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Title: The immoralist
Author: André Gide
Translator: Dorothy Bussy
Release date: June 29, 2026 [eBook #78975]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78975
Credits: Sean (@parchmentglow)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IMMORALIST ***
THE
IMMORALIST
_Translated from the French of_
ANDRÉ GIDE
_by Dorothy Bussy_
1930
_New York_ · ALFRED · A · KNOPF · _London_
_Copyright 1930_ BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_All rights reserved
including the right to reproduce this book
or parts thereof in any form_
_Original title_
L’IMMORALISTE
_Copyright 1921 by
Mercure de France
Paris_
First and Second Printings before Publication
Published, March, 1930
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To
My Comrade and Fellow-Traveller_
HENRI
GHEON
PREFACE
I present this book for what it is worth--a fruit filled with bitter
ashes, like those colocinths of the desert that grow in a parched and
burning soil. All they can offer to your thirst is a still more cruel
fierceness--yet lying on the golden sand they are not without a beauty
of their own.
If I had held my hero up as an example, it must be admitted that my
success would have been small. The few readers who were disposed to
interest themselves in Michel’s adventure did so only to reprobate him
with all the superiority of their kind hearts. It was not in vain that
I had adorned Marceline with so many virtues; they could not forgive
Michel for not preferring her to himself.
If I had intended this book to be an indictment of Michel, I should
have succeeded as little, for no-one was grateful to me for the
indignation he felt against my hero; it was as though he felt this
indignation in spite of me; it overflowed from Michel on to myself; I
seemed indeed within an ace of being confounded with him.
But I intended to make this book as little an indictment as an apology
and took care to pass no judgment. The public now-a-days will not
forgive an author who, after relating an action, does not declare
himself either for or against it; more than this, during the very
course of the drama they want him to take sides, pronounce in favour
either of Alceste or Philinte, of Hamlet or Ophelia, of Faust or
Margaret, of Adam or Jehovah. I do not indeed claim that neutrality
(I was going to say ‘indecision’) is the certain mark of a great
mind; but I believe that many great minds have been very loath to ...
conclude--and that to state a problem clearly is not to suppose it
solved in advance.
It is with reluctance that I use the word ‘problem’ here. To tell the
truth, in art there are no problems--that are not sufficiently solved
by the work of art itself.
If by ‘problem’ one means ‘drama,’ shall I say that the one recounted
in this book, though the scene of it is laid in my hero’s soul, is
nevertheless too general to remain circumscribed in his individual
adventure. I do not pretend to have invented this ‘problem’; it
existed before my book; whether Michel triumph or succumb, the
‘problem’ will continue to exist, and the author has avoided taking
either triumph or defeat for granted.
If certain distinguished minds have refused to see in this drama
anything but the exposition of a special case, and in its hero anything
but a sufferer from disease, if they have failed to recognize that
ideas of very urgent import and very general interest may nevertheless
be found in it--the fault lies neither in those ideas nor in that
drama, but in the author--in his lack of skill, I should say--though
he has put into this book all his passion and all his care, though he
has watered it with many tears. But the real interest of a work and
the interest taken in it by an ephemeral public are two very different
things. A man may, I think, without much conceit, take the risk of not
arousing immediate interest in interesting things--he may even prefer
this to exciting a momentary delight in a public greedy only for sweets
and trifles.
For the rest, I have not tried to prove anything, but only to paint my
picture well and to set it in a good light.
I WILL PRAISE THEE;
FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND
WONDERFULLY MADE
_Psalms, cxxxix, 14_
(TO THE PRIME MINISTER, MR. D. R.)
SIDI B. M.
_30th. July 189-_
Yes, my dear brother, _of course, as you supposed, Michel has confided
in us. Here is his story. You asked me to let you have it and I
promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the
oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder,
will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him
myself?... Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of
turning to good account faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there
are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to recognise
their own features in this tale. Will it be possible to invent some
way of employing all this intelligence and strength? Or must they be
altogether outlawed?_
_In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I cannot guess.... He
must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so
deservedly attained enable you to find one? Make haste. Michel is still
capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to
himself._
_I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve
days that Denis, Daniel and myself have been here, there has not been a
single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the
weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months._
_I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of
vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness
as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness._
_We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will
understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your
reply here, in his house; lose no time about it._
_You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel and
myself together--a friendship which was strong even in our school
days, but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded
between us four--at the first summons of any one of us the other three
were to hasten. So when I received that mysterious signal of alarm
from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis, and we all three
let everything go and set out._
_It is three years since we last saw Michel. He had married and gone
travelling with his wife, and at the time of his last stay in Paris,
Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia and I, as you know, looking after
our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account
given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say
the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puritan of old
days, whose behaviour was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose
clear and simple gaze had so often checked the looseness of our talk.
He was ... but why forestall what his story will tell you?_
_Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard it. Michel
told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and
the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain.
Michel’s house looks down on it and on the village which is not far
off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks
like the desert._
_Michel’s house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter
it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows--or rather,
there are no windows, but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that
we sleep out of doors on mats._
_Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one
evening, gasping with heat, intoxicated with novelty, after having
barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At
Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M., where a little cart
was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village,
which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns
in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage.
Approached by the road, Michel’s house is the first in the village. It
is surrounded by the low walls of a garden--or rather, an enclosure, in
which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander.
A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall
without more ado._
_Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he welcomed us; he was very
simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on
the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely._
_Until night came we barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost
excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing room where the
decorations were so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though
they were afterwards explained by Michel’s story. Then he served us
coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we
went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity,
and all three of us, like Job’s comforters, sat down and waited,
watching and admiring the day’s abrupt decline over the incandescent
plain._
_When it was night Michel said:_
FIRST PART
i
My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. You have answered my summons
as quickly as I should have answered yours. And yet three years have
gone by without your seeing me. May your friendship, which has been so
proof against absence, be equally proof against the story I am going to
tell you. For it was solely to see you, solely that you might listen to
me, that I called upon you so suddenly and made you take this journey
to my distant abode. The only help I wish for is this--to talk to you.
For I have reached a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. Not
from weariness though. But I can no longer understand things. I want
... I want to talk, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing;
the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom. Let me
speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life simply, without modesty
and without pride, more simply than if I were talking to myself. Listen:
The last time we saw each other, I remember, was in the neighbourhood
of Angers, in the little country church in which I was married. There
were very few people at my wedding and the presence of real friends
turned this commonplace function into something touching. I felt that
others were moved and that in itself was enough to move me. After we
left the church you joined us at my bride’s house for a short meal, at
which there was neither noise nor laughter; then, she and I drove away
in a hired carriage, according to the custom by which we always have to
associate the idea of a wedding with the vision of a railway station.
I knew my wife very little and thought, without being much distressed
by it, that she knew me no better. I had married her without being in
love, greatly in order to please my father who, as he lay dying, felt
anxious at leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; engrossed by his
last illness, I had thought of nothing else all through that melancholy
time but how to make his end easier; and so I pledged my life before I
knew what the possibilities of life were. Our betrothal took place at
my dying father’s bedside, without laughter but not without a certain
grave joy, so great was the peace it brought him. If, as I say, I did
not love my betrothed, at any rate I had never loved any other woman.
This seemed to me sufficient to secure our happiness; and I thought I
was giving her the whole of myself, without having any knowledge of
what that self was. She was an orphan as I was, and lived with her two
brothers. Her name was Marceline; she was barely twenty; I was four
years older.
I have said I did not love her--at any rate, I felt for her nothing
of what is generally known as love, but I loved her, if that word may
cover a feeling of tenderness, a sort of pity, and a considerable
measure of esteem. She was a Catholic and I a Protestant ... but,
thought I, so little of a Protestant! The priest accepted me; I
accepted the priest; it all went off without a hitch.
My father was what is called an ‘atheist’--at least, I suppose so, for
a kind of invincible shyness, which I imagine he shared, had always
made it impossible for me to talk to him about his beliefs. The grave
Huguenot teaching which my mother had given me had slowly faded from my
mind together with the image of her beauty; you know I was young when
I lost her. I did not then suspect how great a hold the early moral
lessons of our childhood take of one, nor what marks they leave upon
the mind. That kind of austerity, a taste for which had been left me
by my mother’s bringing up, I now applied wholly to my studies. I was
fifteen when I lost her; my father took me in hand, looked after me
and instructed me himself with passionate eagerness. I already knew
Latin and Greek well; under him I quickly learnt Hebrew, Sanskrit,
and finally Persian and Arabic. When I was about twenty I had been
so intensively forced that he actually made me his collaborator. It
amused him to claim me as his equal and he wanted to show me he was
right. The _Essay on Phrygian Cults_ which appeared under his name was
in reality my work; he scarcely read it over; nothing he had written
ever brought him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me I was a
little abashed by the success of this deception. But my reputation was
made. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile
now at all the honours that were paid me.... And so I reached the age
of twenty-five, having barely cast a glance at anything but books and
ruins, and knowing nothing of life; I spent all my fervour in my work.
I loved a few friends (you were among them), but it was not so much my
friends I loved as friendship--it was a craving for high-mindedness
that made my devotion to them so great; I cherished in myself each and
all of my fine feelings. For the rest, I knew my friends as little as I
knew myself. The idea that I might have lived a different existence or
that anyone could possibly live differently never for a moment crossed
my mind.
My father and I were satisfied with simple things; we both of us spent
so little that I reached the age of twenty-five without knowing that
we were rich. I imagined, without giving it much thought, that we had
just enough to live on. And the habits of economy I had acquired with
my father were so great that I felt almost uncomfortable when I learnt
we had a great deal more. I was so careless about such matters that
even after my father’s death, though I was his sole heir, I failed
to realize the extent of my fortune; I did so only when our marriage
settlements were being drawn up and at the same time I learnt that
Marceline brought me next to nothing.
And another thing I was ignorant of--even more important perhaps--was
that I had very delicate health. How should I have known this, when
I had never put it to the test? I had colds from time to time and
neglected them. The excessive tranquillity of the life I led weakened,
while at the same time it protected me. Marceline, on the contrary,
seemed strong--that she was stronger than I we were very soon to learn.
* * * * *
On our wedding-day, we went straight to Paris and slept in my apartment
where two rooms had been got ready for us. We stayed in Paris only
just long enough to do some necessary shopping, then took the train to
Marseilles and embarked at once for Tunis.
So many urgent things to be done, so many bewildering events following
each other in too rapid succession, the unavoidable agitation of my
wedding coming so soon after the more genuine emotion caused by my
father’s death--all of this had left me exhausted. It was only on the
boat that I was able to realize how tired I was. Up till then, every
occupation, while increasing my fatigue, had distracted me from feeling
it. The enforced leisure on board ship at last enabled me to reflect.
For the first time, so it seemed to me.
It was for the first time too that I had consented to forgo my work
for any length of time. Up till then I had only allowed myself short
holidays. A journey to Spain with my father shortly after my mother’s
death had, it is true, lasted over a month; another to Germany,
six weeks; there were others too, but they had all been student’s
journeys; my father was never to be distracted from his own particular
researches; when I was not accompanying him, I used to read. And
yet, we had hardly left Marseilles, when memories came back to me of
Granada and Seville, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of dances,
of laughter, of songs. That is what we are going to find, I thought.
I went up on to the deck and watched Marseilles disappearing in the
distance.
Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that I was leaving Marceline a little
too much to herself.
She was sitting in the bows; I drew near, and for the first time really
looked at her.
Marceline was very pretty. You saw her, so you know. I reproached
myself for not having noticed it sooner. I had known her too long to
see her with any freshness of vision; our families had been friends for
ages; I had seen her grow up; I was accustomed to her grace.... For the
first time now I was struck with astonishment, it seemed to me so great.
She wore a big veil, floating from a simple black straw hat; she was
fair, but did not look delicate. Her bodice and skirt were made of the
same material--a Scotch plaid which we had chosen together. I had not
wanted the gloom of my mourning to overshadow her.
She felt I was looking at her and turned towards me ... up till then I
had only paid her the necessary official attentions; I replaced love
as best I could by a kind of frigid gallantry, which I saw well enough
she found rather tiresome; perhaps at that moment Marceline felt I was
looking at her for the first time in a different way. She, in her turn
looked fixedly at me; then, very tenderly, smiled. I sat down beside
her without speaking. I had lived up till then for myself alone, or at
any rate in my own fashion; I had married without imagining I should
find in my wife anything different from a comrade, without thinking at
all definitely that my life might be changed by our union. And now at
last I realized that the monologue had come to an end.
We were alone on deck. She held up her face and I gently pressed her to
me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt
as I kissed her an unfamiliar kind of pity, which took hold of me so
violently that I could not restrain my tears.
“What is it, dear?” said Marceline.
We began to talk. What she said was so charming that it delighted me.
I had picked up in one way or another a few ideas on women’s silliness.
That evening, in her presence, it was myself I thought awkward and
stupid.
So the being to whom I had attached my life had a real and individual
life of her own! The importance of this thought woke me up several
times during the night; several times I sat up in my berth in order to
look at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below.
The next morning the sky was splendid; the sea almost perfectly calm.
A few leisurely talks lessened our shyness still more. Marriage was
really beginning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed
in Tunis.
* * * * *
I intended to stay there only a few days. I will confess my folly; in
so new a country nothing attracted me except Carthage and a few Roman
ruins--Timgad, about which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of
Sousse, and above all the amphitheatre of El Djem, which I decided
we must visit without delay. We had first to get to Sousse, and from
Sousse take the mail diligence; between this and then I was determined
to think nothing worth my attention.
And yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations,
certain portions of me awoke--certain sleeping faculties, which, from
not having as yet been used, had kept all their mysterious freshness.
But I was more astonished, more bewildered than amused, and what
pleased me most was Marceline’s delight.
My fatigue in the meantime was growing greater every day; but I should
have thought it shameful to give in to it. I had a bad cough and a
curious feeling of discomfort in the upper part of my chest. We are
going towards the South, I thought; the heat will put me to rights
again.
The Sfax diligence leaves Sousse at eight o’clock in the evening
and passes through El Djem at one o’clock in the morning. We had
engaged coupé places; I expected to find an uncomfortable shandrydan;
the seats, however, were fairly commodious. But oh, the cold!...
We were both lightly clad and, with a kind of childish confidence
in the warmth of southern climes, had taken no wrap with us but a
single shawl. As soon as we were out of Sousse and the shelter of
its hills, the wind began to blow. It leapt over the plain in great
bounds, howling, whistling, coming in by every chink of the door and
windows--impossible to protect oneself from it! We were both chilled
to the bone when we arrived and I exhausted as well by the jolting
of the carriage and by my horrible cough which shook me even worse.
What a night! When we got to El Djem, there was no inn, nothing but a
frightful native _bordj_. What was to be done? The diligence was going
on; the village was asleep; the lugubrious mass of the ruins lowered
dimly through the dark immensity of the night; dogs were howling. We
went into a room whose walls and floor were made of mud and in which
stood two wretched beds. Marceline was shivering with cold, but here at
any rate, we were out of the wind.
The next day was a dismal one. We were surprised on going out to see
a sky that was one unrelieved grey. The wind was still blowing, but
less violently than the night before. The diligence only passed through
again in the evening.... It was a dismal day, I tell you. I went over
the amphitheatre in a few minutes and found it disappointing; I thought
it actually ugly under that dreary sky. Perhaps my fatigue added to my
feeling of tedium. Towards the middle of the day, as I had nothing else
to do, I went back to the ruins and searched in vain for inscriptions
on the stones. Marceline found a place that was sheltered from the
wind and sat reading an English book, which by good luck she had
brought with her. I went and sat beside her.
“What a melancholy day!” I said. “Aren’t you bored?”
“Not particularly. I am reading.”
“What made us come to such a place? I hope you are not cold, are you?”
“Not so very. And you? Oh, you must be. How pale you are!”
“No, oh no!”
At night, the wind began again as violently as ever.... At last the
diligence arrived. We started.
No sooner did the jolting begin than I felt shattered. Marceline, who
was very tired, had gone to sleep almost at once on my shoulder. My
cough will wake her, I thought, and freeing myself very, very gently,
I propped her head against the side of the carriage. In the mean time
I had stopped coughing; yes; I had begun to spit instead; this was
something new; I brought it up without an effort; it came in little
jerks at regular intervals; the sensation was so odd that at first it
almost amused me, but I was soon disgusted by the peculiar taste it
left in my mouth. My handkerchief was very soon used up. My fingers
were covered with it. Should I wake up Marceline?... Fortunately I
thought of a large silk foulard she was wearing tucked into her belt.
I took possession of it quietly. The spitting, which I no longer tried
to keep back, came more abundantly and I was extraordinarily relieved
by it. It is the end of my cold, I thought. Then, there suddenly came
over me a feeling of extreme weakness; everything began to spin round
and I thought I was going to faint. Should I wake her up?... No,
shame!... (My puritanical childhood has left me, I think, a hatred of
any surrender to bodily weakness--cowardice, I call it.) I controlled
myself, made a desperate effort and finally conquered my giddiness....
I felt as if I were at sea again, and the noise of the wheels turned
into the sound of the waves.... But I had stopped spitting.
Then I sank, overpowered, into a sort of sleep.
When I emerged from it, the sky was already filling with dawn.
Marceline was still asleep. We were just getting to Sousse. The foulard
I was holding in my hand was dark-coloured, so that at first I saw
nothing; but when I took out my handkerchief, I saw with stupefaction
that it was soaked with blood.
My first thought was to hide the blood from Marceline. But how?
I was covered with it; it seemed to be everywhere; on my fingers
especially.... My nose might perhaps have been bleeding.... That’s it!
If she asks me, I shall say my nose has been bleeding.
Marceline was still asleep. We drew up at the Sousse hotel. She had
to get down first and saw nothing. Our two rooms had been kept for
us. I was able to dart into mine and wash away every trace of blood.
Marceline had seen nothing.
I was feeling very weak, however, and ordered some tea to be brought.
And as she was pouring it out, a little pale herself, but very calm
and smiling, a kind of irritation seized me to think she had not had
the sense to see anything. I felt indeed I was being unjust, and
said to myself that she only saw nothing, because I had hidden it
from her so cleverly; but I couldn’t help it--the feeling grew in me
like an instinct, filled me ... and at last it became too strong;
I could contain myself no longer; the words slipped out, as though
absent-mindedly:
“I spat blood last night.”
She did not utter a sound; she simply turned much paler, tottered,
tried to save herself and fell heavily to the ground.
I sprang to her in a sort of fury: “Marceline! Marceline!” What on
earth had I done? Wasn’t it enough for _me_ to be ill? But, as I
have said, I was very weak; I was on the point of fainting myself. I
managed, however, to open the door and call. Someone hurried to our
help.
I remembered I had a letter of introduction to an officer in the town,
and on the strength of this I sent for the regimental doctor.
Marceline in the meantime had recovered herself and settled down at
my bedside, where I lay, shivering with fever. The doctor came and
examined us both; there was nothing the matter with Marceline, he
declared, and she had not been hurt by her fall; _I_ was seriously ill;
he refused to give a definite opinion and promised to come back before
evening.
He came back, smiled at me, talked to me and prescribed various
remedies. I realized that he gave me up for lost. Shall I confess that
I felt not the least shock? I was very tired, I simply let myself go.
‘After all, what had life to offer? I had worked faithfully to the end,
resolutely and passionately done my duty. The rest ... oh! what did
it matter?’ thought I, with a certain admiration of my own stoicism.
What really pained me was the ugliness of my surroundings. ‘This hotel
room is frightful,’ I thought and looked at it. Suddenly it occurred
to me that in a like room next door was my wife, Marceline; and I
heard her speaking. The doctor had not gone; he was talking to her; he
was studiously lowering his voice. A little time went by--I must have
slept....
When I woke up, Marceline was there. I could see she had been crying.
I did not care for life enough to pity myself; but the ugliness of the
place vexed me; my eyes rested on her with a pleasure that was almost
voluptuous.
She was sitting by me writing. I thought she looked very pretty. I saw
her fasten up several letters. Then she got up, drew near my bed and
took my hand tenderly.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked. I smiled and said sadly:
“Shall I get better?” But she answered at once, “You _shall_ get
better” with such passionate conviction that it almost brought
conviction to me too, and there came over me a kind of confused feeling
of all that life might mean, of Marceline’s own love--a vague vision
of such pathetic beauties that the tears started from my eyes and I
wept long and helplessly without trying or wanting to stop.
With what loving violence she managed to get me away from Sousse!
How charmingly she protected me, helped me, nursed me! From Sousse
to Tunis, from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was admirable. It was
at Biskra I was to get well. Her confidence was perfect; never for a
single moment did her zeal slacken. She settled everything, arranged
the starts, engaged the rooms. It was not in her power, alas! to make
the journey less horrible. Several times I thought I should have to
stop and give up. I sweated mortally; I gasped for breath; at times I
lost consciousness. At the end of the third day, I arrived at Biskra
more dead than alive.
ii
Why speak of those first days? What remains of them? Their frightful
memory has no tongue. I lost all knowledge of who or where I was. I
can only see Marceline, my wife, my life, bending over the bed where
I lay agonizing. I know that her passionate care, her love alone,
saved me. One day, at last, like a ship-wrecked mariner who catches
sight of land, I felt a gleam of life revisit me; I was able to smile
at Marceline. Why should I recall all this? What is important is that
Death had touched me, as people say, with its wing. What is important
is that I came to think it a very astonishing thing to be alive, that
every day shone for me, an unhoped-for light. Before, thought I, I did
not understand I was alive. The thrilling discovery of life was to be
mine.
