I
I had not returned to Virelogne for fifteen years. I went back there to hunt in the autumn, staying with my friend Serval, who had finally rebuilt his château, which had been destroyed by the Prussians.
I was infinitely fond of that country. There are delicious corners in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We folk whom nature attracts, keep certain tender recollections, often keen, for certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have touched us like happy events. Sometimes even memory returns toward a forest nook, or a bit of a river bank, or a blossoming orchard, seen only once, on some happy day, which has remained in our heart like those pictures of women seen in the street, on a spring morning, with a white, transparent costume, and which leave in our soul and flesh an unappeased, unforgetable desire, the sensation of having just missed happiness.
At Virelogne, I loved the whole region, sowed with little woods, and traversed by brooks which ran through the soil like veins bringing blood to the earth.
We fished in them for crayfish, trout, and eels! Divine happiness! We could bathe in certain places and often found woodcock in the tall grass which grew on the banks of those little narrow streams.
I went, light as a goat, watching my two dogs forage in front of me. Serval, a hundred yards away, on my right, was beating up a field of lucerne. I went around the thickets which formed the boundaries of the Sandres forest, and I perceived a hut in ruins.
Suddenly I recollected that I had seen it for the last time in 1869, neat, vine-clad, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than a dead house with its skeleton standing, dilapidated and sinister?
I recalled also that a woman had given me a glass of wine there, on a day when I was very tired, and that Serval had then told me the story of the inhabitants. The father, an old poacher, had been killed by the gendarmes. The son, whom I had seen before, was a tall, wizened lad who was likewise considered a ferocious killer of game. People called them the Savage family.
Was it a name or a nickname? I hailed Serval. He came with his long stride, as if he were walking on stilts.
I asked him: “What has become of those people?” And he told me this adventure.