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Title: The Elixir of Life
Author: Honore de Balzac
Translator: Clara Bell and James Waring
Release Date: February, 1998 [Etext #1215]
Posting Date: February 20, 2010
Language: English
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THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
By Honore De Balzac
Translated By Clara Bell and James Waring
TO THE READER
At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since
dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same
story in a collection published about the beginning of the present
century. To the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain
of Hoffmann of Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac,
and was omitted in the published editions of his collected works. The
_Comedie Humaine_ is sufficiently rich in original creations for the
author to own to this innocent piece of plagiarism; when, like the
worthy La Fontaine, he has told unwittingly, and after his own fashion,
a tale already related by another. This is not one of the hoaxes in
vogue in the year 1830, when every author wrote his "tale of horror"
for the amusement of young ladies. When you have read the account of
Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to picture to yourself the part which
would be played under very similar circumstances by honest folk who, in
this nineteenth century, will take a man's money and undertake to pay
him a life annuity on the faith of a chill, or let a house to an ancient
lady for the term of her natural life! Would they be for resuscitating
their clients? I should dearly like a connoisseur in consciences to
consider how far there is a resemblance between a Don Juan and fathers
who marry their children to great expectations. Does humanity, which,
according to certain philosophers, is making progress, look on the art
of waiting for dead men's shoes as a step in the right direction? To
this art we owe several honorable professions, which open up ways of
living on death. There are people who rely entirely on an expected
demise; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a corpse, that
serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong bishops'
coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, _tontiniers_, and the like.
Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy landed
property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in cold
blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a step-mother,
some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to themselves, "I
shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, and then----" A
murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted
on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is
always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his
vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live
when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not
just admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by
our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a
fellow-creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin
into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their
wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to
the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought
when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up
childish foreheads to be kissed with a "Good-night, father!" Hourly they
meet the gaze of eyes that they would fain close for ever, eyes that
still open each morning to the light, like Belvidero's in this Study.
God alone knows the number of those who are parricides in thought.
Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who must pay a life
annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live in
the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate
cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require
two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail,
and the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization
of Europe turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a
pivot; it would be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not,
in an age that prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect
this essential portion of the social machinery?
If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of address _To the
Reader_ before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all literary
forms, it is for the purpose of making a remark that applies to
several of the Studies, and very specially to this. Every one of his
compositions has been based upon ideas more or less novel, which, as
it seemed to him, needed literary expression; he can claim priority for
certain forms and for certain ideas which have since passed into the
domain of literature, and have there, in some instances, become common
property; so that the date of the first publication of each Study cannot
be a matter of indifference to those of his readers who would fain do
him justice.
Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like a reader?
We have friends in our own circle who read nothing of ours. The author
hopes to pay his debt, by dedicating this work _Diis ignotis_.
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, Don Juan Belvidero
was giving a banquet to a prince of the house of Este. A banquet in
those times was a marvelous spectacle which only royal wealth or the
power of a mightly [sic] lord could furnish forth. Seated about a
table lit up with perfumed tapers, seven laughter-loving women were
interchanging sweet talk. The white marble of the noble works of art
about them stood out against the red stucco walls, and made strong
contrasts with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in satin, glittering with
gold, and covered with gems less brilliant than their eyes, each told
a tale of energetic passions as diverse as their styles of beauty.
They differed neither in their ideas nor in their language; but the
expression of their eyes, their glances, occasional gestures, or
the tones of their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute, wanton,
melancholy, or satirical, to their words.
One seemed to be saying--"The frozen heart of age might kindle at my
beauty."
Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture of my
adorers."
A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I feel
remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and afraid of hell.
But I love you, I love you so that I can sacrifice my hereafter to you."
The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!" she
cried; "I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful of the
past, with the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still upon me, I
drink deep of life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and of love!"
The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a feverish
glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should need no hired bravo
to kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried at last, and laughed, but
the marvelously wrought gold comfit box in her fingers was crushed by
her convulsive clutch.
"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the frenzy
of a Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between the lips
parted with a smile of cruel glee.
"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the seventh,
throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching playfulness. It was
a childish girl who spoke, and the speaker was wont to make sport of
sacred things.
"Oh! don't talk about it," cried Don Juan, the young and handsome giver
of the banquet. "There is but one eternal father, and, as ill luck will
have it, he is mine."
The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan's friends, the Prince himself, gave a cry
of horror. Two hundred years later, in the days of Louis XV., people of
taste would have laughed at this witticism. Or was it, perhaps, that
at the outset of an orgy there is a certain unwonted lucidity of mind?
