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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78436 ***
+
+
+
+
+  LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 540
+  Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
+
+  Stories in Yellow, Black,
+  White, Blue, Violet
+  and Red
+
+  Remy de Gourmont
+
+  Translated from the French by
+  Isaac Goldberg.
+
+  HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
+  GIRARD, KANSAS
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1924.
+  Haldeman-Julius Company.
+
+  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+  STORIES IN YELLOW, BLACK, WHITE,
+  BLUE, VIOLET AND RED
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+It is now some time since I wrote, somewhat vaguely (with reference
+to one of d’Annunzio’s books) that a novel is a poem and should be
+conceived and executed as such if it is to prove of worth.
+
+At that time I said:
+
+“The novel is based upon the same esthetic as the poem; the original
+novel was composed in verse: for example, the Odyssey, a novel of
+adventure; the Aeneid, a chivalrous romance; the first French novels,
+as everybody knows, were poems, and it is only at a fairly late day
+that they were transposed into prose to adapt them to the indolence and
+the ignorance of a larger reading public. From this origin the novel
+inherits the possibility of a certain nobility, and any genuine writer,
+if he concerns himself with it, will restore that nobility to the form:
+whom would one wish to convince that _Don Quixote_ is not a poem, that
+_Pantagruel_ is not a poem, that _Salammbo_ is not a poem? The novel is
+a poem; the novel that is not a poem does not exist.”
+
+Flaubert had not yet taught me, through the letters that narrate the
+arduous composition of _Madame Bovary_, that one must “endow prose
+with the rhyme of verse (leaving to it, however, its distinctly
+prosaic character) and write to ordinary life as one writes history or
+epic.” Upon thinking this over I found that Flaubert carried a bit too
+far the idea that we must achieve a literary prose whose beauty may be
+fashioned only of words and rhythm, the rhythm being primordial. The
+method that he prescribed for the novel I believe suited likewise to
+the play, the tale, even when it is but an anecdote--almost all form of
+composition--even the simple article done for the morning-paper. There
+is no inferior art. An article may be a poem from the moment one has
+assigned to it the rhythm against which it will dance its brief pavan.
+Once the rhythm has been found, all is found, for the idea incorporates
+itself into the tempo, and the ball of yarn or silk is formed almost
+without the intervention of any consciousness of a task.
+
+The tale, it seems to me, demands a special condition: in order to
+write it one must possess the illusion, no matter how fleeting, of
+being happy; a merry afternoon is enough. And this relates it more
+closely to the poem than any reasoned-out theory could do. To be
+happy--that is to say, to have enjoyed a flower, the flower of one’s
+choice, or the bright glance of certain eyes: then one becomes
+interested in the games of others. In fact, when one is happy, or
+almost so, one can no longer stay inside, where one sees well only
+through desire. A tale is a stroll.
+
+Almost all the stories that you are about to read were written in a
+single breath, save the polishing touches, the expansion of too slender
+parts, and excisions. Thus there comes, at certain times, a moment when
+the breath runs short. One lays the work aside for the following day,
+and this is a pity, for dreams trouble one’s days.
+
+I do not write all this to instruct in a method a public that cares
+very little for methods. The stream of these notes flowed one evening
+in a few moments on to a stray sheet of paper.
+
+I clarified it, at first for my own pleasure, and then in an attempt
+to solve a problem. Take this poet who now overflows in novels, even
+in feuilletons, in all the petty tasks of a man of letters--do you
+really think him unfaithful to his first muse? Yes, doubtless, often.
+Not always. As long as rhythm sings within him, he is faithful.
+His downfall does not begin until that day when the harmony of the
+phrase is utterly sacrificed to reason--to what persons without any
+beyond in their spirits call truth. The true poet and the true
+sage can always, like Goethe, conciliate Poesy and Reality, and all
+the more easily since Poesy is the daughter of Reality. I remember
+hearing M. Quinton express surprise that Pasteur should have written
+a tragedy. Beyond doubt it was very bad (not worse than those in
+which M. Claretie’s abilities as régisseur excel), but this exercise
+attests an original sense of rhythm. His beautiful experiments were,
+in the days that followed, rhythmed like poems, like the marbles of
+his compatriots Hugo, Rude, Clésinger. The _Satyre_ who scales the
+mountain of mysteries, the _Bacchante au Thyrse_, who rushes into
+voluptuousness, the game of chemical retorts which prove that life
+arises only from life--these are the gestures of genius animated by
+one and the same rhythm. One likes to recall that Descartes composed a
+ballet to pleasure the great Christine; one is fond of remembering that
+Montesquieu rhythmed the games of his young imagination, that Pascal
+composed a symphony upon the Passions of love, that Nietzsche caused
+the forests to resound with the superhuman laughter of Zarathustra,
+that Flaubert rhythmed like Homeric verses the quotidian words of that
+Stupidity to whom he played Hercules.
+
+It is rhythm that lends beauty to the poor ballerina who seems draped
+only in her chemise. May it lend a little to those women who, in their
+rushing adventures, dance too madly perhaps, each in one of the rays of
+light resolved by the naïve prism of their desire.--R. G.
+
+  July 30, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+YELLOW
+
+                                      _Que c’est beau, le jaune!_
+
+                                                               Van Gogh.
+
+
+It was understood.
+
+The last time he had sent her a long kiss, his eyes closed as in
+ecstasy, and she had smiled tenderly, drooping her lashes.
+
+They had never spoken to each other.
+
+She lived there. There were houses, along the river bank and half way
+up the hill, bordering the road that wound up the slope: there was a
+mill, a tavern, a sabot factory and two or three little farmhouses,
+with a shed in which slumbered a cart. One could hear whinnying, a
+waggoner’s heavy oath, the crowing of a cock, the patter of the water
+under the mill wheels and its murmuring beneath the wooden bridge.
+
+He, too, lived there, but higher up, behind the trees that framed the
+horizon. At evening, returning from the hunt, he would pause upon the
+bridge, look at the water, the willows, the grass, the narrow valley,
+where the sun, before dying, came to rest for a moment.
+
+It was from this point that he had beheld her. She was spreading out
+upon the fresh lawn some strips of unbleached linen. He thought she
+must be the daughter of the weaver who could be heard at work near
+the tavern, or else some servant. On other days she would be washing
+clothes beneath the large hazel tree whose branches bent to kiss the
+stream, and would lay them on the bushes; then, before returning, she
+would pick some hazel nuts, or flowers, or would throw pebbles into the
+water. When she felt that she was being observed she would laugh, but
+she refused to be disturbed in her work or her play.
+
+One day, however, she stood for a long time looking at him, eating
+hazel nuts that she cracked between her teeth with all the nimbleness
+of a squirrel.
+
+Then he came daily. She would be there, or else she would arrive
+slowly, raising her head. They might have spoken to each other, but
+they said nothing. He threw flowers to her, or twigs, and she paid no
+attention. He brought her a yellow carnation: she hid it in her corsage
+and, without a token, disappeared.
