This discourse made such a deep impression on Funestine that it was as if she were taken out of herself. One does not pass without agitation from one state to another; unexpected joy affects one as much as dolor; her own was filled with trouble and anxiety; she gazed at Imagination and then turned her eyes away; she sighed, she kissed her hands with transport; she wanted to mark her gratitude to her but could not find terms to express it; her thoughts were confused, resembling fever dreams.
Imagination applauded herself for the movements that her presence excited in Funestine’s soul; she saw with pleasure the full extent of her sensibility; when she had enjoyed her triumph sufficiently, she returned to herself. The princess said to her then: “You have commenced my happiness, finish your work; introduce me to this Virtue, of whom I only know the name as yet, but for whom I feel more eager because you have inspired me with tenderness for you.”
Imagination praised her impatience, and promised to satisfy her, without telling her the day; she had her views.
The author that I am translating writes at this point: “Fortunate Funestine, you no longer have any sad return to fear; your woes are ended; the calm you are enjoying is only a feeble image of the happiness that the future is preparing for you.”
A mysterious dream occupied her all night; she had not yet woken up when Imagination, taking her by the arm, informed her that it was time to go to met Virtue.
“Divine fay,” the princess said to her, “I am ready to go with you, but if it is true, as I suspect, that nothing is hidden from you, combine with all the benefits that I have already received from you the complaisance of explaining the meaning of a dream that was too coherent to be merely an illusion.
“Slumber, which I no longer knew, returned as soon as you had quit me. It is said that the ideas of the day are retraced during the night, but nothing similar happened to me. Present as you were in my heart, I had forgotten you. Scarcely was I asleep than I found myself in a valley so profound that my sight could not attain the summits of the mountains that surrounded me. I was walking over flowers that were unknown to me; I have never seen any similar; they perfumed the air and embellished it. I made a garland of them; they lost their colors, and faded as I arranged them, but I felt no less pleasure n adorning myself with them.
“I was on a path that led to a river I could see in the distance; I followed it. A voice I heard behind me shouted: ‘Stop, Funestine; you are going to find monsters by which you will be devoured. I offer you a refuge from them.’ An involuntary movement made me turn my head. Gods, what did I see? A dragon was pursuing me; its horrible hissing chilled me with fear. A frightful noise augmented it, and I started running away with all my might. I arrived, out of breath, on the river bank. I found a small boat there, into which I threw myself. There was a woman with an equivocal physiognomy in it; I begged her to take me to the other side; the perfidious woman seemed to consent to that, but she enveloped me with almost imperceptible nets, which gripped me so tightly that I could not move.
“She put me back on the shore; she disappeared, and came back followed by a host of monsters of every species, which she animated against me. I thought I was going to be their prey; death seemed inevitable. I waited for it, without lowering myself to beg my enemy, and without a sigh escaping me. The frightful dragon was already opening its mouth to swallow me; I was in that state when a bird with the most beautiful plumage in the world came to peck my bonds. I remained motionless without even thinking of seconding it. It finished breaking them and flew away to a tree. I had a bow and arrows; I made use of them. The dragon was my first victim; all my shots struck home. The monsters were less ardent to attack me, but I emptied my quiver without being able to destroy them.
“The beautiful bird came to my aid; it punctured their eyes with thrusts of its beak; eventually they took flight. I gave my liberator thanks that I strove to make proportionate to the service that it had just rendered me. Instead of responding to me it took me on its wings and transported me in rapid flight on to one of the mountains I mentioned. ‘It’s there, Funestine,’ it said to me, showing me a temple situated on an even higher mountain. ‘It’s there that you must seek the end of our troubles. I can’t take you there.’
“‘You can’t take me there,’ I replied, with a sigh. ‘Who will help me, then, to get rid of the thick brambles that surround me? No path is offered to my gaze; I shall perish in this desert.’ Alas, I saw it fly away. I sensed all the strangeness and all the rigor of my destiny, which had only delivered me from one danger to expose me to another. My courage weakened; uncertain of what I ought to do, I perceived that I was trailing behind me the remains of my bonds. I got rid of them. My firmness got the upper hand; I surmounted the obstacles.
“I arrived at the enclosing wall of the temple, my face bruised and my hands and feet all bloody. I was suffering from indescribable pains; I was weeping bitterly; I could no longer sustain myself. I lay down under a tree; when its shade had refreshed me, I began to breathe; my strength had returned. I was standing up in order to knock on the door when an admirably beautiful young woman came to stop me. I looked at her with the penetrating expression that marked so clearly the pleasure one is feeling. I found myself so ugly compared with her that I was surprised that she wasn’t shocked by my ugliness. I was grateful to her. I was no longer mistress of my heart; it escaped me.
“‘Where are you going?’ she asked me, in a tone of voice whose softness further augmented the power of her charms.
“‘Goddess,’ I replied, ‘for, if my eyes are not deceiving me, you are a divinity, I’m going into the nearby temple to seek a remedy for the trouble that is agitating me.’
