" 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER 
 
 ojc o!
 
 TALES BEFORE SUPPER.
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER
 
 GEMS FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 TALES BEFORE SUPPER 
 
 FROM 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER 
 
 fss>? 
 
 AND 
 
 PROSPER MERIMEE 
 
 TOLD IN ENGLISH BY MYNDART VERELST 
 
 AND DELAYED WITH A PROEM 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR SALTUS 
 
 BRENTANO'S 
 
 PARIS WASHINGTON CHICAGO LONDON
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1887, 
 BRENTANO'S 
 
 All Rights Reservtd. 
 
 OF STRAUSS ft KI 
 NEW YORK.
 
 To 
 
 E. G. R.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 AVATAR 31 
 
 THE VENUS OF IT.T.R 175
 
 INTRODUCTION.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A SHORT time ago, in the green room of the 
 Paris Opera, an old gentleman in an ill-fitting 
 coat announced to whomsoever would listen 
 that the most beautiful thing in the world was 
 a beautiful edition of Gautier. He looked 
 boldly about as though hoping for a contra- 
 diction or the chance of an argument, but the 
 remark passed unchallenged, and nodding sa- 
 gaciously to himself he went back to the stalls. 
 
 The old gentleman perhaps was wrong. 
 There are, doubtless, many things in the world 
 more beautiful than that which pleasured his 
 book-lover fancy, but in literature at least the 
 number is small. Theophile Gautier is the 
 Delacroix of prose. 
 
 It is related of Anne Boleyn that one of her 
 eyes was green and the other black. Gautier's 
 were even more chromatic ; they received and 
 reflected with the exactitude of a prism every 
 hue from argent to basaltic. His mental retina 
 was an oscillating rainbow ; and, were it possi- 
 ble to sum him up in a phrase, it might be said
 
 IO INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that of French writers he it was who possessed 
 the clearest perception of color. 
 
 Gautier first entered the drawing-room of 
 letters at the age of nineteen. Under his arm 
 he carried a volume of verse. The cover was 
 of pink paper, and its publication had been 
 paid for in advance. 
 
 This event occurred in 1830. Romanti- 
 cism was then at fever heat. Scott had been 
 translated, and, what is more, was being read ; 
 Shakespeare had been unearthed ; Byron was 
 delighting the world; Goethe glowed in Olym- 
 pian majesty. It was an era of great deeds, of 
 sonorous adjectives, and exuberant enthusi- 
 asm: it was the coming of age of the nineteenth 
 century. It had been found, but a little be- 
 fore, that French literature, if not next door to 
 a pauper, lived practically in the same street. 
 At once the death warrant of classicism was 
 signed. Through the vivifying influence of 
 Chateaubriand, and under the creative hand of 
 Hugo, there leaped into life, as suddenly as the 
 soldiery of Cadmus, a new generation a race 
 of poets that were virile in their ardor, intox- 
 icated with their own theories, rich in ideas, 
 opulent in fancies, and feverish in the determi- 
 nation to turn the indigence of their country's 
 book shelves into the wealth of a millionnaire. 
 Among them no one was more resolute than 
 Gautier. In aid of the cause he subscribed
 
 INTRODUCTION. H 
 
 page after page of luxuriant prose, and line 
 after line of impeccable verse. His ideas were 
 born duchesses. No one could torment a 
 fancy more delicately than he; he had the gift 
 of adjective ; he scented a new one afar like a 
 truffle; and from the Morgue of the dictionary 
 he dragged forgotten beauties. He dowered 
 the language of his day with every tint of dawn 
 and every convulsion of sunset ; he invented 
 metaphors that were worth a king's ransom, 
 and figures of speech that deserve the Prix 
 Montyon. Then, reviewing his work, he for- 
 mulated an axiom which will go down with a 
 nimbus through time: Whomsoever a thought 
 however complex, a vision however apocalyp- 
 tic, surprises without words to convey it, Ls not 
 a writer. The inexpressible does not exist. 
 
 When he first set out to charm that gracious 
 lady whose name is Fame, he was as fabu- 
 lously handsome as a Merovingian prince. He 
 was tall and robust ; his hair was a wayward 
 flood ; his eyes were blue and victorious. He 
 was the image of Young France. His strength 
 was proverbial ; he outdid Dante ; he swam 
 from Marseilles to the Chateau dTf, and then 
 swam back. Had it been necessary, he would 
 have breasted the Hellespont. But .of that 
 there was no need. There were hearts nearer 
 home that he won without effort ; women fell 
 in love with him at once; the Muse smiled, and
 
 1 2 INTROD UCTION. 
 
 Glory stretched her hand. His conquests were 
 so numerous that to give an exact account of 
 them the historian would have to write in 
 Latin. In comparison Mardoche was a Puri- 
 tan ; and yet, through a charming contradic- 
 tion, no one has ever been better supplied with 
 beliefs: he had no less than three hundred and 
 sixty-five, one for every day in the calendar ; 
 and it was only on leap year that he allowed 
 himself for twenty-four hours the privilege of 
 believing in nothing at all. 
 
 At a comparatively early age he was sun- 
 struck by Victor Hugo. To him Hugo was 
 Phoebus indeed. He has given it to the world 
 that when he was first brought in the pres- 
 ence, like Esther before Ahasuerus, he almost 
 swooned. Envy being cheap and the negation 
 of genius easy, the incident is worth noting; 
 it helps to an understanding of the man, and of 
 the poet that was in him. Throughout those 
 riotous days he was Hugo's henchman. Of the 
 little army that fought for him, Gautier was the 
 most demoniac. His contempt of the hum- 
 drum, his enthusiasm for the untried, for Lib- 
 erty in Art, for Hugo, was resplendent in the 
 fantasy of its ornate charm. To talk poetry 
 with Hugo, he said, is like talking theology 
 with God. He did everything for the master. 
 His pen was a scimitar ; his ink, Greek fire ; 
 he defended, lauded, and worshiped. And
 
 INTRODUCTION. !^ 
 
 when years later, "so many that the head he 
 bowed had turned to gray," when Hugo came 
 back from exile, Gautier hastened with a greet- 
 ing. "Yes," he said on his return, "yes, I 
 really think he remembered me." Hugo, it 
 may be noted, rhymes with ego, not richly, per- 
 haps, but well. 
 
 Gautier was a satrap of song: as such his 
 position is not difficult to define. Hugo is the 
 voice of a century; DeMusset the sob; Balzac 
 the echo ; Baudelaire the sneer ; and Gautier 
 the smile, the smileof youth, health, and good 
 looks, the smile of one who held aristocracy to 
 be beauty in woman and intellect in man. He 
 had little in common with the lyric agony of 
 De Musset; his hand was not large enough to 
 wield the thunderbolts which Hugo hurled; he 
 lacked Baudelaire's appreciation of shades of 
 leprous brown; and Balzac's stenographic tal- 
 ent was unpossessed by him. But hisfacture 
 is irreproachable, which De Musset's is not ; 
 his effects are never unintentionally grotesque, 
 as Hugo's often are; his notes are always nat- 
 ural, where Baudelaire's are sometimes forced; 
 and, being a poet, it was easier for him to in- 
 vent than transcribe. 
 
 Gautier wrote in verse before he discovered 
 that it is more difficult to write in prose. Then 
 abandoning one Muse, he set out to caress the 
 peplum of another. In this commerce he pro-
 
 1 4 IN TROD UCTION. 
 
 duced "Mademoiselle de Maupin," and, later, 
 "Avatar." Concerning "Avatar" little need be 
 said ; the reader is the best of critics. But on 
 the subject of the former work, a momentary 
 digression may perhaps be permitted. 
 
 To the average reader "Mademoiselle de 
 Maupin " is a hymn to Love. To the student 
 it is the account of a chase after the Ideal. 
 Through its pages whoso listens hears a strain 
 fromFlaubert'simmortal duo between Chimera 
 and the Sphinx. That duo in which the crouch- 
 ing beast calls : " Ici, Chimere, arrete-toi," and 
 the Chimera, unstayed in her flight, answers, 
 " Non : jamais." 
 
 The Ideal, truly, is intangible, but the fact 
 of its intangibility can hardly be said to make 
 the pursuit other than meritorious. Yet be 
 this as it may, there are many accomplished 
 gentlemen who have thought differently; and 
 in this instance, at least, have called the hunt 
 immoral. The immorality displayed in " Made- 
 moiselle de Maupin " is the tormented grace of 
 adolescence, the emotion which stirs the pulse 
 of every youth however refined, and every 
 maiden however pure. It represents the tur- 
 bulence of health, the love of beauty, and the 
 unaffected expression of a sentiment which 
 while perfectly natural has the misfortune to 
 shock those who lack the ability to inspire it 
 in another. It is a tableau of the candors and
 
 IN TROD UCTION. \ 5 
 
 generous dreams that reside in every one who 
 prefers the beautiful to its opposite. As such, 
 perhaps, it is immoral, though one may wonder 
 in what the criterion consists; and it may not 
 be indecorous to note that they who declaim 
 on the subject are sometimes at a loss for a 
 standard or an instance of morality in nature. 
 Besides, Gautier did not write for accomplished 
 gentlemen, noryet for littlegirlsinshort frocks. 
 He wrote for poets and for men. And where 
 is the poet who would not envy d'Albert, and 
 where is the man who would not have kissed 
 the fair Madeleine ? For my part, were the 
 permission accorded me, I know of nothing 
 that could give me greater pleasure. No, not 
 even a conversation with Schopenhauer. 
 
 But to preach liberality to the illiberal is, as 
 we all know, as profitable as asking alms of 
 statues. Then, too, who shall question taste ? 
 The perfume which is distressing to one is al- 
 luring to another. The concert which delights 
 the idler is painful to the amateur. The secret 
 of never displeasing is the art of mediocrity. 
 And Gautier alternately charms and rebuffs. 
 His Muse has a thousand toilettes ; she lives 
 in a succession of masquerades. At times she 
 moves in a minuet. Again she comes with the 
 breath of brooks and sorceries of spring; now 
 she is enveloped in the incense and hallelujahs 
 of a cathedral, now in the fireworks and frenzy
 
 1 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of a debauch; to-day a princess, yesterday a 
 vagrant, to-morrow a wanton, last week a saint 
 but always the Muse. 
 
 If her attitude in "Mademoiselle deMaupin" 
 may be considered venturesome, no such re- 
 proach has been laid at the door of "Avatar." 
 There the heroine is endowed with a purity so 
 tremulous in its clairvoyance that the Blessed 
 Damozel herself might have envied it, and not 
 she alone, but the 
 
 . . . five handmaidens whose names 
 Are five sweet symphonies : 
 Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, 
 Margaret and Rosalys. 
 
 Prascovie Labinska is meet to be reckoned 
 with such as they, and the portrait which 
 Gautier drew of her could have been signed by 
 no one else save perhaps Guido or Carlo Dolci. 
 In this story he succeeded in what few have 
 accomplished before, he displayed the impal- 
 pable on paper, a dream in black and white. 
 The reader assists at a metamorphosis more 
 marvelous than any Paracelsus ever devised. 
 A forenoon of Veronese fades as in a magic 
 lantern ; in its place comes a tableau after 
 Goya, a nightmare of the Orient in modern 
 guise, a picture of the human soul fluttering 
 as might a bird over the horrors of an abyss. 
 And then, at once, the dawn. 
 
 Gautier had a taste for the exotic, and he
 
 INTRODUCTION. ij 
 
 toyed with it as with a jewel. His knowledge 
 was something wider than encyclopaedic ; he 
 was familiar with the odds and ends of learn- 
 ing, the remnants and misfits of erudition; he 
 knew the reason of things, and confused many 
 whose business in life was to seem wise without 
 being so. In latter years no one knew when 
 he slept. His lamp was always burning. 
 When he rested it was with a book. One day, 
 so runs the legend, 1 he happened to be visiting 
 at a country house. His fellow-guests were ar- 
 tists and savants. Near the house was a pond 
 stocked with immemorial carp. Somebody 
 suggested that one of these fish might be appe- 
 tizing for breakfast. Accordingly a carp was 
 caught and carried to the kitchen. Suddenly 
 the head cook, his face whiter than his cap, 
 and followed by trembling scullions, appeared 
 among the assembled guests. In a voice 
 broken by emotion he announced that the carp 
 had no sooner been placed in the pot than the 
 most heart-rending cries had come from it. 
 The scullions bore witness to the truth of this 
 statement, and declared that they would rather 
 resign their aprons than be obliged to assist 
 at the cooking of such an extraordinary fish. 
 "Extraordinary ! " said Gautier," not at all. 
 All fish object to being boiled alive. The carp 
 merely happened to have a stronger voice than 
 the others." 
 
 1 Thtophik Gautier. Emile Bergerat. Paris.
 
 1 8 INTROD UCTION. 
 
 At this remark of the poet's, the savants 
 were vastly amused. Nothing, they said, was 
 better established than that fish were dumb. 
 The cook evidently had been mystified or de- 
 ceived by some illusion of the acoustics. Be- 
 sides, they insisted, how can fish cry out, 
 they have no vocal organs ? 
 
 "Forgive me," said Gautier, "they have." 
 And thereupon he gave the assembly such a 
 lesson in ichthyology that it seemed as though 
 all the fish of the rivers and the oceans pro- 
 tested with him against the ignorance of man. 
 He dissected and anatomized the finest fibres 
 of their vocal organs. He made them vibrate, 
 sing, cry, and murmur according to their joy or 
 pain. He unveiled their mysterious lives, their 
 loves, their wars, and touching at last on the 
 abominable torture which is inflicted on them 
 when they are cooked alive, he pictured it in 
 such terms that Bergerat says even the scullions 
 wept, and of the guests not one could be in- 
 duced to touch fish for over a week. 
 
 The next day one of the erudites who had 
 returned to Paris wrote to Gautier : " I have 
 passed the night in verifying your assertions ; 
 every one of them is exact. It is you who are 
 the savant and we who are poets." 
 
 It was this readiness that he brought to his 
 work. Wit and wisdom ran off the end of 
 his pen, and in the running assumed such per-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1 9 
 
 feet attitudes that Balzac, whose own phrases 
 were laborious as childbirth, called him a ma- 
 gician, which he undoubtedly was. The qual- 
 ity of his style has been rarely questioned. 
 Zola, it is true, has characterized it as tortured, 
 and were it not malicious to wish that the style 
 of that Jupiter Feuilletonant could be put on 
 the same rack, the wish most assuredly would 
 be expressed. But Zola to the contrary, Gau- 
 tier so far from tormenting his style, did not 
 even polish it. The secret of his grace and 
 fluency lay, perhaps, in this. His mind was a 
 kaleidoscope of fancies ; he had but to shake 
 it and an alluring combination was the result. 
 Moreover, his memory was like a vise. It was 
 never necessary for him to look up a refer- 
 ence ; the dictionary was a relaxation to him ; 
 and when he wrote, and he wrote every- 
 thing, from an epigram to a ballet, enough, in 
 fact, to fill a library, the operation was abso- 
 lutely painless. None of his manuscripts bear 
 the slightest trace of revision, of erasure, or, 
 for that matter, of punctuation. Bergerat says 
 that after an interruption, such as a visit for 
 instance, he would take up his work at the 
 place he left off, often in the middle of a word, 
 without so much as refreshing his memory by 
 a reading of the sentence that preceded it. 
 He wrote a sonnet as readily as an acceptance 
 to a dinner, a story as easily as were he copy-
 
 
 20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ing it. He wrote an acrostic sonnet, bout- 
 rim'e at that one of the most difficult things 
 in verse as an improvisation. He went to 
 Russia, and four years later, without a note- 
 book to help him, wrote a description of what 
 he had seen. The " Capitaine Fracasse," one 
 of his chief works, a story of sixteenth century 
 France, in which there is not an anachronism 
 of language or of detail, was written at the 
 end of a counter in a publisher's office, without 
 even a lexicon at hand, amid the confusion of 
 a large establishment, and as the manuscript 
 fell from him it was carried to the printer. 
 When the printer had enough for the day, 
 Gautier took a stroll in the boulevard. Cer- 
 tainly he was a magician. 
 
 Beside the book of Russian travels, Gautier 
 wrote another on Spain. It was alleged that 
 he grazed the surface of things, and left the 
 backgrounds unpenetrated. "The'o," said that 
 delightful Mme. de Girardin one evening, " are 
 there no Russians in Russia, no Spaniards in 
 Spain ? " 
 
 At this Gautier pretended to be very angry. 
 " Fiddlesticks ! " he exclaimed, or rather the 
 Gallic equivalent. "Do you suppose I saw 
 them ? In St. Petersburg I was a Russian my- 
 self, in Madrid I was as thorough a Spaniard 
 as the Cid or Don Ruy Gomez de Silva. I 
 no sooner put my foot in a country than I
 
 INTRODUCTION. 2 1 
 
 become a native, I think, act, and see precisely 
 like any other inhabitant. In Spain I would 
 have had myself run through and through in 
 defense of any one of a dozen different local 
 opinions, no matter which, provided my sword 
 had been tempered at Toledo, and the chal- 
 lenge was addressed to Don Theophilo. As 
 to Russian customs, I adopted them at once. 
 I adopted them as a matter of course ; I for- 
 got all others that differed. To me they seemed 
 perfectly natural. Would you think of describ- 
 ing the form of a cravat in a land where every 
 cravat is of the same form ? No. Well, then, 
 no more would I. Beside, man is everywhere 
 the same. In every latitude he eats with his 
 mouth and grasps with his fingers. No matter 
 where you go you will find that the strong over- 
 come the weak. From one pole to the other 
 the art of love does not vary. To my thinking, 
 descriptions of habits and customs are not worth 
 the stroke of a pen ; personally, I care as much 
 for them as I do for the snows of yester-year. 
 I have passed my life in a pursuit of the Beau- 
 tiful, and I found it only in Nature and in Art. 
 Everywhere and always man is ugly. He 
 spoils creation. His sole value is in his in- 
 telligence. And as his intelligence is manifest 
 only in his productions, I hold but to them ; 
 the secret of his destinies does not interest me 
 in the least. The one thing that I care about
 
 22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in a foreign city is, therefore, the monuments, 
 and I care for them simply because they con- 
 vey the collective result of the genius of the 
 population. If the population be brutal and 
 the city a haunt of crime, what does it matter 
 to me ? All I ask is the permission to admire 
 the edifices without being assassinated. As 
 for humanity as it is improperly called, there 
 is the ' Gazette des Tribunaux,' the ' Newgate 
 Calendar ; ' all Balzac is in it, and over and 
 above Balzac the universal history of that mis- 
 chievous ape that I have met in all my travels, 
 and who peoples the world. That is the way 
 it is, and that is the way it always will be. It 
 is only climates that differ, climates, thieves- 
 slang, and the uniform of the police." 
 
 After this tirade it is probable that he 
 shrugged his shoulders and repeated the favor- 
 ite axiom of his declining years, " There is no 
 use in anything ; and, moreover, there is noth- 
 ing ; yet everything happens, but to me it is 
 all the same." An axiom which, heard in con- 
 junction with the foregoing tirade, might be 
 mistaken for the purest Leopardi. But Gau- 
 tier was anything but a miserabilist. Indiffer- 
 ence makes one good-natured. In his youth 
 he was too magnificent to be other than happy, 
 and in his old age too sweet-tempered to be- 
 lieve in discontent. 
 
 Such change as there was in his disposition
 
 INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 was that which is the outcome of Time. As a 
 young man he promenaded the boulevards in 
 wonderful trousers, transcendent waistcoats, 
 neckclothed like Brummel, gazing about with 
 conquering eyes. In the majestic indolence of 
 later years he looked much as might an Asiatic 
 potentate grown gray and grave. Victory had 
 deserted his eyes, and in them had come a 
 shadowy nostalgia, the regret of unsailed seas 
 and unexperienced pleasures, and therewith a 
 reverie so feline in its abstraction that one 
 might have thought him constantly following 
 the changes of some unending dream. 
 
 And that dream was, of course, the Beautiful. 
 In the first intoxication of romanticism he 
 caught the Muse by the hair, and threw her 
 down like a young ruffian felling his mistress ; 
 he was vigorous in his beliefs, but as illusions 
 left him, as illusions do, he intercepted some 
 knowledge of the intangibility of the Ideal, 
 and it was then that he shrugged his shoulders. 
 Enthusiasm for a chimera is indeed difficult to 
 prolong. 
 
 The story of the " Venus of Ille " is by an 
 author of a different school. Prosper Me'rime'e 
 was in a certain sense even more erudite than 
 Gautier. He was a professional archaeologist, 
 an historian salaried by the state, &fumiste of 
 literature, one of the mandarins of the Occi- 
 dent that is to say, a member of the French
 
 24 INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 Academy, a senator to boot, and at Saint 
 Cloud and the Tuileries the modern representa- 
 tive of the jester of the past. Though he wore 
 no bells, his business was none the less to 
 amuse the court. He wrote witty little come- 
 dies, which were performed by titled amateurs, 
 and to the empress he whispered anecdotes 
 behind the fan. 
 
 His lines were cast in pleasant places. In 
 after-life Gautier had to trudge through jour- 
 nalism, a martyr to the exigencies of the daily 
 press, but Merime'e wore a braided coat, and 
 drew an income from the coffers of the crown. 
 He was rarely gifted, a man of sound learning, 
 a philologist to the ends of his gloves, a stu- 
 dent in the true acceptation of the word, and 
 yet one who not from modesty but diplomacy 
 preferred to be thought a dilettante. He did 
 not wish to seem wiser than dukes and duch- 
 esses. Throughout his literary career he acted 
 like that Englishman who refused to speak 
 French correctly that he might not be taken 
 for a professor of languages. He wrote a 
 bundle of excellent verse, " La Guzla," which 
 he published as translations from the Illyrian, 
 and which were gravely commented upon by 
 spectacled Germans. He produced a volume 
 of plays, which he gave out as translations from 
 an imaginary Spanish actress, Clara Gazul, 
 whose manuscripts he pretended to have found
 
 INTRODUCTION. 2$ 
 
 when rummaging in the Escurial. The plays 
 were strikingly original, nervous in movement, 
 colorless in adjective, unburdened by an un- 
 necessary word, and in peculiar contrast to the 
 exuberance and fervor of the day. They too 
 were gravely commented upon, and long ar- 
 ticles were written about Clara Gazul and the 
 art which that lady displayed. 
 
 Me'rimee meanwhile laughed in his sleeve. 
 Somebody, Taine perhaps, has said that his 
 existence was dual. When the Me'rime'e whom 
 the world knew showed himself in public, the 
 real Merimee stood at his side, and with an air 
 of mockery resignedly watched him perform. 
 
 The Merimee that the world knew was a 
 pale impassible man, who never raised his 
 voice, who said clever things, and told horrible 
 stories with the impersonal unconcern of one 
 describing the fair weather of an earlier June. 
 It was said that he was an atheist, or, what is 
 worse, a materialist, that he was without senti- 
 ment, without affection, without a heart. But 
 after the posthumous publication of his " Let- 
 tres a une Inconnue," it was discovered that 
 he had worn a mask, it was found that he had 
 beliefs, nay, superstitions even, and that his 
 heart could bleed as well as another. The pale 
 impassible erudite disappeared, and in his place 
 came an unknown Merimee, a lover, tender, 
 delicate, and always refined, who wrote to the 
 Inconnue lines like these :
 
 26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "It is so long since I heard from you that 
 I had begun to be anxious. Besides, I was tor- 
 mented with a presentiment that I have not 
 dared to relate. A few days ago I went with 
 an architect to the Arenas of Nimes, and there, 
 ten paces from me, I noticed a charming bird. 
 It was a trifle larger than a lark, its body was 
 the color of flax, and its wings were striated 
 black, white, and crimson. It was perched on 
 a cornice, and gazed fixedly at me. I inter- 
 rupted the architect to ask what kind of bird 
 it was : although a great sportsman, he said 
 that never before had he seen one like it. I 
 went up to it, but it did not attempt to fly until 
 I was near enough to touch it with my hand. 
 Then, with its eyes still fixed on me, it flut- 
 tered a little distance away. Wherever I went, 
 it followed me. The next day I returned to the 
 Arenas, and found the bird still there. I had 
 brought some bread with me, but it would not 
 touch it. Thinking from the form of its beak 
 that it might prefer insects, I threw it a grass- 
 hopper, but it paid no attention to it. The 
 foremost ornithologist of the town told me that 
 no such bird as I described had ever been seen 
 in the neighborhood. Finally, at my last visit 
 to the Arenas, the bird followed me so persist- 
 ently that it even came after me into a dark 
 passage which only a bat would have entered. 
 I remembered then that the Duchess of Bucking-
 
 INTRO D UCTION. 2 7 
 
 ham saw her husband in the form of a bird on 
 the day that he was assassinated, and at once 
 I feared that you had died, and had taken that 
 way of seeing me. In spite of myself, the idea 
 was torment, and I assure you I was delighted 
 to see that your letter bore the date of the day 
 on which I first saw my marvelous bird." 
 
 So much for the poet that the world did not 
 know. 
 
 As a rule, when the real Merimee showed 
 himself it was in spheres unfrequented by 
 fashion, over the gourd of a galley-slave for in- 
 stance, in a nest of gitanas, or in some smug- 
 gler's haunt. Gautier, it may be remembered, 
 discovered Andalusia, and every one since has 
 wished to follow in his footsteps. The journey 
 can be made in different ways. The pleasant- 
 est, perhaps, is by means of that enchanted rug, 
 the imagination. A history aiding, one or two 
 books of travel, and it is the easiest thing in 
 the world to explore the entire land without 
 so much as leaving one's arm-chair. The trav- 
 eler closes his eyes, and presto ! the Alham- 
 bra, the Lion Court, the Alcazar, Cordova, the 
 ship of stone which is called Cadiz, surge in 
 melting beauty before him. On the wings of 
 his vagabond fancy he can float from Cartha- 
 gena to Tyre ; he can see the Phoenicians sail- 
 ing in their purple galleys ; he can hear the 
 tramp of Roman soldiery ; he can scan the face
 
 2$ IXTEODUCTIOJtf- 
 
 of Caesar, raiaus and blanched by 
 
 jl^lxjwifli^c: - IM* 
 
 Vanda 
 
 MBIT! gf IMC J-J1 \\Mt 
 
 Moorish guitar. Hie ages wffl mncil their se- 
 crets,, the cities dbeir gore and their charm, 
 and an this without being forced to ask a deaf 
 a cold at 
 
 and equally patriotic fashion is 
 
 he spoke the mfr of the gypsies and die ; 
 
 of the Catalans. When, therefore, the fancy 
 
 nanner. Few wui the doors 
 closed to Mm. He ate an 
 
 Gerjon tended the flocks of the Son; with 
 Mme. de Monrijo, mother of the empress that 
 was to be; ; 
 aside, and the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 peasants of Ronda, lounging under the stars 
 with smugglers and highwaymen, or watching 
 some drama of jealousy, that jealousy that 
 spends itself not in a scene, but in a murder. 
 From these and similar excursions he brought 
 back the portraits that fill his gallery. Car- 
 men, for instance, Columba, and Clemence. 
 They are all living, not one of them has stepped 
 into a book before, and yet with five or six 
 strokes of the pen he makes the reader as fa- 
 miliar with them as were they stock characters 
 of fiction. It was this method that he observed 
 wheresoever he went, and as he was a great 
 traveler the variety of his types is noticeable. 
 
 These portraits are hung in the plainest 
 frames. After Gautier, the sobriety of his 
 style is ascetic. To turn from " Avatar " to the 
 " Venus of Ille " is like passing from high noon 
 to twilight. The action in both is as sinewy as 
 it is dramatic ; so far as the mere management 
 is concerned one is at a loss to decide which is 
 the more nervous ; but while through " Avatar " 
 one can hear Gautier's voice, see his ample 
 gestures, mark the forgetfulness of his volubili- 
 ties, and feel as did one sit with him hand in 
 hand that the tale is told with really personal 
 sympathy, one looks in vain through the " Ve- 
 nus of Ille " for the faintest trace of emotion. 
 
 Me'rime'e has a story to tell, and he tells it 
 as though he were giving evidence before a
 
 30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 grand jury. He presents facts, not hearsay ; 
 each word of his testimony is relevant ; he is 
 not to be led into confusion or entangled in 
 contradictions. He is logical, precise, plain- 
 spoken, and undeclamatory. A perfect witness 
 indeed. No one in all probability will ever be 
 able to write as richly as Gautier, but in Meri- 
 meVs stories may be discerned the model of 
 the modern novel the art of displaying the 
 documents in a given case uninterruptedly, one 
 after the other like so many premises with a 
 conclusion for climax. Gautier was the torch 
 of an epoch, Merime'e the rapier. 
 
 EDGAR SALTUS. 
 NEW YORK, May i, 1887.
 
 AVATAR.
 
 AVATAR. 
 
 BY THfiOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 I. 
 
 No one could understand the malady which 
 was slowly undermining Octave de Saville. 
 He was not confined to his bed ; his ordinary 
 existence was unchanged ; no complaint fell 
 from his lips ; and yet it was none the less evi- 
 dent that he was fading away. Questioned 
 by the physicians whom the solicitations of his 
 friends and relations forced him to consult, he 
 could mention no definite suffering, nor could 
 science discover an alarming symptom : the 
 auscultation of the chest gave out a favorable 
 sound, and the ear applied to the heart de- 
 tected scarcely an irregular pulsation ; he had 
 neither cough nor fever, but life ebbed from 
 him through one of those invisible rents of 
 which, Terence says, man is full. 
 
 Sometimes a strange faintness made him 
 white as marble, for a few moments he ap- 
 peared lifeless, then the pendulum, no longer
 
 34 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 stopped by the mysterious finger which had 
 held it, resumed its sway, and Octave awakened 
 as from a dream. 
 
 He had been sent to a water-cure, but the 
 thermal nymphs proved powerless to help him, 
 and a journey to Naples produced no better re- 
 sult. The radiant sun, of which he had heard 
 so much, was to him as black as Albert Diirer 
 has engraved it ; the bat with Melancholia writ- 
 ten on its wing beat the dazzling sky with its 
 dusky web, and flew between him and the light ; 
 on the quay of Mergellina, where the half-clad 
 lazzaroni sun themselves till their skins take 
 on the hue of bronze, he had felt chilled to the 
 heart. So returning to his small apartment 
 in the Rue Saint -Lazare, he had apparently 
 resumed his former habits. 
 
 This apartment was for a bachelor most 
 comfortably furnished. But as in time an in- 
 terior becomes impressed with the look and 
 even the very thought of its inhabitant, Oc- 
 tave's home had little by little grown dull and 
 mournful ; the damask curtains had faded and 
 admitted but a gray light ; the large bunches 
 of flowers were withering on the dingy white 
 of the carpet ; the gilt frames of a few choice 
 water-colors and sketches had slowly reddened 
 under a relentless dust ; a discouraged fire 
 smoked and died out under its own ashes; 
 the antique buhl clock, inlaid with brass and
 
 AVATAR. 35 
 
 tortoise shell, withheld the noise of its tick-tack, 
 and the voice of the dreary hours spoke low 
 as one does in a sick-room ; the doors closed 
 silently, and the footfalls of rare visitors died 
 away on the thick carpet ; laughter ceased on 
 penetrating these cold, sombre rooms, wherein 
 modern luxury was omnipresent. Octave's 
 servant, Jean, a duster under his arm, a tray in 
 his hand, glided about like a shadow, for, un- 
 consciously, affected by the surrounding gloom, 
 he had ended by losing his natural loquacity. 
 Trophies, such as boxing gloves, masks, and 
 foils, hung on the walls, but it was easy to see 
 that they had long been untouched ; books 
 were tossed carelessly about, as if Octave had 
 tried to lull some fixed idea by mechanical 
 reading. An unfinished letter, yellowed with 
 age, seemed to have been waiting its conclu- 
 sion for months, and spread itself out on the 
 table in silent reproach. Though inhabited, the 
 apartment appeared deserted. Life was ab- 
 sent, and on entering one encountered the 
 chill which issues from a tomb. In this lugu- 
 brious dwelling, where no woman ever set her 
 foot, Octave was more at his ease than else- 
 where ; the silence, the sadness, and the neg- 
 lect suited him ; the joyous tumult of life dis- 
 gusted him, though he made frequent efforts to 
 join in it ; but as he returned from the mas- 
 querades, the balls, or the suppers to which his
 
 36 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 friends dragged him, gloomier than before, he 
 struggled no longer against his mysterious 
 pain, and let the days slip by with the indif- 
 ference of a man who expects nothing from the 
 morrow. As he had lost faith in the future he 
 made no plans, and having tacitly sent in his 
 resignation to life, he was awaiting its accept- 
 ance. Nevertheless, if you imagined him thin 
 of face, with an earthy complexion, attenuated 
 limbs, and a wasted appearance, you would be 
 much mistaken ; a dark bruise under the eye- 
 lids, an orange shade around the orbits, a hol- 
 lowing of the temples veined with blue, were 
 alone observable. Yet his eyes were soulless, 
 without trace of will, hope, or desire. This 
 lifeless gaze in such a young face formed a 
 strange contrast, and produced a more painful 
 effect than the emaciated features and fevered 
 expression of the ordinary invalid. Before his 
 health was affected in this way Octave had 
 been called a good-looking fellow, and he was 
 so still ; thick, wavy black hair clustered in silky, 
 lustrous masses at his temples ; his eyes were 
 large, velvety, and deeply blue, fringed with 
 curved lashes, and at times luminous with a 
 liquid fire ; in repose, and when unanimated 
 by passion, they had the serene look which 
 the eyes of Orientals wear when, after smok- 
 ing their nargileh, they take their kief at the 
 cafe* doors of Smyrna or Constantinople. His
 
 AVATAR. 37 
 
 skin, always pale, had that southern tint of olive 
 white which is most effective by gaslight ; his 
 hand was slender and delicate ; his foot narrow 
 and arched. He dressed well, without being 
 in advance of the fashion or behind it, and 
 knew perfectly how to set off his natural at- 
 tractions to their best advantage. Though 
 without the pretensions of an exquisite or a 
 sportsman, had he been put up at the Jockey 
 Club he would not have been blackballed. 
 
