VIII
In spite of the resolution which I had formed and the calm which I had affected, I was not happy. My isolation, though glorious, did not seem to me less painful, and I could not reflect without dread on the necessity, under which I found myself, of passing all my life in celibacy. The return of spring, in particular, caused me mortal discomfort, and I was beginning to relapse into my old melancholy, when an unforeseen circumstance decided my whole life.
It need hardly be said that my writings had crossed the Channel, and that the English made a run upon them. The English make a run upon everything, except the things they understand. One day I received a letter from London, signed by a young lady blackbird: “I have read your poem,” she said to me, “and the admiration which I felt has caused me to form the resolution of offering you my hand and my person. God has created us for each other! I am like you, I am a white young lady blackbird!...”
My surprise and my joy may be easily imagined. “A white young lady blackbird!” I said to myself. “Is it really possible? Then I am no longer alone upon the earth!” I hastened to reply to the fair unknown, and I did so in a manner which showed plainly enough how much her offer was to my mind. I pressed her to come to Paris, or to permit me to fly to her. She replied that she preferred to come herself, because her parents bored her, that she was arranging her affairs, and that I should see her very soon.
She did indeed come some days later. O joy! she was the prettiest lady blackbird in the world, and she was even whiter than myself.
“Ah, mademoiselle!” I exclaimed, “or rather madam, for I regard you from this moment as my lawful wife, is it credible that such a charming creature should have existed on the earth without fame informing me of her existence? Blessed be the misfortunes which I have experienced and the pecks which my father has given me, since Heaven reserved me a consolation so unhoped-for! Until this day I thought myself condemned to an eternal solitude, and, to speak frankly to you, it was a heavy burden to bear; but when I see you I feel within me all the qualities of a father of a family. Accept my hand without delay; let us be married English fashion, without ceremony, and go away together to Switzerland.”
“I won’t hear of that,” said the young lady blackbird; “I mean our marriage to be magnificent, and all the blackbirds in France, who are anything like well-born, to be solemnly gathered to it. People like us owe it to their own reputation not to get married like cats in the gutter. I have brought a supply of bank-notes with me. Write out your invitations, go to your tradesmen, and don’t be stingy with the refreshments.”
I conformed blindly to the white lady blackbird’s orders. Our wedding was of overwhelming magnificence; they ate ten thousand flies at it. We received the nuptial benediction from a Reverend Father Cormorant, who was archbishop in partibus. The day finished up with a superb ball; in short nothing was wanting to my happiness.
The more deeply I understood the character of my charming wife, the more my love increased. She united in her little person all advantages of soul and body. Her only fault was that she was somewhat strait-laced; but I attributed this to the influence of the English fogs in which she had lived hitherto, and I had no doubt that the climate of France would soon dissipate this slight cloud.
A thing which disquieted me more seriously was a sort of mystery, in which she sometimes wrapped herself with singular strictness, locking herself in with her lady’s maids, and so passing hours together at her toilette, as she pretended. Husbands do not much like such whims in their households. A score of times it happened that I knocked at my wife’s apartments without getting the door opened. This vexed me cruelly. One day I insisted with so much ill temper, that she found herself obliged to accede and open to me for a moment, not without complaining bitterly of my importunity. I noticed, on entering, a great bottle full of a sort of paste made with flour and Spanish whiting. I asked my wife what she did with that concoction, and she replied that it was a soothing application for some chilblains that she had.
This soothing application seemed to me just a little suspicious; but what distrust could be excited in me by a person so gentle and discreet, who had surrendered herself to me with such enthusiasm and such perfect sincerity? I did not know at first that my well-beloved was a woman of the pen; she made the avowal in course of time, and she even went so far as to show me the manuscript of a novel in which she had imitated at one and the same time Walter Scott and Scarron. I leave you to imagine the agreeable surprise which such a discovery caused me. Not only did I see myself the possessor of an incomparable beauty, but I also acquired the certainty that the intelligence of my companion was in every respect worthy of my genius. From that moment we worked together. While I composed my poems, she blotted reams of paper. I recited my verses to her aloud, which did not in the least hinder her from writing all the time. She laid her novels with a facility almost equal to my own, always choosing the most dramatic subjects, parricides, rapes, murders, and even knaveries, always taking care to attack the Government by the way and to preach the emancipation of women blackbirds. In a word, no task was too great for her mind, no daring too much for her modesty; she never once had to strike out a line or to form a plan before setting to work. She was the type of the literary woman blackbird.
One day when she was applying herself to her work with unaccustomed ardour, I noticed that she was sweating great drops, and I was astonished to see at the same time that she had a great black stain on her back.
“Why, good gracious, I said to her, “whatever is that! Are you unwell?”
She seemed rather frightened, and even put out at first; but her great experience of the world soon helped her to regain the admirable command which she always exercised over herself. She told me that it was a spot of ink, and that she was very liable to it in her moments of inspiration.
“Can it be that my wife is going off colour?” I asked myself in a whisper. This thought prevented me from sleeping. The bottle of paste came to my mind. “O Heaven!” I exclaimed, “What a suspicion! Can this celestial creature be nothing but a painting, a touch of whitewash? Can she have varnished herself to impose upon me?... When I thought I was pressing to my heart the sister of my soul, the privileged being created for me alone, can it be that I wedded nothing but flour?”
Haunted by this horrible doubt, I formed a plan for delivering myself from it. I made the purchase of a barometer, and waited eagerly for it to be a wet day. I meant to take my wife to the country, to choose a doubtful Sunday, and try the experiment of a drenching. But we were in the middle of July; it was frightfully fine weather.
The semblance of happiness and the habit of writing had stimulated my sensibility exceedingly. Artless as I was, it sometimes happened, when I was at work, that sentiment was stronger than thought, and I began to weep whilst waiting for a rhyme. My wife loved those rare occasions immensely: any masculine weakness charms feminine pride. One night when I was polishing an erasure, according to Boileau’s precept, it so happened that I opened my heart.
“O thou!” I said to my dear lady blackbird, “thou, my only and best beloved! Thou without whom my life is a dream, thou whose look, whose smile metamorphoses the universe for me, life of my heart, knowest thou how much I love thee? A little study and attention would easily enable me to find words to put into verse a commonplace idea, already worn threadbare by other poets; but where will I ever find them to express that with which thy beauty inspires me? Could the memory of my past pains, even, furnish me with a word to describe to thee my present happiness? Before thou camest to me, my isolation was that of an orphan in exile; to-day it is that of a king. In this feeble body, of which I have the form until death make of it a ruin, in this fevered little brain, where an unavailing thought ferments, dost thou know, my angel, dost thou comprehend, my fair one, that there can be nothing but what is thine? Hear what little my brain can express, and understand how much greater is my love! O that my genius were a pearl, and that thou wert Cleopatra!”
Whilst raving thus, I shed tears on my wife, and she changed colour visibly. At each tear that dropped from my eyes, appeared a feather, not even black, but of the most faded russet (I do believe she had already bleached herself elsewhere). After some minutes of tender outpouring, I found myself in presence of a bird stripped of paste and flour, exactly like the most common and everyday blackbirds.
What could I do or say? what measures could I take? Reproaches were useless. No doubt I was fully entitled to consider the matter redhibitory and have my marriage declared null; but how dare to publish my shame? Had I not misfortune enough already? I took my courage in my claws, I resolved to forsake the world, to abandon my literary career, to flee into a desert, if that were possible, to shun for ever the sight of a living creature, and to seek, like Alceste,
... some solitary place,
Where a white blackbird may be white in perfect peace!