THE ADVENTURE

My friend did not tell me that night all that had happened to him on the way. And even when he decided to confide everything to me, during days of anguish of which I shall speak later, it remained for a long time the great secret of our youth. But to-day when all is ended, and there remains only dust of so much good and so much evil, I can relate his strange adventure.

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At half-past one in the afternoon on the Vierzon road, during that freezing weather, Meaulnes set his beast at a brisk pace, because he knew he was late. At first he thought, with amusement, only of our surprise when, at four o’clock, he brought back Grandfather and Grandmother Charpentier. For certainly, at that moment, he had no other intention.

Little by little, the cold being piercing, he wrapped his legs in a rug, which at first he had refused, but which the folk at the Fair Star had thrown into the cart.

At two o’clock he passed through the village of La Motte. He had never gone through a small hamlet at school-time and was amused to see this one so empty, so asleep. Here and there a curtain was moved revealing the inquisitive face of a housewife.

Leaving La Motte, immediately after the schoolhouse, he hesitated between two roads, but seemed to remember that the left road led to Vierzon. Nobody was there to tell him. He once more put the mare to a trot, though the road became narrower and badly in need of repair. He skirted a fir wood for some time, but at last, meeting a carter, he used his hands as a trumpet to inquire if he really were on the right road for Vierzon. The mare pulled on the reins, without stopping her trot; the man must have failed to understand the enquiry; he called out something with a vague gesture, so Meaulnes chanced it and went on.

Once more there was the vast frozen plain without incident or distraction; only at times a magpie startled by the cart flew off to perch on a stunted elm in the distance. The traveller had wrapped the big rug round his shoulders like a cloak. He must have dozed for a long while with his legs stretched out and one elbow resting on the side of the cart....

... When Meaulnes recovered his wits, thanks to the cold penetrating the rug, he noticed a change in the countryside. There was no longer the far horizon, no longer that stretch of pale sky in which sight was lost, but little meadows, still green, with high hedges. On both sides water flowed under the ice in the ditches. Everything showed the neighbourhood of a river. And the road between the tall hedges was nothing more than a narrow rutted lane.

A moment before the mare had stopped trotting, Meaulnes tried to whip her up to the same pace again, but she persisted in walking with extreme slowness, and the big schoolboy, leaning forward, his hands resting on the dashboard, noticed that she was lame in one hind leg. He was much troubled and at once jumped out.

‘We shall never reach Vierzon in time for the train,’ he said half aloud.

And he did not dare to own to himself the thought which upset him most, that perhaps he had lost his way and was no longer on the road to Vierzon.

For a long time he examined the beast’s foot and could find no trace of a wound. The mare was frightened and lifted her foot directly Meaulnes tried to touch it, pawing the ground with her heavy clumsy hoof. At last he realised that she had simply got a stone in her shoe. As a boy who was expert in the handling of beasts he sat on his heels and tried to grasp her right foot with his left hand and put it between his knees, but he was bothered by the cart. Twice the mare got away and went on a few yards. The step struck his head and the wheel hurt his knee. He would not give in and ended by mastering the timid beast, but the stone was so embedded that Meaulnes was obliged to use his peasant’s knife before he could get it out.

When he had finished the job and at last looked up, rather giddy and dim-eyed, he noticed with horror that night was falling....

Any one else but Meaulnes would immediately have turned back. That was the only way not to get more badly lost. But he reflected that he must be very far from La Motte. Besides, the mare might have taken a byway while he was asleep. Anyhow, this lane must lead to some village in time....

In addition to all these reasons, the big boy, with his foot on the step and the mare already pulling on the reins, ached with exasperation to achieve something and to get somewhere, in defiance of every obstacle!

He whipped up the mare, who started and set off at a quick trot. The darkness grew. In the deep-cut lane there was now only just room for the cart. Sometimes a dead branch from the hedge caught in the wheel and broke with a snap.... When it was pitch dark Meaulnes thought suddenly with a pang of our dining-room at Sainte-Agathe in which, by this time, all of us ought to be together. Then rage took him; then pride and the deep joy of having at last run away without premeditation....