Madame Parisse
I
I was sitting on the breakwater of the little harbour of Obernon, near the small town of la Salis, watching Antibes in the setting sun. I have never seen anything so startling or so lovely.
The little town, shut within the heavy ramparts built by M. de Vauban, thrusts out into the sea, in the centre of the wide bay of Nice. The great waves of the open sea run in and break at its feet, wreathing her with flowers of foam; and above the ramparts, the houses climb on each other’s shoulders up to the two towers lifting to the sky like the two horns of an old helmet. And these two towers are sharply outlined on the milky whiteness of the Alps, on the vast and far-off wall of snow that bars the whole horizon.
Between the white foam below the walls and the white snow on the rim of the sky the little town stands like a brilliant flower against the deep blue of the nearest hills, and lifts to the rays of the setting sun a pyramid of red-roofed houses whose white walls are yet all so different that they seem to hold every subtle shade.
And the sky above the Alps is an almost white blue itself, as if the snow had coloured off on to it; a few silver clouds float just above the pale peaks; and at the other side of the bay, Nice, lying at the edge of the water, stretches like a white thread between sea and mountain. Two large three-cornered sails, driven before a strong breeze, seemed to run over the waves. Filled with wonder; I looked at it all.
It was a sight so fair, so divine, so rare that it made itself a place in your heart, as unforgettable as remembered joys. It is through the eyes that we live and think and suffer and are moved. The man who can feel through his eyes enjoys, in the contemplation of things and human beings, the same deep, sharp, subtle joy as the man whose heart is ravished by the music striking on a delicate sensitive ear.
I said to my companion, M. Martini, a true Southerner:
“That is really one of the rarest sights it has ever been my good fortune to admire.
“I have seen the monstrous granite jewel of Mont Saint-Michel rise from its sands at dawn.
“I have seen in the Sahara the lake of Raïanechergui, fifty miles long, gleaming under a moon as brilliant as our suns, with a white wraith of mist like a milky vapour rising from it to the moon.
“I have seen, in the Lipari Islands, the fantastic sulphur crater of Volcanello, a giant flower that smokes and flames, a monstrous yellow flower blossoming in the middle of the sea, with a volcano for a stem.
“And after all I’ve seen nothing more marvellous than Antibes outlined against the Alps at sunset.
“I don’t know why my mind is haunted by echoes of old tales: lines of Homer are ringing in my head: it’s an old Eastern town, a town from the Odyssey, it’s Troy, although Troy was not on the sea.”
M. Martini drew his Sarty guide from his pocket and read:
“The town had its beginnings in a colony founded by the Phoenicians from Marseilles, towards 340 BC. They gave it the Greek name of Antipolis, that is to say, ‘Against-town,’ a town facing another, because it did actually face Nice, another Marseilles colony.
“After the conquest of Gaul the Romans made Antibes a city; its inhabitants enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship.
“We know, by one of Martial’s epigrams, that in his time …”
He was going on. I interrupted him: “I don’t care what it was. I tell you that I am looking down at a town from the Odyssey. Asiatic or European coast, the coasts of both are alike; and the coast on the other side of the Mediterranean is not the one that stirs in me, as this one does, a dream of old heroic days.”
A sound made me turn round; a woman, a tall, dark-skinned woman, was walking along the road that runs beside the sea towards the headland.
M. Martini murmured, sounding the final sibilants of the name: “That’s Mme. Parisse, you know.”
No, I didn’t know, but the chance sound of this name, the name of the Trojan shepherd, deepened my illusion.
“Who is this Mme. Parisse?” I asked, however.
He seemed amazed that I did not know the story.
I swore that I didn’t know it; and I looked at the woman who walked dreamily past without seeing us, walking gravely and slowly as the women of the old world must have walked. She must have been about thirty-five years old and she was still beautiful, very beautiful, although a little stout.
And this is the story that M. Martini told me.
II
Mme. Parisse, a young girl of the Combelombe family, had married, one year before the war of 1870, a Government official called M. Parisse. She was then a beautiful young girl, as slender and merry as she was now stout and sad.
She had reluctantly accepted M. Parisse, who was one of those potbellied, short-legged little men who mince along in trousers that are always cut too wide.
After the war, Antibes was occupied by a single infantry regiment commanded by M. Jean de Carmelin, a young officer who had been decorated during the campaign and who had just become a major.
As he was bored to death in this fortress, in this stifling molehill shut in between its double rampart of enormous walls, the major formed the habit of walking on the headland, a sort of park or pine wood lashed by all the sea winds.
He met Mme. Parisse there; she too came, on summer evenings, for a breath of fresh air under the trees. How did they fall in love? Who could say? They met, they looked at each other, and out of each other’s sight doubtless they thought of one another. The image of the young woman, brown eyed, black-haired, pale-skinned, the beautiful glowing Southern woman who showed her teeth when she smiled, hovered before the eyes of the officer as he continued his walk, chewing his cigar instead of smoking it; and the image of the major in his tight-fitting tunic, scarlet-trousered and covered with gold lace, his fair moustache curling above his lip, must have flitted past the eyes of Mme. Parisse in the evening when her husband, badly shaven and badly dressed, short-limbed and paunchy, came home to supper.
Perhaps they smiled, seeing each other again, meeting so often; and seeing each other so often, they began to fancy that they knew each other. He must have saluted her. She was surprised and bowed, ever so slightly, just enough not to seem discourteous. But at the end of a fortnight she was returning his greeting from afar, before ever they had drawn near each other.
