Part 6
Well, yes, I should have wished you to be He, to perfect in my eyes the legends of my childhood.... But you have spoken, and I no longer believe but in you, in you alone.
HE
Choose. There is yet time. Choose.
I
I have chosen.
At that very instant, all pleasure vanished, and I felt ill, with that overwhelming illness that follows nights of debauch. Nothing, however, had changed around me, and I was standing among the same marbles, though they were frozen and made me almost ashamed and almost afraid. I heard the laughter of the young women in the neighbouring hall, but it seemed to me to come from a bevy of hoydens. My master, still seated there, was looking at me, but with eyes in which I thought I saw I know not what cruel mockery, I know not what mournful reproaches. I was seized with anguish, I breathed with difficulty, I was cold, the memory of my nocturnal lusts disgusted my heart. I was about to faint, perhaps, when my master spoke.
HE
So you have chosen. It is well. Good-bye.
I
Oh! No! Not yet!
HE
Would you care to salute those charming young women? Here they are.
I saw them advancing towards me, naked, and smiling from head to foot, with a docile smile. They held each other by their necks, their arms entwined, like the three graces, but their hips swayed to an evil rhythm.
I
How ugly they are! Sorceresses!
HE
They are your sins.
I
I detest them.
They turned and fled. Their buttocks, joined like three curious faces, made an obscene and singular diagram.
HE
Women belong to metaphysics.
I was too disturbed to understand this saying. I was thinking of Elise, whom I had loved so passionately, and I wept at seeing her thus. I wept also over myself and my lust.
HE
Women are creations of sensibility, of intelligence, or of faith; that depends on the moment, it depends on the man. The difference between the goddess and the girl of the public harem is made by the idea of sin. As a sinner, you see courtesans where, as a god, I see divinities. The world is what you make it, creator without knowing it. Since you have chosen, good-bye, good-bye!
I
Elise.
She whom I had loved, she whom I loved still, ran towards me, in the form of the young woman who had so moved my heart. She offered me her hands and her lips, as if she had returned from a journey, and she pressed me passionately in her arms.
HE
Then you have not chosen?
I
I cannot separate from her I love.
ELISE
I remain among men.
I
For ever?
ELISE
I remain.
HE
I will come back for you. Good-bye then, my friend, and this time really good-bye. You sought truth and you have found love. Good-bye.
Elise drew me along. By the door, I turned. My master had disappeared.
This separation, which I was expecting, caused me but a brief sorrow. I was holding Elise by the hand, I was holding a certainty.
We were now going silently along the deserted street. The joy that filled my heart lit up the sky, the trees, the houses and everything else.
Soon, like any other couple after a morning walk, we went home. Elise had not at any moment the air of a stranger.
Our day was short, that of two lovers mindful of living. My friend complied with all our customs. But for the memory of the night of magic that had placed her in my arms, I should not have distinguished her divine grace from that of a Parisian.
We made with profound joy the discovery of our souls and of our bodies. It seemed to us that we had known each other always, and always belonged to each other; it seemed also, at every kiss, that we touched each other for the first time: these feelings, no more contradictory than delightful, increased our intoxication, our heads turned, we could no longer find words for our ideas, and we said a great many childish things.
I did not, however, so far lose my reason as to forget that, alone among all men, without doubt, I held in my arms an immortal. Much pride was mingled with my love, and also much curiosity.
My goddess much resembles Giorgione's Venus. While I write this, she is sleeping in the same pose, her right arm folded under her head. The body is tapering, the breasts are two upturned cups; the face, of a pure oval, has great charm, with its very red mouth, and its large lowered eyelids that hide from me beautiful eyes of a glaucous and changeful blue. From head to foot she has the complexion of a blonde, but this whiteness is as if melted in gilded rose, because she is accustomed to wear only light and almost transparent veils. Her hair is of that rare chestnut colour, a colour which we scarcely know but by its name; but her eyelashes are much darker, of a very sombre brown.
I have kissed with piety the miracle of her feet, fresh as a spring, and with nails that shone like drops of dew under my lamp.
She accepts homage like caresses, and caresses as a flower accepts the evening rain. She is more feminine than the most sensitive of women, more trembling than the tenderest violins. The kiss that her mouth gives has first passed like a wave of harmony along her whole body, and the kiss that she receives makes her melt voluptuously like snow that has lingered in the sunlight.
O snow with the odour of violets, O flesh with the taste of figs!
1 have eaten and I have drunken, and now I write the praise of my delight, among some metaphysical memories. Of the life that goes on up there, or yonder, she has told me something more than my master. She has told me that perfect pleasure is a gift too common among the gods much to excite their gratitude. They walk under the trees of the orchard, and pluck the gilded fruit whose weight bends them within reach of their hands. More lively and more sensitive, the divine females feel now and then some vexation at being unable to knot their arms about the conquered male; there is sometimes melancholy in their eyes, at seeing light shoulders moving away that happiness has not crushed, and knees that gratitude has not bowed.
