“What is wrong, my Paquita?”
“My friend,” she said, “take me away, this very night! Cast me somewhere where they can’t say when they see me: There is Paquita! where no one replies: Here is a girl with a golden gaze, who has long hair. In that place I will give you pleasures as long as you want them from me. Then, when you don’t love me anymore, you can leave me, I won’t complain, I won’t say anything; and your abandoning me won’t have to make you feel any remorse, since one day spent beside you, one single day during which I can look at you, will have been worth an entire life to me. But if I stay here, I am lost.”
“I cannot leave Paris, my little one,” Henri replied. “I am not my own master, I am tied by oath to the fate of many people who belong to me as I belong to them. But I can make a retreat for you in Paris, where no human power can reach.”
“No,” she said, “you forget feminine power.”
Never had a phrase uttered by a human voice expressed terror more completely.
“What could reach you, then, if I place myself between you and the world?”
“Poison!” she said. “Already Doña Concha suspects you. And,” she continued as tears streamed forth gleaming down her cheeks, “it is very easy to see that I am not the same anymore. Well, if you abandon me to the fury of the monster who will devour me, may your holy will be done! But come, summon all the sensual delights of life to flourish in our love. In any case, I will beg, I will cry, I will shout, I will defend myself, I might even save myself.”
“Who will you implore, then?” he said.
“Silence!” Paquita went on. “If I obtain my pardon, it might be because of my discretion.”
“Give me my dress,” Henri said insidiously.
“No, no,” she replied spiritedly, “stay what you are, one of those angels I have been taught to hate, in whom I saw only monsters, whereas you are the handsomest thing under heaven,” she said, caressing Henri’s hair. “Don’t you know what an idiot I am? I haven’t learned anything. Since I was twelve years old, I’ve been shut up, without seeing anyone. I don’t know how to read or write, I speak nothing but English and Spanish.”
“How is it, then, that you receive letters from London?”
“My letters! Look, here they are!” she said, taking some papers out of a tall Japanese vase.
She held out to de Marsay some letters where the young man saw with surprise strange figures like those in a rebus, drawn with blood, which expressed phrases full of passion.
“But,” he cried out, admiring these hieroglyphs created by a cunning jealousy, “are you under the power of an infernal genius?”
“Infernal,” she repeated.
“But then how could you have gotten away …”
“Ha!” she said, “my doom stems from that. I placed Doña Concha between fear of immediate death and an anger to come. I had the curiosity of a demon, I wanted to break this bronze circle that had been drawn between the world and me, I wanted to see what young men are like, for the only men I know are the Marquis and Christemio. Our coachman and the valet who accompanies us are old men.…”
“But, you weren’t always locked up, were you? Your health …”
“Ha!” she continued, “we took walks, but only at night and in the countryside, by the Seine, far from other people.”
“Aren’t you proud of being so loved?”
“No,” she said, “not any more! This hidden life, although full, is nothing but darkness compared with the light.”
“What do you call ‘light’?”
“You, my handsome Adolphe! You, for whom I would give my life. All the passionate things that I’ve been told and that I’ve inspired, I feel them all for you! Sometimes I understood nothing about existence, but now I know how we love. Till now I was loved, but I didn’t love in return. I would leave everything for you—take me away! If you like, take me like a toy, but let me stay near you until you break me.”
“You won’t have any regrets?”
“Not one!” she said, letting him read her eyes, whose golden tint remained pure and clear.
“Am I her favorite?” Henri said to himself. Though he glimpsed the truth, he found himself in the position of forgiving the offense on account of so naïve a love. “I will see,” he thought.