Despite the taper light, the clamor of the senses, the gleam of gold and
silver, the fumes of wine, and the exquisite beauty of the women,
there may perhaps have been in the depths of the revelers' hearts some
struggling glimmer of reverence for things divine and human, until it
was drowned in glowing floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had
been crushed, eyes were growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais'
phrase, had "taken possession of them down to their sandals."
During that brief pause a door opened; and as once the Divine presence
was revealed at Belshazzar's feast, so now it seemed to be manifest
in the apparition of an old white-haired servant, who tottered in,
and looked sadly from under knitted brows at the revelers. He gave
a withering glance at the garlands, the golden cups, the pyramids of
fruit, the dazzling lights of the banquet, the flushed scared faces, the
hues of the cushions pressed by the white arms of the women.
"My lord, your father is dying!" he said; and at those solemn words,
uttered in hollow tones, a veil of crape seemed to be drawn over the
wild mirth.
Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests that might be
rendered by, "Excuse me; this kind of thing does not happen every day."
Does it so seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in the
full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of an orgy?
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but
death is truer--Death has never forsaken any man.
Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall; and as he went down
the long gallery, through the cold and darkness, he strove to assume an
expression in keeping with the part he had to play; he had thrown off
his mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, at the first
thought of this role. The night was dark. The mute servitor, his guide
to the chamber where the dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly that
Death, aided by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a reaction
of drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts through the spendthrift's
soul. He examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a man involved
in a lawsuit on his way to the Court.
Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an old man of ninety, who
had devoted the greatest part of his life to business pursuits. He had
acquired vast wealth in many a journey to magical Eastern lands, and
knowledge, so it was said, more valuable than the gold and diamonds,
which had almost ceased to have any value for him.
"I would give more to have a tooth in my head than for a ruby," he would
say at times with a smile. The indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's
story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these follies
amuse you, dear boy----" he would say laughingly, as he lavished money
on his son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of youth; the fond
father did not remember his own decaying powers while he looked on that
brilliant young life.
Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an
angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late
and short-lived love. For fifteen years the widower had mourned the
loss of his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son and
his numerous household had attributed the strange habits that he had
contracted. He had shut himself up in the least comfortable wing of his
palace, and very seldom left his apartments; even Don Juan himself must
first ask permission before seeing his father. If this hermit, unbound
by vows, came or went in his palace or in the streets of Ferrara, he
walked as if he were in a dream, wholly engrossed, like a man at strife
with a memory, or a wrestler with some thought.
The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, the palace might echo
with clamorous mirth, horses pawed the ground in the courtyards, pages
quarreled and flung dice upon the stairs, but Bartolommeo ate his seven
ounces of bread daily and drank water. A fowl was occasionally dressed
for him, simply that the black poodle, his faithful companion, might
have the bones. Bartolommeo never complained of the noise. If the
huntsmen's horns and baying dogs disturbed his sleep during his illness,
he only said, "Ah! Don Juan has come back again." Never on earth
has there been a father so little exacting and so indulgent; and,
in consequence, young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his father
unceremoniously, had all the faults of a spoiled child. He treated
old Bartolommeo as a wilful courtesan treats an elderly adorer; buying
indemnity for insolence with a smile, selling good-humor, submitting to
be loved.
Don Juan, beholding scene after scene of his younger years, saw that it
would be a difficult task to find his father's indulgence at fault. Some
new-born remorse stirred the depths of his heart; he felt almost ready
to forgive this father now about to die for having lived so long. He
had an accession of filial piety, like a thief's return in thought to
honesty at the prospect of a million adroitly stolen.
Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty, chilly suite of rooms in
which his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp close
air, the mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses thickly
covered with dust had passed into him, and now he stood in the old man's
antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of the deathbed, beside a
dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic table sent broad uncertain
shafts of light, fainter or brighter, across the bed, so that the dying
man's face seemed to wear a different look at every moment. The bitter
wind whistled through the crannies of the ill-fitting casements; there
was a smothered sound of snow lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of
these sights and sounds with the scenes which Don Juan had just quitted
was so sudden that he could not help shuddering. He turned cold as he
came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a sudden vehement gust of
wind and lighted up his father's face; the features were wasted and
distorted; the skin that cleaved to their bony outlines had taken wan
livid hues, all the more ghastly by force of contrast with the white
pillows on which he lay. The muscles about the toothless mouth had
contracted with pain and drawn apart the lips; the moans that issued
between them with appalling energy found an accompaniment in the howling
of the storm without.
