Madame Trepof simply shook her head by way of explaining that such considerations had no weight with her whatever; then she untied her hat.
The darkness of her black curls descended over her eyes, and bathed them in velvety shadow. She remained a little while quite motionless, and her face a.s.sumed a surprising expression of reverie. But all of a sudden she darted at some oranges which the tavern-keeper had brought in a basket, and began to throw them, one by one, into a fold of her dress.
"These will be nice on the road," she said. "We are going just where you are going--to Girgenti. I must tell you all about it; you know that my husband is making a collection of match-boxes. We bought thirteen hundred match-boxes at Ma.r.s.eilles. But we heard there was a factory of them at Girgenti. According to what we were told, it is a very small factory, and its products--which are very ugly--never go outside the city and its suburbs. So we are going to Girgenti just to buy match-boxes. Dimitri has been a collector of all sorts of things; but the only kind of collection which can now interest him is a collection of match-boxes. He has already got five thousand two hundred and fourteen different kinds. Some of them gave us frightful trouble to find. For instance, we knew that at Naples boxes were once made with the portraits of Mazzini and Garibaldi on them; and that the police had seized the plates from which the portraits were printed, and put the manufacturer in gaol. Well, by dint of searching and inquiring for ever so long a while, we found one of those boxes at last for sale at one hundred francs, instead of two sous. It was not really too dear at that price; but we were denounced for buying it. We were taken for conspirators. All our baggage was searched; they could not find the box, because I had hidden it so well; but they found my jewels, and carried them off. They have them still. The incident made quite a sensation, and we were going to get arrested. But the king was displeased about it, and he ordered them to leave us alone. Up to that time, I used to think it was very stupid to collect match-boxes; but when I found that there were risks of losing liberty, and perhaps even life, by doing it, I began to feel a taste for it. Now I am an absolute fanatic on the subject. We are going to Sweden next summer to complete our series.... Are we not, Dimitri?"
I felt--must I confess it?--a thorough sympathy with these intrepid collectors. No doubt I would rather have found Monsieur and Madame Trepof engaged in collecting antique marbles or painted vases in Sicily. I should have like to have found them interested in the ruins of Syracuse, or the poetical traditions of the Eryx. But at all events, they were making some sort of a collection--they belonged to the great confraternity--and I could not possibly make fun of them without making fun of myself. Besides, Madame Trepof had spoken of her collection with such an odd mingling of irony and enthusiasm that I could not help finding the idea a very good one.
We were getting ready to leave the tavern, when we noticed some people coming downstairs from the upper room, carrying carbines under their dark cloaks, to me they had the look of thorough bandits; and after they were gone I told Monsieur Trepof my opinion of them. He answered me, very quietly, that he also thought they were regular bandits; and the guides begged us to apply for an escort of gendarmes, but Madame Trepof besought us not to do anything of the kind. She declared that we must not "spoil her journey."
Then, turning her persuasive eyes upon me, she asked,
"Do you not believe, Monsieur Bonnard, that there is nothing in life worth having except sensations?"
"Why, certainly, Madame," I answered; "but then we must take into consideration the nature of the sensations themselves. Those which a n.o.ble memory or a grand spectacle creates within us certainly represent what is best in human life; but those merely resulting from the menace of danger seem to me sensations which one should be very careful to avoid as much as possible. For example, would you think it a very pleasant thing, Madame, while travelling over the mountains at midnight, to find the muzzle of a carbine suddenly pressed against your forehead?"
"Oh, no!" she replied; "the comic-operas have made carbines absolutely ridiculous, and it would be a great misfortune to any young woman to find herself in danger from an absurd weapon. But it would be quite different with a knife--a very cold and very bright knife blade, which makes a cold shudder go right through one"s heart."
She shuddered even as she spoke; closed her eyes, and threw her head back. Then she resumed:
"People like you are so happy! You can interest yourselves in all sorts of things!"
She gave a sidelong look at her husband, who was talking with the innkeeper. Then she leaned towards me, and murmured very low:
"You see, Dimitri and I, we are both suffering from ennui! We have still the match-boxes. But at last one gets tired even of match-boxes.
Besides, our collection will soon be complete. And then what are we going to do?"
"Oh, Madame!" I exclaimed, touched by the moral unhappiness of this pretty person, "if you only had a son, then you would know what to do.
You would then learn the purpose of your life, and your thoughts would become at once more serious and yet more cheerful."
"But I have a son," she replied. "He is a big boy; he is eleven years old, and he suffers from ennui like the rest of us. Yes, my George has ennui, too; he is tired of everything. It is very wretched."
She glanced again towards her husband, who was superintending the harnessing of the mules on the road outside--testing the condition of girths and straps. Then she asked me whether there had been many changes on the Quai Malaquais during the past ten years. She declared she never visited that neighbourhood because it was too far way.
