Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
https://archive.org/details/womanpuppetetc00louy
Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
WOMAN AND PUPPET
* * * * *
_MANY TRANSLATIONS_
BY
G. F. MONKSHOOD
WILL BE FOUND IN THE
LOTUS LIBRARY
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
* * * * *
WOMAN AND PUPPET
ETC.
by
PIERRE LOUŸS
Translated and Adapted by G. F. Monkshood
[Illustration: Logo]
London
Greening & Co., Limited
1908
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
Bungay, Suffolk.
DEDICATED
TO
JOHN W. WHITE
PAINTER OF BEAUTIFUL THINGS
G. F. M.
_London, 1908._
CONTENTS
PAGE
WOMAN AND PUPPET 3
THE NEW PLEASURE 51
BYBLIS 65
LÊDA 89
IMMORTAL LOVE 107
THE ARTIST TRIUMPHANT 191
THE HILL OF HORSEL 233
_TRANSLATOR’S NOTE_
_About twelve years ago Oscar Wilde dedicated his beautiful SALOME
thus: “À mon Ami Pierre Louÿs.” At that time not many gentlemen in
England knew the name of the writer who was to become famous throughout
the Land of the Mind as author of APHRODITE. His earliest fame here was
to be enshrined in that dedication. Afterwards, in THE SPIRIT LAMP, he
had the honour and pleasure of putting into a French sonnet one of the
prose poems that Wilde used to put into the post as letters. Suddenly,
about ten years ago, every one in the republic of French letters was
praising a new and wonderful book, APHRODITE. It was the most amazing
study of antiquity since the SALAMBO of Flaubert or the Mary Magdalen
of Edgar Saltus. The beautiful girl in the romance by Louÿs captivated
a continent. She was, indeed_, mystérieuse et victorieuse. _But he did
not stop. His waiting world soon had from him the CHANSONS DE BILITIS.
An English wit, one of the few, said they were CHANCES OF DEBILITY. His
phrase saves trouble, but one can say that these prose chansons were
a picture of Sapphic life and love of a very febrile sort. There is
quite a lot of that in modern French literature. It is a mode of the
moment. Louÿs then passed to the writing of the superb little books
LÊDA, BYBLIS, THE ARTIST TRIUMPHANT, and A NEW PLEASURE. They are here
translated. The narrative Louÿs called THE ADVENTURES OF KING PAUSOLUS
was of the whimsy story type. It brought to the minds of well-read
men such things as Uchard’s tale MON ONCLE BARBASSOU. It also clearly
informed the reader that Louÿs was French, and that even in the telling
of a harmless romance the strip of water between England and France is
a strip that also flows between two antipolar view-points. But Louÿs
at last came to the writing of WOMAN AND PUPPET, and wrote something
of deepest human intent. A version of it follows. The very curious
story entitled THE HILL OF HORSEL shows the fusing of fact and fiction,
antiquity and to-day. It is a most interesting effort, and achievement,
in a form of story that Poe, Gautier and D’Aurevilly also perfected._
G. F. MONKSHOOD.
WOMAN AND PUPPET
CHAPTER I
In Spain the Carnival does not finish, as in France, at eight o’clock
on the morning of Ash Wednesday. Over the wonderful gaiety of Seville
the memory that “_dust we are_,” etc., spreads its odour of sepulture
for four days only, and the first Sunday of Lent all the Carnival
reawakens.
It is the _Domingo de Pinatas_, or the Sunday of Marmites, the Grand
Fête. All the populous town has changed its costume, and one sees in
the streets rags and tatters of red, blue, green, yellow or rose,
that have been mosquito-nets, curtains or women’s garments, all
waving in the sunlight and carried by a small body of ragamuffins. The
youngsters, noisy, many-coloured and masked, push their way through the
crowd of great personages.
At the windows one sees pressed forward innumerable brunette heads.
Nearly all the young girls of the countryside are in Seville on such
a day as this. Paper confetti fall as a coloured rain, fans shade and
protect pretty powdered faces, there are cries, appeals and laughter in
the narrow streets. A few thousands of people make more noise on this
day of Carnival than would the whole of Paris.
