A few hundred yards from Guerande the soil of Brittany comes to an end;
the salt-marshes and the sandy dunes begin. We descend into a desert of
sand, which the sea has left for a margin between herself and earth,
by a rugged road through a ravine that has never seen a carriage. This
desert contains waste tracts, ponds of unequal size, round the shores of
which the salt is made on muddy banks, and a little arm of the sea
which separates the mainland from the island of Croisic. Geographically,
Croisic is really a peninsula; but as it holds to Brittany only by the
beaches which connect it with the village of Batz (barren quicksands
very difficult to cross), it may be more correct to call it an island.
At the point where the road from Croisic to Guerande turns off from
the main road of _terra firma_, stands a country-house, surrounded by
a large garden, remarkable for its trimmed and twisted pine-trees, some
being trained to the shape of sun-shades, others, stripped of their
branches, showing their reddened trunks in spots where the bark has
peeled. These trees, victims of hurricanes, growing against wind and
tide (for them the saying is literally true), prepare the mind for the
strange and depressing sight of the marshes and dunes, which resemble
a stiffened ocean. The house, fairly well built of a species of slaty
stone with granite courses, has no architecture; it presents to the eye
a plain wall with windows at regular intervals. These windows have small
leaded panes on the ground-floor and large panes on the upper floor.
Above are the attics, which stretch the whole length of an enormously
high pointed roof, with two gables and two large dormer windows on each
side of it. Under the triangular point of each gable a circular window
opens its cyclopic eye, westerly to the sea, easterly on Guerande. One
facade of the house looks on the road to Guerande, the other on the
desert at the end of which is Croisic; beyond that little town is the
open sea. A brook escapes through an opening in the park wall which
skirts the road to Croisic, crosses the road, and is lost in the sands
beyond it.
The grayish tones of the house harmonize admirably with the scene
it overlooks. The park is an oasis in the surrounding desert, at
the entrance of which the traveller comes upon a mud-hut, where the
custom-house officials lie in wait for him. This house without land (for
the bulk of the estate is really in Guerande) derives an income from
the marshes and a few outlying farms of over ten thousand francs a year.
Such is the fief of Les Touches, from which the Revolution lopped
its feudal rights. The _paludiers_, however, continue to call it “the
chateau,” and they would still say “seigneur” if the fief were not now
in the female line. When Felicite set about restoring Les Touches, she
was careful, artist that she is, not to change the desolate exterior
which gives the look of a prison to the isolated structure. The sole
change was at the gate, which she enlivened by two brick columns
supporting an arch, beneath which carriages pass into the court-yard
where she planted trees.
The arrangement of the ground-floor is that of nearly all country houses
built a hundred years ago. It was, evidently, erected on the ruins of
some old castle formerly perched there. A large panelled entrance-hall
has been turned by Felicite into a billiard-room; from it opens an
immense salon with six windows, and the dining-room. The kitchen
communicates with the dining-room through an office. Camille has
displayed a noble simplicity in the arrangement of this floor, carefully
avoiding all splendid decoration. The salon, painted gray, is furnished
in old mahogany with green silk coverings. The furniture of the
dining-room comprises four great buffets, also of mahogany, chairs
covered with horsehair, and superb engravings by Audran in mahogany
frames. The old staircase, of wood with heavy balusters, is covered all
over with a green carpet.
On the floor above are two suites of rooms separated by the staircase.
Mademoiselle des Touches has taken for herself the one that looks toward
the sea and the marshes, and arranged it with a small salon, a large
chamber, and two cabinets, one for a dressing-room, the other for a
study and writing-room. The other suite, she has made into two separate
apartments for guests, each with a bedroom, an antechamber, and a
cabinet. The servants have rooms in the attic. The rooms for guests
are furnished with what is strictly necessary, and no more. A certain
fantastic luxury has been reserved for her own apartment. In that sombre
and melancholy habitation, looking out upon the sombre and melancholy
landscape, she wanted the most fantastic creations of art that she
could find. The little salon is hung with Gobelin tapestry, framed in
marvellously carved oak. The windows are draped with the heavy silken
hangings of a past age, a brocade shot with crimson and gold against
green and yellow, gathered into mighty pleats and trimmed with fringes
and cords and tassels worthy of a church. This salon contains a chest
or cabinet worth in these days seven or eight thousand francs, a carved
ebony table, a secretary with many drawers, inlaid with arabesques of
ivory and bought in Venice, with other noble Gothic furniture. Here too
are pictures and articles of choice workmanship bought in 1818, at a
time when no one suspected the ultimate value of such treasures. Her
bedroom is of the period of Louis XV. and strictly exact to it. Here we
see the carved wooden bedstead painted white, with the arched head-board
surmounted by Cupids scattering flowers, and the canopy above it adorned
with plumes; the hangings of blue silk; the Pompadour dressing-table
with its laces and mirror; together with bits of furniture of singular
shape,--a “duchesse,” a chaise-longue, a stiff little sofa,--with
window-curtains of silk, like that of the furniture, lined with pink
satin, and caught back with silken ropes, and a carpet of Savonnerie;
in short, we find here all those elegant, rich, sumptuous, and dainty
things in the midst of which the women of the eighteenth century lived
and made love.
