All unsuspected in the man before,
Monsieur Léonce Miranda made minute
Detail of his intended scheme of life
Thenceforward and for ever. “Vanity
Was ended: its redemption must begin —
And, certain, would continue; but since life
Was awfully uncertain — witness here! —
Behoved him lose no moment but discharge
Immediate burthen of the world’s affairs
On backs that kindly volunteered to crouch.
Cousins, with easier conscience, blamelessly
Might carry on the goldsmith’s trade, in brief,
Uninterfered with by its lord who late
Was used to supervise and take due tithe.
A stipend now sufficed his natural need:
Themselves should fix what sum allows man live.
But half a dozen words concisely plain
Might, first of all, make sure that, on demise,
Monsieur Léonce Miranda’s property
Passed by bequeathment, every particle,
To the right heirs, the cousins of his heart.
As for that woman — they would understand!
This was a step must take her by surprise.
It were too cruel did he snatch away
Decent subsistence. She was young, and fair,
And . . . and attractive! Means must be supplied
To save her from herself, and from the world,
And . . . from anxieties might haunt him else
When he were fain have other thoughts in mind.”
It was a sight to melt a stone, that thaw
Of rigid disapproval into dew
Of sympathy, as each extended palm
Of cousin hasted to enclose those five
Cold fingers, tendered so mistrustfully,
Despairingly of condonation now!
You would have thought, — at every fervent shake,
In reassurance of those timid tips, —
The penitent had squeezed, considerate,
By way of fee into physician’s hand
For physicking his soul, some diamond knob.
And now let pass a week. Once more behold
The same assemblage in the same saloon,
Waiting the entry of protagonist
Monsieur Léonce Miranda. “Just a week
Since the death-day, — was ever man transformed
Like this man?” questioned cousin of his mate.
Last seal to the repentance had been set
Three days before, at Sceaux in neighbourhood
Of Paris, where they laid with funeral pomp
Mother by father. Let me spare the rest:
How the poor fellow, in his misery,
Buried hot face and bosom, where heaped snow
Offered assistance, at the grave’s black edge,
And there lay, till uprooted by main force
From where he prayed to grow and ne’er again
Walk earth unworthily as heretofore.
It is not with impunity priests teach
The doctrine he was dosed with from his youth —
“Pain to the body — profit to the soul;
Corporeal pleasure — so much woe to pay
When disembodied spirit gives account.”
However, woe had done its worst, this time.
Three days allow subsidence of much grief.
Already, regular and equable,
Forward went purpose to effect. At once
The testament was written, signed and sealed.
Disposure of the commerce — that took time,
And would not suffer by a week’s delay;
But the immediate, the imperious need,
The call demanding of the Cousinry
Co-operation, what convened them thus,
Was — how and when should deputation march
To Coliseum Street, the old abode
Of wickedness, and there acquaint — oh, shame!
Her, its old inmate, who had followed up
And lay in wait in the old haunt for prey —
That they had rescued, they possessed Léonce,
Whose loathing at recapture equalled theirs —
Upbraid that sinner with her sinfulness,
Impart the fellow-sinner’s firm resolve
Never to set eyes on her face again:
Then, after stipulations strict but just,
Hand her the first instalment, — moderate
Enough, no question, — of her salary:
Admonish for the future, and so end. —
All which good purposes, decided on
Sufficiently, were waiting full effect
When presently the culprit should appear.
Somehow appearance was delayed too long;
Chatting and chirping sunk inconsciously
To silence, nay, uneasiness, at length
Alarm, till — anything for certitude! —
A peeper was commissioned to explore,
At keyhole, what the laggard’s task might be —
What caused so palpable a disrespect!
Back came the tiptoe cousin from his quest.
“Monsieur Léonce was busy,” he believed,
“Contemplating — those love-letters, perhaps,
He always carried, as if precious stones,
About with him. He read, one after one,
Some sort of letters. But his back was turned.
The empty coffer open at his side,
He leant on elbow by the mantelpiece
Before the hearth-fire; big and blazing too.”
“Better he shovelled them all in at once,
And burned the rubbish!” was a cousin’s quip,
Warming his own hands at the fire the while.
I told you, snow had fallen outside, I think.
When suddenly a cry, a host of cries,
Screams, hubbub and confusion thrilled the room.
All by a common impulse rushed thence, reached
The late death-chamber, tricked with trappings still,
Skulls, cross-bones, and such moral broidery.
Madame Muhlhausen might have played the witch,
Dropped down the chimney and appalled Léonce
By some proposal “Parting touch of hand!”
