Abbe Mouret's Transgression: Chapter 14

Chapter 14

At that moment Albine was still wandering about the Paradou with all
the mute agony of a wounded animal. She had ceased to weep. Her face
was very white and a deep crease showed upon her brow. Why did she have
to suffer that deathlike agony? Of what fault had she been guilty, that
the garden no longer kept the promises it had held out to her since her
childhood's days? She questioned herself as she walked along, never
heeding the avenues through which the gloom was slowly stealing. She had
always obeyed the voices of the trees. She could not remember having
injured a single flower. She had ever been the beloved daughter of the
greenery, hearkening to it submissively, yielding to it with full
belief in the happiness which it promised to her. And when, on that
supreme day, the Paradou had cried to her to cast herself beneath the
giant-tree, she had done so in compliance with its voice. If she then
had nothing to reproach herself with, it must be the garden which had
betrayed her; the garden which was torturing her for the mere sake of
seeing her suffer.

She halted and looked around her. The great gloomy masses of foliage
preserved deep silence. The paths were blocked with black walls of
darkness. The distant lawns were lulling to sleep the breezes that
kissed them. And she thrust out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness
and raised a cry of protest. It could not all end thus. But her voice
choked beneath the silent trees. Thrice did she implore the Paradou to
answer her, but never an explanation fell from its lofty branches, not a
leaf seemed to be moved with pity for her. Then she resumed her weary
wandering, and felt that she was entering into the fatal sternness of
winter. Now that she had ceased to rebelliously question the earth, she
caught sound of a gentle murmur speeding along the ground. It was the
farewell of the plants, wishing one another a happy death. To have drunk
in the sunshine for a whole season, to have lived ever blossoming, to
have breathed continual perfume, and then, at the first blast, to
depart, with the hope of springing up again elsewhere, was not that
sufficiently long and full a life which obstinate craving for further
existence would mar? Ah! how sweet death must be; how sweet to have an
endless night before one, wherein to dream of the short days of life and
to recall eternally its fugitive joys!

She stayed her steps once more; but she no longer protested as she stood
there amidst the deep stillness of the Paradou. She now believed that
she understood everything. The garden doubtless had death in store for
her as a supreme culminating happiness. It was to death that it had all
along been leading her in its tender fashion. After love, there could be
nought but death. And never had the garden loved her so much as it did
now; she had shown herself ungrateful in accusing it, for all the time
she had remained its best beloved child. The motionless boughs, the
paths blocked up with darkness, the lawns where the breezes fell asleep,
had only become mute in order that they might lure her on to taste the
joys of long silence. They wished her to be with them in their winter
rest, they dreamt of carrying her off, swathed in their dry leaves with
her eyes frozen like the waters of the springs, her limbs stiffened like
the bare branches, and her blood sleeping the sleep of the sap. And,
yes, she would live their life to the very end, and die their death.
Perhaps they had already willed that she should spring up next summer as
a rose in the flower-garden, or a pale willow in the meadow-lands, or a
tender birch in the forest. Yes, it was the great law of life; she was
about to die.

Then, for the last time, she resumed her walk through the Paradou in
quest of death. What fragrant plant might need her sweet-scented tresses
to increase the perfume of its leaves? What flower might wish the gift
of her satinlike skin, the snowy whiteness of her arms, the tender pink
of her bosom? To what weakly tree should she offer her young blood? She
would have liked to be of service to the weeds vegetating beside the
paths, to slay herself there so that from her flesh some huge greenery
might spring, lofty and sapful, laden with birds at May-time, and
passionately caressed by the sun. But for a long while the Paradou still
maintained silence as if it had not yet made up its mind to confide to
her in what last kiss it would spirit away her life. She had to wander
all over it again, seeking, pilgrim-like, for her favourite spots. Night
was now more swiftly approaching, and it seemed to her as if she were
being gradually sucked into the earth. She climbed to the great rocks
and questioned them, asking whether it was upon their stony beds that
she must breathe her last breath. She crossed the forest with lingering
steps, hoping that some oak would topple down and bury her beneath the
majesty of its fall. She skirted the streams that flowed through the
meadows, bending down at almost every step she took so as to peep into
the depths and see whether a couch had not been prepared for her amongst
the water lilies. But nowhere did Death call her; nowhere did he offer
her his cold hands. Yet, she was not mistaken. It was, indeed, the
Paradou that was about to teach her to die, as, indeed, it had taught
her to love. She again began to scour the bushes, more eagerly even than
on those warm mornings of the past when she had gone searching for love.
And, suddenly, just as she was reaching the parterre, she came upon
death, amidst all the evening fragrance. She ran forward, breaking out
into a rapturous laugh. She was to die amongst the flowers.

