The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
Saturday of the same week in which they had visited the lake of Tazenat, as they were returning to the hotel about ten o’clock, — the Marquis, Christiane, and Paul, — for they had left Gontran playing écarté with Aubrey and Riquier and Doctor Honorat in the great hall of the Casino, Bretigny exclaimed, as he watched the moon shining through the branches:
“How nice it would be to go and see the ruins of Tournoel on a night like this!”
At this thought alone, Christiane was filled with emotion, the moon and ruins having on her the same influence which they have on the souls of all women.
She pressed the Marquis’s hands. “Oh! father dear, would you mind going there?”
He hesitated, being exceedingly anxious to go to bed.
She insisted: “Just think a moment, how beautiful Tournoel is even by day! You said yourself that you had never seen a ruin so picturesque, with that great tower above the château. What must it be at night!”
At last he consented: “Well, then, let us go! But we’ll only look at it for five minutes, and then come back immediately. For my part, I want to be in bed at eleven o’clock.”
“Yes, we will come back immediately. It takes * only twenty minutes to get there.”
They set out all three, Christiane leaning on her father’s arm, and Paul walking by her side.
He spoke of his travels in Switzerland, in Italy, in Sicily. He told what his impressions were in the presence of certain phenomena, his enthusiasm on seeing the summit of Monte Rosa, when the sun, rising on the horizon of this row of icy peaks, this congealed world of eternal snows, cast on each of those lofty mountain-tops a dazzling white radiance, and illumined them, like the pale beacon-lights that must shine down upon the kingdoms of the dead. Then he spoke of his emotion on the edge of the monstrous crater of Etna, when he felt himself, an imperceptible mite, many meters above the cloud line, having nothing any longer around him save the sea and the sky, the blue sea beneath, the blue sky above, and leaning over this dreadful chasm of the earth, whose breath stifled him. He enlarged the objects which he described in order to excite the young woman; and, as she listened, she panted with visions she conjured up, by a flight of imagination, of those wonderful things that he had seen.
Suddenly, at a turn of the road, they discovered Tournoel. The ancient château, standing on a mountain peak, overlooked by its high and narrow tower, letting in the light through its chinks, and dismantled by time and by the wars of bygone days, traced, upon a sky of phantoms, its huge silhouette of a fantastic manor-house.
They stopped, all three surprised. The Marquis said, at length: “Indeed, it is impressive — like a dream of Gustave Doré realized. Let us sit down for five minutes.”
And he sat down on the sloping grass.
But Christiane, wild with enthusiasm, exclaimed: “Oh! father, let us go on farther! It is so beautiful! so beautiful! Let us walk to the foot, I beg of you!” This time the Marquis refused: “No, my darling, I have walked enough; I can’t go any farther. If you want to see it more closely, go on there with M. Bretigny. I will wait here for you.”
Paul asked: “Will you come, Madame?”
She hesitated, seized by two apprehensions, that of finding herself alone with him, and that of wounding an honest man by having the appearance of suspecting him.
The Marquis repeated: “Go on! Go on! I will wait for you.”
Then she took it for granted that her father would remain within reach of their voices, and she said resolutely: “Let us go on, Monsieur.”
But scarcely had she walked on for some minutes when she felt herself possessed by a poignant emotion, by a vague, mysterious fear — fear of the ruin, fear of the night, fear of this man. Suddenly she felt her legs trembling under her, just as she felt the other night by the lake of Tazenat; they refused to bear her any further, bent under her, appeared to be sinking into the soil, where her feet remained fixed when she strove to raise them.
A large chestnut-tree, planted close to the path they had been pursuing, sheltered one side of a meadow. Christiane, out of breath just as if she had been running, let herself sink against the trunk. And she stammered: “I shall remain here — we can see very well.”
Paul sat down beside her. She heard his heart beating with great emotional throbs. He said, after a brief silence: “Do you believe that we have had a previous life?”
She murmured, without having well understood his question: “I don’t know. I have never thought on it.”
He went on: “But I believe it — at moments — or rather I feel it. As being is composed of a soul and a body, which seem distinct, but are, without doubt, only one whole of the same nature, it must reappear when the elements which have originally formed it find themselves together for the second time. It is not the same individual assuredly, but it is the same man who comes back when a body like the previous form finds itself inhabited by a soul like that which animated him formerly. Well, I, tonight, feel sure, Madame, that I lived in that chateau, that I possessed it that I fought there, that I defended it. I recognized it — it was mine, I am certain of it!
And I am also certain that I loved there a woman who resembled you, and who, like you, bore the name of Christiane. I am so certain of it that I seem to see you still calling me from the top of that tower.
“Search your memory! recall it to your mind! There is a wood at the back, which descends into a deep valley. We have often walked there. You had light robes in the summer evenings, and I wore heavy armor, which clanked beneath the trees. You do not recollect? Look back, then, Christiane! Why, your name is as familiar to me as those we hear in childhood! Were we to inspect carefully all the stones of this fortress, we should find it there carved by my hand in days of yore! I declare to you that I recognize my dwelling-place, my country, just as I recognized you, you, the first time I saw you!”
He spoke in an exalted tone of conviction, poetically intoxicated by contact with this Woman, and by the night, by the moon, and by the ruin.
He abruptly flung himself on his knees before Christiane, and, in a trembling voice said: “Let me adore you still since I have found you again! Here have I been searching for you a long time!”
She wanted to rise and to go away, to join her father, but she had not the strength; she had not the courage, held back, paralyzed by a burning desire to listen to him still, to hear those ravishing words entering her heart. She felt herself carried away in a dream, in the dream always hoped for, so sweet, so poetic, full of rays of moonlight and lays of love.
He had seized her hands, and was kissing the ends of her finger-nails, murmuring:
“Christiane — Christiane — take me — kill me! I love you, Christiane!”
She felt him quivering, shuddering at her feet. And now he kissed her knees, while his chest heaved with sobs. She was afraid that he was going mad, and started up to make her escape. But he had risen more quickly, and seizing her in his arms he pressed his mouth against hers.
Then, without a cry, without revolt, without resistance, she let herself sink back on the grass, as if this caress, by breaking her will, had crushed her physical power to struggle. And he possessed her with as much ease as if he were culling a ripe fruit.
But scarcely had he loosened his clasp when she rose up distracted, and rushed away shuddering and icy-cold all of a sudden, like one who had just fallen into the water. He overtook her with a few strides, and caught her by the arm, whispering: “Christiane, Christiane! Be on your guard with your father!”
She walked on without answering, without turning round, going straight before her with stiff, jerky steps. He followed her now without venturing to speak to her.
As soon as the Marquis saw them, he rose up: “Hurry,” said he; “I was beginning to get cold. These things are very fine to look at, but bad for one undergoing thermal treatmentl.”
Christiane