to thee that I had forgotten thee. But I come from afar off, very far
off, and from a land whence no other has ever yet returned. There is
neither sun nor moon in that land whence I come: all is but space and
shadow; there is neither road nor pathway: no earth for the foot, no air
for the wing; and nevertheless behold me here, for Love is stronger than
Death and must conquer him in the end. Oh what sad faces and fearful
things I have seen on my way hither! What difficulty my soul, returned
to earth through the power of will alone, has had in finding its body
and reinstating itself therein! What terrible efforts I had to make ere
I could lift the ponderous slab with which they had covered me! See, the
palms of my poor hands are all bruised! Kiss them, sweet love, that they
may be healed!’ She laid the cold palms of her hands upon ray mouth, one
after the other. I kissed them, indeed, many times, and she the while
watched me with a smile of ineffable affection.
I confess to my shame that I had entirely forgotten the advice of the
Abbé Sérapion and the sacred office wherewith I had been invested. I had
fallen without resistance, and at the first assault. I had not even
made the least effort to repel the tempter. The fresh coolness of
Clarimonde’s skin penetrated my own, and I felt voluptuous tremors pass
over my whole body. Poor child! in spite of all I saw afterward, I can
hardly yet believe she was a demon; at least she had no appearance
of being such, and never did Satan so skilfully conceal his claws and
horns. She had drawn her feet up beneath her, and squatted down on the
edge of the couch in an attitude full of negligent coquetry. From time
to time she passed her little hand through my hair and twisted it into
curls, as though trying how a new style of wearing it would become my
face. I abandoned myself to her hands with the most guilty pleasure,
while she accompanied her gentle play with the prettiest prattle. The
most remarkable fact was that I felt no astonishment whatever at so
extraordinary ah adventure, and as in dreams one finds no difficulty
in accepting the most fantastic events as simple facts, so all these
circumstances seemed to me perfectly natural in themselves.
‘I loved thee long ere I saw thee, dear Romuald, and sought thee
everywhere. Thou wast my dream, and I first saw thee in the church at
the fatal moment. I said at once, “It is he!” I gave thee a look into
which I threw all the love I ever had, all the love I now have, all
the love I shall ever have for thee--a look that would have damned a
cardinal or brought a king to his knees at my feet in view of all his
court. Thou remainedst unmoved, preferring thy God to me!
‘Ah, how jealous I am of that God whom thou didst love and still lovest
more than me!
‘Woe is me, unhappy one that I am! I can never have thy heart all to
myself, I whom thou didst recall to life with a kiss--dead Clarimonde,
who for thy sake bursts asunder the gates of the tomb, and comes to
consecrate to thee a life which she has resumed only to make thee
happy!’
All her words were accompanied with the most impassioned caresses, which
bewildered my sense and my reason to such an extent, that I did not fear
to utter a frightful blasphemy for the sake of consoling her, and to
declare that I loved her as much as God.
Her eyes rekindled and shone like chrysoprases. ‘In truth?--in very
truth?--as much as God!’ she cried, flinging her beautiful arms around
me. ‘Since it is so, thou wilt come with me; thou wilt follow me
whithersoever I desire. Thou wilt cast away thy ugly black habit. Thou
shalt be the proudest and most envied of cavaliers; thou shalt be my
lover! To be the acknowledged lover of Clarimonde, who has refused
even a Pope! That will be something to feel proud of. Ah, the fair,
unspeakably happy existence, the beautiful golden life we shall live
together! And when shall we depart, my fair sir?’
‘To-morrow! To-morrow!’ I cried in my delirium.
‘To-morrow, then, so let it be!’ she answered. ‘In the meanwhile I shall
have opportunity to change my toilet, for this is a little too light
and in nowise suited for a voyage. I must also forthwith notify all
my friends who believe me dead, and mourn for me as deeply as they are
capable of doing. The money, the dresses, the carriages--all will be
ready. I shall call for thee at this same hour. Adieu, dear heart!’ And
she lightly touched my forehead with her lips. The lamp went out, the
curtains closed again, and all became dark; a leaden, dreamless sleep
fell on me and held me unconscious until the morning following.
