Le chalet dans la montagne 🏔️🌲 | Une aventure mystique et envoûtante

Le chalet dans la montagne 🏔️🌲 | Une aventure mystique et envoûtante

Welcome to the fascinating world of The Chalet in the Mountains by Eugène Montfort, a story full of mystery and suspense. Follow in the footsteps of our protagonists as they find themselves in an isolated chalet in the mountains, confronted with strange and unexplained events . Each moment intensifies, and the tension mounts, captivating the reader from the very first pages. A unique adventure awaits you in this story where nature and the unknown collide . Chapter 1. We had left La Grave around five o’clock. Only eleven kilometers separated us from the Lautaret Pass, but, with the continuous slope of this mountain road, the horses could only go at a walking pace, and we would arrive just before nightfall. The road runs along a precipice at the bottom of which the Romanche River rolls its bubbling waters; on the other side of the torrent, the Meije Glacier crushes you with its majestic enormity, its surfaces of eternal snow supporting the sky. I was in a public car, one of those Alpine coaches that travel all over Dauphiné and provide such great service. It was summer. The other travelers were traveling like me for pleasure; we exchanged our thoughts, all agreed to marvel at this road which, starting from Vizille, rises to Galibier, at an altitude of 2,658 meters, by a long ribbon of twelve leagues through the most beautiful glaciers of Pelvoux… I was going to rest for two days at the hospice of Lautaret, then I would go back down through Maurienne to Saint-Michel where I would take the train to Modane; in Modane, I had an appointment with a friend to enter Italy together and travel there. To be twenty years old and to be traveling, what happiness! So I was certainly the most enthusiastic of the passengers. We were driving slowly… At a certain point the Romanche abandoned us to lose itself in a gorge that suddenly opened up in the mountain: we crossed a plateau formed by hillocks whose thin grass was dotted with scentless flowers, wild in shape and indecisive in color, which only grow on the summits… Then there was a short slope. A bell tower appeared, and we passed a miserable village… Meanwhile the sky was covered with clouds, and, despite the proximity of the snow, the air was stifling. Mists were fraying, trailing over the mountain; in places, they hid everything, then up there, up there, they broke through and we saw a peak; we couldn’t explain how it belonged to the earth. No houses; no passers-by; the country deserted as if at the end of the world. We saw nothing human, but only rocks, yellow grass, ice and clouds. All we could hear was the sound of the waterfalls in a heavy, disturbing silence. Our nerves were tense with anticipation of the storm. It broke! The horses were approaching the bends of the hill at the end of which stands the hospice. Suddenly, torrents of water were hurled down from the torn sky, a gust passed, lifting and tearing off our tarpaulins; soaked in the blink of an eye, we bent our backs, terrified. The horses had stopped, they were neighing, their manes fluttering, and arching their hocks to resist the storm. Then, at the insistence of the coachman, they set off again, dragging a groaning carriage that pitched like a boat… When we arrived, it was dark. A gust of wind carried us right up to the hospice and we disembarked to the sound of thunder. Under a sort of shed, cluttered with trunks and suitcases, people were milling about in the dark. In the background, lights could be seen. It vaguely resembled a railway platform; it was a hubbub and a stirring of shadows leaning towards the arrivals. I passed under this shed and rushed to the office to get a bed, which was laborious, because the hospice was full. I obtained , however, in a large fir chalet to which I was taken, a beautiful room, but it was under the roof; it was raining there, and they had nailed the window shut because it did not close properly; nevertheless, I considered myself lucky, because some of my companions in the carriage were not yet lodged and I heard them in the corridors of the chalet, discussing with the innkeeper. A little dazed by this stage and by this arrival, all wet, I set about changing to go down to the table d’hôte. … Downstairs, I fell into complete disorder. The unexpected influx of travelers panicked the owners and the staff. The dining rooms were full, and not everyone had been able to find a place. A second dinner would have to be served. Where could I hide to wait for it? I returned to the large chalet from which I had come. It had two floors; having nothing to do in my room, I stopped on the first floor. In the corridor, which was wide, a table and a wicker armchair had been placed opposite the staircase. I wrapped myself in my blanket, and, my traveling cap pulled down over my eyes, sat down. A kerosene lamp hanging on the wall barely lit up, losing its small light in this deep passage. I soon heard a light step. We were going up. A woman, whom in this almost darkness I guessed to be supple and graceful, appeared: she made a startled movement on suddenly seeing my shapeless and unexpected silhouette in the armchair; then she passed and entered the first room; she came out again shortly after and went down again… I thought with a smile of the strange aspect that I must have presented to her, huddled, an immobile and dark mass, in this deserted gallery; I flattered myself that I had at least struck the mind of the unknown woman… But the first dinner was doubtless drawing to a close, I returned to the hotel… I sat down at a table that for the occasion, because of the press, had been set up in a small, rather dirty room that ordinarily served as a storeroom, judging by the imposing family of small benches, all the small benches in the house, and the army of empty bottles that one discovered in a corner. A butler with a stained plastron hurriedly circulated the salmon with green sauce, the hens, and the fillet, and I listened with a distracted ear to the anticipated stories of my neighbors. The meal finished, I went to smoke a cigar under the arrival shed, where coffee was served. I was surprised to find such a crowd in the middle of a desert. This coming and going, this life, this animation, all of a sudden, in the middle of the Lautaret pass, in the great mountain, in a place more than two leagues distant from any habitation, offered something paradoxical that I savored philosophically. The stained plastron poured the coffee. I had before my eyes the most singular mixture of individuals that one could encounter; everyone had come to camp in this hospice: people in dinner jackets and patent leather like in a hotel in Aix, next to intrepid walkers in belted jackets, thick stockings, hobnailed shoes, and flannel calicoes like at the seaside, clubmen, shopkeepers on vacation, young Englishmen, Germans with glasses, two priests… Groups had formed, people were chatting. Beside me, three gentlemen and two ladies were talking about Capus’s latest play. A little further on, a man in big shoes was explaining how one should approach Mont Blanc. Elsewhere, a personage, his buttonhole adorned with a green rosette, was saying that one might well do a écarté, and the two priests were discussing M. Combes. What I had at first taken for a shed was a covered terrace placed in front of the house and protected by two wings, one of which housed the living room, the other the dining room. I understood the layout of all this the next day at daybreak. The road ran in front of the terrace; two large chalets stood opposite, and, to the right, sheds; between these various buildings, the widened road formed a kind of square: it came in from the right while climbing, passed, then ran down again to the left. The hospice-hotel was therefore built on a rise… Originally, there was only one house here, where travelers were accommodated. Then the latter had become so numerous that the single house had been augmented by two chalets and the hospice of the Lautaret pass transformed into a hotel. Now the weather was fine, with stars, but it was a night without moon. In the square, shadows came and went; when they appeared before us, they brightened a little, then they plunged back into darkness. I had drunk my coffee, the conversations continued to lack surprise, I left my armchair and went towards the vestibule where I saw light and movement. There was a cupboard where all the travelers’ letters were arranged; people surrounded it, each one looking to see if there was anything for him. I saw again my stranger from earlier. She was charming, as I had guessed in the half-light, slender and graceful; in front of the mirror, she was arranging a light pink muslin scarf over her hair; a city dress of black tulle emphasized the suppleness of her waist. I wondered if she was alone. Around her no one seemed to know her, but I noticed someone near the door who never lost sight of her: a gentleman in short trousers, with fine calves, tall, with the insolent face of a handsome professional man, a little mature however and with relaxed skin. Before going to bed, I decided to go like the others and pace up and down in front of the hotel, which seemed to be the usual and hygienic after-dinner distraction here. One did not suspect the proximity of the mountains, everything was dark; but moving a little away from the terrace, one entered into a great silence and a profound peace. I went back and forth, hands in my pockets, a little quickly, because it was not warm; I passed people who were talking about air cures, treatments and doctors. I saw the young woman in the pink kerchief, she was definitely alone, she walked humming in a soft and pretty voice. I don’t know why I immediately decided in my mind that this was an actress, no doubt because of her black dress, which had at first given me the impression of being a little theatrical for this simple stopover, and because now she was singing. I wanted to talk to her, I followed her, but she didn’t move away from the terrace, and we were surrounded. I lost her for a moment and never found her again. Then I thought I recognized her, sitting on the roadside embankment and talking with the hideously handsome, slightly mature man. Chapter 2. The next day, I went down early. The weather was magnificent, we were enveloped by the marvelous spectacle of the mountains in the clear sky. I moved away from the hotel through the damp grass. On both sides, the enormous chains escorted me, on the right crowned with dazzling ice, on the left, on the contrary, forming a wall of arid, dried-up rock, pink because of the morning sun, representing to my eyes some African mountain. The pass is dotted with small humps ten or twelve meters high; I climbed one of them and, from there, I discovered at my feet the whole bottom. What solitude, what peace, what grandeur, what beauty! I contemplated the green expanse, the black rock, the spaces of snow, this immense desert filled with sun, and I felt my soul blossom. Far from a factitious existence, to breathe in the midst of the light, in the eternal truth of things! I wanted to sing, to sing at the top of my voice. Drunk, dazzled, I was no longer, like a savage, but impulses of love for everything. I lay down, dreamily chewing the stem of a small flower, and I let myself be penetrated by the fierce joy of the enormous and motionless life that surrounded me. My gaze ran over the crests of the mountains, gliding over the pools and basins of snow, flying towards the flakes clinging to the rough spots, falling on the ice stuck to the slopes. I considered the mountain, here like an animal’s spine, and there like a breast, a heavy tower elsewhere, further away a sharp blade. Then my gaze rose to the summit, and I dreamed of up there, up there!… Coming down again, I found the little houses crouching on the edge of the road, in the middle of the pass; the road came from there and went there; people passed, the little houses watched: they watched those who came from afar, who went far away and who would not return. never. Three houses lost in a pass between two mountains. I was following a car with my eyes. An hour ago it had approached the hill that the hospice overlooks, and it still seemed to be in the same place, turning, patiently following the bends. How calm it all was! How restful, purifying it all was! There were a lot of people on the terrace when I returned; a tall, thin, stooped gentleman was being witty in a dry voice in the middle of a group of ladies who were laughing very loudly, the handsome, rather mature man was performing torso movements with a satisfied air, I noticed that he was married: a rather plump person spoke of him, saying “my husband.” People leaning on alpenstocks looked proudly at the audience. As, in the morning, there had been departures, I left my room where it was raining, and I was taken down to the first floor. There they gave me the second room after the stairs. But wasn’t it next door that I had seen the stranger enter last night? I pressed my ear to the wall: no one there yet. There was a communicating door in the partition, I pulled it, but behind it I found a second door, this one closed and opening from the other room. The bell rang for lunch: I went out. I saw my stranger, whom I followed. She was eating alone at a small table. I was able to sit down at the table d’hôte so as to be opposite her, and I began to look at her stubbornly. She was very pretty. Heavy tawny hair, a rather large nose, a voluptuous mouth, and large, melancholy eyes, very sweet, very beautiful. I saw her face between the shoulder of a gentleman and the profile of a lady. I only raised my eyes from my plate to direct them at her; I sought her gaze, she avoided mine. But my insistence did not seem to bother her. After lunch, I sat down opposite her again. Lying in a rocking chair on the terrace, she was reading. Over the heads that separated us, my gaze caught hers; she seemed to see only her book, but I knew well that she saw me. My gaze said to her: “How pretty you are! How graceful your pose is! I love your mouth, your eyes, your neck, your arms, all of you.” And amidst the noise of voices my silent praise rose to caress her heart. At three o’clock, she crossed to go to our chalet. I waited a few moments so that no one would notice my departure behind hers, then I too returned to my room… Yes! It was indeed her beside me, I could hear her humming. She walked here and there; then she stopped. This life, so close! I held my breath, and, my ear against the wall, I listened, I listened… She went out. Her footsteps went down the stairs, then moved away. I sat on my bed, moved; through the window I saw the sky and the mountain… So, she was my neighbor! Fate would have it. I opened my door, she opened hers, we were in each other’s house without anyone being able to see anything, to suspect anything. If everything, by chance, had been so favorably arranged, it was because fate was involved. I looked in the corridor: no one. Quickly, I entered her house… On the chairs, ah! this exquisite jumble of linen, lace, this pink, this pale blue, these tender colors and the perfume that emanates from them!… I ran to the communicating door, I pulled its bolt, then rushed back to my house. So the double door was no longer closed. This partition no longer truly separated me from her. In the middle of the night, I could go from my room to hers! What I had to do now was to look for her, find her, talk to her, carry off a conquest that fortune had sent me, hurry to pick this adventure, fragrant like the wild eglantine and, like her, ephemeral. I had taken a book under my arm. I followed the road, looking in all directions. Soon I saw her; she had not gone far, she was lying in the grass, at the edge of a little path traced by the feet of passers-by, and she was reading. The opportunity was excellent. I I would approach with an indifferent air, I would stop and say a few words to her. I advanced slowly in order to conceal my haste. But a man appeared on the road; so I sat down and opened my book to wait for him to pass. However, looking up, with shock I recognized in the annoying man my insufferable handsome, slightly mature man. He saw the young woman, straightened up, put his fist on his hip, then walked towards her and greeted her, then spoke to her. Ah! that smile of exasperating fatuity! She was responding. Soon she got up and they went back up together in the direction of the hotel. I was furious. I set off into the plain with great strides. I was going to succeed, that was certain, and it had been necessary for this imbecile to appear at that moment. To hell with him!… I was angry too with the charming stranger. What was she? What was she doing here all alone? No doubt a little ham looking for friends. Or perhaps even this gentleman’s mistress, whom he had brought to Lautaret at the same time as his wife? It was still possible. I was meditating furiously while I was massacring the flowers among which I was advancing with my cane; suddenly I stopped: they weren’t ugly, these flowers! They were large black balls, hairy, with a barbaric and disturbing character; I began to compose a bouquet, I also picked some mountain carnations, a little further on I came across some edelweiss, and I picked a few of them. I had calmed down, I returned to the direction of the hotel, still guided by the desire to see the stranger again. She was on the terrace, there was just enough space near her. This time I wouldn’t let the opportunity slip away! I sat down in the armchair next to hers, arranged my flowers in front of me, and then, leaning over, I immediately asked her permission to offer her some. She smiled when she heard me. And her smile said: “At last, you are happy? So you have achieved your goals…” It was quite familiar. If we had not spoken yet, we already knew each other, since I had looked at her a lot, which had forced her to think of me; and I was only continuing aloud a conversation that I had begun with my eyes that morning. A storm came; we took refuge in the living room. We were near the window; I raised the curtain and we contemplated the rain. I asked her if she was afraid of thunder and I said nothing, but in a tender tone and looking her in the eyes. There was a clearing, we went out again. Then it was time for dinner. Like lunch, it passed, she at her little table, me at the table d’hôte and never taking my eyes off her; but this evening, from time to time, she looked at me and smiled. I noticed, however, that the expression on her face was sad. Chapter 3. After dinner I hastened to join her. I suggested a walk in the square, but she refused, for fear, she said, of making all those people chat. I sat down beside her. We were in near darkness, in a corner of the terrace, and we talked in low voices. She complained of being alone, she was bored; she was reading, but the day is long; then all these strangers who look at you with malicious curiosity; and she was the target of the tiresome gallantries of the man with the beautiful calves: fortunately her husband would soon return, she was impatiently waiting for him… Married! So she was married! From the first words I understood that since yesterday I had gone astray. She was not what I had imagined, not in the least an actress, not light… But the persistent homage of my glances, my obstinate search had touched her self-esteem: I had to continue… I exclaimed: –So much impatience! Not being able to bear three days of absence!… It’s passion! You love your husband too much. You are wrong, you will be unhappy… –Oh no! I don’t love him too much; but all alone here, it’s dying! she said with a beautiful southern accent. And then she told me, at length, like a woman to whom the The silence kept for too long has become intolerable, and which overflows, like a child, in all frankness, with an extraordinary confidence, she told me that she had been married for a year, that at first she did not love her husband, then that, little by little, he had been so kind, she had begun to love him, and that they traveled a lot, and that they came from Switzerland, and that they were going to leave again… I listened to her; from the way she spoke of this husband, it seemed to me that she was trying to persuade herself that she loved him. And the melancholy expression of her looks, at the table, came back to me. “You are very happy?” I said. “Yet you are sad… I saw it , it is read in your eyes… ” She did not answer. Then I spoke to her in her voice which I found dreamy and exquisite. –I sing when I am alone… –You like to be alone?… –Yes… –To think of your love… “Ah! I have no love!” she cried in a true cry from the heart that I heard, and which authorized me to continue: –So, to dream of the sadness of having no love, and to abandon yourself to the sweetness of hoping for one? –Oh no! Since I love my husband… she said, naively. She had no love, and she loved her husband, that meant that she had only affection for him. And her sadness was born from the insufficiency of this feeling to fill her heart: it was very simple. –Are you waiting for a great love? I said in a penetrating tone. –Why? My husband is good, and he is very good, you will see. –Yes. But he is your husband… –And why change? To find worse? –Exactly. One does not change to find better. We change for the sake of change. It’s so monotonous to be married!… That wasn’t so bad for a younger brother! But perhaps this truth frightened her a little. The conversation was falling apart. However, oh simple little woman who was near me in the shadows, and with whom I had just had a conversation at once banal and delightful like any dialogue between strangers, I already knew you completely! I don’t know how, later on, I spoke of reading her palm. She had an impulse: “Ah! You could tell me my future!” which, definitively, fixed me. A child who was waiting for something to appear in her life… Yes, she was ready for the adventure. How deplorable it was to have only two days! It would have been enough to bend down to pick her up. Naive, young, sentimental! Poor little heart!… My God! the foolish husband who left her all alone! I said goodnight to her and withdrew. The handsome man, who had been pacing back and forth watching us throughout our conversation, rushed over at once. But she did not stay long: for I had scarcely entered my room when I heard her footsteps in the corridor; I went out to greet her: she gave me a curt bow, quickly entered her room and locked the door. Apparently there was no trust , she was afraid that I might abuse the situation, she wanted to cut short any attempt. “How distressing!” I said to myself with my page-like ardor. “Everything is admirably arranged for a charming night. And we will have to give it up!… This is a brand-new woman; she can hardly be taken in in two hours; she is a little shy: it would take at least eight days. Distressing!…” Another woman, a woman with no experience, would not have failed to take advantage of the favorable and unusual arrangement of our rooms; This provided the opportunity for a unique adventure, one of those dreamed-of adventures that leave no trace. To meet in this solitude, far from everything, where one is unknown to everyone, with a boy who is neither too ugly nor too stupid (oh the conceit of twenty-year-olds!), to have him as a neighbor, at night simply to open the interior door of one’s room, and not to be suspected by anyone!… And the next day, to resume one’s journey, with the memory of a beautiful night, more beautiful without doubt, unforgettable because of the marvelous landscapes in the midst of which the memory had to place her… Why didn’t I have such a woman as a neighbor! A woman who would have appreciated the exceptional value of circumstances! It was with a woman of this kind that yesterday I was convinced I was dealing, an actress, I thought, and on that my project had arisen. But instead of a light and skillful person, I found myself in the presence of a true, sentimental nature, and in a psychological crisis. I discerned well all that I gained from it–not for my night however (and even, deep down, did I gain, since I had no time to enjoy anything?). Well, too bad. Too bad, because she was charming. What frankness! What truth! I thought back to our conversation. Obviously abandonment, boredom, had opened her heart, had disposed her to confidences… Her silence when I had just said a sentence about love! By chance, having come across the thought that nourished this life… She was thinking about love, without consenting to admit it to herself, she was waiting for it, nothing could be more exact and more interesting for her than my reflections on her own taste for solitude, on her waiting, on the feeling that was deep within her… Barely knowing her, it happened that I had immediately expressed her whole secret, that I had guessed her; I was certain of it, it had struck her; and this naive and dreamy soul would be interested in me because she felt understood. Delicious. But she would have to leave, the day after tomorrow! I had put on my slippers. I walked back and forth silently, thinking, by the sad light of my candle. On the other side of this partition, there was an exquisite woman, she was alone, I had just been talking with her all evening, and to think that it would be so easy, so easy—a door to open—and so safe! I would stay there all alone on this side, when on the other side… No, it was an idea to which I could not submit… my head was heated. It was because I was in love with her, with my pretty ingénue! What hair!—the abundant hair of a passionate creature! What a mouth, what languid eyes, and that body! Exquisite, elongated, supple and flexible like a liana… Adorable! I pressed my ear to the wall. I heard her moving! I heard those thousand mysterious sounds of an existence so close at hand: rustling of fabric, gestures, chairs being pushed, footsteps… What was she doing? She must have been undressing, she was probably in a petticoat and corset, and I saw her, her arms bare, her neck bare, her hair on her shoulders. Oh! Open up! Take her in my arms! But I would never have dared. And if I had decided to, what would she have done? She would have screamed, would have thrown me out. The way she came home just now removed all the doubts I might have had about her virtue. I listened to her… I heard her go to bed, I heard her blow out her light. And I pictured her in bed, her pretty body stretched out under the sheets… Chapter 4. The next day, I got up at six o’clock. I had slept very badly. I opened the shutters: wonderful weather; my room, facing east, was filled with sunlight; the walls, the parquet floor, the varnished fir ceiling shone brightly. It was cool; However, I sat at the window and looked at the mountains while smoking a cigarette. How beautiful it was, and, if she wanted, my neighbor, what a day we would spend! But I also thought, gloomy, that tomorrow evening I had an appointment in Modane! I began my toilette, which lasted a good hour and which I did with particular care. Who knows what will happen today? I thought, and for a long time I splashed myself in the cold water. Then I looked at the young sun, and in the morning the sky clear as crystal. How early I had gotten up! I heard nothing moving in the chalet… I would have gladly gone down, what I saw outside attracted me, but I could not bring myself to do it: here, I was near her, she was there, stretched out in her bed, behind this partition; as soon as she stirred, I would hear her, she was there–there! and this thought in my imagination was sharpened by all my desires, by all my hope, and gave me a disturbance that I preferred to the pleasure of wandering in the most beautiful of landscapes. I had pulled my communicating door which had creaked as it opened, and I trembled lest she had heard: why so much timidity? I loved then?… I listened, separated from her room only by the thickness of her own door. And I heard her breathing, it was as if I had been in her house, I heard her breathing! She was there… Lying down!… She was breathing… Oh! if I opened, if I opened the door!… And I remained, ear pressed, listening, my eyes haggard! How long ? I don’t know. She was asleep, I heard her regular breathing. Then she gave a deep sigh and she stirred in her bed; I understood that she was awake. I wanted to speak to her, but I was afraid of displeasing her by suddenly, immediately recalling myself to her thoughts, and also that she would be embarrassed by the idea that I was so close to her, that I heard her so well, that I was so involved in the intimacy of her existence. So I remained still and silent, and I continued to spy passionately on her life. The chambermaid entered. I heard a dialogue, and the still sleepy and as if broken voice of the mistress who said to open the shutters, then who admired the beautiful sun and who ordered the tea tray to be placed on her bed. The chambermaid left. Then I grew bolder; now that she had regained consciousness of things and her dreams of the night were far away, I could remember myself to her in all my imperfect reality. “Good morning!” I said. “Did you sleep well? ” “Oh! But where are you? You frightened me. It’s as if you were talking in my room. So you opened your door? Yes, I opened it to be closer to you. And what good does that do you? As if I were with you, in your house… I’ve been up for two hours… And what were you doing? I didn’t hear you! I was listening to you sleeping. Am I snoring then? No. On the contrary, I was listening to your pure breathing like a child’s, and I adored you like a child. It was charming, this dialogue through the door. I imagined him in his bed, the sheet half thrown back, his shirt half-open, his beautiful hair undone, his large eyes looking at the place where my voice was coming from, and listening and answering me. I continued: Do you know that the weather is miraculous? You must get up. What for? “To come and walk with you… ” “Oh no! I feel so good here, so good!” she murmured lazily. And I thought she was stretching, I saw in myself her pretty gesture, and I still had a furious desire to break down the door. But I restrained myself, and I made my caressing speech to beg her to get up. “Ah! the lazy girl! It’s a shame to stay in bed in such beautiful sunshine. Would you like me to go to your house? I would help you get up, I would dress you, you would see what an attentive maid I would be. Oh! my joy to untangle your hair! How well I would know how to lace your laces! And how humbly I would throw myself at your feet, to put on your shoes!… ” “You are mad! ” “Yes, mad, horribly mad… If you think it’s not enough to drive one mad to spend the night so close to you! ” “Will you be quiet! ” “Well!” Get up! Get up! Let’s go for a walk… –Ah! no, for example! To walk with you!… My God, that would cause a fine scandal!… –Let them talk. Come. –First of all, I’m not up. By the time I get up, and then get dressed, I won’t be ready much before noon. –Come on then… All it takes is a little courage. Come on, one, two and three: up!… Are you up? –No. –I’ll come in! I’ll come in and drag you out of bed. –Oh! –Doesn’t it move you, this beautiful blue sky that you see from your sheets? Doesn’t that make you want to go out, to walk, to sing, to live?… Finally I heard her get up. Then she went into her room humming. What she was humming, ah! how sweet and how dreamy it was! I listened to her with bated breath, I was moved. I would have liked to kiss her on the mouth, on her mouth from which gushed such a limpid soul. However, she was worried about not hearing me move and about my silence. She would stop: “What are you doing?” she would say suddenly. “Nothing. I’m listening to you.” But feeling me there, crouching in a corner, invisible and on the lookout, it made her feel uneasy. She no longer dared to move, she no longer dared to sing, she no longer dared to wash herself. She was no longer free. She would have liked me to go away, and I understood her. “Listen,” I said, “how long does it take to get dressed? An hour? ” “Yes. ” “Well, I’ll be at the bottom of the road in an hour. ” “Good. ” “Will you come? ” “Yes.” “Surely? ” “Surely.” And I went to lie down in the grass with a book. I wasn’t counting on her coming. It would have been too much. Our conversation this morning seemed to me to be able to be considered already a great step forward in my relationship with her. And reasonably, I shouldn’t go any faster than I had been. But also I thought sadly that tomorrow evening I had an appointment in Modane, that I therefore had only one afternoon, one evening, and one night, and that this time was quite insufficient to get the better of a woman who had never yet had a lover. As I had predicted, she didn’t join me, and I only saw her again at lunchtime. Chapter 5. With what extreme pleasure I saw again her form, her line and her face! Since yesterday they had been so near and so far from me, I heard them, I followed their movements in my mind, but I did not see them! A wall separated me from them. Their presence was evident, I knew it, but I could not verify it. I was facing a dream, a play of my thoughts… whereas, now, _she_ was there, before me, she, in her form and in her appearance, she in all her reality, and my eyes touched her beautiful eyes, and my hand sensually clasped her hand.
