The Master of Light

by Maurice Renard

  “You’re marvelously knowledgeable about the affair!”

  “It’s my vocation as a historian and my duty as a great-grandson. I’ve made a careful study of Fieschi’s assassination attempt. At the Palais de Justice, no less minutely, I’ve gone through the entire dossier of the Ortofieri case, item by item, and have taken on the task of completing it for myself, with all that remains to us of César’s papers—his correspondence, his memoirs, and so on.”

  “Is there mention of the Ortofieris therein?”

  “From time to time. He still had property in Corsica, of course—land and farms—which gave rise to disputes with the eternal neighbors, the eternal enemies. I found scattered traces of their disentanglement everywhere, not only in our family archives but those of court clerks and notaries.

  “It’s quite evident that César distrusted Fabius, just as Fabius surely distrusted César. The bushes,6 for them, were those of legal procedure. They were also—and in a more dangerous fashion—the Paris of 100 years ago, with its narrow streets and dark passages: the Paris of barricades and ambushes; the Paris of Les Mystères de Paris—which was to appear seven years later.”

  “Fabius had also settled permanently in the capital, then?”

  “In the Rue Saint-Honoré. He was a financier. That was the origin of their prosperity. It’s said that the banker is extremely well-off.”

  “So it’s said.”

  At that point, the reverie took over. Charles mechanically lit a cigarette that Luc had just offered him and leaned his elbows on the window-sill. He leaned back almost immediately, to avoid the gaze of some passing bathers who had looked up at his appearance. He tried to interest himself as much as possible in the capers of swimmers of both sexes mounted on absurd inflatable rubber steeds. Those childish antics seemed utterly pitiful, given that his heart was grieving; and, turning his attention away from the seaside games, he perceived the dim reflection in the pane of the inwardly-opened widow of Luc de Certeuil, plunged in the bosom of reflections so arduous that they strongly resembled perplexities.

  Charles did not say a word, and watched the young man’s expression curiously, from the corner of his eye. He saw him in profile, sitting down and leaning forward, with his elbows on his thighs, his head lowered and his hands set flat, one against the other, finger to finger—and those fingers were drumming. He saw that snub-nosed profile, that face incessantly animated by a conceited boldness that imposed itself powerfully—and he was not favorably impressed thereby. What the Devil could Certeuil be thinking about so ardently?

  “Pardon?” said Charles. “Oh—I thought you were about to say something.”

  “It’s true—it was on the tip of my tongue, and then…I no longer know whether I should…”

  “Come on—spit it out!”

  “Yes, that would perhaps be best. We’re both honest men, aren’t we? You’re going to leave, I assume…”

  “In exactly half an hour.”

  “It’s possible that I won’t see you again for several weeks. Between now and then, gossip might tell you…things that I’d definitely rather tell you myself.”

  “That’s very solemn! Speak, my dear Certeuil.”

  “If it’s reported to you that here, in Saint-Trojan, and then elsewhere, I am very assiduous in keeping company with Mademoiselle Ortofieri, do me the kindness of remembering that I was the first to tell you that.”

  Charles was obliged to summon up all his strength to remain impassive as he resisted the brutal blow.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but is it an engagement you’re announcing to me?”

  “Almost.”

  “My congratulations.” He extended his hand. Luc de Certeuil shook it energetically.

  “Now I’ll leave you,” Luc declared, in an uncertain vice. “I’ll find you again at the boat, when you board…”

  “Yes…that’s preferable…”

  By his frankness—or his cynicism—Luc had just created an intolerably false situation. Dumbfounded, Charles, once he was alone, had some difficulty pulling himself together. A new light had been cast on things. In the first place, he congratulated himself immeasurably for having moderated his confidences, already excessively indiscreet! Had he really not let slip the affection that Rita had evidenced for him? No, nothing. What luck! Oh, that was not Luc’s doing! He had done everything possible to find out more about it! His fit of sincerity had come very late...in fact, one might easily believe—pending more ample information—that he had yielded it reluctantly.