I awoke later than usual, and the recollection of this singular
adventure troubled me during the whole day. I finally persuaded myself
that it was a mere vapour of my heated imagination. Nevertheless its
sensations had been so vivid that it was difficult to persuade myself
that they were not real, and it was not without some presentiment of
what was going to happen that I got into bed at last, after having
prayed God to drive far from me all thoughts of evil, and to protect the
chastity of my slumber.
I soon fell into a deep sleep, and my dream was continued. The curtains
again parted, and I beheld Clarimonde, not as on the former occasion,
pale in her pale winding-sheet, with the violets of death upon her
cheeks, but gay, sprightly, jaunty, in a superb travelling-dress of
green velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and looped up on either side to
allow a glimpse of satin petticoat. Her blond hair escaped in thick
ringlets from beneath a broad black felt hat, decorated with white
feathers whimsically twisted into various shapes. In one hand she held a
little riding-whip terminated by a golden whistle. She tapped me lightly
with it, and exclaimed: ‘Well, my fine sleeper, is this the way you
make your preparations? I thought I would find you up and dressed. Arise
quickly, we have no time to lose.’
I leaped out of bed at once.
‘Come, dress yourself, and let us go,’ she continued, pointing to
a little package she had brought with her. ‘The horses are becoming
impatient of delay and champing their bits at the door. We ought to have
been by this time at least ten leagues distant from here.’
I dressed myself hurriedly, and she handed me the articles of apparel
herself one by one, bursting into laughter from time to time at my
awkwardness, as she explained to me the use of a garment when I had made
a mistake. She hurriedly arranged my hair, and this done, held up
before me a little pocket-mirror of Venetian crystal, rimmed with silver
filigree-work, and playfully asked: ‘How dost find thyself now? Wilt
engage me for thy valet de chambre?’
I was no longer the same person, and I could not even recognise myself.
I resembled my former self no more than a finished statue resembles
a block of stone. My old face seemed but a coarse daub of the one
reflected in the mirror. I was handsome, and my vanity was sensibly
tickled by the metamorphosis.
That elegant apparel, that richly embroidered vest had made of me
a totally different personage, and I marvelled at the power of
transformation owned by a few yards of cloth cut after a certain
pattern. The spirit of my costume penetrated my very skin and within ten
minutes more I had become something of a coxcomb.
In order to feel more at ease in my new attire, I took several turns
up and down the room. Clari-monde watched me with an air of maternal
pleasure, and appeared well satisfied with her work. ‘Come, enough of
this child’s play! Let us start, Romuald, dear. We have far to go, and
we may not get there in time.’ She took my hand and led me forth. All
the doors opened before her at a touch, and we passed by the dog without
awaking him.
At the gate we found Margheritone waiting, the same swarthy groom who
had once before been my-escort. He held the bridles of three horses, all
black like those which bore us to the castle--one for me, one for him,
one for Clarimonde. Those horses must have been Spanish genets born of
mares fecundated by a zephyr, for they were fleet as the wind itself,
and the moon, which had just risen at our departure to light us on the
way, rolled over the sky like a wheel detached from her own chariot. We
beheld her on the right leaping from tree to tree, and putting herself
out of breath in the effort to keep up with us. Soon we came upon
a level plain where, hard by a clump of trees, a carriage with four
vigorous horses awaited us. We entered it, and the postillions urged
their animals into a mad gallop. I had one arm around Clarimonde’s
waist, and one of her hands clasped in mine; her head leaned upon my
shoulder, and I felt her bosom, half bare, lightly pressing against
my arm. I had never known such intense happiness. In that hour I had
forgotten everything, and I no more remembered having ever been a priest
than I remembered what I had been doing in my mother’s womb, so great
was the fascination which the evil spirit exerted upon me. From that
night my nature seemed in some sort to have become halved, and there
were two men within me, neither of whom knew the other. At one moment I
believed myself a priest who dreamed nightly that he was a gentleman, at
another that I was a gentleman who dreamed he was a priest. I could
no longer distinguish the dream from the reality, nor could I discover
where the reality began or where ended the dream. The exquisite
young lord and libertine railed at the priest, the priest loathed the
dissolute habits of the young lord. Two spirals entangled and confounded
the one with the other, yet never touching, would afford a fair
representation of this bicephalic life which I lived. Despite the
strange character of my condition, I do not believe that I ever
inclined, even for a moment, to madness. I always retained with extreme
vividness all the perceptions of my two lives. Only there was one absurd
fact which I could not explain to myself--namely, that the consciousness
of the same individuality existed in two men so opposite in character.