We speak.
ELISE
Tell me, you whom I love, are all men like you?
I
Men are not gods during love, but they are gods afterwards.
ELISE
That is to say that they become indifferent.
I
No, satisfied, and surfeited.
ELISE
Then they are not always hungry?
I
Alas! No.
ELISE
But, at least, they do not disdain the mouth whose moisture has made them drunk?
I
They forget even the taste of it.
ELISE
They too? I feel like crying.
I
There are some who love tears.
ELISE
You love tears?
I
How do I know? When one is happy, one no longer loves anything but one's own happiness.
Thereupon she dreamed for a long time, perhaps without very well understanding, for there came no more words to her mouth, but only kisses.
With the details I could get from her, in our clearer moments, on the life of the immortals, I pictured their dwelling-place as an earthly paradise of the kind described to us in the Jewish legends. It is probable that ancient indiscretions had long ago informed some Asiatic poet. The popular mind, friendly to confusions, placed at the beginning of our world a paradisiac state which is parallel to our world, and otherwise closed to men. The Greeks, with their adventures of the gods among us, also divined a little of the truth that had just been revealed to me in these two mythological nights. I understood that men do not invent, but remember. How I rejoiced at sharing in these mysteries! What moments! how express their odour, how paint their brilliance and their beauty?
I shall continue every morning to keep the journal of the happiness of my heart and the satisfactions of my intellect. Lover of an immortal, I see the Arcana open at last before my one-time sorrowful desire. The Arcana! For I feel that I am about to enter into the Unity.
But I have been writing for a long time, I am tired. My mistress is waiting for me. She sleeps, she is still sleeping. Perhaps, with them, there is no sleep. She tastes for the first time the happiness of not living....
FINAL NOTE
M. JAMES SANDY ROSE was found sitting at his work-table, his head laid on his desk. He seemed asleep, and he was dead. The pen had escaped from his fingers, and rolled to the ground, leaving a large blot of ink on the paper. After the word "vivre "[1] comes the first letter of a word that ends in a serpentine scrawl. This letter is doubtless a V, and perhaps, as would have been fairly characteristic of his style, he was going to begin a new phrase with this same word, _Vivre_, when death struck him down.
All this is of small importance. Besides, we are giving a facsimile of the last page of this manuscript whose singular aspect has, no doubt, a psychological value.
It has already been seen that the death of M. J. Sandy Rose was spoken of by the newspapers under the title of "The Mystery of the Rue de Médicis."
Their account, without being altogether inaccurate, was very incomplete. Here is exactly what happened, or at least what I saw and knew.
Sandy Rose called at my rooms almost every day at about five o'clock, on his way to the post. I live in the Rue de Tournon, behind an old garden. We used to go out together, and often dined together. On the 11th of February, as I had not seen him for three or four days, I decided to go to his rooms. It was half-past three. The concierge, at first, dissuaded me from going up, and assured me that M. Sandy Rose was away. A bundle of letters and several telegrams were awaiting him.
"What if he is ill?" I said. "What if he is dead?"
"Oh! But how am I to find out? How am I to open his door? We should have to have a locksmith, witnesses, the commissaire...."
Without answering, I bolted up the stair-case. When I reached the door, on the fifth landing, I rang, knocked very loudly, and then bent to look through the crack, or glue my ear to the keyhole. It was dark, a small iron thing went into my eye. The key was in the door.
At that moment, I heard the voice of the concierge, who had followed me.
"Well! You see!"
"The key is in the door."
"Impossible; it was not there yesterday evening, and he has certainly not come in."
"Look!"
And I turned the key. The door opened. The flat consisted of the kitchen, on the left as one went in, and three rooms opening into each other, along the street. We opened three more doors. The last let us see the spectacle I have described.
The death was recent. The body was cold, but not frozen, and the fingers of the right hand, which was hanging over the arm of the chair, were still supple. Later on the doctor declared that death must have occurred about twelve hours before my arrival.
Two young clerks, brothers, who live in a neighbouring room, came home at this moment. We sent one of them in search of the police, and the other remained with me, while the concierge went back to her lodge.
While waiting for the police to draw up their official statement, I made a mental inventory of my friend's room. Its aspect seemed to me odd. The bed, a great four-posted one, very large and almost sumptuous, the only luxury, moreover, of this sentimental and libertine youth, was in disorder. It told of a night of frenzied passion, or of an attack of hallucinatory fever. The counterpanes were dangling, the pillows were one at the foot and one in the middle of the bed; two candles at the bed-side had burned themselves out. A man's clothes had been flung on a sofa, and among these clothes I found a woman's dress, of antique or rather empire fashion, a sort of tea-gown of spongy white linen, very fine, with a gathered belt, much lacework, and blue and yellow embroideries. I saw besides some plain white silk stockings, yellow garters with paste buckles, and one slipper in blue morocco; I did not find the other.
