New Horizons in the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel - Literature and Painting in Quebec: From Imagery to Identity - page 116

render what they have taken!) Maurice has a similar experience of a
return of the past, when, unbeknownst to Angéline, he visits the garden
during her self-imposed exile: 'Le passé était là, et qui pourrait dire la
tristesse et la douceur de mes pensées!' (211; The past was there, and
who could express the sadness and sweetness of my thoughts!) The
past is there, but like the decor itself, the emotional reaction of Maurice
is ambivalent ('la tristesse et la douceur'), as if seeking resolution, and
at any rate, the past remains unattainable. Angéline's response, her last
in the novel, acknowledges the memory, while confining it to the past:
'Le sentiment que vous me conservez, pour moi, c'est une fleur qui
embaume les ruines, c'est un écho attendrissant du passé. Le passé!'
(214; The feeling you preserve for me is a flower that gives fragrance to
the ruins, a touching echo from the past. The past!) In short, the past is
past, and any solution or consolation lies elsewhere, elsewhere than in
the past, and elsewhere than in the garden, as we come to discover.
Just as the garden evolves from a simple stimulant of emotions to a
symbol of those emotions to a repository of memories, the sea follows a
similar evolution. 17 Indeed, the sea is a necessary counterpoint to the
garden, since the infinite nature of vast space is a necessary counterpart
of the certainty of closed place, as Angéline meditates in her diary:
'Nous sommes comme quelqu'un qui, n'ayant jamais vu qu'une feuille,
voudrait se représenter une forêt, ou qui, n'ayant jamais vu qu'une
goutte d'eau, voudrait imaginer l'océan.' (190; We are like someone
who, having seen but a leaf, would like to imagine a forest, or who,
having seen but a drop of water, would like to imagine the ocean.) Here
the metaphorical use of nature again illustrates the correlation of outer
and inner landscape.
The sea tends to inspire profound emotions of a 'Romantic' nature,
ranging from Maurice's 'melancholy' and Mina's 'seduction' to the
mixture of the sublime and the grotesque expressed by Mina's friend
Emma, who is herself about to enter a convent:
Jamais la nature ne m'a paru si belle … En attendant qu'il en neige, j'ai un
endroit qui fait mes délices. C'est tout simplement un enfoncement au
bord de la mer; mais d'énormes rochers le surplombent et semblent tou-
jours prêts à s'écrouler, ce qui m'inspire une crainte mêlée de charme … Il
me semble que cet endroit vous plairait parfaitement, surtout quand le
soleil laisse tomber sur les vagues, ces belles traînées de feu que vous
aimez tant. Ce soir, les plus beaux nuages que j'aie vus s'y miraient dans
l'eau. Cela faisait de la mer un fond chatoyant, merveilleux, et j'ai pensé à