Chapter IV (2)

* * * * *

There were nights when Spadoni remained with his elbow on the keyboard and his brow resting in his right hand, as though completely absorbed in music. As a matter of fact, the visions that were then whirling in his head, beneath those long locks, were red and black squares, many cards, and thirty-six numbers in three rows beginning with a zero. The Prince, annoyed by the silence, turned to Castro.

"Tell us something about your grandfather, Don Enrique."

This grandfather had married an aunt of General Saldana, and although Atilio had never known him personally he often talked about him, as a curious sort of person who aroused either his admiration or his bitter irony, according to the mood he happened to be in. This ancestor was a man of warlike temperament and rather perverse enthusiasms, who had succeeded in depleting the family fortune, already undermined by his predecessors. Related to a great many nobles, he usually would deny the relationship if forced to the point, as though it were something of which to be ashamed. Other members of the family might take the title of nobility if they chose. The motto which had figured for centuries on the Castro shield was an accurate summary of the man's character: "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day." For thirty years there had not been a successful or abortive insurrection in Spain in which this somber-looking gentleman had not had a hand. He was very sensitive to insult and a great swordsman. He treated men like a despot and at the same time he was ready to die for the liberty of mankind.

"A red Don Quixote!" said Castro.

He remembered having played with the old man's sword, as a child. It was a Toledo weapon, inlaid with golden arabesques copied from the old sword of the explorer and _conquistador_, Alvaro de Castro, who had been Governor of the Indies. But toward the hilt of the blade, where his ancestors had been wont to inscribe an expression of fidelity to their God and King, Don Enrique had had engraved: "Long live the Republic!" Without this knightly sword, he refused to take part in a revolution. He had carried it from Sicily to Naples, following Garibaldi to dethrone the Bourbons. "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day!" His companions soon appeared to him unspeakable reactionaries, and this caused him to seek new doctrines which would fully satisfy his insatiable eagerness for destruction and innovation. Finally, this descendant of Governors and Viceroys wound up in the "First International." And the most extraordinary thing of all was that in his new life he never lost the traces of his early education, his arrogance and his knightly ways, which caused him to consider the slightest difference of opinion as "an affair of honor."

Over a discussion in a committee meeting, he had fought a "comrade" laborer in Paris. No sooner had they crossed swords than the workman received a cut across the head.

"It is quite just," said the wounded man, wiping away the blood. "The Marquis, who has been able to learn the use of weapons, ought of course to beat a mere man of the people."

Don Enrique turned pale at the irony, and to restore equality, and eliminate his traditional advantages, he raised his sword and gave himself a terrible cut across the skull, while the witnesses ran forward to seize him and prevent him from doing it again.

After accompanying Garibaldi once more, in the War of 1870, fighting the Prussians at Dijon, he was drawn to Paris by the revolutionary movement of the Commune.

"I think they made him a general," Atilio said. "He must have suffered heavily in that tragic farce. It is certain that he was executed by the government troops, and no one knows where he is buried."

Atilio's admiration for his grandfather, whose life had been so romantic, was dampened by the thought of his mother. Poor, an orphan, and forgotten by her relatives, she had been obliged to marry a man old enough to be her father, and led the wandering life, outside of Spain, that is forced upon the wives of consuls. Atilio was born in Leghorn, and was given the name of his godfather, an old Italian gentleman, who was a friend of the Spanish Consul. The memory of his grandfather, saddened from time to time the life of his poor, resigned, and devout mother. In Rome, visiting Spaniards, all persons of conventional ideas who came to see the Pope, would look askance on learning of her birth: "Oh, so you are the daughter of Enrique de Castro!" And she would seem to shrink, and beg their pardon with her sad, humble eyes.

"I don't disown my grandfather," Castro added. "I would like to have known him. The only thing I blame him for is that he left us so poor; though his forefathers had already done more than he to ruin us."

On days when Atilio had lost, he was more prone to complain, recalling the immense estates of the Castros, gained in the conquests in America.