It was an anomaly for which I could not account--whether I believed
myself to be the curé of the little village of C------, or _Il Signor
Romualdo_, the titled lover of Clarimonde.
Be that as it may, I lived, at least I believed that I lived, in Venice.
I have never been able to discover rightly how much of illusion and how
much of reality there was in this fantastic adventure. We dwelt in a
great palace on the Canaleio, filled with frescoes and statues, and
containing two Titians in the noblest style of the great master, which
were hung in Clarimonde’s chamber. It was a palace well worthy of a
king. We had each our gondola, our _barcarolli_ in family livery,
our music hall, and our special poet. Clarimonde always lived upon a
magnificent scale; there was something of Cleopatra in her nature. As
for me, I had the retinue of a prince’s son, and I was regarded with as
much reverential respect as though I had been of the family of one of
the twelve Apostles or the four Evangelists of the Most Serene Republic.
I would not have turned aside to allow even the Doge to pass, and I do
not believe that since Satan fell from heaven, any creature was ever
prouder or more insolent than I. I went to the Ridotto, and played with
a luck which seemed absolutely infernal. I received the best of all
society--the sons of ruined families, women of the theatre, shrewd
knaves, parasites, hectoring swashbucklers. But notwithstanding the
dissipation of such a life, I always remained faithful to Clarimonde.
I loved her wildly. She would have excited satiety itself, and chained
inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; ay,
to possess all women: so mobile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new
charms was she all in herself--a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth.
She made you commit with her the infidelity you would have committed
with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction,
the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She
returned my love a hundred-fold, and it was in vain that the young
patricians and even the Ancients of the Council of Ten made her the most
magnificent proposals. A Foscari even went so far as to offer to espouse
her. She rejected all his overtures. Of gold she had enough. She wished
no longer for anything but love--a love youthful, pure, evoked by
herself, and which should be a first and last passion. I would have been
perfectly happy but for a cursed nightmare which recurred every night,
and in which I believed myself to be a poor village curé, practising
mortification and penance for my excesses during the day. Reassured by
my constant association with her, I never thought further of the strange
manner in which I had become acquainted with Clarimonde. But the words
of the Abbé Sérapion concerning her recurred often to my memory, and
never ceased to cause me uneasiness.
For some time the health of Clarimonde had not been so good as usual;
her complexion grew paler day by day. The physicians who were summoned
could not comprehend the nature of her malady and knew not how to treat
it. They all prescribed some insignificant remedies, and never called
a second time. Her paleness, nevertheless, visibly increased, and she
became colder and colder, until she seemed almost as white and dead as
upon that memorable night in the unknown castle. I grieved with anguish
unspeakable to behold her thus slowly perishing; and she, touched by my
agony, smiled upon me sweetly and sadly with the fateful smile of those
who feel that they must die.
One morning I was seated at her bedside, and breakfasting from a little
table placed close at hand, so that I might not be obliged to leave her
for a single instant. In the act of cutting some fruit I accidentally
inflicted rather a deep gash on my finger. The blood immediately gushed
forth in a little purple jet, and a few drops spurted upon Clarimonde.
Her eyes flashed, her face suddenly assumed an expression of savage and
ferocious joy such as I had never before observed in her. She leaped out
of her bed with animal agility--the agility, as it were, of an ape or a
cat--and sprang upon my wound, which she commenced to suck with an air
of unutterable pleasure. She swallowed the blood in little mouthfuls,
slowly and carefully, like a connoisseur tasting a wine from Xeres or
Syracuse. Gradually her eyelids half closed, and the pupils of her green
eyes became oblong instead of round. From time to time she paused in
order to kiss my hand, then she would recommence to press her lips to
the lips of the wound in order to coax forth a few more ruddy drops.
