by George Sand
"They rest for having lived," said Trenmor; happy those who sleep in the peace of the Lord!
- The spirit of man must be very poor, resumed Lélia, and its empty pleasures; enjoyments must be simple and easy run out for him very quickly, since basically of his joy and his pomp he always finds himself a such a horrible impression of sadness and terror. here is a rich and joyful man, a happy earth who, for dizzy and forget that your days are numbered, imagine nothing better than exhuming the remains of the past, to cover his hosts of the liveries and make them dance in his
palate the specters of his ancestors!
- Your soul is sad, Lélia, said Trenmor; it looks like only here you fear not to die in your turn. "
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“This young man deserves more compassion, Lélia. I thought you had only the graces and the adorable qualities of the woman. Would you also be fierce Page 47
ingratitude and indecent vanity? No, I would prefer doubt the existence of God than the goodness of your heart Lélia, tell me so what you want to do with this soul of poet who gave herself to you and whom you welcomed, recklessly perhaps! You can no longer
push back without it breaking and beware, Lélia, Dieu you will one day ask for it, because this soul comes from him and must go back there. If God's gaze lowers close enough us to appreciate some difference between the creatures of its hands, undoubtedly the young Sténio must be one of the children of his predilection. Didn't he put in him a reflection of beauty Angels ? What could be purer and sweeter than this child?
Its fluffy eyelid, which lowers at every moment to veil a modest look, doesn't it seem to call the chaste kisses of these winged virgins that we see in our dreams? I did not see a more calm physiognomy angelic or blue in the most beautiful sky which was more limpid and more heavenly than the blue of her eyes. I did not hear a young girl's voice that was more harmonious and softer than hers ; the words he says are like the low notes and velvety that the wind entrusts to the strings of the harp. And then his slow gait, his nonchalant and sad attitudes, his hands white and fine, her frail and flexible body, her hair of a
tone so soft and so silky softness, her complexion changing like the autumn sky, this bright carmine that a look of you spread on his cheeks, this bluish pallor that a word of impresses you on his lips, all that, he's a poet, he's a young virgin man, it's a soul that God sends to suffer here below to test it before making it an angel. And if you deliver this young soul to the breath of corrosive passions, if you put it out under the ice of despair, if you abandon her at the bottom of the abyss, how will she find the way to heaven? O woman! be careful what you go do ! Do not crush this frail child under the weight of your awful reason! Save the wind and the sun, and day, and the cold, and the lightning, and all that withers us overturns, dries us up and kills us. Woman help him walk, cover him with a coat, be his
guide on the edge of the pitfalls. Can't you be his friend or his sister or mother?
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I know everything you told me already, I
understand, I congratulate you, but since you are happy thus (as much as it is given to you to be!) it is no longer you that I take care; it is from him, who suffers and that I sorry. Come on, woman! you who know so much ignored by man, do you not have a remedy for his ailments?
Can't you give others a little bit of science that God gave you? Is it in you to do evil and not to be able to do good?
Well ! Lélia, if it is so, it is necessary to move away Sténio or run away from it. "
16
"Remove Sténio or flee him!" Oh ! not yet. You are so
cold, your heart is so old, friend, that you talk of running away Sténio, as if it were a question of leaving this city for a other, these men of today for the men of tomorrow, as if it were for you, Trenmor, to leave me, me Lélia!
I know it, you've hit the target, you've escaped the sinking, you are in port. No affection in you rises to passion, nothing is necessary for you, nobody can make or break your happiness, you are yourself the craftsman and the caretaker. Me too, Trenmor, I congratulate but i don't understand you i guess you all more ; I admire the regular and solid work that you have done, but it is a fortress that this work of your reason; and me woman, me artist, I need a palace: I will not be there happy, but at least I will not die there; within your walls of ice and stone, I wouldn't have a day to live. No, not yet, no! God does not want it! Can we
to anticipate the accomplishment of his designs? If it is given to me to reach where you are, at least I want to get there ripe for Page 49
wisdom and self-confident enough not to look back with pain.
I hear you from here: "weak and miserable woman, say you are afraid of getting what you often ask for; I have you seen aspire to the triumph that you repel! ... Well! go i I am weak, I am coward, but I am neither ungrateful nor vain, I have not these vices of the woman. No, my friend, I don't want point breaking the heart of man, extinguishing the soul of the poet.
Rest assured, I love Sténio. "
17
"You like Sténio! Woman, you lie. Think about this
that we are, you, him, me. You like Sténio! it is not and cannot be. Are you thinking of the centuries that separate from him? You, withered flower, beaten, broken; you, skiff tossed on all seas, failed on all strikes, would you dare to try a new journey? Ah! you there don't think about it, Lélia! To beings like us, what does it take to present? The rest of the tomb. You have lived ! let live the others in turn; don't throw yourself, sad shadow and fleeting, in the ways of those who have not finished their task and lost their hope. Lélia, Lélia! the coffin demands you; did you not suffered enough, poor destiny? Go to bed in your shroud, finally sleep in your silence, tired soul that God no longer condemns work and pain!
It is true that you are less advanced than me. he you have some reminiscences of past times. You sometimes still fight against the enemy of man, against hope. But believe me, my sister, just a few steps separate you from the goal. Believe me, there is very little way to to make us walk at the same step towards the eternal beatitude. You are much closer to me than to Sténio. And then, to come to me, you must advance; instead that to go to Page 50
he would have to go back; and this is not possible. he aging is easy, no one gets younger.
Again, let the child grow and live, do not choke not the flower in its germ. Don't throw away your frozen breath on its beautiful days of sun and spring. Don't hope give life, Lélia: life is no longer in you, it does not remains that regret; soon, like mine, you won't have any left more than the memory. "
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"You promised me, you will love me gently and we will be happy. Do not try to anticipate time, Sténio, don't worry about probing the mysteries of life. Let her take and carry you where we all go. You fear me You must fear yourself, you must
repress ; because at your age, the imagination spoils the most tasty, impoverishes all enjoyments; at your age we don't knows how to profit from nothing, we want to know everything, own everything, everything
exhaust and then we are surprised that the goods of man are so little thing, when we should be surprised only from the heart of man and his needs. Go, believe me, walk slowly, savor one by one all the ineffable pleasures of a word, with a look, a thought, all the immense things of a love born. Weren't we happy yesterday under these yardsticks, when, sitting close to each other, we felt our clothes touch each other and our eyes guess in the shadows? It was a very dark night and yet I saw you, Sténio; I you saw how beautiful you are and I imagined you were the sylph of these woods, the soul of this breeze, the angel of this mysterious and tender hour. Did you notice, Sténio, that he there are hours when we are forced to love, hours when poetry floods us, where our heart beats faster, where our soul rushes out of us and breaks all the bonds of the will to go find another soul where to spread? How of times, at the entrance of the night, at the rising of the moon, at the first Page 51
daylight, how often, in the midnight silence and in this other midday si
lence so oppressive, so worried, so devouring, didn't I feel my heart rushing towards a goal unknown, towards a formless and nameless happiness, which is at sky, which is in the air, which is everywhere, like a magnet
invisible, like love! And yet, Sténio, it is not love; you believe it, you who know nothing and who hope all ; I know everything, I know that there is, beyond love, desires, needs, hopes that never die
period; otherwise what would man be? It was granted if few days to love on earth!
But, at these times, what we feel is so vivid, if powerful, that we spread it on all that we surrounds; at these times when God possesses and fills us, we bring out on all his works the radiance of the ray which envelops us.
Have you never cried of love for these white women stars that sow the blue veils of the night? Don't you you never kneeled before them, did you not stretched out your arms, calling them your sisters? And then, like the man likes to concentrate his affections, too weak that he is for the vast feelings, did it not happen to you passionate about one of them? Didn't you choose with love, among all, sometimes the one who rose red and sparkling on the dark forests of the horizon; sometimes the one who, pale and sweet, veiled like a modest virgin behind the humid reflections of the moon; sometimes these three sisters also white, also beautiful, shining in a triangle mysterious ; sometimes these two radiant companions who sleep side by side, in the pure sky, among the myriads of least glories; and all these cabalistic signs, all these figures unknown, all these strange, gigantic, sublime characters, that they trace on our heads, did you not let yourself take the fancy of explaining them and discovering the great mysteries of our destiny, the age of the world, the name of the Most High, the future of the soul? Yes, you have questioned these stars with ardent sympathies and you thought you met
looks of love in the trembling radiance of their rays; you thought you felt a voice falling from up there for you Page 52
pet, to tell you, "Hope, you came from us, you will come back to us! I am your homeland. It's me who calls you, it's me who invites you, it's me who has to belong to you one day! "
The love, Sténio, is not what you believe; it's not this violent aspiration of all faculties towards a being created; it is the holy aspiration of the most ethereal part of our soul into the unknown. Being limited, we seek without stop giving way to these stinging and insatiable desires that consume us; we are looking for a purpose around them and poor prodigies that we are, we adorn our
perishable idols of all intangible beauties seen in our dreams. The emotions of the senses are not enough for us.
Nature has nothing sought enough, in the treasure of her joys naive, to quench the thirst for happiness that is in us; he we you need the sky, and we don't have it!
This is why we seek the sky in a creature
similar to us, and we spend all this high for it energy which had been given to us for a more noble use.
We deny God the feeling of worship, feeling which was put into us to return to God alone. We the carry over to an incomplete and weak being, who becomes the god of our idolatrous worship. In the youth of the world, while man had not distorted his nature and disregarded his own heart, love of one sex for the other, as we see it design today, did not exist. Pleasure alone was a link; moral passion, with its obstacles, its sufferings, its intensity is an evil that these generations have ignored. It is
that then there were gods and that today there are no more.
