Short Fiction, Xavier de Maistre [books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

“And I, who feel my heart beating, what is the object of my existence? What am I and whence did I come? I, the maker of the ‘artificial dove?’ ” Scarcely had I pronounced this outlandish word, when, suddenly coming to my senses like a sleeping man, over whom someone has emptied a bucket of water, I perceived that I was surrounded by several persons, who were critically examining me, while I was engaged in my enthusiastic soliloquy. At that moment I saw the lovely Georgine, who was walking some paces in front. Half of her left cheek, which was highly rouged and which I saw between the curls of her yellow hair, brought me back completely to everyday thoughts and ideas, from which I had strayed for a few moments.

When I had recovered a little from the disturbing thoughts the sight of my artificial dove had caused, the pain of the blow I had received made itself keenly felt. I passed my hand over my forehead and discovered a new protuberance, exactly on that part of the head where Dr. Gall has located the bump of poetry. But I did not at that time give it a thought; experience alone was to demonstrate to me the truth of that celebrated man’s theories. After some moments, pulling myself together to make a last effort to write my dedication, I seized a pencil and set to work. To my great astonishment the verses flowed of their own accord from my pen, and I filled two pages with them in less than an hour, and I conclude from this fact that, if motion was necessary to enable Pope’s head to compose verses, nothing less than a concussion would suffice to drag them out of mine. However, I shall not show the reader the verses I made at that time, for the tremendous rapidity with which the adventures of my journey succeeded one another, prevented me from giving them the finishing touches. In spite of this reticence, we must, doubtless, consider the accident which had befallen me in the light of a most valuable discovery, one of which poets could not do better than take frequent advantage.

In reality I am so convinced of the infallibility of this new method, that in a poem of twenty-four cantos which I have since composed, and which will be published with “La Prisonière de Pignerol,” I have not thought it necessary up to the present to begin writing the verses, but have written out clearly five hundred pages of notes, which contain, as we know, all the merit, and most of the bulk of our modern poetry.

As I was walking about my room, thinking over my profound discoveries, I came across my bed, and sitting down on it, my hand, by chance, falling on my night cap, it occurred to me to put it on, and I lay down.

I had been in bed a quarter of an hour and, contrary to my usual habit, was still awake. The saddest reflections had succeeded the idea of my dedication; my candle, which was nearly finished, threw only an unsteady and doleful light from the bottom of the candlestick, and my room looked as funereal as a tomb. Suddenly a gust of wind blew open the window and put out the candle and banged the door to violently. The gloomy cast of my thoughts deepened in the darkness.

All my past pleasures, all my present troubles, rushed at once to my breast and filled it with bitter sorrow.

Although I make continued efforts to forget my troubles and drive them away, it sometimes happens, when I am not on my guard, that they rush suddenly into my recollection as if a floodgate had been opened. Then I have no alternative but to abandon myself to the torrent on which I am borne; my thoughts then become so gloomy, and everything seems so mournful, that I generally end by laughing at my own folly, so that the remedy proceeds from the very extremity of the disease.

I was still in the midst of one of these melancholy attacks, when part of the gust of wind, which had blown open my window and banged the door to as it went by, after taking several turns round my room, scattering the leaves of my books, and causing a leaf of “The Voyage” to flutter to the ground, finally got into my curtains and died away on my face. I felt the sweet coolness of the night, and, taking this as an invitation, I immediately got up and ascended my staircase to enjoy the repose of nature.

The weather was calm and still; the Milky Way, like a light cloud, divided the heavens, a kindly light came to me from every star, and, when I gazed at one attentively, its companions seemed to twinkle all the more brilliantly in order to attract my attention.

Each time that I gaze at the starlit sky I experience new pleasures and fresh delights, and I cannot reproach myself with ever having taken a nocturnal walk, without having paid my tribute of admiration to the wonders of the heavens. Although I feel keenly the utter feebleness of my mind in these lofty meditations, still I find in them an inexpressible pleasure. I love to think that it is not mere chance which has brought to my eyes these emanations from distant worlds; and every star sheds with its beams a ray of hope into my heart. May there not be some other relations between me and these wonderful objects besides this⁠—that they glitter before my eyes? My mind raises itself to their level, my heart is moved at the sight of them; then are not they connected in some way? Man, the ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, raises for a moment his eyes to heaven and then closes them forever, but, during that short moment