But, on the twenty-third of February in eighteen hundred and
ninety-six, André Stévenol saw the end of the Carnival approaching
with a slight feeling of vexation, for the week, although essentially
one of love-affairs, had not brought him any new adventure. Some
previous sojourning in Spain had taught him with what quickness and
freedom of the heart the knots of friendship were tied and untied in
this still primitive land. He was depressed at the thought that chance
and circumstance had not favoured him. He had had a long paper battle
with one young girl. They had fought and teased each other with the
serpentine strips of Carnival time, he in the street, she at a window.
She ran down and gave him a little red bouquet with “Many thanks, sir.”
But, alas! she had fled quickly, and at closer view illusions fled
also. André put the flower in his coat, but did not put the giver in
his memory.
Four o’clock sounded from many clocks. He went by way of the Calle
Rodrigo and gained the Delicias, Champs-Elysées of shading trees along
the immense Guadalquivir thronged with vessels. It was there that
unrolled the Carnival of the elegant.
At Seville the leisured class cannot always afford three good meals per
day, but would rather go without them than without the outside show
of a landau and two fine horses. Seville has hundreds of carriages,
often old-fashioned but made beautiful by their horses, and occupied by
people of noble race and face.
André Stévenol made a way with difficulty through the crowd edging
the two sides of the vast dusty avenue. The battle of eggs was on.
Eggshells filled with paper confetti were being thrown into the
carriages, and thrown back, of course. André filled his pockets
with eggs and fought with spirit. The stream of carriages filed
past--carriages full of women, lovers, families, children, or friends.
The game had lasted an hour when André felt in his pocket his last egg.
Suddenly there again appeared a young woman whose fan he had broken
with an egg earlier in the combat.
She was marvellous. Deprived of the shade and shelter of the fan that
had protected her delicate, laughing features; open on all sides to the
attacks of the crowd and the nearest carriages, she took bravely her
part in the struggle, and, standing panting, hatless, flushed with heat
and frank gaiety, she gave and received attacks. She appeared to be
about twenty-two years old, and must have been at least eighteen. That
she was from Andalucia could not possibly be doubted. She was of that
admirable type that was born of the intermixing of Arabs and Vandals,
of Semites with the Germans. Such mixing has brought together in a
little valley of Europe all the perfection of two races.
Her body, long and supple, was expressive in every line and curve. One
felt that even were she veiled one would be able to divine her thought,
and that she laughed with her limbs, even as she spoke with her
shoulders and her bosom, with grace and with liberty. Her hair was of
dark chestnut, but at a distance shone almost black. Her cheeks were of
great softness as to contour. The edges of the eyelids were very dark.
André, pressed by the crowd close to her carriage, gazed at her
intently. His heart-beats told him that this woman would be one of
those who were destined to play a part in his life. At once he wrote
with pencil on his Carnival egg the word “QUIERO,” and threw it as one
might a rose into her hands.
Quiero is an astonishing verb. It is “to will,” “to desire,” “to love.”
It is “to go in quest of,” it is “to cherish.” In turn, and according
to how used, it expresses an imperative passion, or a light caprice.
It is a prayer or an order, a declaration or a condescension. Often
it is but an irony. André looked as he gave it the look that can mean
“I would love to love you.” She put the curious missive in a sort of
hand-bag, and the stream of traffic took her on. André lost sight of
her after a vain attempt to follow.
Saddened he slowly returned. For him all the Carnival was shrouded
and ended. Should he have been more determined and found a way in the
crowd? How could he find her again? It was not certain that she lived
in Seville. If not, it might be impossible to find her. And little
by little, by an unhappy illusion, the image that his mind held of
her became more charming. Certain details of her sweet features that
had only won a moment’s curious notice now became transmuted in the
crucible of memory into the principal things that made up her tender
attitude. There was a certain detail in the dressing of the hair, an
extreme mobility in the corners of the lips. The latter changed each
instant in form and expression. Often almost hidden, often almost
curved upwards, rounded, slender, pale or darkened, animated, so to
speak, with a varying flame of life and soul. Ah! perhaps one could
blame all the rest of that face--say that the nose was not Grecian, the
chin not Roman; but not to colour with pleasure at the sight of those
little lip-corners was to be past all forgiveness in this world.
So his thoughts flew on and on till a voice cried behind him rough but
warning: a carriage was passing quickly in the narrow street. In the
carriage was a young woman who, when she saw André threw gently towards
him, as one would throw a rose, an egg inscribed “Quiero.”
But, now, after the word there was a decided flourish. It was as if the
fair one had wished to reply by stressing his own one-word message.