In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most striking thing
about the dying face was its incredible power. It was no ordinary spirit
that wrestled there with Death. The eyes glared with strange fixity of
gaze from the cavernous sockets hollowed by disease. It seemed as if
Bartolommeo sought to kill some enemy sitting at the foot of his bed by
the intent gaze of dying eyes. That steady remorseless look was the
more appalling because the head that lay upon the pillow was passive and
motionless as a skull upon a doctor's table. The outlines of the body,
revealed by the coverlet, were no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as
one dead, save for those eyes. There was something automatic about the
moaning sounds that came from the mouth. Don Juan felt something like
shame that he must be brought thus to his father's bedside, wearing a
courtesan's bouquet, redolent of the fragrance of the banqueting-chamber
and the fumes of wine.
"You were enjoying yourself!" the old man cried as he saw his son.
Even as he spoke the pure high notes of a woman's voice, sustained by
the sound of the viol on which she accompanied her song, rose above the
rattle of the storm against the casements, and floated up to the chamber
of death. Don Juan stopped his ears against the barbarous answer to his
father's speech.
"I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.
The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could not
pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.
"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.
"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I have
always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire my death?"
"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a part of my
own life!" cried Don Juan.
("We can always _say_ this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought; "it
is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")
The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the old poodle barked.
Don Juan shivered; the response was so intelligent that he fancied the
dog must have understood him.
"I was sure that I could count upon you, my son!" cried the dying man.
"I shall live. So be it; you shall be satisfied. I shall live, but
without depriving you of a single day of your life."
"He is raving," thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest father,
yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for your image will
be for ever in my heart."
"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble, summoning
all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of doubt ran through
him, one of those suspicions that come into being under a dying man's
pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on, in a voice grown weak with that
last effort, "I have no more wish to give up life than you to give up
wine and mistresses, horses and hounds, and hawks and gold----"
"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by the bed
and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my dear father," he
added aloud, "we must submit to the will of God."
"I am God!" muttered the dying man.
"Do not blaspheme!" cried the other, as he saw the menacing expression
on his father's face. "Beware what you say; you have received extreme
unction, and I should be inconsolable if you were to die before my eyes
in mortal sin."
"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth twitched.
Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the
muffled sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose the
sounds of the beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off and faint
as the dawn. The dying man smiled.
"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the music,
a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark tresses, all
the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am about to begin life
anew."
"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.
"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker went on.
"There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring hidden by the
griffin, and it will fly open."
"I have found it, father."
"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."
"I have it."
"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old man felt
how very near the end had come, and summoned all his dying strength
to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub me all over with that
liquid, and I shall come to life again."
"There is very little of it," his son remarked.
Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and see.
When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with appalling
quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some marble statue
which the sculptor had condemned to remain stretched out for ever, the
wide eyes had come to have a ghastly fixity.
He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.
He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to be a
sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The hair on his
head had risen and stiffened with horror, his agonized glance still
spoke. He was a father rising in just anger from his tomb, to demand
vengeance at the throne of God.
"There! it is all over with the old man!" cried Don Juan.
He had been so interested in holding the mysterious phial to the lamp,
as a drinker holds up the wine-bottle at the end of a meal, that he had
not seen his father's eyes fade. The cowering poodle looked from his
master to the elixir, just as Don Juan himself glanced again and again
from his father to the flask. The lamplight flickered. There was a
deep silence; the viol was mute. Juan Belvidero thought that he saw his
father stir, and trembled. The changeless gaze of those accusing eyes
frightened him; he closed them hastily, as he would have closed a
loose shutter swayed by the wind of an autumn night. He stood there
motionless, lost in a world of thought.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a shrill sound like the creaking of
a rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but dropped the phial. A
sweat, colder than the blade of a dagger, issued through every pore. It
was only a piece of clockwork, a wooden cock that sprang out and crowed
three times, an ingenious contrivance by which the learned of that epoch
were wont to be awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labors of
the day. Through the windows there came already a flush of dawn. The
thing, composed of wood, and cords, and wheels, and pulleys, was more
faithful in its service than he in his duty to Bartolommeo--he, a man
with that peculiar piece of human mechanism within him that we call a
heart.
Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in the
Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the mysterious
liquid.
Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the
gallery, a confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and light
footfalls, and the rustling of silks--the sounds of a band of revelers
struggling for gravity. The door opened, and in came the Prince and Don
Juan's friends, the seven courtesans, and the singers, disheveled and
wild like dancers surprised by the dawn, when the tapers that have
burned through the night struggle with the sunlight.
They had come to offer the customary condolence to the young heir.
"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the Prince in
Brambilla's ear.
"Well, his father was very good," she returned.
But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmistakable traces on his
features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men stood motionless.
