Then, collecting all the courage needed for the cowardly act, he crushed
out the eye, pressing it in with the linen without looking at it. A deep
moan, startling and terrible, was heard. It was the poor spaniel, who died
with a howl.
"Could he have been in the secret?" Don Juan wondered, surveying the
faithful animal.
Don Juan was considered a dutiful son. He raised a monument of white
marble over his father's tomb, and employed the most prominent artists of
the time to carve the figures. He was not altogether at ease until the
statue of his father, kneeling before Religion, imposed its enormous
weight on the grave, in which he had buried the only regret that had ever
touched his heart, and that only in moments of physical depression.
On making an inventory of the immense wealth amassed by the old
Orientalist, Don Juan became avaricious. Had he not two human lives in
which he should need money? His deep, searching gaze penetrated the
principles of social life, and he understood the world all the better
because he viewed it across a tomb. He analyzed men and things that he
might have done at once with the past, represented by history, with the
present, expressed by the law, and with the future revealed by religion.
He took soul and matter, threw them into a crucible, and found nothing
there, and from that time forth he became Don Juan.
Master of the illusions of life he threw himself--young and
beautiful--into life; despising the world, but seizing the world. His
happiness could never be of that bourgeois type which is satisfied by
boiled beef, by a welcome warming-pan in winter, a lamp at night and new
slippers at each quarter. He grasped existence as a monkey seizes a nut,
peeling off the coarse shell to enjoy the savory kernel. The poetry and
sublime transports of human passion touched no higher than his instep.
He never made the mistake of those strong men who, imagining that little
Souls believe in the great, venture to exchange noble thoughts of the
future for the small coin of our ideas of life. He might, like them, have
walked with his feet on earth and his head among the clouds, but he
preferred to sit at his ease and sear with his kisses the lips of more
than one tender, fresh and sweet woman. Like Death, wherever he passed,
he devoured all without scruple, demanding a passionate, Oriental love
and easily won pleasure. Loving only woman in women, his soul found its
natural trend in irony.
When his inamoratas mounted to the skies in an ecstasy of bliss, Don Juan
followed, serious, unreserved, sincere as a German student. But he said
"I" while his lady love, in her folly, said "we." He knew admirably how to
yield himself to a woman's influence. He was always clever enough to make
her believe that he trembled like a college youth who asks his first
partner at a ball: "Do you like dancing?" But he could also be terrible
when necessary; he could draw his sword and destroy skilled soldiers.
There was banter in his simplicity and laughter in his tears, for he could
weep as well as any woman who says to her husband: "Give me a carriage or
I shall pine to death."
For merchants the world means a bale of goods or a quantity of circulating
notes; for most young men it is a woman; for some women it is a man; for
certain natures it is society, a set of people, a position, a city; for
Don Juan the universe was himself! Noble, fascinating and a model of
grace, he fastened his bark to every bank; but he allowed himself to be
carried only where he wished to go. The more he saw the more skeptical he
became. Probing human nature he soon guessed that courage was rashness;
prudence, cowardice; generosity, shrewd calculation; justice, a crime;
delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, policy; and by a singular fatality he
perceived that the persons who were really honest, delicate, just,
generous, prudent and courageous received no consideration at the hands of
their fellows.
"What a cheerless jest!" he cried. "It does not come from a god!"
And then, renouncing a better world, he showed no mark of respect to holy
things and regarded the marble saints in the churches merely as works of
art. He understood the mechanism of human society, and never offended too
much against the current prejudices, for the executioners had more power
than he; but he bent the social laws to his will with the grace and wit
that are so well displayed in his scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in
short, the embodiment of Molière's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's
Manfred, and Maturin's Melmoth--grand pictures drawn by the greatest
geniuses of Europe, and to which neither the harmonies of Mozart nor the
lyric strains of Rossini are lacking. Terrible pictures in which the power
of evil existing in man is immortalized, and which are repeated from one
century to another, whether the type come to parley with mankind by
incarnating itself in Mirabeau, or be content to work in silence, like
Bonaparte; or to goad on the universe by sarcasm, like the divine
Rabelais; or again, to laugh at men instead of insulting things, like
Maréchal de Richelieu; or, still better, perhaps, if it mock both men and
things, like our most celebrated ambassador.
But the deep genius of Don Juan incorporated in advance all these. He
played with everything. His life was a mockery, which embraced men,
things, institutions, ideas. As for eternity, he had chatted for half an
hour with Pope Julius II., and at the end of the conversation he said,
laughing:
"If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I should rather believe in God
than in the devil; power combined with goodness has always more
possibilities than the spirit of evil."
