“That’s enough! Why are you telling me all this?”
Her expression was perfectly innocent. “Because I like to.”
“But I don’t want to hear it.”
“I do, my dear, or I wouldn’t do it.”
He said nothing, but bit his lip. She had so naturally commanding a tone of voice that he felt like a servant. He clenched his fists. How like an animal he is when he’s angry, she thought, feeling both revulsion and fear. She sensed the danger in the atmosphere. But there was too much anger pent up in her, she couldn’t stop tormenting him. She began again.
“What strange ideas you have of life, my dear. Do you think Parisians live as you do in your hovels here, where one is slowly bored to death?”
His nostrils flared; he snorted. Then he said, “People don’t have to come here if they think it’s so boring.”
She felt the pang deep within her. So he knew about her exile too. She supposed the valet had spread the news. She felt weaker now that he knew, and smiled to veil her fear.
“My dear, there are reasons that you may not necessarily understand even if you’ve learned a little Latin. Perhaps you would have found it more useful to study better manners.”
He said nothing, but she heard him snorting quietly with rage. That aroused her even more and she felt something like a sensual desire to hurt him.
“And there you stand proud as a cockerel on the dunghill. Why do you snort like that? You’re acting like a lout!”
“We can’t all be princes or dukes or grooms.”
He was red in the face and had clenched his fists. She, however, poisoned by unhappiness, leaped to her feet.
“Be quiet! You forget who I am. I won’t be spoken to like that by a rustic oaf!”
He made a gesture.
“Be quiet! Or else …”
“Or else?”
He impudently faced her. And it occurred to her that she had no “or else” left. She couldn’t have anyone sent to the Bastille, or reduced to the ranks or dismissed, she couldn’t command or forbid anyone to do or not to do something. She was nothing, only a defenceless woman like hundreds of thousands in France, vulnerable to any insult, any injustice.
“Or else,” she said, fighting for breath, “I’ll have you thrown out by the servants.”
He shrugged his shoulders and turned. He was going to leave.
But she wouldn’t let him. He was not to be the one to throw her over! Another man rejecting her—least of all must it be this one. All her anger suddenly broke out, the accumulated bitterness of days, and she went for him as if she were drunk.
“Get out! Do you think I need you, you fool of a peasant, just because I felt sorry for you? Go away! Don’t soil my floors any more. Go where you like but not to Paris, and not to me. Get out! I hate you, your avarice, your simplicity, your stupid satisfaction—you disgust me. Get out!”
Then the unexpected happened. As she so suddenly flung her hatred at him, he had been holding his fists clenched in front of him like an invisible shield, but now they suddenly came down on her with the impact of falling stones. She screamed and stared at him. But he struck and struck in blind, vengeful rage, intoxicated by the awareness of his strength, he struck her, taking out on her all a peasant’s envy of the distinguished and clever aristocrat, all the hatred of a man despised for a woman, he hammered it all into her weak, flinching, convulsed body. She screamed at first, then whimpered quietly and fell silent. The humiliation hurt her more than the blows. She fell silent, felt his rage, and still preserved her silence.
Then he stopped, exhausted, and horrified by what he had done. A shudder ran through her body. He thought she was about to stand up, and he fled, afraid of her glance. But it was only the weeping that she had held back suddenly tearing convulsively through her body.
And so she broke her last toy herself.
The door had closed behind him long ago, and still she did not move. She lay there like an animal hunted to death, breathing quietly but stertorously, and quite without fear, without feelings, without any sense of pain or shame. She was full of an unspeakable weariness, she felt no wish for revenge, no indignation, just weariness, an unspeakable weariness as if all her blood had flowed out of her together with her tears and only her lifeless body lay here, held down by its own weight. She did not try to stand up, she didn’t know what to do with herself after such an experience.
The evening slowly entered the room, and she did not feel it. For evening comes quietly. It does not look boldly through the window like mid-day, it seeps from the walls like dark water, raises the ceiling into a void, brings everything gently floating down into its soundless torrent. When she looked up, there was darkness around her and silence, except for the sound of the little clock mincing along into infinity somewhere. The curtains fell in dark folds as if some fearful monster were hiding behind them, the doors seemed to have sunk into the wall in some way, making the room look sealed and black around her, like a nailed-up coffin. There was no way in or out any more, it was all boundless yet barred, everything seemed to weigh down, compressing the air so that she could gasp, not breathe.
At the far end of the room shone a path into the unknown: the tall mirror there gleamed faintly in the dark like the nocturnal surface of a marshy pool, and now, as she rose, something white swirled out of it. She got to her feet, went closer, it surged from the mirror like smoke, a ghostly creature: she herself, coming closer and quickly withdrawing again.
She felt dread. Something in her cried out for light, but she did not want to call anyone. She struck the tinder herself, and then one by one lit the candles in the dully glowing bronze candelabrum standing on its marble console. The flames flickered, quivering as they felt their way into the dark, like someone overheated stepping into a cool bath; they retreated, came forward again, and at last a trembling, circular cloud of light rose above the candelabrum and hovered there, casting more and more circles of light on the ceiling. High above, where delicate amoretti with wings of cloud usually rocked in the blue sky, grey, misty shadows now lay, with the soft lightning of the quivering candle-flames flashing fitfully through them. The objects all around seemed to have been roused from sleep; they stood there motionless, with shadows creeping high behind them as if animals had been crouching there, giving them a fearful look.