+
+It was on the next day that their mute agreement was concluded.
+
+The following evening, after the first glances had been exchanged,
+he saw her climb in the direction of the woods and plunge into the
+coppice. He made a detour and caught up with her just as she was
+clearing the rails of a fence. Her short skirt pulled up. She showed a
+white knee. That decided him. This fresh little peasant lass was just
+the thing. Desire made him tremble a little.
+
+He received her into his arms, pressed her close, kissed her upon the
+lips, but gently she freed herself and, curving her shoulders, glided
+in under the branches.
+
+It was a sunken, abandoned path that led to an old cart-road; she ran
+quickly, avoiding the brambles, grazing the broom, the honeysuckle and
+the foxglove that made a crazy arabesque in this sombre lair of sand
+and gravel which the branches of the beeches, the ash-trees and the
+oaks sheltered with their thick green mantle.
+
+Stopped by a bramble that clutched at her legs, she was caught by him;
+he knelt down, vanquished the bramble and threw his arm about her
+knees. But she did not wish to fall yet. She stiffened; she turned her
+back upon him. He rose to his feet; his hands ascended to the breasts
+which she was pressing; he kissed the back of her neck; he nibbled at
+an ear.
+
+Then she turned her head; her eyes were serious; she abandoned all
+resistance. Leaning against the arm that encircled her waist, she
+surrendered her mouth to kisses, her body to caresses.
+
+They fell tenderly.
+
+Seated now side by side they glanced at each other from the corners of
+their eyes, occupied in similar motions. She was dressing her hair; he
+was knotting his cravat.
+
+She was smiling.
+
+He was dreaming.
+
+This happy encounter enchanted him. In his career as an equivocal
+huntsman he had met with few that could match it. “But how difficult
+it is to rouse women! The transports of this loving lass were pretty
+feeble. She seemed more ashamed than tender, more resolved than
+self-abandoned, I can’t just say.”
+
+He, however, had tasted intense happiness, and what sweet peace he now
+enjoyed! What charm in this young body, in those contours fresh with
+their first form. “She is as lissome as the trunk of a beech-tree and
+her flesh yielded with such pride, yet with such simplicity as well!
+How simple is love!”
+
+He looked at the young girl, hunting words to say to her, but he did
+not have the habit of speech, and above all of tender speeches.
+
+She appeared prettier than ever, now--more natural. This sensation of
+naturalness he had never before experienced. Perhaps the silence had
+led him to reflect.
+
+At last he spoke, mentioning the charm of the moment, the coolness of
+this grotto, his happiness, his repose.
+
+She tapped her skirt awkwardly, twisted a scape of foxglove between her
+fingers, smiled, but gave no sign of contentment.
+
+“It seems to me that I could love her, almost, if she would only fondle
+me.”
+
+Wishing to take out his pipe, he put his hand into the wrong pocket and
+struck his purse.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+Secretly he extracted a gold-piece, took the child’s hand and clamped
+her fingers over the surprise. She opened them immediately, looked, and
+blushed; her bosom swelled, she heaved a deep sigh, then crushed into
+her friend’s arms, all aquiver with nervous sobs of joy.
+
+On her knees before him, she kissed his eyes, his cheeks, his chin, the
+corners of his lips.
+
+She was happy.
+
+
+
+
+BLACK
+
+  _Le charme inattendu d’un bijou rose et noir._
+
+                                                             Baudelaire.
+
+
+The most beautiful flower that Duclos had ever seen was a black dahlia.
+
+It was in the public garden of a little town in Normandy--a garden of
+tulips, of daisies, of wistaria, hornbeams and orange trees--a garden
+where the rare plant, sprung up amidst the familiar ones, seemed truly
+rare, exceptional and beautiful.
+
+How well a bunch of white violets would go in a torrid greenhouse,
+amidst the singularity of the orchids! How welcome is an orchid, and
+how strangely it strikes the eye in a spacious provincial garden, where
+three children are laughing, or an ecclesiastic, who has just finished
+his breviary, exchanges timorous words with two old ladies in black!
+
+This garden was fresh and attractive, as elegant as a young woman who
+is perhaps on her way to love, for surely enough one discovers here the
+four-leaf clover. Its plots and its beds mingled willingly with the
+hothouse flowers that were out to take the air, and with the rustic
+blossoms that sleep outside--those that close at night the eyes which
+they open to the sun, those that have always a new smile to take the
+place of the one that has died, and those who surrender completely, all
+at once, in a single great kiss.
+
+There were also numerous trees, and even ash, willows and red osiers,
+among the lilacs, the snowballs and the roses of Jericho. There were
+lawns, basins, fountains, red fishes and white fishes.
+
+There were black flowers.
+
+During all the summer that he spent in this little town, Duclos came
+every morning for a walk along the avenue of dahlias. He looked like
+an inspector of flowers. He examined them one by one, welcoming the
+newcomers and deploring the fate of those which were about to die.
+
+He would pause for a long time before the clump of black dahlias. A
+black flower is black. It is a strip of black velvet cut in the shape
+of a flower, and nothing more.
+
+Black dahlias are simple or double, like all dahlias. The double
+dahlias are fluted balls, stiff, seemingly fashioned of metal or linen
+that has been well starched and ironed. Simple dahlias are shaped like
+a sun or a monstrance and seem, from the height of their green stems,
+to spread a friendly benediction. They have an eye, and almost always,
+in the black dahlias, a yellow eye--an insolvent louis d’or placed in
+the center of the black velvet sun. They inspire fear, for they seem to
+be alive, and this is contrary to the nature of flowers, which must be
+only things, pretty things.
+
+However, the black dahlias that so exalted Duclos every morning in the
+large solitary garden had no eyes: crisp, curly petals intertwined
+above the mystery of the stamens and pistils.
+
+“This flower is only an idea, it is a desire. It is a flower?”
+
+One day he met with a surprise. A tiny bindweed had slipped its supple
+stem in between the petals of a large dahlia and had just opened in the
+heart of the flower. It had dared to set amidst this night of black
+velvet the caress of a carnal mother-of-pearl.
+
+“... And I,” he said to himself, “... to think that I never understood
+that line of Baudelaire’s.... No, it’s impossible.... Farewell,
+innocent flower that offends the peace of my heart.... Whom am I to
+love now, since you are not a woman and this country is a desert of
+love?”
+
+He walked off ill content, his eyes lowered, thrusting at the pebbles
+of the path with his foot and with the tip of his cane, meditating
+upon the disharmony between thought and deed that renders pleasant
+realizations so difficult and so rare.
+
+“Desire comes rarely at the right moment. One yearns only after the
+impossible--water that flows, the bird that flies off, the woman who
+goes back into the house and rudely slams her door. Wisdom would
+consist in never desiring anything save the bit of bread one is raising
+to his mouth. And even then, who knows whether one’s throat will not
+contract as the food is swallowed? Better, then, to desire only that
+which has already been accomplished, to accept chance and live over
+again those moments which were happy....”
