“Yes, yes, but here’s another explanation, that does much more honor to the genius of Signorelli, and which I think more likely. Notice that troop of skeletons arranged to the right of the fresco. To see them holding their sides like that, doesn’t it seem to you that they’re bursting into laughter at the singular idea that the Eternal has wanted to revive eternally those who have already had too much of their temporary life? Do you not think that the attitude implies a protest against the resurrection and a refusal to submit to it? Decidedly, Signorelli was a great mind.”
But Mr. Little was scarcely paying attention to what I was saying; his mind was evidently elsewhere.
“What are you thinking about, Mr. Little?”
“I’m thinking that I might see my dear Betty again in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, in the flesh and bone, and that if, as I sincerely hope, we are both among the elect, it will be possible for us to embrace one another, before going to sit down side by side at the right hand of God.
I looked at Mr. Little with a certain astonishment, for it seemed to me to be rather premature on his part to aspire to the Last Judgment in order to see his wife again in the flesh and bone when he presently had her on his arm. I did not permit myself any allusion on that subject, however, while hoping privately that Mrs. Little, when she was resuscitated, would not be resuscitated as I saw her in Italy—which is to say, absolutely drab—nor even as I had seen her in Spain, when she was already passably dreary, but far more brilliant than she had ever been in this miserable life.
While one of the sacristans showed us that marvelous chapel, two emaciated black cats, which seemed to have been sent to us as a deputation by Signorelli’s Antichrist rubbed against our legs and Mrs. Little’s skirts, and then crouched down on the red steps of the altar, which they seemed to be guarding like two sentinels.
“Look,” Mr. Little said to me. “Astaroth and Beelzebub!”
“Yes,” I replied. And I added, laughing: “The chapter of priests, although the church is completely deserted at the moment when they are singing the glory of God with such lung-power, if not so much soul, cannot say that there was no so much as a cat here, since there are two of them, not to mention us.”
On emerging from the cathedral we went to see the ruins of the amphitheater, today converted into a garden. What struck us most in those ruins—or rather, that garden—was a white marble statue, cruelly tested by time, of I know not what Pope, which seemed to personify the decadence of the papacy itself in our epoch. The two arms were broken, the nose flattened, the tiara broken—and to that broken tiara a washing-line was attached, laden with linen in the process of drying.
A remarkable detail: that statue of a vicar of Christ, thus reduced to the status of a drying machine, had its back turned to a splendid view.
“Decidedly,” Mr. Little said to me, rather shrewdly, “that mutilated statue is a good emblem of the papacy, which has turned its back on the future, as the pope has turned his to one of the most beautiful panoramas one might see.”
While our attention was, so to speak, shuttling between the statue and the landscape displayed behind it, the tenant of the garden, a laundress, I believe, was gathering a large bouquet of lilacs. As we were about to take our leave, she approached Mrs. Little very graciously to offer it to her, doubtless hoping that it might earn her a larger tip or, as the Italians say, a buona mano.
“Signora, favorisca d’accettare questo massi di fiori.”
But Mrs. Little made no movement of the hand to take it, and it was Mr. Little who refused the concierge’s offer in English, under the pretext that Mrs. Little did not have the free use of her hands, and, being in addition very ill, she dreaded odorous flowers.
I took charge of translating Mr. Little’s refusal into Italian, which I naturally did in such a manner as to render it less harsh, to the extent that that was possible. I softened it further by taking a spring of lilac from the bouquet and even further by giving the good woman a double lira—which is to say, two francs.
V
In the evening, shortly before midnight, we left Orvieto in a sort of down-at-heel post chaise, which was to take us to Rome in seventeen hours. We had been scalped at the Locanda delle Belle Arti, as witness the two cups of tea served in the morning and the evening to Mrs. Little, which had cost five francs apiece.
