will have strengthened your heart. You still have many experiences
awaiting you among us, I mean to say among women who love and this
includes them all, if one counts those who shun love because they fancy
they are afraid. You have only known those who throw themselves at
men, but there are others who must be conquered. There lies infinity,
Satyros. It is our infinity and generally our sepulchre. We descend
thither, ever dreaming of the enigma of their smile, and we will never
know whether their smiles are natural expressions or condescensions.
You cannot understand this, I fear, Satyros, but one loves these women
in proportion as one suspects their love, of which one is never sure.
They are never completely conquered, and this is what gives such value
to their slightest favors. It is a quite different world. You have not
the faintest idea of it, Satyros. You have remained with Phryne, access
to whom is always assured by a bag of gold....”
“What is this thing you call gold?”
“Or a fine reputation as a faun.”
“That is more to the point.”
“I do not deny that this last merit, which is yours, might not still
gain you some hearts whose pride has not killed curiosity, but for
this, too, you will need a diplomatic tact which is not yet a part of
you.”
“The thing bores me in advance!”
“You cannot know. Ah! Satyros, despite your little adventure with
Cydalise, you still have a lovely, sentimental ignorance. How many
steps you have still to mount, or perhaps descend, to reach the level
of beautiful, delicate humanity!”
“To descend, Diogenes, to descend. But I no longer desire to resemble
men. I want to leave.”
“You too will think so when you will be alone with your brothers the
trees and the vanishing shadows of your desires. Patience! You will
return. And for this one must leave. Nostalgia is the beginning of the
spiritual life. Ennui is the nobility of the soul.”
“I would have thought it was rather joy.”
“No, a joyous soul will never be thoroughly distinguished. If you must
caper, at least let it be done with melancholy. Look at me steadily.
Infinity commences to appear in your eyes, Satyros, I believe I
discover in you a Christian faun in his birth.”
“I dimly feel, Diogenes, that you are bantering. No matter, I will
perhaps miss you.”
“I really hope so. But I am not bantering. I find that a certain
sadness has touched your heart. If you remained, you would soon weary
of pleasures. In fine, this state does not befit a god. It is good for
us, it is good for me who have no more than this means of living the
last years of my poor life. Life escapes me and I only capture it by
feigning indifference, for there is an irony in things and they love
the malice of contradiction. But I feel that I still have some love for
them and that this love is useless. Do you see what is taking place in
me?”
“I see nothing at all, despite my earnest application, but I hope that
you will be happy and that Erebus will be good to you.”
“That is understood. Adieu. I return to my turpitude.”
Ah! I shall never understand men! But my vessel leaves at break of day
and I must sleep on board. I do not know if I shall ever again have the
occasion or even the desire to write you.
ANTIPHILOS,
_Satyr._
(END)
_Three Stories from_
COLORS
By REMY DE GOURMONT
[Illustration]
Translated by Louis Lozowick
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
LIEBER & LEWIS
_MCMXXII_
Copyright, 1922,
By LIEBER & LEWIS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BLUE
_La demoiselle bleu aux bords frais de la source_
_Th. Gautier._
She was a princess. Sister of the queen, she lived together with her
and shared her royal honors. But her fancy counselled pleasures less
splendid, and she gladly paid occasional visits to one of her maids
of honor whose husband served in the royal body guard, and was an
excellent gentleman, young, fair, clever, amiable.
In her own country the princess had been married to a prince who
might have become king, had several generations disappeared in some
catastrophe. They never loved each other. However, the princess,
sometimes gay and always proud, was known as a woman with a heart
of steel. She received much homage but accepted little. Either she
would assume a mocking attitude or take an icy tone. She loved only to
dress, to play, to reign. What pleased her at the house of the royal
guardsman was that her smile was there equivalent to law; besides, she
was always winning in _vingt-et-un_; then, too, her dresses and her
jewels eclipsed all other robes and adornments. The guardsman had never
exhibited any other sentiment except that of profound respect.
Being a blond she liked blue clothes, blue flowers, blue sapphires—as
blue as her own eyes, so that she finally came to be called the Blue
Princess. This appellation which seemed to come out of some fairy tale,
pleased her greatly. One day as she was listening to the melancholy
stories of her maid of honor, she felt a kind of languor in her body
and mind, and said: “My soul is a blue bird.” These words repeated
several times, brought back her serene mood—so beautiful they were.
Then she looked about her and said:
“Is your husband absent, my dear? I do not think he came out to greet
me.”
