Chapter XIV: Cannes

A sage among civilized people, Diogenes tells me, decrees the uttering of hypocritical compliments during the last days of the year, but this does not suit me at all for several reasons. The first one is that I am aware of the seasons, but not of the years, which have already fallen on me in such numbers that I should be engulfed by them. Now it is warm, now it is cold. The seasons alternate and do not accumulate. The second, third and other reasons are that I have a profound disgust for men and no longer wish to resemble them in anything. I am going to leave, I shall return to the old, consecrated woods, to the fortune awaiting me on the paths. I have engaged my passage on a vessel which returns to the land of Theocritus, deprived of the citrons it brought. Diogenes has pointed out to me that I would doubtless be very ill and that I might be shipwrecked, but I believe he did it only to frighten me, and besides I prefer risking every peril to becoming, in the end, a man like yourself. I leave, I leave! Nothing shall hold me.

I flee a frightful evil, which reduces my strength, exhausts my limbs, which might succeed in turning my skin white. Diogenes, who is touched with the malady like myself, but less perhaps, supports it merrily, laughs at me, swears that it is the common lot of mankind and that I must learn to live with him. I already suffered an attack and acquainted you with its nature, I believe, but this time it is intolerable. This is boredom. Everything seems unprofitable. I have no desire and life for me is vapid. Diogenes tells me that this seizure will pass like the first one, but it is much stronger and I succumb to it. I feel that solitude alone can cure me and I must apply myself to seek it with the last ounce of energy left in me.

Cydalise has absolutely forgotten me. This caused me bitter pain, a sentiment of which I am ashamed. Diogenes finds it an honorable one, but happily I am not fashioned like you and find myself horrified at the idea that a woman should have been able to reduce me to such a degree of slavery that her forgetfulness would make me wretched. The worst of it is that a part of me thinks like Diogenes. He has left for a trip to Toulon. She has never returned. She has not written. Finally, through a female companion, he learned that Cydalise had never gone to Toulon; the informant added that we would perhaps have some tidings before long. I would henceforth like to know only chance women like the one I met in the gardens of Monte-Carlo. It is wrong for a person to belie his own nature. I am pleased with those women who come led by pure chance, and who pass.

I am leaving! Yet there is a consolation in those syllables which I often repeat and which betoken my last days among men. Diogenes does not try very hard to detain me. He sees my dejection and has renounced the idea of conquering it. Besides, I believe he is feeling the nostalgia of his libidinous life, the trip to Toulon awoke his memories. I shall perhaps miss him. He is not at all ignorant of the customs of the women of the country and I, who am almost totally ignorant of them, enjoyed his bitter words which were yet full of gayety.

“You will return to us, Satyros, when solitude, or rather barbarism, will have strengthened your heart. You still have many experiences awaiting you among us, I mean to say among women who love and this includes them all, if one counts those who shun love because they fancy they are afraid. You have only known those who throw themselves at men, but there are others who must be conquered. There lies infinity, Satyros. It is our infinity and generally our sepulchre. We descend thither, ever dreaming of the enigma of their smile, and we will never know whether their smiles are natural expressions or condescensions. You cannot understand this, I fear, Satyros, but one loves these women in proportion as one suspects their love, of which one is never sure. They are never completely conquered, and this is what gives such value to their slightest favors. It is a quite different world. You have not the faintest idea of it, Satyros. You have remained with Phryne, access to whom is always assured by a bag of gold....”

“What is this thing you call gold?”

“Or a fine reputation as a faun.”

“That is more to the point.”

“I do not deny that this last merit, which is yours, might not still gain you some hearts whose pride has not killed curiosity, but for this, too, you will need a diplomatic tact which is not yet a part of you.”

“The thing bores me in advance!”

“You cannot know. Ah! Satyros, despite your little adventure with Cydalise, you still have a lovely, sentimental ignorance. How many steps you have still to mount, or perhaps descend, to reach the level of beautiful, delicate humanity!”

“To descend, Diogenes, to descend. But I no longer desire to resemble men. I want to leave.”

“You too will think so when you will be alone with your brothers the trees and the vanishing shadows of your desires. Patience! You will return. And for this one must leave. Nostalgia is the beginning of the spiritual life. Ennui is the nobility of the soul.”

“I would have thought it was rather joy.”

“No, a joyous soul will never be thoroughly distinguished. If you must caper, at least let it be done with melancholy. Look at me steadily. Infinity commences to appear in your eyes, Satyros, I believe I discover in you a Christian faun in his birth.”

“I dimly feel, Diogenes, that you are bantering. No matter, I will perhaps miss you.”

“I really hope so. But I am not bantering. I find that a certain sadness has touched your heart. If you remained, you would soon weary of pleasures. In fine, this state does not befit a god. It is good for us, it is good for me who have no more than this means of living the last years of my poor life. Life escapes me and I only capture it by feigning indifference, for there is an irony in things and they love the malice of contradiction. But I feel that I still have some love for them and that this love is useless. Do you see what is taking place in me?”

“I see nothing at all, despite my earnest application, but I hope that you will be happy and that Erebus will be good to you.”

“That is understood. Adieu. I return to my turpitude.”

Ah! I shall never understand men! But my vessel leaves at break of day and I must sleep on board. I do not know if I shall ever again have the occasion or even the desire to write you.

ANTIPHILOS,
_Satyr._

(END)

_Three Stories from_

COLORS

By REMY DE GOURMONT

Translated by Louis Lozowick

NEW YORK
LIEBER & LEWIS
_MCMXXII_

Copyright, 1922,
By LIEBER & LEWIS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BLUE

_La demoiselle bleu aux bords frais de la source_

_Th. Gautier._

She was a princess. Sister of the queen, she lived together with her and shared her royal honors. But her fancy counselled pleasures less splendid, and she gladly paid occasional visits to one of her maids of honor whose husband served in the royal body guard, and was an excellent gentleman, young, fair, clever, amiable.

In her own country the princess had been married to a prince who might have become king, had several generations disappeared in some catastrophe. They never loved each other. However, the princess, sometimes gay and always proud, was known as a woman with a heart of steel. She received much homage but accepted little. Either she would assume a mocking attitude or take an icy tone. She loved only to dress, to play, to reign. What pleased her at the house of the royal guardsman was that her smile was there equivalent to law; besides, she was always winning in _vingt-et-un_; then, too, her dresses and her jewels eclipsed all other robes and adornments. The guardsman had never exhibited any other sentiment except that of profound respect.

Being a blond she liked blue clothes, blue flowers, blue sapphires—as blue as her own eyes, so that she finally came to be called the Blue Princess. This appellation which seemed to come out of some fairy tale, pleased her greatly. One day as she was listening to the melancholy stories of her maid of honor, she felt a kind of languor in her body and mind, and said: “My soul is a blue bird.” These words repeated several times, brought back her serene mood—so beautiful they were. Then she looked about her and said:

“Is your husband absent, my dear? I do not think he came out to greet me.”

“You noticed my husband’s absence today, but isn’t he always absent?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t he always absent-minded?”

“My poor friend, that means he is neglecting you.”

“He does not love me any more.”

“Really? A fine state of affairs. But that’s impossible. Moreover, I won’t allow it. I do not want to see my friend unhappy. I am going to order him.”

“Ah! Do you think, Madame, a heart can obey orders?”

“Certainly. Was I, a princess, consulted about my marriage? I was told to love my husband, and I did.”

“How long?”

“I might have loved him always had he wanted it. He did not.”

“There, you see.”

“He did not or perhaps could not. Marriage brought me no pleasure whatever; he reproached me with indifference and I cried. Thenceforth we never met without witnesses. In the beginning I felt deeply humiliated, but gradually I learned to appreciate the calm of solitary nights. I lead the life of a virgin with great pleasure. But since my sad experiences, the plays, the dramas, the comedies of love seem to me more inexplicable than ever.... Does the marriage ceremony really interest you?”

The maid of honor looked at her mistress with respectful and sad irony.

Then she said:

“I fear my husband hides from me some love or infatuation.”

“Infatuation?” said the princess. “A pretty word. Infatuation is nothing serious, is it?”

“Serious? No, infatuation passes while love endures. But I do not know. Perhaps it is real love that alienates him from me. I fear this greatly.”

“I scarcely understand anything of this,” said the princess, “but I would like to see you as happy as I am myself. For me, to observe the passing show of life is quite sufficient. For you—since you need love—I shall try to do something to help you, I repeat. The word of a princess will touch his heart.... Oh! my good friend, it is I, perhaps, whom he adores?”

“Perhaps, alas!”

“Why ‘alas!’ If that is so, you are saved.”

At that moment the guardsman came in and went to greet the princess.

“Sir,” she said to him, “I shall receive you at the palace, in private audience, at six o’clock.”

She rose and left.

Everybody followed the example of the princess, and the husband and wife, very excited, remained face to face.

“Madame,” said the husband, “so you have angered the princess? It is to you then that I owe this affront?”

“Affront? Your heart’s desire wants to see you in private and you complain?”

At first he did not know what to answer, for this was the first time his wife made allusion to the feelings he thought securely hidden in his heart.

“My heart’s desire,” he said brutally, “is my career, and you have doubtless ruined it through your chatter.”

“I am not a chatter-box.”

“You are stupid.”

“Ah! let me be, you do not deserve to be loved.”

The woman ran away overcome with despondent anger. Yet she hoped despite her reason that the intervention of the princess would be crowned with success. She passed the rest of the day in tears.

The guardsman worshipped the princess in secret and without hope. Timid and violent, he reserved his timidity for his idol, his violence for his wife. But every brutal act left him in deep shame and every act of shyness caused him untold suffering. He was almost always unhappy. Thus, he began to seek in ambition a remedy for his ills. He had spent all that afternoon in most humiliating errands for the king’s mistress who was troubled by the conduct of a lover she had recently dismissed. In exchange for a note of three lines the guard was to receive a warrant for the rank of captain. The note was in his pocket-book now and he had to deliver it to the king’s favorite lady at six o’clock exactly.

Love, curiosity, disquietude had the better of ambition. Dressed in his finest, and well perfumed, he ran to the audience, saying to himself: “Perhaps this is a _rendez-vous_?”

The princess, instead of letting him wait for her, was herself waiting, and not without impatience. She was prettier now, being paler, and her eyes were shining. Her face had the sweetness of white lilac hiding in the foliage, but the foliage was fair: her hair intentionally disarranged with great art let a few curls fall casually to her shoulders.

“Come here,” she said dolefully, “come here. Sit down near me. I am ill and can speak only in a whisper. And besides, it is a friend of your wife that is receiving you and not a princess. Well then: I noticed that you do not love Elizabeth any more and this grieves me. Is it really true that you no longer love her?”

“Alas!”

“And the consciousness of your duty, of your honor?”

“My honor?”

“Yes, you swore conjugal fidelity as well as eternal affection.”

“She believed it.... Perhaps I believed it myself....”

“It is wrong to forsake her, to torment her.... She is crying at this very moment, I am sure....”

“I am not severe with her.”

“Very well, then. Will you promise not to cause her any more suffering?”

“I never did that intentionally.”

“Good, but promise me more, promise me....”

She seemed crushed, and her voice became so weak that to hear her the guard had to bend his head so near her as almost to touch her hair. Although he had been trained in all the dissimulation of a courtier, he suffered frightfully. To love the princess from a distance seemed to him sweet pain in comparison with the racking torture his desire caused him at that moment. With any other woman he would either fall on his knees or flee; with the princess he had to stay still, keep silent and maintain an attitude of a soldier receiving orders.

“Promise me,” went on the princess, “to be kind to her, to be very kind, to love her....”

The guardsman was mute.

“Do you promise?”

He was still silent.

“That is impossible, then? Is it all over between you! Can you reproach her with anything serious?”

“I have nothing to reproach her with. I do not love her any longer, that is all.”

“At least, do not let her notice it!”

“I had hoped that she never would notice it.”

“Then it is possible to stop loving a woman without her noticing it?”

“That is very hard if one has not the necessary ability. More easy it is, alas! to love a woman without her noticing it.”

“Oh! Do you think so?”

“I am quite sure of it. She whom I love never suspected it and never shall.”

“Sir guardsman,” said the princess, “Sir soldier, you are a child. She whom you love is aware of it....”

“Alas!” he said, incredulous.

“... and she loves you,” she added extending both her hands to him.

Still hesitating and breathlessly agitated, he flung himself into the proferred hands.

“Kiss them, child,” said the princess, “kiss me, you who love me, you who desired me so long in the secrecy of your heart. Embrace your blue princess, embrace your love.”

Next morning, the chamber-maid said to her mistress:

“Oh! Madame has a blue spot on her breast.”

“Nothing surprising. This is a birthmark. But how strange! Now here, now there. It appears, it disappears. On the breast, on the heart....”

“Maybe that is why Madame is called the blue princess?” she continued innocently.

“Go and see whether my maid of honor is here.”

Remaining alone for a moment, the princess looked with emotion at the blue mark.

“God! How happy I am!” she thought, “and how clever! How stupid my friend! To share love confidence with any one! Poor Ariane, without you I might never have suspected anything. His glances which I mistook for a sign of warm and respectful attachment, were glances of love!... But here she is....”

The maid of honor came in agitated.

“Oh, princess! I had to wait for him till four o’clock in the morning! I am mad! All is lost!”

“There, now! Won’t you ever be reasonable? On the contrary, everything is settled.”

“Oh! Thank you!”

“Listen to me. I made him confess. It was difficult and took a long time. At last I know the truth. Mere infatuation. The person who turned your husband’s head is an actress of no importance. It is the type one picks up, discards, picks up again. She passed through many hands already, those of my husband, among others.... You see, we are of the same family.... Now, the actress is rarely free during the day. Her freedom begins at the time when the freedom of the other women ends—at midnight. I therefore decided that your husband be on guard at my palace every day from midnight to four in the morning.... Naturally, he will receive his compensation, for the work is very exhausting.... His future is assured, and his happiness.... Is he ambitious? Yes. Very well. Would a promotion please him? A decoration? First of all I attach him to my person. As soon as he is promoted to higher rank, in six months, in three months, he shall become my aide-de-camp, my secretary. He shall leave me only to court you, happy spouse. We will save him for both of us.”

“How kind you are!”

“Am I?”

“You are kindness itself.”

“You are beautiful and that is worth more.”

“Beautiful! Who is more beautiful than you?”

“Flatterer! I am thirty years old and you are twenty-five.... Alas! I have renounced everything. Will you at least love me?”

“I always did love you. I will adore you. My life belongs to you. I will be devoted to you until death, and my husband also, I hope.”

“I hope so too, I saved him perhaps from a grave danger, from unhappy love, for what joy could he find in the adventure he had entered into?”

“When he comes to himself he will be very grateful to you.... Last night, that is, this morning, he was very agitated. When he returned I thought him intoxicated. He looked at me with wandering eyes. As soon as he entered his room he locked the door, then I heard him cry: ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’”

“He said nothing more?”

“I think not. He is not very talkative.”

“An excellent trait. What would you say of a husband who should be making humiliating confessions before you?... There are such.... Mine, for example....”

“You were very unhappy!”

“Yes and no. I think no more about it. The present fills my heart with joy.... To give happiness to those whom you love and who love you—is there anything like it in the world?”

“You are adorable.”

“And adored.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Dearest friend!”

She allowed her maid of honor to take her hand and cover it with kisses.

“Kisses superimposed,” she thought, “but the last do not efface the first. Your lips, poor couple, still meet with passion but on my skin.... Very strange....”

“Ah!” she began aloud, “now that you are certain of regaining your happiness sooner or later, I hope you will use discretion. From his confidential talk I gather that your husband is a little weary of conjugal joys. Men dislike to have women make advances to them....”

“Oh! between husband and wife! However, I shall be prudent, kind friend....”

“More kind than you think! For, after all, your husband is quite seductive. He is young, younger than I am, beautiful, warm-hearted, passionate....”

“He was.”

“He still is, rest assured, and it will not take you long to perceive it. If I had not renounced everything, if I were not a princess.... In your place I would be jealous.”

“Heavens! I know your heart too well.”

“Then you will return home full of hope? Still a little sad?”

“A little.”

“But the clouds are scattering, the sky is becoming blue again?”

“Yes.”

“Blue like my soul, my sweet friend, blue like my heart.”

And she pressed her finger to her breast where she felt the blue mark that thrilled her love-intoxicated flesh.

ZINZOLINE

_D’une lumière zinzoline...._

_Scarron_

Color was the subject of conversation, and the young women were expressing their commonplace preferences. One liked rose, another liked blue, a third praised pale green, a fourth preferred red.

“And you, Alain?”

“Oh! I as a man,” said Alain, “am condemned to black, gray and brown. I do not dream like you of brilliant plumage. Still, if I were allowed my choice, I should like to dress in zinzoline.”

All burst out laughing to hide their ignorance.

“Is not the word beautiful?” continued Alain.

No answer came. Then the young man went on:

“I do not want to deceive you. The word is pretty but the color is frightful. Imagine something reddish violet, recall a piece of violet velvet all worn and showing the warp of a dubious red.”

“You are making fun of us, that is not fair.”

“I am not making fun. I like the word because it is so pretty, because it rhymes with my name, perhaps because it rhymes with yours, my Aline. Zinzoline!”

And he passionately kissed his sister who protested vigorously:

“No, I am not zinzoline; I do not want to be zinzoline.”

“But though I like the word I do not like the color it denotes, and if my Aline did in truth become zinzoline I would not love her so much.”

“Naughty boy!” said Aline.

“For several minutes,” said Alain.

The girl called Blue was an orphan. A daughter of the closest friend of Alain and Aline’s mother, she entered their house as a little girl and grew up there, although it was generally felt that she was not one of the family. Her nature separated her from her foster-relatives. She was gloomy, they were gay; she seemed to be afraid of life; they joyfully plunged into it, young and old, as into a warm sea. Neither the first nor the last possessed a strong will. Paula (this was her real name) was, on the contrary, always in a state of high, moral tension, and if she ever happened to laugh in company, aloud like everybody else, she would suddenly cut herself short as soon as she became aware of it. A philosopher would have found in this child the passion for suffering which priesthood has so often exploited in women among whom it is not at all rare; a passion which most men like because it flatters their pride or better still because they find it quite natural. Such women are hard to tame because they are very suspicious and also very apprehensive. One often thinks them cruel while they are only timorous. The more skilled in the art of self-torment seek often to displease, just as others seek to please; always, however, with some hidden motive; and when one divines this motive, he becomes their master.

Paula was neither ugly nor beautiful. When the features of her somewhat concentrated face were illumined with a smile, she became attractive. Her eyes would have been very eloquent had she not imposed an oath of unexpressiveness on them. She was small though not slight, and very nimble; her very thick hair was chestnut of that indefinable hue which is perhaps most captivating because most mysterious, because it does not promise anything.

Besides the two young girls there were two young women and it was to them, naturally, that Alain paid his chief attention. He was not quite sure which of the two pleased him more, nor, in fact, whether either one of them pleased him at all. Both, decided brunettes, scared him a little, but as they answered his banter, he kept teasing them somewhat as one teases a strange animal to see what would happen. What did happen was that while playing, they exchanged sidelong glances, and that each in turn brightened up whenever an extra compliment fell to her share. Alain kissed the tapering fingers of one, and the waist, where the fingers immediately withdrew to seek shelter, heaved like a big wave. He then walked up, like a traitor, to the other woman, and his lips touched the down on the nape of her neck; the neck and the entire body quivered long after.

Motionless, with a dull glance and disdainful air, Paula seemed to see nothing and saw everything. She seemed to feel nothing and suffered great pains.

“I am nothing. He did not look at me even once! I am ugly, it’s true, and badly dressed in this blue so unbecoming to me. But I am satisfied. Oh! I wish I could displease him still more!”

At that moment Alain noticed her.

“She is really the prettiest.”

He threw her a rose he had just stolen from one of the other two women.

“Thanks, Zinzoline,” said Paula, “you do not often make me presents; I shall keep this one.”

“He wanted to humiliate me,” she thought, “what shall I do to displease him still more? Stay here or go?”

She looked at the two young women:

“Stay.”

She smelled the rose:

“Go.”

“I am going up,” said Aline at that moment, “are you, Paula?”

She looked again at the two young women half concealed from her by Alain who was facing them.

“No, I stay here.”

Alain turned his head towards her. His face was smiling.

“Yes, I am going too, wait for me.”

She was thinking:

“He looked at me ironically. He thinks I want to watch him. What an idea! I scorn him!”

Aline entered the parlor. Paula went up to her room. She put some water into a small vase of blue crystal, and, before putting the rose in it, long inhaled its odor, looked attentively at it, then suddenly with a quick motion brought it to her lips.

“I am going mad. I am ashamed of my own self! What’s this flower to me? How stupid! No! no! no!”

And she crushed the rose in a violent fury, threw its shreds on the floor, and began to stamp her feet over the petals in ever-rising childish wrath. Coming to herself, she carefully swept into the fireplace the remnants of her rejected joy, when another fit overtook her in this humble plight. With the small duster in one hand, leaning with the other on the marble, comical and tragic, she burst into tears.

Paula once more found strength to counteract this. She straightened up, washed her eyes, forced herself to read three pages from _The Treasure of the Humble_, and went down calm and cool. Everybody was already in. As usual, she helped Aline to serve the tea. Alain, in the meantime, continued his adolescent pranks. Alain, eighteen years of age, was awkward and insolent, though quite innocently so, for he thought himself very clever as he had already conquered the hearts of two servant maids and one little flower girl in the neighboring city. He saw them swoon away by turns from pleasure and disappointment, and told them such things as occasions required. Hence, he did not think himself insolent at all but, on the contrary, well-bred and even affable.

He was rather tall and graceful, beardless and with hair closely cut. His head was of two hues superimposed above each other, rose and copper, in the rose—two big blue flowers. He was peculiar in appearance and very captivating; women desired him as they desire a sparkling, rare jewel, but being too self-conscious, he failed to notice their desire. Besides, the friends of his mother or sister seemed to him impenetrable fortresses. These two women, however, showed their weakness, and he began to believe them vulnerable.

Remaining alone with the two women, he began to tell them, rather awkwardly, the greatest impertinences in the world.

“I love you both, yes, both.”

“We don’t need to be loved,” answered the younger quickly, “we have husbands.”

“Husbands? Do they know how to love?”

“Certainly,” she answered.

“If your husbands loved you they would not have gone out hunting. They would have acted like me. They would have got a sudden pain in their foot and stayed with you.”

And he pointed to his slipper.

The young woman would not admit herself defeated. She said:

“There is a time for all things.”

But she was thinking:

“Heavens! He remained for my sake! he loves me.”

“So he loves me?” thought the other. “He loves me!”

As if divining their secret thoughts, Alain became more daring.

“Only lovers know how to love.”

“Perhaps this is true?” thought the older. “Shall I try it?”

“He is right,” thought the younger, who had some experience. “He would love me splendidly!”

They dropped their eyes to dream the better.

“_Mesdames_,” said Alain, “I place my heart at your feet.”

This time they both laughed.

“What a devil!”

“What a little demon!”

“Oh! I wish I could whisper something in your ears, to both at the same time.”

“Naughty boy!”

“Naughty boy!”

“Alright, one after the other. Let us draw lots.”

They began to laugh still more loudly.

“I shall say one word to each and ask one question. I expect an answer.”

“No, I don’t want to hear anything.”

“And still less, to answer.”

“But I won’t say the same thing to both, and won’t ask the same question.”

“You wouldn’t say anything that can’t be listened to?”

“You wouldn’t ask questions that can’t be answered?”

“Naturally.”

“Alright, give us the lots, naughty boy.”

“I yield my turn.”

“Your turn, dear Madame. Be kind enough to come near. Good: ‘I love you. And you?’ ‘Monster!’ Now yours: ‘I adore you. Do you love me!’ ‘Hush!’ I kept my word and you did likewise. Now let us go and have tea with a gratified conscience of duty performed.”

They walked, thinking. Alain followed them and was asking himself:

“With which shall I begin and how?”

* * * * *

The dawn was hardly breaking when Paula was already on her feet. She had slept very little. Before dressing, she went out of her bedroom, and straight to an adjacent room called the laundry, which contained besides the wash of the entire household, all sorts of remnants of worn-out clothes, hats, and discarded ribbons—a heritage left by several generations of women. There were multicolored silks brought into fashion by the Empress Eugenie, there was amaranthine velvet, and nacarat satins.

“Ah! Here is something I want!”

She took a box of ribbons the sad color of which seemed to answer fully the definition of zinzoline—reddish violet.

“How ugly!”

She fastened bows of zinzoline silk to her blue waist, to her white neck, to her chestnut hair.

“I look like a wild woman,” she said looking at herself in the mirror, “he will laugh at me; perhaps he is angry. If I do not quite displease him this time, what else can I do?”

She went into the garden. A blackbird was madly whistling the five notes of its monotonous plaint; the sun was casting long shadows; there was velvety dew on the leaves and the grass. She saw a morning glory open truly like a pretty eye; she ate up an apple cold as ice. Paula thought of nothing except how jolly it would be to leap like an early roe.

But what was that she suddenly noticed under the lilac bush? Alain sitting on a bench and looking at her in surprise!

The sight of this friendly enemy revived her rancor.

“What! You are not thinking about me?”

“No, dear, Paula, I was thinking of my own self.”

“Do you always get up so early?”

“Only today.”

Standing in the full light of the sun, Paula sparkled with zinzoline hues.

“Where did you find this?”

“What?”

“These dreadful ribbons.”

“Dreadful? Do you think so?”

“You put them on for my sake, perhaps?”

“Why not?”

“If you intended to displease me, you fully succeeded. But listen, I thought you were indifferent to everything, I thought nothing could touch your heart, and here I see you up at five in the morning....”

“And you?”

“I! I am, at least, in love.”

“Not I.”

“... and you disguise as a gypsy and run about in the garden to shake off your thoughts.... Sit down near me, Paula, come.... This is really zinzoline.... What an idea! But you have not been so foolish as you thought, and I am less stupid than you imagine....”

“Well?” she said with ill-disguised coolness.

“Well, I am like you, I do not know what to say. I would like to jest, but cannot.... Paula, Paula, do you know why we both got up with the sun? Tell me, do you?... Give me your hand, Paula.”

She let him take her hand, she let his arm embrace her, she allowed him to press her to his breast. The trees, flowers, heaven and earth—all became a whirling confusion. She shut her eyes, her head fell.

“Tell me, do you know?” continued Alain. “Well, we sought and found each other.”

She was a tender mistress of Alain during all his vacation and long after, every time he returned home.

One day Alain said to her:

“We ought to marry. But how shall we do it? Can a man marry at eighteen? Let us wait a little.”

“Let us not talk about it,” answered Paula, “I am yours, and you can do with me whatever you please.”

And so she reconciled her happiness with her love of suffering. She was very happy in the course of many years.

WHITE

_Cet unanime blanc conflit
D’une guirland avec la même._

_S. Mallarmé._

There were once two children of the same age, a little boy and a little girl. They loved each other very much, were never happy apart, and their playing had much tenderness in it. In the game of hide-and-seek, whenever the little girl was caught, she would fall into the arms of her friend, throw her head back, lower her eyes, half-open her mouth; and if the kisses were not showered upon her, she would demand them or go in search of them, raising her mouth gracefully to his timid or distracted lips. They had just completed their tenth year.

One day when it was very warm, they removed their socks and went splashing into the stream. They became very wet and went to dry themselves in the sun on the warm grass. The sight of their little rosy legs and wet knees excited their curiosity. They made comparisons, and the little boy had the good sense to notice that his skin was less smooth. “And not so tender,” he said; and his hands were in agreement with his eyes.

They recommenced next day, and read more with each day. Their kisses, now accompanied by soft caresses, sent the blood to their heads. But an instant later they thought no more of it and broke out in innocent laughter. They were happy.

With the coming of the first cold and rainy days they transferred their games to a big half-empty room, left entirely to them. The little boy, who was attending school, came to pass his time at his friend’s house. The little girl was receiving instruction at home. Whenever the weather was bad, the little boy took lessons together with her. Their parents, with an eye on the future, noticed with pleasure the childish intimacy of the two pupils.

Toward the month of September a curé came to the house, and was taken by the mother into the large room where the children were at play. They brought him an armchair and a foot-stool. He sat down, pulled out his snuff-box, blew his nose, took a good pinch of snuff, and began to talk of God. They knew the topic very well, but the little girl became attentive when the priest turned to her and said:

“My child, I hope you will soon make the acquaintance of your creator. You know how much he loves you and also how much you love Him. Pure hearts always love the kind God. But true love requires greater intimacy and greater sacrifice. Jesus will come to you and you must submit to Him with trust. You will feel the sacred embrace of your creator. In a word, my dear little girl, we are going to prepare you for your first communion.”

“And I?” asked the little boy.

“Listen,” said the priest, “and profit by my words. You know,” he continued, turning again to the little girl, “the whole importance of such an act. Catechism teaches you the grandeur of this sacrament. What mystery in the union of the creator and the created! This union is achieved by the Eucharist, and brings to those who know how to prepare themselves for it and how to render themselves worthy of it, the ineffable joys of divine love....”

He spoke a long time, and the frigidity of his speech contrasted strangely with the exalted sentiments he was expressing. Every minute he unfolded a big red, dirty handkerchief, opened his snuff-box, took a pinch, spat, sneezed. The little girl understood nothing of all the grandiloquence on love retailed by the old automaton; however, he spoke of love, and this word even in such a mouth charmed her and made her tremble a little.

Her confessor did not as yet question her on the sixth commandment, but at the approach of the great day he departed from his usual reserve and indifference. His questions, very precise and in conformity with the church manual, interested the little girl very much. Her heart bled reflecting upon them. Then all that was sin! These games, kisses, fondling, caresses—sins! The priest did not, however, apprise her of anything through which might have lost her innocence without knowing it.

One afternoon, she refused a kiss of her friend, and went, without further explanation, to kneel in a corner of her room. Then she took out a book and began to read: “Let us have faith to remove all obstacles that prevent the coming of Christ within us. Let us prepare Him a sanctuary, pure, adorned, kindled with love; and when He comes we can say in the fervor of our joy: ‘My beloved is mine, He rests in my heart’....”

She pronounced these last words aloud. The little boy heard them and asked in tears:

“You don’t love me any more, then?”

“You cannot understand these things. I like you as a brother, as a little friend; I have great affection for you, but my love belongs to Jesus.”

“To Jesus!”

He shrugged his shoulders, vexed in his affliction.

“Jesus loves me, how can I fail to love Him. He is courting me, how can I resist Him? Don’t you know that He is Almighty, that He can grind both of us to dust, at this very moment?”

“Is that true?”

He reflected, overwhelmed, upon this stranger so powerful and so cruel who came to take his friend away, to break his heart.

“Ah! Let Him kill me, but let Him not take you away!”

“He won’t take me away. Did He take Angela, Laura, Juliette whom He loved last year and who are still happy?”

“Then he won’t always love you?”

“He will always love me but from a distance; and I will love Him. But I am not the only one on this earth and He has to reach the hearts of all the little girls who have their first communion.”

“Does he also reach the hearts of little boys?”

“I don’t think so,” she said in a tone of irony. “He cannot offer little boys anything more than good, firm friendship.”

“I will never love Him.”

“You will have to love Him, when your heart is pure. You’ll see.”

“Ah!”

“I have a pure heart. I confessed all my sins!”

“What sins?”

“Be still and ask God’s forgiveness.”

She turned again to her prayers.

Her friend was lost in thought.

Less mature than little girls, little boys have their first communion a year later than girls of the same age. It was a custom; he did not feel himself humiliated by it. Still he was very anxious to participate in the mysteries into which his friend was going to be initiated. He was resentful both through jealousy and fear.

“I hope,” he thought, “He doesn’t do her any harm!”

The great day arrived. He saw his little friend pale and pretty in a cloud of muslin. Coming near her, he whispered:

“How I do love you!”

She lowered her eyes and began to roll the rosary between her hands gloved in white. She passed without answering him, without looking at him. He was sad throughout the ceremony. The reading of the acts braced him up a little, but his heart broke when he heard the voice of his friend:

“Oh, my wealth, my treasure, my life, my paradise, my love, my all, receive a heart burning with love.... Oh, my treasure, I want to live and die in endless communion with you!... My well-beloved is mine and I am His. Oh, Jesus, I do not want to be my own, I want to be yours. Let all my faculties be yours and let them serve your pleasure....”

“Ingrate!” he thought. He felt a spasm of anger. Then he recalled the enchanting moments spent with his friend, their games, their laughter, those long kisses which left them breathless, those embraces out of which they came blushing, skin burning, eyes moist....

“Someone else will now give her all these pleasures! And I am going to be alone.... She does not love me any more....”

The little girl had the honor to speak again after communion. She returned to her place first from the ceremony, fell on her knees, hid her face in her hands, and remained long absorbed in thought. A powerful sentiment was weighing her down. She felt sad and happy:

“He is within me, I feel Him in my heart.... My heart is expanding.... I am choking with joy.... I am loved, I am loved.... Is this you, my love? Oh! Rest in my arms, clasp me to you again, again! Ah! My heart is faint.... My head is reeling.... Ah! Ah! what emotion! I am going to confess my love for Him aloud. I am very happy, very proud.... Do you love me? He loves me.”

And she rose and said:

“Oh, kind Savior, I have devoted myself to you, You have devoted yourself to me. I want to sacrifice to You all my earthly pleasures. I sacrifice to You my body, my soul, my will. This is all I have to offer, alas! If I had more I would give more, I would like to die for You.... Kindle me with Your love. But I cannot be pleased with a spark, I want a tongue of flame, I want a thousand of them, I want a conflagration which would destroy within me all attachment to living creatures.... Vain creatures, leave me alone, you will no longer see me. My heart belongs entirely to my well-beloved....”

“She does not love me any more,” he thought, “she will never love me again.”

He cried. His neighbors thought it was from piety.

In the meantime the Mass was being finished and one could already hear the moving of chairs in the back of the church. The little girl reborn through love was also devoured by hunger. Then she thought of her home, her parents, her friend, of the fine ceremonial table sparkling with flowers, crystals, silverware; she thought of the kitchen and the cook. She was sure that a fine plate of soup was already being cooled for her.

“After that I shall eat a little cake.... My friend will be there anxious to wait upon me.... I like him very much.... We shall take a walk while waiting for the vespers. We shall pick some flowers, nothing but white, white like my veil, like my heart. I am happy!”

The little boy ran to the house of his friend where his own family breakfasted that day. He came to notify the cook. And in the pantry were two portions of soup, two wonderful tarts, and two glasses of wine.

When the little girl arrived, he took her hand and she allowed him to lead her. At the sight of the little dinner all prepared, her little, feminine heart leaped with joy. She fell on the neck of the little boy and embracing him with all her strength, said:

“You know, Jesus is my mystic spouse, but this will not last long. While He still loves me, tell me what you want, He will not refuse anything to his little spouse.”

“I want you to love me as before.”

“Here,” she said.

And she offered her lips.

“Are you satisfied? Let us eat now, I am hungry.”

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 146 Changed: that my conquest of the Admirality
To: that my conquest of the Admiralty