Portugal, and it is very difficult to say what there is
in the depths of a man; if the lead were attached to a
line a hundred fathoms long and every fathom unreeled, it
would still sink without meeting anything to stop it. Yet
I have touched bottom several times with this man, and
the lead has sometimes brought up mud, sometimes lovely
shells, but most frequently mud and fragments of coral
mixed together.--As to his opinion of me, it has varied
greatly; he began where others leave off, he despised me;
young men with vivid imaginations are likely to do that.
There is always a tremendous fall in the first step they
take, and the passage from their chimera to reality cannot
be made without a shock.--He despised me and I entertained
him; now he esteems me and I bore him. In the early days
of our liaison he saw only the commonplace side of me, and
I think that the certainty of meeting with no resistance
had much to do with his determination. He seemed in great
haste to have an affair, and I thought at first that it
was a case of a full heart seeking only an opportunity to
overflow, one of those vague passions that a man has in
the May of youth and that impel him, in default of women,
to throw his arms around the trunks of trees, and to
kiss the flowers and grass in the fields.--But it wasn't
that;--he simply passed through me to reach something
else. I was a means to him, and not an end.--Beneath the
fresh exterior of his twenty years, beneath the first down
of adolescence, he concealed profound corruption. He was
tainted to the core; he was a fruit containing nothing
but ashes. In that young and lusty body was a heart as
old as Saturn--a heart as incurably wretched as heart
ever was.--I confess, Théodore, that I was frightened and
that I was almost taken with vertigo as I looked into
the black depths of that existence. Your sorrows and
mine are nothing compared to those. If I had loved him
more I should have killed him. Something irresistibly
attracts and summons him--something that is not of this
world or in this world, and he cannot rest day or night;
and like the heliotrope in a cellar, he twists about to
turn toward the sun which he cannot see.--He is one of
those men whose mind was not completely dipped in the
waters of Lethe before being attached to his body, but
retains memories of the eternal beauty of the heaven from
which it comes--memories that work upon it and torment
it--and remembers that it once had wings and now has feet
only.--If I were God, I would deprive of poetry for two
eternities, the angel guilty of such negligence.--Instead
of being under the necessity of building a castle of
bright-colored cards in which to shelter a fair, youthful
fancy for a single spring, it was necessary to erect a
tower higher than the eight temples of Belus piled one
upon another. I had not the strength, I pretended not
to have understood him, and I let him flutter about on
his wings in search of a peak from which he could take
flight into boundless space.--He thinks I have noticed
nothing of all this, because I have fallen in with all his
caprices without seeming to suspect their object. Being
unable to cure him, I determined--and I hope that I shall
receive credit for it some day before God--to give him at
least the happiness of believing that he was passionately
loved.--He aroused in me so much pity and interest that I
was easily able to assume a tone and manner sufficiently
affectionate to deceive him. I have played my part like a
consummate actress; I have been playful and melancholy,
sensible and voluptuous; I have feigned anxiety and
jealousy; I have shed false tears, and I have summoned
flocks of ready-made smiles to my lips. I have arrayed
this counterfeit of love in the richest stuffs; I have
taken him to drive through the avenues of my parks; I have
requested all my birds to sing as he passed, and all my
dahlias and daturas to bend their heads in salutation; I
have sent him across my lake on the silvery back of my
darling swan; I have concealed myself inside the manikin
and bestowed my voice, my wit, my youth and beauty upon it
and given it such a seductive appearance that the reality
fell far short of my deception. When the time comes to
shatter this hollow statue, I shall do it in such a way
that he will think the wrong is all on my side and so will
have no remorse. I shall be the one to make the pinhole
through which the air with which the balloon is filled
will make its escape.--Is not that sanctified prostitution
and honorable deception? I have in a glass jar some
tears that I have collected just as they were about to
fall.--They are my jewel-case and my diamonds, and I shall
present them to the angel who comes for me to lead me
before God.
THÉODORE.
They are the loveliest that can glisten on a woman's
neck. A queen's jewels are less precious than they. For
my own part, I believe that the ointment Magdalen poured
on Christ's feet was made of the tears of those she had
comforted, and I believe, too, that the Milky Way is
strewn with such tears, and not, as has been said, with
drops of Juno's milk.--Who will do for you what you have
done for him?
