by George Sand
I waltzed with my cousin. All at once it seemed to me that her face came alive with a singular beauty and that she was speaking to me with fire in the rapid whirlpool of the dance.
Let us leave here, she said to me, it’s stifling; let us pass through those mirrors, which reflect back the candles’ flame into the interminable distance. Don’t you see that this is the image of the infinite, and that it is the road we must take? Come! a little courage, a leap forward, and we shall soon be in the crystal.
While Laura was speaking to me thus, I heard the mocking voice of Walter, who shouted out to me as I was passing close to him:
Hey! have a care! Not so close to the mirrors! Do you want to break those too? This boy is a veritable stag beetle, who beats his head against anything that shines.
Punch was being served. I was one of the last to approach, and found myself sitting next to Laura.
There, she said, handing me the chilled nectar in a fine goblet of Bohemian crystal, drink to my health, and look more cheerful. Do you realise you look as if you are bored, and that your distracted expression is preventing me from numbing myself as I would wish?
How can you want me to be jolly, my good Laura, when I see that you are not? You do not love Walter; why rush to marry without love, when love could come for him … or for another?
I am not permitted to love another, she replied, since it is he my father has chosen. You do not know all that has passed with regard to this marriage. You were considered too young to be informed of it; but, for myself who am even younger than you, you are not a child, and, since we were brought up together, I owe you the truth.
“We were originally destined for each other; but at first you proved too lazy, then extremely pedantic, and now, despite your goodwill and your intelligence, no one yet knows for what career you are best suited. I do not say this to cause you pain; I consider, myself, that no time has yet been lost with regard to your future. You learn, you have become hardworking and modest. You may well be a universal scholar like my uncle, or a specialised scholar like Walter; but my father, who wishes to see me married when he returns to settle near me, charged my uncle and my cousin Lisbeth with finding me a husband of an age suited to my own, that is a little older than you and engaged in very positive studies. He blames the unfortunate beginnings of his business career on ignorance and imagination, and he wants a son-in-law who is knowledgeable about some industry or other.
“Now my father, tired of voyages and adventures, seems satisfied with his position: he has sent me quite a nice sum of money for my dowry; but he did not wish to involve himself in setting me up. He claims he has become too much of a stranger to our customs, and that the choice made by my other relations will be better than one he could make himself or only advise upon.
“And so my poor mother’s plans have been overturned, for she wanted to unite us; but she is no more, and one must admit that the present combination better assures my future and yours. You certainly do not wish to enter into married life so soon, and you have neither wealth nor a lucrative employment, since you do not yet even know what your vocation is.”
You speak of all this with great ease, I replied. It is possible that I may rightly be considered a little young to marry; but that is a defect one can correct in oneself by willpower. If I had not been left in ignorance about all that you have revealed to me, I would have been neither lazy nor pedantic … I would not have allowed myself to be dragged by Uncle Tungstenius into the examination of scientific hypotheses that his life and mine could not resolve, and into which moreover I was not perhaps borne by any special genius or enthusiastic passion. I would have listened to Walter’s advice, I would have studied practical science and industrial craft: I would have made myself a blacksmith, miner, potter, geometrician or chemist; but not so many years have yet been lost. What my uncle teaches me is not useless: all the natural sciences are closely linked, and the knowledge of terrains leads me straight to the research and exploitation of useful minerals. Give me two or three years, Laura, and I shall have a position, you have my word upon it, I shall be a positive man. Can you not wait for me a while? Are you in such a hurry to marry? Have you no feelings of friendship for me?
You are forgetting one very simple thing, Laura went on: it is that, in three years’ time, I shall also be three years older and that, consequently, there will never be the age distance between us that my father demands.
And, since Laura laughed as she said this, I lost my temper and reproached her.
You laugh, I said, and I suffer; but that is all the same to you, you love neither Walter nor me; you love only marriage, the idea of calling yourself “Madame” and wearing feathers in your hat. If you loved me, would you not make an effort to react against the will of a father who is probably not without feelings, and who is less wedded to his ideas than to your happiness? If you loved me, would you not have understood that I loved you too, and that your marriage to another would break my heart? You weep to leave your house in the country, and your cousin Lisbeth, and your governess Loredana, and perhaps also your garden, your cat and your canaries; but for me you have not one tear, and you ask me to be jolly so that you can forget your little customs among which my memory counts for absolutely nothing!
And, as I was saying this with scorn, turning my empty glass round in my clenched hand, for I dared not look at Laura for fear of seeing her angered against me, I saw all at once her face reflected in one of the facets of the Bohemian crystal. She was smiling, she was wondrously beautiful, and I heard her saying to me:
Calm yourself, you silly great child! Didn’t I tell you that I love you? Don’t you know that our earthly life is only a vain fantasmagoria, and that we are forever united in the transparent, radiant world of the ideal? Don’t you see that Walter’s earthly self is obscured by the acrid smoke from the coal, that this unfortunate has no memory, no presentiment of his eternal life, and that, while I enjoy myself on the serene heights where the prismatic light radiates the purest flames, he thinks only of burrowing into the dark shadows of stupid anthracite or into the muffled caverns where the frightful weight of galenite oppresses every seed of vitality, every flight towards the sun? No, no, in this life Walter will marry only the abyss, and I, daughter of the heavens, shall belong to the world of colour and shape; I must have palaces whose walls glitter and whose peaks shimmer in the free air and the full light of day. I sense incessant flight around me and I hear the harmonious beating of the wings of my true soul, forever borne towards the heavens; my human self could not accept the slavery of a union contrary to my true destiny.
Walter tore me away from the delights of this vision, reproaching me for being drunk and gazing at my own image in the smoky crystal of my glass. Laura was no longer by my side. I do not know how many moments earlier she had left; but, until the moment when Walter came to speak to me, I had distinctly seen her charming image in the crystal. I tried to see Walter’s there; with terror, I saw that it did not appear, and that this limpid substance was rejecting my friend’s reflection as if his approach had changed it into a block of coal.
The evening was wearing on, and Laura had taken to dancing with a sort of frenzy, as if her lightness of character had wanted to protest against the revelations of her ideal being. I felt most fatigued by the noise of this little celebration, and I withdrew without anyone noticing. I was still staying in a part of the establishment separated from my uncle’s lodgings by the botanical garden; but, as I had become assistant curator of the museum in place of Walter, who had been promoted, and as I exercised a jealous watchfulness over the scientific riches entrusted to my keeping, in order to reach my domicile I took the path which led past the mineralogical gallery.
I was walking along the glass cases, running the brightness of my candle over the pigeonholes, not looking in front of me, when I almost bumped into a strange person whose presence in this place, to which I alone had the keys, surprised me a great deal.
Who are you? I asked him, raisin
g my lantern close to his face and speaking to him threateningly. What are you doing here, and how did you get in?
Calm this great anger, replied the bizarre stranger, and know that since I belong to the house, I know its ins and outs.
You do not belong to this house, since I do, and I do not know you. You are going to follow me to my Uncle Tungstenius and explain yourself.
So, my little Alexis, went on the stranger, for it can only be you who are speaking to me, you take me for a thief! … Know that you are considerably mistaken, bearing in mind that the most beautiful specimens in this collection were furnished by myself, the majority of them given free of charge. Indeed, your Uncle Tungstenius knows me, and we shall go and see him shortly; but before doing so, I want to talk with you and ask for a little information.
I declare to you, I replied, that it shall not be so. You inspire no confidence at all in me despite the richness of your Persian costume, and I do not know the meaning of a disguise of this type on the body of a man who speaks my language without any trace of a foreign accent. You undoubtedly wish to lull my suspicions by pretending to know me, and you believe you will escape from me without my ensuring …
I believe, heaven protect me, that you are planning to arrest me and search me! replied the stranger, looking at me with disdain. A novice’s fervour, my little friend! It is good form to take the duties of one’s job to heart; but one must know whom one is dealing with.
As he said this, he seized me by the throat with an iron hand, not gripping me any tighter than was necessary to prevent me shouting and struggling; he made me leave the gallery, whose doors I found open, and took me into the garden without letting go of me.
There, he made me sit down on a bench and sat down at my side, telling me with a laugh that was as strange as his face, his clothes and his manners:
Well! do me the pleasure of recognising me and asking forgiveness from your Uncle Nasias for having taken him for a lock-picker. Recognise in me the former husband of your Aunt Gertrude and the father of Laura.
You! I cried out, you!
Nasias is my name abroad, he replied. I have just arrived from the depths of Asia, where—thanks to God—I did some rather good business and made some rather precious discoveries. Learn that I am now domiciled at the court of Persia, where the sovereign treats me with the greatest consideration because of certain rarities which I procured for him, and that, if I have broken off from my great occupations to come here, it is not with the intention of stealing from your little museum a few miserable gemstones with which the pettiest Indian rajah would not deign to decorate his slaves’ toes or noses. Let us leave that, and tell me if my daughter is married.
She is not, I replied impetuously, and she will not yet be, if you consult her true inclination.
My Uncle Nasias took my lantern, which he had placed next to us on the bench, and raised it to my face as I had done to his a few moments earlier. His face was not precisely menacing as mine had been; it was rather mocking, but with an expression of icy irony, implacable, upsetting. As he took his time contemplating me, I also had the leisure to examine him in my anxiety.
In my childhood memories, Laura’s father was a fat, blond, rosy-faced man, with a gentle, cheery face; the one my eyes now beheld was thin, olive-complexioned, of a type that was at once energetic and cunning. On his chin he wore a small, very black beard that looked rather like a goat’s, and his eyes had acquired a satanic expression. He wore a tall hat of fine, jet-black fur and a robe of gold brocade, embroidered with incomparable richness. A magnificent Indian cashmere encircled his waist, and a yataghan covered with gemstones glittered at his side. I do not know if the Eastern sun, the great exhaustion of his journeys, the habitual great dangers and the necessity of a life mingled with cunning and audacity had transformed him to this extent, or if my memories were completely inaccurate: it was impossible for me to recognise him, and I was still in some doubt as to whether I was dealing with a bold impostor.