“‘Be very careful,’ she said, ‘the goddess who is worshiped there is a savage prude, difficult of access and vexatious in commerce. You’ll only reach her sanctuary after the rudest ordeals; when you get there she’ll treat you like a slave; without me you’d commit some imprudence that would have poisoned the rest of your days. Render thanks to your good genius; he’s the one who sent me to help you. Come into my palace; you’ll find the true happiness there.
“I listened to her with pleasure, but I dared not believe her. I recalled the discourse of the faithful bird; I had too much obligation to it to suspect it of wanting to deceive me; however, I only resisted feebly, and I felt myself being drawn away. A woman from the stranger’s retinue, almost as charming as her mistress, offered me an elegant dress; my clothes were in too great a disorder to refuse it. I was ready to put it on when two priestesses came out of the temple. One was wearing a veil, which hid her entirely; the other, of a masculine beauty, showed in her stride a strength above her sex; she had whips armed with iron tips, with which she struck the mistress and servant pitilessly.
“Moved by compassion, I criticized internally such a great inhumanity. Imagine my surprise: those women, whose charms had seduced me, then appeared to me as hideous fleshless skeletons, whose ugliness still makes me shudder. When they had run away, the priestesses gave me their hands without speaking to me, and introduced me into the enclosure. They moved aside an infinite number of fearful specters that blocked my passage; the specters disappeared, came back, and finally vanished. I entered a pathway so narrow and scabrous that without supernatural aid I would have fallen a thousand times over into the precipices that bordered it to the left and right.
I emerged from it. I arrived without accident at the base of the temple; one climbed up to it by so many steps, and they were so slippery, that I doubted the success of my enterprise. A man lying on the ground augmented my mistrust; sadness and languor were painted on his face. ‘Do you hope,’ he said to me, in a poorly articulated voice, ‘young and feeble as you are, to vanquish the difficulties that have deterred me? You’ll succumb to them. Let my example teach you to measure your strength; believe me, turn back.’
“That timid counsel made me pause for a time, but a desire for glory made me go on. I endured so many fatigues and so many contradictions in that
difficult march that I thought that I had employed an entire year in it. The door of the temple was closed. I knocked gently; no one responded to me. I redoubled my blows; I didn’t see anyone. I armed myself with patience; I invoked the goddess; I combined tears with prayers. Finally, after a long wait, the door opened of its own accord.
“The interior of the temple had as much magnificence as the exterior had simplicity. It was ornamented with large pictures representing allegorical mysteries. I considered them attentively, without being able to penetrate their meaning. An old man sitting on a globe wanted to explain them to me. I didn’t listen to him. The sanctuary was offered to my eyes; I ran toward it ardently; but I wasn’t yet at the end of my proofs.
“A woman brilliant with light took me by the hand; she took me into a nearby room; my garments were taken off; I was plunged into a tub full of a liquid so strong and spirituous that I could not sustain the effect; a devouring fire consumed me; I thought that an arrow pierced my heart; I lost consciousness. Then you came, and I woke up.”
“That dream,” said Imagination, “will soon have no more obscurity for you. I shall leave you the pleasure of recognizing it. If, however, a few features of it escape your penetration, Docility will reveal its connections with the situation you are in. She is the person into whose hands I will put you for a few days; she is the one who will introduce you to Virtue.”
“What!” said Funestine. “You’re going to abandon me, then?”
“You have no further need of me,” Imagination replied. “You can support the present, you are hopeful for the future; your anxieties are dissipated, and agreeable objects have taken their place. The story that I have just heard enables me to see all the rectitude of your mind; my power does not extend beyond what I have done for you. I have enabled you to glimpse happiness; you alone can procure it. Adieu, Funestine. When you are happy—which is to say, when you are perfect—don’t forget me. Virtue is my friend, the progress she will make in your heart ought not to efface the impressions that I have made in your mind. It is not enough to be virtuous, it is necessary to be amiable; one is only one and the other by means of the good usage that one makes of the mind and the heart.”
Then, without waiting for a response, she conducted her to the house that Clair-obscur had prepared for her. It had no sumptuous furniture, and no mirrors; everything there was neat, but simple. Funestine had quit the Palace of Eventualities without repugnance; she felt none at the sight of her new dwelling. Docility came to meet her, and took her to her apartment.
Imagination ran to meet Virtue; the joy of seeing one another again was equal. After the first transports they rendered accounts mutually, one of the success of her voyage, the adventures, misfortunes and happiness of Ulibec and Algée, and the other of the fortunate change in Funestine.
Virtue said to her: “When Docility brings her to me she will occupy me entirely. Let’s take advantage of the leisure that we have. You interrupted the story regarding yourself at the most interesting part; I beg you to resume it.”
Imagination could not refuse her friend anything. It is her who is going to speak.
“I have told you about my dissipations; I shall tell you about my weaknesses. Fabulous had a brother about whom she never ceased talking to me; she enabled me remark such singular rapports of humor and character between us that, in the time when I suspected her of exaggeration, I felt a violent desire to know him.
“That brother’s name is Extreme. He was then bearing arms for the first time with Prince Formosa, rumor of whose exploits have doubtless reached you. They had conceived for one another at first sight the esteem to which superior merit gives birth wherever it is found. Their amity did not last long. As they were marching at the same pace in the career of glory, they passed from emulation to jealousy; it became so intense that they were obliged to separate.
