"I hope," Entragues reflected, "that I speak clearly and with an abundance of commonplaces, for I wish to be understood."
After a brief silence, Moscowitch slowly uttered these words which he seemed to be repeating to himself:
"Yes, I think I will be happy with her."
Entragues controlled his emotions and asked in a calm voice:
"Are you going to marry her?"
"Yes, if she consents. That is my intention and my dearest wish. She says neither no nor yes. I don't know what to do about it."
"You don't displease her?"
"You think not?"
"I mean," Entragues answered, "that you please her. But she herself does not know it and you must teach her to read her own heart. Recall the words of Madame Récamier to Benjamin Constant: 'Dare, my friend, dare!' You perhaps don't know the French women, but trust to my experience. A little force doesn't displease them. I don't say violence, I say force. The iron hand gloved in velvet can play a decisive rôle in love; nothing more enlightens a woman about her own sentiments than a kiss which goes further than kisses. Then she knows what she wishes and nine times out of ten she will love, through gratitude, the bold man who has drawn her from indecision. Note this well: she runs after her modesty as one runs after one's gold."
Moscowitch, very interested, drew nearer to Entragues and, as if to appropriate him to himself, passed his arm under Entragues', saying:
"May I?"
"The great liberty? Ah! you know your authors! I believe we are going to become friends, for I felt a great sympathy towards you from the very first.... It is just like in the trenches, before Sebastopol.... See, my dear Moscowitch, I who usually am good for nothing, who am endowed with only a modest activity, I wish, in the name of this common friend, who will be more than a friend for you, to help your noble ambitions, like a brother. You must attain everything: love and glory must crown your genius."
Moscowitch breathed deeply.
"Ah! how happy I am to have met you!"
"Why," Entragues modestly returned, "I think you will not have to repent it. There are so few people capable of understanding; one usually finds only envy, jealousy, stupidity, conceit, and indifference when one is born under a very favorable star. Come, where shall we begin? You know that I can in no way directly intervene to further your marriage. Just acquaint me with what takes place and I will give you advice on the conduct to be followed. You will come to see me; we shall deliberate like a counsel of war; we shall examine the condition of the place; we shall make plans; we shall leave nothing to chance, and we will be victors. Have no doubts upon this. Do you know her long?"
"Since last winter. Some Russian friends gave me a letter of introduction to Madame la comtesse d'Aubry, who introduced me one evening to Madame Magne. I suddenly felt that my life had found its goal."
"It was a sort of thunderbolt?"
"I know that word, thunderbolt," Moscowitch complacently remarked. "No, a sudden attraction, rather. I saw her and loved her—that is all."
"And you did not confess your love till long after?"
"Later, two or three months afterwards. But I believe she had already perceived my sentiments, for she was not surprised to hear me express them."
"The fact that one loves a woman never astonishes her; it is the contrary that surprises her."
"Yes, she had divined my state of mind."
"Oh! they always divine, and that is why confessions always find them so calm. So she allowed you to come to see her?"
"Yes, and I did; but one finds her so rarely! We met quite often at the home of the countess and I spent a delightful fortnight, oh! very delightful, at the château de Rabodanges, during the month of July. I was to have returned there in September and she, too, was to have returned there, but I had to leave for Russia. I am here only a week. I met her again for the first time this evening. I confess, my dear Monsieur d'Entragues, that your entrance in the room was very disagreeable to me. I repent having had this wicked sentiment, but I could not guess that I had before me a friend so ... so...."
"So useful," Entragues finished. "Friends should be useful. That is their purpose. Then, at Rabodanges?"
"It was delightful. I cannot find another word. It was there she did my portrait. It is quite good, only there is no resemblance. I think she was making sport of me that day, for why should she give me a pointed beard instead of this national cut of which I am proud, and which I shall certainly never change. Besides, thanks to retouchings, the very features do not belong to me. She began by copying my figure and ended by designing a dream."
"Was it a sketch?" Entragues asked, amused at this cruel feminine irony.
"Yes, but she etched it the following day, for you know she has a real talent in that direction. She made two copies in my presence, gave me out and then used the same copper plate to elaborate a fantastic landscape where my head became a tree, cloud, grass, I know not what. This figure, which at least I had inspired, I have lost, and despite everything, I deplore its loss because of the inscription."
"That is regrettable," Entragues coldly said, "for without speaking of the sentiment which doubles the price of things, this almost unique sketch had a value because of its rarity and curiosity. If it ever fell into my hands—for things go astray and are found again—I do not truly know if I would surrender it to you. I have a collector's taste."
"It is with this portrait as with its author," replied Moscowitch, with a sudden menacing violence. "I believe it was in the works of a Spanish poet that I once read: 'I love your love more than your life.'"
Entragues was tempted to say: "I possess this sketch, and I have no intention of returning it to you, my friend." What would the consequences be? A duel. But this manner of treating life roughly and questioning the fates was truly quite naive. Sixtine would probably belong to the victor; at least, it would have happened thus in barbarous times. These days, the vanquished have attractions. They inspire pity and the gods are often wrong. "Would I not love her enough to risk my life? Life means nothing to me: if I had any doubts on the matter, I would prove the contrary by quitting it. Moscowitch would willingly fight; but he is a simple soul, while I am very complicated."
Aloud, he continued:
"A woman who inspires such a passion is vanquished in advance. But you must master yourself, so as not to be compromised. Do not see her too often, nor too long at one time. Let her understand that you suffer and that the more cruel she is, the more you suffer. Keep enough presence of mind to remain an exact observer, and then, some fine day, thrust the knife into her neck, crying: 'I suffer too much, be merciful.' She yields and you are happy, unless your imagination has exceeded reality. This happens; then one missesil tempo de' dolci sospiri. Oh! you need not fear this weakness; you are robust and she is beautiful. There are other ways of reaching the same end; what I give you is the surest. It is the procedure of physical love, I confess, but no other mimicry affects a woman to a greater degree. Before all, they wish to be desired; the rest comes or does not come, it is an addition. It is the cement which joins the stones, but the Cyclopean constructions dispensed with it quite easily and were not the less solid. Like the block of granite, the strength of the body is the base of all: one must promise marvels of solidity and the idea of duration, of eternal duration, will soon rise. He who gives this impression does not find women inhuman, and he who transforms it into fine and good sensations, during the hours of maturity, has nothing to fear from infidelity. Ah! you are fortunate, Moscowitch; you are a Hercules!"
"You speak," said the Russian, "as if I should dissemble. But this passion, at once ideal and physical, I truly feel and if I say that I suffer I shall not be lying."
