by George Sand
that I can go to sleep without damnation hanging over me like the nightmare! "But she didn't listen to me, she embraced me with her black hair, her black eyes, her strange smile and I was fighting with this unforgiving shadow to the point of falling exhausted, dying, on the steps of the sanctuary.
"Well! Sometimes by dint of humiliating myself before God, force to water the marble with my tears, it happened to me regain some calm. I came home consoled, I returned to my silent cell, overcome with fatigue and sleep. Goal do you know what Lélia was doing? What she imagined, the mocking impious, to despair and lose myself? She entered in my cell before me, she snuggled up clever and flexible in the carpet of my prie-Dieu or in the sand of my pendulum or in the jasmines of my window; and hardly had I started my last prayer that it suddenly arose in front of me and put his cold hand on my shoulder saying: Page 79
"Here I am! " So I had to lift my eyelids weightlessness and struggling again with my troubled heart and repeat the exorcism, until the ghost was repelled.
Sometimes he even slept on my bed, on my poor bed lonely and cold; he sprawled on this pallet, the horrible specter, with courtesan graces and voluptuous shudders that made me shiver with horror and fear; and when I opened the twill curtains to get close to my bed, I found him there, who held out his lascivious arms to me and who laughed at my terror! Oh my God ! how I suffered! O
woman, oh dream, oh desire! how you hurt me! That of forms you took to enter my house! So many lies you made me! What traps you have set for me!
- Magnus, said Sténio with bitterness, shut up! your
words make my blood run high. There is only the imagination of a priest who is shameless enough to wither thus Lélia.
- No! said the priest, I have not profaned it even in dreams.
God sees me and hears me, that he throws me into this abyss if I lie! I bravely resisted, I used up my soul, I exhausted my life in this fight and I never gave in; and the shadow of Lélia always left virgin of my terrible nights and burning. Is it my fault that the temptation was horrible?
Why did the spirit of this woman cling to all my steps?
Why did he come looking for me everywhere? Sometimes, sitting at sacred confession court I listened with reverence the sad confessions of a woman hideous of wrinkles and rags; and if I happened to throw my eyes on her by answering her, do you know what figure appeared to me at the bars of confessional, instead of the yellow and withered face of the old?
The pale figure and the wicked and cold look of Lélia who petrified. Then my word remained paralyzed on my lips; a painful sweat flooded my forehead, a cloud passed over my eyes; it seemed to me that I was going to die. My language was looking vainly an exorcism formula, I forgot even the name of the Most High; I couldn't summon any power heavenly and this hallucination only stopped with a hoarse voice and broken from the old woman who asked me for absolution. Me absolve, I untie souls, I whose soul was chained Page 80
by an infernal power! But fortunately Lélia is not any more.
She was damned and I live, I will be saved! Because, I admit, as long as she lived I was in the grip of horrible temptations; of the far more destructive thoughts than anything i told you fermented in my brain and stood there victorious
for whole days. These thoughts were doubt, it was the atheism that entered me like a venom. There were days when I was so tired of fighting, when the hope of salvation gleamed so faint and so far away that I rejected myself with all my strength in the present life. Well ! I said to myself, let's be happy at least one day, let's be a man, since we don't can be angel. Why would a law of death weigh on me ? Why would I consent to be cut off from the lives of men, in exchange for a chimera of the future? They are happy, the others are free! They breathe comfortable, they they walk, they command, they love, they live and I am a corpse lying on a coffin, the remains of a man attached to a debris of religion! They place their hope in this life, they can realize it, because they can act. And besides, the things we see exist; wife
that you can hug is not a shadow. Me I
have only the hope of another life, and who will answer for it? My God, therefore, you do not exist, since you leave me in fall prey to these dreadful uncertainties! There was a time, it is said, when you worked miracles to support the faltering faith of men; you sent an angel to touch a
charcoal ignited Isaiah's dumb lip you appeared in the burning bush, in the golden cloud, in the night breeze, and now you are deaf you remain indifferent to our errors and our faults. You have abandoned your people, you no longer reach out to those who go astray, you no longer speak a word of encouragement and strength to him who is suffering and fighting for you. Oh ! you are only lie and vain pride of man, you are nothing! you are not !…
So I blasphemed and let myself be carried away with passion desires. Oh ! if I had dared to do it completely!… if
I dared to claim my share of life and own Lélia only by will!… But even that I did not dare.
There was always a dreary and stupid fear deep inside me, Page 81
which froze my blood at the height of the fever. Satan only wanted neither take me nor let go. God didn't deign to call me or push me away. But all my evils are finished, because Lélia is dead, and I return to faith; she is dead, right not ? "
The priest tilted his head to her breast and fell into a deep reverie. Sténio left it without it noticing it.
2
Spring had returned with its bird songs and new flower scents. The day was ending, the redness of the sunset faded under the purple hues of the night: Lélia dreamed on the terrace of Villa Viola. It was a rich house that an Italian had built for his mistress at the entrance to these mountains. She had died of grief there; and the Italian, wanting more to live in a place that reminded him of painful souvenirs, had rented the gardens which
contained the tomb and the villa which bore the name of his property-beloved. There are pains that feed on themselves. he there are some who are frightened and who flee like remorse.
