They had dressed for dinner. In the drawing-room Miss Bell was sketching
monsters in imitation of Leonard. She created them, to know what they
would say afterward, sure that they would speak and express rare ideas
in odd rhythms, and that she would listen to them. It was in this way
that she often found her inspiration.
Prince Albertinelli strummed on the piano the Sicilian ‘O Lola’! His
soft fingers hardly touched the keys.
Choulette, even harsher than was his habit, asked for thread and needles
that he might mend his clothes. He grumbled because he had lost a
needle-case which he had carried for thirty years in his pocket, and
which was dear to him for the sweetness of the reminiscences and the
strength of the good advice that he had received from it. He thought
he had lost it in the hall devoted to historic subjects in the Pitti
Palace; and he blamed for this loss the Medicis and all the Italian
painters.
Looking at Miss Bell with an evil eye, he said:
“I compose verses while mending my clothes. I like to work with my
hands. I sing songs to myself while sweeping my room; that is the reason
why my songs have gone to the hearts of men, like the old songs of the
farmers and artisans, which are even more beautiful than mine, but not
more natural. I have pride enough not to want any other servant than
myself. The sacristan’s widow offered to repair my clothes. I would not
permit her to do it. It is wrong to make others do servilely for us work
which we can do ourselves with noble pride.”
The Prince was nonchalantly playing his nonchalant music. Therese, who
for eight days had been running to churches and museums in the company
of Madame Marmet, was thinking of the annoyance which her companion
caused her by discovering in the faces of the old painters resemblances
to persons she knew. In the morning, at the Ricardi Palace, on the
frescoes of Gozzoli, she had recognized M. Gamin, M. Lagrange, M.
Schmoll, the Princess Seniavine as a page, and M. Renan on horseback.
She was terrified at finding M. Renan everywhere. She led all her ideas
back to her little circle of academicians and fashionable people, by an
easy turn, which irritated her friend. She recalled in her soft voice
the public meetings at the Institute, the lectures at the Sorbonne,
the evening receptions where shone the worldly and the spiritualist
philosophers. As for the women, they were all charming and
irreproachable. She dined with all of them. And Therese thought: “She
is too prudent. She bores me.” And she thought of leaving her at Fiesole
and visiting the churches alone. Employing a word that Le Menil had
taught her, she said to herself:
“I will ‘plant’ Madame Marmet.”
A lithe old man came into the parlor. His waxed moustache and his white
imperial made him look like an old soldier; but his glance betrayed,
under his glasses, the fine softness of eyes worn by science and
voluptuousness. He was a Florentine, a friend of Miss Bell and of the
Prince, Professor Arrighi, formerly adored by women, and now celebrated
in Tuscany for his studies of agriculture. He pleased the Countess
Martin at once. She questioned him on his methods, and on the results
he obtained from them. He said that he worked with prudent energy. “The
earth,” he said, “is like women. The earth does not wish one to treat
it with either timidity or brutality.” The Ave Maria rang in all
the campaniles, seeming to make of the sky an immense instrument of
religious music. “Darling,” said Miss Bell, “do you observe that the air
of Florence is made sonorous and silvery at night by the sound of the
bells?”
“It is singular,” said Choulette, “we have the air of people who are
waiting for something.”
Vivian Bell replied that they were waiting for M. Dechartre. He was a
little late; she feared he had missed the train.
Choulette approached Madame Marmet, and said, gravely “Madame Marmet,
is it possible for you to look at a door--a simple, painted, wooden
door like yours, I suppose, or like mine, or like this one, or like any
other--without being terror-stricken at the thought of the visitor who
might, at any moment, come in? The door of one’s room, Madame Marmet,
opens on the infinite. Have you ever thought of that? Does one ever
know the true name of the man or woman, who, under a human guise, with a
known face, in ordinary clothes, comes into one’s house?”
He added that when he was closeted in his room he could not look at the
door without feeling his hair stand on end. But Madame Marmet saw the
doors of her rooms open without fear. She knew the name of every one who
came to see her--charming persons.
Choulette looked at her sadly, and said, shaking his head: “Madame
Marmet, those whom you call by their terrestrial names have other names
which you do not know, and which are their real names.”
Madame Martin asked Choulette if he thought that misfortune needed to
cross the threshold in order to enter one’s life.
