Mr. Antiphilos, satyr

By Remy de Gourmont

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Title: Mr. Antiphilos, satyr

Author: Remy de Gourmont

Translator: John Howard
        Louis Lozowick


        
Release date: March 14, 2026 [eBook #78206]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Lieber & Lewis, 1922

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78206

Credits: Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR ***




  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR




  MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR

  By REMY DE GOURMONT

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
  _By_ JOHN HOWARD

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
  JACK LEWIS

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  LIEBER & LEWIS
  _MCMXXII_




  Copyright, 1922,
  By LIEBER & LEWIS


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




_Contents_


  MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR

  Introduction                     9

  To the Amazon                   27

  Apparition                      43

  La Fosca                        57

  The Afternoon of a Faun         73

  Cydalise                        85

  Metamorphosis                   95

  The Cell                       107

  The Satyr! The Satyr!          119

  Fennel Water                   131

  Erebus                         143

  Diogenes                       155

  Déidamie                       167

  The Cluster of Grapes          179

  The Unknown Woman              193

  Flight                         205


  COLORS

  Blue                           219

  Zinzoline                      239

  White                          259




INTRODUCTION


In an age when democratic ideas, levelling processes and the
popularization of thought are in vogue, the phenomenon of a Remy de
Gourmont emphasizing the aristocratic virtues, drawing attention to the
perfect detachment demanded by literature and art, makes one pause as
though transported to a different world, to a less nervous existence.

Gourmont, the aristocrat of letters, the thinker who could shrug his
shoulders amusedly at current acceptances of progress, modernity and
evolution, never for an instant ceased battling for a more discriminate
attitude towards life and letters. He permitted none of his carefully
reared mansions of the intellect to be sullied by aught that could not
pass the tests of “relative” truth and sincerity,—the very truth and
sincerity which the delightful dissociator of ideas loved to mock, when
the whim seized him. His was the mechanism of a brain “heedless to
please other than by the originality of thought and charm of style.”

It matters not what subject Gourmont attacks or woos. He can be
depended upon to take a view the opposite of the conventionally
accepted one. Whether the subject under treatment be women, art,
religion, style or customs, his piercing mind shrewdly discovers the
accumulations of prejudice and stupidity, scrapes off the patina of
rust from the medals of time.

He has said: “I do not love prisons of any sort.” His whole life was
a fight for intellectual freedom, waged in the seclusion of his study
with his army of ideas continually engaged against the enemy. He
early found that the only fruitful research was the research of the
non-true. This quest occupied him during his lifetime.

He achieved this by the methods of paradox and dissociation. Yet, after
having seen himself praised or blamed for this first quality, he felt
free to disclaim the gift. “I have done wrong,” he writes, “to give the
impression to the malicious that my mind has a turn for the paradox.
I never pursued it deliberately. Besides, I do not pretend to dictate
judgments concerning me. A mind of any toughness will always seem
paradoxical to timorous spirits.”

Gourmont’s individualism was pronounced to an unusual degree.
Individualism with most men is usually a rhetorically graceful gesture,
a toying attitude, a hesitant attempt at sincerity hindered by the
fear of public opprobrium; there are always the consequences of
social ostracism or worse. It leads effectually to antinomianism, the
violation of ethical codes. It becomes a harmless pose, belied by
the very words or acts of those who profess it as the basis of their
lives. Gourmont’s sincerity is testified by the tough boldness, the
crystal consistency of his writings. The best way, he always believed,
to ennoble the world is by self-development. “True charity is the act
of the conscious man living according to his own personality and the
rules of his inner and individual logic. Such a man gives what he has
and is.... He offers only the natural opulence of a generous egotism,
conforming to the divine rhythm and adequate to the divine movements.”
And the world would be much better for all, he writes elsewhere, if one
admitted the idea that society is made for the individual and not the
individual for society. “The individual is the important thing.”

The rich diversity of life made him realize how useless it was to
attempt to be oracular, to utter the indisputable, final truths of
the master. No two leaves are alike; no two human beings are alike.
This premise led to his indifference to absolutes, to the doctrines
with which men like to be fooled and entertained. He began and
ended with the idealistic, Schopenhaurian formula: “the world is my
representation.” Not what is, but what seems to be, seen through the
lens of my mind, is what I can depend upon. It followed, as a matter
of course, that he could be lenient toward many points of view, and
his Catholicism of mind is seen to advantage in _The Book of Masks_
where he has enthusiastic, appreciative words for writers united by
nothing but the name of “Symbolisme.” A further corollary was the
need of tolerance to other men’s truths. But some truths are absurd.
Shall I, Remy de Gourmont, be receptive to ugliness and hypocrisy? A
puzzling problem! Either I must be receptive to all perceptions, good
or bad, all beliefs, sincere or dissembled, or I must be suspicious of
everything. Irony and pity are the roads to freedom. What is the use of
being bellicose and vengeful toward what, in the end, does not matter?
So, in his most serious onslaughts, there is something of the amused
playboy.

One cannot help admiring his eclecticism. He saw that symbolism was
but a loose name joining many diverse talents. He took pains to show
that the popularly accepted meaning of decadence is pure trash,
since it is applied to writers whose virtues of originality and
creativeness contradict the true meaning of a down-hill movement, of
imitation and conceited artificiality. He had a good word, the proper
word invariably, for the mysticism of Maeterlinck, the obscurity of
Mallarmé’s ineffable poems, the clanging strength of Verhaeren, the
velvety dreaminess of Samain, the startling genius of Rimbaud, the
anti-democratic idealism of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, the paganism of
Louys, the jeweled fatuity of Montesquiou. He permitted no hard and
fast rules to interfere with the sensitive apparatus of his mind.
Receptivity was a prerequisite. As a result, he is a critic sympathetic
to the core, appreciative of all works partaking of distinction and
charm.

He has given French literature something new. Never before has there
been anything like his novels, where the brilliant youths “denude
themselves with a proud candor.” All his characters are expressions
of the complete life of a superior brain; they have one thing in
common, scepticism. But as André de Fresnois says, it is “a scepticism
necessitated by the richness of an infinitely supple sensibility, and
not the frozen scepticism of a worldly lecturer; a scepticism that is
disdain, pity, intelligence especially, and not impotence.”

Amy Lowell speaks of his preoccupation with sex which has robbed his
books, she thinks, of the large view they might have had, and says that
he is therefore one for whom English readers will have little sympathy.
Whether true or not, it is beside the question of art. Sincerity first,
is his credo. In a brief essay on “The Role of Art,” he writes:

  “Art has a special and altogether egotistic end: it is an end in
  itself. It does not willingly assume any mission, whether religious,
  social, or moral. It is humanity’s supreme game; it is the sign of
  man; it affirms the divine; it tends to depart from contingencies;
  it desires to be free, useless, absurd, that is to say in disaccord
  with the very forces of nature which hold man in a narrow servitude.”

And as “art is not made for the people nor the people for art,” and
further, as “art is a perpetual exception,” he felt himself free to
create men who console themselves for their inability to harmonize
their thoughts with the workaday world, by trifling, delicate love
affairs. But his characters turn away weariedly even from their
_amours_. That is a preoccupation with coarseness which his sensitive
creations cannot long endure. They are martyrs to their ideas, men who
have sought happiness so long and uselessly that they abandon the quest
as hopeless and betake themselves to art and _café_ conversations. His
men reflect so much that they cannot act. Gourmont makes one of his
persons say: “Although I may be the dupe of my pride, I much prefer
this to being the dupe of my feelings.”

They have personality, but no character, amoral beings reflecting
the complexity of Gourmont himself. “I do not wish to believe, to
suffer, to be happy, to be duped. I regard, I observe, I judge, I
smile.” Yes, it is a tired smile his imaginary personages have, a
smile of disillusionment from knowing too much, a smile of mingled
helplessness and power. It is because they live in their fortresses of
thought and are so helpless when they wish to transfer their ideas to
life. Each one, like his creator, inhabits a _tour d’ivoire_. Thought
is so fertile in possibilities that his characters live a complete
life within their brains, and like Des Esseintes, in Huysman’s _A
Rebours_, have a contemptuous disgust for the compromises of the world.
But unlike Des Esseintes, they _will_ wander from their elaborately
constructed esthetic prisons. The Gourmontian characters are strong
when detached from life and the need to act; they have recourse to
brilliant talk that scintillates with cynicism and conceals their
childish incapacity to meet the world on its own terms.

His men are hurled into abysms of doubt through their superior
sophistication. Hubert D’Entragues devotes himself by taste, rather
than need, to the craft of letters, and spends his mornings developing
elaborate sequence poems after the manner of the medieval latinists,
inventing situations for imaginary characters, constructing a
symbolistic novel to parallel his futile love affair with Sixtine,
the young widow. He lives for himself; the world does not exist; like
Gourmont, he is a philosophic idealist. But the ghost of contradiction
leaves its shroud and haunts the exquisite scorner. He confides his
doubts to a friend:

  “We are not mummers and applause does not make us blush with joy.
  But if we write neither for universal suffrage nor to earn money, we
  become truly incomprehensible.”

  “Write for your mistress.”

  “I have none.”

  “Write for Botticelli’s Madonna.”

  “That is what I am doing.”

Truly an unsatisfactory conclusion, this writing for the Madonna of
Botticelli, but following logically from the axiom that art is the mark
of intellectual disinterestedness. The audience is to be scorned since
art and the people are incompatible. Another retrenchment in the solid
ivory tower, but not without its loneliness. This engenders a cynicism:
no laws are valid other than those I choose to make. So the divine
sanction of love vanishes, the state and the validity of all ethics
made by society. To be spiritual in matters of the body is a confession
of adolescence or of a warped mind. The characters of Gourmont
consider women as flowers of the hedge to be plucked for their beauty
and fragrance, to be inserted in one’s buttonhole while the day is
still delightful, and to be replaced by another flower on the morrow.
But women, more gifted than the eglantine, have a choice: “They can
wield the menace of their thorns, if they are averse to be plucked,”
Diomède says. In love, his men are gentle cynics, a little tired and
moody and speculative, and the women, when not _jeunes filles_, follow
their whims, finding sufficient excuse, in the pleasures of the flesh,
for the act of surrender. Love is not transcendental, according to
Gourmont, it is a divine exercise of the senses. “The soul is body and
the body is spirit. The existence or the permanence of the one depends
upon the indestructibility of the other.” Soul, what we call soul,
becomes a blend of dream and act, thought and sensuality.

All this can be seen to advantage in _Mr. Antiphilos, Satyr_.
The unbelievably naive creature of wood and dell is brought to
civilization. He is Desire, its purest essence. He knows only hunger,
fear of peasants’ pitchforks, weariness, sexual desire. Life is these
things and they represent life. Happiness comes with satisfaction of
these needs; misery from lack of satisfaction. Here is the epitome
of our animal natures. It is the animal in us,—the healthy, normal
animal. Whatever is added is superfluous; the addition is civilization.
Gourmont, himself so sophisticated, ever turns a loving, kindly eye
to men who are insistently natural, that is to say animal in their
outlook, and who are brave or simple enough to consider the other sex
in this light. Antiphilos has a try at civilization, and the result
disgusts him; we see in his abnegation the shrug of mild disgust with
which his creator views the world of men and women. Here, too, his
women are personifications of instinct, without mixture of reason and
restraint.