Soft and lazy like the breeze, like the wave, like all this so sweet and sleepy May day, Lélia, leaning on the railing, looked into the most beautiful valley that the foot of civilized man has trod. The sun had gone down behind the horizon and yet the lake still retained a fiery red tone, as if the ancient god, who was supposed to go into the waves every evening, would have indeed immersed in its transparent mass.
Lélia was dreaming. She listened to the confused murmur of the valley, the cries of the young red lambs who came to kneel in front of their brown mothers, the sound of the water began to open the locks, the voice of the great shepherds bronzed, which have a Greek profile; picturesque rags and which sing in a guttural cry down the mountain,
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the shoulder strap. She also listened to the bell at hail stamp which rings on the neck of long tiger cows and the barking sound of these large dogs of primitive breed which echoes on the side of the ravines.
Lélia was calm and radiant like the sky. Sténio fit bring the harp and sang her most beautiful hymns.
As he sang, the night went down, still slow and solemn, like the grave chords of the harp, like the beautiful notes of the suave and male voice of the poet. When he had finished, the sky was lost under this first gray coat whose night takes on, as the trembling stars hardly dare show distant and pale as a weak hope within the doubt; hardly a white line lost in the mist was drawing around the horizon. It was the last light of twilight, the last farewell of the day.
Then his arms fell, the sound of the harp expired and the young man, prostrating himself in front of Lélia, asked him a word of love or pity, a sign of life or tenderness. Lélia took the child's hand and brought it to his eyes: she was crying.
" Oh ! he cried with transport, you cry! So you live finally ? "
Lélia passed its fingers in the scented hair of Sténio and drawing her head to her breast, she covered her with kisses.
Rarely had he touched this beautiful forehead with his
lips. A caress
of Lélia was such a rare gift from heaven that a flower forgotten by winter and that we find flourished on the snow. So this sudden and burning outpour almost cost the life to the child who had received cold lips from Lélia his woman's first kiss. He became pale, his heart stopped beat; almost dying, he pushed her away with all his strength, because he had never feared death so much as in this moment when life turns revealed to him.
He needed to speak to escape these terrible caresses, to this excess of happiness which was painful as fever.
" Oh ! tell me, he cried, escaping from his arms, say you love me finally!
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- Didn't I tell you already, she replied with a look and a smile that Murillo would have given to the Blessed Virgin heavens by angels.
"No, you did not tell me," he replied; you told me, a the day you were going to die, that you wanted to love. It meant when you lost your life you regretted not having one enjoyed.
- So you believe that, Sténio? she said with a tone of mocking coquetry.
- I don't believe anything, but I'm trying to guess you. O Lélia!
you promised to try to love, that's all that you promised me.
- Without doubt, said Lélia coldly, I did not promise to succeed.
- But do you hope that you can finally love me? "Said to him it of a sad and soft voice which stirred all the soul of Lélia.
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed him against her with a
superhuman strength. Sténio, who still wanted to resist him, felt dominated by this power which froze him with terror. His blood boiled like lava and froze like it. he was hot and cold, it was bad and it was good.
Was it joy, was it anguish? He did not know it. It was both were more than that: it was heaven and hell was love and shame, desire and dread, ecstasy and agony.
Finally courage returned to him. He remembered how many delusional wishes he had called this hour of trouble and transport; he scorned for the timid timidity that stopped him and, surrendering to a dash that had something ravenous and wild, he in turn overpowered the woman, he hugged him, he stuck his mouth to that mouth soft and soft whose contact still surprised him ... But Lélia, suddenly pushing him away, said to him in a dry and hard voice:
"Leave me, I don't love you anymore"
Sténio fell annihilated on the flagstones of the terrace. It is when he really thought he was close to dying when he felt the Page 84
cold of despair and shame suddenly strangle this rage of love and this fever of waiting.
Lélia laughed; anger revived him, he got up and deliberated for a moment if he would not kill her.
But this woman was so indifferent to life that there had no more way to get revenge on her than to scare her.
Sténio tried to be philosophical and cold; but after three words he began to cry.
So Lélia kissed him again and, as he dared not return her caresses, she overwhelmed him until intoxicating him; then she put her hand over her mouth and pushed him away, when she felt him
revive and shiver with pleasure.
"Viper! He cried, trying to get up to flee her.
She held him back.
"Come back," she said to him, "come back to my heart." I loved you so much earlier, when, fearful and naive, you received my kisses almost despite you! Here, when you told me this word: Do you hope you can love me? I felt that I adored you.
You were so humble then! Stay that way, that's how I love you.
When I see you tremble and back away from the love that you seek, it seems to me that I am younger and more ardent than you. It makes me proud and charms me, life never more discouraged, because I imagine that I can give it to you to give; but when you get emboldened, when you ask me more I don't feel it in me, I lose hope, I'm scared to love and live. I suffer and I regret having abused myself one more time.