"To-day there are large cities on the fields given by the king to my forefathers. One of my remote ancestors grazed horses, and built a colonial country house on land where at the present time you will find gardens, monuments, and big hotels. There were hundreds of millions of square yards; at a franc a yard, imagine, Michael! I would be richer than you, richer than all the millionaires in the world. And I'm only a well-dressed beggar. Good God! Why didn't my ancestors keep their land, instead of devoting themselves to serving the king and the people? Why didn't they do like any peasant who keeps religiously what has been left him by his ancestors?"

Other evenings, seated in the _loggia_, the Prince listened to Novoa and gazed at the nocturnal scene of sea and sky. There was no light, save the veiled gleam from the distant drawing-room. The coast was dark. The silhouette of Monte Carlo stood out against the starry background, without a single dot of red. There were few street lights in the city, and besides, the glass of those few was painted blue. The lamps on the stairway of the Casino were shrouded like those of a hearse. The German submarine menace kept the whole Principality, as well as the French coast, in darkness. Only at the entrance to the harbor of Monaco, the two octagonal towers kept on their summit a red and a green beacon, which threw out over the water one shifting path of rubies, and another of emeralds.

In the darkness, standing and looking at the stars, Novoa talked about the poetry of space, about distances that defy human calculations. It was impossible for Spadoni to follow this talk with the same attention as the Prince and Castro. What did the so-called tri-colored star matter to him? The millions and millions of leagues that the scientist spoke of merely made him yawn; and through an association of ideas, he became absorbed in gambling, mentally, imagining that he was winning fifty times in succession, doubling each time.

He wagered a simple five franc piece--the smallest bet allowed in the Casino--and at the end of the twenty-fifth bet he stopped as though horror-struck. He had won more than a hundred and sixty-seven million francs. In only twenty-five minutes! The Casino was closing its doors, declaring the bank broken! But this was not enough to bring him out of his dream. The marvellous five franc piece remained on the green cloth beside a mountain of money which kept growing and growing. He must finish the fifty bets, always doubling. He continued for five more times and then stopped. He had already won more than five thousand million francs. They would have to hand over the entire Principality of Monaco to him, and even that would not be enough perhaps to pay the debt. The thirty-fifth time the simple "napoleon" had become a hundred seventy-one billions of francs. They wouldn't pay him; he was sure of that. It would be necessary for all the great powers of Europe to ally themselves as though for a great war, and even then perhaps, he, the pianist, Teofilo Spadoni, would not accept the credit they might offer him.

He could no longer make the calculations mentally. The twentieth time he had been obliged to have resource to the pencil which he used in the Casino to note results of the various plays, and to the cards divided in columns which were distributed by the employees. The back of the card was rather narrow for his winnings, which kept growing so tremendously that they had reached fantastic sums. He continued his triumphant playing. At the fortieth winning he stopped. Five million million francs. Decidedly neither Europe nor the entire world would be able to pay him. The nations would have to put themselves up for sale, the globe would be put on public auction, the women would all have to sell their bodies and give him the proceeds; and even so it would be necessary to ask him for several thousands of years in which to pay the debt to him, the creditor of the universe, seated on his piano stool as though on a throne.

But although he was certain that he was being deceived, since no one on earth or heaven could guarantee the bank, he went on playing. There were only ten more bets to be made. And when he had made the fiftieth he had a sudden stroke of generosity. In his mind he gave the employees of the Casino thousands, millions, and millions of millions. For himself he only kept the amount that figured at the head of his winnings, and wrote on his card:

5,000,000,000,000,000 francs.

Five thousand billions! For fifty minutes' work, that wasn't bad.

Suddenly his attention was attracted by the silence in which the Prince and Castro were listening to Novoa, and he fixed his visionary gaze on the latter, his eyes still dazzled by the golden whirl of the Vision.

The scientist too was talking about millions of millions, figures which words would not express, and was going into detail, repeating dozens of ciphers one after the other. He thought he heard the professor surmising the age which the sun would reach in time--here an interminable figure--the disappearance of the present forms of life, the recession of the heavenly body towards an exceedingly remote constellation, and its final extinction and death--here another appalling sum.

