Laura (4 page)

After a few weeks, I was cured and became fully aware of the delirium from which I had suffered. Seeing me become lucid again, people ceased tormenting me, and confined themselves to forbidding me to speak again, even in jest, about the amethyst geode and what I had seen from the summit of the great milky-white crystal.

In this regard Laura was unassailably discreet or stern. As soon as I opened my mouth to remind her of that
magnificent
excursion, she closed it with her hand; but she did not discourage me as the others did.

Later! later! she told me with a mysterious smile. Regain your strength, and we shall see if your dream was that of a poet or a madman.

I realised that I was expressing myself rather badly, and that this world that had seemed to me so beautiful was becoming ridiculous, viewed through the prosaic
pedantry
of my narration. I promised myself that I would train my mind and dull my senses to accept the language of the common man.

I had grown very attached to Laura during my illness. She had distracted me in my melancholy moments,
reassured
me in my nightmares, in a word, cared for me as if I had been her brother. In the state of weakness in which I had long foundered, the ardours of love had been able to seize hold of my imagination only in the form of fleeting dreams. My senses had remained dumb, my heart did not truly speak until the day my uncle announced my cousin’s departure.

We were returning from the lecture, which I had attended for the first time since my illness.

You know, he told me, that we shall not be lunching
with Laura today. Cousin Lisbeth came to fetch her early this morning. She did not want anyone to wake you, thinking that you would perhaps feel a little sad at being separated from her.

My uncle believed naively that this little pang of regret would be aborted in the face of the fait accompli; he was most astonished to see me dissolve into tears.

Well, he said, I thought you were cured, and you are not, since you are affected like a child by such a small setback.

The setback was a stab of pain, I loved Laura. It was a true friendship, custom, trust, mutual understanding, and yet Laura did not embody the ideal woman my vision had left within me and which it would have been impossible for me to define. In the crystal I had seen her as taller, more beautiful, more intelligent, more mysterious than I now saw her again in reality. In reality, she was simple, good, cheerful, somewhat positive. It seemed to me that I could have spent my life perfectly happily by her side, but always hoping for a new impetus towards that enchanted world of the vision where she vainly denied having taken me. It seemed to me also that she was deceiving me to make me forget the too-vivid impression, and that the question of whether she would transport me there once more, when my strength permitted it, depended upon her affection for me.

T
WO YEARS PASSED
, during which I worked more fruitfully, but did not see Laura again. She had spent her holidays in the country, and, instead of joining her there, I had been forced to follow my uncle on a geological excursion to the Tyrol. At last Laura reappeared one summer’s day, more beautiful and more amiable than ever.

Well, she said, holding out her two hands to me, you have not grown any more handsome, my fine Alexis; but you have the nice face of an honest boy, which makes you loved and respected. I know that you have become perfectly rational and that you are still hardworking. You don’t break glass display cases with your head any more, on the pretext of walking through amethyst geodes and climbing escarpments of milky-white quartz. You see that, having heard you repeat them during your fever, I know the names of your favourite mountains. Now, you are becoming a mathematician, and that is more serious. I want to thank you and reward you with a confidence and a gift. You should know that I am getting married, and here is my wedding-gift, with my fiancé’s permission.

As she said this, she pointed to Walter with one hand, while with the other she placed upon my finger the pretty white cornelian ring I had so long seen her wearing.

I stood there dumbstruck, and I have no idea of what I was able to say or do to express my humiliation, my jealousy or my despair. It is probable that everything concentrated itself within me to the point of making me
appear decently disinterested; for, when I had suppressed the notion of what was surrounding me, I saw neither
discontent
, nor mockery, nor surprise on the well-meaning faces of my uncle, my cousin and her fiancé. I considered I had escaped lightly from a crisis that might have rendered me odious or ridiculous, and I went to lock myself away in my room with the ring, which I placed in front of me on my table, and which I contemplated with the bitter irony that circumstance demanded.

It was not a common cornelian, it was a very pretty hard stone, veined with opaque and translucent shades. As I looked at them questioningly, I sensed that they were extending around me, that they were filling my little room right up to the ceiling and that they were enveloping me like a cloud. At first I experienced a tiresome sensation like that of a fainting fit; but little by little the cloud lightened, spread out over a vast space and gently transported me onto the rounded top of a mountain, whose centre was all at once filled with a lively, red-gold blaze of light which enabled me to see Laura, seated beside me.

