Books: The Red Lily, v2
A >>
Anatole France >> The Red Lily, v2
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6
Dechartre was there, reciting verses of Dante, and looking at Florence:
"At the hour when our mind, a greater stranger to the flesh. . ."
Near him, Choulette, seated on the balustrade of the terrace, his legs
hanging, and his nose in his beard, was still at work on the figure of
Misery on his stick.
Dechartre resumed the rhymes of the canticle: "At the hour when our mind,
a greater stranger to the flesh; and less under the obsession of
thoughts, is almost divine in its visions, . . . ."
She approached beside the boxwood hedge, holding a parasol and dressed in
a straw-colored gown. The faint sunlight of winter enveloped her in pale
gold.
Dechartre greeted her joyfully.
She said:
"You are reciting verses that I do not know. I know only Metastasio.
My teacher liked only Metastasio. What is the hour when the mind has
divine visions?"
"Madame, that hour is the dawn of the day. It may be also the dawn of
faith and of love."
Choulette doubted that the poet meant dreams of the morning, which leave
at awakening vivid and painful impressions, and which are not altogether
strangers to the flesh. But Dechartre had quoted these verses in the
pleasure of the glorious dawn which he had seen that morning on the
golden hills. He had been, for a long time, troubled about the images
that one sees in sleep, and he believed that these images were not
related to the object that preoccupies one the most, but, on the
contrary, to ideas abandoned during the day.
Therese recalled her morning dream, the hunter lost in the thicket.
"Yes," said Dechartre, "the things we see at night are unfortunate
remains of what we have neglected the day before. Dreams avenge things
one has disdained. They are reproaches of abandoned friends. Hence
their sadness."
She was lost in dreams for a moment, then she said:
"That is perhaps true."
Then, quickly, she asked Choulette if he had finished the portrait of
Misery on his stick. Misery had now become a figure of Piety, and
Choulette recognized the Virgin in it. He had even composed a quatrain
which he was to write on it in spiral form--a didactic and moral
quatrain. He would cease to write, except in the style of the
commandments of God rendered into French verses. The four lines
expressed simplicity and goodness. He consented to recite them.
Therese rested on the balustrade of the terrace and sought in the
distance, in the depth of the sea of light, the peaks of Vallambrosa,
almost as blue as the sky. Jacques Dechartre looked at her. It seemed
to him that he saw her for the first time, such was the delicacy that he
discovered in her face, which tenderness and intelligence had invested
with thoughtfulness without altering its young, fresh grace. The
daylight which she liked, was indulgent to her. And truly she was
pretty, bathed in that light of Florence, which caresses beautiful forms
and feeds noble thoughts. A fine, pink color rose to her well-rounded
cheeks; her eyes, bluish-gray, laughed; and when she talked, the
brilliancy of her teeth set off her lips of ardent sweetness. His look
embraced her supple bust, her full hips, and the bold attitude of her
waist. She held her parasol with her left hand, the other hand played
with violets. Dechartre had a mania for beautiful hands. Hands
presented to his eyes a physiognomy as striking as the face--a character,
a soul. These hands enchanted him. They were exquisite. He adored
their slender fingers, their pink nails, their palms soft and tender,
traversed by lines as elegant as arabesques, and rising at the base of
the fingers in harmonious mounts. He examined them with charmed
attention until she closed them on the handle of her umbrella. Then,
standing behind her, he looked at her again. Her bust and arms, graceful
and pure in line, her beautiful form, which was like that of a living
amphora, pleased him.
"Monsieur Dechartre, that black spot over there is the Boboli Gardens, is
it not? I saw the gardens three years ago. There were not many flowers
in them. Nevertheless, I liked their tall, sombre trees."
It astonished him that she talked, that she thought. The clear sound of
her voice amazed him, as if he never had heard it.
He replied at random. He was awkward. She feigned not to notice it, but
felt a deep inward joy. His low voice, which was veiled and softened,
seemed to caress her. She said ordinary things:
"That view is beautiful, The weather is fine."
