“There’s no disputing tastes,” the Scotsman said, “but I suppose with a story like that it comes down to whether one is an idealist or a materialist.”
“Does it?” said Séléné. “As if those were the only two alternatives. Isn’t there a third way, some more moderate view in between?”
“I’ve been struggling to find that compromise in my own philosophy, that takes account of the best and truest points of both,” the Scotsman admitted. “By nature I’d say I’m inclined to moderation, though I recognize sometimes extreme circumstances require extreme actions.”
“Such as?” Séléné asked.
“Well, for example, a case of extreme evil. If you meet a man who wishes to destroy you, unprovoked, it may be the most moral response to defend one’s life by any means necessary, including inflicting a fatal wound upon him.”
“No one with half a brain would dispute that,” Ulysse said. “Though our idealistic Tristan might say it’s better to let him kill you.”
“Indeed, it might be,” Tristan said. “If one’s principles are absolutely against killing or violence.”
“In that case, it seems your principles would amount to suicide,” Donatien interjected.
“Perhaps even suicide might be an honorable course of action in some cases,” Tristan replied.
The Scotsman said, “I’ve argued as much in print, myself. But there are those who’d counter that it’s the very definition of evil to disregard the sanctity of life, even one’s own.”
“And I would agree with them,” Aurore said, looking to Clio and me for confirmation. “For my part I can’t think of a scenario where I could condone suicide. So long as one is alive, one can always strive to better one’s condition, to do good, and to make the best of one’s God-given gift of existence.”
A part of me wanted to agree with her, but another part remembered the terrible loneliness of the darkest days of my marriage, when I had lost my faith in the God of my childhood. If I hadn’t had Valentin, Aimée, and my father to think of, who knows? Perhaps my despair might have overcome me.
As though responding to my thoughts, Harlequin said, “Sometimes, perhaps, a person might take his own life out of cowardice. Far more often I think of those who do, it’s because they’ve faced extremes of despair or anxiety or misery. They’re to be viewed with compassion, rather than judgment.”
Séléné nodded vigorously, and I remembered the story of her young lover who had killed himself.
“But I’m of Aurore’s opinion,” Clio said. “It’s never right. The breath of life in a human being is a divine, sacred thing.”
“What about killing in times of war?” the Scotsman said. “What if the unrest spreads in the capital of France, for example, or if the King of Sardinia orders the Savoyards to go to war with the French or the Swiss over disputed territory? Suppose you or your menfolk were called upon to fight. Would it be just then, to follow the sovereign’s orders and defend one’s country?”
“Unthinking allegiance to sovereigns is an abdication of moral agency,” Tristan said firmly.
“For once we’re in agreement,” Ulysse said. “Sovereign powers, whether church or state, have their own interests, independent of morality. It may be that sometimes the state’s interests coincide with what’s moral and right for an individual, but only the individual can judge whether that’s so, by consulting his conscience and reason.”
“I should say by consulting his heart,” said Tristan.
“Ah,” the Scotsman laughed, “another topic for another essay. Can we trust feeling as surely as reason?”
“Far more so, I think. Absolutely,” said Tristan.
“Reason can be mistaken, but desire doesn’t lie.” Donatien said, meeting Aurore’s eyes. “When you see someone or something beautiful, you know without a doubt you desire it. You don’t have to scratch your head over it.”
Aurore’s cheeks turned pink, and she looked away.
Séléné laughed out loud, and there was a hard edge to her words. “But that’s utter rubbish. Desire and feeling depend on perception. And perception fools us all the time. One sees a stag in the woods at night, for example, and mistakes it for a monster out of a fairy tale.”
“It’s true,” Aurore said. “In fairy tales it often happens that someone’s senses are enchanted and they fall prey to an illusion. The princess in the tale of Peau d’ne disguises herself in a donkey’s skin to escape from her father, who wants to marry her. In the story of the Path of Needles and the Path of Pins, the wolf deceives the girl and makes her believe he’s a safe and comfortable grandmother so he can lure her in and eat her.”
Donatien kept his gaze on Aurore and said in a gentle tone, “Fairy tales are only meant to frighten children and terrify pious peasants. When I feel enchanted by someone charming, I can usually trust it’s not a wicked sorcerer deceiving me.” He smiled at Aurore, and she looked up and smiled back at him shyly.
“There is truth at the heart of those tales, though,” Aurore said. “That’s why they’re told over and over again. People aren’t always what they seem and our impressions aren’t always reliable.”
“Isn’t deception the essence of all seduction?” Harlequin asked. “To create an appearance of beauty or love that conceals the mere desire for conquest, for dominance?”
Donatien drew his brows together. He seemed to be considering a reply when Clio interrupted.
“Well,” Clio said, laying a hand on Tristan’s arm, “you can read that book to us if you like. Perhaps it’d be interesting. In any case, it will give us something to talk about.”
