Short Fiction

Behind me two men were also waiting without showing any sign of impatience, as I did, because they had long been accustomed to our insolent ways.

The other day before leaving Paris I went to dine⁠—as it happens, with your husband⁠—at a restaurant in the Champs Élysées so as to be in the open air. The waiter begged us to wait awhile. I caught sight of an old lady of distinguished appearance who had paid her bill and seemed about to leave. She saw me, eyed me from head to foot, and did not budge. For over fifteen minutes she stayed there, putting on her gloves, glancing at all the tables, observing with detachment all those who were waiting, as I was. Then two young men, who had just finished, saw me, and, hurriedly calling the waiter for their bill, offered me their place at once. I refused to remain seated while they waited for their change⁠—and remember, my dear, that I am no longer pretty like you, but old and white-haired.

There is no doubt that we are the ones who should be taught politeness; the task would be so great that Hercules himself would not succeed.

You talk about Étretat and the people who gossip on that delightful beach. The place is done for for me, although in the past I have enjoyed myself there. There were just a few of us who were on friendly terms, men and women in society⁠—the real thing⁠—and writers, artists and musicians. Nobody tittle-tattled in those days.

As there was no insipid Casino then where people pose, talk scandal under their breath, dance idiotically, and bore themselves to death, we tried to find some way of spending the evenings cheerfully. Well, guess what one of the husbands of the party thought of? To go and dance at one of the neighbouring farms every evening.

We all went off in a band with a hand-organ which the painter Le Poittevin, wearing a cotton nightcap, generally played. Two men carried lanterns and we followed in procession, laughing and chatting like madcaps.

We woke up the farmer, the servants and the men. We even had onion soup (horror!) made for us, we danced under the apple trees to the strains of the “Music-box.” The awakened cocks crowed in the distant outbuildings; the horses moved about in the stables, the fresh country breeze caressed our faces, full of the scent of herbs and grasses and of newly-mown crops.

How long ago all that happened! How long ago! Thirty years ago! I do not want you to come for the opening of the shooting season. Why spoil the pleasure of our friends by insisting on town dress on such an occasion, a day of real country pleasure and violent exercise? That is the way all men are spoilt, my dear.

I embrace you.

Your Old Aunt,

Geneviève de Z.

A Widow

It was during the hunting season, at the de Banville country seat. The autumn was rainy and dull. The red leaves, instead of crackling under foot, rotted in the hollows beneath the heavy showers.

The almost leafless forest was as humid as a bathroom. When you entered it beneath the huge trees shaken by the winds, a mouldy odour, a vapour from fallen rain, soaking grass and damp earth, enveloped you. And the hunters, bending beneath this continuous downpour, the dogs with their tails hanging and their coats matted, and the young huntswomen in their close-fitting habits drenched with rain, returned each evening depressed in body and spirit.

In the great drawing room, after dinner, they played lotto, but without enthusiasm, while the wind shook the shutters violently, and turned the old weathervanes into spinning-tops. Someone suggested telling stories, in the way we read of in books; but no one could invent anything very amusing. The hunters narrated some of their adventures with the gun, the slaughter of rabbits, for example; and the ladies racked their brains without finding anywhere the imagination of Scheherazade.

They were about to abandon this form of diversion, when a young lady, carelessly playing with the hand of her old, unmarried aunt, noticed a little ring made of blond hair, which she had often seen before but thought nothing about.

Moving it gently about the finger she said, suddenly: “Tell us the story of this ring, Auntie; it looks like the hair of a child⁠—”

The old maid reddened and then grew pale, and in a trembling voice she replied: “It is sad, so sad that I never care to speak about it. All the unhappiness of my life is centred in it. I was young then, but the memory of it remains so painful that I weep whenever I think of it.”

They wished very much to hear the story, but the aunt refused to tell it; finally, they urged so much that she at length consented.

“You have often heard me speak of the Santèze family, now extinct. I knew the last three men of this family. They all died within three months in the same manner. This hair belonged to the last one. He was thirteen years old, when he killed himself for me. That appears very strange to you, doesn’t it?

“They were an extraordinary race, a race of fools, if you will, but of charming fools, of fools for love. All, from father to son, had these violent passions, waves of emotion which drove them to most exalted deeds, to fanatical devotion, and even to crime. It was to them what ardent devotion is to certain souls. Those who become monks are not of the same nature as drawing room favourites. Their relatives used to say: ‘as amorous as a Santèze.’

“To see them was to divine this characteristic. They all had curly hair, growing low upon the brow, curly beards and large eyes, very large, whose rays seemed to penetrate and disturb you, without your knowing just why.

“The grandfather of the one of whom this is the only souvenir, after many adventures, and some duels on