French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) (15 page)

But the God he invoked refused to grant this favour—and the old ham expired, declaiming in his florid style his ardent desire to see ghosts—
not realizing that he had himself become that which he sought
.

I esteem myself but little when I look at myself; highly, when I compare myself to others.

(Mr Everyman)

O
NE
evening in spring, two well-brought-up young people, Lucienne Emery and the Comte Maximilien de W***, were seated under the tall trees of the Champs-Élysées.

Lucienne is that beautiful young woman who always wears black, whose face has a marble pallor, and whose past is obscure.

Maximilien, whose tragic end we heard about,
was
a wonderfully talented poet. Further, he was attractive, and elegant in his manners. An intellectual light shone in his eyes that were charming, but, like precious stones, a touch cold.

The two had been intimate for six months at most.

On that evening they sat in silence and watched the dim silhouettes of cabs, shadows, passers-by. Suddenly, gently, Madame Emery took her lover’s hand.

‘Does it not seem to you, my friend, that as the result of being ceaselessly excited by artificial, and, in a manner of speaking, by abstract impressions, great artists—like yourself—end up by blunting their capacity
really
to undergo the torments or the pleasures that Destiny puts in their way! At the very least, you have difficulty in expressing—something which people might take for lack of sensitivity—the personal sentiments that life bids you feel. Judging from the cold deliberation of your movements, people might think that you only throbbed as a matter of courtesy. A preoccupation with Art, no doubt, pursues you constantly, even in love and grief. From the habit of analysing the complexities of these feelings, you fear too much not being perfect in your responses, is that not so?… You can never rid yourself of that niggling thought. It paralyses your noblest flights and tempers all natural expansiveness. It’s almost as if—being princes of a different universe—an invisible crowd surrounds you ceaselessly, ready to praise or blame.

‘In short, when you experience some great joy or misfortune, what stirs in you first of all, even before your mind has really taken anything in, is the obscure desire to seek out some retired actor to ask
how you should be carried away
and what gestures are appropriate for the circumstance. Does the pursuit of Art then lead to a certain hardening?… That worries me.’

‘Lucienne,’ replied the Count, ‘I once knew a singer who stood by his fiancée’s death-bed, and listening to his sister’s convulsive sobbing, could not restrain himself from commenting, despite his own affliction, on the defects of her vocalizing. He even thought of certain exercises that would give her sobs “more body”. Does that seem horrible to you?… And yet, it was the singer who died of his grief, while the sister came out of mourning at the first prescribed opportunity.’

Madame Emery looked at Maximilien.

‘Listening to you,’ she said, ‘it would be hard to define in what true feeling consists, and by what outward signs it might be recognized.’

‘I should be glad to enlighten you on the subject,’ replied Monsieur de W*** with a smile. ‘But the technical… terms… er… are unpleasant, and I rather fear…’

‘Stop that! I have my bunch of Parma violets, and you have your cigar; so please go on.’

‘Very well, then! I shall obey,’ replied Maximilien. ‘The cerebral fibres affected by the feelings of joy or pain appear, you seem to be saying, distended in the artist, by the excess of intellectual emotion required on a daily basis by the cult of Art.—In my opinion, these mysterious fibres are merely sublimated!—Other men seem content with more predictable shows of tenderness, and with passions more openly expressed, more
serious
, in fact… My own view is that the placidity of their organisms, still somewhat occluded by Instinct, causes them to present, in lieu of supreme expressions of emotion, mere overflowings of animality.

‘I maintain further that their hearts and brains are served by nervous centres which, enveloped in the torpor of habit, send out infinitely fewer and more muffled vibrations than our own.

‘These leaden natures are what the world calls acting “in character”—their hearts, their beings—are violent and empty. Let us refrain from being duped by the dullness of their cries. To broadcast weakness in the secret hope of rendering it contagious, in order to benefit, at least in one’s own eyes, from the real emotion that one has provoked in others—thanks to a shadowy pretence—is really only suitable for fragmentary beings.

