The Cross of Berny Part 4

You have probably met that celebrated blue-stocking called the "Romantic Marquise." She is handsome, so the painters say; and, perhaps, they are not far from right, for she is handsome after the style of an old picture. Although young, she seems to be covered with yellow varnish, and to walk surrounded by a frame, with a background of bitumen.

One evening I found myself with this picturesque personage at Madame de Blery's. I was listlessly intrenched in a corner, far from the circle of busy talkers, just sufficiently awake to be conscious that I was asleep--a delirious condition, which I recommend to your consideration, resembling the beginning of haschish intoxication--when by some turn in the conversation Madame de Blery mentioned my name and pointed me out. I was immediately awakened from my torpor and dragged out of my corner.

I have been weak enough at times, as Gubetta says, to jingle words at the end of an idea, or to speak more modestly, at the end of certain measured syllables. The Marquise, cognisant of the offence, but not of the extenuating circ.u.mstances, launched forth into praise and flattering hyperbole that lifted me to the level of Byron, Goethe, Lamartine, discovered that I had a satanic look, and went on so that I suspected an alb.u.m.

This affected me gloomily and ferociously. There is nothing I despise more than an alb.u.m, unless it be two of them.

To avoid any such attempt, I broke into the most of the conversation with several innocent provincialisms, and effected my retreat in a masterly manner; advancing towards the door by degrees, and reaching it, I sprang outside so suddenly and nimbly that I had gotten to the bottom of the stairs before my absence was discovered.

Alas! no one can escape au alb.u.m when it is predestined! The next day a book, magnificently bound in Russia, arrived in a superb moire case in the hands of a groom, with an accompanying note from the Infanta soliciting the honor, &c.

All great men have their antipathies. James I. could not look upon a glittering sword; Roger Bacon fainted at the sight of an apple; and blank paper fills me with melancholy.

However, I resigned myself to the decrees of fate, and scribbled, I don't know what, in the corner, and subscribed my initials as illegible as those of Napoleon when in a pa.s.sion.

This, I flattered myself, was the end of the tragedy, but no: a few days afterwards I received an invitation to a select gathering, in such amiable terms that I resolved to decline it.

Talleyrand said, "Never obey your first impulse, because it is good;" I obeyed this Machiavellian maxim, and erred!

"_Eucharis_" was being performed at the opera; the sky was filled with ugly, threatening clouds; I sought in vain for a companion to get tight with, and moralize over a few bottles of wine, and so for want of a gayer occupation I went to the Marquise.

Her apartments are a perfect series of catafalques, and seem to have been upholstered by an undertaker. The drawing-room is hung in violet damask; the bed-rooms in black velvet; the furniture is of ebony or old oak; crucifixes, holy-water basins, folio bibles, death's-heads and poniards adorned the enlivening interior. Several Zurbarans, real or false, representing monks and martyrs, hung on the walls, frightening visitors with their grimaces. These sombre tints are intended to contrast with the waxy cheeks and painted eyes of the lady who looks more like the ghost than the mistress of this dwelling; for she does not inhabit, she haunts it.

You must not think, dear Roger, from this funereal introduction, that your friend became the prey of a ghoul or a vampire. The Marquise is handsome enough, after all. Her features are n.o.ble, regular, but a little Jewish, which induces her to wear a turban earlier and oftener than is necessary. She would not be so pale, if instead of white she put on red. Her hands, though too thin, are rather pretty and aristocratic, and weighted heavily with odd-looking rings. Her foot is not too large for her slipper. Uncommon thing! for women, in regard to their shoes, have falsified the geometrical axiom: the receptacle should be greater than its contents.

She is, however, to a certain point, a gentlewoman, and holds a good position in society.

I was received with all manner of caresses, stuffed with small cake, inundated with tea, of which beverage I hold the same opinion as Madame Gibou. I was a.s.sailed by romantic and transcendental dissertations, but possessing the faculty of abstraction and fixing my gaze upon the facets of a crystal flagon, my att.i.tude touched the Marquise, who believed me plunged into a gulf of thought.

In short, I had the misfortune to charm her, and the weakness, like the greater part of men, to surrender myself to my good or evil fortune; for this unhung canvas did not please me, and though tolerably stylish and pretty well preserved, I suspected some literature underneath, and closely scanned the edge of her dress to see if some azure reflection had not altered the whiteness of her stocking. I abhor women who take blue-ink baths. Alas! they are much worse than the avowed literary woman; she affects to talk of nothing but ribbons, dress and bonnets, and confidentially gives you a receipt for preserving lemons and making strawberry cream; they take pride in not ignoring housekeeping, and faithfully follow the fas.h.i.+ons. At their homes ink, pen and paper are nowhere to be seen; their odes and elegies are written on the back of a bill or on a page torn from an account-book.

