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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 TWO FRIENDS 
 
 OF Cornell University 
 1934 
 
DATE DUt 
 
 u U '4 
 
 *3 
 
 38 
 
 
 t«W'2 6r,349^ 
 
 OCT " 9 2006 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PQ 2254.L9 1898 
 
 Red lily 
 
 3 1924 027 269 434 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027269434 
 
THE RED LILY 
 
 BY 
 
 ANATOLE FRANCE 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 € 
 
 PUBLISHED BY BRENTANO'S, AT 
 31 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK 
 
 F 
 

 COPYEICm-, 1898, BY 
 
 BRENT ANO'S 
 
 P,|■i:^;.'^^*1 
 
THE RED LILY 
 
 She gave a glance to the armchairs placed before 
 the chimney, to the tea table which shone in the 
 shade, and to the tall pale stems of flowers ascend- 
 ing above Chinese vases. She thrust her hand into 
 the flowery branches of the guelder roses to make 
 their silvery baUs play. Then she looked at herself 
 in a glass with serious attention. She held herself 
 sidewise, her neck on her shoulder, to foUow with 
 her eyes the jet of her flne form in the black satin 
 scabbard, around which floated a light tunic studded 
 with pearls wherein sombre lights scintillated. 
 She went nearer, curious to know her face of that 
 day. The glass returned her look with tranquillity, 
 as if this amiable woman whom she examined and 
 who was not unpleasing to her lived without acute 
 joy and without profound sadness. 
 
 On the walls of the large parlor, empty and dumb, 
 the figures of the tapestries, vague as shadows, 
 were pallid among their antique games, in their 
 dying graces. Like them, the terra-cotta statu- 
 
2 THE RED LILY 
 
 ettes on columnettes, the groups of old Saxony, and 
 the paintings of Sevres in the cases spoke of past 
 things. On a pedestal ornamented with precious 
 bronzes, the marble bust of some princess royal dis- 
 guised as Diana seemed to fly out of her turbulent 
 drapery, while on the ceiling a Night, powdered 
 like a marquise and surrounded by cupids, sowed 
 flowers. Everything was asleep, and one heard only 
 the craclding of the logs and the light murmur of 
 pearls in gauze. 
 
 Turning from the glass, she lifted the corner of 
 a curtain and saw through the window, beyond the 
 dark trees of the quay, the Seine drag its yellow 
 reflections. Ennui of the sky and of the water was 
 reflected in her fine gray irises. The boat passed, 
 the Hvrondelle, coming out of an arch of the Alma 
 Bridge, and carrying humble travellers toward 
 Grenelle and Bfllancourt. She followed it with her 
 eyes, then let the curtain fall, and, seating herself 
 under the flowers, took a book which was on the 
 table. On the straw-colored linen cover shone this 
 title in gold : " Yseult la Blonde, by Yivian Bell." 
 It was a collection of French verses composed by an 
 Englishwoman, and printed in London. She read 
 indifferently, waiting for her callers, and thinking 
 less of the poetry than of the poetess. Miss Bell, 
 who was perhaps her most agreeable friend, and 
 whom she almost never saw; who, at every one of 
 their meetings, which were so rare, kissed her, call- 
 ing her " Darling," and babbled; who, homely and 
 seductive, almost ridiculous, and whoUy exquisite, 
 
THE RED LILY 3 
 
 lived at Fiesole like a philosopher, while England 
 celebrated her as her most beloved poet. Like Ver- 
 non Lee and like Mary Eobinson, she had fallen in 
 love with the life and art of Tuscany ; and, without 
 even finishing her " Tristan," the first part of which 
 had inspired in Burne-Jones dreamy aquarelles, she 
 wrote Provengal verses and French verses with 
 Italian thoughts. She had sent her " Tseult la 
 Blonde " to " Darling " with a letter inviting her to 
 spend a month with her at Fiesole. She had written : 
 "Come; you will see the most beautiful things in 
 the world, and you will embellish them." 
 
 And " Darling " was saying to herself that she 
 would not go, that she had to remain in Paris. But 
 the idea of seeing Miss BeU in Italy was not indif- 
 ferent to her. And turning the leaves of the book, 
 she stopped by chance at this line: 
 
 " Love and gentle heart are one." 
 
 And she asked herself, with light and soft irony, 
 if Miss Bell had ever been in love, and what could 
 be the loves of Miss BeU. The poetess had at Fie- 
 sole an escort. Prince Albertinelli. Yery hand- 
 some, he seemed coarse and vulgar; too much so to 
 please an aesthete who placed in the desire for love 
 the mysticism of an Annunciation. 
 
 " Good-night, Therese. I am worn out." 
 It was Princess Seniavine, supple in her furs, 
 which seemed to form part of her dark and savage 
 flesh. She sat brusquely, and in her voice, which 
 was harsh and yet caressing, said: 
 
4 THE BED LILY 
 
 " This morning I walked through the park with 
 General Lariviere. I met him in an alley and led 
 him to the bridge, where he wished to buy from the 
 guardian a learned magpie which performs the man- 
 ual of arms with a gun. I am tired." 
 
 "But why did you drag the General to the 
 bridge?" 
 
 " Because he had the gout in his toe." 
 
 Therese shrugged her shoulders, smiling: 
 
 "You squander your wickedness. You spoil 
 things." 
 
 "And you want me, dear, to save my kindness 
 and my wickedness for a serious investment? " 
 
 She drank Tokay wine. 
 
 Preceded by the powerful noise of his breathing. 
 General Lariviere approached with heavy state and 
 sat between the two women, looking stubborn and 
 satisfied, laughing in every wrinkle of his temples. 
 
 ' ' How is M. Martin- Belleme ? Always busy ? ' ' 
 
 Therese thought he was at the Chamber, and even 
 that he was making a speech there. 
 
 Princess Seniavine, who was eating caviare sand- 
 wiches, asked of Madame Martin why she had not 
 gone to Madame Meillan's the day before. They 
 had played a comedy there. 
 
 " A Scandinavian play ? Was it a success ? 
 
 "Yes — I don't know. I was in the little green 
 parlor, under the portrait of the Due d' Orleans. M. 
 Le Meml came to me and did me one of those good 
 turns that one never forgets. He saved me from 
 M. Garain." 
 
THE RED LILY 5 
 
 The General, who knew the Annual Register, and 
 stored in his big head aU useful information, pricked 
 up his ears. 
 
 "Garaiu," he asked, "the Minister who was in 
 the Cabinet when the princes were exiled? " 
 
 "Himself. I was excessively agreeable to him. 
 He was talking to me of the needs of his heart and 
 was looking at me with frightful tenderness. And 
 from time to time he looked, with sighs, at the por- 
 trait of the Due d'Orleans. I said to him: 'M. 
 Garain, you are making a mistake. It is my sister- 
 in-law who is an Orleanist. I am not.' At this 
 moment M. Le Menil came to escort me to the 
 buflfet. He paid great compliments — to my horses. 
 He said, also, there was nothing so beautiful as the 
 forest in winter. He talked about wolves. That 
 refreshed me." 
 
 The General, who did not like young men, said 
 he had met Le Menil the day before in the forest, 
 galloping, with vast space between himself and his 
 saddle. 
 
 He declared that old cavaliers alone retained the 
 good traditions of horsemanship; that people in soci- 
 ety now rode like jockeys. 
 
 "It is the same with fencing," he added. 
 " Formerly " 
 
 Princess Seniavine interrupted him : 
 
 " General, look and see how charming Madame 
 Martin is. She is always charming, but at this mo- 
 ment she is prettier than ever. It is because she 
 is bored. Nothing becomes her better than to be 
 
6 THE BED LILY 
 
 bored. Since we have been here, we have bored her 
 terribly. Look at her: her forehead clouded, her 
 glance vague, her mouth dolorous. A victim." 
 
 She started, kissed Therese tumultuously, and fled, 
 leaving the General astonished. 
 
 Madame Martin-BeUeme prayed him not to listen 
 to what the princess had said. 
 
 He collected himself and asked: 
 
 " How about your poets, Madame? " 
 
 It was diflacult for him to forgive Madame Martin 
 her preference for people who lived by writing and 
 were not of his circle. 
 
 " Yes, your poets. What has become of that M. 
 Choulette, who calls on you with a red muffler? " 
 
 " My poets ? They forget me, they abandon me. 
 One should not rely on anybody. Men, things, 
 nothing is sure. Life is a continual betrayal. Only 
 this poor Miss BeU does not forget me. She has 
 written to me from Florence and sent her book." 
 
 "Miss BeU? Isn't she that young person who 
 looks, with her yellow crimped hair, like a little 
 lapdog?" 
 
 He reflected, and expressed the opinion tliat she 
 must be at least thirty. 
 
 An old lady, wearing with modest dignity her 
 crown of white hair, and a little vivacious man 
 with smart eyes came in suddenly — Madame Marmet 
 and M. Paul Yenoe. Then, very stiff, a square glass 
 in his eye, appeared M. Daniel Salomon, the arbiter 
 of elegance. The General hurried out. 
 
 They talked of the novel of the week. Madame 
 
THE RED LILY 7 
 
 Marmet had dined often with the author, a young 
 and very amiable man. Paul Vence thought the 
 book annoying. 
 
 "Oh," sighed Madame Martin, "aU books are 
 annoying. But men are more annoying than books, 
 and they are more exacting." 
 
 Madame Marmet said that her husband, who had 
 much literary taste, had retained until the end of 
 his days a horror for naturalism. 
 
 Widow of a member of the Academie des Inscrip- 
 tions, she decked herself with her illustrious widow- 
 hood. She was sweet and modest in her black gown 
 and under her beautiful white hair. 
 
 Madame Martin said to M. Daniel Salomon that 
 she wished to consult him on a group of children. 
 
 " You win tell me if it pleases you. You may 
 also give me your opinion. Monsieur Vence, unless 
 you disdain such trifles." 
 
 M. Daniel Salomon looked at Paul Vence through 
 his square eye-glass with disdain. 
 
 Paul Vence surveyed the parlor with his eyes. 
 
 "You have beautiful things, Madame. That 
 would be nothing. But you have only beautiful 
 things, and things that become you." 
 
 She did not conceal her pleasure at hearing him 
 talk in that way. She regarded Paul Vence as the 
 only entirely intelligent man she knew. She had 
 appreciated him before his books had made him 
 celebrated. His iU health, his dark humor, his as- 
 siduous labor separated him from society. That 
 little bilious man was not very pleasing; yet he 
 
8 THE BED LILY 
 
 attracted her. She held in high esteem his profound 
 irony, his wild pride, his talent ripened in solitude, 
 and she admired him, with reason, as an excellent 
 writer, the author of beautiful essays on art and on 
 manners. 
 
 Little by little the parlor was fiUed by a brilliant 
 crowd. In the large circle of the armchairs were 
 Madame de Vresson, about whom people told fright- 
 ful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of 
 badly smothered scandal, eyes of a child on virginal 
 cheeks; old Madame de Morlaine, who shouted in 
 piercing cries her witty phrases; Madame Eaymond, 
 the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the 
 wife of the ex-Minister; three other ladies; and, 
 standing against the mantelpiece, M. Berthier 
 d'EyzeUes, editor of the Jowrnal des Debats, a 
 deputy who caressed his white whiskers while Ma- 
 dame de Morlaine shouted at him: 
 
 "Tour article on bimetalism is a pearl, a jewel! 
 Especially the end." 
 
 Standing in the rear of the parlor, young club- 
 men, very grave, Lisped among themselves: 
 
 " What did he do to get the button from the 
 Prince?" 
 
 "He, nothing. His wife, everything." 
 
 They had their philosophy. One of them had no 
 faith in promises of men. 
 
 " They are types that do not suit me. They wear 
 their hearts on their hands and on their mouths. 
 You present yourself at a club. They say, ' I promise 
 to give you a white baU.' It wiU be an alabaster 
 
THE RED LILY 9 
 
 ball — a snowball. They vote. It's a truffle. Life 
 is a nasty thing when I think of it." 
 
 " Then don't think of it." 
 
 Daniel Salomon, who had joined them, whispered 
 in their ears alcove secrets with a chaste voice. And 
 at every strange revelation on Madame Eaymond, on 
 Madame Berthier, and on Princess Seniavine, he 
 added negligently: 
 
 "Everybody knows it." 
 
 Then, little by little, the crowd of visitors was 
 dispersed. There remained Madame Marmet and 
 Paul Vence. 
 
 The latter went toward Madame Martin, and 
 asked : 
 
 " When do you wish me to introduce Dechartre to 
 you?" 
 
 It was the second time he had asked this of her. 
 She did not like to see new faces. She replied un- 
 concernedly : 
 
 " Your sculptor ? "When you wish. I saw at the 
 Champ de Mars medallions made by him which are 
 very good. But he does not work much. He is an 
 amateur, is he not ? " 
 
 "He is a delicate artist. He does not need to 
 work in order to live. He caresses his figures with 
 loving slowness. But do not be deceived about him, 
 Madame. He knows and he feels. He would be a 
 master if he did not live alone. I have known him 
 since his childhood. People think that he is solitary 
 and morose. He is passionate and timid. What he 
 lacks, what he will lack always to reach the highest 
 
10 THE RED LILY 
 
 point of his art, is simplicity of mind. He is dis- 
 quiet, and lie spoils his most beautiful impressions. 
 In my opinion he was created less for sculpture 
 than for poetry or philosophy. He knows a great 
 deal, and you will be astonished by the wealth of his 
 mind." 
 
 Madame Marmet approved. 
 
 She pleased society by appearing to find pleasure 
 in it. She listened a great deal and talked little. 
 Yery affable, she gave value to her affability by not 
 squandering it. Either because she liked Madame 
 Martin, or because she knew how to give in every 
 house where she went discreet marks of preference, 
 she warmed herself contentedly, like an ancestor, in 
 the corner of that Louis XYI. chimney, which suited 
 her beauty. She lacked only her dog. 
 
 " How is Toby ? " asked Madame Martin. " M. 
 Yence, do you know Toby ? He has long silky hair 
 and a lovely little black nose." 
 
 Madame Marmet was reKshing praise of Toby, 
 when an old man, pink and blonde, with curly hair, 
 short-sighted, almost blind under his golden spec- 
 tacles, low on his legs, striking against the furniture, 
 bowing to empty armchairs, throwing himself into 
 the looking-glasses, pushed his crooked nose before 
 Madame Marmet, who looked at him indignantly. 
 
 It was M. SchmoU of the Academie des Inscrip- 
 tions. He smiled, he turned a madrigal for Countess 
 Martin with that hereditary harsh and fat voice with 
 which the Jews, his fathers, pressed their creditors, 
 the peasants of Alsace, of Poland, and of the 
 
THE RED LILY 11 
 
 Crimea. He dragged his phrases heavily. This 
 great philologist knew all the languages except 
 French. And Madame Martin enjoyed his affable 
 phrases, heavy and rusty hke the iron-work of bric- 
 ^-brac shops, and among which fell dried leaves of 
 the Anthology. M. SchmoU liked poets and women, 
 and had wit. 
 
 Madame Marmet feigned not to know him, and 
 went out without returning his bow. 
 
 When he had exhausted his madrigals, M. Schmoll 
 became sombre and pitiful. He complained abun- 
 dantly. He was not decorated enough, not provided 
 with sinecures enough, nor well fed enough by the 
 state — he, Madame SchmoU, and their five daughters. 
 His lamentations had some grandeur. Something of 
 the soul of Ezekiel and of Jeremiah was in them. 
 
 Unfortunately, putting his golden-spectacled eyes 
 on the table, he discovered Yivian BeU's book. 
 
 " Oh, ' Yseult la Blonde,' " he exclaimed bitterly. 
 " You are reading that book, Madame ? "Well, learn 
 that MUe. Yivian BeU has stolen an inscription 
 from me, and that she has altered it, moreover, by 
 putting it into verse. You will find it on page 109 
 of her book : ' A shade may weep over a shade. ' 
 You hear, Madame ? ' A shade may weep over a 
 shade.' Well, these words are translated textually 
 from a funeral inscription which I was the first to 
 publish and to illustrate. Last year, one day, when 
 I was dining at your house, being placed by the side 
 of Mile. Bell, I quoted this phrase to her, and it 
 pleased her a great deal. At her request, the next 
 
12 THE BED LILT 
 
 day I translated into French, the entire inscription 
 and sent it to her. And now I find it changed in 
 this volume of verses under this title: ' On the Sacred , 
 Way ' — the sacred way, that's I." 
 
 And he repeated, in his bad humor: 
 
 " I, Madame, am the sacred way." 
 
 He was annoyed that the poet had not spoken to 
 him about this inscription. He would have Uked to 
 have seen his name at the top of the poem, in the 
 verses, in the rhymes. He wanted to see his name 
 everywhere. And he looked for it in the papers 
 with which his pockets were stuffed. But he had no 
 rancor. He was not angry with Miss Bell. He 
 admitted gracefully that she was a distinguished 
 person, and the poetess who did most honor to Eng- 
 land. 
 
 When he had gone, Countess Martin asked ingenu- 
 ously of Paul Vence if he knew why good Madame 
 Marmet had looked at M. Schmoll with so much 
 anger and silence. He was surprised that she did 
 not know. 
 
 " I never know anything." 
 
 " But the quarrel between Schmoll and Marmet is 
 famous. It ceased only at the death of Marmet. 
 
 " The day that poor Marmet was buried, melted 
 snow was falling. We were wet and frozen to the 
 bones. At the grave, in the wind, in the mud, 
 Schmoll read under his umbrella a speech full of 
 jovial cruelty and triumphant pity, which he brought 
 afterward to the newspapers in a mourning carriage. 
 An unskilful friend let Madame Marmet hear of it, 
 
THE BED LILY 13 
 
 and she fainted. Is it possible, Madame, that you 
 have not heard of this learned and ferocious quarrel ? 
 
 "The Etruscan language was the cause of it. 
 Marmet made it his unique study. He was surnamed 
 Marmet the Etruscan. Neither he nor anyone else 
 knew a word of that language, the last vestige of 
 which is lost. SchmoU said incessantly to Marmet; 
 ' You know that you do not know Etruscan, my dear 
 colleague; that is why you are an honorable savant 
 and a fair-minded man. ' Piqued by his cruel praise, 
 Marmet thought of learning Etruscan a little. He 
 read to his colleague a memoir on the part played by 
 flexions in the idiom of the ancient Tuscans. ' ' 
 
 Madame Martin asked what a flexion was. 
 
 " Oh, Madame, if I explain anything to you, it 
 win mix up everything. Be content with knowing 
 that in that memoir poor Marmet quoted Latin texts 
 and quoted them wrong. Schmoll is a Latinist of 
 great learning, and, after Mommsen, the chief epi- 
 graphist of the world. 
 
 "He reproached his young colleague — Marmet 
 was not fifty years old — with reading Etruscan too 
 well and Latin not well enough. From that time Mar- 
 met had no rest. At every meeting he was mocked 
 with joyful ferocity; and, finally, in spite of his 
 softness, he got angry. Schmoll is without rancor. 
 It is a virtue of his race. He does not bear iU-will 
 to those whom he persecutes. One day, as he went 
 up the stairway of the Institute with Eenan and 
 Oppert, he met Marmet, and extended his hand to 
 him. Marmet refused to take it, and said: 'I do 
 
14 THE RED LILT 
 
 not know you. ' ' Do you take me for a Latin 
 inscription?' replied SchmoU. Marmet died and 
 was buried because of that criticism. You know 
 why his widow sees his enemy with horror." 
 
 "And I have made them dine together, side by 
 side." 
 
 " Madame, it was not immoral, but it was cruel." 
 
 " My dear sir, I will shock you, perhaps; but if I 
 had to choose, I would like better to do an immoral 
 thing than to do a cruel thing." 
 
 A young man, tall, thin, dark, with a long mous- 
 tache, entered, and bowed with brusque suppleness. 
 
 " M. Vence, I think that you know M. Le Menil." 
 
 They had met before at Madame Martin's, and 
 they saw each other often at the Fencing Club. 
 The day before they had met at Madame Meillan's. 
 
 " Madame MeiUan's — there's a house where one is 
 bored," said Paul Vence. 
 
 "Yet Academicians go there," said M. Le Menil. 
 " I do not exaggerate their value, but they are an 
 e7*fe." 
 
 Madame Martin smiled. 
 
 "We know, M. Le Menil, that at Madame Med- 
 ian's you are preoccupied by the women more than by 
 the Academicians. You escorted Princess Seniavine 
 to the bufPet, and you talked to her about wolves." 
 
 "What wolves?" 
 
 "Wolves, and forests blackened by winter. We 
 thought that, with so pretty a woman, your conver- 
 sation was ferocious." 
 
 Paul Vence rose. 
 
THE EED LILY 15 
 
 " So you permit, Madame, that I should bring my 
 friend Dechartre ? He has a great desire to know 
 you, and I hope he will not displease you. There is 
 life in his mind. He is full of ideas." 
 
 Madame Martin said: 
 
 " Oh, I do not ask for so much. People who are 
 natural and show themselves as they are rarely 
 annoy me, and sometimes they amuse me." 
 
 "When Paul Yence had gone, Le Menil listened 
 until the noise of footsteps had vanished; then, 
 coming nearer: 
 
 " To-morrow, at three o'clock? Do you stiU love 
 me?" 
 
 He asked her to reply while they were alone. She 
 answered that it was late, that she expected no callers, 
 and that no one except her husband might come. 
 
 He entreated. Then she said: 
 
 " I shall be free to-morrow all day. "Wait for me 
 at three o'clock. ' ' 
 
 He thanked her with a look. Then, placing 
 himself on the other side of the chimney, he asked 
 who was that Dechartre whom she wanted intro- 
 duced to her. 
 
 " I do not want him to be introduced to me. He 
 is to be introduced to me. He is a sculptor." 
 
 He deplored the fact that she needed to see new 
 faces. 
 
 " A sculptor ? They are generally brutal. " 
 
 " Oh, this one does so little sculpture! But if it 
 annoys you that I should meet him, I will not meet 
 him." 
 
16 THE BED LILY 
 
 " I should be sorry if society took any part of the 
 time you might give to me." 
 
 " My friend, you cannot complain of that. I did 
 not even go to Madame MeHlan's yesterday." 
 
 " You are right to show yourself there as little as 
 possible. It isn't a house for you. " 
 
 He explained. AU the vromen who had gone 
 there had had some adventure which people knew, 
 which people related. Anyway, Madame MeiUan 
 favored intrigue. He gave examples. Madame 
 Martin, however, her hands extended on the arms of 
 the chair in charming restfulness, her he*l inclined, 
 looked at the dying embers in the grate. Her 
 thought had flown. ISTothing of it remained on her 
 face, a little saddened, nor on her languid body, 
 more desirable than ever in that sleep of her mind. 
 She kept for a while a profound immobility, which 
 added to the attraction of her flesh the charm of 
 things that art had created. 
 
 He asked her of what she was thinking. Escap- 
 ing the magic of the blaze in the ashes, she said : 
 
 "We wUl go, to-morrow, if you wish, in far dis- 
 tant districts, in the odd districts where the poor 
 people Kve. I like the old streets of misery." 
 
 He promised to satisfy her taste, although he let 
 her know that he thought it absurd. These walks 
 wherein she led him sometimes bored him, and he 
 thought them dangerous. People might see them. 
 
 " And since we have been successful until now in 
 not causing gossip " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
THE RED LILT 17 
 
 " Do you think that people have not talked about 
 us? "Whether people know or do not know, they 
 talk. Everything is not known, but everything is 
 said." 
 
 She fell back into her dream. He thought her 
 discontented, cross, for some reason which she would 
 not tell. He bent upon her beautiful, grave eyes 
 which reflected the light of the grate. But she 
 reassured him. 
 
 " I do not know if people talk about me. And 
 what do I care? Nothing amounts to anything." 
 
 He left her. He was going to dine at the club, 
 where a friend was waiting for him. She followed 
 him with her eyes, with peaceful sympathy. Then 
 she began again to read in the ashes. 
 
 She saw in them the days of her childhood ; the 
 castle wherein she passed the grand, sad summers; 
 the humid and dark park ; the pond where slept the 
 green water; the marble nymphs under the chestnut 
 trees, and the bench on which she cried and desired 
 death. To-day she still ignored the cause of her 
 youthful despair, when the ardent awakening of her 
 imagination threw her into a trouble made of desires 
 and of fears. "When she was a child, life frightened 
 her. And now she knew that life is not worth so 
 much anxiety nor so much hope ; that it is a very 
 ordinary thing. She should have known this. She 
 was thinking: 
 
 " I saw mamma; she was a good lady, very sim- 
 ple, and not very happy. I dreamed of a destiny 
 different from hers. "Why ? I felt around me the 
 2 
 
18 THE RED LILT 
 
 insipid taste of life, and breathed the future like an 
 air fuU of salt and aroma. Why? "What did I 
 want, and what did I expect ? Was I not warned 
 enough of the sadness of everything? " 
 
 She was born wealthy, in the brilliancy of a for- 
 tune too new. Daughter of Montessuy, who, at 
 first a clerk in a Parisian bank, founded and gov- 
 erned two great establishments, brought to sustain 
 them the resources of a brilliant mind, invincible 
 force of character, a rare alliance of ruse and hon- 
 esty, and treated with the government as if he were 
 a foreign power, she had grown in the historical 
 castle of Joinville, bought, restored, and magnifi- 
 cently furnished by her father. Montessuy made 
 life give aU it could yield. An instinctive and pow- 
 erful atheist, he wanted aU the goods of the flesh 
 and aU the desirable things that this earth produces. 
 He piled up pictures of masters, and precious sculp- 
 tures. He enjoyed everything that is precious in 
 society, with the brutality of his temperament. 
 
 Poor Madame Montessuy, economical and careful, 
 languished at JoinviUe, delicate and poor, under the 
 looks of twelve gigantic caryatides which held a 
 ceiling on which Lebrun had painted the Titans 
 struck by Jupiter. It was there, in the iron cot, 
 placed at the foot of the large bed, that she died 
 one night of sadness and exhaustion, having never 
 loved anything on earth except her husband and her 
 little drawing-room of the Eue Maubeuge. 
 
 She had never had any intimacy with her daugh- 
 ter, whom she felt instinctively too different from 
 
THE RED LILY 19 
 
 herself, too free, too bold at heart; and divined in 
 Th^rese, although she was sweet and good, the 
 strong Montessuy blood, the ardor which had made 
 her suffer so much, and which she forgave in her 
 husband, but not in her daughter. 
 
 But Montessuy recognized his daughter and loved 
 her. Like all great, carnivorous men, he had hours 
 of charming gayety. Although he lived out of his 
 house a great deal, he took breakfast with her almost 
 every day, and sometimes took her out walking. He 
 understood gowns and bibelots. He instructed and 
 formed Therese. He amused her. iN^ear her, his 
 instinct for conquest inspired him still. He wanted 
 to win always, and he won also his daughter. He 
 separated her from her mother. Therese admired 
 him, she adored him. 
 
 In her dream she saw him as the unique joy of 
 her childhood. She was persuaded that no man in 
 the world was as amiable as her father. 
 
 At her entrance in life, she despaired at once of 
 finding elsewhere so much natural wealth, such 
 a plenitude of active and thinking forces. This dis- 
 couragement had followed her in the choice of a hus- 
 band, and perhaps later in a secret and freer choice. 
 
 She had not reaUy selected her husband. She 
 did not know : she had permitted herself to be mar- 
 ried by her father, who, then a widower, embar- 
 rassed by the delicate care of a girl, had wished to 
 do things quickly and well. He considered the exte- 
 rior advantages, estimated the eighty years of impe- 
 rial nobility which Count Martin brought. The 
 
20 THE RED LILY 
 
 idea never came to him that she might find love in 
 marriage. 
 
 He flattered himself that she would find in it the 
 satisfaction of the luxurious desires which he attrib- 
 uted to her, the joy of making a show, the common 
 and strong grandeur, the vulgar pride, the material 
 domination, which were for him aU the value of life, 
 , having no ideas on the subject of the happiness of 
 an honest woman in this world, but sure that his 
 daughter would remain an honest woman. 
 
 While thinking of his absurd and natural faith in 
 her, which accorded so badly with his experiences 
 and his ideas about women, she smiled with melan- 
 choly irony. And she admired her father the more. 
 
 After all, she was not so badly married. Her hus- 
 band was as good as any other man. He had become 
 quite bearable. Of all that she read in the ashes, 
 in the veiled clearness of the lamps, of aU. her remi- 
 niscences, that of their married life was the most 
 effaced. She found a few isolated traits of it, some 
 absurd images, a vague and fastidious impression. 
 The time had not seemed long and had left nothing 
 behind. Six years had passed, and she did not even 
 remember how she had regained her liberty, so 
 prompt and easy had been her conquest of that hus- 
 band, cold, sickly, selfish, and polite; of that man 
 dried up and yellowed by business and politics, labo- 
 rious, ambitious, and commonplace. He liked women 
 only through vanity, and he had never loved his 
 wife. The separation had been frank and complete. 
 And since then, strangers to each other, they were 
 
THE RED LILY 21 
 
 grateful to one another, tacitly, for their mutual 
 freedom. She would have had some affection for 
 him if she had not found him hjrpocritical and too 
 subtle in the art of obtaining her signature when he 
 needed money for enterprises wherein he placed 
 more ostentation than avidity. That man with 
 whom she dined and talked every day had no sig- 
 nificance for her. 
 
 "With her cheek in her hand, before the grate, as 
 if she questioned a Sibyl, she saw again Marquis de 
 Re's face. She saw it so precisely that it surprised 
 her. Brought to her by her father, who praised 
 him, the Marquis de Ee appeared to her grand and 
 beautiful for his thirty years of intimate triumphs 
 and mundane glories. His adventures followed him 
 like a procession. He had captivated three genera- 
 tions of women, and left in the heart of all those 
 whom he had loved an imperishable memory. His 
 virile grace, his sober elegance, and his habit of pleas- 
 ing had prolonged his youth far beyond the ordi- 
 nary term of years. He noticed particularly young 
 Countess Martin. This expert's homage flattered 
 her. She thought of him now with pleasure. He 
 had a marvellous art of conversation. He amused 
 her. She let him see it, and at once he promised to 
 himself, in his heroic frivolity, to finish worthily his 
 happy life by the subjugation of this young woman 
 whom he appreciated above everyone else, and who 
 visibly liked him. He displayed, to capture her, the 
 most learned stratagems. But she escaped him very 
 easily. 
 
22 THE RED LILY 
 
 She yielded, two years later, to Kobert Le Menil, 
 who had wanted her strongly, with aU the warmth 
 of his youth, with all the simplicity of his mind. 
 She said to herself: "I gave myself to, him because 
 he loved me." It was the truth. The truth was, 
 also, that a dumb and powerful instinct had impelled 
 her, and that she had obeyed the obscure powers of 
 her being. But these things were not she; what 
 was she and her conscience was the fact that she 
 had believed in the sincerity of his sentiment. She 
 had yielded as soon as she had felt that she was 
 loved. She had given herself quickly, simply. He 
 thought that she had yielded easily. He was mis- 
 taken. She had felt the discouragement which the 
 irreparable gives, and that sort of shame which 
 comes of having suddenly something to conceal. 
 Everything that had been whispered before her about 
 other women resounded in her burning ears. But, 
 proud and delicate, she took care to hide the value 
 of the gift she was making. He never suspected her 
 moral uneasiness, which lasted only a few days, 
 and was replaced by perfect tranquillity. After 
 three years she defended her conduct as innocent and 
 natural. Having done harm to no one, she had no 
 regrets. She was content. She was in love, she 
 was loved. Doubtless she had not felt the intoxica- 
 tion she had expected, but does one ever feel it? 
 She was the friend of the good and honest f eUow, 
 much Uked by women who passed for disdainful and 
 hard to please, and had a true affection for her. The 
 pleasure which she gave him and the joy of being 
 
THE RED LILY 23 
 
 beautiful for him attached her to this friend. He 
 made life for her not constantly delightful, but easy 
 to bear, and at times agreeable. 
 
 What she had not divined in her solitude, he had 
 revealed to her. She knew herself when she knew 
 him. It was a happy astonishment. Their sympa- 
 thies were not in their minds. Her inclination 
 toward him was simple and precise, and at this 
 moment she found pleasure in the idea of meeting 
 him the next day in the little apartment where they 
 had met for three years. It was with a shake of the 
 head and a shrug of her shoulders, more brutal than 
 one would have expected from this exquisite woman, 
 that she said to herself: " There! I need love." 
 
II 
 
 It was no longer daylight when they came out of 
 the little apartment in the Eue Spontini. Eobert Le 
 M^nil made a sign to a coachman, and went in the 
 carriage with Therese. Close together, they rolled 
 among the vague shadows, cut by sudden lights, 
 through the ghostly city, having in their minds only 
 impressions sweet and vanishing, like the clearness 
 turning into dampness at the window panes. Every- 
 thing around them seemed confused and fleeing, and 
 they felt in their minds a sweet emptiness. 
 
 The carriage came near the Pont-Neuf. They 
 stepped out. A dry cold made vivid the sombre 
 January weather. Therese breathed joyfully under 
 her veil the wind which swept on the hardened 
 soil a dust white as salt. She was glad to go in 
 freedom to unknown things. She liked to see the 
 landscape of stones which the profound clearness 
 of the air enveloped; to walk quickly and firmly 
 on the quay where the trees displayed the black tulle 
 of their branches on the horizon reddened by the 
 smoke of the city; to look at the Seine. In the 
 sky the first stars appeared. 
 
 " One would think that the wind would put them 
 out," she said. 
 
 He observed, too, that they scintillated a great 
 
THE BED LILY 25 
 
 deal. He did not think it was a sign of rain, as tlie 
 peasants believe. He had observed, on the contrary, 
 that nine times in ten the scintillations of stars were 
 an augury of fine weather. 
 
 Near the little bridge they found shops of old iron 
 lighted by smoky lamps. She ran into them. She 
 turned a corner and went into a shop in which queer 
 stuffs were hanging. Behind the dirty panes a 
 candle lighted pots, porcelain vases, a clarinet, and a 
 bride's wreath. 
 
 He did not understand what pleasure she found in 
 her search. 
 
 " These shops are full of vermin. What can you 
 find interesting in them ? " 
 
 " Everything. I think of the poor bride whose 
 wreath is under that globe. The dinner occurred at 
 Maillot. There was a policeman in the procession. 
 There is one in almost all the bridal processions 
 which one sees in the park on Saturday. Don't they 
 move you, my friend, aE. these poor, ridiculous, mis- 
 erable beings who contribute to the grandeur of the 
 past?" 
 
 Among cups decorated with flowers she discovered 
 a little knife, the ivory handle of which represented 
 a tall and thin woman. She bought it for a few 
 cents. It pleased her, because she already had the 
 fork. Le M^nil confessed that he had no taste for 
 such things, but his aunt knew a great deal about 
 them. At Caen aU the merchants knew her. She 
 had restored and furnished her house in proper 
 style. This house was noted in 1690. In a hall of 
 
26 THE EED LILT 
 
 it were white cases full of books. His aunt had 
 wished to put them in order. She had found friv- 
 olous books in them, ornamented with engravings so 
 unconventional that she had burned them. 
 
 " Is she siUy, your aunt ? " asked Therese. 
 
 For a long time his anecdotes about his aunt had 
 made her impatient. Her friend had in the country 
 a mother, sisters, aunts, and numerous relatives 
 whom she did not know and who irritated her. He 
 talked of them with admiration. It annoyed her 
 that he often went with them. When he came back, 
 she imagined that he carried with him the odor of 
 things that had been packed up for years. He was 
 astonished, naively, and he suffered from her antipa- 
 thy to them. 
 
 He said nothing. The sight of a liquor house, 
 the panes of which were flaming, recalled to him the 
 poet Choulette, who passed for a drunkard. He 
 asked her if she stiU saw that Choulette, who called 
 on her wearing a Mackintosh and a red muffler. 
 
 It annoyed her that he spoke like General Lari- 
 viere. She did not say that she had not seen Chou- 
 lette since the fall, and that he neglected her with 
 the capriciousness of a man not in society. 
 
 "He has wit," she said, "fantasy, and an orig- 
 inal temperament. He pleases me. " 
 
 And as he reproached her for having an odd taste, 
 she replied: 
 
 "I haven't a taste, I have tastes. You do not 
 blame them aU, I suppose." 
 
 He did not blame her. He was afraid only that 
 
THE RED LILY 27 
 
 she might do herself harm by receiving a bohemian 
 who had not a place in respectable houses. 
 
 She exclaimed: 
 
 " Hasn't a place in respectable houses — Choulette ? 
 Don't you know that he goes every year for a month 
 to the Marquise de Eieu's? Yes, to the Marquise 
 de Eieu's, the Catholic, the Eoyalist. But since 
 Choulette interests you, listen to his latest adven- 
 ture. Paul Yence related it to me. I understand 
 it better in this street where there are shirts and 
 flowerpots at windows. 
 
 "This winter, one night when it was raining, 
 Choulette went iuto a liquor store in a street the 
 name of which I have forgotten, but which must 
 resemble this one, and met there an unfortunate girl 
 whom the waiters would not have noticed, and whom 
 he Uked for her humility. Her name is Maria. The 
 name is not hers; she found it nailed on her door at 
 the top of the stairway where she went to lodge. 
 Choulette was touched by this perfection of poverty 
 and infamy. He called her his sister, and kissed her 
 hands. Since then he has not quitted her a moment. 
 He brings her into the coffee houses of the Latin 
 Quarter where the rich students read their reviews. 
 He says sweet things to her. He weeps, she weeps. 
 They drink ; and when they are drunk, they fight. 
 He loves her. He calls her the very chaste, his cross 
 and his salvation. She was barefooted; he gave her 
 yarn and knitting needles that she might make stock- 
 ings. And he made shoes for this unfortunate girl 
 himself, with enormous nails. He teaches her verses 
 
28 THE KED LILY 
 
 that are easy to understand. He is afraid of alter- 
 ing her moral beauty by taking her out of the 
 shame where she lives in perfect simplicity and 
 admirable destitution." 
 
 Le Menil shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " But that Choulette is crazy, and Paul Yence has 
 no right to teU. you such stories. I am not austere, 
 assuredly; but there are immoralities that disgust 
 me." 
 
 They were walking at random. She fell into a 
 dream. 
 
 "Yes, morality, I know — duty! But duty — it 
 takes the devil to discover it. I can assure you 
 that I do not know where duty is. It's like Miss's 
 turtle. "We spent all the evening looking for it under 
 the furniture, and when we had found it, we went 
 to bed." 
 
 He thought there was some truth in what she said. 
 He would think about it when alone. 
 
 " I regret sometimes that I did not remain in the 
 army. I know what you are going to say— one 
 becomes a brute in that profession. Doubtless, but 
 one knows exactly what one has to do, and that is a 
 great deal in life. I think that my uncle's life is 
 very beautiful and very agreeable. But now that 
 everybody is in the army, there are neither officers 
 nor soldiers. It all looks like a railway station on 
 Sunday. My uncle knew personally all the officers 
 and all the soldiers of his brigade. Nowadays how 
 can you expect an officer to know his men ? " 
 
 She had ceased to listen. She was looking at a 
 
THE RED LILT 29 
 
 woman selling fried potatoes. She realized that she 
 was hungry and wanted to eat fried potatoes. 
 
 He remonstrated: 
 
 " Nobody knows of what they are made." 
 
 But he had to buy two cents' worth of fried 
 potatoes, and to see that the woman put salt on 
 them. 
 
 While she was eating them, he led her into de- 
 serted streets far from the gas lights. Thus they 
 found themselves in front of the Cathedral. The 
 moon silvered the roofs. 
 
 "Notre Dame," she said. "See, it is as heavy 
 as an elephant and as fine as an insect. The moon 
 climbs on it and looks at it with a monkey's mali- 
 ciousness. She does not look like the country moon 
 at Joinville. At JoinviUe I have a path — a flat path 
 — with the moon at the end of it. She is not there 
 every night; but she returns faithfully, full, red, 
 familiar. She is a country neighbor. I go seriously 
 to meet her. But this moon of Paris I should not 
 like to know. She is not respectable companj/ . Oh 
 the things that she has seen during the time she has 
 been roaming around roofs! " 
 
 He smiled a tender smile. 
 
 " Oh, your little path where you walked alone 
 and that you liked because the sky was at the end 
 of it. I see it as if I were there." 
 
 It was at the Joinville castle that he had seen her 
 for the first time, and had at once loved her. It was 
 there, one night, that he had told her of his love, 
 and that she had listened, dumb, with a pained ex- 
 
30 THE EED LILY 
 
 pression. on her mouth aaid a vague one in her 
 eyes. 
 
 The reminiscence of this little path where she 
 walked alone moved him, troubled him, made him 
 live again the enchanted hours of his first desires 
 and hopes* He tried to find her hand in her muff 
 and pressed her thin wrist under the fur. 
 
 A little girl carrying violets saw that they were 
 lovers, and offered fiowers to them. He bought a 
 two-cent bouquet and offered it to Therese. 
 
 She was walking toward the Cathedral. She was 
 thinking: "It is an enormous beast, a beast of the 
 Apocalypse." 
 
 At the other end of the bridge a flower woman, 
 wrinkled, bearded, gray with years and dust, fol- 
 lowed them with her basket full of mimosas and 
 roses. Therese, who held her violets, and was trying 
 to slip them into her waist, said joyfully : 
 
 " Thank you, I have some." 
 
 " One can see that you are young," shouted, with 
 a wiciced air, the old woman as she went away. 
 
 Therese understood at once, and a smile came to 
 her lips and eyes. They were passing near the 
 porch, before the stone figures that wear sceptres and 
 crowns. 
 
 " Let us go in," she said. 
 
 He did not like to go in. He declared that the 
 door was closed. She pushed it, and slipped into 
 the immense nave, where the inanimate trees of the 
 columns ascended in darkness. In the rear, candles 
 were moving in front of spectres of priests, under 
 
THE EED LILY 31 
 
 the last groans of organs that were hushed. She 
 trembled in the silence, and said: 
 
 " The sadness of churches at night moves me; I 
 feel in them the grandeur of nothingness." 
 
 He replied: 
 
 " We have to believe in something. If there were 
 no God, if our souls were not immortal, it would be 
 too sad." 
 
 She remained for a while immovable under the 
 curtains of shadow which were hanging from the 
 arches. Then she said: 
 
 "My poor friend, we do not know what to do 
 with this life which is so short, and yet you want 
 another life which shall never finish." 
 
 In the carriage which brought them back he said 
 gayly that he had passed a fine afternoon. He 
 kissed her, satisfied with her and with himself. 
 But his good humor was not communicated to her. 
 The last moments which they passed together were 
 spoiled for her always by the presentiment that he 
 would not say at parting the thing that he should 
 say. Ordinarily, he quitted her brusquely, as if the 
 things which had happened were not to last. At 
 every one of their partings she had a confused sen- 
 timent of parting forever. She suffered from this 
 in advance and became irritable. 
 
 Under the trees he took her hand and kissed her. 
 
 " Is it not rare, Therese, to love as we love each 
 other?" 
 
 " Eare ? I don't know ; but I think that you love 
 
32 THE RED LILY 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I, too, love you." 
 
 " And you will love me always ? " 
 
 " What does one ever know ? " 
 
 And seeing the face of her friend darken: 
 
 " "Would you be more content with a woman who 
 would swear to love only you for all time ? ' ' 
 
 He remained anxious, with a wretched air. She 
 was kind, and she reassured him : 
 
 " You know very weU, my friend, that I am not 
 frivolous. ' ' 
 
 Almost at the end of the lane they said good-by. 
 He kept the carriage to return to the Hue Eoyale. 
 He was to dine at the club and go to the theatre. 
 He had no time to lose. 
 
 Therese returned home on foot. Opposite the 
 Trocadero she remembered what the old flower 
 woman had said: " One can see that you are young. " 
 The words came back to her, not salacious, but sad. 
 " One can see that you are young." Yes, she was 
 young, she was loved, and she was bothered to death. 
 
Ill 
 
 In the centre of the table, a basket contained 
 flowers in its large circle of gilded bronze, where 
 there were eagles among stars and bees, under han- 
 dles formed like horns of plenty. On the sides 
 winged "Victories supported the branches of candel- 
 abra. This centrepiece of the Empire style had 
 been given by Napoleon, in 1812, to Count Martin 
 de I'Aisne, grandfather of the actual Count Martin- 
 Belleme. Martin de I'Aisne, a deputy to the Legis- 
 lative Corps in 1809, was appointed the following 
 year member of the Committee on Finance, the assid- 
 uous and secret works of which suited his laborious 
 temperament. Although a Liberal, he pleased the 
 Emperor by his application and his exact honesty. 
 For two years he was under a rain of favors. In 
 1813 he formed part of the moderate majority which 
 approved the report in which Laine censured power 
 and misfortune, by giving to the Empire tardy ad- 
 vice. January 1, 1814, he went with his colleagues 
 to the Tuileries. The Emperor received them in a 
 frightful manner. He charged on their ranks. Vio- 
 lent and sombre, in the horror of his present strength 
 and of his coming fall, he stunned them with his 
 anger and his contempt. 
 
 He came and went through their lines, and sud- 
 
 3 
 
34 THE RED LILT 
 
 denly took Count Martin by the shoulders, shook 
 him and dragged him, exclaiming: "A throne is 
 four pieces of wood covered with velvet ? No ! A 
 throne is a man, and that man is I. You have tried 
 to throw mud at me. Is it the time to make remon- 
 strances to me when there are two hundred thousand 
 Cossacks at the frontiers ? Your Laine is a wicked 
 man. One should wash one's dirty linen at home." 
 And while in his anger he twisted in his hand the 
 embroidered collar of the deputy, he said: "The 
 people know me. It does not know you. I am the 
 elect of the nation. You are the obscure delegates 
 of a department. ' ' He predicted to them the fate of 
 the Girondins. The noise of his spurs accompanied 
 the sound of his voice. Count Martin remained trem- 
 bling for the rest of his life, and it was tremblingly 
 that he called the Bourbons after the defeat of the 
 Emperor. In vain the two restorations; the July 
 government and the Second Empire covered with 
 crosses and cordons his breast always oppressed. 
 Kaised to the highest functions, loaded with honors 
 by three kings and one emperor, he felt forever on 
 his shoulder the hand of the Corsican. He died a 
 senator of Napoleon III, and left a son agitated by 
 the same trembling. 
 
 This son had married Mademoiselle BeUeme, 
 daughter of the first president of the court of 
 Bourges, and with her the political glories of a fam- 
 ily which gave three ministers to the moderate mon- 
 archy. The Bellemes, advocates in the time of 
 Louis XV, elevated the Jacobin origins of the Mar- 
 
THE RED LILT 35 
 
 tins. The second Count Martin was a member of 
 all the Assemblies until his death in 1881. His son 
 took without trouble his seat in the Chamber of Dep- 
 uties. Having married Mademoiselle Therese Mon- 
 tessuy, whose dowry supported his political fortune, 
 he appeared discreetly among the four or five bour- 
 geois, titled and wealthy, who rallied to democracy, 
 and were received without much bad grace by the 
 Republicans whom aristocracy flattered. 
 
 In the dining-room, Count Martin-BeUeme was 
 doing the honors of his table with the good grace, 
 the sad politeness, recently designated at the Elysee 
 to represent at a great northern court isolated 
 France. He addressed from time to time pale 
 phrases to Madame Garain at his right; to Princess 
 Seniavine at his left, who, loaded with diamonds, 
 felt bored. Opposite him, on the other side of the 
 basket. Countess Martin, having by her side General 
 Lariviere and M. SchmoU of the Academie des 
 Inscriptions, caressed with her fan her shoulders, 
 fine and pure. At the two semicircles, wherein the 
 table was prolonged, were M. Montessuy, robust, 
 with blue eyes and ruddy complexion; a young 
 cousin, Madame BeUeme de Saint-Nom, embarrassed 
 by her long, thin arms; the painter Duviquet; M. 
 Daniel Salomon; Paul Vence; Garain the deputy; 
 EeLleme de Saint-lSTom; an unknown senator; and 
 Deohartre, who was dining at the house for the first 
 time. The conversation, at first trivial and insignifi- 
 cant, was prolonged into a confused murmur, above 
 which rose Garain's voice : 
 
36 THE BED LILY 
 
 "Every false idea is dangerous. People think 
 that dreamers do no harm. They are mistaken: 
 dreamers do a great deal of harm. The most inof- 
 fensive Utopias really exercise a noxious influence. 
 They tend to inspire disgust with reality." 
 
 " It is, perhaps, because reality is not beautiful," 
 said Paul Yence. 
 
 M. Garain said that he had been in favor of all 
 possible improvements. He had asked for the sup- 
 pression of permanent armies in the time of the 
 Empire, for the separation of church and state, and 
 had remained always faithful to democracy. His 
 device, he said, was "Order and Progress." He 
 thought, really, he had discovered that device. 
 
 Montessuy said: 
 
 " Well, M. Garain, be sincere. Confess that there 
 are no reforms to be made, and that it is as much as 
 one can do to change the color of postage stamps. 
 Good or bad, things are as they should be. Yes, 
 things are as they should be ; but they change inces- 
 santly. Since 1870 the industrial and financial situ- 
 ation of the country has gone through four or five 
 revolutions which political economists had not fore- 
 seen and which they do not yet understand. In soci- 
 ety, as in nature, transformations are accomplished 
 from within." 
 
 In matters of government he held to short and 
 neat views. Strongly attached to the present, and 
 heedless of the future, the Socialists troubled him 
 little. Without caring whether the sun and capital 
 should be extinguished some day, he enjoyed them. 
 
THE RED LILY 37 
 
 According to him, one should let himself be carried. 
 None but fools resisted the current, and none but 
 fools tried to go in front of it. 
 
 But Count Martin, naturally sad, had dark pre- 
 sentiments. In veiled words he announced catastro- 
 phes. His timorous phrases came through the flowers 
 of the basket, and moved M. Schmoll, who began to 
 grumble and to prophesy. He explained that Chris- 
 tian nations were incapable, alone and by them- 
 selves, of going out of barbarism entirely, and that 
 without the Jews and the Arabs, Europe would be 
 to-day, as in the time of the Crusades, plunged into 
 ignorance, misery, and cruelty. 
 
 " The Middle Ages," he said, " are closed only in 
 the historical manuals which are given to pupils to 
 spoil their minds. In reality, barbarians are always 
 barbarians. Israel's mission is to instruct nations. 
 It was Israel which, in the Middle Ages, brought to 
 Europe the wisdom of ages. Socialism frightens 
 you. It is a Christian evil, like priesthood. And 
 anarchy ? Do you not recognize in it the plague of 
 the Albigeois and of the Yaudois ? The Jews, who 
 instructed and polished Europe, are the only ones 
 who can save it to-day from the evangelical evil by 
 which it is devoured. But they have not fulfilled 
 their duty. They have made Christians of them- 
 selves among the Christians. And God punishes 
 them. He permits them to be exiled and to be 
 despoiled. Anti-Semitism is making fearful prog- 
 ress everywhere. From Eussia my co-religionists 
 are expelled like savage beasts. In France, civil 
 
38 THE RED LILT 
 
 and military employments are closing against Jews. 
 They have no longer access to aristocratic circles. 
 My nephew, young Isaac Coblentz, has had to 
 renounce a diplomatic career, after brilliantly pass- 
 ing his admission examination. The wives of sev- 
 eral of my colleagues, when Madame SchmoL. calls 
 on them, display with affectation under her eyes 
 anti-Semitic newspapers. And would you believe 
 that the Minister of Public Instruction has refused 
 to give me the cross of the Legion of Honor for 
 which I have applied ? There's ingratitude! Anti- 
 Semitism is death — it is death, do you hear? — to 
 European civilization." 
 
 That little man had a natural manner which sur- 
 passed aU the art of the world. Grotesque and ter- 
 rible, he threw the table into consternation by his 
 sincerity. Madame Martin, whom he amused, com- 
 plimented him on this: 
 
 "At least," she said, "you defend your co-relig- 
 ionists. Ton are not, M. SchmoU, like a beautiful 
 Jewish lady of my acquaintance who, having read 
 in a journal that she received the elite of Jewish 
 society, went everywhere shouting that she had been 
 insulted." 
 
 " I am sure, Madame, that you do not know how 
 beautiful and superior to aU other moralities is Jew- 
 ish morality. Do you know the parable of the 
 three rings?" 
 
