“And I in God,” replied Planchette.

Each spoke in character. The universe for a mechanician is a machine

that requires an operator; for chemistry--that fiendish employment of

decomposing all things--the world is a gas endowed with the power of

movement.

“We cannot deny the fact,” the chemist replied.

“Pshaw! those gentlemen the doctrinaires have invented a nebulous

aphorism for our consolation--Stupid as a fact.”

“Your aphorism,” said the chemist, “seems to me as a fact very stupid.”

They began to laugh, and went off to dine like folk for whom a miracle

is nothing more than a phenomenon.

Valentin reached his own house shivering with rage and consumed with

anger. He had no more faith in anything. Conflicting thoughts shifted

and surged to and fro in his brain, as is the case with every man

brought face to face with an inconceivable fact. He had readily

believed in some hidden flaw in Spieghalter’s apparatus; he had not been

surprised by the incompetence and failure of science and of fire;

but the flexibility of the skin as he handled it, taken with its

stubbornness when all means of destruction that man possesses had

been brought to bear upon it in vain--these things terrified him. The

incontrovertible fact made him dizzy.

“I am mad,” he muttered. “I have had no food since the morning, and yet

I am neither hungry nor thirsty, and there is a fire in my breast that

burns me.”

He put back the skin in the frame where it had been enclosed but lately,

drew a line in red ink about the actual configuration of the talisman,

and seated himself in his armchair.

“Eight o’clock already!” he exclaimed. “To-day has gone like a dream.”

He leaned his elbow on the arm of the chair, propped his head with

his left hand, and so remained, lost in secret dark reflections and

consuming thoughts that men condemned to die bear away with them.

“O Pauline!” he cried. “Poor child! there are gulfs that love can never

traverse, despite the strength of his wings.”

Just then he very distinctly heard a smothered sigh, and knew by one

of the most tender privileges of passionate love that it was Pauline’s

breathing.

“That is my death warrant,” he said to himself. “If she were there, I

should wish to die in her arms.”

A burst of gleeful and hearty laughter made him turn his face towards

the bed; he saw Pauline’s face through the transparent curtains, smiling

like a child for gladness over a successful piece of mischief. Her

pretty hair fell over her shoulders in countless curls; she looked like

a Bengal rose upon a pile of white roses.

“I cajoled Jonathan,” said she. “Doesn’t the bed belong to me, to me who

am your wife? Don’t scold me, darling; I only wanted to surprise you, to

sleep beside you. Forgive me for my freak.”

She sprang out of bed like a kitten, showed herself gleaming in her lawn

raiment, and sat down on Raphael’s knee.

“Love, what gulf were you talking about?” she said, with an anxious

expression apparent upon her face.

“Death.”

“You hurt me,” she answered. “There are some thoughts upon which we,

poor women that we are, cannot dwell; they are death to us. Is it

strength of love in us, or lack of courage? I cannot tell. Death does

not frighten me,” she began again, laughingly. “To die with you, both

together, to-morrow morning, in one last embrace, would be joy. It seems

to me that even then I should have lived more than a hundred years.

What does the number of days matter if we have spent a whole lifetime of

peace and love in one night, in one hour?”

“You are right; Heaven is speaking through that pretty mouth of yours.

Grant that I may kiss you, and let us die,” said Raphael.

“Then let us die,” she said, laughing.

Towards nine o’clock in the morning the daylight streamed through the

chinks of the window shutters. Obscured somewhat by the muslin curtains,

it yet sufficed to show clearly the rich colors of the carpet, the silks

and furniture of the room, where the two lovers were lying asleep. The

gilding sparkled here and there. A ray of sunshine fell and faded upon

the soft down quilt that the freaks of live had thrown to the ground.

The outlines of Pauline’s dress, hanging from a cheval glass, appeared

like a shadowy ghost. Her dainty shoes had been left at a distance from

the bed. A nightingale came to perch upon the sill; its trills repeated

over again, and the sounds of its wings suddenly shaken out for flight,

awoke Raphael.

“For me to die,” he said, following out a thought begun in his dream,

“my organization, the mechanism of flesh and bone, that is quickened

by the will in me, and makes of me an individual MAN, must display some

perceptible disease. Doctors ought to understand the symptoms of any

attack on vitality, and could tell me whether I am sick or sound.”

He gazed at his sleeping wife. She had stretched her head out to him,

expressing in this way even while she slept the anxious tenderness of

love. Pauline seemed to look at him as she lay with her face turned

towards him in an attitude as full of grace as a young child’s, with her

pretty, half-opened mouth held out towards him, as she drew her light,

even breath. Her little pearly teeth seemed to heighten the redness of

the fresh lips with the smile hovering over them. The red glow in her

complexion was brighter, and its whiteness was, so to speak, whiter

still just then than in the most impassioned moments of the waking day.

In her unconstrained grace, as she lay, so full of believing trust,

the adorable attractions of childhood were added to the enchantments of

love.

Even the most unaffected women still obey certain social conventions,

which restrain the free expansion of the soul within them during their

waking hours; but slumber seems to give them back the spontaneity of

life which makes infancy lovely. Pauline blushed for nothing; she was

like one of those beloved and heavenly beings, in whom reason has not

yet put motives into their actions and mystery into their glances.

Her profile stood out in sharp relief against the fine cambric of the

pillows; there was a certain sprightliness about her loose hair in

confusion, mingled with the deep lace ruffles; but she was sleeping in

happiness, her long lashes were tightly pressed against her cheeks, as

if to secure her eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of

her soul to recollect and to hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but

fleeting. Her tiny pink and white ear, framed by a lock of her hair and

outlined by a wrapping of Mechlin lace, would have made an artist, a

painter, an old man, wildly in love, and would perhaps have restored a

madman to his senses.

Is it not an ineffable bliss to behold the woman that you love,

sleeping, smiling in a peaceful dream beneath your protection, loving

you even in dreams, even at the point where the individual seems to

cease to exist, offering to you yet the mute lips that speak to you in

slumber of the latest kiss? Is it not indescribable happiness to see

a trusting woman, half-clad, but wrapped round in her love as by a

cloak--modesty in the midst of dishevelment--to see admiringly her

scattered clothing, the silken stocking hastily put off to please you

last evening, the unclasped girdle that implies a boundless faith in

you. A whole romance lies there in that girdle; the woman that it

used to protect exists no longer; she is yours, she has become _you_;

henceforward any betrayal of her is a blow dealt at yourself.

In this softened mood Raphael’s eyes wandered over the room, now filled

with memories and love, and where the very daylight seemed to take

delightful hues. Then he turned his gaze at last upon the outlines of

the woman’s form, upon youth and purity, and love that even now had no

thought that was not for him alone, above all things, and longed to live

for ever. As his eyes fell upon Pauline, her own opened at once as if a

ray of sunlight had lighted on them.

“Good-morning,” she said, smiling. “How handsome you are, bad man!”

The grace of love and youth, of silence and dawn, shone in their faces,

making a divine picture, with the fleeting spell over it all that

belongs only to the earliest days of passion, just as simplicity and

artlessness are the peculiar possession of childhood. Alas! love’s

springtide joys, like our own youthful laughter, must even take flight,

and live for us no longer save in memory; either for our despair, or

to shed some soothing fragrance over us, according to the bent of our

inmost thoughts.

“What made me wake you?” said Raphael. “It was so great a pleasure to

watch you sleeping that it brought tears to my eyes.”

“And to mine, too,” she answered. “I cried in the night while I watched

you sleeping, but not with happiness. Raphael, dear, pray listen to me.

Your breathing is labored while you sleep, and something rattles in

your chest that frightens me. You have a little dry cough when you are

asleep, exactly like my father’s, who is dying of phthisis. In those

sounds from your lungs I recognized some of the peculiar symptoms of

that complaint. Then you are feverish; I know you are; your hand was

moist and burning----Darling, you are young,” she added with a shudder,

“and you could still get over it if unfortunately----But, no,” she cried

cheerfully, “there is no ‘unfortunately,’ the disease is contagious, so

the doctors say.”

She flung both arms about Raphael, drawing in his breath through one of

those kisses in which the soul reaches its end.

“I do not wish to live to old age,” she said. “Let us both die young,

and go to heaven while flowers fill our hands.”

“We always make such designs as those when we are well and strong,”

Raphael replied, burying his hands in Pauline’s hair. But even then a

horrible fit of coughing came on, one of those deep ominous coughs

that seem to come from the depths of the tomb, a cough that leaves the

sufferer ghastly pale, trembling, and perspiring; with aching sides and

quivering nerves, with a feeling of weariness pervading the very marrow

of the spine, and unspeakable languor in every vein. Raphael slowly laid

himself down, pale, exhausted, and overcome, like a man who has spent

all the strength in him over one final effort. Pauline’s eyes, grown

large with terror, were fixed upon him; she lay quite motionless, pale,

and silent.

“Let us commit no more follies, my angel,” she said, trying not to let

Raphael see the dreadful forebodings that disturbed her. She covered her

face with her hands, for she saw Death before her--the hideous skeleton.

Raphael’s face had grown as pale and livid as any skull unearthed from

a churchyard to assist the studies of some scientific man. Pauline

remembered the exclamation that had escaped from Valentin the previous

evening, and to herself she said:

“Yes, there are gulfs that love can never cross, and therein love must

bury itself.”

On a March morning, some days after this wretched scene, Raphael found

himself seated in an armchair, placed in the window in the full light

of day. Four doctors stood round him, each in turn trying his pulse,

feeling him over, and questioning him with apparent interest. The

invalid sought to guess their thoughts, putting a construction on every

movement they made, and on the slightest contractions of their brows.

His last hope lay in this consultation. This court of appeal was about

to pronounce its decision--life or death.

Valentin had summoned the oracles of modern medicine, so that he might

have the last word of science. Thanks to his wealth and title, there

stood before him three embodied theories; human knowledge fluctuated

round the three points. Three of the doctors brought among them the

complete circle of medical philosophy; they represented the points of

conflict round which the battle raged, between Spiritualism, Analysis,

and goodness knows what in the way of mocking eclecticism.

