“That reading redoubled the astonishment and indignation of Fabulous. She criticized her brother; she swore to me that she did not know the name of my rival. She promised me, in order to convince me of her good faith, that she would make every effort to discover it.
“I had no need of her aid; a deceived lover becomes clairvoyant. For some time there had been at the court a young scatterbrain whose character and face made a great deal of noise. She was announced as a great princess; she affected the manners of one and demanded the respect of one. However, no one knew her; she spoke of nothing but her alliances, her pretentions to all the estates in the world, whose sovereigns were, she said, her relatives, or her adorers.
“She only said incredible things; she only related unprecedented adventures, of which she had been the heroine or the witness. She had nothing natural in her intellect, no accuracy in her expression; her tastes were bizarre, her ideas extraordinary, her sentiments excessive. She was prodigal without being liberal; she gave without discernment and refused by caprice; she overwhelmed the ministers with projects that were nothing but ridiculous visions; she invented extravagant fashions every day. Her garments were singular without being stylish; she adorned herself excessively, and never judiciously. Her stature was tall, without the elegance that makes for charm.
“One could say, on looking at her: there is a well made person; but one sensed that she left something to be desired; her beauty was striking at first, but had nothing real, and did not stand up to examination. Her features, taken separately, were admirable, but the ensemble did not have the piquant and flattering I-know-not-what that one cannot resist. She had large eyes, the movements of which she could not regulate; she strove to give them an expression of mildness and tenderness, which degenerated into languor or stupidity.
“Her name was Chimera. She had made advances of amity to me, which I had received coldly, because at first sight I felt a secret antipathy for her that I had not taken the trouble to overcome. She made a semblance of not perceiving it, but she was too vindictive to restrain herself. I was told that she was neglecting the respect due to me, that she sometimes praised me in a manner whose ironic tone was a true satire, that at other times she threatened overtly to avenge herself for the insulting scorn I had for her. I was offended by her indiscretion. Extreme entered into my resentment and offered to impose on her; I did not want to involve him in the quarrel and contented myself with having the madwoman told that I was not in a humor to suffer her extravagance.
“She went to too many places for it to be possible for me to avoid her. On one apartment day she came to that of my mother, the queen, more bizarrely clad than she had ever been, but as nothing is so unreasonable that it does not find partisans, people praised the taste and understanding of her attire. After a few vague discourses in which I remarked that she was seeking to provoke me, the conversation fell upon the different characters of minds. I declared myself in favor of those which, sage in their vivacity, attach themselves more to retaining it than giving it free rein; which, circumspect in their thoughts, do not seek to shine at the expense of reason and common sense; which, simple in their expressions avoid with the same care exaggeration and dryness of style; and which, understanding themselves when they write, are understood by all those who read.
“‘For myself,’ said Chimera, ‘I compare them to timid slaves who, able to break their fetters, do not have the strength to want it; scrupulously enclosed within the narrow limits of a cold plausibility or a sad exactitude, the ennui that they inspire spreads over everything that they touch and chills everyone that approaches them. I know others, and they are the only ones I love, who, enemies of constraint, rise up to the marvelous by unknown routes; they launch themselves into noble flight; they abandon themselves boldly to the movements that agitate them; they fear getting lost less than crawling. With them, one senses oneself transported outside oneself, one flies in their wake on the wings of pleasure and admiration.’
“She sustained her opinion by means of reasons so pompous and so subtle, but so strange, that I had difficulty comprehending that one could combine so much aberration with so much intelligence. The rest of the assembly judged her differently; there were some who applauded. Even Fabulous followed the torrent. Her brother gave her praise so delicate, but so excessive, that I took it as a joke; she repaid him with a glance in which there was something other than gratitude. That glance, which revealed the depths of their hearts, did not escape me, and caused me the most intense dolor that I have ever felt.
