You and I are that traveler. When younger, very young, we believed that we would able to live peacefully in certain splendid regions of amour. The eternal master pushed us forward, crying to us: “March! March!” With sadness—perhaps with despair, who knows?—we have turned our heads in order to contemplate one last time that fugitive horizon, which, for us, has circumscribed pure joy. It is necessary to renounce it henceforth.
“We have begun to march through arid plains where nothing grows but disappointment; except that if, at rare intervals, we happen to encounter a flower that still has some mysterious relationship with those of pure joy, we lean over it, we drink its rich colors with our eyes, we breathe in its perfume; we lend it ten times more tender attention than to all those that once surrounded us. We’re not unaware that it will wither before us, and that, in continuing on our way, we shall no longer have anything to the right and the left but disappointments, and more disappointments.
Get away! Entirely natural ideas—at least, I think so. But are they not yours?
Indeed! So, to get back to my subject, I desire to rise with you far above the affectations and hypocrisies that are usually exchanged between a man and a woman. I desire that we know exactly who we are and on what you can count in attaching ourselves to one another. I desire, in sum, that we play with love—play with love is a vile expression—other than with beguiling words and actions. And to begin with, I will tell you my life story scrupulously. I will tell you everything.
Yes, even why I remain veiled and why I am mute.
[…]
It is by virtue of a scruple that the reader will not, I hope, hold against me that I am leaving blank what Méril replied, all that being spoken and, I consequence, not contained on the paper. I know that I would have been able to reestablish it under his dictation, but as his role in the dialogue was only secondary, I prefer to leave it to the sagacity of the reader to substitute for it.
I was reading the conversation of the marquise aloud in front of Méril. When I arrived at that: “Yes, even why I remain veiled and why I am mute.” Méril took the sheet of paper from my hands and said:
“At that point she got up. She took a rose from the bouquet and slid it into her corsage. She went around the room again, as she had done when she arrived, she put her hand on my shoulder and she headed for the door.
“I ran after her. ‘When shall I see you again Madame?’
“With her pretty fingers, she made me a sign: In four days.
“Then she took me by the arm, led me to my piano, opened it, extended on the lectern a melody by Schubert, and made me a sign to sit down and play.
“I wasn’t half way through the piece when I turned around instinctively. She was no longer there!”
“That’s not very nice,” I said, laughing. “To make you play a piece by Schubert and go away in the middle—that’s at least disrespectful to poor Schubert and to you.”
“It’s you who aren’t being very nice,” said Méril, a trifle piqued. “I am, on the contrary, infinitely grateful to her for that mysterious exit. She disappeared like a dream; it was perfectly in keeping with the situation. The veil and the mutism demanded that it should be thus. A singular woman! Well, her singularity is exactly why I shall love her. My mind is already full of her, as you can imagine.”
“You’re not coming with me to Trouville, then?”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow.”
“No, my dear friend, the beautiful ladies of the beach have tongues that wag too much and faces too uncovered.
J’aime mieux mon Isis.
O gué!
J’aime mieux mon Isis.14
And Méril shook my hand and wished me bon voyage.
IX
I had made him promise to write to me. He kept his word, all the more willingly because it is a need for a man to talk about his little affairs. In truth, a man isn’t sorry, either, to know about the little affairs of others. In that regard, everything is arranged for the best.
I think that the reader, if this story interests him a little, will read over my shoulder the three letters that Méril sent me during the month I spent by the sea. Here they are, in chronological order.
8 August.
She came back yesterday, my dear friend, on the very day that she had indicated to me. I have put my arm round her waist. I have held her against my breast, and my lips have brushed her veil; but I confess, that kiss gave me a chill. To what face was it addressed? I don’t know. By virtue of a kind of boasting to myself, I wanted to redouble it, but, having perceived the attractive repugnance that she inspired in me, she interposed her beautiful hand.
Then, pulling away, she went to the piano and played the melody by Schubert, with a rare sentiment, taking it up precisely at the note that I had reached when she left the other day. That is a trivial detail, but which shows an infinite delicacy. It is one of the thousand nonsensicalities that amour produces.
I am reputed, as you know, to be quite a good musician in the group of our acquaintances. Well, frankly, I believe her to be far superior to me. She astonished me. How precious that musical language, the purest and most beautiful of all, will be between us. Everything that she wanted to say to me, I understood. And note how well the mysterious idiom fits in with the other mysteries. We shall veritably have an exceptional life, an exceptional amour. An apparition within reality!
The hardest part for me will be getting used to the eternal veil that makes the unhappy creature a woman without a face. It’s better, I know, that she has no face than if she showed one that was distant. In spite of probabilities, I have to suppose her beautiful beneath the veil; more beautiful than anyone is. The entire field of my imagination is free. I can compose for her the type that pleases me most: a broad but not very elevated brow, connecting eyebrows, large dark, almost rectangular eyes; a small nose with quivering nostrils; prominent lips, a chin fading away into the softness of the neck. That’s how I want her to be.
