Sarrasine | Page 2

suppose that they had
lived long among those different peoples. Were they gypsies? were
they buccaneers?
"Suppose they're the devil himself," said divers young politicians, "they
entertain mighty well."
"The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some Casbah for all I care; I
would like to marry his daughter!" cried a philosopher.
Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen, whose beauty
realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental poets! Like the Sultan's
daughter in the tale of the Wonderful Lamp, she should have remained
always veiled. Her singing obscured the imperfect talents of the
Malibrans, the Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one dominant
quality always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas Marianina
combined in equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling, accuracy of
time and intonation, science, soul, and delicacy. She was the type of
that hidden poesy, the link which connects all the arts and which
always eludes those who seek it. Modest, sweet, well-informed, and
clever, none could eclipse Marianina unless it was her mother.
Have you ever met one of those women whose startling beauty defies
the assaults of time, and who seem at thirty-six more desirable than
they could have been fifteen years earlier? Their faces are impassioned
souls; they fairly sparkle; each feature gleams with intelligence; each

possesses a brilliancy of its own, especially in the light. Their
captivating eyes attract or repel, speak or are silent; their gait is
artlessly seductive; their voices unfold the melodious treasures of the
most coquettishly sweet and tender tones. Praise of their beauty, based
upon comparisons, flatters the most sensitive self-esteem. A movement
of their eyebrows, the slightest play of the eye, the curling of the lip,
instils a sort of terror in those whose lives and happiness depend upon
their favor. A maiden inexperienced in love and easily moved by words
may allow herself to be seduced; but in dealing with women of this sort,
a man must be able, like M. de Jaucourt, to refrain from crying out
when, in hiding him in a closet, the lady's maid crushes two of his
fingers in the crack of a door. To love one of these omnipotent sirens is
to stake one's life, is it not? And that, perhaps, is why we love them so
passionately! Such was the Comtesse de Lanty.
Filippo, Marianina's brother, inherited, as did his sister, the Countess'
marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a word, that young man
was a living image of Antinous, with somewhat slighter proportions.
But how well such a slender and delicate figure accords with youth,
when an olive complexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of a velvety
eye promise virile passions, noble ideas for the future! If Filippo
remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly beauty, he
likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as the best match in
France.
The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of these two
children came entirely from their mother. The Comte de Lanty was a
short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal as a Spaniard, as great a bore as a
banker. He was looked upon, however, as a profound politician,
perhaps because he rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de
Metternich or Wellington.
This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem by Lord
Byron, whose difficult passages were translated differently by each
person in fashionable society; a poem that grew more obscure and more
sublime from strophe to strophe. The reserve which Monsieur and
Madame de Lanty maintained concerning their origin, their past lives,

and their relations with the four quarters of the globe would not, of
itself, have been for long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In no other
country, perhaps, is Vespasian's maxim more thoroughly understood.
Here gold pieces, even when stained with blood or mud, betray nothing,
and represent everything. Provided that good society knows the amount
of your fortune, you are classed among those figures which equal yours,
and no one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how
little they cost. In a city where social problems are solved by algebraic
equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this
family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that
fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries.
But, unfortunately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered
a perpetual subject of curiosity, not unlike that aroused by the novels of
Anne Radcliffe.
People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon finding out
where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you what rent you pay
when they are pleased with your apartments, had noticed, from time to
time, the appearance of an extraordinary personage at the fetes,