THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FROM THE LIBRARY OF JIM TULLY GIFT OF MRS. JIM TULLY THE MODERN LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS THE RED LILY The publishers will be 'pleased to send, u-pon re- quest, an illustrated catalogue setting forth the 'Purpose and ideals of The Modern Library, and describing in detail each volume in the series, ry reader of books will find titles he has been looking for, attractively ^printed, and at an unusually low -price THE RED LILY BY ANATOLE FRANCE THE MODERN LIBRARY PUBLISHERS : NEW YORK MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOB THE MODERN LIBRARY. INC., BT H. WOLFF College library PS. $ THE RED LILY 801C62 THE RED LILY SHE looked round at the arm-chairs, grouped in front of the fire, at the tea-table with its tea-things glittering like shadows, at the big bunches of delicately coloured flowers in Chinese vases. Lightly she touched the sprays of guelder roses and toyed with their silver buds. Then she gazed gravely in the glass. Standing sideways and looking over her shoulder, she followed the outline of her fine figure in its sheath of black satin, over which floated a thin drapery, sown with beads and scintillating with lights of flame. Curious to examine that day's countenance, she ap- proached the mirror. Tranquilly and approvingly it re- turned her glance as if the charming woman it was reflecting lived a life devoid of intense joy and profound sadness. On the walls of the great empty silent drawing-room, the tap- estry figures at their ancient games, vague in the shadow, grew pale with dying grace. Like them, the terra cotta statuettes on pedestals, the groups of old Dresden china, the paintings on Sevres, displayed in glass cases, spoke of things past. On a stand decorated with precious bronzes the marble bust of some royal princess, disguised as Diana, with irregular features and prominent breast, escaped from her troubled drapery, whilst on the ceiling a Night, pow- dered like a marquise and surrounded by Cupids, scattered flowers. Everything was slumbering, and there was heard only the crackling of the fire and the slight rustling of beads on gauze. Turning from the glass, she went to the window, raised one corner of the curtain, and looked out into the pale twi- light, through the black trees on the quay to the yellow waters of the Seine. The grey weariness of sky and water 6 THE RED LILY was reflected in the greyness of her beautiful eyes. One of the "Swallow" boats passed, coming out from under an arch of the Pont de 1'Alma, and bearing humble passengers to- wards Crenelle and Billancourt. She looked after it as it drifted down the muddy current; then she let the curtain fall, and, sitting down in her accustomed corner of the sofa, under the flowers, she took up a book, laid upon the table just within hand's reach. On its straw-coloured linen cover glittered in gold the title: Yscult la Blonde, by Vivian Bell. It was a collection of French verse written by an Englishwoman and printed in London. She opened it by chance and read: Like to a worshipper who prays and sings, The bell on the quivering air "Hail Mary !" rings ; And there in the orchard, 'mid the apple trees, The messenger the shuddering virgin sees, Awed, his red lily takes, whose perfum'd breath Makes her who breathes it half in love with death. In the wall'd garden, in the cool of the day, Through her cleft lips her soul would speed away, Her life, at some unconquerable behest, Even as a stream, pour from her ivory breast.* Waiting for her visitors to arrive, she read, indifferent and absent-minded, thinking less of the poetry than of the poetess: that Miss Bell, her most delightful friend perhaps, but one whom she hardly ever saw. At each of their rare meetings. Miss Bell embraced her, pecked her on the cheek, called her darling, and then gushed into prattling talk. Ugly ard yet attractive, slightly ridiculous and altogether ' Quand la cloche, faisant comme qui chante et prie, Dit dans le ciel emu : "Je vous salue, Marie," La vierge, en visitant les pommiers du verger, Frissonne d'avoir vu venir le messager Qui lui presente un lys rouge et tel qu'on desire Mourir de son parfum sitot qu'on le respire. La vierge au jardin clos, dans la douceur du soir, Sent 1'ame lui monter aux levres, et croit voir Couler sa vie ainsi qu'un ruisseau qui s'epanche En limpide filet de sa poitrine blanche. THE RED LILY 7 exquisite, Miss Bell lived at Fiesole as aesthete and philos- opher, while in England she was renowned as the favourite English poetess. Like Vernon Lee and Mary Robinson, she had fallen in love with Tuscan life and art; and, without staying to complete her Tristan, the first part of which had inspired Burne- Jones to paint dreams in water-colours, she was expressing Italian ideas in Provengal and French verse. She had sent her Yseult la Blonde to "darling," with a letter inviting her to spend a month at her house at Fiesole. She had written, "Come; you will see the most beautiful things in the world, and you will make them more beautiful." And "darling" was saying to herself that she would not go, that she was detained in Paris. But she was not in- different to the idea of seeing Miss Bell and Italy again. Turning over the pages of the book, she fell upon this line: The self-same thing a kindly heart and love.* And she wondered ironically but kindly whether Miss Bell had ever loved, and if so what her love-story had been. The poetess had an admirer at Fiesole, Prince Albertinelli. He was very handsome, but he seemed too matter-of-fact and commonplace to please an aesthete for whom love would have something of the mysticism of an Annunciation. "How do you do, Therese? I am done up." It was Princess Seniavine, graceful in her furs, which were hardly distinguishable from her dark sallow complex- ion. She sat down brusquely, and in tones harsh yet caressing, at once bird-like and masculine, she said: "This morning I walked right through the Bois with General Lariviere. I met him in the Alice des Potins, and took him to the Pont d'Argenteuil, where he insisted on buying from a keeper and presenting to me a trained mag- pie, which goes through its drill with a little gun. I am tired out." "Why ever did you take the General so far as the Pont d'Argenteuil?" "Because he had gout in his big toe." * Amour et gentil coeur sont une meme chose. 8 THE RED LILY Therese shrugged her shoulders, smiling: "You are wasting your malice; and you are blundering." "And you, my dear, would have me economise my kind- ness and my malice with a view to a serious investment?" She drank some Tokay. Announced by the sound of loud breathing, General Lariviere came in, treading heavily. He kissed the hands of both women. Then, with a determined, self-satisfied air, sat down between them, ogling and laughing in every wrinkle of his forehead. "How is M. Martin-Belleme? Still busy?" Therese thought that he was at the Chamber and making a speech there. Princess Seniavine, who was eating caviar sandwiches, asked Madame Martin, why she was not at Madame Meil- lan's yesterday. There was a play acted. "A Scandinavian play. Was it a success?" "Yes. And yet I don't know. I was in the little green drawing-room, under the Duke of Orleans's portrait. M. le Menil came and rendered me one of those services one never forgets. He saved me from M. Garain." The General, who was a regular Who's Who, storing in his big head all kinds of useful information, pricked up his ears at this name. "Garain," he asked, "the minister who was a member of the Cabinet at the time of the Princes' exile?" "The very same. He was extremely occupied with me. He was explaining his heart's longings and looking at me with a most alarming tenderness. And from time to time with a sigh he glanced at the Duke of Orleans's portrait. I said to him: Monsieur Garain, you are making a mis- take. It is my sister-in-law who is Orleanist. I am not in the least. At that moment M. le Menil arrived to take me to have some refreshment. He complimented me on my horses. He told me there were none finer that winter in the Bois. He talked of wolves and wolf cubs. It was most re- freshing." The General, who never liked young men, said that he had met Le Menil in the Bois the evening before galloping a* a break-neck pace. THE RED LILY 9 He declared that it was only old horsemen who main- tained the good tradition, and that the men of fashion of the day were wrong in riding like jockeys. "It is the same in fencing," he added. "Formerly " Princess Seniavine suddenly interrupted him: "General, see how pretty Madame Martin is. She is always charming, but at this moment she is more so than ever. It is because she is bored. Nothing becomes her bet- ter than boredom. We have been wearying her ever since we came. Just look at her overcast brow, her wandering glance, her mournful mouth. She is a victim." She jumped up, kissed Therese affectionately, and fled, leaving the General astonished. Madame Martin-Belleme entreated him to pay no atten- tion to such a madcap. He was reassured and asked: "And how are your poets, Madame?" He found it difficult to pardon Madame Martin's liking for people who wrote and did not belong to his circle. "Yes, your poets? What has become of that M. Chou- lette, who used to come and see you in a red com- forter?" "My poets are forgetting me; they are forsaking me. You can't depend on any one. Men, things nothing is certain. Life is one long treachery. That poor Miss Bell is the only one who does not forget me. She has written from Florence and sent me her book." "Miss Bell; isn't she that young person with frizzed yellow hair, who looks like a lap-dog?" He made a mental calculation and concluded that by now she must be at least thirty. A white-haired old lady, modestly dignified, and a little keen-eyed, vivacious man entered one after the other: Madame Marmet and M. Paul Vence. Then very stiff, wearing an eye-glass, appeared M. Daniel Salomon, sover- eign arbiter of taste. The General made off. They talked of the novel of the week. Madame Marmet had dined with the author several times, a very charming young man. Paul Vence thought the book dull. "Oh!" sighed Madame Martin, "all books are dull. But io THE RED LILY men are much duller than books; and they are more exacting." Madame Marmet asserted that her husband, a man of fine literary taste, had felt an intense horror of realism to the end of his days. The widow of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, sweet and modest in her black dress, with her beautiful white hair, Madame Marmet prided herself in society on being the widow of an illustrious man. Madame Martin told M. Daniel Salomon she would like to consult him about a porcelain group of children. "It is Saint-Cloud. Tell me if you like it. You must give me your opinion too, Monsieur Vence, unless you scorn such trifles." M. Daniel Salomon gazed at Paul Vence through his eye-glass with sullen haughtiness. Paul Vence was looking round the drawing-room. "You have some beautiful things, Madame. And that in itself would be little. But you have only beautiful things and those which become you." She did not conceal her gratification at hearing him speak thus. She considered Paul Vence to be the only thoroughly intelligent man among her visiting acquaintance. She had appreciated him before his books had made him famous. Ill-health, a gloomy temper, hard work kept him out of society. This bilious little man was not very agreeable. Nevertheless he attracted her. She thought very highly of his profound irony, his untamed pride, his talent matured in solitude; and she justly admired him as an excellent writer, the author of fine essays on art and manners. The drawing-room filled gradually with a brilliant assem- bly. The big circle of arm-chairs now included Madame de Vresson, about whom terrible stories were told, but, who, after twenty years of partially suppressed scandals, re- tained a youthful complexion and looked out on the world through child-like eyes; old Madame de Morlaine, viva- cious, scatter-brained, giving utterance to her witty re- marks in piercing shrieks, while she agitated her unwieldy figure, like a swimmer in a life-belt; Madame Raymond, the <yife of an Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of THE RED LILY n an ex-Minister, three other ladies; and standing by the mantelpiece, warming himself at the fire, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles, editor of Le Journal des Dlbats and deputy, who was stroking his white whiskers and trying to show himself off, while Madame de Morlaine was screaming at him: "Your article on bimetallism a treasure, a gem! The end especially, pure inspiration." Standing at the end of the drawing-room, a few young clubmen were solemnly drawling their conversation. "How is it he has managed to hunt with the Prince's hounds?" "He did nothing. It was his wife." They had their philosophy of life. One of them never believed in promises. "There's A kind of person I can't stand: a man with his heart in his hand and on his lips. When you are standing for a club, he says: 'I promise to vote for you.' 'Yes, but what will your vote be?' 'Why, of course not a black-ball.' But at the election it turns out he has put in a black-ball. Life is full of dirty tricks when you come to think of it." "Then don't think of it," said a third. Daniel Salomon, who had joined them, was whispering scandalous gossip, with an air of decorum. And at each interesting disclosure concerning Madame Raymond, Ma- dame Berthier d'Eyzelles, and the Princess Seniavine he added carelessly: "Every one knows it." Then gradually the crowd of visitors melted away. There remained only Madame Marmet and Paul Vence. The lat- ter went up to the Countess Martin and asked: "When shall I bring Dechartre to see you?" It was the second time he had asked her. She was not fond of new faces. Very carelessly she replied: "Your sculptor? When you like. At the Champs de Mars I saw some medallions by him which were very good. But he produces little. He is an amateur, isn't he?" "He is sensitive. He does not need to work for a live- lihood. He caresses his statues with a lingering affection. But be assured, Madame, he knows and he feels; he would 12 THE RED LILY be a master if he did not live alone. I have known him since he was a child. He is thought to be malicious and irritable. He is really passionate and shy. His defect, a defect which will always hinder him from attaining the highest point of his art, is a lack of simplicity of mind. He grows anxious, distracted, and spoils his finest impres- sions. In my opinion he is less suited for sculpture than for poetry or philosophy. He knows a greal deal, and his well-stored mind would astonish you." The benevolent Madame Marmet approved. She pleased in society because she appeared as if so- ciety pleased her. She listened well and spoke little. Very kind-hearted, she made her kindness valued by not be- stowing it at once. Whether it was that she really liked Madame Martin or that she made a point of showing dis- creet signs of preference in every house she visited, she was warming herself contentedly, like a grandmother, in a corner by the fire under that Louis XVI mantel-piece which was an effective background to the tolerant old lady's beauty. The only thing lacking was her lap-dog. "How is Toby?" asked Madame Martin. "Monsieur Vence, do you know Toby? He has long silky hair and a lovely little black nose." Madame Marmet was enjoying this praise of Toby when there entered a fair rosy-cheeked old man, with curly hair; short-legged and short-sighted, almost blind under his gold spectacles. He came in, knocking against the furni- ture, greeting empty arm-chairs and running into mirrors. Then he pushed his beaked nose in front of Madame Mar- met, who looked at him indignantly. It was M. Schmoll, of the Academy of Inscriptions. His smile was an affected grimace. He recited madrigals in honour of Countess Martin in that hereditary unctuous tone in which his Jewish fathers had importuned their creditors, the peasants of Alsace, Poland, and the Crimea. He drawled out his sen- tences. A member of the French Institute, this great philologist knew every language except French. His gal- lantry amused Madame Martin. As rusty and heavy as the pieces of old iron sold by second-hand dealers, its only adornment was a few dried flowers culled from the THE RED LILY 13 Greek Anthology. M. Schmoll was a lover of poets and of women; and he was intelligent. Madame Marmet pretended not to know him, and went out without returning his greeting. When he had exhausted his madrigals, M. Schmoll became sad and discontented. He groaned frequently. He complained bitterly at the way he was treated; he was neither sufficiently decorated nor sufficiently provided with sinecures, nor were he and Madame Schmoll and their five daughters sufficiently well housed at the State's expense. There was a certain great- ness in his lamentations. Something of the soul of Ezekiel and Jeremiah was in him. Unfortunately looking along the level of the table with his gold spectacles, he perceived Vivian Bell's book. "Ah! Yseult la Blonde," he cried bitterly: "that is the book you are reading, Madame. I should like you to know that Vivian Bell has robbed me of an inscription, and that worse still she has distorted it by putting it into verse. You will find it in the book, page 109: "Weep not, lowered lids between, What is not, never has been " "Stem not my tears, dear maid, A shade may weep for a shade !" * "You hear, Madame: A shade may weep for a shade. Well! those words are literally translated from a funeral inscription which I was the first to publish and to criticise. Last year, when I was dining at your house, finding myself next to Miss Bell at table, I quoted that sentence, which greatly pleased her. At her request the very next day I translated the whole inscription into French and sent it to her. And now I find it dismembered and disfigured in this volume of verse, with the title: On the Via Sacra! The Sacred Way! I am that way." And he repeated with grotesque bad temper: "It is I who am that Sacred Way, Madame." * "Ne pleure pas, toi que j'aimais: Ce qui n'est plus ne fut jamais. Laisse couler ma douleur sombre; Unc ombre peut pleurer une ombre." 14 THE RED LILY He was annoyed that the poet had not mentioned him in connection with the inscription. He would have liked to read his name at the head of the poem, in the lines, in the rhyme. He was always wanting to see his name everywhere. He was always looking for it in the news- papers with which his pockets were stuffed. But he was not vindictive. He bore Miss Bell no ill-will. He agreed with a good grace that she was a very distinguished woman and the most prominent English poet of the day. When he had gone, Countess Martin very ingenuously asked M. Paul Vence if he knew why kind Madame Marmet, generally so benevolent, had greeted M. Schmoll with such angry silence. He was surprised that she did not know. "I never know anything." "But the quarrel between Joseph Schmoll and Louis Marmet, with which the Institute resounded for so long, is very famous. It was only ended by the death of Marmet whom his implacable colleague pursued even to Pere- Lachaise. "The day that poor Marmet was buried sleet was fall- ing. We were frozen and wet to the skin. By the grave- side, in the mist, in the wind and the mud, Schmoll, under his umbrella, read a discourse inspired by cruel jocularity and triumphing pity. Afterwards still in the mourning coach, he took it to the newspapers. When an indiscreet friend showed it to Madame Marmet, she faint. Can it be possible, Madame, that you have never heard of this erudite and bitter quarrel? "The Etruscan language was its cause. Marmet de- voted his life to the study of Etruscan. He was nicknamed 'Marmet the Etruscan.' Neither he nor any one else knew a single word of that completely lost language. Schmoll used to be always saying to Marmet: 'You know that you don't know Etruscan, my dear brother; that's why you are so greatly honoured as a scholar and a wit.' Piqued by such ironical praise, Marmet determined to know some- thing of Etruscan. He read his brother Academicians a paper on the use of inflexions in the ancient Tuscan idiom." Madame Martin asked what an inflexion was. "Oh! Madame, if I stop to explain we shall lose the THE RED LILY 15 thread of the story. Be content to know that in this paper poor Marmet quoted Latin texts and quoted them incor- rectly. Now Schmoll is an accomplished Latin scholar, who, after Mommsen, knows more than any one about in- scriptions. "He reproached his young brother (Marmet was not quite fifty) with knowing too much Etruscan and not enough Latin. From that moment he never let Marmet alone. At each meeting he chaffed him with a mirthful ferocity, so much so that, in the end, Marmet, in spite of his usual good temper, grew angry. Schmoll is not vindictive. It is a virtue of his race. He bears those whom he persecutes no ill-will. One day, going up the stairs of the Institute, accompanied by Renan and Oppert, he met Marmet and held out his hand to him. Marmet re- fused to take it and said: 'I do not know you.' " 'Do you take me for a Latin inscription?' replied Schmoll. That saying hastened Marmet's death. You now understand why his widow, who piously venerates his mem- ory, should be horrified by the sight of his enemy." "And to think that I should have asked them to dine here together, and placed them side by side!" "Madame, that was not immoral, but it was cruel." "My dear sir, perhaps I shall shock you, but if it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one." A tall young man, thin and dark, wearing a long mous- tache, now entered and greeted Madame Martin in an easy but brusque manner. "Monsieur Vence, I think. you know M. Le Menil." In reality they had already met at Madame Martin's and more than once at the fencing-school, which Menil attended assiduously. The day before they had met at Madame Meillan's. "At Madame Meillan's it is always dull," said Paul Vence. "And yet," said M. Le Menil, "she receives Academicians. I do not exaggerate their importance, but, after all, they are the elect." Madame Martin smiled. 1 6 THE RED LILY "We know, Monsieur Le Menil, that at Madame Meil- lan's you were more occupied with women than with Academicians. You took Princess Seniavine to have some refreshment, and talked to her about wolves." "About what? About wolves?" "About wolves she-wolves and wolf-cubs and the bare Avoods of winter. We thought your topics rather too bar- barous for so pretty a woman." Paul Vence rose. "So, if you will permit me, Madame, I will bring you my friend, Dechartre. He is very desirous to know you, and I trust you will like him. He has an active mind. He is full of ideas." Madame Martin interrupted him. "Oh, I don't ask for so much as that. People who are natural and who appear what they really are rarely bore me and sometimes amuse me." When Paul Vence had gone, Le Menil listened to the sound of his footsteps dying away down the hall and to the noise of the front door closing; then drawing nearer to Madame Martin: "Shall we say three o'clock to-morrow, at home?" "Do you still love me, then?" He urged her to give him an answer while they were alone; she tantalisingly replied that it was late, that she expected no more visitors, and that her husband was likely to come in. He entreated her to give him an answer. Then, with- out waiting for any further persuasion, she said: "You really wish it? Then listen. To-morrow I shall be free the whole day. Expect me at three o'clock in the Rue Spontini. We will go for a walk afterwards." He thanked her with a glance. Then, having returned to his place opposite her on the other side of the fire- place, he inquired who this Dechartre was whom she was asking to come and see her. "I am not asking him to come. Monsieur Vence has asked if he may bring him. He is a sculptor." He complained of her always wanting to see new faces. "A sculptor? Sculptors are frequently not gentlemen." THE RED LILY if "Oh, but he is so little of a sculptor! Still, if you don't wish it, I will not receive him." "I should be very annoyed if society were to mo- nopolise any of the time you devote to me." "My friend, you have no reason to complain of my giving too much time to society. Yesterday I did not even go to Madame Meillan's " "You are quite right in going there as seldom as pos- sible: it is not a house for you to visit." He explained. All the women one met there had a past which was known and talked about. Besides Madame Meillan was said to promote intrigues. He enforced his statement by one or two examples. Meanwhile, with her hands on the arms of her chair, in a charming attitude of repose, her head inclined to one side, she was gazing at the dying fire. Her thoughts had fled: there remained no sign of them, either in her face which was rather sad or in her languid pose; she was more desirable than ever in this slumber of her soul. For some time she continued in that absolute immobility which enhanced her natural attractiveness by an artistic charm. He asked of what she was thinking. Half escaping from the melancholy mesmerism of the embers, she said: "To-morrow, if you are willing, we will go to the re- mote quarters of the town, to those curious neighbour- hoods where you can observe the lives of poor people. I like streets that are old and poverty-stricken." While promising to gratify her fancy, he did not con- ceal that he thought it absurd. These excursions on which she made him accompany her bored him sometimes ; and he considered them dangerous; they might be seen. "And since so far we have succeeded in avoiding being talked about . . ." She shook her head. "Do you think we have never been talked about? Whether people know or do not know, they talk. Every- thing is not known, but everything is said." She returned to her dreaming. He thought her dissatis- fied, vexed at something she would not confide to him. He i8 THE RED LILY leaned forward gazing into her fine dreamy eyes in which the firelight was reflected. But she reassured him: "I don't know whether people talk about me. And what does it matter if they do? Nothing matters." He left her. He was going to dine at the club, where his friend Caumont, who was passing through Paris, ex- pected him. She followed him with a glance of tranquil sympathy. Then she returned to contemplate the embers. There she beheld the days of her childhood, the chateau in which she used to pass long sad summers, the trim woods, the damp and gloomy park, the pond with its green stag- nant water, the marble nymphs under the chestnut-trees, and the bench, on which she used to weep and long to die. Even to-day she did not know the cause of her youthful despair, when the tumultuous awakening of her imagination and a mysterious physical evolution cast her into an agitation in which desires were mingled with fears. As a child, life had inspired her at once with fear and longing. And now she knew that life is not worth such anxiety and such hope, that it is a very ordinary matter. She ought to have expected it. Why had she not fore- seen it? She continued her revery. "I used to look at mama. She was a good woman, very simple-minded but not very happy. I dreamed of a lot very different from hers. Why? I felt that the atmos- phere around me was enervating, and I longed for the stronger, salter air of the future. Why? What did I want, and what did I expect? Had I not warning enough of the sadness of everything?" She was born rich and surrounded by the glaring bril- liance of a newly made fortune. The daughter of that Montessuy, who, at first a mere clerk in a Parisian bank, had founded and directed two great banking houses, and by using all the resources of an inventive mind, invincible strength of character, a rare blend of cunning and hon- esty, had piloted them through a difficult crisis, and dealt with the Government on an equal footing. She had grown up in the historic chateau of Joinville, which, bought, re- stored, and magnificently furnished by her father, with its park and its extensive lakes, had come to equal Vaux-le- THE RED LILY 19 Vicomte in splendour. Montessuy enjoyed to the full all that life had to give. By instinct a pronounced atheist he was determined to have every material benefit and every desirable thing that earth produces. He crowded into the gallery and reception rooms of Joinville pictures by the great masters and precious marbles. At fifty he was pay- ing for the luxuries of the most beautiful actresses and a few women in society. With all the brutality of his temperament and the keenness of his intelligence he enjoyed social life. Meanwhile poor Madame Montessuy was languishing at Joinville. Anxious and frugal, she appeared poor and diminutive by the side of the twelve gigantic caryatides which, around her bed enclosed by a gilded balustrade, sup- ported the ceiling painted by Lebrun with Titans pursued by the thunderbolts of Jupiter. There one evening on a little iron bedstead, put up at the foot of the great state bed, she died of sorrow and weakness, her only loves having been her husband and her little red damask drawing- room in the Rue de Maubeuge. There had never been any intimacy between mother and daughter. The mother felt instinctively that Therese had nothing in common with her. Her daughter's intellect was too capacious, her will too vigorous. Although she was good and docile, there flowed in her veins the strong blood of Montessuy. Therese had her father's ardour of soul and body, an ardour from which the mother had suffered so bitterly and for which she found it easier to forgive the father than the daughter. But Montessuy saw himself in his daughter and loved her. Like all bon-vivants, he had his times of charming gaiety. Although he was much away from home, he man- aged to lunch with her nearly every day, and sometimes he took her out. He was a connoisseur in dress and trinkets. At a glance he noticed and corrected in his daugh- ter's toilet the mistakes made by Madame Montessuy's bad taste. He was educating and forming Therese. Coarse yet entertaining, he amused her and won her affection. In his dealings even with her he was inspired by his instinct, his passion for conquest. He, who must always win, was 2c THE RED LILY winnitig his daughter. He was capturing her from her mother. Therese admired him, adored him. In her revery, she saw him in the background of her past, as the one joy of her childhood. She was still fully persuaded that there was no more charming man than her father. As soon as she entered society she despaired of finding elsewhere such natural qualities, such fulness of strength of body and of mind. This disappointment had persisted when she came to choose a husband, and later when she made a secret and a freer choice. She had really not chosen her husband at all. She hardly knew how, but she had let herself be married by her father. He, being a widower embarrassed and trou bled by the responsibility of a daughter in the midst of an agitated, busy life, had as usual wished to act quickly and well. He thought only of external distinctions and social conventions; he appreciated the advantage of the eighty years of imperial nobility offered by Count Martin, and the hereditary glory of a family which had provided, with ministers the Government of July and the Liberal Empire. The idea of his daughter finding love in mar- riage never occurred to him. He persuaded himself that in marriage she would find the satisfaction of that desire for splendour with which he had inspired her. He hoped that she would have the joy of being rich and appearing so, that she would gratify the vulgar pride, the desire for material superiority, which for him constituted the essence of life. For the rest, he had no very definite ideas concerning the happiness of a respectable woman in society; but he was quite sure that his daughter would always be a respectable woman. That was an innate conviction; on that point his mind was perfectly at rest. Reflecting on that confidence, foolish and yet natural, which was so contrary to Montessuy's own experiences and ideas of women, she smiled a smile of ironic melancholy. She admired her father all the more for being too wise to indulge in importunate wisdom. After all, he had not married her so badly, according THE RED LILY 21 to the standards of marriage among the leisured classes. Her husband was as good as many another. He had be- come quite tolerable. Of all the memories, which, in the half-light of the shaded lamps, the embers recalled to her, that of their life in common was the least vivid. All that returned to her were the painfully distinct recollections of one or two incidents, some foolish imaginings, an impression vague and unpleasant. That time had not lasted long, and had left nothing behind it. Now after six years she hardly remembered how she had gained her liberty, so prompt and easy had been that victory over a husband, cold, valetu- dinarian, egotistical, and polite. Ambitious, industrious, and commonplace, he had grown sere and yellow in busi- ness and politics. It was only through vanity that he loved women, and he had never loved his wife. Their separa- tion had been frank and complete. And since then, strangers one to the other, they were both grateful for their mutual deliverance. She would have regarded him as a friend, had she not found him cunning, sly, and too artful in obtaining her signature when he needed money. This money he employed in enterprises prompted less by cupidity than by a desire for ostentation. Except for this the man with whom she dined, lived, travelled, and talked every day was nothing to her and had no share in her life. Absorbed in her own thoughts, sitting chin in hand, be- fore the dead fire, like an anxious inquirer consulting a sibyl, as she reviewed those years of solitude, she beheld the face of the Marquis of Re. It was so clear and dis- tinct that she was astonished. Introduced by her father, who was proud of the acquaintance, the Marquis of Re appeared tall and handsome, decked with the glories of thirty years' private and social triumphs. He had enjoyed a long series of successes. He had seduced three genera- tions of women and imprinted on each mistress's heart an imperishable memory. His virile grace, his refined ele- gance and his gift of pleasing prolonged his youth far be- yond the usual limits. The young Countess Martin had been especially distinguished by him. She had been flat- tered by the homage of such a connoisseur. Even now to 22 THE RED LILY recollect it still gave her pleasure. He had a wonderful gift in conversation. She had found him entertaining and had let him see it. Thenceforth, light-hearted hero that he was, he had determined to bring his gay life to an appropriate close, by possessing this young woman, whom he admired more than any one, and who obviously liked him. To entrap her he laid all a rake's most ingenious toils. But she escaped from them very easily. Two years later she had become the mistress of Robert Le Menil, who, with all the ardour of his youth and all the simplicity of his heart had resolved to win her. "I gave myself to him because he loved me," she told her- self. It was true. It was also true that an unconscious, powerful instinct had impelled her, and that she had obeyed secret forces of her nature. But these proceeded from her subconscious self; what she had consciously done was to accept his love, because she believed it to be informed by that sincerity she had always sought. She had yielded directly she found herself loved to the point of suffering. She had given herself quickly, simply. He thought she had given herself lightly. He was mistaken. The irreparable act had brought on a feeling of overwhelming dejection and shame at suddenly having something to hide. All the whis- perings she had heard about women who had lovers were buzzing in her burning ears. But, proud and sensitive, and with perfect taste, she was careful to hide the cost of the gift she bestowed and to say nothing which might engage her lover to go further than his own feelings would carry him. He never suspected that moral suffering, which after all only lasted a few days and was succeeded by perfect tranquillity. After three years she approved of her conduct as having been innocent and natural. Having done no one any wrong, she had no regrets. She was content. This relationship was her greatest happiness. She loved, she was loved. True she had never experienced the rap- ture she had dreamed of. But is it ever experienced? She was the mistress of a good honourable bachelor, who was much liked by women and popular in society, where he was considered haughty and fastidious; and he loved her sincerely. The pleasure she gave him and the joy of being THE RED LILY 23 beautiful for him were the bonds which bound her to him. He rendered her life, not always rapturously delightful, but tolerable and sometimes pleasant. What she had not guessed in her solitude in spite of the warning of vague misgivings and unaccountable sadness, her own inner nature, her temperament, her true vocation, he had revealed to her. She learned to know herself by knowing him. And her self knowledge brought her some pleasant astonishment. Their sympathies were neither of the head nor of the heart. She had a simple definite liking for him, which did not wear out quickly. And at that very moment she took pleasure in the thought of meeting him on the morrow, in the little flat in the Rue Spontini which had been their rendezvous for three years. It was with rather a brusque movement of her head and a more violent shrug of the shoulders than one would have expected from so exquisite a lady, that, alone in the chimney-corner, by 9 dead fire, she said to herself: "Ahl what I want is to b* n Jove." n NIGHT had already fallen when they came out of the little entresol in the Rue Spontini. Robert Le Menil hailed a passing cab, and looking anxiously at the man and his horse, entered the carriage with Therese. Qose side by side, they drove among the vague shadows relieved by sud- den lights, through the phantom town; in their hearts there were only sweet impressions now vanishing as rapidly as the fleeting lights shining through the blurred carriage win- dows. Everything outside appeared to them confused and fleeting, and in their hearts there was a sweet calm. The cab stopped near the Pont Neuf, on the Quai des Augustins. They got out. A dry cold invigorated the dull Janu- ary day. Therese under her veil breathed with delight the gusts of wind, which, crossing the river, swept the dust, as bitter and white as salt, along the hard ground. It pleased her to walk freely among strange sights. She loved to gaze upon that landscape of stone enveloped in the dim light of the atmosphere, to walk briskly along the quay where the black gauze-like branches of the trees stood out against the horizon reddened by the smoke of the town. It delighted her, leaning over the parapet, to watch the narrow arm of the Seine bearing its tragic waters, and to drink in the sadness of the river between its low banks, devoid of willows or beeches. Already the first stars were twinkling high up in the sky. "It looks as if the wind would put them out," she said. He remarked that they were scintillating brilliantly. He did not consider it a sign of rain, as the peasants believe. On the contrary, he had observed that nine times out of ten the scintillation of the stars announced fine weather. Near the Petit Pont on their right (lit by smoky lamps) were booths where old iron was sold. She gazed eagerly among the dust and rust of the wares displayed. The in- stinct of the curiosity-monger had been aroused in her; she turned the street corner and ventured as far as a lean-to 24 THE RED LILY 25 in which some dark coloured rags were hanging from the damp beams of the ceiling. Behind the dirty windows, by the light of a candle, were to be seen saucepans, porce- lain vases, a clarionette, and a bridal wreath. He could not understand the pleasure she took in looking at these things. "You will be covered with vermin. What can interest you there?" "Everything. I am thinking of that poor bride whose wreath lies under the glass shade. The wedding break- fast was at Porte Maillot. There was a garde republicain in the procession. There nearly always is in the wedding- parties one sees in the Bois, on Saturdays. Don't they ap- peal to you, my friend, all these poor miserable trifles which in their turn are sharing the greatness of the past?" Among the odd chipped cups with flowered patterns, she discovered a little knife with an ivory handle carved to represent a long thin woman with her hair dressed a la Maintenon. She bought it for a few pence. She was de- lighted because she possessed the fork to match. Le Menil confessed that he did not understand curios. But his aunt de Lannoix was quite a connoisseur. She was the talk of all the dealers of Caen. She had restored and furnished her chateau in the old style. It had once been the country house of Jean le Menil, councillor in the Rouen Parliament in 1779. This house, which existed before his time, was de- scribed in a document of 1690, as a hunting-lodge. In a room on the ground floor, at the back of white cupboards, protected by wire net-work, had been found books collected by Jean le Menil. His aunt de Lannoix, he said, had wanted to arrange them, but she had discovered among them such frivolous works, with such indecent engravings, that she had had to burn them. "How stupid your aunt must be! " said Therese. She had long been bored by stories about Madame de Lannoix. In the provinces her lover had a mother, sisters, aunts, a large family, whom she did not know and who irri- tated her. He used to talk of them admiringly, and it an- noyed her. She grew impatient of his frequent visits to his family, from whom he returned, with a musty air, narrow 26 THE RED LILY ideas, and sentiments that wounded her. He on his side was naively astonished and hurt by this antipathy. He was silent. The sight of a tavern with windows all aglow through the railings, suddenly reminded him of the poet Choulette, who was considered a drunkard. With some irritation he asked Therese if she still saw Choulette, who used to visit her wrapped in a plaid with a red com- forter over his ears. She was vexed at his speaking of the poet in the manner of General Lariviere. She avoided confessing that she had not seen him since the autumn and that he neglected her with the indifference of a busy man who did not belong to her circle. "I like him," she said. "He is witty, imaginative, and original." And when he reproached her with a taste for the eccentric, she retorted sharply: "I have not a taste; I have many tastes. Surely you don't condemn them all." He did not condemn anything. He merely feared lest she should put herself in a false position by receiving a Bohemian of fifty who was out of place in any respectable house. She objected: "Choulette out of place in a respectable house? You don't know then that every year he spends a month at the Marchioness of Rieu's . . . yes, the Marchioness of Rieu, a Catholic, a Royalist, an old chouane as she calls herself. But since you are interested in Choulette, I will tell you of his latest adventure. You shall hear it just as Paul Vence told it me. I understand it better in this street, where there are bodices and flower-pots in the windows. "This winter, one evening when it was raining, at a spirit- bar in a street, the name of which I have forgotten, but which must have been as poor as this one, Choulette met a wretched girl, whom the waiters at the bar had turned away, but whom he in his humility loved. She was called Maria. But even this name was not her own; she had found it on the door plate at the top of the staircase of a fur- nished house where she lodged. Choulette was touched by THE RED LILY 27 the depth of her poverty and her shame. He called her his sister and kissed her hand. Since then he has never left her. He takes her bare-headed with a shawl over her shoulders to the cafes in the Latin quarter, where rich students are reading reviews. He says sweet things to her. He weeps; she weeps. They drink; and, when they have drunk, they fight. He loves her. He calls her very chaste. He says she is his cross, his salvation. She was bare- footed; he has given her a skein of coarse wool and knit- ting needles to knit herself some stockings. And he himself mends the poor girl's shoes with huge nails. He teaches her easy verses. He fears to spoil her moral beauty by tak- ing her from the shame in which she lives in perfect sim- plicity and admirable destitution." Le Menil shrugged his shoulders. "But this Choulette must be mad; and these are pretty stories that M. Paul Vence tells you! I am certainly not strict; but there is a kind of immorality which disgusts me." They were paying no heed to where they were going. She became absorbed in her reflections: "Yes, morality, duty, I know! But how hard to discover what is duty. I assure you that for three-quarters of my time I do not know where duty lies. It is like the hedge- hog that belonged to our English governess at Joinville: we used to spend the whole evening looking for it under the furniture; and when we had found it it was time to go to bed." He thought there was a great deal of truth in what she said, more perhaps than she imagined. He often reflected on it when he was alone. "So keenly do I realise it that sometimes I regret not having remained in the army. I foresee what you are going to say. One vegetates in that profession. Doubtless, but one knows exactly what one has to do, and that is much. It seems to me that the life led by my uncle, General de La Briche, is a fine life, honourable and quite pleasant. But now that the whole nation is merged in the army, there are neither officers nor soldiers. It is like a railway station on Sunday when officials are pushing bewildered travellers into their carriages. My uncle de La Briche knew personally all 28 THE RED LILY the officers and all the private soldiers of his brigade. He still has their names on a great board in his dining-room. From time to time it amuses him to read them over. Now- adays how would it be possible for an officer to know his men?" She had stopped listening to him. She was looking at a corner of the Rue Galande, where there was a woman selling fried potatoes. Nestling behind a pane of glass, her face surrounded by shadow, lit up by the glowing fire, she was plunging her ladle into the frizzling fry, and bringing up golden crescents with which she filled a screw of common yellow paper. Meanwhile an auburn-haired girl, watching her attentively, was holding out a penny in her red hand. When the girl had carried off her packet, Therese grew envious and realised that she was hungry; she insisted on tasting some of the fried potatoes. At first he objected. "You don't know what they are fried with." But in the end he must needs ask the woman for a penny packet and see that she put some salt in it. While she was eating the yellow crescents with her veil turned back, he took her into side streets, away from the gas lamps. Thus they found themselves back again on the quay, and saw the black mass of the cathedral rising be- yond the narrow arm of the river. The moon high up over the serrated ridge of the nave, shed a silver light over the slope of the roof. "Notre Dame," she said. "Look, it is as heavy as an elephant and as finely made as an insect. The moon climbs up it, looking at it with the malice of an ape. She is not like the country moon at Joinville. At Joinville, I have my own path, a level path, with the moon at the end. She is not there every evening; but she returns faithfully, full, red, and familiar. She is a country neighbour, a lady of the district. Politely and with a friendly feeling I go gravely to meet her ; but this Paris moon I should not wish to visit. She could hardly mix in good society. Think what she must have seen during all the time she has been shining on the roofs!" He smiled a tender smile. "Ah! Your little path down which you used to walk alone and which you said you loved THE RED LILY 29 because the sky was at the end, not very high and not very far above you, I see it now as if I were there!" It was at the chateau of Joinville, where he had been in- vited to hunt by Montessuy, that he had first seen her, and had immediately loved and desired her. It was there one evening, on the border of the little wood, that he had told her he loved her and that she had listened to him in silence, with a sad smile and wondering eyes. The memory of that little path, where she used to walk alone on those autumn nights, touched and agitated him ; it brought back the enchanted hours of early desires and fear- ful hopes. He sought her hand in her muff, and pressed her slight wrist under the fur. A little girl with violets on a piece of flat basket-work, strewn with pine branches, saw they were lovers, and of- fered them her flowers. He bought a bunch for a penny and gave them to Therese. She was walking towards the cathedral and thinking: "It is like some gigantic beast, a beast out of the Apocalypse." At the other end of the bridge, another flower-seller, this one wrinkled, bearded, grey and grimy, pursued them with her basket of mimosa and Nice roses. Therese, who was at that moment holding her violets in her hand, trying to fasten them in her coat, replied gaily to the old woman's pleading : "Thank you, I have all I want." "It is easy to see you are young," the old woman said gruffly as she turned away. Therese understood almost at once and half smiled. They passed into the shadow cast by the cathedral, in front of the crowned and sceptred stone figures in the niches. "Let us go in," she said. He did not wish to. In entering a church with her he felt vaguely constrained, almost fearful. He said it was closed. He thought it was, and he hoped so. She pushed open the door and slipped into the immense nave, where the lifeless trees of columns rose into the darkness above. At the end candles were moving before phantom priests and the last groans of the organ were dying away in the dis- tance. She shuddered in the silence, and said: 30 THE RED LILY "The sadness of churches at night always moves me; it makes me feel the impressive mystery of annihilation." He replied: "But we ought to believe in something. It would be too sad if there were no God. if our souls were not immortal." For a time she remained still beneath the great curtains of shadow which hung from the vault, then she said: "My poor friend, we don't know what to do with this short life, and do you want another which shall be eternal!" In the carriage which took them home, he said gaily that he had enjoyed his day. He kissed her, pleased with her and with himself. But she did not share his good humour. That was what generally happened between them. The last moments they passed together were always spoilt for her by the foreboding that he would not say the right word when they parted. Usually he left her abruptly as if for him everything was over. At each of these separations she had a vague feeling that it was a final parting. She suffered in anticipation and became irritable. Under the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, he took her hand and kissed it repeatedly. 'It is rare to love as we love, isn't it, Therese?" 'Rare, I don't know; but I believe that you love me." 'And you?" 'Yes, I love you." 'And you will always love me?" 