International Short Stories: French | Page 8

Brambilla.
"He is immensely rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolini.
"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese, she who had broken
the comfit dish.
"What is that to you?" exclaimed the duke. "With his ducats he is as
much a prince as I am!"
At first Don Juan, swayed by a thousand thoughts, wavered toward
many different resolutions. After having ascertained the amount of the
wealth amassed by his father, he returned in the evening to the death
chamber, his soul puffed up with a horrible egoism. In the apartment he
found all the servants of the household busied in collecting the
ornaments for the bed of state on which "feu monseigneur" would lie
to-morrow--a curious spectacle which all Ferrara would come to admire.
Don Juan made a sign and the servants stopped at once, speechless and
trembling.
"Leave me alone," he said in an altered voice, "and do not return until I
go out again."
When the steps of the old servant, who was the last to leave, had died
away on the stone flooring, Don Juan locked the door hastily, and, sure
that he was alone, exclaimed:
"Now, let us try!"
The body of Bartholomeo lay on a long table. To hide the revolting
spectacle of a corpse whose extreme decrepitude and thinness made it
look like a skeleton, the embalmers had drawn a sheet over the body,
which covered all but the head. This mummy-like figure was laid out in
the middle of the room, and the linen, naturally clinging, outlined the
form vaguely, but showing its stiff, bony thinness. The face already had
large purple spots, which showed the urgency of completing the

embalming. Despite the skepticism with which Don Juan was armed,
he trembled as he uncorked the magic phial of crystal. When he stood
close to the head he shook so that he was obliged to pause for a
moment. But this young man had allowed himself to be corrupted by
the customs of a dissolute court. An idea worthy of the Duke of Urbino
came to him, and gave him a courage which was spurred on by lively
curiosity. It seemed as if the demon had whispered the words which
resounded in his heart: "Bathe an eye!" He took a piece of linen and,
after having moistened it sparingly with the precious liquid, he passed
it gently over the right eyelid of the corpse. The eye opened!
"Ah!" said Don Juan, gripping the flask in his hand as we clutch in our
dreams the branch by which we are suspended over a precipice.
He saw an eye full of life, a child's eye in a death's head, the liquid eye
of youth, in which the light trembled. Protected by beautiful black
lashes, it scintillated like one of those solitary lights which travelers see
in lonely places on winter evenings. It seemed as if the glowing eye
would pierce Don Juan. It thought, accused, condemned, threatened,
judged, spoke--it cried, it snapped at him! There was the most tender
supplication, a royal anger, then the love of a young girl imploring
mercy of her executioners. Finally, the awful look that a man casts
upon his fellow-men on his way to the scaffold. So much life shone in
this fragment of life that Don Juan recoiled in terror. He walked up and
down the room, not daring to look at the eye, which stared back at him
from the ceiling and from the hangings. The room was sown with
points full of fire, of life, of intelligence. Everywhere gleamed eyes
which shrieked at him.
"He might have lived a hundred years longer!" he cried involuntarily
when, led in front of his father by some diabolical influence, he
contemplated the luminous spark.
Suddenly the intelligent eye closed, and then opened again abruptly, as
if assenting. If a voice had cried, "Yes," Don Juan could not have been
more startled.
"What is to be done?" he thought
He had the courage to try to close this white eyelid, but his efforts were
in vain.
"Shall I crush it out? Perhaps that would be parricide?" he asked
himself.

"Yes," said the eye, by means of an ironical wink.
"Ah!" cried Don Juan, "there is sorcery in it!"
He approached the eye to crush it. A large tear rolled down the hollow
cheek of the corpse and fell on Belvidéro's hand.
"It is scalding!" he cried, sitting down.
This struggle had exhausted him, as if, like Jacob, he had battled with
an angel.
At last he arose, saying: "So long as there is no blood--"
Then, collecting all the courage needed for the cowardly act, he crushed
out the eye, pressing it in with the linen without looking at it. A deep
moan, startling and terrible, was heard. It was the