Books: The Red Lily, v2
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Anatole France >> The Red Lily, v2
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"Oh, Monsieur Choulette, so far as I am able to judge, you like very bad
women."
He replied with solemnity:
"Madame, you may collect the grain of calumiy sown by Monsieur Paul Vence
and throw handfuls of it at me. I will not try to avoid it. It is not
necessary you should know that I am chaste and that my mind is pure.
But do not judge lightly those whom you call unfortunate, and who should
be sacred to you, since they are unfortunate. The disdained and lost
girl is the docile clay under the finger of the Divine Potter: she is the
victim and the altar of the holocaust. The unfortunates are nearer God
than the honest women: they have lost conceit. They do not glorify
themselves with the untried virtue the matron prides herself on.
They possess humility, which is the cornerstone of virtues agreeable to
heaven. A short repentance will be sufficient for them to be the first
in heaven; for their sins, without malice and without joy, contain their
own forgiveness. Their faults, which are pains, participate in the
merits attached to pain; slaves to brutal passion, they are deprived of
all voluptuousness, and in this they are like the men who practise
continence for the kingdom of God. They are like us, culprits; but shame
falls on their crime like a balm, suffering purifies it like fire. That
is the reason why God will listen to the first voice which they shall
send to him. A throne is prepared for them at the right hand of the
Father. In the kingdom of God, the queen and the empress will be happy
to sit at the feet of the unfortunate; for you must not think that the
celestial house is built on a human plan. Far from it, Madame."
Nevertheless, he conceded that more than one road led to salvation. One
could follow the road of love.
"Man's love is earthly," he said, "but it rises by painful degrees, and
finally leads to God."
The Prince had risen. Kissing Miss Bell's hand, he said:
"Saturday."
"Yes, the day after to-morrow, Saturday," replied Vivian.
Therese started. Saturday! They were talking of Saturday quietly, as of
an ordinary day. Until then she had not wished to think that Saturday
would come so soon or so naturally.
The guests had been gone for half an hour. Therese, tired, was thinking
in her bed, when she heard a knock at the door of her room. The panel
opened, and Vivian's little head appeared.
"I am not intruding, darling? You are not sleepy?"
No, Therese had no desire to sleep. She rose on her elbow. Vivian sat
on the bed, so light that she made no impression on it.
"Darling, I am sure you have a great deal of reason. Oh, I am sure of
it. You are reasonable in the same way that Monsieur Sadler is a
violinist. He plays a little out of tune when he wishes. And you,
too, when you are not quite logical, it is for your own pleasure.
Oh, darling, you have a great deal of reason and of judgment, and I come
to ask your advice."
Astonished, and a little anxious, Therese denied that she was logical.
She denied this very sincerely. But Vivian would not listen to her.
"I have read Francois Rabelais a great deal, my love. It is in Rabelais
and in Villon that I studied French. They are good old masters of
language. But, darling, do you know the 'Pantagruel?' ' Pantagruel' is
like a beautiful and noble city, full of palaces, in the resplendent
dawn, before the street-sweepers of Paris have come. The sweepers have
not taken out the dirt, and the maids have not washed the marble steps.
And I have seen that French women do not read the 'Pantagruel.' You do
not know it? Well, it is not necessary. In the 'Pantagruel,' Panurge
asks whether he must marry, and he covers himself with ridicule, my love.
Well, I am quite as laughable as he, since I am asking the same question
of you."
Therese replied with an uneasiness she did not try to conceal:
"As for that, my dear, do not ask me. I have already told you my
opinion."
"But, darling, you have said that only men are wrong to marry. I can not
take that advice for myself."
Madame Martin looked at the little boyish face and head of Miss Bell,
which oddly expressed tenderness and modesty.
Then she embraced her, saying:
"Dear, there is not a man in the world exquisite and delicate enough for
you."
She added, with an expression of affectionate gravity:
"You are not a child. If some one loves you, and you love him, do what
you think you ought to do, without mingling interests and combinations
that have nothing to do with sentiment. This is the advice of a friend."
Miss Bell hesitated a moment. Then she blushed and arose. She had been
a little shocked.
CHAPTER XVIII
"I KISS YOUR FEET BECAUSE THEY HAVE COME!"
Saturday, at four o'clock, Therese went, as she had promised, to the gate
of the English cemetery. There she found Dechartre. He was serious and
agitated; he spoke little. She was glad he did not display his joy.
