Part 1

THE SISTERS RONDOLI

AND

OTHER STORIES

BY

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1923

CONTENTS

THE SISTERS RONDOLI MY LANDLADY THE LITTLE CASK ANDRÉ'S DISEASE HE? MY UNCLE SOSTHÈNE THE ACCURSED BREAD MADAME LUNEAU'S CASE A WISE MAN THE UMBRELLA A MEETING DECORATED! CHÂLI THE LEGACY

THE SISTERS RONDOLI

I

"No," said Pierre Jouvent, "I do not know Italy. I started to go there twice, but each time I was stopped at the frontier and could not manage to get any further. And yet my two attempts gave me charming ideas of the manners of that beautiful country. Some time or other I must visit its cities, as well as the museums and works of art with which it abounds. I shall make another attempt as soon as possible to cross that impregnable border.

"You don't understand me, so I will explain myself. In 1874 I was seized with desire to see Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. I got this whim about the middle of June, then the powerful fever of spring stirs the desire for love and adventure. I am not, as you know, a great traveller; it appears to me a useless and tiresome business. Nights spent in a train, the disturbed slumbers of the railway carriage, with the attendant headache and stiffness in every limb, the sudden waking in that rolling box, the unwashed feeling, the flying dust and smuts that fill your eyes and hair, the taste of coal in your mouth, and the bad dinners in draughty refreshment rooms, are, in my opinion, a horrible way of beginning a pleasure trip.

"After this introduction by the express, we have the miseries of the hotel; of some great hotel full of people, and yet so empty; the strange room, and the dubious bed! I am most particular about my bed; it is the sanctuary of life. We intrust our nude and fatigued bodies to it that they may be refreshed and rested between soft sheets and feathers.

"There we spend the most delightful hours of our existence, the hours of love and of sleep. The bed is sacred, and should be respected, venerated, and loved by us as the best and most delightful of our earthly possessions.

"I cannot lift up the sheets of a hotel bed without a shiver of disgust. What took place there the night before? What dirty, odious people have slept in it! I begin, then, to think of all the horrible people with whom one rubs shoulders every day, hideous hunchbacks, people with flabby bodies, with dirty hands that make you wonder what their feet and the rest of their bodies are like. I think of those who exhale a smell of garlic and dirt that is loathsome. I think of the deformed and purulent, of the perspiration emanating from the sick, and of everything that is ugly in man. And all this, perhaps, in the bed in which I am going to sleep! The mere idea of it makes me feel ill as I get in.

"And then the hotel dinners--those dreary _table d'hôte_ dinners in the midst of all sorts of extraordinary people, or else those terrible solitary dinners at a small table in a restaurant, feebly lighted up by a small, cheap candle under a shade.

"Again, those terribly dull evenings in some unknown town! Do you know anything more wretched than when it is getting dark on such an occasion? You go about as if in a dream, looking at faces which you have never seen before and will never see again; listening to people talking about matters which are either quite indifferent to you or in a language that perhaps you do not understand. You have a terrible feeling, almost as if you were lost, and you continue to walk on, so as to avoid returning to the hotel, where you would feel still more lost because you are _at home_, in a home which belongs to anyone who can pay for it. At last you fall into a chair at some well-lit café, whose gilding and lights overwhelm you a thousand times more than the shadows in the streets. Then you feel so abominably lonely sitting in front of the foaming bock which a hurrying waiter has brought, that a kind of madness seizes you, the longing to go somewhere or other, no matter where, as long as you need not remain in front of that marble table and in the dazzling brightness.

"And then, suddenly, you perceive that you are really alone in the world, always and everywhere; and that in places which we know the familiar jostlings give us the illusion only of human brotherhood. At such moments of self-abandonment and sombre isolation in distant cities you think broadly, clearly, and profoundly. Then one suddenly sees the whole of life outside the vision of eternal hope, outside the daily deceptions of daily habits and of the expectations of happiness, of which we always dream.

"It is only by going a long distance that we can fully understand how near, short-lived and empty everything is; only by searching for the unknown do we perceive how commonplace and evanescent everything is; only by wandering over the face of the earth can we understand how small the world is, and how very much alike everywhere.