  Anyway, what did Luc de Certeuil matter! What mattered most of all, what obliterated everything else with its glare, was the ineffable revelation that he had just made to Charles, on the assumption that someone else would make it. It was the joy that he had given him, thinking that he would give him nothing but pain. A sad joy, certainly, since nothing had changed in matters of inevitable necessity, but an immense joy nevertheless—for, in Rita’s life, Charles was therefore not merely the one who delights because he is the first and sole emergence, aureoled by mystery and adventure, of the forbidden fruit of love. He was the one who is more than loved—not, in fact, the one who is loved but, far better, the one who is preferred: the chosen one.

  Oh, that beautiful day! Even more madly beautiful that he had dreamed. And what a sparkling wake it left behind it!

  Almost afraid to feel a memory alive within him with such vibrant force that could not be accompanied by any hope, Charles surprised himself by making a trenchant gesture and saying aloud: “You must forget! You must forget!”

  Someone knocked discreetly on the door.

  Experiencing some embarrassment at the thought that the domestic had heard him speak and would nevertheless find him alone, Charles blushed in advance. “Come in! Come in!” he repeated—for no one appeared.

  He went to the door with the intention of opening it.

  A large blue envelope slid along the floor, one of its corners still caught beneath the door. He picked it up and saw his name, traced in elegant, steady feminine handwriting.

  Outside, in the corridor, there was no one to be seen.

  On the back of the envelope there was a monogram: M.O.

  The letter read:

  You know everything now, since you know who I am. But of what I am, do you know enough?

  That is what I want to tell you; or, rather, it is that of which I want to assure you, for I shall not offer you the insult of doubting your judgment—which is to say, your esteem. I am certain that you have not suspected Marguerite Ortofieri, even for a moment, of being that which she is not. No accusation, I am sure, has been raised in your mind against me, my sentiments or my character. In commencing this letter, I want to bring you confirmation of your thoughts, like a sworn statement that is owed to them—along with, perhaps, the hope of reinforcing and affirming them. In writing this letter, I am aware that it would neither be worthy or you nor of me if it were to contain anything resembling a defensive plea or even an attestation. It cannot be anything other than an expression of gratitude.

  I shall, therefore, not even say to you: Believe that in all of this I have been the most sincere of women. I simply thank you for that belief, and beg you to pardon me if any of the preceding sentences have led you to mistake my intentions.

  The fact is—need I admit it to you?—I don’t perceive my intentions very clearly. The fact is that my state of mind is entirely new to me, and I am having some difficulty in coming to terms with it. Finally, the fact is that I have never had to write a letter like this, of which I dare not even pronounce the name! A letter, Monsieur, that I have so much grief, and nevertheless so much joy, in addressing to you.

  But it is not to speak to you about my grief and my poor joy that I have taken up my pen, and I do not want to let myself be distracted thereby into filling these four large pages—for I know full well that I shall fill them—instead of simply putting down the words: “Thank you!”

  Thank you for having the certainty that I ha
ve been, for a day, as happy as can be on a temporary basis.

  Thank you for that day.

  Thank you for retaining a faithful and stainless memory of it.

  Thank you for being who you are—and by that I mean, with everything else that it implies, a gentleman: chivalrous, old France, devoted, as I am myself, to all sorts of ideas that are no longer very fashionable, but which, I imagine, are sufficiently eternal.

  Thank you for placing as the highest of duties that of sacrificing nothing, even love, to the religion of race, the cult of the family—for, without anyone informing me, I will swear that you are about to leave without seeing me again. And how can I reproach the sentiments that dictate that course of action, since they are those that I appreciate the most in what you are?

  Thank you, therefore, for going far away from me, who would give anything in the world to be close to you, but who would not tell you that if it were not impossible.

  Thank you for your love and thank you for your hatred.