‘By what right can they claim that their writhings, of a more than dubious alloy, are required in the expression of life’s sufferings or ecstasies, and how dare they accuse those who have the discretion to abstain from them of being insensitive?
*
Is the ray that strikes a diamond in the raw state more truly reflected than in one properly cut in which the essence of fire enters? In truth, those men and women who let themselves be carried away by such crude expressiveness are of the type that prefer confused noises to deep melodies: that is all.’

‘Excuse me, Maximilien,’ interrupted Madame Emery: ‘I am listening to your rather subtle analysis with very real admiration… but would you be kind enough to tell me what hour is chiming?’

‘Ten o’clock, Lucienne!’ replied the young man, consulting his watch by the light of his cigar.

‘Ah!… That’s all right, then.—Do go on.’

‘Why all of a sudden this anxiety about the time?’

‘Because our love affair has one more hour to go, my friend!’ replied Lucienne. ‘I have a rendezvous with Monsieur de Rostanges at eleven-thirty this evening; I have put off telling you this till the last moment.—Are you angry with me?… Please forgive me.’

If the Count turned a little paler at these words, the ambient darkness veiled his emotion; not a flicker betrayed the effect of this announcement on his being.

‘I see!’ he said in an even and well-modulated tone. ‘A most accomplished young man who well deserves your affection. Then I shall say my
adieux
, dear Lucienne.’

He took his mistress’s hand and kissed it.

‘Who knows what the future may have in store?’ replied Lucienne with a smile, even though she was rather taken aback. ‘Rostanges is merely an irresistible caprice…—and now,’ she went on after a brief silence, ‘go on, my friend, I beg you. I should like to know, before we take our leave of each other,
what is it that gives great artists the right to be so scornful of the behaviour of ordinary mortals?
’

There was a pause, silent and terrible, beween the two lovers.

‘We experience, to put it simply, ordinary feelings as intensely as the next man,’ Maximilien went on. ‘Yes indeed, the natural,
instinctual
fact of an emotion we experience physically, just like everyone else! But it’s only at the very
outset
that we experience it in that human way!

‘It is the near impossibility of expressing its immediate
repercussions
that makes us, almost always, seem paralysed, in so many circumstances. By the time most men have got over and forgotten such emotions, through a failure of vitality, in us they get louder, rather like the sound of roaring as you approach the sea. Such perceptions and their hidden repercussions, such infinite and marvellous resonances, these alone are the things that establish the superiority of our race. This is the source of the apparent discrepancy between thought and act when one of us tries to express, in the conventional manner, what he feels. Think of the distance that separates us from those early ages of Feeling, buried so long ago in the depths of our spirit. The flatness of the voice, the inappropriateness of the gesture, being lost
for words, all of this is in contradiction with the sincerities and banalities of current usage, tailored to the way the majority experiences emotion. We ring false: people think us cold. Observing us, women can’t believe their eyes. They imagined that we too would be moved, at least a little—and drift off into our “clouds” where, according to a saying which suits the Bourgeoisie, we “poets” are meant to take refuge. They are astonished to see quite the contrary! The disdainful horror they feel, discovering this, for those who duped them on our behalf, is excessive—and would procure us some amusement, if we were vengeful.

‘No, Lucienne, it does not do for us to travesty ourselves with the false and extroverted performances that people put on. It is vain for us to try and wear the old human cast-offs that have lain forgotten in our antechamber since time immemorial!—People identify us with the essence of Joy! With the living idea of Grief! That’s how it is.—We alone among men have come into possession of an almost divine aptitude: being able to translate, simply from our contact with it, the transports of Love, or its torments, into a form that has immediate universality. That is our deep secret. Instinctively, we keep it hidden, to spare our neighbour, as far as possible, from the shame of not understanding us.—Alas! We are like those potent crystals that enclose, in the Orient, the pure essence of dead roses, which have been hermetically sealed by a triple envelope of wax, gold, and parchment.

