‘It’s a monograph by Janet on Raymond Roussel’s neurosis – From Anguish to Ecstasy,’ answered d’Angerville.

  ‘A case of Clédalism?’ asked Grandsailles, laughing a little sarcastically.

  ‘Clédalism,’ answered d’Angerville, delicately weighing the neologism as he picked up his book again, ‘it’s something even more obscure and beautiful than that.’

  And he held out his lean, bony hand to the Count of Grandsailles’ perfectly proportioned and muscled one.

  The meeting (this time, surely the last) between the Count of Grandsailles and Lady Chidester-Ames, in the latter’s castle in Scotland, was one of the most turbulent experiences in the Count’s life; and now, on his way back, sitting in his compartment, enveloped by the anise fog of his cigarette-smoke, he watched the serene landscape of dunes roll past, congratulating himself on his wisdom and complimenting himself on having succeeded in not killing Lady Chidester-Ames. He savoured his heaven-sent good fortune at not having become a criminal. As he made all these reflections, the Count’s eyes lingered in the contemplation of a great lead-coloured cloud whose contours resembled the outline of an ancient sarcophagus. Then Grandsailles indulged in the fancy of imagining, engraved in roman letters in the centre of this cloud, so appropriate as an epitaph of his liaison with Lady Chidester-Ames, the famous Latin inscription:

  cadaveribus amore furentium

  miserabundis polyandrien,

  which means

  cemetery of the wret ched bodies that

  through love have fallen into madness

  In the vagueness of a stealthy sleep the tomb, like that of Adonis, became a fountain. The train was now crossing the sinuous waters of a river. From the golden serpent, the faucet of Adonis’s fountain, flowed the elixir of youth, and the great white cloud had become Solange de Cléda’s nuptial bed. Lady Chidester-Ames lay dead at the foot of their couch, metamorphosed into the animal form of a bloody wild boar.

  The Count of Grandsailles was now firmly resolved to marry Solange de Cléda as soon as he returned. Her happiness at least appeared to him as the sole object of his life and all his recent dabblings in the occult field of love-spells appeared to him, in the new light of his budding passion, as merely the last painful residues of his infantile fixations, fading and vanishing one after another like the bats of his tortured celibacy before the limpid sun of marriage. He now understood how much Solange must have suffered from her unrequited love, but he consoled himself for this by telling himself that now her happiness would be all the greater and more unexpected, thus compensating her for all her past tortures. But instead of growing impatient the Count would have like his trip to continue on and on, to last as long as possible, so that he could intoxicate himself the more with the elevated and serene feelings that he had felt come into being in his soul after the nightmarish chaos and the distress of the violences and compulsions in which his spirit had been dangerously foundering in the course of this last week and which were in truth worthy of the Annals of Demonology.

  It was now only a week before the day of the ball he was giving, which he had recently almost entirely forgotten and neglected. The circumstances of the war having inevitably linked this affair to pretexts of patriotic aid, the insipid taste of charity seemed to him to have depersonalized and dulled its strictly social brilliance in advance. But now once more his ball appeared to him dazzling as a shield. The Grandsailles ball would serve to announce officially his betrothal to Madame Solange de Cléda. No one was informed of Grandsailles’ return to Paris except his notary, who was to come and meet him at the station in order to obtain and study the news he was to bring back from London regarding the mining concessions of the Libreux. Wholly absorbed by his affair with Lady Chidester-Ames, he had quite neglected to obtain the latest information on the subject. Yet knowing Maître Girardin’s affection for Madame de Cléda as he did, he could not forbear smiling as he reflected that the announcement of his marriage would be more unexpected and welcome to his notary than any other news he could have brought back.

  Thus it was in the best of spirits that the Count of Grandsailles stepped down from the train. After their effusive accolade he and his notary got into the car and drove to the Hotel Meurice to confer.

  ‘I have great news to announce to you,’ said Girardin, sparkling from the tormented depth of his anxiety.

  ‘No more important or happy than what I have for you,’ answered Grandsailles, ‘but let’s wait with this till we get to the hotel.’

  Girardin bit his lower lip.