 This question was lost in the murmur of the dia- 
 logues wherein were mingled foreign politics, exhi- 
 bitions of paintings, fashionable scandals, and Aca- 
 
THE RED LILY 39 
 
 demic speeches. They talked of the new novel and 
 of the coming play. This was a comedy. Napo- 
 leon was an incidental role in it. 
 
 The conversation fixed itself on JSTapoleon, often 
 placed on the stage and newly studied in books 
 read by many persons, an object of curiosity, a 
 personage in the fashion, no longer a popular hero, 
 a half god wearing boots for his country, as in the 
 days when Norvins and Beranger, Charlet and Eafifet 
 were composing his legend ; but a curious personage, 
 an amusing type in his living infinity, a figure whose 
 style is pleasant to artists, whose movements attract 
 the gadabouters. 
 
 Garain, who had founded his political fortune on 
 hatred of the Empire, judged sincerely that this 
 return of national taste was only an absurd infatua- 
 tion. He discovered no danger in it and felt no fear 
 about it. In him fear was sudden and ferocious. 
 For the moment he was very quiet: he talked neither 
 of prohibiting performances nor of seizing books, 
 nor of imprisoning authors, nor of suppressing any- 
 thing. Calm and severe, he saw in Napoleon only 
 Taine's eondotUere who kicked Volney in the stom- 
 ach. Everybody wished to define the true Napoleon. 
 Count Martin, in the face of the imperial centre- 
 piece and of the winged Victories, talked suitably 
 of Napoleon as an organizer and administrator, and 
 placed him in a high position as president of the 
 state council, where his words brought light into 
 obscure questions. Garain aifirmed that in his ses- 
 sions, only too famous, Napoleon, under pretext of 
 
40 THE BED LILY 
 
 taking snuflf, asked the councillors to pass to him 
 their gold boxes ornamented with miniatures and 
 decked with diamonds, which they never saw again. 
 The anecdote was told to him by the son of Mou- 
 nier himself. 
 
 Montessuy esteemed in Napoleon the genius of 
 order. "He liked," he said, "work well done. 
 That is a taste which people have lost. ' ' 
 
 The painter Duviquet, whose ideas were those of 
 a painter, was embarrassed. He did not find on the 
 funeral mask brought from Saint Helena the charac- 
 teristics of that face, beautiful and powerful, which 
 medals and busts have consecrated. One could be 
 convinced of this now that the bronze of that mask 
 was hanging in all the old shops, among eagles and 
 sphinxes made of gilt wood. And, according to 
 him, since the true face of Napoleon was not Napo- 
 leon, the true soul of Napoleon may not have been 
 Napoleon. Perhaps it was the soul of a good bour- 
 geois. Somebody had said this, and he was inclined 
 to think that it was true. Anyway, Duviquet, 
 who flattered himself with having made the best 
 portraits of the century, knew that celebrated men 
 did not resemble the idea which one forms of 
 them. 
 
 M. Daniel Salomon observed that the mask about 
 which Duviquet talked, the plaster cast taken on the 
 inanimate face of the emperor, and brought to 
 Europe by Dr. Antommarchi, had been moulded in 
 bronze and published by subscription for the first 
 time in 1833, under Louis Philippe, and had then 
 
THE RED LILY 41 
 
 inspired surprise and mistrust. People suspected 
 that Italian, a comedy druggist, talkative and fam- 
 ished, of having tried to make fun of people. Dis- 
 ciples of Dr. Gall, whose system was then in favor, 
 regarded the mask as suspicious. They did not 
 find in it the bumps of genius; and the forehead, 
 examined in accordance with the master's theories, 
 presented nothing remarkable in its formation. 
 
 "Precisely," said Princess Seniavine. "Napo- 
 leon was remarkable only for having kicked Volney 
 in the stomach and stolen a snuff-box ornamented 
 with diamonds. M. Garain has just taught us." 
 
 "And yet," said Madame Martin, "nobody is 
 sure that he kicked Yolney." 
 
 " Everything becomes known in the end," replied 
 the Princess gaily. "Napoleon did nothing at aU. 
 He did not even kick Volney, and his head was that 
 of an idiot." 
 
 General Lariviere felt that he should say some- 
 thing. He hurled this phrase : 
 
 "Napoleon — his campaign of 1813 is much dis- 
 cussed." 
 
 The General wished to please Garain, and he had 
 no other idea. However, he succeeded, after an 
 effort, in formulating a judgment: 
 
 "Napoleon committed faults; in his position he 
 should not have committed any." And he hushed, 
 very red. 
 
 Madame Martin asked: 
 
 " And you, M. Vence, what do you think of Na- 
 poleon? " 
 
42 THE EED LILY 
 
 " Madame, I have not mucli love for sword bear 
 ers, and conquerors seem to me to be dangerous 
 fools. In spite of everything, that figure of the 
 Emperor interests me as it interests the public. I 
 find character and life in it. There is no poem or 
 novel which is worth the ' Memorial of Saint Helena, ' 
 although it is written in ridiculous fashion. What I 
 think of JSTapoleon, if you wish to know, is that, 
 made for glory, he had the brilliant simplicity of a 
 hero of an epic poem. A hero must be human. 
 Napoleon Avas human." 
 
 " Oh, oh! " people exclaimed. 
 
 But Paul Vence continued: 
 
 "He was violent and frivolous; therefore pro- 
 foundly human. I mean, similar to everybody. He 
 desired, with singular force, all that most men 
 esteem and desire. He had the illusions which he 
 gave to the people. This was his power and his weak- 
 ness; it was his beauty. He believed in glory. He 
 had of life and of the world the same opinion as any 
 one of his grenadiers. He retained always the in- 
 fantile gravity which finds pleasure in playing with 
 swords and drums, and the sort of innocence which 
 makes good military men. He esteemed force sin- 
 cerely. He was a man among men, the flesh of 
 human flesh. He had not a thought which was not 
 in action, and all his actions were grand and com- 
 mon. It is this vulgar grandeur which makes 
 heroes. And Napoleon is the perfect hero. His 
 brain never surpassed his hand — that hand, small and 
 beautiful, which crumpled the world. He never 
 
THE BED LILY 43 
 
 had, for a moment, the least care for what he could 
 not reach." 
 
 " Then," said Garain, "according to you, he was 
 not an intellectual genius. I am of your opinion. ' ' 
 
 " Surely," continued Paul Yence, " he had enough 
 genius to be brilliant in the civil and military circus 
 of the world. But he had not speculative genius. 
 That genius is another pair of sleeves, as Buffon 
 says. "We have a collection of his writings and 
 speeches. His style has movement and imagination. 
 And in this mass of thoughts one cannot find a 
 philosophic curiosity, not one expression of anxiety 
 about the unknowable, not an expression of fear of 
 the mystery which surrounds destiny. At Saint 
 Helena, when he talks of God and of the soul, he 
 seems to be a little fourteen-year-old scholar. Thrown 
 into the world, his mind found itself fit for the 
 world, and embraced it all. ITothing of that mind 
 was lost in the infinite. A poet, he knew only the 
 poetry of action. He limited to the earth his pow- 
 erful dream of life. In his terrible and touching 
 puerility he believed that a man could be great, and 
 neither time nor misfortune made him lose that 
 naivete. His youth, or rather a sublime adolescence, 
 lasted as long as he lived, because the days of his 
 life did not add themselves to one another in order 
 to form a conscious maturity. Such is the prodi- 
 gious state of men of action. They are entirely in 
 the naoment when they are living, and their genius 
 is concentrated on one point. The hours of their 
 existence are not attached to one another by a chain 
 
44 THE RED LILT 
 
 of grave and disinterested meditations. They suc- 
 ceed themselves in a series of acts. They lack inte- 
 rior life. This defect is particularly visible in 
 Napoleon, who never lived within himself. From 
 this is derived the frivolity of temperament which 
 made him support easily the enormous load of his 
 evils and of his faults. His mind, ever new, was 
 born every day. He had more than any other per- 
 son a capacity for diversion.. The first day that he 
 saw the sun rise on his funeral rock at Saint Helena, 
 he jumped from his bed, whistling the air of ro- 
 mance. It was the peace of a mind superior to for- 
 tune ; it was the frivolity of a mind prompt in resur- 
 rection. He lived from the outside." 
 
 Garain, who did not like Paul Yence's ingenious 
 turn of wit and language, tried to hasten the con- 
 clusion: 
 
 "In a word," he said, "there was something of 
 the monster in the man." 
 
 "There are no monsters," replied Paul Vence; 
 "and men who pass for monsters inspire horror. 
 Napoleon was loved by an entire people. He had 
 the strength to raise under his feet the love of men. 
 The joy of his soldiers was to die for him. " 
 
 Countess Martin would have wished Dechartre to 
 give his opinion. But he excused himself with a 
 sort of fright. 
 
 "Do you know," said SchmoU, "the parable of 
 the three rings, sublime inspiration of a Portuguese 
 Jew?" 
 
 Garain, while complimenting Paul Yence on his 
 
THE RED LILY 45 
 
 brilliant paradox, regretted that wit should be exer- 
 cised at the expense of morality and justice. 
 
 " There is one principle," he said; " it is that men 
 should be judged by their acts." 
 
 "And women?" asked Princess Seniavine 
 brusquely ; " do you judge them by their acts ? And 
 how do you know what they do ? " 
 
 The sound of voices was mingled with the clear 
 tintillation of the silverware. A warm air bathed 
 the room. The roses shed their leaves on the cloth. 
 Thoughts ascended more ardent into brains. 
 
 General Lariviere fell into dreams. 
 
 " When they shall have split my ear," he said to 
 his neighbor, "I will go to live at Tours. I will 
 cultivate flowers. ' ' 
 
 He flattered himself on being a good gardener; 
 his name had been given to a rose. This pleased 
 him highly. 
 
 SchmoU asked again if they knew the parable of 
 the three rings. 
 
 The Princess teased the Deputy. 
 
 "Then you do not know, M. Garain, that one 
 does the same things for very different reasons? " 
 
 Montessuy said she was right. 
 
 " It is very true, as you say, Madame, that actions 
 prove nothing. This thought is striking in an epi- 
 sode of the life of Don Juan, which was known 
 neither to Moliere nor to Mozart, and which is 
 revealed in an English legend, a knowledge of which 
 I owe to my friend James E.usseU Lowell of Lon- 
 don. One learns from it that the g'teat seducer lost 
 
46 THE RED LILT 
 
 his time with three women. One was a bourgeoise: 
 she was in love with her husband ; the other was a 
 nun: she did not consent to violate her vows; the 
 third, who had for a long time led a life of debauch- 
 ery, had become ugly, and was a servant in a den. 
 After what she had done, after what she had seen, 
 love signified nothing to her. These three women 
 had the same behavior for very different reasons. 
 An action proves nothing. It is the mass of actions, 
 their weight, their sum total, which makes the value 
 of the human being." 
 
 "Some of our actions," said Madame Martin, 
 "have our look, our face: they are our daughters. 
 Others not at all resemble us." 
 
 She rose and took the General's arm. 
 
 In going to the parlor the Princess said : 
 
 " Therese is right. Other actions do not resemble 
 us at all. They are little negresses which were 
 brought to life when we were asleep." 
 
 The nymphs of the tapestries smiled vainly in their 
 faded freshness at the guests, who did not see them. 
 
 Madame Martin served the coffee with her young 
 cousin. She complimented Paul Yence on what he 
 had said at table. 
 
 " You talked of Napoleon with a freedom of mind 
 which is rare in the conversations that I hear. I 
 have noticed that children, when they are hand- 
 some, look, when they pout, like Napoleon at Water- 
 loo. You have made me feel the profound reasons 
 for this similarity. ' ' 
 
 Then turning toward Dechartre: 
 
THE RED LILY 47 
 
 " Do you like Napoleon ? " 
 
 "Madame, I do not like the Eevolution. And 
 Napoleon is the Eevolution in boots." 
 
 " M. Dechartre, why did you not say this at din- 
 ner ? But, I see : you consent to have wit only in 
 little corners." 
 
 Count Martin-Belleme escorted the men to the 
 smoking-room. Paul Vence alone remained with the 
 women. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had 
 finished his novel, and what was the subject of it. 
 It was a study in which he tried to reach the truth 
 formed of a series of plausible things. 
 
 "Thus," he said, "the novel acquires a moral 
 force which history, in its heavy frivolity, never 
 had." 
 
 She wanted to know if the book was written for 
 women. He said no. 
 
 "You are wrong, M. Yence, not to write for 
 women. A superior man can do nothing else for 
 them." 
 
 And, as he wished to know what gave her that 
 idea: 
 
 " It is," she said, " because I see aU the intelligent 
 women love fools." 
 
 " Who bore them." 
 
 "Certainly! But superior men would bother 
 them more. They would have more resources to 
 employ in annoying them. But teU. me the subject 
 of your novel." 
 
 "Do you care?" 
 
 " Oh J I care for nothing." 
 
48 THE EED LILT 
 
 " Well, here it is. It is a study of popular man- 
 ners; the history of a young workman, sober and 
 chaste, as handsome as a girl, with the mind of a 
 virgin, a clothed mind. He is a carver, and works 
 well. At night, near his mother, whom he loves, 
 he studies, he reads books. In his mind, simple and 
 bare, ideas lodge themselves like bullets in a waU. 
 He has no necessities. He has neither the passions 
 nor the vices which attach us to life. He is solitary 
 and pure. Gifted with strong virtues, he becomes 
 conceited. He lives among miserable groups. He 
 sees suffering. He has devotion without humanity. 
 He has that sort of cold charity which is called altru- 
 ism. He is not human because he is not sensual." 
 
 " Oh! One must be sensual to be human? " 
 
 "Certainly, Madame. Pity is in the physical 
 frame as tenderness is, skin deep. He is not intelli- 
 gent enough to doubt. He believes. He beUeves 
 what he has read. And he has read that to establish 
 universal happiness it is enough to destroy society. 
 Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, 
 having kissed his mother, he goes out; he watches 
 for the socialist deputy of his district, sees him, 
 throws himself on him, and buries a poniard in his 
 stomach. Long live anarchy ! He is arrested, meas- 
 ured, photographed, questioned, judged, condemned 
 to death, and guillotined. That is my novel." 
 
 "It won't be amusing," said the Princess; "but 
 that is not your fault. Tour anarchists are as timid 
 and moderate as the other Frenchmen. The Eus- 
 sians have more audacity and more fantasy." 
 
THE EED LILY 49 
 
 Countess Martin asked Paul Vence if he knew a 
 timid-looking man who was saying nothing. It was 
 her husband who had invited him. She knew 
 nothing of him, not even his name. Paul Yence 
 could only say that he was a senator. He had seen 
 him one day by chance in the Luxembourg, in the 
 gaUery which served as a library. 
 
 " I had come to look at the cupola which Dela- 
 croix has painted in a wood of bluish myrtles with 
 heroes and sages of antiquity. He had that wretched 
 and pitiful air. He was warming himself. He 
 smelled of wet cloth. He was talking with old col- 
 leagues and saying, while rubbing his hands : ' The 
 proof that the Republic is the best of governments is 
 that in 1871 it could kill in a week sixty thousand 
 insurgents without becoming unpopular. After 
 such a repression any other regime would have ren- 
 dered itself impossible. ' ' ' 
 
 " He is a very wicked man, " said Madame Martin. 
 " And to think that I was taking pity on him! " 
 
 Madame Garain, her chin softly dropped on her 
 chest, slept in the peace of her housekeeping mind, 
 and dreamed of her vegetable garden on the banks 
 of the Loire, where singing societies came to salute 
 her. 
 
 Joseph SchmoU and General Lariviere came out 
 of the smoking-room. The General took a seat 
 between Princess Seniavine and Madame Martin. 
 
 "I met this morning, ia the park, Baronne War- 
 burg, mounted on a magnificent horse. She said, 
 ' General, how do you manage to have such fine 
 4 
 
50 THE RED LILY 
 
 horses ? ' I replied: ' Madame, to have fine horses, 
 you must be either very wealthy or very smart.' " 
 
 He was so satisfied with his reply that he repeated 
 it twice. 
 
 Paul Vence came near Countess Martin : 
 
 "I know the senator's name: it is Lyer. He is 
 the vice-president of a political group, and author of 
 a book entitled, ' The Crime of December 2d.' " 
 
 The General continued: 
 
 " The weather was horrible. I went into a hut. 
 Le Menil was there. I was in bad humor. He was 
 making fun of me, I saw. He imagines that because 
 I am a general I must like the wind and melted 
 snow. It's absurd. He said that he liked bad 
 weather, and that he was to go fox-hunting with 
 friends next week. ' ' 
 
 There was a pause; the General continued: 
 
 "I wish him much joy, but I don't envy him. 
 Fox-hunting is not agreeable." 
 
 " But it's useful," said Montessuy. 
 
 The General shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Foxes are dangerous for chicken coops in the 
 spring when they have to feed their families. ' ' 
 
 " Foxes are smart poachers, who do less harm to 
 farmers than to hunters. I know something of 
 this." 
 
 Therese was not listening to the Princess, who 
 was talking to her. She was thinking: 
 
 " He didn't tell me that he was going away! " 
 
 " Of what are you thinking, dear? " 
 
 *' Of nothing interesting." 
 
IV 
 
 In the little dark room, dumb with curtains, por- 
 tieres, cushions, bear skins, and carpets of the Ori- 
 ent, swords in the light of the fire shone on the 
 walls among the faded favors of the cotillons of 
 three winters. The rosewood chiffonier was sur- 
 mounted by a silver cup, a premium from some 
 sporting society. On the porcelain plaques of the 
 table a crystal glass, on which ran flowers of gilded 
 brass, held branches of white lilacs, and everywhere 
 lights palpitated in the warm shadow. Therese 
 and Eobert, their eyes accustomed to obscurity, 
 moved easily among these familiar objects. He 
 lighted a cigarette while she arranged her hair, 
 standing before the mirror, where she could hardly 
 see herself. She took pins from the little Bohemian 
 glass cup which was on the table as she had done for 
 three years. He looked at her passing quickly 
 through the gold ripples of her hair her fingers of 
 light, while her face, hardened and bronzed by the 
 shadow, acquired a mysterious expression. She did 
 not talk. 
 
 He said to her: 
 
 " You are not cross now, my dear? " 
 
 And, as he insisted upon her replying : 
 
 " What do you wish me to say, my friend ? I can 
 
52 THE RED LILY 
 
 only repeat what I said at first. I think it strange 
 that I have to learn of your projects from General 
 Lariviere." 
 
 He knew very well that she had not forgiven him ; 
 that she had remained cold and reserved near him. 
 But he affected to think that she only pouted. 
 
 "My dear, I have explained it to you. I have 
 told you that when I met Lariviere I had just 
 received a letter from Caumont, recalling my promise 
 to hunt the fox in his woods, and I replied by return 
 of post. I meant to tell you about it to-day. I am 
 sorry that General Lariviere told you before, but 
 there is no significance in this." 
 
 Her arms were lifted like the handles of a vase. 
 She turned toward him her peaceful eyes, which he 
 did not understand. 
 
 " Then you are going ? " 
 
 " ISText week, Tuesday or "Wednesday. I shall be 
 away for ten days at most." 
 
 She put on her toque of sealskin, ornamented 
 with a branch of holly. 
 
 " Is it something that you cannot postpone ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Fox skin would not be worth any- 
 thing in a month. Moreover, Caumont has invited 
 good friends of mine, who would regret my ab- 
 sence." 
 
 Fixing her toque on her head with a long pin, she 
 frowned. 
 
 " Is fox-hunting interesting ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, very. The fox has stratagems that you 
 must unravel. The intelligence of these animals is 
 
THE RED LILY 53 
 
 really admirable. I have observed at night a fox 
 hunting a rabbit. He had organized a real hunt. I 
 can assure you that it is not easy to dislodge a fox. 
 Caumont has an excellent cellar. I do not care for 
 it, but it is generally appreciated. I will bring you 
 half a dozen skins." 
 
 " What do you want me to do with them? " 
 " Oh, you can make carpets of them." 
 " Oh, and you will be hunting for eight days ? " 
 "Not entirely. I will go for two days to my 
 aunt's. She is waiting for me. Last year at this 
 time there was a beautiful reunion there. She had 
 with her her two daughters and her three nieces 
 with their husbands. All five are pretty, gay, 
 charming, and irreproachable. I will probably find 
 them at the commencement of next month, assem- 
 bled for my aunt's birthday, and I shall stay for two 
 days at her house." 
 
 " My friend, stay as long as it may please you. I 
 should be inconsolable if you shortened on my 
 account a sojourn which is so agreeable." 
 "But you, Therese?" 
 
 "I, my friend? I can take care of myself." 
 The fire was going out. The shadow was grow- 
 ing thicker between them. She said in a dreamy 
 tone: 
 
 "It is true that it is never prudent to leave a 
 woman alone." 
 
 He went near her, trying to see her eyes in the 
 darkness. He took her hand. 
 "You love me?" 
 
54 THE BED LILY 
 
 " Oh, I can assure you that I do not love another 
 —but " 
 
 " "What do you mean ? " 
 
 "Nothing. I am thinking — lam thinking that 
 we are separated all through the summer. That in 
 winter you live with your parents and with your 
 friends half the time; and that, if we are to see so 
 little of each other, it is better not to see each other 
 at aU." 
 
 He lighted the candelabra. His harsh and frank 
 face was lighted up. He looked at her with a con- 
 fidence that came less from his conceit than from the 
 need of regular dignity which was in him. He 
 believed in her through prejudice of education and 
 simplicity of intelligence. 
 
 " Therese, I love you, and you love me, I know. 
 Why do you torment me ? Sometimes you are 
 painfully harsh." 
 
 She shook her little head brusquely. 
 
 "What win. you have? I am harsh and obsti- 
 nate. It's in the blood. I take it from my father. 
 Tou know Joinville ; you have seen the castle, the 
 ceilings, the tapestries, the gardens, the park, the 
 hunting grounds; you said that there were none 
 better in France; but you have not seen my father's 
 workshop — a white wood table and a mahogany 
 bureau. It's from there that everything comes, my 
 friend. On that table my father made figures for 
 forty years; at first in a little room, then in the 
 apartment where I was born. We were not very 
 wealthy then. I am & parvenu's daughter, or a con- 
 
THE EED LILY 55 
 
 queror's daughter, it's all the same. We are inter- 
 ested people. My father wanted to earn money, to 
 possess what he could buy, that is, everything. I 
 want to earn and keep — what ? I do not know — the 
 happiness that I have — or that I have not. I have 
 my way of being exacting. I want dreams and 
 illusions. Oh, I know very well that aU this is not 
 worth the trouble of a woman giving herself to a 
 man ; but it is the trouble which is worth something, 
 because my trouble is myself, my life. I like to 
 enjoy what I like, or think what I like. I do not" 
 wish to lose. I am like papa: I want what is due 
 to me. And then " 
 
 She lowered her voice: 
 
 "And then, I have senses. There, my dear, I 
 bother you. "What will you have ? You shouldn't 
 have loved me. ' ' 
 
 This language, to which she had accustomed him, 
 often spoiled his pleasure. But this did not alarm 
 him. He was sensitive to all that she did, but not 
 at all to that she said ; and he attached no impor- 
 tance to words of a woman. Talking little himself, 
 he could not imagine that words are actions. 
 
 Although he loved her, or, rather, because he 
 loved her with strength and confidence, he thought 
 it his duty to resist her whims, which he judged 
 absurd. Whenever he played the master, he suc- 
 ceeded with her; and, naively, he always played it. 
 
 " You know very well, Therese, that I wish to 
 do nothing except to be agreeable to you. Don't be 
 capricious with me." 
 
56 THE RED LILT 
 
 " And why should not I be capricious ? If I gave 
 myself to you, it was not because I was reasonable, 
 nor because I was beautiful. It was because I was 
 - — capricious." 
 
 He looked at her, astonished and saddened. 
 
 "The word is not pleasant to you, my friend? 
 WeU, let us say that it was love. Truly it was, 
 with all my heart, and because I felt that you loved 
 me. But love must be a pleasure, and if I do not 
 find in it the satisfaction of what you call my capri- 
 ciousness, and which is my desire, my life, my love, 
 I do not want it; I prefer to live alone. You are 
 astonishing ! Capricious ! Is there anything else in 
 life ? Your fox-hunt, isn't that capricious ? " 
 
 He replied, very sincerely: 
 
 " If I had not promised, I swear to you, Therese, 
 that I would sacrifice that smaU pleasure with great 
 
 joy-" 
 
 She felt that he told the truth. He fulfilled his 
 engagements in the smallest matters, incessantly 
 bound by his word; he carried into society an exact 
 conscience. She saw that if she insisted he would 
 not go. But it was too late : she did not wish to win. 
 She would seek hereafter only the violent pleasure of 
 losing. She pretended to take his reason seriously, 
 and said: 
 
 ' ' Ah, you have promised ! ' ' 
 
 And she yielded with perfidy. 
 
 Surprised at first, he congratulated himself on 
 having made her Listen to reason. He was grateful 
 to her for not having been stubborn. He put his 
 
THE RED LILY 67 
 
 arm around her waist and kissed her on the neck 
 and eyelids as a reward. He said : 
 
 ' ' "We may meet three or four times before I go, 
 and more, if you wish. I will wait for you as often 
 as you wish to come. Do you wish to come to-mor- 
 row?" 
 
 She gave to herself the satisfaction of saying that 
 she could not come the next day nor the other days. 
 
 Softly she told the things that prevented her. 
 The obstacles seemed light : calls, a gown to be tried 
 on, a charity fair, exhibitions. When she examined 
 them, the difficulties became thicker : the calls could 
 not be postponed ; there were three fairs ; the exhi- 
 bitions would soon close. In fine, it was impossible 
 for her to see him again before his leaving. 
 
 As it was natural to his temperament to appre- 
 ciate excuses of that sort, he failed to observe that 
 it was not natural for Therese to offer them. Em- 
 barrassed by this tissue of mundane obligations, he 
 did not persist ; but he remained dumb and wretched. 
 
 With her left arm she raised the portiere, placed 
 her right hand on the key of the door; and there, in 
 the panels of sapphire and ruby colors from the 
 Oriental curtain, her head turned toward the friend 
 whom she was leaving, she said a little mockingly, 
 and almost tragically : 
 
 " Good-by, Kobert. Enjoy yourself. My calls, 
 my errands, your little travels are nothing. If is 
 true that destiny is made of such things. Good- 
 by." 
 
 She went out. He would have liked to accom- 
 
58 THE RED LILY 
 
 pany her, but he made it a point not to show him- 
 self with her in the street, when she did not abso- 
 lutely force him to do so. 
 
 In the street, Therese felt suddenly that she was 
 alone, alone in the world, without joy and without 
 pain. She returned to her house on foot, as was 
 her habit. It was night ; the air was frozen, clear, 
 and tranquil. But the avenues through which she 
 walked, in a shadow studded with lights, enveloped 
 her with that lukewarmness of cities, so sweet to 
 city folks, and which they feel even in the cold of 
 winter. She walked between the lines of huts and 
 little mansions, remains of the field days of AuteuU, 
 which taU houses interrupted here and there. These 
 shops of little merchants, these monotonous win- 
 dows, were nothing to her. Yet she felt that she 
 was under the mystery of the friendship of things, 
 and it seemed to her that the stones, the doors of 
 houses, the lights behind the window panes, were 
 favorable to her. She was alone, and she wanted to 
 be alone. 
 
 The steps which she was taking between the two 
 houses wherein her habits were almost equal, the 
 steps which she had taken so often, to-day seemed 
 to her irrevocable. Why? What had that day 
 brought? Hardly a quarrel. And yet that day 
 had a feeble, strange, persistent taste, a taste which 
 would never leave her. What had happened? 
 Nothing. And that nothing effaced everything. 
 She had a sort of obscure certainty that she would 
 never return to that room which so recently enclosed 
 
THE EED LILY 59 
 
 the most secret and dearest phases of her life. She 
 had loved Robert with the gravity of a necessary- 
 joy. Made to be loved, and very reasonable, she 
 had not lost in the abandonment of her person that 
 instinct of reflection, that necessity for security, 
 which was so strong in her. She had not chosen : 
 one seldom chooses. She had not allowed herself to 
 be taken at random and by surprise. She had done 
 what she had wanted to do, as much as one does what 
 one wants to do in such things. She had nothing to 
 regret. He had been to her what it was his duty to 
 be. She felt, in spite of everything, that all was at 
 an end. She thought, with dry sadness, that three 
 years of her life had been given to an honest man 
 who loved her and whom she loved. " For I loved 
 him. I had to love him in order to give myself to 
 him." But she could not feel again the sentiments 
 of other times, the movements of her mind when 
 she had yielded. She recalled small and insignifi- 
 cant circumstances: the flowers on the waU paper 
 and the pictures in the room. She recalled the 
 words, a little ridiculous and almost touching, which 
 he had said to her. But it seemed to her that the 
 adventure had occurred to another woman, to a 
 stranger whom she did not lite and whom she 
 hardly understood. 
 
 And what had happened a moment ago was far 
 distant now. The bed, the hlacs in the crystal glass, 
 the little saucer of Bohemian glass where she found 
 her pins — she saw all these things as through a win- 
 dow by which one passes in the street. She was 
 
60 THE RED LILY 
 
 without bitterness, and even without sadness. She 
 had nothing to forgive, alas ! This absence for a 
 week was not a betrayal, it was not a fault against 
 her ; it was nothing, it was everything. It was the 
 end. She knew it. She wanted to cease. She 
 wanted to do this as the stone that falls wishes to 
 fall. It was a consenting of all the forces of her 
 being and of her nature. She said to herself: "I 
 have no reason to love him less. Do I love him no 
 more? Did I ever love him? " She did not know 
 and she did not care to know. 
 
 Three years, during which there had been months 
 when they had seen each other every day — was aU 
 this nothing? Life is not much. And what one 
 puts in it, how little that is ! 
 
 In fine, she had nothing to complain of. But it 
 was better to finish with it all. All these reflections 
 brought her back to that point. It was not a reso- 
 lution; resolutions may be changed. It was graver: 
 it was a state of the flesh and of the spirit. 
 
 When she arrived at the square, the centre of 
 which is filled by a fountain, and on one side of 
 which rises a church of rustic style, showing its bell 
 in an arcade open on the sky, she recalled the two- 
 cent violet bouquet which he had given to her one 
 night on the bridge near Notre Dame. They had 
 loved each other that day, perhaps more than usual. 
 Her heart softened at that reminiscence. But the 
 Kttle bouquet remained alone, a poor little flower 
 skeleton, in her memory. 
 
 While she was thinking, passers-by, deceived by 
 
THE RED LILY 61 
 
 the simplicity of her dress, followed her. One of 
 them made propositions to her: a dinner and the 
 theatre. It amused her. She was not at all dis- 
 turbed; this was not a crisis. She thought: "How 
 do other women manage such things ? And I, who 
 promised myself not to spoil my life. For what life 
 is worth, there is no use in troubling." 
 
 Opposite the Greek lantern of the Religion Mu- 
 seum she found the soil disturbed by workmen. 
 There were paving stones crossed by a bridge made 
 of a narrow and flexible plank. She had stepped on 
 it, when she saw at the other end, in front of her, a 
 man who was waiting for her. He recognized her 
 and bowed. It was Dechartre. She saw that he 
 was happy to meet her; she thanked him with a 
 smile. He asked her permission to walk a few steps 
 with her, and they entered into the large space that 
 the vivid air filled. In this place the tall houses set 
 back, efface themselves, and reveal a portion of the 
 sky. 
 
 He told her that he had recognized her from a 
 distance by the rhythm of her lines and of her 
 movements, which were hers exclusively. 
 
 "Beautiful movements," he added, "are music 
 for the eyes. ' ' 
 
 She replied that she Hked to walk; it was her 
 pleasure, and the cause of her good health. 
 
 He, too, liked to walk in populous towns and in 
 beautiful fields. The mystery of highways tempted 
 him. He liked to travel. Although voyages had 
 become common and easy, they retained for him their 
 
62 THE BED LILY 
 
 powerful charm. He had seen gilded days and 
 transparent nights, Greece, Egypt, and the Bos- 
 phorus; but it was to Italy that he returned always, 
 as to his mind's mother country. 
 
 " I am going next week," he said. "I want to 
 see again Kavenna asleep in the black pines of its 
 sterile shore. Have you seen Eavenna, Madame? 
 It is an enchanted tomb where sparkling phantoms 
 appear. The magic of death lies there. The mosaic 
 work of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels 
 and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the 
 monstrous delights of the Orient. Despoiled to- 
 day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia 
 is frightful under its crypt, luminous and dark. 
 "When one looks through an opening in the sar- 
 cophagus, it seems as if one saw the daughter of 
 Theodosius, seated on her golden chair, stiff in her 
 gown studded with stones and embroidered with 
 scenes from the Old Testament; her beautiful, cruel 
 face preserved hard and black with aromatic plants, 
 and her ebony hands immovable on her knees. For 
 thirteen centuries she retained this funereal majesty, 
 until one day a child passed a candle through the 
 opening of the grave and burned the body." 
 
 Madame Martin-BeUeme asked what that dead 
 woman, so obstinate in her conceit, had done during 
 her life. 
 
 "Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became 
 twice an empress. ' ' 
 
 " She must have been pretty," said Madame Mar- 
 tin. " You have made me see her too vividly in her 
 
THE RED LILY 63 
 
 tomb. She frightens me. Will you not go to 
 Yenice, M. Dechartre? Or are you tired of gon- 
 dolas, of canals bordered by palaces, and of the 
 pigeons in St. Marc's Square ? I confess that I still 
 like Yenice, after having been there three times. ' ' 
 
 He said she was right. He, too, liked Yenice. 
 
 Whenever he went there, from a sculptor he be- 
 came a painter, and made studies. It is the atmos- 
 phere of it that he would like to paint. 
 
 "Elsewhere," he said, "even in Florence, the 
 sky is too high. At Yenice it is everywhere; it 
 caresses the earth and the water. It envelops lov- 
 ingly the leaden domes and the marble facades, and 
 throws into the iris-colored space its pearls and its 
 crystals. The beauty of Yenice is in its sky and its 
 women. What pretty creatures the Yenetian 
 women are ! Their flesh is so thin and subtle under 
 their black shawls. If nothing remained of these 
 women except a bone, one would find in that bone 
 the charm of their exquisite structure. Sundays, at 
 church, they form laughing groups, agitated, a mass 
 of hips a little pointed, of elegant necks, of flowery 
 smiles, of inflamed glances. And all that bends 
 with a suppleness of young animals at the passage of 
 a priest whose head resembles that of Yitellius, who 
 carries the chalice, preceded by two choir boys." 
 
 He walked with unequal step, following the trend 
 of his ideas, at times quick, at times slow. She 
 walked more regularly, and tended to outstrip him. 
 He looked at her sidewise, and liked the supple and 
 firm manner of her walk. He observed the little 
 
64 THE RED LILT 
 
 shake which at moments her obstinate head gave to 
 the holly on her toque. 
 
 Without thinking of it, he was subject to the 
 charm of that meeting, almost intimate, with a 
 young woman almost unknown. 
 
 They had reached the place where the large ave- 
 nue unfolds its four rows of trees. They were fol- 
 lowing the parapet of stone surmounted by a curtain 
 of boxwood which utterly hides the ugliness of the 
 buildings on the quay. Beyond one felt the pres- 
 ence of the river, by the mUky atmosphere which in 
 misty days rests on water. The sky was clear. The 
 lights of the city were mingled with the stars. At 
 the south shone the three gold nails of the Orion 
 belt. 
 
 " Last year, at Venice, every morning as I went 
 out of my house, I saw at her door, raised by three 
 steps above the canal, an admirable girl, with small 
 head, neck round and strong, and graceful hips. She 
 was there, in the sun and in the vermin, as pure as 
 an amphora, as heady as a flower. She smiled. 
 What a mouth ! The richest jewel in the most beau- 
 tiful light. I realized in time that this smile was 
 addressed to a butcher standing behind me with his 
 basket on his head." 
 
 At the corner of the short street which goes to the 
 quay, between two lines of small gardens, Madame 
 Martin walked more slowly. 
 
 "It is true that at Yenice," she said, "women 
 are pretty." 
 
 " They are almost all pretty, Madame. I speak 
 
THE RED LILT 65 
 
 of the common girls — the cigar girls, the working 
 girls in the glass shops. The others are common- 
 place enough." 
 
 "By others you mean society women; and you 
 don't like these?" 
 
 " Society women ? Oh, some of them are charm- 
 ing. As for loving them, that's a great affair." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " 
 
 She extended her hand to him, and suddenly 
 turned the corner. 
 5 
 
She dined that night alone with her husband. 
 The narrow table had not the basket with golden 
 eagles and winged Yictories. The candelabra did 
 not light Oudry's paintings. "While he talked of 
 the events of the day, she fell into a sad reverie. It 
 seemed to her that she was going through a mist. 
 It was a peaceful and almost sweet suffering. She 
 saw vaguely through the clouds the little room of 
 the Eue Spontini transported by angels to one of 
 the summits of the Himalaya Mountains, and he — 
 in the quaking of a sort of world's end — he had dis- 
 appeared while putting on his gloves. She felt her 
 pulse to see if she were not feverish. Brusquely a 
 clear shock of silverware on the table awoke her. 
 She heard her husband saying : 
 
 " My dear friend Gavaut delivered to-day, in the 
 Chamber, an excellent speech on the question of the 
 reserve funds. It's extraordinary how his ideas 
 have become healthy and just. Oh, he has improved 
 a great deal." 
 
 She could not refrain from smiling. 
 
 "But Gavaut, my friend, is a poor devil who 
 never thought of anything except going out of the 
 crowd of those who are dying of hunger. Gavaut 
 never had any ideas except at his elbows. Does 
 
THE RED LILY 67 
 
 anybody take him seriously in the political world ? 
 You may be sure that he never gave an illusion to 
 any woman, not even his wife. And yet to give 
 that sort of illusion, one doesn't need much, I can 
 assure you." And brusquely she added: 
 
 ' ' You know Miss Bell has invited me to spend a 
 month with her at Fiesole. I have accepted ; I am 
 going." 
 
 Less astonished than discontented, he asked her 
 with whom she was going. 
 
 At once she answered : 
 
 " With Madame Marmet." 
 
 There was no objection to make. Madame Mar- 
 met was a companion perfectly honorable, and spe- 
 cially designed for Italy, where her husband had 
 made diggings in graveyards. He asked only : 
 
 " Have you asked her ? When are you going ? " 
 
 "Next week." 
 
 He had the wisdom not to make any objection, 
 judging that opposition could only make firmer her 
 caprioiousness, and fearing to give body to that fool- 
 ish idea. He said : 
 
 " Surely, to travel is an agreeable pastime. I 
 thought that we might in the spring visit the Cau- 
 casus and Turkistan. There's an interesting coun- 
 try. General Annenkoff wiU place at our disposal 
 carriages, trains, and everything else on his rail- 
 way. He is a friend of mine; he is quite charmed 
 with you. He will provide us with an escort of 
 Cossacks." 
 
 He obstinately tried to iiatter her vanity, unable 
 
68 THE RKD LILY 
 
 to realize that her mind was not mundane. She 
 replied, negligently, that it might be a pretty voy- 
 age. Then he praised the mountains, the ancient 
 cities, the bazaars, the costumes, the arms and armor. 
 
 He added : 
 
 ""We shall take some friends with us — Princess 
 Seniavine, General Lariviere, perhaps Vence or Le 
 Menil." 
 
 She replied, with a little dry laugh, that they had 
 time to select their guests. 
 
 He became attentive to her wants. 
 
 "You are not eating. You are ruining your 
 stomach." 
 
 "Without yet believing in this prompt departure, 
 he felt some anxiety about it. Each had regained 
 freedom, but he did not like to be alone. He felt 
 that he was himself only when his wife was there. 
 And then, he had decided to give two or three polit- 
 ical dinners during the session. He saw his party 
 growing. This was the moment to affirm himself, 
 to make a dazzling show. He said mysteriously : 
 
 " Something might happen requiring the aid of 
 all our friends. You have not followed the march 
 of events, Therese?" 
 
 "No, my friend." 
 
 " I am sorry. You have judgment, liberality of 
 mind. If you had followed the march of events 
 you would have been struck by the current which is 
 leading the country back to moderate opinions. The 
 country is tired of exaggerations. It rejects the 
 men compromised by radical politics and religious 
 
THE RED LILY 69 
 
 persecution. Some day or other it will be necessary 
 to make over a Casimir-Perier ministry with other 
 men, and that day " 
 
 He stopped: really she listened too little and too 
 badly. 
 
 She was thinking, sad and disenchanted. It 
 seemed to her that the pretty woman who, under 
 the warm shadows of a closed room, placed her bare 
 feet in the fur of the brown bear, and to whom her 
 friend gave kisses while she twisted her hair in front 
 of a glass, was not herself, was not even a woman 
 that she knew well, or that she desired to know ; but 
 a woman whose affairs were of no interest to her. 
 A pin badly set in her hair, one of the pins of the 
 Bohemian glass saucer, feU on her neck. She shiv- 
 ered. 
 
 "Yet we shall have," said M. Martin-Belleme, 
 "to give three or four dinners to our political 
 friends. We shall invite ancient radicals with the 
 people of our circle. It will be well to find some 
 pretty women. "We might invite Madame Derard 
 de la Malle; there has been no gossip about her for 
 two years. What do you think of it? " 
 
 " But, my friend, since I am to go next week " 
 
 This filled him with consternation. 
 
 They went, both dumb and dark, into the drawing- 
 room, where Paul Vence was waiting. He often 
 came in the evening. 
 
 She extended her hand to him. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you. I am going out of 
 town. Paris is cold and black. This weather tires 
 
70 TttE RfiD lilLY 
 
 and saddens me. I am going to Florence, for six 
 weeks, to Miss Bell's." 
 
 M. Martin-Belleme lifted his eyes to heaven. 
 
 Vence asked if she had not been in Italy often. 
 
 "Three times; but I saw nothing. This time I 
 want to see, to throw myself into things. From 
 Florence I shall take walks into Tuscany, into 
 Umbria. And, at the end, I will go to Venice." 
 
 "You will do well. Venice is the rest of Sun- 
 day in the grand week of creative and divine 
 Italy." 
 
 "Tour friend Dechartre talked very prettily to 
 me of Venice, of the atmosphere of Venice, which 
 sows pearls." 
 
 " Yes, at Venice the sky is a colorist. At Flor- 
 ence it is witty. An old author has said : ' The sky 
 of Florence is light and subtle, and feeds the beau- 
 tiful ideas of men. ' I have lived delicious days in 
 Tuscany. I wish I could live them again." 
 
 " Come and see me there." 
 
 He sighed: 
 
 The newspaper, the books, the daily work pre- 
 vented him. 
 
 M. Martin-Belleme said one should bow before 
 such reasons, and that one was too happy to read 
 the articles and the books written by M. Paul Vence 
 to have any wish to take him from his work. 
 
 " Oh, my books! One never says in a book what 
 one wishes to say. It is impossible to express one- 
 self. Oh, I know how to talk with my pen as well 
 as any other person ; but to talk or to write, what a 
 
TEE RED LlLf 71 
 
 pity! How wretched are these little signs with 
 which are formed syllables, words, and phrases. 
 What becomes of the idea, the beautiful idea, which 
 these wicked hieroglyphics hide ? "What does the 
 reader make of my writing? A series of false 
 sense, of counter sense, and of nonsense. To read, 
 to hear, is to translate. There are beautiful transla- 
 tions, perhaps. There are no faithful translations. 
 Why should I care for the admiration which they 
 give to my books, since it is what they have put in 
 them that they admire ? Every reader substitutes 
 his visions in the place of ours. We furnish him 
 with the means to rub his imagination. It is a hor- 
 rible thing to be a cause of such exercises. It is 
 an infamous profession." 
 
 " You are jesting," said M. Martin. 
 
 " I do not think so," said Therese. " He recog- 
 nizes that minds are impenetrable to minds, and he 
 suffers from this. He feels that he is alone when 
 he is thinking, alone when he is writing. Whatever 
 one may do, one is always alone in the world. That 
 is what he wishes to say. He is right. Tou may 
 always explain: you may never understand." 
 
 " There are gestures," said Paul Yence. 
 
 " Don't you think, M. Yence, that gestures are a 
 form of hieroglyphics ? Give me news of M. Chou- 
 lette. I do not see him any more." 
 
 Yence replied that Choulette was very busy in 
 forming the Third Order of Saint Francis. 
 
 " The idea, Madame, came to him in a marvellous 
 fashion one day that he had gone to call on Maria 
 
72 THE BED LILY 
 
 in the street where she lives behind the public hospi- 
 tal, a street always da"mp, the houses of which are 
 tottering. You know that Maria is the saint and 
 martyr who is responsible for the sins of the peo- 
 ple. He pulled the bell-rope, made greasy by two 
 centuries of visitors. Either because the martyr 
 was at the wine-shop, where she is familiarly known, 
 or because she was busy in her room, she did not 
 open the door. Choulette rang for a long time, and 
 so strongly that the bell-rope remained in his hand. 
 Skilful at understanding symbols and the hidden 
 meaning of things, he understood at once that this 
 rope had not been detached without the permission 
 of spiritual powers. He made of it a belt, and real- 
 ized that he had been chosen to lead back into its 
 primitive purity the Third Order of Saint Francis. 
 He renounced the beauty of women, the delights of 
 poetry, the brightness of glory, and studied the 
 life and the doctrine of Saint Francis. However, he 
 has sold to his editor a book entitled ' Les Blandices,' 
 which contains, he says, the description of all sorts 
 of loves. He flatters himself with having shown 
 himself in it a criminal with some elegance. But 
 far from harming his mystic undertakings, this book 
 favors them in this sense, that, corrected by an ulte- 
 rior work, he will become very honest and exem- 
 plary ; and because the gold which he has received in 
 payment, and which would not have been paid to 
 him for a more chaste volume, will serve for a pil- 
 grimage to Assisi." 
 Madame Martin asked how much of this story 
 
THE RED LILY 73 
 
 was really true. Vence replied that she must not 
 try to learn. 
 
 He confessed that he was the idealist historian of 
 the poet, and that the adventures which he related 
 of him were not to be taken in the literal and Judaic 
 sense. 
 
 He affirmed, at least, that Ohoulette was publish- 
 ing "Les Blandices," and wanted to visit the cell 
 and the grave of Saint Francis. 
 
 " Then," exclaimed Madame Martin, " I wiU take 
 him to Italy with me. Find him, M. Yence, and 
 bring him to me. I am going next week. " 
 
 M. Martin excused himself, not being able to 
 remain longer. He had to finish a report which was 
 to be laid before the Chamber the next day. 
 
 Madame Martin said that nobody interested her as 
 much as Choulette. Paul Yence said that he was a 
 great human singularity. 
 
 ' ' He is not very different from the saints of whose 
 extraordinary lives we read. He is as sincere as 
 they were. He has an exquisite delicacy of senti- 
 ment and a terrible violence of mind. If he shocks 
 one by many of his acts, the reason is that he is 
 weaker, less supported, or perhaps less closely ob- 
 served. And then there are bad saints, just as there 
 are bad angels: Choulette is a bad saint, that is all. 
 But his poems are true poems, and much handsomer 
 than aU those which the bishops of the seventeenth 
 century wrote."- 
 
 She interrupted him: 
 
 " "While I think of it, I want to congratulate you 
 
74 THE BED LILT 
 
 on your friend Dechartre. He has a charming 
 mind." 
 
 She added : 
 
 " Perhaps he is a little too timid." 
 
 Vence reminded her that he had said to her that 
 she would find Dechartre interesting. 
 
 "I know him by heart; he has been my friend 
 since our childhood." 
 
 " You have known his parents ? " 
 
 "Yes. He is the only son of Philippe De- 
 chartre." 
 
 "The architect?" 
 
 " The architect who, under Napoleon III, restored 
 so many castles and churches in Touraine and the 
 Orleanais. He had taste and knowledge. Solitary 
 and very quiet, he had the imprudence to attack 
 VioUet-le-Duc, then all-powerful. He reproached 
 him with wanting to reestablish buildings in their 
 primitive plan, as they had been, or as they might 
 have been, at the beginning. Philippe Dechartre, 
 on the contrary, wished that everything which cen- 
 turies had added little by little to a church, an 
 abbey, or a castle should be respected. To make 
 anachronisms disappear, and bring a building back 
 to its primitive unity, seemed to him to be a scien- 
 tific barbarity as dreadful as that of ignorance. He 
 said, he repeated incessantly : ' It is a crime to 
 efface the successive imprints made in stone by the 
 hand and mind of our ancestors. JSTew stones cut in 
 old style are false witnesses. ' He wished to limit 
 the task of the archseologic architect to that of sup- 
 
THE RED LILT 75 
 
 porting and consolidating walls. He was right. 
 Everybody said that he was wrong. He achieved 
 his ruin by dying young, while his rival triumphed. 
 He bequeathed an honest fortune to his widow 
 and his son. Jacques Deohartre was brought up 
 by his mother, who adored him. I do not think 
 that maternal tenderness was ever more impetu- 
 ous. Jacques is a charming feUow; but he is a 
 spoiled child." 
 
 ' ' Yet he looks so indifferent, so easy to get along 
 with, so distant from everything." 
 
 " Do not rely on this. He has a tormented and 
 tormenting imagination." 
 
 " Does he like women ? " 
 
 " Why do you ask this ? " 
 
 " Oh, it isn't for a marriage." 
 
 " Yes, he likes them. I told you that he was an 
 egoist. Only selfish men really love women. After 
 the death of his mother, he had a long liaison with 
 a AveU-known actress, Jeanne Tancrede." 
 
 Madame Martin remembered Jeanne Tancrede; 
 not very pretty, but well-shaped, with a grace a 
 little slow in her roles of love. 
 
 "Herself," replied Paul Vence. "They lived 
 almost together in a little house at Auteuil. I 
 often called on them. I found him lost in his 
 dreams, forgetting to model a figure drying under 
 its cloths, alone with himself, pursuing his idea, 
 absolutely incapable of listening to anybody; she, 
 studying her parts, her complexion burned by rouge, 
 her eyes tender, pretty by her intelligence and her 
 
76 THE BED LILY 
 
 activity. She complained to me that he was inatten- 
 tive, cross, and ugly. She loved him and deceived 
 him only to have roles. And when she deceived 
 him, it was done at once. Afterward she never 
 thought of it. A serious woman. But she was 
 imprudent; she went out with Joseph Springer in 
 the hope that he would make her a member of the 
 Comedie Fran§aise. Dechartre left her. Ifow she 
 finds it more practical to live with her managers, 
 and Jacques finds it more agreeable to travel." 
 
 " Does he regret her ? " 
 
 " How can one know the things that agitate a 
 mind anxious and mobile, selfish and passionate, 
 anxious to surrender itself, prompt in disengaging 
 itself, liking itself generously in all the beautiful 
 things that it finds in the world ? " 
 
 Brusquely she changed the subject. 
 
 " And your novel, M. Vence ? " 
 
 " I have reached the last chapter, Madame. My 
 little workingman has been guillotined. He died 
 with that indifference of virgins without desire, who 
 have never felt on their lips the warm taste of life. 
 The journals and the public approve the act of jus- 
 tice which has just been accomplished. But in 
 another garret, another workingman, sober, sad, 
 and a chemist, swears to himself that he wOl com- 
 mit the expiatory murder." 
 
 He rose and said good-night. 
 
 She called him back. 
 
 " M. Vence, you know that it is serious. Bring 
 Choulette to me." 
 
THE BED LILY 77 
 
 When she went up to her room, her husband was 
 watching for her in his gUt plush gown, a sort of 
 Doge's cap framing his pale and hollow face. He 
 had an air of gravity. Behind him, by the open 
 door of his workroom, appeared under the lamp a 
 mass of documents bound in blue, a collection of the 
 annual budgets. Before she could reach her room 
 he motioned that he wished to speak to her. 
 
 " My dear friend, I cannot understand you. You 
 are very inconsequential. It does you a great deal 
 of harm. You leave your house without any rea- 
 son, without even a pretext. And you wish to run 
 through Europe with whom ? With a Bohemian, a 
 drunkard, that man Choulette. ' ' 
 
 She replied that she would travel with Madame 
 Marmet, and that there was nothing objectionable 
 in that. 
 
 " But you announce your going to everybody, and 
 do not even know if Madame Marmet can accom- 
 pany you." 
 