The fourth doctor was Horace Bianchon, a man of science with a future

before him, the most distinguished man of the new school in medicine, a

discreet and unassuming representative of a studious generation that

is preparing to receive the inheritance of fifty years of experience

treasured up by the Ecole de Paris, a generation that perhaps will erect

the monument for the building of which the centuries behind us have

collected the different materials. As a personal friend of the Marquis

and of Rastignac, he had been in attendance on the former for some

days past, and was helping him to answer the inquiries of the three

professors, occasionally insisting somewhat upon those symptoms which,

in his opinion, pointed to pulmonary disease.

“You have been living at a great pace, leading a dissipated life, no

doubt, and you have devoted yourself largely to intellectual work?”

queried one of the three celebrated authorities, addressing Raphael. He

was a square-headed man, with a large frame and energetic organization,

which seemed to mark him out as superior to his two rivals.

“I made up my mind to kill myself with debauchery, after spending three

years over an extensive work, with which perhaps you may some day occupy

yourselves,” Raphael replied.

The great doctor shook his head, and so displayed his satisfaction. “I

was sure of it,” he seemed to say to himself. He was the illustrious

Brisset, the successor of Cabanis and Bichat, head of the Organic

School, a doctor popular with believers in material and positive

science, who see in man a complete individual, subject solely to the

laws of his own particular organization; and who consider that his

normal condition and abnormal states of disease can both be traced to

obvious causes.

After this reply, Brisset looked, without speaking, at a middle-sized

person, whose darkly flushed countenance and glowing eyes seemed to

belong to some antique satyr; and who, leaning his back against the

corner of the embrasure, was studying Raphael, without saying a word.

Doctor Cameristus, a man of creeds and enthusiasms, the head of the

“Vitalists,” a romantic champion of the esoteric doctrines of Van

Helmont, discerned a lofty informing principle in human life, a

mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon which mocks at the scalpel,

deceives the surgeon, eludes the drugs of the pharmacopoeia, the

formulae of algebra, the demonstrations of anatomy, and derides all

our efforts; a sort of invisible, intangible flame, which, obeying some

divinely appointed law, will often linger on in a body in our opinion

devoted to death, while it takes flight from an organization well fitted

for prolonged existence.

A bitter smile hovered upon the lips of the third doctor, Maugredie, a

man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist and a scoffer, with the

scalpel for his one article of faith. He would consider, as a concession

to Brisset, that a man who, as a matter of fact, was perfectly well was

dead, and recognize with Cameristus that a man might be living on after

his apparent demise. He found something sensible in every theory, and

embraced none of them, claiming that the best of all systems of medicine

was to have none at all, and to stick to facts. This Panurge of the

Clinical Schools, the king of observers, the great investigator, a great

sceptic, the man of desperate expedients, was scrutinizing the Magic

Skin.

“I should very much like to be a witness of the coincidence of its

retrenchment with your wish,” he said to the Marquis.

“Where is the use?” cried Brisset.

“Where is the use?” echoed Cameristus.

“Ah, you are both of the same mind,” replied Maugredie.

“The contraction is perfectly simple,” Brisset went on.

“It is supernatural,” remarked Cameristus.

“In short,” Maugredie made answer, with affected solemnity, and handing

the piece of skin to Raphael as he spoke, “the shriveling faculty of the

skin is a fact inexplicable, and yet quite natural, which, ever since

the world began, has been the despair of medicine and of pretty women.”

All Valentin’s observation could discover no trace of a feeling for his

troubles in any of the three doctors. The three received every answer

in silence, scanned him unconcernedly, and interrogated him

unsympathetically. Politeness did not conceal their indifference;

whether deliberation or certainty was the cause, their words at any

rate came so seldom and so languidly, that at times Raphael thought

that their attention was wandering. From time to time Brisset, the

sole speaker, remarked, “Good! just so!” as Bianchon pointed out the

existence of each desperate symptom. Cameristus seemed to be deep in

meditation; Maugredie looked like a comic author, studying two queer

characters with a view to reproducing them faithfully upon the stage.

There was deep, unconcealed distress, and grave compassion in Horace

Bianchon’s face. He had been a doctor for too short a time to be

untouched by suffering and unmoved by a deathbed; he had not learned to

keep back the sympathetic tears that obscure a man’s clear vision

and prevent him from seizing like the general of an army, upon the

auspicious moment for victory, in utter disregard of the groans of dying

men.

After spending about half an hour over taking in some sort the measure

of the patient and the complaint, much as a tailor measures a young man

for a coat when he orders his wedding outfit, the authorities uttered

several commonplaces, and even talked of politics. Then they decided to

go into Raphael’s study to exchange their ideas and frame their verdict.

“May I not be present during the discussion, gentlemen?” Valentin had

asked them, but Brisset and Maugredie protested against this, and, in

spite of their patient’s entreaties, declined altogether to deliberate

in his presence.

Raphael gave way before their custom, thinking that he could slip into

a passage adjoining, whence he could easily overhear the medical

conference in which the three professors were about to engage.

“Permit me, gentlemen,” said Brisset, as they entered, “to give you my

own opinion at once. I neither wish to force it upon you nor to have it

discussed. In the first place, it is unbiased, concise, and based on

an exact similarity that exists between one of my own patients and the

subject that we have been called in to examine; and, moreover, I am

expected at my hospital. The importance of the case that demands my

presence there will excuse me for speaking the first word. The subject

with which we are concerned has been exhausted in an equal degree by

intellectual labors--what did he set about, Horace?” he asked of the

young doctor.

“A ‘Theory of the Will,’”

“The devil! but that’s a big subject. He is exhausted, I say, by too

much brain-work, by irregular courses, and by the repeated use of too

powerful stimulants. Violent exertion of body and mind has demoralized

the whole system. It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms

of the face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an

affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of the

epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left hypochondriac.

You have noticed, too, the large size and prominence of the liver. M.

Bianchon has, besides, constantly watched the patient, and he tells us

that digestion is troublesome and difficult. Strictly speaking, there is

no stomach left, and so the man has disappeared. The brain is atrophied

because the man digests no longer. The progressive deterioration wrought

in the epigastric region, the seat of vitality, has vitiated the whole

system. Thence, by continuous fevered vibrations, the disorder has

reached the brain by means of the nervous plexus, hence the excessive

irritation in that organ. There is monomania. The patient is burdened

with a fixed idea. That piece of skin really contracts, to his way of

thinking; very likely it always has been as we have seen it; but whether

it contracts or no, that thing is for him just like the fly that some

Grand Vizier or other had on his nose. If you put leeches at once on the

epigastrium, and reduce the irritation in that part, which is the very

seat of man’s life, and if you diet the patient, the monomania will

leave him. I will say no more to Dr. Bianchon; he should be able to

grasp the whole treatment as well as the details. There may be, perhaps,

some complication of the disease--the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be

also inflamed; but I believe that treatment for the intestinal organs is

very much more important and necessary, and more urgently required than

for the lungs. Persistent study of abstract matters, and certain violent

passions, have induced serious disorders in that vital mechanism.

However, we are in time to set these conditions right. Nothing is too

seriously affected. You will easily get your friend round again,” he

remarked to Bianchon.

“Our learned colleague is taking the effect for the cause,” Cameristus

replied. “Yes, the changes that he has observed so keenly certainly

exist in the patient; but it is not the stomach that, by degrees, has

set up nervous action in the system, and so affected the brain, like a

hole in a window pane spreading cracks round about it. It took a blow

of some kind to make a hole in the window; who gave the blow? Do we

know that? Have we investigated the patient’s case sufficiently? Are we

acquainted with all the events of his life?

“The vital principle, gentlemen,” he continued, “the Archeus of Van

Helmont, is affected in his case--the very essence and centre of life is

attacked. The divine spark, the transitory intelligence which holds the

organism together, which is the source of the will, the inspiration of

life, has ceased to regulate the daily phenomena of the mechanism and

the functions of every organ; thence arise all the complications which

my learned colleague has so thoroughly appreciated. The epigastric

region does not affect the brain but the brain affects the epigastric

region. No,” he went on, vigorously slapping his chest, “no, I am not

a stomach in the form of a man. No, everything does not lie there. I do

not feel that I have the courage to say that if the epigastric region is

in good order, everything else is in a like condition----

“We cannot trace,” he went on more mildly, “to one physical cause the

serious disturbances that supervene in this or that subject which has

been dangerously attacked, nor submit them to a uniform treatment.

No one man is like another. We have each peculiar organs, differently

affected, diversely nourished, adapted to perform different functions,

and to induce a condition necessary to the accomplishment of an order

of things which is unknown to us. The sublime will has so wrought that

a little portion of the great All is set within us to sustain the

phenomena of living; in every man it formulates itself distinctly,

making each, to all appearance, a separate individual, yet in one point

co-existent with the infinite cause. So we ought to make a separate

study of each subject, discover all about it, find out in what its life

consists, and wherein its power lies. From the softness of a wet sponge

to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite fine degrees of

difference. Man is just like that. Between the sponge-like organizations

of the lymphatic and the vigorous iron muscles of such men as are

destined for a long life, what a margin for errors for the single

inflexible system of a lowering treatment to commit; a system that

reduces the capacities of the human frame, which you always conclude

have been over-excited. Let us look for the origin of the disease in the

mental and not in the physical viscera. A doctor is an inspired being,

endowed by God with a special gift--the power to read the secrets of

vitality; just as the prophet has received the eyes that foresee the

future, the poet his faculty of evoking nature, and the musician the

power of arranging sounds in an harmonious order that is possibly a copy

of an ideal harmony on high.”

“There is his everlasting system of medicine, arbitrary, monarchical,

and pious,” muttered Brisset.

“Gentlemen,” Maugredie broke in hastily, to distract attention from

Brisset’s comment, “don’t let us lose sight of the patient.”

“What is the good of science?” Raphael moaned. “Here is my recovery

halting between a string of beads and a rosary of leeches, between

Dupuytren’s bistoury and Prince Hohenlohe’s prayer. There is Maugredie

suspending his judgment on the line that divides facts from words, mind

from matter. Man’s ‘it is,’ and ‘it is not,’ is always on my track;

it is the _Carymary Carymara_ of Rabelais for evermore: my disorder is

spiritual, _Carymary_, or material, _Carymara_. Shall I live? They have

no idea. Planchette was more straightforward with me, at any rate, when

he said, ‘I do not know.’”