+
+A cry interrupted his reflections.
+
+He looked up and perceived, seated upon a bench before him, a young
+woman who, with the hem of her skirt turned up somewhat, was feeling
+her ankle uneasily, above a white shoe. The hem was black.
+
+Duclos was not timid. As he bowed, his hat in hand, explaining the
+wickedness of the pebbles that one is apt to trip over, he observed the
+severity of a toilette that enchanted him. Everything was black and
+white, save, at the neck, the gleam of a pink ribbon, quite similar in
+shade to the bindweed that opened, yonder, in the heart of the black
+dahlia.
+
+Near the woman, a play in brochure form, yellow and somewhat soiled. He
+connected this with a large poster that he had seen that morning, and
+still drunk with his flower and his desire, he murmured, looking at her
+neck, which was so fresh, then at her subdued, golden face and her very
+sombre eyes: “_The unexpected charm of a pink and black jewel._”
+
+“White, black and pink,” he amended, smiling.
+
+A somewhat forced smile replied to him.
+
+The spoke of the drama. And when he took a seat upon the bench no one
+made a wry face.
+
+“Such stupidity!” exclaimed the lady, rolling up the pamphlet.
+
+Then he recited some verses for her:
+
+    O music, music of the trees,
+      Lull me, cradle me.
+    Warm breath of the wind, cooled by the stream,
+      Caress me, fondle me....
+
+She was soon gazing at him through tender eyes.
+
+Long, shrill whistles. The train rumbled by.
+
+“The station is near,” said Duclos. “You go down a small staircase.”
+
+“We have the afternoon,” murmured the lady.
+
+“I love you!” said the young man.
+
+“Why not?” replied the lady.
+
+“Who knows?”
+
+“Who knows?”
+
+They arose at the same impulse.
+
+As they passed the large black dahlia, black and pink now, Duclos
+stopped, and pointing to the flower:
+
+“I love you, because I love this black and pink flower. I love you,
+because you are both sisters.”
+
+“And to think,” she said, “that this morning I was weeping over the
+wickedness of men....”
+
+“Not all men are wicked.”
+
+They gazed at each other for a long time, then took each other’s hands.
+
+“Are you my destined one?”
+
+“Perhaps,” she answered.
+
+Then she added, as at the first time:
+
+“Who knows?”
+
+“Quickly,” said Duclos, “this is the hour.”
+
+They hastened down the little staircase to the station. They set out on
+their journey.
+
+Sometimes Duclos would call his lady friend “My Dahlia.” This would
+make her laugh, and dream, too.
+
+As soon as they had known each other each loved the other with deep
+passion.
+
+The black dahlia with the pink heart became for Duclos an everlasting
+comfort. The large velvet flower soothed his brow, his heart and his
+lips. It made a beautiful mystery against the marble whiteness.
+
+
+
+
+WHITE
+
+  _Cet unanime blanc conflit d’une guirlande avec la même._
+
+                                                            S. Mallarmé.
+
+
+Once upon a time there were two children of the same age--a little
+boy and a little girl. They were exceedingly fond of each other, were
+never happy unless together, and there was something tender about their
+games. At hide and seek, when the little girl had been caught, she
+would drop into the arms of her companion, throw back her head, lower
+her lashes, purse her lips; and if the kisses did not rain down, she
+would demand them, or go to seek them by graciously raising her lips to
+the other pair of distrait or timid lips. They had just passed their
+tenth year.
+
+One very warm day they rolled down their stockings to go wading in the
+brook. They got very wet and lay down to dry upon the warm grass, in
+the sun. The sight of their little pink legs, however, and of their
+dripping knees excited their curiosity. They made comparisons, and the
+little boy was wise enough to adjudge his skin the less smooth. “It is
+also less soft,” he said; and his hands went in company of his eyes.
+
+They began anew the next day, and each day they read more. Their
+kisses, now, were companioned by sweet caresses that sent the blood
+swirling to their heads. But the very next instant they had already
+forgotten this and their innocence burst into laughter. They were happy.
+
+With the coming of the first cold weather and the rain, they
+transferred their games to a large, half empty room that was left to
+them. The little boy, who went to school, would spend all his spare
+time at his friend’s. The little girl received her instruction at
+home. Upon certain days when the weather was bad the little boy would
+take his lessons with her. Their parents, with an eye to the future,
+observed this childish tenderness of the two pupils with great pleasure.
+
+Towards the month of December a curate came to the house and was led
+by the mother to the large room in which the children were playing. An
+armchair and a footstool were brought for him. He sat down, took out
+his snuff-box, wiped his lips, sniffed a generous pinch and spoke of
+the good Lord. This subject was already known to him, but the little
+girl grew attentive when the priest, turning toward her, addressed her
+thus:
+
+“My child, you will soon, I hope, make the acquaintance of your
+Creator. You know how much he loves you, and you love him, too. Pure
+hearts always love the good Lord. But real love demands closer intimacy
+and more abandon. Jesus will come to you and you will surrender to him
+confidently. You will feel the sacred embraces of your Creator. In a
+word, my dear little girl, we are going to prepare you for your first
+communion.”
+
+“And what about me?” asked the little boy.
+
+“Listen,” said the priest, “and profit duly by my words. You know,” he
+continued, turning back to the little girl, “the great importance of
+such an act. The catechism has instructed you in the grandeur of the
+sacrament. What a mystery is the union of the Creator and the created!
+This union is effected by the eucharistic communion and it brings to
+those beings who know how to prepare for it and make themselves worthy
+of it all the ineffable joys of divine love....”
+
+He spoke for a long time, and the coldness of his speech contrasted
+with the exaltation of the sentiments that he expressed. At every
+moment he would unfold a large red, very dirty handkerchief, open his
+snuff-box, take a pinch, hawk and sneeze. The little girl understood
+nothing of the great words of love uttered by this old automaton;
+still, he spoke of love and this word, even in such a mouth, charmed
+her and made her shudder a little.
+
+Her confessor had not yet questioned her upon the sixth commandment,
+but, upon the approach of the great day, he abandoned his reserve
+or his indifference. His very precise questions, which for the rest
+conformed to the manuals of devotion, interested the little girl
+deeply. Upon reflection she became heartbroken. So all those nice
+things were sins. Those games, those kisses, those touches, those
+caresses--sins! The priest taught her, then, only this--that without
+realizing it she had ceased to be innocent.
+
+One afternoon she refused her friend’s kiss and, with no further
+explanation, went to a corner of the room and sank to her knees. Then
+she took a book and read: “Let us faithfully remove all obstacles that
+might impede the arrival of Jesus into us. Let us prepare for Him a
+pure sanctuary, adorned and aglow with love; and when He shall have
+come, we will be able to say to Him, in the fervor of our joy: ‘My
+well-beloved is mine, he has reposed upon my heart.’....”
