Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

She made haste to return the abbé’s visit. The house was deserted, no letters came—she herself knew that no one in Paris had much time for petitioners, and she had to do something, anything, even if it was just playing backgammon, or talking, or simply finding out how someone else talked. Somehow she must defy the tedium advancing ever more menacingly and murderously on her heart. She hurried through the village; she felt nauseated by everything that partook in any way of the name of Courbépine and reminded her of her exile. The abbé’s little house lay at the end of the village street, surrounded by green countryside. It was not much higher than a barn, but flowers framed the tiny windows and their tangled foliage hung down over the door, so that she had to bend down to avoid being caught in their fragrant toils.

The abbé was not alone. With him at his desk sat a young man whom, in great confusion at the honour of such a visit, he introduced as his nephew. The abbé was preparing him for his studies, although he was not to be a priest—a vocation for which so much must be given up! This was meant as a gallant jest. Madame de Prie smiled, not so much at the rather clumsy compliment as at the amusing embarrassment of the young man, who blushed red and didn’t know where to look. He was a tall country fellow with a bony, red-cheeked face, yellow hair and a rather artless expression: he seemed clumsy and brutish with his awkward limbs, but at the moment his extreme respect for her kept his boorishness within bounds and made him look childishly helpless. He scarcely dared to answer her questions, stuttered and stammered, put his hands in his pockets, took them out again, and Madame de Prie, enchanted by his embarrassment, asked him question after question—it did her good to find someone who was confused and small in her presence again, who felt that he was a supplicant, subservient to her. The abbé spoke for him, praised his passion for the noble vocation of scholarship, his other good qualities, and told her it was the boy’s great wish to be able to complete his studies at the university in Paris. He himself, to be sure, was poor and could not help his nephew much, the boy also lacked the patronage that alone smoothed the path to high office, and he pressingly recommended him to her favour. He knew that she was all-powerful at court; a single word would suffice to make the young student’s boldest dreams come true.

Madame de Prie smiled bitterly into the darkness: so she was supposed to be all-powerful at court, and couldn’t even compel anyone to answer a single letter or grant a single request. Yet it was good to feel that no one here knew of her helplessness and her fall from grace. Even the semblance of power warmed her heart now. She controlled herself: yes, she would certainly recommend the young man, who from what so estimable an advocate as the abbé said of him must surely be worthy of every favour. She asked him to come and talk to her tomorrow so that she could assess his qualities. She would recommend him at court, she said, she would give him a letter of introduction to her friend the Queen and the members of the Academy (reminding herself, as she said so, that not one of them had sent a single line in reply to her letters).

The old abbé was quivering with delight, and tears ran down his fat cheeks. He kissed her hands, wandered around the room as if drunk, while the young fellow stood there with a dazed expression, unable to utter a word. When Madame de Prie decided to leave he did not budge, but stayed rooted to the spot, until the abbé surreptitiously indicated, with a vigorous gesture, that he should escort his benefactress back to the château. He walked beside her, stammering out thanks, and tangling his words up whenever she looked at him. It made her feel quite cheerful. For the first time she felt the old relish, mingled with slight contempt, of seeing a human being powerless before her. It revived the desire to toy with others which had become a necessity of life to her during her years of power. He stopped at the gateway of the château, bowed clumsily and strode away with his stiff, rustic gait, hardly giving her time to remind him to come and see her tomorrow.

She watched him go, smiling to herself. He was clumsy and naïve, but all the same he was alive and passionate, not dead like everything else around her. He was fire, and she was freezing. Her body was starved here too, accustomed as it was to caresses and embraces; her eyes, if they were to have any lively brilliance, must reflect the sparkling desires of the young that came her way daily in Paris. She watched for a long time as he walked away: this could be a toy, admittedly made of hard wood, rough-hewn and artless, but still a toy to help her pass the time.

Next morning the young man called. Madame de Prie, who weary as she was with inactivity and discontent did not usually rise until late in the afternoon, decided to receive the caller in her bed. First she had herself carefully adorned by her lady’s maid, with a little red colour on her lips, which were getting paler and paler. Then she told the maid to admit her visitor.

The door slowly creaked open. Hesitantly and very awkwardly, the young man made his way in. He had put on his best garments, which nonetheless were the Sunday clothes of a rustic, and smelled rather too strongly of various greasy ointments. His gaze wandered searchingly from the floor to the ceiling of the darkened room, and he seemed relieved to find no one there, until an encouraging greeting came from beneath the pink cloud of the canopy over the bed. He started, for he either did not know or had forgotten that great ladies in Paris received visitors at their levée . He made some kind of backwards movement, as if he had stepped into deep water, and his cheeks flushed a deep red, betraying embarrassment which she enjoyed to the full and which charmed her. In honeyed tones, she invited him to come closer. It amused her to treat him with the utmost civility.

He carefully approached, as if walking a narrow plank with great depths of foaming water to right and left of him. And she held out her small, slim hand, which he cautiously took in his sturdy fingers as if he were afraid of breaking it, raising it reverently to his lips. With a friendly gesture, she invited him to sit in a comfortable armchair beside her bed, and he dropped into it as if his knees had suddenly been broken.

He felt a little safer sitting there. Now the whole room couldn’t go on circling wildly around him, the floor couldn’t rock like waves. However, the unusual sight still confused him, the loose silk of the covers seemed to mould the shape of her naked body, and the pink cloud of the canopy hovered like mist. He dared not look, yet he felt that he couldn’t keep his eyes fixed on the floor for ever. His hands, his useless large, red hands, moved up and down the arms of the chair as if he had to hold on tight. Then they took fright at their own restlessness, and lay in his lap, frozen like heavy clods. There was a burning, almost tearful sensation in his eyes, fear tore at all his muscles, and his throat felt powerless to utter a word.

She was delighted by his awkwardness. It pleased her to let the silence drag mercilessly on, to watch, smiling, as he struggled to utter his first word, repeatedly unable to bring out anything but a stammer. She liked to see a young man as strong as an ox trembling and looking helplessly around him. Finally she took pity on him, and began asking him about his intentions, in which she contrived to pretend an uncommon amount of interest, so that he gradually plucked up his courage again. He talked about his studies, the church fathers and philosophers, and she chatted to him without knowing much about it. And when the self-important sobriety with which he put forward his opinions and expanded on them began to bore her, she amused herself by making little movements to discompose him. Sometimes she plucked at the bedspread as if it were about to slide off; at an abrupt gesture from the speaker she suddenly raised a bare arm from the crumpled silk; she wriggled her feet under the covers; and every time she did this he stopped, became confused, stumbled over his words or brought them out tumbling over each other, his face assumed an increasingly tortured and tense expression, and now and then she saw a vein run swift as a snake across his forehead. The game entertained her. She liked his boyish confusion a thousand times better than his well-turned rhetoric. And now she sought to discomfit him verbally too.