“I returned to my apartment, I groaned, I shed tears, I experienced the cruelest things, he most opposed emotions; they succeeded one another rapidly; I succumbed under their violence; but my woes were aggravated by the remedies that ought to have soothed them. Reason, chagrin and self-esteem were all futile.
“I thought I saw Extreme, I spoke to him, I made him reproaches. Soon, I represented him to myself at the feet of my rival; that sight caused a cold poison to flow through my heart that even took away sentiment. An instant later, I reassured myself with Chimera’s extravagance; I flattered myself that Extreme’s passion for her could only be a temporary error. That idea brought back hope; I was foolish enough and enemy of my glory enough to settle upon it. I carefully avoided the sight of the admirable man I mentioned; I feared the wisdom of his speech and the firmness of his advice. When I was obliged to hear it, I lowered my eyes, I sighed, and I made no reply.
“Fabulous, fearing that I might make a crime out of her brother’s infidelity, or perhaps, imitating his inconstancy, had ceased to see me; I had lost her. Extreme and Chimera no longer maintained any reserve, no one was talking about anything but their amour; every day they gave themselves to scenes that afflicted me. Decorum did not permit me to appear sensible to it, and I constrained myself; but I only appeared in public when my tears were exhausted.
“That state was too violent to sustain; I fell ill, I was in danger; I saw death at close range, and did not tremble at her aspect; she only had to show herself and I was cured. I was told then that Extreme and Chimera had disappeared suddenly. The languor of the body was communicated to the mind; that last blow, instead of crushing me, rendered me a species of calm, of which I thought myself incapable.
“Novelty, whom I had neglected, wanted to resume her foremost place in my heart; I received her well, but she perceived that everything was indifferent to me. A year passed in that fashion; I heard mention of your charms and your power, and I came to throw myself into your arms; you welcomed my with kindness; your examples and your advice have rendered peace to my heart; you posses it, never weary of reigning there.”
Night was beginning to make way...
I am obliged to interrupt this story because the rest of the manuscript is in another hand, and the characters are unknown to me. I presume that the author, anticipating death, was unable to finish it, and according to all appearances, some Indian gymnosophist, older than Homer by a few Olympiads, continued it in order to immortalize it.
I will be told that I am making use here of a bad finesse that returns every day. If that is so, is not imitation a fine thing? Ask any maker of tales who begins to run out of breath, or any publisher who produces supposed works, whether they do not find that innocent artifice useful. Where would the equity be in forbidding me what is permitted to them?
The scholar that I have consulted had just told me that the rest of the manuscript is in the Malabar language; that word makes me fear that the style might resemble the princesses of that name, and that one can do nothing about it.67 He has reassured me on that article. One can judge by the translation, in which I have changed nothing, whether it is sufficient to understand Malabar to please readers.
PART THREE
Docility treated Funestine kindly in order to gain her confidence. She feared provoking a revolt by untimely instructions. When she had studied her character she had the pleasure of seeing that it was only necessary to show her benevolence in order to make onese
lf loved by her.
“Princess,” she said to her then, “you are entering into a difficult career; it is necessary to rid yourself of your prejudices, triumph over your humor and vanquish your passions. The enterprise is great, but it is not above your strength. As is rare for a person of your rank to be taught what veritable grandeur is; an imperious governess gives them false ideas. They believe that everything is permitted to them, because they only see flatterers around them who deceive them, or slaves who fear them.
“People say a great deal to them about the prerogatives of their birth; they do not tell them that the more elevated it is, the more obligations it imposes on them. Common virtues spoil it; it only admits purified and sublime ones, and only the latter are appropriate to you. Let discretion rule your speech, let sagacity preside over your actions; it is in that fortunate mixture that the solid glory consists that never passes. Be mild, not with the mildness of temperament that degenerates into indolence, but with the active, reflective mildness that is not belied and enables our happiness in enabling that of others. Be compassionate; one gains more hearts with good will than with benefits; it is not so much a refusal that offends us as the manner of the refusal. One cannot always give, but one can always want to, and make it felt that one desires it.