‘A single teardrop of this essence—an essence kept in the precious amphora (which represents the fortune of the whole race and is handed down as a sacred treasure with the blessing of the elders)—a single teardrop, I tell you Lucienne, is enough to infuse volumes of clear water! And the latter can perfume dwellings and tombs for years on end!… But we are not the same (and therein lies our crime) as these flasks filled with dull perfumes, sad and sterile phials that people mostly neglect to stopper and whose virtue therefore sours or disperses on every passing wind.—Having conquered a purity of feeling inaccessible to the uninitiated, we would become liars in our own eyes if we were to participate in the “expected” mime-shows and expressions that satisfy the vulgar. Indeed we would hasten to disabuse him if he took upon faith the first cry that a happy or fatal event sometimes draws from us. It is from a very exact notion of Sincerity, precisely, that we owe it to ourselves to be sober in our movements,
scrupulous in our language, reserved in our enthusiasms, and self-contained in our despairs.

‘Is it therefore the
quality
of our emotional faculties which earns us the imputation of callousness?… In truth, my dear Lucienne, if we were anxious (God forbid) to cease being misunderstood by most individuals—or to require from them any other form of homage than indifference—it would effectively then be desirable that a good actor, placing himself behind us and passing his arms under our own, spoke and gesticulated on our behalf. Then we would indeed be certain to touch the masses by the only means accessible to them.’

Deep in thought, Madame Emery pondered the honourable Monsieur de W***.

‘But really, my dear Maximilien,’ she exclaimed, ‘soon you won’t be able to say “good morning” or “good evening” for fear of stooping to the level… of mere mortals!—You do have your exquisite and unforgettable moments, and I am proud of having inspired them in you…—Sometimes you have dazzled me with the depths of your heart and with the sweet, sudden accesses of your tenderness; yes, and there have been indescribable, troubling ecstasies that I shall never ever forget!… But what can I do?… For then you slip beyond me—with a look I cannot fathom!—and I shall never be entirely persuaded that you actually feel yourself, except through the imagination, what you inspire in others.—And this is why, Max, I have no alternative but to leave you.’

‘I shall therefore resign myself to not being
ordinary
, even at the risk of provoking the scorn of the good folk who (perhaps rightly) consider themselves better organized than me,’ replied the Count. ‘In any case, these days everybody seems proof to feeling anything whatsoever. I hope that soon there will be four or five hundred theatres per capital in which, the ordinary events of life being played out markedly better than they are in reality, no one will bother very much about living anything through for themselves. When they feel like being stirred or impassioned, they’ll simply book a seat.—Surely that would be a thousand times better, from the common-sense point of view?… Why exhaust oneself in passions destined to oblivion?… And what is not half-forgotten, over the course of one season?—Oh, if you only knew the silence we bear within ourselves!… But forgive me, Lucienne: ten-thirty has just gone, and it would be indecorous of me, in the light of your earlier confidence, not to draw your attention
to the fact,’ murmured Maximilien, getting to his feet with a smile.

‘And your conclusion?…’ she said. ‘I still have time.’

‘I conclude’, replied Maximilien, ‘that when some nobody, beating the outer casing of his chest as if to daze himself on the emptiness he feels within, yells out: “He is too intelligent to have a heart!” it is, first of all, very probable that the said nobody would fly into a rage if one replied that he himself had “too much heart to be intelligent!”; which in itself rather proves that our choice is the more valid, given his furious involuntary reaction. And what becomes of that phrase, when submitted to critical scrutiny? It is like saying: “That person is too well brought-up to have good manners!” In what do good manners consist? This is something the vulgarian, and the man who is truly well brought-up, will never know, despite all the puerile and worthy codes governing the subject. In fact, what that phrase really betrays, naively enough, is the instinctive jealousy, and even the
melancholy
in certain natures that comes out when confronted with our own. In fact, what separates us is not a difference: it is an infinity.’

Lucienne got up and took the Count’s arm.

‘I shall take this axiom away from our discussion,’ she said. ‘That however contrary your words and your actions seem sometimes to be, in the dreadful or joyful circumstances of your life, this does not in any way prove that you are…’

‘—Made of wood!…’ finished off the Count with a smile.