“You noticed my husband’s absence today, but isn’t he always absent?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t he always absent-minded?”
“My poor friend, that means he is neglecting you.”
“He does not love me any more.”
“Really? A fine state of affairs. But that’s impossible. Moreover, I
won’t allow it. I do not want to see my friend unhappy. I am going to
order him.”
“Ah! Do you think, Madame, a heart can obey orders?”
“Certainly. Was I, a princess, consulted about my marriage? I was told
to love my husband, and I did.”
“How long?”
“I might have loved him always had he wanted it. He did not.”
“There, you see.”
“He did not or perhaps could not. Marriage brought me no pleasure
whatever; he reproached me with indifference and I cried. Thenceforth
we never met without witnesses. In the beginning I felt deeply
humiliated, but gradually I learned to appreciate the calm of solitary
nights. I lead the life of a virgin with great pleasure. But since my
sad experiences, the plays, the dramas, the comedies of love seem to
me more inexplicable than ever.... Does the marriage ceremony really
interest you?”
The maid of honor looked at her mistress with respectful and sad irony.
Then she said:
“I fear my husband hides from me some love or infatuation.”
“Infatuation?” said the princess. “A pretty word. Infatuation is
nothing serious, is it?”
“Serious? No, infatuation passes while love endures. But I do not
know. Perhaps it is real love that alienates him from me. I fear this
greatly.”
“I scarcely understand anything of this,” said the princess, “but I
would like to see you as happy as I am myself. For me, to observe the
passing show of life is quite sufficient. For you—since you need love—I
shall try to do something to help you, I repeat. The word of a princess
will touch his heart.... Oh! my good friend, it is I, perhaps, whom he
adores?”
“Perhaps, alas!”
“Why ‘alas!’ If that is so, you are saved.”
At that moment the guardsman came in and went to greet the princess.
“Sir,” she said to him, “I shall receive you at the palace, in private
audience, at six o’clock.”
She rose and left.
Everybody followed the example of the princess, and the husband and
wife, very excited, remained face to face.
“Madame,” said the husband, “so you have angered the princess? It is to
you then that I owe this affront?”
“Affront? Your heart’s desire wants to see you in private and you
complain?”
At first he did not know what to answer, for this was the first time
his wife made allusion to the feelings he thought securely hidden in
his heart.
“My heart’s desire,” he said brutally, “is my career, and you have
doubtless ruined it through your chatter.”
“I am not a chatter-box.”
“You are stupid.”
“Ah! let me be, you do not deserve to be loved.”
The woman ran away overcome with despondent anger. Yet she hoped
despite her reason that the intervention of the princess would be
crowned with success. She passed the rest of the day in tears.
The guardsman worshipped the princess in secret and without hope. Timid
and violent, he reserved his timidity for his idol, his violence for
his wife. But every brutal act left him in deep shame and every act
of shyness caused him untold suffering. He was almost always unhappy.
Thus, he began to seek in ambition a remedy for his ills. He had spent
all that afternoon in most humiliating errands for the king’s mistress
who was troubled by the conduct of a lover she had recently dismissed.
In exchange for a note of three lines the guard was to receive a
warrant for the rank of captain. The note was in his pocket-book now
and he had to deliver it to the king’s favorite lady at six o’clock
exactly.
Love, curiosity, disquietude had the better of ambition. Dressed in his
finest, and well perfumed, he ran to the audience, saying to himself:
“Perhaps this is a _rendez-vous_?”
The princess, instead of letting him wait for her, was herself waiting,
and not without impatience. She was prettier now, being paler, and her
eyes were shining. Her face had the sweetness of white lilac hiding
in the foliage, but the foliage was fair: her hair intentionally
disarranged with great art let a few curls fall casually to her
shoulders.
“Come here,” she said dolefully, “come here. Sit down near me. I am ill
and can speak only in a whisper. And besides, it is a friend of your
wife that is receiving you and not a princess. Well then: I noticed
that you do not love Elizabeth any more and this grieves me. Is it
really true that you no longer love her?”
“Alas!”
“And the consciousness of your duty, of your honor?”
“My honor?”
“Yes, you swore conjugal fidelity as well as eternal affection.”
“She believed it.... Perhaps I believed it myself....”
“It is wrong to forsake her, to torment her.... She is crying at this
very moment, I am sure....”
“I am not severe with her.”
“Very well, then. Will you promise not to cause her any more suffering?”
“I never did that intentionally.”
“Good, but promise me more, promise me....”
She seemed crushed, and her voice became so weak that to hear her the
guard had to bend his head so near her as almost to touch her hair.
Although he had been trained in all the dissimulation of a courtier, he
suffered frightfully. To love the princess from a distance seemed to
him sweet pain in comparison with the racking torture his desire caused
him at that moment. With any other woman he would either fall on his
knees or flee; with the princess he had to stay still, keep silent and
maintain an attitude of a soldier receiving orders.
“Promise me,” went on the princess, “to be kind to her, to be very
kind, to love her....”
The guardsman was mute.
“Do you promise?”
He was still silent.
“That is impossible, then? Is it all over between you! Can you
reproach her with anything serious?”
“I have nothing to reproach her with. I do not love her any longer,
that is all.”
“At least, do not let her notice it!”
“I had hoped that she never would notice it.”
“Then it is possible to stop loving a woman without her noticing it?”
“That is very hard if one has not the necessary ability. More easy it
is, alas! to love a woman without her noticing it.”
“Oh! Do you think so?”
“I am quite sure of it. She whom I love never suspected it and never
shall.”
“Sir guardsman,” said the princess, “Sir soldier, you are a child. She
whom you love is aware of it....”
“Alas!” he said, incredulous.
“... and she loves you,” she added extending both her hands to him.
Still hesitating and breathlessly agitated, he flung himself into the
proferred hands.
“Kiss them, child,” said the princess, “kiss me, you who love me, you
who desired me so long in the secrecy of your heart. Embrace your blue
princess, embrace your love.”
Next morning, the chamber-maid said to her mistress:
“Oh! Madame has a blue spot on her breast.”
“Nothing surprising. This is a birthmark. But how strange! Now here,
now there. It appears, it disappears. On the breast, on the heart....”
“Maybe that is why Madame is called the blue princess?” she continued
innocently.
“Go and see whether my maid of honor is here.”
Remaining alone for a moment, the princess looked with emotion at the
blue mark.
“God! How happy I am!” she thought, “and how clever! How stupid my
friend! To share love confidence with any one! Poor Ariane, without you
I might never have suspected anything. His glances which I mistook for
a sign of warm and respectful attachment, were glances of love!... But
here she is....”
The maid of honor came in agitated.
“Oh, princess! I had to wait for him till four o’clock in the morning!
I am mad! All is lost!”
“There, now! Won’t you ever be reasonable? On the contrary, everything
is settled.”
“Oh! Thank you!”
“Listen to me. I made him confess. It was difficult and took a long
time. At last I know the truth. Mere infatuation. The person who turned
your husband’s head is an actress of no importance. It is the type
one picks up, discards, picks up again. She passed through many hands
already, those of my husband, among others.... You see, we are of the
same family.... Now, the actress is rarely free during the day. Her
freedom begins at the time when the freedom of the other women ends—at
midnight. I therefore decided that your husband be on guard at my
palace every day from midnight to four in the morning.... Naturally,
he will receive his compensation, for the work is very exhausting....
His future is assured, and his happiness.... Is he ambitious? Yes. Very
well. Would a promotion please him? A decoration? First of all I attach
him to my person. As soon as he is promoted to higher rank, in six
months, in three months, he shall become my aide-de-camp, my secretary.
He shall leave me only to court you, happy spouse. We will save him
for both of us.”
“How kind you are!”
“Am I?”
“You are kindness itself.”
“You are beautiful and that is worth more.”
“Beautiful! Who is more beautiful than you?”
“Flatterer! I am thirty years old and you are twenty-five.... Alas! I
have renounced everything. Will you at least love me?”
“I always did love you. I will adore you. My life belongs to you. I
will be devoted to you until death, and my husband also, I hope.”
“I hope so too, I saved him perhaps from a grave danger, from unhappy
love, for what joy could he find in the adventure he had entered into?”
“When he comes to himself he will be very grateful to you.... Last
night, that is, this morning, he was very agitated. When he returned I
thought him intoxicated. He looked at me with wandering eyes. As soon
as he entered his room he locked the door, then I heard him cry: ‘Ah!
Ah! Ah!’”
“He said nothing more?”
“I think not. He is not very talkative.”
“An excellent trait. What would you say of a husband who should be
making humiliating confessions before you?... There are such.... Mine,
for example....”
“You were very unhappy!”
“Yes and no. I think no more about it. The present fills my heart with
joy.... To give happiness to those whom you love and who love you—is
there anything like it in the world?”
“You are adorable.”
“And adored.”
“Oh, yes!”
“Dearest friend!”
