The Red Lily by Anatole France

Author:Anatole France [France, Anatole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411444898
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2016-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

XVII

AFTER dinner Miss Bell was drawing profiles of bearded Etruscans on canvas for a cushion Madame Marmet was to embroider. Prince Albertinelli was choosing the wool with a feminine eye for colour. The evening was well advanced when Choulette appeared. As was his wont he had been playing brissola12 at an eating house with the cook. He was gay and god-like in the exuberance of his wit. He sat down on the sofa, by Madame Martin, and looked at her tenderly. His green eyes sparkled voluptuously. His compliments, poetical and picturesque, had the air of a caress. It was as if he were composing a love-song in her honour. In short, abrupt, curiously turned sentences he explained the charm by which she attracted him.

"He too," she thought.

And she amused herself by teasing him. Had he not discovered in the lower quarters of Florence one of those persons whose society he mostly enjoyed, she inquired. For his preferences in such matters were well known. It was useless for him to deny it; every one knew where he had found the cord of his third order. His friends had seen him on the Boulevard Saint-Michel with women of the street. And he had avowed his interest in these miserable creatures in his finest poems.

"Oh! Monsieur Choulette, by all I hear your friends are very wicked."

He replied solemnly:

"Madame, you may if you like throw in my face calumnies originating with M. Paul Vence. I will not defend myself. That you should be convinced of my chastity and pure-mindedness matters little. But do not lightly judge those whom you call wretched, whom you should regard as holy because they are miserable. The outcast is the docile clay in the potter's hand, the sin offering at the sacrificial altar. Prostitutes are nearer God than honest women: they have lost all vainglory; they have been shorn of pride. They are unadorned by those empty nothings, the matron's boast. They possess humility, that is the corner-stone of the heavenly house of virtue. After a brief repentence they will be be first in the Kingdom of Heaven; for, committed without malice and without joy, their sins are their own atonement. Their vices, in that they are sorrows, have the merit of all suffering. Slaves to the brutality of passion, these women have denied themselves pleasure. Thus they resemble men who have become celibate that they may enter the Kingdom of God. Like us they are sinners, but by their shame they atone for their sins; suffering purifies like fire. Therefore the first prayer they address to Him God will hear. He has prepared for them a throne on the right hand of the Father. In the Kingdom of God, the queen and the empress will be happy to sit at the feet of women of the street. For do not imagine that the heavenly house is constructed on any human plan. It is different in every detail, Madame."

Nevertheless he agreed that there was more than one road leading to salvation.

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