After dinner, in the salon of the bells, under the lamps from which
the great shades permitted only an obscure light to filter, good Madame
Marmet was warming herself by the hearth, with a white cat on her knees.
The evening was cool. Madame Martin, her eyes reminiscent of the golden
light, the violet peaks, and the ancient trees of Florence, smiled with
happy fatigue. She had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet
to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of her
visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate
letters, the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world
but cloisters chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads
where she saw the first blush of spring. Dechartre had modelled for Miss
Bell a waxen figure of Beatrice. Vivian was painting angels. Softly bent
over her, Prince Albertinelli caressed his beard and threw around him
glances that appeared to seek admiration.
Replying to a reflection of Vivian Bell on marriage and love:
“A woman must choose,” he said. “With a man whom women love her heart is
not quiet. With a man whom the women do not love she is not happy.”
“Darling,” asked Miss Bell, “what would you wish for a friend dear to
you?”
“I should wish, Vivian, that my friend were happy. I should wish
also that she were quiet. She should be quiet in hatred of treason,
humiliating suspicions, and mistrust.”
“But, darling, since the Prince has said that a woman can not have at
the same time happiness and security, tell me what your friend should
choose.”
“One never chooses, Vivian; one never chooses. Do not make me say what I
think of marriage.”
At this moment Choulette appeared, wearing the magnificent air of those
beggars of whom small towns are proud. He had played briscola with
peasants in a coffeehouse of Fiesole.
“Here is Monsieur Choulette,” said Miss Bell. “He will teach what we are
to think of marriage. I am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. He
does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not
see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you think of marriage?”
He took a seat and lifted in the air a Socratic finger:
“Are you speaking, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and
woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas! it
is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The
importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would
have made the women of other times laugh. We owe this prejudice, like
many others, to the bourgeois, to the mad performances of a lot of
financiers which have been called the Revolution, and which seem
admirable to those that have profited by it. Civil marriage is, in
reality, only registry, like many others which the State exacts in order
to be sure of the condition of persons: in every well organized state
everybody must be indexed. Morally, this registry in a big ledger has
not even the virtue of inducing a wife to take a lover. Who ever thinks
of betraying an oath taken before a mayor? In order to find joy in
adultery, one must be pious.”
“But, Monsieur,” said Therese, “we were married at the church.”
Then, with an accent of sincerity:
“I can not understand how a man ever makes up his mind to marry; nor how
a woman, after she has reached an age when she knows what she is doing,
can commit that folly.”
The Prince looked at her with distrust. He was clever, but he was
incapable of conceiving that one might talk without an object,
disinterestedly, and to express general ideas. He imagined that Countess
Martin-Belleme was suggesting to him projects that she wished him to
consider. And as he was thinking of defending himself and also avenging
himself, he made velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry:
“You display, Madame, the pride of the beautiful and intelligent French
women whom subjection irritates. French women love liberty, and none of
them is as worthy of liberty as you. I have lived in France a little.
I have known and admired the elegant society of Paris, the salons, the
festivals, the conversations, the plays. But in our mountains, under our
olive-trees, we become rustic again. We assume golden-age manners, and
marriage is for us an idyl full of freshness.”
Vivian Bell examined the statuette which Dechartre had left on the
table.
“Oh! it was thus that Beatrice looked, I am sure. And do you know,
Monsieur Dechartre, there are wicked men who say that Beatrice never
existed?”
Choulette declared he wished to be counted among those wicked men. He
did not believe that Beatrice had any more reality than other ladies
through whom ancient poets who sang of love represented some scholastic
idea, ridiculously subtle.
Impatient at praise which was not destined for himself, jealous of Dante
as of the universe, a refined man of letters, Choulette continued:
“I suspect that the little sister of the angels never lived, except in
the imagination of the poet. It seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an
exercise in arithmetic or a theme of astrology. Dante, who was a good
doctor of Bologna and had many moons in his head, under his
pointed cap--Dante believed in the virtue of numbers. That inflamed
mathematician dreamed of figures, and his Beatrice is the flower of
arithmetic, that is all.”
And he lighted his pipe.
Vivian Bell exclaimed:
“Oh, do not talk in that way, Monsieur Choulette. You grieve me much,
and if our friend Monsieur Gebhart heard you, he would not be pleased
with you. To punish you, Prince Albertinelli will read to you the
canticle in which Beatrice explains the spots on the moon. Take the
Divine Comedy, Eusebio. It is the white book which you see on the table.
Open it and read it.”
During the Prince’s reading, Dechartre, seated on the couch near
Countess Martin, talked of Dante with enthusiasm as the best sculptor
among the poets. He recalled to Therese the painting they had seen
together two days before, on the door of the Servi, a fresco almost
obliterated, where one hardly divined the presence of the poet wearing a
laurel wreath, Florence, and the seven circles. This was enough to exalt
the artist. But she had distinguished nothing, she had not been moved.
And then she confessed that Dante did not attract her. Dechartre,
accustomed to her sharing all his ideas of art and poetry, felt
astonishment and some discontent. He said, aloud:
“There are many grand and strong things which you do not feel.”
Miss Bell, lifting her head, asked what were these things that “darling”
did not feel; and when she learned that it was the genius of Dante, she
exclaimed, in mock anger:
“Oh, do you not honor the father, the master worthy of all praise, the
god? I do not love you any more, darling. I detest you.”
And, as a reproach to Choulette and to the Countess Martin, she recalled
the piety of that citizen of Florence who took from the altar the
candles that had been lighted in honor of Christ, and placed them before
the bust of Dante.
The Prince resumed his interrupted reading. Dechartre persisted in
trying to make Therese admire what she did not know. Certainly he would
have easily sacrificed Dante and all the poets of the universe for her.
But near him, tranquil, and an object of desire, she irritated him,
almost without his realizing it, by the charm of her laughing beauty. He
persisted in imposing on her his ideas, his artistic passions, even his
fantasy, and his capriciousness. He insisted in a low tone, in phrases
concise and quarrelsome. She said:
“Oh, how violent you are!”
Then he bent to her ear, and in an ardent voice, which he tried to
soften:
“You must take me with my own soul!”
Therese felt a shiver of fear mingled with joy.