CHAPTER IX
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As the air was of an almost summer-like warmth, George proposed:
"Shall we dine outside?"
Hippolyte consented. They went down.
On the stairway they held each other's hand; and went down step by step slowly, stopping to look at the crushed flowers, turning round towards each other simultaneously, as if they saw each other for the first time. Each saw in the other eyes larger, more profound, as if more distant, and circled by an almost supernatural shadow. They smiled at each other without speaking, both dominated by the charm of that indefinable sensation which seemed to disperse into the uncertainty of space the substance of their being, transformed into a fluid like a vapor. They walked towards the parapet; they stopped to look around, to listen to the sea.
What they saw was unusual, extraordinarily great, yet illumined by an inner light and as if by an irradiation of their hearts. What they heard was unusual, extraordinarily high, yet contemplated as if a secret revealed to them alone.
A second, as quickly passed! They were recalled to themselves, not by a gust of the wind nor by the noise of a wave, nor by a bellowing, nor by a bark, nor by a human voice, but by the very anxiety which arose from their too intense joy. A second, as quickly passed, irrevocable! And both recommenced to feel that life was slipping by, that time was flying; that everything was becoming once more foreign to their being, that their souls were becoming anxious again and their love imperfect. This second of supreme oblivion, this unique second, was gone forever.
Hippolyte, moved by the solemnity of the solitude, oppressed by a vague fright in the presence of those vast waters, beneath that desert sky, which, from the zenith to the horizon, paled by slow gradations, murmured:
"What endless space!"
It seemed now to both that the point of space in which they breathed was infinitely distant from the frequented spots, out of the way, isolated, unknown, inaccessible, almost outside of the world. Now they saw the wish of their hearts realized, they both felt the same inward terror, as if they foresaw their impotence to sustain the plenitude of the new life. For a few instants longer, silent, standing side by side, but apart, they continued to contemplate the melancholy and icy Adriatic, whose great white-capped waves sported in endless playfulness. From time to time a stiff breeze swept through the tufts of the acacias, bearing off their perfume.
"Of what are you thinking?" asked George, drawing himself up, as if to rebel against the importunate sadness which was about to conquer him.
He was there, alone with his mistress, living and free; and, nevertheless, his heart was not satisfied. Did he, then, bear in himself an inconsolable hopelessness?
Feeling anew a separation between the silent creature and himself, he took her again by the hand, and gazed into the pupils of her eyes.
"Of what are you thinking?"
"I am thinking of Rimini," answered Hippolyte, with a smile.
Always the past! She remembers bygone days at such a moment! Was it the same sea which lay extended before their eyes, veiled in the same illusion? His first motion was one of hostility against the unconscious evocatrice. Then, as if in a lightning flash, with sudden uneasiness, he saw all the summits of his love light up, and scintillate in the past, prodigiously. Far-distant things came back to his memory, accompanied by waves of music which exalted and transfigured them. He lived again, in one second, the most lyric hours of his passion, and he lived them again in propitious places, among the sumptuous scenery of nature and art which had rendered his joy nobler and more profound. Why then, now, in comparison with that past, had the moment just previous lost part of its charm? In his eyes, dazzled by the rapid gleam of his recollections, everything now seemed colorless. And he perceived that the progressive diminution of the light caused him a kind of indefinable corporeal uneasiness, as if this external phenomenon were in immediate correspondence with some element of his own life.
He sought some phrase that would bring Hippolyte closer to him, to attach her to him by some sensitive tie, to restore to himself of the present reality the exact feeling which he had just lost. But this search was painful to him; the ideas escaped him, dispersed, left him void.
As he had heard a rattle of plates, he asked:
"Are you hungry?"
This question, suggested by a slight material fact, and propounded unexpectedly, with puerile vivacity, made Hippolyte smile.
"Yes, a little," she answered, smiling.
And they turned round to look at the table spread beneath the oak. In a few minutes the dinner would be ready.
"You must be satisfied with what there is," said George. "Very countrified cooking."
"Oh! I should be very well satisfied with grass."
And, gayly, she approached the table, examined with curiosity the cloth, the knives and forks, the glassware, the plates, found everything pretty; rejoiced like a child at the sight of the large flowers which decorated the white and fine porcelain.
"Everything here pleases me," she said.
She bent over a large round loaf of bread, yet warm beneath its beautiful browned and rounded crust. She breathed in the odor with delight.
"Oh! what a delightful odor!"
And, with childish greediness, she broke off the crusty edge of the loaf.
"What fine bread!"
Her white and strong teeth shone in the bitten bread; the play of her sinuous mouth expressed vigorously the pleasure enjoyed. In this act, her whole person shed a pure and simple grace which seduced and surprised George as if it were an unexpected novelty.
"Here! taste how good it is."
And she handed him the piece of bread on which was imprinted the humid trace of her bite; and she pushed it between his lips, laughing, imparting the sensual contagion of her hilarity.
"Just see!"
He found the taste delicious; and he abandoned himself to this fugitive enchantment, permitted himself to be enveloped by this seduction which seemed a novelty. A mad longing suddenly seized him to embrace the temptress, to lift her in his arms, to carry her off like a prey. His heart swelled with a confused aspiration towards physical force, towards robust health, towards an almost savage life of joy, towards simple and primitive love, towards the great primordial liberty. He felt a sudden desire to rend the mortal frame which oppressed him, to leave it and be entirely renewed, indemnified for all the woes he had suffered, for all the deformity which had hindered his flight.
He had the hallucination of a future existence which would be his, and in which, freed from every harmful habit, from every foreign tyranny, from every bad error, he would look at things as if he saw them for the first time and had before him all the surface of the World, exposed like a human visage.
"Was it then impossible that the miracle should come from this young woman, who, at the stone table, beneath the protecting oak, had broken the new bread and shared it with him? Could not the New Life really commence from to-day?"
*IV.*
*THE NEW LIFE.*
*