 How was it, then, that a man, young, hand- 
 some, rich, with every incentive to happiness, 
 should be thus miserably consuming himself ? 
 The reader will imagine that Octave was blasd, 
 that the novels of the day had filled his brain 
 with morbid ideas, that he had no beliefs, that 
 of his youth and fortune squandered in dissi- 
 pation nothing remained to him but debts. All 
 these suppositions would be erroneous. Octave 
 had seen too little of dissipation to be tired 
 of it : neither splenetic, romantic, atheistic, nor 
 libertine, his life had been that of the average 
 young man, a commingling of study and relaxa- 
 tion. In the morning, lectures at the Sorbonne 
 claimed his attention, and in the evening, he 
 might be seen stationed on the staircase of the 
 Opera watching the tide of beauty disperse. 
 He was not known to take interest in either 
 actress or duchess, and he spent his income 
 without encroaching on the principal, his
 
 38 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 lawyer respected him ! In brief, he was ot 
 an equable temperament, incapable of jump- 
 ing off a precipice, or setting a river on fire. 
 The cause of his condition, which baffled the 
 skill of the entire faculty, was so incredible in 
 nineteenth century Paris that we must leave its 
 narration to our hero. 
 
 As the ordinary scientists could make noth- 
 ing of this strange illness (at the amphithea- 
 tres of anatomy a soul has yet to be dissected), 
 an eccentric physician recently returned from 
 India, and reputed to effect marvelous cures, 
 was consulted as a last resource. 
 
 Octave, foreseeing a superior discernment 
 capable of penetrating his secret, seemed to 
 dread the doctor's visit, and it was only after 
 repeated entreaties from his mother that he 
 consented to receive M. Balthazar Cherbon- 
 neau. When the physician entered, Octave was 
 stretched on a sofa ; his head was propped up 
 by a cushion, another supported his elbow, and 
 a third covered his feet : wrapped in the soft 
 and supple folds of a Turkish gown, he was 
 reading, or rather holding, a book, for his eyes, 
 though fixed on a page, saw nothing. His face 
 was colorless, but, as has been hinted, showed 
 no marked alteration. A superficial examina- 
 tion would not have disclosed dangerous symp- 
 toms in this young invalid, on whose table, 
 instead of the pills, vials, potions, and other
 
 AVATAR. 39 
 
 drugs usual in such cases, stood a box of 
 cigars. Though slightly drawn, his clear-cut 
 features had lost little of their natural charm, 
 and but for his extreme debility and the irre- 
 mediable despondency of his eye Octave would 
 have appeared in a normal state of health. 
 
 In spite of his apathy Octave was struck 
 by the physician's fantastic appearance. M. 
 Balthazar Cherbonneau seemed as though he 
 had escaped from one of Hoffmann's Tales, 
 and was wandering about astounded at the 
 reality of his own grotesqueness. His sun- 
 burnt face was overhung by an enormous skull, 
 which loss of hair made appear even larger 
 than it really was. The bald cranium, polished 
 as ivory, had remained white, while the face, 
 exposed to the rays of the sun, had taken on 
 the color of old oak or a smoky portrait. Its 
 cavities and projecting bones were thrown in 
 such bold relief that their slight covering of 
 wrinkled flesh resembled damp parchment 
 stretched on a death's-head. The infrequent 
 gray hairs which still lingered on the back of 
 the head were gathered in three thin locks, 
 two drawn up over the ears, and the third, 
 starting from the nape of the neck and end- 
 ing abruptly at the beginning of the forehead, 
 crowned this nut-cracker countenance, and 
 evoked unconscious regrets for the ancient 
 peruque or the modern wig. But the most
 
 40 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 extraordinary thing about him was his eyes. 
 His face, wrinkled with age, calcinated by in- 
 candescent skies, worn with vigils, marked in 
 lines more closely pressed than the pages of a 
 book, with the wearisome fatigues of life and 
 of study, was illuminated by two orbs of tur- 
 quoise blue, inconceivably limpid, fresh, and 
 youthful. Sunken in sombre sockets, whose 
 concentric membranes and pink edges vaguely 
 recalled the dilating and contracting pupils 
 of an owl, they gleamed like two blue stars, 
 and made one suspect that, aided by some 
 witchery of the Brahman s, the physician had 
 stolen the eyes of a child, and transplanted 
 them to his own cadaverous visage. Octave's 
 eyes were those of an octogenarian, but Cher- 
 bonneau's blazed with the fire of youth. He 
 was dressed in the physician's ordinary garb, 
 a suit of black with silk waistcoat of the same 
 color, while his shirt-front was ornamented with 
 a large diamond, the present of some rajah or 
 nabob. But, as if suspended from a peg, his 
 clothes hung on him in perpendicular folds, 
 broken, when he was seated, into sharp angles 
 by his limbs. India's devouring sun could 
 hardly have been the only cause of the phe- 
 nomenal emaciation which he exhibited. It 
 may be that in view of some initiation he had 
 undergone the prolonged fasts of the fakirs, 
 and had been extended by the yogis between
 
 AVATAR. 41 
 
 four glowing braziers on the skin of a gazelle. 
 His attenuation, however, was not the outcome 
 of debility. His fleshless knuckles moved 
 noiselessly, as were they held together by 
 strong ligaments stretched on the hands like 
 the strings of a violin. 
 
 With a stiff movement of the elbows which 
 resembled the folding of a yard-measure, the 
 physician seated himself in the chair by the 
 sofa to which Octave motioned him, betraying, 
 as he did so, an inveterate habit of squatting 
 on a mat. So placed, M. Cherbonneau's back 
 was turned to the light which fell directly on 
 the face of his patient, a situation most favora- 
 ble to examination, and one usually chosen by 
 observers more desirous of seeing than of be- 
 ing seen. Though the physician's face was 
 hidden in shadow, and the top of his cra- 
 nium, round and polished as a gigantic ostrich- 
 egg, alone caught a ray of light, Octave dis- 
 cerned the scintillation of his singular blue 
 pupils, which appeared endowed with the glim- 
 mer peculiar to phosphorescent bodies, and 
 emitted a clear, sharp beam which penetrated 
 the invalid's chest with the hot, pricking sen- 
 sation which an emetic causes. 
 
 "Well, sir," said the physician after a mo- 
 ment's silence, during which he seemed to sum 
 up the symptoms noted in his rapid inspection, 
 " I see already that yours is not a case of every-
 
 42 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 day pathology. You have none of the well- 
 known signs of catalogued maladies which the 
 physician cures or aggravates ; and I shall not 
 ask you for paper, or write from the codex a 
 soothing prescription with a hieroglyphical 
 signature for tail-piece, or trouble your servant 
 to go to the corner drug-shop." Octave smiled 
 faintly as if to thank M. Cherbonneau for 
 sparing him useless and disagreeable remedies. 
 
 " But," resumed the physician, " do not re- 
 joice too quickly ; because you have neither 
 heart-disease, consumption, spinal complaint, 
 softening of the brain, typhoid or nervous fever, 
 it does not follow that you are in good health. 
 Give me your hand." 
 
 Thinking M. Cherbonneau wished to count 
 his pulse, and expecting to see him take out 
 his watch for that purpose, Octave drew back 
 the sleeve of his dressing-gown, and baring 
 his wrist extended it mechanically. Into his 
 yellow paw, of which the bony fingers resem- 
 bled the claws of a crab, M. Cherbonneau 
 took the young man's moist, veined hand, but 
 instead of feeling with his thumb for that un- 
 even pulsation which indicates that the ma- 
 chinery of man is out of order, he pressed and 
 kneaded it as if to put himself in magnetic 
 communication with his subject. 
 
 Though a skeptic in medicine, Octave could 
 not restrain a sort of anxious emotion. The
 
 AVATAR. 43 
 
 blood receded from his temples, and it seemed 
 to him as if the physician's pressure was sub- 
 tracting his very soul. 
 
 " My dear sir," M. Cherbonneau said, as he 
 dropped Octave's hand, " your condition is far 
 graver than you think ; the old-fashioned treat- 
 ments that are in vogue in Europe cannot aid 
 you in the least. You have lost the will to 
 live ; insensibly, your soul is slipping from 
 your body ; yet there is no trace of hypochon- 
 dria, lymphomania, nor yet of melancholy and 
 suicidal preoccupation. No ! There is nothing 
 of that. Strange as it may appear, you might, 
 did I not prevent you, succumb suddenly, with- 
 out a single noticeable rupture internal or ex- 
 ternal. It is high time that I was summoned, 
 for your spirit holds to your body merely by a 
 thread ; we will make a good strong knot of it, 
 however." And therewith the doctor rubbed his 
 hands blithesomely together, and smiled in a 
 manner that sent the wrinkles eddying through 
 the thousand lines of his weather-worn face. 
 
 " Monsieur Cherbonneau," Octave answered, 
 " I do not know whether you will succeed, and 
 as to that I care very little ; but I must admit 
 that you have gauged the cause of my myste- 
 rious affliction in the exactest and most pene- 
 trating manner. I feel as though I had be- 
 come permeable, as though I were losing my 
 ego as water runs through a sieve. I am
 
 44 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 melting away into the universal essence, and 
 it is with difficulty that I distinguish my own 
 identity from the surroundings into which it is 
 being fused. Life, of which, as well as may 
 be, I perform the daily pantomime to avoid 
 grieving my relatives and friends, seems so far 
 from me that there are moments when I feel 
 as if I had already left this mortal sphere. 
 Actuated by habitual motives whose mechan- 
 ical impulse still lingers, I come and go, but 
 without participating in my own actions. At 
 the usual hours I seat myself at table, and ap- 
 pear to eat and drink ; but the most highly sea- 
 soned dishes and the strongest wines have no 
 flavor to me. The sunshine is pale as moon- 
 light, and candle-flames are dark. I shiver in 
 midsummer. Often an intense silence op- 
 presses me, much as though my heart had 
 ceased beating, and the wheelwork was clogged 
 by some unknown cause. If the dead are sen- 
 tient, my condition must resemble theirs." 
 
 " You have," replied the physician, " a 
 chronic inability to live, an entirely moral 
 disease, and one more frequent than is sup- 
 posed. Thought is a force which can kill as 
 surely as electricity or prussic acid, though the 
 signs of its ravages cannot be grasped by the 
 means of such analysis as is at the disposal of 
 vulgar science. What sorrow has set its fangs 
 in your heart ? From what secretly ambitious
 
 AVATAR. 45 
 
 height have you fallen crushed and broken ? 
 On what despair do you muse in your immo- 
 bility? Is it the thirst for power which tor- 
 ments you ? Have you voluntarily renounced 
 an aim placed too high for human attainment ? 
 You are very young for that. May it be that 
 a woman has betrayed you ? " 
 
 " No, doctor," continued Octave ; " I have 
 not even enjoyed that happiness." 
 
 " And yet," continued M. Balthazar Cherbon- 
 neau, " in your dull eyes, in the listless attitude 
 of your body, in the lifeless tones of your voice, 
 I read, as plainly as if it were stamped in gold 
 letters on a morocco binding, the title of one 
 of Shakespeare's plays." 
 
 " And what is this play which I unconsciously 
 translate ? " asked Octave, whose curiosity was 
 aroused in spite of himself. 
 
 " Love's Labor 's Lost," continued the doctor, 
 with a purity of accent which betrayed a long 
 residence in the English colonies of India. 
 
 Octave did not answer ; a slight blush red- 
 dened his cheeks, and to cover his embarrass- 
 ment he toyed with the tassel of his girdle. 
 The physician crossed one leg over the other, 
 producing the effect of the crossbones carved 
 on tombs, and clasped his foot in his hand in 
 Oriental fashion. His blue eyes gazed into 
 Octave's with a look at once soft and imperious. 
 
 " Come, come," said M. Balthazar Cherbon-
 
 46 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 neau, " confide in me ; souls are my specialty ; 
 you are my patient ; and, like the Catholic 
 priest to the penitent, I ask for a complete con- 
 fession, and you can make it without kneeling." 
 
 " What good would it do ? Supposing that 
 you have divined correctly, the telling of my 
 affliction would not relieve it. My sorrow is 
 dumb. No earthly power, not even yours, can 
 cure me." 
 
 " Perhaps," said the physician, settling him- 
 self more comfortably in his arm-chair, as if 
 preparing to listen to a long confidence. 
 
 " I do not wish you," continued Octave, 
 " to accuse me of a puerile obstinacy, nor to 
 give you by my silence a pretext for washing 
 your hands of my death ; so, since you ask it, 
 I will tell you my history ; you have guessed 
 the main point, I need not spare the details. 
 Do not expect anything singular or romantic. 
 It is a very simple adventure, very common- 
 place, very threadbare ; but, as sings Henri 
 Heine, whoso meets it finds it ever new, 
 though the heart be broken every time. Real- 
 ly, I am ashamed to relate such an ordinary 
 tale to a man who has lived in the most fab- 
 ulous and chimerical countries." 
 
 " Do not fear," said the physician, smiling, 
 " it is only the commonplace which can be ex- 
 traordinary to me." 
 
 " Well, doctor, love is killing me."
 
 AVATAR. 47 
 
 II. 
 
 " TOWARDS the end of the summer of 184- 
 I found myself in Florence, at the best sea- 
 son for seeing that city. I had time, money, 
 excellent letters of introduction, and I was a 
 good-humored youth, only too ready to be 
 amused. I installed myself on the Lung'- 
 Arno, hired a trap, and drifted into that easy 
 Florentine life which is so full of charm to the 
 stranger. In the morning I visited some 
 church, palace, or gallery, quite leisurely, with- 
 out hurry, as I did not wish to give myself 
 that indigestion of master - pieces which dis- 
 gusts the too hasty tourist with art. One 
 morning I examined the bronze doors of the 
 Baptistery ; another, the Perseus of Benvenuto 
 under the Loggia dei Lanzi, the portrait of 
 Fornarina, or Canova's Venus in the Pitti Pal- 
 ace, but never more than one object at a 
 time. Then I breakfasted off a cup of iced 
 coffee at the Cafe Doney, smoked a cigar or 
 two, glanced at the papers, and, my bottonhole 
 decorated, willingly or not, by one of the pretty 
 flower-girls who in their huge straw hats stand 
 before the cafe, I returned home for a siesta. 
 At three o'clock the carriage came to take me 
 to the Cascine. The Cascine is to Florence 
 what the Bois de Boulogne is to Paris, with
 
 48 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 this difference, that every one is acquainted, 
 and the square is an open-air drawing-room, 
 where chairs are replaced by the half circle of 
 carriages. The women, in full dress, recline on 
 the cushions, and receive the visits of lovers, 
 friends, exquisites, and attaches, who pose, hat 
 in hand, at the carriage-steps. But you know 
 all this as well as I. There plans for the 
 evening are made, meetings are arranged, 
 answers are given, invitations accepted ; it is 
 like a Pleasure Exchange open from three to 
 five in the shade of beautiful trees, under the 
 world's fairest sky. It is incumbent on every 
 one of the least consequence to be seen there 
 daily, and I was careful not to miss it. In the 
 evening I made a visit or two, or if the prima 
 donna was an attraction I went to the Pergola. 
 "In this way I spent one of the happiest 
 months of my life ; but my good fortune was 
 not destined to last. One day a magnificent 
 open carriage made its first appearance at 
 the Cascine. It was one of Laurenzi's chef- 
 d'&uvres, and a superb example of Viennese 
 manufacture ; glittering with varnish, and bla- 
 zoned with an almost royal coat of arms, there 
 was harnessed to it as handsome a pair of 
 horses as ever paraded in Hyde Park, or drew 
 up before Saint James' Palace during a draw- 
 ing-room ; added to this, it was driven a la Dau- 
 mont in the correctest style by a youthful pos-
 
 AVATAR. 49 
 
 tilion in green livery and white knee-breeches. 
 The brass on the harness, the boxes of the 
 wheels, the door-handles, all shone like gold 
 and sparkled in the sun ; every eye followed 
 this splendid equipage, which, after making a 
 curve as regular as if traced by a compass, 
 drew up near the other vehicles. The car- 
 riage, you may be sure, was not empty ; but in 
 the speed with which it passed nothing had 
 been distinguished but the tip of a slipper ex- 
 tended on a cushion, a large fold of shawl, and 
 the disk of a parasol fringed with white silk. 
 The parasol was now closed, and a woman of 
 incomparable beauty was revealed. Being on 
 horseback, I was able to approach near enough 
 to lose no detail of this poem in flesh. The 
 fair stranger, with the assurance of a perfect 
 blonde, wore a gown of that silvery Nile green 
 which makes any woman whose skin is not 
 irreproachable look as dark as that of a mole. 
 A beautiful shawl of white cr6pe de Chine, 
 thick with embroidery of the same color, en- 
 veloped her like a Phidian statue in its cling- 
 ing, rumpled drapery, while a bonnet of fine 
 Florentine straw, covered with forget-me-nots 
 and delicate aquatic plants of slender glaucous 
 leaves, formed an aureole about her face. Her 
 only ornament was a gold lizard studded with 
 turquoises, which encircled the arm that held 
 the parasol.
 
 50 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " Forgive me, doctor, this fashion-plate de- 
 scription. To a lover these trivialities are of 
 enormous importance. Thick, rippling golden 
 hair lay like undulations of light in luxuriant 
 waves upon her brow, which itself was smooth 
 and white as the new-fallen snow on the high- 
 est Alpine peak; long lashes, fine as the 
 threads of gold radiating from the angel heads 
 in the miniatures of the Middle Ages, veiled 
 her eyes, whose pupils had the bluish-green 
 light of a sun-pierced glacier. Her divinely 
 modeled mouth glowed with the carmine of a 
 sea-shell, and her cheeks resembled white roses 
 flushed by the wooing of the nightingale or the 
 kiss of the butterfly ; no mortal brush could 
 copy the suavity, the fairness, and the immate- 
 rial transparency of this complexion, of which 
 the tints seemed hardly due to the blood which 
 colors our coarser skins ; the first blush of 
 morn on the ridge of the Sierra Nevada, the 
 rose-tipped petals of a camellia, Parian marble 
 seen through a pink gauze veil, can alone give 
 of it a vague idea. The creamy iridescence of 
 the neck, visible between the shawl and the 
 bonnet strings, gleamed with opalescent reflec- 
 tions. It was the Venetian coloring, and not 
 the features, that arrested attention, though the 
 latter were as clear cut and exquisite as the 
 profile of an antique cameo. When I saw her, 
 I forgot my past loves, as Romeo at sight of
 
 AVATAR. 51 
 
 Juliet forgot Rosalind. The pages of my heart 
 became blank : every name, every memory, was 
 obliterated. I wondered how the common- 
 place love affairs which few young men escape 
 had ever had any attraction for me, and I re- 
 proached myself for them as if they had been 
 culpable infidelities. A new life dated for me 
 from this fatal encounter. 
 
 " Presently the carriage left the Cascine and 
 took the road back to town. When the daz- 
 zling vision had vanished I brought my horse 
 alongside that of an amiable young Russian, a 
 great lover of watering places, a man who had 
 frequented all the cosmopolitan drawing-rooms 
 of Europe, and who was thoroughly conversant 
 with the traveling contingent of high life ; I 
 turned the conversation on the fair stranger, 
 and learned that she was known as the Countess 
 Prascovie Labinska, a Lithuanian of illustrious 
 birth and great fortune, whose husband had been 
 fighting for two years in the Caucasian war. 
 
 " It is needless to tell you what diplomacy 
 I used to be received by the countess, who, in 
 view of her husband's absence, was necessarily 
 circumspect in her receptions. At last, how- 
 ever, I was admitted ; two dowager princesses 
 and four aged baronesses answering for me on 
 their ancient virtue. 
 
 " The Countess Labinska had taken, a mile 
 or so from Florence, a magnificent villa, a for-
 
 52 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 mer belonging of the Salviati family, and in a 
 short space of time had filled the mediaeval 
 manor with every modern comfort without in 
 the least disturbing its severe beauty and serious 
 elegance. Heavy blazoned portieres were in 
 fit keeping with the vaulted arches from which 
 they fell ; the easy-chairs and other furniture 
 of quaint and curious shapes harmonized with 
 the sombre wainscoted walls and the frescoes 
 dulled and faded to the hues of old tapestry ; 
 and through it all there was not a note that 
 jarred. The present did not clash with the 
 past. The countess was so naturally the cha- 
 telaine that the old palace seemed built as her 
 appropriate setting. 
 
 " Fascinated as I had been by the countess' 
 radiant beauty, at the end of several visits I 
 was yet more charmed by her brilliant and 
 subtle mind. When the conversation was of 
 interest, her soul shone luminous in her eyes, 
 the pallor of her cheek glowed with an inner 
 flame as does . a lamp of alabaster : the phos- 
 phorescent scintillations, the quivering of light 
 of which Dante speaks in his description of the 
 splendors of Paradise, were illustrated in her 
 appearance, as who should say an angel thrown 
 in bright relief against a sun. I stood bewil- 
 dered, stupefied, and ecstatic. Lost in contem- 
 plation of her beauty, enchanted by the celes- 
 tial tones of her voice, which made of every
 
 AVATAR. 53 
 
 sentence ineffable music, I stammered, when 
 obliged to speak, a few incoherent words, which 
 must have given her a poor idea of my intelli- 
 gence, and sometimes at certain phrases which 
 denoted on my part either great embarrass- 
 ment or incurable imbecility an imperceptible 
 smile of friendly irony danced like a rose-col- 
 ored ripple over her charming lips. 
 
 " Still I had not told my love, for in her 
 presence I was without thought, strength, or 
 courage ; only my heart throbbed as would it 
 break its bonds and fling itself at the knees of 
 its sovereign. Twenty times I had determined 
 to explain myself, but an insurmountable timid- 
 ity restrained me ; the least look of coldness 
 or reserve from the countess threw me into a 
 deathly trance comparable to that of the con- 
 demned who, bowed on the block, await the 
 stroke of the axe that is to sever the head from 
 the body. I was strangled by nervous contrac- 
 tions ; I was bathed in an icy perspiration. I 
 reddened, I grew pale, and without having 
 dared to speak I came away, finding the door 
 with difficulty, and staggering down the steps 
 of the house like a drunkard. Once outside 
 I came to my senses, and threw to the wind 
 the most inflamed dithyrambs. I addressed to 
 my absent idol a thousand declarations of an 
 irresistible eloquence. In these mute apostro- 
 phes I equaled Love's greatest poets. The
 
 54 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 vertiginous perfume of the Orient, the poetry 
 of Solomon's Song of Songs, hallucinated with 
 hashish, the platonic subtleties and ethereal 
 delicacy of Petrarch's sonnets, the nervous and 
 delirious sensibility of Heine's ' Intermezzo,' 
 could not compare with the exhaustless effu- 
 sions of the soul in which my life wasted itself 
 away. At the end of each monologue it seemed 
 to me that the countess, vanquished, at last, 
 must descend from the heavens to my heart, 
 and frequently I clasped my arms to my bosom, 
 thinking to enfold her in them. 
 
 " I was so completely possessed that I spent 
 hours in murmuring like a litany of love the 
 two words, Prascovie Labinska ; and in 
 these syllables, dropped slowly like pearls, or 
 repeated with the feverish volubility of a dev- 
 otee exalted by prayer, I found an indefin- 
 able charm. Then again, I wrote the adored 
 name on the finest parchment, illuminating it 
 like a mediaeval manuscript with flowered de- 
 signs and traceries of azure and gold. In this 
 work of pathetic minuteness and puerile per- 
 fection I passed the long hours which sepa- 
 rated my visits to the countess. I could not 
 read or otherwise occupy myself. Nothing but 
 Prascovie interested me, and even my letters 
 from France lay unopened. I made repeated 
 efforts to overcome this condition ; I tried to re- 
 call the axioms of seduction accepted by young
 
 AVATAR. 55 
 
 men, the stratagems used by the Valmonts of 
 the Cafe de Paris and the Don Juans of the 
 Jockey Club ; but to execute them my heart 
 failed me, and I regretted that I had not, like 
 Stendhal's Julien Sorel, a package of progres- 
 sive epistles which I could copy and send to 
 the countess. Unfortunately, I could only sur- 
 render myself, without the power to ask a re- 
 turn, without even a hope in the future ; indeed, 
 in my most audacious dreams I hardly dared 
 touch with my lips the tips of Prascovie's rosy 
 fingers. A fifteenth-century novice prostrate 
 on the steps of an altar, a chevalier kneeling in 
 his rigid armor, could not have had a more 
 self-annihilating adoration for the Virgin." 
 
 M. Balthazar Cherbonneau had listened to 
 Octave with profound attention ; for to him the 
 young man's story was not merely a tale of 
 romance, and he murmured, during a pause in 
 the narrative, as if to himself, "Yes, that is 
 certainly a diagnostic of love, a curious mal- 
 ady which I have encountered but once, at 
 Chandernagore, in a young Pariah in love 
 with a Brahman ; it killed her, poor girl, but 
 she was a savage ; you, M. Octave, you are a 
 civilized being, and we will cure you." This 
 parenthesis concluded, he motioned M. de Sa- 
 ville to continue ; and, doubling back his leg 
 to the thigh, like the articulated limb of a 
 grasshopper, so as to support his chin on his
 
 56 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 knee, he settled himself in this position, impos- 
 sible to any one else, but which to him ap- 
 peared very restful. 
 
 " I do not want to bore you with the details 
 of my secret martyrdom," resumed Octave ; 
 " I will hasten to a decisive scene. One day, 
 unable to restrain my imperious desire to 
 see the countess, I went to her before the 
 hour at which she was accustomed to re- 
 ceive. The weather was heavy and overcast. 
 Mme. Labinska was not in the salon. She 
 was seated under a portico, which was sup- 
 ported by graceful columns, and opened on 
 a terrace, from which one descended to the 
 garden ; she had had her piano, a wicker 
 lounge, and a few chairs brought out, and jar- 
 dinieres filled with splendid flowers (nowhere 
 are they so fresh and odorous as in Florence) 
 stood between the columns, and impregnated 
 with their perfume the infrequent breezes which 
 came from the Apennines. In front, through 
 the openings of the arcades, one could see the 
 well-pruned yew and box trees, peopled with 
 mythological statues in the labored style of 
 Baccia Bandinelli or of Ammanato, and here 
 and there a tall centenary cypress. In the 
 dim distance rose the dome of Santa Maria del 
 Fiore, and the square belfry of Palazza Vec- 
 chio jutted above the silhouette of the town. 
 
 " The countess was alone, and reclining
 
 AY A TAR. 57 
 
 on her lounge ; never had I thought her so 
 beautiful ; in indolent languor she lay like a 
 water nymph, billowed in the foamy whiteness 
 of an ample India-muslin gown that was bor- 
 dered with a frothy trimming which resembled 
 the silvery edge of a wave, and clasped at the 
 throat by an exquisitely chased Khorassan 
 brooch. In brief, her costume was as airy as 
 the drapery which floats -about the figure of 
 Victory. Her arms, fairer than the alabaster in 
 which Florentine sculptors copy antique stat- 
 ues, issued from wide sleeves open to the shoul- 
 der like pistils from a flower chalice ; a broad 
 black sash knotted at the waist with falling 
 ends contrasted sharply with all this whiteness ; 
 but the melancholy effect which these shades 
 ascribed to mourning might have given was en- 
 livened by the point of a tiny Circassian slip- 
 per of blue morocco figured with yellow ara- 
 besques, which peeped from beneath her skirt. 
 
 "The countess' blonde hair, slightly raised 
 as if by a passing zephyr, revealed her smooth 
 forehead and transparent temples, and formed 
 a nimbus, through which the light glittered in 
 a shower of gold. 
 
 "On a chair near by, a large hat of rice 
 straw, trimmed with long black ribbons, similar 
 to those on her dress, fluttered in the breeze, 
 and by it was a pair of unworn gloves of Swe- 
 dish kid. On my arrival Prascovie closed the
 
 58 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 book she was reading, the poems of Mic- 
 kiewicz, and gave me a kindly nod ; she was 
 alone, a circumstance as uncommon as it was 
 favorable. I seated myself opposite her on the 
 chair she designated, and for some minutes one 
 of those silences fell upon us which are so pain- 
 ful if prolonged. None of the commonplaces 
 of conversation came to my aid ; my thoughts 
 were confused, waves of flame rose from my 
 heart to my eyes, and my passion cried, ' Do 
 not lose this opportunity.' 
 
 " I do not know what I might have done if 
 the countess, divining the cause of my emo- 
 tion, had not partly risen, and extended her 
 beautiful hand as though to close my mouth. 
 
 " ' Not a word, Octave. You love me, I 
 know, I feel, I believe it ; nor does it anger me, 
 for love is involuntary. Stricter women than 
 I would be offended, but I pity you because I 
 cannot return it, and it pains me to be the 
 cause of your unhappiness. I regret that we 
 should have met, and blame the whim which 
 made me leave Venice for Florence. At first 
 I hoped that my persistent coldness would 
 weary and estrange you, but nothing rebuffs 
 true love, of which I see all the signs in your 
 eyes. Do not let my sympathy arouse in you 
 either dreams or illusions ; nor must you take 
 it as an encouragement. An angel with dia- 
 mond shield and flaming sword protects me
 
 AVATAR. 59 
 
 more surely than religion, duty, or virtue against 
 every seduction ; and this angel is my love : 
 I adore the Count Labinski. I have had the 
 good fortune to make a love-match.' " 
 
 " A flood of tears burst from my eyes at 
 this frank, loyal, yet modest avowal, and I felt 
 the spring of life break within me. 
 
 " Prascovie rose in extreme agitation, and, 
 with a motion of gracious feminine pity, pressed 
 her delicate handkerchief to my eyes. 
 
 " 'There, do not weep,' she said ; ' I forbid 
 it. Try to divert your thoughts ; imagine that 
 I have forever disappeared, that I am dead ; 
 forget me. Travel, work, do good ; mingle ac- 
 tively in the tide of life ; console yourself with 
 art or love ' . . . At this I interrupted her 
 with a gesture. 
 
 " ' Do you think,' she asked, ' you would 
 suffer less in continuing to see me? If so, 
 come. I will always receive you. God says we 
 must pardon our enemies ; why, then, should 
 we ill-treat those who love us ? Nevertheless, 
 absence seems to me a more certain remedy. 
 In two years we can shake hands without dan- 
 ger for you,' she added, attempting a smile. 
 
 " The next day I left Florence ; but neither 
 study, travel, nor time has diminished my suf- 
 fering. I am dying : do not prevent it, doc- 
 tor ! " 
 
 " Have you seen the countess since ? " asked
 
 60 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 the physician, with an odd sparkle in his blue 
 eyes. 
 
 " No," answered Octave, " but she is in 
 Paris," and he extended a card on which was 
 engraved : 
 
 The Countess Prascovie Labinska. And in a 
 a corner, Thursdays. 
 
 III. 
 
 AMONG the infrequent passers who follow 
 the Avenue Gabriel from the Turkish Embassy 
 to the Elyse'e Bourbon, and prefer the silence, 
 solitude, and fragrant calm of this avenue to 
 the dusty whirl and noisy elegance of the 
 ChampS'Elysees, there are few who would not 
 pause with mingled feelings of admiration and 
 envy before a poetic and mysterious dwelling 
 where for once felicity seemed to be lodged by 
 wealth. 
 
 Who is there who has not halted at the rail- 
 ing of a park and gazed attentively through 
 the green foliage at some white villa, and then 
 passed on with heavy heart, as if the dream of 
 his life lay hidden behind the walls ? Then, 
 again, other dwellings seen thus from the out- 
 side cause an indefinable melancholy. The 
 gray gloom of desertion and despair has settled 
 upon them and blighted the tops of the sur
 
 AVATAR. 6 1 
 
 rounding trees ; the statues are moss-stained, 
 the flowers droop, the water stagnates in the 
 fountain ; in spite of the rake, the paths are 
 overrun with weeds, and if there are birds 
 they are dumb. 
 
 The gardens on the Avenue Gabriel are sep- 
 arated from the sidewalk by a hedge, and ex- 
 tend in strips of varying size to the houses 
 which face the Faubourg Saint-Honord The 
 one alluded to ended at the street in an em- 
 bankment supporting a wall of rocks chosen 
 for the curious irregularity of their shape. The 
 sides of this wall, being much higher than the 
 centre, formed a rough, dark frame for the 
 radiant landscape set between. The crevices 
 of the rocks held soil enough to nourish the 
 roots of rich plants and flowers, whose varie- 
 gated verdure was thrown into relief against 
 the sombre hue of the stone. No artist could 
 have created a more effective foreground. 
 
 The walls that inclosed the sides of this min- 
 iature paradise disappeared under a curtain of 
 climbing plants, of which the stalks, shoots, 
 and tendrils formed a trellis of green. Thanks 
 to this arrangement, the garden resembled an 
 opening in a forest rather than a narrow grass- 
 plot shut in the limits of civilization. 
 
 Just behind the rock-work stood several 
 groups of slender trees, whose thick foliage 
 contrasted picturesquely. Beyond them spread
 
 62 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 a plot of turf, without an uneren spear of grass. 
 Finer, softer than the velvet of a queen's man- 
 tle, it was of that ideal green rarely obtained, 
 except before the steps of a feudal English 
 manor ; a natural carpet on which the eye loves 
 to rest, and the foot fears to crush ; an emerald 
 rug where, during the day, the pet gazelle 
 frolics in the sun with the lace-frocked scion of 
 an hundred earls, and where by moonlight a 
 Titania of the West End glides hand in hand 
 with an Oberon inscribed in the peerage. A 
 path of sand, sifted through a sieve that no 
 bit of shell or edge of flint should fret the aris- 
 tocratic foot, circled like a yellow ribbon around 
 this thick, smooth lawn, which, leveled by the 
 roller, was moistened even in the dryest days 
 of summer with the artificial rain of the sprink- 
 ler. At the end of the grass-plot blazed a bed 
 of geraniums, a display of flowery fireworks, 
 whose scarlet stars flamed against a dark mass 
 of heath. 
 