“Extreme came back. Renown had announced him as a prodigy; it was not belied. He appeared like one of those luminous phenomena that everyone rushes to see, and which are the subject of all conversations. The personal graces, the sublimity of intelligence and sentiments, everything that composes the amiable man, the man in fashion: such was Extreme; at least, that was what women said of him, even if they had not seen him. It was a badge of status to know him and to have been to his house; there was no reputation, merit or beauty except at that price. For some time, there was nothing but stratagems and enticements to attract him; he was the terror of husbands and fortunate lovers. The most confident fops dared not appear before him.
“I saw him in one of those tumultuous circles of which persons of my rank can never rid themselves. On his part it was only a ceremonial visit, but he said so many brilliant things, in such a fine manner, that it seemed to me that he was only saying them for me. I was flattered by that; I strove to respond. I don’t know whether I succeeded, but I believed that I perceived that the admiration was divided between us. The desire to please is so natural in a young woman that she does not even think of shielding herself from it. We separated prejudiced in one another’s favor and impatient to see one another again.
“His sister rendered me an account of his sentiments; I did not hide mine from her. When he found an opportunity to talk to me, he made use of it with a noble assurance that ordinary men do not have. His declaration was too flattering and too delicate to appear offended by it; I did not use with him the refinements of self-esteem that are disguised beneath the exterior of an apparent pride while they are secretly delivering themselves to the pleasure that a triumph causes. I did not affect the tones of anger and scorn that the heart almost always disavows; but I measured my response and my conduct in such a way that amour and duty had no complaint to make.
“I shall pass lightly over the pleasures of a union formed by sympathy, entertained by mystery and augmented by hope. Extreme had sworn an inviolable fidelity to me so many times, and I was so disposed to believe him, that I was about to make use of the absolute power that I have over the mind of my father to engage him to make my happiness is making his own. Alas, my dear Virtue, I was the victim of Amour and perfidy.
“I had demanded of Extreme that he would see me infrequently; I feared the outburst of an overt passion. I had represented myself for so long as indifferent that I did not want people to know, if possible, that I no longer was. He groaned at that constraint; he complained of it tenderly, but he obeyed. I was charmed by his complaisance; I did not read what was in his heart. By what cruel fatality is it necessary that one cannot be in good faith without being betrayed?
“That lover, whom I thought incapable of dissimulation, was deceiving me at the very moment when he appeared to me to be most sincere. I learned of his inconstancy from a man so marvelous that I cannot dispense with giving you an idea of him. His birth is illustrious, his merit above his employments. Old age has fortified his mind without enfeebling his body at all; one can only judge his age by his experience; he is knowledgeable without ostentation, accessible without familiarity, firm without rudeness and sage without bitterness; he is the soul of councils and makes the delight of society. My father, who raised him, regards him as his own; he had seen me born and loved me since my childhood; he cultivated my mind by means of everything he thought capable of embellishing it, and gave me advice on my conduct that would have made my glory and my happiness if I had followed it. I was too lively then to profit from it; only time could enable me to know its price. However, his zeal and his mildness, which augmented one another instead of belying one another, inspired me with the most respectful tenderness for him.
“On day, finding me alone, he said to me: ‘Princess, I am going to displease you, but I beg you to sacrifice your resentment to me. I know society too well, and I am too attached to you to be mistaken in what regards you; I shall spare your delicacy, but I will not flatter you. You love Extreme; he knows that you love him. Should that confession escape you? I want to believe that one cannot reason with one’s heart; that, at least is how one excuses its weakn
ess; but if one cannot help loving, one can avoid saying so, and above all, one should, when duty does not speak first. The brilliant qualities of Extreme have seduced you, you have thought him worthy of pleasing you, because he does please you. You have committed a fault for which you are being punished; you have touched his vanity, another has touched his heart. At the moment when I am speaking to you, he is at the feet of your rival. Do not demand that I name her; I am reproaching myself for the dolor I am causing you and I do not want to sharpen it.’
“He took a letter from his pocket, which he handed to me, and left me in a state of shock that I cannot describe. Given what I had just heard, I ought to have torn up that letter without reading it, scorned Extreme and labored to cure myself. I took an exactly opposite course; I doubted my misfortune, I read that fatal letter avidly; I wept; I lamented Extreme, and I did not cease to love him.
“I sent for Fabulous and told her about my adventure. I examined all her reactions; I only found surprise there. ‘Is it possible,’ I asked her, ‘that you do not know the person preferred to me, and that you are not partly responsible for betraying me?’ She destroyed my suspicions in such an ingenuous manner that I ceased to suspect her, but when she wanted to excuse her brother I interrupted her. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘and see if you can justify this,
“What! You fear the charms of Imagination?—this is what the letter said—You render yourself scant justice; she has wit, she is amusing, but what is all that compared with what you are? I only see her for the sake of propriety and in order to keep our secret. Is it necessary to cease to see her, and to do so with ostentation? Speak, you will be obeyed. I only know of emotion those that you inspire in me. The heart of Extreme is yours. He adores you, and will always adore you.
Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia Page 25