Julie Romaine
by Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson,
Mme. Quesada, & others.
Two years ago this spring I was making a walking tour
along the shore of the Mediterranean. Is there anything more pleasant than to
meditate while walking at a good pace along a highway? One walks in the
sunlight, through the caressing breeze, at the foot of the mountains, along the
coast of the sea. And one dreams! What a flood of illusions, loves, adventures
pass through a pedestrian's mind during a two hours' march! What a crowd of
confused and joyous hopes enter into you with the mild, light air! You drink
them in with the breeze, and they awaken in your heart a longing for happiness
which increases with the hun ger induced by walking. The fleeting, charming
ideas fly and sing like birds.
I was following that long road which goes from Saint
Raphael to Italy, or, rather, that long, splendid panoramic highway which seems
made for the representation of all the love-poems of earth. And I thought that
from Cannes, where one poses, to Monaco, where one gambles, people come to this
spot of the earth for hardly any other purpose than to get embroiled or to
throw away money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in
this garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and
vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant,
arrogant and full of cupidity.
Suddenly I saw some villas in one of those ravishing
bays that one meets at every turn of the mountain; there were only four or five
fronting the sea at the foot of the mountains, and behind them a wild fir wood
slopes into two great valleys, that were untraversed by roads. I stopped short
before one of these chalets, it was so pretty: a small white house with brown
trimmings, overrun with rambler roses up to the top.
The garden was a mass of flowers, of all colors and
all kinds, mixed in a coquettish, well-planned disorder. The lawn was full of
them, big pots flanked each side of every step of the porch, pink or yellow
clusters framed each window, and the terrace with the stone balustrade, which
enclosed this pretty little dwelling, had a garland of enormous red bells, like
drops of blood. Behind the house I saw a long avenue of orange trees in
blossom, which went up to the foot of the mountain.
Over the door appeared the name, "Villa
d'Antan," in small gold letters.
I asked myself what poet or what fairy was living
there, what inspired, solitary being had discovered this spot and created this
dream house, which seemed to nestle in a nosegay.
A workman was breaking stones up the street, and I
went to him to ask the name of the proprietor of this jewel.
"It is Madame Julie Romain," he replied.
Julie Romain! In my childhood, long ago, I had heard
them speak of this great actress, the rival of Rachel.
No woman ever was more applauded and more
loved--especially more loved! What duets and suicides on her account and what
sensational adventures! How old was this seductive woman now? Sixty, seventy,
seventy-five! Julie Romain here, in this house! The woman who had been adored
by the greatest musician and the most exquisite poet of our land! I still
remember the sensation (I was then twelve years of age) which her flight to
Sicily with the latter, after her rupture with the former, caused throughout
France.
She had left one evening, after a premiere, where the
audience had applauded her for a whole half hour, and had recalled her eleven
times in succession. She had gone away with the poet, in a post-chaise, as was
the fashion then; they had crossed the sea, to love each other in that antique
island, the daughter of Greece, in that immense orange wood which surrounds
Palermo, and which is called the "Shell of Gold."
People told of their ascension of Mount Etna and how
they had leaned over the immense crater, arm in arm, cheek to cheek, as if to
throw themselves into the very abyss.
Now he was dead, that maker of verses so touching and
so profound that they turned, the heads of a whole generation, so subtle and so
mysterious that they opened a new world to the younger poets.
The other one also was dead--the deserted one, who had
attained through her musical periods that are alive in the memories of all,
periods of triumph and of despair, intoxicating triumph and heartrending
despair.
And she was there, in that house veiled by flowers.
I did not hesitate, but rang the bell.
A small servant answered, a boy of eighteen with
awkward mien and clumsy hands. I wrote in pencil on my card a gallant
compliment to the actress, begging her to receive me. Perhaps, if she knew my
name, she would open her door to me.
The little valet took it in, and then came back,
asking me to follow him. He led me to a neat and decorous salon, furnished in
the Louis-Philippe style, with stiff and heavy furniture, from which a little
maid of sixteen, slender but not pretty, took off the covers in my honor.
Then I was left alone.
On the walls hung three portraits, that of the actress
in one of her roles, that of the poet in his close-fitting greatcoat and the
ruffled shirt then in style, and that of the musician seated at a piano.