Spadoni smiled disdainfully. The sun, the constellation of Hercules, the hundred million years that it would take for the former to reach the earth, the seventeen million years that it would require to lose its incandescence, and cease furnishing warmth for life on earth, and all the other calculations of the scientist were as nothing, mere nothing! If he were to put his money on the green table fifty times more, the figures obtained by astronomy would appear paltry and ridiculous beside the winnings obtained in an hour and forty minutes. God alone could be the banker, and pay with stars as though they were money; and who knows if God himself would be able to withstand the hundredth time the five franc piece was wagered, always doubling, and if he would not have to declare his bank was broken?

Spadoni remained for some time absorbed in inner contemplation of his greatness. Coming out of his revery he became aware of Novoa's voice which still sounded a note of mystery, before that dark horizon, dotted above with the points of light from the stars, and undulating below with the phosphorescence of the waves.

The Prince urged him to talk of the sea as the regulator and origin of life. The pianist heard it said that the sea covers three-fourths of the globe, and, as it represents a large preponderance over the continents, the latter, though they consider themselves superior, are dominated by the former, just as governments are obliged to yield to universal suffrage and respect the strength of majorities. All the great atmospheric laws are established, not on the lesser surface of the land, which is rough and broken, but on the vast ocean spaces, which allow the molecules freely to obey the mechanical laws of fluids.

Spadoni touched Castro on the elbow, and tried to tell him in a low voice about the unheard-of winnings that he had just made. But Atilio, without turning around, brushed the interrupting hand aside, and went on listening.

Novoa was talking about the hot waters which condensed on the globe in the primordial atmosphere, and had been precipitated on the crust of the earth which was then in formation, dissolving and tearing down everything in their way on the new-born surface.

"With the salt that there is in the ocean," Novoa said, "one could reconstruct the entire African continent."

The pianist stirred once more in his seat. An Africa made of salt! What could you do with it?

"Castro, listen to me," he said in a low voice. "I put five francs on a certain bet, fifty times in succession, doubling each time, do you know?"

But the latter was not interested, and rejected the piece of cardboard held out to him.

Spadoni, offended, shut his eyes, deciding to isolate himself from the rest, and not listen to what did not seem to him of any importance. If the scientist was going to talk every evening, he would dispense with the hospitality of the Prince, and go in search of other friends.

Suddenly, a word caught his ear and drew him from his shell, causing him to open his eyes. The Professor was talking about the gold that had been washed away by the boiling rains at the creation of the globe, and was still present in solution in the sea.

"There are only a few milligrams in each ton of water, but with all that there is in the ocean one could form a heap so immense, that, if it were divided equally among the thousand five hundred million inhabitants of the earth, we would each get an eighty-five thousand pound ingot, or some forty tons of gold."

The pianist craned his neck in amazement. What was the Professor saying?

"And," Novoa continued, "according to the value of gold before the war, each person's ingot would represent some hundred and twenty million francs."

The silence was broken by a whistling sound. Castro turned his head, thinking that Spadoni was snoring. Observing the pianist's staring eyes, he realized that this was a sigh, of real emotion, an exclamation of surprise.

"I'll give my share for a hundred thousand francs in bank-notes," he said in solemn tones.

And as the others laughed, he remained with his eyes fixed on Novoa. The sea! Who would have thought that the sea!... That scientist knew a great deal; and as for himself, with sudden awe and respect, he determined that hereafter he would always listen to him.

* * * * *

One night, Atilio and the Prince were eating alone. On leaving the Casino, the pianist had gone off to Nice with some English friends of his, who played poker in their landau. Novoa had been invited to dine with a colleague from the Museum and would not be back until midnight.

