The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sarrasine, by Honore de Balzac This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Sarrasine Author: Honore de Balzac Translator: Clara Bell and Others Release Date: March 3, 2010 [EBook #1826] Last Updated: November 23, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SARRASINE *** Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
[*] Macedoine, in the sense in which it is here used, is a
game, or rather a series of games, of cards, each player,
when it is his turn to deal, selecting the game to be
played.
“Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long, has he?”
“Oh, yes! It is nearly ten years since the Marechal de Carigliano sold it
to him.”
“Ah!”
“These people must have an enormous fortune.”
“They surely must.”
“What a magnificent party! It is almost insolent in its splendor.”
“Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucingen or Monsieur de
Gondreville?”
“Why, don’t you know?”
I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were talking as
members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris, busies itself
exclusively with the Whys and Hows. Where does he come
from? Who are they? What’s the matter with him? What has she done?
They lowered their voices and walked away in order to talk more at their
ease on some retired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to
seekers after mysteries. No one knew from what country the Lanty family
came, nor to what source—commerce, extortion, piracy, or inheritance—they
owed a fortune estimated at several millions. All the members of the
family spoke Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German, with
sufficient fluency to lead one to suppose that they had lived long among
those different peoples. Were they gypsies? were they buccaneers?
“Suppose they’re the devil himself,” said divers young politicians, “they
entertain mighty well.”
“The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some Casbah for all I care;
I would like to marry his daughter!” cried a philosopher.
Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen, whose beauty
realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental poets! Like the Sultan’s
daughter in the tale of the Wonderful Lamp, she should have
remained always veiled. Her singing obscured the imperfect talents of the
Malibrans, the Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one dominant quality
always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas Marianina combined in
equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling, accuracy of time and
intonation, science, soul, and delicacy. She was the type of that hidden
poesy, the link which connects all the arts and which always eludes those
who seek it. Modest, sweet, well-informed, and clever, none could eclipse
Marianina unless it was her mother.
Have you ever met one of those women whose startling beauty defies the
assaults of time, and who seem at thirty-six more desirable than they
could have been fifteen years earlier? Their faces are impassioned souls;
they fairly sparkle; each feature gleams with intelligence; each possesses
a brilliancy of its own, especially in the light. Their captivating eyes
attract or repel, speak or are silent; their gait is artlessly seductive;
their voices unfold the melodious treasures of the most coquettishly sweet
and tender tones. Praise of their beauty, based upon comparisons, flatters
the most sensitive self-esteem. A movement of their eyebrows, the
slightest play of the eye, the curling of the lip, instils a sort of
terror in those whose lives and happiness depend upon their favor. A
maiden inexperienced in love and easily moved by words may allow herself
to be seduced; but in dealing with women of this sort, a man must be able,
like M. de Jaucourt, to refrain from crying out when, in hiding him in a
closet, the lady’s maid crushes two of his fingers in the crack of a door.
To love one of these omnipotent sirens is to stake one’s life, is it not?
And that, perhaps, is why we love them so passionately! Such was the
Comtesse de Lanty.
Filippo, Marianina’s brother, inherited, as did his sister, the Countess’
marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a word, that young man was a
living image of Antinous, with somewhat slighter proportions. But how well
such a slender and delicate figure accords with youth, when an olive
complexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of a velvety eye promise virile
passions, noble ideas for the future! If Filippo remained in the hearts of
young women as a type of manly beauty, he likewise remained in the memory
of all mothers as the best match in France.
The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of these two
children came entirely from their mother. The Comte de Lanty was a short,
thin, ugly little man, as dismal as a Spaniard, as great a bore as a
banker. He was looked upon, however, as a profound politician, perhaps
because he rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de Metternich or
Wellington.
This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem by Lord Byron,
whose difficult passages were translated differently by each person in
fashionable society; a poem that grew more obscure and more sublime from
strophe to strophe. The reserve which Monsieur and Madame de Lanty
maintained concerning their origin, their past lives, and their relations
with the four quarters of the globe would not, of itself, have been for
long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In no other country, perhaps, is
Vespasian’s maxim more thoroughly understood. Here gold pieces, even when
stained with blood or mud, betray nothing, and represent everything.
Provided that good society knows the amount of your fortune, you are
classed among those figures which equal yours, and no one asks to see your
credentials, because everybody knows how little they cost. In a city where
social problems are solved by algebraic equations, adventurers have many
chances in their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it
was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford
to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatical
history of the Lanty family offered a perpetual subject of curiosity, not
unlike that aroused by the novels of Anne Radcliffe.
People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon finding out
where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you what rent you pay when they
are pleased with your apartments, had noticed, from time to time, the
appearance of an extraordinary personage at the fetes, concerts, balls,
and routs given by the countess. It was a man. The first time that he was
seen in the house was at a concert, when he seemed to have been drawn to
the salon by Marianina’s enchanting voice.
“I have been cold for the last minute or two,” said a lady near the door
to her neighbor.
The stranger, who was standing near the speaker, moved away.
“This is very strange! now I am warm,” she said, after his departure.
“Perhaps you will call me mad, but I cannot help thinking that my
neighbor, the gentleman in black who just walked away, was the cause of my
feeling cold.”
Ere long the exaggeration to which people in society are naturally
inclined, produced a large and growing crop of the most amusing ideas, the
most curious expressions, the most absurd fables concerning this
mysterious individual. Without being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a
fictitious man, a sort of Faust or Robin des Bois, he partook of the
nature of all these anthropomorphic conceptions, according to those
persons who were addicted to the fantastic. Occasionally some German would
take for realities these ingenious jests of Parisian evil-speaking. The
stranger was simply an old man. Some young men, who were accustomed
to decide the future of Europe every morning in a few fashionable phrases,
chose to see in the stranger some great criminal, the possessor of
enormous wealth. Novelists described the old man’s life and gave some
really interesting details of the atrocities committed by him while he was
in the service of the Prince of Mysore. Bankers, men of a more positive
nature, devised a specious fable.
“Bah!” they would say, shrugging their broad shoulders pityingly, “that
little old fellow’s a Genoese head!”
“If it is not an impertinent question, monsieur, would you have the
kindness to tell me what you mean by a Genoese head?”
“I mean, monsieur, that he is a man upon whose life enormous sums depend,
and whose good health is undoubtedly essential to the continuance of this
family’s income. I remember that I once heard a mesmerist, at Madame
d’Espard’s, undertake to prove by very specious historical deductions,
that this old man, if put under the magnifying glass, would turn out to be
the famous Balsamo, otherwise called Cagliostro. According to this modern
alchemist, the Sicilian had escaped death, and amused himself making gold
for his grandchildren. And the Bailli of Ferette declared that he
recognized in this extraordinary personage the Comte de Saint-Germain.”
Such nonsense as this, put forth with the assumption of superior
cleverness, with the air of raillery, which in our day characterize a
society devoid of faith, kept alive vague suspicions concerning the Lanty
family. At last, by a strange combination of circumstances, the members of
that family justified the conjectures of society by adopting a decidedly
mysterious course of conduct with this old man, whose life was, in a
certain sense, kept hidden from all investigations.
If he crossed the threshold of the apartment he was supposed to occupy in
the Lanty mansion, his appearance always caused a great sensation in the
family. One would have supposed that it was an event of the greatest
importance. Only Filippo, Marianina, Madame de Lanty, and an old servant
enjoyed the privilege of assisting the unknown to walk, to rise, to sit
down. Each one of them kept a close watch on his slightest movements. It
seemed as if he were some enchanted person upon whom the happiness, the
life, or the fortune of all depended. Was it fear or affection? Society
could discover no indication which enabled them to solve this problem.