She, blond, charming, but affected, according to the
fashion of her day, was smiling, with her pretty mouth and blue eyes; the
painting was careful, fine, elegant, but lifeless.
Those faces seemed to be already looking upon
posterity.
The whole place had the air of a bygone time, of days
that were done and men who had vanished.
A door opened and a little woman entered, old, very
old, very small, with white hair and white eyebrows, a veritable white mouse,
and as quick and furtive of movement.
She held out her hand to me, saying in a voice still
fresh, sonorous and vibrant:
"Thank you, monsieur. How kind it is of the men
of to-day to remember the women of yesterday! Sit down."
I told her that her house had attracted me, that I had
inquired for the proprietor's name, and that, on learning it, I could not
resist the desire to ring her bell.
"This gives me all the more pleasure,
monsieur," she replied, "as it is the first time that such a thing
has happened. When I received your card, with the gracious note, I trembled as
if an old friend who had disappeared for twenty years had been announced to me.
I am like a dead body, whom no one remembers, of whom no one will think until
the day when I shall actually die; then the newspapers will mention Julie
Romain for three days, relating anecdotes and details of my life, reviving
memories, and praising me greatly. Then all will be over with me."
After a few moments of silence, she continued:
"And this will not be so very long now. In a few
months, in a few days, nothing will remain but a little skeleton of this little
woman who is now alive."
She raised her eyes toward her portrait, which smiled
down upon this caricature of herself; then she looked at those of the two men,
the disdainful poet and the inspired musician, who seemed to say: "What
does this ruin want of us?"
An indefinable, poignant, irresistible sadness
overwhelmed my heart, the sadness of existences that have had their day, but
who are still debating with their memories, like a person drowning in deep
water.
From my seat I could see on the highroad the handsome
carriages that were whirling from Nice to Monaco; inside them I saw young,
pretty, rich and happy women and smiling, satisfied men. Following my eye, she
understood my thought and murmured with a smile of resignation:
"One cannot both be and have been."
"How beautiful life must have been for you!"
I said.
She heaved a great sigh.
"Beautiful and sweet! And for that reason I
regret it so much."
I saw that she was disposed to talk of herself, so I
began to question her, gently and discreetly, as one might touch bruised flesh.
She spoke of her successes, her intoxications and her
friends, of her whole triumphant existence.
"Was it on the stage that you found your most
intense joys, your true happiness?" I asked.
"Oh, no!" she replied quickly.
I smiled; then, raising her eyes to the two portraits,
she said, with a sad glance:
"It was with them."
"Which one?" I could not help asking.
"Both. I even confuse them up a little now in my
old woman's memory, and then I feel remorse."
"Then, madame, your acknowledgment is not to
them, but to Love itself. They were merely its interpreters."
"That is possible. But what interpreters!"
"Are you sure that you have not been, or that you
might not have been, loved as well or better by a simple man, but not a great
man, who would have offered to you his whole life and heart, all his thoughts,
all his days, his whole being, while these gave you two redoubtable rivals,
Music and Poetry?"
"No, monsieur, no!" she exclaimed
emphatically, with that still youthful voice, which caused the soul to vibrate.
"Another one might perhaps have loved me more, but he would not have loved
me as these did. Ah! those two sang to me of the music of love as no one else
in the world could have sung of it. How they intoxicated me! Could any other
man express what they knew so well how to express in tones and in words? Is it
enough merely to love if one cannot put all the poetry and all the music of
heaven and earth into love? And they knew how to make a woman delirious with
songs and with words. Yes, perhaps there was more of illusion than of reality
in our passion; but these illusions lift you into the clouds, while realities
always leave you trailing in the dust. If others have loved me more, through
these two I have understood, felt and worshipped love."
Suddenly she began to weep.
She wept silently, shedding tears of despair.
I pretended not to see, looking off into the distance.
She resumed, after a few minutes:
"You see, monsieur, with nearly every one the
heart ages with the body. But this has not happened with me. My body is
sixty-nine years old, while my poor heart is only twenty. And that is the
reason why I live all alone, with my flowers and my dreams."
There was a long silence between us. She grew calmer
and continued, smiling:
"How you would laugh at me, if you knew, if you
knew how I pass my evenings, when the weather is fine. I am ashamed and I pity
myself at the same time."