“Misfortune is ingenious and subtle. It comes by the window, it goes
through walls. It does not always show itself, but it is always there.
The poor doors are innocent of the coming of that unwelcome visitor.”
Choulette warned Madame Martin severely that she should not call
misfortune an unwelcome visitor.
“Misfortune is our greatest master and our best friend. Misfortune
teaches us the meaning of life. Madame, when you suffer, you know what
you must know; you believe what you must believe; you do what you must
do; you are what you must be. And you shall have joy, which pleasure
expels. True joy is timid, and does not find pleasure among a
multitude.”
Prince Albertinelli said that Miss Bell and her French friends did not
need to be unfortunate in order to be perfect, and that the doctrine of
perfection reached by suffering was a barbarous cruelty, held in horror
under the beautiful sky of Italy. When the conversation languished,
he prudently sought again at the piano the phrases of the graceful and
banal Sicilian air, fearing to slip into an air of Trovatore, which was
written in the same manner.
Vivian Bell questioned the monsters she had created, and complained of
their absurd replies.
“At this moment,” she said, “I should like to hear speak only figures
on tapestries which should say tender things, ancient and precious as
themselves.”
And the handsome Prince, carried away by the flood of melody, sang. His
voice displayed itself like a peacock’s plumage, and died in spasms of
“ohs” and “ahs.”
The good Madame Marmet, her eyes fixed on the door, said:
“I think that Monsieur Dechartre is coming.”
He came in, animated, with joy on his usually grave face.
Miss Bell welcomed him with birdlike cries.
“Monsieur Dechartre, we were impatient to see you. Monsieur Choulette
was talking evil of doors--yes, of doors of houses; and he was saying
also that misfortune is a very obliging old gentleman. You have lost
all these beautiful things. You have made us wait very long, Monsieur
Dechartre. Why?”
He apologized; he had taken only the time to go to his hotel and change
his dress. He had not even gone to bow to his old friend the bronze San
Marco, so imposing in his niche on the San Michele wall. He praised the
poetess and saluted the Countess Martin with joy hardly concealed.
“Before quitting Paris I went to your house, where I was told you had
gone to wait for spring at Fiesole, with Miss Bell. I then had the hope
of finding you in this country, which I love now more than ever.”
She asked him whether he had gone to Venice, and whether he had seen
again at Ravenna the empresses wearing aureolas, and the phantoms that
had formerly dazzled him.
No, he had not stopped anywhere.
She said nothing. Her eyes remained fixed on the corner of the wall, on
the St. Paulin bell.
He said to her:
“You are looking at the Nolette.”
Vivian Bell laid aside her papers and her pencils.
“You shall soon see a marvel, Monsieur Dechartre. I have found the queen
of small bells. I found it at Rimini, in an old building in ruins, which
is used as a warehouse. I bought it and packed it myself. I am waiting
for it. You shall see. It bears a Christ on a cross, between the Virgin
and Saint John, the date of 1400, and the arms of Malatesta--Monsieur
Dechartre, you are not listening enough. Listen to me attentively. In
1400 Lorenzo Ghiberti, fleeing from war and the plague, took refuge at
Rimini, at Paola Malatesta’s house. It was he that modelled the figures
of my bell. And you shall see here, next week, Ghiberti’s work.”
The servant announced that dinner was served.
Miss Bell apologized for serving to them Italian dishes. Her cook was a
poet of Fiesole.
At table, before the fiascani enveloped with corn straw, they talked of
the fifteenth century, which they loved. Prince Albertinelli praised the
artists of that epoch for their universality, for the fervent love they
gave to their art, and for the genius that devoured them. He talked with
emphasis, in a caressing voice.
Dechartre admired them. But he admired them in another way.
“To praise in a becoming manner,” he said, “those men, who worked so
heartily, the praise should be modest and just. They should be placed in
their workshops, in the shops where they worked as artisans. It is
there that one may admire their simplicity and their genius. They were
ignorant and rude. They had read little and seen little. The hills that
surround Florence were the boundary of their horizon. They knew
only their city, the Holy Scriptures, and some fragments of antique
sculptures, studied and caressed lovingly.”