If she but touched his foolish hand, you know!!
Something had happened quite contrariwise.
Monsieur Léonce Miranda, one by one,
Had read the letters and the love they held,
And, that task finished, had required his soul
To answer frankly what the prospect seemed
Of his own love’s departure — pledged to part!
Then, answer being unmistakable,
He had replaced the letters quietly,
Shut coffer, and so, grasping either side
By its convenient handle, plunged the whole —
Letters and coffer and both hands to boot,
Into the burning grate and held them there.
“Burn, burn and purify my past!” said he,
Calmly, as if he felt no pain at all.
In vain they pulled him from the torture-place:
The strong man, with the soul of tenfold strength,
Broke from their clutch: and there again smiled he,
The miserable hands re-bathed in fire —
Constant to that ejaculation “Burn,
Burn, purify!” And when, combining force,
They fairly dragged the victim out of reach
Of further harm, he had no hands to hurt —
Two horrible remains of right and left,
“Whereof the bones, phalanges formerly,
Carbonized, were still crackling with the flame,”
Said Beaumont. And he fought them all the while:
“Why am I hindered when I would be pure?
Why leave the sacrifice still incomplete?
She holds me,
I must have more hands to burn!”
They were the stronger, though, and bound him fast.
Beaumont was in attendance presently.
“What did I tell you? Preachment to the deaf!
I wish he had been deafer when they preached,
Those priests! But wait till next Republic comes!”
As for Léonce, a single sentiment
Possessed his soul and occupied his tongue —
Absolute satisfaction at the deed.
Never he varied, ‘t is observable,
Nor in the stage of agonies (which proved
Absent without leave, — science seemed to think)
Nor yet in those three months’ febricity
Which followed, — never did he vary tale —
Remaining happy beyond utterance.
“Ineffable beatitude” — I quote
The words, I cannot give the smile — ”such bliss
Abolished pain! Pain might or might not be:
He felt in heaven, where flesh desists to fret.
Purified now and henceforth, all the past
Reduced to ashes with the flesh defiled!
Why all those anxious faces round his bed?
What was to pity in their patient, pray,
When doctor came and went, and Cousins watched?
— Kindness, but in pure waste!” he said and smiled.
And if a trouble would at times disturb
The ambrosial mood, it came from other source
Than the corporeal transitory pang.
“If sacrifice be incomplete!” cried he —
“If ashes have not sunk reduced to dust,
To nullity! If atoms coalesce
Till something grow, grow, get to be a shape
I hate, I hoped to burn away from me!
She is my body, she and I are one,
Yet, all the same, there, there at bed-foot stands
The woman wound about my flesh and blood,
There, the arms open, the more wonderful,
The whiter for the burning . . . Vanish thou!
Avaunt, fiend’s self found in the form I wore!”
“Whereat,” said Beaumont, “since his hands were gone,
The patient in a frenzy kicked and licked
To keep off some imagined visitant.
So will it prove as long as priests may preach
Spiritual terrors!” groaned the evidence
Of Beaumont that his patient was stark mad —
Produced in time and place: of which anon.
“Mad, or why thus insensible to pain?
Body and soul are one thing, with two names
For more or less elaborated stuff.”
Such is the new Religio Medici .
Though antiquated faith held otherwise,
Explained that body is not soul, but just
Soul’s servant: that, if soul be satisfied,
Possess already joy or pain enough,
It uses to ignore, as master may,
What increase, joy or pain, its servant brings —
Superfluous contribution: soul, once served,
Has nought to do with body’s service more.
Each, speculated on exclusively,
As if its office were the only one,
Body or soul, either shows service paid
In joy and pain, that’s blind and objectless —
A servant’s toiling for no master’s good —
Or else shows good received and put to use,
As if within soul’s self grew joy and pain,
Nor needed body for a ministrant.
I note these old unscientific ways:
Poor Beaumont cannot: for the Commune ruled
Next year, and ere they shot his priests, shot him.
Monsieur Léonce Miranda raved himself
To rest; lay three long months in bliss or bale,
Inactive, anyhow: more need that heirs,
His natural protectors, should assume
The management, bestir their cousinship,
And carry out that purpose of reform
Such tragic work now made imperative.
A deputation, with austerity,
Nay, sternness, bore her sentence to the fiend
Aforesaid, — she at watch for turn of wheel
And fortune’s favour, Street — you know the name.
A certain roughness seemed appropriate: “You —
Steiner, Muhlhausen, whatsoe’er your name,
Cause whole and sole of this catastrophe!” —
And so forth, introduced the embassage.
