Mademoiselle de Montmorency was so astonished that she could make no answer, and let this queen of beauty depart, and believed her to be a fairy, until a workman told her that the fairy was Madame de l’Ile Adam. Although the adventure was inexplicable, she told her father that she would not give her consent to the proposed marriage until after the autumn, so much is it in the nature of Love to ally itself with Hope, in spite of the bitter pills which the deceitful and gracious companion gives her to swallow like bulls’ eyes. During the months when the grapes are gathered, Imperia would not let l’Ile Adam leave her, and was so amorous that one would have imagined she wished to kill him, since l’Ile Adam felt as though he had a fresh bride in his arms every night. The next morning the good woman requested him to keep the remembrance of these joys in his heart. Then, to know what her lover’s real thoughts on the subject were, she said to him, “Poor l’Ile Adam, we were very silly to marry—a lad like you, with your twenty-three years, and an old woman close on forty.” He answered her, that his happiness was such that he was the envy of every one, that at her age her equal did not exist among the younger women, and that if ever she grew old he would love her wrinkles, believing that even in the tomb she would be lovely, and her skeleton lovable.
To these answers, which brought the tears into her eyes, she one morning answered maliciously, that Mademoiselle Montmorency was very lovely and very faithful. This speech forced l’Ile Adam to tell her that she pained him by telling him of the only wrong he had ever committed in his life—the breaking of the troth pledged to his first sweetheart, all love for whom he had since effaced from his heart. This candid speech made her seize him and clasp him to her heart, affected at the loyalty of his discourse on a subject from which many would have shrunk.
“My dear love,” said she, “for a long time past I have been suffering from a retraction of the heart, which has always since my youth been dangerous to my life, and in this opinion the Arabian physician coincides. If I die, I wish you to make the most binding oath a knight can make, to wed Mademoiselle Montmorency. I am so certain of dying, that I leave my property to you only on condition that this marriage takes place.”
Hearing this l’Ile Adam turned pale, and felt faint at the mere thought of an eternal separation from his good wife.
“Yes, dear treasure of love,” continued she. “I am punished by God there where my sins were committed, for the great joys that I feel dilate my heart, and have, according to the Arabian doctor, weakened the vessels which in a moment of excitement will burst; but I have always implored God to take my life at the age in which I now am, because I would not see my charms marred by the ravages of time.”
This great and noble woman saw then how well she was beloved. This is how she obtained the greatest sacrifice of love that ever was made upon this earth. She alone knew what a charm existed in the embraces, fondlings, and raptures of the conjugal bed, which were such that poor l’Ile Adam would rather have died than allow himself to be deprived of the amorous delicacies she knew so well how to prepare. At this confession made by her that, in the excitement of love, her heart would burst, the chevalier cast himself at her knees, and declared that to preserve her life he would never ask her for love, but would live contented to see her only at his side, happy at being able to touch but the hem of her garment.
She replied, bursting into tears, “that she would rather die than lose one iota of his love; that she would die as she had lived, since luckily she could make a man embrace her when such was her desire without having to put her request into words.”
Here it must be stated that the cardinal of Ragusa had given her as a present an article, which this holy joker called in articulo mortis. It was a tiny glass bottle, no bigger than a bean, made at Venice, and containing a poison so subtle that by breaking it between the teeth death came instantly and painlessly. He had received it from the Signora Tophana, the celebrated maker of poisons of the town of Rome.
Now this tiny bottle was under the bezel of a ring, preserved from all objects that could break it by certain plates of gold. Poor Imperia put it into her mouth several times without being able to make up her mind to bite it, so much pleasure did she take in the moment she believed to be her last. Then she would pass before her in mental review all her methods of enjoyment before breaking the glass, and determined that when she felt the most perfect of all joys she would bite the bottle.
The poor creature departed this life on the night of the first day of October. Then was there heard a great clamour in the forests and in the clouds, as if the loves had cried aloud, “The great Noc is dead!” in imitation of the pagan gods who, at the coming of the Saviour of men, fled into the skies, saying, “The great Pan is slain!” A cry which was heard by some persons navigating the Eubean Sea, and preserved by a father of the Church.
Madame Imperia died without being spoiled in shape, so much had God made her the irreproachable model of a woman. She had, it was said, a magnificent tint upon her flesh, caused by the proximity of the flaming wings of Pleasure, who cried and groaned over her corpse. Her husband mourned for her most bitterly, never suspecting that she had died to deliver him from a childless wife, for the doctor who embalmed her said not a word concerning the cause of her death. This great sacrifice was discovered six years after the marriage of l’Ile Adam with Mademoiselle de Montmorency, because she told him all about the visit of Madame Imperia. The poor gentleman immediately fell into a state of great melancholy, and finished by dying, being unable to banish the remembrance of those joys of love which it was beyond the power of a novice to restore to him; thereby did he prove the truth of that which was said at the time, that this woman would never die in a heart where she had once reigned.
This teaches us that virtue is well understood but by those who have practised vice; for among the most modest women few would thus have sacrified life, in whatever high state of religion you look for them.
EPILOGUE
AH! mad little one, thou whose business it is to make the house merry, again hast thou been wallowing, in spite of a thousand prohibitions, in that slough of melancholy, whence thou hast already fished out Bertha, and come back with thy tresses dishevelled, like a girl who has been ill-treated by a regiment of soldiers! Where are thy golden aiglets and bells, thy filigree flowers of fantastic design? Where hast thou left thy crimson head-dress, ornamented with precious gewgaws that cost a minot of pearls? Why spoil with pernicious tears thy black eyes, so pleasant when therein sparkles the wit of a tale, that popes pardon thee thy sayings for the sake of thy merry laughter, feel their souls caught between the ivory of thy teeth, have their hearts drawn by the rose point of thy sweet tongue, and would barter the holy slipper for a hundred of the smiles that hover round thy vermilion lips? Laughing lassie, if thou wouldst remain always fresh and young, weep no more; think of riding the bridleless fleas, of bridling with the golden clouds thy chameleon chimeras, of metamorphosing the realties of life into figures clothed with the rainbow, caparisoned with roseate dreams, and mantled with wings blue as the eyes of the partridge. By the Body and the Blood, by the Censer and the Seal, by the Book and the Sword, by the Rag and the Gold, by the Sound and the Colour, if thou dost but return once into that hovel of elegies where eunuchs find ugly women for imbecile sultans, I’ll curse thee; I’ll rave at thee; I’ll make thee fast from roguery and love; I’ll——
Phist! Here she is astride a sunbeam, with a volume that is ready to burst with merry meteors! She plays in their prisms, tearing about so madly, so wildly, so boldly, so contrary to good sense, so contrary to good manners, so contrary to everything, that one has to touch her with long feathers, to follow her siren’s tail in the golden facets which trifle among the artifices of these new peals of laughter. Ye gods! but she is sporting herself in them like a hundred schoolboys in a hedge full of blackberries, after vespers. To the devil the magister! The volume is finished! Out upon work! What ho! my jovial friends; this way!
THE END
Honore de Balzac, Droll Stories
Droll Stories Page 50