'How can one know?" And, seeing a cloud come over her lover's face: "Would you be happier with a woman who would swear to love none but you all her life?" He remained anxious and looked sad. She was consider- ate, and completely reassured him. "You know, my friend, I am not a light woman. I am serious, not like Princess Seniavine." Almost at the end of the Cours-la-Reine, they said good- bye under the trees. He kept the carriage to take him to the Rue Royale. He was dining at his club and going to the theatre. He had no time to lose. Therese went home on foot. When she was in sight of THE RED LILY 31 the hill on which the Trocadero stands glistening like a set of diamonds, she recalled the flower-seller on the Petit- Font: "One can see that you are young"; those words, cast upon the wind and the darkness, came back to her no longer as a rude jest but with an accent of sad foreboding. Yes, she was young, she was loved, and she was discon- tented. m JN the middle of the table was a centre-piece of flowers in a basket of gilded bronze. On the basket's edge, among stars and bees eagles spread their wings, beneath heavy handles formed by horns of plenty. On each side of the basket winged victories supported the flaming branches of the candelabra. This Empire epergne Napoleon had in 1812 presented to Count Martin de 1'Aisne, grandfather of the present Count Martin-Belleme. Martin de 1'Aisne, deputy in the Corps Legislatif of 1809, was nominated the following year member of the commission of finance, for which secret and laborious task his industrious, cautious nature was well fitted. Although liberal by birth and in- clination, he pleased the Emperor by his diligence and hon- esty, exact but not importunate. For two years favours rained upon him. In 1813, he was a member of that mod- erate majority in favour of the report in which M. Laine, when it was too late, taught the tottering Empire a lesson and censured at once power and misfortune. On January i, 1814, he accompanied his colleagues to the Tuileries. They had a terrible reception. The Emperor met them with a volley of abuse. Violent and melancholy, in all the horror of his actual power and his imminent ruin, he overwhelmed them with wrath and scorn. Walking up and down among his terrified ministers, as if without thinking, he seized Count Martin by the shoulders, shook him and dragged him across the floor, crying: "A throne, what is a throne? Is it four pieces of wood covered with velvet? No! A throne is a man, and that man is I! You wanted to throw mud at me. Is this the moment to remonstrate with me when two hundred thousand Cossacks are crossing the frontiers? Your M. Laine is a malicious person. One does not wash one's dirty linen in public." And while his wrath was thus finding expression in ut- terances sublime or commonplace, he was wringing in his THE RED LILY 33 hand the embroidered collar of the deputy for the depart- ment of Aisne. "The people know me. They do not know you. I am the chosen of the nation. You are the obscure delegates of a department." He prophesied that theirs would be the fate of the Girondins. Amidst the loud out- bursts of his voice there sounded the clinking of his spurs. Count Martin trembled and stammered for the rest of his life. Hidden in his house at Laon, it was with trembling that he called in the Bourbons after the Emperor's defeat. It was in vain that two Restorations, the Government of July, and the Second Empire covered his palpitating breast with ribbons and crosses. Raised to the highest offices, loaded with honours by three kings and an emperor, he still felt the hand of the Corsican upon his shoulder. He died a senator under Napoleon III, leaving a son afflicted with the hereditary trembling. This son had married Mademoiselle Belleme, daughter of the First President of the Court of Bourges; and with her he had espoused the political glory of a family which had provided the limited monarchy with three ministers. The traditions of the Bellemes, who had been lawyers under Louis XV, corrected the Jacobin past of the Martins. The second Count Martin sat in every assembly until his death in 1 88 1. Charles Martin-Belleme, his son, had no difficulty in getting elected to the Chamber. Having married Made- moiselle Therese Montessuy, whose dowry provided him with the means of pushing his political fortunes, he dis- creetly took his place among those four or five titled and rich bourgeois, who, having rallied to the democracy and the Republic, were received with no ill grace by noted re- publicans, flattered by their aristocratic names and reas- sured by the mediocrity of their wits. In the dining-room, where, above the doors, in the shadow, one now and then caught a glimpse of the spotted coats of the Oudry dogs, opposite the epergne with its gilded bees and stars, between the Victory candelabra, Count Mar- tin-Belleme was doing the honours of his table with a some- what dejected grace, a melancholy politeness, formerly indi- cated at the Elysee to represent for the benefit of a northern court the isolation and reserve of France. From time to 34 THE RED LILY time he was addressing insipid remarks on the right to Ma- dame Garain, the wife of the former Keeper of the Seals, and on the left to Princess Seniavine, who, loaded with diamonds, was being bored to death. Opposite him, on the other side of the epergne, Countess Martin, supported on the one hand by General Lariviere, and on the other by M. Schmoll of the Academy of Inscriptions, was languidly fan- ning her delicately moulded shoulders. On the two sides of the table were M. Montessuy, robust with blue eyes and a high colour, a young cousin, Madame Belleme de Saint- Norn, who did not know what to do with her long thin arms, the painter Duvicquet, M. Daniel Salomon, Paul Vence, Deputy Garain, M. Belleme de Saint-Nom, an obscure senator, and Dechartre, who was dining at the house for the first time. The conversation at first was thin and slight ; but it gradually grew more vivacious, until it became one confused murmur, dominated by the voice of Garain. "Every false idea is dangerous. Dreamers are thought to be harmless; it is a mistake; they do a great deal of harm. Utopias, apparently the most inoffensive are really injurious. They tend to make one disgusted with reality." "But," said Paul Vence, "perhaps reality is not so per- fect, after all." The Keeper of the Seals protested that he was in favour of every possible reform. And, without recalling that under the Empire he had demanded the abolition of a standing army, and, in 1880, the separation of Church and State, he declared that, faithful to his programme, he remained the devoted servant of the democracy. His motto, he said, was "Order and Progress." And he really believed that he was the first to use it. Montessuy retorted with his rough good-nature: "Come, Monsieur Garain, now be sincere, and confess that there is not a reform left to accomplish, and that the most one could do would be to change the colour of the postage-stamps. Good or bad, things are as they must be. Yes," he added, "they are as they must be. But they are always changing. Since 1870, the industrial and financial condition of the country has passed through four or five revolutions which economists had not foreseen and which THE RED LILY 35 they don't yet understand. In society, as in nature, changes proceed from within." In politics he believed in views which were short and clear. Strongly attached to the present and caring little for the future, Socialists did not much trouble him. Without considering whether the sun and capital would endure for ever, he enjoyed them for the time being. In his opinion one must let oneself drift. Only idiots resisted the current, only madmen anticipated it. But Count Martin, who was naturally melancholy, had gloomy presentiments. In veiled words he indicated the approach of catastrophe. His ominous talk reached Monsieur Schmoll across the flowers of the centre-piece and moved him; he began to groan and prophesy. He explained that Christendom was of itself incapable of rising from barbarism, and that if it had not been for Jews and Arabs, Europe would be to-day what she was in the time of the Crusades, enveloped in ignorance, wretchedness, and cruelty. "It is only in those historical manuals given to children in our schools to pervert their minds that the Middle Ages have passed away. In reality barbarians are always bar- barians. Israel's mission is to instruct the nations. It was Israel, who in the Middle Ages, introduced into Europe the wisdom of Asia. Socialism alarms you. It is a Christian evil just like monasticism. And anarchy? Don't you see that it is the old Albigensian and Vaudois leprosy? The Jews, who educated and civilised Europe, can alone to-day save her from that mischievous propaganda which is prey- ing upon her. But the Jews have failed to do their duty. They have become Christians among Christians. And God is punishing them. He is permitting them to be plundered and driven into exile. Everywhere anti-semitism is mak- ing alarming progress. In Russia my co-religionists are being hunted like wild beasts. In France civil and military offices are closed against the Jews. They are no longer admitted into aristocratic circles. After having brilliantly passed his examinations, my young nephew, Isaac Coblentz, was forced to renounce a diplomatic career. When Ma- dame Schmoll calls upon the wives of certain of my col- 36 THE RED LILY leagues they ostentatiously open anti-semite periodicals under her very nose. And would you believe that the Min- ister of Education refused me the cross of the Legion of Honour for which I asked him? There's ingratitude! There's madness! Anti-semitism, you must understand, means death to European civilisation." There was a naturalness in this little man which surpassed the highest art. Grotesque and terrible, his sincerity over- whelmed every one. Madame Martin, who found him en- tertaining, congratulated him on it. "At least," she said, "you defend your fellow-believers; you, Monsieur Schmoll, are not like a beautiful Jewess I know, who, having read in a newspaper that she was in the habit of receiving the elite of Israelitish society, went about complaining that she had been insulted." "I am sure, Madame, that you are unaware of the ex- cellence of Jewish ethics and of their superiority to all other ethical systems. Do you know the parable of the Three Rings?" This question was lost in the noise of the various dia- logues, discussions on foreign politics, exhibitions of pic- tures, fashionable scandals, and academical speeches. The last novel was discussed as well as a new play about to be acted. It was a comedy with an episode in which Napoleon figured. The conversation centred round Napoleon. He had been frequently represented on the stage. He had been lately studied in works widely read, where he appears as an object of curiosity, a popular character, no longer the peo- ple's hero, the military demi-god of the fatherland, as in the days when Norvins and Beranger, Charlet and Raffet, invented his legend. Now he was regarded as a remarkable personage, a type entertaining in every one of its most intimate details, just the figure to please artists and to in- terest the idly curious. Garain, who had built up his fortune on hatred of the Empire, sincerely believed this reaction in national taste to be nothing but an absurd infatuation. He did not consider it dangerous and was not alarmed by it. He was one of those in whom fear breaks out suddenly and violently. For THE RED LILY 3," the moment, his mind was at rest; for he did not talk of forbidding the representations of plays, nor of seizing books, nor of imprisoning authors, nor of suppressing any- thing. Calm and severe, he regarded Napoleon merely at Taine's condottiere who kicked Volney in the stomach. Every one had his own definition of the true Napoleon. Count Martin, opposite the imperial epergne and the winged Victories, appropriately described Napoleon as organiser and administrator, ranking him high as President of the Council of State, where his words shed light on many points hitherto obscure. Garain asserted that during those unjustly famous coun- cil meetings, Napoleon, saying that he wanted some snuff, would ask the councillors for their gold boxes painted with miniatures and adorned with diamonds, which they never saw again. They ended by never bringing any but leather snuff-boxes to the Council. Mounier's son had told him the story himself. What Montessuy admired in Napoleon was his orderly mind. He had a liking for efficiency, Montessuy said, a taste which has almost died out. The painter Duvicquet, who had a painter's ideas, was puzzled. On the funeral mask brought from Saint-Helena he failed to find the features of that handsome powerful face reproduced in medals and busts. Any one might ob- serve the discrepancy now that the bronze reproductions of the mask no longer stored away in attics were to be seen in all the dealers' shops, surrounded by eagles and sphinxes of gilded wood. And in his opinion since Na- poleon's real force was not Napoleonic, Napoleon's real soul might well not be Napoleonic either. Perhaps it was the soul of a good bourgeois; some one had said so, and he was inclined to believe it. Besides, Duvicquet, who prided himself on having painted the century's portraits, knew that famous men are quite different from the popular estimate of them. M. Daniel Salomon observed that the mask of which Duvicquet had spoken, the cast taken from the Emperor's countenance after death, and brought to Europe by Dr. 38 THE RED LILY Antommarchi, was first produced in bronze and exposed to public view under Louis-Philippe, in 1833, and had then occasioned surprise and incredulity. This Italian, a quack apothecary, a chatterer eager for fame, was suspected of having hoaxed the public. The followers of Dr. Gall, whose system was then in favour, doubted whether the mask were genuine. They could not find that it had the protuberances which indicate genius, and the forehead, examined accord- ing to the master's theories, presented no extraordinary for- mation. "Exactly," said Princess Seniavine; "all that is remark- able about Napoleon is his having kicked Volney in the stomach and stolen snuff-boxes set with diamonds. M. Garain has just told us so." "And are we quite sure," said Madame Martin, "that he was really guilty of that kick?" "After all, everything is dubious," retorted the Princess gaily. "Napoleon did nothing; he did not even kick Vol- ney, and he had the head of an idiot." General Lariviere felt it incumbent upon him to fire his shot. And this was what he said: "Napoleon's campaign of 1813 has given rise to much criticism." The General's one idea was to please Garain. Neverthe- less he made an effort and formulated a comprehensive opinion : "Napoleon made mistakes; and in his position he ought not to have made any." And, very red in the face, he stopped abruptly. Madame Martin asked: "And you, Monsieur Vence, what do you think of Na- poleon?" "Madame, these bloated soldiers are not to my taste; and frankly, conquerors always seem to me to be dangerous lunatics. Nevertheless, the Emperor interests me as he in- terests the public. He has character and vitality. No poem or novel of adventure is equal to the Memorial, writ- ten however in an absurd style. What I really think of Na- poleon, if you wish to know, if, that, having been created for glory, he appears in all the brilliant simplicity of THE RED LILY 39 an epic hero. A hero must be human. Napoleon was human." These remarks were greeted with loud exclamations. But Paul Vence continued: "He was violent and frivolous, and thus profoundly hu- man. By that I mean, like other people. He aspired to enjoy unlimited power, which is what the ordinary man esteems and desires. He himself was possessed by the illu- sions with which he inspired the people. They consti- tuted his strength and his weakness, and were his chief adornment. He believed in glory. Concerning life and society he held about the same opinions as one of his grenadiers. He never lost that childish seriousness which takes a delight in sword-play and the beating of drums, and that kind of innocence which makes good soldiers. He had a sincere respect for force. He was a man among men, flesh of their flesh. He never had a single thought that did not express itself in action; and all his actions were gran- diose and yet ordinary. Heroes are the product of this vulgar greatness. And Napoleon is the perfect hero. His brain never travelled more quickly than his hand, that beautiful little hand which ground the world. He never for a single moment cared about anything he could not realise." "Then you do not consider him an intellectual genius," said Garain. "I agree with you." "Certainly," resumed Paul Vence, "he had the genius necessary to cut a brilliant figure in the civil and military arena of the world. But he had no speculative genius. That genius is 'quite another pair of cuffs,' as Buffon used to say. We possess the collection of his writings and his speeches. His style is vivacious and graphic. And in this mass of ideas there is not a hint of any philosophical curi- osity, of any interest in the unknowable, of any preoccupa- tion with the mystery of destiny. When, at Saint-Helena, he talks of God or the soul, he seems like a good little school- boy of fourteen. His soul cast into the world found itself proportioned to the world and embraced everything. Not a particle of this soul was ever lost in the infinite. A poet, he knew no poetry but that of action. His great dream of 40 THE RED LILY life was earth-bound. In his terrible and pathetic puerility he believed that man may be great; and time and misfortune never robbed him of that illusion. His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, endured to the end, because all the days of his life were powerless to form in him a conscious maturity. Such is the abnormal condition of all men of action. They live entirely for the moment, and their genius is concentrated on one single point. They are constantly renewed, but they do not grow. The hours of their lives are not bound one to another by a chain of grave disinterested reflection. They do not develop; one condition merely suc- ceeds another in a series of deeds. Thus they have no inner life. This absence of any inner life is particularly noticeable in Napoleon. Hence that lightness of heart which enabled him to bear easily the weight of his misfortunes and mistakes. His soul, ever new, was born again every morning. He possessed to the highest degree a capacity for self-amusement. The first time he saw the sun rise over his gloomy rock of Saint-Helena he leapt from bed, whistling the air of a song. His was the repose of a mind superior to fortune, and above all things the lightness of a mind ever apt for renewal. He lived outside himself." Garain, to whom such an ingenious turn of thought and speech appealed little, wished to bring the discussion to a conclusion. "In a word," he said, "the man had something of the monster in him." "Monsters do not exist," replied Paul Vence. "And men who are said to be monsters inspire horror. Napoleon was loved by a whole nation. His power lay in kindling love in men's hearts wherever he passed. It was his soldiers' joy to give up their lives for him." Countess Martin would like Dechartre to have given his opinion. But he seemed afraid to speak. Schmoll was still asking whether any one knew the par- able of the Three Rings, the sublime inspiration of a Portu- guese Jew. Garain, while congratulating Paul Vence on his brilliant paradox, regretted that intellect should thus be brought into olay at the expense of morals and justice. THti RED LILY 41 "There is one incontrovertible principle," he said: "men must be judged according to their actions." "And what about women?" asked Princess Seniavine brusquely; "do you judge them according to their actions? And how do you know what they do?" The sound of voices was mingled with the clear, bell-like ring of the plate. The atmosphere of the room became heated and loaded with vapour. Drooping roses shed their leaves on the table-cloth. In the minds of those assembled there ideas multiplied: General Lariviere indulged in dreams of the future. "When they have done for me," he said to his neighbour, "I will go and live at Tours, and grow flowers." And he boasted of being a good gardener. A rose had been named after him. He was proud of it. Schmoll was still asking if any one knew the parable of the Three Rings. Meanwhile the Princess was teasing the deputy. "Don't you know, Monsieur Garain, that people do iden- tical things for very different reasons?" Montessuy said she was quite right. "It is true, Madame, as you say, that actions prove noth- ing. This idea strikes one in an episode in the life of Don Juan. Neither Moliere nor Mozart was aware of it; but it is related in an English legend, told me by my friend, James Lovell, of London. It relates how the great seducer wasted his time with three women: one was a bourgeoise who loved her husband; another a nun who refused to vio- late her vows; the third, who had long lived a life of de- bauchery, having become ugly, was servant in a low lodging- house; after the life she had lived, and after what she had seen, love was nothing to her. The conduct of these three women was the same, but for very different reasons. One action proves nothing. It is the mass of actions, their weight, their sum, that constitutes the value of a human being." "Certain of our actions," said Madame Martin, "resem- ble us; they are like us. Others do not resemble us at all." She rose and took the General's arm. 42 THE RED LILY As Garain was taking her into the drawing-room, the Princess said: "Therese is right. . . . Some of our actions do not re- semble us at all. They are little negresses conceived in our sleep." The tapestry nymphs in their faded beauty smiled down on the guests who heedlessly passed them by. Madame Martin poured out the coffee, assisted by her young cousin, Madame Belleme de Saint-Nom. She com- plimented Paul Vence on what he had said at dinner. "You spoke of Napoleon with a freedom which is very rare among us. I have often noticed how pretty children when they are sulking resemble Napoleon on the evening of Waterloo. And you brought home to me the cause of that resemblance." Then, turning to Dechartre: "Do you like Napoleon?" "Madame, I do not like the Revolution. And Napoleon is the Revolution in full military dress." "Why didn't you say that at dinner, Monsieur Dechartre? But I see you refuse to display your wit except in tete-a- tete." Count Martin-Belleme took the men to the smoking- room. Paul Vence alone remained with the ladies. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had finished his novel and what it was about. It was a study, an attempt to arrive at truth by means of a logical sequence of appearances which become cumulative evidence. "By such a method," he said, "the novel acquires a moral power which the dull details of history can never pos- sess." She asked if it would be a book for women to read. He replied that it would not. "You make a mistake, Monsieur Vence, in not writing for women. It is the only thing that a superior man can do for them." And when he wanted to know how she came by that idea: "Because," she said, "I notice that intelligent women al- ways marry fools." "Who bore them." THE RED LILY 43 "Certainly! But superior men would bore them still more." "They would have greater chances of succeeding." "But tell me the story of your novel." "You insist." "I never insist." "Well! Here it is. It is a story of manners among the lower classes. The hero is a young artisan, serious and chaste, as beautiful as a girl, with a soul innocent and re- served. He is an engraver and does good work. In the evenings he studies at home with his mother, to whom he is devoted. He reads books. In his simple unfurnished mind ideas fix themselves as tightly as shots fired into a wall. He has few wants. He has neither the passions nor the vices which bind most of us to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes proud of them. He lives among miserable wretches. He sees them suffer. He is kind, although he is not human; he possesses that cold charity which is called altruism. He is not human be- cause he is not sensual." "Ah! Must we be sensual to be human?" "Certainly, Madame. Whilst tenderness is but skin deep, pity lies far below the surface. This young man is not critical enough to grasp this. He is too credulous. He easily believes what he has read. And he has read that universal happiness will be established by the destruction of society. He is devoured by a thirst for martyrdom. One morning, having kissed his mother, he goes out. He lies in wait for the Socialist deputy for his district, sees him, throws himself upon him and plunges his graving-tool into his stomach, crying: 'Long live anarchy!' He is arrested, measured, photographed, examined, tried, condemned to death and guillotined. That is my novel." "It will not be very amusing," said the Princess. "But that is not your fault; your anarchists are as timid and moderate as other Frenchmen. When Russians go in for anarchy they are more audacious and original." Countess Martin came up to Paul Vence and asked him if he knew that very mild gentleman who said nothing and looked about him in the bewildered manner of a lost dog. 44 THE RED LILY Her husband had invited him. She did not know him, nor his name, nor anything about him. All that Paul Vence knew was that he was a Senator. He had noticed him one day in the Luxembourg, in the gallery which is used as a library. "I had just been to see the cupola painted by Delacroix with heroes and sages of antiquity in a wood of blue-green myrtles. He was warming himself with a poor and pitiful air; and his clothes smelt musty. He was talking to some old colleagues and saying as he rubbed his hands: 'In my opinion, what proves that the Republic is the best of gov- ernments, is that in 1871, in one week, it shot down sixty thousand rebels, without rendering itself unpopular. Such violence would have ruined any other government.' " "Then," said Madame Martin, "he is quite a malicious person, while I was pitying him for his shyness and awk- wardness." Madame Garain, her chin resting softly on her breast, was slumbering peacefully; and her domestic soul was dreaming of her kitchen garden by the Loire, where choral societies were in the habit of coming to pay their respects to her. Joseph Schmoll and General Lariviere came out of the smoking-room, still smiling over the indecorous topics they had been discussing. The General sat down between Prin- cess Seniavine and Madame Martin. "This morning I met the Baroness Warburg in the Bois. She was riding a superb animal. She said to me: 'General, how do you manage always to have such fine horses?' f replied: 'Madame, in order to have fine horses, one must be either very rich or very shrewd.' " He was so pleased with this retort that he repeated it twice, winking the while. Paul Vence came up to Countess Martin: "I know the Senator's name: it is Loyer; he is Vice- President of a group and author of a propagandist book, en- titled 'The Crime of December the Second.' " The General continued: "It was a terrible day. I went into the shelter. There I met Le Menil. I was in a bad temper. I saw that he THE RED LILY 45 was laughing at me in his sleeve. He thinks that because I am a general I ought to like wind, hail, ana sleet. But it is absurd. He said he did not mind bad weather, that next week he was going to stay with friends for the hunting." There was a silence. The General resumed: "I trust he may enjoy himself; but 1 don't envy him. Foxhunting is not amusing." "But it is useful," said Montessuy. The General shrugged his shoulders: "A fox never molests the hen-house except in the spring, when he is feeding his young." "A fox," replied Montessuy, "prefers the rabbit-warren to the poultry-yard. He is a stealthy poacher who injures the farmer less than the sportsman. I know something about that." Therese seemed absent-minded; she was not listening to the Princess who was addressing her. "He never even told me that he was going away," she pondered. "Of what are you thinking, my dear?" asked the Princess. "Of nothing at all interesting." IV THE little room was dark and silent. Curtains, portiere, cushions, bear-skins, oriental rugs, hushed every sound. Swords, reflecting the fire-light, glistened on the cretonne of the walls, among targets and the faded relics of three winters' cotillions. On the rosewood chiffonier stood a silver cup, a prize awarded by some sporting society. On the painted porcelain top of the little table, a horn-shaped glass vase, over which ran a gilded convolvulus, was filled with branches of white lilac. And the shadows were everywhere broken by glinting lights. Therese and Robert, their eyes accustomed to the darkness, moved freely amidst these familiar surroundings. He lit a cigarette, while she did her hair, standing, with her back to the fire, before the long glass, in which she was hardly able to see herself. But she would have neither lamp nor candles. For three years she had been in the habit of taking her hairpins from the little cup of Bohemian glass, which stood on the table, just within hand reach. He watched her threading her light fingers through her hair which f ell in streams of yellow gold. Meanwhile her face, hardened and bronzed in the shadow, assumed a mysterious, almost an alarming expression. She did not speak. He said to her: "You are no longer vexed, my love?" And when he urged her to reply, to say something: "What would you have me say, dear? I can only repeat what I told you on my arrival. I think it strange that I should be informed of your projects by General Lariviere." He knew well that she still bore him ill-will, that she had been reserved and stiff, with none of that self -surrender that generally made her so delightful. But he pretended to be- lieve that her fit of the sulks was nearly over. "My dear, I have already explained. I told you and I repeat that when I met Lariviere, I had just received a letter from Caumont, reminding me of my promise to hunt 46 THE RED LILY 47 in his woods, and I had replied by return of post. I was intending to tell you to-day. I regret that General Lari- viere anticipated me; but it really is not important." With her arms raised handle-like above her head, she turned towards him with a tranquil gaze, that he did not understand. "So you are going?" "Next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. I shall be away ten days at the most." She was putting on her sealskin toque in which was stuck a branch of mistletoe. "It is a matter that admits of no delay?" "Oh! no; the fox's fur will be worth nothing in a month's time. Besides Caumont has invited some of our common friends whom my absence would disappoint." Sticking a long pin into her toque, she knit her eye-brows. "Is your hunting very interesting?" "Yes, very, because a fox plays all kinds of tricks which you have to thwart. The intelligence of the beast is won- derful. I have watched foxes hunting rabbits at night. They had organised everything and had regular beaters. I assure you it is not easy to dislodge a fox from his den. These hunting-parties are very gay. Caumont's wine is ex- cellent. That doesn't appeal to me, but it is generally ap- preciated. Would you believe it, one of his farmers told him that he had learnt from a sorcerer how to tame a fox with magic words? I shan't adopt that method, but I prom- ise to bring you back a dozen fine skins." "What would you have me do with them?" "They make very nice rugs." "Ah! . . . And you will be hunting for a week?" "Not quite. As I shall be near Semanville, I shall spend two days with my Aunt de Lannoix. She is expecting me. Last year at this time she had made up a delightful party. There were her two daughters and her three nieces with their husbands; they are all five pretty, gay, charming, and irreproachable. At the beginning of next month I shall doubtless find them all assembled for my Aunt's birthday; and I shall stay two days at Semanville." "Stay as long as ever you like, dear. I should be ex- 48 THE RED LILY tremely sorry if you were to cut short such a delightful visit on my account." "But you, Therese, what will you do?" "I? Oh! I shall be all right." The fire was dying down. The shadows thickened. In a dreamy tone with a note of expectation she said: "It is true that it is never very wise to leave a woman alone." He came near her, trying to look at her in the darkness. He took her hand. "You love me?" "I assure you I do not love another. But " "What do you mean?" "Nothing. I am thinking ... I am thinking that, as we are parted the whole summer, and as, in the winter, you pass half your time with your family and your friends, if we are to meet so seldom it is hardly worth while our meeting at all." He lit the candles. In the light her face appeared hard and frank. He looked at her with a confidence proceeding less from that self-conceit common to all lovers than from his reliance upon a certain conventional propriety. A strong prejudice acquired in his youth and the simplicity of his intelligence caused him to believe in her. "Therese, I love you and you love me, I know it. Why will you torment me? Sometimes your hardness and reserve are very painful." She tossed her little head brusquely. "I can't help it. I am bitter and self-willed. It is in my blood. I inherit it from my father. You know Joinville; you have seen its chateau, its ceilings by Lebrun, its tapestry made at Maincy for Fouquet; you have seen its gardens designed by Le Notre, its park and its game; you said there were none finer in France; but you did not see my father's workshop, with its deal table and mahogany desk. All the rest originated there, my friend. On that table, standing at that desk, my father worked at figures for forty years, first in a little room in the Place de la Bastille, then in the flat in the Rue Maubeuge, where I was born. We were not very rich then. I have seen the little red damask drawing- THE RED LILY 49 room, with which my father set up housekeeping, and which mama loved so much. I am the child of a self-made man or of a conqueror, for it comes to the same thing. We are people who have had to make our way. My father was determined to make money, to possess what pays, that is everything. I am determined to win and to keep. What? I don't know . . . whether it be the happiness I possess ... or one that I have not. In my own way I also am greedy, greedy of dreams, of illusions. Oh! I know well that they are not worth the effort one makes to enjoy them, but it is the effort itself that is worth something, because that effort is I, is my life. I am bent upon enjoying what I love, what I thought I loved. I am determined not to lose it. I am like papa: I stand upon my rights. And then . . ." She lowered her voice. "And then I too have senses. There, my dear, I am boring you. I can't help it. I ought never to have sur- rendered to you." This petulance, to which he was accustomed, marred his pleasure. But it did not alarm him. Extremely sensitive to her acts, he did not care what she said, and attached little importance to words, especially a woman's. Himself a taci- turn person, he was far from imagining that words may also be actions. Although he loved her, or rather because he loved her ardently and trustfully, he thought it his duty to oppose whims that he considered absurd. When he did not vex her she was pleased for him to assume a masterful air; and, naively, he always assumed it. "You know, Therese, that my one thought is to please you in everything. Don't be capricious." "And why should I not be capricious? If I gave myself to you, it was an act neither rational or dutiful; it was a caprice." He looked at her surprised and saddened. "The word wounds you, dear? Say that it was love. And really the impulse did come from my heart; it was because I knew you loved me. But love should be a pleas- ure; and if I do not find that it satisfies what you call my caprices, what really is my desire, my life, my very heart, 50 THE RED LILY I will have no more of it; I prefer to live alone. You aston- ish me. My caprices! Is there anything else in life? Is not your hunting a caprice?" He replied very frankly: "If I had not promised, I swear that I would gladly sacrifice this little pleasure for your sake." She knew that what he said was true. She knew how exact he was in keeping his word in the most trifling mat- ters. Always true to his promises he was minutely and conscientiously scrupulous in the performance of all his social duties. She saw that if she insisted he would not go. But it was too late: she no longer wished to gain that point. Now all that she sought was the bitter joy of losing it. A reason she really considered absurd she now pretended to take seriously. "Ah! you promised." And she affected to yield. Surprised at first, he was soon secretly congratulating himself on having brought her to reason. He was grateful to her for not having persisted in her obstinacy. He put his arm round her, and, as a reward, in a frank, friendly man- ner, kissed her on the eyelids and the nape of her neck. He showed himself eager to devote to her the rest of his days in Paris. "We can meet three or four times before my departure, my darling, and oftener still, if you like. I will be here ready for you whenever you wish to come. Shall it be to- morrow?" She took a delight in saying that she could return neither to-morrow nor the following days. Very sweetly she ex- plained what would prevent her from coming. The obstacles appeared trivial at first: calls to be paid, a frock to be fitted, a bazaar, exhibitions, hangings she wanted to see and per- haps buy. But on examination these difficulties grew more important, more numerous: the calls could not be post- poned; it was not one bazaar but three she had to attend; the exhibitions were on the eve of closing; the hangings were going to America. In short, it was quite impossible for her to see him again before he started. As it was not like him to be content with such trivial THE RED LILY 51 reasons, he perceived that neither was it like Therese to give them. Bewildered by this tangle of trifling social ob- ligations, he did not resist, but remained silent and unhappy. With her left arm raised above her head, she lifted the portiere, and with her right hand turned the key in the lock. And there in the sapphire and ruby coloured folds of the oriental curtain, her head turned towards the lover she was leaving, she said in tones half mocking but almost tragic: "Good-bye, Robert! Enjoy yourself. My calls, my shop- ping, your visits are mere trifles; but it is true that destiny depends on such trifles. Good-bye." She went out. He would have liked to go with her; but he deemed it unwise to be seen in the street with her, when she did not insist upon it. Outside Therese suddenly felt alone, alone in the world, without joy and without sorrow. As usual she returned home on foot. It was dark, the night was cold, clear, and calm. But the streets she followed in the darkness, broken here and there by lights, enveloped her in that tepid warmth of towns, which penetrates even through the winter's cold and is so grateful to town-dwellers. She was passing be- tween lines of sheds, cottages, and booths, remnants of the rural days of Auteuil, with here and there a high-storied house, displaying its coping stone in dismal isolation. These little shops and monotonous windows were nothing to her. Nevertheless, in some mysterious manner her surroundings seemed friendly; and the stones of the street, the doors of the houses, the lights high up in the windows appeared to her not unkind. She was alone, and she wished to be alone. The road she was traversing between those two dwellings, which were almost equally home-like to her, that road she had travelled so often, it now seemed as if she were passing over for the last time. Why? What had the day brought her? Hardly a vexation, not even a quarrel. Nevertheless, there hovered over its past hours a faint, curious, yet per- sistent suggestion, a strange memory that would cling to that day for ever. What had happened? Nothing. And that nothing effaced all. She had a kind of sub-conscious conviction that she would never again enter that room. 52 THE RED LILY which once contained all that was dearest and most secret in her life. Hers was a serious relationship. She had given herself gravely to realise a joy that was necessary to her. Made for love, and very rational, she had not lost, in the abandonment of her person, that instinct for reflection, that aspiration after serenity which were very strong in her. She had not chosen ; one hardly ever does. Neither had she allowed herself to be taken by chance or by surprise. She had done what she had wished to do as much as one ever does in such matters. She had nothing to regret. He had behaved irreproachably towards her. She must in justice admit it with regard to a man much sought after in society and having all the women at his feet. Nevertheless, in spite of everything, she felt that it was over and that its conclusion was quite natural. She was thinking with dull melancholy: "Three years of my life, a good man who loves me and whom I loved, for I did love him. Otherwise I could not have given myself to him. I am not an un- scrupulous woman." But she could no longer revert to the sentiments of those days, the impulses of her soul and of her body. She recalled trivial quite insignificant details: the flowers on the wall paper, the pictures in the room; it was a room in a hotel. She remembered the words somewhat ridiculous and yet almost touching that he had said to her. But it seemed as if these experiences were those of another woman, some stranger whom she did not much like and hardly understood. And what had just happened, those caresses she had so recently received, all that was far away. The couch, the lilac in its glass vase, the little cup of Bohemian glass where she kept her pins she saw it all as if gazing into the room from the street. She knew no bitterness, not even sadness. She had nothing to pardon, alas! That week's absence was no infidelity, no wrong done her; it was nothing, that was all. It was the end. She knew it. She wished it to be the end. She willed it just as the falling stone wills to fall. She was obeying all the secret forces of her being. She was saying to herself: "There is no reason why I should love him less. Do I no longer love him? Have I ever loved him?" She did not know, and she did not care to know. THE RED LILY 53 Three years during which their rendezvous had been twice, occasionally four times a week. There had been months when they had met every day. Was that nothing? But life is no great matter. And how little one puts into it! After all she had no cause to complain. But it was better to make an end of it. All her reflections brought her back to that. It was not a resolution. Resolutions may be changed. This was graver; it was a mental and a physical condition. Having reached the square, with a fountain in the middle and on one side a Gothic church with its bell enclosed in a turret open to the sky, she remembered the penny bunch of violets he had given her one evening on the Petit-Pont, near Notre Dame. That day they had loved each other more passionately than usual. Her heart softened as she remem- bered it. She felt in her coat, but found nothing. In her memory alone lived the little nose-gay, that poor little skeleton of flowers. While she was walking dreamily, passers-by followed her, misled by the simplicity of her dress. One invited her to a restaurant, to dine in a private room and then go to a theatre. Far from being embarrassed by these proposals, she was entertained by them. Her nerves v/ere not in the least unstrung by the crisis she had passed through. "What do other women do?" she was wondering. "And I who con- gratulated myself on not wasting my life. What is life worth after all?" When she came within sight of the Neo-Greek lantern tower of the Museum of Religions, she found the road up. Over a deep ditch, between banks of black earth, heaps of cobbles and piles of paving stones, a narrow bending plank had been thrown. She had already begun to cross it when before her she saw a man who had stopped to let her pass. He had recognised her and was taking off his hat. It was Dechartre. As she advanced she thought he was pleased at meeting her, and she thanked him with a smile. He asked if he might walk a little way with her. And together they entered the broad square, where the air was keener, where the tall houses were farther apart and the sky could be seen. 54 THE RED LILY He said he had recognised her in the distance by the out- line of her figure and the rhythmic movement of her walk. "Graceful motion," he said, "is to the eyes what music is to the ears." She replied that she loved walking, that it pleased and invigorated her. He also liked to take long walks in populous towns or in the beautiful country. The mystery of the road tempted him. He loved travel; and even now, when it had become common and easy, it still attracted him. He had seen golden days and transparent nights in Greece, Egypt, and the Bosphorus. But it was always to Italy he returned as to the home of his soul. "I am going there next week," he said. "I want to see Ravenna again, asleep among the dark pine trees of that barren coast. Have you ever been to Ravenna? It is an enchanting tomb out of which rise dazzling phantoms. "There is the magic of death. The mosaics of Saint Vita- lis and of the two Saints Apollinaris, with their barbaric angels and their empresses with halos recall the delightful monsters of the East. The tomb of Galla Placidia, now that it has been robbed of its silver plates, looks terrible in its crypt, dark yet luminous. Looking through a crack in the sarcophagus it seems as if one saw the daughter of Theo- dosius seated on her golden chair, very straight in her be- jewelled gown embroidered with scenes from the Old Testa- ment, her handsome cruel face hardened and blackened by the aromatic spices used for embalmment, and her ebony hands motionless upon her knees. For thirteen centuries she remained in funereal majesty, until a child, passing with a candle near the opening in the tomb, burnt the body and the dalmatic." Madame Martin-Belleme asked what had been the life of this corpse so inflexible in her pride. "Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became twice an empress." "She was beautiful doubtless," said Madame Martin. "Your description of her in her tomb is so vivid that she alarms me. Will you not go to Venice, Monsieur De- chartre? Or are you tired of gondolas, of canals fringed THE RED LILY 55 with palaces, and of the pigeons of Saint Mark? I confess that after having visited Venice three times I still love her." He agreed with her. He too loved Venice. Whenever he went there he was converted from a sculptor into a painter, and he was always sketching. But it was the atmosphere that he would like to paint. "Elsewhere," he said, "even at Florence, the sky is dis- tant, high up, far away in the background. At Venice it is everywhere: it caresses earth and water; it lovingly en- velops leaden domes and marble fagades and casts its pearls and its crystals into purple space. The beauty of Venice consists in its sky and its women. How beautiful are Venetian women and of so clear and pure a cast. How slender and supple a figure beneath the black shawl. Were nothing left of these women but a single bone, that bone would suggest the charm of their exquisite form. On Sun- day, at church, they gather in groups, laughing and viva- cious, a medley of slim figures, graceful necks, tender smiles, and ardent glances. And, with the suppleness of a young doe, the who'e group bows when a priest with the head of a Vitellius, his chin hanging over his chasuble, passes bearing the ciborium, preceded by two choristers." He walked with unequal step impelled by the flow of his ideas. Her pace was more regular ana slightly more rapid than his. And, looking at her from the side, he saw the measured step and supple gait that he loved. He noticed how the determined motion of her head every now and then made the sprig of mistletoe in her toque quiver. Without realising it he was experiencing the charm of an association almost intimate with a young woman whom he scarcely knew. They had reached the place where the broad avenue dis- plays its four rows of plane trees. They were following that stone parapet crowned by a box hedge, which happily conceals the ugliness of the military buildings on the lower side of the quay. Beyond, the river was indicated by that thickness of the atmosphere which even on days when there is no mist is to be found over the surface of water. The sky was clear. The lights of the town mingled with the 56 THE RED LILY stars. In the south shone the three golden nails of Orion's Belt. "Last year at Venice, every morning as I went out, I used to see a charming girl, with a small head, a round and solid neck, and well-developed figure in front of my door, three steps above the canal. There she was in the sunshine, amidst vermin, as pure as an amphora, as captivating as a flower. She smiled. What a mouth! The richest jewel in the finest light. I perceived in time that this smile was in- tended for a butcher boy, encamped behind me, with his basket on his head." At the corner of the short street which leads down to the quay, between two rows of little gardens, Madame Martin slackened her pace. "It is true that Venetian women are beautiful." "They are nearly all beautiful, Madame. I speak of the women of the people, cigarette makers, glass-workers. The others are the same everywhere." "By the others, you mean society women; and those you do not love?" "Society women? Oh! some are charming. But as for loving them, that is a serious matter." "Do you think so?" She gave him her hand and abruptly vanished round the corner of the street. THAT evening she was dining alone with her husband. There were no winged victories or basket with gilded eagles on the table now reduced in size. The dogs of Oudry were no longer illuminated by hanging lights above the doors. While he was talking of everyday matters, she was in revery far away. It seemed to her that she was lost in a fog and remote from all things. It was a placid, almost a pleasant kind of suffering. Dimly as if through a mist she beheld the little room in the Rue Spontini carried by black angels on to one of the heights of the Himalayas. And, in an earthquake which seemed like the end of the world, her lover disappeared quite calmly while putting on his gloves. She felt her pulse to see if she was suffering from fever. Suddenly the clear tinkling of silver on the dinner-wagon roused her. She heard her husband saying: "My dear, in the Chamber to-day Gavaut made an ex- cellent speech on the pension fund. It is extraordinary how lucid his ideas have become, and how he now always seizes the point. He has made great progress." She could not help smiling: "But, my dear, Gavaut is a poor creature who has never thought of anything beyond rising from the crowd and mak- ing his own way. His ideas are all on the surface. Can it be that he is really taken seriously in the political world? Believe me, he has never imposed upon a woman, not even on his own wife. And yet that kind of illusion can so easily be created, I assure you." Then she added abruptly: "You know that Miss Bell has invited me to spend a month with her at Fiesole. I have accepted, I am going." Less surprised than displeased, he asked with whom she was going. She had the answer ready immediately and replied "With Madame Marmet." 57 58 THE RED LILY There was nothing to be said. Madame Marmet was a very respectable companion, especially suitable for Italy; for her husband, Marmet the Etruscan, had explored Italian tombs. He merely asked: "Have you told her? And when do you start?" "Next week." He was prudent enough to offer no objection for the mo- ment, thinking that opposition would only intensify what he considered a whimsical caprice. He remarked suavely: "Travel is certainly very pleasant. I have been thinking that in the spring we might visit the Caucasus and the country beyond the Caspian. That is a region interesting and little known. General Annenkoff would place car- riages and whole trains at our disposal on the railway he has constructed. He is a friend of mine and he admires you. He would provide us with an escort of Cossacks. Such an expedition would create an impression." He insisted on appealing to her vanity, for he found it impossible to imagine that she was anything but worldly minded, and, like himself, actuated entirely by self love. She replied indifferently that it might be a pleasant trip. Then he praised the mountains, the ancient cities, the bazaars, the costumes, the weapons of the Caucasus. He added: "We will take a few friends, Princess Seniavine, General Lariviere, perhaps Vence or Le Menil." She replied with a dry little laugh that it was rather soon to decide whom they would invite. He became attentive and kind. "You are not eating. You are losing your appetite." Although he did not believe in this sudden departure, the thought of it disturbed him. They had both resumed their liberty; but he did not like to be alone. He only felt him- self when his wife was at home and his household was com- plete. Besides, he had decided to give two or three big political dinners during the session. His party was coming to the front. Now was the moment to strengthen his own influence and to shine before the public. He said mys- teriously: ''There may come a crisis in which we shall need the sup- THE RED LILY 59 port of all our friends. You have not been following the course of public events, Therese?" "No, my dear." "I am sorry. You have sense and an open mind. If you had taken an interest in politics you would have observed the growth of moderate opinions. The country is tired of extremes. It will not have men compromised by a Radical policy and religious persecution. "A day will come when we shall have to form another Casimir-Perier ministry, but with new men, and then " He paused. She was barely listening. Sad and disillusioned, she was lost in revery. It seemed to her that the pretty woman who, not long ago, in the warmth and shadow of a darkened room, was standing bare- foot on a brown bearskin rug, while her lover kissed her neck, as she twisted her hair before the glass, was not her- self, was not even a woman whom she knew well or wished to know, but a lady whose affairs did not interest her. A hairpin, one of those out of the Bohemian glass cup, fell from her hair down her neck. She shuddered. ''But we must give three or four dinners to our political friends," said M. Martin-Belleme. "We will invite former Radicals as well as members of our own circle. We ought to have some pretty women too. We might quite well invite Madame Berard de la Malle: it must now be two years since anything was said against her. What do you think?" " "But, my dear, I am going next week." He was alarmed. Together, both silent and gloomy, they went into the little drawing-room, where Paul Vence was waiting. He often came unceremoniously in the evening. She shook hands. "I am very glad to see you. I must bid you farewell for a short time. Paris is cold and dull. This weather makes me tired and sad. I am going to spend six weeks at Flor- ence with Miss Bell." M. Martin-Belleme raised his eyebrows. Vence asked whether she had not already been to Italy several times. to THE RED LILY "Three times. But I saw nothing. This time I am de- termined to see, to bathe myself in the life of the country. From Florence I shall make excursions into Tuscany and Umbria. And I shall end by going to Venice." "You will do well. Venice is the Sabbath rest concluding Italy's great divine week of creation." "Your friend Dechartre has been talking to me eloquently of Venice, of the pearl-like atmosphere of Venice." "Yes, at Venice the sky is a painter. At Florence it is a spirit. An old author writes: 'The Florentine sky inspires men with beautiful ideas.' I have passed delightful days in Tuscany. I should like to go there again." "Come and see me there." But he murmured with a sigh: "Newspapers, reviews, one's daily work." M. Martin-Belleme said that these were weighty reasons, and that the readers of Monsieur Paul Vence enjoyed his books and articles too much to wish him to be separated /rom his work. "Oh! as for my books! . . . One never says anything m a book as one would really like to say it. It is impossible to render one's thoughts exactly! Yes, I know how to talk with my pen as well as any one. But talking, writing, how pitiable! When one comes to think of it, how trivial are those little signs which form syllables, words, and phrases. Among such hieroglyphics at once commonplace and bizarre what happens to the idea? What does the reader make of my written page? Either wrong sense or nonsense. To read, to understand is to translate. There may be fine translations; there are no accurate ones. What does it mat- ter to me if they admire my books, since they always put into them what they admire? Every reader substitutes his ideas for ours. All we do is to tickle his imagination. It is horrible to have to furnish material for such a proceeding. Ours is an infamous profession." "You are joking," said M. Martin. "I think not," said Therese. "He is suffering because he realises that no soul can see into another. He feels alone when he thinks, alone when he writes. Whatever one does one is always alone in this world. That's what he means. THE RED LILY 61 He is right. One may be always explaining oneself, one is never understood." "But there are actions," said Paul Vence. "Don't you think, Monsieur Vence, that they are a kind of hieroglyphics? Tell me about M. Choulette. I never see him now." Vence replied that for the moment Choulette was very busy reforming the third order of St. Francis. "The idea of this work, madame, occurred to him in a marvellous manner, one day when he was visiting Maria, at her lodging in the street behind the Hotel Dieu, a street which has over-hanging houses and is always damp. Maria, you know, is the saint and martyr who atones for the si is of the people. He pulled the bell-rope worn out by two centuries of callers. The martyr was either at the tavern, which she frequents constantly, or busy in her room; she did not open the door. Choulette continued pulling, and so vigorously that the handle and the rope remained in his hand. Quick to conceive the symbolism and hidden mean- ing of things, he understood at once that the rope had not broken without the interposition of supernatural powers. Over this incident he pondered. The hemp v/as black and sticky with dirt. He made a girdle of it and realised that he had been chosen to restore the third order of St. Francis to its primitive purity. He renounced the beauty of women, the delights of poetry, the brilliance of fame, to study the life and teaching of the blessed saint. Meanwhile he has sold his publisher a book entitled Les Blandices, which, he says, contains a description of every kind of love. He is proud of appearing in it as a criminal with an air of distinc- tion. But this book will in no way interfere with his mysti- cal enterprises. On the contrary, corrected by a subsequent work, it will appear exemplary ; and the gold, or, as he says, the pieces of gold he received for it, which v/ould not have been so many if the work had been more decent, will enable him to make a pilgrimage to Assisi." Highly entertained, Madame Martin inquired how much truth there was in the story. Vence replied that she must not ask. He half admitted that he idealised the poet's history, and 62 THE RED LILY that the adventures he related must not be interpreted in their literal and Hebraic sense. But he maintained that Choulette was actually publishing Les Blandices and that he wished to visit the cell and tomb of St. Francis. "Then," cried Madame Martin, "I will take him to Italy. Monsieur Vence, find him and bring him here. I start next week." M. Martin regretted having to leave them; but he had a report to finish, which must be given in the next day. Madame Martin said that there was no one who inter- ested her more than Choulette. Paul Vence also considered him a singular type of humanity. "He does not greatly differ from those saints whose won- derful lives one reads. Like them he is sincere, with the most sensitive feelings and terribly violent emotions. If many of his actions shock us it is because he is weaker, less self-controlled, or perhaps more closely observed than the saints of history. Besides, there are fallen saints as there are fallen angels. Choulette happens to be a fallen saint. But his poems are really spiritual, and much finer of the kind than any composed by the courtly bishops and dramatic poets of the seventeenth century." She interrupted: "While I think of it, I want to congratulate you on your friend Dechartre. He is extremely interesting. Perhaps a trifle too self-centred," she added. Vence reminded her that he had always said she would find Dechartre interesting. "I know him by heart; he is a friend of my childhood." "Did you know his family?" "Yes; he is the only son of Philippe Dechartre." "The architect?" "The architect. He who under Napoleon III restored so many castles and churches in Touraine and the Orleanais. He was a man of both taste and knowledge. Although by nature reserved and gentle, he was so imprudent as to at- tack Viollet-le-Duc, who was then all-powerful. He re- proached him with restoring buildings according to their original plan and making them what they had been or ought to have been in the beginning. Philippe Dechartre on the contrary would respect everything the centuries have gradu- THE RED LILY 63 ally added to church, abbey, or chateau. To banish an- achronisms and restore a building to its primitive unity ap- peared to him a barbarism of science as atrocious as that of ignorance. He was always saying: It is a crime to efface what the hands and souls of our fathers have imprinted upon the stone throughout the ages. New stones cut in an old style are false witnesses! He would limit the work of the architect-archaeologist to the strengthening and support- ing of the structure. He was right; but no one agreed with him. He completed the failure of his career by dying young at the height of his rival's triumphs. Nevertheless he left his widow and son a modest fortune. Jacques Dechartre was brought up by an adoring mother. No mother ever loved her child more passionately. Jacques is a fine fellow, but he is a spoilt child." "Nevertheless he appears so easy-going, so indifferent, so detached." "Don't you believe it. His is a mind in itself restless and a cause of unrest in others." "Does he like women?" "Why do you ask?" "Oh, I am not thinking of arranging a marriage for him." "Yes, he does like women. I told you that he is an egoist. And on'y egoists really love women. After his mother's death, for a long while, he had an affair with a well-known actress. Jeanne Tancrede." Madame Martin