Part 16

They rode on for some distance and reached the crossroads where the huntsmen and the pack were to meet them. Six arched paths, cut through the dense forest, met at a little stone tower with six sides, on each of which was carved the name of the road that ended there. The trees rose so high that they seemed to be trying to spin the woolly, fleecy clouds that a brisk breeze carried hither and thither over their towering tops; tall, thick grass and impenetrable thickets provided hiding-places and strongholds for the game, and the hunt promised to be a successful one. It was a true forest of an earlier age, with oaks more than a hundred years old, such trees as we never see, now that we no longer plant trees and have not the patience to wait for those that are planted to grow;--a hereditary forest, planted by great-grandfathers for fathers, by fathers for grandsons, with paths of enormous width, the obelisk surmounted by a ball, the rock-work fountain, the inevitable pool, and the keepers with powdered wigs, yellow leather breeches and sky-blue coats;--one of those dense, dark forests in which the white, glossy coats of Wouvermans' great horses stand out in bold relief, and the flaring mouths of the hunting horns _à la Dampierre_ that Parrocel loves to paint on the backs of his huntsmen.--A multitude of dogs' tails, shaped like crescents or reaping-hooks, waved frantically about in a dusty cloud. The signal was given, the dogs, straining at their leashes, were uncoupled, and the hunt began.--We shall not undertake to describe with precision the detours and doublings of the stag through the forest;--we do not even feel sure whether it was a stag seven years old, and, despite our investigations on that point, we have not been able to satisfy ourselves--which is really distressing.--Nevertheless we can but think that in such a forest, so venerable, so dark, so seignorial, there could be none but seven-year stags, and we do not see why the one after which the four principal characters in this romance were galloping on horses of different colors, and _non passibus æquis_, should not have been such a one.

The stag ran, like the true stag that he was, and some fifty dogs or more that followed at his heels were no slight spur to his natural swiftness of foot. The pace was so fleet that only an occasional bark could be heard.

Théodore, being the best mounted and the best rider, kept on the heels of the pack with incredible zeal. D'Albert was close behind him. Rosette and the little page Isnabel followed, falling farther and farther behind.

The interval was soon so great that they could not hope to join their companions.

"Suppose we stop for a moment and let our horses take breath," said Rosette. "The hunt is going toward the pond and I know a crossroad by which we can reach there as soon as they do."

Isnabel drew in his little mountain pony, who put down his head, shook his forelock down over his eyes and began to paw the gravel with his hoofs.

The little creature presented a most striking contrast to Rosette's mare; he was as black as night, she as white as white satin; his mane and tail were bristly and unkempt; her mane was tied with blue ribbons and her tail combed and curled. She looked like a unicorn, he like a spaniel.

There was the same marked difference between the riders as between their steeds.--Rosette's hair was as black as Isnabel's was fair; her eyebrows were very clearly marked and very prominent; those of the page were hardly darker than his skin and resembled the down on a peach.--The coloring of the one was as brilliant and enduring as the light at noonday; the other had the transparent blushing hue of early dawn.

"Suppose we try now to overtake the hunt?" said Isnabel; "the horses have had time to recover their breath."

"Come on!" replied the pretty Amazon, and they galloped away through a narrow transverse path leading to the pool; the two horses ran neck and neck and filled the whole path.

On Isnabel's side, a gnarled and twisted tree stretched out a huge branch like an arm, and seemed to shake its fist at the riders.--The child did not see it.

"Look out!" cried Rosette, "lean forward on your saddle! you will be unhorsed."

The warning came too late; the branch struck Isnabel in the middle of the body. The violence of the blow caused him to lose his stirrups, and, as his horse galloped on and the branch was too stout to bend, he was brushed from his saddle and thrown rudely back.

The child fainted on the spot.--Rosette, terribly frightened, leaped from her horse and knelt beside the page, who gave no sign of life.

His cap had fallen off and his lovely, rippling fair hair lay spread about over the gravel in every direction.--His little open palms looked as if they were made of wax, they were so devoid of color. Rosette knelt beside him and tried to restore him to consciousness.--She had no salts or flask with her and her embarrassment was great. At last she discovered a deep rut in which the rain-water had collected and clarified; she dipped her fingers in it, to the great alarm of a little toad that was the naiad of that stream, and shook a few drops on the young page's blue-veined temples.--He did not seem to feel them, and the pearls of water rolled down his white cheeks as a sylph's tears roll down the leaf of a lily. Rosette, thinking that his clothes might distress him, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his doublet and opened his shirt to give his lungs freer play.--Thereupon Rosette saw something that would have been the most agreeable of surprises to a man, but that seemed very far from affording her any pleasure--for her brows contracted and her upper lip trembled slightly;--she saw a snowy white breast, which was as yet undeveloped, but which made the fairest promises and already fulfilled many of them; a smooth and rounded breast, as white as ivory, and in the language of the Ronsardists, delicious to look at, more delicious to kiss.