"Too far from Monte Allegro?" I queried.
"Why, no!" she replied. "Too far from the Avenue des Champs Elysees, where we live."
And she murmured over again, as if talking to herself, "Too far!--too far!" in a tone of reverie which I could not possibly account for. All at once she smiled again, and said to me,
"I like you, Monsieur Bonnard!--I like you very, very much!"
The mules had been harnessed. The young woman hastily picked up a few oranges which had rolled off her lap; rose up; looked at me, and burst out laughing.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "how I should like to see you grappling with the brigands! You would say such extraordinary things to them!... Please take my hat, and hold my umbrella for me, Monsieur Bonnard."
"What a strange little mind!" I thought to myself, as I followed her.
"It could only have been in a moment of inexcusable thoughtlessness that Nature gave a child to such a giddy little woman!"
Girgenti. Same day.
Her manners had shocked me. I left her to arrange herself in her lettica, and I made myself as comfortable as I could in my own. These vehicles, which have no wheels, are carried by two mules--one before and one behind. This kind of litter, or chaise, is of ancient origin. I had often seen representations of similar ones in the French MSS. of the fourteenth century. I had no idea then that one of those vehicles would be at a future day placed at my own disposal. We must never be too sure of anything.
For three hours the mules sounded their little bells, and thumped the calcined ground with their hoofs. On either hand there slowly defiled by us the barren monstrous shapes of a nature totally African.
Half-way we made a halt to allow our animals to recover breath.
Madame Trepof came to me on the road, took my arm, and drew me a little away from the party. Then, very suddenly, she said to me in a tone of voice I had never heard before:
"Do not think that I am a wicked woman. My George knows that I am a good mother."
We walked side by side for a moment in silence. She looked up, and I saw that she was crying.
"Madame," I said to her, "look at this soil which has been burned and cracked by five long months of fiery heat. A little white lily has sprung up from it."
And I pointed with my cane to the frail stalk, tipped by a double blossom.
"Your heart," I said, "however arid it be, bears also its white lily; and that is reason enough why I do not believe that you are what you say--a wicked woman."
"Yes, yes, yes!" she cried, with the obstinacy of a child--"I am a wicked woman. But I am ashamed to appear so before you who are so good--so very, very good."
"You do not know anything at all about it," I said to her.
"I know it! I know all about you, Monsieur Bonnard!" she declared, with a smile.
And she jumped back into her lettica.
Girgenti, November 30, 1859.
I awoke the following morning in the House of Gellias. Gellias was a rich citizen of ancient Agrigentum. He was equally celebrated for his generosity and for his wealth; and he endowed his native city with a great number of free inns. Gellias has been dead for thirteen hundred years; and nowadays there is no gratuitous hospitality among civilised peoples. But the name of Gellias has become that of a hotel in which, by reason of fatigue, I was able to obtain one good night"s sleep.
The modern Girgenti lifts its high, narrow, solid streets, dominated by a sombre Spanish cathedral, upon the side of the acropolis of the antique Agrigentum. I can see from my windows, half-way on the hillside towards the sea, the white range of temples partially destroyed. The ruins alone have some aspect of coolness. All the rest is arid. Water and life have forsaken Agrigentine. Water--the divine Nestis of the Agrigentine Empedocles--is so necessary to animated beings that nothing can live far from the rivers and the springs. But the port of Girgenti, situated at a distance of three kilometres from the city, has a great commerce. "And it is in this dismal city," I said to myself, "upon this precipitous rock, that the ma.n.u.script of Clerk Alexander is to be found!" I asked my way to the house of Signor Michel-Angelo Polizzi, and proceeded thither.
I found Signor Polizzi, dressed all in white from head to feet, busy cooking sausages in a frying-pan. At the sight of me, he let go the frying-pan, threw up his arms in the air, and uttered shrieks of enthusiasm. He was a little man whose pimply features, aquiline nose, round eyes, and projecting chin formed a very expressive physiognomy.
He called me "Excellence," said he was going to mark the day with a white stone, and made me sit down. The hall in which we were represented the union of the kitchen, reception-room, bedchamber, studio, and wine-cellar. There were charcoal furnaces visible, a bed, paintings, an easel, bottles, strings of onions, and a magnificent l.u.s.tre of coloured gla.s.s pendants. I glanced at the paintings on the wall.
"The arts! the arts!" cried Signor Polizzi, throwing up his arms again to heaven--"the arts! What dignity! what consolation! Excellence, I am a painter!"
And he showed me an unfinished Saint-Francis, which indeed could very well remain unfinished for ever without any loss to religion or to art.
Next he showed me some old paintings of a better style, but apparently restored after a decidedly reckless manner.
"I repair," he said--"I repair old paintings. Oh, the Old Masters! What genius, what soul!"