MORE TRAVEL NOTES
The Pale and Green Moon
"In hac hora anima ebria videtur,
Ut amoris stimulis magis perforetur."
Saint Bonaventure, Philomena.
_Château de Rabodanges, in the portrait chamber, September 12_.--Upon
arriving, I was received by Henri de Fortier, director of _la Revue
spéculative_, and Michel Paysant, whose novels, full of swelling
busts and caressing glances, charm families which mistake impotence
for chastity. Fortier mentions the names of the guests to me. None
of my acquaintances are here. Separated from the general, her
husband, Countess Aubry brings to the country, at the summer end,
her cosmopolitan salon which is frequented by the grand courtiers of
academic or worldly literature. It is rumored that Fortier succeeds,
in her gallant nights, the Bonapartist deputy who recently died
and with whom she had an open liaison. Fortier assumes the modest
airs of a host. At the dinner, several aristocrats who live in the
vicinity mention the fact that the hunting season has opened. The only
interesting face to see is that of a young fair woman, with sparkling
eyes, who is either silent or speaks to Madame Aubry alone. A stroll
in the moonlight follows, then the neighbors call for their carriages.
Fortier disappears with the countess. Paysant takes my arm and prattles.
He groans over his vexations as a chief clerk of literature. Just now
he would like to rest, even to loaf, but a week does not pass without
some publisher, old or young, coming to entreat of him a volume to
restore his business or launch his bookshop. Accordingly, his repressed
Gallic nature would freely awake and he would write several jolly
stories. But the unity of his work! That would no longer turn out to
be Paysant, and the Academy would perhaps knit its brow. He attempts a
laugh, but one feels an apprehensive reverence within the depths of his
deferential brain. A silence, and he greedily describes the young woman
I had noticed. The technique of the patrician gives to his eloquence a
disinterested tone, but one divines the wet mouth and the hand, with
kneading gestures, caressing the absent forms. I maintain that women
are neither beautiful nor ugly, and that their whole charm radiates
from their sex: desire sketches beauty and love completes it. A certain
ugly creature, in the vulgar sense of the word, has been able to assume
an ideal beauty, while another woman, by all judged admirable, has not
passed beyond the limbo of a rough draught, never having been loved.
Paysant shouts this paradox: feminine beauty is real and independent of
sentiment. She is capable of feeling, yes? Doubtless, that is a special
pleasure, yes, a special one. By adroitly goading him, one could make
him confess his tastes of a fondler, of a senile love of touching, but
I know not why, I am afraid lest his pathology take up Madame Sixtine
as a subject of demonstration.
We return to the château. Everybody has surrendered to the rare
pleasure of retiring early. Only Fortier awaits us, to conduct me to my
room. It seems that a friend of the countess is enthusiastic about the
_Revue spéculative_ and is going to espouse it under a dotal system,
making it an allowance of fifty thousand francs, which it lacks. This
Fortier has a mania for offering incomprehensible metaphors.
"Some one is going to put fifty thousand francs into the _Revue_!"
"Precisely."
"And you will become?"
"Editor in chief instead of director."
"And the director?"
"A pseudonym." I know Fortier; he will not take offense.
"Now, confess that it is the countess." He smiles and immediately
gallops across the faded fields of the dithyramb:
"She is charming, generous, devoted to art, and without personal
ambition."
"Except to be loved?"
"I charge myself with that."
This unconstraint interests my natural curiosity, and with little
contradictions powdered with some skepticism, I excite him to the
point where he tells me everything. He was presented by Malaval, who
remarked that his elegance of a clipped dog would turn the head of
the countess. It was an embarrassing introduction, but Fortier showed
wit--so he claims. There followed allurements, sly winks, the habit of
quarreling with each other, an absence, several letters wherein a light
tenderness fluttered. She was alone when he returned. Without speech,
their arms outstretched--there they were, trembling and lovers. Fortier
is incapable of inventing and, perhaps, of lying. He even has the air
of finding this natural and fatal. It had to happen.
"Is it not so?"
"Doubtless."
I take leave of him. Before departing, he asks me to furnish some
pages for the first number of _la Spéculative_, new series. This line
finished, I go to sleep, but why is this room called the portrait
chamber?
_September 13, morning_.--I have dreamed of this portrait and I seek
it in every corner, in every section of the walls. The room is quite
remarkably bare: a uniform gray paper; above the Empire fireplace, a
looking glass which reaches to the ceiling; the bed occupies one of the
sides of the floor; to the right of the door, a bookcase contains some
old books; to the left is a chest of drawers topped with a new mirror;
opposite are two windows; between the two windows, a dressing table and
another glass. Nothing else.
_September 14, evening_.--We took an excursion to Roches-Noires.
Monsieur B----, who was our guide, killed a snake with a few blows of
a little stick. Then, Madame Magne took the reptile and in an instant
made a bracelet of the still moving creature. The countess uttered a
cry, the viper had to be thrown into a hole, and I reflected upon the
biblical and singular sympathy between women and serpents, for the
countess cried without sincerity and Madame de B----. pitied the poor
creature of the good Lord.
_September 14, morning_.--I have seen the portrait. The pale and green
moon soared into my room. I had just awakened, and obscure and ophidian
visions still haunted me. With feverish eyes I distrustfully gazed
around me, while logical and absurd reasonings multiplied in my head,
their fugacity leaving me with a doubt as to the precise place of my
actual existence. Was I in the midst of the brambles and precipices of
Roches-Noire? No. Was I in my room, and in my bed, far from the vipers
and grimacing stones? Perhaps. See! above the mantlepiece the mirror
slowly changes its tint: its lunar green, its green of transparent
waters underneath beeches, brightens and grows golden. One would say
that in the center of the glimmering, as on the moon's very face,
shadows with human features project, while above the vague figure there
winds a luminous undulation like loosened and floating blond hair.
Without being able to analyze the rest of the sudden transformation, I
see it, in the twinkling of an eye, completed. Clear and animate, the
portrait gazes on me; it is, feature for feature, that of the woman
with the reptile. For several moments, long and unforgettable moments,
the vision grew resplendent, then it vanished, as though by a breath.
_September 15, morning_.--I awoke at the same hour, but the mirror
remained green and I did not see the portrait again. I think of nothing
but this. All day yesterday, while Madame Sixtine Magne was with us, I
looked at her; when she was no longer there, I evoked her.
_September 15, evening_.--The countess quickly questioned me, while we
were on the bank of the Orne: "By the way, did you see the portrait?
No, for you would have said so. Besides, to see it one must now, it
seems, be endowed with a certain mystery. It is a trick sometimes
played upon easily troubled imaginations. There is a history. Monsieur
de B----. tells it very well. Make him discuss this chapter after
dinner." I could not find a word to answer. I have seen the portrait,
but how proceed to boast of that privilege? The angling for crawfish
continues; I am asked to take part in it. In a frame of leaves, under
the silvered alders, the young woman, who henceforth has rights to
interest me, seems passionately absorbed in a book whose pages she cuts
with her finger. Monsieur de B----. could not remain for dinner and no
one has spoken again of the portrait chamber. So much the better....
(End of the Travel Notes).--There, in fact, ended the scribbled pages,
Hubert having betaken himself to dream of his impressions instead of
transcribing them. He did not wish to write them down too late, without
some necessary preliminary moments, so as not to take the risk of
confounding the chronology of the little things whose logical order
is of prime importance. The remainder of the notebook was white. Yet
when he perused them later, he perceived a sheet of loose paper where
could be traced some intentions of poetry. This more narrowly fixed his
thoughts upon Sixtine: it was truly with her that he was concerned in
his prose, in his verses, in his life.