Lelia

by George Sand

  Lélia started and moved away involuntarily; then, get briskly approaching, she took her sister's arm.

  "And you, my sister," she cried, "so you have tasted it,

  pleasure ? So you haven't exhausted it? So you are still female and alive? Come on, give me your secret, give me your happiness, since you have it!

  "I have no happiness," replied Pulchérie. I do not have any sought. Like you, I have not experienced disappointments. I do not have not ask life more than it could give me. I have reduces all my ambitions to know how to enjoy what is. I have put my virtue not to despise it, my wisdom not to desire beyond. Anacreon wrote my liturgy. I took antiquity for model and for deities the naked goddesses of Greece. I bear the evils of exaggerated civilization where we are arrived. But I have, to protect myself from despair, religion pleasure ... Ô Lélia, as you look at me, as you listen to me eagerly! So I don't horrify you anymore! I am no longer the stupid and vile organization that you are distant once with so much disgust!

  - I never despised you, my sister. I pitied you; at this hour, I'm just amazed that I don't have to complain. Dare I say that I am delighted?

  - Spiritualist hypocrites, said Pulchérie, you fear always to sanction the joys that you do not share!

  Oh ! you are crying now! You bow your head, my poor sister! You are bent and broken under the weight of this destiny you have chosen! Whose fault is it ? May this lesson be useful to you! Remember our quarrels, our Page 135

  struggles and our separation; we have mutually predict our loss!

  - Alas! I predicted the contempt of men,

  Pulchery, abandonment, a horrible old age ... I can't still be right; thanks to heaven you are still beautiful and

  young. But have you ever felt the shame burn you his hot iron? All this greedy and idle crowd that seek in this instant to satisfy an insolent curiosity, don't you hear him scolding like a filthy beast and dangerous? Do you not feel his warm breath which you continues and infects you? Listen, she calls you, she calls you claims as its prey; courtesan, you belong to him!

  Oh ! if it comes this far, don't say you're my sister! If she was going to confuse us together! If she dared put his muddy hands on me! Poor Pulchérie, here your master, this is your God, this is your lover! This people, everything people who noise and stink there! You found pleasure in his embraces; you see, my poor sister, that you are more vile than the dust on his feet!

  - I know, said the courtesan, running her hand over her brazen forehead as if to drive out a cloud; but I, braving shame is my virtue; it's my strength, like the yours is to avoid it; it's my wisdom, I tell you, and it tells me leads to my goal, it overcomes obstacles, it survives always reborn anxieties and, for the price of combat, I have the pleasure. It's my sunshine after the storm, it's the island enchanted where the storm throws me and, if I am degraded, at least I am not ridiculous. To be useless, Lélia, it is to be ridiculous; being ridiculous is worse than being infamous; serve no purpose in the universe is more despicable than serving the last uses.

  - It is true, said Lélia of a dark air.

  "Besides," replied the courtesan; what does shame matter to a really strong soul? Do you know, Lélia, that this power of the opinion before which so-called honest souls are so servile, do you know that it's just a matter of being weak to get there submit, that you have to be strong to resist it? Call you

  virtue a calculation of selfishness so easy to do and in which everything Page 136

  encourage and reward you? Do you compare them works, pains, heroism of a mother to

  those of a prostitute? When both are struggling with life, do you think this one deserves more glory, which had the least trouble?

  But what, Lélia! my speeches don't make you shudder anymore as before ? You don't answer me? This silence is awful. Lélia, you are nothing more! So you are erased like a fold of the wave, like a name written on the sand?

  Your noble blood no longer rises to the heresies of debauchery, to the impudences of matter? Wake up then, Lélia, defend virtue, if you want me to believe that it exists something called that name!

  - Always speak, woman, answered Lélia in a sinister tone.

  I'm listening to you.

