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282 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
help ! A family of creek-ducks, led by the mother,
scuddied away, running on the water, frightened by the
arrival of dread man ; a grey adder uncurled and made
good its escape, slipping away between the stones, like
a tiny, winding brooklet. The sea-gulls came flying from
the reefs to have a look at the intruder, screamed like
little children and hurried away again. A crow rose from
a large Scotch fir ; it fluttered and beat its wings, screamed
and threatened and groaned and escaped to outlying reefs ;
every living thing shunned the dreaded being who had
fled from his own kind.
He walked along the sandy shore ; he came upon the
skeleton of a pine-tree, washed by the sea and bleached
by the sun to a deadly pallor ; it lay there like a skeleton
of a dragon and between its ribs flowered the purple
Ij^thrum and the golden lysimachia ; little piles of shells
lay heaped round the wild aster which lived its life on empty
sepulchres ; the air was laden with the scent of valerian
which grew in profusion on a bed of evil-smelling seaweed.
He left the shore and turned his footsteps towards the
wood. How tall and straight the trees were, a little too
straight perhaps, but he could see the sea through the
trunks, the sea—solitude—nature ! The ground was as
smooth as if it had been stamped down and flattened by
human feet ; here was the stump of a tree—the axe had
been here ; over there a nettle grew, men had been here ;
there could be no mistake, for the nettle is a parasite
which follows in the wake of man and never ventures into
the solitude of the woods or the large stretches of meadow-
land ; the nettle is vermin, supported by man, and can
only exist in the vicinity of man ; it collects all dust and
dirt on its hairy, sticky leaves and burns the finger which
touches it, —a magnificent breed, nourished by sin.
He went on. His eyes fell on a sparrow, the denizen
of the gutter and backyard—the winged creature which
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