"Upon my word, I laughed at it as much as the rest," Navarette
exclaimed; "I laughed at it with that profound, cruel pitilessness which
we all of us, who are well made and vigorous, feel for those whom their
step-mother, Nature, has disfigured in some way or other, for those
laughable, feeble creatures who are, however, more to be pitied than
those poor deformed wretches from whom we turn away in spite of
ourselves.
"I had been the first to make fun of him at the club, to find those easy
words which are remembered, and to turn that smooth, flabby, pink, ugly
face, like that of an old woman, and of a Levantine eunuch in which the
mouth is like a piece of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten
with concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of
a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish,
without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a
weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the
world except gambling and old Dresden china.
"However, our intercourse was invariably limited to a careless, 'Good
morning,' and to the usual shake of the hands which men exchange when
they meet at the theater or the club, and so I had neither to defend
him, nor to uphold him as a friend. But I can swear to you that now I
reproach myself for all these effusive jeers and bitter things, and they
weigh on my conscience now that I have been told the other side, the
equivocal enigma of that existence."
"A Punch and Judy secret," Bob Shelley said, throwing the end of his
cigar into the fire.
"Oh! yes; we were a hundred miles from the truth when we merely supposed
that he was unfit for service. This unhappy Lantosque, a well-born,
clever man, and very rich to boot, might have exhibited himself in some
traveling booth, for he was an hermaphrodite; do you understand? an
hermaphrodite. And his whole life was one of long, incessant torture, of
physical and moral suffering, which was more maddening than that which
Tantalus endured on the banks of the river Acheron. He had nearly
everything of the woman about him; he was a ridiculous caricature of our
sex, with his shrill voice, his large hips, his bust concealed by a
loose, wide coat, his cheeks, his chin, and upper lip without a vestige
of hair, and he had to appear like a man, to restrain and stifle his
instincts, his tastes, desires, and dreams, to fight ceaselessly against
himself, and never to allow anything of that which he endured, nor what
he longed for, nor that which was sapping his very life, to be
discovered.
"Once only he was on the point of betraying himself, in spite of
himself. He ardently loved a man, as Chloe must have loved Daphnis. He
could not master himself, or calm his feverish passion, and went towards
the abyss as if seized by mental giddiness. He could imagine nothing
handsomer, more desirable, or more charming than that chance friend. He
had sudden transports, fits of surprise, tenderness, curiosity,
jealousy, the ardent longings of an old maid who is afraid of dying a
virgin, who is waiting for love as for her deliverance, who attaches
herself and devotes herself to a lover with her whole being, and who
grows emaciated and dries up, and remains misunderstood and despised.
"And as they have both disappeared now, the lover dead from a sword
thrust in the middle of the chest, at Milan, on account of some ballet
girl, and as he certainly died without knowing that he had inspired such
a passion, I may tell you his name.
"He was Count Sebinico, who used to deal at faro with such delicate,
white hands, and who wore rings on nearly every finger, who had such a
musical voice, and who, with his wavy hair, and his delicate profile,
looked like a handsome, Florentine Condottiere.
"It must be very terrible to be thus ashamed of oneself, to have that
longing for kisses which console the most wretched in their misery,
which satisfy hunger and thirst, and assuage pain; that illusion of
delicious, intoxicating kisses, the delight and the balm of which such a
person can never know; the horror of that dishonor of being pointed at,
made fun of, driven away like unclean creatures that prostitute their
sex, and make love vile by unmentionable rites; oh! the constant
bitterness of seeing that the person we love makes fun of us, ill-uses
us, and does not show us even the slightest friendship!"
"Poor devil!" Jean d'Orthyse said, in a sad and moved voice. "In his
place, I should have blown my brains out."
"Everybody says that, my dear fellow, but how few there are who venture
to forestall that intruder, who always come too quickly."
"Lantosque had splendid health, and declared that he had never put a
penny into a doctor's pocket, and if he had allowed himself to have been
looked after when he was confined to his bed two months before, by an
attack of influenza, we should still be hearing him propose a game of
poker before dinner, in his shrill voice. His death, however, was as
tragic and mysterious as all those tales from beyond the grave are, on
which the Invisible rests."
"Although he had a cough, which threatened to tear his chest to pieces,
and although he was haunted by the fear of death, of that great depth of
darkness in which we lose ourselves in the abyss of Annihilation and
Oblivion, he obstinately refused to have his chest sounded, and repulsed
Doctor Pertuzés almost furiously, who thought he had gone out of his
mind."
"He cowered down, and covered himself with the bed-clothes up to his
chin, and found strength enough to tear up the prescriptions, and to
drive everyone, whether friend or relation, who tried to make him listen
to reason, and who could not understand his attacks of rage and neurosis
from his bedside. He seemed to be possessed by some demon, like those
women in hysterical convulsions, whom the bishops used formerly to
exorcise writh much pomp. It was painful to see him."
"That went on for a week, during which time the pneumonia had ample
opportunities for ravaging and giving the finishing stroke to his body,
which had been so robust and free from ailments hitherto, and he died,
trying to utter some last words which nobody understood, and endeavoring
to point out one particular article of furniture in the room."
"His nearest relation was a cousin, the Marquis de Territet, a skeptic,
who lived in Burgundy, and whom all this disturbance had upset in his
habits, and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal
formalities, the funeral, and all the rest of it, as soon as possible.
"Without reflecting on the strange suggestiveness of that death-bed, and
without looking to see whether there might not be, somehow or other, a
will in which Lantosque expressed his last wishes, he wanted to spare
his corpse the contact of mercenary hands, and to lay him out himself.
"You may judge of his surprise when, on throwing back the bed-clothes,
he first of all saw that Lantosque was dressed from head to foot in
tights, which accentuated, rather than otherwise, his female form.
"Much alarmed, feeling that he must have been violating some supreme
order, and comprehending it all, he went to his cousin's writing-table,
opened it, and successively searched every drawer, and soon found an
envelope fastened with five seals, and addressed to him. He broke them
and read as follows, written on a sheet of black-edged paper:
"'This is my only will. I leave all that I possess to my cousin, Roland
de Territet, on condition that he will undertake my funeral; that in his
own presence, he will have me wrapped up in the sheets of the bed on
which I die, and have me put into the coffin so, without any further
preparations. I wish to be cremated at _Père-Lachaise_, and not to be
subjected to any examination, or _post-mortem_, whatever may happen.'"
"And how came the marquis to betray the secret?" Bob Shelley asked.
"The marquis is married to a charming Parisian woman, and was any
married man, who loved his wife, ever known to keep a secret from her?"