The villa overlooked the sea.

The richness of the salty sea air permeated the calm, dusky rows of pines ; a light, steady breeze was playing about the orange trees and here and there was plucking off a colourful blossom, as if with careful fingers. Everything was shimmering in sharp, delineated contours and had become a luminous mosaic sunk into the deep blue azure of the sky : the sun-dappled horizon, the hills on which dainty houses gleamed like white pearls, a lighthouse miles away that rose up steeply into the sky like a candle. The sea, in which far off in the distance white flashes of glimmering sails of isolated ships could only occasionally be seen, was caressing with the agile flow of its waves the bottom of the stepped terrace over which the villa rose, extending ever deeper into the greenery of a vast, shadowy garden and losing itself in the calmness of a fairy-tale park.

The morning heat was beating down on the sleeping house from which a narrow gravel path ran like a white line to a cool vantage point below which the waves were rumbling in wild, unceasing assaults, here and there throwing up shimmering drops of water that sparkled in the glaring sunlight like rainbow-coloured diamonds. The bright rays of the sun were broken up by the pines, standing close together as if in familiar conversation, that partly kept them away from a broad Japanese umbrella on which gay figures were depicted in sharp, unusual colours.

A female figure was reclining in a straw lounge-chair in the shade of the umbrella, comfortably nestling her graceful form in the resilient wickerwork. A slender hand without any rings was hanging down as if forgotten, caressing with light, easy movements the gleaming, silky fur of a dog while the other hand was holding a book on which her dark eyes with their long black eyelashes were concentrating their uninterrupted attention, the suggestion of a restrained smile on her face. They were large, restless eyes, whose beauty was heightened by a subtly veiled glow. Overall, the strong, attractive effect created by that oval, sharply-cut face wasn’t quite natural and uniform, but was rather the refined highlighting of particular points of beauty that had been cultivated with careful, sensitive coquetry. The apparently disorderly tangle of fragrant, shimmering curls was the painstaking construction of an artist, and the quiet smile that quivered about her lips as she read, exposing the white, bare enamel of her teeth, was the result of several years of practice in front of a mirror that had now already become a fixed, unalterable habit.

There’s a quiet crackling in the sand.

She looks over at who’s coming along without changing her position, like a cat bathing in a dazzling, warm flood of sunlight that just lazily blinks its phosphorescent eyes without moving.

The footsteps approach quickly and a liveried servant is standing in front of her holding out a slim business card and then stepping back, waiting a little.She reads the name with the expression of surprise that one has when greeted in the street by a stranger in a most familiar manner. For a moment little wrinkles dig in above the sharp black eyebrows, indicating intense reflection, and then suddenly a gleam plays over her whole face and the eyes flash with high-spirited brightness as she recalls long gone by, completely forgotten youthful days whose images the name has reawakened in her. Forms and dreams regain solidity and become as clear as reality.

“Oh, I see !” she suddenly exclaimed, turning towards the servant : “Monsieur would like to speak with me, of course.”

The servant went away with quiet submissive steps. For a minute there was just silence, just the tireless wind softly singing in the treetops that were looming overhead full of heavy noontime gold.

And then suddenly there were supple footsteps echoing energetically on the gravel path, a long shadow running over to her feet, and a tall male figure was standing before her, who had briskly gotten up from her reclining chair.They looked at each other in the eye. Then he quickly glanced at her elegant figure, while a soft, ironic smile was shining in her eyes.

“It’s really sweet of you to have thought of me,” she began, holding out her slender, finely groomed hand that he respectfully brushed with his lips.

“Dear Madam, I’ll be honest with you because this is the first time we’ve met again for a long time and also, I fear, for long years to come. It’s quite by chance that I’m here, as the name of the owner of this manor, that I was enquiring about because of its splendid location, made me aware of your presence here. And so I’m really here with a certain guilty conscience.”

“But no less welcome all the same, for I too couldn’t recall your name at first, although it was once rather important to me.”

Now they were both smiling. The soft fragrance of their first half-concealed youthful love had awakened in them with all its intoxicating sweetness, like a dream about which one scornfully purses one’s lips on waking up although one would just like to relive it, to dream it again. The lovely dream of half-measures that one only dares to dream about and doesn’t dare to experience, that only hold out promise and don’t come true.

They continued to talk. But there was already a warmth in their voices, a tender intimacy that only that special kind of rosy, already half-faded secret can create. With soft words into which now and then a gay burst of laughter cast its rolling pearls they spoke of things past, of forgotten poems, of faded flowers, of lost and discarded ribbons, little tokens of love they’d given each other in that little town where they’d spent their youth. The old stories that had long been silent and covered with dust like forgotten sagas echoed in their hearts and were slowly, very slowly imbued with a wafting, weary solemnity ; the fading memories of their bygone youthful love put a deep, almost sad seriousness into their conversation.

And his darkly melodic, ringing voice vibrated softly as he recounted : “Over there in America I learned that you were engaged when your marriage had probably already been consummated.”

She didn’t answer anything. Her thoughts were ten years back into the past.

A sultry silence weighed on both of them for a few long moments.

