Fermina Marquez (1911) (9 page)
heavy, hard face, though delicately drawn, almost classical;
Roman.
The ring of an electric bell summoned the usher into the office of the prefect of studies. Then the usher returned to announce "pupil Leniot".
Pupil Leniot greeted the prefect of studies. He indicated to him his desire to take lessons in watercolouring; and in a few minutes, everything was settled. Next, he said that since his breaks would be taken up by these lessons in the future, he would no longer be able to accompany "the Marquez ladies" in their walks through the grounds. "It would perhaps be appropriate to name another pupil to take my place with them," he added with a slight intonation of irony which the prefect of studies did not notice at all.
"Indeed; but which pupil?"
"I am sure that they will be only too happy to accept Santos Iturria."
"Good. You will tell Iturria major that I wish to speak to him, that he should come here . . . Ah! Mr Leniot," added the prefect of studies, as Joanny was making for the door. "I can certainly inform you straight away; you have been chosen by the teaching board to deliver the speech in Latin for His Eminence. His Eminence will be honouring us with a visit in a fortnight's time; hold yourself in readiness. I congratulate you in all sincerity and I have no doubt that in this matter you will uphold the school's reputation as well as your own. I shan't detain you any longer."
Prep had already started. Leniot, passing by the sixth-form room, pushed the door open and walked in. He conveyed the prefect of studies' command, summoning Santos Iturria to his office, to the monitor. "So he will realize that it is me who is smoothing the path to their meetings," mused Joanny. He felt no jealousy.
He was even glad. Once he was seated at his place in his prep room and at peace, he enquired into the reasons for his contentment. It was first of all this tremendous piece of news that the prefect of studies had just announced to him: he had been singled out to deliver the speech in Latin for the Archbishop. That was a distinction he had never dared hope for.
"When the others find that out! - And as for my parents!" But there was something else which he was still more pleased about: this was the oration he had just made to Fermina Marquez. He had improvised it swiftly, as he would his best compositions in French while walking in the yard at break: he would keep them "in his head" for several days, modifying them, touching them up, doing away with an adverb, moving the whole of a phrase around. And an hour before the time set for the scripts to be handed in, he would write out his composition directly as a tidy copy without any crossing-out. So it was that he had been able to recite the entire speech he had made to the girl, breaking off with her, from beginning to end without hesitation. This caused him satisfaction: he was quite sure that this time he had not been ridiculous.
He barely regretted the somewhat quick-tempered words: "Tradesmen, financiers, every sort and kind of common person", and Marquez senior was a banker! But no, this was no foolishness. All the time he had been speaking, Joanny had felt that from the depths of his consciousness, a hidden force was urging him to say this and that it had all been imbued with a significance more full than he had thought. In short, he had lied once again. His genius for example. It was the first time he asserted the existence of his genius to himself. When he read that
Life of Franklin,
he had no faith in his own gifts. When some other pupil's prepared work was read out in class, he would marvel at the thousand and one subleties of thought, the deftness of translation in scores of places which he himself would never have hit upon. Times without number, he had experienced the truth of the feeling expressed by this line:
My astonished genius trembles before his.
There were in fact in his life, for the few moments when it seemed to him that his personality filled the world, days upon days when he would feel reduced to an atom and when the universe was so vast that the idea of his own nothingness would terrify him. About his modesty and humility he had thus been sincere. But again, he had used a device when supplying what he had called
a
proof of his
genius. While he was talking about persecution, he had associated the following ideas in a vague way: Jean-Jacques Rousseau — persecution mania —genius. His proof was a twofold one: inductive, in his claim to be persecuted because of his genius; and deductive, because the man of genius often believes he is being persecuted. Oh! What brilliance that was!
In sum, all his eloquence amounted to this: "Between Santos Iturria and me you have made your choice. So be it. But know then whom you have spurned and rue me!" Not for a moment had he thought to reproach her for her flirtatiousness, to tell her how much this coquetry was at variance with her religious talk; in short, to accuse her of hypocrisy. "So that was what she was dreading!" So that was why her farewell had been so warm.