 The charming facade of the house closed 
 the perspective. Slim Ionic pillars, and a 
 classical roof surmounted at each corner by 
 graceful marble statues, gave it the appearance 
 of a Greek temple transported by the fancy of 
 a millionnaire, and subdued, by a suggestion of 
 art and poetry, all that might otherwise have 
 seemed ostentatious luxury ; between the pil- 
 lars awnings slashed with crimson were usually
 
 AVATAR. 63 
 
 lowered, shading and defining the windows 
 which opened, at full length, like glass doors, 
 under the portico. 
 
 When the capricious sky of Paris deigned to 
 stretch a bit of blue behind this dainty palace 
 it looked so lovely in its thicket of verdure 
 that it might easily have been taken for the 
 abode of a fairy queen, or for one of Baron's 
 pictures enlarged. 
 
 I v\ tending into the garden from each side of 
 the house were two conservatories, whose crys- 
 tal panes, set in gilt, sparkled in the sun, and 
 gave to a world of the rarest exotic plants the 
 illusion of their native air. 
 
 A matutinal poet strolling in the Avenue 
 Gabriel at dawn would have heard the night- 
 ingale trilling the last notes of his nocturne, 
 and seen the blackbird in his yellow slippers 
 quite at home in the garden walks. At night, 
 in the silence of the sleeping city, when the 
 roll of carriages returning from the Ope'ra has 
 ceased, the same poet might have dimly dis- 
 tinguished a white-robed form clinging to the 
 arm of a young and handsome man, and he 
 would certainly have returned to his solitary 
 attic sad and depressed. 
 
 The reader, doubtless, divines that here lived 
 the Countess Prascovie Labinska and her hus- 
 band. Count Olaf Labinski had returned 
 from the Caucasian war after a glorious cam-
 
 64 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 paign, in which, if he had not fought face to 
 face with the mystical and intangible Schamyl, 
 at least he had attacked the most devout and 
 fanatic Mourides of the illustrious Sheik. He 
 avoided bullets as only the brave can, by rush- 
 ing to meet them, and the curved scimiters o 
 the warlike barbarians had broken on his chest 
 without so much as scratching him. Courage 
 is a flawless cuirass. The Count Labinski 
 possessed the mad valor of the Slav races, who 
 love danger for its own sake, and to whom can 
 be applied the refrain of an old Scandinavian 
 song : " They kill, die, and laugh ! " 
 
 The rapture with which husband and wife, 
 to whom marriage was a passion sanctioned 
 by God and man, were reunited could only be 
 described by Thomas Moore in the style of 
 the "Loves of the Angels" ! To portray it, 
 each drop of ink would have to be trans- 
 formed to a drop of light, and each word 
 evaporate on the paper with the flame and 
 the perfume of a grain of incense. What pic- 
 ture is possible of souls melted in one like 
 two dew-drops which, dissolving on a lily petal, 
 meet, blend, absorb one another, and form but 
 a single gem? 
 
 Happiness is so rare in this world that man 
 has not thought to invent words to depict it, 
 while on the other hand the vocabulary of suf- 
 fering, moral and physical, fills innumerable 
 columns in the dictionaries of all languages.
 
 AVATAR. 65 
 
 Lovers, even in childhood, the hearts of 
 Olaf and Prascovie had never throbbed to 
 other names. In fact, knowing almost from 
 the cradle that they were destined for each 
 other, the rest of the world was but land- 
 scape to them. One might have said that 
 they were the twin halves of Plato's An- 
 drogyne, which, seeking each other since 
 the primeval divorce, were at last united and 
 joined together. In short, they formed that 
 duality in unity which is known as perfect 
 harmony ; and, side by side, they marched, or 
 rather sped, through life with an equal im- 
 pulse, sustained and impelled, as Dante has it, 
 "like two doves beckoned by the same de- 
 sire." 
 
 That nothing might disturb this felicity, a 
 colossal fortune enveloped it in an atmos- 
 phere of gold. When this radiant couple ap- 
 peared, Misery, consoled, shed its rags, and 
 dried its tears; for Olaf and Prascovie had 
 the noble egotism of happiness, and could not 
 endure affliction amid their own delight. 
 
 Since polytheism has disappeared, and with 
 it the young gods, the smiling genii, the celes- 
 tial youths whose forms were absolute in per- 
 fection, harmonious in rhythm, and perfect in 
 idealism, and since ancient Greece no longer 
 chants the hymn to beauty in Parian strophes, 
 man has cruelly abused his permission to
 
 66 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 be ill-favored. Although fashioned in God's 
 image, he is but a poor likeness of him. 
 
 The Count Labinski, however, had not prof- 
 ited by this license. His face was an elon- 
 gated oval ; his nose was clearly and boldly 
 cut ; his mouth firmly outlined and accentuated 
 by a pointed blonde mustache ; his chin, cleft 
 by a dimple, was ever raised ; while his black 
 eyes, through a striking and pleasing singular- 
 ity, caused him to look like one of the warrior 
 angels, St. Michael or Raphael, who, mailed 
 in gold, combated the devil. In fact, he would 
 have been too handsome were it not for the 
 virile light which shone from the dark iris of 
 his eyes, and the shade of bronze that the sun 
 of Asia had spread over his features. 
 
 The count was of middle height, slight, 
 graceful, nervous, concealing, beneath an ap- 
 parent delicacy, muscles of steel. When for 
 some embassy ball he donned a magnate's cos- 
 tume, that was embossed with gold, glittered 
 with diamonds, and embroidered with pearls, 
 he passed through the throng like a shining 
 apparition, exciting the jealousy of the men 
 and the admiration of the women, to whom, 
 be it said, Prascovie rendered him indifferent. 
 We need not add that the count was as intelli- 
 gent as he was handsome ; the good fairies had 
 visited his cradle, and the evil witch who spoils 
 everything was in a good humor that day.
 
 A VA TAR. 67 
 
 It is easy to understand that with such a 
 rival Octave de Saville stood a poor chance, 
 and also, that he was sensible in allowing him- 
 self to expire quietly on the cushions of his 
 sofa, and that, too, despite the hope with 
 which the fantastic physician, Balthazar Cher- 
 bonneau attempted to revivify his heart. The 
 only way was to forget Prascovie, and that was 
 impossible. To see her was evidently useless. 
 Octave felt that the countess' resolution would 
 never weaken in its gentle implacability and 
 compassionate coldness. He was afraid that 
 in the presence of his innocent and beloved 
 assassin his wounds might reopen and bleed, 
 and he did not wish to accuse her. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Two years had passed since the day when 
 the Countess Labinska had prevented Octave 
 from making the declaration of love to which 
 she had no right to listen. Awakened from 
 his dream, Octave had taken his departure a 
 prey to the blackest despair, and had not since 
 communicated with her. The one word he 
 would have wished to write was forbidden. Sur- 
 prised at his silence, the countess' thoughts had 
 frequently and sorrowfully turned to her un- 
 fortunate admirer : had he forgotten her ? The
 
 68 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 simplicity of her nature made her hope that he 
 had, without being able to believe that he had 
 really done so, for the light of inextinguishable 
 passion which blazed in Octave's eyes was not 
 of a character to be misinterpreted. Love 
 and the gods are recognized at first sight. 
 The limpid azure of her content was slightly 
 clouded by this knowledge, and it inspired her 
 with the tender melancholy of the angels who, 
 in heaven, have yet a thought for earth. Her 
 gentle spirit suffered that she should be the 
 cause of pain ; but what can the golden star 
 shining on high do for the obscure shepherd 
 holding up his mortal arms. In mythological 
 times it is true Diana descended in silvery 
 rays upon the sleeping Endymion, but then 
 Diana was not married to a Polish count. 
 
 The Countess Labinska, upon her arrival 
 in Paris, had sent Octave the commonplace 
 invitation which Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau 
 was twirling abstractedly between his fingers. 
 Though she had wished him to come and see 
 her, yet when he failed to do so she said to 
 herself with a feeling of involuntary joy, " He 
 loves me still ! " She was a woman of angelic 
 purity, and chaste as the uppermost snow of 
 the Himalayas ; but God himself in the depth 
 of the infinite has to distract him from the 
 monotony of eternity only the pleasure of 
 hearing the beating heart of some poor, per-
 
 AVATAR. 69 
 
 ishable creature on a puny globe that is itself 
 lost in the immensities of space. Prascovie 
 was not sterner than God, and Count Olaf 
 could not have censured this delicate volup- 
 tuousness of the soul. 
 
 " Your story, to which I have listened atten- 
 tively," said the physician to Octave, " proves 
 to me that all hope on your part would be 
 chimerical. The countess will never share 
 your love." 
 
 " Vou see, Monsieur Cherbonneau, that I was 
 right in not trying to retain my ebbing life." 
 
 "I said," the physician continued, "that 
 ordinary remedies were useless. But, in lands 
 whicK the stupidity of civilization regards as 
 barbasous there are occult powers, of which 
 contemporary science is absolutely ignorant. 
 In those lands primitive man in his first con- 
 tact with the vivifying forces of nature ac- 
 quired a knowledge which is believed to have 
 since been lost, a knowledge which the migrat- 
 ing tribes, the founders of races, were unable 
 to preserve. This knowledge, handed down 
 from initiate to initiate in the dumb recesses 
 of temples, was subsequently confided to hie- 
 roglyphics paneled across the walls of the El- 
 loran crypt in sacred idioms, unintelligible to 
 the vulgar. But on the summit of Meru, 
 the cradle of the Ganges, at the foot of the 
 marble stairs of the holy city of Benares, in
 
 70 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 depths of the ruined pagodas of Ceylon, aged 
 Brahmans are to be seen deciphering forgotten 
 manuscripts, yogis, who, unconscious of the 
 birds that nest in their hair, pass their lives 
 in repeating the ineffable syllable Om, and 
 fakirs whose shoulders still bear the cicatrices 
 of the Juggernaut's iron stamp. These are 
 the ultimate depositaries of the lost arcana, 
 and it is they who, when they so deign, are 
 able with their esoteric lore to produce the 
 most marvelous effects. 
 
 "The materialism of Europe has not the 
 faintest conception of the spirituality which the 
 Hindus have reached : the protracted fasts, 
 the self absorption, the impossible attitudes 
 maintained for years together, attenuate their 
 bodies to such an extent that to see them 
 crouched beneath a molten sun, between glow- 
 ing braziers, their long nails buried in the 
 palms of their hands, one might fancy they 
 were Egyptian mummies withdrawn from their 
 tombs, and bent double in apelike positions. 
 Their mortal envelope is but a chrysalis, which 
 the immortal butterfly, the soul, can abandon 
 or resume at will. While their meagre form, 
 inert and hideous, lies like a night moth sur- 
 prised by the dawn, their untrammeled spirit 
 rises on the wings of hallucination through 
 incalculable distances to the spheres of the 
 supernatural. They are visited by dreams and
 
 AVATAR. yi 
 
 visions ; from one ecstasy to another they fol- 
 low the undulations that the ages make as they 
 sink and subside in the oceans of eternity. 
 To them the infinite delivers up its secrets ; 
 they assist at the creation of worlds, at the 
 genesis and metamorphosis of gods ; they re- 
 call the sciences that have been engulfed in 
 plutonian and diluvian cataclysms, the unre- 
 membered relations of man and of nature. 
 When in this condition they mumble words 
 that no child of earth has lisped for aeons ; they 
 intercept the primordial tongue, the Logos 
 which made light spring from the archaic 
 shadows. They are regarded as madmen ; 
 they are almost gods ! " 
 
 This singular preamble aroused Octave's 
 attention to the last degree. He was unable 
 to understand what connection there could be 
 between his love for the countess and the 
 mummeries of the Hindus, and, in conse- 
 quence, his eyes bristled with interrogation 
 points. His state of mind was divined by the 
 physician who, waving aside his questions with 
 a gesture as who should say, Be patient, you 
 will see in a moment that I am not digressing, 
 continued as follows : 
 
 " Outwearied of questioning, scalpel in hand, 
 the dumb corpses in the amphitheatres, corpses 
 that disclosed but death to me who sought 
 life, I formed the project, and one, be it
 
 72 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 said, as audacious as that of Prometheus who 
 scaled the heavens to rob them of fire, I 
 formed the project of intercepting and surpris- 
 ing the soul, of analyzing and dissecting it, if 
 I may so express myself. I passed over the 
 effect ; I looked for the cause ; and therewith 
 conceived an immense disdain for the self-evi- 
 dent nothingness of materialism. 
 
 " To work over a fortuitous combination of 
 evanescent molecules seemed to me worthy 
 only of a vulgar empiric. I attempted to 
 undo with magnetism the bands that join 
 mind and matter. In experiments that were 
 certainly prodigious, but which failed to satisfy 
 me, I surpassed Mesmer, Deslon, Maxwell, 
 Puyse'gur, and Deleuze : Catalepsy, somnam- 
 bulism, clairvoyance, soul projection, in fact, 
 all the effects which are incomprehensible to 
 the masses, though simple enough to me, I 
 produced at will. Nay, I did more ; from the 
 ecstasies of Cardan and St. Thomas of Aqui- 
 nas I ascended to the self-abstraction of the 
 Pythians ; I penetrated the mysteries of the 
 Greeks ; the arcana of the Hebrews ; I pierced 
 the innermost wisdom of Trophonius and ^s- 
 culapius, and therewithal, I found in their now 
 traditional miracles that by a gesture, a word, 
 a glance, by mere volition or some other un- 
 known agent, the soul would shrink or expand. 
 One by one I repeated all the miracles of
 
 AVATAR. 73 
 
 Apollonius of Tyana. Yet still my ambition 
 was unfulfilled ; the soul escaped me ; I could 
 feel it, hear it, act upon it, but between it and 
 myself there was a veil of flesh that I could 
 not draw aside. Did I do so, the soul had 
 vanished. I was like the bird-catcher who 
 holds a bird beneath a net which he dare not 
 raise lest his winged prey shall mount the sky 
 and escape him. 
 
 "I went, therefore, to India. In that land 
 of archaic wisdom I hoped to find the solu- 
 tion of the riddle. I learned Sanskrit and 
 Prakrit, the idioms of the erudite, and the lan- 
 guage of the people. I enabled myself to con- 
 verse with Pundits and Brahmans. I crossed 
 the tiger-haunted jungles. I skirted the sa- 
 cred lakes possessed of crocodiles. I forced 
 my way through impenetrable forests, scatter- 
 ing the bats and monkeys before my path, and 
 at times, in a byway made by savage beasts, I 
 halted abruptly face to face with an elephant. 
 And all this to reach the hut of some far- 
 famed yogi, one in communication with the 
 Mahatmas ; and near him I would sit for days 
 sharing his gazelle skin, and noting the vague 
 incantations that fell from his black, cracked 
 lips. In this manner I caught the all-power- 
 ful words, the evoking formulas, the syllables 
 of the creating Logos. 
 
 " In the interior recesses of pagodas that no
 
 74 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 eye save that of the initiate has seen, but which 
 the garb of a Brahman permitted me to pene- 
 trate, I studied the symbolic sculptures. I 
 read many of the cosmological mysteries, many 
 of the legends of lost civilizations. I discov- 
 ered the meaning of the emblems that the 
 hybrid gods, profuse as Indian vegetation, 
 clutch in their multiple hands. I meditated 
 over Brahma's circle, Vishnu's lotus, the cobra 
 de capello of the blue god Siro. Ganesa un- 
 rolling her pachyderm trunk, and winking her 
 small eyes fringed with long lashes, seemed 
 to smile at my efforts and encourage my re- 
 searches. Each one of these monstrous figures 
 appeared to whisper in their language of stone : 
 'We are but forms ; it is the Spirit that stirs.' 
 
 " A priest of the Temple of Tirunamalay, to 
 whom I disclosed my intentions, told me of a 
 yogi who dwelt in one of the grottoes of the 
 isle of Elephanta, and who had reached the 
 highest degree of sanctity. I found him 
 propped against the wall of the cavern. Robed 
 in sackcloth, his knees drawn up to his chin, 
 his fingers clasped around his legs, he crouched 
 there motionless. His upturned pupils left vis- 
 ible only the whites of his eyes ; his drawn lips 
 exposed his teeth ; his skin clung to his cheek- 
 bones ; his hair, thrown back, hung in stiff locks 
 like overhanging plants ; his beard, divided in 
 two floods, nearly touched the ground ; and his 
 nails curved inward like an eagle's claw.
 
 AVATAR. 75 
 
 " His skin, naturally brown, had been dried 
 and darkened by the sun till it resembled 
 basalt, and, thus seated, he looked, both in 
 form and color, like a Canopic vase. At first I 
 thought him dead. His arms, that were anchy- 
 losed in a cataleptic immobility, I shook in 
 vain ; in his ear I shouted the most power- 
 ful of the saqramental words which were to re- 
 veal me to him as initiate, but he heeded them 
 not, nor did his eyelids quiver. In my despair 
 of arousing him I was about to leave him, when 
 suddenly I heard a singular rustle ; swift as a 
 lightning flash a bluish spark passed before my 
 eyes, hovered for a second on the half-open 
 lips of the penitent, and disappeared. 
 
 " Brahma-Logum (such was the name of this 
 holy personage) seemed to awake from a 
 lethargy ; he opened his eyes, gazed at me in 
 a natural manner, and answered my questions. 
 ' Your wish is fulfilled,' he said ; ' you have 
 seen a soul. I have succeeded in freeing mine 
 from my body whenever it so pleases me ; it 
 goes and returns like a luminous bee, percep- 
 tible only to the eyes of the adept. I have 
 fasted, I have prayed, I have meditated so 
 long, I have dominated the flesh so rigorously, 
 that I have been able to loose the terrestrial 
 bonds. Vishnu, the god of the tenfold incar- 
 nations, has revealed to me the mysterious 
 syllable that guides the soul in its avatars. If,
 
 76 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 after making the consecrated gestures, I were 
 to pronounce that word, your soul would fly 
 away and animate whatever man or beast I 
 might designate. I bequeath you this secret, 
 which of the whole world I am now the sole 
 possessor. I am glad you have come, for I 
 long to disappear in the bosom of the Increate 
 as does the drop of water that falls in the sea.' 
 And therewith the penitent whispered in a 
 voice as feeble as the last gasp of the mori- 
 bund, but very distinctly, a few syllables which 
 made a shudder, such as that which Job has 
 mentioned, run down my back." 
 
 " Doctor," cried Octave, " what do you 
 mean ? I dare not fathom the awful profun- 
 dities of your thought." 
 
 " I mean," M. Balthazar Cherbonneau tran- 
 quilly replied, " that I have not forgotten my 
 friend Brahma-Logum's magic formula, and 
 that the Countess Prascovie will be clever in- 
 deed if she recognizes the soul of Octave de 
 Saville in the body of Olaf Labinski." 
 
 V. 
 
 DR. BALTHAZAR CHERBONNEAU'S reputation 
 as physician and wonder-worker had begun to 
 be noised through Paris. His eccentricities, 
 affected or natural, had made him the fashion
 
 AVATAR. 77 
 
 But far from seeking to form what is called a 
 practice, he rebuffed his patients by shutting 
 the door in their faces, giving strange pre- 
 scriptions, or ordering impossible regimens. 
 The cases that he accepted were those that 
 were hopeless ; a vulgar consumption, a hum- 
 drum enterite, or a commonplace typhoid he 
 disdainfully dismissed to the care of his brother 
 practitioners. But on supreme occasions the 
 cures he effected were simply inconceivable. 
 Standing at the bedside, he made magic ges- 
 tures over a glass of water, and bodies already 
 stiff and cold, prepared even for the coffin, 
 after imbibing a few drops of the liquid recov- 
 ered the flexibility of life, the colors of health, 
 and sitting up again gazed about them with 
 eyes that had become accustomed to the shad- 
 ows of the tomb. In consequence, he was 
 known as the resurrectionist, the physician of 
 the dead. But it was not always that he con- 
 sented to use his powers, and he often refused 
 enormous sums from wealthy invalids. To 
 decide him to undertake a struggle with de- 
 struction, he must needs be touched by the 
 grief of some mother imploring the restoration 
 of her only child ; by the despair of some lover 
 whose beloved was at the door of death; or 
 else it was necessary for him to consider the 
 patient as one whose life was valuable to po- 
 etry, science, or the progress of humanity. In
 
 78 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 this way he saved a delicious baby that was 
 being throttled by croup's iron ringers, a charm- 
 ing maiden in the last stages of consumption, 
 a poet in delirium tremens, an inventor attacked 
 by cerebral congestion, and whose discovery 
 would otherwise have been buried with him. 
 
 Elsewhere he declined to intervene, alleging 
 that nature should not be interfered with, that 
 certain deaths were necessary, and that in pre- 
 venting them there was a risk of disturbing 
 something in the order that is universal. You 
 can see, therefore, that M. Balthazar Cherbon- 
 neau was the most paradoxical of physicians, 
 and that he had brought with him from India 
 a complete outfit of vagaries. His fame as a 
 magnetizer was, however, even greater than his 
 fame as a physician. In the presence of a 
 select company he had given a seance or two, 
 of which the marvels that were related dis- 
 turbed every preconceived idea of the possible 
 and the impossible and surpassed the prodigies 
 of Cagliostro. 
 
 Dr. Cherbonneau lived on the ground floor 
 of an old mansion in the Rue du Regard. 
 The apartment which he occupied was strung 
 out in the manner peculiar to former times. 
 The high windows opened on a garden that 
 was planted with great black-trunked trees 
 topped with vibrant green. Although it was 
 summer, powerful furnaces puffed from their
 
 A VA TAR. 79 
 
 brazen-grated mouths blasts of hot air that 
 maintained throughout the vast chambers a 
 temperature that exceeded a hundred degrees 
 Fahrenheit, for the physician, accustomed to 
 the incendiary climate of India, shivered be- 
 neath our pale sun very much as did that 
 traveler who, returning from the equatorial 
 sources of the Blue Nile, shook with cold in 
 Cairo ; as a consequence, Dr. Cherbonneau 
 never left his house save in a closed carriage, 
 and on such occasions he wrapped himself in 
 a coat of Siberian fox, and rested his feet on a 
 foot-warmer filled with boiling water. 
 
 His rooms were furnished with low couches 
 covered with stuffs from Malabar, inworked with 
 chimerical elephants and fabulous birds ; there 
 were detachable stands, colored and gilded by 
 the Ceylonese with naif barbarity ; there were 
 Japanese vases filled with exotic flowers ; and 
 on the floor from one end of the apartment to 
 the other was spread one of those funereal car- 
 pets sprigged in black and white that the Thugs 
 weave for punishment in prison, and of which 
 the woof seems woven of the hemp from the 
 ropes with which they strangle their victims. 
 And therewith, in the corners, were a few 
 Hindu idols of marble and bronze, the eyes 
 long and almond-shaped, the nose hooped with 
 rings, the lips thick and smiling, necklaced 
 with pearls that descended to the waist, sin-
 
 80 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 gular and mysterious in their attributes, the 
 legs crossed on supporting pedestals. On the 
 walls hung water-color miniatures by some 
 Calcutta or Lucknow artist representing the 
 Avatars which Vishnu has accomplished : his 
 incarnation in a fish, in a tortoise, in a pig, in 
 a lion with the head of man, in a Brahman 
 dwarf, in Rama, in a hero combating the 
 thousand-armed giant Cartasuciriargunen ; in 
 Krishna, the miraculous child in whom the 
 dreamers see a Hindu Christ; in Buddha, 
 adorer of the great god Mahadeva ; and lastly, 
 representing him asleep in the Milky Way on 
 the five-headed serpent coiled in the form of 
 a supporting dais, and there awaiting the hour 
 when for final incarnation he shall assume the 
 form of that winged white horse which in drop- 
 ping its hoof upon the universe shall cause the 
 world to cease to be. 
 
 In the last room, heated to an even greater 
 degree than the others, M. Balthazar Cher- 
 bonneau was seated surrounded by Sanskrit 
 volumes. In these volumes the letters had 
 been made with a stylus on thin tablets of 
 wood, which latter were pierced and strung 
 together on a cord in a way which more closely 
 resembled Venetian blinds than books, at 
 least as European libraries understand them. 
 
 In the centre of the room an electric ma- 
 chine, its bottles filled with gold leaf and its
 
 AVATAR. 8 1 
 
 glass plates revolved by cranks, raised its com- 
 plicated and disquieting silhouette beside a 
 mesmeric bucket spiked with numberless iron 
 rods, and in which was plunged a metal lance. 
 M. Cherbonneau was anything but a charlatan, 
 and did not need a stage setting ; but, neverthe- 
 less, it was difficult to enter this weird retreat 
 without experiencing a little of the impression 
 which, in olden times, the alchemic laboratories 
 must have caused. 
 
 Count Olaf Labinski had heard of the mir- 
 acles realized by the physician, and his half- 
 credulous curiosity had been aroused. The 
 Slav races have a natural leaning towards 
 the marvelous, which the most careful educa- 
 tion does not always correct, and, besides, wit- 
 nesses worthy of belief who had assisted at 
 these seances told things of them which could 
 not be credited until seen, no matter how much 
 confidence one had in the narrator. The count 
 went, therefore, to call on the thaumaturgist. 
 
 When he entered Dr. Balthazar Cherbon- 
 neau's apartment he felt as if surrounded by 
 imperceptible flames ; the blood rushed to his 
 head and seethed in the veins of his temples. 
 He was suffocated by the excessive heat, and 
 the lamps burning with aromatic oils, the huge 
 Java flowers swaying their chalices like censers, 
 intoxicated him with their vertiginous emana- 
 tions and their asphyxiating perfumes. He
 
 82 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 staggered a few steps towards M. Cherbonneau, 
 who was squatting on his divan in one of those 
 strange fakir-like postures with which Prince 
 Soltikoff has so picturesquely illustrated his 
 book of Indian travels. One might have said, 
 on seeing the angles formed by his joints be- 
 neath the folds of his garments, he was a hu- 
 man spider wrapped in his web, and crouching 
 immovable before his prey. At sight of the 
 count his turquoise pupils lighted up in their 
 orbits, as yellow as the bistre of the liverwort, 
 with a phosphorescent gleam, which as quickly 
 died away, as if covered by a voluntary film. 
 
 Understanding Olaf's discomfort, the physi- 
 cian extended his hand towards him, and with 
 two or three passes surrounded him with an 
 atmosphere of spring, creating for him a cool 
 paradise out of infernal heat. 
 
 " Do you feel better now ? " he asked. " Your 
 lungs, accustomed to the Baltic breezes, still 
 icy from their contact with the perpetual snows 
 of the pole, must pant like the bellows of a 
 forge in this scorching air where, nevertheless, 
 I shiver, I, baked, tempered, and, so to speak, 
 calcinated in the furnaces of the sun." 
 
 Count Labinski made a sign to show that he 
 no longer suffered from the high temperature 
 of the apartment. 
 
 The physician continued in a good-humored 
 tone,
 
 AVATAR. 83 
 
 " Well, you have heard my tricks of leger- 
 demain spoken of, and you want a sample of 
 my skill. Oh, I am cleverer than Comus, 
 Comte, or Bosco." 
 
 " My curiosity is not so frivolous," replied 
 the count, " and I have too much respect for 
 one of the princes of science." 
 
 "I am not an erudite in the acceptation 
 given to the word ; but, on the other hand, in 
 studying certain subjects disdained by science 
 I have mastered some unemployed occult 
 forces, and I produce effects which appear 
 miraculous, though they are perfectly natural. 
 By watching for it, I have sometimes sur- 
 prised the soul ; it has made me confidences 
 by which I have profited, and repeated words 
 which I have retained. The spirit is every- 
 thing ; matter exists only in appearance. The 
 universe is, perhaps, but a dream of God, 
 or an irradiation of the Logos in space. I 
 rumple at will the garment of the body ; I stop 
 or quicken life, I remove the senses, I do away 
 with distance ; I rout pain without chloroform, 
 ether, or other anaesthetic drug. Armed with the 
 force of my will, that electricity of the intellect, 
 I vivify or I annihilate. Nothing is opaque to 
 my eyes ; my gaze pierces everything ; I discern 
 "the radiations of thought ; and I can make them 
 vass through my invisible prism and reflect 
 tiemselves on the white curtain of my brain as
 
 84 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 the solar spectrums are projected on a screen. 
 But all that is trifling beside the prodigies ac- 
 complished by certain yogis of India who have 
 arrived at the sublimest height of asceticism. 
 We Europeans are too superficial, too inatten- 
 tive, too matter of fact, too much in love with 
 our clay-prison, to open windows on the eter- 
 nal and the infinite. Nevertheless, as you 
 shall judge, I have obtained a few rather 
 strange results." 
 
 Whereupon Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau slid 
 back on a rod the rings of a heavy portiere 
 which concealed a sort of alcove situate at the 
 end of the room. By the light of an alcohol 
 flame, which flickered on a bronze tripod, 
 Count Olaf Labinski saw a spectacle, at which, 
 notwithstanding his courage, he shuddered. 
 On a black marble table was a young man, 
 naked to the waist, and immobile as a corpse. 
 Not a drop of blood flowed from his body, 
 which bristled with arrows like that of St. 
 Sebastian. He might have been taken for the 
 colored print of a martyr in which the vermil- 
 ion tinting of the wounds had been forgotten. 
 
 " This eccentric physician," Olaf said to 
 himself, " is perhaps a worshiper of Siva, and 
 has sacrificed a victim to his god." 
 
 " Oh, he does not suffer at all ; prick him 
 without fear; not a muscle of his face will 
 move," said the physician, drawing the arrows
 
 AVATAR. 85 
 
 from the body as one takes pins from a cush- 
 ion. 
 
 A few rapid motions of the hands released 
 the patient from the web of emanations which 
 imprisoned him, and he awoke, with an ecstatic 
 smile on his lips, as if from a happy dream. 
 M. Cherbonneau dismissed him with a gesture, 
 and he withdrew by a small door cut in the 
 woodwork with which the alcove was lined. 
 
 " I could have cut off a leg or an arm with- 
 out his perceiving it," said the physician, mov- 
 ing his wrinkles by way of a smile ; " I did not 
 do it because as yet I cannot create, and man, 
 in that respect inferior to the lizard, has not a 
 sap sufficiently powerful to remake the mem- 
 bers cut from him. But if I do not create, I 
 at least rejuvenate." He raised a veil which 
 covered an aged woman who, lost in a mag- 
 netic slumber, was seated in an arm-chair near 
 the marble table. Her features, which might 
 once have been beautiful, were withered, and 
 the ravages of time could be read in the ema- 
 ciated outlines of her arms, shoulders, and bust. 
 The physician fixed his blue eyes on her with 
 obstinate intensity for several minutes. Grad- 
 ually the tremulous lines strengthened, the 
 contour of the bust recovered its virginal pu- 
 rity, smooth white flesh filled the hollows of 
 the throat, the cheeks rounded into the peach- 
 like bloom and freshness of youth, the eyes
 
 86 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 opened sparkling in liquid vivacity, and the 
 mask of age, lifted as by magic, disclosed a 
 lovely young woman. 
 
 " Do you think the Fountain of Youth has 
 som'ewhere poured forth its miraculous wa- 
 ters ? " asked the physician of the count, who 
 stood stupefied by this transformation. " I, at 
 least, believe so, for man invents nothing, and 
 each one of his dreams is a divination or a 
 memory. But let us leave this figure, remod- 
 eled for an instant by my will, and consult the 
 young girl tranquilly sleeping in this corner. 
 Question her ; she knows more than sages and 
 sibyls. You can send her to one of your seven 
 castles in Bohemia, and ask her what your 
 most secret casket incloses ; she will tell you, 
 for it needs but a second for her soul to make 
 the journey, which is not so surprising, after 
 all, since electricity travels seventy thousand 
 leagues in that space of time, and electricity is 
 to thought what the cab is to the train. Give 
 her your hand to put yourself in communica- 
 tion with her ; you will not have to formulate 
 your question, she will read it in your mind." 
 
 The young girl replied to the mental inter- 
 rogation of the count in a voice as lifeless as 
 that of a spectre. 
 
 " In the cedar casket there is a bit of clay 
 on which can be seen the impress of a small 
 foot."
 
 AVATAR. 87 
 
 " Has she guessed correctly ? " asked the 
 physician negligently, as though quite sure of 
 the infallibility of his somnambulist. 
 
 The count's cheeks grew crimson. In the 
 earliest days of his love he had taken the im- 
 print of one of Prascovie's footsteps from an 
 alley in a park, and he kept it, like a relic, in a 
 box of the most costly workmanship inlaid 
 with silver and enamel, whose microscopic key 
 he wore hung at his neck on a Venetian chain. 
 
 M. Balthazar Cherbonneau, who was a well- 
 bred man, seeing the count's embarrassment, 
 did not insist, but led him to a table, on which 
 was set some water that was crystal in its clar- 
 ity. 
 
 " You have, of course, heard of the magic 
 mirror in which Mephistopheles showed Faust 
 the image of Helen ; now, without having a 
 hoof in my silk stocking or plumes in my hat, 
 I am none the less able to entertain you with 
 this innocent phenomenon. Lean over this 
 bowl and think intently of the person you 
 wish to see ; living or dead, far or near, she 
 will come at your call from the end of the 
 world or the depths of history." 
 
 The count bent over the bowl. Soon the 
 water grew troubled and took on opalescent 
 tints, as if a drop of essence had been poured 
 into it, and a rainbow-hued ring encircled the 
 edge of the dish framing the picture which
 
 88 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 already sketched itself beneath the creamy 
 cloud. 
 
 The mist faded. Through the now trans- 
 parent water a young woman was revealed. 
 Her loose gown was of lace, her eyes sea 
 green, her hair wavy and golden. Over the 
 ivory keys of a piano her lovely hands strayed 
 like white butterflies. The picture was so 
 marvelous in its perfection that at sight of it 
 artists might have died of despair. It was 
 Prascovie Labinska, who, unconsciously, 
 obeyed the passionate invocation of the count. 
 
 " And now let us pass to something more 
 curious," said the physician, grasping the 
 count's hand and placing it on one of the rods 
 belonging to the mesmeric bucket. Olaf had 
 no sooner touched the metal charged with an 
 overpowering magnetism than he fell stunned 
 to the floor. 
 
 Taking him in his arms, the physician lifted 
 him up, laid him on the divan, rang, and said 
 to the servant who appeared at the door, 
 
 "Go find M. Octave de Saville." 
 