+
+She had uttered these words aloud. The little boy heard them and
+asked, through tears:
+
+“It’s no longer I whom you love?”
+
+“You can’t understand those things. I love you as my brother and as my
+little friend; I have a deep affection for you, but my love belongs to
+Jesus.”
+
+“To Jesus!”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders in peevish chagrin.
+
+“Jesus loves me. How then can I not love Him? He courts me; how then
+resist Him? Don’t you know that He is all-powerful and that He can
+pulverize the both of us on the spot?”
+
+“Really?”
+
+Overwhelmed, he meditated upon this Stranger, so strong and so cruel,
+who had come to bear off his friend and to break his heart.
+
+“Ah! Let Him kill me, but let him not take you away!”
+
+“He won’t take me away. Did He take away Angéle, Laure, Juliette, whom
+He loved so much a year ago and who are all still so happy with Him?”
+
+“Then He won’t love you always?”
+
+“He will love me always, but from afar, and I, too, shall love Him.
+But I’m not the only one on earth and He must enter the hearts of all
+little girls who take their first communion.”
+
+“Does He enter the hearts of little boys, too?”
+
+“I don’t think so,” she replied in ironic tones. “He can offer to
+little boys only a good, firm friendship.”
+
+“As for me, I’ll never love Him.”
+
+“You’ll be compelled to love Him, when you’ll have a pure heart, you’ll
+see.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Now, I have a pure heart, I’ve confessed all my sins!”
+
+“What sins!”
+
+“Silence, and ask pardon of God.”
+
+She renewed her prayers.
+
+Her friend meditated.
+
+Little boys, less early developed, generally take their first communion
+a year later than little girls of their age. This was a custom; he
+did not feel humiliated by it. Nevertheless, he would have liked very
+much to share in the mysteries into which his friend was about to be
+initiated. He felt a mingled jealousy and fear.
+
+“I only hope,” he told himself, “that He does her no harm!”
+
+At last the great day arrived. He saw his little friend pale and
+winsome in a cloud of muslin. These two whitenesses were charming.
+Drawing near to her, he murmured:
+
+“How I love you!”
+
+She lowered her eyes and rolled in her white-gloved fingers the beads
+of her mother-of-pearl chaplet. She walked on without answer, without
+so much as looking at him. He was sad throughout the ceremony. The
+recital of acts stirred him a trifle, but at the sound of his friend’s
+voice his heart broke:
+
+“Oh, my sole possession, my treasure, my life, my paradise, my love,
+my All, I wish to receive You with a heart aflame with love.... Oh, my
+treasure, I wish to live and die in a continual union with You!... My
+well-beloved has given Himself all to me I give myself likewise all to
+Him. Oh, my Jesus, I desire no longer to belong to myself. I would be
+yours alone. Let my senses belong to You and may they no longer serve
+for aught but to give You pleasure....”
+
+“Ungrateful wretch!” he thought. He stirred with anger. Then he
+recalled the charming hours spent with his friend--their games, their
+laughter, those long kisses that put them out of breath, those embraces
+out of which they came blushing, with scorching skin and moist eyes....
+
+“And now all these pleasures she is to give to another! And I’m left
+all alone.... She loves me no more....”
+
+The little girl had the honor of speaking again after the communion.
+She returned to her place, the first one in the white procession,
+kneeled with her head in her hands and remained for a long time
+absorbed. A powerful emotion crushed her. She felt at once grieved and
+happy:
+
+“He is within me, I feel Him in my heart.... My heart swells.... I
+stifle, but it is with happiness.... I am beloved, I am beloved....
+Is it Thou, my love? Oh! Stay in my arms, clasp me tightly yet again!
+Ah! I feel bad.... My head is in a whirl.... Ah! Ah! What a feeling!
+Now I will declare my love for Him unafraid. I am well content, deeply
+proud.... Thou lovest me, say? He loves me.”
+
+She arose and spoke:
+
+“Oh loving Savior, I have given myself to You and You have given
+Yourself to me. I wish to sacrifice to You all the pleasures of the
+earth; I sacrifice to you my body, my soul, my will. I have only
+these to offer You, alas! If I had more, I would give You more. I
+would gladly die for you.... Kindle me with Your love! But I am not
+satisfied with a spark, I want a flame, I want a thousand flames, I
+want a conflagration that shall on the instant destroy within me all
+attachment to earthly creatures.... Vain creatures, leave me; you will
+never again behold me. Ask no more for my affection. My heart belongs
+entirely to my well-beloved....”
+
+“She loves me no more,” he said to himself. “She will never love me
+again.”
+
+He wept. The persons near him believed that it was through pious
+emotion.
+
+At last mass was over and the seats were heard to move about on the
+lower floor of the church. The little girl who had been reborn through
+love felt likewise devoured by hunger. Then she began to think of
+her house, her parents, her friend, the beautiful table set for the
+celebration, aglitter with flowers, with crystal and silver; she
+thought of the kitchen, of the cook. Surely a good plate of soup was
+getting cold for her.
+
+“After that, I’ll eat a nice tart.... My friend will be there, eager to
+serve me attentively.... I love him so.... While waiting for vespers
+we’ll take a stroll, we’ll pick flowers, only white flowers, as white
+as my veil, as my heart. I’m so happy!”
+
+The little boy had run to his friend’s house, where his family was
+dining that day. He had gone to notify the cook, and, in the pantry,
+on a corner of the table, there had been laid aside specially two
+plates of soup, two royal patties and two glasses of wine.
+
+When the little girl arrived he took her by the hand and she let him
+pull her along. At the sight of the dainty banquet her little feminine
+heart melted with tenderness. She threw herself around the little boy’s
+neck and hugging him with all her might, said:
+
+“You know, Jesus is my mystic husband, but that isn’t going to last
+long. While he loves me, tell me what you want, for He’ll refuse his
+little wife nothing.”
+
+“I want you to love me as before.”
+
+“Here,” she said.
+
+She gave him her lips.
+
+“Are you satisfied? Let’s eat, now. I’m as hungry as a bear.”
+
+
+
+
+BLUE
+
+
+She was a princess. A sister of the queen; she lived at her side and
+shared her honors. But the fancy of the princess, suggested less
+pompous pleasures to her, and she gladly would visit one of her ladies
+in waiting whose husband was a simple member of the bodyguard and
+moreover an excellent gentleman--young, handsome, witty, tender.
+
+The princess had been married in her country to a prince who might
+become king, if several generations were to disappear in some
+cataclysm. They had never loved each other. The princess, too, who was
+at times mocking and always proud, was reputed to have a heart of iron.
+She had been showered with plenty of homage, but had accepted no one.
+Now she would scoff, now she would assume a glacial tone. She was fond
+only of her toilette, gaming and domination. What pleased her about the
+guard was that he accepted her smiles as commands; then, she always won
+at _vingt-et-un_; and her gowns and her diamonds eclipsed all other
+adornments and all other gowns. The guard had never displayed for her
+any feeling other than a deep respect.
