Chapter II · 6

And the echo carried away that hymn, a blend of moan, dithyramb, and burst of laughter; and as the dark, cold night had already fallen, the echo resounded through the gloom.

An old woman passed by and begged for alms.

And that tattered figure—by his look a beggar, perhaps a pilgrim, perchance a poet—gave her his last petrified crust of bread, and departed into the dreadful shadow, muttering under his breath.

THE RUBY

“Ah! So it is true! So that Parisian scholar has managed to extract from the depths of his retorts and flasks the crystalline purple with which the walls of my palace are encrusted!” And as he said this, the little gnome darted to and fro in short hops through the deep cavern that served as their dwelling, making his long beard and the bell on his pointed blue cap quiver.

Indeed, a friend of the centenarian Chevreul—a modern Althotas—the chemist Frémy, had just discovered the method of manufacturing rubies and sapphires.

Agitated and stirred, the gnome—who was learned and possessed an exceedingly lively temper—continued his monologue.

“Ah, sages of the Middle Ages! Ah, Albertus Magnus, Averroës, Ramon Llull! You could not behold the great sun of the philosopher’s stone shine forth, and lo, without studying Aristotelian formulas, without knowledge of Kabbalah or necromancy, a man of the nineteenth century arrives to fashion in the light of day what we forge in our subterranean realms! And what a conjuration! Fusion for twenty days of a mixture of silica and lead aluminate; coloration with potassium bichromate or cobalt oxide. Words, in truth, that sound like a devilish tongue.”

Laughter.

Then he paused.

The corpus delicti lay there in the center of the grotto upon a great boulder of gold: a tiny ruby, round, faintly gleaming like a pomegranate seed in the sun.

The gnome blew a horn hanging from his belt, and the echo resounded through the vast cavities. Soon after, a clamor, a trampling herd, an uproar. All the gnomes had arrived.

The cave was wide, and within it shone a strange, white radiance. It was the brilliance of carbuncles that sparkled upon the stone ceiling—embedded, recessed, clustered in manifold foci; a sweet light illuminated everything.

In that radiance the wondrous mansion could be seen in all its splendor. Upon the walls, atop sheets of silver and gold and amidst veins of lapis lazuli, a vast multitude of precious stones formed whimsical patterns, like the arabesques of a mosque. White diamonds, clean as drops of water, cast the irises of their crystallizations; near chalcedonies dangling in stalactites, emeralds scattered their green luster; and sapphires, in strange heaps and in clusters hanging from the quartz, resembled great, trembling blue flowers.

Golden topazes and amethysts encircled the chamber in gleaming bands; and on the floor, encrusted with opals over polished chrysoprase and agate, a thread of water welled up from distance to distance, falling with musical sweetness in harmonic drops, like a metallic flute blown very softly.

Puck had meddled in the matter—roguish Puck! He had brought the corpus delicti, the counterfeit ruby, which lay there upon the gold boulder like a desecration amidst the sparkle of all that enchantment.

When the gnomes were assembled—some with their hammers and short axes in hand, others in full dress with blazing scarlet hoods covered in gems, all of them furious—Puck spoke thus:

“You asked me to bring you a specimen of humanity’s new forgery, and I have satisfied your desires.”

The gnomes, sitting cross-legged, tugged at their mustaches; they thanked Puck with a slow nod, and those closest to him examined with astonishment his lovely wings, resembling those of a butterfly.

He continued:

“Oh, Earth! Oh, Woman! Ever since the time I gazed upon Titania, I have been nought but a slave of the one, an almost mystical worshiper of the other.”

And then, as though speaking in the bliss of a dream:

“Those rubies! In the great city of Paris, flying invisible, I saw them everywhere. They glittered on the necklaces of courtesans, on the exotic ribbons of upstart parvenus, on the rings of Italian princes, and on the bracelets of prima donnas.”

