At his age can one really know his desires?”

 

“Oh! Even much later one does not always know them,” she finally said, bizarrely.

 

Her puzzling and sententious tone irritated me, because I am by nature very frank and open, and I don’t take easily to mystery. Turning myself towards her, I asked her to explain what she was insinuating by that.

 

“Nothing, my friend,” she said sadly. “I was only thinking that sometimes you are wishing that you be advised of what you had not noticed.”

 

“And so?”

 

“And so I was saying that it is not always easy to advise.”

 

I told her that I was horrified by mystery, and did not appreciate double meanings.

 

“When you want me to understand you, make an effort to express yourself more clearly,” I replied, in a manner that was a bit brutal and which I regretted right away, for I saw her lips tremble in an instant. She turned her head and then, getting up, made several hesitant steps as if she was faltering in the room.

 

“But Amélie,” I cried out, “why do you continue to be so upset now that everything has been resolved?”

 

I felt that my look was bothering her, and with her back turned and putting my elbows on the table with my head leaning against my hand, I said to her,

 

“I spoke to you harshly a little while ago. Pardon me.”

 

Then I heard her approaching me, and I felt her fingers softly placed on my forehead while she said in a tender voice that was full of tears,

 

“My poor friend!”

 

And then she suddenly left the room.

 

These words of Amélie seemed mysterious at that time, but they would become clear to me later. I am reporting them such as they appeared to me then, and that day I only understood that it was time for Gertrude to leave.

12 March

 

I dedicated a little time to Gertrude each day. It would be several hours or several minutes, depending on my daily occupations. The day after I had this conversation with Amélie, I was relatively free, and the good weather invited Gertrude and I to take a walk through the forest. We went up to the decline in the Jura which is dominated by the immense countryside. When the weather is clear, through the curtain of branches, one discovers a marvelous view of the white Alps sitting above a light cloud of mist. The sun was going down already on our left when we arrived at the spot where we normally sat down. A prairie of grass, which was mowed but at the same time still thick, descended at our feet. Farther down some cows were in pasture, and each one of them in this mountain herd carried a bell around its neck.

 

“They draw the countryside,” said Gertrude while listening to their ringing.

 

She asked me, as she did on every walk we took, to describe for her the spot where we had stopped.

 

“But,” I said to her, “you already know it. This is the edge where we see the Alps.”

 

“Do you see them well today?”

 

“Today you see them in all of their splendor.”

 

“You have told me that they are a little different every day.”

 

“To what should I compare them today? To the thirst of a fine summer day. Before this evening they will have succeeded in dissolving into the air.”

 

“I want you to tell me if there are lilies in the big prairie in front of us?”

 

“No, Gertrude, lilies do not grow at these elevations, or only several rare species.”

 

“Not those that are called the lilies of the fields?”

 

“There are no lilies in these fields.”

 

“Even in the fields around Neuchâtel?”

 

“There are no lilies of the fields.”

 

“Then why did God say to us, ‘Look at the lilies of the fields’?”

 

“There must have been some in his time for him to have said that, but the cultures of men have made them disappear.”

 

“I recall that you often said to me that the biggest needs of this earth are confidence and love. Do you not think that with a little more confidence, man would see them again? When I say these words to you, I assure you that I see them. Would you like me to describe them? They look like bells of flames, large azure bells, filled with the perfume of love and balancing on the evening breeze. Why do you say that there are none of them in front of us? I smell them! I see the prairie full of them.”

 

“They are not more beautiful than you see them, my Gertrude.”

 

“Say that they are not less beautiful.”

 

“They are as beautiful as you see them.”

 

“And I say to you in truth that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of them,” she said, citing the words of Christ. And listening to her melodious voice it seemed to me that I was hearing these words for the first time. “In all his glory,” she repeated pensively, then she remained silent for a time, and I continued,

 

“I have said to you before, Gertrude, those who have eyes do not know how to see.” And from the bottom of my heart I heard this prayer, “I thank you, O God, for revealing to the humble what you hide from the intelligent!”

 

“If you only knew,” she then cried in a playful exultation, “if you could only know how easily I imagine all this. Here! Do you want me to describe the countryside to you? Behind, above and around us are large pines, with the taste of resin, with granite trunks and long dark horizontal branches that complain when the wind bends them. At our feet, like an open book, inclined on the desk of the mountain, is the large green, diapered prairie which looks blue in the shadows and gold in the sunlight and whose distinct words are the flowers, the gentians, the pasque flowers, the buttercups, and the beautiful lilies of Solomon, that the cows come to spell with their bells and where the angels come to read, since you say that the eyes of man are closed. At the bottom of the book, I see a large river of smoking milk, misty, covering a mysterious abyss, without any other bank but over there, far from us, the beautiful blooming Alps. That is where Jacques must go. Tell me, is it true that he is leaving tomorrow?”

 

“He must leave tomorrow. Did he tell you?”

 

“He did not tell me, but I understood it. Will he be gone for a long time?”

 

“One month. Gertrude, I wanted to ask you, why did you not tell me that he came to the church to be with you?”

 

“He only came there two times. Oh! I do not want to hide anything from you! But I was afraid of causing you pain.”

 

“You do that by not telling me about it.”

 

Her hand reached for mine. “He was sad to leave.”

 

“Tell me, Gertrude, did he tell you that he loved you?”

 

“He did not say that, but I felt it without him telling me.