To every department of literature which Gourmont essayed, he brings his
supple intelligence, lighting up his subject with a clear brilliance.
Irony he used as a surgical instrument to lance the sores of society.
In his study, isolated and removed from the bustle of Parisian life,
he boldly dispelled the mists of ridicule and slander with which the
young writers were covered. A great master, his influence on French
literature was tremendous. The high standards Gourmont demanded of
himself and others, his cultivated taste are required wherever there
is a tendency to the facile and the common. His Olympian serenity,
too, is a needed antidote to the febrile, nervous note. To read him
critically is to renounce forever the false gods which are being
worshipped in literature. He gives one a delicious draught of sanity;
he is pure mind, unadulterated by muddy emotionalism or didacticism.
The things he attacked are not dead; there remain the same problems
of art and morality. Gourmont, the supremely civilized man, brings
a cynicism, a perfect detachment and poise to the task of analyzing
current and eternal values; he helps us to understand and solve these
problems.

  _J. L._




TO THE AMAZON


When you accepted the dedication of this strange story, Amazon, you did
not ask me what I had meant by it. This did not at all surprise me,
for you often know my intentions better than I do, and you are ever
ready to attribute the most favorable and ingenious ones to me. Ah, my
friend, I am not always the man of intentions, plans and projects; I
like to obey whatever the gods suggest and to place my trust, so far as
execution is concerned, in that logic which dwells deep in my brain and
which reassures me about the sequence of any of my rambling stories.
Though the chain of causes necessitated a lapse of several years
between the writing of the first letters and the others, and though the
latter were produced at irregular intervals,—beside the fact that my
mind, in the course of this novel, experienced certain modifications—I
have sought to have them conserve a sufficiently apparent unity of tone
in their ensemble. Yet I fear, though this will be quite transitory,
lest any one feel a little of the weariness, towards the end, which
the monotonous psychology of my horned character gave me. Nothing is
more difficult than the study of an elementary creature whose naiveté
puts to rout our sham or civilized habits, who advances as a matter of
course into the frankest of vices, who is not even astonished at our
astonishment.

What most amuses us in our pleasant games is that they are forbidden.
Now, that is a quality of pleasure he cannot relish. He cannot grasp
the idea of a person not naturally attracted to whatever is pleasurable
to him, though he too enjoys, like others, the charm of obstacles
surmounted and difficulties vanquished. What amused me, in writing
this story, was to take the side of the instinctive creature against
the creature of reason, whose reason is so transitory a thing; but
whatever may have been my sympathy for the brazen-faced satyr, I could
not procure for him the contentment of living in a strait-laced society
whose finesses he would have had to learn before accommodating himself
to them. He lacks too many things ever to succeed in cutting much of a
figure in this world. What sort of being is he, ignorant of the value
of money and, first of all, possessing none? I even doubt whether he
will extract deep satisfactions from a more fastidious, delicate world
he may later chance to frequent. Just behold the simplicity of his
heart! He falls in love with a worthless woman, and he is not in the
least ashamed, understanding nothing of her trade: but even if he did
understand it, I do not know whether or not he would blush with shame.
He has not yet shown his fullest capacities. He would need a vaster
theatre. Antiphilos might go far in the world of the unconscious.

Do not believe, moreover, that in making him relate the beginning
of his human adventures, I had any deep satirical intentions. To
criticize the manners of men:—that would need more naiveté than I
possess. To tell the truth, I find that they do well when following
their pleasures; they alone are not dupes of our extraordinary moral
organization. But let us not judge men, and still less women, after
ourselves. Most people are very well satisfied with their slavery,
to the point where their virtue suffers at the wretched state of all
who have liberated themselves. They do everything in their power to
recapture the emancipated, to fasten collars on their necks: “You do
not know happiness, our happiness. Come and we will share it with you.”
There are unfortunate souls who let themselves be taken in with this
sort of talk. Others are seized by force, when that is possible.

The police, or some of those charitable persons of whom there are too
many, once found a nest of felicity in a hovel of the Saint-Sulpice
section. An extremely young pair of hand-to-mouth tatterdemalions
lived there. The boy might have been fifteen years old,—even less if I
remember correctly—and the girl was twelve. No one knew on what they
lived—doubtless on pickings, refuse and water. When their roamings
in search of food exhausted them, they returned to their garret and
fell asleep in each other’s arms, for they were in love. Their naive
love consoled them for having, too often, to go hungry, and those who
discovered them found them happy in their animal-like innocence.
It created a terrible scandal, still discussed, perhaps, by devout
persons and others of the neighborhood. Naturally they were separated,
although they cried hard; the boy was sent to a home, while the girl
had to follow the skirts of some good nun. And everybody thought this
was as it should be. I, too. I was compelled, so as not to be treated
with contempt, and you would have done likewise, my friend,—would you
not? to preserve the esteem of respectable people. Is it right, in
fact, that children should begin to live in a state of nature, here
in Paris, in a decent section, several steps away from a church, the
Luxembourg Gardens and the Senate? The matter of the pickings might
have been passed by, but the love! Is it not true that such perversity,
manifested so precociously, is disconcerting? Antiphilos would have
been affected by this story, but Antiphilos is very much suspected and
he is at home only in natural ethics. He practices it without knowing
its theory.

You do not know, Amazon, how grateful I am that you loved this
uncertain little book and that you did not reprove its tendencies! I am
grateful to the point of being tempted to say that you have loved it
more than it deserved. Besides, is this not what I think of nearly all
of my writings? There is hardly one which has wholly satisfied me. That
is why I decided never to correct them when they were being printed
or reprinted, for I am always tempted to throw them into the printing
press and have their dried ink replaced by new ink. This you know well,
you who have wrested one of my books from my hands. I am haunted by
the technique of the unknown masterpiece. But I practice too well the
philosophy of detachment even to yield to such naivetés of conceit, and
I resign myself to the displeasure which my writings cause me, while
dreaming of the marvelous books I shall never write. Ah! how I envy
those authors who admire themselves in their works and who do not see
the approaching oblivion into which their works will sink with them.
I envy them, but I smile with a touch of irony, perhaps, for all this
has really little importance. Yet one must love, and to do so it is
necessary to hold firmly to some support, along the stream which sweeps
everything forward, like the castaways that we are. The feeling that
you please those very persons whom you would have chosen to please, and
the feeling that you displease others whom you would have willingly
designated for this service, sometimes suffices to keep you in
balance, to fortify heart and hands. One of these comforts only affects
the pride and has but negative effects on the pleasure of living;
but the other, which stirs every fibre of sympathy, can alone confer
the joy that is complete. Why, through what cowardice place these
necessary terms in the plural? A beautiful tenderness has achieved its
end. Amazon, I really believe that without you I should no more love
myself very much; I no longer would have a deep confidence in life or
in myself. So again I thank you for having taken Antiphilos under your
protection. Of his destiny among humans I am reassured, since you have
smiled upon him, dear friend.

  _Remy de Gourmont._




MR. ANTIPHILOS, SATYR


        ...Fugiunt per devia Nymphae:
  Has agitant Satyri per juga quaeque leves,
  Nec fuit in sylvis arbos nec rupibus antrum
  Sub quo non illic pressa puella foret.

  _B. P. PRIGNANUS, Mutinensis, De imperio cupidinis. Lib. I._




I

APPARITION




I


  Etang de Saint-Cucufa, June 3.

A sense of keen injustice prompts this letter: _Indignatio facit
versum_, as they used to say good old days. You know that I can neither
read nor write, but sometimes a tiny obliging mouth tries to make me
spell out of an old newspaper stained with fat and wine. Today, the
friendly little hand of a schoolgirl, equipped with everything needed
for writing, transfers my thought with a charming dexterity. My shaggy
knees, of which she is not afraid, serve as a table. Now, therefore, I
am going to tell you my story and register my protest.

You must know, first of all, that it was the little one now writing
to you who advised me to address you. “He is a man who wrote, I am
told, a story which is really my life. But I was eighteen and not so
complex.” Yesterday, her memory was refreshed by a paper she read to
me: “Virginal! My virgin heart! That’s it.” She stamped her foot at
the thought. Although I have been roving in fields and near towns for
about eight thousand and nine hundred years, I still do not know women
very well. I have known more women than there are stars in the sky, and
the last one remains as new and mysterious as the first. All this, to
tell you that I do not know how her virgin heart could have interested
her.—Now she is smiling, holding her tongue in the corner of her
mouth.—Perhaps she is thinking of the moment when she will once more
turn maiden, quite naturally, for the convenience of social ways.—I
hear her sing out: “Why, of course!”—They are surprising.

But I am coming to the matter of importance. You see my innocence. I
protest, then, with all the strength of an honest, though libertine
satyr, against the use of the term ‘satyr’ by your newspapers, which
apply it to men,—yes, to men, by Jupiter, who kidnap young girls,
rip their bellies, slice them to pieces! A satyr would never do such
idiotic things. Violate, when one has but to open the arms to desire?
Grasp these fresh, yielding little necks with a brutal hand? Tear this
soft flesh and cause these unripe bodies to bleed, cut the bud where
the woman already is developing and dreaming? For what do you take us,
stupid journalists? For men? Be undeceived. We are gods.

My history, which is very long, is obscure, but two episodes peculiarly
dignify it. I was born in Phrygia of the loves of Hermes and an elegant
Dryad, whom I greatly loved, for she was tender and pretty. She had
ardent passions and the shepherds, no less than the gods, attracted
but did not hold her caprice. I grew up, I exercised at hazard my
curiosity, which discovered odd things at all the fords and on all the
paths. Dionysius, whom you call Bacchus, brought me into his cortège
and I knew, under torrid skies, women more melting than your grapes,
more wanton than your goats. I passed into Greece, on my return, but
men were already beginning to wage war; they locked up their women and
enclosed their fields with fences. The golden age had ended:

  Regrettez-vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre
  Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux?

I regret it so much and so often that I am filled with an unconquerable
melancholy. The great gods no longer descending to an earth soiled by
war, ownership, gold and those human laws which so badly translate
the gentle divine laws, we remain the sole immortals that a herdsman
can chance on at the fall of day, as he walks along the path. We were
loved, and we were also feared. We were given milk, cakes and honey,
and this was pleasant; but more than once a peevish peasant used to
pursue me with a pitchfork, forcing me to run to the shelter of a wood.
I am peaceable and vulnerable. I am a god, but a churl might easily
cripple me. They say the golden age will return. Let us hope so.

Do not think of ancient Greece as a place where good fortune held
sway. Love was there esteemed only under a form that always excited
my disgust. Few joys: an escaped female slave, an eager peasant woman.
Had I not had my sisters, the nymphs, I should have died of boredom;
but nymphs have less variety than women, though prettier, and their
pride is terrible. The disgusting teachings of a certain Socrates, that
motley apostle of virtue, enemy of women and gods, hastened my flight.
I made for Italy, where once more I found a certain state of nature
and human customs. To refrain from astonishing people, I called myself
Faun, like my Italian brothers.

It is in Italy that I have spent the best part of my life. There I
found the graces of Asia, with less effeminacy, much curiosity at once
erotic and passionate, and that delicious precociousness which causes
young flowers, in their innocent ardor, to outstrip the spring and
break their corslets at the sun’s first appearance. I enjoyed seasons
worthy of Apollo. My snub nose gleamed in the fairest of eyes. The
repeated sound of my feet on the rocky side of a hill awoke still
slumbering desires in the vague breasts of latin maidens. Pardon my
emotion at these brilliant memories. I still have days; I hardly have
seasons any longer, and my eternal youth is often forced to dwell on
the past: the time of gleaning has long since succeeded the period
of abundance. Remember that in those days I perhaps fled as often as
I pursued. I was weary of love, weary of opening new paths. For an
instant, I thought of remaining on a piece of cleared ground; I was
going to become domesticated.—The family of Faunus, look at the pretty
little Atellanian girl!—Alas! I did not have time for this.