ROSETTE.
No one, alas! since you cannot.
THÉODORE.
O dear heart! would that I could!--But do not lose hope.
You are lovely and still very young. You have many avenues
of lindens and flowering acacias to pass through before
reaching the damp road lined with box and leafless trees,
which leads from the tomb of porphyry in which your happy
dead years will be buried, to the tomb of rough and
moss-covered stone where they will hasten to bestow the
remains of what once was you, and the wrinkled, tottering
spectres of the days of your old age. You still have much
of the mountain of life to climb and it will be long
before you reach the zone where the snow begins. You
are now only at the level of aromatic plants, of limpid
cascades over which the iris suspends its tri-colored
arches, of stately green oaks and sweet-smelling larches.
Mount a little higher and from that point, with the
broader horizon spread out before you, perhaps you will
see the blue smoke rising above the roof beneath which
he who will love you sleeps. You must not, in the very
beginning, despair of life, for vistas open in our destiny
which we had ceased to expect. Man, in his life, has
often made me think of a pilgrim toiling up the winding
stairway of a Gothic tower. The long granite serpent winds
upward in the darkness, every coil a stair. After a few
circumvolutions the little light that came from the door
dies out. The shadow of the houses, which are not yet
passed, does not allow the loopholes to admit the sun:
the walls are black and moisture oozes from them; you
seem rather to be going down into a dungeon from which
you are never to come forth, than ascending to the turret
which, from below, seemed to you so slender and graceful,
covered with lace-work and embroidery as if it were about
starting for the ball.--You hesitate whether you ought
to go higher, the damp shadows weigh so heavily upon
your forehead.--A few more turns of the staircase and
more frequent openings cast their golden trefoils on the
opposite wall. You begin to see the notched gables of the
houses, the carving of the entablatures, the strange forms
of the chimneys; a few steps more and your eye overlooks
the whole city; it is a forest of steeples, of spires and
towers, bristling upon all sides, toothed and slashed and
hollowed, stamped as with dies, and allowing the light to
shine through their numberless apertures. The domes and
cupolas raise their rounded forms like a giant's breasts
or the skulls of Titans. The islets formed by houses and
palaces appear through shadowy or luminous openings. A
few steps more and you will be on the platform; and then
you will see, beyond the walls of the city, the green
fields, the blue hill-sides and the white sails on the
changing ribbon of the stream. A dazzling light bursts
upon you, and the swallows fly hither and thither, close
at hand, with their joyous twitter. The distant sounds
reach your eyes like a soothing murmur or the hum of a
swarm of bees; all the bells scatter their necklaces of
pearls of sound through the air; the breezes bring you
the odors of the neighboring forest and of the mountain
flowers: it is all light and melody and perfume. If your
feet had been weary or discouragement had seized upon
you, and you had remained on a lower step or had turned
back and gone down again, that spectacle would have been
lost to you.--Sometimes, however, the tower has only a
single opening, in the centre or at the top.--The tower of
your life is built so.--In that case you must have more
obstinate courage, perseverance armed with sharper nails,
to cling, in the darkness, to the protruding stones, and
to reach the opening, resplendent with light, through
which the eye embraces the surrounding country; or it
may be that the loopholes have been filled up, or no one
has thought to cut them, and then you must go on to the
summit; but the higher one goes without looking out, the
more extended the horizon seems, and the greater the
surprise and pleasure.
ROSETTE.
O Théodore, God grant that I may soon reach the point
where the window is! For a long, long time I have been
following the winding staircase in the most profound
darkness; but I am afraid the opening has never been
cut and I must climb to the very top; and suppose this
staircase with the countless stairs should end at a
walled-up doorway, or an arch closed by blocks of stone?
THÉODORE.
