by George Sand
When they were alone and she sat trembling and the face on fire, Sténio contemplated it some time in silence.
Princess Claudia had barely emerged from childhood; her size, Page 237
already formed, had not yet acquired all of its development; the excessive length of his black eyelids, the bilious tone of his prematurely smooth and satiny skin, slight blue hues spread around his greedy eyes and languid, his sickly and downcast attitude, everything announced in her precocious puberty, a devouring imagination.
Despite these indications of a fiery constitution and a future full of storms, Claudia owed to her extreme youth to be still clothed in all the charm of modesty. His agitations
betrayed themselves and did not reveal themselves. His simmering mouth seemed to call the kiss; but his eyes were wet with tears; his unsteady voice seemed to ask for mercy and protection; desire and dread upset this whole being fragile, all this burning and shy virginity.
Sténio, seized with admiration, was initially astonished internally to have at his disposal such a rich treasure. It was the first once he saw the princess so close and granted her so much attention. She was much more beautiful and more desirable than he had imagined. But his senses turned off and blasé no longer changed his mind, now
skeptical and cold. In one glance, he examined and owned Claudia entirely, from her rich hair locked in a pearl net to her tight little foot in satin. In a thought, he foresaw and contemplated all his future life, since this first madness that brought him into the arms of a poor poet to the hideous gallantries of a princely and debauched old age. Sad, scared, disgusted above all, Sténio looked at her with a strange air and without speaking to her.
When he saw the ridiculous situation in which he was placed concern he tried to approach her and him
to speak to. But he could never feign the love he was not feeling and he told her in an almost severe tone of curiosity taking her hand in a completely paternal way:
"How old are you then?"
- Fourteen, replied the distraught young princess and almost lost in surprise, grief, anger and fear.
- Well ! my child, said Sténio, go tell your confessor that he gives you absolution for coming here and Page 238
thank God especially for sending you a year,
that is to say a century too late in the destiny of Sténio. "
As he finished this sentence, the housekeeper of the princess, who had remained in the doorway of a crusader for observe the conduct of the two lovers, rushed towards them and receiving poor Claudia in her arms while weeping, she called Sténio indignantly.
"Insolent! she said to him, is this how you recognize the grace granted to you by your illustrious sovereign, going down to honor you with his looks? On your knees, vassal, on your knees! If your brutal soul is not touched by most excellent beauty of the universe, let your audacity bend less before the respect you owe to the daughter of Bambuccj.
- If the Bambuccj's daughter deigned to come down to me, answered Sténio, she had to resign herself in advance to be treated by me as my equal. If she repents at this hour, so much better for her. This is the only punishment that she will receive from his imprudence; but she can boast of being protected by the Virgin who brought her here the next day and not the day before an orgy. Listen, you two women, listen to the voice of a man whom the approach of death makes wise and disinterested. Listen, you, old duenna with a sordid soul, with infamous ways, and you, young girl with early passions, fatal and dangerous beauty, listen. You first, titled courtesan, marquise whose heart conceals so many vices that the face shows wrinkles, you can make it through the carelessness which will erase from the memory of Sténio the memory of this adventure before an hour has passed; without that, you would be unmasked in the eyes of this court and driven out, as you deserve, from a family you want to wither the frail offspring. Get out of here, vice and greed, courtesy, servility, betrayal, leprosy of the nations, lie and stigma of the race
human! And you, my poor child, he added, tearing away Claudia from the arms of her housekeeper and drawing her to the great day, all vermeille and all sorry it was; listen carefully, and if, one day, carried away according to fate and passions, you come take a frightened look back on your beautiful lost years, on your tarnished purity, remember Sténio and Page 239