First she hastened to the thicket-like rosary. There, in the last
flickering of the gloaming, she searched the beds and gathered all the
roses that hung languishing at the approach of winter. She plucked them
from down below, quite heedless of their thorns; she plucked them in
front of her, with both hands; she plucked them from above, rising upon
tip-toes and pulling down the boughs. So eager was she, so desperate was
her haste, that she even broke the branches, she, who had ever shown
herself tender to the tiniest blades of grass. Soon her arms were full
of roses, she tottered beneath her burden of flowers. And having quite
stripped the rose trees, carrying away even the fallen petals, she
turned her steps to the pavilion; and when she had let her load of
blossoms slip upon the floor of the room with the blue ceiling, she
again went down to the garden.

This time she sought the violets. She made huge bunches of them, which
she pressed one by one against her breast. Then she sought the
carnations, plucking them all, even to the buds; massing them together
in big sheaves of white blossoms that suggested bowls of milk, and big
sheaves of the red ones, that seemed like bowls of blood. Then, too, she
sought the stocks, the patches of mirabilis, the heliotropes and the
lilies. She tore the last blossoming stocks off by the handful,
pitilessly crumpling their satin ruches; she devastated the beds of
mirabilis, whose flowers were scarcely opening to the evening air; she
mowed down the field of heliotropes, piling her harvest of blooms into a
heap; and she thrust bundles of lilies under her arms like handles of
reeds. When she was again laden with as much as she could carry, she
returned to the pavilion to cast the violets, the carnations, the
lilies, the stocks, the heliotrope, and the mirabilis by the side of the
roses. And then, without stopping to draw breath, she went down yet
again.

This time she repaired to that gloomy corner which seemed like the
graveyard of the flower-garden. A warm autumn had there brought on a
second crop of spring flowers. She raided the borders of tuberoses and
hyacinths; going down upon her knees, and gathering her harvest with all
a miser's care, lest she should miss a single blossom. The tuberoses
seemed to her to be extremely precious flowers, which would distil drops
of gold and wealth and wondrous sweetness. The hyacinths, beaded with
pearly blooms, were like necklets, whose every pearl would pour forth
joys unknown to man. And although she almost buried herself beneath the
mass of tuberoses and hyacinths which she plucked, she next stripped a
field of poppies, and even found means to crop an expanse of marigolds
farther on. All these she heaped over the tuberoses and hyacinths, and
then ran back to the room with the blue ceiling, taking the greatest
care as she went that the breeze should not rob her of a single pistil.
And once more did she come downstairs.

But what was she to gather now? She had stripped the parterre bare. As
she rose upon the tips of her shoes in the dim gloom, she could only see
the garden lying there naked and dead, deprived of the tender eyes of
its roses, the crimson smile of its carnations, and the perfumed locks
of its heliotropes. Nevertheless, she could not return with empty arms.
So she laid hands upon the herbs and leafy plants. She crawled over the
ground, as though she would have carried off the very soil itself in a
clutch of supreme passion. She filled her skirt with a harvest of
aromatic plants, southernwood, mint, verbenas. She came across a border
of balm, and left not a leaf of it unplucked. She even broke off two big
fennels which she threw over her shoulders like a couple of trees. Had
she been able, she would have carried all the greenery of the garden
away with her between her teeth. When she reached the threshold of the
pavilion, she turned round and gave a last look at the Paradou. It was
quite dark now. The night had fully come and cast a black veil over
everything. Then for the last time she went up the stairs, never more to
step down them.

The spacious room was quickly decked. She had placed a lighted lamp upon
the table. She sorted out the flowers heaped upon the floor and arranged
them in big bunches, which she distributed about the room. First she
placed some lilies behind the lamp on the table, forming with them a
lofty lacelike screen which softened the light with its snowy purity.
Then she threw handfuls of carnations and stocks over the old sofa,
which was already strewn with red bouquets that had faded a century ago,
till all these were hidden, and the sofa looked like a huge bed of
stocks bristling with carnations. Next she placed the four armchairs in
front of the alcove. On the first one she piled marigolds, on the second
poppies, on the third mirabilis, and on the fourth heliotrope. The
chairs were completely buried in bloom, with nothing but the tips of
their arms visible. At last she thought of the bed. She pushed a little
table near the head of it, and reared thereon a huge pile of violets.
Then she covered the whole bed with the hyacinths and tuberoses she had
plucked. They were so abundant that they formed a thick couch
overflowing all around, so that the bed now looked like one colossal
bloom.

The roses still remained. And these she scattered chancewise all over
the room, without even looking to see where they fell. Some of them
dropped upon the table, the sofa, and the chairs; and a corner of the
bed was inundated with them. For some minutes there was a rain of roses,
a real downpour of heavy blossoms, which settled in flowery pools in the
hollows of the floor. But as the heap seemed scarcely diminished, she
finished by weaving garlands of roses which she hung upon the walls. She
twined wreaths around the necks and arms and waists of the plaster
cupids that sported over the alcove. The blue ceiling, the oval panels,
edged with flesh-coloured ribbon, the voluptuous paintings, preyed upon
by time, were all hung with a mantle, a drapery of roses. The big room
was fully decked at last. Now she could die there.

For a moment she remained standing, glancing around her. She was looking
to see if death was there. And she gathered up the aromatic greenery,
the southernwood, the mint, the verbenas, the balm, and the fennel. She
broke them and twisted them and made wedges of them with which to stop
up every little chink and cranny about the windows and the door. Then
she drew the white coarsely sewn calico curtains and, without even a
sigh, laid herself upon the bed, on all the florescence of hyacinths and
tuberoses.

And then a final rapture was granted her. With her eyes wide open she
smiled at the room. Ah! how she had loved there! And how happily she was
there going to die! At that supreme moment the plaster cupids suggested
nothing impure to her; the amorous paintings disturbed her no more. She
was conscious of nothing beneath that blue ceiling save the intoxicating
perfume of the flowers. And it seemed to her as if this perfume was none
other than the old love-fragrance which had always warmed the room, now
increased a hundredfold, till it had become so strong and penetrating
that it would surely suffocate her. Perchance it was the breath of the
lady who had died there a century ago. In perfect stillness, with her
hands clasped over her heart, she continued smiling, while she listened
to the whispers of the perfumes in her buzzing head. They were singing
to her a soft strange melody of fragrance, which slowly and very gently
lulled her to sleep.

At first there was a prelude, bright and childlike; her hands, that had
just now twisted and twined the aromatic greenery, exhaled the pungency
of crushed herbage, and recalled her old girlish ramblings through the
wildness of the Paradou. Then there came a flutelike song, a song of
short musky notes, rising from the violets that lay upon the table near
the head of the bed; and this flutelike strain, trilling melodiously to
the soft accompaniment of the lilies on the other table, sang to her of
the first joys of love, its first confession, and first kiss beneath the
trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with
the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen
notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh
when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which
recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt
that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity,
lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks,
and died away amidst a delightful hymn from the heliotropes, which, with
their vanilla-like breath, proclaimed the approach of nuptial bliss.
Here and there the mirabilis gently trilled. Then came a hush. And
afterwards the roses languidly made their entry. Their voices streamed
from the ceiling, like the strains of a distant choir. It was a chorus
of great breadth, to which she at first listened with a slight quiver.
Then the volume of the strain increased, and soon her whole frame
vibrated with the mighty sounds that burst in waves around her. The
nuptials were at hand, the trumpet blasts of the roses announced them.
She pressed her hands more closely to her heart as she lay there
panting, gasping, dying. When she opened her lips for the kiss which was
to stifle her, the hyacinths and tuberoses shot out their perfume and
enveloped her with so deep, so great a sigh that the chorus of the roses
could be heard no more.

And then, amidst the final gasp of the flowers, Albine died.

Back to chapter list of: Abbe Mouret's Transgression