him’—I was about to add, my anger rising, I could feel it… ‘So you have both betrayed me!’—But I repressed that… Did I not have to pry out, one by one, every detail of this horrible seduction?… And so I asked her for them, with a gentleness that nearly killed me, when she herself released me from the vice-like grip, this torture, by saying quite ingenuously:
‘ “ ‘It was one evening, mother. He was in the big armchair in the corner by the fire, opposite the sofa. He stayed there a long while, then he got up, and I had the misfortune to go and sit in the armchair he had just left. Oh, mother!… I felt I had fallen into fire. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t… I didn’t have the strength! And I felt… here, mother, feel here!… that what I had… was a child!… ’ ”’
The Marquise had laughed, said Ravila, when she told him the story; but not one of the twelve women seated round that table dreamed of laughing—and nor did Ravila.
‘So there you have it, Ladies, believe it or not,’ he added, by way of conclusion, ‘the crowning love, the most beautiful I have ever inspired in my life!’
He fell silent, and so did his listeners. They were pensive… had they understood him?
When Joseph was bound a slave to Potiphar’s wife, he was so handsome, says the Koran, that the women he served at table cut their fingers with their knives from looking at him. But the age of Joseph is past, and our preoccupations over dessert are less beguiling.
‘What a great ninny that Marquise of yours is, for all her wit, to have told you such a thing!’ said the Duchesse, who decided to becynical, but who still had her golden knife in her hand, and had not used it to cut anything at all.
The Comtesse de Chiffrevas gazed deep into her glass of Rhenish wine, an emerald crystal glass, as mysterious as her reverie.
‘And Little Mask?’ she inquired.
‘Oh, she got married to someone in the provinces—and then she died, very young, before her mother told me this story,’ said Ravila.
‘That, too…’ said the Duchesse thoughtfully.
VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM
The Presentiment
Attende, homo, quid fuisti ante ortum et quod eris usque ad occasum. Profecto fuit quod non eras. Postea, de vili materia factus, in utero matris de sanguine menstruali nutritus, tunica tua fuit pellis secundina. Deinde, in vilissimo panno involutus, progressus es ad nos, - sic indutus et ornatus! Et non memor es quae sit origo tua. Nibil est aliud homo quam sperma foetidum, saccus stercorum, cibus vermium. Scientia, sapientia, ratio, sine Deo sicut nubes transeunt.
Post hominem vermis; post vermem foetor et horror. Sic, in non hominem, vertitur omnis homo.
Cur carnem tuam adornas et impinguas quam, post paucos dies, vermes devoraturi sunt in sepulchro, animam, vero, tuam non adornas, - quae Deo et Angelis ejus praesentenda est in coelis!
(Saint Bernard,
Meditations
)
O NE winter evening over tea, a group of us, who had in common a taste for metaphysical enquiry, were gathered round a good fire at the home of one of our friends, Baron Xavier de la V*** (a pale young man, whose lengthy spells of military service in Africa, while still just a youth, had exacerbated a singularly moody and rugged temperament). The conversation came round to a most sombre subject: the
nature
of those extraordinary, stupefying, and mysterious coincidences that arise in the lives of some people.
‘This is a story,’ he told us, ‘that I shall tell without further comment. It is true. You may find it striking.’
We lit our cigarettes and settled back to listen to the following narrative:
‘In 1876, at the Autumn solstice, * around the time when the ever-growing number of shallow burials—expedited far too hurriedly, in actual fact—began to revolt the Parisian bourgeoisie and set alarm-bells ringing, one evening, at eight o’clock, after a most extraordinary spiritualist seance, I went home feeling overcome by that hereditaryspleen I am
‘ “ ‘It was one evening, mother. He was in the big armchair in the corner by the fire, opposite the sofa. He stayed there a long while, then he got up, and I had the misfortune to go and sit in the armchair he had just left. Oh, mother!… I felt I had fallen into fire. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t… I didn’t have the strength! And I felt… here, mother, feel here!… that what I had… was a child!… ’ ”’
The Marquise had laughed, said Ravila, when she told him the story; but not one of the twelve women seated round that table dreamed of laughing—and nor did Ravila.
‘So there you have it, Ladies, believe it or not,’ he added, by way of conclusion, ‘the crowning love, the most beautiful I have ever inspired in my life!’
He fell silent, and so did his listeners. They were pensive… had they understood him?
When Joseph was bound a slave to Potiphar’s wife, he was so handsome, says the Koran, that the women he served at table cut their fingers with their knives from looking at him. But the age of Joseph is past, and our preoccupations over dessert are less beguiling.
‘What a great ninny that Marquise of yours is, for all her wit, to have told you such a thing!’ said the Duchesse, who decided to becynical, but who still had her golden knife in her hand, and had not used it to cut anything at all.
The Comtesse de Chiffrevas gazed deep into her glass of Rhenish wine, an emerald crystal glass, as mysterious as her reverie.
‘And Little Mask?’ she inquired.
‘Oh, she got married to someone in the provinces—and then she died, very young, before her mother told me this story,’ said Ravila.
‘That, too…’ said the Duchesse thoughtfully.
VILLIERS DE L’ISLE-ADAM
The Presentiment
Attende, homo, quid fuisti ante ortum et quod eris usque ad occasum. Profecto fuit quod non eras. Postea, de vili materia factus, in utero matris de sanguine menstruali nutritus, tunica tua fuit pellis secundina. Deinde, in vilissimo panno involutus, progressus es ad nos, - sic indutus et ornatus! Et non memor es quae sit origo tua. Nibil est aliud homo quam sperma foetidum, saccus stercorum, cibus vermium. Scientia, sapientia, ratio, sine Deo sicut nubes transeunt.
Post hominem vermis; post vermem foetor et horror. Sic, in non hominem, vertitur omnis homo.
Cur carnem tuam adornas et impinguas quam, post paucos dies, vermes devoraturi sunt in sepulchro, animam, vero, tuam non adornas, - quae Deo et Angelis ejus praesentenda est in coelis!
(Saint Bernard,
Meditations
)
O NE winter evening over tea, a group of us, who had in common a taste for metaphysical enquiry, were gathered round a good fire at the home of one of our friends, Baron Xavier de la V*** (a pale young man, whose lengthy spells of military service in Africa, while still just a youth, had exacerbated a singularly moody and rugged temperament). The conversation came round to a most sombre subject: the
nature
of those extraordinary, stupefying, and mysterious coincidences that arise in the lives of some people.
‘This is a story,’ he told us, ‘that I shall tell without further comment. It is true. You may find it striking.’
We lit our cigarettes and settled back to listen to the following narrative:
‘In 1876, at the Autumn solstice, * around the time when the ever-growing number of shallow burials—expedited far too hurriedly, in actual fact—began to revolt the Parisian bourgeoisie and set alarm-bells ringing, one evening, at eight o’clock, after a most extraordinary spiritualist seance, I went home feeling overcome by that hereditaryspleen I am
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