"How well I know, and how I hate and fear more than anything else those haphazard walks through unknown streets. This was the reason why, as nothing would induce me to undertake a tour in Italy by myself, I induced my friend Paul Pavilly to accompany me.

"You know Paul, and how woman is everything, the world, life itself, to him. There are many men like him, to whom existence becomes poetical and idealised by the presence of women. The earth is habitable only because they are there; the sun shines and is warm because it lights them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their skin and ruffles the short hair on their temples, and the moon is charming because it makes them dream, and imparts a languorous charm to love. Every act and action of Paul has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his efforts, and hopes are centred on them.

"A poet has branded that type of man:"

Je déteste surtout le barde à l'oeil humide Qui regarde une étoile en murmurant un nom, Et pour qui la nature immense serait vide S'il ne portait en croupe ou Lisette ou Ninon.

Ces gens-là sont charmants qui se donnent la peine, Afin qu'on s'intéresse à ce pauvre univers, D'attacher des jupons aux arbres de la plaine Et la cornette blanche au front des coteaux verts.

Certes ils n'ont pas compris tes musiques divines Éternelle Nature aux frémissantes voix, Ceux qui ne vont pas seuls par les creuses ravines Et rêvent d'une femme au bruit que font les bois!

"When I mentioned Italy to Paul he at first absolutely refused to leave Paris. I, however, began to tell him of the adventures I had on my travels. I told him that Italian women are supposed to be charming, and I made him hope for the most refined society at Naples, thanks to certain letters of introduction which I had for a Signore Michel Amoroso whose acquaintances are very useful to travellers. So at last he allowed himself to be persuaded."

II

"We took the express one Thursday evening on the 26th of June. Hardly anyone goes south at that time of the year, so that we had the carriage to ourselves. Both of us were in a bad temper on leaving Paris, sorry for having yielded to the temptation of this journey, and regretting cool Marly, the beautiful Seine, and our lazy boating excursions, our delightful evenings spent on the banks of the river waiting for nightfall.

"As soon as the train started Paul settled himself comfortably into a corner, and said: 'It is most idiotic to go to this place.' As it was too late for him to change his mind then, I answered: 'Well, you should not have come.'

"He did not answer, and I felt very much inclined to laugh when I saw how furious he looked. He certainly looks like a squirrel, but then every one of us has retained the type of some animal or other as the mark of primal race. How many people have jaws like a bulldog, or heads like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul was a squirrel turned into a man. He had its bright, quick eyes, its hair, its pointed nose, its small, fine, supple, active body, and a certain mysterious resemblance in his general bearing: in fact, a similarity of movements, of gestures, and of bearing which might almost be taken for an atavism.

"At last we both went to sleep--the noisy slumber of the railway carriage, which is broken by horrible cramps in the arms and neck, and by the sudden stopping of the train.

"We woke up as we were going along the Rhone. Soon the continuous noise of the grasshoppers came in through the window, a cry which seems to be the voice of the warm earth, the song of Provence. It seemed to instill into our looks, our breasts, and our souls the light and happy feeling of the south, the smell of the parched earth, of the stony and light soil of the olive tree with its grey-green foliage.

"When the train stopped again a porter ran along the train calling out 'Valence' in a sonorous voice, with an accent that again gave us that taste of Provence which the shrill note of the grasshoppers had already imparted to us.

"Nothing happened till we got to Marseilles, where we breakfasted, but when we returned to our carriage we found a woman installed there. Paul, with a delighted look at me, unconsciously gave his short moustache a twirl, and passed his fingers like a comb through his hair, which had become slightly disordered with the night's journey. Then he sat down opposite the newcomer.

"Whenever I happen to see a new face, either while travelling or in society, I become obsessed with the desire to find out what character, mind, and intellectual capacities are hidden beneath those features.

"She was a young and pretty woman, a native of the south of France certainly, with splendid eyes, beautiful, wavy black hair, which was so thick, long, and strong that it seemed almost too heavy for her head. She was dressed with a certain southern bad taste which made her look a little vulgar. Her regular features had none of the grace and finish of the refined races, of that slight delicacy which members of the aristocracy inherit from their birth, and which is the hereditary mark of blue blood.

