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Authors: Théophile Gautier

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"You see the moment has come; it is daybreak, it is the hour when happy
dreams take flight," said Meïamoun. Then he emptied the fatal vessel at
a draught, and fell as though struck by lightning. Cleopatra bent her
head, and one burning tear—the only one she had ever shed—fell into
her cup to mingle with the molten pearl.

"By Hercules, my fair queen! I made all speed in vain. I see I have come
too late," cried Mark Antony, entering the banquet-hall, "the supper is
over. But what signifies this corpse upon the pavement?"

"Oh, nothing!" returned Cleopatra, with a smile; "only a poison I was
testing with the idea of using it upon myself should Augustus take me
prisoner. My dear Lord, will you not please to take a seat beside me,
and watch those Greek buffoons dance?"

Clarimonde
*

[7]

Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange and
terrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age, I scarcely dare
even now to disturb the ashes of that memory. To you I can refuse
nothing; but I should not relate such a tale to any less experienced
mind. So strange were the circumstances of my story, that I can scarcely
believe myself to have ever actually been a party to them. For more than
three years I remained the victim of a most singular and diabolical
illusion. Poor country priest though I was, I led every night in a
dream—would to God it had been all a dream!—a most worldly life, a
damning life, a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too freely cast
upon a woman well-nigh caused me to lose my soul; but finally by the
grace of God and the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded in
casting out the evil spirit that possessed me. My daily life was long
interwoven with a nocturnal life of a totally different character. By
day I was a priest of the Lord, occupied with prayer and sacred things;
by night, from the instant that I closed my eyes I became a young
nobleman, a fine connoisseur in women, dogs, and horses; gambling,
drinking, and blaspheming, and when I awoke at early daybreak, it seemed
to me, on the other hand, that I had been sleeping, and had only dreamed
that I was a priest. Of this somnambulistic life there now remains to me
only the recollection of certain scenes and words which I cannot banish
from my memory; but although I never actually left the walls of my
presbytery, one would think to hear me speak that I were a man who,
weary of all worldly pleasures, had become a religious, seeking to end a
tempestuous life in the service of God, rather than an humble seminarist
who has grown old in this obscure curacy, situated in the depths of the
woods and even isolated from the life of the century.

Yes, I have loved as none in the world ever loved—with an insensate and
furious passion—so violent that I am astonished it did not cause my
heart to burst asunder. Ah, what nights—what nights!

From my earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, so
that all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to the age
of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Having
completed my course of theology I successively received all the minor
orders, and my superiors judged me worthy, despite my youth, to pass the
last awful degree. My ordination was fixed for Easter week.

I had never gone into the world. My world was confined by the walls of
the college and the seminary. I knew in a vague sort of a way that there
was something called Woman, but I never permitted my thoughts to dwell
on such a subject, and I lived in a state of perfect innocence. Twice a
year only I saw my infirm and aged mother, and in those visits were
comprised my sole relations with the outer world.

I regretted nothing; I felt not the least hesitation at taking the last
irrevocable step; I was filled with joy and impatience. Never did a
betrothed lover count the slow hours with more feverish ardor; I slept
only to dream that I was saying mass; I believed there could be nothing
in the world more delightful than to be a priest; I would have refused
to be a king or a poet in preference. My ambition could conceive of no
loftier aim.

I tell you this in order to show you that what happened to me could not
have happened in the natural order of things, and to enable you to
understand that I was the victim of an inexplicable fascination.

At last the great day came. I walked to the church with a step so light
that I fancied myself sustained in air, or that I had wings upon my
shoulders. I believed myself an angel, and wondered at the sombre and
thoughtful faces of my companions, for there were several of us. I had
passed all the night in prayer, and was in a condition well-nigh
bordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a venerable old man, seemed to me God
the Father leaning over his Eternity, and I beheld Heaven through the
vault of the temple.

You well know the details of that ceremony—the benediction, the
communion under both forms, the anointing of the palms of the hands with
the Oil of Catechumens, and then the holy sacrifice offered in concert
with the bishop.

Ah, truly spake Job when he declared that the imprudent man is one who
hath not made a covenant with his eyes! I accidentally lifted my head,
which until then I had kept down, and beheld before me, so close that it
seemed that I could have touched her—although she was actually a
considerable distance from me and on the further side of the sanctuary
railing—a young woman of extraordinary beauty, and attired with royal
magnificence. It seemed as though scales had suddenly fallen from my
eyes. I felt like a blind man who unexpectedly recovers his sight. The
bishop, so radiantly glorious but an instant before, suddenly vanished
away, the tapers paled upon their golden candlesticks like stars in the
dawn, and a vast darkness seemed to fill the whole church. The charming
creature appeared in bright relief against the background of that
darkness, like some angelic revelation. She seemed herself radiant, and
radiating light rather than receiving it.

I lowered my eyelids, firmly resolved not to again open them, that I
might not be influenced by external objects, for distraction had
gradually taken possession of me until I hardly knew what I was doing.

In another minute, nevertheless, I reopened my eyes, for through my
eyelashes I still beheld her, all sparkling with prismatic colors, and
surrounded with such a purple penumbra as one beholds in gazing at the
sun.

