Folle-Farine

“ To Folle-Farine it bore no such terror.
The unconscious pantheism breathed into her with her earliest thoughts, with the teachings of Phratos, made her see a nameless mystical and always wondrous beauty in every blade of grass that fed on the dew, and with the light rejoiced; in every bare brown stone that flashed to gold in bright brook waters, under a tuft of weed; in every hillside stream that leaping and laughing sparkled in the sun; in every wind that wailing went over the sickness of the weary world. ”

“ Folle-Farine stooped to the water, and played with it, and drank it, and steeped her lips and her arms in it; lying there on the stone bench, with her bare feet curled one in another, and her slender round limbs full of the voluptuous repose of a resting panther.
The coolness, the murmur, the clearness, the peace, the soft flowing movement of water, possess an ineffable charm for natures that are passion-tossed, feverish, and full of storm. ”

“ Manon Dax gave a soft troubled sigh.
"God is good," she muttered, like one speaking in a dream.
Folle-Farine held on her way; fiercely blown, blinded by the snow, pierced by the blasts of the hurricane, but sure of foot on the ice as a reindeer, and sure of eye in the dark as a night-hawk. ”

“ Folle-Farine shivered where she crouched in the shadow of the doorway; she still said nothing.
The crone mumbled on indifferent of answer, and yet pitiful, gazing into the chamber.
"I have watched him often; he is fair to look at—one is never too old to care for that. All winter, spring, and summer he has lived so hard;—so cold too and so silent—painting that strange thing yonder. He looks like a king—he lives like a beggar. The picture was his god:—see you. And no doubt he has set his soul on fame—men will. All the world is mad. ”

“ Could you ask yourself twice if what you think your shame would not grow noble and pure beyond all honor, being embraced for his sake? Nay; you are weak, like all your sex. You would die, so you say. To say it is easy; but to live, that were harder. You will not sacrifice yourself—so. And yet it were greater far, Folle-Farine, to endure for his sake in silence one look of his scorn, than to brave, in visionary phrase, the thrusts of a thousand daggers, the pangs of a thousand deaths. ”

“ So little, so you say; and the gods will not hear."
"The gods are all dead, Folle-Farine."
"Save him! You are as a god! Save him!"
"I am but a mortal, Folle-Farine. Can I open the gates of the tomb, or close them?"
"You can save him,—for you have gold."
He smiled still.
"Ah! you learn at last that there is but one god! You have been slow to believe, Folle-Farine!"
She clung to him; she writhed around him; she kissed with her soilless lips the base dust at his feet.
"You hold the keys of the world; you can save the life of his body; you can give him the life of his soul. ”

“ Like one of these, hearing the summons to some great unknown imperial power smite all his poor pale barren life to splendor, so Folle-Farine, standing by the water's side in the light of the moon, desolate, ignorant, brutelike, felt elected to some mighty heritage unseen of men. If this were waiting for her in the future, what matter now were stripes or wounds or woe? ”

“ Into the mirror she was gazing with a smile, whilst with both hands about her throat she clasped some strings of polished shells brought to her from the sea.
"How white and how warm and how glad she is!" thought Folle-Farine, looking upward; and she rowed in the gloom through the sluggish water with envy at her heart.
She was growing harder, wilder, worse, with every day; more and more like some dumb, fierce forest beast, that flees from every step and hates the sound of every voice. Since the night that they had pricked her for a witch, the people had been more cruel to her than ever. ”

“ I think your northern god was only thus cold because your gift was such a little one, Folle-Farine."
A strong light flashed on him from her eyes.
"It would have been the same if I had offered him an empire."
"You are so sure? Does he hate you, then—this god of yours?"
She quivered from head to foot; but her courage would not yield, her faith would not be turned.
"Need a man hate the dust under his foot?" she muttered in her teeth; "because it is a thing too lowly for him to think of as he walks."
"You are very truthful."
She was silent; standing there in the shadow of the great mill-timbers. ”

