Marie Corelli

“ Death is a mere human dream,—a comforting fancy; it has no real existence,—there is nothing in the Universe but life! O hideous misery!—I cannot die! In my mortal body I can scarcely breathe,—the pen I try to hold writes of itself rather than through my shaking hand,—but these pangs are the throes of birth—not death! ... I hold back,—with all the force of my soul I strive not to plunge into that black abyss I see before me—but—my mother drags me with her,—I cannot shake her off! I hear her voice now;—she speaks distinctly, and laughs as though she wept; ‘Come Sibyl! ”

“ Let me go back to the time when love came to me,—love, ardent, passionate, and eternal! Ah, what wild joy thrilled through me! what mad ecstasy fired my blood!—what delirious dreams possessed my brain!—I saw Lucio,—and it seemed as if the splendid eyes of some great angel had flashed a glory in my soul! With him came his friend, the foil to his beauty,—the arrogant, self-satisfied fool of a millionaire, Geoffrey Tempest,—he who bought me, and who by virtue of his purchase, is entitled by law to call himself my husband ... ”

“ Did I not tell you I would set you up as successfully as the bear who has reached the bun on the top of the slippery pole, a spectacle for the envy of men and the wonder of angels? Well, there you are!—triumphant!—a great creature Geoffrey!—in fact, you are the greatest product of the age, a man with five millions and owner of the Derby-winner! What is the glory of intellect compared to such a position as yours! Men envy you,—and as for angels,—if there are any,—you may be sure they do wonder! A man’s fame guaranteed by a horse, is something indeed to make an angel stare! ”

“ O man to whom, by God’s will and because the world’s end draws nigh, I unveil a portion of the mystery of my doom, learn now once and for all, that there is no possible joy in evil!—it is the despair and the discord of the Universe,—it is Man’s creation,—My torment,—God’s sorrow! Every sin of every human being adds weight to my torture, and length to my doom,—yet my oath against the world must be kept! I have sworn to tempt,—to do my uttermost to destroy mankind,—but man has not sworn to yield to my tempting. ”

“ I confess I like a woman to have a certain amount of temper. I cannot endure your preternaturally amiable female who can find nothing in all the length or breadth of the globe to move her to any other expression than a fatuous smile. I love to see the danger-flash in bright eyes,—the delicate quiver of pride in the lines of a lovely mouth, and the warm flush of indignation on fair cheeks. It all suggests spirit, and untamed will; and rouses in a man the love of mastery that is born in his nature, urging him to conquer and subdue that which seems unconquerable. ”

“ Love, Mavis Clare!—lover’s love,—devoted love, blindly passionate,—this has not been yours as yet to win! No heart beats against your own,—no tender arms caress you,—you are alone. Men are for the most part afraid of you,—being brute fools themselves, they like their women to be brute fools also,—and they grudge you your keen intellect,—your serene independence. Yet which is best?—the adoration of a brute fool, or the loneliness pertaining to a spirit aloft on some snowy mountain-peak, with no companions but the stars? ”

“ A few years, and we all die, and are forgotten even by those who loved us,—why should we lose such joys as we may have for the mere asking? Surely it is not difficult to love even me for an hour?—am I not fair to look upon?—and is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your sight, and you no more than man? Murder me as you may with all the cruelty of cruel words, I care nothing!—I love you—love you!”—and in a perfect passion of self-abandonment she sprang to her feet, tossing back her rich hair over her shoulders, and stood erect, a very bacchante of wild loveliness—“Look at me! ”

“ If women were pure and true, then the lost happiness of the world might return to it,—but the majority of them are like you, liars, ever pretending to be what they are not. I may do what I choose with you, you say? torture you, kill you, brand you with the name of outcast in the public sight, and curse you before Heaven—if I will only love you!—all this is melodramatic speech, and I never cared for melodrama at any time. I shall neither kill you, brand you, curse you, nor love you;—I shall simply—call your husband! ”

“ My soul sickened as I thought that within a few yards of us was the bleeding corpse of the man I had so lately seen alive and spoken with,—and notwithstanding Lucio’s words I felt as if I had murdered him.
“‘Temporary insanity’”—repeated Lucio again, as if speaking to himself—“all remorse, despair, outraged honour, wasted love, together with the scientific modern theory of Reasonable Nothingness—Life a Nothing, God a Nothing,—when these drive the distracted human unit to make of himself also a nothing, ‘temporary insanity’ covers up his plunge into the infinite with an untruthful pleasantness. ”