"Her bracelets were too big to be of gold; she wore earrings with white stones too big to be diamonds, and she belonged unmistakably to the people. One would guess that she would talk too loud, and use exaggerated gestures.

"When the train started she remained motionless in her place, in the attitude of a woman who was in a rage. She had not even looked at us.

"Paul began to talk to me, evidently with an eye to effect, trying to attract her attention, as shopkeepers expose their choice wares to catch the notice of passers-by. She did not seem to hear.

"'Toulon! Ten minute's wait! Refreshment room!' the porter shouted.

"Paul motioned to me to get out, and, as soon as we were on the platform, he said:

"'I wonder who on earth she can be?'

"I began to laugh. 'I am sure I don't know, and I don't in the least care.'

"He was quite excited.

"'She is an uncommonly fresh and pretty girl. What eyes she has, and how cross she looks. She must be dreadfully worried, for she takes no notice of anything.'

"'You will have all your trouble for nothing,' I ventured.

"He began to lose his temper.

"'I am not taking any trouble, my dear fellow. I think her an extremely pretty woman, that is all. If one could only speak to her! But I don't know how to begin. Can't you give me an idea? Can't you guess who she is?'

"'Upon my word, I cannot. I rather think she is some actress who is going to rejoin her company after some love adventure.'

"He seemed quite upset, as if I had said something insulting.

"'What makes you think that? On the contrary, I think she looks most respectable.'

"'Just look at her bracelets,' I said, 'her earrings, and her whole dress. I should not be the least surprised if she were a dancer or a circus rider, but most likely a dancer. Her whole style smacks very much of the theatre.'

"He evidently did not like the idea.

"'She is much too young, I am sure; why, she is hardly twenty.'

"'Well,' I replied, 'there are many things which one can do before one is twenty; dancing and reciting are among them, without counting another business which is, perhaps, her sole occupation.'

"'Take your seats for Nice, Ventimiglia,' the guards and porters called out.

"We got in; our fellow-passenger was eating an orange. She certainly was not refined. She had spread her handkerchief on her knees, and the way in which she tore off the peel and opened her mouth to put in the pieces, and then spat the pips out of the window, showed that her education had been decidedly vulgar. She seemed more unapproachable than ever, and swallowed the fruit with an exceedingly comic air of rage.

"Paul devoured her with his eyes, and tried to attract her attention and excite her curiosity, but in spite of his talk and of the manner in which he brought in well-known names, she did not pay the least attention to him.

"After passing Fréjus and St. Raphael, the train passes through a veritable garden, a paradise of roses, of groves of oranges and lemons covered with fruit and flowers at the same time. That delightful coast from Marseilles to Genoa is a kingdom of perfumes in a land of flowers.

"June is the time to see it, when in every narrow valley and on every slope the most exquisite flowers are growing luxuriantly. And the roses! fields, hedges, groves of roses! They climb up the walls, blossom on the roofs, hang from the trees, peep out from among the bushes; they are white, red, yellow, large and small, ordinary and quiet, with a simple dress, or full in brilliant and heavy toilettes. Their powerful perfume makes the air heavy and relaxing, while the still more penetrating lasting odour of the orange blossoms sweetens the atmosphere, till it might almost be called a sugarplum for the olfactory nerve.

"The shore, with its brown rocks, was bathed by the motionless Mediterranean. The hot summer sun stretched like a fiery cloth over the mountains, over the long expanses of sand, and over the hard, set blue sea. The train went on, through the tunnels, along the slopes, above the water, on straight, wall-like viaducts, and a soft, vague, saltish smell came up, a smell of drying seaweed, mingled at times with the strong, heavy perfume of the flowers.

"But Paul neither saw, nor looked at, nor smelled anything, for our fellow-traveller engrossed all his attention.

"When we got to Cannes, as he wished to speak to me, he signed to me to get out again, and as soon as I had done so he took me by the arm.