Concealed for months at a time in the depths of an unknown sanctuary, this
familiar spirit suddenly emerged, furtively as it were, unexpectedly, and
appeared in the salons like the fairies of old, who alighted from their
winged dragons to disturb festivities to which they had not been invited.
Only the most experienced observers could divine the anxiety, at such
times, of the masters of the house, who were peculiarly skilful in
concealing their feelings. But sometimes, while dancing a quadrille, the
too ingenuous Marianina would cast a terrified glance at the old man, whom
she watched closely from the circle of dancers. Or perhaps Filippo would
leave his place and glide through the crowd to where he stood, and remain
beside him, affectionate and watchful, as if the touch of man, or the
faintest breath, would shatter that extraordinary creature. The countess
would try to draw nearer to him without apparently intending to join him;
then, assuming a manner and an expression in which servility and
affection, submissiveness and tyranny, were equally noticeable, she would
say two or three words, to which the old man almost always deferred; and
he would disappear, led, or I might better say carried away, by her. If
Madame de Lanty were not present, the Count would employ a thousand ruses
to reach his side; but it always seemed as if he found difficulty in
inducing him to listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose
mother gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. Some
prying persons having ventured to question the Comte de Lanty
indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual seemed not to understand
their questions. And so, after many attempts, which the circumspection of
all the members of the family rendered fruitless, no one sought to
discover a secret so well guarded. Society spies, triflers, and
politicians, weary of the strife, ended by ceasing to concern themselves
about the mystery.
But at that moment, it may be, there were in those gorgeous salons
philosophers who said to themselves, as they discussed an ice or a
sherbet, or placed their empty punch glasses on a tray:
“I should not be surprised to learn that these people are knaves. That old
fellow who keeps out of sight and appears only at the equinoxes or
solstices, looks to me exactly like an assassin.”
“Or a bankrupt.”
“There’s very little difference. To destroy a man’s fortune is worse than
to kill the man himself.”
“I bet twenty louis, monsieur; there are forty due me.”
“Faith, monsieur; there are only thirty left on the cloth.”
“Just see what a mixed company there is! One can’t play cards in peace.”
“Very true. But it’s almost six months since we saw the Spirit. Do you
think he’s a living being?”
“Well, barely.”
These last remarks were made in my neighborhood by persons whom I did not
know, and who passed out of hearing just as I was summarizing in one last
thought my reflections, in which black and white, life and death, were
inextricably mingled. My wandering imagination, like my eyes, contemplated
alternately the festivities, which had now reached the climax of their
splendor, and the gloomy picture presented by the gardens. I have no idea
how long I meditated upon those two faces of the human medal; but I was
suddenly aroused by the stifled laughter of a young woman. I was stupefied
at the picture presented to my eyes. By virtue of one of the strangest of
nature’s freaks, the thought half draped in black, which was tossing about
in my brain, emerged from it and stood before me personified, living; it
had come forth like Minerva from Jupiter’s brain, tall and strong; it was
at once a hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. Escaped
from his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old man had
evidently crept behind a long line of people who were listening
attentively to Marianina’s voice as she finished the cavatina from Tancred.
He seemed to have come up through the floor, impelled by some stage
mechanism. He stood for a moment motionless and sombre, watching the
festivities, a murmur of which had perhaps reached his ears. His almost
somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon things that,
although he was in the midst of many people, he saw nobody. He had taken
his place unceremoniously beside one of the most fascinating women in
Paris, a young and graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh
as a child’s, all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it
seemed that a man’s glance must pass through her as the sun’s rays pass
through flawless glass. They stood there before me, side by side, so close
together, that the stranger rubbed against the gauze dress, and the
wreaths of flowers, and the hair, slightly crimped, and the floating ends
of the sash.
I had brought that young woman to Madame de Lanty’s ball. As it was her
first visit to that house, I forgave her her stifled laugh; but I hastily
made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her
neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the
charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and
apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and
which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young
lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the
inert heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the movements of
a paralytic. He sat slowly down upon his chair with great caution,
mumbling some unintelligible words. His cracked voice resembled the noise
made by a stone falling into a well. The young woman nervously pressed my
hand, as if she were trying to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that
man, at whom she happened to be looking, turned upon her two lifeless,
sea-green eyes, which could be compared to nothing save tarnished
mother-of-pearl.
“I am afraid,” she said, putting her lips to my ear.
“You can speak,” I replied; “he hears with great difficulty.”
“You know him, then?”
“Yes.”
Thereupon she summoned courage to scrutinize for a moment that creature
for which no human language has a name, form without substance, a being
without life, or life without action. She was under the spell of that
timid curiosity which impels women to seek perilous excitement, to gaze at
chained tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering all the while because the
barriers between them are so weak. Although the little old man’s back was
bent like a day-laborer’s, it was easy to see that he must formerly have
been of medium height. His excessive thinness, the slenderness of his
limbs, proved that he had always been of slight build. He wore black silk
breeches which hung about his fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered
veil. An anatomist would instinctively have recognized the symptoms of
consumption in its advanced stages, at sight of the tiny legs which served
to support that strange frame. You would have said that they were a pair
of cross-bones on a gravestone. A feeling of profound horror seized the
heart when a close scrutiny revealed the marks made by decrepitude upon
that frail machine.
He wore a white waistcoat embroidered with gold, in the old style, and his
linen was of dazzling whiteness. A shirt-frill of English lace, yellow
with age, the magnificence of which a queen might have envied, formed a
series of yellow ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace seemed
rather a worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the frill a
diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That superannuated
splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic worth, but utterly
without taste, served to bring out in still bolder relief the strange
creature’s face. The frame was worthy of the portrait. That dark face was
full of angles and furrowed deep in every direction; the chin was
furrowed; there were great hollows at the temples; the eyes were sunken in
yellow orbits. The maxillary bones, which his indescribable gauntness
caused to protrude, formed deep cavities in the centre of both cheeks.
These protuberances, as the light fell upon them, caused curious effects
of light and shadow which deprived that face of its last vestige of
resemblance to the human countenance. And then, too, the lapse of years
had drawn the fine, yellow skin so close to the bones that it described a
multitude of wrinkles everywhere, either circular like the ripples in the
water caused by a stone which a child throws in, or star-shaped like a
pane of glass cracked by a blow; but everywhere very deep, and as close
together as the leaves of a closed book. We often see more hideous old
men; but what contributed more than aught else to give to the spectre that
rose before us the aspect of an artificial creation was the red and white
paint with which he glistened. The eyebrows shone in the light with a
lustre which disclosed a very well executed bit of painting. Luckily for
the eye, saddened by such a mass of ruins, his corpse-like skull was
concealed beneath a light wig, with innumerable curls which indicated
extraordinary pretensions to elegance. Indeed, the feminine coquettishness
of this fantastic apparition was emphatically asserted by the gold
ear-rings which hung at his ears, by the rings containing stones of
marvelous beauty which sparkled on his fingers, like the brilliants in a
river of gems around a woman’s neck. Lastly, this species of Japanese idol
had constantly upon his blue lips, a fixed, unchanging smile, the shadow
of an implacable and sneering laugh, like that of a death’s head. As
silent and motionless as a statue, he exhaled the musk-like odor of the
old dresses which a duchess’ heirs exhume from her wardrobe during the
inventory. If the old man turned his eyes toward the company, it seemed
that the movements of those globes, no longer capable of reflecting a
gleam, were accomplished by an almost imperceptible effort; and, when the
eyes stopped, he who was watching them was not certain finally that they
had moved at all. As I saw, beside that human ruin, a young woman whose
bare neck and arms and breast were white as snow; whose figure was
well-rounded and beautiful in its youthful grace; whose hair, charmingly
arranged above an alabaster forehead, inspired love; whose eyes did not
receive but gave forth light, who was sweet and fresh, and whose fluffy
curls, whose fragrant breath, seemed too heavy, too harsh, too
overpowering for that shadow, for that man of dust—ah! the thought
that came into my mind was of death and life, an imaginary arabesque, a
half-hideous chimera, divinely feminine from the waist up.
