It was the next day.
Having carefully placed on the drawing-room table his knotty stick, his
pipe, and his antique carpet-bag, Choulette bowed to Madame Martin, who
was reading at the window. He was going to Assisi. He wore a sheepskin
coat, and resembled the old shepherds in pictures of the Nativity.
“Farewell, Madame. I am quitting Fiesole, you, Dechartre, the too
handsome Prince Albertinelli, and that gentle ogress, Miss Bell. I am
going to visit the Assisi mountain, which the poet says must be named no
longer Assisi, but the Orient, because it is there that the sun of love
rose. I am going to kneel before the happy crypt where Saint Francis is
resting in a stone manger, with a stone for a pillow. For he would not
even take out of this world a shroud--out of this world where he left
the revelation of all joy and of all kindness.”
“Farewell, Monsieur Choulette. Bring me a medal of Saint Clara. I like
Saint Clara a great deal.”
“You are right, Madame; she was a woman of strength and prudence. When
Saint Francis, ill and almost blind, came to spend a few days at Saint
Damien, near his friend, she built with her own hands a hut for him in
the garden. Pain, languor, and burning eyelids deprived him of sleep.
Enormous rats came to attack him at night. Then he composed a joyous
canticle in praise of our splendid brother the Sun, and our sister the
Water, chaste, useful, and pure. My most beautiful verses have less
charm and splendor. And it is just that it should be thus, for Saint
Francis’s soul was more beautiful than his mind. I am better than all
my contemporaries whom I have known, yet I am worth nothing. When Saint
Francis had composed his Song of the Sun he rejoiced. He thought: ‘We
shall go, my brothers and I, into the cities, and stand in the public
squares, with a lute, on the market-day. Good people will come near us,
and we shall say to them: “We are the jugglers of God, and we shall
sing a lay to you. If you are pleased, you will reward us.” They will
promise, and when we shall have sung, we shall recall their promise to
them. We shall say to them: “You owe a reward to us. And the one that we
ask of you is that you love one another.” Doubtless, to keep their
word and not injure God’s poor jugglers, they will avoid doing ill to
others.’”
Madame Martin thought St. Francis was the most amiable of the saints.
“His work,” replied Choulette, “was destroyed while he lived. Yet he
died happy, because in him was joy with humility. He was, in fact, God’s
sweet singer. And it is right that another poor poet should take his
task and teach the world true religion and true joy. I shall be that
poet, Madame, if I can despoil myself of reason and of conceit. For all
moral beauty is achieved in this world through the inconceivable wisdom
that comes from God and resembles folly.”
“I shall not discourage you, Monsieur Choulette. But I am anxious about
the fate which you reserve for the poor women in your new society. You
will imprison them all in convents.”
“I confess,” replied Choulette, “that they embarrass me a great deal in
my project of reform. The violence with which one loves them is harsh
and injurious. The pleasure they give is not peaceful, and does not lead
to joy. I have committed for them, in my life, two or three abominable
crimes of which no one knows. I doubt whether I shall ever invite you to
supper, Madame, in the new Saint Mary of the Angels.” He took his pipe,
his carpet-bag, and his stick:
“The crimes of love shall be forgiven. Or, rather, one can not do
evil when one loves purely. But sensual love is formed of hatred,
selfishness, and anger as much as of passion. Because I found you
beautiful one night, on this sofa, I was assailed by a cloud of violent
thoughts. I had come from the Albergo, where I had heard Miss Bell’s
cook improvise magnificently twelve hundred verses on Spring. I was
inundated by a celestial joy which the sight of you made me lose. It
must be that a profound truth is enclosed in the curse of Eve. For, near
you, I felt reckless and wicked. I had soft words on my lips. They were
lies. I felt that I was your adversary and your enemy; I hated you. When
I saw you smile, I felt a desire to kill you.”
“Truly?”
“Oh, Madame, it is a very natural sentiment, which you must have
inspired more than once. But common people feel it without being
conscious of it, while my vivid imagination represents me to myself
incessantly. I contemplate my mind, at times splendid, often hideous.
If you had been able to read my mind that night you would have screamed
with fright.”
Therese smiled:
“Farewell, Monsieur Choulette. Do not forget my medal of Saint Clara.”
He placed his bag on the floor, raised his arm, and pointed his finger:
“You have nothing to fear from me. But the one whom you will love and
who will love you will harm you. Farewell, Madame.”
He took his luggage and went out. She saw his long, rustic form
disappear behind the bushes of the garden.
In the afternoon she went to San Marco, where Dechartre was waiting for
her. She desired yet she feared to see him again so soon. She felt an
anguish which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, appeased. She did
not feel the stupor of the first time that she had yielded for love;
she did not feel the brusque vision of the irreparable. She was under
influences slower, more vague, and more powerful. This time a charming
reverie bathed the reminiscence of the caresses which she had received.
She was full of trouble and anxiety, but she felt no regret. She had
acted less through her will than through a force which she divined to
be higher. She absolved herself because of her disinterestedness. She
counted on nothing, having calculated nothing.
Doubtless, she had been wrong to yield, since she was not free; but she
had exacted nothing. Perhaps she was for him only a violent caprice.