Ah! how delicious she was indeed, the fine and supple child, and how right it was that she should have been the object, this night and this morning, of my passionate preoccupation! I considered her with rapture and I smiled, naturally, happily. She directed her pure, sweet, a little worried and a little sad look at me. After lunch, I sat down apart so as to avoid providing a pretext for the malice of those who crowded onto the terrace. She was reading, I was reading too, and I forced myself not to look at her too much; I supposed that she would stay there for an hour or two, like the day before. But soon, to my great surprise, she suddenly got up and disappeared. I didn’t know what to think. Why this departure? Where was she going? She had gone towards the road. But to walk so early in the morning, when the sun was at its hottest ! I didn’t understand anything, and I was disconcerted. This upset my plans. If I didn’t see her again in the afternoon than I had seen her in the morning, she was lost to me, and it was quite in vain that I would have spent so many sighs. I had to follow her, to catch up with her! Yes, but could I get up behind her and leave in the same direction, under the sly and attentive gaze of all this unoccupied company! That would have clearly compromised her. I had to wait. And with each passing second, she moved further away, I risked more of not finding her. I thought about this, apparently indifferent to everything, without moving and with my nose in my book, but biting my lips with impatience. I forced myself to wait ten minutes. Then, nonchalantly, I got up, standing I considered the company for a few moments, without haste and with a vacant eye; finally, I set off with a languid step. But as soon as I was no longer in sight, I straightened up, I rushed forward… I looked in all directions. I saw nothing. Down below, at the place where the road joins the mountain and runs alongside it, it could have turned right or left. This was serious. If I continued in the wrong direction, I would spend irritating hours searching for it endlessly, stupidly, and naturally without any chance of finding it. But how could I decide? How had it decided itself? For what reasons? I did not know and it was impossible for me, with the best reasoning in the world, to discover it. I was very perplexed, and I found nothing that would make me decide to go one way rather than the other… I fortunately noticed, some distance to the left, two stone breakers; I approached them and asked them if they had not seen a young woman pass by. They thought: no, I hadn’t seen anything. So she had turned right. I set off across the grass at a gallop, leaping over streams, crossing clods and holes, light, filled with the hope of catching up with her. But I saw only the mountain, where everything melted into an immense light… Finally, over there, over there, on a hillock, I thought I could make out a black dot moving. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, or even if it was a human being. But I was sure, however, it was her; my intoxicated heart told me so, and I redoubled my run. I ran and ran, unaware of the burning air. Soon I gave a cry of triumph, flooded with an enormous and simple joy, like Pan when he sees that he has finally won Syrinx, the little nymph. I had just recognized the pink color of her veil; it was indeed her! Now I climbed, often slipping on the dry grass , bent double, ardent and stubborn. She was up there: I climbed towards her.
And as I rose, I dominated more things, the landscape became grander and more beautiful and my soul happier. I approached, I saw her now entirely, walking in the light, infinitely graceful. At the moment of approaching her, a fear seized me, and I stopped. What reception would she give me? Wouldn’t she be angry with me for having pursued her? If she had left in this way, after lunch, suddenly and as if fiercely, wasn’t it because she wanted solitude? Wouldn’t I disturb her, upset her? Immediately after the feeling of victory I had experienced, a reaction took place, I trembled now, I dreaded her coldness. I was uncertain: would she be angry at my pursuit or , on the contrary, did she desire it deep down? But when she saw me , her face lit up. Before me, she was standing, tall, slender, bold, similar, with her pretty face of pure lines, like some Diana. The walk had awakened in her all her life: her delicate flesh was colored, one could feel a beautiful red and noble blood running under the skin and singing, it was like a fertile countryside irrigated by a perfect network of fountains; she breathed deeply, with a fullness of admirable health; her eye had come alive… How beautiful she was, under the illumination of the sky, standing on a green eminence in the middle of the grandiose motionless landscape! She wore an iron-grey velvet dress of a somewhat cavalier cut, which lent her a charmingly fanciful tone. Her pink veil fluttered. She leaned on a tall mountain cane, and in her free hand she held a bouquet of flowers she had picked. A ravishing vision, one of the truest poetry. A perfume enveloped her, which I absorbed with delight. And her mouth, her ardent eyes , the movement of her breast, and this moment of apotheosis, and the splendor of this place intoxicated me. I contemplated her, I drank her in. I offered to show her the place where I had found some edelweiss yesterday. She walked ahead of me for a moment, and I discovered her heavy tawny hair twisted at the nape of her neck in sumptuous twists. “I have never seen such beautiful hair,” I said with admiration. She gave a little laugh in which pleasure and incredulity mingled. “Ah! really!” she said. My wish this morning was granted, my neighbor had wished: we were going to spend a wonderful day. She was alone with me in a marvelous country, and I felt her happy. A radiant sun bathed the entire tormented surface of the pass, the mountains fled towards the sky, opposite we saw a waterfall descending the rocks, shining like a silver line, below the white road that flowed and, in the distance, the dark opening of the gorge where the Romanche disappeared. She walked in front of me, a movement that enchanted me: “Edelweiss: noble and white. Noble and white, like you,” I murmured. We had to go up. I held out my hand, which she took and I pulled gently. I felt her warm flesh against my fingers, I pressed with voluptuous emotion, through this I communicated with her, I was in contact with her nerves, with her thoughts, her heart, her life! “Ah! How I love to hold your hand!” I said to her. “It is warm, it is soft. I touch you… I feel you…” From time to time, she stopped, tired. A step higher than her, I stopped and looked at her: “Is it still very far?” she asked, raising her eyes to mine.
“We are arriving,” I replied. I would have liked this ascent to last forever; what a pleasure to draw her along behind me!… But we had reached a place where the grass was thinning. The earth appeared, whitened, dry and cracked. I saw a small star of dull velvet radiate on the ground , then we discovered others. We began to gather them: “Edelweiss! Edelweiss!” cried my friend. “I would have picked those myself!” She bent down, agile; I brought her what I found. We uttered exclamations when a flower more beautiful than the others appeared . Meanwhile, while gleaning, we had climbed up to a plateau formed by the top of a fairly high mound. There, the grass was becoming bushy again, and from below it was no longer possible to see each other. I very much wanted us to sit down. In making bouquets, in climbing, I had only the joy of being with her, and not that of speaking to her and hearing her speak to me; I would have liked to speak tenderly , to express the sweetness with which my heart was full; expressing sweetness leads to making it: I was suffocating with suppressed kisses. There, sitting in the grass, divinely alone, in the midst of admirable nature and under a splendid sky, if I had felt her listening to me, little by little yielding to me, finally abandoning herself, paradise would have opened up! It was a moment of perfect happiness… And what can one, at twenty years of age, ask of life better than the moment when a beautiful creature whom one desires with all one’s strength feels penetrated by the same fever that possesses you and gives herself with a transport equal to yours?… Without doubt such a new love was not deep, it was even without doubt only a lively appetite of my senses. What does it matter! A kiss from her at that moment would have fulfilled me as much as that of a woman for whom I had sighed for years. If my desire had been born recently, it was born adult; This nocturnal proximity had exasperated him… And now, nothing but her existed for me any more, I was intoxicated, I had forgotten everything, I had an immense love and would have felt, had it been shared, an immense happiness. But my companion guessed the danger. She did not consent to sit here, far from all eyes. She was wary of me and perhaps of herself too ; she too, the sun had intoxicated her, dazzled her, she felt weak and happy, and she was afraid. Not being sure of herself, she preferred not to be tempted; playing with fire now seemed imprudent to her, I saw it well, I had in vain begged her: “No,” she said, “no, let’s go.” “Well! go,” I told her. “I’ll stay,” and I sat down. “Good!” she replied. She made as if to move away. I crawled on my knees in front of her and wrapped my arms around her skirt; she pulled away; I got up and took a few steps: “Leave!” I thought, when this plateau was so well placed. We’re going to go back down, be in sight of the road, walk some more, pick edelweiss and no conversation possible…” An idea came to me: “Do you want me to read your hand?” I asked her. “Oh yes!” she cried. “Then we must sit down for a while.” She consented, driven by curiosity. I lay down next to her, took the hand she held out to me and began to feel it, to press it, to caress it, under the pretext that it was useful for my observations. I do not, of course, possess palmistry, but I think that with a little invention anyone can remedy the deficiency of this science. So I felt, very pleasantly for me, my lady’s hand, I even put my lips to it. But then she withdrew quickly, and I felt her ready to get up: “Be serious,” she said. She added: “I see that you don’t know how to read palms at all. ” “Don’t be mistaken,” I cried; “I’ll tell you your whole future: but first, let’s start with your character and your past.” I then told her that she was very good and very frank, then I saw in her lines that she was very sensual, which shocked her, but she didn’t deny it. She only said very quickly and a little red: “And then?” I ventured that she had no will. This was not very clever apparently, because lack of will can count as a fault, and it was obviously necessary to find none in her. But if I put this forward, it was to enlighten myself. She would have had no will and would have known it, with her frankness she admitted: “That is true.” Now, sensual and without will, she was mine. I was very Machiavellian at twenty. But she claimed to possess energy, on the contrary. And I had committed a double fault since I had supposed a defect in her, which hurt her, and I had been mistaken, which took away her faith in my science. I did not stop and I immediately began her past and her present, as I had understood them last night. I assured her that, as she had told me, I saw very clearly in her hand that she had married her husband without loving him, but that I also saw there that she did not yet love him, while wanting to believe that she did. “You have more affection for him than love, I can see it, see this line,” I told her. “It is clear.” She replied: “Yes, that is true.” And she dreamed. I could formulate predictions that agreed with her reverie. After a good moment of attention devoted to untangling the tangle of lines, I advanced with a serious and hesitant air that she was going to have a great love, soon. She was all ears. I redoubled my gravity and was able, by making her bend her fingers, to discover that it would be for a young dark-haired man. She looked at me shyly. “Is that you you mean?…” “Oh me! I’m brown-haired,” I replied. I really wanted to kiss her. For a moment, she was on her knees before me, her lips at the level of mine: I had only to bend down; but I looked into her eyes and saw that if I rushed her, everything would be over. She was as simple as a child, at once trusting and fierce. I felt her soul at that moment completely open, but I felt at the same time that the slightest thing would make it close forever, that it was as easy to lose her as to win her, that extreme precaution was necessary. So I did not kiss her, and the fact that I had conquered my desire, which she had noticed, increased her tranquility and her pleasure in being with me. We went back down. Now we followed a level path and walked side by side. I risked putting my arm through hers, she did not push me away, she was no longer afraid of me. But this mixture of freedom and wildness that was in her put me on thorns; I did not know what I should attempt, how far she would allow it, at what moment she would take offense. I was affectionate and very gentle, at the same time bold and timid, and I believe that is how one had to be to conquer her; I had to do nothing that would shock her and at the same time not letting her desire anything that I did not offer her. The trick was knowing how to anticipate her desires and at the same time knowing how not to exceed them. We continued the conversation on what I had revealed to her earlier . She spoke of her husband: she was sure that he loved her, he had given her proof of it. I replied that if he had not adored her, he would have been a savage, for she was adorably pretty and of a charming character. I thus declared my feelings. “All at once then!… It is clear that you do not know me…”, she mocked to hide her satisfaction. We passed near a stream of clear water. I drank from my hand. She wanted to drink too: I joined my two hands together like a cup, I filled them with water and held them out to her: she bent down and put her mouth between my hands. Ah! that gesture! It was as if she had kissed my fingers! And if, taking advantage of this exquisite intimacy, I had taken her in my arms, she would have rebelled, she would have pushed me away with indignation! I felt that she was acting innocently. And that was delicious and irritating. “See,” I said, “I showed you the place where the edelweiss grew.”–“Yes, you were very kind. I thank you very, very much…” And as I looked at her without saying anything: “Can I thank you more?” she asked.–“In words, certainly not…” I said a little sadly.–“Well, I will walk with you again.”–“Alas, I am leaving tomorrow!”–“Since you have been good, I will walk this evening.” Perhaps she saw something in my eyes, for she added: “But, you know, I warn you: if the night inspires bad thoughts in you, if you are not good, I am going away, and you will never see me again… Now let us separate. Let no one see us together.” I lay down in a hole of grass and she moved away. Chapter 6. Obviously, she was perfectly innocent. She was a good little wife, sorry not to love her husband. She would have liked to love him, firstly because, being honest, she believed she ought to, and secondly because, young, tender and sentimental, she needed love. She realized that it was a great misfortune for her not to cherish the man to whom her life was linked. But how could she love him? She tried without succeeding,–and if she never loved him, how could she live?… She was sad. And she was there, all alone… And I had arrived. I had looked at her a lot, with tenderness, with gentleness, with emotion, as perhaps this husband had never known how to look at her or as she had never noticed that he looked at her. She had thought of me…–And I had spoken to her. I had spoken of what was deep inside her, of what was her whole preoccupation… At night she had thought of me again, of what I had said…–And in the morning when she woke, I was still there, very close, I spoke in a caressing way, with a loving voice. Then, in the afternoon, when she had seen me running in the plain, when I had joined her, she had felt happy… She did not mind having me near her, since I knew how to look at her, how to express things that touched her, and since she guessed that I was full of her image. She was happy to find me, affectionate, in this solitude where she sadly imagined herself abandoned by all. And she was flattered and caressed that I was gallant, attentive, and had eyes only for her. She said to herself: “It doesn’t matter. He’ll leave soon. It wo n’t have any consequences. – And besides, I’m not doing anything wrong.” And, with a restrained intoxication and desire, she leaned towards possible love, and since she was not to feed on it, she deceived her hunger by looking at it. I distinguished this feeling. But I also understood that she was passionate, that at the end of three days or eight, she would be caught up in her game, that she was defenseless, having a profound need to love, that I pleased her and that if I wanted, she would love me. madly,–that I had only to stay here, to make love shimmer before her eyes, to woo her in the same way I had begun, and that she would fall into my arms. I understood that deep down , and by repudiating him with all her honesty, with all her heart, she was calling for a lover, that this admirable woman,–natural, dreamy and melancholy,–full of life,–with the hair, eyes and lips of a lover,–secretly asked her God for the one in whose arms she would finally twist, she would weep, she would cry out, that she had arrived at the moment when an ardent soul wants nothing more than to adore or die. Tonight, I would not have her. If I knew how to move her, I could embrace her perhaps, kiss her lips? And even then, she was fierce, and for each of the slightest gifts she could consent to, she would have to have been tamed by a great deal of tenderness; she had never tolerated familiarity except from her husband, I was sure of it: there was in her a sense of her own dignity and that of the sanctity of love. Love seemed to her something so beautiful and so elevated that nothing could have made her agree to tarnish the idea of it in herself, and she would never have given herself over to a base and incomplete representation of it. She would have given herself only to a being by whom she believed herself certain to be loved and whom she herself had loved entirely. She was too pure to want anything other than all love, a total exchange of heart and flesh, a perfect gift. Tonight, then, I would not have it. But let me continue tomorrow, let me pursue, one day I will possess her and it will be a superb love. I saw that … Then I said to myself: “Tomorrow, I have an appointment at eight o’clock in the evening in Modane with Lionel, my friend. Our trip has been decided for a year. We prepared for it at length this winter. Lionel, yesterday, set off… He left Paris: it is as if I had left Le Lautaret myself. My journey has begun, I can no longer think of putting it off, of putting it off. Lionel gone, I cannot not join him. I must be with him tomorrow evening at eight o’clock. It is fate. Something greater than my will opposes my staying here, my giving myself to this love.” And painfully I dreamed, for I, too, a sentimental child, needed to love. And to feel Love there, so close and ready. And to leave! And to think: “I am leaving here what perhaps I will never find again.” Chapter 7. I left my grass-lined hole and returned to the hospice. I went up to my room… She was in hers, singing softly… What could she be doing? I couldn’t guess. She wasn’t moving and she was singing sadly, softly, in a slow voice… I felt her absorbed… What was she thinking? What was she looking at? Her delicious voice was meditative and tender, like those voices of mothers who hum while contemplating the child they are rocking. All her pain, her innocence, her simple and profound soul overflowed from her song. And I, on the other side of the partition, in my room, listened… A sadness like hers gripped me. I let my gaze wander over the majestic landscape framed by my window. I listened to that melancholy voice saddening the silence and I thought desperately: “Tomorrow I will be far away! Tomorrow it will be a thing of the past !…” Meanwhile, the day faded. Her voice fell silent and her immobility persisted. She did not move, I heard nothing, and yet I knew she was there. Like her, I made no movement. We were sitting each on one side of the wall, both in the shadows and thinking. Very close to each other, and without seeing each other and thinking of each other… During dinner, I looked at her, but it was no longer with my audacious eyes of the day before, it was with infinite sweetness, with an air of tender sorrow, and she responded to my glances with an expression so frank and so exquisite with regret and caress that each time my soul threw itself at her feet. Her eyelids were a little red; certainly In the twilight and silence of her room, she had wept. This thought transported me and made a thousand times more bitter the idea that this dinner was the last I would have in her presence, the idea that I was going to be separated from her. When we got up from the table, I immediately went out in front of the terrace, onto the square, counting that she would come and join me and that we would go for a walk, as she had said. I paced up and down and waited for her, but she did not appear. I returned to the vestibule of the hospice to see what was holding her back. She was there, talking with the innkeeper’s young daughter; I showed myself to her, but she pretended not to see me and continued her conversation. Thinking that she would free herself and that she would arrive, I returned to the terrace. But no, she remained there. I wondered then what had made her give up her plan, and thinking back to the intimate way she looked at me during dinner, and to her tender song before, to her silence, to her probable tears, I said to myself: “I please her and she is wary of her inclination, she is afraid of finding herself alone in the night with a man for whom she feels a taste and who will leave her tomorrow! She is weak, she is sad, she is afraid that my own sadness will whisper to me words that penetrate her too deeply. She has the feeling that she is now helpless against love, and she no longer wants to risk provoking it.” I thought back to her song and I was convinced that it was the idea of my departure that had made this slow and tender voice rise from the depths of her heart. Yes, what was she dreaming of, if not of me, or at least of the Love that today I represented in her eyes and that she had desired so earnestly? It was Love that she looked at, contemplated, that she rocked with her sweet song; for Love was her child, she carried him in her bosom, she nourished him with her thoughts and her life, and now like a mother for her little one, she thought for him of the future, of the mysterious future… Her reverie absorbed her and had made her cry, because it seemed to her today, confusing me with Love, that my departure was forever that of Love. … I saw her suddenly come down from the terrace, cross quickly, and enter the chalet. This action confused me, but by ruminating on it a little, I found in it the confirmation of what I presumed. My friend had obviously wanted to avoid me; and why?–because she was afraid, if I met her, that she would not be able to put off this walk with me which, on reflection, she no longer wanted to undertake, and she had preferred to flee all explanation, for one does not know where explanations lead you… I walked in the darkness, savoring the intoxicating and despairing juice of a victory from which I could not profit. The night was beautiful, I looked at it with the pain of a wounded soul. I thought that it could have been supremely happy; that other nights following that one and that the days could have poured a divine radiance into my existence, that fate did not want it, that it held me by the hand and that it was withdrawing me from here where happiness was… But I could not stay outside long since she was not there. I went back up to my room, and, when I had lit the light, I opened my connecting door and knocked gently on hers. At first, she did n’t answer, she walked back and forth in her room, she had probably decided not to hear me. I knocked and knocked. Then I whispered: “Tell me?…” She still seemed not to be paying attention: “Listen, come here, I must speak to you,” I said. She approached the door quietly, and without answering me, she listened: “You haven’t kept your promise, I waited for you, you didn’t come, that ‘s not nice… I thought I liked you a little, but no, I was wrong, you were making fun of me… I’m going to leave tomorrow, very sad… you’ve made me sad. You told me you would come, and it wasn’t true…” Then, behind the door, she cried out in spite of herself: “But it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t necessary !–Why?–It wasn’t necessary, she repeated. “You are wicked, ” I affirmed, as if I didn’t understand her. “Do you want me to take away a bad memory of you?”–Oh no! she cried.–Why didn’t you come?” She didn’t answer. “Oh! I want to speak to you,” I continued. “Do you want me to speak to you?”–Yes.–We can’t talk through this door; open it for me.–No, no, she said in a weak voice.–Open it.–You mustn’t .–Open it! I beg you, open it!–You wouldn’t be wise.–Yes! I promise you! Open it!…” My God, she opened the door! I was in her house! What struck me immediately was that she was in a negligee, she had no corset, she was in a petticoat and her hair was half undone, and I saw her bed, there, the cover open. Then I lost my mind; this situation panicked me. She had opened her door to me at night, when I was convinced she wouldn’t; if she had been afraid to come for a walk with me, how much more should she have been afraid of receiving me in her room; and she had let me in! This fact ruined my presumptions: either it was completely illogical, or else I had been totally mistaken about her; and it was this last hypothesis that I adopted. Yes, I had gotten carried away on a false trail; I hadn’t understood anything, it was obvious. A woman who receives you at home , at night, in a negligee, that, in all the countries of the world, has only one meaning. So my imagination had played another trick on me; all day long I had been seeing things the wrong way and behaving ridiculously, she must have thought me very naive! I had swallowed everything she told me, and to each of her words, to each of her gestures, I had attributed an erroneous meaning; but I was a visionary! Come now, it was as clear as day, this woman… I had been blind, I had had faith against all evidence: her solitude here, the way she responded to my glances, the ease with which she had spoken to me, her walk with me today, it was clear. The scales were falling from my eyes: I saw. So, she was quite simply easy! I was hurling myself from a dream into reality, I was losing an exquisite illusion, and I was cruelly humiliated. Finally, I comforted myself by contemplating the present: to hell with nonsense! She is adorably pretty, what does it matter to me after all whether she has a passion for me or a whim? What does it matter to me whether she is honest, or not? That takes nothing away from, nor adds anything to her real charm, to her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her body. She is delightful and I please her; I am going to spend a beautiful night in beautiful arms. And tomorrow I will leave less sad than if I had left here the possibility of a true love. That is good. That is perfect. That is the train of thoughts that crowded into my head in a minute, as soon as I entered. It does not matter, I was dizzy by the sudden collapse of the idea on which I had lived for two days, and I could not find a word. I examined around me with a wild eye and I wondered if I was dreaming. I was sitting near her. I looked at her. Yet she did not look like love, she was tired, she passed a weary hand over her forehead: “Ah! How my head hurts!” she said. Then, surprised by my silence, she murmured: “Well! Is that all you tell me?” I was anxious. What did that mean? Was she completely innocent?