Sarrasine | Page 7

was not without a touch of that graceful playfulness,
the secret of which only a few privileged women possess.
"_Addio, addio!_" she said, with the sweetest inflection of her young
voice.
She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, in a very low
tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection of her heart by a poetic
expression. The old man, suddenly arrested by some memory, remained
on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard
the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed the most beautiful
of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and placed it in
Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed, plucked out the ring,
slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove, and ran hastily back
toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at that moment, beginning
the prelude of a contra-dance.
She spied us.
"Ah! were you here?" she said, blushing.
After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ran away to her
partner with the careless petulance of her years.
"What does this mean?" queried my young partner. "Is he her husband?
I believe I am dreaming. Where am I?"
"You!" I retorted, "you, madame, who are easily excited, and who,

understanding so well the most imperceptible emotions, are able to
cultivate in a man's heart the most delicate of sentiments, without
crushing it, without shattering it at the very outset, you who have
compassion for the tortures of the heart, and who, with the wit of the
Parisian, combine a passionate temperament worthy of Spain or
Italy----"
She realized that my words were heavily charged with bitter irony; and,
thereupon, without seeming to notice it, she interrupted me to say:
"Oh! you describe me to suit your own taste. A strange kind of tyranny!
You wish me not to be myself!"
"Oh! I wish nothing," I cried, alarmed by the severity of her manner.
"At all events, it is true, is it not, that you like to hear stories of the
fierce passions, kindled in our heart by the enchanting women of the
South?"
"Yes. And then?"
"Why, I will come to your house about nine o'clock to-morrow evening,
and elucidate this mystery for you."
"No," she replied, with a pout; "I wish it done now."
"You have not yet given me the right to obey you when you say, 'I wish
it.'"
"At this moment," she said, with an exhibition of coquetry of the sort
that drives men to despair, "I have a most violent desire to know this
secret. To-morrow it may be that I will not listen to you."
She smiled and we parted, she still as proud and as cruel, I as ridiculous,
as ever. She had the audacity to waltz with a young aide-de-camp, and I
was by turns angry, sulky, admiring, loving, and jealous.
"Until to-morrow," she said to me, as she left the ball about two o'clock
in the morning.

"I won't go," I thought. "I give up. You are a thousand times more
capricious, more fanciful, than--my imagination."
The next evening we were seated in front of a bright fire in a dainty
little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost at her feet, looking up
into her face. The street was silent. The lamp shed a soft light. It was
one of those evenings which delight the soul, one of those moments
which are never forgotten, one of those hours passed in peace and
longing, whose charm is always in later years a source of regret, even
when we are happier. What can efface the deep imprint of the first
solicitations of love?
"Go on," she said. "I am listening."
"But I dare not begin. There are passages in the story which are
dangerous to the narrator. If I become excited, you will make me hold
my peace."
"Speak."
"I obey.
"Ernest-Jean Sarrasine was the only son of a prosecuting attorney of
Franche-Comte," I began after a pause. "His father had, by faithful
work, amassed a fortune which yielded an income of six to eight
thousand francs, then considered a colossal fortune for an attorney in
the provinces. Old Maitre Sarrasine, having but one child, determined
to give him a thorough education; he hoped to make a magistrate of
him, and to live long enough to see, in his old age, the grandson of
Mathieu Sarrasine, a ploughman in the Saint-Die country, seated on the
lilies, and dozing through the sessions for the greater glory of the
Parliament; but Heaven had not that joy in store for the attorney.
Young Sarrasine, entrusted to the care of the Jesuits at an early age,
gave indications of an extraordinarily unruly disposition. His was the
childhood of a man of