Michael was thinking of his impressions of that afternoon. He had gone to the Casino to attend a classical concert, determined to face the obsequious curiosity of the employees, and take the risk of running across former friends. From the outer stairway to the door of the theater he had been obliged to reply to the series of deep bows from the various functionaries, some with military caps and gold buttons, others in solemn frock coats, stiff and dignified like lawyers in a play. The people who were passing through the portico noticed him immediately. "Prince Lubimoff!" They all remembered his yacht, his adventures, and his parties, and repeated his name like the glorious echo of a resurrected past. He had been obliged to hurry through the groups at top speed, with a vague stare, feigning absentmindedness, so as not to see certain well-known smiles, and certain inviting faces which evoked sweet visions of by-gone days.

In the auditorium he looked for a seat where he would be entirely inconspicuous, some corner divan, close to the wall; but even there he was annoyed by the curiosity of the crowd. Around the leader of the orchestra were the most famous musicians, those who prided themselves on the title of "Soloists to His Most Serene Highness the Prince of Monaco." Some of them had sailed with Prince Michael on his yacht, as members of the orchestra. During a pause in the music, the first violin, in looking around the room to see if he could recognize any of his admirers, discovered Lubimoff, and communicated his surprise at once to the other soloists. They all smiled in his direction, and showed on their faces that they were dedicating to him alone the music which was rising from their instruments. Finally the public began to notice the gentleman who was half hidden, and who was gradually attracting the attention of the entire orchestra.

When the concert was over Lubimoff left hurriedly, afraid of being stopped by certain former women friends whom he had observed in the audience. He crossed the portico brusquely, elbowing his way through the crowd that barred the way. Here his attention was caught by a person of majestic bearing and exclusive showy appearance, with a derby of smooth gray silk, a honey colored overcoat with velvet sleeves of the same shade, and white gloves and shoes. His gray side-whiskers joined his mustache; his hair was parted away down to his neck, and over his ears strayed two locks of hair, cut short and dyed and shining with cosmetics.

"I thought it was a Russian general or some Austrian of note dressed for winter, with an elegance worthy of the Riviera, and I find it's you, my dear Colonel. I hadn't seen you outside of Villa Sirena before."

Toledo blushed, not knowing whether to feel proud or annoyed, at these words.

"Your Excellency, I always liked to dress well, and...."

"Who was the lady you were talking with?"

"It was the Infanta. She was telling me that she had lost seven thousand francs that were sent to her from Italy, and that she hasn't the money to pay her living expenses, and...."

"The tall, thin one, with the big cow-boy hat? No, not that one. I was asking you about the other."

He had only seen "the other" from behind, but she had attracted his attention for the moment because of her svelte figure and her queenly carriage.

"Your Excellency," said Don Marcos, hesitatingly, "that was the Duchess de Delille."

There was a moment's silence, and as though the Prince had caught him doing something wrong, that he must apologize for, he hastened to add:

"She is very kind to the Infanta. She gives her children clothes, and I think she even lends her dresses. The daughter of a King! The grand-daughter of San Fernando! I am an old legitimist soldier, and the least I can do is be grateful that...."

Michael cut his excuses short with a gesture. That was enough: he did not want to hear any more. And he turned to Castro. He had seen him too, near the entrance to the Casino, talking to another lady.

"And I saw you, too," said Atilio, "but you were in such a rush, going along with your head down, making your way like a mad bull. Do you want to know who the lady is? Does she interest you?"

Lubimoff shrugged his shoulders; but his indifference was feigned. As a matter of fact she had interested him, although slightly. The unknown woman was tall and blond, with an air of lithe strength, with the freedom of movement of a gymnast or an amazon.

"Well, that's the _'Generala_,'" Castro continued without observing that his friend was not paying much heed. "The title of '_Generala_' isn't to be taken seriously. It's a pet name. I think the Duchess invented it, for I warn you the two are very good friends. She's a 'General' in the same way that certain other people are Colonels."

Don Marcos overlooked this bit of irony. Atilio was evidently in a bad humor that evening. His nerves were on edge, and he seemed ready to snap at any one. He must have lost in the gambling.

