by George Sand
to reproduce.
- Calm ! said Trenmor looking up to the sky gorgeous ; calm is the greatest blessing of Divinity, this is the future where the immortal soul constantly stretches, bliss! calm is God! Well ! it is in the penal colony that I found it. The secret of human destiny, without the penal colony, I would never have understood it, I would never have tasted it, me player, me man without belief and aimless, tired of life whose outcome I sought in vain, tormented with freedom which I didn't know what to do, not taking the time to dream about it, I was in such a hurry to push time and cut down on boredom to exist! I needed to be cleared for awhile of my will and fall under the control of some will hateful and brutal, who taught me the price of mine. This overabundance of energy, which would cling to dangers and to the vulgar fatigue of legal life, is finally satisfied when she was grappling with life's anxieties atoning. I dare say that she came out victorious; but the victory brought his contentment and his lonely weariness. For the first time in my life I experienced the sweetness of sleep, as full, as voluptuous in the galleys, as they had been rare and incomplete for me in luxury. In prison I learned what self-esteem is worth, because far from being humiliated by the contact of all these cursed existences, in comparing their cowardly cheekiness and dismal fury to calm resignation that was in me I rose to my own eyes and I dared to believe that there could be some weak and distant communication between the sky and the brave man.
In my days of fever and daring, I had never been able manage to hope for that. Calm gave birth to this thought regenerative and little by little it took root in me. I came to
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bout to lift up my soul completely to God and to implore Him with confidence. Oh ! so that torrents of joy flowed in this poor devastated soul! Like the promises of the Divinity became humble and small and merciful, for come down to me and reveal myself to my weak organs!
It was then that I understood the mysterious symbol of the Word divine made man to exhort and comfort men and all this so poetic and tender Christian mythology, these relationship of the earth to the sky, these magnificent effects of spiritualism which finally opens a career for the unfortunate man of hope and consolation! O Lélia! O Sténio! you believe in God too, right?
- Always ! answered Sténio.
- Almost always, answered Lélia.
- And then, said Trenmor, with faith revealed another moral faculty, another celestial blessing, poetry! Through the thunderstorms of my past life, that feeling quickly touched my organs. I understood the great poets I had approached; maybe it was a lot for a man as greedy and as incapable of understanding himself as I was. The calm of the soul gave birth to poetry, as it had born the thought of a friendly God. How many treasures would have been to me forever refused without the benefit of these five years of penance and of meditation! The agony of the penal colony was for me what at one a softer and more flexible soul would have been the peace of the cloister.
I had often wanted solitude. In the days of anguish and fruitless remorse, I tried to flee the presence of the man ; but in vain had I traveled part of the world: loneliness was running away from me, man or his influences inevitable or his despotic power over all of creation, had chased me to the heart of the desert. In the prison, I
found this solitude so precious and so vainly sought. At amidst all this vice and all this ragged crime that roared by my side, I found isolation and silence. These voices at most hit my ears, none came
to my soul. These men had no sympathy
moral with me: my relationships with them alienated me more than my physical freedom and I had managed to exist quite in Page 38
outside of material life; there is the only freedom, there is the only freedom possible isolation on earth. In this calm, in this loneliness, my heart opened to the charms of nature. Formerly at my admiration jaded the most beautiful countries that the sun had not been enough; now a pale ray between two clouds, a melodious complaint of the wind on the strike, the rustling of the waves, the melancholy cry of the seagulls, the distant song of a young girl, the scent of a flower raised to pain in the crack of a wall, it was there for me to vivid pleasures, treasures whose price I knew. How many times did I contemplate with delight, through the narrow fence of a loophole, the immense and grandiose scene of the sea agitated, moving its convulsive swell and long blades of foam from one horizon to another with the speed of lightning!
How beautiful it was, this sea framed in a slit brazen! Like my eye glued to this jealous opening hugged the immensity deployed before me!
