That scene can only be compared to those with which the infancy of all humans has been sown: the dolor of a child who wants the impossible, which has been refused to him, and to whom one ends up promising the moon whose crescent he sees in the water, once it is full; that naïve infantile dolor, deceived by a gross ruse, is the image of the scene of chagrin to which Catherine rendered the smoky laboratory witness.
In the morning, she began reasoning again; she recovered courage, embraced Abel and quit his dwelling, resolved never to return.
On leaving the cottage, she was so troubled by her somber despair, and by the idea that it was necessary to marry Jacques Bontems, that she took the path to the forest. She looked at the ground as she went, drying up many a tear.
Suddenly, she noticed pearls on the path, which announced that the fay had passed that way. On closer inspection she saw on the sand the marks of carriage wheels, and their small breadth indicated an elegant vehicle. She decided to follow the route that the fay’s rig had taken, and as she followed that route, ever step she took slid a ray of hope into her soul.
She walked for a long time, and when she was three-quarters of the way through the forest, she said to herself: If, by chance, the fay were only a woman like me, I could compete in amour with her, and I love him so much that I might perhaps prevail... Then again, if she isn’t a fay, she will have deceived Abel in telling him that she was making sacrifices, and I’ve never deceived Abel...
Forming a thousand projects thus, hoping and creating a bright future, she did not perceive the length of the journey. She traversed the entire forest, and the marks of the wheels led her to a magnificent château, surrounded by a park, illustrious in its magnificence and picturesque aspects, the waters and rare flowers that ornamented it.
She recognized immediately the château in which the Duchesse de Sommerset lived, and a vague idea that the fay could not be anyone but that young widow celebrated for her intelligence, her beauty, and even more so for her wealth and benevolence, occurred to Catherine’s mind.
The Duchesse de Sommerset received everyone with affability. Catherine asked to see her, and no one made any difficulty about introducing her.
Catherine trembled in all her limbs as she traversed the courtyards, the stairways and the apartments. Finally, having arrived at the principal drawing room, a young chambermaid, whom she recognized as the djinni of the lamp, opened the door of the boudoir that Abel had described to her.
She looked at the duchesse, recognized the fay, and fainted.
Immediately, the duchesse lavished the customary cares upon her, and when the pretty peasant girl came round, she asked her several questions with a kindness that went straight to the heart.
“Oh, Madame!” Catherine exclaimed, in the voice of despair, “your wealth, your power, nothing, nothing in the world, nothing can soothe me!”
“But what’s the matter, my child?”
“Oh, Madame, I’ve seen you! That’s sufficient; about the rest, I must maintain the most profound silence. People say that you’re good, benevolent—well, what I would say to you would poison your happiness at its source. Go, adieu, Madame, be happy! However, it was me who saw him first! He belonged to me!” She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh! Let’s keep, let’s keep my secret, and die with it...”
The astonished duchesse contemplated the young peasant tenderly, already feeling sorry for her, while ignorant of the cause of the tears she was shedding.
In the end, the sole grace that Catherine asked was that Madame la Duchesse should have her taken back in a carriage to the village of V***.
The duchesse ordered the satisfaction of Catherine’s desire, and at the same time, she gave secret instructions to her servants that they should discover the adventure that had brought the young woman to the château.
If you are curious to know by what circumstance the Duchesse de Sommerset came to be the Pearl Fay, you can cast your eyes over two letters that we have extracted from her correspondence with one of her friends.
These letters will hasten the conclusion of this adventure.
The duchesse had been living in Joigny14 for a year; she had become bored there, and had already made trips of Paris; it was during one of those trips that she had linked herself in amity with the person to whom the letter is addressed.
Letter from the Duchesse de Sommerset
to Madame la Marquise de Stainville
Château de Joigny, ****
You complain, my dear about my retreat, my silence and my apathy, but no woman has ever been more occupied than me. As I have confided my entire life to you, I see no reason why I should not tell you, under the sworn secrecy that one keeps for at least twenty-four hours in Paris, about the adventure that retains me in the depth of the woods twelve leagues from the capital.
The folly of my entire life, my dream, is to be loved for myself. There was a time once when I thought I had achieved my goal, but the Duc de Sommerset deceived me very cruelly, by showing me that ambition, self-regard and wounded vanity do not even pardon amour. You French women, who love for a witty remark, or a beautiful leg, who, love, in sum with our head more often than your heart, will never understand…there are exceptions, I think, so, the majority of women will never understand the torture of a heart for which vanity, the petty triumphs of self-esteem, balls and city are nothing, and which only aspires to that profound admiration, hat perpetual abasement, which composes a true sentiment.
On the death of Lord Sommerset, and even before, I sensed the void in my soul and was no longer alive; in effect, my live was devoid of charm. What is a woman’s life? It is an eternal need for love; it is to be incessantly occupied with the happiness of an individual who is not her; she has a mass of sentiment that it is necessary for us to throw, at every instant, over some creature, and that mass comprises respect joy, grandeur, purity, exaltation; in sum, all of nature.