“And yet such marriages are often made in society!” I said to myself.
“He smells of the cemetery!” cried the terrified young woman, grasping my
arm as if to make sure of my protection, and moving about in a restless,
excited way, which convinced me that she was very much frightened. “It’s a
horrible vision,” she continued; “I cannot stay here any longer. If I look
at him again I shall believe that Death himself has come in search of me.
But is he alive?”
She placed her hand on the phenomenon, with the boldness which women
derive from the violence of their wishes, but a cold sweat burst from her
pores, for, the instant she touched the old man, she heard a cry like the
noise made by a rattle. That shrill voice, if indeed it were a voice,
escaped from a throat almost entirely dry. It was at once succeeded by a
convulsive little cough like a child’s, of a peculiar resonance. At that
sound, Marianina, Filippo, and Madame de Lanty looked toward us, and their
glances were like lightning flashes. The young woman wished that she were
at the bottom of the Seine. She took my arm and pulled me away toward a
boudoir. Everybody, men and women, made room for us to pass. Having
reached the further end of the suite of reception-rooms, we entered a
small semi-circular cabinet. My companion threw herself on a divan,
breathing fast with terror, not knowing where she was.
“You are mad, madame,” I said to her.
“But,” she rejoined, after a moment’s silence, during which I gazed at her
in admiration, “is it my fault? Why does Madame de Lanty allow ghosts to
wander round her house?”
“Nonsense,” I replied; “you are doing just what fools do. You mistake a
little old man for a spectre.”
“Hush,” she retorted, with the imposing, yet mocking, air which all women
are so well able to assume when they are determined to put themselves in
the right. “Oh! what a sweet boudoir!” she cried, looking about her. “Blue
satin hangings always produce an admirable effect. How cool it is! Ah! the
lovely picture!” she added, rising and standing in front of a
magnificently framed painting.
We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which seemed the work
of some supernatural brush. The picture represented Adonis stretched out
on a lion’s skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase, hanging in the centre of
the boudoir, cast upon the canvas a soft light which enabled us to grasp
all the beauties of the picture.
“Does such a perfect creature exist?” she asked me, after examining
attentively, and not without a sweet smile of satisfaction, the exquisite
grace of the outlines, the attitude, the color, the hair, in fact
everything.
“He is too beautiful for a man,” she added, after such a scrutiny as she
would have bestowed upon a rival.
Ah! how sharply I felt at that moment those pangs of jealousy in which a
poet had tried in vain to make me believe! the jealousy of engravings, of
pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human beauty, as a result
of the doctrine which leads them to idealize everything.
“It is a portrait,” I replied. “It is a product of Vien’s genius. But that
great painter never saw the original, and your admiration will be modified
somewhat perhaps, when I tell you that this study was made from a statue
of a woman.”
“But who is it?”
I hesitated.
“I insist upon knowing,” she added earnestly.
“I believe,” I said, “that this Adonis represents a—a
relative of Madame de Lanty.”
I had the chagrin of seeing that she was lost in contemplation of that
figure. She sat down in silence, and I seated myself beside her and took
her hand without her noticing it. Forgotten for a portrait! At that moment
we heard in the silence a woman’s footstep and the faint rustling of a
dress. We saw the youthful Marianina enter the boudoir, even more
resplendent by reason of her grace and her fresh costume; she was walking
slowly and leading with motherly care, with a daughter’s solicitude, the
spectre in human attire, who had driven us from the music-room; as she led
him, she watched with some anxiety the slow movement of his feeble feet.
They walked painfully across the boudoir to a door hidden in the hangings.
Marianina knocked softly. Instantly a tall, thin man, a sort of familiar
spirit, appeared as if by magic. Before entrusting the old man to this
mysterious guardian, the lovely child, with deep veneration, kissed the
ambulatory corpse, and her chaste caress was not without a touch of that
graceful playfulness, the secret of which only a few privileged women
possess.
“Addio, addio!” she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
voice.
She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, in a very low
tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection of her heart by a poetic
expression. The old man, suddenly arrested by some memory, remained on the
threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard the
sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed the most beautiful of the
rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and placed it in
Marianina’s bosom. The young madcap laughed, plucked out the ring, slipped
it on one of her fingers over her glove, and ran hastily back toward the
salon, where the orchestra were, at that moment, beginning the prelude of
a contra-dance.
She spied us.
“Ah! were you here?” she said, blushing.
After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ran away to her
partner with the careless petulance of her years.
“What does this mean?” queried my young partner. “Is he her husband? I
believe I am dreaming. Where am I?”
“You!” I retorted, “you, madame, who are easily excited, and who,
understanding so well the most imperceptible emotions, are able to
cultivate in a man’s heart the most delicate of sentiments, without
crushing it, without shattering it at the very outset, you who have
compassion for the tortures of the heart, and who, with the wit of the
Parisian, combine a passionate temperament worthy of Spain or Italy——”
She realized that my words were heavily charged with bitter irony; and,
thereupon, without seeming to notice it, she interrupted me to say:
“Oh! you describe me to suit your own taste. A strange kind of tyranny!
You wish me not to be myself!”
“Oh! I wish nothing,” I cried, alarmed by the severity of her manner. “At
all events, it is true, is it not, that you like to hear stories of the
fierce passions, kindled in our heart by the enchanting women of the
South?”
“Yes. And then?”
“Why, I will come to your house about nine o’clock to-morrow evening, and
elucidate this mystery for you.”
“No,” she replied, with a pout; “I wish it done now.”
“You have not yet given me the right to obey you when you say, ‘I wish
it.’”
“At this moment,” she said, with an exhibition of coquetry of the sort
that drives men to despair, “I have a most violent desire to know this
secret. To-morrow it may be that I will not listen to you.”
She smiled and we parted, she still as proud and as cruel, I as
ridiculous, as ever. She had the audacity to waltz with a young
aide-de-camp, and I was by turns angry, sulky, admiring, loving, and
jealous.
“Until to-morrow,” she said to me, as she left the ball about two o’clock
in the morning.
“I won’t go,” I thought. “I give up. You are a thousand times more
capricious, more fanciful, than—my imagination.”
The next evening we were seated in front of a bright fire in a dainty
little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost at her feet, looking up
into her face. The street was silent. The lamp shed a soft light. It was
one of those evenings which delight the soul, one of those moments which
are never forgotten, one of those hours passed in peace and longing, whose
charm is always in later years a source of regret, even when we are
happier. What can efface the deep imprint of the first solicitations of
love?
“Go on,” she said. “I am listening.”
“But I dare not begin. There are passages in the story which are dangerous
to the narrator. If I become excited, you will make me hold my peace.”
“Speak.”
“I obey.
