THE FAUN
"Sancte pater, sic transit gloria mundi."
_Le Pontifical romain_.
No sooner was he in Sixtine's presence than Hubert felt his pleasure
spoiled by the questionings which an algebraic schema had laid down but
had not solved. So his will to act weakened under the weight of the
present. First he must decipher the puzzle.
He coldly advanced, with a calm smile, kissing the hand she gave him;
this contact quieted his need of knowledge. Then, he asked himself
whether the interlaced foliage of two or three problems would not form
the necessary aureola around this fair head.
"And when I should reach the precise explanations, would I have added
more beauty to this body full of beauties? As for the soul, I know that
it is a secret coffer to which no one--not even she herself--has the
key. And what could I do with it, and what could she do with it? So
my anxiety is quite futile. What if I took her merely with plausible
words, as the bird-call, by its mechanical song, captures the free
birds?"
They spoke of different things, particularly of the falling leaves,
and Hubert skilfully led, under the same stimulus, his revery and the
conversation.
A Ziem, at the end of the room, cleverly illuminated by hidden lights,
a resplendent Italian road-stead, with purple-tinted sails, many
colored clouds in the sky, and over all a deep transparency, a sense
of great distance, a brilliancy of atmosphere full of the magic of
unfailing blue:
"Naples, a Naples I have never seen! Ah! that is because I scarcely
look towards the gulf, for the Novella is my heaven and my ocean."
"Monsieur d'Entragues, why have you such a distracted air?"
This brought him back to the truth: he was not Della Preda, she had
just pronounced his correct name, and Naples disappeared; after a few
minute's absence, he found himself in Paris again, near Madame Sixtine
Magne and before a quite good view of Venice.
"It is that picture," continued Sixtine. "It pleases me, but do not
observe it too closely, for you will be forced to admit that it is
mediocre, but charged with some power of illusion for imaginative
minds."
While cursory words were being exchanged about painters and their
paintings, there reawakened in Hubert, without any determinable cause,
one of the most significant impressions of his adolescence. Feeling
the impossibility of evading it and fearing a fit of abstractions, he
repeated it aloud. The word "madonna" uttered by Sixtine furnished the
pretext:
"Summer and a stormy evening. I had been restless all day; sudden
languors made me prostrate; my nerves vibrated like harp-strings with
each clap of thunder. My grandmother's harp rested in a corner of the
room and when any one touched a door, it echoed. I compared myself
to this mysterious instrument which I had once seen out of its rose
silk case. I listened to the interior murmurings of my overexcited
life, sounds welled within me, made me ill, and slowly went to a death
of which it seemed I should die. Then the fears, the sweet fears of
seeing, among the branches, a strange woman who would smile to me.
Then the indiscreet titillations of pubescence which passed, played,
breathed like a warm wind upon my skin. It was vacation time in the
country: they had left me to my own devices and I rolled on the grass
and ate it; I cut switches and shoots and instantly abandoned them;
I climbed up trees and, half way, let myself slip with lax muscles.
Obscene, vaguely understood couplets returned to me. Alexis and Corydon
preoccupied me and I fancied that for the first time I understood the
dim ardors of the poets. My desires were altogether formless. I had
still another anguish: what was this malady which gripped me? Life
would not be endurable, if I had to live thus. The night quieted me
somewhat. As I annoyed everybody, that is to say my great-aunt Sophie,
Aunt Azélia, an old maid, and the two house cats, dear and precious
creatures, I was given pictures to look at, with instructions not to
stir. They belonged to different parts of books given to quiet noisy
children. Suddenly, as I was reading, I stopped, having found my
childish ideal: the Madonna de Masolino da Panicale. Later in life I
came upon that name under a quite different lithograph, alas! although
it represented the same picture and the same madonna. I felt myself
grow pale with emotion and confusion. The half-opened eyes gazed on me
tenderly and the inflection of the head was so coy and amorous that my
heart pounded. But the eyes soon preoccupied me above all the rest: I
made a rampart of one of the leaves, I pretended to read attentively, I
was alone with the divine eyes and gazed upon them. An hour perhaps had
passed in this way but it seemed that I had hardly looked at them when
the inflexible Azélia uttered the daily phrase: 'The curfew has rung.'