stop at the edge of the abyss. Look at me, Claudia, look opposite, without fear and without trouble, this man you think you are in love and that you probably never watched. At your age, the heart is restless and impatient. He calls a heart which responds, he ventures, he confides, he gives himself up. But woe to those who abuse ignorance and candor! For you, Claudia, you heard the poems of a man you sang thought young, beautiful, passionate. Look at him, poor Claudia, and see what ghost you liked; see his bald head, his emaciated hands, his extinguished eyes, his withered lips. dish your hand on this exhausted heart, count the slow pulsations and dying of this twenty year old man. Look at this hair who turn gray around a face where the virile down has no still pushed; and tell me, is this the Sténio you had dreamed, is it the religious poet, is it the burning sylph that you thought you saw in your heavenly visions when you sang his hymns on your harp at sunset? If you had thrown then a glance towards the steps of your palace, you could have see the pale ghost talking to you now, sitting on one of the marble lions guarding your door. You would have seen it, like today, withered, exhausted, indifferent to your beauty as an angel, to your melodious voice, curious only to hear how a fifteen year old princess phrased the melodies inspired by drunkenness, written in debauchery. But you didn't see it,
Claudia; luckily for you your eyes were looking for it in the sky, where he was not. Your faith gave him wings, when he crawled under your feet, among the lazzaroni who sleep at threshold of your villa. Well ! young girl it will be so with all your illusions, of all your loves. Remember this disappointment if you want to keep your youth, your beauty and the power of your soul; or, if you can still, after this, hope and believe, do not hurry to realize your impatience, keep and curb desire in your fiery soul, extend from all your power this blindness of hope, this childhood of heart that only has one day and never returns. Government wisely, watch with vigilance, spend sparingly on treasure of your illusions; because the day you want to obey the fiery of your thought, to the worried suffering of your senses, you will see your gold and diamond idol change to clay coarse; you will only hold a ghost in your arms Page 240
without heat and without life. You will vainly pursue your dream youth; in your breathless and fatal race, you will not reach only a shadow and you will soon fall exhausted, alone at the amidst the crowd of your remorse, hungry in the midst of satiety, decrepit and dead like Sténio, without having lived a whole day. "
After speaking thus, he left the casino and got ready to join Trenmor. But he hit him on the shoulder as he reached the bottom of the steps. He had seen everything, everything heard, through the ajar window.
"Sténio, it said to him, the tears which I shed quite at the hour was an insult, my pain was blasphemy.
You are unhappy and sorry, but you are, my son, more taller than Lélia, more experienced than Trenmor, purer than
the saints to whom God opens his arms with love.
- Trenmor, said Sténio with a deep disdain and a laugh bitter, I can see that you are mad; don't you see that all this morality that i just flaunted is just the miserable comedy of an old soldier who fell into childhood, who builds fortresses with grains of sand and thinks they are entrenched against imaginary enemies? Do not understand you don't like virtue like old libertines
love young virgins and that I praise the attractions which I have lost enjoyment? Do you believe, childish man, dreamer stupidly virtuous, that I would have respected this girl, if the abuse Pleasure would have made me helpless? "
By completing these words in a bitter and cynical tone, Sténio fell into deep reverie, and Trenmor led him away from the villa, without seeming to worry about the place where he was being taken.
2<
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Camaldules
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Trenmor who liked to travel on foot, nevertheless obtained a car to transport Sténio, who would not have had the strength to walk. They went away in the short days, contemplating at leisure the magnificent places they crossed. Sténio was taciturn and peaceful. He never asked once what was the end and purpose of this trip. He let himself be carried away with the apathy of a prisoner of war and his indifference for the future seemed to restore the enjoyment of the present. he often looked with admiration at the beautiful sites of this country delighted and begged Trenmor to have the horses arrested, to whether he could climb a mountain or sit on the edge of a River. So he found glimmers of enthusiasm, impulses of poetry, to understand nature and to celebrate it.