Without pausing, he thought of her little sister's beautiful, solemn eyes, "I wouldn't have said no." He remembered all Pilar's gestures and all her pretty manners. One day when her large ribbon had come undone, he had seen her unadorned hair spread out across her shoulders, absolutely black tresses, which must have been dense and resistant to the touch. Fermina had tied the ribbon up again, taking the locks in handfuls . . . Did they sleep in the same room? ... "I wouldn't have said no." He retained the memory of this glance as if it had been one of an actual caress which made him redden and wholly electrified his blood.
Almost every Thursday, the sisters of Requena (a little boy in the juniors' penultimate class) came with their mother to spend the afternoon at Saint Augustine's. They were three young girls from Cuba with saucy eyes: Pilar, Encarnacion and Consuelo, sixteen, fifteen and fourteen years old respectively. Joanny had often heard them talked about and he had occasionally seen them. It was said that they would allow themselves to be kissed in any corner of the grounds. They liked kissing for its own sake and not because of those who were doing the kissing. Consequently, they were not at all jealous and it was possible to make comparisons and determine whether the lips of a sixteen-year-old were softer than those of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old.
A fifteen-year-old. Joanny noticed that there was something sensual simply in the designations of these ages: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, etc. Pronounce these words out loud and think of girls ... As from the start of the next school year, he would find a way to spend Thursday afternoons in the grounds . . . Oh! To subdue a girl of that proud race. They were rumoured to be so caressing, despite all their haughty airs . . . And even if the little Requenas were to come next Thursday . . .
Or again during the holidays; he would no doubt find an opportunity. One day when he had wandered a long way away from his parents' house in the country (it was during the last summer holidays), a young shepherdess, standing in the middle of a field, had hailed him to ask for news of a serving girl at his parents'. And he hadn't understood, the oaf, that this was merely a pretext seized upon by the young peasant girl to make contact with "the little master from the big house". Ah! If a similar opportunity presented itself again, he wouldn't let it pass by. Just so, he was going to be sixteen towards the end of August; it was high time for him to learn a thing or two.
He could remember as well a little maid his parents had had in days gone by. He was scarcely twelve years old at that time. The maid was called Louise and was nineteen. One day, she had pinched a lead soldier from him, a general to which he was particularly attached. She had pretended to conceal this plaything in her blouse between her skin and her chemise, and she had said to Joanny: "If master wants it, he'll have to look for it." |
And he had looked for "it", feigning great anger but actually wholly confused and flushed with pleasure . . . Perhaps he was going to find a little maid of that Louise's sort during these holidays at his parents'. She was so neat and so sweet, that Louise. A serving girl? Bah! A girl is always a girl. And if need be, he could reach Regny, the nearest station, by bicycle from his parents' house in the country. By leaving immediately after the midday meal, he would have enough time to spend a whole two hours in Roanne. He would be back for dinner and nobody at home would suspect him of having gone into town. A woman is always a woman whatever clothes she's wearing. Joanny pressed his two hands to his heart; he was losing his head; he was seeing red. He thought he would die.
. . .
The dream in which I thought I saw wise Mentor descend to
the Elysian Fields ended by disheartening me: a secret and pleasant
languor was taking hold of me. I was already enjoying the insinuating poison which slipped from vein to vein and soaked right through to the marrow of my bones. Yet I let out more deep sighs; I shed bitter tears; I roared like a lion in my rage. Oh unhappy youth! I said: oh Gods, you who play cruelly with men, why do you make them pass through that age, which is a time of folly and feverish ardour? Oh! Would that I were covered with white hair, bowed and near my grave like Laertes, my grandfather! Death would be sweeter to me than the shameful weakness in which I find myself.
Throughout the whole of
Telemachus,
Joanny only really liked two passages: the description of the Cretan sages in Book Five and that passage where Telemachus, with the very passion and exaggeration of the young, curses youth. He had wanted to reread this passage. Up until that point, he had admired it, above all because he could see in it a portrayal of what the youth of others amounted to. These frenzies, "this time of folly and feverish ardour", that was what other young people experienced. He himself was absolutely sure of escaping all that, buried as he was in his texts and his exercise books, cuirassed by his pride and armed by his ambition. And now, quite on the contrary, he liked this passage because he discerned in it the exact expression of his own state of mind.