The study, entirely of the present day, presents, in contrast with the
Louis XV. gallantries, a charming collection of mahogany furniture;
it resembles a boudoir; the bookshelves are full, but the fascinating
trivialities of a woman’s existence encumber it; in the midst of which
an inquisitive eye perceives with uneasy surprise pistols, a narghile,
a riding-whip, a hammock, a rifle, a man’s blouse, tobacco, pipes, a
knapsack,--a bizarre combination which paints Felicite.
Every great soul, entering that room, would be struck with the peculiar
beauty of the landscape which spreads its broad savanna beyond the park,
the last vegetation on the continent. The melancholy squares of water,
divided by little paths of white salt crust, along which the salt-makers
pass (dressed in white) to rake up and gather the salt into _mulons_;
a space which the saline exhalations prevent all birds from crossing,
stifling thus the efforts of botanic nature; those sands where the
eye is soothed only by one little hardy persistent plant bearing rosy
flowers and the Chartreux pansy; that lake of salt water, the sandy
dunes, the view of Croisic, a miniature town afloat like Venice on the
sea; and, finally the mighty ocean tossing its foaming fringe upon the
granite rocks as if the better to bring out their weird formations--that
sight uplifts the mind although it saddens it; an effect produced at
last by all that is sublime, creating a regretful yearning for things
unknown and yet perceived by the soul on far-off heights. These wild and
savage harmonies are for great spirits and great sorrows only.
This desert scene, where at times the sun rays, reflected by the water,
by the sands, whitened the village of Batz and rippled on the roofs of
Croisic with pitiless brilliancy, filled Camille’s dreaming mind for
days together. She seldom looked to the cool, refreshing scenes, the
groves, the flowery meadows around Guerande. Her soul was struggling to
endure a horrible inward anguish.
No sooner did Calyste see the vanes of the two gables shooting up beyond
the furze of the roadside and the distorted heads of the pines, than the
air seemed lighter; Guerande was a prison to him; his life was at Les
Touches. Who will not understand the attraction it presented to a youth
in his position. A love like that of Cherubin, had flung him at the feet
of a person who was a great and grand thing to him before he thought
of her as a woman, and it had survived the repeated and inexplicable
refusals of Felicite. This sentiment, which was more the need of loving
than love itself, had not escaped the terrible power of Camille for
analysis; hence, possibly, her rejection,--a generosity unperceived, of
course, by Calyste.
At Les Touches were displayed to the ravished eyes of the ignorant young
countryman, the riches of a new world; he heard, as it were, another
language, hitherto unknown to him and sonorous. He listened to the
poetic sounds of the finest music, that surpassing music of the
nineteenth century, in which melody and harmony blend or struggle on
equal terms,--a music in which song and instrumentation have reached a
hitherto unknown perfection. He saw before his eyes the works of modern
painters, those of the French school, to-day the heir of Italy, Spain,
and Flanders, in which talent has become so common that hearts, weary
of talent, are calling aloud for genius. He read there those works of
imagination, those amazing creations of modern literature which produced
their full effect upon his unused heart. In short, the great Nineteenth
Century appeared to him, in all its collective magnificence, its
criticising spirit, its desires for renovation in all directions, and
its vast efforts, nearly all of them on the scale of the giant who
cradled the infancy of the century in his banners and sang to it hymns
with the lullaby of cannon.
Initiated by Felicite into the grandeur of all these things, which may,
perhaps, escape the eyes of those who work them, Calyste gratified at
Les Touches the taste for the glorious, powerful at his age, and that
artless admiration, the first love of adolescence, which is always
irritated by criticism. It is so natural that flame should rise! He
listened to that charming Parisian raillery, that graceful satire which
revealed to him French wit and the qualities of the French mind, and
awakened in him a thousand ideas, which might have slumbered forever in
the soft torpor of his family life. For him, Mademoiselle des Touches
was the mother of his intellect. She was so kind to him; a woman is
always adorable to a man in whom she inspires love, even when she seems
not to share it.
