THE EDUCATION OF MAIDENS
"Enamourée, tant que mon coeur étouffe!"
Ciacco Dell' Anguillara.
Scraps of conversation of the preceding evening returned to his memory
after he left. The approaching pleasure of the promised evening led his
thoughts to the theater, and he mentally re-read some of the dramatic
projects he had conceived and written.
Two or three particularly interested him. They sketched some brief
scenes of stupidity, egoism, ill-nature, the eternal and contemporary
eagerness to engage with the passion embedded in very young hearts.
He merely showed simple persons dominated by a vice, an ambition,
a mania; no analysis except in the rough; probabilities carefully
extracted from the improbable confusion of ordinary life; soul states
which tend to become symbolic; no mere news, no sudden changes, no
modification of facts. What an agreeable spectacle, for example, in the
legend of the Prodigal Son, defined in images, or the story which a
biscuit manufacturer prints on rough pale rose paper for his trade, or
some popular tale, or higher, among holy or saintly things, Passion,
the Life of the Magdalene, a narrative dramatized by a little of the
unforeseen struggles of spirit against flesh. Everything came back to
that.
Prey to a devouring intellectual excitement, Hubert walked rapidly with
no destination in mind beyond the desire to free himself by means of
the natural denouements of the agitated world which stirred in him,
assailing, like grapeshot of besiegers, the fortress of his logic.
Finally, as he was walking along the rue des Tuileries, near the wooden
and zinc booth where at certain times people exhibit paintings, and
where at other times young girls exhibit their capacities as teachers;
near this booth, the enchanted army disappeared, returning to limbo.
The booth was shut and the street empty, but Entragues saw the door
open and the highway as far as the garden fill with little pupils,
with mammas hanging to their coats, proudly, and black paper-boxes
under their arms, faded complexions, breasts drooping through the
constant bending of the chest, ugly robes without even the coquetry of
a beggar's colored rags, ink-stained fingers, sleeves made glossy by
rubbing against wooden tables, and orthographic preoccupations in the
eyes of those at the age of a mild little love affair with "the friend
of my brother" or "the brother of my girl friend."
He distinguished, however, a future woman between two who wore
spectacles. She walked with a sprightly and decided air, carrying
her body that was rebellious to the obligatory deformations; she
was brunette and garbed in a becoming black. A young man, who moved
timidly among all these skirts, lifted his hat as he glanced at her;
she answered with a little motion of the head, joined him without shame
and both, arms united, departed. In the middle of the street, she threw
over the wooden fence her black box, inkstand, pencils, penholder and
papers; these articles the wind blew about; the girl joyously clapped
her hands, seemed to pause for a long breath; then they fled. They
hastened with reason, for a teacher, warned, was running towards her
pupil, the hope of her cage and the honor of her manger; they hastened
with reason: for they were going to live.
Entragues understood quite well what had happened. It was during the
dictation that a sudden lance thrust had pierced her heart, making a
breech in the breastplate of boards. Blood had rushed, mingling with
rules of syntax: she was saved!
Entragues was not at all satisfied with the too humorously ironic form
which the anecdote took. He decided, in case he ever returned to it
with a view of writing, to introduce a more methodical and haughty
protestation. The instruction given to young girls did not vex him,
but its quality did: they were crammed, like Turkish women, with
maize-flour, so as to obtain a forced corpulency, although fine dieting
is necessary for those creatures who can so easily be deformed. Neither
grammar, nor geography, nor distasteful chronological history, nor
practically anything now customary was suitable for women, but only the
Old and New Testament, the Life of the Saints, solid mystic readings,
then the poets, the romancers of dreams, all that can, in gloomy hours,
reflower in the soul, at the call of holy harps, at the summons of
kisses of love, under children's caresses.
These thoughts accompanied him as far as his home, whither the rain
forced him to return.
He had not wished to think directly of Sixtine all day, for fear of
withering the expected pleasures by a precocious plucking; she had her
revenge; although it was long before the hour of the rendezvous, he
held her before his eyes, but changing and retreating, like a woman
who comes and goes, busied with her toilet, disappearing all white,
reappearing clothed in color, a summer landscape whose nuances obey the
transparent play of clouds.