“Ernest-Jean Sarrasine was the only son of a prosecuting attorney of
Franche-Comte,” I began after a pause. “His father had, by faithful work,
amassed a fortune which yielded an income of six to eight thousand francs,
then considered a colossal fortune for an attorney in the provinces. Old
Maitre Sarrasine, having but one child, determined to give him a thorough
education; he hoped to make a magistrate of him, and to live long enough
to see, in his old age, the grandson of Mathieu Sarrasine, a ploughman in
the Saint-Die country, seated on the lilies, and dozing through the
sessions for the greater glory of the Parliament; but Heaven had not that
joy in store for the attorney. Young Sarrasine, entrusted to the care of
the Jesuits at an early age, gave indications of an extraordinarily unruly
disposition. His was the childhood of a man of talent. He would not study
except as his inclination led him, often rebelled, and sometimes remained
for whole hours at a time buried in tangled meditations, engaged now in
watching his comrades at play, now in forming mental pictures of Homer’s
heroes. And, when he did choose to amuse himself, he displayed
extraordinary ardor in his games. Whenever there was a contest of any sort
between a comrade and himself, it rarely ended without bloodshed. If he
were the weaker, he would use his teeth. Active and passive by turns,
either lacking in aptitude, or too intelligent, his abnormal temperament
caused him to distrust his masters as much as his schoolmates. Instead of
learning the elements of the Greek language, he drew a picture of the
reverend father who was interpreting a passage of Thucydides, sketched the
teacher of mathematics, the prefect, the assistants, the man who
administered punishment, and smeared all the walls with shapeless figures.
Instead of singing the praises of the Lord in the chapel, he amused
himself, during the services, by notching a bench; or, when he had stolen
a piece of wood, he would carve the figure of some saint. If he had no
wood or stone or pencil, he worked out his ideas with bread. Whether he
copied the figures in the pictures which adorned the choir, or improvised,
he always left at this seat rough sketches, whose obscene character drove
the young fathers to despair; and the evil-tongued alleged that the
Jesuits smiled at them. At last, if we are to believe college traditions,
he was expelled because, while awaiting his turn to go to the confessional
one Good Friday, he carved a figure of the Christ from a stick of wood.
The impiety evidenced by that figure was too flagrant not to draw down
chastisement on the artist. He had actually had the hardihood to place
that decidedly cynical image on the top of the tabernacle!
“Sarrasine came to Paris to seek a refuge against the threats of a
father’s malediction. Having one of those strong wills which know no
obstacles, he obeyed the behests of his genius and entered Bouchardon’s
studio. He worked all day and went about at night begging for subsistence.
Bouchardon, marveling at the young artist’s intelligence and rapid
progress, soon divined his pupil’s destitute condition; he assisted him,
became attached to him, and treated him like his own child. Then, when
Sarrasine’s genius stood revealed in one of those works wherein future
talent contends with the effervescence of youth, the generous Bouchardon
tried to restore him to the old attorney’s good graces. The paternal wrath
subsided in face of the famous sculptor’s authority. All Besancon
congratulated itself on having brought forth a future great man. In the
first outburst of delight due to his flattered vanity, the miserly
attorney supplied his son with the means to appear to advantage in
society. The long and laborious study demanded by the sculptor’s
profession subdued for a long time Sarrasine’s impetuous temperament and
unruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the passions would
some day rage in that youthful heart, as highly tempered perhaps as
Michelangelo’s, smothered its vehemence with constant toil. He succeeded
in restraining within reasonable bounds Sarrasine’s extraordinary
impetuosity, by forbidding him to work, by proposing diversions when he
saw that he was on the point of plunging into dissipation. But with that
passionate nature, gentleness was always the most powerful of all weapons,
and the master did not acquire great influence over his pupil until he had
aroused his gratitude by fatherly kindness.
“At the age of twenty-two Sarrasine was forcibly removed from the salutary
influence which Bouchardon exercised over his morals and his habits. He
paid the penalty of his genius by winning the prize for sculpture founded
by the Marquis de Marigny, Madame de Pompadour’s brother, who did so much
for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon’s pupil’s statue as a masterpiece. Not
without profound sorrow did the king’s sculptor witness the departure for
Italy of a young man whose profound ignorance of the things of life he
had, as a matter of principle, refrained from enlightening. Sarrasine was
Bouchardon’s guest for six years. Fanatically devoted to his art, as
Canova was at a later day, he rose at dawn and went to the studio, there
to remain until night, and lived with his muse alone. If he went to the
Comedie-Francaise, he was dragged thither by his master. He was so bored
at Madame Geoffrin’s, and in the fashionable society to which Bouchardon
tried to introduce him, that he preferred to remain alone, and held aloof
from the pleasures of that licentious age. He had no other mistresses than
sculpture and Clotilde, one of the celebrities of the Opera. Even that
intrigue was of brief duration. Sarrasine was decidedly ugly, always badly
dressed, and naturally so independent, so irregular in his private life,
that the illustrious nymph, dreading some catastrophe, soon remitted the
sculptor to love of the arts. Sophie Arnould made some witty remark on the
subject. She was surprised, I think, that her colleague was able to
triumph over statues.
“Sarrasine started for Italy in 1758. On the journey his ardent
imagination took fire beneath a sky of copper and at the sight of the
marvelous monuments with which the fatherland of the arts is strewn. He
admired the statues, the frescoes, the pictures; and, fired with a spirit
of emulation, he went on to Rome, burning to inscribe his name between the
names of Michelangelo and Bouchardon. At first, therefore, he divided his
time between his studio work and examination of the works of art which
abound in Rome. He had already passed a fortnight in the ecstatic state
into which all youthful imaginations fall at the sight of the queen of
ruins, when he happened one evening to enter the Argentina theatre, in
front of which there was an enormous crowd. He inquired the reasons for
the presence of so great a throng, and every one answered by two names:
“‘Zambinella! Jomelli!’
“He entered and took a seat in the pit, crowded between two unconscionably
stout abbati; but luckily he was quite near the stage. The curtain
rose. For the first time in his life he heard the music whose charms
Monsieur Jean-Jacques Rousseau had extolled so eloquently at one of Baron
d’Holbach’s evening parties. The young sculptor’s senses were lubricated,
so to speak, by Jomelli’s harmonious strains. The languorous peculiarities
of those skilfully blended Italian voices plunged him in an ecstasy of
delight. He sat there, mute and motionless, not even conscious of the
crowding of the two priests. His soul poured out through his ears and his
eyes. He seemed to be listening with every one of his pores. Suddenly a
whirlwind of applause greeted the appearance of the prima donna. She came
forward coquettishly to the footlights and curtsied to the audience with
infinite grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a vast multitude,
the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume which was most
attractive for the time, all conspired in that woman’s favor. Sarrasine
cried aloud with pleasure. He saw before him at that moment the ideal
beauty whose perfections he had hitherto sought here and there in nature,
taking from one model, often of humble rank, the rounded outline of a
shapely leg, from another the contour of the breast; from another her
white shoulders; stealing the neck of that young girl, the hands of this
woman, and the polished knees of yonder child, but never able to find
beneath the cold skies of Paris the rich and satisfying creations of
ancient Greece. La Zambinella displayed in her single person, intensely
alive and delicate beyond words, all those exquisite proportions of the
female form which he had so ardently longed to behold, and of which a
sculptor is the most severe and at the same time the most passionate
judge. She had an expressive mouth, eyes instinct with love, flesh of
dazzling whiteness. And add to these details, which would have filled a
painter’s soul with rapture, all the marvelous charms of the Venuses
worshiped and copied by the chisel of the Greeks. The artist did not tire
of admiring the inimitable grace with which the arms were attached to the
body, the wonderful roundness of the throat, the graceful curves described
by the eyebrows and the nose, and the perfect oval of the face, the purity
of its clean-cut lines, and the effect of the thick, drooping lashes which
bordered the large and voluptuous eyelids. She was more than a woman; she
was a masterpiece! In that unhoped-for creation there was love enough to
enrapture all mankind, and beauties calculated to satisfy the most
exacting critic.
“Sarrasine devoured with his eyes what seemed to him Pygmalion’s statue
descended from its pedestal. When La Zambinella sang, he was beside
himself. He was cold; then suddenly he felt a fire burning in the secret
depths of his being, in what, for lack of a better word, we call the
heart. He did not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad impulse, a sort
of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age when there is a
something indefinably terrible and infernal in our desires. Sarrasine
longed to rush upon the stage and seize that woman. His strength,
increased a hundredfold by a moral depression impossible to describe,—for
such phenomena take place in a sphere inaccessible to human observation,—insisted
upon manifesting itself with deplorable violence. Looking at him, you
would have said that he was a cold, dull man. Renown, science, future,
life, prizes, all vanished.
“‘To win her love or die!’ Such was the sentence Sarrasine pronounced upon
himself.
“He was so completely intoxicated that he no longer saw theatre, audience,
or actors, no longer heard the music. Nay, more, there was no space
between him and La Zambinella; he possessed her; his eyes, fixed
steadfastly upon her, took possession of her. An almost diabolical power
enabled him to feel the breath of that voice, to inhale the fragrant
powder with which her hair was covered, to see the slightest inequalities
of her face, to count the blue veins which threaded their way beneath the
satiny skin. And that fresh, brisk voice of silvery timbre,
flexible as a thread to which the faintest breath of air gives form, which
it rolls and unrolls, tangles and blows away, that voice attacked his
heart so fiercely that he more than once uttered an involuntary
exclamation, extorted by the convulsive ecstasy too rarely evoked by human
passions. He was soon obliged to leave the theatre. His trembling legs
almost refused to bear him. He was prostrated, weak, like a nervous man
who has given way to a terrible burst of anger. He had had such exquisite
pleasure, or perhaps had suffered so, that his life had flowed away like
water from an overturned vessel. He felt a void within him, a sense of
goneness like the utter lack of strength which discourages a convalescent
just recovering from a serious sickness. Overwhelmed by inexplicable
melancholy, he sat down on the steps of a church. There, with his back
resting against a pillar, he lost himself in a fit of meditation as
confused as a dream. Passion had dealt him a crushing blow. On his return
to his apartments he was seized by one of those paroxysms of activity
which reveal to us the presence of new principles in our existence. A prey
to that first fever of love which resembles pain as much as pleasure, he
sought to defeat his impatience and his frenzy by sketching La Zambinella
from memory. It was a sort of material meditation. Upon one leaf La
Zambinella appeared in that pose, apparently calm and cold, affected by
Raphael, Georgione, and all the great painters. On another, she was coyly
turning her head as she finished a roulade, and seemed to be listening to
herself. Sarrasine drew his mistress in all poses: he drew her unveiled,
seated, standing, reclining, chaste, and amorous—interpreting,
thanks to the delirious activity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas
which beset our imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by
a mistress. But his frantic thoughts outran his pencil. He met La
Zambinella, spoke to her, entreated her, exhausted a thousand years of
life and happiness with her, placing her in all imaginable situations,
trying the future with her, so to speak. The next day he sent his servant
to hire a box near the stage for the whole season. Then, like all young
men of powerful feelings, he exaggerated the difficulties of his
undertaking, and gave his passion, for its first pasturage, the joy of
being able to admire his mistress without obstacle. The golden age of
love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we are almost
as happy by ourselves, was not likely to last long with Sarrasine.
However, events surprised him when he was still under the spell of that
springtime hallucination, as naive as it was voluptuous. In a week he
lived a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in molding the clay with
which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella, notwithstanding the veils,
the skirts, the waists, and the bows of ribbon which concealed her from
him. In the evening, installed at an early hour in his box, alone,
reclining on a sofa, he made for himself, like a Turk drunk with opium, a
happiness as fruitful, as lavish, as he wished. First of all, he
familiarized himself gradually with the too intense emotions which his
mistress’ singing caused him; then he taught his eyes to look at her, and
was finally able to contemplate her at his leisure without fearing an
explosion of concealed frenzy, like that which had seized him the first
day. His passion became more profound as it became more tranquil. But the
unsociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it was with
images, adorned with the fanciful creations of hope, and full of
happiness, to be disturbed by his comrades. His love was so intense and so
ingenuous, that he had to undergo the innocent scruples with which we are
assailed when we love for the first time. As he began to realize that he
would soon be required to bestir himself, to intrigue, to ask where La
Zambinella lived, to ascertain whether she had a mother, an uncle, a
guardian, a family,—in a word, as he reflected upon the methods of
seeing her, of speaking to her, he felt that his heart was so swollen with
such ambitious ideas, that he postponed those cares until the following
day, as happy in his physical sufferings as in his intellectual
pleasures.”
“But,” said Madame de Rochefide, interrupting me, “I see nothing of
Marianina or her little old man in all this.”
“You see nothing but him!” I cried, as vexed as an author for whom some
one has spoiled the effect of a coup de theatre.
“For some days,” I resumed after a pause, “Sarrasine had been so faithful
in attendance in his box, and his glances expressed such passionate love,
that his passion for La Zambinella’s voice would have been the town-talk
of Paris, if the episode had happened here; but in Italy, madame, every
one goes to the theatre for his own enjoyment, with all his own passions,
with a heartfelt interest which precludes all thought of espionage with
opera-glasses. However, the sculptor’s frantic admiration could not long
escape the notice of the performers, male and female. One evening the
Frenchman noticed that they were laughing at him in the wings. It is hard
to say what violent measures he might have resorted to, had not La
Zambinella come on the stage. She cast at Sarrasine one of those eloquent
glances which often say more than women intend. That glance was a complete
revelation in itself. Sarrasine was beloved!
“‘If it is a mere caprice,’ he thought, already accusing his mistress of
too great ardor, ‘she does not know the sort of domination to which she is
about to become subject. Her caprice will last, I trust, as long as my
life.’
“At that moment, three light taps on the door of his box attracted the
artist’s attention. He opened the door. An old woman entered with an air
of mystery.
“‘Young man,’ she said, ‘if you wish to be happy, be prudent. Wrap
yourself in a cloak, pull a broad-brimmed hat over your eyes, and be on
the Rue du Corso, in front of the Hotel d’Espagne, about ten o’clock
to-night.’
“‘I will be there,’ he replied, putting two louis in the duenna’s wrinkled
hand.
“He rushed from his box, after a sign of intelligence to La Zambinella,
who lowered her voluptuous eyelids modestly, like a woman overjoyed to be
understood at last. Then he hurried home, in order to borrow from his
wardrobe all the charms it could loan him. As he left the theatre, a
stranger grasped his arm.
“‘Beware, Signor Frenchman,’ he said in his ear. ‘This is a matter of life
and death. Cardinal Cicognara is her protector, and he is no trifler.’
“If a demon had placed the deep pit of hell between Sarrasine and La
Zambinella, he would have crossed it with one stride at that moment. Like
the horses of the immortal gods described by Homer, the sculptor’s love
had traversed vast spaces in a twinkling.
“‘If death awaited me on leaving the house, I would go the more quickly,’
he replied.
“‘Poverino!’ cried the stranger, as he disappeared.
“To talk of danger to a man in love is to sell him pleasure. Sarrasine’s
valet had never seen his master so painstaking in the matter of dress. His
finest sword, a gift from Bouchardon, the bow-knot Clotilde gave him, his
coat with gold braid, his waistcoat of cloth of silver, his gold
snuff-box, his valuable watch, everything was taken from its place, and he
arrayed himself like a maiden about to appear before her first lover. At
the appointed hour, drunk with love and boiling over with hope, Sarrasine,
his nose buried in his cloak, hurried to the rendezvous appointed by the
old woman. She was waiting.
“‘You are very late,’ she said. ‘Come.’
