Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne

Urgent to be gone now, he kissed her somewhat absently, picked up his hat and was striding to the door when, just as he reached it, he stopped and clapped his hand impatiently to his forehead.

'Fool that I am! I nearly forgot!'

Turning back to Marianne who still stood rooted to the spot, he put into her hands a large green morocco jewel case, stamped with the imperial arms, which he produced as though by magic from yet another of his enormous pockets.

'Here,' he said. 'Wear these on the night of your first appearance! Then I shall know you are thinking of me.'

As though in a dream, Marianne opened the case. Lying on a bed of black velvet, gleaming and flashing in the candlelight, was a fabulous set of emeralds and diamonds. Not even at Talleyrand's had she ever seen anything so splendid. But when she looked up with dazzled eyes, she saw that Napoleon was already back at the door.

'Don't tell me they won't suit you. They are the same green as your eyes. Goodbye, my heart.'

When, a little later, Madame Hamelin, growing anxious at the continued silence in the salon, entered cautiously, she found Marianne sitting on the floor by the fire with her hands full of documents and a cascade of fabulous jewels on her knees, crying as though her heart would break.

In the grey, rain-swept light of a new day, beneath a sky that held no promise of sunshine, the great entrance portico framed by delapidated walls, with here and there a stone missing, presented a dismal sight. Dead weeds sprouted from the gaps in the stonework where their seed had been carried by the wind and the paving stones before the door with its sad, flaking green paint gaped to make way for a mass of brown and soggy vegetation.

Marianne stood leaning on Fortunée's arm and her eyes behind the heavy veil which hid her face filled with tears as she looked at the old house where her life had begun, from which her father and mother had gone out hand in hand to meet their deaths. She had wanted to visit it alone, before the architects took possession of it, because it seemed to her that she alone had the right to break the silence which had enveloped the Hôtel d'Asselnat for so many years. She wanted to see it in all its loneliness and neglect, before the magic wand was waved that would give it a new life, but she found now that this neglect was painful to her. So much lay behind it.

But for the Terror, all her youth would have been passed in this splendid old dwelling, its noble proportions and the cracked stone trophies over the porch still telling of the splendours of the reign of the Sun King, or else in the old Chateau in Auvergne which now she might never see. Instead, she would have a different life, but would it be any happier? Who could tell what Marianne d'Asselnat de Villeneuve might have been at this moment if – but there was no end to it.

Behind her, Marianne heard Arcadius de Jolival telling the coachman to wait. She walked a few steps towards the house, strangely unwilling to make use of the keys which had been handed to her on waking. Opposite the silent entrance, a splendid, luxurious mansion was just awaking to a spate of furious activity contrasting strongly with its neglected neighbour. The staff were going about their morning tasks, and the place was alive with servants sweeping out courtyards and pavements, polishing brass and beating carpets. People were coming and going, many of them men in army uniform on foot or on horseback, entering or leaving a vast forecourt at the far end of which rose an impressive building in the Egyptian style. Seeing Marianne turn to look, disturbed by the noise breaking in on her thoughts, Arcadius frowned.

'You're going to have noisy neighbours, when they are in Paris, at least. That is the Hôtel de Beauharnais. Prince Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy is there at present. And yesterday, there was a ball and a reception. Prince Eugene likes entertaining and the Emperor was there. But it means hard work for the servants this morning. That's why they are so busy. But when he is back in Milan it will be quieter. The Emperor is very fond of him,' he added knowing that this would be the best way of soothing his young friend's irritation. He was quite right. She smiled.

'Oh well, if the Emperor is fond of him. Come, shall we go in? It is freezing out here!'

She proffered the great keys which she had been carrying in her muff. Arcadius took them and went up to the little postern gate beside the main one.

'It will probably be very stiff,' he said, 'if this gate has not been opened for years, the wood frame will have warped and we'll probably have trouble from rusty hinges.'

He inserted the key and leaned against the door, prepared to push with all his strength as he tried to turn it. But the key turned smoothly in the lock and the door opened without the least; resistance.

'Someone seems to have taken the trouble of oiling the lock,' he said in surprise. 'And the door opens as though it were used every day. Who can come here?'

'I don't know,' Marianne answered in some alarm. Let's go in.'

The forecourt lay before them in all its desolation. Ahead, framed in moss-grown outbuildings, the noble, classical facade displayed black windows with broken panes and stonework smeared with green stains and chipped, here and there, by bullet holes. A number of steps were missing from the imposing perron and the stone lions which had formerly guarded it lay headless among the weeds in the courtyard. The ground was strewn with debris of all kinds and over on the right some blackened walls and pillars told of the beginnings of a fire, probably the same the abbé de Chazay had put out before he fled. A riot of vegetation had sprung up everywhere, as though trying to draw a veil over the poor, gutted house. A thin trail of ivy had begun climbing tentatively up the carved oak door, as though nature were trying to comfort the mutilated stones with this fragile ornament. A black cat sprang suddenly through the twisted ironwork of the cellar grille and streaked away to disappear through the gaping doorway of an old stable.

Like a good, superstitious Creole, Fortunée Hamelin shivered and clutched Marianne's arm a little tighter. She sighed.

'Percier and Fontaine will have their work cut out. What a ruin! I am beginning to think the Emperor has given you an odd present!'

