Letters to an Unknown. Prosper Merimee

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      My dear platonic Friend: We are becoming very affectionate. You say to me, Amigo de mi alma, which from a woman’s lips is very sweet. You give me no news of your health. In your former letter you told me that my platonic friend was ill, and you should have known that I was anxious. Be more definite in future. It is all very well for you to complain of my reticence, you who are mystery incarnate! What more will you have on the story of the diamond, unless it is the name? Details, perhaps; but they would be tiresome to write, and some day they may amuse you, when we shall find nothing to say to each other, seated in our arm-chairs on opposite sides of the chimney corner.

      Listen to the dream that I had two nights ago, and if you are sincere, interpret it for me. Methought we were both in Valencia, in a beautiful garden where there was an abundance of oranges, pomegranates, and other fruits. You were seated upon a bench, resting against a hedge. Opposite was a wall about six feet in height, separating this garden from another garden on a much lower level. I was standing facing you, and it seemed to me that we were speaking to each other in the Valencian tongue. Nota bene, that I am able to understand Valencian with much difficulty. What sort of a deuced language is it that one speaks in a dream, when one speaks a language that he does not know? For lack of something else to do, and from habit, I went and stood on a rock, looking over into the garden below. There I saw a bench also with its back against the wall, and seated on this bench was a Valencian gardener playing the guitar, and my diamond was listening. This sight put me instantly in a bad humour, but at first I gave no sign of this. The diamond raised her head, and seemed astonished to see me, but she did not start, or appear otherwise disconcerted.

      After a time I stepped down from the stone, and said to you, casually and without mentioning the diamond, that it would be a great joke to throw a big stone over the top of the wall. This stone was very heavy. You were eager to help me, and without asking any questions (which is not natural to you), by dint of pushing we succeeded in placing the stone on the top of the wall, and we were making ready to push it over, when the wall itself gave way and crumbled, and we both fell with the stone and the débris of the wall. I do not know what happened then, for I awoke. That you may understand the scene better, I enclose a drawing of it. I was unable to see the gardener’s face, which is most exasperating.

      You are very kind. I have said this to you frequently of late. It was very kind of you to have answered the question that I asked you recently. I need not tell you that your reply pleased me. You have even said, unconsciously, perhaps, several things that have given me pleasure, and especially that the husband of a woman who resembled you would have your sincere sympathy. I can readily believe you, and will add that no one could be more unfortunate unless it were a man who loved you.

      You must be cold and sarcastic in your perverse moods, with an insuperable pride which forbids you to acknowledge when you are in the wrong. Add to this your energetic temperament, which compels you to disdain tears and complaints. When in the course of time and of events we become friends, it shall be seen which of us knows better how to torment the other. Only to think of it makes my hair stand on end. Have I interpreted correctly your but? Rest assured that, notwithstanding your resolutions, the threads of our lives are too closely intermingled for us to fail to find each other some day or other. I am dying to see and talk with you. It seems to me that I should be perfectly happy if I knew that I should see you this evening.

      By the way, you are wrong to suspect Mr. V. of undue curiosity. Even if it were equal to yours, which is not possible, Mr. V. is a Cato, and under no consideration would he break a seal. Therefore send him the schizzo under cover, and have no fear of any indiscretion on his part. I should like to see you as you were writing, Amigo de mi alma. When you are having your photograph taken for me, say those words to yourself, instead of “prunes and prisms,” as ladies say when they wish to give their mouth a pleasant expression.

      Try and arrange it so that we may meet without any secrecy and as good friends do. You will be distressed, no doubt, to learn that I am not at all well and am horribly bored. Do come soon to Paris, dear Mariquita, and make me fall in love with you. Then I shall be no longer lonely, and in compensation I shall make you very unhappy by my whims. For some time your writing has been very careless and your letters short. I am convinced that you have no love for any one, and never will have any. However, you understand well enough the theory of love.

      Good-bye. You have my best wishes for your health, for your happiness, that you may not marry, that you may come to Paris—in short, that we may become good friends.

IX

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      Mariquita de mi alma: I am grieved to learn of your indisposition. When this letter reaches you I hope you will have fully recovered your health, and that you will be in a condition to write me longer letters. Your last one was maddeningly brief and stiff, a style of writing to which you formerly accustomed me, but which is now more annoying than you can imagine. Write me a long letter, and tell me all kinds of pleasant things. What is your malady? Have you some vexation to endure, or is it a sorrow? In your last note there are several mysterious phrases, as all your phrases are which intimated this. But between ourselves, I do not believe you have ever known the luxury of that organ called the heart. You have troubles of the mind, pleasures of the mind; but the organ known as the heart is developed only about the twenty-fifth year of age, in the 46th degree of latitude.

      You will knit your beautiful black brows at this, and say, “The saucy man doubts that I have a heart!” for this nowadays is the great assumption. Since so many novels and poems of passion, so called, have been written, all women affect to have a heart. Wait a little while. When you have really discovered your heart you will tell me about it; you will recall regretfully these good days when you were ruled only by the mind, and you will realise that the vexations you now suffer are mere pin-pricks compared to the dagger-thrusts that shall overwhelm you when the days of passion shall have come.

      I have been grumbling about your letter, but it really contains some very agreeable news: that is, the definite promise, graciously given, to send me your photograph. This gives me great pleasure, not only because I shall then know you better, but especially because it will be a token of your growing confidence in me. I see that I am making progress in your esteem, and congratulate myself. When am I to receive this portrait? Will you give it to me yourself? If so, I will come to receive it. Or will you give it to Mr. V., who will send it to me with all due discretion? Have no fear of either him or his wife. I should prefer to receive it from your own white hand.

      I shall start for London early next month. I am going to see the election. I shall also eat some whitebait at Blackwall, look over the cartoons of Hampton Court, and then return to Paris. If I were to see you it would make me very happy, but I dare not hope for it. However that may be, if you will send the sketch under cover to Mr. V. just as you do your letters, I shall receive it promptly, for, if nothing happens, I shall be in London the 8th of December.

      I have censured your curiosity and indiscretion in opening Mr. V.’s letter, but to tell you the truth you have some faults that I like, and your curiosity is one of them. If we were to meet often, I am afraid you would take a dislike to me, and that the opposite would happen with me. At this moment I am thinking of the expression on your face. It is a little severe, that of a lioness, though tame.

      Adieu. I send a thousand kisses to your mysterious feet.

X

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      By all means, by all means, send Mr. V. what you have for so long a time led me to expect. Enclose a letter too, a long one, for if you were to send a letter to Paris I should probably cross it on my way. Caution Mr. V. to take care of the letter and the package, and tell him that I shall call for them in person