  Thank you for being Christiani, as I am

  Ortofieri.

  It was signed, briefly, “Ortofieri.” Proudly, “Ortofieri.” One might have thought that the entire lineage of the Ortofieris had signed that tender and cruel note via the single small hand of its unique descendant. And, indeed, one sensed that the soul of generations had inspired that valiant confirmation, so dignified and so touching at the same time.

  Charles held the blue letter up to the limpid light of the setting sun. He could only distinguish one word, which summarized its entirety and similarly encapsulated the whole tragic situation: the word “impossible.”

  And Charles thought he could hear the abominable word being repeated by all the Christianis and all the Ortofieris who had succeeded one another since July 28, 1835, including old César, with his southern accent, and old Fabius, raising his pistol—all the way to his mother, who seemed to be standing in front of him, stern and authoritarian, smoothing her bandeaux, like the wings of a crow, with an angry finger, and shouting at him, like all the rest—like Horace Christiani, like Napoléon Christiani, Eugène and Achille, the two brothers, and Adrien, his father, dead on the field of honor—“Impossible! Impossible! Impossible!” as if all those Corsicans had forgotten that, since Louis XV, Corsica had been French.7

  III. At Home

  The train that brought Charles Christiani back did not get in to the Gare Montparnasse until 9 a.m. It was very late and contained far more standing passengers than seated ones. Everyone was coming back from vacation.

  In spite of his most sincere efforts, Charles could not drag his thoughts far from the events that had just unfolded so rapidly. He never left off revisiting them, analyzing them and chewing over their bitter yet delightful taste. He was now better able to explain certain details of the sojourn on the Ile d’Aix and the voyage that it had so memorably interrupted. The great confusion into which he had thrown Madame Le Tourneur and Rita by introducing himself now appeared to him with all its causes, which were not slight. He understood poor Geneviève’s fearful anxiety when she had seen her friend throw herself into an adventure with a Christiani. He also understood why Rita had refused to bathe in the sea, for all the obscure reasons of foresight, generosity and modesty, in order not to leave Charles with too vivid a memory of the woman he would never see again, whose race and rhythm he had instinctively perceived, that being his own race and the very rhythm of his own Corsican blood.

  He numbed himself and hypnotized himself with those memories, incapable of extracting anything from them but a sort of confused and distressing sensuousness. The arrival in Paris produced an almost funereal effect in him. Everything seemed to have changed, without him being able to understand how. He could not have felt more out of place on returning from a very long voyage through strange and distant countries. It was as if his memory had been deformed, in the space of a few days, or that Paris had been mysteriously subjected to modifications that were impossible to specify, in its proportions, in the color of the sky, in its atmosphere, and God knows what other aspects that he sought in vain to define. He saw everything smaller, poorer, darker; there was a silent element in the hubbub of the streets, a dull quality that set a weight of anxiety upon his soul, the cause of which escaped him completely. He was heartbroken, and could not react to anything.

  He got a taxi, gave the chauffeur the address in the Rue de Tournon, then changed his mind on the way and had himself taken to the Quai Malaquais, to the home of his future brother-in-law Bertrand Valois. Before confronting his mother again, it seemed to be a good idea to chat with a stalwart friend, a sensible man, full of heart and blessed with a perpetual cheerfulness, who would certainly “restore his morale.” He did not admit to himself that he needed to talk, and needed to relive events in talking about them. And he did not imagine that in going to the Quai Malaquais he was surrendering to the impulse that drives us all, when things are “not going well,” toward people who are fortunate, who are continually successful in everything, and whose luck takes on the appearance of a contagious power. In the company of those favorites of fate, we have the illusion of being immunized against misfortune and of renewing our provisions of confidence, strength and competence.

