Toledo had not seen her. She was living in the neighborhood of Monte Carlo without his ever suspecting it. The first news he had had of her was that of her death; a death which leaves the Colonel pensive whenever he recalls it. She became infected by a surgical instrument which had just been used in an operation. Perhaps it was because of the clumsiness of her hands; perhaps ... who knows! Don Marcos believes that the Duchess was tired of life.
"A horrible death, Marquis. I did not see her: I am glad I didn't. They tell me she was black and swollen. Besides, for several hours she was in torture, lifting herself on her head and heels, arching above the bed, with the muscles of her body tense with the most atrocious suffering. Tetanus! How terrible for a great lady, so beautiful, so elegant to die like that! But in the midst of such pain she found the peace of mind to dictate her last testament. Señorita Valeria has inherited Villa Rosa, and several hundred thousand francs: all that she won that night at the Sporting Club. As for your Highness...."
The Prince interrupts him with a gesture. He has known for a long time, from the letters of Don Marcos, that Alicia remembered him in her last moments, leaving him heir to her silver mines in Mexico, all that she possessed on the other side of the ocean; nothing at the present moment, but in the future perhaps a fortune, almost as great as that which Lubimoff formerly held in Russia.
He remains with his eyes fixed on the grave. On it he sees some fine moss, a miniature forest, opening its branches at the breath of spring, and among the tiny leaves diminutive flowers are stirring. Several greenish black butterflies, spotted with red, are fluttering above this murmuring forest of budding life, much as the monstrous prehistoric birds fluttered above the first vegetation of the globe.
Michael sees a relation between these insects and the spirit that dwelt in the organism now disintegrating a few feet under the ground beneath his feet. The varied, clashing colors remind him of the dead woman's soul. In the same way a few minutes before, a white butterfly fluttering above the flowers brought by Lewis reminded him of the child-like and sublime soul of Lady Mary.
At present, sitting in the café, his emotions are greater than in the cemetery. He can see events through a veil of memory, spiritualized, and free from the sediment of reality.
Poor Alicia! Poor woman, disillusioned of life! The triumphant Venus, the Helen of the "old men on the wall," the beauty who was the center of the Universe, more eager for admiration than for love, is lying in this miserable cemetery, among the bodies of soldiers. Perhaps she voluntarily hastened her exit from a world in which she could not find her place, defeated by her own actions.
Our lives are nothing more than what we will them to be. We create life in our own image; it is useless for us to complain of fate: we are what we want to be. It was impossible for Alicia to end her days save in some extraordinary manner, in harmony with her previous career. He, too, has lived as most men do not live, and he will die a different death from them.
He feels neither grief nor resentment. He is surprised that he could have hated Martinez and desired this woman with such vehemence. At present he feels only melancholy and a deep sadness at the memory of those dreams that no longer exist and which are beginning to die a second death, in being forgotten by those who knew of them. They have no immortality save in the memory of the Prince, a poor memory destined to fade away in turn before many years.
In his imagination he attempts to pierce the mass of earth that covers the dead body; he makes an effort to penetrate with his vision into the densest of the shadows. Only a few months of decomposition have gone by: her personality has not yet wasted away completely. He sees her as she was in life and at the same time as she is now. Her flesh is disintegrating in little putrid rivulets that run down the folds of her clothes, blackened and eaten away. She is forced to smile at all times in the darkness: she no longer has any lips. Her eyes serve as a refuge for the prolific grave flies which engender millions and millions of destroyers. And this annihilation of something which existed, thought, and loved, is as yet only in its first stages.