Part 2

But I am coming to the matter of importance. You see my innocence. I protest, then, with all the strength of an honest, though libertine satyr, against the use of the term ‘satyr’ by your newspapers, which apply it to men,—yes, to men, by Jupiter, who kidnap young girls, rip their bellies, slice them to pieces! A satyr would never do such idiotic things. Violate, when one has but to open the arms to desire? Grasp these fresh, yielding little necks with a brutal hand? Tear this soft flesh and cause these unripe bodies to bleed, cut the bud where the woman already is developing and dreaming? For what do you take us, stupid journalists? For men? Be undeceived. We are gods.

My history, which is very long, is obscure, but two episodes peculiarly dignify it. I was born in Phrygia of the loves of Hermes and an elegant Dryad, whom I greatly loved, for she was tender and pretty. She had ardent passions and the shepherds, no less than the gods, attracted but did not hold her caprice. I grew up, I exercised at hazard my curiosity, which discovered odd things at all the fords and on all the paths. Dionysius, whom you call Bacchus, brought me into his cortège and I knew, under torrid skies, women more melting than your grapes, more wanton than your goats. I passed into Greece, on my return, but men were already beginning to wage war; they locked up their women and enclosed their fields with fences. The golden age had ended:

Regrettez-vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux?

I regret it so much and so often that I am filled with an unconquerable melancholy. The great gods no longer descending to an earth soiled by war, ownership, gold and those human laws which so badly translate the gentle divine laws, we remain the sole immortals that a herdsman can chance on at the fall of day, as he walks along the path. We were loved, and we were also feared. We were given milk, cakes and honey, and this was pleasant; but more than once a peevish peasant used to pursue me with a pitchfork, forcing me to run to the shelter of a wood. I am peaceable and vulnerable. I am a god, but a churl might easily cripple me. They say the golden age will return. Let us hope so.

Do not think of ancient Greece as a place where good fortune held sway. Love was there esteemed only under a form that always excited my disgust. Few joys: an escaped female slave, an eager peasant woman. Had I not had my sisters, the nymphs, I should have died of boredom; but nymphs have less variety than women, though prettier, and their pride is terrible. The disgusting teachings of a certain Socrates, that motley apostle of virtue, enemy of women and gods, hastened my flight. I made for Italy, where once more I found a certain state of nature and human customs. To refrain from astonishing people, I called myself Faun, like my Italian brothers.

It is in Italy that I have spent the best part of my life. There I found the graces of Asia, with less effeminacy, much curiosity at once erotic and passionate, and that delicious precociousness which causes young flowers, in their innocent ardor, to outstrip the spring and break their corslets at the sun’s first appearance. I enjoyed seasons worthy of Apollo. My snub nose gleamed in the fairest of eyes. The repeated sound of my feet on the rocky side of a hill awoke still slumbering desires in the vague breasts of latin maidens. Pardon my emotion at these brilliant memories. I still have days; I hardly have seasons any longer, and my eternal youth is often forced to dwell on the past: the time of gleaning has long since succeeded the period of abundance. Remember that in those days I perhaps fled as often as I pursued. I was weary of love, weary of opening new paths. For an instant, I thought of remaining on a piece of cleared ground; I was going to become domesticated.—The family of Faunus, look at the pretty little Atellanian girl!—Alas! I did not have time for this.

One day we found ourselves surrounded by a troop of peasants armed with sharp staffs, as though for a boar hunt. They were led by a sort of sorcerer with a head-dress similar to the Gauls; this man brandished a piece of wood shaped like a crutch head; with his other hand he dipped a branch of box into a little bottle, held by a slave, and sprinkled the ground. I would have liked to laugh, had the danger not been so great. My companion had left to gather grass. “They are coming to look for her,” I reflected. “They will do _her_ no hurt. But if they get _me_, beware of the boar-spears!” I rushed away and, springing over a precipice, was soon free from harm. I have not been able to recross this precipice for nearly twelve hundred years.

