In a sumptuous palace of Ferrara, one winter evening, Don Juan Belvidéro
was entertaining a prince of the house of Este. In those days a banquet
was a marvelous affair, which demanded princely riches or the power of a
nobleman. Seven pleasure-loving women chatted gaily around a table lighted
by perfumed candles, surrounded by admirable works of art whose white
marble stood out against the walls of red stucco and contrasted with the
rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin, glittering with gold and laden with
gems which sparkled only less brilliantly than their eyes, they all told
of passions, intense, but of various styles, like their beauty. They
differed neither in their words nor their ideas; but an expression, a
look, a motion or an emphasis served as a commentary, unrestrained,
licentious, melancholy or bantering, to their words.
One seemed to say: "My beauty has power to rekindle the frozen heart of
age." Another: "I love to repose on soft cushions and think with rapture
of my adorers." A third, a novice at these fêtes, was inclined to blush.
"At the bottom of my heart I feel compunction," she seemed to say. "I am a
Catholic and I fear hell; but I love you so--ah, so dearly--that I would
sacrifice eternity to you!" The fourth, emptying a cup of Chian wine,
cried: "Hurrah, for pleasure! I begin a new existence with each dawn.
Forgetful of the past, still intoxicated with the violence of yesterday's
pleasures, I embrace a new life of happiness, a life filled with love."
The woman sitting next to Belvidéro looked at him with flashing eyes. She
was silent. "I should have no need to call on a bravo to kill my lover if
he abandoned me." Then she had laughed; but a comfit dish of marvelous
workmanship was shattered between her nervous fingers.
"When are you to be grand duke?" asked the sixth of the prince, with an
expression of murderous glee on her lips and a look of Bacchanalian frenzy
in her eyes.
"And when is your father going to die?" said the seventh, laughing and
throwing her bouquet to Don Juan with maddening coquetry. She was an
innocent young girl who was accustomed to play with sacred things.
"Oh, don't speak of it!" cried the young and handsome Don Juan. "There is
only one immortal father in the world, and unfortunately he is mine!"
The seven women of Ferrara, the friends of Don Juan, and the prince
himself gave an exclamation of horror. Two hundred years later, under
Louis XV, well-bred persons would have laughed at this sally. But perhaps
at the beginning of an orgy the mind had still an unusual degree of
lucidity. Despite the heat of the candles, the intensity of the emotions,
the gold and silver vases, the fumes of wine, despite the vision of
ravishing women, perhaps there still lurked in the depths of the heart a
little of that respect for things human and divine which struggles until
the revel has drowned it in floods of sparkling wine. Nevertheless, the
flowers were already crushed, the eyes were steeped with drink, and
intoxication, to quote Rabelais, had reached even to the sandals. In the
pause that followed a door opened, and, as at the feast of Balthazar, God
manifested himself. He seemed to command recognition now in the person of
an old, white-haired servant with unsteady gait and drawn brows; he
entered with gloomy mien and his look seemed to blight the garlands, the
ruby cups, the pyramids of fruits, the brightness of the feast, the glow
of the astonished faces and the colors of the cushions dented by the white
arms of the women; then he cast a pall over this folly by saying, in a
hollow voice, the solemn words: "Sir, your father is dying!"
Don Juan rose, making a gesture to his guests, which might be translated:
"Excuse me, this does not happen every day."
Does not the death of a parent often overtake young people thus in the
fulness of life, in the wild enjoyment of an orgy? Death is as unexpected
in her caprices as a woman in her fancies, but more faithful--Death has
never duped any one.
When Don Juan had closed the door of the banquet hall and walked down the
long corridor, which was both cold and dark, he compelled himself to
assume a mask, for, in thinking of his rôle of son, he had cast off his
merriment as he threw down his napkin. The night was black. The silent
servant who conducted the young man to the death chamber, lighted the way
so insufficiently that Death, aided by the cold, the silence, the gloom,
perhaps by a reaction of intoxication, was able to force some reflections
into the soul of the spendthrift; he examined his life, and became
thoughtful, like a man involved in a lawsuit when he sets out for the
court of justice.