He led her by the deserted walls of the gardens to a narrow street which
she did not know. She read on a signboard: Via Alfieri. After they had
taken fifty steps, he stopped before a sombre alley:
"It is in there," he said.
She looked at him with infinite sadness.
"You wish me to go in?"
She saw he was resolute, and followed him without saying a word, into the
humid shadow of the alley. He traversed a courtyard where the grass grew
among the stones. In the back was a pavilion with three windows, with
columns and a front ornamented with goats and nymphs. On the moss-covered
steps he turned in the lock a key that creaked and resisted. He murmured
"It is rusty."
She replied, without thought "All the keys are rusty in this country."
They went up a stairway so silent that it seemed to have forgotten the
sound of footsteps. He pushed open a door and made Therese enter the
room. She went straight to a window opening on the cemetery. Above the
wall rose the tops of pine-trees, which are not funereal in this land
where mourning is mingled with joy without troubling it, where the
sweetness of living extends to the city of the dead. He took her hand
and led her to an armchair. He remained standing, and looked at the room
which he had prepared so that she would not find herself lost in it.
Panels of old print cloth, with figures of Comedy, gave to the walls the
sadness of past gayeties. He had placed in a corner a dim pastel which
they had seen together at an antiquary's, and which, for its shadowy
grace, she called the shade of Rosalba. There was a grandmother's
armchair; white chairs; and on the table painted cups and Venetian
glasses. In all the corners were screens of colored paper, whereon were
masks, grotesque figures, the light soul of Florence, of Bologna, and of
Venice in the time of the Grand Dukes and of the last Doges. A mirror
and a carpet completed the furnishings.
He closed the window and lighted the fire. She sat in the armchair, and
as she remained in it erect, he knelt before her, took her hands, kissed
them, and looked at her with a wondering expression, timorous and proud.
Then he pressed his lips to the tip of her boot.
"What are you doing?"
"I kiss your feet because they have come."
He rose, drew her to him softly, and placed a long kiss on her lips.
She remained inert, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Her toque
fell, her hair dropped on her shoulders.
Two hours later, when the setting sun made immeasurably longer the
shadows on the stones, Therese, who had wished to walk alone in the city,
found herself in front of the two obelisks of Santa Maria Novella without
knowing how she had reached there. She saw at the corner of the square
the old cobbler drawing his string with his eternal gesture. He smiled,
bearing his sparrow on his shoulder.
She went into the shop, and sat on a chair. She said in French:
"Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, and what will become of
me?"
He looked at her quietly, with laughing kindness, not understanding nor
caring. Nothing astonished him. She shook her head.
"What I did, my good Quentin, I did because he was suffering, and because
I loved him. I regret nothing."
He replied, as was his habit, with the sonorous syllable of Italy:
"Si! si!"
"Is it not so, Quentin? I have not done wrong? But, my God! what will
happen now?"
She prepared to go. He made her understand that he wished her to wait.
He culled carefully a bit of basilick and offered it to her.
"For its fragrance, signora!"
CHAPTER XIX
CHOULETTE TAKES A JOURNEY
It was the next day.
Having carefully placed on the drawing-room table his knotty stick, his
pipe, and his antique carpet-bag, Choulette bowed to Madame Martin, who
was reading at the window. He was going to Assisi. He wore a sheepskin
coat, and resembled the old shepherds in pictures of the Nativity.
"Farewell, Madame. I am quitting Fiesole, you, Dechartre, the too
handsome Prince Albertinelli, and that gentle ogress, Miss Bell. I am
going to visit the Assisi mountain, which the poet says must be named no
longer Assisi, but the Orient, because it is there that the sun of love
rose. I am going to kneel before the happy crypt where Saint Francis is
resting in a stone manger, with a stone for a pillow. For he would not
even take out of this world a shroud--out of this world where he left the
revelation of all joy and of all kindness."
"Farewell, Monsieur Choulette. Bring me a medal of Saint Clara. I like
Saint Clara a great deal."
"You are right, Madame; she was a woman of strength and prudence. When
Saint Francis, ill and almost blind, came to spend a few days at Saint
Damien, near his friend, she built with her own hands a hut for him in
the garden. Pain, languor, and burning eyelids deprived him of sleep.