What centuries! I lived amid wild goats and only from time to time did an imprudent peasant girl, who happened to be good-looking, fall into my traps. One of them told me that I no longer was called Faunus, but Diabolo, and that I was considered the enemy of the human species, the creature who had caused man to fall into sin. I had seduced a woman under a serpent’s form! I believed that people had become as crazy as they were wicked, and I grieved, musing on my sad immortality. Yet, as the woman stroked my beard and kissed my snub nose and moist lips, while calling me monster, I decided that this was a mitigated extravagance which left a little hope, at least with a half of humanity.—Here, my little friend sticks out her tongue at me and says: “Ah! so it is you they call the devil?”

A noise of hunting one day awoke me. They were blowing through horns which gave a sound like those of my sea brothers, the Tritons. Hounds rent the air with harsh and violent barking. The gallop of horses rang against the firm ground like a Virgilian verse.—O days when shepherds repeated the songs of the Mantuan Shepherd!—Made more bold for some time past, I was loitering in the heath, chasing grasshoppers and lizards. The hunt drew near. I did not have time enough to leap on a rock; and, as I watched the spectacle before leaping higher and disappearing, I heard a clear voice cry, with an accent of surprise and joy: “Ecco il Fauno!” I, too, was satisfied, for I knew that this beautiful name of the Roman god was applied to me, that new days had arrived. Excited, I lay down in the thyme warm with sun kisses; evening fell, I was musing, when the same clear voice once more rang in my ears: “Fauno! Fauno!” I pricked my hairy ears, my body grew tense. I stood listening. “Fauno! Fauno!” With a few bounds, I reached the spot from which the clear voice came. She was a beautiful young woman. The better to run, she had opened her dress and the wind had loosened her hair. She let herself fall, dazed, into my arms, the while I murmured, lifting my thought to the master of gods: “Has beauty then once more descended to earth? O Jupiter, thou dost not forget thy children!”

If I were to tell you that you have always under your eyes, perhaps, the proof of the truth of my narrative, you would not believe me. Wait several days, you will no longer be incredulous. My little friend is tired.—“Yes, I really am!”—She is going to re-read to me this letter which she promises to place in your hands. With the commencement of this story, you can already show your friends the journalists that a satyr is a respectable creature, meriting consideration. But what I have still to tell you is even better.

ANTIPHILOS, _Satyr._

II

LA FOSCA

II

Au Mont Agel, July 17.

The cold drove me into the south, where I had just arrived when I first wrote to you. It is on the fragrant slopes of this peaceful mountain, looking upon the violet sea, that I am passing the bitter winter. Favorable grottos provide me with shelter and, when the sun shines, I gambol about, watching the strange passers-by along the paths. It is a beautiful country and I am enchanted by the charm of its wonderful girls. When the weather grows too warm, I climb upwards and it seems that in proportion as I proceed, I carry the spring with me. I am known in the villages. Everybody waits for me. People whisper to each other: “You know, I’ve seen him!” “Oh, my dear!” And at the fringe of the woods, at evening, I perceive light shadows vanishing under the pines or oaks. By chance I surprise and seize one, sometimes two. Stifled laughter blends with long sighs. I am the joy that passes, the joy troubled by a delicious fear. My hand has calmed throbbing breasts, revived many a throbbing heart. I pass, and when I am gone the young men find the maidens less shy. I sow kisses and I do not await the harvest time. That I leave to others. I only seize the flower, as long as there are flowers to be taken. Such is the way of gods. The gods are fastidious.

When I left the banks of the Seine, the little one who wrote to you, wished to follow me. A true love! That child will be fiercely faithful. I left hurriedly, I traveled without pausing, save to sleep, and I was very cold. Here, I am warming myself again, amusing myself a little. The girl to whom I dictate this differs greatly from my little secretary of the Saint-Cucufa pool. She is taller. She is almost a woman.—“Almost?”—She writes on fine transparent paper with an instrument which she calls a fountain-pen. I have never seen such a thing before. The girl is delicate and unbreakable, wanton as a goddess, and she has the air of having descended from Olympus yesterday at dawn. She comes every day from Roquebrune. Having risen with the sun, she walks through the dew, leaves to mingle innocently with the morning strollers, and never forsakes her royal mask, even when she murmurs: “Darling, darling!” She pleases me indeed. (Here the fountain-pen is thrust painfully into my knee, but I say nothing, I am satisfied.) Her curiosities are infinite, and she methodically satisfies them, without ever abandoning her serious look. I like this. Love is serious. When one has deep sensibility, love can cause tears; laughter, never. It is only among mortals that love is accompanied with laughter. The gods never laugh, except at the silliness of mankind. When my little English woman is stirred, she recites verses and then translates them for me, for I only know the Mediterranean languages. She says, while caressing me:

