“Thanks, I’ll find her now, thanks, thanks very much.” He ran up the
steps. I remained standing below, and looked with deep pity on the poor
German.
Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will
paint her, and go mad.
* * * * *
It is a sunny winter’s day. Something that looks like gold trembles on
the leaves of the clusters of trees down below in the green level of
the meadow. The camelias at the foot of the gallery are glorious in
their abundant buds. Wanda is sitting in the loggia; she is drawing.
The German painter stands opposite her with his hands folded as in
adoration, and looks at her. No, he rather looks at her face, and is
entirely absorbed in it, enraptured.
But she does not see him, neither does she see me, who with the spade
in my hand am turning over the flower-bed, solely that I may see her
and feel her nearness, which produces an effect on me like poetry, like
music.
* * * * *
The painter has gone. It is a hazardous thing to do, but I risk it. I
go up to the gallery, quite close, and ask Wanda “Do you love the
painter, mistress?”
She looks at me without getting angry, shakes her head, and finally
even smiles.
“I feel sorry for him,” she replies, “but I do not love him. I love no
one. _I used to love you, as ardently, as passionately, as deeply as it
was possible for me to love,_ but now I don’t love even you any more;
my heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.”
“Wanda!” I exclaimed, deeply moved.
“Soon, you too will no longer love me,” she continued, “tell me when
you have reached that point, and I will give back to you your freedom.”
“Then I shall remain your slave, all my life long, for I adore you and
shall always adore you,” I cried, seized by that fanaticism of love
which has repeatedly been so fatal to me.
Wanda looked at me with a curious pleasure. “Consider well what you
do,” she said. “I have loved you infinitely and have been despotic
towards you so that I might fulfil your dream. Something of my old
feeling, a sort of real sympathy for you, still trembles in my breast.
When that too has gone who knows whether then I shall give you your
liberty; whether I shall not then become really cruel, merciless, even
brutal toward; whether I shall not take a diabolical pleasure in
tormenting and putting on the rack the man who worships me
idolatrously, the while I remain indifferent or love someone else;
perhaps, I shall enjoy seeing him die of his love for me. Consider this
well.”
“I have long since considered all that,” I replied as in a glow of
fever. “I cannot exist, cannot live without you; I shall die if you set
me at liberty; let me remain your slave, kill me, but do not drive me
away.”
“Very well then, be my slave,” she replied, “but don’t forget that I no
longer love you, and your love doesn’t mean any more to me than a
dog’s, and dogs are kicked.”
* * * * *
To-day I visited the Venus of Medici.
It was still early, and the little octagonal room in the Tribuna was
filled with half-lights like a sanctuary; I stood with folded hands in
deep adoration before the silent image of the divinity.
But I did not stand for long.
Not a human soul was in the gallery, not even an Englishman, and I fell
down on my knees. I looked up at the lovely slender body, the budding
breasts, the virginal and yet voluptuous face, the fragrant curls which
seemed to conceal tiny horns on each side of the forehead.
* * * * *
My mistress’s bell.
It is noonday. She, however, is still abed with her arms intertwined
behind her neck.
“I want to bathe,” she says, “and you will attend me. Lock the door!”