Hey! didn't it all belong to me, this great sea that my gaze could embrace, where my thoughts wandered free and wandering, faster, more flexible, more capricious in sound celestial flight as the swallows with large black wings which shaved the foam and let themselves sleep lulled in the wind! What did the prison and the chains matter to me then? My
imagination straddled the storm, like shadows evoked by Ossian's harp. Since then, I crossed it on a light ship, this sea where my soul had wandered so many time. Well ! so she seemed less beautiful to me, I admit; the winds were lazy and heavy at my will, the waves had less sparkling reflections, less ripples graceful. The sun rose less pure there, it set less gorgeous ; this sea which carried me, it was no longer the sea which had rocked my dreams, the sea that belonged only to me and which I had enjoyed alone among the chained slaves.
- And now, said Sténio to him, what is your life, what are your pleasures? Men like you live so little material life that you don't enjoy, I see, benefits of ease and freedom, of everything that another to your place would have hurried to savor long lines after such a harsh abstinence.
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- There would be pride, answered Trenmor, and worse than that, of conceit, to say that I am insensitive to the return of all these goods so long lost. I told you by what competition romantic events, I told you after which trips, what works, what well-directed activity, I had managed to to pay my creditors and to insure myself, for the rest nowadays, what's called wellness. This great condition of existence was of less absolute necessity to me than most men. Used to the miseries of
slavery and then to those of wandering life, I could have accept, as a blessing from Providence, a hut wild on the shores of some new settlement, with the simple resources of nature and the fruit of my work.
Indifferent to my social future, I left it to chance
and, as chance did, I accepted it with gratitude.
Today I’m perhaps the happiest of men,
because I live without projects and without desires. Passions extinct in me left me a huge fund of memories and of reflections, from which I draw sensations every moment sad and sweet. I live languidly and without effort, like recovering from a violent illness. Have you not experienced this delicious numbness of the soul and body after these days of delirium and nightmare, these days both long and fast where, devoured by dreams, tired of sensations inconsistent and abrupt, we do not notice the time which walking and nights following the days? So if you came out of this fantastic drama where we throw fever, for re-enter calm and lazy life, in idyll and
gentle walks, under the warm sun, among the plants that you have left in germ and you find in bloom, if you walked slowly, still weak, along the stream nonchalant and peaceful like you, if you listened vaguely all those long lost nature sounds and almost forgotten on a bed of pain, if you smiled at song of a bird and the scent of a rose like things rare and new, if you have finally come back to life, gently, and through all the pores, and through all the sensations one by one, you can understand what it is finally that the rest after the storms of my life.
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I must admit, however, I sometimes promised myself this new life more happiness than it gave me
Actually. The imagination of man is thus made: it finds enjoyments beyond the present or below. Slave, I tasted great joys in the feeling of hope and in
dreams of the future. Free, I had to look for these joys promised in the memory of slavery, in the dreams of past
. Well ! this is sweet. These vague sufferings of the soul which seeks, which waits, which desires, which ignores itself-even, which builds up the wonders of future life and raises the ruins of past life, those tender and sad aspirations towards an unknown good that never surrenders and never runs out: all this is the life of the soul. Unhappy are those who ignore and who put their ambition in the goods of the Earth ! These goods are mobile and capricious. they miss often they escape constantly. At the heart of man dreams never fail, expectation and remembrance are treasures always open. "
Trenmor fell into deep reverie; his
companions imitated his silence. The beautiful Lélia looked at the wake of the boat, where the reflection of the trembling stars made run thin moving gold streaks. Sténio, the eyes attached to it, only saw it in the universe. When the breeze, which began to rise with sudden and rare shivers, threw her a braid of Lélia's black hair or fringe of his scarf, it shuddered like the waters of the lake, like the reeds on the shore; and then the breeze fell blow like the exhausted breath of a suffering chest. The Lélia's hair and the folds of her scarf fell on her breast and Sténio looked in vain for a look in these eyes whose the fire knew so well how to pierce the darkness, when Lélia deigned to be a woman. But what Lélia was thinking while watching the wake from the boat? ... The breeze had washed away the fog; all to suddenly Trenmor saw the trees in front of him shore and, towards the horizon, the reddish lights of the city; he sighed deeply.