“Have no fear that your affability will make people forget what you are; all those who make themselves loved are respected. Dissimulation is of no use to princes; the enlightened courtier studies them and penetrates it; imaginary faults can sometimes be attributed to them, but their virtues are never disputed when they are real. If you are only virtuous in appearance, you will not acquire the delicate esteem that makes all the charm of life; men fear truth for themselves, but they seek it and adore it elsewhere; if a lie dazzles them, it is only for an instant.
“Without the bounty of the gods, who watch over you, the misunderstood amity of Clair-obscur would doom you; you would only be famous for your faults. The greatest of all is ill-humor, that monster born with us, which, feeble in children, is manifest in cries and tears, but which, having become stronger, rises and escapes like an impetuous torrent that carries ravage and horror everywhere; it is not arrested by reason or duty; the enemy of propriety, it spares no one; it does not listen to advice or threats; it disfigures the finest qualities and renders them hateful; it poisons pleasures, disperses friends, and drives away fortune; everything embitters it and nothing appeases it; everything fights it and nothing destroys it; its fury extends even to insensible things. Don’t tell me that yours was the effect of your ugliness; you followed its movement before knowing that you were ugly.
“I know that, by virtue of the power of Imagination, its fits are less frequent and less nasty, but she has only showed you thus far pleasant images on which your mind can dwell agreeably. That calm, even if it is only external is already something, but he most difficult work remains to do. Listen to me, and you can examine afterwards: be careful, above all, of deluding yourself. Mistrust false shame. In order to put yourself in a state to defend yourself against it, I shall teach you to recognize it. It affects the external appearance of modesty; timid, it walks with lowered eyes; slothful, it stops at the slightest obstacle; its extends it advantages so meagerly that it renders itself ridiculous by fearing to appear so; it is so unskillful that it only deceives itself when it imagines that it is deceiving everyone. It has only ever been able to make one dupe, and that is self-esteem, which it blinds by humiliating it and discredits by persuading it that it is only acting in its interests; its cold poison is all the more dangerous because it insinuates itself without violence and numbs all the faculties of the soul. Shrug off its yoke; not to dare to fathom its faults, nor to admit them, or only to admit them while blushing, is to love them, and not to be cured of them.
“I shall pass on to the essential. You have to uproot from your heart harshness, jealousy, hatred and vengeance; it is here, Funestine, that you must no longer look backward; sacrifice yourself with a good grace, your glory and your felicity depend on that sacrifice. Our passions are dear to us because they are born with us, and they are, so to speak, a part of ourselves; it is so natural and so comfortable to deliver ourselves to that which flatters us that one hardly ever bothers to examine the principles and effects of its movements. What it will cost you to combat yours is nothing compared with the price of the advantages that their defeat will procure you.
“Harshness departs from a foundation of pride and scorn that nothing can authorize. The gods are infinitely further above our heads than you are above those of other men; take them as models; they love us and do not scorn us.
“Jealousy is a sentiment that dishonors us all the more so because it forces us to recognize in those of whom we are envious a superiority of talents and enlightenment that we lack; it agitates, torments and afflicts those who feel it, and changes nothing of the merit or the fortune of those who give birth to it; one yields easily to those impressions, one allows them to dominate because one does not render oneself justice; the more one has, the more one wants to have and the more one complains of not having enough; those with the poorest share are always the least unreasonable. That jealousy, the horror of which I am inspiring in you, is so base and so abject that one dare not pronounce its name when one speaks about oneself.
“Hatred is a bizarre monster, which is not appeased either by homages or sacrifices; it persecutes those who serve it, and respects those who scorn it. It is so painful and so shameful to hate that hatred is its own torture and executioner. Do not believe that it needs reasons or pretexts to exercise its fury; it is a frenzy of caprice or temperament, so is it not the prerogative of petty souls?