For the moment, he felt soothed but in a few days, in an hour perhaps, sin would renew its attack, and the swirl of desires would once again sweep away his reason. His childhood was over. His youth was beginning and beginning against his will. How long would this ferment, this giddiness last for him? Would he have to abandon those plans for fame? Was his career going to be held up by five, by ten years possibly? Henceforth, an end to tranquillity. Without doubt, he would continue to come top of his class; he would stand out in his exams. But at the price of what struggles; amidst what agitation? If he had at least kept his faith, he would have had God as an ally in his tussle with his passions. But for a long time, religion was no more to him than the outdated ideal of a few pious old women.
Joanny invoked, not old age, but that time of life when once the turbulence of youth was spent, he could sit down again once and for all with his dictionaries and his papers in front of him — or with his life before him, which was more interesting than all the books ever written. A girl had just turned him down and he would have thanked her for it, had she restored him to his books and the elaboration of his great career. But she had returned him to her sister — her sisters, the family of women.
Oh, how weary he was! Life was insipid. He took no pleasure at all in thinking about his most recent first place. Fame itself was without interest. Encarnacion, the prettiest of the little Cuban girls - no, much better not to dwell on her. That was perhaps yet another disappointment he was storing up for himself. He followed his form to the dormitory, worn
out sickened, discontented with the world and himself, desiring nothing more than the oblivion of sleep.
He slept extremely badly and woke up only on the summons of the drum roll. All night, he had been dreaming that he was reciting a speech in Latin in the Archbishop's presence and it had seemed to him as though he were uttering,
ore rotundo,
an infinite number of fine endings and noble inflections:
abunt, arentur, ibus, arum . . .
Roman.
The ring of an electric bell summoned the usher into the office of the prefect of studies. Then the usher returned to announce "pupil Leniot".
Pupil Leniot greeted the prefect of studies. He indicated to him his desire to take lessons in watercolouring; and in a few minutes, everything was settled. Next, he said that since his breaks would be taken up by these lessons in the future, he would no longer be able to accompany "the Marquez ladies" in their walks through the grounds. "It would perhaps be appropriate to name another pupil to take my place with them," he added with a slight intonation of irony which the prefect of studies did not notice at all.
"Indeed; but which pupil?"
"I am sure that they will be only too happy to accept Santos Iturria."
"Good. You will tell Iturria major that I wish to speak to him, that he should come here . . . Ah! Mr Leniot," added the prefect of studies, as Joanny was making for the door. "I can certainly inform you straight away; you have been chosen by the teaching board to deliver the speech in Latin for His Eminence. His Eminence will be honouring us with a visit in a fortnight's time; hold yourself in readiness. I congratulate you in all sincerity and I have no doubt that in this matter you will uphold the school's reputation as well as your own. I shan't detain you any longer."
Prep had already started. Leniot, passing by the sixth-form room, pushed the door open and walked in. He conveyed the prefect of studies' command, summoning Santos Iturria to his office, to the monitor. "So he will realize that it is me who is smoothing the path to their meetings," mused Joanny. He felt no jealousy.
He was even glad. Once he was seated at his place in his prep room and at peace, he enquired into the reasons for his contentment. It was first of all this tremendous piece of news that the prefect of studies had just announced to him: he had been singled out to deliver the speech in Latin for the Archbishop. That was a distinction he had never dared hope for.
"When the others find that out! - And as for my parents!" But there was something else which he was still more pleased about: this was the oration he had just made to Fermina Marquez. He had improvised it swiftly, as he would his best compositions in French while walking in the yard at break: he would keep them "in his head" for several days, modifying them, touching them up, doing away with an adverb, moving the whole of a phrase around. And an hour before the time set for the scripts to be handed in, he would write out his composition directly as a tidy copy without any crossing-out. So it was that he had been able to recite the entire speech he had made to the girl, breaking off with her, from beginning to end without hesitation. This caused him satisfaction: he was quite sure that this time he had not been ridiculous.