thought she remembered Jeanne Tan- crede t. very pretty, but a fine figure, languidly graceful when playing the part of a woman in love. "Hut is the woman," said Paul Vence. "They nearly always lived together in a little house in the cite des Jas- mins at / uteuil. I often went to see them. I used to find him lost in his dreams, forgetting to model a figure drying beneath its linen covering; he would be wrapt in revery, concerned only with his own thoughts, quite incapable of listening to any one. She meanwhile would be studying her parts, her checks burning with rouge, love in her eyes, pretty in her intelligence and her energy. She used to complain to me that he was absent-minded, sullen, irritable. She really loved him, and never betrayed him, except to get a 64 THE RED LILY part. And when she did betray him it was quickly over, and afterwards she thought no more about it. She was a serious-minded woman. But she allowed herself to be seen with Joseph Springer, and cultivated his society in the hope that he would give her a part at the Comedie Frangaise. Dechartre was vexed and parted from her. Now she finds it more convenient to live with her directors, and Jacques prefers to travel." "Does he regret her?" "How can one know the thoughts of a mind so restless and so versatile, so eager to give itself, so quick to take back the gift, so egotistical and so passionate? He loves with fervour whenever he finds the personification of his own ideals." She changed the subject abruptly. "And what about your novel, Monsieur Vence?" "I am writing the last chapter. My poor little engraver has been guillotined. He died with the calm of a placid virgin who has never felt the warm breath of life on her lips. Newspapers and the public conventionally approve of the act of justice which has just been performed. But in a garret another artisan, a chemist, serious and sad, is swearing to avenge his brother's death." He rose and took his leave. She called him back. "Monsieur Vence, you know I am in earnest. Bring me Choulette." When she went up to her room her husband was waiting for her on the landing. He was wearing a reddish-brown frieze dressing-gown and a kind of doge's cap encircling his pale hollow face. He looked grave. Behind him, through the open door of his study, appeared under the lamp a pile of documents and the open blue-books of the annual budget. Before she entered her room he signed that he wished to speak to her. "My dear, I don't understand you. Your inconsistency may do you harm. Without motive, without even an excuse, you abandon your home and travel through Europe, with whom? With this Choulette, a Bohemian, a drunkard." THE RED LILY 65 She replied that she would travel with Madame Marmet, and there was nothing unconventional in that. "But you are telling every one of your departure, and you don't yet know whether Madame Marmet can go with you." "Oh, dear Madame Marmet can soon pack up and go. It would only be her dog that would detain her in Paris. She will leave him with you; you can look after him." "And does your father know of your plans?" When his own authority was defied it was always his last resource to invoke that of Montessuy. He knew that his wife was afraid of displeasing her father and giving him a bad opinion of her. He insisted. "Your father is full of common sense and tact. I have been so fortunate as to find myself in agreement with him in the advice I have given you on several occasions. Like me he considers that a woman in your position ought not to visit Madame Meillan. Her society is very mixed and she is known to facilitate intrigues. I must tell you plainly that you make a great mistake in holding the opinion of society of so little account. I am very much mistaken if your father will not consider it strange for you to go off in this frivolous manner. And your absence will be all the more remarked because, permit me to remind you, through- out this session I have been very much in the public eye. In this matter my personal merit counts for nothing. But, if you had been willing to listen to me at dinner, I should have proved to you that the political group to which I be- long is on the verge of coming into power. It is not at such a moment that you should forsake your duties as mis- tress of this house. You must understand this." She replied: "You are boring me." And, turning her back upon him, she shut herself in her room. In bed that evening, as was her custom, she opened a book before falling asleep. It was a novel. Turning over its pages haphazard, she came upon these lines: "Love is like devoutness in religion; it comes late. One 66 THE RED LILY is seldom either in love or devout at twenty, unless one has an unusual disposition, a kind of innate holiness. Even the elect strive long with that grace of loving which is more terrible than the lightning on the road to Damascus. A woman does not generally yield to the passion of love until age and solitude have ceased to alarm her. For passion is an arid desert, a burning Thebaid. Passion is a secular asceticism as severe as the asceticism of religion. "Therefore a great passion is as rare in women as great religious devotion. Those who know life and society know that women do not willingly wear upon their delicate bodies the hair-shirt of a true love. They know that nothing is rarer than a life-long sacrifice. And reflect how much a woman of the world must sacrifice when she loves: liberty, peace of mind, the charming play of a free imagination, coquetry, amusements, pleasures, she loses everything. "Flirting is permitted to her. That is consistent with all the exigencies of a fashionable life. But not love. Love is the least worldly of the passions, the most anti-social, the wildest, the most barbarous. Therefore the world judges it more severely than gallantry and than profligacy. In one sense the world is right. A Parisian woman in love belies her nature, and fails to perform her function which is, like a work of art, to belong to us all. She is a work of art and the most marvellous that man's industry has ever produced. She is an enchanting artifice, resulting from the conjunction of all the mechanical arts and all the liberal arts; she is their common production, and she is the common good. Her duty is to show herself." As Therese closed the book, she reflected that these were the dreams of novelists who did not know life. She knew well that in reality there existed no Mount of Passion, no hair-shirt of love, no terrible yet beautiful vocation against which the elect strove in vain ; she knew that love was only a brief intoxication, which when it passes leaves one a little sorrowful. And yet, if after all she did not know every- thing, if there should be a love in which one might drown oneself with delight. . . . She put out her lamp. The dreams of her early youth returned to her from the dim background of her past. VI IT was raining. Through the streaming windows of her carriage, Madame Martin-Belleme dimly saw a multi- tude of umbrellas passing through the rain like tortoises. She was dreaming. Her thoughts were as misty and vague as the appearance of the streets and squares, rendered in- distinct by the rain. She could not remember how the idea had occurred to her of spending a month with Miss Bell. Indeed she had never realised why she had formed this resolution. It had been a spring hidden in the beginning beneath a few sprigs of water plantain, now it was a deep and rapid stream. She recollected that on Tuesday evening at dinner she had sud- denly said that she wanted to go, but she could not trace her desire back to its origin. It was not a wish to act to- wards Robert Le Menil as he had acted towards her. Cer- tainly it seemed to her excellent that she should be walking in the Cascine while he was hunting. It was pleasant and fitting. Robert, who was generally very pleased to see her after an absence, would not find her when he returned. It was good and just that he should have to submit to that disappointment. But she had not thought of that reason before her decision. And since she had seldom thought of it. It was really not the pleasure of making him vexed or the fun of a little act of vengeance that was the motive for her departure. Her feeling towards him was not so keen as that, but harder, more serious. She was especially desirous to postpone their meeting. Without their having come to any rupture, he had become a stranger to her. He ap- peared a man like the rest, although better than most of them; very good looking, with excellent manners, an esti- mable character; a man she did not dislike, but who did not deeply interest her. He had suddenly passed out of her life. How intimately he had been associated with it she did not care to recall. The idea of belonging to him shocked her and seemed indecorous. The anticipation of meeting 67 68 THE RED LILY him again in the flat in the Rue Spontini was so painful that she banished it immediately from her mind. She preferred to believe that their reunion would be prevented by some event unforeseen but inevitable, the end of the world for example. The previous evening, at Madame de Morlaine's, M. Lagrange, of the Academy of Science, had spoken of a comet. One day, he said, coming from the depths of the firmament, and meeting this planet, it might envelop the earth in its flaming tail, burn it in its fire, breathe into its animals and plants unknown poisons, and slay the children of men who would die in frantic laughter or pass away in a dull stupor. Either that or something of that kind must happen before next month. Thus her desire to go away was not without an explanation. But why a vague joy should enter into her wish to depart, why she should feel herself already under the charm of what she was going to see, that she could not understand. The carriage put her down at the corner of the narrow Rue de la Chaise. There since her husband's death lived Madame Marmet, in a small but very neat flat, on the top floor of a high house. Her five windows looked on a balcony and were brightened by the morning sun. It was her afternoon at home, and the Countess Martin had come to call. In the modest highly polished salon, she found M. Lagrange slum- bering in an arm-chair opposite the kind lady, who looked sweet and tranquil beneath her crown of white hair. This old scholar and man of the world had always been her faithful friend. On the day after Marmet's funeral it was he who had brought the unhappy widow Schmoll's waspish oration, and, thinking to console her, had beheld her consumed by grief and anger. She had fainted in his arms. Madame Marmet thought him lacking in judgment. He was her best friend. They often dined together at the tables of the rich. Madame Martin, tall and beautiful, in her sable furs opening over a fall of lace, by the sparkling brilliance of her grey eyes, awoke the good man who was susceptible to feminine grace. The evening before, at Madame Morlaine's, he had described the end of the world. He asked her THE RED LILY 69 whether she had not been afraid when in the night watches there recurred to her those pictures of the earth eaten up by fire, or dead with cold and white as the moon. While he was talking to her with affected gallantry, she was look- ing at the mahogany book-case, which occupied a recess in the drawing-room wall opposite the windows. It contained few books, but on a lower shelf was a skeleton in armour. It was strange to find established in the kind lady's home this Etruscan warrior, wearing on his skull a helmet of greenish bronze and on his disjointed body the rusty plates of his cuirass. All unkempt and wild he slept among sweet- meat boxes, gilded porcelain vases, holy virgins in plaster and delicate souvenirs of carved wood from Lucerne and the Righi. In the poverty of her widowhood, Madame Marmet had sold the books with which her husband worked ; and of all the antiquities the archaeologist had collected she had kept only the Etruscan. Her friends had tried to induce her to get rid of it. Marmet's former colleagues had found a purchaser. Paul Vence had persuaded the directors of the Louvre to offer to buy it. But the good widow would not sell it. She imagined that if she were to part with the warrior in his helmet of tarnished bronze crowned with a wreath of gilded leaves, she would forfeit that name she bore with such dignity and cease to be known as the widow of Louis Marmet of the Academy of Inscriptions. "Be assured, Madame. The earth will not come into col- lision with a comet just yet. Such an event is extremely improbable." Madame Martin replied that the immediate annihilation of the earth and humanity would matter little to her. Old Lagrange strongly protested. He was extremely de- sirous that the catastrophe should be delayed. She looked at him. On his bald head there remained but a few tufts of hair dyed black. His eyelids hung limply over his eyes which were still bright; his wrinkled face was as yellow as parchment, and the hang of his clothes sug- gested a shrunken body. And she thought: "He enjoys life." Neither did Madame Marmet desire that the end of the world should be near. 7o THE RED LILY "Monsieur Lagrange," said Madame Martin, "don't you live in a pretty little house, with windows overhung by wistaria, looking on to the Jardin des Plantes? It must be delightful to live in that Garden, which always reminds me of the Noah's Arks of my childhood and the Garden of Eden in the old picture Bible." But he did not find the house delightful. It was small, badly built, and infested with rats. She realised that every life has its vexations, and that everywhere there are rats, real or symbolic, legions of tiny creatures bent on tormenting us. Nevertheless she liked the Jardin des Plantes; she was always wanting to go there, but never went. There was the Museum too which she had never entered but was curious to visit. Smiling and delighted he offered to do her the honours of the house. It was his home. He would show her the bolides; there were some very fine specimens. She had no idea what a bolide was. But she remembered having been told that in the Museum there were reindeers' bones worked by primitive man, and pieces of ivory en- graved with pictures of animals long since extinct. She asked if it were true. Lagrange had lost his smile. He re- plied with sullen indifference that these matters concerned one of his colleagues. "Ah!" said Madame Martin, "they are not in your line." She perceived that scholars lack curiosity and that it is unwise to question them about anything which is not in their department. It is true that thunderbolts had made Lagrange's fortune in science. And that they had led him to the study of comets. But he was prudent. For twenty years his chief occupation had been dining out. When he had gone, Countess Martin told Madame Mar- met what she had planned for her. "Next week I am going to Fiesole, to Miss Bell's, and you must come with me." Kind Madame Marmet, keen eyed beneath her placid brow, was silent for a moment; then she refused feebly, but was entreated and at last consented. VII E Marseilles express was drawn up at the platform, where porters were hurrying to and fro, pushing their trucks in the smoke and the noise and the blue light that fell through the glass of the roof. Before the open carriage doors travellers in long cloaks came and went. At the ex- treme end of the station, half veiled by dust and smoke, there appeared, just as if at the end of a telescope, a little arch of sky. No bigger than a man's hand, it represented the infinitude of travel: Countess Martin and kind Ma- dame Marmet were already seated in their carriage beneath a rack loaded with bags; and newspapers were lying near them on the cushions. Choulette had not come, and Ma- dame Martin had given him up. Nevertheless he had promised to be at the station. He had made arrangements for his departure and received the money for Les Blandices from his publisher. One evening Paul Vence had brought him to the Quai de Billy. He had been gentle, polite, wittily gay and naively happy. Since then she had looked forward with great pleasure to travelling with a man of genius, so original, so fascinatingly ugly, so entertainingly mad, such a thorough old prodigal, so abounding in natural vices and yet so innocent. They were shutting the carriage doors. He was evidently not coming. She had been foolish to rely on any one so impulsive and Bohemian. Just as the engine was beginning to snort, Madame Marmet, looking out of the window, said calmly: "I think I see M. Choulette." He was limping down the platform, wearing his hat on the back of his head, which showed some curious bumps. His beard was untrimmed and he was dragging an old carpet-bag. His aspect was almost terrifying; and yet in spite of his fifty years he looked young; his bright blue eyes shone clearly and there was an ingenuous audacity in his furrowed yellow face: for in this dilapidated old man 71 72 THE RED LILY there still flourished the eternal youth of the poet and the artist. As she looked at him, Therese regretted having chosen so strange a companion. As he walked down the train he cast into each carriage a quick glance which became gradually suspicious and sinister. But when he reached the carriage in which the two ladies were, and recognised Madame Martin, he smiled so gracefully and bade her good-day in such a soft voice, that there was no longer anything to suggest the wild vagabond, who had been wandering on the platform, except the old carpet-bag which he was dragging by its half-broken handles. He put it carefully in the rack side by side with the trim bags, covered with grey linen, which made it look tawdry and common, and showed up its yellow flowers on a ground of blood-red. Quite at his ease he congratulated Madame Martin on the capes of her travelling-coat. "Forgive me, ladies," he added, "I fear I am late. I toent to six o'clock mass at Saint-Severin, my parish church, in the Lady Chapel beneath those beautiful but incon- gruous reed-like pillars climbing heavenwards like us poor sinners." "So to-day you are pious," said Madame Martin. And she asked whether he had brought the cord of the order he had founded. He became sad and grave. "I am afraid, Madame, that M. Paul Vence has told you some absurd tales on that subject. I have heard that he goes about saying that my cord is a bell-rope! I should be sorry to think that any one should for a moment be- lieve such a wicked story. My cord is symbolic. It is represented by a thread worn next the skin, after having been touched by a poor person as a sign that poverty is holy and will save the world. Goodness is impossible with-, out poverty; and since receiving the money for my Blan- dices, I have felt myself growing hard and unjust. It does me good to remember that I have a few of these mystic cords in my bag." And, pointing to the hideous blood-red bag: THE RED LILY 73 "I have also got there a wafer, given me by a bad priest, the works of M. de Maistre, a few shirts and several other things." Madame Martin, somewhat alarmed, raised her eyebrows. But kind Madame Marmet retained her accustomed placidity. Whilst the train was going through the suburbs, that ugly black fringe of the town, Choulette took out a pocket-book and began to look in it. Beneath the vagabond the scribe was revealing himself. Choulette was fond of hoarding doc- uments, although he did not wish to appear to do so. He made sure that he had lost nothing, neither the scraps of paper with ideas for his poems jotted down in a cafe, nor the dozen complimentary letters, dirty, finger-marked, ragged at the folds, which he always carried and read at night beneath the gas lamps to any chance acquaintance he might happen to meet. Having seen that everything was there he took a letter in an unsealed envelope out of his pocket-book. He fidgeted with it for some time with an air of rather impudent mystery and then gave it to the Countess Martin. It was a letter of introduction, given him by the Marchioness of Rieu, to a princess of the French royal family, a very near relative of the Comte de Chambord, who, old and widowed, lived in retirement near the gates of Florence. Having enjoyed the effect which he thought this letter must have produced, he remarked that he might perhaps call on the Princess; she was a good pious person. "She is a real fine lady," he added, "one who does not display her magnificence in her gowns and hats. She wears her underclothing six weeks and sometimes longer. The noblemen of her suite have seen her wearing very dirty white stockings hanging over her shoes. She revives the virtues of the great queens of Spain. Those dirty stockings are a true glory." He took back the letter and restored it to his pocket- book. Then, having armed himself with a horn-handled knife, he began to carve a figure already half finished on the handle of his walking stick. Meanwhile he was pro- nouncing a eulogy on himself. 74 THE RED LILY "I am skilled in all the arts of beggars and vagabonds. I know how to open locks with a nail and carve wood with a cheap clasp-knife." The head was beginning to be defined. It was the thin face of a woman weeping. Choulette meant it to express human suffering, not in its touching simplicity as in an earlier civilisation when barbarism was mingled with goodness, nor painted and hideous with that ugliness into which it had been degraded by the middle-class freethinkers and the militarist patriots, the children of the French Revolution. In his opinion the present government was the personification of hypocrisy and brutality. "Barracks are a horrible invention of modern times. They originate in the seventeenth century. Formerly there was nothing but the guard-house, where veterans played cards and told fairy stories. Louis XIV is the precursor of the Convention and of Bonaparte. But the evil has come to a head in the monstrous institution of universal mili- tary service. To have forced men to kill each other is the disgrace of emperors and republics, the crime of crimes. In the so-called barbarous ages, cities and princes en- trusted their defence to mercenaries who made war delib- erately and prudently; in some great battles there were only five or six slain. And when the knights engaged in war they were not forced to it; they were killed of their own free will. It is true they were good for nothing else. In the days of Saint Louis no one would have dreamt of sending a man of learning and intelligence into battle. Neither was the labourer dragged from his plough and forced to join the army. Now it is considered the duty of a poor peasant to serve as a soldier. Now he is driven from his home with its chimneys smoking in the golden evening light, from the fat meadows where his oxen are grazing, from his cornfields and ancestral woods. In the court-yard of some miserable barracks he is taught how to kill men methodically; he is threatened, insulted, impris- oned; he is told that it is an honour, and if he desire no such honour, he is shot. He obeys, because, like all the gentlest, gayest, and most docile domestic animals, he is THE RED LILY 75 afraid. We in France are soldiers and we are citizens. Our citizenship is another occasion for pride! For the poor it consists in supporting and maintaining the rich in their power and their idleness. At this task they must labour in the face of the majestic equality of the laws, which forbid rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. This equality is one of the benefits of the Revolution. Why, that revolution was effected by madmen and idiots for the benefit of those who had acquired the wealth of the crown. It resulted in the enrichment of cunning peasants and money-lending bourgeois. In the name of equality it founded the empire of wealth. It delivered France to those moneyed classes who have been devouring her for a century. Now they are our lords and masters. The so-called government, com- posed of poor creatures, pitiable, miserable, impoverished, and complaining, is in the pay of financiers. Throughout the last hundred years any one caring for the poor in this plague-stricken country has been held a traitor to society. And you are considered dangerous if you assert that there are those who suffer poverty. There are even laws against indignation and pity. But what I am saying now cannot be printed." While Choulette was growing animated and brandishing his knife, they were passing fields of brown earth, clumps of purple trees that winter had robbed of their leaves, and curtains of poplars on the banks of silver rivers, lying in the winter sunshine. He looked pathetically at the figure carved upon his stick. "There you are," he said, "poor Humanity, emaciated and in tears, stupefied by shame and poverty, such as you have been made by your masters, the soldier and the plutocrat." Kind Madame Marmet, whose nephew was a captain of artillery, a charming young man, strongly attached to his profession, was shocked by the violence of Choulette's attack upon the army. Madame Martin regarded it as an amusing caprice. Choulette's ideas did not alarm her. She was afraid of nothing. But she thought them rather ab- 76 THE RED LILY surd; she could not conceive that the past could ever have been better than the present. "I believe, Monsieur Choulette, that men have always been what they are to-day, selfish, violent, greedy, and pitiless. I believe that the unfortunate have always been harshly and cruelly treated by laws and customs." Between La Roche and Dijon, they lunched in the restaurant-car, and then left Choulette there alone with his pipe, his glass of Benedictine, and his vexed soul. When they had returned to their carriage, Madame Mar- met talked with tranquil affection of her dead husband. Theirs was a love match. He had written her beautiful verses, which she kept and showed to no one. He was vivacious and gay. No one would have believed it pos- sible that he would ever succumb to overwork and dis- ease. He had laboured till the very last. Suffering from an enlarged heart, he could never lie down, and used to pass the night in his arm-chair, with his books on a table at his side. Only two hours before his death he made an effort to read. He was kind and affectionate. His suf- ferings never rendered him irritable. For lack of anything better, Madame Martin said: "You have the memory of long years of happiness, and in this world that is to have a share of good fortune." But Madame Marmet sighed; and a cloud over- shadowed her tranquil brow. "Yes," she said, "Louis was the best of men and the best of husbands. Nevertheless, he made me very unhappy. He had only one fault, but I suffered bitterly from it. He was jealous. He who was otherwise so kind, so affectionate, and so noble-minded was rendered unjust, tyrannical, and violent by that hateful passion. I can assure you that my conduct gave no ground for suspicion. I was not a co- quette. But I was young and fresh-looking; I was con- sidered almost pretty. That was enough. He forbade me to go out alone or receive callers in his absence. When we went to a ball together, I trembled in anticipation of the scene he would make in the carriage on our way home." And kind Madame Marmet added with a sigh; THE RED LILY 77 "It is true that I loved dancing. But I was obliged to give it up. It pained him too much." Countess Martin did not conceal her surprise. She had always regarded Marmet as a shy self-absorbed old gentle- man, appearing rather ridiculous between his corpulent wife, with her white hair and her sweet temper, and the skele- ton of his Etruscan warrior in its gilded bronze helmet. But the excellent widow confided to her that when he was fifty-five and she fifty-three, Louis was as jealous as in the early days of their married life. Therese remembered that Robert had never troubled her by his jealousy. Was it a proof of his tact and good taste or had he never loved her enough to be jealous? She did not know and she had not the courage to inquire. It would have involved searching in those secret chambers of her heart which she had decided never to open again. She murmured almost involuntarily: "We want to be loved; and when we are loved we are either tormented or bored." They closed the day with reading and meditation. Chou- lette had not reappeared. Night was gradually casting a grey veil over the mulberry trees of Dauphine. Madame Marmet slept peacefully, her head resting on her breast as if on a pillow. Therese looked at her and thought: "She is happy indeed if she can take delight in recalling the past." The sadness of the night seemed to enter into her heart. And when the moon rose over the olive fields, as she gazed upon the soft outline of plains and hills and the fleeting blue shadows, surrounded by a landscape in which every- thing suggested peace and oblivion, Therese longed for the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe with its radiating avenues, and the glades of the Bois, where at least the trees and stones knew her. Suddenly, with an artful abruptness, Choulette precipi- tated himself into the carriage. Armed with his knotted stick, his head enveloped in rough fur and a red shaw.1, he almost alarmed her. That was what he wanted. His violent pose and savage mien were affectations. Always occupied with bizarre and trivial effects it was 78 THE RED LILY his delight to appear alarming. Himself very easily fright- ened, he liked to inspire the terror he experienced. Smok- ing his pipe alone at the end of the passage only a few moments before, as he saw the moon behind the fleeting clouds, over the Camargue, his imaginative, versatile soul had been struck by childish fears. He had come to take refuge with Countess Martin. "Aries," he said. "Do you know Aries? It is pure beauty! In the cloisters of St. Trophimus I have seen doves perched on the shoulders of statues, and little grey lizards warming themselves on the tombs in the Aliscamps. The tombs are now arranged on each side of the road lead- ing to the church. They are cistern-shaped, and at night beggars sleep in them. One evening, as I was walking with Paul Arene, I met a nice old woman who was spreading dried grass in the tomb of a virgin who died long ago on her wedding-day. We wished her good-night. She re- plied: 'May God hear you. But an evil fate has willed that this cistern should be open to the north-west wind. If only the crack had been on the other side, I should have slept like Queen Jane.' " Therese did not reply. She was sleepy. And Choulette, shivering in the aaight cold, thought of death and was afraid. VIII MISS BELL had driven the Countess Martin-Beileme and Madame Marmet in her trap from the Florence station, up the steep hill, to her house at Fiesole, painted pink, surrounded by a balustrade, and looking down on the incomparable city. The maid was following with the luggage. Choulette, whom Miss Bell had quartered on a verger's widow in the shadow of Fiesole cathedral, was to come to dinner. Pleasant and plain, with short hair and slim, flat figure, almost graceful in her tailor-made coat and skirt of masculine cut, the poetess welcomed her French friends to her home. The house betrayed the refined deli- cacy of her taste. On the drawing-room walls pale virgins of Sienna, with long hands, reigned tranquilly over angels, patriarchs, and saints in triptychs with fine gilded mould- ings. On a pedestal was a standing figure of a Magdalen, enveloped in her long hair, terribly old and wasted, some beggar on the road to Pistoia, her skin hardened by sun and snow, copied in clay, with horrible pathetic realism, by an unknown precursor of Donatello. And Miss Bell's armorial bearings, big bells and little bells, were every- where. The largest, in bronze, were in the corners of the room; others formed a chain round the bottom of the walls. Smaller ones bordered the cornice. There were bells on the stove, on the coffers and the cabinets. There were glass cases full of bells in silver and silver gilt. There were big bronze bells engraved with the Florentine lily, little Renaissance bells composed of a woman wearing a full farthingale, funeral bells decorated with tears and bones, filigree bells, covered with leaves and symbolic animals, which rang in churches in the days of St. Louis, table bells of the seventeenth century with a statuette for handle, little flat clear-sounding cow-bells of the Rutli valleys, Indian bells made to ring softly with a stag's horn, Chinese bells of cylindrical form; they had come there from all coun- 79 8o THE RED LILY tries and from all times in obedience to the magic summons of this little Miss Bell. "You are looking at my vocal coats of arms," she said to Madame Martin. "I think all those Misses Bell are happy here, and it would not astonish me if one day they began to sing together. But you must not admire them all equally. You must keep your highest praise for this one." As she struck with her finger a dark plain bell, there re- sounded a shrill note: "This one," she resumed, "is a holy country-woman of the fifth century. She is the daughter in the faith of Paulinus of Nola, he who first made music in the sky above us. It is made of a rare metal, called Campanian brass. Soon I will show you at her side a most charming Floren- tine, the queen of bells. She is to come. But I am weary- ing you with these toys, darling. And I am boring kind Madame Marmet also. It is too bad of me." She took them to their rooms. An hour later, Madame Martin, refreshed and rested, in a tea-gown of soft silk and lace, came down on to the terrace, where Miss Bell was waiting for her. The damp air, warmed by the sunlight, not yet strong but already abundant, breathed the disquieting sweetness of spring. Therese, leaning against the balustrade, bathed her eyes in the light. At her feet the cypresses raised their dark pyramids and the olive trees clustered on the slopes. In the hollow of the valley was Florence with its domes, its towers, the multitude of its red roofs, among which was faintly discernible the winding thread of the Arno. Be- yond were the blue hills. She tried to make out the Boboli gardens, where she had walked during a previous visit, the Cascine, which she did not care for, the Pitti Palace, Santa Maria del Fiore. Then the glorious spaces of the sky attracted her. She followed the fleeting forms of the clouds. After a long silence, Vivian Bell stretched out her hand towards the horizon. "Darling, I cannot express myself, I don't know how to say it. But look, darling, look again. What you see THE RED LILY 81 is unique. Nowhere else is nature so subtle, so elegant, so delicate. The god who created the Florentine hills was an artist. Yes, he was a worker in jewels, an en- graver of medals, a sculptor, a bronze founder, and a painter; he was a Florentine. And he produced nothing else, darling. The rest is the work of a less delicate hand, a less perfect creation. How could that violet hill of San Miniato, standing out in such pure and firm relief, be by the author of Mont Blanc? It is not possible. This land- scape, darling, has all the beauty of an ancient medal and a costly painting. It is a perfect and harmonious work of art. And there is something else that I can't express, that I can't understand, and yet it it true. In this coun- try, I feel, and you will feel like me, darling, half alive and half dead, in a state very noble, very sad and very sweet. Look, look well; you will discern the melancholy of these hills which surround Florence, and you will be- hold a delicious sadness ascending from the Country of the Dead." The sun was declining towards the horizon. One by one the lights faded from the hills and the clouds became on fire. Madame Marmet sneezed. Miss Bell had shawls brought and warned her French guests that the evenings were cold and dangerous. Then suddenly she said: "Darling, do you know M. Jacques Dechartre? Well, he writes that he is coming to Florence next week. I am glad that M. Jacques Dechartre should be in our city at the same time as you. He will go with us to churches and museums; and he will be a good guide. He under- stands beautiful things because he loves them. His sculp- ture is exquisite. His figures and medallions are even more highly appreciated in England than in France. Oh! I am so glad that M. Jacques Dechartre will be at Florence with you, darling!" DC next day, as they were coming out of Santa Maria JL Novella, and crossing the square, where, as in an ancient circus, stand two obelisks of marble, Madame Mar- met said to Countess Martin: "I think I see Monsieur Choulette." Sitting in a cobbler's booth, pipe in hand, Choulette was gesticulating rhythmically, and appeared to be recit- ing verses. The Florentine shoemaker, as he worked with his awl, was listening with a good-natured smile. He was a little bald man, a favourite type in Flemish pictures. On the table, among the wooden lasts, nails, pieces of leather, and balls of wax, was a basil plant. A sparrow with a false leg, made of a bit of match, was hopping gaily from the old man's shoulder to his head. Delighted at such a sight, Madame Martin stood on the threshold and called Choulette, who was reciting in a soft, singing voice, and asked him why he had not come with her to visit the Cappella degli Spagnuoli. He rose and replied: "Madame, you are occupied with vain imaginings. I am concerned with life and reality." He shook hands with the cobbler, and followed the two ladies. "On my way to Santa Maria Novella," he said, "I saw this old man, leaning over his work, holding the last be- tween his knees as Jf in a vise, and stitching clumsy shoes. I felt that he was simple and good. I said to him in Italian, 'Father, will you drink a glass of Chianti with me?' He was quite willing. He went to fetch a bottle and glasses, while I minded his shop." And Choulette pointed to two glasses and a bottle stand- ing on the stove. "When he returned we drank together; I repeated good words of obscure meaning, the music of which delighted him. I shall return to his booth. I shall learn from 82 THE RED LILY 83 him how to make shoes and live a contented life. After that I shall never know sadness, which arises solely from discontent and idleness." Countess Martin smiled. "Monsieur Choulette, I am not discontented, and yet I am not gay. Must I also learn to make shoes?" Choulette replied gravely: "Not yet." When they reached the Oricellari Gardens, Madame Mar- met dropped on to a seat. At Santa Maria Novella she had carefully examined the serene frescoes of Ghirlandajo, the choir-stalls, the virgin of Cimabue, and the pictures in the monastery. She had taken great pains in honour of her husband's memory, who was said to have loved Italian art. She was tired. Choulette sat down by her and said: "Could you tell me, Madame, if it is true that the Pope has his robes made by Worth?" Madame Marmet did not think so. Nevertheless Chou lette had heard it in the cafes. Madame Martin was sur- prised that Choulette, a Catholic and a Socialist, should speak so disrespectfully of a Pope who was the friencr of the Republic. But he had little admiration for Leo XIII. "The wisdom of princes is short-sighted," he said. "The Church's salvation will be effected by the Italian Republic; and this is what Leo XIII believes and desires; but the Church will not be saved in the way that pious Machiavelli expects: the revolution will deprive the Pope of his in iquitous tribute with the rest of his temporal dominion. And that will be the salvation of the papacy. Poor and stripped of his temporal power, the Pope will once more be powerful. He will move the world. The Peters, the Linuses, the Cletuses, the Anacletuses, the Clements,* the humble, the ignorant, the saints of early times who changed the face of the earth, will return. If such an impossible thing were to happen as that to-morrow there were to sit in the chair of St. Peter a true bishop, a true Christian, I should go to him and say: 'Cease to be an old man buried * St. Peter, St. Linus, St. Cletus, St. Clement, St. Anacletus are said to have been the first five Popes, A.D. 65-109 (cf. Butler's "Lives of the Saints"). W.S. 84 THE RED LILY alive in a golden tomb. Leave your chamberlains, your noble body-guards, and your cardinals; abandon your throne and the empty shows of power. Come, and, supported by me, beg your bread from the nations. Ragged, poor, sick, dying, bear in yourself the image of Jesus. Say, I beg my bread in order that the rich may be reproached. Enter the towns and cry from door to door: Be humble, be gentle, be poor! Proclaim peace and charity in dark cities, in barracks, and in miserable hovels. You will be despised, you will be stoned. Soldiers will drag you to prison. To the humble as to the powerful, to the poor as to the rich, you will be a laughing-stock, a subject for disgust and pity. Your priests will depose you and elect an anti- pope. Every one will call you mad. And they must speak the truth; for you must be mad: the world has always been saved by madmen. Men will crown you with a crowns of thorns, and put in your hands a sceptre of reeds; and by these signs they shall know you to be the Christ, the true King. By these means you shall establish Christian socialism, which is the kingdom of God on earth.' " Having thus spoken, Choulette lit a long Italian cigar with a straw running through the middle. He inhaled a few whin's of noxious smoke and then tranquilly resumed: "And it would be quite practical. I am nothing if not clear-headed. Ah! Madame Marmet, you will never know how true it is that the great tasks of the world have always been accomplished by madmen. Do you think, Madame Mlartin, that if St. Francis of Assisi had been reasonable, he could have shed abroad among the nations the living wa- ters of charity and quickened them with the perfumes of love?" "I do not know," replied Madame Martin. "But I al- ways find reasonable persons very wearisome. I need not hesitate to say this to you, Monsieur Choulette." They returned up the hill to Fiesole by steam tram. It was raining. Madame Marmet fell asleep, and Choulette grumbled. He was overwhelmed with misfortunes: the dampness of the atmosphere gave him pains in the knee and be couldn't bend his leg; his carpet-bag, lost on the THE RED LILY 85 way from the station to Fiesole, couldn't be found, and that was an irreparable disaster; a Parisian review had just published one of his poems with glaring misprints. He accused men and things of being against him, bent on his ruin. He was childish, absurd, disagreeable. Ma- dame Martin, depressed by Choulette and by the rain, thought the ascent would never come to an end. When she entered the house of bells, she found Miss Bell in the drawing-room. In a handwriting modelled on the Aldine type she was copying, in golden ink, on to a piece of parchment, the verses she had composed during the night. At the sight of her friend, she raised her plain little face, glorified by her fine brilliant eyes. "Darling, let me introduce Prince Albertinelli." . The prince, in all the beauty of a young Adonis, hu- manised by a straight black beard, was standing near the stove. He bowed to Madame Martin. "Madame would inspire us with a love for France had not that sentiment already taken root in our hearts," he said. The Countess and Choulette asked Miss Bell to read them the verses she was writing. She said it would be impossible for her to make her halting numbers compre- hensible to the French poet whom she admired most after Frangois Villon; then, in her pretty, shrill, birdlike voice, she recited: Where the stream, like a water-sprite, laughing and singing, And waving cool arms, to the Arno down-springing, In spray-lifting leaps, skips o'er rugged rock-ledges, Two comely young lovers changed rings as love's pledges. And the transport of love in their bosoms was swelling, As the riotous drops in the torrent upwelling, The maiden was Gemma, but name for her lover No chronicler ever was known to discover. As day followed day, lips to lips closely pressing, With arms interlaced in their artless caressing, The goats cropping thyme all unstartled would brook them, Till at eve to their home in the town they betook them. And there the tired toilers, 'neath linden trees seated, The dream-enwrapped lovers nor heeded nor greeted. Yet they wept when they thought there remained not to capture From life, aught of bliss that could heighten their rapture. 86 THE RED LILY In that meadow where first they gave ear to love's singing, Where like as the vine to the green elm-tree clinging, O'erarched by the sky their first kisses they blended, Its blood-tinted petals a strange plant extended, All lance-like and wan were the leaves of its growing, Herb of Silence its name of the shepherds' bestowing. And Gemma was 'ware it was potent in lending The slumber eternal, the dream without ending, To all who should taste its ineffable savour. One day, 'neath the branches with breezes a-quaver, With a leaflet she parted the lips of her lover, And straightway ElysiurA received him, a rover ; Then she, of the peace-bringing leaf having tasted, In pursuit of her love to the silent shades hasted. And the dove, that at twilight complains as it hovers, Alone breaks the silence enwrapping the lovers.* "That is very pretty," said Choulette; "it suggests an Italy veiled in the mists of the Land of Thule." "Yes," said Countess Martin, "it is pretty. But, my dear Vivian, why did your two innocents want to die?" "Why, darling! because they felt as happy as possible, and they desired nothing more. Nothing was left to them to hope for. Don't you understand?" "Then you believe that hope keeps us alive?" "Yes, darling, we live in the expectation of what To- morrow, To-morrow, King of Fairyland, will bring in his * "Lors au pied des rochers oil la source penchante, Pareille a la Naiade et qui rit et qui chante, Agite ses bras frais et vole vers 1'Arno, Deux beaux enfants avaient echange leur anneau, Et le bonheur d'aimer coulait dans leurs poitrines Comme i'eau du torrent au versant des collines. Elle avait nom Gemma. Mais I'amant de Gemma, Nul entre les conteurs jamais ne le nomma. Le jour, ces innocents, la bouche sur la bouche, Melaient leurs jeunes corps dans la sauvage couche De thym que visitait la chevre. Et vers le soir, A 1'heure ou 1'artisan fatigue va s'asseoir Sous les tilleuls, surpris, ils regagnaient la ville. Nul n'avait souci d'eux dans la foule servile, Et souvent ils pleuraient, se sentant trop heureux. He comprirent que vivre etait mauvais pour eux, THE RED LILY 87 mantle of black or blue, embroidered with flowers, with stars, and with tears. Oh bright king To-morrow!" Or, dans cette prairie ou dechires de joie, Us etaient 1'orme vert et la vigne qui ploie, Et tordaient sous le ciel leur rameau gemissant, S'elevait une plante etrange, aux fleurs de sang, Qui dardait son feuillage en pales fers de lance. Les bergers la nommaient la Plante du silence. Et Gemma le savait, que le sommeil divin Et Feternel repos et Je reve sans fin Viendraient de cette plante a qui 1'aurait mordue. Un jour qu'elle riait sous 1'arbuste etendue, Elle en mit une feuille aux levres de 1'ami. Quand il fut dans la joie a jamais endormi, Elle mordit aussi la feuille bien-aimee. Aux pieds de son amant elle tomba pamee. Les colombes au soir sur eux vinrent gemir, fit rien plus ne troubla leur amoureux dormir." ' I A HEY were dressed for dinner. In the drawing-room JL Miss Bell was drawing monsters, suggested by those of Leonardo da Vinci. She created them in order to see what they would say, convinced that they would speak and express rare ideas in curious rhymes. Then she would listen to them. It was thus that she generally conceived her poems. Prince Albertinelli was strumming on the piano the Sicilian air, O Lola! His fingers passed lightly over the keys. Choulette, more uncouth than usual, was asking for a needle and thread with which to mend his clothes. He was groaning over the loss of a modest needle-case he had carried in his pocket for thirty years, and which was precious on account of the sweet memories it recalled and the wise counsels it suggested. He thought he must have lost it in that impious hall of the Pitti Palace, and he held the Medicis and all the Italian painters responsible. Looking at Miss Bell reproachfully, he said: "I compose my poems when I am mending my clothes. I take delight in manual labour. I sing my songs as I sweep my room. That is why those songs go straight to the hearts of men, like the old songs of ploughmen and artisans, which are more beautiful than mine but not more natural. I take a pride in waiting on myself. The verger's widow offered to mend my rags. I would not permit it. It is wrong to employ others to do servilely what we could ourselves accomplish in noble free- dom." The Prince was playing slight airs mechanically. Therese, who for the last week had been visiting churches and museums with Madame Marmet, was meditating on the vexation her companion caused her by insisting on recog- nising resemblances to persons among her acquaintance in the portraits by the old masters. That morning at the THE RED LILY 89 Riccardi Palace, merely in the frescoes of Benozzo Goz- zoli, she had recognised M. Garain, M. Lagrange, M. Schmoll, Princess Seniavine dressed as a page, and M. Renan on horseback. M. Renan she was quite alarmed to find everywhere. Her ideas were always revolving around her little academical and social circle with a facility which annoyed her friend. In her sweet voice she was always describing the public meetings of the Institute, lec- tures at the Sorbonne, assemblies adorned by fashionable theosophists. As for the women, in her opinion they were all charming and irreproachable. She visited them all. And Therese reflected: "Kind Madame Marmet! She is too discreet. She bores me." And Madame Marmet thought of leaving her behind at Fiesole and visiting the churches alone. She said to herself, using an expression that Le Menil had taught her: "I must drop Madame Marmet." A thin old man entered the drawing-room. His waxed moustache and little white pointed beard made him look like an old officer. But beneath his spectacles his glance betrayed the cunning geniality of eyes worn out in the service of science and pleasure. He was a Florentine, a friend of Miss Bell and of the Prince, Professor Arrighi, once adored by women, now famous throughout Tuscany and the Emilia * for his essays on agriculture. Countess Martin liked him at once. Although she had not been favourably impressed by rural life in Italy, she carefully questioned the Professor concerning his methods and their results. He proceeded, he said, with energy tempered by prudence. "The earth," he continued, "is like a woman. She re- quires you to be neither timid nor brutal." The Ave Maria sounding from all the campanili con- verted the sky into one vast musical instrument playing religious music. "Darling," said Miss Bell, "do you hear how in the evening the air of Florence is sonorous and tinkling with the sound of bells?" *A district composed of three duchies, Parma, Piacenza and Mo dena.- -W.S. 90 THE RED LILY "It is strange," said Choulette, "but we all seem as if we were waiting for some one." Vivian Bell replied that they were indeed waiting for some one, for M. Dechartre. He was rather late. She was afraid he must have missed his train. Choulette went up to Madame Marmet and said very gravely: "Madame Marmet, can you ever look at a door, a sim- ple door of painted wood, like yours for instance or mine, on that one or any other, without being filled with fear and horror at the thought of the visitor who may enter at any moment? The door of our dwelling opens into the infinite. Have you ever thought of it? Do we ever know the true name of him or her, who, in human form, with a familiar face, in commonplace clothes, enters our house?" For his part, shut up in his own room, he could never look at the door without fear making his hair stand on end. But Madame Marmet was able to look at her drawing- room doors without experiencing the slightest alarm. She knew the names of all her visitors; all delightful people. Choulette looked at her sadly and shook his head: "Madame Marmet, Madame Marmet, those whom you call by their earthly names have another name, which you do not know, but which is their true name." Madame Martin asked Choulette if he believed that when misfortune descended upon people there was any need for it to cross the threshold. "It is subtle and ingenious. It comes through the win- dow, it passes through walls. It is not always seen, but it is always there. The poor doors are quite innocent of the advent of this evil visitor." Choulette reproached Madame Martin severely for call- ing the advent of misfortune evil. "Misfortune is our greatest master and our best friend. It teaches us the meaning of life. Ladies, when you suf- fer, you will know what you ought to know, you will believe what you ought to believe, you will do what you ought to do, you will be what you ought to be. And THE RED LILY 91 you will possess that joy which pleasure banishes. Joy is shy and delights not in feasting." Prince Albertinelli said that neither Miss Bell nor her two French friends needed misfortune to make them per- fect, and that the doctrine of perfection through suffering was barbarously cruel and held in horror beneath the beau- tiful Italian sky. Then, when conversation languished, he returned to the piano and tried to finger out the melody of the graceful conventional Sicilian air, fearing to glide into the somewhat similar one in II Trovatore. Vivian Bell was questioning in whispers the monsters she had created and grumbling at their absurd jesting replies. "At this moment," she said, "I only want to listen to tapestry figures talking of things pale, ancient, and as precious as they." And now the handsome Prince was singing, carried away on the flood of melody. His voice swelled, spread itself out like a peacock's tail, and then died away softly. Kind Madame Marmet, with her eyes on the glass door, said: "I think here is M. Dechartre." He entered with a vivacious animated air. His face, gen- erally grave, was beaming with joy. Miss Bell welcomed him with little bird-like cries. "Monsieur Dechartre, we were growing very impatient. M. Choulette was speaking evil of doors. Yes, doors in houses; and he was saying that misfortune is an obliging old gentleman. You have lost ail these fine things. You have kept us waiting, Monsieur Dechartre; why?" He made his excuses: he had barely had time to go to his hotel and dress quickly. He had not even been to greet his dear good friend the bronze San Marco, so pa- thetic in its niche, on the wall of Or San Michele. He complimented the poetess and greeted Countess Martin with an ill-concealed delight. "Before leaving Paris, I called at your house on the Quai de Billy, where I was told that you had gone to meet the spring at Miss Bell's at Fiesole. Then I hoped I might find you in that country which now I love more than ever." 92 THE RED LILY She asked him if he had been first to Venice and ta Ravenna to see the haloed empresses and the glistening phantoms. No, he had not stayed anywhere. She said nothing. Her glance remained fixed on one corner of the wall on the bell of St. Paulinus. He said: "You are looking at the bell from Nola." Vivian threw down her papers and pencils. "You will soon see a marvel which will appeal to you more than that, M. Dechartre. I have discovered the queen of little bells. I found it at Rimini, in a ruined wine- press, which is now being used as a shop, where I had gone for some old wood saturated with oil, hard, dark, and shiny. I bought the bell and had it packed myself. I shall not live until it arrives. You will see. On its cup is a Christ on the Cross, between the Virgin and St. John, with the date 1400 and the arms of the Malatesta. "Monsieur Dechartre, you are not attending. You must listen. In 1400, Lorenzo Ghiberti, who was fleeing from war and plague, had taken refuge at Rimini with Paolo Malatesta. It must certainly have been he who modelled the figures on my bell. Next week you will see a work by Ghiberti here." Dinner was announced. She asked them to pardon her giving them an Italian dinner. Her cook was a poet of Fiesole. At table, before the fiasconi, encased in maize straw, they talked of that blessed fifteenth century that they loved. Prince Albertinelli praised the universality of the artists of that period, their passionate love of art and their genius. He spoke emphatically, in a caressing voice. Dechartre admired them, but in a different manner. "An appropriate eulogy," he said, "of those men who from Cimabue to Masaccio laboured with such whole- hearted devotion, should be both modest and precise. One must regard them first in the studio, and then in the work- shop, where they lived like artisans. It is by studying them at their work that one comes to appreciate their simplicity and their genius. They were rough and igno- THE RED LILY 93 rant. They had read little and seen little. The hills around Florence enclosed their visual and mental horizon. They knew nothing beyond their own town, the Bible and a few fragments of ancient sculpture, tenderly studied and cherished." "You are quite right," said Professor Arrighi. "All they cared about was to use the best process. Their minds were entirely occupied in preparing glaze and mixing colours. He who first thought of pasting linen over a panel ix order that the painting might not crack with the wood, was heralded as a man of genius. Every master had his own recipes and formulae, which he guarded in strict secrecy." "Happy days," resumed Dechartre, "when no one dreamed of that originality to which to-day we so eagerly aspire. The apprentice was content to follow his master. His sole ambition was to resemble him, and it was quite involuntarily that he appeared different from the others. They worked not to win fame, but to earn a livelihood." "They were right," said Choulette; "there is nothing better than to work for a livelihood." "To desire that their names should be handed down to posterity," continued Dechartre, "never occurred to them. Knowing nothing of the past, they did not think of the future, and their dreams were confined to the present. On doing good they concentrated all the force of a strong will. And, being simple, they did not go far wrong; they beheld truths which our intelligence hides from us." Meanwhile Choulette was beginning to tell Madame Mar- met of a call he had paid that day on the French royal princess, to whom the Marchioness of Rieu had given him a letter of introduction. He took a delight in insinuating that he, a Bohemian, had been received by a royal princess, who would not have seen either Miss Bell or the Countess Martin, and whom Prince Albertinelli boasted of having met at some public reception. "She practises the most austere piety," said the Prince. "Her nobility combined with simplicity is admirable," said Choulette. "Surrounded by the gentlemen and ladies of her suite, she observes the strictest etiquette, and makes 94 THE RED LILY a penance of her high rank. Every morning she washes the church floor. It is a village church, the floor of which is often overrun by fowls, while the priest is playing at cards with the verger." And Choulette, leaning over the table, imitated with his serviette the princess at her work. Then raising his head, he said gravely: "After a fitting time, spent in waiting in a long series of ante-chambers, I was admitted to kiss her hand." And he was silent. Madame Martin eagerly curious, asked: "Well, what did this charmingly simple and noble prin- cess say to you?" "She asked me: 'Have you been to Florence? I hear that some very fine shops have recently been opened there, and that at night they are brilliantly lighted.' She re- marked further: 'We have a very good chemist here. No Austrian chemist could be better. Six weeks ago he put a plaster on my leg which has not come off yet.' Such were the words that Marie Therese deigned to address to me. O simple greatness! O Christian virtue! O daughter of St. Louis! O marvellous echo of thy voice, holy Elizabeth of Hungary!" Madame Martin smiled. She thought ChouleUe must be joking. But he insisted that he was serious. Miss Bell reproached her friend. The French, she said, are always too ready to think people are not in earnest. Then they resumed the discussion of those artistic ideas which in that country are always in the air. "For my part," said Counters Martin, "I am not learned enough to admire Giotto and his school. What strikes me most in the fifteenth century is the sensuality of that so- called Christian art. The onlv piety and purity is to be found in the figures of Fra Angelico, and they too appeal to the senses as well as to the soul. The rest, virgins and angels, are voluptuous, caressing, and even perverse. What religious idea do they express, those royal magi as beauti- ful as women and that St. Sebastian, brilliant in his youth- fulness, like the suffering Bacchus of Christianity?" Dechartre replied that he agreed with her and that they THE RED LILY 95 must both be right, since Savonarola was of their opinion. Failing to discover piety in any work of art, 2*o had con- demned them all to be burnt. "In the days of that superb Manfred, who was half a Mussulman, men. said to be followers of Epicurus, tried to argue against the existence of God. The handsome Guido Cavalcanti despised those ignorant persons who believed in the immortality of the soul. He was represented as hav- ing said that 'The death of a man is like that of a beast.' Later when the beauty of antiquity rose from the tfmb, the Christian sky was overclouded. The painters who worked in churches and monasteries were neither chaste lor de- vout. Perugino was an atheist and did not deny it '' "Yes," retorted Miss Bell, "but he was said to lave a hard heart into which celestial truth could not per.etrate. He was bitter and avaricious, wrapped up in materi; 1 con- cerns. He thought of nothing but buying houses." Professor Arrighi defended Pietro Vannucci of Perugia. "He was an honest man," he said. "And the prnr of the Gesuati at Florence was wrong in mistrusting him. This monk practised the art of -making ultra-marine bUy. by pounding lapis-lazuli to a powder. The ultra-marine was worth its weight in gold, and the prior, who knew a secret way of preparing it, considered his more precious ' ban rubies and sapphires. He asked Pietro to decorate the two cloisters of his monastery, and he expected wonoVrs, less from the skill of the master than from the beai ty of the sky-blue ultra-marine. While the artist was paint- ing the story of Jesus Christ on the cloister walls, the prior stayed by his side, holding the precious powder in a little bag, of which he never let go. Under the old man's eye, Pietro took from it and dipped his brush covered with paint into a cup of water, before using it on the plaster of the wall. In this manner he used a great quantity of powder. And the good Father, seeing the contents of his bag rapidly growing less and less, groaned: 'Jesus, what a lot of ultra- marine it takes to cover this white-wash!' "When the frescoes were finished, and Perugino had re- ceived from the prior the price agreed upon, he put into his hand a packet of blue powder. 