When Mr. Little, who had been kind enough to take charge of settling the bill, and to whom I reimbursed my proportionate contribution later, had told me about the exaggerated tariff for the cup of tea, adding: “If the tea had even been good—but I couldn’t drink it,” I thought it my duty to intervene with the proprietor. The latter, probably sniffing in me, with the finesse appropriate to an Italian, an authentic Frenchman, even though he had only head me speak English with Mr. Little, replied to me mezza voce:
“Se fosse il tè per lei, l’avrebbe pagato due soltante lire e mezza, ma per inglesi…!”31
I admired the profound rascality of the hotelier all the more because what I had consumed myself had been charged appropriately; I admired it so much that I did not have the strength to insist.
In spite of the petty aggravation that resulted from that, which was further aggravated at the moment of our departure by the stable-hand, who asked us without rhyme or reason in English for a tip, which we did not owe him—he must have learned to ask for it in all languages, even Russian—and in spite of the jolts of the carriage, of which we felt the reverberations, and even in spite of the vague apprehension we had by night in the Roman countryside of being stopped and ransomed by bandits, we slept quite well, and Mr. Little and I scarcely exchanged three or four words before dawn.
At the relay in Viterbe, where we arrived after daybreak, I got down in order to stretch my legs, and Mr. Little did likewise, but his wife did not budge.
Seeing that she remained immobile, he said to her, taking her hand: “You want to rest, then, my dear Betty?”
And, the latter having replied to that: “Ho yes, Tom,” he did not insist any further.
We were very desirous of breaking a crust, as they say, for we were beginning to feel hungry, but it was necessary for us to replace that exercise with another, less comforting one, which was putting a coin in the hand of a retired postillion with a wooden leg, who resembled Hyacinthe, the actor at the Palais-Royal, to such a degree, that one might have thought he was his twin brother, tested by the misfortunes of war.
Although, at Monterose we had again to grease the palm of an irreproachably-dressed, even well-to-do, gentleman who looked like a good bourgeois but who asked us or something per il povero conduttore, at least it was possible for us to have lunch.
While we were eating with a real appetite, sitting facing one another, while Mrs. Little remained in the vehicle, as at Viterbe, I said to Mr. Little: “Aren’t you going to send the worthy Mrs. Little a bowl of soup?”
He immediately looked at me reproachfully, without replying to my question. Although I was a little troubled by that, I added: “You know that we’ll arrive in Rome quite late, and that between now and then, Mrs. Little might suffer from hunger.”
Again he shot me a glance that went straight to my heart, saying: “Come, come, Monsieur le Bref...”
I dared not persist, for I saw that, without meaning to, I had caused the excellent man pain, but in my conscience, it was impossible for me to comprehend how a man who showed so much solicitude for his wife in other regards could be so indifferent in that instance.
We returned silently to our vehicle, stopped outside the door of the inn, and at the doors of which three or four beggars where wailing in a lamentable fashion while the postillion attached fresh horses.
“Signora, per l’amor d’Iddio, un poveretto balocco!”32
They had sung that in every key, and other things appropriate to soften the most insensible heart, or at least to force the best barricaded purse, but Mrs. Little did not budge. Pitilessly, she let them warble.
Apparently indignant at such aridity of soul, t
he postillion, who might perhaps have suffered from it on his own account, cracked his whip over the ears of the rabble, saying: “Andante via dunque…non si dona niente.”33
Meanwhile, Mr. Little gave them an order in English to leave his wife alone, and they understood it because of his tone and his gesture. But as he was an excellent man, easily moved, with a sincere pity even for a feigned poverty, he took a few sous out of his pocket, which he distributed to the beggars.
“Perhaps,” I said, “Mrs. Little has already given something.”
“No,” said Mr. Little, impatiently. “How do you think she can have given anything?”
I understood that I had just committed another gaffe, and I climbed into the carriage in a crestfallen fashion, bowing to the perfectly immobile Mrs. Little.
Scarcely had we begun rolling along the road again, than Mr. Little said to me: “My dear Monsieur Le Bref, since I had the pleasure of encountering you in the cathedral at Pisa, I have had it on the tip of my tongue several times to ask you a question, but, fearing that you might see it as a sharp reproach, I have kept silent. I have not forgotten, in fact, that I owe you gratitude for having saved my life twice, and I do not believe I have the right to hold anything against you whatsoever.”