“She led the Frenchman through several narrow streets and stopped in front
of a palace of attractive appearance. She knocked; the door opened. She
led Sarrasine through a labyrinth of stairways, galleries, and apartments
which were lighted only by uncertain gleams of moonlight, and soon reached
a door through the cracks of which stole a bright light, and from which
came the joyous sound of several voices. Sarrasine was suddenly blinded
when, at a word from the old woman, he was admitted to that mysterious
apartment and found himself in a salon as brilliantly lighted as it was
sumptuously furnished; in the centre stood a bountifully supplied table,
laden with inviolable bottles, with laughing decanters whose red facets
sparkled merrily. He recognized the singers from the theatre, male and
female, mingled with charming women, all ready to begin an artists’ spree
and waiting only for him. Sarrasine restrained a feeling of displeasure
and put a good face on the matter. He had hoped for a dimly lighted
chamber, his mistress leaning over a brazier, a jealous rival within two
steps, death and love, confidences exchanged in low tones, heart to heart,
hazardous kisses, and faces so near together that La Zambinella’s hair
would have touched caressingly his desire-laden brow, burning with
happiness.
“‘Vive la folie!’ he cried. ‘Signori e belle donne, you will
allow me to postpone my revenge and bear witness to my gratitude for the
welcome you offer a poor sculptor.’
“After receiving congratulations not lacking in warmth from most of those
present, whom he knew by sight, he tried to approach the couch on which La
Zambinella was nonchalantly reclining. Ah! how his heart beat when he
spied a tiny foot in one of those slippers which—if you will allow
me to say so, madame—formerly imparted to a woman’s feet such a
coquettish, voluptuous look that I cannot conceive how men could resist
them. Tightly fitting white stockings with green clocks, short skirts, and
the pointed, high-heeled slippers of Louis XV.‘s time contributed
somewhat, I fancy, to the demoralization of Europe and the clergy.”
“Somewhat!” exclaimed the marchioness. “Have you read nothing, pray?”
“La Zambinella,” I continued, smiling, “had boldly crossed her legs, and
as she prattled swung the upper one, a duchess’ attitude very well suited
to her capricious type of beauty, overflowing with a certain attractive
suppleness. She had laid aside her stage costume, and wore a waist which
outlined a slender figure, displayed to the best advantage by a panier
and a satin dress embroidered with blue flowers. Her breast, whose
treasures were concealed by a coquettish arrangement of lace, was of a
gleaming white. Her hair was dressed almost like Madame du Barry’s; her
face, although overshadowed by a large cap, seemed only the daintier
therefor, and the powder was very becoming to her. She smiled graciously
at the sculptor. Sarrasine, disgusted beyond measure at finding himself
unable to speak to her without witnesses, courteously seated himself
beside her, and discoursed of music, extolling her prodigious talent; but
his voice trembled with love and fear and hope.
“‘What do you fear?’ queried Vitagliani, the most celebrated singer in the
troupe. ‘Go on, you have no rival here to fear.’
“After he had said this the tenor smiled silently. The lips of all the
guests repeated that smile, in which there was a lurking expression of
malice likely to escape a lover. The publicity of his love was like a
sudden dagger-thrust in Sarrasine’s heart. Although possessed of a certain
strength of character, and although nothing that might happen could subdue
the violence of his passion, it had not before occurred to him that La
Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that he could not hope to enjoy at
one and the same time the pure delights which would make a maiden’s love
so sweet, and the passionate transports with which one must purchase the
perilous favors of an actress. He reflected and resigned himself to his
fate. The supper was served. Sarrasine and La Zambinella seated themselves
side by side without ceremony. During the first half of the feast the
artists exercised some restraint, and the sculptor was able to converse
with the singer. He found that she was very bright and quick-witted; but
she was amazingly ignorant and seemed weak and superstitious. The delicacy
of her organs was reproduced in her understanding. When Vitagliani opened
the first bottle of champagne, Sarrasine read in his neighbor’s eyes a
shrinking dread of the report caused by the release of the gas. The
involuntary shudder of that thoroughly feminine temperament was
interpreted by the amorous artist as indicating extreme delicacy of
feeling. This weakness delighted the Frenchman. There is so much of the
element of protection in a man’s love!
“‘You may make use of my power as a shield!’
“Is not that sentence written at the root of all declarations of love?
Sarrasine, who was too passionately in love to make fine speeches to the
fair Italian, was, like all lovers, grave, jovial, meditative, by turns.
Although he seemed to listen to the guests, he did not hear a word that
they said, he was so wrapped up in the pleasure of sitting by her side, of
touching her hand, of waiting on her. He was swimming in a sea of
concealed joy. Despite the eloquence of divers glances they exchanged, he
was amazed at La Zambinella’s continued reserve toward him. She had begun,
it is true, by touching his foot with hers and stimulating his passion
with the mischievous pleasure of a woman who is free and in love; but she
had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after she had heard
Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated the extreme violence of his
temper. When the supper became a debauch, the guests began to sing,
inspired by the Peralta and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating
duets, Calabrian ballads, Spanish sequidillas, and Neapolitan canzonettes.
Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music, in the hearts and voices of the
guests. There was a sudden overflow of bewitching vivacity, of cordial
unconstraint, of Italian good nature, of which no words can convey an idea
to those who know only the evening parties of Paris, the routs of London,
or the clubs of Vienna. Jests and words of love flew from side to side
like bullets in a battle, amid laughter, impieties, invocations to the
Blessed Virgin or the Bambino. One man lay on a sofa and fell
asleep. A young woman listened to a declaration, unconscious that she was
spilling Xeres wine on the tablecloth. Amid all this confusion La
Zambinella, as if terror-stricken, seemed lost in thought. She refused to
drink, but ate perhaps a little too much; but gluttony is attractive in
women, it is said. Sarrasine, admiring his mistress’ modesty, indulged in
serious reflections concerning the future.
“‘She desires to be married, I presume,’ he said to himself.
“Thereupon he abandoned himself to blissful anticipations of marriage with
her. It seemed to him that his whole life would be too short to exhaust
the living spring of happiness which he found in the depths of his heart.
Vitagliani, who sat on his other side, filled his glass so often that,
about three in the morning, Sarrasine, while not absolutely drunk, was
powerless to resist his delirious passion. In a moment of frenzy he seized
the woman and carried her to a sort of boudoir which opened from the
salon, and toward which he had more than once turned his eyes. The Italian
was armed with a dagger.
“‘If you come hear me,’ she said, ‘I shall be compelled to plunge this
blade into your heart. Go! you would despise me. I have conceived too
great a respect for your character to abandon myself to you thus. I do not
choose to destroy the sentiment with which you honor me.’
“‘Ah!’ said Sarrasine, ‘to stimulate a passion is a poor way to extinguish
it! Are you already so corrupt that, being old in heart, you act like a
young prostitute who inflames the emotions in which she trades?’
“‘Why, this is Friday,’ she replied, alarmed by the Frenchman’s violence.
“Sarrasine, who was not piously inclined, began to laugh. La Zambinella
gave a bound like a young deer, and darted into the salon. When Sarrasine
appeared, running after her, he was welcomed by a roar of infernal
laughter. He saw La Zambinella swooning on a sofa. She was very pale, as
if exhausted by the extraordinary effort she had made. Although Sarrasine
knew but little Italian, he understood his mistress when she said to
Vitagliani in a low voice:
“‘But he will kill me!’
“This strange scene abashed the sculptor. His reason returned. He stood
still for a moment; then he recovered his speech, sat down beside his
mistress, and assured her of his profound respect. He found strength to
hold his passion in check while talking to her in the most exalted strain;
and, to describe his love, he displayed all the treasures of eloquence—that
sorcerer, that friendly interpreter, whom women rarely refuse to believe.