At the present time Felicite was giving him music-lessons. To him the
grand apartments on the lower floor, and her private rooms above, so
coquettish, so artistic, were vivified, were animated by a light, a
spirit, a supernatural atmosphere, strange and undefinable. The
modern world with its poesy was sharply contrasted with the dull and
patriarchal world of Guerande, in the two systems brought face to face
before him. On one side all the thousand developments of Art, on the
other the sameness of uncivilized Brittany. No one will therefore ask
why the poor lad, bored like his mother with the pleasures of _mouche_,
quivered as he approached the house, and rang the bell, and crossed the
court-yard. Such emotions, we may remark, do not assail a mature man,
trained to the ups and downs of life, whom nothing surprises, being
prepared for all.
As the door opened, Calyste, hearing the sound of the piano, supposed
that Camille was in the salon; but when he entered the billiard-hall
he no longer heard it. Camille, he thought, must be playing on a small
upright piano brought by Conti from England and placed by her in her
own little salon. He began to run up the stairs, where the thick carpet
smothered the sound of his steps; but he went more slowly as he neared
the top, perceiving something unusual and extraordinary about the music.
Felicite was playing for herself only; she was communing with her own
being.
Instead of entering the room, the young man sat down upon a Gothic seat
covered with green velvet, which stood on the landing beneath a window
artistically framed in carved woods stained and varnished. Nothing
was ever more mysteriously melancholy than Camille’s improvisation; it
seemed like the cry of a soul _de profundis_ to God--from the depths of
a grave! The heart of the young lover recognized the cry of despairing
love, the prayer of a hidden plaint, the groan of repressed affliction.
Camille had varied, modified, and lengthened the introduction to the
cavatina: “Mercy for thee, mercy for me!” which is nearly the whole of
the fourth act of “Robert le Diable.” She now suddenly sang the words
in a heart-rending manner, and then as suddenly interrupted herself.
Calyste entered, and saw the reason. Poor Camille Maupin! poor Felicite!
She turned to him a face bathed with tears, took out her handkerchief
and dried them, and said, simply, without affectation, “Good-morning.”
She was beautiful as she sat there in her morning gown. On her head was
one of those red chenille nets, much worn in those days, through which
the coils of her black hair shone, escaping here and there. A short
upper garment made like a Greek peplum gave to view a pair of cambric
trousers with embroidered frills, and the prettiest of Turkish slippers,
red and gold.
“What is the matter?” cried Calyste.
“He has not returned,” she replied, going to a window and looking out
upon the sands, the sea and the marshes.
This answer explained all. Camille was awaiting Claude Vignon.
“You are anxious about him?” asked Calyste.
“Yes,” she answered, with a sadness the lad was too ignorant to analyze.
He started to leave the room.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To find him,” he replied.
“Dear child!” she said, taking his hand and drawing him toward her with
one of those moist glances which are to a youthful soul the best of
recompenses. “You are distracted! Where could you find him on that wide
shore?”
“I will find him.”
“Your mother would be in mortal terror. Stay. Besides, I choose it,” she
said, making him sit down upon the sofa. “Don’t pity me. The tears you
see are the tears a woman likes to shed. We have a faculty that is not
in man,--that of abandoning ourselves to our nervous nature and
driving our feelings to an extreme. By imagining certain situations and
encouraging the imagination we end in tears, and sometimes in serious
states of illness or disorder. The fancies of women are not the action
of the mind; they are of the heart. You have come just in time; solitude
is bad for me. I am not the dupe of his professed desire to go to
Croisic and see the rocks and the dunes and the salt-marshes without
me. He meant to leave us alone together; he is jealous, or, rather, he
pretends jealousy, and you are young, you are handsome.”
“Why not have told me this before? What must I do? must I stay away?”
asked Calyste, with difficulty restraining his tears, one of which
rolled down his cheek and touched Felicite deeply.
“You are an angel!” she cried. Then she gaily sang the “Stay! stay!” of
Matilde in “Guillaume Tell,” taking all gravity from that magnificent
answer of the princess to her subject. “He only wants to make me think
he loves me better than he really does,” she said. “He knows how much
I desire his happiness,” she went on, looking attentively at Calyste.
