Part 16
We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly by us, to right and left.
For an instant we saw only sky and sea.
A few moments later obelisks commenced to tower in the distance: pylons and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined against the horizon.
We had reached our destination.
The princess conducted me to a mountain of rose-colored granite, in the face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not its location been marked by two stelæ wrought with sculptures.
Hermonthis kindled a torch, and led the way before me.
We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock: their walls, covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation;--these corridors, of interminable length, opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways;--these pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the _tau_ and _pedum_--prodigious works of art which no living eye can ever examine--interminable legends of granite which only the dead have time to read through all eternity.
At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could not reach its limits; files of monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame;--points of light which revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.
The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance.
My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight; and objects became discernible.
I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones--grand old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened with naphtha and bitumen--all wearing _pshents_ of gold, and breast-plates and gorgets glittering with precious stones; their eyes immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles cotemporary with them--rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands--mewed, flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.
All the Pharaohs were there--Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Amenotaph--all the dark rulers of the pyramids and syrinxes:--on yet higher thrones sat Chronos and Xixouthros--who was contemporary with the deluge; and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.
The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie--and buried in dreams.
Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two Preadamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples--forever passed away.
After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who favored me with a most gracious nod.
“I have found my foot again!--I have found my foot!” cried the princess, clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy: “it was this gentleman who restored it to me.”
The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi--all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:
“The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!”
Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.
He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his mustache with his fingers, and turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.
“By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth! this is a brave and worthy lad!” exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me with his sceptre which was terminated with a lotus-flower.
“What recompense do you desire?”
Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;--the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.
Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty request.
“What country do you come from? and what is your age?”
“I am a Frenchman; and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh.”
“--Twenty-seven years old! and he wishes to espouse the Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!”--cried out at once all the Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.
Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.
“If you were even only two thousand years old,” replied the ancient King, “I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer; even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust;--behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are bars of steel!
“I will be present on the last day of the world, with the same body and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.
“Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms of Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.
“See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp,” he added, shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my rings in the flesh of my fingers.
He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking me by the arm to make me get up.
“O you everlasting sleeper!--must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is after noon; don’t you recollect your promise to take me with you to see M. Aguado’s Spanish pictures?”
“God! I forgot all, all about it,” I answered, dressing myself hurriedly; “we will go there at once; I have the permit lying there on my desk.”
I started to find it;--but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead of the mummy’s foot I had purchased the evening before, the little green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!
CIRCÉ BY OCTAVE FEUILLET
[Illustration]
_As a writer of romance, Octave Feuillet holds an absolutely unique place. For thirty years he was the sole representative of that delicate, high-minded school of writing which owes to him, and to him alone, its rescue from the realistic deluge._
_He wrote “The Romance of a Poor Young Man” “Julie de Trécœur,” and a host of those exquisite “proverbes,” like “Circé,” that delighted with their delicacy of observation, the grace and spirit of their style; and yet Feuillet has a most exacting realism of his own, suave, urbane._
_Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lô in 1821. His life was beautifully simple, coherent, and filled with work. He wrote many admirable plays, “Montjoye,” “Dalila,” and others, and a sketch, “Le Curé de Bourron,” almost perfect in its art, drawn from his own observation as librarian at Fontainebleau. In 1862 he was elected to the Academy and in 1890 he died at Paris._
[Illustration]
CIRCÉ[10]
A PARISIAN SCENE BY OCTAVE FEUILLET
PERSONS
THE PRINCE, thirty years old. THE COUNTESS, twenty-six years old.
SCENE--_The Countess’s Boudoir._
_The Countess._ How do you do, Prince?
_Prince._ What, not out? Ah, I am fortunate, upon my word!
_Countess._ But you wrote me that you would come--
_Prince._ I wrote you that, really? Ah, that’s odd. Ah, ah, that is amusing! Madame, your mother is well?
_Countess._ Very well--a little tired, that’s all--she’s just going up to her room. But sit down.
_Prince_ (_seating himself_). Do you know what brings me here?
_Countess._ What?
_Prince._ I come to ask your advice. Imagine that I dined at the Embassy. They got talking about little drawing-room comedies, about _proverbes_ or parables, about those little things, you know, that they play at private theatricals, and of the difficulty one experiences in finding any that are not too hackneyed, that one has not seen everywhere, and that are agreeable.
_Countess._ Yes--and then?
