Lucile

by Earl of Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Lytton

XIV.

STRANGER.
I see, Sir, you are
A smoker. Allow me!
ALFRED.
Pray take a cigar.
STRANGER.
Many thanks!... Such cigars are a luxury here.
Do you go to Luchon?
ALFRED.
Yes; and you?
STRANGER.
Yes. I fear,
Since our road is the same, that our journey must be
Somewhat closer than is our acquaintance. You see
How narrow the path is. I'm tempted to ask
Your permission to finish (no difficult task!)
The cigar you have given me (really a prize!)
In your company.
ALFRED.
Charm'd, Sir, to find your road lies
In the way of my own inclinations! Indeed
The dream of your nation I find in this weed.
In the distant Savannahs a talisman grows
That makes all men brothers that use it... who knows?
That blaze which erewhile from the Boulevart out-broke,
It has ended where wisdom begins, Sir,—in smoke.
Messieurs Lopez (whatever your publicists write)
Have done more in their way human kind to unite,
Perchance, than ten Prudhons.
STRANGER.
Yes. Ah, what a scene!
ALFRED.
Humph! Nature is here too pretentious. Her mien
Is too haughty. One likes to be coax'd, not compell'd,
To the notice such beauty resents if withheld.
She seems to be saying too plainly, "Admire me!"
And I answer, "Yes, madam, I do: but you tire me."
STRANGER.
That sunset, just now though...
ALFRED.
A very old trick!
One would think that the sun by this time must be sick
Of blushing at what, by this time, he must know
Too well to be shocked by—this world.
STRANGER.
Ah, 'tis so
With us all. 'Tis the sinner that best knew the world
At Twenty, whose lip is, at sixty, most curl'd
With disdain of its follies. You stay at Luchon?
ALFRED.
A day or two only.
STRANGER.
The season is done.

ALFRED.
Already?
STRANGER.
'Twas shorter this year than the last.
Folly soon wears her shoes out. She dances so fast
We are all of us tired.
ALFRED.
You know the place well?
STRANGER.
I have been there two seasons.
ALFRED.
Pray who is the Belle
Of the Baths at this moment?
STRANGER.
The same who has been
The belle of all places in which she is seen;
The belle of all Paris last winter; last spring
The belle of all Baden.
ALFRED.
An uncommon thing!
STRANGER.
Sir, an uncommon beauty!... I rather should say
An uncommon character. Truly, each day
One meets women whose beauty is equal to hers,
But none with the charm of Lucile de Nevers.
ALFRED.
Madame de Nevers!
STRANGER.
Do you know her?
ALFRED.
I know
Or, rather, I knew her—a long time ago.
I almost forget...
STRANGER.
What a wit! what a grace
In her language! her movements! what play in her face!
And yet what a sadness she seems to conceal!
ALFRED.
You speak like a lover.
STRANGER.
I speak as I feel,
But not like a lover. What interests me so
In Lucile, at the same time forbids me, I know,
To give to that interest, whate'er the sensation,
The name we men give to an hour's admiration,
A night's passing passion, an actress's eyes,
A dancing girl's ankles, a fine lady's sighs.
ALFRED.
Yes, I quite comprehend. But this sadness—this shade
Which you speak of?... it almost would make me afraid
Your gay countrymen, Sir, less adroit must have grown,
Since when, as a stripling, at Paris, I own
I found in them terrible rivals,—if yet
They have all lack'd the skill to console this regret
(If regret be the word I should use), or fulfil
This desire (if desire be the word), which seems still
To endure unappeased. For I take it for granted,
From all that you say, that the will was not wanted.

XV.

The stranger replied, not without irritation:
"I have heard that an Englishman—one of your nation
I presume—and if so, I must beg you, indeed,
To excuse the contempt which I..."
ALFRED.
Pray, Sir, proceed
With your tale. My compatriot, what was his crime?
STRANGER.
Oh, nothing! His folly was not so sublime
As to merit that term. If I blamed him just now,
It was not for the sin, but the silliness.
ALFRED.
How?
STRANGER.
I own I hate Botany. Still,... admit,
Although I myself have no passion for it,
And do not understand, yet I cannot despise
The cold man of science, who walks with his eyes
All alert through a garden of flowers, and strips
The lilies' gold tongues, and the roses' red lips,
With a ruthless dissection; since he, I suppose,
Has some purpose beyond the mere mischief he does.
But the stupid and mischievous boy, that uproots
The exotics, and tramples the tender young shoots,
For a boy's brutal pastime, and only because
He knows no distinction 'twixt heartsease and haws,—
One would wish, for the sake of each nursling so nipp'd,
To catch the young rascal and have him well whipp'd!
ALFRED.
Some compatriot of mine, do I then understand,
With a cold Northern heart, and a rude English hand,
Has injured your Rosebud of France?
STRANGER.
Sir, I know
But little, or nothing. Yet some faces show
The last act of a tragedy in their regard:
Though the first scenes be wanting, it yet is not hard
To divine, more or less, what the plot may have been,
And what sort of actors have pass'd o'er the scene.
And whenever I gaze on the face of Lucile,
With its pensive and passionless languor, I feel
That some feeling hath burnt there... burnt out, and burnt up
Health and hope. So you feel when you gaze down the cup
Of extinguish'd volcanoes: you judge of the fire
Once there, by the ravage you see;—the desire,
By the apathy left in its wake, and that sense
Of a moral, immovable, mute impotence.
ALFRED.
Humph!... I see you have finished, at last, your cigar;
Can I offer another?
STRANGER.
No, thank you. We are
Not two miles from Luchon.
ALFRED.
You know the road well?
STRANGER.
I have often been over it.

XVI.

Here a pause fell
On their converse. Still musingly on, side by side,
In the moonlight, the two men continued to ride
Down the dim mountain pathway. But each for the rest
Of their journey, although they still rode on abreast,
Continued to follow in silence the train
Of the different feelings that haunted his brain;
And each, as though roused from a deep revery,
Almost shouted, descending the mountain, to see
Burst at once on the moonlight the silvery Baths,
The long lime-tree alley, the dark gleaming paths,
With the lamps twinkling through them—the quaint wooden roofs—
The little white houses.
The clatter of hoofs,
And the music of wandering bands, up the walls
Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals
Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips,
And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips
Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens
Of airy acacias and dark evergreens,
They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs
Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs,
Led by Laughter and Love through the old eventide
Down the dream-haunted valley, or up the hillside.

XVII.

At length, at the door of the inn l'HERISSON,
Pray go there, if ever you go to Luchon!
The two horsemen, well pleased to have reached it, alighted
And exchanged their last greetings.
The Frenchman invited
Lord Alfred to dinner. Lord Alfred declined.
He had letters to write, and felt tired. So he dined
In his own rooms that night.
With an unquiet eye
He watched his companion depart; nor knew why,
Beyond all accountable reason or measure,
He felt in his breast such a sovran displeasure.
"The fellow's good looking," he murmur'd at last,
"And yet not a coxcomb." Some ghost of the past
Vex'd him still.
"If he love her," he thought, "let him win her."
Then he turn'd to the future—and order'd his dinner.

XVIII.