THE EARTH is a charming mother; we issue from her womb; in our infancy, she holds us to her breasts swollen with milk and honey; in our youth and maturity, she lavishes us with her cool waters, her harvests, and her fruits; everywhere, she offers us shade, a bath, a table, and a bed; at our death, she opens her entrails to us once again, and throws a blanket of grass and flowers over our grave, silently transforming us into her own substance, only to reproduce us in some new and graceful form. That is what I said to myself when I woke and blinked my eyes at the sky, the canopy of my bed.
The hunters had set out to do the day’s work, and I was left behind with the women and children. I did not stray from my two sylvan goddesses: the one was proud, the other melancholy. I understood not a word of what either of them said to me, but I went to fetch water for their cups, twigs for their fire, and mosses for their bed. They wore the short petticoat and wide slashed sleeves of the Spanish woman, the bodice and the cloak of the Indian. Their bare legs were laced in latticed birch bark. They threaded garlands of flowers and rushes through their hair and strung chains and glass necklaces around their necks. They wore crimson berries as earrings and possessed a pretty talking parrot, bird of Armida, that they set on their shoulder like an emerald, or hooded and carried on their hand, as the grandes dames of the tenth century carried their hawks. To firm their breasts and arms, they rubbed themselves with apoya or supplejack. In Bengal, the bayadères chew betel; in the Levant, the almes suck the mastic of Chios; the Floridians crushed, between their bluish-white teeth, the blades of liquidambar and the roots of libanis, which mingled the fragrances of angelica, cedrat, and vanilla: they lived in an atmosphere of scents that they themselves exuded, as orange trees and flowers live in the pure exhalations of their leaves and calyxes. I amused myself by placing small trinkets in their hair, and, sweetly scared, they submitted. Being magicians, they believed I was casting a spell over them. One of them, the proud one, often prayed; she seemed to be half Christian. The other sang songs in a velvety voice, ending every phrase with an unsettling cry. Sometimes they spoke sharply to one another, and I thought I could detect the accents of jealousy; but then the sad one wept, and silence returned.
Weak as I was, I sought examples of weakness to embolden myself. Hadn’t Camões, in the Indies, fallen in love with a black Barbary slave? Couldn’t I, in America, offer homage to two young jonquil sultanas? Camões, after all, had addressed a few endechas, or stanzas, to his barbara escrava:
Aquella captiva,
Que me tem captivo,
Porque nella vivo,
Já naõ quer que viva.
Eu nunqua vi rosa
Em soaves mólhos,
Que para meus olhos
Fosse mais formosa.
. . . . . . . . .
Pretidaõ de amor,
Taõ doce a figura,
Que a neve lhe jura
Que trocára a cõr.
Léda mansidaõ,
Que o siso acompanha:
Bem parece estranha,
Mas Barbara naõ.
“This captive who holds me captive, because I live in her, does not spare my life. Never has a rose, not even in the sweetest bouquet, been more charming to my eyes. . . . Oh, seductress: her face is so sweet the snow wants to change its color for her; her gaiety walks hand in hand with restraint. She is a foreigner, but a barbarian, no.”
A fishing party was arranged. The sun had almost set. In the foreground, there were sassafras, tulip trees, catalpas, and oaks whose boughs held long skeins of white moss. Beyond this foreground rose the most charming of trees, the papaya, which might have been taken for a column of chased silver topped with a Corinthian urn. The background was dominated by balsams, magnolias, and liquidambars.
The sun sank behind this curtain. A ray glided across the dome of a thicket, sparkling like a carbuncle set in the dark foliage, and the light, fractured by the trees and branches, projected crescent columns and shifting arabesques on the grass. Below were lilac bushes, azaleas, and bindweed in gigantic bunches; above were clouds like promontories or ancient towers, others floating past like pink smoke or carded silk. Transformations followed one after another; furnaces heaped with glowing embers turned into a flowing river of lava: everything was dazzling, radiant, gilded, opulent, and saturated with light.
