Happiness
It was teatime, just before the lamps were brought in. The villa overlooked the sea; the vanished sun had left the sky rose-tipped in its passing, and powdered with golden dust; and the Mediterranean, without ripple or faintest movement, smooth, still gleaming with the light of the dying day, spread out a vast shield of burnished metal.
Far to the right, the jagged mountains lifted their black sharp-cut bulk against the dim purple of the West.
They were speaking of love, retelling an ancient tale, saying over again things already said many, many times before. The soft melancholy dusk pressed upon their speech, so that a feeling of tenderness welled up in their hearts, and the word “love,” constantly repeated, now in a man’s strong voice, now in the high, clear tones of a woman, seemed to fill the little room, flitting about it like a bird, hovering like a spirit over them.
Can one love for years without end?
Yes, claimed some.
No, declared others.
They drew a distinction between various cases, made clear the qualities that divided them from others, quoted examples; and all, both men and women, filled with rushing, disquieting memories which they could not reveal and which hovered on their lips, seemed profoundly moved; they spoke of this commonplace yet supreme thing, this mysterious concord between two beings, with the deepest emotion and burning interest.
Suddenly one among them, whose eyes were fixed on the distant scene, exclaimed:
“Oh! Look! What’s that, over there?”
Across the sea, on the rim of haze, rose a huge, grey, shapeless mass.
The women had risen and were staring uncomprehendingly at this amazing object, which none of them had ever seen before.
“It’s Corsica,” said someone. “It can be seen two or three times a year under exceptional atmospheric conditions, when the air is so perfectly clear as not to conceal it with those mists of water-vapour in which distant prospects are always wrapped.”
They could distinguish vaguely the mountain peaks, and fancied that they could see the snow on the summits. And everyone was surprised, disturbed, almost frightened at this abrupt appearance of a world, at this phantom risen from the sea. Such, perhaps, were the perilous visions of those who set out like Columbus across strange seas.
Then an old gentleman, who had not spoken, remarked:
“Oddly enough, in that island which has just swum into our sight—at the very moment when it would give force to what we have been saying and awaken one of my strangest memories—I came across a perfect instance of faithful love, miraculously happy love.
“Five years ago I made a tour in Corsica. That wild island is farther away from us, and less known to us, than America, although it is sometimes to be seen from the coasts of France, even as today.
“Imagine a world still in chaos, a maelstrom of mountains separated by narrow ravines down which rush foaming torrents; not a single level space, but only immense billows of granite and gigantic undulations in the ground covered with thickets or with lofty forests of chestnut and pine. It is virgin soil, uncultivated, deserted, although an occasional village may be descried, like a pile of rocks perched on the top of a mountain. There is no culture, no industry, no art. Never does one meet with a piece of carved wood, a block of sculptured stone, with any reminder of hereditary taste, rudimentary or refined, for gracious and beautiful things. That is the most striking thing in this superb, harsh country: its inherited indifference to that search for magical loveliness which is called art.
“Italy, where every palace, full of masterpieces, is itself a masterpiece, where marble, wood, bronze, iron, in fact all metals and stones, bear witness to the genius of man, where the tiniest heirlooms in old houses reveal a divine care for beauty, is to each one of us a sacred and beloved land, because she displays and proves to us the strong impulse, the grandeur, the power, and the triumph of the creative intelligence.
“Facing her, wild Corsica has remained just as she was in her earliest days. There man lives in his rude house, indifferent to all that does not affect his mere existence or his family quarrels. He has survived with the defects and qualities of all uncivilised races, violent, strong to hate, instinctively bloodthirsty, but also hospitable, generous, full of true piety, simple-hearted, opening his door to the passerby and bestowing a loyal friendship in return for the smallest token of sympathy.
“For a month I had been wandering over this magnificent island, feeling as though I were at the end of the world. There are no inns, no taverns, no roads. Mule paths lead to the villages that cling to the flanks of the mountains and overlook the twisting gulfs from whose depths the heavy, muffled, deep roar of the torrent rises ceaselessly in the silence of evening. The traveller knocks at the house doors and asks for shelter for the night and food until next day. He sits down at the humble table and sleeps beneath the humble roof, and in the morning shakes the outstretched hand of his host, who leads him to the edge of the village.
“One evening, after walking for ten hours, I came to a little house standing by itself in the depths of a narrow valley that fell into the sea a league farther on. The two steep slopes of the hillside, covered with thickets, boulders, and tall trees, were like two gloomy walls enclosing this unutterably mournful abyss.
“Round the hovel were a few vines, a small garden, and, further on, some large chestnut-trees; enough, actually, for a bare existence, a fortune in that poor country.
“The woman who opened the door was old, hard-featured, and clean, which was unusual. The man, seated on a cane chair, got up to greet me and then sat down without saying a word.
“ ‘Please excuse him,’ said his wife to me. ‘He’s deaf now. He’s eighty-two.’
“She spoke perfect French. I was surprised.
“ ‘You are not Corsicans?’ I asked her.
“ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘we come from the mainland. But we have lived here for fifty years.’
“A feeling of anguish and terror overwhelmed me at the thought of the fifty years that had rolled by in this dark hole, so far from towns and the life of men. An old shepherd came in, and we began to eat the only course of the dinner, a thick soup in which potatoes, bacon, and cabbage were all boiled together.
