Carmen

“ Carmen’s days were filled to the brim with a measure of joy that constantly overflowed upon all among whom she moved. Her slight dependence upon her impoverished material environment, her contempt of its ennui, were constant reminders to Josè that heaven is but a state of mind. Even in desolate Simití, life to her was an endless series of delightful experiences, of wonderful surprises in the discovery of God’s presence everywhere. Her enthusiasms were always ardent and inexhaustible. Sparkling animation and abounding vitality characterized her every movement. ”

“ A flood of life and color goes into the staging of a Carmen film: a throng of attractive faces and bodies of people, women and men and lovely children, move through it in a pulsating gay pageant: flowers and Spanish prettinesses of costume and country-side and street and café are all over it, bright as life: and sweet winds blow in it and leaves and grasses wave and flutter, and the sunshine melts and mellows the air—all as if one saw it thrice-enlarged through windows. ”

“ That hath drawn its crimson from hearts in hell.
The haughtiest beauty must yield her fame,
When this strange vision shall dusk her sky.
For Carmen rules, and her glance’s flame
Shall set the torch to satiety.
Wild, graceless Carmen! — Though yet this be,
Savour she hath of a world undreamt,
Of a world of wonder, whose salt young sea
Provoked a Venus to rise and tempt. ”

“ And then he thought of Carmen. He had seen her, as he looked out over his people, sitting with Doña Maria, arrayed in a clean white frock, and swinging her plump bare legs beneath the bench, while wonder and amazement peered out from her big brown eyes as she followed his every move. What would such things mean to her, whose God was ever-present good? What did they mean to the priest himself, who was beginning to see Him as infinite, divine mind, knowing no evil––the One whose thoughts are not as ours? ”

“ Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen’s mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. ”

“ I suppose there's no other character like Carmen for flaming roundness in all fiction: filled with her treacheries yet purely true to herself, without fear, utterly game: fierce, coarse, ruthless and reckless yet wrapped in a maddening unwitting pathos: strong and bold and cruelly poised yet capable of sudden complete surrender: ignorant and abandoned and criminal in every instinct yet beyond every littleness, every pettiness: sensual yet contemptuous and indifferent in it, a woman of essential chastity. ”

“ Carmen's castanets sing shrilly, with a rolling trill, and, all at once, Rey lifts his massive head and listens. The call is sweet. It speaks to him of pleasant things.
What shall he do? Obey that call and follow? Or shall he stay and fight it out with all his sharp-horned strength until the end?
A frenzied murmur issues from the crowd. Slowly the people rise together in their seats, as if a mountain heaved. The bull has turned and now begins to trot toward Carmen's side. ”

“ It was Carmen who, in those first long nights of gnawing, corroding remorse, wound her soft arms about the Beaubien’s neck, as she lay tossing in mental agony on her bed, and whispered the assurances of that infinite Love which said, “Behold, I make all things new!” It was Carmen who whispered to her of the everlasting arms beneath, and of the mercy reflected by him who, though on the cross, forgave mankind because of their pitiable ignorance. It is ignorance, always ignorance of what constitutes real good, that makes men seek it through wrong channels. ”

“ Carmen, your mother was one of the most innocent, the purest beings on earth; in her heart was no impure thought, in her life was no action which could not bear the light of day. But there, under the glowing, tropical skies, blood flies quicker through the veins than here in our cool Germany; and from childhood to womanhood is but one, sudden leap. When I felt her kisses on my lips, I was taken aback ”

“ The gaudy, careless Southern life amazed them. The bold free way in which Carmen played with life startled them with hints of freedom. They stared on the stage fascinated. Between the acts they held each other’s hands, and looked full into each other’s wide bright eyes, and, laughing with excitement, talked about the opera. The theatre surged and roared dimly like a hoarse shell. Then the music rose like a storm, and swept and rattled at their feet. On the stage the strange storm of life clashed in music towards tragedy and futile death. ”

“ The priest smiled. “Everything is a miracle, friend; for a miracle is simply a sign of God’s presence. And finding Carmen in this musty, forgotten place is one of the greatest. For where she is, He is.”
“Yes, Padre, that is true,” assented Rosendo gravely.
“I was led here,” continued Josè; “I see it now. Rosendo, all my life I have regarded evil as just as real and powerful as good. And my life has been one of bitterness and woe. Carmen sees only the good God everywhere. And she dwells in heaven. ”

“ You would destroy yourself and be of no benefit to us." She laid her hand gently on Carmen's head, and added: "Go now, dear Sister, and tread the new path you have chosen for yourself; and Heaven grant it may not lead to misery! If, however, happiness deserts you, and your heart yearns after us, like the thirsty wayfarer in the desert, then return to the people of the Lord, that we may help you to return to Him."
She tenderly kissed the maiden's brow, pressed her to her bosom again and again, and let her go. ”

“ Carmen, my Carmen, let me save you, and save myself with you.'
"'José,' she answered, 'what you ask is impossible. I don't love you any more. You love me still, and that is why you want to kill me. If I liked, I might tell you some other lie, but I don't choose to give myself the trouble. Everything is over between us two. You are my rom, and you have the right to kill your romi, but Carmen will always be free. A calli she was born, and a calli she'll die.'
"'Then, you love Lucas?' I asked. ”

“ But, while Carmen had eagerly grasped and assimilated them, even to the consistent shaping of her daily life to accord with them, he had gone on putting the stamp of genuineness and reality upon every sort of thought and upon every human event as it had been enacted in his conscious experience. His difficulty was that, having proclaimed the allness of spirit, God, he had proceeded to bow the knee to evil. Carmen had seemed to know that the mortal, material concepts of humanity would dissolve in the light of truth. ”