+
+As she was blonde, she liked blue stuffs, blue flowers, sapphires, as
+blue as her eyes, so that people began to call her the Blue Princess.
+The name, which seemed to have come out of a fairy tale, pleasured her.
+One day, hearing the sad confidences of her lady in waiting, she felt a
+certain languor steal through her thoughts and into her limbs, and she
+said: “My soul is a blue bird.” This phrase, which she repeated several
+times, restored all her serenity, so beautiful it was. Then she looked
+about her:
+
+“So your husband is away, my dear? I believe he hasn’t come to pay his
+respects to me.”
+
+“My husband seems absent to you today, but isn’t he absent every day?”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Isn’t he every day absent from himself?”
+
+“My poor friend, that signifies that he neglects you.”
+
+“He no longer loves me.”
+
+“Truly, this is fine behavior. But it’s impossible. Besides, I’ll not
+allow it. I don’t want my friend to be unhappy. He is going to get
+orders from me.”
+
+“Ah, madame! You believe, then, that hearts may be commanded?”
+
+“Why, without a doubt. Was I consulted when they married me off--me, a
+princess? I was told to love my husband, and I loved him.”
+
+“How long?”
+
+“Why, I should have loved him always, had he wished it. He did not wish
+it.”
+
+“So you see.”
+
+“He did not wish it, or perhaps he could not. The marriage gave me no
+pleasure; he reproached me for my coldness, and I wept. Since that
+moment we have never met without witnesses. At first I felt exceedingly
+humiliated, then I appreciated the quietude of solitary nights. I am
+very happy to be a girl again. But since my experience I understand
+somewhat the less all games, dramas and comedies of love.... Then you
+find amusement, do you, in the conjugal ceremony?”
+
+The lady gazed at her mistress with respectful, sorrowful irony.
+
+Then she said:
+
+“I fear lest my husband has some lady-love upon his mind, or some
+light-o’-love.”
+
+“Light-o’-love?” repeated the princess. “The word’s a pretty one.
+Light-o’-love. That can hardly be serious, can it?”
+
+“Serious? No. Light-o’-love passes and love remains. But I don’t know.
+Perhaps it’s a genuine love passion that takes him from me. I’m afraid,
+really.”
+
+“I understand almost nothing of all this,” said the princess, “but I
+should be glad to see you as happy as I myself am. As far as that is
+concerned, I need only the life that goes by and that I breathe. As
+for you, since you need love, I’ll do my best, I repeat, to help you.
+The word of his princess will touch his heart.... Eh! My good friend,
+perhaps it is I whom he adores?”
+
+“Perhaps, alas!”
+
+“Why ‘alas’? If it is I, you are saved.”
+
+At this moment the guard entered and advanced to salute the princess.
+
+“Monsieur,” she said to him, “I will receive you at six o’clock at the
+palace, in private audience.”
+
+She arose and left.
+
+Everybody followed the example of the princess, and man and wife were
+left face to face, both exceedingly uneasy.
+
+“Madame,” said the husband, “so you have displeased the princess? So
+it’s to you that I owe this insult?”
+
+“Insult? What do you mean? The lady of your thoughts makes a private
+appointment for you and yet you complain?”
+
+He was at a loss for reply, for this was the first time that his wife
+had referred to feelings which he had imagined he held well hidden in
+his heart.
+
+“The lady of my thoughts,” he answered, brutally, “is my career, and
+you have doubtless ruined that with your prating.”
+
+“I’m no gossip.”
+
+“You’re stupid.”
+
+“Ah! Leave me. You don’t deserve to be loved.”
+
+The lady in waiting fled, brimming with a sad anger. But, in defiance
+of all reason, she hoped that the intercession of the princess would
+prove fruitful, and she spent the rest of that day weeping softly.
+
+The guard adored the princess secretly and without hope. Timid and
+violent, he saved his timidity for his divinity, his violence for his
+wife; but when he had been brutal he would be overwhelmed with shame
+and his timidity would cause him much suffering. He was almost always
+unhappy. Thus, for some time he had been seeking in ambition a remedy
+for his ills. He had just spent the afternoon in executing the most
+humiliating errands for the king’s mistress, who was troubled by the
+attentions of a lover of inferior station whom she had dismissed.
+The guard, in exchange for a note three lines long, was to receive a
+captain’s brevet. He had the note in his wallet and it was supposed to
+be delivered to the mistress at exactly six o’clock.
+
+Love, curiosity and disquietude triumphed over ambition. He went to
+dress for the occasion, perfumed himself and ran to the interview,
+saying to himself: “Perhaps it’s a rendez-vouz.”
+
+The princess, instead of letting him dance attendance, was herself
+waiting for him when he arrived, and not without impatience. She was
+prettier than ever, because more pale, with sparkling eyes. Her face
+was as tender as a cluster of white lilacs hidden beneath the leaves,
+but these leaves were blonde: her coiffure, in most artistic disarray,
+let a few curly tresses droop to her shoulders.
+
+“Come nearer,” she said in a sorrowing voice. “Come nearer. Stand here,
+beside me. I am suffering, and can speak only in the lowest tones. And
+then, it’s the friend, the friend of your wife who receives you--not
+the princess. Now, then: I have become aware that you no longer love
+Elizabeth and that gives me pain. Have you really ceased to love her?”
+
+“Alas!”
+
+“And how about your sense of duty, of your honor?”
+
+“My honor?”
+
+“Yes. You had vowed to her, besides conjugal fidelity, an eternal
+tenderness....”
+
+“She believed it.... Perhaps I, too, believed.”
+
+“It’s wrong to abandon her, to torment her.... She is weeping at this
+moment, I am sure....”
+
+“I am not bad to her.”
+
+“Very well. Promise me never to cause her displeasure again.”
+
+“I will never voluntarily cause her displeasure.”
+
+“Good. But promise me more. Promise me....”
+
+She seemed oppressed, and her voice sank so low that, in order to hear
+it, the guard had to lean toward the princess, almost grazing her
+tresses. This man, although he was accustomed to all the dissemblances
+of the courtly folk, suffered frightfully. To love the princess from
+afar had seemed to him a sweet torture in comparison to the agony
+which, at this moment, was stirred in him by desire. Were she any
+other woman, either he would have fallen to his knees or taken to
+flight; with the princess, he must remain, keep silent and preserve the
+attitude of a soldier receiving orders.
+
+“Promise me,” resumed the princess, “that you will be kind to her, very
+kind, and that you will love her again....”
+
+The guard said nothing.
+
+“You promise?”
+
+Still he said nothing.
+
+“Then it’s no longer possible? All is then over between you? Have you
+any serious fault to find with her?”
+
+“I have no fault to find. I no longer love her. That is all.”
+
+“Let her not discover this, at least!”
+
+“I was hoping that she would never discover it.”