Nothing rang in the house with its very old-fashioned clocks; so it was
a metaphor; she always repeated it and I usually did not even smile at
its mention. That evening I flew into a passion and I bantered the old
maid so much that she sent me to bed 'without a candle, as cats go to
the loft.' I fell asleep and slept as one sleeps at thirteen, but, in
the night, the eyes of the Madonna visited me and I have since felt an
inexplicable pleasure when gazing upon eyes that resemble the eyes of
the Madonna de Masolino da Panicale."
As he finished, Entragues perceived that Sixtine had them, the very
eyes; he knelt down and said:
"That is why I love you, Sixtine, and why I shall always love you!"
"Please, rise and let go my hands!"
"Let me keep them, let me love you. Ah! you are not indifferent, it is
not possible."
"But," returned Sixtine, "I am surprised.... You tell me a very curious
and interesting anecdote to which I listen without distrust, and it
ends with a declaration.... It is very unexpected ... Come, sit down
and let us talk peacefully.... I do not wish to discourage you, and I
really want to be sincere.... If I loved you I would say so, it would
even be a fitting occasion.... Frankly, I have not felt that little
emotion, that tiny nothing.... Then how say it, I am very inexperienced
... It perhaps will come another time. Come, you will recommence and it
will merely be a deferred pleasure.... I am quite willing to love....
My soul yearns for something.... It may be won, but you must conquer
it.... How? That is your affair.... And then, you know that if I loved
it would be for eternity.... There can be no casualness where such
bonds are concerned. It is necessary to know each other, to estimate
each other, to tell something of one's past life, to fathom characters,
to analyze tastes. We are not children.... All this...."
"Ah! I am a fool," Sixtine was saying to herself during the pauses
of her speech. "But I do not withdraw my hand, I only seem to ... So
stirred, I would not wish to admit how delicious it has been....
No, it is an avowal.... Unexpected? I was waiting for it and would
have been pained and surprised had it not come.... He is there, at my
knees, at my knees: Oh! remain thus.... If I were he I should speak
quite differently, but I like these doubts, these supplications. He
is going to implore me again, again, again.... Do I love him? I am
able to love him, at least I am not far from it, I feel that a certain
word, a certain gesture ... and I would be in his arms, but will he
say the word? Will he make the gesture?... Oh! yes! I have experienced
something undefinable.... Yes, but I am not at such a point of
ignorance.... Can all this be recovered, such moments?... Believe me,
it is true, true, true, I want to love.... Well, take it, but be sure
to take it. The word is too hard. My God, perhaps I am discouraging
him. So much the worse, it will be the test.... Oh! to be fixed, to be
bound forever! To him? I do not know, but if he wished it!... He is
quite proper, but a little cold, and then, I already know him; he is
capable of a profound sentiment.... What! he is rising, he abandons my
hand, he goes to sit down on that chair, so far, so far from me....
Well, it is finished, and I am deceived. Let us wait."
"I believe I was wrong," replied Entragues, "to let you speak so long.
You have recovered possession of your natural calm and now you are
unattainable."
"I also think so," said Sixtine, wounded by this clumsy reply. "But I
can assure you that I do not lose my head so easily. I have resisted
more dangerous assaults and my virtue came out of them all untouched.
If you expected to conquer me by surprise, you deceived yourself. Very
strong muscles might succeed, perhaps, but the conquest would be quite
precarious."
"You are mistaken, Madame, I love you too sincerely to count on the
occasion and a mere physical possession, gained through the strength
of one or the lassitude of the other. This is not at all my purpose. I
wished only to obtain an avowal in return for an avowal...."
"There are mute women," Sixtine interrupted.
Entragues did not pursue the matter further. He contemplated the
magnificent eyes which anxiously watched him, and he wondered how he
could make them tender, how make them speak, for eyes speak without
knowing that they do so, and are not masters of their language, like
lips. Finally he answered, with the bitterness of deception:
"It is necessary to lose one's head."
"It is necessary, it is necessary: that is easily said. If he who
proffers this aphorism first lost his head, it would be a different
matter. Be indulgent to a very banal allusion: Whoever wishes to make
others weep must be the first to weep."