Bartholomeo Belvidéro, the father of Don Juan, was an old man of ninety,
who had devoted the greater part of his life to business. Having traveled
much in Oriental countries he had acquired there great wealth and learning
more precious, he said, than gold or diamonds, to which he no longer gave
more than a passing thought. "I value a tooth more than a ruby," he used
to say, smiling, "and power more than knowledge." This good father loved
to hear Don Juan relate his youthful adventures, and would say,
banteringly, as he lavished money upon him: "Only amuse yourself, my dear
child!" Never did an old man find such pleasure in watching a young man.
Paternal love robbed age of its terrors in the delight of contemplating so
brilliant a life.
At the age of sixty, Belvidéro had become enamored of an angel of peace
and beauty. Don Juan was the sole fruit of this late love. For fifteen
years the good man had mourned the loss of his dear Juana. His many
servants and his son attributed the strange habits he had contracted to
this grief. Bartholomeo lodged himself in the most uncomfortable wing of
his palace and rarely went out, and even Don Juan could not intrude into
his father's apartment without first obtaining permission. If this
voluntary recluse came or went in the palace or in the streets of Ferrara
he seemed to be searching for something which he could not find. He walked
dreamily, undecidedly, preoccupied like a man battling with an idea or
with a memory. While the young man gave magnificent entertainments and the
palace re-echoed his mirth, while the horses pawed the ground in the
courtyard and the pages quarreled at their game of dice on the stairs,
Bartholomeo ate seven ounces of bread a day and drank water. If he asked
for a little poultry it was merely that he might give the bones to a black
spaniel, his faithful companion. He never complained of the noise. During
his illness if the blast of horns or the barking of dogs interrupted his
sleep, he only said: "Ah, Don Juan has come home." Never before was so
untroublesome and indulgent a father to be found on this earth;
consequently young Belvidéro, accustomed to treat him without ceremony,
had all the faults of a spoiled child. His attitude toward Bartholomeo was
like that of a capricious woman toward an elderly lover, passing off an
impertinence with a smile, selling his good humor and submitting to be
loved. In calling up the picture of his youth, Don Juan recognized that it
would be difficult to find an instance in which his father's goodness had
failed him. He felt a newborn remorse while he traversed the corridor, and
he very nearly forgave his father for having lived so long. He reverted to
feelings of filial piety, as a thief returns to honesty in the prospect of
enjoying a well-stolen million.
Soon the young man passed into the high, chill rooms of his father's
apartment. After feeling a moist atmosphere and breathing the heavy air
and the musty odor which is given forth by old tapestries and furniture
covered with dust, he found himself in the antique room of the old man, in
front of a sick bed and near a dying fire. A lamp standing on a table of
Gothic shape shed its streams of uneven light sometimes more, sometimes
less strongly upon the bed and showed the form of the old man in
ever-varying aspects. The cold air whistled through the insecure windows,
and the snow beat with a dull sound against the panes.
This scene formed so striking a contrast to the one which Don Juan had
just left that he could not help shuddering. He felt cold when, on
approaching the bed, a sudden flare of light, caused by a gust of wind,
illumined his father's face. The features were distorted; the skin,
clinging tightly to the bones, had a greenish tint, which was made the
more horrible by the whiteness of the pillows on which the old man rested;
drawn with pain, the mouth, gaping and toothless, gave breath to sighs
which the howling of the tempest took up and drew out into a dismal wail.
In spite of these signs of dissolution an incredible expression of power
shone in the face. The eyes, hallowed by disease, retained a singular
steadiness. A superior spirit was fighting there with death. It seemed as
if Bartholomeo sought to kill with his dying look some enemy seated at the
foot of his bed. This gaze, fixed and cold, was made the more appalling by
the immobility of the head, which was like a skull standing on a doctor's
table. The body, clearly outlined by the coverlet, showed that the dying
man's limbs preserved the same rigidity. All was dead, except the eyes.
There was something mechanical in the sounds which came from the mouth.
Don Juan felt a certain shame at having come to the deathbed of his father
with a courtesan's bouquet on his breast, bringing with him the odors of a
banquet and the fumes of wine.
"You were enjoying yourself!" cried the old man, on seeing his son.
At the same moment the pure, high voice of a singer who entertained the
guests, strengthened by the chords of the viol by which she was
accompanied, rose above the roar of the storm and penetrated the chamber
of death. Don Juan would gladly have shut out this barbarous confirmation
of his father's words.