"A woman!" she exclaimed, "a woman! ah! Théodore!"

Isnabel--for we will continue to call him by that name, although it was not his--began to show some signs of life and languidly raised his long eyelashes; he was not wounded in any way, he was simply stunned.--He soon sat up and, with Rosette's assistance, was able to stand and remount his horse, which had stopped as soon as he felt that his rider was gone.

They rode slowly to the pool, where they found the remainder of the hunting party. Rosette in a few words told Théodore what had happened.--He changed color several times during her recital, and throughout the rest of the ride he kept his horse close beside Isnabel's.

They returned to the château betimes; the day that had begun so joyously, had a decidedly melancholy ending.

Rosette was in a meditative mood and D'Albert seemed as deeply engrossed in his reflections. The reader will soon learn what had given rise to them.

VIII

No, my dear Silvio, I have not forgotten you; I am not one of those who go through life without a backward glance; my past follows me and encroaches upon my present, and almost upon my future; your friendship is one of the sunlit spots that stand out most clearly on the blue horizon of my later years; often, from the peak on which I stand, I turn to gaze upon it with a feeling of ineffable melancholy.

Oh! what lovely weather it was!--how angelically pure we were!--Our feet hardly touched the ground, we had wings on our shoulders, as it were, our desires carried us away and the fair halo of youth around our foreheads trembled in the breeze of spring.

Do you remember the little island covered with poplars at the spot where the river forms a little arm?--To reach it we had to cross a long, very narrow plank that bent in the middle, with a strange sensation; an excellent bridge for goats and little used, in fact, except by them: it was a delightful spot.--Short, thick grass where the forget-me-not opened its pretty little blue twinkling eye, a path, as yellow as nankeen, that served as a belt for the green robe of the islet and encircled its waist, the constantly moving shadow of aspens and poplars, were not the least charms of that paradise;--there were great pieces of linen that the women stretched out to whiten in the dew;--one would have said they were square patches of snow.--And the little dark, sun-burned girl whose great wild eyes sparkled so brightly under her long locks, and who ran after the goats, threatening them with her osier switch when they were on the point of walking on the linen she was watching--do you remember her?--And the sulphur-colored butterflies, with their irregular, hesitating flight, and the kingfisher we tried so many times to catch, that had its nest in the clump of alders; and the banks sloping to the river, with the steps roughly hewn in the rock, with their posts and stakes, all green at the bottom and almost always closed by a hedge of plants and branches? How smooth and clear the water was! how the golden gravel glistened at the bottom! and how pleasant it was to sit on the bank and dabble our toes in the stream! The water-lily, with its golden flowers unfolding gracefully, seemed like green hairs floating on the gleaming back of some nymph in the bath.--The sky gazed at its reflection in that mirror with azure smiles and transparent rifts of pearl-gray of most bewitching beauty, and at every hour in the day there were turquoise blues, golden yellows, fleecy whites and flickering shades in inexhaustible variety.--How I loved those flocks of ducks with the emerald necks that sailed incessantly from bank to bank and caused an occasional wrinkle on that glassy surface!

And how well adapted we were to be the figures in that landscape!--how attached we became to those sweet, restful scenes, and how easily we harmonized ourselves with them! Springtime without, youth within, the sun on the turf, a smile on the lips, snow-white blossoms on all the bushes, fair illusions blooming in our minds, a modest flush upon our cheeks and on the eglantine, poetry singing in our hearts, invisible birds humming among the trees, bright light, cooing doves, perfumes, a thousand confused murmurs, the beating of the heart, the water stirring a pebble, a wisp of grass or a thought springing up, a drop of water rolling down the side of a flower, a tear flowing from beneath an eyelid, a sigh of love, the rustling of a leaf;--what evenings we have passed there, walking slowly, so near the edge that we often had one foot in the water and the other on land!

Alas!--that lasted a very short time, in my case at least; for you, while acquiring the knowledge of a man, were able to retain the innocence of a child.--The seed of corruption that was within me developed very rapidly, and the gangrene pitilessly devoured all that was pure and saintlike about me. The only good that remained was my friendship for you.

I am accustomed to conceal nothing from you--neither acts nor thoughts. I have laid bare before you the most secret fibres of my heart; however strange, absurd, eccentric the movements of my mind, I must needs describe them to you; but, in truth, my sensations for some time past have been so strange that I hardly dare confess them to myself. I told you at some time that I was afraid that by dint of seeking the beautiful and straining every nerve to attain it, I should fall into the impossible or the horrible.--I have almost reached that point; when, then, shall I get clear of all these currents that cross and recross one another and drag me to right and left; when will the deck of my vessel cease to tremble under my feet and to be swept by the waves of every storm? where shall I find a haven in which I can cast anchor, and an immovable rock out of reach of the waves, whereon I can dry myself and wring the spray from my hair?