The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks marbled with kisses, knelt
down and began a prayer. Don Juan could scarce help trembling when he
saw splendor and mirth and laughter and song and youth and beauty and
power bowed in reverence before Death. But in those times, in that
adorable Italy of the sixteenth century, religion and revelry went hand
in hand; and religious excess became a sort of debauch, and a debauch a
religious rite!
The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all
faces had simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy,
half-indifferent--the whole masque disappeared, and left the chamber of
death empty. It was like an allegory of life.
As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to Rivabarella:
"Now, who would have taken Don Juan's impiety for a boast? He loves his
father."
"Did you see that black dog?" asked La Brambilla.
"He is enormously rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolino.
"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese (she who had crushed the
comfit-box).
"What does it matter to you, forsooth?" cried the Duke. "With his money
he is as much a prince as I am."
At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by countless thoughts,
and wavered between two decisions. He took counsel with the gold heaped
up by his father, and returned in the evening to the chamber of death,
his whole soul brimming over with hideous selfishness. He found all his
household busy there. "His lordship" was to lie in state to-morrow; all
Ferrara would flock to behold the wonderful spectacle; and the servants
were busy decking the room and the couch on which the dead man lay. At a
sign from Don Juan all his people stopped, dumfounded and trembling.
"Leave me alone here," he said, and his voice was changed, "and do not
return until I leave the room."
When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last to go, echoed
but faintly along the paved gallery, Don Juan hastily locked the door,
and sure that he was quite alone, "Let us try," he said to himself.
Bartolommeo's body was stretched on a long table. The embalmers had
laid a sheet over it, to hide from all eyes the dreadful spectacle of a
corpse so wasted and shrunken that it seemed like a skeleton, and only
the face was uncovered. This mummy-like figure lay in the middle of
the room. The limp clinging linen lent itself to the outlines it
shrouded--so sharp, bony, and thin. Large violet patches had already
begun to spread over the face; the embalmers' work had not been finished
too soon.
Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a tremor as he opened
the magic crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling
so violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don
Juan had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had been
corrupted by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of
Urbino crossed his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that
goaded him into boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the
words that were echoing through his brain, _Moisten one of the eyes with
the liquid_! He took up a linen cloth, moistened it sparingly with
the precious fluid, and passed it lightly over the right eyelid of the
corpse. The eye unclosed....
"Aha!" said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, as we clutch in
dreams the branch from which we hang suspended over a precipice.
For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a
death's head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful liquid
brightness. Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled like the strange
lights that travelers see in lonely places in winter nights. The eye
seemed as if it would fain dart fire at Don Juan; he saw it thinking,
upbraiding, condemning, uttering accusations, threatening doom; it cried
aloud, and gnashed upon him. All anguish that shakes human souls was
gathered there; supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the
love in a girl's heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all
these, the deeply searching glance a man turns on his fellows as he
mounts the last step of the scaffold. Life so dilated in this fragment
of life that Don Juan shrank back; he walked up and down the room, he
dared not meet that gaze, but he saw nothing else. The ceiling and
the hangings, the whole room was sown with living points of fire and
intelligence. Everywhere those gleaming eyes haunted him.
"He might very likely have lived another hundred years!" he cried
involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his father,
and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid closed and
opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of assent. It was an
intelligent movement. If a voice had cried "Yes!" Don Juan could not
have been more startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought.
He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.
"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with himself.
"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.
"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!" And he
went closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over the hollow
cheeks, and fell on Don Juan's hand.
"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted him; it
was as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an angel.
At last he rose. "So long as there is no blood----" he muttered.
Then, summoning all the courage needed for a coward's crime, he
extinguished the eye, pressing it with the linen cloth, turning his head
away. A terrible groan startled him. It was the poor poodle, who died
with a long-drawn howl.
"Could the brute have been in the secret?" thought Don Juan, looking
down at the faithful creature.
Don Juan Belvidero was looked upon as a dutiful son. He reared a
white marble monument on his father's tomb, and employed the greatest
sculptors of the time upon it. He did not recover perfect ease of mind
till the day when his father knelt in marble before Religion, and the
heavy weight of the stone had sealed the mouth of the grave in which he
had laid the one feeling of remorse that sometimes flitted through his
soul in moments of physical weariness.
He had drawn up a list of the wealth heaped up by the old merchant in
the East, and he became a miser: had he not to provide for a second
lifetime? His views of life were the more profound and penetrating;
he grasped its significance, as a whole, the better, because he saw it
across a grave. All men, all things, he analyzed once and for all; he
summed up the Past, represented by its records; the Present in the law,
its crystallized form; the Future, revealed by religion. He took spirit
and matter, and flung them into his crucible, and found--Nothing.