"They call her the 'Generala' because of her somewhat masculine character, and the brusque way she has of treating people at times. An extraordinary woman! A real amazon! She shoots, does gymnastics, swims in the rivers in mid-winter, and what's more she has a voice like the sighing of the breeze, and looks as though she were going to faint at the least emotion, like a timid girl. Do you want to know who she is? Her name is Clorinda, a name of ancient poetry, or ancient comedy. I always call her Dona Clorinda; it seems as though it would be disrespectful if I didn't, in spite of the fact that she is still young. Perhaps two or three years younger than her friend Alicia. The two hate each other, and they can't live apart. One week each month they clash, call each other names, and tell the most horrible tales about each other; then they look each other up; 'How are you, my dear?' 'Are you angry with me, angel?'"

The Prince smiled at Atilio's imitation of the words and gestures of the two ladies.

"Clorinda is an American," Castro continued, "but from South America, from a little Republic where her grandfathers and great-grandfathers were Presidents, and fighters, and fathers of their country. Her title of 'Generala' has a certain basis. Over there in her native land they admire her for her beauty and for the great sensation she is supposed to have caused in Europe. At a distance, you see, everything is changed and seems much greater. Her picture is public property, and figures on every package of coffee, and every advertising prospectus in the country. She is a national beauty; and when she gets old, there will always be a spot in the world where she will be considered eternally youthful. She got married in Paris to a young Frenchman, a dreamer, rather ill with tuberculosis. That was the very reason why the 'Generala' loved him. If she had married a strong, fiery sort of man, they would have killed each other in a few days. She is a widow now. I don't think she is very rich; the war must have diminished her income, but she has enough to live comfortably. I even imagine she must suffer fewer hardships than does the Delille woman. She is an exceedingly well-balanced person."

He remained silent for a moment.

"But she has such queer ideas! She is so used to dominating! I met her in Biarritz some years ago. I have seen her here often in the gaming rooms; we have bowed to each other and had a few conversations which did not amount to much. When a woman is placing her stakes she doesn't allow compliments that might distract her attention. To-day is the first time that I have talked with her at any length. Do you know what she asked me, the very first thing? Why I wasn't in the war. It didn't make any difference when I told her that I'm neutral, and that the war doesn't interest me. 'If I were a man, I would be a soldier,' she said. And if you had only seen the look she gave when she said it!"

Lubimoff smiled a bit scornfully at the woman's words.

"In her opinion," Castro went on saying, "every man ought to work at something, produce something, be a hero. She adored her poor husband, gentle as a sick lamb, because he painted a few pale, washed-out pictures, and had been rewarded in some slight degree at various expositions. Men like you and me, in her eyes, are a variety of 'supers' hired to give life to the drawing-rooms, casinos, and bathing resorts, to keep the conversation going, and be nice to the ladies; but we don't interest her. She told me so this afternoon once again."

"Does her opinion bother you?" asked the Prince.

Atilio paused for a moment, as though to weigh his words before replying.

"Yes, it does bother me," he resolutely answered at last. "Why should I deny it? That woman interests me. When I don't see her, I forget all about her. Months and years have gone by without my giving her a thought. But as soon as I meet her she dominates me.... I want her. I know I can't come up to you in such matters, but I've had successful love affairs too. But she is so different from the others! Besides, there's the joy in conquering, the need of dominating, that you find at the bottom of all our amorous desires! Every time we talk together, and she makes quite evident, with her bird-like voice and her smile of compassion, the distance that separates us, I come away sad, or rather, discouraged, as though I had to climb a great height, of which I would never reach the top, no matter how hard I tried. To-day I ought to be happy; it has been months since I've had an afternoon like this. I've played, and look ... look! Seventeen thousand francs!"

He had taken from his inner pocket a bundle of blue bank-notes, throwing it on the table with a certain fury.

"I succeeded in winning as high as twenty-six thousand. If there is anything in the saying, 'Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,' I was as lucky as a despairing lover or a deceived husband. And yet, I'm not happy."