  Grandsailles’ fury on learning from his notary that Solange de Cléda had bought the property of the Moulin des Sources was indescribable, so laconically did his anger manifest itself, so completely without outward signs.

  ‘Very well!’ said Grandsailles dryly and without emotion, ‘in doing this Madame de Cléda has lost my esteem and friendship.’

  But by the gleam of hatred that shone in the Count’s eyes, Girardin saw that the true and authentic Grandsailles, who had long disappeared, was again coming to the fore – the vindictive Grandsailles, with irrevocable decisions, with a pitiless heart and an elementary force sprung from an old stock of massive pride. Maître Girardin, filled with consternation, knowing beforehand the futility of making any conciliatory efforts, hazarded with the utmost prudence. ‘Yet we cannot overlook the fact that the Count’s greatest political enemy is made harmless by this sale. It brings the Libreux plain back to well-disposed and friendly hands.’

  ‘Madame de Cléda is no longer my friend,’ replied Grandsailles.

  He had, during this time, been writing a note, in his tiny, precise and delicate handwriting. He handed it to Girardin in an unsealed envelope.

  ‘You must surely be seeing your client soon,’ he said, ‘I beg you to hand her this.’

  The note read,

  ‘Madame,

  ‘I have just learned through my notary, Pierre Girardin, of your purchase of the Moulin des Sources property. I must inform you that I disapprove of the motives of this purchase. Your fortune made it possible, but the heart of a Grandsailles cannot be corrupted by such means. This is why I beg you no longer to consider me among your friends.

  Count Hervé de Grandsailles.’

  When Solange de Cléda read this letter in the presence of her notary, she became so frightfully pale that Girardin, getting up from his seat, came over and took her free hand, pressing it between his own. Solange then passed him the note, and as Girardin protested, refusing to have knowledge of its contents, she said to him, ‘I prefer you to know everything. The motives that the Count attributes to me are as far as they could possibly be from anything that has even entered my mind, and five minutes with him ought to suffice to dispel this misunderstanding. I authorize you to repeat this, if the Count asks any questions about me. As for myself, my dignity prevents me at present from asking for such a rendezvous.’

  Maître Girardin, ever diligent, hastened to pay Grandsailles a visit.

  ‘Count,’ he said to him, ‘Madame Solange de Cléda was deeply distressed by your letter.’

  ‘Did she communicate its contents to you?’ asked Grandsailles.

  ‘No sir, she told me only that a horrible misunderstanding had arisen between you, and that five minutes with you ought to suffice to dispel it.’

  ‘She shall have a rendezvous,’ said Grandsailles, ‘you may ask her to set it for any time she likes.’

  When Girardin had gone, Grandsailles remained for a long time plunged in speculation. ‘What could Solange possibly think up to try to justify herself? Surely nothing having the least validity as an argument; she will only try to devise makeshift sentimental subterfuges, to prevent at least the embarrassment of not appearing at the ball. What persevering ant’s labour!’ said Grandsailles to himself, at the same time underscoring his admiration for what he regarded as Solange’s perfidy by a smile of contempt…. Ten years spent in pursuing day after day, by all human and superhuman means, that single goal: to marry him, to become the Countess of Grandsailles. First it had been a struggle of prestige, of pride; then when she had realized that he was still the stronger in this kind of method she had feigned to be the humble victim, and to resign herself to the tortures of an unreciprocated love with an ardour of sacrifice and a loftiness of soul that were without equal; all this in order to move him to pity. But at the same time she had not neglected society – on the contrary, she had climbed and climbed, animated by a demonic ambition and with the sole, deliberate aim of dazzling him. And he, the naive Grandsailles, no more wily than a simple peasant of the Libreux, had been within two inches of falling definitely into her trap, he had had pity on her. She had succeeded in dazzling him, and worse, in making him fall in love, in bewitching him. For even now, from the depth of his hatred, he continued to desire Solange. ‘Her game has been perfect, without a fault,’ Grandsailles said to himself, ‘but she knew me so little that at the last moment she committed a crude, unpardonable psychological error in believing she had definitely sealed her influence over me by attaching herself to me through common interests. Well, she won’t even get an invitation to the ball out of me!’