CHAPTER XII
HEARTS AWAKENED
In the morning, her head on the embroidered pillow, Therese was thinking
of the walks of the day before; of the Virgins, framed with angels;
of the innumerable children, painted or carved, all beautiful, all happy,
who sing ingenuously the Alleluia of grace and of beauty. In the
illustrious chapel of the Brancacci, before those frescoes, pale and
resplendent as a divine dawn, he had talked to her of Masaccio, in
language so vivid that it had seemed to her as if she had seen him,
the adolescent master of the masters, his mouth half open, his eyes dark
and blue, dying, enchanted. And she had liked these marvels of a morning
more charming than a day. Dechartre was for her the soul of those
magnificent forms, the mind of those noble things. It was by him, it was
through him, that she understood art and life. She took no interest in
things that did not interest him. How had this affection come to her?
She had no precise remembrance of it. In the first place, when Paul
Vence wished to introduce him to her, she had no desire to know him, no
presentiment that he would please her. She recalled elegant bronze
statuettes, fine waxworks signed with his name, that she had remarked at
the Champ de Mars salon or at Durand-Ruel's. But she did not imagine
that he could be agreeable to her, or more seductive than many artists
and lovers of art at whom she laughed with her friends. When she saw
him, he pleased her; she had a desire to attract him, to see him often.
The night he dined at her house she realized that she had for him a noble
and elevating affection. But soon after he irritated her a little;
it made her impatient to see him closeted within himself and too little
preoccupied by her. She would have liked to disturb him. She was in
that state of impatience when she met him one evening, in front of the
grille of the Musee des Religions, and he talked to her of Ravenna and
of the Empress seated on a gold chair in her tomb. She had found him
serious and charming, his voice warm, his eyes soft in the shadow of the
night, but too much a stranger, too far from her, too unknown. She had
felt a sort of uneasiness, and she did not know, when she walked along
the boxwood bordering the terrace, whether she desired to see him every
day or never to see him again.
Since then, at Florence, her only pleasure was to feel that he was near
her, to hear him. He made life for her charming, diverse, animated, new.
He revealed to her delicate joys and a delightful sadness; he awakened
in her a voluptuousness which had been always dormant. Now she was
determined never to give him up. But how? She foresaw difficulties;
her lucid mind and her temperament presented them all to her. For a
moment she tried to deceive herself; she reflected that perhaps he,
a dreamer, exalted, lost in his studies of art, might remain assiduous
without being exacting. But she did not wish to reassure herself with
that idea. If Dechartre were not a lover, he lost all his charm. She
did not dare to think of the future. She lived in the present, happy,
anxious, and closing her eyes.
She was dreaming thus, in the shade traversed by arrows of light, when
Pauline brought to her some letters with the morning tea. On an envelope
marked with the monogram of the Rue Royale Club she recognized the
handwriting of Le Menil. She had expected that letter. She was only
astonished that what was sure to come had come, as in her childhood, when
the infallible clock struck the hour of her piano lesson.
In his letter Robert made reasonable reproaches. Why did she go without
saying anything, without leaving a word of farewell? Since his return to
Paris he had expected every morning a letter which had not come. He was
happier the year before, when he had received in the morning, two or
three times a week, letters so gentle and so well written that he
regretted not being able to print them. Anxious, he had gone to her
house.
"I was astounded to hear of your departure. Your husband received me.
He said that, yielding to his advice, you had gone to finish the winter
at Florence with Miss Bell. He said that for some time you had looked
pale and thin. He thought a change of air would do you good. You had
not wished to go, but, as you suffered more and more, he succeeded in
persuading you.
"I had not noticed that you were thin. It seemed to me, on the contrary,
that your health was good. And then Florence is not a good winter
resort. I cannot understand your departure. I am much tormented by it.
Reassure me at once, I pray you.
"Do you think it is agreeable for me to get news of you from your husband
and to receive his confidences? He is sorry you are not here; it annoys
him that the obligations of public life compel him to remain in Paris.
I heard at the club that he had chances to become a minister.
This astonishes me, because ministers are not usually chosen among
fashionable people."
Then he related hunting tales to her. He had brought for her three fox-
skins, one of which was very beautiful; the skin of a brave animal which
he had pulled by the tail, and which had bitten his hand.
In Paris he was worried. His cousin had been presented at the club.
He feared he might be blackballed. His candidacy had been posted.
Under these conditions he did not dare advise him to withdraw; it would
be taking too great a responsibility. If he were blackballed it would be
very disagreeable. He finished by praying her to write and to return
soon.
