by George Sand
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The orchestra was silent and a boat of Asian form pinged slightly ahead of the small fleet. This boat, frailer and more elegant than the others, was performed by musicians whose instruments were all copper. They sounded a brilliant fanfare and these metal voices, so loud and penetrating, came from the bottom of the waves on the walls of the pavilion. Immediately all the windows parted successively and all the happy lovers, refugees in the boudoirs of the pavilion of Aphrodise, spread out in pairs on the terrace and on the balconies. But in vain the jealous and the slanderers, embarked on the gondolas, staring at them eagerly. They had dressed in new costumes in the interior of the pavilion and, at sheltered from their masks, they cheerfully saluted the fleet.
Lélia wanted to involve Sténio among them; but she couldn't decide to get out of the delicious languor in which he was plunged.
"What do their joys and their songs matter to me? he said.
Can I feel some admiration or some pleasure when I just knew the delights of heaven? Let me savor at least that memory ... "
But Sténio suddenly rose and frowned.
"What is this voice that sings on the waves?
he said with an involuntary shiver.
- It is a woman's voice, answered Lélia, a beautiful and great voice, in truth. See as in the gondolas and on the shore we hurry to listen to.
- But, said Sténio whose face was altered by degrees, to as the full and low tones of that voice went up towards him ; if you weren't here, close to me, your hand in the mine, I would believe that this voice is yours, Lélia.
"There are voices that resemble each other," she replied. This night weren't you completely abused by that of my Sister Pulchérie?… ”
Sténio listened only to the voice which came from the sea, and seemed agitated with a superstitious fear.
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"Lélia!" he cried, "that voice hurts me; she terrifies me: it will drive me mad if it continues. "
The brass instruments played a song phrase; the human voice was silent: then it resumed when the instruments had finished; and this time she was so close, so distinct, that Sténio troubled sprang up and completely opened the golden frame from the window.
“Certainly all this is a dream, Lélia. But this woman singing there… Yes, this woman, standing and alone at the bow of the boat, it's you, Lélia, or it's your doppelganger
- You are crazy ! said Lélia, raising her shoulders. How? 'Or' What could it be?
- Yes, I'm crazy, but I see you double. I see you and I hear you here near me; and I hear you and I you still see over there. Yes, it's you, it's my Lélia; it's her
whose voice is so powerful and beautiful, it is she whose black hair flutters in the sea breeze: here it comes, carried on her bounding gondola. O Lélia! Do you are you dead? Is it your ghost i see
pass ? Are you fairy or demon or sylph?
Magnus had told me you were two ... "
Sténio leaned completely out of the window and forgot the masked woman who was near him to only look at the woman similar to Lélia of voice, attitude, size and suit, which he saw coming on the air.
When the boat carrying it was at the foot of the pavilion, the day was pure and brilliant on the waves. Lélia turned everything to blow towards Sténio and showed him his face making him a sign of friendly mockery.
There was in his smile so much mischief and cruel carefree that Sténio finally suspected the truth.
"This is Lélia!" if he cried. Oh yes ! the one who pass in front of me like a dream and that goes away throwing me a look of irony and contempt! But the one who intoxicated me with his caresses, the one I hugged when I called him my soul and my life, who is she then? Now, Madame, he said in Page 197
approaching the blue domino with a threatening air, tell me you your name and will you show me your face?
- With all my heart, replied the courtesan, unmasking. I am Zinzolina la cortigiana , Pulchérie, the sister of Lélia; I am Lélia herself, since I possessed the heart and the senses of Sténio during one whole hour. Come on, ungrateful, do not look at me thus with a wandering air: come kiss my lips, and remember the happiness you gave me thanked on my knees.
- Run away ! exclaimed Sténio furious while drawing his stylus, do not don't stay a moment longer in front of me, because I don't know what I am capable of. "
Zinzolina fled; but, crossing the terrace which was under the pavilion windows, she cried mockingly:
"Farewell, Sténio the poet!" We are engaged now: we will meet again!
3
«Lélia, you cruelly deceived me! You, you are played on me with a composure that I cannot understand.
You have lit in my senses a devouring fire that you do not didn't want to turn off. You called my soul on my lips and you disdained it. I am not worthy of you, I know it well ; but cannot you love me out of generosity?
If God made you like Himself, was it not so that did you follow his example on earth? If you are an angel heaven sent among us, instead of waiting for your feet climb the summits where you walk, isn't your duty not to reach out to us and teach us the road that we ignore?
You counted on shame to heal me; you have
thought that when I woke up in the arms of a courtesan, I would be lit by a sudden light. You were hoping, in Page 198
your inexorable wisdom, that my eyes would finally open and that I would have nothing but a contemptuous contempt for joys that your arms promised me and that you replaced by your sister's lascivious caresses. Well, Lélia! your hope is disappointed. My love came out victorious and pure from this test. My forehead did not keep the imprint of kisses from Pulchérie, he will not blush. I fell asleep in
whispering your name. Your image was in all my dreams.
Despite you, despite your contempt, you were mine entirely: I possessed you, I profaned you. My hugs
convulsive, the voluptuous quivering of my mouth, everything it was for you. Your sister is aware of this because many times I had rejected it.
