The Bacchantes. Leon Daudet
window, and has been seen in the hayloft weeping and clenching his fist over her portrait. It’s a bad sign.”
Late in the afternoon, in fact, Jean Calvat, a handsome fellow of athletic proportions, lanky, robust and muscular, with the head of a young wolf, steel-hard and malign eyes, and bushy hair as shiny as fractured coal, came to demand news of his stepmother. His father’s death seemed to weigh less upon his heart than her bruises. He asked Marianne whether he could see her and speak to her.
“Oh, there’s no question of it. The doctor has given instructions not to let anyone into her room.”
“Not even your employer?”
“Not even him…at least for the moment.”
“That’s all right—I’ll come back.”
“When he said that,” Marianne said to Abrice, “he had a frightful expression.”
“Bah!” said the chauffeur. “He can be tamed.” He was a good-humored colossus with a hearty appetite, very intelligent and solely responsible for maintaining the laboratory equipment. The scientist paid him and his wife, the cook Caroline, princely wages. They were very devoted to him.
* * * *
The tragic death of Père Calvat caused great emotion in the region. He was a country squire who did not mistreat his employees, treated everyone fairly and managed his estate, one of the finest in the region, with wisdom and skill. His marriage to Tullie Moneuse, who was known as “the Italian woman” because of her Neapolitan origin, had generated gossip, but not too much. “One more cuckold,” had been the smiling judgment of the Loir-et-Cher, the Indre-et-Loire and the Eure-et-Loir. The new farmer’s wife was amiable and cheerful. She won forgiveness with her gentility and sparkling beauty. She was called “a royal piece.” As she was at least thirty-five years younger than her husband, it was added that, when the day came, mourning would suit her “jolly well.”
The funeral procession set out from the farm at Arges at midday, beneath a sky heavy with storm-clouds. Behind the coffin, at the head, Jean Calvat marched alone, his detached, almost arrogant attitude contrasting with the soft expressions of the uncles, aunts and cousins, and the sincerely-afflicted expressions of the servants. All the inhabitants of the villages of Brancheville and Avenillon were there, and people had even come from Blois and Vendôme. The file of black-clad individuals going through the fields recalled Courbet’s famous canvas,5 for in the Blésois, as in Normandy, Artois or Auvergne, all funeral or nuptial processions resemble one another, the ceremonies of life and death being packaged in the same fashion, so much have our kings unified France.
In the church at Avenillon, where the ceremony was to take place, people thought, they would doubtless see “the three sorcerers.” Bénalep had forbidden Marianne to let Tullie get up, even for the mass. She was reading her prayers in her bed.
The curé, Abbé Parroy, was a saintly man of about seventy, universally respected, as thin and gaunt as the Curé d’Ars,6 and who, like him, lived in the supernatural in the midst of an unbelieving population. The devotion to science of his neighbors, Dévonet, Bénalep and Ségétan and their natural impiety did not astonish or frighten him. He called them “the big brains” and willingly argued with them: “You look at the tapestry; I look at what’s behind it.” He was interested in Ségétan’s discoveries and the work of the other two, as a providential florescence whose source was unknown to those who benefited from it. He felt pity for sensuality and scorn for concupiscence, as two traps set by the Evil One. His speech was slow, difficult and measured, nourished by Holy Writ and rudimentary theology, for he was of rural stock, with a face both knotty and hollowed out: “the tree of faith,” Ségétan said.
The church, ancient and spacious, with a projecting roof at the door, was packed. In the second row were the pews of the châtelains of Brancheville, the Duc d’Ignacio, Spanish by descent although born in Paris, and his wife, the blonde and rosy-featured Ariana, a former “star” of the screen, with a child-like face, burnt eyes and harmonious gestures. The Duc looked like a portrait by Zurbarán.7 In his elongated, equine, clean-shaven face shone two eyes charged with passion, green or black according to the angle of the light. Then came the Maire, Monsieur Taupin, a vague bourgeois, liberal and timid; Madame la Mairesse, who was said to look like a deck-chair attendant; Roman Ségétan, whose sharply-defined head seemed a projection of profane stained glass; and Dévonet, no less singular by virtue of his high forehead, the ridge of his nose and strong jaws, with his Mélanie.
The last-named was, quite naturally, the most charming and reserved of the village madonnas, and her kneeling was gentleness personified. A fiery soul dwelt within her, however, of a kind less extravagant but more calculated and redoubtable than Ariana’s. She had recently perceived that she desired Ségétan, that she would like to be enclosed, if only once, but fundamentally, in his vigorous genius, to sweat with pleasure between his arms, to pour over him the bold foam of her mouth. She had hoped that she might succeed Lili in the creative images to which the father of the waves of time had recourse, but now an accident had put the beautiful Tullie into his bed. Patience, though: all hours chime, especially for those who keep their eyes fixed on the hand of destiny!
As those violent sentiments gripped Mélanie Dévonet, to the strains of the Dies Irae, a sudden tempestuous desire for Jean Calvat, standing with his arms folded, in mourning-dress, took possession of the supple Ariana. By night, between the sheets, her husband whipped up his blood with vivid extracts from her past, which she related to him in a repentant tone, or laughing in the dark like a crazed child. “Oh, that was good, you know…he took it like this, and this.…” And she did not spare the rude words, pretending to mistake his Christian name, putting Ignacio outside himself by means of some of those shrill remarks with which women are able profoundly to dissimulate their faculty for enjoyment.
By virtue of a well-known sensual repercussion, the ex-star had awakened in herself the demon of irresistible desire. The latter had just settled on the supple and proud peasant, like a young Bacchus, who had succeeded his father, along with his stepmother, in the direction of the farm of Les Arges. She could see the film, designed solely for a few rich amateurs: herself, nude, pursued by him, nude, in the remotest room in the château; the refusal, to improve the surrender; the fondling, like a dance whose steps she would regulate; and, finally, the embrace and the double, simultaneous, synchronic ecstasy, knotting the flesh for the eternity of a second and making, of two lives combined in a gasp, the most exquisite mortal frisson.
When they emerged from the church, the pretty woman, as lively as an eel, went up to the young peasant, who was going to his mercy-seat in the sacristy, and brushed against his entire body—leg, hip, side, shoulder—while looking into his eyes. He had never given her a thought, although he had met her several times in the fields, in Branchevlle and in Avenillon, while his fiery imagination was flowing around his stepmother. Even so, from that contact and gaze he received a kind of electric shock, which was not disagreeable, and extracted a silly smile from him.
Can he be a virgin? thought Ariana, who had once debauched an adolescent of sixteen in Los Angeles. There’s something of the unripe fruit about him. Turning round, she perceived the chauffeur Abrice a few paces away, watching her with mocking eyes. As a legitimate Sultana in the days of Solomon, she would have had his head cut off.
When, then would she have another opportunity to approach the magnificent twenty-year-old athlete with the stormy pupils?
* * * *
As soon as he was back at the Villa Dyonisos, Ségétan went into Tullie’s room to give her an account of the ceremony. She was sitting up gracefully in bed, clad in a short blue silk tunic, open over her lace chemise, which swelled over her white bosom. He asked after her health, negligently taking a soft and slender hand, which he held in his own, and told her what had happened. He named a few individuals, emphasizing the fine bearing of Jean Calvat, whom everyone had admired.
She