 VI. 
 
 IN a little while the wheels of a carriage 
 resounded in the silent courtyard of the hotel, 
 and almost simultaneously Octave was an-
 
 AVATAR. 89 
 
 nounced. When M. Cherbonneau showed 
 him the Count Olaf Labinski stretched on a 
 sofa, apparently lifeless, he was stupefied. At 
 first he thought murder had been committed, 
 and was struck dumb with horror ; but, on a 
 closer examination, he noticed that the chest 
 of the sleeper rose and fell with an almost 
 imperceptible respiration. 
 
 " There," said the physician, " there is your 
 disguise already prepared. It is a little more 
 difficult to put on than a domino ; but Romeo, 
 in climbing to the balcony at Verona, did not 
 worry at the danger he ran of breaking his 
 neck. He knew that Juliet awaited him in 
 the silence of the night. The Countess Pras- 
 covie Labinska is well worth the daughter of 
 the Capulets." 
 
 Perplexed by the weirdness of the situation, 
 Octave did not answer. His eyes were fixed 
 on the count, whose head slightly thrown back 
 on a cushion gave him the appearance of one 
 of those effigies of knights which, with their 
 stiff necks resting on a carved marble pillow, 
 lie above their tombs in Gothic cloisters. In 
 spite of himself, this chivalrous figure, of 
 which he was to take possession, smote him 
 with remorse. 
 
 The physician mistook Octave's perplexity 
 for hesitation. A vaguely disdainful smile 
 flitted across his lips, and he said,
 
 9O TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " If you are not decided I can awaken the 
 count, who will depart as he came, astonished 
 at my magnetic power. But, think it over ; 
 such a chance may never repeat itself. Still, 
 however great my interest in your love may be, 
 however much I desire to make an experiment 
 which has never been attempted in Europe, 
 I dare not hide from you that this exchange 
 of souls is perilous. Question your heart. 
 Will you risk your life in this supreme at- 
 tempt ? The Bible says Love is as strong as 
 death." 
 
 " I am ready," Octave replied simply. 
 
 " Very good," cried the doctor, rubbing his 
 shrunken, brown hands together with an ex- 
 traordinary rapidity, as if he wished to strike 
 fire in the manner of savages. "A passion 
 which recoils at nothing pleases me. There are 
 but two things in this world passion and will. 
 If you are not happy it will not be my fault. 
 Ah, Brahma-Logum, from the depths of the 
 sky of Indra, where the Apsaras surround you 
 with their voluptuous choirs, you shall see if 
 I have forgotten the irresistible formula which 
 you gasped in my ear on abandoning your 
 petrified carcass. Word and gestures, I have 
 retained them all. To work ! to work ! We 
 shall make in our caldron as strange a mess 
 as the witches of Macbeth, without, however, 
 the sorcery of the North. Take this arm-chair
 
 AVATAR. 91 
 
 in front of me, and give yourself confidently 
 into my power. Good ! eye to eye, hand to 
 hand. Already the charm works. The sense 
 of time and space is lost, consciousness fades, 
 the eyelids fall. The muscles, no longer com- 
 manded by the brain, relax ; the mind is lulled, 
 and all the delicate threads which hold the 
 soul to the body are untied. Brahma in the 
 golden egg, where he dreamed for ten thousand 
 years, was not farther from external things. 
 Now inundate him with electric currents, 
 bathe him in psychic emanations." 
 
 While muttering these disjointed sentences, 
 the physician did not for an instant discon- 
 tinue his passes. Luminous rays flew from 
 his distended hands and struck his patient on 
 the brow and heart, while around him there 
 gathered slowly a sort of visible atmosphere, 
 phosphorescent like an aureole. 
 
 " That is perfect ! " exclaimed M. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau, applauding himself for his suc- 
 cess. " Now he is as I want him. But there," 
 he cried, after a pause, as if he read through 
 Octave's skull the last effort of his vanish- 
 ing personality, " what is it that still resists ? 
 What is that mutinous idea which, driven from 
 the circumvolutions of the brain, tries to es- 
 cape my influence by crouching on the primal 
 monad, in the sphericity of life ? But I know 
 how to reach and curb it."
 
 92 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. ' 
 
 To master this unconscious opposition the 
 physician recharged the magnetic battery of 
 his gaze, and caught the rebel thought between 
 the base of the brain and the insertion of the 
 spinal marrow, the most secret sanctuary, the 
 most mysterious tabernacle of the soul. His 
 triumph was complete. 
 
 He next prepared himself with a majestic 
 solemnity for the surprising experiment he was 
 to attempt. Robing himself in a linen gown 
 like a Magi, he washed his hands in perfumed 
 water. He took from different boxes powders, 
 and smeared his brow and cheeks with hie- 
 rarchic designs. He encircled his arm with 
 the Brahman cord, and read two or three 
 Slokas of the sacred poems, omitting none of 
 the minute rites recommended by the Mahat- 
 mas of the isles of Elephanta. 
 
 These ceremonies terminated, he threw the 
 doors of the furnaces wide open, and soon the 
 room was filled with an incandescent atmos- 
 phere, which would have made tigers swoon in 
 the jungle, cracked the cuirass of mud on the 
 hides of buffaloes, and exploded aloes into 
 bloom. 
 
 "The two sparks of divine fire which will 
 now find themselves nude and divested for sev- 
 eral seconds of their mortal envelope must not 
 pale or waver in our icy air," said the physician, 
 examining the thermometer, which marked 
 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
 A VA TAR. 93 
 
 Between the inert bodies Dr. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau, garmented in white, looked 
 like a priest of one of those sanguinary reli- 
 gions which throw the corpses of men on the 
 altars of their gods. Indeed, he recalled that 
 pontiff of Vitziliputzili, of whom Heine speaks 
 in a ballad, though his intentions were neces- 
 sarily more pacific. 
 
 Presently he approached the motionless 
 count and pronounced the ineffable syllable, 
 which he hastened to repeat to Octave, who 
 lay in a profound slumber. M. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau's face, which under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances was simply fantastic, now assumed 
 a singular majesty. The extent of the power 
 which he wielded ennobled his irregular fea- 
 tures, and if any one had witnessed the sacer- 
 dotal gravity with which he accomplished 
 these mysterious rites he would not have rec- 
 ognized in him the Hoffmannesque physician 
 who suggested, while defying the pencil of the 
 caricaturist. 
 
 Strange things then came to pass : Octave 
 de Saville and Count Olaf Labinski appeared 
 to be simultaneously agitated by a convulsion 
 of agony ; their faces, which were of a deathly 
 pallor, twitched nervously, and a slight froth 
 rose to their lips. Two small blue flames 
 scintillated hesitantly over their heads. 
 
 The physician made an imperious gesture,
 
 94 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 which seemed to trace the way for them 
 through the air, and the two phosphorescent 
 sparks began to move. They crossed to their 
 new abodes, leaving a trail of light behind 
 them. Octave's soul entered the body of 
 Count Labinski, and the count's soul entered 
 that of Octave. The avatar was accomplished. 
 
 A flush of red at the cheek-bones showed 
 that life had reentered the human clay, which, 
 an instant soulless, would, without the physi- 
 cian's power, have become the prey of the 
 angel of death. 
 
 Cherbonneau's blue eyes gleamed with joy 
 at his triumph, and he said to himself, as he 
 strode up and down the room, " I should like 
 to see the most noted physicians do as much, 
 they who are so proud of mending the 
 human machine when it gets out of order : 
 Hippocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, 
 Boerhaave, Tronchin, Hahnemann, Rasori, the 
 most insignificant Indian fakir squatting on 
 the steps of a pagoda knows a thousand times 
 more than you ! What matters the body when 
 one can command the spirit ? " 
 
 At the end of his sentence Dr. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau cut several capers of exultation, 
 and danced like the hills in the Sir-Hasirim 
 of Solomon ; but, catching his foot in the hem 
 of his Brahman gown, he almost fell on his 
 nose, a trifling accident, which recalled him to 
 his senses and calmed his excitement.
 
 A VA TAR. 95 
 
 " Now to awake my sleeping friends," said 
 he, after he had removed the smears of the col- 
 ored powder with which he had streaked his 
 face, and tossed aside his Brahman costume. 
 Placing himself before the body of Count La- 
 binski, which contained Octave's soul, he made 
 the passes necessary to awaken him from his 
 somnambulistic state, shaking from his fingers 
 at each gesture the electric fluid withdrawn. 
 
 After a few minutes Octave-Labinski (here- 
 after we will so call him for the clearness 
 of the story) rose on his elbow, rubbed his 
 hands across his eyes, and cast around him a 
 look of astonishment, not yet lighted by the 
 consciousness of self. When a finer perception 
 of objects returned to him the first thing he 
 noticed was his own form placed quite away 
 from him on a sofa. He saw himself, not re- 
 flected by a mirror, but in reality. He gave a 
 cry, to his horror, this cry did not resound 
 in his own tone of voice ; the exchange of 
 souls having occurred during the magnetic 
 sleep, he had no recollection of it, and felt a 
 strange sense of discomfort. His mind, served 
 by new organs, was like a workman whose ha- 
 bitual tools had been taken away and replaced 
 by others. Psyche, exiled, beat with restless 
 wings the vault of this unfamiliar skull, and 
 lost herself in the mazes of a brain in which 
 still lingered traces of unfamiliar thoughts.
 
 g6 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 When the physician had sufficiently enjoyed 
 Octave's surprise he said, " Well, how do you 
 like your new habitation ? Is your soul at 
 home in the body of this handsome cavalier, 
 hetman, hospodar, magnate, and husband of 
 the most beautiful woman in the world ? You 
 no longer mean to let yourself die, as was your 
 intention the first time I saw you in your 
 gloomy apartment of the Rue Saint-Lazare 
 now that the doors of the Labinski mansion 
 are open to you, and you need not fear that 
 Prascovie will close your mouth with her 
 hand, as in the Villa Salviati, when you wish 
 to speak of love. You see now that old Bal- 
 thazar Cherbonneau, in spite of his hideous 
 face, which, by the way, he can change when 
 he wants to, has still rather good recipes in 
 his box of tricks." 
 
 " Doctor," replied Octave-Labinski, " you 
 have the power of a god, or at least of a 
 demon." 
 
 " Oh, oh, do not fear ; there is not the slight- 
 est deviltry in this ! Your salvation is not in 
 danger. I shall not make you sign a compact 
 with a flourish. Nothing could be simpler 
 than what has happened. The Logos which has 
 created light can surely displace a soul. If 
 men would but hearken to God across time 
 and infinity they would see things even more 
 surprising than that."
 
 AVATAR. 97 
 
 " With what gratitude, with what devotion, 
 can I acknowledge this inestimable service ? " 
 
 " You owe me nothing. You interest me ; 
 and to an old Lascar like myself, bronzed by 
 every sun, hardened to every event, an emo- 
 tion is a rare occurrence. You have revealed 
 love to me, and you know we dreamers, who 
 are more or less alchemists, magicians, and 
 philosophers, all seek the absolute. But get 
 up, move about, and see if your new skin is 
 uncomfortable." 
 
 Octave-Labinski obeyed, and took a turn or 
 two about the room. Already he was less 
 awkward ; though occupied by another soul, 
 the body of the count retained the impulsion 
 of its ordinary habits, and the new guest con- 
 fided himself to these physical memories, for 
 it was important for him to have the walk, the 
 air, and the gestures of the former proprietor. 
 
 " Had I not myself but just operated the 
 exchange of your souls," Dr. Balthazar Cher- 
 bonneau said, laughing, " I should think that 
 nothing unusual had happened during the 
 evening, and I should take you for the true, 
 legitimate, and authentic Lithuanian Count 
 Olaf Labinski, whose real self still sleeps 
 there in the chrysalis which you have disdain- 
 fully discarded. But it will soon be midnight ; 
 and if you do not want Prascovie to scold you, 
 or accuse you of preferring lansquenet or bac-
 
 98 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 carat to her, you had now better go. You must 
 not begin your married life with a quarrel ; it 
 would be a bad omen. In the mean time, I will 
 busy myself in awakening your former envelope 
 with all the care and respect it deserves." 
 
 Recognizing the importance of the physi- 
 cian's suggestion, Octave-Labinski hastened to 
 leave. At the foot of the steps the count's mag- 
 nificent bay horses snorted with impatience, 
 and in champing their bits had flecked the 
 pavement about them with froth. On Octave's 
 appearance a superb green-garbed groom, of 
 the lost race of heyduques, hurried to the car- 
 riage-step, which he lowered with a bang. Oc- 
 tave, who had first turned mechanically towards 
 his modest brougham, installed himself in the 
 splendid vehicle, and said to the chasseur, who 
 flung the order to the coachman, " Home ! " 
 The door was hardly closed when the horses 
 started, and the descendant of Almanzors and 
 Azolans, aided by the large cords, swung him- 
 self up behind with a lightness one would not 
 have expected of his immense size. 
 
 The distance between the Rue du Regard 
 and the Faubourg Saint-Honore is not long ; 
 it was covered in a few minutes ; and presently 
 the huge portals of the mansion opened and 
 gave way for the carriage, which swept about 
 a large graveled courtyard, and stopped with 
 remarkable precision under a pink-and-white 
 striped awning.
 
 AVATAR. 99 
 
 The courtyard was vast. Octave-Labinski 
 took in the details with that rapidity of vision 
 which the mind acquires on certain impor- 
 tant occasions. Surrounded with symmetrical 
 buildings, and lighted by bronze lamp-posts 
 of which the gas darted white tongues of flame 
 into crystal lanterns resembling those that in 
 olden times ornamented the Bucentaur, the 
 Labinski mansion looked more like a palace 
 than a mere house. Boxes of orange trees, 
 worthy of the terrace at Versailles, stood at 
 equal distances along the edge of the asphalt, 
 which framed, like a border, the carpet of turf 
 forming the centre. 
 
 The transformed lover, on setting his foot 
 on the threshold, was obliged to pause an in- 
 stant and press his hand to his heart to still 
 its beating. He had, indeed, the body of Count 
 Olaf Labinski, but he possessed only its phys- 
 ical attributes ; all the ideas belonging to the 
 brain had flown with the soul of its first pro- 
 prietor, this house, which was henceforth to 
 be his, was strange to him ; he was even igno- 
 rant of its interior arrangements. A staircase 
 rose before him ; he followed where it led, 
 determined to attribute to abstraction any 
 mistake he might make. The polished stone 
 steps shone brilliantly, and threw into relief 
 the opulent crimson of the broad strip of vel- 
 vet carpet, which, held in place by rods of
 
 IOO TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 gilded brass, traced the way softly underfoot. 
 Stands, filled with beautiful exotic plants, lined 
 the stair. An immense windowed lantern, sus- 
 pended by a heavy rope of knotted and tas- 
 seled purple silk, flashed golden shimmers over 
 the stucco walls, smooth and white as marble, 
 and threw a flood of light on a reproduction 
 of one of Canova's most celebrated groups, 
 Cupid embracing Psyche. 
 
 The landing of the first and only story was 
 paved with mosaics of costly design, and on 
 the walls, hung by silken cords, were four pic- 
 tures, the work of Paris Bordone, Bonifazzio, 
 Palma the elder, and Paul Veronese, whose 
 architectural and pompous style harmonized 
 tvith the magnificence of the staircase. 
 
 A high baize door, studded with gold nails, 
 opened on the landing. Octave - Labinski 
 pushed it, and found himself in a large ante- 
 chamber, where drowsed several liveried foot- 
 men, who at his approach rose as if on springs, 
 and ranged themselves along the walls with 
 the impassibility of Oriental slaves. He passed 
 on. A white- an d-gold drawing-room succeeded 
 the antechamber, but there was no one in it. 
 Octave rang a bell. A maid appeared. 
 
 " Can madame receive me ? " 
 
 " Her ladyship is undressing, but she will 
 be visible presently."
 
 AVATAR. 101 
 
 VII. 
 
 LEFT alone with the body of Octave de 
 Saville, which the soul of Count Olaf Labinski 
 inhabited, Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau set 
 himself to work to bring it back to every-day 
 life. After a few passes Olaf-de Saville (we 
 must now unite these two names to desig- 
 nate a double personage) came out of the pro- 
 found slumber, or rather catalepsy, which had 
 chained him, like a spectre from Hades, stiff 
 and motionless, to the sofa. He rose with an 
 automatic movement, undirected as yet by the 
 will, and staggered from dizziness. Objects 
 swayed about him ; the incarnations of Vishnu 
 on the walls danced a saraband. Dr. Cher- 
 bonneau, waving his arms like wings, and 
 rolling his blue eyes in wrinkled, brown or- 
 bits which looked like the rims of spectacles, 
 appeared to him as the Mahatma of Elephanta. 
 The weird sights at which he had assisted be- 
 fore falling into the mesmeric trance reacted 
 on his reason, and he grasped reality slowly. 
 He resembled a sleeper suddenly awakened 
 from a nightmare, who mistakes the clothes 
 scattered over the furniture for vague, human 
 shapes, and thinks the brass curtain knobs, 
 shining with the reflection of the night-light, 
 are the flaming eyes of cyclops.
 
 102 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 Little by little this phantasmagoria evapo- 
 rated, and things resumed their natural aspect ; 
 M. Balthazar Cherbonneau was no longer an 
 Indian fakir, but a plain doctor of medicine, 
 who smiled at his patient with commonplace 
 good nature. 
 
 " Are you satisfied, sir," he said, in a tone 
 of obsequious humility, in which could be dis- 
 cerned a shade of irony ; " are you satisfied 
 with the experiments which I have had the 
 honor to make before you? I dare to hope 
 that you will not much regret your evening, 
 and that you will leave here convinced that 
 all that is told of magnetism is not, as official 
 science affirms, mere fable and jugglery." 
 
 Olaf-de Saville nodded assent, and left the 
 apartment accompanied by Dr. Cherbonneau, 
 who made him a low bow at each door. 
 
 The brougham drove up, grazing the steps, 
 and the soul of the Countess Labinska's hus- 
 band, which inhabited Octave de Saville's body, 
 entered it without noticing that neither the liv- 
 ery nor the carriage was his. 
 
 The coachman asked where his master wished 
 to go. 
 
 " Home," answered Olaf-de Saville, con- 
 fusedly, astonished at not hearing the voice of 
 the chasseur who usually asked him this ques- 
 tion with a most pronounced Hungarian ac- 
 cent The brougham in which he found him-
 
 AVATAR. IO3 
 
 self was upholstered with dark-blue damask ; 
 his own coupe was lined with buttercup col- 
 ored satin, and the count, though surprised, 
 accepted it all much as one does in a dream 
 where ordinary objects present themselves un- 
 der strange aspects without however ceasing to 
 be recognizable. He felt smaller than usual , 
 also, it seemed to him he had gone to the physi- 
 cian's in evening dress ; yet, without remem- 
 brance of having changed his clothes, he saw 
 that he wore a summer suit of thin material, 
 which had never formed -part of his wardrobe. 
 His mind was confused, and his thoughts, so 
 lucid in the morning, unraveled themselves 
 laboriously. Attributing this singular state to 
 the weird scenes of the evening, he thought 
 no more of it ; and leaning his head against 
 the side of the carriage, he drifted into an 
 undefined reverie, a vague dreaminess, which 
 was neither waking nor sleeping. 
 
 The sudden halt of the horse, and the coach- 
 man's voice shouting " Gate ! " recalled him 
 to himself ; he lowered the window, put out 
 his head, and saw by the light of a lamp an 
 unfamiliar street, and a house which was not 
 his own. 
 
 " Where the devil have you brought me, 
 fool ? " he cried ; " are we in the Faubourg 
 Saint-Honore, Hotel Labinski ? " 
 
 " Excuse me, sir ; I did not understand,"
 
 IO4 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 muttered the coachman, turning his horse in 
 the direction indicated. 
 
 During the transit the transformed count 
 asked himself several questions which he was 
 unable to answer. Why had his own carriage 
 left without him, since he had ordered it to 
 wait ? Why did he find himself in some one 
 else's. For the moment he fancied that the 
 clearness of his perceptions must be obscured 
 by fever, or perhaps that the thaumaturgistic 
 doctor, to impress his credulity more keenly, 
 had made him inhale in his sleep hashish or 
 some other hallucinating drug, whose illusions 
 would be dispelled by a night's rest. 
 
 The carriage reached the Labinski mansion. 
 The Suisse, when summoned, refused to open 
 the door, saying it was not a reception even- 
 ing, and adding that his master had returned 
 an hour ago, and her ladyship had retired. 
 
 " Fool, are you drunk or crazy ? " cried Olaf- 
 de Saville, pushing aside the giant who rose 
 colossal from the threshold of the half-open 
 door, like one of those bronze statues which, 
 in Arab tales, defend from wandering knights 
 the entrance to enchanted castles. 
 
 " Drunk or crazy yourself, my little gentle- 
 man," answered the man, who from his natural 
 crimson turned purple with anger. 
 
 "Scoundrel!" roared Olaf-de Saville, "did 
 I not respect myself "
 
 AVATAR. 105 
 
 " Be quiet, or I will break you across my knee 
 and throw the pieces on the sidewalk," replied 
 the giant, opening a hand larger than the huge 
 plaster hand in the glove shop of the Rue 
 Richelieu ; " you must not be ugly with me, my 
 little man, because you have drunk too much 
 champagne." 
 
 Olaf-de Saville, exasperated, shoved the 
 Suisse so fiercely that he got by under the 
 porch. Several footmen who were still up ran 
 forward at the noise of the altercation. 
 
 " I discharge you, stupid animal, wretch, vil- 
 lain ! You shall not even spend the night in 
 the house. Go, or I will kill you as I would a 
 mad dog. Do not force me to spill the base 
 blood of a lackey." 
 
 And the count, dispossessed of his body, 
 with blood-shot eyes, foaming lips, and clinched 
 hands, rushed at the enormous Suisse, who 
 grasped his aggressor's hands in one of his 
 own, and held them almost crushed in the vise 
 of his short, thick fingers, fleshy and knotted 
 like those of a medieval torturer. 
 
 "There now," said the giant, who, good- 
 natured enough in the main, and fearing noth- 
 ing more from his adversary, simply gave him 
 a shake or two to keep him respectful. " There 
 now, is there any sense in getting into such a 
 state when one is dressed like a man of the 
 world, and then come like a rowdy making a
 
 106 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 racket at night in respectable houses ? One 
 owes a certain consideration to wine, and that 
 which has made you so drunk must be famous, 
 that is why I do not knock you down, and I 
 shall just put you gently out on the sidewalk, 
 where the watchman will pick you up if you 
 continue your uproar. A breath of prison air 
 will sharpen your wits." 
 
 " Rascals," cried Olaf-de Saville to the as- 
 sembled lackeys, " you allow this low varlet to 
 insult your master, the noble Count Labin- 
 ski ! " 
 
 At this name the footmen with one accord 
 gave a loud shout ; a burst of laughter, Homeric 
 and convulsive, lifted their galloon - covered 
 chests. 
 
 " This little gentleman who thinks himself 
 the Count Labinski ! ha, ha, ha ! the idea is 
 good ! " 
 
 An icy sweat broke out on Olaf-de Saville's 
 temples. A sharp thought pierced his brain 
 like a dagger, and he felt the marrow freeze in 
 his bones. Was Smarra's knee on his chest, 
 or was this real life ? Had his reason foun- 
 dered in the bottomless sea of magnetism, 
 or was he the plaything of some diabolical 
 machination ? Not one of his servants, so trem- 
 bling, so submissive, so prostrate before him, 
 recognized their master. Had his body been 
 changed as well as his clothing and carriage ?
 
 AVATAR. lO/ 
 
 "That you may be very sure of not being 
 the Count Labinski," said one of the most in- 
 solent of the group, " look, there he is, aroused 
 by your clamor, descending the steps him- 
 self." 
 
 The Suisse's captive turned his eyes towards 
 the end of the court, and saw, erect under the 
 awning of the marquise, a slender, graceful 
 young man, with oval face, black eyes, aquiline 
 nose, and slight mustache, a young man who 
 was none other than himself, or else his own 
 ghost modeled by the devil with delusive cun- 
 ning. 
 
 The Suisse dropped the hands which he held 
 imprisoned. The lackeys ranged themselves 
 respectfully against the wall, and with lowered 
 eyes, hanging hands, in an absolute immobility, 
 like pages at the approach of the Sultan, they 
 rendered to this phantom the honors which 
 the real count was denied. 
 
 Prascovie's husband, though brave as a Slav, 
 a term which implies everything, felt an un- 
 speakable terror at the approach of this Me- 
 nechme, who in mingling with real life and 
 making his double unrecognizable was far 
 more terrible than on the stage. An ancient 
 family legend came to his mind and increased 
 his dread. Each time a Labinski was to die, 
 he was warned by the appearance of a phan- 
 tom exactly similar to himself. Among north-
 
 IO8 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 ern nations to see one's double, even in a 
 dream, is always regarded as a fatal omen, 
 and the intrepid warrior of the Caucasus, at 
 the aspect of this external vision of his own 
 self, was seized with an insurmountable super- 
 stitious horror. He who would have plunged 
 his arm in the mouth of a loaded cannon re- 
 coiled at sight of himself. 
 
 Octave-Labinski advanced toward his former 
 body, in which the count's indignant soul was 
 struggling and shivering, and said, in a tone 
 of cold and haughty politeness, 
 
 " Sir, do not compromise yourself with these 
 servants. The Count Labinski, if you wish to 
 speak to him, is visible from noon until two 
 o'clock. The countess receives on Thursdays 
 those who have had the honor to be presented 
 to her." 
 
 Having uttered these sentences slowly, and 
 emphasized each syllable, the pseudo- count 
 quietly withdrew, and the doors closed behind 
 him. 
 
 Olaf-de Saville was put in his carriage un- 
 conscious. When he came to his senses he 
 was lying on a bed unlike his own in shape, 
 in a room which he did not remember ever to 
 have entered. At his side stood a strange 
 servant, who raised his head and made him 
 smell a bottle of salts. " Do you feel better, 
 sir ? " Jean asked the count, whom he took 
 for his master.
 
 AVATAR. 109 
 
 " Yes," answered Olaf-de Saville ; " it was 
 nothing but a momentary faintness." 
 
 " Shall I leave you, sir, or had I better sit 
 up ? " 
 
 " No, leave me ; but, before going, light the 
 candelabra by the mirror." 
 
 " You are not afraid, sir, that the light will 
 prevent your sleeping ? " 
 
 " Not at all ; besides, I am not yet sleepy." 
 
 " I shall not go to bed, sir," said Jean, in- 
 wardly alarmed at the count's pallor and drawn 
 features, " and if you need anything I will come 
 at the first sound of the bell." 
 
 When Jean, after lighting the candles, had 
 gone, the count hurried to the mirror, and in 
 the clear glass where the scintillations of the 
 lights flickered he saw the face of a young 
 man that was sad and gentle, he saw abundant 
 black hair, eyes of a sombre azure, and pale 
 cheeks covered with a dark, silky beard. In 
 fact, a visage which was not his own, and 
 which gazed at him from the depths of the 
 mirror with an air of surprise. At first he 
 tried to believe that some practical joker was 
 framing his face in the brass and inlaid moth- 
 er-of-pearl border of the Venetian mirror. He 
 felt behind it ; there was no one. 
 
 His hands, which he then examined, were 
 longer, thinner, and more veined than his own. 
 On the fourth finger projected a heavy gold
 
 I IO TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 ring with a seal, on which was engraved a coat- 
 of-arms, a shield divided, gules and silver, 
 surmounted by a baron's crown. This ring 
 had never belonged to the count, who wore 
 one that bore an eagle displayed in sable, and 
 for crest a pearled coronet. He searched his 
 pockets and drew out a small card-case con- 
 taining visiting cards with the name : " Octave 
 de Saville." 
 
 The laughter of the lackeys at the Hotel 
 Labinski, the apparition of his double, the un- 
 known physiognomy substituted for his own re- 
 flection in the mirror, all this might possibly be 
 the illusions of a disordered brain ; but these 
 different clothes, the ring which he took from 
 his finger, were material, palpable proofs, evi- 
 dence not to be denied. A complete meta- 
 morphosis had taken place in him without his 
 knowledge. A magician, without doubt, a 
 devil perhaps, had stolen from him his form, 
 his nobility, his name, his whole personality, 
 leaving him only his soul without means to 
 manifest it. The fantastic stories of Pierre 
 Schlemil and the Tale of Saint Sylvester's 
 Night came to his mind. But La Motte-Fouque 
 and Hoffmann's characters had only lost the 
 one his shadow, and the other his reflection, 
 and if this strange loss of a projection which 
 every one possesses inspired vexatious suspi- 
 cions, at least no one denied that they were 
 themselves.
 
 A VA TAR. Ill 
 
 The count's position was far worse. He 
 could not claim his own title with the body in 
 which he was now imprisoned. In the eyes of 
 the world he would pass for an impudent im- 
 postor, or at least for a madman. In this de- 
 ceitful envelope even his wife would disown 
 him. How could he prove to her his identity ? 
 Yet surely there were a thousand familiar 
 events, a thousand intimate details unknown 
 to every one else, which, recalled to Prascovie, 
 would make her recognize her husband's soul 
 in this disguise ; but of what use would her 
 recognition be even if he obtained it, against 
 the verdict of the world ? 
 
 He was really and absolutely dispossessed 
 of his self. And he had another anxiety. Was 
 his transformation limited to the exterior 
 change of figure and features, or did he really 
 inhabit the body of another ? In this case, 
 what had been done with his own? Had a 
 lime pit consumed it, or had it become the 
 property of some bold marauder ? The double 
 seen at the Hotel Labinski could be a spectre, 
 a vision perhaps, but it might also be a physi- 
 cal being, installed in the skin which that fakir- 
 faced physician had stolen from him with in- 
 fernal skill. 
 
 A frightful idea stung his heart like a vi- 
 per's fang : " But this fictitious Count Labinski 
 pressed into my shape by the devil's hands,
 
 112 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 this vampire who is now living in my house, 
 whom my servants obey in spite of me, per- 
 haps at this moment he is setting his cloven 
 hoof on the threshold of that room where I 
 have never entered less agitated than on the 
 first night. And does Prascovie smile and, 
 with a divine blush, lean her charming head 
 on that shoulder marked by the devil's claw, 
 taking for me that lying shell, that ghoul, that 
 hideous son of night and hell? Shall I rush 
 to the house, and setting it on fire, shout amid 
 the flames to Prascovie : ' You are deceived ; 
 it is not your beloved Olaf whom you press to 
 your heart ! You are about to commit an 
 abominable crime which my despairing soul 
 will still remember when Time is weary of 
 turning his hour-glass ! ' " 
 
 Waves of flame surged through the count's 
 brain. He gave inarticulate cries of rage, 
 gnawed his knuckles, and paced the room like 
 a wild beast. Insanity was about to sub- 
 merge the dim consciousness of self which 
 remained to him. He ran to Octave's toilet 
 table, filled a basin with water, and plunged 
 his head into an icy bath. 
 
 His presence of mind returned. He told 
 himself that the age of magic and sorcery 
 was past; that death alone separated body 
 and soul ; that in the centre of Paris a Po- 
 lish count accredited with several millions at
 
 AVATAR. 113 
 
 Rothschilds, related to the best families, the 
 beloved husband of a fashionable woman, 
 and decorated with the Order of Saint-Andre', 
 could not be juggled with in this way. All 
 this was undoubtedly but a joke, in very bad 
 taste, indeed, but still a joke of M. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau, a joke which could be explained 
 as naturally as the bugbears of Anne Radcliffe's 
 novels. As he was worn out with fatigue he 
 threw himself on Octave's bed, and fell into a 
 deep sleep, so heavy that it resembled death, 
 and which lasted until Jean, thinking his mas- 
 ter awake, came in to lay the letters and news- 
 papers on the table. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE count opened his eyes and cast about 
 him an investigating look. He saw a comfort- 
 able but simple bedroom. A carpet, spotted 
 in imitation of a leopard skin, covered the 
 floor, and tapestry curtains, which Jean had 
 just drawn back, hung at the windows and hid 
 the doors; on the walls was a green velvet 
 paper simulating cloth. A clock cut from a 
 block of black marble, with a metal dial, sur- 
 mounted by the statuette of Diana in oxidized 
 silver reduced by Barbedienne, and accom- 
 panied by two antique vases also in silver,
 
 114 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 decorated the mantel, which was of white mar- 
 ble veined with blue. The Venetian mirror in 
 which the count had discovered the previous 
 evening that he did not possess his usual face, 
 and the portrait of an old lady painted by 
 Flandrin, without doubt Octave's mother, were 
 the only ornaments of this rather sad, sedate 
 chamber. 
 
 A divan, an arm-chair near the fireplace, a 
 study table covered with books and papers, 
 furnished the room comfortably, but in no wise 
 recalled the sumptuousness of the Hotel La- 
 binski. 
 
 " Will you get up, sir ? " said Jean in tht 
 careful voice which he had adopted during 
 Octave's illness, as he handed ^he count the 
 silk shirt, flannel trousers, and Algerian gan- 
 doura, which formed his master's morning cos- 
 tume. Though the count revolted at putting 
 on a stranger's clothes, he was obliged to ac- 
 cept those Jean offered him or remain naked ; 
 s'o he put his feet down on the soft black bear- 
 skin rug at the side of the bed. 
 
 His toilet was soon finished, and Jean, with- 
 out appearing to have the least doubt as to 
 the identity of the false Octave de Saville 
 whom he helped to dress, asked him, "At 
 what hour will you breakfast, sir ? " 
 
 " At the usual hour," replied the count, who 
 had resolved to outwardly accept his incom-
 
 AVATAR. 115 
 
 prehensible transformation so as not to raise 
 obstacles to the steps he intended to take to 
 recover his personality. 
 
 Jean left the room, and Olaf-de Saville 
 opened the two letters which had come with 
 the newspapers, hoping to get from them some 
 information. The first contained friendly re- 
 proaches, and complained that the old habits 
 of comradeship were interrupted without mo- 
 tive ; it was signed with a name unknown to 
 him. The second was from Octave's lawyer, 
 and urged him to come and draw a quarter's 
 income long due him, or at least to designate 
 an investment for this money which was lying 
 unproductive. 
 