After the rapid volleys of conversation over the meal, I wanted to go out for an afternoon walk in the garden, since the clouds and constant downpour of cold rain had finally broken. I wanted to be alone for a while, to think about all that had happened in the past two days since the others had arrived. So I slipped out of the hall into the privy room and waited until the gallery was empty. From there I slunk out to the garden unnoticed, and into the labyrinth of hedges and tall bushes where I could hide if I heard anyone coming. How beautiful the flowers and plants were, washed clean from the rain! I walked down the paths, shaded by arbors and trellises of clematis, honeysuckle, and roses, stopping now and then to watch bees dipping in and out of the cups of the petals. After an hour of walking, I sat down on a bench in the sun across from an elaborately woven spider web. Its maker, the size of a hazelnut and shiny black, clung to the center. The spider’s forearms were busy, turning a piece of prey back and forth, back and forth, encasing it in a white cottony cocoon.
I heard voices approaching, Séléné’s and Ulysse’s. I stood up to dart around the spider’s web into the bushes behind it. In this way I succeeded in avoiding the two speakers, but unwittingly stumbled nearly into the laps of a silent couple sitting on another stone bench. Donatien pressed close to Aurore, with one hand at her waist and another laid against her chest. When Aurore saw me, she pulled away from him and jumped up as if stung. He stood up too, and I averted my eyes so as not to stare at the erection under his breeches. He smiled at us both.
“Good day, Belle-me,” he said. “It’s a pretty afternoon, isn’t it?”
Aurore wrung her hands, blushing and trembling, and then put a hand to her hair and realized that her coiffure was half undone. Without a word and without meeting my eyes, she plunged forward, nearly breaking the spider’s web before I grabbed her arm and said, “Wait,” and pointed out the shiny black creature that was a hair’s breadth from her arm. She gave me a grateful look and skirted around it, and I followed after her. Donatien stayed behind.
I took Aurore’s arm to steady her and we walked arm in arm. “What was that?” I asked her.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know … I … Donatien was being so sweet and sympathetic to me. I let things go farther than I should have. I’ve never in my life been unfaithful to my husband, though it’s been years since he’s touched me.”
I walked her to the house, through the gallery, and up the stairs to her own room on the third floor. I didn’t know if it was right to tell her what I had witnessed the night before between Donatien and Séléné, since it might reflect badly on Séléné. I didn’t wish to harm Séléné in her friend’s eyes, or seem as if I wished to create bad blood between them, or to disobey the rules of Boisaulne.
“I’ll lie down. I don’t feel well,” she said. She no longer trembled, but her face was white as a moonflower and the skin around her eyes was drawn.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I just want to rest for a little.”
We parted with kisses on each cheek.
Aurore, Donatien, and Séléné were all absent from the table at supper. Ulysse, Tristan, and the Scotsman got into a long discussion about whether the soul might be a separate and different kind of substance from the body. Tristan believed it was of a spiritual nature, like love. The Scotsman believed it consisted of the action of ordinary physical substances such as the brain and the other organs of a human being, rather than being a separate kind of substance unto itself.
“When Galileo dropped cannonballs out the window of his tower, he performed the experiment to observe the effects of gravity and the resistance of the air. But no one would posit – and he certainly didn’t – that the downward movement of the balls was a substance unto itself. Rather, the state of movement was the balls’ potential energy that was being actualized. So it is also with the action of the brain, when it directs the body and its thoughts and movements. It’s that action, I believe, that has been given the name of the soul.”
Ulysse, for his part, didn’t doubt the materialist position. He was mainly concerned with drawing out its implications for morality and ethics.
“If there’s no separate soul to save or lose, that means morality isn’t spiritual, but rather practical. For the ancients, indeed, morals or mores were practices – the way one chose to live one’s life, not divine injunctions. Therefore, our morals, our ethical practices, must be determined by our material circumstances.”
“But the implications of that are rather monstrous, don’t you think?” said Tristan. “Is it justified then for a hungry man to steal? Or for a lustful person to commit adultery? After all, those are material circumstances.”
“Well, that’s the question. On what basis do we determine morality if material circumstances are all we have to go on? There’s still the matter of the need to preserve order and justice in society, for the good and safety of all. But the best start we can make toward forming a truly just society is to throw out authoritarian dictates regarding moral principles, based on old and false notions of a divide between body and soul.”
Tristan launched into a passionate defense of conscience and moral sentiment as functions of the soul and contended they ought to be the true basis of moral judgments.
I listened along with the others and thought about the points and questions the three of them raised. I stored up thoughts to talk over with Thérion, when he came that night. Harlequin sat next to me again, and once or twice his hand brushed against mine and he looked at me sidelong, surreptitiously, his long reddish lashes lowering and hooding his pale silver eyes. Was it his lips, his teeth, his tongue, that had left the marks on my neck under the ribbon? The thought aroused me and half-consciously, in my reverie, I stroked the tines of my fork. I glanced up at him again to see that his eyes were fixed on the movement of my fingers. He looked away quickly.
After supper, coffee and sweets were served in the music room, but I chose not to linger and left to go upstairs to my chamber. As I passed by Séléné’s door, I heard a sound coming out of the keyhole again and couldn’t resist bending down and glancing through it into the room to see if Donatien was with her. I made out a form huddled on her bed. She appeared to be alone, weeping as if her heart would break.