“When the short meal was over, I went out and sat before the door, my heart oppressed with the melancholy of that sombre landscape, in the grip of that feeling of wretchedness which sometimes lays hold on the traveller, on sad evenings, in desolate places. It seems as though all things were coming to an end, life itself, and the universe. The dreadful misery of life is revealed in one blinding flash, and the isolation of all things, the nothingness of all things, and the black loneliness of our hearts which soothe and deceive themselves with dreams until the coming of death itself.
“The old woman joined me, and tormented by the curiosity which lives on in the hearts of even the most resigned of mortals, said to me:
“ ‘So you come from France?’
“ ‘Yes, I am travelling for pleasure.’
“ ‘You are from Paris, perhaps?’
“ ‘No, I come from Nancy.’
“At that it seemed to me that an extraordinary excitement was agitating her. How I saw this, or rather felt it, I do not know.
“ ‘You are from Nancy?’ she repeated slowly.
“The husband appeared in the doorway, impassive, as are all deaf people.
“ ‘It does not matter,’ she continued. ‘He cannot hear.’
“Then, after a few seconds:
“ ‘Then you know people in Nancy?’
“ ‘Why, yes, almost everybody.’
“ ‘The Sainte-Allaize family?’
“ ‘Yes, very well; they were friends of my father’s.’
“ ‘What is your name?’
“ ‘I told her. She stared intently at me, then said in that soft voice evoked by wakening memories:
“ ‘Yes, yes, I remember quite well. And the Brisenaves, what has become of them?’
“ ‘They are all dead.’
“ ‘Ah! And the Sirmonts, do you know them?’
“ ‘Yes, the youngest is a general.’
“At that she replied, shaking with excitement, with anguish, with I know not what confused powerful and intimate emotion, with I know not how pressing a need to confess, to tell everything, to speak of things she had until this moment kept locked in the secret places of her heart, and of the people whose name troubled the very depths of her soul:
“ ‘Yes, Henri de Sirmont. I know him well. He is my brother.’
“I lifted my eyes to her, quite dumbfounded with surprise. And suddenly I remembered.
“It had been a great scandal, long ago, in aristocratic Lorraine. As a young girl, beautiful, wealthy, Suzanne de Sirmont had run off with a noncommissioned officer in the hussar regiment of which her father was commander.
“He was a handsome lad; his parents were peasants, but he wore the blue dolman with a gallant air, this soldier who seduced his colonel’s daughter. Doubtless she had seen him, noticed him, fallen in love with him as she watched the squadrons march past. But how had she spoken to him, how had they been able to meet and come to an understanding? How had she dared to make him realise that she loved him? This no one ever knew.
“Nothing had been guessed or foreseen. One evening, when the soldier had just completed his term of service, he disappeared with her. A search was made, but they were not found. No news of them was heard, and she was thought of as dead.
“And thus I had found her in this sinister valley.
“Then in my turn I answered:
“ ‘Yes, I remember well. You are Mademoiselle Suzanne.’
“She nodded ‘yes.’ Tears poured from her eyes. Then, glancing towards the old man, standing motionless on the threshold of his dwelling, she said to me:
“ ‘That is he.’
“And I realised that she still loved him, still saw him with eyes blinded by love.
“ ‘But at least you have been happy?’ I asked.
“She answered, in a voice that came from her heart:
“ ‘Oh, yes, very happy. He has made me very happy. I have never had any regrets.’
“I gazed at her, a little sad, surprised, marvelling at the power of love! This rich girl had followed this man, this peasant. She had stooped herself to a life without charm, luxury, or refinement of any sort, she had accustomed herself to an entirely simple existence. And she still loved him. She had become the wife of a country clodhopper, with a bonnet and a canvas skirt. She sat on a cane chair, she ate broth made of potatoes, cabbage, and bacon, out of an earthen platter set on a deal table. She slept on straw at his side.
“She had never a thought for anything but him. She had regretted neither jewels, nor fine clothes, nor fashion, nor the comfort of armchairs, nor the perfumed warmth of tapestry-hung rooms, nor the softness of down whereon the body sinks to rest. She had never needed anything but him; so only that he was there, she wanted nothing.
“In early youth she had forsaken life and the world and those who had loved and nurtured her. She had come, alone with him, to this wild ravine. And he had been everything to her, all that a woman desires, all that she dreams of, all that she ceaselessly awaits, all for which she never ceases to hope. He had filled her existence with happiness from its beginning to its close.
“She could not have been happier.
“And all night long, as I listened to the hoarse breathing of the old soldier lying on his pallet beside the woman who had followed him so far, I thought of this strange and simple adventure, of her happiness, so complete, built of so little.
“I left next morning, after shaking hands with the old couple.”
The teller of the tale was silent. A woman said:
“All the same, her ideal was too easy of attainment, her needs too primitive, her demands on life too simple. She must have been a stupid girl.”
Another woman said slowly:
“What does it matter? She was happy.”
In the distance, on the rim of the world, Corsica receded into the night, sinking slowly back into the sea, withdrawing the vast shadow that had appeared as though itself would tell the story of the two humble lovers sheltered by its shores.