I made an evasive gesture and, lowering my eyes, I admitted that, at least thus far, I had no certainty regarding my mission.
Roseline nodded her head. But, as if she had already forgotten the importance of missions, her eyes bright with curiosity, she asked me if I liked snakes. My response would not have been useful, for she added, without waiting for it: “It’s necessary to like them. You’ll see a large number of them. Perhaps you’ve already seen some. The whole region is full of them. But there’s a marvelous quality of those creatures that gives the illusion of coldness. They pullulate in certain places; they’re in all the walls and under all the trees, and humans don’t suspect it. In any case, don’t come to the château at night without taking good care. I have a sister who is so beautiful that one can’t see her for the first time without fainting. What would happen if you fell unconscious on a pathway in the park and the snakes…?”
I had attributed qualities of common sense to Madame Tournadieu imprudently. I saw that her face had a grave expression and that she was considering the hypothesis that had just been put forward as quite plausible.
“Yes,” Roseline went to, “my sister is a little like the ancient Medusa whose head Perseus was obliged to cut off. Her power is so frightening that I wonder whether it might not be necessary to do that some day.”
She paused and meditated for a few seconds, while Madame Tournadieu continued to approve.
“Every Lusignan has a curious particularity. Thus my father…if you’ve met him, you’ll have noticed it because of his beard…he has two beards. My father has a frightful habit and I argue with him incessantly about that subject. He has a benevolent air about him but he’s a very cruel man. He kills his enemies and he nails them to the wall with long steel spikes. If he weren’t so rich he’d have been condemned to death a long time ago. I love him, though, because he’s my father.
“How can wearing that beard be explained—that beard divided into two parts, one of which is longer than the other? I think he’d prefer it if the two parts were symmetrical, and he suffers from that inequality. But it makes me suffer much more when I kiss him. And I kiss him often because I have a heart overflowing with love.
“And yet we have thousands of butterflies that separate us! Poor butterflies that he martyrizes, I love you for the inexplicable length of your agony! ‘You don’t understand anything about science,’ my father says, laughing. It’s necessary to tell you that my father is one of the greatest scientists of our epoch, perhaps the greatest of all. He knows all the species of butterflies and moths that exist, even the American species, even those of the North Pole. But how can the science that knows deadly poisons for humans not have found one for butterflies, which are much tinier?
“And I wonder if the butterflies, after having palpitated for a long time in a glass box, even end up by dying. I believe they make a semblance of it. They resign themselves to having a pin that traverses them and they wait silently for the duration of a collection—a duration that might be immense.
“Once, I set one of them free, the most beautiful of all. ‘It’s at least a hundred years old and it’s Russian,’ my father told me. It was covered in gold powder and wore a little crown. It was a mummy of a butterfly. Its eyes were a centimeter long. It flew away with a great sadness. The garden was too young for it.
“When I told my father what I’d done, he chased me around the house shouting that I was a monster, and I believe that he would have nailed me instead of the butterfly if I’d been on the scale of the box and the pin. One is sometimes saved by a difference in dimension.”
CONCERNING THE OBJECTIVE
OF THE VOYAGE
Why had I come to that land of solitude and that house that nobody had rented for a long time?
That was a question that I dared not ask myself. Frankness practiced, with a clear gaze, with regard to a stranger, produces an interior voluptuousness, but with oneself it is difficult to realize, because one does not dispose of the magic of speech and the soul is then diminished instead of being glorified. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognize why one is here rather than somewhere else.
In truth, it is necessary not to expect too much of solitude. To begin with, one cannot find it anywhere. Perhaps there are islands in Oceania…but one then finds the problem of nourishment as absorbing as that of the presence of humans. At that time and at that turning-point in my life, I believed in the virtue of solitude.
For I was at a turning point. I had entered the period when the smile of women who look at you changes its meaning. One distinguishes a hint of respect therein. Unwittingly, and simply by the play of years, one no longer finds oneself on the same equal footing with them. In their eyes, one is an important person, with whom communication will be mingled with a certain ennui. One has been pushed, without being aware of it, into a new condition of life.
I had remained as long as possible without wanting to think about that change. But I had received a warning, like a ringing bell. On going into a Metro carriage once, a well brought-up young man had got up precipitately to offer me his seat. My God! It is little, unimportant events that force one to make great decisions.
As far as I can go back in my memories, I can see therein the resolution to devote myself, at a certain time of my life, to the search for the truth, perhaps to what is called, in Christian language, salvation. I had arrived at that moment and I knew that it entailed the renunciation of the former reasons for living.
Contrary to my expectations, I did not experience any difficulty in renouncing all the pleasures that were not those of the spirit—or rather, almost all the pleasures, because there is the pleasure of the air one breathes, the sunlight that penetrates you, creatures with which one sympathizes, pleasures that never quit you. I was intoxicated by the joy of the new horizons I glimpsed. The spiritual world was abruptly revealed, like the panorama at the top of a mountain. How long I had taken! How insensate I was to have delayed for so long! But it is necessary to take the first step, to commence with renunciation, otherwise the summit of the mountain remains obscure and one remains convinced that there is nothing behind the clouds.
