She strolled a little way along the sanded paths, all leading to the little pool with its murmuring fountain. It was a small garden, made up of no more than a few lime trees and masses of roses basking in the summer sun. The fountain was also small, in the form of a bronze dolphin clasped in the arms of an enigmatically smiling cupid. It was certainly nothing to compare with the marvels of the Villa dei Cavalli. Here, no proud stallion made the ground echo at night to the thunder of his furious galloping hooves, no phantom rider streaked through the shadows on his lonely way, carrying with him to the end of the night some terrible secret, some awful despair. Here, all was peace and cheerfulness, ordered, companionable, as a small Parisian garden should be.
The cupid on the dolphin smiled through the shower of falling crystal drops and it seemed to Marianne that she read a kind of irony in his smile. 'You are mocking me,' she thought. 'But why? What have I done to you? I believed in you and you betrayed me cruelly. You have never smiled at me except to take away what you have given. I entered into marriage as other women enter religion, yet you made marriage nothing but a mockery to me. And yet, here I am, married for the second time, and still as lonely. The first was a villain, the second is no more than a shadow – while the man I love is merely another woman's husband. Will you never have mercy on me?'
But no, the cupid remained silent and his smile did not change. With a sigh Marianne turned her back and went to sit down on a bench of mossy stone where a climbing rose dropped its crimson petals. Her heart felt empty, like one of those deserts created in a night by a hurricane gust of wind, carrying everything away with it, obliterating even the memory of what was there before. And when she tried to revive the fire that was slowly going out within her by remembering the madness of her love, the delirium of joy, the blind despair which the very name, the very picture of her lover had once had power to evoke. Marianne found to her distress that not even the echo of her cries remained. It was as if – yes, it was as if it were a story she had heard, but a story of which someone else was the heroine.
From a great distance, as though at the end of a long series of vast, empty rooms, she seemed to hear Talleyrand's persuasive voice saying: 'This was never made to last…' Could he have been right, after all? Was he proved right already? Could it be that her great love for Napoleon was dying, leaving behind it only the small change of tenderness and admiration that remains after the burning, golden flood of passion has withdrawn?. The present day Place de l'Italie.
Footnotes
1
Now the Chaussée d'Antin.
(<< back)
2
The Palais Bourbon.
(<< back)
3
The present day Place de l'Italie.
(<< back)
FB2 document info
Document ID: f5485ff5-fd76-46cc-a657-c1d37e03b9bb
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 21.3.2013
Created using: FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Juliette Benzoni
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Marianne and The Masked Prince Page 39
