I can still see dear Melanski saluting me tenderly with his head and hand; then, when the ship is already too far from the shore for anyone on board to be recognized, I can at least recognize a handkerchief that I believe is being waved by my poor comrade, to which mine responds until, eventually, having nothing more to do, it wipes a commencement of tears from the edges of my eyelids.
Two hours later I climbed into a railway carriage in order to return to Paris, taking with me a long parcel wrapped in straw, which intrigued the baggage-handlers at the two stations greatly. It was the skeleton case, in which the skeleton, extended as in a coffin, was maintained by wads of paper.
At the Gare Saint-Lazare, two baggage-handlers, as they delivered the said package to me, murmured between themselves as if to interrogate me indirectly: “What’s that?”
The customs employee was more explicit, as was his right, and he asked me straight out.
“It’s a skeleton,” I told him. “Do skeletons play an entry fee, perhaps?”
A policeman who was prowling around whispered in the customs man’s ear: “Have him open it.”
I showed the messieurs the copper wires, which immediately freed me of the disagreeable suspicion that I had provoked.
That fatal item of furniture, and its even more fatal inhabitant, of which no cab wanted to take charge, and for which I was obliged to send two commissionaires to the station the following day, are now visible in the museum of osteology at the École de Médecine, to which I made a gift of it on Melanski’s behalf. Equally visible in the middle of the frontal bone is the portrait, which I glued back as neatly as possible.
I advise all people to whom things do not appear other than they are, all those who never mistake balloons for lanterns—all the sane, in brief—if they want to jeer at Melanski’s inconceivable aberration at close range, to observe how little that portrait combined with a skeleton resembles a woman, and how stupid one would have to be to be deceived by it. Stupid is the epithet found by Mauplaisant, who is a man of common sense, clear-sighted and antichimerical. Thus the reader, convinced not only by my story but by sight, that Melanski was stupid, will be able to award himself a considerable certificate of superiority over the poor hero of the story.
What more can I tell you? I wanted to talk to Monsieur Onfroy, the dissector of the woman and the painter of her portrait. He does not know very much about the life of the woman, but he gave me a few details about her demise and has put me on the track of learning the rest. Now, as there is no novel, in my opinion, that equals in interest the exact biography of the humblest among us, if that of Armandine Dedeman—as the skeleton was called when it was moving within living flesh—is revealed to me, I shall gladly give it to the public, rather than fatigue my head inventing more or less plausible fiction.
I am waiting for a letter from Melanski, for he promised to write to me from the first port in which the Love drops anchor, and another from the Captain, who is supposed to write to me without Melanski’s knowledge in order to verify, with regard to our friend’s mental health, his personal testimony.
And I shall know, for example, whether, contrary to my conjectures, his fits of somnambulism have continued in an environment completely different from that in which I saw them produced.
The malign reader who interrupted me once before has interrupted me again at the moment when I was about to stop speaking for myself.
“Pardon me,” he says, “but there’s something you haven’t thought of...”
“What’s that, Monsieur?”
“You appear to be insisting that your friend Melanski doesn’t know that he is a sleepwalker, or at least, that he was, for you feared that he might be affected unduly by learning that he is afflicted by that partial mental alienation, and yet here you are crying out to all and sundry that ‘Melanski is a sleepwalker, and he does this and that while asleep,’ Do you think that your story will never fall into his hands some day?”
“Yes, Monsieur. It isn’t on the Atlantic Ocean, or even in America, I assume, that my story will find him. When, after two years, Melanski returns to France, as I hope, and cured, as I’ll wager, if someone is uncharitable enough to reveal to him what it is better that he does not know, he will not be afflicted by it nearly as violently as he would be today. But the best response I can make to you, Monsieur, is that in two years’ time, no one, including you, will remember the little story that I have just told.”
THE MUTE WOMAN OF THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES
I
I have a very good friend named Alphonse Méril, who has a mania for knotting intrigues in the street—a deplorable and truly reprehensible mania.
It is how he spends his time.
He has nerve to say that he is not wasting it; that he is working in the most intelligent manner; that he is studying, not in the stout books in libraries, from which he does not learn very much, but in the little book with the double lock entitled The Heart of a Woman, from which one can learn everything.
Poor Alphonse! With that paradox, he has never done anything…except stupidities.
For ten years now he has been exercising his art, and in that ultimate art of pleasure he deploys, in truth, a fine talent. Today he is a consummate virtuoso, the Paganini of the genre.
How many times he has quit my arm in order to launch himself in pursuit of a blonde, a brunette, a chestnut or a redhead, or even an African woman! How many times I have been surprised to see that women, apparently very honest, do not disdain to reply to him and sustain his conversation!
He explained that to me himself:
“I conduct myself,” he said, “as if in a drawing room. I’m extremely polite, somewhat witty, and thanks to the habitude I have in discerning women, I immediately find the first word that it is necessary to say in order to make them listen to me. When the first word has passed, the others follow. Then I have another first word to find, the word that ought to force them to respond to me; I find it, and the conversation is engaged. It often happens that my adventure is limited to that, but it’s still charming—and instructive! Oh, my dear, what a treasure of observations you, who are a man of letters, would amass in my place! What subjects for novels, comedies and dramas would be offered to you! And how you would hold human nature under your hand! It’s a pity that such beautiful psychological materials remain unemployed.”