But, despite these moments of revival and rebirth, Trenmor could observe in his young friend the irreparable ravages of debauchery. Formerly, his active and vigilant thinking took over all things and gave color, shape and life to all external objects; now, Sténio vegetated, at the ordinary, in a voluptuous and fatal stupidity. he seemed to disdain to make use of his intelligence; But, in reality, he was no longer the master of governing it. Often it called her in vain, she no longer obeyed. He then affected despise the faculties he had lost but the bitterness of his gaiety betrayed his anger and his pain. He greedily secret his rebellious memory; he castigated his imagination lazy Girl ; he thrust the spur to the side of his genius insensitive and tired, but it was in vain; he fell back exhausted in a chaos of dreams without aim and without order. His ideas went through his brain, incoherent, whimsical, elusive, like these imaginary sparks, that the eye thinks they see dancing in the darkness and that follow each other and multiply to fade forever in the eternal night of nothingness.
One evening, at sunset, they entered a valley covered with rich forests; the most beautiful waters meandered in silence in the shade of myrtles and fig trees. Vast clearings, where semi-wild herds grazed,
intersected with tender green edges these masses in a tone vigorous. This country was rich and deserted. We couldn't see Page 242
dwellings as scattered and almost hidden chalets in the foliage. We could therefore enjoy all the graces at the same time, of all the benefits of fruitful nature and all grandeur, of all the poetry of uncultivated nature.
Halfway up the hill that our travelers were descending to enter this beautiful valley, Trenmor set foot in earth to his companion and while the chair and the horses followed them step by step and carefully on a fast and dangerous, they gained, by walking, the fertile ground and gently undulating from the valley.
Sténio felt one instant rejuvenated and comforted by the sight of this beautiful country.
"Happy," he cried several times, "the pastors carefree and rough sleeping in the shade of these woods silent, with no other concern than the care of their flocks, with no other study than the rising and setting of the stars! More happy again the disheveled foals leaping
slightly in these scrub and the fierce goats that climb the steep rocks effortlessly! Happy all creatures that enjoy life without fatigue and without excess! "
As they turned one of the angles of the path, Sténio saw in the evening mist, which ate imperceptibly all the contours of the landscape, a large white line on the side of the mountain which surrounded the valley of a vast circus and majestic.
" What is that ? he said to Trenmor. Is it a line of splendid architecture or a wall of chalk, as are there any in these rocks? Is it a huge waterfall, a career or a palace?
- It's a monastery, replied Trenmor, it's the convent Camaldolese. "
Sténio had not listened to the answer; he continued to whistling.
Night came. The barely drawn road became so dark that the postilion could not advance further without colliding with all
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trees. A chalet gave him hospitality; but both travelers, finding the time too early to engage in rest, walked on and plunged randomly into
Woods.
Trenmor knew the country perfectly; but he pretended to get lost. Fearing to awaken the repugnance of Sténio and of remind him of the feeling of his freedom by warning him of his purposely, it affected to ignore where they would spend the night.
Gradually they approached the mountains and Trenmor, seeing Sténio tired, proposed to him to regain, as they could, the place where they had left their crew.
"I would rather die right now than try again the way that I made, answered Sténio; I am overwhelmed, I will not go further.
- You cannot, said Trenmor, sleep safely on this wet grass and in the mist of these cold waters and stagnant. Make an effort to climb the base of the mountain.
Here is a soft and easy path. When we reach a certain elevation we can find in some cave a healthier asylum. "
Sténio was carried along and, when they had crossed a thicket that covered the foot of the mountain, they saw, at first light of the moon, rise up in front of them elegant and rich from the Camaldolese convent. Trenmor proposed to ask for hospitality. A lay brother came to receive them and, without answering a single word their request, he led them to the room for pilgrims.
Sténio, overwhelmed with weariness, slept so deeply that completely lost the feeling of his situation and the next day he found himself standing and clothed, without having been able to recollect the
memory of
the day before and realize where he was. He ... not not even thought of calling Trenmor; he had forgotten and Trenmor and his own departure from Villa-Bambuccj and his journey through campaigns whose names he hadn't asked for. he seemed to him that he had just suddenly passed from a stay noisy and populous in a deserted and silent house. he Page 244
came out of his room and glanced in lazy amazement and carefree indecision on the objects that presented themselves.