Enormous rats came to attack him at night. Then he composed a joyous
canticle in praise of our splendid brother the Sun, and our sister the
Water, chaste, useful, and pure. My most beautiful verses have less
charm and splendor. And it is just that it should be thus, for Saint
Francis's soul was more beautiful than his mind. I am better than all my
contemporaries whom I have known, yet I am worth nothing. When Saint
Francis had composed his Song of the Sun he rejoiced. He thought:
'We shall go, my brothers and I, into the cities, and stand in the public
squares, with a lute, on the market-day. Good people will come near us,
and we shall say to them: "We are the jugglers of God, and we shall sing
a lay to you. If you are pleased, you will reward us." They will
promise, and when we shall have sung, we shall recall their promise to
them. We shall say to them: "You owe a reward to us. And the one that
we ask of you is that you love one another." Doubtless, to keep their
word and not injure God's poor jugglers, they will avoid doing ill to
others.'"
Madame Martin thought St. Francis was the most amiable of the saints.
"His work," replied Choulette, "was destroyed while he lived. Yet he
died happy, because in him was joy with humility. He was, in fact, God's
sweet singer. And it is right that another poor poet should take his
task and teach the world true religion and true joy. I shall be that
poet, Madame, if I can despoil myself of reason and of conceit. For all
moral beauty is achieved in this world through the inconceivable wisdom
that comes from God and resembles folly."
"I shall not discourage you, Monsieur Choulette. But I am anxious about
the fate which you reserve for the poor women in your new society. You
will imprison them all in convents."
"I confess," replied Choulette, "that they embarrass me a great deal in
my project of reform. The violence with which one loves them is harsh
and injurious. The pleasure they give is not peaceful, and does not lead
to joy. I have committed for them, in my life, two or three abominable
crimes of which no one knows. I doubt whether I shall ever invite you to
supper, Madame, in the new Saint Mary of the Angels." He took his pipe,
his carpet-bag, and his stick:
"The crimes of love shall be forgiven. Or, rather, one can not do
evil when one loves purely. But sensual love is formed of hatred,
selfishness, and anger as much as of passion. Because I found you
beautiful one night, on this sofa, I was assailed by a cloud of violent
thoughts. I had come from the Albergo, where I had heard Miss Bell's
cook improvise magnificently twelve hundred verses on Spring. I was
inundated by a celestial joy which the sight of you made me lose.
It must be that a profound truth is enclosed in the curse of Eve.
For, near you, I felt reckless and wicked. I had soft words on my lips.
They were lies. I felt that I was your adversary and your enemy; I hated
you. When I saw you smile, I felt a desire to kill you."
"Truly?"
"Oh, Madame, it is a very natural sentiment, which you must have inspired
more than once. But common people feel it without being conscious of it,
while my vivid imagination represents me to myself incessantly.
I contemplate my mind, at times splendid, often hideous. If you had been
able to read my mind that night you would have screamed with fright."
Therese smiled:
"Farewell, Monsieur Choulette. Do not forget my medal of Saint Clara."
He placed his bag on the floor, raised his arm, and pointed his finger:
"You have nothing to fear from me. But the one whom you will love and
who will love you will harm you. Farewell, Madame."
He took his luggage and went out. She saw his long, rustic form
disappear behind the bushes of the garden.
In the afternoon she went to San Marco, where Dechartre was waiting for
her. She desired yet she feared to see him again so soon. She felt an
anguish which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, appeased. She did
not feel the stupor of the first time that she had yielded for love; she
did not feel the brusque vision of the irreparable. She was under
influences slower, more vague, and more powerful. This time a charming
reverie bathed the reminiscence of the caresses which she had received.
She was full of trouble and anxiety, but she felt no regret. She had
acted less through her will than through a force which she divined to be
higher. She absolved herself because of her disinterestedness. She
counted on nothing, having calculated nothing.
Doubtless, she had been wrong to yield, since she was not free; but she
had exacted nothing. Perhaps she was for him only a violent caprice.
She did not know him. She had not one of those vivid imaginations that
surpass immensely, in good as in evil, common mediocrity. If he went
away from her and disappeared she would not reproach him for it;
at least, she thought not. She would keep the reminiscence and the
imprint of the rarest and most precious thing one may find in the world.
Perhaps he was incapable of real attachment. He thought he loved her.