“ I have fastened Lucio’s wedding-gift round my waist,—the beautiful snake of jewels that clings to me as though it were charged with an embrace from him,—ah! would I could cheat myself into so pleasing a fancy! ... I am trembling, but not with cold or fear,—it is simply an excitation of the nerves,——an instinctive recoil of flesh and blood at the near prospect of death.... How brilliantly the sun shines through my window!—its callous golden stare has watched so many tortured creatures die without so much as a cloud to dim its radiance by way of the suggestion of pity! ”

“ Thus do I come upon men, when they rejoice in their wilful self-blindness and vanity!—thus do I become their constant companion, humouring them in such vices as they best love!—thus do I take on the shape that pleases them, and fit myself to their humours! They make me what I am;—they mould my very form to the fashion of their flitting time. Through all their changing and repeating eras, they have found strange names and titles for me,—and their creeds and churches have made a monster of me,—as though imagination could compass any worse monster than the Devil in Man! ”

“ I am as I was made,—a proud and rebellious woman, self-willed and sensual, seeing no fault in free love, and no crime in conjugal infidelity,—and if I am vicious, I can honestly declare that my vices have been encouraged and fostered in me by most of the literary teachers of my time. I married, as most women of my set marry, merely for money,—I loved, as most women of my set love, for mere bodily attraction,—I die, as most women of my set will die, either naturally or self-slain, in utter atheism, rejoicing that there is no God and no Hereafter! ”

“ The light about his face deepened,—he went on in clear accents that vibrated with the strangest music.
“Men make their own choice and form their own futures,” he said—“And never let them dare to say they are not free to choose! From the uttermost reaches of high Heaven the Spirit of God descended to them as Man,—from the uttermost depths of lowest Hell, I, the Spirit of Rebellion, come,—equally as Man! But the God-in-Man was rejected and slain,—I, the Devil-in-Man live on, forever accepted and adored! Man’s choice this is—not God’s or mine! ”

“ For all answer she came towards him, stretching out her arms in wild appeal.
“Lucio!” she cried—“Lucio, my love! Good-night!—Good-bye!”
I sprang between him and her advancing form.
“Before my very face!” I exclaimed—“O infamous woman! Have you no shame?”
“None!” she said, with a wild smile—“I glory in my love for such a king of worth and beauty! Look at him!—and then look at yourself in the nearest mirror that reflects so poor and mean a picture of a man! How, even in your egoism, could you deem it possible for a woman to love you when he was near! ”

“ That the outcast may hate the innocent maiden? And that it is possible that I,—reading life as I do, and finding it loathsome in many of its aspects,—distrusting men and women utterly,—and being destitute of any faith in God,—may hate,—yes hate,”—and she clenched her hand on a tuft of drooping leaves and scattered the green fragments at her feet—“a woman who finds life beautiful, and God existent,—who takes no part in our social shams and slanders,—and who in place of my self-torturing spirit of analysis, has secured an enviable fame and the honour of thousands, allied to a serene content? ”

“ Young as I am, I have no delight now in existence,—I see nothing but my love’s luminous eyes, his god-like features, his enthralling smile,—and these are lost to me. For a brief while he has been my world, life and time,—he has gone,—and without him there is no universe. How could I endure the slow, wretched passing of hours, days, weeks, months and years alone?—though it is better to be alone than in the dull companionship of the self-satisfied, complacent and arrogant fool who is my husband. ”

“ If a man has indulged in both folly and sin, the time comes at last, when, if he has any good left in him at all, he turns back upon himself and lashes his own vices with the scorpion-whip of self-contempt till he smarts with the rage and pain of it,—and then, aching in every pulse with his deserved chastisement, he kneels in spirit at the feet of some pure, true-hearted woman whose white soul, like an angel, hovers compassionately above him, and there lays down his life, saying “Do what you will with it,—it is yours!” ”

“ I despise men,—I despise my own sex,—I loathe myself for being a woman! You wonder at my fanaticism for Mavis Clare,—it is only because for a time her books give me back my self-respect, and make me see humanity in a nobler light,—because she restores to me, if only for an hour, a kind of glimmering belief in God, so that my mind feels refreshed and cleansed. All the same, you must not look upon me as an innocent young girl Geoffrey,—a girl such as the great poets idealized and sang of,—I am a contaminated creature, trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day. ”