Just then Valentin heard Maugredie’s voice.

“The patient suffers from monomania; very good, I am quite of that

opinion,” he said, “but he has two hundred thousand a year; monomaniacs

of that kind are very uncommon. As for knowing whether his epigastric

region has affected his brain, or his brain his epigastric region, we

shall find that out, perhaps, whenever he dies. But to resume. There

is no disputing the fact that he is ill; some sort of treatment he must

have. Let us leave theories alone, and put leeches on him, to counteract

the nervous and intestinal irritation, as to the existence of which we

all agree; and let us send him to drink the waters, in that way we shall

act on both systems at once. If there really is tubercular disease, we

can hardly expect to save his life; so that----”

Raphael abruptly left the passage, and went back to his armchair. The

four doctors very soon came out of the study; Horace was the spokesman.

“These gentlemen,” he told him, “have unanimously agreed that leeches

must be applied to the stomach at once, and that both physical and

moral treatment are imperatively needed. In the first place, a carefully

prescribed rule of diet, so as to soothe the internal irritation”--here

Brisset signified his approval; “and in the second, a hygienic regimen,

to set your general condition right. We all, therefore, recommend you

to go to take the waters in Aix in Savoy; or, if you like it better, at

Mont Dore in Auvergne; the air and the situation are both pleasanter in

Savoy than in the Cantal, but you will consult your own taste.”

Here it was Cameristus who nodded assent.

“These gentlemen,” Bianchon continued, “having recognized a slight

affection of the respiratory organs, are agreed as to the utility of

the previous course of treatment that I have prescribed. They think

that there will be no difficulty about restoring you to health, and that

everything depends upon a wise and alternate employment of these various

means. And----”

“And that is the cause of the milk in the cocoanut,” said Raphael,

with a smile, as he led Horace into his study to pay the fees for this

useless consultation.

“Their conclusions are logical,” the young doctor replied. “Cameristus

feels, Brisset examines, Maugredie doubts. Has not man a soul, a body,

and an intelligence? One of these three elemental constituents always

influences us more or less strongly; there will always be the personal

element in human science. Believe me, Raphael, we effect no cures; we

only assist them. Another system--the use of mild remedies while Nature

exerts her powers--lies between the extremes of theory of Brisset and

Cameristus, but one ought to have known the patient for some ten years

or so to obtain a good result on these lines. Negation lies at the

back of all medicine, as in every other science. So endeavor to live

wholesomely; try a trip to Savoy; the best course is, and always will

be, to trust to Nature.”

It was a month later, on a fine summer-like evening, that several

people, who were taking the waters at Aix, returned from the promenade

and met together in the salons of the Club. Raphael remained alone by a

window for a long time. His back was turned upon the gathering, and he

himself was deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts arise in

succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly, passing over

us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy is sweet to us then,

and delight is shadowy, for the soul is half asleep. Valentin gave

himself up to this life of sensations; he was steeping himself in the

warm, soft twilight, enjoying the pure air with the scent of the

hills in it, happy in that he felt no pain, and had tranquilized his

threatening Magic Skin at last. It grew cooler as the red glow of the

sunset faded on the mountain peaks; he shut the window and left his

place.

“Will you be so kind as not to close the windows, sir?” said an old

lady; “we are being stifled----”

The peculiarly sharp and jarring tones in which the phrase was uttered

grated on Raphael’s ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark let

slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word which

reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some pleasing

sentimental illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the cool

inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called a

servant, and, when he came, curtly bade him:

“Open that window.”

Great surprise was clearly expressed on all faces at the words. The

whole roomful began to whisper to each other, and turned their eyes upon

the invalid, as though he had given some serious offence. Raphael, who

had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness of his early

youth, felt a momentary confusion; then he shook off his torpor, exerted

his faculties, and asked himself the meaning of this strange scene.

A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain; the past weeks appeared

before him in a clear and definite vision; the reasons for the feelings

he inspired in others stood out for him in relief, like the veins of

some corpse which a naturalist, by some cunningly contrived injection,

has colored so as to show their least ramifications.

He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed out his

own life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not

without astonishment, an absent gloomy figure in the midst of these

lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his own

sufferings, seemingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw how

he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so ready to

establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting each other

again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him. He saw

himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the stormy

surgings of the waves.

Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of all

those about him. The light of a candle revealed the sardonic profile

and yellow cranium of an old man; he remembered now that he had won from

him, and had never proposed that the other should have his revenge; a

little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively advances he

had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there that did not

reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all appearance, but

the real offence in every case lay in some mortification, some invisible

hurt dealt to self-love. He had unintentionally jarred on all the small

susceptibilities of the circle round about him.

His guests on various occasions, and those to whom he had lent his

horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways; their ungraciousness

had been a surprise to him; he had spared them further humiliations of

that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and

had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost

thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its

polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for

his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive;

his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial natures.

He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had committed against

them; he had overstepped the limits of the jurisdiction of their

mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial tyranny; he could

dispense with their society; and all of them, therefore, had

instinctively combined to make him feel their power, and to take revenge

upon this incipient royalty by submitting him to a kind of ostracism,

and so teaching him that they in their turn could do without him.

Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of mankind, but very

soon he shuddered at the thought of the power that came thus, at will,

and flung aside for him the veil of flesh under which the moral nature

is hidden away. He closed his eyes, so as to see no more. A black

curtain was drawn all at once over this unlucky phantom show of truth;

but still he found himself in the terrible loneliness that surrounds

every power and dominion. Just then a violent fit of coughing seized

him. Far from receiving one single word--indifferent, and meaningless,

it is true, but still containing, among well-bred people brought

together by chance, at least some pretence of civil commiseration--he

now heard hostile ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there

assembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps because he had

gauged its real nature too well.

“His complaint is contagious.”

“The president of the Club ought to forbid him to enter the salon.”

“It is contrary to all rules and regulations to cough in that way!”

“When a man is as ill as that, he ought not to come to take the

waters----”

“He will drive me away from the place.”

Raphael rose and walked about the rooms to screen himself from their

unanimous execrations. He thought to find a shelter, and went up to a

young pretty lady who sat doing nothing, minded to address some pretty

speeches to her; but as he came towards her, she turned her back upon

him, and pretended to be watching the dancers. Raphael feared lest he

might have made use of the talisman already that evening; and feeling

that he had neither the wish nor the courage to break into the

conversation, he left the salon and took refuge in the billiard-room.

No one there greeted him, nobody spoke to him, no one sent so much as

a friendly glance in his direction. His turn of mind, naturally

meditative, had discovered instinctively the general grounds and

reasons for the aversion he inspired. This little world was obeying,

unconsciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite

society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its entirety

to Raphael’s eyes. A glance into the past showed it to him, as a type

completely realized in Foedora.

He would no more meet with sympathy here for his bodily ills than he had

received it at her hands for the distress in his heart. The fashionable

world expels every suffering creature from its midst, just as the body

of a man in robust health rejects any germ of disease. The world holds

suffering and misfortune in abhorrence; it dreads them like the plague;

it never hesitates between vice and trouble, for vice is a luxury.

Ill-fortune may possess a majesty of its own, but society can belittle

it and make it ridiculous by an epigram. Society draws caricatures, and

in this way flings in the teeth of fallen kings the affronts which it

fancies it has received from them; society, like the Roman youth at the

circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator; mockery and money are

its vital necessities. “Death to the weak!” That is the oath taken by

this kind of Equestrian order, instituted in their midst by all the

nations of the world; everywhere it makes for the elevation of the

rich, and its motto is deeply graven in hearts that wealth has turned to

stone, or that have been reared in aristocratic prejudices.

Assemble a collection of school-boys together. That will give you a

society in miniature, a miniature which represents life more truly,

because it is so frank and artless; and in it you will always find poor

isolated beings, relegated to some place in the general estimations

between pity and contempt, on account of their weakness and suffering.

To these the Evangel promises heaven hereafter. Go lower yet in the

scale of organized creation. If some bird among its fellows in the

courtyard sickens, the others fall upon it with their beaks, pluck

out its feathers, and kill it. The whole world, in accordance with its

character of egotism, brings all its severity to bear upon wretchedness

that has the hardihood to spoil its festivities, and to trouble its

joys.

Any sufferer in mind or body, any helpless or poor man, is a pariah. He

had better remain in his solitude; if he crosses the boundary-line, he

will find winter everywhere; he will find freezing cold in other men’s

looks, manners, words, and hearts; and lucky indeed is he if he does not

receive an insult where he expected that sympathy would be expended upon

him. Let the dying keep to their bed of neglect, and age sit lonely

by its fireside. Portionless maids, freeze and burn in your solitary

attics. If the world tolerates misery of any kind, it is to turn it to

account for its own purposes, to make some use of it, saddle and bridle

it, put a bit in its mouth, ride it about, and get some fun out of it.

Crotchety spinsters, ladies’ companions, put a cheerful face upon it,

endure the humors of your so-called benefactress, carry her lapdogs for

her; you have an English poodle for your rival, and you must seek to

understand the moods of your patroness, and amuse her, and--keep silence

about yourselves. As for you, unblushing parasite, uncrowned king

of unliveried servants, leave your real character at home, let your

digestion keep pace with your host’s laugh when he laughs, mingle your

tears with his, and find his epigrams amusing; if you want to relieve

your mind about him, wait till he is ruined. That is the way the world

shows its respect for the unfortunate; it persecutes them, or slays them

in the dust.

Such thoughts as these welled up in Raphael’s heart with the suddenness

of poetic inspiration. He looked around him, and felt the influence of

the forbidding gloom that society breathes out in order to rid itself of

the unfortunate; it nipped his soul more effectually than the east wind

grips the body in December. He locked his arms over his chest, set his

back against the wall, and fell into a deep melancholy. He mused upon

the meagre happiness that this depressing way of living can give. What

did it amount to? Amusement with no pleasure in it, gaiety without

gladness, joyless festivity, fevered dreams empty of all delight,

firewood or ashes on the hearth without a spark of flame in them. When

he raised his head, he found himself alone, all the billiard players had

gone.

