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(Fragment)
Neither this dreamy monk, nor this old charlatan,
Have guessed why Mariette is dying.
She is stricken at the heart, the beautiful indifferent one;
That is her malady, — she loves. — It is cruel, however,
To see between the hands of a hypocrite and a fool,
Die this superb and young courtesan.
But each has his day, and hers has come;
For my part, I scarcely believe in this unknown malady.
Look, — do you see her, alone, at the foot of these trees,
Seeking the deep shade and the coolness of the marbles,
And plunging into the bath her sweating limbs?
I would wager my bones that she is stricken at the heart.
Look: — it is here, under these long arbors,
That yesterday still, in her arms, far from the rays of day,
Have paled the children of the noblest families.
There was exercised in the shade a redoubtable love;
There, this Messalina opened her rapacious arms
To change into old men her frail favorites,
And, spreading death under lively kisses,
Drank with fury her cherished elements,
Gold and blood. —
Alas! it is done, Mariette,
Now you are solitary and mute.
You mirror yourself in the water; on this body so vaunted
Your eyes seek in vain your fatal beauty.
Go run now in the public squares.
Pull by the coats your magnificent lovers.
Those who, last winter, built you your palace,
Will send to ask your name by their valets.
The doctor moves away shrugging his shoulders;
He sighs, he says to himself that art is powerless.
As for the stupid monk, he knows only two roles,
One for the criminal, the other for the innocent;
And, seeing a woman in silence extinguish herself,
Not knowing if he should condemn or pity,
With a trembling mouth he has said them both.
Maria! Maria! superb creature,
You will be that imprudent hunter whom the gods
To the dogs he nourished threw as food.
Under the tranquil shelter of flowering lemon trees,
The unfortunate one lulls the poison that undermines her;
And, like Magdalene, one sees on her breast
Stream her hair together with her tears.
Was he a connoisseur in matters of woman,
That writer who says that, when she smiles,
She deceives you; she has wept all night?
Ah! if it is true that an eye full of joy and flame,
A laughing mouth, and light words,
Hide bitter tears and nights of sobs;
If it is true that the actor has his soul torn
When the mask is painted with joyous colors,
What then when the cheek is burning and leaden,
When the mask itself is flooded with tears?
I do not know if ever eternal justice
Has made a permitted pleasure of the pleasure of the gods;
But, if it were given to me to say to what torture
I would wish to condemn my proudest enemy,
It is you, pale care of a scorned love,
Wretched despair that dies unknown,
Yes, it is you, it would be your poisoned blade
That I would wish to break in an abhorred heart!
Do you know what this solitary malady is?
What one must suffer of it only to keep silent?
So that a whole sea of anguish and evils
Remains at the bottom of the skull, between two weak bones?…
And how would he wish, the madman, that one pity him?
Be despised by one alone, it is a race to forget you.
Besides, is not inexorable pride there?
Pride, which fears eyes, and, on its bleeding flank,
Holds back, like Caesar, even under the knife,
With its feeble hands the folds of its cloak.
…………………………………………………….
On the numbed waves of these indolent seas,
The nonchalant Octave, insolently adorned,
Closes and raises, at the sound of turbulent waltzes,
His eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, which have never wept.
He is a puny child; — he begins to appear,
No one until now had noticed him.
They say that one day, at the foot of his window,
The beautiful Mariette in a gondola saw him.
An old woman this evening stops him as he passes:
“Alas! she said in a trembling voice,
She would like to see you one last time.”
But Octave, at these words, uncovering his face,
Let be seen a brow where joy burst forth:
“Mariette is dying! is one sure that she is dying?
He says. — The doctor gives her still one hour.
— Then, he replies, carry her this note.”
He wrote these words with the tip of his stylet:
“I am a woman, Maria; you had offended me.
I can forgive you, since you die by me.
You have avenged me! farewell. — I am the betrothed
Of Petruccio Balbi who drowned himself for you.”
Alfred De Musset
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-octave-alfred-de-musset/