The guidebook does not tell what happened to Babette, of her quiet life that was spent with her father—not in the mill, strangers live there now, but in a pretty house near the new railroad station. Many a night from its upper windows she has looked out over the topmost branches of the chestnut tree to the snow-capped mountains where Rudy once played. Often she has watched the sunset, seen the children of the sun go to sleep in their splendor on the peaks, and heard them repeat the tale of the man from whom the whirlwind had stolen a cap: how the wind could take his covering but not the man himself.
The snow on the mountainside has a rose luster, and so does the heart who believes that “God wills the best for us all.” But few are so fortunate as Babette, who had it revealed to her in a dream.
111
The Butterfly
The butterfly wanted a sweetheart, and naturally it had to be a flower. He inspected them. Everyone sat as properly and quietly on her stalk as a young maiden should. The trouble was that there were too many of them to choose from, and the butterfly didn’t want to be bothered by anything so fatiguing. He flew over to the camomile flower. She is called by some the French daisy and she knows how to tell the future. Young maidens and boys who are in love ask her questions, and then answer them by tearing off her petals, one at a time. This is the rhyme they usually recite:
“With all her [or his] heart …
With only a part …
Not lost forever …
She’ll love me never.”
Or something like that. You can ask the camomile flower any questions you want to. When the butterfly came, he did not tear off any of the petals; he kissed them instead, for he was of the opinion that you get furthest with compliments.
“Sweet daisy, dear camomile flower, matron of all the flowers, you who are so clever that you can see the future, answer me: which of the flowers will be my sweetheart? This one or that one? Please tell me so that I can fly directly over to her and propose at once.”
The camomile flower did not answer. The butterfly had insulted her by calling her a matron. She was a virgin and hadn’t been proposed to yet. The butterfly asked the same question a second time and a third, then he got bored and flew away to go courting on his own.
It was early spring. Snowdrops and crocuses were still in bloom. “How sweet they are,” he remarked. “Just confirmed, but they have no personalities.” Like so many young men, he preferred older girls. He flew to the anemones but he found them too caustic. The violets were a little too romantic and the tulips a little too gaudy.
Soon the Easter lilies came, but they were a little too bourgeois. The linden blossoms were too small and had too large a family. The apple blossoms were so beautiful that they could be mistaken for roses, but they were here today and gone tomorrow. “Our marriage would be too short,” the butterfly muttered.
He was most attracted by one of the sweet peas. She was red and white, pure and delicate; and was one of those rare beauties who also knows what a kitchen looks like. He was just about to propose when he happened to notice a pea pod with the withered flower at its tip. “Who is that?” he asked with alarm.
“That is my sister,” replied the sweet pea.
“So that is what she will look like later,” thought the butterfly. “How frightening!” And he flew away.
The honeysuckle had climbed over the fence. What a lot of girls there were, and all of them with long faces and yellow skins. The butterfly didn’t care for them. But whom did he like? To find out, you must ask him.
Spring passed, summer passed, and then autumn came. Still the butterfly had no wife. The flowers were dressed in their finery, but they had lost their fresh innocence and scent of youth. As the heart grows older it needs scent, odor, perfume to arouse it; and the dahlias and the hollyhocks have none.
The butterfly lighted on a little mint plant with curly leaves. “She has no flowers, but she is a flower from her roots to the tip of her tiny leaves. She smells like a flower. I shall marry her.” And the butterfly proposed.
The mint plant stood stiff and silent. At last she replied: “Friendship, but no more! I am old and you are old. We can live for each other, but marriage, no! It would be ridiculous at our age.”
And that is how it happened that the butterfly never got married. He had searched too long for a wife, and now he had to remain a bachelor.
It was late in the autumn. The rains had come and the wind blew down the backs of the willow trees. It was not the weather to be out flying in, especially in summer clothes. But the butterfly was not outside, he was in a room that was kept summer-warm by a stove, where he could keep himself alive.
“But to live is not enough,” declared the butterfly. “One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” He flew to the windowpane. There he was seen, admired, and a pin was stuck through him. He was “collected” and that is as much as a human being can do for a butterfly.
“Now I sit on a stalk just like the flowers,” he said. “It isn’t very comfortable, probably just like being married: you are stuck.” And with that he consoled himself.
“Not much of a consolation,” said the potted plants who lined the window sill.
“But you cannot trust potted plants,” thought the butterfly, “they have associated too much with human beings.”
112
Psyche
At dawn, when the very air seems red and pink, a great star shines brightly. It is the star of morning. Its rays fall on the white walls of the city as if it wanted to write upon them all the stories it knows: all that it has seen through the thousands of years that it has been observing our swift-moving world.