“I have only to let them know my power to make them worship my coughing

fits,” he said to himself, and wrapped himself against the world in the

cloak of his contempt.

Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and took an anxious

interest in his health. Raphael felt a thrill of joy at the friendly

words addressed to him. The doctor’s face, to his thinking, wore an

expression that was kind and pleasant; the pale curls of his wig seemed

redolent of philanthropy; the square cut of his coat, the loose folds

of his trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything about him down

to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a circle upon his

slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic nature, and spoke of

Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice of a man, who, out of sheer

devotion to his patients, had compelled himself to learn to play whist

and tric-trac so well that he never lost money to any of them.

“My Lord Marquis,” said he, after a long talk with Raphael, “I can

dispel your uneasiness beyond all doubt. I know your constitution well

enough by this time to assure you that the doctors in Paris, whose great

abilities I know, are mistaken as to the nature of your complaint.

You can live as long as Methuselah, my Lord Marquis, accidents only

excepted. Your lungs are as sound as a blacksmith’s bellows, your

stomach would put an ostrich to the blush; but if you persist in living

at high altitude, you are running the risk of a prompt interment in

consecrated soil. A few words, my Lord Marquis, will make my meaning

clear to you.

“Chemistry,” he began, “has shown us that man’s breathing is a real

process of combustion, and the intensity of its action varies according

to the abundance or scarcity of the phlogistic element stored up by

the organism of each individual. In your case, the phlogistic, or

inflammatory element is abundant; if you will permit me to put it so,

you generate superfluous oxygen, possessing as you do the inflammatory

temperament of a man destined to experience strong emotions. While

you breath the keen, pure air that stimulates life in men of lymphatic

constitution, you are accelerating an expenditure of vitality already

too rapid. One of the conditions for existence for you is the heavier

atmosphere of the plains and valleys. Yes, the vital air for a man

consumed by his genius lies in the fertile pasture-lands of Germany, at

Toplitz or Baden-Baden. If England is not obnoxious to you, its misty

climate would reduce your fever; but the situation of our baths, a

thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean, is dangerous for

you. That is my opinion at least,” he said, with a deprecatory gesture,

“and I give it in opposition to our interests, for, if you act upon it,

we shall unfortunately lose you.”

But for these closing words of his, the affable doctor’s seeming

good-nature would have completely won Raphael over; but he was too

profoundly observant not to understand the meaning of the tone, the

look and gesture that accompanied that mild sarcasm, not to see that

the little man had been sent on this errand, no doubt, by a flock of his

rejoicing patients. The florid-looking idlers, tedious old women, nomad

English people, and fine ladies who had given their husbands the slip,

and were escorted hither by their lovers--one and all were in a plot to

drive away a wretched, feeble creature to die, who seemed unable to hold

out against a daily renewed persecution! Raphael accepted the challenge,

he foresaw some amusement to be derived from their manoeuvres.

“As you would be grieved at losing me,” said he to the doctor, “I will

endeavor to avail myself of your good advice without leaving the place.

I will set about having a house built to-morrow, and the atmosphere

within it shall be regulated by your instructions.”

The doctor understood the sarcastic smile that lurked about Raphael’s

mouth, and took his leave without finding another word to say.

The Lake of Bourget lies seven hundred feet above the Mediterranean, in

a great hollow among the jagged peaks of the hills; it sparkles there,

the bluest drop of water in the world. From the summit of the Cat’s

Tooth the lake below looks like a stray turquoise. This lovely sheet of

water is about twenty-seven miles round, and in some places is nearly

five hundred feet deep.

Under the cloudless sky, in your boat in the midst of the great expanse

of water, with only the sound of the oars in your ears, only the

vague outline of the hills on the horizon before you; you admire the

glittering snows of the French Maurienne; you pass, now by masses of

granite clad in the velvet of green turf or in low-growing shrubs, now

by pleasant sloping meadows; there is always a wilderness on the one

hand and fertile lands on the other, and both harmonies and dissonances

compose a scene for you where everything is at once small and vast,

and you feel yourself to be a poor onlooker at a great banquet.

The configuration of the mountains brings about misleading optical

conditions and illusions of perspective; a pine-tree a hundred feet in

height looks to be a mere weed; wide valleys look as narrow as meadow

paths. The lake is the only one where the confidences of heart and heart

can be exchanged. There one can live; there one can meditate. Nowhere on

earth will you find a closer understanding between the water, the

sky, the mountains, and the fields. There is a balm there for all the

agitations of life. The place keeps the secrets of sorrow to itself, the

sorrow that grows less beneath its soothing influence; and to love, it

gives a grave and meditative cast, deepening passion and purifying it.

A kiss there becomes something great. But beyond all other things it is

the lake for memories; it aids them by lending to them the hues of its

own waves; it is a mirror in which everything is reflected. Only here,

with this lovely landscape all around him, could Raphael endure the

burden laid upon him; here he could remain as a languid dreamer, without

a wish of his own.

He went out upon the lake after the doctor’s visit, and was landed at a

lonely point on the pleasant slope where the village of Saint-Innocent

is situated. The view from this promontory, as one may call it,

comprises the heights of Bugey with the Rhone flowing at their foot,

and the end of the lake; but Raphael liked to look at the opposite

shore from thence, at the melancholy looking Abbey of Haute-Combe, the

burying-place of the Sardinian kings, who lie prostrate there before the

hills, like pilgrims come at last to their journey’s end. The silence of

the landscape was broken by the even rhythm of the strokes of the oar;

it seemed to find a voice for the place, in monotonous cadences like the

chanting of monks. The Marquis was surprised to find visitors to this

usually lonely part of the lake; and as he mused, he watched the people

seated in the boat, and recognized in the stern the elderly lady who had

spoken so harshly to him the evening before.

No one took any notice of Raphael as the boat passed, except the elderly

lady’s companion, a poor old maid of noble family, who bowed to him,

and whom it seemed to him that he saw for the first time. A few seconds

later he had already forgotten the visitors, who had rapidly disappeared

behind the promontory, when he heard the fluttering of a dress and the

sound of light footsteps not far from him. He turned about and saw the

companion; and, guessing from her embarrassed manner that she wished to

speak with him, he walked towards her.

She was somewhere about thirty-six years of age, thin and tall, reserved

and prim, and, like all old maids, seemed puzzled to know which way to

look, an expression no longer in keeping with her measured, springless,

and hesitating steps. She was both young and old at the same time, and,

by a certain dignity in her carriage, showed the high value which she

set upon her charms and perfections. In addition, her movements were

all demure and discreet, like those of women who are accustomed to take

great care of themselves, no doubt because they desire not to be cheated

of love, their destined end.

“Your life is in danger, sir; do not come to the Club again!” she said,

stepping back a pace or two from Raphael, as if her reputation had

already been compromised.

“But, mademoiselle,” said Raphael, smiling, “please explain yourself

more clearly, since you have condescended so far----”

“Ah,” she answered, “unless I had had a very strong motive, I should

never have run the risk of offending the countess, for if she ever came

to know that I had warned you----”

“And who would tell her, mademoiselle?” cried Raphael.

“True,” the old maid answered. She looked at him, quaking like an owl

out in the sunlight. “But think of yourself,” she went on; “several

young men, who want to drive you away from the baths, have agreed to

pick a quarrel with you, and to force you into a duel.”

The elderly lady’s voice sounded in the distance.

“Mademoiselle,” began the Marquis, “my gratitude----” But his

protectress had fled already; she had heard the voice of her mistress

squeaking afresh among the rocks.

“Poor girl! unhappiness always understands and helps the unhappy,”

Raphael thought, and sat himself down at the foot of a tree.

The key of every science is, beyond cavil, the mark of interrogation; we

owe most of our greatest discoveries to a _Why_? and all the wisdom in

the world, perhaps, consists in asking _Wherefore_? in every connection.

But, on the other hand, this acquired prescience is the ruin of our

illusions.

So Valentin, having taken the old maid’s kindly action for the text of

his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate promptings of philosophy,

must find it full of gall and wormwood.

“It is not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman’s gentlewoman should

take a fancy to me,” said he to himself. “I am twenty-seven years old,

and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a year. But

that her mistress, who hates water like a rabid cat--for it would be

hard to give the palm to either in that matter--that her mistress should

have brought her here in a boat! Is not that very strange and wonderful?

Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like marmots; they ask if day

has dawned at noon; and to think that they could get up this morning

before eight o’clock, to take their chances in running after me!”

Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became, in his eyes, a

fresh manifestation of that artificial, malicious little world. It was a

paltry device, a clumsy artifice, a piece of priest’s or woman’s craft.

Was the duel a myth, or did they merely want to frighten him? But

these petty creatures, impudent and teasing as flies, had succeeded in

wounding his vanity, in rousing his pride, and exciting his curiosity.

Unwilling to become their dupe, or to be taken for a coward, and even

diverted perhaps by the little drama, he went to the Club that very

evening.

He stood leaning against the marble chimney-piece, and stayed there

quietly in the middle of the principal saloon, doing his best to give no

one any advantage over him; but he scrutinized the faces about him, and

gave a certain vague offence to those assembled, by his inspection. Like

a dog aware of his strength, he awaited the contest on his own ground,

without necessary barking. Towards the end of the evening he strolled

into the cardroom, walking between the door and another that opened into

the billiard-room, throwing a glance from time to time over a group of

young men that had gathered there. He heard his name mentioned after a

turn or two. Although they lowered their voices, Raphael easily guessed

that he had become the topic of their debate, and he ended by catching a

phrase or two spoken aloud.

“You?”

“Yes, I.”

“I dare you to do it!”

“Let us make a bet on it!”

“Oh, he will do it.”

Just as Valentin, curious to learn the matter of the wager, came up

to pay closer attention to what they were saying, a tall, strong,

good-looking young fellow, who, however, possessed the impertinent stare

peculiar to people who have material force at their back, came out of

the billiard-room.