'This is yours. Father ' 96 THE RED LILY he said; 'your ultra-marine, which I took on my brush, descended to the bottom of my cup, from which I abstracted it every day. I give it back to you. Now learn to trust good men.' " "Oh!" said Therese, "there is nothing extraordinary in Perugino's having been both avaricious and honest. It is not always self-seeking persons who are the most unscrupu- lous. There are many who are honest and avaricious." "Of course, darling!" said Miss Bell. "The avaricious will owe no man anything, while the prodigal is quite con- tent to have debts. He thinks little of the money he pos- sesses, and still less of what he owes. I never said that Pietro Vannucci of Perugia was a dishonest man. I said that he had a hard heart, and that he bought many houses. I am very glad to hear that he gave back the ultra-marine to the prior of the Gesuati." "As your Pietro was rich," said Choulette, "it was his duty to restore the ultra-marine. It is incumbent upon the rich to be honest, but not upon the poor." At this moment the butler was offering Choulette a silver basin ; and the poet held out his hands to receive the scented water poured from the ewer. It was a jug of chased silver and a basin with a false bottom, which, according to an ancient custom, Miss Bell had passed round to her guests at the end of a meal. "I wash my hands," he said, "of the harm that Madame Martin does or may do by her words or in any other manner." And he rose, furious, and followed Miss Bell who left the table on the arm of Professor Arrighi. In the drawing-room, while coffee was being served, she said: "Monsieur Choulette, why must you be ever condemn- ing us to the barbaric sadness of equality? The flute of Daphnis would not produce such sweet music if it were made of seven reeds of equal length. You would destroy those fine harmonies of master and servant, aristocrat and artisan. Oh! Monsieur Choulette, you are a barbarian. You have pity upon the poor, but you have no pity for the divine beauty you are driving from the world. You THE RED LILY 97 are driving her away, Monsieur Choulette; she is naked and in tears, you turn from her. Be assured, she will cease to dwell upon the earth when mankind becomes weak, puny, and ignorant. To banish from society the grouping of men of various ranks, from the humble to the great, is to be the enemy of rich and poor alike; it is to be the enemy of the whole human race." "The enemies of humanity!" replied Choulette, dropping a knob of sugar into his coffee, "by that name did the hard-hearted Roman call the Christians who preached to him of love." Meanwhile Dechartre, sitting by Madame Martin, was questioning her concerning her artistic tastes, supporting, directing, animating her admiration, stimulating it some- times with an affectionate abruptness, desiring that she should see all that he had seen, and love all that he had loved. He wanted her to go into the garden in the delicate dawn of spring. In his mind's eye he saw her on the grand terraces; already he beheld the sunlight, playing on her neck and in her hair, and the bay-trees casting a shadow over her eyes. It seemed to him now that the earth and sky of Florence existed only as a background for this woman. He congratulated her on the simplicity of her dress, on the lines of her figure and her grace, on the charming ease of her every movement. He liked, he said, those supple, graceful, flowing gowns that one sees so seldom and never forgets. She had received many compliments, but never any that had given her greater pleasure. She knew that she dressed well, with a pronounced but unerring taste. But no man, except her father, had ever given her the praise of a con- noisseur. She had believed men capable of appreciating the general effect of dress without understanding its mi- nute details. Some, who were said to understand chiffons, disgusted her by an effeminate air and doubtful taste. She resigned herself to seeing her dress appreciated only by women, whose judgment was warped by petty malice and envy. The masculine artistic admiration of Dechartre sur- 98 THE RED LILY prised and pleased her. She received his praise with delight, and never thought of considering it too familiar and almost indiscreet. "Then you take an interest in dress, Monsieur Dechartre?" No, he seldom looked at it. There are so few well- dressed women, even now when they dress as well and perhaps better than ever before. It gave him no pleasure to look at walking bundles. But to a woman whose figure presented good lines and who walked rhythmically he felt grateful. He continued in a slightly higher voice: "I can never think of a woman carefully adorning her- self every day, without being reminded of the lesson she teaches us artists. It is for so short a time that she dresses and arranges her hair; but her labour is not wasted. Like her, we ought to adorn life without thinking of the future. To paint, to carve, to write for posterity is mere empty pride." "Monsieur Dechartre," asked Prince Albertinelli, "how do you think a mauve gown with silver flowers would be- come Miss Bell?" "As for me," said Choulette, "I am so little concerned with any earthly future that I have written my finest poems on cigarette papers. They perish easily and my verses retain only a kind of metaphysical existence." He piqued himself on this air of indifference towards his own co ipositions. In reality he had never lest a single line of his writings. Dechartre was more sincere. He did not desire posthumous fame. Miss Bell blamed him for it. "Life to be full and great must contain the past and the future, Monsieur Dechartre. We must produce our poetry and our works of art in memory of those who are dead and looking forward to those who will follow us. Thus we partake of what was, what is, and what will be. You do not wish to be immortal. Monsieur Dechartre. Be- "ire lest God grant your desire." He replied: "It is enough for me to live for the moment." THE RED LILY 99 And he took his leave, promising to return on the mor- row to take Madame Martin to the Brancacci Chapel. An hour later Therese was lying in a room, furnished in aesthetic style, hung with tapestry, on which lemon-trees, bearing golden fruit of immense size, formed a kind of fairy forest. Her head was on the pillow and over it she had thrown her beautiful bare arm. She was dreaming in the lamplight. Passing confusedly before her she beheld visions of her new life: Vivian Bell and her bells; those religious pictures, in which slight shadowy Pre-Raphaelite figures, ladies and cavaliers, appeared isolated, indifferent, and rather sad, but all the more human through their charming languor; the evening at the Fiesole villa, Prince Albertinelli, Professor Arrighi, Choulette, the brisk con- versation, the curious play of ideas, and Dechartre with young eyes but rather worn countenance, to which his swarthy skin and pointed beard gave an almost East- ern air. She realised that he possessed a delightful imagination, a mind richer than any she had known, and a charm she could no longer resist. She had known from the first that he was endowed with the gift of pleasing. She now knew that he wished to please. This idea filled her with delight; she shut her eyes as if to retain it. Then suddenly she shuddered. In the depths of her inner consciousness she felt a dull blow and a smarting pain. She had a sudden vision of her lover in the wood, his gun under his arm. He was walking with his firm regular step down a long path. She could not see his face and it troubled her. She no longer bore him any ill-will. She was not vexed with him now. At present she was vexed with herself. And Robert went straight on never turning his head, on and on, till he be- came a black spot in the desolate wood. She felt that she had been abrupt, hard, and capricious to leave him with- out saying good-bye, even without writing a letter. He was her lover, her one lover. She had never had another. "I should not like him to be unhappy through me," she thought. Gradually she was reassured. It was true that he loved ioo THE RED LILY her; but he was not very sensitive, and fortunately not very quick to grow anxious and uneasy. "He is hunting. He is happy. He is with his Aunt de Lannoix, whom he admires. . . ." She forgot her anxiety and gave herself up to the enchanting deep-seated gaiety of Florence. At the Uffizi there was a picture she had not cared for and which Dechartre admired. It was the detached head of Medusa, a work into which, the sculptor said, Leonardo had put all his wonderful power of detail and delicate sense of the deepest tragedy. Disappointed with herself for not having thoroughly appreciated it at first, she wanted to see it again. She put out her lamp and fell asleep. Towards morning she dreamt she met Robert Le Menil in an empty church, that he was wrapped in a fur coat which was unfamiliar to her. He was waiting for her, but they were separated by a crowd of priests and worshippers, who had suddenly appeared. She did not know what became of him. She had not been able to see his face and that alarmed her. Awake, she heard at her open window a little sad monotonous cry, and, in the milky dawn, she saw a swallow flit by. Then, without cause and with- out reason, she wept. With the sorrow of a child she shed tears over herself. XI SHE rose early and took delight in dressing carefully with an art delicately disguised. Her dressing-room was one of Vivian Bell's aesthetic fancies. With its roughly glazed pottery, it copper pitchers and tiled floor, it resem- bled a kitchen, but a fairy's kitchen. It was so mediaeval and so uncommon that Countess Martin had no difficulty in imagining herself a fairy princess. While her maid was doing her hair she heard Dechartre and Choulette talk- ing underneath her window. She undid Pauline's work and boldly displayed the fine line of the nape of her neck. Then, having taken a last look at herself in the mirror, she went down into the garden. In the garden, shaded by yew trees like some peaceful cemetery, Dechartre was looking down on Florence and repeating lines from Dante: "And when our soul, more alien from the sphere." * Near him Choulette, sitting on the balustrade, his legs hanging and his nose in his beard, was carving the face of Poverty on his wanderer's staff. And Dechartre repeated the lines of the poem: "And when our soul, more alien from the sphere Of flesh, and less to rush of hot thoughts given, As half-divine looks forth in visions clear"; In her maize-coloured gown, shaded by her parasol, she came along the trim box hedge. The soft winter sun clothed her in a pale golden light. Dechartre joyfully bade her good morning. She said: "You are reciting lines I do not know. Metastasio is the only Italian poet with whose works I am familiar. The professor who taught me Italian adored Metastasio and * "Purgatory," canto ix. 16. Plumptre's Translation. W.S. 102 THE RED LILY did not care for any one else. When does the mind become divine in its visions?" "At the break of day, or it may be also in the dawn of faith or of love." Choulette did not think the poet meant morning dreams. They leave so vivid and sometimes so painful an impres- sion on awaking, and they are not dissociated from the body. But Dechartre had only quoted those lines in his rapture at the golden dawn which he had seen that morn- ing on the fair hills. He had long wondered about the visions that come to us in the night, and he had arrived at the conclusion that they proceed not from what has most occupied our minds during the day, but from thoughts from which we have turned away. Then Therese recalled her dream that morning of the hunter on the long path leading into the deep wood. "Yes," said Dechartre, "at night we see the sad vestiges of what we have neglected during the day. A dream is often the revenge of things neglected or of persons deserted ; hence its unexpectedness and sometimes its sadness." For a moment she remained silent and thoughtful, and then she said: "Perhaps it is true." Then, turning eagerly to Choulette, she asked him i'f he had finished carving the figure of Poverty on the handle of his walking-stick. But Poverty had become a Pieta, and Choulette was pleased to call her the Virgin. He had even composed a quatrain to be written on a scroll beneath; the quatrain was both didactic and moral. His style was henceforth to be that of the Ten Commandments translated into French verse. The four lines were good and simple. He consented to repeat them: Prone 'neath His Cross, will ye Not weep, love, hope with me? Beneath that Tree of Grace Refuge of all our rac^? * * "Je pleure au pied de la Croix. Avec moi pleure, aime et crois, Sous cet arbre salutaire Qui doit ombrager la terre." THE RED LILY 103 As on the day of her arrival, Therese leant against the balustrade and looked far into the distance, beyond the ocean of light, to where rose the summits of Vallombrosa, almost as liquid as the clouds. Dechartre was watching her. It seemed to him as if he saw her for the first time, such new charm did he dis- cover on her delicate face, which life and thought had lined, but had not robbed of their youthful grace and freshness. The light that she loved enhanced her beauty. And she was beautiful indeed, bathed in that soft Florentine light which glorifies beautiful forms and fosters noble thoughts. There was a slight colour on her finely moulded cheeks. There was a laugh in her grey-blue eyes; and when she spoke she displayed the brilliant whiteness of her teeth. In a glance he appreciated all the graceful details of her supple figure. With one hand she held her parasol, with the other ungloved she was toying with some violets. Dechartre had a passion for beautiful hands. For him a hand had a character, a soul, a physiognomy as pronounced as a countenance. Therese's hands delighted him. They were at once sensual and spiritual. It seemed to him that they were bare from sheer voluptuousness. He adored their tapering fingers, their pink nails, their slender skin, marked with graceful lines, and rising gently and harmoniously to- wards the knuckles. He gazed entranced until she closed them on the handle of her parasol. Then, slightly behind her, he looked again. Her bust, her arms, graceful and correct in line, her well-developed hips, her fine ankles, her whole figure, in the beautiful form of a living amphora, pleased him. "That black spot down there is the Boboli gardens, isn't it, Monsieur Dechartre? I saw them three years ago. There were hardly any flowers then; and yet I loved them with their great dark trees." That she should speak, that she should think, almost astonished him. The clear tones of that voice came upon him as if he had never heard them before. He answered in the first words that occurred to him, and smiled a forced smile, attempting to hide the stirrings of passion. He was awkward and confused. She did not 104 THE RED LILY seem to notice it. That deep husky, faltering voice uncon- sciously caressed her. She, like him, uttered common- places: "What a fine viewl What a lovely day." XII IN the morning, with her head upon a pillow embroidered with a coat of arms in the form of a bell, Therese was meditating on what she had seen on the previous day: those finely painted Virgins surrounded by angels, those countless children, painted or in sculpture, all beautiful, all happy, singing simply through the town their alleluias of grace and beauty. In the famous Brancacci Chapel, before those frescoes pale and gleaming like a divine dawn, he had talked of Masaccio, in such glowing words that she seemed to see the youth, master of masters, with half open mouth and dark blue eyes, dying in an ecstasy. And she was filled with adoration for the marvels of that dawn more delightful even than the noon-day. And for her Dechartre was the soul of all these magnificent forms, the vivifying spirit of all these good things. Through him and in him she understood life and art. The sights of the world inter- ested her only so far as they interested him. How had this sympathy grown up between them? She did not exactly know. At first, when Paul Vence wished to introduce him to her, she had no wish to know him, no presentiment that she would like him. She recalled the beautiful bronzes and fine wax figures signed with his name that she had noticed in the Salon of the Champ-de-Mars and at Durand-Ruel's. But she never imagined that he himself would be interesting or more attractive than so many artists and amateurs whom she invited to her lunch- eon parties. On their first meeting he pleased her; and she made up her mind to attract him and see him often. The evening that he dined at her house she perceived that her liking for him was of an intellectual kind which flat- tered her own amour propre. But soon afterwards he irri- tated and vexed her by appearing too self-centred, too much occupied with himself and too little with her. She would have liked to agitate him. In this dissatisfied mood, and troubled by other things, feeling herself alone in the world, 106 THE RED LILY she had met him one evening, in front of the Museum of Religions, and b" had talked of Ravenna and the empress in her tomb, on her golden chair. In the shades of night she had thought him charming, with his soft voice, and his pleasing glance, but too reserved and distant. He made her feel ill at eave, and, at that moment, walking along the terrace, by the box hedge, she could not decide whether she wanted *,o see him always or never again. Since she had met him at Florence her one delight was to feel hire near her and hear him talk. He made her life attractive by introducing into it variety, novelty, and colour. He initiated her into the delicate delicious melan- choly of thought. He called into activity a taste for pleas- ures hitherto undreamed of. Now she was quite decided to retain him. But how? She foresaw difficulties; her lucid rrind and her intense feeling called them all up before her. For a moment she tried to deceive herself: she argued that a dreamer, an enthusiast, wrapped up in the study of art, he had perhaps no violent passion for women, and would remain assiduous without becoming exacting. But immediately, shaking her beautiful head half lost in the ripples of her dark hair, she cast this idea from her. If Dochartre were not a lover then he lost all his charm f<T her. She dared not think of the future. She must *>ve in the present; happy, but anxious and blindfold. She was meditating thus in the shadow broken by arrows of light, when Pauline brought her letters with her morn- ing tea. She recognised Le Menil's writing on an envelope, stamped with the name of his club in the Rue Royale. She had expected to receive this letter, and now, as in her childhood when the infallible clock struck the hour of her music-lesson, she was merely surprised that what was bound to come had actually happened. Robert's letter was full of just reproaches. Why had she gone away without telling him, without even leaving a line of farewell? Since his return to Paris, every morn- ing he had expected the letter which had not arrived. How different from last year, when, two or three times a week, on awaking, he used to find such nice letters, so well ex- pressed that he had regretted not being able to publish THE RED LIL^V 107 them. He had become very anxious n-iJ had called at her house. "I was thunderstruck to hear of your departure. Your husband received me. He told me, that, following his ad j vice, you had gone to pass the last weeks of winter at Miss Bell's, at Florence. For some time he had noticed you growing pale and thin. He had thought that a change of air would do you good. You had not wanted to go; but, as you became less and less well, he had succeeded in persuading you. "I had not noticed that you were growing thin. On the contrary I thought you looking extremely well. Besides Florence is not a winter resort. I can't understand your departure; it troubles me very much. Write at once, I pray you, and reassure me. . . . "I leave you to imagine how pleasant it is for me to hear of your movements from your husband and to receive his confidences! He is distressed by your absence and regrets that his public duties keep him in Paris. At the club I hear there is a chance of his entering the Govern- ment. I am astonished, for it is not usual for a leader of society to become a Minister." Then he told her of his hunting. He had brought her three fox's skins, one very fine: the coat of a brave beast, he had dragged from his den, that had turned and bitten him in the hand. "After all," he said, "the creature was standing on his rights." At Paris he was worried. A young cousin was standing for election to the club. He was afraid that he would be blackballed. But his candidature was already announced. And at this point he dared not advise him to withdraw; it would be assuming too great a responsibility. On the other hand, a defeat would be extremely disagreeable. He ended his letter by entreating her to write and to return soon. Having read the letter, she tore it up slowly, threw it in the fire, and sadly, gloomily, and thoughtfully watched it burn. Doubtless he was right. He said what he might be ex- pected to say; he complained as he had a right to com- plain. How should she reply to him? Should she prolong io8 THE RED LILY the quarrel and continue to sulk? But it was no longer a question of sulking. The subject of their quarrel was so indifferent to her that she must needs think before she could remember it. Oh, no, she had lost all desire to vex him. On the contrary she felt kindly towards him. The realisation that he loved her trustfully and with an un- disturbed tranquillity of mind saddened and alarmed her. He had not changed. He was the same as before. But she was no longer the same. They were separated now by things imperceptible and yet as strong as the vivifying or deadening effects of the atmosphere. When her maid came to dress her she had not yet begun to write the reply. She was thinking anxiously: "He trusts me. His mind is at rest." That was what irritated her most. Simple per- sons mistrustful neither of themselves nor of other people always irritated her. When she went down into the drawing-room of bells, she found Vivian Bell there writing; she said to her: "Darling, would you like to know what I was doing while I was waiting for you? Nothing and yet everything. I was writing verses. Oh! darling, poetry must be the natural flowering of the soul." Therese kissed Miss Bell, and, with her head on her friend's shoulder, she said: "May I look?" "Oh! yes, look, darling. They are verses written in the ttyle of the popular songs of your country." And Therese read: The milk-white stone she threw Pierced the lake-waters blue, And as its surface grew Still, took a darker hue. Tihen she, the stone that threw, Both shame and dolour knew The load from her heart to view The treacherous waters through.* * EHe jeta la pierre blanche A 1'eau du lac bleu. La pierre dans 1'onde tranquille Sombra peu a peu. THE RED LILY 109 "The lines are figurative, Vivian; explain them to me." "Why should I explain, why? A poetical figure may have many meanings. The one that you put into it will be the true meaning for you. But one is very clear, my love: that you must not lightly part with your heart's treasure." The carriage was ready. They started as they had ap- pointed to visit the Albertinelli Gallery, in the Via del Moro. The Prince expected them and Dechartre was to meet them at the Palace. On the way, as the carriage glided over the broad highroad, Vivian Bell talked in short, disjointed sentences uttered in a sing-song voice. Thus she gave expression to the gaiety of a temperament rare and precious. As they went down among the pink and white houses, with storied gardens, adorned with statues and fountains, she pointed out to her friend, the villa half hid- den among the pine-trees, to which the ladies and gentle- men of the Decameron fled from the plague, which was ravaging Florence, and amused themselves by telling stories, gallant, facetious, or tragic. Then she disclosed a brilliant idea which had occurred to her the day before. "You, darling, had gone to the Carmine with M. Dechar tre. You had left Madame Marmet at Fiesole. She is a nice old lady of moderate opinions and excellent manners. She is full of stories of distinguished Parisians. And when she tells them she is like my cook, Pampaloni, when he sends up poached eggs: he does not salt them, but he puts the salt-cellar by the side of the dish. Madame Marmet is a sweet-tongued old lady. But the salt is there in her eyes. It is Pampaloni's dish, my love; and every one sea- sons it to his taste. Oh! I am very fond of Madame Mar- met. Yesterday, after you had gone, I found her sad and lonely in a corner of the drawing-room. She was thinking of her husband, and her thoughts were sad. I said to her: 'Would you like me to join you in your meditations on your Alors la jeteuse de pierres Eut honte et douleur D'avoir mis dans le lac perfide Le poids de son cceur. i io THE RED LILY husband? 1 shall be very pleased to do so. I have heard that he was a scholar and a member of the Paris Royal So- ciety. Tell m * about him.' She replied that he was devoted to the Etrust ans and had consecrated his whole life to them. And, ,it once, darling, I venerated the memory of this Monsieui Marmet who lived for the Etruscans. And then a brilliant idea occurred to me. I said to Madame Marmet: 'At Fiesole, in the Palazzo Pretorio, we have a modest little Etruscan museum. Come with me and see it. Will you?' She replied that that was what she wanted to see more tlun anything in Italy. We went together to the Pretorio Palace; and we saw a lioness with her numer- ous young and little grotesque bronze men, either very fat or very thin. The Etruscans were a people who took their pleasures saaly. They used to make caricatures in brass. But these grotesque figures, some with protruding stomachs, others with an astonished air, displaying bare bones, Ma- dame Marmet regarded with sorrowful admiration. She considered them as ... there is an expressive French word I am trying to find ... as the monuments and trophies of M. Marmet." Madame Martin smiled. But she was depressed. The sky appeared to her dull, the streets ugly, die passers-by vulgar. "Oh! darling, the Prince will be delighted to welcome you to his palace." "I don't think so." "But why, darling, why?" "Because he does not like me." Vivian Bell declared that on the contrary the Prince greatly admired Countess Martin. The carriage stopped before the Albertinelli Palace. On the dark Gothic fagade were bronze rings which in former days, on festive nights were used to hold pine torches. At Florence these rings indicate the residences of the most illustrious families. They imparted to the palace an ag- gressively arrogant air. Inside it appeared empty, unused, and neglected. The Prince met them and conducted them, through unfurnished reception rooms, to the gallery. He apologised for showing them pictures which were not very THE RED LILY in pleasing. The collection had been made by Cardinal Giulio Albertinelli at the time of the vogue of Guido and Carracci. His ancestor had delighted in collecting the works of the Bolognese school. But he would show Madame Martin a few pictures which had found favour with Miss Bell; among others a Mantegna. At a glance Countess Martin saw that the pictures were commonplace and of doubtful authenticity. She was bored at once by the numerous examples of Parrocel, all with figures in armour mounted on white horses amid darkness made visible by gleams of lurid light. A footman brought in a card. The Prince read aloud the name of Jacques Dechartre. Just at that moment he had his back towards his two visitors. His countenance as- sumed that expression of malicious vexation which is to be seen on the statues of Roman emperors. Dechartre was on the landing of the state stair-case. The Prince advanced to meet him with a languishing smile. He was no longer Nero, but Antinous. "Yesterday I myself invited M. Dechartre to come to the Albertinelli Palace," said Miss Bell to the Prince. "I knew I should give you pleasure. He wanted to see your pictures." And it was true that Dechartre had wished to come in order to meet Madame Martin. Now all four, they were wandering past the Guidos and Albanis. Miss Bell was chirping to the Prince pretty things about the old men and virgins whose mantles were being blown by a motionless tempest. Dechartre, pale and nervous, came near to Therese and whispered: "This gallery is the rubbish-heap on which the picture- dealers of the whole world have deposited the refuse of their stock. And here the Prince succeeds in selling what the Jews have failed to dispose of." He took her to a Holy Family, displayed on an easel draped in green velvet and bearing in the margin the name of Michael Angelo. "I have seen that Holy Family in picture shops at Lon- don, Bale, and Paris. As the dealers have not been able to get for it the twenty-five louis it is worth, they have H2 THE RED LILY commissioned the last of the Albertinelli to sell it for fifty thousand francs." The Prince, seeing them whispering together, and guess- ing what they were saying, approached very graciously. "A replica of this pitcture has been offered for sale every- where. I don't maintain that this is an original. But it has always been in my family, and old inventories attribute it to Michael Angelo. That's all I can say." The Prince turned to Miss Bell, who was looking for Primitives. Dechartre was ill at ease. Since yesterday he had been thinking of Therese. He had dreamed of her all night and conjured up her image. Now he found her delightful, but delightful in a different way, and even more desirable than she had appeared to him in the visions of the night; her materialised form more irresistibly attractive, her soul more mysterious and inscrutable. She was sad; she ap- peared to him cold and absent-minded. He told himself that he was nothing to her, that he was becoming im- portunate and ridiculous. He grew gloomy and irritable. He murmured bitterly in her ear: "I had thought better of it. I didn't want to come. Then why am I here?" She understood immediately what he meant, that he feared her now, and so was impatient, shy, and awkward. She liked him thus, and was grateful to him for the agi- tation and desire, with which she saw she inspired him. Her heart beat quickly. But, pretending to understand that he was vexed at having taken the trouble to come and see bad pictures, she replied that the gallery was in- deed very uninteresting. Already terrified at the idea of displeasing her, he was reassured and really believed that, absent and indifferent, she had not remarked either the tone or the significance of the words that had escaped from him. "Very uninteresting," he repeated. The Prince, who was entertaining his two visitors to lunch, invited their friend also. Dechartre excused him- self. He was going out, when, in the great drawing-room empty of everything but consoles on which were piled con- THE RED LILY 113 fectioners' boxes, he found himself alone with Madame Martin. He had thought of avoiding her, now his one idea was when he should see her again. He reminded her that on the morrow she was to visit the Bargello. "You were kind enough to say I might come with you." She asked him if he had not found her dull and heavy that day. Oh! no, but he had thought her rather sad. "Alas!" he added, "your sadness, your joys, I have not even the right to know them." She turned round upon him quickly, almost severely, saying: "You surely don't think I am going to make you my confidant?" And she left him abruptly. XIII AFTER dinner, in the drawing-room of bells, under the lamps, the deep shades of which permitted but a half light to reach the long-handed Virgins of Sienna, kind Ma- dame Marmet was warming herself at the stove with a white cat on her knee. The evening was cold. Madame Martin was smiling happily, in spite of fatigue, and gaz- ing mentally at the purple hill-tops in the clear atmosphere and at the ancient oaks twisting their huge branches across the road. With Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet she had been to the Certosa of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of the day's memories, she forgot the cares of two days ago importunate letters, reproaches from a dis- tance; and it seemed to her as if there were nothing in the world but carved and painted cloisters, with a well in the grass-grown court, red roofed villages, and roads, where, soothed by flattering words, she had watched the dawn of spring. Dechartre had just roughly modelled a little Beatrice in wax for Miss Bell. Vivian was painting angels. Lazily leaning over her, in an effeminate pose, Prince Alber- tinelli was stroking his beard and casting languishing glances around him. Replying to a remark of Vivian Bell's on marriage and love: "A woman must choose," he said. "With a man whom women like she is never at rest. With a man whom women do not like, she is never happy." "Darling," asked Miss Bell, "which lot would you choose for a very dear friend?" "Vivian, I should wish my friend to be happy, I should wish her also to be free from anxiety. And she would wish to be so and yet to hate treachery, humiliating suspicion, and mean mistrust." "But, darling, since the Prince said that a woman could not at once enjoy happiness and peace of mind, say which you would choose for your friend." "4 TH RED LILY 115 "One does not choose, Vivian, one does not choose. Don't make me say what I think of marriage." At this moment Choulette appeared, with the magnifi- cent air of one of those beggars who honour the gates of little towns. He had just been playing cards with peasants in a Fiesole wine-shop. "Here is M. Choulette," said Miss Bell. "He will tell us what to think of marriage. I am ready to listen to him as to an oracle. He does not see what we see, and he sees what we do not see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you think of marriage?" He sat down and raised a Socratic finger. "Do you speak, Mademoiselle, of the solemn union be- tween man and woman? In this sense marriage is a sac- rament. Hence it is nearly always sacrilege. As for civil marriage, that is a mere formality. The importance at- tached to it by present day society is a folly which would have appeared laughable to women of the old regime. We owe this prejudice with many others to that bourgeois movement, to the rise of financiers and lawyers, which is termed the Revolution and which seems admirable to those who profit by it. It is the fruitful mother of all foolish- ness. Every day for a century she has been bringing forth new absurdities. Civil marriage is nothing but one of many registrations, instituted by the state in order that it may be informed concerning the condition of its citizens: for in a civilised state every one must have his label. And of what value are all these labels in the eyes of the Son of God? Morally, this entry in a register is not even enough to induce a woman to take a lover. Who would scruple to break an oath sworn before a mayor? In order to taste the true joys of adultery one must be pious." "But, sir," said Therese, "we have been married at church." Then in a tone of deep sincerity, she added: "I cannot understand how any man or woman, having attained to years of discretion, can commit the folly of marriage." The Prince looked at her suspiciously. He was quick witted, but he was incapable of believing that any one ii6 THE RED LILY ever spoke disinterestedly, merely to express general ideas and without some definite object. He imagined that Countess Martin had discovered his scheme and determined to thwart it. And, as already he was thinking of defending himself and taking his revenge, he ogled her and addressed her with affectionate gallantry. "You, Madame, display the pride of all beautiful and intelligent Frenchwomen, who chafe beneath the yoke. Frenchwomen love liberty, and not one of them is worthier of it than you. I myself have lived a little in France. I have known and admired the fashionable society of Paris in drawing-rooms, at dinner tables, in public assemblies, and sports. But among our mountains, beneath our olive- trees, we relapse into rusticity. We return to our country manners, and marriage seems to us a sweet romantic idyll." Vivian Bell examined the model which Dechartre had left on the table. "Oh! that is the living image of Beatrice, I am sure. And do you know, Monsieur Dechartre, there are wicked men who say that Beatrice never existed?" Choulette declared that he was one of those wicked men. He did not believe that Beatrice existed any more than those other ladies in whose personalities the old love poets expressed some ridiculously subtle scholastic idea. Intolerant of any praise not bestowed on himself, jealous of Dante, and of the whole universe, and also a keen man of letters, he thought he had discovered a joint in the amour, and struck: "I suspect," he said, "that the young sister of the angels never lived except in the dry imagination of the illustrious poet. Even there she appears as a pure allegory, or rather a mathematical calculation or an astrological exercise. Dante, who between ourselves was a good doctor of Bo- logna, and had several bees in his poked bonnet, believed in the virtue of numbers. This passionate geometrician dreamt in figures, and his Beatrice is the flower of his arith- metic. That's all!" And he lit his pipe. Vivian Bell protested: 'Oh! don't talk like that, Monsieur Choulette. You hurt THE RED LILY 117 me. If our friend M. Gebhart heard you, he would be very angry. To punish you, Prince Albertinelli shall read you the canto in which Beatrice explains the spots in the moon. Take the Divina Commedia, Eusebio. It is that white book on the table. Open it and read." During the reading under the lamp, Dechartre, sitting on the sofa near Countess Martin, spoke enthusiastically of. Dante in whispers, calling him the greatest sculptor among poets. He reminded Therese of the picture they had seen together two days ago, at Santa Maria, on the Senates' door, a half-effaced fresco, in which it was diffi- cult to distinguish the poet with his laurel-wreathed hood, Florence, and the seven circles. Enough of .it remained however to enrapture the artist. But she had not been able to distinguish anything; it had not appealed to her. And then she confessed that Dante was too gloomy and attracted her but little. Dechartre, who had grown accus- tomed to her sharing all his poetical and artistic ideas, felt surprised and vexed. He said aloud: "There are things both great and strong that you do not realise." Miss Bell, raising her head, asked what were those things that darling did not realise; and, when she heard that one was the genius of Dante, she exclaimed with simulated wrath: "Ohl don't you honour the father, the master worthy of all praise, the River God? I don't like you any more, darling. I detest you." And, as a reproach to Choulette and Countess Martin, she recalled the piety of that Florentine citizen who took from the altar the candles lit in honour of Jesus Christ and placed them before Dante's bust After this interruption the Prince had resumed his reading: "Within 'itself the ever-during pearl Received us ;" * Dechartre insisted on wishing to make Therese admire what she did not understand. For her sake certainly he * "Paradise," Canto ii. Gary's Translation. W.S. ii8 THE RED LILY would have sacrificed Dante and all the poets, with the rest of the universe. But by her side, in the ardour of his desire, beholding her tranquil, he was irritated by her smiling beauty. He felt bound to impose on her his ideas, his artistic passions, even his fancies and caprices. In a low voice and in quick argumentative words he remonstrated with her. "How vehement you are," she said. Then he whispered in her ear, in a passionate voice which ne vainly sought to moderate: "You must take my soul with me. It would give me no joy to win you with a soul that was not my own." At these words there passed over Therese a little shudder af fear and joy. XIV next day, on awaking, she told herself that she JL must answer Robert's letter. It was raining. Lan- guidly she listened to the raindrops falling on the terrace. With thoughtful and delicate taste, Vivian Bell had had the table furnished with artistic writing materials: sheets of paper in imitation of the parchment of missals, and others pale violet glistening with silver; celluloid penholders, white and light, requiring to be used like brushes; and purple ink, turning on the page into an azure shot with gold. Such precious and unusual equipments irritated Therese, who considered them out of keeping with the sim- ple direct letter she wanted to write. When she perceived that the name of "friend," by which she addressed Robert in the first line, cut a curious figure on the silvered paper, outlined in shades of dove colour and mother-of-pearl, she half smiled. She found the first sentences difficult. The rest she hurried over. She wrote at length of Vivian Bell and Prince Albertinelli, a little of Choulette, and said that she had met Dechartre, who was passing through Florence. She praised a few pictures in the museums, but without enthusiasm and merely to fill the pages. She knew that Robert did not understand pictures, that the only one he admired was a little cuirassier by Detaille, bought at Goupil's. In her mind's eye she saw once more that little cuirassier, which he had proudly shown her one day, in his bedroom near the mirror, underneath his family por- traits. Looked at from a distance it all seemed mean, weari- some, and sad. She ended her letter with a few kind friendly words which were sincere. She had really never before felt so calmly benignant towards her lover. In four pages she had said little and implied less. She had merely told him that she would stay another month at Flor- ence, where the air was doing her good. Afterwards she wrote to her father, her husband, and Princess Seniavine, With her letters in her hand she went downstairs. In the 120 THE RED LILY hall she placed three of them on the silver salver intended for letters. Mistrusting Madame Marmet's curious eyes she put Le Menil's letter in her pocket, intending to post it herself when out walking. Almost immediately Dechartre arrived to go with the three friends into the town. While he was waiting for a moment in the hall he noticed the letters in the salver. Without believing in the slightest in the reading of char- acter by means of handwriting, he became aware of the form of the letters, which assumed a certain grace as if they were a kind of drawing. Because it was a memorial, a sort of relic of Therese, her writing charmed him, and he appreciated also its striking frankness and bold sim- plicity with an admiration entirely sensual. He looked at the addresses without reading them. That morning they visited Santa Maria Novella, where Countess Martin had been already with Madame Marmet. But Miss Bell had reproached them with not having seen the beautiful Ginevra de' Benci, in a fresco in the choir. "You must see that figure of the dawn in the fine morning light," said Vivian. While the poetess and Therese were talking together, Dechartre, attached to Madame Marmet, was listening patiently to anecdotes of academicians dining with fashionable ladies, and was sympathising with the good lady in her vain endeavours to procure a tulle veil. She could not find any to her liking in the Florence shops, and she longed for the Rue du Bac. Coming out of the church they passed the booth of the cobbler whom Choulette had adopted as his master. The good man was patching a countryman's boots. The pot of basil was at his side, and the sparrow with the wooden leg chirped close by. Madame Martin asked the old man if he were quite well, if he had enough work to do, and if he were happy. To all these questions he replied the charming Italian "Yes," the 5* coming musically from his toothless mouth. She made him tell them his sparrow's story. One day the poor little creature had put his foot into the boiling wax. "I made my little friend a wooden leg out of a match, and now he is able to perch on my shoulder as of old." THE RED LILY 121 "He is a kind old man," said Miss Bell, "who teaches M. Choulette wisdom. At Athens there was a cobbler, named Simon, who wrote works on philosophy and was the friend of Socrates. I have always thought M. Chou- lette resembled Socrates." Therese asked the shoemaker to tell them his name and his story. His name was Serafino Stoppini and he came from Stia. He was old. His life had been full of trouble. He put back his spectacles on to his forehead, revealing his blue kindly eyes, growing dim beneath their reddened lids: "I had a wife and children, now I am alone. I have known things, which now I have forgotten." Miss Bell and Madame Marmet had gone to buy the veil. "His tools, a handful of nails, the tub in which he soaks his leather, and a pot of basil are all he has hi the world," thought Therese, "and yet he is happy." "This plant smells sweet, and soon it will flower," she said. "If the poor little thing flowers, it will die," he replied. When she went away, Therese left a coin on the table. Dechartre was near her. Seriously, almost sternly, he said to her: "You knew it?" She looked at him and waited. He concluded: ". . . that I love you." For a moment she continued to look at him silently with bright eyes and quivering lids. Then she bowed her head as a sign of affirmation. And, without his at- tempting to detain her, she went towards Miss Bell and Madame Marmet, who were waiting at the end of the street XV ON leaving Dechartre, Therese went to lunch with her friend and Madame Marmet at the house of an old Florentine lady, whom Victor-Emmanuel had loved when he was Duke of Savoy. For thirty years she had never once quitted her palace on the Arno, where painted and powdered, wearing a violet wig, she played upon the guitar in her great white halls. She received the highest society in Florence, and Miss Bell frequently went to see her. During lunch, this recluse of eighty-seven questioned Coun- tess Martin concerning the fashionable Paris world, the life of which she followed in newspapers and conversation with a frivolity which was rendered august by its persist- ence. In her solitude she continued to cherish a respect and adoration for pleasure. Coming out of the palazzo, in order to avoid the wind, which was blowing across the river, the keen libeccio, Miss Bell took her friends through the old narrow streets, lined with houses of dark stone, suddenly opening on a broad space where a hill with three slender trees stands forth in the clear atmosphere. As they went, Vivian pointed out to her friend, on sordid facades from which red rags were hanging, some precious statue, a Virgin, a lily, a St. Cath- erine beneath a scroll of leaves. They walked down the little streets of the ancient city as far as the church of Or San Michele, where it had been agreed that Dechartre should meet them. Therese was thinking of him now with intense interest. Madame Marmet was bent on finding a veil; she had been encouraged to hope that there might be one on the Corso. Her errand reminded her of the absent-mindedness of M. Lagrange who, one day, when he was lecturing, took from his pocket a veil with gold beads and wiped his forehead with it, mistaking it for his handkerchief. His astonished hearers giggled. It was a veil belonging to his niece, Made- moiselle Jeanne Michot, who had confided it to his care 172 THE RED LILY 123 when he had taken her to the theatre on the previous evening. And Madame Marmet explained how, finding it in his overcoat pocket, he had taken it with him, intending to give it back to his niece, and how, by mistake, he had unfolded it and waved it before his smiling audience. The name of Lagrange reminded Therese of the comet predicted by the scholar, and she said to herself with a sad irony, that now was the time for it to come and end the world and relieve her from embarrassment. But, above the beautiful walls of the old church, she beheld the sky gleaming and cruelly blue, swept by the wind blowing in from the sea. Miss Bell directed her attention to one of the bronze statues, which, in carved niches, adorn the fagade of the church. "Look, darling, how proud and young that St. George is. St. George used to be a girl's ideal knight. You remem- ber how Juliet cried when she saw Romeo: 'What a hand- some St. George!' " * But darling thought he looked conventional, common- place, and obstinate. At that moment, she remembered the letter in her pocket. "I think there is M. Dechartre," said kind Madame Marmet. He had been looking for them in the church, near Or- cagna's shrine. He ought to have remembered how irre- sistible Miss Bell always found Donatello's St. George. He also admired the famous figure. But the frank less conventional figure of St. Mark appealed to him more. They might see it in its niche on the left, near that little street, overspanned by a massive arched buttress, near the old House of the Wool-staplers. As they were approaching the statue, Therese saw a letter-box in the wall of the narrow street at the end of which stood the saint. Meanwhile Dechartre, standing so as to have a good view of his St. Mark, was speaking of him as if he were an intimate friend. "I always come to him before going anywhere else in * I have been unable to discover this reference in Shake- speare's Romeo ind Juliet. W.S. 124 THE RED LILY Florence. Only once did I fail. But he will forgive me; he is an excellent man. He is not appreciated by the ma- jority and attracts little attention. But I delight in his company. He is alive. I can understand why Donatello, after having created his soul, cried: 'Mark, why don't you speak?' ' Madame Marmet, tired of admiring St. Mark and feel- ing nipped by the libeccio, carried away Miss Bell to help her buy the veil in the Via dei Calzaioli. They left "darling" and Dechartre alone to continue their worship of St. Mark. They arranged to meet at the milliner's. "I have always loved him," continued the sculptor, "be- cause I recognise here more than in the St. George, the hand and soul of Donatello, who was all his life a poor and honest workman. And to-day I love him more in- tensely, because, in his venerable touching candour, he reminds me of the old cobbler of Santa Maria Novella, to whom you were talking so sweetly this morning." "Ah!" she said. "I have forgotten his name. We and M. Choulette call him Quentin Matsys because he reminds us of the old men that artist painted." As they turned the church corner to inspect the fagade opposite the old Wood-staplers' House, bearing the heraldic lamb on its red-tiled gable, she found herself close to the letter-box, so covered with grime and rust that it looked as if the postman never cleared it. She slipped in her letter, under the ingenuous eyes of St. Mark. Dechartre saw her and immediately felt pierced to the heart. He tried to talk, to laugh, but he could not forget the gloved hand posting the letter. He remembered having seen Therese's letters in the morning on the hall table. Why had she not put that one with the others? It was not difficult to guess. He stood still, lost in thought, gazing vacantly. He tried to reassure himself: perhaps it was only an unimportant letter she wanted to hide from Madame Marmet's irritat- ing curiosity. "Monsieur Dechartre, it must be time for us to go and f fiv friends at the milliner's on the Corso." THE RED LILY 125 Perhaps she was writing to Madame Schmoll who had quarrelled with Madame Marmet. And immediately he realised the improbability of such suppositions. It was quite clear. She had a lover. She was writing to him. Perhaps she was saying: "I have seen Dechartre to-day, the poor fellow is in love with me." But whatever she wrote, she had a lover. He had never dreamt of such a thing. The idea of her belonging to another caused him agony of soul and body. And the vision of that hand, that little hand posting the letter, remained before his eyes and seemed to burn them. She could not imagine why he had suddenly become silent and gloomy. But she guessed at once, when she saw him look anxiously at the letter-box. She thought it strange that without having the right he should be jealous; but it did not displease her. When they reached the Corso, in the distance they saw Miss Bell and Madame Marmet coming out of the milliner's. Dechartre said to Therese in a voice at once imperious and entreating: "I want to speak to you. I must see you alone; come to-morrow evening at six o'clock to the Lungarno Acciajoli." She said nothing. XVI II 7HEN, wrapped in her rough coat, she reached the V V Lungarno Acciajoli, about half-past six, Dechartre welcomed her with a humble and radiant glance which touched her heart. The setting sun was shedding a purple hue over the swollen waters of the Arno. For a moment they were silent. Following the monotonous line of palaces, they walked towards the Ponte Vecchio. She was the first to speak: "You see I have come. I thought it my duty to come. I am not innocent of what has happened. I know it: I have done everything in order that your attitude toward? me should be what it is now. My conduct has inspired you with thoughts which would not have otherwise occurred to you." He seemed not to understand. She resumed: "I was selfish, I was indiscreet. I liked you; your in- telligence appealed to me; I could not do without you. I did everything in my power to attract and retain you. I flirted with you. But not in coldness of heart or intending to deceive. Still I flirted." He shook his head, denying that he had ever perceived it. "Yes, I flirted. But it is not my custom. However, I flirted with you. I don't say that you attempted to take advantage of it, as you had a perfect right to do, or that you were puffed up by it. I never thought you vain. Pos- sibly you did not perceive it. High-minded men some- times lack insight. But I know well that I was not what I should have been. And I ask you to forgive me. That is why I came. Let us remain good friends while we may." With a sorrowful tenderness he told her that he loved her. In the beginning his love had been sweet and delight- ful. All he wanted was to see her and see her again. But soon she had agitated him, rent his heart, made him beside 126 THE RED LILY 127 himself. His passion had broken forth suddenly and vio- lently one day on the terrace at Fiesole. And now he lacked the courage to suffer in silence. He cried out for her help. He had come with no settled plan. If he had told her of his passion it was because he could not help it and in spite of himself, because of his overpowering craving to speak of her and to her, since for him she alone existed. His life was lived in her. She must know then that he loved her, not with any mild, indefinite love, but with an all-consuming, cruel passion. Alas! His imagination was precise. He knew exactly and always what he wanted, and it was torture to him. And then it seemed to him that together they would have joys which made life worth living. Their existence would be a beautiful but secret work of art. They would think, they would comprehend, they would feel in unison. Theirs would be a wonderful world of emotions and ideas. "We would make life a beautiful garden." She pretended to interpret this dream in all innocence. "You know how strongly your mind appeals to me. It has become necessary to me to see you and hear you. I have shown you this only too plainly. Be assured of my friendship, and be at rest." She offered him her hand. He did not take it, and re- plied abruptly: "I will not have your friendship. I will not have it. You must be mine entirely, or I must never see you again. Why with mocking words do you offer me your hand? Whether you intended it or not you have inspired me with a passionate desire, a fatal longing. You have become my heart's anguish and torture. And now you ask me to be your friend. It is now that you are cruel and a flirt. If you cannot love me, let me leave you; I will go, I do not know where, to forget you and hate you. For in the depths of my heart I feel towards you both anger and hatred. Oh! I love you, I love you." She believed what he said. She feared lest he should go away; and she dreaded the sad dulness of life without him. "I have found you in my life. I will not lose you. No, I will not," she said. 128 THE RED LILY Timid, passionate, he tried to murmur something, but the words stuck in his throat. Darkness was descending on the distant mountains, and in the east, over the hill of San Miniato, were fading the last gleams of the setting sun. She spoke again. "If you had known my life, if you had seen how empty it was before you came into it, you would know what you are to me, and you would not think of leaving me." But the even tones of her voice and measured step upon the pavement irritated him. He cried out that he was in anguish; his desire burnt within him; this one thought pos- sessed and tortured him; always and everywhere, by night, by day he saw her, he called her, he stretched out his arms to her. The divine passion had entered into his soul. "Like incense I breathe the charm of your intellect, the inspiration of your courage, the pride of your soul. When you speak I seem to see your soul on your lips, and I die be- cause I cannot press mine to yours. Your soul is for me but the expression of your beauty. Deep down within me there slumbered the instincts of primitive man. You have awak- ened them. And I feel that I love you with the simplicity of a savage." She looked at him tenderly and in silence. Just then they saw lights and heard mournful songs approaching them out of the darkness. And then, like phantoms, driven by the wind, there appeared before them black-robed penitents. The crucifix was carried before them. They were the Brothers of the Misericordia. With their faces hidden by cowls they were holding lighted torches and singing psalms. They were bearing a corpse to the cemetery. It was the Italian custom for the funeral procession to take place at night and to pass along rapidly. On the deserted quay there appeared cross, coffin, and banners. Jacques and Therese stood against the wall to let pass the crowd of priests, choristers, and hooded figures, and, in their midst, importunate Death, whom no one welcomes on this pleasure- loving earth. The black stream had passed. Weeping women ran after the coffin borne by weird shapes in hob- nailed boots. Therese sighed: THE RED LILY 129 "Of what avail is it to torment ourselves in this world?" He appeared not to hear her, and resumed in a calmer voice: "Before I knew you I was not unhappy. I loved life. It inspired me with dreams and with curiosity. I delighted in form and in the spirit of form, in the appearance which charms and soothes. To see and to dream were my joys. I enjoyed everything, and I was independent of everything. I was borne up on the wings of my insatiable curiosity. I was interested in everything; I longed for nothing: and it is only desire that makes us suffer. I realise that to-day. Mine was not a melancholy disposition. I was happy with- out knowing it. I possessed little, but all that was neces- sary to make me contented with life. Now that has de- parted from me. My pleasures, the interest I took in life and in art, the joy of expressing in material form the visions of my brain, you have robbed me of them all, and without leaving me one regret. I no longer desire my liberty. I would not return to the tranquillity of past years. It seems as if I never lived till I met you. And now that I know what life really is, I can live neither with you nor away from you. I am more wretched than the beggars we saw on the road to Ema. They at least had the air to breathe. But I have not that, for you are the breath of my life, and you I have not. Nevertheless I rejoice that I have known you. It is all that counts in my life. Just now I thought I hated you. I was mistaken. I adore you, and I bless you for the suffering you have caused me. I love everything that comes from you." They were approaching the dark trees at the entrance to the Porta San Niccola. On the other side of the river the land looked vague and infinite in the darkness. Seeing him once more calm and gentle, she thought that his passion, ex- isting only in his imagination, had been appeased by expres- sion and that his desire was merely a dream. She had not expected his resignation to come so quickly. She was almost disappointed at having escaped the danger she had so greatly feared. She now offered him her hand more boldly than at first. "Come, let us be friends. It is late. We must return, 130 THE RED LILY and you must take me to my carriage, which I have left on the Piazza della Signoria. I shall always be your good friend as I was before. You have not vexed me." But he led her towards the open country, along the river bank, which became more and more deserted. "No, I will not let you go before saying what was in my mind. But I cannot express myself; the words will not come. I love you ; I want you. I long to know that you are mine. I swear to you that I will not pass another night in the horror of doubt." He took her and clasped her in his arms. With his face close to hers he gazed through her veil and looked deep into her eyes. "You must love me. I will it, you also have willed it. Say that you are mine. Say it!" Having gently freed herself from his embrace, she replied in a weak hesitating voice: "I cannot. I cannot. You see I am quite frank with you. Just now I told you that you had not vexed me. But I can- not do as you wish." And thinking of the absent lover awaiting her, she re- peated: "I cannot." Bending over her, anxiously he questioned her wavering downcast glance. "Why? You love me. I see it. Why do me the wrong of refusing to be mine?" He drew her towards him and tried to kiss her lips be- neath her veil. This time she withdrew quickly and de- cisively. "I can't. Don't ask me. I can't be yours." His lips trembled. His whole countenance was convulsed. He cried: "You have a lover and you love him. Why do you trifle *ith me?" "I swear that I never thought of trifling with you, and that if ever in this world I were to love it would be you." But he no longer listened to her. "Leave me. Leave me," he cried. And he fled through the darkness. The Arno had over- THE RED LILY 131 flowed its banks on to the pasture lands. There the water lay in shallow sheets, on to which the half veiled moon cast its quivering beams. Past these lagoons and over the muddy fields he hastened sadly and distractedly. She was afraid and uttered a cry. She called him. But he neither replied nor turned his head. With alarming decision he continued on his way. She ran after him. With her feet bruised by the stones, her skirt heavy with water, she rejoined him and drew him towards her. "What were you going to do?" Then as he looked into her eyes, he read there the fear that had possessed her. "Don't be afraid. I did not see where I was going. I assure you I was not seeking death. Set your mind at rest. I am despairing, but I am calm. I fled from you. Forgive me. But I could not bear to look at you. Leave me, I entreat of you. Good-bye." Weak and intensely agitated, she replied: "Come. We will see what can be done." But he remained sorrowful and silent. She repeated: "Come." She took his arm. The gentle touch of her hand cheered him. "Will you?" he asked. "I am determined not to drive you to despair." "Will you promise?" "I must." Even in her anguish of spirit she half smiled to think how quickly his wildness had given him his desire. "To-morrow?" he asked. She replied eagerly with an instinct of self-defence: "No, not to-morrow." "You don't love me. You regret your promise," he said. "No. I don't regret it, but ... " He implored her, entreated her. She looked at him for a moment, turned away her head, hesitated, and then said in a very low voice: "Saturday." XVII AFTER dinner Miss Bell was drawing profiles of bearded Etruscans on canvas for a cushion Madame Marmet was to embroider. Prince Albertinelli was choosing the wool with a feminine eye for colour. The evening was well ad- vanced when Choulette appeared. As was his wont he had been playing briscola * at an eating-house with the cook. He was gay and god-like in the exuberance of his wit. He sat down on the sofa, by Madame Martin, and looked at her tenderly. His green eyes sparkled voluptuously. His com- pliments, poetical and picturesque, had the air of a caress. It was as if he were composing a love-song in her honour. In short, abrupt, curiously turned sentences he explained the charm by which she attracted him. "He too," she thought. And she amused herself by teasing him. Had he not dis- covered in the lower quarters of Florence one of those per- sons whose society he mostly enjoyed, she inquired. For his preferences in such matters were well known. It was useless for him to deny it; every one knew where he had found the cord of his third order. His friends had seen him on the Boulevard Saint-Michel with women of the street. And he had avowed his interest in these miserable creatures in his finest poems. "Oh! Monsieur Choulette, by all I hear your friends are very wicked." He replied solemnly: "Madame, you may if you like throw in my face calum- nies originating with M. Paul Vence. I will not defend my- self. That you should be convinced of my chastity and pure-mindedness matters little. But do not lightly judge those whom you call wretched, whom you should regard as holy because they are miserable. The outcast is the docile clay in the potter's hand, the sin offering at the sacrifici** *A game at cards. W.S. THE RED LILY 133 altar. Prostitutes are nearer God than honest women: they have lost aJl vainglory; they have been shorn of pride. They are unadorned by those empty nothings, the matron's boast. They possess humility, that is the corner-stone of the heavenly house of virtue After a brief repentance they will be first in the Kingdom of Heaven ; for, committed with- out malice and without joy, their sins are their own atone- ment. Their vices, in that they are sorrows, have the merit of all suffering. Slaves to the brutality of passion, these women have denied themselves pleasure. Thus they re- semble men who have become celibate that they may enter the Kingdom of God. Like us they are sinners, but by their shame they atone for their sins; suifering purifies like fire. Therefore the first prayer they address to Him God will hear. He has prepared for them a throne on the right hand of the Father. In the Kingdom of God, the queen and the empress will be happy to sit at the feet of women of the street. For do not imagine that the heavenly house is con- structed on any human plan. It is different in every detail. Madame." Nevertheless he agreed that there was more than one road leading to salvation. There was the road of love. "Men's love," he said, "is base. It is but a steep and stony path, but it leads to God." The Prince had risen. Kissing Miss Bell's hand, he said: "Till Saturday." "Yes, till the day after to-morrow, till Saturday," re- peated Vivian. Therese shuddered. Saturday! They spoke so calmly of Saturday as if it were an ordinary day and near at hand. Until then she had not let herself believe that Saturday would come so soon or so naturally. It was half an hour since the party had broken up. Therese, tired and weary, was lying in bed thinking, when she heard a knock at her bedroom door. It opened, and Vivian's little head appeared round the great lemon-trees of the portiere. "Am I disturbing you, darling? Are you sleepy?" 134 THE RED LILY No, "darling" was not sleepy. She raised herself on her elbow. Vivian sat down on the bed, upon which her slender form made no impression. "Darling, I know that you are very sensible. Oh! I am sure of it. You are as sensible as Mr. Sadler, the violinist, is musical. Sometimes he plays a little out of tune on pur- pose. And you when you make a mistake indulge in the pleasure of a virtuoso. Oh! darling, you are a person of sound judgment. And I come to ask your advice." Surprised and a little anxious, Therese declared that she was not sensible. She denied it absolutely. But Vivian did not listen to her. "I have read Frangois Rabelais a great deal, my love. Rabelais and Villon taught me French. They are grand old masters of language. But, darling, do you know Pantagruel? Oh! Pantagruel is a fine and beautiful town, full of palaces, splendid in the dawn, notwithstanding that the sweepers have yet to arrive to remove the filth and the servants to wash the marble pavements. No, darling, the sweepers have not yet removed the filth, and the servants have not yet washed the marble pavements. And I have noticed that French ladies don't read Pantagruel. You don't know it? Well, that does not matter. In Pantagruel, Panurge asks whether he should marry, and he appears ridiculous, my love. Well, I am as absurd as he, for I ask you the same question." Therese replied with ill-concealed constraint: "As for that, my dear. Don't ask me. I have already told you my opinion." "But, darling, you merely said that men do wrong to marry. I can't take that advice for myself." Madame Martin looked at Miss Bell's little close clipped head, which seemed in some curious manner to suggest the bashfulness of love. Kissing her, she said: "There isn't a man in the world distinguished enough and charming enough for you." Then gravely and tenderly she continued: "You are not a child: if you love and are loved, do what you think right, and don't complicate love by material in- THE RED LILY 135 terests which have nothing to do with feeling. That is the advice of a friend." For a moment Miss Bell failed to understand. Then she blushed and rose. She was shocked. XVIII AT four o'clock on Saturday Therese went to the Eng- lish cemetery, according to her promise. At the gate she met Dechartre, grave and agitated. He said little. She was glad he did not appear elated. He led her past the cemetery walls to a narrow street she did not know. "Via Alfieri," she read on a tablet. After walking a few steps, he stopped in front of a dark entry. "Here it is," he said. She looked at him with infinite sadness. "Do you want me to go in?" She saw that he was resolute, and she followed him silently into the damp gloom of the passage. He crossed a grass-grown courtyard. At the end was a little house with three windows, with pillars and a pediment carved with goats and nymphs. On the moss-grown doorstep, slowly and with a grating sound, he turned the key in the lock. "It is rusty," he murmured. "In this country all keys are rusty," she replied me- chanically. They went up the staircase, so tranquil beneath its Greek moulding, that it seemed to have forgotten the sound of footsteps. He opened a door and showed Therese into the room. Without staying to examine it, she went straight to the open window, looking on the cemetery. Over the wall rose the tops of pine-trees, which, in that country, have no funereal aspect ; for their mourning casts no gloom over joy, and the sweetness of life is felt even in the grass growing over the tomb. He took her by the hand and led her to an arm-chair. She remained standing, gazing round the room, which he had arranged so that she might feel at home. A few strips of old printed calico represented on the walls the, melancholy delights of past gaiety. In one corner he had hung up a faded pastel they had looked at together in an antiquary's shop, and which she had called the shade of Rosalba on account of its vanishing grace. One or two 13* THE RED LILY 137 white chairs and a grandmother's arm-chair; on the table a few painted cups and some Venetian glass. In the corners were screens of coloured paper, painted with masks, gro- tesque figures, and sheep-cotes, representing the gay life of Florence, Bologna, and Venice, in the days of the grand- dukes and the last doges. She noticed that he had carefully hidden the bed behind one of these gaily painted screens. A mirror, a carpet, and hangings, that was all. He had not dared to procure more in a town where ingenious dealers were always on his track. He shut the window and lit the fire. She sat down in the arm-chair; and, while she sat there stiffly, he knelt before her, took her hands, kissed them, and gazed at her long with an admiration proud yet fearful. Then he bent down and kissed the tip of her shoe. "What are you doing?" "I am kissing the feet that brought you here." He rose, drew her gently to him, and kissed her long on the lips. She remained passive, her head thrown back, her eyes closed ; her toque slipped off, her hair fell down. She yielded without resistance. Two hours later, when the setting sun was casting its long rays over the pavement, Therese, who had wished to go back through the town alone, found herself in front of the two obelisks of Santa-Maria-Novella, without knowing how she had come there. At the corner of the square she saw the old cobbler drawing his thread in the same monotonous manner. He was smiling, with his sparrow on his shoulder. She went into his booth and sat down on a stool, and there she said in French: "Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, and what will become of me?" He looked at her calmly, with cheerful good nature, mak- ing an effort to understand. He was past being astonished. She shook her head. "What I did, my good Quentin, was because he was suf- fering, and I loved him. I do not regret it." To which he answered, as was his custom, the sonorous Italian "yes": 138 THE RED LILY "Si, si." "I did no wrong, did I, Quentin? But what will happen now?" She was going, but he signed to her to wait a moment. He carefully picked a spray of basil and gave it to her. "Take it for its sweet smell, Signora." XIX ON the morrow Madame Martin was reading at the win dow. Choulette greeted her, having first tenderly placed on the table his knotted stick, his pipe, and his car- pet-bag. He was going to Assisi. He wore a goatskin jacket, and looked like the old shepherds in the story of the Nativity. "Good-bye, Madame. I am leaving Fiesole, you, De- chartre, the effeminate Prince Albertinelli, and that charm- ing ogress, Miss Bell. I go to visit the mountain of Assisi, which, says the poet, should be called not Assisi, but 'the Orient,' for thence rose the sun of love. I shall kneel before that happy crypt where reposes the naked body of St. Francis in a trough of stone, with a stone for a pillow. For he would not bear away even so much as a shroud from this world, to which he had revealed the secret of true happiness and true holiness." "Good-bye, Monsieur Choulette. Bring me a Santa Chiara medal. I like Santa Chiara." "You are right, Madame. She was a woman of strength and prudence. When, ill and almost blind, St. Francis came to spend a few days with his friend at San Damiano, with her own hands she built him a cell in the garden. His soul rejoiced. A painful weariness and burning of his eye- lids deprived him of sleep. Rats attacked him by night. It was then that he composed that joyful hymn in honour of his splendid brother, the Sun, and our chaste, useful, and pure sister, Water. My finest lines, even those of Le Jardin Clos, have less irresistible charm and natural splendour. And it is right that it should be so; for the soul of St. Francis was more beautiful than mine. Although I am better than any of my contemporaries, whom I have been privileged to know, I am worthless. When Francis had composed his hymn to the Sun, he was happy. He thought: My brethren and I will go through the towns, playing our lutes in the market-places on market-days. When the good Kfo THE RED LILY people draw near us we will say: 'We are God's minstrels; we will sing you a lay. If it pleases you, you must reward us.' /ney will promise. And when we have sung, we shall say to *hem: 'Now for our reward; what we ask is that you shall love one another.' Doubtless, in order to keep their pr&ririse, and so please God's poor minstrels, they will forbear frvn doing each other harm." Madame Martin thought St. Francis the most lovable of saints. "His work," Choulette resumed, "was destroyed during his lifetime. Nevertheless he died happy, because joy and humility were his. He was indeed God's sweet singer. And it is fitting that another poor poet should take up his work, and teach the world true religion and true joy. That poet shall be I, Madame, if only I can cast away pride and wisdom. For all moral beauty is the result of that incom- prehensible wisdom which comes from God and resembles madness." "I will not discourage you, Monsieur Choulette. But I am anxious about the lot of poor women in your new so- ciety. You will shut them all up in convents." "I confess," replied Choulette, "that in my project for a reformation they cause me much embarrassment. The vio- lence with which they are loved is bitter and bad. The pleasure they give brings no calm, and does not lead to joy. I, in my life, have for the sake of women committed two or three abominable crimes, of which no one knows. I doubt, Madame, whether I shall invite you to supper in the new Santa Maria degli Angeli." He took up his pipe, his carpet-bag, and his stick with its human head. "The faults of love will be pardoned or, rather, one can do no wrong when one really loves. But sensual pas- sion is compact of hatred, egoism, and wrath as much as of love. One evening, for having thought you beautiful as you sat on this sofa, I was assailed by a whole army of passionate thoughts. I had come from the Albergo, where I had heard Miss Bell's cook improvise two hundred mag- nificent lines on spring. My soul was flooded with a celes- tial joy which vanished at the sight of you. Eve's curse THE RED LILY IA* contains a profound truth. For in your presence I grew sad and wicked. Soft words were on my lips. But they lied. Within I felt myself your adversary; I hated you. When I saw you smile, I wanted to kill you." "Really?" "Oh, Madame, it is a very natural feeling, and one that you must have often inspired. But the ordinary man feels it without knowing what it is, whilst my vivid imagination defines it clearly. I am in the habit of contemplating my own soul; sometimes I find it splendid, sometimes hideous. If you had seen it that evening, you would have been horrified." Therese smiled. "Good-bye, Monsieur Choulette; don't forget the Santa Chiara medal." He put his bag on the ground, and, stretching out his arm, with his forefinger raised in the manner of one who teaches, he said: "From me you have nothing to fear. But him whom you shall love and who shall love you will be your enemy. Farewell, Madame." He took up his bag and went out. She saw his tall quaint form disappear behind the shrubs in the garden. In the afternoon she went to San Marco, where Dechartre was waiting for her. She longed and yet she feared to see him again so soon. Her anguish of heart was appeased by a new feeling of intense sweetness. The moral numbness of her first yielding to passion, followed by a sudden vision of the irreparable, did not recur. She was now under serener, vaguer, more powerful influences. This time the memory of caresses and the violence of passion was veiled in a charming revery. She was troubled and anxious, but not ashamed or regretful. It was not so much by her own will as in obedience to a higher power that she had acted. She justified her action by its unselfishness. She counted on nothing, having expected nothing. Certainly she had been wrong to yield when she was not free, but then she on her part had exacted nothing. Perhaps she was for him only a passing fancy all absorbing, yet serious only for the mo- ment. She did not know him. She had not put to the test 142 THE RED LILY those fine imaginings, which are so far above mediocrity in evil as well as in good. If he were suddenly to depart and disappear, she would not reproach him, she would not bear him ill-will, at least she believed so. She would treasure the memory of what is rarest and most precious in the world. Perhaps he was incapable of an enduring love. He had thought he loved her. He had loved her for an hour. She did not dare to hope for more in the embarrassment of a false position in which her frankness and her pride were outraged and the usual clearness of her thought obscured. While the carriage was bearing her to San Marco, she suc- ceeded in persuading herself that he would not mention what had happened on the previous day, and that the mem- ory of that room, looking on the dark pine-trees, would be to them both but the dream of a dream. He gave her his hand as she got out of the carriage. Before he spoke she saw by his glance that he loved her and that he wanted her still ; and she perceived at the same time that she was pleased it should be so. "It is you," he said, "really you I have been here since noon, waiting, knowing that you would not come yet, but feeling that I could not live away from the place where I was to see you. It is you! . . . Speak that I may see you and hear you." "Do you still love me?" "It is now that I really love you. I thought I loved you when you were but a phantom pursued by my desire. Now you are the body of my soul. Is it true, say, can it be true that you are mine? What have I done that I should possess the greatest, the only good upon earth? And those other men who fill the earth! They think they live! But I alone live! Say what have I done to possess this treasure?" "Oh! what has been done has been done by me. I tell you frankly. If we come to that, it is my fault. She may not always avow it, but it is always the woman's fault. So, whatever may happen, I shall never reproach you." An active noisy troop of beggars, guides, and profligates came out of the church porch and surrounded them with an importunity mingled with that grace always characteristic of the nimble Italian. They were subtle enough to guess THE RED LILY 143 they had to deal with lovers, and they knew that lovers are generous. Dechartre threw them a few silver pieces, and they all returned to their happy idleness. A policeman met the visitors. Madame Martin regretted that it was not a monk. At Santa-Maria-Novella, the white robes of the Dominicans looked so beautiful under the arches of the cloister. They visited the cells where Fra Angelico, aided by his brother Benedetto, painted innocent pictures on the white walls for his comrades, the monks. "Do you remember that winter evening when I met you on the little bridge over a ditch in front of the Guimet Museum and accompanied you to that little street bordered by gardens and leading to the Quai de Billy? Before part- ing, we paused for a moment by the thin box hedge running along the parapet. You looked at the box which the winter had dried and withered. And after you had gone, I stayed and gazed at it." They were in the cell of. Savonarola, the prior of the monastery of San Marco. The guide showed them the por- trait and the relics of the martyr. "What could you see to admire in me that day? It was nearly dark." "I could see you walk. It is by motion that forms speak. Each of your steps revealed to me the secret of your regular beauty and your charm. Oh! when you are concerned my imagination has never kept within the bounds of discretion. I did not dare to speak to you. The sight of you filled me with fear. I was terrified before her who could do every- thing for me. In your presence I adored you with trembling. Away from you I felt all the irreverence of desire." "I never guessed it. But do you remember the first time we met, when Paul Vence introduced you? You were sit- ting by the screen, looking at the miniatures hanging on it. You said: 'That woman, painted by Siccardi, is like Andre Chenier's mother.' I replied: 'That's my husband's grand- mother. What was Andre Chenier's mother like?' And you said: 'We have her portrait, that of a degenerate Levantine woman.' " He was sure he had not spoken so rudely. 144 THE RED LILY "But yes. My memory is better than yours." They walked, surrounded by the white silence of the monastery. They visited the cell that Blessed Angelico adorned with the softest painting. And there before the picture of the Virgin on a pale blue sky receiving the im- mortal crown from God the Father, he took Therese in his arms and kissed her on the lips, almost in sight of two Eng- lishwomen, passing down the corridor, reading Baedeker. "We must not forget to visit St. Anthony's cell," she said. "Therese, I cannot bear that any part of you should escape from me. It is terrible to think that you do not live in me and for me alone. I long to possess entirely you and your past." She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh! as for the past!" "The past alone is real. The past alone exists." She looked up at him with eyes like the sun shining through the rain: "Well I can say very truly: I never really live except when I am with you." On her return to Fiesole, she found a short threatening letter from Le Menil. He could not understand her silence and her prolonged absence. If she did not immediately name the date of her return he would come to Florence. She read his letter, not in any way surprised, yet over- whelmed by the realisation that the inevitable was happen- ing and that she would be spared nothing of all she had feared. She might yet pacify and reassure him. She had only to write that she loved him, that she was soon coming back, and that he must renounce the wild idea of meeting her at Florence, which was only a village, where they would be recognised immediately. But she must write: "I love you." She must soothe him with loving words. She had not the courage. She allowed him to guess the truth. In vague terms she accused herself. She wrote mysteriously of souls carried away on the waves of life and how powerless one is on the ocean of vicissitude. Sadly and tenderly she asked him to keep a kindly memory of her in one corner of his heart. She herself went to post the letter on the Piazza, of THE RED LILY 145 Fiesole. In the twilight some children were playing at hop- scotch. From the top of the hill she looked down on the beautiful basin and Florence like a lovely jewel nestling in the hollow. The peacefulness of evening made her shudder. She dropped the letter into the box. And then only did she clearly realise what she had done and what would be its result. XX THE bright spring sun was casting its golden beams on the Piazza, della Signoria, when at the striking of the hour of twelve the country crowd of corn-dealers and macaroni merchants began to break up. At the foot of the Lanzi, in front of the group of statues, the ice-cream sellers had erected little castles with the inscription Bibite ghiac- ciate, on tables covered with red cotton. Joy and gaiety seemed to have come down to earth from heaven. Therese and Jacques, on their way home from a morning walk in the Boboli Gardens, were passing the famous loggia. Therese was looking at John of Bologna's Sabine woman, with that curious interest with which one woman looks at another. But Dechartre had eyes for Therese alone. "It is wonderful," he said, "how the bright daylight en- hances your beauty; it seems to linger lovingly on the pearl white of your cheeks." "Yes," she said. "Candle-light always hardens my fea- tures. I have noticed it. It is unfortunate that I am not an evening beauty; for in the evening women have most opportunity of displaying their good looks. In the evening Princess Seniavine has a lovely olive complexion; by day- light she is as yellow as a guinea. I must admit that it does not trouble her. She is not a coquette." "And you are." "Oh! yes. I used to be for my own sake, now I am for yours." She looked again at the robust, long-limbed Sabine woman, who was endeavouring to escape from the Roman's embrace. "Is that angularity and length of limb a necessary quality in a beautiful woman? I am not like that." Dechartre hastily reassured her. But she had not really doubted. Now she was looking at the ice cream man's little chateau, with its copper walls gleaming on the scarlet table- cloth. She suddenly felt a desire to eat an ice there, stand* 146 THE RED LILY 147 ing at this table, as she had just seen the working women of the town do. "Wait a moment," he said. He ran to a street on the left of the Lanzi and disap- peared. In a minute he returned with a little silver gilt spoon, from which the gilding was partly worn away, and the handle of which was formed by a Florentine lily with its calyx enamelled in red. "This is for you to eat your ice with. The ice-cream man does not provide spoons. You would have been obliged to use your tongue. It would have been charming. But you would not have known how to do it." She recognised the spoon; it was a little gem she had noticed the day before in a shop window near the Lanzi. They were happy. The fulness of their simple joy over- flowed in trivial, meaningless words. And they laughed when the Florentine with excellent mimicry told them the time-honoured tales of old Italian story-tellers. She was entertained by the play of his classic, jovial countenance. But she did not always understand him. "What is he saying?" she asked Jacques. "Do you want to know?" She did. "Well! he says he would be happy if the fleas in his bed were as pretty as you." When she had finished her ice, he urged her to revisit Or San-Michele. It was so close. They would cross to the opposite corner of the square and there they would see the jewel in stone. They went. They looked at the bronze St. George and St. Mark. On the encrusted wall of the house, Dechartre saw the letter-box, and remembered with painful vividness the little gloved hand posting the letter. The copper mouth that had swallowed Therese'^ secret appeared to him hideous. He could not look away from it. All his gaiety had vanished. Meanwhile she was trying to appreci- ate the rough statue of the Evangelist. "Yes, indeed he looks frank and honest. If he could speak his words would always be true." "His is no woman's mouth," Dechartre retorted bitterly. 148 THE RED LILY She understood, and said very sweetly: "My friend, why do you say that? I am frank." "What do you call being frank? You know that a woman is bound to lie." She hesitated. Then: "A woman," she said, "is frank when she does not lie use- lessly." XXI 'TpHfiRESE, in grey, was gliding among the flowering J. broom bushes. The silver stars of the arbutus covered the steep slope of the terrace, and on the hill-side gleamed the sweet scented flame-like flowers of the oleander. The Florentine valley was one mass of flowers. Vivian Bell, dressed in white, came into the perfumed garden. "You see, darling, Florence is really the city of flowers; and it is right she should have the red lily for her emblem. To-day is a festival." "Ah! is it a feast-day?" "Darling, don't you know that it is the first of May, the Primavera? Did you not awake this morning in fairyland? Aren't you keeping the Festival of Flowers, darling? Don't you feel gay, you who love flowers? For you do love them, I know. You feel tenderly towards them. You said that they feel joy and sorrow, that they suffer as we do." "Did I say that they suffer like us?" "Yes, you said so. To-day is their festival. You must celebrate it according to the custom of our ancestors, in rites depicted by the old masters." Therese heard without comprehending. Crushed in her gloved hand was a letter she had just received, bearing the Italian post-mark and containing only two lines: "I arrived to-night at the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne, Lungarno Acciajoli. I expect you to-morrow morning. No. 18." "Oh! darling, don't you know that at Florence it is our custom to welcome the springtime on the first of May? Then you can't have understood Botticelli's picture of the Feast of Flowers, his delightful Spring, so full of happy revery. Formerly, darling, on this first day of May, the whole town was merry. The girls of Florence, in festive garb, crowned with hawthorn, passed in procession up the Corso, beneath arches of flowers, to dance under the olean- 149 ISO THE RED LILY ders on the fresh green grass. We will imitate them. We will dance in the garden." "Are we going to dance in the garden?" "Yes, darling, and I will teach you some fifteenth-century Tuscan dances, discovered in a MS. by Mr. Morison, the doyen of London librarians. Come back quickly, my love; we will wreathe our heads with flowers and then we will dance." "Yes, dear, we will dance." And, opening the gate, she hurried down the little path with channels worn by the rain like the bed of a mountain torrent, and stones hidden beneath briar roses. She jumped into the first carriage she met. The driver had cornflowers in his hat and on his whip-handle. "Hotel de la Grande-Bretagne, Lungarno Acciajoli," she said. She knew where it was, Lungarno Acciajoli. . . . She had been there, in the evening, and she remembered the golden light of the setting sun on the surging waters of the river. Then night had come; and she heard the water's dull murmur in the silence; words and glances had agitated her, and her lover's first kiss, the beginning of an irreparable love. Oh! Yes, she remembered Lungarno Acciajoli and the river bank beyond the Ponte Vecchio . . . Hotel de la Grande Bretagne . . . She knew: a broad stone fagade on the quay. It was fortunate, if he must come, that he was staying there. He might have gone to the Hotel de la Ville, on the Piazzi Manin, where Dechartre was staying. It was fortunate that their rooms were not side by side in the same corridor . . . Lungarno Acciajoli! . . . That corpse they had seen hurrying by, borne by cowled monks, it was at rest in some little garden cemetery. Number 18. It was a bare Italian hotel room with a stove. A set of brushes was carefully set out on the table, and by them a railway guide. Not a book, not a newspaper. He was there: she read suffering and feverish excitement on his thin face; and its sad expression pained her. He awaited a word, a sign; but she remained silent, motionless, and afraid. THE RED LILY 151 He offered her a chair. She put it on one side and con- tinued standing. "Therese, there is something that I do not know. Speak." After a moment's silence, she replied with painful hesi- tation: "Why did you leave me in Paris?" The sadness of her tone made him believe, and he wished to believe, that she was reproaching him. He blushed and replied eagerly: "Ah! If I had foreseen! You must know that at heart I cared little for that hunting-party! But you, your letter of the zyth (he had a good memory for dates) made me terribly anxious. Something had happened when you wrote it. Tell me everything." "I thought, dear, that you had ceased to love me." "But now you know that to be untrue." "Now ..." She was still standing with her hands clasped. Then with assumed tranquillity, she said: "Our union was formed in ignorance. One never knows. You are young, younger than I, since we are nearly of an age. Doubtless you have plans for the future." He looked her haughtily in the face. She continued with less assurance: "Your relatives, your mother, your aunts have made plans for you. It is quite natural. I ought to have guessed that there was some obstacle. It is better that I should disap- pear from your life. We shall keep a kindly memory of each other." She offered him her gloved hand. He folded his arms. "And so you are tired of me," he said. "You think that when you have made me happier than any other man has ever been, you can put me on one side, that everything is over! . . . And what have you come to tell me? That a union such as ours is quickly sundered. That a parting is easy? ... I tell you, no! You are not the kind of woman from whom one parts." "Yes, you probably loved me with an affection stronger than is usual in such cases. I was more to you than a pass- ing fancy. But, what if I were not the woman you thought 152 THE RED LILY nie, what if I were a flirt, and betrayed you. . . . You know what has been said. . . . Well! what if I have not been all that I ought to have been ..." She hesitated and resumed in a grave serious tone which contrasted with her words: "Supposing that while I was your mistress I yielded to other attractions and was possessed by other longings. Per- haps I am not made for a serious passion. ..." He interrupted her. "You lie," he said. "Yes, I lie. And I do not lie well. I wanted to spoil our past. I was wrong. It is what you know it was. But . . ." "But . . .?" "Well! I always told you I am not to be depended on. There are women, so I am told, who are mistresses of their feelings. I warned you that I was not like them, that I am not answerable for mine." He looked left and right and turned his head like a creature irritated and yet hesitating to attack. "What do you mean? I don't understand. I understand nothing. Explain yourself. There is something between us. I don't know what. But I am determined to know. What is it?" "It is because I am not sure of myself, dear. You ought never to have placed your confidence in me. No, you ought never to have done it. I never promised anything. . . . And, then, if I had promised, what are words?" "You love me no longer. You have ceased to love me, I see it well. But, so much the worse for you! I love you. You ought never to have given yourself to me. It is no use your thinking you can take back that gift. I love you and L keep you. ... Ah! You thought you were easily rid of me? Listen. You made me love you; you charmed me; it is your fault that I cannot live without you. You enjoyed your share in our raptures. I did not take you by force. You were willing. Six weeks ago you asked for nothing better. You were everything to me. I was everything to you. So complete was our union that our very lives were mingled. And then all of a sudden you ask me to forget THE RED LILY 153 you, to regard you as a stranger, a casual acquaintance. Ah! you have an unparalleled assurance. Tell me, was I dreaming when I felt your kisses and your breath upon my neck? Was it not true? Am I imagining it all? Oh! I cannot doubt that you loved me once. I feel the breath of your love upon me still. And yet, I have not changed. I am what I was. You have nothing with which to reproach me. I have never deceived you. Not that it is any credit to me. I could not have done it. When one has known you, all other women, even the most beautiful, appear in^ sipid. The idea of deceiving you never occurred to me. I always treated you honourably. Then why have you ceased to love me? But tell me, speak. Say that you still love me, Say so, since it must be true. Come, come! Therese, you will feel at once that you love me, as you used to love me in our little nest in the Rue Spontini, where we were so happy. Come!" Passionately, eagerly he threw his strong arms around her. She, with tears in her eyes, repulsed him icily. He understood and said: "You have a lover." She bowed her head, and then raised it, grave and silent Then he struck her on the breast, on the shoulder, and m the face. But immediately he drew back ashamed, and looked down in silence. With his fingers on his lips, biting his nails, he noticed that his hand had been scratched by a pin in her bodice. He threw himself into an arm-chair, took out his handkerchief to dry the blood, and remained as if benumbed and stupefied. She, leaning against the door, pale, her head erect, her glance uncertain, was instinctively unpinning her torn veil and readjusting her hat. At the sound, once so delicious, of the rustling of her clothes, he shuddered, looked at her, and relapsed into fury. "Who is it?" he asked. "I must know." She did not move. On her white face was a red mark where his hand had struck her. She replied firmly and gently: "I have told you all I could. Ask me no more. It would be useless." 154 THE RED LILY He looked at her with a cruel glance she had never seea before. "Oh! you need not tell me his name. I shall have no difficulty in finding him." She was silent, sad for him, anxious for another, full of fear and anguish, yet without bitterness, sorrow, or regret, for her heart was elsewhere. He seemed to know what was passing within her. In his wrath at beholding her so sweet and serene, beautiful, but not as he had known her, beautiful for another, he felt a desire to kill her, and he cried: "Go go." Then overpowered by the passion of that hatred, which was not natural to him, he put his head in his hands and sobbed. His grief touched her and gave her hope that she might be able to calm him and render her departure less agonising. She imagined that she might console him for losing her. In a friendly and confiding manner she sat down beside him. "You must blame me," she said. "I deserve blame but also pity. Despise me, if you like, and if you can despise a miserable creature who is life's plaything. Judge me, as you will. But in your wrath feel a little friendliness to- wards me; let me be a bitter-sweet memory like those autumn days when there is sunshine and east wind. That is what I deserve. Don't be hard on the pleasant but frivolous visitor who has crossed your path. Bid me farewell as if I were a sad traveller who goes away she knows not whither. It is always so sad to part! You were angry with me just now. I don't reproach you. But it grieves me. Show me some sympathy. Who knows? The future is always un- known. It lies vague and dark before me. Let me be able to say that I have been kind, simple, and frank with you, and that you have not forgotten me. In time you will come to understand and to forgive. But to-day, just be pitiful." He was not listening to the words she said, but the soft clear sound of her voice soothed him. He said suddenly: "You do not love him. It is I whom you love. Then " She hesitated, then said: "Oh: to say whom one loves and whom one does not love THE RED LILY 155 is no easy matter for a woman, at least for me. I don't know how others do; for life is not merciful. One is bat- tered and thrown and driven " He looked at her very calmly. An idea had occurred to him. He had made a resolve. It was quite simple. He would forgive, he would forget, if only she would return at once. "Therese, you don't love him? It was a mistake, a mo- ment's forgetfulness, a horrible stupid thing that you did, surprised in an instant of weakness, or perhaps out of pique. Swear to me that you will never see him again." He took hold of her arm, saying, " Swear." She was silent, her lips tightly closed, looking darkly. "You are hurting me," she cried. But he did not desist. He dragged her to the table, where, as well as the brushes, were an ink-pot and a few sheets of letter-paper each bearing a picture of the hotel fagade with its numerous windows. "Write what I dictate. I will send the letter." And, when she resisted, he forced her on to her knees. Proudly and calmly, she said: "I cannot. I will not." "Why?" "Because ... Do you want to know? . . . Because I love him." Suddenly he let her go. If he had had a revolver at hand, perhaps he would have killed her. But almost im- mediately his wrath melted into sadness; and, then despair- ing, it was his own life he would have taken. "Are you speaking the truth? Is it possible? Is it true?" "Do I myself know? Can I tell? Can I understand yet? Can I think? Can I feel? Can I see any ray of light? Can I . . Then with a slight effort, she added: "At this moment can I realise anything but my sadness and your despair?" "You love him! You love him!" he cried. "How has he made you love him?" He was stupefied by surprise, overwhelmed with astonish- ment. Nevertheless, what she had said had separated them. 156 THE RED LILY He no longer dared to handle her roughly, to seize her, to strike her, and treat her as his chattel. He repeated: "You love him ! You love him ! But what did he say to you, what has he done to make you love him? I know you: I did not always tell you when your ideas shocked me. I wager that this lover of yours is not even a man in society. And you think he loves you? You think so? Well you are mistaken: he does not love you. He will give you up at the first opportunity. He will have had enough of you when he has compromised you. Then you will pass from one affair to another. Next year the worst things will be said of you, I am sorry for your father, who is my friend. He will know of your conduct; for you will not be able to deceive him." She listened, humiliated and yet consoled, for she knew she would have suffered more deeply had she found him nagnanimous. He despised her in his simplicity; and his scorn consoled him. He tested it to the full. "How did it happen?" he asked. "You need not hesitate to tell me." She shrugged her shoulders with such obvious pity for him that he did not dare continue in this strain. He re- sumed bitterly: "Do you think I shall help you to save the situation, that I shall continue to visit your husband and be a third in your household?" "I expect you to do what a gallant man ought to do. I ask you for nothing. I should have liked to remember you as a dear friend. I had expected you to be kind and chari- >able. It is impossible. I see such partings must always be bitter. Later you will think better of me. Good-bye." He looked at her. Now his face was more expressive of sorrow than of wrath. She had never seen his eyes look so hard or deeply ringed, or his temples appearing so plainly beneath his thin hair. He seemed to have aged in an hour. "I must warn you," he said. "It will be impossible for me to meet you again. You are not the kind of woman whom, after what has passed between us, one can continue to meet in society. As I have said, you are a woman apart. THE RED LILY 15? You have a poison of your own, which you have given me; I feel it within me, in my veins, everywhere. Why did I ever know you?" She looked at him kindly. "Good-bye! Say to yourself that I am not worth such bitter regrets." Then, when he saw her with her hand on the door handle, when he felt that he was about to lose her, that he would never possess her again, he uttered a cry and rushed forward. He remembered nothing. All that he felt was the numbness which follows a great misfortune, an irreparable loss. But this feeling of having been stunned gave place to desire. He wanted once more the mistress, who was going, never to return. He drew her to him. With all the strength of his physical nature he wanted her. She was on the watch and resisted him with all the power of her will. Dishevelled and disarranged, she freed herself without having even felt afraid. He understood that it would be useless ; the lost sequence of facts returned to him, and he realised that she could not be his because she was another's. His anguish revived; he hurled insults at her and pushed her out of the room. For a moment she lingered in the passage, proudly wait- ing for a word, a look worthy of their past love. But again he cried: "Go," and banged the door. Via Alfieri! She returned to the little house at the back of the courtyard, overgrown with pale green grass. It seemed peaceful, silent, faithful, with its goats and nymphs, carved for the lovers of the days of the Grand-Duchess Eliza. Already she felt a sense of escape from a sorrowful and brutal world, as if she had been carried through the ages to a life where suffering was unknown. At the bottom of the staircase, the steps of which were strewn with roses, Dechartre was waiting for her. She fell into his arms and remained there passive, while he carried her upstairs like the precious relic of her before whom he had once grown pale and trembled. With eyes half closed she tasted the superb humiliation of feeling herself his. Her weariness, her sadness, the mortifications of the day, the memory of violence, her re-conquered liberty, the desire to forget, some 158 THE RED LILY vestige of fear, all intensified her tenderness. Lying on the bed, she clasped her arms round her lover's neck. They were as gay as children. They laughed, talked non- sense, and played as they sucked lemons, oranges, and water-melons piled near them on painted plates. She was flushed with pride in the comeliness of the body she was offering upon the altar of love. For she had dis- carded her clothes save for one thin rose-hued garment, and this had slipped scarfwise from her shoulder, laying bare one breast, whilst the warmer tinted tip of the other glowed through the rosy gossamer that veiled it. Her half open lips displayed the whiteness of her teeth. With coquettish anxiety, she asked whether, after all his glowing dreams of her, he had not been disappointed. In the half-light which he had contrived he contemplated her with youthful ardour, mingling kisses with his praises. In pretty caresses, loving disputes, and happy glances they passed the time, till all of a sudden grave, with looks overcast and compressed lips, a prey to that sacred wrath which brings love near hatred they plunged into the abyss of passion. Then her head upon the pillow, her hair flowing, she would open her eyes bathed in tears, and smile