I had accepted joyfully the appearance of egotism that the first step toward wisdom provides—for there is no detachment without egotism. “Wretch! You’re a ingrate! You’re forgetting your family,” one hears quite frequently. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary to be an ingrate and forget one’s family. The amity of the gods does not entail that of humans. There is an inexorable choice between the paths. They are the paths that once presented themselves to Hercules. In our day, Gauguin also found them before him, and he knew that, in order for art to be a divine path, it had to be accompanied by renunciation.
It was a great ambition that impelled me, perhaps the greatest of all, that which only requires, in order to be realized, the gleam of a tranquil eye, combined with the light of thought. Perhaps one is aided by certain books, by the sound of the wind, by the quality of the atmosphere. But perhaps it is necessary to have within oneself the dormant source of a welling beauty. Perhaps it is necessary to be marked by a predestination whose sign is invisible.
What if I were not worthy of that attempt? What if I had chosen the place in which to make it imprudently? For there must be some places that are more favorable than others. I had heard talk of places where the spirit breathes, and even of an inspired hill. There must, therefore, be soulless hills, valleys that the spirit cannot reach. What significance did the presence of a very old crow have? And above all, was it a favorable commencement to encounter, when I had scarcely arrived, a young woman with eyes the color of flowing water?
MELUSINE WITH THE LONG GREEN HAIR
“You haven’t yet perceived anything?” Roseline asked me, with a gesture that designated the land around us.
I had just said something banal about the beauty of the region.
“What might I have perceived?”
Roseline burst into clear laughter in which there was an undis
guised scorn.
We were walking on a hill that day, between a little pine wood and a field of leafless vines, the stunted trunks of which were reminiscent of as many sorrowful dwarfs.
“I won’t tell you anything because it’s necessary to divine it for oneself. And then, perhaps you’re one of those who are fated never to understand: fortunate innocents who traverse life which a blindfold over the eyes. Anyway, what’s the point in knowing? Knowledge of those mysteries came to my father a long time ago and he hasn’t yet found the solution. I’ve never known whether he bought the château in which we live in order to delve deeper into the question, or to console himself for having a daughter who transforms into a snake.”
Roseline uttered a profound sigh and lowered her head slightly, like someone who is bearing the weight of a beautiful but ineluctable destiny.
It was only at that moment that the old legend of the Lusignan family returned to my memory. Henri de Lusignan went on a crusade with Saint Louis at the time when he was King of Cyprus.1 Then he married a young woman of great beauty called Melusine, whom he brought back to his château in Poitou.
“Melusine with the long green hair,” sang the poets of those distant times.
“She must have difficulty in understanding the mysteries of our holy religion,” said the prior of Lusignan.
That Queen of Cyprus remained somewhat pagan, unable to traverse the great forests of centenarian oaks and chestnuts, where the rain made the underwood rotten with dead leaves and vegetal waters, without having fruits of nostalgia and distraction.
“I’m going to clear the area of trees and our woodcutters will become laborers,” said the Seigneur de Lusignan.
On the day before every Sunday, the young wife locked herself in her bedroom, and she had demanded that the Seigneur de Lusignan never attempt to enter it, under the pretext of unleashing an irreparable misfortune. He could not resist the temptation, and one evening he peeped through the keyhole. He saw, to his great dolor and an equally great surprise, that the woman he had married was only a woman in the upper part of her body, and a snake in the rest. He heard a heart-rending scream and Melusine with the long green hair, which must also have been wings, flew out of the window and disappeared in the direction of the profound forest, from which she never returned.
In vain the Seigneur de Lusignan went to kneel down at the edge of the forest and begged his wife to come back. In order to have her he would have consented to her keeping her half-animal appearance, even though it was not fitting for a good Christian to have a wife with the form of a serpent. A man in love is willing to make great concessions. Only on certain evenings at Pentecost did he hear a desperate cry emerging from in the depths of the forest, whose accent he recognized. And that was all. Then he grew old, and died. Perhaps the race of serpents cannot be reconciled with that of humans.
Roseline allowed to pass over her face the expression of slightly sad softness that the evocation of memories provokes.
“I’ve often thought about my ancestor Melusine, and I know that I resemble her.”
“Have portraits of her been conserved?”
“No, no portraits—no portraits painted on canvas, at least. But so many mirrors and springs have reflected her image! Even close to the place where we are. She leaned over the sea when she disembarked at Fréjus, the towers of which we can see from here. Fréjus was a great port and she stayed there for several days in the bishop’s house. That holy man didn’t suspect anything, and advised her to take communion at least once a week, on Sunday. And that didn’t please her. But she loved the bishop’s garden. It reminded her of her youth—for my ancestor Melusine was born in the sunlit place in the Orient, not far from the Tigris and the Euphrates, where the terrestrial paradise was located. And a marvelous cactus grew in the bishop’s garden, with nine leaves full of colors, falling back harmoniously in proportions fixed by the law that regulates cacti.”
I marveled that such precise details should be known to Roseline after ten centuries had gone by,2 but I thought it better not to ask her how she knew them.
“Poitou didn’t suit her, because the sun is too pale and neither palm trees nor cacti grow there. And yet, my ancestor Henri had done everything necessary for the abode to delight her. As much to please her as to astonish the inhabitants of Lusignan, he arrived at his château, after years of absence, with an extraordinary cortege. Melusine with the long green hair was to his right, on a white horse, in a robe befitting the Queen of Cyprus, the color of a pool, the color of beech leaves, with a necklace of emeralds and a crown of woven jade. Behind came negroes wearing green armor and huge sabers in the shape of a quarter-moon. They were laughing and showing their teeth. And as the people of Poitou had never seen men with black skin, they were astounded, and pointed at their woolly hair and bizarre tattoos. After the negroes there were fakirs and charlatans with cabalistic objects related to magical things, and hen a camel at the end of a rope, which lowered its head pensively. Then came the followers of the Queen, all princesses of Arabia, Palmyra or other places; then cavaliers in large numbers; then slaves carrying a crocodile, with its mouth open, its jaws sustained by ivory colonnettes in order that its teeth could be seen. And the oddest thing of all, surely, at the end of the cortege, was a sort of Oriental clown, an acrobat of a certain age, with a long nose and a graying beard...”
“A graying beard?”
“Which stirred over his breast while he played a psalterion...”
“A psalterion? Are you quite sure?”
“Yes…and who performed a comic dance on his own in order to entertain the audience.”
And, at the idea of that psalterion player at the end of the cortege, Roseline, forgetting her ancestor Melusine amid the forests of Poitou, emitted a loud burst of laughter—a burst of laugher so long and filled with joy that I thought she was about to start dancing, like the bearded acrobat.
THE OWNER OF THE AGRIPPA
I could see from my threshold a house with a low roof illuminated by a slightly ruddy light, and it gave me a bad impression. I asked Mathieu Lapeyre who lived there and whether his commerce was agreeable.
“It’s the house of a bad man,” he said, “an assuredly wicked man. And what’s more, he’s foreign to the region.”
Now, a few days later, the wicked man died. Whether he is good or bad, death awaits a man at his hour.
Guillard—that was his name—had a bad reputation in the locale. It was known all the way to Fréjus, and perhaps even beyond, that he had an evil nature.
“He’s very careful of his money. He’s cross-eyed, which is a sign. His house faces north. And he has an Agrippa in his possession, also known as the Egromus.”
That Agrippa is well-known—I mean, known in the region. It is a large book with an embossed cover, whose parchment pages are full of sorceries and singular figures. At least, it is said to be parchment. Perhaps it is vulgar paper, but garnished in the margins with fingerprints with distinct lines. It is said that there is an Agrippa, or an Egromus, which is similar, in every Christian parish, and that the man who owns it is a left-handed Christian.3
In addition to such a possession, the bad man was bad because he conserved, no one knew for what purpose, a small bone in a green bottle, a bone like a minuscule dorsal spine, that of a little-known animal or a human dwarf—all things that are characteristic of evil.
He had been seen through the windows, one evening, reading his book and moistening his finger in order to turn the pages. He had been seen after dinner and in the morning, the candle still burning. But it went out subsequently, as all candles do, and the door did not open. One night passed, and then several, and the house seemed lower and more deeply sunk in the ground, with a certain air of not wanting anyone to go there.
When several days had gone by, an old woman named Catherine and a retired individual named Malassis, who sometimes visited the wicked man, were informed by the postman that the door was still closed and that an unused pot of milk was stil
l in the same place. They discussed the matter, and, as they were very pious people, they went to fetch the curé. Having a presentiment of what had happened, they penetrated into the house.
The man was on his bed with his face rigid, but almost as calm as if he were asleep. Two candles had been consumed, one to his right, the other to his left, as if Guillard had carried out the funeral service for his own death.
And the book was there, in fact, but much smaller than had been believed: a book touched by many fingers.
Everything was quite ordinary, for death overtakes the living with great simplicity. Everything except one thing. It is well-known that the human body, as it dissolves, destroying itself, returning to putrescence, gives off an insupportable odor. Only great saints, it is reported—although very few have witnessed it—escape the common law and emit a sweet odor that is known as the perfume of sanctity. Now, Guillard, lying on his bed, his hands closed, turned to stone and his face taking on the elongation of death, emitted, with no doubt about it, a delicate odor of roses, an odor such that, when it had been respired, the soul was penetrated with delight.
At first, no one wanted to believe it. But the perfume was increasing. Several people had come to see, for death attracts, and all of them were embalmed.
“There are roses somewhere,” someone said.
But no, there were no earthly roses.
“Personally, I don’t smell anything,” the curé had said, remembering that Guillard had died without confession or extreme unction ad could not pretend to any sanctity. Then, from the corner of his eye, he had seen the Agrippa, also known as the Egromus, the sole example in the parish.
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