When it came time to return to Rome, she climbed into a four-seat berline, cruelly ordering the sculptor to take the phaeton back alone. Along the way, Sarrasine resolved to abduct La Zambinella. He spent the entire day making plans, each more convoluted than the last. At nightfall, just as he was going out to inquire into the address of his mistress’s palace, he found a comrade of his on the doorstep. ‘My dear friend,’ said the visitor, ‘I am requested by our ambassador to invite you to his home this evening. He’s planned a magnificent concert, and when I tell you that Zambinella will be there—’ ‘Zambinella!’ cried Sarrasine, ecstatic to hear the name spoken. ‘I’m mad about her!’ ‘As are we all,’ his friend replied. ‘But if you truly are my friends, you, Vien, Lautherbourg, and Allegrain, you will lend me your aid for a small undertaking after the party,’ answered Sarrasine. ‘There’s no cardinal to be killed, I hope, no—’ ‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Sarrasine, ‘I ask of you nothing honest folk could not do.’ Soon the sculptor had in hand all he required for the success of his scheme. He was among the last guests to arrive at the ambassador’s, but he came in a traveling coach drawn by vigorous horses and driven by one of the ablest and most serviceable vetturini in Rome. A great crowd crammed the ambassador’s palace; only with difficulty did the sculptor, a stranger to all present, fight his way into the salon where Zambinella was singing. ‘I suppose it’s for the sake of the cardinals, bishops, and abbots in attendance,’ asked Sarrasine, ‘that she is dressed as a man, that she has a snood behind her head, crimped hair, and a sword at her side?’ ‘She? What she is that?’ replied the old lord to whom Sarrasine was speaking. ‘La Zambinella.’ ‘La Zambinella?’ the Roman prince snorted. ‘Are you joking? Where do you come from? Has any woman ever set foot on the stages of Rome? And do you not know what sort of creatures play women’s roles in the Papal States? It is I, monsieur, who gave Zambinella his voice. I paid that rogue’s every expense, down to his singing master. And do you know, the ingrate never so much as set foot in my house again! And to think: If he makes a fortune, he will owe it entirely to me.’ Prince Chigi might well have gone on talking for some time; Sarrasine had stopped listening. An awful truth had pierced deep into his soul. He was speechless with shock. He stood still, eyes glued to that false soprano. His fiery gaze exerted a sort of magnetic influence on Zambinella, for after a moment the musico whirled around to face Sarrasine, and suddenly his celestial voice cracked. He trembled! An involuntary murmur rose from the crowd, which he had up to then held as if bound to his lips. His discomposure complete, he broke off his song and sat down. Glimpsing from the corner of his eye the direction of his protégé’s gaze, Cardinal Cicognara turned toward the Frenchman; he bent to one of his ecclesiastical aides-de-camp, as if to ask the sculptor’s name. On obtaining the desired answer, he looked the artist over and whispered some order to an abbot, who hurried off at once. In the meantime, Zambinella recovered his poise and began anew the air that he had so capriciously interrupted, but he performed it badly, and despite all the crowd’s urgings refused to sing another note. This was his first display of the unpredictable willfulness for which he would later become famous, as famous as for his talent and vast fortune, which he is said to owe no less to his voice than to his great beauty. ‘She’s a woman,’ said Sarrasine, thinking himself alone. ‘There’s some secret intrigue behind all this. Cardinal Cicognara is deceiving the pope and the entire city of Rome along with him!’
The sculptor dashed out of the salon, gathered his friends, and led them to a dark, secret spot in the palace’s courtyard. Seeing that Sarrasine was gone, Zambinella seemed to recover some semblance of tranquillity. Toward midnight, after wandering for some time through the salons, in the manner of a man looking for an enemy, the musico left the party. On the palace’s threshold, he was deftly seized by a group of men, who gagged him with a handkerchief and bundled him into Sarrasine’s hired carriage. Zambinella huddled in one corner, too terrified to move. Before him he saw the terrible face of the artist, as silent as the dead. The trip was a short one. Abducted by Sarrasine, Zambinella soon found himself in a dim, barren studio. The singer sat numbly on a chair, not daring to glance at the nearby statue of a woman on which he saw his own features. He did not speak a word, but his teeth chattered. He was paralyzed with fear. Sarrasine paced back and forth in deep agitation. Suddenly he stopped before Zambinella. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he asked, in a choked, quiet voice. ‘Are you a woman? Cardinal Cicognara . . . ’ Zambinella fell to his knees, his only answer a bowed head. ‘Ah! You are a woman,’ cried the artist, beside himself, ‘for surely even a . . . ’ He left his sentence unfinished. ‘No,’ he resumed, ‘he would never be so base.’ ‘Ah! Do not kill me,’ cried Zambinella, dissolving into tears. ‘It was only to please my friends that I deceived you. They wanted some fun.’ ‘Fun!’ the sculptor answered, in an infernally caustic voice. ‘Fun, fun! You dared to toy with the passion of a man, you of all people?’ ‘Take pity on me,’ Zambinella answered. ‘I should put an end to your life here and now!’ cried Sarrasine, furiously drawing his sword. ‘But,’ he went on with cold disdain, ‘were I to plunge this blade into the very depths of your soul, would I find any sentiment to snuff out, any vengeance to satisfy? You are nothing. Man or woman, I would kill you! But . . . ’ Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust that forced him to turn his head, and his eye landed on the statue. ‘And all this is an illusion!’ he cried. Then, turning back to Zambinella, ‘For me, a woman’s heart was a refuge, a home. Do you have sisters who resemble you? No. Well then, die! But no, you shall live. By allowing you your life, am I not consigning you to something still worse than death? I care nothing for my blood nor my life, only my future and my fortunes in love. Your frail hand has sent my happiness crashing to earth. What hopes might I strip you of, for all those you have blighted? You have lowered me to your level. Loving and being loved are henceforth words without meaning for me, as they are for you. From this moment on, the sight of a real woman will always fill me with thoughts of this imaginary woman.’ He gestured despairingly toward the statue. ‘In my memory there will ever be a celestial harpy who will sink her claws into my every manly emotion, and who will stamp all other women with the mark of imperfection. Monster! You who can bring no new life into being, you have emptied my world of women forever.’ Sarrasine sat down before the distraught singer. Two large tears welled up in his dry eyes, rolled down his virile cheeks, and fell to the ground, two tears of rage, two bitter, stinging tears. ‘No more love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human sentiment!’ He snatched up a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such excessive force that he missed his mark. Thinking he had destroyed that monument to his folly, he picked up his sword and raised it high, making ready to dispatch the singer. Zambinella cried out sharply. At that moment three men entered, and all at once the sculptor fell to the ground, pierced by the blades of three stilettos. ‘On behalf of Cardinal Cicognara,’ said one of the intruders. ‘This is a blessing worthy of a Christian,’ the Frenchman answered in his final breath. These somber emissaries told Zambinella of the anxieties that had assailed his protector, who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage, ready to take him away the moment he was freed.”
“But,” said Madame de Rochefide to me, “what has this to do with the little old man we saw at the Lantys’?”
“Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of the statue of Zambinella and had it sculpted in marble. Today it can be seen in the Albani Museum. It was there that, in 1791, the Lanty family discovered it and commissioned a copy from Vien. The portrait that showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you’d seen him at one hundred, later served as a model for Girodet’s Endymion, whose essence you recognized in that Adonis.”
“But this Zambinella? Who is she? Or he?”
“Why, madame, Marianina’s great-uncle. Perhaps now you can imagine Madame de Lanty’s interest in concealing the source of a fortune that comes from—”
“Enough!” she interrupted,
with a commanding gesture.
We sat for a moment in deepest silence.
“Well?” I asked.
“Ah!” she cried, standing and pacing restlessly through the room. She came and looked at me, then said in a choked voice, “You have put me off life and passion for a long time to come. The monster aside, do not all human sentiments end just that way, in crushing disappointment? As mothers, our children destroy us by their wickedness or their distance. As wives, we are betrayed. As lovers, we are cast aside and forgotten. And friendship! Does it even exist? I would devote my life to God tomorrow, did I not have the gift of standing like an inaccessible rock amid all the tempests of life. If the Christian’s future is only one more illusion, at least it goes on unshattered until we are dead. Leave me now.”
“Ah!” I said. “You know how to punish a man.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes,” I answered, with a sort of courage. “As a conclusion to this story, fairly well known in Italy, I can offer you a consoling idea of the progress that contemporary civilization has achieved. They no longer make those wretched creatures there.”
“Paris,” she said, “is a very hospitable land; here all are welcome, fortunes draped in shame no less than fortunes bathed in blood. Crime and infamy have free rein and meet with nothing but sympathy; virtue alone finds no altar. Yes, only in heaven do pure souls have a place of their own! I say it with pride: No one will ever know me!”
And the marquise sat lost in thought.
Paris, November 1830
Translated by Jordan Stump
A PASSION IN THE DESERT
“THAT PERFORMANCE was terrifying!” she cried out as she left Monsieur Martin’s menagerie.
She was there to contemplate the dashing performer working with his hyena, as the advertising poster put it.
“How did he manage,” she went on, “to tame his animals to the point where he is so certain of their affection that—”
“That accomplishment, which seems so strange to you,” I interrupted her, “is in fact something very natural.”
“Oh!” she cried, allowing an incredulous smile to play over her lips.
“So you think that animals have no passions?” I asked her. “Here’s proof that we can give them all the vices belonging to our stage of civilization.”
She looked at me in astonishment.
“But,” I continued, “seeing Monsieur Martin for the first time, I confess that, like you, I could not contain my surprise. At that time I found myself seated next to an old veteran with a missing right leg. He struck me as an impressive figure. He had one of those intrepid heads marked by war and inscribed by Napoleonic battles. That old soldier had an aura of frankness and cheer about him that always makes me favorably disposed. No doubt he was one of those unflappable troopers who laugh at a comrade’s final rictus, cheerfully strip or enshroud him, command cannonballs to be fired with dispatch, deliberate swiftly, and deal with the devil without a qualm. After paying close attention to the menagerie’s owner as he was leaving the loge, my companion pursed his lips in a gesture of mocking disdain, with the sort of pout that allows superior men to single out the gullible. And when I exclaimed at Monsieur Martin’s courage, he smiled and said to me with a knowing look, shaking his head: ‘Same old story.’