And who will belie me? No one—not even me, since I’m condemned never to know her features.
But will I be strong enough and poetic enough to accept that situation, so frightful and so tender?
I fear that I might not. I sense my impatiences, the rages that are familiar to you, the hand that itches to tear away her veil. What I perceive of her, the firm and gracious whiteness of her nape, the elegant slope of her shoulders, the rich slimness of her waist, all cries out to me: how can she not be beautiful? And if she’s beautiful, that veil is odious. No more veil!
At one moment, she stopped playing—it was the waltz from Faust—and turned toward me; in order to look at me, I think. I held out my hands to her. She placed hers in them, which I bore to my lips. Then, as if to render me that caress in some way, she ran her fingers over my beard.
“Since you don’t want me to see you,” I said, “blindfold my eyes, take off your veil, and let me kiss you.”
I can here you laughing from here, my dear friend—you find the idea droll; that’s a game of blind man’s bluff that surpasses your expectation. She laughed at it: a muffled and inarticulate laugh that gave me gooseflesh.
Then she got up from the piano, went to the table and wrote:
If you don’t want to be reasonable, I’ll go this instant, and you’ll never see me again.
“What do you call being reasonable?” I asked.
I call being reasonable never making any attempt on my face.
I felt quite content that she refused the proposal made in jest that made you laugh just now, for I would have had a great anxiety as to what my mouth might encounter.
“You’ve offered,” I said, “to tell me your life story, to tell me why you wear a veil; I’m still waiting.”
It’s necessary to wait a while. I’m writing for you, at the moment, but you have no need to write what you want to say; let’s see first what kind of man you are and what you think of yourself. I’m listening.
It was necessary for me
to do it, and this is how I did it. You, who know me well, my dear friend, will be my witness that I judged myself impartially.
“What kind of man am I, Madame? A very complex individual, and, in consequence, not easy to disentangle. What do I think of myself? I don’t really know exactly what to think. Sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on which side of the coin appears.
“There are times when I declare myself to be egotistical, skeptical, proud, cowardly, ignorant and stupid. There are others when I would swear that I’m devoted, naïve, modest, courageous, learned and clever.
Fundamentally, the mixture or alternation of those qualities or defects must make me a weak character, a banal nature, whatever my desire might be to distinguish myself.”
A weak character, that’s possible, she replied on the paper, a banal nature, no. Banal natures don’t look themselves up and down like that.
And I confess to you, dear friend, that I was very flattered that she made that difference, legitimate after all.
She added: But you’re not telling me what you’re worth in amour.
“What am I worth in amour, Madame? A great deal, I believe, if it’s a matter of loving. Not much, if it’s a matter of being loved.”
That’s a remark that might be pretty, she wrote, but that’s not what I want. You’re falling into drawing-room preciosity. Frankness, if you please.
“I have more frankness than you think. The great tenderness of which I’m capable is wearisome for women, and they don’t take long to become blasé on my account, whereas I never become blasé for the same reason.”
We’ll see about that, fine talker; go to your piano and play me a song of farewell.
“Already?”
Yes, it’s necessary.
I obeyed her, very sad. But while my fingers were running over the keys I looked behind me. She opened the door, put her hand to her veil as if to blow me a kiss, and disappeared.
That’s where we are, my dear friend.
17 August.
Yesterday evening, when I got home, the concierge handed me a rather voluminous letter, closed by two red seals. I recognized the handwriting of the address immediately.
“Who brought this?”
“A man.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“No, Monsieur.”
Scarcely was I in my apartment than I broke the seals. It was, as I suspected, the abridged history of her life that the Marquise was sending me. But why hadn’t she brought it herself? I’ll transcribe a few pages for you, in the certainty that they’ll interest you...
X. The Brief Memoirs of the Marquise
I was born in 1864. I am, in consequence, twenty-two years old at present. The first years of my life were spent in the part of Auxerrois known as La Puisaye, where my father possessed a magnificent estate.
My father, a man of great sense, simple heart and mild mores, much preferred the country to the city. He had, moreover, a pronounced fondness for hunting, which was to be fatal to him, since he perished miserably during a hunting party, killed by one of his maladroit companions.
My mother’s character was very different. Superficial, loving intrigue and a riotous existence, she had always dreamed of living in Paris. I cannot remember ever having seen her and my father in accord for five minutes on any subject whatsoever. I lived between them, more saddened than one can suppose in a child by that perpetual discord.
All my instincts drew me toward my father, and naturally I inclined in his direction. His unexpected death, although I was only twelve years old at that time, caused me a pain of which I was only relieved by other chagrins a long time after. Why, I said to myself, did death not fall upon my mother instead?
