In this state of mind, nothing could interest him; since the principle of all interest vanished. Opium-like dreams benumbed him and all the texts on the vanity of things which he had gathered here and there in his readings, played under his skull, like the bell of a rattle.
Love, strangled by his hand, barred his path: to advance, it was necessary to leap over the dead thing: no! he would remain on this side, unless a miraculous and quite questionable resurrection occurred.
Glory! the bell has been melted so that little bells could be made. And as for the brass of the bells, does one ever know the right of the metal to the claim? One dies and the cracked sounds make the bell-ringers laugh.
He recited the proud and yet disheartening verses of old Dante:
La mondaine rumeur n'est rien qu'un souffle
De vent qui vient d'ici, qui vient de là,
Et, changeant d'aire, change aussi de nom.
Having put these three lines in French syllables, Hubert observed how difficult it was to clothe Dante in a fitting foreign garb. He pardoned the well-intentioned persons who had attempted it in scandalous translations: one could do no better than to adopt an exact, if disfiguring, metaphor: the precision of the original becomes loose, its clearness shadowy, for it is necessary to employ certain short words whose true sense is lost, and others which are no longer read except in glossaries. Finally, he laid down this aphorism: it is impossible to translate into an old and refined language a work belonging to the youth of a kindred language.
These technical notations, the reading of some verse, trips from his table to his library, had somewhat revived him. Although he felt that the depression might last all day and doubtless many more days, he recovered courage and believed himself fit for some light work. Hubert was not a poet, no more than many others who pretend to the poetic gift. His impressions translated themselves into little notes of analytical prose, not into fixed and exact rhythms; but he had learned the craft, knew the most modern secrets of versification, and in happy hours could, without illusion, fabricate an interesting piece according to the rules.
This morning, he succeeded in giving the final details to a diptych whose appearance had heretofore not satisfied him. It was heavy and the hammer beat had shaped it, directed by a hand that was more strong than adroit, but it seemed to him that the metal was good and without cracks.
MORITURA
Dans la serre torride, une plante exotique
Penchante, résignée: éclos hors de saison
Deux boutons fléchissaient, l'air grave et mystique;
La sève n'était plus pour elle qu'un poison.
Et je sentais pourtant de la fleur accablée
S'évaporer l'effluve âcre d'un parfum lourd,
Mes artères battaient, ma poitrine troublée
Haletait, mon regard se voilait, j'étais sourd
Dans la chambre, autre fleur, une femme très pale,
Les mains lasses, la tête appuyée aux coussins:
Elle s'abandonnait: un insensible râle
Soulevait tristement la langueur de ses seins.
Mais ses cheveux tombant en innombrables boucles
Ondulaient sinueux comme un large flot noir
Et ses grands yeux brillaient du feu des escarboucles
Comme un double fanal dans la brume du soir.
Les cheveux m'envoyaient des odeurs énervantes,
Pareilles à l'éther qu'aspire un patient,
Je perdais peu à peu de mes forces vivantes
Et les yeux transperçaient mon coeur inconscient.
The afternoon vanished, a very calm night conquered, he found himself astonished at the sudden return of vigor and of capacity for work. Three days after, he had completed "Peacock Plumes" and "The Twenty-Eighth of December;" he reread them, not without suffering from a sense of inmost shame, for although the conception of this last study was anterior to the luckless night, he had not been able, so identically did the situations present themselves, to develop his old idea except by borrowing from his recent adventure.