Do not say that, Rosette, do not think it.--What architect
would build a stairway that led nowhere? Why imagine that
the placid Architect of the world was stupider and less
far-sighted than an ordinary architect? God makes no
mistakes and forgets nothing. It is incredible that He
should have amused Himself by playing a trick upon you
and shutting you up in a long stone tunnel without exit
or opening. Why should you suppose that He would haggle
with such poor ants as we are over our paltry momentary
happiness and the imperceptible grain of millet that falls
to each of us in this immeasurable universe?--In order to
do that He must be as savage as a tiger or a judge; and if
we were so obnoxious to Him, He would simply have to bid
a comet turn aside a little from its path and annihilate
us all with a hair of its tail. How the devil can you
think that God diverts Himself by spitting us all on a
gold pin as the Emperor Domitian did with flies?--God
isn't a concierge or a church-warden, and although He is
old, He is not yet in His dotage. All such petty malice
is beneath Him and He is not foolish enough to show off
His smartness to us and play tricks on us.--Courage,
Rosette, courage! If you are out of breath, stop a bit and
take breath and then continue your upward course; perhaps
you have only a score more steps to climb to reach the
embrasure from which you will see your happiness.
ROSETTE.
Never! oh never! and if I reach the top of the tower, it
will only be to hurl myself from it.
THÉODORE.
Banish these gloomy thoughts that flutter about you like
bats, and cast the opaque shadow of their wings on your
fair brow, my poor afflicted one. If you want me to love
you, be happy, and do not weep. (_He draws her gently to
his side and kisses her on the eyes_).
ROSETTE.
What a misfortune for me that I ever knew you! and yet, if
I could live my life over, I would still prefer to have
known you.--Your harshness has been sweeter to me than
the passion of other men; and, although you have made me
suffer intensely, all the pleasure I have ever had has
come to me from you; through you I have caught a glimpse
of what I might have been. You have been a flash of
light in my darkness, and you have illuminated many dark
places in my soul; you have opened new perspectives in my
life.--I owe it to you that I know what love is,--unhappy
love, it is true; but there is a melancholy and profound
fascination in loving without being loved, and it is
pleasant to remember those who forget us. It is a joy
simply to be able to love, even when one loves alone, and
many die without having had it, and often they who love
are not the most to be pitied.
THÉODORE.
They suffer and feel their wounds, but at all events
they live. They have some interest in life; they have
a star about which they gravitate, a pole toward which
they ardently extend their hands. They have something to
long for; they can say to themselves: "If I reach that
point, if I obtain that, I shall be happy."--They suffer
frightful agony, but when they die, they can at least say
to themselves: "I am dying for him."--To die thus is to
be born again. The really unhappy, the only ones who are
irreparably so, are they whose wild embrace takes in the
whole universe, they who want everything and nothing, and
who would be embarrassed and speechless if an angel or
fairy should descend to earth and say suddenly to them:
"Express one wish and it shall be gratified."
ROSETTE.
If a fairy should come I know what I would ask her.
THÉODORE.
You know, Rosette, and therein you are happier than I, for
I do not know. There are in my heart many vague longings,
which become confounded with one another and give birth
to others which eventually consume them. My desires are a
cloud of birds that fly aimlessly this way and that; yours
is an eagle that has its eyes on the sun and is prevented
by lack of air from soaring upward on its outspread wings.
Ah! if I could only know what I want; if the idea that
haunts me would stand out clear and well-defined from
the mist that envelops it; if the lucky or unlucky star
would appear in the depths of my sky; if the light I am to
follow would shine out through the darkness, a deceitful
will-o'-the-wisp or a friendly beacon; if my column of
fire would go on before me, even though it were through
a desert without manna and without springs of water; if
I knew where I am going, even though my path ends at a
precipice!--I would prefer the wild flights of accursed
huntsmen through bogs and thickets, to this absurd and
monotonous stamping and pawing. To live thus is to follow
a trade like that of the horses with bandages over their
eyes, who turn the wheel of a well, and travel thousands
of leagues without seeing anything or changing their
position.--I have been turning a long while, and the
bucket ought to be at the top.
ROSETTE.
You resemble D'Albert in many ways, and, when you speak,
it seems to me sometimes as if he were speaking.--I
have no doubt that, when you know him better, you will
become much attached to him; you cannot fail to suit each
other.--He is tormented as you are, by these same aimless
impulses; he is head over ears in love but does not know
with what; he would like to ascend to Heaven, for the
earth seems to him like a stool hardly fit for one of his
feet to rest upon, and he has more pride than Lucifer
before his fall.