The day came when I was able to get up. I was utterly enchanted by our
home. It was almost nothing but a terrace. What a terrace! My room and
Marceline’s opened out on to it; at the further end it was continued
over roofs. From the highest part, one saw palm-trees above the houses;
and above the palm-trees, the desert. On the other side, the terrace
adjoined the public gardens and was shaded by the branches of the
nearest cassias; lastly, it ran along one side of the courtyard--a
small, regular courtyard, planted regularly with six palm-trees--and
came to an end with the staircase that led down to the courtyard. My
room was spacious and airy; the walls were bare and whitewashed; a
little door led to Marceline’s room; a large door with glass panes
opened on to the terrace.
There the hourless days slipped by. How often in my solitude those
slow-slipping days come back to me!... Marceline sits beside me. She
is reading, or sewing, or writing. I am doing nothing--just looking
at her. O Marceline! Marceline!... I look. I see the sun; I see the
shadow; I see the line of shadow moving; I have so little to think
of that I watch it. I am still very weak; my breathing is very bad;
everything tires me--even reading; besides, what should I read?
Existing is occupation enough.
* * * * *
One morning Marceline came in laughing.
“I have brought you a friend,” she said, and I saw come in behind her
a little dark-complexioned Arab. His name was Bachir and he had large
silent eyes that looked at me. They made me feel embarrassed, and that
was enough to tire me. I said nothing, only looked cross. The child,
disconcerted by the coldness of my reception, turned to Marceline and,
with the coaxing grace of a little animal, nestled up against her, took
her hand and kissed it, showing his bare arms as he did so. I noticed
that under his thin, white gandourah and patched burnous, he was naked.
“Come, sit down there,” said Marceline, who had noticed my shyness.
“Amuse yourself quietly.”
The little fellow sat down on the floor, took a knife and a piece of
djerid wood out of the hood of his burnous, and began to slice at it. I
think it was a whistle he was trying to make.
After a little time, I ceased to feel uncomfortable. I looked at him;
he seemed to have forgotten where he was. His feet were bare; he had
charmingly turned ankles and wrists. He handled his wretched knife with
amusing dexterity.... Was this really going to interest me?... His hair
was shaved Arab fashion; he wore a shabby chechia on his head with a
hole in the place of the tassel. His gandourah, which had slipped down
a little, showed his delicate little shoulder. I wanted to touch it. I
bent down; he turned round and smiled at me. I signed to him to pass me
his whistle, took it and pretended to admire it. After a time he said
he must go. Marceline gave him a cake and I a penny.
The next day, for the first time, I felt dull. I seemed to be expecting
something. Expecting what? I was listless, restless. At last I could
resist no longer.
“Isn’t Bachir coming this morning, Marceline?”
“If you like, I’ll fetch him.”
She left me and went out; after a little she came back alone. What kind
of thing had illness made me that I should have felt inclined to cry at
seeing her return without Bachir?
“It was too late,” she said, “the children had come out of school and
dispersed. Some of them are really charming. I think they all know me
now.”
“Well, at any rate, try and get him to come tomorrow.”
Next morning Bachir came back. He sat down in the same way he had done
two days before, took out his knife and tried to carve his bit of wood,
but it was too hard for him and he finally managed to stick the blade
into his thumb. I shuddered with horror, but he laughed, held out his
hand for me to see the glistening cut and looked amused at the sight
of his blood running. When he laughed, he showed very white teeth; he
licked his cut complacently and his tongue was as pink as a cat’s.
Ah! how well he looked! That was what I had fallen in love with--his
health. The health of that little body was a beautiful thing.
The day after he brought some marbles. He wanted to make me play.
Marceline was out or she would have prevented me. I hesitated and
looked at Bachir; the little fellow seized my arm, put the marbles into
my hand, forced me. The attitude of stooping made me very breathless,
but I tried to play all the same. Bachir’s pleasure charmed me. At
last, however, it was too much for me. I was in a profuse perspiration.
I pushed aside the marbles and dropped into an armchair. Bachir,
somewhat disturbed, looked at me.
“Ill?” said he sweetly; the quality of his voice was exquisite.
Marceline came back at that moment.
“Take him away,” I said, “I am tired this morning.”
A few hours later I had a hemorrhage. It was while I was taking a
laborious walk up and down the terrace; Marceline was busy in her room
and fortunately saw nothing. My breathlessness had made me take a
deeper respiration than usual and the thing had suddenly come. It had
filled my mouth.... But it was no longer bright, clear blood as on the
first occasion. It was a frightful great clot which I spat on to the
ground in disgust.
I took a few tottering steps. I was horribly upset. I was frightened; I
was angry. For up till then I had thought that, step by step, recovery
was on the way, and that I had nothing to do but wait for it. This
brutal accident had thrown me back. The strange thing is that the first
hemorrhage had not affected me so much. I now remembered it had left me
almost calm. What was the reason of my fear, my horror now? Alas! it
was because I had begun to love life.
I returned on my steps, bent down, found the clot, and with a piece
of straw picked it up and put it on my handkerchief. It was hideous,
almost black in colour, sticky, slimy, horrible.... I thought of
Bachir’s beautiful, brilliant flow of blood.... And suddenly I was
seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more
imperious than I had ever felt before--to live! I want to live! I
_will_ live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being
in this wild, grief-stricken endeavour after existence.
The day before, I had received a letter from T..., written in answer
to Marceline’s anxious enquiries; it was full of medical advice; T...
had even accompanied his letter with one or two little popular medical
pamphlets and a book of a more technical nature, which for that reason
seemed to me more serious. I had read the letter carelessly and the
printed matter not at all; in the first place I was set against the
pamphlets because of their likeness to the moral tracts that used
to tease me in my childhood; and then too every kind of advice was
irksome to me; and besides, I did not think that _Advice to Tuberculous
Patients_ or _How to Cure Tuberculosis_ in any way concerned me. I
did not think I was tuberculous. I inclined to attribute my first
hemorrhage to a different cause; or rather, to tell the truth, I did
not attribute it to anything; I avoided thinking of it, hardly thought
of it at all, and considered myself, if not cured altogether, at
least very nearly so.... I read the letter; I devoured the book, the
pamphlets. Suddenly, with shocking clearness, it became evident to
me that I had not been treating myself properly. Hitherto, I had let
myself live passively, trusting to the vaguest of hopes; suddenly I
perceived my life was attacked--attacked in its very centre. An active
host of enemies was living within me. I listened to them; I spied
on them; I felt them. I should not vanquish them without a struggle
... and I added half aloud, as if better to convince myself, “It is a
matter of will.”
I put myself in a state of hostility.
Evening was closing in; I planned my strategy. For some time to come,
my recovery was to be my one and only concern; my duty was my health;
I must think good, I must call right everything that was salutary to
me, forget everything that did not contribute to my cure. Before the
evening meal, I had decided on my measures with regard to breathing,
exercise and nourishment.
We used to take our meals in a sort of little kiosk that was surrounded
by the terrace on all sides. We were alone, quiet, far from everything,
and the intimacy of our meals was delightful. An old negro used to
bring us our food, which was tolerable, from a neighbouring hotel.
Marceline superintended the menus, ordered one dish or rejected
another.... Not having much appetite as a rule, I did not mind
particularly when the dishes were a failure or the menu insufficient.
Marceline, who was herself a small eater, did not know, did not realize
that I was not taking enough food. To eat a great deal was the first
of my new resolutions. I intended to put it into execution that very
evening. I was not able to. We had some sort of uneatable hash, and
then a bit of roast meat which was absurdly overdone.
My irritation was so great that I vented it upon Marceline and let
myself go in a flood of intemperate words. I blamed her; to listen to
me, it was as though she were responsible for the badness of the food.
This slight delay in starting on the régime I had decided to adopt,
seemed of the gravest importance; I forgot the preceding days; the
failure of this one meal spoilt everything. I persisted obstinately.
Marceline had to go into the town to buy a tin or a jar of anything she
could find.
She soon came back with a little terrine, of which I devoured almost
the whole contents, as though to prove to us both how much I was in
need of more food.
That same evening we settled on the following plan: the meals were
to be much better and there were to be more of them--one every
three hours, beginning as early as half-past six in the morning. An
abundant provision of every kind of tinned food was to supplement the
deficiencies of the hotel menus.
I could not sleep that night, so excited was I by the vision of my
future virtues. I was, I think, a little feverish; there was a bottle
of mineral water beside me; I drank a glass, two glasses; the third
time, I drank out of the bottle itself and emptied it at a draught.
I strengthened my will as one strengthens one’s memory by revising a
lesson; I instructed my hostility, directed it against all and sundry;
I was to fight with everything; my salvation depended on myself alone.
At last I saw the night begin to pale, another day had dawned.
It had been my night of vigil before the battle.
The next day was Sunday. Must I confess that so far I had paid very
little attention to Marceline’s religious beliefs? Either from
indifference or delicacy, it seemed to me they were no business of
mine; and then I did not attach much importance to them. That morning
Marceline went to Mass. When she came back, she told me she had been
praying for me. I looked at her fixedly and then said as gently as I
could:
“You mustn’t pray for me, Marceline.”
“Why not?” she asked, a little troubled.
“I don’t want favours.”
“Do you reject the help of God?”
“He would have a right to my gratitude afterwards. It entails
obligations. I don’t like them.”
To all appearance we were trifling, but we made no mistake as to the
importance of our words.
“You will not get well all by yourself, my poor dear,” she sighed.
“If so, it can’t be helped.” Then, seeing how unhappy she looked, I
added less roughly:
“You will help me.”
iii
I am going to speak at length of my body. I shall speak of it so much
you will think at first I have forgotten my soul. This omission, as I
tell you my story, is intentional; out there, it was a fact. I had not
strength enough to keep up a double life. “I will think of the spirit
and that side of things later,” I said to myself, “--when I get better.”
I was still far from being well. The slightest thing put me into
a perspiration; the slightest thing gave me a cold; my breath was
short; sometimes I had a little fever, and often, from early morning,
oppressed by a dreadful feeling of lassitude, I remained prostrate in
an armchair, indifferent to everything, self-centred, solely occupied
in trying to breathe properly. I breathed laboriously, methodically,
carefully; my expiration came in two jerks which, with the greatest
effort of my will, I could only partially control; for a long time to
come, I still had need of all my attention to avoid this.
But what troubled me most was my morbid sensibility to changes of
temperature. I think, when I come to reflect on it today, that,
in addition to my illness, I was suffering from a general nervous
derangement. I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena which
it seems to me impossible to attribute entirely to a simple condition
of tuberculosis. I was always either too hot or too cold; I put on a
ridiculous number of clothes, and only stopped shivering when I began
to perspire; then, directly I took anything off, I shivered as soon
as I stopped perspiring. Certain portions of my body would turn as
cold as ice and, in spite of perspiration, felt like marble to the
touch; nothing would warm them. I was so sensitive to cold that if
a little water dropped on my feet while I was washing, it gave me a
relapse; I was equally sensitive to heat.... This sensibility I kept
and still keep, but now it gives me exquisite enjoyment. Any very
keen sensibility may, I believe, according as the organism is robust
or weakly, become a source of delight or discomfort. Everything which
formerly distressed me is now a delicious pleasure.
I do not know how I had managed to sleep up till then with my windows
shut; in accordance with T...’s advice, I now tried keeping them open
at night; a little at first; soon I flung them wide; soon it became
a habit, a need so great that directly the window was shut, I felt
stifled. Later on, with what rapture was I to feel the night wind blow,
the moon shine in upon me!...
But I am anxious to have done with these first stammerings after
health. Indeed, thanks to constant attention, to pure air, to better
food, I soon began to improve. Up till then, my breathlessness had made
me dread the stairs and I had not dared to leave the terrace; in the
last days of January I at last went down and ventured into the garden.
Marceline came with me, carrying a shawl. It was three o’clock in the
afternoon. The wind, which is often violent in those parts and which
I had found particularly unpleasant during the last few days, had
dropped. The air was soft and charming.
The public gardens!... A very wide path runs through the middle of
them, shaded by two rows of that kind of very tall mimosa, that out
there is called cassia. Benches are placed in the shadow of the trees.
A canalized river--one, I mean, that is not wide so much as deep, and
almost straight--flows alongside the path; other smaller channels
take the water from the river and convey it through the gardens to
the plants; the thick, heavy-looking water is the same colour as the
earth--the colour of pinkish, greyish clay. Hardly any foreigners walk
here--only a few Arabs; as they pass out of the sunlight, their white
cloaks take on the colour of the shade.
I felt an odd shiver come over me as I stepped into that strange shade;
I wrapped my shawl tighter about me; but it was not an unpleasant
sensation; on the contrary. We sat down on a bench. Marceline was
silent. Some Arabs passed by; then came a troop of children. Marceline
knew several of them; she signed to them and they came up to us. She
told me some of their names; questions and answers passed, smiles,
pouts, little jokes. It all rather irritated me and my feeling of
embarrassment returned. I was tired and perspiring. But, must I
confess that what made me most uncomfortable was not the children’s
presence--it was Marceline’s. Yes; however slightly, she was in my
way. If I had got up, she would have followed me; if I had taken off
my shawl, she would have wanted to carry it; if I had put it on again,
she would have said, “Are you cold?” And then, as to talking to the
children, I didn’t dare to before her; I saw she had her favourites;
I, in spite of myself, but deliberately, took more interest in the
others.
“Let us go in,” I said at last. And I privately resolved to come back
to the gardens alone.
The next day, she had to go out about ten o’clock; I took advantage of
this. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to come of a morning, carried my
shawl; I felt active, light-hearted. We were almost alone in the garden
path; I walked slowly, sometimes sat down for a moment, then started
off again. Bachir followed, chattering; as faithful and as obsequious
as a dog. I reached a part of the canal where the washerwomen come down
to wash; there was a flat stone placed in the middle of the stream,
and upon it lay a little girl, face downwards, dabbling with her hand
in the water; she was busy throwing little odds and ends of sticks
and grass into the water and picking them out again. Her bare feet
had dipped in the water; there were still traces of wet on them and
there her skin showed darker. Bachir went up and spoke to her; she
turned round, gave me a smile and answered Bachir in Arabic. “She is my
sister,” he explained; then he said his mother was coming to wash some
clothes and that his little sister was waiting for her. She was called
Rhadra in Arabic, which meant ‘Green.’ He said all this in a voice
that was as charming, as clear, as childlike, as the emotion I felt in
hearing it.
“She wants you to give her two sous,” he added.
I gave her fifty centimes and prepared to go on, when the mother, the
washerwoman, came up. She was a magnificent, heavily built woman, with
a high forehead tatooed in blue; she was carrying a basket of linen on
her head and was like a Greek caryatid, like a caryatid too, she was
simply draped in a wide piece of dark blue stuff, lifted at the girdle
and falling straight to the feet.
As soon as she saw Bachir, she called out to him roughly. He made an
angry answer; the little girl joined in and the three of them started a
violent dispute. At last Bachir seemed defeated and explained that his
mother wanted him that morning; he handed me my shawl sadly and I was
obliged to go off by myself.
I had not taken twenty paces when my shawl began to feel unendurably
heavy. I sat down, perspiring, on the first bench I came to. I hoped
some other boy would come along and relieve me of my burden. The one
who soon appeared and who offered to carry it of his own accord, was
a big boy about fourteen years old, as black as a Soudanese and not in
the least shy. His name was Ashour. I should have thought him handsome,
but that he was blind of one eye. He liked talking; told me where the
river came from, and that after running through the public gardens,
it flowed into the oasis, which it traversed from end to end. As I
listened to him, I forgot my fatigue. Charming as I thought Bachir, I
knew him too well by now, and I was glad of a change. I even promised
myself to come to the gardens all alone another day and sit on a bench
and wait for what some lucky chance might bring....
After a few more short rests, Ashour and I arrived at my door. I
wanted to invite him to come in, but I was afraid to, not knowing what
Marceline would say.
I found her in the dining-room, busied over a very small boy, so frail
and sickly looking that my first feeling was one of disgust rather than
pity. Marceline said rather timidly:
“The poor little thing is ill.”
“It’s not infectious, I hope. What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t exactly know yet. He complains of feeling ill all over. He
speaks very little French. When Bachir comes tomorrow, he will be able
to interpret.... I am making him a little tea.”
Then, as if in excuse, and because I stood there without saying
anything, “I’ve known him a long time,” she added. “I haven’t dared
bring him in before; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps vexing you.”
“Why in the world!” I cried. “Bring in all the children you like, if it
amuses you!” And I thought, with a little irritation at not having done
so, that I might have perfectly well brought up Ashour.
And yet, as I thought this, I looked at my wife; how maternal and
caressing she was! Her tenderness was so touching that the little
fellow went off warm and comforted. I spoke of my walk and gently
explained to Marceline why I preferred going out alone.
At that time, my nights were generally disturbed by my constantly
waking with a start--either frozen with cold or bathed in sweat.
That night was a very good one. I hardly woke up at all. The next
morning, I was ready to go out by nine o’clock. It was fine; I felt
rested, not weak, happy--or rather, amused. The air was calm and warm,
but nevertheless, I took my shawl to serve as a pretext for making
acquaintance with the boy who might turn up to carry it. I have said
that the garden ran alongside our terrace, so that I reached it in
a moment. It was with rapture I passed into its shade. The air was
luminous. The cassias, whose flowers come very early, before their
leaves, gave out a delicious scent--or was it from all around me that
came the faint, strange perfume, which seemed to enter me by several
senses at once and which so uplifted me? I was breathing more easily
too, and so I walked more lightly; and yet at the first bench I sat
down, but it was because I was excited--dazzled--rather than tired.
I looked. The shadows were transparent and mobile; they did not fall
upon the ground--seemed barely to rest on it. Light! Oh, light!
I listened. What did I hear? Nothing; everything; every sound amused me.
I remember a shrub some way off whose bark looked of such a curious
texture, that I felt obliged to go and feel it. My touch was a caress;
it gave me rapture. I remember.... Was that the morning that was at
last to give me birth?
I had forgotten I was alone, and sat on, expecting nothing, waiting
for no-one, forgetting the time. Up till that day, so it seemed to me,
I had felt so little and thought so much, that now I was astonished to
find my sensations had become as strong as my thoughts.
I say, “it _seemed_ to me,” for from the depths of my past childhood,
there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations.
The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give
them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now
remembered a whole ancient history of their own--recomposed for
themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never
ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious
years they had been living their own latent, cunning life.
I met no-one that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a
little Homer, which I had not opened since Marseilles, re-read three
lines of the Odyssey and learnt them by heart; then, finding in their
rhythm enough to satisfy me, I dwelt on them awhile with leisurely
delight, shut the book, and sat still, trembling, more alive than I had
thought it possible to be, my mind benumbed with happiness....
iv
In the meantime, Marceline, who saw with delight that my health was
at last improving, had lately begun telling me about the marvellous
orchards of the oasis. She was fond of the open air and outdoor
exercise. My illness left her enough spare time for long walks, from
which she returned glowing with enthusiasm; so far she had not said
much about them, as she did not dare invite me to go with her and was
afraid of depressing me by an account of delights I was not yet fit
to enjoy. But now that I was better, she counted on their attraction
to complete my recovery. The pleasure I was again beginning to take
in walking and looking about me tempted me to join her. And the next
morning we set out together.
She led the way along a path so odd that I have never in any country
seen its like. It meanders indolently between two fairly high mud
walls; the shape of the gardens they enclose directs its leisurely
course; sometimes it winds; sometimes it is broken; a sudden turning
as you enter it and you lose your bearings; you cease to know where
you came from or where you are going. The water of the river follows
the path faithfully and runs alongside one of the walls; the walls
are made of the same earth as the path--the same as that of the whole
oasis--a pinkish or soft grey clay, which is turned a little darker
by the water, which the burning sun crackles, which hardens in the
heat and softens with the first shower, so that it becomes a plastic
soil that keeps the imprint of every naked foot. Above the walls, show
palm-trees. Wood-pigeons went flying into them as we came up. Marceline
looked at me.
I forgot my discomfort and fatigue. I walked on in a sort of ecstasy,
of silent joy, of elation of the senses and the flesh. At that moment
there came a gentle breath of wind; all the palms waved and we saw the
tallest of the trees bending; then the whole air grew calm again, and I
distinctly heard, coming from behind the wall, the song of a flute. A
breach in the wall; we went in.
It was a place full of light and shade; tranquil; it seemed beyond the
touch of time; full of silence; full of rustlings--the soft noise of
running water that feeds the palms and slips from tree to tree, the
quiet call of the pigeons, the song of the flute the boy was playing.
He was sitting, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm-tree,
watching a herd of goats; our coming did not disturb him; he did not
move--stopped playing only for a moment.
I noticed during this brief pause that another flute was answering in
the distance. We went on a little, then:
“It’s no use going any further,” said Marceline; “these orchards are
all alike; possibly at the other end of the oasis they may be a little
larger....”
She spread the shawl on the ground. “Sit down and rest,” she said.
How long did we stay there? I cannot tell. What mattered time?
Marceline was near me; I lay down and put my head on her knees. The
song of the flute flowed on, stopped from time to time, went on again;
the sound of the water ... From time to time a goat baa’ed. I shut my
eyes; I felt Marceline lay her cool hand on my forehead; I felt the
burning sun, gently shaded by the palm-trees; I thought of nothing;
what mattered thoughts? I _felt_ extraordinarily....
And from time to time there was another noise; I opened my eyes; a
little wind was blowing in the palm-trees; it did not come down low
enough to reach us--stirred only the highest branches.
* * * * *
The next morning, I returned to the same garden with Marceline; on the
evening of the same day, I went back to it alone. The goatherd that
played the flute was there. I went up to him; spoke to him. He was
called Lassif, was only twelve years old, was a handsome boy. He told
me the names of his goats, told me that the little canals are called
‘seghias’; they do not all run every day, he explained; the water,
wisely and parsimoniously distributed, satisfies the thirst of the
plants, and is then at once withdrawn. At the foot of each palm the
ground is hollowed out into a small cup which holds water enough for
the tree’s needs; an ingenious system of sluices, which the boy worked
for me to see, controls the water, conducts it wherever the ground is
thirstiest.
