This was about the state of affairs between Mademoiselle Louise and me,
when one evening, at Pagella's, where there were Southerners of various
races present, I was introduced to a young lady, Mademoiselle Mathilde
M., who at first sight made a powerful impression upon me.
She was a young Spanish Brazilian, tall of stature, a proud and
dazzling racial beauty. The contours of her head were so impeccably
perfect that one scarcely understood how Nature could have made such a
being inadvertently, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion
made the carnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or
crimson by the side of hers. At the same time there was a something in
the colour of her skin that made me understand better the womanish
appearance of Zurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen
in Nature before. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the
fashion of the day, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick
ringlets upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled,
arched and almost met over her delicate nose, her eyes were burning and
a deep brown; they conquered, and smiled; her mouth was a little too
small, with white teeth that were a little too large, her bust slender
and full. Her manner was distinguished, her voice rich; but most
marvellous of all was her hand, such a hand as Parmeggianino might have
painted, all soul, branching off into five delightful fingers.
Mentally I unhesitatingly dubbed her the most marvelous feminine
creature I had ever seen, and that less on account of her loveliness
than the blending of the magnificence of her bearing with the ardour,
and often the frolicsomeness, of her mode of expression.
She was always vigorous and sometimes daring in her statements, cared
only for the unusual, loved only "the impossible," but nevertheless
carefully observed every established custom of society. To my very
first remark to her, to the effect that the weakness of women was
mostly only an habitual phrase; they were not weak except when they
wished to be, she replied: "Young as you are, you know women very
well!" In that she was quite wrong.
Besides Spanish and Portuguese, she spoke French perfectly and English
not badly, sang in a melodious contralto voice, drew well for an
amateur, carved alabaster vases, and had all kinds of talents. She did
not care to sing ballads, only cared for grand pathos.
She was just twenty years of age, and had come into the world at Rio,
where her father represented the Spanish government. The family were
descended from Cervantes. As she had early been left motherless, her
father had sent her over in her fifteenth year to her aunt in Paris.
This latter was married to an old monstrosity of a Spaniard, religious
to the verge of insanity, who would seem to have committed some crime
in his youth and now spent his whole day in the church, which was next
door to his house, imploring forgiveness for his sins. He was only at
home at mealtimes, when he ate an alarming amount, and he associated
only with priests. The aunt herself, however, in spite of her age, was
a pleasure-seeking woman, rarely allowed her niece to stay at home and
occupy herself as she liked, but dragged her everywhere about with her
to parties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt
depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the
Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love
of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and,
like a well-brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between
friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she
understood everything; but there was a certain sublimity in her manner.
While Mademoiselle Louise, the little Parisian, had been brought up in
a convent, kept from all free, intelligent, mundane conversation, and
all free artistic impressions, the young Spaniard, at the same age, had
the education and the style of a woman of the world in her manner.
We two young frequenters of the Pagella salon, felt powerfully drawn to
one another. We understood one another at once. Of course, it was only
I who was fascinated. When, in an evening, I drove across Paris in the
expectation of seeing her, I sometimes murmured to myself Henrik
Hertz's verse:
"My beloved is like the dazzling day,
Brazilia's Summer!"
My feelings, however, were much more admiration than love or desire. I
did not really want to possess her. I never felt myself quite on a
level with her even when she made decided advances to me. I rejoiced
over her as over something perfect, and there was the rich, foreign
colouring about her that there had been about the birds of paradise in
my nursery. She seldom disturbed my peace of mind, but I said to myself
that if I were to go away then, I should in all probability never see
her again, as her father would be taking her the next year to Brazil or
Madrid, and I sometimes felt as though I should be going away from my
happiness forever. She often asked me to stay with such expressions and
with such an expression that I was quite bewildered. And then she
monopolised my thoughts altogether, like the queenly being she was.
A Danish poet had once called the beautiful women of the South "Large,
showy flowers without fragrance." Was she a large, showy flower?
Forget-me-nots were certainly by no means showy, but they were none the
more odorous for that.
Now that I was seeing the radiant Mathilde almost every day, my
position with regard to Louise seemed to me a false one. I did not yet
know how exceedingly rare an undivided feeling is, did not understand
that my feelings towards Mathilde were just as incomplete as those I
cherished for Louise. I looked on Mademoiselle Mathilde as on a work of
art, but I came more humanly close to Mademoiselle Louise. She did not
evoke my enthusiastic admiration; that was quite true, but Mademoiselle
Mathilde evoked my enthusiastic admiration only. If there were a great
deal of compassion mingled with my feelings for the Parisian, there was
likewise a slight erotic element.
The young Frenchwoman, in her passion, found expressions for affection
and tenderness, in which she forgot all pride. She lived in a
commingling, very painful for me, of happiness at my still being in
Paris, and of horror at my approaching departure, which I was now about
to accelerate, merely to escape from the extraordinary situation in
which I found myself, and which I was too young to carry. Although
Mathilde, whom I had never seen alone, was always the same, quite the
great lady, perfectly self-controlled, it was the thought of saying
good-bye to her that was the more painful to me. Every other day, on
the other hand, Louise was trembling and ill, and I dreaded the moment
of separation.