"All the better, for sincerity is a mighty wonder-worker, but you would be able to say nothing and, through modesty, you would conceal your sufferings. I merely offer you the means of not suffering, of not loving in vain. Ah! the futile loves, the deceitful tortures of vain desire: tears—good grain sown on the sands!"
"Yes," Moscowitch answered, "all who weep are not consoled. I thank you and understand you. You, too, have the religion of human suffering."
"I!" Hubert wanted to cry, jestingly. But why wound this humanitarian mystic? He simply answered:
"Grief is inevitable, but far from being evil, it is the very honor of humanity and the supreme reason of existence. We suffer in order to be less ugly, and that, in the vulgarity of our animal flesh, there may be an esthetic illusion. Joys are unacceptable and repulsive which have in them no promise of suffering: two lovers, in their sports, make a charming spectacle because they tread on the fragile trap-door of an oubliette, full of stakes and hooks. Intellectual desires, in the same way, are interesting in that they surely lead to the horrors of deception or doubt. Try, then, you who are a poet and a creator of souls, to induce the esthetic thrill in your audience with the picture of a perfect happiness: joy is illogical, and, since the illogical is the essential cause of laughter, joy causes laughter. This might, nevertheless, serve in the fifth act as an unexpected punishment. Could you not show a happy knave just by inflicting upon him the most degrading punishment possible to a man? Happy, while he dreams infinitely of the contempt residing in the word, 'happy'!"
"Yet," Moscowitch answered, "we do nothing else but pursue happiness."
"Oh!" Entragues rejoined, "that is a pastime. We know quite well that we shall never reach it.
"I believe," the Russian said, "that you judge humanity by your own sentiments."
"I think so too," Entragues answered, "but the contrary would be the more surprising. With whose brain would you have me think, if not with my own?"
They separated, after having arranged a rendezvous. Moscowitch, on the day after the morrow or the following day, would call for Entragues at his home, and together they would go tola Revue spéculative.
"Le fol n'a Dieu."Epilogue des Contes d'Eutrappei.
"What a painful evening!" thought Hubert, after returning to his home. "What nonsense I have had to think, what platitudes to hear, what stupid remarks to bray? And in what a language! Just so the practical part of my talk be not useless! I count on brutality blended with much weeping: Sixtine will be irritated or bored, and the Russian will disappear from our life. Yes, our life, I have rights upon this woman, those rights of mutual intelligence. We understand each other; with a little attention and verbal caresses, I can acquire a pleasant antenuptial position near her. She is not one of those who are dominated by a perpetual appetite of the flesh and I believe that her delicacy would regard as shameful the very idea of yielding to force. Ah! in short, I do not know her: the plan I have given Moscowitch is perhaps good. Yes, one can never know, but if he adopts it he will have an air of insincerity and she will perceive it."
He was less philosophical on the morrow, and, in a moment of ill-humor, gave himself this alternative which had for an instant occupied him the evening before: Either he would be completely disinterested in Sixtine, or he would become her lover within twenty-four hours. "I cannot play the rôle of a companion to Moscowitch, I cannot admit such a possibility in my life—he or I. What! will those dear arms I have clasped around my neck in dreams caress the Austrian beard of this dramatist? I do not even wish to give expression to my jealousy: in himself, Moscowitch is only another person. Thus, shall another person have those lips and eyes and hair? Vulgar plaints of a vulgar jealous person: to what details do I apply my imagination? How the obscene image possesses me! So one must come to this point, and that is why I love her—for that alone! Bravo! words are useful: with words one analyzes everything, one destroys and sullies everything. Since it is this, I no longer wish it. Valentine plays the beast prettily, and what more do I want! She is sly as a succuba and charming in her ways, and what more do I want! Her caresses have a profuse generosity: her heart is on her hand and on her lips, and what more do I want!"
He took a walk, despite the cold, through the bare and muddy alleys of the Luxembourg, among the shivering statues and silent trees.
"If desire," he thought once more, "permits me—even in thought—the freedom of choice, what is the good of loving, or do I really and truly love? I would perhaps need, like a woman, possession to free me of my doubts. I am afraid lest, after its first blossoming, my temperament grow effeminate and give way, corroded by the rust of a devouring indecision. After my ideas, I analyze my sentiments: the air is becoming unbreathable. I thought that a passion would have refashioned the synthesis of my will; it is too late—the elements, dispersed, have become irreconcilable; here I am, approaching the state of a fakir who, with arms uplifted to an empty sky, immobile and with feet firmly pressed against the ground, dreams of the life he will no longer live. Thinking is not living; living is feeling. Where am I? I wished to penetrate the essence of each thing; I saw that there was nothing but movement, and the world, reduced to an indivisible force, vanished: I expected to double my sensations by dividing them, and I have seen them annihilated. There is nothing worth the lifting of a finger tip: one's reason reduces everything to a vague stirring of cerebral atoms, to a little inward bluster."
As he whispered in the gloomy silence of the vast garden, the words took flight, leaving only a murmuring trace of their passage. It required an effort for him to reseize the logic of his complaints:
"Yes, I was in doubt. Well! I believe that I have cast it beyond the previous limits." This satisfaction of the author cheered him: "So, I shall write about it, I shall show how this little inward bluster, which is nothing, contains everything, how, with the support of a single sensation always the same and distorted from its very inception, a brain isolated from the world can create a world for itself. My Adorer will show whether it is necessary, for the purpose of living, to mingle with surrounding complications. But it is only an experiment and my real work will be this: a being born with the complete paralysis of all his senses, nothing functioning but the brain and the digestive apparatus. This being has no knowledge of external things since, even the sensitiveness of the skin is absent. A miracle, electric or otherwise, partially cures him; he learns to talk and relates his cerebral life: it is just like other lives. It is necessary to find the point of departure, to find, at least, a medical example."
While reflecting, he recognized that his scorn of materialism was leading him a little far: it was hurling him into absurdity. Yet, such an imagination seemed less stupid than the psychical negation of the one group and the dualism of the other. The spiritualists, in fact, did not inspire him with less wrath: these bastards of Theology and Common Sense really formed the most obnoxious hybrid of all the human flora. Of all the outrages which the ignorant pour like a shower of mud on all who think, this class especially offended him and nothing irritated him so much as to hear grouped as idealists, without distinction, all those who do not admit the theories of Büchner, in science, or those of Zola, in literature.