“Monsieur Léonce Miranda was divorced
Once and for ever from his — ugly word.
Himself had gone for good to Portugal:
They came empowered to act and stipulate.
Hold! no discussion! Terms were settled now:
So much of present and prospective pay,
But also — good engagement in plain terms
She never seek renewal of the past!”
This little harmless tale produced effect.
Madame Muhlhausen owned her sentence just,
Its execution gentle. “Stern their phrase,
These kinsfolk with a right she recognized —
But kind its import probably, which now
Her agitation, her bewilderment
Rendered too hard to understand, perhaps.
Let them accord the natural delay,
And she would ponder and decide. Meantime,
So far was she from wish to follow friend
Who fled her, that she would not budge from place —
Now that her friend was fled to Portugal, —
Never! She leave this Coliseum Street?
No, not a footstep!” she assured them.
So —
They saw they might have left that tale untold
When, after some weeks more were gone to waste,
Recovery seemed incontestable,
And the poor mutilated figure, once
The gay and glancing fortunate young spark,
Miranda, humble and obedient took
The doctor’s counsel, issued sad and slow
From precincts of the sick-room, tottered down,
And out, and into carriage for fresh air,
And so drove straight to Coliseum Street,
And tottered upstairs, knocked, and in a trice
Was clasped in the embrace of whom you know —
With much asseveration, I omit,
Of constancy henceforth till life should end.
When all this happened, — ”What reward,” cried she,
“For judging her Miranda by herself!
For never having entertained a thought
Of breaking promise, leaving home forsooth,
To follow who was fled to Portugal!
As if she thought they spoke a word of truth!
She knew what love was, knew that he loved her;
The Cousinry knew nothing of the kind.”
I will not scandalize you and recount
How matters made the morning pass away.
Not one reproach, not one acknowledgment,
One explanation: all was understood!
Matters at end, the home-uneasiness
Cousins were feeling at this jaunt prolonged
Was ended also by the entry of —
Not simply him whose exit had been made
By mild command of doctor “Out with you!
I warrant we receive another man!”
But — would that I could say, the married pair!
And, quite another man assuredly,
Monsieur Léonce Miranda took on him
Forthwith to bid the trio, priest and nuns,
Constant in their attendance all this while,
Take his thanks and their own departure too;
Politely but emphatically. Next,
The Cousins were dismissed: “No protest, pray!
Whatever I engaged to do is done,
Or shall be — I but follow your advice:
Love I abjure: the lady, you behold,
Is changed as I myself; her sex is changed:
This is my Brother — He will tend me now,
Be all my world henceforth as brother should.
Gentlemen, of a kinship I revere,
Your interest in trade is laudable;
I purpose to indulge it: manage mine,
My goldsmith-business in the Place Vendôme,
Wholly — through purchase at the price adjudged
By experts I shall have assistance from.
If, in conformity with sage advice,
I leave a busy world of interests
I own myself unfit for — yours the care
That any world of other aims, wherein
I hope to dwell, be easy of access
Through ministration of the moneys due,
As we determine, with all proper speed,
Since I leave Paris to repair my health.
Say farewell to our Cousins, Brother mine!”
And, all submissiveness, as brother might,
The lady curtseyed gracefully, and dropt
More than mere curtsey, a concluding phrase
So silver-soft, yet penetrative too,
That none of it escaped the favoured ears:
“Had I but credited one syllable,
I should to-day be lying stretched on straw,
The produce of your miserable rente !
Whereas, I hold him — do you comprehend?”
Cousin regarded cousin, turned up eye,
And took departure, as our Tuscans laugh,
Each with his added palm-breadth of long nose, —
Curtailed but imperceptibly, next week,
When transfer was accomplished, and the trade
In Paris did indeed become their own,
But bought by them and sold by him on terms
‘Twixt man and man, — might serve ‘twixt wolf and wolf,
Substitute “bit and clawed” for “signed and sealed” —
Our ordinary business-terms, in short.
Another week, and Clairvaux broke in bloom
At end of April, to receive again
Monsieur Léonce Miranda, gentleman,
Ex-jeweller and goldsmith: never more, —
According to the purpose he professed, —
To quit this paradise, his property,
This Clara, his companion: so it proved.
The Cousins, each with elongated nose,
Discussed their bargain, reconciled them soon
To hard necessity, disbursed the cash,
And hastened to subjoin, wherever type
Proclaimed “Miranda” to the public, “Called
Now Firm-Miranda.” There, a colony,
They flourish underneath the name that still
Maintains the old repute, I understand.
They built their Clairvaux, dream-Château, in Spain,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 170