"What," he said, "already!" You row too fast, Sténio, you
snatch from me a very dear illusion. This fog deceived; this noise of oars, this cold of the evening and, above all, this Page 41
religious calm that was in me made me believe that I was still in the penal colony. "
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14
A few hours later, they were at the rich man's ball musician Spuela. Trenmor and Sténio returned under the dome and, from the bottom of this empty and sound rotunda, they were walking their eyes on the large rooms full of movement and noise. The dances swirled in capricious circles under the fading candles, the flowers died in the rare air and tired, the sounds of the orchestra would die out under the marble vault and, in the hot vapor of the ball, passed and ironed pale sad and beautiful figures under their Party ; but, above this rich and vast picture, above these vibrant tones softened by the wave of depth and the weight of the atmosphere, above the bizarre masks, sparkling adornments, fresh grids and groups of young and cheerful women, above movement and noise, above all, stood the large isolated figure of Lélia.
Leaning against an ancient bronze pipe, on the steps of the amphitheater, she also contemplated the ball; she had put on also a characteristic costume, but had chosen it noble and dark like her: she had austere clothes and yet wanted, pallor, gravity, the deep look of a young person poet of yesteryear, when times were poetic and poetry was not mixed up in the crowd. Black hair of Lélia, rejected behind, left uncovered this front where the
finger of God seemed to have printed the seal of a mysterious misfortune and that the looks of the young Sténio constantly questioning with the anxiety of the pilot attentive to the slightest breath of wind and the appearance of the least clouds over pure sky. Lélia's coat was less black, less velvety than her big eyes crowned with a movable eyebrow. The dull whiteness of his face and neck was lost in that of her vast strawberry and the cold breath of her breast impenetrable didn't even lift the black satin from her doublet and the triple rows of its golden chain.
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"Look at Lélia," said Trenmor with a feeling of calm.
admiration as the young man's heart rushed violently outside of himself; look at this big size under these clothes of devout and passionate Italy, this ancient beauty, whose statuary has lost the mold, with the expression of deep reverie of philosophical centuries; these forms and these features so rich; this luxury of organization exterior of which only a Homeric sun could have created the types now forgotten; look, I tell you, this beauty physical which would suffice to see great power and that God was pleased to take on all intellectual power of our time!… Can we imagine something more complete than Lélia dressed, posed and dreaming as well? It's the unblemished marble from Galatea, with the celestial gaze of the Cup, with Alighieri's dark smile. It's the easy attitude and chivalrous young heroes of Shakespeare: it's Romeo, poetic love; it's Hamlet, the pale and ascetic visionary; it's Juliette, Juliette half dead, hiding in her breast poison and the memory of a broken love. You can register the biggest names in history, theater and
poetry on this face whose expression sums it all up, strength to concentrate everything. Young Raphael was to fall into this ecstatic contemplation, when God made him appear a virginal ideality of woman. Dying corinne had to be immersed in this dreary attention when she listened to her last verses declaimed at the Capitol by a young girl. Lara's silent and mysterious page was enclosed in this disdainful isolation from the crowd. Yes, Lélia brings together all these idealities, because it brings together the genius of all poets, the greatness of all heroism. You can give all of these names to Lélia; the greatest, the most harmonious of all before God will still be that of Lélia! Lélia whose forehead bright and pure, whose large and flexible chest contains all great thoughts, all generous feelings; religion, enthusiasm, stoicism, pity, perseverance, pain, charity, forgiveness, candor, audacity, contempt for life, intelligence, activity, hope, patience, everything! Everything, down to weaknesses innocent, to the sublime lightness of woman, to the carefree motive which is perhaps his sweetest privilege and its most powerful seduction.