The Prince smiled again, as though a self-evident truth had just been completely demonstrated. Woman! That Clorinda, that devil of a "Generala," was a real "woman." With a few short minutes of conversation only, she had turned Castro topsy-turvy, and perhaps would end by breaking up the peaceful life--without exciting pleasures but without desperate sorrows as well--that the guests at Villa Sirena were leading.

"And you, Atilio," he said in a reproachful voice, "are moved by that smooth-voiced virago. You believe in love like a school-boy."

Castro replied in a cold, aggressive tone. The Prince might say whatever he liked about him; but to call her a virago!... What right had he? Nevertheless he hid the real cause of his annoyance, pretending to be hurt by the allusion to his credulity.

"I don't believe in anything; I'm more skeptical than you perhaps. I know that everything about us is false, and conventional--all a matter of lies that we accept because they are necessary to us for the moment. You love music and painting as though they were something divine and eternal. Very well; if the structure of our ears were to be modified a little, the symphonies of Beethoven would be a regular din; if the functioning of our retinas were to change, we would have to burn all the famous pictures, because they would seem like so many canvases dirtied by a child's play; if our brains were to be modified, all the poets and thinkers would become childish idiots for us. No, I don't believe in anything," he insisted angrily. "In order to live and understand one another, we have to agree upon a high and a low, a left and a right; but even that is a lie, since we live in the infinite which has no limits. Everything we consider fundamental is simply a matter of lines that have been laid down on the canvas of life to mark off our various conceptions."

The Prince shrugged his shoulders, giving him a look of surprise. Why all this, apropos of a woman?

"Everything is a lie," Castro went on; "but that is no reason why I should live like a stone or a tree. I need sweet falsehoods to sing my mind to sleep until the hour of my death. Illusions are a lie, but I want them near me; hope is another lie, but I want it to walk before me. I don't believe in love, since I don't believe in anything. Everything you say against it I have known for years; but should I give it a kick if it comes my way, and wants to go with me? Do you know any dream that fills the emptiness of our lives better--even though it lasts only a short time?"

Michael greeted his friend's enthusiasm with a sardonic gesture.

"Do you know why I look younger than I am?" Atilio continued, more and more excitedly. "Do you know I shall be young when others of my own age have become old men? I pretend to be ironical. As a matter of fact I'm a skeptic. But I have a secret, the secret of eternal youth, which I keep to myself. Let me tell you what it is. I have discovered that the greatest wisdom in life, the most important thing, is to 'while away the time'; and I fill the emptiness that every man carries inside him with an orchestra; the orchestra of my illusions. The great thing is that it play all the time, that the music rack never be empty; once one piece is played, another must take its place. At times it is a symphony of love. Mine have been beautiful but brief. For that reason I have replaced them with another which is endless--that of ambition and the desire for gain, whose orbits are infinite like those of the stars in the heavens, and like the possible combinations of cards. I gamble. In the whirl of the roulette wheel I see a castle that may be mine, a more sumptuous castle than any in existence; a finer yacht than the one you used to have; endless _fetes_. Through a pack of cards I can contemplate things more magnificent than were dreamed of by the Persian story-tellers. Its suites are so many piles of precious gems. Most of the time I lose, and the orchestra plays an accompaniment on muted strings, with a funeral march of wondrous wild sadness and beauty; but after a few measures, the march becomes a hymn of triumph, the dawning of a new day, the resurrection of hope."

And now there was a look of pity in the eyes of the Prince. "He is mad," it seemed to say.

"This afternoon," Castro continued, "my orchestra made me acquainted with a new symphony, something I had never heard before. While I was winning money I did not think a single time about myself, nor about palaces, nor yachts, nor parties. I was thinking only of the 'Generala,' and thinking of her with real hate, wanting to get revenge. I wanted to win a hundred thousand francs--who knows, I may win it to-morrow--and spend the whole hundred thousand on a pearl necklace, on leaving the Casino, and send it to her anonymously with something like this: 'As a tribute of dislike from a worthless, miserable man.'"