For a moment I wondered what to do. I tapped lightly on her door. She looked up, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and came to open the door. Her face fell a little when she saw it was me.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “I was passing by and I thought I heard a noise.”
She sniffled. Her eyes were red, puffy, and swollen. “I’m fine. Just … tired.”
“Are you sure? Would you like to talk?”
“You can come in if you like.” She drew me in and we sat on opposite ends of a sofa against the wall, facing each other.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m just an idiot. I made a mistake, trusting someone I shouldn’t have trusted.”
“Who?”
“Donatien. Fils de pute.” She punched the sofa cushion with enough force to shake the whole sofa. “But I guess he can’t be blamed for abandoning me. I’m old and used up.”
“What nonsense. What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?”
“It was all right at first. It was fun. He was different and it was rather exciting. What I didn’t like was that he changed toward me from one day to the next, with no explanation. He made me think he cared about me. He spent a whole month writing me dear little notes, charming and flirting with me. He finally made his conquest, a couple of weeks ago, and we’d been meeting discreetly whenever we could. Then suddenly today, he was as cold to me as could be. He’s chasing after Aurore, I think just because she has a reputation for being virtuous and incorruptible. He joked about what an accomplishment it would be if anyone seduced her, but I thought he was only teasing.”
“It did seem he was paying attention to her and she seemed troubled by it.”
“Well, I saw him go into her room just as I was coming up the stairs. So she can’t have been as troubled as all that.”
“Really? That surprises me. I hope she’s all right.” I thought for a long moment. “Do you think I ought to go and check on her? Suppose he’s not a gentleman with her?”
Séléné snorted. “A gentleman. Right. I mean, I don’t think he’s so bad as to force himself on a woman. He prefers the thrill of the chase, and overpowering a woman by force wouldn’t please his vanity so well as being able to talk her into it so she gives herself to him. He had me practically pursuing him in Paris.”
I frowned. “I hope you’re right and she’ll be safe.”
“Safe – that’s another matter. He doesn’t care what damage he does or whom he hurts.”
“Oh, Séléné, I’m sorry. You don’t deserve to be hurt like this.”
“Perhaps I do.”
“Why should you?”
“I’m a fool. I make terrible choices regarding men. I’m always getting my feelings hurt.”
“But you seemed so confident. I thought perhaps, if you have had many love affairs, they might not mean much to you.”
“You must have heard about my reputation. I can’t say I haven’t earned it. Yes, I’ve had many lovers. I’m not ashamed of that. I certainly take pleasure in the act itself, when the fellow’s up to it and has some sense of what he’s doing. And it was lovely with you the other night.”
I stared down at my hands and felt sweat gathering along my brow and under my arms. This was exactly what I had hoped we wouldn’t ever talk about. I swallowed and began to stammer, “I hadn’t ever done anything like that before. I’m not normally …”
“Shhh, don’t worry about it,” she said, laying a hand on my arm for a moment. “What I mean to say is, sometimes it is just fun. But having many encounters doesn’t mean I have no feelings. I told you, didn’t I, about my late husband?”
“A little. It sounded as if you had a terrible time with him.”
“Well, after he died, I decided I’d never let anyone else determine what I did with my body ever again. I claimed my freedom. Do you know, one of my chevaliers wanted to marry me so badly he contrived to put a child in my belly, thinking that would persuade me. But I gave the child up to the foundling hospital. I wasn’t going to let myself be bullied
into marrying again, not after having a husband who used to beat me and force himself on me. You look horrified. I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?”
“I … never mind. Go on.”
“The thing is, once you have the freedom to choose your own life, and to choose any lover who will have you, then you have the hope of finding something satisfying. It’s hard to fail at it, again and again. If I couldn’t hope to find true love, I shouldn’t feel so miserable, perhaps, every time things fizzle.”
“I think I understand what you mean. May I ask – what happened to the child?”
“The child? Oh, the foundling hospital you mean. It all turned out all right. The boy’s father took charge of his upbringing and education, which was only right, given that I had no choice in the matter of giving him life.”
“Ah.”
“But tell me, you’re a widow,” she said. “Don’t you find your freedom exhilarating? Or do you miss being married?”
“Goodness, no, I don’t miss it.” I didn’t tell her I wasn’t free, but a prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment.
“What do you think you’d like in a lover? You know, ideally.”
“Well … someone kind, strong, intelligent, faithful … I suppose I hadn’t really thought about it in a long time. When I was married I read romances and dreamed of a knight who’d be chivalrous and devoted, who would rescue me and defend me. But in my dreams the details were always hazy. What about you?”
“I’ve thought about it a good deal,” she said. “I long for a union of the mind as well as of the body. Perfect harmony. We might quarrel, but we do so lovingly, from a shared love of ideas, in the furtherance of our learning and knowledge together. Neither of us would ever be subordinate to the other. We’d be equals. We’d support each other in our intellectual efforts. He wouldn’t mind my writing, or make fun of it, but would be proud of it, and I’d be proud of him too, whatever his field of endeavor.”
The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment Page 13