La Marquise contemplates reform, romances, social poetry, humanitarian and palingenesic treatises, and scattered about on the tables and chairs were to be seen solemn old books, dog-leaved at their most tiresome pages, all of which is very appalling. Nothing is more convenient than a muse whose complete works are printed; one knows then what to expect, and you have not always the reading of Damocles hanging over your head.

Dragged by a fatality that so often makes me the victim of women I do not admire, I became the Conrad, the Lara of this Byronic heroine.

Every morning she sent me folio-sized epistles, dated three hours after midnight. They were compilations from Frederick Soulie, Eugene Sue, and Alexander Dumas, glorious authors, whom I delight to read save in my amorous correspondence, where a feminine mistake in orthography gives me more pleasure than a phrase plagiarised from George Sand, or a pathetic tirade stolen from a popular dramatist.

In short, I do not believe in a pa.s.sion told in language that smells of the lamp; and the expression "_Je t'aime_" will scarcely persuade me if it be not written "_Je theme_."

It made no difference how often the beauty wrote, I fortified myself against her literary visitations by consigning her billets-doux unopened to an empty drawer. By this means I was enabled to endure her prose with great equanimity. But she expected me to reply--now, as I did not care to keep my hand in for my next romance, I viewed her claims as extravagant and unreasonable, and feigning a strong desire to see my mother, I fled, less curious than Lot's wife, without looking behind.

Had I not taken this resolution I should have died of ennui in that dimly-lighted house, among those sepulchral toys, in the presence of that pale phantom enveloped in a dismal wrapper, cut in the monkish style, and speaking in a trembling and languis.h.i.+ng tone of voice.

La Trappe or Chartreuse would have been preferable--I would have gained at least my salvation. Although it may be the act of a Cossack, a shocking irregularity, I have given her no sign of my existence, except that I told her that my mother's recovery promised to be very slow, and she would need the devoted attention of a good son.

Judge, dear Roger, after this recital, of which I have subdued the horrors and dramatic situations out of regard to your sensibility, whether I could return to Paris to be the comforter in your sorrow. Yet I could brave an encounter with the Marquise were it not that I am retained in Normandy by an expected visit of two months from our friend Raymond. This fact certainly ought to make you decide to share our solitude. Our friend is so poetical, so witty, so charming. He has but one fault, that of being a civilized Don Quixote de la Mancha; instead of the helmet of Mambrino he wears a Gibus hat, a Buisson coat instead of a cuira.s.s, a Verdier cane by way of a lance. Happy nature! in which the heart is not sacrificed to the intellect; where the subtlety of a diplomate is united to the ingenuousness of a child.

Since your ideal has fled, are not all places alike to you? Then why should you not come to me, to Richeport, but a step from Pont de l'Arch?

I am perched upon the bank of the river, in a strange old building, which I know will please you. It is an old abbey half in ruins, in which is enshrined a dwelling, with many windows at regular intrevals, and is surmounted by a slate roof and chimneys of all sizes. It is built of hewn stone, that time has covered with its gray leprosy, and the general effect, looking through the avenue of grand old trees, is fine. Here my mother dwells. Profiting by the walls and the half-fallen towers of the old enclosure, for the abbey was fortified to resist the Norman invasions, she has made upon the brow of the hill a garden terrace filled with roses, myrtles and orange trees, while the green boxes surrounding them replace the old battlements. In this quarter of the old domain, I have not interfered with any of these womanly fancies.

She has collected around her all manner of pretty rusticities; all the comfortable elegancies she could imagine. I have not opposed any system of hot-air stoves, nor the upholstering of the rooms, nor objected to mahogany and ebony, wedgwood ware, china in blue designs, and English plate. For this is the way that middle-aged, and in fact, all reasonable people live.

For myself, I have reserved the refectory and library of the brave monks, that is, all that overlooks the river. I have not permitted the least repairing of the walls, which present the complete flora of the native wild flowers. An arched door, closed by old boards covered with a remnant of red paint, and opening on the bank, serves me as a private entrance. A ferry worked by a rope and pulley establishes communication with an island opposite the abbey, which is verdant with a ma.s.s of osiers, elder bushes and willows. It is here also that my fleet of boats is moored.

Seen from without, nothing would indicate a human habitation; the ruins lie in all the splendor of their downfall.

I have not replaced one stone--walled up one lizard--the house-leek, St.

