He felt strong and free, proud to see that his own life was not as precious to him as his sister-in-law’s, and that he felt as much scorn for his own life as pity for hers. He now looked death in the face and no longer beheld the scenes that would surround his death. He wanted to remain like that until the end, no longer prey to his lies, which, by trying to bring him a beautiful and wonderful agony, would have added the last straw to his profanations by soiling the mysteries of his death just as it had concealed from him the mysteries of his life.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
—SHAKESPEARE: MACBETH
Baldassare’s emotions and fatigue during his sister-in-law’s illness had stepped up the advance of his own disease. He had just been told by his confessor that he had only one month left; it was ten A.M., the rain was coming down in torrents. A carriage halted in front of the castle. It was Duchess Oliviane. Earlier, when harmoniously adorning the scenes of his death, he had told himself:
“It will be on a clear evening. The sun will be down, and the sea, glimpsed through the apple trees, will be mauve. As airy as pale and faded wreaths and as persistent as regrets, blue and rosy cloudlets will drift along the horizon. . . .”
It was at ten A.M., in a downpour, under a foul and low-lying sky, that Duchess Oliviane arrived; exhausted by his illness, fully absorbed in higher interests, and no longer feeling the grace of things that he had once prized as the charm, the value, and the refined glory of life, Baldassare had his servant tell the duchess that he was too weak. She insisted, but he would not receive her.
He was not even acting out of necessity: she meant nothing to him anymore. Death had rapidly broken the bonds whose enslavement he had been dreading for several weeks. When he tried to think of Oliviane, nothing presented itself to his mind’s eye: the eyes of his imagination and of his vanity had closed.
Yet roughly a week before his death, his furious jealousy was aroused by the announcement that the Duchess of Bohemia was giving a ball, at which Pia was to lead the cotillion with Castruccio, who was leaving for Denmark the next day. The viscount demanded to see Pia; his sister-in-law was reluctant to summon her; he believed that they were preventing him from seeing her, that they were persecuting him; he lost his temper, so, to avoid tormenting him, they sent for her immediately.
By the time she arrived, he was perfectly calm, but profoundly sad. He drew her close to his bed and instantly spoke about the ball being hosted by the Duchess of Bohemia. He said:
“We’re not related, so you won’t wear mourning for me, but I have to ask you one favor: Do not go to the ball, promise me you won’t.”
They locked gazes, showing their souls on the edge of their pupils, their melancholy and passionate souls, which death was unable to unite.
He understood her hesitation; his lips twisting in pain, he gently murmured:
“Oh, don’t promise me, after all! Don’t break a promise made to a dying man. If you’re not certain of yourself, don’t promise me anything.”
“I can’t promise you that; I haven’t seen him in two months and I may never see him again; if I miss the ball, I’ll be inconsolable for all eternity.”
“You’re right, since you love him, and since death may come. . . . And since you’re still alive with all your strength. . . . But you can do a small something for me; to throw people off the scent, you’d be obliged to spend a bit of time with me at the ball; subtract that time from your evening. Invite my soul to remember a few moments with you, think of me a little.”
“I can scarcely promise you even that much, the ball will be so brief. Even if I don’t leave, I’ll barely have time to see him. But I’ll give you a moment every day after that.”
“You won’t manage, you’ll forget me; but if after a year, alas, more perhaps, a sad text, a death, or a rainy evening reminds you of me, you can offer me some altruism! I will never, never be able see you again . . . except in my soul, and this would require that we think about each other simultaneously. I’ll think about you forever so that my soul remains open to you endlessly in case you feel like entering it. But the visitor will keep me waiting for a long time! The November rains will have rotted the flowers on my grave, June will have burned them, and my soul will always be weeping impatiently.
Ah! I hope that someday the sight of a keepsake, the recurrence of a birthday, the bent of your thoughts will guide your memory within the circle of my tenderness. It will then be as if I’ve heard you, perceived you, a magic spell will cover everything with flowers for your arrival. Think about the dead man. But, alas! Can I hope that death and your gravity will accomplish what life with its ardors, and our tears, and our merry times, and our lips were unable to achieve?”
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
—SHAKESPEARE: HAMLET
Meanwhile a violent fever accompanied by delirium never left the viscount; his bed had been moved to the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday, seen him still so joyful: here the sick man could watch the sea, the pier, and, on the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he began to speak; but his words showed no traces of the thoughts from on high which, during the past few weeks, had purified him with their visits. Savagely cursing an invisible person who was teasing him, he kept repeating that he was the premier musician of the century and the most illustrious aristocrat in the universe. Then, suddenly calm, he told his coachmen to drive him to some low den, to have the horses saddled for the hunt.
He asked for stationery in order to invite all the European sovereigns to a dinner celebrating his marriage to the sister of the Duke of Parma; horrified at being unable to pay a gambling debt, he picked up the paper knife next to his bed and aimed it like a gun. He dispatched messengers to find out whether the policeman he had thrashed last night was dead, and he laughingly muttered obscenities to someone whose hand he thought he was holding. Those exterminating angels known as Will and Thought were no longer present to drive the evil spirits of his senses and the vile emanations of his memory back into the darkness.
Three days later, around five o’clock, he woke up as if from a bad dream for which the dreamer is responsible yet which he barely remembers. He asked whether any friends or relatives had been here during the hours when he had presented an image of only his lowliest, most archaic, and most extinct part; and he told his servants that if he became delirious, they should have his visitors leave instantly and they should not readmit them until he regained consciousness.
He raised his eyes, surveyed the room, and smiled at his black cat, who, perched on a Chinese vase, was playing with a chrysanthemum and inhaling its fragrance with a mime-like gesture. He sent everyone away and conversed at length with the priest who was keeping watch over him. Yet he refused to take communion and asked the physician to say that the patient’s stomach was in no condition to tolerate a host. An hour later he had the servant bring in his sister-in-law and Jean Galeas. He said:
“I’m resigned, I’m happy to die and to come before God.”
The air was so mild that they opened the windows facing the ocean but not seeing it, and because the wind blowing from the opposite direction was too brisk, they did not open the windows giving upon the pastures and the woods.
Baldassare had them drag his bed near the open windows. A boat was just nosing out to sea, guided by sailors towing the lines on the pier. A handsome cabin boy of about fifteen was leaning over the bow; each billow seemed about to knock him into the water, but he stood firm on his solid legs. With a burning pipe