 " So it seems," the count said to himself, 
 "that the Octave de Saville whose body I 
 occupy much against my will really exists. 
 He is not a fanciful being, a character of 
 Achim Arnim or of Cle'ment Brentano : he 
 has an apartment, friends, a lawyer, an in- 
 come greater than his wants, in fact everything 
 which constitutes the legal status of a gentle- 
 man. Nevertheless, it seems to me I am the 
 Count Olaf Labinski." 
 
 A glance in the mirror convinced him that 
 this opinion would be shared by no one ; the 
 reflection was the same by the clear daylight 
 as by the uncertain flicker of the candles. 
 
 In continuing the domiciliary visit he opened
 
 Il6 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 the drawers of the table : in one he found title 
 deeds of property, two one - thousand franc 
 notes, and fifty louis, which latter he appro- 
 priated without scruple for the needs of the 
 campaign which he was about to begin ; while 
 in the other drawer he noticed a Russian 
 leather portfolio closed by a patent lock. 
 
 Jean entered announcing M. Alfred Hum- 
 bert, who rushed into the room with the fa- 
 miliarity of an old friend without waiting till 
 the servant returned with his master's answer. 
 
 " Good morning, Octave," said the new- 
 comer, a handsome young man with a frank, 
 cordial manner ; " what are you up to, what has 
 become of you, are you dead or alive ? No 
 one sees you ; I write, you do not answer. I 
 should avoid you, but I have no false pride in 
 matters of affection, and I come to see how 
 you are. Good heavens ! I cannot let a col- 
 lege friend die of melancholy in the depths of 
 this apartment which is as lugubrious as one 
 of Charles the Fifth's cells in the Yuste Mon- 
 astery. You imagine you are ill, but you are 
 bored, that is all. I shall force you to dis- 
 tract yourself, and I mean to play the despot 
 and take you to a jolly breakfast in which Gus- 
 tave Raimbaud buries his bachelor freedom." 
 
 Uttering this tirade in a half angry, half hu- 
 morous tone, he took the count's hand in his 
 and shook it vigorously.
 
 AVATAR. 117 
 
 " No," answered Prascovie's husband, enter- 
 ing into the spirit of his part, "I am even 
 more indisposed to-day than usual ; I am not 
 in good condition ; I should sadden and de- 
 press you." 
 
 " It is true you are pale and you look tired. 
 I will wait for a more favorable occasion. I 
 am off, for I am late for three dozen oysters 
 and a bottle of Sauterne," said Alfred, going 
 towards the door. " Raimbaud will be sorry 
 not to see you." 
 
 This visit increased the count's depression. 
 Jean took him for his master, Alfred for his 
 friend. A last trial awaited him. The door 
 opened, and a lady whose hair was streaked 
 with gray, and who in the most striking man- 
 ner resembled the portrait on the wall, en- 
 tered the room, took a seat on the sofa, and 
 said to the count, 
 
 " How are you, my poor Octave ? Jean has 
 told me that you came in late yesterday in a 
 state of alarming weakness ; do take care of 
 yourself, my dear son, for you know how 
 much I love you notwithstanding the grief 
 caused me by this inexplicable melancholy, the 
 secret of which you have never been willing 
 to confide." 
 
 "Fear nothing, mother, it is not serious," 
 replied Olaf-de Saville ; " I am much better 
 to-day."
 
 Il8 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 Reassured, Mme. de Saville rose and de- 
 parted, not wishing to annoy her son, who, 
 she knew, disliked to be long disturbed in his 
 solitude. 
 
 " Now I am decidedly Octave de Saviile," 
 cried the count when the old lady had gone ; 
 " his mother recognizes me, and does not 
 divine a stranger under her son's epidermis. 
 Perhaps I am then forever immured in this 
 envelope. What a curious prison for a soul 
 is the body of another ! It is hard though to 
 renounce being the Count Olaf LabinsU, to 
 lose his coat-of-arms, his wife, his fortune, and 
 to be reduced to a miserable commonplace 
 existence. Oh ! to get out of it I would tear 
 this skin of Nessus which clings to me, and I 
 would return it to its owner in a thousand 
 shreds. Shall I go back to the hotel ? No ! 
 I should make a terrible scandal, and the 
 Suisse would throw me out, for I have no 
 strength in this invalid's dressing-gown. I 
 must think, and look about me, for I must 
 know something about the life of this Octave 
 de Saville who is at present myself." 
 
 He tried to open the portfolio. Touched 
 by chance the spring yielded, and the count 
 drew from the leather pockets first a number 
 of sheets of paper blackened with fine, close 
 writing, and then a square of vellum. On 
 this an unskilled but faithful hand had drawn,
 
 AVATAR. 119 
 
 with love's memory and a resemblance not 
 always attained by great artists, a crayon 
 portrait which it was impossible not to rec- 
 ognize at the first glance. It was the Countess 
 Prascovie Labinska ! 
 
 At this discovery the count was stupefied. 
 A feeling of furious jealousy succeeded his 
 surprise ; how did the countess's portrait come 
 to be in the private portfolio of this strange 
 young man ? how did he get it ? who had made 
 it? who had given it to him? Had the reli- 
 giously adored Prascovie descended from her 
 sky of love to a vulgar intrigue ? What infer- 
 nal jest incarnated him, the husband, in the 
 body of the lover of this woman, till then 
 believed so pure ? After being the husband, 
 he was to be the lover ! Sarcastic metamor- 
 phosis, a reversal of position sufficient to turn 
 one's brain, he might trick himself, be at the 
 same time Clitandre and Georges Dandin ! 
 All these ideas buzzed tumultuously in his 
 mind ; he felt he was losing his reason, and 
 he made a supreme effort of will to regain 
 a little composure. Without hearing Jean 
 announce that breakfast was ready, he con- 
 tinued with nervous trepidation the examina- 
 tion of the mysterious portfolio. 
 
 The leaves composed a sort of psychologi- 
 cal journal, abandoned and resumed at differ- 
 ent intervals. Here are several fragments 
 devoured by the count with anxious curiosity.
 
 I2O TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " She will never love me, never, never ! I 
 have read in her soft eyes the cruel sentence 
 than which Dante could find nothing more 
 severe to inscribe on the bronze gates of the 
 CitiDoknte: 'Lose all hope.' What have I 
 done to God to be damned alive ? To-morrow, 
 after to-morrow, always, it will be the same. 
 The planets may intercross their orbits, the 
 stars in conjunction may knot, but nothing 
 in my destiny will change. With a word 
 she has dispelled the dream ; with a gesture 
 broken the chimera's wings. The fabulous 
 combinations of the impossible offer me no 
 chance ; the numbers thrown a million times 
 in fortune's wheel will never come up, there 
 is no winning number for me ! 
 
 " Fool that I am ! I know that paradise 
 is closed to me, and I sit stupidly on the 
 threshold, with my back against the door 
 which will not open, and I weep silently, with- 
 out violence, without effort, as if my eyes were 
 living springs. I have not the courage to rise 
 and plunge into the immense desert or into the 
 tumultuous Babel of men. 
 
 "When, sometimes, in the night I cannot 
 sleep, I think of Prascovie ; if I sleep I dream 
 of her. Oh, how beautiful she was that day 
 in the garden of the Villa Salviati, at Flor- 
 ence ! That white dress with the black rib- 
 bons, it was charming and funereal ! The
 
 AVATAR. 121 
 
 white for her, the black for me ! Now and 
 then the ribbons stirred by the breeze formed 
 a cross on the background of startling white, 
 an invisible spirit was murmuring the death 
 mass of my heart. 
 
 " Should some surprising catastrophe tiara 
 my brow with the crown of an emperor or ca- 
 liph, should the earth bleed for me her veins 
 of gold, should the diamond mines of Gol- 
 conda and of Visiapour allow me to dig in 
 their sparkling galleries, should Byron's lyre 
 resound under my fingers, should the most per- 
 fect works of antique and modern art lend me 
 their charms, should I discover a new world, 
 well, for all that I would not be further ad- 
 vanced ! 
 
 " On what a thread hangs fate ! If I had had 
 the desire to go to Constantinople I should 
 not have met her; I stay in Florence, I see 
 her, and I die. 
 
 " I should have killed myself, but she 
 breathes the air in which I live, and perhaps 
 my covetous lip may seize oh, ineffable joy ! 
 a distant emanation of that perfumed 
 breath. And, besides, my guilty soul would 
 be assigned to an exile's planet, and I should 
 lose the chance to make her love me in an- 
 other life. To be separated there, she in 
 paradise, I in hell : oh, maddening thought ! 
 
 " Why must I love precisely the one woman
 
 122 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 who cannot love me ! Others, called beauti- 
 ful, who were free, smiled on me with their 
 tenderest smiles, and seemed to invite an 
 avowal which did not come. Oh, how happy 
 is he ! What sublimity of former life does 
 God recompense in him by the magnificent 
 gift of her love ? " 
 
 It was unnecessary to read further. The 
 suspicion which the count had conceived at 
 sight of Prascovie's portrait had vanished at 
 the first lines of this sad confession. He un- 
 derstood that the cherished image, recom- 
 menced a thousand times, had been drawn far 
 from the model with the tender and indefatiga- 
 ble patience of an unhappy love, and that it 
 was the madonna of a mystical shrine, before 
 which kneeled a hopeless adoration. 
 
 " But perhaps this Octave has made a com- 
 pact with the devil to divest me of my body, 
 and then in my form to profit by Prascovie's 
 unsuspecting love ! " 
 
 Though it troubled him strangely, the im- 
 probability of such a supposition in these mod- 
 ern days made the count soon discard it. 
 
 Smiling to himself at his credulity, he ate 
 the now cold breakfast which Jean had brought, 
 then dressed, and ordered the carriage. When 
 it was ready, he had himself driven to Dr. 
 Balthazar Cherbonneau's, and crossed the 
 rooms which he had entered the day before as
 
 AVATAR. 123 
 
 the Count Olaf Labinski, and from which he 
 had come out saluted by all the world with the 
 name of Octave de Saville. The physician 
 was seated, as usual, on the divan in the far- 
 thest room, holding his foot in his hand, and 
 seemingly plunged in a profound meditation. 
 
 At the sound of the count's steps he raised 
 his head. 
 
 " Ah ! it is you, my dear Octave. I was 
 about to go to you, but it is a good sign when 
 the invalid comes to the physician." 
 
 " Always Octave ! I think I shall go mad 
 with rage," thought the count. Then crossing 
 his arms, he stood in front of the physician, 
 and fastening on him a terrible look, said, 
 
 "You know perfectly, M. Balthazar Cher- 
 bonneau, that I am not Octave, but Count Olaf 
 Labinski, and you know it, because last even- 
 ing, on this very spot you stole my skin by 
 means of your foreign witchcraft." 
 
 At these words the doctor gave a shout of 
 laughter, fell back on his cushions, and held his 
 sides to restrain the convulsions of his gayety. 
 
 " Moderate this excessive mirth of which 
 you may repent, doctor. I speak seriously." 
 
 " So much the worse ! that proves that the 
 anaesthesia and the hypochondria for which I 
 have been treating you are turning into insan- 
 ity. I must change the regimen, that is all." 
 
 " I do not know what keeps me from stran-
 
 124 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 gling you with my hands, you doctor of the 
 devil," cried the count, advancing towards 
 Cherbonneau. 
 
 The physician smiled at the count's menace, 
 and touched him with the end of a little steel 
 rod. Olaf-de Saville received a frightful shock, 
 and thought his arm was broken. 
 
 " Oh ! we have means to compel invalids 
 when they resist," said Cherbonneau, turning on 
 him the look, cold as a douche, which conquers 
 madmen and subdues the lion. " Go home, 
 take a bath, and this excitement will pass 
 away." 
 
 Confused by the electric shock, Olaf-de Sa- 
 ville left Dr. Cherbonneau's, more upset and 
 uncertain than ever. He had himself driven 
 to Passy to consult Dr. B. 
 
 To this celebrated physician he said, " I am 
 the prey of a strange hallucination; when I 
 look in the glass my face does not appear to 
 me with its usual features ; the objects which 
 surround me are changed ; I do not recognize 
 either the walls or the furniture of my room ; 
 it seems to me that I am not myself but some 
 one else." 
 
 " Under what aspect do you see yourself ? " 
 asked the physician ; " the delusion may come 
 from the eyes or from the brain." 
 
 "I see myself with black hair, dark blue 
 eyes, and a pale face framed by a beard."
 
 AVATAR. 125 
 
 " A passport description could not be more 
 exact : you have neither mental hallucination 
 nor perverted sight. You are, in fact, just as 
 you describe." 
 
 " Oh, no ! I have really fair hair, black 
 eyes, tanned skin, and a slight mustache d 
 la hongroise" 
 
 " Here," replied the physician, " begins an 
 alteration of the mental faculties." 
 
 " Nevertheless, doctor, I am not in the least 
 insane." 
 
 " Quite true. It is only sane people who 
 come to me of themselves. A little fatigue, 
 some excess in study or pleasure, has caused 
 this trouble. You are mistaken ; the vision is 
 real, the idea chimerical : instead of being 
 fair and seeing yourself dark, you are dark 
 and think yourself fair." 
 
 " Still, I am sure of being Count Olaf La- 
 binski, but since yesterday every one calls me 
 Octave de Saville." 
 
 " That is precisely what I said," answered 
 the doctor. " You are M. de Saville, and you 
 imagine yourself to be Count Labinski, whom 
 I remember to have seen, and who, as you 
 say, is fair. That explains perfectly why you 
 see yourself in the mirror with another face ; 
 this face which is yours does not correspond 
 with your idea and surprises you. Remember 
 this, that every one calls you M. de Saville, and
 
 126 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 consequently does not share your belief. 
 Come and spend a fortnight here ; the baths, 
 the rest, the walks under the large trees, will 
 dissipate this annoying impression." 
 
 The count bowed and promised to come 
 again. He no longer knew what to think. 
 He returned to the apartment in the Rue Saint 
 Lazare, and by chance saw on the table the in- 
 vitation of the Countess Labinska, which Oc- 
 tave had shown to M. Cherbonneau. 
 
 "With this talisman," he cried to himself, 
 " I can see her to-morrow." 
 
 IX. 
 
 WHEN the real Count Labinski, chased from 
 his terrestrial paradise by the false guardian 
 angel who stood on the threshold, had been 
 taken to his carriage by the servants, the trans- 
 formed Octave went back to the little cream- 
 and-gold salon to wait the countess' leisure. 
 
 Leaning against a white marble mantel of 
 which the hearth was filled with flowers, he saw 
 himself reflected in the depths of the glass 
 placed on a gilt - legged console opposite. 
 Though he was in the secret of his meta- 
 morphosis, or, to speak more exactly, of his 
 transposition, he had some difficulty in per- 
 suading himself that this image, so different
 
 AVATAR. 127 
 
 from his own, was the reflection of his present 
 form, and .he could not turn his eyes from the 
 phantom stranger who yet had become him- 
 self. He gazed at himself and saw some one 
 else. Involuntarily he looked to see if the 
 Count Olaf were not leaning on the mantel 
 beside him and thus throwing his reflection 
 in the mirror. But he was quite alone. Dr. 
 Cherbonneau had done the thing thoroughly. 
 
 After a few minutes, Octave-Labinski ceased 
 to consider the marvelous avatar which had 
 placed his soul in the body of Prascovie's hus- 
 band ; his thoughts took a turn more conform- 
 able to his situation. This incredible event, of 
 which the wildest visionary would not in his 
 delirium have dared to dream, had been brought 
 about. He was to find himself in the pres- 
 ence of the beautiful and adored being, and 
 she would not repulse him ! The only com- 
 bination which could unite his happiness with 
 the immaculate virtue of the countess was 
 achieved ! 
 
 At the approach of this supreme moment 
 his soul underwent the most dreadful agony 
 and anxiety ; the timidity of true love made 
 it as weak as were it still in the despised body 
 of Octave de Saville. 
 
 The entrance of the maid put an end to his 
 combat with this tumult of thoughts. At sight 
 of her he could not control a nervous start}
 
 128 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 and the blood surged to his heart when she 
 said, 
 
 " Her ladyship can receive you now, sir." 
 Octave-Labinski followed the woman, for he 
 was unfamiliar with the different parts of the 
 house and did not wish to betray his ignorance 
 by taking uncertain steps. The maid showed 
 him into a good-sized room ; it was a dressing- 
 room ornamented with all the most delicate 
 refinements of luxury. A set of wardrobes in 
 precious wood carved by Knecht and Lienhart, 
 formed a sort of architectural wainscoting, a 
 portico of capricious style, rare elegance, and 
 finished execution. The doors were separated 
 by columns around which heart-shaped leaves 
 of convolvuli and bell-like flowers, cut with 
 infinite skill, twined in ascending spirals. In 
 these wardrobes were kept gowns of velvet 
 and of silk, cashmeres, wraps, laces, cloaks 
 of sable and blue fox, hats of a thousand 
 shapes, and all the belongings of a pretty 
 woman. 
 
 Opposite, the same idea was repeated with 
 this difference, that the smooth panels were 
 replaced by mirrors revolving on hinges like 
 the leaves of a screen, so that it was possible 
 to see the face, profile, or back, and to judge 
 of the effect of a bodice or a head-dress. On 
 the third side was a long toilet-table with an 
 alabaster-onyx top, where the silver faucets
 
 AVATAR. 129 
 
 spouted hot and cold water into huge Jap- 
 anese bowls set in an open-work rim of the 
 same metal ; Bohemian glass bottles sparkling 
 in the candlelight like diamonds and rubies, 
 contained essences and perfumes. 
 
 The walls and ceiling were tufted with Nile 
 green satin, like the inside of a jewel-case. A 
 thick Smyrna rug, with softly blending colors, 
 wadded the floor. 
 
 On a green velvet pedestal in the centre of 
 the room was set a large chest of fantastic 
 shape in Khorassan steel, chased, embossed, 
 and engraved with arabesques amplificated 
 enough to make the ornamentation of the Am- 
 bassadors' Hall in the Alhambra appear sim- 
 plicity itself. Oriental art seemed to have 
 done its best in this marvelous work, in which 
 the fairy fingers of the Peris must surely have 
 taken part. It was in this chest that the 
 Countess Prascovie Labinska inclosed her or- 
 naments, jewels fit for a queen, which she 
 wore rarely, thinking, with reason, that they 
 were not worth the place they covered. Her 
 woman's instinct told her that she was too 
 beautiful to need magnificence ! In conse- 
 quence, they only saw the light on solemn oc- 
 casions when the hereditary pomp of the an- 
 cient Labinski family had to appear in all its 
 splendor. Diamonds never lay more idle. 
 
 Near the window, whose ample curtains
 
 I3O TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 hung in heavy folds, the Countess Prascovie 
 Labinska, radiantly fair and beautiful, was 
 seated at a lace-covered dressing-table, before 
 a mirror held toward her by two angels carved 
 by Mile, de Fauveau with the fragile elegance 
 which characterizes that lady's talent ; two 
 candelabra, each with six candles, flooded 
 her with light. An ideally fine Algerian bur- 
 nous, with blue and white stripes in alternation 
 opaque and transparent, enveloped her like a 
 fleecy cloud ; the thin material had slipped 
 from the satiny tissue of the shoulders, and re- 
 vealed the lines of a throat beside which the 
 snow-white neck of a swan would have ap- 
 peared gray indeed. The opening of the folds 
 was filled by the laces of a batiste gown, a 
 nocturnal attire without a restraining belt. The 
 countess' hair was undone, and fell behind 
 her in a mass as opulent as the mantle of an 
 empress. The flowing golden locks, from which 
 Venus Aphrodite kneeling in her mother-of- 
 pearl shell wrung the drops when she rose like 
 a flower from the blue Ionian Sea, were not 
 more blonde or luxurious ! Blend Titian's am- 
 ber and Paul Veronese's silver with the golden 
 varnish of Rembrandt, make the sun shine 
 through a topaz, and yet you will not obtain 
 the marvelous tint of her wonderful hair, which 
 seemed to give out light instead of receiving it, 
 and which would have merited more than did
 
 AVATAR. 131 
 
 Berenice's to shine, a new constellation, among 
 the ancient planets ! Two women were divid- 
 ing, smoothing, and rolling it in coils carefully 
 arranged that the contact with the pillow 
 should not rumple it. 
 
 During this delicate operation the countess 
 balanced on the end of her foot a Turkish 
 slipper of white velvet embroidered with gold, 
 small enough to create jealousy in the hearts 
 of the Sultan's khanouns and odalisques. 
 Now and then, throwing back the silky folds 
 of the burnous, she uncovered her white arm, 
 and with a gently impatient motion pushed 
 aside some stray lock of hair. 
 
 Reclining in this indolent posture she re- 
 called the graceful figures in the Greek toilet 
 scenes which decorate antique vases, and of 
 which no artist has since been able to reproduce 
 the pure and correct outlines or the youthful 
 and slender beauty. She was a thousand times 
 more seductive than in the garden of the Villa 
 Salviati at Florence, and had Octave not been 
 already wildly in love with her he would then 
 have infallibly become so ; but happily, noth- 
 ing can be added to the infinite. 
 
 At sight of her Octave-Labinski acted as if 
 he had seen the most terrible spectacle; his 
 knees knocked together and almost gave way 
 under him. His mouth grew parched. Dis- 
 tress seized him at the throat like the hand of
 
 132 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 a Thug, and flames danced before his eyes. 
 Her loveliness magnetized him. 
 
 Reflecting, however, that this stupid and be- 
 wildered manner fit for a repulsed lover was 
 perfectly ridiculous in a husband, no matter 
 how much in love he might still be with his 
 wife, he made a courageous effort, and stepped 
 firmly enough toward the countess. 
 
 " Ah ! it is you, Olaf ! How late you are this 
 evening ! " said the countess without turning, 
 for her head was held by the long braids which 
 the maids were twisting. Freeing it from the 
 folds of the burnous, she offered him one of 
 her beautiful hands. Octave-Labinski grasped 
 her soft, flower-like hand, carried it to his lips, 
 and pressed it with a long, burning kiss, his 
 whole soul concentrating itself on the little 
 spot. 
 
 It is impossible to know what sensitiveness 
 of the epidermis, what instinct of divine mod- 
 esty, what unconscious intuition of the heart 
 warned the countess ; but a crimson flush 
 spread swiftly over her face. Her throat and 
 her arms took on the hue of the snow on the 
 mountain-tops at the sun's earliest kiss. She 
 started, and, half angry, half ashamed, slowly 
 withdrew her hand. Octave's lips had given 
 her the impression of a hot iron. She quickly 
 recovered herself, however, and smiled at her 
 childishness.
 
 AVATAR. 133 
 
 " You do not answer me, dear Olaf . Do you 
 know that it is over six hours since I saw you ? 
 You neglect me," she added, in a reproachful 
 tone ; " formerly you would not have deserted 
 me so for a whole long evening. Did you even 
 think of me ? " 
 
 " All the time," replied Octave-Labinski. 
 
 " Oh, no, not all the time. I know when 
 you think of me even at a distance. This 
 evening, for instance, I was alone, seated at 
 the piano, playing a piece of Weber's to soothe 
 my dullness with music ; in the sonorous pul- 
 sations of the notes your spirit hovered about 
 me for several minutes ; but at the last chord 
 it flew away I know not whither, and did not 
 return. Do not contradict me, I am sure of 
 what I say." 
 
 Prascovie in fact was not mistaken. It was 
 the moment when Count Olaf Labinski, at Dr. 
 Cherbonneau's, had leaned over the magical 
 glass of water evoking with all the force of a 
 fixed idea an adored image. From that in- 
 stant, submerged in the fathomless ocean of 
 a magnetic slumber, the count had been with- 
 out thought, feeling, or volition. 
 
 Having finished the countess' toilet, the 
 maids withdrew. Octave-Labinski remained 
 standing, gazing at Prascovie with a look of 
 passion. 
 
 Constrained and oppressed by his expression,
 
 134 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 the countess wrapped herself in her burnous 
 like Polymnia in her draperies. Only her head 
 appeared above the blue-and-white folds, un- 
 easy but charming. 
 
 No human penetration could divine the 
 mysterious displacement of souls performed by 
 Dr. Cherbonneau by means of the Sannyasi 
 Brahma-Logum formula; still Prascovie did 
 not recognize in the eyes of Octave-Labinski 
 her husband's usual expression, that look of 
 love, chaste, calm, equal, eternal as the love of 
 angels. This look was kindled by an earthly 
 passion which troubled her and made her 
 blush. She did not understand what it was, 
 but she knew something had happened. A 
 thousand wild suppositions crossed her mind. 
 IVas she no longer for Olaf anything but a 
 common woman, desired for her beauty like 
 a courtesan ? Had the sublime accord of their 
 souls been broken by some dissonance of 
 which she was ignorant ? Did Olaf love an- 
 other, or had the corruptions of Paris sullied 
 the purity of his heart? She asked herself 
 these questions rapidly without being able to 
 answer them in a satisfactory manner, and she 
 told herself she was foolish, but still she felt 
 afraid. A secret terror invaded her as though 
 she were in the presence of some danger, un- 
 known, but divined by that second sight of the 
 mind which it is always wrong to disobey.
 
 AVATAR. 135 
 
 Nervous and agitated, she arose and went 
 toward the door of the bedroom. The pseudo- 
 count accompanied her as Othello leads away 
 Desdemona at each exit in Shakespeare's 
 play, with one arm around her waist ; but when 
 she was on the threshold she turned white and 
 cold as a statue, stopped a second, gave a 
 timorous glance at the young man, then en- 
 tered, closed the door quickly, and shot the bolt. 
 
 " Octave's look ! " she cried, and sank faint- 
 ing on a sofa. As her senses came back she 
 said to herself : " But how is it that this look 
 which I have never forgotten shines to-night 
 in Olaf's eyes ? Why have I seen its gloomy 
 and despairing flame sparkle in the pupils of 
 my husband ? Is Octave dead ? Is it his soul 
 which gleamed before me an instant to bid me 
 farewell on leaving this world ? Olaf ! Olaf ! 
 If I was mistaken, if I foolishly yielded to 
 empty fears, you will forgive me ; but if I had 
 welcomed you to-night I should have thought I 
 was giving myself to another." 
 
 The countess assured herself that the door 
 was well bolted, lighted a pendent lamp, and 
 with a sensation of indefinable anguish like a 
 timid child she hid herself in the bed. To- 
 wards morning she fell asleep; but strange 
 and incoherent dreams tormented her restless 
 slumber. Ardent eyes Octave's eyes 
 stared at her from a mist, and darted at her
 
 136 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 forks of fire ; while at the foot of her bed 
 crouched a black and wrinkled figure, mutter- 
 ing syllables in an unknown tongue. Count 
 Olaf also appeared in this absurd dream, but 
 clothed in a form which was not his own. 
 
 We will not attempt to portray Octave's dis- 
 appointment when he found himself facing a 
 closed door and heard the bolt grating inside. 
 His supreme hope had failed. He had had 
 recourse to strange and terrible methods ; he 
 had surrendered himself to a magician, perhaps 
 a demon, risking his life in this world, and his 
 soul in the next, to conquer a woman who es- 
 caped him, though rendered defenseless by the 
 sorcery of India. Repulsed as a lover, he was 
 not more fortunate as a husband ; Prascovie's 
 invincible purity thwarted the most infernal 
 plots. On the door-sill of the bedchamber 
 she had seemed to him like one of Sweden- 
 borg's white angels anathematizing the Evil 
 Spirit. 
 
 He could not stay all night in this ridiculous 
 position, so he looked for the count's apart- 
 ment. At the end of a suite of rooms he found 
 one which contained an ebony columned bed 
 with tapestry curtains, where amid the scrolls 
 and flowers was embroidered a coat-of-arms. 
 The panoplies of Oriental armor, knights' 
 cuirasses and helmets, touched by the reflec- 
 tion of a lamp, threw vague glimmers into the
 
 AVATAR. 137 
 
 shadow. Bohemian leather stamped with gold 
 gleamed on the walls. Three or four huge 
 carved arm-chairs and a heavy cabinet loaded 
 with ornaments completed this mediaeval fur- 
 niture, which would not have been out of place 
 in the great hall of a Gothic manor. On the 
 count's part this was not a frivolous imitation 
 of the fashion, but a hallowed memory. The 
 room exactly reproduced the one he had in- 
 habited at his mother's, and though often 
 laughed at about it, this fifth-act scenery, 
 he had always refused to change its style. 
 
 Octave-Labinski, exhausted with fatigue and 
 emotion, flung himself on the bed and fell 
 asleep, cursing Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau. 
 
 Fortunately, the morning brought with it 
 serener thoughts ; he promised himself to act 
 hereafter in a more moderate fashion, to dull 
 his glances, and to assume the manners of a 
 husband. Aided by the count's valet, he 
 dressed himself in a plain and simple costume, 
 and went quietly down to the dining-room to 
 breakfast with the countess. 
 
 X. 
 
 OCTAVE-LABINSKI walked in the footsteps of 
 the valet, for in this house of which he was the 
 apparent master he did not know where the
 
 138 TALES BEFORE SUPPER, 
 
 dining-room was. It was a vast room on the 
 ground floor, opening on the court, and in its 
 noble and severe style recalled both an abbey 
 and a manor. Dark oak wainscoting, arranged 
 in symmetrical designs, reached to the ceiling, 
 where plaster moulded in relief formed hex- 
 agonal panels painted blue and delicately ara- 
 besqued in gold. On the long panels of the 
 wood-work Philippe Rousseau had painted the 
 four seasons symbolically, not in mythologi- 
 cal figures, but by trophies of still-life com- 
 posed of the fruits appropriate to each season 
 of the year. Game by Jadin corresponded to 
 the fruits of Rousseau, and above each paint- 
 ing gleamed like the disk of a shield an im- 
 mense plate by Bernard Palissy or Leonard 
 de Limoges, of Japanese porcelain, Majolica or 
 Arabian pottery, the glaze opalescent with all 
 the colors of the prism. Stags' antlers and 
 aurochs' horns alternated with the faience, and 
 at each end of the room rose a large side- 
 board, as high as the altar-pieces in Spanish 
 churches, of elaborate architecture and carved 
 decoration, and rivaling the most beautiful 
 works of Berruguete, Cornejo Duque, and 
 Verbruggen. On their shelves glittered in 
 confusion the antique silver of the Labinski 
 family. Pitchers with fantastic handles, salt- 
 cellars of ancient shape, large bowls, drinking- 
 cups, centre pieces shaped by the quaint Ger-
 
 AVATAR. 139 
 
 man fancy, all worthy of a place amid the 
 treasures of the Dresden Green Vault. Oppo- 
 site the antique plate shone the marvelous 
 products of modern silverware. The master- 
 pieces of Wagner, Duponchel, Rudolphi, and 
 Froment-Meurice ; enameled tea-sets with fig- 
 ures by Feuchere and Vechte ; chased salvers, 
 champagne coolers with vine-leaved handles, 
 and bacchanals in bas-relief , chafing-dishes as 
 graceful as the Pompeian tripods, not to men- 
 tion the Bohemian crystal, the Venetian glass, 
 and the services in old Saxe and old Sevres. 
 
 Oak chairs covered with green morocco 
 were ranged along the walls, and over a table 
 of which the feet were carved like eagle's claws 
 there fell a clear, equal light through the ground 
 white glass set in the centre panel of the ceiling. 
 A transparent wreath of vine-leaves framed this 
 milky square with green foliage. On the table, 
 set in Russian fashion, the fruit was already 
 placed, surrounded by a garland of violets ; 
 and under silver covers that were polished like 
 emirs' helmets, the viands awaited the knife 
 and fork. A Moscow samovar hissed forth a 
 jet of steam ; and two footmen in knee-breeches 
 and white cravats stood silent and immovable 
 behind the two arm-chairs, facing each other 
 like domestic statues. 
 
 Octave, in order not to be involuntarily pre- 
 occupied by the novelty of objects with which
 
 140 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 he ought to have been familiar, took in all these 
 things at a glance. 
 
 A rustle on the marble slabs, a murmur of 
 silk, made him turn his head. It was the 
 Countess Prascovie Labinska who approached 
 and seated herself, after making him an arnica^ 
 ble little gesture. She wore a morning gown 
 of pale green and white plaid silk trimmed 
 with a pinked ruching of the same material. 
 Her hair lay in thick waves on her temples, 
 and was gathered at the nape of her neck in a 
 golden coil resembling the scroll of an Ionian 
 pillar, a style as simple as it was dignified, and 
 which a Greek sculptor could not have wished 
 to change. Her rose-tinted cheeks were deli- 
 cately blanched by the evening's emotion and 
 the agitated sleep of the night. An impercep- 
 tible aureole of shadow encircled her eyes, 
 usually so clear and calm. She had a weary, 
 languid air ; but thus softened, her beauty was 
 only the more penetrating ; it acquired a 
 human touch, the goddess became a woman, 
 the angel, folding her wings, ceased to soar. 
 
 Octave, grown prudent, veiled the flame in 
 his eyes with a look of indifference. 
 
 The countess, with a slight motion of the 
 shoulders as if chilled by a remnant of fever, 
 stretched out her small bronze-slippered foot 
 to the silky wool of a rug that had been placed 
 under the table to neutralize the, cold contact
 
 AVATAR. 141 
 
 of the mosaic of white and Veronese variegated 
 marble which paved the dining-room. Fixing 
 her blue eyes on her companion, whom she 
 took for her husband, for with the daylight had 
 vanished the presentiments, the fears, and the 
 phantoms of the night, she spoke a sentence in 
 Polish in a tender, melodious voice, rich with 
 chaste caresses. In moments of affection and 
 intimacy she often used the dear maternal lan- 
 guage with the count, especially in the presence 
 of French servants to whom this idiom was un- 
 familiar. 
 
 The Parisian Octave was well up in Latin, 
 Italian, Spanish, and knew a few words of Eng- 
 lish ; but, like all Gallo-Romans, he was en- 
 tirely ignorant of the Slavic tongues. The 
 bristling bastion of consonants which protects 
 the rare vowels in Polish would have inhibited 
 his access even had he wished to approach it. 
 In Florence the countess had always spoken 
 to him in French or Italian, and the idea of 
 learning the language in which Mickiewicz has 
 almost equaled Byron had not occurred to 
 him. It is impossible to think of everything. 
 
