Part 25

When I objected that such lessons could hardly be really instructive, I was told that she was not only in every way a nice but a very gifted and painstaking young girl.

The first time I entered the house, as a future pupil, I found the young lady, dressed in a plain black silk dress, surrounded by a circle of toddlers of both sexes, for whom she had a sort of school, and whom on my arrival she sent away. She had a pretty figure, a face that was attractive without being beautiful, a large mouth with good teeth, and dark brown hair. Her features were a little indefinite, her face rather broad than oval, her eyes brown and affectionate. She had at any rate the beauty that twenty years lends. We arranged for four lessons a week, to begin with.

The first dragged considerably. My teacher was to correct any mistakes in pronunciation and grammar that I made in conversation. But we could not get up any proper conversation. She was evidently bored by the lessons, which she had only undertaken for the sake of the fees. If I began to tell her anything, she only half listened, and yawned with all her might very often and very loudly, although she politely put her hand in front of her large mouth. There only came a little animation into her expression when I either pronounced as badly as I had been taught by my French master at school, or made some particularly ludicrous mistake, such as c'est tout égal for bien égal. At other times she was distracted, sleepy, her thoughts elsewhere.

After having tried vainly for a few times to interest the young lady by my communications, I grew tired of the lessons. Moreover, they were of very little advantage to me, for the simple reason that my youthful teacher had not the very slightest scientific or even grammatical knowledge of her own tongue, and consequently could never answer my questions as to why you had to pronounce in such and such a way, or by virtue of what rule you expressed yourself in such and such a manner. I began to neglect my lessons, sometimes made an excuse, but oftener remained away without offering any explanation.

On my arrival one afternoon, after having repeatedly stayed away, the young lady met me with some temper, and asked the reason of my failures to come, plainly enough irritated and alarmed at my indifference, which after all was only the reflection of her own. I promised politely to be more regular in future. To insure this, she involuntarily became more attentive.

She yawned no more. I did not stay away again.

She began to take an interest herself in this eldest pupil of hers, who at 24 years of age looked 20 and who was acquainted with all sorts of things about conditions, countries, and people of which she knew nothing.

She had been so strictly brought up that nearly all secular reading was forbidden to her, and she had never been to any theatre, not even the Théâtre Français. She had not read Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Musset, had not even dared to read Paul et Virginie, only knew expurgated editions of Corneille, Racine and Molière. She was sincerely clerical, had early been somewhat influenced by her cousin, later the well-known Roman Catholic author, Ernest Hello, and in our conversations was always ready to take the part of the Jesuits against Pascal; what the latter had attacked were some antiquated and long-abandoned doctrinal books; even if there were defects in the teaching of certain Catholic ecclesiastics, their lives at any rate were exemplary, whereas the contrary was the case with the free-thinking men of science; their teaching was sometimes unassailable, but the lives they led could not be taken seriously.

When we two young people got into a dispute, we gradually drew nearer to one another. Our remarks contradicted each other, but an understanding came about between our eyes. One day, as I was about to leave, she called me back from the staircase, and, very timidly, offered me an orange. The next time she blushed slightly when I came in. She frequently sent me cards of admission to the Athénée, a recently started institution, in which lectures were given by good speakers. She began to look pleased at my coming and to express regret at the thought of my departure.

On New Year's day, as a duty gift, I had sent her a bouquet of white flowers, and the next day she had tears in her eyes as she thanked me: "I ask you to believe that I highly appreciate your attention." From that time forth she spoke more and more often of how empty it would be for her when I was gone. I was not in love with her, but was too young for her feelings, so unreservedly expressed, to leave me unaffected, and likewise young enough to imagine that she expected me before long to ask for her hand. So I soon informed her that I did not feel so warmly towards her as she did towards me, and that I was not thinking of binding myself for the present.

"Do you think me so poor an observer?" she replied, amazed. "I have never made any claims upon you, even in my thoughts. But I owe you the happiest month of my life."

VI.

This was about the state of affairs between Mademoiselle Louise and me, when one evening, at Pagella's, where there were Southerners of various races present, I was introduced to a young lady, Mademoiselle Mathilde M., who at first sight made a powerful impression upon me.

She was a young Spanish Brazilian, tall of stature, a proud and dazzling racial beauty. The contours of her head were so impeccably perfect that one scarcely understood how Nature could have made such a being inadvertently, without design. The rosy hue of her complexion made the carnation even of a beautiful woman's face look chalky or crimson by the side of hers. At the same time there was a something in the colour of her skin that made me understand better the womanish appearance of Zurbaran and Ribera, a warm glow which I had never seen in Nature before. Her heavy, bluish-black hair hung down, after the fashion of the day, in little curls over her forehead and fell in thick ringlets upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows were exquisitely pencilled, arched and almost met over her delicate nose, her eyes were burning and a deep brown; they conquered, and smiled; her mouth was a little too small, with white teeth that were a little too large, her bust slender and full. Her manner was distinguished, her voice rich; but most marvellous of all was her hand, such a hand as Parmeggianino might have painted, all soul, branching off into five delightful fingers.