Thenceforward he became DON JUAN.
At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty of
youth, he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he despised
the world, and made the utmost of the world. His felicity could not
have been of the bourgeois kind, rejoicing in periodically recurrent
_bouilli_, in the comforts of a warming-pan, a lamp of a night, and
a new pair of slippers once a quarter. Nay, rather he seized upon
existence as a monkey snatches a nut, and after no long toying with it,
proceeds deftly to strip off the mere husks to reach the savory kernel
within.
Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely reached
ankle-depth with him now. He in nowise fell into the error of strong
natures who flatter themselves now and again that little souls will
believe in a great soul, and are willing to barter their own lofty
thoughts of the future for the small change of our life-annuity ideas.
He, even as they, had he chosen, might well have walked with his feet
on the earth and his head in the skies; but he liked better to sit on
earth, to wither the soft, fresh, fragrant lips of a woman with kisses,
for like Death, he devoured everything without scruple as he passed; he
would have full fruition; he was an Oriental lover, seeking prolonged
pleasures easily obtained. He sought nothing but a woman in women, and
cultivated cynicism, until it became with him a habit of mind. When
his mistress, from the couch on which she lay, soared and was lost in
regions of ecstatic bliss, Don Juan followed suit, earnest, expansive,
serious as any German student. But he said I, while she, in the
transports of intoxication, said We. He understood to admiration the art
of abandoning himself to the influence of a woman; he was always clever
enough to make her believe that he trembled like some boy fresh from
college before his first partner at a dance, when he asks her, "Do
you like dancing?" But, no less, he could be terrible at need, could
unsheathe a formidable sword and make short work of Commandants. Banter
lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind his tears--for
he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says to her husband,
"Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a consumption."
For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of circulating
bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a woman here and there
it is a man; for a certain order of mind it is a salon, a coterie, a
quarter of the town, or some single city; but Don Juan found his world
in himself.
This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his bark
by every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried away, and
was only steered in a course of his own choosing. The more he saw,
the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath
the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice;
generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy,
pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus vivendi_; and by some strange
dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really
honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent, or brave were held cheaply
by their fellow-men.
"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not devised by a
God."
From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered
himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the
churches became works of art. He understood the mechanism of society too
well to clash wantonly with its prejudices; for, after all, he was not
as powerful as the executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit
and grace so well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in
fact, Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's
Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius
in Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no more justice than
Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures that shall endure as long
as the principle of evil existing in the heart of man shall produce
a few copies from century to century. Sometimes the type becomes
half-human when incarnate as a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate
force in a Bonaparte, sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony
as a Rabelais; or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu
elects to laugh at human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when
one of the most famous of our ambassadors goes a step further and
scoffs at both men and things. But the profound genius of Juan Belvidero
anticipated and resumed all these. All things were a jest to him.
His was the life of a mocking spirit. All men, all institutions, all
realities, all ideas were within its scope. As for eternity, after half
an hour of familiar conversation with Pope Julius II. he said, laughing:
"If it is absolutely necessary to make a choice, I would rather believe
in God than in the Devil; power combined with goodness always offers
more resources than the spirit of Evil can boast."
"Yes; still God requires repentance in this present world----"
"So you always think of your indulgences," returned Don Juan Belvidero.
"Well, well, I have another life in reserve in which to repent of the
sins of my previous existence."
"Oh, if you regard old age in that light," cried the Pope, "you are in
danger on canonization----"
"After your elevation to the Papacy nothing is incredible." And they
went to watch the workmen who were building the huge basilica dedicated
to Saint Peter.
"Saint Peter, as the man of genius who laid the foundation of our double
power," the Pope said to Don Juan, "deserves this monument. Sometimes,
though, at night, I think that a deluge will wipe all this out as with a
sponge, and it will be all to begin over again."
Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they understood each other. A
fool would have gone on the morrow to amuse himself with Julius II. in
Raphael's studio or at the delicious Villa Madama; not so Belvidero. He
went to see the Pope as pontiff, to be convinced of any doubts that he
(Don Juan) entertained. Over his cups the Rovere would have been capable
of denying his own infallibility and of commenting on the Apocalypse.
Nevertheless, this legend has not been undertaken to furnish materials
for future biographies of Don Juan; it is intended to prove to
honest folk that Belvidero did not die in a duel with stone, as some
lithographers would have us believe.