THÉODORE.
I was afraid at first that he was one of those poets, of
whom there are so many, who have driven poetry off the
face of the earth, one of those stringers of false pearls
who see nothing in the world but the last syllables of
words, and who, when they have made _ombre_ rhyme with
_sombre, flame_ with _âme_, and _Dieu_ with _lieu_, fold
their arms and legs conscientiously and permit the spheres
to accomplish their revolutions.
ROSETTE.
He is not one of that kind. His verses are beneath him and
do not contain his thought. You would form a very mistaken
idea of his nature from what he has written; his real
poem is himself, and I don't know if he will ever produce
another. He has, in the depths of his mind, a seraglio of
choice ideas which he surrounds with a triple wall, and
of which he is more jealous than ever sultan was of his
odalisques.--He puts in his poetry only those ideas that
he holds in light esteem, or with which he has become
disgusted; he makes his verse the door through which he
expels them and the world receives only those for which he
has no further use.
THÉODORE.
I can understand his jealousy and his modesty.--Just as
many men do not care for the love they have had until they
no longer have it, or for their mistresses until they are
dead.
ROSETTE.
It is so hard for one to have anything to one's self in
this world! every candle attracts so many moths, every
treasure attracts so many thieves!--I love the silent men
who carry their ideas to the grave and do not choose to
abandon them to the filthy kisses and shameless handling
of the vulgar crowd. Those lovers please me best who do
not carve their mistress's name on the bark of any tree,
who confide it to no echo, and who, while they sleep, are
haunted by the fear that they may utter it in a dream. I
am one of that number; I have not divulged my thoughts
and no one shall know my love.--But it is almost eleven
o'clock, my dear Théodore, and I am preventing your taking
rest that you must sadly need. When I am obliged to leave
you I always have a feeling of oppression at my heart, and
it seems to me as if it were the last time I should ever
see you. I postpone it as long as I can; but I always have
to go at last. Good-night, for I am afraid D'Albert may
be looking for me; good-night, my dear friend.
Théodore put his arm around her waist and thus escorted her to the
door; there he stopped and followed her a long time with his glance;
the corridor was lighted at intervals by small windows with narrow
panes, through which the moon shone, making alternate light and dark
patches of fantastic shape. At each window Rosette's pure, white form
gleamed like a silvery phantom; then it vanished to appear, even more
brilliant, a little farther away; at last it disappeared altogether.
Théodore stood for some moments motionless, with folded arms, as
if buried in profound meditation; then he passed his hand over his
forehead and threw back his hair with a jerk of his head, returned to
his room, and went to bed after kissing the brow of the page, who was
still asleep.
VII
As soon as the daylight entered Rosette's room, D'Albert made his
appearance, with an eagerness that was not usual with him.
"Here you are," said Rosette, "I would say very early, if you could
ever arrive early.--To reward you for your gallantry I present you my
hand to kiss."
And she drew from beneath the sheet of Flemish linen trimmed with lace
the prettiest little hand that was ever seen at the end of a plump,
well-shaped arm.
D'Albert kissed it with compunction:--"And the other, little sister,
are we not to kiss that too?"
_"Mon Dieu_, yes! nothing is easier. I am in my Sunday humor to-day;
here."--And she extended her other hand with which she tapped him
lightly on the lips.--"Am I not the most obliging woman on earth?"
"You are grace itself, and temples of white marble should be erected to
you in thickets of myrtle.--Really, I am very much afraid that the same
thing will happen to you that happened to Psyche, and that Venus will
be jealous of you," said D'Albert, taking the fair one's hands in one
of his and raising them together to his lips.
"How you say all that without taking breath! any one would think it was
something you had learned by heart," said Rosette, with a delicious
little pout.
"No; you deserve to have the phrase turned expressly for you, and
you were made to pluck the virgin bloom from compliments," rejoined
D'Albert.
"Oho! whatever is the matter with you to-day? are you ill that you are
so gallant? I fear you are dying. Do you know that when one's character
suddenly changes, and without any apparent reason, it is an evil omen?