sweetly. He asked her how she had come by that little red mark on the temple. She replied that she did not know and that it was nothing. It was hardly a lie. For really she had forgotten. They recalled their beautiful short story which yet cov- ered all their life, for life began the day they first met. "You remember being on the terrace the day after your arrival. You talked vaguely and incoherently. I guessed then that you loved me." "I was afraid you thought me stupid." "You were rather. But that was my triumph. I was beginning to grow impatient with your serenity in my pres- ence. I loved you before you loved me. Oh! I am not ashamed of it." He poured into her mouth a few drops of sparkling Asti. But on the table was a bottle of Trasimene wine. She wanted to taste it in memory of that lake lying in the eve- THE RED LILY 159 ning light so melancholy and beautiful in its opal cup. She had seen it during her first visit to Italy, six years ago. He reproached her with having appreciated beauty with- out his aid. "But, without you, I should never have seen anything," she said. "Why did you not come sooner?" He silenced her with a kiss. And she exhausted with joy cried: "Yes, I love you! Yes, I have never loved any one but you." XXII LE MfiNIL had written: "I leave to-morrow evening at seven. Be at the station." She had come. As she approached the hotel omnibuses, there she saw him in his long grey Inverness, calm and correct. He merely said: "Ah! You here!" "But you asked me to come." He would not confess that his letter had been written in the wild hope that perhaps after all she might love him again, that everything might be forgotten and that he might hear her say: "It was only to try you." If she had spoken thus he would have believed her at once. But her silence disappointed him; and he said bitterly: "What have you to say to me? It is for you to speak, not for me. I have nothing to explain. I have no falseness to excuse." "My friend, don't be cruel; bear me no ill-will for what is past. That is what I came to say. But I want to tell you too, that I bid you farewell with the sadness of a true friend." "Is that all? Go and say it to the other; it will interest him more than me." "You asked me to come, and I came. Don't make me regret it." "I am sorry I have troubled you. Doubtless you could have employed your time better. Don't let me detain you. Go to him, as you are longing to." Struck by the thought that these poor miserable words represented but a moment of humanity's eternal suffering, aad haunted by the memory of many similar words in tragic drama, Therese's lips curled with ironical sadness. He thought she was smiling. "Don't laugh. Listen. At the hotel, the day before yes- terday, I wanted to kill you. I came so near doing it that 160 THE RED LILY 161 now I know what it means. And I shall not do it. You need not fear. Besides, what would be the good? As I wish to keep up appearances for my own sake, I shall call on you in Paris. I shall learn with regret that you cannot see me. I shall see your husband. I shall also see your father. It will be to take my leave before a long absence. Good-bye, Madame." Just as he was turning away from her, Therese saw Miss Bell and Prince Albertinelli coming out of the goods station and walking towards her. The Prince looked very hand- some. Vivian was walking by him in all the gladness of maidenly joy. "Oh! darling! What a delightful surprise to find you here. The Prince and I have been to the custom-house to claim my bell, which has just arrived." "Ah! has your bell come?" "It is here, darling, Ghiberti's bell! I have seen it in its wooden packing-case. It would not ring because it was a prisoner. But, in my house at Fiesole, I will lodge it in a campanile. When it breathes Florentine air, it will delight to make its silver voice heard. Visited by doves, it will ring out all our joys and all our sorrows. It will ring for you, for me, for the Prince, for good Madame Marmet, for M. Choulette, for all our friends." "Bells never ring out true joys and sorrows, dear. They are mere dutiful officials who know none but official feel- ings." "Darling, you are mistaken. Bells know the heart's secrets; they know everything. But I am so glad to meet you. Oh! 1 know why you are at the station. Your maid betrayed you. She told me you were expecting a pink gown, which had not come, and that you were burning with impatience. But don't worry. You are always perfectly beautiful, my love." She made Madame Martin get into the trap. "Come quickly, darling. M. Jacques Dechartre is dining with us to-night; and I don't want to keep him waiting." And, after they had driven in silence along the lanes, smelling sweetly of wild flowers, Vivian said: "Do you see down there, darling, the black distaffs of the 162 THE RED LILY Fates, the cypress trees in the cemetery? It is my wish one day to lie beneath them." But Therese was thinking anxiously: "They saw him. Did she recognise him? I don't think so. It was growing dark; and the lights were dazzling. Perhaps she does not know him. I can't remember whether she met him at my house last year." What troubled her most was the Prince's ill-concealed rejoicing. "Darling, will you lie by my side, in that rural cemetery, beneath a little earth and the vast spaces of the sky? But it is foolish of me to give you an invitation which you can't accept. You will not be permitted to sleep your last sleep at the foot of the Fiesole hills, my love. You will have to rest at Paris, beneath a handsome monument, by the side of Count Martin-Belleme." "Why? Do you think, dear, that a wife should remain united to her husband even after death?" "Certainly, she should, darling. Marriage is for time and for eternity. Don't you know the story of the husband and wife of Auvergne, who loved one another. They died al- most together, and were buried in two graves, separated by a road. But every night a wild rose threw a spray of flowers between the ITTO graves; in the end the coffins had to be put together." When they had passed the Badia, they saw a procession winding up the hill slopes. The evening breeze was blowing out the flickering flames of the candles in their gilded wooden candlesticks. The painted banners were surrounded by girls in the white and blue of their religious society. Then came a little St. John, fair with curly hair, naked except for the lamb's fleece, showing his bare arms and shoulders; and then a St. Mary Magdalen of seven, robed in the gold of her crimped hair. The inhabitants of Fiesole were following in a crowd. Countess Martin recognised Choulette in their midst. He was singing, a candle in one hand, his book in the other, blue spectacles on the end of his nose. The candle cast a yellow light over his flat fea- tures, the bumps on his skull, and his dishevelled hair. His unkempt beard rose and fell to the measure of the hymn. THE RED LILY 163 In the lurid lights and shadows he looked old and robust, and, like the hermits, capable of living through a century of penance. "How grand he is!" said Therese. "He poses to himself. He is a great artist." "Oh! darling, why won't you allow that M. Choulette is really pious? Why? It is so sweet and so beautiful to believe. Poets realise that. If M. Choulette had no faith, he would not be able to write such fine verses." "And you, dear, have you faith?" "Oh! Yes, I believe in God and in the words of Christ." At length the canopy, the banners, and the white veils had all disappeared round a corner of the hill. But Choulette's bare head, illuminated by the candle-light, was still to be seen. Meanwhile, Dechartre was waiting alone in the garden. Therese found him, leaning against the balustrade of that terrace, where he had felt the first agony of love. While Miss Bell and the Prince were choosing a place for the new bell's campanile, he took Therese for a moment in among the broom bushes. "You promised to be in the garden on my arrival. I have been waiting for an hour, which seemed like eternity. You ought not to have gone out. Your absence surprised and distressed me." She replied vaguely that she had been obliged to go to the station, and that Miss Bell had driven her back in the trap. He asked her to forgive his anxiety. But everything alarmed him. Even his happiness made him tremble. They were already at dinner when Choulette appeared, looking like some ancient satyr, a strange light gleaming in his phosphorescent eyes. Since his return from Assisi, he had lived with the people. He spent his days drinking Chianti wine with doubtful women and working men, ad- monishing them to be glad and innocent, announcing the coming of Jesus Christ and the quickly approaching aboli- tion of taxes and military service. After the procession, he had assembled the crowd in the ruins of the Roman theatre, and in Macaronic language, a jumble of French and Tuscan, 164 THE RED LILY preached a sermon, which he was now pleased to repeat: "Kings, Senators, and Judges have said: 'We are the life of the people.' Now '.l~y lie. They are the coffin who says: 'I am the cradle.' "The life of the people is in the fields growing white unto the harvest in the sight of the Lord. It is in the vines hanging from the branches of the young elms, and in the smiles and the tears which the heavens rain down upon the fruits of the trees in the meadows and orchards. "The life of the people is not in the laws, made by the powerful and rich for the preservation of power and wealth. "The heads of kingdoms, and republics have written in their books that international law is the law of war. And they have glorified violence. They honour conquerors; in the public squares they erect statues to the victor and to his steed. But no one has the right to kill: wherefore the just man will refuse to draw his number for conscription. No man has the right to encourage the madness and the crimes of a prince who has been placed over a kingdom or a republic: wherefore the just man will not pay taxes; and he will not give his money to the publicans. In peace he will enjoy the fruit of his labour; and he will make bread of the corn he has sown, and he will eat of the fruits of the trees he has trimmed." "Ah! Monsieur Choulette," said Prince Albertinelli gravely, "you are right to take an interest in the condition of our poor country, ruined by taxation. What profit can one derive from land taxed at the rate of 33 per cent, on its net annual value? Master and servants are alike the prey of the publicans." Dechartre and Madame Martin were both struck by the unexpected sincerity of his manner. "I love the King," he added. "There is no question of my loyalty. But I grieve for the sufferings of the peasants." The truth is that he was pertinaciously pursuing one sin- gle object: that of restoring his country estate of Casentino. His father, one of Victor-Emmanuel's artillery officers, had left three-quarters of it in the hands of money-lenders. His son concealed his purpose beneath affected indolence. But THE RED LILY 165 he allowed himself no vices except such as were useful and would tend to accomplish the object of his life. It was with the design of becoming a great Tuscan landed proprietor that he had dealt in pictures, secretly sold the famous ceil-, ings of his palace, paid his addresses to old women, and finally asked for the hand of Miss Bell, whom he knew to be an adept at money-making and housekeeping. He really loved the land and its peasants. And Choulette's fervent words, which he only half understood, appealed to that love. He permitted himself to say what he really thought: "In a country where the master and servants are one family, the fate of the one depends on that of the other. Taxation ruins us. What fine fellows our farmers are! In the cultivation of the land they are unequalled." Madame Martin confessed that she would not have thought it. It was only in Lombardy that she had seen fields well cultivated and well watered. Tuscany looked to her like a beautiful neglected orchard. The Prince replied smiling that perhaps she might alter her opinion if she were to do him the honour of visiting his farms at Casentino, in spite of their having suffered from long and ruinous law-suits. There she would see the true Italian peasant. "I pay great attention to my estate. I was coming from it this evening when I had the double pleasure of meeting at the station, Miss Bell, who was claiming her treasure, and you, Madame, who were talking to a friend from Paris." He had thought that he might annoy her by speaking of this meeting. Looking round the table he noticed the ex- pression of grieved surprise which Dechartre had been un- able to conceal. He insisted: "Pardon a country person who flatters himself on pos- sessing a certain social discrimination, Madame; but I saw that the gentleman talking to you must be a Parisian, be- cause of his English air, and his affectation of English stiffness which only served to display the ease and vivacity of the Frenchman." "Oh!" said Therese carelessly, "I had not seen him for a long while. And I was very surprised to meet him at Florence just as he was going away." 166 THE RED LILY She looked at Dechartre who pretended not to be lis- tening. "But I know the gentleman," said Miss Bell. "It was M. Le Menil. I sat next him at dinner twice, at Madame Mar- tin's, and he talked very well. He told me that he liked football, that he had introduced it into France, and that now it is very fashionable. He also told me about his hunt- ing. He is very fond of animals. I notice that sportsmen are always fond of animals. I assure you, darling, that M. Le Menil can talk delightfully of hares. He knows their habits. He told me it was charming to see them dancing by moonlight in the heather. He assured me that they are very intelligent, and that he had seen an old hare, pursued by dogs, forcing another hare out of its hiding-place, in order to put them off the track. Darling, has M. Le Menil ever talked to you about hares?" Therese replied that she did not remember. She thought sportsmen were always bores. Miss Bell replied that she did not believe M. Le Menil could bore any one when he described hares dancing by moonlight in the vines and the heather. Like Phanion, she would like to train a little hare. "Don't you know Phanion, darling? I am sure M. Dechartre knows her. She was beautiful and beloved of poets. She lived in the Island of Cos, in a house on the side of a hill, covered with lemon and terebinth trees, and on the shore of a blue sea. It is said that she used to gaze at the blue waves. I told Phanion's story to M. Le Menil, and he was very pleased with it. A hunter had given her a leveret, taken from the mother when she was still feeding it. Phanion took it in her lap and gave it spring flowers to eat. It loved Phanion and forgot its mother. It died of eating too many flowers. Phanion mourned over it. She buried it in the garden, beneath the lemon-trees in a grave, which she could see from her bed. And the poet's singing consoled the shade of the leveret." Kind Madame Marmet said that M. Le Menil had a dis- cretion and a charm of manner seldom met with in the young men of the present day. She would have liked to see him. She wanted ta ask him to do her a service. THE RED LILY 167 "It is on behalf of my nephew," she said. "He is an ar- tillery captain, well thought of and very popular with his superior officers. His colonel has for some time been at- tached to M. Le Menil's uncle, General de La Briche. If M. Le Menil would be so kind as to ask his uncle to write a few lines recommending my nephew to Colonel Faure, I should be very grateful to him. Besides, M. Le Menil knows my nephew. They met last year at Caen, at th fancy dress ball given at the Hotel d'Angleterre, by Captain de Lessay to the officers of the garrison and the ycung men of the neighbourhood." Looking down, Madame Marmet added: "The women there were of course not in society, but I heard that some were very pretty. Many had been brought from Paris. My nephew, who told me about it, was dressed as a postillion; M. Le Menil as one of the Black Hussars; * he was a great success." Miss Bell said she regretted not having known that M. Le Menil was at Florence. She would have liked to invite him to come to Fiesole. Dechartre was gloomy and distracted for the rest of the evening. And, when they parted, Therese noticed that he did not press her hand. *A cavalry regiment founded by Frederick the Great; the sabres of these hussars were engraved with a skull and two cross bones. W.S. XXIII E next day when they met in the little house in the _ Via Alfieri, she found him anxious. At first, by an ex- uberance of gaiety, by the charm of her tenderness and by the proud humility of a mistress who offers her beauty, she tried to dispel his melancholy. But he continued depressed. All night long he had been thinking and pondering and re- flecting on his sorrow and his distress. His mind discerned a relation between the hand posting the letter in front of the bronze San Marco and the commonplace but menacing stranger seen at the railway station. Now Jacques De- chartre had a name for his anguish. An army of dark fancies assailed him as he sat, at Therese's invitation, in the grandmother's chair she had occupied on the day of her first happy coming. She meanwhile leant upon his arm and pressed against it her soft figure and her warm, loving heart. The cause of his sorrow she knew too well to ask. Trying to suggest pleasant thoughts she reminded him of the secrets that room enclosed and of their walks through the city. She lavished upon him all the graces of intimacy. "You remember that little spoon you gave me under the Lanzi, with the red lily for a handle," she said. "I use it every morning for my tea. When I awake, the delight I feel at the sight of it tells me how much I love you." Then, when he answered in sad mysterious words, she said: "I am here at your side, and you are not thinking of me. You are occupied with some idea of which I am ignorant. Nevertheless, I exist, and your idea is nothing." "An idea is nothing? Do you think so? An idea can r ender us happy or miserable. An idea can kill us or make MS live. Yes, I am thinking ..." "Of what are you thinking?" "Why do you ask me? You know. I am thinking of what I heard yesterday, of what you have concealed from ine I am thinking of a meeting yesterday, at the station. THE RED LILY 169 It was not the result of chance, but had been arranged by a letter posted do you remember? in the letter-box of Or San Michele. Oh! I don't reproach you. I haven't the right. But why did you become mine, if you were not free?" She thought it best to lie. "If you mean the person I met at the station yesterday I assure you it was a meeting of no consequence." He noticed sorrowfully that she dared not name him of whom she spoke. He also avoided pronouncing his name. "Therese, did he not come here to see you? Did you not know that he was at Florence? Is he nothing more to you than a man you meet in society and receive in your own home? Was it not on his account that you said to me on the Arno bank: 'I cannot!' Is he nothing to you?" She replied resolutely: "Sometimes he comes to see me. General Lariviere intro- duced him. I have nothing else to tell you. I assure you that he does not interest me in the slightest, and that I can- not think what you are imagining." It gave her a kind of pleasure thus to deny the man who had so violently and so sternly asserted his rights over her. But she hastened to be frank once more. With her beautiful soft serious eyes she looked at her lover and said: "Listen: from the day when I became yours my life has belonged to you entirely. If you have a doubt, a single anxiety, question me. The present is yours and yours only, you know. As for my past, if you knew how empty it was you would be happy. I cannot think that any woman, made for love as I am, could have brought you a heart more com- pletely yours. That I swear to you. During the years be- fore I knew you, I did not live. Don't let us talk of them. There is nothing in them of which I need be ashamed. Regret! that is another matter. I regret having known you so late. Why did you not come earlier, my love? Five years ago I would have given myself to you as willingly as to-day. But do not let us question the years that are past. Remember Lohengrin. If you love me, I am your Knight of the Swan. I have asked you nothing. I have wanted to know nothing. I have not reproached you with Made- moiselle Jeanne Tancrede. I saw that you loved me, that i/o THE RED LILY you were in trouble; and that was enough, because I loved you." "A woman can't be jealous like a man, nor can she feel what causes us the sharpest agony." "I don't know. Why not?" "Why? Because in the blood, in the flesh of a woman there is not that ridiculous yet noble desire for possession, that ancient instinct which man claims as his right. Man is a god whose creature must be his alone. From time im- memorial woman has shared her possessions. Our passions have their roots in the past, the obscure past. When we are born we are already old. For a woman jealousy is merely the wounding of her self-love. In man it is an agony with all the acuteness of mental suffering and all the persistence of physical pain. . . . You ask why? Because, in spite of my submissiveness and my respect, in spite of the fear with which you inspire me, you are matter, I am thought, you are the chattel, I am the soul, you are the clay, I am the potter. Oh, you need not complain. What is the rude and humble potter by the side of the rounded amphora be- wreathed with garlands? She is calm and beautiful. He is miserable. He is in torture: he wills and he suffers; for to will is to suffer. Yes I am jealous. I know what my jeal- ousy is. When I analyse it, I find it compounded of heredi- tary prejudice, savage pride, diseased sensibility, a mingling of stupid violence and cruel weakness, foolish and wicked rebellion against the laws of life and the universe. But it is useless for me to contemplate it in all its nakedness: it is and it tortures me. I am the chemist, who studying the properties of the acid he has drunk, knows with what bases it can combine and what salts it can form. But the acid meanwhile is burning him and will burn him to the marrow of his bones." "My love, you are absurd." "Yes, I am absurd. I know it better than you. To de- sire a woman in the flower of her beauty and her intelli- gence, mistress of herself, who knows and dares and is in that all the more beautiful and desirable, who can choose with insight, free and unfettered; to desire her, to love her for all that she is and to suffer because she possesses neither THE RED LILY 171 the childish candour, nor the pale innocence, which would shock one in her, if it were possible to find them; to ask her to be at once herself and not herself, to adore her for what life has made her and yet to regret bitterly that life, which has made her so beautiful, should have even touched her. Oh! it is absurd. I love you, do you understand, I love you with all that you bring me of sensations and habits, with all that your experience has taught you, with all that may even come from him, from them, how can I tell? . . . This is my delight, this is my agony. There must be some pro- found meaning in that popular imbecility which regards love as a crime. Joy when it is intense is a crime. That is why I suffer, my beloved." She knelt before him, took his hands, and drew him to her. "I cannot bear to see you suffer and I cannot let you. It would be madness. I love you, and I have never loved any but you. You may believe me, I am speaking the truth." He kissed her on the forehead. "If you were deceiving me, darling, I should bear you no ill-will for it. On the contrary I should be grateful. What can be more lawful, more human than to deceive sorrow? What would become of us if women did not take pity and lie? Yes, lie, my beloved, lie in all charity. Give me the dream which shall gladden the night of my sorrow. Lie fearlessly; you will but add one more illusion to that of love and beauty." He sighed: "Oh! for common sense, for common wisdom!" She asked him what he meant by common wisdom. He replied that it was a wise but a brutal proverb and that he had better not repeat it. "Tell me," she said. "You really want me to tell you: 'The mouth that is kissed keeps its freshness.' " And he added: "It is true that love preserves beauty, and that a woman feeds on caresses as a bee feeds on flowers." "I swear to you," she replied, "that I have never loved but you. No caresses have preserved any beauty I may be 172 THE RED LILY so fortunate as to have to offer you. I love you. I swear I love only you." And she sealed her oath with a kiss on his lips. But he remembered the Or San Michele letter and the Stranger at the railway station. "If you really loved me you would not love any one else." She rose indignant. "Then you think that I love another? But what you say is horrible. That's what you think of me. And then you gay that you love me. ... I pity you; you are mad." "Yes, I am mad. Say so. Say so again." Kneeling at his feet she took his face in her soft hands. She told him he was mad to trouble so much about an in- significant meeting. She made him believe her, or rather she induced him to forget. He saw, he knew, he felt nothing but those slight hands, those burning lips, that eager mouth, that heaving breast and all those charms that were his. His only thought was to lose himself in her. His wrath and bitterness vanished; and there remained the keen desire to forget everything and make her forget everything in a voluptuous unconsciousness. Goaded by anxiety and desire, she showed the passion she aroused ; she realised at once her power and her weakness, inspired by the half unconscious will to give more of herself than ever, she gave love for love with an instinctive ardour she had never experienced before. In the warm shaded room, the sun's golden beams were falling on the hems of the curtains, and the basket of straw- berries beside a bottle of Asti wine on the table. By the bedside, there was a smile on the faded lips of the Venetian lady's clearly outlined form. On the screens the Bergamo and Verona masks laughed joyously in silence. A full blown rose in a glass was dropping its leaves one by one. The silence was redolent of love; they sank down weary with passion. She fell asleep on her lover's breast. Her pleasure con- tinued in her light slumber. When she opened her eyes, she said, joyfully: "I love you." With his elbow on the pillow, he was looking at her in dumb anguish. THE RED LILY 173 She asked him why he was sad. "You were so happy a few minutes ago. Why aren't you now?" But he shook his head and did not speak: "Do say. I would rather hear you complain than that you should be silent." Then he said: "You want to know. Then do not be angry. My grief is greater than ever, because now I know what you can give." She drew away quickly, her eyes full of sorrow and re- proach. "Can you think that I have ever been to another what I am to you! You wound my most tender feeling, my love for you. I cannot forgive you. I love you. I have never loved another. You alone have caused me to suffer. Be happy. You wound me to the quick. . . . Can you be cruel?" "Therese, when one loves one is never kind." Sitting on the bed, with her legs hanging down, like a bather's, she remained long motionless and lost in thought. A blush spread over her face, which had been pale with passion, and tears filled her eyes. "Therese, you are crying." "Forgive me, dear. It is the first time I have loved and been really loved. I am afraid." XXIV IN the Villa of Bells there was heard the heavy thud of trunks being brought down the staircase. Pauline loaded with bundles was tripping down the steps. Kind Madame Marmet with calm solicitude was watching the despatch of the luggage; and Miss Bell was dressing in her room. Therese in a grey travelling gown was leaning against the balustrade of the terrace, and taking one last look at the City of the Flower. She had decided to go. In every letter her husband clamoured for her return. If, as he urgently entreated, she returned to Paris early in May, they might give two or three political dinners, followed by receptions, before the Grand Prix. His party was being borne into power on a wave of public opinion; and Garain thought that Countess Martin's salon might exercise an excellent influence on the country's future. Such reasons did not appeal strongly to her; but now she felt kindly disposed towards her husband, and wished to please him. Two days before she had heard from her father. M. Montessuy did not discuss his son-in- law's political projects, neither did he give advice to his daughter; but he contrived to let her understand that people were talking about Countess Martin's mysterious visit to Florence, where she was said to be leading a somewhat fantastic, sentimental existence, with poets and artists at the Villa of Bells. She herself felt that she was too closely watched in the little world of Fiesole. In her new life, Madame Marmet worried her, and Prince Albertinelli caused her anxiety. Her rendez-vous in the Via Alfieri were be- coming dangerous and difficult. Professor Arrighi, a friend of the Prince, had met her one evening, walking in a lonely street, on Dechartre's arm. Professor Arrighi, author of a treatise on agriculture, was the most amiable of scholars. He had turned away his handsome heroic face, with its white moustache, and merely remarked to her the next day: *'I used to be able to divine the approach of a beautiful 174 THE RED LILY 175 woman from a distance. Now that I have passed the age when ladies like to look at me, the gods are pitiful: they spare me the sight of them. My eyes are very bad, and can- not recognise even the most charming face." She under- stood and accepted the warning. She now longed to hide her happiness in the immensity of Paris. Vivian, to whom she had announced her approaching de- parture, had urged her to stay a few days longer. But Therese suspected that her friend was still shocked at the advice she had received one night in the tapestried room, and that she was no longer quite happy in the society of a confidant who disapproved of her choice; she imagined also that the Prince had represented her as a flirt, and, possibly, as immoral. Her departure was fixed for the 5th of May. It was a clear bright day in the valley of the Arno. Therese, as she dreamed, saw the blue basin illumined by the morning's rosy light. She leant forward, trying to descry, at the foot of the flower covered slope, the barely discernible spot, where she had known infinite joy. Far below, she saw a little dark spot which was the cemetery- garden and near at hand she knew was the Via Alfieri. There came before her a vision of that dear room she would never again enter. Those hours passed beyond recall had all the sadness of a dream. She felt her eyes grow dim, her knees tremble, and her spirit fail. She seemed to be leaving her life behind in that spot near the dark cypress-trees. She reproached herself with feeling troubled when she ought to be glad and confident. She knew she would see Jacques Dechartre at Paris. They would have liked to arrive at the same time, or rather to travel together. Although they had judged it best for him to stay three or four days longer at Florence, their meeting was not far off, already it was fixed and she was living in the thought of it. Her love was her life, her very flesh and blood. Nevertheless she was leaving a part of herself in the house of goats and nymphs, a part of herself which would never come back to her. In the height of life's vigour she was dying to things infinitely precious and delicate. She remembered that Dechartre had said: "The lover is a fetich worshipper; on the terrace I gathered some dry black privet berries that you had looked i;6 THE RED LILY at." Why had she not thought of bringing away one little stone of the house where she had forgotten the world? A cry from Pauline disturbed her revery. Bounding from behind a brown bush, Choulette had suddenly kissed the maid as she was carrying bags and cloaks to the carriage. Now he was running along the path as gay as a satyr, with ears pricked up horn-like on each side of his shining skull. "Good-morning," he said to Countess Martin. "So I must bid you farewell, Madame." He was remaining in Italy at the behest of a lady; that lady was Rome. He wanted to see the cardinals. One of them, said to be a man of sense, might possibly entertain the idea of Choulette 's socialist and revolutionary church. His object was to plant on the ruins of a cruel and unjust civi- lisation the cross of Calvary, no longer bare and dead, but alive and sheltering the world beneath its living arms. For the accomplishment of his purpose he was founding an order and a newspaper. Madame Martin knew the order. The newspaper, which was to cost a halfpenny, would be couched in rhythmic phrases and plaintive lines. It could and should be sung. Verse, if it were very simple, passionate or gay, was really the only language suitable for the people. Prose was only for persons of subtle intelligence. He had met anarchists among the money-changers of the Rue Saint- Jacques. They passed their evenings reciting and listening to ballads. And he added: "A newspaper which should be a collection of songs would appeal to the heart of the people. They say I am a genius. I don't know whether they are right. But at least you must admit that I have a practical mind." Miss Bell was coming down the steps, putting on her gloves. "Oh! darling, the town and the mountains and the sky are determined to make you weep when you bid them good- bye. They clothe themselves in beauty to-day to make you regret leaving them and long to see them again." But Choulette, weary of the parched brilliance of the Tuscan landscape, pined for green Umbria and its cloudy sky. He remembered Assisi, standing as if at prayer, in her THE RED LILY 177 fertile pasture, in the midst of a mellower humbler country. "There," he said, "are woods and rocks, and glades, above which may be seen the sky with white, fleecy clouds I walked in the footsteps of St. Francis, and I put his hymn to the Sun into good old simple French rhymes." Madame Martin said she would like to hear it. Miss Bell was listening already, and on her face was a rapt expression, which made her look like one of Mine's angels. Choulette warned them that it was artless and unpolished. The lines laid no claim to be beautiful. They were simple and unequal, so as not to be heavy. Then slowly and in a monotonous voice, he recited the hymn. Je vous louerai, mon Dieu, d'avoir fait aimable et clair Ce monde ou vous voulez que nous attendions de vivre. Vous 1'avez seme d'or, d'emeraude et d'outremer, Cotnme un peintre qui met des peintures dans un livre. Je vous louerai d'avoir cree le seigneur Soleil, Qui luit a tout le monde, et de 1'avoir voulu faire Aussi beau qu'il est bon, tres digne de vous, vermeil, Splendide et rayonnant, en forme exacte de sphere. Je vous louerai, mon Dieu, pour notre frere le Vent, Pour notre soeur la Lune et pour nos sceurs les Etoiles, Et d'avoir au ciel bleu mis le nuage mouvant Et tendu les vapeurs du matin comme des toiles. Je vous louerai, Seigneur, je vous benirai, mon Dieu, Pour le brin de 1'hysope et le cime de 1'yeuse, Pour mon frere terrible et plein de bonte, le Feu, Et pour 1'Eau, notre soeur humble, chaste et precieuse. Pour la Terre qui, forte, a son sein vetu du fleurs, Nourrit la mere avec 1'enfant riant dans les langes, Et rhomme qui vous aime, et le pauvre dont les pleurs Au sortir de ses yeux vous sont portes par les anges. Pour notre soeur la Vie et pour notre soeur la Mort, Je vous louerai, Seigneur, d'ores a mon ultime heure, Afin d'etre en mourant le nourrisson qui s'endort Dans la belle vespree et pour une aube meilleure." * * Here follow the Italian original and Mrs. Oliphant's transla- tion, from her "Life of St. Francis of Assisi," 1868, the latter by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan. W.S. 17? THE RED LILY "Oh! Monsieur Choulette," said Miss Bell, "this hymn ascends to heaven, like the hermit in the Campo Santo at Pisa, who is climbing the mountain on which goats love to graze. I will tell you how it is: the hermit is going up, leaning on the staff of faith; and his step is unequal, be- cause the stick being on one side, one of his feet moves more quickly than the other. That is why your lines are unequal. Oh! I understand." The poet accepted this praise, persuaded that uncon- sciously he had deserved it. "You have faith, Monsieur Choulette," said Therese, 1 Altissimu, onnipotente, bon signore, Tue so le laude la gloria e 1'onore E onne benedictione, A te solu, altissimu, se konfanno: E nullu homo ene dignu te mentovare. 2 Laudatu si, mi signore, Cum tucte le tue creature Spetialmente messer lu frate sole, Lu quale lu iorno allumeni per nui; E ellu e bellu e radiante cum grande splendore; De te, altissimu, porta significatione. 3 Laudatu si, mi signore, per sora luna e le stelle; In celu 1'ai formate clarite e pretiose e belle. 4 Laudatu si, mi signore, per frate ventu E per acre e nubilo e sereno e onne tempu, Per le quale a le tue creature dai sustentamentu. 5 Laudatu si, mi signore, per sor aqua, La quale e multo utile e humele e pretiosa e casta. 6 Laudatu si, mi signore, Per frate focu, per la quale n'allumeni la nocte; E ellu e bellu e iocondu e robustosu e forte. THE RED LILY 179 "What good does it do you if it doesn't help you to write good verses?" "It helps me to sin, Madame." "Oh! We can sin without it." Madame Marmet appeared, ready for the journey. With placid pleasure she was looking forward to returning to her little flat in the Rue de la Chaise, her little dog Toby, and her old friend M. Lagrange. After the Etruscans of Fiesole, she would be glad to see her own domestic warrior among Laudatu si, mi signore, per sora nostra matre terra, La quale ne sustenta e governa E produce diversi fructi e colorati flori e herba. 8 Laudatu si, mi signore, Per quilli ke perdonano per lo tuo amore E sostengo infirmitate e tribulatione : Beati quilli ke le sosterrano in pace, Ka da te, altissimu, sirano incoronati. Laudatu si, mi signore, per sora nostra morte corporate, Da la quale nullu homo vivente po skampare : Guai a quilli ke morrano in peccato mortale ; Beati quilli ke se trovara ne le tue sanctissime voluntate, Ka la morte secunda non li potera far male : 10 Laudate e benedicete lu mi signore e rengratiate E servite a lui cum grande humilitate. Amen THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN, OR THE SONG OF THE CREATURES. Highest omnipotent good Lord, Glory and honour to Thy name adored, And praise and every blessing Of everything Thou art the source No man is worthy to pronounce Thy name. i8o THE RED LILY the sweet-meat boxes, looking out of the window across the Place du Bon Marche. Miss Bell drove her friends to the station in her trap. Praised by His creatures all, Praised be the Lord my God, By Messer Sun, my brother above all, Who by his rays lights us and lights the day; Radiant is she with his great splendour stored, Thy glory. Lord, confessing. By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised, Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised. By Brother Wind, my Lord, Thy praise is said, By air and clouds and the blue sky o'erhead, By which Thy creatures all are kept and fed, By one most humble, useful, precious, chaste, By Sister Water, O my Lord, Thou art praised. And praised is my Lord By Brother Fire, he who lights up the night Jocund, robust is he, and strong and bright. Praised art Thou, my Lord, by Mother Earth Thou who sustainest her and governest, And to her flowers, fruit, herbs, dost colour give and birth. And praised is my Lord By those who, for Thy love, can pardon give, And bear the weakness and the wrongs of men, Blessed are those who suffer thus in peace, By Thee, the Highest, to be crowned in Heaven. Praised by our Sister Death, my Lord, art Thou, From whom no living man escapes. Who die in mortal sin have mortal woe ; But blessed they who die doing Thy will, The second death can strike at them no blow. ,*! Praises and thanks and blessing to my Master be, Serve ye Him all with great humility. XXV DECHARTRE had come to the carriage door to bid the travellers good-bye. Parted from him, Therese realised all he was to her: he had given her life a new and delicious zest, so keen, so real, that she seemed to feel the savour of it on her lips. She was living as if under a spell, in the hope of seeing him again ; her happy revery was only occasionally broken, when Madame Marmet remarked dur- ing the journey: "I think we are crossing the frontier," or "Look at the rose-trees in bloom on the seashore." Her inward joy remained with her when, after a night in a Mar- seilles hotel, she saw the grey olive trees in their stony fields, then the mulberry trees and the distant outline of Mount Pilatus, and the Rhone, and Lyons, and then the familiar country, the tops of the clusters of trees, recently dark and violet, now clothed in tender green, the hill slopes carpeted with little lines of cultivated land, and the rows of poplars along the river banks. The journey passed smoothly for her. She was tasting the fulness of past hours and the wonder of deep joy. When the train stopped in the blue light of the station, it was with the smile of an awakened sleeper that she greeted her husband, delighted to see her back. Kissing kind Madame Marmet, she told her she thanked her with all her heart. And truly, she thanked everything, like Choulette's St. Francis. In the carriage, driving along the quays in the glow of the setting sun, she listened patiently to her husband's story of his oratorical successes, the plans of his party, his own projects and hopes, and the necessity of giving two or three big political dinners. She closed her eyes to think better. She said to herself: "I shall have a letter to-morrow; and I shall see him again in a week." When the carriage had crossed the bridge, she looked at the water all on fire with the reflection of the sunset, at the smoky arches of the bridge, the rows of plane-trees and the chestnut-trees in flower in the quincunxes of Cours-la-Reine; 182 THE RED LILY all these familiar sights wore a new loveliness in her eyes. It seemed as if her love had given a new colour to the universe. And she asked herself if the stones and trees recognised her. She was wondering how it was that her silence, her eyes, her very flesh, and the sky and the earth did not cry out her secret. M. Martin-Belleme, thinking she was tired, advised her to rest. And at night, locked in her room, amid a silence so intense that she could hear her heart beat, she wrote her absent lover a letter full of those words which are like flowers in their perennial freshness: "I love you, I wait for you. I am happy. I feel you near me; you and I are alone in the world. From my window I see a twinkling blue star. I look at it and think that you also may be gazing at it from Florence. I have put the spoon with its red lily handle on my table. Come. I long for you from afar. Come!" And thus she found ever new in her heart those thoughts and sensa- tions which are eternal. For a week she lived this inner life, in the sweet memory of days in the Via Alfieri, feeling still the impression of kisses she had received and loving herself because another loved her. She employed the greatest care and the most delicate taste in ordering her new dresses. In this she pleased and aimed at pleasing herself. Madly anxious when there was nothing for her at the post office, trembling and glad when there was handed to her from behind the counter an envelope on which she recognised the round elaborate writing of her lover. Memories, desires, and hopes de- vourc- 4 her; and thus the ardent hours passed quickly by. It was only the morning of the day of his arrival that seemed to her hatefully long. She was at the station be- fore the train was due. It was announced to be late, and she felt crushed. An optimist, and like her father, believ- ing that fate must always be on her side, this unforeseen delay seemed to her like treachery. For three-quarters of an hour, the grey light filtering through the dull win- dows of the station seemed to fall on her like so many grains of sand in an hour-glass, measuring out the minutes of her lost happiness. She was despairing, when in the red light of the setting sun she saw the huge engine stop THE RED LILY 183 gently at the platform. Jacques, tall and slim, came to- wards her out of the crowd of travellers hurrying to the cabs. He looked at her with that kind of sombre, violent delight which she knew so well. He said: "Here you are at last. I was afraid that I should die before seeing you again. You do not know and I did not what torture it is to live a week away from you. I went back to the little house in the Via Alfieri. In the room you know so well, before the old pastel, I wept tears of love and passion." She looked up at him full of happiness, and said: "And don't you think that I called you, that I wanted you, that even when I was alone, I stretched out my arms to you? I had hidden your letters in the cabinet where I keep my jewels. I used to reread them every night: it was delightful, but it was imprudent. Your letters were too much like you, and yet not enough." They crossed the station-yard, among the cabs piled with luggage. She asked him if they were not going to hire a carriage. He did not reply, and seemed not to hear. She re- sumed: "I have been to see your house, but I dared not go in. I looked through the gate, and at the end of a court-yard, behind a plane-tree, I saw mullioned windows with rose trees climbing round them. And I said to myself: 'It is there.' I felt strangely moved." He was no longer listening, or looking at her. They crossed the pavement quickly, and by a narrow flight of steps, went down into a lonely street which flanked the lower side of the station-yard. There, among wooden sheds and stores of coal, was an inn with a restaurant on the ground-floor, and tables outside. Under the painted sign, white curtains were to be seen at the windows. Dechartre stopped at the little door and pushed Therese into the dark passage. She asked: "Where are you taking me? What time is it? I must be at home at half-past seven. We are mad." And in a red-tiled room, furnished with a walnut bed- 184 THE RED LILY stead, and a carpet in the pattern of a lion, they tasted one moment's divine oblivion. Coming downstairs, she said: "Jacques, my beloved, we we too happy; we are stealing life." XXVI next day she drove in a cab to a street half town, half country, half sad and half gay, where high gar- den walls alternated with newly built houses. She stopped where the pavement passes under the vaulted arch of a mansion in the Regency style, fantastically spanning the street, now covered with dust and oblivion. Here and there among the stone-work, green branches gladden this corner of the town. As she rang at the little gate, in the perspective limited by the houses, Therese saw a pulley on a skylight and a big gilded key, the sign of a lock-maker. Her glance eagerly drank in these sights which were new to her and yet already familiar. Pigeons flew over her head, and she heard the clucking of fowls. A countrified servant with a military moustache opened the gate. She found herself in a sanded court, shaded by a plane-tree. On the left, on a level with the street, was the porter's lodge, with canaries in cages at the windows. On this side, was the gable of the next house, covered with a green lattice-work. Leaning against it was the glazed frame of a sculptor's studio, through the glass of which could be seen plaster figures covered with dust. On the right, fixed to the low wall of the court, were precious fragments of friezes and the broken shafts of columns. In front were the six mul- lioned windows of the moderate sized house, half hidden by ivy and climbing roses. Enamoured of French fifteenth-century architecture, Philippe Dechartre had skilfully reproduced the charac- teristics of a private dwelling in the reign of Louis XII. Begun in the middle of the Second Empire, this house had never been finished. The builder of so many chateaux had died before completing his own shanty. It was better thus. It had been designed in a style which once had an air of distinction, but now appeared common and old-fashioned, 185 186 THE RED LILY The gardens that had once surrounded it had been gradu- ally built up. And to-day, cramped between the walls of high buildings, Philippe Dechartre's little mansion cor- rected the bad taste of its sham antiquity and its archaeo- logical romanticism by the pathos of its rough-hewn stone crumbling away in expectation of the mason, dead for per- haps twenty years, by the heaviness of its three incomplete dormer windows, by the simplicity of the inexpensive roof provided by the architect's widow, and by all the charm of the unfinished and the involuntary. Thus it harmonised better with that ugliness of the neighbourhood which re- sulted from the rapid increase of the population. After all, the house had a certain charm with its tumble- down air and its drapery of green. Suddenly and instinct- ively Therese discovered other harmonies. In that pic- turesque neglect, revealed by the ivy-covered walls, the darkened studio windows, and even by the bending plane tree, strewing with its scaled bark the grass of the court, she read the soul of the master, careless, spendthrift, bear- ing within him the eternal discontent of the passionate. For a moment her joy was clouded as she realised the indif- ference with which her lover treated his surroundings. Although united to a kind of grace and nobility, it be- trayed a detachment according ill with her own nature and the vigilant careful spirit of the Montessuy. She thought at once how, without disturbing the pensive charm of this wild place, she would introduce into it a spirit of order: she would have the path strewn with sand, and in the corner where there was most sun would plant some bright col- oured flowers. Sympathetically she gazed at a statue brought there from some ruined park. It was a Flora, covered with dark green moss and lying on the ground, her two arms by her side. Therese dreamed of raising her and making her the centre-piece for the fountain, the wa- ters of which were now trickling sadly into the bucket acting in lieu of a basin. Dechartre had been looking for her for an hour. Now he was glad, but still anxious. Trembling with agitation at his good fortune, he came down the steps to meet her. In the refreshing shade of the vestibule, from which Till!, ^ED .LILY 187 could be vaguely descried the severe beauty of bronzes and marbles, she paused, overcome by her heart's wild beating. He pressed her to him and gave her a long kiss. Through her emotion she heard him recalling the delights of the previous day. She saw the lion of Mount Atlas on the rug, and slowly and passionately she gave Jacques back his kisses. Up a winding wooden staircase, he led her into a large room, which had been his father's study, and where he himself drew, modelled, and read. Reading was a kind of opium to him, inspiring him with dreams over the open page. Over the cupboards and reaching to the painted beams of the ceiling was Gothic tapestry, delicately tinted, sug- gesting a fairy forest, and a lady wearing a high fifteenth- century head-dress, with a unicorn at her feet on the flower- strewn grass. He led her to a divan broad and low, with cushions cov- ered with sumptuous Spanish shawls and Byzantine dal- matics; but she sat down in an arm-chair. "You are here! Now the world may come to an end." "I used to think of the end of the world and not to fear it," she replied. "M. Lagrange out of politeness had promised me it should come; and I expected it. I was so dull before I knew you!" She looked round at the tables loaded with vases and statuettes, at the tapestry, the mass of glittering weapons, the enamels, marbles, paintings, and old books. "You have some beautiful things." "Most of them belonged to my father, who lived in the golden age of collectors. In 1851 he discovered thesi unicorn stories, the complete series of which is at Cluny, in an inn at Meung-sur-Yevre." But curious and disappointed, she said: "I don't see anything by you, here; not a statue, a low- relief, or one of those wax figures so admired in England, not one tiny statuette, or even a plaque or a medal." "How can you think I could bear to live in the midst *t my own works! ... I know my figures only too well. , . , i88 THE RED LILY They bore me. A thing loses its charm when you know its secret." She looked at him, pretending to be vexed: "You never told me that a thing loses its charm when you know its secret." He took her in his arms: "Ah! all that lives is mysterious. And you, my beloved, are for me an unsolved enigma, the meaning of which is the delight of life and the horror of death. Don't fear to be mine. I shall desire you always; I shall never know you. Does one ever possess what one loves? Are kisses and caresses anything but the strivings of a delicious de- spair? When I hold you in my arms, I still long for you; and I never have you, since I would have you always, since what I want in you is the impossible and the infinite. What you are the Gods only know. Do you think that because I have modelled a few indifferent figures I am a sculptor? I am rather a kind of a poet and philosopher seeking in nature subjects which shall agitate and torment me. Feeling for form does not satisfy me. My fellow sculptors laugh at me because I cannot be as simple as they. They are right. And that brute Choulette is right too when he would have us live without thought or desire. Our friend, the cobbler of Santa Maria Novella, who knows nought of all that would render him unjust or unfortunate, is a master in the art of life. I ought to love you in all simplicity without those metaphysics of passion which ren- der me absurd and unkind. The only good thing is to ignore and forget. Come, come, in the torture of our separation I have had cruel thoughts of you: come, my beloved. You yourself must drown these thoughts of you. It is through you only that I can forget you and myself." He took her in his arms, and, raising her veil, kissed her on the lips. She pulled the black tulle over her face, rather fright- ened in this strange big room and feeling embarrassed by the presence of unfamiliar objects. "Here!" she said; "surely you are not thinking." He said that they were alone. RED LILY 189 "Alone? But what about the man with the terrible moustache who opened the door to me?" He smiled: "That is Fusellier, my father's old servant. His wife and he compose my household. Don't be alarmed. They stay quietly in their lodge, sullen but faithful. You will see Madame Fusellier. She is familiar, I warn you." "Why, my love, should a butler and porter like M. Fusel- lier wear a Tartar's moustache?" "Nature gave it him, darling, and I would not deprive him of it. I am pleased that he should look like a retired sergeant-major turned nurseryman, for at times he in- spires me with the illusion that he is my country neighbour." Sitting on one corner of the divan, he drew her on to his knee and gave her kisses which she returned. Then she rose quickly, saying: "Show me the other rooms. I am curious. I want to see everything." He took her to the second floor. Water colours by Philippe Dechartre hung upon the walls of the corridor. Me opened a door and showed her into a room with ebony furniture. It was his mother's room. He kept it just as it had been in her lifetime. It looked as if it had been used but yesterday ; and it is only yesterday's past that really touches and saddens us. Although it was nine years since it had been used, the room seemed not yet to have resigned itself to solitude. The wardrobe mirror was watching for the old lady's glance, and on the onyx clock a pensive Sappho looked disappointed as she listened for the sound of the swinging pendulum. There were two portraits on the walls. One, by Ricard, was of Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with tumbled hair, his eyes lost in romantic dreams, his mouth full of elo- quence and good nature. The other, painted by a surer hand, was of a lady of uncertain age, thin, with an eager air and almost beautiful. "My poor mother's room is like me," said Jacques: "it remembers." 