+
+“One may cease loving a woman, then, without her discovering?”
+
+“It is hard. I lacked the necessary skill. What is too easy, alas, is
+to love a woman without her discovering it.”
+
+“Oh! You really think so?”
+
+“I am sure of it. She whom I love has never suspected my love and will
+never suspect it.”
+
+“Sir guard,” said the princess, “sir soldier man, you are a child. She
+whom you love knows your love....”
+
+“Alas!” he said, incredulously.
+
+“... and she loves you,” she added, giving him her two hands.
+
+He threw himself upon the gift, but he was still undecided, so troubled
+that he panted.
+
+“Kiss them, my child,” said the princess. “Kiss me, you who love me,
+you who have desired me so long in the secret chamber of your heart.
+Kiss your blue princess, kiss your love.”
+
+On the next morning the maid said to her mistress:
+
+“Oh! Madame has a blue spot upon her throat.”
+
+“That doesn’t surprise me. It’s a mark. But so strange! Now it’s here,
+now there. It appears, it vanishes. On my throat, it’s true, and on my
+heart....”
+
+“Perhaps that’s why they call Madame the blue princess?” continued the
+innocent woman.
+
+“Go, see if my lady-in-waiting is there.”
+
+The princess, left for a moment by herself, gazed feelingly at her blue
+spot.
+
+“Lord, how happy I am!” she said to herself. “And how cunning! And how
+stupid is my friend! To confide her love troubles! Poor Ariane, without
+you, I should perhaps never have known anything. Those glances which I
+took for the signs of an ardent, respectful attachment were love!...
+But here she comes....”
+
+The lady-in-waiting entered excitedly.
+
+“Ah! Princess? I had to stay up for him till four in the morning! I am
+beside myself! All is lost.”
+
+“There! Can’t you ever be reasonable? On the contrary, all is settled.”
+
+“Ah! Thanks!”
+
+“Listen to me. I received his confession. It was difficult, it was
+long. At last I know the truth. It’s a light-o’-love. The person who
+has turned your husband’s head is a humble actress of no consequence.
+Men take them, drop them, pick them up again. This one had already
+passed through many hands, and among others, through my husband’s....
+You see, you and I have a family relationship.... Now then. An actress
+is hardly ever free during the day time. Her liberty begins when
+that of other women ends, at midnight. So I have decided that your
+husband’s duties shall be shifted to my palace from midnight to four
+in the morning.... Naturally he will receive compensation, for that’s
+an arduous task.... His future is assured, and his happiness.... Is
+he ambitious? Yes. Very well. Would he like a title? A decoration? At
+first I’ll attach him to my personal suite. As soon as there is an
+opening, in six months, in three, he will be made my aide-de-camp, my
+secretary. He will leave me only to court you, happy wife. Between the
+two of us we will keep watch over him....”
+
+“How good you are!”
+
+“Am I not, indeed?”
+
+“You are kindness itself.”
+
+“You are beautiful. You are, and that is worth more.”
+
+“Beautiful? Who is more beautiful than you?”
+
+“Flatterer! I am thirty and you are twenty-five.... Alas! I have
+renounced everything. You will love me, at least?”
+
+“I have always loved you. Henceforth I will adore you. My life belongs
+to you. I will devote myself to you until death, and my husband, too, I
+fondly hope.”
+
+“I, too, hope so. I have perhaps delivered him from a grave peril, from
+an unhappy love, for what joy can one find in the adventure that he was
+engaged in?”
+
+“When he comes to his right senses he will be deeply grateful to
+you.... Yesterday evening, that is to say this morning, he was greatly
+troubled. When he returned, I thought him drunk. He stared at me out of
+wandering eyes. As soon as he entered his room he bolted the door and I
+heard him cry out: ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’...”
+
+“He said nothing else?”
+
+“I don’t think so. He is not very talkative.”
+
+“A precious virtue. What would you say of a husband who imparted
+humiliating confidences?... There _are_ some like that.... Mine, for
+example....”
+
+“You were indeed unhappy!”
+
+“Yes and no. I never think of it any more The present exalts my
+heart.... To bring happiness to those you love and who love you,--can
+anything in the world equal that?”
+
+“You are adorable!”
+
+“And I am adored.”
+
+“Oh! Yes.”
+
+“My dear friend!”
+
+She did not withhold her hand, which the lady in waiting covered with
+kisses.
+
+“They are superimposed,” she thought, “but the last does not efface
+the first. Your lips, poor couple, still meet in fervor, but upon my
+skin.... It is indeed curious....”
+
+“Ah!” she resumed, aloud, “now that you are sure to rediscover your
+happiness one day or another, I hope that you will be prudent.
+According to the tales confided to me, your husband has been a trifle
+fatigued by conjugal joys. Men don’t like to have advances made to
+them....”
+
+“Oh! Between husband and wife! Never mind. I will be discreet, generous
+friend....”
+
+“More generous than you think! For, after all, your husband is
+very seductive. He is young, younger than I,--handsome, ardent,
+passionate....”
+
+“He was.”
+
+“He still is, you may be sure, and you will notice it soon enough. If
+I had not renounced everything, if I were not a princess.... In your
+place I should be jealous.”
+
+“Ah! Lord, I know your heart too well.”
+
+“Then you will go home in full confidence? Yet a mite sad.”
+
+“Yet a mite.”
+
+“But the clouds are scattering, the sky is beginning to turn blue
+again?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“As blue as my soul, my tender darling, as blue as my heart.”
+
+And she thrust her finger into her bosom, toward the spot of the blue
+bruise that so enchanted her amorous flesh.
+
+
+
+
+VIOLET
+
+                                                     _L’heure violette._
+
+                                                           Leo Larguier.
+
+
+They called her the old maid, and yet, though she was both a maid
+and old, she looked like neither one nor the other. Her appearance
+suggested a widow just past her prime. She always dressed in black,
+with a profusion of embroidery, ornaments and violet ribbons. Most
+frequently a bouquet of pale violets would bedeck her corsage and
+would be repeated, artificially, upon her hat. The scent of violets
+floated through her garden, her house and her heart: her soft eyes were
+two beautiful violets. The old maid was jolly and religious; and the
+curates were not slow in adducing this as a proof that good humor is
+the inseparable companion of virtue and piety: “Just see the old maid.
+Heaven is in her soul and in her eyes.” Her eyes were indeed of the
+sweetest, and a smile, at once celestial and childish, would scatter
+its benediction over the pink plenitude of her countenance. She was, in
+every aspect, plump, but not to excess, and the entire effect revealed
+that restful suavity of definite architectural structures.
+
+A single token betrayed her age--the color of her hair. Their very
+ashen blond had become even more faded when she reached forty,
+dissolving into the shade of tawny linen which the years, those skilful
+laundresses, bleach at each springtime a little.
+
+In short, the old maid was an agreeable canoness.