"Ah! I grow angry against ignorance; that is worse than warring with stupidity. And then, among those who do not know are some who would like to know: it is not their fault. A few suffice, besides: only the summits count. It is on the mountains that formerly the annunciatory beacons blazed."
This last reflection was sufficiently disinterested: he willingly thought of himself as a summit, but he also knew that no beacon would ever burn there. The world was not ready to hear any great tidings he cared to announce. Without doubt, like others, he had come too late or too early. The ears would be stopped up if he opened his mouth, for he could only repeat the vain speech of the prophets: NisiDominus aedificaverit domun, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant earn....
"Hello! what are you doing alone, walking like an inspired person?"
"Ah! my dear Calixte, I am bored to death."
"What about spending the evening together?" asked Heliot. "You know, I am hardly entertaining, but we will talk."
"Agreed," said Entragues, taking his friend's arm, "I cling to you, as a castaway to a spar."
"But," returned Calixte laughing, "I am in no wise the partial result of a shipwreck. I ride the sea quite well, the mast is firmly planted, the hull is sound ... come, embark and don't treat me like a wreck. Now, listen, I am going to return and get rid of this cumbersome portfolio; I will get some verses I want to show you, then we will go to your home and you will also read me some slightly symbolic pages, eh?"
They discussed the value of the words with which the modern schools of writers distinguish themselves. The symbolists, according to Entragues, usurped their name; one never makes a symbol purposely, unless one is dedicated to this career as the fabulists to the fable. For him the symbol was the summit of art, conquered only by those who had placed upon it a statue which was superhuman and which yet had a human appearance, containing an idea in its form.
"Now," he continued, "in Milton's Satan you have a symbol, in de Vigny'sMoïseyou have a symbol, in Villiers'Hadalyyou have a symbol. The symbol is a soul made visible: the type is only the resume or the epitome of a character."
"Your definition is not clear. It seems to me that what you take for the symbol is rather to be called synthesis."
"No, synthesis is found, indeed, in the symbol—it is the final process; if synthesis has not been preceded by an analysis—it matters not whether it be brief or long provided it be exact—there is no symbol, because there is no life."
"Say rather that every psychological masterpiece contains a symbol."
"Perhaps," conceded Entragues. "Would a symbolist then signify a fabricator of masterpieces?"
"At least that is quite an interesting ideal and I believe you will not disclaim it. You don't worry about the public any more than I do; you would rather please ten select persons than please everybody, to the exclusion of the ten."
"Evidently. We are not actors and the applause do not make us beam with joy. But if we write neither to win universal approbation nor to earn money, we become truly incomprehensible."
"Write for your mistress," said Calixte.
"I have none," said Entragues.
"Write for the Madonna of Botticelli," said Calixte.
"That is what I am doing," said Entragues.
"A lovely and noble confident. Do you remember what the page says in theGitana? I know it by heart. It is the portrait of our mistress, since it is that of poetry, Listen to it in the stately language of Cervantes: 'La poesia es una bellissima doncella, casta, honesta, discreta, aguda, retirada, y que se contien en las limites de la discrecion mas alta: es amiga de la soledad, las fuentes la entretien, los prados la consuelan, los arboles la desenojan, los flores le alegran; y finalmente deleyta y ensena a quantos con ella communican.'"
Their talk often ended thus, by the recollection of an old impression, in mystic and shy plaints. Calixte was gentle towards life, which had not shown him the same clemency. No one knew what he sought, excepting the fine editions of old poets and the mysterious modern prints: his disdain of all vainglory was more sincere than that of Entragues, in whom heredity determined a dim need of social domination. Entragues strove to scorn life. During the long and painful reckonings of his tutelage, he had undergone, without external revolt, the humiliation of a lowly situation, a horror of the forced fabrication of worthless copy for miserly publishers. The verdict of several lawsuits had despoiled him of the relics of his patrimony; but he would have consented to a Castilian wretchedness rather than abandon his dream. He wished to regild his name, and, encircled by glory, he hated the present, as an obstacle, but he would have liked to assume the existence that was due him, to put it on like a ducal cloak, without astonishment, with the satisfaction of a lord returning to his domains. He was waiting; nothing would have surprised him, but neither did the nothing surprise him: hence, the infinite contradictions of his character and conduct. He knew his nature and had applied to himself, with a joy which revealed the triplicity of his soul, this line of Dante:
Che sensa speme vivemo in disio.
"And without hope live in desire." His triplicity, a quite elementary scholastic division, he thus explained: a soul that wills, a soul that knows the uselessness of willing, a soul that watches the struggle of the other two and writes the Iliad of it.
He had no naïveté, save perhaps in his rare unfortunate crises, for in his normal state his proud indifference of principle saved him from anger and its consequences. Thus, his indignation against Moscowitch had become deadened after the first thought of vengeance, and he was the man, on matters that did not touch the essentials, to give up a thing in despair, send the handle after the ax. But he was also the man to lift and unite the fallen instrument. He was the man to do the contrary of what he pretended to do, but as his acts were a spectacle to himself, and the most amusing of all spectacles, he never let it sadden him beyond measure. He knew himself full of the unexpected and liked it: ah! without this he surely would have been wearied, for the rest of the world unrolled itself to his wearied eyes but as a circus performance, truly too monotonous; the world was peopled by vague and distant phantoms thrown on the eternally trod course.
Calixte was much more simple: all dream, all faith, all spontaneity. No one could guess at the aim of his movements, and, in short, he had no other aim than movement itself. Older than Entragues by five or six years, and having attained a certain renown as a stylist and delicate thinker, he was unconcerned with it; he always kept the tone and the manners of a beginner, carried his manuscripts here and there, preferably to the little new reviews, not, like others, with the purpose of lording it there, but rather from a need of silence, not to have to discuss, to demonstrate, by a necessary charlatanry, the merit of a work.
He earned little, because of his indifference, for he could easily have won a lucrative position in journalism. But he loved, above all things, to work freely and with dignity.
His disdain of life was naive: he did not know life, just as one is ignorant of analytical chemistry, and he no more felt the inclination to live in the modern fashion than to shut himself up in a cellar with retorts; either of these careers seemed equally absurd in his estimation. Some dream figures—creatures encountered in the pages of Shakespeare or Calderon, personal creations—sufficed to people his days. He considered his illusions the only beings not endowed with the melancholy spirit of contradiction; he loved them, and he loved Entragues and all the intelligent persons who discussed things politely and without prolixity.
