sisters who resemble you? No. Then die! But no, you shall live. To
leave you your life is to doom you to a fate worse than death. I regret
neither my blood nor my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart.
Your weak hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can I extort from
you in place of all those you have destroyed? You have brought me down
to your level. _To love, to be loved!_ are henceforth meaningless words
to me, as to you. I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman
when I see a real woman.’
“He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair.
“‘I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her
talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women
with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing,
have swept all women off the face of the earth.’
“Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer. Two great
tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his swarthy cheeks, and fell
to the floor--two tears of rage, two scalding, burning tears.
“‘An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!’
“As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such
excessive force that he missed it. He thought that he had destroyed
that monument of his madness, and thereupon he drew his sword again, and
raised it to kill the singer. Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek.
Three men burst into the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell,
pieced by three daggers.
“‘From Cardinal Cicognara,’ said one of the men.
“‘A benefaction worthy of a Christian,’ retorted the Frenchman, as he
breathed his last.
“These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his patron,
who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage in order to take him
away as soon as he was set at liberty.”
“But,” said Madame de Rochefide, “what connection is there between this
story and the little old man we saw at the Lantys’?”
“Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambinella’s statue and
had it reproduced in marble; it is in the Albani Museum to-day. In 1794
the Lanty family discovered it there, and asked Vien to copy it. The
portrait which showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had
seen him as a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet’s _Endymion_;
you yourself recognized the type in _Adonis_.”
“But this Zambinella, male or female--”
“Must be, madame, Marianina’s maternal great uncle. You can conceive now
Madame de Lanty’s interest in concealing the source of a fortune which
comes--”
“Enough!” said she, with an imperious gesture.
We remained for a moment in the most profound silence.
“Well?” I said at last.
“Ah!” she cried, rising and pacing the floor.
She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered voice:
“You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long time to come.
Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human sentiments dissolved
thus, by ghastly disillusionment? Children torture mothers by their bad
conduct, or their lack of affection. Wives are betrayed. Mistresses
are cast aside, abandoned. Talk of friendship! Is there such a thing! I
would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that I can remain like the
inaccessible summit of a cliff amid the tempests of life. If the future
of the Christian is an illusion too, at all events it is not destroyed
until after death. Leave me to myself.”
“Ah!” said I, “you know how to punish.”
“Am I in the wrong?”
“Yes,” I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. “By finishing this
story, which is well known in Italy, I can give you an excellent idea of
the progress made by the civilization of the present day. There are none
of those wretched creatures now.”
“Paris,” said she, “is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes one
and all, fortunes stained with shame, and fortunes stained with blood.
Crime and infamy have a right of asylum here; virtue alone is without
altars. But pure hearts have a fatherland in heaven! No one will have
known me! I am proud of it.”
And the marchioness was lost in thought.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Carigliano, Marechal, Duc de
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Father Goriot
Lanty, Comte de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Comtesse de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Marianina de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Filippo de
The Member for Arcis
Rochefide, Marquise de
Beatrix
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
A Prince of Bohemia
Sarrasine, Ernest-Jean
The Member for Arcis
Vien, Joseph-Marie
The Member for Arcis
Zambinella
The Member for Arcis