_Prince._ Very well, then. I was in rather a good humor; the spirit was upon me to compose during the week one of those witty trifles. A wager, serious enough, in fact, was connected with it. Briefly, since yesterday I have been thinking, without boring myself about other matters.
_Countess._ And you have hit upon something?
_Prince._ I have not yet thought of anything. But it will come. I conceived the idea of talking it over with you. We will do the thing together, if you are quite willing. It is very easy, you will see.
_Countess._ But I don’t know, for my part, that it is so very easy.
_Prince._ Positively. Nothing more simple. Will you try?
_Countess._ Mon Dieu, I should like to--but you must hold the pen.
_Prince._ That’s understood.
_Countess._ There, there’s paper and ink--blue ink; is that all right?
_Prince._ Blue ink will do no harm. (_Places himself at a centre-table._) There! Sit down in front of me, like a muse, and let us begin without further ceremony, will you?
_Countess._ Very willingly--but it’s rather embarrassing, it seems to me.
_Prince._ Not at all. It’s very easy. Always the same thing: Two people who chat about the rain and about fine weather--more or less wittily, as it happens to come. Well, are you ready?
_Countess._ Yes, yes--go on.
_Prince._ First we must write down the persons: “The Count, the Countess ----,” is it not?
_Countess._ Yes, of course--but is this to be a _proverbe_?
_Prince._ Yes, it’s a _proverbe_.
_Countess._ But what _proverbe_? That must be decided first.
_Prince._ Oh! Mon Dieu, why? It’s of no use--it will develop itself in time--it will evolve naturally from the conversation--it will be the finishing touch.
_Countess._ So be it. Go on.
_Prince._ “The Count, the Countess. First scene--” Well?
_Countess._ Hé!
_Prince._ What is it they say?
_Countess._ But what is the subject?
_Prince._ There is no subject! It is a witty trifle, I told you--a nothing--an improvisation without substance--a go-as-you-please conversation--I am not proposing that you should write “The Misanthrope,”[11] remember.
_Countess._ Yet it is necessary to know what they are to talk about.
_Prince._ But about nothing--about trifles--you know how those things are!
_Countess._ But, no, my dear Prince, I know nothing about it--and no more do you, so it would seem.
_Prince._ Come, chère madame, do not let us quarrel. We said, “The Count and the Countess,” is it not so? They are in the country--and the Count is bored, I suppose--
_Countess._ Yes, that’s new enough.
_Prince._ I do not say that it must be new, but at any rate it is a subject, since you must have one. So then, the Count is bored--and the Countess--the Countess--
_Countess._ Is bored too, perhaps?
_Prince._ It’s an idea, and with that combination, too, may become original enough. They are both bored--Well, you see, chère madame, we are progressing. Let us pass on to the dialogue--That, that’s the easiest--Once in the dialogue it will go by itself--“The Count--” The Count--he enters, doesn’t he?
_Countess._ Quite right.
_Prince._ And in entering, he says--
_Countess._ He says?
_Prince._ What?
_Countess._ I am asking you.
_Prince._ Well--he might say, for instance, “Always alone, dear Countess?”
_Countess._ I see nothing inappropriate in that.
_Prince._ It’s sufficiently the phrase of a bored man--“Always alone, dear Countess?”
_Countess._ It’s a charming phrase--To which the Countess, who is always alone, replies?
_Prince._ Wait--yes--perhaps--that is to say, no--that will not do.
_Countess._ Instead of entering the diplomatic service you ought to devote yourself to literature--with your facility.
_Prince_ (_rising_). It is certain that I am too beastly stupid--dumb as an animal--And then I am thinking of something else--Oh, well, I am going!
_Countess._ No!
_Prince._ I assure you that at other times I had a sort of wit--Inquire at the Embassy--they know--But I am altogether changed--Good night, I am going.
_Countess._ No!
_Prince._ I am not going?
_Countess._ No, I tell you!
_Prince._ So be it. (_He sits down again._)
_Countess._ Let us return. Where were we?--“The Count, the Countess--”
_Prince._ The truth is you ought to consider me a regular imbecile.
_Countess._ Is it the Count says that?
_Prince._ No, it is I.
_Countess._ Not at all--I find you only a little odd.
_Prince._ Odd! You are very kind--But no, really; I beg of you to inquire at the Embassy--they will tell you that I do not lack intelligence, and that at other times I had even a sort of inspiration.
