International Short Stories: French | Page 7

having brought singers and music! A banquet, young
and beautiful women, with dark locks, all the pleasures of life. Let
them remain. I am about to be born again."
"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.
"I have discovered a means of resuscitation. There, look in the drawer
of the table--you open it by pressing a hidden spring near the griffin."
"I have it, father."
"Good! Now take out a little flask of rock crystal."
"Here it is."
"I have spent twenty years in----"
At this point the old man felt his end approaching, and collected all his
energy to say:
"As soon as I have drawn my last breath rub me with this water and I
shall come to life again."
"There is very little of it," replied the young man.
Bartholomeo was no longer able to speak, but he could still hear and
see. At these words he turned his head toward Don Juan with a violent
wrench. His neck remained twisted like that of a marble statue doomed
by the sculptor's whim to look forever sideways, his staring eyes
assumed a hideous fixity. He was dead, dead in the act of losing his
only, his last illusion. In seeking a shelter in his son's heart he had
found a tomb more hollow than those which men dig for their dead. His
hair, too, had risen with horror and his tense gaze seemed still to speak.
It was a father rising in wrath from his sepulchre to demand vengeance
of God.
"There, the good man is done for!" exclaimed Don Juan.
Intent upon taking the magic crystal to the light of the lamp, as a
drinker examines his bottle at the end of a repast, he had not seen his

father's eye pale. The cowering dog looked alternately at his dead
master and at the elixir, as Don Juan regarded by turns his father and
the phial. The lamp threw out fitful waves of light. The silence was
profound, the viol was mute. Belvidéro thought he saw his father move,
and he trembled. Frightened by the tense expression of the accusing
eyes, he closed them, just as he would have pushed down a
window-blind on an autumn night. He stood motionless, lost in a world
of thought.
Suddenly a sharp creak, like that of a rusty spring, broke the silence.
Don Juan, in his surprise, almost dropped the flask. A perspiration,
colder than the steel of a dagger, oozed out from his pores. A cock of
painted wood came forth from a clock and crowed three times. It was
one of those ingenious inventions by which the savants of that time
were awakened at the hour fixed for their work. Already the daybreak
reddened the casement. The old timepiece was more faithful in its
master's service than Don Juan had been in his duty to Bartholomeo.
This instrument was composed of wood, pulleys, cords and wheels,
while he had that mechanism peculiar to man, called a heart.
In order to run no further risk of losing the mysterious liquid the
skeptical Don Juan replaced it in the drawer of the little Gothic table.
At this solemn moment he heard a tumult in the corridor. There were
confused voices, stifled laughter, light footsteps, the rustle of silk, in
short, the noise of a merry troop trying to collect itself in some sort of
order. The door opened and the prince, the seven women, the friends of
Don Juan and the singers, appeared, in the fantastic disorder of dancers
overtaken by the morning, when the sun disputes the paling light of the
candles. They came to offer the young heir the conventional
condolences.
"Oh, oh, is poor Don Juan really taking this death seriously?" said the
prince in la Brambilla's ear.
"Well, his father was a very good man," she replied.
Nevertheless, Don Juan's nocturnal meditations had printed so striking
an expression upon his face that it commanded silence. The men
stopped, motionless. The women, whose lips had been parched with
wine, threw themselves on their knees and began to pray. Don Juan
could not help shuddering as he saw this splendor, this joy, laughter,
song, beauty, life personified, doing homage thus to Death. But in this

adorable Italy religion and revelry were on such good terms that
religion was a sort of debauch and debauch religion. The prince pressed
Don Juan's hand affectionately, then all the figures having given
expression to the same look, half-sympathy, half-indifference, the
phantasmagoria disappeared, leaving the chamber empty. It was, indeed,
a faithful image of life! Going down the stairs the prince said to la
Rivabarella:
"Heigho! who would have thought Don Juan a mere boaster of impiety?
He loved his father, after all!"
"Did you notice the black dog?" asked la