Having read this letter, she tore it up gently, threw it in the fire,
and calmly watched it burn.
Doubtless, he was right. He had said what he had to say; he had
complained, as it was his duty to complain. What could she answer?
Should she continue her quarrel? The subject of it had become so
indifferent to her that it needed reflection to recall it. Oh, no; she
had no desire to be tormented. She felt, on the contrary, very gentle
toward him! Seeing that he loved her with confidence, in stubborn
tranquillity, she became sad and frightened. He had not changed. He was
the same man he had been before. She was not the same woman. They were
separated now by imperceptible yet strong influences, like essences in
the air that make one live or die. When her maid came to dress her, she
had not begun to write an answer.
Anxious, she thought: "He trusts me. He suspects nothing." This made
her more impatient than anything. It irritated her to think that there
were simple people who doubt neither themselves nor others.
She went into the parlor, where she found Vivian Bell writing. The
latter said:
"Do you wish to know, darling, what I was doing while waiting for you?
Nothing and everything. Verses. Oh, darling, poetry must be our souls
naturally expressed."
Therese kissed Miss Bell, rested her head on her friend's shoulder, and
said:
"May I look?"
"Look if you wish, dear. They are verses made on the model of the
popular songs of your country."
"Is it a symbol, Vivian? Explain it to me."
"Oh, darling, why explain, why? A poetic image must have several
meanings. The one that you find is the real one. But there is a very
clear meaning in them, my love; that is, that one should not lightly
disengage one's self from what one has taken into the heart."
The horses were harnessed. They went, as had been agreed, to visit the
Albertinelli gallery. The Prince was waiting for them, and Dechartre was
to meet them in the palace. On the way, while the carriage rolled along
the wide highway, Vivian Bell talked with her usual transcendentalism.
As they were descending among houses pink and white, gardens and terraces
ornamented with statues and fountains, she showed to her friend the
villa, hidden under bluish pines, where the ladies and the cavaliers of
the Decameron took refuge from the plague that ravaged Florence, and
diverted one another with tales frivolous, facetious, or tragic. Then
she confessed the thought which had come to her the day before.
"You had gone, darling, to Carmine with Monsieur Dechartre, and you had
left at Fiesole Madame Marmet, who is an agreeable person, a moderate and
polished woman. She knows many anecdotes about persons of distinction
who live in Paris. And when she tells them, she does as my cook
Pompaloni does when he serves eggs: he does not put salt in them, but he
puts the salt-cellar next to them. Madame Marmet's tongue is very sweet,
but the salt is near it, in her eyes. Her conversation is like
Pompaloni's dish, my love--each one seasons to his taste. Oh, I like
Madame Marmet a great deal. Yesterday, after you had gone, I found her
alone and sad in a corner of the drawing-room. She was thinking
mournfully of her husband. I said to her: 'Do you wish me to think of
your husband, too? I will think of him with you. I have been told that
he was a learned man, a member of the Royal Society of Paris. Madame
Marmet, talk to me of him.' She replied that he had devoted himself to
the Etruscans, and that he had given to them his entire life. Oh,
darling, I cherished at once the memory of that Monsieur Marmet, who
lived for the Etruscans. And then a good idea came to me. I said to
Madame Marmet, 'We have at Fiesole, in the Pretorio Palace, a modest
little Etruscan museum. Come and visit it with me. Will you?' She
replied it was what she most desired to see in Italy. We went to the
Pretorio Palace; we saw a lioness and a great many little bronze figures,
grotesque, very fat or very thin. The Etruscans were a seriously gay
people. They made bronze caricatures. But the monkeys--some afflicted
with big stomachs, others astonished to show their bones--Madame Marmet
looked at them with reluctant admiration. She contemplated them like--
there is a beautiful French word that escapes me--like the monuments and
the trophies of Monsieur Marmet."
Madame Martin smiled. But she was restless. She thought the sky dull,
the streets ugly, the passers-by common.
"Oh, darling, the Prince will be very glad to receive you in his palace."
"I do not think so."
"Why, darling, why?"
"Because I do not please him much."
Vivian Bell declared that the Prince, on the contrary, was a great
admirer of the Countess Martin.