“You are right,” said Professor Arrighi. “They had no other care than to
use the best processes. Their minds bent only on preparing varnish and
mixing colors. The one who first thought of pasting a canvas on a panel,
in order that the painting should not be broken when the wood was split,
passed for a marvellous man. Every master had his secret formulae.”
“Happy time,” said Dechartre, “when nobody troubled himself about that
originality for which we are so avidly seeking to-day. The apprentice
tried to work like the master. He had no other ambition than to resemble
him, and it was without trying to be that he was different from the
others. They worked not for glory, but to live.”
“They were right,” said Choulette. “Nothing is better than to work for a
living.”
“The desire to attain fame,” continued Dechartre, “did not trouble them.
As they did not know the past, they did not conceive the future; and
their dream did not go beyond their lives. They exercised a powerful
will in working well. Being simple, they made few mistakes, and saw the
truth which our intelligence conceals from us.”
Choulette began to relate to Madame Marmet the incidents of a call he
had made during the day on the Princess of the House of France to whom
the Marquise de Rieu had given him a letter of introduction. He liked
to impress upon people the fact that he, the Bohemian and vagabond, had
been received by that royal Princess, at whose house neither Miss
Bell nor the Countess Martin would have been admitted, and whom Prince
Albertinelli prided himself on having met one day at some ceremony.
“She devotes herself,” said the Prince, “to the practices of piety.”
“She is admirable for her nobility, and her simplicity,” said Choulette.
“In her house, surrounded by her gentlemen and her ladies, she causes
the most rigorous etiquette to be observed, so that her grandeur is
almost a penance, and every morning she scrubs the pavement of the
church. It is a village church, where the chickens roam, while the
‘cure’ plays briscola with the sacristan.”
And Choulette, bending over the table, imitated, with his napkin, a
servant scrubbing; then, raising his head, he said, gravely:
“After waiting in consecutive anterooms, I was at last permitted to kiss
her hand.”
And he stopped.
Madame Martin asked, impatiently:
“What did she say to you, that Princess so admirable for her nobility
and her simplicity?”
“She said to me: ‘Have you visited Florence? I am told that recently
new and handsome shops have been opened which are lighted at night.’ She
said also ‘We have a good chemist here. The Austrian chemists are not
better. He placed on my leg, six months ago, a porous plaster which
has not yet come off.’ Such are the words that Maria Therese deigned
to address to me. O simple grandeur! O Christian virtue! O daughter
of Saint Louis! O marvellous echo of your voice, holy Elizabeth of
Hungary!”
Madame Martin smiled. She thought that Choulette was mocking. But he
denied the charge, indignantly, and Miss Bell said that Madame Martin
was wrong. It was a fault of the French, she said, to think that people
were always jesting.
Then they reverted to the subject of art, which in that country is
inhaled with the air.
“As for me,” said the Countess Martin, “I am not learned enough to
admire Giotto and his school. What strikes me is the sensuality of that
art of the fifteenth century which is said to be Christian. I have seen
piety and purity only in the images of Fra Angelico, although they
are very pretty. The rest, those figures of Virgins and angels, are
voluptuous, caressing, and at times perversely ingenuous. What is there
religious in those young Magian kings, handsome as women; in that Saint
Sebastian, brilliant with youth, who seems merely the dolorous Bacchus
of Christianity?”
Dechartre replied that he thought as she did, and that they must be
right, she and he; since Savonarola was of the same opinion, and,
finding no piety in any work of art, wished to burn them all.
“There were at Florence, in the time of the superb Manfred, who was half
a Mussulman, men who were said to be of the sect of Epicurus, and who
sought for arguments against the existence of God. Guido Cavalcanti
disdained the ignorant folk who believed in the immortality of the soul.
The following phrase by him was quoted: ‘The death of man is exactly
similar to that of brutes.’ Later, when antique beauty was excavated
from ruins, the Christian style of art seemed sad. The painters that
worked in the churches and cloisters were neither devout nor chaste.
Perugino was an atheist, and did not conceal it.”
“Yes,” said Miss Bell; “but it was said that his head was hard, and that
celestial truths, could not penetrate his thick cranium. He was harsh
and avaricious, and quite embedded in material interests. He thought
only of buying houses.”
Professor Arrighi defended Pietro Vanucci of Perugia.