“I am deputed, sir,” he said coolly addressing the Marquis, “to make you

aware of something which you do not seem to know; your face and person

generally are a source of annoyance to every one here, and to me in

particular. You have too much politeness not to sacrifice yourself to

the public good, and I beg that you will not show yourself in the Club

again.”

“This sort of joke has been perpetrated before, sir, in garrison towns

at the time of the Empire; but nowadays it is exceedingly bad form,”

said Raphael drily.

“I am not joking,” the young man answered; “and I repeat it: your health

will be considerably the worse for a stay here; the heat and light, the

air of the saloon, and the company are all bad for your complaint.”

“Where did you study medicine?” Raphael inquired.

“I took my bachelor’s degree on Lepage’s shooting-ground in Paris, and

was made a doctor at Cerizier’s, the king of foils.”

“There is one last degree left for you to take,” said Valentin; “study

the ordinary rules of politeness, and you will be a perfect gentlemen.”

The young men all came out of the billiard-room just then, some disposed

to laugh, some silent. The attention of other players was drawn to the

matter; they left their cards to watch a quarrel that rejoiced their

instincts. Raphael, alone among this hostile crowd, did his best to keep

cool, and not to put himself in any way in the wrong; but his adversary

having ventured a sarcasm containing an insult couched in unusually keen

language, he replied gravely:

“We cannot box men’s ears, sir, in these days, but I am at a loss for

any word by which to stigmatize such cowardly behavior as yours.”

“That’s enough, that’s enough. You can come to an explanation

to-morrow,” several young men exclaimed, interposing between the two

champions.

Raphael left the room in the character of aggressor, after he had

accepted a proposal to meet near the Chateau de Bordeau, in a little

sloping meadow, not very far from the newly made road, by which the man

who came off victorious could reach Lyons. Raphael must now either take

to his bed or leave the baths. The visitors had gained their point. At

eight o’clock next morning his antagonist, followed by two seconds and a

surgeon, arrived first on the ground.

“We shall do very nicely here; glorious weather for a duel!” he cried

gaily, looking at the blue vault of sky above, at the waters of the

lake, and the rocks, without a single melancholy presentiment or doubt

of the issue. “If I wing him,” he went on, “I shall send him to bed for

a month; eh, doctor?”

“At the very least,” the surgeon replied; “but let that willow twig

alone, or you will weary your wrist, and then you will not fire

steadily. You might kill your man instead of wounding him.”

The noise of a carriage was heard approaching.

“Here he is,” said the seconds, who soon descried a caleche coming along

the road; it was drawn by four horses, and there were two postilions.

“What a queer proceeding!” said Valentin’s antagonist; “here he comes

post-haste to be shot.”

The slightest incident about a duel, as about a stake at cards, makes an

impression on the minds of those deeply concerned in the results of the

affair; so the young man awaited the arrival of the carriage with a

kind of uneasiness. It stopped in the road; old Jonathan laboriously

descended from it, in the first place, to assist Raphael to alight;

he supported him with his feeble arms, and showed him all the minute

attentions that a lover lavishes upon his mistress. Both became lost to

sight in the footpath that lay between the highroad and the field where

the duel was to take place; they were walking slowly, and did not appear

again for some time after. The four onlookers at this strange spectacle

felt deeply moved by the sight of Valentin as he leaned on his servant’s

arm; he was wasted and pale; he limped as if he had the gout, went with

his head bowed down, and said not a word. You might have taken them

for a couple of old men, one broken with years, the other worn out with

thought; the elder bore his age visibly written in his white hair, the

younger was of no age.

“I have not slept all night, sir;” so Raphael greeted his antagonist.

The icy tone and terrible glance that went with the words made the real

aggressor shudder; he know that he was in the wrong, and felt in secret

ashamed of his behavior. There was something strange in Raphael’s

bearing, tone, and gesture; the Marquis stopped, and every one else was

likewise silent. The uneasy and constrained feeling grew to a height.

“There is yet time,” he went on, “to offer me some slight apology;

and offer it you must, or you will die sir! You rely even now on your

dexterity, and do not shrink from an encounter in which you believe all

the advantage to be upon your side. Very good, sir; I am generous, I am

letting you know my superiority beforehand. I possess a terrible power.

I have only to wish to do so, and I can neutralize your skill, dim your

eyesight, make your hand and pulse unsteady, and even kill you outright.

I have no wish to be compelled to exercise my power; the use of it costs

me too dear. You would not be the only one to die. So if you refuse to

apologize to me, not matter what your experience in murder, your ball

will go into the waterfall there, and mine will speed straight to your

heart though I do not aim it at you.”

Confused voices interrupted Raphael at this point. All the time that he

was speaking, the Marquis had kept his intolerably keen gaze fixed upon

his antagonist; now he drew himself up and showed an impassive face,

like that of a dangerous madman.

“Make him hold his tongue,” the young man had said to one of his

seconds; “that voice of his is tearing the heart out of me.”

“Say no more, sir; it is quite useless,” cried the seconds and the

surgeon, addressing Raphael.

“Gentlemen, I am fulfilling a duty. Has this young gentleman any final

arrangements to make?”

“That is enough; that will do.”

The Marquis remained standing steadily, never for a moment losing sight

of his antagonist; and the latter seemed, like a bird before a snake, to

be overwhelmed by a well-nigh magical power. He was compelled to endure

that homicidal gaze; he met and shunned it incessantly.

“I am thirsty; give me some water----” he said again to the second.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes,” he answered. “There is a fascination about that man’s glowing

eyes.”

“Will you apologize?”

“It is too late now.”

The two antagonists were placed at fifteen paces’ distance from each

other. Each of them had a brace of pistols at hand, and, according to

the programme prescribed for them, each was to fire twice when and how

he pleased, but after the signal had been given by the seconds.

“What are you doing, Charles?” exclaimed the young man who acted as

second to Raphael’s antagonist; “you are putting in the ball before the

powder!”

“I am a dead man,” he muttered, by way of answer; “you have put me

facing the sun----”

“The sun lies behind you,” said Valentin sternly and solemnly, while he

coolly loaded his pistol without heeding the fact that the signal had

been given, or that his antagonist was carefully taking aim.

There was something so appalling in this supernatural unconcern, that it

affected even the two postilions, brought thither by a cruel curiosity.

Raphael was either trying his power or playing with it, for he talked

to Jonathan, and looked towards him as he received his adversary’s

fire. Charles’ bullet broke a branch of willow, and ricocheted over the

surface of the water; Raphael fired at random, and shot his antagonist

through the heart. He did not heed the young man as he dropped; he

hurriedly sought the Magic Skin to see what another man’s life had cost

him. The talisman was no larger than a small oak-leaf.

“What are you gaping at, you postilions over there? Let us be off,” said

the Marquis.

That same evening he crossed the French border, immediately set out for

Auvergne, and reached the springs of Mont Dore. As he traveled, there

surged up in his heart, all at once, one of those thoughts that come

to us as a ray of sunlight pierces through the thick mists in some dark

valley--a sad enlightenment, a pitiless sagacity that lights up the

accomplished fact for us, that lays our errors bare, and leaves

us without excuse in our own eyes. It suddenly struck him that the

possession of power, no matter how enormous, did not bring with it the

knowledge how to use it. The sceptre is a plaything for a child, an axe

for a Richelieu, and for a Napoleon a lever by which to move the world.

Power leaves us just as it finds us; only great natures grow greater

by its means. Raphael had had everything in his power, and he had done

nothing.

At the springs of Mont Dore he came again in contact with a little world

of people, who invariably shunned him with the eager haste that animals

display when they scent afar off one of their own species lying dead,

and flee away. The dislike was mutual. His late adventure had given him

a deep distaste for society; his first care, consequently, was to find

a lodging at some distance from the neighborhood of the springs.

Instinctively he felt within him the need of close contact with nature,

of natural emotions, and of the vegetative life into which we sink so

gladly among the fields.

The day after he arrived he climbed the Pic de Sancy, not without

difficulty, and visited the higher valleys, the skyey nooks,

undiscovered lakes, and peasants’ huts about Mont Dore, a country whose

stern and wild features are now beginning to tempt the brushes of our

artists, for sometimes wonderfully fresh and charming views are to be

found there, affording a strong contrast to the frowning brows of those

lonely hills.

Barely a league from the village Raphael discovered a nook where nature

seemed to have taken a pleasure in hiding away all her treasures like

some glad and mischievous child. At the first sight of this unspoiled

and picturesque retreat, he determined to take up his abode in it.

There, life must needs be peaceful, natural, and fruitful, like the life

of a plant.

Imagine for yourself an inverted cone of granite hollowed out on a large

scale, a sort of basin with its sides divided up by queer winding paths.

On one side lay level stretches with no growth upon them, a bluish

uniform surface, over which the rays of the sun fell as upon a mirror;

on the other lay cliffs split open by fissures and frowning ravines;

great blocks of lava hung suspended from them, while the action of rain

slowly prepared their impending fall; a few stunted trees tormented

by the wind, often crowned their summits; and here and there in some

sheltered angle of their ramparts a clump of chestnut-trees grew tall as

cedars, or some cavern in the yellowish rocks showed the dark entrance

into its depths, set about by flowers and brambles, decked by a little

strip of green turf.

At the bottom of this cup, which perhaps had been the crater of an

old-world volcano, lay a pool of water as pure and bright as a diamond.

Granite boulders lay around the deep basin, and willows, mountain-ash

trees, yellow-flag lilies, and numberless aromatic plants bloomed about

it, in a realm of meadow as fresh as an English bowling-green. The fine

soft grass was watered by the streams that trickled through the fissures

in the cliffs; the soil was continually enriched by the deposits of loam

which storms washed down from the heights above. The pool might be

some three acres in extent; its shape was irregular, and the edges were

scalloped like the hem of a dress; the meadow might be an acre or two

acres in extent. The cliffs and the water approached and receded from

each other; here and there, there was scarcely width enough for the cows

to pass between them.