The horses stopped before the Albertinelli palace. On the sombre facade
were sealed those bronze rings which formerly, on festival nights, held
rosin torches. These bronze rings mark, in Florence, the palaces of the
most illustrious families. The palace had an air of lofty pride.
The Prince hastened to meet them, and led them through the empty salons
into the gallery. He, apologized for showing canvases which perhaps had
not an attractive aspect. The gallery had been formed by Cardinal Giulio
Albertinelli at a time when the taste for Guido and Caraccio, now fallen,
had predominated. His ancestor had taken pleasure in gathering the works
of the school of Bologna. But he would show to Madame Martin several
paintings which had not displeased Miss Bell, among others a Mantegna.
The Countess Martin recognized at once a banal and doubtful collection;
she felt bored among the multitude of little Parrocels, showing in the
darkness a bit of armor and a white horse.
A valet presented a card.
The Prince read aloud the name of Jacques Dechartre. At that moment he
was turning his back on the two visitors. His face wore the expression
of cruel displeasure one finds on the marble busts of Roman emperors.
Dechartre was on the staircase.
The Prince went toward him with a languid smile. He was no longer Nero,
but Antinous.
"I invited Monsieur Dechartre to come to the Albertinelli palace," said
Miss Bell. "I knew it would please you. He wished to see your gallery."
And it is true that Dechartre had wished to be there with Madame Martin.
Now all four walked among the Guidos and the Albanos.
Miss Bell babbled to the Prince--her usual prattle about those old men
and those Virgins whose blue mantles were agitated by an immovable
tempest. Dechartre, pale, enervated, approached Therese, and said to
her, in a low tone:
"This gallery is a warehouse where picture dealers of the entire world
hang the things they can not sell. And the Prince sells here things that
Jews could not sell."
He led her to a Holy Family exhibited on an easel draped with green
velvet, and bearing on the border the name of Michael-Angelo.
"I have seen that Holy Family in the shops of picture-dealers of London,
of Basle, and of Paris. As they could not get the twenty-five louis that
it is worth, they have commissioned the last of the Albertinellis to sell
it for fifty thousand francs."
The Prince, divining what they were saying, approached them gracefully.
"There is a copy of this picture almost everywhere. I do not affirm that
this is the original. But it has always been in the family, and old
inventories attribute it to Michael-Angelo. That is all I can say about
it."
And the Prince turned toward Miss Bell, who was trying to find pictures
by the pre-Raphaelites.
Dechartre felt uneasy. Since the day before he had thought of Therese.
He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again,
delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had
imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and
also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed
cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her;
that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated him. He
murmured bitterly in her ear: "I have reflected. I did not wish to come.
Why did I come?" She understood at once what he meant, that he feared her
now, and that he was impatient, timid, and awkward. It pleased her that
he was thus, and she was grateful to him for the trouble and the desires
he inspired in her. Her heart throbbed faster. But, affecting to
understand that he regretted having disturbed himself to come and look at
bad paintings, she replied that in truth this gallery was not
interesting. Already, under the terror of displeasing her, he felt
reassured, and believed that, really indifferent, she had not perceived
the accent nor the significance of what he had said. He said "No,
nothing interesting." The Prince, who had invited the two visitors to
breakfast, asked their friend to remain with them. Dechartre excused
himself. He was about to depart when, in the large empty salon, he found
himself alone with Madame Martin. He had had the idea of running away
from her. He had no other wish now than to see her again. He recalled
to her that she was the next morning to visit the Bargello. "You have
permitted me to accompany you." She asked him if he had not found her
moody and tiresome. Oh, no; he had not thought her tiresome, but he
feared she was sad.
"Alas," he added, "your sadness, your joys, I have not the right to know
them." She turned toward him a glance almost harsh. "You do not think
that I shall take you for a confidante, do you?" And she walked away
brusquely.
CHAPTER XIII
"YOU MUST TAKE ME WITH MY OWN SOUL!"
After dinner, in the salon of the bells, under the lamps from which the
great shades permitted only an obscure light to filter, good Madame
Marmet was warming herself by the hearth, with a white cat on her knees.