199 THE RED LILY "You are like your mother," said Therese. "You have her eyes. Paul Vence told me she adored you." "Yes," he replied, smiling, "mother was delightful: in- telligent, with excellent taste, but wonderfully absurd. In her maternal affection almost amounted to madness; she never left me a moment's peace; she tormented herself and me." Therese was looking at a bronze by Carpeaux, on a cabinet. Said Dechartre: "You recognise the Prince Imperial, by lus ears like wings in the statues of Zephyrus, enlivening a somewhat cold countenance. This bronze was a gift from Napoleon III. My parents used to visit Compiegne. Whilst the court was at Fontainebleau, my father took a plan of the chateau and drew the gallery. In the morning the Emperor would come in his frock-coat, smoking a meer- schaum pipe, and pose near him, like a penguin on a rock. At that time I was a day pupil at the Lycee Bonaparte. I used to listen to these stories at meals; and I have never forgotten them. The Emperor would stay there, quite calm and good-tempered, occasionally breaking the long silence by a few words, stifled beneath his heavy moustache. Then he would grow slightly animated and explain his ideas on machinery. He was an inventor and an engineer. He would take a pencil from his pocket and, to my fa- ther's despair, draw figures on his plans. Two or three sketches a week were regularly spoiled in this manner. . . . He was very fond of my father and promised him employ- ment and honours that never came. The Emperor was kind, but he had no influence, as mother used to say. I was a lad at that time. And ever since those days I have felt a vague sympathy for that man lacking genius, but with a heart kind and good, who amidst all life's vicissi- tudes conducted himself with a simple courage and a good- tempered fatalism. . . . "And then, I sympathise with him also, because he was opposed and insulted by those who wanted to take his place and who hadn't even his love for the people. Since then we have seen them in power. Ye Gods! What vil- lains! Senator Loyer, for example, who in tfr smoking- THE RED LILY 191 room, at your house, was stuffing cigars into his pocket, and inviting me to do so too. 'To smoke on the way home,' he said. This Loyer is a wicked man, one who is hard on the weak, the humble, and the unfortunate. And Garain, doesn't he disgust you? You remember my first dinner at your house, when we talked of Napoleon. Your hair was beautifully coiled in the nape of your neck in a 'mot pierced by a diamond arrow. Paul Vence talked subtly. Garain did not understand. You asked what I thought." "It was because I wanted you to shine. I was proud of you already." "Oh! I should never have been able to utter a single sentence in the presence of such serious people. Never- theless I should have liked to say that the third Napoleon appealed to me more than the first, and that I thought him more human. But perhaps such a sentiment would have been badly received. Besides, I am not so utterly devoid of talent as to trouble about politics." He was walking round the room and looking at the fur- niture with a tender affection. He opened a drawer in the bureau: "See, here are my mother's spectacles. How often she looked for them! Now I am going to show you my room. If it is not in order, you must forgive Madame Fusellier, who has orders to respect my untidiness." The window curtains were drawn and he let them re- main so. An hour later, she herself drew aside the folds of red satin. The rays of light dazzled her eyes and scat- tered themselves in her tumbled hair. She looked for a glass and found only a tarnished Venetian mirror in an ebony frame. Standing on tip-toe so as to see herself, she asked: "Is that dim shadowy spectre really I? Those who have been reflected in this glass can hardly have congratu- lated you on it." As she was taking her pins from the table, she saw a little bronze she had not noticed before. It was a piece of old Italian work in the Flemish style: a heavy, nude, short-legged figure of a woman, as if in flight, with arms 192 THE RED LILY extended. She thought it a trifle grotesque and vulgar "What is she doing?" she asked. "She is doing what Madame Mondanite is doing under the porch of the Bale Cathedral." But Therese, although she had been to Bale, did not know Madame Mondanite. She looked at the little bronze .again, but failed to understand, and asked: "Can it be so improper? I should have thought any- thing done under a church porch might be talked of here." Then suddenly a misgiving occurred to her: "Good gracious! What would M. and Madame Fusellier Tthink of me?" Then discovering on the wall a medallion by Dechartre, representing the interesting but vicious profile of a little street girl, she asked: "What is that?" "That is Clara, a little newspaper-seller of the Rue Demours. She used to bring me the Figaro every morn- ing. She had dimples on her cheeks that were nests for kisses. One day I said to her: 'I will draw your portrait.' She came one summer morning wearing earrings and rings bought at the Neuilly fair. Then I never saw her again. I don't know what has become of her. She was too much a creature of instinct ever to become a regular prostitute. Shall I take it away?" "No, it looks very well in that corner. I am not jealous of Clara." It was time for her to go home; but she couldn't make up her mind to leave him. She put her arms round her lover's neck. "Oh! I love you. And to-day you have been gay and light-hearted. Gaiety becomes you well. Yours is so sparkling and graceful. I should like you to be always gay. I want joy almost as much as love, and who will give it me if not you?" XXVII SINCE her return to Paris, now six weeks ago, Therese had been living as if in a slumber; and happy dreams had taken the place of conscious thought. Every day she met Jacques in the little house overshadowed by the plane- tree; and when at last she tore herself away, adorable memories lingered in her heart. Delicious languor and renewed desire linked the hours of love together. They both had the same tastes and were possessed by the same fancies. If one had a whim the other shared it. Together they delighted to explore that border region on the outskirts of the town. There the streets and purple painted taverns are shaded by acacias. Thistles grow on the stony roads along the bottom of the walls, while over fields and woods extends a pale sky streaked with smoke from the factory chimneys. She was glad to feel him near her in a country where she ceased to recognise herself and felt lost with him. That day, their whim had been to take the boat she had so often seen passing beneath her windows. She was not afraid of being recognised. There was no great dan- ger; and since she had been in love, she had forgotten to be prudent. Leaving behind the dusty barrenness of the suburbs, they came upon smiling banks; they passed islands with clumps of trees overshadowing rustic cafes and innumerable boats moored beneath the willows. They landed at Lower Meudon. She said she was hot and thirsty. He took her by a side door into a tavern, where there were furnished rooms to let. It was a building surrounded by wooden galleries. In its desertion it appeared larger than usual and seemed to slumber in rustic peace, waiting till Sunday should fill it with women's laughter, oarsmen's cries, the smell of cooking and stench of fried fish. They went up the ladder-like creaking stairs into a room on the first floor, where a waitress brought them wine and biscuits. Woollen curtains covered a mahogany bedstead, 193 194 THE RED LILY Over the mantelpiece, fixed across one corner, was inclined an oval mirror in a flowered frame. Through the open window could be seen the Seine, with its green banks, and hills in the distance, looking misty in the heat and the sun already inclining towards the tops of the poplar trees. Swarms of gnats were dancing by the river. The quivering peace of a summer evening alike pervaded sky, earth, and water. Long did Therese watch the flowing river. The steamer passed, pounding its screw through the water; and the swell lapping on the shore seemed to make the house on the bank roll like the boat. "I love the water," said Therese, turning to her lover. "How happy I am!" Their lips met. Lost in the enchanted abyss of love, the passing of time was unmarked for them save every ten minutes, after the passing of the boat, by the ripple of the waves breaking beneath the open window. Her clothes carelessly thrown on one side strewed the floor. She lifted her head from the pillow and saw her- self in the glass. To Dechartre's loving praise she replied: "It is true I am made for love." With sensitive immodesty she contemplated her own image in the silver light of the mirror. "I love myself because you love me." Certainly he loved her; and he could not explain to himself why his love was a fervent pity, a kind of sacred passion. It was not on account of her beauty, so rare and so infinitely precious. Her figure had the true lines, but line follows motion and is always fleeting; it is lost and is found again, the joy and the despair of artists. A beautiful line is the lightning which burns the eye while rejoicing it. One admires but one is also overwhelmed. The impulse of love and desire is a sweet and terrible force, stronger than beauty. There is one woman in a thousand, whom when you have once possessed you can never leave; you desire her always and for ever. The flower of her beauty is the cause of this incurable malady of love. But there is another and inexplicable cause; it THE RED LILY 195 is the soul of her body. She was that woman, who can be neither abandoned nor deceivea. "Ah! you cannot leave me," she cried joyfully. She asked him why since he thought her beautiful he did not model her bust. "Why? Because I am but a second-rate sculptor. But I know it and that is not to be second-rate. However, if you insist on regarding me as a great artist I will give you other reasons. To create a living figure you must treat your model as mere matter to be pounded and moulded until it distils the very essence of its beauty. But in you everything is dear to me, your form, your flesh, your whole self. If I were to do your bust I should be servilely at- tentive to trifles, which are everything for me, because they are something of you. I could not help it, and it would prevent my work from arriving at any unity." She looked at him a little surprised. He resumed: "I do not say that it would be so if I were to work from memory. I have attempted a little pencil sketch, that I always carry with me." As she insisted on seeing it, he showed it to her. It was on the leaf of an album, a very bold simple sketch. She did not recognise it, thought it hard, with an expression that seemed foreign to her. "Ah! is that how you see me, is that the impression I make on you?" He closed the album. "No, it is merely a reminder, a note, that's all. But I think the note is correct. Probably you don't see your- self quite as I see you. Every human being has a different personality for every one who looks at him." With a kind of forced gaiety, he added: "From that point of view one may say that the same woman has never been the mistress of two men. That is Paul Vence's idea." "I think it true," said Therese. "What time is it?" she asked. It was seven o'clock. She said they must go. Every evening she was later 196 THE RED LILY going home. Her husband had noticed it. He had said: "We are always the last to arrive at a dinner-party; there is a fatality about it." But he himself was frequently late, being detained at the Palais-Bourbon. The budget was under discussion; and he was absorbed by the duties of the subcommittee on which he had been appointed reporter. And so reasons of state covered Therese's unpunctuality. With a smile she recalled the evening when she had reached Madame Garain's at half-past eight. She was afraid her hostess would be annoyed. But it was the day of a famous question in the Chamber; and her hus- band and Garain did not arrive till nine o'clock, when they both dined without waiting to dress. They had saved the ministry. Suddenly she became thoughtful. "I shall have no excuse, my love, for remaining in Paris when the Chamber is adjourned. Already Father can't understand the devotion that keeps me here. In a week I must join him at Dinard. What shall I do without you?" She clasped her hands and looked at him with a sadness that was infinitely tender. But he said gloomily: "It is I, Therese, I who must wonder anxiously what will become of me without you. When you leave me I am besieged by sorrowful imaginings; black thoughts come and sit in a circle around me." She asked what those thoughts were. He replied: "My beloved, I have told you already: you yourself must make me forget you. When you are gone, the memory of you will torture me. I must pay for the happiness you give me." XXVIII IN the bay, terminating in two promontories like horns of gold, with here and there a rose-coloured reef, the blue sea was languidly rolling its silver fringe on to the fine sand of the beach. The day was so bright that the sunlight on Chateaubriand's tomb might make one imagine oneself in Greece. In a room full of flowers, with a balcony looking on the myrtles and tamarisks of the garden and the ocean beyond, with its islands and promontories, sat Therese. She was reading the letters she had fetched that morning from the St. Malo post office. On the boat crowded with passengers she had not liked to open them. Immediately after lunch, she had shut herself in her room. There, with her letters spread out on her lap, she was eagerly reading, and greedily tasting her furtive joy. At two o'clock she had to go for a coach-drive with her fa- ther, her husband, Princess Seniavine, Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles, the deputy's wife, and Madame Raymond, the wife of an Academician. That day she had two letters. The first she read was full of gladness and the delicate savour of love. Jacques had never appeared gayer, simpler, happier, more charming. Since he had loved her, he said, his feet had moved so lightly and so swiftly that they hardly touched the ground. He had only one fear, and that was that he was dreaming and should awake to find he did not know her. Yes, he must be dreaming. But what a dream! the little house in the Via Alfieri, the inn at Meudon! Their kisses, and those divine shoulders, that supple form, fresh and fragrant as a stream flowing among flowers. If he were not dream- ing, then he must be intoxicated. Fortunately his reason had left him; and he saw her in her absence: "Yes, I see you near me. I see your heavy lashes shading those eyes more delightful than all the blue in flowers and sky, your lips like a delicious fruit, your cheeks with two adorable dimples when you laugh. I see you beautiful and de- 297 198 THE RED LILY sirable, but fleeting, vanishing. And when I open my arms you have gone. I see you in the distance far away, on the long yellow sand, no bigger than a spray of heather in flower, beneath your sunshade, in your pink gown. You appear as tiny as when I saw you from the top of the Campanile, on the Piazza, del Duomo at Florence. And I say to myself as I said that day: 'One blade of grass would hide her from me completely, and yet she is to me the infinite of joy and sorrow.' " All he complained of was the torture of her absence. But with his complaints mingled the glad happiness of love. He threatened to come and surprise her at Dinard. "Don't be afraid. I shall not be recognised. I shall be disguised as a hawker of plaster casts; and I shall not belie myself. Dressed in a grey blouse and coarse cotton trousers, my face and beard covered with white dust, I shall ring at the Villa Montessuy. You, Therese, will rec- ognise me by the statuettes on the plank I bear on my head. They will all be Cupids. There will be Faithful Cupid, Jealous Cupid, Tender Cupid, Ardent Cupid; and the ardent Cupids will be the most numerous. And I shall cry in the rude sonorous tongue of the Pisan or Florentine artisan: Tutti gli Amori per la signora Teresina." The last page of this letter was tender and thoughtful. There escaped from it reverent effusions, reminding The- rese of the prayer books she used to read when a child. "I love you, and I love everything in you: the earth on which you walk so lightly and which you render beauti- ful, the light which enables me to see you, and the air you breathe. I love the bending plane-tree in my court- yard because you have seen it. To-night I walked along the avenue where I met you one winter evening. I gath- ered a sprig of box that you had looked at. I see you and you only in this city which does not contain you." When he had finished his letter, he wrote, he would go out to lunch. The saucepan had upset in the absence of Madame Fusellier, who on the previous day had gone to her native town, Nevers. He would go to a favourite tav- ern in the Rue Royale. And there, lost in the crowd, he would be alone with her. THE RED LILY 199 Soothed by the charm of invisible caresses, Therese closed her eyes and leant back in her arm-chair. Hearing the sound of the coach stopping at the door, she opened the second letter. The altered writing, the uneven lines, the disordered appearance of the pages made her anxious. The mysterious beginning betrayed a sudden anguish of mind and dark suspicion. "Therese, Therese, why were you ever mine if you could not give your whole self? Your deception has done me no good, since now I know what I was determined not to know." She paused in her reading and her eyes grew dim. "We were so happy just now," she thought. "What has hap- pened? And I was rejoicing in his gladness when it had ceased to exist! It would be better not to write, since letters only express feelings that have passed away, ideas that are no more." She read on. Seeing that he was devoured by jealousy, she despaired. "If I have not proved to him that I love him with all my strength, with all my soul, how can I ever convince him?" And she hastened on to see what had caused this sud- den madness. Jacques told her: As he was lunching at a tavern in the Rue Royale, he met an old friend, who was passing through Paris on his way from an inland watering-place to the seaside. They began to talk; and it chanced that this man, who moved much in society, spoke of Countess Martin, whom he knew. Jacques interrupted his narrative to exclaim: "Therese, Therese, what use was it for you to lie to me since one day I must know that of which I alone was ignorant? But the mistake was more mine than yours. Your letter posted in the box at Or San Michele, your meeting at the Florence station should have told me, if only I had not so obstinately clung to my illusions, in spite of evidence. I refused to know you were another's when you were giving yourself to me with that bold grace, that charming voluptuousness which will kill me. I will- ingly remained in ignorance. I ceased to ask you for an explanation out of fear lest you should find yourself un- 200 THE RED LILY able to lie. I was so prudent that it remained for a fool to open my eyes suddenly and brutally and bring it home to me at a restaurant table. Oh! now that I know, now that I can no longer doubt, it seems to me that doubting was delicious. He uttered the name, that name I had heard already at Fiesole, on the lips of Miss Bell, and he added: 'The story is well known.' "So you loved him, you still love him. And when, alone in my room, I am biting the pillow on which your head reclined, perhaps he is with you. Doubtless he is. He always goes to the Dinard races; so I have been told. I see him. I see everything. If you knew the sights that haunt me, you would say: 'He is mad,' and you would pity me. Oh! how I wish I could forget you and every- thing. But I cannot. You know that you alone can make me forget you. I am always seeing you with him. It is torture. That night on the Arno's bank, I thought myself unhappy. But then I did not even know what suffering meant. To-day I know." As she finished the letter, Therese thought: "A chance word has thrown him into this state of agitation. One word sufficed to make him mad with despair." She won- dered who the wretch was who had uttered it. She sus- pected two or three young men whom Le Menil had intro- duced to her, warning her to beware of them. And in a passion of wrath, of the cold severe kind, inherited from her father, she said to herself: "I shall know." Meanwhile what must she do? Her lover was ill, despairing, wild with grief; and yet she could not hasten to his side, to embrace him and throw herself into his arms with so complete an abandonment of soul and body as would convince him she was his entirely and compel him to believe in her. She could write. But how much better it would have been to go, and silently nestle near his heart, and then after- wards say: "Now dare to think I am not yours alone." But she could only write. She had hardly begun her letter, when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. Al- ready Princess Seniavine was climbing up the ladder on to the coach. Therfee went down and appeared on the steps tranquil THE RED LILY 201 and smiling; her broad straw hat trimmed with poppies cast a becoming shadow over her face and her bright grey eyes. "Good heavens! how pretty she is!" cried Princess Senia- vine. "And what a pity we see her so seldom! In the morning she crosses the ferry and goes into the narrow streets of Saint-Malo; in the afternoon she shuts herself in her room. She avoids us." The coach wound round the wide circle of the beach, past villas and terraced gardens on the side of the hill. And on the left were to be seen, as if emerging from the blue sea, the steeple and ramparts of Saint-Malo. Then the coach passed into a road bordered with gay hedge- rows, along which were walking women from Dinard, with figures upright and broad winged cambric caps. "It is unfortunate," said Madame Raymond, who was on the box by Montessuy, "that the old costumes are dying out. Railways are responsible for it." "True," said Montessuy, "if it were not for railways, the peasants would still be wearing their old picturesque cos- tumes; but we should not see them." "What does that matter?" replied Madame Raymond. "We should imagine them." "But," asked Princess Seniavine, "do you ever see any- thing interesting? I never do." Madame Raymond, who had acquired a smattering of philosophy from her husband's books, maintained that things were nothing and ideas everything. Without looking at Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles sitting on her right on the back seat, Countess Martin murmured: "Oh! yes, people only regard their own ideas; they refuse to be guided by anything else. Blindly and deafly they go on. Nothing can stop them." "But, my dear," said Count Martin, who was sitting in front of her, by the Princess, "without such guiding ideas, one would simply drift. . . . By-the-by, Montessuy, have you read Loyer's speech at the unveiling of Cadet-Gassi- court's statue? The opening is remarkable. Loyer is not lacking in sound political common sense." Having crossed the willow bordered meadows, the coach 202 THE RED LILY climbed the hill, and came on to a vast wooded plateau. For some time it followed a park wall. Away in front the road disappeared out of sight in the damp mist. "Is this Le Guerric?" asked Princess Seniavine. Suddenly, between two stone pillars surmounted by lions, there came before them a closed gate crowned by four ornaments in wrought iron. Through the bars, at the end of a long avenue of limes, could be seen the grey walls of the chateau. "Yes," said Montessuy, "it is Le Guerric." And, turning to Therese, he said: "You know the Marquis of Re. ... At sixty-five he had all the vigour of youth. He set the fashion, was the arbiter of good taste, and always popular. Young men used to copy his frock-coat, his eye-glass, his gestures, his capti- vating insolence and his entertaining fancies. Suddenly he withdrew from society, shut up his house, sold his horses, and vanished. You remember, Therese, his sudden disap- pearance. It was soon after you were married. He used often to call and see you. One day we heard that he had left Paris. In the midst of winter he had come down here to Le Guerric. We all wondered what had caused this sudden retreat. We thought he must have suffered some annoyance. Perhaps he had fled in the humiliation of his first failure, afraid lest he should be seen to grow old. Old age was what he most dreaded. The truth is that for six years he has been living in retirement. Not once has he left his chateau and his park. At Le Guerric he entertains two or three old men, who were the com- panions of his youth. That gate opens for them only. He has never been seen since his disappearance from Paris; he will never be seen again. He is now as persistent in his retirement as he was formerly in his sociability. He could not bear his decline to be observed. He is dead though alive. It seems to me not in the least despicable." Theiese remembered the charming old man who had wished to possess her as the glorious conclusion of his life of gallantry; and she turned round to look at Le Guerric, at the greyish tops of its oak-trees, and its four sentry-box turrets. THE RED LILY 2o v On the way home, she said she had a headache, and could not come down to dinner. She shut herself in her room and took the sad letter out of her jewel-case. She re-read the last page: "At the thought that you are another's my heart is rent and consumed. And then I cannot bear that other to be he." It was an obsession. Three times on the same page he had written: "I cannot bear that other to be he." She also was possessed by but one idea: she must not lose him. She would have said anything, done anything not to lose him. She sat down, and in an outburst of passion, tender and pathetic, wrote a letter, in which over and over again she repeated like a groan: "I love you, I love you, I have never loved any one but you. You are alone, alone, alone, do you understand? Alone in my heart, alone in me. Don't listen to that wretch. Listen to me. I swear to you I loved no one, no one before you." While she was writing, the indistinct, vague sighing of the sea accompanied the heaving of her breast. She wanted to write and believed she was writing the truth; and all she said was sincere with the sincerity of her love. She heard her father's firm heavy step on the stairs. She hid her letter and opened the door. Montessuy coax- ingly asked if she were better. "I came to wish you good-night and to ask you some- thing," he said. "I shall probably see Le Menil at the races to-morrow. He always goes, and he is a man of regular habits. If I meet him, dear, do you mind my inviting him to come and spend a few days here? Your husband thinks you would be pleased to see him. He might have the blue room." "As you like. But I would rather you kept the blue room for Paul Vence, who very much wants to come. It is possible, too, that Choulette may come without sending us word. It is just like him. We shall see him one morning ringing at our gate like a beggar. My husband is mis- taken when he thinks I like Le Menil. Besides, next week I must go to Paris for a few days." XXIX TWENTY-FOUR hours after writing her letter, ThSrese arrived from Dinard at Dechartre's little house, at Les Ternes.* She had had no difficulty in finding an ex- cuse for going to Paris. She had travelled with her husband, who wished to visit his constituency, undermined by social- ists, in the department of Aisne. In the morning she surprised Jacques in his studio, as he was outlining a big figure of Florence, on the banks of the Arno, weeping over her ancient glory. The model was posing, seated on a very high stool. She was a tall dark girl. The glare from the window accentu- ated the clear lines of her hip and thigh, the hardness of her face, her dark neck and yellow skin, the veins on her breast, the muscles of her knees and feet, the toes of which overlapped. Therese looked curiously at her, realis- ing the beauty of her form, in spite of neglect and emaciation. Dechartre, with his chisel and his pellet of day in hand, came to meet Therese with a sad affectionate air which touched her. Then, putting the clay and the instru- ment on the edge of the easel and covering the figure with a damp cloth, he said to the model: "That is enough for to-day, my girl." Then she rose, awkwardly gathered together her clothes, a mere handful of dark woollen stuff and soiled linen, and went behind the screen to dress. Meanwhile the sculptor washed his hands, whitened by the clinging clay, in a green earthenware basin. Then he went out of the studio with Therese. They passed beneath the plane-tree. The scales from its trunk were strewing the sand of the courtyard. * A district of Paris between the Avenue de la Grande Armee and the Boulevard Malesherbes. W.S. 204 THE RED LILY 205 She said: "You don't think so any longer, do you?" He took her to his room. Her letter from Dinard had already partly corrected his painful impression. It had come at the very moment when, worn out with suffering, he needed calm and tenderness. A few lines in writing had appeased his anguish.' His was a soul that fed on images, that was less sensitive to things than to symbols of things. But there was still a painful twist in his heart. In the room everything seemed on her side: the fur- niture, the curtains, the rugs spoke of love. She murmured sweet words: "But how could you believe it? ... Don't you know what you are? ... It was madness! . . . How could a woman who has known you tolerate any one else?" "But before?" "Before, I was waiting for you." "And wasn't he at the Dinard races?" She did not think so; and it was perfectly certain that she wasn't there horses and horsey men bored her. "Jacques, you are like no one else and need fear no one." .; On the contrary he realised his own insignificance; he knew that the individual counts for little in a world where persons are like corn and chaff united or winnowed by one movement of the fan in the hand of a rustic or of a god. But the regular measured motion of the material or of the mystic fan prevents the metaphor from being strictly applied to life. Men seemed to him more like beans in the trough of a coffee-mill. The fact had -been brought home to him two days before as he watched Madame Fusellier grinding her coffee. "Why have you no pride?" Therese asked him. She said little; but she spoke with her eyes, her arms, and her breath, as her breast rose and fell. In the glad surprise of seeing and hearing her, he allowed himself to be persuaded. She asked him who had spoken those hateful words. 206 THE RED LILY There was no reason why he should not tell her. It was Daniel Salomon. She was not surprised. Daniel Salomon, who was said to be incapable of being any woman's lover, at least wished to be intimate with all, and to know their secrets. She guessed why he had spoken thus. "Jacques, don't be angry at what I am going to say: you are not very clever at disguising your feelings. He suspected that you loved me; and he wanted to make sure. I am certain that he no longer has any doubts concerning our relations; but I don't mind that. On the contrary if you were a better deceiver, I should be less easy. I should think that you did not love me enough." She changed the subject quickly, afraid of making him anxious. "I didn't tell you how delighted I was with your figure. Florence on the Arno bank! That is you and I." "Yes, into that figure I have put all the ardour of my love. It is sad, and I want it to be beautiful. Do you see, Therese, that beauty is sorrowful. That is why I have suffered since my life became beautiful." He felt in the pocket of his flannel coat and took out his cigarette-case. But she urged him to dress. She would take him home to lunch. They would spend the whole day together. It would be delightful. ? She looked at him with childlike joy. Then she grew sad, remembering that at the end of the week she must return to Dinard, and afterwards go to Joinville, and that all that time they would be parted. She would ask her father to invite him to Joinville for a few days. But they would not be alone and free there as they were in Paris. "It is true," he said, "Paris in its vague immensity is best for us. "Even in your absence," he added, "I could not leave Paris. I should hate to live in countries that do not know you. A sky, mountains, trees, springs, statues that could not speak to me of you would have nothing to say to me." While he dressed she turned over the pages of a book she had found on the table. It was "The Arabian Nights." THE RED LILY 207 It was illustrated by prints of viziers, sultanas, black eu- nuchs, bazaars, and caravans. "Do 'The Arabian Nights' amuse you?" she asked. "Very much," he replied, putting on his tie. "When I like I can believe in those Arabian princes whose legs were turned into black marble, and the women of the harem who haunt cemeteries at night. These stories sug- gest easy dreams which make me forget life. Yesterday I went to bed very sad, and I read the story of the three one-eyed Calendars." "You try to forget," she said rather bitterly. "I would not for the world efface the memory of any trouble which came from you." They went down into the street together. She was to take a cab a little farther on, so as to arrive a few min- utes before him. "My husband expects you to lunch." On the way they talked of trivialities, which in the light of their love, became important and delightful. They planned out their afternoon so as to cram into it as much as possible of the infinitude of deep joy and the delight of cleverly contrived pleasure. She consulted him about her dresses. She could not bring herself to leave him, so happy was she to walk with him down the sunlit streets in the glad cheerfulness of noon. When they reached the avenue of Les Ternes there was a row of provision shops displaying their wares in lavish profusion. Strings of birds at the poulterer's door, boxes of apricots and peaches, baskets of grapes and heaps of pears, at the fruiterer's. Carts full of fruit and flowers blocked up the roadway. In the glass-covered space in front of a restaurant, men and women were having lunch. Among them Therese rec- ognised Choulette, sitting alone at a little table by an oleander in a tub, lighting his pipe. Having seen her, he haughtily threw a five-franc piece on to the table, rose and took off his hat. He was very grave; and his long frock-coat gave him an austere and decorous air. He said he would have liked to have gone to see Madame Martin at Dinard. But the Marchioness of Rieu had kept 208 THE RED LILY him in Vendee. Meanwhile he had published a new edition of the Jardin Clos, to which he had added the Verger of Sainte Claire. He had touched hearts that had been thought hard, and made streams flow from rocks. "So," he said, "I have been a kind of Moses." He felt in his pocket, and took out of his pocketbook a dirty crumpled letter. "This is what Madame Raymond, the Academician's wife, writes. I am publishing her words because they do her credit." And, unfolding the thin sheets, he read: "I have called my husband's attention to your book; and he cried: 'This is pure mysticism! Here is a walled garden, which I think, among its lilies and white roses, must have a little door leading into the road to the Academy.' " Having tasted to the full the savour of these words mingled with the fumes of brandy, Choulette carefully put back the letter into his pocketbook. Madame Martin congratulated the poet on being Madame Raymond's candidate. "You would be mine, Monsieur Choulette, if I troubled about elections to the Academy. But do you really want to become a member?" For a few moments he was solemnly silent. Then he said: "Madame, I am on my way to confer with various well- known persons in the political and religious world, who live at Neuilly. The Marchioness of Rieu is urging me to stand in her neighbourhood as candidate for a seat in the Senate, which has fallen vacant through the death of an old man, who, it is said, was a general while he lived this life of illusion. I am going to the Boulevard Bineau to consult priests, women, and children on this matter O Eternal Wisdom! The constituency, whose support I shall solicit, is situated in an undulating, wooded country, with fields bordered by pollarded willows. In the hollow of one of these willows is sometimes found a chouan's skele- ton, still holding his gun, with a rosary between his fleshless fingers. My profession of faith shall be pasted on the THE RED LILY 209 oak-trees' bark. This shall be my manifesto: 'Peace for the priests' houses! May the day come when the bishops, with wooden croziers, may be like unto the poorest curate of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Annas and Caiaphas. And they still bear those names before the Son of God. Now, while they were nailing Him to the Cross, I was the good thief, at His side.' " He pointed with his stick towards Neuilly: "Dechartre, my friend, is not that the Boulevard Bineau, from which the dust is rising down there on the right?" "Good-bye, Monsieur Choulette," said Therese. "Don't forget me when you are a senator." "Madame, I remember you in all my prayers, both at matins and vespers. And I say to God: 'Since in Thy wrath, Thou hast given her wealth and beauty, look upon her in mercy, O Lord, and deal with her according to Thy great loving kindness.' " And limping stiffly, he went away down the crowded avenue. XXX THfiRfiSE, wrapped in a pink cloth mantle, was com- ing down the steps with Dechartre. He had arrived at Joinville that morning. She had planned that he should join the small circle of intimate friends, before the hunt- ing season began; for she was afraid that Le Menil, of whom she had heard nothing, would then be invited as usual. The soft September air blew through the curls of her hair, and the declining sun made her dark grey eyes glitter with sparks of gold. Behind them the fagade of the chateau displayed busts of Roman emperors on high ped- estals in the spaces between the windows, above the three arcades of the ground floor. The main building was flanked by two high wings raised still higher by extravagant Ionic pillars supporting their great slate roofs. This style was characteristic of the architect Leveau. In 1650 he had planned the chateau of Joinville-sur-Oise for that rich Mareuilles, who was the creature of Mazarin and the for- tunate accomplice of Surintendant * Fouquet. Therese and Jacques saw before them the flower-beds ar- ranged in great semicircles designed by Le Notre, the green lawn and the fountain; then the grotto with its five rustic arches, its giants' heads terminating in columns, and its big trees tinted already with autumn colours of purple and gold. "All the same," said Dechartre, "these geometrical fig- ures in flowers and foliage have their beauty." "Yes," said Therese, "but I am thinking of a plane-tree bending over a grass-grown court-yard. We will plant flow- ers in it, and put up a beautiful fountain, won't we?" Leaning against one of the stone lions, with almost hu- man faces, which guarded the filled up moat at the bottom of the steps, she "turned round to the chateau, and, looking * The King's chief financial minister. 210 THE RED LILY 211 a* one of the dormer windows, in the guise of an open dragon's mouth, above the cornice, she said: "That is your room; I went up there yesterday evening. On the same story on the other side, right at the end of the passage, is papa's study. A white deal table, a mahogany desk, a water-bottle on the mantelpiece: his study as it was when he was a young man. Our fortune was made in it." Walking down the sanded garden paths they came to the trim box hedge, bordering the park on its southern side. They passed in front of the orangery, the monumental door of which was surmounted by Mareuilles's Lorraine cross, and they entered the lime walk on one side of the green lawn. Under the trees half stripped of their leaves, statues of nymphs seemed to shiver in the damp shade, streaked with pale rays of light. A pigeon, perched on the shoulder of one of these white women, took flight. From time to time a dry leaf, detached by a gust of wind, flut- tered down, and lay like a shell of reddish gold holding a raindrop. Therese pointed to the nymph and said: "She watched me when I was a child and longed to die. I was distressed by fear and desire. I was waiting for you. But you were so far away." At a point where several paths met the lime-tree walk was interrupted. A lake was there. In its centre was a group of Tritons and sea-nymphs, blowing into shells forming, when the fountain was at work, a diadem of water with flourishes of foam. "That is the Joinville crown," she said. She showed him a path, beginning at the lake and lead- ing into the country, towards the rising sun. "That is my path. How often have I walked down it sorrowfully. I was sad before I knew you." They continued in the walk, which, with other limes and other nymphs, went on beyond the lake. They fol- lowed it as far as the grottos. Situated at the end of the park, the grottos were a semicircle of rock-work huts, sur- mounted by balusters, and separated by statues of giants. One of these statues, at one corner of the grotto, towered over it in its huge nakedness and seemed to look down 212 THE RED LILY upon it with a stony glance at once fierce and benevolent. "When my father bought Joinville," she said, "the grot- tos were a mere mass of ruins overgrown with grass and full of vipers. Thousands of rabbits had burrowed in them. He restored the statues and arches according to Perelle's prints in the National Library. He was his own archi- tect." A desire for shade and retirement led them to a pleached walk at the side of the grottos. But a sound of foot- steps coming from the covered walk made them pause a moment. And through the leaves they saw Montessuy with his arm round Princess Seniavine. They were quietly walk- ing towards the chateau. Jacques and Therese, hidden by a great statue, waited till they had passed. Then she said to Dechartre, who was looking at her in silence: "This is too much! Now I understand why Princess Seniavine asked papa's advice when she bought her horses last winter." Nevertheless Therese could not help admiring her father for having won this beautiful woman, who was considered difficult to please, and was known to be rich in spite of occasional embarrassments resulting from her spendthrift habits. She asked Jacques if he did not think the Princess very beautiful. He recognised that she possessed a certain distinction; but her charms were too sensuous for him. She was beau- tiful doubtless, but in her swarthy beauty he detected a smear of the tar-brush, a negroid strain. Therese replied that it was possible, but that neverthe- less, in the evening, Princess Seniavine threw every other woman into the shade. At the back of the grottos, she took Jacques up moss- grown steps leading to the Sheaf of Oise, formed by a clump of leaden reeds in the middle of a basin of pink marble. There towered the tall trees which shut in the park and marked the beginning of the wood. They passed into the forest. They were silent amidst the faint rustling of the leaves. Beyond the magnificent curtain of elms, stretched thickets of aspen trees and birches, the silver bark of which glittered in the last rays of the setting sun. THE RED LILY 213 He held her tightly in his arms and rained kisses on her eyelids. Night came down; the earliest stars were twin- kling among the branches. The croaking of the frogs was heard in the damp grass. They went no farther. When in the darkness she turned back with him towards the castle, there remained on her lips a taste of kisses and of mint, and in her eyes the vision of her lover, who, stand- ing by the trunk of a willow seemed like a faun, while she in his arms, with her hands clasped round his neck, swooned with voluptuous delight. As she passed beneath the lime-trees, she smiled at the nymphs who had seen her childhood's tears. In the sky Cygnus was displaying his cross of stars, and the moon was reflecting her deli- cate horn in the basin of the lake. The insects in the grass were singing songs of love. Turning the last corner of the box hedge, Therese and Jacques perceived, black and menacing, the triple mass of the chateau, and through the great bow-windows of the ground-floor they discerned forms moving in the red light. The bell was ringing. "I have only just time to dress for dinner," cried Therese. And in front of the stone lions she escaped from her lover, vanishing quickly like a vision in a fairy tale. In the drawing-room after dinner, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles was reading a newspaper, and Princess Seniavine was play- ing patience at the card-table. Therese, her eyes half- closed over a book, feeling still the pricking at her ankles of the thorns which had scratched her among the brush- wood, was recalling with a shudder how her lover had taken her in the woods, like a faun playing with a nymph. The Princess asked if her book were amusing. "I don't know. I was dreaming while I read. Paul Vence was right: 'It is only ourselves that we find in books.' " Through the curtains could be heard the staccato tones of the players and the clashing of balls in the billiard- room. "I have done it," cried the Princess, throwing away her cards. 214 THE RED LILY That day she had put a big sum on a horse at the Chan- tilly races. Therese said she had had a letter from Fiesole. Miss Bell announced her approaching marriage with Prince Eusebio Albertinelli della Spina. The Princess began to laugh: "There's a man who will do her a great service." "What service?" asked Therese. "Why, he will make her disgusted with men." Montessuy came into the drawing-room, very gay. He had just won. He sat down by Berthier d'Eyzelles, and taking an un- folded newspaper from the sofa, read: "At the meeting of the Chamber, the Minister of Fi- nance will bring forward his savings-bank bill." It was a question of authorising savings-banks to lend money to the communes, which would result in depriv- ing the banks that Montessuy directed of their best customers. "Berthier," asked the financier, "are you resolutely de- termined to oppose this bill?" Berthier nodded. Montessuy, rising, put his hand on the deputy's shoulder. "My dear Berthier, I have an idea that the ministry will be defeated at the beginning of the session." He went up to his daughter. "Le Menil has written me a strange letter." Therese went and shut the door leading to the billiard- room. She was afraid of draughts, she said. "A strange letter," resumed Montessuy. "Le Menil won't hunt at Joinville. He has bought a yacht of eighty tons, the Rosebud. He is yachting in the Mediterranean, and can't live on land. It is a pity. He is about the only man I know who can lead the hunt." Just at this moment Dechartre came into the drawing- room with Count Martin. After having beaten Dechartre at billiards, the Count became friendly; and he was ex- plaining the dangers of taxation based on household expenses and the number of servants. XXXI HPHE pale winter sunlight shone through the mist from A the Seine on to the dogs of Oudry above the dining- room doors. On Madame Martin's right sat Deputy Garain, ex-Keeper of the Seals, ex-President of the Council, on her left the Senator Loyer. On Count Martin-Belleme's right was M. Berthier d'Eyzelles. A small and serious political luncheon-party. According to Montessuy's prophecy, the ministry had been defeated four days ago. Summoned to the Elysee that very morning, Garain had accepted the task of forming a cabinet. During lunch he was drawing up the list of names to be submitted to the President in the evening. And, while they were discussing names, Therese was recalling the scenes in her secret life. She had returned to Paris with Count Martin in time for the reassembling of the Chamber, and from that mo- ment she had been living an enchanted life. Jacques loved her; he loved her with a delightful mingling of passion and tenderness, of knowledge and curi- osity. He was nervous, irritable, anxious. But his moody temperament made her appreciate his gaiety all the more. That artistic gaiety, bursting forth suddenly like a flame, enhanced love without ever offending it. And her lover's witty merriment was a constant wonder to Therese. She had never imagined possible that perfect grace which he displayed alike in his merry moments and in his more intimate moods. In earlier days his passion had been gloomy and monotonous. That alone had attracted her. But since then she had discovered his overflowing versa- tile gaiety, the unique grace of his sentiments, his gift of drinking pleasure's draught to the very dregs. "It is all very well to talk .of a homogeneous ministry," cried Garain. "We must come into touch with the tend- encies of the various parties." 215 216 THE RED LILY He was anxious. He felt himself surrounded by all the snares he had laid for others. Even his collaborators he regarded as enemies. Count Martin wanted the new ministry to gratify the aspirations of the ultra-modern party. "Your list includes persons who differ widely in origin and opinions," he said. "Now perhaps the most important innovation in the po- litical history of the last few years is that it has become possible, I may say necessary, for the government of the Republic to be unanimous. These are the very views, my dear Garain, which you have yourself expressed with such rare eloquence." M. Berthier d'Eyzelles was silent. Senator Loyer was crumbling his bread. It was an old habit he had acquired in taverns; and he could think best while cutting corks or rolling crumbs of bread. He raised his pimpled face, fringed with an unkempt beard, and, with sparkling eyes, looking constrainedly at Garain : "I said so; but no one would believe me. The annihila- tion of the monarchical right was an irreparable misfor- tune for the leaders of the republican party. They lost a strong opposition, which is a government's best support. All the measures of the Empire were directed against the Orleanists and against us; the government of the i6th of May was hostile to the Republicans. And we were more fortunate still: we directed all our measures against the Right. And what an excellent opposition the Right was ominous, candid, weak, vast, honest, unpopular! We ought to have kept it. But we did not. And then, it must be admitted, everything wears out in time. Nevertheless, some kind of opposition is absolutely necessary. To-day only the Socialists can give us that strength which the Right furnished fifteen years ago, with such unfailing generosity. But they are too weak. They must be strengthened, multi- plied, and made into a political party. At the present moment that is the first duty of the Minister of the Interior." Garain, who was not cynical, did not reply. "Do you know yet, Garain," asked Count Martin, THE RED LIL\ 217 "whether you will be Keeper of the Seals or Minister of the Interior as well as President of the Council?" Garain replied that his decision depended on the choice made by N , whom it was necessary to include in the cabinet, and who was hesitating between the two offices. Garain was ready to sacrifice his personal convenience to the public interest. Senator Loyer was pulling a wry face. He wanted the Seals. He had long cherished this desire. He had been a law tutor under the Empire, and, at Cafe tables, had given highly appreciated lessons. He had a feeling for chicanery. Having laid the foundation of his political fortune by arti- cles expressed so as to involve him in prosecution, law- suits, and some weeks in prison, he had henceforth con- sidered the press as a weapon in the hands of the oppo- sition, which should be broken by every good government. Since the 4th of September, 1870, he had dreamed of be- coming Keeper of the Seals; he wanted to show people how an old Bohemian, who had served his time in the Ste. Pelagic Prison in Badinguet's days, a law tutor who once expounded the Code while supping off sauer-kraut and sauce, could rise to the highest legal appointment. Dozens of fools had passed him by. He had grown old in the mediocrity of the Senate; dirty, bewitched by a girl he had picked up in a tavern, poor, lazy, disillusioned ; his old Jacobinism and his sincere contempt of the people outlived his ambitions and still attached him to the gov- ernment. Now, having become associated with Garain and his group, he thought justice was about to be done to him. And his patron, who denied it, became an impor- tunate rival. He sneered as he modelled a poodle out of bread-crumbs. M. Berthier d'Eyzelles, very calm, very grave, very de- jected, stroked his white whiskers and said: "Don't you think you ought to include those in the cab- inet who from the very first have adopted the policy towards which we are inclining to-day?" "It was that course that ruined them," replied Garain impatiently. "A politician should never precede public opinion. It is a mistake to see things too quickly. It is 218 THE RED LILY not thinkers that we want in politics. Besides, let us be perfectly frank: if you want a ministry of the left centre, say so, and I withdraw. But I warn you that neither the Chamber nor the country will be with you." "It is obvious," said Count Martin, "that we must make certain of having a majority." "If you accept my nominations, then your majority is assured," said Garain. "Our opponents were supported by the minority swelled by the votes that we have won. Gentlemen, I appeal to your public spirit." And the difficult work of assigning the various offices began again. Count Martin was offered Public Works, which he refused on the ground of incompetence; and then Foreign Affairs, which he accepted without making any ob- jection. But M. Berthier d'Eyzelles, to whom Garain offered Commerce and Agriculture, demurred. Loyer was sent to the Colonial Office. He seemed chiefly concerned in making his bread-crumb poodle stand up on the tablecloth. Meanwhile, out of the corner of his little eye, from among his wrinkles, he was looking at Countess Martin and admiring her. He was dreaming vaguely of meeting her again some day in private. Leaving Garain to fend for himself, he devoted his atten- tion to this pretty woman; he tried to discover her tastes and her habits, asked her if she were fond of the theatre and if sometimes her husband took her to cafes in the evening. And Therese began to find that, in spite of his dirt, with his ignorance of society and his superb cynicism he was more interesting than the others. Garain rose. He had still to see N , N , and N before presenting his list to the President of the Republic. Count Martin offered him his carriage, but Garain had his own. "Don't you think," asked Count Martin, "that the Presi- dent may object to certain names?" "The President," said Garain, "will take into considera- tion the needs of the hour." He had already crossed the threshold when he returned, exclaiming: "We have forgotten the War Minister." THE RED LILY 219 "You will easily find one among the generals," said Count Martin. "Ah," cried Garain, "do you think the choice of a War Minister so easy? It is obvious that you have not as I have belonged to three cabinets and presided over the council. During my ministries and while I was President, our most insuperable difficulties always came from the Minister of War. All generals are the same. You know the one I appointed when I formed a cabinet. We chose him because he was totally ignorant of politics. He was hardly aware that there were two Chambers. We had to explain to him the whole working of the parliamentary machine; to teach him that there was a war committee, a committee of finance, subcommittees, reporters, a debate on the budget. He asked us to write it all down on half a sheet of notepaper. His ignorance of men and things was alarming. ... At the end of a fortnight he was famil- iar with all the tricks of politics, was personally acquainted with all the senators and all the deputies, and was in- triguing with them against us. If it had not been for the support of President Grevy, who always mistrusted soldiers, he would have turned us out. And he was a very ordinary general, just like all the rest. Ah! don't think the office of War Minister can be bestowed hastily or without mature reflection. . . ." And Garain shuddered to think of his former colleague on the Boulevard St. Germain.