"Yes; but God wants one to do penance in this world."
"Are you always thinking of your indulgences?" replied Belvidéro. "Well, I
have a whole existence in reserve to repent the faults of my first life."
"Oh, if that is your idea of old age," cried the Pope, "you are in danger
of being canonized."
"After your elevation to the papacy, one may expect anything."
And then they went to watch the workmen engaged in building the huge
basilica consecrated to St. Peter.
"St. Peter is the genius who gave us our double power," said the Pope to
Don Juan, "and he deserves this monument. But sometimes at night I fancy
that a deluge will pass a sponge over all this, and it will need to be
begun over again."
Don Juan and the Pope laughed. They understood each other. A fool would
have gone next day to amuse himself with Julius II at Raphael's house or
in the delightful Villa Madama; but Belvidéro went to see him officiate in
his pontifical capacity, in order to convince himself of his suspicions.
Under the influence of wine della Rovere would have been capable of
forgetting himself and criticising the Apocalypse.
When Don Juan reached the age of sixty he went to live in Spain. There, in
his old age, he married a young and charming Andalusian. But he was
intentionally neither a good father nor a good husband. He had observed
that we are never so tenderly loved as by the women to whom we scarcely
give a thought. Doña Elvira, piously reared by an old aunt in the heart of
Andalusia in a castle several leagues from San Lucas, was all devotion and
meekness. Don Juan saw that this young girl was a woman to make a long
fight with a passion before yielding to it, so he hoped to keep from her
any love but his until after his death. It was a serious jest, a game of
chess which he had reserved for his old age.
Warned by his father's mistakes, he determined to make the most trifling
acts of his old age contribute to the success of the drama which was to
take place at his deathbed. Therefore, the greater part of his wealth lay
buried in the cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he seldom went.
The rest of his fortune was invested in a life annuity, so that his wife
and children might be interested in keeping him alive. This was a species
of cleverness which his father should have practiced; but this
Machiavellian scheme was unnecessary in his case. Young Philippe
Belvidéro, his son, grew up a Spaniard as conscientiously religious as his
father was impious, on the principle of the proverb: "A miserly father, a
spendthrift son."
The Abbot of San Lucas was selected by Don Juan to direct the consciences
of the Duchess of Belvidéro and of Philippe. This ecclesiastic was a holy
man, of fine carriage, well proportioned, with beautiful black eyes and a
head like Tiberius. He was wearied with fasting, pale and worn, and
continually battling with temptation, like all recluses. The old nobleman
still hoped perhaps to be able to kill a monk before finishing his first
lease of life. But, whether the Abbot was as clever as Don Juan, or
whether Doña Elvira had more prudence or virtue than Spain usually accords
to women, Don Juan was obliged to pass his last days like a country
parson, without scandal. Sometimes he took pleasure in finding his wife
and son remiss in their religious duties, and insisted imperiously that
they should fulfil all the obligations imposed upon the faithful by the
court of Rome. He was never so happy as when listening to the gallant
Abbot of San Lucas, Doña Elvira and Philippe engaged in arguing a case of
conscience.
Nevertheless, despite the great care which the lord of Belvidéro bestowed
upon his person, the days of decrepitude arrived. With this age of pain
came cries of helplessness, cries made the more piteous by the remembrance
of his impetuous youth and his ripe maturity. This man, for whom the last
jest in the farce was to make others believe in the laws and principles at
which he scoffed, was compelled to close his eyes at night upon an
uncertainty. This model of good breeding, this duke spirited in an orgy,
this brilliant courtier, gracious toward women, whose hearts he had wrung
as a peasant bends a willow wand, this man of genius, had an obstinate
cough, a troublesome sciatica and a cruel gout. He saw his teeth leave
him, as, at the end of an evening, the fairest, best dressed women depart
one by one, leaving the ballroom deserted and empty. His bold hands
trembled, his graceful limbs tottered, and then one night apoplexy turned
its hooked and icy fingers around his throat. From this fateful day he
became morose and harsh. He accused his wife and son of being insincere in
their devotion, charging that their touching and gentle care was showered
upon him so tenderly only because his money was all invested. Elvira and
Philippe shed bitter tears, and redoubled their caresses to this malicious
old man, whose broken voice would become affectionate to say:
"My friends, my dear wife, you will forgive me, will you not? I torment
you sometimes. Ah, great God, how canst Thou make use of me thus to prove
these two angelic creatures! I, who should be their joy, am their bane!"