The man's clothes were those of my friend, who was dressed at the moment in a grey flannel suit and a brown dressing-gown. Nothing could be simpler. But the dress, and the silk stockings? Did Sandy Rose amuse himself with robing his mistress magnificently, before unrobing her? The presence of a woman seemed proved by this theatrical costume. The stockings had been worn; some one had even walked bare-foot in one of them, doubtless looking for the slipper that had slid away under a piece of furniture.
On the mantelpiece, I found a big tortoiseshell comb, a necklace of pearls, no doubt false, another of amethysts, some ancient rings, and two bracelets, one of braided gold, the other of cameos.
I opened a little door. The state of the washing-stand showed that it had been recently used. There were still drops of water on the marble, and the towels were damp. On a comb, I found some woman's hairs, blond, very long; a powder-box was open. A perfume that I could not identify, was floating in this closet, something like peppered, highly peppered, jessamine.
In the fireplace of the room a log was still burning, among dead pieces of coal.
I returned to the table on which was resting the lifeless head of my unfortunate friend. He seemed asleep, and I was glad of it, for, if a tragic story is to be as it should, the dead must seem to sleep.
There was nothing on the table but a quantity of sheets of paper covered with big irregular handwriting, nothing but that and an ink-pot. The pen had fallen down.
At this moment the commissaire arrived with a scribe. Notes were taken. The doctor who had come attested something.
"Natural death?"
"The most natural in the world."
And he pointed first to the bed and then to the writing-table.
"Sexual followed by cerebral excesses. These papers, perhaps, will give us an explanation."
Meanwhile the commissaire, who had opened a drawer, found a will that left everything to me; the doctor, happy to do nothing, stopped putting together the sheets of the manuscript.
"I do not dispute them with you. I have signed. I am off."
My rights were soon legally confirmed. Meanwhile I thought of the woman who had worn the white dress with yellow embroideries and put her feet in the slippers of blue morocco. I sought her and did not find her. Singular rumours went about, set on foot by the journalists. M. Sandy Rose had been strangled by a woman with whom he had spent the night. She had disappeared at dawn, taking money and jewels. I had no difficulty in exposing the absurdity of this hypothesis, firstly because we had noticed no trace of violence on the body of the defunct, and secondly because many precious stones, as well as a quantity of gold pieces, were found in the same drawer as the will, which was not locked.
Little by little there came to be silence concerning the story, and I was alone in sometimes thinking of it.
It is certain that Sandy Rose went home on Thursday morning, the 8th of February, about nine o'clock, accompanied by a woman. He took his letters: no letter or paper of earlier date was found in the Sunday packet. It is also certain that he went out with this woman about midday, and that they returned about eight, this time without speaking to the concierge, without answering her question: "Monsieur Sandy Rose, aren't you going to take your letters?" Finally, from that moment on, the concierge saw no one, neither Sandy Rose nor the lady, whose name she did not know, though, she says, she had noticed her light-coloured, almost white, dress; and adds,
"I was surprised at it, because of the colour." On Friday morning, she knocked, at the hour at which she was accustomed to come and clean out the rooms. She knocked again in the afternoon, and rang the bell; in vain. It was the same on Saturday and Sunday, and she had therefore concluded that he was away, as was not unlikely, for my friend sometimes went to spend a week at Menton, and never went alone.
These little facts, whose accuracy I cannot doubt, do not contradict certain details that have been read in my friend's manuscript, but I am far from offering them as a proof of the veracity of his story. I give on the one hand the manuscript, as the will obliges me, and on the other the result of my inquiry, as friendship demands; that is all.
I must note one last detail. No trace of food was found in the flat, except some paper that had been used in wrapping up cakes, or perhaps a pâté, and six empty champagne bottles. But there is nothing to prove that these relics are contemporaneous with the period that interests us. It is, however, probable enough.
The telegram mentioned on page 36 has not been printed by the _Northern Atlantic Herald_. It is even doubtful if it was ever sent off. At least, the inquiries I have made have been without result.
[1] The last word of the manuscript.