“Eh! Good God, what could you possible hold against me, my dear Mr. Little?”
“I repeat to you that I don’t recognize the right to hold anything whatsoever against you.”
“But explain to me, I beg you, how I might have incurred your rancor.”
Mr. Little then held out his hand to me, which I shook, and he said to me, with tears in his eyes and his voice: “How is it that you, such a worthy fellow, a man of so much heart, did not respond with a single sympathetic word to the letter in which I announced to you, three years ago, the death of my poor wife?”
“The death of your wife? Come, come, Mr. Little, is it really you who is joking in that fashion, and in front of Mrs. Little, whom your joke might shock, with just entitlement?”
“I’m not joking at all, for it’s certainly not a joking matter. And since you mention joking, permit me to say that that is exactly what you have seemed to be doing, since we met in Pisa, and you were still doing just now, notably in advising me to send a bowl of soup to Mrs. Little.”
“Me, joking?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, that’s too much! You want to make me believe that it’s me who is joking, when it’s you! You’re typical of our homeland, where that might pass as the last word in ‘humor’!”
“I swear to you, Monsieur Le Bref, on everything I hold most sacred, that, unfortunately, I’m not joking.”
“But then, that makes me dread, Mr. Little, that you are under the influence of…how shall I put it?...a temporary disturbance of your mental faculties.”
“You didn’t receive, then, the letter in which I informed you of the death of my wife?” said Mr. Little, fixing me with a stare that, in truth, had nothing distracted about it.
“No, truly, I didn’t receive it, and I confess to you that I’m glad, since, definitively, here is Mrs. Little now, if not well, at least alive...”
As I said that I looked at Mrs. Little, expecting some acquiescence from her, or at least a burst of laughter—but there was nothing!
“You sincerely believe that my poor wife is alive?” said Mr. Little.
“Of course! Unless I’m seeing things.”
“Oh my dear friend!” he cried, then, shaking my hands, “you can’t imagine how much joy that causes me!”
I understood Mr. Little less and less, and, finding the joy he was manifesting because I considered Mrs. Little, who was sitting in front of me, to be alive, and his reproach for not having written to him on the occasion of her death, to be equally incoherent, I thought that he had definitely gone mad.
I no longer doubted that he had gone mad on seeing him immediately embrace Mrs. Little, something that he had never permit himself to do before in my presence, and hearing him repeat, in the midst of real tears: “Betty, my dear Betty....”
“Calm down, my dear friend,” I said to him, very emotional myself. “Calm down.” And I died, in a low voice: “You’ll frighten your wife.”
But he replied to me loudly: “Eh! How do you expect me to frighten her, poor woman, since she’s been dead for three years?”
“That’s true,” I said, as if to agree with his mania. “But then, who is this lady, who resembles Mrs. Little so perfectly, so far as I can judge through her veil, and whom you just embraced, calling her Betty, and to whom, after all, I’ve spoken twenty times since the day we met in Pisa, calling her Mrs. Little, without you protesting once?”
Then, Mr. Little gently lifted the veil covering his companion’s face, and said: “Look.”
It really was his Betty, it really was Mrs. Little, with the face like a red ball, a Dutch cheese, as I had known, since our first encounter at the railway station in Bordeaux, but the prominent blue eyes which had never had much expression, had even less, and her parted lips, showing teeth almost as large as piano keys, maintained a complete immobility.
Meanwhile, Mr. Little, who was holding his wife’s hand tenderly in his own, said with an emotion that was at first contained, but soon overabundant; “Betty, my dear Betty, answer me: Do you approve of my having lifted our veil, in order to show our friend Monsieur Le Bref your cherished and forever regretted features, such as he knew them?”
Without Mrs. Little’s lips moving in the slightest, the customary little phrase emerged from that open mouth.
“Ho yes, Tom.”