“ Folle-Farine stood erect and without a quiver in her face and in her limbs; but her teeth shut together like a steel clasp, and all the rich and golden hues of her skin changed to a sickly ashen pallor.
"Yes, why not?" grumbled the old woman. "To be sure, men said that God would never let him die, because he killed St. Louis; but I myself never thought that. I knew the devil would not wait more than a hundred years for him—you can never cheat the devil, and he always seems stronger than the saints—somehow. You are that thing of Yprès, are you not? Get you gone!" ”

“ See here, Folle-Farine: you dwell with the lowest; you are the slave of street mimes; no eyes see you except those of the harlot, the beggar, the thief, the outcast; your wage is a crust and a copper coin; you have the fate of your namesake, the dust, to wander a little while, and then sink on the stones of the streets. Yet that you think worthy and faithful, because it is pure of alms and of vice. Oh, beautiful fool! what would your lost lover say if beholding you here amidst the reek of the mob and the homage of thieves? ”

“ He is as niggard as the saints are—the little mean beasts! Do you know that the man who paints you brings death, they say—sooner or later—to every creature that lives again for him in his art?"
Folle-Farine, beneath in the dense brown shadows cast from the timbers of the leaning houses, raised her eyes; the eyes smiled, and yet they had a look in them that chilled even the mocking, careless, wanton temper of the woman who leaned above among the roses. ”

“ For strong though you are, you are also weak; for you are of your mother's sex, Folle-Farine. You may repent. Think well. You are no more to him than your eponym, the mill-dust. You have said so to yourself. But you are beautiful in your barbarism; and here you are always near him; and with a man who has no gold to give, a woman need have few rivals to fear. If his heart eat itself out here in solitude, soon or late he will be yours, Folle-Farine. A man, be he what he will, cannot live long without some love, more or less, for some woman. ”

“ I was to set him free: to find his fame or his grave; as he might. He will soon find one, no doubt. Nay; you would make no bond with me, Folle-Farine. You scorned my golden pear. Otherwise—how great they are! That cruel scorn, that burning color, that icelike coldness! If the world could be brought to see them once aright, the world would know that no powers greater than these have been among it for many ages. But who shall force the world to look?—who? It is so deaf, so slow of foot, so blind, unless the film before its eyes be opened by gold. ”

“ But, truly, I will make another bond with you any day, Folle-Farine."
She shuddered, and her hands dropped from their hold.
"You know nothing?" she murmured.
"Of your Norse god? nay, nothing. An eagle soars too high for a man's sight to follow, you know—oftentimes." ”

“ Folle-Farine listened, musing, with her hands clasped on the handle of her empty basket, and her chin resting upon them, and her eyes watching a maimed butterfly drag its wings of emerald and diamond through the hot, pale, sickly dust.
"I dream!" she said, suddenly, as she stooped and lifted the wounded insect gently on to the edge of a leaf. "But I dream wide awake."
Marcellin smiled.
"Never say so. They will think you mad. That is only what foolish things, called poets, do."
"What is a poet?" ”

“ She staggered to her feet and rose, and held her knife close in the bosom of her dress, and with passionate eyes of hope and dread searched the face of the old man through the shadows.
"It is the truth?" she muttered. "If you mock me,—if you lie——"
"Your knife will sheathe itself in my body, I know. Nay, I have never lied to you. One cannot wear a velvet glove to tame a lioness. Come with me; fear nothing, Folle-Farine. Come with me, and see with your own eyesight how the world of men has dealt with this your god." ”

“ She thought,—"Envy them? she? what could she envy save the eyes that looked on Arslàn's face?" "What were the use?" she said aloud; "all my life I have seen all things are for others; nothing is for me."
"Your life is but just opening. Henceforth you shall see all things for you, instead."
She flashed her eyes upon him.
"How can that be?"
"Listen to me; you are alone in the world, Folle-Farine?"
"Alone; yes."
"You have not a coin to stand a day between you and hunger?" ”

