No More Learning

At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those
skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself
remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the
regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was
without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the
purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the
burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy,
without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for
many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year!

Yet one more:

I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at
least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the
enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night,
float songs of fete, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the
women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing
nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the
music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not
inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the
mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at
the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering
furnace within.

There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the
poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed
in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast
with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and
so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like
in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume
of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn,
was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed.
She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked
upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of
her head.

It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this
poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so
noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings
with which she is so strikingly in contrast?
"

But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The
tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black.
Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay
for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a
superfluity, a toy.

She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always
alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or
patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a
cat, the confidant of solitary griefs.




THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY.


Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary
ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the
frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three
postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and
a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged
themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so
proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for
three of the true Gods.

The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The
softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His
beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were
like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his
slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the
sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic
insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his
breath.

Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was
an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned
sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with
shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle.
He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and
inscribed with a legend in these singular words:

"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE";

and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his
pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly
upon the nights of the Sabbath.

From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and
when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth,
he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and
polished as well-wrought jewels.

He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an
insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if
thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master
of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay;
thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating
thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose
themselves in thine.