“ I would not be the possessor of wealth for all the world! To be surrounded with sycophants and flatterers,—never to be able to distinguish false friends from true,—to be loved for what you have and not for what you are!—oh no, it would be misery to me. And I have never craved for power,—except perhaps the power to win love. And that I have,—many people love my books, and through my books love me,—I feel their love, though I may never see or know them personally. But I am so conscious of their sympathy that I love them in return without the necessity of personal acquaintance. ”

“ I little thought the time would come when I should look back to the time spent in that small mean room as the best period of my life,—when I should regard the bitter poverty I then endured, as the stern but holy angel meant to guide me to the highest and noblest attainment,—when I should pray desperately with wild tears to be as I was then, rather than as I am now! Is it well or ill for us I wonder, that the future is hidden from our knowledge? Should we steer our ways clearer from evil if we knew its result? ”

“ You imply that I assert my wealth in my face; do you know what you assert in your every glance and gesture?”
“I cannot imagine!” he said smiling.
“Contempt for us all!” I said—“Immeasurable contempt,—even for me, whom you call friend. I tell you the truth, Lucio,—there are times, when in spite of our intimacy I feel that you despise me. I daresay you do; you have an extraordinary personality united to extraordinary talents; you must not however expect all men to be as self-restrained and as indifferent to human passions as yourself.” ”

“ Not one author in many centuries writes from his own heart or as he truly feels—when he does, he becomes well-nigh immortal. This planet is too limited to hold more than one Homer, one Plato, one Shakespeare. Don’t distress yourself—you are neither of these three! You belong to the age, Tempest,—it is a decadent ephemeral age, and most things connected with it are decadent and ephemeral. Any era that is dominated by the love of money only, has a rotten core within it and must perish. ”

“ The work of Mavis Clare had excited my most passionate envy,—while the very fact that Sibyl Elton had read her book before she had thought of looking at mine, had accentuated the bitterness of my feelings.
“Well,” said Rimânez at last, smiling as he finished reading my onslaught—“all I can say Geoffrey, is that this will not touch Mavis Clare in the least. You have overshot the mark, my friend! Her public will simply cry “what a shame!” and clamour for her work more than ever. And as for the woman herself,—she has a merry heart, and she will laugh at it. You must see her some day.” ”

“ She dropped on her knees—and clasped her hands,—I strove to move,—to speak,—but some resistless force held me dumb and motionless;—the light from the stained glass window fell upon her face, and showed its fairness illumined by a smile of perfect rapture.
“With every pulse of my being I worship you!” she murmured passionately—“My king!—my god! The cruel things you say but deepen my love for you,—you can kill, but you can never change me! For one kiss of your lips I would die,—for one embrace from you I would give my soul! ...” ”

“ Keep that bright nature of yours,—that unruffled spirit of quiet contentment, and you may wear the bitter laurel of fame as sweetly as a rose! I have seen the world; I have travelled far, and have met many famous men and women,—kings and queens, senators, poets and philosophers,—my experience has been wide and varied, so that I am not altogether without authority for what I say,—and I assure you that the Satan of whom you are able to speak with compassion, can never trouble the peace of a pure and contented soul. ”

“ I cried deliriously—“A poet should be here to immortalize so touching a scene! Go—go!”—and I motioned her away with a furious gesture—“Go, if you do not want me to murder you! Go, with the proud consciousness that you have worked all the mischief and ruin that is most dear to the heart of a woman,—you have spoilt a life and dishonoured a name,—you can do no more,—your feminine triumph is complete! Go!—would to God I might never see your face again!—would to God I had been spared the misery of having married you!”
She paid no attention whatever to my words, but kept her eyes fixed on Lucio. ”

“ The potent, resistless, unpurchaseable quality of Genius!—ah, I was not yet so blinded by my own conceit as to be unable to recognize that divine fire when I saw it flashing up from every page as I saw it now; but, to be compelled to give that recognition to a woman’s work, galled and irritated me almost beyond endurance. Women, I considered, should be kept in their places as men’s drudges or toys—as wives, mothers, nurses, cooks, menders of socks and shirts, and housekeepers generally,—what right had they to intrude into the realms of art and snatch the laurels from their masters’ brows! ”