WITHERED LEAVES
THE sun had set. The wheeling masses of cloud were hastening to heap themselves one above another in the distant horizon. The cold wind of autumn evenings was whirling the withered leaves about my feet.
I was sitting by the side of a road [the road to the cemetery] where ever there return fewer than those who go.
I do not know of what I was thinking, if, indeed, I was just then thinking of anything at all. My soul was trembling on the point of soaring into space, as the bird trembles and flutters its wings before taking flight.
There are moments in which, thanks to a series of abstractions, the spirit withdraws from its environment and, self-absorbed, analyzes and comprehends the mysterious phenomena of the inner life of man.
There are other moments in which the soul slips free from the flesh, loses its personality, mingles with the elements of nature, relates itself to their mode of being and translates their incomprehensible language.
In one of these latter moments was I, when, alone and in the midst of a clear tract of level ground, I heard talking near me.
The speakers were two withered leaves, and this, a little more or less exact, was their strange dialogue:
“Whence comest thou, sister?”
“I come from riding on the whirlwind, enveloped in the cloud of dust and of withered leaves, our companions, all the length of the interminable plain. And thou?”
“I drifted for a time with the current of the river, until the strong south wind snatched me up from the mud and reeds of the bank.”
“And whither bound?”
“I know not. Doth perchance the wind that driveth me know?”
“Woe is me! Who would have said that we should end like this, faded and withered, dragging ourselves along the ground – we who lived clothed in color and light, dancing in the air?”
“Rememberest thou the beautiful days of our budding – that peaceful morning when, at the breaking of the swollen sheath which had served us for a cradle, we unfolded to the gentle kiss of the sun, like a fan of emeralds?”
“Oh, how sweet it was to be swayed at that height by the breeze, drinking in through every pore the air and the light!”
“Oh, how beautiful it was to watch the flowing water of the river that lapped the twisted roots of the ancient tree which sustained us, that limpid, transparent water, reflecting like a mirror the azure of the sky, so that we seemed to live suspended between two blue abysses!”
“With what delight we used to peep over the green foliage to see ourselves pictured in the tremulous stream!”
“How we would sing together, imitating the murmur of the breeze and following the rhythm of the waves!”
“Brilliant insects would flit about us, spreading their gauzy wings.”
“And the white butterflies and blue dragon-flies, gyrating in strange circles through the air, would alight for a moment on our dentate edges to tell each other the secrets of that mysterious love lasting but an instant and burning up their lives.”
“Each of us was a note in the concert of the groves.”
“Each of us was a tone in their harmony of color.”
“In the silver nights when the moonbeams glided over the mountain tops, dost remember how we would chat in low voices amid the translucent shadows?”
“And we would relate in soft whispers stories of the sylphs who swing in the golden threads that the spiders hang from tree to tree.”
“Until we hushed our murmurous speech to listen enraptured to the plaints of the nightingale, who had chosen our tree for her throne of song.”
“And so sad and so tender were her lamenting strains that, though filled with joy to hear her, the dawn found us weeping.”
“Oh, how sweet were those tears which the dew of night would shed upon us, and which would sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow in the first gleam of dawn!”
“Then came the jocund flock of linnets to pour into the grove life and sound with the gleeful, gay confusion of their songs.”
“And one enamoured pair hung close to us their round nest of straws and feathers.”
“We served to shelter the little ones from the troublesome rain-drops in the summer tempests.”
“We served as a canopy to shield them from the fierce rays of the sun.”
“Our life passed like a golden dream from which we had no thought there could be an awakening.”
“One beautiful afternoon, when everything around us seemed to smile, when the setting sun was kindling the west and crimsoning the clouds, and from the earth, touched by the evening damp, were rising exhalations of life and the perfumes of flowers, two lovers stayed their steps on the river bank at the foot of our parent tree.”
“Never will that memory fade! She was young, scarcely more than a child, beautiful and pallid. He asked her tenderly, ‘Why weepest thou?’ ‘Forgive this involuntary selfishness,’ she replied, brushing away a tear; ‘I weep for myself; I weep for the life which is slipping from me. When the sky is crowned with sunshine and the earth is clothed with verdure and flowers, and the wind is laden with perfumes, with the songs of birds and with far-off harmonies, and when one loves and feels herself beloved, life is good.’ ‘And why wilt thou not live?’ he insisted, deeply moved, clasping her hands close in his. ‘Because I cannot. When these leaves, which whisper in unison above our heads, fall withered, I, too, shall die, and the wind will some day bear away their dust, and mine – whither, who knoweth?’ ”
“I heard, and thou did’st hear, and we shuddered and were silent. We must wither! We must die, and be whirled about by the rushing wind! Mute and full of terror we remained even till nightfall. O, how terrible was that night!”