He was said to be as chaste as a Franciscan monk: he disclaimed such an eccentricity. A pretty and short love affair did not displease him: he enjoyed a woman's grace more than her beauty, her childishness more than her sex. He considered nervous disorders, so aggravated by the complacency of deteriorated writers, as repugnant maladies that were anti-harmonious, and he shunned dark and thin women, who smell fresh flesh, like the ogre.
They entered, as had been agreed, the home of Entragues, who read the following tale to his friend.
"... L'une meurt, l'autre vit, mais lamorte parfois se venge d'être morte."Anonymous.
At the corner of the fire-place, in the cool chamber, they were talking affectingly, for it was the hour when their closed lips, with a tacit agreement, were opening the door to their imprisoned souls. Sidoine had courted Coquerette for two months. He did not speak to her of earth and sky, nor of the charming destiny of lovers who fly away on wings, in the estival purple of evenings, towards the luminous heights; he spoke to her of new dresses and the Auteuil races, of the Opera, of the Salon, of the street, of the Boulogne wood, and of theRevue des Deux-Mondes: she understood him and found him witty.
Sidoine amused himself in loving listlessly. Having greatly suffered during a whole year, he felt the need of diversion, of playing light-heartedly and of kissing, with a smile, a blond head and two blue eyes.
Coquerette also amused herself. She had a husband, amiable butbourgeois, a member of a club of the second order and of several councils. He often played baccarat: cards were lenient with his purse and the Bourse with his pocketbook. She did not understand him, but she respected him greatly and in the matrimonial hour did not pout at him more than two out of three times.
A husband is a father, a brother; he kisses your lips instead of kissing your brow; he sleeps with you, because it is customary, or because the apartments are too small; and he pays you an intimate visit because you are within easy reach, and you must have a child, or two, when business is good.
A lover is a child, something you have yourself created, he belongs to you, you can play with him, fondle him, rock him, kiss him, beat him, console him, caress him, punish him, scold him, deprive him of dessert, make him hold pins when you dress, send him to bed at eight o'clock.
You become a little girl again, you have a doll: ah! it is altogether different.
Coquerette did not have a child, she wished to play, and Sidoine asked for nothing better.
The moment, however, was grave: they were going to pass to the other side of the river, and it was necessary to jump into the water and swim to the other bank, shoulder against shoulder. Afterwards they bask in the sun on the green lawn and, recovered from emotions, they enjoy fine moments, gathering pleasing flowers; and with what delight they return to bathe in the river so terrible not long ago, now so gentle, so mild, so tenderly murmuring.
He took Coquerette's hands and began to kiss her fingers one after the other with a gracefulness which charmed her; she grew tender at such delicacy of sentiment, the poor darling! It did not take a much stronger wind to disperse the last birds still chattering among the branches; she suddenly felt her heart grow light, for never had her spouse had the idea of such an exquisite caress, "and since he never thought of it, I really must love another. Can one reasonably demand that a woman deprive herself of such delights? If my husband is incapable, that is not my fault!"
Sidoine continued, having found this means of dispensing with speech and counting equally on finding, thanks to a few minutes of this practice, the means of dispensing with thought.
He recommenced with the little finger and Coquerette had the enraptured eyes of Psyche under the first kiss of love.
Sidoine kissed the little finger on the second phalanx, for he had distributed the round of his kisses on the nails, at first, then on the first joint.
He kissed the little finger and at the same instant there returned to his lips, and this time almost terrifying, these syllables that had already been inwardly pronounced:
"The magnificence!"
Coquerette thought he said: "I love you, little finger of Coquerette," and she was content.
Sidoine kissed the second joint of the ring-finger of Coquerette, and this other word issued from his lips:
"Funereal!"
Coquerette thought he said: "I love you, annular finger of Coquerette," and she was content.
Sidoine kissed the joint of the middle finger of Coquerette, and he said nothing.
Coquerette thought the gentle familiar lizard was climbing along her hand, along her wrist, along her bare arm: "Gracious! how far will he go? I am going to keep my eyes closed, I will see very well."
But the caress stopped, startled; Sidoine stood up, pale; he gazed at the bed as one gazes at an unexpected and melancholy spectacle.
"The magnificence is funereal, and my heart is terrified."
The words had joined and from the magic union was born the real unity contained in their elements.
It really was a funereal magnificence:
Three wax-tapers were lighted at the heads of the bed and in their gleam the white figure seemed to be smiling at angels, like little children in their cradles. A great black crucifix appeared under her crossed hands; flowers were scattered, roses on her breast, lilies on her body and violets at her feet.
"No, she is not dead!" cried Sidoine, kneeling near his mistress. "Speak, you are not dead? Open your eyes, if you recognize me? What have you done? Why these lights, why all these flowers, you are going to give her a headache."
It was just a year, the twenty-eighth of December last, since he had come to her home: it was the same funereal magnificence and he had uttered the same words, shed the same tears.
He took the hand of the dead woman and raised it to his lips, but the affright of a sudden shock threw him to the ground: she was cold.
Coquerette, her large blue eyes wide opened, had followed with amazement the phases of the terrifying vision. She knew Sidoine's history and understood that a stroke of love madness had touched her friend at the-very hour of the poignant anniversary.
The little frivolous and laughing woman felt a strange thrill. She rose palpitating, threw herself upon Sidoine, as a lioness on her prey, and bit him on the cheek.
Sidoine opened his eyes:
"Ah! you are mine, mine only, mine," cried Coquerette kissing, bewildered, the impression of her teeth, "I have marked you with my sign, you belong to me. I love you, Sidoine, I love you even to death. Ah! I have never felt anything like it!"
She lifted him up, made him sit down, placed herself at his feet.
"She is dead," said Sidoine, still giddy, but recovered, "she is dead, but I will love her eternally."
"And me? And me?"
Sidoine did not reply.
"And me? And me?"
Sidoine gently kissed her brow.
"And me? And me?"
"She is dead!" said Sidoine.
"I will die," said Coquerette.
"For what reason?" asked Sidoine.
"So as to be loved," said Coquerette.
"L'épouvantable misère de ceux qui viventsans amour."Rusbrock l'Admirable,De la Jouissance chaste.
"Do you know, Madame, that Monsieur Moscowitch has the firm intention of marrying you?"
"That is quite natural."
"Yes, but what do you say to it?"
"It is agreeable to me."
"Then," asked Entragues, "why did you not let me know?"
"Ah! you would like to have the cards stacked. You do not wish to waste your time? At first, not any more than yourself, Monsieur Moscowitch never asked more than the pleasure of seeing me."
"He is fascinating."
"Isn't he?" returned Sixtine. "He pleases me very much and I believe that with him I shall never be bored."