One day we found ourselves surrounded by a troop of peasants armed with
sharp staffs, as though for a boar hunt. They were led by a sort of
sorcerer with a head-dress similar to the Gauls; this man brandished a
piece of wood shaped like a crutch head; with his other hand he dipped
a branch of box into a little bottle, held by a slave, and sprinkled
the ground. I would have liked to laugh, had the danger not been so
great. My companion had left to gather grass. “They are coming to look
for her,” I reflected. “They will do _her_ no hurt. But if they get
_me_, beware of the boar-spears!” I rushed away and, springing over a
precipice, was soon free from harm. I have not been able to recross
this precipice for nearly twelve hundred years.

What centuries! I lived amid wild goats and only from time to time did
an imprudent peasant girl, who happened to be good-looking, fall into
my traps. One of them told me that I no longer was called Faunus, but
Diabolo, and that I was considered the enemy of the human species, the
creature who had caused man to fall into sin. I had seduced a woman
under a serpent’s form! I believed that people had become as crazy
as they were wicked, and I grieved, musing on my sad immortality.
Yet, as the woman stroked my beard and kissed my snub nose and moist
lips, while calling me monster, I decided that this was a mitigated
extravagance which left a little hope, at least with a half of
humanity.—Here, my little friend sticks out her tongue at me and says:
“Ah! so it is you they call the devil?”

A noise of hunting one day awoke me. They were blowing through horns
which gave a sound like those of my sea brothers, the Tritons. Hounds
rent the air with harsh and violent barking. The gallop of horses rang
against the firm ground like a Virgilian verse.—O days when shepherds
repeated the songs of the Mantuan Shepherd!—Made more bold for some
time past, I was loitering in the heath, chasing grasshoppers and
lizards. The hunt drew near. I did not have time enough to leap on
a rock; and, as I watched the spectacle before leaping higher and
disappearing, I heard a clear voice cry, with an accent of surprise
and joy: “Ecco il Fauno!” I, too, was satisfied, for I knew that this
beautiful name of the Roman god was applied to me, that new days had
arrived. Excited, I lay down in the thyme warm with sun kisses; evening
fell, I was musing, when the same clear voice once more rang in my
ears: “Fauno! Fauno!” I pricked my hairy ears, my body grew tense. I
stood listening. “Fauno! Fauno!” With a few bounds, I reached the spot
from which the clear voice came. She was a beautiful young woman. The
better to run, she had opened her dress and the wind had loosened her
hair. She let herself fall, dazed, into my arms, the while I murmured,
lifting my thought to the master of gods: “Has beauty then once more
descended to earth? O Jupiter, thou dost not forget thy children!”

If I were to tell you that you have always under your eyes, perhaps,
the proof of the truth of my narrative, you would not believe me. Wait
several days, you will no longer be incredulous. My little friend is
tired.—“Yes, I really am!”—She is going to re-read to me this letter
which she promises to place in your hands. With the commencement of
this story, you can already show your friends the journalists that a
satyr is a respectable creature, meriting consideration. But what I
have still to tell you is even better.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




II

LA FOSCA




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




III


  Cogolin, June 3.

At last I have the leisure to write and give you another chapter of
my adventures, since I know that you have communicated them to other
men. Like nature, the gods exist only at the instant you speak and
think of them, and as soon as your attention is distracted from divine
things, they fall again into the dim, pantheistic immensity where
their lives glide by, mute, deep and plant-like. I partake of the
gods, I have lived that life. I partake of men, and I know what human
joys are. Alas! destiny has meted them out to me so miserly, in these
days, that I hardly feel my humanity any longer. That is why I am sad,
yes, sad, despite the restless eyes which reproachfully gaze at me
this very moment, despite cheeks made slightly rosy by paint and now
somewhat pale, rubbing against my old, immortal, shaggy skin. For the
past three years I have tasted more bitterness than I experienced in
my life heretofore. Solitude has poisoned my heart and if such times,
or worse,—who knows?—were to return, I would be reduced to imploring
the gods to recall me to Olympus, to the parental habitation. Ah! to
renounce women! The gods no longer descend to the earth and I fear the
goddesses. What a sorry figure this poor goat-footed satyr would make
among them!

But was I not born to be happy? When I say this, Cydalise treats
me as a romantic satyr, and though I do not very well understand, I
feel it means that such a dream is considered chimerical. I and your
philosophers do not understand happiness in the same way. I will die
only when nature dies, and it is with her alone that I should take
my stand. The seasons mean more to me than does metaphysics. Why
should there not be a return to the old, faun liberties? The gates of
sheepfolds will not always be so firmly shut and Venus, who seems to
have forgotten herself in particular loves, will yet again remember
her universal mission. It is a fact that the nymphs no longer inhabit
the woods and that for three years I have not been able to capture
any maiden, but Cydalise has comforted the old solitary faun and the
hope of vintage time returns to my heart. Do not believe the things I
told you at the beginning of this letter. They were the remains of
melancholy moods I have not been able to share with anyone. Now that
you have felt them with me, I no longer feel them. What matters the
past to him who holds the present?

Cydalise descended from the Thespian chariot to come to me. Her
profession is to recite verses of the poets to the people. She was
seeking me, which means that she had already found me, according to
some verses she recited and which evidently apply to my divinity, ever
present and ever active. Cydalise has not invoked me in vain. The
hoary, old god has always the youth of his desires and the desires of
his youth. Weak men disappoint women, many women have told me, but
satyrs never; others say they have known, trembling and blushing, men
too late for happiness. Dreamy and wanton, Cydalise loves to recite
poems in the interval of two frenzies. She begins with a voice a
little out of breath because of the divine inspiration; then she slowly
grows elated and falls into a sort of sudden trembling which ends still
more rapidly in my arms. So, I know the first stanzas better than I do
the last, which die in vague murmurs. I remember a similar adventure in
Campania. I was enamoured of a Greek slave of marvelous beauty who used
to come to visit me each evening, and who always wished to sing the
first idyll of Theocritus for me, to show that her voice was as pure
as her body anointed with oil of lavender. She never had the strength
to begin the third verse: “Sweet is the murmuring of the pine near
the fountains, O goatherd, sweet is the sound of thy flute....” Her
voice stopped at [Greek: Tyrisdes]. Perhaps she did not wish, as Aesop
says, to lose the prey for the shadow. The gods be praised! Gaiety
returns to me with these distant memories which are so delicately
woven into the present, across the centuries. This one knows better
how to resist the violence of desire: She prepares with more skill the
denouement whose plaintive syllables she knows how to prolong. She
has not received a bad education: perhaps I shall be attached to her
more than to all the others, though my nature always drives me to new
discoveries. Such women are so rare!

But love knows a forced repose, and honest satyrs themselves respect
this state, for they hold blood in as much horror as tears. One of
these days of languor, she came to me with a book and, still smiling
through her resigned sadness, began to read aloud, without any
explanation: _The Afternoon of a Faun_. What a miracle! Lulled by
these rhythms that were as irregular as a stream running down woody
hillsides, I had almost as much pleasure in watching her moving lips as
in holding them sealed to mine. Then she explained the poem to me, as
the philosophers formerly did in the academies.

And I saw myself rising from between the willows of the bank, my ear
intent for hint of pastimes which I desired and which was lacking. I
remember it was one of those exciting and warm days, the like of which
I have not experienced for a long time; I had heard the river lightly
plash, as though on some plunging body, and I was about to run away,
for I fear the hostility of mankind, when I fancied I saw floating
hair on the water’s edge, some hemp held by a rush. I watched. If
it was a woman, come from a garden of roses, she would return; the
hedge was translucent and the house quite high, up towards the hill.
Long I waited. Tired, I went in quest of her. I saw nothing. Now I
heard laughter. I imagined many things, the very things this poet has
described. Oh! to seize them! They are at least two, since there is so
much laughter. Laughter, games, delicate caresses. It is yonder. Now
silence reigns. Could they have guessed? No. Pleasure meditates before
bursting forth. And I? But if you know the poem, you also know my
agitation, my exasperated restlessness, panting, atremble, made dizzy.
A man stood up among the trees, far above me.

“It was he,” said Cydalise.

“Who is ‘he’?”

“The poet.”

And she kissed his name on the title page of the book.

“So it was really he?”

“Certainly.”

“I took to flight!”

“To run away! But he saw you, he would have liked to approach. Just
fancy! he resembled you, as much as any man can resemble a god, and
no one was ever nearer the gods by spirit. To run away from him. Your
brother in candor!”

This is the adventure such as I have been able to learn it. Cydalise
says I should be very proud because of it. She has made me memorize
three lines of this divine poem, so that I shall never have the air of
being ignorant of my past:

    Alors m’éveillerais-je à la ferveur première,
    Droit et seul, sous le flot antique de lumière,
    Lys! et l’un de vous tous pour l’ingénuité.

Candor, again! But nothing suits me any longer.

I have made a bargain with Cydalise. I permit her to send you kisses:
accept them. She permits me to make, to renew rather, an entreaty to
you. Do not allow those rascals who disembowel girls to be called
satyrs. A satyr is incapable of such crimes. The lasses I have met
have been highly satisfied with me and their kisses, innocent like
nature, have thanked me fervently with a thousand little tricks I
taught them.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




IV

CYDALISE




IV


  Cogolin, September 30.

Realize that I myself write to you. Cydalise has achieved this miracle.
My divinity, which was already old six thousand years ago, now knows
almost as much as those little lads coming out from school. I will
not say that it has revealed the world to me. It has veiled it, on
the contrary, and I have seen the world diminish, just as the pines
on the hillsides lessen in size as one moves away. But in shrinking
in stature, the world becomes sharper, its outlines grow more fixed,
its light stronger. My brain is quite changed. It is no longer that
of a god. The vision, vast but confused, and almost unconscious, has
suddenly assumed form. Little by little I have detached myself from
nature, where I was at home. She lived within me and I felt her like
the beating of my heart. It is now I who live in her and in vain do I
seek to touch her hands: no longer is she only air, light, odors and
nourishment. I felt her breathing with the same breath as my own and
now I must drink her essence: it intoxicates me.

Cydalise is amused at my astonishment:

“I see,” she says, “the birth of a man. That is finer than a god. I
was curious about you. Now I love you, for I read a fraternity in your
eyes. One can only love one’s equals or those who have been fashioned
in one’s image. When the gods begin to love, they become men.”

This strange language delights me, for it is the truth: I have begun
to love Cydalise. I know it by the fact that I now view the loveliest
creatures almost indifferently, by the fact that the image of Cydalise
immediately is interposed between them and me, if by chance they please
and attract me. There were many of them under our pines, this summer.
They used to lie on the lavender, their large hats shading their eyes;
and they would pretend to sleep in the warm peacefulness of nature,
beneath the sun’s last rays. Oh! the sudden emotion, the thrill that
instantly seizes you, when the slowly lifted robe reveals a beautiful
body! This is not an old recollection. There are still such refinements
which were once common. Those bare feet in sandals, those hoods, those
robes of a nun I once had seen in Florence, upright and modest in
wool—the color of time and innocence—I beheld again, one evening,
under the Cogolin pines.