And with an ever-roguish smile:

“I slipped into a certain rose-tinted boudoir much in vogue... A beautiful woman lay asleep. From her neck I snatched a medallion, and from the medallion, the ruby. There you have it.”

All burst out laughing. What a chiming of bells!

“Ha, friend Puck!”

And then they gave their verdict on that false stone, the handiwork of man—or of a scholar, which is worse!

“Glass!”

“Sorcery!”

“Poison and Kabbalah!”

“Chemistry!”

“To dare imitate a fragment of the rainbow!”

“The rubicund treasure from the globe’s deep womb!”

“Formed of solidified sunset rays!”

The eldest gnome, hobbling on bowed legs, with his grand snowy beard, patriarchal demeanor, and face lined with wrinkles:

“Gentlemen!” he said. “You know not what you speak of!”

All fell silent to listen.

“I—I who am the oldest among you, since I am now barely fit to hammer diamond facets; I who have seen these deep citadels form, who have chiseled the bones of the earth, who have kneaded gold, who once dealt a stone wall a fist-blow and tumbled into a lake where I took a nymph; I, the old one, shall recount to you how the ruby was made.”

“Listen.”

Puck smiled curiously. All the gnomes gathered around the elder, whose white hair paled amidst the glare of jewels and whose hands cast their shifting shadow upon the gemstone-encrusted walls, like a honeyed canvas onto which grains of rice are tossed.

“One day, we, the cohorts charged with the diamond mines, went on strike—a strike that shook the whole earth—and fled through the volcanic craters.”

“The world was merry; all was vigor and youth; and the roses, the fresh green leaves, the birds whose crops swallow seed and yield warbles, and the entire countryside greeted the sun and fragrant spring.”

“The mountain was harmonious and blooming, humming with trills and bees; it was a grand, holy bridal that refracted the light, and deep within the tree the sap burned, and within each beast all was tremor or bleat of song, and within the gnome was laughter and delight.”

“I had emerged through an extinct crater. Before my eyes lay a sprawling field. With one leap I sprang onto a great tree, an ancient oak. Then I climbed down the trunk and found myself near a brook, a small, limpid stream where the waters chattered, trading crystalline pleasantries. I was thirsty. I sought to drink there... Now, heed well.”

“Arms, shoulders, bare breasts, white lilies, roses, ivory loaves crowned with cherries; echoes of golden, festive laughter; and out yonder amid the spray, amid broken ripples, beneath green boughs...”

“Nymphs?”

“No—women.”

“I knew the way to my grotto. By striking the earth, I could part the black sand and reach my domain. You poor creatures, young gnomes, have much yet to learn!”

“Beneath the shoots of new-grown ferns I slipped across stones washed smooth by the foaming, chattering stream; and her—the fair one, the woman—I seized by the waist with this arm, once so muscular. She screamed; I struck the earth; we plunged downward. Above remained sheer astonishment; below, the gnome, proud and triumphant.”

“One day I was hammering an immense lump of diamond, which shone like a star and shattered into fragments beneath the blow of my mallet.”

“The floor of my workshop resembled the ruins of a sun dashed to pieces. The beloved woman rested at my side—a flesh-and-blood rose among sapphire jardinières, empress of gold upon a bed of rock crystal, stark naked and splendid as a goddess.”

“Yet in the depths of my domain, my queen, my darling, my beauty, betrayed me. When a mortal man loves truly, his passion permeates all things and can pierce through the very earth.”

“She loved a man, and from her prison she sent him her sighs. These passed through the pores of the earth’s crust and reached him; and he, loving her in return, kissed the roses in a certain garden; and she, enamored, would have—as I well observed—sudden tremblings in which she parted her lips, rosy and fresh as petals of a cabbage rose. How did they thus feel each other? For all that I am, I know not.”