You know how ardently I have sought physical beauty, what importance I attach to physical form, and what affection I have conceived for the visible world; it must be because I am too corrupt and too _blasé_ to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any constancy.--I have completely lost the power to distinguish between good and evil, and, by force of depravity, I have almost reverted to the ignorance of the savage and the child. In fact, nothing seems praiseworthy or blameworthy to me, and the most extraordinary actions surprise me but little. My conscience is a deaf mute. Adultery seems to me the most innocent thing in the world; I find it quite natural that a girl should prostitute her person; it seems to me that I would betray my friends without the slightest remorse, and I should not have the slightest scruple in kicking over a precipice people who annoyed me, if I were walking on the brink with them.--I could witness the most atrocious scenes with indifference, and there is something that is not unpleasant to me in the sufferings and woes of humanity.--I have the same sensation of acrimonious, bitter joy when some great disaster falls on the world, that one feels when one takes revenge for an old insult.

O world, what hast thou done to me that I should hate thee so? Who has so filled me with gall against thee? what did I expect from thee that I should bear thee such rancor for having deceived me? what high hope didst thou disappoint? what eaglet's wings didst thou clip?--What doors shouldst thou have opened that have remained closed, and which of us two has failed the other?

Nothing touches me, nothing moves me;--I no longer feel, when I hear the story of a heroic action, the sublime shudder that used to run over me from head to foot.--Indeed, it all seems to me a little foolish.--No accent is deep enough to tighten the relaxed fibres of my heart and make them vibrate:--I look upon the tears of my fellow-mortals with the same eye that I look upon the rain, unless they are of a particularly beautiful water and the light is reflected prettily in them and they are flowing down a lovely cheek.--Dumb animals are almost the only creatures for which I have a slight remnant of compassion. I would allow a peasant or a servant to be soundly whipped, but I could not stand by and see the same treatment inflicted on a horse or dog in my presence; and yet I am not evil-minded, I have never injured anybody on earth and I probably never shall; but that is due rather to my nonchalance and my sovereign contempt for all those people whom I do not like, which does not permit me to interest myself even to the extent of injuring them.--I abhor the whole world in bulk, and there are only one or two in the whole lot whom I deem worthy to be hated specially.--To hate a person is to be as much disturbed about him as if you loved him;--it is to set him apart, to distinguish him from the common herd; it is to be in a state of violent excitement because of him; it is to think of him by day and dream of him by night; it is to bite at your pillow and gnash your teeth as you think that he exists; what more do you do for any one you love? Would you take the same amount of trouble to please a mistress that you take to ruin an enemy?--I doubt it--in order to hate one person intensely, one must be in love with some other person. Every great hatred serves as a counterpoise to a great love: and whom could I hate, when I love nobody?

My hatred is, like my love, a confused, general sentiment that seeks to apply itself to some object and cannot; I have within me a treasure of hatred and love which I don't know what to do with, and which weighs horribly upon me. If I can find no place to bestow one or the other or both of them, I shall burst and break apart, like a bag filled too full of money, which rips at the seams and spills its contents.--Oh! if I could detest some one, if one of the stupid men with whom I live would insult me in such a way as to make my old viper's blood boil in my frozen veins, and force me out of this dull drowsiness in which I am stagnating; if thou, old witch with the palsied head, wouldst bite me in the cheek with thy rat's teeth and infect me with thy venom and thy madness; if some one's death could be my life;--if the last heart-beat of an enemy writhing under my foot could send a delicious thrill through my hair, and the odor of his blood smell sweeter to my thirsty nostrils than the aroma of flowers, oh! how gladly would I renounce love, and how happy I would deem myself!

Deadly embraces, tiger-bites, the hug of a boa-constrictor, an elephant's foot placed upon a breast that is crushed and flattened beneath it, the poisoned tail of the scorpion, the milky juice of the Euphorbia, the curved kris of the Javanese, blades that gleam at night and extinguish their gleam in blood--I call upon you now, it is you who shall replace for me the leafless roses, the moist kisses and the warm embrace of love!

I love nothing, as I have said, but alas! I am afraid of loving something.--It would be a hundred thousand times better to hate than to have such a love!--I have found the type of beauty that I have so long dreamed of.--I have found the body of my phantom; I have seen it, it has spoken to me, I have touched its hand, it exists; it is not a chimera. I knew that I could not be mistaken and that my presentiments never lied.--Yes, Silvio, lam living beside the dream of my life;--my chamber is here, its chamber is there; I can see from here the curtain trembling at its window, and the light of its lamp. Its shadow has just passed across the curtain: in an hour we shall sup together.