Mentally I unhesitatingly dubbed her the most marvelous feminine creature I had ever seen, and that less on account of her loveliness than the blending of the magnificence of her bearing with the ardour, and often the frolicsomeness, of her mode of expression.

She was always vigorous and sometimes daring in her statements, cared only for the unusual, loved only "the impossible," but nevertheless carefully observed every established custom of society. To my very first remark to her, to the effect that the weakness of women was mostly only an habitual phrase; they were not weak except when they wished to be, she replied: "Young as you are, you know women very well!" In that she was quite wrong.

Besides Spanish and Portuguese, she spoke French perfectly and English not badly, sang in a melodious contralto voice, drew well for an amateur, carved alabaster vases, and had all kinds of talents. She did not care to sing ballads, only cared for grand pathos.

She was just twenty years of age, and had come into the world at Rio, where her father represented the Spanish government. The family were descended from Cervantes. As she had early been left motherless, her father had sent her over in her fifteenth year to her aunt in Paris. This latter was married to an old monstrosity of a Spaniard, religious to the verge of insanity, who would seem to have committed some crime in his youth and now spent his whole day in the church, which was next door to his house, imploring forgiveness for his sins. He was only at home at mealtimes, when he ate an alarming amount, and he associated only with priests. The aunt herself, however, in spite of her age, was a pleasure-seeking woman, rarely allowed her niece to stay at home and occupy herself as she liked, but dragged her everywhere about with her to parties and balls. In her aunt's company she sometimes felt depressed, but alone she was cheerful and without a care. At the Pagellas' she was like a child of the house. She had the Spanish love of ceremony and magnificence, the ready repartee of the Parisian, and, like a well-brought-up girl, knew how to preserve the balance between friendliness and mirth. She was not in the least prudish, and she understood everything; but there was a certain sublimity in her manner.

While Mademoiselle Louise, the little Parisian, had been brought up in a convent, kept from all free, intelligent, mundane conversation, and all free artistic impressions, the young Spaniard, at the same age, had the education and the style of a woman of the world in her manner.

We two young frequenters of the Pagella salon, felt powerfully drawn to one another. We understood one another at once. Of course, it was only I who was fascinated. When, in an evening, I drove across Paris in the expectation of seeing her, I sometimes murmured to myself Henrik Hertz's verse:

"My beloved is like the dazzling day, Brazilia's Summer!"

My feelings, however, were much more admiration than love or desire. I did not really want to possess her. I never felt myself quite on a level with her even when she made decided advances to me. I rejoiced over her as over something perfect, and there was the rich, foreign colouring about her that there had been about the birds of paradise in my nursery. She seldom disturbed my peace of mind, but I said to myself that if I were to go away then, I should in all probability never see her again, as her father would be taking her the next year to Brazil or Madrid, and I sometimes felt as though I should be going away from my happiness forever. She often asked me to stay with such expressions and with such an expression that I was quite bewildered. And then she monopolised my thoughts altogether, like the queenly being she was.

A Danish poet had once called the beautiful women of the South "Large, showy flowers without fragrance." Was she a large, showy flower? Forget-me-nots were certainly by no means showy, but they were none the more odorous for that.

Now that I was seeing the radiant Mathilde almost every day, my position with regard to Louise seemed to me a false one. I did not yet know how exceedingly rare an undivided feeling is, did not understand that my feelings towards Mathilde were just as incomplete as those I cherished for Louise. I looked on Mademoiselle Mathilde as on a work of art, but I came more humanly close to Mademoiselle Louise. She did not evoke my enthusiastic admiration; that was quite true, but Mademoiselle Mathilde evoked my enthusiastic admiration only. If there were a great deal of compassion mingled with my feelings for the Parisian, there was likewise a slight erotic element.

The young Frenchwoman, in her passion, found expressions for affection and tenderness, in which she forgot all pride. She lived in a commingling, very painful for me, of happiness at my still being in Paris, and of horror at my approaching departure, which I was now about to accelerate, merely to escape from the extraordinary situation in which I found myself, and which I was too young to carry. Although Mathilde, whom I had never seen alone, was always the same, quite the great lady, perfectly self-controlled, it was the thought of saying good-bye to her that was the more painful to me. Every other day, on the other hand, Louise was trembling and ill, and I dreaded the moment of separation.

VII.

I had not left off my daily work in Paris, but had read industriously at the Imperial Library. I had also attended many lectures, some occasionally, others regularly, such as those of Janet, Caro, Lévêque and Taine.

Of all contemporary French writers, I was fondest of Taine. I had begun studying this historian and thinker in Copenhagen. The first book of his that I read was The French Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century, in a copy that had been lent to me by Gabriel Sibbern. The book entranced me, and I determined to read every word that I could get hold of by the same author. In the Imperial Library in Paris I read first of all The History of English Literature, of which I had hitherto only been acquainted with a few fragments, which had appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Taine was to me an antidote to German abstraction and German pedantry. Through him I found the way to my own inmost nature, which my Dano-German University education had covered over.