How good and beautiful and gentle she was,—the little nun of Cogolin!
It was my last adventure. Its memory is dear to me and I have not
sacrificed it for Cydalise’s love; but since then I have sought
nothing, accepted nothing. When I learned my alphabet, I wanted to
carve these words on the bark of a plane-tree:

    THE SATYR ANTIPHILOS
      IS FAITHFUL TO
         CYDALISE.

Re-reading this inscription, I could not believe it to be the truth,
could not believe that I myself had written it. I was about to burst
into laughter, when I beheld a happy expression in Cydalise’s eyes. I
understood that I had not been lying.

We are living golden days. My sweetheart gives me almost all her time.
When she leaves for the town, she returns a trifle fatigued, with
pieces of gold which she smilingly shows, cakes, milk and honey. We
share the food by the banks of a pure stream where doves come to drink.

Then she gives me a lesson. I think the gold she brings back with her
comes from the lessons she gives men, down there. When I ask if her
pupils are progressing, her only reply is to play with my curls and
kiss me. I am acquiescent. Then we traverse our domain, that is to say
the pine wood, the carpet of heather and lavender, the arid hillside
where a stream, near which several plane-trees have sprung up, pauses
beside a grotto and brambles.

Cydalise thinks it odd and amusing to dwell in a grotto. I have never
slept anywhere but in the open or in grottos, and what astonishes
me in our haven is not that it is a grotto, but that Cydalise has
transformed it into a palace worthy of Olympus. In a chariot drawn
by a swift-footed steed she brought a large sack of wool, skilfully
sewed, on which we rest, much more at our ease than on the dead leaves
which, notwithstanding, are comfortable; she also brought skins of
beasts, and material richly woven and painted with liveliest colors.
For her toilette she has collected a thousand objects which would make
goddesses envious and, placed in elegant little boards are—and I have
never seen the like of this—books and sketches. With her aid,—she
is so frank, so refined, divine one might say—I live in a state of
enchantment. I have leisure. My prepared repasts await me and the time
I once spent in gathering fruits and roots is now passed with a book in
which I discover life.

What surprises me, even more than the wonders created by Cydalise, is
that life can be contained in the pages of a book. Yes, I have noticed
that a sheet of paper on which one would say that a bug has taken a
deliberate stroll with its dirty legs,—that such a rag of paper holds
in itself more things than do the valleys and hillsides, the trees and
horizons which stand or spread out in front of me. My long and divine
experience is confounded. I believed I knew things because I had seen
them; but men have regarded them, and that is not the same thing. I
can only faintly express my joys, those of a budding, young, civilized
creature. Into me have entered ideas of whose existence I never had
the slightest suspicion, and as a result I am quite perturbed. It is
in vain that I would attempt to explain them to you. Then, it would be
like explaining flying to one who is at home in the air. But I need a
confidant, a man to whom I can confess my new state of mind, without
being laughed at. Cydalise intimidates me too much: near her I am like
a big child trying to read thoughts in eyes and finding only itself
reflected therein.

Ah! divine nature, thou art the agent, nevertheless, and it is thee I
must thank. It is my noble nudity and the wild boldness of my carriage
that have attracted this woman to me. The antennæ of pleasure have
slowly changed to those of intelligence. When Cydalise, under my
attentive eyes, disrobes and stands radiant, it seems to me that it is
Isis herself; my brain is awhirl and no longer my senses alone, and my
mind expands and blossoms with the same movement as my flesh.

Well! Not so bad for a satyr, eh? I re-read what I have written with a
sense of pleasure, change a few commas and amuse myself hugely.




V

METAMORPHOSIS




V


  Toulon, December 15.

Oh, what adventures since my last letter which itself announced so many
changes in my life! I believe Cydalise is the victim of Aphrodite who
has caused her to become infatuated with me.

“Before knowing you,” she tells me, “I did not know what love was?”

I laugh up my sleeve, for Cydalise, though mortal, has always seemed
to me an expert in this immortal science, which I have practiced long
enough to be considered a good judge. But I say nothing. How retort?
My divine irony pauses at my lips, for Cydalise makes me experience
such a strange sentiment. It is certain that I cannot do without
her, and such a thing never happened to me before. To me she is more
beautiful than all other women, fresher than maidens, more melting than
perfumed matrons. With her I possess everything and I regret nothing.
I soar higher than the gods, to the point where it seems to me that to
become more than a god, one must cease being divine at each hour of
existence. True divinity is intermittent and reposes deliciously in
the vague condition of having been a god. I offer so many things in
love that heretofore I had never sought of women; of them I had asked
nothing more than to be a pretext, an opportunity for self-display.
Now I feel that Cydalise throws as many jewels at my feet as I do:
accordingly, not to be outdone in generosity, I obey her. She does
what she wishes with me. What a metamorphosis!

I could not bear to be separated from her and the inclemency of the
season made our meetings more and more difficult. Then she hit on the
idea of bringing me to town:

“For I want to love you among my people,” she said.

I, who recalled the blows of pitchforks and the fangs of dogs, remained
silent, gazing at her with terror.

“Are you afraid?”

“How can I follow you with my bareness?”

Cydalise broke into laughter, threw herself into my arms. That day we
spoke no more of my departure.

One morning I was sadly meditating, dreaming of flight like a boar
bearing in its flank the spear which has wounded it. Despite my love,
the intriguing vision of new women began to swim before me; I was
hearing their laughter, their disputes and their restless mockery,
when Cydalise appeared at the end of the road, carrying a large bundle
which she let fall, at the same instant that she herself dropped to the
ground. Without uttering a word, she by turns looked at the package and
at me. At last, she decided to laugh, as is her wont in embarrassing
situations. She rolled on the moss, a prey to such a fit of hysterical
gayety that her dress gave way. This changed the tenor of her thoughts
and instantly calmed her. As soon as I noticed her troubled and serious
face, I drew near and, after kissing her eyes tenderly, opened the
package.

Cydalise’s eyes were following my every emotion with curiosity:

“Yes, it’s for you. I’m going to take you to town.”

You have guessed that it contained man’s apparel. I experienced a
moment of despair:

“What, put on this!”

But Cydalise looked at me with such solicitude that I murmured, as
submissive as an infant:

“I would really like to.”

She clapped her hands and we entered the grotto. There, it was quite
cool and this perhaps influenced my mood. I was very much satisfied
with myself after I had donned these garments which at first had seemed
such wretched instruments of torture.

I felt warm and there emanated from me a certain human elegance of
which I was proud. A sailor has since told me that I had the grace
of Ho-Papo, the negro king, and he was not joking: a king is always
a king, a satyr is always a satyr. With usual feminine good taste,
Cydalise began to admire me. She did not tire of flattery, made me turn
like a top, and smoothed the wrinkles and pockets of the suit. She
only pouted at my blue tie which did not go well with my complexion,
she said. “But we will see about that later.” My shoes were of
soft, brilliant leather and did not hurt me in the least. A round,
broad-brimmed hat completely covered my little, curving horns and my
heavy shock of hair. Blushing a little, she put some pieces of gold and
silver in my coat pocket. Then:

“Now, dear, you are ready. Let’s leave.”

“Farewell, grotto where I have been happy with the wind; and you,
trees, streams, holly-trees, adieu. Nature, adieu....”

Cydalise interrupted my effusions, which seemed ridiculous, besides,
to me, now that I had donned this human livery, and we transferred the
contents of the grotto into a packet hardly bigger than the one which
had contained the elements of my metamorphosis. I would have really
liked to sacrifice once more to the sylvan Aphrodite, but Cydalise said
that the train would not wait for us. We reached the carriage waiting
for us at the edge of the pine forest.

My sensations, in this extraordinary beginning of my new life, were
too confused for me to be able to find words to characterize them
correctly. I traveled with something of the feeling of the animal
I had been until now, but a divine animal in whom all sounds leave
an impression. If I applied myself to the task, I might succeed in
deciphering my impressions, as I did the phrases in my first reading
book, but I fear that the results will give you nothing new, and I am
going to delay the co-ordination of my emotions till later, if I should
then decide that it is worth the trouble.

“Thus I behold these rapid objects which pass through the country,
fleeter than the deer, more clamorous than wolves....”

You know how this sort of thing is done. Or again:

“Now I am installed in one of those palaces seen massed far off in the
valleys or on the hills, and from which spreads a confused, continuous
roar like the sea.”

Besides, my astonishments have ceased. I live with Cydalise in a room
which looks out on the sea and where I suffocate when the window is
shut. I hardly see my divine creature more often than in the days when
our couch had only pine branches for a curtain. She never returns
before two or three o’clock in the morning, and so fatigued that she
only thinks of love upon awakening. She continues to recite the verses
of the poets before groups of people, and amateurs of poetry demand her
talents after the public performances. Despite this, I am not bored. I
pay attention to things. So far, I do not see very well. My happiness
is concentrated in Cydalise, and I am the joy of her days.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




VI

THE CELL




VI


  March 1.

Strange, this life for which I have exchanged my familiar woods and
their hazards! And all through Cydalise! What monotony at first; then
what annoyance and ennui! I thought of escape many a time, but my
sweetheart imprisoned me with her tears, her smiles, her kisses, her
gestures of entreaty.

“At least, wait until good weather arrives, dear,” she said. “What will
you do in this severe cold, with the wind moaning through the pines,
now that you have grown accustomed to the softness of beds and my
tenderness? Could you find your way alone, among all these houses that
conceal the horizon from your gaze? O Antiphilos! think of me, think of
our mornings, think of my days made divine by your presence! What! you
wish to leave your Cydalise! Have you not everything needed by a satyr?
Come, tell me what it is you lack?”

I am at a loss for a reply to these honied words breathed into my
pointed ears, and on my lips as well, while she kisses me. I desire
to rediscover myself, but would she understand if I told her this? So
I am silent. I also keep from her an adventure which has upset me. I
fear she suspects it, although I would not wish her to be certain of
it. The thing still makes me tremble, but you will know it, for you
are my friend. And if I did not tell you, who then? For I no longer
can confide in the pines, the rhododendrons, the crags and streams.
Formerly, when some unlucky adventure befell me, through having strayed
too near civilization, I would joyously chant my griefs and fears. Now,
a prisoner, I have no living thing to listen to me, and when my voice
rises, it stuns me. Besides, I have other concerns than liberty, the
liberty I know I shall never recover.

One sunny day of last month, when I was leaning against the window and
peering out, I discovered a grassy nook not far from here, a garden
from which sharp cries came. I desired to go there. Cydalise daily
takes me for a walk before dinner—as she would a favorite, pet animal.
We go through old streets, towards the harbor, trying to reach the
country; but it is too far away, and Cydalise never has time to spare.
We dine early; she returns with me and, after a few caresses, leaves
me with a parting injunction to be good. These maternal, little ways
delight me, but they are also hard on me. I see myself reduced to an
obedient infant, and this hurts my pride. At other times, I reflect
that it is love which holds me, modifying my soul. Then I no longer
dare commiserate myself, and I obey Cydalise’s every whim with a good
grace.

