it an undesirable neighbour to healing springs: Riom, Mori.
28 July.—Crash! Bang! Two men have come to fetch my two widows. Two widowers, of course.—They are leaving this evening, they wrote to tell me.
29 July.—Alone! Long excursion on foot to the extinct crater of Nachère. Superb view.
30 July.—Nothing. Am following the treatment.
31 July. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.
This beautiful country is full of disgusting streams. I am drawing the careless town council’s attention to the abominable sewer which poisons the road in front of the hotel. All the kitchen refuse of this place is thrown into it. It makes a good breeding-ground for cholera.
1 August.—Nothing. Treatment.
2 August. Lovely walk to Châteauneuf, centre for rheumatic patients where everybody is lame. Nothing could be funnier than this population of people on crutches.
3 August.—Nothing. Treatment.
4 August.—Ditto. Ditto.
5 August.—Ditto. Ditto.
6 August.—Despair!—I have just been weighed and have put on over half a pound. Well; what then?—
7 August.—Over sixty-six miles’ drive in the mountains. I won’t mention the name of the country out of respect for its women.
This excursion had been suggested to me as beautiful and uncommon. I reached a rather pretty village on the bank of a river, surrounded by a lovely wood of walnut-trees after a four hours’ drive. Hitherto I had never seen so extensive a walnut forest in Auvergne. Moreover, it constitutes all the wealth of the district, for it is planted on common land. Formerly this land was nothing but a bare hillside covered with brushwood. The authorities tried in vain to get it cultivated; it barely sufficed to feed a few sheep.
Today it is a superb wood, thanks to the women, and has a curious name: it is called “The Sins of the Curé.”
It must be acknowledged that the women of this mountain district have the reputation of being loose in character, more so than those of the plain. A boy who meets one anywhere owes her at least one kiss and if he does not take more he is a fool.
To be quite frank, this is the only reasonable and logical way of approaching the question. Since it is recognised that woman’s natural mission is to please man—whether the woman be town or countrybred—the least man can do is to show her that she does please him. If he refrains from any display of feeling, it means that he considers her ugly, which amounts to an insult. If I were a woman I would never receive a man a second time who had not been wanting in respect at the first meeting; I would consider that he had failed to appreciate my beauty, my charm, my essential womanhood.
So the bachelors of the village X often proved to the women of the district that they found them to their taste, and the curé, who could not succeed in preventing these gallant and perfectly natural demonstrations, decided to turn them to some profit. So every woman who made a slip had to do penance by planting a walnut on the common land, and, night after night, lanterns might be seen twinkling on the hillside like will-o’-the-wisps; for the guilty were not anxious to make atonement in broad daylight.
In two years’ time there was no more room on the land belonging to the village, and there are now said to be over three thousand magnificent trees whose foliage conceals the belfry that calls the faithful to prayer and praise. These are “The Sins of the Curé.”
A way to reafforest France has been sought for so eagerly that the Administration of Forests might come to an understanding with the clergy and use the simple method invented by this humble curé.
7 August.—Treatment.
8 August.—I am packing up and bidding farewell to this charming spot, so peaceful and silent, to the green mountain, the quiet valleys, the deserted casino from whence you can see the immense plain of Limagne, always veiled in its light, bluish mist. I shall leave tomorrow.
There the manuscript stopped. I will add nothing to it, my impressions of the country not being quite the same as my predecessor’s; for I did not find the two widows there!