The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume I Part 10

How well I know, and how I hate and almost fear those haphazard walks through unknown streets; and this was the reason why, as nothing would induce me to undertake a tour in Italy by myself, I made up my mind to accompany my friend Paul Pavilly.

You know Paul, and how woman is everything, the world, life itself, to him. There are many men like that, to whom existence becomes poetical and idealized by the presence of women. The earth is inhabitable only because they are there; the sun shines and is warm because it lights upon them; the air is soft and balmy because it blows upon their skin and ruffles the short hairs on their temples, and the moon is charming because it makes them dream and imparts a languorous charm to love.

Every act and action of Paul's has woman for its motive; all his thoughts, all his efforts and hopes are centered on them.

When I mentioned Italy to Paul he at first absolutely refused to leave Paris. I, however, began to tell him of the adventures I had on my travels. I a.s.sured him that all Italian women are charming, and I made him hope for the most refined pleasures at Naples, thanks to certain letters of introduction which I had; and so at last he allowed himself to be persuaded.

II

We took the express one Thursday evening, Paul and I. Hardly anyone goes South at that time of the year, so that we had the carriage to ourselves, and both of us were in a bad temper on leaving Paris, sorry for having yielded to the temptation of this journey, and regretting Marly, the Seine, and our lazy boating excursions, and all those pleasures in and near Paris which are so dear to every true Parisian.

As soon as the train started Paul stuck himself into his corner, and said, "It is most idiotic to go all that way," and as it was too late for him to change his mind then, I said, "Well, you should not have come."

He gave me no answer, and I felt very much inclined to laugh when I saw how furious he looked. He is certainly always rather like a squirrel, but then every one of us has retained the type of some animal or other as the mark of his primitive race. How many people have jaws like a bull-dog, or heads like goats, rabbits, foxes, horses, or oxen. Paul is a squirrel turned into a man. He has its bright, quick eyes, its old hair, pointed nose, its small, fine, supple, active body, and a certain mysterious resemblance in his general bearing: in fact, a similarity of movements, of gestures, and of bearing which might almost be taken for a recollection.

At last we both went to sleep with that uncomfortable slumber of the railway carriage, which is interrupted by horrible cramps in the arms and neck, and by the sudden stoppages of the train.

We woke up as we were going along the Rhone. Soon the continued noise of the gra.s.shoppers came in through the window, that cry which seems to be the voice of the warm earth, the song of Provence; and seemed to instill into our looks, our b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and our souls the light and happy feeling of the South, that odor of the parched earth, of the stony and light soil of the olive, with its gray-green foliage.

When the train stopped again a railway servant ran along the train calling out "Valence" in a sonorous voice, with an accent that again gave us a taste of that Provence which the shrill note of the gra.s.shoppers had already imparted to us.

Nothing new happened until we got to Ma.r.s.eilles, where we got out to breakfast, but when we returned to our carriage we found a woman installed there.

Paul, with a delightful look at me, gave his short moustache a mechanical twirl, and pa.s.sed his fingers through his hair, which had become slightly out of order with the night's journey. Then he sat down opposite the newcomer.

Whenever I happen to see a striking new face, either while traveling or in society, I always have the strongest inclination to find out what character, mind, and intellectual capacities are hidden beneath those features.

She was a young and pretty woman, a native of the South of France certainly, with splendid eyes, beautiful wavy black hair, which was so thick, long, and strong that it seemed almost too heavy for her head.

She was dressed with a certain Southern elegant bad taste which made her look a little vulgar. Her regular features had none of the grace and finish of the refined races, of that slight delicacy which members of the aristocracy inherit from their birth, and which is the hereditary mark of thinner blood.

Her bracelets were too big to be of gold; she wore earrings with large white stones which were certainly not diamonds, and she belonged unmistakably to the commonalty. One would have guessed that she would talk too loud, and shout on every occasion with exaggerated gestures.

When the train started she remained motionless in her place, in the att.i.tude of a woman who was in a rage, without even looking at us.

Paul began to talk to me, evidently with an eye to effect, trying to attract her attention, like shopkeepers who expose their choice wares to catch the notice of pa.s.sers-by.

