The Last Fay Read online

  “You love her?” said Catherine, shivering and glimpsing his response.

  “I dare not, for fear that my love might tarnish her purity.”

  “But if she’s so beautiful,” said Catherine, “what if she doesn’t love you?”

  “You’re provoking too many thoughts!” he said, striking himself over the heart. “I have too many here—they’re choking me.”

  “You’ll love her and she’ll love you,” said Catherine then, dissolving in tears, “for a woman who has seen you could never forget the sweetness of your face.”

  Having said that, Catherine fled through the brambles, still weeping...but she stopped, came back precipitately, and, sitting beside him on the large stone, she said to him: “Abel, be happy, and I shall be happy...” And she disappeared.

  The pensive young man followed her with his eyes. For some time he did not think any more about the Pearl Fay, and he began to recall within himself all of Catherine’s speech, gazes and even tones, but vaguely, and with a confused sentiment that he could not explain.

  Chapter VII

  The Marvelous Lamp

  For several hours, Abel’s soul lived, in a way, on the memory of the apparition of the Pearl Fay, but after that, he felt a need to see her that resembled hunger. He tried not to go to sleep at night, in order not to lose any of the moments during which the pretty fay might come. He adorned himself carefully, washed his hair in the clear water of the spring, and tried with Caliban to render as white as mountain snow the collar that his mother had embroidered. He plaited the cords by means of which he attached wooden sandals made by Caliban during winter nights, and on which his feet resembled the marble feet of a statue.

  One evening, he and Caliban collected a bouquet of roses, and he strewed the petals in the laboratory, which he ornamented with foliage. He swept the chimney through which the little fay had descended, and attached lilac branches to it, in order that she might find a perfumed path.

  The following evening, at midnight, the hour that fays—all fays—cherish, because at that moment the amorous stars cast a more vivid gleam and the silence pleases their loving souls, a music of divine sweetness and the pure and tender song of the Pearl Fay alloyed their melody, which seemed to be coming from the clouds, so cautiously and softly did the harmony caress the ear.

  Abel suddenly woke up and saw the fay, in the midst of her cortege of light, which extended over the entire laboratory, like the veil of air that can sometimes be seen over the earth on a beautiful spring day when one climbs a mountain and looks down into a valley.

  The charming fay was sitting in the worm-eaten armchair and watching her protégé sleep. As soon as Abel opened his eyes she ceased her celestial song and her face took on another expression.

  Abel, who had slept fully dressed since the first apparition, got up, and set himself on his knees a few paces from the fay. A moment of silence reigned between them, for she seemed to be taking pleasure in admiring the young man, whose gaze ran over her avidly, as if he were seeing a tenderly beloved friend again after many years.

  Finally, he said to her with a charming naivety: “You’ve doubtless broken the big bottle in which my father had enclosed you?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling. “And it’s because he took me from the hands of an enchanter, my enemy, that I’ve sworn to protect you.”

  “To protect me?” he repeated, slowly, with a tone of regret and a reproachful gaze

  “What more do you want?” said the fay, who understood him perfectly well.

  “I don’t know,” he replied; but after a moment of silence and hesitation, he added, with the air of supplication and tender desire that gives so much charm: “I’d like never to leave you! Have you not rendered life insupportable to me? For if I didn’t think about you and your image didn’t fill my every moment…what would I become? Nothing pleases me now as much as a relationship between my life and you. My soul was full of happiness in picking these roses, because you were to tread on the petals I’ve spread. Once, I loved flowers, the murmur of our spring, the sight of the valley and that of the sky; today, all that only has charm because I think I hear a voice replying to me; it’s an artifice of my soul, which makes me believe that you’re listening to me. Go, beautiful fay; you can be in the places where you rest, but I’m certain that you’re also here”—and he pointed at his heart.