In churches, on feast days, there are children who carry baskets full of roses, and who are only occupied in strewing the flowers in the places by which the Lord might pass; that is the image of the life of a woman. We have made them proud and apparent queens, but if the one who loves sincerely re-enters into the depths of her heart, she will find for her Lord an obedience, a dread and a real servitude. To love, it is necessary to believe in perfection, and to find it in the individual one adores; he is a God, for amour is a terrestrial religion. Now, we can only be slaves of a being we see thus; everything bears us to that because everything bears us to render happy those we love.
Listen, dear friend; I am English, and in consequence a lover of reverie and extreme sentiments. Well, what I am describing to you I have in my soul: a smile from the being I cherish is a tender feast; a word makes me shiver; and I await that smile, that word, as an Arab in the desert looks out for a drop of water. That sweet occupation of always seeking to render life pleasant for a being one adores is my essence. What pleasure there is in annihilating oneself in another soul than one’s own, feeling his pain, his dolor, his voluptuousness! We are born for that, for we have one sense more than men; it is the sense of instinct that bears us to please them. In sum, dear friend, I don’t know how certain women contrive to shake off that nucleus of amour that they all must have.
Well, I have found a being to whom I am attaching that mass of sentiment, that vivacity of thought; that is what is retaining me in the country. Oh, my story was amusing at first, but now it’s serious to the highest degree, for it’s a matter of marriage.
Can you imagine that the curé of one of the villages nearby had come to pay me a visit, and that he spoke to me over dessert about a young madman who lived on a hill of his village; the young man believed in the existence of fays, and he had not yet made the acquaintance of society, had never left his cottage.
Suddenly, the idea came to me of amusing myself with that singular being, and after obtaining a great deal of information, going around his cabin by night, I noticed that there is a rather chimney wide enough to descend
into the interior. Then I ordered a sumptuous costume, without forgetting my wand, and one night I embarked in a carriage, which I stopped in the forest. Fearful of the rain I had myself carried in a chair to the chimney.
Dear friend, I appeared to the sounds of beautiful music…but I found the most handsome individual that it is possible to see, and his first glance convinced me that I had found my master. I went to laugh and play, to amuse myself, but I found amour with all its magical force. I went to enchant, and it was me who was enchanted,
There are no follies that I have not committed. I have given that young man a superb fête, with illuminations, music, etc. It was believed at the time that the fête was for Lord V***, but I alone and my servants, who maintain the strictest secrecy, knew the veritable hero, whom I subjected to rude ordeals. In fact, by a hazard that served my designs, the aqueduct that once brought water to the park has an immense manhole not far from his cottage. I moved quickly to have the tunnel cleared, and he only came to the fête after being subject to a few phantasmagorical tricks and fought phantoms that were created for him. The boudoir that you admired so much was constructed uniquely for him, for on seeing me with pearls, he had named me the Pearl Fay.
I have, as you can imagine, wanted to sustain my dignity; hence, enchantments. I had one of my servants dress in his father’s clothes; the places where they were worn indicated his pose, his gestures, his attitude, and in a mirror, he has seen his father, dead for a long time.
He took it into his head to believe that my night-lamp was a talisman; I had my chambermaid dress as a djinni, and she played the role marvelously. I got her to read Shakespeare’s Tempest, and she grasped the role of Ariel very well. A machine was fitted beneath the manhole, and every time he rapped thereon, his desires were satisfied. I had everything that he might desire brought, and for the rest, there are relays in the forest, and someone comes to tell me immediately all that he wishes. There are also relays on the road to Paris, and in that center of civilization I obtain very rapidly, at a price of gold, what he desires. My people have orders to obey everything that the possessor of the lamp wishes, and I have made sure of their devotion and discretion.
A fortnight ago he made me run around all the ministries for positions; fortunately, Lord V***’s credit was very useful to me, and I obtained everything in a trice.
But the completion of happiness is that he loves me as much, and perhaps even more, than I love him, for I have succeeded in confounding myself thus before him. He has the purest soul and the most loving heart in the body of an angel of heaven; his gaze is celestial; in sum, he is so modest and so tender that he realizes the ideal that my imagination had designed. He is one of the fortunate creatures of amour and happiness, a kind of flower that one rarely encounters on earth, and it has required the bizarre circumstances that have surrounded his life until now to bring a man to that perfection of nature.
Oh, he is the living proof of the principle that consecrates the innate bounty and beauty of humankind. All the generous sentiments compose the flower of his soul, in which no evil can grow. How could one not love and cherish such a creature? So I have attached all my life to that dear Abel—for Abel is his name, and expresses very will his resemblance with that first just man on earth.
Don’t believe, after what I’ve told you, that he is as soft-headed as a sheep; he is fine and intelligent; his language is exalted, and has something Oriental about it—with the different, nevertheless, that it is often energetic and concise, like that of a natural man who only expresses ideas.
Can you conceive now how one can remain buried in the woods? But dear friend, I have one dread, and it is to you that I am addressing myself in order to put an end to it. I’m afraid, if I marry him, that all Paris will mock me. The Duchesse de Sommerset is to marry? Who? Monsieur Abel…a young man devoid of fortune and devoid of education! It’s true that he will soon know as much as I want him to know. I have only to bring his books in Greek and Latin and tell him that it’s necessary for him to study the language of djinn, and he’ll quickly learn it for love of me—but what do Greek and Latin matter to a woman of my rank, who only wants to live for him and will not suffer other beings to approach him?