"'Do you know she is really charming. Just look at her eyes; and I never saw anything like her hair.'

"'Don't excite yourself,' I replied. 'Tackle her, if you have any intentions that way. She does not look impregnable, I fancy, although she appears to be a little bit grumpy.'

"'Why don't you speak to her?' he said. 'I don't know what to say, for I am always terribly stupid at first; I can never make advances to a woman in the street. I follow them, go round and round them, quite close to them, but I never know what to say at first. I only once tried to enter into conversation with a woman in that way. As I clearly saw that she was waiting for me to make overtures, and as I felt bound to say something, I stammered out, "I hope you are quite well, Madame?" She laughed in my face, and I made my escape.'

"I promised Paul to do all I could to bring about a conversation, and when we had taken our places again, I politely asked our neighbour:

"'Have you any objection to the smell of tobacco, Madame?'

"She merely replied: '_Non capisco._'

"So she was an Italian! I felt an absurd inclination to laugh. As Paul did not understand a word of that language, I was obliged to act as his interpreter, so I said in Italian:

"'I asked you, Madame, whether you had any objection to tobacco smoke?'

"With an angry look, she replied, '_Che mi fa?_'

"She had neither turned her head nor looked at me, and I really did not know whether to take this What does it matter to me, for an authorisation, a refusal, a real sign of indifference, or for a mere 'Leave me alone.'

"'Madame,' I replied, 'if you mind the smell of tobacco in the least--'

"She again said, '_mica_,' in a tone of voice which seemed to mean, 'I wish to goodness you would leave me alone!' It was, however, a kind of permission, so I said to Paul:

"'You can smoke.'

"He looked at me in that curious sort of way that people have when they try to understand others who are talking in a strange language before them, and asked me:

"'What did you say to her?'

"'I asked if we might smoke, and she said we might do whatever we liked.'

"Whereupon I lighted my cigar.

"'Did not she say anything more?'

"'If you had counted her words you would have noticed that she used exactly six, two of which gave me to understand that she knew no French, so four remained, and a lot cannot be said in four words.'

"Paul seemed quite unhappy, disappointed, and at sea.

"But suddenly the Italian asked me, in that tone of discontent which seemed habitual to her, 'Do you know at what time we shall get to Genoa?'

"'At eleven o'clock,' I replied. Then after a moment I went on:

"'My friend and I are also going to Genoa, and if we can be of any service to you, we shall be very happy. As she did not answer, I insisted: 'You are alone and if we can be of service...' But she interrupted with such a '_mica_,' that I did not venture on another word.

"'What did she say?' Paul asked.

"'She said that she thought you were charming.'

"But he was in no humour for joking, and begged me, dryly, not to make fun of him, so I translated her question and my polite offer, which had been so pertly rejected.

"Then he became as agitated as a squirrel in a cage.

"'If we only knew,' he said, 'what hotel she was going to, we would go to the same. Try and find out, so as to have another opportunity for making her speak.'

"It was not particularly easy, and I did not know what pretext to invent, anxious as I was to make the acquaintance of this unapproachable person.

"We passed Nice, Monaco, Mentone, and the train stopped at the frontier for the examination of luggage.

"Although I hate those badly brought-up people who breakfast and dine in railway-carriages, I went and bought a quantity of good things to make one last attack on her by their means. I felt sure that this girl must, ordinarily, be by no means inaccessible. Something had put her out and made her irritable, but very little would suffice, a mere word or some agreeable offer, make her unbend, to decide her and overcome her.

"We started again, and we three were still alone. I spread my eatables out on the seat. I cut up the fowl, put the slices of ham neatly on a piece of paper, and then carefully laid out our dessert, the strawberries, plums, cherries, and cakes, close to the girl.

"When she saw that we were going to eat she took a piece of chocolate and two small rolls out of her pocket and began to eat them with her beautiful sharp teeth.

"'Ask her to have some of ours,' Paul said in a whisper.

"'That is exactly what I want to do, but it is rather a difficult matter.'

"As she, however, glanced from time to time at our provisions, I felt sure that she would still be hungry when she had finished what she had. So as soon as her frugal meal was over, I said to her:

"'It would be very kind of you if you would take some of this fruit.'