+
+Toward that period in which she had to undergo the great feminine
+crisis, her fortune, through the establishment of a railroad that
+cut across one of her farms, rose considerably. Then, her head
+being troubled by vapors, she felt a desire to move. She made
+distant pilgrimages, but only in the company of a lady friend, and
+at her leisure. Having seen the provinces and some new faces, she
+felt different; her curiosity, too long dormant, awoke. A literary
+ecclesiastic loaned her some books of history. The novel treats only of
+possible loves, while history speaks of real loves attested by letters
+and relics. The old maid was surprised; one day she dreamed for a long
+time before the picture of a handsome worldly cardinal which decorated
+a serious book.
+
+_Galeotto fu ’l libro e chi lo scrisse._[A]
+
+[A] Translator’s Note--This is the famous line from Dante’s
+Inferno,--episode of Paolo and Francesca. “Galeotto was the book and he
+who wrote it.”
+
+She had not married, through piety, having, at the hands of a priest
+implacable before all terrestrial pleasures, taken a vow to consecrate
+herself to the Lord. Her mother, informed of this, wept and threatened
+to die; then the daughter deferred, postponing this abandonment of the
+world until her mother should have departed. But the years, without
+abating her piety, had little by little effaced in her spirit even the
+memory of this vow, and when she had found herself free to fulfill it,
+she had no longer thought of it. The fanatical priest was dead. The
+hour of marriage was dead, too. Having refused all the eligibles of the
+region, she had become, without noticing it, the old maid; and now that
+she did realize it, it was too late. Besides, she was happy thus, and
+happier still since she had taken to dreaming.
+
+So the old maid was dreaming, one beautiful twilight toward the end of
+September, as she shelled peas in her garden together with her servant.
+One could descry the little town, reclining like a lazy lass along the
+river bank; one of her arms, half bare, rose toward the station; the
+other was lost in a forest; her head was formed by the church; her
+body, the city; and her legs, the suburbs. And all this dozed, even the
+station, between two cries.
+
+The old maid was dreaming so well that her servant, wearied of not
+obtaining any replies to her talk, had ceased speaking; she was
+dreaming so well that, at the sound of the front-door bell, she started
+and half rose with a bewildered air.
+
+The visitor did not correspond to her dream. She recognized one of her
+girlhood companions, a poor woman who lived in the country, married to
+a petty notary and burdened with children. An urchin of some twelve
+years, garbed in a sorry gray uniform, followed this figure, with
+humble mien and his cap in his hands.
+
+The reception was a cold one, but the poor woman was so amiable and
+she brought such pretty rustic flowers and such large plums, that the
+old maid rediscovered her smile. The youngster was introduced to her;
+he was going, on the following day, to enter the town academy as a
+pensioner. Now, the parents, who were too busy and not wealthy, could
+come all that distance to see him only three or four times per year,
+perhaps. What was desired of her was, that if it did not inconvenience
+her too greatly, she should board during holidays this youngster, who
+was so well-behaved, so gentle, so respectful, and so well advanced in
+his studies, since he had just won a scholarship.
+
+The old maid consented. This seemed to her at first an act of charity.
+
+“If I can’t attend to it,” she said, “Rosalie will hunt him up and see
+after him. She’ll take him to my Pine farm in good weather. He’ll drink
+milk. Is he fond of milk?”
+
+“Oh!” replied the mother, “very much. Thank the mademoiselle.”
+
+“Thank you, mademoiselle.”
+
+At the sound of this sweet voice, already almost masculine, the old
+maid looked at the youngster.
+
+That was all. As night had fallen the peas were brought in, and the old
+maid, summoned by the Angelus, went off to church.
+
+Rosalie, toward the middle of October, went to the academy. The boy was
+given to her.
+
+Mademoiselle would not return till evening. Alone with a servant, the
+boy soon began to take liberties. Then, tired, he became serious and
+spoke of his studies, of his plans for the future. When Mademoiselle
+arrived unexpectedly, she found a young man who was saying, solemnly:
+
+“As soon as I shall have become a sub-lieutenant, I will marry; I
+already am considering it.”
+
+“And perhaps you know whom?”
+
+“I know very well.”
+
+The servant laughed. She, too, knew whom he would marry as soon as it
+would be possible.
+
+“Why, he’s charming--this little fellow!” exclaimed the old maid.
+
+After this first day, she never failed to be at home during the school
+holidays. They would chat, take strolls, or play by the fire. She used
+the familiar form of address when speaking to him, she would kiss him,
+touch his clothes, mother him; she loved him.
+
+In the meantime the youngster became thirteen, then came vacation days;
+she let them pass, and herself went on a trip. But the end of September
+was like an anniversary; she wished herself to go and fetch him whom
+she called her protégé. While waiting for school to reopen, he spent
+three days in her home. She was so attentive, so tender, almost, that
+Rosalie felt pangs of jealousy.
+
+The holidays came around again, all alike, all happy. There were hours
+of intimacy, family hours, but mingled with a certain indescribable
+uneasiness, ever so sweet, of an acute, enervating sweetness. The days
+went by and the boy grew to fourteen.
+
+The absence of Rosalie on one afternoon that she went to the farm
+troubled them as an animal is troubled by the sudden opening of his
+cage. By a common impulse they went into the house. It was stormy and
+very warm.
+
+“Come,” she said, “to my room. It’s the only cool place in the house.”
+
+And all this was innocent and inevitable.
+
+In her room they drew near to a table where there were albums; they
+looked them over together, but without seeing anything. Their voices,
+when they spoke, seemed to them different. Their knees touched, then
+their hands, then their lips, and the rest came, too, though with
+difficulty.
+
+The thrill of the chaste old maid was moving. She wept. Then she sank
+to her knees and worshipped, as a sacred symbol, the adorable body of
+her little friend. The god that she had sought distractedly on her
+pious journeys had at last appeared, and the happiness that the priests
+had prophesied for her she had at last felt swelling her heart.
+
+The young boy was far less perturbed, for at that age pleasure does
+not radiate. He was absorbed by anatomical curiosity. He made a tour
+of the woman he had conquered, like the adolescent who feels his first
+partridge all about and who brushes back all its feathers.
+
+“My little Jesus,” said the old maid, “Rosalie will soon be here.”
+
+The hours that intervened before dinner were like acts of grace. She
+dined as one listening to mass.
+
+And this continued for four years, from Thursday to Thursday, from
+vacation to vacation. The young boy, at times, felt a desire for other
+loves, but tiny hamlets are not very fertile in adventures and, then
+again, such powerful arms enfolded him, such generous hands!
+
+Rosalie, who detected the secret of her mistress, took advantage of it
+to procure herself a dowry in view of the uncertainty of the future,
+and the adopted son of the “old maid” became a young man who enjoyed
+high esteem.
+
+And now the old maid discovered that, among her friend’s children there
+were two other little boys, one of twelve and one of eight.
+
+“I’ll see them through their school career,” she said. “But I want only
+one at a time.”