… But no, she knew perfectly well what she was doing: she recommended me to speak quietly, we must not be overheard: she understood perfectly well that it was serious that I was in her room at this hour, and that she should be ignored.–But, all the same, I doubted. Ah! the answer, the answer to this riddle?… And yet, it was not possible, she did not receive me now to talk. It was something else that she expected from me, undressed, her bed open. And by staying there without risking anything, I continued my role as a fool. I felt uneasy: “If she’s waiting for me to kiss her, I’m stupid not to understand and to delay, but on the contrary, what if that’s not what she’s waiting for?…” Now she was standing against the bed. Ah! It was too tempting, and then it couldn’t last!… I got up, suddenly I embraced her, trying to lay her on the bed and seeking her mouth. She had been surprised at first. But now she was struggling, pushing me away furiously. We struggled, trying not to make a sound so that we wouldn’t be heard from the corridor . There was something tragic in this silent struggle. Finally, faced with her desperate resistance, I understood with sadness and shame that I had made a mistake: I opened my arms. She sat up. She was quivering, haughty and irritated: “Ah! What have you just done, sir?” she said in a trembling voice, “you are mistaken, I am not a girl!” I grasped my fault, I fell to my knees: “Forgive me,” and I tried to take her hand. “Don’t touch me , go away, go away!” she cried. She was full of contempt, she was beautiful and innocent: “I trusted your word,” she said. Then she said: “What has just happened! Ah! I am disgusted with myself!” I got up, I felt that no words would excuse me, I stepped back to the door, I went back into my room, murmuring mechanically: “Forgive me, forgive me,” and she closed it. I heard her furious gesture as she pushed the bolt, and the sigh of deliverance she exhaled, when at last, after having run the greatest danger, she found herself alone! I found myself at home, stupefied and heartbroken. The whole scene had happened so quickly! I was disturbed to the utmost. Sitting on my bed, I stared ahead in the darkness, and my head was in disarray. Finally, I undressed and went to bed, as quietly as I could. I was ashamed to make her remember my presence, my existence; it was to make her think of me, and I was in despair at what she might think about me. I did not sleep, of course; only, after a while, my exaltation calmed down and I saw clearly in us both. Chapter 8. And master of the disposal, at least in many respects, of the most amiable woman in the world, did you not find me as reserved as today I would be with this execrable Araminte who inspires such violent disgust in me? I do not want to deserve any reward, and I do not want you to believe that you owe me favors for the sole reason that I did not try to wrest them from you, but that at least the effort I made, too cruel not to be the work of the most lively passion that ever existed, proves to you the truth of my feelings. (CRÉBILLON fils, _La Nuit et le Moment_). What was intolerable to me was the thought that I had hurt her, that I had destroyed the dream she had already built about me, that now, behind this wall, she was suffering, she was lamenting, she was saying to herself: “So this is the being I was dreaming of!” I could not bear the idea of her contempt. I heard her moving, turning in her bed, and I wanted to cry out to her: “Pardon, pardon! No, you were not mistaken, no! I am indeed who you thought I was, I had a moment of madness, but now I understand you, now I love you and I respect you deeply. Oh! I beg you: do not think that I entered your room to do what I did. Do not think that I intended to, that I lied to you, that I deceived you, that I had this duplicity and this dishonesty.” I was sorry. I remembered her words: “Ah! I am disgusted with myself!” And she punished me cruelly. “I am disgusted with myself” meant: I am disgusted with myself who could believe in you, think of you, you who are only a dirty and nobility-less being. I am disgusted with myself who had enough lack of intelligence of heart not to penetrate you, not to see the ugly soul that you have, to commit myself to an individual of your kind… Ah! her contempt! Ah! to think that she despised me, that now she wept over her blindness , that she tore me from her heart and regarded me with repulsion ! … Yes, her contempt pierced my soul, for now, having recognized my error, I understood her innocence, her delicacy, the confidence she had placed in me, and I was infinitely touched. I adored her, she appeared to me a rare creature of whiteness, of naturalness, of beauty. She had let me enter her room with innocence! She believed my word! She did not doubt it for a moment! She could not suppose that I would betray her! This thought moved me to tears.–What she had desired of me, I understood now: it was that I should speak to her as I had told her. What she wanted, since I was leaving tomorrow, was to see me one last time, to have a supreme conversation with me: to tell us everything, at the moment of our separation forever. What she expected was for me to express what must have been in my heart on the eve of leaving her, what made our situation intoxicating and painful, and what was to make our meeting unforgettable. What she expected was emotion, caressing words, and tender consolations, phrases that she could repeat to herself later, when she was alone, phrases of which she would think: “Someone who loved me said them to me, I was not his, I will not be his; he is gone, I love him, and I will never see him again.” This was adorably childish, this was exquisitely sentimental, and it was this, this, that I had not understood. That which, like a soldier, like a lout, I had broken, destroyed, trampled underfoot, without seeing anything! It was this divine flower that I had crushed in my big savage fingers!… Poor little one, poor friend! I could not console myself for the harm I had done her, and I said to myself: “Yet, no, it is not possible, I cannot leave with that, she must forgive me, she must understand, I must explain to her…” and reviewing the scene, dismantling all my feelings from the moment I had crossed her threshold, I did not find myself so guilty. It is true that I had been blinded, that I had gone mad, that I had no longer understood anything, that I had lost consciousness of what she was, of all that I had rightly thought of her. But after all, in my place, who would not have been mistaken, who would not have committed the same mistake? To enter a woman’s house in this way, at this hour!… In short, I knew her very little, so it was natural to ask myself if the opinion I had formed of her was well-founded, and faced with a new fact to rectify my opinion. This fact could really disturb the clear sense that until now I had had of what was happening between us… No, I was not so guilty, and the most subtle, the most delicate would doubtless have acted as I did in my place, such an unforeseen circumstance disconcerts, misleads,–and the most gallant man is not infallible. I examined within myself the moment when I had held her in my arms, and I discovered generosity there. As soon as I realized that I was mistaken, I experienced a complex feeling, I thought: “No, she doesn’t want to. But she is sensual. I can manage to frighten her, her senses can betray her,” and I instinctively sought her mouth to lead her will astray with my kisses. But I had also thought: “Let’s say I have her, there, in this way, cowardly… I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m abandoning here a humiliated woman, who has lost her happiness, who no longer values herself, who will have a secret from her husband, who will no longer dare to look him in the face. I’m sullying a woman’s whole life. I’m making her unhappy.” And at this idea, I had immediately opened my arms. I had clearly seen the crime I was going to commit and I had been horrified by it. No, a thousand times no! I was not guilty as a little head, behind this wall, supposed. I had been honest. I had stopped at time.
And I had to bless heaven that it was with me that this child had been imprudent. How many others, indeed, would not have hesitated! How many others, without reflection, or in a thought of ignoble selfishness, would have blighted this innocent soul!… I had left her free, and she was at my mercy. For she was at my mercy, I was in her room: she was mine; she could not chase me away, she could not call; who would have consented to believe that she had brought me into her home with the intention of refusing me? At that hour! In that costume! All appearances were against her. She had put herself in a situation such that she could only escape by my will. And she knew that her situation was dreadful, she struggled silently, panicked, terrified, in horrible distress… Now, as soon as I noticed her state, I thought only of reassuring her. And I said to myself: “Yes, it is absolutely necessary that tomorrow, before I leave, she agrees to listen to me. I must not leave her with a bad memory, she must understand what I have done, that instead of being guilty, I would be praiseworthy; that a misunderstanding on my part was forced, and that I stopped for pure reasons which prove all my love for her…” Chapter 9. I was up at six o’clock, having slept such a bad sleep that, when I got out of bed, I found myself more tired than when I went in. I got up because I had been awake for a long time and could not bear my inaction and immobility… As yesterday, the weather was fine and the mountains showed themselves in their virginal splendor of the early hours of the morning, enormous, impassive, indifferent to the violent feelings which, in their midst, during the night, had agitated two small human souls. I leaned on my window, and I looked before me, dreaming, letting peace and silence penetrate little by little my tumultuous heart. Soon there remained in me only an immense sadness and an immense sweetness. I felt sorry for her, for myself, for all the poor beings who, during a small space of time, from their birth until their death, move beneath the empty sky, traversed in turn by love and by hate, by pleasure, by suffering, by joy and by pain. I was overwhelmed by the miserable smallness of our condition, discouraged by the vision of our humble lives subject to fate… It was that I loved, was loved, and was about to leave!… But before my departure, I had to restore strength to the feeling I had wounded, I had to rekindle in the heart I loved the little flame that I had first lit, then extinguished. I wanted people to keep a pure memory of me, a memory equal to the one I would keep. I wanted to talk, I wanted to explain myself, and finally our farewells would be the beautiful farewells that were to crown such hours… However, I remained at my window, without making a noise, for I thought that she must have fallen asleep late, and that she was now perhaps in her best sleep. From time to time I pressed my ear to the partition, to try to hear if she was awake. At eight o’clock, I heard her sigh. “Aren’t you asleep?” I said in a timid voice. “No,” she replied. She was talking to me. So she wasn’t completely angry anymore. “How are you this morning?” I continued. “Oh! I’m so sick!… and because of you…” I cried: “Yes! Ah! Forgive me! I’m in despair. I didn’t sleep all night… If you only knew… ” She didn’t reply. Then I declared: “I absolutely must speak to you. Put on a dressing gown. Open the door for me. ” “Open you, ah! Never in my life!… Talk to me, I know that!… What you want to tell me doesn’t interest me,” she replied bitterly. I leaned against the door and said: “Open me, open me, open me. I must speak to you. Open me, open me…” Monotonously with a mechanical insistence. But she no longer answered. For fear of tiring her, of exasperating her with my stubbornness, I kept quiet. However, I heard her get up, get dressed. This morning, alas! she was not singing. I went downstairs. I positioned myself at the door of the chalet, so as to stop her as she came down in turn. When she appeared, I rushed forward. Her drawn features, the look of fatigue on her face, redoubled my remorse and my emotion. I greeted her and held out my hand, which she did not take. “Oh! wicked!” I said. “How so?” she said with disdain. “If I could tell you everything I feel, everything I felt last night…” She looked at me with a skeptical and cold air. I was experiencing the difficulty of making myself understood by her now; her soul had closed itself off. I was sorry. She probably noticed, because she looked at me more gently. I will always remember the brightness of this morning, the beauty of the sky, this pure landscape, me wanting to be listened to, her showing me by her words that she no longer believed in me… “If you hadn’t had to leave today, I would never have spoken to you again,” she said. “Listen to me. Believe me,” I murmured. “Ah! I beg you, don’t be like this. Don’t let me leave you with the thought that you hate me. I swear I don’t deserve it. I swear I understand you now, and that I love and respect you infinitely. ” But how could I further enchant her disenchanted heart? “You are indignant, you are under the influence of the outrage I have done you. Distance yourself from this moment, no longer feel the feeling you once experienced. Stand outside yourself and think with me a little; I beg you, my friend, I beg you.” She shrugged her shoulders. I continued: “Yes, you are as innocent as a child and I seem like a monster to you. But later, one day, when you have experience of men… you will understand me, you will judge me more fairly… you will realize that I acted better than most would have acted…” I turned this idea over and over again, I placed myself at every point of view to take it up and to agitate it before her mind. And in the end she listened to me, she was attentive, she thought. Poor little bird, who had such a great need to believe in me, poor little bird for whom the thought of having been mistaken had been so horrible! I spoke. Little by little, she no longer knew, she no longer remembered, she forgot, she gave herself over to the pleasure of being with me on this beautiful morning, and of hearing herself sigh tender things. And, when at last I said to her: “Forgive me. Tell me that you are reconciled with me,” she cried out with a painful contraction: “Be quiet, be quiet! Don’t make me think of that again!” However, it was ten o’clock, the carriage was ready, it was waiting in front of the hospice; it was the bustle of departure, the boys were loading trunks, parcels… The horses, shaking their heads because of the flies, were ringing their bells… “I cannot leave you yet,” I said. “I have too many things still to tell you. My heart is full. It is early, what have you to do?… Come with me, accompany me for a little… Remember that we are separating forever.” We sat next to each other on a bench behind the coachman. One last time I looked at that terrace, the square, our chalet, and the coach moved off. But it didn’t seem to me that I was leaving yet, since she was still with me. The four horses descended the slope at a full gallop, then we turned left: we were approaching the mountain; the Galibier Pass was up there, 600 meters away, which could be two leagues of winding road. Now we were going at a walking pace. We got out and began to walk behind the coach; there we were alone, out of sight. I was moved. I looked at her charming form, I thought that never again this beloved image would not show itself to my eyes. I began to speak tenderly, with an open heart, from the depths of my being, and, now that I was rid of all desire and all hope, with passionate reason. I don’t know why, I returned again to my attempt of yesterday evening: to be forgiven entirely, no doubt, so that not the slightest cloud against me would remain in this soul. But should I not think that of itself, when I was far from her, she would erase even the smallest suspicion of my fault, and that this very gesture which had so disgusted her would end by charming her?… However, I still excused myself: “For three days, I have not stopped thinking of you… And to be able to embrace you, to hold you in my arms! It was tempting the devil! Besides, as soon as I saw that I displeased you, did I not stop?… Do not be angry with me, my friend, – but take advantage of this emotion. Do not trust anyone and never allow anyone to court you. Be prudent. ” Thus, for her, I clarified like a fabulist the moral of our adventure, and I gave her the wise advice of a friend. I was jealous of her honor and her virtue. Leaving, and no longer able to seduce her, therefore no longer being her enemy, I went over to her side, I took her side, and I wanted to ensure her happiness. I demonstrated to her that apart from fidelity, she would only reap torments and sufferings; that only a regular life could accord with her sincere nature; that nothing would be so painful and dreadful for her as to deceive her husband… The human heart is singular! I was leaving her forever, it was, as for her, to die: I felt a posthumous jealousy… What madness! I was never to see her again, I would not even know if she were alive, and I wanted her to preserve herself for me!… One always wants to possess more than one should possess. Would it not have been reasonable to be content with the delicious memory, which, no doubt, in the midst of all the agitations of existence, she would keep of me in a fold of her memory, as I keep of herself in a fold of mine. Would it not have been enough to say to myself: “I created a dream in that soul; I passed, I sowed, another will reap. I am the awakener. I now figure in the history of her life, for I have placed myself at the very source of the love that she will later have for another. Having awakened you, beautiful soul, I am leaving: farewell. I wish that the one who follows me will be worthy of you!”–No! I wanted her to remain mine… I wanted this seed that I had thrown to never become a flower! I wanted her to have only a dream love and that it would be for me. I wanted to have appeared in her life, disappeared, and from afar, and invisible, and lost, to remain always the king of her heart. But also it is that I loved her in the moment when, both of us, following the carriage that a moment would carry me away alone, we climbed the white road, thinking of our hearts. I loved her infinitely, and I told her so. I described the effect of her charm on me. I repeated that she was divine, that I breathed her like a flower and that I would never forget her. I assured her that she would always remain deep within me as the most adorable vision of my life and that I was hers forever. She listened to me, half doubting, half delighted: “You would find me very foolish if I believed everything you tell me?” she would say. And I would answer her: “But no, because it is all true.” I spoke; she walked by my side, pensive. I said to myself: “It’s true. I am leaving and yet we would have adored each other! With her I am heart to heart. Our two beings are made for each other . I invade her thoughts little by little, little by little she invades mine. She respects herself, she is innocent, she has dignity, honor; she has not yet had love: she has all her value for me. I would have adored her, and I am leaving!” I said to myself, youthfully: “I am leaving. I’m hitting the road again. And for go where? Hadn’t I arrived? Hadn’t I found what we all seek endlessly?… But that is my destiny. I always wander and never settle. When I have begun to be passionately interested in a heart, it must be removed from my life and I must flee. If my wings have finally grown, and if they are about to open, I will break them! I picked up a flat, polished stone and wrote on the surface: _You will remain the most delicious of my memories._ And I gave it to her. — “I will always keep it,” she said. Then she continued: “You: the saddest of my memories. ” — “Does my departure pain you a little?” I asked. — “A great deal.” And she added timidly, lowering her eyes: “I can tell you, since you’re leaving, I would like to be with you for a long, long time…” At these words, I wanted to throw myself on my knees on the road and kiss the hem of her dress. Only then did I know her name. I asked her to engrave it in my thoughts. Her name was Aurélia. She picked small daisies and forget-me-nots, and gave them to me… There was a little snow at the edge of the road, she gathered some, formed a ball of it and held it out to me: Keep it as a souvenir of me. – But it will melt. – Will your memory melt less quickly? she said sadly. And it was with such discreet words that she showed me her emotion. We had arrived at the Galibier Pass. The carriage had stopped, the horses were panting. There, on this summit, stands a small road-mender’s house, with a terrace from which one commands the most marvelous panorama one can see in the world. The sun rolled between the mountains, the glaciers glittered, the admirable snow slept in the light. Over there, over there, in the valley, a torrent stirred with fire. The distant mountains were vaporous… A great distance away, at our feet, in the middle of the meadows of Lautaret, at the edge of a thin white stream, one could distinguish a small, clear square. This dot, as big as a fly, was the chalet where we had lived, where I had heard her sing, where I had heard her live, where I had loved her; I could not take my eyes off it. How many times in the future would my thoughts return to it? How many times would the memory and nostalgia for this love, so short, so pure and so beautiful, in this solitude, far from the world, surrounded by grandiose visions, make my heart bleed?… Finally, I looked back at her. I saw her terribly sad… We were near Italy; they gave us Asti wine. I frothed some in our glasses. “To your happiness,” I said. “To yours,” she replied, trembling. Meanwhile, the coachman cracked his whip. We were about to leave. I silently held Aurélia’s hand in mine. I simply pressed it; then we said goodbye. I got into the carriage, which moved off and entered the Galibier tunnel… I was in the night, I was sinking into it. I turned around and saw, a motionless black dot in the hole of light over there, watching us disappear, Aurélia, Aurélia!… The car came out of the tunnel. We were on the other side of the mountain. A new panorama opened up before our eyes. And we began to descend. _November 1902._ JOURNEY TO FLORENCE _Arrival at night._–We found ourselves in front of the station in the rain, surrounded by kids shouting: Signor! Signor! and coachmen in silk hats who came to pull our sleeves and show us their cabs. These were remarkable because an immense green umbrella sheltered the seat… Then we asked directions from a tram employee whom we took for an officer. It was to go to the Duomo: those of us who had studied the Guide knew that our hotel was located near the Duomo. We boarded a tram, which stopped immediately: the Dome was there… Walls of white and black marble appeared before us; we walked along them with astonishment and suspicion; then we entered a dark street where we discovered the hotel. Everything shone, illuminated, and the doors were hung with a dazzling yellow fabric. Having put down our suitcases, we set off again into the night. Having wandered through the streets and trampled many smooth flagstones with our tired feet, we arrived at the Piazza della Signoria. A bronze horseman, then a fountain, then enormous crenellated walls, then, under a loggia, a marble crowd, successively surprised us. We distinguished extraordinary monuments in the darkness. We said nothing, worried. We dined in a fiaschetteria, where planks all around supported the alignment of innumerable flasks lying on their large bellies. First morning. It’s raining. These enormous palaces, their heavy blocks and the formidable rings fixed to them, their barred windows, finally the gray sky: it’s stifling here. Let’s walk; through there, we arrive at the Arno. God! How dark this city is! We found ourselves under a covered gallery that runs along the river; the gallery is the color of burnt earth, its arcades, as we advance, one after the other, open: then the Old Bridge all laden with small houses, and on the opposite bank ancient walls whose foot is bathed by the Arno, appear and disappear… Then a hill whose bending line is broken by black cypresses. As we left the gallery, a portico appeared which majestically dominated the river. We turned left: we were in a palace courtyard. From there, between the parallel lines of two colonnaded buildings, a fortified tower juts into the sky. We advance, we emerge onto the Piazza della Signoria. And there, in the daylight, is the Palazzo Vecchio, formidable, with its unknown Romanesque and Moorish architecture, a crenellated cube with cabochons dominated by a quadrangular tower. Beside it, the Loggia dei Lanzi, surprising in its grace, and even more so because it is an open-air museum where the poor can come and lie down among the statues on marble benches. Everything is striking here, even the shape of the square, even the way the statues, the fountain, are placed, seemingly at random, and yet in perfect proportion with the whole. For several days, unable to recover from our astonishment, we wandered around Florence. We could not define what we felt. “I walk around as if in a painting,” said one. “I think I am one of those from the Arabian Nights who enters a magical city. It resembles nothing I know, nor anything I imagine.” I am surrounded by very subtle characters. Incredible things are going to happen.” “I have no idea where I am, ” said the third. “This isn’t a city, it’s someone’s property. I always think a servant will appear and ask what I’m doing here.” One imagines oneself in galleries and courtyards of palaces, not in streets. In the square, the statues which, according to ancient custom, are located on the pavement, present to the imagination a mixed idea of the heroic and the familiar. It’s as if someone had taken a marble passer-by and placed him on a pedestal. Here one would find it quite natural to see marble passers-by . And these flagstones, these large flagstones on which one always walks, take us out of the street, into a palace, we people of France who have been accustomed to cobblestones for centuries. In Florence, one has the sensation of walking in a city not public, but private. It would belong to two or three families who would have decorated it for their pleasure. We contemplated the marvelous _Perseus_, then the lion that Donatello placed on the staircase of the Palace. Finally, we became acquainted with this Bandinelli whose soft giants clutter up so many places in Florence.
But the _Perseus_ whose casting cost such great effort at the Benvenuto, here it is!… What the great Florentine wrote about it in his Memoirs comes back to me. The Duke disputed the price that the sculptor asked. “You are letting yourself be blinded by self-interest,” he said. “I will have the statue appraised and I will pay what it is worth.” “How could it be possible for my work to be appraised at what it is worth,” Cellini replied superbly, “when today there is not a single man in Florence capable of doing as much!” And he continued: “If Bronzino had applied himself to sculpture, as well as to painting, perhaps he could have accomplished my task with equal success. Michelangelo Buonarotti, my master, could have made a statue similar to mine in his youth. But now that he is bowing under the weight of years, he would certainly not succeed. I am therefore entitled to believe that today one would not find a single man in the world capable of carrying out such an undertaking.” We were amazed, seized; we dreamed with our eyes open. I remember our ecstasy before everything; it seemed more beautiful than anything we had ever seen before. It was raining, however, but we didn’t feel it. How long did we stay in front of the door of the Baptistery? And under an umbrella!… In the cathedral we witnessed an extraordinary ceremony. In the middle, in an enormous glass cage, a hundred priests moved while singing. A large antiphonary placed on a high lectern, lit by a torch, dominated them. These black forms, violently illuminated by the flames, moved as if at the bottom of water, through the glass. The thunder of their voices rolled under the vaults. Then, in the intervals of silence, we heard, coming from distant chapels, the murmur of the faithful lost in the darkness. _A minstrel._–In the afternoon, we wanted to go to the Boboli Gardens. But in a small square the people had gathered; We approached: it was a minstrel who performed sleight of hand. The nutmeg was passed from one goblet to another, and the handkerchief was hidden away. The man had the face of an antique grotesque, a wide nose and mouth, bold eyes, a stupid laugh; as for his gestures and gait, extraordinary in their agility and feigned clumsiness. Small, with a big belly over which his shirt was dripping, he went from one to the other, briskly, speaking with a dizzying patter, and letting loose at the right moment with jokes that made the gossips, the kids, the boors around him laugh. He was skillful and charmed us. We watched him for so long that when we arrived at the Boboli Gardens, they were closed. The guard, dressed in black and wearing a cocked hat with silver ornaments, looked like a funeral director from our country. But he was full of Italian politeness, and it was with a smile and a nod of the head of a man of the world that he refused the coin that shone in the palm of our hand and with which we wanted to force the order. So we continued on our way. The street was pretty. We saw a dead man being led at a trot to his final resting place. Then a charming garden and a pavilion that looked like a small temple,–in a victoria of young women of free gaiety,–pretty girls at the windows… And then, in ranks, little boys of ten dressed as priests. We left by the Roman gate, we were on the road. Of so many roads that lead to Rome, here is the most direct… The sky, on the horizon, was luminous, and, everywhere else, black. _Pêle-Mêle._–We were lodged behind the Old Palace. What a dark street!… A newspaper vendor had set up his stall on the black wall of the Palace. One could see, as one passed, the large coloring of the _Asino_, and the sentimental engravings of the _Rivista d’Amor_. For him, in a tearful voice, dragging on the last syllable, he announced the _giornale_ and the events of the day… Civil guards circulate in the street whose bicorne with blue pompom, scarf, tunic, infallibly recall our commissioners of the Convention. In Milan, already, the police wore a top hat with wide wings, a vast frock coat and a club, like our former half-pay… And, everywhere, the little soldiers with their two- pointed kepi, their gaiters and their white trousers seem, for one half, soldiers of the Revolution, and for the other half Austrians. Italy thus seems to drag itself limply behind the other nations. It lives behind. But it is the glorious past. How then could it struggle with an America which, behind it, has nothing, which leaps into the field of the world like a foal in the plain, which does not murmur wearily: “Already, by those of my race, everything has been done!” but which cries: “I am young, I am new. It is up to me to live!” Here the dead attach themselves to our feet and pull us back. What one encounters characteristically in Florence, in the street, with these soldiers from other eras, are the two-wheeled carriages, very small, drawn by tiny horses whose lively trot clatters hurriedly on the flagstones. They look like toys like the goat cart on the Champs Elysées. Once, in Vittorio Emanuele Square, I saw a donkey much shorter, certainly less than a good-sized dog, harnessed to a child’s cart in which two people were sitting. The serious air of the coachman and the infinitely rapid knitting of the donkey’s little legs were irresistible. Many of the common men wear big red coats, with enormous collars and muffs of common fur. With their soft hats, they look like shepherds. There is a lot of parking in the street. The parking surprised us and we thought that these people standing there were waiting for something. No, they are not waiting for anything. They are staying there for the sake of it. It is so much in the customs that for officers and young elegant men, fashion dictates to stay for hours in front of the pastry shops frequented by the ladies. You stand there, you do not move, you talk, and during this time, the ladies entering the pastry shop see you. This always makes an hour pass. _The street in Florence._–The street in Florence is a dark passage, bordered by two formidable masses of rough blocks, and onto which open barred windows and massive doors that could only be forced with artillery. The use of cornices that border the roof of each house removes even more daylight from the street. You see the sky like a small stream flowing over your head. And you are oppressed as in an open prison corridor. It rained a lot during our stay, so this impression was even more striking; because of the rain the flagstones of the roadway were black. We saw ourselves again at the time of the civil wars that bloodied the city. We felt we were in a fortified city of men-at-arms; at every turn of the street, we thought we were going to fall into an ambush of Guelphs or Ghibellines. And we wondered anxiously where we could escape in these corridors where all the doors would be closed and where the barred windows destroyed all hope of salvation. A soldier who fell into a group of enemy partisans was sure of his fate; he was there with them as if in a locked dungeon. This painful impression held us; the rain did not stop. One morning, however, the sun came out and we had a few fine days; then, must I say it? I missed the gray sky; the gray sky seemed to me to complete this sad and terrible city. And Florence with sunshine was no longer Florence. _Strolling._–I remember one morning… I was strolling along the Lung Arno, looking at the hills covered in a little mist. This day promised to be beautiful. Stopping in the middle of the bridge, I embraced the morning splendor of the river filled with light. At this radiant spectacle, old emotions, old desires were awakened in my heart, and I rediscovered there with a melancholy pleasure the taste of feelings that are over… It is long before we are old that we must already live with the dead. I had crossed, I was advancing, dreaming, in a distant district, I had the intention of visiting I don’t remember which church. Passing through a small street, I noticed at the foot of a house a sort of lit stove near which two or three scoundrels were standing. One of them took a straw broom placed near the stove, and he began to light it. The others laughed. But a shutter of the house, on the second floor, was pushed open, a woman was heard swearing, and suddenly a bucket of water fell, extinguishing the stove, the broom, and drenching the joker. Then the whole street was nothing but peals of laughter… I went into a tinker’s that morning, and I bought a Florentine lamp with three nozzles. “Tre lire,” the man said. “Due,” I replied. “Tre,” he went on. “Due,” I repeated. “Tre! Tre!” Tre!_» He didn’t budge. I also took with me, however, a small holy water font, which, weary of the war, he abandoned to me. I had been haggling hard ever since a second-hand dealer had let me have ten _soldi_ prints that he had initially counted for five _lire_… But what a pleasure to rummage through all these old things! A piece of old silk, a ring, a snuffbox, it makes so many dreams come true… I think I know all the second-hand shops in Florence!… _Impression._–Nothing makes me dream more than a visit to the museum. Before these paintings, copies of a past reality, I relive dead things, I feel extinguished feelings, inside me I listen like a child to beautiful stories. It is not only the merit of the painter and the beauty of the color and forms that I love in a painting and that make me decide to enter a gallery where old masterpieces are gathered, it is all that it whispers to my soul. I am transported to other times, I see people who loved, who fought, who enjoyed, and who died; a reverie that is sweet to me takes possession of my thoughts… This is the infinite charm of Florence. Florence is only past, you walk there from dream to dream. As one is on a journey, that is to say separated, detached from one’s own life, one no longer knows who one is, where one is, whether it is now or in the past, whether one is alive or in a dream. Whether you stop in a museum, or in a church in front of faded frescoes , it is always somewhere other than here and today that you are, and when you leave, the spell is not broken, because the street is contemporary with the paintings in which a moment ago you were breathing. I cannot express the magic of this stay, everything contributes to it, and the names that one hears: Dante, Donatello, Cellini, Medici… and the landscapes of which, because of our culture and the Latin poets, we believe we recognize the ancient grace, and everything, in short, everything that surrounds us… I remember one morning in the courtyard of the Uffizi. Countless white pigeons paved the ground, fluttering familiarly at our feet. Then, all of them, they flew away, a swift and fleeting cloud of snow; they had landed on the cornices. Finally they returned to land: a great gust of wind enveloped me, because of the beating of so many wings… _Culinary Florence._–In Florence everything is delicious, everything, except the cuisine. At first we endured the pasta and the Chianti with equal courage . Even one of us enjoyed it. “Give me,” he said to the waiter every day, “give me the most Italian you have”; and the _affetato misto_ followed the _lasagna_, and the _testina alla Parmeggiana_ the _affetato misto_. However, some heaviness in the stomach soon warned us: the enthusiasm subsided. Then came anxiety, unease. The sweet and sour wild boar, that is to say, prepared with vinegar and sugar, which was served to us one morning, finally revolted us. Ah! What hands we stretched out towards the sky of France and our dear cuisine, the prettiest, the finest, the lightest in the world! France, oh my country, where all the graces are cultivated, even that of eating with art!… Our friend, however, did not admit defeat. His stomach cried out for mercy, his face was strained, he had dark circles under his eyes and a dark mood. But he continued to support the benefits of this barbaric food. One day finally, unable to take it any longer, wanting to give it up but without admitting it, he used a charming detour: “Give me,” he said to the waiter, “give me something very Italian… that corresponds to the steak…” _The little conversation manual._–_Bottega! Bottega!_ a Frenchman, our neighbor at the table, would say to call the waiter. The waiter looked at him in surprise. “_Bottega!_” No response. “_Bottega! Bottega!_” the waiter did not move. This is because _Bottega_ only means shop. The Frenchman spoke Italian according to his manual, and his manual betrayed him. But the Italians who come to Paris, and who, for their part, speak French according to this manual again, are betrayed in the same way. To what language does this little Franco-Italian manual remain faithful? Here is a dialogue from our “stagecoach”: –Please, gentlemen, a little space. –You are trampling on my feet. –You are damaging my hat. –Don’t sit on my knees. –Ah! you are suffocating me. –I beg your pardon a thousand times. –Allow me to cross my legs. –Straighten out your right leg. –Withdraw your left arm. –Am I still in your way? –I cannot go backwards without feeling ill. –For me, it makes no difference whether I go forward or backward… You will also certainly enjoy this conversation with the hairdresser: –Quickly give me the dressing gown and a towel. –Ah! you stuck the brush in my mouth. –You opened it when I least expected it. –Bleeding is coming out,–you shaved me against the grain. –I only cut off a small pimple. –Doesn’t the mustache seem too long to you? –And the sideburns. –Do you want to curl your hair? –No. It curls naturally. This “No. It curls naturally” in French is perhaps also a word of character. _Of Michelangelo._–All of Michelangelo is in the Medici Chapel. The famous Thinker, Lorenzo armed and reflecting, with his heroic attitude and his costume, seems to me a complete expression of this genius. Genius outside of life, and at the same time full of it. Theater, but neither tragedy nor drama, more like opera. With, moreover, a striking Italian character. His heroes do not live like men, but like statues; Michelangelo is the type of the sculptor more than that of the artist; he is not the one who in the street will stop, seized by religious emotion, before a woman carrying a child or before any penetrating scene. He is not moved by the psychological and profound significance of the details of life. What he sees in each feeling is its sculptural, ornamental, architectural aspect. Thus each feeling becomes abstract for him, and he represents it as an abstraction instead of grasping it in life itself. Michelangelo does not feel his subjects as men, but as sculptors. All life in his eyes is sculpture. The kinship of Hugo with Michelangelo is visible. Both were dark geniuses, and who at bottom did not love life, or rather did not love. One felt the sculptural moment of life, the other the verbal moment, they were not moved by life itself. Before the creations of Michelangelo, I inevitably think of the characters in Les Misérables, formidable and simple. O less great, O delicious, human Donatello! His house. The house where Michelangelo lived is on the Via Ghibellina. On our way there, we noticed, hanging against the windows of a small shop, dolls whose shape, clothing and face were very naive. It was an old man, with clear blue eyes, who made them with rags; in a corner there was a straw mattress, no doubt he slept there. It seemed nice to me, going to Michelangelo’s, to meet this ingenuous creator… What is moving in the house is the study where he worked. A door hidden in a wood paneling, impossible to guess, gives access to it. As big as a wardrobe: one meter by two; a board fixed to the partition, a stepladder. The idea of this genius hidden in the wall gives a shiver; one came and went through the house, without suspecting him, and he, silently, mysteriously, invisible to all, meditated. One suspected nothing, and behind the woodwork, in the wall, there was a hidden man, motionless and meditating tremendously. This is indeed in the genius of Michelangelo. It is of a furious restraint, of a desire for solitude and an incredible withdrawal.–This extraordinary cabinet reminded me–perhaps because it is the opposite, but fraternally–of that of Father Hugo in Guernsey: on the top of a house a glass cage in the middle of the sky and the sea. … One circulates through the rooms. In one of them manuscripts, drawings, by the hand of Michelangelo have been preserved under glass cases. We also see plans of houses. This is what stopped me the most; on one plan all the rooms are indicated, even the kitchen. It was Michelangelo who on this poor piece of paper wrote this little note: _cucina!_ _In the Boboli Gardens._–Our first walk in the Boboli Gardens was charming. It was raining, the smell of wet earth was exhaled from the ground where we walked, a great sadness was spread over things; trees with fine, gently yellowing foliage received the rain. We wandered in the deserted paths, silently looking at the statues, the arbors and the groves… Above the amphitheater, a woman in a grand princess costume, motionless on a pedestal, dominates the sad landscape. We went down an avenue of cypresses and, through a door whose two jambs are decorated with columns supporting the image of leaping goats, we reached a small circular pool. It is bordered by trees whose branches, cut into niches, shelter rustic figures; in the center of the basin, a small island has been drawn; a marble horseman crosses the water. All of this is perfectly melancholic; the sky full of ashes, the sound of water drops on the leaves, the solitude… Rain in gardens enchants me. In the Boboli Gardens there is a grotto in the most ravishingly bad taste. Figures that seem to emerge from the pink rockery and blend in with it, adorn the wall: they are shepherds and their sheep, an old hermit, women; all, like the sheep, are covered in stone wool, you have to guess them. At the four corners of the grotto, torsos carved by Michelangelo appear. A fountain in the middle murmurs, and in a glass ball through which the water flows, three smaller balls are perpetually agitated. At the back, in the second grotto, a naked woman emerges from a basin. Clinging to it, satyrs with violent faces look at the naked woman. _Angelico._– Our poor human nature is constantly balanced between two extremes, in each of which in turn it thinks it encounters the sovereign good. One day, it is voluptuousness that attracts me and in which I believe I will find happiness; the next day a life of wisdom, of reason, regulated and austere, appears to me the most beautiful and the most desirable. It is this perpetual contradiction, with its opposing impulses, which fills our life and gives it its ardent taste. I do not know which in Florence I loved more, Angelico, the most chaste of painters, or the voluptuous Titian. In the convent of Saint Mark where the frescoes of Beato Angelico are preserved, what hours I spent! There I knew an infinitely pure soul. A saint’s heart revealed itself to me, to my surprise at first, then, as I perceived it better in its nuances and in its details, to my love and my ecstasy. You pass through a door which opens onto the cloister, the door of the parlor, and there you are in a cold room, in front of the largest fresco by Angelico, a Crucifixion. At the foot of the cross, in two groups: the Virgin and the women, the Apostles; six of the latter drag themselves on the knees; each face expresses pain, but in its own way ; and the differences in character are emphasized in the manner of suffering with extreme finesse and depth. One, somber, stares at the Cross with an icy eye; another is proud, he bears his misfortune with energy, his furrowed brows alone indicating the violence of his innermost movements; this one abandons himself to his despair and bows his head, that one sheds tears, while the one who touches him can shed no more. The woman who supports the Virgin marvelously expresses shared affliction and powerless compassion. And
all these faces are simple; no brilliance: one weeps for oneself. But each of them has been observed and recorded by an admirable psychologist. Sitting in the cold parlor before this painting, I was struck by the quality of Angelico’s observation. Such finesse and penetration, the depth of feelings and the naturalness with which they are rendered transported me. When, having completed the tour of the cloister, I had first known _Saint Peter_ who, with a finger on his lips, recommends Silence, and who is himself the most perfect and most moving image of it, mysterious and oppressive like a mask, with his eyes open and his mouth closed, then the two Dominican saints and _Jesus_, with the sweet impulse of their faces,–I began to explain to myself what Angelico made me feel, the nature of his genius, and that of my emotion. His genius is above all that of an ecclesiastic. Only an ecclesiastic, a religious, a man of meditation, of silence and of interior life can arrive at such a nuanced, such a varied perception of feelings. The church is a unique school of analysis, and monastic life, withdrawn and solitary, seems the best understood by those who devote themselves to analysis. Angelico’s vast and profound observation is the product of an existence in which he was in the best conditions to reflect on all that he saw and felt. Alone in his cell, painting amidst the silence of a monastery!… On a foggy and cold November day, a morning when I was still before the Crucifixion, and when I heard, in the midst of my thoughts, only the guard’s footsteps regularly ringing on the cloister pavement, a little gray cat entered the parlor with silent steps, came up to me, rubbed itself purring at the foot of my chair, then jumped onto my knees. I had let it do so: it climbed up my arm and lay down on my neck. And while I looked at the fresco, I felt the warmth of its fur against my skin. You spoke to me, little gray cat, mysterious animal like Saint Peter with his finger on his mouth, a monk’s animal, subtle and full of nuances. While in the peace of the convent, caressing, you rubbed yourself against my hair, the soul of Angelico became even clearer to me. The meditations to which he devoted himself in his long hours of solitude appeared to me on the faces of his characters, and I saw before my eyes the features of his soul. This Brother Giovanni with his acute psychology, would indeed have made a good Bishop of Florence. He refused this great honor from Pope Nicholas V. But the fact is that, at the same time as an ecclesiastic, Angelico was a saint. His holiness, as well as his marvelous divination of hearts, he holds from a constant state of grace, from an incessant elevation of the soul, you understand it when you have gone up to the first floor of the convent, and, walking along the magnificent corridor, you visit the cells. In each of them the brother painted a small fresco. Before these you understand then that he was truly inspired. “When he took up his brush to work, he would go into prayer , and he was seen bathed in tears while he was working on the Crucifix, in the memory he had of the pains that this divine Savior had suffered on the Cross,” says a biographer. No one, in fact, has ever painted with such emotion; no one has so much carried his feelings on the face and in the gestures of his hero. It was a man in prayer who imagined these frescoes, a man whose soul spoke, and who, to listen to himself, leaned into himself with the most tender genius. In Angelico’s works, there is nothing to distract from the main subject, which is the divine emotion of the virgins and the saints; the decoration is reduced to its strict minimum, and the form is not used for itself, but to express the interior life. Look at this _Preaching on the Mount_: the twelve apostles surround Jesus on an absolutely bare summit, without a plant, without a blade of grass. He speaks; and the scene is unheard of. What is there, however? Nothing but twelve faces and twelve attitudes, but so profoundly expressive that emotion immediately seizes us… Look at Christ in Limbo. There, nothing but a movement: the surge of the blessed towards Christ, but it is prodigious!… No painter has been able to translate the interior life with this intensity. O the Annunciation which is in the third cell! The body of the Virgin no longer exists as a body, everything has become soul. Kneeling, arms outstretched, before the Angel, she is immaterial and yet real. This is adorable, there are no settings there, no invented and artificial characters as in Botticelli: no, it is a scene from life, but it is seen by a saint, with infinite innocence! However, I opened the small window of the cell in which one of the most beautiful men who have existed experienced such emotions. I wanted to see what he could look at when he rested: over there, to the left, the graceful hill of Fiesole is outlined; to the right, appear the reddish Duomo and Giotto’s tower. In the street people passed. At the foot of this convent perfumed by a suave genius, ordinary life followed its course. Someone, nose in the air, was looking for a number on a door, a little boy was amused himself by walking on the tramway rails, carpenters carrying planks were moving heavily; finally,–but I hesitate to write it, people will think I’m arranging things–finally, right in front of me, stopped against the wall, a man, legs apart, was turning his back on me. _From Titian._–If Giovanni da Fiesole is par excellence the painter of interior life, Titian is the most admirable of exterior life. All that color and form are worth in voluptuousness, he expresses lovingly: no man who has very healthy senses and who appreciates the pleasure one tastes in using them, can remain insensitive before his paintings. Titian takes all the senses, the eye, then the others,–for what imagination could escape the effect of a representation of nature so complete and so beautiful? a nude woman by Titian is so alive and so desirable that touch, taste, smell and hearing immediately abound in memories, speak… The Uffizi contain the two most voluptuous canvases of Titian, who is the most voluptuous of painters. One is Flora, with her admirable flesh so fine, so clear, so full, so luscious, with her light, golden, wavy hair, whose play on the shoulders is an exquisite spectacle, with her chemise like muslin and whose color joined with that of the flesh and that of the hair forms the most perfect and penetrating voluptuous harmony. The other, which is in the Tribune, is the Reclining Venus, whose reclining body is of such charming distinction, and so young, and so fresh that anyone possessing the adoration of the female body stops, moved and softened. The Venus is motionless, with her eyes open she is dreaming or reflecting; At the back of the room, a servant leaning over a chest is no doubt looking for the clothes her mistress will wear. Venus waits, indolent, uncertain, and, it seems, still enjoying the pleasure of lying there… Perhaps the lover, if he came now, taking advantage of this favorable disposition of the soul, would be well received. Titian is the painter of voluptuousness. He adores the woman’s body, he paints all its beauties with delight. What happiness he gorges himself on by contemplating her graceful movements, by pausing at each of her charms! I don’t know if it has been remarked that painters of voluptuousness are rare. However, look in museums: how few artists have painted the body with devotion! Some are attached to it for its line, for its decorative arrangement, others for its color, because here the value of the flesh will do well next to that of the fabric; almost no one gets drunk painting the flesh, those who would like to put down their brushes to breathe it, to touch it, to kiss it, how many are there? Almost all of them copy it, indifferent as to any other material. Look at Rubens who painted so many nudes, what coldness!