“I shall not pause to depict vengeance to you; however horrible the portrait I made for you might be, it would not approach the idea that you ought to have of it. Of all the passions it is the one that degrades the excellence of humanity the most; unfortunately, it is the one that flatters it the most, because it only offers itself as the generous sentiment of a noble heart, incapable of suffering an insult. However gross the illusion might be, it is only too accredited, even among your sex. It is said that the gods reserve it to themselves, but the maxim is impious. The gods do not avenge themselves; vengeance is returning the harm that one has received.
“There are other passions; thanks to the gods, you do not know them yet. Virtue will prevent them from approaching you; I have only told you all these things in order that you will be prepared to receive them. She does not stop at speech; she only wants and only loves actions. If it is the case, which I dare not presume, that my advice will have effaced even the trace of your faults, it will only be a feeble commencement; it is very little not to do harm if one does not do good, and if one does not love to do it. You are troubled, Funestine!”
The princess had listened without impatience; suddenly she seemed gripped by a disturbance that passed from her heart into her eyes and her face. Ill-humor, ready to cede, was making one last effort. How much it costs to destroy the first impressions of habitude! The combat was painful, the victory dubious, but in the end reason got the upper hand.
“Ah!” she cried. “My dream is coming true, and I no longer need to have it explained to me.”
“What dream is that?” asked Docility.
“You want to test me,” said Funestine. “Nothing is hidden from the immortals. However, I shall obey you. Then she repeated, word for word, the dream that has been described.
“What meaning do you attribute to it?” asked Docility
“It seems to me,” he princess went on, “that the profound valley is childhood, to which all objects appear to be mountains; the flowers that fade are amusements; the voice is instruction; the dragon is ill-humor; the river is the passage to a less frivolous estate; the perfidious woman is habitude, who is aided by the passions; the bow and the arrows are books, examples and advice; the bird is Imagination; the temple is that of Virtue. The rest is self-explanatory; the two women, so beautiful in appearance, are volu
ptuousness and coquetry; the priestesses that strike them with whips are modesty and firmness; the man lying on the ground is discouragement; the specters are prejudices; the steps are proofs; the closed temple door that only opens after a long wait shows that one can only enter it by perseverance; the emblems are the attributes and mysteries of Virtue that only time, symbolized by the old man, can make comprehensible; the ardor that I sensed at the sight of the sanctuary is inspiration; the woman radiant with light is reason; and it is you, divine Docility, who, piercing my heart with an arrow of fire, has purified it in order to render it worthy of Virtue.”
Invisibly present at that conversation, the goddess was so touched by Funestine’s sentiments that she suddenly showed herself. Less surprised by that prodigy than by the radiance than surrounded her, Funestine threw herself at her knees, clasped them with transport, bathed hem with her tears, sighed, groaned and fell silent.
That eloquent silence had its effect. Virtue lifted her up, embraced her and directed a gaze at her that penetrated all the way to the depths of her heart. From that moment on, the monsters that afflicted it gave way, quivering, to the goddess, who took possession of it. That change was followed by another even more marvelous. Beauty ripped the veil by which it was obfuscated and shone over Funestine’s face, reclaiming all its rights there.
The two goddesses thought it appropriate to hide that new metamorphosis from her. They feared that an excessive joy might cause too sudden a revolution in a soul that was not accustomed to such transports. Perhaps they also wanted to wait until she was capable of judging things sanely enough not to regard beauty as the sovereign good. They gave orders to all those who approached her not to mention it to her; they were obeyed.
Funestine fund herself in a calm of mind the mildness of which was communicated to her speech and her actions. On guard against herself, the memory of the past rendered her attentive to the present and timid with regard to the future. Her domestics adored her, her masters were charmed by her grace and her progress; however, they served her poorly and scolded her, in truth, in spite of themselves, but Virtue made use of that to test her. The stupidity of some and the ill humor of others did not disturb her tranquility at all. I have given them the example, she said to herself, they are compensating themselves for my injustice and my indocility; I have no grounds for complaint.
Funestine and Other Adventures in Romancia Page 26