The next day I saw a brother of Lassif’s; he was a little older and not
so handsome; he was called Lachmi. By means of the kind of ladder made
in the trunk of the tree by the old stumps of excised palm leaves, he
climbed up to the top of a pollarded palm; then he came swiftly down
again, showing a golden nudity beneath his floating garment. He brought
down a little earthen gourd from the place where the head of the tree
had been severed; it had been hung up near the fresh cut in order to
collect the palm sap, from which the Arabs make a sweet wine they are
extremely fond of. At Lachmi’s invitation, I tasted it; but I did not
like its sickly, raw, syrupy taste.
The following days I went further; I saw other gardens, other goatherds
and other goats. As Marceline had said, all these gardens were alike;
and yet they were all different.
Sometimes Marceline would still come with me; but more often, as soon
as we reached the orchards, I would leave her, persuade her that I was
tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she must not wait for me, for
she needed more exercise; so that she would finish the walk without
me. I stayed behind with the children. I soon knew a great number of
them; I had long conversations with them; I learnt their games, taught
them others, lost all my pennies at pitch and toss. Some of them used
to come with me on my walks (every day I walked further), showed me
some new way home, took charge of my coat and my shawl when I happened
to have them both with me. Before leaving the children, I used to
distribute a handful of pennies among them; sometimes they would follow
me, playing all the way, as far as my own door; and finally, they would
sometimes come in.
Then Marceline on her side brought in others. She brought the boys
who went to school and whom she encouraged to work; when school broke
up, the good little boys, the quiet little boys came in; those that
I brought were different; but they made friends over their games. We
took care always to have a store of syrups and sweetmeats on hand. Soon
other boys came of their own accord, even uninvited. I remember each
one of them; I can see them still....
* * * * *
Towards the end of January, the weather changed suddenly; a cold wind
sprang up and my health immediately began to suffer. The great open
space that separates the oasis from the town again became impassable,
and I was obliged once more to content myself with the public gardens.
Then it began to rain--an icy rain, which covered the mountains on the
far Northern horizon with snow.
I spent those melancholy days beside the fire, gloomily, obstinately,
fighting with my illness, which in this vile weather, gained upon me.
Lugubrious days! I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort
brought on the most troublesome perspiration; fixing my thoughts
exhausted me; directly I stopped paying attention to my breathing, I
suffocated.
During those melancholy days the children were my only distraction. In
the rainy weather, only the most familiar came in; their clothes were
drenched; they sat round the fire in a circle. A long time would often
go by without anything being said. I was too tired, too unwell to do
anything but look at them; but the presence of their good health did
me good. Those that Marceline petted were weakly, sickly, and too well
behaved; I was irritated with her and with them and ended by keeping
them at arm’s length. To tell the truth, they frightened me.
One morning I had a curious revelation as to my own character; Moktir,
the only one of my wife’s protégés who did not irritate me (because of
his good looks perhaps), was alone with me in my room; up till then,
I had not cared much about him, but there was something strange, I
thought, in the brilliant and sombre expression of his eyes. Some kind
of inexplicable curiosity made me watch his movements. I was standing
in front of the fire, my two elbows on the mantlepiece, apparently
absorbed in a book; but, though I had my back turned to him, I could
see what he was doing reflected in the glass. Moktir did not know I
was watching him and thought I was immersed in my reading. I saw him
go noiselessly up to a table where Marceline had laid her work and
a little pair of scissors beside it, seize them furtively, and in
a twinkling engulf them in the folds of his burnous. My heart beat
quickly for a moment, but neither reason nor reflection could arouse
in me the smallest feeling of indignation. More than that! I could not
manage to persuade myself that the feeling that filled me at the sight
was anything but joy.
When I had allowed Moktir ample time for robbing me, I turned round
again and spoke to him as if nothing had happened.
Marceline was very fond of this boy; but I do not think it was the fear
of grieving her that made me, rather than denounce Moktir, invent some
story or other to explain the loss of her scissors.
From that day onwards, Moktir became my favourite.
v
Our stay at Biskra was not to last much longer. When the February rains
were over, the outburst of heat that succeeded them was too violent.
After several days of drenching downpour, one morning, suddenly, I woke
in an atmosphere of brilliant blue. As soon as I was up, I hurried to
the highest part of the terrace. The sky, from one horizon to the other
was cloudless. Mists were rising under the heat of the sun, which was
already fierce; the whole oasis was smoking; in the distance could be
heard the grumbling of the Oued in flood. The air was so pure and so
delicious that I felt better at once. Marceline joined me; we wanted to
go out, but that day the mud kept us at home.
A few days later, we went back to Lassif’s orchard; the stems of the
plants looked heavy, sodden and swollen with water. This African land,
whose thirsty season of waiting was not then known to me, had lain
submerged for many long days and was now awaking from its winter sleep,
drunken with water, bursting with the fresh rise of sap; throughout
it rang the wild laughter of an exultant spring which found an echo,
a double, as it were, in my own heart. Ashour and Moktir came with us
at first; I still enjoyed their slight friendship, which cost me only
half a franc a day; but I soon grew tired of them; not now so weak as
to need the example of their health, and no longer finding in their
play the food necessary to keep my joy alive, I turned the elation of
my mind and senses to Marceline. Her gladness made me realize she had
been unhappy before. I excused myself like a child for having so often
left her to herself, set down my odd, elusive behaviour to the score of
weakness and declared that hitherto loving had been too much for me,
but that henceforward, as my health grew, so would my love. I spoke
truly, but no doubt I was still very weak, for it was not till more
than a month later that I desired Marceline.
In the meantime, it was getting hotter every day. There was nothing to
keep us at Biskra--except the charm which afterwards brought me back
there. Our determination to leave was taken suddenly. In three hours
our things were packed. The train started next morning at daybreak.
I remember that last night. The moon was nearly full; it streamed into
my room by the wide open window. Marceline was, I think, asleep. I had
gone to bed but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of
happy fever--the fever of life itself.... I got up, dipped my hands and
face in water, then, pushing open the glass doors, went out.
It was already late; not a sound; not a breath; the air itself seemed
asleep. The Arab dogs which yelp all night like jackals, could only
just be heard in the distance. Facing me, lay the little courtyard;
the wall opposite cast a slanting band of shadow across it; the
regular palm-trees, bereft of colour and life, seemed struck for ever
motionless.... But in sleep there is still some palpitation of life;
here, nothing seemed asleep; everything seemed dead. The calm appalled
me; and suddenly there rose in me afresh the tragic realization of my
life; it came upon me as though to protest, to assert itself, to bewail
itself in the silence, so violent, so impetuous, so agonizing almost,
that I should have cried aloud, if I could have cried like an animal.
I took hold of my hand, I remember--my left hand in my right; I wanted
to lift it to my head and I did. What for? To assure myself that I
was alive and that I felt the wonder of it. I touched my forehead, my
eyelids. Then a shudder seized me. A day will come, thought I, a day
will come when I shall not even be strong enough to lift to my lips the
very water I most thirst for.... I went in, but did not lie down again
at once; I wanted to fix that night, to engrave its memory on my mind,
to hold and to keep it; undecided as to what I should do, I took a book
from my table--it was the Bible--and opened it at random; by stooping
over it in the moonlight, I could see to read; I read Christ’s words to
Peter--those words, alas, which I was never to forget: “When thou wast
young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but
when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands ...”--thou
shalt stretch forth thy hands....
The next morning at dawn, we left.
vi
I shall not speak of every stage of the journey. Some of them have left
me only a confused recollection; I was sometimes better and sometimes
worse in health, still at the mercy of a cold wind and made anxious by
the shadow of a cloud; the condition of my nerves too was the cause
of frequent trouble; but my lungs at any rate were recovering. Each
relapse was shorter and less serious; the attacks were as sharp, but my
body was better armed against them.
From Tunis we went to Malta, and from there to Syracuse; I found myself
back again on the classic ground whose language and history were known
to me. Since the beginning of my illness I had lived without question
or rule, simply applying myself to the act of living as an animal
does or a child. Now that I was less absorbed by my malady, my life
became once more certain of itself and conscious. After that long and
almost mortal sickness, I had thought I should rise again the same as
before and be able without difficulty to reknit my present to my past;
in the newness of a strange country it had been possible to deceive
myself--but not here; everything brought home to me--though I still
thought it astonishing--that I was changed.
When at Syracuse and later, I wanted to start my work again and immerse
myself once more in a minute study of the past, I discovered that
something had, if not destroyed, at any rate modified my pleasure in
it ... and this something was the feeling of the present. The history
of the past had now taken on for me the immobility, the terrifying
fixity of the nocturnal shadows in the little courtyard of Biskra--the
immobility of death. In old days, I had taken pleasure in this very
fixity which enabled my mind to work with precision; the facts of
history all appeared to me like specimens in a museum, or rather like
plants in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to
forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the
sun. Now-a-days, if I still took any pleasure in history, it was by
imagining it in the present. Thus the great political events of the
past moved me less than the feeling that began to revive in me for the
poets or for a few men of action. At Syracuse, I re-read Theocritus and
reflected that his goatherds with the beautiful names were the very
same as those I had loved at Biskra.
My erudition, which was aroused at every step, became an encumbrance
and hampered my joy. I could not see a Greek theatre or temple without
immediately reconstructing it in my mind. Every thought of the
festivals of antiquity made me grieve over the death of the ruin that
was left standing in their place; and I had a horror of death.
I ended by avoiding ruins; the noblest monuments of the past were less
to me than those sunk gardens of the Latomie whose lemons have the
sharp sweetness of oranges--or the shores of the Cyane, still flowing
among the papyri as blue as on the day when it wept for Proserpine.
I ended by despising the learning that had at first been my pride;
the studies, which up till then had been my whole life, now seemed to
me to have a mere accidental and conventional connection with myself.
I found out that I was something different and--O rapture!--that I
had a separate existence of my own. Inasmuch as I was a specialist,
I appeared to myself senseless; inasmuch as I was a man, did I know
myself at all? I had only just been born and could not as yet know
_what_ I had been born. It was that I had to find out.
There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die
than a long convalescence. After that touch from the wing of Death,
what seemed important is so no longer; other things become so which had
at first seemed unimportant, or which one did not even know existed.
The miscellaneous mass of acquired knowledge of every kind that has
overlain the mind gets peeled off in places like a mask of paint,
exposing the bare skin--the very flesh of the authentic creature that
had lain hidden beneath it.
He it was whom I thenceforward set out to discover--that authentic
creature, ‘the old Adam,’ whom the Gospel had repudiated, whom
everything about me--books, masters, parents, and I myself had begun
by attempting to suppress. And he was already coming into view, still
in the rough and difficult of discovery, thanks to all that overlay
him, but so much the more worthy to be discovered, so much the more
valorous. Thenceforward I despised the secondary creature, the creature
who was due to teaching, whom education had painted on the surface.
These overlays had to be shaken off.
And I compared myself to a palimpsest; I tasted the scholar’s joy when
he discovers under more recent writing, and on the same paper, a very
ancient and infinitely more precious text. What was this occult text?
In order to read it, was it not first of all necessary to efface the
more recent one?
I was besides no longer the sickly, studious being to whom my early
morality, with all its rigidity and restrictions, had been suited.
There was more here than a convalescence; there was an increase, a
recrudescence of life, the influx of a richer, warmer blood which must
of necessity affect my thoughts, touch them one by one, inform them
all, stir and colour the most remote, delicate and secret fibres of
my being. For, either to strength or to weakness, the creature adapts
itself; it constitutes itself according to the powers it possesses; but
if these should increase, if they should permit a wider scope, then ...
I did not think all this at the time, and my description gives a false
idea of me. In reality, I did not think at all; I never questioned
myself; a happy fatalism guided me. I was afraid that too hasty an
investigation might disturb the mystery of my slow transformation. I
must allow time for the effaced characters to reappear, and not attempt
to re-form them. Not so much neglecting my mind therefore, as allowing
it to lie fallow, I gave myself up to the luxurious enjoyment of my
own self, of external things, of all existence, which seemed to me
divine. We had left Syracuse, and as I ran along the precipitous road
that connects Taormina with Mola, I remember shouting aloud, as if my
calling could bring him to me: “A new self! A new self!”
My only effort then--an effort which was at that time
constant--consisted in systematically contemning and suppressing
everything which I believed I owed to my past education and early moral
beliefs. Deliberately disdainful of my learning, and in scorn of my
scholar’s tastes, I refused to visit Agrigentum, and a few days later,
on the road to Naples, I passed by the beautiful temple of Pæstum, in
which Greece still breathes, and where, two years later, I went to
worship some God or other--I no longer know which.
Why do I say ‘my only effort’? How could I be interested in myself save
as a perfectible being? Never before had my will been so tensely strung
as in striving after this unknown and vaguely imagined perfection. I
employed the whole of my will indeed, in strengthening and bronzing my
body. We had left the coast near Salerno and reached Ravello. There, a
keener air, the charm of the rocks, their recesses, their surprises,
the unexplored depths of the valleys, all contributed to my strength
and enjoyment and gave impetus to my enthusiasm.
Not far from the shore and very near the sky, Ravello lies on an
abrupt height facing the flat and distant coast of Pæstum. Under the
Norman domination, it was a city of no inconsiderable importance; it
is nothing now but a narrow village where I think we were the only
strangers. We were lodged in an ancient religious house which had
been turned into a hotel; it is situated on the extreme edge of the
rock, and its terraces and gardens seemed to hang suspended over an
abyss of azure. Over the wall, festooned with creeping vine, one
could at first see nothing but the sea; one had to go right up to the
wall in order to discover the steep cultivated slope that connects
Ravello with the shore by paths that seem more like staircases. Above
Ravello, the mountain continues. First come enormous olive and caroub
trees, with cyclamen growing in their shadow; then, higher up, Spanish
chestnuts in great quantities, cool air, northern plants; lower down
lemon trees near the sea. These are planted in small plots owing to
the slope of the ground; they are step gardens, nearly all alike; a
narrow path goes from end to end through the middle of each; one enters
noiselessly, like a thief; one dreams in their green shadow; their
foliage is thick and heavy; no direct ray of sunlight penetrates it;
the lemons, like drops of opaque wax, hang perfumed; they are white and
greenish in the shade; they are within reach of one’s hand, of one’s
thirst; they are sweet and sharp and refreshing.
The shade was so dense beneath them that I did not dare linger in it
after my walk, for exercise still made me perspire. And yet I now
managed the steps without being exhausted; I practised climbing them
with my mouth shut; I put greater and greater intervals between my
halts; “I will go so far without giving in,” I used to say to myself;
then, the goal reached, I was rewarded by a glow of satisfied pride;
I would take a few long deep breaths, and feel as if the air entered
my lungs more thoroughly, more efficaciously. I brought all my old
assiduity to bear on the care of my body. I began to progress.
I was sometimes astonished that my health came back so quickly. I began
to think I had exaggerated the gravity of my condition--to doubt that
I had been very ill--to laugh at my blood-spitting--to regret that my
recovery had not been more arduous.
In my ignorance of my physical needs, my treatment of myself had at
first been very foolish. I now made a patient study of them and came
to regard my ingenious exercise of prudence and care as a kind of
game. What I still suffered from most was my morbid sensitiveness to
the slightest change of temperature. Now that my lungs were cured, I
attributed this hyperaesthesia to the nervous debility left me by my
illness and I determined to conquer it. The sight of the beautiful,
brown, sunburnt skins which some of the carelessly clad peasants at
work in the fields showed beneath their open shirts, made me long to be
like them. One morning, after I had stripped, I looked at myself; my
thin arms, my stooping shoulders, which no effort of mine could keep
straight, but above all the whiteness of my skin, or rather its entire
want of colour, shamed me to tears. I dressed quickly and, instead of
going down to Amalfi as usual, I turned my steps towards some mossy,
grass-grown rocks, in a place far from any habitation, far from any
road, where I knew no-one could see me. When I got there, I undressed
slowly. The air was almost sharp, but the sun was burning. I exposed my
whole body to its flame. I sat down, lay down, turned myself about. I
felt the ground hard beneath me; the waving grass brushed me. Though I
was sheltered from the wind, I shivered and thrilled at every breath.
Soon a delicious burning enveloped me; my whole being surged up into my
skin.
We stayed at Ravello a fortnight; every morning I returned to the
same rocks and went on with my cure. I soon found I was wearing a
troublesome and unnecessary amount of clothing; my skin, having
recovered its tone, the constant perspiration ceased and I was able to
keep warm without superfluous protection.
On one of the last mornings (we were in the middle of April), I was
bolder still. In a hollow of the rocks I have mentioned, there flowed
a spring of transparent water. At this very place it fell in a little
cascade--not a very abundant one to be sure, but the fall had hollowed
out a deeper basin at its foot in which the water lingered, exquisitely
pure and clear. Three times already I had been there, leant over it,
stretched myself along its bank, thirsty and longing; I had gazed at
the bottom of polished rock, where not a stain, not a weed was to be
seen, and where the sun shot its dancing and iridescent rays. On this
fourth day, I came to the spot with my mind already made up. The
water looked as bright and as clear as ever, and without pausing to
think, I plunged straight in. It struck an instant chill through me
and I jumped out again quickly and flung myself down on the grass in
the sun. There was some wild thyme growing near by; I picked some of
the sweet-smelling leaves, crushed them in my hands and rubbed my wet
but burning body with them. I looked at myself for a long while--with
no more shame now--with joy. Although not yet robust, I felt myself
capable of becoming so--harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful.
vii
And so, in the place of all action and all work, I contented myself
with physical exercises, which certainly implied a change in my moral
outlook, but which I soon began to regard as mere training, as simply a
means to an end, and no longer satisfying in themselves.
I will tell you, however, about one other action of mine, though
perhaps you will consider it ridiculous, for its very childishness
marks the need that then tormented me of showing by some outward sign
the change that had come over my inward self: at Amalfi I had my beard
and moustache shaved off. Up till that day I had worn them long and
my hair cropped close. It had never occurred to me that I could do
anything else. And suddenly, on the day when I first stripped myself
on the rock, my beard made me feel uncomfortable; it was like a last
piece of clothing I could not get rid of; I felt as if it were false;
it was carefully cut--not in a point, but square, and it then and
there struck me as very ugly and ridiculous. When I got back to my
hotel room, I looked at myself in the glass and was displeased with my
appearance; I looked like what I had hitherto been--an archaeologist--a
bookworm. Immediately after lunch, I went down to Amalfi with my mind
made up. The town is very small and I could find nothing better than
a vulgar little shop in the piazza. It was market day; the place was
full; I had to wait interminably; but nothing--neither the suspicious
looking razors, nor the dirty yellow shaving-brush, nor the smell, nor
the barber’s talk could put me off. When my beard fell beneath his
scissors, I felt as though I had taken off a mask. But oh! when I saw
myself, the emotion that filled me and which I tried to keep down, was
not pleasure, but fear. I do not criticize this feeling--I record it. I
thought myself quite good-looking ... no, the reason of my fear was a
feeling that my mind had been stripped of all disguise, and it suddenly
appeared to me redoubtable.
On the other hand, I let my hair grow.
That is all my new and still unoccupied self found to do. I expected
it eventually to give birth to actions that would astonish me--but
later--later, I said to myself, when it is more fully formed. In the
meantime, as I was obliged to live, I was reduced, like Descartes,
to a provisional mode of action. This was the reason Marceline did
not notice anything. The different look in my eyes, no doubt, and
the changed expression of my features, especially on the day when I
appeared without my beard, might perhaps have aroused her suspicions,
but she already loved me too much to see me as I was; and then I did
my best to reassure her. The important thing was that she should not
interfere with my renascent life, and to keep it from her eyes, I had
to dissemble.
For that matter, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was
not my ‘new self.’ So I told myself again and again as an excuse for
hiding him. In this way I showed her an image of myself, which by the
very fact of its remaining constant and faithful to the past, became
every day falser and falser.
For the time being, therefore, my relationship with Marceline remained
the same, though it was every day getting more intense by reason of
my growing love. My dissimulation (if that expression can be applied
to the need I felt of protecting my thoughts from her judgment),
my very dissimulation increased that love. I mean that it kept me
incessantly occupied with Marceline. At first, perhaps, this necessity
for falsehood cost me a little effort; but I soon came to understand
that the things that are reputed worst (lying, to mention only one)
are only difficult to do as long as one has never done them; but that
they become--and very quickly too--easy, pleasant and agreeable to do
over again, and soon even natural. So then, as is always the case when
one overcomes an initial disgust, I ended by taking pleasure in my
dissimulation itself, by protracting it, as if it afforded opportunity
for the play of my undiscovered faculties. And every day my life grew
richer and fuller, as I advanced towards a riper, more delicious
happiness.
viii
The road from Ravello to Sorrento is so beautiful that I had no desire
that morning to see anything more beautiful on earth. The sun-warmed
harshness of the rocks, the air’s abundance, the scents, the limpidity,
all filled me with the heavenly delight of living, and with such
contentment that there seemed to dwell in me nothing but a dancing
joy; memories and regrets, hope and desire, future and past were alike
silent; I was conscious of nothing in life but what the moment brought,
but what the moment carried away.
“O joys of the body!” I exclaimed; “unerring rhythm of the muscles!
health!...”
I had started early that morning, ahead of Marceline, for her calmer
pleasure would have cooled mine, just as her slower pace would have
kept me back. She was to join me by carriage at Positano, where we were
to lunch.
I was nearing Positano, when a noise of wheels, which sounded like the
bass accompaniment to a curious kind of singing, made me look round
abruptly. At first I could see nothing because of a turn in the road,
which in that place follows the edge of the cliff; then a carriage
driven at a frantic pace dashed suddenly into view; it was Marceline’s.