"Ah! you are quite perverse, but perhaps that is why I love you."
"Perverse, because I do not wish to be bored!"
"No, boredom is the terror of every woman, and they commit half of their crimes to escape its claws. But it is useless. Boredom, impassive, smokes his houka and maintains his slaves. I well know that passion is stronger than he is, but you are incapable of loving."
"No more than another," Sixtine nonchalantly said, "and, besides all I ask is to be given the chance. I have already told you I was dough waiting for the hands of the kneader; and, after all I can not fashion myself alone. But are you coming to warble such poor ditties of jealousy, and in such a vulgar style. I believed you had more disdain and a richer vocabulary. Ah, fie! to sing such a romanza to me: 'You are incapable of loving.' Well, Monsieur, to use your language, I am at least capable of being loved. You seem to think that in love there is a category of capacities as in the time of Louis-Philippe? Would it be a special string that the cithara lacks? All the human instruments are complete and even women have spare strings, if you care to know. But skillful citharists are rare and most men only know how to direct the preliminary chord of the instrument from which they pretend to draw music. Please speak to me in the language of a logician, since that is your intellectual profession, and do not imagine that I am a boarding-school girl who will feel herself burning with love, through a very noble spirit of contradiction, at the very moment when a man presents her adroit inaninity: 'You are incapable of loving.' For you are perhaps very skillful and capable, oh! very capable of demonstrating the patent lack of logic in my feminine deductions. But, question me!"
"I get," said Entragues, "much pleasure in listening to you. Your voice is sweet."
"This time," he thought, "thanks to the mutual impertinences with which we are offending each other, things will end very well or very badly. She is very much unnerved and my own mental state lacks poise. We are going to reach, it is to be hoped, a surprising result."
As she was silent, he resumed:
"There are instruments irremediably out of tune, like those which undergo the humidity of solitude; but it is not such a great disaster—you have but to change the strings."
"A turn of the peg perhaps might suffice," said Sixtine, "and first of all, a ray of sunshine."
That word went straight to his heart. Yet the voice which had pronounced it was cold and brittle with irony, but he only kept its sense and saw rising before him, under the form of a sorrowful woman with imploring gestures, the very figure of Abandonment. Her fingers dropped arrows at his feet, he was naively touched:
"I have offended you, forgive me."
"Yes," Sixtine said, "you have been spiteful and it has hurt me. Let us become good friends, while awaiting something better, if it is to be our destiny that I put my hand in your hand forever. But do rot vent your anger against a weak woman, unfortunate enough already in not knowing what she wants. You have no cause to be jealous, and besides," she smiled, but not mischievously, "you have not the right, my friend."
He had placed a knee on the ground before her and held her hand in his hands, without pressing it, with precaution, like a fragile and precious porcelain.
"Here I am," he thought, "in the attitude of Sidoine before Coquerette, I have but to bring these fingers and nails to my lips to complete the resemblance, making allowances for the different natures of the two women. Coquerette, that capricious and laughing child, might experience a sudden but momentary change of nature. Her very sincere passion for Sidoine will last as long as Sidoine does not respond —perhaps a few days. As Sidoine seeks no more in this pretty little woman than a diverting intrigue, he is quite capable of yielding on the very evening, despite the shocked nerves, when this would be but out of human respect. In that case, Coquerette's passion would not be protracted: the wood would blaze and quickly become a little heap of ashes. But how singular! at the very moment of the thunderbolt, and during all those surprising electric effects, Coquerette is the woman to give Sidoine, if he quite openly scorned her, a truly great and real proof of love: she would throw herself through the window, if no revolver came to her hand. I could write this sequel, or some other, for there are two or three equally logical denouements in every love story.... Where was I? Sixtine is quite different from Coquerette...."
A long silence had followed the last words of Sixtine, during which Entragues, without ceasing to be absorbedly interested in the present, could nevertheless not curb his analytical imagination.
"I know it, I know it too well," answered Hubert between two attitudes, "but you say bitter things with such sweetness and charm that they delight me like tender caresses. The future, where you let me glimpse the possibility of joy, appears to me like the thought and imagination of dawn to a poor pilgrim who has stayed too long in the horrors of a black forest...."
"Imagination, if such is your pleasure, my friend; but strike and the spring will gush. Strike boldly, make way to my heart, make my blood flow like a stream, and let me fall into the murderer's arms, dying of joy and dying of love. I would like, I would like...."
"Ah! tell me just what I would like," Sixtine continued inwardly, "evoke my will before me, let me see it with my eyes, let me touch it with my hands. You can do it, you should be able, since you are a man!..."
She waited a second: the aura of a nervous stroke hovered nearby and played along her spine, the swelling ball traveled along her neck; her fingers thrilled in the hand of Entragues, she felt the imperious necessity of shunning all contact and, suddenly rising, she went to her piano and feverishly played an incoherent piece of music which saved her.
"She is strange," thought Entragues. "One might say that she was going to let herself go and suddenly she flies away from peril. She never loses her head and I should truly applaud the advice which a diabolic inspiration made me give this poor Moscowitch. She is not a Coquerette, she can master herself, but on the day when the river shall have been crossed, shoulder against shoulder, she will be united to her lover as iron to iron under the hammer of the good smith:
"Love, good smith of hearts,Hammer, hammer,Hammer two by two the hearts,Hammer, hammer,Love, good smith of hearts!"
He hummed this verse, improvised at the end of a rhythm that sang under Sixtine's fingers. Verses, welcome phrases, fine periods rose to his lips according to the cadence of the music and with the words came ideas, curious ideas with which he had no acquaintance, plans of romances, metaphysical romances, interesting views on himself, on his friends, on love, on politics. During the hour that Sixtine was at the piano, he lived through several days of a full deep life, and when the music paused, Hubert felt a violent arrest of thought which seized his heart and brain, just as an extreme and sudden transition from warm to cold seizes the flesh and marrow.
"Now," said Sixtine, half turning on her stool, "to prove to you that you are still a person I trust, despite your blunder, I will tell you some fragments of my life. Do not take it for a confession, nor for a secret, nor for an avowal; it is nothing else than goodness of heart on my part, and the desire to satisfy your curiosity. I hardly like to explain my past miseries, and I really believe, besides, that no one has ever seen the spectacle, unless it be the countess and a dead friend, dear and always dear in memory, of Sixtine tearing aside the veil of Isis."
"Your past," said Entragues, "is as sacred to me as a religious mystery. I do not question that you have always behaved like a woman endowed with natural dignity...."