This suspicion gave me the strength to bear his keen gaze with a pride that suddenly seemed to satisfy him. He replaced the lantern on the bench and said to me calmly:
I see that you are an honest boy and that you have never sought to seduce my daughter. I see also that you are naive, sentimental, and that, if you love her, it is not at all from ambition; but, from what you say, you are in love and you would very much like to see me break the marriage to which I have consented for her. Embed this in your mind, my dear nephew, that, if I did break it, it would not be to your benefit, for you are only a child, and I do not find in your face any special energy which promises a brilliant destiny. So answer me disinterestedly, as you have nothing better to do, and with sincerity, since chance has caused you to be born an honest man: what of this other fellow Walter, of whom my brother-in-law Tungstenius and his cousin Lisbeth wrote to me in such glowing terms?
Walter, I replied without hesitation, is the most worthy boy in the world. He is frank, loyal and his conduct is irreproachable. He has intelligence, learning and the ambition to distinguish himself in practical science.
And has he a profession?
He will have one in six months’ time.
Very good, replied my Uncle Nasias, he is the son-in-law who suits me; but he will have the goodness to wait until he actually has the title of his employment. I am not a man to change my mind, and I am going immediately to tell him so and make his acquaintance. As for you, make haste to forget Laura, and, if you wish in a short space of time to become bold, intelligent, rich and active, prepare yourself to follow me. I am leaving again in a few days, and it is entirely up to you whether I take you along with me. Now let us go and see if the family will recognise me and give me a better welcome than yours.
I did not feel brave enough to follow him. I was shattered by fatigue. I was far from liking my Uncle Nasias and he seemed not at all favourable towards my hopes; but Laura’s marriage had been delayed, and it seemed to me that in six months, immense events could surface and change the look of things.
When I awoke, with the first glimmers of dawn, I was surprised to see Nasias in my room, stretched out in my old leather armchair, and so profoundly asleep that I had the leisure to attend to my toilet before he had opened his eyes. He was so motionless and starkly white in the half-light of morning that, if I had seen him like that for the first time, he would have terrified me like a ghost. I approached him and touched him. He was singularly cold, but he was breathing very regularly and in such a peaceful manner, that his disturbing face was entirely changed. Like this, he seemed like the calmest of dead men and his strange ugliness had given way to a strange beauty.
I was preparing to leave soundlessly in order to go and attend to my duties, when he awoke of his own accord and looked at me without hostility or disdain.
You are surprised, he said, to see me in your bedroom; but you should know that, for more than ten years, I have not lain in a bed. That way of sleeping would be unbearable to me. It is as much as I can do if, from time to time, on my days of laziness, I sleep in a silk hammock. Moreover, accustomed as I am to a female companion, I do not like sleeping alone. Yesterday evening I found the door to your room standing ajar, and, instead of going to suffocate in the eiderdown Laura had had prepared for me at the height of summer, I came in with you, and took possession of this leather armchair which suits me very well. You snore a little loudly, but I imagined I was sleeping amid the roaring of lions roaming around my encampment, and you reminded me of nights of rather agreeable emotions.
I am happy, Uncle, I replied, that my armchair and my snoring agree with you, and please make use of them as often as you like.
I want to pay you back for your politeness, he went on; now come into my room, I have to speak with you.
When we were ensconced in the apartment which Uncle Tungstenius had had made ready and which was the finest in the establishment, he showed me his luggage, whose smallness surprised me. It consisted entirely of a change of robe and hat, wit
h a little case of underclothing made from yellow cloth, and an even smaller bronze box.
This, he said, is the way to travel freely from one end of our planet to the other, and, when you have adopted my habits, you will see that they are excellent. You must begin by becoming thin and losing the garish roses of your Germanic complexion, and for that, there is no better regime than eating little, sleeping fully dressed on the first chair you find, and never halting for more than three days under the same roof; but, before I take charge of your fate, which is no mean favour to do you, I want a few sincere explanations, and you are going to answer me as if you were standing before …
Before whom, my dear uncle?
Before the devil, ready to break your bones if you should lie, he replied, and his wicked smile and infernal gaze returned.
I am not in the habit of lying, I told him; I am an honest man, and I do not swear oaths.
Very well; then answer! What is the meaning of this story of a broken glass case, hallucinations, a journey into the crystal? During your illness two years ago, my brother-in-law wrote me something rather muddled about it and I made Laura tell me about it yesterday evening. Is it true that you wanted to enter by thought into a geode lined with amethyst crystals, that you believed you really had entered it, and that you saw there the face of my daughter?
All that is unfortunately true, I replied. I had an extraordinary vision, I broke a glass case, I injured my head, I had a fever, I recounted my dream with the conviction with which it had left me, and for some time people thought me mad. However, my uncle, I am not; I am cured, I am in good health, I work to my teachers’ satisfaction, my behaviour is not at all extravagant, and nothing would have made me unworthy of being Laura’s husband, if you had not given authorisation for her to be engaged to another who has little interest in her hand, whereas I …