  At this moment Pierre Girardin was back again, out of breath, and childishly ashamed of his eagerness. He had been unable to resist coming to inform him immediately of the time Solange de Cléda had set for her rendezvous with the Count.

  ‘Well, when is that five-minute rendezvous?’ asked Grandsailles testily.

  ‘Ten days from today, at six o’clock, at her house on Rue de Babylone,’ answered Girardin, making a note of it on a slip of paper. Grandsailles was perplexed and repeated, unable to understand. ‘In ten days?’

  ‘It’s quite understandable,’ said Girardin proudly, ‘Madame de Cléda surely wants to wait till the ball is over….’

  ‘To be sure,’ said Grandsailles, and without a word of leave-taking withdrew to his room vexed, outraged. What? Pride beginning all over again? Yes, that was it! She wanted none of his ball!

  And so, at last, behind the protective opium of the ramparts of the Maginot line, the Count of Grandsailles’ ball was held.

  Those ten days of waiting for the meeting on which she pinned all her last hopes of happiness were the severest ordeal that a woman in love, in Solange’s circumstances, could have imposed on herself; and, quite contrary to the interpretation the Count had given of it, she put off their meeting – which she might have obtained and would have wished immediately – only out of delicacy. She wanted no factors other than those of their own and true relationship to create the slightest misunderstanding at their meeting. In this Solange had only anticipated and come to the rescue of the weaknesses and evil thoughts that could not fail to arise in Grandsailles’ spirit, too much inclined to judge the motives of each of Solange’s actions as consistently guided by all sorts of aims and ambitions other than the very simple ones of her love.

  But to make those ten days that separated her from her meeting with the Count flow by, what prodigies of will she had to summon up at each hour of her life! Less than ever would she have allowed herself to appear at the decisive moment before Grandsailles’ eyes in a light unfavourable to her beauty, or to the integrity of her spirit. On the contrary, between now and then she was, more uncompromisingly than ever, going to impose upon herself the torture of becoming that fabulous creature invented by her burning imagination, to whom the Count had wished to be joined by a spell! Then Solange de Cléda’s torture began without truce or pity, the torture of separating her soul from her body so that the torments of the one should not encroach upon and wilt the intact beauty of the other, so that she could reach the goal, those five minutes that Grandsailles deigned to grant her, and get down on her knees once more, as she had once said so sublimely, ‘while remaining before him on an equal footing’…. But just as she had experienced no shame in accepting the humiliation of exposing her nakedness without the consecration of love, so this time she would not come down to earth again; she would remain kneeling on her pedestal, just as she had lain down without demeaning herself on the tomb of her illusion.

  And as in this world the hours of circumstances can be extended and repeated, except for death whose hour is rigidly fixed, the ten fearful days flowed by and at last the moment of the rendezvous arrived. Solange was beautiful and dignified as a queen, clean in body and soul. What could one despise in her that was not her passion? The limpidity of all her intentions could not but disarm the Count’s tortuous ones, whatever they might be. She had not learned by heart what she would tell him, for it was her heart that would speak for her. But the worst awaited Solange – though perhaps it was not yet the worst: at about six o’clock Maître Girardin came to convey the Count’s apologies and to announce that the latter was unable to keep his engagement, having been urgently called to England. As his stay might be prolonged several months. Girardin was charged to advise her as soon as he returned to Paris. Several months! She knew what this meant, having endured each hour of the last ten days as though it were ten years of a calvary without resurrection. But as long as she had a single reason for hope she would live, she would continue to live by her despair. Then her permanent heroism of persevering in everyday life began again inexorably.