"Precisely," interrupted Sixtine, "I am and was a woman, and I committed the crimes of a woman who does not know the meaning of the word 'duty.' I was taught it, I forgot it, never having understood it."
"If you have forgotten it," said Entragues, "I will not try to have you learn it anew, before knowing you better. Duty for me consists in doing my work and cutting down all the obstacles of life; I do not know what duty is to another."
"Yes, you are an intellectual. Some men are and many might become intellectuals, but it is not possible for a woman. Those women who have the air of interesting themselves in things of the mind do so only through pretense of imitation. The silver circle of sensation clasps them and sentiment remains sentiment to them. I have been told this and you are right in thinking that I could not have found it out myself; besides, it is a matter of indifference to me, since, like other women, I seek only happiness."
"And you are not happy."
"No, but I can be. I live for that: it is my work, I shall pursue it to my last hour and I am quite tranquil."
"You will give me your secret," said Entragues.
"In a moment," said Sixtine. "If an adventure like the first came to me, it would be myself, not the other, who would die. You have perhaps learned that when any one speaks to me of love, it is not only the peace of my heart which is at stake, but the light of my eyes. This should give me, I believe, the right of choosing: well, I will not choose. Thus, I shall have nothing with which to reproach myself, if I am shipwrecked. I shall have usurped neither the speaking-trumpet nor the helm, I will be the passenger who sleeps in the ship and sails with closed eyes. And to think," she added, as if speaking to herself, "that it needs but eight days for me to be at sea, embarked towards reefs, in a capsizing ship and under an inexperienced command! Isn't that what awaits me? I prefer therefore not to set sail, life is not painful to me; but I shall depart, for some one will lift me from the ground and some one's arms ... whose?... will place me on the cushions amid the rolling waves.... Ah! I am capable of having a very happy voyage, a voyage of real pleasure through oceans full of sunshine with a calm and cool port, and smiles of good souls, for my destination, to the very end...."
"It shall be so," said Entragues.
The tragic simplicity of this woman who vouch-safed to confess herself, affected him as much as a beautiful sunrise or as perfect prose in splendid print. At this moment, he no longer felt any love for her; the impression was wholly literary, and with a remnant of conscience, he cursed himself for this blasphemy. Yet he noticed this: the metaphorical developments with which Sixtine had indicated her conception of the future were analogous to the images which had haunted him one day in a similar state of-mind. A fugitive state, doubtless, but one whose birth, though occasional, revealed secret agreements between their souls. If not the joys of union a great devotion was at least possible, and it is much that two beings be qualified for the same sufferings, and that if life strike one heart the other be wounded. This transitory thought led him back to love: his arms, by a sudden loosened spring, opened and, if she had fallen into them, they would have closed again on the infinite. But he was too late by several minutes: there is a very tiny space between perceived sensation and analyzed sensation: it is there that the ironic "Too Late" dwells.
Sixtine answered:
"What do you know? Could you, yourself, promise me, on your life, that the morrows will not bring me the disillusion of your past days? Will you make such a promise?"
The sun had had its day, and the sky, by slow diminutions, darkened. Red, green and yellow fires blazed on the stream.
Languid under its trappings, lightly rocked by the eddy, a slow bark drew near and anchored at the quay. The stones were all covered with heavy rugs, as were the granite steps and the pavement to the foot-path where the carriage stopped. Torch carriers lined the road to the bark: by their flickering flames, the golds and purples of the draperies brightened and the water of the river assumed the color of garnets and topazes.
They were alone. Holding each other's hand, they walked in silence, both garbed in black and resembling shadows.
When they stepped on the plank, they looked and smiled at each other. They departed alone, they departed together, and yet each saw in the other's eye the melancholy of voyagers.
The bark put to sea, the torches were extinguished: in the night there was again but one lantern on the water of the stream.
"Yes," said Entragues.
Sixtine shuddered.
"Yes," repeated Entragues, "if you love me!"
Sixtine continued:
"There's a story intermingled with much prattling.... I am speaking for myself."
"I deserve my part of the blame," returned Entragues.
And to himself he added:
"If you love me! I have the air of laying down my conditions. What cowardice made me pronounce these humiliating syllables! I, too, have spoiled everything. I had only to say 'yes'! And that was my whole thought, it was my true thought. Yet I love you, Sixtine, I really love you without conditions, you see! Ah! you will end by understanding it."
Sixtine observed him:
"Ah! my poor friend, will you never understand me, then?"
She said loud:
"But we must end.... It is because I have some modesty in baring myself in this way.... After all.... No, enough for to-day ... another time .... Please leave me, now, if you wish to please me ... without questions ... and without fear ... you will come to-morrow. Good-by, my friend."
"La malle bouche, elle a raté si traistreQu'elle a baisé et vendu nostre maistre."Charles de la Huetrie,Contreblason de la Bouche.
Hubert had no desire whatever to think, but it is not given to all persons to be able to regulate cerebral activity and to dismiss the serious affairs until the morrow. Neither the reading of a naturalistic novel, nor meditation upon the most abtruse propositions and scholia of the contemporary thinkers, nor the contemplation of the eternal verities, prevented him from bewailing his recent foolish behavior.
Ah! how well he judged things from a distance, how well he sawwhat he should have done. No one had to a higher degree his presence of mind at the foot of the staircase.
Immediate analysis was always slightly confused and did not force any precise conclusions. Without doubt, it was always three or four minutes after the occasion had passed that he was able to unravel the thoughts and the mental reservations of his partner, and by the forth minute he already knewwhat he should have doneat the first second, but he never knew it so pertinently as after a night's sleep.
No disturbance of his heart had ever prevented him from sleeping; he thanked heaven for having granted him lucid mornings.
The more he thought, this morning, the more the moving sands of indecision shifted.
Having taken an awkward step, he had seen how pernicious action had proved to him; to wait was sterile: it is like the sower of pebbles who, pausing along the fields in spring, is astonished not to see any germination.
"Well," thought Hubert, "one cannot know, everything happens and the absurd especially. I should be pleased if some miracle would occur in my favor. We shall see this evening, and," he added, smiling at himself, "the following days."
Impatient for the night, and fearing the surliness of the hours, he went out in search of casual diversion.
The street was inclement. The quays, swept by a sharp and humid wind, stood out gloomily under their closed boxes, truly an unfavorable sight to those restless plunderers of knowledge. What becomes of the disconsolate vagabonds, amateurs of printed foolishness, in those days of enforced idleness? He perceived one, with sad eyes and weary movements, who was examining the sky, holding out against the storm and waiting for a lull. Entragues knew him: he was an old man of letters who spent his days here. No book was unknown to him, he dipped into all of them, saluted them with a smile, but purchased only those which concerned the Auvergne, his native country. In a vast garret he had fifteen thousand books of this kind and did not despair of doubling the number.