"There are rebels and the spirit of contradiction makes great ravages
in proud souls."
"I confess to a little pride. Without it there would be no dignity, but
am I moved by the spirit of contradiction? I do not think so. If it
were given you to penetrate into my inmost recesses, you would see, on
the other hand, an infinitely malleable soul, a soul without definite
form--a lump of clay which awaits the divine shaper; a woman's soul,
in fine. But men judge women as inferior men; just as men, to women,
generally are other women armed with superior strength. In truth, they
are two beings as distinct as a dog and a cat, and it is always their
unhappy fate not to understand one another, just like a dog and cat.
What a distressing fatality, for one only exists through the other. Are
they, perhaps, truly complete beings only in the fleeting moment when
they are joined together? But it should be the labor of civilization
and intelligence to perpetuate that moment by spiritual bonds, strong
and supple ties whose physical meetings would be the consolidating
knots. No, there is nothing more than actual desire and when that has
fled, unassuaged, and one is well-bred, one has recourse to irony."
"It is a consolation," Entragues replied, "but I am refused it. I have
never had enough presence of mind to juggle with my chagrin and divert
myself by letting my eye follow the play of glass balls. Is my nature,
perhaps, excessively complicated? Sincerity, like a diamond, has more
than one facet...."
"Then," Sixtine interrupted, "it is a decomposed sincerity. Labor
is needed to assist it to the state of pure light and all this
psychological physics is too difficult a maneuver for my simplicity. If
you only knew how simple I am, how simple all women are, dreadfully
simple, my friend! In truth, one has but to take them by the hand!"
"Like the woman of a little while ago," Entragues thought. "Those whom
one supposes strange are only more feminine women, thrust by their
nerves to the extreme of feminity. It is true: to dominate the others,
one must study them specially. Did not Ribot find the laws of memory
and will in mental pathology? It would be excellent to make analogous
studies of hysteria, but if the matter does not attempt it, who is
capable of doing it? After all, the very subjects of the experiment
have today given me two valuable lessons. Unfortunately, it is to be
feared that they will avail me little in practical life. I am in a
mood to live and I do not know how. Come, I will provoke her a little
and guide myself by her replies. Women may be simple, but they appear
artful and we can only act in their presence according to received
impressions. Simple as a deciphered dispatch, simple when you have the
key. What was she saying to me? I must answer. She is looking at me.
Those beautiful large eyes! Ah! I truly love her!"
"Have me!" he exclaimed, falling on his knees. "I love you, I can say
no more."
Her restless studded fingers clasped her knees that were covered with
a red robe. Hubert embraced the knees and kissed the fingers. It was
the same as happens with little serpents in skins of old silver found
under withered ferns, in the sunlight; as soon as one touches them,
they stiffen and become as brittle as glass. Sixtine, at this brusque
contact, grew rigid as a lady of stone in her emblazoned seat, and
Hubert felt that the least insistence would shatter that soul. It was
too late. As Sixtine had so well conjectured, the startled occasion had
fled. The very woman who, an instant before,--something Hubert did not
suspect--would have surrendered for the present and for eternity to the
first kiss, this same woman resented a new attempt at intimacy as an
attempt at violation.
He obeyed and rose, but this time with more anger than embarrassment,
for physical desire held him in its iron grip. Its nostrils held tight
by a subduing apparatus, the bull occasionally resists under the stress
of its anguish, routs its tormentor and rears itself, ready for vain
accomplishments.
Before leaving, restraining his brutal unchained forces by a violent
effort of will, he endeavored to reassure Sixtine by a playful
amiability. Without returning to sow foolish explanations along
the path he had traveled and which a wall, suddenly up-sprung, had
confined, he smoothly indulged in metaphors and generalities upon love,
made a dusky poetry gleam, paused at the scintillations of lyrical
enthusiasm and succeeded in making the young uneasy woman smile, amused
and perhaps moved by his good will.
He really felt that this evening had been somewhat unfortunate, but
despair did not touch him. In short, nothing is irreparable. Then, too,
he had acted and he believed that this was a great point.