“ For seven days you shall do as you please; eat, drink, be clothed, be housed, be feasted, be served, be beguiled,—as the rich are. You shall taste all these things that gold gives, and which you, being ignorant, dare rashly deride and refuse. If, when seven days end, you still choose, you shall go, and as poor as you came. But you will not choose, for you are a woman, Folle-Farine!"
Ere she knew his intent he had moved the panel and drawn it behind him, and left her alone,—shut in a trap like the birds that Claudis Flamma had netted in his orchards. ”

“ You have not loved the old, dead gods for naught. You have the temper of their times. You obey them; though they betray you and forget you, Folle-Farine."
She gazed at him, fascinated by her very loathing of him, as the bird by the snake.
"Who told you?" she muttered. "Who told you that I dwell here?"
"The sun has a million rays; so has gold a million eyes; do you not know? There is nothing you have not done that has not been told to me. But I can always wait, Folle-Farine. You are very strong; you are very weak, of course;—you have a faith, and you follow it ”

“ It has brazen lungs to shout for what it needs; the lungs of a multitude. It is no use what your own voice whispers you unless those great lungs also shout before you, Hosannah."
So he spoke to himself in bitterness of soul, standing before his cartoons into which he had thrown all the genius there was in him, and which hung there unseen save by the spider that wove and the moth that flew over them.
Folle-Farine, who was that day in his chamber, looked at him with the wistful, far-reaching comprehension which an unerring instinct taught her. ”

“ I am old and ill-favored; and I know that, any way, you will forever hate me. But the rage of the desert-beast is more beautiful than the meek submission of the animal timid and tame. It is the lioness in you that I care to chain; but your chain shall be of gold, Folle-Farine; and all women will envy. Name your price, set it high as you will; there is nothing that I will refuse. Nay, even I will find your lover, who loves not you; and I will let you have your fullest vengeance on him. ”

“ A great terror held her mute and breathless there; gazing in the paralysis of horror at this frail life, which was for her the incarnation of the world, and by whose lips the world said to her, "Come, eat and drink, and sew your garments with gems, and kiss men on the mouth whilst you slay them, and plunder and poison, and laugh and be wise. For all your gods are dead; and there is but one god now,—that god is gold."
"You must be tired, surely," the old man said, with soft insistance. "You never find what you seek; you are always alone, always hungered and poor; always wretched, Folle-Farine. ”

“ But you can make it potent as gold, and sweet as honey if you choose, Folle-Farine."
And she had not chosen; yet of any nobility in the resistance she did not dream. She had shut her heart to it by the unconscious instinct of strength, as she had shut her lips under torture, and shut her hands against life.
She sat there in the wood, roofless, penniless, friendless, and every human creature was against her. Her tempter had spoken only the bare and bleak truth. A dog stoned and chased and mad could be the only living thing on the face of the earth more wretched and more desolate than herself. ”

“ The cool moist herbs soaked on her bruises; and the draught of milk had slaked the thirst of her throat.
"Is evil good?" she asked in her heart as she went through the tall red poppies.
And from that evening thenceforward Folle-Farine and Marcellin cleaved to one another, being outcasts from all others. ”

“ But the pity died, and tie cruelty remained alive behind it.
He bent on her the magnetic power of his bright, sardonic, meaning eyes.
"Well—be Folle-Farine still. Why not? But let Folle-Farine mean no longer a beggar, an outcast, a leper, a thing attainted, proscribed, and forever suspected; but let it mean on the ear of every man that hears it the name of the most famous, the most imperious, the most triumphant, the most beautiful woman of her time; a woman of whom the world says, 'look on her face and die—you have lived enough.'"
Her breath came and went as she listened ”

“ There was a dangerous gleam in her eyes that daunted him. Moreover, he was patient, humorous, gentle, cruel, wise,—all in one; and he desired to tame and to beguile her, and to see her slowly drawn into the subtle sweetness of the powers of gold; and to enjoy the yielding of each moral weakness one by one, as the southern boy slowly pulls limb from limb, wing from wing, of the cicala.
"I will let you go, surely," he said, with his low, grim laugh. "I keep no woman prisoner against her will. But think one moment longer, Folle-Farine. ”