"Again she said '_mica_,' but less crossly than before.

"'Well, then,' I said, 'may I offer you a little wine? I see you have not drunk anything. It is Italian wine, and as we are now in your own country, we should be very pleased to see such a pretty Italian mouth accept the offer of its French neighbours.'

"She shook her head slightly, evidently wishing to refuse, but very desirous of accepting, and her '_mica_' this time was almost polite. I took the bottle, which was covered with straw in the Italian fashion, and filling the glass I offered it to her.

"'Please drink it,' I said, 'to bid us welcome to your country.'

"She took the glass with her usual look, and emptied it at a draught, like a woman tormented with thirst, and then gave it back to me without even saying 'Thank you.'

"Then I offered her the cherries. 'Please take some,' I said; 'we shall be so pleased if you will.'

"Out of her corner she looked at all the fruit spread out beside her, and said so rapidly that I could scarcely follow her: '_A me non piacciono ne le ciliegie ne le susine; amo soltano le fragole._'

"'What does she say?' Paul asked.

"'That she does not care for cherries or plums, but only for strawberries.'

"I put a newspaper full of wild strawberries on her lap, and she ate them quickly, throwing them into her mouth from some distance in a coquettish and charming manner.

"When she had finished the little red heap which we had seen rapidly diminishing, melting and disappearing under the rapid action of her hands, I asked her:

"'What may I offer you now?'

"'I will take a little chicken,' she replied.

"She certainly devoured half of it, tearing it to pieces with the rapid movements of her jaws like some carnivorous animal. Then she made up her mind to have some cherries, which she 'did not like,' then some plums, then some little cakes. Then she said, 'I have had enough,' and sat back in her corner.

"I was much amused, and tried to make her eat more, pressing her, in fact, till she suddenly got in a rage again, and flung such a furious '_mica_' at me, that I would no longer run the risk of spoiling her digestion.

"I turned to my friend. 'My poor Paul,' I said, 'I am afraid we have had our trouble for nothing.'

"Night was coming on, one of those hot summer nights which extend their warm shade over the burning and exhausted earth. Here and there, in the distance by the sea, over capes and promontories bright stars began to shine on the dark horizon, which I was, at times, almost inclined to confound with lighthouses.

"The scent of the orange-trees became more penetrating, and we breathed with delight, distending our lungs to inhale it more deeply. The balmy air was soft, delicious, almost divine.

"Suddenly I noticed something like a shower of stars under the dense shade of the trees along the line where it was quite dark. It might have been taken for drops of light, leaping, flying, playing and running among the leaves, or for small stars fallen from the skies in order to have an excursion on the earth; but they were only fireflies dancing a strange fiery ballet in the perfumed air.

"One of them happened to come into our carriage and shed its intermittent light, which seemed to be extinguished one moment and to be burning the next. I covered the carriage-lamp with its blue shade and watched the strange fly careering about in its fiery flight. Suddenly it settled on the dark hair of our neighbour, who was dozing after dinner. Paul seemed delighted, his eyes fixed on the bright, sparkling spot which looked like a living jewel on the forehead of the sleeping woman.

"The Italian awoke about eleven o'clock, with the bright insect still in her hair. When I saw her move, I said: 'We are just getting to Genoa, Madame,' and she murmured, without answering me, as if possessed by some obstinate and embarrassing thought:

"'What am I going to do, I wonder?'

"And then she suddenly asked:

"'Would you like me to come with you?'

"I was so taken aback that I really did not understand her.

"'With us? What do you mean?'

"She repeated, looking more and more furious:

"'Would you like me to go with you now, as soon as we get out of the train?'

"'I am quite willing; but where do you want to go to? Where shall I take you to?'

"She shrugged her shoulders with an air of supreme indifference.

"'Wherever you like; what does it matter to me?' She repeated her '_Che mi fa?_' twice.

"'But we are going to the hotel.'

"'Very well, let us all go to the hotel,' she said, in a contemptuous voice.

"I turned to Paul, and said: