She made an impatient gesture.
"I embody," she said, lifting a timbale of crayfish from the chafing-dish, "the elite of the women of our day. An example of the feminine as artist and as great lady, a creature of the sort who is repelled by the idea of perpetuating an inferior breed or of giving pleasure where they take none themselves. Well! I stand before your tribunal, delegated by my sisters, to announce to you that we all desire the impossible, so badly do you love us."
"The floor is yours, my dear counsel," said Raittolbe by way of lively encouragement and laughing no longer. "I state however that I have no wish to be both judge and respondent. So put your case in the third person: so badly do they love us ..
"Yes," Raoule went on, "lack of feeling or lack of power. That is the dilemma. The unfeeling exasperate us, the powerless belittle us and both of them are in such haste to have their pleasure that they forget to give to us, their victims, the only aphrodisiac which could make them happy through making us happy too: Love ...
"I say!" Raittolbe interrupted, nodding. "Love as an aphrodisiac for love! Very pretty! I approve. The court is on your side!"
"In Antiquity" the relentless defence counsel continued, "vice was sacred because people were strong. In our century, it is shameful because it is born of our exhaustion. If we were strong, and if moreover we had grievances against virtue, vice would be permitted as a form of inventiveness, for example. Sappho could not be a girl, she was rather the vestal of a new fire. If I were to devise a new depravity, I would be a priestess, while my imitators, in the wake of my reign, would be wallowing in abominable filth .. . Does it not seem to you that, by copying Satan, proud men are greatly more culpable than the Satan of the Scriptures who invented pride? Does not Satan's very fault make him respectable, for it is without precedent and a counter-impulse to the divine ...?"
Raoule, carried away by the thrill of her emotions, had risen, holding her goblet filled with clear water. She seemed to be raising a toast to the Antinous that stood over her.
Raittolbe also rose, filling his drinking-cup with iced champagne. After his tenth glass he was more emotional than a hussar is accustomed to be, but more courteous than a pleasure-seeker would have been in the circumstances. He shouted out:
"To Raoule de Venerande, the Christopher Columbus of modern love ...!"
Then, sitting down again:
"Counsel, get to the point, for I know that you are in love, though I do not know why you betrayed me ...!"
Raoule continued sorrowfully:
"Madly in love! Yes! Already, having the certainty that I shall never be understood, I intend to raise an altar to my idol ...! Alas! Can a passion against nature that is also a true love ever become anything other than a dreadful folly ...
"Raoule," said the baron de Raittolbe effusively, "I am surely convinced that you are mad. But I hope to cure you. Tell me the rest, and let me understand how, without Sappho's example, you can be in love with some pretty girl or other?"
Raoule's pale visage became fiery.
"I am a man in love with a man, not a woman!" she retorted, as her shadowed eyes turned away from the glittering gaze of the Antinous. "I have not been loved enough for me to be desirous of reproducing a being in the image of the husband ... and I have not been given enough pleasure for my brain not to have time enough to seek better ... I wished for the impossible ... It is mine ... No, I mean to say it shall never be mine ...
A tear fell on Raoule's cheek, its moist brilliance surely plundered from the shining suns of former Edens. But Raittolbe shook his outstretched arms in a gesture of absolute despair.
"She is a man in love ... with a man! Immortal gods!" he exclaimed, "have pity on me! I think that my mind is giving way!"
There was silence for a moment; then very slowly and very naturally, Raoule narrated her first meeting with Jacques Silvert, how a whim had assumed the proportions of an ardent passion, and how she had bought a being whom she despised as a man and adored as a beauty. She said beauty, unable to say woman.
"Can such a man exist?" stammered the baron, stunned by being dragged thus into an unknown region where inversion seemed the only admissible regime.
"He exists, my friend, and he isn't even a hermaphrodite, nor even impotent; he is a handsome male of twenty-one years, whose soul, with its feminine instincts, is in the wrong container."
"I believe you Raoule, I believe you! And will you not be his mistress?" the pleasure-seeker asked, convinced there was no other outcome for this adventure.
