The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 3 (of 8) eBook
Guy de Maupassant
“When we arrived, I saw that we were expected,
and that they had not doubted that the Empress would
come to close her lover’s eyes with a last kiss.
She left me there, and hurried to Ladislas Ferkoz’s
room, without even shutting the doors behind her,
where his beautiful, sensual, gipsy head stood out
from the whiteness of the pillows; but his face was
quite bloodless, and there was no life left in it,
except in his large, strange eyes, that were striated
with gold, like the eyes of an astrologer or of a
bearded vulture.
“The cold numbness of the death struggle had
already laid hold of his robust body and paralyzed
his lips and arms, and he could not reply even by
a sound of tenderness to Maria-Gloriosa’s wild
lamentations and amorous cries. Neither reply
nor smile, alas! But his eyes dilated, and glistened
like the last flame that shoots up from an expiring
fire, and filled them with a world of dying thoughts,
of divine recollections, of delirious love. They
appeared to envelope her in kisses, they spoke to
her, they thanked her, they followed her movements,
and seemed delighted at her grief. And as if
she were replying to their mute supplications, as
if she had understood them, Maria-Gloriosa suddenly
tore off her lace, threw aside her fur cloak, stood
erect beside the dying man, whose eyes were radiant,
desirable in her supreme beauty with her bare shoulders,
her bust like marble and her fair hair, in which diamonds
glistened, surrounding her proud head, like that of
the Goddess Diana, the huntress, and with her arms
stretched out towards him in an attitude of love,
of embrace and of blessing. He looked at her in
ecstacy, he feasted on her beauty, and seemed to be
having a terrible struggle with death, in order that
he might gaze at her, that apparition of love, a little
longer, see her beyond eternal sleep and prolong this
unexpected dream. And when he felt that it was
all over with him, and that even his eyes were growing
dim, two great tears rolled down his cheeks....
“When Maria-Gloriosa saw that he was dead, she
piously and devoutly kissed his lips and closed his
eyes, like a priest who closes the gold tabernacle
after service, on an evening after benediction, and
then, without exchanging a word, we returned through
the darkness to the palace where the ball was still
going on.”
* * * *
*
There was a minute’s silence, and while Madame
de Laumieres, who was very much touched by this story
and whose nerves were rather highly strung, was drying
her tears behind her open fan, suddenly the harsh and
shrill voices of the fast women who were returning
from the Casino, by the strange irony of fate, struck
up an idiotic song which was then in vogue: “Oh!
the poor, oh! the poor, oh! the poor, dear girl!”
THE RELICS
They had given him a grand public funeral, like they
do victorious soldiers who have added some dazzling
pages to the glorious annals of their country, who
have restored courage to desponding heads and cast
over other nations the proud shadow of their country’s
flag, like a yoke under which those went who were
no longer to have a country, or liberty.
