第14章
Frozen with terror, Zambinella lay back in a corner, not daring to move a muscle. He saw before him the terrible face of the artist, who maintained a deathlike silence. The journey was a short one.
Zambinella, kidnaped by Sarrasine, soon found himself in a dark, bare studio. He sat, half dead, upon a chair, hardly daring to glance at a statue of a woman, in which he recognized his own features. He did not utter a word, but his teeth were chattering; he was paralyzed with fear. Sarrasine was striding up and down the studio. Suddenly he halted in front of Zambinella.
" 'Tell me the truth,' he said, in a changed and hollow voice. 'Are you not a woman? Cardinal Cicognara----'
"Zambinella fell on his knees, and replied only by hanging his head.
" 'Ah! you are a woman!' cried the artist in a frenzy; 'for even a--'
"He did not finish the sentence.
" 'No,' he continued, 'even /he/ could not be so utterly base.'
" 'Oh, do not kill me!' cried Zambinella, bursting into tears. 'Iconsented to deceive you only to gratify my comrades, who wanted an opportunity to laugh.'
" 'Laugh!' echoed the sculptor, in a voice in which there was a ring of infernal ferocity. 'Laugh! laugh! You dared to make sport of a man's passion--you?'
" 'Oh, mercy!' cried Zambinella.
" 'I ought to kill you!' shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword in an outburst of rage. 'But,' he continued, with cold disdain, 'if Isearched your whole being with this blade, should I find there any sentiment to blot out, anything with which to satisfy my thirst for vengeance? You are nothing! If you were a man or a woman, I would kill you, but--'
"Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face away;thereupon he noticed the statue.
" 'And that is a delusion!' he cried.
"Then, turning to Zambinella once more, he continued:
" 'A woman's heart was to me a place of refuge, a fatherland. Have you sisters who resemble you? No. Then die! But no, you shall live. To leave you your life is to doom you to a fate worse than death. Iregret neither my blood nor my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart. Your weak hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can Iextort from you in place of all those you have destroyed? You have brought me down to your level. /To love, to be loved!/ are henceforth meaningless words to me, as to you. I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a real woman.'
"He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair.
" 'I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the face of the earth.'
"Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer. Two great tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his swarthy cheeks, and fell to the floor--two tears of rage, two scalding, burning tears.
" 'An end of love! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human emotions!'
"As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue with such excessive force that he missed it. He thought that he had destroyed that monument of his madness, and thereupon he drew his sword again, and raised it to kill the singer. Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek. Three men burst into the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell, pieced by three daggers.
" 'From Cardinal Cicognara,' said one of the men.
" 'A benefaction worthy of a Christian,' retorted the Frenchman, as he breathed his last.
"These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety of his patron, who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage in order to take him away as soon as he was set at liberty.""But," said Madame de Rochefide, "what connection is there between this story and the little old man we saw at the Lantys'?""Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambinella's statue and had it reproduced in marble; it is in the Albani Museum to-day. In 1794 the Lanty family discovered it there, and asked Vien to copy it.
The portrait which showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had seen him as a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet's /Endymion/; you yourself recognized the type in /Adonis/.""But this Zambinella, male or female--"
"Must be, madame, Marianina's maternal great uncle. You can conceive now Madame de Lanty's interest in concealing the source of a fortune which comes--""Enough!" said she, with an imperious gesture.
We remained for a moment in the most profound silence.
"Well?" I said at last.
"Ah!" she cried, rising and pacing the floor.
She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered voice:
"You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long time to come.
Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human sentiments dissolved thus, by ghastly disillusionment? Children torture mothers by their bad conduct, or their lack of affection. Wives are betrayed.
Mistresses are cast aside, abandoned. Talk of friendship! Is there such a thing! I would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that Ican remain like the inaccessible summit of a cliff amid the tempests of life. If the future of the Christian is an illusion too, at all events it is not destroyed until after death. Leave me to myself.""Ah!" said I, "you know how to punish."
"Am I in the wrong?"
"Yes," I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. "By finishing this story, which is well known in Italy, I can give you an excellent idea of the progress made by the civilization of the present day. There are none of those wretched creatures now.""Paris," said she, "is an exceedingly hospitable place; it welcomes one and all, fortunes stained with shame, and fortunes stained with blood. Crime and infamy have a right of asylum here; virtue alone is without altars. But pure hearts have a fatherland in heaven! No one will have known me! I am proud of it."And the marchioness was lost in thought.
End