"I shall be his lover," answered Mademoiselle de Venerande, still drinking clear water and crumbling macaroons.
This time Raittolbe let forth an extraordinary burst of laughter.
"... The process for which I am willing to pay the patent?" he said.
A look of severity made him stop.
"Have you ever denied the existence of the Christian martyrs, Raittolbe?"
"Upon my soul no! I have always had better things to do, my dear Raoule!"
"Do you deny the vocation of the virgin who takes the veil?"
"I yield to the evidence. I have a charming cousin with the Carmelites in Moulins."
"Do you deny the possibility of fidelity to an unfaithful wife?"
"For me, yes, for one of my best friends, no! So is that a carafe of enchanted water? You frighten me with all your questions."
"Well my dear baron, I shall love Jacques as an affianced husband hopelessly loves his dead fiancee."
They had finished dinner. They pushed back the table, which was discreetly removed by a servant; then, side by side, they stretched out on the couch, each with a Turkish cigarette between their lips.
Raittolbe wasn't thinking about Raoule's dress, and Raoule had no thought for the young officer's moustache.
"So, will you keep him?" the baron enquired in a voice of the utmost neutrality.
"Even if it ruins me! I want her to be as happy as the godchild of a king!"
"Let us be clear about this! If I am the official confidant, let it be either he or she, lest I lose what little reason I have left."
"Let it be she."
"And the sister?"
"A servant, no more than that!"
"If the former boy florist had flirtations, might she have new ones ...!"
"... Hashish ..
"I'll be hanged! Even more complicated. And if by some fluke hashish were not enough?"
"I should kill her!"
At this Raittolbe idly took up a book, feeling a strange need to read aloud. All at once, with some help from the champagne, he seemed to see Raoule dressed in the doublet of Henri III and offering a rose to the Antinous. His ears hummed, his temples throbbed; then he choked on the lines of print that danced before his eyes and uttered things of a crudeness that would make the hair of all the hussars in France stand on end.
"Be silent!" murmured the dreaming Mademoiselle de Venerande. "Allow me the chastity of my thoughts when I think of her!"
Raittolbe gave himself a shake. He clasped Raoule by the hand. "Farewell," he said softly. "If I haven't blown my brains out, tomorrow morning we shall go to see her together."
"Your friendship will prevail, my friend. Besides, who can resist being in love with Raoule de Venerande ...
"You-are- right!" Raittolbe replied.
And he left without ado because his imagination was busily running away with him.
Before retiring to her bedchamber, Raoule went to see her aunt. The latter was kneeling at a lofty, grand prieDieu and reciting the prayer to the Virgin:
"Remember, oh sweet Virgin Mary, that it has never been known that those who have recourse to you have ever been abandoned ..."
"Has anyone ever asked her to grant them a change of sex?" the young woman wondered, sighing as she embraced the pious old woman.
The introductions were made in front of an easel on which there stood a rough sketch of a huge bouquet of forgetme-nots.
Jacques wore his studio attire: loose-cut trous
ers and a jacket of a soft white material.
He had made himself a silk tie out of one of the curtain loops; his fresh cheeks and clear eyes were thoroughly discountenanced by this visit. In their passage through his raw organism the fabulous hashish dreams had swathed him in a clumsy embarrassment, a lack of ease with himself which was evident in all his gestures. From his languid demeanour it could be guessed that these dreams haunted his mind, troubling him about the reality of the fairytale existence he was being made to live out.
In offhanded fashion, Raoule tapped him on the shoulder.
"Jacques," she said, "I wish you to meet one of my friends. He has a fondness for good drawings, you can show him yours."
Raittolbe, clad in a close-fitting riding habit with a regimental collar, gave an ill-humoured sniff. Entering the apartment, he had exclaimed in disapproval on seeing its sumptuousness.
"Yes," he muttered, now taken aback by the all too real beauty of the florist, "I too have done some drawing, but on ordnance maps! Does Monsieur paint flowers ...?"