Tiens, couche-toi sur ce tapis de fleurs, Pendant que je caresserai tes aimables joues, Pendant que je piquerai des roses parfumées dans le poil soyeux de ta douce tête Et que je baiserai tes larges et belles oreilles, ô ma tendre joie! ... Oh! comme je t’aime! Je suis folle de toi!

And sometimes I fall asleep, the while she gazes at me tenderly.

But I want to begin my story where I left off. I am anxious to narrate the adventure which does me honor, to my way of thinking, and which I have promised you. For two days and nights I was in love with the fair creature who had come, crying: “Fauno! Fauno!” It was near eventide; the sun was shining brightly and its rays, passing beneath the pines, were lighting up the ground, each tuft of grass, each flower. My sweetheart was sleeping and, to keep off the buzzing flies, for she was naked, I had thrown her long scarf over her. But, from time to time, unable to resist my desire, so beautiful she was, I approached to lift a corner of the veil and to watch her as she slept. At a certain moment, I discovered with terror that we were not alone. Somebody, concealed in the thicket, was spying on us. I ran towards the enemy: a man arose. I was about to throw myself at him, enraged with jealousy, when he made a gesture at once imperious and friendly:

“Do you understand the language of men?” he asked. “In that case, know that I am not come to fight you. I am walking about in search of beautiful things. I seek Nature and it seems I have found her. Now I see. Are you a beast, are you a god?”

“I am a god.”

“Then it is true that such beings live,” the young man murmured. “And she?”

“She? A woman, but as lovely as my mother, who was a goddess. I was born in Phrygia, in the time when gods were as numerous on the earth as men.”

“Let me do your portrait and that of the divine woman sleeping at your feet.”

He brought out paper and pencils. I was on the point of agreeing to his whim when my beloved awoke. Half lifting herself on one of her arms, she said:

“Seigneur Allegri, I hope you will not betray me!”

“Oh, it is La Fosca. I did not know you were so wonderful, my dark beauty!”

“And glowing today, eh! But turn your head away a moment, for it would not be right to let you see the movements of my body. I am marble when I sleep; but when I move, I become a woman. I want to dress, to honor your presence and to offer you some fruit from our woods, and water from our spring.”

“Have you then left humanity forever?”

“Perhaps. Only the gods can love, and I have found one.”

“A marvelous adventure,” Allegri said. “But if you put a robe on, two suns will set at the same instant.”

“You will see me again if you come here, for my god is not jealous. And why should he be jealous, he who surpasses men in strength, as an oak surpasses an ivy?”

I smiled, and my mouth was so broad that Allegri exclaimed:

“He really is a faun. He resembles the one that Seigneur Buonarroti made not long ago, to amuse our sainted Guilio.”

While Allegri was tracing on his paper a figure in which I recognized myself, La Fosca had risen and gone, draped in her scarf, farther off. I went to fetch water in a buffalo horn, while La Fosca brought fruit, blackberries, apples and nuts. We made a pleasant meal of these things.

In the days that followed, Allegri visited us frequently. He sketched on small sheets with crayons of different colors. As soon as he arrived, La Fosca used to stretch out, in the pose you know, and I had the goodness to remain near her, holding the veil I was about to remove, in an attitude of desire which was not feigned. This comedy slightly bored me. I found the sittings too long. And then La Fosca had too happy smiles in her pretended sleep, her body moved with such charm.