APPENDIX[1]
REMY DE GOURMONT
BY
ARTHUR RANSOME
I
M. de Gourmont lives on the fourth floor of an old house in the Rue des Saints-Pères. A copper chain hangs as bell-rope to his door. The rare visitor, for it is well known that for many years he has been a solitary and seldom receives even his friends, pulls the chain and waits. The door opens a few inches, ready to be closed immediately, by a man of middle size, in a brown monk's robe, with a small, round, grey felt cap. The robe is fastened with silver buckles, in which are set large blue stones. The admitted visitor walks through a passage into a room whose walls are covered with books. In the shadow at the back of the room is a loaded table. Another table, with a sloping desk upon it, juts out from the window. M. de Gourmont sits in a big chair before the desk, placing his visitor on the opposite side of the table, with the light falling on his face so that he can observe his slightest expression. He pokes at the little, brimless skull-cap, and twists it a quarter of a circle on his head. He rolls and lights cigarettes. In conversation he often disguises his face with his hand, but now and again looks openly and directly at his visitor. His eyes are always questioning, and almost always kindly. His face was beautiful in the youth of the flesh, and is now beautiful in the age of the mind, for there is no dead line in it, no wrinkle, no minute feature not vitalised by intellectual activity. The nose is full and sensitive, with markedly curved nostrils. There is a little satiric beard. The eyebrows lift towards the temples, as in most men of imagination. The eyes are weighted below, as in most men of critical thought. The two characteristics are, in M. de Gourmont, as in his work, most noticeable together. The lower lip, very full, does not pout, but falls curtain-like towards the chin. It is the lip of a sensualist, and yet of one whose sensuality has not clogged but stimulated the digestive processes of his brain. Omar might have had such a lip, if he had been capable not only of his garlands of roses, but also of the essays of Montaigne.
He was born in a château in Normandy on April 4th, 1858. Among his ancestors was Gilles de Gourmont, a learned printer and engraver of the fifteenth century. He has himself collected old woodcuts, and in _L'Ymagier_ amused himself by setting the most ancient specimens of the craft, among which he is proud to show some examples of the work of his family, side by side with drawings by Whistler and Gauguin. He came to Paris in 1883, when he obtained a post in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Huysmans was "sous-chef de bureau la direction de la Sûreté générale," and M. de Gourmont, who made his acquaintance through the dedication of a book, used to call for him between four and five of the afternoon, and walk with him across the river to a café, that has since disappeared, where he listened to the older man's rather savage characterisations of men, women, movements and books. A few years later he was held to be lacking in patriotism, and relieved of his post on account of an article urging the necessity of Franco-German agreement. He wrote incessantly. Merlette, a rather naïve and awkward little novel, published in 1886, did not promise the work he was to do. It was no more than an exercise. The exercise was well done, but that was all. It was the work of a good brain as yet uncertain of its personal impulse. But about this time he was caught in the stream of a movement for which he had been waiting, for which, indeed, the art of his time had been waiting, the movement that was introduced to English readers by Mr. Arthur Symons's admirable series of critical portraits.[2] In 1890 he published Sixtine, dedicated to Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who had died the year before. In 1892 appeared Le Latin Mystique, a book on the Latin poets of the Middle Ages. He has always been "a delicate amateur of the curiosities of beauty," though the character that Mr. Symons gave him has since become very inadequate. He edited Gérard de Nerval, _Aucassin et Nicolette_, and Rutebeuf's _La Miracle de Théophile_, and wrote _Lilith_, 1892, and _Théodat_, a dramatic poem in prose that was produced by my friend M. Paul Fort at the Théâtre d'Art on December 11th of the same year. Several other curious works of this period were united in Le Pèlerin du Silence. I extract from the bibliography by M. van Bever, printed in Poètes d'aujourd'hui, a list of the more important books that have followed these very various beginnings:--_Le Livre des Masques_, 1896; _Les Chevaux de Diomède_, 1897; _Le IIme Livre des Masques_, 1898; _Esthétique de la langue française_, 1899; _La Culture des Idées_, 1900; _Le Chemin de Velours_, 1902; _Le Problème du Style_, 1902; _Physique de l'Amour_, 1903; _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_, 1906; besides four volumes of literary and philosophical criticism, and four volumes of comment on contemporary events.
All this mass of work is vitalised by a single motive. Even the divisions of criticism and creation (whose border line is very dim) are made actually one by a desire common to both of them, a desire not expressed in them, but satisfied, a desire for intellectual freedom. The motto for the whole is written in _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_: "L'exercice de la pensée est un jeu, mais il faut que ce jeu soit libre et harmonieux." I am reminded of this sentence again and again in thinking of M. de Gourmont and his books. There must be no loss of self-command, none of the grimaces and the awkward movements of the fanatic, the man with whom thought plays. The thinker must be superior to his thought. He must make it his plaything instead of being sport for it. His eyes must be clear, not hallucinated; his arms his own, not swung with the exaggerated gestures of the preacher moved beyond himself by his own words. M. de Gourmont seems less an artist than a man determined to conquer his obsessions, working them out one by one as they assail him, in order to regain his freedom. It is a fortunate accident that he works them out by expressing them, twisting into garlands the brambles that impede his way.
[1] Reprinted from the _Fortnightly Review_.
[2] _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_, 1899.
II