When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of sixty he settled in Spain,
and there in his old age he married a young and charming Andalusian
wife. But of set purpose he was neither a good husband nor a good
father. He had observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by
women to whom we scarcely give a thought. Dona Elvira had been devoutly
brought up by an old aunt in a castle a few leagues from San-Lucar in
a remote part of Andalusia. She was a model of devotion and grace. Don
Juan foresaw that this would be a woman who would struggle long against
a passion before yielding, and therefore hoped to keep her virtuous
until his death. It was a jest undertaken in earnest, a game of chess
which he meant to reserve till his old age. Don Juan had learned wisdom
from the mistakes made by his father Bartolommeo; he determined that
the least details of his life in old age should be subordinated to one
object--the success of the drama which was to be played out upon his
death-bed.
For the same reason the largest part of his wealth was buried in the
cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he seldom went. As for the
rest of his fortune, it was invested in a life annuity, with a view to
give his wife and children an interest in keeping him alive; but this
Machiavellian piece of foresight was scarcely necessary. His son, young
Felipe Belvidero, grew up as a Spaniard as religiously conscientious
as his father was irreligious, in virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, "A
miser has a spendthrift son." The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by Don
Juan to be the director of the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero
and her son Felipe. The ecclesiastic was a holy man, well shaped, and
admirably well proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like that of
Tiberius, worn with fasting, bleached by an ascetic life, and, like all
dwellers in the wilderness, was daily tempted. The noble lord had hopes,
it may be, of despatching yet another monk before his term of life was
out.
But whether because the Abbot was every whit as clever as Don Juan
himself, or Dona Elvira possessed more discretion or more virtue than
Spanish wives are usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend
his declining years beneath his own roof, with no more scandal under
it than if he had been an ancient country parson. Occasionally he would
take wife and son to task for negligence in the duties of religion,
peremptorily insisting that they should carry out to the letter the
obligations imposed upon the flock by the Court of Rome. Indeed, he was
never so well pleased as when he had set the courtly Abbot discussing
some case of conscience with Dona Elvira and Felipe.
At length, however, despite the prodigious care that the great
magnifico, Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude
came upon him, and with those days the constant importunity of physical
feebleness, an importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the
wealth of memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures of
middle age. The unbeliever who in the height of his cynical humor had
been wont to persuade others to believe in laws and principles at which
he scoffed, must repose nightly upon a _perhaps_. The great Duke, the
pattern of good breeding, the champion of many a carouse, the proud
ornament of Courts, the man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts
that he had wrung as carelessly as a peasant twists an osier withe,
was now the victim of a cough, of a ruthless sciatica, of an unmannerly
gout. His teeth gradually deserted him, as at the end of an evening the
fairest and best-dressed women take their leave one by one till the room
is left empty and desolate. The active hands became palsy-stricken,
the shapely legs tottered as he walked. At last, one night, a stroke of
apoplexy caught him by the throat in its icy clutch. After that fatal
day he grew morose and stern.
He would reproach his wife and son with their devotion, casting it in
their teeth that the affecting and thoughtful care that they lavished
so tenderly upon him was bestowed because they knew that his money was
invested in a life annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter
tears and redouble their caresses, and the wicked old man's insinuating
voice would take an affectionate tone--"Ah, you will forgive me, will
you not, dear friends, dear wife? I am rather a nuisance. Alas, Lord in
heaven, how canst Thou use me as the instrument by which Thou provest
these two angelic creatures? I who should be the joy of their lives am
become their scourge..."
In this manner he kept them tethered to his pillow, blotting out the
memory of whole months of fretfulness and unkindness in one short
hour when he chose to display for them the ever-new treasures of his
pinchbeck tenderness and charm of manner--a system of paternity that
yielded him an infinitely better return than his own father's indulgence
had formerly gained. At length his bodily infirmities reached a point
when the task of laying him in bed became as difficult as the navigation
of a felucca in the perils of an intricate channel. Then came the day of
his death; and this brilliant sceptic, whose mental faculties alone had
survived the most dreadful of all destructions, found himself between
his two special antipathies--the doctor and the confessor. But he was
jovial with them. Did he not see a light gleaming in the future
beyond the veil? The pall that is like lead for other men was thin and
translucent for him; the light-footed, irresistible delights of youth
danced beyond it like shadows.
It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan felt the near
approach of death. The sky of Spain was serene and cloudless; the air
was full of the scent of orange-blossom; the stars shed clear, pure
gleams of light; nature without seemed to give the dying man assurance
of resurrection; a dutiful and obedient son sat there watching him with
loving and respectful eyes. Towards eleven o'clock he desired to be left
alone with this single-hearted being.