Forgive my pain, oh my beloved! forgive my sacrilegious anger. Ungrateful that I am, do I have the right to address you a reproach? Since my kisses did not warm the marble of your lips is that I didn't deserve such a miracle. But at least tell me, I beg you on your knees, say-me what fears or suspicions keep you away from me?
Do you fear to obey me by yielding to me? Do you think happiness will make me a compelling master? If you doubt, oh my Lélia! if you doubt my eternal gratitude, then I no longer have that weep and pray to God that he will bend you; because my language refuses to take new oaths.
You told me so often and I didn't need your revelations: I had guessed, men experienced severely your trust and your gullibility. Your heart has been crossed deep wounds. He bled a long time and it is not wonder if your wounds in closing have covered it insensitive scars. But you don't know, my love, that I love you for the sufferings of your past life? You don't know therefore not that I adore in you the unshakable soul which has suffered without bend the storms of life? Do not accuse me of wickedness; if you had always lived in calm and joy, I feel that I would love you less. If someone is guilty of my love, it is doubtless God; because it was he who put in my awareness admiration and worship of strength, devotion to courage ; it is he who orders me to bow before you.
Your memories explain your distrust enough. By loving me, you
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fear of alienating your freedom: you fear losing something that has cost so many tears. But tell me, Lélia, what are you doing with this treasure of which you are so proud? Since you managed to focus in yourself the consuming activity of your faculties, are you more happy? Since humanity is nothing in your eyes that a dust that God allows to stir for a while under your feet, is nature for you a richer and more magnificent spectacle? Since you withdrew from the cities, have you you discovered in the grass of the fields, in the voice of the waters, in the majestic steps of the rivers, a more powerful charm and safer ? Is the mysterious voice of the forests softer to your ear? Si
nce you forgot the passions that we agitated, did you surprise the secret of starry nights? Converse you with invisible messengers who console you with their secrets of our weakness and unworthiness? Admit it, you are not happy. You adorn your freedom like a priceless gem, but you only have to distract yourself the amazement and the envy of the crowd, who do not understand you. You have no role to play among us and yet you are tired idleness. You do not find around you a destiny for the size of your genius and you've exhausted all the joys of thinking solitary. You crossed the desolate plains without trembling where the vulgar could not follow you: the mountains that our eyes hardly dare to measure, you have touched the top; and here is that you feel dizzy, your arteries dilate and buzz. You feel your temples swell, you only have God where you take refuge; you only have his throne to sit on: you must be unholy or fall back to us.
God punishes you, Lélia, for having coveted his power and his majesty. He inflicts you isolation to punish the temerity of your
ambitions. It widens day by day the circle of your loneliness to remind you of your origin and your mission. He had sent you to bless and to love; he had spilled on your white shoulders the scented braids of your hair to wipe our tears; he had watched with jealous eye the velvety freshness of your lips that were to smile, the wet shine of your eyes who had to reflect the sky and show it to us. All these gifts precious that you diverted from their use, he asks you counts today. What have you done with your beauty? Do you believe so that the Creator chose you among all women for Page 200
practice mockery and disdain, to mock love sincere, to deny oaths, to refuse promises, to despair the gullible and confident youth?
You are proud, Lélia, of the sleep of your senses, and you boldly say, "I can challenge men. I no longer fear handshakes, nor amorous looks. I can feel
on my lips their burning kisses without my reason being cloudy or go astray. I can safely give myself the show their torments without ever sharing them. " But don't you fear the awakening of your senses? Don't you fear not only your master, to tame the proud revolt of his slave, never send you frantic desire one day and he tell the marble to ignite? If this terrible prophecy came to pass, the pleading victims that you have sacrificed on the altar of your pride would be well avenged!
You would be reduced to imploring the pity of those whom you despise. Your lips would get dirty to the point of begging for looks that today you do not see. What
humiliation, right? You will never go down that low.
Ah! rather come back to us. Open your arms to me and don't
not despair of yourself. Let me test on your sense numb the power of my caresses. Let me get you rejuvenate and revive you. Let me hug you and you tear out cries of suffering. Come to me, Lélia, I will be patient and resigned. I will wait angrily for your blood to warms up and your heart expands. I will not order you not a joy as prompt as mine. I will devote myself to your happiness and, I'm sure, a time will come when our tears will mingle. Our souls, confused in a commune congratulated, will thank God. I will live in you. You will find the drunkenness of young years, perhaps more lively and less passenger.
You laugh at my hopes. You take pity on my ambitious confidence that wants to relight the ashes. But my poor Lélia, as long as the wind has not swept the ashes, this is not madness to look there for some buried brand which does not wait that air to revive. Perhaps, oh my Lélia, there is in your heart an ignored part of yourself, which has not yet bled and that love can reach. Who knows what's in there Page 201
of power a sincere passion? And who can boast for having exhausted the faculties that heaven has given you?
If you entrusted your destiny to me, you would hardly have understood the happiness that I expect from you as soon as you come back to life to make me better days; you would feel inflamed of generous emulation and, jealous of surpassing myself in dedication and selflessness, you would forget the misfortunes of your young years striving as a skillful pilot of point out the pitfalls where your ship broke. This rapid and continuous exchange of maternal protection and filial piety would soon have regenerated you, at the same time that he
would fortify against the dangers of the future.