Listen! Here is one of its stories: Not long ago—and by “Not long ago” the star means “a few hundred years ago”—its rays followed a young artist who lived in the Papal States, that capital of the world called Rome. Time has changed the city, but not as rapidly as it changes a human being from infancy to old age. The palace of the emperors is now as it was then: a ruin where, among the broken marble columns, fig trees and laurel bushes grew, and even stretched their limbs into the baths that once boasted of having walls inlaid with gold. The Colosseum was also a ruin. Church bells rang and the smell of incense was everywhere. There was always some kind of procession passing through the streets, in which lighted candles and colorful baldachins were carried. The Church was holy and all-powerful; and art was holy and at its height. In Rome lived the world’s greatest painter, Raphael, and that epoch’s leading sculptor, Michelangelo. The Pope himself admired these artists and paid visits to their workshops. Yes, artists were esteemed, honored, and even rewarded; but this does not mean that every great talent was recognized.
In a narrow street was an old house that had once been a temple. Here lived a young artist who was poor and unknown. But he had friends—other artists with the hopes and ideals of youth—who told him that he had great talent and skill and that he was a fool for doubting it. The young artist was never satisfied with his work. Every clay figure that he made he destroyed the following day, so that he never had any finished work; and one must have something to show if one wants to be known and earn a living.
“You are a dreamer,” one of his friends said. “That is your misfortune and the cause of it is that you have not lived. You have not tasted life. You ought to take a big healthy swallow and enjoy it. Youth and life must be one! Look at the great Master Raphael, honored by the Pope, admired by the world; but he does not say no to either bread or wine.”
“They say he not only eats bread but devours the baker woman, the young and lovely fornarina, as well.” added Angelo, who was the boldest of the young artists.
His friends who talked a great deal about their ideals were always trying to persuade the young artist to join them in their pleasures: their revelries that some call madness. And he was not disinclined. His blood ran swiftly through his body, his imagination was strong, and he could laugh and talk as wittily as any of his friends. But when he stood in fron
t of one of Raphael’s paintings, it seemed as if he caught a glimpse of God; and then what his friends called “Raphael’s gay life” disappeared like a morning mist. The masters of antiquity had a similar effect on him. He felt within himself a purity, a sense of piety, a feeling of the power of goodness that made him want to create in marble as these great men had. What he wanted to describe was how his heart sought and sensed infinity, but how was he to do it?
The soft clay took the form his fingers commanded; but the next day, as usual, he destroyed the figure.
One day he was passing one of Rome’s more splendid palaces. He paused in front of the entrance. Looking through the frescoed archway, he saw a small garden filled with roses. In the center of it there was a fountain; water splashed into a marble basin, where large white calla lilies, with their glossy green leaves, bloomed in abundance. A young girl was there; she was walking—no, floating, for so light was her step—near the fountain. She was the daughter of the nobleman who owned the palace. The young artist had never seen anyone so beautiful, so delicate, so dainty, so lovely … except once: Raphael’s Psyche; but that had been a painting hanging on the wall of a palace, while this girl was alive.
And as he went about his poor workshop she remained alive in his mind; and he molded a clay Psyche, which was an image of the young noblewoman. And for the first time he was satisfied with his work. Here at last was something of value: it was the girl.
His friends came and, when they saw it, they were jubilant. They had said he had great talent; they had never doubted it; and now this work would reveal his greatness to the world.
Clay has a fleshlike aliveness but does not last as long as marble; nor has it the whiteness. In marble his Psyche would come to life. He had a block of marble. He had had it for years. In the yard behind his father’s house it lay, hidden by broken glass and discarded vegetables: the tops of fennel and the rotten leaves of artichokes had made it dirty; but underneath it was as white as the snow of the mountains.
One day a party of wealthy Romans came to the humble street where the young artist lived. They had left their coach behind in one of the broader streets. They had come to see the young artist’s work; but the star does not tell us how they had happened to hear about it.
Who were these distinguished visitors?
Poor young man! Or should we say too happy young man? There before him, in his own workshop, stood the young noblewoman. And when her father said, “But it is you!” the girl smiled; and the artist could not have reproduced her smile in marble—or her glance, which ennobled and crushed him.
“You must make that figure in marble,” the rich nobleman remarked. “When it is finished, I shall buy it.” His words brought life to the dead clay, to the heavy marble, and to the young artist.
A new era began in the workshop: a time of joy and laughter. The morning star watched the work progress. It was as if the clay itself had been inspired by the visit of the model, as if once having seen those beautiful features it could more readily become them.
“Now I know what life is,” rejoiced the young man. “It is love! It is to be able to appreciate loveliness and to delight in beauty. And what my friends call ‘life’ is nothing but empty vanity, bubbles from fermentation of the dregs, instead of the pure wine, drunk at the altar to consecrate life.”
The marble block was raised into place and the tools made ready. The first rough work was done. Measurements were made and marked in the marble and large pieces of it chopped away. Soon the young artist had to use all his craftsmanship and skill to give shape to the stone. The beautiful figure of Psyche appeared. She was so light, she seemed about to take flight. She danced, she smiled, and in her smile was reflected the innocence of the young artist.
The star of the rose-colored dawn knew what affected the young man, why the color of his cheek changed and his eyes brightened; for in creating he used God’s gift to reproduce God’s work.