“‘Same old story? What do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘I would be much obliged if you would explain this mystery to me.’
“After spending several moments exchanging introductions, we went to dine at the first restaurant we came across. Over dessert, a bottle of champagne coaxed this curious old soldier to refresh his memories in all their clarity. He told me his tale and I saw that he was right to cry out, ‘Same old story!’”
As I was seeing my companion home, she begged and pleaded with me until I agreed to write up the soldier’s confidences for her. The following day she received this episode from a saga that could be entitled “The French in Egypt.”
During the expedition undertaken in Upper Egypt by General Desaix, a soldier from Provence fell into the hands of the Maghrebis and was taken by those Arabs into the desert situated beyond the cataracts of the Nile. In order to put sufficient distance between themselves and the French army and so ensure their peace of mind, the Maghrebis undertook a forced march, stopping only at night. They made camp around a water source hidden by palm trees where they had buried provisions some time before. Having no idea that their prisoner might take it into his head to flee, they were content to bind his hands, and all went to sleep after eating a few dates and feeding their horses. When the bold man from Provence saw his enemies incapable of keeping watch over him, he used his teeth to steal a scimitar, then, employing his knees to steady the blade, he cut the cords that bound his hands and freed himself. He instantly grabbed a rifle and a dagger, provisions of dried dates, a small sack of barley, some powder and bullets, strapped on a scimitar, hopped on a horse, and headed quickly in the direction he thought the French army must have taken. Impatient to join his bivouac, he rode his already tired mount so hard that the poor animal expired, its flanks torn to shreds, leaving the Frenchman in the middle of the desert.
After walking for some time in the sand with all the courage of an escaped convict, the soldier was forced to stop at nightfall. Despite the beauty of the sky during the Oriental night, he hadn’t the strength to continue on his way. Fortunately, he was able to climb a promontory crowned by several palm trees, whose long visible fronds had awakened the sweetest hopes in his heart. His fatigue was so great that he stretched out on a piece of granite whimsically shaped like a camp bed and slept without a thought to defend himself. He had made the sacrifice of his life. His last thought was even a regret. He repented having left the Maghrebis, whose nomadic life was beginning to please him, now that he was far from them and quite helpless.
He woke with the sun, whose pitiless rays were falling directly on the granite and generating an unbearable heat. Now, our man from Provence had had the poor judgment to place himself on the other side from the shade projected by the verdant and majestic tops of the palm trees . . . He looked at those solitary trees and shivered! They reminded him of the elegant capitals, crowned with the long leaves, that distinguish the Saracen columns of the Arles cathedral. But after counting the palms, he cast his glance around him and felt the most terrifying despair sink deep into his soul. He saw a limitless ocean. The blackened sand of the desert extended unbroken in every direction, and it glittered like a steel blade struck by harsh light. He did not know whether this was a sea of ice or of lakes smooth as a mirror. Borne on waves, a mist of fire whirled above this moving earth. The sky was an Oriental burst of desolate purity, for it left nothing to the imagination. Sky and earth were on fire. The silence was frightening in its savage and terrible majesty. The immensity of the infinite pressed on the soul from all sides: not a cloud in the sky, not a breath of air, no undulation in the depths of the sand that shifted in small, skittering waves on the surface. Finally, the horizon ended like a sea in good weather, at a line of light as slender as the edge of a sword. The man from Provence squeezed the trunk of one of the palm trees as if it were the body of a friend; then, in the shelter of the straight, spindly shade that the tree inscribed on the granite, he wept, sitting and resting there, deeply sad as he contemplated the implacable scene that lay before him. He cried out to test his solitude. His voice, lost in the crevices of the heights, projected a thin sound into the distance that found no echo; the echo was in his heart: He was twenty-two years old, he loaded his rifle.
“There’ll always be time enough!” he said to himself, laying the weapon of his liberation on the ground.
Looking in turn at the black and the blue spaces around him, the soldier dreamed of France. He caught the delightful scent of Parisian rivulets, he remembered the cities he had passed through, the faces of his comrades, and the most trivial circumstances of his life. And his southern imagination soon conjured the stones of his dear Provence in the play of heat t
hat undulated above the extended sheet of the desert. Fearing all the dangers of this cruel mirage, he went down the other side of the hill he had climbed the day before. He felt great joy in discovering a kind of grotto naturally carved into the gigantic crags of granite that formed the base of this small peak. The remains of a mat told him that this refuge had already been inhabited. Then, several feet farther on, he saw palm trees laden with dates. The instinct that attaches us to life awoke in his heart. He hoped to live long enough for the passage of some Maghrebis, or perhaps indeed he would soon hear the noise of cannon; for just now Bonaparte was marching through Egypt.
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories Page 17