  Finally, what does God impose on us on earth?

  continued Pulchérie. It's to live, isn't it! ? What is that that society imposes on us? It is not to steal. The society is so that many people have nothing else

  to live that a profession authorized by her and by her withered by heinous name, vice. Do you know what steel a poor creature be soaked to live on that? Of how many of insults we try to make her pay for the weaknesses she has surprises and brutality she has assuaged? Under what mountain of ignominations and injustices it must gets used to sleeping, walking, being a lover, courtesan and mother, three conditions of the woman's destiny to which no woman escapes, that is to say that it is sold by a market of prostitution or a marriage contract? O my sister!

  how much are publicly and unjustly dishonored beings right to despise the crowd that strikes them with its curse, after having defiled them with his love! Do you see, if there is a sky and hell, heaven will be for those who have suffered the most and who will have found some pain on their bed smiles of joy, some blessings to send to God; hell for those who have captured the most beautiful part of the existence and who will have ignored the price. The courtesan Zinzolina, amidst the horrors of social degradation, will have confessed his faith by remaining faithful to voluptuousness; ascetic Page 137

  Lélia, at the bottom of an austere and respected life, will have denied God to all the time by closing his eyes and his soul to the benefits of existence.

  - Alas! you accuse me, Pulchérie, and you don't know if it depended on me to make a choice and follow a plan in life. Do you know what my fate has been since we we are separated?

  - I knew what the world said about you, replied the courtesan; I only saw that you had an existence problematic as a woman. I knew you were walking surrounded by mystery and poetic affectation and I smiled pity on thinking of this hypocritical virtue which consists in drawing vanity of helplessness or fear.

  - Humiliate me, answered Lélia; I have so little confidence in me today that I find nothing to justify myself; But do you want to hear the story of this moral life, so arid and so pale, yet so long and bitter? Then tell me if there can be a cure for such old pains, if deep discouragement.

  - I'm listening, answered Pulchérie, leaning on his round arm

  and white on the foot of a hiding marble nymph smiling and mannered in the dark twigs. Speak, my sister, tell me the miseries of your destiny; and first let tell me that I know them in advance; when pale and thin like a sylph, you walked in the depths of our woods leaning on my arm, attentive to the flight of birds, to the nuance of flowers, with the changing appearance of the clouds, insensitive to the gaze young hunters who passed and followed us with an eye to through trees, I already knew, Lélia, that your youth was would consume to pursue vain dreams and to disdain only benefits of life. Do you remember these walks endless that we were doing in our paternal fields and these long daydreams of the evening, when, both resting on the golden railing of the terrace, we looked at you, the stars white at the front of the hills, me, the powdery riders who went down the path?

  - I remember everything, answered Lélia. You followed by watchful eye all these travelers already erased in the mist of the Page 138

  sunset. You could barely make out their clothes and their attitude; but you took yourself for preference or disdain for each of them, depending on whether he was going down the hill boldly or caution. You laughed mercilessly at the careful horseman who put dismount to drag his uncertain mount by the bridle and lazy Girl. You applauded from afar to the one who trots firm and sustained, faced the dangers of the rapid slope. A times, I remember I took you back severely for having, in admiration, wave your handkerchief to

  encourage a young madman who was galloping and who; two or three times, vigorously supported his horse near roll in the r
avine.

  - And yet he could neither see nor hear me, continued Pulcheria. You were indignant, you, my fierce sister, to the interest I gave to a man; you were not sensitive that the elusive beauties of nature, sound, color, never in distinct and palpable form. A distant song you was shedding tears. But as soon as the leg shepherd appeared at the top of the hill, you diverted them eyes with disgust; you stopped listening to his voice or enjoy. In all, reality hurt your perceptions too alive and destroyed your overly demanding hope. Isn't it true, Lélia?

  - It is true, my sister, we were not alike. More wise and happier than me, you lived only to enjoy; more ambitious and less subject to God perhaps, I never lived only to desire. Do you remember that heavy summer day so hot, where we stopped at the edge of the stream under the cedars of the valley, in this mysterious and dark retreat where the rustle of water falling from rock to rock mingled to the sad song of the cicadas? We lay down on the lawn and, while looking at the fiery sky over our heads through trees, there came to us a heavy sleep, a deep carelessness. We woke up in the arms of one of the other without feeling sleepy. "

  At this word Pulchérie started, and pressing his hand sister:

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  «Yes, I remember that better than you, Lélia. It is a burning memory in my life, and I thought about it often with an emotion full of charm and perhaps of shame.

  - Of shame ? said Lélia, withdrawing her hand.

  - You did not know, you did not guess that said

  Pulcheria. I would never have dared to entrust it to you. But at the time that we are I can say everything and you can everything learn. Listen, my sister ... It's in your innocent arms, it is on your virginal bosom that for the first time God has revealed the power of life. Don't walk away like this.

  Listen without prejudice.

  - Without prejudice! said Lélia while approaching. What do i have in effect of prejudice! It would be some kind of belief. Speak : tell me everything, sister.

  - Well ! said Pulchérie, we slept peacefully on moist, hot grass. The cedars exhaled their exquisite scent of balm, and the midday wind passed its burning wing on our wet foreheads. Until then, carefree and laughing, I welcomed every day of my life as a blessing new. Sometimes abrupt and penetrating sensations made my blood boil. An unknown ardor

  seized my imagination; nature appeared to me under more sparkling colors; youth throbbed more lively and more cheerful in my womb; and, if I looked at myself mirror, I was in those moments more ruddy and more beautiful. So I wanted to kiss in this ice who reflected me and who inspired me with an insane love. Then I laughed and I ran stronger and lighter in the grass and in the flowers; because, for me, nothing was revealed through suffering. I didn't get tired like you to guess; I found because I was not looking.

  That day, happy and calm that I was, a strange dream, delusional, unheard of, revealed to me the mystery hitherto impenetrable and until then quietly respected. O my sister! deny the influence from the sky ! deny the sanctity of pleasure! You would have said, if this ecstasy would have been given to you, that an angel sent to you from bosom of God, was responsible for initiating you to sacred trials

  of human life. I just dreamed of a man Page 140

  with dark hair who was leaning towards me to touch my lips of his warm and ruddy lips; and I woke up oppressed, thrilling, happy, more than I ever imagined should never be. I looked around: the sun was sowing its reflections on the depths of the wood; the air was good and sweet and the cedars raised their great branches with splendor fingernails, like huge arms and long hands stretched towards the sky. I looked at you then. O my sister, that you were beautiful! I had never found you such before day. In my complacent vanity as a young girl, I preferred to you. It seemed to me that my bright cheeks, that my rounded shoulders, that my golden hair made me more beautiful than you. But, at this moment, the sense of beauty was revealed to me in another creature. I didn't love myself anymore alone: I needed to find an object outside of me of admiration and love. I rose gently and I contemplated with a singular curiosity, with a strange pleasure. Your thick black hair stuck to your forehead and their tight curls rolled on themselves as if a feeling of life would have clenched them near your velvety neck of shadow and sweat. I ran my fingers through it: it seemed to me that your hair squeezed it and drew me to you. Your white and thin shirt, tight on your breast, made appear your skin tanned by the sun even more brown than the ordinary; and your long eyelids, weighed down by the sleep, stood out on your cheeks then animated in a tone stronger than today. Oh ! you were beautiful, Lélia! But beautiful other than me, and that disturbed me strangely. Your arms, thinner than mine, were covered with a

  imperceptible black down that luxury skincare has done since disappear. Your feet, so perfectly beautiful, were bathed in the stream and long blue veins stood out there. Your breathing raised your chest with a regularity that seemed to herald calm and strength; and in all of your features, in your attitude, in your more determined forms than mine, in the darker shade of your skin, especially in that proud and cold expression of your sleepy face there had I don't know what masculine and strong which prevented me almost recognize you. I thought you looked like to this beautiful black haired child that I had just dreamed of and I Page 141

  kissed your arm, trembling. So you open your eyes and your gaze penetrated me with an unknown shame; i am turned away as if I had done something guilty. However, Lélia, no impure thought had even presented itself to my mind. How would it have happened? I knew nothing. I received from nature and from God, my creator and my master, my first lesson in love, my first feeling of desire ...