I can fall asleep quickly. Reading by natural light dazes me, and I
have preserved that faculty, more divine than animal, of instantly
falling into an easy slumber, at once profound and light, which plunges
me to the depths in a trice, and in a breath brings me back to the
surface. I awake only with the return of Cydalise, who comes at a late
hour, with the harmonious bees of Pindus still murmuring within her.
She hums the verses she has been declaiming before the people, with
new rhythms unfamiliar to my ear accustomed more to the stirring
of winds through trees than to the fanciful inventions of inspired
Euterpe. Sometimes she falls into my arms, almost dead with fatigue.
Sometimes she disrobes frantically, astonishing me even by the boldness
of her wanton movements. But I must confess that usually she is quite
calm. After hailing me with a “Good evening, Tityrus,” she counts the
money lying in her large bag which never leaves her; generally, she
seems satisfied with herself and loses no time in falling asleep.

Were it not for the mornings, I certainly could not support a life so
measured and confined; despite my love for Cydalise, I would go whither
the road led; but I must confess that the mornings embellish my life.
Cydalise is very lovely and surrenders her beauty even more completely
than was her wont in the grottos and on the mosses. The open air and
absence of seclusion frighten women a little. So I can understand and
admire the means taken by your civilization to reassure them. If I can
judge by Cydalise, how faun-like they become behind a stout bolt and
under a light softly sifted by curtains! She is worthy of the gods.
Why art thou not, like myself, immortal! I cannot behold thee without
melancholy, for now that I perceive thy continued existence, I also
perceive thy fate. It is only _en passant_, like a flash of lightning
that gods should love women, who then experience them as a memorable
thunderclap descending, illuminating, consuming, disappearing. And
for them love, in their life, is but a deeper sensation, a profounder
inspiration, a headier cup of wine. But the constant union of two
beings so different in essence, though almost alike in desires and
pleasures! Cydalise’s love makes me aware of the sadness of perishable
things. I think of flowers, I think of the harvest time, I think of the
seasons, of all that lives but a day, of all things that inevitably
fall into the gulf, never to reappear. In giving me her feminine love,
Cydalise has given me a man’s soul,—a soul realizing that destiny will
not strike it, while witnessing the passing of all dear ones.

I already possess the metaphysical jargon of men. I can no longer
accept life as it is offered, good or bad, but ever adorable by the
fact that it exists. In spite of my divinity, I think of what will
be, as though I did not bear the present and future within me, and as
though I were not destined never to feel their burden on my shoulders.
Mysterious gods, I need an effort not to think with sadness, I whose
unconscious life once exulted in brief moments of illumination! Shall I
really be transformed into a man, through having loved a woman? Then, I
too, would have age. How long do infatuated fauns live? Perhaps that is
why they have disappeared, for one no longer encounters them, at least
in these Occidental lands.

You see to what excesses my ramblings lead me and the illogical
thoughts which attack me while contemplating the mortal head of
Cydalise, asleep as though she were dead. Ah, mortals! how poisonous is
your love, and what an idea was mine to lift towards my lips the cool
amphoras which seemed to contain pure water! Trust in pure water, fauns
and satyrs.

And I have not told you my adventure. Cydalise is yet asleep, but she
will soon awake. I dare not. I will write you more anon. Despite his
sunny mornings, pity the poor satyr.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




VII

THE SATYR! THE SATYR!




VII


  Toulon, March 15.

Dear friend, the head of a satyr living in Toulon with a lyrical
declaimer of verse, the people’s favorite, and seeing nothing but
the ungraceful habitations of humanity, is subject to strange
effervescences. So you will pardon the ramblings of my last letter in
which I desired to describe a certain incident but did not know how
to go about it. I have not yet learned how to assort my ideas into
their compartments. They are jumbled together in complete disorder,
and the result is confusion. When I wish to draw one of them out, the
others interfere, and much time is spent in putting the whole into some
semblance of order.

I was on the point of touching the matter in question when the hour
struck for Cydalise to give to her rested features the smile that
illuminates them. This is the same as saying that Cydalise awakes
with a smile. It occurs like a rose unfolding quickly enough to let
one observe the opening of its petals. I would not willingly miss the
phenomenon, and from the rose I watch each morning I draw the dew of
moist lips. The hamadryads and the oreads are beautiful. Happy is he
who can surprise them in the freshness of dawn and awaken storms of
pleasure in their breasts. But Cydalise effaces their memory by her
indescribable grace in which promises and desires are blent. She is
really the waking nymph, but she is the nymph who awaits her beloved,
joyously taking possession at the same instant that she surrenders.
I would never reach an end, dear friend, if I dared tell you all the
delights Cydalise causes me to experience. It is an incantation,
perhaps, but I lend myself happily to its consummation, and never am I
surfeited by the divine potion, no more than by the ecstasy with which
it fills me.

On a certain morning of the month that has passed, Cydalise was
cruel. She permitted me to drink her dawning smile, but the perfumed,
blossomed cup was rudely snatched from my lips, at the same time that
her arms, clasped an instant round my neck, disengaged themselves and
thrust me away.

“Tityrus,”—this is how she always addresses me—“I have business to
attend. I must leave for I am already late. Be good, my dear.”

Not a word did I say; I merely looked at her distressfully. She quickly
dressed, kissed me almost discreetly and disappeared.

She left me in a state which you, perhaps, will not understand, since
you are not a faun. Within me these lines murmured:

    Tant pis! vers le bonheur d’autres m’entraîneront
    Par leur tresse nouée aux cornes de mon front....

She had forgotten to lock me in. I was out in a trice. I had taken
pains with my attire, had given myself all the elegance worthy of my
athletic, satyr form. It was the morning hour. Shrill cries issuing
from a little garden gave me my bearings. There were all sorts of
short-skirted creatures who were playing, leaping, running; but I
particularly noticed two almost tall girls near a clump of trees. They
were conversing while combing their dolls. Another bench was opposite;
I sat down on it.

Already you are trembling because you know the person, because he has
confessed several amusing anecdotes to you, because it is by a mere
slip of a girl that you first learned of my existence. Well, my friend,
nothing occurred, unless it be that I was suddenly seized with fear,
that I took to my heels and returned home, followed, from a distance,
happily—by a yelling troop of Yahoos.

“The satyr! The satyr!”

I was allayed. I did not desire to be led “by their tresses tied to the
horns of my head.”

But what reflections are these!

Now you see the result of five or six months of living in a
civilization of which I have not been a part. Certainly, I have never
been foolhardy and I prefer to flee from blows to having the blows
scathe me; but nonetheless, I would never have trembled, in the old
days, like a hare at the shadow of my ears. Could it be the reading
of your newspapers which has distracted me? I think so. An honest
man—at least, I have the appearance of one—can no longer sit facing and
smiling at the playful affectations of two little girls without having
his ears tingle with the baying of a pack of hounds.

Yet these young lasses with hair down their backs are pretty; but since
this foolish adventure, I detest them. Ah! how I suffer through my
cowardice and faithfulness. Cydalise, always Cydalise! Does she imagine
that, because I love her, I can love no one but her?

Alas! I am enchained. After having broken my bonds, I have myself
rewelded them. I fear lest she grumble, I fear lest she ridicule, I
fear her eyes, especially, her eyes in which I see and tremblingly
await the dawning of suspicion.

Is it thus you love, you others? With such laceration and an equal
submissiveness? Do you feel within you the roarings of an impatient
and obedient animal? Perhaps, at bottom, men and gods are formed of
the same elements, with the exception that the fauns have a more
energetic leaven? This might easily be the case, since in all times the
gods have mingled with your women and, to please and serve them, have
occasionally abdicated their divinity. We all are children of destiny
and our immortal life is, after all, but a succession of human lives
badly joined to each other by the confused mortar of recollection. What
matters the past to me, today? I easily perceive that there is only a
present, for the present effaces every other instant of time. There
is such a difference between the being I was yesterday and the being
I am today that it is only with difficulty that I can establish any
logical connection. Duration, or what you call by this name, is only
an illusion of the passage of time. But it is motionless for me, who
am ever the same and whose life is always recommencing, rather than
continuing, since duration is time. Do you understand? My dear, I have
read the metaphysicians and have concluded that life means nothing to
mortals, since it has an end, and nothing to the gods, since it has
none. All things are equal in absurdity. Yet, I still have a vague
reminiscence of pleasures I knew as a free animal. I did not act the
animal every day, but neither do I do so every day with Cydalise. By
Jupiter! if I came to such a pass that I loved no longer, what would
I become between these four walls, or outside, among those swarming
Yahoos!

I want Cydalise to take me with her to the people she delights with
her art. I must familiarize myself with external movement and speech.
Have I not everything needful to please? Yes, I am satisfied with
myself when I gaze into my darling’s mirror. Besides, since she looks
upon me with pleasure, why should others be startled? I had no doubts
concerning myself in the woody dells when my limbs were plastered with
dried mud, with moss and leaves clinging to my hairy body; and never
did woman flee long before me without bringing on an opportune fall. It
is true that everything seemed good to me at that time and that I have
since become more fastidious. I am even astounded by the number of ugly
and unattractive women we meet in our walks. I jest so loudly about it
to Cydalise that she scolds me, but she holds my opinion and often
softly murmurs: “What figures?”

I did not wish to relate my experiences with the young girls to
Cydalise. I have changed my mind. I want her to know of it. I even want
to exaggerate the dangers—almost imaginary—which I risked among these
Yahoos, so that she may see the necessity of familiarizing me with the
world.

Yahoos! That is the feeling you all give me. Do not be offended! There
are women, there are men among the Yahoos.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




VIII

FENNEL WATER




VIII


  Toulon, April 1.

Friend, I thank you for your advice which I found to the point.
Everything has succeeded beautifully. My chagrin has touched Cydalise.
It was real. I had but to feign an excess of feeling and simulate
despair. A week of high comedy has reduced her to acquiescence. How
easy it is to deceive women! I came to this conclusion long ago with
the naive nymphs of my fatherland; women, just a little more subtle,
fall into the same snares. Occupied with themselves more than with
anyone else, and totally confident of the power of their charms,
they do not know that one can deprive oneself of them for a week,
merely to acquire that superior thing,—liberty. Creatures of instinct,
they are superior in the conflicts of instinct, but the exercise of
intelligence puts them to rout, because they never think of crediting
their adversaries with this quality. Cydalise understood but one thing,
that I might escape her tenderness; ever since, she redoubles her
cajoleries. Mine reassure her and, as I have been well received by the
society she frequents, we are more than ever united.

I secretly made preparations for my new mode of life. From the very
first, I found myself at my ease. I owe it to myself, I said, to the
antiquity and divinity of my race, and I assumed the disillusioned
attitude of a superior person exiled among the Scythians. I converse
little, save when Cydalise is near enough to nudge me with her elbow
or knee, and by degree I am acquiring the reputation of a contemptuous
or indifferent man.

“Some gentleman’s son, some solid country squire,” I have heard people
remark.

Cydalise, to whom I repeated this, laughed heartily.

“Isn’t it true!” she kept on saying.

She informed me that a country squire signifies a nobleman of the
country who has remained slightly rustic. Stroking my beard, she kissed
me before everybody. This brought queer little cries from many of the
women present. It took place in the café de l’Amirauté, where I made my
debut in the career of a man of the world, of the vast world.

Women gaze at me intently. This does not astonish me, for I must seem
supernatural to them, but hardly any one of them has yet pleased me,
and Cydalise sees her anxieties dissipated from day to day. She has
entrusted me to one of her friends, an old naval officer who has known
human nature of every kind and who tells me, from morning to night, of
his sea voyages and experiences. He is very proud of having known a
girl named Rarahu who was inconsolable, like Calypso at the departure
of Ulysses, and whom he, notwithstanding, consoled.

“I have never seen my equal,” he tells me, “in consoling mulatto girls
abandoned by the whites.”

