Louis Couperus

“ He does not understand and, above all, he wants to see. His childish curiosity wants to see the terrible Thing which he does not yet understand. Silently, on his bare feet, he steals through the dark verandah. And, in the dim light of the night outside ... he sees! He sees the Thing! A flash of lightning, terrible; a clap of thunder, as if the mountains were falling ... and he has seen! He is now looking only at vagueness, the vague progress of something which they are carrying ... of somebody whom they are carrying, Mamma, Mr. Emile and Ma-Boeten. In his innocence, he does not realize whom. ”

“ The sea is rocking the wind in her lap and the phoenix is dying away in ashes. Let's stay here, let's stay and look. There are the first stars. It's as though the sea were becoming very calm and the wind sleeping peacefully on her blue breast. You can just feel its breath still, but it's asleep.... This is the land of life and love. We are too early for the season; but what do we care for smart people?... This is gorgeous, Elly, this wealth of life, of love, of living colour, fading away so purple in the darkness of the night. ”

“ An artist is no demigod, as we picture him when we are twenty-three, like you, Elly. An entertainer is what he is; he entertains himself and others; usually he is vain, petty, envious, jealous, ungenerous to his fellow-entertainers, puffed up with his principles and his art, that noble aim in life; just as petty and jealous as any one else in any other profession. Then why shouldn't I speak of authors as entertainers? They entertain themselves with their own sorrows and emotions; and with a melancholy sonnet or a more or less nebulous novel they entertain the young people who read them. ”

“ Oh, to think that he never uttered a word of affection now, never gave her a kiss on her forehead! She was jealous of Elly because of Lot, she was jealous of Lot because of Steyn, because Steyn really cared more for Lot, nowadays, than for her! How cruel the years were, slowly to take everything from her! The years were past, the dear, laughing love-years, full of caresses; all that was past! Even the dog had just gone off with Steyn: no living creature was nice to her; and why need Lot suddenly go getting married now? ”

“ He tore up the letter and dropped the pieces, very small, into the paper-basket.
Before his eyes shimmered pale-red the bygone passions that were strange to him; they loomed up before him; and yet he saw the room, wintry-cold and silently abandoned by the old man, with not a sound in it save the flaring gas.
"Yes," said Aunt Adèle, "perhaps it's better that no one should know ... except ourselves.... Oh, Steyn, it has relieved me ... that you should know, that you should know!... Oh, how dreadful life is, for such things to happen!" ”

“ That was happiness; there was nothing else; and Aunt Thérèse was right, even though she, Elly, conceived devotion, happiness and vocation so very differently. She wanted more than the feeling, the thought; she wanted, above all, action. Even as she had always given herself to action, though it was only tennis at first—and sculpture later and in the end the pouring out of her own sorrow in words and the sending of it to an editor, to a publisher—so she now longed to devote herself to action, or at least to active collaboration. ”

“ Oh, Elly, it's terrible! Think of those old people of to-day! Think of Grandpapa Takma and Grandmamma! I look upon them as something to shudder at.... There they sit, nearly every day, ninety-three and ninety-seven, each looking out of a window. What do they talk about? Not much, I expect: their little ailments, the weather; people as old as that don't talk, they are numbed. They don't remember things. Their past is heavy with years and crushes them, gives them only a semblance of life, of the aftermath of life: they've had their life.... ”

“ We feel perhaps ... more brutally and fully. We have redder blood. You have the gift of feeling nuances. We haven't. When I feel, I feel entirely. When Ottilie feels a thing now, she also feels it like that. But she was not always so."
"Aldo is making a southerner of me!" said Ottilie. "He is wiping out all my nuances!"
Outside, the mistral rose and raged in a whirl of glowing-copper plane-leaves.
"That's autumn," said Ottilie.
"Turning into winter," said Lot.
"But winter here is life again, renewed. Life is renewed daily. Every day that comes is new life." ”

“ When Steyn de Weert was a first lieutenant, a good-looking fellow, just turned thirty, he had met Mrs. Trevelley, without knowing her age. Besides, what did age matter when he set eyes upon a woman so ravishingly beautiful to his quick desire that he had at once, at the first moment that he saw her, felt the blood flaming in his veins and thought:
"That woman I must have!..."
At that time, though already forty, she was a woman so full of blossoming prettiness that she was still known as the beautiful Lietje. ”