He spoke to her! Of what? Probably of the sunset. And they admired it together, looking into each other’s eyes oftener than at the horizon. And every evening for a fortnight this was the unvarying conventional excuse for a few minutes’ talk.
Then they were bold enough to walk a little way together, talking of various things; but already their eyes were saying a thousand more intimate things, delightful secret things that are reflected in soft tender glances and quicken the heart’s wild beating, revealing the hidden desires more plainly than any protestations.
Then he must have taken her hand, and stammered those words that a woman understands and pretends not to hear.
And they told each other that they loved without proving their love by any gross and sensual act.
The woman would have stayed indefinitely in this halfway house of affection but the man wanted to go further. He pressed her each day more fiercely to yield herself to his violent desire.
She resisted, she would not, seemed determined not to give in.
However, one evening she said to him casually: “My husband has just gone to Marseilles. He will be away for four days.”
Jean de Carmelin threw himself at her feet, and entreated her to open her door that very evening, about eleven o’clock. But she did not listen and went home in seeming anger.
The major was in an ill humour all evening; and that day at dawn he stalked furiously up and down the ramparts, from the band school to the squad drill, flinging punishments at officers and men, like a man flinging stones in a crowd.
But when he returned from breakfast, he found under his napkin an envelope containing these four words:
“Tonight at ten o’clock.”
And he gave the orderly who was serving him five francs for no reason at all.
The day seemed far too long for him. He spent part of it in curling and scenting himself.
Just as he sat down to dinner, another envelope was handed to him. Inside he found this telegram:
“Darling, business finished. I return this evening nine o’clock train. Parisse.”
The commandant let fly an oath so heartfelt that the orderly dropped the soup tureen on the floor.
What was to be done? He wanted her that evening, at all costs; and he would have her. He would have her by hook or by crook, even if he had to arrest and imprison the husband. Suddenly a wild idea came into his head. He sent for paper and wrote:
“Madame,
“He will not come home this evening, I swear it, and at ten o’clock I will be at the appointed place. Don’t be afraid of anything. I promise you it will be all right, on my honour as an officer.
He sent off the letter, and placidly finished his dinner.
Towards eight o’clock, he sent for Captain Gribois, his second in command; and crushing M. Parisse’s crumpled telegram between his fingers, he said:
“Captain Gribois, I have received a strange telegram, the contents of which I cannot possibly tell you. You will shut the town gates at once and set a guard, so that no one—no one, you understand—can come in or go out before six o’clock in the morning. You will also send patrols through the streets and compel the townspeople to be in their houses at nine o’clock. Any person found outside after that hour will be conducted to his house manu militari. If your men meet me tonight they will walk in the opposite direction, without making any sign of recognition.
“You have that quite clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I make you responsible for the carrying out of these orders, Gribois.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you have a Chartreuse?”
“Delighted, sir.”
They touched glasses, drank the tawny liqueur, and Captain Gribois went off.
III
The Marseilles train came into the station to the minute of nine o’clock, deposited two travellers on the platform and continued its journey to Nice.
One was tall and thin, M. Saribe, oil merchant, the other fat and short, M. Parisse.
They set off side by side, carrying their suitcases, towards the town, which was a mile away.
But when they reached the harbour gate, the sentries fixed bayonets and ordered them to keep out.
Startled, stupefied, quite dazed with surprise, they drew off and deliberated; then after taking counsel together, they returned cautiously to parley and gave their names.
But the soldiers must have had the strictest orders, for they threatened to shoot; and the two terrified travellers fled with all possible agility, leaving behind the suitcases that weighed them down.
Then they walked round the ramparts and presented themselves at the Cannes gate. It was as closely shut, and it too was guarded by menacing sentries. MM. Saribe and Parisse, being prudent men, pursued the matter no further, but returned to the station in search of shelter, for the road round the fortifications was not very safe after sundown.
A surprised and sleepy porter allowed them to spend the night in the waiting-room.
They spent it side by side, without a light, on the green velvet sofa, too terrified to think of sleeping.
They found it a long night.
Towards half past six they learned that the gates were open, and that they could at last get into Antibes. They set out, but they did not find their abandoned suitcases on the road.
When, a little uneasy, they stepped through the town gate, the commanding officer himself, with the ends of his moustache twisted up and veiled impenetrable glance, came up to identify and question them.
Then he saluted them politely and apologised for having made them spend an unpleasant night. But he had been compelled to carry out his orders.
The citizens of Antibes were utterly bewildered. Some people said that the Italians had been planning a surprise attack, others said that the Prince had gone away by boat, and yet others believed there had been an Orléanist plot. The truth was not suspected until later when it came out that the battalion had been posted to a distant station and M. de Carmelin severely punished.
IV
M. Martini had finished speaking. Mme. Parisse, her walk over, was returning. She passed near me, gravely, her eyes turned to the Alps whose peaks were rosy now in the last rays of the sun.
I wanted to speak to her, the poor unhappy woman who must have thought long of that night of love, now so far in the past, and of the bold man who for one kiss of hers had dared to put a town in a state of siege and jeopardise his whole future.
He had doubtless forgotten her now; or remembered her only when his tongue was loosened by wine and he told the story of that audacious, comic and passionate jest.
Had she seen him again? Did she still love him? I thought: “It is an admirable instance of modern love, absurd and still heroic. The Homer who would sing this Helen, and the adventure of her Menelaus, would have to possess the mind of Paul de Kock. And yet the hero of this forsaken woman is brave, daring, beautiful, as strong as Achilles, and craftier than Ulysses.”