However, the mirror enticed and allured her. Something was always moving in it when she looked. Otherwise, all around her was silent and hostile, the objects were sleepy, human beings rejected her. She could ask no questions, couldn’t complain to anyone, but there was something in the mirror that gave an answer, did not remain indifferent, moved and looked significantly at her. But what should she ask it? She had seldom asked if she was beautiful in Paris. The bright eyes of the men who desired her had been her mirror. She knew she was beautiful from her triumphs, her passionate nights, from the amazement of the common people when she drove to Versailles in her carriage. She had believed them even when they lied, for confidence in her own power was the secret of her strength. But now, what was she now that she had been humbled?
She looked anxiously into the flickering light in the glass, as if her fate stood in the mirror looking back at her. She started in alarm: was that really herself? Her cheeks looked hollow and dull, a bitter set to her mouth mocked her, her eyes lay deep in their sockets and looked out in fear as if searching for help. She shook herself. This was just a nightmare. And she smiled at the mirror. But the smile was returned frostily, scornfully. She felt her body: no, the mirror did not lie, she had grown thin, thin as a child, and the rings hung loose on her fingers. She felt the blood flow more coldly in her veins. She was full of dread. Was everything over, youth as well? A furious desire came over her to mock herself, celebrated as she was, the mistress of France, and as if in a dream she spoke the lines that Voltaire had written when dedicating his play to her, the lines that her flatterers liked to repeat:
Vous qui possedez la beauté
Sans être vaine e
t coquette
Et l’extrème vivacité
Sans être jamais indiscrète,
Vous à qui donnèrent les Dieux
Tant des lumières naturelles
Un esprit juste, gracieux,
Solide dans le sérieux
Et charmant dans les bagatelles.*
Every word now seemed to express derision, and she stared and stared into the mirror to see if the woman there was not mocking her too.
She raised the candelabrum to get a better view of herself. And the closer she held it the more she seemed to age. Every minute she spent looking into the mirror seemed to put years on her life, she saw herself grow paler and paler, becoming more wan, sicklier, older all the time, she felt herself aging, her whole life seemed to be passing away. She trembled. She saw her fate horribly revealed in the mirror, the entire story of her decline, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it, but stared and stared at the white, distorted mask of the old woman who was herself.
Then, suddenly, the candles all flickered at once as if in alarm, the flames turned blue and tried to fly up from their wicks. A dark figure stood in the mirror, its hand reaching out to her.
She uttered a piercing scream, and in self-defence flung the bronze candelabrum at the mirror. A thousand sparks sprang from the glass. The candles fell to the floor and went out. There was darkness around her and in her as she collapsed unconscious. She had seen her fate.
The courier who had entered the room with news from Paris, and whose sudden appearance in the mirror-frame had so alarmed madame de Prie, saw only the shimmering of the broken shards of glass, and heard the sound of a fall in the darkness. He ran to fetch the servants. They found madame de Prie lying motionless on the floor among the sparkling glass splinters and the extinguished candles, her eyes closed. Only her bluish lips trembled slightly, showing a sign of life. They carried her to her bed, and a servant set out to ride to Amfreville and fetch the doctor.
But the sick woman soon came round, and with difficulty brought herself back to reality amidst the frightened faces. She did not know exactly how she had come here, but she controlled her fear and weariness in front of the others, kept her ever-ready smile on her bloodless lips, although her face had now frozen to a mask, and asked in a voice that endeavoured to be carefree, even cheerful, what had happened to her. In alarm, and evasively, the servants told her. She did not reply, but smiled and reached for the letter.
However, it was difficult for her to keep that smile on her face. Her friend wrote to say that he had succeeded in speaking to the King at last. The King was still extremely angry with her, because she had wrecked the country’s finances and roused the people against her, but there was some hope of having her recalled to Paris in two or three years’ time. The letter shook in her hands. Was she to live away from Paris for two years without people around her, without power? She was not strong enough to bear such solitude. It was her death sentence. She knew that she couldn’t breathe without happiness, without power, without youth, without love; after ruling France, she couldn’t live here like a peasant woman.
And all of a sudden she understood the figure in the mirror that had reached out for her, and the extinguishing of the flames: she must put an end to it before she grew really old, wholly ugly and wholly unhappy. She refused to see the doctor, who had now arrived; only the King could have helped her. And as he would not, she must help herself. The thought no longer hurt her. She had died long ago, on the day when the officer stood in her room and took everything from her that kept her alive: the air of Paris, the only place where she could breathe; the power that was her plaything; the admiration and triumph to which she owed her strength. The woman who roamed these empty rooms, lonely, bored, and humiliated, was no longer madame de Prie, was an aging, unhappy, ugly creature whom she must kill so that it would not dishonour the name that had once shone brightly over France.
