Short Fiction

slowly, drifting with the tide.

Cora remarked: “It appears that poor M. Savon married a bad woman.”

Mme. Torchebeuf, who was familiar with everything of the office, replied:

“Yes, she was an orphan, very much too young for him, and deceived him with a worthless fellow, and she ended in running away with him.”

Then the fat lady added: “I say he was a worthless fellow, but I know nothing about it. It is reported that they loved one another very much. In any case, old Savon is not very seductive.”

Mme. Lesable replied gravely:

“That is no excuse; the poor man is much to be pitied. Our next door neighbour, M. Barbou, has had the same experience. His wife fell in love with a sort of painter who passed his summers here, and she has gone abroad with him. I do not understand how women can fall so low. To my mind it seems a special chastisement should be meted out to those wicked creatures who bring shame upon their families.”

At the end of the alley the nurse appeared, carrying the little Désirée wrapped in her laces. The child, all rosy in the red gold of the evening light, was coming towards the two women. She stared at the fiery sky with the same pale and astonished eyes with which she regarded their faces.

All the men who were talking at a distance drew near, and Cachelin, seizing his little granddaughter, tossed her aloft in his arms as if he would carry her to the skies. Her figure was outlined against the brilliant line of the horizon, while her long white robe almost touched the ground; and the grandfather cried: “Look! isn’t this the best thing in the world, after all, father Savon?”

But the old man made no reply, having nothing to say, or perhaps thinking too many things.

A servant opened the door and announced: “Madame is served!”

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.

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“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