He had loved her for an hour. She dared not wish for more, in the
embarrassment of the false situation which irritated her frankness and
her pride, and which troubled the lucidity of her intelligence. While
the carriage was carrying her to San Marco, she persuaded herself that he
would say nothing to her of the day before, and that the room from which
one could see the pines rise to the sky would leave to them only the
dream of a dream.
He extended his hand to her. Before he had spoken she saw in his look
that he loved her as much now as before, and she perceived at the same
time that she wished him to be thus.
"You--" he said, "I have been here since noon. I was waiting, knowing
that you would not come so soon, but able to live only at the place where
I was to see you. It is you! Talk; let me see and hear you."
"Then you still love me?"
"It is now that I love you. I thought I loved you when you were only a
phantom. Now, you are the being in whose hands I have put my soul. It
is true that you are mine! What have I done to obtain the greatest, the
only, good of this world? And those men with whom the earth is covered
think they are living! I alone live! Tell me, what have I done to
obtain you?"
"Oh, what had to be done, I did. I say this to you frankly. If we have
reached that point, the fault is mine. You see, women do not always
confess it, but it is always their fault. So, whatever may happen, I
never will reproach you for anything."
An agile troupe of yelling beggars, guides, and coachmen surrounded them
with an importunity wherein was mingled the gracefulness which Italians
never lose. Their subtlety made them divine that these were lovers, and
they knew that lovers are prodigal. Dechartre threw coin to them, and
they all returned to their happy laziness.
A municipal guard received the visitors. Madame Martin regretted that
there was no monk. The white gown of the Dominicans was so beautiful
under the arcades of the cloister!
They visited the cells where, on the bare plaster, Fra Angelico, aided by
his brother Benedetto, painted innocent pictures for his companions.
"Do you recall the winter night when, meeting you before the Guimet
Museum, I accompanied you to the narrow street bordered by small gardens
which leads to the Billy Quay? Before separating we stopped a moment on
the parapet along which runs a thin boxwood hedge. You looked at that
boxwood, dried by winter. And when you went away I looked at it for a
long time."
They were in the cell wherein Savonarola lived. The guide showed to them
the portrait and the relics of the martyr.
"What could there have been in me that you liked that day? It was dark."
"I saw you walk. It is in movements that forms speak. Each one of your
steps told me the secrets of your charming beauty. Oh! my imagination
was never discreet in anything that concerned you. I did not dare to
speak to you. When I saw you, it frightened me. It frightened me
because you could do everything for me. When you were present, I adored
you tremblingly. When you were far from me, I felt all the impieties of
desire."
"I did not suspect this. But do you recall the first time we saw each
other, when Paul Vence introduced you? You were seated near a screen.
You were looking at the miniatures. You said to me: 'This lady, painted
by Siccardi, resembles Andre Chenier's mother.' I replied to you: 'She
is my husband's great-grandmother. How did Andre Chenier's mother look?'
And you said: 'There is a portrait of her: a faded Levantine.'"
He excused himself and thought that he had not spoken so impertinently.
"You did. My memory is better than yours."
They were walking in the white silence of the convent. They saw the cell
which Angelico had ornamented with the loveliest painting. And there,
before the Virgin who, in the pale sky, receives from God the Father the
immortal crown, he took Therese in his arms and placed a kiss on her
lips, almost in view of two Englishwomen who were walking through the
corridors, consulting their Baedeker. She said to him:
"We must not forget Saint Anthony's cell."
"Therese, I am suffering in my happiness from everything that is yours
and that escapes me. I am suffering because you do not live for me
alone. I wish to have you wholly, and to have had you in the past."
She shrugged her shoulders a little.
"Oh, the past!"
"The past is the only human reality. Everything that is, is past."
She raised toward him her eyes, which resembled bits of blue sky full of
mingled sun and rain.
"Well, I may say this to you: I never have felt that I lived except with
you."
When she returned to Fiesole, she found a brief and threatening letter
from Le Menil. He could not understand, her prolonged absence, her
silence. If she did not announce at once her return, he would go to
Florence for her.
She read without astonishment, but was annoyed to see that everything
disagreeable that could happen was happening, and that nothing would be
spared to her of what she had feared. She could still calm him and
reassure him: she had only to say to him that she loved him; that she
would soon return to Paris; that he should renounce the foolish idea of
rejoining her here; that Florence was a village where they would be
watched at once. But she would have to write: "I love you." She must
quiet him with caressing phrases.