Entragues wished to lead him away from these desolate banks; he resisted, like a lover who has decided to sleep across the bolted door of his mistress.
This constancy pleased Entragues.
"Just come as far as the rue de Richelieu. There is a big Moorish room where you can also find some books, and you are in shelter."
"Yes, it is all right, but you can't take them with you."
Entragues left him at this word whose bitterness he understood, for he too belonged to those who can only read with pleasure the books that one owns. Books, women, pictures, horses, statues and the rest, the very grass and trees and everything one enjoys can only be half-enjoyed if it is not owned. That explains the little success of museums, usually deserted except on rainy Sundays; a great indifference or a great detachment is necessary to bestow enthusiastic feelings on the contemplation of a picture which an imbecile glance will pollute the moment after.
Rue de Richelieu has a special atmosphere which can only be breathed there. As soon as one enters, a little chill strikes the hands and feet, and once installed in the chair and in a numbered place, one feels the cruel feverish embraces of books.
Entragues could not remain seated. He walked along the aisle, examining the heads at his right and the books at his left. Evidently, all those heads believed in knowledge and came here to imbibe books, in which—as one knows—all knowledge is contained. Pliny, too, believed in knowledge, and Paracelsus, and Erasmus, and Salmasius, and where is their knowledge, Villon! It is where your verses shall never go, poor scholar! You knew, and among other things you knew that who-ever dies, "dies in grief." Work, work and some day knowledge, like gall, will rend your heart. Work, if it is necessary to live; that is an excuse, although, according to a certain preface, one must not attach too much value to one's daily bread. But," continued Entragues, "must humanity grow weary intentionally so that there may be amateurs of labor!"
"What, you, Oury? I thought you were in the provinces."
"I made for myself," answered Oury, "a corner of the provinces in Paris, and as you see I am alive, or at least I appear to be so."
"And what are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing? when I find you leaning against the big catalogues!"
"I came here to rest my eyes a little, for I do not work, I watch others work."
"Ah!"
"Yes, I come here each noon and remain till closing time. In summer this takes place at six o'clock, so I do a good day's work. In winter I have hardly time to install myself."
"And you do nothing?"
"No, I wait. I am like the scholar in the legend: I wait until the others leave."
"My dear Oury, your psychology is really interesting. 'I wait until the others leave!' Your device is the very device of humanity. It is admirable, it is the scheme of life. You are a man, Oury, you are the man, you are symbolic."
"Perhaps, but I do not get any vanity from the fact. Yet my existence is singular and I imagine that few creatures will have lived whole days so destitute of incidents. Sit down and we will talk; I really can sacrifice an hour or two to an old friend."
Entragues willingly consented.
"You thought that I was in the provinces?" commenced Oury. "I am a man who has disappeared, but not a provincial. Do you see that gray-haired, very amiable man down there, at the desk. I bow to him, he smiles and offers me a little paper which I take. I also smile, for this paper which is used to ask for a book is useless to me. I do not come here to work, but to watch others work.
"I spend five or six agreeable hours here.
"It is quite different at home in the morning. Time creeps like a serpent, writhes, yawns, bites me, instills me with the cataleptic venom of boredom.
"I sometimes open my window in fine weather and gaze upon the distant trees; other mornings I read Ronsard. Time goes! time goes! No, it lies heavy, useless and tenacious.
"I had two or three months of respite, several years ago.
Paint me, Janet, the beauties of my darling.
"I set out in quest of this visionary portrait. Why had Thomas de Leu not engraved it? He is without an equal in frilling a starched collar, in lengthening ferociously the face of a leaguer, but delicately that of a princess. As this picture does not exist, and I knew it did not exist, I sought it perseveringly, for I was at least sure of never touching the final disillusion with my finger.
"But my weary steed staggered; a whip lashed his croup; I found my princess, painted by Janet, in the Louvre. I recognized her by her long and pale figure, her almond eyes, her large white collar, her slender shape made still more delicate by a pointed bodice, her Mary Stuart chapeau, her gray gloves, her gauntlets, her undeniable Renaissance air. I fell in love with her.
"As I am quite regular in my habits, the princess never failed to appear on the mornings that followed the first vision. She was ever the same, ever the princess. She entered the Louvre, I unfortunately went to the library, for I could neither stop myself nor follow her, so that it was a long time before I knew if it was a hallucination or the tangible reality of a woman endowed with flesh and bones.
"We left each other under the vault where the Egyptian and Assyrian perspectives are situated: she entered by the right and I continued on my way. I might have entered and followed her, doubtless, but the hours spent here are sacred to me: it is true that I do not work, but I might work: I wish, at least, to preserve the possibility of the duty. All that is left of my will has been transmuted into habits: to snap the thread would be to resolve the series of learned movements into an eternal immobility.
"You see that I know myself somewhat. The more I go on, the more I lack initial force. I can continue anything, I can commence nothing. Between the will and the act is a hollow ditch into which I would fall if I attempted to leap it: it is a physical impression.
"One day, finally, my princess appeared in a Van Dyck hat which threw very ugly shadows on her white figure: farewell to my princess painted by Janet! She was a woman like all other women and could not, decidedly, atone for this fault by any other merit.
"That is my adventure.
"I find that life, at bottom, is quite tolerable after the noon hour. I wait for inspiration, I watch others work, and that is an occupation."
"It is an occupation," said Entragues. "Good-by. Are you not coming out with me?"
"Oh, no," Oury replied, "it is impossible. Not before four o'clock."
Entragues left him and continued his walk, seeking some head familiar to his eyes among the bowed skulls. Vain search! Then he withdrew alone, without the companion he would have liked, and strolled up the street as far as the boulevard. Oury had thrown a gloom over him.
Entragues was afraid of growing indifferent because of the confidences of this sad invalid, once an intelligent boy whom his friends had thought destined to write interesting retrospective criticism, a sort of history of the Pleiade, less puerile and braver than that of the doleful Sainte-Beuve. These sicknesses of the will were contagious: he decided to shun this intellectual leper and abolish at once all remembrance of the meeting. A like malady might entrap his nerves and lay low his will in the beaten path of habit; he was not eager for a sojourn, not even for a tourist's excursion, within the borders of madness.