“You are a master as the sculptors of ancient Greece were,” his friends said. “Soon the whole world will admire your Psyche.”
“My Psyche …” he repeated. “Yes, she must be mine. My work shall be immortal. I have been given God’s grace, and that makes me noble.”
He sank down on his knees and wept because of his gratitude to God. But soon both God and his tears were forgotten; instead he thought of his Psyche, who stood before him, looking as if she had been cut out of snow and blushing in the light of the dawn. He was going to see her: the living, breathing girl who stepped so lightly, as if she walked on air, the girl whose innocent words were music.
He went to the palace to report that the marble statue had been finished. He walked through the rose-filled courtyard, where water splashed out of the mouths of the little bronze dolphins into the marble basin, in which calla lilies bloomed. He stepped into the entrance hall, whose walls and ceilings were covered with paintings and over whose doors were painted the family’s coat of arms. Servants dressed in livery, holding their heads as proudly as horses do in winter when they wear sleigh bells around their necks, walked to and fro; some were even reclining arrogantly on the carved wooden benches, as if they were the masters of the palace.
He told one of them his errand and was led up a flight of carpet-covered marble stairs, on either side of which there were statues, to a great hall filled with paintings and carpets, which had a mosaic floor. Such splendor made the heart of the young visitor heavy and would have tied his tongue had not his patron treated him so kindly. The nobleman spoke so warmly to him that the young artist soon felt at ease.
When the interview was over, he asked the artist to visit the young signorina as well, for she, too, would like to speak with him.
A servant accompanied him through beautiful banquet halls and galleries until, finally, they came to the chamber of the young girl.
She talked to him and no miserere, no holy chant, had ever touched his heart and lifted his soul as much as her words. He grabbed her hand and kissed it, and he thought it was softer than a rose petal and yet it inflamed him. He was so excited, so aroused, that he hardly knew what he was saying; words gushed out of his mouth and he could no more control their flow than the crater can stop the volcano from vomiting burning lava. He told her how much he loved her.
At first she appeared surprised, then insulted; and finally proud and full of disdain, as if her hand by mistake had touched the damp, clammy skin of a toad. Her cheeks grew red and her lips pale; her eyes were afire and yet as dark as the night.
“Madman!” she exclaimed. “Leave me alone! Go away!” And as she turned her back to him the expression on her beautiful face resembled that of the stone creature whose hair is snakes.
He made his way out of the palace as lifelessly as an object sinks into the sea. Once in the street, he walked like a sleepwalker; but when he reached his workshop he awoke in rage and pain. He grabbed his mallet and lifted it: he was about to destroy the marble statue. Someone grasped his arm; it was Angelo, who until now he had not noticed was there.
“What were you about to do? Have you gone mad?” he shouted. They began to wrestle, but Angelo was the stronger. The young artist gave up and threw himself into a chair.
“What has happened?” Angelo asked kindly. “Pull yourself together and tell me.”
But what was there to tell? What could the young artist say? Angelo’s questions were answered by silence, and he soon stopped trying to unravel a secret to which he had no threads.
“Your blood will grow thick and stop flowing from all your dreaming! Admit that you are a man. If you live only for your ideals, then life will break you! Drink some wine, get a little drunk, and you will sleep better. Let a beautiful girl be your physician. The girls of the Campagna are as lovely as the princess in the marble castle. Both are daughters of Eve, and in paradise you would not be able to see the difference between them.… Come, follow me. Let Angelo be your guide, your angel of life. It shall come to pass that you, too, will grow old; then your body will have co
llapsed like an abandoned cottage. The sun will still shine and the world will still be filled with laughter, but you will be like a broken reed, unable to take nourishment. I do not believe what the priests tell of a life beyond the grave. It is a fiction, a fairy tale for children, delightful if you can convince yourself that it’s true. I don’t want to live through dreams but in reality. Be a man and come with me.”
Angelo had come at the right time. A fire was burning in the young artist’s blood; his soul seemed to have changed, he wanted to tear himself away from the life he had led, from all his old habits. He wanted to be free from his former self. So that day he followed Angelo.
On the outskirts of Rome was a little restaurant. It was built in the ruins of an ancient bath and was the favorite meeting place for young artists. Big yellow lemons hung among the dark shining foliage that almost hid the ancient red brick walls. The restaurant itself was located in a deep vault that resembled a grotto. A lamp burned in front of a picture of the Madonna and in the great fireplace a fire was burning, over which food was roasted, boiled, and fried. Outside, under the lemon and laurel trees, stood some tables.
The young men were greeted with shouts of joy from their friends. They ate little but drank a lot, for wine makes you cheerful. They sang and someone began to play on a guitar. It was a saltarello and they started to dance. Two Roman girls, who earned their living as models for the artists, joined in the lively dance. They were lovely bacchantes. They had not the figure or the bearing of Psyche: they were not roses but two young, fresh carnations in full bloom.
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Page 89