“Perhaps he feels humiliated to be inferior to me there. Perhaps he
has suspicions about you and means to surprise us. But even if his only
crime is to take his pleasure without me, and not to associate me with
the ideas this new place gives him, is not that enough? Ah! I am no more
loved by that great brain than I was by the musician, by the poet,
by the soldier! Sterne is right; names signify much; mine is a bitter
sarcasm. I shall die without finding in any man the love which fills my
heart, the poesy that I have in my soul--”
She stopped, her arms pendant, her head lying back on the cushions, her
eyes, stupid with thought, fixed on a pattern of the carpet. The pain of
great minds has something grandiose and imposing about it; it reveals
a vast extent of soul which the thought of the spectator extends still
further. Such souls share the privileges of royalty whose affections
belong to a people and so affect a world.
“Why did you reject my--” said Calyste; but he could not end his
sentence. Camille’s beautiful hand laid upon his eloquently interrupted
him.
“Nature changed her laws in granting me a dozen years of youth beyond my
due,” she said. “I rejected your love from egotism. Sooner or later the
difference in our ages must have parted us. I am thirteen years older
than _he_, and even that is too much.”
“You will be beautiful at sixty,” cried Calyste, heroically.
“God grant it,” she answered, smiling. “Besides, dear child, I _want_ to
love. In spite of his cold heart, his lack of imagination, his cowardly
indifference, and the envy which consumes him, I believe there is
greatness behind those tatters; I hope to galvanize that heart, to save
him from himself, to attach him to me. Alas! alas! I have a clear-seeing
mind, but a blind heart.”
She was terrible in her knowledge of herself. She suffered and analyzed
her feelings as Cuvier and Dupuytren explained to friends the fatal
advance of their disease and the progress that death was making in
their bodies. Camille Maupin knew the passion within her as those men of
science knew their own anatomy.
“I have brought him here to judge him, and he is already bored,” she
continued. “He pines for Paris, I tell him; the nostalgia of criticism
is on him; he has no author to pluck, no system to undermine, no poet
to drive to despair, and he dares not commit some debauch in this house
which might lift for a moment the burden of his ennui. Alas! my love is
not real enough, perhaps, to soothe his brain; I don’t intoxicate him!
Make him drunk at dinner to-night and I shall know if I am right. I will
say I am ill, and stay in my own room.”
Calyste turned scarlet from his neck to his forehead; even his ears were
on fire.
“Oh! forgive me,” she cried. “How can I heedlessly deprave your girlish
innocence! Forgive me, Calyste--” She paused. “There are some superb,
consistent natures who say at a certain age: ‘If I had my life to live
over again, I would do the same things.’ I who do not think myself
weak, I say, ‘I would be a woman like your mother, Calyste.’ To have
a Calyste, oh! what happiness! I could be a humble and submissive
woman--And yet, I have done no harm except to myself. But alas! dear
child, a woman cannot stand alone in society except it be in what is
called a primitive state. Affections which are not in harmony with
social or with natural laws, affections that are not obligatory, in
short, escape us. Suffering for suffering, as well be useful where we
can. What care I for those children of my cousin Faucombe? I have not
seen them these twenty years, and they are married to merchants. You are
my son, who have never cost me the miseries of motherhood; I shall leave
you my fortune and make you happy--at least, so far as money can do so,
dear treasure of beauty and grace that nothing should ever change or
blast.”
“You would not take my love,” said Calyste, “and I shall return your
fortune to your heirs.”
“Child!” answered Camille, in a guttural voice, letting the tears
roll down her cheeks. “Will nothing save me from myself?” she added,
presently.
“You said you had a history to tell me, and a letter to--” said the
generous youth, wishing to divert her thoughts from her grief; but she
did not let him finish.
“You are right to remind me of that. I will be an honest woman before
all else. I will sacrifice no one--Yes, it was too late, yesterday,
but to-day we have time,” she said, in a cheerful tone. “I will keep my
promise; and while I tell you that history I will sit by the window and
watch the road to the marshes.”
Calyste arranged a great Gothic chair for her near the window, and
opened one of the sashes. Camille Maupin, who shared the oriental taste
of her illustrious sister-author, took a magnificent Persian narghile,
given to her by an ambassador. She filled the nipple with patchouli,
cleaned the _bochettino_, perfumed the goose-quill, which she attached
to the mouthpiece and used only once, set fire to the yellow leaves,
placing the vase with its long neck enamelled in blue and gold at some
distance from her, and rang the bell for tea.
“Will you have cigarettes?--Ah! I am always forgetting that you do not
smoke. Purity such as yours is so rare! The hand of Eve herself, fresh
from the hand of her Maker, is alone innocent enough to stroke your
cheek.”
Calyste colored; sitting down on a stool at Camille’s feet, he did not
see the deep emotion that seemed for a moment to overcome her.