Augustin came to see her, and tried to persuade her to go back to Styria with him.
“You have conquered a veritable kingdom,” he told her. “Isn’t that enough for you? Why don’t you turn back into the old Violante?”
“Yes, I have indeed just conquered a kingdom, Augustin,” replied Violante. “At least let me enjoy my conquest for a few months.”
An event that Augustin had not foreseen meant that Violante could dispense for a while with any thought of retirement. After having rejected twenty most serene highnesses, the same number of sovereign princes and a man of genius who had asked for her hand, she married the Duke of Bohemia, who had the most dazzling charm and five million ducats. The announcement of Honoré’s return almost caused the marriage to be broken off the day before it was due to be celebrated.
But an illness to which he had succumbed had disfigured him and made his familiarities appear hateful to Violante. She wept over the vanity of her desires which had once winged their ardent way to the flesh that had then been in its first bloom and was now withered for ever. The Duchess of Bohemia continued to charm everyone just as Violante of Styria had done, and the Duke’s huge fortune merely served to set the work of art that she now was within a frame worthy of her. Having been a work of art she became a luxury item, by virtue of that tendency, natural to things here below, which makes them sink down to the lowest level unless some noble effort maintains, so to speak, their centre of gravity above themselves. Augustin was astonished at all the things he heard about her.
“Why,” he wrote to her, “does the Duchess spend her time talking about the same things that Violante so despised?”
“Because I would be less popular if I expressed preoccupations which, by their very superiority, are neither liked nor understood by people in high society,” replied Violante. “But I’m bored, my dear Augustin.”
He came to see her, and explained to her why she was bored.
“Your liking for music, for reflection, for charity, for solitude, for the countryside, can no longer find any outlet. You are obsessed by success and held in thrall by pleasure. But one can find happiness only by doing what one loves in the depths of one’s soul.”
“How do you know that? You’ve never lived,” said Violante.
“I’ve thought. That’s life enough,” said Augustin. “But I hope you will soon be seized by disgust at this insipid way of life.”
Violante felt more and more bored, and was now incapable of showing enjoyment. Then the immorality of society, which until now had left her indifferent, assailed her and wounded her cruelly, just as the harshness of the seasons overwhelms bodies deprived by illness of their capacity to fight back. One day that she was out walking by herself along an almost deserted avenue, from a carriage she had not at first noticed there stepped out a woman who came straight up to her.
This woman stopped her, and asked her whether she was indeed Violante of Bohemia, whereupon she told her that she had been her mother’s friend and had felt a desire to see once more the little Violante she had once held on her knees. She kissed her with deep feeling, put her arm round her waist and started kissing her so repeatedly that Violante, without even saying goodbye, took to her heels in flight. On the evening of the next day, Violante went to a party given in honour of the Princess of Misenum, whom she did not know. On seeing the Princess, she recognized her as the abominable woman of the previous day. And a dowager, whom Violante had hitherto thought highly of, said to her:
“Would you like me to introduce you to the Princess of Misenum?”
“No!” said Violante.
“Don’t be shy,” said the dowager. “I’m sure she’ll take a liking to you. She’s very fond of pretty women.”
From that day onward, Violante had two deadly enemies, the Princess of Misenum and the dowager, who both depicted her to everyone as a monster of pride and perversity. Violante discovered this, and wept for herself and the wickedness of women. She had long since resigned herself to the wickedness of men. Soon she was telling her husband every evening:
“We’re setting out the day after tomorrow for my beloved Styria, and we will never leave it again.”
Then along came a party that, maybe, she would enjoy more than the others, and a prettier dress to show off. The deep need to imagine, to create, to live by herself in thought alone, and thus to dedicate herself to something, while it made her suffer at the fact that it was still unfulfilled, and while it prevented her from finding in society even a shadow of joy, had become too dulled, and was no longer imperious enough to make her change her way of life, or to force her to renounce the world and realize her true destiny.
She continued to present the sumptuous and desolate spectacle of an existence made for the infinite and little by little restricted to next to nothing, filled only with the melancholy shadows of the noble destiny she might have fulfilled, but which she neglected ever more each day. The deep surge of charity that might have washed her heart like a great wave, levelling all the human inequalities that clog a worldly heart, was held back by the thousand dykes of egotism, coquetry and ambition. Even kindness seemed to her laudable only as an elegant gesture. She would perform many more charitable deeds, lavishing money and even time and effort, but a whole part of herself was held captive, and no longer belonged to her.
She would still read or dream as she lay in bed in the mornings, but her mind was warped, and now came to a halt on the exterior of things; when it paid itself any attention at all, it was not in order to understand itself more profoundly, but to admire itself, voluptuously and coquettishly, as if in a mirror. And if anyone had come to announce visitors, she would not have had the will power to send them away so that she could continue dreaming or reading.
She had reached such a state that she could no longer enjoy nature other than with perverted senses, and the charm of the seasons now existed for her only as an extra perfume for her elegant social appearances, for which it set the tone. The charms of winter became the pleasure of feeling the cold, and the enjoyment of hunting closed her heart to the melancholy of autumn. Sometimes she would go walking by herself through a forest, trying to rediscover the natural source of all true joys. But, even under the shady leaves, she insisted on wearing eye-catching dresses. And the pleasure of her elegance ruined for her the joy of being alone and able to dream.
“Are we setting off tomorrow?” the Duke would ask.
“The day after tomorrow,” Violante would reply.
Eventually the Duke stopped asking. When Augustin lamented her absence, Violante wrote, “I’ll come back when I am a little older.”
“Ah!” replied Augustin. “You are deliberately lavishing your youth on them; you will never return to your Styria.”
She never did return. In her youth, she had remained in society to reign over that kingdom of elegance which, while still almost a child, she had conquered. In her old age, she remained in society to defend that kingdom.
In vain. She relinquished it. And when she died, she was still trying to reconquer it. Augustin had reckoned that weariness would wean her away. But he had not reckoned on a force which, if it is at first fed by vanity, vanquishes weariness, contempt and even boredom: the force of habit.
– August 1892
Fragments From Italian Comedy
…As crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance and the water pot lose their meanness when hung as signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in… distant persons.
– Emerson*
1
Fabrizio’s Mistresses
Fabrizio’s mistress was intelligent and beautiful; nothing could console him for this fact. “She shouldn’t know her own mind so well!” he groaned aloud. “I find her beauty is spoilt by her intelligence; would I still fall in love with the Mona Lisa each time I looked at her, if I had to listen at the same time to some critic sounding off, however exquisitely?” He abandoned her, and took another mistress who was beautiful and devoid of wit. But she continually prevented him from enjoying her charm, thanks to her merciless lack of tact. Then she aspired to intelligence, read a great deal, became pedantic and was just as intellectual as the first woman, but less naturally so, and with a ridiculous clumsiness. He begged her to keep quiet: even when she was not talking, her beauty cruelly reflected her stupidity. Finally, he struck up an acquaintance with a woman whose intelligence could be guessed at merely through her more subtle grace: she was happy just to live, and did not dissipate in cavilling conversations the alluring mystery of her nature. She was as gentle as the gracious, agile beasts with their deep gaze, and troubled people’s minds like the morning memory, poignant and vague, of their dreams. But she could not be bothered to do for him what the two others had done – namely, love him.
2
Countess Myrto’s Lady Friends
Myrto, Pretty, witty and kind, but with
