The Woman of Fire

I-3

“Well, the famous nickname: don't we come back to it?” asked the first Lucien.

“In a moment. Do you smoke?”

“No..., I'm not used to it.”

“Here, here are some Russian cigarettes I brought back from Paris. They're very soft and they won't hurt you. Try one.”

“Let it be!” said d’Aubier after a moment of hesitation and as if he was taking a benefit.

As they walked, they had arrived at the end of the beach, on the Painchâteau side.

“Do we go further?” asked the young substitute, “It seems to me that the sea will prevent us from passing.”

“No... Slide along this wall, and when we cross it, we will find ourselves on a small beach that the tide will not reach.”

“Here we are, here we are.”

“Do you wonder why I brought you here?”

“I admit it.”

“It's very simple: I have a story to tell you. Instead of painting you the place where it happened, I will take you there. This way, you won't be able to complain about my descriptions, and you won't accuse me of inaccuracy. Have you looked around yourself?”

“Perfectly.”

“In front of us the sea, on the left the wall we have just turned; on the right, these rocks that come forward and do not allow us, for the moment, to go any further; finally, the small beach of seven to eight square meters on which we are standing.”

“I have seen all this.”

“Well, I was in the same place a few days ago, at ten in the evening, with Closel. Do you know Closel? This young man that our new prefect brought back from Paris to be his secretary.”

“Yes, I met him at official parties.”

“After walking on the beach, while talking, we arrived here. The sea, in its full state as it is now, that night was silent and calm: not a breath of air, no star on the horizon, complete darkness. Above our heads large dark clouds, and before us a large blackish water table, which lowered and rose, at equal times, with a kind of monotonous lapping. It was a stifling heat and we didn't think about going to bed, we were so afraid of that stormy night. After lighting a cigar, we would lie there, on the sand, in this crevice of the rock and continue to guess a thousand things, when Closel suddenly told me: “Here! someone is swimming near here!”

“At this hour! Where? Where?”

“I don't see, but these clothes obviously belong to a swimmer,” and at the same time he presented me with different things that his hands had just encountered as he was looking for a place to sit.

“They are women's clothes,” I said, “no doubt about it, despite the darkness, a petticoat, and a dress; they had the honor of covering some peasant girl from Painchâteau who is taking her bath, before going to bed.”

“No, no, no,” said Closel, who kept palpating the clothes; “it's not a peasant’s dress, it's easy to notice when you touch it, and this hood lined with silk and this thin batiste shirt... Damn it! Damn it! We are indiscreet, more than indiscreet, and I’ll put these clothes back in their place, especially since they give off a scent that goes up to the brain, in this stormy weather... But I know this perfume, I've already noticed it, smelled it; it belongs to... Well, yes, I'm not mistaken... I bet but a hundred louis to one that these clothes are Miss Diane Bérard's property.”

“Hey, are you sure?”

“It’s very simple. She lives on this side; she's an original, you know her, she thought to herself: “It's stifling hot, why shouldn't I swim? I'll sleep better after.” She came down here, quietly; the place is deserted, no one at this hour sets foot here, it is quite by exception that we found ourselves here. She undressed in the kind of vault formed by this rock, without fear of being seen, for we do not see ourselves, and she baths offshore, in her capacity as a great swimmer.”

“If this is the case,” I told Closel,” we must withdraw; Miss Diane Bérard would not be very flattered to find us sitting in the company of her clothes, and our presence in her dressing room can embarrass her when she gets dressed.”

“That’s right, let's go! And, however,” he added with a sigh, “there would have been a certain charm, a certain spiciness to stay here. God! How embarrassing it is sometimes to be well-mannered. Simple travel clerks would hide there, in this retreat of the ground. Miss Diane would not suspect their presence and would not have anything to blush about. She is very pretty, Miss Berard,” he continued warming up, “very pretty, an uncommon beauty, superb red hair, and made....”

I thought I should moderate his exaltation and soften his regrets by saying, “Please note, my dear, that you can't see two steps away, and that you would be paying for your curiosity.”

“Come on,” he said, probably more and more animated by the storm that was beginning to rumble in the distance, “to see, it's something, I agree, but do you count for nothing the pleasure of feeling, in this night, with this weather and in the position where she will find herself, a few steps from a young and beautiful woman? We do not see her, either, but we guess her, we feel her, we scrutinize all her movements, and, with the help of the imagination, this very darkness adds to the charm of the situation. I mean, let's go! We have principles; what do you want? “

He moved sharply this way, and I was going to follow him when, all of a sudden, I stopped in admiration. As we talked bent over the night-swimmer's clothes, and turned to the side of the land, the sea had spontaneously become phosphorescent. An immense sheet of light extended, narrowed and elongated in equal amounts of time over the entire surface of the bay. Myriads of incandescent bodies, immense metal masses, lead flows melted in a burning furnace, thousands of sparks seemed to roll around us. It was a magical, vigorous and eventful illumination, which one felt as if it were living. It seemed as if the Ocean was trying to return to heaven the streams of light it had received during the day.

