When I Awoke For The Third Time
(Wednesday, September 25th), The World Was Flooded With A Blue Light, The
Mother Of The Dawn.
I saw the leaves labouring in the wind and the
ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modestine tied to
a beech, and standing half across the path in an attitude of inimitable
patience.
I closed my eyes again, and set to thinking over the
experience of the night. I was surprised to find how easy and pleasant
it had been, even in this tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed
me would not have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in
the opaque night; and I had felt no other inconvenience, except when my
feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat's Pastors of
the Desert among the mixed contents of my sleeping-bag; nay, more, I had
felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and clear
sensations.
With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and gaiters, and,
breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, strolled about to see in
what part of the world I had awakened. Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with
a mind unsettled by the goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have
been after an adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such
as befell early and heroic voyagers; and thus to be found by morning in a
random woodside nook in Gevaudan - not knowing north from south, as
strange to my surroundings as the first man upon the earth, an inland
castaway - was to find a fraction of my day-dreams realised.
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