This inferior love inspires me with some pity, but I am glad to know of
his function in love. If I ever leave Cydalise to follow my destiny,
which is unlimited, besides, I shall place her in the hands of this
fine fellow.

A crony came to see him and they began to recount what they term their
lucky fortunes. This comrade is very agreeable, but a trifle of a bore.

What a poverty of recollections and sensations! From their recitals
there emanates an indefinable odor of smutty talk which sickens. As
for myself, love never made me laugh. It was to me the most serious,
the most profound thing in the world. I have always found a savor of
infinity even with the coarse farm girl, smelling of cow dung.

Besides, I really believe that love gives us what we already possess
and that it can give us this alone. That is why, to natures like mine,
the quality of the adversary matters little, allowing for youth and
strength. Yet beauty has always been a fountain wherein my forces
increased, and where I have ever found my desires renewed as soon as I
abandoned myself to the secret of the waters.

But beauty is so rare! I can confess to you that even the immortal
nymphs are sometimes a little flat-nosed, and there is a common quality
in their eyebrows which are too close together, and their hair which
falls too far down. Like myself, before the transformation, they are
redolent of the earth, dead leaves and flowers crushed by thighs.
Do not dream of those loves which are beautiful only by reason of
their unconsciousness. They can still delight me, I can still renew
my original essence with them and the vigorous youth of my Phrygian
desires, but your Cydalises, so precious through their very fragility,
surpass the deliciousness of the immortal creatures, and it is their
skin which is fragrant with the odor of violets.

My two sailors drank a sort of grass-colored water with the aroma of
fennel. Their complexion took on richer hues and, playing with some
little bones, like Sicilian shepherds, they exchanged no speech save
for a few words whose meaning I could not seize. They had forgotten
the women and I was not at all sorry, for I hardly relish the insane
conversations of which they are the pretext.

I was free to gaze at those who now filled the café and who seemed to
be paying no attention to me. Yet I noticed that two eyes, apparently
straying listlessly, were fixed on my figure from time to time, and
vanity caused me to smile. A smile answered me. I, who was not drinking
any of the fennel water, felt myself grow redder than my companions,
and I suddenly made a movement to rise. My old instincts came to the
surface, I was about to run toward my pleasure, as in days past. An
instant, I thought I breathed real fennel and the odor of the Cogolin
oranges. Had she also risen, had she made a gesture of flight like
the wild creatures I once knew, how I would have bounded in pursuit!
But she took a newspaper, behind which she concealed her face, and
the source of enticement being removed, I remained tranquil. Cydalise
approached. It is probable that her arrival, perceived in the mirror,
had caused the newspaper to be unfolded. I promised myself to be,
henceforth, more a master of myself and to survey the mirrors.

My beloved Cydalise annoyed, then exasperated me by stupidly calling me
“her old Tityrus”; this caused the release of a little rusty spring in
the old officer who labouriously let fall these words:

    “_Tityre tu recubans, recubans_....”

The newspaper did not budge, but I prudently lowered my eyes.
Fortunately, the game of bones was ended, the two old men turned
towards her and assailed her with gallantries. The one who had arrived
last was the most assiduous and Cydalise, amused, recovered a little of
her animation. She accepted a glass of grass juice and the gentlemen
profited by the occasion to fill their cups, begging me to follow their
example.

“Not he, not he!” Cydalise cried. “It makes him wild. He wants some
milk.”

The milk was bluish and tasted like old paper, but I preferred it to
the fennel. How often, in my wanderings through fields, have I not
pressed Io’s drugs to my lips! I wanted to mention this aloud. Happily,
the grimace I made, in tasting this strange beverage, removed from my
mind this unreasonable piece of confidence.

I kept silent, imbibing the benefits of civilization without a word.

“Well, there are compensations,” I told myself.

We left. On the threshold I turned toward the newspaper. It had been
lowered. Cydalise examined the folds of her dress. I foolishly threw a
kiss at the face which now was looking at me.

“Are you coming, Tityrus?”

I followed.

Am I beginning to understand?

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




IX

EREBUS




IX


  Toulon, June 17.

You now know the manner of my life for the past two months, my dear
friend, and although you have not let me hear from you for such a
length of time, I am going to tell you something of myself, to call
forth your advice. Young persons and the eternally young gods need
the remonstrances of the sages, and you are a sage, you who do not
scorn satyrs. You know that the manner of their life exposes them to
unpleasant adventures among mortals more infatuated with the idea of
love than with love itself.

It seems that some sort of Olympic games are being celebrated at Turin
and that different representatives from the whole world have come
there to dispute for the embossed cups and laurel wreaths. A director
of the performances who traveled through this place became enamoured
of Cydalise’s face and entreated her to represent the goddesses, in
unveiled poses, before the assembled throngs. He supposes that a
beautiful body always follows from a fine figure and I must confess
to you that he was not deceived, in this instance. Cydalise is like
myself; she has no false modesty and she would even consider it
criminal obstinately to conceal from the world what the supreme Creator
of men and satyrs has formed for the delight of eyes. She therefore
accepted,—she has since then laughingly told me that the tyrant of
this country, whom I thought more humane, far from wishing to lighten
the draperies of goddesses, insists on their being very opaque and
heavy; but this is a secondary point in the story, so we will pass it
by,—without concealing the fact that there was a question of me; this
embarrassed her greatly. She said that she feared all sorts of dangers
for her dear Antiphilos, and Antiphilos who preferred to remain at
Toulon hastened to reveal a scandalous joy in the idea of the trip. So
she has left me here, promising—and her director has agreed to this—to
return once a week to spend a day with me.

She faithfully returns, as she has promised, bringing on each trip a
quantity of golden money with the most diverse effigies: I would never
have supposed that the world contained so many tyrants. If they wage
war, as was customary in the old days, in what state must the earth
be, O master of Olympus? I am the guardian of this treasure, which
steadily increases. I do not yet know very well what can be done with
this gold; I have other means of persuasion, but Cydalise knows, and
I content myself with fulfilling my office which is to stuff all this
gold in a bag, make it fast and be silent.

I have other means of persuasion. They are apparent in the eagerness
of my eyes which are not, as the poet says, “hard, brilliant and sad,”
but soft, brilliant and joyous, eyes of a lover, eyes of a magnet, eyes
which attract hearts and eyes, as the magic stone, sapphires. You have
guessed that my conquest of the Admiralty café has fallen into my arms
and that she was satisfied to be there. She is far from being as comely
as Cydalise and hardly gives me any pleasure outside that of variety.
Yet she, too, knows the rules of the game and all its finesse. What
especially stimulates her is the idea of deceiving Cydalise, whom she
knows and who has never wanted to associate with her. Let us hope, O
god of the winged heel, that she proceeds not to boast of her good
fortune! I will make a sacrifice to Harpocrates so that he may place
a seal on her lips. I have called her Erebus; why, she does not know.
Her body is like those gilded flambeaux, smudged with black, that I
remember having seen at Ephesis after the conflagration. As we were
strolling on the wharf the other day, a sailor sang:

    Elle est un peu brunette,
    Ce sont les plus belles gens.

She began to listen and laugh:

“Is that so, Satyros?”

“Yes, Erebus.”

I have not confided anything to her, but she has beheld, carved on the
poop of a Greek vessel, a satyr’s head that resembled me; and a sailor
spelled for her the name with which she calls me. All this amuses me.
The Phrygian Oreads used to call me this name for the fun of provoking
me, and they would stamp a figure on the ground, telling of my victory.
O sweet land of Phrygia!

All the same, I have entreated her to keep this name for our intimacy,
for the satyrs have more and more acquired a bad reputation in this
country and it maddens me. Did not Erebus have the idea, the other
day, to buy and read aloud a newspaper proudly called _The Journal of
Satyrs_:

“Ah! Ah! there is the paper for you! The only thing it lacks is your
picture.”

By Apollo! What incoherencies! What nonsense! What idea, anyway, have
the slaves who write these pages, of a satyr? Despite my debonair
attitude of mind, I grew angry both against the journal and against
the archons who have thrown, it seems, the slaves into prison. They
are but fools. They hardly merit the punishment with which Priapus
threatens plunderers of the orchards: _inrumabo!_ I explained all this
to Erebus: she became serious. We began to speak of other things.

This is to what you expose your satyr, Cydalise, in letting him stroll
through the streets, while the Olympic youths drain the enchased cups,
filled with a dark wine, in your honor. Erebus only likes champagne.
I am always faithful to my milk with the paper taste and, when Erebus
is astonished at this, I tell her that milk is the wine of satyrs. She
quickly assumes a smiling expression: it is her manner of intimating
that she has understood.

When Cydalise returns, we pass every minute at our home, the days as
well as the nights. Thus I avoid chance meetings and explanations,
which would cause me to lose my head, for my only diplomacy consists
in taking to flight and in concealing myself behind a tree trunk. How
fettered I feel myself with your civilization and how unreasonable
women are! This they call treason, betrayal. But I love them all. Do
they not all belong to me, since I can satisfy them all? Neither they,
nor you perhaps, yet know what it is to be a satyr, the quality of
that force of nature unchained by desire. Cydalise will have to make a
decision and admit that satyrs are not formed for constancy and that
caprice is a divine thing.

O caprice, diversity of forms under the eternal law, caprice with
changing eyes!

Caprice, slender maiden with breasts of brass, matron where autumn and
its colors are enthroned!

Caprice, nymphs stained with blackberries, with argil backs, with
cheeks cut by brambles, pure or impure like the earth,—and dry leaves
rustle in their entangled tresses!

Caprice, the young shepherds run towards the cot, and the shepherdesses
takes each other by the hand, crying like fowl surprised by a fox, and
turning round to laugh between their cries!

Caprice, pungent odor of ferns, odor of shoulders under willows and of
limbs in streams still white with the foam of the daughter of Latona
bathing there!

Caprice!

Let not this flight of fancy surprise you. The summer has mounted to my
head.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




X

DIOGENES




X


  Toulon, July 15.

Joyful, indeed, and happy is my lot since I became a domesticated faun.
No longer do I experience hunger or cold, absence of love, hostility
of mankind, the bites of dogs. But with my happiness there mingles a
vague sense of shame, an indescribable feeling of being cramped. I have
the sensation of diminishing divinity: the man grows in me, subtly and
gradually stifling my primitive nature, which was Desire. I have the
nostalgia of desire. Once I desired fruits, leaves, women; and now that
these things have come to me, I dream only of being naked and famished
in a desert. Oh! what attractions solitude has for him who lives in the
midst of humanity!

The Phrygian Aesop—I knew his brothers, who were handsome and
stupid—has written a fable to prove that liberty is the chief blessing.
I heard it in the Greek of my infancy, and young girls learned it by
heart on my knees. It is true and false, like every human invention.
Liberty is a burden which one desires to throw on the ground, when one
knows nothing else, and in the slavery of the happiest of civilizations
there is a bitterness that oppresses the heart. Once my very sadness
was a sort of joy that caused my life to expand flower-like and become
glorious. My sadness was a momentary transformation of the forces of
my being and when, by chance, I encountered someone with whom to share
this mood, it bourgeoned in the voluptuous silence of nights until it
equalled the very immensity of the world. Now and then I suffered, but
I never experienced ennui. What is this new distemper whose existence I
learned at the same time that I knew its name? One day I observed that
things around me were becoming colorless and that the eyes of women
were fading at my approach, like a metal mirror. I no longer interested
myself in anything, I dreamed of lands that were inexistent. My past
itself, so rich in adventures, no longer sufficed to fix memory on any
single point of my history, and my dormant desire stirred not at the
prospect of future loves.

