I had come to spend a few days in Paris last year at the
beginning of May, and at a ball, slowly passing by, I was watching Princesse
Françoise V. who in her graceful benevolence was giving to all her friends the
inestimable charity of her sincere attention, more beautiful still in its
sadness, and her ungloved hand. Among all those who were crowding round her,
bowing respectfully to receive her, I recognized one of my cousins who had
promised me, a few years earlier, to introduce me to the Princesse. All in a
fever, in fear of her leaving, I went up to him and reminded him of his promise.
"That's impossible," he told me. "After the first of May nobody else is
introduced to her."
"At least one still may be able to see her in society."
"After the first of June she no longer attends any parties, other than
dinner-parties where all the guests without exception are her friends. Strangers
can no longer catch sight of her other than at the theatre, in the Bois, or
in the street. And from the twentieth of June to the fifteenth of July, when she
leaves for her château in Breyves, she no longer comes out of her house other
than to stroll in the garden."
Indirectly I made it known to the Princesse the regret that these unusual
customs caused me, and all the more keenly as I would not be returning to Paris
for several years and perhaps I would no longer have the opportunity to see her.
"I am not able to bend this custom on your behalf," she wrote to me, "however
bizarre it might seem to you. A custom, be what it may, must be followed.
Otherwise, as one of your friends said, it is no longer a custom. But the
genuine affection I feel for your music requires at least that I explain to you
why I am resisting the desire to become acquainted with you and why my refusal
to see anybody at that time is the most considerable and the most frightful
homage to those that I set aside. It was ten years ago at the entrance to the
Bois, that my friend Geneviève H., asking M. Honoré XXX with sincere
indifference if he would accompany her home, and hearing him reply that he had
to rejoin his friends and take supper with the ladies, took her leave of him
with a sadness that she could never have foreseen. She had already seen him two
or three times and hardly gave him a thought. How was it that she who had
never yet loved, out of thousands could love this insignificant creature. How
was it furthermore - because I could find in the person of M. XXX no reason for
this inclination, how was it that on that particular day my friend's heart
became suddenly enamoured just as at certain times of the year the air takes on
a spring-like sweetness, or rather as at certain hours of the day the weather
becomes fine? Because just as inevitable and superior to our will as the
physical seasons, those seasons of the sentiments do not allow themselves to be
predicted for what they are. I had never been aware of it and nor had she. It is
like the sky's countenance, that as suddenly and with as much mysterious
inconstancy, lights up or darkens the countenance of our hearts. The perpetual
presence of summer in the month of June, whether it radiates like a naked beauty
during the day, whether like a veiled beauty at the onset of night, yet never
ceasing for a moment to be imminent, is to the imagination and to the senses a
terrible and delicious oppression. Hearts that are set free by the charm of
these hours stray along the green avenues of the land, along the pale avenues of
the heavens and often come together there. Like the boatman's net the soul
floats adrift. Horizons glow in the distance like an infinity of sunbeams and
hopes. Soon weakened the soul opens up and often a dangerous being, passing by
chance, then enters into it, that cannot be made to leave either by the
desperate efforts of the boatman or its own exertions in order to return to a
happier life.
This is what my friend thought on returning, alone and her heart overflowing,
overflowing with this new arrival that had entered into it. All her thoughts did
nothing but to fix her hurt like the finger that relentlessly presses the
eye that an insect has got into only to make it penetrate more deeply. Two days
later she met Honoré XXX again and he said to her: 'I must bid you farewell,
Madame, as you are going to your château for just two months before coming back
to Paris; as for me I am going to the races at Trouville, then afterwards to
Engadine, then Bayreuth, and finally to Italy, so that I will not be returning
to Paris for eight months.' I was with Geneviève; I shall never forget the look
of agony and indulgence in the dreadful pallor of her face that she fixed on
Honoré as though he was the unwitting torturer who in his innocent cruelty tears
from the living flesh that which without him ever suspecting it was
inextricably part of her. In her château she brought with her the adored and
torturing image of an absent person who without doubt she would have loved."
Preliminary, but quite different, sketch for Mélancolique villégiature de Mme de Breyves.