She, however, did not appear to be paying the least attention.

"Toulon! Ten minutes to wait! Refreshment room!" the porters shouted.

Paul motioned to me to get out, and as soon as we had done so, he said:

"I wonder who on earth she can be?"

I began to laugh. "I am sure I don't know, and I don't the least care."

He was quite excited.

"She is an uncommonly fresh and pretty girl. What eyes she has, and how cross she looks. She must have been dreadfully worried, for she takes no notice of anything."

"You will have all your trouble for nothing," I growled.

He began to lose his temper.

"I am not taking any trouble, my dear fellow. I think her an extremely pretty woman, that is all. If one could only speak to her! But I don't know how to begin. Cannot you give me an idea? Can't you guess who she is?"

"Upon my word, I cannot. However, I should rather think she is some strolling actress who is going to rejoin her company after a love adventure."

He seemed quite upset, as if I had said something insulting.

"What makes you think that? On the contrary, I think she looks most respectable."

"Just look at her bracelets," I said, "her earrings and her whole dress.

I should not be the least surprised if she were a dancer or a circus rider, but most likely a dancer. Her whole style smacks very much of the theater."

He evidently did not like the idea.

"She is much too young, I am sure; why, she is hardly twenty."

"Well," I replied, "there are many things which one can do before one is twenty; dancing and reciting are among them, without counting another little business which is, perhaps, her sole occupation."

"Take your seats for Nice, Vintimiglia," the guards and porters called out.

We got in; our fellow pa.s.senger was eating an orange, and certainly she did not do it elegantly. She had spread her pocket-handkerchief on her knees, and the way in which she tore off the peel and opened her mouth to put in the figs, and then spat the pips out of the window, showed that her education had been decidedly vulgar.

She seemed, also, more put out than ever, and swallowed the fruit with an exceedingly comic air of rage.

Paul devoured her with his eyes, and tried to attract her attention and excite her curiosity, but in spite of his talk and of the manner in which he brought in well-known names, she did not pay the least attention to him.

After pa.s.sing Frejus and St. Raphael, the train pa.s.sed through a veritable garden, a paradise of roses, and groves of oranges and lemons covered with fruit and flowers at the same time. That delightful coast from Ma.r.s.eilles to Genoa is a kingdom of perfumes in a home of flowers.

June is the time to see it in all its beauty, when in every narrow valley and on every slope, the most exquisite flowers are growing luxuriantly. And the roses! fields, hedges, groves of roses. They climb up the walls, blossom on the roofs, hang from the trees, peep out from among the bushes; they are white, red, yellow, large and small, single, with a simple self-colored dress, or full and heavy in brilliant toilets.

Their continual breath makes the air heavy and relaxing, while the still more penetrating odor of the orange blossoms sweetens the atmosphere till it might almost be called the sugar-plum of the smell.

The sh.o.r.e, with its brown rocks, was bathed by the motionless Mediterranean. The hot summer sun stretched like a fiery cloth over the mountains, over the long expanses of sand, and over the hard, fixed blue sea. The train went on, through the tunnels, along the slopes, above the water, on straight, wall-like viaducts, and a soft, vague, saltish smell, a smell of drying seaweed, mingled at times with the strong, heavy perfume of the flowers.

But Paul neither saw, looked at, nor smelled anything, for our fellow traveler engrossed all his attention.

When we got to Cannes, as he wished to speak to me he signed to me to get out again, and as soon as I had done so he took me by the arm.

"Do you know, she is really charming. Just look at her eyes; and I never saw anything like her hair."

"Don't excite yourself," I replied, "or else tackle her, if you have any intentions that way. She does not look impregnable, I fancy, although she appears to be a little bit grumpy."

"Why don't you speak to her?" he said.

"I don't know what to say, for I am always terribly stupid at first; I can never make advances to a woman in the street. I follow them, go round and round them, and quite closely to them, but I never know what to say at first. I only once tried to enter into conversation with a woman in that way. As I clearly saw that she was waiting for me to make overtures, and as I felt bound to say something, I stammered out, 'I hope you are quite well, madam?' She laughed in my face, and I made my escape."