 " Oh, Madame Marmet will soon pack her boxes. 
 Nothing retains her in Paris except her dog. She 
 will leave it to you ; you'll take care of it. ' ' 
 
 " Does you father know of your project? " 
 
 It was his last resource to invoke the authority of 
 Montessuy. He knew that his wife feared to dis- 
 please her father. He insisted: 
 
 " Your father is full of sense and of tact. I have 
 been happy to find him agreeing with me several times 
 in the advices which I have permitted myself to give 
 you. He thinks, as I do, that Madame Meillan's 
 
78 THE RED LILT 
 
 house is not a fit one for you to visit. The people 
 who go there are mixed, and the mistress of the 
 house favors intrigue. You are wrong, I must say, 
 not to take account of what people think. I am 
 mistaken if your father does not think it singular 
 that you should go away with so much frivolity, 
 and the absence will be the more remarked, my dear 
 friend, since circumstances have made me eminent 
 in the course of this legislature. My merit has 
 nothing to do with the case, surely. But if you had 
 consented to listen to me at dinner I would have 
 demonstrated to you that the group of politicians to 
 which I belong has almost reached power. It is not 
 in such a moment that you should renounce your 
 duties as mistress of the house. You understand 
 this yourself. ' ' 
 
 She replied: 
 
 " You bother me. " 
 
 And, turning her back to him, she closed herself 
 in her room. 
 
 That night, in her bed, she opened a book, as she 
 always did before going to sleep. It was a novel. 
 She was turning the leaves with indifference, when 
 her eyes fell on these lines : 
 
 " Love is like devotion: it comes late. A woman 
 is hardly in love or devout at twenty, unless she has 
 a special disposition to be either, a sort of native 
 sanctity. "Women who are predestined to love, 
 themselves struggle for a long time against that 
 grace of love which is more terrible than the 
 thunderbolt which fell on the road to Damascus. 
 
THE RED LILY 79 
 
 A woman most often yields to the passion of 
 love only when age or solitude does not frighten 
 her. Passion is an arid desert, a burning desert. 
 Passion is profane asceticism, as harsh as religious 
 asceticism. Great women lovers are as rare as 
 great penitent women. Those who know life well, 
 and society, know that women do not easily place 
 on their delicate chests the cilicium of veritable 
 love. They know that nothing is less common 
 than sacriiice among them. And consider how 
 much a mundane woman must sacrifice when she 
 is in love — liberty, quietness, charming play of 
 a free mind, coquetry, amusement, pleasure — she 
 loses everything. 
 
 "Flirting is permissible. One may conciliate 
 that with aU the exigencies of fashionable life. Not 
 so love. Love is the least mundane of passions, the 
 most anti-social, the most savage, the most barbar- 
 ous. So the world judges it more severely than gal- 
 lantry or looseness of manners. In one sense the 
 world is right. A woman in love betrays her nature 
 and fails in her function, which is to belong to 
 everybody, like a work of art. A woman is a work 
 of art, the most marvellous that man's industry ever 
 produced. A woman is a wonderful artifice, due to 
 the concourse of all the arts mechanical and of all 
 the arts liberal. She is the work of everybody, she 
 belongs to everybody." 
 
 Therese closed the book and thought that these 
 were dreams of novelists who did not know Ufe. 
 She knew very well that there was in reality neither 
 
80 THE BED LILT 
 
 Carmel of passion nor cilicium of love, nor beautiful 
 and terrible vocation against which the predestined 
 one resisted in vain ; she knew very well that love 
 was only a short intoxication from which one 
 recovered a little sadder. And yet, perhaps, she 
 did not know everything ; perhaps there were loves 
 in which one was deliciously lost. She put out her 
 lamp. The dreams of her first youth came back 
 to her. 
 
VI 
 
 It was raining. Madame Martin-BeUeme saw 
 confusedly through the glass of her coufd the mul- 
 titude of umbrellas passing like black turtles under 
 the waters of the skies. She was thinking. Her 
 thoughts were gray and indistinct, like the aspect of 
 the streets and the squares that the rain effaced. 
 
 She no longer knew why the idea had come to 
 her to spend a month at Miss BeU's. Truly she 
 had never known. It was like a spring, at first 
 hidden by leaves, and now forming the current of a 
 profound and rapid brook. She remembered that 
 Tuesday night at dinner she had said suddenly that 
 she wanted to go, but she could not ascend to the 
 first fiush of that desire. It was not the wish to act 
 toward Robert Le Menil as he was acting toward 
 her. Doubtless she thought it excellent to go prom- 
 enading in Italy while he went fox-hunting. This 
 seemed to her to be symmetrical. Robert, who was 
 always pleased to see her when he came back, would 
 not find her on his return. She thought this was 
 right. But she had not thought of it at first. And 
 since then she had thought little of it, and reaUy 
 she was not going for the pleasure of making him 
 grieve. She had against him a thought less piquant, 
 and more harsh. She did not wish to see him soon. 
 6 
 
82 THE EED LILY 
 
 He had become to her a stranger. He seemed to 
 her to be a man like the others — better than most 
 others — good-looking, estimable, and who did not 
 displease her; but he did not preoccupy her much. 
 Suddenly he had gone out of her life. She did not 
 remember how he had become mixed with it. The 
 idea of belonging to hiin shocked her. The previ- 
 sion that they might meet again in the small apart- 
 ment of the Eue Spontini was so painful to her that 
 she discarded it at once. She preferred to think that 
 an unforeseen event would prevent their meeting 
 again — the end of the world, for example. M. 
 Lagrange, of the Academic des Sciences, had told her 
 the day before of a comet which some day might meet 
 the earth, envelop it with its flaming hair, give to 
 animals and to plants unknown poisons, and make 
 all men die in a frenzy of laughter. She expected 
 that this, or something else, would happen next 
 month. It was not inexplicable that she wished to 
 go. But that her desire to go should contain a 
 vague joy, that she should feel the charm of what 
 she was to find, was inexplicable to her. 
 
 Her carriage left her at the corner of a street. 
 
 It was there, under the roof of a taU house, 
 behind five windows heated by the sun, in a narrow 
 and very clean apartment, Madame Marmet had 
 lived since the death of her husband. 
 
 Countess Martin found her in her modest parlor, 
 opposite M. Lagrange, half asleep in an armchair. 
 This old mundane savant had remained faithful to 
 her. He it was who, the day after the funeral of 
 
THE RED LILY 83 
 
 Marmet, had conveyed to the unfortunate widow 
 the poisoned speech delivered by SchmolL She had 
 fainted in his arms. Madame Marmet thought that 
 he lacked judgment. He was her best friend. They 
 dined together often with wealthy people. 
 
 Madame Martin, fine and firm in her zibeline cor- 
 sage open on a flood of laces, awakened with the 
 charming brightness of her gray eyes the good 
 man, who was susceptible to the graces of women. 
 Pie had told her the day before how the world 
 would come to an end. He asked her if she had not 
 been frightened at night by pictures of the earth 
 devoured by flames or frozen. While he talked to 
 her with affected gallantry, she looked at the ma- 
 hogany book-case. There were not many books in 
 it, but on one of the shelves was a skeleton with 
 weapons. It amazed one to see in this good lady's 
 house that Etruscan warrior wearing a green bronze 
 helmet and a cuirass. He slept among boxes of 
 bonbons, vases of gilded porcelain, and carved im- 
 ages of the Virgin, picked up at Lucerne and on the 
 Eighi. Madame Marmet, in her widowhood, had 
 sold the books which her husband had left. Of all 
 the ancient objects collected by the archaeologist, 
 she had retained nothing except that Etruscan. 
 Many persons had tried to sell it for her. Paul 
 Vence had obtained from the administration a prom- 
 ise to buy it for the Louvre, but the good widow 
 would not part with it. It seemed to her that if she 
 lost that warrior with his green bronze hehnet she 
 would lose the name that she wore worthily, and 
 
84 THE RED LILY 
 
 cease to be the widow of Louis Marmet of the 
 Acddemie des Inscriptions. 
 
 "Do not be afraid, Madame; a comet will not 
 soon strike the earth. Such meetings are very im- 
 probable." 
 
 Madame Martin replied that she knew no serious 
 reason why the earth and humanity should not be 
 annihilated at once. 
 
 Old Lagrange exclaimed with profound sincerity 
 that he hoped the cataclysm would come as late as 
 possible. 
 
 She looked at him. His arid cranium hardly fed 
 a few hairs dyed black. His eyelids f eU like rags on 
 eyes yet smiling ; long skins were hanging on his 
 yellow face, and one divined that under his clothes 
 his body was dried up. She thought, ' ' He likes 
 life." 
 
 Madame Marmet hoped, too, that the end of the 
 world was not near at hand. 
 
 " M. Lagrange," said Madame Martin, " you live, 
 do you not, in a pretty little house, the windows of 
 which overlook the Botanical Garden ? It seems to 
 me that it must be a joy to live in that garden, 
 which makes me think of the Noah's Ark of my 
 infancy, and of the terrestrial paradises in the old 
 Bibles." 
 
 But he was not charmed at aU. The house was 
 smaU, unimproved, infested with rats. 
 
 She acknowledged that one was not at home any- 
 where, and that there were rats everywhere, either 
 real or symbolical, legions of little beings that tor- 
 
THE RED LILT 85 
 
 ment us. Yet she liked the Botanical Garden ; she 
 always wanted to go there, and never went. There 
 was also the museum, which she was curious to visit. 
 
 Smiling, happy, he offered to escort her there. 
 It was his house. He would show her the rare speci- 
 mens. Some of them were superb. 
 
 She did not know at all what a bolide was. She 
 recalled that someone had said to her that there 
 were at the museum bones carved by primitive men, 
 and plaques of ivory on which were engraved pic- 
 tures of animals, the races of which were long ago 
 lost. She asked if it was true. Lagrange ceased 
 to smile. He replied indifferently that these objects 
 concerned one of his colleagues. 
 
 "Ah!" said Madame Martin, "these things are 
 not in your showcase." 
 
 She observed that learned men were not curious, 
 and that it is indiscreet to question them on things 
 that are not in their show-cases. It is true that 
 Lagrange had made a scientific fortune with stones 
 fallen from the skies. This led him to study comets. 
 But he was a wise man. For twenty years he had 
 been preoccupied by nothing except dining out. 
 
 When he had left, Countess Martin told Madame 
 Marmet what she expected of her. 
 
 " I am going next week to Fiesole, to Miss Bell's, 
 and you are coming with me." 
 
 The good Madame Marmet, her forehead placid 
 over searching eyes, kept silent for a moment, 
 refused softly, and finally consented. 
 
VII 
 
 The Marseilles express was ready on the quay, 
 where ran the postmen and rolled the carriages in 
 the smoke and the noise, under the livid clearness 
 "which fell from the windows. Before the open 
 doors, travellers in long cloaks came and went. At 
 the end of the gallery, blinded by soot and dust, 
 appeared a small rainbow, not larger than one's 
 hand. Countess Martin and the good Madame 
 Marmet were already in their carriage, under the 
 rack loaded with bags, among newspapers thrown 
 on the cushions. Choulette had not appeared, and 
 Madame Martin expected him no longer. Yet he 
 had promised to be at the station. He had made 
 his arrangements to go, and had received from his 
 publisher the price of the " Blan dices." Paul Yence 
 had brought him, one evening, to Madame Martin's 
 house. He had been sweet, polished, full of witty 
 gayety and of naive joy. She had promised herself 
 much pleasure in travelling with a man of genius, 
 original, picturesquely ugly, amusingly foolish; an 
 old, abandoned child, full of sincere vices and of 
 innocence. The doors closed. She expected him no 
 longer. She should not have counted on his impul- 
 sive and vagabondish mind. At the moment when 
 the engine began to breathe hoarsely, Madame 
 
THE RED LILY 87 
 
 Marmet, who was looking out of the window said 
 quietly : 
 
 " I think that here comes M. Choulette." 
 
 He was walking along the quay, limping on one 
 leg, his hat on the back of his head, his beard 
 unkempt, and dragging an old carpet-bag. He was 
 almost terrible ; and, in spite of his fifty years of 
 age, looked young, so clear and lustrous were his 
 eyes, so much ingenuous audacity had been retained 
 in his yellowed and hoUowed face, so vividly came 
 out of this old man the expression of the eternal 
 adolescence of the poet and artist. "When she saw 
 him, Therese regretted having taken so strange a 
 companion. He walked, throwing a rough glance 
 into every carriage — a glance which, little by little, 
 became wicked and distrustful. But when he recog- 
 nized Madame Martin, he smiled so prettily and said 
 good morning to her in so caressing a voice that 
 nothing was left in him of the old ferocious vaga- 
 bond walking on the quay, nothing except the old 
 carpet-bag, the handles of which were half broken. 
 
 He placed it in the rack with great care, among 
 the elegant bags enveloped with gray cloth, beside 
 which it made a dazzling and sordid spot. One could 
 see then that it was studded with yellow flowers on 
 a blood-colored background. 
 
 Well at ease, he complimented Madame Martin on 
 her cape. 
 
 " Excuse me, ladies," he added, " I was afraid to 
 be late. I went to six o'clock mass at St. Severin, 
 my parish, in the Virgin Chapel, under those pretty, 
 
88 THE RED LILY 
 
 absurd columns that go up to heaven like candy 
 mottoes — Kkeus, poor sinners that we are." 
 
 " Then," said Madam Martin, " you are pious to- 
 day." 
 
 And she asked him if he wore the cordon of the 
 Order which he was founding. He assumed a grave 
 and penitent air. 
 
 "I am afraid, Madame, that M. Paul Vence has 
 told you many absurd lies about me. I have heard 
 that he goes about circulating rumors that my rib- 
 bon is a bell-rope — and of what a bell ! I should be 
 pained if anybody believed so wretched a story. My 
 ribbon, Madame, is a symbolical ribbon. It is rep- 
 resented by a simple thread, which one wears under 
 one's clothes after a pauper has touched it, as a sign 
 that poverty is holy, and that it will save the world. 
 There is nothing good except in poverty ; and since 
 I have received the price of the ' Blandices, ' I- feel 
 that I am unjust and harsh. It is a good thing that 
 I have placed in my bag several of these mystic rib- 
 bons." 
 
 And, pointing to the horrible carpet-bag : 
 
 " I have also placed in it a host which a bad priest 
 gave to me, the works of M. de Maistre, shirts, and 
 several other things." 
 
 Madame Martin lifted her eyes, a little ill at ease. 
 But the good Madame Marmet retained her habitual 
 placidity. 
 
 As the train rolled through the homely scenes of 
 the outskirts, on that black fringe which borders the 
 city so sadly, Choulette took from his pocket an old 
 
THE RED LILY 89 
 
 book which he began to fumble. The scribe, hidden 
 under the vagabond, revealed himself. Choulette, 
 without wishing to appear to be careful of his 
 papers, was very orderly about them. He assured 
 himself that he had not lost the pieces of paper on 
 which he noted at the coffee house his ideas for 
 poems, nor the dozen of flattering letters which, 
 soiled and spotted, he carried with him constantly, 
 to read them to his newly-made companions at night 
 under the gas-lamps. Yerifying the fact that 
 nothing was missing, he took from the book a letter 
 folded in an open envelope. He waved it for a while; 
 with an air of mysterious impudence, then handed 
 it to Countess Martin. It was a letter of introduc- 
 tion from the Marquise de Eieu to a Princess of the 
 house of France, a near relative of the Count de 
 Ohambord, who, old and a widow, lived in retire- 
 ment at the doors of Florence. Having enjoyed 
 the effect which he expected to produce, he said that 
 he would perhaps see that Princess ; that she was a 
 good person, and pious. 
 
 " A truly great lady," he added, " and who does 
 not show her magnificence in gowns and hats. She 
 wears her shirts for six weeks, and sometimes longer. 
 The gentlemen of her train have seen her wear white 
 stockings, very dirty, which fell on her heels. The 
 virtues of the great queens of Spain are revived in 
 her. Oh, these dirty stockings, what real glory 
 there is in them! " 
 
 He took the letter and put it back in his book. 
 Then, arming himself with a horn-handled knife, 
 
90 THE RED LILY 
 
 he began, with its point, to finish a figure sketched 
 in the handle of his stick. He complimented him- 
 self on it: 
 
 " I am skilful in all the arts of beggars and vaga- 
 bonds. I know how to open locks with a nail, and 
 how to carve wood with a bad knife." 
 
 The head began to appear. It was the thin head 
 of a woman weeping. 
 
 Choulette wished to express in it human misery, 
 not simple and touching, such as men of other times 
 may have felt it in a world of mingled harshness 
 and kindness ; but hideous, and reflecting the state 
 of perfect ugliness created by the free-thinking 
 bourgeois and the military patriots of the French 
 Kevolutioh. According to him the present regime 
 was only hypocrisy and brutality. 
 
 "Their acts are a hideous invention of modern 
 times. It dates from the seventeenth century. 
 Eefore that time there were only guard houses where 
 the soldiers played cards and told tales. Louis XIY 
 was a precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has at- 
 tained its plenitude since the monstrous institution of 
 the obligatory enlistment. The shame of emperors 
 and of republics is to have made it an obligation 
 for men to kill. In the ages called barbarous, cities 
 and princes entrusted their defence to mercenaries, 
 who fought prudently. In a great battle there were 
 only five or six men killed. And when the knights 
 went to the wars, at least they were not forced to 
 do it ; they died for their pleasure. They were good 
 for nothing else. Nobody in the time of Saint Louis 
 
THE EED LILY 91 
 
 would have thought of sending to battle a man of 
 learning. And the laborer was not torn from the 
 soil to be killed. Nowadays it is a duty for a poor 
 peasant to be a soldier. He is exiled from the 
 house, the roof of which smokes in the silence of 
 night ; from the fat prairies where the oxen graze ; 
 from the fields; from the paternal woods; he is 
 taught regularly how to kill men; he is threatened, 
 he is insulted, he is put in prison ; he is told that it 
 is an honor ; and, if he does not care for that sort of 
 honor, he is fusHaded. He obeys because he is sub- 
 ject to fright, and is of all domestic animals the 
 gentlest and the most docile. We are warlike in 
 France, and we are citizens. Another reason to be 
 proud, this being a citizen ! For the poor it consists 
 in sustaining and preserving the wealthy in their 
 power and their laziness. The poor must work for 
 this, in presence of the majestic quality of the law 
 which prohibits the wealthy as well as the poor from 
 sleeping under the bridges, from begging in the 
 streets, and from stealing bread. That is one of the 
 good effects of the Revolution. As this Eevolution 
 was made by fools and idiots for the benefit of those 
 who acquired national lands, and resulted in nothing 
 but making the fortune of crafty peasants and finan- 
 ciering bourgeois, the Eevolution elevated, under the 
 name of equality, the empire of wealth. It has 
 betrayed France into the hands of the men of 
 wealth. They are masters and lords. The apparent 
 government, composed of poor devils, piteous and 
 calamitous, is in the pay of the financiers. For one 
 
92 THE EED LILY 
 
 hundred years, in this poisoned country, whoever 
 has loved the poor has been a traitor to society. 
 One is a dangerous man when one says that there 
 are wretched people. There are laws against indig- 
 nation and pity, and what I say here could not go 
 into print." 
 
 Choulette became excited and waved his knife, 
 while under the cold sun passed fields of brown 
 earth, violet bouquets of trees despoiled by winter, 
 and curtains of poplars by the side of silvery rivers. 
 
 He looked with tenderness at the figure carved 
 on his stick. 
 
 ' ' Here you are, ' ' he said, ' ' poor humanity, 'thin and 
 weeping, stupid with shame and misery, as you were 
 made by your masters — soldiers and men of wealth. " 
 
 The good Madame Marmet, whose nephew was a 
 captain in the artillery, was shocked by the violence 
 with which Choulette attacked the army. Madame 
 Martin saw in this only an amusing fantasy. 
 Choulette' s ideas did not frighten her. She was 
 afraid of nothing. But she thought they were a 
 little absurd. She did not think that the past had 
 ever been better than the present. 
 
 "I believe, M. Choulette, that men were always 
 as they are to-day, selfish, avaricious, and pitiless. 
 I believe that laws and manners were always harsh 
 and cruel to the unfortunate." 
 
 Between La Eoche and Dijon they took breakfast 
 in the restaurant car, and left Choulette in it, alone 
 with his pipe, his glass of benedictine, and his irri- 
 tated mind. 
 
THE RED LILY 9S 
 
 In the carriage, Madame Marmet talked -with 
 peaceful tenderness of the husband whom she had 
 lost. He had married her for love ; he had written 
 admirable verses to her, which she had kept, and 
 never showed to anyone. He was quick and very- 
 gay. One would not have thought it who saw him 
 later, tired by work and weakened by illness. He 
 studied until the last moment. Two hours before he 
 died he was trying to read again. He was affec- 
 tionate and kind. Even in suffering he retained all 
 his sweetness. Madame Martin said to her : 
 
 " You have had long years of happiness; you have 
 kept the reminiscence of them; that is a share of 
 happiness in this world." 
 
 But good Madame Marmet sighed; a cloud passed 
 over her quiet forehead. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "Louis was the best of men 
 and the best of .husbands. Yet he made me very 
 miserable. He had only one fault, but I suffered 
 from it cruelly. He was jealous. Good, kind, ten- 
 der, and generous as he was, this horrible passion 
 made him unjust, ironical, and violent. I can assure 
 you that my behavior gave not the least cause for 
 suspicion. I was not a coquette. But I was young, 
 fresh; I passed for beautiful. That was enough. 
 He would not let me go out alone, and would not 
 let me receive calls in his absence. "Whenever we 
 went to a reception, I trembled in advance with the 
 fear of the scene which he would make in the car- 
 riage." 
 
 And the good Madame Marmet added, with a sigh : 
 
94 THE EED LILT 
 
 "It is true that I liked to dance. But I had to 
 renounce going to balls; it made him suffer too 
 much." 
 
 Countess Martin expressed astonishment. She had 
 always imagined Marmet as an old man, timid, and 
 absorbed by his thoughts ; a little ridiculous ; between 
 his wife, fat, white, and so sweet, and the skeleton 
 wearing a helmet of bronze and gold. Eut the 
 excellent widow confided to her that, at fifty-five 
 years of age, when she was fifty -three, Louis was 
 just as jealous as the first day of their marriage. 
 
 And Therese thought that Eobert had never tor- 
 mented her with his jealousy. Was it on his part a 
 proof of tact and good taste, a mark of confidence, or 
 was it that he did not love her enough to make her 
 suffer ? She did not know, and she did not have the 
 heart to try to know. She would have to look 
 through drawers of her mind, which she preferred 
 not to open. 
 
 She murmured carelessly: 
 
 "We want to be loved, and when we are loved 
 we are tormented or bothered," 
 
 The day was finished in reading and thinking. 
 Choulette did not reappear. Night covered little by 
 little with its gray ashes the mulberry trees of the 
 Dauphine. Madame Marmet went to sleep peace- 
 fully, resting on herself as on a mass of pillows. 
 Therese looked at her and thought : 
 
 "It is true that she is happy, since she likes to 
 remember." 
 
 The sadness of night penetrated her heart. And 
 
THE RED LILY 96 
 
 when the moon rose on the fields of olive trees, 
 seeing the soft lines of plains and of hills pass, 
 Therese, in this landscape wherein everything spoke 
 of peace and oblivion, and nothing spoke of her, 
 regretted the Seine, the triumphal arch with its rays 
 of avenues, and the alleys of the park where, at 
 least, the trees and the stones knew her. 
 
 Suddenly Choulette threw himself into the car- 
 riage. Armed with his knotty stick, his face and 
 head enveloped by red wool and ferocious skins, he 
 almost frightened her. 'It was what he wished to 
 do. His violent attitudes and his savage dress were 
 studied. Incessantly preoccupied by puerile effects, 
 it pleased him to seem frightful. He was glad to 
 inspire the courage that he felt. A moment before, 
 as he was smoking his pipe, he had felt, while seeing 
 the moon run in the clouds, one of those childish 
 frights that tormented his light mind. He had come 
 near the countess to be reassured. 
 
 " Aries," he said. " Do you know Aries? It is 
 pure beauty. I have seen, in the cloister, doves rest 
 on the shoulders of statues, and I have seen the 
 little gray lizards warm themselves in the sun on 
 the tombs. The tombs are now in two rows on the 
 road which leads to the church. They are formed 
 like cisterns, and serve as beds for the wretched at 
 night. One night, when I was walking among 
 them, I met a good old woman who was placing 
 dried herbs in the tomb of an antique virgin who had 
 died on her wedding-day. We said good-night to 
 her. She replied: 'May God hear you; but fate 
 
96 THE BED LILT 
 
 wills that this cistern is open on the side of the mis- 
 tral. If it were open on the other side, I would be 
 lying like Queen Jeanne.' " 
 
 Therese made no answer. She was dozing. And 
 Choulette shivered in the cold of the night, in the 
 fear of death. 
 
YIII 
 
 In her English, cart, which she drove herself, 
 Miss Bell had brought from the station of Florence, 
 through the hills, Countess Martin-Belleme and 
 Madame Marmet to her house at Fiesole, which, 
 pink, and crowned with a band of balustrades, over- 
 looked the incomparable city. The chambermaid 
 followed with the luggage. Choulette, lodged, by 
 Miss Bell's attention, in a sacristan widow's house, 
 in the shadow of the cathedral of Fiesole, was not 
 expected until dinner. Homely and gentle, with 
 short hair, wearing a waistcoat, a man's shirt on a 
 boy's chest, almost graceful, with small hips, the 
 poetess was doing to her French friends the honors 
 of the house, which reflected the ardent delicacy of 
 her taste. On the walls of the parlor were Yirgins 
 pale, with long hands, reigning peacefully among 
 angels, patriarchs, and saints in beautiful gilded 
 architecture. On a pedestal was standing a Mag- 
 dalena, clothed in her hair, frightful with thinness 
 and old age, some beggar of the road to Pistoia, 
 burned by the suns and the snows, whom some 
 unknown precursor of Donatello had moulded. And 
 everywhere the arms of Miss Bell — beUs and cym- 
 bals. The biggest lifted their bronze clappers at the 
 angles of the room; others formed a chain at the 
 7 
 
98 THE RED LILY 
 
 foot of the walls. Smaller ones ran along the cor- 
 nices. There were beUs on the stove, on the safes, 
 and on the chairs. The shelves were fuU of silver 
 and golden bells. Big bronze beUs marked with 
 the Florentine lily; bells of the Eenaissance, repre- 
 senting a lady wearing a white gown ; bells of the 
 deceased, decorated with tears and bones ; bells cov- 
 ered with symbolical animals and leaves, which rang 
 in the churches of the time of Saint Louis ; table bells 
 of the seventeenth century, having a statuette for a 
 handle; flat and clear bells of the cows of the Eutli 
 Valley; Hindu beUs; Chinese bells formed hke 
 cylinders — they had come from all countries and all 
 times, at the magic call of little Miss Bell. 
 
 "You look at my speaking arms," she said to 
 Madame Martin. " I think that all these Misses 
 Bell are pleased to be here, and I should not be 
 astonished if some day they all began to sing 
 together. Bat you must not admire them all equally. 
 Eeserve your purest and most fervent praise for this 
 one." 
 
 And striking with her finger a dark and bare 
 bell which gave a faint sound : 
 
 "This one," she said, "is a holy village bell of 
 the fifth century. 'She is a spiritual daughter of 
 Saint Paulin de Nole, who was the first to make 
 the sky sing over our heads. The metal is rare. 
 Soon I will show to you a gentle Florentine, the 
 queen of beUs. She is coming. But I annoy you, 
 Darling, with my babble. And I annoy, too, the 
 good Madame Marmet. It is wrong. ' ' 
 
THE RED LILY 99 
 
 She escorted them to their rooms. 
 
 An hour later, Madame Martin, rested, fresh, in 
 a gown of foulard and laces, went on the terrace 
 where Miss Bell was waiting for her. The humid 
 air, made lukewarm by a sun still feeble and already 
 generous, breathed the anxious sweetness of spring. 
 Therese, resting on the balustrade, bathed her eyes 
 in the light. At her feet, the cypress trees raised 
 their black distaffs, and the olive trees were like 
 sheep on the hills. In the valley, Florence extended 
 its domes, its towers, and the multitudes of its red 
 roofs, through which the Arno showed its undulat- 
 ing line. Beyond, the hills were blue. 
 
 She tried to recognize the Boboli gardens, where 
 she had walked on her first visit ; the Cascine, which 
 she did not like; the Pitti Palace. Then the charm- 
 ing infinity of the sky attracted her. She looked 
 at the forms in the clouds. 
 
 After a long silence, Yivian Bell extended her hand 
 toward the horizon. 
 
 "Darling, I cannot teU, I do not know how to 
 teU. But look. Darling, look again. What you see 
 there is unique in the world. Nature is nowhere 
 else as subtle, elegant, and fine. The god who 
 made the hills of Florence was an artist. Oh, he 
 was a jeweller, an engraver, a sculptor, a bronze 
 founder, and a painter; he was a Florentine. He 
 did nothing else in the world, Darling. The rest 
 was made by a hand less delicate, with work less 
 perfect. How can you think that this violet hiU of 
 San Miniato, so firm and so pure in relief, was made 
 
100 THE RED LILY 
 
 by the author of Mont Blanc ? It is not possible. 
 This landscape, Darling, has the beauty of an 
 antique medal and of a precious painting. It is a 
 perfect and measured work of art. And here is 
 another thing that I do not know how to teU, that 
 I do not know how to understand, and which is a 
 real thing. In this country I feel — and you will feel 
 as I do. Darling — half alive and half dead ; in a con- 
 dition which is very noble, very sad, and very sweet. 
 Look, look again ; you will realize the melancholy of 
 those hills that surround Florence, and see a deli- 
 cious sadness ascend from the land of the dead." 
 
 The sun was low over the horizon. The points of 
 peaks went out one by one, while the clouds inflamed 
 the sky. Madame Marmet sneezed. 
 
 Miss Bell sent for some shawls, and warned the 
 French women that the evenings were fresh and 
 malignant. 
 
 And suddenly: 
 
 "Darling, you know M. Jacques Dechartre? 
 Well, he wrote to me that he would be at Florence 
 next week. I am glad M. Jacques Dechartre is to 
 meet you in our city. He will accompany us to the 
 churches and to the museums, and he will be a good 
 guide. He understands beautiful things, because he 
 loves them. And he has an exquisite talent as a 
 sculptor. His figures in medallions are admired 
 more in England than in France. Oh, I am so glad 
 M. Jacques Dechartre and you are to meet at Flor- 
 ence, Darling! " 
 
IX 
 
 The next day, as they were traversing the square 
 where are planted, in imitation of antique surfaces, 
 two marble pillars, Madame Marmet said to Coun- 
 tess Martin; 
 
 " I think that here is M. Choulette." 
 
 Seated in a shoemaker's shop, his pipe in his hand, 
 Choulette was making rhythmic gestures, and 
 seemed to be reciting verses. The Florentine cob- 
 bler listened with a kind smile. He was a little, 
 bald man, and represented one of the types familiar 
 to Flemish painters. On a table, among the wooden 
 lasts, the nails, the leather, and the wax, a basilick 
 plant displayed its green and round head. A spar- 
 row, lacking a leg, which had been replaced by a 
 match, played gently on the old man's shoulder and 
 head. 
 
 Madame Martin, amused by this spectacle, called 
 Choulette from the threshold. He was softly pro- 
 nouncing singing words, and she asked him why he 
 had not gone with her to visit the Spanish chapel. 
 
 He arose and replied : 
 
 "Madame, you are preoccupied by vain images; 
 but I reside in hfe and in truth." 
 
 He shook the cobbler's hand and followed the 
 two ladies. 
 
102 THE KED LILY 
 
 "While going to church," he said, "I saw this 
 old man, who, bending over his work, and pressing 
 a last between his knees as in a vise, was sewing 
 coarse shoes. I felt that he was simple and kind. 
 I said to him, in Italian: ' My father, will you drrak 
 with me a glass of chianti ? ' He consented. He went 
 for a flagon and some glasses, and I kept the shop." 
 
 And Choulette pointed to two glasses and a bottle 
 placed on a stove. 
 
 " "When he came back we drank together; I said 
 obscure and kind things to him, and I charmed him 
 by the sweetness of sounds. I wiU go again to his 
 shop ; I will learn from him how to make shoes, and 
 how to live without desire. After which, I shall 
 not be sad again. For desire and idleness alone 
 make us sad." 
 
 Countess Martin smiled. 
 
 "M. Choulette, I desire nothing, and, neverthe- 
 less, I am not joyful. Must I make shoes, too ? ' ' 
 
 Choulette replied gravely: 
 
 " It is not yet time for that." 
 
 When they reached the gardens of the Oricellari, 
 Madame Marmet let herself fall on a bench. She 
 had examined at Santa Maria-lTovella the frescoes of 
 Ghirlandajo, the stalls of the choir, the Virgin of 
 Cimabue, the paintings in the cloister. She had 
 done this carefully, in memory of her husband, who 
 had greatly liked Italian art. She was tired. 
 Choulette sat by her and said: 
 
 " Madame, could you teU me if it is true that the 
 Pope's gowns are made by Worth ? " 
 
THE RED LILY 103 
 
 Madame Marmet thought not. Nevertheless, 
 Choulette had heard people say this in cafes. Ma- 
 dame Marmet was astonished that Choulette, a Cath- 
 olic and a Socialist, should speak so disrespectfully 
 of a pope friendly to the republic. But he did not 
 like Leo XIII. 
 
 "The wisdom of princes is shortsighted," he 
 said; " the salvation of the Church must come from 
 the Italian republic, as Leo XIII believes and wishes ; 
 but the Church wiU not be saved in the manner 
 which this pious Machiavel thinks. The revolution 
 will make the Pope lose his last cent, with the rest 
 of his patrimony. And it will be salvation. The 
 Pope, destitute and poor, wiU become powerful. He 
 will agitate the world. "We shall see £i,gain Peter, 
 Lin, Clet, Anaclet, and Clement; the humble, the 
 ignorant ; the saints of the first days will change the 
 face of the earth. If to-morrow, in the chair of 
 Peter, came to sit a real bishop, a real . Christian, I 
 would go to him, and I would say to him : ' Do not 
 be an old man buried alive in a golden tomb ; quit 
 your noble guards and your cardinals; quit your 
 court and its similacrums of power. Take my arm 
 and come with me to beg for your bread among the 
 nations. Covered with rags, poor, ill, dying, go 
 on the highways, showing in yourself the image of 
 Jesus. Say, " I am begging my bread for the con- 
 demnation of the wealthy." Go into the cities, and 
 shout from door to door, with sublime stupidity, 
 "Be humble, be gentle, be poor! " Announce to 
 the black cities, to the dens, and to the barracks. 
 
104 THE BED LILY 
 
 peace and charity. You will be disdained; the mob 
 will throw stones at you. Policemen will drag you 
 into prison. Tou shall be for the humble as for the 
 powerful, for the poor as for the rich, a subject of 
 laughter, an object of disgust and of pity. Your 
 priests will dethrone you, and elevate against you 
 an anti-pope, or will say that you are crazy. And 
 it is necessary that they should tell the truth; it is 
 necessary that you should be crazy ; the crazy have 
 saved the world. Men wiU give to you the crown 
 of thorns and the reed sceptre, and they will spit 
 in your face, and it is by that sign that you will 
 appear as Christ and true king; and it is by such 
 means that you will establish Christian socialism, 
 which is the kingdom of God on earth.' " 
 
 Having spoken in this way, Choulette lighted one 
 of those long and tortuous Italian cigars which are 
 traversed by a straw. He drew from it several 
 puffs of iufectious vapor, then he continued tran- 
 quilly: 
 
 " And it would be practical. You may refuse to 
 acknowledge any quality in me except my clear 
 view of situations. Ah, Madame Marmet, you 
 shall never know how true it is that the great 
 works of this world were always achieved by crazy 
 people. Do you think, Madame Martin, that if 
 Saint Francis of Assisi had been reasonable, he 
 would have thrown on the earth, for the refresh- 
 ment of peoples, the vivid waters of charity and 
 all the perfumes of love? " 
 
 " I do not know," replied Madame Martin; " but 
 
THE HED LILY 106 
 
 reasonable people have always seemed to me to be 
 bores. I can say this to you, M. Choulette. ' ' 
 
 They returned to Fiesole by the steam tramway 
 which goes up the hill. The rain fell. Madame 
 Marmet went to sleep and Choulette complained. 
 AU his iUs came to attack him at once : the humid- 
 ity in the air gave him a pain in the knee, and he 
 could not bend his leg ; his carpet-bag, lost the day 
 before in the trip from the station to Fiesole, had 
 not been found, and it was an irreparable disaster; 
 a Parisian review had just published one of his 
 poems, with typographical errors as glaring as 
 Aphrodite's shell. 
 
 He accused men and things with being hostile to 
 him. He became puerile, absurd, odious. Madame 
 Martin, whom Choulette and the rain saddened, 
 thought the trip would never end. "When she 
 reached the house, in the parlor Miss Bell, in a 
 handwriting formed after the Aldine italics, was 
 copying with gold ink on a leaf of parchment 
 verses which she had composed in the night. At 
 her friend's coming she raised her little head, 
 homely, illuminated and burned by splendid eyes. 
 
 "Darling, permit me to introduce to you Prince 
 Albertinelli. ' ' 
 
 The Prince was displaying his young, godlike 
 beauty, that his beard, hard and black, intensified. 
 He bowed. 
 
 "Madame, you would make one love France if 
 that sentiment were not already in our hearts." 
 
 The Countess and Choulette asked Miss Bell to 
 
106 THE RED LILY 
 
 read to them the verses she was "writing. She 
 excused herself from reciting her uncertain cadence 
 to the French poet, whom she liked best after Fran- 
 gois ViUon. Then she recited in her pretty, hiss- 
 ing, birdlike voice. 
 
 " That is very pretty," said Choulette, " and bears 
 the mark of an Italy softly veiled by the mists of 
 Thule." 
 
 ' ' Yes, ' ' said Countess Martin, ' ' that is pretty. But 
 why, dear "Vivian, did your two beautiful innocents 
 wish to die? " 
 
 "'Oh, Darling, because they felt as happy as pos- 
 sible, and desired nothing more. It was discourag- 
 ing. Darling, discouraging. How is it that you do 
 not understand that? " 
 
 "And do you think that if we live the reason is 
 that we hope? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Darling. "We live in the hope of what 
 to-morrow, to-morrow, king of the land of the 
 fairies, will bring in his black mantle studded with 
 stars, flowers, and tears. Oh, bright King, To- 
 morrow ! " 
 
They had dressed for dinner. In the parlor Miss 
 Bell was drawing monsters in imitation of Leonard. 
 She created them, to know what they would say 
 afterward, sure that they would speak and express 
 in odd rhythms rare ideas. She would listen to 
 them. It was in this way that most often she found 
 her inspiration. 
 
 Prince Albertinelli strummed on the piano the 
 Sicilian " O Lola! " His soft fingers hardly touched 
 the keys. 
 
 Choulette, even harsher than was his habit, asked 
 for thread and needles that he might mend his 
 clothes. He grumbled because he had lost a 
 needle-case which he had carried for thirty years in 
 his pocket, and which was dear to him for the sweet- 
 ness of the reminiscences and the strength of the 
 good advice which he had received from it. He 
 thought he had lost it in a profane hall of the 
 Pitti Palace ; he blamed for this loss the Medicis and 
 all the Italian painters. 
 
 Looking at Miss Bell with an evil eye: 
 
 " I compose verses while mending my clothes. I 
 like to work with my hands. I sing songs to myself 
 while sweeping my room; that is why my songs 
 have gone to the hearts of men, like the old songs 
 
108 THE RED LILY 
 
 of the farmers and artisans, which, are even more 
 beautiful than mine, but not more natural. I have 
 pride enough not to want any other servant than 
 myself. The sacristan's widow wanted to repair my 
 clothes. I would not permit her to do it. It is 
 wrong to make others do servilely for us works 
 which we can do ourselves with noble pride." 
 
 The Prince was nonchalantly playing his noncha- 
 lant music. Therese, who for eight days had been 
 running to churches and museums in the company 
 of Madame Marmet, was thinking of the annoyance 
 which her companion caused her by discovering 
 incessantly in the faces of the old painters resem- 
 blances to persons she knew. In the morning, at 
 the Eicardi Palace, on the frescoes of GozzoU, she 
 had recognized M. Garain, M. Lagrange, M. SchmoU, 
 Princess Seniavine as a page, and M. Penan on 
 horseback. She was terrified herself at finding M. 
 Penan everywhere. She led all her ideas back to 
 her little circle of Academicians and fashionable 
 people, by an easy turn, which irritated her friend. 
 She recalled in her soft voice the public meetings at 
 the Institute, the lectures at the Sorbonne, the even- 
 ing receptions where shone the mundane and spiritu- 
 alist philosophers. As for the women, they were 
 all charming and irreproachable. She dined with 
 all of them. And Therese thought: "She is too 
 prudent. She bothers me. " And she thought of 
 leaving her at Fiesole and visiting the churches 
 alone. Employing a word that Le M^nil had taught 
 her, she said to herself : 
 
THE EED LILY 109 
 
 " I will plant Madame Marmet." 
 
 A lithe old man came into the parlor. His 
 waxed mustache and his white goatee made him look 
 like an old soldier; but his glance betrayed, under 
 his glasses, the fine softness of eyes worn by science 
 and voluptuousness. He was a Florentine, a friend 
 of Miss Bell and of the Prince, Professor Arrighi, 
 formerly adored by women, and now celebrated in 
 Tuscany for his studies of agriculture. 
 
 He pleased Countess Martin at once. She ques- 
 tioned him on his methods, and on the results which 
 he obtained from them. 
 
 He worked with prudent energy. 
 
 "The earth," he said, "is like women. The 
 earth does not wish one to be either timid or brutal. " 
 
 The Ave Maria rang in all the campaniles. It 
 made of the sky an immense instrument of religious 
 music. 
 
 " Darling," said Miss Bell, " do you observe that 
 the air of Florence is made sonorous and silvery at 
 night by the sound of the bells ? ' ' 
 
 "It is singular," said Choulette, "we have the 
 air of people who are waiting for something." 
 
 Vivian Bell replied that they were waiting for M. 
 Dechartre. He was a little late; she feared he had 
 missed the train. 
 
 Choulette went near Madame Marmet, and 
 gravely : 
 
 " Madame Marmet, is it possible for you to look 
 at a door — a simple, painted, wooden door like yours, 
 I suppose, or like mine, or like this one, or like any 
 
110 THE RED LILY 
 
 other — without being terror-stricken at the thought 
 of the visitor who might, at any moment, come in ? 
 The door of one's room, Madame Marmet, opens on 
 the infinite. Did you ever think of this? Does 
 one ever know the true name of the man or woman, 
 who, under a human guise, with a known face, in 
 ordinary clothes, comes into one's house? " 
 
 When he was closeted in his room he could not 
 look at the door without feeling his hair stand on 
 end. 
 
 But Madame Marmet saw the doors of her parlor 
 open without fear. She knew the name of every- 
 body who came to see her — charming persons. 
 
 Choulette looked at her sadly, and, shaking his 
 head: 
 
 ' ' Madame Marmet, Madame Marmet, those whom 
 you call by their terrestrial names have other names 
 which you do not know, and which are their real 
 names." 
 
 Madame Martin asked Choulette if he thought 
 that misfortune needed to cross the threshold in 
 order to enter people's houses. 
 
 " Misfortune is ingenious and subtle. It comes by 
 the window, it goes through walls. It does not 
 always show itself ; it is always there. The poor 
 doors are innocent of the coming of that bad vis- 
 itor." 
 
 Choulette warned Madame Martin severely that 
 she should not call misfortune a bad visitor. 
 
 " Misfortune is our greatest master and our best 
 friend. Misfortune teaches us the meaning of life. 
 
THE RED LILY 111 
 
 Madame, when you shall suffer, you shall know 
 what you must know ; you shall believe what you 
 must believe ; you shall do what you must do ; you 
 shall be what you must be. And you shall have 
 joy, which pleasure expels. Joy is timid, and does 
 not find pleasure in festivals." 
 
 Prince Albertinelli said that Miss BeU and her 
 French friends did not need to be unfortunate in 
 order to be perfect, and that the doctrine of perfec- 
 tion reached by suffering was a barbarous cruelty, 
 held in horror under the beautiful sky of Italy. 
 Then, in the languor of the conversation, he pru- 
 dently sought again the phrases of the graceful and 
 banal Sicilian air, fearing to slip into an air of 
 " Trovatore," which had the same manner. 
 
 Yivian Bell questioned the monsters she had 
 created, and complained of their absurd replies. 
 
 "At this moment," she said, "I would like to 
 hear only figures of tapestries which should say pale 
 things, ancient and precious as themselves." 
 
 And the handsome Prince, carried away by the 
 flood of melody, sang. His voice displayed itself 
 like a peacock's plumage, and died in spasms of ohs 
 and ahs. 
 
 The good Madame Marmet, her eyes fixed on the 
 door, said: 
 
 " I think that here is M. Dechartre." 
 
 He came in, animated, with joy expressed on his 
 grave face. 
 
 Miss BeU welcomed him with birdlike cries. 
 
 "M. Dechartre, we were impatient to see you. 
 
112 THE BED LILT 
 
 M. Choulette was talking evil of doors— yes, of 
 doors of houses; and he was saying, also, that mis- 
 fortune is a very obliging old gentleman. You have 
 lost all these beautiful things. You have made us 
 wait very long, M. Dechartre. "Why? " 
 
 He apologized: he had taken only the time to go 
 to his hotel and change his dress. He had not even 
 gone to bow to his old friend the bronze San Marco, 
 so touching: in his niche on the San Michele waU. 
 He praised the poetess and saluted Countess Martin 
 with joy hardly concealed. 
 
 " Before quitting Paris I went to your house, 
 where I was told you had gone to wait for spring at 
 Fiesole, at Miss Bell's. I. then had the hope of find- 
 ing you in this country, which I love now more than 
 ever." 
 
 She asked him if he had gone to Yenice, and if 
 he had seen again at Kavenna the empresses wear- 
 ing aureolas, and the dazzling phantoms. 
 
 No, he had not stopped anywhere. 
 
 She said nothing. Her look remained fixed on 
 the corner of the wall, on the Saint Paulin bell. 
 
 He said to her: 
 
 " You are looking at the Nolette." 
 
 Vivian Bell laid aside her papers and her pencils. 
 
 "You shall soon see a marvel, M. Dechartre. I 
 have found the queen of small beUs. I found it at 
 Kimini, in an old building in ruins, which is used as 
 a warehouse. I bought it and packed it myself. I 
 am waiting for it. You shall see. It bears a Christ 
 on a cross, between the Virgin and St. John, the 
 
THE RED LILY 113 
 
 date of 1400, and the arras of Malatesta — M. 
 Dechartre, you are not listening enough. Listen to 
 me attentively. In 1400 Lorenzo Ghiberti, fleeing 
 from war and the plague, took refuge at Eimini, at 
 Paola Malatesta's house. It was he who modelled 
 the figures of my beU. And you shall see here, 
 next week, Ghiberti's work." 
 
 The servant announced that dinner was served. 
 
 Miss BeU apologized for serving to them Italian 
 dishes. Her cook was a poet of Fiesole. 
 
 At table, before the fiasooni enveloped with corn 
 straw, they talked of the fifteenth century, which 
 they loved. Prince Albertinelli praised the artists 
 of that epoch for their universality, for the fervent 
 love which they gave to their art, and for the 
 genius which devoured them. He talked with 
 emphasis, in a caressing voice. 
 
 Dechartre admired them. But he admired them 
 in another way. 
 
 "To praise in a becoming manner," he said, 
 "those men, who worked so cordially, I wish the 
 praise were modest and precise. They should be 
 placed in their workshops, in the shops where they 
 worked as artisans. It is there that one may admire 
 their simplicity and their genius. They were igno- 
 rant and rude. They had read little and seen little. 
 The hills which surround Florence closed the hori- 
 zon of their eyes and of their minds. They knew 
 only their city, the Holy Scriptures, and some frag- 
 ments of antique sculptures, studied and caressed 
 lovingly." 
 8 
 
114 THE BED LILT 
 
 " You are right," said Professor Arrighi. " They 
 had no other anxiety than to use the best profess- 
 ors. The tension of their minds was on preparing 
 the varnish and mixing the colors. The one who 
 first thought of pasting a canvas on a panel, in order 
 that the painting should not be broken when the 
 wood was split, passed for a marvellous man. Every 
 master had his secret formula." 
 
 "Happy time," said Dechartre, "when nobody 
 suspected that originality for which we are so avidly 
 seeking to-day. The apprentice tried to work like 
 the master. He had no other ambition than to 
 resemble him, and it was without trying to be, that 
 he was different from the others. They worked not 
 for glory, but to live." 
 
 " They were right," said Choulette. "Nothing 
 is better than to work for a living." 
 
 ' ' The desire to attain fame, ' ' continued Dechartre, 
 " did not trouble them. As they did not know the 
 past, they did not conceive the future; and their 
 dream did not go beyond their lives. They exercised 
 a powerful will in working well. Being simple, 
 they made few mistakes, and saw the truth which 
 intelligence conceals from us. ' ' 
 
 Choulette began to relate to Madame Marmet the 
 incidents of a call which he had made during the 
 day on the Princess of the house of France to whom 
 the Marquise de Pieu had given him a letter of 
 introduction. He liked to impress upon people the 
 fact that he, the bohemian and vagabond, had been 
 received by that royal Princess, at whose house 
 
THE RED LILY 115 
 
 neither Miss Bell nor Countess Martin would have 
 been admitted, and whom Prince AlbertineUi prided 
 himself on having met one day at some ceremony. 
 
 "She devotes herself," said the Prince, "to the 
 practices of a minute piety." 
 
 ' ' She is admirable for her nobility and her sim- 
 plicity," said Choulette. "In her house, sur- 
 rounded by her gentlemen and her ladies, she causes 
 the most rigorous etiquette to be observed, in order 
 that her grandeur might be a penance, and every 
 morning she scrubs the pavement of the church. It 
 is a village church, where the chickens roam, while 
 the curi plays briscola with the sacristan." 
 
 And Choulette, bending over the table, imitated, 
 with his napkin, a servant scrubbing ; then, raising 
 his head, he said gravely: 
 
 " After a wait in consecutive parlors, I was per- 
 mitted to kiss her hand." 
 
 And he stopped. 
 
 Madame Martin asked impatiently : 
 
 "What did she say to you, that Princess admi- 
 rable for her nobility and her simplicity ? " 
 
 " She said to me: ' Have you visited Florence? I 
 am told that recently new and handsome stores have 
 been opened which are lighted at night. ' She said 
 also : ' We have a good druggist here. The Aus- 
 trian druggists are not better. He placed on my 
 leg, six months ago, a porous plaster which has not 
 yet fallen." Such are the words that Marie Therese 
 deigned to address to me. Oh, simple grandeur ! oh. 
 Christian virtue ! oh, daughter of St. Louis ! oh, mar- 
 
116 THE RED LILY 
 
 vellous echo of your voice, holy Elizabeth of Hun- 
 gary! " 
 
 Madame Martin smiled. She thought that Chou- 
 lette was mocking. But he said no, indignantly, 
 and Miss Bell said that Madame Martin was wrong. 
 It was a fault of the French, she said, to think that 
 people were always jesting. 
 
 Then they reverted to the ideas of art, which in 
 that country are breathed with the air. 
 
 "As for me," said Countess Martin, "I am not 
 learned enough to admire Giotto and his school. 
 "What strikes me is the sensuality of that art of the 
 fifteenth century which is said to be Christian. I 
 have seen piety and purity only in the images of 
 Fra Angelico, although they are very pretty. The 
 rest, those figures of Virgins and angels, are volup- 
 tuous, caressing, and at times perversely ingenuous. 
 What is there religious in those young Magian 
 kings, handsome as women ; in that Saint Sebastian, 
 brilliant with youth, who is the dolorous Bacchus of 
 Christianity?" 
 
 Dechartre replied that he thought as she did, and 
 that they must be right, she and he; since Savo- 
 narola thought as they did, and, finding no piety in 
 any work of art, wanted to burn them aU. 
 
 " There were at Florence, in the time of the superb 
 Manfred, half a Mussulman, men who were said to 
 be of the sect of Epicurus, and sought for arguments 
 against the existence of God. Guido Cavalcanti 
 disdained the ignorant folks who believed in the 
 immortality of the soul. The following phrase by 
 
THE RED LILY 117 
 
 him was quoted : ' The death of man is exactly 
 similar to that of brutes.' Later, when antique 
 beauty came out of graves, the Christian style 
 seemed sad. The painters who worked in the 
 churches and in the cloisters were neither devout 
 nor chaste. Perugino was an atheist, and did not 
 conceal it. ' ' 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Bell; "but it was said that his 
 head was hard, and that celestial truths could not 
 penetrate his thick cranium. He was harsh and 
 avaricious, and quite embedded in material interests. 
 He thought only of buying houses." 
 
 Professor Arrighi defended Pietro Vannucci of 
 Perugia. 
 
 " He was, " he said, "an honest man. And the 
 Prior of the Gesuati of Florence was wrong to mis- 
 trust him. That monk practised the art of manu- 
 facturing ultramarine blue by crushing stones of 
 burnt lapis-lazuli. Ultramarine was then worth its 
 weight in gold; and the Prior, who doubtless had a 
 secret, esteemed his own more precious than rubies 
 or sapphires. He asked Pietro Vannucci to decorate 
 the two cloisters of his convent, and he expected 
 marvels, less from the skilfulness of the master than 
 from the beauty of that ultramarine in the skies. 
 During all the time the painter worked in the clois- 
 ters at the history of Jesus Christ, the Prior kept 
 by his side and presented to him the precious powder 
 in a bag which he never quitted. Pietro took from 
 it, under the saintly man's look, the quantity he 
 needed, and dipped his brush, loaded with color, in 
 
118 THE EED LILY 
 
 a cup Ml of water, before rubbing the wall with it. 
 He used in that manner a great quantity of the 
 powder. And the good father, seeing his bag get- 
 ting thinner, sighed: 'Jesus! How that lime 
 devours the ultramarine ! ' When the frescoes were 
 finished, when Perugino had received from the monk 
 the agreed price, he placed in his hand a package 
 of blue powder: ' This is for you, father. Your 
 ultramarine which I took with my brush fell at the 
 bottom of my cup, where I gathered it every day. 
 I return it to you. Learn how to trust honest 
 people.' " 
 
 "Oh," said Therese, "there is nothing extraor- 
 dinary in the fact that Perugino was avaricious 
 and honest.. Interested people are not always the 
 least scrupulous. There are many misers who are 
 honest." 
 
 "l^aturaUy, Darling," said Miss Bell. "Misers 
 do not wish to owe anything, and prodigal people 
 can bear to have debts. They do not think of the 
 money they have, and they thinlc less of the money 
 they owe. I did not say that Pietro Yannucci of 
 Perugia was a man without property. I said that 
 he had a head which was hard, and that he bought 
 houses. I am very glad to hear that he returned 
 the ultramarine to the Prior of the Gesuati." 
 
 "Since your Pietro was rich," said Choulette, 
 "it was his duty to return the ultramarine. The 
 rich are morally bound to be honest; the poor are 
 not." 
 
 At this moment, Choulette, to whom the waiter 
 
THE RED LILY 119 
 
 was presenting a silver bowl, extended his hands 
 for the perfumed water. It came from a vase which 
 Miss Bell passed to her guests, in accordance with 
 antique usage, after meals. 
 
 "I wash my hands," he said, "of the evil that 
 Madame Martin does or may do by her speech, or 
 otherwise." 
 
 And he rose, ferocious, after Miss BeU, who took 
 the arm of Professor Arrighi. 
 
 In the parlor she said, while serving the coffee: 
 
 "M. Choulette, why do you condemn us to the 
 savage sadness of equality? Why, Daphnis's flute 
 would not sing well if it were made of seven equal 
 reeds. You wish to destroy the beautiful harmonies 
 of the masters and the servants, of the aristocrats 
 and the artisans. Oh, you are a barbarian, M. Chou- 
 lette. You are full of pity for those who are in 
 need, and you have no pity for divine beauty which 
 you exile from this world. You expel beauty, M. 
 Choulette; you repudiate her, nude and in tears. 
 Be certain of this: she will not remain on earth 
 when the poor little men shall all be weak, delicate, 
 and ignorant. Oh, to undo the ingenious groups 
 which men of diverse conditions form in society, the 
 humble with the magnificent, is to be the enemy of 
 the poor and of the rich, is to be the enemy of the 
 human race." 
 
 " Enemies of the human race! " replied Choulette, 
 while stirring his coffee. " That is the phrase which 
 the harsh Eoman applied to the Christians who 
 talked love to him." 
 
120 THE BED LILY 
 
 Dechartre, seated near Madame Martin, ques- 
 tioned her on her tastes about art and beauty, sus- 
 tained, led, animated her admirations, at times 
 prompted her with caressing brusquerie, wished her 
 to see all that he had seen, to love all that he loved. 
 
 He did not desire less that she should go in the 
 gardens at the first flush of spring. He contem- 
 plated her in advance on the noble terraces ; he saw 
 already the light playing on her neck and in her 
 hair, the shadow of laurel trees falling on her eyes. 
 For him the land and the sky of Florence had 
 nothing more to do than to serve as an adornment 
 to this young woman. 
 
 He praised the simplicity with which she dressed, 
 the characteristics of her form and of her grace, the 
 charming frankness of the lines which every one of 
 her movements created. He hked, he said, the 
 animated and living, subtle, witty, and free gowns 
 which one sees so rarely, which one never forgets. 
 
 Although she had been much lauded, she had 
 never heard praise which had pleased her more. She 
 knew she dressed weU, with bold and sure taste. 
 But no man except her father had made to her on 
 the subject the compliments of an expert. She 
 thought that men were capable of feeling only the 
 effect of a gown, without understanding the ingen- 
 ious details of it. Some men who knew gowns dis- 
 gusted her by their effeminate air. She was resigned 
 to the appreciation of women only, and these had in 
 their appreciation narrowness of mind, malignity, 
 and envy. The artistic admiration of Dechartre 
 
THE RED LILT 121 
 
 astonished and pleased her. She received agreeably 
 the praise he gave her, without thinking that per- 
 haps it "was too intimate and almost indiscreet. 
 
 " So you look at gowns, M. Dechartre? " 
 
 ITo, he seldom looked at them. There were so 
 few women well dressed, even now, when women 
 dress as weU as and better than ever. He found no 
 pleasure in seeing packages walk. But if a woman 
 having rhythm and line passed before hhn, he blessed 
 her. 
 
 He continued, in a tone a little more elevated : 
 
 "I cannot think of a woman who takes care to 
 deck herself every day, without meditating on the 
 great lesson which she gives to artists. She dresses 
 for a few hours, and the care she has taken is not 
 lost. We must, as she does, ornament life without 
 thinking of the future. To paint, carve, write for 
 posterity is only silUness of conceit." 
 
 "M. Dechartre," asked Prince AlbertineUi, 
 "how do you think a mauve waist studded with 
 silver flowers would become Miss Bell? " 
 
 "I think," said Choulette, "so little of a terres- 
 trial future, that I have written my finest poems on 
 cigarette paper. They vanished easily, leaving to 
 my verses only a sort of metaphysical existence." 
 
 It was an air of negligence for which he posed. 
 In fact, he had never lost a line of his writing. 
 Dechartre was more sincere. He was not desirous 
 of surviving. Miss Bell blamed him for this. 
 
 " M. Dechartre, that life may be great and com- 
 plete, one must put in it the past and the future. 
 
122 THE BED LILY 
 
 Our works of poetry and of art must be accom- 
 plished in honor of the dead and with the thought 
 of those who are to come after us. Thus we shall 
 participate in what has been, in what is, and in 
 what shall be. Tou do not wish to be immortal, 
 M. Dechartre. Beware, for God may hear you." 
 
 He replied: 
 
 " It would be enough for me to live one moment 
 more. ' ' 
 
 And he said good-night, promising to return the 
 next day to escort Madame Martin to the Brancacci 
 chapel. 
 
 An hour later, in the assthetic room tapestried 
 with stuffs whereon citron trees loaded with enor- 
 mous golden fruits formed a fairy forest, Therese, 
 her head on the pillow, and her handsome bare 
 arms folded under her head, was thinking under the 
 lamp and seeing float confusedly before her the 
 images of her new life: Vivian Bell and her bells, her 
 Preraphaelite figures, light as shadows, ladies, iso- 
 lated knights, indifferent among pious scenes, a little 
 sad, and looking to see who was coming ; very pleas- 
 ant thus, and friends in their soft lethargy ; and in 
 the evening, at the Fiesole viUa, Prince AlbertineUi, 
 Professor Arrighi, Choulette, the odd play of ideas, 
 and Dechartre, with youthful eyes in a careworn 
 face. 
 
 She thought he had a charming imagination, a 
 mind richer than aU those which had been revealed 
 to her, and an attraction which she no longer tried 
 to resist. She had always recognized his gift to 
 
THE RED LILY 123 
 
 please. She discovered now that he had the will to 
 please. This idea was delightful to her ; she closed 
 her eyes to retain it. Then, suddenly, she shuddered. 
 She had felt a dumb blow struck within her in the 
 mystery of her being. She had the brusque vision 
 of her friend, his gun under his arm, in the woods. 
 He walked with firm and regular step in the pro- 
 found alleys. She cotdd not see his face, and that 
 troubled her. She bore him no ill-wiU. She was not 
 discontented with him. Now it was with herself 
 that she was discontented. And Eobert went straight 
 before him, without turning his head, far, still far- 
 ther, until he was only a black point in the desolate 
 wood. She judged that she was capricious, and that 
 she had been harsh in leaving him without a word 
 of farewell, without even a letter. He was her 
 friend, her only friend. She had never had another. 
 She thought: " I would not wish him to be unfortu- 
 nate because of me." 
 
 Little by little she was reassured. He loved her, 
 doubtless ; but he was not susceptible, not ingenious, 
 happily, in tormenting himself. She said to herself : 
 ' ' He is hunting. He is glad. He sees his aunt, 
 whom he admires." She calmed her foars and 
 returned to the charming and profound gayety of 
 Florence. She had seen badly, at the Offices, a pic- 
 ture that Dechartre liked. It was a decapitated 
 head of the Medusa, a head work wherein Leonardo, 
 the sculptor said, had expressed the minute profun- 
 dity and the tragic refinement of his genius. She 
 wanted to see it again, sorry that she had not seen 
 
124 THE RED LILY 
 
 it better herself. She put out her lamp and went to 
 sleep. 
 
 In the morning she dreamed that she met in a 
 deserted church Robert Le Menil enveloped in furs 
 which she had never seen him wear. He was wait- 
 ing for her, but a crowd of priests had separated 
 them. She did not know what had become of him. 
 She had not seen his face, and that frightened her. 
 Having awakened, she heard at the window, which 
 was open, a small, monotonous, and sad cry, and 
 she saw in the milky dawn a humming-bird pass. 
 Then, without cause, without reason, she fell into 
 tears. She fell into tears about her fate, with the 
 despair of a child. 
 
XI 
 
 She took pleasure in dressing early with delicate 
 and subtle taste. Her dressing-room, an aesthetic 
 fantasy of Vivian Bell, with its coarsely varnished 
 pottery, its tall copper pitchers, and the chess-board 
 of its faience pavement, resembled a fairy kitchen. 
 It was rustic and marvellous, and Countess Martin 
 could have in it the agreeable surprise of mistaking 
 herself for a fairy personage. "While her maid was 
 dressing her hair, she heard Dechartre and Choulette 
 talk under her windows. She made over all the 
 work Pauline had done, and uncovered the line of 
 her nape, which was fine and pure. She looked at 
 herself in the glass, and went into the garden. 
 
 In the garden Dechartre was reciting verses of 
 Dante, and looking at Florence : ' ' At the hour when 
 our mind, a greater stranger to the flesh . . . " 
 
 Near him, Choulette, seated on the balustrade of 
 the terrace, his legs hanging, and his nose in his 
 beard, was carving the figure of Misery on his vaga- 
 bond's stick. 
 
 And Dechartre resumed the rhymes of the can- 
 ticle: "At the hour when our mind, a greater 
 stranger to the flesh, and less under the obsession of 
 thoughts, is almost divine in its visions, . . . " 
 
 She was coming along the boxwood hedge, under 
 
126 THE RED LILY 
 
 her umbrella, in her straw-colored gown. The fine 
 sun of winter enveloped her in pale gold. 
 
 Dechartre put joy into his greeting. 
 
 She said: 
 
 "You are reciting verses which I do not know. 
 I know only Metastasa. My teacher liked only Met- 
 astasa. What is the hour when the mind is divine 
 in its visions? " 
 
 " Madame, that hour is the dawn of day. It may 
 be also the dawn of faith and of love." 
 
 Choulette doubted that the poet meant dreams of 
 the morning, which leave at awakening an impres- 
 sion so vivid, and often so painful, and which are not 
 at all strangers to the flesh. But Dechartre had 
 quoted these verses in the pleasure of the golden 
 dawn which he had seen that morning on the blonde 
 hiUs. He had been, for a long time, disquiet about 
 the images which are formed in one's sleep, and he 
 believed that these images were not related to the 
 object which preoccupies one the most ; but, on the 
 contrary, to ideas abandoned during the day. 
 
 Then Therese recalled her morning dream, the 
 hunter lost in the deep alley. 
 
 "Yes," said Dechartre, "the things we see at 
 night are unfortunate remains of what we neglected 
 the day before. Dreams avenge things which one 
 disdained. They are reproaches of abandoned 
 friends. Hence their sadness. " 
 
 She was lost in dreams for a moment, then she 
 said: 
 
 " It is perhaps true," 
 
THE RED LILY 127 
 
 Then, quickly, she asked Choulette if he had fin- 
 ished the portrait of Misery on his stick. That 
 Misery had become a Pieta, and Choulette recog- 
 nized the Yirgin in it. He had even composed a 
 quatrain which he was to write on it in spiral form, 
 a didactic and moral quatrain. He would cease to 
 write, except in the style of the commandments of 
 God rendered into French verses. The four lines 
 were of that simple and good sort. He consented 
 to recite them. 
 
 Therese rested on the balustrade of the terrace 
 and sought in the distance, in the depth of the sea of 
 light, the peaks of VaUambrosa, almost as fluid as 
 the sky. Jacques Dechartre was looking at her. It 
 seemed to him that he saw her then for the first time, 
 such was the delicacy that he discovered in her face, 
 where the work of light and of mind had placed 
 profoundness without altering its young and fresh 
 grace. Light, which she liked, was indulgent to 
 her. And truly she was pretty, bathed in that 
 light of Florence, which caresses beautiful forms 
 and feeds noble thoughts. A fine, pink color rose 
 to her well-rounded cheeks ; her eyes, bluish gray, 
 laughed ; and when she talked, the brilliancy of her 
 teeth had an ardent sweetness. His look embraced 
 her supple bust, her full hips, and the bold attitude 
 of her waist. She held her umbrella with her left 
 hand, the other hand played with violets. Dechartre 
 had a love, a mania for beautiful hands. Hands 
 presented to his eyes a physiognomy as striking as 
 the face — a character, a souL These hands enchanted 
 
128 THE RED LILY 
 
 Mm. They were witty. He adored their thin fin- 
 gers, their pink nails, their palms soft and tender, 
 traversed by lines as elegant as arabesques, and ris- 
 ing at the base of the fingers in little harmonious 
 mounts. He examined them with charmed atten- 
 tion until she closed them on the handle of her um- 
 brella. Then, standing behind her, he looked at 
 her again. Her bust and her arms, graceful and 
 pure in line, her beautiful form, which was that of 
 a living amphora, pleased him. 
 
 "M. Dechartre, that black spot over there is the 
 BoboU Gardens, is it not ? I saw the gardens three 
 years ago. There were not many flowers in them. 
 Nevertheless, vidth their tall, sad trees, I liked 
 them." 
 
 It astonished him that she talked, that she thought. 
 The clear sound of her voice amazed him, as if he 
 had not yet heard it. 
 
 He replied at random. He was awkward. She 
 feigned not to notice it. She seemed glad. His 
 deep voice, which was veiled and weakened, caressed 
 her. She said ordinary things: 
 
 " That view is beautiful. The weather is soft." 
 
XII 
 
 In the morning, her head on the embroidered pil- 
 low, Th^rese was thinking of the walks of the day 
 before; of the Virgins, so fine, in frames of angels; 
 of the innumerable children, painted or carved, all 
 beautiful, all happy, who sing ingenuously in the 
 city the Alleluia of grace and of beauty. In the 
 illustrious chapel of the Brancacci, before those 
 frescoes, pale and resplendent as a divine dawn, he 
 had talked to her of Masaccio, in a language so vivid 
 and so colored that it had seemed to her as if she 
 had seen him, the adolescent master of the masters, 
 his mouth half open, his eyes dark and blue, dying, 
 enchanted. And she had liked these marvels of a 
 morning more charming than a day. Dechartre 
 was for her the soul of those magnificent forms, the 
 mind of those noble things. It was by him, it 
 was through him, that she understood art and life. 
 She took no interest in the spectacles of the world 
 which did not interest him. 
 
 How had this affection come to her ? She had no 
 precise remembrance of it. In the first place, when 
 Paul Vence wanted to introduce him to her, she had 
 no desire to know him, no presentiment that he 
 would please her. She recalled elegant bronze statu- 
 ettes, fine wax-works signed with his name, that 
 
130 THE RED LILY 
 
 she had remarked at the Champ de Mars salon or at 
 Durand-Euel's. But she did not imagine that he 
 could be agreeable to her, nor more seductive than 
 so many artists and lovers of art about vrhom she 
 laughed at her intimate receptions. When she saw 
 him, he pleased her; she had the peaceful idea of 
 attracting him, of seeing him often. The night 
 when he dined at her house, she observed that she 
 had for him an affection which was noble and which 
 flattered her. But soon after he irritated her a 
 little; it made her impatient to see him closeted 
 within himself and too little preoccupied by her. 
 She would have liked to disturb him. She was in 
 that state of impatience when she met him one 
 evening, in front of the grille of the Eeligion 
 Museum, and he talked to her of Ravenna and of 
 the empress seated on a gold chair in a grave. She 
 had found him serious and charming, his voice 
 warm, his eyes soft in the shadow of the night, but 
 too much a stranger, too far from her, too unknown. 
 She had felt a sort of uneasiness, and she did not 
 know, when she walked along the boxwood border- 
 ing the terrace, whether she desired to see him every 
 day or never to see him again. 
 
 Since then, at Florence, her only pleasure was to 
 feel that he was near her, to hear him. He made 
 life for her amiable, diverse, and colored — new, alt 
 new. He revealed to her delicate joys and a delight- 
 ful sadness ; he awakened in her a voluptuousness 
 which had been always dormant. Now she was 
 determined never to give him up. But how ? She 
 
THE RED LILT 131 
 
 foresaw difficulties ; her lucid mind and her tempera- 
 ment presented them all to her. For a moment 
 she tried to deceive herself; she said to herself that 
 perhaps, a dreamer, exalted, lost in his studies of 
 art, he might remain assiduous without being exact- 
 ing. But she did not wish to reassure herself with 
 that idea. If Dechartre were not a lover, he lost 
 all his charm. She did not dare to think of the 
 future. She lived in the present hour, happy, anx- 
 ious, and closing her eyes. 
 
 She was dreaming thus, in the shade traversed by 
 arrows of light, when Pauline brought to her some 
 letters with the morning tea. On an envelope 
 marked with the monogram of the Eue Royale Club 
 she recognized the quick and simple handwriting of 
 Le MeniL. She had expected that letter. She was 
 only astonished that what was bound to come had 
 come, as in her childhood, when the infallible clock 
 rang the hour of her piano lesson. 
 
 In his letter Robert made reasonable reproaches. 
 Why did she go without saying anything, without 
 leaving a word of farewell? Since his return to 
 Paris he had expected every morning a letter which 
 had not come. He was happier the year before, 
 when he received in the morning, two or three 
 times a week, letters so gentle and so well written 
 that he regretted not being able to print them. 
 Anxious, he had gone to her house. 
 
 "I was astounded to hear of your departure. 
 Your husband received me. He said that, yielding 
 to his advice, you had gone to finish the winter at 
 
132 THE BED LILY 
 
 Florence with Miss Bell. He said that for some time 
 you had looked pale and thin. He thought a change 
 of air would do you good. You did not wish to go, 
 but, as you suffered more and more, he succeeded in 
 persuading you. 
 
 " I had not noticed that you were thin. It seemed 
 to me, on the contrary, that your health was good. 
 And then Florence is not a good winter resort. I 
 cannot understand your departure. I am much tor- 
 mented by it. Reassure me at once, I pray you. 
 
 " Do you think it is agreeable for me to get news 
 of you from your husband and to receive his confi- 
 dences? He is sorry you are not here ; it annoys 
 him that the obligations of public life compel him 
 to remain in Paris. I heard at the club that he had 
 chances to become a Minister. This astonishes me, 
 because Ministers are not usually chosen from among 
 fashionable people." 
 
 Then he related hunting tales to her. He had 
 brought for her three fox-skins, one of which was 
 very beautiful; the skin of a brave animal which he 
 had pulled by the tail, and which had bitten his 
 hand. 
 
 In Paris he was worried. His cousin was pre- 
 sented at the club. He feared he might be black- 
 balled. His candidacy had been posted. Under 
 these conditions he did not dare advise him to with- 
 draw; it would be taking too great a responsibility. 
 If he were blackballed it would be very disagreeable. 
 He finished by praying her to write and to return 
 soon. 
 
THE RED LILY 133 
 
 Having read this letter, she tore it up very softly, 
 threw it in the fire, and sadly, in a graceless reverie, 
 saw it burn. 
 
 Doubtless, he was right. He said what he had 
 to say ; he complained, as it was his duty to com- 
 plain. What could she answer? Continue her 
 quarrel ? The subject of her quarrel had become so 
 indififerent to her that it needed reflection to recall 
 it. Oh, no ; she had no desire to be tormented. She 
 felt, on the contrary, very sweet toward him ! See- 
 ing that he loved her with confidence, in stubborn 
 tranquillity, she became sad and frightened. He 
 had not changed. He was the same man he had 
 been before. She was not the same woman. They 
 were separated now by imperceptible and strong 
 things, like influences in the air which make one live 
 or die. When her maid came to dress her, she had 
 not begun to write an answer. 
 
 Anxious, she thought: "He trusts me. He is 
 quiet." This made her more impatient than any- 
 thing. It irritated her to think that there were 
 simple people who doubt neither themselves nor 
 others. 
 
 She went into the parlor, where she found Vivian 
 Bell writing. The latter said : 
 
 "Do you wish to know. Darling, what I was 
 doing while waiting for you ? Nothing and every- 
 thing. Verses. Oh, Darling, poetry must be our 
 souls naturally expressed." 
 
 Therese kissed Miss Bell, rested her head on her 
 friend's shoulder, and said: 
 
134 THE RED LILY 
 
 "May I look?" 
 
 "Oh., Darling, look if you wish. They are 
 verses made on the model of the popular songs of 
 your country." 
 
 " Is it a symbol, Vivian ? Explain it to me." 
 
 "Oh, Darling, why explain, why? A poetic 
 image must have several meanings. The one which 
 you shall find shall be the real one. But there is a 
 very clear meaning in them, my love ; that is, that 
 one should not lightly disengage oneself from what 
 one has put in one's heart." 
 
 The horses were harnessed. They went, as it had 
 been agreed, to visit the AlbertineUi gallery. The 
 Prince was waiting for them, and Dechartre was to 
 meet them in the palace. On the way, while the 
 carriage rolled on the wide pavement, Vivian Bell 
 communicated in small, singing words her fine and 
 precious gayety. As they were descending between 
 houses pink and white, gardens in terraces orna- , 
 mented with statues and fountains, she showed to 
 her friend the villa, hidden under bluish pines, where 
 the ladies and the cavaliers of the Decameron took 
 refuge from the plague that ravaged Florence, and 
 diverted one another with tales frivolous, facetious, 
 or tragic. Then she confessed the thought which 
 had come to her the day before. 
 
 "You had gone. Darling, to Carmine with M. 
 Dechartre, and you had left at Fiesole Madame Mar- 
 met, who is an agreeable old lady, a moderate and 
 polished old lady. She knows many anecdotes about 
 persons of distinction who live in Paris. And when 
 
THE RED LILY 135 
 
 she tells them, she does as my cook Pompaloni does 
 when he serves eggs : he does not put salt in them, 
 but he puts the salt cellar next to them. Madame 
 Marmet's tongue is very sweet. The salt is near it, 
 in her eyes. It is Pompaloni's dish, my love: each 
 one seasons to his taste. Oh, I like Madame Mar- 
 met a great deal. Yesterday, after you had gone, 
 I found her alone and sad in a corner of the parlor. 
 She was thinking of her husband, and it was a 
 mournful thought. I said to her: 'Do you wish 
 me to think of your husband, too ? I wiU think of 
 him with you. -I have been told that he was a 
 learned man, a member of the Eoyal Society of 
 Paris. Madame Marmet, talk to me of him. ' She 
 replied that he had devoted himself to the Etrus- 
 cans, and that he had given to them his entire life. 
 Oh, Darling, I cherished at once the memory of 
 that M. Marmet, who lived for the Etruscans. 
 And then a good idea came to me. T said to Ma- 
 dame Marmet, ' We have at Fiesole, in the Pretorio 
 Palace, a modest little Etruscan museum. Come 
 and visit it with me. Will you ? ' She replied it 
 was what she desired to know in Italy. We went 
 to the Pretorio Palace, we saw a lioness and a great 
 many little bronze men, grotesque, very fat or very 
 thin. The Etruscans were a seriously gay people. 
 They made bronze caricatures. But these monkeys, 
 some afflicted with big stomachs, others astonished 
 to show their bones, Madame Marmet looked at 
 with dolorous admiration. She contemplated them 
 like — there is a beautiful French word that escapes 
 
136 THE RED LILY 
 
 me — like the monuments and the trophies of M. 
 Marmet." 
 
 Madame Martin smiled. But she was disquiet. 
 She thought the sky duU, the streets ugly, the pass- 
 ersby common. 
 
 "Oh, Darling, the Prince will be very glad to 
 receive you in his palace." 
 
 " I do not think so." 
 
 " "Why, Darling, why ? " 
 
 " Because I do not please him much." 
 
 Vivian Bell declared that the Prince, on the con- 
 trary, was a great admirer of Countess Martin. 
 
 The horses stopped before the Albertinelli palace. 
 On the sombre fagade were sealed those bronze 
 rings which formerly, in nights of festivals, held 
 torches of rosin. These rings mark, in Florence, 
 the houses of the most illustrious families. The 
 palace had an air of ferocious pride. In the inte- 
 rior it showed itself empty, idle, annoyed. The 
 Prince hastened to meet them, and led them through 
 the empty parlors into the gallery. He apologized 
 for showing canvases which perhaps had not a flat- 
 tering aspect. The gallery had been formed by 
 Cardinal Giulio Albertinelli at a time when the taste 
 for Guido and Oaraccio, now fallen, predominated. 
 His ancestor had taken pleasure in gathering the 
 works of the school of Bologna. But he would 
 show to Madame Martin several paintings which had 
 not displeased Miss Bell, among others a Mantegna. 
 
 Countess Martin recognized at once a banal and 
 doubtful gallery; she felt bored among the multi- 
 
THE BED LILY 137 
 
 tude of little Parrocels, showing in the darkness a 
 bit of armor and a bit of white horse. 
 
 A valet presented a card. 
 
 The Prince read aloud the name of Jacques 
 Dechartre. At that moment he was turning his 
 back on the two visitors. His face wore the expres- 
 sion of cruel discontent which one finds only on the 
 marble busts of Roman emperors. Dechartre was 
 on the staircase. 
 
 The Prince went toward him with a languid smile. 
 Already it was no longer Nero, it was Antinous. 
 
 " I invited M. Dechartre to come to the Alberti- 
 neUi palace," said Miss BeU. "I knew it would 
 please you. He wished to see your gaUery." 
 
 And it is true that Dechartre had wished to be 
 there with Madame Martin. Now all four walked 
 among the Guidos and the Albanos. 
 
 Miss Bell babbled to the Prince pretty things 
 about those old men and those Virgins whose blue 
 mantles were agitated by an immovable tempest. 
 Dechartre, pale, enervated, went near Therese, and 
 said to her in a low tone: 
 
 ' ' This gaUery is a warehouse where picture dealers 
 of the entire world hang the things they cannot sell. 
 And the Prince sells here things which Jews could 
 not sell. ' ' 
 
 He led her to a Holy Family exhibited on an easel 
 draped with green velvet, and bearing on the border 
 the name of Michael Angelo. 
 
 "I have seen that Holy Family in the shops of 
 picture dealers of London, of Basle, and of Paris. 
 
138 THE BED LILY 
 
 As they could not get the twenty-five louis that it 
 is worth, they have commissioned the last of the 
 Albertinellis to sell it for fifty thousand francs." 
 
 The Prince, divining what they were saying, came 
 near them gracefully. 
 
 "There is a copy of this picture almost every- 
 where. I do not afiirm that this is the original. 
 But it has always been in the family, and old inven- 
 tories attribute it to Michael Angelo. This is aU I 
 can say. ' ' 
 
 And the Prince turned toward Miss Bell, who was 
 trying to find pictures by the Preraphaelites. 
 
 Dechartre felt uneasy. Since the day before he 
 had thought of Therese. He had all the night 
 dreamed and labored over her image. He saw her 
 again, delightful, but delightful in another manner, 
 and even more desirable than he had imagined in 
 his insomnia; less visionary, of a taste more vivid, 
 stronger, harsher, and also of a mind more mysteri- 
 ous and more impenetrable. She Avas sad; she 
 seemed to him to be cold and indifferent. He said 
 to himself that he was nothing to her ; that he was 
 becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irri- 
 tated him. He murmured bitterly in her ear : 
 
 " I have reflected. I did not wish to come. "Why 
 did I come? " 
 
 She understood at once what he meant, that he 
 feared her now, and that he was impatient, timid, 
 and awkward. It pleased her that he was thus, and 
 she was grateful to him for the trouble and the 
 desires which he inspired in her. 
 
THE BED LILT 139 
 
 Her heart beat. But, affecting to understand 
 that he regretted having disturbed himself for bad 
 paintings, she replied that in truth this gallery was 
 not interesting. Already, under the terror of dis- 
 pleasing her, he felt reassured, and believed that, 
 really indifferent, she had not perceived the accent 
 nor the significance of what he had said. He said : 
 
 "No, nothing interesting." 
 
 The Prince, who had invited the two visitors to 
 breakfast, asked their friend to remain with them. 
 Dechartre excused himself. He was going out, 
 when, in the large, empty parlor, ornamented with 
 confectioners' boxes, h^ found himself alone with 
 Madame Martin. He had had the idea of running 
 away from her. He had no other idea now than 
 to see her again. He recalled to her that she was 
 the next morning to visit the Bargello. 
 
 " You have permitted me to accompany you." 
 
 She asked him if he had not found her moody 
 and bothersome. Oh, no ; he had not thought her 
 bothersome, but he thought she was sad. 
 
 "Alas," he added, "your sadness, your joys, I 
 have not the right to know them." 
 
 She turned toward him a glance almost harsh. 
 
 " You cannot think I wiU take you for a confi- 
 dante, can you?" 
 
 And she walked away brusquely. 
 
XIII 
 
 After dinner, in the parlor fuU of beUs, under 
 the lamps from which the great shades permitted 
 only an obscure light to rise, the good Madame 
 Marmet was warming herself by the stove, with a 
 white cat on her knees. The evening was cool. 
 Madame Martin, her eyes full of light air, of violet 
 peaks, and of antique trees twisting their monstrous 
 arms on the road, smiled with happy fatigue. She 
 had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame 
 Marmet to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And 
 now, in the fine intoxication of her visions, she for- 
 got the care of the day before, the importunate let- 
 ters, the distant reproaches, and did not think that 
 there was anything else in the world than cloisters 
 chiselled and painted, with a weU in the grass of 
 the yard, villages with red roofs, and roads where, 
 rocked by flattering praises, she saw the first blush 
 of spring. Dechartre had modelled for Miss Bell 
 the wax figure of a Beatrice. Yivian was painting 
 angels. Softly bent over her. Prince AlbertineUi 
 caressed his beard and threw around him courtesan- 
 like glances. 
 
 Eeplying to a reflection of Vivian Bell on mar- 
 riage and love: 
 
 "A woman must choose," he said. ""With a 
 
THE BED LILY 141 
 
 man whom women love she is not quiet. "With a 
 man whom the women do not love she is not happy. ' ' 
 
 "Darling," asked Miss Bell, "what would you 
 wish for a friend dear to you ? ' ' 
 
 " I would wish, Vivian, that my friend were 
 happy. I would wish also that she were quiet. She 
 should be quiet in hatred of treason, humiliating 
 suspicions, and low mistrust." 
 
 " But, Darling, since the Prince has said that a 
 woman cannot have at the same time happiness and 
 security, tell me what your friend should choose; 
 teU me. Darling." 
 
 "One never chooses, Vivian; one never chooses. 
 Do not make me say what I think of marriage. ' ' 
 
 At this moment Choulette appeared, wearing the 
 magnificent air of one of those beggars about whom 
 small towns are proud. He had played briscola 
 with peasants in a coffee-house of Fiesole. 
 
 "Here is M. Choulette," said Miss Bell. "He 
 will teach what we are to think of marriage. I am 
 inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. He does 
 not see the things that we see, and he sees things 
 that we do not see. M. Choulette, what do you 
 think of marriage? " 
 
 He took a seat and lifted in the air a Socratic 
 finger : 
 
 " Are you speaking. Mademoiselle, of the solemn 
 union between man and woman? In this sense, 
 marriage is a sacrament. Hence it is always a sac- 
 rilege. As for civil marriage, it is a formality. The 
 importance which is given to it in our society is an 
 
142 THE BED LILT 
 
 idiotic thing which would have made the women of 
 other times laugh. We owe this prejudice, like 
 many others, to the bourgeois, to the coming for- 
 ward of a lot of financiers which has been called 
 the Eevolution, and which seems admirable to the 
 folks who profit by it. Civil marriage is, in real- 
 ity, only an inscription like many others which the 
 State exacts in order to be sure of the condition of 
 persons: in every well organized state everybody 
 must be indexed. Morally, this inscription in a big 
 ledger has not even the virtue of inducing a wife to 
 take a lover. Who ever thinks of betraying an 
 oath taken before a mayor ? In order to find joy 
 in adultery, one must be pious." 
 
 "But, Monsieur," said Therese, "we were mar- 
 ried at the church." 
 
 Then, with an accent of sincerity : 
 
 "I cannot understand how a man ever marries, 
 nor how a woman at an age when she knows what 
 she is doing can commit that folly." 
 
 The Prince looked at her with distrust. He was 
 clever, but he was incapable of conceiving that one 
 might talk without an object, disinterestedly, and to 
 express general ideas. He imagined that Countess 
 Martin-Belleme was discovering projects that she 
 wished to traverse. And as he was thinking of 
 defending himself and of avenging himself, he made 
 velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry : 
 
 " You display, Madame, the pride of the beautiful 
 and intelligent French women whom subjection irri- 
 tates. French women love liberty, and none of 
 
THE RED LILY 143 
 
 them is as worthy of liberty as you are. I have 
 lived in France a little. I have known and admired 
 the elegant society of Paris, the salons, the festi- 
 vals, the conversations, the plays. But in our 
 mountains, under our olive trees, we become rustic 
 again. We take again golden-age manners, and 
 marriage is for us an idyll full of freshness." 
 
 Yivian BeU examined the statuette which De- 
 chartre had left on the table. 
 
 " Oh! it was thus that Beatrice looked, I am sure. 
 And do you know, M. Dechartre, there are wicked 
 men who say that Beatrice never existed? " 
 
 Choulette declared he wished to be counted among 
 these wicked men. He did not believe that Beatrice 
 had more reality than these other ladies through 
 whom the old poets of love represented some scho- 
 lastic idea, ridiculously subtle. 
 
 Impatient at praise which was not destined for 
 him, jealous of Dante as of the universe, a refined 
 man of letters, he said: 
 
 " I suspect that the young sister of the angels 
 never lived, except in the imagination of the poet. 
 It seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an exercise in 
 arithmetic or a theme of astrology. Dante, who was 
 a good doctor of Bologna and had many moons in his 
 head, under his pointed cap — Dante believed in. the 
 virtue of numbers. That inflamed mathematician 
 dreamed of figures, and his Beatrice is a flower of 
 arithmetic, that is all." 
 
 And he lighted his pipe. 
 
 Vivian BeU exclaimed: 
 
144 THE BED LILT 
 
 "Oh, do not talk in that way, M. Choiilette. 
 You grieve me much, and if our friend M. Geb- 
 hart heard you, he would not be pleased with you. 
 To punish you. Prince Albertinelli will read to you 
 the canticle in which Beatrice explains the spots on 
 the moon. Take the 'Divine Comedy,' Eusebio. 
 It is the white book which you see on the table. 
 Open it and read it." 
 
 During the Prince's reading under the lamp, 
 Dechartre, seated on the lounge near Countess Mar- 
 tin, talked of Dante with enthusiasm as the best 
 sculptor among the poets. He recalled to Therese 
 the painting which they had seen together two days 
 before, on the door of the Servi, a fresco almost 
 erased, where one hardly divined the presence of 
 the poet wearing a laurel wreath, Florence, and the 
 seven circles. This was enough to exalt the artist. 
 But she had distinguished nothing, she had not been 
 moved. And then she confessed that Dante did not 
 attract her. Dechartre, accustomed to her sharing 
 aU his ideas of art and poetry, felt astonishment and 
 some discontent. He said aloud : 
 
 "There are grand and strong things which you 
 do not feel." 
 
 Miss Bell, lifting her head, asked what were these 
 things that Darhng did not feel; and when she 
 learned that it was the genius of Dante, she ex- 
 claimed in mock anger : 
 
 " Oh, you do not honor the father, the master 
 worthy of all praise, the god ? I do not love you 
 any more. Darling. I detest you. ' ' 
 
THE RED LILY 145 
 
 And, as a reproach to Choulette and to Countess 
 Martin, she recalled the piety of that citizen of 
 Florence who took from the altar candles which had 
 been lighted in honor of Christ, and placed them 
 before the bust of Dante. 
 
 The Prince resumed his interrupted reading. 
 Dechartre obstinately tried to make Therese admire 
 what she did not know. Certainly he would have 
 easUy sacrificed Dante and all the poets of the uni- 
 verse for her. But near him, tranquil, and an object 
 of desire, she irritated him, almost without his real- 
 izing it, by the charm of her laughing beauty. He 
 persisted in imposing on her his ideas, his artistic 
 passions, even his fantasy and his capriciousness. 
 He insisted in a low tone, in phrases serried and 
 quarrelsome. She said: 
 
 " Oh, how violent you are! " 
 
 Then he bent to her ear, and in an ardent voice, 
 which he tried to soften: 
 
 " You must take me with my soul. I would have 
 no joy in winning you if I won you with a stran- 
 ger's soul." 
 
 This gave to Therese a shiver of fear and of joy. 
 10 
 
XIY 
 
 The next day she said to herself that she would 
 reply to Robert. It was raining. She listened lan- 
 guidly to the water falling on the terrace. Vivian 
 Bell, careful and refined, had placed on the table 
 artistic stationery, sheets imitating the vellum of 
 missals, others pale violet studded with silver dust; 
 celluloid pens, white and light, which one had to 
 manage like brushes ; an iris ink which, on a page, 
 had a mist of azure and gold. Therese did not 
 like such delicacy. It seemed to her not appropriate 
 for letters which she wished to make simple and 
 modest. "When she saw that the name of " friend," 
 given to Eobert on the first line, placed on the sil- 
 very paper, tinted itself like mother of pearl, a half 
 smile came to her lips. The first phrases were hard 
 to write. She hurried the rest, said a great deal of 
 Yivian Bell and of Prince Albertinelli, a little of 
 Choulette, and that she had seen Dechartre at Flor- 
 ence. She praised some pictures of the museums, 
 but without taste, and only to fill the pages. She 
 knew that Robert had no appreciation of painting; 
 that he admired nothing except a little cuirassier by 
 Detaille, bought at Goupil's. She saw again in her 
 mind this little cuirassier, which he had shown to 
 her one day with pride, in his bedroom, near the 
 
THE BED LILY 147 
 
 looking-glass, under family portraits. All this, at a 
 distance, seemed to her small, annoying, and sad. 
 She finished her letter with words of friendship, the 
 sweetness of which was not feigned. Truly, she 
 had never felt more peaceful and clement toward 
 her friend. In four pages she had said little and 
 explained less. She announced only that she would 
 stay a month in Florence, the air of which did her 
 good. Then she wrote to her father, to her hus- 
 band, and to Princess Seniavine. She went down 
 the stairway with the letters in her hand. In the 
 haU she threw three of them on the silver tray 
 destined to receive papers for the post-office. Mis- 
 trusting Madame Marmet, she slipped into her 
 pocket the letter to Le Menil, counting on chance to 
 throw it into a box. 
 
 Almost at the same time Dechartre came to ac- 
 company the three friends in a walk through the 
 city. As he was waiting he saw the letters on the 
 tray. 
 
 "Without thinking that minds could be divined 
 through penmanship, he was susceptible to the form 
 of letters as to a sort of drawing which has its ele- 
 gance. The writing of Therese charmed him as a 
 fresh relic, and because he liked its biting frankness, 
 the bold and simple turn of its lines. He looked at 
 the addresses without reading them, with sensual 
 admiration. 
 
 They visited, that morning, Santa Maria NoveUa, 
 where Countess Martin had already gone with Ma- 
 dame Marmet. But Miss Bell had blamed them for 
 
148 THE BED LILY 
 
 not seeing tlie beautiful Ginevra of Benci on a 
 fresco of the choir. " You must visit that morn- 
 ing figure in a morning light," said Yivian. While 
 the poetess and Therese were talking together, De- 
 chartre listened patiently to Madame Marmet's con- 
 versation, filled with anecdotes, wherein Academi- 
 cians dined with elegant women, and shared the 
 anxiety of that lady, much preoccupied for several 
 days by the necessity to buy a tulle veil. She could 
 find none to her taste in the stores of Florence. 
 
 As they came out of the church they passed the 
 cobbler's shop. The good man was mending rustic 
 shoes. Madame Martin asked the old man if he 
 was well, if he had enough work for a living, if he 
 was happy. To all these questions he replied with 
 the charming yes of Italy, the si, which sang softly 
 in his toothless mouth. She made him tell his 
 sparrow's story. The poor bird had once dipped its 
 leg in burning wax. 
 
 " I have made for my little companion a wooden 
 leg out of a match, and he rests on my shoulder as 
 formerly." 
 
 " It is this good old man," said Miss Bell, " who 
 teaches wisdom to M. Choulette. There was at Athens 
 a cobbler name Simon, who wrote books on philosophy, 
 and who was the friend of Socrates. I have always 
 thought that M. Choulette resembled Socrates." 
 
 Therese asked the cobbler to tell his name and his 
 history. His name was Serafino Stoppini, and he 
 was a native of Stia. He was old. He had had 
 much trouble in his life. 
 
THE RED LILY 149 
 
 He lifted his spectacles to his forehead, uncover- 
 ing blue eyes, very soft, and almost extinguished 
 under their red lids. 
 
 ' ' I have had a wife and children ; I have none now. 
 I have known things which I know no more." 
 
 Miss Bell and Madame Marmet went to look for a 
 veil. 
 
 "He has nothing in the world," thought The- 
 rese, ' ' but his tools, a handful of nails, the tub 
 wherein he dips his leather, and a pot of basilick, 
 and he is happy. ' ' 
 
 She said to him : 
 
 "This plant is fragrant, and it will soon be in 
 bloom." 
 
 He replied: 
 
 " If the poor little plant comes into bloom it will 
 die." 
 
 Therese, when she left him, placed a coin on the 
 table. 
 
 Dechartre was near her. Gravely, almost se- 
 verely, he said to her: 
 
 "You knew ..." 
 
 She looked at him and waited. 
 
 He finished his phrase: 
 
 "... that I love you ? " 
 
 She continued to fix on him, silently, the gaze of 
 her clear eyes, the lids of which were trembling. 
 Then she made a motion with her head that meant 
 yes. And, without his trying to stop her, she re- 
 joined Miss Bell and Madame Marmet, who were 
 waiting for her at the corner. 
 
XV 
 
 Thebese, after quitting Dechartre, took breakfast 
 with her friend and Madame JVfarmet with an old 
 Florentine lady whom Victor Emmanuel had loved 
 when he was Duke of Savoy. For thirty years she 
 had not once gone out of her palace on the Arno, 
 where, made up and painted, wearing a violet wig, 
 she played the guitar in the large white halls. She 
 received the fine society of Florence, and Miss BeU 
 often called on her. At table this recluse, eighty- 
 seven years of age, questioned Countess Martin on 
 the fashionable world of Paris, whose movement 
 was familiar to her through the journals. Solitary, 
 she retained respect and a sort of devotion for pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 As they came out of the palazzo, in order to avoid 
 the wind which was blowing on the river, Miss Bell 
 led her friends into the old streets with black stone 
 houses which open abruptly on the horizon, where, 
 in the purity of the air, laughs a hOl with three 
 frail trees. They walked, and "Vivian showed to 
 her friend, on facades where red rags were hanging, 
 some marble jewel — a Virgin, a lily, a Saint Cath- 
 erine. They walked through these alleys of the 
 antique city to the church of Or San Michele, where 
 it had been agreed that Dechartre would meet them. 
 
THE RED LILY 151 
 
 Therose was thinking of him now with interested 
 and minute attention. Madame Marmet was think- 
 ing of buying a veil; she had the hope of finding 
 one on the Corso. This affair recalled to her M. 
 Lagrange, who, at his lecture one day, took from his 
 pocket a veil with gold dots and wiped his forehead 
 with it, thinking it was his handkerchief. The 
 audience was astonished, and whispered to one 
 another. It was a veil which had been confided to 
 him the day before by his niece, Mile. Jeanne 
 Michot, whom he had accompanied to the theatre, 
 and Madame explained how, finding it in the pocket 
 of his overcoat, he had taken it to return it to his 
 niece. 
 
 At Lagrange's name, Therese recalled the fiaming 
 star announced by the savant, and said to herself, 
 with m.ocking sadness, that it was time for that star 
 to put an end to the world and take her out of her 
 trouble. But above the precious walls of the old 
 church she saw the sky, which, dried by the wind 
 of the sea, shone pale blue and cruel. Miss Bell 
 showed to her one of the bronze statues which, in 
 their chiselled niches, ornament the fagade of the 
 church. 
 
 ' ' See, Darling, how that Saint George is young 
 and proud. Saint George was formerly the cava- 
 lier about whom young girls dreamed." 
 
 But Darling said that he looked precise, bother- 
 some, and stubborn. At this moment she recalled 
 suddenly the letter which had remained in her 
 pocket. 
 
152 THE RED LILT 
 
 "I think that here comes M. Dechartre," said 
 the good Madame Marmet. 
 
 He had looked for them in the church, before the 
 tabernacle. He should have recalled the irresistible 
 attraction which Donatello's Saint George had for 
 Miss Bell. He also admired that famous figure. 
 But he retained a particular friendship for Saint 
 Mark, rustic and frank, whom they could see in his 
 niche at the left. 
 
 "When she went near the statue which he was 
 pointing out to her, Therese saw a letter box against 
 the wall of the narrow street at which the saint 
 looked. Dechartre, placed at the most convenient 
 point of view, talked of his Saint Mark with 
 abundant friendship. 
 
 " It is to him I make my first visit when I come 
 to Florence. I failed to do this only once. He will 
 forgive me; he is an excellent man. He is not 
 appreciated by the crowd, and does not attract 
 attention. I take pleasure in his society. He is 
 vivid. I understand that Donatello, after giving a 
 sold to him, exclaimed: 'Mark, why do you not 
 talk?'" 
 
 Madame Marmet, tired of admiring Saint Mark, 
 and feeling on her face the burning wind, dragged 
 Miss Bell toward Calzaioli Street in search of a veil. 
 
 Darling and Dechartre remained. 
 
 "I liked him," continued the sculptor; "I liked 
 Saint Mark because I felt in him, much better than 
 in the Saint George, the hand and mind of Dona- 
 tello, who was a good workman. I like him even 
 
THE BED LILY 153 
 
 more to-day, because he recalls to me, in his venera- 
 ble and touching candor, the old cobbler to whom 
 you were talking so gently this morning. ' ' 
 
 "Ah," she said, "I have forgotten his name. 
 When we talk with M. Choulette Ave call him 
 Quentin Matsys, because he resembles the old men 
 of that painter." 
 
 As they were turning the corner of the church to 
 see the f a9ade, she found herself before the letter- 
 box, which was so dusty and so rusty that it seemed 
 as if the postman never came near it. She put her 
 letter in it under the ingenuous look of Saint Mark. 
 
 Dechartre saw her, and felt as if a heavy blow had 
 been struck at his heart. He tried to speak, to 
 smile; but the gloved hand which had dropped the 
 letter remained before his eyes. He recalled having 
 seen in the morning Therese's letters on the hall 
 tray. Why had she not put that one with the 
 others ? The reason was not hard to divine. He 
 remained immovable, dreamy, and looked without 
 seeing. He tried to be reassured; perhaps it was an 
 insignificant letter which she was trying to hide 
 from the enervating curiosity of Madame Marmet. 
 
 " Monsieur Dechartre, it is time to rejoin our 
 friends at the dressmaker's." 
 
 Perhaps it was a letter to Madame Schmoll, who 
 was not a friend of Madame Marmet, and at once 
 he realized that his suppositions were idiotic. 
 
 It was very clear. She had a lover. She was 
 writing to him. Perhaps she was saying to him : 
 " I saw Dechartre to-day; the poor fellow is badly 
 
154 THE RED LILY 
 
 in love with. me. ' ' But wliether she wrote that or 
 something else, she had a lover. He had not 
 thought of that. To know that she belonged to 
 another made him suffer profoundly. And that 
 hand, that little hand dropping the letter, remained 
 in his eyes and made them burn atrociously. 
 
 She did not know why he had become suddenly 
 dumb and sombre. "When she saw him throw an 
 anxious glance on the letter-box, she guessed what 
 it was. She thought it odd that he should be jeal- 
 ous without having the right to be jealous; but this 
 did not displease her. 
 
 "When they reached the Corso, they saw Miss BeU 
 and Madame Marmet coming out of the dress- 
 maker's. 
 
 Dechartre said to Therese, in an imperious and 
 supplicating voice: 
 
 " I have to talk to you. I must see you alone to- 
 morrow; meet me at six o'clock at the Lungarno 
 Acciaoli." 
 
 She replied nothing. 
 
XYI 
 
 When, in her Carmelite mantle, she came to the 
 Lungarno Acciaoli, at about half -past six, Dechartre 
 greeted her with a humble look that moved her. 
 The setting sun made the Arno purple. They re- 
 mained silent for a moment. "While they were 
 walking past the monotonous line of palaces to the 
 old bridge, she was the first to speak. 
 
 "You see, I have come. I thought I ought to 
 come. I do not think I am innocent of what has 
 happened. I know: I have done what was to be 
 done in order that you should be with me as you are 
 now. My attitude has put thoughts into your head 
 which you would not have had otherwise." 
 
 He looked as if he did not understand. She con- 
 tinued: 
 
 "I was selfish, I was imprudent. You were 
 agreeable to me ; I liked your wit ; I could not get 
 along without you. I have done what I could to 
 attract you, to retain you. I was a coquette — not 
 coldly, nor perfidiously, but a coquette." 
 
 He shook his head, denying that he ever saw a 
 sign of this. 
 
 " Yes, I was a coquette. Yet it was not my 
 habit. But I was a coquette with you. I do not 
 say that you have tried to take advantage of it, as 
 
156 THE RED LILY 
 
 you had the right to do, nor that you are vain about 
 it. T have not remarked vanity in you. It may be 
 possible that you had not noticed. Superior men 
 sometimes lack cleverness. But I know very well 
 that I was not as I should have been, and I beg your 
 pardon. That is why I came. Let us be good 
 friends, since there is yet time." 
 
 He said to her, with sombre softness, that he loved 
 her. The first hours of that love had been easy 
 and delightful. Pie only wanted to see her, and to 
 see her again. But soon she had troubled him. The 
 evil had come suddenly and violently one day on 
 the terrace of Fiesole. And now he had not the 
 courage to suffer and to say nothing. He had not 
 come with a fixed design. If he spoke of his pas- 
 sion he spoke by force and in spite of him; in the 
 inexorable necessity of talking of her to herself, 
 since she was for him the only being in the world. 
 His life was no longer in him, it was in her. She 
 should know it, then, that he was in love with her, 
 not with vague tenderness, but with cruel ardor. 
 Alas, his imagination was exact and precise. He 
 saw her incessantly, and she tortured him. 
 
 And then it seemed to him that they might have 
 joys which made life worth living. Their existence 
 would be a work of art, beautiful and hidden. They 
 would think, comprehend, and feel together. It 
 would be a marvellous world of emotions and of 
 ideas. 
 
 "We could make of life a delightful garden." 
 
 She feigned to think that the dream was innocent. 
 
THE RED LILY 157 
 
 " You know very well that I am susceptible to the 
 charm of your mind. I have made it a necessity to 
 see you and to hear you. I have made this only too 
 visible to you. Count upon my friendship and do 
 not torment yourself . " She extended her hand to 
 him. He did not take it, but replied brusquely: 
 
 " I do not want your friendship. I do not want 
 it. I must have you entire, or never see you again. 
 You know very well. Why do you extend your 
 hand to me with derisive phrases? Whether you 
 wished it or not, you have made me desperately in 
 love with you. You have become my evil, my 
 suffering, my torture, and you ask me to be an agree- 
 able friend. It is now that you are coquettish and 
 cruel. If you cannot love me, let me go; I wiU go, 
 I do not know where, to forget and hate you. For 
 I have against you a latent feeling of hatred and 
 anger. Oh, I love you, I love you! " 
 
 She believed what he was saying, feared that he 
 might go, and feared the sadness of living without 
 him. She said: , 
 
 " I found you in my path. I do not wish to lose 
 you. I do not wish to lose you. ' ' 
 
 Timid and violent, he stammered ; the words were 
 stifled in his throat; the twilight descended from 
 the far-off mountains, and the last reflections of the 
 sun became pallid in the east. She said : 
 
 " If you knew my life, if you had seen how 
 empty it was before I knew you, you would know 
 what you are to me, and would not think of aban- 
 doning me. ' ' 
 
158 THE RED LILT 
 
 But, with the tranquil tone of her voice and with 
 the regular movement of her skirts on the pavement, 
 she irritated him. He told her how he suffered. He 
 knew now the divine malady of love. 
 
 "The grace of your thoughts, your magnificent 
 courage, your witty pride, I breathe them like a 
 perfume. It seems to me when you talk that your 
 mind is floating on your lips. Your mind is for me 
 only the odor of your beauty. I have retained 
 instincts of a primitive man, you have reawakened 
 them. I feel that I love you with savage simpli- 
 city." 
 
 She looked at him softly and said nothing. They 
 saw in the night lights, and heard lugubrious songs 
 coming towards them. And then, like spectres 
 chased by the wind, appeared the black penitents. 
 The crucifix was before them. They were Brothers 
 of Mercy, holding torches, singing psalms on the 
 way to the graveyard. In accordance with the 
 Italian custom, the cortege marched quickly. The 
 crosses, the coffin, the banners, seemed to leap on 
 the deserted quay. Jacques and Therese stood 
 against the wall in order that the funeral train 
 might pass. 
 
 The black avalanche had passed. There were 
 women weeping behind the coffin carried by phan- 
 toms wearing heavy shoes. 
 
 Therese sighed: 
 
 " "What wUl be the use of having tormented our- 
 selves in this world ? " 
 
 He looked as if he had not heard, and said: 
 
THE RED LILT 159 
 
 "Before I knew you I was not unhappy. I 
 liked life. I was retained in it by dreams. I liked 
 forms, and the mind in forms, the appearances that 
 caress and flatter. I had the joy of seeing and of 
 dreaming. I enjoyed everything and depended upon 
 nothing. My desires, abundant and light, bore me 
 without fatigue. I was interested in everything and 
 wished for nothing. One suffers only through the 
 will. I know this to-day. I had not a sombre wUl. 
 Without knowing it, I was happy. Oh, it was not 
 much, it was only enough to live. Now I haven't 
 it. My pleasures, the interest which I took in the 
 images of life and of art, the vivid amusement of 
 creating with my hands a dreamed figure — you have 
 made me lose everything and have even not left me 
 regret. I would not want my liberty and tranquil- 
 lity again. It seems to me that before I knew you 
 I did not live ; and now that I feel that I am living, 
 I cannot live far from you nor near you. I am 
 more wretched than the beggars whom we saw on 
 the road to Ema. They had air to breathe, and I 
 can breathe only you, whom I have not. Yet I am 
 glad to have met you. This alone counts in my 
 existence. A moment ago I thought I hated you. 
 I was wrong ; I adore you, and I bless you for the 
 wrong you have done me. I love all that comes to 
 me from you." 
 
 They were nearing the black trees at the entrance 
 to San Mccola bridge. On the other side of the 
 river the vague lots displayed their sadness, intensi- 
 fied by night. Seeing that he was calm and full of 
 
160 THE KBD LILT 
 
 a soft languor, she thought that his love, all in imag- 
 ination, fled in words, and that his desires ran into 
 reverie. She had not expected so prompt a resigna- 
 tion. It almost disappointed her to escape the 
 danger she had feared. 
 
 She extended her hand to him, more boldly this 
 time than before. 
 
 " Then, let us be friends. It is late. Let us 
 return. Escort me to my carriage. I shall be what 
 I have been to you, an excellent friend. You have 
 not displeased me. ' ' 
 
 But he led her to the fields, in the growing soli- 
 tude of the shore. 
 
 "'No, 1 will not let you go without having told 
 you what I wish to say to you. But I know no 
 longer how to talk; I cannot find the words. I love 
 you. I want to know that you are mine. I swear 
 to you that I wiU not stand another night in the 
 horror of doubting it." 
 
 He pressed het in his arms ; and watching for the 
 light of her eyes through the obscurity of her veil, said : 
 
 " You must love me. I want you to love me, and 
 it is your fault, for you have wanted it too. Say 
 that you are mine. Say it. " 
 
 Having gently disengaged herself, she replied with 
 a voice weak and slow : 
 
 ' ' I cannot. I cannot. You see I am acting frankly 
 with you. I said to you a moment ago that you had 
 not displeased me. But I cannot do as you wish. " 
 
 And reoaUing to her thought the absent one who 
 was waiting for her, she repeated: 
 
THE BED LILY 161 
 
 "I cannot." 
 
 Bending over her, he anxiously questioned her look, 
 the double star of which trembled and veiled itself. 
 
 "Why? You love me, I feel it, I see it. You 
 love me. Why will you do me this wrong ? " 
 
 He drew her to him, wishing to put his soul, with 
 his mouth, on her veiled lips. She escaped him with 
 agile will and said : 
 
 ' ' I cannot. Do not ask more. I cannot be 
 yours." 
 
 His lips trembled, his face was convulsed. He 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " You have a lover, and you love him. Why do 
 you mock me? " 
 
 " I swear to you I have no desire to mock you, and 
 that if 1 loved anyone in the world it would be you. " 
 
 But he was not listening to her. 
 
 ' ' Leave me, leave me ! ' ' 
 
 And he ran toward the dark country. The Arno 
 formed in the land lagoons, where the moon, half 
 veiled, broke its uncertain clearness. He walked 
 through the water and the mud, with a step rapid, 
 blind, frightful. 
 
 She took fright and shouted. She called him. 
 But he did not turn his head and made no answer. 
 He fled with frightful tranquillity. She ran after 
 him. Her feet hurt by the stones, her skirt made 
 heavy with water, she rejoined him. 
 
 " What were you going to do ? " 
 
 Then, looking at her, he saw in her eyes her 
 fright, and said: 
 11 
 
162 THE BED LILY 
 
 " Do not be afraid. I did not see where I was 
 going. I assure you I was not trying to die. Oh, 
 do not be afraid. I am desperate, but I am very 
 cahn. I was running away from you. I beg your 
 pardon. But I could not see you any longer. 
 Leave me, I pray you. Farewell! " 
 
 She replied, troubled and feeble: 
 
 " Come! We shall do what we can." 
 
 He remained sombre and spoke not. 
 
 She repeated: 
 
 "WeR, come!" 
 
 She took his arm. The vivid softness of her 
 hand animated him. He said: 
 
 "Do you wish? " 
 
 " I cannot leave you." 
 
 "You promise? " 
 
 "I must." 
 
 And, in her anxiety and in her anguish, she 
 smiled almost, in thinking that he had succeeded so 
 quickly by his foUy. 
 
 He said: 
 
 " To-morrow." 
 
 She, quickly, with a defensive instinct: 
 
 "Oh, no; not to-morrow! " 
 
 " You do not love me; you regret that you have 
 promised." 
 
 " No, I do not regret, but " 
 
 He implored, he supplicated her. She looked at 
 him for a moment, turned her head, hesitated, and 
 said in a low tone: 
 
 "Saturday." 
 
XYII 
 
 After dinner, Miss Bell was drawing in the par- 
 lor. She was tracing, on canvas, profiles of bearded 
 Etruscans for a cushion which Madame Marmet was 
 to embroider. Prince Albertinelli was selecting the 
 wool with a feminine knowledge of shades. It was 
 late when Choulette, having, as was his habit, 
 played briscola with the cook at the caterer's, ap- 
 peared, joyful, and as if having the mind of a god. 
 He took a seat on a sofa, by the side of Madame 
 Martin, and looked at her tenderly. Yoluptuousness 
 shone in his green eyes. He enveloped her, while 
 talking to her, with poetic and picturesque phrases. 
 It was like the sketch of a love song that he was 
 improvising for her. In short, tormented and odd 
 sentences, he was telling her the charm that she 
 exhaled. 
 
 She thought: 
 
 "He, too!" 
 
 She amused herself by teasing him. She asked 
 him if he had not found in Florence, in the low 
 quarters, one of the women whom he addressed 
 ordinarily. His preferences were known. He 
 could deny it as much as he wished : none ignored 
 the door where he had found the cordon of his Third 
 Order. His friends had met him on the boulevard. 
 
164 THE BED LILY 
 
 His taste for the most unfortunate women was evi- 
 dent in his most beautiful poems. 
 
 " Oh, M. Choulette, as far as I am able to judge, 
 they are very bad women whom you prefer." 
 
 He replied with solemnity: 
 
 " Madame, you may collect the grain of calum- 
 nies sown by M. Paul Vence and throw handfuls of 
 it at me. I wiU not try to avoid them. It is not 
 necessary you should know that I am chaste and 
 that my mind is pure. But do not judge lightly 
 those whom you call unfortunate, and who should be 
 sacred to you, since they are unfortunate. The dis- 
 dained and lost girl is the docile clay under the 
 finger of the Divine Potter: she is the victim and 
 the altar of the holocaust. The unfortunates are 
 , nearer God than the honest women : they have lost 
 conceit. They do not glorify themselves with the 
 nothingness that honors the matron. They possess 
 humility, which is the cornerstone of virtues agree- 
 able to heaven. A short repentance will be suffi- 
 cient for them to be the first in heaven; for their 
 sins, without malice and without joy, contain their 
 own forgiveness. Their faults, which are pains, 
 participate in the merits attached to pain; slaves to 
 brutal love, they are deprived of all voluptuousness, 
 and in this they are like the men who practise conti- 
 nence for the Kingdom of God. They are like us, 
 culprits ; but shame falls on their crime like a balm., 
 suffering purifies it like a coal. That is why God 
 wOl listen to the first voice which they shall send to 
 him. A throne is prepared for them at the right 
 
THE BED LILY 165 
 
 hand of the Father. In the Kingdom of God, the 
 queen and the empress will be happy to sit at the 
 feet of the unfortunate ; for you must not think that 
 the celestial house is built on a human plan. It is 
 far from it, Madame." 
 
 Nevertheless, he conceded that more than one 
 road led to salvation. One could follow the road of 
 love. 
 
 " The love of men is low," he said, " but it rises 
 on painful, incUned planes, and leads to God." 
 
 The Prince had risen. Kissing Miss BeU's hand, 
 he said: 
 
 "Saturday." 
 
 "Yes, day after to-morrow, Saturday," replied 
 Vivian. 
 
 Therese started. Saturday ! They were talking 
 of Saturday quietly, as of an ordinary day. Until 
 then she had not wished to think that Saturday 
 would come so soon or so naturally. 
 
 The company had been gone for a half hour. 
 Therese, tired, was thinking in her bed, when she 
 heard a knock at the door of her room. The panel 
 opened, and Vivian's little head appeared. 
 
 "I am not intruding, Darling? You are not 
 sleepy? " 
 
 JSTo, Darling had no desire to sleep. She rose on 
 her elbow. Vivian sat on the bed, so light that she 
 made no impression on it. 
 
 "Darling, I am sure you have a great deal of 
 reason. Oh, I am sure of it. You are reasonable 
 in the same way as M. Sadler is a violinist. He 
 
166 THE RED LILY 
 
 plays a little out of tune when he wishes. And you, 
 too, when you are not quite logical, it is for your 
 pleasure. Oh, Darling, you have a great deal of 
 reason and of judgment, and I come to ask your 
 advice." 
 
 Astonished, and a little anxious, Therese denied 
 that she was logical. She denied this very sincerely. 
 But Yivian would not listen to her. 
 
 " I have read Frangois Eabelais a great deal, my 
 love. It is in Rabelais and in Yillon that I studied 
 French. They are good old masters of language. 
 But, Darling, do you know the ' Pantagruel ' ? 
 Oh ! the ' Pantagruel ' is a beautiful and noble city, 
 full of palaces, in the resplendent dawn, before the 
 street sweepers of Paris have come. Oh, no, Dar- 
 ling, the sweepers have not taken out the dirt, and 
 the servant girls have not washed the marble slabs. 
 And I have seen that French women do not read 
 the ' Pantagruel. ' You do not know it ? No ? 
 Oh, it is not necessary. In the ' Pantagruel,' 
 Panurge asks if he must marry, and he covers him- 
 self with ridicule, my love. "Well, I am quite as 
 laughable as he, since I am asking the same question 
 of you." 
 
 Therese replied with an uneasiness she did not try 
 to conceal : 
 
 " As for that, my dear, do not ask me. I have 
 already told you my opinion." 
 
 " But, Darling, you have said only that men are 
 wrong to marry. I cannot take that advice for 
 myself." 
 
THE BED LILY 167 
 
 Madame Martin looked at the little boyish head 
 of Miss Bell, which oddly expressed loving modesty. 
 
 She said, embracing her: 
 
 ' ' Dear, there is not a man in the world exquisite 
 and delicate enough for you." 
 
 Then, with an expression of affectionate gravity : 
 
 " You are not a child; if some one loves you, and 
 you love him, do what you think you ought to do, 
 without mingling with love interests and combina- 
 tions that have nothing to do with sentiments. This 
 is the advice of a friend." 
 
 Miss Bell hesitated a moment to understand. 
 Then she blushed and rose. She had been shocked. 
 
XYIII 
 
 Satuedat, at four o'clock, Th^rese came, as slie 
 had promised, to the gate of the English cemetery. 
 She found Dechartre at the grille. He was serious 
 and troubled ; he hardly talked. She was glad he 
 did not display his joy. He led her by the deserted 
 walls of the gardens to a narrow street which she 
 did not know. She read on a signboard: "Via 
 Alfieri." After they had taken fifty steps, he 
 stopped before a sombre alley: 
 
 " It is there," he said. 
 
 She looked at him with infinite sadness. 
 
 " You wish me to go in ? " 
 
 She saw he was resolute, and followed him with- 
 out saying a word, in the humid shadow of the alley. 
 He traversed a courtyard where the grass grew 
 between the stones. In the back was a pavilion 
 with three windows, with columns and a front orna- 
 mented with goats and nymphs. On the moss-cov- 
 ered stoop he turned in the lock a key that screeched 
 and resisted. He murmured: 
 
 "It is rusty." 
 
 She replied, without thought: 
 
 " All the keys are rusty in this country." 
 
 They went up a stairway so silent under its 
 Greek band that it seemed to have forgotten the 
 
THE RED LILY 169 
 
 noise of footsteps. He pushed open a door and 
 made Therese enter the room. She went straight 
 to the window open on the graveyard. Above the 
 wall rose summits of pines, which are not funereal on 
 this earth where mourning is mingled with joy with- 
 out troubling it, where the sweetness of living ex- 
 tends to the grass of the dead. He took her hand 
 and led her to an arm-chair. He remained stand- 
 ing, and looked at the room which he had prepared 
 so that she would not find herself lost in it. Panels 
 of old print cloth, with figures of Comedy, placed 
 on the walls the amiable sadness of past gayeties. 
 He had placed in a corner an effaced pastel which 
 they had seen together at an antiquary's, and which, 
 for its vanished grace, she called the shade of 
 Eosalba. A grandmother's arm-chair; white chairs; 
 on the table painted cups and Yenetian glasses. At 
 aU the corners, screens of colored paper, whereon 
 were masks, grotesque figures, the light soul of Flor- 
 ence, of Bologna, and of "Venice in the time of the 
 Grand Dukes and of the last Doges. A looking- 
 glass, a carpet, that was aU. 
 
 He closed the window and lighted the fire. She 
 sat in the arm-chair, and as she remained in it stiffly, 
 he knelt before her, took her hands, kissed them, 
 and looked at her for a while with a marvel of ex- 
 pression, timorous and proud. Then he pressed his 
 lips on the end of her boot. 
 
 " "What are you doing ? " 
 
 " I kiss your feet because they have come." 
 
 He rose, drew her to him softly, and placed a long 
 
170 THE RED LILY 
 
 kiss on her mouth. She remained inert, her head 
 thrown back, her eyes closed. Her toque fell, her 
 hair dropped on her shoulders. 
 
 Two hours later, when the setting sun made im- 
 measurably longer the shadows on the stones, The- 
 rese, who had wished to walk alone in the city, 
 found herself in front of the two obelisks of Santa 
 Maria E"oveIla without knowing how she had reached 
 there. She saw at the corner of the square the old 
 cobbler drawing his string with his eternal gesture. 
 He smiled, bearing his sparrow on his shoulder. 
 
 She went into the shop, and sat on a chair. She 
 said in French: 
 
 " Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, 
 and what will become of me? " 
 
 He looked at her quietly, with laughing kindness, 
 not understanding nor caring. Nothing astonished 
 him. She shook her head. 
 
 " What I did, my good Quentin, I did because he 
 was suflfering, and because I loved him. I regret 
 nothing." 
 
 He replied, as was his habit, with the sonorous 
 yes of Italy: 
 
 "Si! si!" 
 
 " Is it not so, Quentin ? I have not done wrong ? 
 But what will happen now, my God? " 
 
 She prepared to go. He made her understand 
 that he wished her to wait. He culled carefully a 
 bit of basilick and offered it to her. 
 
 " For its fragrance, signora! " 
 
XIX 
 
 It was the next day. 
 
 Having carefully placed on the table of the parlor 
 his knotty stick, his pipe, and his antique carpet- 
 bag, Choulette bowed to Madame Martin, who was 
 reading at the window. He was going to Assisi. 
 He was wearing a sheepskin coat, and resembled the 
 old shepherds in pictures of the Nativity. 
 
 " Farewell, Madame. I am quitting Fiesole, you, 
 Dechartre, the too handsome Prince AlbertineUi, 
 and that gentle ogress. Miss Bell. I am going to 
 visit the Assisi mountain, which the poet says must 
 be named no longer Assisi, but the Orient, because 
 it is there that the sun of love rose. I am going to 
 kneel before the happy crypt where Saint Francis 
 is resting in a stone manger, with a stone for a pil- 
 low. For he would not even take out of this world 
 a shroud — out of this world where he left the revela- 
 tion of all joy and of all kindness. ' ' 
 
 "Farewell, M. Choulette. Bring to me a medal 
 of Saint Clara. I like Saint Clara a great deal." 
 
 ' ' You are right, Madame ; she was a lady full of 
 strength and of prudence. When Saint Francis, ill 
 and almost blind, came to spend a few days at Saint 
 Damien, near his friend, she built with her own 
 hands a hut for him in the garden. He was glad. 
 
172 THE BED LILY 
 
 A dolorous languor and the burning of his eyelids 
 deprived him of sleep. Enormous rats came to 
 attack him at night. Then he composed a canticle 
 full of joy to bless the splendid brother the Sun, 
 and our sister the "Water, chaste, useful, and pure. 
 My most beautiful verses have less inevitable charm 
 and splendor. And it is just that it should be thus ; 
 for Saint Francis's soul was more beautiful than his 
 mind. I am better than aU those of my contempo- 
 raries whom I have known, still I am worth nothing. 
 "When Saint Francis had found his Song of the Sun 
 he was very glad. He thought : ' "We shaU go, my 
 brothers and I, into the cities, and stand in the pub- 
 lic squares, with a lute, on the market day. Good 
 people win come near us, and we shaU say to them: 
 ""We are the jugglers of God, and we shall sing a 
 lay to you. If you are pleased, you will reward 
 us." They wiU promise, and when we shall have 
 sung, we shall recall their promise to them. "We 
 shall say to them: " You owe a reward to us. And 
 the one that we ask of you is that you love one 
 another." Doubtless, to keep their word and not 
 injure God's poor jugglers, they wiU avoid doing 
 ill to others.' " 
 
 Madame Martin thought Saint Francis was the 
 most amiable of the saints. 
 
 "His work," replied Choulette, "was destroyed 
 while he lived. Yet he died happy, because in him 
 was joy with humility. He was, in fact, God's 
 sweet singer. And it is right that another poor 
 poet should take his task and teach to the world true 
 
THE RED LILY 173 
 
 religion and true joy. I shall be that poet, Ma- 
 dame, if I can despoil myself of reason and of con- 
 ceit. For all moral beauty is achieved in this world 
 through the inconceivable wisdom which comes from 
 God and resembles folly." 
 
 " I shall not discourage you, M. Choulette. But 
 I am anxious about the fate which you reserve for 
 the poor women in your new society. You wiU 
 imprison them all in convents." 
 
 " I confess," replied Choulette, " that they embar- 
 rass me a great deal in my project of reform. The 
 violence with which one loves them is harsh and 
 bad. The pleasure which they give is not peaceful, 
 and does not lead to joy. I have committed for 
 them, in my life, two or three abominable crimes 
 which nobody knows. I doubt whether I shall ever 
 invite you to supper, Madame, in the new Saint 
 Mary of the Angels." 
 
 He took his pipe, his carpet-bag, and his stick : 
 
 " The crimes of love shall be forgiven. Or, 
 rather, one cannot do evil when one loves. But 
 sensual love is formed of hatred, selfishness, and 
 anger as much as of love. Because I found you 
 beautiful one night, on this sofa, I was assailed by 
 a cloud of violent thoughts. I had come from the 
 Albergo, where I had heard Miss Bell's cook impro- 
 vise magnificently twelve hundred verses on Spring. 
 I was inundated by a celestial joy which the sight 
 of you made me lose. It must be that a profound 
 truth is enclosed in Eve's malediction. For, near 
 you, I became sad and wicked. I had soft words 
 
174 THE BED LILY 
 
 on my lips. They were lies. I felt that I was your 
 adversary and your enemy ; I hated you. When I 
 saw you smile, I felt a desire to kill you." 
 
 "Truly?" 
 
 " Oh, Madame, it is a very natural sentiment 
 which you must have inspired more than once. But 
 the common people feel it without being conscious 
 of it, while my vivid imagination represents me to 
 myself incessantly. I contemplate my mind, at 
 times splendid, often hideous. If you had seen my 
 mind that night you would have yeUed with fright. ' ' 
 
 Therese smiled : 
 
 "Farewell, M. Choulette. Do not forget my 
 medal of Saint Clara." 
 
 He placed his bag on the floor, raised his arm, and 
 held his forefinger like one pointing : 
 
 " You have nothing to fear from me. But the 
 one whom you will love and who wiU love you wiU 
 harm you. Farewell, Madame." 
 
 He took his luggage and went out. She saw his 
 long, rustic form disappear behind the bushes of the 
 garden. 
 
 In the afternoon she went to San Marco, where 
 Dechartre was waiting for her. She desired and 
 she feared to see him so soon. She felt an anguish 
 which an unknown sentiment, profoundly soft, 
 appeased. She did not feel the stupor of the first 
 time that she had yielded for love; she did not feel 
 the brusque vision of the irreparable. She was 
 under influences slower, more vague, and more pow- 
 erful. This time a charming reverie bathed the 
 
THE RED LILY 175 
 
 reminiscence of the caresses whicli she had received. 
 She was full of trouble and of anxiety, but she felt 
 no regret. She had acted less through her will than 
 through a force which she divined to be better. She 
 absorbed herself because of her disinterestedness. 
 She counted on nothing, having calculated nothing. 
 Doubtless, she had been wrong to yield, since she 
 was not free; but she had exacted nothing. Perhaps 
 she was for him only a sincere and violent caprice. 
 She did not know him. She had not the experience 
 of these beautiful, vivid imaginations that surpass 
 immensely, in good as in evil, common mediocrity. 
 If he went away from her and disappeared she would 
 not reproach him for it ; at least, she thought not. 
 She would keep the reminiscence and the imprint of 
 the rarest and most precious thing one may find in 
 the world. Perhaps he was incapable of real attach- 
 ment. He thought he loved her. He had loved her 
 for an hour. She dared not wish for more, in the 
 embarrassment of the false situation at which her 
 frankness and her pride were irritated, and which 
 troubled the lucidity of her intelligence. "While the 
 carriage was carrying her to San Marco, she per- 
 suaded herself that he would say nothing to her of 
 the day before, and that the room from which one 
 could see the pines rise to the sky would leave to 
 them only the dream of a dream. 
 
 He extended his hand to her. Before he had 
 spoken she saw in his look that he loved her and 
 wanted her again, and she perceived at the same 
 time that she wished him to be thus. 
 
176 THE RED LILY 
 
 a ■ 
 
 ' You — " he said, " I have been here since noon. 
 I was waiting, knowing that you would not come 
 so soon, but able to live only at the place where I 
 was to see you. It is you! Talk; let me see and 
 hear you." 
 
 " Then you stOl love me ? " 
 
 "It is now that I love you. I thought I loved 
 you when you were only a phantom. ISTow, you are 
 the being in whom I have put my soul. It is true 
 you are mine. "What have I done to obtain the 
 greatest, the only, good of this world ? And those 
 men with whom the earth is covered think they are 
 living ! I alone live ! Tell me, what have I done to 
 obtain you? " 
 
 " Oh, what had to be done, I did. I say this to 
 you frankly. If we have reached that point, the 
 fault is mine. You see, they do not always confess 
 it, but it is always the fault of women. So, what- 
 ever may happen, I will never reproach you for any- 
 thing." 
 
 An agile troupe of yelling beggars, guides, and 
 coachmen surrounded them with an importunity 
 wherein was mingled the gracefulness which Italians 
 never lose. Their subtlety made them divine that 
 these were lovers, and they knew that lovers are 
 prodigals. Dechartre threw coin to them, and they 
 aU returned to their happy laziness. 
 
 A municipal guard received the visitors. Madame 
 Martin regretted that there was no monk. The 
 white gown of the Dominicans was so beautiful 
 under the arcades of the cloister! 
 
THE RED LILY 177 
 
 They visited the cells where, on the bare plaster, 
 Fra Angelico, aided by his brother Benedetto, 
 painted for his companions innocent pictures. 
 
 "Do you recall the winter night when, meeting 
 you before the Guimet Museum, I accompanied you 
 to the narrow street bordered by small gardens 
 which leads to the Billy quay ? Before separating 
 we stopped a moment on the parapet on which runs 
 a thin boxwood curtain. To'u looked at that box- 
 wood, dried by winter. And when you went away 
 I looked at it for a long time. ' ' 
 
 They were in the ceU wherein Savonarola lived. 
 The guide showed to them the portrait and the relics 
 of the martyr. 
 
 " What could there have been in me that you liked 
 that day ? It was dark. ' ' 
 
 " I saw you walk. It is in movements that forms 
 speak. Each one of your steps told me the secrets 
 of your precise and charming beauty. Oh! my 
 imagination was never discreet for anything that 
 concerned you. I did not dare to talk to you. 
 "When I saw you, it frightened me. It frightened 
 me because you could do everything for me. When 
 you were present, I adored you tremblingly. When 
 you were far from me, I felt all the impieties of 
 desire." 
 
 "I did not suspect this. But do you recall the 
 first time we saw each other, when Paul Yence intro- 
 duced you ? You were seated near the screen. Tou 
 were looking at the miniatures. You said to me: 
 ' This lady, painted by Siccardi, resembles Andr6 
 13 
 
178 THE BED LILY 
 
 Chenier's motlier.' I replied to you: 'She is my 
 husband's great-grandmother. How looked Andre 
 Chenier's mother ? ' And you said : ' There is a por- 
 trait of her: a faded Levantine.' " 
 
 He excused himself and thought that he had not 
 spoken so impertinently. 
 
 " You did. My memory is better than yours." 
 
 They were walking in the white silence of the 
 convent. They visited the cell which Angelico orna- 
 mented with the suavest painting. And there, 
 before the Yirgin which, in the pale sky, receives 
 from God the Pather the immortal crown, he took 
 Therese in his arms and placed a kiss on her mouth, 
 almost in view of two Englishwomen who were 
 walking through the corridors, consulting their 
 Baedeker. She said to him: 
 
 " "We must not forget Saint Anthony's cell." 
 
 " Therese, I am suffering in my happiness from 
 everything that is yours and that escapes me. I am 
 suffering because you do not live for me alone. I 
 wish to have you entire, and to have had you in the 
 past." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders a little. 
 
 "Oh, the past!" 
 
 " The past is the only human reaUty. Every- 
 thing that is, is past." 
 
 She raised toward him her eyes, which resembled 
 charming skies full of mingled sun and rain. 
 
 "Well, I may say this to you: I have never felt 
 that I lived except with you. ' ' 
 
 When she returned to Fiesole, she found a brief 
 
THE RED LILY 1T9 
 
 and threatening letter from Le Menil. He could not 
 understand her prolonged absence, her silence. If 
 she did not announce at once her return, he would 
 go to Florence for her. 
 
 She read without astonishment, but annoyed to 
 see that everything which could happen was hap- 
 pening, and that nothing would be spared to her of 
 what she had feared. She could stiU cahn him and 
 reassure him : she had only to say to him that she 
 loved him; that she would soon return to Paris; that 
 he should renounce the foolish idea of rejoining her 
 here; that Florence was a village where they would 
 be seen at once. But she would have to write: " I 
 love you." She would have to quiet him with 
 caressing phrases. She had not the courage to do 
 it. She would let him guess the truth. She accused 
 herself in veiled terms. She Avrote obscurely of 
 souls carried by the flood of hfe, and of the little 
 that one is on the moving ocean of things. She 
 asked him, with affectionate sadness, to keep of her 
 a good reminiscence in a little corner of his soul. 
 
 She took the letter to the post-office box on the 
 Fiesole square. Children were playing in the twi- 
 light. She looked from the top of the hiU to the 
 elegant cup which carried like a jewel beautiful 
 Florence. And the peace of night made her shiver. 
 She threw the letter in the box. Then only she 
 had the clear vision of what she had done and of 
 what the result would be. 
 
XX 
 
 On the square, "where the sun of spring threw its 
 yellow roses, the ringing bells at noon dispersed the 
 rustic crowd of grain merchants assembled to sell 
 their wares. At the foot of the Lanzi, before the 
 assembly of statues, the venders of ices had placed 
 on tables covered with red cottonade small castles 
 bearing the inscription: "Bibite cliacciate." And 
 easy joy descended from heaven on earth. Therese 
 and Jacques, returning from an early promenade to 
 the Boboli Gardens, were passing before the illustri- 
 ous loggia. Therese looked at the Sabine by John 
 of Bologna with that interested curiosity of a woman 
 examining another woman. But Dechartre looked 
 at Therese only. He said to her: 
 
 " It is marvellous how the vivid light of day flat- 
 ters your beauty, loves you, and caresses the mother- 
 of-pearl on your cheeks." 
 
 "Yes," she said. "Candle light hardens my 
 features. I had observed this. I am not an even- 
 ing woman, unfortunately. It is at night that women 
 have a chance to show themselves and to please. At 
 night. Princess Seniavine has a fi.ne gilt complexion ; 
 in the sun she is as yellow as a lemon. It must be 
 owned that she does not care. She is not a co- 
 quette." 
 
THE BED LILT 181 
 
 "And you are? " 
 
 " Oh, yes. Formerly I was a coquette for myself, 
 now I am a coquette for you. ' ' 
 
 She looked at the Sabine woman, who with her 
 arms, long and robust, tried to avoid the Roman's 
 embraces. 
 
 " To be beautiful, must a woman have that dry- 
 ness of form and that length of limb ? I am not 
 shaped in that way." 
 
 He took pains to reassure her. But she was not 
 anxious. She was looking now at the little castle 
 of the ice- vender. A sudden desire had come to her 
 to eat an ice there, standing as the working-girls of 
 the city did. He said : 
 
 " Wait a moment. " 
 
 He ran toward the street which follows the left 
 side of the Lanzi, and disappeared. 
 
 After a moment he came back, and gave to her a 
 little gold spoon, the handle of which was finished 
 in a lily of Florence, the chalice of which was 
 enamelled with red. 
 
 " It is to eat your ice. The man does not give a 
 spoon. You would have had to put out your tongue. 
 It would have been pretty, but you haven't the 
 habit of it." 
 
 She recognized the spoon, a jewel which she had 
 remarked the day before in the showcase of an anti- 
 quarian. 
 
 They were happy ; they disseminated their joy, 
 which was fuU and simple, in light words which had 
 no sense. And they laughed when the Florentine 
 
182 THE RED LILY 
 
 repeated to them with sober and powerful mimicry 
 passages of the old Italian, writers. She enjoyed 
 the play of his face, which was antique and jovial. 
 But she did not always understand what he said. 
 She asked Jacques : 
 
 " What did he say ? " 
 
 " Do you wish to know ? " 
 
 She wished to know. 
 
 " Well, he said he would be happy if the fleas in 
 his bed were shaped like you." 
 
 When she had eaten the ice, he asked her to 
 return to San Michele. It was so near! They 
 would traverse the square and at once discover the 
 old stone jewel. They went. They looked at the 
 Saint George and at the bronze Saint Mark. De- 
 chartre saw again on the wall the post-office box, and 
 he recalled with painful exactitude the little gloved 
 hand which had thrown the letter. He thought it 
 hideous, that copper mouth which had swallowed 
 Therese's secret. He could not turn his eyes away 
 from it. All his gayety had fled. She applied her- 
 self to admiring the rude statue of the Evangelist. 
 
 " It is true that he looks honest and frank, and 
 that, if he talked, nothing would come out of his 
 mouth except words of truth." 
 
 He replied bitterly: 
 
 " It is not a woman's mouth." 
 
 She understood his thought, and said in her soft 
 tone: 
 
 " My friend, why do you say this to me? I am 
 frank." 
 
THE RED LILY 183 
 
 "What do you call frank? You know that a 
 woman is obliged to He." 
 
 She hesitated. Then: 
 
 "A woman is frank when she does not lie use- 
 lessly." 
 
XXI 
 
 Thekese was dressed in sombre gray. The bushes 
 were covered with silver stars on the border of the 
 terrace, and on the side of the hills the laurel trees 
 threw their odoriferous flame. The cup of Florence 
 was in bloom. 
 
 Yivian BeU walked, white, in the fragrant garden. 
 
 " You see. Darling, Florence is truly the City of 
 Flowers, and it is not wrong that she should have a 
 red lily for emblem. It is a festival to-day. Dar- 
 ling." 
 
 "A festival, to-day?" 
 
 " Darling, you do not know this is the first of 
 May ? You did not wake this morning in a charm- 
 ing fairy spectacle ? Oh, Darling, you do not cele- 
 brate the Festival of the Flowers ? You do not feel 
 joyful, you who love flowers ? For you love them, 
 my love, I know it ; you are very good to them. 
 You said to me that they felt joy and pain; that they 
 suffered as we do." 
 
 ' ' Ah ! I said that they suffered as we do ? " 
 
 "Yes, you said it. It is their festival to-day. 
 "We must celebrate it with the rites consecrated by 
 old painters." 
 
 Therese heard without understanding. She was 
 crumpling under her glove a letter which she had 
 
THE RED LILT 185 
 
 just received, a letter bearing the Italian postage 
 stamp, and containing only these two lines: 
 
 "I am staying at the Great Britain Hotel, Lun- 
 garno Acciaoli. I shall expect you to-morrow 
 morning. N"o. 18." 
 
 " Oh, Darling, you do not know it is the custom 
 of Florence to celebrate spring the first of May 
 every year? Then you did not understand the 
 meaning of Botticelli's picture consecrated to the 
 Festival of Flowers. Formerly, Darling, the first 
 of May the entire city was in joy. Young girls, 
 crowned with sweetbriar and other flowers, made a 
 long cortege through the Corso, under arches, and 
 formed choruses on the new grass. We shall do as 
 they did. We shall dance in the garden." 
 
 ' ' Ah, we shall dance in the garden ? ' ' 
 
 " Yes, Darling; and I will teach you Tuscan steps 
 of the fifteenth century which have been found in a 
 manuscript by Mr. Morrison, the oldest librarian in 
 London. Come back soon, my love; we shall put 
 on flower hats and dance." 
 
 " Yes, dear, we shall dance." 
 
 And pushing the gate, she ran through the little 
 pathway that hid its stones under rose bushes. She 
 threw herself into the first carriage she found. The 
 coachman wore forget-me-nots on his hat and on 
 the handle of his whip. 
 
 " Great Britain Hotel, Lungarno Acciaoli." 
 
 She knew where that was, Lungarno Acciaoli. 
 She had gone there at sunset, and she had seen the 
 gold of the sun on the agitated surface of the river. 
 
186 THE BED LILY 
 
 Then night had come, the murmur of the waters in 
 the silence, the words and the looks that had trou- 
 bled her, the first kiss of the friend, the beginning 
 of irreparable love. Oh, yes, she recalled Lungarno 
 AcciaoH and the river side beyond the old bridge — 
 Great Britain Hotel — she knew : a big stone f a§ade 
 on the quay. It was fortunate, since he had to come, 
 that he had gone there. He might as easily have 
 gone to the City Hotel, where Dechartre was. It 
 was fortunate they were not side by side in the same 
 corridor. Lungarno Acciaoli! The dead body 
 which they had seen pass was at peace somewhere 
 in the little graveyard in bloom. 
 
 "JS^umber 18." 
 
 It was a bare hotel room, with a stove in the Ital- 
 ian fashion, a set of brushes minutely displayed on 
 the table, and a time-table. Not a book, not a 
 journal. He was there; she saw suffering on his 
 bony face, an air of fever. This produced on her a 
 grave impression. He waited a moment for a word, 
 a gesture; but she dared do nothing. He offered a 
 chair to her. She refused it and remained standing. 
 
 "Therese, there is something which I do not 
 know. Speak." 
 
 After a moment of silence, she replied, with 
 painful slowness : 
 
 ' ' My friend, when I was in Paris, why did you go ? " 
 
 By the sadness of her accent he believed, he 
 wished to believe, in the expression of an affection- 
 ate reproach. His face colored. He replied ar- 
 dently: 
 
THE RED LILY 187 
 
 "Ah, if I could have foreseen! That hunting 
 party — I cared little for it, as you may think ! But 
 you — your letter, that of the 27th " (he had a gift 
 for dates) "has thrown me into a horrible anxiety. 
 Something has happened. Tell me everything." 
 
 "My friend, I believed you had ceased to love 
 me." 
 
 "But now that you know the contrary ? " 
 
 "]Srow " 
 
 She paused, her arms falling and her hands 
 joined. 
 
 Then, with affected tranquillity: 
 
 ""Well, my friend, we took each other without 
 Icnowing. One never knows. You are young; 
 younger than I, since we are of the same age. You 
 have, doubtless, projects for the future." 
 
 He looked at her proudly. She continued: 
 
 " Your parents, your mother, your aunts, your 
 uncle the General, have projects for you. It's nat- 
 ural. I might have become an obstacle. It is better 
 that I should disappear from your life. We shall 
 keep a good reminiscence of each other." 
 
 She extended to him her gloved hand. He folded 
 his arms: 
 
 "Then, you do not want me? You have made 
 me happy, as no other man ever was, and you think 
 now to brush me aside ? Truly, you think you have 
 finished with me ? What have you come to say to 
 me ? A liaison ? that is easily undone. People take 
 each other, quit each other — well, no ! You are not 
 a person whom one may quit," 
 
188 THE BED LILY 
 
 "Yes, you had perhaps placed in me more than 
 one does ordinarily in such cases. I was more than 
 an amusement for you. But, if I am not the 
 ■woman you thought I was, if I have deceived you, 
 if I am frivolous — you know people have said so — 
 well, if I have not been to you what I should have 
 been " 
 
 She hesitated, and continued in a brave tone, 
 contrasting with what she said : 
 
 " If, while I was yours, I have been led astray; if 
 I have been curious ; if I say to you that I was not 
 made for serious sentiment " 
 
 He interrupted her: 
 
 " You are not telling the truth." 
 
 "No, I am not telling the truth. And I do not 
 know how to he. I wanted to spoil our past. I 
 was wrong. It was, as you know it was. But " 
 
 "But?" 
 
 " I have always told you I am not sure. There 
 are women, it is said, who are sure of themselves. 
 I warned you that I am not like them." 
 
 He shook his head from right to left, like an irri- 
 tated beast. 
 
 " "What do you mean ? I do not understand. I 
 understand nothing. Speak clearly. There is some- 
 thing between us. I do not know what. I want to 
 know what it is. What is it ? " 
 
 " There is the fact that I am not a woman sure of 
 herself, and that you should not rely on me. No, 
 you should not rely on me. I had promised nothing 
 — and then, if I had promised, what are words? " 
 
THE RED LILY 189 
 
 " You do not love me. Oh, you love me no more. 
 I can see it. But it is so much the worse for you! 
 I love you. You should not have given yourself to 
 me. Do not think that you can take yourself back. 
 I love you and I'll keep you. So you thought you 
 could get out of trouble very quietly? Listen a 
 moment. You have done everything to make me 
 love you, to attach me to you, to make it impossible 
 for me to live without you. 
 
 ' ' Six weeks ago you asked for nothing better. You 
 were everything for me, I was everything for you. 
 And now you want suddenly that I should know 
 you no longer; that you should be to me a stranger, 
 a lady whom one meets in society. Ah, you have a 
 fine audacity ! Have I dreamed ? All the past is 
 not true ? I invented it all ? Oh, there can be no 
 doubt of it. You loved me. 1 feel it stiU, "Wellj 
 I have not changed. I am what I was ; you have 
 nothing to complain of. I have not betrayed you 
 for other women. It isn't credit that I claim. I 
 could not have done it. When one has known you, 
 one finds the prettiest women insipid. I have never 
 had the idea of deceiving you. I have always acted 
 well toward you. Why should you not love me ? 
 Answer. Speak. Say you love me still. Say it, 
 since it is true. Come, Therese, you will feel at once 
 that you love as you loved me formerly in the little 
 nest where we were so happy. Come! " 
 
 He went near her ardently. She, her eyes fuU of 
 fright, pushed him away with glacial horror. 
 
 He understood, stopped, and said; 
 
190 THE RED LILY 
 
 " You have a lover. " 
 
 She lowered her head, then lifted it, grave and 
 dumb. 
 
 Then he made a gesture as if to strike her, and at 
 once recoiled in shame. He lowered his eyes and 
 was silent. His fingers to his lips, and biting his 
 nails, he saw that his hand had been pricked by 
 a pin on her waist, and bled. He threw himself 
 in an armchair, drew his handkerchief to wipe off 
 the blood, and remained indifferent and without 
 thought. 
 
 She, with her back to the door, her head straight 
 and pale, her look vague, arranged her hat with in- 
 stinctive care. At the noise, formerly delicious, that 
 the rustle of her skirts made, he started, looked at 
 her, and asked furiously : 
 
 ' ' Who is he ? I want to know. ' ' 
 
 She did not move. She replied with soft firmness : 
 
 " I have told you aU I can. Do not ask more; it 
 would be useless." 
 
 He looked at her with a cruel look which she had 
 never seen before. 
 
 " Oh, do not tell me his name. It wiU not be 
 difficult for me to find it." 
 
 She said not a word, saddened for him, anxious 
 for another, full of anguish and of fear, and yet 
 without regret, without bitterness, having her soul 
 elsewhere. 
 
 He had a vague sensation of what was happening 
 in her. In his anger to see her so sweet and so 
 serene, to find her beautiful, and beautiful for an- 
 
THE BED LILY 191 
 
 other, he felt a desire to kill her, and he shouted at 
 her: 
 
 "Go!" 
 
 Then, weakened by this effort of hatred which 
 was not natural to him, he buried his head in his 
 hands and sobbed. 
 
 His pain touched her, gave her the hope of quiet- 
 ing him. She thought she might perhaps console 
 him for her loss. Amicably and comfortably she 
 sat by him. 
 
 "My friend, blame me. I am to blame, and 
 more to be pitied. Disdain me, if you wish, if 
 one can disdain an unfortunate creature who is 
 the plaything of life. In fine, judge me as you 
 wish. But keep for me a little friendship in your 
 anger, a little bitter and sweet reminiscence, some- 
 thing like those days of autumn where there is sun- 
 light and strong wind. That is what I deserve. 
 Do not be harsh to the agreeable and frivolous vis- 
 itor who passed through your life. Bid good-by to 
 me as to a traveller who goes one knows not where, 
 and who is sad. There is so much sadness in sepa- 
 ration! You were irritated against me a moment 
 ago. Oh, I do not reproach you for it. I only 
 suffer for it. Beserve a little sympathy for me. 
 Who knows ? The future is always unknown. It is 
 very gray and very obscure before me. Let me say 
 to myself that I have been kind, simple, frank with 
 you, and that you have not forgotten it. In time 
 you wUl understand, you wiH forgive; to-day have 
 A little pity." 
 
192 THE RED LILY 
 
 He was not listening. He was only appeased by 
 the caress of her voice, wherein the sounds were 
 limpid and clear. He exclaimed : 
 
 " You do not love him. I am the one whom you 
 love. Then " 
 
 She hesitated: 
 
 "Ah, to say whom one loves or loves not is 
 not an easy thing for a woman, or at least for 
 me. I do not know how other women do. But 
 life is not good to me. I am thrown, pushed, 
 rocked." 
 
 He looked at her calmly. An idea came to him. 
 He had taken a resolution; he forgave, he forgot, 
 provided she returned to him at once. 
 
 " Th^rese, you do not love him. It was an error, 
 a moment of forgetfulness, a horrible and stupid 
 thing that you did through weakness, through sur- 
 prise, perhaps in spite. Swear to me that you wiU 
 never see him again." 
 
 He took her arm : 
 
 " Swear to me." 
 
 She said not a word, her teeth set, her face som- 
 bre. He wrenched her wrist. She exclaimed: 
 
 "You hurt me." 
 
 However, he followed his idea; he led her to the 
 table, on which, near the brushes, were an ink bottle, 
 and several leaves of letter paper ornamented with 
 a large blue vignette, representing the fa§ade of the 
 hotel, with innumerable windows. 
 
 ""Write what I am going to dictate to you. I 
 wiU have somebody to take the letter. ' ' 
 
THE BED LILY 193 
 
 And as she resisted, lie made her faJl on her 
 knees. Proud and tranquil, she said: 
 
 " I cannot, I will not." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Because — do you wish to know? — because I 
 love him." 
 
 Brusquely he released her. If he had had his 
 revolver at hand, perhaps he would have kiUed her. 
 But almost at once his anger was dampened by sad- 
 ness ; and now, desperate, he was the one who would 
 have wished to die. 
 
 " Is what you say true ? Is it possible ? " 
 
 "How do I know? Can I say? Do I under- 
 stand ? Have I an idea, a sentiment, on anything ? " 
 
 "With an effort she added: 
 
 " Am I at this moment aware of anything except 
 my sadness and your despair? " 
 
 "You love him, you love him ! What has he, 
 how is he, that you should love him ? ' ' 
 
 His surprise made him stupid ; he was in an abyss 
 of astonishment. But what she had said separated 
 them. He did not dare to complain. He only 
 repeated : 
 
 "You love him, you love him; but what has he 
 done to you, what has he said, for you to love him ? 
 I know you. I have not told you every time your 
 ideas shocked me. I would wager he is not even a 
 man in society. And you believe he loves you? 
 You believe it ? WeU, you are deceiving yourself. 
 He does not love you. You flatter him, simply. He 
 win quit you at the first opportunity. When he 
 13 
 
194 
 
 THE RED LILY 
 
 shall have compromised you, he wiU abandon you. 
 Next year people will say of you : ' She goes with 
 everybody.' I am sorry for your father; he is one 
 of my friends, and will know your behavior. You 
 cannot expect to deceive him." 
 
 She listened, humiliated but consoled, thinking 
 how she would have suffered had she found him 
 generous. 
 
 In his simplicity he sincerely disdained her. This 
 disdain relieved him. 
 J ' ' How did the thing happen ? You can teL. me. ' ' 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders with so much pity 
 that he dared not continue. He became hateful 
 again. 
 
 " Do you imagine that I will aid you in saving 
 appearances, that I wiU return to your house, that I 
 will continue to caU on your husband ? " 
 
 "I think you wiU continue to do what a gentle- 
 man should. I ask nothing of you. I should have 
 liked to preserve of you the reminiscence of an ex- 
 cellent friend. I thought you might be indulgent 
 and kind to me, but it's not possible. I see that 
 people never quit each other kindly. Later, later, 
 you win judge me better. Farewell ! ' ' 
 
 He looked at her. JSTow his face expressed more 
 pain than anger. She had never seen his eyes so 
 dry and so black, his temples so arid. It seemed as 
 if he had grown old in an hour. 
 
 "I prefer to tell you in advance. It wiU be 
 impossible for me to see you again. You are not a 
 woman whom one may meet after one has been 
 
THE RED LILY 195 
 
 loved by her. You are not like others. You have 
 a poison of your own, which you have given to me, 
 and which I feel in me, in my veins. "Why have I 
 known you?" 
 
 She looked at him kindly. 
 
 " Farewell ! Say to yourself that I am not worthy 
 of being regretted so much. ' ' 
 
 Then, when he saw that she placed her hand on 
 the key of the door, when he felt at that gesture that 
 he was to lose her, that he would never have her 
 again, he shouted. He forgot everything. There 
 remained in him only the dazed feeling of a great 
 misfortune accomplished, of an irreparable calamity. 
 And from the depth of his stupor a desire ascended. 
 He wanted to captivate again the one who was 
 going and would never return. He drew her to 
 him. She resisted with aU the force of her will, 
 which was free and on the alert. She disengaged 
 herself, crumpled, torn, without even having been 
 afraid. 
 
 He understood that everything was useless; he 
 realized she was no longer for him, because she 
 belonged to another. As his suffering returned, he 
 pushed her out of the door. 
 
 She remained a moment in the corridor, proudly 
 waiting for a word. 
 
 But he shouted again, " Gro! " and shut the door 
 violently. 
 
 On the Via Alfieri, she saw again the pavilion in 
 the rear of the courtyard where pale grass grew. 
 She found it tranquil and dumb, faithful, with its 
 
196 THE BED LILY 
 
 goats and its nymphs, to the lovers of the time of 
 Grand Duchess Eliza. She felt at once freed from 
 the painful and brutal world, and transported to 
 ages wherein she had not known the sadness of life. 
 At the foot of the stairs, the steps of which were 
 covered with roses, Dechartre was waiting. She 
 threw herself in his arms. He carried her inert, as 
 the precious trophy before which he had become 
 pallid and trembling. She enjoyed, her eyelids half 
 closed, the superb humiliation of being a beautiful 
 prey. Her fatigue, her sadness, her disgust with 
 the day, the reminiscence of violence, her regained 
 liberty, the need of forgetting, remains of fright, 
 everything vivified, irritated her tenderness. She 
 linked her arms around the neck of her friend. 
 
 They had the gayety of children. They laughed, 
 said nothings, played, ate lemons, oranges, and other 
 fruits piled up near them on painted plates. Her 
 lips were half open on the brilliancy of her humid 
 teeth. She asked, with coquettish anxiety, if he 
 were not disillusioned after the beautiful dream he 
 had made of her. 
 
 In the caressing lights of the day which he had 
 arranged, he contemplated her with youthful joy. 
 He gave praise and kisses to her. They forgot 
 themselves in caresses, in friendly quarrels, in happy 
 glances. 
 
 He asked her how a little red mark on her temple 
 had come there. She replied that she had forgotten ; 
 that it was nothing. She hardly lied; truly she had 
 forgotten. 
 
THE RED LILY 197 
 
 They recalled to each other their beautiful and 
 short history, all their life, which dated from the 
 day when they had met. 
 
 "You know, on the terrace, the day after your 
 arrival, you said vague words to me. I guessed that 
 you loved me." 
 
 " I was afraid to seem stupid to you." 
 
 " You were, a little. It was my triumph. It 
 made m.e impatient to see you so little troubled near 
 me. I loved you before you loved me. Oh, I do 
 not blush for it." 
 
 He gave her a glass of Asti. But there was on the 
 table a bottle of Trasimene. She wished to taste it, 
 in memory of the lake which she had seen desolate 
 and beautiful at night in its opal cup. It was at her 
 first stay in Italy. It had happened six years before. 
 
 He chided her for having discovered the beauty of 
 things without his aid. 
 
 She said: 
 
 "Without you, I did not know how to see any- 
 thing. "Why did you not come before ? ' ' 
 
 He closed her mouth with a kiss. Then she said: 
 
 " Yes, I love you! Yes, I have never loved any 
 one but you! " 
 
xxii 
 
 Le Menil had written: "I leave to-morrow at 
 seven P.M. Meet me at the station. " 
 
 She had come. She saw him in long coat and 
 cape, precise and calm, in front of the hotel stages. 
 He said only: 
 
 " Ah, you have come." 
 
 " But, my friend, you have called me." 
 
 He did not confess that he had written in the 
 absurd hope that she would love him again and that 
 the rest would be forgotten, or that she would say 
 to him: "It was a trial." 
 
 If she had said so he would have believed her. 
 
 Astonished because she did not speak, he said 
 dryly: 
 
 " "What have you to say to me ? It is not for me, 
 it is for you to talk. I have no explanations to give 
 you. I haven't to justify a betrayal." 
 
 "My friend, do not be cruel, do not be ungrate- 
 ful. This is what I had to say to you. And I have 
 still to say to you that I quit you with the sadness 
 of a real friend." 
 
 " Is that aU? Go and say this to the other. It 
 wiU interest him more than it does me." 
 
 " You have called me, I have come; do not make 
 me regret it." 
 
THE BED LILY 199 
 
 ' ' I am sorry to have disturbed you. You could 
 doubtless find a better employment for your time. 
 I will not detain you. Eejoin Mm, since you are 
 dying to do so." 
 
 At the thought that the poor and wretched words 
 which she heard expressed a moment of the eternal 
 human pain, and that tragedy had Ulustrated simi- 
 lar ones, she had an impression of sadness mingled 
 with irony which a curl of her lips betrayed. He 
 thought she was laughing. 
 
 " Do not laugh; listen to me. The other day, in 
 the hotel room, I wanted to kill you. I came so 
 near doing it that now I know what it is. I wiU not 
 do it. You can rest secure. What would be the 
 use ? As I wish to keep up appearances, I will call 
 on you in Paris. It wiU grieve me to learn that 
 you cannot receive me. I will see your husband, I 
 win see your father also. It wiU be to say good-by 
 to them, as I intend to go on a long voyage. Fare- 
 well, Madame! " 
 
 At the moment when he turned his back to her, 
 Therese saw Miss BeU and Prince Albertinelli com- 
 ing out of the freight station toward her. The 
 Prince was very handsome. Yivian was walking 
 by his side with the lightness of chaste joys. 
 
 "Oh, Darling, what a pleasant surprise to find 
 you here. The Prince and I have just seen, at the 
 custom house, the beU, which has come." 
 
 " Ah, the bell has come ? " 
 
 " It is here, Darling, the Ghiberti beU. I saw it 
 in its wooden cage. It did not ring, because it was 
 
200 THE EED LILY 
 
 a prisoner. But it wUl have a campanile in my 
 Fiesole house. When it feels the air of Florence, it 
 will be happy to let its silvery voice be heard. Vis- 
 ited by the doves, it will ring for all our joys and 
 for aU our sufferings. It will ring for you, for me, 
 for the Prince, for good Madame Marmet, for M. 
 Choulette, for aU our friends." 
 
 " Dear, bells never ring for real joys and for real 
 sufferings. Bells are honest functionaries who know 
 only official sentiments." 
 
 "Oh, Darling, you are much mistaken. Bells 
 know the secrets of souls; they know everything. 
 But I am very glad to find you here. Oh, I know, 
 my love, why you came to the station. Your maid 
 betrayed you. She told me you were waiting for a 
 pink gown which delayed coming and that you were 
 very impatient. But do not let that trouble you. 
 You are always beautiful, my love." 
 
 She made Madame Martin enter her wagon. 
 
 "Come, quick, Darling; M. Jacques Dechartre 
 dines at the house to-night, and I would not like to 
 make him wait." 
 
 And while they were going through the silence 
 of the night, through the pathways fuU of savage 
 perfumes: 
 
 " Do you see over there. Darling, the black distaflfs 
 of the Fates, the cypresses of the cemetery ? It is 
 there I wish to sleep." 
 
 But Therese thought anxiously; " They saw him. 
 Did they recognize him ? I think not. The place 
 was dark, and studded with little blinding lights. 
 
THE RED LILY 201 
 
 Bid she know him ? T do not recall whether she 
 saw him at my house last year." 
 
 What made her anxious was the half-concealed 
 joy of the Prince. 
 
 "Darling, do you wish a place near me in that 
 rustic graveyard ? Shall we rest side by side under 
 a little earth and a great deal of sky ? But I do 
 wrong to extend to you an invitation which you can- 
 not accept. It will not be permitted to you to sleep 
 your eternal sleep at the foot of the hill of Fiesole, 
 my love. You will have to rest in Paris, in a hand- 
 some monument, by the side of Count Martin-Bel- 
 leme. " 
 
 " "Why ? Do you think, dear, that the wife must 
 be united to her husband even after death? " 
 
 " Certainly she must. Darling. Marriage is for 
 time and for eternity. Do you not know the history 
 of a young couple who loved each other in the 
 province of Auvergne? They died ahnost at the 
 same time, and were placed in two tombs separated 
 by a road. But every night a sweetbriar bush threw 
 from one tomb to the other its flowery branches. 
 The two coffins had to be reunited." 
 
 "When they had passed the Badia, they saw a pro- 
 cession coming up the side of the hill. The wind of 
 night blew on the last flames of the candles borne 
 in gilt wood candlesticks. The girls, white and 
 blue, of the societies, accompanied the painted ban- 
 ners. Then came a little Saint John, blonde, curly- 
 headed, nude under the lamb's fleece which showed 
 his arms and his shoulders ; and a Saint Mary Mag- 
 
202 THE RED LILY 
 
 dalene, seven years old, in the gilt crown of her 
 crimped hair. The people of Fiesole followed. 
 Countess Martin recognized Choulette among them. 
 A candle in one hand, his book in the other, blue 
 spectacles on the end of his nose, he was singing ; 
 there were savage lights in the corners of his face 
 and on the bumps of his head. His wild beard went 
 up and down with the rhythm of the song. Under 
 the harshness of the shades and lights which worked 
 on his face, he had an old and robust air similar to 
 that of a solitary monk capable of accomplishing a 
 century of penance. 
 
 "How handsome he is," said Therese. "He is 
 making a spectacle of himself to himself. He is a 
 great artist." 
 
 " Oh, Darling, why will you insist that M. Chou- 
 lette is not a pious man ? "Why ? There is much 
 joy and much beauty in faith. Poets know this. If 
 M. Choulette had not faith, he could not write the 
 admirable verses that he does." 
 
 " And you, dear, have you faith ? " 
 
 "Oh, yes; I believe in God and in the word of 
 Christ." 
 
 'Sow the banners and the white veils had disap- 
 peared in the road. But one could see on the bald 
 cranium of Choulette the flame of the candle re- 
 flected in rays of gold. 
 
 Dechartre, however, was waiting alone in the 
 garden. Therese found him resting on the balcony 
 of the terrace where he had felt the first sujBferings 
 of love. While Miss Bell was trying to find with 
 
THE RED LILY 203 
 
 the Prince a place for the campanile, he led his 
 friend under the trees. 
 
 ' ' You promised me that you -would be in the 
 garden when I came. I have been waiting for you 
 an hour which seemed mortal. You were not to 
 go out. Your absence has surprised and grieved 
 me." 
 
 She replied vaguely that she had been compelled 
 to go to the station, and that Miss Bell had brought 
 her back in the wagon. 
 
 He begged her pardon for the anxious expression 
 of his face, but everything frightened him. His 
 happiness made him afraid. 
 
 They were already at table when Choulette 
 appeared, with the face of an antique satyr. A ter- 
 rible joy shone in his phosphorous eyes. Since his 
 return from Assisi, he lived only among paupers, 
 drank Chianti wine all day with girls and artisans 
 to whom he taught joy and innocence, the advent 
 of Jesus Christ, and the imminent abolition of 
 taxes and military service. At the beginning of 
 the procession he had gathered vagabonds in the 
 ruins of the Eoman theatre, and had delivered to 
 them in a macaronic language, half French and 
 half Tuscan, a sermon, which he took pleasure in 
 repeating : 
 
 " Kings, senators and judges have said: ' The life 
 of nations is in us. ' "Well, they lie ; and they are 
 the coffin saying : ' I am the cradle. ' 
 
 " The life of nations is in the crops of the fields 
 yellowing under the eye of the Lord. It is in the 
 
204 THE BED LILY 
 
 vines, and in the smiles and in the tears with which 
 the sky bathes the fruits on the trees. 
 
 " It is not in the laws which were made by the 
 rich and the powerful for the preservation of power 
 and riches. 
 
 " The chiefs of kingdoms and of republics have 
 said in their books that the right of peoples is the 
 right of war, and they have glorified violence. And 
 they render honors unto conquerors, and they raise 
 on the public squares statues to the victorious man 
 and horse. But one has not the right to kiU; that 
 is why the just man wiU not draw from the urn a 
 number which wiU send him to the war. The right 
 is not to feed foUy and crimes of a prince raised 
 over a kingdom or over a republic ; and that is why 
 the just wiU not pay taxes and will not give money 
 to the publicans. He will enjoy in peace the fruit 
 of his work, and he will make bread with the wheat 
 that he has sown, and he wiU eat the fruits of the 
 trees which he has cut." 
 
 "Ah, M. Choulette," said Prince AlbertineUi, 
 gravely, " you are right to take interest in the state 
 of our unfortunate fields, which taxes exhaust. 
 "What fruit can be drawn from a soil taxed to thirty- 
 three per cent, of its net income ? The master and 
 the servants are the prey of the publicans. ' ' 
 
 Dechartre and Madame Martin were struck by the 
 unexpected sincerity of his accent. 
 
 He added: 
 
 ' ' I like the King. I am sure of my loyalty, but 
 the Uls of the peasants move me." 
 
THE BED LILY 205 
 
 The truth is that he pursued with obstinacy a single 
 aim : to reestablish the domain of Casentino that his 
 father, Prince Carlo, an officer of "Victor Emmanuel, 
 had left devoured by usurers. His affected gentle- 
 ness concealed his stubbornness. He had only useful 
 vices. It was to become a great Tuscan landowner 
 that he had dealt in pictures, sold the famous ceil- 
 ings of his palace, made love to old women, and, 
 finally, sought the hand of Miss BeU, whom he knew 
 to be skilful at earning money and practised in the 
 art of housekeeping. He liked peasants really. The 
 ardent praises of Choulette, which he understood 
 vaguely, awakened this affection in him. He forgot 
 himself enough to express his mind : 
 
 " In a country where master and servants form 
 one family, the fate of the one depends on that of 
 the others. Taxes despoil us. How good are our 
 fathers. They are the best men in the world to tiU 
 the soil." 
 
 Madame Martin confessed that she would not 
 have believed it. The country of Lombardy alone 
 seemed to her to be well cultivated. Tuscany seemed 
 to be a beautiful, savage orchard. 
 
 The Prince replied, smilingly, that perhaps she 
 would not have talked in that way if she had done 
 him the honor of visiting his farms of Casentino, 
 although these had suffered from long and ruinous 
 suits. She would have seen there what an Italian 
 landscape really is. 
 
 " I take a great deal of care of my domain. I 
 was coming from it to-night when I had the double 
 
206 THE EED LILY 
 
 pleasure of finding at the station Miss Bell, who 
 had come for her Ghiberti beU, and you, Madame, 
 ■who were talking with a friend from Paris." 
 
 He had the idea that it would be disagreeable to 
 her to hear him speak of that meeting. He looked 
 around the table, and saw the motion of anxious 
 surprise which Dechartre could not restrain. He 
 insisted: 
 
 " Forgive, Madame, in a rustic, a certain preten- 
 sion to knowing something about the world. In the 
 man who was talking to you I recognized a Pari- 
 sian, because he had an English air; and while he 
 affected stiffness, he showed perfect ease and particu- 
 lar vivacity." 
 
 " Oh," said Therese negligently, " I have not seen 
 him for a long time. I was much surprised to meet 
 him at Florence at the moment of his departure. ' ' 
 
 She looked at Dechartre, who affected not to listen. 
 
 " I know that gentleman," said Miss BeU. " It 
 is M. Le MenU. I dined with him twice at Madame 
 Martin's, and he talked to me very well. He said 
 he liked football; that he introduced the game in 
 France, and that now football is quite in the fashion. 
 He also related to me his hunting adventures. He 
 likes animals. I have observed that hunters like ani- 
 mals. I assure you, Darling, that M. Le Menil talks 
 admirably about hares. He knows their habits. He 
 said to me it was a pleasure to look at them danc- 
 ing in the moonlight in the plains. He has assured 
 me that they were very intelligent, and that he had 
 seen an old hare, pursued by dogs, force another 
 
THE RED LILY 207 
 
 hare to get out of the trail so as to deceive the hunt- 
 ers. Darling, did M. Le MenH ever talk to you 
 about hares? " 
 
 Therese replied she did not know, she thought 
 hunters were bothersome. 
 
 Miss BeL. exclaimed. She did not think M. Le 
 Menil was ever bothersome when talking of the 
 hares that danced ia the moonlight in the plains and 
 ia the vines. She would have liked to raise a hare, 
 like Phanion. 
 
 " Darling, you do not know Phanion. Oh, I am 
 sure that M. Dechartre knows her. She was beau- 
 tiful, and dear to poets. She lived in the Island of 
 Cos, in a house on the side of a dell which, covered 
 with lemon trees, descended to the blue sea. And 
 they say that she looked at the blue glances of the 
 waves. I related Phanion's history to M. Le Menil, 
 and he was very glad to hear it. She had received 
 from some hunter a little hare with long ears. She 
 raised it on her knees and fed it on the flowers of 
 spring. It loved Phanion and forgot its mother. 
 It died before having eaten too many flowers. 
 Phanion lamented over its loss. She buried it in 
 the lemon garden, in a grave which she could see 
 from her bed. And the shade of the little hare was 
 consoled by the songs of the poets." 
 
 The good Madame Marmet said that M. Le Menil 
 pleased by his elegant and discreet manners, which 
 young men no longer know. She would have liked 
 to have seen him. She wanted him to do something 
 for her. 
 
208 THE RED LILT 
 
 " For my nephew," she said. " He is a captain 
 in the artUIery, and his chiefs like him. His colonel 
 was for a long time under orders of M. Le Menil's 
 uncle, General La Briche. If M. Le Menil would 
 ask his uncle to write to Colonel Faure in favor of 
 my nephew I would be grateful to him. My nephew 
 is not a stranger to M. Le Menil. They met last 
 year at the masked baU which Captain de Lessay 
 gave at the Hotel at Caen." 
 
 Madame Marmet lowered her eyes and added : 
 
 " The invited guests, naturally, were not society 
 women. But it is said some of them were very 
 pretty. They came from Paris. My nephew, who 
 gave these details to me, was dressed as a coachman. 
 M. Le Menil was dressed as a Hussar of Death, and 
 he had much success." 
 
 Miss BeU said she was sorry not to have known 
 that M. Le Menil was in Florence. Certainly, she 
 would have invited him to come to Fiesole. 
 
 Dechartre remained sombre and distant during 
 the rest of the dinner ; and when, at the moment of 
 leaving, Therese extended her hand to him, she 
 felt that he avoided pressing it in his. 
 
XXIII 
 
 The next day, in the hidden pavilion of the Via 
 Alfieri, she found him preoccupied. She tried to 
 distract him with ardent gayety, with the sweet- 
 ness of pressing intimacy, with superb humility. 
 But he remained sombre. He had aU night medi- 
 tated, labored over, and formed his sadness. He 
 had found reasons for suffering. His thought had 
 brought together the hand which threw a letter in 
 the box before the bronze San Marco and the banal 
 and dreadful unknown who had been seen at the 
 station. l:^ow Jacques Dechartre gave a face and 
 a name to his suffering. In the grandmother's 
 armchair where Therese had been seated on the day 
 of her welcome, and which she had this time offered 
 to him, he was assailed by painful images; while 
 she, bent over one of his arms, enveloped him with 
 her warm form and her loving mind. She divined 
 too weU what he was suffering to ask it of him 
 simply. 
 
 In order to bring him back to gentle ideas, she re- 
 called the secrets of the room where they were and 
 reminiscences of their walks through the city. She 
 was gracefully familiar. 
 
 " The Little spoon you gave me, the little red lily 
 14 
 
210 THE BED LILY 
 
 spoon, I use for my tea in the morning. And I 
 know by the pleasure which I feel at seeing it when 
 I wake how much I love you." 
 
 Then, as he replied only in sentences sad and 
 veiled, she said: 
 
 " I am here near you, and you do not care forme. 
 You are preoccupied by some idea that I do not 
 know. Tet I am alive, and an idea is nothing." 
 
 "An idea is nothing? Do you think so? One 
 may be wretched or happy for an idea; one may 
 live and one may die for an idea. "Well, I am 
 thinking " 
 
 " Of what are you thinking ? " 
 
 ""Why do you ask? You know very well I am 
 thinking of what I heard last night, which you had 
 concealed from me. I am thinking of your meeting 
 at the station, which was not due to chance, but 
 which a letter had caused, a letter thrown — remem- 
 ber — in the box of San Michele. Oh, I do not 
 reproach you for it. I have not the right. But 
 why did you give yourself to me if you were not 
 free?" 
 
 She thought she must tell an untruth. 
 
 " You mean someone whom I met at the station 
 yesterday ? I assure you it was the most ordinary 
 meeting in the world." 
 
 He was painf uUy impressed with the fact that she 
 did not dare to name the one she spoke of. He 
 avoided, too, to pronounce that name. 
 
 "Therese, he had not come for you? You did 
 not know he was in Florence? He is nothing more 
 
THE RED LILY 211 
 
 to you than a man whom you meet socially ? He is 
 not the one who, when absent, made you say to me, 
 ' I cannot ' ? He is nothing to ydu ? " 
 
 She replied resolutely: 
 
 " He comes to the house at times. He was intro- 
 duced to me by General Lariviere. I have nothing 
 more to say to you about him. I assure you he is of 
 no interest to me, and I cannot conceive what may 
 be in your mind about him." 
 
 She felt a sort of contentment at repudiating the 
 man who had sustained against her with so much 
 harshness and violence his rights of ownership. Eut 
 she was in a hurry to get out of her tortuous path. 
 She rose and looked at her friend, with beautiful, 
 tender, and grave eyes. 
 
 "Listen to me: the day when I gave myself to 
 you, my life was yours entire. If a doubt or a sus- 
 picion comes to you, question me. The present is 
 yours, and you know well there is only you, you 
 alone, in it. As for my past, if you knew what 
 nothingness it was you would be glad. I do not 
 think another woman made as I was, to love, would 
 have brought to you a mind newer to love than is 
 mine. That I swear to you. The years which were 
 spent without you, I have not lived them. Let us 
 not talk of them. There is nothing in them of 
 which I may be ashamed. To have regret for them 
 is another thing. I regret to have known you so 
 late. Why did you not come sooner ? You could 
 have had me five years ago as easily as to-day. But, 
 believe me, let us not tire ourselves with digging 
 
212 THE RED LILT 
 
 time that has gone. Eemember Lohengrin. If you 
 love me, I am for you the swan's knight. I have 
 asked nothing of you. I have vranted to know 
 nothing. I have not chided you about Mile. Jeanne 
 Tancrede. I saw you loved me, that you were suf- 
 fering, and it was enough — because I loved you." 
 
 " A woman cannot be jealous in the same manner 
 as a man, nor feel what makes us suffer." 
 
 "I do not know. Why?" 
 
 " "Why? Because there is not in the blood, in the 
 flesh of a woman that absurd and generous fury 
 for ownership, that antique instinct of which man 
 has made a right. Man is the god who wants his 
 creature entire. Since time immemorial woman is 
 accustomed to sharing men's love. It is the past, 
 the obscure past, which determines our passions. 
 We were already so old when we were born! Jeal- 
 ousy for a woman is only a wound to her own self- 
 love. For a man it is a torture as profound as 
 moral suffering, as continuous as physical suffering. 
 You ask why ? Because, in spite of my submission 
 and of my respect, in spite of the fright you cause 
 me, you are matter and I am the idea; you are the 
 thing and I am the mind ; you are the clay and I am 
 the artisan. Oh, do not complain of this! Near 
 the amphora round and surrounded with garlands, 
 what is the humble and rude potter ? The amphora 
 is tranqml and beautiful: he is wretched; he is 
 tormented; he wills; he suffers; for to will is to 
 suffer. Tes, I am jealous. I know what there is 
 in my jealousy. When I examine it, I find in it 
 
THE RED LILY 213 
 
 hereditary prejudices, savage conceit, sickly suscep- 
 tibility, a mingling of bestial violence and cruel fee- 
 bleness, imbecile and wicked revolt against the laws 
 of life and society. But it does not matter that I 
 know it for what it is : it exists and torments me. 
 I am the chemist who, studying the properties of 
 acid which he has drunk, knows how it was combined 
 and what salts form it. E^evertheless the acid burns 
 him, and wiU burn him to the bone." 
 
 " My friend, you are absurd." 
 
 " Yes, I am absurd. I feel it better than you 
 feel it yourself. To want a woman in all the bril- 
 liancy of her beauty and her wit, mistress of her- 
 self, and who knows and who dares ; more beautiful 
 in that and more desirable, and whose choice is free, 
 voluntary, learned; to desire her, to love her for 
 what she is, and to suffer because she is not puerile 
 candor nor pale innocence, which would be shocking 
 in her if it were possible to find them there; to ask 
 her at the same time that she be herself and not be 
 herself ; to adore her as life has made her, and regret 
 bitterly that life, which has made her so beautiful, 
 has touched her — Oh, this is absurd ! I love you. 
 I love you with aU that you bring to me of sensa- 
 tions, of habits, with aU that comes of your expe- 
 riences, with aU. that comes from him perhaps, from 
 them, how do I know? These things are my 
 delights and they are my tortures. There must be 
 a profound sense in the public idiocy which says 
 that our love is guilty. Joy is guilty when it is 
 immense. That is why I suffer, my beloved." 
 
214 THE EED LILY 
 
 She knelt before him, took his hands, and drew 
 him to her: 
 
 " I do not wish you to suffer; I will not have it. 
 It would be foUy. I love you, and have never 
 loved any one but you. You may believe me; I do 
 not lie." 
 
 He kissed her forehead. 
 
 "If you deceived me, my dear, I would not 
 reproach you for that; on the contrary, I should be 
 grateful to you. Nothing is so legitimate, so human, 
 as to deceive pain. What would become of us if 
 women had not for us the pity of untruth ? Lie, 
 my beloved, lie for the sake of charity. Give me 
 the dream that colors black sorrow. Lie; have no 
 scruples. Tou will add only an illusion to the illu- 
 sion of love and beauty." 
 
 He sighed: 
 
 " Oh, common sense, common wisdom." 
 
 She asked him what he meant, and what common 
 wisdom was. He said it was a sensible proverb, but 
 brutal, and which it was better not to teU. 
 
 "TeUitaUthesame." 
 
 " You wish me to teU. it to you: ' A kissed mouth 
 does not lose its freshness. ' ' ' 
 
 And he added: 
 
 "It is true that love preserves beauty, and that 
 the flesh of women is fed on caresses as bees are fed 
 on flowers." 
 
 She placed on his mouth a pledge in a kiss. 
 
 " I swear to you I never loved any one but you. 
 Oh, no, it is not caresses that have preserved the few 
 
THE EED LILY 215 
 
 charms which I am happy to have in order to offer 
 them to you. I love you. I love you." 
 
 But he remembered the letter thrown in the box, 
 and the unknown individual met at the station. 
 
 " If you loved me truly, you would love only 
 me." 
 
 She rose, indignant: 
 
 " Then, you believe I love another? "What you 
 are saying is monstrous. Is that what you think of 
 me ? And you say you loved me. I pity you be- 
 cause you are crazy." 
 
 " Truly, I am crazy." 
 
 She, kneeling, with the supple palms of her 
 hands enveloped his temples and his cheeks. He 
 said again that he was crazy to be anxious about a 
 vulgar and banal meeting. She forced him to believe 
 her, or, rather, to forget. He saw, knew, no longer 
 anything. His bitterness and his anger vanishing 
 left to hitn nothing but the harsh desire to forget 
 everything, to make her forget everything. 
 
 She asked him why he was sad. 
 
 " You were glad a moment ago. "Why are you 
 not glad now?" 
 
 And as he shook his head and said nothing : 
 
 " Speak. I like your complaints better than your 
 silence." 
 
 Then he said: 
 
 ' ' You wish to know ? Do not be angry. I suffer 
 now more than ever, because I know now what 
 you are capable of giving." 
 
216 THE RED LILY 
 
 She withdrew brusquely, and with eyes fuU of 
 pain and reproach : 
 
 "You can believe that I was to another what I 
 am to you! You wound me in my most susceptible 
 sentiment, in my love for you. I do not forgive 
 you for this. I love you. I have never loved any 
 one except you. I have never suffered except 
 through you. Be content. You do me a great 
 deal of harm. Are you wicked ? " 
 
 " Therose, one is never kind when one is in love." 
 
 She remained for a long time immovable and 
 dreamy. Her face colored, and a tear dampened her 
 eyeUds. 
 
 " Therese, you are weeping! " 
 
 " Forgive me, my friend, it is the first time that 
 I am in love and that I am really loved. I am 
 afraid." 
 
XXIV 
 
 As the roll of boxes on the stairways filled the 
 Bell villa; as Pauline, loaded with packages, lightly 
 came down the steps; as good Madame Marmet, 
 with tranquil vigilance, supervised everything ; and 
 as Miss Bell finished dressing in her room; Therese, 
 dressed in gray, resting on the terrace, looked once 
 again at the Flower City. 
 
 She had decided to start. Her husband recalled 
 her in every one of his letters. If, as he asked her 
 to do, she returned to Paris in the first days of May, 
 they might give two or three dinners, followed by 
 receptions. His political group was supported by 
 pubHo opinion. The tide was pushing him along, 
 and Garain thought Countess Martin's drawing-room 
 could exercise an excellent influence on the future of 
 the country. These reasons moved her not; but 
 she felt a desire to be agreeable to her husband. She 
 had received the day before a letter from her father. 
 M. Montessuy, without sharing the political views 
 of his son-in-law, and without giving any advice to 
 his daughter, insinuated that they were beginning 
 to talk in society of Countess Martin's mysterious 
 sojourn at Florence among poets and artists. The 
 BeU villa took, from a distance, an air of senti- 
 mental fantasy. She felt herself that she was too 
 
218 THE EED LILY 
 
 closely observed at Fiesole. Madame Marmet an- 
 noyed her. Prince AlbertineUi disquieted her. The 
 meetings in the pavilion of the Yia Alfieri had 
 become difficult and dangerous. Professor Arrighi, 
 whom the Prince often met, had seen her one night 
 as she was walking through the deserted streets 
 leaning on Dechartre. Professor Arrighi, author of 
 a treatise on agriculture, was the most amiable of 
 wise men. He had turned his beautiful, heroic face, 
 and said, only the next day, to the young woman: 
 " Formerly, I could guess from a distance the com- 
 ing of a beautiful woman. IS'ow that I have gone 
 beyond the age to be viewed favorably by women, 
 heaven has pity on me. Heaven prevents my see- 
 ing them. My eyes are very bad. The most ami- 
 able visage I can no longer recognize." She had 
 understood, and heeded the warning. She wished 
 now to conceal her joy in the immensity of Paris. 
 
 Yivian, to whom she had announced her depart- 
 ure, had asked her to remain a few days longer. 
 But Therese suspected that her friend remained 
 shocked by the advice which she had received one 
 night in the lemon-decorated room; that, at least, 
 she did not enjoy herself entirely in the familiarity 
 of a confidante who disapproved of her choice, and 
 whom the Prince had represented to her as a co- 
 quette, and perhaps worse. The date of the depart- 
 ure had been fixed for May 5th. 
 
 The day shone brilliant, pure and charming on 
 the Arno valley. Therese, dreamy, saw from the 
 terrace the immense morning rose placed in the blue 
 
THE BED LILY 219 
 
 cup of Florence. She leaned forward to discover, 
 at the foot of the flowery hlUs, the imperceptible 
 point where she had known infinite joys. There 
 the graveyard garden made a small, sombre spot 
 near which she divined the Via Alfieri. She saw 
 herself again in the room wherein, doubtless, she 
 would never enter again. The hours that had passed 
 had for her the sadness of a dream. She felt her 
 eyes becoming veiled, her knees weaken, and her 
 soul shudder. It seemed to her that her life was no 
 longer in her, and that she had left it in that corner 
 where she saw the black pines raise their immovable 
 summits. She reproached herself for troubling 
 without reason when, on the contrary, she should be 
 reassured and joyful. She knew she would meet 
 Jacques Dechartre in Paris. They would have liked 
 to arrive there at the same time, or, rather, to go 
 there together. They had thought it indispensable 
 that he should remain three or four days longer in 
 Florence, but their meeting would not be retarded 
 beyond that. They had appointed a place of meet- 
 ing, and she lived in the thought of it. She wore her 
 love mingled with her flesh and running in her blood. 
 Still, a part of herself remained in the pavilion deco- 
 rated with goats and with nymphs, a part of her- 
 self which would be never returned to her. In full 
 ardor of life, she was dying for things infinitely deli- 
 cate and precious. She recalled that Dechartre had 
 said to her: " Love likes charms. I gathered from 
 the terrace the leaves of a tree which you had 
 admired." Why had she not thought of taking a 
 
220 THE BED LILY 
 
 stone of the pavilion wherein she had forgotten the 
 world ? 
 
 A shout from Pauline drew her from her thoughts. 
 Choulette, jumping from a bush, had suddenly 
 kissed the maid, who was carrying overcoats and 
 bags into the carriage. Il^ow he was running 
 through the alleys, joyful, his ears standing like 
 horns. He bowed to Countess Martin. 
 
 "I have, then, to say farewell to you, Madame." 
 
 He was remaining in Italy. A lady was calling 
 him, he said: it was Kome. He wanted to see the 
 cardinals. One of them, whom people praised as 
 an old man full of sense, would perhaps share the 
 ideas of the socialist and revolutionary church. 
 Choulette had his aim: to plant on the ruins of 
 unjust and cruel civilization the cross of Calvary, 
 not dead and bare, but vivid, and with its flowery 
 arms chaining the world. He was founding with that 
 design an Order and a newspaper. Madame Martin 
 knew the Order. The newspaper was to be sold for 
 one cent, and to be written in rhythmic phrases. It 
 was a newspaper to be sung. Yerse, simple, violent, 
 or joyful, was the only language which suited the 
 people. Prose pleased only people whose intelli- 
 gence was very subtle. He had seen anarchists in 
 the taverns of the Rue Saint Jacques. They spent 
 their evenings reciting and listening to romances. 
 
 And he added: 
 
 " A newspaper which shall be at the same time a 
 song-book will touch the soul of the people. People 
 say I have genius, I do not know if people are 
 
THE BED LILY 221 
 
 right. But it must be admitted tliat I have a prac- 
 tical miad." 
 
 Miss Bell came down the stoop, putting on her 
 gloves. 
 
 " Oh, Darling, the city and the mountains and 
 the sky vrant you to lament your departure. They 
 make themselves beautiful to-day in order to make 
 you regret quitting them and desire to see them 
 again." 
 
 But Choulette, whom the elegant dryness of the 
 Tuscan nature tired, regretted green Umbria and its 
 humid sky. He recalled Assisi. He said: 
 
 "There are woods and rocks, a small sky and 
 white clouds. I have walked there in the footsteps 
 of good Saint Francis, and I transcribed his canticle 
 to the sun in old French rhymes, simple and poor." 
 
 Madame Martin said she would like to hear it. 
 Miss Bell was already listening, and her face took 
 the fervent expression of an angel sculptured by 
 Mino. 
 
 Choulette told them it was a rustic and artless 
 work. The verses were not trying to be beautiful. 
 They were simple, although uneven, for the sake of 
 lightness. Then in a slow and monotonous voice he 
 recited the canticle. 
 
 "Oh, M. Choulette," said Miss BeU, "this can- 
 ticle goes up to heaven hke the hermit in the Campo 
 Santo of Pisa, whom one saw going up the moun- 
 tain that the goats liked. I wiU teU you. The old 
 hermit goes up, leaning on the staff of faith, and his 
 step is unequal because the crutch, being on one 
 
222 THE BED LILT 
 
 side, places one of the feet at an advantage over the 
 other. That is why your verses are unequal. Oh, 
 I have understood it." 
 
 The poet accepted this praise, persuaded that he 
 had unwittingly deserved it. 
 
 "Tou have faith, M. Choulette," said Therese. 
 " Of what use is it to you if not to write beautiful 
 verses?" 
 
 " Faith serves me to commit sin, Madame." 
 " Oh, we commit sins without that." 
 Madame Marmet appeared, equipped for the jour- 
 ney, in the tranquil joy of returning to her little 
 apartment, her little dog Toby, her old friend La- 
 grange, and to see again, after the Etruscans of 
 Fiesole, the domestic warrior who, among the bon- 
 bon boxes, looked out of the window. 
 
 Miss BeU in her carriage escorted her friends to 
 the station. 
 
XXY 
 
 Dechaetee came to the carriage to salute the two 
 travellers. Separated from him, Therese felt what 
 he vs^as to her: he had given to her a new taste of 
 life, delicious and so vivid, so real, that she felt it 
 on her lips. She lived under a charm in the dream 
 of seeing him again, surprised when Madame Mar- 
 met, along the journey, said: " I think we are pass- 
 ing the frontier," or " Eose-bushes are in bloom by 
 the seaside." She retained her interior joy when, 
 after a night at the hotel in Marseilles, she saw the 
 gray olive trees in the stony fields, then the mul- 
 berry trees and the distant profile of Mount Pilate, 
 and the Ehone, and Lyons, and then the familiar 
 landscapes, the trees raising their summits into bou- 
 quets clothed in tender green, and the lines of pop- 
 lars on the side of rivers. She enjoyed the pleni- 
 tude of the hours she lived and the astonishment of 
 profound joys. And it was with the smile of a 
 sleeper suddenly awakened that, at the station in 
 Paris, under the livid light of the station, she greeted 
 her husband, who was glad to see her. "When she 
 kissed Madame Marmet, she told her that she thanked 
 her with all her heart. And truly she was grateful 
 to aU things, like M, Ohoulette's Saint Francis. 
 
224 THE RED LILY 
 
 In the coupe, which followed the quays in the 
 luminous dust of the setting sun, she listened with- 
 out impatience to her husband confiding to her his 
 successes as an orator, the intentions of his parlia- 
 mentary groups, his projects, his hopes, and the 
 necessity to give two or three big political dinners. 
 She closed her eyes in order to think better. She 
 said to herself: "I shall have a letter to-morrow, 
 and wUl see him again within eight days." When 
 the coupe passed on the bridge, she looked at the 
 water, which seemed to roll flames; at the smoky 
 arches; at the rows of trees; at the heads of the 
 chestnut trees in bloom on the Cours-la-Eeine ; all 
 these famUiar aspects seemed to be clothed for her 
 in novel magnificence. It seemed to her that her 
 love had given a new color to the universe. And 
 she asked herself if the trees and the stones recog- 
 nized her. She was thinking: " How is it that my 
 silence, my eyes, and heaven and earth do not yell 
 my secret?" M. Martin-BeUeme, thinking she 
 was a little tired, advised her to rest. And at night, 
 closeted in her room, in the midst of the grand 
 silence wherein she heard the palpitations of her 
 mind, she wrote to the absent one a letter fuU of 
 these words, which are similar to flowers in their 
 perpetual novelty: " I love you. I am waiting for 
 you. I am happy. I feel you are near me. There is 
 nobody except you and me in the world. I see from 
 my window a blue star which trembles, and I look 
 at it, thinking that you see it in Florence. I have 
 put on my table the little red lily spoon. Come ! 
 
THE RED LILT 225 
 
 Come! " And she found thus, all fresh in her mind, 
 the eternal sensations and images. 
 
 For a week she lived an inward life, feeling 
 within her the soft warmth which remained of the 
 days passed in the Yia Alfieri, breathing the kisses 
 which she had received, and loving herself for being 
 loved. She took delicate care and displayed atten- 
 tive taste in new gowns. It was to herself, too, 
 that she was pleasing. Madly anxious when there 
 was nothing for her at the post-oflEice, trembling and 
 joyful when she received through the small window 
 a letter wherein she recognized the large handwrit- 
 ing of her friend, she devoured her reminiscences, 
 her desires, and her hopes. Thus the hours quickly 
 annihilated themselves. 
 
 Only the morning of the day when he was to 
 arrive seemed to her to be odiously long. She was 
 at the station before the train arrived. A delay had 
 been signalled. It weighed heavily upon her. Op- 
 timist in her projects, and placing by force, like her 
 father, faith on the side of her will, that delay 
 which she had not foreseen seemed to her to be trea- 
 son. The gray light, which for three-quarters of 
 an hour filtered through the window panes of the 
 hall, fell on her like the rays of an immense hour- 
 glass which measured for her the minutes of happi- 
 ness lost. She was lamenting her fate, when, in 
 the red light of the sun, she saw the locomotive of 
 the express stop, monstrous and docile, on the quay, 
 and, in the crowd of travellers coming out of the 
 carriages, Jacques coming toward her. He was 
 15 
 
226 THE BED LILT 
 
 looking at her with that sort of sombre and violent 
 joy which she had observed in him. He said : 
 
 "At last here you are. I feared to die before 
 seeing you again. You do not know, I did not 
 know myself, what torture it is to live a week away 
 from you. I have returned to the little pavilion of 
 the Yia Alfieri. In the room you know, in front of 
 the old pastel, I have cried for love and rage." 
 
 She looked at him contentedly. 
 
 " And I, do you not think that I called you, that 
 I wanted you, that when alone I extended my arms 
 toward you ? I had hidden your letters in the chif- 
 fonier where my jewels are. I read them at night : 
 it was delicious, but it was imprudent. Your letters 
 were yourself — too much and not enough." 
 
 They traversed the court where roUed cabs loaded 
 with boxes. She asked if they were to take a car- 
 riage. 
 
 He made no answer. He seemed not to hear. 
 She said: 
 
 " I went to see your house; I did not dare go in. 
 I looked through the grille and saw windows hidden 
 in rose bushes in the rear of a yard, behind a tree, 
 and I said: 'It is there!' I have never been so 
 moved." 
 
 He was not listening to her nor looking at her. 
 He traversed quickly with her the paved street, and 
 through a narrow stairway reached a deserted street 
 running by the station. There, between wood and 
 coal yards, was a hotel with a restaurant on the first 
 floor and tables on the sidewalk. There were, under 
 
THE RED LILY 227 
 
 the painted sign board, white curtains at the win- 
 dows. Dechartre stopped before the small door and 
 pushed Therese into the obscure alley. She asked: 
 " Where are you leading me ? What is the time ? 
 I must be home at half -past seven. We are mad, 
 
 55 
 
 She said, while they were coming down the stairs : 
 "Jacques, my friend, we are too happy; we are 
 robbing life." 
 
XXVI 
 
 A CAB brougM her, the next day, to a populous 
 street, half sad, half gay, with walls of gardens in 
 the intervals of new houses, and stopped at the 
 point where the sidewalk passes under the arcade of 
 a mansion of the Regency, covered now with dust 
 and oblivion, and fantastically placed across the 
 street. Here and there green branches give gayety 
 to that city corner. Therese, while ringing at the 
 door, saw in the limited perspective of the houses a 
 pulley at a window and a big gilt key, the sign of a 
 locksmith. Her eyes were full of this picture, which 
 was new to her. Pigeons flew above her head ; she 
 heard chickens cackle. A servant with a military 
 look opened the door. She found herself in a 
 yard covered with sand, shaded by a tree, and 
 where, at the left, was the janitor's box with bird 
 cages at the windows. On that side rose, under a 
 green trellis, the mansard of the neighboring house. 
 A sculptor's studio backed on it its glass-covered 
 roof, which showed plaster figures asleep in the 
 dust. At the right, the wall which closed the yard 
 bore debris of monuments, broken bases of column- 
 ettes. In the rear, the house, not very large, opened 
 the six windows of its f a§ade, half hidden by vines 
 and rose bushes. 
 
THE BED LILY 229 
 
 Philippe Dechartre, infatuated with the architec- 
 ture of the fifteenth century in France, had repro- 
 duced there very learnedly the characteristics of a 
 private house of the time of Louis XII. That house, 
 begun in the middle of the Second Empire, had not 
 been finished. The buUder of so many castles 
 died without being able to finish his own house. It 
 was better thus. Conceived in a manner which had 
 then its distinction and its value, but which seems 
 to-day banal and outlandish, having lost little by 
 little its large frame of gardens, tightened now be- 
 tween the walls of the taU. buildings, Philippe De- 
 chartre's little house, by the roughness of its stones, 
 by the naive heaviness of its windows, by the sim- 
 plicity of the roof, which the architect's widow 
 had caused to be covered with little expense, by all 
 the lucky accidents of the unfinished and unpre- 
 meditated, corrected the lack of grace of its an- 
 tiquity too new, of its archfeologic romanticism, and 
 harmonized with the hunulity of a district made 
 ugly by progress of population. 
 
 In fine, under its appearance of ruin and in its 
 green drapery, that little house had its charm. Sud- 
 denly and instinctively, Th6rese discovered in it other 
 harmonies. In the elegant negligence which ex- 
 tended from the walls covered with vines to the 
 darkened panes of the studio, and even in the bent 
 tree, the bark of which studded with its shells the 
 wild grass of the courtyard, she divined the mind 
 of the master, nonchalant, not skilful in preserving, 
 dragging the long solitude of passionate men. She 
 
230 ITHE RED LILY 
 
 had in her joy a sort of grief at observing this 
 indifference wherein her friend left things around 
 him. She found in it a sort of grace and nobility, 
 but also a spirit of indifference contrary to her own 
 nature, opposite to the interested and careful mind 
 of the Montessuys. At once she thought that, with- 
 out spoiling the pensive softness of that savage cor- 
 ner, she would bring to it her well-ordered activity; 
 she would have sand thrown in the alley, and in the 
 angle wherein a little sunlight came she would put 
 the gayety of flowers. She looked sympathetically 
 at a statue which had come there from some park, 
 a Flora, lying on the earth, eaten by black moss, and 
 her two arms lying by her side. She thought of 
 raising her soon, of making of her a centrepiece for 
 a fountain. 
 
 Dechartre, who for an hour had been watching 
 for her coming, joyful, anxious, trembling in his 
 agitated happiness, descended the stairs of the 
 stoop. In the fresh shade of the vestibule, wherein 
 she divined confusedly the severe splendor of bronze 
 and marble statues, she stopped, troubled by the 
 beatings of her heart, which rang with aU its might 
 in her chest. 
 
 He pressed her in his arms and kissed her. She 
 heard him, through the tumult of her temples, re- 
 calling to her the short delights of the day before. 
 She saw again the lion of the Atlas on the carpet, 
 and returned to Jacques his kisses with delicious 
 slowness. 
 
 He led her by a wooden stairway, into the 
 
THE RED LILY 231 
 
 vast hall wMcli served formerly as a worksliop, 
 and where he designed and modelled his figures, 
 and, above all, read; .lOdng reading as if it were 
 opium. 
 
 Gothic tapestries, very pale, which let one divine 
 in a marvellous forest a lady at the feet of whom a 
 unicorn lay on grass in bloom, ascended above cabi- 
 nets to the painted beams of the ceiling. 
 
 He led her to a large and low divan, loaded with 
 cushions which sumptuous fragments of Spanish 
 and Byzantine cloaks covered ; but she sat in an arm- 
 chair. 
 
 " You are here. You are here. The world may 
 come to an end." 
 
 She replied: 
 
 " Formerly I thought of the end of the world, but 
 I was not afraid of it. M. Lagrange had promised 
 it to me, and I was waiting for it. When I did not 
 know you, I felt so lonely. ' ' 
 
 She looked at the tables loaded with vases and 
 statuettes, the tapestries, the confused and splendid 
 mass of weapons, the animals, the marbles, the 
 paintings, the ancient books. 
 
 " You have beautiful things." 
 
 " Most of them come from my father, who lived 
 in the golden age of collectors. These histories of 
 the unicorn, the complete series of which is at 
 Cluny, were found by my father in 1851 in an inn." 
 
 But she, curious and disappointed: 
 
 " I see nothing that you have done; not a statue, 
 not one of those wax figures which are prized so 
 
232 THE RED LILY 
 
 highly in England, not a figurine nor a plaque nor a 
 medal." 
 
 " If you think I could find any pleasure in living 
 among my works ! I know my figures too weU — they 
 annoy me. Whatever is without secret is without 
 charm." 
 
 She looked at him with affected spite. 
 
 " You had not told me that one had lost all charm 
 when one had no more secrets." 
 
 He put his arm around her waist. 
 
 "Ah! The things that live are only too myste- 
 rious; and you remain for me, my beloved, an 
 enigma, the unknown sense of which contains the 
 lights of life. Do not fear to give yourself to me. 
 I will desire you always, and I will never know you. 
 Does one ever possess what one loves ? Are kisses, 
 caresses, anything else than the effort of a delight- 
 ful despair ? When I embrace you, I am still search- 
 ing for you, and I never have you; since I want you 
 always, since in you I expect the impossible and the 
 infinite. What you are, the devil knows if I wiU 
 ever know! Because I have modelled a few bad fig- 
 ures I am not a sculptor; I am rather a sort of poet 
 and philosopher who seeks for subjects of anxiety 
 and torment in nature. The sentiment of form is 
 not sufficient for me. My colleagues laugh at me 
 because I have not their simplicity. They are 
 right. And that brute Choulette is right, too, 
 when he says we ought to live without thinking and 
 without desiring. Our friend the cobbler of Santa 
 Maria Novella, who knows nothing of what might 
 
THE BED LILY 233 
 
 make him unjust and unfortunate, is a master of 
 the art of living. I ought to love you naively, with- 
 out that sort of metaphysics which is passional and 
 makes me absurd and wicked. There is nothing 
 good except to ignore and to forget. Come, come, 
 I have thought of you too cruelly in the tortures of 
 your absence ; come, my beloved. I must forget you 
 with you. It is with you only that I can forget you 
 and lose myself." 
 
 He took her in his arms and, lifting her veil, kissed 
 her on the mouth. 
 
 A little frightened in that vast, unknown hall, 
 embarrassed by the look of strange things, she drew 
 the black tulle to her chin. 
 
 " Here! You cannot think of it. " 
 
 He said they were alone. 
 
 "Alone? And the man with terrible mustaches 
 who opened the door ? " 
 
 He smiled: 
 
 " That is FuseUier, father's former servant. He 
 and his wife take charge of the house. Do not be 
 afraid. They remain in their box. You shall see 
 Madame FuseUier; she is inclined to familiarity, I 
 warn you." 
 
 "My friend, why has M. FuseUier, a janitor, 
 mustaches like a Tartar ? ' ' 
 
 " My dear, nature gave them to him. I am not 
 sorry that he has the air of a sergeant-major and 
 gives me the iUusion of being a country neighbor." 
 
 Seated on a corner of the divan, he drew her to 
 his knees and gave to her kisses which she returned. 
 
234 THE BED LILT 
 
 She rose qmckly. 
 
 " Show me the other rooms. I am curious. I 
 want to see everything. ' ' 
 
 He escorted her to the second story. Aquarelles 
 by Philippe Dechartre covered the walls of the cor- 
 ridor. He opened the door and made her enter a 
 room furnished with white mahogany. 
 
 It was his mother's room. He kept it intact in 
 its past. Uninhabited for nine years, the room had 
 not the air of being resigned to its solitude. The 
 looking-glass waited for the old lady's look, and on 
 the onyx clock a pensive Sappho was lonely because 
 she did not hear the noise of the pendulum. 
 
 There were two portraits on the walls. One by 
 Eicard represented Philippe Dechartre, very pale, 
 with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a romantic 
 dream. The other showed a middle-aged lady, 
 almost beautiful in her ardent thinness. It was 
 Madame Philippe Dechartre. 
 
 "My poor mother's room is like me," said 
 Jacques ; "it remembers. ' ' 
 
 "You resemble your mother," said Th^rese; 
 ' ' you have her eyes. Paul Yence told me she adored 
 you." 
 
 "Yes," he replied, smilingly. "Mother was 
 excellent, intelligent, exquisite, marvellously absurd. 
 Her madness was maternal love. She did not give 
 me a moment of rest. She tormented herself and 
 tormented me." 
 
 Th^rese looked at a bronze figure by Carpeaux, 
 placed on the chiffonier. 
 
THE BED LILY 235 
 
 "You recognize," said Dechartre, "the Prince 
 Imperial by his ears, which are like the wings of a 
 zephyr, and which make gay his cold visage. This 
 bronze is a gift of Napoleon III. My parents went 
 to Compiegne. My father, while the court was at 
 Fontainebleau, made the plan of the castle, and de- 
 signed the gallery. In the morning the Emperor 
 would come in his frock coat, and smoking his meer- 
 schaum pipe, to sit near him like a penguin on a 
 rock. At that epoch I went to day school. I lis- 
 tened to his stories at table, and I have not forgotten 
 them. The Emperor stayed there, peaceful and 
 quiet, interrupting his long silence with few words 
 smothered under his big mustache ; then he excited 
 himself a little and explained his ideas of machinery. 
 He was an inventor. Pie would draw a pencil from 
 his pocket and make drawings on the designs of my 
 father. He spoiled in that way two or three studies 
 a week. He liked my father a great deal, and 
 promised works and honors to him which never 
 came. The Emperor was kind, but he had no influ- 
 ence, as mamma said. At that time I was a little 
 boy. Since then a vague sympathy has remained in 
 me for that man, who was lacking in genius, but 
 whose mind was affectionate and beautiful, and who 
 carried through great adventures a simple courage 
 and a soft fatalism. Then, he is sympathetic to me 
 because he has been combated and insulted by peo- 
 ple who wanted to take his place, and who had not, 
 as he had, in the depths of their souls, a love for 
 the people. We have seen them in power since 
 
236 THE RED LILT 
 
 then. Heavens, how ugly they are! Senator 
 Loyer, for instance, who at your house, in the 
 smoking-room, i311ed his pockets with cigars, and 
 invited me to do likewise. That Loyer is a bad 
 man, harsh to the unfortunate, to the weak, and to 
 the humble. And Garain, don't you think his mind 
 is disgusting ? Do you remember the first tinae I 
 dined at your house and we talked of l^apoleon? 
 Your hair, twisted above your neck, and traversed 
 by a diamond arrow, was adorable. Paul Vence 
 said subtle things. Garain did not understand. 
 You asked for my opinion. " 
 
 " It was to make you shine. I was already con- 
 ceited for you." 
 
 "Oh, I never could say a single phrase before 
 people who are so serious. Yet I had a great desire 
 to say that Napoleon III. pleased me more than 
 Napoleon I. ; that I thought him more touching ; 
 but perhaps that idea would have produced a bad 
 effect. Anyway, I am not so destitute of talent as 
 to care about politics." 
 
 He turned around the room, looking at the furni- 
 ture with familiar tenderness. He opened a drawer : 
 
 " Here are mamma's eye-glasses. How she looked 
 for these eye-glasses ! Now I will show you my 
 room. If it is not in order you must excuse Ma- 
 dame Fusellier, who is trained to respect my dis- 
 order." 
 
 The curtains of the windows were down. He did 
 not lift them. After an hour she drew back the red 
 satin draperies; rays of light dazzled her eyes and 
 
THE RED LILY 237 
 
 fell on her imdone hair. She looked for a mirror 
 and found only a looking-glass of Yenice, dull in its 
 wide ebony border. Eising on the tips of her toes 
 to see herself in it: 
 
 "Is that sombre and far-away spectre I? The 
 women who have looked at themselves in this glass 
 cannot have complimented you on it." 
 
 As she was taking pins from the table she noticed 
 a little bronze figure which she had not yet seen. It 
 was an old Italian work of Flemish taste: a nude 
 woman, with short legs and heavy stomach, who 
 apparently ran with an arm extended. She thought 
 the figure had a droll air. She asked what she was 
 doing. 
 
 " She is doing what Madame Mundanity does on 
 the portal of the cathedral at Basle." 
 
 But Therese, who had been at Basle, did not know 
 Madame Mundanity. She looked at the figure 
 again, did not understand, and asked; 
 
 "Is it something very bad? How can a thing 
 done on the portal of a church be so difficult to teU 
 here?" 
 
 Suddenly an anxiety came to her: 
 
 "What win M. and Madame FuseUier think of 
 me?" 
 
 Then, discovering on the wall a medallion wherein 
 Dechartre had modelled the profile of a girl, amus- 
 ing and vicious : 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " That is Clara, a newspaper girl. She brought 
 the ' Figaro ' to me every morning. She had dim- 
 
238 THE BED LILY 
 
 pies in her cheeks, nests of kisses. One day I said 
 to her: 'I will make your portrait.' She came, 
 one summer morning, with earrings and rings 
 which she had bought at the NeuOly fair. I never 
 saw her again. I do not know what has become of 
 her. She was too instinctive to become a fashion- 
 able demi-mondaine. Shall I take it out ? " 
 
 " No; it looks very well in that corner. I am not 
 jealous of Clara." 
 
 It was time to return home, and she could not 
 decide to go. She put her arms around her friend's 
 neck. 
 
 " Oh, I love you! And then, you have been to- 
 day good-natured and gay. Gayety becomes you so 
 well. I would like to make you gay always. I need 
 joy almost as much as love; and who will give me 
 joy if you do not ? " 
 
XXVII 
 
 Aftee her return to Paris, for six weeks Therese 
 lived in the ardent half sleep of happiness, and 
 prolonged delightfully her thoughtless dream. She 
 went to see Jacques every day in the little house 
 that a tree shaded; and when they had at last parted 
 at night, she brought with her adored reminis- 
 cences. They had the same tastes ; they yielded to 
 the same fantasies. The same capricious thoughts 
 carried them away. They found pleasure in running 
 to the country that borders the city, the streets 
 where the wine-shops are shaded by acacia, the 
 stony roads where the grass grows at the foot of 
 waUs, the little woods and the fields on which is 
 extended a fine sky that the smoke of manufactories 
 stripes. She was happy to feel him near her in these 
 lands where she did not know herself, and where she 
 gave to herself the illusion of being lost with him. 
 
 That day they had taken the boat which she had 
 seen pass so often under her windows. She was not 
 afraid to be recognized. Her danger was not great, 
 and, smce she was in love, she had lost prudence. 
 They saw shores which little by little grew gay, 
 escaping the dusty aridity of the suburbs; they 
 went by islands with bouquets of trees shading tav- 
 erns, and innumerable boats tied under wiUows. 
 
240 THE EED LILY 
 
 They disembarked at Bas-Meudon. As she said she 
 was too warm, and that she was thirsty, he made 
 her enter a wine-shop. It was a building surcharged 
 with wooden galleries, which solitude made to appear 
 larger, and which slept in rustic peace, waiting for 
 Sunday to fill it with the laughter of girls, the cries 
 of boatmen, the odor of fried fish, and the smoke 
 of stews. 
 
 They went up the stairway, shaped like a ladder, 
 which groaned, and in a first-story room a servant 
 brought wine and biscuits to them. On the man- 
 telpiece, at one of the corners of the room, was an 
 oval mirror in a flower-covered frame. Through 
 the open window one saw the Seine, its green shores, 
 and the hills in the distance bathed with warm air. 
 The trembling peace of a summer night fiUed the 
 sky, the earth, and the water. 
 
 Therese looked at the running river. The boat 
 passed on the water, and when the wake which it 
 left reached the shore it seemed as if the house 
 rocked like a vessel. 
 
 " I like the water," said Therese. " How happy 
 I am! " 
 
 Their lips met. 
 
 Lost in the enchanted despair of love, time was 
 not marked for them except by the cool plash of the 
 water, which at intervals broke under the half -open 
 window. To the caressing praise of her friend she 
 replied: 
 
 " It is true I was made for love. I love myself 
 because you love me." 
 
THE RED LILY 241 
 
 Certainly, he loved her; and it was not possible 
 for him to explain to himself why he loved her with 
 ardent piety, with a sort of sacred fury. It was 
 not because of her beauty, although it was rare and 
 infinitely precious. She had line, but line follows 
 movement, and flies incessantly ; it is lost and found 
 again; causes esthetic joys and despair. A beauti- 
 ful line is the lightning which deliciously wounds 
 the eyes. One admires and one is surprised. "What 
 makes one love is a soft and terrible force, more 
 powerful than beauty. One finds one woman among 
 a thousand whom one wants always. Therese was 
 that woman whom one cannot quit nor betray. 
 
 She exclaimed joyfuUy : 
 
 " I cannot be quitted ? ' ' 
 
 She asked why he did not make her bust, since he 
 thought her beautiful. 
 
 "Why? Because I am an ordinary sculptor, 
 and I know it ; which is not the faculty of an ordi- 
 nary mind. But if you wish to think that I am a 
 great artist, I will give you other reasons. To cre- 
 ate a figure that will live, one must take the model 
 like a vile material from which one will extract the 
 beauty, press it, crush it, and obtain its essence. 
 There is nothing in you which is not precious to me. 
 If I made your bust I would be servilely attached to 
 these things which are everything to me because 
 they are something of you. I would stubbornly 
 attach myself to the details, and would not succeed 
 in composing a finished figure." 
 
 She looked at him, astonished. 
 16 
 
242 THE RED LILT 
 
 He said: 
 
 "From memory I might. I tried a pencil 
 sketch." 
 
 As she wanted to see it, he showed it to her. It 
 was on an album leaf, a very simple sketch. She 
 did not recognize herself in it, and thought he had 
 represented her with a soul that she did not have. 
 
 "Ah, is that the way in which you see me? Is 
 that the way in which you love me ? " 
 
 He closed the album. 
 
 " No; this is only a note. But I think the note is 
 just. It is probable you do not see yourself exactly 
 as I see you. Every human creature is a different 
 being for everyone of those who look at it." 
 
 He added, with a sort of gayety : 
 
 " In that sense one may say one woman never be- 
 longed to two men. That is one of Paul Yence's 
 ideas." 
 
 " I think it is a true idea," said Therese. 
 
 She asked: 
 
 "What is the time?" 
 
 It was seven o'clock. She said she had to go. 
 Every day she returned home later. Her husband 
 had noticed it. He had said: " We are the last to 
 arrive at all the dinners ; there is a fatality about 
 it!" But, detained every day in the Chamber of 
 Deputies, where the budget was being discussed, and 
 absorbed by the work of a sub-committee of which 
 he was the chairman, state reasons excused Ther^se's 
 lack of punctuality. She recalled smilingly a night 
 when she had arrived at Madame Garain's at half- 
 
THE RED LILY 243 
 
 past eight. She had feared to cause a scandal. But 
 it was a day of great interpellations. Her husband 
 came from the Chamber at nine o'clock only, with 
 Garain. They dined in morning dress. They had 
 saved the Ministry. 
 
 Then she fell into a dream. 
 
 "When the Chamber shall be adjourned, my 
 friend, I shall not have a pretext to remain in Paris. 
 Father does not understand my devotion to my 
 husband which makes me stay in Paris. In a week 
 I shall have to go to Dinard. "What wiU become of 
 me without you ? " 
 
 She clasped her hands and looked at him with a 
 sadness infinitely tender. But he, more sombre: 
 
 " It is I, Therese, it is I who must ask anxiously. 
 What will become of me without you ? When you 
 leave me alone I am assailed by painful thoughts ; 
 black ideas come and sit in a circle around me." 
 
 She asked him what those ideas were. 
 
 He replied: 
 
 " My beloved, I have already told you: I have to 
 forget you with you. When you are gone, your 
 memory will torment me. I have to pay for the 
 happiness you give me." 
 
XXYIII 
 
 The blue sea, studded with pink shoals, threw its 
 silvery fringe softly to the iine sand of the beach, 
 along the amphitheatre which two golden horns 
 terminate. The beauty of the day threw a ray of 
 Greece's sunlight on the tomb of Chateaubriand. 
 In the room the balcony of which dominated the 
 beach, the ocean, the islands, and the promontories, 
 Therese was reading the letters which she had found 
 in the morning at the Saint Milo post-office, and 
 which she had not opened in the boat, loaded with 
 passengers. At once, after breakfast, she had clos- 
 eted herself in her room, and there, her letters 
 unfolded on her knees, she relished hastily her furtive 
 joy. She was to drive at two o'clock on the mall 
 with her father ; her husband ; Princess Seniavine ; 
 Madame Berthier-d'EyzeUes, the wife of the Dep- 
 uty; and Madame Raymond, the wife of the Acade- 
 mician. She had two letters that day. The first 
 one she read exhaled a fine and gay odor of love. 
 Jacques had never displayed more simplicity, more 
 happiness, and more charm. 
 
 Since he had been in love with her, he said, he 
 walked so lightly and was supported by such a joy 
 that his feet did not touch the earth. He had only 
 one fear, which was that he might be dreaming, and 
 
THE RED LILY 245 
 
 awake unknown to her. Doubtless he was only 
 dreaming. And what a dream! He was like one 
 intoxicated and singing. He had not his reason, 
 happily. Absent, he saw her incessantly. " Yes, 
 I see you near me ; I see your lashes on eyes the 
 gray of which is more delicious than all the blue of 
 the sky and the flowers ; your lips, which have the 
 taste of a marvellous fruit; your cheeks, where 
 laughter puts two adorable dimples ; I see you beau- 
 tiful and desired, but fleeing and gliding away; and 
 when I open my arms, you have gone ; and I see you 
 afar on the long, long beach, not taller in your pink 
 gown and under your umbrella than a twig. Oh, 
 so small — small as you were one day when I saw you 
 from the height of the Campanile on the square at 
 Florence. And I say to myself, as I said that day : 
 ' A bit of grass would sufiice to hide her from me, 
 and she is for me the infinite of joy and of pain. ' ' ' 
 He complained of the torments of absence. And 
 he mingled with his complaints the smiles of fortu- 
 nate love. He threatened jokingly to surprise her 
 at Dinard. " Do not be afraid. They wiU not rec- 
 ognize me. I shaU be disguised as a vendor of plas- 
 ter images. It wiU not be a lie. Dressed in gray 
 tunic and trousers, my beard and face covered with 
 white dust, I wfll ring the bell of the Montessuy 
 villa. Tou may recognize me, Therese, by the statu- 
 ettes on the plank placed on my head. They will 
 aU be Cupids. There will be faithful Love, jealous 
 Love, tender Love, vivid Love; there will be many 
 vivid Loves. And I will shout in the rude and 
 
246 THE EED LILY 
 
 sonorous language of the artisans of Pisa or of 
 Florence: ' Tutti gli Amori per la Signora Tere- 
 sina! ' " 
 
 The last page of this letter was tender and grave. 
 There were pious efiPusions in it which reminded 
 Therese of the prayer books which she read when a 
 child. " I love you, and I love everything in you: 
 the earth which carries you, on which you weigh so 
 little, and which you embellish; the light which 
 makes me see you; the air you breathe. I like the 
 bent tree of my yard because you have seen it. I 
 have walked to-night on the avenue where I met 
 you one winter night. I have culled a branch of 
 the boxwood at which you looked. In this city, 
 where you are not, I see only you." 
 
 He said at the end of his letter that he was to 
 dine out. In the absence of Madame FuseUier, who 
 had gone to the country, he would go to a wine 
 shop of the Rue Eoyale where he was known. And 
 there, in the indistinct crowd, he would be alone 
 with her. 
 
 Therese, made languid by the softness of invisible 
 caresses, closed her eyes and threw back her head on 
 the armchair. "When she heard the noise of the 
 carriage coming near the stoop, she opened the sec- 
 ond letter. As soon as she saw the altered hand- 
 writing of it, the lines precipitated and falling, the 
 sad, violent aspect of the address, she was troubled. 
 
 Its obscure commencement indicated sudden an- 
 guish and black suspicion: " Therese, Therese, why 
 did you give yourseK to me if you were not giving 
 
THE RED LILY 247 
 
 yourself to me entire ? How does it serve me that 
 you have deceived me, now that I know what I did 
 not wish to know? " 
 
 She stopped; a veil came over her eyes. She 
 thought: " "We were so happy a moment ago. "What 
 has happened? And I was so pleased at his joy, 
 when it had already gone ; it would be better not to 
 write, since letters show only vanished sentiments 
 and effaced ideas." 
 
 She read further. And seeing that he was full 
 of jealousy, she felt discouraged: 
 
 "If I have not proved to him that I love him 
 with all my strength, that I love him with all 
 there is in me, how am I ever to persuade him 
 of it?" 
 
 And she was in a hurry to discover the cause of 
 his brusque foUy. Jacques told it. "While taking 
 breakfast in the E.ue Eoyale he had met there a 
 former companion who had just returned from the 
 seaside. They had talked together; chance made 
 that man talk of Countess Martin, whom he knew. 
 And at once, interrupting the narration, Jacques 
 exclaimed: " Therese, Therese, why did you lie to 
 me, since I was bound to learn some day what I 
 alone ignored ? But the error is mine more than 
 yours. The letter which you threw in the San 
 Michele box, your meeting at the Florence station, 
 would have instructed me if I had not obstinately 
 retained my illusions and disdained evidence. 
 
 ' ' I did not know ; I wanted to remain ignorant. I 
 did not ask you anything, from fear that you might 
 
248 THE EED LILY 
 
 not be able to continue to lie; I was prudent; and 
 it bas bappened tbat an idiot, suddenly, brutally, 
 before a restaurant table, bas opened my eyes and 
 forced me to know. Ob, now tbat I know, now 
 tbat I cannot doubt, it seems to me tbat to doubt is 
 delicious! He gave tbe name, tbe name wbicb I 
 beard at Fiesole from Miss BeU, and be added: 
 ' Everybody knows about tbat. ' 
 
 " So you loved bim. You love bim still! He is 
 near you, doubtless. He goes every year to tbe 
 Dinard races. I bave been told so. I see bim. I 
 see everytbing. If you knew tbe images tbat 
 worry me, you would say, ' He is crazy, ' and you 
 would take pity on me. Ob, bow I would like to 
 forget you. and everytbing ! But I cannot. Tou 
 know very well I cannot forget you except witb 
 you. I see you incessantly witb bim. It is torture. 
 I tbougbt I was unfortunate tbat nigbt on tbe Arno 
 sbore. But I did not even know tben wbat it is to 
 suffer. To-day I know. " 
 
 As sbe flnisbed reading tbat letter, Tberese 
 tbougbt: "A word tbrown bapbazard bas placed 
 bim in tbat condition, a word bas made bim despair- 
 ing and mad." Sbe tried to tbink wbo migbt be 
 tbe wretcbed fellow wbo could bave talked in tbat 
 way. Sbe suspected two or tbree young men wbom 
 Le Menil bad introduced to ber once, warning ber 
 not to trust tbem. And witb one of tbe wbite and 
 cold fits of anger sbe bad inberited from ber fatber 
 sbe said to berself : " I must know wbo be is." In 
 tbe meanwbile wbat was sbe to do ? Her friend in 
 
THE EED LILY 249 
 
 despair, mad, ill, she could not run to him, embrace 
 him, and throw herself on him with such an aban- 
 donment that he would feel how entirely she was 
 his, and be forced to believe in her. To write ? 
 How much better it would be to go near him, to fall 
 down on his heart and to say to him: "Dare to 
 believe I am not yours only! " But she could only 
 write. She had hardly begun her letter when she 
 heard voices and laughter in the garden. Therese 
 went down tranquil and smiling; her large straw 
 hat threw on her face a transparent shadow wherein 
 her gray eyes shone. 
 
 ' ' How beautiful she is ! " exclaimed Princess Senia- 
 vine. "What a pity it is we never see her! In 
 the morning she is promenading in the alleys of 
 Saint Milo, in the afternoon she is closeted in her 
 room. She is running away from us. " 
 
 The coach turned around the large circle of the 
 beach at the foot of the villas and gardens on the 
 hillside. And one saw at the left the ramparts and 
 the steeple of Saint Milo come out of the blue sea. 
 Then the coach went into a road bordered by hedges, 
 along which walked Dinard women, straight under 
 their wide headdress. 
 
 "Unfortunately," said Madame Eaymond, seated 
 on the box by Montessuy's side, " old costumes are 
 dying out. The fault is with the railways." 
 
 "It is true," said Montessuy, "that if it were 
 not for the railways the peasants would still wear 
 their picturesque costumes of other times. But we 
 would not see them." 
 
250 THE RED LILY 
 
 "What does it matter?" replied Madame Kay- 
 mond. " "We could imagine them." 
 
 "But," asked Princess Seniavine, "do you ever 
 see interesting things? I never do." 
 
 Madame Eaymond, who had taken from her hus- 
 band's books a vague tint of philosophy, declared 
 that things were nothing, and that the idea was 
 everything. 
 
 "Without looking at Madame Berthier-d'Eyzelles, 
 seated at her right, Countess Martin murmured : 
 
 " Oh, yes, people see only their ideas; they follow 
 only their ideas. They go along, blind and deaf. 
 One cannot stop them." 
 
 "But, my dear," said Count Martin, placed in 
 front of her, by the Princess's side, "without lead- 
 ing ideas one would go haphazard. Have you read, 
 Montessuy, the speech delivered by Loyer at the 
 unveUing of the Cadet-Gassicourt statue ? The be- 
 ginning is remarkable. Loyer is not lacking in 
 political sense." 
 
 The carriage, having traversed the fields bordered 
 with willows, went up a hiU and advanced on a vast, 
 wooded plateau. Por a long time it skirted the 
 walls of the park. 
 
 " Is it the Guerric ? " asked Princess Seniavine. 
 
 Suddenly, between two stone pillars surmounted 
 by lions, appeared the closed gate. At the end of a 
 long alley stood the gray stones of a castle. 
 
 " Tes," said Montessuy, " it is the Guerric." 
 
 And, addressing Therese: 
 
 " You knew the Marquis de K6 ? At sixty-five he 
 
THE RED LILY 251 
 
 had retained his strength and his youth. He set the 
 fashion and was loved. Young men copied his frock 
 coat, his monocle, his gestures, his exquisite inso- 
 lence, his amusing mania. Suddenly he abandoned 
 society, closed his house, sold his stable, ceased to 
 show himself. Do you remember, Th^rese, his sud- 
 den disappearance ? You had been married a short 
 time. He called on you often. One fine day people 
 learned that he had quitted Paris. It is here that 
 he had come in winter. People tried to find a rea- 
 son for the sudden retreat; people thought he had 
 run away under the influence of some sorrow, of 
 some humiliation, or from fear that people might 
 see him grow old. He was afraid of old age more 
 than anything. For seven years he has retired 
 from society, he has not gone out of the castle once. 
 He receives at the Guerric two or three old men 
 who were his companions iu youth. This gate is 
 opened for them only. Since his retirement no one 
 has seen him; no one will ever see him. He has the 
 same energy to conceal himseli that he had to show 
 himself. He has not suffered from his decline. He 
 has died alive. That is not contemptible." 
 
 And Therese, recalling the amiable old man who 
 had wished to finish gloriously with her his life of 
 gallantry, turned her head and looked at the Guer- 
 ric lifting its four towers above the gray summits 
 of oaks. 
 
 On their return she said she had a headache and 
 that she would not take dinner. She closed her- 
 self in her room and drew from her jewel casket 
 
252 THE BED LILT 
 
 the lamentable letter. She read over the last 
 page. 
 
 " The thought that you belong to another burns 
 me. And then, I did not wish that one to be the 
 one." 
 
 It was a fixed idea. He had written three times 
 on the same leaf these words: " I did not wish that 
 one to be the one." 
 
 She, too, had only one idea: not to lose him. 
 JSTot to lose him, she would have said anything, she 
 would have done anything. She went to her table 
 and wrote, under the spur of a tender and plaintive 
 violence, a letter wherein she repeated like a groan: 
 " I love you, I love you. I never loved any one but 
 you. You are alone, alone — do you hear ? — in my 
 mind, in me. Do not listen to what this wretched 
 man says. Listen to me. I never loved any one, I 
 swear, any one, before you." 
 
 As she was writing, the great and light sigh of 
 the sea accompanied her sigh. She wanted to say, 
 she believed she was saying, real things; and all 
 that she was saying was true of the truth of her 
 love. She heard the heavy step of her father on 
 the stairway. She hid her letter and opened the 
 door. Montessuy asked her if she did not feel 
 better. 
 
 " I came," he said, " to say good evening to you, 
 and to ask you something. It is probable that I will 
 meet Le Menil at the races. He goes there every 
 year. If I meet him, darling, would you have any 
 objection to my inviting him to come here for a few 
 
THE RED LILY 253 
 
 days ? Your husband, thinks he would be agreeable 
 company for you. "We might give him the blue 
 room." 
 
 " As you wish. But I should prefer that you 
 keep the blue room for Paul Yence, who wishes to 
 come. It is possible, too, that Choulette comes 
 without warning. It's his habit. We shall see him 
 some morning ringtag like a beggar at the gate. You 
 know my husband is mistaken when he thinks Le 
 Menil pleases me. And then I have to go to Paris 
 next week for two or three days." 
 
XXIX 
 
 TwENTT-Fomt hours after her letter, Therese came 
 from Dinard to the little house in the Ternes. It 
 had not been difficult for her to find a pretext to go 
 to Paris. She had made the trip with her husband, 
 who wanted to see his electors, whom the Socialists 
 were working over. She surprised Jacques in the 
 morning, at the studio, while he was sketching a tall 
 figure of Florence weeping on the shore of the 
 Arno. 
 
 The model, seated on a very high stool, kept her 
 pose. She was a long, dark girl. The harsh light 
 which f eU from the skylight gave precision to the 
 pure lines of her hip and thighs, accentuated her 
 harsh visage, her dark neck, her marble chest, her 
 grimacing knees, and her feet, the toes of which 
 were set one over the other. Therese looked at her 
 curiously, divining her exquisite form under the 
 miseries of her flesh, poorly fed and badly cared for. 
 
 Dechartre came toward Therese with an air of 
 painful tenderness which moved her. Then, placing 
 his clay and the instrument near the easel, and cov- 
 ering the figure with a wet cloth, he said to the 
 model: 
 
 " It is enough for to-day." 
 
THE BED LILT 255 
 
 Then she rose, picked up awkwardly her clothing, 
 a handful of sombre wool and dirty linen, and went 
 to dress behind the screen. 
 
 Meanwhile the sculptor, having dipped in the 
 water of a green bowl his hands, where the tena- 
 cious clay was whitening, went out of the studio 
 with Th^rese. 
 
 They passed under the tree which studded the 
 sand of the courtyard with the shells of its flayed 
 bark. She said: 
 
 " You have no more faith, have you ? " 
 
 He led her to the room. 
 
 The letter written from Dinard had already soft- 
 ened his painful impressions. She had come at the 
 moment when, tired of suffering, he felt the need of 
 calm and of tenderness. A few lines of handwrit- 
 ing had appeased his mind, fed on images, less sus- 
 ceptible to things than to the signs of things ; but he 
 felt a pain in his heart. 
 
 In the room where everything talked for her, 
 where the furniture, the curtains, and the carpets 
 told of their love, she murmured soft words : 
 
 " You could believe — do you not know what you 
 are ? — it was folly ! How can a woman who has 
 known you care for another after you? " 
 
 "But before?" 
 
 " Before, I was waiting for you." 
 
 " And he did not attend the races at Dinard ? " 
 
 She did not think he had, and it was very certain 
 she did not attend them herself. Horses and horsey 
 men bored her. 
 
256 THE EED LILY 
 
 " Jacques, fear no one, since you are not compar- 
 able to any one." 
 
 He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he 
 was and how insignificant every one is in this world 
 where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed 
 and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the 
 god. This idea of the agricultural or mystical van 
 represented too weU measure and order to be exactly 
 applied to life. It seemed to him that men were 
 grains in a coffee-mill. He had a vivid sensation of 
 this the day before, when he saw Madame FuseUier 
 grinding coffee in her miU. 
 
 Th^rese said to him: 
 
 " Why are you not conceited ? " 
 
 She added few words, but she talked with her 
 eyes, her arms, the breath that made her bosom rise. 
 
 In the happy surprise of seeing and hearing her, 
 he permitted himself to be convinced. 
 
 She asked who had said so odious a thing. 
 
 He had no reason to conceal his name from her. 
 It was Daniel Salomon. 
 
 She was not surprised. Daniel Salomon, who 
 passed for not having been the lover of any woman, 
 wished at least to be in the confidence of all and 
 know their secrets. She guessed why he had 
 talked. 
 
 "Jacques, do not be cross at what I say to you. 
 You are not skilful in concealing your sentiments. 
 He suspected you were in love with me, and he 
 wanted to be sure of it. I am persuaded that now 
 he has no doubt of our relations. But that is in- 
 
THE RED LILY 257 
 
 different to me. On the contrary, if you knew 
 better how to dissimulate, I would be less quiet. I 
 would think you did not love me enough." 
 
 For fear of disquieting him, she turned to other 
 thoughts : 
 
 "I have not told you how much I like your 
 sketch. It is Florence on the Arno. Then it is 
 we?" 
 
 " Yes, I have placed in that figure the emotion of 
 my love. It is sad, and I wish it were beautiful. 
 You see, Therese, beauty is painful. That is why, 
 since life is beautiful, I suffer." 
 
 He took out of his flannel coat his cigarette 
 holder, but she told him to dress. She would bring 
 him to breakfast with her. They would not quit 
 each other that day. It would be delightful. 
 
 She looked at him with childish joy. Then she 
 became sad, thinking she would have to return to 
 Dinard at the end of the week, later go to Joinville, 
 and that during that time they would be separated. 
 
 At JoinviUe, at her father's, she would cause him 
 to be invited for a few days. But they would not 
 be free and alone there, as they were in Paris. 
 
 " It is true," he said, "that Paris is good to us in 
 its confused immensity." 
 
 And he added: 
 
 "Even in your absence I cannot quit Paris. It 
 would be terrible for me to live in countries that do 
 not know you. A sky, mountains, trees, fountains, 
 statues which do not know how to talk of you 
 would have nothing to say to me." 
 17 
 
258 THE EED LILY 
 
 While he -was dressing she was turning the leaves 
 of a book which she had found on the table. It was 
 " The Arabian Nights." Eomantic engravings dis- 
 played here and there in the text grand viziers, sul- 
 tanas, black tunics, bazaars, and caravans. 
 
 She asked: 
 
 " ' The Arabian Mghts ' — does that amuse you ? " 
 
 " A great deal," he replied, tying his cravat. " I 
 believe as much as I wish in these Arabian princes 
 whose legs become black marble, and in these 
 women of the harem who wander at night in grave- 
 yards. These tales give me easy dreams which 
 make me forget life. Last night I went to bed in 
 sadness and read the history of the Three Calen- 
 dars." 
 
 She said with a little bitterness: 
 
 " You are trying to forget. I would not consent 
 for anything in the world to lose the memory of a 
 pain which came to me from you." 
 
 They went down together in the street. She was 
 to take a carriage a little further on and precede 
 him at her house by a few minutes. 
 
 "My husband expects you to breakfast." 
 
 They talked, on the way, of insignificant things, 
 which their love made great and charming. They 
 arranged their afternoon in advance in order to put 
 into it the infinity of profound joy and of ingenious 
 pleasure. She consulted him about her gowns. She 
 could not decide to leave him, happy to walk with 
 him in the streets, which the sun and the gayety of 
 noon filled. When they reached the Avenue des 
 
THE RED LILY 259 
 
 Ternes they saw before them, on the avenue, shops 
 displaying side by side a magnificent abundance of 
 victuals. There were rosaries of chickens at the 
 caterer's, and at the fruiterer's boxes of apricots 
 and of peaches, baskets of grapes, piles of pears. 
 Wagons fiUed with fruits and flowers bordered the 
 sidewalk. Under the awning of a restaurant men 
 and women were taking breakfast. Therese recog- 
 nized among them, alone, at a smaU. table against a 
 laurel tree in a box, Choulette lighting his pipe. 
 
 Having seen her, he threw superbly a five-franc 
 piece on the table, rose, and bowed. He was grave; 
 his long frock coat gave him an air of decency and 
 of austerity. 
 
 He said he would have liked to call on Madame 
 Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the 
 Yendee by the Marquise de Eieu. However, he had 
 issued a new edition of the "Jardin Clos," aug- 
 mented by the " Yerger de Sainte-Claire. " He had 
 moved souls which were thought to be insensible and 
 made springs come out of rocks. 
 
 "So," he said, " I was, in a fashion, a Moses." 
 
 He fumbled in his pocket and drew from a book a 
 letter which was worn and spotted. 
 
 "This is what Madame Raymond, the Academi- 
 cian's wife, writes me. I publish what she says, 
 because it is creditable to her." 
 
 And, unfolding the thin leaves, he read: 
 
 " I have made your book known to my husband, 
 who exclaimed : ' It is pure spiritualism. Here is a 
 closed garden, which on the side of the lilies and 
 
260 THE BED LILY 
 
 white roses lias, I imagine, a small gate opening on 
 the road to the Academie.' " 
 
 Choulette relished these phrases mingled in his 
 mouth with the perfume of whiskey, and replaced 
 carefully the letter in its book. 
 
 Madame Martin congratulated the poet on being 
 Madame Eaymond's candidate. 
 
 "You should be mine, M. Choulette, if I were 
 interested in Academic elections. But does the In- 
 stitute excite your envy ? " 
 
 He kept for a few moments a solemn silence, 
 then: 
 
 " I am going now, Madame, to confer with divers 
 notable persons of the political and religious worlds 
 who reside at ISTeuilly. The Marquise de Rieu 
 wishes me to be a candidate, in her country, to a 
 senatorial seat which has become vacant by the death 
 of an old man who was, they say, a general during 
 his illusory life. I wlH considt in this regard with 
 priests, women, and children — oh, eternal wisdom! 
 — of the Bineau Boulevard. The constituency whose 
 suffrages I shall attempt to obtain is an undulated 
 and wooded land wherein willows frame the in elds. 
 And it is not a rare thing to iind in the hollow of 
 one of these old willows the skeleton of a Chouan 
 pressing his gun against his breast and holding his 
 beads in his fleshless fingers. I shall have my pro- 
 gramme posted on the bark of oaks. I wiU say : 
 ' Peace to presbyteries ! Let the day come when 
 bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, 
 shall make themselves similar to the poorest servant 
 
THE BED LILY 261 
 
 of the poorest parish ! It is the bishops who cruci- 
 fied Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and 
 Caiph. And they still retain these names before 
 the Son of God. While they were naUing Him to 
 the cross, I was the good thief hanged by His 
 side.'" 
 
 He lifted his stick and pointed toward NeuiUy: 
 
 "Dechartre, my friend, do you not think the 
 Bineau Boulevard is the dusty one over there, at the 
 right?" 
 
 "Farewell, M. Choulette," said Th^rese. "Ee- 
 member me when you are a senator." 
 
 "Madame, I do not forget you in any of my 
 prayers, morning and evening. And I say to God: 
 ' Since, in your anger, you gave to her riches and 
 beauty, regard her. Lord, with kindness, and treat 
 her in accordance with your sovereign mercy." 
 
 And he went, stiff, and dragging his leg, through 
 the populous avenue. 
 
XXX 
 
 Enveloped in a mantle of pink cloth, Therese 
 went down the steps of the stoop with Dechartre. 
 He had come in the morning to Joinville. She had 
 made him come to the circle of her intimate friends, 
 before the hunting party to which she feared Le 
 Menil had been invited as was the custom. The 
 light air of September agitated the curls of her hair, 
 and the sun made golden darts shine in the profound 
 gray of her eyes. Behind them, the fagade of the 
 palace displayed above the three arcades of the first 
 story, in the intervals of the windows, on long 
 tables, busts of Eoman emperors. The house was 
 placed between two taU pavilions which their great 
 slate roofs made higher, over piUars of the Ionic 
 order. This style betrayed the art of the architect 
 Leveau, who had constructed, in 1650, the castle of 
 JoinviUe-sur-Oise for that rich MareuiUes, creature 
 of Mazarin, and fortunate accomplice of Fouquet. 
 
 Therese and Jacques saw before them the flower 
 beds designed by Le Notre, the green carpet, the 
 fountain ; then the grotto with its five rustic arcades 
 crowned by the taU trees on which autumn had 
 already begun to spread its golden mantle. 
 
 "This green ["geometry is beautiful," said De- 
 chartre. 
 
THE RED LILY 263 
 
 " Yes," said Therese. "But I thint of the tree 
 bent in the small courtyard where grass grows be- 
 tween the stones. We shall build a beautiful foun- 
 tain in it, shall we not, and put flowers in it ? " 
 
 Leaning against one of the stone lions, with almost 
 human face, that watched over the steps, she turned 
 her head toward the castle, and, looking at one of 
 the windows, said : 
 
 " There is your room; I went into it last night. 
 On the same floor, on the other side, at the other 
 end, is father's office. A white wood table, a ma- 
 hogany portfolio, a decanter on the mantelpiece: 
 his office when he was a young man. Our entire 
 fortune came out of that." 
 
 Through the sand-covered paths between the 
 flower beds they walked to the boxwood wall which 
 bordered the park on the southern side. They passed 
 before the orange grove, the monumental door of 
 which was surmounted by the Lorraine cross of 
 Mareuflles, and then passed under the linden trees 
 which formed an alley on the lawn. Statues of 
 nymphs shivered in the damp shade studded with 
 pale lights. A pigeon, posed on the shoulder of one 
 of the white women, fled. From time to time a 
 breath of wind detached a dried leaf which fell, a 
 shell of red gold, where remained a drop of rain. 
 Therese pointed to the nymph and said: 
 
 " She saw me when a child and wishing to die. 
 I suffered of desire and of fright. I was waiting 
 for you. But you were so far away! " 
 
 The linden alley stopped near the large basin, in 
 
264 THE RED LILY 
 
 the centre of which was a group of tritons blowing 
 in their shells to form, when the waters played, a 
 liquid diadem with flowers of foam. 
 
 " It is the JoinviUe crown," she said. 
 
 She pointed to a pathway which, starting from 
 the basin, went to lose itself in the fields, in the 
 direction of the rising sun. 
 
 " This is my pathway. How often I walked in it 
 sadly! I was sad when I did not know you." 
 
 They found the alley which, with other lindens 
 and other nymphs, went beyond. And they fol- 
 lowed it to the grottoes. There was, in the rear of 
 the park, a semicircle of five large niches of rocks 
 surmounted by balustrades and separated by gigan- 
 tic Terminus gods. One of these gods, at a corner 
 of the monmnent, dominated all the others by his 
 monstrous nudity, and lowered on them his stony 
 look, ferocious and soft. 
 
 "When my father bought Joinville," she said, 
 " the grottoes were only ruins, full of grass and of 
 vipers. A thousand rabbits had made holes in them. 
 He restored the Terminus gods and the arcades in 
 accordance with prints by PerreUe, which are pre- 
 served at the BibUotheque Rationale. He was his 
 own architect." 
 
 A desire for shade and mystery led them toward 
 the arbor near the grottoes. But the noise of foot- 
 steps which they heard, coming from the covered 
 alley, made them stop for a moment, and they saw, 
 through the leaves, Montessuy, with his arm around 
 Princess Seniavine's waist. Quietly they were 
 
THE RED LILY 265 
 
 Walking toward the palace. Jacques and Therese, 
 hiding behind the enormous Terminus god, waited 
 until they had passed. Then she said to Dechartre, 
 who was looking at her silently : 
 
 " That is great ! I understand now why Princess 
 Seniavine, this winter, wanted father to advise her 
 about buying horses." 
 
 Yet Therese admired her father for having con- 
 quered that beautiful woman, who passed for being 
 hard to please, and who was known to be wealthy, 
 in spite of the embarrassments which her mad dis- 
 order caused her. She asked Jacques if he did not 
 think the Princess was beautiful. He said she was 
 stylish. She was beautiful, doubtless. 
 
 Therese led Jacques to the moss-covered steps 
 which, ascending behind the grottoes, led to the 
 Gerbe-de-1'Oise, formed of leaden reeds in the midst 
 of a grand pink marble vase. There were tall 
 trees which closed the park's perspective and stood 
 at the beginning of the forest. They walked under 
 them. They were silent under the faint moan of 
 the leaves. 
 
 He pressed her in his arms and placed kisses on 
 her eyelids. Night was descending from the sky, 
 the first stars were trembling among the branches. 
 In the damp grass sighed the frogs' flutes. They 
 went no farther. 
 
 "When she took with him, in the night, the road 
 to the palace, the taste of kisses and of mint remained 
 on her lips, and in her eyes was the image of her 
 friend. She snuled under the lindens at the nymphs 
 
266 THE BED LILT 
 
 who had seen the tears of her childhood. The Swan 
 lifted in the sky its cross made of stars, and the 
 moon mirrored its fine horn in the basin of the 
 crown. Insects in the grass uttered appeals to love. 
 At the last turn of the boxwood hedge, Therese and 
 Jacques saw the triple, frightful and black mass of 
 the castle, and through the wide bay windows of the 
 first story distinguished, in the red light, moving 
 forms. The beU rang. 
 
 Therese exclaimed: 
 
 " I have hardly time to dress for dinner." 
 
 And she ran before the stone lions, leaving her 
 friend under the impression of a fairy-tale vision. 
 
 In the parlor, after dinner, M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles 
 was reading the newspaper, and Princess Seniavine 
 playing solitaire. Therese sat, her eyes half closed 
 on a book. 
 
 The Princess asked if she found what she was 
 reading amusing. 
 
 " I do not know. I was reading and thinking. 
 Paul Yence is right: 'We find only ourselves in 
 books.' " 
 
 Through the hangings came from the billiard-room 
 the voices of the players and the shock of the balls. 
 
 "I have it!" exclaimed the Princess, throwing 
 down the cards. 
 
 She had wagered a big sum on a horse which was 
 running that day at the ChantiUy races. 
 
 Therese said she had received a letter from Piesole. 
 Miss BeU announced her forthcoming marriage with 
 Prince Eusebio Albertinelli della Spina. 
 
THE RED LILY 267 
 
 The Princess laughed : 
 
 "There's a man who will render a service to 
 her." 
 
 " What service? " asked Th^rese. 
 
 " He will disgust her with men, of course." 
 
 Montessuy came into the parlor joyfully. He had 
 won the game. 
 
 He sat beside Berthier-d'Eyzelles, and, taking a 
 newspaper from the sofa, said: 
 
 " The Minister of Finance announces that he wiU 
 propose, when the Chamber reassembles, his savings- 
 bank biU." 
 
 This bin was to give to savings banks the authority 
 to lend money to communes, a proceeding which 
 would take from Montessuy's business houses their 
 best customers. 
 
 "Berthier," asked the financier, "are you reso- 
 lutely hostile to that bill? " 
 
 Berthier nodded. 
 
 Montessuy rose, placed his hand on the Deputy's 
 shoulder, and said: 
 
 " My dear Berthier, I have an idea that the Cabi- 
 net will fall at the beginning of the session." 
 
 He went near his daughter. 
 
 " I have received an odd letter from Le Menil. " 
 
 Therese rose and closed the door which separated 
 the parlor from the billiard-room. 
 
 She was afraid of draughts, she said. 
 
 " A singular letter," continued Montessuy. " Le 
 Menil will not come to Joinville. He has bought 
 the yacht Rosebud. He is on the Mediterranean, and 
 
268 THE KED LILY 
 
 cannot live except on the water. It is a pity. He 
 is the only one who knows how to manage a hunt." 
 At this instant Dechartre came into the parlor 
 with Count Martin, who, after beating him at bil- 
 liards, had acquired a great affection for him and 
 was explaining to him the dangers of a personal tax 
 based on the number of servants. 
 
XXXI 
 
 A PALE winter sun, piercing the mists of the 
 Seine, Uluminated on the doors of the dining-room 
 the dogs painted by Oudry. 
 
 Madame Martin had at her right Garain the Dep- 
 uty, former Chancellor, former President of the 
 Council, and at her left Senator Loyer. At Count 
 Martin-Belleme's right was M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles. 
 It was an intimate and sober business breakfast. In 
 conformity with Montessuy's prediction, the Cabi- 
 net had fallen four days before. Called to the 
 Elysee the same morning, Garata had accepted the 
 task of forming a Cabinet. He was preparing, 
 while taking breakfast, the combination which was 
 to be submitted in the evening to the President. 
 And, while they were discussing names, Therese 
 was reviewing in herself the images of her intimate 
 life. 
 
 She had returned to Paris with Count Martin at 
 the opening of the parliamentary session, and since 
 that moment was leading an enchanted life. 
 
 Jacques loved her ; he loved her with a delicious 
 mingling of passion and of tenderness, of learned 
 experience and of curious ingenuity. He was ner- 
 vous, irritable, anxious. But the inequality of his 
 humor gave more value to his gayety. That artistic 
 
270 THE RED LILT 
 
 gayety, bursting out suddenly like a flame, caressed 
 love without offending it. And the witty laughter 
 of her friend made Therese marvel. She could never 
 have imagined the infallible taste which he exercised 
 naturally in joyful caprice and in familiar fantasy. 
 At first he had displayed only monotonous and som- 
 bre ardor. That alone had captured her. But since 
 then she had discovered in him a gay mind, abun- 
 dant and diverse, the gift of flattery. 
 
 "A homogeneous ministry," exclaimed Garain, 
 "is easily said. Yet one must be inspired by the 
 tendencies of the various factions of the Cham- 
 ber." 
 
 He was disquiet. He saw himself surrounded by 
 as many snares as those which he had laid. His 
 collaborators even became hostile to him. 
 
 Count Martin wanted the new ministry to satisfy 
 the aspirations of the new men. 
 
 " Your list is formed of personalities essentially 
 different in origin and in tendency," he said. " Yet 
 the most important fact in the political history of 
 recent years is the possibility, I should say the 
 necessity, to introduce unity of views in the govern- 
 ment of the republic. These are ideas which you, my 
 dear Garain, have expressed with rare eloquence. " 
 
 M. Berthier-d'EyzeUes kept silence. 
 
 Senator Loyer rolled crumbs with his fingers. A 
 former frequenter of beer haUs, it was while mould- 
 ing crumbs or cutting corks that he found ideas. He 
 raised his red face. And looking at Garain with 
 vn-inkled eyes wherein red fire sparkled: 
 
THE BED LILY 271 
 
 te ■ 
 
 1 said it, and nobody would believe it. The 
 annihilation of the monarchical Eight "was for the 
 chiefs of the republican party an irreparable misfor- 
 tune. "We governed formerly against it. The real 
 support of a government is the Opposition. The 
 Empire governed against the Orleanists and against 
 us; MacMahon governed against the Eepublicans. 
 More fortunate, we governed against the Right. 
 The Eight — what a magnificent Opposition it was ! 
 It threatened, was candid, powerless, vast, honest, 
 unpopular ! "We should have nursed it. "We did not 
 know how to do that. And then it must be said 
 that everything wears out. Tet it is always neces- 
 sary to govern against something. There are to-day 
 only Socialists to give us the support which the 
 Eight lent to us fifteen years ago with so constant a 
 generosity. But they are too weak. "We should 
 reinforce them, make of them a political party. 
 To do this at the present hour is the first duty of a 
 state minister." 
 
 Garain, who was not cynical, made no answer. 
 
 "Garain, you do not yet know," asked Count 
 Martin, "if with the Premiership you are to take 
 the Seals or the Interior? " 
 
 Garain replied that his decision would depend on 
 the choice which some one else would make. The 
 presence of that personage in the Cabinet was nec- 
 essary, and he hesitated between two portfolios. 
 Garain sacrificed his personal convenience to supe- 
 rior interests. 
 
 Senator Loyer made a face in his beard. He 
 
272 THE RED LILT 
 
 wanted the Seals. It was an ancient desire. A 
 teacher of law under the Empire, he gave in cafes 
 lessons which were appreciated. He had the sense of 
 chicanery. Having begun his political fortune with 
 articles skUf uUy written in order to attract to him 
 prosecution, suits, and several weeks of imprison- 
 ment, he had considered the press as a weapon of 
 opposition which every good government should 
 break. Since September 4, 1870, he had had the 
 ambition to become Keeper of the Seals, so that every- 
 body might see how the old Bohemian who formerly 
 explained the code while dining on sauerkraut, 
 would appear as supreme chief of the magistracy. 
 
 Idiots by the dozen had climbed over his back. 
 Become aged in the ordinary honors of the Senate, 
 badly polished, married to a brewery girl, poor, 
 lazy, disillusionized, his old Jacobin spirit and his 
 sincere contempt for the people surviving his ambi- 
 tion, made of him a good governmental man. This 
 time a part of the Garain combination, he imagined 
 he held the Department of Justice. And his pro- 
 tector, who would not give it to him, was an unfor- 
 tunate rival. He laughed, while shaping with bread 
 a lapdog. 
 
 M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles, cahn and grave, caressed 
 his handsome white whiskers. 
 
 "Do you not think, M. Garain, that it would be 
 well to give a place in the Cabinet to the men who 
 have followed from the beginning the political prin- 
 ciples towards which we are directing ourselves to- 
 day?" 
 
THE RED LILY 273 
 
 ''They lost themselves in doing it," replied 
 Garain impatiently. " The politician should never 
 be in advance of circumstances. It is wrong to be 
 in the right too soon. Thinkers are not men of 
 business. And then — let us taEc frankly — if you 
 want a Ministry of the Left Centre variety, say so : 
 I wiU retire. But I warn you that neither the 
 Chamber nor the country will sustain you." 
 
 "It is evident," said Count Martin, "that we 
 have to be sure of a majority. ' ' 
 
 " With my list, we have a majority," said Garain. 
 "It is the minority which sustained the Ministry 
 against us. Gentlemen, I appeal to your devotion. ' ' 
 
 And the laborious distribution of the portfolios 
 began again. Count Martin received in the first 
 place the Public Works, which he refused, for lack 
 of competency, and afterward the Foreign Affairs, 
 which he accepted without objection. 
 
 But M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles, to whom Garain 
 offered Commerce and Agriculture, reserved hia 
 decision. 
 
 Loyer got the Colonies. He seemed very busy 
 trying to make his bread dog stand on the cloth. 
 Tet he was looking with a corner of his little wrin- 
 kled eye at Countess Martin and thinldng that shs 
 was desirable. He vaguely thought of the pleasure 
 of meeting her again. 
 
 Leaving Garain to his combination, he was preoc- 
 cupied by that pretty woman, trying to divine her 
 tastes and her habits, asking her if she went to the 
 theatre, and if she ever went at night to the coffee- 
 18 
 
274: THE BED LILY 
 
 house with her husband. And Therese was begin- 
 ning to think he was more interesting than the 
 others, with his ignorance of the world and his 
 superb cynicism. 
 
 Garain rose. He had to see several persons before 
 submitting his list to the President of the Eepublic. 
 Count Martin offered his carriage, but Garain had 
 one. 
 
 " Do you not think," asked Count Martin, " that 
 the President might object to some names ? ' ' 
 
 "The President," replied Garain, "will be in- 
 spired by the necessities of the situation." 
 
 He had already gone out of the door when he struck 
 his forehead with his hand. 
 
 " We have forgotten the Ministry of "War." 
 
 " We shall easily iind somebody for it among the 
 generals," said Count Martin. 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed Garain, " you believe the choice 
 of a Minister of War is easy. It is clear you have 
 not, like me, been a member of three Cabinets and 
 President of the Council. In my Cabinets, and 
 during my Presidency, the greatest difficulties came 
 from the Ministry of War. Generals are all alike. 
 You know the one whom I chose for the Cabinet 
 which I formed. When we took him, he knew 
 nothing of afiPairs. He hardly knew there were two 
 Chambers. We had to explain to him all the wheels 
 of parliamentary machinery ; we had to teach him 
 that there were an army committee, finance commit- 
 tee, sub-committees, presidents of committees, a 
 budget. He asked that all this information be writ- 
 
THE RED LILY 275 
 
 ten for him on a piece of paper. His ignorance of 
 men and of things frightened us. In a fortnight 
 he knew the most subtle tricks of the trade; he 
 knew personally all the Senators and aU the Depu- 
 ties, and was intriguing with them against us. If it 
 had not been for President Grevy's help, he would 
 have overthrown us. And he was a very ordinary 
 general, a general like any other. Oh, no; do not 
 think that the Portfolio of "War may be given has- 
 tily, without reflection." 
 
 And Garain stUl shivered at the thought of his 
 former colleague. 
 
 Therese rose. Senator Loyer offered his arm to 
 her, with the beautiful attitude that he had learned 
 forty years before at BuUier's dancing haJl. She 
 left the politicians in the parlor. She hastened to 
 meet Dechartre. 
 
 Keddish mists covered the Seine, the stone quays, 
 and the gilded trees. The red sun threw into the 
 cloudy sky the last glories of the year. Therese, 
 as she went out, relished delightfully the harshness 
 of the air and the dying splendor of the day. Since 
 her return to Paris, happy, she found pleasure every 
 morning in the novelty of the weather. It seemed 
 to her, in her generous selfishness, that it was for 
 her the wind blew in the trees, or the fine, gray rain 
 wet the horizon of the avenues, or the sun dragged 
 in the chilled sky its frozen block ; for her, so that 
 she might say, as she entered the little house of the 
 Ternes, "It is windy; it is raining; the weather is 
 pleasant; " mingling thus the ocean of things in the 
 
276 THE EED LILY 
 
 intimacy of her love. And every day was beautiful 
 for her, since each one brought her into the arms of 
 her friend. 
 
 "While she was going that day to the little house 
 of the Ternes, she was thinking of her unexpected 
 happiness, so full and so secure. She was walking 
 in the last glory of the sun already touched by 
 winter, and she was saying to herself: 
 
 " He loves me; I believe he loves me entirely. To 
 love is easier and more natural for him than for 
 other men. They have in life ideas superior to 
 them, a faith, habits, interests. They believe in 
 God, or in duties, or in themselves. He believes in 
 me only. I am his God, his duty, and his life." 
 
 Then she thought: 
 
 "It is true, too, that he needs nobody, not even 
 me. His thoughts are a magnificent world in which 
 he could easily live. But I cannot live without 
 him. What would become of me if I did not have 
 him?" 
 
 She was not alarmed by the violent taste, the 
 charmed habit, which he had for her. She recalled 
 that she had said to him one day: " Your love for 
 me is only sensual. I do not complain of it; it is 
 perhaps the only true love." And he had replied: 
 " It is also the only grand and strong love. It has 
 its measure and its weapons. It is full of meaning 
 and of images. It is violent and mysterious. It 
 attaches itself to the flesh and to the soul of the 
 ', flesh. The rest is only illusion and untruth. ' ' She 
 V;was almost tranquil in her joy. Suspicions and 
 
THE RED LILT 277 
 
 anxieties had fled like the mists of a summer storm. 
 The worst weather of their love had come when 
 they had been separated from each other. One 
 should never leave the one whom one loves. 
 
 At the corner of Avenue Marceau and of the Rue 
 Galilee, she divined rather than recognized a shadow 
 that had passed by her, a forgotten form. She 
 thought, she wished to think, she was mistaken. 
 The one whom she thought she had seen existed no 
 longer, had never existed. It was a spectre seen in 
 the limbo of another world, in the darkness of a 
 half light. And she walked, retaining of this ill- 
 defined meeting an impression of coldness, of vague 
 embarrassment, and of pain in the heart. 
 
 As she ascended the avenue she saw coming to- 
 ward her newspaper carriers holding the evening 
 sheets announcing the new Cabinet. She traversed 
 the square ; her steps followed the happy impatience 
 of her desire. She had visions of Jacques waiting 
 for her at the foot of the stairway, among the mar- 
 ble figures ; taking her in his arms and carrying her, 
 trembling from kisses, to that room full of shadows 
 and of delights, where the sweetness of life made 
 her forget life. 
 
 But in the solitude of the Avenue MacMahon, 
 the shadow which she had seen at the corner of the 
 Eue Galilee came near her with a precision which 
 was banal and painful. 
 
 She recognized Eobert Le Menil, who, having fol- 
 lowed her from the quay, was stopping her at the 
 most quiet and secure place. 
 
278 THE RED LILT 
 
 His air, his attitude, expressed the limpidity of 
 mind which had formerly pleased Th^r^se. His 
 face, naturally harsh, darkened by sunburn, some- 
 what hollowed, very calm, concealed and expressed 
 profound suffering. 
 
 " I have to talk to you." 
 
 She slackened her pace. He walked by her side. 
 
 "I have tried to forget you. After what had 
 happened it was natural, was it not ? I have done 
 aU I could. It was better to forget you, surely ; but 
 I could not. So I bought a boat. And I have 
 been travelling for six months. You know, per- 
 haps?" 
 
 She made a sign that she knew. 
 
 He continued : 
 
 " The Rosebud, a beautiful yacht. There were six 
 men in the crew. I manoeuvred with them. It 
 was a pastime." 
 
 He paused. She was walking slowly, saddened, 
 and, above aU, bothered. It seemed to her an 
 absurd and painful thing, beyond all expression, to 
 have to listen to such words from a stranger. 
 
 He continued : 
 
 " What I suffered on that boat I would be 
 ashamed to teU you." 
 
 She felt he told the truth. 
 
 " Oh, I forgive you. I have reflected alone a 
 great deal. I passed many nights and days on the 
 divan of the deck house, turning always the same 
 ideas in my mind. For six months I have thought 
 more than I ever did in my life. Do not laugh. 
 
THE BED LILT 279 
 
 There is nothing like suffering to enlarge the mind. 
 I have understood that if I have lost you the fault 
 is mine. I should have known how to keep you. 
 And I said to myself: ' I did not know. Oh, if I 
 could only begin again ! ' By dint of thinking and 
 of suffering, I have understood. I have under- 
 stood that I had not sufficiently shared your tastes 
 and your ideas. Tou are a superior woman. I had 
 not noticed that, because it was not for that I loved 
 you. "Without suspecting it, I irritated you." 
 
 She shook her head. He insisted. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I often wounded your feelings. I did 
 not take care of your delicacy. There were misun- 
 derstandings between us. The reason is we have 
 not the same temperament. And then, I did not 
 know how to amuse you. I did not know how to 
 give you the amusement you need. I did not pro- 
 cure for you the pleasure which becomes a woman 
 intelligent as you are." 
 
 So simple and so true in his regrets and in his 
 pain, she found him worthy of sympathy. She 
 said to him softly : 
 
 " My friend, I never had to complain of you." 
 
 He continued: 
 
 " All I have said to you is true. I understood 
 this when I was alone in my boat. I have spent 
 hours on it to which I would not condemn my worst 
 enemy. Often I felt like throwing myself into the 
 water. I have not done it. Is it because I have 
 religious priaciples or family sentiments, or because 
 I have no courage? I do not know. The reason 
 
280 THE RED LILY 
 
 is, perhaps, that from a distance you retained me 
 in life. I was attracted by you, since I am here. 
 For two days I have been watching you. I did not 
 wish to reappear at your house. I would not have 
 found you alone; I would not have been able to talk 
 to you. And then you would have been forced to 
 receive me. I thought it better to talk to you in 
 the street. The idea came to me on the boat. I 
 said to myself: ' In the street she wiLL listen to me 
 only if she wishes, as she wished four years ago in 
 the park of Joinville, you know, under the statues, 
 near the crown.' " 
 
 He continued, with a sigh : 
 
 " Yes, as at Joinville, since all is to be begun 
 again. For two days I have been watching you. 
 Yesterday it was raining; you went out in a car- 
 riage. I might have followed you, learned where 
 you were going. I wished to do it. I did not do 
 it. I do not wish to do what would displease you. " 
 
 She extended her hand to him. 
 
 "I thank you. I knew I would not have to 
 regret the trust which I have placed in you." 
 
 Alarmed, impatient, enervated, fearing what he 
 might say, she tried to escape him. 
 
 " Farewell! You have all life before you. You 
 are happy. Appreciate it, and do not torment your- 
 self about things that are not worth the trouble." 
 
 He stopped her with a look. His face had taken 
 the violent and resolute expression which she knew. 
 
 " I have told you I had to talk to you. Listen 
 to me for a minute." 
 
THE RED LILY 281 
 
 She was thinking of Jacques, who was waiting 
 for her. Rare passersby looked at her and went on 
 their way. She stopped under the black branches of 
 a tree, and waited with pity and fright in her soul. 
 
 He said: 
 
 " I forgive you and forget everything. Take me 
 back. I win promise never to say a word of the 
 past. ' ' 
 
 She shuddered, and made a movement of surprise 
 and desolation so natural that he stopped. Then, 
 after a moment of reflection: 
 
 "My proposition to you is not an ordinary one, 
 I know it well. But I have reflected. I have 
 thought of everything. It is the only possible 
 thing. Think of it, Therese, and do not reply at 
 once. ' ' 
 
 ' ' It would be wrong to deceive you. I cannot, I 
 will not do what you say ; and you know why. ' ' 
 
 A cab was passing slowly near them. She made 
 a sign to the coachman to stop. Le Menil kept her 
 a moment longer. 
 
 "I knew you would say this to me, and that is 
 why I say to you, do not reply at once." 
 
 Her hand on the handle of the door, she turned on 
 him the glance of her gray eyes. 
 
 It was a painful moment for him. He recalled 
 the time when he saw those charming gray eyes 
 slide under half-closed lids. He smothered a sob, 
 and murmured : 
 
 " Listen; I cannot live without you. I love you. 
 It is now that I love you. Before I did not know. " 
 
282 THE BED LILT 
 
 And while slie gave haphazard the address of a 
 dressmaker, he went away. 
 
 She kept of that meeting an uneasiness and an 
 anxiety. Since she had to see him again, she would 
 have preferred to see him violent and brutal, as he 
 had been at Florence. At the corner of the avenue 
 she said to the coachman: 
 
 "To the Ternes." 
 
XXXII 
 
 It was Friday, at the Opera. The curtain had 
 faUen on Faust's laboratory. From the orchestra, 
 opera-glasses were raised, and looks, under the 
 lights, lost in the immense emptiness, analyzed the 
 purple and gold haU. The sombre drapery of the 
 boxes framed the dazzling heads and bare shoulders 
 of women. The amphitheatre bent slowly above 
 the parquette its garland of diamonds, of flowers, 
 of hair, of flesh, of gauze, and of satin. In the 
 proscenium boxes were the wife of the Austrian 
 Ambassador and Duchess Gladwin; in the amphi- 
 theatre Berthe d'Osigny and Jane Tulle, the latter 
 made famous the day before by the suicide of one 
 of her lovers ; in the boxes, Madame Berard de La 
 Malle, her eyes lowered, her long eyelashes shading 
 her pure cheeks; Princess Seniavine, who, superb, 
 concealed under her fan panther-like yawnings; 
 Madame de Morlaine, between two young women 
 whom she was training in the elegances of the mind ; 
 Madame Meillan, resting assured on thirty years of 
 sovereign beauty ; Madame Berthier-d'Eyzelles, stiff 
 under iron-gray hair loaded with diamonds. The 
 red of her face heightened the austere dignity of her 
 attitude. She was attracting much notice. It had 
 been learned in the morning that, after the failure 
 
284 THE BED LILY 
 
 of Garain's combination, M. Berthier-d'Eyzelles 
 had undertaken the task of forming a Ministry. 
 The papers published lists with the name of Martin- 
 Belleme for the Treasury, and the opera-glasses 
 -were turned uselessly toward the box, still empty, 
 of Countess Martin. 
 
 A murmur of voices filled the hall. In the third 
 rank of the orchestra, General Lariviere, standing 
 at his place, was talking with General de La 
 Briche. 
 
 " I will do like you, my old comrade, I will go 
 and plant cabbage in Touraine." 
 
 He was in one of his moments of melancholy, 
 when nothingness appeared to him. to be at the end 
 of life. lie had flattered Garain, and Garain, 
 thinking him too smart, had preferred for Minister 
 of "War a short-sighted and chimerical artillery 
 general. At least, the General relished the pleas- 
 ure of seeing Garain abandoned, betrayed by his 
 friends Berthier-d'Eyzelles and Martin-Belleme. It 
 made him laugh with the wrinkles of his small eyes. 
 He laughed in profile. "Weary of a long life of dis- 
 simulation, he gave to himself suddenly the joy and 
 the beauty of expressing his thoughts. 
 
 "You see, my good La Briche, they bother us 
 with their civil army, which costs a great deal, and 
 is worth nothing. Small armies are the only good 
 ones. This was the opinion of ]!>l'apoleon I., who 
 knew." 
 
 " It is true, it is very true," sighed General de 
 La Briche, with tears in his eyes. 
 
THE RED LILY 285 
 
 Montessuy passed before them; Lariviere ex, 
 tended his hand to him. 
 
 " They say, Montessuy, that you are the one who 
 checked Garain. Accept my compliments. ' ' 
 
 Montessuy denied that he exercised any political 
 influence. He was not a senator nor a deputy, nor 
 councillor-general. And, looking through his glasses 
 at the hall : 
 
 " See, Lariviere, in that box at the right, a very 
 beautiful woman, a brunette." 
 
 And he took his seat quietly, relishing the reali- 
 ties of power. 
 
 However, in the hall, in the corridors, the names 
 of the new Ministers went from mouth to mouth 
 in the midst of profound indifference : President of 
 the Council and Minister of the Interior, Berthier- 
 d'EyzeUes ; Justice and EeUgions, Loyer ; Treasury, 
 Martin-BeUeme. All the Ministers were known 
 except those of Commerce, "War, and the Navy, 
 who were not yet designated. 
 
 The curtain was raised on the wine-shop of Bac- 
 chus. The students were singing their second 
 chorus when Madame Martin appeared in her box. 
 Her white gown had sleeves like wings, and on the 
 drapery of her corsage, at the left breast, shone a 
 large ruby lily. 
 
 Miss BeU sat near her, in a green velvet Queen 
 Anne gown. Engaged to be married to Prince 
 Eusebio AlbertineUi della Spina, she had come to 
 Paris to order her trousseau. 
 
 In the movement and the noise of the kirmess: 
 
286 THE EED LILY 
 
 "Darling," said Miss Bell, "you have left at 
 Florence a friend who retains preciously the charm 
 of your memory. It is Professor Arrighi. He 
 reserves for you the praise which he says is the most 
 beautiful. He says you are a musical creature. But 
 how could Professor Arrighi not remember you, 
 Darling, since the trees in the garden have not for- 
 gotten you ? Their unleaved branches lament your 
 absence. Oh, they regret you, Darling." 
 
 "Tell them," said Therese, "that I have of 
 Fiesole a delightful reminiscence, of which I want 
 to live." 
 
 In the rear of the box M. Martin-Belleme was 
 explaining in a low voice his ideas to Joseph Springer 
 and to Duviquet. He was saying: " France's sig- 
 nature is the best in the world." He was inclined 
 to prudence in financial matters. 
 
 And Miss Bell said: 
 
 " Oh, Darling, I wiU tell the trees of Fiesole 
 that you regret them and that you will soon come 
 to visit them on their hills. But I ask you, do you 
 see M. Dechartre in Paris ? I would like to see him 
 very much. I like him because his mind is grace- 
 ful. Oh, Darling, the mind of M. Dechartre is 
 full of grace and elegance." 
 
 Th6rese replied M. Dechartre was doubtless in the 
 haU., and that he would not fail to come and salute 
 Miss BeU. 
 
 The curtain fell on the colored turbulence of the 
 waltz. Visitors crowded the haU. Financiers, 
 artists, deputies in a moment met in the parlor 
 
THE BED LILY 287 
 
 adjoining the box. They surrounded M. Martin- 
 Belleme, murmured congratulations, made graceful 
 gestures to him, and smothered one another in order 
 to shake his hand. Joseph SchmoU, coughing, 
 complaining, blind and deaf, made his way through 
 their disdained mass and reached Madame Martin, 
 He took her hand, and said: 
 
 " They say your husband was appointed Minister. 
 Is it true?" 
 
 She knew they were talking of it, but she did not 
 thiak he had been appointed yet. Her husband was 
 there, why not ask him ? 
 
 Sensitive to literal truths only, Schmoll said : 
 " Tour husband is not yet a Minister ? "When he 
 is appointed, I will ask you for an interview. It is 
 an affair of the highest importance." 
 
 He paused, turning under his golden spectacles 
 his glances of a blind man and of a visionary, which 
 kept him, despite the brutal exactitude of his tem- 
 perament, in a sort of mysticism. He asked 
 brusquely : 
 
 " You were in Italy this year, Madame? " 
 And, without giving her time to answer: 
 "I know, I know. You went to Eome. You 
 have looked at the arch of the infamous Titus, that 
 execrable monument, where one may see the seven- 
 branched candle-stick among the spoHs of the Jews. 
 "Well, Madame, it is a shame for the universe that 
 this monimient remains standing in the city of 
 Eome, where the Popes have subsisted only through 
 the art of the Jews, financiers and money-changers. 
 
288 THE BED LILT 
 
 The Jews brought to Italy the science of Greece and 
 of the Orient. The Eenaissance^ Madame, is the 
 work of Israel. That is the truth, certain and mis- 
 understood." 
 
 And he went through the crowd of the visitors, 
 in the faint noise of hats which he crushed. 
 
 Princess Seniavine looked at her friend from her 
 box with the curiosity that the beauty of women at 
 times excited in her. She made a sign to Paul 
 Yence, who was near her: 
 
 " Do you not think Madame Martin is extraordi- 
 narily beautiful this year? " 
 
 In the lobby, full of light and of gold, General de 
 La Briche asked Lariviere: 
 
 " Did you see my nephew ? " 
 
 " Your nephew, Le Menil? " 
 
 "Yes — Eobert. He was in the hall a moment 
 ago." 
 
 La Briche remained pensive for a moment. 
 Then: 
 
 " He came this summer to Semanville. I thought 
 him odd. A charming fellow, as frank as gold, and 
 intelligent. But he ought to have some occupation, 
 some aim in life." 
 
 The bell which announced the end of an intermis- 
 sion between the acts had hushed. In the lobby the 
 two old men were walking. 
 
 "An aim in Ufe," repeated La Briche, tall, thin 
 and bent, while his companion, lightened and reju- 
 venated, was hurrying not to miss a scene. 
 
 Marguerite, in the garden, was spinning and 
 
THE RED LILY 289 
 
 singing. "When she had finished, Miss Bell said to 
 Madame Martin : 
 
 "Oh, Darling, M. Ohoulette has written me a 
 perfectly beautiful letter. He has told me that he is 
 very celebrated. And I am very glad to know it. 
 And he has said also : ' The glory of other poets 
 reposes in myrrh and aromatic plants. Mine bleeds 
 and moans under a rain of stones and of oyster 
 shells.' Do the French, my love, really throw 
 stones at M. Ohoulette ? " 
 
 While Therese reassured Miss BeU, Loyer, impe- 
 rious and somewhat noisy, caused the door of the 
 box to be opened. He appeared wet, covered with 
 mud. 
 
 " I come from the Elysee," he said. 
 
 He had the gallantry to announce to Madame 
 Martin, first, the good news he was bringing: 
 
 " The decrees are signed. Your husband has the 
 Finances. It is a good portfolio. " 
 
 "The President of the Republic," asked M. 
 Martin-BeUeme, " made no objection when my name 
 was pronounced ? ' ' 
 
 " No; Berthier praised the hereditary property of 
 the Martins, your caution, and the links with which 
 you are attached to certain personalities in the 
 financial world whose concurrence may be useful to 
 the government. And the President, in accordance 
 with Garain's happy expression, was inspired by the 
 necessities of the situation. He has signed. ' ' 
 
 On Count Martin's yellowed face two or three 
 wrinkles appeared. He was smiling. 
 19 
 
290 THi; RED LILT 
 
 "The decree," continued Loyer, "will be pub- 
 lished to-morrow. I accompanied myself the clerk 
 who took it to the printer. It was surer. In 
 Grevy's time, and Grevy was not an idiot, decrees 
 were intercepted in the journey from the Elysee to 
 the Quay Yoltaire." 
 
 And Loyer threw himself on a chair. There, rel- 
 ishing the view of Madame Martin: 
 
 " People will not say, as they did in the time of 
 my poor friend Gambetta, that the republic is lack- 
 ing in women. You will give fine festivals to us, 
 Madame, in the parlors of the Ministry." 
 
 Marguerite, looking at herself in the glass, with 
 her necklace and her ear-rings, was singing the 
 jewel air. 
 
 " We shaU have to compose the declaration," said 
 Count Martin. " I have thought of it. For my de- 
 partment I have found, I think, a fine formula." 
 
 Loyer shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "My dear Martin, we have nothing essential to 
 change in the declaration of the preceding Cabinet; 
 the situation is unchanged." 
 
 He struck his forehead with his hand. 
 
 " Oh, I had forgotten. "We have made Minister 
 of "War, your friend, old Lariviere, without consult- 
 ing him. I have to warn him. ' ' 
 
 He thought he could find him in the Boulevard 
 cafe, where military men go. But Count Martin 
 knew the General was in the hall. 
 
 " I must find him," said Loyer. 
 
 Bowing: 
 
THE RED LILY 291 
 
 " You permit me, Countess, to take your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 They had just gone out when Jacques Dechartre 
 and Paul Vence came into the box. 
 
 " I congratulate you, Madame," said Paul Vence. 
 
 But she turned toward Dechartre : 
 
 " I hope you have not come to congratula,te me 
 too." 
 
 Paul Vence asked her if she would move into the 
 apartments of the Ministry. She said: 
 
 "Oh, no." 
 
 " At least, Madame," said Paul Vence, " you wUl 
 go to the balls at the Elysees, and we shall admire 
 the art with which you retain your mysterious 
 charm." 
 
 "Changes in cabinets," said Madame Martin, 
 "inspire you, M. Vence, with very frivolous re- 
 flections." 
 
 " Madame," continued Paul Vence, " I shall not 
 say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does 
 Sirius care ? ' because somebody would reply with 
 reason : ' What does little Earth care for big Sirius ? ' 
 But I am always surprised when people who are adult 
 and even old let themselves be abused by the illusion 
 of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble 
 or sublime necessities of life, did not exercise on the 
 crowd of men an empire too sovereign to leave to 
 masters any other thing than power written on paper 
 and an empire of words. And, what is stiU more 
 marvellous, people imagine they have other chiefs 
 of state and other ministers than their miseries, their 
 
292 THE RED LILY 
 
 desire, and their imbecility. He was a wise man who 
 said: 'Let us give to men as witnesses and judges 
 irony and pity.' " 
 
 "But, M. Yence," said Madame Martin laugh- 
 ingly, ' ' you are the man who wrote that. I read it. ' ' 
 
 The two Ministers looked vainly in the hall and in 
 the corridors for the General. On the advice of the 
 ushers, they went behind the scenes, and, through 
 the decorations which went up and down, in the 
 crowd of young German women in red skirts, of 
 witches, of demons, of antique courtesans, they found 
 the lobby of the dance; the vast hall, ornamented 
 with allegoric paintings, almost deserted, had the 
 air of gravity which the state and wealth give to 
 their institutions. 
 
 Two ballet dancers were standing sadly, with a 
 foot on the bar placed against the wall. Here and 
 there men in evening dress and women ia gauze 
 formed groups almost silent. 
 
 Loyer and Martin-Bellfeme, when they entered, 
 took off their hats. They saw, in the rear of the 
 hall, Lariviere with a pretty girl Avhose pink tunic, 
 held by a gold belt, was split at the hips. 
 
 She held in her hand a gilt pasteboard cup. When 
 they were near her, they heard her say to the Gen- 
 eral: 
 
 " You are old, you, but I am sure you do as much 
 as he does." 
 
 And she was pointing disdainfully to a young man 
 who, near them, with a gardenia in his button-hole, 
 grinned. 
 
THE RED LILY 293 
 
 Loyer motioned to the General that he wished to 
 speak to him, and, pushing him against the bar : 
 
 " I have the pleasm-e to announce to you that you 
 have been appointed Minister of War." 
 
 Lariviere, distrustful, said nothing. That badly 
 dressed man -with long hair, who, under his dusty 
 coat, resembled a clown, inspired so little confidence 
 in him that he suspected a snare, perhaps a bad joke. 
 
 "Monsieur Loyer, Keeper of the Seals," said 
 Count Martin. 
 
 Loyer said: 
 
 "General, you cannot refuse. I have said you 
 win accept. If you hesitate, it will be favoring the 
 offensive return of Garain. He is a traitor." 
 
 " My dear colleague, you exaggerate," said Count 
 Martin ; ' ' but Garain, perhaps, is lacking a little in 
 frankness. And the General's adhesion is urgent." 
 
 "The Fatherland before everything," replied 
 Lariviere with emotion. 
 
 "You know. General," continued Loyer, "the 
 existing laws are to be applied with inflexible mod- 
 eration." 
 
 He looked at the two dancers who were extending 
 on the bar their short and muscular legs. 
 
 Lariviere miirmured: 
 
 "The army's patriotism is excehent; the good 
 will of the chiefs is at the height of the most criti- 
 cal circumstances." 
 
 Loyer tapped his shoulder. 
 
 "My dear colleague, there is some good in big 
 
294 f •&£ iREl) LILY 
 
 "I believe as you do," replied Lariviere; "the 
 present army fills the superior necessities of national 
 defence." 
 
 " The good of big armies," continued Loyer, " is 
 to make war impossible. One would be crazy to 
 engage in a war these immeasurable forces, the 
 management of which surpasses all human faculty. 
 Is not this your opinion. General? " 
 
 General Lariviere winked. 
 
 " The situation, " he said, " exacts circumspection. 
 "We are in the face of a perilous unknown." 
 
 Then Loyer, looking at his war colleague with 
 cynical and soft contempt, said: 
 
 " In the very improbable case of a war, don't you 
 think, my dear colleague, that the real generals 
 would be the station masters ? " 
 
 The three Ministers went out by the private stair- 
 way. The President of the Council was waiting for 
 them. 
 
 The last act had begun ; Madame Martin had in 
 her box only Dechartre and Miss BeU. Miss EeU 
 was saying : 
 
 "I rejoice, Darling, I am exalted, at the thought 
 that you wear on your heart the red lily of Florence. 
 M. Dechartre, whose soul is artistic, must be very 
 glad, too, to see at your corsage that gentle jewel. 
 Oh, I would like to know the jeweller who made it, 
 Darling. This lily is lithe and supple like an iris 
 flower. Oh, it is elegant, magnificent, and cruel. 
 Have you noticed, my love, that beautiful jewels 
 have an air of magnificent cruelty ? " 
 
THE RED LILY 295 
 
 " My jeweller, " said Therese, "is here, and you 
 have named him ; it is M. Dechartre who designed 
 this jewel." 
 
 The door of the box was opened. Therese half 
 turned her head and saw in the shadow Le Menil, 
 who was bowing to her with his brusque suppleness. 
 
 " Transmit, I pray you, Madame, my congratula- 
 tions to your husband." 
 
 He complimented her dryly on her fine appear- 
 ance. He spoke to Miss Bell a few obliging and 
 precise words. 
 
 Therese listened anxiously, her mouth half open in 
 the painful effort to reply insignificant things. He 
 asked her if she had had a good season at Joinville. 
 He would have liked to go in the hunting time, but 
 he could not. He had gone on the Mediterranean ; 
 then he had hunted at Semanville. 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Le Menil," said Miss Bell, "you 
 have wandered on the blue sea. Have you seen 
 sirens? " 
 
 IS'o, he had not seen sirens, but for three days a 
 dolphin had swum in the yacht's wake. 
 
 Miss Bell asked him if that dolphin liked music. 
 
 He thought not. 
 
 "Dolphins," he said, "are very ordinary fish 
 that sailors call sea geese because they have a goose- 
 shaped head." 
 
 But Miss Bell would not believe that the monster 
 which carried the poet Arion had a goose head. 
 
 " Monsieur Le Menil, if next year a dolphin comes 
 to swim near your boat, I pray you play to him on 
 
296 THE RED LILT 
 
 the flute the Delphic Hymn to Apollo. Do you 
 like the sea, Monsieur Le Menil? " 
 
 " I prefer the woods. " 
 
 Self-contained, simple, he talked quietly. 
 
 " Oh, Monsieur Le M^nil, I know you like woods 
 where the hares dance in moonlight." 
 
 Deohartre, pale, rose and went out. 
 
 It was the church scene. Marguerite, kneeling, 
 was wringing her hands, and her head fell by the 
 weight of her long tresses; and the voices of the 
 organ and the chorus sang the death song. 
 
 " Oh, Darling, do you know that that death song, 
 which is sung only in the Catholic churches, comes 
 from a Franciscan hermitage ? It retains the noise 
 of the wind which blows in winter in the trees on 
 the summit of the Alverno." 
 
 Therese did not hear. Her soul had run out of 
 the door of her box. 
 
 There was in the parlor a noise of overthrown 
 arm-chairs. It was SchmoU coming back. He had 
 learned that M. Martin-BeUeme had been appointed 
 Minister. At once he claimed the cross of Com- 
 mander of the Legion of Honor and a larger apart- 
 ment at the Institute. His apartment was smaU, 
 Harrow, insufficient for his wife and his five daugh- 
 ters. He had been forced to put his workshop 
 under the roof. He made long complaints, and 
 consented to go only after Madame Martin had 
 promised that she would speak to her husband. 
 
 "M. LeMeml," asked Miss Bell, "shall you go 
 yachting next year ? " 
 
THE RED LILY 297 
 
 Le Menil thought not. He did not intend to keep 
 the Rosebud. The water was sad. 
 
 And calm, energetic, stubborn, he looked at 
 Therese. 
 
 On the stage, in Marguerite's prison, Mephis- 
 topheles sang, and the orchestra imitated the gallop 
 of horses. Therese murmured : 
 
 "I have a headache. It is too warm here." 
 
 Le Menil opened the door. 
 
 , The clear phrase of Marguerite calling the angels 
 ascended in white sparks in the air. 
 
 " Darling, I will tell you that poor Marguerite 
 does not wish to be saved according to the flesh, and 
 for that reason she is saved in spirit and in truth. I 
 believe one thing, Darling, I believe firmly we shall 
 all be saved. Oh, yes, I believe in the final purifi- 
 cation of sinners." 
 
 Therese rose, tall and white, with the red flower 
 at her breast. Miss Bell, immovable, listened to the 
 music. Le Menil, in the parlor, took Madame 
 Martin's cloak, and, while he held it unfolded, she 
 traversed the box, the parlor, and stopped before 
 the mirror of the half-open door. He placed on her 
 bare shoulders the cape of red velvet embroidered 
 with gold and lined with ermine, and said in a low 
 tone, with a voice brief and clear : 
 
 " Therese, I love you. Eemember vJ'hat I asked 
 you day before yesterday. I shall be every day, 
 every day at three o'clock, at our home, Eue Spon- 
 tini." 
 
 At this moment, as she made a motion with her 
 
298 THE BED LILY 
 
 head to receive the cloak, she saw Dechartre with his 
 hand on the knob of the door. He had heard. He 
 looked at her with all the reproaches and the suffer- 
 ing that human eyes can contain. Then he went 
 into the vague corridor. She felt hammers of iire 
 beating in her chest and remained immovable on the 
 threshold. 
 
 "You were waiting for me?" said Montessuy. 
 " How you are left alone to-day. I wiU escort you 
 and Miss Bell." 
 
XXXIII 
 
 In the carriage, in her room, she saw again the 
 look of her friend, that cruel and dolorous look. 
 She knew with what facility he fell into despair, the 
 promptness of his wiU not to will. She had seen him 
 run away thus on the shore of the Arno. Happy 
 then in her sadness and in her anguish, she could 
 run after him and say, " Come." Now again, sur- 
 rounded, watched, she should have found, she should 
 have said something, and not let him go dumb and 
 desolate. She had remained surprised, stunned. 
 The accident had been so absurd and so rapid ! She 
 had against Le Menil the sentiment of simple anger 
 which malicious things cause. She reproached her- 
 self bitterly for having permitted her friend to go 
 without a word, without a glance, wherein she could 
 have placed her soul. 
 
 While Pauline was waiting to undress her, she 
 was walking to and fro impatiently. Then she 
 would stop suddenly. In the obscure mirrors, 
 wherein the reflections of the candles were drowned, 
 she saw the corridor of the playhouse, and her friend 
 flying from her through it. 
 
 "Where was he now? "What was he saying to 
 himself alone ? It was torture for her not to be able 
 to rejoin him and see him again at once. 
 
300 THE RED LILY 
 
 She pressed her heart with her hands; she was 
 smothering. 
 
 Pauline uttered a cry. She saw on the white 
 corsage of her mistress drops of blood. 
 
 Therese, without knowing it, had pricked her 
 hand with the red lily. 
 
 She detached the emblematic jewel which she had 
 worn before all as the dazzling secret of her heart, 
 and, holding it in her fingers, contemplated it for a 
 long time. Then she saw again the days of Flor- 
 ence — the cell of San Marco, where her friend's kiss 
 weighed delicately on her mouth, while, through 
 her lowered lashes, she vaguely perceived again the 
 angels and the sky painted on the wall, and the 
 dazzling fountain of the ice vender on the cottonade 
 cloth; the pavilion of the Via Alfieri, its nymphs, 
 its goats, and the room where the shepherds and the 
 masks on the screens listened to her cries and to her 
 long silences. 
 
 l^o, all these things were not shadows of the past, 
 spectres of ancient hours. They were the present 
 reality of her love. And a word stupidly cast 
 by a stranger would destroy these beautiful things ! 
 Plappily, it was not possible. Her love, her lover, 
 did not depend on such insignificant matters. If 
 only she could run to his house! She would find 
 him before the fire, his elbows on his knees, his 
 head in his hands, sad. Then she would put her 
 fingers through his hair, force him to lift his head, 
 to see that she loved him, that she was his treasure, 
 living with joy and love. 
 
THE BED LILT 301 
 
 She had dismissed her maid. In her bed she 
 was thinking on only one idea. 
 
 It "was an accident, an absurd accident. He would 
 understand it ; he would know that their love had 
 nothing to do with anything so stupid. What f oUy 
 for him to care about another! As if there were 
 other men in the world ! 
 
 M. Martin-BeUeme half opened the door. Seeing 
 a light, he went in. 
 
 " You are not asleep, Therese? " 
 
 He had been at a conference with his colleagues. 
 He wanted advice from his wife on certain points. 
 He needed to hear sincere words. 
 
 " It is done," he said. " You will help me, I am 
 sure, in my situation, which is much envied, but very 
 difficult and even perilous. I owe it to you some- 
 what, since it came to me through the powerful 
 influence of your father." 
 
 He consulted her on the choice of a Chief of 
 Cabinet. 
 
 She advised him as best she could. She thought 
 he was sensible, calm, and not sillier than the others. 
 
 He lost himself in reflections. 
 
 " I have to defend before the Senate the budget 
 voted by the Chamber of Deputies. The budget 
 contains innovations which I did not approve. When 
 I was a Deputy I fought against them. Now that 
 I am a Minister I must support them. I saw things 
 from the outside formerly. I see them from the 
 inside now, and their aspect is changed. And, then, 
 I am free no longer." 
 
302 THE EED LILT 
 
 He sighed: 
 
 "Ah, if the people only knew the little that we 
 can do when, we are powerful! " 
 
 He told her his impressions. Berthier was reserved. 
 The others were impenetrable. Loyer alone was 
 excessively authoritative. 
 
 She listened to him without attention and with- 
 out impatience. His pale face and voice marked for 
 her like a clock the minutes which were passing one 
 by one, slowly. 
 
 "Loyer had odd saUies of wit. At the moment 
 when he was declaring his strict adhesion to the 
 Concordat, he said: '^ Bishops are spiritual prefects. 
 I will protect them since they belong to me. And 
 through them I wiU hold the guardians of souls, 
 curates.' " 
 
 He recalled to her that she would have to meet 
 people who were not of her class and who would 
 shock her by their vulgarity. But his situation 
 demanded that he should not disdain anybody. At 
 aU events, he counted on her tact and on her devo- 
 tion. 
 
 She looked at him, a little astonished. 
 
 "There is no hurry, my friend. We shaE see 
 later." 
 
 He was tired. He said good-night and advised 
 her to sleep. She was ruining her health by reading 
 aU night. He left her. 
 
 She heard the noise of his footsteps, heavier than 
 usual, while he traversed the workshop, encumbered 
 with blue books and journals, to reach his room, 
 
THE RED LILY 803 
 
 where he would perhaps sleep. Then she felt the 
 weight on her of the night's silence. She looked at 
 her watch. It was half -past one. 
 
 She said to herself: "He too is suffering. He 
 looked at me with so much despair and anger." 
 
 She was courageous and ardent. She was impa- 
 tient at being a prisoner. When daylight came, she 
 would go, she would see him, she would explain 
 everything to him. It was so clear ! In the pain- 
 ful monotony of her thought, she listened to the 
 rolling of wagons which at long intervals passed on 
 the quay. That noise preoccupied, almost interested 
 her. She listened to the rumble, at first weak and 
 distant, then thicker, in which she could distin- 
 guish the rubbing of the wheels, the creaking of 
 the axles, the shock of the horses' shoes, which, 
 weakening little by little, ended in an imperceptible 
 murmur. 
 
 And when silence returned, she fell again into her 
 idea. 
 
 He would understand that she loved him, that she 
 had never loved any one except him. It was unfor- 
 tunate that the night was so long. She did not dare 
 to look at her watch for fear of seeing in it the 
 immobility of time. 
 
 She rose, went to the window, and drew the cur- 
 tains. There was a pale light in the clouded sky. 
 She thought it might be the beginning of dawn. She 
 looked at her watch. It was half -past three. 
 
 She returned to the window. The sombre infin- 
 ity outdoors attracted her. She looked. The side- 
 
304 THE RED LILY 
 
 walks shone under the gas-jets. An invisible and 
 dumb rain fell from the sky. Suddenly a voice as- 
 cended in the silence; acute, and then grave, it 
 seemed to be made of several voices replying to one 
 another. It was a drunkard disputing with the 
 beings of his dream, to whom he generously gave 
 utterance, and whom he confounded afterward with 
 great gestures and in furious sentences. Therese 
 could see the poor man walk along the parapet iu 
 his white blouse, and she coidd hear words recurring 
 incessantly : ' ' That is what I say to the government. ' ' 
 
 Chilled, she returned to her bed. She thought, 
 " He is jealous, he is madly jealous. It is a question 
 of nerves and of blood. But his love, too, is an 
 affair of blood and of nerves. His love and his jeal- 
 ousy are one and the same thing. Another would 
 understand. It would be sufficient to please his 
 self-love." But he was jealous from the depth of 
 his flesh. She knew this; she knew that in him 
 jealousy was a physical torture, a wound enlarged 
 by imagination. She knew how profound the evil 
 was. She had seen him grow pale before the bronze 
 Saint Mark when she had thrown the letter in the 
 box on the wall of the old Florentine house at a 
 time when she was his only in dreams. 
 
 She recalled his smothered complaints, his sudden 
 fits of sadness, and the painful mystery of the words 
 which he repeated incessantly: "I have to forget 
 you with you." She saw again the Dinard letter 
 and his furious despair for a word overheard at a 
 wine-shop table. She felt that the blow had been 
 
THE RED LILT 305 
 
 struck accidentally at the most sensitive point, at 
 the bleeding wound. But she did not lose courage. 
 She would tell everything, she would confess every- 
 thing, and all her avowals would say to him: "I 
 love you. I have never loved anyone except you! " 
 She had not betrayed him. She would tell him 
 nothing that he had not guessed. She had lied so 
 little, as little as possible, and then only not to give 
 him pain. How should he not understand? It 
 was better he should know everything, since every- 
 thing was nothing. She represented to herself in- 
 cessantly the same ideas, repeated to herself the 
 same words. 
 
 Her lamp gave only a smoky light. She lighted 
 candles. It was six o'clock. She realized that she 
 had slept. She ran to the window. The sky was 
 black, and mingled with the earth in a chaos of thick 
 darkness. Then she was curious to know exactly 
 at what hour the sun would rise. She had no idea 
 of this. She thought only that nights were long in 
 December. She did not think of looking at the 
 calendar. The heavy step of workmen walking in 
 squads, the noise of wagons of milkmen and market- 
 men, came to her ear like sounds of good augury. 
 She shuddered at this first awakening of the city. 
 
 30 
 
XXXIV 
 
 At nine o'clock, in the yard of the little house, 
 she saw M. FuseUier sweeping in the rain while 
 smoking his pipe. Madame FuseUier came out of 
 her box. Both looked embarrassed. Madame Fusel- 
 lier was the first to speak: 
 
 " M. Jacques is not at home." 
 
 And, as Therese remained silent, immovable, 
 FuseUier came near her with his broom, hiding with 
 his left hand his pipe behind his back : 
 
 " M. Jacques has not yet come home." 
 
 " I will wait for him," said Therese. 
 
 Madame FuseUier led her to the parlor, where 
 she lit the fire. And as the wood smoked and would 
 not flame, she remained bent, with her hands on her 
 knees. 
 
 "It is the rain," she said, "which causes the 
 smoke." 
 
 Madame Martin said it was not worth while to 
 make a fire, that she did not feel cold. 
 
 She saw herself in the glass. 
 
 She was Uvid, with ardent spots on her cheeks. 
 Then only she felt that her feet were frozen. She 
 went near the fire. Madame FuseUier, seeing her 
 anxious, spoke softly to her : 
 
THE RED LILY 307 
 
 " M. Jacques will come soon. Let Maxiame warm 
 herself while waiting for him." 
 
 A sad light fell with the rain on the glass ceiling. 
 
 Along the walls, the lady with the unicorn was 
 not beautiful among the cavaliers in a forest full of 
 flowers and birds. Th^rese was repeating to herself 
 the words: "He has not yet come home." And 
 by dint of saying them she lost the meaning of 
 them. "With burning eyes she looked at the door. 
 
 She remained thus without a movement, without 
 a thought, for a time the duration of which she did 
 not know ; perhaps half an hour. The noise of a 
 footstep came to her, the door was opened. He 
 came in. She saw that he was wet with rain and 
 mud, and burned by fever. 
 
 She fixed on him a look so sincere and so frank 
 that it struck him. But almost at once he recalled 
 within himself all his sufferings. 
 
 He said to her : 
 
 " "What do you want of me ? You have done me 
 all the harm you could do me. ' ' 
 
 Fatigue gave him an air of kindness. It fright- 
 ened her. 
 
 " Jacques, listen to me! " 
 
 He motioned to her that he wished to hear nothing 
 from her. 
 
 " Jacques, listen to me. I have not deceived you. 
 Oh, no, I have not deceived you. Was it possible ? 
 Was it " 
 
 He interrupted her: 
 
 " Have some pity for me. Do not make me suffer 
 
308 THE RED LILY 
 
 again. Leave me, I pray you. If you knew the 
 night I have passed, you would not have the courage 
 to torment me again." 
 
 He let himself fall on the divan. 
 
 He had walked aU night. IsTot to sufif er too much, 
 he tried to find diversions. On the Bercy Quay he 
 had looked at the moon running in the clouds. For 
 an hour he had seen it veil itself and reappear. Then 
 he had counted the windows of houses with minute 
 care. The rain had begun to faU. He had gone to 
 the market and had drunk whiskey in a wine-room. 
 A big girl who squinted had said to him, " You 
 don't look happy." He had fallen half asleep on 
 the leather bench. It had been a good moment. 
 
 The images of that painful night passed before 
 his eyes. He said: 
 
 "I recalled the night of the Arno. You have 
 spoiled for me all the joy and all the beauty in the 
 world." 
 
 He asked her to leave him alone. In his lassitude 
 he had a great pity for himself. He would have 
 liked to sleep — not to die; he held death in horror — 
 but to sleep and never to wake again. Yet, before 
 him, as desirable as formerly, despite the painful 
 fixity of her dry eyes, and more mysterious than 
 ever, he saw her. His hatred was vivified by 
 suffering. 
 
 She extended her arms to him. 
 
 " Listen to me, Jacques." 
 
 He motioned to her that it was useless for her to 
 speak. Yet he wished to listen to her, and already 
 
THE RED LILY 309 
 
 he was listening with avidity. He detested and 
 rejected in advance what she would say, but nothing 
 else in the world interested him. She said : 
 
 "You may have believed I was betraying you, 
 that I was not living for you alone. But can you 
 not understand anything ? You do not see that if 
 that man were my lover it would not have been nec- 
 essary for him to talk to me at the play-house in 
 that box; he would have a thousand other ways of 
 meeting me. Oh, no, my friend, I assure you that 
 since the day when I had the happiness to meet 
 you, I have been yours entirely. Could I have been 
 another's ? What you imagine is monstrous. But 
 I love you, I love you! I love only you. I have 
 never loved any one except you." 
 
 He replied slowly, with cruel heaviness : 
 
 "I shall be every day, at three o'clock, in our 
 home, E.ue Spontini. It was not a lover, your lover, 
 who said these things ? No ! it was a stranger, an 
 unknown person." 
 
 She straightened herself, and with painful gravity 
 said: 
 
 "Yes, I was his. You knew it. I have denied 
 it, I have told an untruth, not to irritate or grieve 
 you. I saw you so anxious. But I lied so little and 
 so badly. You knew. Do not reproach me for it. 
 You knew; you often spoke to me of the past, and 
 then one day somebody told you at the restaurant 
 — and you imagined much more than ever happened. 
 While telling an untruth, I was not deceiving you. 
 If you knew the little that he was in my life! 
 
310 THE BED LILY 
 
 There ! I did not know you. I did not know you 
 were to come. I was lonely." 
 
 She fell on her knees. 
 
 ' ' I was wrong. I should have waited for you. But 
 if you knew to what degree that thing never existed . ' ' 
 
 And her voice, modulating a soft and singing 
 complaint, said: 
 
 " "Why did you not come sooner, why ? " 
 
 She dragged herself to him, tried to take his 
 hands. He repulsed her. 
 
 "I was stupid. I did not thinlc. I did not know. 
 I did not want to know." 
 
 He rose, and exclaimed in an explosion of hatred : 
 
 " I did not want, I did not want him to be that 
 man." 
 
 She sat in the place which he had left, and there, 
 plaintive, in a low voice, she explained the past. In 
 that epoch she was in a world horribly common- 
 place. She had yielded, but she had regretted at 
 once. Oh, if he knew the sadness of her life he 
 would not be jealous. lie would pity her. She 
 shook her head and said, looking at him through the 
 undone looks of her hair: 
 
 " I am talking to you of another woman. There 
 is nothing in common between that woman and me. 
 I exist only since I have known you, since I have 
 belonged to you." 
 
 He walked in the room madly. He laughed 
 painfully. 
 
 ' ' Yes ; but while you loved me, the other woman — 
 the one who was not you ? " 
 
THE BED LILY 311 
 
 She looked at him indignantly : 
 
 * ' Can yo\i believe " " 
 
 '' Did you not see him again at Florence? Did 
 you not escort him to the station ? " 
 
 She told him that he had come to Italy to find 
 her; that slie had seen him; that she had broken 
 vrith. him; that he had gone, irritated, and that since 
 then he was tr^dng to take her back; but that she 
 had not even paid attention to him. 
 
 * ' My friend, I see, I know, only you in the 
 world." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I do not believe you." 
 
 She revolted. 
 
 "I have told you everything. Accuse me, con- 
 demn me, but do not offend me in my love for 
 you." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 ' ' Leave me. Tou have harmed me too much. I 
 have loved you so much that all the pain which you 
 could have given me I would have taken, kept, loved; 
 but this is too hideous. I hate it. Leave m.e. I 
 am suffering too much. Farewell ! " 
 
 Straight, her small feet fixed on the carpet: 
 
 ■■' I have come. It is my happiness, it is my life, 
 I am fighting for. I will not go. "" 
 
 And she said again all that she had said. Violent 
 and sincere, sure of herself, she explained how she 
 had broken the tie which was already loose and irri- 
 tated her : how since the day when she had loved 
 him she had been his onlv, without reirret, without 
 
312 THE BED LILY 
 
 a wandering look or thought. But in speaking to 
 him of another she irritated him. And he shouted 
 at her: 
 
 " I do not believe you." 
 
 Then she began to say again what she had said 
 before. 
 
 And suddenly, instinctively, she looked at her 
 watch : 
 
 " Oh, it is noon." 
 
 She had often given that cry of alarm when the 
 farewell hour surprised them. And Jacques shud- 
 dered at this word which was so familiar, so painful, 
 and was this time so desperate. For a few minutes 
 she said ardent words wet with tears. Then she 
 had to go ; she had gained nothing. 
 
 At her house she found in the waiting-room the 
 market woman who had come to present a bouquet 
 to her. She remembered that her husband was a 
 state Minister. There were telegrams, visiting-cards 
 and letters, congratulations and solicitations. Ma- 
 dame Marmet wrote to recommend her nephew to 
 General Lariviere. 
 
 She went into the dining-room and f eU in a chair. 
 M. Martin-Belleme was finishing his breakfast. He 
 was expected at the Cabinet Council and at the 
 former Finance Minister's, to whom he owed a call. 
 
 "Do not forget, my dear friend, to call on Ma- 
 dame Berthier-d'Eyzelles. You know how suscep- 
 tible she is." 
 
 She made no answer. While he was dipping his 
 fingers in the glass bowl, he saw her so tired that 
 
THE RED LILY 313 
 
 he dared not say anything. He found himself in 
 the presence of a secret Avhich he did not wish to 
 know; in presence of an intimate suffering which 
 one word would make explode. He felt anxious, 
 frightened, and respectful. 
 
 He threw down his napkin. 
 
 "Excuse me, dear." 
 
 He went out. 
 
 She tried to eat. She could swallow nothing. 
 
 At two o'clock she returned to the little house of 
 the Ternes. She found Jacques in his room. He 
 was smoking a wooden pipe. A cup of coffee almost 
 empty was on the table. He looked at her with a 
 harshness that chilled her. She dared not talk, 
 feeling that everything that she could say would 
 offend and irritate him, and that, discreet and dumb, 
 she vivified his anger. He knew that she would 
 return ; he had waited for her with impatience. A 
 sudden light came to her, and she saw that she had 
 been wrong to come ; that if she had beeif absent he 
 would have desired, wanted, called for her, perhaps. 
 But it was too late ; and, at all events, she was not 
 trying to be crafty. 
 
 She said to him : 
 
 "Tou see I have returned. I could not do 
 otherwise. And then it was natural, since I love 
 you. And you know it. " 
 
 She knew very well that all she could say would 
 only irritate him. He asked her if that was the 
 way she spoke in the Rue Spontini. 
 
 She looked at him with sadness. 
 
314 THE BED LILT 
 
 " Jacques, you have often told me that there were 
 hatred and anger in your heart against me. You 
 like to maJfe me suffer. I can see it." 
 
 With ardent patience, at length, she told him her 
 entire hfe; the little that she had put into it; the 
 sadness of the past; and how, since he had known 
 her, she had lived only through him and in him. 
 
 The words fell as limpid as her look. She sat near 
 him. He listened to her with wicked avidity. Cruel 
 with himself, he wished to know everything; her 
 last meetings with the other. She reported faith- 
 fully the events of the Great Britain Hotel; but she 
 changed the scene to the outside, in an alley of the 
 Casino, from fear that the image of their sad inter- 
 view in a closed room should irritate her friend. 
 Then she explained the meeting at the station. 
 She had not wished to cause despair to a man who 
 was so violent and suffering. Since then she had had 
 no news from him until the day when he spoke to 
 her on the street. She repeated what she had 
 replied to him. Two days later she had seen him 
 at the opera, in her box. Certainly, she had not 
 encouraged him to come. It was the truth. 
 
 It was the truth. But the ancient poison slowly 
 piled up in him burned him. She made the past, 
 the irreparable past, present to him by her avowals. 
 He saw images of it which tortured him. He said : 
 
 " I do not believe you." 
 
 And he added: 
 
 "And if I believed you, I could not see you 
 again, because of the idea that you have loved that 
 
THE RED LILY 315 
 
 man. I have told you, I have written to you, you 
 remember, that I did not wish him to be that man. 
 And since " 
 
 He stopped. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " You know very well that since then nothing has 
 happened." 
 
 He replied, with dumb violence : 
 
 '' Since then I have seen him." 
 
 They remained silent for a long time. Then she 
 said, surprised and plaintive : 
 
 ' ' But, my friend, you should have thought that 
 a woman such as I ;un. married as I was — every day 
 one sees Avomen bring to their lovers a past heavier 
 than miae and yet inspire love. Ah, my past — if 
 you Icnew how insignificant it was! " 
 
 ' ' I know what you c;in give. One cannot forgive 
 to you what one may forgive to another." 
 
 • * But, my friend, I am like the othei-s. 
 
 ' • Xo, you aa-e not Uke the others. To you one 
 cannot forgive anything." 
 
 He talked with set teeth. His eyes — his eyes 
 which she had seen so large, loaded Anth tender- 
 ness, now dry, harsh, narrowed between wrinlded 
 lids — cast a new glance at her. He frightened her. 
 She went to the rear of the room, sat on a chair, 
 and thei'e she remained, trembling, for a long time, 
 smothered by her sobs. Then she feU. into tears. 
 
 He sighed: 
 
 " Why did I ever know you ? " 
 
 She replied, in her tears : 
 
316 THE BED LILY 
 
 "I do not regret having known you. I am 
 dying of it, and I do not regret it. I have loved." 
 
 He stubbornly continued to make her suffer. 
 He felt that he was playing an odious part, but he 
 could not stop. 
 
 " It is possible, after all, that you have loved me 
 too." 
 
 She, with soft bitterness : 
 
 " But I have loved only you. I have loved you 
 too much. And it is for that you are punishing me. 
 Oh, you can think that I was to another what I 
 have been to you ? " 
 
 ""Why not?" 
 
 She looked at him without force and without 
 courage. 
 
 " It is true that you do not believe me." 
 
 She added softly : 
 
 " If I killed myself would you believe me ? " . 
 
 " No, I would not believe you." 
 
 She wiped her cheeks with her handkerchief ; 
 then, lifting her eyes, shining through her tears : 
 
 "Then, aU is at an end ! " 
 
 She rose, saw again in the room the thousand 
 things with which she had lived in laughing inti- 
 macy, which she was making hers, and which sud- 
 denly were nothing to her, and looked at her as a 
 stranger and an enemy ; she saw again the nude 
 woman who was making, while running, the gesture 
 which had not been explained to her; the Florentine 
 models which recalled to her Fiesole and the en- 
 chanted hours of Italy ; the profile sketch by De- 
 
THE RED LILT 317 
 
 chartre of the girl who laughed in her pretty suffer- 
 ing thinness. She stopped a moment sympathetic- 
 ally in front of that little newspaper girl who had 
 come there too, and had disappeared, carried away 
 in the frightful immensity of life and of things. 
 
 She repeated : 
 
 " Then aU is at an end?" 
 
 He remained silent. 
 
 The twilight was rubbing out forms. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " What will become of me? " 
 
 He replied : 
 
 "And what will become of me ? " 
 
 They looked at each other with pity, because each 
 one pitied his own fate. 
 
 Therese said again : 
 
 " And I, who feared to grow old for you — forme, 
 who feared this so that our beautiful love should not 
 end? It would have been better if it had never 
 come. Yes, it would be better if I had not been 
 born. "What a presentiment was the one that came 
 to me, when a child, under the lindens of JoinviUe, 
 before the marble nymphs! I wished to die then." 
 
 Her arms fell, and clasping her hands she lifted 
 her eyes ; her wet glance threw a light in the shade. 
 
 " Is there not a way of my making you feel that 
 what I am saying to you is true ? That never since 
 I have been yours, never^ But how could I ? The 
 very idea of it seems horrible, absurd. Do you 
 know me so little ? ' ' 
 
 He shook his head sadly. 
 
318 THE BED LILY 
 
 " I do not know you." 
 
 She questioned once more with her eyes all the 
 objects in the room. 
 
 "But then, what we have been for each other 
 was vain, useless. People break themselves against 
 each other ; they do not mingle." 
 
 She revolted. It was not possible that he should 
 not feel what he was to her. And, in the ardor of 
 her love, she threw herself on him and enveloped 
 him with kisses and tears. 
 
 He forgot everything. Already, with her head 
 thrown back, she smiled in her tears. Brusquely 
 he disengaged himself. 
 
 "I do not see you alone. I see the other one 
 with you always." 
 
 She looked at him, dumb, indignant, desperate. 
 Then, feeling that all was at an end, she cast around 
 her a surprised glance of her eyes, which did not 
 see, and went out slowly. 
 
 THE END. 
 
V 
 
 US