When the first rays of dawn surprised the boon companions, some woman
suggested that they go to Frascati. One and all welcomed with loud
applause the idea of passing the day at Villa Ludovisi. Vitagliani went
down to hire carriages. Sarrasine had the good fortune to drive La
Zambinella in a phaeton. When they had left Rome behind, the merriment of
the party, repressed for a moment by the battle they had all been fighting
against drowsiness, suddenly awoke. All, men and women alike, seemed
accustomed to that strange life, that constant round of pleasures, that
artistic energy, which makes of life one never ending fete, where
laughter reigns, unchecked by fear of the future. The sculptor’s companion
was the only one who seemed out of spirits.
“‘Are you ill?’ Sarrasine asked her. ‘Would you prefer to go home?’
“‘I am not strong enough to stand all this dissipation,’ she replied. ‘I
have to be very careful; but I feel so happy with you! Except for you, I
should not have remained to this supper; a night like this takes away all
my freshness.’
“‘You are so delicate!’ rejoined Sarrasine, gazing in rapture at the
charming creature’s dainty features.
“‘Dissipation ruins my voice.’
“‘Now that we are alone,’ cried the artist, ‘and that you no longer have
reason to fear the effervescence of my passion, tell me that you love me.’
“‘Why?’ said she; ‘for what good purpose? You think me pretty. But you are
a Frenchman, and your fancy will pass away. Ah! you would not love me as I
should like to be loved.’
“‘How?’
“‘Purely, with no mingling of vulgar passion. I abhor men even more,
perhaps than I hate women. I need to take refuge in friendship. The world
is a desert to me. I am an accursed creature, doomed to understand
happiness, to feel it, to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled
to see it always fly from me. Remember, signor, that I have not deceived
you. I forbid you to love me. I can be a devoted friend to you, for I
admire your strength of will and your character. I need a brother, a
protector. Be both of these to me, but nothing more.’
“‘And not love you!’ cried Sarrasine; ‘but you are my life, my happiness,
dear angel!’
“‘If I should say a word, you would spurn me with horror.’
“‘Coquette! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you will cost me my
whole future, that I shall die two months hence, that I shall be damned
for having kissed you but once——’
“And he kissed her, despite La Zambinella’s efforts to avoid that
passionate caress.
“‘Tell me that you are a demon, that I must give you my fortune, my name,
all my renown! Would you have me cease to be a sculptor? Speak.’
“‘Suppose I were not a woman?’ queried La Zambinella, timidly, in a sweet,
silvery voice.
“‘A merry jest!’ cried Sarrasine. ‘Think you that you can deceive an
artist’s eye? Have I not, for ten days past, admired, examined, devoured,
thy perfections? None but a woman can have this soft and beautifully
rounded arm, these graceful outlines. Ah! you seek compliments!’
“She smiled sadly, and murmured:
“‘Fatal beauty!’
“She raised her eyes to the sky. At that moment, there was in her eyes an
indefinable expression of horror, so startling, so intense, that Sarrasine
shuddered.
“‘Signor Frenchman,’ she continued, ‘forget forever a moment’s madness. I
esteem you, but as for love, do not ask me for that; that sentiment is
suffocated in my heart. I have no heart!’ she cried, weeping bitterly.
‘The stage on which you saw me, the applause, the music, the renown to
which I am condemned—those are my life; I have no other. A few hours
hence you will no longer look upon me with the same eyes, the woman you
love will be dead.’
“The sculptor did not reply. He was seized with a dull rage which
contracted his heart. He could do nothing but gaze at that extraordinary
woman, with inflamed, burning eyes. That feeble voice, La Zambinella’s
attitude, manners, and gestures, instinct with dejection, melancholy, and
discouragement, reawakened in his soul all the treasures of passion. Each
word was a spur. At that moment, they arrived at Frascati. When the artist
held out his arms to help his mistress to alight, he felt that she
trembled from head to foot.
“‘What is the matter? You would kill me,’ he cried, seeing that she turned
pale, ‘if you should suffer the slightest pain of which I am, even
innocently, the cause.’
“‘A snake!’ she said, pointing to a reptile which was gliding along the
edge of a ditch. ‘I am afraid of the disgusting creatures.’
“Sarrasine crushed the snake’s head with a blow of his foot.
“‘How could you dare to do it?’ said La Zambinella, gazing at the dead
reptile with visible terror.
“‘Aha!’ said the artist, with a smile, ‘would you venture to say now that
you are not a woman?’
“They joined their companions and walked through the woods of Villa
Ludovisi, which at that time belonged to Cardinal Cicognara. The morning
passed all too swiftly for the amorous sculptor, but it was crowded with
incidents which laid bare to him the coquetry, the weakness, the
daintiness, of that pliant, inert soul. She was a true woman with her
sudden terrors, her unreasoning caprices, her instinctive worries, her
causeless audacity, her bravado, and her fascinating delicacy of feeling.
At one time, as the merry little party of singers ventured out into the
open country, they saw at some distance a number of men armed to the
teeth, whose costume was by no means reassuring. At the words, ‘Those are
brigands!’ they all quickened their pace in order to reach the shelter of
the wall enclosing the cardinal’s villa. At that critical moment Sarrasine
saw from La Zambinella’s manner that she no longer had strength to walk;
he took her in his arms and carried her for some distance, running. When
he was within call of a vineyard near by, he set his mistress down.
“‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why it is that this extreme weakness which in
another woman would be hideous, would disgust me, so that the slightest
indication of it would be enough to destroy my love,—why is it that
in you it pleases me, fascinates me? Oh, how I love you!’ he continued.
‘All your faults, your frights, your petty foibles, add an indescribable
charm to your character. I feel that I should detest a Sappho, a strong,
courageous woman, overflowing with energy and passion. O sweet and fragile
creature! how couldst thou be otherwise? That angel’s voice, that refined
voice, would have been an anachronism coming from any other breast than
thine.’
“‘I can give you no hope,’ she said. ‘Cease to speak thus to me, for
people would make sport of you. It is impossible for me to shut the door
of the theatre to you; but if you love me, or if you are wise, you will
come there no more. Listen to me, monsieur,’ she continued in a grave
voice.
“‘Oh, hush!’ said the excited artist. ‘Obstacles inflame the love in my
heart.’
“La Zambinella maintained a graceful and modest attitude; but she held her
peace, as if a terrible thought had suddenly revealed some catastrophe.
When it was time to return to Rome she entered a berlin with four seats,
bidding the sculptor, with a cruelly imperious air, to return alone in the
phaeton. On the road, Sarrasine determined to carry off La Zambinella. He
passed the whole day forming plans, each more extravagant than the last.
At nightfall, as he was going out to inquire of somebody where his
mistress lived, he met one of his fellow-artists at the door.
“‘My dear fellow,’ he said, I am sent by our ambassador to invite you to
come to the embassy this evening. He gives a magnificent concert, and when
I tell you that La Zambinella will be there—’
“‘Zambinella!’ cried Sarrasine, thrown into delirium by that name; ‘I am
mad with love of her.’
“‘You are like everybody else,’ replied his comrade.
“‘But if you are friends of mine, you and Vien and Lauterbourg and
Allegrain, you will lend me your assistance for a coup de main,
after the entertainment, will you not?’ asked Sarrasine.
“‘There’s no cardinal to be killed? no—?’
“‘No, no!’ said Sarrasine, ‘I ask nothing of you that men of honor may not
do.’
“In a few moments the sculptor laid all his plans to assure the success of
his enterprise. He was one of the last to arrive at the ambassador’s, but
he went thither in a traveling carriage drawn by four stout horses and
driven by one of the most skilful vetturini in Rome. The
ambassador’s palace was full of people; not without difficulty did the
sculptor, whom nobody knew, make his way to the salon where La Zambinella
was singing at that moment.