The driver was singing at the top of his voice, standing up on the
box and gesticulating violently, while he ferociously whipped his
frightened horse. What a brute the fellow was! He passed me so quickly
that I only just had time to get out of the way and my shouts failed
to make him stop.... I rushed after him, but the carriage was going
too fast. I was terrified that Marceline would fling herself out of
the carriage, and equally so that she would stay in it; a single jolt
might have thrown her into the sea.... All of a sudden the horse fell
down. Marceline jumped out and started running, but I was beside her
in a moment.... The driver, as soon as he saw me, broke into horrible
oaths. I was furious with the man; at his first word of abuse, I rushed
at him and flung him brutally from his box. I rolled on the ground with
him, but did not lose my advantage; he seemed dazed by his fall and was
soon still more so by a blow on the face which I gave him, when I saw
he meant to bite me. I did not let go of him, however, and pressed with
my knee on his chest, while I tried to pinion his arms. I looked at his
ugly face, which my fist had made still uglier; he spat, foamed, bled,
swore; oh, what a horrible creature! He deserved strangling, I thought.
And perhaps I should have strangled him--at any rate, I felt capable
of it; and I really believe it was only the thought of the police that
prevented me.
I succeeded, not without difficulty, in tying the madman up, and flung
him into the carriage like a sack.
Ah! what looks, what kisses Marceline and I exchanged when it was all
over. The danger had not been great; but I had had to show my strength,
and that in order to protect her. At the moment I felt I could have
given my life for her ... and given it wholly with joy.... The horse
got up. We left the drunkard at the bottom of the carriage, got on to
the box together, and drove as best we could, first to Positano, and
then to Sorrento.
It was that night that I first possessed Marceline.
Have you really understood or must I tell you again that I was as it
were new to things of love? Perhaps it was to its novelty that our
wedding night owed its grace.... For it seems to me, when I recall it,
that that first night of ours was our only one, the expectation and
the surprise of love added so much deliciousness to its pleasures--so
sufficient is a single night for the expression of the greatest love,
and so obstinately does my memory recall that night alone. It was a
flashing moment that caught and mingled our souls in its laughter....
But I believe there comes a point in love, once and no more, which
later on the soul seeks--yes, seeks in vain--to surpass; I believe that
happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it; that nothing
is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness. Alas! I
remember that night....
Our hotel was outside the town and surrounded with gardens and
orchards; a very large balcony opened out from our room and the
branches of the trees brushed against it. Our wide open windows let in
the dawn freely. I got up and bent tenderly over Marceline. She was
asleep; she looked as though she were smiling in her sleep; my greater
strength seemed to make me feel her greater delicacy and that her grace
was all fragility. Tumultuous thoughts whirled in my brain. I reflected
that she was telling the truth when she said I was her all; then,
“What do I do for her happiness?” I thought. “Almost all day and every
day I abandon her; her every hope is in me and I neglect her!... oh,
poor, poor Marceline!” My eyes filled with tears. I tried in vain to
seek an excuse in my past weakness; what need had I now for so much
care and attention, for so much egoism? Was I not now the stronger of
the two?
The smile had left her cheeks; daybreak, though it had touched
everything else with gold, suddenly showed her to me sad and pale; and
perhaps the approach of morning inclined me to be anxious. “Shall I in
my turn have to nurse you, fear for you, Marceline?” I inwardly cried.
I shuddered, and, overflowing with love, pity and tenderness, I placed
between her closed eyes the gentlest, the most lover-like, the most
pious of kisses.
ix
The few days we stayed at Sorrento were smiling days and very calm. Had
I ever enjoyed before such rest, such happiness? Should I ever enjoy
them again?... I spent almost all my time with Marceline; thinking
less of myself, I was able to think more of her, and now took as much
pleasure in talking to her as I had before taken in being silent.
I was at first astonished to feel that she looked upon our wandering
life, with which I professed myself perfectly satisfied, only as
something temporary; but its idleness soon became obvious to me; I
agreed it must not last; for the first time, thanks to the leisure
left me by my recovered health, there awoke in me a desire for work,
and I began to speak seriously of going home; from Marceline’s joy, I
realized she herself had long been thinking of it.
Meanwhile, when I again began to turn my attention to some of my old
historical studies, I found I no longer took the same pleasure in
them. As I have already told you, since my illness, I had come to
consider this abstract and neutral acquaintance with the past as mere
vanity. In other days I had worked at philological research, studying
more especially, for instance, the influence of the Goths on the
corruption of the Latin language, and had passed over and misunderstood
the figures of Theodoric, Cassiodorus and Amalasontha, and their
admirable and astonishing passions, in order to concentrate all my
enthusiasm on mere signs--the waste product of their lives.
At present, however, these same signs, and indeed philology as a whole,
were nothing more to me than a means of penetrating further into things
whose savage grandeur and nobility had begun to dawn on me. I resolved
to study this period further, to limit myself for a time to the last
years of the empire of the Goths, and to turn to account our coming
stay at Ravenna, the scene of its closing agonies.
But shall I confess that the figure of the young king Athalaric was
what attracted me most? I pictured to myself this fifteen-year-old
boy, worked on in secret by the Goths, in revolt against his mother
Amalasontha, rebelling against his Latin education and flinging aside
his culture, as a restive horse shakes off a troublesome harness;
I saw him preferring the society of the untutored Goths to that of
Cassiodorus--too old and too wise--plunging for a few years into a life
of violent and unbridled pleasures with rude companions of his own age,
and dying at eighteen, rotten and sodden with debauchery. I recognized
in this tragic impulse towards a wilder, more natural state, something
of what Marceline used to call my ‘crisis.’ I tried to find some
satisfaction in applying my mind to it, since it no longer occupied my
body; and in Athalaric’s horrible death, I did my best to read a lesson.
So we settled to spend a fortnight at Ravenna, visit Rome and Florence
rapidly, then, giving up Venice and Verona, hurry over the end of our
journey and not stop again before reaching Paris. I found a pleasure
I had never felt before in talking to Marceline about the future; we
were still a little undecided as to how we should spend the summer;
we were both tired of travelling and I was in need of absolute quiet
for my work; then we thought of a place of mine, situated between
Lisieux and Pont-L’Evêque, in the greenest of green Normandy; it had
formerly belonged to my mother, and I had passed several summers there
with her in my childhood, though I had never gone back to it since
her death. My father had left it in charge of a bailiff, an old man
by now, who collected the rents and sent them to us regularly. I had
kept enchanting memories of a large and very pleasant house standing
in a garden watered by running streams; it was called La Morinière; I
thought it would be good to live there.
I spoke of spending the following winter in Rome, but as a worker this
time, not a tourist.... But this last plan was soon upset. Amongst the
number of letters we found waiting for us at Naples, was one containing
an unexpected piece of information--a chair at the Collège de France
had fallen vacant and my name had been several times mentioned in
connection with it; it was only a temporary post which would leave me
free in the future; the friend who wrote advised me of the few steps to
be taken in case I should accept, which he strongly advised me to do.
I hesitated to bind myself to what at first seemed to me slavery; but
then I reflected that it might be interesting to put forward my ideas
on Cassiodorus in a course of lectures.... The pleasure I should be
giving Marceline finally decided me, and once my decision taken, I saw
only its advantages.
My father had several connections in the learned world of Rome and
Florence, with whom I had myself been in correspondence. They gave
me every facility for making the necessary researches in Ravenna and
elsewhere; I had no thoughts now but for my work. Marceline, by her
constant consideration and in a thousand charming ways, did all she
could to help me.
Our happiness during those last days of travel was so equable, so calm,
that there is nothing to say about it. Men’s finest works bear the
persistent marks of pain. What would there be in a story of happiness?
Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. I have now
told you what prepared it.
SECOND PART
i
We arrived at La Morinière in the first days of July, having stayed
in Paris only just long enough to do our shopping and pay a very few
visits.
La Morinière is situated, as I have told you, between Lisieux and
Pont-L’Evêque in the shadiest, wettest country I know. Innumerable
narrow coombes and gently rounded hills terminate near the wide ‘Vallée
d’Auge,’ which then stretches in an uninterrupted plain as far as the
sea. There is no horizon; some few copse-woods, filled with mysterious
shade, some few fields of corn, but chiefly meadow land--softly
sloping pastures, where the lush grass is mown twice a year, where the
apple-trees, when the sun is low, join shadow to shadow, where flocks
and herds graze untended; in every hollow there is water--pond or pool
or river; from every side comes the continual murmur of streams.
Oh, how well I remembered the house! its blue roofs, its walls of
stone and brick, its moat, the reflections in the still waters....
It was an old house which would easily have lodged a dozen persons;
Marceline, three servants, and myself, who occasionally lent a helping
hand, found it all we could do to animate a part of it. Our old
bailiff, who was called Bocage, had already done his best to prepare
some of the rooms; the old furniture awoke from its twenty years’
slumber; everything had remained just as I remembered it--the panelling
not too dilapidated, the rooms easy to live in. Bocage, to welcome
us, had put flowers in all the vases he could lay hands on. He had
had the large courtyard and the nearest paths in the park weeded and
raked. When we arrived, the sun’s last rays were falling on the house,
and from the valley facing it a mist had arisen which hovered there
motionless, masking and revealing the river. We had not well arrived,
when all at once I recognized the scent of the grass; and when I heard
the piercing cries of the swallows as they flew round the house, the
whole past suddenly rose up, as though it had been lying in wait for my
approach to close over and submerge me.
In a few days the house was more or less comfortable; I might have
settled down to work; but I delayed, at first still listening to the
voice of my past as it recalled its slightest details to my memory, and
then too much absorbed by an unwonted emotion. Marceline, a week after
our arrival, confided to me that she was expecting a child.
Thenceforward I thought I owed her redoubled care, and that she had a
right to greater tenderness than ever; at any rate during the first
weeks that followed her confidence, I spent almost every minute of the
day in her company. We used to go and sit near the wood, on a bench
where in old days I had been used to sit with my mother; there, each
moment brought us a richer pleasure, each hour passed with a smoother
flow. If no distinct memory of this period of my life stands out for
me, it is not because I am less deeply grateful for it--but because
everything in it melted and mingled into a state of changeless ease, in
which evening joined morning without a break, in which day passed into
day without a surprise.
I gradually set to work again with a quiet mind, in possession of
itself, certain of its strength, looking calmly and confidently to the
future; with a will that seemed softened, as though by harkening to the
counsels of that temperate land.
There can be no doubt, I thought, that the example of such a land,
where everything is ripening towards fruition and harvest, must
have the best of influences on me. I looked forward with admiring
wonder to the tranquil promise of the great oxen and fat cows that
grazed in those opulent meadows. The apple-trees, planted in order on
the sunniest slopes of the hill-sides, gave hopes this summer of a
magnificent crop. I saw in my mind’s eye the rich burden of fruit which
would soon bow down their branches. From this ordered abundance, this
joyous acceptance of service imposed, this smiling cultivation, had
arisen a harmony that was the result not of chance but of intention,
a rhythm, a beauty, at once human and natural, in which the teeming
fecundity of nature and the wise effort of man to regulate it, were
combined in such perfect agreement, that one no longer knew which was
most admirable. What would man’s effort be worth, thought I, without
the savagery of the power it controls? What would the wild rush of
these upwelling forces become without the intelligent effort that banks
it, curbs it, leads it by such pleasant ways to its outcome of luxury?
And I let myself go in a dream of lands where every force should be so
regulated, all expenditure so compensated, all exchanges so strict,
that the slightest waste would be appreciable; then I applied my
dream to life and imagined a code of ethics which should institute the
scientific and perfect utilization of a man’s self by a controlling
intelligence.
Where had my rebelliousness vanished to? Where was it hiding itself? It
seemed never to have existed, so tranquil was I. The rising tide of my
love had swept it all away.
Meanwhile old Bocage bustled round us; he gave directions, he
superintended, he advised; his need of feeling himself indispensable
was tiresome in the extreme. In order not to hurt his feelings I
had to go over his accounts and listen for hours to his endless
explanations. Even that was not enough; I had to visit the estate with
him. His sententious truisms, his continual speeches, his evident
self-satisfaction, the display he made of his honesty drove me to
exasperation; he became more and more persistent and there was nothing
I would not have done to recover my liberty, when an unexpected
occurrence brought about a change in my relations with him. One evening
Bocage announced that he was expecting his son Charles the next day.
I said, “Oh!” rather casually, having so far troubled myself very
little as to any children Bocage might or might not have; then, seeing
my indifference offended him and that he expected some expression of
interest and surprise, “Where has he been?” I asked.
“In a model farm near Alençon,” answered Bocage.
“How old is he now? About...?” I went on, calculating the age of this
son, of whose existence I had so far been totally unaware, and leaving
him time enough to interrupt me....
“Past seventeen,” went on Bocage. “He was not much more than four when
your father’s good lady died. Ah! He’s a big lad now; he’ll know more
than his dad soon....” Once Bocage was started, nothing could stop him,
not even the boredom I very plainly showed.
I had forgotten all about this, when the next evening, Charles, newly
arrived from his journey, came to pay his respects to Marceline and me.
He was a fine strong young fellow, so exuberantly healthy, so lissom,
so well-made, that not even the frightful town clothes he had put on
in our honour could make him look ridiculous; his shyness hardly added
anything to the fine natural red of his cheeks. He did not look more
than fifteen, his eyes were so bright and so childlike; he expressed
himself clearly, without embarrassment, and, unlike his father, did
not speak when he had nothing to say. I cannot remember what we talked
about that first evening; I was so busy looking at him that I found
nothing to say and let Marceline do all the talking. But next day, for
the first time, I did not wait for old Bocage to come and fetch me, in
order to go down to the farm, where I knew they were starting work on a
pond that had to be repaired.
This pond--almost as big as a lake--was leaking. The leak had been
located and had to be cemented. In order to do this, the pond had first
to be drained, a thing that had not been done for fifteen years. It
was full of carp and tench, great creatures, some of them, that lay at
the bottom of the pond without ever coming up. I wanted to stock the
moat with some of these fish and give some to the labourers, so that
upon this occasion the pleasure of a fishing party was added to the
day’s work, as could be seen from the extraordinary animation of the
farm; some children from the neighbourhood had joined the workers and
Marceline herself had promised to come down later.
The water had already been sinking for some time when I got there.
Every now and then a great ripple suddenly stirred its surface and
the brown backs of the disturbed fish came into sight. The children
paddling in the puddles round the edges, amused themselves with
catching gleaming handfuls of small fry, which they flung into pails
of clear water. The water in the pond was muddy and soon became more
and more thick and troubled owing to the agitation of the fish. Their
abundance was beyond all expectation; four farm labourers, dipping
into the water at random, pulled them out in handfuls. I was sorry
that Marceline had not arrived and decided to run and fetch her, when
a shout signalled the appearance of the first eels. But no-one could
succeed in catching them; they slipped between the men’s fingers.
Charles, who up till then had been standing beside his father on the
bank, could restrain himself no longer; he took off his shoes and socks
in a moment, flung aside his coat and waistcoat, then, tucking up his
trousers and shirtsleeves as high as they would go, stepped resolutely
into the mud. I immediately did the same.
“Charles!” I cried, “it was a good thing you came back yesterday,
wasn’t it?” He was already too busy with his fishing to answer, but he
looked at me, laughing. I called him after a moment to help me catch a
big eel; we joined hands in trying to hold it.... Then came another and
another; our faces were splashed with mud; sometimes the ooze suddenly
gave way beneath us and we sank into it up to our waists; we were soon
drenched. In the ardour of the sport, we barely exchanged a shout or
two, a word or two; but at the end of the day, I became aware I was
saying ‘thou’ to Charles, without having any clear idea when I had
begun. Our work in common had taught us more about each other than a
long conversation. Marceline had not come yet; she did not come at all,
but I ceased to regret her absence; I felt as though she would have a
little spoilt our pleasure.
Early next morning, I went down to the farm to look for Charles. We
took our way together to the woods.
As I myself knew very little about my estate and was not much
distressed at knowing so little, I was astonished to find how much
Charles knew about it and about the way it was farmed; he told me what
I was barely aware of, namely, that I had six farmer-tenants, that
the rents might have amounted to sixteen or eighteen thousand francs,
and that if they actually amounted to barely half that sum, it was
because almost everything was eaten up by repairs of all sorts and
by the payment of middlemen. His way of smiling as he looked at the
fields in cultivation soon made me suspect that the management of the
estate was not quite so good as I had at first thought and as Bocage
had given me to understand; I pressed Charles further on this subject,
and the intelligence of practical affairs which had so exasperated me
in Bocage, amused me in a child like him. We continued our walks day
after day; the estate was large and when we had visited every corner
of it, we began again with more method. Charles did not hide his
irritation at the sight of certain fields, certain pieces of land that
were overgrown with gorse, thistles and weeds; he instilled into me his
hatred of fallow land and set me dreaming with him of a better mode of
agriculture.
“But,” I said to him at first, “who is it that suffers from this lack
of cultivation? Isn’t it only the farmer himself? However much the
profits of his farm vary, his rent still remains the same.”
Charles was a little annoyed: “You understand nothing about it,” he
ventured to say--and I smiled. “You think only of income and won’t
consider that the capital is deteriorating. Your land is slowly losing
its value by being badly cultivated.”
“If it were to bring in more by being better cultivated, I expect the
farmers would set about it. They are too eager for gain not to make as
much profit as they can.”
“You are not counting,” continued Charles, “the cost of increased
labour. These neglected bits of land are sometimes a long way from the
farms. True, if they were cultivated, they would bring in nothing or
next to nothing, but at any rate, they would keep from spoiling.”
And so the conversation went on. Sometimes for an hour on end we seemed
to be interminably repeating the same things as we walked over the
fields; but I listened, and little by little gathered information.
“After all, it’s your father’s business,” I said one day impatiently.
Charles blushed a little.
“My father is old,” he said; “he has a great deal to do already, seeing
to the upkeep of the buildings, collecting the rents and so on. It’s
not his business to make reforms.”
“And what reforms would _you_ make?” I asked. But at that he became
evasive and pretended he knew nothing about it; it was only by
insisting that I forced him to explain.
“I should take away all the uncultivated fields from the tenants,”
he ended by advising. “If the farmers leave part of their land
uncultivated, it’s a proof they don’t need it all in order to pay you;
or if they say they must keep it all, I should raise their rents. All
the people hereabouts are idle,” he added.
Of the six farms that belonged to me, the one I most liked visiting
was situated on a hill that overlooked La Morinière; it was called La
Valterie; the farmer who rented it was a pleasant enough fellow and I
used to like talking to him. Nearer La Morinière, was a farm called
the ‘home farm,’ which was let on a system that left Bocage, pending
the landlord’s absence, in possession of part of the cattle. Now that
my doubts had been awakened, I began to suspect honest Bocage himself,
if not of cheating me, at any rate, of allowing other people to cheat
me. One stable and one cow-house were, it is true, reserved to me,
but it soon dawned upon me that they had merely been invented so as
to allow the farmer to feed his cows and horses with my oats and hay.
So far, I had listened indulgently to the very unconvincing reports
which Bocage gave me from time to time of deaths, malformations and
diseases. I swallowed everything. It had not then occurred to me that
it was sufficient for one of the farmer’s cows to fall ill for it to
become one of my cows, nor that it was sufficient for one of my cows to
do well for it to become one of the farmer’s; but a few rash remarks of
Charles’s, a few observations of my own began to enlighten me, and my
mind once given the hint, worked quickly.
Marceline, at my suggestion, went over the accounts minutely, but could
find nothing wrong with them; Bocage’s honesty was displayed on every
page. What was to be done? Let things be. At any rate, I now watched
the management of the cattle in a state of suppressed indignation, but
without letting it be too obvious.
I had four horses and ten cows--quite enough to be a considerable
worry to me. Among my four horses was one which was still called ‘the
colt,’ though it was more than three years old; it was now being broken
in; I was beginning to take an interest in it, when one fine morning
I was informed that it was perfectly unmanageable, that it would be
impossible ever to do anything with it and that the best thing would
be to get rid of it. As if on purpose to convince me of this, in case I
had doubted it, it had been made to break the front of a small cart and
had cut its hocks in doing so.
I had much ado that day to keep my temper, but what helped me was
Bocage’s obvious embarrassment. After all, thought I, he is more weak
than anything else; it is the men who are to blame, but they want a
guiding hand over them.
I went into the yard to see the colt; one of the men who had been
beating it began to stroke it as soon as he heard me coming; I
pretended to have seen nothing. I did not know much about horses, but
this colt seemed to me a fine animal; it was half-bred, light bay in
colour and remarkably elegant in shape, with a very bright eye and a
very light mane and tail. I made sure it had not been injured, insisted
on its cuts being properly dressed and went away without another word.
That evening, as soon as I saw Charles, I tried to find out what he
personally thought of the colt.
“I think he’s a perfectly quiet beast,” he said, “but they don’t know
how to manage him; they’ll drive him wild.”
“And how would _you_ manage him?”
“Will you let me have him for a week, Sir? I’ll answer for him.”
“And what will you do?”
“You will see.”
The next morning, Charles took the colt down to a corner of the field
that was shaded by a superb walnut-tree and bordered by the river;
I went too, together with Marceline. It is one of my most vivid
recollections. Charles had tied the colt with a rope a few yards long
to a stake firmly planted in the ground. The mettlesome creature had,
it seems, objected for some time with great spirit; but now, tired and
quieted, it was going round more calmly; the elasticity of its trot was
astonishing and as delightful and engaging to watch as a dance. Charles
stood in the centre of the circle and avoided the rope at every round
with a sudden leap, exciting or calming the beast with his voice; he
held a long whip in his hand, but I did not see him use it. Everything
about his look and movements--his youthfulness, his delight--gave his
work the fervent and beautiful aspect of pleasure. Suddenly--I have no
idea how--he was astride the animal; it had slackened its pace and then
stopped; he had patted it a little and then, all of a sudden, I saw he
was on horseback, sure of himself, barely holding its mane, laughing,
leaning forward, still patting and stroking its neck. The colt had
hardly resisted for a moment; then it began its even trot again, so
handsome, so easy, that I envied Charles and told him so.