She did not know him. She had not one of those vivid imaginations that
surpass immensely, in good as in evil, common mediocrity. If he went
away from her and disappeared she would not reproach him for it; at
least, she thought not. She would keep the reminiscence and the imprint
of the rarest and most precious thing one may find in the world. Perhaps
he was incapable of real attachment. He thought he loved her. He had
loved her for an hour. She dared not wish for more, in the embarrassment
of the false situation which irritated her frankness and her pride, and
which troubled the lucidity of her intelligence. While the carriage
was carrying her to San Marco, she persuaded herself that he would say
nothing to her of the day before, and that the room from which one could
see the pines rise to the sky would leave to them only the dream of a
dream.
He extended his hand to her. Before he had spoken she saw in his look
that he loved her as much now as before, and she perceived at the same
time that she wished him to be thus.
“You--” he said, “I have been here since noon. I was waiting, knowing
that you would not come so soon, but able to live only at the place
where I was to see you. It is you! Talk; let me see and hear you.”
“Then you still love me?”
“It is now that I love you. I thought I loved you when you were only a
phantom. Now, you are the being in whose hands I have put my soul. It
is true that you are mine! What have I done to obtain the greatest, the
only, good of this world? And those men with whom the earth is covered
think they are living! I alone live! Tell me, what have I done to obtain
you?”
“Oh, what had to be done, I did. I say this to you frankly. If we have
reached that point, the fault is mine. You see, women do not always
confess it, but it is always their fault. So, whatever may happen, I
never will reproach you for anything.”
An agile troupe of yelling beggars, guides, and coachmen surrounded them
with an importunity wherein was mingled the gracefulness which Italians
never lose. Their subtlety made them divine that these were lovers, and
they knew that lovers are prodigal. Dechartre threw coin to them, and
they all returned to their happy laziness.
A municipal guard received the visitors. Madame Martin regretted that
there was no monk. The white gown of the Dominicans was so beautiful
under the arcades of the cloister!
They visited the cells where, on the bare plaster, Fra Angelico, aided
by his brother Benedetto, painted innocent pictures for his companions.
“Do you recall the winter night when, meeting you before the Guimet
Museum, I accompanied you to the narrow street bordered by small gardens
which leads to the Billy Quay? Before separating we stopped a moment on
the parapet along which runs a thin boxwood hedge. You looked at that
boxwood, dried by winter. And when you went away I looked at it for a
long time.”
They were in the cell wherein Savonarola lived. The guide showed to them
the portrait and the relics of the martyr.
“What could there have been in me that you liked that day? It was dark.”
“I saw you walk. It is in movements that forms speak. Each one of your
steps told me the secrets of your charming beauty. Oh! my imagination
was never discreet in anything that concerned you. I did not dare to
speak to you. When I saw you, it frightened me. It frightened me because
you could do everything for me. When you were present, I adored you
tremblingly. When you were far from me, I felt all the impieties of
desire.”
“I did not suspect this. But do you recall the first time we saw each
other, when Paul Vence introduced you? You were seated near a screen.
You were looking at the miniatures. You said to me: ‘This lady, painted
by Siccardi, resembles Andre Chenier’s mother.’ I replied to you: ‘She
is my husband’s great-grandmother. How did Andre Chenier’s mother look?’
And you said: ‘There is a portrait of her: a faded Levantine.’”
He excused himself and thought that he had not spoken so impertinently.
“You did. My memory is better than yours.”
They were walking in the white silence of the convent. They saw the cell
which Angelico had ornamented with the loveliest painting. And there,
before the Virgin who, in the pale sky, receives from God the Father
the immortal crown, he took Therese in his arms and placed a kiss on her
lips, almost in view of two Englishwomen who were walking through the
corridors, consulting their Baedeker. She said to him:
“We must not forget Saint Anthony’s cell.”
“Therese, I am suffering in my happiness from everything that is yours
and that escapes me. I am suffering because you do not live for me
alone. I wish to have you wholly, and to have had you in the past.”
She shrugged her shoulders a little.
“Oh, the past!”
“The past is the only human reality. Everything that is, is past.”
She raised toward him her eyes, which resembled bits of blue sky full of
mingled sun and rain.
“Well, I may say this to you: I never have felt that I lived except with
you.”
When she returned to Fiesole, she found a brief and threatening letter
from Le Menil. He could not understand, her prolonged absence, her
silence. If she did not announce at once her return, he would go to
Florence for her.
She read without astonishment, but was annoyed to see that everything
disagreeable that could happen was happening, and that nothing would
be spared to her of what she had feared. She could still calm him and
reassure him: she had only to say to him that she loved him; that she
would soon return to Paris; that he should renounce the foolish idea
of rejoining her here; that Florence was a village where they would be
watched at once. But she would have to write: “I love you.” She must
quiet him with caressing phrases.
She had not the courage to do it. She would let him guess the truth. She
accused herself in veiled terms. She wrote obscurely of souls carried
away by the flood of life, and of the atom one is on the moving ocean of
events. She asked him, with affectionate sadness, to keep of her a fond
reminiscence in a corner of his soul.
She took the letter to the post-office box on the Fiesole square.
Children were playing in the twilight. She looked from the top of the
hill to the beautiful cup which carried beautiful Florence like a jewel.
And the peace of night made her shiver. She dropped the letter into the
box. Then only she had the clear vision of what she had done and of what
the result would be.