Now it is a well-known fact, to all the women who have taken the pains
to love you, that you are usually as morose as a man can be, and it is
no less certain that at this moment you are as charming as a man can
be, and inexplicably amiable.--Really, I think you are pale, my poor
D'Albert: give me your arm and let me feel your pulse;" and she pushed
back his sleeve and counted the pulsations with mock gravity.--"No,
you are perfectly well and you haven't the slightest symptom of fever.
In that case I must be furiously pretty this morning! Go and find my
mirror so that I can see how far your gallantry is justified."
D'Albert brought a small mirror from the toilet-table and placed it on
the bed.
"In truth," said Rosette, "you are not altogether wrong. Why don't you
write a sonnet on my eyes, _Monsieur le Poète._ You have no excuse
for not doing it. Just see how unfortunate I am! to have eyes like
these and a poet like this, and to be left without sonnets just as if
I were one-eyed and had a water-carrier for a lover! You don't love
me, monsieur; you have never written so much as an acrostic sonnet for
me.--And my mouth, what do you think of that? I have kissed you with
that mouth and perhaps I will kiss you with it again, my dark-browed
beauty; and upon my word, it is a favor that you hardly deserve--I am
not speaking of to-day, for to-day you deserve anything;--but, to talk
about something beside myself, you are incomparably fresh and comely
this morning, you look like a brother of Aurora, and, although it is
hardly daylight, you are already arrayed in your best clothes as if for
a ball. Can it be that you have designs upon me? and do you meditate
dealing an unexpected and final blow to my virtue? do you propose to
make a conquest of me? But I forget that you have already done that,
and that it's ancient history."
"Don't joke like that, Rosette; you know that I love you."
"Why, that depends. I don't know it; and you?"
"I know it perfectly well, and from such symptoms that, if you should
have the kindness to forbid me your door, I should try to prove it
to you, and I venture to flatter myself that I should do it most
triumphantly."
"Not that way: however anxious I may be to be convinced, my door will
remain open; I am too pretty to be shut up behind closed doors; the sun
shines for one and all, and my beauty shall be like the sun to-day, if
you approve."
"Upon my honor I strongly disapprove; but act as if I approved as
strongly. I am your very humble slave, and I lay my wishes at your
feet."
"That is as jolly as can be; continue to entertain such sentiments and
leave your key in your door to-night."
"Monsieur le Chevalier Théodore de Sérannes,"--said a huge negro,
putting his round, good-humored face between the wings of the
folding-door, "desires to pay his respects to you and begs that you
will deign to receive him."
"Admit Monsieur le Chevalier," said Rosette, pulling the sheet up to
her chin.
Théodore went first to Rosette's bed and made a very low and graceful
courtesy, which she returned with a friendly nod; then he turned to
D'Albert, whom he also saluted in an off-hand, courteous manner.
"What were you talking about?" said Théodore. "It may be that I
interrupted an interesting conversation: go on, I beg, and tell me in a
few words what it is all about."
"Oh, no!" Rosette replied with a mischievous smile; "we were talking
business."
[Illustration: Chapter VII--_"Admit Monsieur le Chevalier," said Rosette,
pulling the sheet up to her chin._
_Théodore went first to Rosette's bed and made a very low and graceful
courtesy, which she returned with a friendly nod; then he turned to
D'Albert, whom he also saluted in an off-hand, courteous manner._]
Théodore seated himself at the foot of Rosette's bed, for D'Albert
had taken his place at her pillow, by right of having arrived first.
The conversation wandered for some time from subject to subject, very
bright and gay and animated, and that is why we do not report it; we
should be afraid that it would lose too much in being transcribed. The
manner, the tone, the vivacity of speech and gesture, the countless
ways of uttering a word, the effervescent wit, like the foam of
champagne which sparkles and evaporates at once, are details that
it is impossible to note down and reproduce. We leave that hiatus
for the reader to fill, and he will certainly acquit himself of the
task better than we could do. Let him imagine here five or six pages
filled with whatever is most capricious, most refined, most curiously
original, most ingenious and most sparkling in the way of conversation.
We are well aware that we are resorting to an artifice which reminds
one a little of that resorted to by Timanthes, who, in despair of ever
being able to reproduce Agamemnon's face, threw some drapery over his
head; but we prefer to be timid rather than imprudent.