You told me so often and I believe it: there is in your soul mysteries that I cannot penetrate, obscure folds that my eye cannot probe. But from the day when you love me, Lélia, I will know you all, because you are aware of it and, so young that I am in life, I have the right to affirm it, love, as religion, reveals and illuminates many hidden paths that the reason does not suspect. From the day our two souls unite in holy communion, God would show us one to the other ; I would read in your consciousness as clearly as in mine, I'll take you by the hand and come down with you in your vanished days; I would count the thorns that have you wounded, I will see under your scars the blood that has flowed and I would press them with my lips as if it was still flowing.
Keep your friendship for Trenmor; your friendship is enough for him, for he is strong, he is purified by atonement, he walks with a step closes and knows the purpose of his pilgrimage. But I don't have the will which makes the greatness and the energy of the virile role, I do not have invulnerable selfishness which submits passions to its designs that bother him, the interests that embarrass him, the destinies jealous who block his way. I never fed at the bottom from the heart only lofty but unachievable desires. I am delighted in the spectacle of great things and I wished May my intimate and familiar society never fail me reveries. I lived in the constant admiration of characters superiors and I felt the thrill inside of me the compelling need to imitate and follow them. But, wandering relentlessly from desire to desire, my solitary meditations, my Page 202
fervent prayers never got from the God who created me the strength to accomplish what I coveted, what I hatched
under the wing of my dreams.
Well ! Lélia, that's why I love you, you have took my role, that the men refused you. Far from repudiate yours, I ask you on your knees. I'm sure in advance you will want all my desires and my desires do will never cross the august limits of your will.
If I had received an ordinary nature from heaven, I would have found, along the way, many hearts to give my love to, well docile affections where to plant my hope and my ambition ; the first shoulder came would have been good for me rest my head, my forehead would have refreshed every lips. I would have kneaded from a common clay the happiness of my years. But God put me higher or lower than all those. My feet would bleed from walking on the broken path in front of them ; and yet at the first steps that I want to take, I find brambles before me that I must tear off and the loneliness of the trip does not save me from the bitter wounds.
It is therefore you, O Lélia, who must be and who will be, I still hope, my guide and my support. You will be my light and my advice. It is you whose stern hand and constant will show me every day the goal where my heart sucks and that my mind cannot distinguish. It's in you, oh my beloved, that I confide and rest. It's yours deep and calm voice which should silence the noise discordant of my thoughts, to the tumultuous fights of my crazy fantasies. Another woman, you know, beautiful and young, but weak and faltering, would not find in my love ignoring the happiness and security it deserve; vainly would she ask my panting thought the wisdom I don't have, the firmness I'm still looking for.
His naive caresses would afflict me instead of consoling me, his kisses would be complaints and her tears of joy blame
without answer. Whenever she said to me, "Go and I will will follow! I would be ready to ask her forgiveness.
That is why, O Lélia, I cannot doubt without impiety, I can not deny without blasphemy, that God did not create you for Page 203
light my way, that he did not choose you among his angels of predilection to lead me to the term marked in advance in his eternal decrees.
I put in your hands, not the entire care of my destiny, because you have yours to achieve and it is for your forces a fairly heavy burden; but what you I you ask, oh Lélia, it's to let me obey you, it
's to to suffer that my life is modeled on yours, it is to allow my days of getting busy with work or rest, movement or study, according to your designs which, I know, will never be frivolous whims.
To those humble prayers you guessed a hundred times in my looks you answered with taunt and
disappointment. It was to you that I rallied my last hopes, it was in you that I took refuge. If you tell me miss, oh Lélia! what will become of me? "
4
"Perhaps, Sténio, that I was wrong towards you; but wrong is not the one you blame me for and the one you accuse me, I'm not guilty. I didn't get you deceived, I did not want to play with you; maybe i had a few moments of contempt, a few bursts of anger at because of you and next to you; but it was against nature human, not against you, pure child, that I was irritated.
It is not to humiliate you, even less for you discourage from life, that I threw you in the arms of
Pulcheria. I didn't even try to teach you a lesson.
What triumph could I taste to prevail in my cold right on your inexperienced candor! You suffered, you aspire to the fatal realization of your future; I wanted you satisfy, deliver you from the torments of a vague expectation and ignorant concern. Now is it my fault,
in your rich and fruitful imagination, you had attributed to Page 204
these things more valuable than they have? Is it my fault if your soul, like mine, like that of all
men, has immense faculties for desire and if your sense are bounded for joy? Am i responsible for the miserable helplessness of physical love to calm and cure the stinging and fanciful ardor of your dreams?
I can neither hate you nor despise you for having suffered my feet are delirious of the senses. It didn't depend on your soul to strip the coarse frame where God exiled her. And you were too young, too ignorant to discern the real needs of this poetic and holy soul of the lying aspirations of the material. You took for a need of the heart what was not than a brain fever. You confused pleasure with happiness. We all do the same before we know the before knowing that man is not given