Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois

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Gérard de Nerval. Sylvie: souvenirs du Valois

SYLVIE ET AURÉLIE

GÉRARD DE NERVAL

I

II

III

IV

SYLVIE:

I. A WASTED NIGHT

II. ADRIENNE

III. RESOLVE

IV. A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

V. THE VILLAGE

VI. OTHYS

VII. CHAÂLIS

VIII. THE BALL AT LOISY

IX. HERMENONVILLE

X. BIG CURLY-HEAD

XI. RETURN

XII. FATHER DODU

XIII. AURÉLIE

XIV. THE LAST LEAF

APPENDIX

TO ALEXANDER DUMAS

Отрывок из книги

Of Gérard de Nerval, whose true name was Gérard Labrunie, it has been finely said: "His was the most beautiful of all the lost souls of the French Romance."1 Born in 1808, he came to his death by suicide one dark winter night towards the end of January.

The story of this life and its tragic finale was well known at the time to all men of letters, – Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Arsène Houssaye, – friends who never forgot the young poet even after he went the way that madness lies. For it was insanity, – a nostalgia of the soul always imminent – that led him into the squalid Rue de la Vieille-Lanterne, in which long forgotten corner of old Paris his dead body was found one bleak belated dawn. And this was forty years ago.

.....

Adrienne rose and, drawing up her slender figure, bowed to us gracefully and ran back to the castle; they said she was the child of a race allied to the ancient kings of France, that the blood of the Valois princes flowed in her veins. Upon this festal day, she had been permitted to join in our sports, but we were not to see her again, for on the morrow she would return to the convent of which she was an inmate.

When I rejoined Sylvie, I found her weeping because of the crown I had given to the fair singer. I offered to make another for her, but she would not consent, saying she did not merit it. I vainly tried to vindicate myself, but she refused to speak as we went the homeward way.

.....