Friend, she said, talking to me in that language which she alone knew, and which had the gift of revealing itself to me suddenly, do not believe a word of what I said to you in front of our uncle. It is he who dreamed up this fable to prevent you from being distracted from your
studies
, seeing that we loved each other and that you were still too young to marry; but have no fear, I do not love Walter, and I shall never belong to anyone but you.

Ah! my dear Laura! I cried out, at last you have become radiant again with love and beauty, as I saw you in the amethyst! Yes, I believe, I know that you love me, and that
nothing can pull us apart. So why, in our family, do you always appear so incredulous or mocking?

I could also ask you, she replied, why in our family I see you as ugly, awkward, ridiculous, and poorly dressed, while in the crystal, you are as handsome as an angel and draped in the colours of the rainbow; but I do not ask you that, I know.

Teach it to me, Laura! You who know everything, give me the secret of appearing to you always and everywhere as you see me here.

My dear Alexis, it is with this as it is with all the secrets of the sciences you call natural: one who knows them can tell you that things are, and how they are; but when it is a question of why, everyone has his own opinion. I shall willingly tell you my opinion of the strange phenomenon which places us here together in broad daylight, while, in the world called the world of facts, we now see each other only through the shadows of relative life; but my opinion will be nothing but my opinion, and, if I told you it
anywhere
but here, you would regard me as a madwoman.

Tell it to me, Laura; it seems to me that here we are in the world of the real, and that elsewhere everything is illusion and lies.

Then, beautiful Laura spoke to me thus:

You must be aware that within each one of us who inhabit the earth there are two manifestations that are very distinct in reality, although they are confused in the notion of our terrestrial life. If consequently we believe that our senses are limited and our appreciation
incomplete
, we have only one soul, or, to speak like Walter, a certain animism destined to be extinguished with the
functions of our organs. If, on the contrary, we raise
ourselves
above the sphere of the positive and the palpable, a mysterious, unnamed, invincible sense tells us that our self is not only in our organs, but that it is indissolubly linked to the life of the universe, and that it must survive intact beyond what we call death.

“What I remind you of here is not new: in all religious or metaphysical forms, men have believed and will always believe in the persistence of the self; but my idea, mine which I tell you about in the land of the ideal, is that this immortal self is contained only partially in the visible man. The visible man is merely the result of an
emanation
from the invisible man, and this, the true unit of his soul, the real, durable and divine face of his life, remains veiled to him.

“Where is it and what does it do, this flower of the eternal spirit, while the body’s soul accomplishes its
difficult
, austere life of but a day? It is somewhere in time and space, since space and time are conditions of all life. In time, it preceded human life, and will survive after it, it accompanies and watches over it up to a certain point; but it is not dependent upon it and does not count its days and its hours within the same framework. In space, it
certainly
enjoys a feasible and frequent relationship with the human self; but it is not its slave, and its expansion floats in a sphere whose limits man does not know. Have you understood me?

I believe I have, I replied, and, to sum up your
revelation
in the simplest fashion, I shall say that we have two souls: one which lives within us and does not leave us, the other which lives outside us and which we do not know.
The first enables us to live in a fleeting way, and
apparently
dies with us, the second enables us to live eternally, and is unceasingly renewed with us. Or rather it is the soul which renews us, and which provides for the entire series of our successive existences, without ever becoming exhausted.

What the devil are you writing there? a harsh,
discordant
voice cried out beside me.

The cloud flew away, taking with it the radiant figure of Laura, and I found myself once again in my room, seated before my table, and writing the last lines which Walter was reading over my shoulder.

Since when, he added, have you been occupying
yourself
with philosophical nonsense? If you are claiming to make advances in practical science with this new genre of hypotheses, I cannot compliment you on it … Now, leave that fine manuscript, and come and take your place at my engagement dinner.

Is it possible, my dear Walter, I replied, throwing myself into his arms, that, through friendship for me, you are taking part in a pretence unworthy of a serious man? I know perfectly well that Laura does not love you, and that you have never dreamed of being her husband.

“Laura told you she didn’t love me?” he answered with a mocking tranquillity. That’s quite possible and, as for me, if I am thinking of marrying her, I certainly haven’t been doing so for long; but your uncle arranged it at a distance with his absent brother-in-law, and, as Laura did not say no, I had to consent to say yes … Do not think that I am smitten with her; I don’t have the time to put my
imagination
to work and discover fabulous perfections in that good
little person. I do not dislike her, and, as she is extremely sensible, she asks no more of me for the moment. Later, when we have lived together for years, and we have allied our wills to run our household and bring up our children properly, I do not doubt that we shall have a good and solid friendship for each other. Until then, it is work to be placed in common with the idea of duty and the feeling of mutual respect. So you can tell me that Laura does not love me without surprising me and without wounding me. I would even be surprised if she did love me, since I have never thought to please her, and I would be a little anxious about her reason, if she saw in me an Amadis. Therefore, see things as they are, and be sure that they are as they must be.