The evening was cool. Madame Martin, her eyes reminiscent of the golden
light, the violet peaks, and the ancient trees of Florence, smiled with
happy fatigue. She had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet
to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of her
visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate letters,
the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world but cloisters
chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads where she saw
the first blush of spring. Dechartre had modelled for Miss Bell a waxen
figure of Beatrice. Vivian was painting angels. Softly bent over her,
Prince Albertinelli caressed his beard and threw around him glances that
appeared to seek admiration.
Replying to a reflection of Vivian Bell on marriage and love:
"A woman must choose," he said. "With a man whom women love her heart is
not quiet. With a man whom the women do not love she is not happy."
"Darling," asked Miss Bell, "what would you wish for a friend dear to
you?"
"I should wish, Vivian, that my friend were happy. I should wish also
that she were quiet. She should be quiet in hatred of treason,
humiliating suspicions, and mistrust."
"But, darling, since the Prince has said that a woman can not have at the
same time happiness and security, tell me what your friend should
choose."
"One never chooses, Vivian; one never chooses. Do not make me say what I
think of marriage."
At this moment Choulette appeared, wearing the magnificent air of those
beggars of whom small towns are proud. He had played briscola with
peasants in a coffeehouse of Fiesole.
"Here is Monsieur Choulette," said Miss Bell. "He will teach what we are
to think of marriage. I am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle.
He does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not
see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you think of marriage?"
He took a seat and lifted in the air a Socratic finger:
"Are you speaking, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union between man and
woman? In this sense, marriage is a sacrament. But sometimes, alas!
it is almost a sacrilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality.
The importance given to it in our society is an idiotic thing which would
have made the women of other times laugh. We owe this prejudice, like
many others, to the bourgeois, to the mad performances of a lot of
financiers which have been called the Revolution, and which seem
admirable to those that have profited by it. Civil marriage is,
in reality, only registry, like many others which the State exacts in
order to be sure of the condition of persons: in every well organized
state everybody must be indexed. Morally, this registry in a big ledger
has not even the virtue of inducing a wife to take a lover. Who ever
thinks of betraying an oath taken before a mayor? In order to find joy
in adultery, one must be pious."
"But, Monsieur," said Therese, "we were married at the church."
Then, with an accent of sincerity:
"I can not understand how a man ever makes up his mind to marry; nor how
a woman, after she has reached an age when she knows what she is doing,
can commit that folly."
The Prince looked at her with distrust. He was clever, but he was
incapable of conceiving that one might talk without an object,
disinterestedly, and to express general ideas. He imagined that Countess
Martin-Belleme was suggesting to him projects that she wished him to
consider. And as he was thinking of defending himself and also avenging
himself, he made velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry:
"You display, Madame, the pride of the beautiful and intelligent French
women whom subjection irritates. French women love liberty, and none of
them is as worthy of liberty as you. I have lived in France a little.
I have known and admired the elegant society of Paris, the salons, the
festivals, the conversations, the plays. But in our mountains, under our
olive-trees, we become rustic again. We assume golden-age manners, and
marriage is for us an idyl full of freshness."
Vivian Bell examined the statuette which Dechartre had left on the table.
"Oh! it was thus that Beatrice looked, I am sure. And do you know,
Monsieur Dechartre, there are wicked men who say that Beatrice never
existed?"
Choulette declared he wished to be counted among those wicked men.
He did not believe that Beatrice had any more reality than other ladies
through whom ancient poets who sang of love represented some scholastic
idea, ridiculously subtle.
Impatient at praise which was not destined for himself, jealous of Dante
as of the universe, a refined man of letters, Choulette continued:
"I suspect that the little sister of the angels never lived, except in
the imagination of the poet. It seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an
exercise in arithmetic or a theme of astrology. Dante, who was a good
doctor of Bologna and had many moons in his head, under his pointed cap--
Dante believed in the virtue of numbers. That inflamed mathematician
dreamed of figures, and his Beatrice is the flower of arithmetic, that
is all."
And he lighted his pipe.
Vivian Bell exclaimed:
"Oh, do not talk in that way, Monsieur Choulette. You grieve me much,
and if our friend Monsieur Gebhart heard you, he would not be pleased
with you. To punish you, Prince Albertinelli will read to you the
canticle in which Beatrice explains the spots on the moon. Take the
Divine Comedy, Eusebio. It is the white book which you see on the table.
Open it and read it."
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6