In truth, that regret was impious, and I accuse myself of it as an evil sentiment, but I believe that in my place, few children would have been virtuous enough not to feel it. The detached fashion in which my mother welcomed her widowhood contributed, in any case, to giving me that sentiment, and, it appears to me, to excusing it.
The first act of authority accomplished by my mother was to prompt the sale of the land that was as odious to her as it was dear to me. A thousand memories attached me to it, especially the saddest: the violent death of my father. I addressed the most touching supplications to my mother in vain; she took no account of them. She had her idea, an obsession, which was to double her income by capitalizing a property that did not have a high yield by comparison with industrial shares, and to go and live in Paris. The sale was held by auction and in total.15
My mother claimed that it was a great advantage for us, but that consideration, which has scant effect on me now, had none then. What moved me to tears was leaving, once and for all, the meadows in which I had often played during the haymaking with Bog Tom, my father’ favorite dog; the woods where I had so often, for pleasure, aided the poor to collect firewood, especially old Catuche, saying to her: Don’t worry, Catuche, about breaking dry branches that are still on the tree. If I were tall enough…;” and the river on the bank of which I sat so often to make crowns of myosotis; and our good farmers, who found that I wasn’t proud with them and had such a mild and affectionate way of calling my Mam’zelle Julie.
Oh, when I think about all that, I still weep.
It was also necessary to say adieu to my friend Tom, and that wasn’t the least cruel adieu. Poor dog! I pleaded his cause with all possible fire and emotion, in vain. My mother wouldn’t consent to taking him with us. He was given, at my request, to a neighboring small landowner, half-monsieur and half-peasant, who had known my father well and liked him a great deal.
My mother only took her trunks.
Having arrived in Paris we did not live together for long. My mother had nothing more urgent than to get rid of me by putting me in a boarding school.
If my father had been alive, the idea of boarding school would have horrified me; with him dead, I almost rejoiced in going there.
Thanks to the notions that good an enlightened man had give me, since the first glimmer of reason had appeared within me, I immediately found myself on a level with the other pupils of my age, and superior to them in some respects. The method of education employed by my father produced that superiority. He had not limited himself, as is almost always done, to instructing me in the rules of grammar, the elements of arithmetic and a few details of history, geography and literature. He reasoned everything before me, forcing me to do likewise. The slightest thing that we encountered in our studies, the simplest spectacle offered to us, was for him a subject of reflections so clear and precise that a child’s mind could only profit therefrom. He formed my mind and my conscience in the image of his own mind and conscience.
My mother, who never forgave him for his qualities, could not bear to see them reflected in me, and drew away further from me as I drew closer to him.
Bizarrely enough, I had exactly the same features as my mother, but the soul of my father, and, in consequence, his physiognomy, had passed into me. When she began to look at me, my mother, at the sight of the features that I had in common with her, seemed glad of that resemblance, but she did not take long to discover in the midst of those features an expression that was foreign to her, and that chilled her tenderness. I believe now that she was jealous of the fact that I did not have her character, as I had her face.
For my father it was the complete opposite. He had been very much in love with my mother. She still inspired a sort of passion in him, mingled with bitterness. In seeing represented in me what she had of beauty and what he had of goodness, he had everything he could wish. I was what he had dreamed of my mother becoming.
Sometimes, at the same moment, if I happened to express one of the petty current ideas obtained from my father, he caressed me with a sad gaze and my mother shot me a hostile glance. It was easier to sense than to explain my mother’s discontentment.
Although her attitudes generally displeased my father, he treated her with a rare mildness and indulgence. She could not hate
him, therefore, or hate me for marching with him. I imagine, however, that she had the chagrin typical of people who are in the wrong, who sense that they are in the wrong, but who do not want to conform.
My father had not only taken care of my moral education but also my physical education. He played with me as young comrade would have done. We ran, we jumped, and we devoted ourselves to gymnastic exercises. I was with him more frequently than with my mother.
In the boarding-school, it was necessary for me to live an enclosed life, entirely new to me. I had some difficulty accustoming myself to it. Music, which I began to learn at that time with all my heart, was perhaps the good fairy that aided me. Music operated another miracle; it filled to some extent the void that my father, in dying, had left within me. In addition, my mistresses and my companions did not take long to show me a keen sympathy—one of those sympathies that can be embarrassing, in that they set you apart. I was very pretty and very benevolent. That is the whole secret. In good faith, I would have liked to be a little less pretty, in order no longer to have been the cynosure of all eyes. People sensed that—without my saying anything, naturally—and loved me more because of it.
My mother sometimes came to visit me. I say “visit” because that is the right word. It was, unfortunately only too evident to me that she was not yielding to the impulsion of her maternal heart, but acquitting an obligation to society. And I was not alone in perceiving that. People talked about it at the school; they felt sorry for me.
Singular Amours Page 13