Sometimes, they paused beneath the pine trees, above an olive-grove, among the brightly-colored roses edging the crest of a small hill. At their feet, the treasures of a divinely privileged country were displayed beneath a flamboyant Sun. Lower down and further away there was a sparkling sheet of transparent blue or limpid yellows; the Sea, which the differences of background colored curiously. Around them, the silence, in which love delighted, with the imposing host of the Alps in the far distance, seemingly unreal, within a mirage, the occasional peak capped with snow.
They felt that they were alone, the masters of the marvelous visible landscape; they put their hands and lips together.
“Will you love me for as long as we live?”
“It will be too brief to exhaust the kisses with which I want to sate myself.”
“You’ll wear me out, and never be sated!”
“How you loved love, little legitimate Messalina.”
“Faithful! I love you—nothing but you. You have conquered me so utterly...”
And they talked such delightful nonsense every day, beneath the Sun, the eternal magician, in the changing décor of the land of flowers, enchantment and light, sometimes under the green pines or in the magical rose-patches, along the perfumed paths, between the mimosa hedges, or on the blue and tranquil sea with muslin shores. Everywhere, in the lilac dawn or the grey dusk, in the dazzling and heavy noonday, in the heady effluvia of pepper-plants, eucalyptus, carnations, or even by moonlight, caressed by the gentle breeze, or, at night, at home, in their bed—beneath the twinkling of the stars, approving of their embraces and their life through the open window—they said the sincere and puerile things, gravely and naively, that translated the impulses of their amorous souls and the emotions of their unsated bodies.
Rozal, enchained by roses and lips, thus forgot, a little more each day, the chimera of his previous life, and there was no longer any passionate enigma beyond the one he contemplated in the eyes whose gaze made him dizzy, toward his ever-ready lips—the eyes of the adorable mistress who, tenderly and surely, enslaved him.
VII. The Reproach of the Tapestries
Two months late, at the beginning of April, Georges Turner returned anxiously to the Côte d’Azur.
On the first day, he contented himself with admiring, with amazement, the happiness of those two superior beings, who would have been able, if they had wished, to raise themselves above the vulgar herd by virtue of the power of gold and genius. He approved of the fact that they had had sufficient originality to disdain scientific and sporting glory and worldly glory alike, contenting themselves with being pure lovers, magnificently isolated, hidden in a nest that nature, aided by gambling and art, seemed to have beautified in honor of their love. On the second day, having observed the tightly-knit accumulation of their exasperated sentiments, he found them profoundly egotistical. On the third, he took them for lunatics, overwhelmed by stupor. On the fourth, he became disturbed.
Then, one morning, before dinner, he asked his friend to take a turn around the garden with him, to talk to him, as he had determined to do.
After a few paces, he said: “Old chap, you do well to love, to taste an absolute happiness, since you’re newly married. Your sentiment is legitimate, very human.”
Rozal burst out laughing. “What are you saying? You have the face of someone who’s going to give me a lecture. Why have you come, in fact?”
“To warn you.”
“About what?”
Turner raised his eyes to the Heavens, in distress, “You’ve even forgotten Nasenberg.”
“Did he send you?”
“No—I don’t run his errands. But I know that he’s furious that you and your wife have been pretending to ignore him, for what will soon be five months. I’m scared—you don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“I’ll pay him.”
“With what?”
Suddenly, Rozal had a vision of months passing by, in rapid succession, of the numerous days lost to the work and won by Love. “Yes, I’m too far behind...”
Turner, delighted to see the sacred flame in the engineer’s eyes again, exclaimed: “No, not too far! A man like you needn’t fear a visit, even a threat, from Nasenberg. You have what’s needed to answer him, for you can construct, with a gesture, with hard work, an accomplishment before which he will have to bow down. He’s dangerous and he’s strong, but fortunately, he only has the power of money. Would you like me to tell you a story, in which Nasenberg has just received a magnificent lesson?”