Yes, I want his life to be an eternal enchantment; I want to consecrate myself to his happiness, to erect a barrier between the world and him, that he should remain as if in a sanctuary, and forbid the approach of anything that might cause him pain or dolor, while trying nevertheless to ensure that the perpetual enchantment has nothing insipid about it.
Divine melancholy, benevolence, tears shed over the misfortune of others will not be banished from our temple; for I find that after having wept thus, one has added a greater portion of soul of soul to one’s soul. I shall not even trust my amour and the multiplicity of sensations to avoid ennui, disgust and the other harpies of existence that wither everything; pleasant study, the arts and the sciences will succeed the intoxication of society, and the country salons, in the same way that in nature, autumn succeeds summer, and spring winter.
Oh, I shall marry him, for I feel that I am worthy of him; he has named me his fay; I shall be that always, and always heap him with tenderness and testimonies of my gratitude. What a life! What happiness! Oh, his love has rendered me the happiest of women, and there is no joy on earth that can compare to mine: it comes from heaven!
What reassures me about the marriage I’m planning is that ten days thereafter, people in Paris will no longer be talking about it, for you only have a certain dose of attention, and if people only talk about the fall of a great empire for six days, I can’t see why anyone should bother about my union for more than two nights.
I am so crazy that, seeing Abel happy in believing me to be a fay, I dare not undeceive him.
Adieu; I await your response, etc. etc.
Letter from Madame de Stainville
One of our poets, a charming man, I don’t know which, has written these divine lines:
…………....Marry as soon as possible;
Tomorrow if you can; today if you must.
I don’t know whether I’m writing them accurately,15 but such as they are, they form the best prescription that any doctor has ever written; it is cheerful in style, in conformity with the malady. What! You fear what people will say? What do you expect Parisians to say about one of the most beautiful women in England, when she has an annual income of fifty thousand pounds sterling, except that what she has done is delightful? Yes, my friend, if you didn’t put on a hat and went out bare-headed, it would become the fashion; with regard to dress codes, olives, girdles and Scottish tartans are out, we no longer wear them.
I would dearly like to know whether there are many forests in France where husbands like yours grow—for I see you already married; I’ve already thought about the dress that I shall have made; it will be divine, as gracious as your manner of envisaging amour, although I think you are dragging us down. My knees are the part of my delicate body that I spare the most, and I would be ashamed to be in contemplation thus before my husband. If he is in my arms, so be it, I’ll try to make him comfortable there, poor man, but me at his knees! Fie on that! You’re abasing us too much by pitting men so high. Personally, I imagine that men are to some extent made for us, and that their life ought to receive its flame from us; the proof that they’re made for our usage is that we are mothers, and in consequences the mistresses of the world.
Having been very stupidly married and loving my husband in order to do as everyone does, since I mean to say everything that the spirit of our century holds to be the case…in any case, he’s a worthy man, and I wouldn’t want to cause him pain for thirty lovers! Where was I? Oh, yes…I nevertheless married very stupidly, in that I was twenty-two and Monsieur le Marquis was forty-nine, which means that when I’m thirty he’ll be fifty-seven, if my arithmetic is correct; now, can you imagine that I can “pour my sensibility” over a sexagenarian, “attach my life” to him and “occupy myself with his happiness”? While
he takes a pinch of snuff I’ll have a thousand thoughts; when he climbs into one carriage door, I’ll get out through the other; in truth, the future frightens me, and I think you’re very lucky to be marrying a handsome young man whom you love. Nevertheless, poor Stainville has qualities, I love him—but listen to me, for I’ll shout it very loudly in writing my last word to you: marry!
Has your little Abel a moustache? Can he ride a horse? Does he know Rossini, Lord Byron? What are his habits? Does he tilt his head, does he walk straight or do his steps stutter, like our old people? You haven’t given me any details about his person. But I think, my dear, that you’ve calumniated the French horribly in saying that they only love with the head; think and about it, and you’ll reform that judgment, on seeing Madame S***, Madame G*** etc., who have had so many lovers and are so agreeable.
I’m going to the Bouffes this evening; I always think of you when I see your empty box; people ask me for news of you, and I tell everyone that you’re in the provinces to put a little lead in your spirit, because you were crushing everyone with your amiability, and that you only want to make enemies because of your beauty. Think about it, my dear—you’re going to lose a great deal in that solitude. Come back to Paris soon—without that, no salvation.
I’ve reflected on what you say about the need that women have to throw their sensibility over something, and I’m laughing like a lunatic, because I have a little monkey that I love passionately, since a fortnight ago, and what will enable me to love my husband forever is that I have a weakness for poor animals; that preserves me from betraying conjugal fidelity, in that my sensibility will be exercised on some animal. Oh, I’m profoundly philosophical and I haven’t, for five years, been sowing, embroidering, painting water colors, skimming my piano-keys and warbling songs without knowing a thing or two. Adieu, dear friend...
The Last Fay Page 14