Jacques, becoming increasingly ill at ease, cast a reproachful look towards Mademoiselle de Venerande.
"I have done sheep, am I to bring them out?" he asked, without directly answering the baron, whose riding-whip disconcerted him.
This unanticipated submissiveness set Raoule's whole body atremble. She could only acquiesce with a nod. While he was fetching his little daubs, Marie Silvert swaggered in through the bedroom door, draped in a skirt with flying panels and wearing a knowing look. On her fingers were rings made of pinchbeck adorned with fake gems. She stopped right in front of Raittolbe and, forgetting the sacred presence of the mistress of the house, exclaimed:
"Lawks! What a fetching chap!"
Jacques guffawed, the astonished baron opened his mouth wide and Raoule shot Marie a dreadful flashing look.
"My dear, you would do better to keep your admiration to yourself," pronounced the ex-officer, indicating Jacques. "There are those here in whom it might provoke bad thoughts ...!
This joke, in somewhat doubtful taste, was meant for the brother, but the sister thought it was intended for Raoule.
Marie Silvert became very humble, as if to feign something other than her vagabond upbringing.
"Now that you are better," said Raoule haughtily, "we must find you a room close by the studio. That would be more comfortable for ... Jacques ...
"Mademoiselle need concern herself no further. I well know that a servant has no place with the bourgeois. I rented yesterday a small room on the landing and have put in an ugly iron bedstead."
Jacques did not hear. He was taking down the sheep painting, and the girl backed out of the room, still muttering:
"What a good-looking fellow! My oh my, a good-looking fellow ...!"
With the incident over, they busied themselves with the young artist's drawings. In a voice that gave nothing away, Raoule told how she had discovered in him a considerable talent; with a few hours of study at the Louvre, some private lessons and the undisturbed peace of this secluded neighbourhood, he would do wonders and could then enter for the Salon prize. Jacques' teeth sparkled in a smile. The medal, oh yes, that was a noble ambition! Thanks to his benefactress he would become famous, he the poor jobless workman!
He spoke slowly, wishing to show to Raoule that he knew how to treat fine guests. Now and then he would turn to Raittolbe with an incidental don't-you-think, sir? He was so shy that for all his initial disgust, the baron ended by feeling immense compassion for this p ... transvestite.
Raoule, stretched out on a fumeuse, followed Jacques' every movement; when she saw him accept a cigarette, she well-nigh jumped out of her skin with rage. He smoked with little inhalations, like a child fearful of being burned, holding the cigarette with a pretence of low-life manners.
"Jacques, you don't still have the fever?" Raoule enquired.
At once he put down the cigarette, blushing. Then she explained to Raittolbe that she spoke to Silvert with such familiarity only because she was his elder and, besides, such easiness of speech was acceptable between artists in the studio. The baron nodded in assent. Were they not after all in the realms of the preposterous ... This grotesque idyll was so thoroughly oriental, the squalor of this vile passion gilded so adroitly, a carpet so thick had been nailed over the mud underfoot that he, the pleasure-seeker, would not let his pique stand in the way of a whiplash acquainttance with these irksome things.
Besides, if one did not count the trollop and the Romeo, he was being compromised in excellent company.
Although until then Raittolbe had been an honest man, he suffered from the mal du siecle, an infirmity which no other words can serve to explain.
He would much rather have possessed Raoule by other means than through the secrets of her private life; but after all a pretty mistress is no rarity, while one does not always have the opportunity to study a new depravity at close quarters.
Gradually, the conversation was enlivened. Jacques let himself be won over by the baron's candour; he bantered and went so far as to confide.
"I wager this lad, for all he falls short of a soldier's height, has plenty of ripe tales to tell about women ... Raittolbe ventured, with a wink.
"With that naughty little face of his! Doubtless ...!" added Raoule, her nervous fingers pummelling one of her gloves.
"Oh no ...! I swear to you," said Jacques, somewhat amazed to be asked such a question in such surroundings. "If I have slept out (and he returned Raittolbe's wink) all of ten times, it's no more than that, there ...!"