+
+And thus it was arranged. These three little friends took care of
+her to her sixtieth year. Rich in the years of youth that she had
+economised, and unceasingly refreshed by youthful flesh, this innocent
+Ninon continued, up to an advanced age, to be the benefactress of the
+honorable poor families who had sons to send to school. Her piety,
+now become uncertain, gave concern to the clergy, but since one of
+her pupils, disgusted with his love tasks, entered the ecclesiastical
+seminary, where the old maid paid his expenses generously, the church
+was reassured. There are crises of indifference even in the souls of
+the most religious.
+
+Only the confessor of the old maid, for she confessed regularly and
+voluptuously--only this honest old canon knew the whole truth. He would
+lower his eyes as they met those of his penitent and would flee at her
+approach. The odor of the secret that sealed his lips poisoned his
+heart. He died of grief at the sight of his tender lioness devouring
+her seventh lamb.
+
+Violets continued ever to adorn and to perfume the corsage and the hat,
+the garden and the heart of the old maid with the violet eyes.
+
+
+
+
+RED
+
+  _Cum vere rubenti Candida venit avis._
+
+                                                                 Virgil.
+
+
+She was already returning, her arms rigid with the weight of the milk
+pails; her sabots were wet with the dew, and the hem of her skirt felt
+cold. When the sun became visible, red through the morning mist, she
+said to herself:
+
+“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
+
+She mused upon this for a long while, avoiding the pebbles of the
+path so as not to spill her milk, and the tall bending, weeping grass
+because her bare legs were really cold.
+
+“It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
+
+She walked on, now crossing a field of gorse where the path, much
+wider, made expressly for the farmhands, stretched straight ahead of
+her. The mist had disappeared, enchanted by the sun--had risen yonder
+above, doubtless, whence it would descend again gently, as serene
+dew, a mantle of coolness which the stars spread fraternally over the
+shoulders of the parched earth.
+
+She mused again:
+
+“It’s going to be very warm.”
+
+Then a stem of buckwheat, lost there by a bird, suggested to her:
+
+“The buckwheat will be ripe for threshing.”
+
+This idea gave her pleasure, then became a source of worriment, for
+the season had been a wet one, and if the buckwheat were ripe for
+threshing, surely it would be threshed. This meant that she must
+quickly get in, quickly strain the milk, feed the fowl and many things,
+so many that she felt a tug at her heart.
+
+As she was striding along too quickly, a drop of milk splashed from the
+pail and fell upon her sabot. She stopped, put down the pails, happy
+for a chance to rest, although she was somewhat remorseful, too; in
+order to limber them she raised her beautiful pink arms very high, thus
+gilding them with the fire of the sun.
+
+Suddenly she started, becoming almost pale, and bringing her hand to
+her bosom. She had not been frightened. She had simply been surprised
+by the first gun shot of the year.
+
+At the same moment she saw a cloudlet of smoke; a feather flew by her;
+a wounded partridge fell amidst the gorse.
+
+“Here, Tom!” cried a voice. “Go look. Fetch it.”
+
+The dog bounded along the path, pressed forward, returned, intent and
+troubled, but definitely resolved not to plunge into the dangerous
+forest. As the voice, now more imperious, more angry and nearer as
+well, repeated the commandment, Tom, his tail between his legs, took
+refuge in the skirts of the young girl, who bent over to caress him and
+encourage him.
+
+“Don’t fondle him, beat him!” cried the voice.
+
+It was that of a young man who now appeared, standing in the hedge
+amidst the branches.
+
+The milk maid straightened up, looked and turned red. From the voice
+she had not been able to tell whether it was the father or the son. She
+thought that it was the father; she wished it were, for the scorn of
+the haughty young man, who had never spoken a word to her, pained her
+deeply.
+
+She went red and felt uneasy, but could not lower her glance. She was
+lost in admiration, she was ready to fall to her knees.
+
+The command was repeated, the dog pretended death.
+
+Then, with legs and arm bare, she plunged into the gorse and was badly
+scratched. She walked along almost blindly, as fast as she could,
+holding back her tears.
+
+Having fetched the partridge she threw it into Tom’s mouth.
+
+The young man, still standing amidst the trees, above the sea of cruel
+gorse, made her a friendly sign then jumped forward, proceeding in
+front of his hound.
+
+She, without replying, perhaps without having seen the friendly gesture
+that thanked the poor servant, once more bent her shoulders beneath the
+neck yoke, and the milk pails, well balanced, hung from her red hands.
+
+She walked on, thinking no longer of anything but matters so vague and
+so deep that her mind could not grasp them.
+
+Her legs were bleeding, her hand was bleeding, and around her right arm
+was a scratch that encircled it like a bracelet.
+
+“That’s a briar.”
+
+The gorse pricks but does not tear.
+
+The milk pails, in the meantime, seemed to grow lighter. She walked on,
+quickly, as quickly as her unstable burden would permit.
+
+A man whom she passed near the farmhouse looked at her bleeding arm.
+Then she turned red. Later, as she strained the milk, she thought that
+she felt ill.
+
+The purple bracelet gripped her arm, but it was in her heart that she
+felt the clutch.
+
+Tom was running up to her. She was afraid.
+
+“Is it going to begin all over again?” she asked herself, upset by
+emotion.
+
+Panting but happy, the dog lay at her feet. Then, espying a bowl, she
+poured out a little milk for him.
+
+“You spoil him,” said the young man, approaching. “I told you, he
+rather deserved a beating.”
+
+She found some words to say:
+
+“Beat your dog?”
+
+“Upon my word, if I had been alone, the partridge should have remained
+in the gorse. Did you hurt yourself? Oh! You’re bleeding?”
+
+She was so happy that she no longer felt her joy. She was in another
+world. She was a woman face to face with a man.
+
+“Let me see!”
+
+She held out her pink, golden arm and at once drew it back, thus
+causing her breasts to shake under the coarse plaited linen. The young
+man was tempted, but controlled himself:
+
+“Don’t say anything. But I don’t want anybody to know that I met you
+near the gorse.”
+
+He went off, knowing full well what he was to do.
+
+The next morning as the dew was disappearing and Tom was off in search
+of yesterday’s partridges, a sudden cry, a sweet and dolorous cry, rose
+from amidst the tall dry grass, near the gorse field, yonder where the
+heather begins.
+
+The servant returned as on the previous day, her shoulders beneath the
+yoke, her hands hanging, holding the milk pails. She did not stop on
+the way, although she was very weary and deeply moved. She strained
+her milk, as on every other day, sunk in vague thought. But, her task
+finished, she sat down upon a stool and gazed at her arm.
+
+A mad bite had placed upon the bracelet of blood a red clasp.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+Typos in punctuation corrected, and author’s spelling of “Angéle”
+retained.
+
+Unexpected change in character name from “Elizabeth” (page 37) to
+“Ariane” (page 40) retained.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78436 ***