She allowed her maid of honor to take her hand and cover it with kisses.
“Kisses superimposed,” she thought, “but the last do not efface the
first. Your lips, poor couple, still meet with passion but on my
skin.... Very strange....”
“Ah!” she began aloud, “now that you are certain of regaining your
happiness sooner or later, I hope you will use discretion. From his
confidential talk I gather that your husband is a little weary of
conjugal joys. Men dislike to have women make advances to them....”
“Oh! between husband and wife! However, I shall be prudent, kind
friend....”
“More kind than you think! For, after all, your husband is quite
seductive. He is young, younger than I am, beautiful, warm-hearted,
passionate....”
“He was.”
“He still is, rest assured, and it will not take you long to perceive
it. If I had not renounced everything, if I were not a princess.... In
your place I would be jealous.”
“Heavens! I know your heart too well.”
“Then you will return home full of hope? Still a little sad?”
“A little.”
“But the clouds are scattering, the sky is becoming blue again?”
“Yes.”
“Blue like my soul, my sweet friend, blue like my heart.”
And she pressed her finger to her breast where she felt the blue mark
that thrilled her love-intoxicated flesh.
ZINZOLINE
_D’une lumière zinzoline...._
_Scarron_
Color was the subject of conversation, and the young women were
expressing their commonplace preferences. One liked rose, another liked
blue, a third praised pale green, a fourth preferred red.
“And you, Alain?”
“Oh! I as a man,” said Alain, “am condemned to black, gray and brown. I
do not dream like you of brilliant plumage. Still, if I were allowed my
choice, I should like to dress in zinzoline.”
All burst out laughing to hide their ignorance.
“Is not the word beautiful?” continued Alain.
No answer came. Then the young man went on:
“I do not want to deceive you. The word is pretty but the color is
frightful. Imagine something reddish violet, recall a piece of violet
velvet all worn and showing the warp of a dubious red.”
“You are making fun of us, that is not fair.”
“I am not making fun. I like the word because it is so pretty, because
it rhymes with my name, perhaps because it rhymes with yours, my Aline.
Zinzoline!”
And he passionately kissed his sister who protested vigorously:
“No, I am not zinzoline; I do not want to be zinzoline.”
“But though I like the word I do not like the color it denotes, and if
my Aline did in truth become zinzoline I would not love her so much.”
“Naughty boy!” said Aline.
“For several minutes,” said Alain.
The girl called Blue was an orphan. A daughter of the closest friend of
Alain and Aline’s mother, she entered their house as a little girl and
grew up there, although it was generally felt that she was not one of
the family. Her nature separated her from her foster-relatives. She was
gloomy, they were gay; she seemed to be afraid of life; they joyfully
plunged into it, young and old, as into a warm sea. Neither the first
nor the last possessed a strong will. Paula (this was her real name)
was, on the contrary, always in a state of high, moral tension, and if
she ever happened to laugh in company, aloud like everybody else, she
would suddenly cut herself short as soon as she became aware of it. A
philosopher would have found in this child the passion for suffering
which priesthood has so often exploited in women among whom it is
not at all rare; a passion which most men like because it flatters
their pride or better still because they find it quite natural. Such
women are hard to tame because they are very suspicious and also very
apprehensive. One often thinks them cruel while they are only timorous.
The more skilled in the art of self-torment seek often to displease,
just as others seek to please; always, however, with some hidden
motive; and when one divines this motive, he becomes their master.
Paula was neither ugly nor beautiful. When the features of her somewhat
concentrated face were illumined with a smile, she became attractive.
Her eyes would have been very eloquent had she not imposed an oath of
unexpressiveness on them. She was small though not slight, and very
nimble; her very thick hair was chestnut of that indefinable hue which
is perhaps most captivating because most mysterious, because it does
not promise anything.
Besides the two young girls there were two young women and it was to
them, naturally, that Alain paid his chief attention. He was not quite
sure which of the two pleased him more, nor, in fact, whether either
one of them pleased him at all. Both, decided brunettes, scared him a
little, but as they answered his banter, he kept teasing them somewhat
as one teases a strange animal to see what would happen. What did
happen was that while playing, they exchanged sidelong glances, and
that each in turn brightened up whenever an extra compliment fell to
her share. Alain kissed the tapering fingers of one, and the waist,
where the fingers immediately withdrew to seek shelter, heaved like a
big wave. He then walked up, like a traitor, to the other woman, and
his lips touched the down on the nape of her neck; the neck and the
entire body quivered long after.