Those lovely Turkish eyelashes, that clear, profound gaze, that warm hue of pale amber, that long glossy black hair, that nose, of proud and delicate shape, those joints and extremities, supple and slender after the manner of Palmegiani, the graceful curves and the pure oval contour that give such an air of aristocratic refinement to a face--all that I longed for and would have been overjoyed to find distributed among five or six persons, I have found united in a single person!

The thing that I adore most fervently among all earthly things is a lovely hand.--If you could see the hand of my dream! such perfection! such dazzling whiteness! such soft skin! such penetrating moisture! the ends of the fingers so admirably tapered! the half-moon of the nails so clearly marked! such polish and such brilliant color! you would say they were the inner petals of a rose;--Anne of Austria's hands, so vaunted and famous, were no more than the hands of a turkey-keeper or scullery-maid compared with these.--And then what grace, what art in the slightest movements of the hand! how gracefully the little finger bends and stays a little apart from its tall brothers!--The thought of that hand drives me mad and makes my lips quiver and burn.--I close my eyes to avoid looking at it; but with its delicate fingers it seizes my eyelashes and raises the lids, causing countless visions of ivory and snow to pass before me.

Ah! doubtless it is Satan's claw gloved in that satin skin; it is some mocking demon making sport of me; there is witchcraft in it.--It is too monstrously impossible.

That hand--I propose to go to Italy, to see the pictures of the great masters, to study, compare, draw, become a painter in short, in order to be able to reproduce it as it is, as I see it, as I feel it; it will perhaps serve the purpose of ridding me of this sort of obsession.

I longed for beauty; I did not know what I asked for.--It is like trying to look at the sun without eyelids, it is like trying to handle flames.--I suffer horribly.--To be unable to assimilate this perfection, to be unable to pass into it and to cause it to pass into me, to have no means of reproducing it and of making it feel!--When I see anything beautiful, I want to touch it with my whole self, everywhere and at the same time. I want to sing of it and paint it, to carve it and write of it, to be loved by it as I love it; I want what cannot be and never can be.

Your letter made me ill--very ill--forgive me for saying it.--All the pure, tranquil happiness that you enjoy, the walks in the reddening woods,--the long conversations, so affectionate and tender, that end with a chaste kiss on the forehead; the serene, isolated life; the days that pass so quickly that night seems to come before its time, make the constant internal agitation in which I live seem even more tempestuous.--So you are to be married in two months; all the obstacles are removed, you are sure now of belonging to each other forever. Your present felicity is augmented by all the happiness in store for you. You are happy and you are certain of being happier soon.--What a destiny is yours!--Your beloved is beautiful, but what you have loved in her is not the mortal, palpable beauty, material beauty, but the invisible, immortal beauty, the beauty that does not grow old, the beauty of the soul.--She is full of charm and innocence; she loves you as such souls know how to love.--You never looked to see if the golden shade of her hair resembled the golden hair painted by Rubens or Giorgione; but it pleased you because it was her hair. I will wager, happy lover that you are, that you have no idea whether your mistress is of the Grecian or Asiatic type, English or Italian.--O Silvio! how rare are the hearts that are content with pure and simple love and desire neither a hermitage in the forest nor a garden on an island in Lago Maggiore.

If I had the courage to tear myself away from here, I would go and pass a month with you; perhaps I should become purified in the air that you breathe, perhaps the shade of your avenues would bring a little coolness to my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise in which I must not set foot.--Hardly ought I to be allowed to gaze from afar, over the wall, at the two fair angels who are walking there, hand in hand, eyes fixed upon eyes. The devil can enter Eden only in the shape of a serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness on earth, I would not be the serpent of your Eve.

What frightful upheaval has taken place in my soul of late! who has transformed my blood and changed it to venom? O monstrous thought, that puttest forth thy pale green twigs and umbels of hemlock in the glacial shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind deposited there the seed from which thou didst spring? This, then, was what was in store for me, this is the end of all the roads that I so desperately attempted!--O fate, how thou dost mock at me!--All those upward flights of the eagle toward the sun, those pure flames aspiring to reach the sky, that divine melancholy, that profound, restrained passion, that worship of beauty, that refined and curious fancy, that unquenchable and ever-rising flood from the interior fountain, that ecstasy borne upon wings always spread, that reverie blooming brighter than the hawthorn in May--all the poesy of my youth, all those beautiful and rare gifts were destined to serve no other purpose than to place me beneath the lowest of mankind.