One night, when we remained chatting and laughing,—he had brought preserves and a bottle of wine—the sky paled a little.

“It is time,” Allegri said, getting up. “Come. In an hour we shall reach the solitary hut where I have established my studio. My picture is finished, but I would like, at least once, to compare it with the original, for the recollection of my eyes may have deceived me, although they are very dependable mirrors.”

We followed him. The work was perfect. La Fosca truly breathed, I was truly handsome, with my infatuated air. La Fosca reposed on skins of beasts, and Allegri feverishly completed his work with rapid strokes, each one of them,—what a miracle!—augmenting the distinction, the relief, the splendor, the life. At that instant, _he_ was the real god!

“I hear the peasants,” he suddenly cried. “Save yourself. I will bring her to you tonight.”

I fled, for I stand in terror of pitchforks. I have never since seen La Fosca. Her fall only affected me during the first few days, for I had felt her love for me grow less from the moment she yielded to Allegri’s admiration; and besides, I had tasted so many pleasures that I was on the verge of satiety.

A little later I made the acquaintance of a young peasant girl who caused me to forget the other completely. Yet I never see, without emotion, the picture done by this Allegri, my portrait and the divine nudity of that noble La Fosca, whom love transformed into a bacchante, but who never, not even in her most wanton attitudes, made a disgraceful gesture. Her beauty has made her deserve immortality: she will live as long as I live, as long as the trees, the streams and mountains, as long as the world itself. Yesterday, my little Englishwoman brought me a photograph of the portrait. I prefer the old engravings, but this manner is perhaps more exact. Why the thing is called “Jupiter and Antiope,” no one, not even the little darling, has been able to explain. At least you will know that it represents the Faun Antiphilos and La Fosca, who has since become the Marquise de Sassuolo.

Allegri came to see me a month later. I was with the young peasant girl, and yet I was about to shower him with reproaches, when, with a very melancholy mien, he said:

“She left me, in turn.”

I answered:

“You deserved it.”

“Doubtless; but you are consoled and I, I am not yet consoled.”

He told me that La Fosca was the daughter of an extremely dissolute, indebted patrician of Modena who had sold her to a priest. She had stabbed the priest and fled to Sassuolo where the Marquis Giambattista met, welcomed and hid her, because of her beauty. Finally through gratitude, she became his mistress, and lived at his court.

“She was with him at the hunt when she ran to you. The Marquis sought her high and low for a week and then learned that I was concealing a woman in my shack. He came: instead of flying into a rage, he wept, pardoned me, purchased my picture and invited me to the marriage. She became the Marquise de Sassuolo this very morning. These old men have odd ideas. What creations I could have made with such a figure!”

“You are neither man nor god, Allegri, only a painter.”

He did not answer, but remained plunged in revery a long time. I have not seen him since.

ANTIPHILOS, _Satyr._

III

THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN

III

Cogolin, June 3.

At last I have the leisure to write and give you another chapter of my adventures, since I know that you have communicated them to other men. Like nature, the gods exist only at the instant you speak and think of them, and as soon as your attention is distracted from divine things, they fall again into the dim, pantheistic immensity where their lives glide by, mute, deep and plant-like. I partake of the gods, I have lived that life. I partake of men, and I know what human joys are. Alas! destiny has meted them out to me so miserly, in these days, that I hardly feel my humanity any longer. That is why I am sad, yes, sad, despite the restless eyes which reproachfully gaze at me this very moment, despite cheeks made slightly rosy by paint and now somewhat pale, rubbing against my old, immortal, shaggy skin. For the past three years I have tasted more bitterness than I experienced in my life heretofore. Solitude has poisoned my heart and if such times, or worse,—who knows?—were to return, I would be reduced to imploring the gods to recall me to Olympus, to the parental habitation. Ah! to renounce women! The gods no longer descend to the earth and I fear the goddesses. What a sorry figure this poor goat-footed satyr would make among them!