_Countess._ But, my Prince, I have no need to inquire at the Embassy, I have only to remember. I have known you to be extremely brilliant, several months ago when you were making love to me.
_Prince._ Brilliant, no; but I was as good as another at any rate.
_Countess._ Yes, yes, I insist--You were a brilliant young man, sparkling, dreadful!--(_She rubs her hands softly._)
_Prince._ You are making fun of me--I was not sparkling, but I had some vivacity--and that was but two years ago! It is true that I had only just arrived at Paris,--and that I had not yet passed under the influence of the climate.
_Countess._ You believe it was the climate--
_Prince._ What will you have? It must assuredly have been something--It isn’t age--I am not thirty years old--At any rate, I think I shall leave Paris, and diplomacy as well--My mother sends for me from Vienna--I received a letter from her this morning--I wanted, also, to show it to you--
(_He fumbles about in his coat pocket and pulls out a letter half-tangled in some black lace._)
_Countess._ What lace is that coming out of your pocket?
_Prince_ (_confused_). Lace? Oh! Do you see some lace?
_Countess._ This--But I say, my Prince, is not this one of my veils, here?
_Prince._ One of your veils--here?--Are you sure?
_Countess._ Absolutely!--And I am going to take it back, too, if you will allow me--That’s lace of great price, if you have your doubts about it.
_Prince._ I implore you to believe, indeed, madame, that I did not attach a mercenary value to it. But how do I come to have that veil about me?
_Countess._ It is very easy to explain. I must have left it at the Embassy on a visit, they charged you to return it to me, and with your usual absent-mindedness, you forgot the commission.
_Prince._ That’s simple. I ask ten thousand pardons. It is perfectly evident! You see I am not myself at all any more. All my faculties--even my memory--are weakening. It is high time I go to recover strength in my native air. You see what my mother tells me?
_Countess_ (_running through the letter_). She has the air of a noble woman, your mother.
_Prince._ Yes. We two are very fond of each other. She advises me not to have too much success, poor mother! She believes me always irresistible.
_Countess._ Then you have been so, my prince?
_Prince._ Why, yes, a little, up to the day I had the honor of meeting you--Well, what do you advise me?
_Countess._ To go, since your mother wishes to see you again.
_Prince._ That’s my advice, too, and to tell you the truth, I came this evening specially to bid you good-by.
_Countess._ What! to bid me good-by?--And that _proverbe_? What was the object of that joke?
_Prince._ That _proverbe_? Come, madame, I want the last impression you receive of me to be pleasant. You will laugh. Here is the history of that _proverbe_. You remember well enough that which passed between us two years ago, after I had vainly offered you my heart and my hand. It so happened that if I wished to continue to regard you as a friend, I must sternly refrain from all allusions to a love definitely repulsed. I gave you my word on the matter, and I expected to have kept it scrupulously.
_Countess._ That is true.
_Prince._ Well, then, I made a mistake there. Excuse me, I swear to you that I am going. My discretion and my reserve naturally made you believe that I was cured of my love.
_Countess._ Naturally.
_Prince._ Yes. Well, it is a mistake. I love you always. I love you like a fool, like a child, like an angel, like a savage, as you will. Having decided to go away, I wished first to make one supreme effort, a desperate one. The idea of that _proverbe_ came to me. Under cover of that _proverbe_ I promised myself to set my feelings before you, with so much fire, emotion, eloquence, wit, that you would be infallibly softened, fascinated, and overcome. You have seen how successful I was!--Isn’t it comic?--Now, madame, adieu.
_Countess._ Adieu, Prince.
_Prince._ One word more. Be gracious enough to tell me why you refused to marry me. My proposal was, in fact, perfectly honest and perfectly worthy of acceptance. Why did you repulse it with so much decision? Was it from caprice, from antipathy, or did you have some serious reason?
_Countess._ I had a serious reason.
_Prince._ You loved some one?
_Countess._ No one.
_Prince._ Then your heart was free, like your hand. You had not been, you told me so yourself, particularly happy with your husband--although he was charming, from what they say.
_Countess._ He was charming, altogether charming, sparkling and irresistible--like you--in days gone by.
_Prince._ In short, you were not happy; consequently, you had no occasion to torment yourself if you became unfaithful to the memory of the dead. As for me I had a brilliant name, a fortune, a position. At that time I was not ill and depressed as I am now. I was tolerable in my person.