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- Everything, except love! Alas, said Sténio, it is therefore good true ! you didn't name love, Trenmor, you who know Lélia, you didn't name love! Well !
if that is the case, you lied: Lélia is not a complete being.
It is a dream, as man can create it, graceful, sublime, but where something unknown is always missing, something that has no name and that a cloud veils us always, something that is beyond the heavens, something thing where we tend endlessly without reaching or guessing never, something true, perfect and unchanging; God
maybe it's maybe God it's called! Well ! the revelation of this is lacking in the human mind. For the replace, God gave him love, weak emanation of fire from heaven, soul of the universe perceptible to man; this divine spark, this reflection of the Most High, without which the most beautiful creation is worthless, without which beauty is that a private animated image, love, Lélia does not have it.
What is Lélia? A shadow, a dream, an idea all at most. Go where there is no love, there is no women.
- And do you also think, said Trenmor without answering this that Sténio hoped to be a question, do you also think that there where there is no more love there is no more man?
"I believe it with all my soul," cried the child.
- So in that case I died too, said Trenmor in smiling, because I have no love for Lélia and, if Lélia doesn't not inspire, what other would have the power! Well, child, i hope you're wrong and so is love
like other passions. I believe where they end the man begins. "
At this moment Lélia went down the steps and came to them. The majesty full of sadness that surrounded Lélia as of halo almost always isolated him in the middle of the world: it was a woman who, in public, never indulged in her impressions. She hid in her privacy to laugh at the life, but she crossed it with hateful distrust and went there showed in a rigid aspect to move away from it as much as possible, contact with the company. However she liked them Page 45
parties and public meetings. She came to look for a show. She came to dream there, alone in the middle of the crowd. he
the crowd had to get used to seeing it hover over them and draw impressions from her breast without ever giving him anything communicate his own. Between Lélia and the crowd, there was no change. If Lélia abandoned herself to some dumb sympathies, she refused to inspire them: she had none need. The crowd did not understand this mystery, but it was
fascinated and, while seeking to belittle this destiny unknown whose independence offended her, she opened before her with an instinctive respect that held fear.
The poor young poet with whom she was loved conceived a little better the causes of his power, although he did not want still confess them. Sometimes he was so close to the sad truth, sought and repelled by him, which he felt like a feeling of horror for Lélia. It seemed to him then that Lélia was his scourge, his demon, his evil genius, the most dangerous enemy he had in the world. Seeing her coming so towards him, alone and thoughtful, he felt like hate for this being who had no apparent connection to nature, without thinking that he would have suffered much more, the fool! it would have seen him bet and smile.
"You are here," he said to him in a harsh and bitter tone, like a corpse which would have opened its coffin and which would come walk among the living. See, we're moving away from you, we're afraid to touch your shroud, we hardly dare to look at you face; the silence of fear hovers around you like a night Bird. Your hand is as cold as marble where you go out. "
Lélia answered only by a strange glance and a cold smile; then, after a moment of silence:
"I had a very different idea earlier," she says. I you all took the dead and I, alive, I
was reviewing; I thought there was something
strangely dismal in the invention of these masquerades.
Isn't it very sad, indeed, to revive the centuries who are no longer and force them to entertain the present century?
These costumes of past times, which represent us Page 46
extinct generations, are they not, in the midst of drunkenness of a party, a frightening lesson to remind us of the brevity of man's days? Where are the passionate brains that burned under these bars and under these turbans? Where are the young and vivacious hearts that throbbed under these doublets of silk, under these bodices embroidered with gold and pearls? Where are the proud and beautiful women who draped themselves in these heavy fabrics, which covered their rich hair with these Gothic gems? Alas! where are they, these kings for a day, who have shone like us? They passed without thinking of generations that had preceded them, without thinking of those who had to follow them, without thinking of themselves, who covered with gold and perfumes, which surrounded themselves with luxury and melodies, waiting for the cold of the coffin and forgetting the falls.