"Felipe," said the father, in tones so soft and affectionate that the
young man trembled, and tears of gladness came to his eyes; never had
that stern father spoken his name in such a tone. "Listen, my son," the
dying man went on. "I am a great sinner. All my life long, however, I
have thought of my death. I was once the friend of the great Pope
Julius II.; and that illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive
excitability of my senses should entangle me in mortal sin between the
moment of my death and the time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave
me a flask that contains a little of the holy water that once issued
from the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret of this
squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am permitted
to reveal the mystery _in articulo mortis_ to my son. You will find the
flask in a drawer in that Gothic table that always stands by the head
of the bed.... The precious little crystal flask may be of use yet again
for you, dearest Felipe. Will you swear to me, by your salvation, to
carry out my instructions faithfully?"
Felipe looked at his father, and Don Juan was too deeply learned in the
lore of the human countenance not to die in peace with that look as his
warrant, as his own father had died in despair at meeting the expression
in his son's eyes.
"You deserved to have a better father," Don Juan went on. "I dare
to confess, my child, that while the reverend Abbot of San-Lucar was
administering the Viaticum I was thinking of the incompatibility of the
co-existence of two powers so infinite as God and the Devil----"
"Oh, father!"
"And I said to myself, when Satan makes his peace he ought surely to
stipulate for the pardon of his followers, or he will be the veriest
scoundrel. The thought haunted me; so I shall go to hell, my son, unless
you carry out my wishes."
"Oh, quick; tell me quickly, father."
"As soon as I have closed my eyes," Don Juan went on, "and that may be
in a few minutes, you must take my body before it grows cold and lay it
on a table in this room. Then put out the lamp; the light of the stars
should be sufficient. Take off my clothes, reciting Aves and Paters the
while, raising your soul to God in prayer, and carefully anoint my
lips and eyes with this holy water; begin with the face, and proceed
successively to my limbs and the rest of my body; my dear son, the power
of God is so great that you must be astonished at nothing."
Don Juan felt death so near, that he added in a terrible voice, "Be
careful not to drop the flask."
Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his son, and his son's
tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard features.
It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero laid his father's body
upon the table. He kissed the sinister brow and the gray hair; then he
put out the lamp.
By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across the country
without, Felipe could dimly see his father's body, a vague white thing
among the shadows. The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the
liquid, and, absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A deep
silence reigned. Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the
breeze in the tree-tops, he thought. But when he had moistened the right
arm, he felt himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him
in a tight grip--it was his father's hand! He shrieked aloud; the flask
dropped from his hand and broke in pieces. The liquid evaporated; the
whole household hurried into the room, holding torches aloft. That
shriek had startled them, and filled them with as much terror as if the
Trumpet of the Angel sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and
sky. The room was full of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the
fainting Felipe upheld by the strong arm of his father, who clutched
him by the throat. They saw another thing, an unearthly spectacle--Don
Juan's face grown young and beautiful as Antinous, with its dark hair
and brilliant eyes and red lips, a head that made horrible efforts, but
could not move the dead, wasted body.
An old servitor cried, "A miracle! a miracle!" and all the Spaniards
echoed, "A miracle! a miracle!"
Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the Abbot of
San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his own eyes, being
a clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues,
determined to turn the occasion to profit. He immediately gave out
that Don Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the
celebration of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he
said, should be called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words
a sufficiently facetious grimace passed over the features of the late
Duke.
The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is so
well known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the religious
pantomime by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated the translation
of the _blessed Don Juan Belvidero_ to the abbey-church. The tale of the
partial resurrection had spread so quickly from village to village, that
a day or two after the death of the illustrious nobleman the report had
reached every place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good
as a play to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on
all sides, their curiosity whetted still further by the prospect of
a _Te Deum_ sung by torchlight. The old abbey church of San-Lucar, a
marvelous building erected by the Moors, a mosque of Allah, which for
three centuries had heard the name of Christ, could not hold the throng
that poured in to see the ceremony. Hidalgos in their velvet mantles,
with their good swords at their sides, swarmed like ants, and were so
tightly packed in among the pillars that they had not room to bend the
knees, which never bent save to God. Charming peasant girls, in the
basquina that defines the luxuriant outlines of their figures, lent an
arm to white-haired old men. Young men, with eyes of fire, walked beside
aged crones in holiday array. Then came couples tremulous with joy,
young lovers led thither by curiosity, newly-wedded folk; children
timidly clasping each other by the hand. This throng, so rich in
coloring, in vivid contrasts, laden with flowers, enameled like a
meadow, sent up a soft murmur through the quiet night. Then the great
doors of the church opened.