If Paquita didn’t owe him any account of the past, the slightest memory became a crime to him. He had that regrettable strength of keeping his thoughts to himself, judging his mistress, studying her, while at the same time abandoning himself to the most stirring pleasures that a Peri fallen from paradise could ever have contrived for her beloved. Paquita seemed to have been created expressly by nature for love. From last night to this, her woman’s genius had made the most rapid progress. What this young man’s power was, and whatever his carefree attitude towards pleasure, despite his satiety the night before, he found in the Girl with the Golden Eyes that whole harem that a loving woman knows how to create, which a man never turns from. Paquita responded to the passion that all truly great men feel for the infinite, a mysterious passion so dramatically expressed in Faust, so poetically conveyed in Manfred, the one that drove Don Juan to sound the hearts of women, hoping to find there that limitless thought that so many ghost hunters go in search of, that learned men think they glimpse in science, and that mystics find in God alone. The hope that he had finally found the ideal Being with whom the struggle could be constant and tireless delighted de Marsay who, for the first time in a long time, opened up his heart to her. His nerves relaxed, his coldness melted in the atmosphere of this burning soul, his cold doctrines fled, and happiness colored his existence, like this white and pink boudoir. Sensing the stimulus of a superior voluptuousness, he was led beyond the limits within which he had till then enclosed his passion. He did not want to be surpassed by this girl who had been shaped to the needs of his soul in advance by a love that was in a sense artificial, so in that vanity of his that drives a man to be a conqueror in everything, he found the strength to dominate this girl; but also, hurled beyond that line where the soul is master of itself, he lost himself in that delicious limbo that common men so stupidly call imaginary spaces. He was tender, sweet, and communicative. He drove Paquita almost wild.
“Why shouldn’t we go to Sorrento, to Nice, to Chiavari, to spend our lives this way? Would you like that?” he said to Paquita in a penetrating voice.
“Do you ever need to say ‘Would you like that’ to me?” she cried. “Do I have a will of my own? I am something outside of you only so that I can be a pleasure for you. If you want to choose a retreat worthy of us, Asia is the only country where love can spread its wings.…”
“You are right,” Henri said. “Let’s go to the Indies, where Spring is eternal, where the earth is always full of flowers, where man can rule like a sovereign, without bumbling about as in these stupid countries where they want to realize the insipid pipe dreams of equality. Let’s go to the country where you can live in the midst of a population of slaves, where the sun always illuminates a palace that stays white, where the air is impregnated with perfumes, where birds sing of love, and where you die when you can no longer love.…”
“And where you die together!” said Paquita. “But let’s not leave tomorrow, let’s leave right away, let’s bring Christemio with us.”
“Pleasure is the most beautiful climax of life. Let’s go to Asia, but, child, in order to leave, you need a lot of gold, and to have gold, one has to put one’s affairs in order.”
She didn’t understand any of this.
“There’s gold up to there, here!” she said, raising her hand.
“But it’s not mine.”
“What does that matter?” she said, “if we need it, let’s take it.”
“It doesn’t belong to you.”
“Belong!” she repeated. “Haven’t you possessed me? When we possess each other, it belongs to us.”
He began to laugh.
“Poor innocent! You know nothing of the things of this worl
d.”
“No, but here is what I know,” she cried out, pulling Henri onto her.
At the very instant when de Marsay was forgetting everything, and was consolidating his desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received at the height of his joy a dagger thrust that went right through his heart, mortified for the first time. Paquita, who had pushed him vigorously above her to contemplate him, cried out, “Oh! Mariquita!”
“Mariquita!” the young man cried out, turning red. “Now I know everything I didn’t want to believe was true!”
He leaped to the wardrobe where the long dagger was kept. Fortunately for her and for him, the wardrobe was locked. His rage increased at this obstacle; but he recovered his calmness, went to get his cravat, and came towards her in such a fiercely significant way that, without knowing what crime she was guilty of, Paquita nonetheless understood that her death was in the offing. So she leaped in one single bound to the end of the room to avoid the fatal knot that de Marsay wanted to loop around her neck. There was a fight. On both sides suppleness, agility, vigor were equal. To end the struggle, Paquita threw a cushion between her lover’s legs that made him fall; she took advantage of the respite this advantage left her to press down the spring that was attached to a warning bell. The mulatto arrived right away. In the blink of an eye Christemio leaped onto de Marsay, pinned him to the ground, put his foot on his chest, the heel turned towards his throat. De Marsay understood that if he fought he would be instantly crushed at one signal from Paquita.
“Why did you want to kill me, my love?” she asked him.
De Marsay didn’t reply.
“How have I displeased you?” she asked him. “Speak, let us explain ourselves.”
Henri kept the phlegmatic attitude of the strong man who feels he has been conquered; cold countenance, silent, thoroughly English, which proclaimed his awareness of his dignity through a temporary resignation. Moreover he had already thought, despite his fit of rage, that it wasn’t very prudent to endanger his reputation with the law by killing this girl without warning and without having prepared the murder in a way that would guarantee his impunity.
“My beloved,” Paquita went on, “speak to me; don’t leave me without a loving farewell! I don’t want to keep in my heart the terror you’ve just set there. Why won’t you speak?” she said, stamping her foot in anger.
In response de Marsay fixed her with a look that so obviously meant You will die that Paquita rushed over to him.
“You want to kill me, then? If my death can make you happy, kill me!”
She made a sign to Christemio, who lifted his foot from on top of the young man and moved away without letting any judgment, good or bad, of Paquita be seen on his face.
“That is a man!” de Marsay said, pointing darkly at the mulatto. “There is no devotion like one that obeys friendship without judging it. You have a true friend in this man.”
“I will give him to you if you want,” she replied; “he will serve you with the same devotion he has for me if I tell him to.”
She waited for a word in reply, and continued in tones full of tenderness: “Adolphe, give me a kind word. It will soon be day.”
Henri didn’t answer. This young man had one sad quality, for anything that resembles strength is regarded as a great thing, and men tend to deify excess. Henri didn’t know how to forgive. Flexibility, which is certainly one of the blessings of the soul, was meaningless to him. The ferocity of the Northmen, with which English blood is quite strongly tainted, had been transmitted to him by his father. He was unwavering in both his good and bad emotions. Paquita’s exclamation was all the more horrible for him since he had been dethroned from the sweetest triumph that had ever swollen his male vanity. Hope, love, all emotions had been exalted in him, everything had blazed in his heart and in his intelligence; then these flames, lit to illuminate his life, had been blown out by a cold wind. Paquita, stupefied, in her suffering had only the strength to give the signal for departure.
“This is useless,” she said, throwing aside the blindfold. “If he no longer loves me, if he hates me, it is all over.”
She waited for a look that didn’t come, and fell down, half-dead. The mulatto looked at Henri with such a horrifyingly significant gaze that he made this young man tremble for the first time in his life—a man whom everyone acknowledged had rare courage. “If you don’t love her, if you have caused her the slightest suffering, I will kill you.” That was the meaning of this swift look. De Marsay was led with almost servile care along a hallway lit by slits in the wall, at the end of which he went out through a secret door to a hidden stairway that led to the garden of the San-Réal mansion. The mulatto made him walk carefully along a lane of linden trees that ended at a little gate opening onto a street that was deserted at that hour. De Marsay made note of everything. The carriage was waiting; this time the mulatto didn’t accompany him; and, when Henri put his head out of the door to look again at the garden and the mansion, he encountered the white eyes of Christemio, with whom he exchanged a look. On both sides it was a provocation, a challenge, the announcement of a war of savages, a duel where ordinary rules didn’t apply, where treason and perfidy were the methods permitted. Christemio knew that Henri had vowed Paquita’s death. Henri knew that Christemio wanted to kill him before he could kill Paquita. Both understood each other wonderfully.
“The adventure is getting interestingly complicated,” Henri said to himself.
“Where does Monsieur want to go?” the coachman asked him.
De Marsay had himself driven to Paul de Manerville’s house.
For more than a week Henri was absent from his house, without anyone knowing either what he was up to during this time, or where he was living. This withdrawal saved him from the mulatto’s fury, and caused the ruin of the poor creature who had placed all her hope in the one she loved as no other creature has loved on this Earth. On the last day of this week, around eleven at night, Henri came in a carriage to the little gate in the garden of the San-Réal mansion. Three men accompanied him. The coachman was obviously one of his friends, for he stood up straight in his seat, like a man who, like an attentive sentinel, was listening for the slightest noise. One of the other three stood outside the gate, in the street; the second stayed standing in the garden, leaning against the wall; the last one, who was holding a bunch of keys, accompanied de Marsay.
“Henri,” his companion said to him, “we are betrayed.”
“By whom, my good Ferragus?”
“They are not all sleeping,” the leader of the Devourers replied: “Someone in the house must not have eaten or drunk. Look at that light.”
“We have the map of the house; where is it coming from?”
“I don’t need the map to know,” Ferragus replied; “it comes from the Marquise’s room.”
“Ah!” de Marsay cried. “She must have arrived from London today. This woman wants to catch me in my revenge! But, if she has anticipated me, my dear Gratien, we will hand her over to justice.”
“Listen, then! The thing is done,” Ferragus said to Henri.
The two friends listened, and heard weak cries that would have softened the heart of tigers.
“Your Marquise didn’t think the sounds would come out of the chimney,” the chief of the Devourers laughed, like a critic delighted at discovering a fault in a fine work.
“We alone, only we can foresee everything,” Henri said. “Wait for me, I want to go see what’s happening up there, so I can find out how their household quarrels are conducted. Good Lord, I think she’s having her cooked over a slow fire.”
De Marsay nimbly climbed the staircase he knew and discovered the path to the boudoir. When he had opened the door, he had the involuntary shiver that the sight of bloodshed causes even the most determined man. The spectacle that presented itself to his eyes had for him more than one cause for surprise. The Marquise was a woman: She had calculated her revenge with that perfection of perfidy that is the sign of weak anima
ls. She had hidden her anger to assure herself of the crime before executing it.
“Too late, my beloved!” the dying Paquita said, her pale eyes turned towards de Marsay.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes was expiring drowned in blood. All the lit torches, a delicate perfume that could be smelt, a certain disorder where the eye of a fortunate man would recognize the mad whims common to all passions, showed that the Marquise had expertly questioned the guilty one. This white room, where blood stood out so clearly, betrayed a long struggle. The bloody prints of Paquita’s hands stained the cushions. Everywhere she had clung to life, everywhere she had defended herself, and everywhere she had been struck. Whole strips of the cinnamon-colored hangings had been torn out by her bloody hands, which must have struggled for a long time. Paquita must have tried to climb up to the ceiling. Her bare feet had left prints along the back of the divan, on which she had no doubt climbed. Her body, torn to shreds by her executioner’s dagger, showed how single-mindedly she had fought for a life that Henri had made so dear to her. She was lying on the ground, and, as she was dying, she had bit the muscles of the instep of Mme de San-Réal, who held in her hand a dagger soaked in blood. The Marquise’s hair was torn out; she was covered with bites, many of which were bleeding; and her torn dress showed her half naked, her breasts scratched. She looked sublime. Her greedy, furious head gave off the smell of blood. Her gasping mouth remained half-open, and her nostrils weren’t wide enough for her gasps. Certain animals, when enraged, leap on their enemy, kill it, and, calm in their victory, seem to have forgotten everything. There are others who circle around their victim, who guard it, afraid someone might come and take it away, and who, like Homer’s Achilles, circle around Troy nine times, dragging their enemy by the feet. That is how the Marquise was. She didn’t see Henri. First of all, she was too aware of being alone to fear witnesses; plus, she was too drunk with hot blood, too animated by the struggle, too exalted to see all Paris, if the city had formed a circle around her. She wouldn’t have felt lightning. She hadn’t even heard Paquita’s last sigh, and thought she could still be heard by the dead girl.