* He went out. Therese rose. Senator Loyer offered her his arm with the elegant bow he had learnt at Bullier's forty years ago. She left the politicians in the drawing-room. She was in a hurry to meet Dechartre. The Seine, the stone quays and the plane-trees with their golden leaves were shrouded in a yellowish brown fog. Over a cloudy sky the red sun was casting the last glories of the year. Therese, coming out of doors, delighted in the exhilarating sharpness of the air and the dying splen- dour of the day. Since her return to Paris she had been * Where the French War Office is situated. W.S. 220 THE RED LILY so nappy that every morning she rejoiced in the changing weather. In her benevolent egoism it seemed as if it were for her that the wind blew through the ragged trees, or that the horizon of avenues became grey in the fine rain, or that the sun dragged its cooled orb across the chilly sky; it was all for her, that she might say when she en- tered the little house at Les Ternes: "It is windy, it rains, it is a fine day," thus introducing the world of external things into the intimacy of their love. And every dawn seemed beautiful, because the day was to bring her to her lover's arms. On that day as on every day, as she took her way to the little house at Les Ternes, she was thinking of her unexpected happiness, so complete and, she felt, so secure. She walked in the last glorious sunshine, already threat- ened by winter, and she was saying to herself: "He loves me, I think he loves me with all his heart. To love is easier and more natural for him than for other men. In their lives there is something above them, a faith, habits, or interests. They believe in God, or in duty, or in themselves. He only believes in me. I am his god, his duty, his life." Then she thought: "It is true also that he is not dependent on any one, not even on me. His own thoughts are a magnificent world in which he could live easily. But I cannot live without him. What would become of me if I had him no longer?" She was reassured when she thought of his passionate ad- miration of her, and the spell she had cast over him. She remembered having said to him one day: "You only love me with a sensual love. I do not complain; perhaps it is the only love that is true." And he had replied: "It is the only love that is great and strong. It has its measure and its weapons. It is full of sense and imagination. It is violent and mysterious. Its object is the body. The rest is but a lie and an illusion." She was almost at rest in her joy. Suspicion, anxiety had vanished like the clouds of a summer storm. Their worst time had been when they were separated from each other. Lovers should never be parted. THE RED LILY 221 At the corner of the Avenue Marceau and the Rue Galilee she half divined, rather than recognised, a shadow that of a form forgotten, which had passed close to her. She believed and she wished to believe that she was mistaken. He whom she imagined she had seen was no longer, had never been. It was a phantom beheld in the limbo of a former world, in the darkness of a visionary existence. And she went on, but this uncertain meeting left a coldness, a vague uneasiness, and an ill-defined fear in her heart. As she went up the avenue she saw the newspaper sellers coming towards her holding out the evening papers with large headlines, announcing the new ministry. She crossed the Place de 1'Etoile, walking hurriedly in the happy impatience of her desire. In her mind's eye she saw Jacques awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs among the nude figures of marble and bronze, taking her in his arms and carrying her, already quivering and faint with kisses, to that shaded room of delight, where the joy of living made her forget life. But, in the solitude of the Avenue Mac-Mahon, the shadow seen already at the corner of the Rue Galilee, approached and appeared close to her with a lifelike and painful dis- tinctness. She recognised Robert le Menil, who, having fol- lowed her from the Quai de Billy, now joined her in the quietest safest spot. His air, his attitude indicated that transparency of soul which once had pleased Therese. His face, naturally hard, browned by sea and sun, a trifle hollow, very calm, bore traces of deep suffering. "I must speak to you." She slackened her step. He walked at her side. "I have tried to forget you. After what had happened you will agree it was only natural. I did my very best. It would certainly have been better to forget you. But I could not. Then I bought a yacht. For six months I have been at sea. Perhaps you know?" She signified that she knew. He resumed: "The Rosebttd, a pretty boat of eighty tons. I had a crew of six men. I worked with them. It distracted me." 222 THE RED LILY He was silent. She was walking slowly, saddened but chiefly annoyed. It was utterly absurd and painful for her to listen to this strange talk. He resumed: "What I suffered on that yacht I should be ashamed to tell you." She felt that he was speaking the truth and turned away. "Oh! I forgive you. When I was alone, I reflected much. Days and nights I passed lying on the divan in the deck-house; over and over again I returned to the same thoughts. During those six months I thought more than I have done in my whole life. Don't laugh. There i? nothing like sorrow for opening one's mind. I understood that if I had lost you it was my own fault. I ought to have known how to keep your love. And, lying full length, while the Rosebud skimmed over the sea, I said to myself: 'I did not know how to keep her. Oh! if I could begin over again!' By dint of thinking and suffering I came to under- stand; I understood that I had not sympathised enough with your tastes and ideas. You are an intellectual woman. I didn't notice it, because I didn't love you for that. I unconsciously wounded and irritated you." She shook her head. He insisted. "Yes, yes! I often wounded you. I was not considerate enough of your sensitive temperament. There were misun- derstandings between us. They arose from our being so different. And then I never knew how to distract you. I never gave you the kind of pleasures that an intelligent women like you requires." He was so simple and sincere in his regrets and his suffering that her heart went out to him. She said gently: "My friend, I have nothing to complain of in you." He resumed: "All that I have just said is true. I understood it in my boat out at sea. The hours I lived through there I would not desire for my greatest enemy. Many a time I thought of jumping overboard. I did not do it. Was it because of religious principles or considerations for my family or lack of courage? I don't know. Perhaps it was because you far away were attracting me to life. I was THE RED LILY 223 being drawn to you, therefore I am here. I have been watching you for two days. I would not come to your house. I should not have been able to see you alone. And then you would have been obliged to receive me. I thought it better to speak in the street. The idea came to me on board my yacht. I said to myself: 'In the street if she listens to me it will be because she wishes to, just as she did four years ago, in the park at Joinville, you know, by the statues, near the Crown.' " And he resumed with a deep sigh: "Yes, as at Joinville, since we must begin over again. I have been watching you for two days. Yesterday it rained; you drove out. I might have followed and seen where you went. I wanted to; but I didn't. I determined not to do anything that would displease you." She gave him her hand. "Thank you. I knew I should never regret having confided in you." Alarmed, impatient, nervous, fearing what he would say next, she tried to break off and to leave him. "Good-bye! You have life before you. You are happy. Only realise it and cease troubling about what is not worth while." But he interrupted her with a look. There had come over his face that intense, resolute expression she knew so well. "I told you I had something to say. Listen for one minute." She thought of Jacques, who must be expecting her now. A few rare passers-by looked at her and went on their way. She stopped beneath the branches of the Judas-tree and waited in pity and fear. "See," he said, "I forgive and I forget. Take me back. I promise never to refer to the past." She trembled. Her surprise and distress were so evi- dent that he stopped. Then after a moment's reflection: "I know that what I propose is unusual. But I have thought it over. It is the only possible thing to do. Con- sider it, Therese, and don't give me an answer at once." 224 THE RED LILY "It would be wrong to deceive you. I cannot and will not agree to what you propose; and you know why." A cab was passing slowly. She hailed it, and it stopped. He kept her a minute longer. "I expected you to say that; therefore I say again don't give me an answer at once." With her hand on the carriage door, she looked at him out of her grey eyes. It was a sad moment for him. He recalled the times when he had seen those eyes half closed. He stifled a sob and murmured in a husky voice: "Listen, I cannot live without you; I love you. Now I really love you. Before I did not know." And, while she gave the cabman a dressmaker's address, he walked away with a brisk easy gait, which to-day, how- ever, was a little less firm than usual. This meeting left her anxious and uneasy. If she must see him again, she would have preferred to find him vio- lent and brutal as at Florence. At the corner of the avenue, she called out to the coachman: "Les Ternes, Rue Demours." XXXII IT was Friday at the opera. The curtain had just gone, down on Faust's laboratory. Now the orchestra stall* were in movement, opera-glasses were at work surveying the hall of purple and gold beneath the lights far up in the immensity of the roof. Like precious stones in their caskets, the bejewelled heads of the women and their bare shoulders glittered in the dark boxes. Hanging over the pit was the amphitheatre, in one long garland of diamonds, flowers, beautiful hair, dazzling necks and shoulders, gauze and satin. In the front rows of the stalls were to be seen the Austrian Amoassadress, and the Duchess of Glad- win; in the amphitheatre, Berthe d'Isigny and Jane Tulle, who had been made famous by the suicide of her lover on the previous day; in the boxes, Madame Berard de La Malle, with downcast eyes, her long eyelashes shading her finely moulded face; Princess Seniavine, superb, hiding her yawns behind her fan; Madame de Morlaine, between two young married women whom she was educating in the art of being gracefully clever; Madame Meillan, happy in thft assurance of thirty years of incomparable beauty ; Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles, stiff, with iron-grey hair loaded with diamonds. Her bad complexion accentuated the severe dig^ nity of her bearing. Every one was looking at her. That morning, it had been reported that after Garain's failure, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles had undertaken to form a cabinet. His task was nearly accomplished. The list of ministers was in the newspapers, and included Martin-Belleme at the Treasury. And opera-glasses were turned uselessly to the Countess's box, which was still empty. The house resounded with a great murmur of voices. In the third row of the orchestra stalls, General Lariviere, standing in his usual place, was talking to General de La Briche. "I shall soon follow your example, old chap, and retire to grow cabbages in Touraine." 225 226 THE RED LILY He was in one of those melancholy moods when anni- hilation seemed the necessary sequence to the rapidly ap- proaching end of life. He had flattered Garain, and Garain, thinking him too clever, had passed him by and appointed a short-sighted faddist, a general of artillery, to be Min- ister of War. Lariviere, however, had the satisfaction of seeing Garain abandoned, betrayed by his friends Berthier d'Eyzelles and Martin-Belleme. The wrinkles round his little eyes were puckered up with laughter. On his crabbed face the crow's-feet seemed to laugh all by themselves. He was laughing only in profile. Weary of a long life of dis- simulation, he now suddenly indulged in the joy of ex- pressing his thoughts: "My good La Briche, they are really too stupid with their civil army which is expensive and useless. Small armies are the only ones that are any good. That was Napoleon's opinion, and he knew." "It is true, quite true," sighed General de La Briche, moved to tears. Montessuy passed them on his way to his seat; Lariviere held out his hand. "I hear that it was you, Montessuy, who defeated Garain. I congratulate you." Montessuy protested that he never meddled in politics. He was neither senator, nor deputy, nor even member of the General Council for Oise. And looking at the house through his glass: "Look, Lariviere, in that box on the right, there is a very pretty woman with her hair in flat bandeaux coming well over her forehead." And he took his place, tranquil in the enjoyment of the reality of power. Meanwhile in the foyer, in the passages, and in the house the names of the new ministers were being passed from mouth to mouth with sluggish indifference. President of the Council and Home Secretary, Berthier d'Eyzelles; Min- ister of Justice and Religion, Loyer; Minister of Finance, Martin-Belleme. All the appointments were known except the Ministers of Commerce, War, and the Fleet, not yet nominated. The curtain had risen on the tavern of the god Bacchus. THE RED LILY 227 The students were singing their second chorus, when Madame Martin appeared in her box, her hair dressed high; her white gown with winglike sleeves; and over her left breast a great lily in rubies sparkling on her white bodice. Miss Bell was sitting next her in a Queen Anne gown of green velvet. Engaged to Prince Eusebio Albertinelli della Spina, she had come to Paris to order her trousseau. In the noise and movement of the throng: "Darling," said Miss Bell, "at Florence you have left a friend who tenderly cherishes the charm of your mem- ory, Professor Arrighi. He gives you what he considers the highest of all praise: he says that you are a musical being. But how should Professor Arrighi forget, when even the broom bushes in the garden remember you? Their bare branches moan over your absence. Oh! they long for you, darling." "Tell them," said Therese, "that from Fiesole I brought away a delightful memory which is to be my very life." At the back of the box, M. Martin-Belleme in a low voice was giving his views to Joseph Springer and Du- vicquet. He was saying: "The credit of France is the best in the world," and again: "Let us pay off our debt by using our surplus, not by imposing taxes." He was in favour of prudent finance. And Miss Bell went on: "I will tell the broom-bushes of Fiesole, that you long for them, darling, that you will soon come back to them on the hill. But, I want to ask you: do you often meet M. Dechartre at Paris? I should so much like to see him again. I like him because he has a distinguished soul. Yes, darling, M. Dechartre's soul is full of grace and distinction." Therese replied that probably M. Dechartre was in the house and that he would not fail to come and see Miss Bell. The curtain went down on the myriad coloured whirl of a waltz. People pressed into the passage: financiers, artists, deputies, in one moment crowded into the little salon adjoining the box. They surrounded M. Martin- Belleme, muttered their congratulations, nodded their com- pliments over each other's heads, and nearly stifled each 228 THE RED LILY other in their efforts to shake hands with him. Joseph Schmoll, coughing and whining, blind and deaf, scornfully pushed his way through the crowd and reached Madame Martin. He took her hand, breathed heavily upon it, and covered it with resounding kisses. "I hear that your husband has been appointed minister. Is it true?" She knew it was rumoured, but did not think anything was decided yet. But her husband was here. Why not ask him? Always grasping at literal truth, he said: "Ah! your husband is not yet a minister? When he is nominated I will ask you for a moment's conversation. It is a matter of the highest importance." Then he was silent, looking through his gold spectacles, with that glance of the blind man and the visionary, which in spite of the brutal precision of his temperament, sur- rounded him with a kind of mysticism. "You have been to Italy this year, Madame?" he asked abruptly. And without giving her time to reply: "I know, I know. You went to Rome. You looked at that infamous Arch of Titus, that execrable monument bear- ing among the spoils from Judea the Seven Branched Can- dlestick. Ah well! Let me tell you, Madame, that the universe should be ashamed of permitting that ' Arch to remain standing in the city of Rome, where the Popes have only been able to exist by means of the art of the Jews, the silversmiths, and the money-changers. The Jews intro- duced the science of Greece and of the East into Italy. Madame, the Renaissance is the work of Israel. That is absolute but unacknowledged truth." And he went out through the crowded ante-room, tread- ing on the hats which collapsed with a dull thud beneath his heavy footsteps. Meanwhile Princess Seniavine, in the front of her box, was looking at her friend through the glass with that curiosity with which now and again the beauty of women inspired her. She signed to Paul Vence, who was near her: "Don't you think Madame Martin wonderfully beautiful this year?" THE RED LILY 229 In the foyer sparkling with light and gold, General de La Briche asked Lariviere: "Have you seen my nephew?" "Your nephew? Le Menil?" "Yes, Robert. He was in the house just now." La Briche thought for a moment. Then: "He came to Semanville this summer. I thought him strange, absent-minded. A nice fellow, perfectly frank and intelligent. But he ought to have a career, an object in life." It was a moment since the bell announcing the rise of the curtain had stopped ringing. The two old men were passing through the deserted foyer. "An object in life," repeated La Briche, tall, thin, and bent, while his comrade, brisk and active, left him behind and reached the theatre door. Marguerite was spinning and singing in the wood. When she had finished, Miss Bell said to Madame Martin: "Oh! darling, M. Choulette has written me a perfectly beautiful letter. He told me that he was very famous. And I was delighted to hear it. And he added: 'The fame of other poets rests upon spices and myrrh. Mine bleeds and groans beneath a shower of stones and oyster-shells.' Is it really true, my love, that good M. Choulette is being stoned by his fellow countrymen?" While Therese was reassuring Miss Bell, Loyer came into the box with an imperious and blustering air. He was wet and muddy. "I have just come from the Elysee," he said. He had the politeness to announce the good news to Ma- dame Martin first. "The appointments are ratified. Your husband is Min- ister of Finance. It is a fine office." "Did the President of the Republic make no objection when my name was brought before him?" asked M. Martin- Belleme. "None. Berthier reminded him of the hereditary up- rightness of the Martins, of your wealth, and especially of your connection with certain personages in the financial world, where support may be useful to the government. 230 THE RED LILY And, to employ Garain's happy expression, the President realised the needs of the hour. He confirmed the appoint- ment." Count Martin's sallow face wrinkled slightly. He smiled. "The official announcement," resumed Loyer, "will ap- pear in L'Officiel to-morrow. I drove in a cab with the gov- ernment clerk who was taking it to the editor's office. It was a necessary precaution. In the days of Grevy, who was by no means a fool, official decrees have been intercepted on their way from the Elysee to the Quai Voltaire." And Loyer threw himself into a chair. There, while admiring Madame Martin's shoulders, he continued: "It can no longer be said, as in the days of my poor friend Gambetta, that the Republic has no women. You, Madame, will entertain royally in the ministerial halls." Marguerite, wearing her necklace and her earrings, was looking in the glass and singing the jewel song. "We must draw up our manifesto," said Count Martin. "I have already been thinking of it. With regard to my own department I think I have discovered an excellent pro- gramme: The debt to be paid off from the surplus. No new taxation." Loyer shrugged his shoulders. "My dear Martin, there is no reason for making any radical change in the programme of the last cabinet; the situation remains essentially the same." An idea suddenly struck him. "The deuce! I had forgotten. We have sent your old friend Lariviere to the War Office, without consulting him. I was commissioned to tell him the news." He thought he might find him in a cafe on the boule- vards frequented by officers. But Count Martin said he was in the house. "We must get hold of him," said Loyer. Bowing to Madame Martin: "Will you permit me to carry off your husband, Countess?" They had just gone out when Jacques Dechartre and Paul Vence came into the box. "I congratulate you, Madame." said Paul Vence. THE RED LILY 231 But she turned to Dechartre: "I hope you have not come to congratulate me . . . ?" Paul Vence asked if they would live in the ministerial residence. "Not for anything." "But at any rate, Madame," resumed Paul Vence, "you will go to the balls at the Elysee and the Government Offices; and we shall admire the art with which you will preserve your mysterious charm, and continue the subject of our dreams." "Ministerial changes seem to inspire you with very frivo- lous reflections, Monsieur Vence," said Madame Martin. "Madame," he replied, "I will not say with Renan, my beloved master: 'What does that matter to Sirius?' because you would rightly reply: 'What has big Sirius to do with the little Earth?' But it always surprises me somewhat to see the mature and even the aged led astray by the illusion of power, forgetting that hunger, love, death, all the mean, as well as the sublime necessities of life, exer- cise so imperious a control over the mass of mankind that those who rule over their bodies are left with nothing more than power on paper and empire in words. And what is more wonderful still the people believe that they have other rulers than their poverty, their desire, and their imbecility. He was a wise man who said: 'Let us appoint Irony and Pity to be the witnesses and judges of man- kind.' " "But, Monsieur Vence," laughed Madame Martin, "you wrote that yourself I read your books." Meanwhile in the theatre and the passages, the .two min- isters were looking in vain for the General. Through the group of box-keepers, they went behind the stage, and past the stage scenery, which was being put up and taken down, through the crowd of young German girls in red petti- coats, sorcerers, demons, ancient courtesans, they came into the foyer of the ballet. The vast room, painted with alle- gorical figures, almost deserted, had that air of gravity aris- ing from State ownership and the endowment of wealth. There were two dancers standing mournfully, with one foot on the bar running along the wall. Here and there men in 232 THE RED LILY black coats and women in short full skirts were standing in groups^ in almost perfect silence. As they entered, Loyer and Martin-Belleme took off their hats. Across the room they saw Lariviere with a pretty girl, whose pink tunic with a gold belt was slit up the sides over her tights. She was holding in her hand a piece of cardboard covered with gilt paper. As they approached, they heard her saying to the General: "You are old, but I am sure you go in for it as much as he does." And with her bare arm she pointed disdainfully to a young man, with a gardenia in his button-hole, standing near them and grinning. Loyer signed to the General that he wanted to speak to him; and, pushing him against the bar, said: "I have pleasure in announcing your appointment as Min- ister of War." Lariviere, incredulous, did not reply. This badly dressed man, with long hair, who in his long dusty coat looked like some shouting juggler, inspired him with such mistrust that he suspected a trap, perhaps a practical joke. "Monsieur Loyer, Keeper of the Seals," said Count Martin. Loyer insisted: "General, you cannot refuse. I have answered for your acceptance. If you hesitate you will promote the unde- sirable return of Garain. He is a traitor." "My dear colleague, you exaggerate," said Count Martin. "But perhaps Garain lacks frankness. And the General's support is imperative." "Our country before everything," replied Lariviere, bub- bling over with excitement. "You know, General," resumed Loyer: "existing laws administered with inflexible moderation. Stand to that principle." His eyes were fixed on the two ballet girls stretching their short muscular legs over the bar. Lariviere was murmuring: "The moral of the army excellent. . . . The disinter- THE RED LILY 233 estedness of the commanders rising to the most critical situ- ations." Loyer tapped him on the shoulder: "My dear colleague, large armies are good after all." "I agree with you," replied Lariviere, "the present army is sufficient for the highest requirements of national de- fence." "The best of big armies," resumed Loyer, "is that they render war impossible. It would be mad to engage in wai with a force so gigantic that it baffles every human attempt to direct it. Don't you agree, General?" General Lariviere winked: "The present situation demands great prudence," he said. "We have to deal with unusual and menacing circum- stances." Then Loyer, looking at his military colleague with a cer- tain mild cynicism and scorn: "In the very improbable case of war, don't you think, ray dear colleague, that the real generals would be the station- masters?" The three ministers went out, down the stage staircdse. The President of the Council was expecting them at his house. The last act was beginning. Only Dechartre and Miss Bell were with Madame Martin in her box. Miss Bell was saying: "Darling, I am delighted how do you say it in French? je suis exaltee, to think that you wear the red lily of Florence on your heart. And M. Dechartre, who has an artist's soul, must be very pleased to see those dear jewels on your dress. Oh! how I should like to know what jew- eller made it. That lily is as graceful and supple as an iris. Yes, it is exquisite, magnificent and cruel. Have you .ever noticed, my love, that beautiful jewels have always, an air of magnificent cruelty?" "My jeweller," said Therese, "is here, and you have named him: M. Dechartre was kind enough to design this ornament." The box door opened. Therese half turned and -saw Le Menil in the shadow bowing to her with his stiff grace: 234 THE RED LILY "Will you convey my congratulations to your husband, Madame?" Rather dryly he complimented her on looking well. To Miss Bell he addressed a few pleasant, conventional remarks. Therese was listening anxiously, with her mouth half open in the painful effort to make insignificant replies. He asked her if she had had a good time at Joinville. He would like to have been there for the hunting. But he could not arrange it. He had been yachting in the Medi- terranean and later hunting at Semanville. "Oh! Monsieur Le Menil," said Miss Bell, "did you wander over the blue sea? And did you meet any sirens?" No, he had not seen any sirens; but for three days a dolphin had accompanied the yacht. Miss Bell asked whether the dolphin liked music. He did not think so. "Dolphins," he said, "are simply spermaceti-whales that sailors call ocean geese because of a certain goose-like forma- tion of the head." But Miss Bell refused to believe that the monster that bore Arion to Cape Tenarus had the head of a goose. "Next year, Monsieur Le Menil, if you find a dolphin swimming round your yacht, I entreat you to play to him on your flute the hymn to the Delphic Apollo. Do you like the sea, Monsieur Le Menil?" "I prefer the woods." He spoke simply and calmly, quite self-contained. "Yes, Monsieur Le Menil, I know how you love the woods and the thickets where leverets dance in the moonlight." Dechartre turned pale; he rose and went out. It was the church scene Marguerite on her knees, was wringing her hands, her head bowed beneath the heavy weight of her long fair plaits. And there resounded from the organ and the chorus the chant of the dead : His Cross in Heaven on that dread day Obscures the sun's diminished ray, Chaos resumes its ancient sway.* * Quand du Seigneur le jour luira, Sa croix au ciel resplendira, Et 1'univers s'ecroulera. THE RED LILY 235 "Do you know, darling, that the chant of the dead sung in Catholic churches comes from a Franciscan hermitage? It suggests the wind in winter blowing through the larches on the heights of Alvernia." Therese did not hear. Her soul had flown away through the door of the box. In the ante-chamber there was a sound of chairs being overturned. Schmoll came back. He had heard that M. Martin-Belleme had been appointed minister. And im- mediately he came to demand his Commander's Cross and a larger flat at the Institute. At present his rooms were dark and small, not nearly large enough for his wife and his five daughters. The only place for his study was a loft. He complained at length and refused to depart until Ma- dame Martin promised to speak for him. "Monsieur Le Menil," asked Miss Bell, "shall you go yachting next year?" Le Menil thought not. He had no intention of keeping the Rosebud. The sea was depressing. And calmly and determinedly he looked at Therese. On the stage, in Marguerite's prison, Mephistopheles was singing: "The day has dawned," and the orchestra was imitating the terrible gallop of the horses. Therese mur- mured : "I have a headache. It is very close in here." Marguerite's clear words, calling to the angels, were wafted on the air. "Darling, I must tell you that poor Marguerite will not be saved according to the flesh, and for that very reason she is saved in spirit and in truth. One thing I believe, darling, that we shall all be saved. Yes, I believe in the ultimate purification of sinners." Therese rose, tall, and dazzlingly white in contrast to the blood-red flower on her breast. Miss Bell enthralled was listening to the music. Le Menil, in the ante-room, took Madame Martin's cloak. And while he held it unfolded, she passed from the box into the ante-room, and paused before the mirror, near the half open door. On to her bare shoulders, touching them lightly with his fingers, he put the great cloak of red velvet embroidered with gold and lined 2#S THE RED LILY with emiiwA, And said in a low voice, very briefly and very distinctly: "Therese, 1 love you. Remember what I asked you the day before yesterday. Every day, every day, after three o'clock I shall be in our flat, Rue Spontini." At that moment, as she bent her head for him to put on her cloak, she saw Dechartre, with his hand on the door- handle. He looked at her with all the reproach and sorrow the human eye is capable of expressing. Then he turned away down the corridor. It was as if hammers of fire were beating on the walls of her heart, and she remained motion- less on the threshold. "You were waiting for me?" said Montessuy, who had come to fetch her. "You are quite forsaken to-day; I will take you and Miss Bell home." XXXIII IN her carriage, in her room, her lover's cruel sorrowful look haunted her. She knew how apt he was to fall into despair, how quick to lose command of his will. In that mood she had seen him hastening along the Arno bank. In his sadness and anguish it had been her happiness then to run to him and say : "Come." And now again, surrounded and observed as she was, she ought to have found something to say to him, and not to have let him go away in silence and suffering. But she had been taken by surprise and over- whelmed. The absurd incident had passed so rapidly! She felt for Le Menil that impulsive anger we feel for things that hurt us, the stone against which we bruise our heads. It was herself whom she reproached bitterly for having al- lowed her lover to go, without one word, without one glance, into which she might have put her whole soul. While Pauline was waiting to undress her, she walked up and down impatiently. Then she stopped abruptly. In the dark mirrors, in which the candles were reflected, she saw the corridor at the theatre and her lover hastening down it, without looking back. Where was he now? What was he saying to himself alone? It was torture not to be able to go to him immedi- ately. For a long while she pressed her hands against her heart; for she felt as if she were choking. Pauline uttered a little cry. On her mistress's white bodice she saw drops of blood. Without her noticing it, the stamens of the red lily had scratched her hand. She took off the emblem, which she had worn, openly declaring the secret of her heart, and, holding it in her hand, she gazed at it long. Then once again she saw the Florence days, the cell at San Marco where her lover's kiss fell sweetly on her lips, while through the lashes of her cast down eyelids she saw vaguely the angels nd the blue sky painted on the wall, the Lanzi, and the glittering fountain 237 238 THE RED LILY of the ice vendor on the red cotton table-cloth; the little house in the Via Alfieri, its nymphs, its goats, and the room, where the shepherds and the masks on the screens listened to her voice breaking the long silence. All this was no shadow of the past, no phantom of former days. It was the present reality of her love. And one stupid word uttered by a stranger had shattered these beau- tiful things. Fortunately it was impossible. Her love, her lover were not dependent on such a trifle. If only she could go to him, as she was, half-undressed, by night, and enter his room. . . . She would find him sitting by the fire, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, sad. Then, with her fingers in his hair, she would make him look up and see that she loved him, that she was his, his living treasure of joy and love. She had sent her maid away. In bed, with her lamp lit, she was pondering over one thought. It was coincidence, an absurd coincidence. He would understand that nothing so stupid could affect their love. What madness! for him to be jealous of another! As if there were for her any other men in the world! M. Martin-Belleme opened the door of his room. Seeing a light, he came in. "Aren't you asleep, Therese?" He had just come from conferring with Berthier d'Ey- zelles and his colleagues. On certain matters he wanted advice from his wife, for he knew she was clever. Above all things he wanted sincerity. "It is done," he said. "You, my love, will help me, I am sure, in a position greatly desired, but very difficult and even dangerous. I owe it partly to you, for it is largely your father's powerful influence that has placed me in it." He consulted her as to who should be the leader of the cabinet. She gave him the best advice she could. She found him sensible, calm, and not more foolish than the others. He indulged in reflections: "In the Senate I must support the budget as it has been voted by the Chamber. This budget includes innovations of which T did not approve. As a deputy I opposed them. THE RED LILY 239 As a minister I shall support them. Then I looked at things from the outside. Seen from within they are quite different. Besides, I am no longer free." He sighed. "Ah! if people only knew how little one can do when one is in power." He gave her his impressions. Berthier was holding back. The others were inscrutable. Loyer alone appeared ex- tremely autocratic. She heard him patiently, but without paying attention. That pale face and thin voice were to her a timepiece mark- ing the slow passing of the minutes one by one. "Now and then Loyer gives utterance to the most extra- ordinary opinions. At the same time that he declares him- self a firm supporter of the Concordat, he says: 'The bishops are the prejets of religion. I shall protect them be- cause they belong to me. And through them I shall control the spiritual gamekeepers the parish priests.' " He reminded her that she would have to 'move in a circle not her own, which would doubtless shock her by its vul- garity. But their position would require them to slight no one. Besides, he counted on her tact and her loyalty. She looked at him, rather alarmed. "Nothing is urgent at present, my love. We shall see later." He was tired and overdone. He wished her good-night and advised her to sleep. She would ruin her health if she read like that all night. He left her. She heard the sound of his footsteps, rather heavier than usual, while he was crossing the study heaped up with blue- books and newspapers, on his way to the bedroom, where he would sleep, perhaps. Then the silence of the night op- pressed her. She looked at her watch. It was half-past one. She said to herself: "He also is suffering. ... He looked at me with such anger and despair." She had lost none of her courage nor her ardour. What made her desperate was to be there, a prisoner, as if in solitary confinement. She would be free when day dawned; then she would go to him, see him, and explain all. It was 240 THE RED LILY so simple. In the sad monotony of her thoughts, she lis- tened to the rolling of carts, at long intervals, on the quay. This sound, which marked the flight of the hours, arrested her attention, almost interested her. She made an effort to catch the faint noise in the distance, growing more and more distinct until she could distinguish the rolling of the wheels, the grinding of the axle-trees, the clashing of hoofs, growing feebler and feebler, and dying away into an im- perceptible murmur. And, when silence was restored, she returned to her thoughts. He would understand that she loved him, that she had never loved any one else. But it was distressing that the night was so long in passing away. She dared not look at her watch, for fear of perceiving the terrible slowness of the hours. She rose, went to the window, and drew aside the cur- tains. There was a pale light in the cloudy sky. She thought it must be the beginning of daybreak. She looked at her watch. It was half-past three. She went back to the window. The infinite darkness out- side attracted her. She looked. The pavement shone under the gas-lamps. An invisible, silent rain was falling from the dull sky. Suddenly a voice came out of the silence; high and then low, so staccato that it seemed several voices re- plying to each other. It was a drunkard loafing on the pavement and knocking up against the trees. He was en- gaged in a long argument with the creatures of his dreams, magnanimously allowing them to speak, only to overwhelm them afterwards by wild gestures and imperious speech. Therese watched the poor man swaying along the parapet, in his white blouse, like a rag in the night wind, and now and again she heard the words, constantly recurring: "That is what I say to the government." Numb with cold, she went back to bed. An agonising thought came into her mind. "He is jealous, madly jealous. It is a physical matter, one of nerves. But his love also is physical and of the nerves. His love and his jealousy are the same thing. Another would understand. It would be enough to appeal to his self-respect." She knew that in THE RED LILY 241 him jealousy was physical torture, an open wound, extended by the powers of imagination. She knew how deep-rooted was the evil. She had seen him turn pale in front of the bronze St. Mark, when she posted her letter in the wall of the old Florentine house; and then she was only his in his desire and his dreams. Later, after their long kisses, she recalled his half-stifled complaints, his sudden sadness, and the sorrowful mystery of the words he was always repeating: "You alone can help me to forget you." She beheld the letter received at Dinard and his wild despair over a few words heard in a cafe. She felt that the chance blow had fallen on the sensitive spot, on the open wound. But she did not lose heart. She would say everything, confess everything, and all her avowals would proclaim: "I love you. I have never loved another." She had never deceived him. She would tell him nothing that he had not guessed already. She had lied so little, as little as possible, and merely to avoid giving him pain. How could he fail to understand? It would be best that he should know all, since that all amounted to nothing. Over and over again she thought the same thoughts and said to herself the same words. Her lamp, was going out. She lit candles. It was half- past six. She realised that she had slept. She ran to the window. The sky was black, and touching the earth seemed to form one chaos of thick darkness. Then she became curious as to what hour the sun would rise. She had no idea. All she knew was that the nights were very long in December. She tried to remember, but could not. She never thought of looking at the open calendar on the table. The heavy footsteps of workmen passing in groups, tke noise of the milk carts and the vegetable waggons sounded like good omens to her ears. She shuddered at these first signs of the town's awakening. XXXIV AT nine o'clock, in the courtyard of the little house, she found M. Fusellier sweeping away the rain-water, with his pipe in his mouth. Madame Fusellier came out of her lodge. They both looked embarrassed. Madame Fusellier was the first to speak: "M. Jacques is not at home." And, as Therese was silent and did not move, Fusellier came up to her, broom in hand, hiding his pipe behind his back. "M. Jacques has not come home yet." "I will wait for him," said Therese. Madame Fusellier showed her into the drawing-room, where she lit the fire. And because the wood only smoked and refused to burst into a flame, she stayed bending over it, her hands on her hips. "It is the rain," she said, "that makes the smoke come down the chimney." Madame Martin told her not to trouble to light a fire, she was not cold. She saw herself in a mirror. Her face was white, except for her cheeks which were burning. And then only she be- came aware that her feet were as cold as ice. She went up to the fire. Madame Fusellier, seeing that she was anxious, tried to say something comforting: "M. Jacques won't be long wouldn't Madame like to warm herself while she is waiting?" The rain was pattering on the glazed ceiling and the light was dull. On the walls, the lady with the unicorn, stiff and of deathly hue, seemed no longer beautiful among her cava- liers, in the forest full of birds and flowers. Therese was muttering to herself the words: "He has not come home." As she repeated them over and over again, they seemed to lose their meaning. With burn- Ing eyes she looked at the door. She remained thus without moving, without thinking, 242 THE RED LILY 243 how long she didn't know; perhaps it was half an hour. Then there was a sound of footsteps; the door opened. He entered. She saw that he was wet through, and muddy, and burning with fever. She looked at him so sincerely and so frankly that he was astonished. But, almost immediately all his anguish welled up within him. "What do you want of me now?" he said. "You have done me all the harm in your power." His fatigue made him seem gentle. She was alarmed. "Jacques, listen to me . . ." He signified that there was nothing more to be said. "Jacques, listen. I have not deceived you. Oh! no I have not deceived you. Could it have been possible? Could it . . ." He interrupted: "Have pity on me. Don't hurt me any more. Leave me, I entreat of you. If you knew what a night I have passed, you would not dare to torture me further." He sank on to the divan, where, six months ago, he had kissed her under her veil. All night he had walked without thinking of where he was going. He had followed the Seine, until he found its banks fringed with willows and poplars. To still his suffer- ing he had tried to distract his mind. On the Quai de Bercy he had watched the moon fleeting among the clouds. For an hour he had seen her hidden and then reappearing. Then he had set himself with minute accuracy to count the windows of houses. It had begun to rain. He had gone to the Market, and drunk brandy in a tavern. A big woman, who squinted, had said to him: "You don't look happy." He sank down on a leather covered bench. And for a mo- ment he was at rest. The visions of that terrible night passed before him. He ?aid: "I thought of that night on the bank of the Arno. You have robbed me of all beauty and all joy." He besought her to leave him alone. In his weariness he pitied himself profoundly. He would have liked to sleep, not to die: death always filled him with horror. But to sleep and never wake. Meanwhile he saw her before him, 244 THE RED LILY ardently desired, and as desirable as before, with her face worn by suffering and in spite of the fixity of her fevered gaze. And inscrutable now, more mysterious than ever. He looked at her. His hatred revived with his anguish. With an evil glance, he sought signs of caresses that he had not given her. She held out her arms to him: "Listen, Jacques." He showed that it was useless for her to speak. Never- theless he wanted to hear her, and already he was listening eagerly. What she was going to say, he hated and rejected beforehand, but it was the only thing in the world that interested him. She said: "You dared to believe that I betrayed you, that I did not live in and for you alone. But don't you understand? Don't you realise that if that man had been my lover he would not have needed to speak to me in the theatre, in that box; he would have had a thousand other opportunities of arranging a rendezvous. Oh! no, my love, I assure you that since I have had the happiness and even to-day in agony and sorrow, I still say happiness of knowing you, I have been yours alone. Could I possibly have been an- other's? It is monstrous to imagine it. But I love you, I love you. It is you alone that I love. I have never loved another." He replied slowly, with cruel deliberation: " 'Every day I shall be in our flat, Rue Spontini, after three o'clock.' It was no lover, not your lover who spoke those words! No! It was a stranger." She rose, and with sad seriousness: "Yes, I have been his mistress. You knew it. I denied it, I lied, so as not to give you pain, not to irritate you. I saw how anxious and suspicious you were. But I lied so little and so badly! You knew it. Don't reproach me with it. You knew it, you often spoke of the past, and then one day at a restaurant you heard. . . . And your imagination went beyond the truth. I did not deceive you when I lied. And if you knew how little it counts in my life! And be- sideSj I did not know you. I did not dream that I should ever know you. I was so weary of my life." THE RED LILY 245 She threw herself on her knees: "I was wrong. I ought to have waited for you. But, if you only knew how all that is as if it had never been, and it was so very little." And in a sweet, singing voice, she said over and over again like a refrain: "Why did you not come before? Why?" She crept to him, tried to take his hands and clasp his knees. He repulsed her: "I was stupid. I did not believe, I did not know. I was resolved not to know." He rose, and, in an outburst of hatred: "I could not bear it, no I could not bear it to be that one." She sat down on the divan that he had quitted; and then plaintively, speaking low, she explained the past. She had been cast all alone into a horribly commonplace society. Then it had happened, she had yielded. But immediately she had regretted it. Oh! if he knew how dull and sad her life had been, he would not be jealous, he would pity her. She shook her head, and, looking at him through her dis- ordered hair: "But I am talking of another woman. I have nothing in common with that woman. I have existed only since I knew you, since I was yours." He had begun to pace wildly up and down the room, just as a short time before he had walked on the banks of the Seine. He burst into a bitter laugh: "Yes, but while you were loving me, what about the other woman, who was not you?" She looked at him indignantly: "Can you believe . . . ?" "Didn't you see him at Florence, didn't you go with him to the station?" She told him that he had sought her in Italy, that she had met him and parted from him, that he had gone away in anger, and that since he had tried to persuade her to come back to him, but that she had not even thought about it. 246 THE RED LILY "My love, I see none, I know none but you." He shook his head. "I do not believe you." She grew angry. "I have told you everything. Accuse me, condemn me, but don't insult my love for you. That I forbid." He shook his head. "Leave me. You have hurt me too much. I loved you so dearly that any sorrow you might have caused me, I would have accepted and kept and loved; but this is hideous. I hate it. Leave me. My grief is too deep. Good-bye." Standing firmly, her little feet planted on the carpet: "I came. It is for my happiness, my life, that I am con- tending. I am resolute, you know. I will not go." And she repeated all she had said. Emphatic and sin- cere, convinced that she was in the right, she explained how she had broken the already slackened tie that chafed her. She told how from the day when she had yielded to him in the little house in the Via Alfieri, she had been his entirely, without a regret, certainly without a glance or a thought for any one else. But when she spoke of another, she angered him. And he cried: "I don't believe you." Then she began again to repeat what she had said. And suddenly, instinctively she looked at her watch: "Good heavens! it is twelve o'clock." Many a time she had uttered the same cry of alarm when the hour for parting had surprised them. And Jacques trembled when he heard those familiar words now so sorrow- ful and despairing. For a few minutes longer she implored him with tears and passionate words. Then she was obliged to go ; she had gained nothing. At home she found market-women waiting in the hall to present her with a bouquet. She remembered that her hus- band was minister. There were piles of telegrams, cards, letters, congratulations, requests. Madame Marmet wrote asking her to recommend her nephew to General Lariviere. She went into the dining-room, and sank exhausted on to a divan. M. Martin-Belleme was finishing his lunch. He was due at once at a cabinet council and at the house of the THE RED LILY 247 retiring Minister of Finance, on whom he had to call. The discreet obsequiousness of his staff had already flattered, wearied, and perturbed him. "Don't forget, my love," he said, "to call on Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles. You know how sensitive she is." She made no reply. While he was dipping his withered fingers in a finger-glass, he looked up, and, seeing her tired look and her disordered dress, he did not dare to say an- other word. He found himself face to face with a mystery he was de- termined to ignore, a secret sorrow which one word might disclose. It filled him with anxiety, fear, and a kind of respect. He threw down his serviette. "Excuse me, my dear." And he went out. She tried to eat. She could swallow nothing. For every- thing she felt an uncontrollable loathing. About two o'clock she went back to the little house at Les Ternes. She found Jacques in his room. He was smok- ing his wooden pipe. A cup of coffee nearly empty was on the table. He looked at her with a hardness that froze the blood in her veins. She did not dare to speak, feeling that all she might say would offend and irritate him, and that her mere appearance discreet and silent rekindled his wrath. He knew that she would come back; he had expected her with the impatience of hatred, with an eagerness as keen as when he waited for her in the house in the Via Alfieri. She saw in a flash that she had been unwise in coming; absent he would have desired her, longed for her, summoned her perhaps. But it was too late; and besides, being prudent had not occurred to her. She said to him: "You see, I came back; I could not do otherwise. And it was quite natural, since I love you. You know it." She had felt that everything she could say would only ir- ritate him. He asked her if she said as much in the Rue Spontini. She looked at him profoundly sad. "Jacques, you have often said that deep down in your 248 THE RED LILY heart was a world of hatred and anger, which might break forth against me. I see you like to make me suffer." With loving patience, she retold at length the story of her life, the emptiness and sadness of the past, and how, since he had made her his, she had lived only in him and through him. Her words were as sincere as her glance. She was sitting near him. From time to time he felt the now timid touch of her fingers and the warmth of her fevered breath. He listened with a cruel interest. Hard on himself, he wanted to know everything: her latest meeting with Le Menil, and the story of their final rupture. She told him faithfully all that had happened at the Hotel de la Grande Bretagne; but she represented it as having taken place in a walk in the Cascine, for fear lest the thought of their sad interview in a private room should still further anger her lover. Then she explained the meeting at the station. She had not wished to drive to desperation a sad passionate man. Since then she had heard nothing of him till the day when he spoke to her in the Avenue Mac-Mahon. She repeated what he had said under the Judas-tree. Two days later she had seen him in her box at the opera. She had certainly not in- vited him to come. That was the truth. It was the truth. But the old poison slowly accumulated was working. The past, the irreparable past had been called into the present by her confession. He saw it and it tor- tured him. "I don't believe you," he said. And he added: "And if I did believe you, the very thought that you had been the mistress of that man would make it impossible for me ever to see you again. I told you so, I wrote it to you you remember, when you were at Dinard. I could not bear it to be he. And since ..." He paused. She said: "You know there has been nothing since." He resumed with sullen passion: "Since, I have seen him." Long they remained silent. At length, in a surprised and plaintive tone she said: "But, my love, you should have thought that a woman THE RED LILY 249 like me, married as I was. . . . Every day women come to their lovers with a more serious past than mine, and are loved nevertheless. Ah! if you only knew how little my past counts for in my life." "I know what you can be. One cannot forgive in you what one would overlook in another." "But, my love, I am like other women." "No, you are not like the others. In you oothing can be overlooked." He spoke with compressed mouth and look of hatred. His eyes, those eyes that she had seen so big, so sparkling with the gentle fire of love, now hard and dry, ?unken be- hind their wrinkled lids, made him look quite different. He frightened her. She went to the opposite end qf the room. Seated there, with her heart in her throat, her eyes wide open with aston- ishment, like a child, she stayed long, trembling and stifling her sobs. Then she burst out crying. "Why did I ever know you?" he sighed. Through her tears, she answered: "I do not regret having known you. It is killing me, and I do not regret it. I have loved." He cruelly persisted in making her suffer. He knew hov badly he was acting and yet could not help himself. "It is possible that after all you may have loved me too.' With a slight bitterness, she replied: "But I loved you only. I loved you too well. That is what you are punishing me for now. . . .Oh! how can you think that I ever was to another what I have been to you!" "Why not?" She looked at him without strength or courage: "Tell me, is it true that you don't believe me?" She added very softly: "If I were to kill myself, would you believe me?" "No, I should not believe you." She wiped her face with her handkerchief, then looking up, her eyes sparkling through her tears: "Then, it is all over." She rose, looked round the room at the thousand things 250 THE RED LILY with which she had lived in joyful, voluptuous intimacy, that she had made her own, and that now suddenly were nothing to her; they regarded her as a stranger and an enemy; she looked at the nude woman, who was making that gesture in flight that had not been explained to her; the Florentine medals recalling Fiesole and the enchanted hours in Italy; Dechartre's study of the profile of a street girl with a laugh on her thin worn pretty face. She paused for a moment, she stood in front of it, sympathising with that little newspaper-seller, who had also come there and disappeared, carried into the terrible immensity of life and things. She repeated: "Then it is over." He was silent. Their forms were growing indistinct in the twilight. She said: "What is to become of me?" He replied: "And what will become of me?" They looked pitifully at each other, because each was filled with self pity. , Therese continued: "And I who used to fear growing old, for your sake and mine, lest our beautiful love might utterly die! It would have been better had it never been born. Yes, it would have been better had I never been born. Was it not an omen when as a child, under the lime-trees at Joinville, near the Crown, in front of the marble nymphs, I longed to die?" With arms hanging down and hands clasped, she looked up; through her tears, her eyes sparkled in the gloom. "Is there no way of making you feel that what I tell you in true, that never, since I was yours, never. . . . But how could I? The very idea seems to me horrible, absurd! Can you know me so little?" He shook his head sadly. "I don't know you." Once again she looked round questioningly at all the things in the room that had witnessed their love. THE RED LILY 25^. "But then, all that we have been to each other ... it was in vain, it was useless. We have merely met, we have not become one." She grew indignant. It was impossible for him not to realise what he was to her. And in the passion of her rejected love, she threw herself into his arms and covered him with tears and kisses. He forgot everything, took her, aching, broken, but happy, and pressed her in his arms with the mournful rage of desire. Already her head thrown back on the pillow, she was smiling through her tears. Suddenly he tore himself away from her. "I no longer see you alone. The other is always with you." Silent, indignant, despairing, she looked at him. She rose, arranged her dress and her hair, with a feeling of shame that was new to her. Then, realising that the end had come, she looked around her in astonishment, with eyes that saw nothing, and went out slowly. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES COLLEGE LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1 REGD 001. UB. 1 'A*f \un 2 o/i J'<n326? > JVJH \ 6 v SECT) COL LIB. - Nov 22 6& * ^ j , 5 JAN 17 78 14DA\ otp ' n J^AP nw ntu U UUL. LFD. JAN 1 7 10- OR Slip-25m-&,'60 (.B2.93 5s4)4280 /\ A A UCLA-College Library PQ 2254 L99E5 1917 L 005 690 270 3 College Library PQ 221k L99ES 1917 ^SSISSsassssdsviH \ A oo7 1^'7