Clarimonde Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  CLARIMONDE

  By Theophile Gautier

  Translated By Lafcadio Hearn

  1908

  Brother, you ask me if I have ever loved. Yes. My story is a strange andterrible one; and though I am sixty-six years of age, I scarcely dareeven now to disturb the ashes of that memory. To you I can refusenothing; but I should not relate such a tale to any less experiencedmind. So strange were the circumstances of my story, that I can scarcelybelieve myself to have ever actually been a party to them. For morethan three years I remained the victim of a most singular and diabolicalillusion. Poor country priest though I was, I led every night in adream--would to God it had been all a dream!--a most worldly life, adamning life, a life of Sardanapalus. One single look too freely castupon a woman well-nigh caused me to lose my soul; but finally by thegrace of God and the assistance of my patron saint, I succeeded incasting out the evil spirit that possessed me. My daily life was longinterwoven with a nocturnal life of a totally different character. Byday I was a priest of the Lord, occupied with prayer and sacred things;by night, from the instant that I closed my eyes I became a youngnobleman, a fine connoisseur in women, dogs, and horses; gambling,drinking, and blaspheming; and when I awoke at early daybreak, it seemedto me, on the other hand, that I had been sleeping, and had only dreamedthat I was a priest. Of this somnambulistic life there now remains to meonly the recollection of certain scenes and words which I cannot banishfrom my memory; but although I never actually left the walls of mypresbytery, one would think to hear me speak that I were a man who,weary of all worldly pleasures, had become a religious, seeking to end atempestuous life in the service of God, rather than a humble seminaristwho has grown old in this obscure curacy, situated in the depths of thewoods and even isolated from the life of the century.

  Yes, I have loved as none in the world ever loved--with an insensateand furious passion--so violent that I am astonished it did not cause myheart to burst asunder. Ah, what nights--what nights!

  From my earliest childhood I had felt a vocation to the priesthood, sothat all my studies were directed with that idea in view. Up to theage of twenty-four my life had been only a prolonged novitiate. Havingcompleted my course of theology I successively received all the minororders, and my superiors judged me worthy, despite my youth, to pass thelast awful degree. My ordination was fixed for Easter week.

  I had never gone into the world. My world was confined by the walls ofthe college and the seminary. I knew in a vague sort of a way that therewas something called Woman, but I never permitted my thoughts to dwellon such a subject, and I lived in a state of perfect innocence. Twicea year only I saw my infirm and aged mother, and in those visits werecomprised my sole relations with the outer world.

  I regretted nothing; I felt not the least hesitation at taking the lastirrevocable step; I was filled with joy and impatience. Never did abetrothed lover count the slow hours with more feverish ardour; I sleptonly to dream that I was saying mass; I believed there could be nothingin the world more delightful than to be a priest; I would have refusedto be a king or a poet in preference. My ambition could conceive of noloftier aim.

  I tell you this in order to show you that what happened to me couldnot have happened in the natural order of things, and to enable you tounderstand that I was the victim of an inexplicable fascination.

  At last the great day came. I walked to the church with a step so lightthat I fancied myself sustained in air, or that I had wings upon myshoulders. I believed myself an angel, and wondered at the sombre andthoughtful faces of my companions, for there were several of us. Ihad passed all the night in prayer, and was in a condition wellnighbordering on ecstasy. The bishop, a venerable old man, seemed to me Godthe Father leaning over His Eternity, and I beheld Heaven through thevault of the temple.

  You well know the details of that ceremony--the benediction, thecommunion under both forms, the anointing of the palms of the hands withthe Oil of Catechumens, and then the holy sacrifice offered in concertwith the bishop.