_Countess._ Very handsome, indeed.
_Prince._ I passed for a sufficiently lively talker. I made court to you, if I remember, with--intelligence.
_Countess._ With much, much wit.
_Prince._ And you refused me!--Come, now, why?
_Countess._ You do not guess?
_Prince._ Not at all.
_Countess_ (_she takes his hand and looks him tenderly in the eyes_). It is because I love dumb animals, my friend!
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Circe, according to Homer, was an enchantress who lived on the Island of Ææa surrounded by human beings whom she had transformed into wolves, lions, and swine.
[11] A comedy by Molière.
THE HANGING AT LA PIROCHE BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, FILS
[Illustration]
_Alexandre Dumas, the Younger, son of Alexandre Dumas, was born at Paris in 1824, and died at Marly-le-Roi in 1895. His first great success came to him in 1848, with “La Dame aux Camélias,” the romantic story of a “woman with a past” reclaimed by love; afterward dramatized with such success that it decided his career. He still wrote novels and short stories, but without his father’s imagination. He was elected an Academician in 1874._
_The younger Dumas inherited a strong, good nature, weak enough to share in a few human vices, strong enough to combat them; he was a lover of order, elegance, and amateur in all arts but his own. Aiming at social and moral reformation, he was bold, logical, spiritual. By reason of his depth of background and knowledge of form, he ranks among the foremost of the nineteenth century dramatists._
[Illustration]
THE HANGING AT LA PIROCHE BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, FILS
Do you know La Piroche? No. No more do I. So I shall not abuse my privilege as an author by giving you a description; especially since, between you and me be it said, they are very tiresome, those descriptions. Unless it be a question of the virgin forests of America, as in Cooper, or of Meschaccbé,[12] as in Chateaubriand, that is to say, countries that are not close at hand, and about which the imagination, to obtain a clear vision of the details, must be assisted by those poetical voyagers who have visited them, in general descriptions are not of much consequence except to be skipped by the reader. Literature has this advantage over painting, sculpture, and music; the threefold advantage of being able to paint by itself a picture in a single word, to carve a statue in one phrase, to mold a melody on one page; it must not abuse itself of that privilege, and one should leave to the special arts a little of their own prerogative. I own, then, for my part, and for lack of better advice, that when I find that I have to describe a country which every one has seen, or every one could see, if it be near, if it does not differ from our own, I prefer to leave to my reader the pleasure of recalling it if he has seen it, or of imagining it if he does not yet know it. The reader likes well enough to be left to do his share of the work he is reading. This flatters him and makes him believe that he is capable of doing the rest. Indeed, it is an excellent thing to flatter your reader. Moreover, the whole world in reality knows what the sea is like--a plain, a forest, a blue sky, an effect of sun, an effect of the moon, or an effect of storm. Of what use to dwell upon it? It would be far better to trace a landscape in one stroke of the brush like Rubens or Delacroix; this should be said without comparison and keep the whole value of your palette for the figures you wish to reanimate. When one blackens with descriptions page after page of paper, one doesn’t give the reader an impression equal to that experienced by the most artless bourgeois who walks through the Bois de Vincennes on a soft April day, or by an unlettered girl who strolls in June, on the arm of her fiancé, at eleven o’clock at night through the shady vistas of the woods of Romainville or the park of Enghien. We all have in our minds and hearts a gallery of landscapes made from memory, and which serves as background for all the stories of the world. There is but one word to use--day or night, winter or spring, calm or storm, wood or plain--to evoke at once a most finished landscape.
So I have only to tell you this: that at the moment when the story I am about to tell you begins it is noon, that it is May, that the highway we are going to enter is bordered on the right with furze bushes, on the left by the sea; you know at once all that I have not told you; that is to say, that the bushes are green, that the sea is murmuring, that the sky is blue, that the sun is warm, and that there is dust on the road.
I have only to add that this highway that winds along the coast of Brittany runs from La Poterie to La Piroche; that Piroche is a village about which I know nothing, but which must be more or less like all villages, that we are in the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1418, and that two men, one older than the other, one the father of the other, both peasants, are following the highway mounted on two nags trotting along comfortably enough for two nags under the weight of two peasants.
“Shall we get there in time?” said the son.
“Yes, it is not to take place until two o’clock,” replied the father, “and the sun marks but a quarter after noon.”
“Oh, but I am curious to see that!”
“I can well believe it.”