When she found that the blood would no longer come, she arose with eyes
liquid and brilliant, rosier than a May dawn; her face full and fresh,
her hand warm and moist--in fine, more beautiful than ever, and in the
most perfect health.
‘I shall not die! I shall not die!’ she cried, clinging to my neck, half
mad with joy. ‘I can love thee yet for a long time. My life is thine,
and all that is of me comes from thee. A few drops of thy rich and noble
blood, more precious and more potent than all the elixirs of the earth,
have given me back life.’
This scene long haunted my memory, and inspired me with strange
doubts in regard to Clarimonde; and the same evening, when slumber had
transported me to my presbytery, I beheld the Abbé Sérapion, graver
and more anxious of aspect than ever. He gazed attentively at me, and
sorrowfully exclaimed: ‘Not content with losing your soul, you now
desire also to lose your body. Wretched young man, into how terrible
a plight have you fallen!’ The tone in which he uttered these words
powerfully affected me, but in spite of its vividness even that
impression was soon dissipated, and a thousand other cares erased it
from my mind. At last one evening, while looking into a mirror whose
traitorous position she had not taken into account, I saw Clarimonde in
the act of emptying a powder into the cup of spiced wine which she had
long been in the habit of preparing after our repasts. I took the
cup, feigned to carry it to my lips, and then placed it on the nearest
article of furniture as though intending to finish it at my leisure.
Taking advantage of a moment when the fair one’s back was turned, I
threw the contents under the table, after which I retired to my chamber
and went to bed, fully resolved not to sleep, but to watch and discover
what should come of all this mystery. I did not have to wait long,
Clarimonde entered in her nightdress, and having removed her apparel,
crept into bed and lay down beside me. When she felt assured that I
was asleep, she bared my arm, and drawing a gold pin from her hair,
commenced to murmur in a low voice:
‘One drop, only one drop! One ruby at the end of my needle.... Since
thou lovest me yet, I must not die!... Ah, poor love! His beautiful
blood, so brightly purple, I must drink it. Sleep, my only treasure!
Sleep, my god, my child! I will do thee no harm; I will only take of thy
life what I must to keep my own from being for ever extinguished. But
that I love thee so much, I could well resolve to have other lovers
whose veins I could drain; but since I have known thee all other men
have become hateful to me.... Ah, the beautiful arm! How round it is!
How white it is! How shall I ever dare to prick this pretty blue vein!’
And while thus murmuring to herself she wept, and I felt her tears
raining on my arm as she clasped it with her hands. At last she took the
resolve, slightly punctured me with her pin, and commenced to suck up
the blood which oozed from the place. Although she swallowed only a few
drops, the fear of weakening me soon seized her, and she carefully tied
a little band around my arm, afterward rubbing the wound with an unguent
which immediately cicatrised it. Further doubts were impossible. The
Abbé Sérapion was right. Notwithstanding this positive knowledge,
however, I could not cease to love Clarimonde, and I would gladly of
my own accord have given her all the blood she required to sustain her
factitious life. Moreover, I felt but little fear of her. The woman
seemed to plead with me for the vampire, and what I had already heard
and seen sufficed to reassure me completely. In those days I had
plenteous veins, which would not have been so easily exhausted as at
present; and I would not have thought of bargaining for my blood, drop
by drop. I would rather have opened myself the veins of my arm and said
to her: ‘Drink, and may my love infiltrate itself throughout thy body
together with my blood!’ I carefully avoided ever making the least
reference to the narcotic drink she had prepared for me, or to the
incident of the pin, and we lived in the most perfect harmony.
