BLUE
La demoiselle bleu aux bords frais de la source
Th. Gautier.
She was a princess. Sister of the queen, she lived together with her and shared her royal honors. But her fancy counselled pleasures less splendid, and she gladly paid occasional visits to one of her maids of honor whose husband served in the royal body guard, and was an excellent gentleman, young, fair, clever, amiable.
In her own country the princess had been married to a prince who might have become king, had several generations disappeared in some catastrophe. They never loved each other. However, the princess, sometimes gay and always proud, was known as a woman with a heart of steel. She received much homage but accepted little. Either she would assume a mocking attitude or take an icy tone. She loved only to dress, to play, to reign. What pleased her at the house of the royal guardsman was that her smile was there equivalent to law; besides, she was always winning in vingt-et-un; then, too, her dresses and her jewels eclipsed all other robes and adornments. The guardsman had never exhibited any other sentiment except that of profound respect.
Being a blond she liked blue clothes, blue flowers, blue sapphires—as blue as her own eyes, so that she finally came to be called the Blue Princess. This appellation which seemed to come out of some fairy tale, pleased her greatly. One day as she was listening to the melancholy stories of her maid of honor, she felt a kind of languor in her body and mind, and said: “My soul is a blue bird.” These words repeated several times, brought back her serene mood—so beautiful they were. Then she looked about her and said:
“Is your husband absent, my dear? I do not think he came out to greet me.”
“You noticed my husband’s absence today, but isn’t he always absent?”
“What do you mean?”
“Isn’t he always absent-minded?”
“My poor friend, that means he is neglecting you.”
“He does not love me any more.”
“Really? A fine state of affairs. But that’s impossible. Moreover, I won’t allow it. I do not want to see my friend unhappy. I am going to order him.”
“Ah! Do you think, Madame, a heart can obey orders?”
“Certainly. Was I, a princess, consulted about my marriage? I was told to love my husband, and I did.”
“How long?”
“I might have loved him always had he wanted it. He did not.”
“There, you see.”
“He did not or perhaps could not. Marriage brought me no pleasure whatever; he reproached me with indifference and I cried. Thenceforth we never met without witnesses. In the beginning I felt deeply humiliated, but gradually I learned to appreciate the calm of solitary nights. I lead the life of a virgin with great pleasure. But since my sad experiences, the plays, the dramas, the comedies of love seem to me more inexplicable than ever.... Does the marriage ceremony really interest you?”
The maid of honor looked at her mistress with respectful and sad irony.
Then she said:
“I fear my husband hides from me some love or infatuation.”
“Infatuation?” said the princess. “A pretty word. Infatuation is nothing serious, is it?”
“Serious? No, infatuation passes while love endures. But I do not know. Perhaps it is real love that alienates him from me. I fear this greatly.”
“I scarcely understand anything of this,” said the princess, “but I would like to see you as happy as I am myself. For me, to observe the passing show of life is quite sufficient. For you—since you need love—I shall try to do something to help you, I repeat. The word of a princess will touch his heart.... Oh! my good friend, it is I, perhaps, whom he adores?”
“Perhaps, alas!”
“Why ‘alas!’ If that is so, you are saved.”
At that moment the guardsman came in and went to greet the princess.
“Sir,” she said to him, “I shall receive you at the palace, in private audience, at six o’clock.”
She rose and left.
Everybody followed the example of the princess, and the husband and wife, very excited, remained face to face.
“Madame,” said the husband, “so you have angered the princess? It is to you then that I owe this affront?”
“Affront? Your heart’s desire wants to see you in private and you complain?”
At first he did not know what to answer, for this was the first time his wife made allusion to the feelings he thought securely hidden in his heart.
“My heart’s desire,” he said brutally, “is my career, and you have doubtless ruined it through your chatter.”
“I am not a chatter-box.”
“You are stupid.”
“Ah! let me be, you do not deserve to be loved.”
The woman ran away overcome with despondent anger. Yet she hoped despite her reason that the intervention of the princess would be crowned with success. She passed the rest of the day in tears.
The guardsman worshipped the princess in secret and without hope. Timid and violent, he reserved his timidity for his idol, his violence for his wife. But every brutal act left him in deep shame and every act of shyness caused him untold suffering. He was almost always unhappy. Thus, he began to seek in ambition a remedy for his ills. He had spent all that afternoon in most humiliating errands for the king’s mistress who was troubled by the conduct of a lover she had recently dismissed. In exchange for a note of three lines the guard was to receive a warrant for the rank of captain. The note was in his pocket-book now and he had to deliver it to the king’s favorite lady at six o’clock exactly.
Love, curiosity, disquietude had the better of ambition. Dressed in his finest, and well perfumed, he ran to the audience, saying to himself: “Perhaps this is a rendez-vous?”
The princess, instead of letting him wait for her, was herself waiting, and not without impatience. She was prettier now, being paler, and her eyes were shining. Her face had the sweetness of white lilac hiding in the foliage, but the foliage was fair: her hair intentionally disarranged with great art let a few curls fall casually to her shoulders.
“Come here,” she said dolefully, “come here. Sit down near me. I am ill and can speak only in a whisper. And besides, it is a friend of your wife that is receiving you and not a princess. Well then: I noticed that you do not love Elizabeth any more and this grieves me. Is it really true that you no longer love her?”
“Alas!”
“And the consciousness of your duty, of your honor?”
“My honor?”
“Yes, you swore conjugal fidelity as well as eternal affection.”
“She believed it.... Perhaps I believed it myself....”
“It is wrong to forsake her, to torment her.... She is crying at this very moment, I am sure....”
“I am not severe with her.”
