E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
(http://www.pgdpcanada.net)

VANITAS

POLITE STORIES

BY

VERNON LEE,

AUTHOR OF "HAUNTINGS," ETC.

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1892

[All rights reserved]

ALLA BARONESSA E. FRENCH-CINI.

PISTOIA PER IGNO.

My Dear Elena,

We had a conversation once, walking on your terrace, with thewind-rippled olives above and the quietly nodding cypress tuftsbelow—about such writings as you chose to compare with carvedcherry-stones. We disagreed, for it seemed to me that the worldneeded cherry-stone necklaces as much as anything else; and thatthe only pity was that most of its inhabitants could not afford suchtoys, and the rest despised them because they were made of suchvery cheap material. Still, lest you should wonder at my sendingsuch things to you, I write to declare that my three little tales,whatever they be, are not carved cherry-stones.

For round these sketches of frivolous women, there have gatheredsome of the least frivolous thoughts, heaven knows, that have evercome into my head; or rather, such thoughts have condensed andtaken body in these stories. Indeed, how can one look from outsideon the great waste of precious things, delicate discernment,quick feeling and sometimes stoical fortitude, involved in frivolouslife, without a sense of sadness and indignation? Or what satisfactioncould its portrayal afford, save for the chance that such picturesmight mirror some astonished and abashed creature; or showto men and women who toil and think that idleness, and callousness,and much that must seem to them sheer wickedness, is less afault than a misfortune. For surely it is a misfortune not merelyto waste the nobler qualities one has, but to have little inkling ofthe sense of brotherhood and duty which changes one, from a blinddweller in caves, to an inmate of the real world of storms and sunshineand serene night and exhilarating morning. And, if miracleswere still wrought nowadays, as in those times when great sinners(as in Calderon's play) were warned by plucking the hood off theirown dead face, there would have been no waste of the supernaturalin teaching my Madame Krasinska that poor crazy paupers andherself were after all exchangeable quantities.

Of my three frivolous women, another performed the miracleherself, and abandoned freely the service of the great GoddessVanitas. While the third … and there is the utter pity of thething, that frivolous living means not merely waste, but in manycases martyrdom.

That fact, though it had come more than once before my eyes,w

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