After a certain height the plant life ceased. Aloft in air the granite

took upon itself the most fantastic shapes, and assumed those misty

tints that give to high mountains a dim resemblance to clouds in the

sky. The bare, bleak cliffs, with the fearful rents in their sides,

pictures of wild and barren desolation, contrasted strongly with the

pretty view of the valley; and so strange were the shapes they assumed,

that one of the cliffs had been called “The Capuchin,” because it was so

like a monk. Sometimes these sharp-pointed peaks, these mighty masses

of rock, and airy caverns were lighted up one by one, according to the

direction of the sun or the caprices of the atmosphere; they caught

gleams of gold, dyed themselves in purple; took a tint of glowing

rose-color, or turned dull and gray. Upon the heights a drama of color

was always to be seen, a play of ever-shifting iridescent hues like

those on a pigeon’s breast.

Oftentimes at sunrise or at sunset a ray of bright sunlight would

penetrate between two sheer surfaces of lava, that might have been split

apart by a hatchet, to the very depths of that pleasant little garden,

where it would play in the waters of the pool, like a beam of golden

light which gleams through the chinks of a shutter into a room in Spain,

that has been carefully darkened for a siesta. When the sun rose above

the old crater that some antediluvian revolution had filled with water,

its rocky sides took warmer tones, the extinct volcano glowed again, and

its sudden heat quickened the sprouting seeds and vegetation, gave color

to the flowers, and ripened the fruits of this forgotten corner of the

earth.

As Raphael reached it, he noticed several cows grazing in the

pasture-land; and when he had taken a few steps towards the water, he

saw a little house built of granite and roofed with shingle in the spot

where the meadowland was at its widest. The roof of this little cottage

harmonized with everything about it; for it had long been overgrown with

ivy, moss, and flowers of no recent date. A thin smoke, that did not

scare the birds away, went up from the dilapidated chimney. There was a

great bench at the door between two huge honey-suckle bushes, that were

pink with blossom and full of scent. The walls could scarcely be seen

for branches of vine and sprays of rose and jessamine that interlaced

and grew entirely as chance and their own will bade them; for the

inmates of the cottage seemed to pay no attention to the growth which

adorned their house, and to take no care of it, leaving to it the fresh

capricious charm of nature.

Some clothes spread out on the gooseberry bushes were drying in the

sun. A cat was sitting on a machine for stripping hemp; beneath it lay a

newly scoured brass caldron, among a quantity of potato-parings. On

the other side of the house Raphael saw a sort of barricade of dead

thorn-bushes, meant no doubt to keep the poultry from scratching up

the vegetables and pot-herbs. It seemed like the end of the earth. The

dwelling was like some bird’s-nest ingeniously set in a cranny of the

rocks, a clever and at the same time a careless bit of workmanship. A

simple and kindly nature lay round about it; its rusticity was genuine,

but there was a charm like that of poetry in it; for it grew and throve

at a thousand miles’ distance from our elaborate and conventional

poetry. It was like none of our conceptions; it was a spontaneous

growth, a masterpiece due to chance.

As Raphael reached the place, the sunlight fell across it from right to

left, bringing out all the colors of its plants and trees; the yellowish

or gray bases of the crags, the different shades of the green leaves,

the masses of flowers, pink, blue, or white, the climbing plants

with their bell-like blossoms, and the shot velvet of the mosses, the

purple-tinted blooms of the heather,--everything was either brought

into relief or made fairer yet by the enchantment of the light or by the

contrasting shadows; and this was the case most of all with the sheet of

water, wherein the house, the trees, the granite peaks, and the sky were

all faithfully reflected. Everything had a radiance of its own in this

delightful picture, from the sparkling mica-stone to the bleached tuft

of grass hidden away in the soft shadows; the spotted cow with its

glossy hide, the delicate water-plants that hung down over the pool like

fringes in a nook where blue or emerald colored insects were buzzing

about, the roots of trees like a sand-besprinkled shock of hair above

grotesque faces in the flinty rock surface,--all these things made a

harmony for the eye.

The odor of the tepid water; the scent of the flowers, and the breath of

the caverns which filled the lonely place gave Raphael a sensation that

was almost enjoyment. Silence reigned in majesty over these woods, which

possibly are unknown to the tax-collector; but the barking of a couple

of dogs broke the stillness all at once; the cows turned their heads

towards the entrance of the valley, showing their moist noses to

Raphael, stared stupidly at him, and then fell to browsing again. A

goat and her kid, that seemed to hang on the side of the crags in some

magical fashion, capered and leapt to a slab of granite near to Raphael,

and stayed there a moment, as if to seek to know who he was. The yapping

of the dogs brought out a plump child, who stood agape, and next came a

white-haired old man of middle height. Both of these two beings were in

keeping with the surroundings, the air, the flowers, and the dwelling.

Health appeared to overflow in this fertile region; old age and

childhood thrived there. There seemed to be, about all these types of

existence, the freedom and carelessness of the life of primitive times,

a happiness of use and wont that gave the lie to our philosophical

platitudes, and wrought a cure of all its swelling passions in the

heart.

The old man belonged to the type of model dear to the masculine brush

of Schnetz. The countless wrinkles upon his brown face looked as if

they would be hard to the touch; the straight nose, the prominent

cheek-bones, streaked with red veins like a vine-leaf in autumn, the

angular features, all were characteristics of strength, even where

strength existed no longer. The hard hands, now that they toiled no

longer, had preserved their scanty white hair, his bearing was that of

an absolutely free man; it suggested the thought that, had he been

an Italian, he would have perhaps turned brigand, for the love of the

liberty so dear to him. The child was a regular mountaineer, with the

black eyes that can face the sun without flinching, a deeply

tanned complexion, and rough brown hair. His movements were like a

bird’s--swift, decided, and unconstrained; his clothing was ragged; the

white, fair skin showed through the rents in his garments. There they

both stood in silence, side by side, both obeying the same impulse; in

both faces were clear tokens of an absolutely identical and idle life.

The old man had adopted the child’s amusements, and the child had fallen

in with the old man’s humor; there was a sort of tacit agreement between

two kinds of feebleness, between failing powers well-nigh spent and

powers just about to unfold themselves.

Very soon a woman who seemed to be about thirty years old appeared on

the threshold of the door, spinning as she came. She was an Auvergnate,

a high-colored, comfortable-looking, straightforward sort of person,

with white teeth; her cap and dress, the face, full figure, and general

appearance, were of the Auvergne peasant stamp. So was her dialect; she

was a thorough embodiment of her district; its hardworking ways, its

thrift, ignorance, and heartiness all met in her.

She greeted Raphael, and they began to talk. The dogs quieted down;

the old man went and sat on a bench in the sun; the child followed his

mother about wherever she went, listening without saying a word, and

staring at the stranger.

“You are not afraid to live here, good woman?”

“What should we be afraid of, sir? When we bolt the door, who ever could

get inside? Oh, no, we aren’t afraid at all. And besides,” she said,

as she brought the Marquis into the principal room in the house, “what

should thieves come to take from us here?”

She designated the room as she spoke; the smoke-blackened walls, with

some brilliant pictures in blue, red, and green, an “End of Credit,” a

Crucifixion, and the “Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard” for their

sole ornament; the furniture here and there, the old wooden four-post

bedstead, the table with crooked legs, a few stools, the chest that

held the bread, the flitch that hung from the ceiling, a jar of salt, a

stove, and on the mantleshelf a few discolored yellow plaster figures.

As he went out again Raphael noticed a man half-way up the crags,

leaning on a hoe, and watching the house with interest.

“That’s my man, sir,” said the Auvergnate, unconsciously smiling in

peasant fashion; “he is at work up there.”

“And that old man is your father?”

“Asking your pardon, sir, he is my man’s grandfather. Such as you see

him, he is a hundred and two, and yet quite lately he walked over to

Clermont with our little chap! Oh, he has been a strong man in his time;

but he does nothing now but sleep and eat and drink. He amuses himself

with the little fellow. Sometimes the child trails him up the hillsides,

and he will just go up there along with him.”

Valentin made up his mind immediately. He would live between this child

and old man, breathe the same air; eat their bread, drink the same

water, sleep with them, make the blood in his veins like theirs. It was

a dying man’s fancy. For him the prime model, after which the customary

existence of the individual should be shaped, the real formula for the

life of a human being, the only true and possible life, the life-ideal,

was to become one of the oysters adhering to this rock, to save

his shell a day or two longer by paralyzing the power of death. One

profoundly selfish thought took possession of him, and the whole

universe was swallowed up and lost in it. For him the universe existed

no longer; the whole world had come to be within himself. For the sick,

the world begins at their pillow and ends at the foot of the bed; and

this countryside was Raphael’s sick-bed.

Who has not, at some time or other in his life, watched the comings

and goings of an ant, slipped straws into a yellow slug’s one

breathing-hole, studied the vagaries of a slender dragon-fly, pondered

admiringly over the countless veins in an oak-leaf, that bring the

colors of a rose window in some Gothic cathedral into contrast with the

reddish background? Who has not looked long in delight at the effects

of sun and rain on a roof of brown tiles, at the dewdrops, or at the

variously shaped petals of the flower-cups? Who has not sunk into these

idle, absorbing meditations on things without, that have no conscious

end, yet lead to some definite thought at last. Who, in short, has not

led a lazy life, the life of childhood, the life of the savage without

his labor? This life without a care or a wish Raphael led for some days’

space. He felt a distinct improvement in his condition, a wonderful

sense of ease, that quieted his apprehensions and soothed his

sufferings.

He would climb the crags, and then find a seat high up on some peak

whence he could see a vast expanse of distant country at a glance, and

he would spend whole days in this way, like a plant in the sun, or a

hare in its form. And at last, growing familiar with the appearances

of the plant-life about him, and of the changes in the sky, he minutely

noted the progress of everything working around him in the water, on the

earth, or in the air. He tried to share the secret impulses of nature,

sought by passive obedience to become a part of it, and to lie within

the conservative and despotic jurisdiction that regulates instinctive

existence. He no longer wished to steer his own course.

Just as criminals in olden times were safe from the pursuit of justice,

if they took refuge under the shadow of the altar, so Raphael made an

effort to slip into the sanctuary of life. He succeeded in becoming an

integral part of the great and mighty fruit-producing organization; he

had adapted himself to the inclemency of the air, and had dwelt in every

cave among the rocks. He had learned the ways and habits of growth of

every plant, had studied the laws of the watercourses and their beds,

and had come to know the animals; he was at last so perfectly at

one with this teeming earth, that he had in some sort discerned its

mysteries and caught the spirit of it.