“Well,” cried Mr. Little, in a voice blurred by tears, “do you understand now?”
Yes, yes, I understood, by dint of looking at Mrs. Little’s inanimate face, what I had not understood at first. Mrs. Little was indeed dead, and the striking representation of her that I had before me was nothing but a mannequin, albeit executed with such artistry that it feigned life marvelously.
I shook Mr. Little’s had, saying to him, profoundly moved myself: “My poor friend, be sure that I sympathize as much as is humanly possible with your just affliction, and that I deplore the false direction that your letter took, since my silence must have resulted for you in the thought that I might remain indifferent. Oh, you must have been deeply offended.”
“I didn’t know how to explain it,” replied Mr. Little. And he added, wiping his eyes: “But now I can explain it very well, and I can also explain how, since our encounter in the cathedral in Pisa until just now, you have been able to believe that my poor Betty was alive. Has not the artist imitated her very well? And with the faculty that she has of moving and speaking, as long as her veil is lowered, the illusion is complete.”
“Complete, indeed, Mr. Little, and I confess that if you had not lifted it for me, I would still have... But it’s obviously not in order to give that illusion to the public that you’re traveling thus with the mann…with the modeled image of Mrs. Little...”
“No. my ear friend, it’s in order to have it myself.”
“What! You can imagine that it’s Mrs. Little, when you know the contrary full well, you who make that mechanism move and talk?”
“Yes and no...so little that if I reflect, the sad truth appears to me clearly, and then I’m gripped by a fit of despair, as you were able to judge just now, but more often than not, it isn’t like that...I yield to the mirage, I imagine that my poor wife, even when I make her talk, even when I make her move, is still alive, and the horrible lacuna that her death has made in my existence is partly filled in.”
“I understand, I understand—but perhaps, if you had done as so many others have done, if you had simply remarried, without absolutely forgetting the first Mrs. Little, you might have found almost the same rewards in the second.”
“Never, never! Unless I had encountered a woman resembling my Betty in the most striking fashion...and how would I find her, even supposing that she exists? I had, therefore, to resign myself to the stratagem th
at you see, without which I would be dead of chagrin at present. And what is most horrible in the loss that I have suffered of my poor Betty, Monsieur Le Bref, is that it is, in a sense, imputable to me.”
“How is that?”
“You know, for having been a witness to it in Burgos, what umbrage maidservants brought to Mrs. Little. I even told you about some of my difficulties in that regard.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, it is in regard to a question that seemed quite innocent to me, but which had in my Betty’s eyes the irremediable sin of being addressed by me to our maid…yes, it was because of that question that the poor woman fell unconscious in a transport of rage, and did not recover.
“A ruptured aneurism, no doubt?”
“Exactly.”
“Poor woman! But what had you said to your maid, then Mr. Little?”
“Oh, something, I repeat to you, that seemed to me ought not to have disquieted Mrs. Little at all, umbrageous as I knew her to be—which seemed, on the contrary, only to be able to reassure her by her observation of my ignorance in certain regards... So, I asked the maid, in front of my wife, whether she had any night-chemises. That question did not, moreover, come out of the blue. It arrived at the very moment when my wife had just shown me some very sparse day-chemises that she had bought her, and some very high-necked night-chemises that she had bought for herself. And I reasoned internally that if the poor girl wore such sparse chemises in bed, she was in danger of catching cold, as is commonly said. Hence my question to the maid: ‘Annie, have you any night-chemises?’
“‘Annie, I forbid you to reply to Monsieur!’ cried my unfortunate wife, turning purple. Then, turning to me and clapping her hands together, she cried: ‘Oh! Oh! you have no shame! To ask such a question of a maid! What, then, do you suppose your maid to be, Monsieur? A maid who had night-chemises would be the worst of maids. Is it appropriate for a maid to have night-chemises…?’”
“‘Perhaps, perhaps,’
“‘What do you mean, perhaps?’
“‘Well, propriety does not appear to me to raise an obstacle, my love, to a maid putting on night-chemises.’
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