The Amouretta Landscape

I am sure that everyone, at least everyone who is anyone, truly knows in the bottom of their heart just what a _taupe_ is. But in case there is a person with such weighty world affairs on their mind that they cannot possibly set them aside to discover an insignificant matter like a _taupe_, I will say that a _taupe_ is a small furry thing that burrows in the ground. By no means an unfashionable creature, I assure you! Its color is always modish. Its skins, when collected by hundreds and thousands, go to make up what I am told are “among the most authoritative fur garments of the coming season.” In short, a _taupe_ is a mole, all told.

Also, I am reasonably certain that most of us, if we should stop to consider the subject, would understand perfectly the nature of a _limace_. A slimy, limy _limace_! Its very name tells its story. It is not exactly one of the “slithy toves” of the old song, but they may all have had similar ancestors. And if you have guessed that a _limace_ is a slug, poor thing—a big slug, no more and no less—you are entirely right. So there you have the two characters, the mole, the slug; the furry, fashionable _taupe_, the slippery yet sticky _limace_.

In the Bois de Meudon, on the most beautiful summer morning in the world, a _limace_ was lying curled up like a thick brown half-moon on a bright green leaf. In its sluggish way, it was flirting with the sunbeams. The _limace_ was in love with life and at peace with all the earth. So were the little Parisians who had come out from the city to make holiday. At first there were not many of them; only M. Petitpot, the kind, red-eyed mason from the rue Delambre; Mme. Petitpot with the baby, in his straw hat built like a life-preserver; the good grandmother, not ashamed of her white cap; and the boy Pierre Petitpot, in his newest black apron. There were also the two double-opening baskets for the luncheon. M. Petitpot himself carried the basket that had the bread and the salad, with the two bottles of red wine slanted in, one at each end.

But the grandmother kept fast hold of the smaller basket, because that one contained a truly magnificent roasted chicken, wrapped in a napkin. What an aroma, my friends! A picnic on the grass was contemplated. Messrs. Manet and Monet are not the only artists of the picnic on the grass.

Presently other Parisians came, from various quarters of the city and from various businesses. All were seeking a little Sunday happiness in the open. They were not really familiar with the secrets of the wood, as you shall see. But they had curiosity and discernment, and these two, keeping together, will go far toward finding knowledge. Unlike English people, these French persons chatted with each other, without mistrust. Also, they revealed the beauties of nature to each other. How dazzling and glorious were the clouds that day! The grocer’s lady pointed out to Mme. Petitpot that the good God must surely possess a giant egg-whisk, to be able to produce a meringue as colossal and light as those masses of cloud over there! And Mme. Petitpot had replied that eggs were better and cheaper, now that it was June, but that her own egg-beater had a kink in it, so that she was about to buy another.

Black-aproned Pierre was a pale, bright-eyed child with a bulging forehead, and hands that looked as if they wanted to play the piano or something. Easy to see that he was predestined for the paths of learning. _Per aspera ad astra_; the latter for Pierre, the former for his parents. Even for this one holiday, they had not been able to separate him from his new “Petit Atlas du Monde”; he hugged it so tightly that the crimson cover had already stained his hands, freshly washed that very morning. His delighted glance skipped like a bird from tree to bush. He nodded his head in smiling ecstasy when the grocer’s lady expressed that airy fantasy of hers as to the clouds.

But it was one of the later comers, a pink-sashed little girl from the Montrouge quarter, who first saw the _limace_, and shouted aloud in joyous fright. “What a droll beast! I beg of thee, Mamma, look at that!”

All the world pressed forward to inspect the _limace_. There were some who even had the hardihood to touch the creature with little sticks. “Hold, hold, my infant! Don’t touch it! Perhaps it is poisonous, eh? Ask thy papa whether it is venomous.”

By now, quite a little crowd had gathered. One would say, amateurs in snail-lore! Papa, not knowing in the least whether it was venomous or otherwise, preferred not to make any statement before the other Parisians, who, if the truth were discovered, were no better informed than he himself as to the nature of the thing there. Strange as it may seem, those Parisians were really less wise about the _limace_ than you and I are today! For not one of them really knew that all of them were looking at a _limace_. But they one and all wanted to talk about it, solo, fugue, and chorus; and they did not know how best to mention it. Now it is absurd to keep on calling a thing “the thing.” So at last someone asked aloud, as all had been asking within, “What is that, that that?”