Beg as I might, she would not tell me what she did.
Then I rose to leave.
"Already!" she exclaimed.
And as I said that I wished to dine at Monte Carlo,
she asked timidly:
"Will you not dine with me? It would give me a
great deal of pleasure."
I accepted at once. She rang, delighted, and after
giving some orders to the little maid she took me over her house.
A kind of glass-enclosed veranda, filled with shrubs,
opened into the dining-room, revealing at the farther end the long avenue of
orange trees extending to the foot of the mountain. A low seat, hidden by
plants, indicated that the old actress often came there to sit down.
Then we went into the garden, to look at the flowers.
Evening fell softly, one of those calm, moist evenings when the earth breathes
forth all her perfumes. Daylight was almost gone when we sat down at table. The
dinner was good and it lasted a long time, and we became intimate friends, she
and I, when she understood what a profound sympathy she had aroused in my
heart. She had taken two thimblefuls of wine, as the phrase goes, and had grown
more confiding and expansive.
"Come, let us look at the moon," she said.
"I adore the good moon. She has been the witness of my most intense joys.
It seems to me that all my memories are there, and that I need only look at her
to bring them all back to me. And even--some times--in the evening--I offer to
myself a pretty play--yes, pretty--if you only knew! But no, you would laugh at
me. I cannot--I dare not--no, no--really--no."
I implored her to tell me what it was.
"Come, now! come, tell me; I promise you that I
will not laugh. I swear it to you--come, now!"
She hesitated. I took her hands--those poor little
hands, so thin and so cold!--and I kissed them one after the other, several
times, as her lovers had once kissed them. She was moved and hesitated.
"You promise me not to laugh?"
"Yes, I swear it to you."
"Well, then, come."
She rose, and as the little domestic, awkward in his
green livery, removed the chair behind her, she whispered quickly a few words
into his ear.
"Yes, madame, at once," he replied.
She took my arm and led me to the veranda.
The avenue of oranges was really splendid to see. The
full moon made a narrow path of silver, a long bright line, which fell on the
yellow sand, between the round, opaque crowns of the dark trees.
As these trees were in bloom, their strong, sweet
perfume filled the night, and swarming among their dark foliage I saw thousands
of fireflies, which looked like seeds fallen from the stars.
"Oh, what a setting for a love scene!" I
exclaimed.
She smiled.
"Is it not true? Is it not true? You will
see!"
And she made me sit down beside her.
"This is what makes one long for more life. But
you hardly think of these things, you men of to-day. You are speculators,
merchants and men of affairs.
You no longer even know how to talk to us. When I say
'you,' I mean young men in general. Love has been turned into a liaison which
very often begins with an unpaid dressmaker's bill. If you think the bill is
dearer than the woman, you disappear; but if you hold the woman more highly,
you pay it. Nice
morals--and a nice kind of love!"
She took my hand.
"Look!"
I looked, astonished and delighted. Down there at the
end of the avenue, in the moonlight, were two young people, with their arms
around each other's waist. They were walking along, interlaced, charming, with
short, little steps, crossing the flakes of light; which illuminated them
momentarily, and then sinking back into the shadow. The youth was dressed in a
suit of white satin, such as men wore in the eighteenth century, and had on a
hat with an ostrich plume. The girl was arrayed in a gown with panniers, and
the high, powdered coiffure of the handsome dames of the time of the Regency.
They stopped a hundred paces from us, and standing in
the middle of the avenue, they kissed each other with graceful gestures.
Suddenly I recognized the two little servants. Then
one of those dreadful fits of laughter that convulse you made me writhe in my
chair. But I did not laugh aloud. I resisted, convulsed and feeling almost ill,
as a man whose leg is cut off resists the impulse to cry out.
As the young pair turned toward the farther end of the
avenue they again became delightful. They went farther and farther away,
finally disappearing as a dream disappears. I no longer saw them. The avenue
seemed a sad place.
I took my leave at once, so as not to see them again,
for I guessed that this little play would last a long time, awakening, as it
did, a whole past of love and of stage scenery; the artificial past, deceitful
and seductive, false but charming, which still stirred the heart of this
amorous old comedienne.
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