First it was a long gallery, whose marble vault white was supported by Corinthian columns of a pink marble veined with blue, separated from each other by a vase of malachite where the aloe raised its large ridges thorny; and then huge successive courses in a really piranesic depth and that filled,
like extensive carpets, rich variegated flowerbeds of the most beautiful flowers. The dew of which all these plants were freshly flooded seemed to still wrap them in gauze silver. In the center of the symmetrical ornaments that these flowerbeds were drawing on the ground, fountains, gushing in jasper basins, raising their transparent jets in the air morning blue and the first ray of the sun, which was starting to go over the top of the building, falling on this fine rain and leaping, crowned each jet with an egret of diamonds.
Beautiful Chinese pheasants, who barely bothered under the feet of Sténio, walked among the flowers their filagram plumes and their velvet sides. The peacock spread her gown of jewels and the musk duck on the lawns, in the emerald chest, pursued, in the basins, the golden flies that draw circles on the water surface
elusive.
At the mocking or plaintive cry of these captive birds, at their melancholy and proud gaits, the thousand voices mingled joyous and noisy, the thousand curious familiarities of free sky birds. The tarin, mischievous and confident, came place statues on the immobile forehead. The insolent sparrow and fearful would steal the food from domestic birds and flew horrified at the slightest chuckle from the incubators; the goldfinch attacked the egrets of flowers, that the wind was fighting over him. Insects also woke up and began to rustle under the heated and steaming grass first lights of the day. The most beautiful butterflies in the valley arrived by troops, to drink the juice of these beautiful exotic plants, the flavor of which intoxicated them so much that they let themselves be taken by hand. All the voices of the air, all the morning scents rose to heaven like pure incense, Page 245
like a naive hymn, to thank God for the blessings of the creation and work of man.
But among all these animal and vegetable existences, among these works of art and these splendours of wealth, man alone was missing. The rake had recently walked on the sand of all the alleys, as
if to erase the remember human steps. Sténio had a kind of fright superstitious by printing his own. It seemed to him that he was going to destroy the harmony of this magic scene and make fall upon him the enchanted walls of his dream.
Because, in the confusion of his ideas of poet and his aberrations of the sick, he did not want to believe in the reality of things he saw. Seeing in the distance, behind the transparent colonnades of the cloister, the deserted depths
of the valley, he readily imagined that in the woods he fell asleep under a fairy's favorite tree and woke up the flirtatious queen of prestige surrounded him with wonders impalpable from his palace, to make him in love or mad.
As he let go of this fantasy,
intoxicated with the sweet scent of jasmine and datura, happy to be alone in these beautiful places and believing themselves almost to be king or god, he
came close to a high and long crossroad, whose glazing colored, sparkling in the sun, looked like the silk curtain nuanced of a harem. He sat on the margins of a basin filled with fish and had fun following, across the water limpid, trout wearing flexible silver armor sprinkled with ruby and the tench coated with a pale gold nuanced green. He admired the softness of their games, the sparkle of their eyes metallic, the inconceivable agility of their fearful flight when he drew his moving shadow over the waters. Suddenly, chants such as the saints should make them heard at the foot from the throne of Jehovah, departed from the bottom of the mysterious building and, mingling with the vibrations of the organ and the great voice of the whelk, filled the whole enclosure of the monastery. Everything seemed make silence to listen and Sténio, struck with admiration, kneeled instinctively as on the day of his childhood.
Male voices, deep and full, rose to
God as a fervent and hopeful prayer; and voices Page 246
children, penetrating and Argentinian, responded to these like the distant promises of heaven expressed by the organ pure angels.
The monks said:
“Angel of the Lord, spread your protective wings over us.