The infinitely varied forms of every natural kingdom were, to his

thinking, only developments of one and the same substance, different

combinations brought about by the same impulse, endless emanations from

a measureless Being which was acting, thinking, moving, and growing, and

in harmony with which he longed to grow, to move, to think, and act.

He had fancifully blended his life with the life of the crags; he had

deliberately planted himself there. During the earliest days of

his sojourn in these pleasant surroundings, Valentin tasted all the

pleasures of childhood again, thanks to the strange hallucination of

apparent convalescence, which is not unlike the pauses of delirium

that nature mercifully provides for those in pain. He went about making

trifling discoveries, setting to work on endless things, and finishing

none of them; the evening’s plans were quite forgotten in the morning;

he had no cares, he was happy; he thought himself saved.

One morning he had lain in bed till noon, deep in the dreams between

sleep and waking, which give to realities a fantastic appearance, and

make the wildest fancies seem solid facts; while he was still uncertain

that he was not dreaming yet, he suddenly heard his hostess giving a

report of his health to Jonathan, for the first time. Jonathan came

to inquire after him daily, and the Auvergnate, thinking no doubt

that Valentin was still asleep, had not lowered the tones of a voice

developed in mountain air.

“No better and no worse,” she said. “He coughed all last night again fit

to kill himself. Poor gentleman, he coughs and spits till it is piteous.

My husband and I often wonder to each other where he gets the strength

from to cough like that. It goes to your heart. What a cursed complaint

it is! He has no strength at all. I am always afraid I shall find him

dead in his bed some morning. He is every bit as pale as a waxen Christ.

_Dame_! I watch him while he dresses; his poor body is as thin as a

nail. And he does not feel well now; but no matter. It’s all the same;

he wears himself out with running about as if he had health and to

spare. All the same, he is very brave, for he never complains at all.

But really he would be better under the earth than on it, for he is

enduring the agonies of Christ. I don’t wish that myself, sir; it is

quite in our interests; but even if he didn’t pay us what he does, I

should be just as fond of him; it is not our own interest that is our

motive.

“Ah, _mon Dieu_!” she continued, “Parisians are the people for these

dogs’ diseases. Where did he catch it, now? Poor young man! And he is so

sure that he is going to get well! That fever just gnaws him, you know;

it eats him away; it will be the death of him. He has no notion whatever

of that; he does not know it, sir; he sees nothing----You mustn’t cry

about him, M. Jonathan; you must remember that he will be happy, and

will not suffer any more. You ought to make a neuvaine for him; I have

seen wonderful cures come of the nine days’ prayer, and I would gladly

pay for a wax taper to save such a gentle creature, so good he is, a

paschal lamb----”

As Raphael’s voice had grown too weak to allow him to make himself

heard, he was compelled to listen to this horrible loquacity. His

irritation, however, drove him out of bed at length, and he appeared

upon the threshold.

“Old scoundrel!” he shouted to Jonathan; “do you mean to put me to

death?”

The peasant woman took him for a ghost, and fled.

“I forbid you to have any anxiety whatever about my health,” Raphael

went on.

“Yes, my Lord Marquis,” said the old servant, wiping away his tears.

“And for the future you had very much better not come here without my

orders.”

Jonathan meant to be obedient, but in the look full of pity and

devotion that he gave the Marquis before he went, Raphael read his own

death-warrant. Utterly disheartened, brought all at once to a sense of

his real position, Valentin sat down on the threshold, locked his arms

across his chest, and bowed his head. Jonathan turned to his master in

alarm, with “My Lord----”

“Go away, go away,” cried the invalid.

In the hours of the next morning, Raphael climbed the crags, and sat

down in a mossy cleft in the rocks, whence he could see the narrow path

along which the water for the dwelling was carried. At the base of the

hill he saw Jonathan in conversation with the Auvergnate. Some malicious

power interpreted for him all the woman’s forebodings, and filled the

breeze and the silence with her ominous words. Thrilled with horror, he

took refuge among the highest summits of the mountains, and stayed

there till the evening; but yet he could not drive away the gloomy

presentiments awakened within him in such an unfortunate manner by a

cruel solicitude on his account.

The Auvergne peasant herself suddenly appeared before him like a shadow

in the dusk; a perverse freak of the poet within him found a vague

resemblance between her black and white striped petticoat and the bony

frame of a spectre.

“The damp is falling now, sir,” said she. “If you stop out there, you

will go off just like rotten fruit. You must come in. It isn’t healthy

to breathe the damp, and you have taken nothing since the morning,

besides.”

“_Tonnerre de Dieu_! old witch,” he cried; “let me live after my own

fashion, I tell you, or I shall be off altogether. It is quite bad

enough to dig my grave every morning; you might let it alone in the

evenings at least----”

“Your grave, sir! I dig your grave!--and where may your grave be? I want

to see you as old as father there, and not in your grave by any

manner of means. The grave! that comes soon enough for us all; in the

grave----”

“That is enough,” said Raphael.

“Take my arm, sir.”

“No.”

The feeling of pity in others is very difficult for a man to bear, and

it is hardest of all when the pity is deserved. Hatred is a tonic--it

quickens life and stimulates revenge; but pity is death to us--it makes

our weakness weaker still. It is as if distress simpered ingratiatingly

at us; contempt lurks in the tenderness, or tenderness in an affront.

In the centenarian Raphael saw triumphant pity, a wondering pity in the

child’s eyes, an officious pity in the woman, and in her husband a pity

that had an interested motive; but no matter how the sentiment declared

itself, death was always its import.

A poet makes a poem of everything; it is tragical or joyful, as things

happen to strike his imagination; his lofty soul rejects all half-tones;

he always prefers vivid and decided colors. In Raphael’s soul this

compassion produced a terrible poem of mourning and melancholy. When

he had wished to live in close contact with nature, he had of course

forgotten how freely natural emotions are expressed. He would think

himself quite alone under a tree, whilst he struggled with an obstinate

coughing fit, a terrible combat from which he never issued victorious

without utter exhaustion afterwards; and then he would meet the clear,

bright eyes of the little boy, who occupied the post of sentinel, like

a savage in a bent of grass; the eyes scrutinized him with a childish

wonder, in which there was as much amusement as pleasure, and an

indescribable mixture of indifference and interest. The awful _Brother,

you must die_, of the Trappists seemed constantly legible in the eyes

of the peasants with whom Raphael was living; he scarcely knew which

he dreaded most, their unfettered talk or their silence; their presence

became torture.

One morning he saw two men in black prowling about in his neighborhood,

who furtively studied him and took observations. They made as though

they had come there for a stroll, and asked him a few indifferent

questions, to which he returned short answers. He recognized them both.

One was the _cure_ and the other the doctor at the springs; Jonathan had

no doubt sent them, or the people in the house had called them in, or

the scent of an approaching death had drawn them thither. He beheld his

own funeral, heard the chanting of the priests, and counted the tall wax

candles; and all that lovely fertile nature around him, in whose lap

he had thought to find life once more, he saw no longer, save through a

veil of crape. Everything that but lately had spoken of length of days

to him, now prophesied a speedy end. He set out the next day for Paris,

not before he had been inundated with cordial wishes, which the people

of the house uttered in melancholy and wistful tones for his benefit.

He traveled through the night, and awoke as they passed through one of

the pleasant valleys of the Bourbonnais. View after view swam before his

gaze, and passed rapidly away like the vague pictures of a dream.

Cruel nature spread herself out before his eyes with tantalizing grace.

Sometimes the Allier, a liquid shining ribbon, meandered through the

distant fertile landscape; then followed the steeples of hamlets, hiding

modestly in the depths of a ravine with its yellow cliffs; sometimes,

after the monotony of vineyards, the watermills of a little valley would

be suddenly seen; and everywhere there were pleasant chateaux, hillside

villages, roads with their fringes of queenly poplars; and the Loire

itself, at last, with its wide sheets of water sparkling like diamonds

amid its golden sands. Attractions everywhere, without end! This nature,

all astir with a life and gladness like that of childhood, scarcely able

to contain the impulses and sap of June, possessed a fatal attraction

for the darkened gaze of the invalid. He drew the blinds of his carriage

windows, and betook himself again to slumber.

Towards evening, after they had passed Cesne, he was awakened by lively

music, and found himself confronted with a village fair. The horses

were changed near the marketplace. Whilst the postilions were engaged

in making the transfer, he saw the people dancing merrily, pretty and

attractive girls with flowers about them, excited youths, and finally

the jolly wine-flushed countenances of old peasants. Children prattled,

old women laughed and chatted; everything spoke in one voice, and there

was a holiday gaiety about everything, down to their clothing and the

tables that were set out. A cheerful expression pervaded the square and

the church, the roofs and windows; even the very doorways of the village

seemed likewise to be in holiday trim.

Raphael could not repress an angry exclamation, nor yet a wish to

silence the fiddles, annihilate the stir and bustle, stop the clamor,

and disperse the ill-timed festival; like a dying man, he felt unable

to endure the slightest sound, and he entered his carriage much annoyed.

When he looked out upon the square from the window, he saw that all the

happiness was scared away; the peasant women were in flight, and the

benches were deserted. Only a blind musician, on the scaffolding of the

orchestra, went on playing a shrill tune on his clarionet. That piping

of his, without dancers to it, and the solitary old man himself, in the

shadow of the lime-tree, with his curmudgeon’s face, scanty hair, and

ragged clothing, was like a fantastic picture of Raphael’s wish. The

heavy rain was pouring in torrents; it was one of those thunderstorms

that June brings about so rapidly, to cease as suddenly. The thing was

so natural, that, when Raphael had looked out and seen some pale clouds

driven over by a gust of wind, he did not think of looking at the piece

of skin. He lay back again in the corner of his carriage, which was very

soon rolling upon its way.

The next day found him back in his home again, in his own room, beside

his own fireside. He had had a large fire lighted; he felt cold.