He sauntered along, visited some editorial offices in search of Van Baël, whom he wished to consult on a detail of costume, passed a half hour in an auction room where he bought some ancient silks and a lot of faded church ornaments, ugly, but sacred and smelling of simony.
A simoniac priest had haunted him for years; his was a lean face with malignant eyes, a rigid skeleton-like body, long hands, white hands, supple hands with square nails, hands of a seller of stuffs, hands of one who blesses, hands of a Jew quickly returned into the cloak with the prize of blood. In what century and country lived he?
"To reach some appropriateness of analysis," thought Entragues, while returning to his dwelling, a chasuble on his knees and a great heap of sacerdotal embroideries filling the rest of the carriage, "to instill true life into this simoniac, he should be modern. It would be necessary for me to be able to enter into his church, take a seat some evening and kneel down in his confessional, drinking the wine from his chalice and taking the consecrated wafers from his pyx. Like him I would have to be simoniacal and sacrilegious, Ah! what a test! and like him I would have to feel the irrevocable damnation and daily glorify myself with the opprobrious secret of my lies!"
Sixtine came to his rescue: the red robe rid him of the black robe.
The hour of the meeting, given the evening before, rang.
"Madame has gone out!"
"Ah!"
That was all. Why even open the mouth again?
"Il y a un secret, Valérien, que je veuxle dire; j' ai pour amant un ange de Dieu,qui, avec une extrême jalousie, veille surmon corps."Bréviare romain,Office de sainte Cécile.
"The incense! The incense!
"What incense there is in the censers!
"What fumes there are in the incense!
"That cloud is pagan, Virgin! Fie! to hide yourself in a cloud in order to love. But why? I see the wings of the angel whose whiteness shines under the fragrant cloud. It is with this, with so little, Virgin I fie! that he has intoxicated you to possess you. And you smile at him, I see your eyes whose splendor shines under the fragrant cloud, in the shadow of the white wings.
"Thou, the immaculate! And for whom is so much purity sullied? For an angel?"
"You fancied it was the Holy Spirit?"—"Yes, the dove pecked my lips and I opened my lips and I gave him the end of my tongue. I speak of the past. It was very pleasant and I have always wanted to begin again."
"Ah! Virgin, fie, you lie like a woman. Doves have no such large wings."—"They are the wings of my mantle."
"Ah? Virgin! Fie! doves have not light feathers."—"But they have, they have! And besides they are not light,figliuolo, they are shot-color."
Such aplomb confused Delia Preda. What! a Virgin in whom he had placed his whole confidence,sub tuum praesidium!
The colloquy was resumed in this fashion:
"Ah! Virgin! Fie! think of your family, think of your chaste spouse! think of your son! think of God the father! Do you wish to dishonor the creator of heaven and earth? What will become of us, if you awaken his wrath? It is always on us, poor mortals, that his wrath falls, and we will have the plague again."—"Ecce ancilla Domini!my friend. I am under the orders of the Most High, and what if it pleases him to send me an angel?"
Della Preda did not know what reply to make, for he was too religious to question the eternal decrees. He contented himself with remarking to the madonna that if the Most High had sent her an angel, it was not apparently to have love with him.
"Ah! Good Lord!" the Novella cried.
"Moreover," continued Delia Preda, "I am at peace, for the angels have no sex. It is merely play. Ah, well! the question is controverted."
"Ah! Good Lord! Ah! Good Lord!" the Novella cried.
"Thus, Saint Ambrose, who has discussed angels at some length, does not pronounce himself in a peremptory way. He notes that some, having transgressed, were thrust 'into the world' and replaced in the celestial concert by the most meritorious virginities. How did they transgress, and must not this expression mean the flesh?..."
"Ah! my angel!" the Novella cried.
"Or perhaps they are epicene, like their name. This opinion was sustained but I believe it heretical, for these vases of purity, finding themselves endowed with two sexes, would have too many temptations. Tertullian, as well as Origen, grants them a body: I know that to be so, and I see what profane use they make of it.
"Ah! I am about to lose all my illusions concerning angels: I must submit the case to the padre who taught me theology....
"If I call to mind my prayer-book, is it not written in the service of Saint-Cecilia: 'Valerian found Cecilia supplicating with an angel in her bed. Cecilia, moreover, had informed him beforehand: 'There is a secret, Valerian, I wish to tell thee: I have an angel of God for a lover; he watches over my body with an extreme jealousy.' Yes, I have read this in my prayer-book, in those holy pages where disrespect should not even appear. I read about holy loves, and of saints also, without a doubt, and these things oppress my heart. Pardon, madonna! Nevertheless you make me suffer and you make me weep; I no longer dare, ashamed of the spectacle which has disturbed my soul, lift my rude eyes towards your beatified eyes. You do what you wish, being a queen, and my only duty is to love, to suffer and to die if you so order it.
"I do not understand at all, but what matter? Do I understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity?
"If you have chosen, like the charming and blest maiden, an angel for lover, it is because it is the function of angels to be the lovers of virgins: it was so ordained by the Lord for all eternity.
"And I, I am unworthy; my body is soiled, twice soiled: since the baptism of your love, madonna, the carnal seductions have prevailed over the grace which your intercession had granted me.
"To a woman, and what a woman! to an infidel, and what an infidel! I have betrayed my body that had been regenerated by the condescension of your gaze, lavished by your tears, purified by your smile, as a scabious rag by the running of the stream and by the rays of sunshine.
"You have punished me, madonna, but should I moan, since I myself have supplicated you to whip my shoulders with the rod. You have punished me well, thanks ... I hate you now, impure and perjured Virgin!
"Dream that I love you for your immaculate candor, and that your virginal skin is spotted with ineffable stains...."
"It can no longer be seen," the Virgin said, "I have a new robe."
"My lord," said Veltro, bowing to the prisoner, "the ceremony is ended and we must return. I have taken it upon myself to prolong the minutes, but orders, my lord, orders ... all the same, the crowning of a madonna is a fine holiday. The Novella is crowned every year at Assumption, and her red robe is changed at the same time; it is the custom. The little poor girls are given the old gown and dresses are made of it. And how proud the little rascals are; after all, it is the custom, you see!"
"Another moment, Veltro, please, my friend?"
After Della Preda had raised his eyes and saw the Novella face to face, radiant in her new purple and without the veil of any cloud, his anguish and bewilderment subsided. All he felt was the agitation that follows an evil dream, like a persistent odor, but suddenly the sensation of blasphemy struck him; it was dim and violent: he swooned and Veltro took him in his arms.