  No one could represent good fortune better than Bertrand Valois, the cheerful author. His plays were bringing him a sensational success; everyone liked him and rejoiced in his achievements. He was also endowed with an open and buoyant physical appearance that legitimated a great deal of sympathy. Not that he was handsome, strictly speaking—fortunately for him, for handsomeness in a man disadvantages him with many of his fellows—but his joyful friendliness won him the support of the masculine tribe while his spiritual gaiety assured him of all feminine approval, for God knows how our sisters love to laugh.

  Why not say that Bernard Valois had required all the prestige of his genteel renown and all the promise of a radiant future to bend Madame Christiani’s rigidity and obtain Colomba’s hand from her? There was nothing in him to reproach, except being born of very modest parents, but his father had only been a simple ward of poor-law relief, a foundling, and Madame Christiani, infatuated with ancestry and proud of her genealogy, had hesitated for long months before giving her daughter to a fellow who had accumulated nothing from the heritage of past centuries but an old ring and an old walking-stick. They were the only objects that had been discovered, one morning in the year 1872, next to the new-born baby wailing in a corner of the Galerie de la Valois in the Palais-Royal—whence came the name “Valois,” which Bertrand bore after his father, who owed that uniquely sonorous patronymic to the place of his abandonment and the thoughtless caprice of the poor-law administrators. After all, “Valois” is a historic name, and it was perhaps audacious to give it to an unknown brat who might subsequently dishonor, as his destiny unfolded, the memory of Louis XII, François I and Henri III, of whom it was very doubtful that he was a descendant.

  The ring, in fact—that gold ring enameled in black and provided with a tiny diamond; the ring that Colomba had undertaken to wear on the day of her engagement—did not indicate a royal origin, but one scarcely bourgeois. And the walking-stick—a long rattan cane surmounted by a silver pommel ornamented with meager garlands—was entirely in agreement with the ring on this point. To tell the truth, these two witnesses, each offering the characteristics of Louis XVI style, constituted Bertrand Valois’ only ancestors, and we need to note that circumstance in order to make the fashion in which Charles Christiani addressed the young author understandable.

  He found him in his study, working on some comedy. The place was arranged for the pleasure of the eyes and the accommodation of necessities. A large bay window looked out upon the Seine and the Louvre. As for Bertrand, who was already carefully shaven, his coppery hair smoothed over the rounded skull one could ever see, he had tightened about his fine figure the belt of a dressing-gown elegant enough to put a cinematic Don Juan to shame. When Charles came in, he hastened to meet him with open arms—and th
e visitor felt better simple for having seen that welcoming face, ornamented by the very nose of comic genius, a nose molded with malice, with nostrils so flared that they truly warranted the name of wings: the famous nose to the wind with which the late Monsieur Choiseul8 had sniffed the breezes of Versailles; the nose of great actors never mistaken in their theatrical vocation. A trifle large, no doubt; a trifle turned up, agreed—but, in the final analysis, a famous nose, pleasant, generous, artistic and jolly; one of those that one is delighted to see between two bright eyes.

  “What, back already?” said Bertrand. “I thought…but where have you come from? Did you sleep in a doss-house?”

  “On the train.”

  “What brings you here?” asked the other, raising his eyebrows.

  “The fact that you don’t know how lucky you are.”

  “What sort of luck? I haven’t won that much.”

  “The luck of having no ancestors,” Charles pronounced.

  “Unsought!”

  “Ah, my friend, when I think that you, an intelligent fellow, a man of spirit, regret your lack of ancestors!”

  “That’s true,” Bertrand admitted. “I have that inexcusable fault.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I’ve only seen you melancholy once—we were talking about the past, ancestors…well, today, my old friend, I’d give anything to have no forebears!”

  “Known, at least,” observed Bertrand. “For, since Adam, no one has yet found a means of doing without them, in the natural order of things. Come on, tell me—what have your ancestors done to you?”

  “I’m talking about César, and those who followed him.”

  “Which means?”

  “Romeo and Juliet. The Capulets and the Montagus—get it?”