It was thus that he held them at his bedside, making them forget whole
months of impatience and cruelty by one hour in which he displayed to them
the new treasures of his favor and a false tenderness. It was a paternal
system which succeeded infinitely better than that which his father had
formerly employed toward him. Finally he reached such a state of illness
that manoeuvres like those of a small boat entering a dangerous canal were
necessary in order to put him to bed.
Then the day of death came. This brilliant and skeptical man, whose
intellect only was left unimpaired by the general decay, lived between a
doctor and a confessor, his two antipathies. But he was jovial with them.
Was there not a bright light burning for him behind the veil of the
future? Over this veil, leaden and impenetrable to others, transparent to
him, the delicate and bewitching delights of youth played like shadows.
It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan felt the approach of
death. The Spanish sky was gloriously clear, the orange trees perfumed the
air and the stars cast a fresh glowing light. Nature seemed to give
pledges of his resurrection. A pious and obedient son regarded him with
love and respect. About eleven o'clock he signified his wish to be left
alone with this sincere being.
"Philippe," he began, in a voice so tender and affectionate that the young
man trembled and wept with happiness, for his father had never said
"Philippe" like this before. "Listen to me, my son," continued the dying
man. "I have been a great sinner, and all my life I have thought about
death. Formerly I was the friend of the great Pope Julius II. This
illustrious pontiff feared that the excessive excitability of my feelings
would cause me to commit some deadly sin at the moment of my death, after
I had received the blessed ointment. He made me a present of a flask of
holy water that gushed forth from a rock in the desert. I kept the secret
of the theft of the Church's treasure, but I am authorized to reveal the
mystery to my son 'in articulo mortis.' You will find the flask in the
drawer of the Gothic table which always stands at my bedside. The precious
crystals may be of service to you also, my dearest Philippe. Will you
swear to me by your eternal salvation that you will carry out my orders
faithfully?"
Philippe looked at his father. Don Juan was too well versed in human
expression not to know that he could die peacefully in perfect faith in
such a look, as his father had died in despair at his own expression.
"You deserve a different father," continued Don Juan. "I must acknowledge
that when the estimable Abbot of San Lucas was administering the viaticum'
I was thinking of the incompatibility of two so wide-spreading powers as
that of the devil and that of God."
"Oh, father!"
"And I said to myself that when Satan makes his peace he will be a great
idiot if he does not bargain for the pardon of his followers. This thought
haunted me. So, my child, I shall go to hell if you do not carry out my
wishes."
"Oh, tell them to me at once, father!"
"As soon as I have closed my eyes," replied Don Juan, "and that may be in
a few minutes, you must take my body, still warm, and lay it on a table in
the middle of the room. Then put out the lamp--the light of the stars will
be sufficient. You must take off my clothes, and while you recite 'Paters'
and 'Aves' and uplift your soul to God, you must moisten my eyes, my lips,
all my head first, and then my body, with this holy water. But, my dear
son, the power of God is great. You must not be astonished at anything."
At this point Don Juan, feeling the approach of death, added in a terrible
voice: "Be careful of the flask!"
Then he died gently in the arms of his son, whose tears fell upon his
ironical and sallow face.
It was nearly midnight when Don Philippe Belvidéro placed his father's
corpse on the table. After kissing the stern forehead and the gray hair he
put out the lamp. The soft rays of the moonlight which cast fantastic
reflections over the scenery allowed the pious Philippe to discern his
father's body dimly, as something white in the midst of the darkness. The
young man moistened a cloth in the liquid and then, deep in prayer, he
faithfully anointed the revered head. The silence was intense. Then he
heard indescribable rustlings, but he attributed them to the wind among
the tree-tops. When he had bathed the right arm he felt himself rudely
seized at the back of the neck by an arm, young and vigorous--the arm of
his father! He gave a piercing cry, and dropped the phial, which fell on
the floor and broke. The liquid flowed out.
The whole household rushed in, bearing torches. The cry had aroused and
frightened them as if the trumpet of the last judgment had shaken the
world. The room was crowded with people. The trembling throng saw Don
Philippe, fainting, but held up by the powerful arm of his father, which
clutched his neck. Then they saw a supernatural sight, the head of Don
Juan, young and beautiful as an Antinoüs, a head with black hair,
brilliant eyes and crimson lips, a head that moved in a blood-curdling
manner without being able to stir the skeleton to which it belonged.