This only lasted several days, but I am still affected by it and
I feel that I shall never be cured. Cydalise’s return brought a
temporary recovery; since her second departure, I support my life
without extracting much pleasure out of it. Erebus has forsaken me, I
am alone, and it is in vain that Déidamie, a little Greek girl, puts
herself in my way when I go to see my friends who drink the green
water. She is a friend of Erebus, who has also bequeathed me an old
dealer in syllables who used to write love letters for her in return
for the pleasure her visits gave him. She had a habit of tossing her
dark hair at him, while letting fall a medley of words that were sharp
and peppery. Erebus called him her secretary and I address him as
Diogenes. I have often heard their quarrels and debates, one wishing
to clothe the secret thoughts of Erebus in fitting diction, the other
hurling them forth at random, as naked as Aphrodite emerging from the
waves, and much less chaste. How comical my old Diogenes seemed in
this struggle. But I was hurt to learn that Erebus trafficked in her
charms, with the same unconsciousness as Destiny. The manner of my
breaking with her is an insignificant episode. Several days afterwards,
I learned that she had left with an English traveler who had no desire
to view sunny sites without a companion. Diogenes was in tears when he
told me the news. He attends when I dress and awaits my morning talk,
but it is I who make him speak.

His discourse is pleasant and bitter. At first I was immensely amused,
but his disillusioned words soon made me reflect on myself and on life
more than he would have wished, and I think it is perhaps this that has
made me ill. It is not surprising to find him disenchanted, for he is
old and poor, reduced to associate with a circle of people that goes
against his instincts and habits. I have perhaps erred in calling him
Diogenes, for he is more melancholy than cynical, more resigned than
depraved. Little as I am versed in apparel and styles, he seems to me
to be garbed with a sort of old-fashioned refinement. His hair has
the color of hemp one sees steeping in the ponds of fields; it is as
discolored as his soul. His linen is always immaculate, his complexion
is rosy, his hands fine, his eyes gentle and vague; and his fleshy lips
give him an air of goodness and innocent sensuality.

There are priests of Jupiter here with this appearance, but some Greek
phrases he let fall have revealed to me the old professor of eloquence
or philosophy. Now I listen to his explanations of life without dismay
and I even experience the pleasures of the initiate. Sometimes I seem
to hear a Bacchant, sometimes a Mithriac, and sometimes again, a man in
his cups. Wine, which makes me wild and which I like only in the grape,
makes him bold. When he visits me, I always order a flagon the color
of amber or of new roses, the sight of which is pleasant to my eyes,
and I hearken to his wisdom while brushing my hair or polishing my
horns, for I keep no secrets from him.

Like Erebus, he familiarly calls me Satyros, and I find this quite
natural. She was the subject of our first conversation, or rather of
his first discourse:

“What I like in this woman is her disinterestedness. She sells her
body only the better to surrender herself; it is her weakness. She
has a marvelous appetite and can only satisfy it with those of her
choice. Those who choose her find her but a servant of Aphrodite. Were
she rich, she would be the most honest of women and would only select
her loves among those who most resemble the gods. Wealth is a great
privilege, even in love. Thus it happens that there are two races on
the globe, everlastingly creating and re-creating themselves,—the race
submissive to destiny and the race which surmounts it. You have heard
the contrary. It is nonsense. Give heed to the voice of a man whom
fate overwhelms and who, to be reconciled with a woman he loves, has
changed himself into her domestic slave. She will return; I shall again
feel the odor of her hair and of her scorn. I have ruined myself for
Aspasia. It is right that Aspasia should hold me in contempt.”

I give you quite faithfully some of his words; I have not understood
them well. It seemed to me, besides, that his face flushed and grew
ruddy, that he was getting drunk. He added words that I understood
even less, about the pleasure of suffering and the keen delights of
humiliation. Then he recited Theognis’ invective against poverty, thus
completing the confession of his absolute incoherence.

He is not always so senseless. He is an unfortunate wretch punished by
Aphrodite for having misused love—this is only permitted the gods—but
she usually offers him a respite and then his conversation is less
depressing. If I am to tell you the end of my experiences, I shall
doubtless have to speak of Diogenes. But I am truly forbearing, for he
has taken advantage of me.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




XI

DÉIDAMIE




XI


  Monte-Carlo, September 15.

How it all came about, my dear friend, is a puzzling matter, but
Diogenes led me into an adventure which could not help make me uneasy,
though I am confident the protection of the all-powerful gods will
never fail me. Everything was proceeding smoothly; the roguish snares
of Déidamie, to which I had at last yielded, had freed me of that
vague ennui which tormented me.... But I must make you familiar with
this, in the episodic manner, before giving you the recital of the
dreadful happenings. Picture to yourself this Phrygian girl, born on
the Mæander shores, and if this does not move you, at least you will
understand my emotion upon discovering, once more, a lass hailing from
my native land! But the Phrygians have always been inconstant: Déidamie
is the very embodiment of caprice. Charming maid! She was the inamorata
of an archon’s wife, herself strikingly lovely, partaking of the beauty
that men have given Pallas Athena.

“You love those who resemble you, O Déidamie of the violet eyes!”

Déidamie loved those who were like her and those unlike her. How
privileged women are! They bring grace to their loves. Diogenes
explained to me that it was thus they disarmed morality, that power
dreaded by mankind, and whose aim is to prevent the extraction of
too much pleasure from life. Déidamie was taken away from me while
I still loved her. That is a good time to lose a woman. Regrets then
are transformed into pleasant memories, and one is spared satiety.
Diogenes had predicted that this would hardly last and that Déidamie,
being accustomed to feminine cajoleries, would soon weary, after the
first days of felicitous astonishment, of a being awkward in tender
adorations.

“You will not know,” he said, “how to feed the flame sleeping in her
soft eyes. Your bellows will extinguish instead of keeping it alive.”

And he continued:

“I know all about you, Satyros. You always excite curiosity and you
never fail to disappoint it. Your career consists of abduction, the
sudden surprise, the stupefaction.”

I wanted to reply that there was much truth in his judgment of my
character, but I remained silent, meditating on my companion’s wisdom
and perspicacity. Yet I thought of Cydalise, of whom he was ignorant.
I related the story to him and surprised him. After a moment’s
reflection, he confessed that to know and classify the types of women
was a vain and sorry task; some one would always turn up to contradict
and annihilate the most positive theories.

“What you tell me, Satyros, does not go against the grain, since it
instructs me. The science of men and women is composed of exceptions,
each one of which constitutes a rule. Thus the science is a very long
and laborious one. It thus resembles the Chinese language, which aged
men begin to master after sixty years of study and when they no longer
have either the strength or the inclination to discourse. The eyes
grow impaired in observing men, and it is quite other faculties that
are used in the company of women, without which, besides, they would
be equally spent. But you cannot understand this, you who were kneaded
out of an immortal clay, moulded so that you would never experience
exhaustion, and who are the image of a youthfulness whose illusions
should be realities.”

While saying this, Diogenes looked at me with an air of envy in which
was affection, that air carried by the poor in the presence of vases
filled with gold, such as I have seen in the street behind iron
railings. He continued, as though issuing from a dream:

“Are you truly immortal, Satyros? The great gods, your masters and the
masters of men, are dead....”

“Destiny has overlooked me, Diogenes, and besides, I believe that I
have brethren in the depths of every forest, in the grottos of every
mountain, in every dale. I have never seen, but I divine them. We are
the forces of nature and if we died, you would be condemned to death.”

“That is rather what _we_ are. I think you are confusing immortality
and perpetuity.”

I did not answer. I find it difficult to enter into subtleties. It
seems to me that my horns then begin to shoot out of my head. This time
he looked at me with pity:

“Hm! Satyr,” he said. “To return to a more sensible topic, since
Cydalise loves you, why do you not go to find her again?”

“And will you come with me, Diogenes?”

“Without a doubt. You spoke of destiny, and since it has placed in my
path a son, or even a grand-cousin of the immortal gods, do you suppose
that I can abandon him? You do not know friendship, Satyros. It is
man’s virtue.”

Thereupon, he delivered a long discourse which enchanted me by the
charmingly cadenced arrangement of its periods. I imagined myself
transported to the times of my childhood, I drank his eloquence like
my mother’s milk. I was stirred, I wept with emotion and I panted,
half-drowned under these harmonious waves. I am Greek and sensitive
to the felicities of rhetoric. Ah! had he spoken in Greek, I would
have offered to share my divinity with him, but I was thankful for his
discretion and embraced him. It was the time propitious for swearing
eternal friendship. I passed the remainder of the day congratulating
myself on the good fortune which had fallen to my lot among mankind. I
had a friend, and without understanding the joys that this should bring
me, I considered them great and equal to those painted by Diogenes in
his flowered discourse.

He came to live with me. He installed himself in an adjoining room
which I was happy to be able to offer him, as is fitting in true
friendship, and he did not hesitate to share my frugal repasts, with
which he was pleased to be contented. Then he spoke once more of
Cydalise, whose portrait arose from the depths of his memories. I
described her to him and he forthwith knew her. His talk afforded me
pleasure. To speak of her was to revive her under my very eyes, almost
under my lips. She was nearer to me, each time I pronounced her name
aloud, and it seemed to me that the door was about to open and reveal
her.

Cydalise had not returned for nearly a month and she had only written
me somewhat enigmatic letters which but half reassured me. The last
was a note so brief that I read it at a glance, as one drinks with
a single draught the water scooped into the palm of the hand. I had
been distracted from my uneasiness by Déidamie’s caprice, but now that
the little Phrygian had returned to her friend, I thought deeply of
Cydalise. It was easy for Diogenes to prevail on me to go and join her,
and as he wished to spare me all the inconveniences of the trip, our
departure was decided upon, following a new discourse which profoundly
stirred me to the depths of my heart and satisfied my last scruples. We
made our preparations. I did not forget the treasure with whose care I
was entrusted. Diogenes took charge of it.

You will know the consequences.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




XII

THE CLUSTER OF GRAPES




XII


  Monte-Carlo, September 20.

Consequently we left. Diogenes was in very good spirits and I a trifle
out of countenance by such a rapid decision, for he had hardly obtained
my consent than, our affairs in order, we were on our way.

“Perhaps,” I said, “Cydalise is returning at the very moment that I
leave. What will she think of me?”

But Diogenes seemed quite sure of the matter.

“Doubtless, at this very moment she is climbing the flight of stairs,
she knocks at the door, no one answers her, she grows perturbed,
she begins to make inquiries. This is possible since everything is
possible. But Cydalise is not one of those giddy, thoughtless persons
who arrive all of a sudden at the home of their lover, especially
when the lover goes by the name of Satyros. Life has given such a one
experience. Trust in me, my friend, and let us have no anxieties about
the matter.”

As I am always sensitive to the last impression which strikes me, I
easily agreed with the opinion of Diogenes and began to examine the
landscape which still possessed the richness of summer. Everywhere I
imagined I found once more the appearance of the Cogolin countryside
and the fragrance of its orange-trees. In vain did Diogenes endeavor
to put me right by informing me that we were quite remote from that
spot; still I saw the woods of the last days of my liberty, and I grew
enthusiastic as though they were about to return.

