This
grove was the pride, the recollection, the love of all. The idea of
converting it into a small bag of money, which would leave no memory in
the heart, no perpetual joy and shade, would have occurred to no one,
save to a mother, trembling with anxiety for the life of an only son.
My mother conceived the thought; and, with the readiness and firmness
of resolve that distinguished her, called for the woodcutters as soon
as morning came,--fearing lest she should feel remorse, or my
entreaties stop her, if she first consulted me. She saw the axe laid to
their roots, and wept, and turned away her head not to hear their moan,
or witness the fall of these leafy protectors of her youth on the
echoing and desolate soil of the garden.
XCV.
When I returned to M---- on the following Sunday, I looked round from
the top of the mountain for the clump of trees that stood out so
pleasantly on the hillside, screening from the sun a portion of the
gray wall of the house; and it seemed as a dream when in their wonted
place I perceived only heaps of hewn-down trunks whose barked and
bleeding branches strewed the earth around.
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