'But none that could have given me greater pleasure,' Marianne said fiercely. 'Even the emeralds are nothing besides this sick old house.'

'It is not as bad as that,' Arcadius said comfortingly. 'With a little care and work all this can soon be repaired. The damage is more superficial than really serious. Let's look inside.'

He gave his hand to Marianne to help her up the few wobbly steps that remained of the perron and then returned to perform the same service for Madame Hamelin who followed.

The carved door opened as easily as the one in the street had done. Arcadius frowned.

'Who troubles to look after the locks in a ruined house?' he mumbled. But Marianne was not listening. She stepped forward with a thudding heart into the huge, deserted entrance hall. Not a stick of furniture remained. The coloured marble which had clothed the walls and surrounded the doors lay shattered on the cracked black marble floor. The exquisitely painted doors had been torn from their hinges, allowing the eye to penetrate unhindered into the recesses of the house where everything showed the same traces of blind vandalism.

In the dining room with its tattered hangings, the bare sideboards, tall cabinets and furnishings too heavy to be carried away showed shattered panels rotten with damp. The mutilated remnants of King Louis XIV's profile still showed on a large cartouche above the red marble fireplace, and the grate was full of ashes in which were small bright scraps of gilt bronze from the furniture burnt there.

In the salon which came next, the ravages were still more terrible. Not one piece of furniture was left standing. The once exquisitely polished harpsichord lay in a heap of rubbish, among which one carved foot and a few ivory keys were still distinguishable. The pale silk hangings were only filthy, blackened rags hanging from bits of wood that still showed traces of gilding. Only the scrolled panelling – but suddenly Marianne gave a start. Her eyes widened, staring. Over the mantelpiece, lonely, splendid and wholly unexpected, the portrait of a man reigned over this scene of devastation. It was a fine piece of work. The face beneath the powdered hair was dark, with proud features and fierce, brooding eyes. He stood, hand on hip, proud and arrogant in his handsome colonel's uniform, against the smoky background of some battle scene. The painter's model must have been a man of rare charm and Fortunée, coming up behind Marianne, exclaimed in wonder.

'Oh—! What a splendid man!'

'It is my father,' Marianne said tonelessly.

All three stood motionless, their feet in the dust, their eyes riveted on the portrait which gazed back at them mockingly, with eyes that were extraordinarily alive. For Marianne, there was great poignancy in this confrontation. Until this moment, her father had been to her only a rather faded miniature in a frame of seed pearls, the picture of an elegant, sardonically smiling man, a little world-weary, almost effete, whom she had regarded with the same kind of vague fondness she might have felt for any attractive portrait or for the hero of a novel. But the arrogant young soldier portrayed here touched her in the deepest fibers of her being, because in each of those bold features she recognized herself. He was so like her. The high cheek-bones, the challenging look in those mocking, slightly upward curving eyes, the wide, sensual mouth, betraying the stubborness of that strong, square jaw. He was all at once very close to her, this father she had never really known.

It was Jolival who broke the spell.

'You are his daughter all right,' he said pensively. 'He cannot have been much older than you when that picture was painted. I have never seen a man more handsome, or more virile. But who could have hung it there? Look—' Jolival brushed the gilded frame with one pale kid-gloved finger, 'not a speck of dust! While everything else—'

An expressive movement of his arm embraced the desolation around them. Then he paused, his arm still in mid-air, as from somewhere upstairs a floorboard cracked sharply, as though under someone's feet.

'But – is there someone here?' Marianne said softly.

'I'll go and see,' Arcadius told her.

He ran quickly to the staircase, whose broad sweep could be seen through a gaping doorway and leapt up two at a time with the lightness of a dancer. Left alone in the salon, the two women looked at one another, neither anxious to break the silence. Marianne had a strange feeling that this empty, desolate house where the one portrait hung in state, was none the less alive, with a dim, underground life of its own. She was torn between two contradictory urges, to sit down right there on the dusty ground and wait for what God knew what or to run away, and shut fast the doors that had opened with such suspicious ease and never return. The thought that very soon workmen would come and break the silence of this peculiar shrine with all their clamour troubled her, as though there was something wrong about it. And yet, no one had more right than she to cross this threshold, and to awaken the sleeping echoes of the old house. The house to which, even yesterday, she had not given a thought had now become part of her flesh and she knew that she could never tear it from her again without leaving a wound. Her eyes returned to those of the portrait which seemed to follow her wherever she went and she spoke to it, a silent, earnest prayer from her heart.

'Is it your wish, tell me, is it your wish that I should come back here, to our house? Already, I love it so! I will restore it to its past splendours, and once again you shall preside over a setting worthy of you.'

Then, as though the house were trying to answer her, the one remaining whole window in the room, its fastening perhaps broken or ill-latched, was caught suddenly by a gust of wind and flew open. Marianne moved across to shut it and in doing so saw that it gave, like the rest, on to a small garden laid out around a green and stagnant pool. Beside the pool a stone cupid with a blackened nose stood dreaming with his arms around a large dolphin that had long since ceased to spout water. And just at that very moment, the rain-filled clouds parted to make way for a pale, timid ray of sunshine which caressed the cupid's cheek, revealing his enigmatic smile. And, without quite knowing why, Marianne felt comforted and accepted. Just then, Arcadius came back.