What could one say about this one? She was at
home and alone. Yes, she was alone, for she was
smiling as one smiles when thinking in solitude of
something sad or sweet, and not as one smiles when
one is being watched. She seemed so much alone
and so much at home that she made the whole large
apartment seem absolutely empty. She alone lived
in it, filled it, gave it life. Many people might
come in and converse, laugh, even sing; she would
still be alone with a solitary smile, and she alone
would give it life with her pictured gaze.
That look also was unique. It fell directly on
me, fixed and caressing, without seeing me. All
portraits know that they are being watched, and they
answer with their eyes, which see, think, follow us
without leaving us, from the very moment we enter
the apartment they inhabit. This one did not
see me; it saw nothing, although its look was fixed
directly on me. I remembered the surprising verse
of Baudelaire:
And your eyes, attractive as those of a portrait.
They did indeed attract me in an irresistible manner;
those painted eyes which had lived, or which were
perhaps still living, threw over me a strange, powerful
spell. Oh, what an infinite and tender charm,
like a passing breeze, like a dying sunset of lilac
rose and blue, a little sad like the approaching night,
which comes behind the sombre frame and out of those
impenetrable eyes! Those eyes, created by a few
strokes from a brush, hide behind them the mystery
of that which seems to be and which does not exist,
which can appear in the eyes of a woman, which can
make love blossom within us.
The door opened and M. Milial entered. He excused
himself for being late. I excused myself for
being ahead of time. Then I said: “Might
I ask you who is this lady?”
He answered: “That is my mother. She
died very young.”
Then I understood whence came the inexplicable attraction
of this man.
The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through
the sky big, black, heavy clouds from which the rain
poured down on the earth with terrific violence.
A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow,
foamy waves along the coast with the rumbling sound
of thunder. The waves followed each other close,
rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam
as they broke.
The storm engulfed itself in the little valley of
Yport, whistling and moaning, tearing the shingles
from the roofs, smashing the shutters, knocking down
the chimneys, rushing through the narrow streets in
such gusts that one could walk only by holding on
to the walls, and children would have been lifted
up like leaves and carried over the houses into the
fields.
The fishing smacks had been hauled high up on land,
because at high tide the sea would sweep the beach.
Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms
of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky
and the sea.