“Very well, then. Will you promise not to cause her any more suffering?”
“I never did that intentionally.”
“Good, but promise me more, promise me....”
She seemed crushed, and her voice became so weak that to hear her the guard had to bend his head so near her as almost to touch her hair. Although he had been trained in all the dissimulation of a courtier, he suffered frightfully. To love the princess from a distance seemed to him sweet pain in comparison with the racking torture his desire caused him at that moment. With any other woman he would either fall on his knees or flee; with the princess he had to stay still, keep silent and maintain an attitude of a soldier receiving orders.
“Promise me,” went on the princess, “to be kind to her, to be very kind, to love her....”
The guardsman was mute.
“Do you promise?”
He was still silent.
“That is impossible, then? Is it all over between you! Can you reproach her with anything serious?”
“I have nothing to reproach her with. I do not love her any longer, that is all.”
“At least, do not let her notice it!”
“I had hoped that she never would notice it.”
“Then it is possible to stop loving a woman without her noticing it?”
“That is very hard if one has not the necessary ability. More easy it is, alas! to love a woman without her noticing it.”
“Oh! Do you think so?”
“I am quite sure of it. She whom I love never suspected it and never shall.”
“Sir guardsman,” said the princess, “Sir soldier, you are a child. She whom you love is aware of it....”
“Alas!” he said, incredulous.
“... and she loves you,” she added extending both her hands to him.
Still hesitating and breathlessly agitated, he flung himself into the proferred hands.
“Kiss them, child,” said the princess, “kiss me, you who love me, you who desired me so long in the secrecy of your heart. Embrace your blue princess, embrace your love.”
Next morning, the chamber-maid said to her mistress:
“Oh! Madame has a blue spot on her breast.”
“Nothing surprising. This is a birthmark. But how strange! Now here, now there. It appears, it disappears. On the breast, on the heart....”
“Maybe that is why Madame is called the blue princess?” she continued innocently.
“Go and see whether my maid of honor is here.”
Remaining alone for a moment, the princess looked with emotion at the blue mark.
“God! How happy I am!” she thought, “and how clever! How stupid my friend! To share love confidence with any one! Poor Ariane, without you I might never have suspected anything. His glances which I mistook for a sign of warm and respectful attachment, were glances of love!... But here she is....”
The maid of honor came in agitated.
“Oh, princess! I had to wait for him till four o’clock in the morning! I am mad! All is lost!”
“There, now! Won’t you ever be reasonable? On the contrary, everything is settled.”
“Oh! Thank you!”
“Listen to me. I made him confess. It was difficult and took a long time. At last I know the truth. Mere infatuation. The person who turned your husband’s head is an actress of no importance. It is the type one picks up, discards, picks up again. She passed through many hands already, those of my husband, among others.... You see, we are of the same family.... Now, the actress is rarely free during the day. Her freedom begins at the time when the freedom of the other women ends—at midnight. I therefore decided that your husband be on guard at my palace every day from midnight to four in the morning.... Naturally, he will receive his compensation, for the work is very exhausting.... His future is assured, and his happiness.... Is he ambitious? Yes. Very well. Would a promotion please him? A decoration? First of all I attach him to my person. As soon as he is promoted to higher rank, in six months, in three months, he shall become my aide-de-camp, my secretary. He shall leave me only to court you, happy spouse. We will save him for both of us.”
“How kind you are!”
“Am I?”
“You are kindness itself.”
“You are beautiful and that is worth more.”
“Beautiful! Who is more beautiful than you?”
“Flatterer! I am thirty years old and you are twenty-five.... Alas! I have renounced everything. Will you at least love me?”
“I always did love you. I will adore you. My life belongs to you. I will be devoted to you until death, and my husband also, I hope.”
“I hope so too, I saved him perhaps from a grave danger, from unhappy love, for what joy could he find in the adventure he had entered into?”
“When he comes to himself he will be very grateful to you.... Last night, that is, this morning, he was very agitated. When he returned I thought him intoxicated. He looked at me with wandering eyes. As soon as he entered his room he locked the door, then I heard him cry: ‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’”
“He said nothing more?”
“I think not. He is not very talkative.”
“An excellent trait. What would you say of a husband who should be making humiliating confessions before you?... There are such.... Mine, for example....”
“You were very unhappy!”
“Yes and no. I think no more about it. The present fills my heart with joy.... To give happiness to those whom you love and who love you—is there anything like it in the world?”
“You are adorable.”
“And adored.”
“Oh, yes!”
“Dearest friend!”
She allowed her maid of honor to take her hand and cover it with kisses.
“Kisses superimposed,” she thought, “but the last do not efface the first. Your lips, poor couple, still meet with passion but on my skin.... Very strange....”
“Ah!” she began aloud, “now that you are certain of regaining your happiness sooner or later, I hope you will use discretion. From his confidential talk I gather that your husband is a little weary of conjugal joys. Men dislike to have women make advances to them....”
“Oh! between husband and wife! However, I shall be prudent, kind friend....”
“More kind than you think! For, after all, your husband is quite seductive. He is young, younger than I am, beautiful, warm-hearted, passionate....”
“He was.”
“He still is, rest assured, and it will not take you long to perceive it. If I had not renounced everything, if I were not a princess.... In your place I would be jealous.”
“Heavens! I know your heart too well.”
“Then you will return home full of hope? Still a little sad?”
“A little.”
“But the clouds are scattering, the sky is becoming blue again?”
“Yes.”
“Blue like my soul, my sweet friend, blue like my heart.”
And she pressed her finger to her breast where she felt the blue mark that thrilled her love-intoxicated flesh.