John's-wort, bell-flower, sea-green saxifrage, woody nightshade and blue popion flower have engaged in a struggle upon the walls of arabesques, and carvings which would discourage the most patient ornamental sculptor. But above all, a marvel of nature attracts your admiring gaze: it is a gigantic ivy, dating back at least to Richard Coeur de Lion, it defies by the intricacy of its windings those geneological trees of Jesus Christ, which are seen in Spanish churches; the top touching the clouds, and its bearded roots embedded in the bosom of the patriarchal Abraham; there are tufts, garlands, cl.u.s.ters, cascades of a green so l.u.s.trous, so metallic, so sombre and yet so brilliant, that it seems as if the whole body of the old building, the whole life of the dead abbey had pa.s.sed into the veins of this parasitic friend, which smothers with its embrace, holding in place one stone, while it dislodges two to plant its climbing spurs.

You cannot imagine what tufted elegance, what richness of open-work tracery this encroachment of the ivy throws upon the rather gaunt and sharp gable-end of the building, which on this front has for ornament but four narrow-pointed windows, surmounted by three trefoil quadrilobes.

The sh.e.l.l of the adjoining building is flanked at its angle by a turret, which is chiefly remarkable for its spiral stairway and well. The great poet who invented Gothic cathedrals would, in the presence of this architectural caprice, ask the question, "Does the tower contain the well, or the well the tower?" You can decide; you who know everything, and more besides--except, however, Mlle. de Chateaudun's place of concealment.

Another curiosity of the old building is a moucharaby, a kind of balcony open at the bottom, picturesquely perched above a door, from which the good fathers could throw stones, beams and boiling oil on the heads of those tempted to a.s.sault the monastery for a taste of their good fare and a draught of their good wine.

Here I live alone, or in the company of four or five choice books, in a lofty hall with pointed roof; the points where the ribs intersect being covered with rosework of exquisite delicacy. This comprises my suite of apartments, for I never could understand why the little s.p.a.ce that is given one in this world to dream, to sleep, to live, to die in, should be divided into a set of compartments like a dressing-case. I detest hedges, part.i.tions and walls like a phalansterian.

To keep off dampness I have had the sides of the market-house, as my mother calls it, wainscoted in oak to the height of twelve or fifteen feet.

By a kind of gallery with two stairways, I can reach the windows and enjoy the beauty of the landscape, which is lovely. My bed is a simple hammock of aloes-fibre, slung in a corner; very low divans, and huge tapestry arm-chairs, for the rest of the furniture. Hung up on the wainscoting are pistols, guns, masks, foils, gloves, plastrons, dumb-bells and other gymnastic equipments. My favorite horse is installed in the opposite angle, in a box of _bois des iles_, a precaution that secures him from the brutalizing society of grooms, and keeps him a horse of the world.

The whole is heated by a cyclopean chimney, which devours a load of wood at a mouthful, and before which a mastodon might be roasted.

Come, then, dear Roger, I can offer you a friendly ruin, the chapel with the trefoil quadrilobes.

We will walk together, axe in hand, through my park, which is as dense and impenetrable as the virgin forests of America, or the jungles of India. It has not been touched for sixty years, and I have sworn to break the head of the first gardener who dares to approach it with a pruning-hook.

It is glorious to see the abandonment of Nature in this extravagance of vegetation, this wild luxuriance of flowers and foliage; the trees stretch out their arms, breed and intertwine in the most fantastic manner; the branches make a hundred curiously-distorted turns, and interlace in beautiful disorder; sometimes hanging the red berries of the mountain-ash among the silver foliage of the aspen.

The rapid slope of the ground produces a thousand picturesque accidents; the gra.s.s, brightened by a spring which at a little distance plays a thousand pranks over the rocks, flourishes in rich luxuriance; the burdock, with large velvet leaves, the stinging nettles, the hemlock with greenish umbels; the wild oats--every weed prospers wonderfully. No stranger approaches the enclosure, whose denizens are two or three little deer with tawny coats gleaming through the trees.

This eminently romantic spot would harmonize with your melancholy. Mlle.

de Chateaudun not being in Paris, you have better chance of finding her elsewhere.

Who knows if she has not taken refuge in one of these pretty bird's-nests embedded in moss and foliage, their half-open blinds overlooking the limpid flow of the Seine? Come quickly, my dear fellow; I will not take advantage of your position as I did of Alfred's, to overwhelm you from my moucharaby with a shower of green frogs, a miracle which he has not been able to explain to his entire satisfaction. I will show you an excellent spot to fish for white-bait; nothing calms the pa.s.sions so much as fis.h.i.+ng with rod and line; a philosophical recreation which fools have turned into ridicule, as they do everything else they do not understand.

If the fish won't bite, you can gaze at the bridge, its piers blooming with wild flowers and lavender; its noisy mills, its arches obstructed by nets; the church, with its truncated roof; the village covering the hill-side, and, against the horizon, the sharp line of woody hills.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN

IV.

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS _to_ M. EDGAR DE MEILHAN, Richeport, near Pont de l'Arche (Eure).