  The fay—for fays are women, after all—listened with pleasure. She showed him the stool with the tip of her wand, as if to tell him to sit down on it. Abel perched on it timidly, while still gazing at the fay. As he sat down, he perceived the beautiful lamp that was burning on the mantelpiece, and for a moment, he considered it with surprise, in silence.

  The fay looked at him and seemed to divine his thought; she smiled.

  “Beautiful fay,” sad Abel, “can you prolong Caliban’s existence?”

  She shook her head in a sign of refusal, and replied in her soft voice: “We can give or take away life, but God has forbidden us to make it last longer than it should.”

  “You recognize Catherine’s God, then?”

  “Who is Catherine!” cried the fay, emerging from the kind of impassivity on which she was striving to remain. “Is she not a young and pretty woman that you love?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t love her!” Abel retorted, swiftly. “For we laugh together and I take her hand; by her side I feel that I’m entirely myself. In sum, I cherish her like a sister…and she was chagrined the other day, and I wept with her.”

  “Abel, listen! If you have some request to make of me, speak. I can grant you anything you wish.”

  “I don’t want anything for myself,” he exclaimed, softly, “for at this moment, I’m happy! But I feel that I’d have pleasure in seeing my father and my tender mother, the Good Fay, again. You must know them; let me enjoy the pleasant sight of them once more.”

  “I’ll have to consult my books,” the fay replied, “and if it can be done, I’ll show them to you.”

  “Oh, kind fay!” cried Abel. “I’d also like to see your palace, the place of your habitual residence.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because then,” said Abel, “I’d always see you there, and you’d almost never be absent for me.”

  She seemed touched by that response, and promised Abel to satisfy his desires. She darted a glance of complaisance at him, in which a sentiment even more delicate gleamed, and made a movement as if to withdraw. “Oh, stay!” said Abel, seizing her pretty hand, which she suddenly withdrew.

  The poor young man, reading the disdain on the face of the Pearl Fay, thought he had offended her, and he recoiled shamefully, looking at her with the expression of a criminal asking for mercy, and a tear even formed in his fiery eyes.

  “Terrible!” he said, in a whisper.

  The fay, very emotional, took a step toward him and presented him with her hand, very near his lips, and when Abel deposited a tender and respectful kiss thereon, he felt the gentle hand tremble as it brushed his face.

  In that apparition, the fay was already slightly embarrassed; she no longer had on her face the cheerful expression that Abel had noticed the first time; but the splendor of her adornment prevented the chemist’s son from perceiving that change.

  She looked at the laboratory attentively, especially the clothes of the chemist and his wife, and then she turned to Abel and said: “The dew is about to be distilled over the flowers; dawn is breaking; it’s the hour when we disappear. Adieu...”

  Then, as light as a cloud, as gracious as an amorous virgin’s thought, she seized her brilliant lamp and launched herself into the chimney through which he had arrived, like a young squirrel climbing a branch, balancing lightly and playing with the foliage.

  Abel remained utterly nonplussed; that apparition of the fay left something in his soul that was indistinct and vague, like the first light of dawn rising on the horizon over a blue sea. That sentiment was not amour, for Abel, without yet perceiving it, had a soul full of it
, and the fay ought to be the object of his first and last amour; but that movement of his pensive soul resembled hope, without being hope itself.

  When the fay had gone, he remembered the singular expression on her face, and the uncertainty, even embarrassment, of her gestures and her countenance.

  He was plunged in that meditation until broad daylight, and Caliban found him in the same posture as when the fay had disappeared.

  “Caliban, she told me that she can’t delay the moment of your death, when it arrives.”

  Caliban looked at the ground sadly, and when he raised his head again, Abel perceived a large tear trickling through the old man’s wrinkles.

  “How can I leave you, Abel? But you’ll put me with your father, won’t you?”

  Abel promised him that.

  A few days later, the fay appeared to him again, and came to warn him that it was necessary to resolve himself to running the greatest dangers in order to reach the palace where she lived. Abel replied that presenting him with such a prospect was fulfilling his desires.

