Books: The Red Lily, v3
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Anatole France >> The Red Lily, v3
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"I did not know; I wished to remain ignorant. I did not ask you
anything, from fear that you might not be able to continue to lie;
I was prudent; and it has happened that an idiot suddenly, brutally, at a
restaurant table, has opened my eyes and forced me to know. Oh, now that
I know, now that I can not doubt, it seems to me that to doubt would be
delicious! He gave the name--the name which I heard at Fiesole from Miss
Bell, and he added: 'Everybody knows about that.'
"So you loved him. You love him still! He is near you, doubtless.
He goes every year to the Dinard races. I have been told so. I see him.
I see everything. If you knew the images that worry me, you would say,
'He is mad,' and you would take pity on me. Oh, how I should like to
forget you and everything! But I can not. You know very well I can not
forget you except with you. I see you incessantly with him. It is
torture. I thought I was unfortunate that night on the banks of the
Arno. But I did not know then what it is to suffer. To-day I know."
As she finished reading that letter, Therese thought: "A word thrown
haphazard has placed him in that condition, a word has made him
despairing and mad." She tried to think who might be the wretched fellow
who could have talked in that way. She suspected two or three young men
whom Le Menil had introduced to her once, warning her not to trust them.
And with one of the white and cold fits of anger she had inherited from
her father she said to herself: "I must know who he is." In the
meanwhile what was she to do? Her lover in despair, mad, ill, she could
not run to him, embrace him, and throw herself on him with such an
abandonment that he would feel how entirely she was his, and be forced to
believe in her. Should she write? How much better it would be to go to
him, to fall upon his heart and say to him: "Dare to believe I am not
yours only!" But she could only write. She had hardly begun her letter
when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. Therese went down,
tranquil and smiling; her large straw hat threw on her face a transparent
shadow wherein her gray eyes shone.
"How beautiful she is!" exclaimed Princess Seniavine. "What a pity it
is we never see her! In the morning she is promenading in the alleys of
Saint Malo, in the afternoon she is closeted in her room. She runs away
from us."
The coach turned around the large circle of the beach at the foot of the
villas and gardens on the hillside. And they saw at the left the
ramparts and the steeple of St. Malo rise from the blue sea. Then the
coach went into a road bordered by hedges, along which walked Dinard
women, erect under their wide headdresses.
"Unfortunately," said Madame Raymond, seated on the box by Montessuy's
side, "old costumes are dying out. The fault is with the railways."
"It is true," said Montessuy, "that if it were not for the railways the
peasants would still wear their picturesque costumes of other times. But
we should not see them."
"What does it matter?" replied Madame Raymond. "We could imagine them."
"But," asked the Princess Seniavine, "do you ever see interesting things?
I never do."
Madame Raymond, who had taken from her husband's books a vague tint of
philosophy, declared that things were nothing, and that the idea was
everything.
Without looking at Madame Berthier-d'Eyzelles, seated at her right, the
Countess Martin murmured:
"Oh, yes, people see only their ideas; they follow only their ideas.
They go along, blind and deaf. One can not stop them."
"But, my dear," said Count Martin, placed in front of her, by the
Princess's side, "without leading ideas one would go haphazard. Have you
read, Montessuy, the speech delivered by Loyer at the unveiling of the
Cadet-Gassicourt statue? The beginning is remarkable. Loyer is not
lacking in political sense."
The carriage, having traversed the fields bordered with willows, went up
a hill and advanced on a vast, wooded plateau. For a long time it
skirted the walls of the park.
"Is it the Guerric?" asked the Princess Seniavine.
Suddenly, between two stone pillars surmounted by lions, appeared the
closed gate. At the end of a long alley stood the gray stones of a
castle.
"Yes," said Montessuy, "it is the Guerric."