“A few days’ more training and the saddle won’t tickle him at all; in a
fortnight, Sir, your lady herself won’t be afraid to mount him; he’ll
be as quiet as a lamb.”
It was quite true; a few days later, the horse allowed himself to
be stroked, harnessed, led, without any signs of restiveness; and
Marceline might really have ridden him if her state of health had
permitted.
“You ought to try him yourself, Sir,” said Charles.
I should never have done so alone; but Charles suggested saddling
another of the farm horses for himself, and the pleasure of
accompanying him proved irresistible.
How grateful I was to my mother for having sent me to a riding-school
when I was a boy! The recollection of those long-ago lessons stood
me in good stead. The sensation of feeling myself on horseback was
not too strange; after the first few moments, I had no tremors and
felt perfectly at ease. Charles’s mount was heavier; it was not pure
bred, but far from bad-looking, and above all, Charles rode it well.
We got into the habit of going out every day; for choice, we started
in the early morning, through grass that was still bright with dew;
we rode to the limit of the woods; the dripping hazels, shaken by our
passage, drenched us with their showers; suddenly the horizon opened
out; there, in front of us, lay the vast Vallée d’Auge and far in the
distance could be divined the presence of the sea. We stayed a moment
without dismounting; the rising sun coloured the mists, parted them,
dispersed them; then, we set off again at a brisk trot; we lingered a
little at the farm, where the work was only just beginning; we enjoyed
for a moment the proud pleasure of being earlier than the labourers--of
looking down on them; then, abruptly, we left them; I was home again at
La Morinière just as Marceline was beginning to get up.
I used to come in drunk with the open air, dazed with speed, my limbs
a little stiff with a delicious fatigue, all health and appetite and
freshness. Marceline approved, encouraged my fancy. I went straight to
her room, still in my gaiters, and found her lingering in bed, waiting
for me; I came bringing with me a scent of wet leaves, which she
said she liked. And she listened while I told her of our ride, of the
awakening of the fields, of the recommencing of the day’s labour....
She took as much delight, it seemed, in feeling me live as in living
herself. Soon I trespassed on this delight too; our rides grew longer,
and sometimes I did not come in till nearly noon.
I kept the afternoons and evenings, however, as much as possible for
the preparation of my lectures. My work on them made good progress;
I was satisfied with it and thought they might perhaps be worth
publishing later as a book. By a kind of natural reaction, the more
regular and orderly my life became and the more pleasure I took in
establishing order about me--the more attracted I felt by the rude
ethics of the Goths. With a boldness, for which I was afterwards
blamed, I took the line throughout my lectures of making the apology
and eulogy of non-culture; but, at the same time, in my private life,
I was laboriously doing all I could to control, if not to suppress,
everything about me and within me that in any way suggested it. How far
did I not push this wisdom--or this folly?
Two of my tenants whose leases expired at Christmas time, came to me
with a request for renewal; it was a matter of signing the usual
preliminary agreement. Strong in Charles’s assurances and encouraged by
his daily conversations, I awaited the farmers with resolution. They
on the other hand, equally strong in the conviction that tenants are
hard to replace, began by asking for their rents to be lowered. Their
stupefaction was great when I read them the agreement I had myself
drawn up, in which I not only refused to lower the rents but also
withdrew from the farms certain portions of land, which I said they
were making no use of. They pretended at first to take it as a laughing
matter--I must be joking. What could I do with the land? It was worth
nothing; and if they made no use of it, it was because no use could be
made of it.... Then, seeing I was serious, they turned obstinate; I was
obstinate too. They thought they would frighten me by threatening to
leave. It was what I was waiting for:
“All right! Go if you like! I won’t keep you,” I said, tearing the
agreement up before their eyes.
So there I was, with more than two hundred acres left on my hands.
I had planned for some time past to give the chief management of
this land to Bocage, thinking that in this way I should be giving
it indirectly to Charles; my intention also was to look after it a
good deal myself; but in reality, I reflected very little about it;
the very risk of the undertaking tempted me. The tenants would not be
turning out before Christmas; between this and then we should have
time to look about us. I told Charles; his delight annoyed me; he
could not hide it; it made me feel more than ever that he was much
too young. We were already pressed for time; it was the season when
the reaping of the crops leaves the fields empty for early ploughing.
By an established custom, the outgoing tenant works side by side with
the incoming; the former quits the land bit by bit, as soon as he has
carried his crops. I was afraid the two farmers I had dismissed would
somehow revenge themselves on me; but, on the contrary, they made a
pretence of being perfectly amiable (I only learnt later how much they
benefited by this). I took advantage of their complaisance to go up to
their land--which was soon going to be mine--every morning and evening.
Autumn was beginning; more labourers had to be hired to get on with
the ploughing and sowing; we had bought harrows, rollers, ploughs; I
rode about on horseback, superintending and directing the work, taking
pleasure in ordering people about and in using my authority.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring meadows, the apples were being gathered;
they dropped from the trees and lay rolling in the thick grass; never
had there been a more abundant crop; there were not enough pickers;
they had to be brought in from the neighbouring villages and taken on
for a week; Charles and I sometimes amused ourselves by helping them.
Some of the men beat the branches with sticks to bring down the late
fruit; the fruit that fell of itself was gathered into separate heaps;
often the overripe apples lay bruised and crushed in the long grass so
that it was impossible to walk without stepping on them. The smell that
rose from the ground was acrid and sickly and mingled with the smell of
the ploughed land.
Autumn was advancing. The mornings of the last fine days are
the freshest, the most limpid of all. There were times when the
moisture-laden atmosphere painted all the distances blue, made them
look more distant still, turned a short walk into a day’s journey;
and the whole country looked bigger; at times again the abnormal
transparency of the air brought the horizon closer; it seemed as though
it might be reached by one stroke of the wing; and I could not tell
which of the two states filled me with a heavier languor. My work was
almost finished--at least, so I told myself, as an encouragement to be
idle. The time I did not spend at the farm, I spent with Marceline.
Together we went out into the garden; we walked slowly, she languidly
hanging on my arm; the bench where we went to sit looked over the
valley, which the evening gradually filled with light. She had a tender
way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay so till evening,
motionless, speechless, letting the day sink and melt within us.... In
what a cloak of silence our love had already learnt to wrap itself!
For already Marceline’s love was stronger than words--for sometimes
her love was almost an anguish to me. As a breath of wind sometimes
ripples the surface of a tranquil pool, the slightest emotion was
visible in her face; she was listening now to the new life mysteriously
quivering within her, and I leant over her as over deep transparent
waters where, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but
love. Ah! if this was still happiness, I know I did my best to hold
it, as one tries--in vain--to hold the water that slips between one’s
joined hands; but already I felt, close beside my happiness, something
not happiness, something indeed that coloured my love, but with the
colours of autumn.
Autumn was passing. Every morning the grass was wetter, till it no
longer dried in the fringe of the woods on the shady side of the
valley; at the first streak of dawn, it was white. The ducks on the
waters of the moat fluttered and flapped their wings; they grew
fiercely agitated; sometimes they rose together, calling loudly, and
flew in a noisy flight right round La Morinière. One morning we missed
them. Bocage had shut them up. Charles told me that every autumn at
migration time they had to be shut up in this way. And a few days later
the weather changed. One evening, suddenly, there came a great blast,
a breath from the sea, stormy, steady, bringing with it cold and rain,
carrying off the birds of passage. Marceline’s condition, the business
of settling into a new apartment, the work entailed by my lectures,
would in any case have soon called us back to town. The bad weather,
which began early, drove us away at once.
It is true that the farm affairs were to bring me back in November. I
was greatly vexed to hear of Bocage’s plans for the winter; he told
me he wished to send Charles back to his model farm where, so he
declared, he had still a great deal to learn; I talked to him long,
used all the arguments I could think of, but I could not make him
budge; at the outside, he consented to shorten Charles’s training by
a trifle, so as to allow him to come back a little sooner. Bocage did
not conceal from me that the running of the two farms would be a matter
of no small difficulty; but he had in view, so he said, two highly
trustworthy peasants whom he intended to employ; they would be partly
farmers, partly tenants, partly labourers; the thing was too unusual in
these parts for him to hope much good would come of it; but, he said,
it was my own wish. This conversation took place towards the end of
October. In the first days of November, we moved to Paris.
ii
It was in S... Street, near Passy, that we took up our residence. The
apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline’s brothers,
and which we had visited when we had last passed through Paris, was
much bigger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was a
little uneasy, not only at the increased rent, but at all the other
expenses we should certainly be led into. I countered all her fears by
pretending I had a horror of anything temporary; I forced myself to
believe in this feeling and deliberately exaggerated it. Certainly, the
cost of furnishing and arranging the apartment would exceed our income
for the present year, but our fortune, which was already large, was
sure to increase still further; I counted on my lectures for this, on
the publication of my book and, such was my folly, on the profits from
my new farms. In consequence, I stopped short at no expense, telling
myself at each new one that here was another tie and thinking also
that by these means I should suppress every vagabond inclination I
felt--or feared I might feel--within me.
For the first few days, our time was taken up from morning to night
by shopping and other business of the sort; and though eventually,
Marceline’s brother very obligingly offered to do as much as he
could for us, it was not long before Marceline felt thoroughly tired
out. Then, as soon as we were settled in, instead of resting as she
should have done, she felt obliged to receive visitors; they flocked
to see us now because we had been absent from Paris during the
first days of our marriage, and Marceline, who had become unused to
society, was incapable of getting rid of them quickly or of shutting
her doors altogether. When I came home in the evening, I found her
exhausted, and, though her fatigue, which seemed only natural, caused
me no anxiety, I did my best to lessen it; often receiving visits in
her stead, which was very little to my taste, and sometimes paying
them--which was still less so.
I have never been a brilliant talker; the frivolity, the wit, the
spirit of fashionable drawing-rooms, were things in which I could
take no pleasure; yet in old days I had frequented some of these
salons--but how long ago that seemed! What had happened since then?
In other people’s company, I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at
once bored and boring.... By a singular piece of ill-luck, you, whom
I considered my only real friends, were absent from Paris and not
expected back for long. Should I have been able to speak to you more
openly? Would you have perhaps understood me better than I did myself?
But what did I know at that time of all that was growing up within me,
of all I am now telling you about? The future seemed to me absolutely
assured and I had never thought myself more master of it.
And even if I had been more perspicacious, what help against myself
should I have found in Hubert, Didier or Maurice, or in all the
others whom you know and judge as I do? I very soon discovered,
alas, the impossibility of their understanding me. In our very first
conversations, I found myself forced to impersonate a false character,
to resemble the man they imagined I still was; and for convenience’
sake, I pretended to have the thoughts and tastes with which they
credited me. One cannot both be sincere and seem so.
I was rather more willing to renew my acquaintance with the people of
my own profession--archaeologists and philologists--but I found very
little more pleasure and no more emotion in talking to them than in
consulting a good dictionary. I hoped at first to find a rather more
direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if
they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did
not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live--contented
themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering
life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing. I could not blame
them for it; and I do not affirm that the mistake was not mine.... As
to that, what did I mean by ‘living’? That is exactly what I wanted to
find out. One and another talked cleverly of the different events of
life--never of what is at the back of them.
As for the few philosophers whose business it should have been to
instruct me, I had long known, what to expect of them; whether
mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far away as possible
from the disturbing reality and had no more concern for it than the
algebraist has for the existence of the quantities he measures.
When I got back to Marceline, I did not conceal from her how tedious I
found all these acquaintances.
“They are all alike,” I said to her. “When I talk to one, I feel as if
I were talking to the whole lot.”
“But, my dear,” said Marceline, “you can’t expect each of them to be
different from all the others.”
“The greater their likeness to each other, the more unlike they are to
me.”
And then I went on with a sigh, “Not one of them has managed to be
ill. They are alive--they seem to be alive, and yet not to know they
are alive. For that matter, since I have been in their company, I have
ceased to be alive myself. Today, amongst other days, what have I done?
I had to leave you about nine o’clock. I had just a bare moment for a
little reading before I went out; it was the only satisfactory moment
of the day. Your brother was waiting for me at the solicitor’s, and
after the solicitor’s, he insisted on sticking to me; I had to see the
upholsterer with him; he was really a nuisance at the cabinet-maker’s
and I only got rid of him at Gaston’s; I had lunch in the neighbourhood
with Philip and then I met Louis at a café and went with him to
Theodore’s absurd lecture, and paid him compliments when it was over;
then, in order to get out of his invitation for Sunday, I had to go
with him to Arthur’s; then to a water-colour exhibition with Arthur;
then left cards on Albertine and Julie.... I came in thoroughly
exhausted and found you as tired as myself, after visits from Adeline,
Marthe, Jeanne and Sophie.... And now, in the evening, as I look back
on my day, it seems to me so vain and so empty, that I long to have it
back and live it over again hour by hour--and the thought of it makes
me inclined to weep.”
And yet I should not have been able to say what I meant by ‘living,’
nor whether the very simple secret of my trouble was not that I had
acquired a taste for a more spacious, breezier life, one that was
less hemmed in, less regardful of others; the secret seemed to me
much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one
who has known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people,
like a man who has risen from the grave. And at first I merely felt
rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very
different feeling. I had known no pride, I repeat, when the publication
of my Essay had brought me such praise. Was it pride now? Perhaps; but
at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather,
for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated
me--distinguished me--from other people was crucial; what no-one said,
what no-one could say but myself, _that_ it was my task to say.
My lectures began soon after; the subject was congenial and I poured
into the first of them all my newly born passion. Speaking of the later
Latin civilization, I depicted artistic culture as welling up in a
whole people, like a secretion, which is at first a sign of plethora,
of a superabundance of health, but which afterwards stiffens, hardens,
forbids the perfect contact of the mind with nature, hides under the
persistent appearance of life a diminution of life, turns into an
outside sheath, in which the cramped mind languishes and pines, in
which at last it dies. Finally, pushing my thought to its logical
conclusion, I showed Culture, born of life, as the destroyer of life.
The historians blamed a tendency, as they phrased it, to too rapid
generalization. Other people blamed my method; and those who
complimented me were those who understood me least.
* * * * *
It was at the end of my lecture that I came across Ménalque again for
the first time. I had never seen much of him, and shortly before my
marriage, he had started on one of those distant voyages of discovery
which sometimes kept him from us for over a year. In the old days, I
had never much liked him; he seemed proud and he took no interest in my
existence. I was therefore astonished to see him at my first lecture.
His very insolence, which had at first held me aloof from him, pleased
me, and I thought the smile he gave me all the more charming because
I knew he smiled rarely. Recently, an absurd--a shameful--lawsuit had
caused a scandal and given the newspapers a convenient occasion to
drag him through the mud; those whom he had offended by his disdain
and superiority seized this pretext to revenge themselves; and what
irritated them most was that he appeared not to care.
“One must allow other people to be right,” he used to say when he was
insulted, “it consoles them for not being anything else.”
But ‘good society’ was indignant and people who, as they say, ‘respect
themselves,’ thought it their duty to turn their backs on him, and
so pay him back his contempt. This was an extra encouragement to me;
feeling myself attracted by a secret influence, I went up to him and
embraced him before everyone.
When they saw to whom I was talking, the last intruders withdrew; I was
left alone with Ménalque.
After the irritating criticisms and inept compliments I had been
listening to, his few words on the subject of my lecture were very
soothing.
“You are burning what you used to adore,” said he. “Very good. It is a
little late in the day, but never mind, the fire is all the fiercer. I
am not sure whether I altogether understand you. You make me curious. I
don’t much care about talking, but I should like to talk to you. Come
and dine with me tonight.”
“Dear Ménalque,” I answered, “you seem to forget that I am married.”
“Yes,” he answered, “quite true. The frank cordiality with which you
were not afraid to greet me made me think you might be free.”
I was afraid I might have wounded him; still more so of seeming weak,
and I told him I would join him after dinner.
* * * * *
Ménalque never did more than pass through Paris on his way to somewhere
else; he always stayed in a hotel. On this occasion he had had several
rooms fitted up for him as a private apartment; he had his own
servants, took his meals apart, lived apart; stuffs and hangings of
great value which he had brought back from Nepal had been hung on the
walls and thrown over the furniture, whose commonplace ugliness was an
offence to him. He was dirtying them out, he said, before presenting
them to a museum. My haste to rejoin him had been so great, that I
found him still at table when I came in; as I excused myself for
disturbing his meal:
“But I have no intention of letting you disturb it,” he said, “and I
expect you to let me finish it. If you had come to dinner, I should
have given you some Chiraz--the wine that Hafiz celebrated--but it is
too late now; one must only drink it fasting; but you’ll take some
liqueur, won’t you?”
I accepted, thinking he would take some too, and when only one glass
was brought in, I expressed astonishment.
“Forgive me,” he said, “but I hardly ever drink such things.”
“Are you afraid of getting drunk?”
“Oh!” replied he, “on the contrary! But I consider sobriety a more
powerful intoxication--in which I keep my lucidity.”
“And you pour the drink out for others?”
He smiled.
“I cannot,” said he, “expect everyone to have my virtues. It’s good
enough to meet with my vices....”
“You smoke, at any rate?”
“No, not even that. Smoking is an impersonal, negative, too easily
achieved kind of drunkenness; what I want from drunkenness is an
enhancement not a diminution of life. But that’s enough. Do you know
where I have just come from? Biskra. I heard you had been staying
there, and I thought I would like to follow up your tracks. What
could the blindfolded scholar, the learned bookworm have come to do
at Biskra? It’s my habit to be discreet only about things that are
confided to me; for things that I find out myself, I’ll admit that I
have an unbounded curiosity. So I searched, poked about, questioned
wherever I could. My indiscretion was rewarded, since it has made me
wish to meet you again; since instead of the learned man of habit you
seemed to be in the old days, I know now that you are ... it’s for you
to tell me what.”
I felt myself blushing.
“What did you find out about me, Ménalque?”
“Do you want to know? But there’s no need to be alarmed! You know your
friends and mine well enough to be sure there is no-one I can talk to
about you. You saw how well your lecture was understood?”
“But,” said I, a little impatiently, “there’s nothing yet to prove that
I can talk to you better than to them. Come on then! What is it you
found out about me?”
“First of all, that you had been ill.”
“But there’s nothing in that to ...”
“Oh, yes! That in itself is very important. Then I was told you liked
going out alone, without a book (that’s what started me wondering), or,
when you were not alone, you preferred the company of children to that
of your wife ... Don’t blush like that, or I shan’t go on.”
“Go on without looking at me.”
“One of the children--his name was Moktir, if I remember right--(I
have scarcely ever seen a handsomer boy, and never a greater little
swindler) seemed to have a good deal to say about you. I enticed him--I
bribed him to confide in me ... not an easy thing to do, as you know,
for I think it was only another lie, when he said he was not lying that
time.... Tell me whether what he told me about you is true.”
In the meantime, Ménalque had got up and taken a little box out of a
drawer.
“Are these scissors yours?” he said, opening the box and taking out
a shapeless, twisted, rusty object, which, however, I had little
difficulty in recognizing as the pair of scissors Moktir had purloined.
“Yes, they are; they were my wife’s scissors.”
“He pretends he took them when your head was turned away one day he
was alone in the room with you; but that’s not the point; he pretends
that at the moment he was hiding them in his burnous, he saw you were
watching him in the glass and caught the reflection of your eyes
looking at him. You saw the theft and said nothing! Moktir was very
much astonished at this silence--and so was I.”
“And I am too at what you have just said. What! Do you mean to say he
knew I had caught him at it?”
“It isn’t that that matters; you were trying to be more cunning than
he; it’s a game at which children like that will always get the better
of us. You thought you had him, and in reality, it was he who had
you.... But that’s not what matters. I should like an explanation of
your silence.”
“I should like one myself.”
Some time passed without a word from either of us. Ménalque, who was
pacing up and down the room, lighted a cigarette absent-mindedly and
then immediately threw it away.
“The fact is,” said he, “there’s a ‘sense,’ as people say, ‘a sense’
which seems to be lacking in you, my dear Michel.”
“The ‘moral sense,’” said I, forcing myself to smile.
“Oh, no! simply the sense of property.”
“You don’t seem to have much of it yourself.”
“I have so little of it that, as you see, nothing in this place is
mine; not even--or rather, especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have
a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and
there’s nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life
well enough to want to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my
riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which
means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify my life. I will not say I
like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand
at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health....”
“Then what do you blame me for?” I interrupted.
“Oh, how little you understand me, my dear Michel; for once that I am
foolish enough to try and make a profession of faith!... If I care
little for the approbation or disapprobation of men, Michel, it is not
in order to approve or disapprove in my turn; those words have very
little sense for me. I spoke of myself too much just now.... I was
carried away by thinking you understood me.... I simply meant to say
that, for a person who has not got the sense of property, you seem to
possess a great deal. Isn’t that rather serious?”
“And what is this great deal I possess?”
“Nothing, if you take it in that way.... But are you not beginning a
course of lectures? Have you not an estate in Normandy? Have you not
just settled yourself--and luxuriously too--in an apartment at Passy?
You are married? Are you not expecting a child?”
“Well!” said I, impatiently, “it merely proves that I have succeeded in
making my life more dangerous than yours.”
“Yes, merely,” repeated Ménalque ironically; then, turning abruptly, he
put out his hand:
“Well, good-bye now; I don’t think any more talk tonight would be of
much use. But I shall see you again soon.”