He barely regretted the somewhat quick-tempered words: "Tradesmen, financiers, every sort and kind of common person", and Marquez senior was a banker! But no, this was no foolishness. All the time he had been speaking, Joanny had felt that from the depths of his consciousness, a hidden force was urging him to say this and that it had all been imbued with a significance more full than he had thought. In short, he had lied once again. His genius for example. It was the first time he asserted the existence of his genius to himself. When he read that
Life of Franklin,
he had no faith in his own gifts. When some other pupil's prepared work was read out in class, he would marvel at the thousand and one subleties of thought, the deftness of translation in scores of places which he himself would never have hit upon. Times without number, he had experienced the truth of the feeling expressed by this line:
My astonished genius trembles before his.
There were in fact in his life, for the few moments when it seemed to him that his personality filled the world, days upon days when he would feel reduced to an atom and when the universe was so vast that the idea of his own nothingness would terrify him. About his modesty and humility he had thus been sincere. But again, he had used a device when supplying what he had called
a
proof of his
genius. While he was talking about persecution, he had associated the following ideas in a vague way: Jean-Jacques Rousseau — persecution mania —genius. His proof was a twofold one: inductive, in his claim to be persecuted because of his genius; and deductive, because the man of genius often believes he is being persecuted. Oh! What brilliance that was!
In sum, all his eloquence amounted to this: "Between Santos Iturria and me you have made your choice. So be it. But know then whom you have spurned and rue me!" Not for a moment had he thought to reproach her for her flirtatiousness, to tell her how much this coquetry was at variance with her religious talk; in short, to accuse her of hypocrisy. "So that was what she was dreading!" So that was why her farewell had been so warm.
Without pausing, he thought of her little sister's beautiful, solemn eyes, "I wouldn't have said no." He remembered all Pilar's gestures and all her pretty manners. One day when her large ribbon had come undone, he had seen her unadorned hair spread out across her shoulders, absolutely black tresses, which must have been dense and resistant to the touch. Fermina had tied the ribbon up again, taking the locks in handfuls . . . Did they sleep in the same room? ... "I wouldn't have said no." He retained the memory of this glance as if it had been one of an actual caress which made him redden and wholly electrified his blood.
Almost every Thursday, the sisters of Requena (a little boy in the juniors' penultimate class) came with their mother to spend the afternoon at Saint Augustine's. They were three young girls from Cuba with saucy eyes: Pilar, Encarnacion and Consuelo, sixteen, fifteen and fourteen years old respectively. Joanny had often heard them talked about and he had occasionally seen them. It was said that they would allow themselves to be kissed in any corner of the grounds. They liked kissing for its own sake and not because of those who were doing the kissing. Consequently, they were not at all jealous and it was possible to make comparisons and determine whether the lips of a sixteen-year-old were softer than those of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old.
A fifteen-year-old. Joanny noticed that there was something sensual simply in the designations of these ages: fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, etc. Pronounce these words out loud and think of girls ... As from the start of the next school year, he would find a way to spend Thursday afternoons in the grounds . . . Oh! To subdue a girl of that proud race. They were rumoured to be so caressing, despite all their haughty airs . . . And even if the little Requenas were to come next Thursday . . .
Or again during the holidays; he would no doubt find an opportunity. One day when he had wandered a long way away from his parents' house in the country (it was during the last summer holidays), a young shepherdess, standing in the middle of a field, had hailed him to ask for news of a serving girl at his parents'. And he hadn't understood, the oaf, that this was merely a pretext seized upon by the young peasant girl to make contact with "the little master from the big house". Ah! If a similar opportunity presented itself again, he wouldn't let it pass by. Just so, he was going to be sixteen towards the end of August; it was high time for him to learn a thing or two.