“Yes, old chap, tell it…I need an example.”
“You remember your two rivals, the other suitors launched concurrently by Nasenberg in pursuit of Nelly’s hand?”
Yes—Lamentin, a parliamentary arriviste, and Créqui, a broken-down duc with a glorious ancestry.”
“Well, to that pride, Jean de Créqui owes a marvelous resolve.”
They both installed themselves in wicker armchairs, which they had found at the end of the path, under a clump of mimosas. That year—1914—the spring Sun, which was to set fire to almost all of Europe four months later, for long and bloody years, was already firing its burning arrows, but the air was delightfully pure and calm on the hillside, and soft in the shade. The gardeners had watered the shrubs and the lawns, and the fine sand, still damp, emanated a caressing freshness.
Turner began his story.
“The Duc de Créqui had suffered a great disappointment at the failure of his marriage to Nelly. Ruined, riddled with debts, desirous of a big Parisian wedding, he had found no other recourse than to get in deeper and deeper. He owed Nasenberg 400,000 francs, as you know. He had the compensation that you signed over to him, via the intermediary of the banker, but as he knew, of course, that Nasenberg wouldn’t pass a single centime on to him, it made no difference.
“Since his defeat, Créqui had not cut himself loose from the high life. Entangled with Marcelle Fougerette, he signed new engagements on her behalf, entangling himself even further. One evening, at Ernest’s, he wore one of those expressions that betrays a man on the rocks. It was painful to see, all the more so because Fougerette, who was slightly drunk, was making an infernal racket and letting herself be courted openly by a rich Argentinian with velvet eyes. I overheard a snatch of conversation between the Duc and his mistress.
“ ‘You’re boring me with your jealousy.’
“ ‘But I love you, Marcelle, and you’re making me suffer!’
“ ‘If you love me, you don’t give me much evidence of it!’
“ ‘My entire life belongs to you!’
“ ‘Words! I prefer pearls, as you know.’
“‘ You’ll have them, I swear—but don’t talk to that man anymore!’
“The next morning, he was at Nasenberg’s. The dialogue between them was brief.
“ ‘Save me! I need...’
“ ‘A few thousand in banknotes. I know that—to give them to Fougerette. No, I like you—I won’t do you such a poor favor.’
“ ‘I’m not asking for a favor. I’m offering you an excellent bit of business.’
“ ‘Oh!’
“ ‘What if I sell you the Château de Créqui?’
“ ‘What? The château, with all its contents? The paintings, the furniture, the suits of armor, the sculptures, the tapestries? Everything? How much?’
“ ‘A million, net.’
“ ‘The mortgages already amount to 600,000. With the 250,000 you owe me, I’ll only be able to give you 150,000 immediately. I’m not bargaining, as you see.’
“ ‘Pardon me, but Rozal is due to reimburse you for the advances you’ve made to me—that’s agreed.’
“ ‘If he pays!’
“ ‘Come on, Nasenberg, it’s take it or leave it. Do you want the château on those conditions? Four hundred thousand for me, net. I need them. I’ll leave the rest to the creditors, the carrion crows.’
“ ‘Two hundred thousand. Not a sou more.’
“ ‘Let’s
go, right away—for if I think about it, I’ll reject your abominable bargain!’
“Three hours later, having covered 180 kilometers in the Nasenberg automobile, they arrived at the old Château de Créqui, at sunset. Immediately, together, they began a tour of the ancient manor, making an inventory of the riches conserved there over the centuries.
“After two hours of walking through the innumerable rooms of the château, on their way back, they stopped in a high-ceilinged room in the Gothic style, at the back of which there was an immense fireplace. To the right there was a platform with steps, a sort of dais on which, no doubt, the ancient ducs of the family had enthroned themselves to grant audiences. On the walls, between the narrow windows fitted with admirable stained glass, were three tapestries from the end of the fifteenth century, representing a tourney, a hunt and a scene in which Saint Veronica is presenting the veil on which the Holy Visage is imprinted to the Emperor Vespasian. Other, more recent tapestries, we also hanging from the high cornice, however, and they were the history, the entire heroic life, of a glorious lineage.