“For the first time the love-lorn nightingale failed at the tryst which she had enchanted with her mournful lays.”
“Soon the birds flew away, and with them their little ones now clothed with plumage, and only the nest remained, rocking slowly and sadly, like the empty cradle of a dead child.”
“And the white butterflies and the blue dragonflies fled, leaving their place to obscure insects which came to eat away our fibre and to deposit in our bosoms their nauseous larvae.”
“Oh, and how we shivered, shrinking from the icy touch of the night frosts!”
“We lost our color and freshness.”
“We lost our pliancy and grace, and what before had been to us like the soft sound of kisses, like the murmur of love words, now became a harsh, dry call, unwelcome, dismal.”
“And at last, dislodged, we flew away.”
“Trodden under foot by the careless passers-by, whirled incessantly from one point to another in the dust and the mire, I accounted myself happy when I could rest for an instant in the deep rut of a road.”
“I have revolved unceasingly in the grip of the turbid stream; and in the course of my long travels I saw, alone, in mourning garb and with clouded brow, gazing absently upon the running waters and the withered leaves which shared and marked their movement, one of those two lovers whose words gave us our first presentment of death.”
“She, too, has lost her hold on life, and perchance will sleep in an open, new-made grave over which I paused a moment.”
“Ah, she sleeps and rests at last; but we, when shall we come to the end of our long journey?”
“Never! – Even now the wind, which has given us a brief repose, blows once more, and I feel myself constrained to rise from the ground and follow. Adieu, sister!”
“Adieu!”
* * * * * * * *
The wind, quiet for a moment, whistled again, and the leaves rose in a whirling confusion, to be lost afar in the darkness of the night.
And then there came to me a thought that I cannot remember and that, even though I were to remember it, I could find no words to utter.
THE SET OF EMERALDS
WE were pausing on the Street of San Jerónimo, in front of Durán’s and were reading the title of a book by Mery.
As my attention was called to that extraordinary title, and as I spoke of it to the friend who accompanied me, he, leaning lightly on my arm, exclaimed: “The day could not be more beautiful. Let us take a turn by the Fuente Castellana. While we are walking, I will tell you a story in which I am the principal hero. You will see how, after hearing it, you will not only understand this title, but will find its explanation the easiest thing in the world.”
I had plenty to do; but as I am always glad of an excuse for doing nothing, I accepted the proposition, and my friend began his story as follows:
“Some time ago, one night when I had set out to stroll the streets, without any more definite object, – after having examined all the collections of prints and photographs in the shop-windows, after having chosen in imagination in front of the Savoyard store the bronzes with which I would adorn my house, if I had one, after having made a minute survey, in fine, of all the objects of art and luxury exposed to public view upon the shelves behind the lighted plate-glass, I stopped a moment before Samper’s.
“I do not know how long it was that I remained there, adorning, in fancy, all the pretty women I know, one with a collar of pearls, another with a cross of diamonds, another with ear-rings of amethyst and gold. I was deliberating at that point to whom to offer – who would be worthy of it – a magnificent set of emeralds as rich as it was elegant, which among all the other jewelled ornaments claimed attention for the beauty and clearness of its stones, when I heard at my side the softest, sweetest voice exclaim with an accent which could not fail to put my fancies to flight: ‘What beautiful emeralds!’
“I turned my head in the direction of that voice, a woman’s voice, for only so could it have left such an echo, and I confronted, in fact, a woman supremely beautiful. I could look at her only a moment, and yet her loveliness made on me a profound impression.
“At the door of the jeweller’s shop from which she had come out, there was a carriage. She was accompanied by a lady of mature age, too young to be her mother, too old to be her friend. When both had entered the coupé, the horses started, and I stood like a fool staring after her until she was lost to sight.
“ ‘What beautiful emeralds!’ she had said. The emeralds were indeed superb. That collar, around her snowy neck, would look like a garland of young almond leaves besprent with dew; that brooch upon her bosom, a lotus-flower when it sways on its pulsing wave, crowned with foam. ‘What beautiful emeralds!’ Would she like them, perhaps? And if she would like them, why not have them? She must be rich, a lady of high rank. She has an elegant carriage, and on the door of that carriage I thought I saw a crest. Doubtless in the life of this woman there is some mystery.
