A servant in brown livery and gold buttons opened the door quite promptly and showed me to a small drawing room that had pine paneling, walls hung with cretonne, and a view of the sea. When I entered, a young man, rather handsome indeed, stood up, greeted me coldly, then sat back down in his easy chair and continued reading his newspaper while smoking his pipe. I remained standing, a bit embarrassed, I might say even preoccupied with the reception I would be given here. Was I doing the right thing after so many years, coming to this house, where they might have forgotten me long ago?—this once hospitable house, where I had spent profoundly tender hours, the happiest of my life?
The garden surrounding the house and forming a terrace at one end, the house itself with its two red-brick turrets encrusted with diversely colored faiences, the long, rectangular vestibule, where we had spent our rainy days, and even the furnishings of the small drawing room to which I had just been led—nothing had changed.
Several moments later an old man with a white beard shuffled in; he was short and very bent. His indecisive gaze lent him a highly indifferent expression. I instantly recognized Monsieur de N. But he could not place me. I repeated my name several times: it evoked no memory in him. I felt more and more embarrassed. Our eyes locked without our really knowing what to say.
I vainly struggled to give him clues: he had totally forgotten me. I was a stranger to him. Just as I was about to leave, the door flew open: “My sister Odette,” said a pretty girl of ten or twelve in a soft, melodious voice, “my sister has just found out that you’re here. Would you like to come and see her? It would make her so happy!” I followed the little girl, and we went down into the garden. And there, indeed, I found Odette reclining on a chaise longue and wrapped in a large plaid blanket.
She had changed so greatly that I would not, as it were, have recognized her. Her features had lengthened, and her dark-ringed eyes seemed to perforate her wan face. She had once been so pretty, but this was no longer the case at all. In a somewhat constrained manner she asked me to sit at her side.
We were alone. “You must be quite surprised to find me in this state,” she said after several moments. “Well, since my terrible illness I’ve been condemned, as you can see, to remain lying without budging. I live on feelings and sufferings. I stare deep into that blue sea, whose apparently infinite grandeur is so enchanting for me. The waves, breaking on the beach, are so many sad thoughts that cross my mind, so many hopes that I have to abandon. I read, I even read a lot.
The music of poetry evokes my sweetest memories and makes my entire being vibrate. How nice of you not to have forgotten me after so many years and to come and see me! It does me good! I already feel much better. I can say so—can’t I?—since we were such good friends.
Do you remember the tennis games we used to play here, on this very spot? I was agile back then; I was merry. Today I can no longer be agile; I can no longer be merry. When I watch the sea ebbing far out, very far, I often think of our solitary strolls at low tide. My enchanting memory of them could suffice to keep me happy, if I were not so selfish, so wicked.
But, you know, I can hardly resign myself, and, from time to time, in spite of myself, I rebel against my fate. I’m bored all alone, for I’ve been alone since Mama died.
As for Papa, he’s too sick and too old to concern himself with me. My brother suffered a terrible blow from a woman who deceived him horrendously. Since then, he’s been living alone; nothing can console him or even distract him. My little sister is so young, and besides, we have to let her live happily, to the extent that she can.”
As she spoke to me, her eyes livened up; her cadaverous pallor disappeared. She resumed her sweet expression of long ago. She was pretty again. My goodness, how beautiful she was! I would have liked to clasp her in my arms: I would have liked to tell her that I loved her. . . . We remained together for a long time. Then she was moved indoors, since the evening was growing cool. I now had to say goodbye to her.
My tears choked me. I walked through that long vestibule, that delightful garden, where the graveled paths would never, alas, grind under my feet again. I went down to the beach; it was deserted.
Thinking about Odette, I strolled, pensive, along the water, which was ebbing, tranquil and indifferent. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon; but its purple rays still splattered the sky.
Pierre de Touche
Portrait of Madame X.
Nicole combines Italian grace with the mystery of northern women. She has their blond hair, their eyes as clear as the transparency of the sky in a lake, their lofty bearing. However, she breathes a knowing softness that has virtually ripened in that Tuscan sun, which inundates the eyes of women, lengthens their arms, raises the corners of their mouths, and rhythmically scans their gait, ultimately making all their beauty divinely languorous.
And not for nothing have the charms of both climates and both races fused together to make up Nicole’s charm, for she is the perfect courtesan, if this simply means that in her the art of pleasing has reached a truly unique degree, that it is composed of both talents and efforts, that it is both natural and refined.
Thus, the tiniest flower between her breasts or in her hand, the most ordinary compliment on her lips, the most banal act, like offering her arm to whoever escorts her to the table—all these things, when she does them, are imbued with a grace as poignant as an artistic emotion. Everything softens around her in a delightful harmony that is summed up in the folds of her gown.
But Nicole is unconcerned about the artistic pleasure that she provides, and as for her eyes, which seem to promise so much bliss, she barely knows for certain on whom her gaze has fallen—barely knows for no other reason most likely than that its fall was lovely. She is concerned only about good, loves it enough to do it, loves it too much to be content with just doing it, without trying to grasp what—in doing it—she does. One cannot say that she is pedantic in her magnanimity, for it appeals to her too sincerely.
Let us say rather that she is erudite about it, an enchanting erudition that places only the agreeable names of the Virtues in her mind and on her lips. This makes her charm all the sweeter, as if it were perfumed with a saintly fragrance. One can seldom admire what one loves. Hence, it is all the more exquisite to understand the seductions, the fecundity of a great heart in Nicole’s soft and rich beauty, in her lactea ubertas [her milky abundance], in her whole alluring person.
Before the Night
“Even though I’m still quite strong, you know” (she spoke with a more intimate sweetness, the way accentuation can mellow the overly harsh things that one must say to the people one loves), “you know I could die any day now—even though I may just as easily live another few months. So I can no longer wait to reveal to you something that has been weighing on my conscience; afterwards you will understand how painful it was to tell you.”
Her pupils, symbolic blue flowers, discolored as if they were fading. I thought she was about to cry, but she did nothing of the kind. “I’m quite sad about intentionally destroying my hope of still being esteemed by my best friend after my death, about tarnishing and shattering his memory of me, in terms of which I often imagine my own life in order to see it as more beautiful and more harmonious.
But my concern about an aesthetic arrangement” (she smiled while pronouncing that epithet with the slightly ironic exaggeration accompanying her extremely rare use of such words in conversation) “cannot repress the imperious need for truth that forces me to speak. Listen, Leslie, I have to tell you this. But first, hand me my coat. This terrace is a bit chilly, and the doctor forbade me to get up if it’s not necessary.” I handed her the coat. The sun was already gone, and the sea, which could be spotted through the apple trees, was mauve.
As airy as pale, withered wreaths and as persistent as regrets, blue and pink cloudlets floated on the horizon. A melancholy row of poplars sank into the darkness,