“‘It must be in deference to all the cardinals, bishops, and abbes
who are here,’ said Sarrasine, ‘that she is dressed as a man, that
she has curly hair which she wears in a bag, and that she
has a sword at her side?’
“‘She! what she?’ rejoined the old nobleman whom Sarrasine addressed.
“‘La Zambinella.’
“‘La Zambinella!’ echoed the Roman prince. ‘Are you jesting? Whence have
you come? Did a woman ever appear in a Roman theatre? And do you not know
what sort of creatures play female parts within the domains of the Pope?
It was I, monsieur, who endowed Zambinella with his voice. I paid all the
knave’s expenses, even his teacher in singing. And he has so little
gratitude for the service I have done him that he has never been willing
to step inside my house. And yet, if he makes his fortune, he will owe it
all to me.’
“Prince Chigi might have talked on forever, Sarrasine did not listen to
him. A ghastly truth had found its way into his mind. He was stricken as
if by a thunderbolt. He stood like a statue, his eyes fastened on the
singer. His flaming glance exerted a sort of magnetic influence on
Zambinella, for he turned his eyes at last in Sarrasine’s direction, and
his divine voice faltered. He trembled! An involuntary murmur escaped the
audience, which he held fast as if fastened to his lips; and that
completely disconcerted him; he stopped in the middle of the aria he was
singing and sat down. Cardinal Cicognara, who had watched from the corner
of his eye the direction of his protege’s glance, saw the
Frenchman; he leaned toward one of his ecclesiastical aides-de-camp, and
apparently asked the sculptor’s name. When he had obtained the reply he
desired he scrutinized the artist with great attention and gave orders to
an abbe, who instantly disappeared. Meanwhile Zambinella, having
recovered his self-possession, resumed the aria he had so capriciously
broken off; but he sang badly, and refused, despite all the persistent
appeals showered upon him, to sing anything else. It was the first time he
had exhibited that humorsome tyranny, which, at a later date, contributed
no less to his celebrity than his talent and his vast fortune, which was
said to be due to his beauty as much as to his voice.
“‘It’s a woman,’ said Sarrasine, thinking that no one could overhear him.
‘There’s some secret intrigue beneath all this. Cardinal Cicognara is
hoodwinking the Pope and the whole city of Rome!’
“The sculptor at once left the salon, assembled his friends, and lay in
wait in the courtyard of the palace. When Zambinella was assured of
Sarrasine’s departure he seemed to recover his tranquillity in some
measure. About midnight after wandering through the salons like a man
looking for an enemy, the musico left the party. As he passed
through the palace gate he was seized by men who deftly gagged him with a
handkerchief and placed him in the carriage hired by Sarrasine. Frozen
with terror, Zambinella lay back in a corner, not daring to move a muscle.
He saw before him the terrible face of the artist, who maintained a
deathlike silence. The journey was a short one. Zambinella, kidnaped by
Sarrasine, soon found himself in a dark, bare studio. He sat, half dead,
upon a chair, hardly daring to glance at a statue of a woman, in which he
recognized his own features. He did not utter a word, but his teeth were
chattering; he was paralyzed with fear. Sarrasine was striding up and down
the studio. Suddenly he halted in front of Zambinella.
“‘Tell me the truth,’ he said, in a changed and hollow voice. ‘Are you not
a woman? Cardinal Cicognara——’
“Zambinella fell on his knees, and replied only by hanging his head.
“‘Ah! you are a woman!’ cried the artist in a frenzy; ‘for even a—’
“He did not finish the sentence.
“‘No,’ he continued, ‘even hecould not be so utterly base.’
“‘Oh, do not kill me!’ cried Zambinella, bursting into tears. ‘I consented
to deceive you only to gratify my comrades, who wanted an opportunity to
laugh.’
“‘Laugh!’ echoed the sculptor, in a voice in which there was a ring of
infernal ferocity. ‘Laugh! laugh! You dared to make sport of a man’s
passion—you?’
“‘Oh, mercy!’ cried Zambinella.
“‘I ought to kill you!’ shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword in an
outburst of rage. ‘But,’ he continued, with cold disdain, ‘if I searched
your whole being with this blade, should I find there any sentiment to
blot out, anything with which to satisfy my thirst for vengeance? You are
nothing! If you were a man or a woman, I would kill you, but—’
“Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face away; thereupon
he noticed the statue.
“‘And that is a delusion!’ he cried.
“Then, turning to Zambinella once more, he continued:
“‘A woman’s heart was to me a place of refuge, a fatherland. Have you
sisters who resemble you? No. Then die! But no, you shall live. To leave
you your life is to doom you to a fate worse than death. I regret neither
my blood nor my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart. Your weak
hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can I extort from you in place
of all those you have destroyed? You have brought me down to your level.
To love, to be loved! are henceforth meaningless words to me, as to
you. I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a
real woman.’
“He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair.
“‘I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons
in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal
of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept
all women off the face of the earth.’
“Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer. Two great
tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his swarthy cheeks, and fell to
the floor—two tears of rage, two scalding, burning tears.
“‘An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!’
“As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such
excessive force that he missed it. He thought that he had destroyed that
monument of his madness, and thereupon he drew his sword again, and raised
it to kill the singer. Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek. Three men
burst into the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell, pieced by
three daggers.
“‘From Cardinal Cicognara,’ said one of the men.
“‘A benefaction worthy of a Christian,’ retorted the Frenchman, as he
breathed his last.
“These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his patron,
who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage in order to take him away
as soon as he was set at liberty.”
“But,” said Madame de Rochefide, “what connection is there between this
story and the little old man we saw at the Lantys’?”
“Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambinella’s statue and had
it reproduced in marble; it is in the Albani Museum to-day. In 1794 the
Lanty family discovered it there, and asked Vien to copy it. The portrait
which showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had seen him as
a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet’sEndymion; you
yourself recognized the type in Adonis.”
“But this Zambinella, male or female—”
“Must be, madame, Marianina’s maternal great uncle. You can conceive now
Madame de Lanty’s interest in concealing the source of a fortune which
comes—”
“Enough!” said she, with an imperious gesture.
We remained for a moment in the most profound silence.
“Well?” I said at last.
“Ah!” she cried, rising and pacing the floor.
She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered voice:
“You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long time to come.
Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human sentiments dissolved thus,
by ghastly disillusionment? Children torture mothers by their bad conduct,
or their lack of affection. Wives are betrayed. Mistresses are cast aside,
abandoned. Talk of friendship! Is there such a thing! I would turn pious
to-morrow if I did not know that I can remain like the inaccessible summit
of a cliff amid the tempests of life. If the future of the Christian is an
illusion too, at all events it is not destroyed until after death. Leave
me to myself.”
“Ah!” said I, “you know how to punish.”
“Am I in the wrong?”
“Yes,” I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. “By finishing this
story, which is well known in Italy, I can give you an excellent idea of
the progress made by the civilization of the present day. There are none
of those wretched creatures now.”
“Paris,” said she, “is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes one
and all, fortunes stained with shame, and fortunes stained with blood.
Crime and infamy have a right of asylum here; virtue alone is without
altars. But pure hearts have a fatherland in heaven! No one will have
known me! I am proud of it.”
And the marchioness was lost in thought.
Carigliano, Marechal, Duc de
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
Father Goriot
Lanty, Comte de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Comtesse de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Marianina de
The Member for Arcis
Lanty, Filippo de
The Member for Arcis
Rochefide, Marquise de
Beatrix
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
A Prince of Bohemia
Sarrasine, Ernest-Jean
The Member for Arcis
Vien, Joseph-Marie
The Member for Arcis
Zambinella
The Member for Arcis
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