  Then the fay gave him her nacre wand, which, for this time only, would obey the orders he intimated to it, and she said to him, in a voice full of charm: “Abel, tomorrow, when the chariot of the night has traveled the air and you hear midnight chime on the village clock, strike the stone a hundred paces from your cottage with the wand; it will rise up and open a gulf into which it is necessary to hurl yourself; when you have descended, you must march until you see the light of my castle; it will only be visible to you.”

  The fay disappeared, as usual, leaving him the wand. He never stopped kissing it, thinking that the fay’s hand had touched it. He did not know what to do with it; he put it down in one place, and then another, going away and coming back to look at it, as if it were the fay herself.

  In the times when Napoléon governed Europe with a bold hand, and appeared to people to be surrounded by a majestic splendor, he confided his portfolio to a young clerk who had to follow the army. The clerk, once he had the portfolio, did not know where to put it; he consulted everyone, and asked them how one carried the portfolio of an Emperor, and what precious substance was contained within it. He never took his eyes off it, as if Napoléon and his genius were contained therein. If someone went past, he looked at it anxiously; if someone came he would show him the portfolio. He told everyone that that he had His Majesty’s portfolio at home. In the end, he went mad...

  So it was with Abel and the fay, except that his folly was forgivable as amour, whereas the clerk’s announced a narrow soul.

  Abel waited with a rare impatience for the appointed hour to arrive.

  Caliban was absolutely determined to accompany him, and they were both at the stone in question at midnight. When the last stroke of the clock resounded in the air, Abel struck the slab very gently, and it rose up abruptly. The opening immediately vomited a great quantity of flames, and Caliban looked at Abel fearfully; but the intrepid young man, closing his eyes, launched himself into the crater of the little volcano, and Caliban followed him.

  They fell on to a soft and flexible substance that received them complaisantly. They heard the stone fall back noisily and found themselves in the most frightful obscurity. Abel stood up, and, putting his hand out in front of him, marched courageously, calling to Caliban; but he could no longer hear the faithful servant. He groped around everywhere trying to find him, but it was in vain. Then he decided to go forward.

  He wandered for a long time without encountering any obstacle; the most profound silence reigned, as well as the greatest obscurity.

  He traveled for so long, always surrounded by that cortege of terror, that he thought that the night must have ended.

  Suddenly, a horrible noise, of which he had never had any idea, resounded like a clap of thunder, and the vault under which he was walking seemed to be shaken by it, and ready to crumble. After the first shudder of involuntary dread that the noise had excited in his body, he resumed marching, but at every moment the noise was repeated, and seemed to be drawing nearer.

  Abel stopped, and sat down on a cold stone; there, the most terrible spectacle came to frighten him.

  In fact, his eyes were always directed forward by a natural movement, and he was striving to see; that optical tension fatigued him, and it was when that fatigue arrived that the noise ceased, and in the distance, a luminous white dot began to appear. Gradually, that light became alarming and grew, and took on substance—and the substance was that of a giant armed with a club, who approached rapidly and raised the tree-trunk over Abel’s head, swinging it.

  Abel stood up and ran at the giant, but he heard frightful laughter, and the giant started dancing and retreating, while jumping, still holding the club aloft. Then Abel ran swiftly toward the terrible vision. Just as he was on the point of reaching it, the giant was resolved into a line of extreme thinness, and changed into a serpent, which hissed with all its night, and launched itself instantly upon Abel, who, in that perplexity, tried to strike it with the nacreous wand.

  As he touched it with the wand, it recoiled into the most obscure distance, and from there it came back with an awful fury. On the way, it raised itself up on its tail and its head became a human head: a death’s head with that fixed and terrible smile, its body swaying on two dry bones, and Abel saw daylight through its empty ribs. He heard the bones creak, and finally, infernal laughter burst forth that chilled him with terror.