  Wafted beyond the reach of her anguish by the effect of the luminal, she would awaken to it again every morning, benumbed by the amnesia of the drug, finding it all the more poignant in the crude and sudden revival of the memory of all her unhappiness. From that point on, while her poor soul crossed the threshold of the hell of her passion, she gave her lovely nude body over to the kneading, shaking, tapping, patting, squeezing, rubbing, twisting and pressing of the four bony and unsparing hands of her two masseuses; then food – surveyed, vitamined, tasteless, regulated and weighed in a scale, and while she automatically chewed with all the energy of the aching muscles of her jaws she would think only of letting herself die of fasting. Then the forced labour of measured rest periods, gnawed by the pecking of quarter-seconds, watch in hand…. Then the long sessions in beauty salons, in the mortuary atmosphere of which Solange lived through, one after the other, all the minutest ceremonies of her own burial with the paralysing realism of the choking and pressures of the winding-sheet and of the descent into the tomb so solemnly imitated by the shockless movements of the nickelled stretchers with their subtle mechanisms… and a little later, the horrible apparition of the first drops of the liquids, creams, balms and juices of her own decomposition that began to flow amid strong ammoniac odours…. Then the worst part of it, the resurrection, the monstrous ascension, the pitiless dancing lessons, with each whirl punished by a humiliating fall and each forward sweep by the ‘fouettés’ of the beat – torn by the spiked wheels of the pirouettes, crucified on the tiptoe, her open arms nailed to the knotty cross of rhythm, bound, stretched head down on the Saint Andrew’s crosses of acrobatics.

  Solange de Cléda, what are you doing with your body? What are you doing with your spirit?

  No pity on earth for either, and so much base flattery from society for both! The painters and the poets go into ecstasies before the enigmatic expression of your glance, the ballet-master praises the flexibility of your entrechats, the make-up man the spotless purity of your complexion. But I see you on your knees, Solange de Cléda, in your room, when you are alone, with your head uplifted to your idol; you are like those mystic women, desirable and dying, painted by El Greco; like them, you have eyes made brilliant by the continual patina of timeless tears, hardened and barely translucent like the very shell of ecstasy. In the martyrdoms of your passion each of your gestures makes you tremble and each of your movements becomes a sharpened dagger falling into the sensitive emptiness of the moon-well of your anguish and remaining nailed to its bottom. This makes you cough, and the slit of your wound widens; then you cough on purpose, you cough with all your might to shake off all the swords stuck in your heart. Sometimes also you sigh so deeply that you are afraid to lose your breath, then you stop breathing altogether to stop living. The veins of your neck swell and your head trembles; each new second becomes a victory, but in the end you cannot help falling frenzied on the hard shiny tiles, your chest convulsed by the spasms of your frantic breathing, your sides aching with grief!

  Solange de Cléda presents psychiatry with a strange case indeed, for even in the most painful aberrations of her mind, the very convulsions of her hysteria became for her a means of making her nervous centres more supple and her biological functions in general more regular. Becoming day by day more dual by virtue of the very nature of her somatic personality, she seemed to approach the absolute of that dualism, considered clinically impossible, of the body and the soul.*

  Veronica stood on tiptoe the better to listen…. At the beginning it was like the thin insistent whine of a mosquito. Then the sound swelled and became more precise, and she turned off the gas and the electricity. It was in fact the air-raid signal, and by the sudden joy with which it filled her, she realized instantly with what secret impatience her unconscious had waited, night after night, for such an event to occur. The doors on the various floors began to slam, like blows of Hitler’s fists angrily struck on a wooden table, and immediately the noises of the tenants, rolling like walnuts in an empty drawer, sounded in the well of the stairs. Now the siren bellowed powerfully, making the windows rattle. She was ready, her toilet articles too, since for months she had been waiting only for this. Nevertheless she had been taken by surprise, and was wearing shoes she did not like. She rummaged about in vain. Finally in annoyance she slipped her gas-mask by its strap over her shoulder and went down into the cellar with a smile on her lips.

  Everyone down here wore the same expression, impossible to repress in spite of the contractions that each one imposed on his lips to give himself a serious, if not grave, countenance – one more in keeping with the circumstances. The mingled illusion and anguish of this first alert seemed to make them all like children again. It had been said so often that modern bombardment would pulverize everything, that under the menace of external danger they all felt the intensely human pleasure of intra-uterine protection as they pressed and huddled together at the bottom of a dark and maternally protective cave. The people covered one another’s legs with blankets, they brought cushions, crouched on sacks, seeking complicated postures for the wait. Madame Maurel, the concierge, did the honours of the cellar and served black coffee; a bottle of wine was opened, a box of stale crackers was passed around; the whole attention was concentrated on comfort and well-being.