I found Laura dressed up for dinner; she had a gown of pearl-white taffeta decorated with rose-pink gauze which reminded me confusedly of the soft, warm hue of the
cornelian
; but her face seemed to me demoralised, as though it were lifeless.

Come and give me confidence and courage, she said frankly, calling me to her side. I have wept a great deal today. It is not that I dislike Walter, nor that I am angry about marrying. I had known for a long time that I was destined for him, and I have never had any intention of becoming an old maid; but now the moment has come to leave my family and my home it is still painful. Be
cheerful
to help me forget all of this a little, or speak to me of reason so that I shall become cheerful, as I believe in the future.

How different Laura’s language and physiognomy seemed to me from how they had been in the cloud
emanating from the cornelian! She was so vulgarly resigned to her fate, that I clearly recognised the illusion of my dream; but, strange to tell, I no longer felt any pain at the thought of her really marrying Walter. I rediscovered the feeling of friendship that her care and her goodness had inspired in me, and I even rejoiced at the thought that I was going to live close by her, since she was leaving her home and coming to settle in our town.

The meal was very jolly. My uncle had placed it in the hands of Walter, who, as a positive man, knew how to eat well, and who had ordered it from one of the best cooks for hire in Fischausen. Laura had not been averse to busying herself with it too, and the governess had added to it with a few Italian dishes in her own style, strongly spiced and cooked in copious amounts of wine. Walter ate and drank enough for four. My uncle even became sufficiently jolly at dessert to perform a few courtly
madrigals
addressed to the governess, who was scarcely more than forty-five, and he wanted to open the dancing with her when Laura’s young female friends demanded the violins.

I waltzed with my cousin. All at once it seemed to me that her face came alive with a singular beauty and that she was speaking to me with fire in the rapid whirlpool of the dance.

Let us leave here, she said to me, it’s stifling; let us pass through those mirrors, which reflect back the candles’ flame into the interminable distance. Don’t you see that this is the image of the infinite, and that it is the road we must take? Come! a little courage, a leap forward, and we shall soon be in the crystal.

While Laura was speaking to me thus, I heard the mocking voice of Walter, who shouted out to me as I was passing close to him:

Hey! have a care! Not so close to the mirrors! Do you want to break those too? This boy is a veritable stag beetle, who beats his head against anything that shines.

Punch was being served. I was one of the last to approach, and found myself sitting next to Laura.

There, she said, handing me the chilled nectar in a fine goblet of Bohemian crystal, drink to my health, and look more cheerful. Do you realise you look as if you are bored, and that your distracted expression is preventing me from numbing myself as I would wish?

How can you want me to be jolly, my good Laura, when I see that you are not? You do not love Walter; why rush to marry without love, when love could come for him … or for another?

I am not permitted to love another, she replied, since it is he my father has chosen. You do not know all that has passed with regard to this marriage. You were considered too young to be informed of it; but, for myself who am even younger than you, you are not a child, and, since we were brought up together, I owe you the truth.

“We were originally destined for each other; but at first you proved too lazy, then extremely pedantic, and now, despite your goodwill and your intelligence, no one yet knows for what career you are best suited. I do not say this to cause you pain; I consider, myself, that no time has yet been lost with regard to your future. You learn, you have become hardworking and modest. You may well be a universal scholar like my uncle, or a specialised scholar
like Walter; but my father, who wishes to see me
married
when he returns to settle near me, charged my uncle and my cousin Lisbeth with finding me a husband of an age suited to my own, that is a little older than you and engaged in very positive studies. He blames the
unfortunate
beginnings of his business career on ignorance and imagination, and he wants a son-in-law who is
knowledgeable
about some industry or other.

“Now my father, tired of voyages and adventures, seems satisfied with his position: he has sent me quite a nice sum of money for my dowry; but he did not wish to involve himself in setting me up. He claims he has become too much of a stranger to our customs, and that the choice made by my other relations will be better than one he could make himself or only advise upon.

“And so my poor mother’s plans have been overturned, for she wanted to unite us; but she is no more, and one must admit that the present combination better assures my future and yours. You certainly do not wish to enter into married life so soon, and you have neither wealth nor a lucrative employment, since you do not yet even know what your vocation is.”