And, addressing Therese:
"You knew the Marquis de Re? At sixty-five he had retained his strength
and his youth. He set the fashion and was loved. Young men copied his
frockcoat, his monocle, his gestures, his exquisite insolence, his
amusing fads. Suddenly he abandoned society, closed his house, sold his
stable, ceased to show himself. Do you remember, Therese, his sudden
disappearance? You had been married a short time. He called on you
often. One fine day people learned that he had quitted Paris. This is
the place where he had come in winter. People tried to find a reason for
his sudden retreat; some thought he had run away under the influence of
sorrow or humiliation, or from fear that the world might see him grow
old. He was afraid of old age more than of anything else. For seven
years he has lived in retirement from society; he has not gone out of the
castle once. He receives at the Guerric two or three old men who were
his companions in youth. This gate is opened for them only. Since his
retirement no one has seen him; no one ever will see him. He shows the
same care to conceal himself that he had formerly to show himself. He
has not suffered from his decline. He exists in a sort of living death."
And Therese, recalling the amiable old man who had wished to finish
gloriously with her his life of gallantry, turned her head and looked at
the Guerric lifting its four towers above the gray summits of oaks.
On their return she said she had a headache and that she would not take
dinner. She locked herself in her room and drew from her jewel casket
the lamentable letter. She read over the last page.
"The thought that you belong to another burns me. And then, I did not
wish that man to be the one."
It was a fixed idea. He had written three times on the same leaf these
words: "I did not wish that man to be the one."
She, too, had only one idea: not to lose him. Not to lose him, she would
have said anything, she would have done anything. She went to her table
and wrote, under the spur of a tender, and plaintive violence, a letter
wherein she repeated like a groan: "I love you, I love you! I never have
loved any one but you. You are alone, alone--do you hear?--in my mind,
in me. Do not think of what that wretched man said. Listen to me!
I never loved any one, I swear, any one, before you."
As she was writing, the soft sigh of the sea accompanied her own sigh.
She wished to say, she believed she was saying, real things; and all that
she was saying was true of the truth of her love. She heard the heavy
step of her father on the stairway. She hid her letter and opened the
door. Montessuy asked her whether she felt better.
"I came," he said, "to say good-night to you, and to ask you something.
It is probable that I shall meet Le Menil at the races. He goes there
every year. If I meet him, darling, would you have any objection to my
inviting him to come here for a few days? Your husband thinks he would
be agreeable company for you. We might give him the blue room."
"As you wish. But I should prefer that you keep the blue room for Paul
Vence, who wishes to come. It is possible, too, that Choulette may come
without warning. It is his habit. We shall see him some morning ringing
like a beggar at the gate. You know my husband is mistaken when he
thinks Le Menil pleases me. And then I must go to Paris next week for
two or three days."
CHAPTER XXIX
JEALOUSY
Twenty-four hours after writing her letter, Therese went from Dinard to
the little house in the Ternes. It had not been difficult for her to
find a pretext to go to Paris. She had made the trip with her husband,
who wanted to see his electors whom the Socialists were working over.
She surprised Jacques in the morning, at the studio, while he was
sketching a tall figure of Florence weeping on the shore of the Arno.
The model, seated on a very high stool, kept her pose. She was a long,
dark girl. The harsh light which fell from the skylight gave precision
to the pure lines of her hip and thighs, accentuated her harsh visage,
her dark neck, her marble chest, the lines of her knees and feet, the
toes of which were set one over the other. Therese looked at her
curiously, divining her exquisite form under the miseries of her flesh,
poorly fed and badly cared for.
Dechartre came toward Therese with an air of painful tenderness which
moved her. Then, placing his clay and the instrument near the easel, and
covering the figure with a wet cloth, he said to the model:
"That is enough for to-day."
She rose, picked up awkwardly her clothing, a handful of dark wool and
soiled linen, and went to dress behind the screen.
Meanwhile the sculptor, having dipped in the water of a green bowl his
hands, which the tenacious clay made white, went out of the studio with
Therese.
They passed under the tree which studded the sand of the courtyard with
the shells of its flayed bark. She said:
"You have no more faith, have you?"
He led her to his room.
The letter written from Dinard had already softened his painful
impressions. She had come at the moment when, tired of suffering,
he felt the need of calm and of tenderness. A few lines of handwriting
had appeased his mind, fed on images, less susceptible to things than to
the signs of things; but he felt a pain in his heart.
In the room where everything spoke of her, where the furniture, the
curtains, and the carpets told of their love, she murmured soft words:
"You could believe--do you not know what you are?--it was folly! How can
a woman who has known you care for another after you?"