Ah, if only M. J. Henri Fabre had been there, M. Fabre, the “insects’ Homer”! But M. Fabre was far away, and no one answered for him. There was a pause. Parisians hate a pause. The day had begun so joyous, and there they all were, pausing. Insupportable! A pretty lady with a primrose-colored parasol said that if it were a serpent, now, she would be able to tell you. She felt herself something of a connoisseur in serpents; there had been a serpent at the last picnic she had attended. The gentleman on whose arm she was leaning said, with emotion, “Ah, I can well believe that, Mademoiselle!” Then everybody laughed a merry “Hé, hé!” But all this graceful banter brought them no nearer to knowledge. Hence those who really thirsted for knowledge were glad when the white-capped grandmother Petitpot, with proud, beady eyes, pushed forward pale little Pierre with his bulging forehead.

In fine, our Pierre, a child well instructed, could inform those ladies.

Appalling yet entrancing moment for black-aproned Pierre! He clasped his thin little Atlas of the World against his stomach, and silently prayed for knowledge to descend upon him from on high. Then he looked earnestly down on the _limace_, to put himself in rapport with the creature in her underworld life.

A touch of rose pink bloomed a moment on his sallow cheek. “I think,” he said, in his eager, fluty voice of a born teacher’s favorite, “I think, yes, I believe well!—it’s a mole.” The very utterance of his faith created in him a faith more abundant. He nodded his head sagely, even boldly. “Ah, yes, Madame, without doubt, it’s a mole.”

Swiftly the words of the young scholar penetrated all the little groups of Parisians. A mole! Lady and gentleman, girl and boy, mason and grocer, one after the other took up that goodly revelation. “It’s a mole!” Some repeated it a little sadly, as if it were a mistake, or at least an indelicacy, on the part of the mole not to have been something else. Others repeated it with exquisite gayety, as if a mole were the one object of joy the world had waited for until then. Still others repeated it without passion and without surprise, as if a mole were no more than should have been expected at such a time. But in one way or another, they all repeated it. It’s a mole. Even those who had never had so much as a cornerwise glance at the _limace_ went their ways, saying, with a fine, discriminating wave of the hand, “a mole.”

Indeed, not having seen the _limace_, they were naturally far more confident than those who had really gone quite near to that brown half-moon on the green leaf, and touched it with twigs. The distribution of knowledge is a moving spectacle, is it not?

My friend who was beside me in that lovely wood, with the blue sky above the waving branches, and with the flower-like children springing up from the grass, and the autumn-leaf grandmothers walking abroad with baskets for the picnic, suddenly asked me why I was laughing like that, with the tears running down my cheeks.

“You do not know why!” I answered. “Oh, surely if you know anything at all, you must know! It is because I can see, at this moment, this same spectacle shaping itself everywhere on our planet; yes, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, on Capricornus and on Cancer, and even in the Equatorial belt where the lazy peoples live. Everywhere, everywhere on this round globe of ours, there is a poor _limace_ among the green leaves, and no one knows what she is; but everywhere there is a good old grandmother, pushing forward a pale little Pierre with a bay-window brow, to tell the world, ‘It’s a mole.’ And the world listens, and repeats, and so becomes wise.”

My friend, a sadly literal person, objected. It couldn’t be like that, among the Eskimos, in their igloos. And I had all I could do to prove that among the Eskimos, in their igloos, it was not only just like that, but more so. On the return boat for Paris, we were still arguing the question. The beady-eyed little grandmother had already helped to remove the life-preserving hat from the Petitpot baby. She continued to guard her basket, which now held only an aroma, and, please God, the carcass for the morrow’s soup. Black-aproned Pierre, with an unrelenting grip upon his Atlas of the World, laid his sleepy, knowledge-burdened head against her shoulder. Mme. Petitpot whispered over that head into the grandmother’s ear, and the grandmother nodded and smiled. The two were agreed that it was truly a miracle; in all that fine company, the boy was the only one who knew. Surely there was a future for this child, already so well instructed!

And with what agreeable courtesy he had said it, “Madame, it’s a mole!”

The women smiled, yet there was something sad and lofty in their smiling. For they knew that they were guarding between them a very precious vessel, and they prayed for strength equal to the honored task.

The evening breeze freshened sweetly; and in case that fabled Gallic monster, a draft, might come stalking through the boat, the grandmother spread a fold of her voluminous black skirt over Pierre’s bare knees.