 On hearing this phrase, there took place in 
 the count's brain, inhabited by the mind of 
 Octave, a very singular phenomenon. The 
 sounds, so strange to the Parisian, following 
 the folds of a Slav ear reached the usual place 
 where Olaf's mind received and transferred
 
 142 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 them into thoughts, and evoked there a sort 
 of physical remembrance. Octave had a con- 
 fused idea of their meaning ; words hidden in 
 the cerebral circumvolutions, in the secret re- 
 cesses of memory, arose buzzing, ready to re- 
 ply ; but these vague reminiscences, failing to 
 communicate with the mind, soon dispersed, 
 and all was again a blank. The poor lover's 
 embarrassment was dreadful ; in taking the 
 form of Count Olaf Labinski, he had not 
 dreamed of this complication, and he realized 
 that in seizing his position he had exposed 
 himself to severe disasters. 
 
 Astonished at Octave's silence, and fancying 
 that through some momentary abstraction he 
 had not heard her, Prascovie repeated her re- 
 mark slowly and in a louder tone. 
 
 If he heard more plainly the sound of the 
 words, the pseudo-count understood their sig- 
 nification none the better. He made desper- 
 ate efforts to guess what it might be about, 
 but for those who do not know them the dense 
 languages of the North have no transparency, 
 and if a Frenchman can surmise what an Ital- 
 ian says, he is deaf when listening to a Pole. 
 In spite of himself, a violent blush covered his 
 cheeks, he bit his lips, and to keep himself in 
 countenance hacked furiously at the meat on 
 his plate. 
 
 "One would certainly suppose, my sweet
 
 AVATAR. 143 
 
 prince," said the countess this time in French, 
 " that you do not hear, or that you do not un- 
 derstand me." 
 
 "Really," faltered Octave-Labinski, hardly 
 knowing what he said, " that terrible language 
 is so difficult ! " 
 
 " Difficult ! Yes ! perhaps it is for stran- 
 gers ; but for those who have stammered it at 
 their mother's knee it springs from the lips 
 like the breath of life, and with the uncon- 
 sciousness of thought." 
 
 " Yes, doubtless ; but there are times when 
 it seems to me as if I no longer know it." 
 
 " What are you saying, Olaf ? What ! you 
 have forgotten the language of your ancestors, 
 the language of the Fatherland, the language 
 which enables you to recognize your brothers 
 among men, and," added she in a lower 
 voice, " the language in which you first told me 
 you loved me ! " 
 
 " The habit of using another tongue "... 
 ventured Octave-Labinski, at the end of his 
 arguments. 
 
 " Olaf," answered the countess reproachfully, 
 " I see that Paris has spoiled you ; I was right 
 in not wishing to come here. Who could have 
 told me that when the noble Count Labinski 
 returned to his domains he would no longer 
 know how to reply to the felicitations of his 
 vassals ? "
 
 144 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 Prascovie's charming countenance assumed 
 a doleful expression ; for the first time sadness 
 cast its shadow on her angelically smooth 
 brow. This strange forgetfulness wounded hei 
 inmost soul, and seemed almost treasonable. 
 
 The rest of the breakfast passed in silence. 
 Prascovie frowned on the man whom she 
 thought the count. Octave was in torment, 
 for he dreaded other questions which he would 
 be compelled to leave unanswered. At last 
 the countess rose and returned to her rooms. 
 
 Left alone, Octave played with the handle 
 of a knife which he was tempted to thrust in 
 his heart, for his situation was unbearable. 
 He had counted on a surprise, and now he 
 found himself involved in the to him issue- 
 less labyrinths of an unknown existence. In 
 assuming the body of Count Olaf Labinski he 
 should also have taken from him his previous 
 ideas, the languages he knew, his childhood's 
 memories, the thousand intimate details 
 which compose a man's self, the links binding 
 his existence to the existences of others. But 
 for that, all Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau's 
 knowledge would not have sufficed. What 
 a fate ! actually to be in this paradise whose 
 threshold he had hardly dared glance at from 
 afar % to live under the same roof with Pras- 
 covie, see her, speak to her, kiss her hand 
 with the very lips of her husband, and yet be
 
 AVATAR. 145 
 
 unable to deceive her divine modesty, and to be- 
 tray himself every instant by some inexplicable 
 stupidity ! " It was written above that Pras- 
 covie would never love me ! And yet I have 
 made the greatest sacrifice to which mortal 
 pride can descend ; I have renounced my self, 
 I have consented to profit under a strange form 
 by caresses destined for another ! " 
 
 At this point in his monologue a groom 
 bowed before him and asked, with every sign 
 of the deepest respect, what horse he would 
 ride. Seeing that the count did not answer, 
 the man, much frightened at his own bold- 
 ness, risked murmuring, 
 
 " Vultur or Rustem ? they have not been 
 out for a week." 
 
 " Rustem," replied Octave-Labinski, as he 
 would have said Vultur had not the last name 
 clung to his distraught mind. 
 
 He dressed for riding and started for the 
 Bois de Boulogne, wishing to give his shaken 
 nerves a bath of fresh air. 
 
 Rustem, a magnificent animal of the Nedji 
 race, that carried on his breast, in an Oriental 
 bag of gold-embroidered velvet, titles to a no- 
 bility extending back to the first years of the 
 hegira, did not need to be roused. He seemed 
 to understand his rider's thoughts, and as soon 
 as he had left the pavements and struck the 
 bridle-paths he started off, fleet as an arrow,
 
 146 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 before Octave had touched him with the spur. 
 After two hours of hard riding the horseman 
 and his beast returned to the hotel, the one 
 quite calm, and the other fuming, with scarlet 
 nostrils. 
 
 The pseudo-count joined the countess, whom 
 he found in her drawing-room, dressed in a 
 gown of white silk flounced to the waist, a knot 
 of ribbon in her hair. 
 
 It was Thursday, the day on which she re- 
 mained at home and received her visitors. 
 
 " Well," she said to him, with a gracious 
 smile, for her beautiful lips could not pout for 
 long, " have you regained your memory gallop- 
 ing in the alleys of the Bois ? " 
 
 " No, my dear," replied Octave-Labinski, 
 "but I have a confession to make." 
 
 " Do I not know in advance all your 
 thoughts? Are we no longer transparent to 
 each other ? " 
 
 " Yesterday I went to see the physician who 
 is so much talked about." 
 
 "Yes, Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau, who 
 made a long stay in India, and has, they say, 
 learned from the Brahmans a lot of secrets, 
 each more marvelous than the other. You 
 even wished to take me, but I am not curious ; 
 for I know you love me, and that knowledge 
 is all I require." 
 
 " He made such singular experiments before
 
 AVATAR. 147 
 
 me, he produced such miraculous effects, that 
 my mind is still disturbed by them. This ec- 
 centric fellow, who has an irresistible power at 
 his disposal, threw me into a magnetic sleep 
 so profound that on awakening I no longer 
 had the same faculties. I had lost the remem- 
 brance of many things. The past floated in 
 a mist of obscurity ; my love for you alone 
 remained intact." 
 
 " You were wrong, Olaf, to put yourself un- 
 der the influence of this physician. God, who 
 has created the soul, has the right to touch it," 
 said the countess in a grave tone; "but man 
 in attempting to do so commits an impious 
 action. I hope that you will not go back there, 
 and I hope, too, that when I say something 
 agreeable to you in Polish you will under- 
 stand me as you once did." 
 
 During his ride Octave had conceived this 
 excuse of magnetism to palliate the errors which 
 he could not fail to make in his new life. But 
 his troubles were not ended. A servant open- 
 ing the door announced a visitor. 
 
 " M. Octave de Saville." 
 
 Though he might have expected this meeting 
 one day or another, at these simple words the 
 real Octave trembled as if the trumpet of the 
 last judgment had suddenly sounded in his ear. 
 He had need to call up all his courage, and 
 to tell himself that he had the best of the sit-
 
 148 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 uation, to prevent himself from reeling. In- 
 stinctively he clutched the back of a chair, and 
 thus managed to stand apparently firm and 
 tranquil. 
 
 Count Olaf, clothed in the form of Octave, ad- 
 vanced towards the countess with a deep bow. 
 
 "The Count Labinski . . . M. Octave de 
 Saville," said the countess, presenting the 
 gentlemen. 
 
 The two men bowed coldly, and over the 
 marble mask of worldly politeness which some- 
 times covers such evil passions shot savage 
 glances at each other. 
 
 " You have grown formal since Florence 
 days, Monsieur Octave," said the countess in a 
 familiar and friendly tone, " and I was afraid 
 I should leave Paris without seeing you. You 
 were more assiduous at the Villa Salviati, and 
 you were numbered among the faithful." 
 
 " Madam," the pseudo - Octave answered 
 constrainedly, " I have traveled, I have been 
 ailing, ill even, and on receiving your gracious 
 invitation I asked myself whether I should 
 profit by it, for one must not be an egotist and 
 abuse the indulgence that people are good 
 enough to have for a bore." 
 
 " Bored perhaps, but never a bore," replied 
 the countess. " You have always been melan- 
 choly ; yet does not one of your poets say of 
 melancholy, 
 
 'After idleness, 't is the best of ills V"
 
 AVATAR. 149 
 
 " It is a report which happy people spread to 
 dispense themselves from pitying those who 
 suffer," said Olaf-de Saville. 
 
 As if to beg his pardon for the love with 
 which she had involuntarily inspired him, the 
 countess cast a look of ineffable sweetness on 
 the count, shut up in Octave's body. 
 
 " You think me more frivolous than I am ; 
 all real pain has my pity, and if I cannot re- 
 lieve, I can at least commiserate. I would 
 like to have had you happy, dear Monsieur 
 Octave ; but why have you immured yourself 
 in sadness, why have you refused the life which 
 came to you with its joys, its seductions, and 
 its duties ? Why have you refused my prof- 
 fered friendship ? " 
 
 These simple and sincere phrases impressed 
 the two listeners differently. Octave heard in 
 them the confirmation of the judgment pro- 
 nounced in the Salviati garden by this perfect 
 mouth unsoiled by lies ; and Olaf, a proof of 
 his wife's unalterable virtue, which nothing 
 but diabolical cunning could overcome. And 
 a sudden madness seized him on seeing his 
 spectre animated by another soul installed in 
 his own house. He sprang at the throat of 
 the false count. 
 
 "Thief, brigand, rogue, give me back my 
 body ! " 
 
 At this most extraordinary action the coun-
 
 I5O TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 tess rushed to the bell and the footmen car- 
 ried out the count. 
 
 " That poor Octave has gone crazy ! " said 
 Prascovie while Olaf, struggling vainly, was 
 being taken away. 
 
 "Yes," answered the real Octave, "crazy 
 with love ! Countess, you are decidedly too 
 beautiful ! " 
 
 XI. 
 
 Two hours after this scene the false count 
 received from the real one a letter bearing 
 the seal of Octave de Saville, the unhappy 
 dispossessed Olaf had no other at his disposal. 
 It produced an odd effect on the usurper 
 of Count Labinski's body to open a missive 
 sealed with his own crest, but everything had 
 to be peculiar in this abnormal position. 
 
 The letter contained the following lines, 
 traced by a stiff hand, in a writing which 
 looked like counterfeit, for Olaf was not ac- 
 customed to holding a pen with Octave's 
 fingers : 
 
 " Read by another than yourself, this letter 
 would appear to be dated from a lunatic 
 asylum, but you will understand it. An inex- 
 plicable combination of circumstances never 
 before produced, perhaps, since the earth has
 
 AVATAR. 151 
 
 turned about the sun forces me to act as no 
 man has ever done. I write to myself and put 
 on the address a name which is my own, a 
 name which with my person you have stolen 
 from me. I am ignorant of the plot of which 
 I am the victim and of the circle of infernal 
 illusions into which I have put my foot. You, 
 of course, know all about it. 
 
 " If you are not a coward, the mouth of my 
 pistol or the point of my sword will demand of 
 you this secret on a ground where every man, 
 honorable or infamous, answers the questions 
 put to him. To-morrow one of us must have 
 ceased to see the light of day. The universe 
 is now too narrow for us both. I will kill my 
 body filled with your lying spirit, or you will 
 kill yours, wherein my soul rages at being im- 
 prisoned. 
 
 " Do not try to prove me crazy. I shall have 
 the strength to be reasonable, and everywhere 
 I meet you I will insult you with the polite- 
 ness of a gentleman and the coolness of a 
 diplomat. The Count Olaf Labinski's mus- 
 tache may displease M. Octave de Saville, 
 and, every day, feet are trodden on at the exit 
 of the Opera. I trust that my words, though 
 obscure, will have no ambiguity for you, and 
 that my seconds will come to a perfect under- 
 standing with yours as to the hour, the place, 
 and the conditions of the duel."
 
 152 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 This letter threw Octave into a quandary. 
 He could not refuse the count's challenge, and 
 yet it went against him to fight with himself, for 
 he had kept a sort of tenderness for his old 
 envelope. The idea of being forced into this 
 duel by some open insult made him decide to 
 accept it, though if necessary he could have 
 put his adversary into a lunatic's strait-jacket 
 and thus stayed his arm ;. but his delicacy re- 
 volted at such a method. If carried along by 
 an overpowering passion he had committed a 
 reprehensible action and hidden the lover un- 
 der the disguise of the husband to triumph 
 over a virtue above all seduction, he was still 
 a man not without honor and courage. Beside, 
 he had not taken this extreme step until, after 
 three years of struggle and suffering, the mo- 
 ment had arrived when his life, consumed by 
 love, was escaping him. He did not know the 
 count ; he was not his friend, he owed him 
 nothing, and he had profited by the hazard- 
 ous means which Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau 
 had offered to him. 
 
 Where find seconds ? Of course among the 
 count's friends ; but Octave in the one day he 
 had lived in the house had had no chance to 
 meet them. 
 
 On the mantelpiece were two vases of china 
 with gold dragons for handles. One held 
 rings, pins, seals, and other trifling jewels,
 
 AVATAR. 153 
 
 the other, visiting cards, on which, under the 
 coronet of duke, marquis, or count, were in- 
 scribed by skilled engravers in Gothic, round, 
 or English type a multitude of names, Polish, 
 Russian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Span- 
 ish, and attesting the roving existence of the 
 count, who had friends in every land. 
 
 Octave took two hap-hazard : Count Zamoi- 
 eczki and the Marquis de Sepulveda. He 
 ordered the carriage, and drove to their ad- 
 dresses. He found them both in. They did 
 not appear surprised at the request of the 
 man whom they thought Count Olaf Labinski. 
 Totally devoid of the sensitiveness of middle- 
 class seconds, they did not ask if the affair 
 could be compromised, and like the perfect 
 gentlemen they were maintained a silence ful) 
 of good taste as to the motive of the quarrel. 
 
 On his side, the real count, or, if you like 
 it better, the pseudo-Octave, was a prey to a 
 similar embarrassment. He remembered Al- 
 fred Humbert and Gustave Raimbaud, whose 
 breakfast he had refused to attend, and he 
 requested them to help him in this encounter. 
 The two young men showed considerable sur- 
 prise at rinding their friend involved in a duel, 
 for he had hardly left his room in a year, and 
 they knew his character was more pacific than 
 quarrelsome. But when he had told them 
 that it was a mortal combat, they made no
 
 154 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 further objections, and went to the Hotel La- 
 binski. 
 
 The conditions were soon arranged. The 
 adversaries having declared that sword or pis- 
 tol suited them equally well, a gold coin thrown 
 in the air decided the weapon. They were to 
 meet in the Avenue des Poteaux of the Bois 
 de Boulogne, near the rustic thatched summer- 
 house, where the fine gravel offers a favorable 
 arena for this sort of combat. 
 
 When all was settled it was nearly midnight, 
 and Octave went to the door of Prascovie's 
 apartment. As on the previous evening it 
 was bolted, and the countess' mocking voice 
 flung this sarcasm at him through the door, 
 
 " Come back when you know Polish ; I am 
 too patriotic to receive a foreigner." 
 
 Notified by Octave, Dr. Cherbonneau came 
 in the morning, carrying a case of surgical 
 instruments and a roll of bandages. They 
 entered a carriage together, MM. Zamoieczki 
 and de Sepulveda following in their coupd. 
 
 "Well, my dear Octave," said the physician ; 
 " so the adventure is already turning into trag- 
 edy ? I ought to have let the count sleep in 
 your body on my divan for a week. I have 
 prolonged magnetic slumbers beyond that 
 limit. But even when one has learned wis- 
 dom from the Brahmans, the Pandit, and the 
 Sanniasys of India, one always forgets some-
 
 AVATAR. 155 
 
 thing, and imperfections are found in the 
 best combined plans. But how did Countess 
 Prascovie welcome her Florence lover thus 
 disguised ? " 
 
 " I think," replied Octave, " that either she 
 recognized me notwithstanding my metamor- 
 phosis, or else her guardian angel whispered in 
 her ear to distrust me. I found her as chaste, 
 as cold, as pure, as polar snow. Doubtless 
 her exquisite nature divined a stranger under 
 the beloved form of her husband. I told you 
 truly that you could do nothing for me ; indeed 
 I am even more unhappy than when you paid 
 me your first visit." 
 
 "Who can fix a boundary to the soul's 
 power," said Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau 
 thoughtfully, " especially when it is weakened 
 by no earthly preoccupation, soiled by no hu- 
 man tie, and keeps itself in the glow and 
 contemplation of love just as it left the Crea- 
 tor's hands ? Yes, you are right ; she recog- 
 nized you, her heavenly modesty shrank at the 
 look of desire, and instinctively veiled itself 
 with its white wings. I pity you, my poor 
 Octave ! Your wound is indeed immedicable. 
 Were we in the Middle Ages, I should say, Get 
 thee to a monastery." 
 
 " I have often thought of it," replied Octave. 
 
 Presently they reached the meeting ground. 
 The counterfeit Octave's brougham was al- 
 ready at the place designated.
 
 156 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 At this early hour the Bois presented a 
 really picturesque aspect, which later in the 
 day fashion makes it lose. Summer was at 
 that stage when the sun has not yet had time 
 to darken the green of the foliage ; fresh, 
 translucent tints, washed by the night's dew, 
 variegated the forest, and gave out an odor of 
 tender vegetation. At this spot the trees are 
 particularly fine ; perhaps because they have 
 encountered a more favorable soil, or because 
 they are the only survivors of some old plan- 
 tation. Their vigorous trunks, stained with 
 moss or glossed with a silvery bark, clutch 
 the earth with gnarled roots, and project oddly 
 bent branches. They might have served as 
 models for the studies of artists and decora- 
 tors who go much further to seek less remark- 
 able ones. A few birds, which later the day's 
 noises silence, chirped gayly in the leafy re- 
 treat ; a timid rabbit crossed the gravel of the 
 alley in three bounds and ran to hide in the 
 grass, frightened at the sound of the wheels. 
 
 These poems of nature surprised in undress 
 occupied the two adversaries and their sec- 
 onds very little, as you can imagine. The 
 sight of Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau made a 
 disagreeable impression on Count Olaf La- 
 binski, but he recovered himself quickly. 
 
 The swords were measured, their places 
 assigned to the combatants, who after taking 
 off their coats fell into position.
 
 AVATAR. 157 
 
 " Ready ! " the seconds cried. 
 
 In every duel, no matter what the fury of 
 the adversaries may be, there is a moment of 
 solemn immobility : each combatant silently 
 studies his enemy and makes his plan, reflect- 
 ing on the attack and preparing to parry and 
 thrust. Then the swords seek, provoke, and 
 feel each other, so to speak, without separat- 
 ing; that lasts several seconds, which seem 
 minutes, hours, to the anxiety of the assist- 
 ants. 
 
 The conditions of this duel, apparently com- 
 monplace to the spectators, were so abnormal 
 for the combatants that they remained thus 
 on guard longer than is customary. Each had 
 in front of him his own body, and must drive 
 the steel into flesh which had belonged to 
 himself two days before. 
 
 The fight was complicated by a sort of un- 
 foreseen suicide, and, though both were brave, 
 yet Octave and the count felt an instinctive 
 horror at standing, sword in hand, face to 
 face with their own phantoms, and ready to 
 fall on themselves. The impatient seconds 
 were about to cry again, " Gentlemen, are you 
 ready ! " when at last the blades crossed. 
 
 Several attacks were parried with agility on 
 each side. 
 
 Thanks to his military education, the count 
 was a skillful fencer ; he had pinked the plas-
 
 1 58 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 tron of the most famous masters. But if he 
 still had the method he no longer possessed 
 the muscular arm which had routed the 
 Mourides of Schamyl ; it was Octave's weak 
 wrist which wielded his sword. 
 
 Octave on the contrary felt, in the count's 
 body, an unaccustomed strength, and though 
 less expert, he always parried the steel which 
 sought his breast. 
 
 It was in vain that Olaf strove to touch his 
 adversary and risked thrusts which exposed 
 himself. Octave, cooler and more steady, 
 baffled every feint. 
 
 The count began to get excited, and his play 
 grew nervous and uneven. Though he would 
 then have to remain Octave de Saville, he 
 wanted to kill this deceptive body which 
 might even deceive Prascovie a thought 
 which lashed him into an inexpressible rage. 
 
 At the risk of being run through, he tried a 
 straight thrust to reach, through his own body, 
 the life and heart of his rival ; but Octave's 
 sword wound round his with such a quick, 
 sharp, irresistible movement that the steel 
 was wrenched from his hand, and springing 
 in the air fell several steps away. 
 
 Olaf's life was at Octave's disposal ; he had 
 only to thrust and run him through. 
 
 The count's face quivered ; not that he 
 feared death, but he thought that he was about
 
 AVATAR. 159 
 
 to leave his wife to this body-thief whom noth- 
 ing hereafter could unmask. 
 
 Far from profiting by his advantage, Octave 
 threw down his sword, and motioning to the 
 seconds not to interfere walked towards the 
 stupefied count, whom he took by the arm and 
 dragged into the depth of the wood. 
 
 " What do you want with me ? " said the 
 count. " Why not kill me when you have the 
 chance ? Why not continue the duel after 
 letting me recover my sword if it revolts you 
 to strike an unarmed man ? You know that 
 the sun should not cast the shadows of both 
 of us on the ground, and that the earth must 
 receive one or the other." 
 
 " Listen to me patiently," replied Octave. 
 " Your happiness is in my hands. I can keep 
 forever this body in which I dwell to-day and 
 which in legitimate propriety belongs to you. 
 It suits me to acknowledge this now that there 
 are no witnesses near us, and only the wild 
 birds, who never repeat, can hear. Count Olaf 
 Labinski, whom I represent as well as I can, 
 is a better fencer than Octave de Saville, whose 
 form you now have, and which I, much to my 
 regret, would be obliged to suppress. This 
 death, though not real, as my soul would sur- 
 vive, would desolate my mother." 
 
 Recognizing the truth of these remarks, the 
 count maintained an acquiescent silence.
 
 160 TALES BEFORE SUPPER, 
 
 " If I should oppose it," continued Octave, 
 "you would never succeed in reintegrating 
 your identity; you see in what your two at- 
 tempts ended. Other trials would stamp you 
 as a monomaniac. No one would believe a 
 word of your allegations, and, as you have 
 already been able to convince yourself, when 
 you pretended to be Count Olaf Labinski 
 every one would laugh in your face. You 
 would be shut up, and you would pass the 
 rest of your life protesting under the shower- 
 bath that you were actually the husband of the 
 beautiful Countess Prascovie Labinska. Com- 
 passionate souls would say on hearing you : 
 Poor Octave ! And you would be disowned 
 like Balzac's Chabert who wished to prove he 
 was not dead." 
 
 This was all so mathematically true that 
 the discouraged count let his head fall on his 
 breast. 
 
 " As you are at present Octave de Saville 
 you have doubtless searched his desk and 
 rummaged among his papers, and you are not 
 ignorant that for three years he has nourished 
 for the Countess Prascovie Labinska a desper- 
 ate, hopeless love, which he has tried in vain 
 to tear from his heart, and which will only 
 leave him with his life, unless it follows him to 
 the tomb." 
 
 "Yes, I know it," said the count, biting his 
 lip.
 
 AVATAR. l6l 
 
 " Well, to reach her I have employed terrible 
 means, on which a delirious passion alone would 
 venture. Dr. Cherbonneau has attempted for 
 me a task that would startle the thaumatur- 
 gists of the universe. After putting us both 
 to sleep he changed the envelopes of our souls. 
 But in vain ! I will return you your body : 
 Prascovie does not love me ! Under the hus- 
 band's form she recognized the lover's soul ; 
 her look was the same on the threshold of the 
 conjugal apartment as in the garden of the 
 Villa Salviati." 
 
 Octave's tone betrayed such true sorrow 
 that the count had faith in his words. 
 
 "I am a lover," added Octave, smiling, 
 " and not a thief, and as the only thing which 
 I desired in this world cannot belong to me, 
 I do not see why I should keep your titles, 
 castles, lands, money, horses, and weapons. 
 There, give me your arm ; let us appear recon- 
 ciled, thank our seconds, take with us Dr. 
 Cherbonneau, and return to the magical labo- 
 ratory from which we came forth transformed. 
 The old Brahman will know how to undo his 
 work." 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Octave, sustaining for 
 a little longer the part of Count Olaf Labinski, 
 "my adversary and I have exchanged confi- 
 dential explications which render the contin- 
 uation of the duel useless. There is nothing
 
 1 62 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 like crossing swords a bit to clear the minds 
 of sensible people." 
 
 MM. Zamoieczki and de Sepulveda reen- 
 tered their carriage, and Alfred Humbert and 
 Gustave Raimbaud regained theirs, while 
 Count Olaf Labinski, Octave de Saville, and 
 Dr. Cherbonneau drove at full speed towards, 
 the Rue du Regard. 
 
 XII. 
 
 DURING the transit from the Bois de Bou- 
 logne to the Rue du Regard, Octave de Saville 
 said to Dr. Cherbonneau, 
 
 " My dear doctor, I am about to test your 
 science once more ; you must restore our souls, 
 each to its customary habitation. That should 
 not be difficult for you. I hope that Count 
 Labinski will not be angry at you for having 
 made him change a palace for a hovel, and 
 lodging his illustrious personality for some 
 hours in my poor individuality. But then, you 
 possess a power which fears nothing." 
 
 With an acquiescent gesture Dr. Balthazar 
 Cherbonneau replied : " The operation will be 
 much simpler this time ; the imperceptible 
 filaments which hold the soul to the body 
 have with you been recently broken, and have 
 not had time to be renewed, and your minds
 
 AVATAR. 163 
 
 will not form that obstacle which the instinctive 
 resistance of the magnetized opposes to the 
 magnetizer. The count will doubtless pardon 
 an old erudite like myself for not having been 
 able to resist the pleasure of putting in practice 
 an experiment for which one finds but few sub- 
 jects, and particularly as this attempt has only 
 served to brilliantly confirm a virtue which 
 carries delicacy to divination and triumphs 
 where every other would have succumbed. If 
 you wish, you can look on this momentary 
 transformation as a strange dream, and per- 
 haps, later, you will not be sorry to have ex- 
 perienced the odd sensation, which few men 
 have known, of having inhabited two bodies. 
 Metempsychosis is not a new doctrine ; but 
 before transmigrating into another existence 
 the souls drink the cup of forgetfulness, and 
 every one cannot, like Pythagoras, remember 
 to have assisted at the Trojan war." 
 
 " The benefit of being reinstalled in my own 
 individuality," the count answered politely, 
 " equals the unpleasantness of having been 
 expropriated from it ; this is said without ill- 
 feeling for M. Octave de Saville, whom I still 
 am, and whom I am about to cease to be." 
 
 Octave smiled with the lips of Count Labin- 
 ski at this sentence which could only reach 
 him through another's envelope, and silence 
 established itself between these three persons
 
 164 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 whose abnormal situation rendered all convor- 
 
 sation difficult. 
 
 The unfortunate Octave thought of his van- 
 ished hope, and his reflections were not, it 
 must be owned, precisely rose-color. Like all 
 repulsed lovers, he still asked himself why he 
 was not loved as if love had a why ! The 
 only reason one can give.it is the because, a 
 reply logical in its obstinate laconism, and 
 which women oppose to all embarrassing ques- 
 tions. Nevertheless, he recognized his defeat, 
 and felt that the spring of life, which for an 
 instant Dr. Cherbonneau had renovated for 
 him, was newly broken, and rattled in his heart 
 like that of a watch dropped on the ground. 
 Octave would not have caused his mother the 
 sorrow of his suicide; and he sought a spot 
 wherein he might extinguish his unknown grief 
 quietly under the scientific name of a plausible 
 illness. Had he been an artist, poet, or musi- 
 cian, he would have crystallized his pain in 
 masterpieces ; and Prascovie, robed in white, 
 crowned with stars, like Dante's Beatrice, 
 would have hovered about his inspiration like 
 an angel of light ; but, as has been intimated 
 at the beginning of this story, though well in- 
 structed and gifted, Octave was not one of those 
 chosen spirits who imprint on this earth the 
 trace of their passage. In his obscure sublimity 
 he only knew how to love and die.
 
 AVATAR. 165 
 
 The carriage entered the court of the old 
 hotel in the Rue du Regard, a court whose 
 pavement was set in green grass through which 
 the visitors' steps had worn a path, and which 
 the high gray walls of the building inundated 
 with shadow, like that which falls from a clois> 
 ter's arcades ; Silence and Immobility, like in^ 
 visible statues, watched on the threshold pro- 
 tecting the meditations of the erudite. 
 
 When Octave and the count had alighted, 
 the physician jumped from the carriage with a 
 lighter step than one would have expected 
 from his age, without even leaning on the arm 
 which the footman offered to him with that 
 politeness which servants of large establish- 
 ments affect towards old or feeble persons. 
 
 As soon as the double doors had closed on 
 them, Olaf and Octave felt themselves wrapped 
 in the hot atmosphere which recalled to the 
 physician that of India, and in which only he 
 could breathe at his ease, but which almost 
 suffocated those who had not, like him, been 
 for thirty years terrified in tropical suns. The 
 incarnations of Vishnu still leered in their 
 frames, weirder by day than by lamplight ; 
 Shiva, the blue god, sneered on his pedestal ; 
 and Dourga, biting his callous lip with his wild 
 boar's tusks, seemed to agitate his chaplet of 
 skulls. The apartment retained its magical 
 and mysterious appearance. Dr. Balthazar
 
 1 66 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 Cherbonneau led his two subjects to the room 
 where the first transformation had taken place. 
 He turned the glass disk of the electric ma- 
 chine, shook the iron rods of the mesmeric 
 battery, opened the hot-air registers to make 
 the temperature rise rapidly, read two or three 
 lines from parchments so ancient that they re- 
 sembled old bark ready to crumble into dust, 
 and, when several minutes had elapsed, said 
 to Octave and the count, 
 
 " Gentlemen, I am at your service ; shall we 
 begin ? " 
 
 While the physician was making these prep- 
 arations, disquieting reflections passed through 
 the count's mind. 
 
 " When I am asleep, what is this old lugubri- 
 ous-faced magician, who might be the devil 
 himself, going to do with my soul ? Will he 
 restore it to my body, or will he carry it off to 
 hell with him ? Is not this exchange, which 
 ought to give me back my happiness, a Mach- 
 iavellian combination for some sorcery whose 
 end escapes me ? Still, my position could not 
 be worse. Octave possesses my body, and, as 
 he wisely remarked this morning, in reclaiming 
 it with my present figure I should cause my- 
 self to be shut up as a lunatic. If he wished 
 to put me definitely out of his way, he had only 
 to drive in the point of his sword ; I was dis- 
 armed, at his mercy ; the justice of man could
 
 AVATAR. 167 
 
 have said nothing against it ; the form of the 
 duel was perfectly regular, and it would have 
 been done all in order. I must think of Pras- 
 covie and have no childish fears. Let me try 
 the only way which is left me to regain her ! " 
 
 And, like Octave, he grasped the rod which 
 Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau presented to him. 
 
 Overpowered by the metal conductors, 
 charged to the utmost with electric fluid, the 
 two young men sank into an unconsciousness 
 so profound that to any one unprepared for it 
 it would have resembled death. The physician 
 made the passes, performed the rites, pro- 
 nounced the syllables as on the first occasion, 
 and soon two luminous stars appeared above 
 Octave and the count. The physician led to 
 its original abode Count Olaf Labinski's soul, 
 which followed the electrician's gesture with 
 an eager flight. 
 
 During this time Octave's soul moved 
 slowly from Olaf's body, and instead of re- 
 joining its own, rose, rose as if glad to be 
 free, and appeared indifferent to its prison. 
 The physician was touched with pity for the 
 fluttering, winged Psyche, and asked himself 
 if it were a kindness to bring it back to this 
 vale of misery. In this momentary hesitation 
 the soul continued to ascend. Remembering 
 his part, M. Cherbonneau repeated with the 
 most imperious accent the irresistible monosyl-
 
 1 68 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 lable, and made a pass pregnant with volition, 
 but the tiny quivering spark was already out of 
 the circle of attraction, and swiftly traversing 
 the upper pane of the window it disappeared. 
 
 The physician ceased making efforts which 
 he knew to be useless, and awakened the 
 count, who, seeing himself in a mirror with his 
 usual features, gave a cry of joy, threw a glance 
 at Octave's immobile body to make sure that 
 he was thoroughly clear of that envelope, and 
 with a nod of farewell to M. Balthazar Cher- 
 bonneau rushed away. 
 
 A few seconds later the muffled roll of a 
 carriage under the arch was heard, and Dr. 
 Balthazar Cherbonneau was alone face to face 
 with the corpse of Octave de Saville. 
 