- Poor woman ! said Sténio, overcome by pity.
- Oh ! can't you stay so fearful and thrilling under my caresses! she said to him, still drawing her head to her lap.
Here, let me run my hand around your white neck and polished like an ancient marble, let me feel your hair if soft and so flexible roll up and attach to my fingers. As your chest is white, young man! As your heart beats rough and violent! It is well, my child; but this heart does it contain the germ of some virtuous male? Cross he Page 85
life without spoiling or drying up? Here is the moon which rise above you and reflect its ray in your eyes.
Breathe in this breeze the grass and the flowering meadow. I recognize the emanation of each plant, I feel them pass one after the other in the air that carries them away. Now it's
wild thyme from the hill; earlier, it was the daffodils of the lake, and now they are the geraniums in the garden.
As the Air Spirits should rejoice in pursuing these subtle scents and to bathe in! You smile, my gracious poet, fall asleep like this.
- Fall asleep! said Sténio of a tone of surprise and of reproach.
- Why no ? Are you not calm, are you not happy now ?
- Happy, yes, but calm?
- Well ! you are a fool! she went on, pushing him away.
- Lélia, you make me unhappy, let me
to leave.
- Coward! how you fear suffering! Come on, go!
- I can't, he replied, falling back to his knees.
- My God ! she said to him kissing him, why suffer ? You don't know how much I love you: I like to caress you, to look at you, as if you were my child. Look, I was never a mother, but it seems to me that I have for you the feeling that I would have had for my son.
I revel in your beauty with a candor, with a maternal childishness… And then, after all, what a feeling canI have for you?
- So you can not have love? "Said Sténio to him in a trembling voice and a torn heart.
Lélia did not answer, she convulsively passed her hands in the waves of black hair curling at the forehead of the young man; she leaned over and looked at him as if she wanted to sum up in a glance the power
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of several souls, in an instant, the intoxication of a hundred existences; then the ambitious and helpless creature, finding his heart less fiery than his brain and his faculties below his dreams, was once again discouraged from life: his hand fell dead to his side; she looked at the moon with sadness, she breathed the breeze with a swelling of nostrils who had something wild; then bringing his hand to his heart and breathing from the bottom of the chest:
"Alas! she said in an irritated voice and a somber look, happy those who can love! "
3
Viola
There was, at the bottom of the garden terraces, a small river which flowed under the thick shade of yew and cedars and sank beneath their hanging branches. Under one of these mysterious vaults, a tomb of white marble was mirrored in the water, pale in the middle of the dark reflections of the greenery. AT
hardly a furtive breath of the breeze shook the pure angles and trembling from the marble reflected in the wave; a big bindweed had invaded its sides and hung its garlands of bells blue around the sculptures already blackened by the rain and abandonment. The foam grew on the breast and on the arms of kneeling statues; the weeping cypresses, dropping languidly their branches on these livid foreheads, already surrounded the monument entrusted to the protection of oblivion.
"It is there," said Lélia, putting aside the long grasses which hiding the inscription, the tomb of a dead woman of love and pain!…
- It's a monument full of religion and poetry, said Sténio. See how nature seems to take pride in it
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own ! As these scallops of flowers gently embrace him, as these trees embrace it, as water kisses its foot fondly ! Poor woman who died of love! Poor angel exiled to the earth and strayed into human ways, you sleep finally in the peace of your coffin, you no longer suffer, Viola!
You sleep like this stream, you lie in your marble bed your tired arms, like that cypress leaning over you. Lelia take this flower from the grave, put
it on your breast, breathe it very often, but breathe it quickly, before, separated from its stem, it loses this virginal perfume which is perhaps the soul of Viola, the soul of a woman who loved until she died.
Viola! if there is any emanation from you in these flowers, if some breath of love and life has passed from your womb into this mysterious chalice, can you not penetrate to the heart of Lélia? Can't you ignite the air she breathes and do no longer there, pale, cold and dead, like these statues who look at each other with a melancholy look in the stream?
- Child! said Lélia, throwing the flower over the lazy course of the water and following it with a distracted look, do you think so that I don't have my suffering as harsh and deep as the one who killed this woman? Hey! What do you know ? It was there perhaps a very rich, very complete, very fruitful life.
Live in love and die from it! It's beautiful for a woman!
Under what sky of fire were you born, Viola? Where did you took a heart so energetic that it broke instead of bend under the weight of life? What god had put in you this indomitable power, which death alone could dethrone of your soul? O great! great among all creatures!
you did not bow your head under the yoke, you did not wanted to accept destiny, and yet you did not hurry
your death like these weak beings who kill themselves for prevent themselves from healing. You were so sure you didn't console yourself that you withered slowly without backing off step towards life, without taking a step towards the grave; the death came and took you, weak, broken, dead already, but still rooted in your love, saying to nature: "Farewell, I despise you and don't want salvation. Keep your benefits, your disappointing poetry, your consoling vanities and narcotic forgetfulness and skepticism on the brazen front; save it all for them others, I want to love or die ”Viola! you even Page 88