  Ah, truly spake Job when he declared that the imprudent man is one whohath not made a covenant with his eyes! I accidentally lifted my head,which until then I had kept down, and beheld before me, so close thatit seemed that I could have touched her--although she was actually aconsiderable distance from me and on the further side of the sanctuaryrailing--a young woman of extraordinary beauty, and attired with royalmagnificence. It seemed as though scales had suddenly fallen from myeyes. I felt like a blind man who unexpectedly recovers his sight. Thebishop, so radiantly glorious but an instant before, suddenly vanishedaway, the tapers paled upon their golden candlesticks like stars in thedawn, and a vast darkness seemed to fill the whole church. The charmingcreature appeared in bright relief against the background of thatdarkness, like some angelic revelation. She seemed herself radiant, andradiating light rather than receiving it.

  I lowered my eyelids, firmly resolved not to again open them, thatI might not be influenced by external objects, for distraction hadgradually taken possession of me until I hardly knew what I was doing.

  In another minute, nevertheless, I reopened my eyes, for through myeyelashes I still beheld her, all sparkling with prismatic colours, andsurrounded with such a penumbra as one beholds in gazing at the sun.

  Oh, how beautiful she was! The greatest painters, who followed idealbeauty into heaven itself, and thence brought back to earth the trueportrait of the Madonna, never in their delineations even approachedthat wildly beautiful reality which I saw before me. Neither the versesof the poet nor the palette of the artist could convey any conceptionof her. She was rather tall, with a form and bearing of a goddess. Herhair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back overher temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademedqueen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calmbreadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularitywere almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyesof unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flashthey could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity,an ardour, a humid light which I have never seen in human eyes; theyshot forth rays like arrows, which I could distinctly _see_ enter myheart. I know not if the fire which illumined them came from heaven orfrom hell, but assuredly it came from one or the other. That woman waseither an angel or a demon, perhaps both. Assuredly she never sprangfrom the flank of Eve, our common mother. Teeth of the most lustrouspearl gleamed in her ruddy smile, and at every inflection of her lipslittle dimples appeared in the satiny rose of her adorable cheeks. Therewas a delicacy and pride in the regal outline of her nostrils bespeakingnoble blood. Agate gleams played over the smooth lustrous skin of herhalf-bare shoulders, and strings of great blonde pearls--almost equalto her neck in beauty of colour--descended upon her bosom. From timeto time she elevated her head with the undulating grace of a startledserpent or peacock, thereby imparting a quivering motion to the highlace ruff which surrounded it like a silver trellis-work.

  She wore a robe of orange-red velvet, and from her wide ermine-linedsleeves there peeped forth patrician hands of infinite delicacy, and soideally transparent that, like the fingers of Aurora, they permitted thelight to shine through them.

  All these details I can recollect at this moment as plainly as thoughthey were of yesterday, for notwithstanding I was greatly troubled atthe time, nothing escaped me; the faintest touch of shading, the littledark speck at the point of the chin, the imperceptible down at thecorners of the lips, the velvety floss upon the brow, the quiveringshadows of the eyelashes upon the cheeks--I could notice everything withastonishing lucidity of perception.

  And gazing I felt opening within me gates that had until then remainedclosed; vents long obstructed b
ecame all clear, permitting glimpses ofunfamiliar perspectives within; life suddenly made itself visible to meunder a totally novel aspect. I felt as though I had just been born intoa new world and a new order of things. A frightful anguish commenced totorture-my heart as with red-hot pincers. Every successive minute seemedto me at once but a second and yet a century. Meanwhile the ceremony wasproceeding, and I shortly found myself transported far from that worldof which my newly born desires were furiously besieging the entrance.Nevertheless I answered 'Yes' when I wished to say 'No,' though allwithin me protested against the violence done to my soul by my tongue.Some occult power seemed to force the words from my throat against mywill. Thus it is, perhaps, that so many young girls walk to the altarfirmly resolved to refuse in a startling manner the husband imposedupon them, and that yet not one ever fulfils her intention. Thus it is,doubtless, that so many poor novices take the veil, though they haveresolved to tear it into shreds at the moment when called upon to utterthe vows. One dares not thus cause