He could remember as well a little maid his parents had had in days gone by. He was scarcely twelve years old at that time. The maid was called Louise and was nineteen. One day, she had pinched a lead soldier from him, a general to which he was particularly attached. She had pretended to conceal this plaything in her blouse between her skin and her chemise, and she had said to Joanny: "If master wants it, he'll have to look for it." |
And he had looked for "it", feigning great anger but actually wholly confused and flushed with pleasure . . . Perhaps he was going to find a little maid of that Louise's sort during these holidays at his parents'. She was so neat and so sweet, that Louise. A serving girl? Bah! A girl is always a girl. And if need be, he could reach Regny, the nearest station, by bicycle from his parents' house in the country. By leaving immediately after the midday meal, he would have enough time to spend a whole two hours in Roanne. He would be back for dinner and nobody at home would suspect him of having gone into town. A woman is always a woman whatever clothes she's wearing. Joanny pressed his two hands to his heart; he was losing his head; he was seeing red. He thought he would die.
. . .
The dream in which I thought I saw wise Mentor descend to
the Elysian Fields ended by disheartening me: a secret and pleasant
languor was taking hold of me. I was already enjoying the insinuating poison which slipped from vein to vein and soaked right through to the marrow of my bones. Yet I let out more deep sighs; I shed bitter tears; I roared like a lion in my rage. Oh unhappy youth! I said: oh Gods, you who play cruelly with men, why do you make them pass through that age, which is a time of folly and feverish ardour? Oh! Would that I were covered with white hair, bowed and near my grave like Laertes, my grandfather! Death would be sweeter to me than the shameful weakness in which I find myself.
Throughout the whole of
Telemachus,
Joanny only really liked two passages: the description of the Cretan sages in Book Five and that passage where Telemachus, with the very passion and exaggeration of the young, curses youth. He had wanted to reread this passage. Up until that point, he had admired it, above all because he could see in it a portrayal of what the youth of others amounted to. These frenzies, "this time of folly and feverish ardour", that was what other young people experienced. He himself was absolutely sure of escaping all that, buried as he was in his texts and his exercise books, cuirassed by his pride and armed by his ambition. And now, quite on the contrary, he liked this passage because he discerned in it the exact expression of his own state of mind.
For the moment, he felt soothed but in a few days, in an hour perhaps, sin would renew its attack, and the swirl of desires would once again sweep away his reason. His childhood was over. His youth was beginning and beginning against his will. How long would this ferment, this giddiness last for him? Would he have to abandon those plans for fame? Was his career going to be held up by five, by ten years possibly? Henceforth, an end to tranquillity. Without doubt, he would continue to come top of his class; he would stand out in his exams. But at the price of what struggles; amidst what agitation? If he had at least kept his faith, he would have had God as an ally in his tussle with his passions. But for a long time, religion was no more to him than the outdated ideal of a few pious old women.
Joanny invoked, not old age, but that time of life when once the turbulence of youth was spent, he could sit down again once and for all with his dictionaries and his papers in front of him — or with his life before him, which was more interesting than all the books ever written. A girl had just turned him down and he would have thanked her for it, had she restored him to his books and the elaboration of his great career. But she had returned him to her sister — her sisters, the family of women.
Oh, how weary he was! Life was insipid. He took no pleasure at all in thinking about his most recent first place. Fame itself was without interest. Encarnacion, the prettiest of the little Cuban girls - no, much better not to dwell on her. That was perhaps yet another disappointment he was storing up for himself. He followed his form to the dormitory, worn
out sickened, discontented with the world and himself, desiring nothing more than the oblivion of sleep.
He slept extremely badly and woke up only on the summons of the drum roll. All night, he had been dreaming that he was reciting a speech in Latin in the Archbishop's presence and it had seemed to him as though he were uttering,
ore rotundo,
an infinite number of fine endings and noble inflections:
abunt, arentur, ibus, arum . . .
XVIII
And so Santos Iturria remained the untroubled master of his conquest. In a month's time, he was due to sit the papers of the second part of the baccalaureate in Paris and he had every chance of passing with distinction. Whilst his sixth-form friends spent their breaks cramming themselves with textbook formulas, Santos would stroll privately with Fermina Marquez in the grounds. Mama Dolore permitted these tete-a-tetes. She had always had a fondness for the Iturria brothers. And she had begun to cherish Santos most especially since that Whit Sunday when at the way out of the Spanish chapel in the Avenue Friedland, a very elegant young man had advanced to meet her, all smiles, and she had suddenly recognized the broad, handsome face of Santos, fresh and open, under a truly gleaming top hat. There was no gainsaying he was a real man; "and a man of the best society," the Creole lady would say.