“Why don’t you employ them?”
“I’m too lazy; and then too, I probably wouldn’t have the genius. I can bring the quarry-stone, the wood and the iron, but when it’s a matter of building the house, of making use of then, I can’t do any more.”
“Bah!”
“I’m erudite, but not a historian, you understand.”
“You’re modest; I know many erudite men who believe themselves to be historians, as if by grace of the estate. In any case, my dear, I deem our kind of erudition a hundred times preferable to that of pedants who have only studied life in archeological tomes—except that you’re a frightful libertine and that spoils everything.”
II
Now that I’ve introduced Alphonse Méril to you, reader and you know what kind of man you’re dealing with, know that last July, as I was going along the Rue de Richelieu at one o’clock in the morning in a fiacre. I perceived Méril walking alongside the houses in the rain. At the same moment, he called out to my driver:
“Driver, are you free?”
The coachman replied: “No.”
In my turn, I shouted: “Stop, driver!”
An agreeable surprise for Méril. When he had climbed in beside me, I said to him: “My dear, you were walking head down just now like a man under the empire of some preoccupation. What’s happened to you today?”
“I’ve had a strange encounter,” he replied. “You see me still great troubled by it.”
“An encounter with a woman?”
“Of course! And a woman who has turned my mind upside down.”
“Get away!”
“I assure you that I haven�
��t got over it.”
“You’re amusing yourself piquing my curiosity, eh?”
“I’m not amusing myself at all; I don’t have the slightest desire to amuse myself. I’m submissive to a very serious and entirely fresh impression, for I was with that woman only a few moments ago.”
“Come on, tell me about it.”
“Pooh! I fear that it won’t have the same effect on you as on me, and that you’ll think that the strangest thing about the encounter is that I remain so afflicted by it. You see, my dear, a story, even very skillfully told, can’t translate certain vibrations that operate directly on the animal fibers of the spectator. In addition, it’s quite possible that I might have been particularly disposed just now to sense it excessively.”
“You’re wearying me. What happened?”
“Well, at about half past ten I was walking in the Champs-Élysées, on the right hand sight, around the café-concerts. A star was singing at the Alcazar. I stopped for moment with the crowd in order to listen, and then, the last bravos having did away, I started walking again, darting glances his way and that, as always, in quest of adventures. Level with the Café des Ambassadeurs, at the foot of a tree, a woman was sitting, profoundly veiled. Her pose had something very melancholy about it. Her feet on the crossbar of a chair, her elbow on her knees, and her chin in her hand—a marvelous hand, brilliant with gemstones—she was maintaining a complete immobility.
“Her attire was both simple and expensive. I noticed that she did not have the chair next to her that all women seeking fortune reserve. In any case, her attitude was not at all provocative; it was, on the contrary, because of that manner of isolating herself that she was provoking surprised glances from the passers-by.
“A monsieur, seduced liked me by such strangeness, started walking back and forth in front of her with the evident design of attracting her attention and finding a commencement of discourse. I was conducting myself in accordance with the same principles. He must have noticed that, so, each of us was wondering who would take the initiative. It was me. I approached the lady and, in my softest voice, I murmured: ‘If one had to make a statue of Discretion, Madame, I believe that you would be a good model!’
“And as she did not reply, I added: ‘Undoubtedly, you judge that in speaking to you thus without having the honor of knowing you, I depict well enough the marionette of indiscretion.’
“And as she made no reply again: ‘Isn’t that true, Madame?’
“She didn’t say a word, or move a muscle. I started to walk on, but then I changed my mind. ‘You give the impression of being infinitely sad. I assure you that I’m in the same boat. A bad thing, being sad! If you’d like to aid me, we could make single parcel of our respective chagrins and go and throw ourselves in the Seine.’
“Same silence.
“Slightly disconcerted to see sallies that, if not witty, were at least gallant and original, welcomed so coldly, but resolved not to admit myself beaten yet, I continued idling there, while observing her at close range. However, it was eleven o’clock. The café-concerts were closing; the crowds were flowing away. That entire section of the Champs-Élysées was deserted. There was no one left but the veiled lady and me. She did not show any sigh of leaving.
“I went back to her. ‘Madame,’ I said to her, ‘here we are, all alone. A moment ago, if you didn’t reply to me, perhaps it’s because you feared the curious. Now that peril has disappeared. Tell me squarely to leave you alone, and I’m certainly too polite not to obey you; on the other hand, if it wouldn’t displease you to chat with me, say so with the same sincerity.’
“I was standing there in front of her, and I was very fearful that she would send me away. Nothing—except that she extended her lovely hand, as if to discover whether it was raining. ‘Yes, Madame,’ I told her, ‘it’s raining, and you can’t go home on foot. Would you permit me to hail a cab for you?’