Jonathan brought him some letters; they were all from Pauline. He opened

the first one without any eagerness, and unfolded it as if it had

been the gray-paper form of application for taxes made by the revenue

collector. He read the first sentence:

“Gone! This really is a flight, my Raphael. How is it? No one can tell

me where you are. And who should know if not I?”

He did not wish to learn any more. He calmly took up the letters

and threw them in the fire, watching with dull and lifeless eyes the

perfumed paper as it was twisted, shriveled, bent, and devoured by the

capricious flames. Fragments that fell among the ashes allowed him to

see the beginning of a sentence, or a half-burnt thought or word; he

took a pleasure in deciphering them--a sort of mechanical amusement.

“Sitting at your door--expected--Caprice--I obey--Rivals--I, never!--thy

Pauline--love--no more of Pauline?--If you had wished to leave me for

ever, you would not have deserted me--Love eternal--To die----”

The words caused him a sort of remorse; he seized the tongs, and rescued

a last fragment of the letter from the flames.

“I have murmured,” so Pauline wrote, “but I have never complained, my

Raphael! If you have left me so far behind you, it was doubtless because

you wished to hide some heavy grief from me. Perhaps you will kill me

one of these days, but you are too good to torture me. So do not go away

from me like this. There! I can bear the worst of torment, if only I

am at your side. Any grief that you could cause me would not be grief.

There is far more love in my heart for you than I have ever yet shown

you. I can endure anything, except this weeping far away from you, this

ignorance of your----”

Raphael laid the scorched scrap on the mantelpiece, then all at once he

flung it into the fire. The bit of paper was too clearly a symbol of his

own love and luckless existence.

“Go and find M. Bianchon,” he told Jonathan.

Horace came and found Raphael in bed.

“Can you prescribe a draught for me--some mild opiate which will always

keep me in a somnolent condition, a draught that will not be injurious

although taken constantly.”

“Nothing is easier,” the young doctor replied; “but you will have to

keep on your feet for a few hours daily, at any rate, so as to take your

food.”

“A few hours!” Raphael broke in; “no, no! I only wish to be out of bed

for an hour at most.”

“What is your object?” inquired Bianchon.

“To sleep; for so one keeps alive, at any rate,” the patient answered.

“Let no one come in, not even Mlle. Pauline de Wistchnau!” he added to

Jonathan, as the doctor was writing out his prescription.

“Well, M. Horace, is there any hope?” the old servant asked, going as

far as the flight of steps before the door, with the young doctor.

“He may live for some time yet, or he may die to-night. The chances of

life and death are evenly balanced in his case. I can’t understand it

at all,” said the doctor, with a doubtful gesture. “His mind ought to be

diverted.”

“Diverted! Ah, sir, you don’t know him! He killed a man the other day

without a word!--Nothing can divert him!”

For some days Raphael lay plunged in the torpor of this artificial

sleep. Thanks to the material power that opium exerts over the

immaterial part of us, this man with the powerful and active imagination

reduced himself to the level of those sluggish forms of animal life that

lurk in the depths of forests, and take the form of vegetable refuse,

never stirring from their place to catch their easy prey. He had

darkened the very sun in heaven; the daylight never entered his room.

About eight o’clock in the evening he would leave his bed, with no very

clear consciousness of his own existence; he would satisfy the claims

of hunger and return to bed immediately. One dull blighted hour after

another only brought confused pictures and appearances before him, and

lights and shadows against a background of darkness. He lay buried in

deep silence; movement and intelligence were completely annihilated for

him. He woke later than usual one evening, and found that his dinner was

not ready. He rang for Jonathan.

“You can go,” he said. “I have made you rich; you shall be happy in

your old age; but I will not let you muddle away my life any longer.

Miserable wretch! I am hungry--where is my dinner? How is it?--Answer

me!”

A satisfied smile stole over Jonathan’s face. He took a candle that

lit up the great dark rooms of the mansion with its flickering light;

brought his master, who had again become an automaton, into a great

gallery, and flung a door suddenly open. Raphael was all at once dazzled

by a flood of light and amazed by an unheard-of scene.

His chandeliers had been filled with wax-lights; the rarest flowers

from his conservatory were carefully arranged about the room; the table

sparkled with silver, gold, crystal, and porcelain; a royal banquet was

spread--the odors of the tempting dishes tickled the nervous fibres of

the palate. There sat his friends; he saw them among beautiful women in

full evening dress, with bare necks and shoulders, with flowers in their

hair; fair women of every type, with sparkling eyes, attractively and

fancifully arrayed. One had adopted an Irish jacket, which displayed

the alluring outlines of her form; one wore the “basquina” of Andalusia,

with its wanton grace; here was a half-clad Dian the huntress, there the

costume of Mlle. de la Valliere, amorous and coy; and all of them alike

were given up to the intoxication of the moment.

As Raphael’s death-pale face showed itself in the doorway, a sudden

outcry broke out, as vehement as the blaze of this improvised banquet.

The voices, perfumes, and lights, the exquisite beauty of the women,

produced their effect upon his senses, and awakened his desires.

Delightful music, from unseen players in the next room, drowned the

excited tumult in a torrent of harmony--the whole strange vision was

complete.

Raphael felt a caressing pressure on is own hand, a woman’s white,

youthful arms were stretched out to grasp him, and the hand was

Aquilina’s. He knew now that this scene was not a fantastic illusion

like the fleeting pictures of his disordered dreams; he uttered a

dreadful cry, slammed the door, and dealt his heartbroken old servant a

blow in the face.

“Monster!” he cried, “so you have sworn to kill me!” and trembling at

the risks he had just now run, he summoned all his energies, reached his

room, took a powerful sleeping draught, and went to bed.

“The devil!” cried Jonathan, recovering himself. “And M. Bianchon most

certainly told me to divert his mind.”

It was close upon midnight. By that time, owing to one of those physical

caprices that are the marvel and the despair of science, Raphael, in his

slumber, became radiant with beauty. A bright color glowed on his pale

cheeks. There was an almost girlish grace about the forehead in which

his genius was revealed. Life seemed to bloom on the quiet face that lay

there at rest. His sleep was sound; a light, even breath was drawn in

between red lips; he was smiling--he had passed no doubt through the

gate of dreams into a noble life. Was he a centenarian now? Did his

grandchildren come to wish him length of days? Or, on a rustic bench set

in the sun and under the trees, was he scanning, like the prophet on the

mountain heights, a promised land, a far-off time of blessing.

“Here you are!”

The words, uttered in silver tones, dispelled the shadowy faces of his

dreams. He saw Pauline, in the lamplight, sitting upon the bed; Pauline

grown fairer yet through sorrow and separation. Raphael remained

bewildered by the sight of her face, white as the petals of some water

flower, and the shadow of her long, dark hair about it seemed to make it

whiter still. Her tears had left a gleaming trace upon her cheeks, and

hung there yet, ready to fall at the least movement. She looked like an

angel fallen from the skies, or a spirit that a breath might waft away,

as she sat there all in white, with her head bowed, scarcely creasing

the quilt beneath her weight.

“Ah, I have forgotten everything!” she cried, as Raphael opened his

eyes. “I have no voice left except to tell you, ‘I am yours.’ There is

nothing in my heart but love. Angel of my life, you have never been so

beautiful before! Your eyes are blazing---- But come, I can guess it

all. You have been in search of health without me; you were afraid of

me---- well----”

“Go! go! leave me,” Raphael muttered at last. “Why do you not go? If you

stay, I shall die. Do you want to see me die?”

“Die?” she echoed. “Can you die without me? Die? But you are young; and

I love you! Die?” she asked, in a deep, hollow voice. She seized his

hands with a frenzied movement. “Cold!” she wailed. “Is it all an

illusion?”

Raphael drew the little bit of skin from under his pillow; it was as

tiny and as fragile as a periwinkle petal. He showed it to her.

“Pauline!” he said, “fair image of my fair life, let us say good-bye?”

“Good-bye?” she echoed, looking surprised.

“Yes. This is a talisman that grants me all my wishes, and that

represents my span of life. See here, this is all that remains of it. If

you look at me any longer, I shall die----”

The young girl thought that Valentin had grown lightheaded; she took the

talisman and went to fetch the lamp. By its tremulous light which she

shed over Raphael and the talisman, she scanned her lover’s face and the

last morsel of the magic skin. As Pauline stood there, in all the beauty

of love and terror, Raphael was no longer able to control his thoughts;

memories of tender scenes, and of passionate and fevered joys,

overwhelmed the soul that had so long lain dormant within him, and

kindled a fire not quite extinct.

“Pauline! Pauline! Come to me----”

A dreadful cry came from the girl’s throat, her eyes dilated with

horror, her eyebrows were distorted and drawn apart by an unspeakable

anguish; she read in Raphael’s eyes the vehement desire in which she had

once exulted, but as it grew she felt a light movement in her hand, and

the skin contracted. She did not stop to think; she fled into the next

room, and locked the door.

“Pauline! Pauline!” cried the dying man, as he rushed after her; “I love

you, I adore you, I want you, Pauline! I wish to die in your arms!”

With unnatural strength, the last effort of ebbing life, he broke down

the door, and saw his mistress writhing upon a sofa. Pauline had vainly

tried to pierce her heart, and now thought to find a rapid death by

strangling herself with her shawl.

“If I die, he will live,” she said, trying to tighten the knot that she

had made.

In her struggle with death her hair hung loose, her shoulders were bare,

her clothing was disordered, her eyes were bathed in tears, her face

was flushed and drawn with the horror of despair; yet as her exceeding

beauty met Raphael’s intoxicated eyes, his delirium grew. He sprang

towards her like a bird of prey, tore away the shawl, and tried to take

her in his arms.

The dying man sought for words to express the wish that was consuming

his strength; but no sounds would come except the choking death-rattle

in his chest. Each breath he drew sounded hollower than the last, and

seemed to come from his very entrails. At the last moment, no longer

able to utter a sound, he set his teeth in Pauline’s breast. Jonathan

appeared, terrified by the cries he had heard, and tried to tear away

the dead body from the grasp of the girl who was crouching with it in a

corner.

“What do you want?” she asked. “He is mine, I have killed him. Did I not

foresee how it would be?”