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

the severe laws of Vesta. If the Gods be as cruel as men, open at once for me the abyss of Tartarus! I loved, and I still love.”

“No, no you are not yet in the kingdom of the dead, come unfortunate young lady, come back to earth, to life, and love.” I seized her hand, already icy cold; I raised her in my arms, I pressed her to my heart, and snatched her from that horrible place all trembling with fear and gratitude.

Above all, Madam, do not imagine that any personal motive was the cause of that good action. The hope of kindling some tender feelings towards myself in the beautiful ex-vestal did not influence me in the least in what I did for her; for, in that case, I should be employing my old method of lovemaking. I assure you, on the honour of a traveller, that during the whole of our walk from the Colline Gate to the place where the tomb of the Scipios is situated, in spite of the inky darkness, and even at the moment when her weakness compelled me to hold her in my arms, I never ceased to treat her with the regard and respect which were due to her misfortunes, and I conscientiously handed her over to her lover, who was waiting for her on the road.

XXV

On another occasion, led by my imagination, I was present at the carrying off of the Sabine women, and I saw, with much surprise, that the Sabines took the affair in quite a different manner to that recorded in history. Totally misunderstanding the true nature of the tumult, I offered my protection to a woman who was escaping, and, as I accompanied her, could not help laughing when I heard a furious Sabine exclaim, in accents of despair, “Ye Immortal Gods! would that I also had brought my wife to this fête!”

XXVI

Besides that, half of the human race, for whom I have such a lively affection, you will, perhaps, hardly believe me when I tell you that my heart is endowed with such a capacity for tenderness, that all things, animate and inanimate, have a goodly share of it. I love the trees, which afford me shade, and the birds, which warble in the foliage, the nocturnal cry of the screech-owl, and the roar of torrents. I love them all⁠—I even love the moon! You laugh, Mademoiselle, but it is easy to ridicule the feelings one cannot experience, and these hearts which beat with mine will not fail to understand.

Yes, I have a veritable love for everything around me. I love the roads I walk on, the fountain at which I drink, and I can scarcely part with a stick I have plucked by chance from a hedge. I look after it still when I have thrown it away, for we had already begun to know one another. I regret the falling leaves, and even the passing breeze. Where now is that breeze which stirred your dark locks, Eliza, when, seated beside me on the banks of the Doire, on the eve of our eternal separation, you gazed at me in sad silence? Where is that glove? Where is that sorrowful but precious moment? Oh, Time! oh, terrible Divinity! Thy cruel scythe hath no terrors for me; but I dread thy hideous children, Indifference and Oblivion, which turn three parts of our existence into a lingering death.

Alas! that breeze, that glance, that smile, are now as far away as the adventures of Ariadne. In the depths of my soul there remain nought but regrets and vain remembrances, on which sad medley the bark of my existence still floats, just as a vessel, wrecked by the storm, floats for some time on the troubled waters!

XXVII

Until, the sea trickling in, little by little, between the broken planks, the unfortunate vessel disappears in the abyss⁠—the waves close over it⁠—the tempest lulls⁠—and the sea-swallow skims over the lonely and tranquil ocean.

XXVIII

Here I find myself obliged to finish my dissertation on my new method of lovemaking; it seems to me that it is becoming rather obscure, and so a little more explanation of the nature of this discovery will not be out of place, seeing that it does not become everybody at all times of life.

For instance, I would not recommend it to anybody under twenty. The inventor himself did not practice it at that period of his life. To make full use of the invention one must have experienced all the sorrows of life without being disheartened, and all its pleasures without being surfeited. The difficulty lies in this, that it is especially useful at that period of life when reason counsels us to abandon the habits of youth, and it can then transition or intermediary step between the age of pleasure and the age of wisdom⁠—a step (as all moralists have observed) fraught with immense difficulties. Few, indeed, have the courage to take the leap boldly; and often, after having taken it, they feel bored to death on the other side; and, shamefaced, and with snowy locks, they are compelled to re-cross the ditch. And this is exactly what they will be spared by adopting my new method of lovemaking. The greatest number of our pleasures in reality being nothing but the play of the imagination, it is essential to offer it an innocent field, in order to divert it from the objects we ought to renounce, almost in the same way as one offers playthings to children when one refuses them sweetmeats.

In this way we gain time to obtain a firm footing on the threshhold of wisdom, without being too forcibly reminded that we have reached this stage of life; and, moreover, the circumstance that one attains to it by the path of folly, will greatly facilitate its access to most people.

I really believe that I was not deceived in the hope