Some time went by before I saw him again.
Fresh work, fresh preoccupations took up my time; an Italian scholar
brought to my notice some new documents he had discovered which were
important for my lectures and which I had to study at some length.
The feeling that my first lesson had been misunderstood stimulated me
to shed a different and more powerful light on the succeeding ones;
I was thus led to enounce as a doctrine what I had at first only
tentatively suggested as an ingenious hypothesis. How many assertions
owe their strength to the lucky circumstance that as suggestions they
were not understood? In my own case, I admit I cannot distinguish what
proportion of obstinacy may have mingled with my natural propensity
for asserting my opinions. The new things I had to say seemed to me
especially urgent because of the difficulty of saying them, and above
all of getting them understood.
But, alas, how pale words become when compared with deeds! Was not
Ménalque’s life, Ménalque’s slightest action a thousand times more
eloquent than my lectures? How well I understood now that the great
philosophers of antiquity, whose teaching was almost wholly moral,
worked by example as much--even more than by precept!
The next time I saw Ménalque was in my own house, nearly three weeks
after our first meeting. We had been giving a crowded evening party,
and he came in almost at the end of it. In order to avoid being
continually disturbed, Marceline and I had settled to be at home on
Thursdays; in this way it was easier to keep our doors shut for the
rest of the week. Every Thursday evening then, those people who called
themselves our friends used to come and see us; our rooms were large
enough to hold a good many guests and they used to stay late. I think
that what attracted them most was Marceline’s exquisite charm and the
pleasure of talking to each other, for as to myself, from the very
beginning of these parties, there was nothing I could find either to
say or to listen to, and it was with difficulty I concealed my boredom.
That evening, I was wandering aimlessly from the drawing-room to the
smoking-room, from the antechamber to the library, caught by a sentence
here and there, observing very little but looking about me more or less
vaguely.
Antoine, Etienne and Godefroi were discussing the last vote in the
Chamber, as they lolled on my wife’s elegant armchairs. Hubert and
Louis were carelessly turning over some fine etchings from my father’s
collection, entirely regardless of how they were creasing them. In the
smoking-room, Mathias, the better to listen to Leonard, had put his
red-hot cigar down on a rosewood table. A glass of curaçoa had been
spilt on the carpet. Albert was sprawling impudently on a sofa, with
his muddy boots dirtying the cover. And the very dust of the air one
breathed came from the horrible wear and tear of material objects....
A frantic desire seized me to send all my guests packing. Furniture,
stuffs, prints, lost all their value for me at the first stain; things
stained were things touched by disease, with the mark of death on them.
I wanted to save them, to lock them up in a cupboard for my own use
alone. How lucky Ménalque is, thought I, to have no possessions! The
reason I puffer is that I want to preserve things. But after all, what
does it really matter to me?...
There was a small, less brilliantly lighted drawing-room, partitioned
off by a transparent glass door, and there Marceline was receiving
some of her more intimate friends; she was half reclining on a pile
of cushions and looked so fearfully pale and tired that I suddenly
took fright and vowed that this reception should be the last. It was
already late. I was beginning to take out my watch, when I suddenly
felt Moktir’s little scissors in my pocket.
“Why did the little wretch steal them,” thought I, “if it was only to
spoil and destroy them at once?”
At that moment someone touched me on the shoulder; I turned quickly; it
was Ménalque.
He was almost the only person in evening dress. He had just arrived. He
asked me to present him to my wife; I should certainly not have done so
of my own accord. Ménalque was distinguished looking--almost handsome;
his face was like a pirate’s, barred by an enormous drooping moustache,
already quite grey; his eyes shone with a cold flame that denoted
courage and decision rather than kindness. He was no sooner standing
before Marceline than I knew she had taken a dislike to him. After he
had exchanged a few banal words of courtesy with her, I carried him off
to the smoking-room.
I had heard that very morning of the new mission on which the
Colonial Office was sending him; the newspapers, as they recalled his
adventurous career, seemed to have forgotten their recent base insults
and now could find no words fine enough to praise him with. Each was
more eager than the other to extol and exaggerate his services to his
country, to the whole of humanity, as if he never undertook anything
but with a humanitarian purpose; and they quoted examples of his
abnegation, his devotion, his courage, as if such encomiums might be
considered a reward.
I began to congratulate him, but he interrupted me at the first words.
“What! You too, my dear Michel! But _you_ didn’t begin by insulting
me,” said he. “Leave all that nonsense to the papers. They seem to
be surprised that a man with a certain reputation can still have any
virtues at all. They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot
apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be
natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I
ought to do it.”
“That may lead far,” I said.
“Indeed I hope so,” answered Ménalque. “If only the people we know
could persuade themselves of the truth of this! But most of them
believe that it is only by constraint they can get any good out of
themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It
is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each
of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the
pattern he imitates; he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for
him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in
man. But people don’t dare to--they don’t dare to turn the page. Laws
of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself
alone--that is what they suffer from--and so they don’t find themselves
at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia--the most odious cowardice I
call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything--but they
don’t want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is
different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part
that makes our special value--and that is the very thing people try to
suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.”
I let Ménalque speak on; he was saying exactly what I myself had said
the month before to Marceline; I ought to have approved him. For what
reason, through what moral cowardice did I interrupt him and say, in
imitation of Marceline, the very sentence word for word with which she
had interrupted me then?
“But, my dear Ménalque, you can’t expect each one of them to be
different from all the others.”...
Ménalque stopped speaking abruptly, looked at me oddly and then, as
at that very moment Eusèbe came up to take leave, he unceremoniously
turned his back on me and went off to talk about some trifle or other
to Hector.
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I realized not only that
they were stupid, but worse still, that they might have given Ménalque
the impression that I thought his remarks had been pointed at me. It
was late; my guests were leaving. When the drawing-room was nearly
empty, Ménalque came back to me.
“I can’t leave you like this,” he said. “No doubt, I misunderstood what
you said. Let me at least hope so.”
“No,” I answered, “you did not misunderstand it ... but it was
senseless, and I had no sooner said it than I knew it was foolish. I
was sorry, and especially sorry to think it would make you place me
among the very people you were attacking and who, I assure you, are as
odious to me as to you. I hate people of principle.”
“Yes,” answered Ménalque, laughing, “there is nothing more detestable
in the world. It is impossible to expect any sort of sincerity from
them; for they never do anything but what their principles have
decreed they should do; or if they do, they think they have done wrong.
At the mere suspicion you might be one of them, the words froze on my
lips. I felt by my distress what a great affection I have for you; I
hoped I was mistaken--not in my affection, but in the conclusion I had
drawn.”
“Yes, really; your conclusion was wrong.”
“Oh! it was, I am sure,” said he, suddenly taking my hand. “Listen a
moment; I shall soon be going away, but I should like to see you again.
My expedition this time will be a longer one and more risky than any
of the others; I don’t know when I shall come back. I must start in a
fortnight’s time; no-one knows I am leaving so soon; I tell you so in
confidence. I start at daybreak. The night before leaving is always a
night of terrible heart-ache for me. Give me a proof that you are not a
man of principle; may I count on it that you will spend that last night
with me?”
“But we shall see each other again before then,” I said, a little
astonished.
“No; during the next fortnight I shall be at home to no-one. I shall
not even be in Paris. Tomorrow I leave for Buda-Pesth; in six days’
time I must be in Rome. I have friends dotted here and there to whom I
must say good-bye before leaving. There is one expecting me in Madrid.”
“Very well then, I will pass your night of vigil with you.”
“And we will have some Chiraz to drink,” said Ménalque.
* * * * *
A few days after this party, Marceline began to feel less well. I have
already said she was easily tired; but she did not complain, and as
I attributed her fatigue to her condition, I thought it natural and
felt no particular anxiety. A rather foolish--or rather ignorant--old
doctor had at first been over reassuring. Some fresh symptoms,
however, accompanied by fever, decided me to send for Dr. Tr... who
was considered at that time the cleverest specialist in Paris for
such cases. He expressed astonishment that I had not called him in
sooner and prescribed a strict régime which she ought to have begun
to follow some time ago. Marceline had been very courageous, but not
very prudent, and had overtired herself. She was told she must now lie
up till the date of her confinement, which was expected about the end
of January. Feeling no doubt a little anxious and more unwell than
she would admit, Marceline consented very meekly to the most tiresome
orders. She had a moment’s rebellion, however, when Tr... prescribed
quinine in such heavy doses that she knew it might endanger the child.
For three days she obstinately refused to take it; then as her fever
increased she was obliged to submit to that too; but this time it was
with deep sadness and as if she were mournfully giving up all hope of
the future; the resolution which had hitherto sustained her seemed
broken down by a kind of religious resignation, and her condition grew
suddenly worse in the days that followed.
I tended her with greater care than ever, did my best to reassure
her and repeated the very words Dr. Tr... had used, that he could
see nothing very serious in her case; but her extreme anxiety ended
by alarming me too. Alas! our happiness was already resting on the
dangerous foundations of hope--and hope of what an uncertain future!
I, who at first had taken pleasure only in the past, may have one day
felt, thought I, the sudden and intoxicating sweetness of a fugitive
moment, but the future disenchants the present even more than the
present then disenchanted the past; and since our night at Sorrento my
whole love, my whole life have been projected into the future.
* * * * *
In the meantime the evening I had promised Ménalque came round; and
notwithstanding the reluctance I felt at abandoning Marceline for a
whole winter’s night, I got her, as best I could, to acknowledge the
solemnity of the occasion and the gravity of my promise. Marceline was
a little better that evening and yet I was anxious; a nurse took my
place beside her. But as soon as I was in the street, my anxiety gained
ground; I shook it off, struggled against it, was angry with myself
for not being better able to get rid of it; thus I gradually reached a
state of excessive tension, of singular excitement, both very unlike
and very like the painful uneasiness from which it sprang, but liker
still to happiness. It was late and I strode along rapidly; the snow
began to fall in thick flakes; I was glad to be breathing a keener air,
to be struggling with the cold; I was happy with the wind, the night,
the snow against me; I rejoiced in my strength.
Ménalque had heard me coming and came out on to the landing to welcome
me. He was waiting for me not without impatience. His face was pale
and he looked overwrought. He helped me off with my overcoat and forced
me to change my wet boots for some soft Persian slippers. Sweets and
cakes were standing on a small table by the fire. There were two
lamps, but the light in the room came chiefly from the fire on the
hearth. Ménalque immediately enquired after Marceline; for the sake of
simplicity I answered that she was very well.
“Are you expecting your child soon?” he went on.
“In a month.”
Ménalque bent down towards the fire as if he wished to hide his face.
He remained silent. He remained silent so long that at last I felt
embarrassed, and as I myself could think of nothing to say either, I
got up, took a few steps, and then went up to him and put my hand on
his shoulder. Presently, as though he were pursuing his thoughts aloud:
“One must choose,” he murmured. “The chief thing is to know what one
wants....”
“Don’t you want to go?” I asked, in some uncertainty as to what he
meant.
“It looks like it.”
“Are you hesitating then?”
“What is the use? You have a wife and child, so stay at home.... Of
the thousand forms of life, each of us can know but one. It is madness
to envy other people’s happiness; one would not know what to do with
it. Happiness won’t come to one ready-made; it has to be made to
measure. I am going away tomorrow; yes, I know; I have tried to cut
out my happiness to fit me ... keep your calm happiness of hearth and
home....”
“_I_ cut out my happiness to fit me too,” I said, “but I have grown; I
am not at ease in my happiness now; sometimes I think it is strangling
me....”
“Pooh! you’ll get accustomed to it!” said Ménalque. Then he planted
himself in front of me and looked deep into my eyes; as I found nothing
to say, he smiled rather sadly.
“One imagines one possesses and in reality one is possessed,” he went
on. “Pour yourself out a glass of Chiraz, dear Michel; you won’t
often taste it; and eat some of those rose-coloured sweets which the
Persians take with it. I shall drink with you this evening, forget that
I am leaving tomorrow, and talk as if the night were long.... Do you
know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead letter
now-a-days? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In
Greece, ideas went hand in hand with life; so that the artist’s life
itself was already a poetic realization, the philosopher’s life a
putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy
and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with
each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave
expression to philosophy--and the result was admirably persuasive.
Now-a-days beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be
beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart.”
“But _you_ live your wisdom,” said I; “why do you not write your
memoirs? Or simply,” I added, seeing him smile, “recollections of your
travels?”
“Because I do not want to recollect,” he replied. “I should be afraid
of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It
is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new
hour’s freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do
not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more
and never having been.”
These words were too far in advance of my thoughts not to end by
irritating me; I should have liked to hang back, to stop him; but I
tried in vain to contradict, and besides I was more irritated with
myself than with Ménalque. I remained silent therefore, while he,
sometimes pacing up and down like a wild beast in a cage, sometimes
stooping over the fire, kept up a long and moody silence, or again
broke abruptly into words:
“If only our paltry minds,” he said, “were able to embalm our memories!
But memories keep badly. The most delicate fade and shrivel; the most
voluptuous decay; the most delicious are the most dangerous in the end.
The things one repents of were at first delicious.”
Again a long silence; and then he went on:
“Regrets, remorse, repentance, are past joys seen from behind. I don’t
like looking backwards and I leave my past behind me as the bird leaves
his shade to fly away. Oh, Michel! every joy is always awaiting us, but
it must always be the only one; it insists on finding the bed empty
and demands from us a widower’s welcome. Oh, Michel! every joy is like
the manna of the desert which corrupts from one day to the next; it is
like the fountain of Ameles, whose waters, says Plato, could never be
kept in any vase.... Let every moment carry away with it all that it
brought.”
Ménalque went on speaking for long; I cannot repeat all his words;
but many of them were imprinted on my mind the more deeply, the more
anxious I was to forget them; not that they taught me much that was
new--but they suddenly laid bare my thoughts--thoughts I had shrouded
in so many coverings that I had almost hoped to smother them.
And so the night of watching passed.
The next morning, after I had seen Ménalque into the train that carried
him away, as I was walking home on my way back to Marceline, I felt
horribly sad and full of hatred of his cynical joy; I wanted to believe
it was a sham; I tried to deny it. I was angry with myself for not
having found anything to say to him in reply; for having said words
that might make him doubt my happiness, my love. And I clung to my
doubtful happiness--my “calm happiness,” as Ménalque had called it;
I could not, it was true, banish uneasiness from it, but I assured
myself that uneasiness was the very food of love. I imagined the future
and saw my child smiling at me; for his sake I would strengthen my
character, I would build it up anew.... Yes, I walked with a confident
step.
Alas! when I got in that morning, I was struck by a sight of
unaccustomed disorder. The nurse met me and told me guardedly that my
wife had been seized in the night with bad sickness and pains, though
she did not think the term of her confinement was at hand; feeling very
ill, she had sent for the doctor; he had arrived post-haste in the
night and had not yet left the patient; then, seeing me change colour,
I suppose, she tried to reassure me, said that things were going much
better now, that ... I rushed to Marceline’s room.
The room was darkened and at first I could make out nothing but the
doctor, who signed to me to be quiet; then I saw a figure in the dark I
did not know. Anxiously, noiselessly, I drew near the bed. Marceline’s
eyes were shut; she was so terribly pale that at first I thought she
was dead; but she turned her head towards me, though without opening
her eyes. The unknown figure was in a dark corner of the room,
arranging, hiding, various objects; I saw shining instruments, cotton
wool; I saw, I thought I saw a cloth stained with blood.... I felt I
was tottering. I almost fell into the doctor’s arms; he held me up. I
understood; I was afraid of understanding....
“The child?” I asked anxiously.
He shrugged his shoulders sadly. I lost all sense of what I was doing
and flung myself sobbing against the bed. Oh! how suddenly the
future had come upon me! The ground had given way abruptly beneath my
feet; there was nothing there but an empty hole into which I stumbled
headlong.
* * * * *
My recollections here are lost in dark confusion. Marceline, however,
seemed at first to recover fairly quickly. The Christmas holidays
allowed me a little respite and I was able to spend nearly the
whole day with her. I read or wrote in her room, or read aloud to
her quietly. I never went out without bringing her back flowers. I
remembered the tenderness with which she had nursed me when I was ill,
and surrounded her with so much love that sometimes she smiled as
though it made her happy. Not a word was exchanged about the melancholy
accident that had shattered our hopes....
Then phlebitis declared itself; and when that got better, a clot
of blood suddenly set her hovering between life and death. It was
night time; I remember leaning over her, feeling my heart stop and
go on again with hers. How many nights I watched by her bedside, my
eyes obstinately fixed on her, hoping by the strength of my love to
instil some of my own life into hers. I no longer thought much about
happiness; my single melancholy pleasure was sometimes seeing Marceline
smile.
My lectures had begun again. How did I find strength to prepare them,
to deliver them?... My memory of this time is blurred; I have forgotten
how the weeks passed. And yet there was a little incident I must tell
you about.
It was one morning, a little after the embolism; I was sitting with
Marceline; she seemed a little better, but she was still ordered to
keep absolutely motionless; she was not allowed to move even her arms.
I bent over her to give her some drink and after she had drunk, and as
I was still stooping over her, she begged me, in a voice made weaker
still by her emotion, to open a little box, which she showed me by
the direction of her glance; it was close by, on the table; I opened
it and found it full of ribbons, bits of lace, little ornaments of no
value.... I wondered what she wanted. I brought the box to her bedside
and took out every object one by one. Was it this? That?... No, not
yet; and I felt her getting agitated “Oh, Marceline, is it this little
rosary you want?”
She tried to smile.
“Are you afraid then that I shan’t nurse you properly?”
“Oh, my dear,” she murmured. And I remembered our conversation at
Biskra, and her timid reproaches when she heard me refuse what she
called “the help of God.” I went on a little roughly:
“_I_ got well alone all right.”
“I prayed for you so much,” she answered.
She said the words tenderly, sadly. There was something anxious and
imploring in her look.... I took the rosary and slipped it into her
weak hand as it lay on the sheet beside her. A tearful, love-laden
glance rewarded me--but I could not answer it; I waited another moment
or two, feeling awkward and embarrassed; finally not knowing what to
do, “Goodbye,” I said, and left the room, with a feeling of hostility,
and as though I had been turned out of it.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the horrible clot had brought on serious trouble; after
her heart had escaped, it attacked her lungs, brought on congestion,
impeded her breathing, made it short and laborious. I thought she would
never get well. Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to
leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing
that had been spoilt.
iii
The weather was now becoming warmer. As soon as my lectures were over,
I took Marceline to La Morinière, the doctor having told me that all
immediate danger was past and that nothing would be more likely to
complete her cure than a change to purer air. I myself was in great
need of rest. The nights I had spent nursing her, almost entirely by
myself, the prolonged anxiety, and especially the kind of physical
sympathy which had made me at the time of her attack feel the fearful
throbbing of her heart in my own breast--all this had exhausted me as
much as if I myself had been ill.
I should have preferred to take Marceline to the mountains, but she
expressed the strongest desire to return to Normandy, declared that no
climate could be better for her and reminded me that I must not neglect
the two farms of which I had rather rashly assumed the charge. She
insisted that as I had made myself responsible for them, it was my
business to make them succeed. No sooner had we arrived therefore, than
she urged me to visit the estate immediately.... I am not sure that her
friendly insistence did not go with a good deal of abnegation; she was
afraid perhaps, that as she still required assistance, I might think
myself bound to stay with her and not feel as free as I might wish
to.... Marceline was better however; the colour had returned to her
cheeks, and nothing gave me greater comfort than to feel her smile was
less sad; I was able to leave her without uneasiness.
I went then to the farms. The first hay was being made. The scented
air, heavy with pollen, at first went to my head like a strong
drink. I felt that I had hardly breathed at all since last year, or
breathed nothing but dust, so drowned was I in the honied sweetness
of the atmosphere. The bank, on which I seated myself in a kind of
intoxication, overlooked the house; I saw its blue roofs; I saw the
still waters of the moat; all around were fields, some newly mown,
others rich with grass; further on, the curve of the brook; further
again, the woods where last autumn I had so often gone riding with
Charles. A sound of singing, which I had been listening to for the last
moment or two, drew near; it was the haymakers going home, with a fork
or a rake on their shoulders. I recognized nearly all of them, and the
unpleasant recollection came to me that I was not there as an enchanted
traveller, but as their master. I went up to them, smiled, spoke to
them, enquired after each of them in turn. Bocage that morning had
already given me a report of the crops; he had indeed kept me regularly
informed by letter of everything that went on in the farms. They were
not doing so badly--much better than Bocage had led me to expect. But
my arrival was being awaited in order to take some important decisions,
and during the next few days I devoted myself to farm business to the
best of my ability--not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this
semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life.
As soon as Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, a few
friends came to stay with us. They were affectionate, quiet people and
Marceline liked their society, but it had the effect of making me leave
the house with more pleasure than usual. I preferred the society of
the farm hands; I felt that with them there was more to be learnt--not
that I questioned them--no; and I hardly know how to express the kind
of rapture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with
their senses rather than with my own--and while I knew what our friends
were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of
these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement.
If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried
to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of
my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with
following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their
obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals,
listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of
sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs
of Marceline’s, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of
my own--no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms
grow stiff with the mower’s stiffness; I was weary with his weariness;
the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down
his throat; one day, one of them, while sharpening his scythe, cut his
thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone.
And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I
became aware of the landscape, but that I _felt_ it as well by some
sense of touch, which my curious power of sympathy inimitably enlarged.
Bocage’s presence was now a nuisance to me; when he came I had to play
the master, which I had no longer the least inclination to do. I still
gave orders--I had to--still superintended the labourers; but I no
longer went on horseback, for fear of looking down on them from too
great a height. But notwithstanding the precautions I took to accustom
them to my presence and prevent them from feeling ill at ease in it,
in theirs I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There
was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt
that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I
was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of
amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I
pertinaciously tried to discover. I went about prowling, following,
spying. For preference I fastened on the rudest and roughest among
them, as if I expected to find a guiding light shine from their
darkness.