“Let us get off at this spot,” I would say each moment, “I feel that
happiness awaits me in these rocks. A woman has come for me in this
very place, she is looking for me, she believes she has spied me behind
each clump of arbutus. See, she turns round hopefully and scans the
autumn-hued land. Let us get off, let us get off!”

“It is a long time since you beheld the country fields, Satyros,”
Diogenes answered. “Your head is turned. What would you have us do
in this wild desert? It is nothing but a color, it is nothing but
imagination.”

The train slackened its speed and Diogenes had to stop me as I was
about to hurl myself through the carriage door. It opened at the same
moment and two women entered our compartment where we had been alone
up till now. Diogenes now knew that he need no longer watch me. From
his pocket he drew a newspaper and began to read tranquilly, confident
that I would not try to escape. In fact, I was quite at ease, quite
satisfied with the turn of affairs. Although the new arrivals afforded
no pleasure to my eyes, they were capable of occupying my imagination.
I recognized their coiffure. How many similar heads had I not pursued
in days of yore among the shadows of descending night, on the skirt of
the vineyards! They were not absolutely ugly and their eyes had even a
certain beauty; but what heaviness of outline, what disgracefulness of
forms! Certainly I had loved more than one with less comeliness. And
these were the types of conquests with which I had once been so elated,
those fruits of nature which I had devoured, those earthen urns out of
which I had quaffed my pleasures so boldly. These buxom daughters of
Pomona carried in each arm a basket of grapes, oranges and vegetables.
These they deposited near them, and as I looked at the contents of the
baskets more intently than at their owners, one of them addressed me in
a singing voice:

“Perhaps you would like to eat a bunch of grapes?”

I stretched my hand forward and she gracefully lifted her heavy basket
toward me. She was the less coarse of the two.

“I can only offer you,” I said, “a kiss.”

Both of them commenced to laugh and the other, in an engaging manner,
remarked:

“The baskets belong to the two of us.”

I kissed her on the cheek, and her companion on the corner of her
lips. I had once again become a faun; my contemptuous reflections had
counted for naught against the tempting odor of a market woman!

They laughed so loudly, to conceal their embarrassment, that they
failed to notice the train’s arrival at Arcs. Diogenes, whom the scene
had diverted from his newspaper, mentioned the fact aloud and the
countrywomen hastened to dismount. As I held out their baskets to them,
she whom I had touched with my desire bowed to me with a smile while
the other said:

“Shall we perhaps meet again?”

I had dominated my emotion. When the train started again, Diogenes
sententiously proferred these words which I was long in understanding:

“That is what one gets for having frequented the little courtesans of
Toulon.”

Noticing my astonishment, he added:

“Satyros is becoming farther and farther removed from nature. Perhaps
we shall be able to make something out of him.”

Diogenes’ perspicacity surprised and enchanted me at the same time. How
well the two propositions reunite and how faithfully they render my own
sentiment. But what could be the meaning of these words: “Perhaps we
shall be able to make something out of him. Am I then nothing, nothing
of consequence, nothing serious and true?”

“Diogenes,” I answered, “I understand your first thought; it answers to
mine; but what do you propose to make of me? This is vague.”

“A philosopher, Satyros, nothing more and nothing less, a philosopher
like myself, that is to say a man who is the dupe of nothing or who,
when he is a dupe, knows and enjoys his deception. It is a very rare
state of mind and surpasses even that of the Gods whom, if I am to
judge by yourself, are totally ignorant and always at the mercy of the
impressions of the moment. I was satisfied to notice with what an eye
you studied the rustics who tried their best little tricks upon you.
That is the first stage. One must know how to resist the passions. The
second consists in yielding to them. To be neither above nor below
human weakness, which the divine foibles greatly resemble, if once more
I can judge by yourself,—here you have the ideal position. Be always at
their level, always ready to respond to them.”

“Had I met them along some path, in the mountain, despite my repulsion
of the first moment I would not have been able to master my desire.”

“It is thus I understand the second stage,” answered Diogenes, “but
there is a third stage, which is still more advantageous. This takes
place when a person loves himself sufficiently, loves himself more than
the desires which make him leave his egoism. I am journeying toward
that condition, which I do not believe you will ever attain, Satyros.”

“No more do I myself believe it, Diogenes. If the nature of the
gods is hardly removed from that of men, it nevertheless differs in
this essential point: all poetry is forthwith incorporated with its
substance, effortlessly and by the very play of desire. I enrich myself
where you impoverish yourself, Diogenes.”

It was his turn to meditate upon the profundity of my words. He did
not know what to answer, doubtless, for on his face I read ennui
and sadness and envy perhaps. Diogenes is no longer very young. I
fear his philosophy is only a sort of insouciant resignation to the
fatality which weighs on mankind. I perceive—books have already taught
me this—that there are as many philosophies as there are ages and
temperaments. He has sufficiently outlined this for me by his theory
of the three stages. One desires to resist passions when they are so
weak that a little attention suffices to master them. One yields to
them when they are so strong that a struggle is grievous. One scorns
them on the day they become nerveless, when one no longer dare regret
the time of their heydey for fear of appearing in the attitude of a
vanquished person. That is the moment of virtue. According as young or
old men, the feeble or the strong govern society, the one or the other
spirit dominates the world. And I really believe that this applies to
all human inclinations. States fluctuate according as action or thought
and dream are held in higher repute. Ah! I understand why they laugh
in Olympus.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




XIII

THE UNKNOWN WOMAN




XIII


  Cannes, December 1.

Good friend, I have not told you what happened to us at Monte-Carlo
and it is with difficulty that I now recall it. At first it seemed
important and stirring, but I readily see that events have hardly any
interest outside of their novelty: this should teach us to view them
philosophically at the very moment when they appear most grievous. It
really seems to me that the adventure which befell Diogenes, and which
affected us both, might have turned out badly for both of us, at least
this is what he told me, but my insouciance did not linger on the
matter overlong and life soon put me to rights.

“Fortunate Antiphilos!” said Diogenes, gazing at me with an admiration
in which anger was mingled, “we are lost and he is as calm as a god!
Are you at least capable of giving me some advice? Divine animal, be
oracular, be Dodonian, pronounce a number!”

It is probable that I obeyed, for Diogenes manifested a sudden
contentment and disappeared, leaving me slightly bewildered by his
eccentricities, on one of the garden seats, in the dim shadow of the
palm trees. I was not long in finding tranquility, since the place was
propitious to peace. Young women passed by accompanied by aged men and
the same thoughts certainly did not inhabit their heads, for their
glances were unlike. The expressions on the men’s faces were dull, the
women looked stupid, and though some among them were quite pretty, they
did not inspire me with any desire.

Besides, I do not dispute a woman with any male. Only the rams, goats
and bulls intertwine their horns and battle for the conquest of
females. I, whose ways are peaceful, only attack unescorted women; it
is surer. Unless it be night, I even wait to see, in their eyes, near
the dwellings, the provocative little flame which my presence rarely
fails to light in their eyes. I do not put myself to any trouble,
unless I am sure of pleasing. Diogenes has told me that men are not
so constituted and that what often excites them in a woman is her
coldness, no less than the obstacles which shield her. On this subject
they use in their speech all sorts of images of warfare which make
veritable treaties of strategy of their books on love. It is a question
of siege, stratagems, skirmishes, attack, defeat, resistance, victory,
conquest. I do not understand all these things. Love is naught when it
is not the leaping of a twin desire. Yet I would not be worthy of my
name of Satyros did I not admit assault and abduction, the surprise
which satisfies desire lulled to sleep before it has had time to
awake. It is not perhaps the most beautiful side of my nature, but it
is such as the gods have made it and besides, neither women nor girls
have ever taken offense at it. I must confess that I have completely
leashed these habits since living, in the towns, a life similar to
that of other men. If I have not yet been able to understand that one
lays siege to woman, as Alexander laid siege to the city of Tyre, it
is perhaps due to the fact that I still rely more on the candor of
her desires than on a possession which, in the strategic system, one
generally owes to the weariness of the besieged, to the poliorcetic
science of the besieger.

“Satyros,” Diogenes suddenly cried out, “Satyros! You are the true God
or at least a true god!”

And, plunging a hand in his pocket, he drew it forth filled with gold
pieces.

“But let us be circumspect,” he continued. “One must no longer question
destiny. It has answered in no uncertain terms. Let us flee this town.
Take my arm on the side where I carry the gold and let us leave without
turning our heads.”

“You are wrong, monsieur,” a voice behind us answered. “One does not
thus break his lucky streak....”

The voice belonged to an extremely pretty woman who lacked neither
elegance nor distinction. Diogenes apostrophized her strongly:

“Are you the guardian dragon of these portals, recovering from mortals
the gold which destiny conceded them? Are you....”

“I am not even a dragon of virtue,” answered the young woman, smiling
pleasantly. “You are right. It is time to go and breakfast. I will show
you the way.”

I had the look of a schoolboy rescued from the perils of an adventure
by his elder brother and I found that Diogenes really protected my
virtue a little too carefully, for this woman decidedly pleased me. I
am ashamed to avow it, but I struggled an instant longer against my
desire, I was on the point of obeying Diogenes, my arm relaxed its
hold, I felt myself the docile son of the dreariest civilization, which
sits down at the roadside and watches its dream pass, without daring
to arrest them. But she turned her fair head, her clear eyes toward
me, our glances penetrated each other and I suddenly felt myself become
again the faun of the forests, the jovial, whinnying faun who can
overcome pitchfork blows, but not reasonings.

With a harsh burst of laughter, I scoffed at my hesitations. My
companion trembled and grasped my arm tighter. She led me away and I
imagined that I was carrying her off, for already I felt her limbs
tremble under my strength.

When Diogenes rejoined us in the rooms, to which he had the key, she
was already arranging her hair in front of the mirror, while glancing
at my reflection in one of its corners. She was murmuring:

“What a man! Amazing!”

He had the rudeness to come and behold us, then he shrugged his
shoulders and said:

“It might as well be this one as another. Besides, she is pretty, even
though she has blond hair. Satyros could not remain good very long. And
one must enliven the journey. We are going far, madam, and the caprices
of the gods are short-lived. I leave you, unless you are going to
invite me to the repast.”

The nymph was still dressing her hair. I reflected on the fortunate
state of women in being able to arrange their hair in delicate
situations. I myself did not know what to say, I did not know what to
do.

“What repast?” asked the lady. “It is finished,” she added with a happy
laugh. “At least, I believe so.”

“And are you ready?” questioned Diogenes.

“Who are you anyway?” she rejoined, almost angry. “Why do you come to
interfere?...”

“Madam, I am Satyros’ secretary, and as I fear that he does not know
the customs very well....”

“I understand. You imagine me venal? I am life’s slave, that is all.
I know how to enjoy, making allowances for my chain and its length,
the enchantments of the present moment, and I accept the disappointing
after-taste that follows. Leave me with my friend an hour, so that I
may gather, under my eyelids, tears for the moment he will quit me....
I have often seen love bud in eyes that followed me, but I have not
known how to make the bud thrive, how to keep it fresh, at least, like
a rose in a glass of water. When friends abandon me, they tear the rose
to bits and sneer, they throw it to the ground and trample it. Are you,
too, ashamed of your pleasures?”

“How well she speaks!” exclaimed Diogenes, who loves eloquence. “How I
love this flute player! And you say nothing, Satyros?”

But I spoke and she remained.

  ANTIPHILOS,
  _Satyr._




XIV

FLIGHT




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

  [Illustration]

  Translated by Louis Lozowick

  [Illustration]

  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



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