Raoule rose to adjust the sketch of the blue bouquet.
"No flirtations? No intrigues?" the baron insisted.
"Only the rich can afford to be in love!" murmured the florist, his gay spirits suddenly lowered.
Having complimented Jacques on his fine talent, when the last of his cigarette turned to ash Raittolbe took his leave of him as one takes one's leave of a woman at home, that is to say with an exaggerated respect, then he took his leave of Raoule, saying abruptly:
"This evening, at the Italiens, yes ...
She shook her head without turning round, and called Jacques.
"There, fathead," she said, boxing his ears with her ripped gloves, "try to put some life into your wretched forget-me-nots! You've forgotten all about your old trade! The flowers you paint for me are made of wood!"
"I shall start again, Mademoiselle, for I mean them to be for your aunt."
"Goodness me, so long as they are for my aunt, you have my permission to make them out of marble if it pleases you!"
Raittolbe had gone.
"I forbid you to smoke!" she shouted, shaking Jacques by the arm.
"Very well! I shall smoke no more ...!"
"And I forbid you to speak to a man without my permission here."
Jacques, astounded, stood rooted to the spot, still wearing his foolish smile.
All at once she threw herself upon him and laid him at her feet before he had time to resist; then, seizing him by the neck, a neck uncovered by the soft white jacket, she sank her nails into his skin.
"I am jealous!" she roared in a fury. "Do you understand now ...?"
Jacques did not move. On his wet eyes he had placed the two clenched fists which he did not wish to use.
Realising that she was hurting him, Raoule relaxed.
"It must be apparent to you," she said ironically, "that I, unlike you, do not have the hands of a florist, and that of us two I am invariably more the man?"
Without replying, Jacques stole a glance at her, his lips set in rueful folds.
His feminine beauty was heightened in the inertia forced upon him, and from his weakness, now perhaps become willing, there emanated a mysteriously attractive power.
"Cruel one ...!" he said in an undertone.
Raoule seized hold of a stray cushion and placed it beneath the young man's red curls.
"You are driving me mad!" she stammered. "I should like to have you all to myself, and you
speak, you laugh, you listen and answer before others with the ease of an ordinary being! Can you not guess that your almost superhuman beauty depraves the spirit of all those who come near you? Yesterday I wished to love you in my fashion without telling you how I suffered; today I am beside myself because one of my friends sat next to you ...!"
She broke into hoarse sobbing and raised her handkerchief to her face, in the hope of hiding it from him.
On her knees beside his outstretched body, she blazed with a lover's passion that inflamed Jacques despite himself; so he raised himself up to put an arm around her shoulders.
"So you really love me ...?" he asked, in a tone both sceptical and gently wheedling.
"Dreadfully ...
"Will you promise to give me more of that day-long delirium ...?"
"You prefer it to my kisses, Jacques!"
"No! And your cure will not go to my head this time, no, for I shall spit it out if you force me to swallow it ... This will be a better delirium ..."
He stopped, a little breathless, amazed to have said so much, then he went on in a voice patently quivering with a fiery voluptuous excitement:
"Why did you come with that gentleman ...? Can I too not be jealous? You disgrace me dreadfully! You have bought me and you beat me ... In case you think I do not realise this. I should have left, but there we are ... Your green paste made me more cowardly than my sister ...! I am afraid of everything ... Yet I am happy, very happy ... It is as if I desired to sleep on the bosom of my nurse ...
Raoule kissed his fine golden hair that was like filaments of gauze, wishing the respiration of her monstrous passion to pass through his skull. Her lips imperiously pushed his head forward and she bit into the nape of his neck with her whole mouth.
Jacques twisted in a love-cry of pain.
"Oh how good it feels!" he sighed, bracing himself in the arms of his savage dominatrix; "I would know nothing else! Raoule, you shall love me as it pleases you to love me, so long as you caress me always thus!"
Monsieur Venus (Decadence from Dedalus) Page 6