I
"No," said Pierre Jouvent, "I do not know Italy. I started to go
there twice, but each time I was stopped at the frontier and could
not manage to get any further. And yet my two attempts gave me charming
ideas of the manners of that beautiful country. Some time or other I
must visit its cities, as well as the museums and works of art with which
it abounds. I shall make another attempt as soon as possible to cross
that impregnable border.
"You don't understand me, so I will explain myself. In 1874 I was
seized with desire to see Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. I got this
whim about the middle of June, then the powerful fever of spring stirs
the desire for love and adventure. I am not, as you know, a great
traveller; it appears to me a useless and tiresome business. Nights spent
in a train, the disturbed slumbers of the railway carriage, with the
attendant headache and stiffness in every limb, the sudden waking in
that rolling box, the unwashed feeling, the flying dust and smuts that
fill your eyes and hair, the taste of coal in your mouth, and the bad
dinners in draughty refreshment rooms, are, in my opinion, a horrible
way of beginning a pleasure trip.
"After this introduction by the express, we have the miseries of the
hotel; of some great hotel full of people, and yet so empty; the strange
room, and the dubious bed! I am most particular about my bed; it is the
sanctuary of life. We intrust our nude and fatigued bodies to it that
they may be refreshed and rested between soft sheets and feathers.
"There we spend the most delightful hours of our existence, the hours of
love and of sleep. The bed is sacred, and should be respected, venerated,
and loved by us as the best and most delightful of our earthly
possessions.
"I cannot lift up the sheets of a hotel bed without a shiver of
disgust. What took place there the night before? What dirty, odious
people have slept in it! I begin, then, to think of all the horrible
people with whom one rubs shoulders every day, hideous hunchbacks, people
with flabby bodies, with dirty hands that make you wonder what their feet
and the rest of their bodies are like. I think of those who exhale a smell
of garlic and dirt that is loathsome. I think of the deformed and
purulent, of the perspiration emanating from the sick, and of everything
that is ugly in man. And all this, perhaps, in the bed in which I am going
to sleep! The mere idea of it makes me feel ill as I get in.
"And then the hotel dinners--those dreary _table d'hôte_ dinners in
the midst of all sorts of extraordinary people, or else those terrible
solitary dinners at a small table in a restaurant, feebly lighted up by
a small, cheap candle under a shade.
"Again, those terribly dull evenings in some unknown town! Do you know
anything more wretched than when it is getting dark on such an occasion?
You go about as if in a dream, looking at faces which you have never seen
before and will never see again; listening to people talking about matters
which are either quite indifferent to you or in a language that perhaps
you do not understand. You have a terrible feeling, almost as if you were
lost, and you continue to walk on, so as to avoid returning to the hotel,
where you would feel still more lost because you are _at home_, in a
home which belongs to anyone who can pay for it. At last you fall into a
chair at some well-lit café, whose gilding and lights overwhelm you a
thousand times more than the shadows in the streets. Then you feel so
abominably lonely sitting in front of the foaming bock which a hurrying
waiter has brought, that a kind of madness seizes you, the longing to go
somewhere or other, no matter where, as long as you need not remain in
front of that marble table and in the dazzling brightness.
"And then, suddenly, you perceive that you are really alone in the
world, always and everywhere; and that in places which we know the
familiar jostlings give us the illusion only of human brotherhood.
At such moments of self-abandonment and sombre isolation in distant
cities you think broadly, clearly, and profoundly. Then one suddenly
sees the whole of life outside the vision of eternal hope, outside
the daily deceptions of daily habits and of the expectations of
happiness, of which we always dream.
"It is only by going a long distance that we can fully understand
how near, short-lived and empty everything is; only by searching for the
unknown do we perceive how commonplace and evanescent everything is; only
by wandering over the face of the earth can we understand how small the
world is, and how very much alike everywhere.
"How well I know, and how I hate and fear more than anything else
those haphazard walks through unknown streets. This was the reason
why, as nothing would induce me to undertake a tour in Italy by myself,
I induced my friend Paul Pavilly to accompany me.
"You know Paul, and how woman is everything, the world, life itself,
to him. There are many men like him, to whom existence becomes poetical
and idealised by the presence of women. The earth is habitable only
because they are there; the sun shines and is warm because it lights them;
the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their skin and ruffles the
short hair on their temples, and the moon is charming because it makes
them dream, and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every act and action
of Paul has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his efforts, and
hopes are centred on them.
"A poet has branded that type of man:"
Je déteste surtout le barde à l'oeil humide
Qui regarde une étoile en murmurant un nom,
Et pour qui la nature immense serait vide
S'il ne portait en croupe ou Lisette ou Ninon.
Ces gens-là sont charmants qui se donnent la peine,
Afin qu'on s'intéresse à ce pauvre univers,
D'attacher des jupons aux arbres de la plaine
Et la cornette blanche au front des coteaux verts.
Certes ils n'ont pas compris tes musiques divines
Éternelle Nature aux frémissantes voix,
Ceux qui ne vont pas seuls par les creuses ravines
Et rêvent d'une femme au bruit que font les bois!
"When I mentioned Italy to Paul he at first absolutely refused to
leave Paris. I, however, began to tell him of the adventures I had on my
travels. I told him that Italian women are supposed to be charming, and I
made him hope for the most refined society at Naples, thanks to certain
letters of introduction which I had for a Signore Michel Amoroso whose
acquaintances are very useful to travellers. So at last he allowed himself
to be persuaded."