“ Do be nice again to your mother. She has nothing, nothing left in her life: Lot is married; the old man is dead. She has nothing left. No one will ever be nice to her again, if you aren't. And in the old days ... in the old days everybody used to be so very nice to her; yes, in the old days ..."
She began to cry. It came from her regret for the old man, from her anger about Lot, who was married, from her jealousy of Elly and her pity for herself. Her fingers, like a little child's, felt for Hugh's strong hand. ”

“ From the faded characters of the frayed, yellow letter, torn in part, rose hatred, passion, mad jubilation, mad agony of love and remorse for a night of blood, an Indian mountain night, clattering with torrents of rain. With all of that these two had nothing to do; they were foreign to it; and yet the Thing that was passing brushed against their bodies, their souls, their lives. It made them start, reflect, look each other shudderingly in the eyes, strangers though they were to the Thing that was passing....
"It is terrible," said Steyn. ”

“ So heavy a life's secret he would never have to bear, no; but there was so much else—so much melancholy, so much silent suffering and loneliness—that, feeling the shadowy dread sink down upon him, he asked:
"O God, O my God, can I ever grow so old? So old as those two old people were?... Is it possible that I shall slowly wither and fade, gradually dying and dragging myself along, always with that same gnawing at my heart, always with that same sorrow, a sorrow which I cannot yet utter to anybody, to anybody ... not even to Steyn ... ”

“ Ina d'Herbourg was waiting for them in the little house of her son-in-law and daughter, Frits and Lily van Wely: Frits, a callow little officer; Lily, a laughing, fair-haired little mother, up again pluckily after her confinement. There were the two children, Stefanus a year and Antoinetje a fortnight old; the monthly nurse, fat and pompous; the maid-of-all-work busy with the little boy; the twelve-o'clock lunch not cleaned away yet; a bustle of youth and young life: one child crowing, the other screaming, the nurse hushing it and filling the whole house with her swelling figure. ”

“ He is full of pity, he, the son, who knows and who suspects what he does not know, because he knows the soul of that mother, her soul now dulled and blunted in waiting for the body's death, but her soul also once a soul of passion, of temper, an amorous creole soul, capable at one moment of forgetting all the world and life itself for a single instant of rapture ... ”

“ Well, thought Cousin Adèle, who had long kept house for Grandpapa Takma—she was a Takma too and unmarried—well, a first little love-romance which a girl experiences when not much over twenty and which makes her feel unhappy, an engagement broken off with a fellow who used to go and see his mistress after spending the evening with his betrothed: a romance of that sort does not influence a girl's life; and, though Elly had moped for a while, Lot Pauws was making her happy and making her look better, with a glad laugh on her lips and a bright colour in her cheeks. ”

“ We are both so old, so old, Ottilie.... He must have forgiven us by now. Else we should never have grown so old. Our life has passed peacefully for years: long, long, old years; nothing has ever disturbed us: he must have forgiven us.... Now we are both standing on the brink of our graves."
"Yes, it will soon come. I feel it."
But Takma brought his geniality into play:
"You, Ottilie? You'll live to be a hundred!" ”

“ All the kindness in my life has come from your side. When you got married ... I really missed you more perhaps than Mamma did: don't be angry with me, Elly, for saying so.... There, perhaps we shall see each other again ... somewhere or other.... Don't cry, Lot, there's a good fellow!"
He took Lot in his arms and kissed him as a father kisses his son. He held him in his embrace for a moment and then shook him firmly by the hand:
"Come, Lot, my dear fellow ... be a man!..."
"Poor Mamma!" said Lot.
His eyes were full of tears; he was greatly moved.
"When are you going?" he asked Steyn. ”

“ The silence of the room was broken by Ottilie Steyn's sobs and by the sighing of the old woman's breath.... Out of doors, the thaw stole down the window-panes like a stream of tears.
"Oh!" Anna wept. "How long the old lady takes dying!... Hark ... there's a ring!... That kind Mr. Hugo, the dear boy, he's a great help to me, Mrs. Ottilie: listen, he's opening the door again!..."
Hugh did in fact open the door; and in quick succession there entered Harold, Daan and Floor, Stefanie and Anton, Ina, D'Herbourg and the Van Welys. ”