  At that instant, the fay and all her magical brightness presented herself to his imagination; he closed his eyes and ran with a terrible strength and energy, and when he was weary, he sat down, opened his eyes, and could no longer see anything. He got up, and continued his route. Soon he perceived a soft light at the end of the tunnel through which he had just traveled, and when he reached it, he saw that it was the reflection of the waters of a lake, which was reflecting a multitude of gleams.

  In fact, he found himself in a grotto covered with seashells, some rarer than others. That grotto, where nacre was predominant, was the extremity of a limpid lake, surrounded on all sides by luminous trees. A gilded boat was floating in front of the bold young man, who immediately leapt into it, and tried to guide it toward a magnificent Chinese pavilion that he was seeing for the first time in reality.

  As soon as he was in the boat, from both sides of the shore, a soft music spread through the air, the most divine sounds; and when the music fell silent, a silvery voice sang a hymn in Abel’s honor.

  As for him, he enjoyed the most magnificent spectacle that could flatter his marvel-loving soul; he was sailing on a lake in the midst of an ocean of light, which effaced the glimmer of the stars of a sky as pure as the water that caressed the boat with luminous waves. He saw a Chinese pavilion rising up from the bosom of the waters, and every angle and point was garnished with a pearl as large as an egg, and contained a light that, through the oriental envelope, cast a glow as mysterious glow as the fay of the place. The waters appeared to fade away beneath the divine pavilion, through the windows of which he perceived figures moving and dancing like sylphs.

  When his boat reached the pavilion, he heard a delightful music and the joyful cries of a troop of fays that were dancing. He stepped out, and suddenly, two tall and strong strangers took hold of him, threw him into a kind of box and carried him off with extreme rapidity. He tried to break the crate in which he was contained, but the bursts of laughter that followed his vain efforts reminded him that human strength was futile against the enchantments of fays.

  Finally, the same noise that he had heard during his difficult journey became audible; his prison seemed to shatter, and he found himself alone in the middle of a white cloud and an agreeable odor, in a place that resembled, so far as he could imagine it, the palace of a fay.

  It was a circular space; the cupola was supported by thirty columns of white marble, and the interval between each pair of columns was garnished with a precious red fabric attached by lions’ claws to the frieze. The parquet, composed of pr
ecious species of wood, formed the most ingenious designs; a chandelier, which he thought made of diamond, hung from the middle of the vault, which seemed to him to be a sky, so skillfully was it painted; and the chandelier emitted fires whose glare he could not sustain.

  From the bosom of three golden tripods, the sweetest perfumes were exhaled. All around the marvelous room ran a divan, where there were crimson cushions in profusion, and the richness of the woodwork was further augmented by gilding and gemstones. Between each pair of columns stood a bonze pedestal, on which he saw the most beautiful statues in honor of the most celebrated fays. He read the names thereon: the fay Urgelle; the fay Gentille; the Fay of the Waters, etc.10

  At first, in his surprise, he did not perceive an open door, and it required him to hear a well-known cherished voice in the next room for him to rush in there immediately...

  Another astonishment!

  He entered the place where the fay lived. The light came from on high, but it was veiled by an immense ceiling composed of a fabric as white as snow, and folded with a thousand pleats, so that the daylight had a soft whiteness like the fay herself.

  That divine redoubt was square in form. In the four corners, crystal pedestals—into the middle of which the fay had poured silver, which gave them a soft gleam—supported cassolettes, which exhaled the sweetest perfumes. Once Abel was inside he could no longer perceive the door, because the walls—if they were walls—were coated with a precious mat white substance with large nacreous seashells, artistically posed, the brilliant ridges of which, changing color and admirably imitated, decorated the fay’s boudoir. The base of each shell contained a seed-pearl, and the plinth from the top to the bottom of the apartment was decorated by a girdle of pearls half a foot wide. The seashells stood out, by virtue of the brilliant white of their nacre, from the background, which was a mat white, almost blue-tinted.