She had nevertheless already seen him on two occasions in Paris; but it was at night-time and half dozing or inattentive, she had barely made him out. "Well, well, so you have managed to be given time off?" One evening at a late hour, he had come to the avenue Wagram to return to
La Chica
a bracelet she had dropped, that fool, while playing tennis in the grounds of Saint Augustine's. On another occasion, she and her nieces had met him quite by chance as they were leaving the Opera Comique: he had difficulty in concealing the little uniform of the pupils from Saint Augustine's beneath a civilian overcoat. Mama Dolore was unable to follow any of this and all the less so since
La Chica
had implored her (but without caring to explain herself) never to speak of Mr Iturria to Saint Augustine's' prefect of studies.
But once she had seen Santos in broad daylight on the cobblestones of Paris and a Santos in frock coat, light-coloured gloves and fine shoes, she talked about him to everybody. It became her infatuation. She wrote specially to her brother in Columbia just to sing the praises of Santos Iturria. She went to make inquiries about the Iturria family at the Mexican legation. These particulars were satisfactory. Mama Dolore would consider
La Chica. Y como no?
Of course there was time: they were both still so young! And what did her niece think about it? That was the main point.
Yet it was not all that difficult to tell. Since Whitsun,
La Chica
was too gay and then too thoughtful.
La Chica
took an hour longer than she normally did to prepare herself on the days when they went to Saint Augustine's.
La Chica
was loved and perhaps in love.
At first, she was completely dejected: she thought she had reduced this poor Mr Leniot to despair. But was this her own fault? And besides, he was a child. Then she felt ashamed: "What must he be thinking of me?" She would have wished never to have trusted him with those secrets, never to have imparted those wholly pure thoughts from the time when she was still innocent and devout. "Hypocrite! He must be saying that I'm a hypocrite!" she would say to herself and, poisoned with remorse, she supposed that God was punishing her in this manner for her lack of self-constraint. She hardly had the courage to pray any more.
Yet the world ought to show understanding for our feelings instead of condemning us. At the very moment she had taken Joanny Leniot as the confidant for her religious ideas, she was beginning to struggle against this propensity which was drawing her towards human love. It was even to strengthen herself in her resistance to sin that she had sought these pious discussions, that she had said all those things which she had jealously guarded up until then. And her expectation had been disappointed. As she gave her religious fervour every freedom in expressing itself, so this fervour abandoned her. Without knowing it, this child had witnessed the death throes of her piety; it was the cry of this dying piety which he had heard. On returning one evening to her room, she had fallen sobbing to the carpet. She wanted to abase herself, to wipe away all the sin she could feel inside which was to overcome her. So she decided to lie stretched out facing the ceiling for one hour, with her feet joined together and her arms in the cross's form. But soon this was unbearable; oppressed, aching, the veins on her head swollen to bursting point, she could endure it no longer. She stood up again and looked at the face of her alarm clock: she had persevered for barely ten minutes. So she hurled herself passionately into what she called sin. She did not seek to excuse herself: she loved a man and that meant her soul was lost. She loved. And her night was so wonderful that she lived it in its entirety, that she drank in every dark minute of it with delight and only fell asleep at daybreak.