She had not the courage to do it. She would let him guess the truth.
She accused herself in veiled terms. She wrote obscurely of souls
carried away by the flood of life, and of the atom one is on the moving
ocean of events. She asked him, with affectionate sadness, to keep of
her a fond reminiscence in a corner of his soul.
She took the letter to the post-office box on the Fiesole square.
Children were playing in the twilight. She looked from the top of the
hill to the beautiful cup which carried beautiful Florence like a jewel.
And the peace of night made her shiver. She dropped the letter into the
box. Then only she had the clear vision of what she had done and of what
the result would be.
CHAPTER XX
WHAT IS FRANKNESS?
In the square, where the spring sun scattered its yellow roses, the bells
at noon dispersed the rustic crowd of grain-merchants assembled to sell
their wares. At the foot of the Lanzi, before the statues, the venders
of ices had placed, on tables covered with red cotton, small castles
bearing the inscription: 'Bibite ghiacciate'. And joy descended from
heaven to earth. Therese and Jacques, returning from an early promenade
in the Boboli Gardens, were passing before the illustrious loggia.
Therese looked at the Sabine by John of Bologna with that interested
curiosity of a woman examining another woman. But Dechartre looked at
Therese only. He said to her:
"It is marvellous how the vivid light of day flatters your beauty, loves
you, and caresses the mother-of-pearl on your cheeks."
"Yes," she said. "Candle-light hardens my features. I have observed
this. I am not an evening woman, unfortunately. It is at night that
women have a chance to show themselves and to please. At night, Princess
Seniavine has a fine blond complexion; in the sun she is as yellow as a
lemon. It must be owned that she does not care. She is not a coquette."
"And you are?"
"Oh, yes. Formerly I was a coquette for myself, now I am a coquette for
you."
She looked at the Sabine woman, who with her waving arms, long and
robust, tried to avoid the Roman's embraces.
"To be beautiful, must a woman have that thin form and that length of
limb? I am not shaped in that way."
He took pains to reassure her. But she was not disturbed about it. She
was looking now at the little castle of the ice-vender. A sudden desire
had come to her to eat an ice standing there, as the working-girls of the
city stood.
"Wait a moment," said Dechartre.
He ran toward the street that follows the left side of the Lanzi, and
disappeared.
After a moment he came back, and gave her a little gold spoon, the handle
of which was finished in a lily of Florence, with its chalice enamelled
in red.
"You must eat your ice with this. The man does not give a spoon with his
ices. You would have had to put out your tongue. It would have been
pretty, but you are not accustomed to it."
She recognized the spoon, a jewel which she had remarked the day before
in the showcase of an antiquarian.
They were happy; they disseminated their joy, which was full and simple,
in light words which had no sense. And they laughed when the Florentine
repeated to them passages of the old Italian writers. She enjoyed the
play of his face, which was antique in style and jovial in expression.
But she did not always understand what he said. She asked Jacques:
"What did he say?"
"Do you really wish to know?"
Yes, she wished to know.
"Well, he said he should be happy if the fleas in his bed were shaped
like you!"
When she had eaten the ice, he asked her to return to San Michele. It
was so near! They would cross the square and at once discover the
masterpiece in stone. They went. They looked at the St. George and at
the bronze St. Mark. Dechartre saw again on the wall the post-box, and
he recalled with painful exactitude the little gloved hand that had
dropped the letter. He thought it hideous, that copper mouth which had
swallowed Therese's secret. He could not turn his eyes away from it.
All his gayety had fled. She admired the rude statue of the Evangelist.
"It is true that he looks honest and frank, and it seems that, if he
spoke, nothing but words of truth would come out of his mouth."
He replied bitterly:
"It is not a woman's mouth."
She understood his thought, and said, in her soft tone:
"My friend, why do you say this to me? I am frank."
"What do you call frank? You know that a woman is obliged to lie."
She hesitated. Then she said:
"A woman is frank when she does not lie uselessly."
CHAPTER XXI
"I NEVER HAVE LOVED ANY ONE BUT YOU!"
Therese was dressed in sombre gray. The bushes on the border of the
terrace were covered with silver stars and on the hillsides the laurel-
trees threw their odoriferous flame. The cup of Florence was in bloom.
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