Now that the exiled woman had decided to put an end to it herself, her sense of frozen heaviness, her urgent disquiet had left her. She had a purpose again, an occupation, something that kept her going, excited her and intrigued her with the various possibilities it offered. For she would not die here like an animal breathing its last in a corner; she wanted an aura of the mysterious and mystical to hover around her death. She would come to a heroic, legendary end like the queens of antiquity. Her life had burned bright, and so must her death; it must arouse the somnolent admiration of the multitude once again. No one in Paris was to guess that she died here in torment, choked by loneliness and disfavour, burnt up by her unsatisfied greed for power; she would deceive them all by staging her death as a drama. Deception, the delight of her life, opened up her heart again. She would end it all in a blazing fire of merriment, as if at random, she wouldn’t die squirming like a discarded wax taper coiling on the ground, trodden out in pity. She would go down into the abyss dancing.
Next day a number of notes flew away from her desk: affectionate, appealing, seductive, imperious, promising and softly perfumed lines. She scattered her invitations around Paris and the provinces, she held out the prospect of their favourite occupations to everyone, offered some hunting, others gaming, others again masked balls. She had actors, singers and dancers hired by her agents in Paris, she ordered expensive costumes, announced the founding of a second court in France, with all the refinements and pleasures of Versailles. She enticed and invited strangers and acquaintances, the distinguished and the less distinguished, but she must have people here, a great many people, an audience for the comedy of happiness and satisfaction that she was going to stage before the end came.
And soon a new life began in Courbépine. Parisian society, always craving pleasure, sought out this novelty. In addition, its members all felt a secret, slightly contemptuous curiosity to see how the former mistress of France, now toppled, took her exile. One festivity followed another. Carriages came emblazoned with noble coats of arms, large country coaches arrived crammed with high-spirited passengers, army officers came on horseback—more visitors flooded in every day, and with them an army of hangers-on and servants. Many had brought pastoral costumes with them, as if for a rustic game, others came in great pomp and ceremony. The little village was like a military camp.
And the château awoke, its once unlighted windows shining proudly, for it was enlivened by talking and laughter, games and music. People walked up and down, couples whispered in corners where only grey silence had lurked. Women’s dresses glowed in bright hues in the shade of the shrubberies, the cheerfully plangent tunes of risqué songs were plucked on mandolins far into the night. Servants hurried along the corridors, the windows were framed by flowers, coloured lights sparkled among the bushes. They lived out the carefree life of Versailles, the light charm of heedlessness. The absence of the real court did take a little of the bloom off it all, but increased the exuberance that encouraged the guests to dance, free from all constraints of etiquette.
At the centre of this whirlwind of activity, madame de Prie felt her sluggish blood begin to circulate feverishly again. She was one of those women, and they are not rare, who are shaped entirely by other people’s attitudes. She was beautiful when she was desired, witty in clever company, proud when she was flattered, in love when she was loved. The more that was expected of her, the more she gave. But in solitude, where no one saw her, spoke to her, heard her or wanted anything of her, she had become ugly, dull-witted, helpless, unhappy. She could be lively only in the midst of life; in isolation she dwindled to a shadow. And now that the reflected light of her earlier life shone around her, all her merriment and her carefree charm sparkled in the air again, she was witty once more, agreeable, she wove her enchantments, made conversation, caught fire from the glances that lingered on her. She forgot that she meant to deceive these people with her cheerfulness, and was in genuine high spirits, she took every smile as a piece of good fortune, every word as true, plunged feverishly into enjoying the company she had been deprived of so long, as if falling into the arms
of a lover.
She made the festivities wilder and wilder, she summoned more and more guests, enticing them to Courbépine. And more and more came. For at the time, after the failure of John Law’s financial system, the land was impoverished, but she herself was rich, and she was casting the millions she had extorted during her time of power to the wind. Money was thrown down on the gaming tables, went up in smoke in expensive firework displays, was squandered on exotic fancies, but she threw it away more and more wildly, like a woman desperate. The guests were amazed, surprised by her lavish expenditure and the magnificence of the festivities; no one knew in whose honour they were really given. And in all the wild merriment, she herself almost forgot.
The festivities continued unabated for the whole month of August. September came, the trees wore colourful fruits in their hair, and the evening clouds were shot with gold. The guests were fewer now; time was pressing.
But amidst the pleasures, madame de Prie had almost forgotten her purpose. Wishing to deceive others with such magnificent frenzies, she deceived herself; her carefree mood matched this imitation of her former life so well that she took it for real, and even believed in her power, her beauty, her joie de vivre.
To be sure, one thing was different, and that hurt. People were all kinder to her now that she was of no importance, they were warmer and yet cooler. The women no longer envied her, did not inflict malicious little pinpricks, the men did not flock around her. They all laughed with her, treated her as a good friend, but they told no more lies about love, they did not beg, they did not flatter, they did not make an enemy of her, and that was what made her feel that she was quite powerless. A life without envy, hatred and lies was not a life worth living. She realised, with horror, that in fact she had already been forgotten; the social whirl was as wild as ever, but she was not at its centre now. The men laughed with other women, whose freshness and youth they saw for the first time; the moment had come to remind the world of herself again before she grew old and a stranger to them all.