"But before?"
"Before, I was waiting for you."
"And he did not attend the races at Dinard?"
She did not think he had, and it was very certain she did not attend them
herself. Horses and horsey men bored her.
"Jacques, fear no one, since you are not comparable to any one."
He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant
every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van,
are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god. This
idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order
too well to be exactly applied to life. It seemed to him that men were
grains in a coffee-mill. He had had a vivid sensation of this the day
before, when he saw Madame Fusellier grinding coffee in her mill.
Therese said to him:
"Why are you not conceited?"
She added few words, but she spoke with her eyes, her arms, the breath
that made her bosom rise.
In the happy surprise of seeing and hearing her, he permitted himself to
be convinced.
She asked who had said so odious a thing.
He had no reason to conceal his name from her. It was Daniel Salomon.
She was not surprised. Daniel Salomon, who passed for not having been
the lover of any woman, wished at least to be in the confidence of all
and know their secrets. She guessed the reason why he had talked.
"Jacques, do not be cross at what I say to you. You are not skilful in
concealing your sentiments. He suspected you were in love with me, and
he wished to be sure of it. I am persuaded that now he has no doubt of
our relations. But that is indifferent to me. On the contrary, if you
knew better how to dissimulate, I should be less happy. I should think
you did not love me enough."
For fear of disquieting him, she turned to other thoughts:
"I have not told you how much I like your sketch. It is Florence on the
Arno. Then it is we?"
"Yes, I have placed in that figure the emotion of my love. It is sad,
and I wish it were beautiful. You see, Therese, beauty is painful. That
is why, since life is beautiful, I suffer."
He took out of his flannel coat his cigarette-holder, but she told him to
dress. She would take him to breakfast with her. They would not quit
each other that day. It would be delightful.
She looked at him with childish joy. Then she became sad, thinking she
would have to return to Dinard at the end of the week, later go to
Joinville, and that during that time they would be separated.
At Joinville, at her father's, she would cause him to be invited for a
few days. But they would not be free and alone there, as they were in
Paris.
"It is true," he said, "that Paris is good to us in its confused
immensity."
And he added:
"Even in your absence I can not quit Paris. It would be terrible for me
to live in countries that do not know you. A sky, mountains, trees,
fountains, statues which do not know how to talk of you would have
nothing to say to me."
While he was dressing she turned the leaves of a book which she had found
on the table. It was The Arabian Nights. Romantic engravings displayed
here and there in the text grand viziers, sultanas, black tunics,
bazaars, and caravans.
She asked:
"The Arabian Nights-does that amuse you?"
"A great deal," he replied, tying his cravat. "I believe as much as I
wish in these Arabian princes whose legs become black marble, and in
these women of the harem who wander at night in cemeteries. These tales
give me pleasant dreams which make me forget life. Last night I went to
bed in sadness and read the history of the Three Calendars."
She said, with a little bitterness:
"You are trying to forget. I would not consent for anything in the world
to lose the memory of a pain which came to me from you."
They went down together to the street. She was to take a carriage a
little farther on and precede him at her house by a few minutes.
"My husband expects you to breakfast."
They talked, on the way, of insignificant things, which their love made
great and charming. They arranged their afternoon in advance in order to
put into it the infinity of profound joy and of ingenious pleasure. She
consulted him about her gowns. She could not decide to leave him, happy
to walk with him in the streets, which the sun and the gayety of noon
filled. When they reached the Avenue des Ternes they saw before them, on
the avenue, shops displaying side by side a magnificent abundance of
food. There were chains of chickens at the caterer's, and at the
fruiterer's boxes of apricots and peaches, baskets of grapes, piles of
pears. Wagons filled with fruits and flowers bordered the sidewalk.
Under the awning of a restaurant men and women were taking breakfast.
Therese recognized among them, alone, at a small table against a laurel-
tree in a box, Choulette lighting his pipe.
Having seen her, he threw superbly a five-franc piece on the table, rose,
and bowed. He was grave; his long frock-coat gave him an air of decency
and austerity.
He said he should have liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he
had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had
issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de
Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible,
and had made springs come out of rocks.
"So," he said, "I was, in a fashion, a Moses."