“These were the thoughts that agitated my mind after I lost sight of her, – when not even the sound of her carriage wheels came to my ears. And truly there was in her life, apparently so peaceful and enviable, a horrible mystery. I found it out – I will not tell you how.
“Married when a mere child to a profligate who, after squandering his own fortune, had sought a profitable alliance, as the best means of squandering another’s, that woman, a model of wives and mothers, had refused to gratify the least of her caprices that she might save some part of her inheritance for her daughter and that she might maintain in outer appearance the dignity of her house at the height which it had always held in Spanish society.
“People tell of some women’s great sacrifices. I believe that, considering their peculiar organization, there is none comparable with the sacrifice of an ardent desire in which vanity and coquetry are concerned.
“From the time when I penetrated the mystery of her life, all my aspirations, through one of these freakish enthusiasms of my character, were reduced to this only, – to get possession of that marvellous set of jewels and to give it to her in such a way that she could not refuse it, nor even know from whose hand it might have come.
“Among other difficulties which I at once encountered in the realization of my idea, assuredly not the least was that I had not money, neither much nor little, to buy the gems.
“Yet I did not despair.
“ ‘Where shall I look for money?’ I said to myself, and I remembered the marvels of The Thousand and One Nights; those cabalistic words at whose echo the earth opened and revealed hidden treasures; those rods of such rare virtue that, when rocks were smitten by them, there bubbled from the clefts not a spring of water, which was a small miracle, but rubies, topazes, pearls and diamonds.
“Being ignorant of the words and not knowing where to find a rod, I decided at last to write a book and sell it. To get money out of the rock of a publisher is nothing short of miraculous; but I did it.
“I wrote a book of original quality, which few people liked, as only one person could understand it; for the rest it was merely a collection of phrases.
“The book was entitled The Set of Emeralds, and I signed it with my initials only.
“Since I am not Victor Hugo, nor anybody of the sort, I need not tell you that I did not get for my novel what the author of Notre Dame de Paris had for his latest; but what with one thing and another I gathered together a sufficient sum to begin my plan of campaign.
“The emeralds in question would be worth from fourteen to fifteen thousand dollars, and toward the purchase I now counted up the respectable sum of one hundred and fifty. It was necessary, then, to game.
“I gamed; and I gamed with such good sense and good fortune that in a single night I won what I needed.
“Apropos of gambling, I have made an observation in which every day has confirmed me more and more. If one puts down his money with the full expectation of winning, he wins. One must not approach the green table with the hesitancy of a man who is going to try his luck, but with the coolness of him who comes to take his own. For myself, I can assure you that I should have been as much surprised to lose that night as if a substantial bank had refused me money on a check with Rothschild’s signature.
“The next day I went to Samper’s. Will you believe that in throwing down upon the jeweller’s counter that handful of many-colored notes, those notes which represented for me at least a year of pleasure, many beautiful women, a journey to Italy, and champagne and cigars at discretion, that I wavered a moment? Then don’t believe it. I threw them down with the same nonchalance – do I say nonchalance? – with the same satisfaction with which Buckingham, breaking the thread on which they were strung, strewed with pearls the carpet of his beloved’s palace.
“I bought the jewels and carried them to my lodgings. You can picture nothing more glorious than that set of emeralds. No wonder the women sigh now and then as they pass in front of those shops which present to their eyes such glittering temptations; no wonder that Mephistopheles selected a collar of precious stones as the object most likely to seduce Marguerite. I, man that I am, could have wished for an instant to live in the Orient and be one of those fabulous monarchs who wreathe their brows with a coil of gold and gems, that I might adorn myself with those magnificent emerald leaves and diamond flowers.
“A gnome, to buy a kiss from a sylph, would not have been able to find among the immense treasures hoarded in the avaricious heart of the earth and known to those elves alone, an emerald larger, clearer, more beautiful than that which sparkled, fastening a knot of rubies, in the centre of the diadem.
“Now that I had the gems, I began to think out a way of placing them in possession of the woman for whom they were intended.
“At the end of several days, I prevailed upon one of her maids – thanks to the money that I still had left – to promise me that she, when unobserved, would place the set in the jewel-box; and to assure myself that she should not, by her conduct, betray the source of the gift, I gave her what money was left over, several hundred dollars, on condition that she, as soon as she had put the emeralds in the place agreed upon, should leave the capital and remove to Barcelona. This, in fact, she did.