 " By the trunk of Ganesa ! " exclaimed the 
 pupil of the Brahman of Elephanta when the 
 count had gone, " this is a provoking affair. I 
 opened the cage-door, the bird flew away, and 
 now it is already beyond the sphere of this 
 world, so far indeed that the Sannyasi Brahma- 
 Logum himself could not overtake it, and here 
 am I with a corpse on my hands. It is true. 
 I can dissolve it in a corrosive bath of such 
 strength that not an appreciable atom will re- 
 main, or I can make of it in a few hours a beau- 
 tiful mummy, like those inclosed in cases cov- 
 ered with variegated hieroglyphs ; but inquiries 
 will be started, my dwelling searched, my chests
 
 AYATAR. 169 
 
 opened, myself subjected to all serts of tire- 
 some questions "... Here a bright idea 
 crossed the physician's mind ; he seized a pen 
 and wrote rapidly a few lines on a sheet of 
 paper, which he put in the drawer of his table. 
 
 The paper contained these words : 
 
 " Having neither relatives nor connections, 
 I bequeath all my belongings to M. Octave 
 de Saville, for whom I have a particular affec- 
 tion, on condition that he pays a legacy of 
 one hundred thousand francs to the Brahmanic 
 hospital of Ceylon for old, worn-out, and sick 
 animals ; that he gives twelve hundred francs 
 yearly for life to my Indian and to my Eng- 
 lish servant ; and that he sends the manuscript 
 of the laws of Manu to the Mazarin library." 
 
 This testament made to a dead man by a liv- 
 ing one is not the strangest thing in this story, 
 improbable yet true ; but the singularity of it 
 will be at once explained. 
 
 The physician felt Octave de Saville's body, 
 from which the warmth of life had not yet de- 
 parted, looked in the glass, with a singularly 
 disdainful air, at his own wrinkled face, tanned 
 and rough like a zebra's skin, and making 
 over his head the motion with which one 
 throws off an old coat when the tailor brings a 
 new one, he muttered the formula of the San- 
 nyasi Brahma-Logum. 
 
 Immediately, Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau's
 
 1 70 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 body fell to the floor as if struck by a thunder- 
 bolt, and that of Octave de Saville rose up in 
 full strength and activity. 
 
 Octave-Cherbonneau stood for some minutes 
 before the thin, bony, and livid carcass, which, 
 no longer upheld by the powerful spirit that 
 had before animated it, at once took on a look 
 of complete senility, and rapidly assumed a 
 cadaverous appearance. 
 
 " Farewell, poor human remnant, miserable 
 out-at-elbow garment, frayed at every seam, 
 which for seventy years I have dragged about 
 the five parts of the globe ! You did me good 
 service, and I do not leave you without regret. 
 One gets accustomed to living so long together ! 
 but with this young envelope, which my sci- 
 ence will soon make robust, I can study, work, 
 and read still a few words more in the great 
 book before Death, saying ' It is enough ! ' 
 closes it at the most interesting paragraph ! " 
 
 After this funeral oration, addressed to him- 
 self, Octave-Cherbonneau went forth with a 
 tranquil step to take possession of his new 
 existence. 
 
 Count Olaf Labinski had returned to his 
 house and had immediately sent to ask if the 
 countess could receive him. 
 
 He found her in the conservatory seated on 
 a bank of moss amid a virgin forest of exotic
 
 AVATAR. 171 
 
 and tropical plants. The half raised panes 
 of glass admitted the warm, bright air. She 
 was reading Novalis, one of the most subtile, 
 rarefied, and immaterial authors which Ger- 
 man spiritualism has produced. The countess 
 did not like books which paint existence in 
 strong, real colors ; and, from having lived in a 
 world of elegance, love, and poetry, life ap- 
 peared to her a trifle coarse. 
 
 She threw down her book and slowly lifted 
 her eyes to the count. She feared to encoun- 
 ter again in her husband's dark pupils that ar- 
 dent, stormy look, full of mysterious thoughts, 
 which had troubled her so much, and which 
 had seemed to her foolish apprehension 
 the look of another ! 
 
 In Olafs eyes shone a serene joy, and a 
 pure, chaste love burned in them with a steady 
 fire ; the stranger soul, which had so myste- 
 riously changed the expression of his features, 
 was gone forever. Prascovie at once recognized 
 her adored Olaf, and a quick blush of pleasure 
 colored her transparent cheeks. Though she 
 was ignorant of the transformations performed 
 by Dr. Cherbonneau, her delicate sensitiveness 
 had unconsciously been aware of all these 
 changes. 
 
 " What are you reading, dear Prascovie ? " 
 said Olaf, lifting from the moss the book 
 bound in blue morocco. " Ah ! the history
 
 IJ2 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 of Henri d'Ofterdingen, it is the same vol- 
 ume that I went full galop to get you at Mohi- 
 lev, one day when you had expressed a wish 
 for it at dinner. At midnight it was on the 
 table beside your lamp ; but poor Ralph was 
 broken-winded ever after ! " 
 
 " And I told you that I would never again 
 mention the least desire before you. You have 
 the character of that Spanish noble who prayed 
 his mistress not to gaze at the stars, since he 
 could not give them to her." 
 
 " If you looked at one," replied the count, " I 
 should try to climb to heaven and ask it of 
 God." 
 
 While listening to her husband the countess 
 smoothed a refractory mesh of her hair which 
 scintillated like a flame in a ray of gold. The 
 motion had disarranged her sleeve, and uncov- 
 ered her beautiful arm encircled at the wrist by 
 the turquoise-studded lizard which she wore 
 on the day of her apparition in the Cascine so 
 fatal to Octave. 
 
 " What a fright that poor little lizard once 
 gave you ! " said the count. " It was when you 
 had, on my insistent prayer, descended to the 
 garden for the first time, and I killed it with 
 the stroke of a switch. I had it dipped in 
 gold and decorated with a few stones ; but 
 even as a trinket it still appeared disagreea- 
 ble to you, and it was some time before you 
 could bring yourself to wear it,"
 
 AVATAR. 173 
 
 " Oh, I am quite accustomed to it now, and 
 it is my favorite ornament, for it recalls a very 
 dear remembrance." 
 
 " Yes," replied the count, " on that day we 
 agreed that on the morrow I should make your 
 aunt an official request for your hand." 
 
 The countess recognized the look and tone 
 of the real Olaf, and reassured also by these in- 
 timate details, she rose smiling, took his arm, 
 and made several turns about the conserva- 
 tory with him, plucking with free hand as she 
 went some flowers whose petals she pulled off 
 with her fresh lips, looking as she did so like 
 that Venus of Schiavoni's who is feasting on 
 roses. 
 
 " As you have such a good memory to-day," 
 she said, flinging from her the flower she had 
 been mutilating with her pearly teeth, " you 
 ought to have recovered the use of your 
 mother-tongue . . . which yesterday you no 
 longer knew." 
 
 " If souls retain a human language in para- 
 dise," answered the count in Polish, " it is the 
 one my soul will speak in heaven to tell you 
 that I love you." 
 
 Prascovie, still moving, let her head fall 
 gently on Olaf's shoulder. 
 
 " Dear heart," she murmured, " now you are 
 as I love you to be. Yesterday you frightened 
 me, and I fled as from a stranger."
 
 174 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 The next day Octave de Saville, animated 
 by the spirit of the old physician, received a 
 black-edged letter which begged him to assist 
 at the funeral service and burial of M. Baltha- 
 zar Cherbonneau. 
 
 Clothed in his new aspect, the physician 
 followed his former body to the cemetery, saw 
 himself buried, listened with a well-assumed 
 air of regret to the address pronounced over 
 his grave, in which the irreparable loss to 
 science was deplored, and then returned to 
 the Rue Saint Lazare and awaited the opening 
 of the will he had made in his own favor. 
 
 That day could be read among the items of 
 the evening papers : 
 
 " Dr. Balthazar Cherbonneau, known by his 
 long sojourn in India, his philological knowl- 
 edge, and his marvelous cures, was yesterday 
 found dead in his laboratory. A most thorough 
 examination of the body has banished all idea 
 of a crime. M. Cherbonneau probably suc- 
 cumbed to excessive mental fatigue, or per- 
 ished in some audacious experiment. It is 
 said that a will in the testator's own hand- 
 writing leaves to the Mazarin library some ex- 
 tremely valuable manuscripts, and names as 
 heir a young man belonging to a distinguished 
 family, M. O. de S."
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE.
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 
 
 TXeis Ijv Sctyfc, effTw & avSptas 
 ical iJTrios, o&T<as avSpftos &v, 
 
 AovKiavov 4>iAov|/ey577J. 
 
 BY PROSPER MfiRIMfiE. 
 
 I WAS descending the last slope of the 
 Canigou, and though the sun was already set 
 I could distinguish on the plain the houses 
 of the small town of Ille, towards which I 
 directed my steps. 
 
 "Of course," I said to the Catalan who 
 since the day before served as my guide, " you 
 know where M. de Peyrehorade lives?" 
 
 "Just don't I," cried he; "I know his 
 house like my own, and if it were not so dark 
 I would show it to you. It is the finest in 
 Ille. He is rich, M. de Peyrehorade is, and 
 he marries his son to one richer even than 
 he." 
 
 " Does the marriage come off soon ? " 1 
 asked him. 
 
 " Soon ? It may be that the violins are al- 
 ready ordered for the wedding. To-night per-
 
 178 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 haps, to - morrow or the next day, how do I 
 know ? It will take place at Puygarrig, for it 
 is Mademoiselle de Puygarrig that the son is 
 to marry. It will be a sight, I can tell you." 
 
 I was recommended to M. de Peyrehorade 
 by my friend M. de P. He was, I had been 
 told, an antiquarian of much learning and a 
 man of charming affability. He would take 
 delight in showing me the ruins for ten leagues 
 around. Therefore I counted on him to visit 
 the outskirts of Ille, which I knew to be rich 
 in memorials of the Middle Ages. This mar- 
 riage, of which I now heard for the first time, 
 upset all my plans. 
 
 "I shall be a troublesome guest, I told 
 myself. But I am expected; my arrival has 
 been announced by M. de P. : I must present 
 myself." 
 
 When we reached the plain the guide said, 
 " Wager a cigar, sir, that I can guess what you 
 are going to do at M. de Peyrehorade's." 
 
 Offering him one, I answered, " It is not very 
 hard to guess. At this hour, when one has 
 made six leagues in the Canigou, supper is the 
 great thing after all." 
 
 "Yes, but to-morrow? Here I wager that 
 you have come to Ille to see the idol. I 
 guessed that when I saw you draw the por- 
 traits of the saints at Serrabona." 
 
 " The idol ! what idol ? " This word had 
 aroused my curiosity.
 
 THE rEJiUS OF ILLE. 179 
 
 What! were you not told at Perpignan 
 how M. de Peyiehorade had found an idol in 
 the earth?" 
 
 " You M^aTi to say an Mrfhpn statue ? " 
 M Not at all A statue in copper, and there 
 is enough of it to make a lot of big pennies. 
 She weighs as much as a church-belL It was 
 deep in the ground at the foot of an olive-tree 
 that we got her." 
 
 " You were present at the discovery ? " 
 " Yes, sir. Two weeks ago M. de Peyreho- 
 rade told Jean Coll and me to uproot an old 
 olive-tree which was frozen last year when the 
 weather as you know was very, severe. So 
 in working, Jean Coll, who went at it with all 
 his might, gave a blow with his pickaxe, and I 
 heard bimm as if he had struck a bell, and 
 I said, What is that ? We dug on and on, and 
 there was a black hand, which looked like the 
 hand of a corpse, sticking out of the earth. 
 I was scared to death. I ran to M. de Peyre- 
 horade and I said to him, * There are dead 
 people, master, under the oh" ve - tree ! The 
 priest must be called.' 
 
 " ' What dead people,' said he to me. He 
 came, and he had no sooner seen the hand, 
 than he cried out * An antique ! an antique ! ' 
 You would have thought he had found a treas- 
 ure. And there he was with the pickaxe in 
 his own hands struggling and doing almost as 
 much work as we two."
 
 ISO TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " And at last what did you find ? " 
 
 "A huge black woman more than half 
 naked, with due respect to you, sir. She was 
 all in copper, and M. de Peyrehorade told us 
 it was an idol of pagan times the time of 
 Charlemagne." 
 
 " I see what it is, some virgin or other in 
 bronze from a destroyed convent." 
 
 " A virgin ! Had it been one I should have 
 recognized it. It is an idol, I tell you ; you 
 can see it in her look. She fixes you with her 
 great white eyes one might say she stares 
 at you. One lowers one's eyes, yes indeed 
 one does, on looking at her." 
 
 " White eyes ? Doubtless they are set in the 
 bronze. Perhaps it is some Roman statue." 
 
 " Roman ! That 's it. M. de Peyrehorade 
 says it is Roman. Oh ! I see you are an eru- 
 dite like himself." 
 
 " Is she complete, well preserved ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, she lacks nothing. It is a hand- 
 somer statue and better finished than the bust 
 of Louis Philippe in colored plaster which is 
 in the town-hall. But with all that the face 
 of the idol does not please me. She has a 
 wicked expression, and, what is more, she is 
 wicked." 
 
 " Wicked ! what has she done to you ? " 
 
 " Nothing to me exactly ; but wait a minute. 
 We had gotten down on all fours to stand her
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. l8l 
 
 upright, and M. de Peyrehorade was also pull- 
 ing on the rope, though he has not much more 
 strength than a chicken. With much trouble 
 we got her up straight. I reached for a 
 broken tile to support her, when if she does n't 
 tumble over backwards all in a heap. I said, 
 ' take care,' but not quick enough, for Jean 
 did not have time to draw away his leg " 
 
 " And it was hurt ? " 
 
 " Broken as clean as a vine-prop. When I 
 saw that I was furious, I wanted to take my 
 pickaxe and smash the statue to pieces, but 
 M. de Peyrehorade stopped me. He gave 
 Jean Coll some money, but all the same, he is 
 in bed still, though it is two weeks since it 
 happened, and the physician says that he will 
 never walk as well with that leg as with the 
 other. It is a pity, for he was our best runner, 
 and, after M. de Peyrehorade's son, the clever- 
 est racquet player. M. Alphonse de Peyreho- 
 rade was sorry I can tell you, for Coll always 
 played on his side. It was beautiful to see 
 how they returned each other the balls. They 
 never touched the ground." 
 
 Chatting in this way we entered Ille, and I 
 soon found myself in the presence of M. de 
 Peyrehorade. He was a little old man, still 
 hale and active, with powdered hair, a red 
 nose, and a jovial, bantering manner. Be- 
 fore opening M. de P.'s letter he had seated
 
 1 82 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 me at a well-spread table, and had presented 
 me to his wife and son as a celebrated archae- 
 ologist who was to draw Roussillon from the 
 neglect in which the indifference of erudites 
 had left it. 
 
 While eating heartily, for nothing makes 
 one hungrier than the keen air of the moun- 
 tains, I scrutinized my hosts. I have said a 
 word about M. de Peyrehorade, I must add 
 that he was activity personified. He talked, 
 got up, ran to his library, brought me books, 
 showed me engravings, and filled my glass, all 
 at the same time. He was never two min- 
 utes m repose. His wife was a trifle stout, as 
 are most Catalans when they are over forty 
 years of age. She appeared to me a thorough 
 provincial, solely occupied with her house- 
 keeping. Though the supper was sufficient 
 for at least six persons, she hurried to the 
 kitchen and had pigeons killed and a number 
 broiled, and she opened I do not know how 
 many jars of preserves. In no time the table 
 was laden with dishes and bottles, and if I 
 had but tasted of everything offered me I 
 should certainly have died of indigestion. 
 Nevertheless, at each dish I refused they made 
 fresh excuses. They feared I found myself 
 very badly off at Ille. In the provinces there 
 were so few resources, and of course Parisians 
 were fastidious !
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 183 
 
 In the midst of his parent's comings and 
 goings M. k Alphonse de Peyrehorade was as 
 immovable as rent-day. He was a tall young 
 man of twenty-six, with a regular and hand- 
 some countenance, but lacking in expression. 
 His height and his athletic figure well justi- 
 fied the reputation of an indefatigable racquet 
 player given him in the neighborhood. 
 
 On that evening he was dressed in an ele- 
 gant manner ; that is to say, he was an exact 
 copy of a fashion plate in the last number of 
 the Journal des Modes. But he seemed to me 
 ill at ease in his clothes ; he was as stiff as a 
 post in his velvet collar, and could only turn 
 all of a piece. In striking contrast to his cos- 
 tume were his large sunburnt hands and blunt 
 nails. They were a laborer's hands issuing 
 from the sleeves of an exquisite. Moreover, 
 though he examined me in my quality of Pari- 
 sian most curiously from head to foot, he only 
 spoke to me once during the whole evening, 
 and that was to ask me where I had bought 
 my watch-chain. 
 
 As the supper was drawing to an end M. de 
 Peyrehorade said to me : " Ah ! my dear guest, 
 you belong to me now you are here. I shall 
 not let go of you until you have seen every- 
 thing of interest in our mountains. You must 
 learn to know our Roussillon, and to do it 
 justice. You do not suspect all that we have
 
 1 84 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 to show you, Phoenician, Celtic, Roman, Ara- 
 bian, and Byzantine monuments ; you shall see 
 them all from the cedar to the hyssop. I 
 shall drag you everywhere, and will not spare 
 you a single stone." 
 
 A fit of coughing obliged him to pause. I 
 took advantage of it to tell him that I should 
 be sorry to disturb him on an occasion of so 
 much interest to his family. If he would but 
 give me his excellent advice about the excur- 
 sions to be made, I could, without his taking 
 the trouble to accompany me. 
 
 " Ah ! you mean the marriage of that boy 
 there," he exclaimed, interrupting me ; " stuff 
 and nonsense, it will be over the day after to- 
 morrow. You will go to the wedding with us, 
 which is to be informal, as the bride is in 
 mourning for an aunt whose heiress she is. 
 Therefore, there will be no festivities, no ball. 
 It is a pity, though ; you might have seen our 
 Catalans dance. They are pretty, and might 
 have given you the desire to imitate Alphonse. 
 One marriage they say leads to another. 
 Once the young people married I shall be free, 
 and we will bestir ourselves. I beg your par- 
 don for boring you with a provincial wedding. 
 For a Parisian tired of entertainments and 
 a wedding without a ball at that ! Still you 
 will see a bride a bride well, you shall 
 tell me what you think of her. But you are a
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 185 
 
 thinker and no longer notice women. I have 
 better than that to show you. You shall see 
 something; in fact, I have a fine surprise in 
 store for you to-morrow." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said I ; "it is difficult to 
 have a treasure in the house without the public 
 being aware of it. I think I know the surprise 
 in reserve for me. But if it is your statue 
 which is in question, the description my guide 
 gave me of it has only served to excite my 
 curiosity and prepared me to admire." 
 
 " Ah ! So he spoke to you about the idol, 
 as he calls my beautiful Venus Tur ; but I 
 will tell you nothing. To-morrow you shall 
 see her by daylight, and tell me if I am right 
 in thinking the statue a masterpiece. You 
 could not have arrived more opportunely. 
 There are inscriptions on it which I, poor 
 ignoramus that I am, explain after my own 
 fashion ; but you, a Parisian erudite, will prob- 
 ably laugh at my interpretation ; for I have 
 actually written a paper about it, I, an old 
 provincial antiquary, have launched myself in 
 literature. I wish to make the press groan. If 
 you would kindly read and correct it I might 
 have some hope. For example, I am very anx- 
 ious to know how you translate this inscription 
 from the base of the statue : CAVE. But I do 
 not wish to ask you yet ! Wait until to-morrow. 
 Not a word more about the Venus to-day ! "
 
 1 86 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " You are right, Peyrehorade," said his wife ; 
 " drop your idol. Can you not see that you 
 prevent our guest from eating ? You may be 
 sure that he has seen in Paris much finer 
 statues than yours. In the Tuilleries there are 
 dozens, and they also are in bronze." 
 
 " There you have the saintly ignorance of 
 the provinces !" interrupted M. de Peyrehorade. 
 " The idea of comparing an admirable antique 
 to the insipid figures of Coustou ! 
 
 ' How irreverently my housekeeper 
 Speaks of the gods ! ' 
 
 Do you know that my wife wanted me to melt 
 my statue into a bell for our church. She would 
 have been the godmother. Just think of it, to 
 melt a masterpiece by Myron, sir ! " 
 
 " Masterpiece ! Masterpiece ! A charming 
 masterpiece she is ! to break a man's leg." 
 
 " Madam, do you see that ? " said M. de 
 Peyrehorade in a resolute tone, extending to- 
 ward her his right leg in its changeable silk 
 stocking ; " if my Venus had broken that leg 
 there for me I should not regret it." 
 
 " Good gracious ! Peyrehorade, how can 
 you say such a thing ! Fortunately, the man is 
 better. And yet I cannot bring myself to look 
 at a statue which has caused so great a disas- 
 ter. Poor Jean Coll ! " 
 
 " Wounded by Venus, sir," said M. de Peyre-
 
 THE VENUS OF !LLE. 187 
 
 horade, with a loud laugh ; " wounded by Venus, 
 and the churl complains ! 
 
 ' Veneris nee praemia noris.' 
 
 Who has not been wounded by Venus ? " 
 
 M. Alphonse, who understood French better 
 than Latin, winked one eye with an air of in- 
 telligence, and looked at me as if to ask, " And 
 you, Parisian, do you understand ? " 
 
 The supper came to an end. I had ceased 
 eating an hour before. I was weary, and I 
 could not manage to hide the frequent yawns 
 which escaped me. Madame de Peyrehorade 
 was the first to notice them, and remarked that 
 it was time to go to bed. Then followed fresh 
 apologies for the poor accommodations I would 
 have. I would not be as well off as in Paris. 
 It was so uncomfortable in the provinces ! 
 Indulgence was needed for the Roussillonnais. 
 Notwithstanding my protests that after a tramp 
 in the mountains a bundle of straw would 
 seem to me a delicious couch, they continued 
 begging me to pardon poor country people if 
 they did not treat me as well as they could 
 have wished. 
 
 Accompanied by M. de Peyrehorade I as- 
 cended at last to the room arranged for me. 
 The staircase, the upper half of which was in 
 wood, ended in the centre of a hall, out of 
 which opened several rooms.
 
 1 88 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " To the right," said my host, " is the apart- 
 ment which I propose to give the future Ma- 
 dame Alphonse. Your room is at the opposite 
 end of the corridor. You understand," he 
 added in a manner which he meant to be 
 sly, " you understand that newly married 
 people must be alone. You are at one end of 
 the house, they at the other." 
 
 We entered a well-furnished room where the 
 first object on which my gaze rested was a bed 
 seven feet long, six wide, and so high that one 
 needed a chair to climb up into it. 
 
 Having shown me where the bell was, and 
 assured himself that the sugar-bowl was full 
 and the cologne bottles duly placed on the 
 toilet-stand, my host asked me a number of 
 times if anything was lacking, wished me good 
 night, and left me alone. 
 
 The windows were closed. Before undress- 
 ing I opened one to breathe the fresh night 
 air so delightful after a long supper. Facing 
 me was the Canigou. Always magnificent, it 
 appeared to me on that particular evening, 
 lighted as it was- by a resplendent moon, as 
 the most beautiful mountain in the world. 
 I remained a few minutes contemplating its 
 marvelous silhouette, and was about to close 
 the window when, lowering my eyes, I per- 
 ceived a dozen yards from the house the 
 statue on its pedestal. It was placed at the
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 189 
 
 corner of a hedge that separated a small gar- 
 den from a vast, perfectly level quadrangle, 
 which I 'icvuued later was the racquet court 
 of the town. This ground was the property 
 of M. de Peyrehorade, and had been given by 
 him to the parish at the solicitation of his son. 
 
 Owing to the distance it was difficult for me 
 to distinguish the attitude of the statue ; I 
 could only judge of its height, which seemed 
 to be about six feet. At that moment two 
 scamps of the town, whistling the pretty Rous- 
 sillon tune, Montagues regalades, were crossing 
 the racquet court quite near the hedge. They 
 paused to look at the statue, and one of them 
 even apostrophized it aloud. He spoke Cata- 
 lonian, but I had been long enough in Rous- 
 sillon to understand pretty well what he said. 
 
 " There you are, you wench ! " (The Cata- 
 lonian word was much more forcible.) " There 
 you are ! " he said. '" It was you then who 
 broke Jean Coil's leg ! If you belonged to me 
 I 'd break your neck." 
 
 " Bah ! what with ? " said the other youth. 
 " It is of the copper of pagan times, and harder 
 than I don't know what." 
 
 " If I had my chisel " (it seems he was a 
 locksmith's apprentice), " I would soon force 
 out its big white eyes, as I would pop an al- 
 mond from its shell. There are more than a 
 hundred pennies' worth of silver in them."
 
 190 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 They went on a few steps. 
 
 "I must wish the idol good -night," said 
 the taller of the apprentices, stopping sud- 
 denly. 
 
 He stooped and probably picked up a stone. 
 I saw him unbend his arm and throw some- 
 thing. A blow resounded on the bronze, and 
 immediately the apprentice raised his hand to 
 his head with a cry of pain. 
 
 " She threw it back at me ! " he exclaimed. 
 And my two rascals ran off as fast as they 
 could. It was evident that the stone had re- 
 bounded from the metal and had punished the 
 wag for the outrage he had done the goddess. 
 Laughing heartily, I shut the window. 
 
 Another Vandal punished by Venus ! May 
 all the desecrators of our old monuments thus 
 get their due ! 
 
 With this charitable wish I fell asleep. 
 
 When I awoke it was broad day. On one 
 side of my bed stood M. de Peyrehorade in a 
 dressing-gown ; a servant sent by his wife was 
 on the other side with a cup of chocolate in 
 his hand. 
 
 " Come, come, you Parisian, get up ! This 
 is quite the laziness of the capital ! " said my 
 host, while I dressed in haste. " It is eight 
 o'clock, and you are still in bed ! I have been 
 up since six. This is the third time I have 
 been to your door. I approached on tiptoe :
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 191 
 
 no one, not a sign of life. It is bad for you to 
 sleep too much at your age. And my Venus, 
 which you have not yet seen ! Come, hurry up 
 and take this cup of Barcelona chocolate. It 
 is real contraband chocolate, such as cannot 
 be found in Paris. Prepare yourself, for when 
 you are once before my Venus no one will be 
 able to tear you away from her." 
 
 I was ready in five minutes, that is to say, 
 I was half shaved, half dressed, and burnt by 
 the boiling chocolate I had swallowed. I de- 
 scended to the garden and saw an admirable 
 statue before me. It was truly a Venus, and 
 of marvelous beauty. The upper part of the 
 body was nude, as great divinities were usually 
 represented by the ancients. The right hand 
 was raised as high as the breast, the palm 
 turned inwards, the thumb and two first fin- 
 gers extended, and the others slightly bent. 
 The other hand, drawn close to the hip, held 
 the drapery which covered the lower half of 
 the body. The attitude of this statue reminded 
 one of that of the rnourre player which is 
 called, I hardly know why, by the name of 
 Germanicus. Perhaps it had been intended 
 to represent the goddess as playing at mourre. 
 However that may be, it is impossible to find 
 anything more perfect than the form of this 
 Venus, anything softer and more voluptuous 
 than her outlines, or more graceful and dig-
 
 IQ2 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 nified than her drapery. I had expected -a 
 work of the decadence; I saw a masterpiece 
 of statuary's best days. 
 
 What struck me most was the exquisite 
 reality of the figure ; one might have thought it 
 moulded from life, that is, if Nature ever pro- 
 duced such perfect models. 
 
 The hair, drawn back from the brow, seemed 
 once to have been gilded. The head was 
 small, like nearly all those of Greek statues, 
 and bent slightly forward. As to the face, I 
 shall never succeed in describing its strange 
 character ; it was of a type belonging to no 
 other Greek statue which I can remember. It 
 had not the calm, severe beauty of the Greek 
 sculptors, who systematically gave a majestic 
 immobility to all the features. On the contrary, 
 I noticed here, with surprise, a marked inten- 
 tion on the artist's part to reproduce malice 
 verging on viciousness. All the features were 
 slightly contracted. The eyes were rather ob- 
 lique, the mouth raised at the corners, the 
 nostrils a trifle dilated. Disdain, irony, and 
 cruelty were to be read in the nevertheless 
 beautiful face. 
 
 Truly, the more one gazed at the statue the 
 more one experienced a feeling of pain that 
 such wonderful beauty could be allied to such 
 an absence of all sensibility. 
 
 " If the model ever existed," I said to M. de
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 193 
 
 Peyrehorade, " and I doubt if heaven ever pro- 
 duced such a woman, how I pity her lovers ! 
 She must have taken pleasure in making them 
 die of despair. There is something ferocious 
 in her expression, and yet I have never seen 
 anything more beautiful." 
 
 " 'C'est Venus tout entire a saproieattachee !' " 
 cried M. de Peyrehorade, delighted with my 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 But the expression of demoniac irony was 
 perhaps increased by the contrast of the bright 
 silver eyes with the dusky green hue which 
 time had given to the statue. The shining 
 eyes produced a sort of illusion which simu- 
 lated reality and life. I remembered what my 
 guide had said, that those who looked at her 
 were forced to lower their eyes. It was almost 
 true, and I could not prevent a movement of 
 anger at myself when I felt ill at ease before 
 this bronze figure. 
 
 " Now that you have seen everything in de- 
 tail, my dear colleague in antiquities, let us, if 
 you please, open a scientific conference. What 
 do you say to this inscription which you have 
 not yet noticed ? " He pointed to the base of 
 the statue, and I read these words : 
 
 CAVE AMANTEM. 
 
 "Quid diets doctissimeV he asked, rubbing 
 his hands. " Let us see if we agree as to the 
 meaning of cave amantem ! "
 
 194 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " But," I replied, " it has two meanings. You 
 can translate it : ' Guard against him who loves 
 thee,' that is, 'distrust lovers.' But in this sense 
 I do not know if cave amantem would be good 
 Latin. After seeing the diabolical expression 
 of the lady I should sooner believe that the 
 artist meant to warn the spectator against this 
 terrible beauty. I should then translate it : 
 ' Take care of thyself if she loves thee.' " 
 
 " Humph ! " said M. de Peyrehorade ; " yes, 
 it is an admissible meaning : but, if you do 
 not mind, I prefer the first translation, which 
 I would, however, develop. You know Venus's 
 lover ? " 
 
 " There are several." 
 
 " Yes ; but the first is Vulcan. Why should 
 it not mean : ' Notwithstanding all thy beauty, 
 thine air of disdain, thou wilt have a black- 
 smith, a wretched . cripple for a lover ' ? A 
 profound lesson, sir, for coquettes ! " 
 
 The explication seemed so far-fetched that 
 I could not help smiling. 
 
 To avoid formally contradicting my anti- 
 quarian friend, I observed, " Latin is a terrible 
 language in its conciseness," and I drew back 
 several steps to better contemplate the statue. 
 
 " Wait a moment, colleague ! " said M. de 
 Peyrehorade, catching hold of my arm ; " you 
 have not seen all. There is another inscrip- 
 tion. Climb up on the pedestal and look at
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 195 
 
 the right arm." So saying, he helped me up, 
 and without much ceremony I clung to the 
 neck of the Venus with whom I was becoming 
 more familiar. For a second I even looked 
 her straight in the eyes, and on close inspec- 
 tion she appeared more wicked, and, if possible, 
 more beautiful than before. Then I noticed 
 that on the arm were engraved, as it seemed 
 to me, characters in ancient script. With the 
 aid of my spectacles I spelt out what follows, 
 and M. de Peyrehorade, approving with voice 
 and gesture, repeated each word as I uttered 
 it. Thus I read : 
 
 VENERI TVRBVL . . . 
 EVTVCHES MYRO. 
 IMPERIO FECIT. 
 
 After the word 'Tvrbvl' in the first line it 
 looked to me as if there were several letters 
 effaced ; but ' Tvrbvl ' was perfectly legible. 
 
 " Which means to say? " my host asked radi- 
 antly, with a mischievous smile, for he thought 
 the ' Tvrbvl ' would puzzle me. 
 
 "-There is one word which I do not yet un- 
 derstand," I answered ; " all the rest is simple. 
 Eutyches Myron has made this offering to 
 Venus by her command." 
 
 " Quite right. But ' Tvrbvl,' what do you 
 make of it ? What does it mean ? " 
 
 " ' Tvrbvl ' perplexes me very much. I am
 
 196 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 trying to think of one of Venus's familiar char- 
 acteristics which may enlighten me. But what 
 do you say to ' Tvrbvlenta ' ? The Venus who 
 troubles, agitates. You see I am still preoc- 
 cupied by her wicked expression. ' Tvrbvlenta ' 
 is not too bad a quality for Venus," I added 
 modestly, for I was not too well satisfied with 
 my explanation. 
 
 " A turbulent Venus ! A noisy Venus ! Ah ! 
 then you think my Venus is a public-house 
 Venus ? Nothing of the kind, sir ; she is a 
 Venus of good society. I will explain 'Tvr- 
 bvl' to you that is, if you promise me not 
 to divulge my discovery before my article ap- 
 pears in print. Because, you see, I pride my- 
 self on such a.,find, and, after all, you Parisian 
 erudites are rich enough to leave a few ears 
 for us poor devils of provincials to glean ! " 
 
 From the top of the pedestal, where I was 
 still perched, I promised him solemnly that I 
 would never be so base as to filch from him 
 his discovery. 
 
 " ' Tvrbvl,' sir," said he, coming nearer and 
 lowering his voice for fear some one besides 
 myself might hear him, " read ' Tvrbvlnerae.' " 
 
 " I understand no better." 
 
 "Listen to me attentively. Three miles 
 from here at the foot of the mountain is a 
 village called Boulternere. The name is a 
 corruption of the Latin word ' Tvrbvlnera.'
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 197 
 
 Nothing is more common than these transpo- 
 sitions. Boulternere was a Roman town. I 
 always suspected it, but I could get no proof 
 till now, and here it is. This Venus was the 
 local goddess of the city of Boulternere ; and 
 the word Boulternere, which I have shown is 
 of ancient origin, proves something very curi- 
 ous, namely, that Boulternere was a Phoenician 
 town before it was Roman ! " 
 
 He paused a moment to take breath and 
 enjoy my surprise. I succeeded in overcoming 
 a strong inclination to laugh. 
 