… As for him the flesh is, like everything else, only material for beautiful painting. There are few voluptuous painters. Titian, for his part, is infinitely so. All the women he paints are as lovers. He held them all in his arms and became intoxicated with them. It was from Giorgione, the handsome George, that Titian learned the art of enjoyment. He taught it to Paris Bordone. _The House of Patata._–When Mr. President de Brosses was traveling in Italy, as he was in Venice, the desire came to him to approach some beautiful Venetian woman. He therefore sent a gondolier to make an ambasciata to the famous Bagatina. A meeting was arranged. But when he presented himself, he found a person of such noble bearing and such composed manners that he became very embarrassed about how to tell her what he desired from her. We had been in Florence for several days and we still did not possess anything to whom to relate our gallantries. How difficult for Frenchmen!… Someone who wished us well taught us a magic word: Patata; we hire a coachman, we say to him: “Patata,” – he understood. Our carriage stopped in a very narrow and dark alley. We were in front of a door with bronze leaves, but whose openwork transom revealed that there was light from behind. We pulled a wire, a thin bell rang; then slippers approached the door, a small shutter opened, an old woman’s head appeared. She examined us, disappeared, and soon the door shook and turned on its hinges. We were in a marble vestibule, adorned with columns and in the corners of which Michelangelo, Dante and Galileo, with their noble busts placed on pedestals, regarded us impassively. The old woman, who in one hand carried a copper lamp with smoky wicks and in the other a heavy key, greeted us, then she preceded us up a monumental staircase which we climbed with emotion. Soon a raised door appeared, and we entered a vast room hung all in old red where the eyes were drawn first to a bright wood fire blazing in a large fireplace. A purple-covered bench went around this room, in the middle a large pouf and green plants decorated it, finally magnificent paintings hung on the walls. We found ourselves in a palace and the audience was brilliant; young ladies with graceful low-cut dresses and light fabrics, stretched out nonchalantly, were conversing with young lords full of elegance. Madame Patata, a little neglected, was smoking a cigarette in silence… A blonde woman of proportions as monumental as this entire residence was spilling powerful flesh onto the softness of a sofa. She was made up, she was sparkling, rings weighed down her fingers. And while she maintained the immobility of a goddess, her majestic body appeared beneath the transparency of fine linen. We nevertheless dared to address our homage to her: “I am Sappho,” she said. And her raspy, heavy, and vulgar voice seemed admirable to us. Addressing one of us more particularly: “You see, we are here in the country of churches,” she continued (saying this for the reason that she was adorned like a shrine). “I am from Brussels. Are you going up to the countryside with me, my love?” Our conquered friend followed her. We other onlookers remained in the living room. There I met a French woman whose accent was so peculiar that I couldn’t guess which province she had been born in . We chatted: “Spanish is too materialistic,” she told me. ” Italian is amazing. It depends on the region you take it from.” Now, at the door, a man in an Ulster coat, bearded, with a German face, had appeared. He entered, embarrassed, as if slipping. Then went to the pouffe and sat down, sideways. A woman came to join him. Immediately he stood up, took her by the waist, dragged her away with an extraordinary movement, and disappeared. “You see: of all the naziones,” an Italian woman who was near me said to me. But our friend was coming back. Sappho was scolding him because he had taken a long time to get dressed. He closed her mouth with gold. Besides, he congratulated her, he affirmed that he had never tasted voluptuousness before knowing her… “It is singular all the same that in Florence, it is enough to say: potato , for you to be taken to see beautiful women, and singular still that the most beautiful Florentines are Belgians,” said our Louis coming down the stairs. _The Charterhouse._–To go to the Charterhouse._–I took that little steam tram to go to the Charterhouse which spreads a black smoke over the whole countryside. It runs along the road to Rome, in the middle of pure hills surmounted by charming castles. The infinitely beautiful style of Tuscan nature can be well grasped in two or three walks. One of the most magnificent is to go up to the Piazzale del Michelangelo, then to follow the Viale dei Colli to the Roman gate.–First of all, from the square, one overlooks Florence. In the middle of an immense hilly plain, bordered on the horizon by blue mountains, the city huddles at the edge of the river, commanded by its majestic reddish dome, throwing all its bell towers skyward. The Arno flows gently and disappears under three bridges… Following the Viale, delightful landscapes appear, they are admirably composed. It is a refined mixture of elegance and sadness, a graceful line, cut by dark cypresses; square houses with flat roofs, pink or white, and which have preserved the beautiful antique proportions, rest there. In this perfect setting, the simplest tragedies could unfold without surprising their sublime circumstances. When one goes to Fiesole, which is the smile of Florence, it is an enchantment of blond light, light trees, bright villas. It is as delicious as a young girl. One climbs, always climbing. And the landscape becomes immense. Delicious nipples, billowing greenery and gold. One is completely enveloped in rays as if the divine hair of Titian’s Flora had interposed itself between things and the eye. On the way to the Chartreuse, on the contrary, the landscape is severe. Instead of dominating the hills, one is at their foot. One insinuates oneself between them in the valley. Their delicate profiles having succeeded one another, and several villages crossed, one arrives at V… where one leaves the tramway. V… is located at the base of a height on the plateau of which the Chartreuse d’Ema was built.–After a laborious ascent the door of the convent presents itself… It has opened, the white monk has welcomed you, here you are under pretty arcades from which the most delicious landscape unfolds. The site of the Chartreuse d’Ema was chosen by voluptuaries. On a fairly high eminence, not too high, so that one is not lost and separated from the world, and yet one can enjoy a wide view, the monastery reveals from the smallest of its windows a charming universe. The countryside, everywhere around it attractive and of a suave softness, one would like to cover it with kisses, it is exquisite. The Carthusians understand it. Each of their cells is completed by a small open-air gallery, admirably situated, and where they can spend their hours following the waning daylight on things. I felt there everything that separated Italian piety from French piety. The Chartreuse de Grenoble is in fact the exact antithesis of the Chartreuse d’Ema. While the Italians wanted to see everything that was happening around them and enjoy it, the French fiercely separated themselves from it. They built their convent far from the world, at the foot of the Grand Som, an enormous, barren rock that hides all view; moreover, they surrounded it with high walls, from each cell one sees only a tiny square of sky, the wall of the chapel, and the cemetery… There one devotes oneself entirely to the interior life, everything speaks only of austerity, one wants to ignore everything about the world, to belong only to God and to study. At Ema, one wants to always taste the joy of living. There one was buried, stifled, blinded, here one is in the open air, one breathes and one sees. The cloister of Grenoble was a dark corridor where footsteps resound loud and solitary. At the Chartreuse d’Ema, there is a gallery with a roof supported by graceful columns, which surrounds a garden in the center of which a well decorated by Michelangelo has been dug. In this garden, the cemetery blends into the vegetable garden: such well- manured soil must produce excellent vegetables! The chapel is extremely rich, the carare and porphyry are not spared. Everything is luxurious and beautiful. The bright refectory is gaily decorated. Finally, everywhere in this convent, one has the feeling of being on a height, which makes one feel light. In Grenoble one was stifled by the fierce mountain. So much wealth assembled to allow fifteen monks to lead the life of a fakir! exclaims Stendhal. –Certainly one can only understand them here with pretty mistresses!… Besides, we were all seduced by this stay. Everyone would have liked to settle there. A little Italian woman , led by a fat, indolent, dark-haired boy, touched the tablecloths in the refectory to judge their fineness, then sat down on the superior’s bed to see if it was good. An Englishman gravely inquired near the venerable monk who served as our guide if the rule permitted smoking. “No, only chewing tobacco,” replied the monk. “Fine linen and a soft couch, a pipe and cigars, and two unbelieving visitors were perhaps touched by grace! _December 1903._ CHAUSEY To Maurice Le Blond. Chapter 10. After an hour of sailing on a calm sea, radiant weather, and the fresh morning wind, we saw black rocks lying on the water, which grew larger and longer the closer we got. Standing on a pile of ropes at the front of the boat, at first in the distance I had distinguished black dots; These points having spread out, had become lines, and now, close to us, a bank of reefs which prevented us from passing. We therefore began to skirt them. The Chausey archipelago includes several hundred small islands, but at high tide many are covered by the waves, and at spring tide almost all of them. I believe there are fifteen or twenty islands which are not formed only of rock and on which grass grows. Only one, the largest, is inhabited. It is towards this one that, following the line of reefs, we were heading. We arrived at the entrance to a fairly wide channel, one of whose edges is formed by a bank of the large island and the other, often broken, by a series of small islands facing the largest… We entered it. It was then noon. The sun at its zenith struck the sea which rocked its dazzling waters. The sky was blue and hard. To the left, we saw a small, treeless hill, dry, bare, and on which a white lighthouse stood. The hill was passed… A miserable house appeared halfway up the hill, four or five shacks, a narrow church without a steeple, a few scattered huts. A harsh, scorched landscape of Oceania; under a bright sun, little life, and those raised shapes that give the earth a volcanic appearance… To the right, black islets, flat or pointed, jagged, jagged, full of indentations, full of threats. We land at the foot of the eminence that serves as a base for the church. Near this one, – a brick building that nothing would designate for a place of worship without its bell fixed in a frame above the roof, – we pass, and we go back down towards the main part of the island. There, three houses, that of the owner, that of the trader, the inn. In front, a grassless square surrounded by huts on a promontory which juts out into the water of the channel. We turn left, and we sink into the land. Then, a succession of small hills, small plains: sterility, yellow and slippery grass, stones and brushwood. We quickly crossed from east to west, not without having noticed several abandoned houses, deteriorating… And we arrived at the other shore, on a plateau from which one overlooks the open sea and which supports ruins, large dying walls pierced with loopholes, vestiges, it seems, of an ancient castle. From there we look at the sea and the island. The latter, seen from this point, is, only, on the right on a hill the white lighthouse, on the left on a hill the white semaphore, and between the two a yellowish ground cut by a square of greenery… Greenery, trees, what refreshment in this aridity! Yes, but this oasis in the middle of a desert of water and rocks, this place of shade, flowers and birdsong is closed! It is the garden of the owner of the island, and no one can enter it except him. The poor fishermen, pushed by the wave onto this black stone, burned by the sun, thirsty by the salt of the air, see paradise–of shade, springs, moss, flowers!–and touch it, without being able to enter… … In the island no movement. We did not see its inhabitants. Arid and parched, it stretched out in the middle of the shining sea, silent, gloomy under the flames overflowing from the clouds that devoured it… Where we could make out life was in the channel: several boats and two steamers were anchored there; but behind them, still more death: the other islands lying on the water, black, rocky, and following one another like the links of a chain. We went back down towards the three houses, the center of civilization in Chausey. In the inn, we found a few tables and benches around a fire, thick smoke, the sizzling of melting fat, and a small but large hostess. We then entered the second house. A large room with beaten earth tiles where little light entered through two grilled windows . Smell of leather and brine. Planks stacked all along the walls, and on these planks: espadrilles, fish hooks, a large cheese, loaves of bread, wool shirts, caps… In the middle of this singular store, a tall man, white beard, thick hair, in a sailor’s blue jersey, smokes a pipe and looks at you calmly, his arms crossed. I had the impression of a counter in a colony and outside, when I saw again that sun and the water of a thick blue, I said: “We are going to see some Negroes loaded with elephant tusks and gold dust, and coming to exchange them at the counter for a general’s hat and beautiful glass beads. The sturdy old man is waiting for them. There must be here a resident, ten colonists, some officials and a company of marine infantry… I finished this reflection as a sailor who came up from the hold and was heading towards the house shouted to the white beard on his doorstep : “Eggs! eggs for Mr. Toussaint!… “Toussaint is on the island?” asked my companion. “Yes, on a fishing boat…” This boat was rocking in front of us, at anchor and with the sails folded: “Let’s go see Toussaint, he’s a friend of mine, he’s exquisite, you ‘ll see…” and we jumped into the sailor’s boat. We landed; from inside the boat where he was devouring shellfish, Toussaint poked out his lovely bearded head, he made us happy, he kept us fishing with him during these days of high tide… In the afternoon, the tide was out. We spent our hours in front of the cove on a small sandy beach dotted with rocks. A group of children were looking for octopuses. What screams if they discovered one! The filthy beast quickly extended and retracted its tentacles to flee. It buried itself under the rock. But the fishermen tormented it with their stakes. It appeared, one of them seized it abruptly, removed it from its lair, and threw it onto the sand. Some held it down, while another took its life with a knife. It was then thrown onto a pile of already dead octopuses, whose slimy and flaccid mass it increased. Chapter 11. As we went back up to the island, we met the priest walking quickly towards the sea: “Good morning, priest!” said Toussaint.–“Good morning!” threw the priest, “excuse me, I’m in a hurry, my coal is here on the slipway, the sea will carry it away.” And to run… He arrives at the bottom, loads a large sack onto a wheelbarrow, and there he is pushing, his cassock up, in a square cap and gold glasses on his large red and sweaty face… In Chausey, the priest is the only official.–The archipelago, in fact, does not form a commune: to get married before the mayor, one must cross the water and go to Granville (if one is dead, it is the same, because for several years now they have not buried on the island). The priest is therefore the master and father of the family, and the light of the islanders. He is a doctor, cares for the sick and delivers women; a teacher and teaches the little children, a magistrate and settles disputes between the parishioners, a postman and distributes letters, finally a priest and baptizes, marries and administers. The population amounts to sixty-five inhabitants. On Sundays, at mass, the priest looks at all those present, counts them, and at the sermon: “There are only sixty-four of you,” he says. “It’s so-and-so who is missing. Why didn’t he come?” I spoke earlier about the church. Ten years ago, the altar was not in the church, but in a large building—empty today—constructed long ago when the island ‘s quarries were being worked , to serve as a canteen for the workers. Here’s why it was there: The father of the current owners of Chausey rented the church land cheaply to the priest; he died and his heirs wanted to increase the rent: the priest did not agree. Now, the whole island does not belong to these heirs, the State owns a piece of it, and the old canteen, which is no longer of any use, stands on this piece. The priest carries his good Lord into the canteen, places a cross on the roof, and begins to celebrate mass there. This goes on for several years. Then this good pastor passed away. His successor arrived, he knew how to come to an agreement with the owners, obtained from them a cheap rental, and abandoning the canteen, reinstalled the placid good Lord in the true church. … We were walking around the island, we saw a small isolated hut on a hillock from which one could see the whole sea. We went in; it was the customs cabin: two bunks, an old rifle on the wall, and, hopping in this narrow space, a magpie with a clipped wing. Two men live there, watching the sea, in the middle of the sea, filled with its roar, sad like it, wild like it; the other day, they caught a hawk, they locked it in their attic, they throw pieces of fish at it; If you half-open the door, you see him, motionless, fierce, looking at you with a hard eye. You feel that he will never be tamed… These men and their wild bird troubled me. … As evening fell, we sat down in front of the inn. It was silent and mild. You could see the poor huts around the small square where the grass is torn up, then the dark water, and as a background, barbaric and black rocks in the half-light of twilight. On the square, in a peaceful attitude, a few cows, three horses, and small dogs were lying down. These mixed animals made one think of earthly paradise . “But what are these horses for?” I asked Toussaint. “They haul the coal that is sometimes unloaded here,” he replied. ” See: they are left free; they come and go, they run everywhere. One night, one of them fell through the roof into one of these huts! On the thatched roof, grass had grown; in the moonlight, the horse sees this grass: “I will graze on it,” he says. He begins to climb (it’s easy; on one side the roof reaches to the ground), reaches the peak and sets about satisfying himself. But the roof was not solid: it collapsed. And there was my horse falling from the sky into the house of a fisherman lying on his pallet and who woke up with a start!… To get the horse out they had to demolish half the house. “These cows stretched out near the three horses, we see them from time to time swimming in the middle of the channel: when there is no more grass on this island, they pass into the small ones opposite, and return, their meal finished. You will see them, strange in the middle of the sea, like Neptune’s steeds.” … We walked around the huts. The door of one was open, we put our heads forward. A poor man was sitting on his bed, motionless, wrapping his arms around his knees. He looked at us without speaking. In this shadow, in this misery, the look of these fixed eyes, the attitude and the appearance of this body impressed us. He did not speak . But what did he say, however? Our soul heard in the silence his sad and mysterious speech… “These are dreadful hovels,” said our friend. “Scarcely does the day penetrate there.” And they are in ruins, the walls do not hold, the doors do not close: one can stick one’s fist between the boards and the door; in winter one freezes there. Well! these dens are rented to fishermen for up to ten francs a month! The wretched are exploited terribly. The man with the white beard whom you saw this morning in this singular shop which made you think of a colonial trading post, is the manager of the island: he is pitiless and sucks the blood out of this starving people. He alone has _the right to sell_, you have noticed: he sells everything (that is to say, everything that can be necessary to fishermen),–and at double price. You must deal with him or go to Granville. Also the population, exploited, badly treated, is diminishing; the owners of the island act in such a way as to make it deserted. In the interior, you found abandoned houses ; formerly they were inhabited; Now every year the inhabitants leave; they leave their island; they return to the coast… Alas! what will become of our Chausey? Its owners are two old maids without direct heirs, bigots and surrounded by religious people; perhaps they will leave their fortune and this admirable corner of land to some congregation. The black men will exploit Chausey: They will transform the archipelago into a fashionable beach, they will build villas there, they will put a casino there. And our islands, so interesting and so curious, this landscape and this unique life, that will have been!… And unfortunately, my friends, I am not just talking idle. Terrible industrialists have already, in fact, thought of Chausey for a seaside resort! … Meanwhile we continued our walk. Around us, kneeling on the stone, the fishermen were gutting fish, turning them over, cutting them into long strips to dry. Others were spreading their nets on the sand. The women were heating the soup. What struck us was the silence and gentleness of all these people. Two children, in a canoe, were playing. At the age when ours cradle their dolls, very small, they played with the immense sea. One—he is perhaps ten years old—is among the best pilots on the island: he knows all the passes, all the depths, all the reefs. It is he who guides Waldeck-Rousseau, when the latter, in summer, comes to rest for a few days at Chausey[1], and this severe minister smiles and calls him: Admiral. [1] Written in 1901. –On this little island opposite us, on the other side of the channel, you “See a ruin,” said Toussaint. “Many years ago, it was a house, inhabited by a man, all alone. I often think of the life of this man: withdrawn on his island, always facing himself, he listens in turn to the terrible voice of the raging sea and the fresh murmur of the tranquil wave,–and in his heart their echo. Alone in the day, alone in the night, husband of nature, united to the sky, to the earth, to the sea!…–Today, without doubt, he is dead. Beautiful was your life, oh solitary fisherman!… Chapter 12. Night brought us back to the boat. We found ourselves in the small cabin set up in the hold and which served both as dining room and bedrooms. A table with fixed benches, four berths. We dined there, lit by a smoky, flickering candle, buffeted by the sudden surge of the tide, uncomfortable. So what a relief to reappear on the surface: on the deck! The weather was fine, the moon was rising in the sky, making its sweet music of light. The captive boats that surrounded us, with the same movement as ours, were rocking. We could see, over there on the island, like stars, the little lamps of the cabins, and a few human shadows. We sat down and breathed in the delicious freshness of the breeze, savoring this calm, our independence, the distance we felt from civilization, and finally everything that the song of the sea can awaken in the mind on a beautiful night. We smoked in silence… Then Toussaint spoke; he told us about his life, what he liked, what he didn’t like, what he would have liked to have, what he hadn’t had. And it was the desire, the hope, and the melancholy of all existences. And how I understood this soul!… The moon! The moon! The song of the sea! Ah! It was a night to talk and to hear each other! A night to say everything! But we listened, and we barely responded, stifling within ourselves the bursts of our emotion. We were to fish at midnight. It was ten o’clock. To wait, we lay down on the deck next to each other; over our bodies, a man from the ship spread the main sail that covered us all; its canvas is heavy, thick, and the air does not pass through it; we were hot. Lying like that, we probably resembled the dead, all buried in the same shroud. I did not move; I was rocking; when I opened my eyes, it was the stars. Vaguely, I thought that, soon, we would have to get up and enter the cold water. People were snoring near me… At midnight a sailor woke us: “The tide is high. It’s time.” We dressed without enthusiasm, we shivered as we looked at the water and the moon. Finally we got into the boat. And there we were, off we went, with, amidst the silence, only the sound of the oars regularly slapping the sea… But the extraordinary beauty of the landscape soon revived us completely . Ah! the dreamy, the pure, the fantastic aspect of the rocks under the moon! Ah! the dazzling light on the coves and on the livid mountain! The sheets of clarity sliding over the low islands, and the water pierced with a thousand silver points! Ah! the enchanted sleep, and the ecstasy of things!… We landed on a small beach. Two fishermen remained in the boat to place the seine. It is a long net that is placed in the sea in a semicircle and so that the opening faces the edge; then, entering the water, five or six men harness themselves to each end and pull towards them when returning to land; the net is thus brought to the beach, and with it, all the fish that were in front of the edge. We sank into the mud, we felt the water bathing our bellies, and we sang softly, softly, intoxicated by the beauty of the landscape and the action. “To think that while such divine spectacles exist, we sleep!” cried one of us. “Alas! we lose our lives!”… The seine, which we took out of the water, dripped in tears of moonlight… From the meshes spread out on the sand we freed the soles, the rays, the green sea bass that had gotten caught, and threw them away in a basket. Then we folded the net, climbed back into the boat, returned to the ship, and from there, to land, where we planned to sleep at the inn. Chapter 13. When we got up, a lovely morning sun lit up a beautiful sky. Down in front of the inn, we watched the little boats in the channel among the rocks. It was mild, it was good. The man with the white beard was standing on the corner of his door and surveying things while smoking his pipe. The fishermen were mending their nets in front of the huts. The little dogs were frolicking in the square. We saw the tenants of the inn heading one by one towards the rocks, disappearing there and, after a few minutes, reappearing; my hostess’s reply : “In the rocks, sir,” to some information I asked her yesterday, comes back to me. Our boat is there, very close. A signal to the boat, it comes to get us. And our bare feet, once again, know the polished surface of the deck… On the boom of the mainmast, fishing clothes dry in the sun; in a corner of the yard, the old sailor peels octopuses and washes them, his fingers covered with the black they shed; another sweeps, cleans; Toussaint prepares baskets of bouquets to send to friends. This is life on board in the early hours of the day. It is deliciously calm. Far from all worries, relieved of the weight of an existence to be planned and executed each day with precision, freed from life in society, I enjoy the sky, the water, the islands, motionless and without desiring anything, neither that the hour pass, nor that it remain. Ah! how I love this barbarity without ties, this absence of obligations!