Late comers who remained without saw afar, through the three great open
doorways, a scene of which the theatrical illusions of modern opera can
give but a faint idea. The vast church was lighted up by thousands of
candles, offered by saints and sinners alike eager to win the favor
of this new candidate for canonization, and these self-commending
illuminations turned the great building into an enchanted fairyland. The
black archways, the shafts and capitals, the recessed chapels with gold
and silver gleaming in their depths, the galleries, the Arab traceries,
all the most delicate outlines of that delicate sculpture, burned in
the excess of light like the fantastic figures in the red heart of a
brazier. At the further end of the church, above that blazing sea, rose
the high altar like a splendid dawn. All the glories of the golden lamps
and silver candlesticks, of banners and tassels, of the shrines of the
saints and votive offerings, paled before the gorgeous brightness of
the reliquary in which Don Juan lay. The blasphemer's body sparkled with
gems, and flowers, and crystal, with diamonds and gold, and plumes white
as the wings of seraphim; they had set it up on the altar, where the
pictures of Christ had stood. All about him blazed a host of tall
candles; the air quivered in the radiant light. The worthy Abbot of
San-Lucar, in pontifical robes, with his mitre set with precious stones,
his rochet and golden crosier, sat enthroned in imperial state among his
clergy in the choir. Rows of impassive aged faces, silver-haired old
men clad in fine linen albs, were grouped about him, as the saints who
confessed Christ on earth are set by painters, each in his place, about
the throne of God in heaven. The precentor and the dignitaries of the
chapter, adorned with the gorgeous insignia of ecclesiastical vanity,
came and went through the clouds of incense, like stars upon their
courses in the firmament.
When the hour of triumph arrived, the bells awoke the echoes far and
wide, and the whole vast crowd raised to God the first cry of praise
that begins the _Te Deum_. A sublime cry! High, pure notes, the voices
of women in ecstasy, mingled in it with the sterner and deeper voices of
men; thousands of voices sent up a volume of sound so mighty, that the
straining, groaning organ-pipes could not dominate that harmony. But
the shrill sound of children's singing among the choristers, the
reverberation of deep bass notes, awakened gracious associations,
visions of childhood, and of man in his strength, and rose above that
entrancing harmony of human voices blended in one sentiment of love.
_Te Deum laudamus_!
The chant went up from the black masses of men and women kneeling in
the cathedral, like a sudden breaking out of light in darkness, and the
silence was shattered as by a peal of thunder. The voices floated up
with the clouds of incense that had begun to cast thin bluish veils over
the fanciful marvels of the architecture, and the aisles were filled
with splendor and perfume and light and melody. Even at the moment when
that music of love and thanksgiving soared up to the altar, Don Juan,
too well bred not to express his acknowledgments, too witty not
to understand how to take a jest, bridled up in his reliquary, and
responded with an appalling burst of laughter. Then the Devil having put
him in mind of the risk he was running of being taken for an ordinary
man, a saint, a Boniface, a Pantaleone, he interrupted the melody of
love by a yell, the thousand voices of hell joined in it. Earth blessed,
Heaven banned. The church was shaken to its ancient foundations.
_Te Deum laudamus_! cried the many voices.
"Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are! _Dios! Dios! Garajos
demonios!_ Idiots! What fools you are with your dotard God!" and a
torrent of imprecations poured forth like a stream of red-hot lava from
the mouth of Vesuvius.
"_Deus Sabaoth!... Sabaoth_!" cried the believers.
"You are insulting the majesty of Hell," shouted Don Juan, gnashing his
teeth. In another moment the living arm struggled out of the reliquary,
and was brandished over the assembly in mockery and despair.
"The saint is blessing us," cried the old women, children, lovers, and
the credulous among the crowd.
And note how often we are deceived in the homage we pay; the great man
scoffs at those who praise him, and pays compliments now and again to
those whom he laughs at in the depths of his heart.
Just as the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, was chanting "_Sancte
Johannes, ora pro noblis_!" he heard a voice exclaim sufficiently
distinctly: "_O coglione_!"
"What can be going on up there?" cried the Sub-prior, as he saw the
reliquary move.
"The saint is playing the devil," replied the Abbot.
Even as he spoke the living head tore itself away from the lifeless
body, and dropped upon the sallow cranium of the officiating priest.
"Remember Dona Elvira!" cried the thing, with its teeth set fast in the
Abbot's head.
The Abbot's horror-stricken shriek disturbed the ceremony; all the
ecclesiastics hurried up and crowded about their chief.
"Idiot, tell us now if there is a God!" the voice cried, as the Abbot,
bitten through the brain, drew his last breath.
PARIS, October 1830.
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