“ It is enough that one of us has suffered and lived through such an ordeal. No, Carmen, be at rest, my darling. Your father will tell the elders that he cannot do without his child."
The faintest shadow of a smile appeared again on Carmen's lips as she listened to his comforting words, and she breathed more freely. ”

“ When the family separated for the night, and Carmen had as usual given her hand to her hostess, Adele, and Hans, she hesitated a second, and then, with a burning blush mantling her cheek, extended her hand to Alexander. Heretofore she had persistently avoided him; but to-day he had proved himself her friend and protector, and she felt that some reparation was due him for her rudeness in the past. ”

“ The youths clamor about her and inquire collectively when she will love them. Carmen bestows regardlessly some of her dangerous laughing glances, and then sings her great song, the "Habenera," so called because of its rhythm, which is like a Spanish dance. But no mazy, undulating dance could be so fascinating as this song about "Love, the child of Bohemia." The compass of its ravishing melody is within a single octave. The notes cling lovingly together, for the intervals are mostly half-tones; and, indeed, as Carmen sings them each one seems like a kiss or a caress. ”

“ Carmen is the one criminal conception in whom there is no vulgar evil, no personal maculateness though wrecking all the wildness of her temper in her tempestuous days'-journeys. She is a romantic murderous appeal to human superjudgment. It was this isolate quality of her which Theda Bara gave out with mystic masterful art. She gauged the personal odors and blood-pressures of Carmen. She slipped into Carmen's skin and first sucked in and then breathed out the irresistible menacingness and arresting ingruination of her beautiful diabolic spirit. ”

“ He kneels at her feet, vowing never to forsake her and to be one of her own people, but Carmen, though wayward, is neither a coward nor a liar, and boldly declares that her affections are given to the bull-fighter, whose triumphs are borne to their ears on the shouts of the multitude. ”

“ Excepting Carmen's old prayer-book,—in which she learned to read a little,—her childhood passed without books,—also without pictures, without dainties, without music, without theatrical amusements. But she saw and heard and felt much of that which, though old as the heavens and the earth, is yet eternally new and eternally young with the holiness of beauty,—eternally mystical and divine,—eternally weird: the unveiled magnificence of Nature's moods,—the perpetual poem hymned by wind and surge,—the everlasting splendor of the sky. ”

“ While I was hiding at Granada there were bull-fights there, to which Carmen went. When she came back she talked a great deal about a skilful picador of the name of Lucas. She knew the name of his horse, and how much his embroidered jacket had cost him. I paid no attention to this; but a few days later, Juanito, the only one of my comrades who was left, told me he had seen Carmen with Lucas in a shop in the Zacatin. Then I began to feel alarmed. I asked Carmen how and why she had made the picador’s acquaintance.
“‘He’s a man out of whom we may be able to get something,’ said she. ”

“ Carmen was the most earnest in her persuasions, using none of the manager's circumlocutions. He ought to retire at once, he ought to "cut off his pigtail," as they said in his profession, and spend his life quietly at La Rinconada or in his house in Seville with his family, she could bear it no longer. Her heart told her with that feminine instinct which seldom erred that something serious would occur. ”

“ Carmen nods her head in saucy obedience, and talks no more; she only sings! Sings of "an inn near the ramparts of Sevilla" where she will go to dance the Seguidilla. The song is in the rhythm of that dance, and its sinuous melody is handled by Carmen like a toy. She composes words to suit the occasion: "My heart is free and willing to love whoever loves me."
Don José, who has been trying to ignore her, but without success, tells her again to stop. She looks up with a grieved expression and her prettiest smile, and says she is not talking, only singing to herself and thinking ”

“ So Carmen was freed from the fetters she had unwillingly worn for so long. Alexander had arranged with her and her father that she should go to his mother at Wollmershain; but the separation from her father was a severe trial to her loving heart. Fate had scarcely united them, and already they must part and, knowing what misery it was to the old man, it seemed almost more than she could bear. And yet it must be. She promised to visit her father twice every week, and would be quick and diligent in her home duties, so as to make her visits longer. ”

“ With a low moan the woman sank to the ground, while oblivion drew its sable veil across her mind.
Reaching the study, Diego pushed Carmen into the room and then followed, closing the door after him and throwing the iron bolt. Turning about, he stood with arms akimbo upon his bulging hips and gazed long and admiringly at the girl as she waited in expectant wonder before him. A smile of satisfaction and triumph slowly spread over his coarse features. ”

“ The girl herself quickly met the woman’s groping thought. “I’m in the world to show what love will do,” she murmured; “and I love you.” Had she not thus solved every problem from earliest childhood?
The Beaubien melted. Not even a heart of stone could withstand the solvent power of such love. Her head dropped upon her breast, and she wept.
“Don’t cry,” said Carmen, tenderly caressing the bepowdered cheek. “Why, we are all God’s children; we all have one another; you have me, and I have you; and God means us all to be happy.” ”

“ While I was on duty I saw Carmen again. She was dressed out like a shrine, all gold and ribbons, and was going in one evening with a party of gipsies to amuse the colonel's guests. She recognised me, and named a place where I could meet her next day. When I gave her back the gold piece she burst into laughter, but kept it all the same. Do you know, my son,' she said to me when we parted, 'I believe I love you a little. But that cannot last. Dog and wolf do not keep house together long. Perhaps, if you adopted the gipsy law, I would like to become your wife. ”