  Your eyes were mocking and severe. It was good that I had always met him. But he never intimidated me like right now ... don't you remember

  my trouble and my redness?

  - I even remember a word that I couldn't

  explain it to me, answered Lélia. You made me bend over the water, and you say to me: "Look at yourself, my sister: are you not beautiful ? I replied that I was less so than you. " Oh !

  you are much more, you repeat yourself. You look like a man. "

  - And that made you shrug your contempt, resumed Pulcheria.

  - And I did not guess, answered Lélia, that a destiny had just been accomplished for you, while for me none destiny was never to be fulfilled.

  - Start your story, said Pulchérie. The sounds of party have moved away; I hear the orchestra taking the air interrupted; we forget you; they give up looking for me: we may be free for some time. Speak. "

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  Third part

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  I

  "I will not tell you detailed and precise facts, said Lélia. Everything that made up my life would take so long to say that my life has lasted for days. But I will tell you the story of a unhappy heart, led astray by a vain wealth of faculties, withered before having lived, worn out by hope and returned helpless by too much power perhaps!

  - And that's what makes you deplorably vulgar, Lélia, replied the merciless courtesan in her good sense. That is what makes you look like all the poets I've read. Because I read them poets; I read them to reconcile myself with the life they paint colors so wrong and that is wrong to be too good for them. I read them to find out what ideas pretentious and scandalously erroneous we must preserve ourselves to be wise. I read them to take from them what is useful and reject what is bad; that is to say to take hold of this luxury of expression which has become the common language of the century and to keep me from dressing the nonsense they profess.

  You should have stopped there. You should, my Lélia, have done serve the fertility of your brain to poetize things for appreciate them better. You should have applied your superiority of organization to enjoy and not to deny; because then what is the use for you the light ?

  - And you are right, cruel, said Lélia bitterly. Born don't i know all this? Well ! it's my fault, it's my wrong, it's my fatality that you point out and you mock me when I come to complai
n to you. I humble myself and grieve to be such a trivial and common type of suffering from any a sickly and weak generation, and you answer me with the contempt. Is this how you console me?

  - Forgive me, meschina! said the carefree Pulchérie in smiling, and continue. "

  Lélia continued:

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  "If God created me in a day of anger or apathy, in a feeling of indifference or hatred for the works with his hands, that's what I don't know. There are times when I hate myself enough to imagine myself to be the most learned and the most dreadful combination of an infernal will. It is others where I mistake myself, to the point of looking at myself like a inert production generated by chance and matter. The for want of my misery, I do not know to whom to attribute it; and, within acrid revolts of my mind, my greatest suffering is always to fear the absence of a God whom I could insult.

  I seek him then on earth and in the heavens and in hell, that is to say in my heart. I'm looking for it, because I would like to extinguish it, curse it and strike it down. What indignant and irritates me because he has given me so much force to fight it and keep it so far from me;

  is that it has given me the gigantic power of attack him and he stands there or up there, I don't know where, seated in its glory and in its deafness, above all efforts of my thinking.

  I was however apparently born under happy auspices.

  My forehead was well formed; my eye looked dark and impenetrable as every free and proud woman's eye must be; my blood was flowing well and no crippled disgrace struck with an unjust and withering curse. My childhood is rich with memories and impressions of an inexpressible poetry. It seems to me that the angels rocked me in their arms and that magical appearances have spoiled me real nature before my sight had revealed the sense of sight.

  And as beauty developed in me, everything

  smiled, men and things. Everything became love and poetry around me and in my womb every day hatched the power to love and power to admire.

  This power was so great and so precious and so good; I felt it emanating from me like a perfume so sweet and so intoxicating that I cultivated it with love. Far from wary of her and to spare her sap to enjoy her