He fumbled in his pocket and drew from a book a letter, worn and spotted.
"This is what Madame Raymond, the Academician's wife, writes me.
I publish what she says, because it is creditable to her."
And, unfolding the thin leaves, he read:
"I have made your book known to my husband, who exclaimed: 'It is pure
spiritualism. Here is a closed garden, which on the side of the lilies
and white roses has, I imagine, a small gate opening on the road to the
Academie.'"
Choulette relished these phrases, mingled in his mouth with the perfume
of whiskey, and replaced carefully the letter in its book.
Madame Martin congratulated the poet on being Madame Raymond's candidate.
"You should be mine, Monsieur Choulette, if I were interested in Academic
elections. But does the Institute excite your envy?"
He kept for a few moments a solemn silence, then:
"I am going now, Madame, to confer with divers notable persons of the
political and religious worlds who reside at Neuilly. The Marquise de
Rieu wishes me to be a candidate, in her country, for a senatorial seat
which has become vacant by the death of an old man, who was, they say, a
general during his illusory life. I shall consult with priests, women
and children--oh, eternal wisdom!--of the Bineau Boulevard. The
constituency whose suffrages I shall attempt to obtain inhabits an
undulated and wooded land wherein willows frame the fields. And it is
not a rare thing to find in the hollow of one of these old willows the
skeleton of a Chouan pressing his gun against his breast and holding his
beads in his fleshless fingers. I shall have my programme posted on the
bark of oaks. I shall say 'Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when
bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves
similar to the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops
who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they
still retain these names before the Son of God. While they were nailing
Him to the cross, I was the good thief hanged by His side.'"
He lifted his stick and pointed toward Neuilly:
"Dechartre, my friend, do you not think the Bineau Boulevard is the dusty
one over there, at the right?"
"Farewell, Monsieur Choulette," said Therese. "Remember me when you are
a senator."
"Madame, I do not forget you in any of my prayers, morning and evening.
And I say to God: 'Since, in your anger, you gave to her riches and
beauty, regard her, Lord, with kindness, and treat her in accordance with
your sovereign mercy."
And he went erect, and dragging his leg, along the populous avenue.
CHAPTER XXX
A LETTER FROM ROBERT
Enveloped in a mantle of pink broad cloth, Therese went down the steps
with Dechartre. He had come in the morning to Joinville. She had made
him join the circle of her intimate friends, before the hunting-party to
which she feared Le Menil had been invited, as was the custom. The light
air of September agitated the curls of her hair, and the sun made golden
darts shine in the profound gray of her eyes. Behind them, the facade of
the palace displayed above the three arcades of the first story, in the
intervals of the windows, on long tables, busts of Roman emperors. The
house was placed between two tall pavilions which their great slate roofs
made higher, over pillars of the Ionic order. This style betrayed the
art of the architect Leveau, who had constructed, in 1650, the castle of
Joinville-sur-Oise for that rich Mareuilles, creature of Mazarin, and
fortunate accomplice of Fouquet.
Therese and Jacques saw before them the flower-beds designed by Le Notre,
the green carpet, the fountain; then the grotto with its five rustic
arcades crowned by the tall trees on which autumn had already begun to
spread its golden mantle.
"This green geometry is beautiful," said Dechartre.
"Yes," said Therese. "But I think of the tree bent in the small
courtyard where grass grows among the stones. We shall build a beautiful
fountain in it, shall we not, and put flowers in it?"
Leaning against one of the stone lions with almost human faces, that
guarded the steps, she turned her head toward the castle, and, looking at
one of the windows, said:
"There is your room; I went into it last night. On the same floor, on
the other side, at the other end, is my father's office. A white wooden
table, a mahogany portfolio, a decanter on the mantelpiece: his office
when he was a young man. Our entire fortune came from that place."
Through the sand-covered paths between the flowerbeds they walked to the
boxwood hedge which bordered the park on the southern side. They passed
before the orange-grove, the monumental door of which was surmounted by
the Lorraine cross of Mareuilles, and then passed under the linden-trees
which formed an alley on the lawn. Statues of nymphs shivered in the
damp shade studded with pale lights. A pigeon, posed on the shoulder of
one of the white women, fled. From time to time a breath of wind
detached a dried leaf which fell, a shell of red gold, where remained a
drop of rain. Therese pointed to the nymph and said:
"She saw me when I was a girl and wishing to die. I suffered from dreams
and from fright. I was waiting for you. But you were so far away!"