… The air that caresses my face and hands and that I breathe, the sights that I see, the sounds that I hear, I taste everything equally. And I was even happier when, at ten o’clock, reinforcements having arrived for fishing, the mainsail was hoisted and the boat gently began to glide across the water. It was a departure for adventure, a departure for a dream… Oh, to sail on a voyage of discovery in a deserted archipelago! We passed slowly among the islands under a beautiful sky, on a peaceful wave and in the joy of the morning. The delightful stroll!… We set off as if to the ends of the earth, nothing to hinder our dream, let us wander! Others have already passed through these islands, but what does it matter if we have never been there? They are unknown to us, as if they were unknown to the whole world. We discover them with as much happiness and astonishment as the first one who discovered them. Let us glide through the blond atmosphere, full of joy, free, detached from everyone and everything… So we were sailing, when our boat stopped. The sea was going down; the water was no longer high enough and the keel touched the sand. We were placed in the middle of a wave so transparent, so clear, that under its ripples and its trembling one could see the pale and smooth bottom. The boat would run aground there; more and more it leaned to port; soon when there would be no more water at all, it would lie down, and it would wait for the return of the sea. The softness and the limpidity of this lake gave me a great desire to plunge into it. I undressed, and naked in the middle of the world where everything is naked, naked like all the roses or like all the gazelles, I stretched out in the sea, drunk with swimming with a body that was finally not hindered by anything… I tossed and turned and I voluptuously enjoyed the caress of the wave with all my flesh. Thus, I reached a small island which was opposite our boat. And when my foot hit the ground, I reflected with a smile that I found myself, like Robinson Crusoe, stark naked on a desert island. … It was noon. We were going to lunch. The water having leaked out, the hull had fallen completely onto its left side. Now the surface of the deck was on a steep slope; to move around on it, one had to crawl, circulation was difficult. We had an excellent meal on this deck, as comfortable as on the slope of a roof; but what an appetite! I have never seen oysters, cold chickens, pâtés, the contents of numerous bottles swallowed with such speed! A charming lunch and for which I want to keep eternal gratitude to our friend Toussaint… Afterwards, a good pipe. The fishing outfit. And here we are on the beach on the way to the Saillard hole where we are going to seine. The Saillard hole is a cavity, one and a half to two meters deep, fifty long and fifteen wide, full of fish, and which, on days of high tide, the sea retreating very far allows one to visit. It is located among islands of high rock; seeing on all sides these chains, these passes, these defiles, one believes oneself in a country of mountains, in a valley, – and one is in the very bed of the ocean! So, we began again, in the light of the sun, the fishing that we had already experienced in the moonlight. And it was abundant both day and night. When the hole had been thoroughly scoured, all the fish had been pulled out, and we saw them struggling and jumping on the sand where we had thrown them, we abandoned the seine, and scattering ourselves among the rocks, began another fishing trip. The flat ground on which we were walking, a mixture of stone and sand, is covered with a green grass called straw, which is very long, and which, from the way it spreads out, evokes the idea of floating hair of drowned women. This straw covers the ground entirely, and we walked, as if in a meadow in the middle of the mountains, surprised not to encounter sometimes, in this Swiss and bucolic setting, sheep, goats or cows ringing their bells. The sun, shining above the mountains, illuminated our valley… In this meadow, we began to pick flowers, but it was a marine meadow and our flowers were fish, scallops. They are hidden under the grass, we do not see them, but, from time to time, a kind of snapping comes out of the ground. We run to the place where this noise comes from, we lift the spread grass, and we discover the mollusk which, by suddenly closing its shells to move in the water, produced this call, revealed its presence and was lost. But the sea was beginning to rise. We left our mountains, our meadow, the picking, and we returned to the side of our boat which, still lying sadly on its side, waited for the sea to come and give it life. The water, soon, was there. The boat floated. And while we were putting on dry clothes, the anchor was pulled, the sail hoisted and the evening breeze lifted us… We saw the large island again, its huts, its three houses, its arid land, the garden, the semaphore, the church and the lighthouse… The boat took us back to the hold; we disembarked. The hostess promised two beds for the night. We made a tour at dusk to the customs cabin,… as yesterday we saw the fishermen preparing their soup, gentle and silent, we saw the misery… Then we returned on board; we had dinner and those who wanted to sleep at the inn left. As for me, I remained on the boat; I lay down fully dressed on a bunk, drew the curtain of the box where I was, and rocked by the sea, fell asleep, happily ending a wild and happy day. Chapter 14. That morning was Sunday. On the poor island, Sunday is sad, laborious, and sunburned like every day of the week. The previous evening, we had spread our hundred meters of net on the grass to dry; in the morning we rolled them up and put them in bags, and the sailors brought them back on board. The fishing was over… We had to leave Chausey in the afternoon. We wanted to see once again those landscapes that had moved us; we took a last walk around the island with Toussaint. That morning was Sunday. It was very hot, the air was stifling. Blazing in a cloudless sky, a barbaric sun yellowed the grass and hardened the earth. We passed crouching fishermen sorting shrimps. We climbed towards the fort. To the left we could make out the small islands that appeared on the blue water like black mold; to the right we encountered some low houses surrounded by walls made of stones (simply placed one on top of the other, not even cemented), and no higher than a goat. We climbed, and the sea gradually revealed itself to our eyes as far as the horizon. We arrived at the ditches surrounding the fort. It was built around 1860, cost a lot of money, and fifteen years after its construction, it was decommissioned! However, it was not sold, because the Navy reserved it to establish a coal depot. This southern part of the large Chausey Island belongs, as I said above, to the State; the fort and the lighthouse are located there; This is where the French flag flies and where one has the sensation of a corner of Africa or Oceania administered by a governor, protected by officials and exploited by colonists. The desolation of this abandoned fort in the middle of this island fits in with the landscape. These gloomy walls, these deserted ditches, these ramparts and bastions that never see a soul, these glacis, these embankments, these casemates that until the end of time will have been built for nothing, that will always represent sterile and vain work, are sad among all the sadnesses of Chausey. But we turn our backs on the fort, and take the coast that borders the sea. Around here, there are no more houses, no more trace of habitations. The bitter feeling of this island penetrates my heart. We walk in the sun. The undergrowth is alive, these brambles and dry branches, we feel them quiver and tremble: they abound with lizards. Then, more and more, it becomes bare, more and more arid, more and more scorched; and from hillocks to slopes and from slopes to hillocks one arrives at a level plateau, bleak, without grass, gloomy. In winter, here, with all the gray sea around and the sky like a leaden lid, it is undoubtedly enough to cry out with despair. Today already under the bright sun, this small arid place surrounded by burning water is sinister. “What is this line of stones sown in such a way as to form a large rectangle, and within it all these smaller rectangles next to each other?” “That’s the cemetery,” Toussaint replies. “In the old days the quarries were worked; when the quarrymen died, that’s where they were buried.” Not a name, not a cross, nothing! They dig a pit, put a dead person in it, throw the earth over it, then scatter a few stones around the grave to say to passersby: “Here, there is a dead person. A man like you was on the earth, today what remains of it is underneath.” I have seen nothing in the world more tragic and more overwhelming than this cemetery at Chausey. Nowhere have I felt to the same extent the impersonality of man and his nothingness. The quarrymen are thrown into holes like dogs; they have no names, no families, no homes, nothing of their own; they were beasts who lived on the earth; strength has worked, now it is dead… What is this large rectangle formed of scattered stones, on this plateau, in the middle of the sea?–The cemetery.–But there are no names, what kind of men are there?–What does it matter! Men… … Then I saw the quarry where these poor people worked. The sea is at the foot. All day long, with the pickaxe, in the sun or in the rain, they detached the granite. Then, when the day was over, they went to their canteen, they drank alcohol; then, all together, in a dormitory that I also saw, they slept like a brute… The next day, they were woken up. They went back to work, did the day again, ate and slept, to start again the next day…, and every day, and every day!… Then they died. Then, up there, they dug a pit, threw a body in, covered it with earth… And that was it. No one remembered who had lived and who was death… And that is a man’s life! The existence and death of the Chausey quarrymen made me think of the existence and death of the prostitutes of Saint-Pierre-Port, in Guernsey. In Saint-Pierre, at the bottom of Rue des Cornets, you see an old cemetery. If you go up the street, on all sides there are one-eyed cabarets, shady houses, and you only come across girls. It is, in fact, their street. Now, not only do they live their whole miserable lives there, but even when dead, they don’t leave there: they are put in the cemetery at the bottom of the street. Today, the Chausey quarry is abandoned. And on the island, they no longer bury people. A few years ago, however, a drowned man who, due to circumstances I don’t know, could not be taken to Granville, was buried there again. It is on a point, facing the ocean. They dug, and immediately found the rock. The hole dug was shallow : to finish more quickly, they put the body in anyway; but for fear that the sea wind would carry it away, they placed stones, stones, a pile of stones on top of it! I think of that poor corpse crushed by the stones!… Unknown drowned man, oh anonymous remains carried there by the wave, and which, all alone, on this point and under a pile of stones, rests, with despair I think of you, unfortunate man! Now, we were in front of the ruins located to the west of Chausey. These are the remains of a Cordeliers convent which was established on this spot by the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, to which the island had belonged since the 11th century. Chronicles have given these monks a bad reputation: shipwreckers, they plundered the ships that came to ruin on these dangerous reefs, and, on this small corner of land, sheltered from all jurisdiction, led a joyful and unscrupulous life. This lasted two centuries, from 1343 to 1543. These old walls, which now observe only the variations of the sky and the sea, once saw blood, debauchery , the most furious acts of a band of corsairs. Besides, what has this little land not known? All the passions lived there, all the feelings that the human race can experience, the purest as well as the most troubled, developed there. Long before this monastery of shipwreckers was founded, a holy man, a monk from Abbeville, had retired to Chausey to live in solitude and meditation. The place was well chosen. No place in the world, indeed, no desert seems so suited to this destiny. There is no retreat more austere than an island, nor one better suited to fostering contemplation and constant existence with oneself or with one’s god. I experienced this impression at Chausey; I had already felt it last summer on the island of Batz, which is so desolate that not a thing seems likely to distract one from reflection. “Here, ” I said to myself, “is the dream asylum for a Spinoza, for a Kant, for a philosopher who wants to spend his life constructing a system. Here, nothing will divert him from his speculation; he will live with it, only with it, outside the world, and entirely devoted to the intellectual constructions he is slowly building within himself.” And I saw this solitary man, seated on a rock, his head in his hands, and following his thoughts in the midst of the immense landscape of the sea and the sky. Chausey must have also known another form of passion, that of love. For a moment, a certain prince thought of acquiring it. He was looking for a discreet retreat to take there a woman he adored and with whom he wanted to freely lead a life of love. … We arrived at the semaphore which is built on a small hill and which waves its long arms in the sky. Then we went back down to the cove, passing near several abandoned houses, one among others, without a door or a roof, and which serves as a morgue: there they expose the drowned people who are often found on the rocks after stormy days. Chapter 15. In the afternoon we weighed anchor, and we left Chausey. Our boat put back to sea. These islands so sad, so beautiful, did not move away much a little away from us… The wind was in our sails, and we were sped along, lying on the water. From time to time, waves washed the deck and splashed us. I lay down on the helm bench, thinking. Sails crossed us, or moved parallel to us. Soon Chausey was nothing more than a line on the horizon. And we entered the port of Granville… Ah! What a pang in my heart, what a painful impression on seeing again the large houses leaning against the hill, the cabs on the quays, the people in felt hats, the civilized life! After having seen something great, I saw again something small. I am already tired of the life I am about to resume, of a life that is not barbaric! In my eyes everything shrinks. Farewell freedom! Farewell the expenditure of all my strength, farewell mixing with nature! Here is society, and I am suffocating. _December 1901._ ENGLISH SENSATIONS To Louis Codet. _Oxford. Evening._–The grace of their bare collars, their flat chignons on the nape of their necks, frail and blond, in blue bodices, in pink bodices, fine linens and muslins, they, two by two following the sidewalk, stop and chat with the proper students. Voices are exhaled from the open windows . The purple of a curtain lights up. The flowering geraniums color and refine a balcony. In the warm air, in the evening, Miss Florie, upright, passes by on her bicycle. At the foot of the little church clad in ivy, they flirt. Girls, oh girls!… but we, foreigners, enter the bar, and on the leather bench, seated beneath the diploma framed by a prehistoric Buffalo, ask for two ginger wines. _Oxford._–With what love at Oxford the old age of monuments is surrounded! A ruined palace is maintained there like a castle full of youth. No plaster, no dust here, and this ivy that climbs around a decaying ogive clings to it according to English taste. One thus has all the benefit of ancient things, the dream that emerges from the stones, but without ransom, without soiling the hem of one’s jacket or the tip of one’s shoe. Here, the past extends a caring hand to you… Sweetness of Oxford! On this pretty street with its pretty little houses, trams, and luxury bookstores, here is an ancient facade. Let us cross the vault. Four crenellated walls blackened by time, in which regular windows open, surround a fresh square of lawn. Ah! this calm! Ah! this intimacy! On the gravity of the past, the childlike smile of a lawn!… No one, no noise; contemplation… Is it not a monastery, and that of the happiest meditation? But here is Magdalen, its cloister, its parks. Colleges of poets. In a meadow bordered by trees, deer graze peacefully, and I see a young girl reading, sitting in a garden armchair, wearing a flowered dress and a baby hat, a long dog at her feet. A bed of begonias and tulips sings in several voices in front of a pretty 18th-century facade. I saw the Bodleian, its old oak and old gold colors, its manuscripts and bindings, its hairless librarian with a monocle, its stained-glass windows on the foliage. How happy the books are there! None of their houses has this fragrance. One could work there for a hundred years. And what bliss a literary mind must taste there! When you pursue work in the library, cells are offered to you; isolated with your books, in perfect peace, in an ideal atmosphere, you can slowly savor all the joy of work. At the Bodleian, I saw an Ovid annotated by Shakespeare, I also saw the Sophocles found on Shelley the day of his death. Shelley is highly honored at Oxford; he studied there. In one of the colleges, a monument has been erected to him. He is represented naked, sprawled on the beach where the waves carried him, his long hair tangled. We were circling around. The warden, a man in a morning coat and glasses, approached. “He is completely naked, because that is when he came out of the sea,” he explained to us. As a good Methodist, he thought we were shocked to see discovered Shelley’s body. Peaceful streets, venerable streets, cobblestones over which much rain and much sun have passed, I walked through them in silence and gravely.
I looked at the decrepit walls, the monuments, their beautiful whites and their beautiful blacks, I thought of the doctors who had known you, at study, in the pure charm of letters. I passed students in togas and flat caps, and I envied them. They are without doubt the happiest students in the world. I saw again the Sheldonian Amphitheatre where degrees are proclaimed, the majestic armchairs like thrones of the professors and the noble columns, I saw a beautiful refectory all adorned with sculpted panels and portraits of bishops, ministers, generals, _olim socii_, I saw chapels with painted organ pipes, I saw delightful windows, Gothic towers, flowerbeds. And I saw, in front of the door of an old college, a little Italian beggar, melancholy, with his monkey. _Edith._–Fake greens and pinks, sodas, sour voices,–the acidity of the lawns, and the green currant tarts–and the tobacco sweet as candy–that’s you, all that, Edith… Edith, thin little girl with the half-smile! _Two hours in London._–The train rushes through the houses, little houses that go in groups, houses all the same, chimneys and windows, and, in front of the same door, the same square of garden. Here is a squad of twenty, and then there are twelve, and then forty, and I think of a print that represented a Chinese monastery. Do all lives here follow the same rule, and does not one live like this, while another like that?… Yellow soap posters… Chimneys,–very diverse, the chimneys: round and square, straight and crooked… On the platform of the little suburban station, the old lady waits… The train starts again… A street filled with houses, suddenly, then tall houses, offices where the employees are leaning over, windows from which clothes hang, bedrooms where a family is eating. … And yet it is Charing Cross. The train stops, however. Porters are already standing on the running board, and carriages are constantly arriving in front of the wagons, and, loaded, setting off again into the street… … I’m riding along the Strand in a cab: colorful omnibuses following one another, constantly being attacked and abandoned by travelers, their coachmen, gloves, bowler hats, cigars, gentlemen, no doubt, who are taking friends for a walk, a little dung-picker throws himself in front of my horse, he pushes a short flat shovel along the asphalt, he slips, weaves through, and disappears… These men, these women, so oddly dressed, who, on the sidewalk, are hurrying… How everything is bustling! How this cinematography amuses me! Oh! the posters on the wall!… At the height of a first floor a bridge over which a train passes between two houses… But now the ceiling is speaking… _Yes, Yes, Cabman!…_ The figuration is really very well regulated. But how many, how many streets where no one, no doubt, has ever recognized themselves. One very ugly monument, another, how crowded they are! However, this is beautiful, two strong soldiers on horseback, mounting guard, statues, superb statues! Hyde Park, footmen in wigs, coachmen in pink stockings, and Wellington completely naked out of place, like an Achilles from a bad school… And the Thames and its steamers… And the Parliament, majestic, delicate… Ah! God! I have a headache! _Glasgow. Saturday evening._–Penned behind the armchairs, hundreds of bright-eyed workmen follow the spectacle attentively. The drama unfolds. In a country residence, young people in red coats, in hunting clothes, bad characters who sit on the table, crack whips on their boots and drink a lot of whisky… One is soon falsely accused of having seduced the daughter of a friend of his father. His father chases him away.–The young man has become a pastor, he does good, takes in lost children, fights drunkenness; as, at every moment, he speaks of Providence, he joins his hands and raises his eyes to heaven.–But the young girl’s father finds (3rd act) the supposed seducer, the said father is accompanied by a sort of bravo, an accomplished boxer who takes it upon himself to do his bidding for the good apostle. Indeed, at the end of the service, he provokes the pastor; the latter does not hesitate, he takes off his vest, and, in front of the assembled faithful, gives, according to all the rules, a masterful thrashing to the accomplished boxer. The triumph of religion and boxing; it is irresistible: from all sides enthusiastic applause and whistles . Even the easy Scottish beauty, in a sky-blue hat with straps, sitting next to me, claps her hands, and reveals, in a tender smile, her rotten teeth. The curtain has risen. A strong blonde woman, in a large, low-cut, all-white gown, advances onto the stage. She carries a nickel-plated cornet. Darkness falls, but the soloist remains illuminated by a spotlight; then, seeking the most graceful attitudes for a wind instrument player, she fills the room with torrents of harmony. She blows for a quarter of an hour. Cheers. Triumph of music and beauty. Outside, the little newspaper vendors yelp. An enormous crowd, black and gloomy, lit by yellow gas, covers the roadway. Luminous trams pass by. A little poor woman clings to my jacket. I knock on a door, which an old man sitting behind quickly opens and closes. It is the bar, the hidden Saturday bar. Somber men stand, drinking, motionless, indifferent to the others. A tall red soldier speaks loudly. The waiter, locked in his counter, rushed at the coin I had placed on the wet wood, he hurriedly threw me a glass and some sticky pennies. Here, in the street, were banana sellers, so blond, with such blue eyes. At the entrance to an alley, a crowd gathered: a bloodied drunkard appeared… And this other, fierce, who wanted to drag away this girl wrapped in a red shawl: she clung to the wall, he pulled her , she had her arms spread wide, and her shawl tragically draped itself over the cross she represented,–but the girl’s fingers gave way, and the two of them, there they were, staggering on the greasy pavement, in the dark alley. Under his cloth helmet, the policeman remained impassive… Bands of ragged children followed the street, singing. _Sunday._–The cab entered a park. Yellow lawns that follow one another, monotonous, hideous, over a vast space surrounded by factories. It’s heavy… But what? What a massacre? All these men on the lawns!… There are a hundred of them, a thousand of them, fallen there on their stomachs, on their sides, on their backs… They don’t move… How everything smells of fever! A column of heavy smoke is coming out of a large chimney over there… Struck by gin, they fell last night. They will stay there until tomorrow, then return to the factory… Here are disheveled women, in blue linen dresses, lying inert, ignoble and obscene, with their skirts pulled up over their pierced shoes. An old woman whose gray hair falls in thick filaments over a sordid forehead, sitting on the grass, a small juicy pipe in her mouth, stares fixedly ahead. As if on a battlefield, tense bodies, under a gray sky, in humid weather… The cab turns right. Now there are streets with houses all alike, bricks blackened by smoke and fog— hot asphalt… Men, women, and flocks of children barefoot. So many bare feet! More factories, more chimneys, then another park housing a gasworks. The port, and its thick, stinking water. It is afternoon. Everything is closed. The geometric, arid sidewalks follow the black houses. An orator, at a street corner, has climbed onto a small bench; he wears blue glasses and speaks slowly and methodically. Twenty men, leaning against the house, lined up, look at him, listening without saying anything and without moving. It is an anarchist meeting. But, further on, an organ, and around it, men singing psalms, books open, marking time with a sharp nod of the chin… A pretty girl at a window… Scotland. The countries we crossed bore names of rugged beauty: Alloa, Falkirk, Armadale, Lochburn… At Aberfoyle, the six horses of the mail gradually raised us above a marshy land; under a sky laden with black clouds, the wild heath, a tormented expanse, where masses of the heaviest green spread out, subject to dark rocks. Here is an immense landscape, wild and grave, tragic, barbaric, and as if watered with blood. Here, here is the plain where three witches greeted Macbeth. “Hail, Macbeth, hail to you, Thane of Glamis! Hail, Macbeth, hail to you, Thane of Cawdor!” Here they burst out laughing, and then jumped from rock to rock like goats. An immense, mysterious moor, where the elves are hidden, who, if our horses stumble, will emerge and dance around us, mocking us. It is the magic moor, and I hear in the wind the muffled voice of all the dead. Along the path where I pick a sprig of heather, black-legged billy goats graze, while a man, bare-legged, descends towards the plain. Mountains, mountains that smell of storm and thunder. We are at the top. Here is the other slope. The horses break into a trot, and the red coachman points to a dark lake with the tip of his whip. It was on the _Sir Walter Scott_, white as steam, that we passed Loch Kathrin. The sky was low, we skirted small shady islands in the hollows of the bays, gulls followed us in a monotonous flight; The water was as thick as jelly, and the mountain, in places where it was bare, seemed spongy. There were neither men nor beasts on the shore, we were advancing as if towards the end of the world. We disembarked, passed through an arid defile, crossed another lake, and joined the railway at Arriochar; after driving four hours through solitary valleys, we reached Fort William, in the boreal light, with gray water, with the cold of the North, so far away! and which seems like a small Norwegian town perched on the edge of a fjord. _Edinburgh._–Mixed with nature rises Edinburgh. It is the city of the mountain, the sea, the sky and the forest. One hears there a deep, grave and grandiose voice, as if the stony gliding of the waves, the song of the wind in the wild trees and the sonority of the caves were passing through the air. Here it is, planted on two hills, thrown into a valley, with its monuments like rocks and its churches like organs; here it is, like a pensive young girl, Edinburgh filled with shadows and waterfalls, city of fairies, rich in echoes and all in dreams. I went up to the Castle and saw the handsome Highlanders, dry and hairy like goats. I saw the bagpipe players in red jackets marching by, smiling, gallant as in battle. As noon struck, the freshly shaven general, followed by the valet carrying his coat, arrived in the square, and the poor, pustular and stinking, crowded there. July 1905. For the smoking room. SPANISH NIGHTS SPANISH NIGHTS To Gustao Violet. Chapter 16. My friend Raymond and I had arrived in Barcelona at night. We were worn out by a journey that had lasted since dawn, first on a stagecoach, but in the oppressive early August sun, then in the stifling body of a Spanish wagon that rolled with a slowness that would make you despair (even though attached to a high-speed train ). We had crossed, it is true, some admirable regions, and we could have forgotten our weariness a little by contemplating through the window the mountains of Catalonia, on the crests of which graceful trees stand out , or the fast-flowing rivers that cross them in deep hollows , or again a wasteland of a very opulent red color… We boarded the first hotel bus that introduced ourselves, the waiter loaded our luggage, and off we went through the city. It was the first time I had come to Barcelona… We first traveled along the large, dark, little-used roads. We were silent, our minds extinguished, no longer able to perceive anything but rather faint sensations and feeling only one desire: to get to our beds as quickly as possible. I tried vaguely to see something in the streets; but nothing but large, unlit houses , sad and closed, following one another like sleeping things. We arrived at the Plaza de Cataluna, which dazzled me and woke me up. Then we went down the Ramblas. The brutal brightness of the electric lamps , the bustle, the noise, that festive air that summer walks take on at night, interested me; the carriage stopped. We were given two rooms. We washed off the dust and sweat of the journey; Then we met downstairs for dinner. But to have dinner in an anonymous and characterless hotel room, no! As tired as we were, we still had the desire to go outside and mingle, if only for a few moments, with the Spanish crowd. On the Rambla, a constantly renewed stream of people glided gaily by. We hardly had time to examine them, for we had noticed a _chocolateria_ towards which we headed. In these little shops they serve chocolate as thick as cream with light, sweet, and warm cakes, which are exquisite in taste; at meal times you can eat hot food there. While we were dining, one of our neighbors was talking about the bullfights that evening!… We questioned the waiter; a _bullfight of novillos_, in fact, was to be held at the new arenas; The races, at night, by electric light , was an innovation tried this winter in Barcelona, and which had succeeded… We were exhausted, all our limbs ached , we were very sleepy. No matter! We immediately decided to go to these races. We hurried to the end of our supper by putting in double the effort, because we were hungry, and we did not want to lose anything; we had been served, moreover, a dish of octopus in tomato sauce, and another of _arroz à la valenciana_ which we enjoyed. In the Plaza de Catalunya, a man with a powerful voice was recruiting travelers for a small, rather decent omnibus, in which he promised to take you to the bullring quickly and without incident, for half a peseta. We got in, other trusting people followed us, soon we were stiflingly packed. My friend was almost buried under a very large lady who violently excited his lust with her magnificent forms, but who weighed so much that the poor boy almost gave up his soul. Agile young people had perched on the roof of the car, and we could see in the shadows, through the windows, their black legs swinging lamentably like limp pipes. The vehicle, driven with great force of whiplash, swayed violently from one side of the street to the other. At each dip the axles bent suddenly, and the body jolted against the axis; we thought that everything was going to break and that our last hour had come. My friend, crushed by his neighbor, heaved weak sighs, in which the greatest terror was combined with a minimal voluptuousness. Then, like a drowning man trying to save himself, flailing his desperate arms painfully above the water, he freed his four limbs and tried to keep them above the pitiless mass that wanted to submerge them. We finally reached the arenas. Extreme excitement reigned around them . Carriages were emerging from all sides. And, on foot, women, men, and children were arriving in haste. It was a tumult: the pawing of the stopped horses and the sound of bells they make as they shake their heads, for those who were walking the clatter of their feet on the pavement, then the parents and friends calling to each other, and still all the barking of ticket sellers, program sellers, newspaper vendors… Beggars, wobbly, one-eyed or deformed, rushed at your feet and pursued you with their shrill lamentations. A circular building, in Moorish style and painted in crude colors, dominated the square. It was reached by a wide staircase. Having taken two _sombras_[2], we entered. Now we walked along a high and poor corridor where an impatient crowd was bustling; there we came across counters where refreshments were being sold. We glimpsed, as we passed, through a half-open door, a tiny chapel; it was laden with gold and a statue dressed in sumptuous clothes inhabited it: the Virgin to whom the bullfighters go to pray before the race. The staircase leading up to our sombras was blocked by an audience that occupied every step; it took time and patience to make one’s way to the last one… But from there, suddenly, a magnificent spectacle appeared. [2] _Sombras_: places so named because, in daytime races , they are located by their position in the shade of the sun. We were in an immense circus, so large that at its end, in front of us, the men and women, seated, appeared only vaguely, like a distant vision. From the track, stands laden with countless spectators rose, rose to the edge of a black hole that was the sky. We looked ahead, and it was a whole bustling life, the beating of a thousand fans, a glitter of jewels, an infinity of movements, a multitude of heads, a rumor. But if one took one’s eyes off this brilliant agitation and raised them, the sky awaited them, a cold, black, bare sky, without adornments like a poor man, without movement like a dead man, and immense, and frightening, with its silent mystery above all this carefree swarming… I had seen a little space not too far from the staircase. By slipping through we managed to reach the stone bench. In front of me, on the lower step was a Spanish woman; she wore a black satin skirt, a white bodice and a mantilla; she turned her head to address a young man of good looks sitting beside her, and we saw his face which seemed pretty to us, a dark skin in which teeth like pearls opposed eyes like black diamonds.–Behind us whistlers were making an infernal racket against a matador who had displeased them. We began to follow the spectacle. On an immense ring, various people of unequal importance were scattered. Two picadors, stiff as mannequins and mounted on pitifully thin horses, stood side by side against the wooden railing that ran around the ring. They were encumbered by padded leather trousers intended to protect them from the bull’s blows, but which weighed them down and were so uncomfortable that with each movement of their beast one thought they were going to lose their balance. The horses, moreover, were not disposed to move of their own accord, but from time to time, a servant came to pull them by the bridle to lead them to the bull, which at the same time, by dint of passes, the bullfighters brought closer. Stretching out its neck, the horse followed the man, at a stiff and laborious trot, its old legs, which could no longer bend, seeming like wood; on the bony body, the shaken picador made efforts to maintain himself, ungainly and comical movements. Finally, the bull was close; then, head down, with enormous force, he threw himself on the harmless carcass that was opposed to him. This fell; the picador, in the sand with it, painfully freed his legs, crawled and disappeared, grotesque… However, the bull’s attention had been diverted from him by drawing him to another point of the trail; instead of finishing with the enemy on the ground, the stupid brute allowed herself to be distracted, a hundred times she rushed at capes that were offered to her, always expecting to meet a man behind her and never finding anything but emptiness, because, by a simple deviation to the right or left, the man had avoided her. Thus she spent herself in useless efforts, became angry, tired, and did not understand this struggle in which she saw so many enemies pursuing her, surrounding her and vanishing each time she was on it. Soon, a great unease and acute suffering seized the bull. He stopped, looked at these arenas, these lights, this noisy multitude, and, mad, discouraged, scratched the earth with his hoof in anguish. As we spoke French, our pretty neighbor had cast us a furtive glance of curiosity. Then my friend’s cigar, no doubt worrying her about her dress—although at the races every man smokes—she had said in a rather hoarse voice a few words incomprehensible to me, but in a bad mood, and had turned around with dignity. The banderillas were being brought. Supple men, dressed in little silver jackets and tight-fitting breeches, challenged the bull, standing fixedly in front of it; nimbly they stuck spindles adorned with multicolored favors into its neck; then, like breaths, they disappeared, and the furious beast passed by without touching them. Feeling these little hooks in its skin and the banderillas dancing on its neck, she experienced a new irritation and surprise… Yet the crowd, no doubt judging that its scapegoat was not yet showing enough signs of panic, the crowd whistled, howled, and booed the bull. Then banderillas de fuego were used. Now, spindles containing firecrackers were planted in the neck of the miserable brute; they lit up, they burst, the beast was surrounded by gunshots that frightened it and smoke that blinded it, its fur burned. However, they still circled around it, moving shadows continued to harass it, and it leaped at them, always in vain. Finally, in despair, the bull stopped, it bellowed, it bent piteously towards the ground, sniffing it as if to seek advice or to supplicate it. But the trumpets sounded death. The matador, his cape over his shoulder, a short sword in his right hand, advanced nobly into the arena. With skillful, narrow passes, he tired his adversary, watching for the right moment to strike him. And, standing in front of him, while the bull lowered its head, ready to charge, suddenly he struck it between the shoulders; the beast fell dead at his feet. Ah! the enthusiasm then! The room stamping! Hats flying everywhere on the ring! The passionate aficionados who were behind us were talking animatedly; the fierce little Spanish girl who preceded us turned towards her companion, her brother it seemed, looks shining with pleasure. Did we share the general joy? My goodness, the game had seemed very barbaric to me. By all means, to force into a fight, and into such an unequal fight, an animal of such an unfighting disposition! During the entire duration of the race, the bull was visibly ignorant of what was wanted of him… I had a painful impression of savagery and ridicule. The slaughter of the picadors’ horses, in particular, in which neither skill nor struggle appeared, which was pure butchery, seemed to me indefensible. It would obviously have been better to lead all these animals to the slaughterhouse in silence and without the help of the people. However, I looked at this ardent race with curiosity, and I had pleasure and emotion in feeling myself in the midst of a humanity so different from myself. On the other hand, I guessed that one of the great elements of interest in the race had been missing, and that to vividly taste the passion, the color of all this savagery, it was in the bright sunlight, and not in the livid light of the electric globes that it would have been necessary to see it. But the bullfight was over. Everyone left their place, the bleachers, the beer and cigar sellers were called; many jumped into the arena, it was soon filled with people. It was because they were supposed to dance there… On the square where blood had been spilled and where death had lain, young bodies full of health, full of joy, would soon crowd and rock themselves. As for us, we were exhausted; now that we were no longer tied down by the spectacle, our self-consciousness having returned, we felt our exhaustion. So we left the ball to finally go to bed. Chapter 17. It was a beautiful summer morning under the Spanish sky. Freed from all care, I walked through the city, enjoying—as Stendhal said—”the delicious pleasure of seeing what I had never seen.” Impatient to watch life, my fatigue already erased, as soon as I woke up I jumped out of bed and went out. The Rambla displayed the most cheerful movement. One walks along a central sidewalk, very wide and shaded by beautiful plane trees. First I had myself adorned with a pretty camellia, then I went along, nonchalantly, enjoying the shade and looking around me… Here are Aragonese, arched and superb, who pass gypsies dragging their slippers; little shoe shiners jostle each other laughing; with red clapboard on their heads, messengers wait, motionless in the middle of the flow that surrounds them; further on, black men offer you white dogs , fat priests pass by, then women, with round waists, in light dresses, wearing a mantilla and playing with fans. And one still sees house cleaners carrying a brush on their shoulders, at the end of a long pole; chulos in small jackets, open waistcoats, felt hats; Civil guards in patent leather bicorns, and finally many other people who are, God forgive me, only like you and me. And all this goes up and down the Rambla amidst the noise of the trams sliding by, their bells ringing, the bells of the carriages, the rolling of tartanes, the shouts of the street vendors. But Raymond has joined me; and as today is Sunday, we are going to the cathedral. We enter through the cloister, a delightful retreat; old people sit there enjoying the sweetness of the air, young girls stroll there; around the gallery, chapels closed by admirable gates follow one another, and the courtyard, instead of being bare, is planted with oriental trees: palm trees, fig trees, lemon trees mingle their branches and blend in with the sound of a fountain whose jet of water is always murmuring. Ah! This cloister makes me happy to be so pagan! Inside the cathedral, during mass, through all the shadows: the beating of fans. No chairs, and the faithful scattered as they please, here and there, some sitting on steps, others standing, most kneeling on the stone. In light-colored attire, the women are kneeling, fanning themselves while praying. And this is of great charm, such a mixture of piety and freedom, this familiar gesture even in such a fervent attitude makes them adorable. If I were—with all due respect—the good Lord, how grateful I would be to my beautiful devotees for abandoning nothing of their graces to address me! All the fans beating in this reverent silence and under this immense vault delighted me. So, a little later, when we had been able to enter a garden with flowerbeds decorated with earthenware like in China or Turkey, I cried out: “What happiness! We have left Europe, here we are in the land of the Thousand and One Nights, we are among a people who know how to live with pleasure.” In the evening, we were walking along the Rambla, smoking. You might have found us looking preoccupied. Did I say that at the time of our arrival in Barcelona, we had just spent two months in complete solitude? Far from everything, lost in the mountains, thinking only of work, we had lived like true little saints. So, now, we felt,–but how can I say this?–we felt a hunger rather similar, no doubt, to that of sailors who come back ashore after a long voyage. Hence, isn’t it? Our anxious brows… My friend, who had already been to Barcelona and who is industrious, remembered well a certain place he had visited long ago. But he looked for it—we looked for it—in vain. Had the street disappeared? Were Raymond’s memories imprecise? We could find nothing. So we wandered sadly without a compass in this foreign city. Finally, having devoured all shame, we stopped a coachman and explained our predicament to him: “Ah! señores,” he said, “I see what you need. I will take you to the most beautiful casa in Barcelona; it is there that I take all foreigners. One finds only perfect ladies there . You will see, carai! You will be pleased.” He whips his horse, and off we go with a great clatter, through a tangle of dark streets. Then he stops. We enter a house, get in; we open the door. The apartment was beautiful: the living room is decorated with green plants, adorned with a tall fireplace, furnished with Louis XIV armchairs ; an elegant lady of excellent taste receives us there. Our hearts beat with emotion, we were already blessing the good coachman. And the conversation begins between this lady and Raymond, who knows Catalan. Without understanding anything, I listen attentively, but soon, alas! Raymond, who relays to me what has been said, drives me to despair. There you go: we’ve come at a bad time; today precisely, there’s no one. And it’s a little early… No doubt, later in the evening, some ladies will come… For the moment, _nada_: nothing. Ah! what a disappointment! The cab, fortunately, had remained at the door; and his precious coachman, he knew many other similar houses ! Our journey, in the night, on the noisy pavement, began again. Then, another stop. The premises and the furniture were this time more ordinary; a small living room with a glass door, a mat on the floor, common sofas and armchairs, a piano, on the wall Chinese masks and fans… As for the merchant, very vulgar; thick, wrapped in a blue dressing gown, she was hot and sweating; but she spoke quickly, fixing you with a sad and convinced look, emphasizing each affirmation with a nod, sparing neither her gestures nor her words to persuade . “For the moment, these ladies are not here; besides, they cannot be long. The Señores should be kind enough to be patient a little, they will not regret it.” We wait. First sitting opposite each other, we look at each other in silence; then we go around the room and examine the walls… Finally, a bell rings; our impatient eyes fly to the door: three women. Jabbering, they sit down on the sofa and we examine them. They are badly dressed, in a garish and provincial way ; one, tall and dark, would be quite beautiful if she were not faded; she has very dark eyes, very lively, still with fire, but her upper gums are too long and spoil her smile; however, she looks at you with a devouring air; the other two, of mediocre appearance, are completely erased; none of the three are worth much and they visibly come from the Rambla… We examine them without enthusiasm. The procurator follows our gaze and tries to guess the impression that her gallant assortment makes on us. “You can speak French to
this one, señor,” she says to me, pointing with an encouraging finger at one of the two insignificant people. However, the trio having risen, had gone into another room. Alone with us, the trafficker began an animated speech which I regretted not understanding. I missed nothing, it is true, of the gestures, the flow, the facial expression, and from time to time, Raymond , turning towards me, translated with an impassive air the sentence he had just heard: “She says that the brunette is wonderfully beautiful, that there are few women like her in Barcelona, she has confidence in our taste to appreciate her…’ The spiel continued: ‘She says that the one to the right of the brunette, she holds on to her like the apple of her eye. She is a true virgin. A doctor who was going to the Congress of Madrid saw her, he fell in love with her. The President of the Republic of Brazil stopped here for a month; every day he came to see her. When he left, he absolutely wanted to take her with him.’ And the fat woman continued, energetic and persuasive, and nothing was more amusing than the seriousness with which Raymond listened to her: ‘She says, ‘ he translated, still sententious, ‘that the third, her greatest pride is to take off her shirt: her body is a jewel…’ Yet, we had stood up; despite her emphatic and flowery speech, and despite the high-ranking figures to whom she referred and who honored her with their confidence, the merchant had not succeeded in convincing us of the superiority of her wares. Having assured her that we would return to see her, we took our leave of her. However, in the end, we found ourselves on the Rambla, as scruffy as ever, biting our thumbs and prey to that gloomy mood that hunger brings. We even went so far as to speak bitterly of Spain. What were these empty or poorly furnished houses? Where had anyone ever seen bakeries without bread, pastures without cattle, rivers without fish, or, would you prefer poetry, greenhouses without flowers and orchards without fruit?… Yes, Spain was indeed a finished country. France from that point of view, thank God… We did not know of an example of a foreigner arriving in a French city of the size of Barcelona and being reduced to where we were. So, while going up the main road on which the traffic had already thinned, we groaned. Two fat women were walking in front of us; we passed them without noticing. Then they joined us and began to talk. We had stopped. They were both of monstrous size; the head of the most extraordinary one was placed on her breasts, so—excuse me for this expression that describes her—like a small melon on two pumpkins, she had no neck; finally, from her enormous throat came a little girl’s voice, and for laughter she giggled! We appeared frightened: “But the other day, a Frenchman came with me,” she whispered. “So you’re not like him, you don’t like fat?” I admit that by their very horror these monsters attracted me; I was very curious about their architecture. But Raymond dragged me away… We had dreamed so much of the Spanish women! “You’re going home. Good. Let’s go to bed,” I said to my friend. But he shook his head with terrible energy: “No, no! Go to bed if you want, I can’t. I’ll look for that house I visited before again.” So I left him, wishing him good luck, and went back to the hotel. I hadn’t been in bed an hour and was thinking longingly of the delights Raymond must be enjoying now, when I heard the sound of a key in his lock and his door opened. (His room adjoined mine.) “Is it possible?” I thought, “How! So fast! It can’t be. What does it mean?” I knocked on the wall to warn Raymond that I wasn’t asleep. Then he came into my room. I turned the electric switch, and saw an excited boy, out of breath, his eyes popping out of his head, in the grip of the greatest excitement. “What happened to you?” I asked him. He sat down by my bed, and while I was sitting up, listening with all ears, he began in these terms: “My dear fellow, something prodigious, unheard of, incredible has happened to me! You know how little I was inclined to return. Well, here I am!–and… pure, my friend, quite pure!… This city is ridiculous, I am leaving tomorrow morning.” Having made his declaration, he stopped and wiped his forehead, but soon resumed in a lighter tone: “In leaving you, I am going, as I intended, in search of that charming asylum which once sheltered my fragile loves. I I remembered a street near a church; I found the church, I found the street, which was narrow, dark and deserted, an alley rather than a street. No matter, pushed by this god without reason who dictates all your madness and gives you all your courage, I set out. But all the houses look the same, especially at night. I looked at each one, I didn’t recognize a single one. And then, it was so long ago!… Finally, I stood there, and I didn’t move, I tried to revive my memory and I tried to perceive some detail that would help me. But nothing was revealed, the houses remained closed, silent, mysterious, and I was uncertain. Finally, under the door of one of them, I distinguished a light and I don’t know by what signs it seemed to me that it must be the one I was looking for. I approached. However, I still hesitated. Just then, I noticed a small shop opposite this house , which had remained open. I went there and asked. But imagine that I was received very badly. People were very unkind to me about my question; eyebrows furrowed, they said they didn’t know what I meant , and the tone and the air made me understand that the best thing for me, in the present moment, was to abandon all searches in this little street. “So here I am again on this eternal Rambla, still vexed, still furious and bitter, but not discouraged. On the contrary, the obstacles, all this ill will of fate, increased my stubbornness. And then, finally, the voice that spoke within me, this voice that for two months we have disdained, this voice cried out louder and louder… So I took a car and had myself driven back to the house of the fat woman in the blue dress. She was delighted to see me again, naturally, she overwhelms me with compliments, she asks me about you, but… she had no new subjects. Even the faded brunette was gone, there were only the two insignificant creatures left, you know: the one who is a real virgin, and whose President of the Republic of Brazil…, and the one whose greatest pride is to take off her shirt. “I go back downstairs, I take my car again and I return to the first house we had both gone to. In what nervousness, you can imagine… Well! Still empty!… No one had come… I sit down in the living room with the well-bred lady you know, and we chat… She is very nice, you know… She saw my state. “But I think,” she said, “not far from here, there lives a woman. Perhaps we could see if she is at home.” She put on a coat and we went there… Naturally the woman had gone out. So we came back. We waited again, together, in the living room. Still no one. “I do have a woman here,” this obliging lady finally confided to me, “but… I don’t employ her anymore; she helps me instead. She’s in bed, you could always see her, if… by chance…” We took a candle and went into the room of this poor child who was sleeping, woke up, opened her haggard eyes… Only, she wasn’t well at all. “At last I whispered to the lady: “But you, you, if you wanted…” She replied with her proper air: “No, you know, I don’t work anymore. No…, really, no…” “I left, entrusted by her to the _sereno_[3], because I would never have been able to find my way around all these little streets; the first _sereno_ passed me to the second who passed me to the third, and so on until I reached the Rambla. That’s it.” [3] _Sereno_: night watchman. They carry enormous bunches of keys: they have the keys to the houses in the streets where they keep watch; and those who come home call them with a clap of the hand to have the door opened. Raymond shook his head sadly. “And you say, wretch!” he said, banging his fist on my bed, “you say that these people know how to live voluptuously!” Chapter 18. The next evening, we were having ice creams in the Plaza de Catalunya. During the day, we had visited the port and Barcelonnette, then, like Spaniards, we had sat with nonchalant poses in armchairs on the Paseo de Gracia and watched the carriages, the horsemen, and the women. By the evening, however, we were rather gloomy. We were bored. All the beggars who stopped in front of the café, trying to excite our generosity with their talents or their poverty, no longer entertained us; neither the troops of blind men led by a one-eyed man, who plucked the guitar and whose facial expressions were touching, nor the women laden with children, nor the Cuban violinist with such comical expressions, nor the one-armed soldier, decorated and dressed in a ripped uniform, still interested us. We wanted to return to the Rambla, to see its nocturnal bustle again. We crossed the square and mingled with the crowd that was going down towards the Column. It was the joyful walk that follows supper, the gay groups, the laughing women, and one felt in each one the pleasure of living in this mild evening. We were following the current, walking quietly, when it seemed to me that I recognized someone who was ahead of us: those round hips, that small waist, that grace? But yes, it was the young girl who had been in front of us the other day at the bullfight! This evening, an ageless woman, spherical in shape, ugly, no doubt one of her relatives, was accompanying her. I showed them to Raymond, then, hurrying a little, we passed them. It was indeed her: I saw again under the mantilla her two black diamond eyes. The encounter spurred us on. We remembered, moreover, the impression that the young lady had made on us the other day with her air of decency, her perfect attire, the uninviting tone in which she had complained about Raymond’s cigar; and we found her with a fat lady who, no doubt, was her mother; all this gave little hope. This graceful Spanish beauty was probably an honest little bourgeois who came to get some fresh air on the Rambla before going to sleep. However, as we had nothing better to do and she seemed very pretty to us, we decided to see. Retracing our steps, we passed the ingénue and we gave her a glance which she noticed, then we followed the two women. They advanced in the middle of the crowd, gently, fanning themselves; after a few moments, the young girl turned around; and, soon, a second time. Raymond became enthusiastic. “She is delicious,” he cried, “delicious! Let’s follow them, let’s not lose them”; and he began to talk about our future conquest as if she were his; I observed that in the sharing he forgot me, but I let him talk. The two women, however, now knew that we were following them; now, instead of worrying about it, they complacently reduced their already slow pace: I began to doubt the virtue of the beautiful afficionada. Soon, we were at the same height. We exchanged a few glances, then they veered to the right and entered a small street. The false Agnes turned her head again to see if we continued to follow her: “Now we can no longer hesitate,” I said to Raymond. “There is no doubt. All that remains is to deal with the matter; speak to them, you who know their language.” And we also left the Rambla. The charming little one went modestly alongside this big trotting ball that we had first taken for the _madre_ and which was undoubtedly only the _tia_[4]. The lights of the shops illuminated them as they passed, the street was lively and animated; one could breathe the warm summer night: all sorts of people were walking around; gossips chatted on the doorsteps. We had gradually caught up with those we were following and we walked a step behind them, without speaking to them. [4] _Tia_: aunt. But can also be taken in the sense of gossip. Arriving in front of a large dark monument which stretched endlessly into the night, they entered the corridor of a house; there, they stopped. We entered behind them: “Can we go up?” Raymond asked the _tia_, and on a sign of consent, we followed in step up a greasy, narrow, and miserable staircase. This whole adventure delighted me; I found it to have a highly exotic taste. I could not get over the little girl’s honest appearance, and this custom of having a respectable-looking person accompany her in the street to carry on her dubious business there seemed to me to be of a delicious refinement and elegance. Finally, I remembered the air she had the other day at the arena with this young man who seemed to be her brother and when I was a thousand miles from supposing that she could be so approachable… It would never have occurred to me, then, to try anything against her… And there we were, climbing behind her skirt up this greasy staircase! I was thoroughly enjoying my surprise, the unexpected adventure, its novelty, in short, all these foreign things, and, moreover, I was curious about the interior where we were being led; I had, in short, a great deal of pleasure. Here we are upstairs; the old woman pushes open a door; we enter a long, empty corridor. To the left, a lighted room; through the glass door covered with a white curtain, we could make out an old woman sitting in an armchair; I thought I heard a man’s voice. The tia had lit a lamp, she preceded us in the corridor… We arrived at a small room, and she signaled to us to sit with the little girl on a sofa. The place was poor: stained and torn paper covered the wall, a small dress with one leg mended stood humbly in a corner; on a table that occupied the middle of the room, dusty paper flowers were waiting for who knows what in a chipped vase. The floor tiles were littered with cigarette ends. Finally, from the ceiling hung a gas lamp, which the tia lit , giving off its little hiss and its ugly light. We discovered an alcove where a bed, draped in thin, faded curtains, looked innocent. The old woman sat in an armchair opposite us. It lay there like a pile on top of which a head had been planted, a singular head of a bald, mustachioed woman, with outspread eyes that smiled with a benevolent, sleepy air and said nothing. Sometimes the head turned and it seemed as if it were swaying, with a movement similar to that of the cute Chinese magots whose head sways. Our ingénue had placed herself between Raymond and me, and I stroked her little brown hand. Raymond, I don’t know why, pretended to know only a few Catalan words, probably on a whim, or in order to catch the words the two women might have exchanged without our knowledge. We already knew the name of the beauty: it was Rosita… Rosita looked at us as one looks at people one recognizes without being able to remember where or when one met them. Raymond told her that it was at the bullfight, the other evening; this memory with the detail of the cigar amused her. She was probably referring to the impression she had experienced when she heard us speaking French behind her, and she found it funny to have seen us again so soon. She then began to speak volubly to the tia, who nodded amiably. One thing about me had really struck Rosita, and that was that I was wearing gray chamois shoes: she wore them too. This coincidence having seemed remarkable to her, she had immediately mentioned it to the tia, who, complacently lowering her gaze to my extremities, chirped, at their appearance, with satisfaction… It soon became evident that Rosita was more interested in me than in Raymond… I attributed this circumstance to the fact that Raymond surprised her less: he is in fact dark-skinned, bearded and has a fierce look: at first, from his appearance, she had believed him to be Catalan; then, after his denials, she had decided that he was Castilian, but a Castilian offered her few mysteries and she turned towards me who unraveled a whole skein for her pretty French compliments that she didn’t understand a word of, which made her burst out laughing. _Que diu? que diu?_ she asked Raymond, who had to translate my gallantries, without gaining anything from them other than to see her thank me with a: _Muchisimas gracias, señor_, full of kindness. Although my poor friend was quite disconcerted by the turn things were taking, he didn’t want to let it show: he was kind to everyone, including the old woman. However, without either of us having said anything, after a fairly short time, it was as if implied that it was I who had come for Rosita; it was to me that she was addressing herself, it was me that she was taking care of, me her friend, me her future lover. And here is Raymond, still doomed to celibacy!… Fortunately, the tia retained enough presence of mind, through her smiling half-sleep, to inquire whether the other señor would not also wish to know _una doña molt maca_. To which Raymond replied ardently that this was precisely the most ardent object of his desires. The old woman urged him to wait a little, for an extremely beautiful woman would certainly not fail to arrive soon. We waited. For myself, it was not painful: already I was taking some advances on the pleasures that Rosita would soon offer me, I caressed her, I kissed her; her supple grace of a young animal, the smile on her whole face and her pretty movements delighted me. Always mute, the old woman followed our games with the tender air of a good woman watching the frolics of her grandchildren. Raymond had given us the whole sofa, judging himself useless; he had taken a chair and was inspecting the people with a dull eye. I calmed down out of consideration for his misfortune, and I also began to wait seriously, motionlessly, and patiently… Now, all four of us waited, without speaking or moving, as if in a dentist’s office . Time passed. The gaslight made its little whistle in the silence. Everyone stubbornly followed the sounds coming from the street. The tia smiled vaguely at Raymond and said: “Qui espera desespera.” I asked what that meant: “Who waits despairs,” Raymond translated for me… Then silence began again. Rosita swung her legs in the air like a bored little girl, it made a noise like a skirt. I looked at the table, the gaslight, the tia, the toilet, finally the bed, this bed where my wedding with Rosita would be consummated and which, for such a beautiful celebration, I would have wished more luxurious. We did not speak, and thus, quiet and silent, we waited for the beautiful Spanish girl whom an old woman had promised to Raymond. At last the door was heard to open. At the noise the tia got up and went out into the corridor. She soon returned, followed by a strong girl with a beaming face, who contrasted completely with the cute and petite Rosita. This happy creature sat on Raymond’s knees, who examined her, smiling: she was smiling too… The old woman followed all of Raymond’s glances with great attention; her head accompanied each gesture like that of a little dog watching for a treat in its hand. Finally the strong girl got up and went out. Then the tia turned her face so eagerly towards Raymond, and with such an interrogative air, that she amused me greatly. My friend paid him a thousand compliments on his doña maca. But the tia clearly saw that she only half pleased him. Less plump? she asked simply… Raymond assured her that the person was entirely to his taste. Then he got up and announced that we would return tomorrow evening at eight-thirty. This news dismayed Rosita. “Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Why not tonight?” she said, and made a delicious little pout; no doubt she thought we would not return. And if I had not known what to think about the real cause of her insistence and her disappointment, I would have been flattered; the old woman, more perceptive, showed no displeasure, she had understood that we would return. _For the night?_ she asked, and at our assent, she looked at us with consideration. Then the price was discussed , which was fixed at four douros apiece, and we left. I had seen that the companion that had been offered to Raymond did not suit him at all, and that this was the reason that had decided him to postpone until tomorrow a feast so eagerly awaited and for which his appetite was so keen. This girl was indeed ordinary, and without her freshness and apparent health, she resembled any other we could have met in any European city: her Spanish blood was not obvious, and then she was of such indifferent complacency that one no longer found any reason to desire her: she was really too ready to fulfill all your desires,–and not only yours! For my part, I preferred not to venture to spend the night alone in an unknown house in a foreign country and with dubious people. I would have found myself quite helpless there in the event of any attempt. It was this reflection that had made me follow Raymond in his retreat. Outside I hypocritically offered him the Rosita, but he considered it an honor not to accept it: it was what I expected; only he aggravated his refusal by adding vehemently that he did not like it. This sudden change of taste resembled spite; however, I did not remark it aloud, so as not to accentuate my friend’s bad humor, and to keep myself from grossly boasting about a victory that I owed, in the end, only to my clean-shaven cheeks, my ignorance of Catalan, and my shoes. I then urged Raymond, since the Rosita no longer pleased him, to take the strong girl that the tia had presented to him. I praised her to him with conviction as if I had found her quite pleasant. He merely replied that she did not interest him. I was embarrassed, because on the one hand I cared for Rosita, but on the other I was afraid of spending the night at her place, if Raymond did not sleep there too. To convince the strong girl, I put forward this argument: He could not abandon me, I would run risks alone in the midst of strangers whose language I did not know… This did not persuade him. He exclaimed that on the contrary, there was no danger, the street being very busy, and the room opening onto the street; I would not let my throat be cut without uttering a cry: now, I had only to call and they would hear me… With Rosita holding me, this reason convinced me quite easily; I only arranged not to bring there any watch, nor jewels, nor money: thus, admitting that the house of the tia was a real den of bandits, at least they would not take much from me there. Once the resolution was made, I was impatient for the moment of carrying it out, expecting the unforeseen and singular sensations of a night spent with people who did not understand me, near a child with whom I would not be able to exchange two words. Chapter 19. The next evening, at the appointed hour, we were at the tia’s. Raymond announced to her that he had a migraine and that tonight I would stay alone at her house. She did not object, and only asked with a worried face if Raymond was suffering a lot. She certainly took us for important strangers, to whose every whim we must comply, because there is always more to be gained with them, by not contradicting them; no doubt she counted on her good grace to attach our clientele. We wanted to see Rosita. She was finishing dinner. The tia called her. She came in a camisole, disheveled, in an outfit that showed all the habits of an irregular existence. We announced to the tia that we wanted to take her protégée to have coffee with us. Rosita grimaced a little, we had to get dressed, and she was lazy; however, she did not think of resisting, knowing that she was ours,–and then the tia encouraged her with her eyes: so she disappeared for to go and get ready, but that she had only obeyed with half-passiveness seemed agreeable to us… It is unfortunate to have slaves who are too submissive, one only has the joy of feeling oneself the master if they only give in to you after a defense… Rosita returned after a few moments adorned with her black satin skirt and her white bodice, and the mantilla over her hair. And as I write this, I really see her coming into the room , I see the gesture of the tia turning towards her to check if she is well, I see her, letting herself be looked at while smiling, and at the same time I hear the noise of Calle Hospital, on which the house opens, coming through the open window… Rosita has a very black mole on her matte cheek, her eyes are hard and lively like a shining coal, she has a pretty little nose and a cheerful smile like the sound of a stream, or like a ray of sunshine on the grass, in short like all things happy with simplicity; she is a content little soul as if she lived among angels. The old woman asks her why she has put on this mantilla. And Rosita answers that it is less pretty than the other one, but less warm. And now the old woman is looking at us both standing there, and the bearded Raymond near us, she smiles with a charmed air and says, shaking her head good-naturedly: “El papa et elle matrimono…” And that is not ridiculous. It is probably only in Spain that a matchmaker can sincerely show such love for family… When we passed through the door, she patted me on the back with a friendly and familiar little pat. On the Rambla, we walk in the middle of the crowd; I hold Rosita by the little finger, I enjoy, in this warm air, on this lively avenue, being next to a woman who wears a mantilla, who fans herself, and who speaks in a hoarse voice. She speaks, I listen and I do not understand. But Raymond answers her. From time to time, I ask for the conversation to be translated for me. Only, soon, I feel a little exiled, and now it seems very strange to me to possess a girl to whom I cannot even say that she has pretty eyes… However, it is she who has chosen me: this little Rosita is therefore looking for particular sensations? At the café, she is charming; she serves me, she sweetens my drinks, she squeezes lemon into them, she does not want me to do anything: the woman must serve the man, the man must allow himself to be served while smoking peacefully and without making a useless gesture. I accommodate myself to this way of understanding duties, and I watch her with pleasure as she moves gracefully. “Little girl with the mantilla, you please me infinitely; you are exquisite, I regret not being able to tell you in your language and with pretty words that warm your heart. But see how I smile at you! You please me, and the idea of possessing you soon makes me very happy; you will see, oh little savage, that the Frenchman is not remarkable only because he is not black-skinned and because his shoes are made of gray chamois, but because he also understands sensual pleasure… Raymond accompanied us to the house. While Rosita preceded me in the corridor, with a furtive gesture I passed my watch, my ring and my purse to my friend. Then Raymond, having wished us good night, left. I was alone now, alone in a house whose inhabitants could only say words that were meaningless to me, and in which it was also impossible for me to make myself understood. However, I had come there with a known purpose, determined in advance, so I hardly saw what embarrassment I had to fear. I encountered none, in fact. The tia welcomed me with her maternal air. She inquired about Raymond’s migraine, which I guessed from her pantomime: she smoothed her chin to indicate Raymond by his beard, then touched her forehead to signify the pain. I reassured her with movements of the head and eyes which showed that the pain had not increased. With that we went into the room; the tia and, with her, another An old woman whom I had not yet seen arrived and began to prepare the bed… Rosita was undressing. I was sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigarette and smiling amiably, since I could not speak. The old women had gone out… Alone with my young companion, I was interested in what was under her skirt and under her bodice and which she was removing little by little. It was several very starched white petticoats which gave her those round hips which she had in common with all the other Spanish women I saw in the streets, then a very loose corset in which her supple torso and her cute young girl’s breasts were at ease. She found herself in her chemise. Her very brown skin contrasted sharply with the dazzling whiteness of the linen: she would have said she was a little Negress; agile and of perfect movements, with red lips and white teeth; I think there was Moorish blood in her veins… It was hot: she got naked, and she walked back and forth in the room, without modesty or shamelessness, carefree and very pretty. Then I took her in my arms and caressed her. She said kind and incomprehensible things to me . Then I carried this innocent little creature to the bed , and I knew that she had been right to choose me and that there is no need for words to be in harmony while making love. I only had to look at her eyes and her mouth to guess all her desires, and, if I embraced her, her cute body arching and embracing me said everything that was happening in her life and what no words could have expressed to me better. Rosita, little burning flesh, you knew well that speech is only made to express ideas, and that it is superfluous or vain to transmit sensations. It was heavy. The sweat was drenching us. Through the wide- open windows, I could hear people passing by in the street, speaking their unknown language… I didn’t want to sleep, because from time to time, at the other end of the apartment, I could make out a man’s voice… I would hug Rosita, and I could smell the scent of spices in her hair. I enjoyed all this, strange, distant, and different. When we weren’t kissing, that’s when we couldn’t speak. But we still tried to start a conversation. Counting on her fingers, she told me her age, which was seventeen. Then I let her know with gestures that I had never slept with such a dark-haired woman… But topics of conversation by this means are quite rare. And you quickly run out. So as not to run out , we now taught each other the language of our respective countries. I pointed to her eyes and said: Eyes, she said: Ochos. Then her nose, and she: Al nas; her mouth: la boca; her breasts: las tetas; and her belly: la panxa; and her legs: las camas, and her hands: las mas… Then I told her she was pretty: O hermosa, oh mignoneta! Sometimes we heard a clapping of hands outside, it was someone coming home calling the sereno; this one with his clang of keys, came running. Rosita began to sing, I listened to her in ecstasy. Never have Spanish songs so violent and so wild, and in which the whole soul of the race cries out, gripped me so much. She threw out words, in her hoarse voice, and I listened to her passionately. When she had finished: Mira (look), she said, and she blew me a kiss;–I then kissed her with a passion doubled by all that I had felt alive in her song. She wanted me to sing too. I told her one or two café-concert songs , the best known and most popular. Repeating this after listening to her, I was ashamed of what was sung at home, of this poverty and this silly melody. But she, she did not tire of it, she found it much more beautiful than what she had sung. She wanted me to continue always. And she asked me: “Canta, canta… canta, you.” … There was a discussion in the street. I was spying… When we did not We weren’t talking, I looked at the gas lamp burning in the middle of the room… She said to me: An que pensès? I answered: Nada… Then she wanted to say a very long sentence to me which I didn’t understand a word. She started it again, looking for a way to make herself understood. And I didn’t understand. Understand? Understand? she said. And I: No. She nodded her head with a sorry look: Ah!… quès mal da no entender pas el francès, quès mal!… A rooster crowed. It was very late,–or very early. In the street nothing could be heard; all the houses were asleep. The voice of the man who spoke last night to the tia had fallen silent. As nothing had happened to me yet, I reassured myself… And I fell asleep. … When I woke up, it was broad daylight, there was a lot of noise outside. Little Rosita was sleeping peacefully beside me. Nothing in the room was disturbed. My clothes hung in their places. I was definitely at an honest tia’s house. I got up. I dressed. I found the douros in my pocket and lined them up on the table. Rosita, who had stood up, bounced the large coins and caught them in her hand, as one does in Spain to test the goodness of the change. I would have liked to give her something else, to thank her particularly for having deprived me of so much pleasure, unfortunately, because of my precaution I had barely forty sous in small change in my pockets. I offered them to her, apologizing with gestures of the little. But at the thought that I had nothing else on me, she was seized with compassion, and she gave me back exactly nineteen sous, begging me to accept them. I found this adorable, and I put the nineteen sous in my pocket, blessing the Lord for having created a divine child like Rosita, and for having allowed me to know her. I left. She gave me an exquisite kiss, the kiss of a child in love. In the corridor I met the tia in a corset, which was an incredible sight and which completed my happiness. She greeted me with a smile and a maternal buenes. Chapter 20. The following night, we left Barcelona by sea. Raymond had finally found some peace with the well- bred lady we had visited the other evening. The boat set off at four o’clock; dawn was whitening the sky. I had woken up feeling that we were no longer motionless, standing up on my bunk I looked out the porthole at the quays slowly passing along the livid and dead water. The port surrounded by its porticoes passed before me; The heavy ships, moored side by side , followed one another. Christopher Columbus’s column appeared, triumphant, standing out against the clear sky. Then came Montjuich, raising its enormous mass above the city. Finally, having skirted the jetties, we passed the lighthouse and entered the open sea… Then, seeing nothing but a murky, shifting plain through my porthole, I lay back down on my bunk. August-September 1903. And now, The Chalet in the Mountains by Eugène Montfort is coming to an end. A story where mystery and emotion were intertwined until the very last moment. We hope you enjoyed this journey to the heart of the mountains and remained captivated by the plot. Thank you for listening, and don’t forget to subscribe to discover more thrilling stories on the Audiobooks channel.

Découvrez *Le chalet dans la montagne*, un récit captivant d’Éugène Montfort où l’aventure et le mystère se mêlent dans un cadre majestueux. ✨ Ce roman vous plonge dans une atmosphère mystérieuse où la nature sauvage de la montagne cache des secrets inimaginables. 🌄 L’intrigue se tisse autour de personnages intrigants et d’événements surprenants qui ne manqueront pas de vous tenir en haleine !

👉 N’oubliez pas de vous abonner pour plus d’histoires passionnantes : [Abonnement](https://bit.ly/LivresAudioLaMagieDesMots)
-Au bon soleil 🌞📖 [https://youtu.be/2HmcKLXL18Q]
-📖 Les Misérables – Tome III : Marius | Victor Hugo 🌟 [https://youtu.be/boYFIB43VxU]
-🔎✨ Nouveaux mystères et aventures | Arthur Conan Doyle 📖🕵️ [https://youtu.be/j6bpnhPwVbQ]

🎧 Plongez dans un univers où chaque coin de montagne cache une énigme à résoudre. Préparez-vous à être transporté dans un monde où chaque étape du voyage vous rapproche d’une révélation inattendue. Ce récit est idéal pour les amateurs de mystères et de récits d’aventure dans des paysages sauvages. 🌲🗻

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00:49:06 Chapter 6.
00:53:36 Chapter 7.
01:05:14 Chapter 8.
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02:07:50 Chapter 10.
02:13:59 Chapter 11.
02:22:01 Chapter 12.
02:25:35 Chapter 13.
02:32:23 Chapter 14.
02:40:44 Chapter 15.
02:56:12 Chapter 16.
03:09:03 Chapter 17.
03:24:35 Chapter 18.
03:39:26 Chapter 19.
03:50:12 Chapter 20.