Chapter II: Au Mont Agel, July 17

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am a god.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you then left humanity forever?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She left me, in turn.”

I answered:

“You deserved it.”

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

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

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

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

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

ANTIPHILOS,
_Satyr._

III

THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN