No More Learning

I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the
ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of
glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.

But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died
soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon
a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I
myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as
uncorruptible as the coffers of India.

And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I
became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the
dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and
hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true
Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly
and blindness you shall love me as I truly am. "

But I, furious, replied: "No! " The better to emphasise my refusal I
struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to
the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught
perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.




ALREADY!


A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from
the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred
times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of
twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the
firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And
each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the
approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they
said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by
a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an
unmoving table?
"

There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their
sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the
image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass
with as much enthusiasm as the beasts.

At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent
and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed
therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of
growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and
fruits.

Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were
forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted
out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.

I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn
his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this
so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its
terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent
by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and
agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that
shall yet live.

In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had
been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said:
"At last! " I could only cry "_Already! _"

Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its
commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of
promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and
from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring.




THE DOUBLE CHAMBER.


A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the
stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.

There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and
desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue
and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the
furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed
with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.