At the same time, thunder roared in the distance, lightning became more frequent, the horizon brightened, the wind rose and the waves, which began to break on the rocks, surrounded them at times with a bright edge and a circle of fire.

Closel had joined me and, fascinated, moved beyond all expression, standing motionless, our hands clenched, we silently admired this celebration that nature gave us unexpectedly.

“If we climbed this rock,” I said to my companion after a moment, “our view would be wider, and the sight even more beautiful.”

“Closel approved my idea and soon we were settled on that kind of small platform you see up there. From our observatory we could recognize that the phosphorescence of the sea was not limited to the bay of Pouliguen; it extended as far as the Ocean: the entrance to the Loire seemed illuminated, and, in the direction of the Even, we could see the waves rising, rolling, bubbling and crushing on the reefs.

Suddenly, I was turned away from my admiration by the voice of Closel, who cried out: “There she is! There she is!” “Who?” I asked. “She, the bathing woman.” And, at the same time, he indicated to me, a few meters away from us, a point that shaded the sheet of light. I was going to talk, he stopped me. “Silence,” he said, “now we can no longer run away, and she must not suspect our presence here. Let’s bend down so that she does not see us, or rather not, it is useless; she is illuminated but we are not, and she cannot see us. “

It was indeed Miss Diane Bérard who came back from the sea and headed towards the coast where she had taken off her clothes. She swam slowly, without hurrying, admiring as we did the painting that was unfolding in front of her and convinced that she was the only one to admire it. As she was about to reach the beach, she felt, no doubt, a regret to leave this splendid sea, to take herself away from this wonderful bath; she suddenly plunged, and we saw her appear again below the rock on which we had taken refuge. This rock, you can judge it, protrudes a few feet into the sea, and the deep water around it seems to call for bathers. Miss Bérard, to whom all the corners of the coast are familiar, had obviously chosen this place to indulge more pleasantly in her frolics and to say a last goodbye to the sea.

From the point where we were placed, we dominated the pretty swimmer, and we were diving around her, so to speak. “Ah! my dear magistrate, this is where you should cover your ears, in case you are tainted with prudery.” As for us, despite the reserve we had shown when we had wanted to escape these areas, despite our savoir-vivre and our delicacies, we did not think to close our eyes, so attractive, original and unexpected was the sight before us. Yes, unexpected, because we had no idea of a very simple thing, namely that Miss Diane's bath could not have been premeditated. You don't leave your house at ten in the evening to go swimming in the sea; but in the middle of summer, if the night is hot, if the air inside the houses is lacking, if you fear insomnia, you leave your villa, with the hope of breathing on the beach; you walk for a moment, you realize that the heat is more and more overwhelming, you say to yourself: “How pleasant it would be to swim at this time!” We hesitate, we resist this desire, it increases. But we're in a city dress, we don't have our bathing suit under our arm... it's very embarrassing to wear a swimming suit, and for whom would we wear it? For the world, the spectators, the curious; there is no one on the beach, the whole Pouliguen is deeply asleep, and, moreover, it is so dark that we would be hidden from all eyes. Instead of being wrapped in a bathrobe, we are wrapped in darkness, isn't that even better. Then we will dive into the water, only to refresh ourselves, perhaps only to soak our legs. So, we look for a small, solitary place, a rocky crevice. We first remove our boots and stockings to protect them from the foam of the waves; we move forward in the water; the sea comes to our ankles, then to our knees. How hot it is, what a pleasure it would be to soak your whole body and then sleep well! What a pleasure to swim, to go out to sea! For an ardent imagination, what a delight to lose oneself in this darkness, this solitude, this immensity! Yes, but this last veil that we kept on ourselves, not in fear of being seen, it's impossible, but out of respect for ourselves, out of intimate modesty. Come on! the temptation is so strong we go back to the beach, we throw the thin batiste next to the dress, and we run to hide in the dark wave. But, oh miracle! the darkness disappears, the sea lights up, and without anyone suspecting it, without even thinking about it, we suddenly find ourselves illuminated.

We looked at her, we didn't lose any of her graceful movements, any of the details of her splendid beauty. Do not hasten to condemn us: our curiosity, I swear to you, had nothing unhealthy, our looks, nothing carnal; we admired her as artists, as we admire, in a museum, some splendid painting. The canvas we had before us was too correct, too noble, too pure, too untainted a drawing, too wonderful a setting around it, to allow our mind and our imagination to wander. Our soul was overwhelmed, and instead of admiring the creature, it admired the creator and rose towards him.