And then she asked softly, in a very low voice : “What did you think of me then ?”

He looked up in surprise.

“I can tell you frankly, for tomorrow I’m going back to my new country. I wasn’t angry with you ; there weren’t any wild or hostile thoughts, for life had then already cooled the raging fires of my love down to a low-burning flame of sympathy. I didn’t understand you – I just pitied you.”

A slight streak of dark red flashed across her cheeks and the gleam in her eyes became intense as she exclaimed excitedly : “Pity me ? I don’t know why !”

“Because I thought of your future husband, that indolent fellow who was always obsessed by making money – please don’t contradict me, for I don’t at all want to offend your husband whom I’ve always respected – and because I thought of you, the girl you were when I left you. Because I couldn’t image how you, you so solitary, with your ideals, who had only contempt and irony for everyday life, could become the respectable wife of an ordinary man.”

“And why would I have married him then, if all that were true ?”

“I didn’t know for sure. Perhaps he possessed hidden qualities that superficially weren’t evident and that only began to appear in intimate relations. And that was the easy solution to the puzzle, for there was one thing I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe.”

“Which was ?”

“That you would have taken him for his count’s title and his millions. That was the only impossibility for me.”

It was as if she hadn’t heard the last phrase, for with her fingers held out in front of her, her dark-pink fingers gleaming in the sunlight like a purple shell, she was gazing far out to the veiled horizon where the sky dipped its pale blue cloak into the dark splendour of the waves.

He too was lost in deep thought and had almost forgotten his last words when she suddenly barely audibly said, turning away from him : “And yet that’s what it was !”

He looked in surprise, almost shocked, at her who in a slow, clearly artificially calm way had again settled down in her lounge chair and was continuing to talk in a calmly monotonous tone imbued with a quiet wistfulness, barely moving her lips :

“You hadn’t understand me back then when I was still the little girl with the shy words of a child, not even you who was so close to me. Perhaps I myself didn’t either. I still think about it often now and still don’t understand myself, for what do women still know of their miraculous girlish souls whose dreams are like delicate, slender white blossoms that the first breath of reality blows away ? And I wasn’t like all the other girls who were dreaming of manly heroes in the force of their youth who would transform their longings into glowing happiness and their unspoken premonitions into blissful knowledge, who would bring them salvation from the uncertain, unclear, incomprehensible and yet palpable distress that cast its shadow over their girlish days, becoming ever more sombre, threatening and burdensome. I never went through all that – my dreams were directed elsewhere, towards the hidden grove that was lying behind the opaque mists of the future. My dreams were particular. I always used to dream of myself as a royal child like the ones in the fairy tales who play with sparkling, radiant gems, whose hands are plunged deep in the golden glow of fairyland treasures and whose flowing clothes are of extraordinary value. I dreamt of luxury and magnificence because that’s what I loved. The pleasure I experienced when my hands could roam over delicate, softly singing silks, when my fingers could plunge into the deep, dark down of heavy velvets as in a dream ! I was happy when I could wear jewellery like little necklaces on my slender fingers trembling with pleasure, when white stones shimmered from the thick locks of my hair like pearls of foam : my highest ambition was to lie back in the soft seats of an elegant carriage. I was intoxicated then by artistic beauty that made me despise my real life. I hated myself when I was in my everyday clothes, modest and simple like a nun, and I often stayed at home for days because I was ashamed of my ordinariness ; I hid in my narrow, ugly room ; I, whose most beautiful dream was to live in solitude by the sea in a property that was both splendid and artistic, in shady green arcades of leaves where the baseness of the working day didn’t reach out its dirty claws, where there was rich peacefulness – almost like here. Then my husband made possible what my dreams wanted, and I married him precisely because he was able to do that.”

She’s fallen silent and her face is glowing with bacchanalian beauty. The gleam in her eyes has become deep and menacing, and the redness of her cheeks is flaring ever hotter.

There’s a deep silence.

There’s just the monotonous, rhythmic tones of the gleaming waves down below that are throwing themselves against the steps of the terrace as if against a beloved breast.

Then he says quietly, as if to himself : “But love ?”

She has heard what he said. A slight smile crosses her lips.

“Do you still have all your ideals, all those that you carried off with you into that distant world back then ? Have they all remained with you undamaged, or have some died and withered away ? Or weren’t they finally torn out of you and flung into the manure where thousands of wheels whose carriages were striving towards the goals of life crushed them down ? Or haven’t you lost any ?”

He nods bleakly and remains silent.

And suddenly he brings her hand to his lips and silently kisses it. Then he says in a heartfelt voice : “Farewell !”

She responds in kind to him vigorously and honestly. She feels no shame in having revealed her soul and her deepest secret to someone to whom she’s been a stranger for years. Smiling, she looks at him going away and thinks of the words he’d spoken about love, and the past again comes between her and the present with silent, inaudible steps. And suddenly she thinks that he could have guided her life, and her thoughts paint that bizarre idea in bright colours.

And slowly, very slowly, imperceptibly, the smile on her dreaming lips dies away….

Still Life, Henri Fantin-Latour