“Then, in that atmosphere of the past, in that unexpected frame in which the splendid tapestries were pages in honor of the bravery of his family, Jean de Créqui was moved. A malaise overwhelmed him and Nasenberg scented danger. The tapestries were unique; they alone were worth more than a million. He said: ‘All right—I’ll give you 300,000.’
“When the Duc de Créqui made no reply, he added: ‘And I’ll send Marcelle Fougerette the pearl she desires, in your name, into the bargain.’
“Créqui looked at the tempter. ‘Get out!’ he said. ‘Leave me alone, here, for twenty minutes. I want to reflect, in the midst of these testimonials to the illustriousness of my coat-of-arms.’
“ ‘So be it. I’ll come back in a quarter of a hour. And don’t think, my dear fellow, that you’re making a poor bargain…’
“Imperiously, the Duc repeated: ‘Leave me alone!’
“Left alone, Jean de Créqui—Kiki, as we call him in the bars—lets himself fall into an armchair covered in old gold brocade. He puts his head in his hands and sighs, exhaling a name: ‘Fougerette!’ He thinks that there’s no way out. However, he loves that Marcelle, a practical fantasist; he would sacrifice everything he still possesses for her. And what remains is the château, that nobly-shaped furniture that served his ancestors, those portraits—among which is that of François Champsaur de Lesdiguières, Marshal and Constable of France, the friend of King Henri IV, and vanquisher, in a horse race, of the Devil himself—those old paintings in which their faces are preserved, those tapestries in which their lives are traced, to serve as a model for their descendants.
“That thought throws him into complete disorder; and as Parisian life, the futile life—for there is another—has not destroyed everything within him, he suffers, clutching his temples…and he meditates, with his head bowed.
“When he gets up again, the characters in the tapestries seem to be alive, to be animated. Gradually, they lose their pictorial immobility, as if awakening from a sleep several centuries long. They quit their panels, the woven threads that retain them on the walls, and start walking, advancing toward their fallen scion. Here are Godefroy de Bouillon’s knights, the Prince de Condé’s generals,31 and a mariner who fought at Trafalgar. A superb knight, fully armored but bare-headed, with a fine beard, speaks to the Duc in a wrathful voice, telling him what his ancestors accomplished—all of them, without exception—to bring glory and fortune to their house, to raise the prestige of a name that they transmitted with respect, like a relic. All of them worked on the aristocratic edifice, every stone of which is the result of their efforts, a segment of their life, their blood or their thought. And this château, the colossal product of the determination of centuries, the work on which all of them except him—the degenerate—have collaborated, is about to endure the shame of being sold to a trafficker, a German, a resident alien in Paris?
“Then, a tapestry that represents a battle fought under the walls of a besieged town on the banks of the Rhine becomes animated in its turn. It’s a war, a distant epic, with primitive weapons, terrible and hateful men of a grim race. In the midst of the mêlée, a giant is visible who is felling combatants all around him with great seeps of a club. And suddenly, as the battle is taking place under the ramparts of the town, a great beam is seen, about to be dropped on to the head of the colossus, Conrad de Créqui, and flatten him. Conrad dodges it, and kills a red-headed soldier who tries to run him through with a pike.
“It’s over. The knight with the long beard has folded his arms, sadly, in front of the Duc, who is looking at him with hallucinated eyes. Finally, the Ancestor takes his place again in one of the tapestries, which resume, along with all their characters, the fixity of inert mementos.
“The door opens; it’s Nasenberg.
“ ‘Well?”’ he says.
“ ‘Oh, get out! Nothing doing, blackguard! My eyes have been opened to the irremediable folly.’