“He was,” he said, “an honest man. And the prior of the Gesuati of
Florence was wrong to mistrust him. That monk practised the art
of manufacturing ultramarine blue by crushing stones of burned
lapis-lazuli. Ultramarine was then worth its weight in gold; and the
prior, who doubtless had a secret, esteemed it more precious than rubies
or sapphires. He asked Pietro Vanucci to decorate the two cloisters of
his convent, and he expected marvels, less from the skilfulness of the
master than from the beauty of that ultramarine in the skies. During
all the time that the painter worked in the cloisters at the history
of Jesus Christ, the prior kept by his side and presented to him the
precious powder in a bag which he never quitted. Pietro took from it,
under the saintly man’s eyes, the quantity he needed, and dipped his
brush, loaded with color, in a cupful of water, before rubbing the wall
with it. He used in that manner a great quantity of the powder. And the
good father, seeing his bag getting thinner, sighed: ‘Jesus! How that
lime devours the ultramarine!’ When the frescoes were finished, and
Perugino had received from the monk the agreed price, he placed in
his hand a package of blue powder: ‘This is for you, father. Your
ultramarine which I took with my brush fell to the bottom of my cup,
whence I gathered it every day. I return it to you. Learn to trust
honest people.”
“Oh,” said Therese, “there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that
Perugino was avaricious yet honest. Interested people are not always the
least scrupulous. There are many misers who are honest.”
“Naturally, darling,” said Miss Bell. “Misers do not wish to owe
anything, and prodigal people can bear to have debts. They do not think
of the money they have, and they think less of the money they owe. I
did not say that Pietro Vanucci of Perugia was a man without property.
I said that he had a hard business head and that he bought houses. I am
very glad to hear that he returned the ultramarine to the prior of the
Gesuati.”
“Since your Pietro was rich,” said Choulette, “it was his duty to return
the ultramarine. The rich are morally bound to be honest; the poor are
not.”
At this moment, Choulette, to whom the waiter was presenting a silver
bowl, extended his hands for the perfumed water. It came from a vase
which Miss Bell passed to her guests, in accordance with antique usage,
after meals.
“I wash my hands,” he said, “of the evil that Madame Martin does or may
do by her speech, or otherwise.”
And he rose, awkwardly, after Miss Bell, who took the arm of Professor
Arrighi.
In the drawing-room she said, while serving the coffee:
“Monsieur Choulette, why do you condemn us to the savage sadness of
equality? Why, Daphnis’s flute would not be melodious if it were made of
seven equal reeds. You wish to destroy the beautiful harmonies between
masters and servants, aristocrats and artisans. Oh, I fear you are a sad
barbarian, Monsieur Choulette. You are full of pity for those who are in
need, and you have no pity for divine beauty, which you exile from this
world. You expel beauty, Monsieur Choulette; you repudiate her, nude and
in tears. Be certain of this: she will not remain on earth when the poor
little men shall all be weak, delicate, and ignorant. Believe me, to
abolish the ingenious grouping which men of diverse conditions form in
society, the humble with the magnificent, is to be the enemy of the poor
and of the rich, is to be the enemy of the human race.”
“Enemies of the human race!” replied Choulette, while stirring his
coffee. “That is the phrase the harsh Roman applied to the Christians
who talked of divine love to him.”
Dechartre, seated near Madame Martin, questioned her on her tastes
about art and beauty, sustained, led, animated her admirations, at times
prompted her with caressing brusquerie, wished her to see all that he
had seen, to love all that he loved.
He wished that she should go in the gardens at the first flush of
spring. He contemplated her in advance on the noble terraces; he saw
already the light playing on her neck and in her hair; the shadow
of laurel-trees falling on her eyes. For him the land and the sky of
Florence had nothing more to do than to serve as an adornment to this
young woman.
He praised the simplicity with which she dressed, the characteristics
of her form and of her grace, the charming frankness of the lines which
every one of her movements created. He liked, he said, the animated and
living, subtle, and free gowns which one sees so rarely, which one never
forgets.
Although she had been much lauded, she had never heard praise which had
pleased her more. She knew she dressed well, with bold and sure
taste. But no man except her father had made to her on the subject the
compliments of an expert. She thought that men were capable of feeling
only the effect of a gown, without understanding the ingenious details
of it. Some men who knew gowns disgusted her by their effeminate air.
