When I got it home, I wished to have a small chair of the same charming period covered with it; and as I was handling it in order to take the necessary measures, I felt some paper beneath my fingers.
When I cut the lining, some letters fell at my feet. They were yellow with age, and the faint ink was the colour of rust; outside the sheets, which were folded in the fashion of long ago, it was addressed in a delicate hand “To Monsieur l’Abbé d’Argence.”
The first three letters merely settled places of meeting, but here is the third:
“My Friend—I am very unwell, ill in fact, and I cannot leave my bed. The rain is beating against my windows, and I lie dreaming comfortably and warmly under my eiderdown coverlet. I have a book of which I am very fond, that seems as if a little of myself were in it. Shall I tell you what it is? No, for you would only scold me. Then, when I have read a little, I think, and will tell you what about.
“They have put behind me pillows which keep me up and I am writing you on the lovely little desk you gave me.
“Having been in bed for three days, I think about my bed, and even in my sleep I meditate on it still. I have come to the conclusion that the bed encircles our whole life; for we are born in it, we live in it and we shall die in it. If, therefore, I had Monsieur de Crébillon’s pen, I should write the history of a bed, and what exciting and terrible, as well as delightful and moving adventures would not such a book contain! What lessons and what subjects for moralising could not one draw from it, for everyone?
“You know my bed, my friend, but you will never guess how many things I have discovered in it within the last three days, and how much more I love it, in consequence. It seems to me to be inhabited, haunted, if I may say so, by a number of people I never thought of, who, nevertheless, have left something of themselves in that couch.
“Ah! I cannot understand people who buy new beds, beds to which no memories or cares are attached. Mine, ours, which is so shabby, and so spacious, must have held many existences in it, from birth to the grave. Think of that, my friend; think of it all; review all those lives, a great part of which was spent between these four posts, surrounded by these hangings embroidered by human figures, which have seen so many things. What have they seen during the three centuries since they were first put up?
“Here is a young woman lying in this bed.
“From time to time she sighs, and then she groans and cries out; her mother is with her, and presently a little creature that makes a noise like a cat mewing, and which is all shriveled and wrinkled, appears. It is a male child to which she has given birth, and the young mother feels happy in spite of her pain; she is nearly suffocated with joy at that first cry, and stretches out her arms, and those around her shed tears of pleasure. For that little morsel of humanity which has come from her means the continuation of the family, the perpetuation of the blood, of the heart, and of the soul of the old people, who are looking on, trembling with excitement.
“And then, here are two lovers, who for the first time are together in that tabernacle of life. They tremble; but transported with delight, they have the delicious sensation of being close together, and by degrees their lips meet. That divine kiss makes them one, that kiss which is the gate of a terrestrial heaven, that kiss which speaks of human delights, which continually promises them, announces them, and precedes them. And their bed is agitated like the tempestuous sea, it bends and murmurs, and itself seems to become animated and joyous, for the maddening mystery of love is being accomplished on it. What is there sweeter, what more perfect in this world than those embraces which make one single being out of two, and which give to both of them at the same moment the same thought, the same expectation, and the same maddening pleasure, a joy which descends upon them like a celestial and devouring fire?
“Do you remember those lines which you read to me last year, from some old poet, I know not whom, perhaps it was gentle Ronsard?
Et quand au lit nous serons
Entrelacés, nous ferons
Les lascifs, selon les guises
Des amants qui librement
Pratiquent folâtrement
Sous les draps cent mignardises.8I should like to have them embroidered on the top of my bed, where Pyramus and Thisbe are continually looking at me out of their tapestried eyes.
“And think of death, my friend, of all those who have breathed out their last sigh to God in this bed. For it is also the tomb of hopes ended, the door which closes everything, after having been the entrance to the world. What cries, what anguish, what sufferings, what groans; how many arms stretched out toward the past; what appeals to a happiness that has vanished forever; what convulsions, what death-rattles, what gaping lips and distorted eyes, have there not been in this bed from which I am writing to you, during the three centuries that it has sheltered human beings!
“The bed, you must remember, is the symbol of life; I have discovered this within the last three days. There is nothing good except the bed, and are not some of our best moments spent in sleep?
“But then, again, we suffer in bed! it is the refuge of those who are ill and suffering; a place of repose and comfort for worn-out bodies.
“The bed is