But was I not born to be happy? When I say this, Cydalise treats me as a romantic satyr, and though I do not very well understand, I feel it means that such a dream is considered chimerical. I and your philosophers do not understand happiness in the same way. I will die only when nature dies, and it is with her alone that I should take my stand. The seasons mean more to me than does metaphysics. Why should there not be a return to the old, faun liberties? The gates of sheepfolds will not always be so firmly shut and Venus, who seems to have forgotten herself in particular loves, will yet again remember her universal mission. It is a fact that the nymphs no longer inhabit the woods and that for three years I have not been able to capture any maiden, but Cydalise has comforted the old solitary faun and the hope of vintage time returns to my heart. Do not believe the things I told you at the beginning of this letter. They were the remains of melancholy moods I have not been able to share with anyone. Now that you have felt them with me, I no longer feel them. What matters the past to him who holds the present?

Cydalise descended from the Thespian chariot to come to me. Her profession is to recite verses of the poets to the people. She was seeking me, which means that she had already found me, according to some verses she recited and which evidently apply to my divinity, ever present and ever active. Cydalise has not invoked me in vain. The hoary, old god has always the youth of his desires and the desires of his youth. Weak men disappoint women, many women have told me, but satyrs never; others say they have known, trembling and blushing, men too late for happiness. Dreamy and wanton, Cydalise loves to recite poems in the interval of two frenzies. She begins with a voice a little out of breath because of the divine inspiration; then she slowly grows elated and falls into a sort of sudden trembling which ends still more rapidly in my arms. So, I know the first stanzas better than I do the last, which die in vague murmurs. I remember a similar adventure in Campania. I was enamoured of a Greek slave of marvelous beauty who used to come to visit me each evening, and who always wished to sing the first idyll of Theocritus for me, to show that her voice was as pure as her body anointed with oil of lavender. She never had the strength to begin the third verse: “Sweet is the murmuring of the pine near the fountains, O goatherd, sweet is the sound of thy flute....” Her voice stopped at [Greek: Tyrisdes]. Perhaps she did not wish, as Aesop says, to lose the prey for the shadow. The gods be praised! Gaiety returns to me with these distant memories which are so delicately woven into the present, across the centuries. This one knows better how to resist the violence of desire: She prepares with more skill the denouement whose plaintive syllables she knows how to prolong. She has not received a bad education: perhaps I shall be attached to her more than to all the others, though my nature always drives me to new discoveries. Such women are so rare!

But love knows a forced repose, and honest satyrs themselves respect this state, for they hold blood in as much horror as tears. One of these days of languor, she came to me with a book and, still smiling through her resigned sadness, began to read aloud, without any explanation: _The Afternoon of a Faun_. What a miracle! Lulled by these rhythms that were as irregular as a stream running down woody hillsides, I had almost as much pleasure in watching her moving lips as in holding them sealed to mine. Then she explained the poem to me, as the philosophers formerly did in the academies.

And I saw myself rising from between the willows of the bank, my ear intent for hint of pastimes which I desired and which was lacking. I remember it was one of those exciting and warm days, the like of which I have not experienced for a long time; I had heard the river lightly plash, as though on some plunging body, and I was about to run away, for I fear the hostility of mankind, when I fancied I saw floating hair on the water’s edge, some hemp held by a rush. I watched. If it was a woman, come from a garden of roses, she would return; the hedge was translucent and the house quite high, up towards the hill. Long I waited. Tired, I went in quest of her. I saw nothing. Now I heard laughter. I imagined many things, the very things this poet has described. Oh! to seize them! They are at least two, since there is so much laughter. Laughter, games, delicate caresses. It is yonder. Now silence reigns. Could they have guessed? No. Pleasure meditates before bursting forth. And I? But if you know the poem, you also know my agitation, my exasperated restlessness, panting, atremble, made dizzy. A man stood up among the trees, far above me.

“It was he,” said Cydalise.

“Who is ‘he’?”

“The poet.”

And she kissed his name on the title page of the book.

“So it was really he?”

“Certainly.”

“I took to flight!”

“To run away! But he saw you, he would have liked to approach. Just fancy! he resembled you, as much as any man can resemble a god, and no one was ever nearer the gods by spirit. To run away from him. Your brother in candor!”