Yet my priestly scruples commenced to torment me more than ever, and
I was at a loss to imagine what new penance I could invent in order to
mortify and subdue my flesh. Although these visions were involuntary,
and though I did not actually participate in anything relating to them,
I could not dare to touch the body of Christ with hands so impure and a
mind defiled by such debauches whether real or imaginary. In the effort
to avoid falling under the influence of these wearisome hallucinations,
I strove to prevent myself from being overcome by sleep. I held my
eyelids open with my fingers, and stood for hours together leaning
upright against the wall, fighting sleep with all my might; but the dust
of drowsiness invariably gathered upon my eyes at last, and finding all
resistance useless, I would have to let my arms fall in the extremity
of despairing weariness, and the current of slumber would again bear
me away to the perfidious shores. Sérapion addressed me with the most
vehement exhortations, severely reproaching me for my softness and want
of fervour. Finally, one day when I was more wretched than usual, he
said to me: ‘There is but one way by which you can obtain relief from
this continual torment, and though it is an extreme measure it must be
made use of; violent diseases require violent remedies. I know where
Clarimonde is buried. It is necessary that we shall disinter her
remains, and that you shall behold in how pitiable a state the object of
your love is. Then you will no longer be tempted to lose your soul for
the sake of an unclean corpse devoured by worms, and ready to crumble
into dust. That will assuredly restore you to yourself.’ For my part, I
was so tired of this double life that I at once consented, desiring to
ascertain beyond a doubt whether a priest or a gentleman had been the
victim of delusion. I had become fully resolved either to kill one of
the two men within me for the benefit of the other, or else to kill
both, for so terrible an existence could not last long and be endured.
The Abbé Sérapion provided himself with a mattock, a lever, and a
lantern, and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of ------,
the location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him. After
having directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions of
several tombs, we came at last upon a great slab, half concealed by
huge weeds and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon we
deciphered the opening lines of the epitaph:
Here lies Clarimonde
Who was famed in her life-time
As the fairest of women.*
* Ici gît Clarimonde
Qui fut de son vivant
La plus belle du monde.
The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably
lost in the translation.
‘It is here without a doubt,’ muttered Sérapion, and placing his lantern
on the ground, he forced the point of the lever under the edge of the
stone and commenced to raise it. The stone yielded, and he proceeded to
work with the mattock. Darker and more silent than the night itself, I
stood by and watched him do it, while he, bending over his dismal toil,
streamed with sweat, panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed to have
the harsh tone of a death rattle. It was a weird scene, and had any
persons from without beheld us, they would assuredly have taken us
rather for profane wretches and shroud-stealers than for priests of God.
There was something grim and fierce in Sérapion’s zeal which lent him
the air of a demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, and his great
aquiline face, with all its stern features, brought out in strong relief
by the lantern-light, had something fearsome in it which enhanced the
unpleasant fancy. I felt an icy sweat come out upon my forehead in huge
beads, and my hair stood up with a hideous fear. Within the depths of my
own heart I felt that the act of the austere Sérapion was an abominable
sacrilege; and I could have prayed that a triangle of fire would issue
from the entrails of the dark clouds, heavily rolling above us,
to reduce him to cinders. The owls which had been nestling in the
cypress-trees, startled by the gleam of the lantern, flew against it
from time to time, striking their dusty wings against its panes, and
uttering plaintive cries of lamentation; wild foxes yelped in the far
darkness, and a thousand sinister noises detached themselves from the
silence. At last Séra-pion’s mattock struck the coffin itself, making
its planks re-echo with a deep sonorous sound, with that terrible sound
nothingness utters when stricken. He wrenched apart and tore up the
lid, and I beheld Clarimonde, pallid as a figure of marble, with hands
joined; her white winding-sheet made but one fold from her head to her
feet. A little crimson drop sparkled like a speck of dew at one corner
of her colourless mouth. Sérapion, at this spectacle, burst into fury:
‘Ah, thou art here, demon! Impure courtesan! Drinker of blood and gold!
‘And he flung holy water upon the corpse and the coffin, over which he
traced the sign of the cross with his sprinkler. Poor Clarimonde had
no sooner been touched by the blessed spray than her beautiful body
crumbled into dust, and became only a shapeless and frightful mass of
cinders and half-calcined bones.