CHAPTER IV
It was the last evening of Carnival. The same masks, the same
yells, the same mad rushes, the same bedlam of disguised humanity
blowing about the streets in the great gusts of mistral that seemed
to make them dance like dead leaves on an earth where all joy is
watched by death.
It was exactly twelve months since that other carnival evening when
I had felt a little weary and a little lonely but at peace with all
mankind. It must have been--to a day or two. But on this evening
it wasn't merely loneliness that I felt. I felt bereaved with a
sense of a complete and universal loss in which there was perhaps
more resentment than mourning; as if the world had not been taken
away from me by an august decree but filched from my innocence by
an underhand fate at the very moment when it had disclosed to my
passion its warm and generous beauty. This consciousness of
universal loss had this advantage that it induced something
resembling a state of philosophic indifference. I walked up to the
railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of wind as
though I had been going to the scaffold. The delay of the train
did not irritate me in the least. I had finally made up my mind to
write a letter to Dona Rita; and this "honest fellow" for whom I
was waiting would take it to her. He would have no difficulty in
Tolosa in finding Madame de Lastaola. The General Headquarters,
which was also a Court, would be buzzing with comments on her
presence. Most likely that "honest fellow" was already known to
Dona Rita. For all I knew he might have been her discovery just as
I was. Probably I, too, was regarded as an "honest fellow" enough;
but stupid--since it was clear that my luck was not inexhaustible.
I hoped that while carrying my letter the man would not let himself
be caught by some Alphonsist guerilla who would, of course, shoot
him. But why should he? I, for instance, had escaped with my life
from a much more dangerous enterprise than merely passing through
the frontier line in charge of some trustworthy guide. I pictured
the fellow to myself trudging over the stony slopes and scrambling
down wild ravines with my letter to Dona Rita in his pocket. It
would be such a letter of farewell as no lover had ever written, no
woman in the world had ever read, since the beginning of love on
earth. It would be worthy of the woman. No experience, no
memories, no dead traditions of passion or language would inspire
it. She herself would be its sole inspiration. She would see her
own image in it as in a mirror; and perhaps then she would
understand what it was I was saying farewell to on the very
threshold of my life. A breath of vanity passed through my brain.
A letter as moving as her mere existence was moving would be
something unique. I regretted I was not a poet.
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