“Nasenberg, who has a vague suspicion of the suggestiveness of the château and its ambience, doesn’t insist, and heads for the door. As he goes out, he says: ‘See you soon, in Paris. It’s nice of you to bring me here for nothing. Stay. Me, I’m going. I’ll wait, curiously, to see what you’re going to do.’
“At these insolent words, the Duc remains nonplussed. Yes, what is he going to do? When the banker has gone, his eyes suddenly alight on a newspaper that Nasenberg was reading, doubtless to pass the time, which he was holding when he came in but has dropped. A set of headlines in large print stands out: Latest news from Morocco. Trouble in Marrakesh. Reinforcements sent.
“He closes his eyes. Another vision offers itself to him, like the one a little while before, in a halo that seems to be the very shadow of that ancient hall. It’s a rapid, ethereal, supernatural image of the war out there. In a cloud of dust, the silhouettes of running soldiers pass by, infantrymen, legionnaires and turcos, racing horses, camels, burnooses, floating sashes, bayonets, cannons, drums, trumpets. In the foreground is a proud and frantic officer, him, Jean de Créqui, who, in this apotheosis, has just killed a Moroccan chief. The French flag that he is waving looms over the tumult of men and beasts, the chaos of colors and sunlight, among the sublime dust, floating in the wind of victory.
“And that, my dear friend, is how that useless individual became a man. For, as a lieutenant in the active army reserve, he asked to be re-engaged, on condition that he serve in Morocco. And General Lyautey,32 who knew him as a child, having approved his request, he’s out there, in the only land where a Frenchman can regenerate himself today—in the spring of 1914—by risking shedding his blood for the fatherland, the Republic of businessmen having abandoned any idea of revenge beyond the Rhine. The newspapers have recently given news of his bravery; he’s doing honor to his ancestral tapestries now.”
The Sun, having climbed high into the azure, was peppering the hill with its golden arrows. In the atmosphere embalmed with all the scents of spring, the effluvia of the Earth, there was something akin to floating energies. And everywhere, in nature, one divined the mysterious, irresistible work of victorious sap.
On the sea, rippled by a gentle wind, a sailing ship was heading for some distant destination. Along the bay, on the white road, bronzed laborers were coming back from the fields, with red sashes round their waists and baskets on their shoulders.
Henri Rozal sensed the activity all around him, the work that is life. He thought deeply, and was suddenly ashamed. He turned to his friend, Georges Turner and fixed his eyes upon him, in order to divine what he was thinking. Then, in a grave voice, as if pronouncing an oath, he said: “We’ll leave for Paris within the week.”
Violently moved, Turner threw himself upon him, seized him by the shoulders, and embraced him.
IX. Nothing Above Love
All birds, even the smallest, with as much intensity as large and robust albatrosses, have an instinctive awareness for the danger that an atmo
spheric perturbation will pose to them. They sense an approaching tempest. In the same way, there is no woman who does not have an obscure prescience of that which threatens her happiness.
The day after the one when Turner had reanimated in Rozal’s soul the violent desire for the work that would ensure his future tranquility, by getting rid of Nasenberg, Nelly woke up sad and anxious. In the words and tender gestures she lavished on her husband, her passion was tinged with an intuitive melancholy. He heard them and accepted them, in a preoccupied manner, scarcely responding to her coaxing. She got up then, sulkily, and disappeared into her dressing-room.
Outside, however, Nelly was glad to observe the serenity of the sky and the purity of the atmosphere, still humid with the nocturnal dew. In restful nature, scarcely awake, already illuminated by the Sun in places without shade, like little fires, she experienced a caressing impression of peace—and in spite of a vague disturbance that remained within her soul, she was optimistic about the day to come.
In a light mauve kimono with large flared sleeves forming pockets, she seemed when she raised her eyes toward the flowers, like a gigantic butterfly gathering pollen. Being a woman, she did worse; she cut prodigious black irises striped with grey, to adorn the sandstone walls of the dining-room—and she did not hear her husband, who approached her quietly.
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