The linden alley stopped near the large basin, in the centre of which was
a group of tritons blowing in their shells to form, when the waters
played, a liquid diadem with flowers of foam.
"It is the Joinville crown," she said.
She pointed to a pathway which, starting from the basin, lost itself in
the fields, in the direction of the rising sun.
"This is my pathway. How often I walked in it sadly! I was sad when I
did not know you."
They found the alley which, with other lindens and other nymphs, went
beyond. And they followed it to the grottoes. There was, in the rear of
the park, a semicircle of five large niches of rocks surmounted by
balustrades and separated by gigantic Terminus gods. One of these gods,
at a corner of the monument, dominated all the others by his monstrous
nudity, and lowered on them his stony look.
"When my father bought Joinville," she said, "the grottoes were only
ruins, full of grass and vipers. A thousand rabbits had made holes in
them. He restored the Terminus gods and the arcades in accordance with
prints by Perrelle, which are preserved at the Bibliotheque Nationale.
He was his own architect."
A desire for shade and mystery led them toward the arbor near the
grottoes. But the noise of footsteps which they heard, coming from the
covered alley, made them stop for a moment, and they saw, through the
leaves, Montessuy, with his arm around the Princess Seniavine's waist.
Quietly they were walking toward the palace. Jacques and Therese, hiding
behind the enormous Terminus god, waited until they had passed.
Then she said to Dechartre, who was looking at her silently:
"That is amazing! I understand now why the Princess Seniavine, this
winter, asked my father to advise her about buying horses."
Yet Therese admired her father for having conquered that beautiful woman,
who passed for being hard to please, and who was known to be wealthy,
in spite of the embarrassments which her mad disorder had caused her.
She asked Jacques whether he did not think the Princess was beautiful.
He said she had elegance. She was beautiful, doubtless.
Therese led Jacques to the moss-covered steps which, ascending behind the
grottoes, led to the Gerbe-de-l'Oise, formed of leaden reeds in the midst
of a great pink marble vase. Tall trees closed the park's perspective
and stood at the beginning of the forest. They walked under them. They
were silent under the faint moan of the leaves.
He pressed her in his arms and placed kisses on her eyelids. Night was
descending, the first stars were trembling among the branches. In the
damp grass sighed the frog's flutes. They went no farther.
When she took with him, in darkness, the road to the palace, the taste of
kisses and of mint remained on her lips, and in her eyes was the image of
her lover. She smiled under the lindens at the nymphs who had seen the
tears of her childhood. The Swan lifted in the sky its cross of stars,
and the moon mirrored its slender horn in the basin of the crown.
Insects in the grass uttered appeals to love. At the last turn of the
boxwood hedge, Therese and Jacques saw the triple black mass of the
castle, and through the wide bay-windows of the first story distinguished
moving forms in the red light. The bell rang.
Therese exclaimed:
"I have hardly time to dress for dinner."
And she passed swiftly between the stone lions, leaving her lover under
the impression of a fairy-tale vision.
In the drawing-room, after dinner, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles read the
newspaper, and the Princess Seniavine played solitaire. Therese sat, her
eyes half closed over a book.
The Princess asked whether she found what she was reading amusing.
"I do not know. I was reading and thinking. Paul Vence is right:
'We find only ourselves in books.'"
Through the hangings came from the billiard-room the voices of the
players and the click of the balls.
"I have it!" exclaimed the Princess, throwing down the cards.
She had wagered a big sum on a horse which was running that day at the
Chantilly races.
Therese said she had received a letter from Fiesole. Miss Bell announced
her forthcoming marriage with Prince Eusebia Albertinelli della Spina.
The Princess laughed:
"There's a man who will render a service to her."
"What service?" asked Therese.
"He will disgust her with men, of course."
Montessuy came into the parlor joyfully. He had won the game.
He sat beside Berthier-d'Eyzelles, and, taking a newspaper from the sofa,
said:
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