For her, this was the beginning of unforgettable nights. As she was absolutely incapable of closing her eyes, she wanted to spend every night reading and reading precisely those profane books which she had hitherto despised. She read in succession
Petitesses
by P. Luis Coloma, Jorge Isaacs'
Maria
and one or two of the Argentine novels by Carlos Maria Ocantos. But she was too preoccupied to give these authors a sustained attention. Her reading was a struggle with the pages: she would continuously slide the paper knife to the place she had reached in the book and, looking at the segment, she would compare the width of the pages she had already read to that of the pages she still had to read. Occasionally, however, she would forget herself enough to grasp the complete meaning of the phrases. Then she would become interested in the characters. Novels being something new for her, she did not see behind the narrative the literary devices, the commonplace, the age-old props which can be used anywhere and which end up by putting us off the defined past and all the novels of the world. She was like those members of an audience who have never seen the wings and who admire the scenery without reservations. She would begin to read as soon as she had returned to her room. She would lie down on her bed without taking off her evening gown in which she felt more beautiful and which she crumpled without caring. There was no doubting it, all the adventures of these characters really did not interest her; her own heart was too full of emotions; her own adventure was too wonderful. If the traitor had become Santos Iturria's friend, he would obviously have mended his ways and the final catastrophe would not have taken place. She pitied the Currita (in
Petitesses);
she felt sorry for all the black-hearted or unhappy heroines. They had never had the love of Santos Iturria to console or redeem them . . . She would close the book and think of her happiness. She would cast tender glances at the things surrounding her. The chandelier's electric lights, the illuminated bulbs of the wall lamps above the fireplace and on each side of the round mirror, all these lights shone pure and still, conveying a sense of security in the midst of this wealth. The walls hung in watered silk of old rose, the heavy and sumptuous furniture, the thick carpet covering the entire floor, the gold of the picture frames, the tables and pedestal stands inlaid with copper, the wardrobe, its three doors panelled with limpid mirrors, she would run a kindly eye over all these objects. A few weeks earlier, she detested them because they reminded her that the rich will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, because they caused her anguish to think of all the poor wretches, of those who sleep in hostels, of those luckless souls who have fallen to society's depths and whose nakedness stands revealed to the very cores of their being. Now on the contrary, she liked them: this luxury was worthy of her heart's sovereign. As for her, she felt no attachment to it but wouldn't he be happy if he agreed to come and spend a few days at their home on the breaking up of his school where life was tough and frugal, yes wouldn't he be happy here? He would have
thefeui/le morte
bedroom which was even more opulent than this one and he would do his shopping in the victoria. Oh! If only that were possible!
She lowered her glance to her bare throat; she contemplated herself stretched out in her gorgeous dress, she admired the daintiness of her arched feet. Surely she too was worthy of her heart's sovereign? — The night hours have a romantic side. Two o'clock in the afternoon is prosaic, almost common; but two o'clock in the morning is an adventurer plunging into the unknown. And this unknown is three o'clock in the morning, the nocturnal pole, time's mysterious continent. You skirt round it and if you believe you have ever crossed it, you are mistaken for soon four o'clock arrives without your having discovered the secret of the night. And the dawn is already streaking the shutters with its parallel stripes of blue.
Now when Fermina Marquez appeared on the steps of the visiting room at Saint Augustine's, she had been up for barely two hours and there were rings under her wonderful eyes which would shut at the overvivid brightness of the sun. But her gait was nobler, more triumphant than ever. She would quite deliberately show herself before the pupils had left the refectory to provoke Santos, who having eaten his lunch in great haste and being obliged to stay at his bench, would stamp with impatience, ready to rush outside as soon as grace had been said.
How happy he seemed to us! We knew that he wore a lock of her hair wound round his right wrist and concealed beneath his cuff, which she had given to him, with the result that we did not shake his hand and brush his right arm without experiencing a feeling of respect: this lock rendered Santos' person sacred.
They used to stroll on the terrace. She had allowed him to smoke in her presence: his cigarette smoke had such a good, reassuring smell! She breathed it in with relish. She looked up
at him with an expression of solemnity and admiration. She was happy to be slightly less exalted than him. Everything he said affected her, made her joyful, caressed her.
Once or twice, they invited Demoisel to come and have tea with them in the grounds. We also saw them in the great avenue: they walked ahead of the group made up of Mama Dolore, Pilar and Paquito Marquez; Santos was on Fermina's left and Demoisel on her right. The Negro would stand absolutely straight and hold his head up high; he seemed very proud and very intimidated at the same time. From afar, you could see the whites of his eyes roll in his gleaming, black face. His manners were beyond reproach. He too was South American.
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