Part 11 (2/2)
”Good enough if they even knew how to sing that!”
”We have got off at the wrong station, we left the train too early.”
”I'm afraid,” said Pierre, ”that the next station would have been still worse. Can you see us, my darling, in the social fabric of the future--the hive they promise us, where none will have the right to live except for the queen bee's service or for the republic?”
”Laying eggs from morning to night like a _mitrailleuse_ or from morning to night licking the eggs of others.... Thank you for that choice!” said Luce.
”Oh, Luce, little ugly one, how ugly you talk,” said Pierre laughing.
”Yes, it's very bad, I know it. I am good for nothing. Nor you either, my friend. You are just as ill fitted for killing or maiming men as I am for sewing them up again, like those wretched horses when they are ripped up at the bullfights, so that they can serve again at the next affray. We two are useless beings and dangerous, who have the ridiculous, criminal pretention to live only in order to love those we do love, likewise my little lover lad and my friends, honest people and little children, the good light of the day, also good white bread and everything that is pretty and right for me to put in my mouth. It's shameful, it's shameful! Blush for me, Pierrot!... But we shall be well punished! There is going to be no place for us in that factory of the State, without rest and without truce, which the earth will be soon....
Luckily we shall not be here!”
”Yes, what happiness!” quoth Pierre.
”If in thine arms, O Lady of my heart, I die, to greater fame I'll not aspire, Content upon thy bosom to expire Whilst kissing thee and thus from living part....”
”Well, little darling, what sort of a fas.h.i.+on is that?”
”Nevertheless it is after a good old French mode. It's by Ronsard,” said Pierre:
”...else I would only claim A century hence, sans glory and sans fame Slothful to die upon thy lap, Ca.s.sandra....”
”A hundred years!” sighed Luce. ”He doesn't ask much!...”
”Or I mistake, or more delights are heaped In death like that than all the honors reaped By Caesar great or firebolt Alexander.”
”Naughty, naughty, naughty little scamp! have you no shame? In this epoch of heroes!”
”There are too many,” said Pierre. ”I would rather be a little fellow who loves, a babe of a man.”
”The babe of a woman who still has on his lips the milk from my breast,”
cried Luce, seizing him round the neck. ”My babe, my own!”
SURVIVORS of those days who, since then, have been witness to the dazzling change of fortune, will have forgotten doubtless the menacing heavy flight of the dark wing which, during that week, covered the Ile de France and touched Paris with its shadow. Joy does not take further stock in past trials.--The German drive reached the line of its summit between Holy Monday and Holy Wednesday. The Somme traversed, Bapaume, Vesle, Guiscard, Roye, Noyon, Albert carried. Eleven hundred guns taken.
Sixty thousand prisoners.... Symbol of the land of grace trampled upon, on Holy Tuesday died Debussy the harmonious. A lyre that is snapped....
”Poor little expiring Greece!” What will remain of it? A few chiseled vases, a few perfect stelae which the gra.s.s will invade from the Path of Tombs. Immortal vestiges of ruined Athens....
As from the height of a hill, Pierre and Luce watched the shadow that moved upon the town. Still wrapped in the rays of their love, they waited without fear for the end of the brief day. Now they would be two in the night. Like to the evening _Angelus_ there rose up to them, conjured up, the voluptuous melancholy of the lovely chords of Debussy which they had so greatly loved. More than it had ever done in any other time, music responded to the need of their hearts. Music was the only art which rendered the voice of the delivered soul behind the screen of forms.
On Holy Thursday they walked, Luce on Pierre's arm and holding his hand, along the streets of the suburb, soused with the rain. Gusts of wind scurried over the moistened plain. They noted neither rain nor wind, neither the hideousness of the fields nor the muddy ways. They seated themselves on the low wall of a park, a section of which had recently fallen in. Under Pierre's umbrella, which scarcely protected her head and shoulders, Luce, her legs hanging down and her hands wet, her rubber coat all steeped, looked at the water dripping down. When the wind stirred the branches a little fire of drops sounded ”clop, clop!” Luce was silent, smiling, tranquilly luminous. A profound joy bathed them.
”Why does one love so much?” said Pierre.
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