Free The Tale of the Rose by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery Page A

could live your life on your own. I knew you were sad, and so strong, so beautiful, and I wanted to see where your strength would take you. Only I didn’t think much about what it would actually mean. When you were really gone, I could have thrown myself into the ocean. My mother can tell you about the trip we took to Asunción Lake in Paraguay. I never once opened my mouth. I was counting the hours, waiting to take the boat to come and find you. I would have carried you off no matter what, even if you hadn’t come to Almería, even if you had married Lucien. But speak to me! Tell me that you need me too.”
    “Ah, Tonio,” I said. “The truth is that I’m here now but I’ve gone back to Lucien. I told him our whole story, all my grief, and he consoled me and promised he would make me forget it all. And yet here I am. I’ve vanished from Paris without saying a word to him. I sent him a telegram from Madrid in a moment of remorse—I don’t know what I told him.”
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “Don’t think about anything except us.”
    “But he’s only human, and I’m making him suffer . . .”
    “Don’t be afraid, I’ll go see him. I’ll explain that we’re mad, the two of us, dangerously mad, mad with love. And that he, my God, is an old friend of yours, a friend for life. I don’t hold the fact that he loves you against him. The whole world should love you! And I’ll get your dog back, and your car, and your papers. Promise me we won’t ever talk about him again, never. You don’t need to know anything about it, I’ll arrange everything in a very friendly way.”
    “Very well, Tonio,” I said. “I entrust myself to you forever, forever . . .”
    After that we stayed at the hotel in Almería for several days. He decided to hire a taxi to make excursions in the city and then to cross Spain. He didn’t want to drive; we would be too far from each other, he said. The Valencia oranges, the little villages perched on white rocks, the places he had visited in his youth, he wanted to show me everything. He laughed like an oversized child. Our constant chattering in French drove the Spanish driver crazy.
    At last we had to go back to France, because of my dog or Lucien or his family, I don’t remember. He wanted to stay a few days longer, but I was afraid of keeping him from his family for too long; they were waiting for him and didn’t know where he was.

    B ACK IN THE SOUTH OF F RANCE , we were happy at the Mirador, not far from Nice. Nothing troubled us except the smell of the mimosas, which was sometimes too strong. We couldn’t bring ourselves to burn the bouquets, so we were constantly sneezing. Oh, the mimosas and the handkerchiefs in all colors! I was a newly engaged woman, but this time I wasn’t waiting for a wedding. We said we were going to break with tradition, that we wouldn’t go the way of people who hate each other because they’re forced to marry or who marry to please their families. “You are my freedom,” he told me. “You are the land where I want to live for the rest of my life. We are the law.”
    Agay, the home of Tonio’s brother-in-law where his sister Didi lived, was only an hour away from the Mirador. Didi came to see us. The two of them walked in the gardens for hours, and I stayed behind, sitting in an armchair, waiting for their conversation to end.
    “I beg of you, young future bride,” Tonio said, “you who read books, don’t wait for us. There is no end to a conversation when it is about you. The end is your disappearance—so sing, read, work!”
    One day his sister told us that one of their cousins was coming to see Tonio and his young fiancée. I was nervous. Who was this cousin, really?
    “A duchess,” Tonio told me.
    “Oh no, Tonio, I won’t come with you. You go and see her on your own.”
    “She’s coming with André Gide, you know,” he said.
    “Really?”
    “André Gide is a great friend of my cousin’s. He wants to speak to me. Come