Oh, how beautiful she was! The greatest painters, who followed ideal
beauty into heaven itself, and thence brought back to earth the true
portrait of the Madonna, never in their delineations even approached
that wildly beautiful reality which I saw before me. Neither the verses
of the poet nor the palette of the artist could convey any conception
of her. She was rather tall, with a form and bearing of a goddess. Her
hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back over
her temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademed queen.
Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm
breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity
were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes
of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flash
they could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity,
an ardor, a humid light which I have never seen in human eyes; they shot
forth rays like arrows, which I could distinctly
see
enter my heart. I
know not if the fire which illumined them came from heaven or from hell,
but assuredly it came from one or the other. That woman was either an
angel or a demon, perhaps both. Assuredly she never sprang from the
flank of Eve, our common mother. Teeth of the most lustrous pearl
gleamed in her ruddy smile, and at every inflection of her lips little
dimples appeared in the satiny rose of her adorable cheeks. There was a
delicacy and pride in the regal outline of her nostrils bespeaking noble
blood. Agate gleams played over the smooth lustrous skin of her
half-bare shoulders, and strings of great blonde pearls—almost equal to
her neck in beauty of color—descended upon her bosom. From time to time
she elevated her head with the undulating grace of a startled serpent or
peacock, thereby imparting a quivering motion to the high lace ruff
which surrounded it like a silver trellis-work.

She wore a robe of orange-red velvet, and from her wide ermine-lined
sleeves there peeped forth patrician hands of infinite delicacy, and so
ideally transparent that, like the fingers of Aurora, they permitted the
light to shine through them.

All these details I can recollect at this moment as plainly as though
they were of yesterday, for notwithstanding I was greatly troubled at
the time, nothing escaped me; the faintest touch of shading, the little
dark speck at the point of the chin, the imperceptible down at the
corners of the lips, the velvety floss upon the brow, the quivering
shadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks, I could notice everything with
astonishing lucidity of perception.

And gazing I felt opening within me gates that had until then remained
closed; vents long obstructed became all clear, permitting glimpses of
unfamiliar perspectives within; life suddenly made itself visible to me
under a totally novel aspect. I felt as though I had just been born into
a new world and a new order of things. A frightful anguish commenced to
torture my heart as with red-hot pincers. Every successive minute seemed
to me at once but a second and yet a century. Meanwhile the ceremony was
proceeding, and I shortly found myself transported far from that world
of which my newly-born desires were furiously besieging the entrance.
Nevertheless I answered "Yes" when I wished to say "No," though all
within me protested against the violence done to my soul by my tongue.
Some occult power seemed to force the words from my throat against my
will. Thus it is, perhaps, that so many young girls walk to the altar
firmly resolved to refuse in a startling manner the husband imposed
upon them, and that yet not one ever fulfils her intention. Thus it is,
doubtless, that so many poor novices take the veil, though they have
resolved to tear it into shreds at the moment when called upon to utter
the vows. One dares not thus cause so great a scandal to all present,
nor deceive the expectation of so many people. All those eyes, all those
wills seem to weigh down upon you like a cope of lead; and, moreover,
measures have been so well taken, everything has been so thoroughly
arranged beforehand and after a fashion so evidently irrevocable, that
the will yields to the weight of circumstances and utterly breaks down.

As the ceremony proceeded the features of the fair unknown changed their
expression. Her look had at first been one of caressing tenderness; it
changed to an air of disdain and of mortification, as though at not
having been able to make itself understood.

With an effort of will sufficient to have uprooted a mountain, I strove
to cry out that I would not be a priest, but I could not speak; my
tongue seemed nailed to my palate, and I found it impossible to express
my will by the least syllable of negation. Though fully awake, I felt
like one under the influence of a nightmare, who vainly strives to
shriek out the one word upon which life depends.

She seemed conscious of the martyrdom I was undergoing, and, as though
to encourage me, she gave me a look replete with divinest promise. Her
eyes were a poem; their every glance was a song.

She said to me:

"If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His
paradise. The angels themselves will be jealous of thee. Tear off that
funeral shroud in which thou art about to wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I
am Youth, I am Life. Come to me! Together we shall be Love. Can Jehovah
offer thee aught in exchange? Our lives will flow on like a dream, in
one eternal kiss.

"Fling forth the wine of that chalice, and thou art free. I will conduct
thee to the Unknown Isles. Thou shalt sleep in my bosom upon a bed of
massy gold under a silver pavilion, for I love thee and would take thee
away from thy God, before whom so many noble hearts pour forth floods of
love which never reach even the steps of His throne!"

These words seemed to float to my ears in a rhythm of infinite
sweetness, for her look was actually sonorous, and the utterances of her
eyes were reechoed in the depths of my heart as though living lips had
breathed them into my life. I felt myself willing to renounce God, and
yet my tongue mechanically fulfilled all the formalities of the
ceremony. The fair one gave me another look, so beseeching, so
despairing that keen blades seemed to pierce my heart, and I felt my
bosom transfixed by more swords than those of Our Lady of Sorrows.

All was consummated; I had become a priest.

Never was deeper anguish painted on human face than upon hers. The
maiden who beholds her affianced lover suddenly fall dead at her side,
the mother bending over the empty cradle of her child, Eve seated at
the threshold of the gate of Paradise, the miser who finds a stone
substituted for his stolen treasure, the poet who accidentally permits
the only manuscript of his finest work to fall into the fire, could not
wear a look so despairing, so inconsolable. All the blood had abandoned
her charming face, leaving it whiter than marble; her beautiful arms
hung lifelessly on either side of her body as though their muscles had
suddenly relaxed, and she sought the support of a pillar, for her
yielding limbs almost betrayed her. As for myself, I staggered toward
the door of the church, livid as death, my forehead bathed with a sweat
bloodier than that of Calvary; I felt as though I were being strangled;
the vault seemed to have flattened down upon my shoulders, and it seemed
to me that my head alone sustained the whole weight of the dome.

BOOK: One of Cleopatra's Nights
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