“This time, the veiled woman shook her head, and then got up…and I followed her. We were walking side by side. I said many things that came into my head, all polite, delicate and capable of making the most serious woman smile. She continued to remain silent, but at least she responded by signs of the head that showed me that she was tolerating my presence.
“We took the Rue Rivoli, and then the Rue du Dauphin.
“The veiled woman stopped outside a travelers’ hotel, on the threshold of which the proprietress was standing. Was she staying here? I didn’t know, but out of discretion, I kept my stance.
“After a couple of minutes, she came back and we continued walking forward. She led me into the garden of the Palais-Royal. She sat down. I sat down next to her. The evening was hot, as you know. In spite of the commencing storm, there was an absolute lack of air. I was stifling; so was the lady. On the far side of me, she moved her veil from time to time in order to wipe her face.
“‘Why,’ I said to her, ‘don’t you get some air here? What a passion for incognito! And what is the purpose of all the mystery? Lift your veil, Madame, I beg you, Lift it.’
“She contented herself with a slight shrug of the shoulders. And as, on seeing that movement. I advanced my head mischievously in order to perceive her revealed profile, she let her veil fall and placed her hands over it.
“‘Oh.’ I exclaimed, ‘don’t think that I want to see you against your will. But please, speak to me. What’s the point of this comedy? You’ve amused yourself long enough. Come on, burst out laughing, so that I can hear the sound of our voice.’
“Again she shrugged her shoulders slightly. It did not seem to me that those shrugs signified any disdain; they rather seemed to express a mild reproach that she had addressed to me because I was understanding things so poorly.
“I had believed until then that it was only an affectation on her part. I began to suppose that, if she was so profoundly veiled and did not speak, it might perhaps be for very serious reasons.
“About her face I dared not say anything, but on the question of her silence I was less uneasy.
“‘Can it be that you’re mute, Madame?’
“She nodded affirmatively two or three times.
“‘It’s because of an accident, then, for you’re not deaf?’
“Same sign.
“‘But just now, I saw you chatting to a hotel proprietress in the Rue du Dauphin?’
“Energetic sign of negation and a mime of sorts, which signified: I didn’t say anything; it was only the mistress of the hotel who spoke.
“Still incredulous, I went on: ‘Well, since you’re mute, talk to me with the aid of the deaf-mute alphabet. I know it and I’ll understand you.’
“Immediately, she took the glove of her right hand, and made me the sign that corresponded to the spoken instruction: ‘Go away!’
“‘You want me to go away,’ I said. ‘That’s harsh of you. You can’t imagine how you interest me, not how much joy I experience, being a dreamer, in encountering someone who isn’t like everyone else. No, Madame, you can’t imagine what magnetism, perhaps fatal, drew me toward you.’
“Third little shrug of the shoulders.
“‘Listen to me; they aren’t vain words that I’m going to say to you—the words that one says to just any woman. I’m perfectly sincere. So, Madame, without loving you yet, I already experience for you a bizarre sympathy—let’s call it romantic, if you like...at any rate, a sympathy such that I can’t bear the idea of not seeing you again.’
“Fourth little shrug of the shoulders.
“‘I consent to go away, since you order me to do so; but promise me that tomorrow, at eleven o’clock in the evening or any other hour you wish, I’ll find you in the Champs-Élysées, near the tree where I saw you think evening. Will you promise me that?’
“Negative sign.”
“‘Would you care to do it another day?’
“Second negative sign.
“‘So I’ll never see you again?’
“Third negative sign.
“‘Do
I displease you? Oh, be frank; it would afflict me, but it wouldn’t surprise me.’
“Fourth negative sign, and fifth little shrug of the shoulders.
“It was midnight. By a few rolls, the drum announced the closure of the gardens. She got up. I did likewise. But, extending her arm in the direction of the Rue de Valois, she indicated that direction to me, while she headed for the Rue de Richelieu.
“‘Yes, yes,’ I said, and I continued walking by her side. ‘Anything you wish, as long as I see you again. Don’t give me to understand that it’s impossible. What would render it impossible?’
“She stopped dead in front of me, and, with an abruptness of gesture of which you can have no idea, and abruptness that surprised and alarmed me, she put the tips of her fingers almost level with my eyes.
“I made an involuntary movement of recoil as if before a dagger; then, recovering from my foolish fear, I examined the hand. On one of the fingers, among three or four rings, there was one that had the crown of a marquise attached to it by a little chain. And the veiled lady advanced the crown along her finger with a singular gesture that had something about it like a gesture of attack or malediction.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s the crown of a marquise.’
“Affirmative sign.
“‘But I don’t see very clearly, Madame, I confess, what that crown has to do with it. What does it matter that you’re a marquise? I might not have a title analogous to yours, nor any heraldic title, but I’m quite certain that that doesn’t leap to the eyes.’
“I had said those few words in a slightly piqued tone, because I found it strange that her quality as a marquise appeared to her immediately to put a distance between us.
“She hastened to make a very energetic negative sign with both her head and he hand, signifying: You’re absolutely mistaken. Nothing is further from my thoughts than such vanity. I willingly consider you as my equal.
“‘Perhaps you mean to indicate that you’re married?’
“Affirmative sign.
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