Motionless, with a dull glance and disdainful air, Paula seemed to see
nothing and saw everything. She seemed to feel nothing and suffered
great pains.
“I am nothing. He did not look at me even once! I am ugly, it’s true,
and badly dressed in this blue so unbecoming to me. But I am satisfied.
Oh! I wish I could displease him still more!”
At that moment Alain noticed her.
“She is really the prettiest.”
He threw her a rose he had just stolen from one of the other two women.
“Thanks, Zinzoline,” said Paula, “you do not often make me presents; I
shall keep this one.”
“He wanted to humiliate me,” she thought, “what shall I do to displease
him still more? Stay here or go?”
She looked at the two young women:
“Stay.”
She smelled the rose:
“Go.”
“I am going up,” said Aline at that moment, “are you, Paula?”
She looked again at the two young women half concealed from her by
Alain who was facing them.
“No, I stay here.”
Alain turned his head towards her. His face was smiling.
“Yes, I am going too, wait for me.”
She was thinking:
“He looked at me ironically. He thinks I want to watch him. What an
idea! I scorn him!”
Aline entered the parlor. Paula went up to her room. She put some water
into a small vase of blue crystal, and, before putting the rose in it,
long inhaled its odor, looked attentively at it, then suddenly with a
quick motion brought it to her lips.
“I am going mad. I am ashamed of my own self! What’s this flower to me?
How stupid! No! no! no!”
And she crushed the rose in a violent fury, threw its shreds on the
floor, and began to stamp her feet over the petals in ever-rising
childish wrath. Coming to herself, she carefully swept into the
fireplace the remnants of her rejected joy, when another fit overtook
her in this humble plight. With the small duster in one hand, leaning
with the other on the marble, comical and tragic, she burst into tears.
Paula once more found strength to counteract this. She straightened up,
washed her eyes, forced herself to read three pages from _The Treasure
of the Humble_, and went down calm and cool. Everybody was already in.
As usual, she helped Aline to serve the tea. Alain, in the meantime,
continued his adolescent pranks. Alain, eighteen years of age, was
awkward and insolent, though quite innocently so, for he thought
himself very clever as he had already conquered the hearts of two
servant maids and one little flower girl in the neighboring city. He
saw them swoon away by turns from pleasure and disappointment, and told
them such things as occasions required. Hence, he did not think himself
insolent at all but, on the contrary, well-bred and even affable.
He was rather tall and graceful, beardless and with hair closely cut.
His head was of two hues superimposed above each other, rose and
copper, in the rose—two big blue flowers. He was peculiar in appearance
and very captivating; women desired him as they desire a sparkling,
rare jewel, but being too self-conscious, he failed to notice their
desire. Besides, the friends of his mother or sister seemed to him
impenetrable fortresses. These two women, however, showed their
weakness, and he began to believe them vulnerable.
Remaining alone with the two women, he began to tell them, rather
awkwardly, the greatest impertinences in the world.
“I love you both, yes, both.”
“We don’t need to be loved,” answered the younger quickly, “we have
husbands.”
“Husbands? Do they know how to love?”
“Certainly,” she answered.
“If your husbands loved you they would not have gone out hunting. They
would have acted like me. They would have got a sudden pain in their
foot and stayed with you.”
And he pointed to his slipper.
The young woman would not admit herself defeated. She said:
“There is a time for all things.”
But she was thinking:
“Heavens! He remained for my sake! he loves me.”
“So he loves me?” thought the other. “He loves me!”
As if divining their secret thoughts, Alain became more daring.
“Only lovers know how to love.”
“Perhaps this is true?” thought the older. “Shall I try it?”
“He is right,” thought the younger, who had some experience. “He would
love me splendidly!”
They dropped their eyes to dream the better.
“_Mesdames_,” said Alain, “I place my heart at your feet.”
This time they both laughed.
“What a devil!”
“What a little demon!”
“Oh! I wish I could whisper something in your ears, to both at the same
time.”
“Naughty boy!”
“Naughty boy!”
“Alright, one after the other. Let us draw lots.”
They began to laugh still more loudly.
“I shall say one word to each and ask one question. I expect an answer.”
“No, I don’t want to hear anything.”
“And still less, to answer.”
“But I won’t say the same thing to both, and won’t ask the same
question.”
“You wouldn’t say anything that can’t be listened to?”
“You wouldn’t ask questions that can’t be answered?”
“Naturally.”
“Alright, give us the lots, naughty boy.”
“I yield my turn.”