A burst of laughter from the Prince woke the Colonel with a start. As a good early riser, the latter had gone to sleep in his chair. Observing that His Excellency was not paying any attention to him, he slipped out of the Hall, as though he had something of more importance to attend to than the conversation of the two friends who seemed to ignore his presence.

"But what do you find in love?" Michael asked. "For I think you know what love really is. All the illusions of adolescence, and all the idealism of poetry, are merely winding paths which lead to the same, the only goal; the physical act. And aren't you tired of that? Aren't you never daunted by the monotony of it?"

There was a certain gloomy intonation in the Prince's voice, as though he were lamenting over the ruin of all his own life. He had met hundreds of women of the sort that cause a sudden burst of mute desire as they pass. Feminine resistance was something unknown to him. More than that: women had sought him, coming half-way of their own free will, pursuing him with no regard for the conventions and modesty, obliging him, as a matter of masculine pride, to overtax his powers with a prodigality that made pleasure almost painful. And they were all alike! He understood the mirage of illusion in the things that one admires from afar, and has no hope of obtaining. It is our curiosity for what is hidden, the desire which is aroused by an obstacle, the inner fancies inspired by clothes, ornaments, everything which covers the feminine body, giving to its sameness the charm of a mystery which is ever renewed. As for him, alas, it was as though they all went nude. Nothing could stimulate his interest; it was all too familiar.

"Besides," and here his voice grew quieter, "I wouldn't confess it to any one else; but love and women make me think of the miserableness of human life, the inevitable end, death. Since I've been freed from their false seductions, I feel gayer, more sure of myself; I enjoy more frankly the passing moment. I don't want to talk to you about the shame of those bodies which we claim to be divine. Women are less wholesome than men. It was Nature's will. But that isn't what makes me flee from them."

He was silent for a moment, but then added shortly after:

"Whenever I am near a woman I can't help but see the image of death. When I caress her silky hair, I suddenly seem to feel a smooth, hard yellow skull, like those one sees protruding from the ground in abandoned cemeteries. A kiss on her mouth, or a nibble at her chin, rouses in me a vision of the bony jaw with its teeth, not so different from those of the anthropoids in the museums. Those eyes will fade; that nose with its graceful curves and rosy quivering nostrils will dissolve likewise; the only solid and permanent parts are the black sockets, and the grotesque grin of the skull, with its flattened nose. Those swelling breasts are nothing more than false padding to hide the ghastly cage of the ribs; those legs, which seem to us such wonderful columns, are stringy flesh and water that will waste away, leaving bare two long calcareous pipe-stems. We imagine we are adoring supreme beauty, and we are embracing a skeleton. The image of death fills us with horror, and every woman carries one within her, and compels us to worship it."

Now it was Castro's turn to gaze in astonishment. His eyes, fixed on the Prince, seemed to say: "He is mad."

"The trouble with you, Michael, is that you've over-enjoyed," he said after a long pause. "You make me think of the people who, when they sit down to the table, hide their lack of appetite with nausea. The most succulent meat for them suggests the horrors of the slaughter house. Bread reminds them of the hands that kneaded it, and wine calls up a picture of feet reeking with juice in the vintage-troughs. But just let their senses awaken, and their physical needs reassert themselves, and they see everything in a different light, as though the sun had just risen, and they find an indescribable charm in the very things that disgusted them. What difference is it to me if a woman has a skeleton inside? I have one too, and that doesn't prevent me from taking a great deal of joy in the pleasures of life, and considering love as the most interesting of all those pleasures."

Castro laughed with affectionate compassion as he looked at his friend.

"Let me say it again, you are satiated; you have the lack of appetite and the gloomy vision of a person suffering from a painful indigestion. You are still too young for this debility to last. You will recover. Your appetite will come back. I hope you won't find the table set exactly as in the past, that you will be swept off your feet by some obstacle, in other words, that unrequital will make you suffer; and then ... well, just wait till then!"