She was resigned to the appreciation of women only, and these had in
their appreciation narrowness of mind, malignity, and envy. The artistic
admiration of Dechartre astonished and pleased her. She received
agreeably the praise he gave her, without thinking that perhaps it was
too intimate and almost indiscreet.
“So you look at gowns, Monsieur Dechartre?”
No, he seldom looked at them. There were so few women well dressed, even
now, when women dress as well as, and even better, than ever. He found
no pleasure in seeing packages of dry-goods walk. But if a woman having
rhythm and line passed before him, he blessed her.
He continued, in a tone a little more elevated:
“I can not think of a woman who takes care to deck herself every day,
without meditating on the great lesson which she gives to artists. She
dresses for a few hours, and the care she has taken is not lost. We
must, like her, ornament life without thinking of the future. To paint,
carve, or write for posterity is only the silliness of conceit.”
“Monsieur Dechartre,” asked Prince Albertinelli, “how do you think a
mauve waist studded with silver flowers would become Miss Bell?”
“I think,” said Choulette, “so little of a terrestrial future, that I
have written my finest poems on cigarette paper. They vanished easily,
leaving to my verses only a sort of metaphysical existence.”
He had an air of negligence for which he posed. In fact, he had never
lost a line of his writing. Dechartre was more sincere. He was not
desirous of immortality. Miss Bell reproached him for this.
“Monsieur Dechartre, that life may be great and complete, one must put
into it the past and the future. Our works of poetry and of art must be
accomplished in honor of the dead and with the thought of those who are
to come after us. Thus we shall participate in what has been, in what
is, and in what shall be. You do not wish to be immortal, Monsieur
Dechartre? Beware, for God may hear you.”
Dechartre replied:
“It would be enough for me to live one moment more.”
And he said good-night, promising to return the next day to escort
Madame Martin to the Brancacci chapel.
An hour later, in the aesthetic room hung with tapestry, whereon
citron-trees loaded with golden fruit formed a fairy forest, Therese,
her head on the pillow, and her handsome bare arms folded under her
head, was thinking, seeing float confusedly before her the images of her
new life: Vivian Bell and her bells, her pre-Raphaelite figures, light
as shadows, ladies, isolated knights, indifferent among pious scenes, a
little sad, and looking to see who was coming; she thought also of the
Prince Albertinelli, Professor Arrighi, Choulette, with his odd play of
ideas, and Dechartre, with youthful eyes in a careworn face.
She thought he had a charming imagination, a mind richer than all those
that had been revealed to her, and an attraction which she no longer
tried to resist. She had always recognized his gift to please. She
discovered now that he had the will to please. This idea was delightful
to her; she closed her eyes to retain it. Then, suddenly, she shuddered.
She had felt a deep blow struck within her in the depth of her being.
She had a sudden vision of Robert, his gun under his arm, in the woods.
He walked with firm and regular step in the shadowy thicket. She could
not see his face, and that troubled her. She bore him no ill-will. She
was not discontented with him, but with herself. Robert went straight
on, without turning his head, far, and still farther, until he was only
a black point in the desolate wood. She thought that perhaps she had
been capricious and harsh in leaving him without a word of farewell,
without even a letter. He was her lover and her only friend. She never
had had another. “I do not wish him to be unfortunate because of me,”
she thought.
Little by little she was reassured. He loved her, doubtless; but he was
not susceptible, not ingenious, happily, in tormenting himself. She said
to herself:
“He is hunting and enjoying the sport. He is with his aunt, whom he
admires.” She calmed her fears and returned to the charming gayety
of Florence. She had seen casually, at the Offices, a picture that
Dechartre liked. It was a decapitated head of the Medusa, a work wherein
Leonardo, the sculptor said, had expressed the minute profundity and
tragic refinement of his genius. She wished to see it again, regretting
that she had not seen it better at first. She extinguished her lamp and
went to sleep.
She dreamed that she met in a deserted church Robert Le Menil enveloped
in furs which she had never seen him wear. He was waiting for her, but a
crowd of priests had separated them. She did not know what had become of
him. She had not seen his face, and that frightened her. She awoke and
heard at the open window a sad, monotonous cry, and saw a humming-bird
darting about in the light of early dawn. Then, without cause, she began
to weep in a passion of self-pity, and with the abandon of a child.