“I had finished my toil: a great heap of diamonds fashioned in a single day; the earth opened its granite fissures like thirsty lips, awaiting the brilliant fragmentation of rich crystal. At the close of my labor, weary, I struck a final blow that cracked a rock, and fell asleep.”

“I awoke shortly after, hearing what sounded like a moan.”

“From her couch, from her dwelling brighter and richer than those of all the queens of the Orient, my beloved, the stolen woman, had fled in despair. Alas! Seeking to escape through the aperture opened by my granite mallet, naked and fair, she mangled her body—white and soft as orange blossom, marble, and rose—upon the sharp edges of shattered diamonds. Her flanks wounded, blood poured forth; her laments were moving unto tears. Oh, grief!”

“I started awake, gathered her into my arms, and gave her my most passionate kisses; yet blood streamed, flooding the chamber, and the great diamond mass was dyed scarlet. As I kissed her, I fancied I caught a scent departing from that flushed mouth: the soul; the body grew still.”

“When our great patriarch, the centenarian demigod of the earth’s bowels, passed by that place, he found that multitude of red diamonds.”

A pause.

“Have you understood?”

The gnomes, exceeding grave, rose to their feet.

They examined more closely the counterfeit stone, the scholar’s fabrication.

“Look, it has no facets!”

“It glimmers palely.”

“Imposture!”

“It is as round as a beetle’s carapace!”

And circling about, one here, another there, they plucked fragments of arabesque from the walls—rubies as large as an orange, red and sparkling like a diamond turned to blood; and they cried:

“Behold what is ours, oh Mother Earth!”

It was an orgy of luster and color.

And they tossed the giant luminous gems into the air, laughing aloud.

Suddenly, with all the dignity of a gnome:

“And now! Our disdain.”

They understood one another. They seized the false ruby, smashed it, and flung the fragments—with terrible disdain—into a pit that opened below onto an ancient carbonized forest.

Then, upon their rubies and opals, amid those glittering walls, they joined hands and began to dance a wild, ringing farandole.

And they celebrated with laughter, proud of their greatness in the dark.

Puck was already flying outside in the humming breath of newborn dawn, bound for a meadow in bloom. And he murmured, with his ever-rosy smile: “Earth... Woman...”

“For thou, oh Mother Earth, art great, fertile, with an unquenchable, sacred breast; and from thy brown womb wells the sap of robust trunks, the gold and diamond water, and the chaste fleur-de-lis. The pure, the strong, the unforgeable! And thou, woman, art spirit and flesh, all love!”

THE PALACE OF THE SUN

To you, mothers of anemic maidens, goes this tale—the story of Berta, the girl with olive-colored eyes, fresh as a peach bough in bloom, luminous as dawn, graceful as the princess of an azure fairy tale.

You shall see, healthy and respectable ladies, that there is something better than arsenic and iron to kindle the purple glow on pretty virginal cheeks; and that you must open the cage door to your lovely fledglings, above all when springtime arrives and fire runs through veins and sap, and a thousand sunbeams buzz in the gardens like a swarm of gold over half-opened roses.

Upon reaching her fifteenth year, Berta began to grow sad, while her flaming eyes grew shadowed with melancholy rings. “Berta, I have bought you two dolls...” “I do not want them, Mother...” “I have had the Nocturnes brought...” “My fingers ache, Mother...” “Then...” “I am sad, Mother...” “Then let the doctor be summoned.”

And along came the tortoiseshell spectacles, the black gloves, the illustrious bald pate, and the double-breasted frock coat.

“Quite natural... Development... the age... Clear symptoms: lack of appetite, a sensation of tightness in the chest, melancholy, occasional throbbing in the temples, palpitations... You know the regimen: administer arsenious acid globules to your young lady, followed by cold showers. The standard cure...” And thus began the treatment of her melancholy, with pills and showers, as spring opened—Berta, the girl with olive-colored eyes, who came to be as fresh as a peach bough in bloom, luminous as dawn, graceful as the princess of an azure fairy tale.