Today, for poetic souls, the feeling of
worship goes even into physical love. Strange error of a greedy and helpless generation! Also when the divine veil and that the creature shows itself, puny and imperfect, behind these clouds of incense, behind this halo of love, we are afraid of our illusion, we blush at it, we overturn the idol and we trample on it.
And then we are looking for another! because we need to love, and we are still often mistaken, until the day Page 53
where, disillusioned, enlightened, purified, we give up hope of lasting affection on earth and we raise up to God the enthusiastic and pure tribute that we should never have address that to him. "
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“Do not write to me, Lélia; why are you writing to me I was happy, and now you throw me back into anxiety which I left for a moment! This hour of silence with you had revealed to me so much ineffable pleasure! Already, Lélia, you repent for making them known to me. And are you afraid of my eager impatience? You me intentionally misunderstand. You know that I will be happy by little, because nothing you will do for me will seem small, because I will attach to your least favors the price they must have. I'm not presumptuous, I know how much i am below you. Cruel woman!
why constantly remind me of this trembling humility who makes me suffer so much?
I understand, Lélia! alas, I understand! It's god alone that you may like! It is only in heaven that your soul can rest and live! When you have, in
the emotion of an hour of reverie, dropped on me a look of love is that you are mistaken is that you think of God, that you take a man for an angel.
When the moon rose, when it lit up my features and dispelled this shadow favorable to your golden chimeras, you smiled in pity recognizing the forehead of Sténio; forehead of Sténio where you had printed a kiss, nevertheless!
You want me to forget it, I can see it! You have afraid that I keep the intoxicating sensation and that I live everything One day ! Rest assured, I did not taste this happiness in blind; if he has devoured my blood, if he has broken my chest, he has not not lost my reason. Reason never goes astray with you, Lélia! Don't worry, I tell you, I'm not one of these daring Don Juan's for whom a woman's kiss is a pledge of love. I don't believe myself the power to animate the marble and raise the dead.
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And yet your breath has kindled my brain. Barely your lips touched the end of my hair, and I believed feel an electric spark, a concussion so terrible that cry of pain escaped from my chest. Oh ! you are not not a woman, Lélia, I can see it! I had dreamed of the sky in one of your kisses and you let me know hell.
Yet your smile was so sweet, your words so sweet and so consoling, that I then let myself be happy by you. This terrible emotion dulled a little, I came to the end to touch your hand without shivering. You showed me the sky and I went up there with your wings.
I was happy last night remembering your last look, your last words. I did not flatter myself, Lélia, I swear ; I knew I was not loved by you, but I fell asleep in this soft numbness where you had me discarded. Here you are already waking me up to scream at me with your voice dismal: "Remember, Sténio, that I cannot love you! "
Hey! I know it, Madame, I know it too well! "
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«Lélia, goodbye, I am going to kill myself. You made me happy today, tomorrow you would quickly snatch happiness from me that by mistake or by whim you gave me this evening. he I don't have to live until tomorrow, I have to fall asleep in my joy and do not wake up.
The poison is prepared; now i can talk to you freely, you won't see me anymore, you won't be able to see me anymore despair. Perhaps you will regret the victim you could make you suffer, the toy you were having fun torment under your capricious breath. You loved me more that Trenmor, you said, although you valued me less.
It is true that you cannot torture Trenmor at your willing; against him your power fails, your tiger nails and women have no hold on this diamond heart. Me, Page 56
I was a soft wax which received all the imprints; I conceive, artist, that you enjoy yourself better with me. You torment me as you please and you gave me all forms of your inspirations. Sad, you were printing to your works the feeling that you were dominated. Calm you give the calm air of the angels; irritated, you communicated to him the awful smile that the demon put on your lips. So the statuary makes a god with a little mud and a reptile with the
same mire who was a god.
Lélia, forgive those moments of hate that you inspire me, is that I love you with passion, with delirium, w
ith despair. I then tell you without offending you, without disobeying you, since this is the last time i'm talking to you: you hurt me a lot!
And yet it was very easy for you to make me a man happy, a poet with laughing ideas, with lively sensations; with one word a day, with a smile every night, you would have me made great, you would have kept me young. Instead, you don't have sought only to wither and to discourage me. While saying that you wanted to keep the sacred fire in me, you extinguished it until the last spark; you turned it on badly, in order to surprise the rash and smother the flame. Now, I renounce love, I renounce life: are you happy?
Farewell !
Midnight is approaching. I go ... where you will not come, Lélia!
because it is impossible that we have the same future. We we do not worship the same power, we will not inhabit them same heavens… "
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Midnight rang: Trenmor entered at Sténio, it found it thoughtful, sitting by the fire. The weather was cold and dark; the bise hissed in a high voice under the empty and sound paneling.
There was on a table, in front of Sténio, a cup filled Page 57
to the edges, which Trenmor knocked over with the touch of his coat.