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.