“ You saw Lietje yesterday.... I thought you were speaking of yourself."
"She was crying."
"Why?"
"Because Lot is going to be married."
"She'll be very lonely, poor Lietje; yet Steyn is a decent fellow.... It's a pity.... I like Steyn...."
"We are all of us lonely," said Mrs. Dercksz; and the cracked voice sounded sad, as though she were regretting a past full of vanished shades.
"Not all of us, Ottilie," said Takma. "You and I have each other. We have always had each other.... Our child, when Lot is married, will have no one, not even her own husband." ”

“ He did not think he was a marrying man. He was young still: thirty-eight; he really looked much younger; he made enough money with his articles to risk it, frugal-fashion, with what Elly would get from Grandpapa Takma; but all the same he did not think that he was of the marrying kind. His liberty, his independence, his selfish power to amuse himself as he pleased were what he loved best; and marrying meant giving one's self over, bound hand and foot, to a woman. He was not passionately in love with Elly: he thought her an intelligent, artistic little thing ”

“ Beyond a doubt, he had not seen Elly for the last time; beyond a doubt she would come back, wearied, and sleep, sleep off her weariness in his arms.... And he would see his mother again also: older, an older woman, worn out, penniless; and she would cry out her grief, cry out her grief in his arms.... And he, with a little laugh of disillusionment, would find a chaffing word of consolation ... and the days would drag by, the things would pass ... pass very, very slowly ... not full of red remorse and hatred, passion and murder, as they had passed for those two very old people ... ”

“ A cold shiver passed through Aunt Adèle: that a person could live for years beside another and not know him and know nothing about him! How long was it? For twenty-three years, she, the poor relation, had lived with him like that!... And the old woman also lived like that....
Shaking her head in stupefaction, Aunt Adèle moved away. She clasped her hands together, gently, with an old maid's gesture. She saw the old woman in her imagination. The old woman was sitting, dignified and majestic, frail and thin, in her high-backed chair. ”

“ Why not cull a moment of happiness? What was an instant of love with a still seductive and beautiful woman? A triumph for a week, a month, a couple of months; and then each would go a different way.
That was how he had thought at the time; but now, now he was sitting here, because that bounder of a Trevelley, who wanted to get rid of Ottilie, had taken advantage of their relations to create a scandal and, after a pretence at a duel, to insist on a divorce; because all the Hague had talked about Ottilie, when she was left standing alone with a lover ”

“ What was the good of wanting to live, when nevertheless your life was mapped out for you by things stronger than yourself that slumbered in your blood?
Ottilie gave herself up to her French novel, for Steyn de Weert had entered the room, with Jack leaping in front of him. And any one who had seen Mamma a moment ago and saw her now would have noticed this phenomenon, that Mamma became much older as soon as her husband entered. The plump cheeks contracted nervously and the lines round the nose and mouth grew deeper. The little straight nose stuck out more sharply, the forehead frowned angrily. ”

“ He was a fat little man of over forty, with a round face containing a pair of small, sparkling eyes: they leered at Elly with an almost irresistible curiosity to see the young wife, married but a few days since. A sensuality ever seeking physical enjoyment surrounded him as with a warm atmosphere, jovial and engaging, as though he would invite them presently to come and have a nice lunch with him in a good restaurant and to go on somewhere afterwards. ”

“ It produced a void about them, but Lot nevertheless felt happy and remained true to that soft blissfulness which had come to him smilingly and which cast a soft gloss over both his worldly cynicism and the overhanging dread. But Elly's disappointment increased and became a great sorrow to her, greater even, she thought, than the sorrow which she had felt as a young girl at her broken engagement, at the loss of the man whom she had first loved. She was a woman to suffer more for another than for herself ”

“ She had to laugh, secretly, when Stefanie kept on saying:
"At our age ..."
Why, Stefanie was seventy-seven! There was a difference—rather!—between sixty and seventy-seven. But she shrugged her shoulders: what did it matter? It was all over and so long ago. There she sat now, an old, grey-haired woman, and the aftermath of life dragged on and the loneliness increased daily, even though Steyn was here still: there he was, coming in. Where on earth did he go to every evening? She heard the fox-terrier barking in the passage and her husband's deep, bass voice:
"Hush, Jack! Quiet, Jack!..." ”

“ He was no pessimist, he loved life: life was beautiful, life was radiant; there were so many beautiful things in art, in Italy, in his own intellect: in his own soul even, at present, that emotion for Elly. But he loved young and vigorous life and did not want decay and withering. Oh, for vigour, vigour always, youth always! To die young, to die young! ”