After the Morean insurrection in 1770, Greek families sought refuge in Florida, where they could still believe themselves in their old Ionian climate, which seems to have softened, like men’s passions: at Smyrna in the evening, nature sleeps like a courtesan worn out by love.
To our right were the ruins of one of those enormous fortifications found along the Ohio; to our left was what had formerly been an Indian camp. The island where we sat, reflected in the water and reproduced by a mirage, flung its doubled image before us. To the east, the moon was resting on the distant hills; to the west, the vault of the sky had melted into a sea of diamonds and sapphires in which the half-drowned sun seemed to be dissolving. All the animals of creation kept watch, and the earth, in an act of adoration, appeared to scatter her incense in the sky. The ambergris she exhaled would soon fall back to her as dew, as prayers return upon the heads of the one who prays.
Abandoned by my companions, I rested alone at the edge of a clump of trees: their shadows, glazed with light, formed the penumbra in which I sat. Fireflies shone among the dark shrubs and were eclipsed as they passed through the irradiations of the moon. I heard the ebb and flow of the lake, the leap of the goldfish, and the rare cry of the wild duck. My gaze fixed upon the rippled surface of the water, and I slipped little by little into that drowsiness familiar to all men who travel the roads of this world. No distinct memory remains with me. I felt myself living and vegetating with nature in a sort of pantheistic stupor. I leaned my back against the trunk of a magnolia and went to sleep. My slumber floated on a vague sea of hope.
When I emerged from this Lethe, I found myself between two women. The odalisques had returned. They had not wanted to wake me and had sat down in silence by my side. Either feigning sleep or truly dozing, their heads had fallen on my shoulders.
A breeze traveled through the grove and showered us with a rain of magnolia petals. Then the younger of the Seminoles began to sing. Let he who is unsure of himself keep far from such temptations! One never knows what passion steals into man’s heart with a song. To this voice, a rough and jealous voice replied: a “Burntwood” was calling to the two cousins, who shuddered and stood. Dawn was beginning to break.
I have since reexperienced this scene, though without Aspasia, on the shores of Greece. Climbing to the columns of the Parthenon at dawn, I have seen Mount Cythera, Mount Hymetus, the Acropolis of Corinth, the tombs, and the ruins bathed in a dewy golden light, transparent, scintillant, reflected by the seas, and diffused like a perfume by the zephyrs of Salamis and Delos.
We brought our wordless journey to a close on shore. At midday, the traders struck camp to go inspect the horses that the Creeks wanted to sell and that they wanted to buy. All the women and children were assembled, according to custom, to witness these solemn transactions. Stallions of every age and every color, foals and mares together with bulls, cows, and heifers, began to sprint and gallop around us. In this confusion, I was separated from the Creeks. A thick group of horses and men massed at the edge of the woods. Suddenly, I caught sight of my two Floridians in the distance. Vigorous hands were pushing them up onto the cruppers of two Barbary mares ridden bareback by a “Burntwood” and a Seminole. O Cid! If only I’d had your swift Babieca to chase after them! The mares gallop away, and the immense squadron follows after them. Now the horses kick, rear, bound, and neigh among the clashing horns of bulls and buffalo, their hoofs smacking midair, their bloody tails and manes flying. A maelstrom of terrible insects envelops the globe of this wild cavalry. My Floridians disappeared like Ceres’ daughter, spirited away by the god of the underworld.
So it is that everything proves abortive in my story, and nothing is left to me but pictures of what has passed so swiftly by: I shall go down to the Elysian Fields with more shades than any man has ever brought with him. The fault lies in my character. I do not know how to profit from any kind of fortune, and I am uninterested in what may be interesting to others. Outside of religion, I have no beliefs. Were I a shepherd or a king, what would I do with my scepter or my crook? I would tire of glory and genius, work and leisure, prosperity and misfortune alike. Everything wearies me: I haul my boredom through my days like a chain, and everywhere I go I yawn away my life.