344
SAMUEL BECKETT
The dogs for their part were already copulating, with the utmost nat–
uralness.
The place where they now found themselves, where they had
agreed, not without pains, that they should meet, was not properly
speaking a square, but rather a small public garden at the heart of a
tangle of streets and lanes.
It
displayed the usual shrubberies, flower–
beds, pools, fountains, statues, lawns and benches in strangulating
profusion. It had something of the maze, irksome to perambulate, diffi–
cu lt of egress, for one not in its secrets. Entry was of course the simplest
thing in the world. In the centre, roughly, towered huge a shining
copper beech, planted several centuries earlier, according to the sign
rudely nailed to the bole, by a Field Marshal of France peacefully
named Saint-Ruth. Hardly had he done so, in the words of the inscrip–
tion, when he was struck dead by a cannon-ball, faithful
to
the last to
the same hopeless cause, on a battlefield having little in common, from
the point of view of landscape, with those on which he had won his
spurs, first as brigadier, then as lieutenant, if that is the order in which
spurs are won, on the battlefield.
It
was no doubt to this tree that the
garden owed its existence, a consequence which can scarcely have oc–
curred to the Field Marshal as on that distant day, well clear of the
quincunxes, before an elegant and replete assistance, he held the frail
sapling upright in the hole gorged with evening dew. But
to
have done
with this tree and hear no more about it, from it the garden derived
what little charm it still possessed, not
to
mention of course its name.
The stifled giant's days were numbered, it would not cease hencefor–
ward to pine and rot till finally removed, bit by bit. Then for a while,
in the garden mysteriously named, people would breathe more freely.
Mercier and Camier did not know the place. H ence no doubt their
choice of it for their meeting. Certain things shall never be known for
sure.
. Through the orange panes the rain to them seemed golden and
brought back memories, determined by the hazard of their excursions,
to the o ne of Rome, of Naples to the other, mutually unavowed and
with a feeling akin to shame. They should have felt the better for this
glow of distant days when they were young, and warm, and loved art,
and mocked marriage, and did not know each other, but they felt no
whit the better.
Let us go home, said Camier.
Why? said Mercier.