“Judge for yourself what must have been the surprise of her mistress when, after noticing her sudden disappearance and suspecting that perhaps she had fled from the house with something stolen, she found in the jewel-box the magnificent set of emeralds. Who had divined her thought? Who had been able to surmise that she still, from time to time, remembered those gems with a sigh?
“The weeks and the months passed on. I knew that she kept my gift; I knew that great efforts had been made to discover whence it came; and yet I had never seen her adorned with it. – Did she scorn the offering? ‘Ah!’ I said, ‘if she knew all the merit of that gift! if she knew that its desert is scarcely surpassed by the gift of that lover who pawned his cloak in winter to buy a nosegay! Does she perhaps think that it comes from the hands of some great personage who will one day present himself, if admitted, to claim its price? What a mistake she makes!’
“One night when there was to be a royal ball I stationed myself at the door of the palace and, lost in the crowd, waited for her carriage that I might see her. When it arrived and, the footman opening the door, she appeared in radiant beauty, a murmur of admiration went up from among the pressing multitude. The women beheld her with envy; the men with longing; from me there broke a low, involuntary cry. She was wearing the set of emeralds.
“That night I went to bed without my supper; I do not remember whether it was because emotion had taken away my appetite or because I had no money. In either case, I was happy. In my dreams I thought I heard the music of the ball and saw her crossing before my eyes, flashing sparks of a thousand colors, until I dreamed even that I was dancing with her.
“The romance of the emeralds had been conjectured, since they had been talked about when they first appeared in the cabinet, by some ladies of rank.
“Now that the set had been seen, there was no longer room for doubt, and idle tongues began to comment on the affair. She enjoyed a spotless reputation. Notwithstanding the dissipation of her husband and his neglect of her, calumny could never reach to the height on which her virtue had placed her; but yet, on this occasion, there began to stir that little breath of gossip from which, according to Don Basilio, scandal begins.
“On a day when I chanced to be in a circle of young men, the conversation fell on the famous emeralds, and finally a coxcomb said, as if settling the matter:
“There is no need of discussion. These jewels have as vulgar an origin as all such presents in this world of ours. The time has gone by when invisible spirits placed marvellous gifts under the pillows of lovely ladies, and the man who makes a present of this value makes it with the hope of a recompense – and this recompense, who knows that it was not given in advance?”
“The words of that idiot roused my wrath, and all the more because they found response in those who heard them. Yet I controlled myself. What right had I to go to the defence of that woman?
“Not a quarter of an hour had passed when I had opportunity to contradict this man who had insulted her. I do not know exactly what the point was on which I contradicted him; what I can assure you of is that I did it with so much sharpness, not to say rudeness, that out of our dispute grew a quarrel. That is what I was seeking.
“My friends, knowing my disposition, wondered, not only that I should have sought a duel for so trifling a cause, but at my firm refusal to give or receive explanations of any kind.
“I fought, I do not know whether to say with good fortune or not, for although on firing I saw my adversary sway an instant and fall to the ground, a second after I felt my ears buzzing and my eyes clouding over. I was wounded, too, and seriously, in the breast.
“They carried me, already in a burning fever, to my mean lodging. There I know not how many days went by, while I called aloud I know not on whom; undoubtedly on her. I would have had courage to suffer in silence all my life for one look of gratitude on the brink of the grave; but to die without leaving her even a memory of me!
“These ideas were tormenting my imagination one wakeful, fevered night, when I saw the curtains of my alcove part and in the opening appeared a woman. I thought that I was dreaming; but no. That woman approached my bed, that poor, hot bed on which I was tossing in pain, and lifting the veil which covered her face, disclosed a tear trembling on her long, dark lashes. It was she!
“I started up with frightened eyes, I started up and – at that moment I arrived in front of Durán’s bookstore – ”
“What!” I exclaimed, interrupting my friend on hearing that change of tone. “Then you were not wounded and in bed?”
“In bed! – ah! what the deuce! I had forgotten to tell you that all this is what I was thinking as I came from the jewelry shop of Samper, – where in sober truth I saw the set of emeralds and heard, on the lips of a beautiful woman, the exclamation which I have mentioned to you, – to the Carrera de San Jerónimo, where a thrust from the elbow of a porter roused me from my revery in front of Durán’s, in whose window I observed a book by Mery with this title, Histoire de ce qui n’est pas arrivé, ‘The Story of that which did not happen.’ Do you understand it now?”
On hearing this dénouement, I could not repress a shout of laughter. Really I do not know of what Mery’s book may treat, but I now see how, with that title, a million incomparable stories might be written.