Here they are met.
Here, by the balustrade, these lords and lusty ladies are met to romp
and wanton in the fulness of love, under the solstice of a noon in
midsummer. Water gushes in fantastic arcs from the grotto, making a
cold music to the emblazoned air, while a breeze swells the sun-shot
satin of every lady's skirt, and tosses the ringlets that hang like
bunches of yellow grapes on either side of her brow, and stirs the
plumes of her gallant. But the very breeze is laden with heat, and the
fountain's noise does but whet the thirst of the grass, the flowers,
the trees. The earth sulks under the burden of the unmerciful sun. Love
itself, one had said, would be languid here, pale and supine, and,
faintly sighing for things past or for future things, would sink into
siesta. But behold! these are no ordinary lovers. The gushing fountains
are likelier to run dry there in the grotto than they to falter in
their redundant energy. These sanguine lords and ladies crave not an
instant's surcease. They are tyrants and termagants of love.
If they are thus at noon, here under the sun's rays, what, one wonders,
must be their manner in the banqueting hall, when the tapers gleam
adown the long tables, and the fruits are stripped of their rinds, and
the wine brims over the goblets, all to the music of the viols?
Somehow, one cannot imagine them anywhere but in this sunlight. To it
they belong. They are creatures of Nature, pagans untamed, lawless and
unabashed. For all they are robed in crimson and saffron, and are with
such fine pearls necklaced, these dames do exhale from their exuberant
bodies the essence of a quite primitive and simple era; but for the
ease of their deportment in their frippery, they might be Maenads in
masquerade. They have nothing of the coyness that civilisation fosters
in women, are as fearless and unsophisticated as men. A 'wooing' were
wasted on them, for they have no sense of antagonism, and seek not by
any means to elude men. They meet men even as rivers meet the sea. Even
as, when fresh water meets salt water in the estuary, the two tides
revolve in eddies and leap up in foam, so do these men and women laugh
and wrestle in the rapture of concurrence. How different from the first
embrace which marks the close of a wooing! that moment when the man
seeks to conceal his triumph under a semblance of humility, and the
woman her humiliation under a pretty air of patronage. Here, in the
Garden of Love, they have none of those spiritual reservations and
pretences. Nor is here any savour of fine romance. Nothing is here but
the joy of satisfying a physical instinct--a joy that expresses itself
not in any exaltation of words or thoughts, but in mere romping. See!
Some of the women are chasing one another through the grotto. They are
rushing headlong under the fountain. What though their finery be
soaked? Anon they will come out and throw themselves on the grass, and
the sun will quickly dry them.
Leave them, then, to their riot. Look upon these others who sit and
stand here in a voluptuous bevy, hand in hand under the brazen sun, or
flaunt to and fro, lolling in one another's arms and laughing in one
another's faces. And see how closely above them hover the winged loves!
One, upside down in the air, sprinkles them with rose-leaves; another
waves over them a blazing torch; another tries to frighten them with
his unarrowed bow. Another yet has dared to descend into the group; he
nestles his fat cheek on a lady's lap, and is not rebuked. These little
chubby Cythareans know they are privileged to play any pranks here.
Doubtless they love to be on duty in this garden, for here they are
patted and petted, and have no real work to do. At close of day, when
they fly back to their mother, there is never an unmated name in the
report they bring her; and she, belike, being pleased with them, allows
them to sit up late, and to have each a slice of ambrosia and a sip of
nectar. But elsewhere they have hard work, and often fly back in dread
of Venus' anger. At that other balustrade, where Watteau, remembering
this one, painted for us the 'Plaisirs du Bal,' how often they have
lain in ambush, knowing that were one of them to show but the tip of
his wings those sedate and migniard masqueraders would faint for very
shame; yet ever hoping that they might, by their unseen presence, turn
that punctilio of flirtation into love. And always they have flown back
from Dulwich unrequited for all the pains they had taken, and pouting
that Venus should ever send them on so hard an errand. But a day in
this garden is always for them a dear holiday. They live in dread lest
Venus discover how superfluous they are here. And so, knowing that the
hypocrite's first dupe must be himself, they are always pretending to
themselves that they are of some use. See that child yonder, perched on
the balustrade, reading aloud from a scroll the praise of love as
earnestly as though his congregation were of infidels. And that other,
to the side, pushing two lovers along as though they were the veriest
laggarts. The torch-bearer, too, and the archer, and the sprinkler of
the rose-leaves--they are all, after their kind, trying to persuade
themselves that they are needed. All but he who leans over and nestles
his fat cheek on a lady's lap, as fondly and confidingly as though she
were his mother... And truly, the lady is very like his mother. So,
indeed, are all the other ladies. Strange! In all their faces is an
uniformity of divine splendour. Can it be that Venus, impatient of mere
sequences of lovers, has obtained leave of Jove to multiply herself,
and that to-day by a wild coincidence her every incarnation has trysted
an adorer to this same garden? Look closely! It must be so...
Hush! Let us keep her secret.
'ARIANE ET DIONYSE'