 " ' Tvrbvlnera ' is, in fact, pure Phoenician," 
 he continued. "'Tvr,' pronounce 'tour' 
 ' Tour ' and ' Sour ' are the same word, are 
 they not ? ' Sour ' is the Phoenician name of 
 Tyr ; I do not need to recall the meaning to 
 you. ' Bvl ' is Baal ; Bal, Bel, Bui are slight 
 differences of pronunciation. As to 'Nera,' 
 that troubles me a little. I am tempted to 
 believe, for want of a Phoenician word, that it 
 comes from the Greek v^pos, moist, marshy. 
 In that case, it is a mongrel word. To justify 
 vrjpos I will show you at Boulternere how the 
 mountain streams form stagnant pools. Then, 
 again, the ending ' Nera ' may have been 
 added much later in honor of Nera Pive- 
 suvia, wife of Tetricus, who may have bene- 
 fited the city of Turbul. But on account of 
 the marshes, I prefer the etymology of
 
 198 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 He took a pinch of snuff in a complacent 
 way, and continued : 
 
 " But let us leave the Phoenicians and return 
 to the inscription. I translate it then : To 
 Venus of Boulternere Myron dedicates by her 
 order this statue, his work." 
 
 I took good care not to criticise his etymol- 
 ogy, but I wished in my turn to give a proof 
 of penetration, so I said, 
 
 " Stop a moment, M.de Peyrehorade. Myron 
 has dedicated something, but I by no means 
 see that it is this statue." 
 
 " What ! " he cried, " was not Myron a famous 
 Greek sculptor ? The talent was perpetuated 
 in his family, and it must have been one of his 
 descendants who executed this statue. Noth- 
 ing can be more certain." 
 
 " But," I replied, " on this arm I see a small 
 hole. I think it served to fasten something, a 
 bracelet for example, which this Myron, being 
 an unhappy lover, gave to Venus as an expia- 
 tory offering. Venus was irritated against him ; 
 he appeased her by consecrating to her a gold 
 bracelet. Notice that fecit is often used for 
 consecravit. The terms are synonymous. I 
 could show you more than one example if I 
 had at hand Gruter or Orellius. It is natural 
 that a lover should see Venus in a dream and 
 imagine that she commands him to give a gold 
 bracelet to her statue. Myron consecrated the
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 199 
 
 bracelet to her. Then the barbarians or some 
 other sacrilegious thieves " 
 
 " Ah ! it is easy to see you have written 
 romances ! " cried my host, helping me down 
 from the pedestal. " No, sir ; it is a work of 
 Myron's school. You have only to look at the 
 workmanship to be convinced of that." 
 
 Having made it a rule never to contradict 
 self-opinionated antiquarians, I bowed with an 
 air of conviction, saying, 
 
 " It is an admirable piece of work." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " exclaimed M. de Peyre- 
 horade, " another act of vandalism ! Some one 
 must have thrown a stone at my statue ! " 
 
 He had just perceived a white mark a little 
 above the bosom of the Venus. I noticed a 
 similar mark on the fingers of the right hand. 
 I supposed it had been touched by the stone 
 as it passed, or that a bit of the stone had 
 been broken off as it struck the statue, and 
 had rebounded on the hand. I told my host 
 of the insult I had witnessed, and the prompt 
 punishment which had followed it. 
 
 He laughed heartily, and, comparing the 
 apprentice to Diomede, wished he might, like 
 the Greek hero, see all his comrades turned 
 into white birds. 
 
 The breakfast bell interrupted this classical 
 conversation, and, as on the preceding evening, 
 I was obliged to eat enough for four. Then
 
 2OO TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 came M. de Peyrehorade's farmers, and, while 
 he was giving them an audience, his son led 
 me to inspect an open carriage, which he had 
 bought at Toulouse for his betrothed, and 
 which it is needless to say I duly admired. 
 After that I went into the stable with him, 
 where he kept me a half hour, boasting about 
 his horses, giving me their genealogy, and tell- 
 ing me of the prizes they had won at the 
 county races. At last he began to talk to me 
 about his betrothed in connection with a gray 
 mare which he intended for her. 
 
 " We will see her to-day," he said. " I do 
 not know if you will find her pretty. In Paris 
 people are hard to please. But every one here 
 and in Perpignan thinks her lovely. The best 
 of it is that she is very rich. Her aunt from 
 Prades left her a fortune. Oh ! I shall be 
 very happy." 
 
 I was profoundly shocked to see a young 
 man appear more affected by the dower than 
 by the beauty of his bride. 
 
 " You are a judge of jewels," continued M. 
 Alphonse ; " what do you think of this ? Here 
 is the ring I shall give her to-morrow." 
 
 He drew from his little finger a heavy ring, 
 enriched with diamonds, and fashioned into 
 two clasped hands, an allusion which seemed 
 to me infinitely poetic. The workmanship was 
 antique, but I fancied it had been retouched
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 2OI 
 
 to insert the diamonds. Inside the ring these 
 words in Gothic characters could be discerned : 
 Sempr 1 ab ti, which means, thine forever. 
 
 " It is a pretty ring," I said, " but the dia- 
 monds which have been added have made it 
 lose a little of its style." 
 
 " Oh ! it is much handsomer now," he an- 
 swered, smiling. "There are twelve hundred 
 francs' worth of diamonds in it. My mother 
 gave it to me. It is a very old family ring, 
 it dates from the days of chivalry. It was my 
 grandmother's, who had it from her grand- 
 mother. Heaven knows when it was made." 
 
 "The custom in Paris," I said, "is to give a 
 perfectly plain ring, usually composed of two 
 different metals, such as gold and platina. 
 The other ring which you have on would be 
 very suitable. This one with its diamonds 
 and its clasped hands is so thick that it would 
 be impossible to wear a glove over it." 
 
 "Madame Alphonse must arrange that as 
 she pleases. I think she will be very glad to 
 have it all the same. Twelve hundred francs 
 on the finger is pleasant. That other little 
 ring," he added, looking in a contented way at 
 the plain ring he wore, " that one a woman in 
 Paris gave me on Shrove Tuesday. How I 
 did enjoy myself when I was in Paris two 
 years ago ! That is the place to have a good 
 time ! " and he sighed regretfully.
 
 2O2 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 We were to dine that day at Puygarrig, with 
 the relations of the bride ; so we got in the 
 carriage, and drove to the chateau, which was 
 four or five miles from Ille. I was presented 
 and received as the friend of the family. I 
 will not speak of the dinner, or the conversa- 
 tion which followed. I took but little part in 
 it. M. Alphonse was seated beside his be- 
 trothed, and whispered a word or two in her 
 ear now and then. As for her, she hardly 
 raised her eyes ; and every time her lover 
 spoke to her she blushed modestly, but an- 
 swered without embarrassment. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Puygarrig was eighteen 
 years of age. Her slender, graceful figure 
 formed a striking contrast to the stalwart frame 
 of her future husband. She was not only beau- 
 tiful, she was alluring. I admired the perfect 
 naturalness of all her replies. Her kind look, 
 which yet was not free from a touch of malice, 
 reminded me, in spite of myself, of my host's 
 Venus. While making this inward comparison, 
 I asked myself if the incontestably superior 
 beauty of the statue did not in great measure 
 come from its tigress-like expression ; for 
 strength, even in evil passions, always arouses 
 in us astonishment, and a sort of involuntary 
 admiration. 
 
 " What a pity," I thought, on leaving Puy- 
 garrig, " that such an attractive girl should be
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 203 
 
 rich, and that her dowry makes her sought by 
 a man quite unworthy of her." 
 
 While returning to Ille, I spoke to Mme. 
 de Peyrehorade, to whom I thought it only 
 proper to address myself now and then, though 
 I did not very well know what to say to her : 
 " You must be strong-minded people in Rous- 
 sillon," I said. " How is it, madam, that you 
 have a wedding on a Friday ? We would be 
 more superstitious in Paris ; no one would 
 dare be married on that day." 
 
 " Do not speak of it," she replied ; " if it had 
 depended on me, certainly another day would 
 have been chosen. But Peyrehorade wished 
 it, and I had to give in. All the same, it 
 troubles me very much. Supposing an acci- 
 dent should happen ? There must be some 
 reason in it, or else why is every one afraid of 
 Friday ? " 
 
 " Friday ! " cried her husband, " is Venus' 
 day ! Just the day for a wedding ! You see, 
 my dear colleague, I think only of my Venus. 
 I chose Friday on her account. To-morrow, 
 if you like, before the wedding, we will make a 
 little sacrifice to her a sacrifice of two doves 
 and if I only knew where to get some in- 
 cense " 
 
 " For shame, Peyrehorade! " interrupted his 
 wife, scandalized to the last degree. " Incense 
 to an idol { It would be an abomination !
 
 204 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 What would they say of us in the neighbor- 
 hood ? " 
 
 "At least," answered M. de Peyrehorade, 
 " you will allow me to place a wreath of roses 
 and lilies on her head : Manibus date lilia 
 plenis. You see, sir, freedom is an empty 
 word. We have not liberty of worship ! " 
 
 The next day's arrangements were ordered 
 in the following manner : Every one was to be 
 dressed and ready at ten o'clock punctually. 
 After the chocolate had been served we were 
 to be driven to Puygarrig. The civil mar- 
 riage was to take place in the town-hall of 
 the village, and the religious ceremony in 
 the chapel of the chateau. Afterwards there 
 would be a breakfast. After the breakfast 
 people would pass^ the time as they liked until 
 seven o'clock. At that hour every one would 
 return to M. de Peyrehorade's at Ille, where 
 the two families were to assemble and have 
 supper. It was natural that being unable to 
 dance they should wish to eat as much as 
 possible. 
 
 By eight o'clock I was seated in front of the 
 Venus, pencil in hand, recommencing the head 
 of the statue for the twentieth time without 
 being' able to catch the expression. M. de 
 Peyrehorade came and went about me, giving 
 me advice, repeating his Phoenician etymology, 
 and laying Bengal roses on the pedestal of the
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 205 
 
 statue while he addressed vows to it in a tragi- 
 comic tone for the young couple who were 
 to live under his roof. Towards nine o'clock 
 he went in to put on his best, and at the 
 same moment M. Alphonse appeared looking 
 very stiff in a new coat, white gloves, chased 
 sleeve-buttons, and varnished shoes. A rose 
 decorated his buttonhole. 
 
 " Will you make my wife's portrait ? " he 
 asked, leaning over my drawing. " She also is 
 pretty." 
 
 On the racquet-court of which I have spoken 
 there now began a game which immediately 
 attracted M. Alphonse's attention. And I, 
 tired, and despairing of ever being able to copy 
 the diabolical face, soon left my drawing to 
 look at the players. There, were among them 
 some Spanish muleteers who had arrived the 
 night before. They were from Aragon and 
 Navarre, and were nearly all marvelously skill- 
 ful at the game. Therefore the Illois, though 
 encouraged by the presence and advice of M. 
 Alphonse, were promptly beaten by the for- 
 eign champions. The native spectators were 
 disheartened. M. Alphonse looked at his 
 watch. It was only half-past nine. His 
 mother's hair he knew was not dressed. He 
 hesitated no longer, but taking off his coat 
 asked for a jacket, and defied the Spaniards. 
 I looked on smiling and a little surprised.
 
 206 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 " The honor of the country must be sustained," 
 he said. 
 
 Then I thought him really handsome. He 
 seemed full of life, and his costume, which but 
 now occupied him so entirely, no longer con- 
 cerned him. A few minutes before he would 
 have dreaded to turn his head for fear of dis- 
 arranging his cravat. Now he did not give a 
 thought to his curled hair or his fine shirt-front. 
 And his betrothed ? If it had been necessary 
 I think he would have postponed the wedding. 
 I saw him hurriedly put on a pair of sandals, 
 roll up his sleeves, and, with an assured air, 
 take his stand at the head of the vanquished 
 party like Caesar rallying his soldiers at Dyrra- 
 chium. I leaped the hedge and placed myself 
 comfortably in the shade of a tree so as to 
 command a good view of both sides. 
 
 Contrary to general expectation, M. Alphonse 
 missed the first ball. It came skimming along 
 the ground, it is true, and was thrown with as- 
 tonishing force by an Aragonese who appeared 
 to be the leader of the Spaniards. 
 
 He was a man of about forty, nervous and 
 agile, and at least six feet tall. His olive 
 skin was almost as dark as the bronze of the 
 Venus. 
 
 M. Alphonse threw his racquet angrily on 
 the ground. 
 
 " It is this cursed ring," he cried, " which
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 2O/ 
 
 squeezes my finger, and makes me miss a sure 
 ball." 
 
 He drew off his diamond ring with some 
 difficulty ; I approached to take it, but he fore- 
 stalled me by running to the Venus and shov- 
 ing it on her fourth finger. He then resumed 
 his post at the head of the Illois. 
 
 He was pale, but calm and resolute. From 
 that moment he did not miss a single ball, and 
 the Spaniards were completely beaten. The 
 enthusiasm of the spectators was a fine sight : 
 some threw their caps in the air and shouted 
 for joy, while others wrung M. Alphonse's 
 hands, calling him the honor of the country. 
 If he had repulsed an invasion I doubt if he 
 would have received warmer or sincerer con- 
 gratulations. The vexation of the vanquished 
 added to the splendor of the victory. 
 
 " We will play other games, my good fellow," 
 he said to the Aragonese in a tone of superior- 
 ity, " but I will give you points." 
 
 I should have wished M. Alphonse to be 
 more modest, and I was almost pained by his 
 rival's humiliation. 
 
 The Spanish giant felt the insult deeply. I 
 saw him pale beneath his tan. He looked 
 sullenly at his racquet and clinched his teeth, 
 then, in a smothered voice he muttered : 
 
 " Me lo pagards." 
 
 M. de Peyrehorade's voice interrupted his
 
 2O8 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 son's triumph. Astonished at not finding him 
 presiding over the preparation of the new 
 carriage, my host was even more surprised on 
 seeing him racquet in hand and bathed in per- 
 spiration. M. Alphonse hurried to the house, 
 washed his hands and face, put on again his 
 new coat and patent-leather shoes, and in five 
 minutes we were galloping on the road to 
 Puygarrig. All the racquet players of the town 
 and a crowd of spectators followed us with 
 shouts of joy. The strong horses which drew 
 us could hardly keep ahead of the intrepid 
 Catalans. 
 
 We were at Puygarrig, and the procession 
 was about to set out for the town-hall, when 
 M. Alphonse, striking his forehead, whispered 
 to me : 
 
 " What a mess ! I have forgotten the ring ! 
 It is on the finger of the Venus ; may the devil 
 carry her off ! Do not tell my mother at any 
 rate. Perhaps she will not notice it." 
 
 "You can send some one for it," I replied. 
 
 "My servant remained at Ille. I do not 
 trust these here. Twelve hundred francs' worth 
 of diamonds might well tempt almost any one. 
 Moreover, what would they think of my for- 
 getfulness. They would laugh at me. They 
 would call me the husband of the statue. If it 
 only is not stolen ! Fortunately, the rascals are 
 afraid of the idol. They do not dare approach
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 209 
 
 it by an arm's length. After all, it does not 
 matter ; I have another ring." 
 
 The two ceremonies, civil and religious, were 
 accomplished with suitable pomp, and Made- 
 moiselle de Puygarrig received the ring of a 
 Parisian milliner without suspecting that her 
 betrothed was making her the sacrifice of a 
 love-token. Then we seated ourselves at table, 
 where we ate, drank, and even sang, all at 
 great length. I suffered for the bride at the 
 coarse merriment which exploded around her ; 
 still, she faced it better than I would have ex- 
 pected, and her embarrassment was neither 
 awkward nor affected. 
 
 Perhaps courage comes with difficult situa- 
 tions. 
 
 The breakfast ended when heaven pleased. 
 It was four o'clock. The men went to walk in 
 the park, which was magnificent, or watched 
 the peasants, in their holiday attire, dance on 
 the lawn of the chateau. In this way we 
 passed several hours. Meanwhile, the women 
 were eagerly attentive to the bride, who showed 
 them her presents. Then she changed her 
 dress, and I noticed that she had covered her 
 beautiful hair with a be-feathered bonnet ; for 
 women are in no greater hurry than to assume, 
 as soon as possible, the attire which custom 
 forbids their wearing while they are still young 
 girls.
 
 2IO TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 It was nearly eight o'clock when preparations 
 were made to start for Ille. But first a pa- 
 thetic scene took place. Mile, de Puygarrig's 
 aunt, a very old and pious woman, who stood 
 to her in a mother's place, was not to go with 
 us. Before the departure she gave her niece 
 a touching sermon on her wifely duties, from 
 which sermon resulted a flood of tears and 
 endless embraces. 
 
 M. de Peyrehorade compared this separation 
 to the Rape of the Sabines. 
 
 At last, however, we got off, and, on the way, 
 every one exerted himself to amuse the bride 
 and make her laugh ; but all in vain. 
 
 At Ille supper awaited us, and what a sup- 
 per ! If the coarse jokes of the morning had 
 shocked me, I was now much more so by the 
 equivocations and pleasantries of which the 
 bride and groom were the principal objects. 
 The bridegroom, who had disappeared for a 
 moment before seating himself at the table, was 
 pale, cold, and grave. 
 
 He drank incessantly some old Collioure 
 wine almost as strong as brandy. I sat next 
 to him, and thought myself obliged to warn 
 him. " Be careful ! they say that wine " I 
 hardly know what stupid nonsense I said to 
 be in harmony with the other guests. 
 
 He touched my knee, and whispered :
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 211 
 
 " When we have left the table ... let me 
 have two words with you." 
 
 His solemn tone surprised me. I looked 
 more closely at him, and noticed a strange 
 alteration in his features. 
 
 " Do you feel ill ? " I asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 And he began to drink again. 
 
 Meanwhile, amidst much shouting and clap- 
 ping of hands, a child of twelve, who had 
 slipped under the table, held up to the com- 
 pany a pretty pink and white ribbon which he 
 had untied from the bride's ankle. It was 
 called her garter, and at once cut into pieces 
 and distributed among the young men, who, 
 following an old custom still preserved in some 
 patriarchal families, ornamented their button- 
 holes with it. This was the time for the bride 
 to flush up to the whites of her eyes. But her 
 confusion was at its height when M. de Peyre- 
 horade, having called for silence, sang several 
 verses in Catalan, which he said were im- 
 promptu. Here is the meaning, if I under- 
 stood it correctly : 
 
 " What is this, my friends ? has the wine I 
 have drunk made me see double ? There are 
 two Venuses here "... 
 
 The bridegroom turned his head suddenly 
 with a frightened look, which made every one 
 laugh.
 
 212 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 "Yes, "continued M. de Peyrehorade, "there 
 are two Venuses under my roof. The one, I 
 found in the ground like a truffle ; the other, 
 descended from heaven, has just divided among 
 us her belt." 
 
 He meant her garter. 
 
 " My son, choose between the Roman Venus 
 and the Catalan the one you prefer. The 
 rascal takes the Catalan, and his choice is the 
 best. The Roman is black, the Catalan is 
 white. The Roman is cold, the Catalan en- 
 flames all who approach her." 
 
 This equivocal allusion excited such a shout, 
 such noisy applause, and sonorous laughter, 
 that I thought the ceiling would fall on our 
 heads. Around the table there were but three 
 serious faces, those of the newly married cou- 
 ple and mine. I had a terrible headache ; and 
 besides, I do not know why, a wedding always 
 saddens me. This one, moreover, even dis- 
 gusted me a little. 
 
 The final verses having been sung, and very 
 lively they were, I must say, every one adjourned 
 to the drawing-room to enjoy the withdrawal of 
 the bride, who, as it was nearly midnight, was 
 soon to be conducted to her room. 
 
 M. Alphonse drew me into the embrasure of 
 a window, and, turning away his eyes, said, 
 
 " You will laugh at me But I don't know 
 what is the matter with me ... I am be- 
 witched I"
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 213 
 
 My first thought was that he fancied himself 
 threatened with one of those misfortunes of 
 which Montaigne and Madame de Sevignd 
 speak : 
 
 " All the world of love is full of tragic his- 
 tories," etc. 
 
 " I thought only clever people were subject 
 to this sort of accident," I said to myself. 
 
 To him I said : " You drank too much Col- 
 lioure wine, my dear Monsieur Alphonse ; I 
 warned you against it." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps. But something much more 
 terrible than that has happened." 
 
 His voice was broken. I thought him com- 
 pletely inebriated. 
 
 " You know about my ring ? " he continued, 
 after a pause. 
 
 " Well, has it been stolen ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then you have it ? " 
 
 "No I I cannot get it off the ringer of 
 that infernal Venus." 
 
 " You did not pull hard enough." 
 
 " Yes, indeed I did But the Venus she 
 has bent her finger." 
 
 He stared at me wildly, and leaned against 
 the window-sash to prevent himself from fall- 
 ing. 
 
 " What nonsense ! " I said. " You pushed 
 the ring on too far. You can get it off to-morrow
 
 214 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 with pincers. But be careful not to damage 
 the statue." 
 
 " No, I tell you. The Venus' finger is 
 crooked, bent under ; she clinches her hand, 
 do you hear me ? ... She is my wife appar- 
 ently, since I have given her my ring. . . . She 
 will not return it." 
 
 I shivered, and, for a moment, I was all 
 goose-flesh. Then a great sigh from him 
 brought me a whiff of wine, and all my emotion 
 disappeared. 
 
 The wretch, I thought, is dead drunk. 
 
 " You are an antiquarian, sir," added the 
 bridegroom in a mournful tone ; " you under- 
 stand those statues ; there is, perhaps, some 
 hidden spring, some deviltry which I do not 
 know about. Will you go and see ? " 
 
 " Certainly," I replied. " Come with me." 
 
 " No, I would prefer to have you go alone." 
 
 I left the drawing-room. 
 
 The weather had changed during supper, 
 and a heavy rain had begun to fall. I was 
 about to ask for an umbrella, when a sudden 
 thought stopped me. I should be a great fool, 
 I reflected, to go and verify what had been told 
 me by a drunken man ! Besides, he may have 
 wished to play some silly trick on me to give 
 cause for laughter to the honest country people ; 
 and the least that can happen to me from it is 
 to be drenched to th bone and catch a bad 
 cold.
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 2 1 5 
 
 From the door I cast a glance at the statue 
 running with water, and I went up to my room 
 without returning to the drawing-room. I went 
 to bed ; but sleep was long in coming. All 
 the scenes of the day passed through my mind. 
 I thought of the young girl, so pure and love- 
 ly, abandoned to a drunken brute. What an 
 odious thing a marriage of convenience is ! A 
 mayor dons a tri-colored scarf, a priest a stole, 
 and then the most virtuous girl in the world is 
 delivered over to the Minotaur ! What can 
 two people who do not love each other find 
 to say at a moment, which two lovers would 
 buy at the price of their lives ? Can a woman 
 ever love a man whom she has once seen 
 coarse ? First impressions are never effaced, 
 and I am sure M. Alphonse will deserve to be 
 hated. 
 
 During my monologue, which I abridge very 
 much, I had heard a great deal of coming and 
 going in the house. Doors opened and shut, 
 and carriages drove away. Then I seemed to 
 hear on the stairs the light steps of a number 
 of women going towards the end of the hall 
 opposite my room. It was probably the bride's 
 train of attendants leading her to bed. After 
 that they went down stairs again. Madame de 
 Peyrehorade's door closed. How troubled and 
 ill at ease that poor girl must be, I thought. 
 I tossed about in my bed with bad temper. A
 
 2l6 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 bachelor plays a stupid part in a house where 
 a marriage is accomplished. 
 
 Silence had reigned for some time when it 
 was disturbed by a heavy tread mounting the 
 stairs. The wooden steps creaked loudly. 
 
 " What a clown ! " I cried to myself. " I 
 wager that he will fall on the stairs." All was 
 quiet again. I took up a book to change the 
 current of my thoughts. It was the county 
 statistics, supplemented with an address by M. 
 de Peyrehorade on the Druidical remains of the 
 district of Prades. I grew drowsy at the third 
 page. I slept badly, and awoke repeatedly. It 
 might have been five o'clock in the morning, 
 and I had been awake more than twenty min- 
 utes, when the cock crew. Day was about to 
 dawn. Then I heard distinctly the same heavy 
 footsteps, the same creaking of the stairs which 
 I had heard before I fell asleep. I thought it 
 strange. Yawning, I tried to guess why M. 
 Alphonse got up so early. I could imagine no 
 likely reason. I was about to close my eyes 
 again, when my attention was freshly excited 
 by a singular trampling of feet, which was soon 
 intermingled with the ringing of bells and the 
 sound of doors opened noisily ; then I distin- 
 guished confused cries. 
 
 " My drunkard has set something on fire," I 
 thought, jumping out of bed. I dressed quickly 
 and went into the hall. From the opposite
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 21 / 
 
 end came cries and lamentations, and a heart- 
 rending voice dominated all the others : " My 
 son ! my son ! " It was evident that an acci- 
 dent had happened to M. Alphonse. I ran to 
 the bridal apartment : it was full of people. 
 The first sight which struck my gaze was the 
 young man partly dressed and stretched across 
 the bed, the wood-work of which was broken. 
 He was livid and motionless. His mother 
 sobbed and wept beside him. M. de Peyre- 
 horade moved about frantically ; he rubbed his 
 son's temples with cologne water, or held salts 
 to his nose. Alas ! his son had long been 
 dead. On a sofa at the other side of the room 
 lay the bride, a prey to dreadful convulsions. 
 She was making inarticulate cries, and two 
 robust maid-servants had all the trouble in the 
 world to hold her down. " Good heavens ! " 
 I exclaimed, " what has happened ? " 
 
 I approached the bed and raised the body 
 of the unfortunate young man : it was already 
 stiff and cold. His clinched teeth and black 
 face expressed the most fearful anguish. It 
 was evident enough that his death had been 
 violent and his agony terrible. 
 
 Nevertheless, no sign of blood was on his 
 clothes. I opened his shirt, and on his chest 
 I found a livid mark which extended around 
 the ribs to the back. One would have said he 
 had been squeezed in an iron ring. My foot
 
 2l8 TALES BEFORE SUPPER, 
 
 touched something hard on the carpet ; I 
 stooped and saw it was the diamond ring. I 
 dragged M. de Peyrehorade and his wife into 
 their room, and had the bride carried there. 
 
 " You still have a daughter," I said to them. 
 " You owe her your care." Then I left them 
 alone. 
 
 To me it did not seem to admit of a doubt 
 that M. Alphonse had been the victim of a 
 murder whose authors had discovered a way 
 to introduce themselves into the bride's room 
 during the night. The bruises on the chest 
 and their circular direction, however, perplexed 
 me, for they could not have been made either 
 by a club or an iron bar. Suddenly I remem- 
 bered having heard that at Valencia bravi 
 used long leather bags filled with sand to stun 
 people whom they had been paid to kill. 
 Immediately I thought of the Aragonese mule- 
 teer and his threat. Yet I hardly dared sup- 
 pose he would have taken such a terrible re- 
 venge for a trifling jest. 
 
 I went through the house seeking every- 
 where for traces of house-breaking, but could 
 find none. I descended to the garden to see 
 if the assassins could have made their entrance 
 from there ; but there were no conclusive signs 
 of it. In any case, the evening's rain had so 
 softened the ground that it could not have re- 
 tained any very clear impress. Nevertheless, I
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 2 1C) 
 
 noticed some deeply marked footprints ; they 
 ran in two contrary directions, but on the same 
 path. They started from the corner of the 
 hedge next the racquet-court and ended at the 
 door of the house. They might have been 
 made by M. Alphonse when he went to get his 
 ring from the finger of the statue. Then again, 
 the hedge at this spot was narrower than else- 
 where, and it must have been here that the 
 murderers got over it. Passing and repassing 
 before the statue, I stopped a moment to con- 
 sider it. This time, I must confess, I could 
 not contemplate its expression of vicious irony 
 without fear ; and, my mind being filled with 
 vhe horrible scene I had just witnessed, I 
 seemed to see in it a demoniacal goddess ap- 
 plauding the sorrow fallen on the house. 
 
 I returned to my room and stayed there 
 till noon. Then I left it to ask news of my 
 hosts. They were a little calmer. Mile, de 
 Puygarrig, or I should say the widow of M. 
 Alphonse, had regained consciousness. She 
 had even spoken to the procurcur du roi from 
 Perpignan, then in circuit at Ille, and this 
 magistrate had received her deposition. He 
 asked for mine. I told him what I knew, and 
 did not hide from him my suspicions about the 
 Aragonese muleteer. He ordered him to be 
 arrested on the spot. 
 
 " Have you learned anything from Mme.
 
 22O TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 Alphonse ? " I asked the procureur du roi when 
 my deposition was written and signed. 
 
 " That unfortunate young woman has gone 
 crazy," he said, smiling sadly. " Crazy, quite 
 crazy. This is what she says : 
 
 " She had been in bed for several minutes with 
 the curtains drawn, when the door of her room 
 opened and some one entered. Mme. Al- 
 phonse was on the inside of the bed with her 
 face turned to the wall. Assured that it was 
 her husband she did not move. Presently the 
 bed creaked as if laden with a tremendous 
 weight. She was terribly frightened, but dared 
 not turn her head. Five minutes, or ten min- 
 utes perhaps she has no idea of the time 
 passed in this way. Then she made an in- 
 voluntary movement, or else it was the other 
 person who made one, and she felt the contact 
 of something as cold as ice, that is her expres- 
 sion. She buried herself against the wall 
 trembling in all her limbs. 
 
 " Shortly afterwards, the door opened a sec- 
 ond time, and some one came in who said, 
 ' Good evening, my little wife.' Then the cur- 
 tains were drawn back. She heard a stifled cry. 
 The person who was in the bed beside her sat 
 up apparently with extended arms. Then she 
 turned her head and saw her husband, kneeling 
 by the bed with his head on a level with the 
 pillow, held close in the arms of a sort of
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 221 
 
 prreenish-colored giant. She says, and she re- 
 peated it to me twenty times, poor woman ! 
 she says that she recognized do you guess 
 who? the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade's 
 statue. Since it has been here every one dreams 
 about it. But to continue the poor lunatic's 
 story. At this sight she lost consciousness, 
 and probably she had already lost her mind. 
 She cannot tell how long she remained in this 
 condition. Returned to her senses she saw the 
 phantom, or the statue as she insists on call- 
 ing it, lying immovable, the legs and lower part 
 of the body on the bed, the bust and arms ex- 
 tended forward, and between the arms her hus- 
 band, quite motionless. A cock crew. Then 
 the statue left the bed, let fall the body, and 
 went out. Mme. Alphonse rushed to the bell, 
 and you know the rest." 
 
 The Spaniard was brought in ; he was calm, 
 and defended himself with much coolness and 
 presence of mind. He did not deny the re- 
 mark which I had overheard, but he explained 
 it, pretending that he did not mean anything 
 except that the next day, when rested, he 
 would beat his victor at a game of racquets. 
 I remember that he added : 
 
 " An Aragonese when insulted does not wait 
 till the next day to revenge himself. If I had 
 believed that M. Alphonse wished to insult me 
 I would have ripped him up with my knife on 
 the spot."
 
 222 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 His shoes were compared with the footprints 
 in the garden ; the shoes were much the larger. 
 
 Finally, the innkeeper with whom the man 
 lodged asserted that he had spent the entire 
 night rubbing and dosing one of his mules 
 which was sick. And, moreover, the Aragonese 
 was a man of good reputation, well known in 
 the neighborhood, where he came every year 
 on business. 
 
 So he was released with many apologies. 
 
 I have forgotten to mention the statement of 
 a servant who was the last person to see M. 
 Alphonse alive. It was just as he was about 
 to join his wife, and calling to this man he 
 asked him in an anxious way if he knew where 
 I was. The servant answered that he had not 
 seen me. M. Alphonse sighed, and stood a 
 minute without speaking, then he said : " Well ! 
 the devil must have carried him off also ! " 
 
 I asked the man if M. Alphonse had on his 
 diamond ring. The servant hesitated ; at last 
 he said he thought not ; but for that matter he 
 had not noticed. 
 
 "If the ring had been on M. Alphonse's 
 finger," he added, recovering himself, " I 
 should probably have noticed it, for I thought 
 he had given it to Mme. Alphonse." 
 
 When questioning the man I felt a little 
 of the superstitious terror which Mme. Al- 
 phonse's statement had spread through the
 
 THE VENUS OF ILLE. 22$ 
 
 house. The proatreur du rot smiled at me, and 
 I was careful not to insist further. 
 
 A few hours after the funeral of M. Alphonse 
 I prepared to leave Ille. M. de Peyrehorade's 
 carriage was to take me to Perpignan. Not- 
 withstanding his feeble condition, the poor old 
 man wished to accompany me as far as the 
 garden gate. We crossed the garden in silence, 
 he creeping along supported by my arm. As 
 we were about to part I threw a last glance at 
 the Venus. I foresaw that my host, though he 
 did not share the fear and hatred which it in- 
 spired in his family, would wish to rid himself 
 of an object which must ceaselessly recall to 
 him a dreadful misfortune. My intention was 
 to induce him to place it in a museum. As I 
 hesitated to open the subject, M. de Peyre- 
 horade turned his head mechanically in the 
 direction he saw I was looking so fixedly. He 
 perceived the statue, and immediately melted 
 into tears. I embraced him, and got into the 
 carriage without daring to say a word. 
 
 Since my departure I have not learned that 
 any new light has been thrown on this mysteri- 
 ous catastrophe. 
 
 M. de Peyrehorade died several months after 
 his son. In his will he left me his manuscripts, 
 which I may publish some day. I did not find 
 among them the article relative to the inscrip- 
 tions on the Venus.
 
 224 TALES BEFORE SUPPER. 
 
 P. S. My friend M. de P. has just written 
 to me from Perpignan that the statue no longer 
 exists. After her husband's death Madame de 
 Peyrehorade's first care was to have it cast into 
 a bell, and in this new shape it does duty in 
 the church at Ille. " But," adds M. de P., " it 
 seems as if bad luck pursues those who own 
 the bronze. Since the bell rings at Ille the 
 vines have twice been frozen."
 
 DEC S
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY