One of Cleopatra's Nights (11 page)

Be that as it may, I lived, at least I believed that I lived, in Venice.
I have never been able to discover rightly how much of illusion and how
much of reality there was in this fantastic adventure. We dwelt in a
great palace on the Canaleio, filled with frescoes and statues, and
containing two Titians in the noblest style of the great master, which
were hung in Clarimonde's chamber. It was a palace well worthy of a
king. We had each our gondola, our
barcarolli
in family livery, our
music hall, and our special poet. Clarimonde always lived upon a
magnificent scale; there was something of Cleopatra in her nature. As
for me, I had the retinue of a prince's son, and I was regarded with as
much reverential respect as though I had been of the family of one of
the twelve Apostles or the four Evangelists of the Most Serene Republic.
I would not have turned aside to allow even the Doge to pass, and I do
not believe that since Satan fell from heaven, any creature was ever
prouder or more insolent than I. I went to the Ridotto, and played with
a luck which seemed absolutely infernal. I received the best of all
society—the sons of ruined families, women of the theatre, shrewd
knaves, parasites, hectoring swashbucklers. But notwithstanding the
dissipation of such a life, I always remained faithful to Clarimonde. I
loved her wildly. She would have excited satiety itself, and chained
inconstancy. To have Clarimonde was to have twenty mistresses; aye, to
possess all women: so mo-bile, so varied of aspect, so fresh in new
charms was she all in herself—a very chameleon of a woman, in sooth.
She made you commit with her the infidelity you would have committed
with another, by donning to perfection the character, the attraction,
the style of beauty of the woman who appeared to please you. She
returned my love a hundred-fold, and it was in vain that the young
patricians and even the Ancients of the Council of Ten made her the most
magnificent proposals. A Foscari even went so far as to offer to espouse
her. She rejected all his overtures. Of gold she had enough. She wished
no longer for anything but love—a love youthful, pure, evoked by
herself, and which should be a first and last passion. I would have been
perfectly happy but for a cursed nightmare which recurred every night,
and in which I believed myself to be a poor village cure, practising
mortification and penance for my excesses during the day. Reassured by
my constant association with her, I never thought further of the strange
manner in which I had become acquainted with Clarimonde. But the words
of the Abbé Sérapion concerning her recurred often to my memory, and
never ceased to cause me uneasiness.

For some time the health of Clarimonde had not been so good as usual;
her complexion grew paler day by day. The physicians who were summoned
could not comprehend the nature of her malady and knew not how to treat
it. They all prescribed some insignificant remedies, and never called a
second time. Her paleness, nevertheless, visibly increased, and she
became colder and colder, until she seemed almost as white and dead as
upon that memorable night in the unknown castle. I grieved with anguish
unspeakable to behold her thus slowly perishing; and she, touched by my
agony, smiled upon me sweetly and sadly with the fateful smile of those
who feel that they must die.

One morning I was seated at her bedside, and breakfasting from a little
table placed close at hand, so that I might not be obliged to leave her
for a single instant. In the act of cutting some fruit I accidentally
inflicted rather a deep gash on my finger. The blood immediately gushed
forth in a little purple jet, and a few drops spurted upon Clarimonde.
Her eyes flashed, her face suddenly assumed an expression of savage and
ferocious joy such as I had never before observed in her. She leaped out
of her bed with animal agility—the agility, as it were, of an ape or a
cat—and sprang upon my wound, which she commenced to suck with an air
of unutterable pleasure. She swallowed the blood in little mouthfuls,
slowly and carefully, like a connoisseur tasting a wine from Xeres or
Syracuse. Gradually her eyelids half closed, and the pupils of her green
eyes became oblong instead of round. From time to time she paused in
order to kiss my hand, then she would recommence to press her lips to
the lips of the wound in order to coax forth a few more ruddy drops.
When she found that the blood would no longer come, she arose with eyes
liquid and brilliant, rosier than a May dawn; her face full and fresh,
her hand warm and moist—in fine, more beautiful than ever, and in the
most perfect health.

"I shall not die! I shall not die!" she cried, clinging to my neck, half
mad with joy. "I can love thee yet for a long time. My life is thine,
and all that is of me comes from thee. A few drops of thy rich and noble
blood, more precious and more potent than all the elixirs of the earth,
have given me back life."

This scene long haunted my memory, and inspired me with strange doubts
in regard to Clarimonde; and the same evening, when slumber had
transported me to my presbytery, I beheld the Abbé Sérapion, graver and
more anxious of aspect than ever. He gazed attentively at me, and
sorrowfully exclaimed: "Not content with losing your soul, you now
desire also to lose your body. Wretched young man, into how terrible a
plight have you fallen!" The tone in which he uttered these words
powerfully affected me, but in spite of its vividness even that
impression was soon dissipated, and a thousand other cares erased it
from my mind. At last one evening, while looking into a mirror whose
traitorous position she had not taken into account, I saw Clarimonde in
the act of emptying a powder into the cup of spiced wine which she had
long been in the habit of preparing after our repasts. I took the cup,
feigned to carry it to my lips, and then placed it on the nearest
article of furniture as though intending to finish it at my leisure.
Taking advantage of a moment when the fair one's back was turned, I
threw the contents under the table, after which I retired to my chamber
and went to bed, fully resolved not to sleep, but to watch and discover
what should come of all this mystery. I did not have to wait long.
Clarimonde entered in her night-dress, and having removed her apparel,
crept into bed and lay down beside me. When she felt assured that I was
asleep, she bared my arm, and drawing a gold pin from her hair,
commenced to murmur in a low voice:

"One drop, only one drop! One ruby at the end of my needle.... Since
thou lovest me yet, I must not die!... Ah, poor love! His beautiful
blood, so brightly purple, I must drink it. Sleep, my only treasure!
Sleep, my god, my child! I will do thee no harm; I will only take of thy
life what I must to keep my own from being forever extinguished. But
that I love thee so much, I could well resolve to have other lovers
whose veins I could drain; but since I have known thee all other men
have become hateful to me.... Ah, the beautiful arm! How round it is!
How white it is! How shall I ever dare to prick this pretty blue vein!"
And while thus murmuring to herself she wept, and I felt her tears
raining on my arm as she clasped it with her hands. At last she took the
resolve, slightly punctured me with her pin, and commenced to suck up
the blood which oozed from the place. Although she swallowed only a few
drops, the fear of weakening me soon seized her, and she carefully tied
a little band around my arm, afterward rubbing the wound with an unguent
which immediately cicatrized it.

Further doubts were impossible. The Abbé Sérapion was right.
Notwithstanding this positive knowledge, however, I could not cease to
love Clarimonde, and I would gladly of my own accord have given her all
the blood she required to sustain her factitious life. Moreover, I felt
but little fear of her. The woman seemed to plead with me for the
vampire, and what I had already heard and seen sufficed to reassure me
completely. In those days I had plenteous veins, which would not have
been so easily exhausted as at present; and I would not have thought of
bargaining for my blood, drop by drop. I would rather have opened myself
the veins of my arm and said to her: "Drink, and may my love infiltrate
itself throughout thy body together with my blood!" I carefully avoided
ever making the least reference to the narcotic drink she had prepared
for me, or to the incident of the pin, and we lived in the most perfect
harmony.

Yet my priestly scruples commenced to torment me more than ever, and I
was at a loss to imagine what new penance I could invent in order to
mortify and subdue my flesh. Although these visions were involuntary,
and though I did not actually participate in anything relating to them,
I could not dare to touch the body of Christ with hands so impure and a
mind defiled by such debauches whether real or imaginary. In the effort
to avoid falling under the influence of these wearisome hallucinations,
I strove to prevent myself from being overcome by sleep. I held my
eyelids open with my fingers, and stood for hours together leaning
upright against the wall, fighting sleep with all my might; but the dust
of drowsiness invariably gathered upon my eyes at last, and finding all
resistance useless, I would have to let my arms fall in the extremity of
despairing weariness, and the current of slumber would again bear me
away to the perfidious shores. Sérapion addressed me with the most
vehement exhortations, severely reproaching me for my softness and want
of fervor. Finally, one day when I was more wretched than usual, he said
to me: "There is but one way by which you can obtain relief from this
continual torment, and though it is an extreme measure it must be made
use of; violent diseases require violent remedies. I know where
Clarimonde is buried. It is necessary that we shall disinter her
remains, and that you shall behold in how pitiable a state the object of
your love is. Then you will no longer be tempted to lose your soul for
the sake of an unclean corpse devoured by worms, and ready to crumble
into dust. That will assuredly restore you to yourself." For my part, I
was so tired of this double life that I at once consented, desiring to
ascertain beyond a doubt whether a priest or a gentleman had been the
victim of delusion. I had become fully resolved either to kill one of
the two men within me for the benefit of the other, or else to kill
both, for so terrible an existence could not last long and be endured.
The Abbé Sérapion provided himself with a mattock, a lever, and a
lantern, and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of —, the
location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him. After having
directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions of several
tombs, we came at last upon a great slab, half concealed by huge weeds
and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon we deciphered the
opening lines of the epitaph:

Here lies Clarimonde
Who was famed in her life-time
As the fairest of women.
[8]

"It is here without a doubt," muttered Sérapion, and placing his lantern
on the ground, he forced the point of the lever under the edge of the
stone and commenced to raise it. The stone yielded, and he proceeded to
work with the mattock. Darker and more silent than the night itself, I
stood by and watched him do it, while he, bending over his dismal toil,
streamed with sweat, panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed to have
the harsh tone of a death rattle. It was a weird scene, and had any
persons from without beheld us, they would assuredly have taken us
rather for profane wretches and shroud-stealers than for priests of God.
There was something grim and fierce in Sérapion's zeal which lent him
the air of a demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, and his great
aquiline face, with all its stern features brought out in strong relief
by the lantern-light, had something fearsome in it which enhanced the
unpleasant fancy. I felt an icy sweat come out upon my forehead in huge
beads, and my hair stood up with a hideous fear. Within the depths of my
own heart I felt that the act of the austere Sérapion was an abominable
sacrilege; and I could have prayed that a triangle of fire would issue
from the entrails of the dark clouds, heavily rolling above us, to
reduce him to cinders. The owls which had been nestling in the
cypress-trees, startled by the gleam of the lantern, flew against it
from time to time, striking their dusty wings against its panes, and
uttering plaintive cries of lamentation; wild foxes yelped in the far
darkness, and a thousand sinister noises detached themselves from the
silence. At last Sérapion's mattock struck the coffin itself, making
its planks reëcho with a deep sonorous sound, with that terrible sound
nothingness utters when stricken. He wrenched apart and tore up the lid,
and I beheld Clarimonde, pallid as a figure of marble, with hands
joined; her white winding-sheet made but one fold from her head to her
feet. A little crimson drop sparkled like a speck of dew at one corner
of her colorless mouth. Sérapion, at this spectacle, burst into fury:
"Ah, thou art here, demon! Impure courtesan! Drinker of blood and gold!"
And he flung holy water upon the corpse and the coffin, over which he
traced the sign of the cross with his sprinkler. Poor Clarimonde had no
sooner been touched by the blessed spray than her beautiful body
crumbled into dust, and became only a shapeless and frightful mass of
cinders and half-calcined bones.

"Behold your mistress, my Lord Romuald!" cried the inexorable priest, as
he pointed to these sad remains. "Will you be easily tempted after this
to promenade on the Lido or at Fusina with your beauty?"

I covered my face with my hands, a vast ruin had taken place within me.
I returned to my presbytery, and the noble Lord Romuald, the lover of
Clarimonde, separated himself from the poor priest with whom he had kept
such strange company so long. But once only, the following night, I saw
Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at the
portals of the church: "Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?
Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy?
And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poor
tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communication
between our souls and our bodies is henceforth forever broken. Adieu!
Thou wilt yet regret me!" She vanished in air as smoke, and I never saw
her more.