One in particular attracted me; he was fairly good-looking, tall, not
in the least stupid, but wholly guided by instinct, never acting but
on the spur of the moment, blown hither and thither by every passing
impulse. He did not belong to the place, and had been taken on by
some chance. An excellent worker for two days--and on the third dead
drunk. One night I crept furtively down to the barn to see him; he lay
sprawling in a heavy, drunken sleep. I stayed looking at him a long
time.... One fine day, he went as he had come. How much I should have
liked to know along what roads!... I learnt that same evening that
Bocage had dismissed him.
I was furious with Bocage and sent for him.
“It seems you have dismissed Pierre,” I began. “Will you kindly tell me
why?”
He was a little taken aback by my anger, though I tried to moderate it.
“You didn’t want to keep a dirty drunkard, did you, Sir? A fellow who
led all our best men into mischief!”
“It’s my business to know the men I want to keep, not yours.”
“A regular waster! No-one knew where he came from. It gave the place
a bad name.... If he had set fire to the barn one night, you mightn’t
have been so pleased, Sir.”
“That’s my affair, I tell you. It’s my farm, isn’t it? I mean to manage
it in my own way. In future, be so good as to give me your reasons
before dismissing people.”
Bocage, as I have told you, had known me since my childhood. However
wounding my tone, he was too much attached to me to be much offended.
He did not, in fact, take me sufficiently seriously. The Normandy
peasant is too often disinclined to believe anything of which he cannot
fathom the motive--that is to say, anything not prompted by interest.
Bocage simply considered this quarrel as a piece of absurdity.
I did not want, however, to break off the conversation on a note
of blame; feeling I had been too sharp with him, I cast about for
something pleasant to add.
“Isn’t your son Charles coming back soon?” I ended by asking after a
moment’s silence.
“I thought you had quite forgotten him, Sir; you seemed to trouble your
head about him so little,” said Bocage, still rather hurt.
“Forget him, Bocage! How could I, after all we did together last year?
I’m counting on him in fact to help me with the farms....”
“You’re very good, Sir. Charles is coming home in a week’s time.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Bocage,” and I dismissed him.
Bocage was not far wrong; I had not of course forgotten Charles, but
I now cared very little about him. How can I explain that after such
vehement camaraderie, my feeling for him now should be so flat and
spiritless? The fact is my occupations and tastes were no longer the
same as last year. My two farms, I must admit, did not interest me so
much as the people employed on them; and if I wanted to foregather with
them, Charles would be very much in the way. He was far too reasonable
and too respectable. So notwithstanding the vivid and delightful
memories I kept of him, I looked forward with some apprehension to his
return.
He returned. Oh, how right I had been to be apprehensive--and how
right Ménalque was to repudiate all memories! There entered the room
in Charles’s place an absurd individual with a bowler hat. Heavens!
how changed he was! Embarrassed and constrained though I felt, I tried
not to respond too frigidly to the joy he showed at seeing me again;
but even his joy was disagreeable to me; it was awkward, and I thought
insincere. I received him in the drawing-room, and as it was late
and dark, I could hardly distinguish his face; but when the lamp was
brought in, I saw with disgust he had let his whiskers grow.
The conversation that evening was more or less dreary; then, as I knew
he would be continually at the farms, I avoided going down to them
for almost a week, and fell back on my studies and the society of my
guests. And as soon as I began to go out again, I was absorbed by a
totally new occupation.
Wood-cutters had invaded the woods. Every year a part of the timber on
the estate was sold; the woods were marked off into twelve equal lots
which were cut in rotation and every year furnished, besides a few
fully grown trees, a certain amount of twelve-year-old copse wood for
faggots.
This work was done in the winter, and the wood-cutters were obliged by
contract to have the ground cleared before spring. But old Heurtevent,
the timber-merchant who directed operations, was so slack that
sometimes spring came upon the copses while the wood was still lying on
the ground; fresh, delicate shoots could then be seen forcing their way
upwards through the dead branches, and when at last the wood-cutters
cleared the ground, it was not without destroying many of the young
saplings.
That year old Heurtevent’s remissness was even greater than we had
looked for. In the absence of any other bidder, I had been obliged to
let him have the copse wood exceedingly cheap; so that being assured in
any case of a handsome profit, he took very little pains to dispose of
the timber which had cost him so little. And from week to week he put
off the work with various excuses--a lack of labourers, or bad weather,
or a sick horse, or an urgent call for work elsewhere, etc. etc.--with
the result that as late as the middle of summer, none of it had been
removed.
The year before, this would have irritated me to the highest degree;
this year it left me fairly calm; I saw well enough the damage
Heurtevent was causing me; but the devastated woods were beautiful; it
gave me pleasure to wander in them, tracking and watching the game,
startling the vipers, and sometimes sitting by the hour together on one
of the fallen trunks which still seemed to be living on, with green
shoots springing from its wounds.
Then suddenly, about the middle of the last fortnight in August,
Heurtevent made up his mind to send his men. Six of them came with
orders to finish the work in ten days. The part of the woods that had
been cut was that bordering on La Valterie; it was arranged that the
wood-cutters should have their food brought them from the farm, in
order to expedite the work. The labourer chosen for this task was a
curious young rascal called Bute; he had just come back from a term of
military service which had utterly demoralized him; but physically, he
was in admirable condition; he was one of the farm hands I most enjoyed
talking to. By this arrangement I was able to see him without going
down to the farm. For it was just at that time that I began going out
again. For a few days I hardly left the woods except for my meals at
La Morinière, and I was very often late for them. I pretended I had to
superintend the work, though in reality, I only went to see the workers.
Sometimes two of Heurtevent’s sons joined the batch of six men; one was
about twenty, the other about fifteen years old, long-limbed, wiry,
hard-featured young fellows. They had a foreign look about them, and
I learnt later that their mother was actually a Spanish woman. I was
astonished at first that she should have travelled to such distant
parts, but Heurtevent had been a rolling stone in his youth and had,
it appears, married her in Spain. For this reason he was rather looked
askance at in the neighbourhood. The first time I saw the younger
of the sons was, I remember, on a rainy day; he was alone, sitting
on a very high cart, on the top of a great pile of faggots. He was
lolling back among the branches, and singing, or rather shouting, a
kind of extraordinary song, which was like nothing I had ever heard
in our parts. The cart-horses knew the road and followed it without
any guidance from him. I cannot tell you the effect this song had on
me; for I had never heard its like except in Africa.... The boy looked
excited--drunk; when I passed, he did not even glance at me. The next
day, I learnt he was a son of Heurtevent’s. It was in order to see him,
or rather in the hopes of seeing him, that I spent so much time in the
copse. The men by now had very nearly finished clearing it. The young
Heurtevents came only three times. They seemed proud and I could not
get a word out of them.
Bute, on the other hand, liked talking; I soon managed to make him
understand that there was nothing it was not safe to say to me. Upon
this he let himself go and soon stripped the countryside of every rag
of respectability. I lapped up his mysterious secrets with avidity.
They surpassed my expectation and yet at the same time failed to
satisfy me. Was this what was really grumbling below the surface of
appearances or was it merely another kind of hypocrisy? No matter!
I questioned Bute as I had questioned the uncouth chronicles of the
Goths. Fumes of the abyss rose darkly from his stories and as I
breathed them uneasily and fearfully, my head began to turn. He told me
to begin with that Heurtevent had relations with his daughter. I was
afraid if I showed the slightest disapprobation I should put an end to
his confidences; curiosity spurred me on.
“And the mother? Doesn’t she object?”
“The mother! She has been dead full twelve years.... He used to beat
her.”
“How many are there in the family?”
“Five children. You’ve seen the eldest son and the youngest. There’s
another of sixteen who’s delicate and wants to turn priest. And then
the eldest daughter has already had two children by the father.”
And little by little, I learnt a good deal more, so that do what I
would, my imagination began to circle round the lurid attractions of
Heurtevent’s house like a blow-fly round a putrid piece of meat. One
night the eldest son had tried to rape a young servant girl, and as
she struggled, the father had intervened to help his son and had held
her with his huge hands; while the second son went piously on with his
prayers on the floor above, and the youngest looked on at the drama as
an amused spectator. As far as the rape is concerned, I imagine it was
not very difficult, for Bute went on to say that not long after, the
servant girl, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing, had tried
to seduce the young priest.
“And hasn’t she succeeded?” I asked.
“He hasn’t given in so far, but he’s a bit wobbly,” answered Bute.
“Didn’t you say there was another daughter?”
“Yes; she picks up as many fellows as she can lay hold of. And all for
nothing too. When she’s set on it, she wouldn’t mind paying herself.
But you mustn’t carry on at her father’s. He would give you what for.
He says you can do as you like in your own house, but don’t let other
people come nosing round! Pierre the farm hand you sent away, got a
nasty knock on the head one night, though he held his tongue about it.
Since then, she has her chaps in the home woods.”
“Have you had a go yourself?” I asked with an encouraging look.
He dropped his eyes for form’s sake and said, chuckling:
“Every now and then.” Then, raising his eyes quickly, “So has old
Bocage’s boy,” he added.
“What boy is that?”
“Alcide, the one who sleeps in the farm. Surely you know him, Sir?”
I was simply astounded to hear Bocage had another son.
“It is true,” went on Bute, “that last year he was still at his
uncle’s. But it’s very odd you’ve never met him in the woods, Sir; he
poaches in them nearly every night.”
Bute said these last words in a lower voice. He looked at me and I saw
it was essential to smile. Then Bute seemed satisfied and went on:
“Good Lord, Sir, of course you know your woods are poached. They’re so
big it doesn’t do much harm to anyone.”
I looked so far from being displeased that Bute was emboldened to go
on, and I think now he was glad to do Bocage an ill turn. He pointed
out one or two hollows in the ground in which Alcide had set his
snares, and then showed me a place in the hedge where I should be
almost certain of catching him. It was a boundary hedge and ran along
the top of a bank; there was a narrow opening in it through which
Alcide was in the habit of coming about six o’clock in the evening. At
this place Bute and I amused ourselves by stretching a copper wire
which we very neatly concealed. Then, having made me swear not to give
him away, Bute departed.
For three evenings I waited in vain. I began to think Bute had played
me a trick.... At last on the fourth evening, I heard a light step
approaching. My heart began to beat and I had a sudden revelation of
the horrible allurement of the poacher’s life.... The snare was so well
set that Alcide walked straight into it. I saw him suddenly fall flat,
with his ankle caught in the wire. He tried to save himself, fell down
again, and began struggling like a trapped rabbit. But I had hold of
him in an instant. He was a wicked looking youngster, with green eyes,
tow-coloured hair and a ferrety expression. He started kicking; then,
as I held him so tight that he was unable to move, he tried to bite;
and when that failed, he spat out the most extraordinary volley of
abuse I have ever heard. In the end I could resist no longer and burst
out laughing. At this, he stopped abruptly, looked at me, and went on
in a lower tone:
“You brute, you! You’ve hurt me something horrible.”
“Show me where.”
He slipped his stocking down over his boot and showed me his ankle,
where a slight pink mark was just visible.
“It’s nothing at all.”
He smiled a little; then, “I shall tell Father,” he said in a cunning
voice, “that it’s _you_ who set snares.”
“Why, good Heavens, it’s one of your own!”
“Sure enough, you never set that one.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You would never know how to set them as well as that. Just show me how
you did it.”
“Give me a lesson....”
That evening I came in very late for dinner; no-one knew where I was
and Marceline had been anxious. But I did not tell her I had set six
snares and so far from scolding Alcide had given him ten sous.
The next evening when I went with him to visit the snares, much to
my entertainment I found two rabbits caught in them. Of course I let
him take them. The shooting season had not yet begun. I wondered what
became of the game, as it was impossible to dispose of it openly
without the risk of getting into trouble. Alcide refused to tell me.
Finally, I learnt, through Bute again, that Heurtevent was the receiver
and his youngest son the go-between between Alcide and him. Was this
going to give me an opportunity of a deeper insight into the secrets of
that mysterious, unapproachable family? With what passionate eagerness
I set about poaching!
I met Alcide every evening; we caught great numbers of rabbits and once
even a young roe-deer which still showed some faint signs of life; I
cannot recall without horror the delight Alcide took in killing it. We
put the deer in a place of safety from which young Heurtevent could
take it away at night.
From that moment I no longer cared for going out in the day, when
there was so little to attract me in the emptied woods. I even tried
to work--melancholy, purposeless work, for I had resigned my temporary
lectureship--thankless, dreary work, from which I would be suddenly
distracted by the slightest song, the slightest sound coming from the
country outside; in every passing cry I heard an invitation. How often
I have leapt from my reading and run to the window to see--nothing pass
by! How often I have hurried out of doors.... The only attention I
found possible was that of my five senses.
But when night fell--and it was the season now when night falls
early--that was our hour. I had never before guessed its beauty; and I
stole out of doors as a thief steals in. I had trained my eyes to be
like a night-bird’s. I wondered to see the grass taller and more easily
stirred, the trees denser. The dark gave everything fresh dimensions,
made the ground look distant, lent every surface the quality of depth.
The smoothest path looked dangerous. Everywhere one felt the awakening
of creatures that lead a life of darkness.
“Where does your father think you are now?”
“In the stables looking after the cattle.”
Alcide slept there, I knew, close to the pigeons and the hens; as he
was locked in at night, he used to creep out by a hole in the roof.
There still hung about his clothes a steamy odour of fowls.
Then, as soon as the game had been collected, he would disappear
abruptly into the dark, as if down a trap-door--without a sign of
farewell, without a word of tomorrow’s rendezvous. I knew that before
returning to the farm, where the dogs recognized him and kept silent,
he used to meet the Heurtevent boy and deliver his goods. But where?
Try as I might, I was never able to find out; threats, bribes,
cunning--all failed; the Heurtevents remained inaccessible. I cannot
say where my folly showed more triumphantly. Was it in this pursuit of
a trivial mystery, which constantly eluded me--or had I even invented
the mystery by the mere force of my curiosity? But what did Alcide do
when he left me? Did he really sleep at the farm? Or did he simply
make the farmer think so? My compromising myself was utterly useless;
I merely succeeded in lessening his respect without increasing his
confidence--and it both infuriated and distressed me.
After he had disappeared, I suddenly felt myself horribly alone; I
went back across the fields, through the dew-drenched grass, my head
reeling with darkness, with lawlessness, with anarchy; dripping, muddy,
covered with leaves. In the distance there shone from the sleeping
house, guiding me like a peaceful beacon, the lamp I had left alight
in my study, where Marceline thought I was working, or the lamp of
Marceline’s own bedroom. I had persuaded her that I should not have
been able to sleep without first going out in this way. It was true; I
had taken a loathing to my bed. How greatly I should have preferred the
barn!
* * * * *
Game was plentiful that year; rabbits, hares, pheasants succeeded each
other. After three evenings, Bute, seeing that everything was going so
well, took it into his head to join us.
On the sixth of our poaching expeditions, we found only two of the
twelve snares we had set; somebody had made a clearance during the
daytime. Bute asked me for five francs to buy some more copper wire, as
ordinary wire was no use.
The next morning I had the gratification of seeing my ten snares at
Bocage’s house and I was obliged to compliment him on his zeal. What
annoyed me most was that the year before I had foolishly offered fifty
centimes for every snare that was brought in; I had therefore to give
Bocage five francs. In the meantime Bute had bought some more wire with
the five francs I had given him. Four days later, the same story! Ten
fresh snares were brought in; another five francs to Bute; another five
francs to Bocage. And as I congratulated him:
“It’s not me you must congratulate, Sir, it’s Alcide,” he said.
“No, really?” said I. Too much astonishment might have given me away. I
controlled myself.
“Yes,” went on Bocage; “it can’t be helped, Sir, I’m growing old. The
lad looks around the woods instead of me; he knows them very well; he
can tell better than I can where to look out for the snares.” “I’m
sure he can, Bocage.”
“So out of the fifty centimes you give me, I let him have twenty-five.”
“He certainly deserves it. What! Twenty snares in five days! Excellent
work! The poachers had better be careful. I wager they’ll lie low now.”
“Oh, no, Sir. The more one takes, the more one finds. Game is very dear
this year, and for the few pence it costs them ...”
I had been so completely diddled that I felt almost inclined to suspect
old Bocage himself of having a hand in the game. And what specially
vexed me in the business was not so much Alcide’s threefold traffic as
his deceitfulness. And then what did he and Bute do with the money? I
didn’t know. I should never know anything about creatures like them.
They would always lie; they would go on deceiving me for the sake of
deceiving. That evening I gave Bute ten francs instead of five and
warned him it was for the last time, that if the snares were taken
again, so much the worse, but I should not go on.
The next day up came Bocage; he looked embarrassed--which at once made
me feel even more so. What had happened? Bocage told me that Bute had
been out all night and had only come in at cockcrow. The fellow was as
drunk as a fiddler; at Bocage’s first words, he had grossly insulted
him and then flown at him and struck him....
“And I’ve come to ask, Sir,” said Bocage, “whether you authorize me,”
(he accented the word a little) “whether you _authorize_ me to dismiss
him?”
“I’ll think about it, Bocage. I’m extremely sorry he should have been
disrespectful. I’ll see ... Let me reflect a little and come again in
two hours’ time.”
Bocage went out.
To keep Bute was to be painfully lacking in consideration for Bocage;
to dismiss Bute was to ask for trouble. Well! there was nothing to be
done about it. Let come what come might! I had only myself to blame....
And as soon as Bocage came back:
“You can tell Bute we have no further use for him here,” I said.
Then I waited. What would Bocage do? What would Bute say? It was
not till evening that I heard rumours of scandal. Bute had spoken.
I guessed it at first from the shrieks I heard coming from Bocage’s
house; it was Alcide being beaten. Bocage would soon be coming up to
see me; here he was; I heard his old footstep approaching and my heart
beat even faster than when I was poaching. It was an intolerable
moment. I should have to trot out a lot of fine sentiments. I should be
obliged to take him seriously. What could I invent to explain things?
How badly I should act! I would have given anything to throw up my
part! Bocage came in. I understood absolutely nothing of what he was
saying. It was absurd; I had to make him begin all over again. In the
end, this is what I made out. He thought that Bute was the only guilty
party; the inconceivable truth had escaped him--that I could have given
Bute ten francs! What for? He was too much of a Normandy peasant to
admit the possibility of such a thing. Bute must have stolen those ten
francs. Not a doubt of it! When he said I had given them to him, he
was merely adding a lie to a theft; it was a mere invention to explain
away his theft; Bocage wasn’t the man to believe a trumped up story
like that.... There was no more talk of poaching. If Bocage had beaten
Alcide, it was only because the boy had spent the night out.
So then, I am saved! In Bocage’s eyes, at any rate, everything is all
right. What a fool that fellow Bute is! This evening, I must say, I
don’t feel much inclined to go out poaching.
I thought that everything was all over, when an hour later in came
Charles. He looked far from amiable; the bare sight of him was enough;
he struck me as even more tedious than his father. To think that last
year!...
“Well, Charles! I haven’t seen you for ever so long!”
“If you had wanted to see me, Sir, you had only to come down to the
farm. You won’t find _me_ gallivanting about the woods at nights.”
“Oh, your father has told you ...”
“My father has told me nothing, because my father knows nothing. What’s
the use of telling him at his age that his master is making a fool of
him?”
“Take care, Charles, you’re going too far....”
“Oh, all right! You’re the master--you can do as you please.”
“Charles, you know perfectly well I’ve made a fool of no-one, and if I
do as I please, it’s because it does no-one any harm but myself.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“How can one defend your interests when you attack them yourself? You
can’t protect both the keeper and the poacher at the same time.”
“Why not?”
“Because ... Oh, you’re a bit too clever for me, Sir. I just don’t like
to see my master joining up with rogues and undoing the work that other
people do for him.”
Charles spoke with more and more confidence as he went on. He held
himself almost with dignity. I noticed he had cut off his whiskers. For
that matter, what he said was sensible enough, and as I kept silence
(what could I have said?), he went on:
“You taught me last year, Sir, that one has duties to one’s
possessions. One ought to take one’s duties seriously and not play with
them ... or else one doesn’t deserve to have possessions.”
Silence.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“For this evening, yes, Sir; but if you ask me some other time, Sir, I
may perhaps tell you that my father and I are leaving La Morinière.”
And he went out, bowing very low. I hardly took time to reflect:
“Charles!... He’s right, by Jove!... Oh, if that’s what’s meant by
possessions ... Charles!...” And I ran after him, caught him up in
the dark and called out hastily, as if in a hurry to clinch my sudden
determination:
“You can tell your father that I am putting La Morinière up for sale.”
Charles bowed again gravely and went away without a word.
The whole thing is absurd! Absurd!
* * * * *
That evening, Marceline was not able to come down to dinner and sent
word to say she was unwell. Full of anxiety, I hurried up to her room.
She reassured me quickly. “It’s nothing but a cold,” she said. She
thought she had caught a chill.
“Couldn’t you have put on something warmer?”
“I put my shawl on the first moment I felt a shiver.”
“You should have put it on before you felt a shiver, not after.”
She looked at me and tried to smile.... Oh, perhaps it was because the
day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. If she had said aloud,
“Do you really care whether I live or not?” I should not have heard the
words more clearly.
“Oh,” I thought, “without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to
pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps, can my hand hold.”
I sprang to Marceline and covered her pale face with kisses. At that,
she broke down and fell sobbing on my shoulder....
“Oh, Marceline! Marceline! Let us go away. Anywhere else but here I
shall love you as I did at Sorrento.... You have thought me changed,
perhaps? But anywhere else, you will feel that there is nothing altered
in our love.”
I had not cured her unhappiness, but how eagerly she clutched at
hope!...
It was not late in the year, but the weather was cold and damp, and the
last rosebuds were rotting unopened on the bushes. Our guests had long
since left us. Marceline was not too unwell to see to the shutting up
of the house, and five days later we left.
THIRD PART
i
And so I tried, yet once more, to close my hand over my love. But what
did I want with peaceful happiness? What Marceline gave me, what she
stood for in my eyes, was like rest to a man who is not tired. But as
I felt she was weary and needed my love, I showered it upon her and
pretended that the need was mine. I felt her sufferings unbearably; it
was to cure her that I loved her.
O days and nights of passionate tender care! As others stimulate their
faith by exaggerating the observance of its practices, so I fanned my
love. And Marceline, as I tell you, began forthwith to recover hope. In
her there was still so much youth; in me, she thought, so much promise.
We fled from Paris, as though for another honeymoon. But on the very
first day of the journey, she got much worse and we had to break it at
Neuchâtel.
I loved this lake, which has nothing Alpine about it, with its
grey-green shores, and its waters mingling for a long space,
marsh-like, with the land, and filtering through the rushes. I found
a very comfortable hotel, with a room looking on to the lake for
Marceline. I stayed with her the whole day.
She was so far from well the next day, that I sent for a doctor from
Lausanne. He wanted to know, quite uselessly, whether there were any
other cases of tuberculosis in my wife’s family. I said there were,
though, as a matter of fact, I knew of none; but I disliked saying that
I myself had been almost given up on account of it, and that Marceline
had never been ill before she nursed me. I put the whole thing down to
the score of the clot, though the doctor declared that this was merely
a contributory cause and that the trouble dated from further back. He
strongly recommended the air of the high Alps, which he assured me
would cure her; and as just what I myself wished was to spend the whole
winter in the Engadine, we started as soon as she was able to bear the
journey.
I remember every sensation of that journey as vividly as if they
had been events. The weather was limpid and cold; we had taken our
warmest furs with us.... At Coire, the incessant din in the hotel
almost entirely prevented us from sleeping. I myself should have put
up cheerfully with a sleepless night and not found it tiring; but
Marceline ... And it was not so much the noise that irritated me as the
fact that she was not able to sleep in spite of it. Her need of sleep
was so great! The next morning we started before daybreak; we had taken
places in the coupé of the Coire diligence; the relays were so arranged
that St. Moritz could be reached in one day.
Tiefenkasten, the Julier, Samaden ... I remember it all, hour by hour;
I remember the strange, inclement feeling of the air; the sound of
the horses’ bells; my hunger; the midday halt at the inn; the raw egg
that I broke into my soup; the brown bread and the sour wine that
was so cold. This coarse fare did not suit Marceline; she could eat
hardly anything but a few dry biscuits, which I had had the forethought
to bring with me. I can recall the closing in of the daylight; the
swiftness with which the shade climbs up the wooded mountain side;
then another halt. And now the air becomes keener, rawer. When the
coach stops, we plunge into the heart of darkness, into a silence that
is limpid--limpid--there is no other word for it. The quality, the
sonority of the slightest sound acquire perfection and fullness in
that strange transparency. Another start--in the night, this time.
Marceline coughs ... Oh, will she never have done coughing? I think of
the Sousse diligence; I feel as if I had coughed better than that. She
makes too great an effort.... How weak and changed she looks! In the
shadow there, I should hardly recognize her. How drawn her features
are! Used those two black holes of her nostrils always to be so
visible?... Oh, how horribly she is coughing! Is that the best she can
do? I have a horror of sympathy. It is the lurking place of every kind
of contagion; one ought only to sympathize with the strong. Oh! she
seems really at the last gasp. Shall we never arrive? What is she doing
now? She takes her handkerchief out, puts it to her lips, turns aside
... Horror! Is she going to spit blood too? I snatch the handkerchief
roughly from her hand, and in the half light of the lantern look at
it.... Nothing. But my anxiety has been too visible. Marceline attempts
a melancholy smile and murmurs:
“No; not yet.”
At last we arrived. It was time, for she could hardly stand. I did not
like the rooms that had been prepared for us; we spent the night in
them, however, and changed them next day. Nothing seemed fine enough
for me nor too expensive. And as the winter season had not yet begun,
the vast hotel was almost empty and I was able to choose. I took two
spacious rooms, bright, and simply furnished; there was a large sitting
room adjoining, with a big bow-window, from which could be seen the
hideous blue lake and a crude mountain, whose name I have forgotten
and whose slopes were either too wooded or too bare. We had our meals
served separately. The rooms were extravagantly dear. But what do I
care? thought I. It is true I no longer have my lectures, but I am
selling La Morinière. And then we shall see.... Besides, what need
have I of money? What need have I of all this?... I am strong now....
A complete change of fortune, I think, must be as instructive as a
complete change of health.... Marceline, of course, requires luxury;
she is weak ... oh, for her sake, I will spend so much, so much that
... And I felt at one and the same time a horror of luxury, and a
craving for it. I bathed, I steeped my sensuality in it, and then again
it was a vagabond joy that I longed for.
In the meanwhile Marceline was getting better and my constant care was
having good results. As she had a difficulty in eating, I ordered the
most dainty and delicious food to stimulate her appetite; we drank the
best wines. The foreign brands we experimented on every day amused me
so much that I persuaded myself she had a great fancy for them; sharp
Rhine wines, almost syrupy Tokays, that filled me with their heady
virtue. I remember too an extraordinary Barba-grisca, of which only one
bottle was left, so that I never knew whether the others would have had
the same bizarre taste.
Every day we went for a drive, first in a carriage, and later on, when
the snow had fallen, in a sledge, wrapped up to our eyes in fur. I came
in with glowing cheeks, hungry and then sleepy. I had not, however,
given up all idea of work, and every day I found an hour or so in which
to meditate on the things I felt it was my duty to say. There was no
question of history now; I had long since ceased to take any interest
in historical studies except as a means of psychological investigation.
I have told you how I had been attracted afresh to the past when I
thought I could see in it a disquieting resemblance to the present; I
had actually dared to think that by questioning the dead I should be
able to extort from them some secret information about life.... But
now the youthful Athalaric himself might have risen from the grave to
speak to me, I should not have listened to him. How could the ancient
past have answered my present question?--What can man do more? that is
what seemed to me important to know. Is what man has hitherto said all
that he _could_ say? Is there nothing in himself he has overlooked? Can
he do nothing but repeat himself?... And every day there grew stronger
in me a confused consciousness of untouched treasures somewhere lying
covered up, hidden, smothered, by culture and decency and morality.
It seemed to me then that I had been born to make discoveries of a kind
hitherto undreamed of; and I grew strangely and passionately eager
in the pursuit of my dark and mysterious researches, for the sake of
which, I well knew, the searcher must abjure and repudiate culture and
decency and morality.
I soon went to the length of sympathizing only with the wildest
outbreaks of conduct in other people, and of regretting that such
manifestations were subject to any control whatever. I came very
near thinking that honesty was merely the result of restrictions or
conventions or fear. I should have liked to cherish it as something
rare and difficult; but our manners had turned it into a form of
mutual advantage and commonplace contract. In Switzerland, it is just
a part of one’s comfort. I understood that Marceline required it; but
I did not conceal from her the new trend of my thoughts; as early as
Neuchâtel, when she was praising the honesty that is so visible in the
faces of the people and the walls of the houses.
“I prefer my own,” I retorted. “I have a horror of honest folk. I may
have nothing to fear from them, but I have nothing to learn either. And
besides, they have nothing to say.... Honest Swiss nation! What does
their health do for them? They have neither crimes, nor history, nor
literature, nor arts ... a hardy rose-tree, without thorns or flowers.”
That I should be bored by this honest country was a foregone
conclusion, but at the end of two months, my boredom became a kind of
frenzy and my one thought was to fly.
We were in the middle of January. Marceline was better--much better;
the continual low fever that was undermining her had disappeared; a
brighter colour had returned to her cheeks; she once more enjoyed
walking, though not for long, and was not continually tired as she
used to be. I did not have much difficulty in persuading her that the
bracing air had done her all the good that could be expected and that
the best thing for her now would be to go down into Italy, where the
kindly warmth of spring would completely restore her ... and above all,
I had not much difficulty in persuading myself--so utterly sick was I
of those mountain heights.
And yet now, when in my idleness the detested past once more asserts
its strength, those are the very memories that haunt me. Swift sledge
drives; joy of the dry and stinging air, spattering of the snow,
appetite; walks in the baffling fog, curious sonority of voices, abrupt
appearance of objects; readings in the snug warmth of the sitting-room,
view of the landscape through the windows, view of the icy landscape;
tragic waiting for the snow; vanishing of the outer world, soft
brooding of one’s thoughts.... Oh, to skate with her alone once more on
the little lake, lying lost among the larches, pure and peaceful--oh,
to come home with her once more at night!...
That descent into Italy gave me all the dizzy sensations of a fall. The
weather was fine. As we dropped into a warmer and denser air, the rigid
trees of the highlands--the larches and symmetrical fir-trees--gave
way to the softness, the grace and ease of a luxuriant vegetation. I
felt I was leaving abstraction for life, and though it was winter, I
imagined perfumes in every breath. Oh, for long--too long, our only
smiles had been for shadows! My abstemiousness had gone to my head and
I was drunk with thirst as others are with wine. My thrift of life
had been admirable; on the threshold of this land of tolerance and
promise, all my appetites broke out with sudden vehemence. I was full
to bursting with an immense reserve of love; sometimes it surged from
the obscure depths of my senses up into my head and turned my thoughts
to shamelessness.
This illusion of spring did not last long. The sudden change of
altitude may have deceived me for a moment, but as soon as we left the
sheltered shores of the lakes, Bellagio and Como, where we lingered
for a day or two, we came into winter and rain. We now suffered from
the cold which we had borne well enough in the Engadine; it was not
dry and exhilarating here as it had been in the mountains, but damp
and heavy, and Marceline began to cough again. In order to escape it,
we pursued our way still further south; we left Milan for Florence,
Florence for Rome, Rome for Naples, which in the winter rain is really
the most lugubrious town I know. I dragged along in unspeakable ennui.
We went back to Rome in the hopes of finding, if not warmth, at least a
semblance of comfort. We rented an apartment on the Pincio, much too
vast, but marvellously situated. Already, at Florence, disgusted with
hotels, we had rented a lovely villa on the Viale dei Colli, for three
months. Anybody else would have wished to spend a lifetime in it.... We
stayed barely three weeks. And yet at every fresh stage, I made a point
of arranging everything as if we were never going to leave.... Some
irresistible demon goaded me on.... And add to this that we travelled
with no fewer than eight trunks. There was one I never opened during
the whole journey, entirely filled with books.
I did not allow Marceline to have any say in our expenses nor attempt
to moderate them. I knew of course that they were excessive and that
they could not last. I could no longer count on any money from La
Morinière. It had ceased to bring in anything and Bocage wrote that he
could not find a purchaser. But all thoughts of the future only ended
in making me spend the more. What need should I have of so much money,
once I was alone, thought I; and sick at heart, I watched Marceline’s
frail life as it ebbed away more quickly still than my fortune.
Although she depended on me for all the arrangements, these perpetual
and hurried moves tired her; but what tired her still more (I do not
hesitate now to acknowledge it) was the fear of what was in my mind.
“I understand,” she said to me one day, “I quite understand your
doctrine--for now it has become a doctrine. A fine one perhaps,” and
then she added sadly, dropping her voice, “but it does away with the
weak.”
“And so it should!” was the answer that burst from me in spite of
myself.
In my heart then, I felt the sensitive creature shiver and shrivel
up at the shock of my dreadful words.... Oh, perhaps you will think
I did not love Marceline. I swear I loved her passionately. She
had never been--I had never thought her--so beautiful. Illness had
refined--etherealized her features. I hardly ever left her, surrounded
her with every care, watched over her every moment of the night and
day. If she slept lightly, I trained myself to sleep more lightly
still; I watched her as she fell asleep and I was the first to wake.
When sometimes I left her for an hour to take a solitary walk in the
country or streets, a kind of loving anxiety, a fear of her feeling the
time long, made me hurry back to her; and sometimes I rebelled against
this obsession, called upon my will to help me against it, said to
myself, “Are you worth no more than this, you make-believe great man?”
And I forced myself to prolong my absence; but then I would come in, my
arms laden with flowers, early garden flowers, or hothouse blooms....
Yes, I say; I cared for her tenderly. But how can I express this--that
in proportion as I respected myself less, I revered her more? And who
shall say how many passions and how many hostile thoughts may live
together in the mind of man?...
The bad weather had long since ceased; the season was advancing;
and suddenly the almond trees were in bloom. The day was the first
of March. I went down in the morning to the Piazza di Spagna. The
peasants had stripped the campagna of its white branches, and the
flower-sellers’ baskets were full of almond blossom. I was so enchanted
that I bought a whole grove of it. Three men carried it for me. I
went home with all this flowering spring. The branches caught in
the doorways and petals snowed upon the carpet. I put the blossoms
everywhere, filled all the vases, and, while Marceline was absent from
the drawing-room for a moment, made it a bower of whiteness. I was
already picturing her delight, when I heard her step...! She opened the
door. Oh, what was wrong with her?... She tottered.... She burst out
sobbing.
“What is it, my poor Marceline?”...
I ran up to her, showered the tenderest caresses upon her. Then as if
to excuse her tears:
“The flowers smell too strong,” she said....
And it was a faint, faint, exquisite scent of honey.... Without a
word, I seized the innocent fragile branches, broke them to pieces,
carried them out of the room and flung them away, my temples throbbing
with exasperation, my nerves ajar. Oh, if she finds this little bit of
spring too much for her!...
I have often thought over those tears of hers and I believe now that
she already felt herself condemned and was crying for the loss of other
springs.... I think too that there are strong joys for the strong and
weak joys for the weak who would be hurt by strong joys. She was sated
by the merest trifle of pleasure; one shade brighter and it was more
than she could bear. What she called happiness, I called rest, and I
was unwilling, unable to rest.
Four days later we left again for Sorrento. I was disappointed not to
find it warmer. The whole country seemed shivering with cold. The wind,
which never ceased blowing, was a severe trial to Marceline. Our plan
was to go to the same hotel we had been to at the time of our first
journey, and we were given the same room.... But how astonished we
were to see that the grey sky had robbed the whole scene of its magic,
and that the place we had thought so charming when we had walked in it
as lovers was nothing but a dreary hotel garden!
We settled then to go by sea to Palermo, whose climate we had heard
praised; we returned therefore to Naples, where we were to take
the boat and where we stayed on for a few days longer. But at any
rate, I was not dull at Naples. Naples is alive--a town that is not
overshadowed by the past.
I spent nearly every moment of the day with Marceline. At night she was
tired and went to bed early; I watched by her until she went to sleep
and sometimes went to bed myself; then, when her more regular breathing
told me she was asleep, I got up again noiselessly, dressed in the
dark, slipped out of doors like a thief.
Out of doors! Oh, I could have shouted with joy! What was I bent on?
I cannot tell. The sky that had been dark all day, was cleared of its
clouds; the moon was nearly full. I walked at random, without object,
without desire, without constraint. I looked at everything with a fresh
eye; I listened to every noise with an attentive ear; I breathed the
dampness of the night; I touched things with my hand; I went prowling.
The last night we spent at Naples I stayed out later than usual on
this vagabond debauch. When I came in, I found Marceline in tears. She
had woken up suddenly, she said, and been frightened at not feeling
me there. I calmed her, explained my absence as well as I could, and
resolved not to leave her again. But the first night we spent at
Palermo was too much for me--I went out. The orange trees were in
flower; the slightest breath of air came laden with their scent....
We only stayed five days at Palermo; then, by a long detour, we made
our way to Taormina, which we both wanted to see again. I think I have
told you that the village is perched high on the mountain side; the
station is on the sea-shore. The carriage that drove us to the hotel
took me back again to the station for me to get our trunks. I stood up
in the carriage in order to talk to the driver. He was a Sicilian boy
from Catania, as beautiful as a line of Theocritus, full of colour and
odour and savour, like a fruit.
“Com’è bella, la Signora!” said he, in a charming voice, as he watched
Marceline go into the hotel.
“Anche tu sei bello, ragazzo,” I replied; then, as I was standing so
near him, I could not resist, but drew him to me and kissed him. He
allowed it laughingly.
“I Francesi sono tutti amanti,” he said.
“Ma non tutti gli Italiani amati,” I answered, laughing too.... I
looked for him on the following days, but never succeeded in finding
him.
We left Taormina for Syracuse. Step by step we went over the ground we
had covered in our first journey, making our way back to the starting
point of our love. And as during our first journey I had week by week
progressed towards recovery, so week by week as we went southwards,
Marceline’s health grew worse.
By what aberration, what obstinate blindness, what deliberate folly
did I persuade myself, did I above all try and persuade her that what
she wanted was still more light and warmth? Why did I remind her of
my convalescence at Biskra?... And yet the air had become warmer; the
climate of Palermo is mild and pleasant; Marceline liked it. There,
perhaps, she might have ... But had I the power to choose what I should
determine--to decide what I should desire? The state of the sea and
the irregular boat-service delayed us a week at Syracuse. All the time
I did not spend with Marceline I spent in the old port. O little port
of Syracuse! smells of sour wine, muddy alleys, stinking booths,
where dockers and vagabonds and wine-bibbing sailors loaf and jostle!
The society of the lowest dregs of humanity was delectable company to
me. And what need had I to understand their language, when I felt it
in my whole body? Even the brutality of their passion assumed in my
eyes a hypocritical appearance of health and vigour. In vain I told
myself that their wretched life could not have the same flavour for
them that it had for me.... Oh, I wished I could have rolled under the
table with them to wake up only with the first grey shiver of dawn.
And their company whetted my growing horror of luxury, of comfort, of
all the things I was wrapped round with, of the protection that my
newly restored health had made unnecessary, of all the precautions
one takes to preserve one’s body from the perilous contact of life. I
imagined their existence in other surroundings. I should have liked
to follow them elsewhere, to probe deeper into their drunken life....
Then suddenly I thought of Marceline. What was she doing at this very
moment? Suffering, crying, perhaps.... I got up hastily and hurried
back to the hotel; there, over the door, seemed written the words: No
poor admitted here.
Marceline always received me in the same way, without a word of
reproach or suspicion, and struggling, in spite of everything, to
smile. We took our meals in private; I ordered for her the best our
very second-rate hotel could provide. And all through the meal, I
kept thinking, “A piece of bread, a bit of cheese, a head of fennel
is enough for _them_ and would be enough for _me_ too. And perhaps
out there, close by, some of them are hungry and have not even that
wretched pittance. And here on my table is enough to fill them for
three days.” I should have liked to break down the walls and let the
guests flock in.... For to feel there were people suffering from hunger
was dreadful. And I went back again to the port and scattered about at
random the small coin with which my pockets were filled.
Poverty is a slave-driver; in return for food, men give their grudging
labour; all work that is not joyous is wretched, I thought, and I
paid many of them to rest. “Don’t work,” I said, “you hate it.” In
imagination, I bestowed on each of them that leisure without which
nothing can blossom--neither vice nor art.
Marceline did not mistake my thoughts; when I came back from the
port, I did not conceal from her what sort of wretches I had been
frequenting. Every kind of thing goes to the making of man. Marceline
knew well enough what I was trying so furiously to discover; and as
I reproached her for being too apt to credit everyone she knew with
special virtues of her own invention, “You,” said she, “are never
satisfied until you have made people exhibit some vice. Don’t you
understand that by looking at any particular trait, we develop and
exaggerate it? And that we make a man become what we think him?”
I could have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that the worst
instinct of every human being appeared to me the sincerest. But then
what did I mean by sincere?
We left Syracuse at last. I was haunted by the desire and the memory
of the past. At sea, Marceline’s health improved.... I can still see
the colour of the sea. It is so calm that the ship’s track in it
seems permanent. I can still hear the noises of dripping and dropping
water--liquid noises; the swabbing of the deck and the slapping of the
sailors’ bare feet on the boards. I can see Malta shining white in the
sun--the approach to Tunis.... How changed I am!
It was hot; it was fine; everything was glorious. Oh, how I wish
that every one of my sentences here could distill a quintessence of
voluptuous delight!... I cannot hope to tell my story now with more
order than I lived my life. I have been long enough trying to explain
how I became what I am. Oh, if only I could rid my mind of all this
intolerable logic!... I feel I have nothing in me that is not noble.
Tunis! The quality of the light here is not strength but abundance. The
shade is still full of it. The air itself is like a luminous fluid in
which everything is steeped; one bathes, one swims in it. This land of
pleasure satisfies desire without appeasing it and desire is sharpened
by satisfaction.
A land free from works of art; I despise those who cannot recognize
beauty until it has been transcribed and interpreted. The Arabs have
this admirable quality, that they live their art, sing it, dissipate
it from day to day; it is not fixed, not embalmed in any work. This is
the cause and effect of the absence of great artists.... I have always
thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of
beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, “Why did I
never realize before that that was beautiful too?”
At Kairouan, which I had not seen before, and which I visited without
Marceline, the night was very fine. As I was going back to sleep at the
hotel, I remember a group of Arabs I had seen lying out of doors on
mats, outside a little café. I went and lay down to sleep beside them.
I came away covered with vermin.
Marceline found the damp of the coast very relaxing {“enfeebling” in 1948
ed.} and I persuaded her that we ought to go on to Biskra as quickly as
possible. We were now at the beginning of April.
The journey to Biskra is a very long one. The first day we went to
Constantine without a break; the second day, Marceline was very tired
and we only got as far as El Kantara. I remember seeking there, and
towards evening finding, shade that was more delicious and cooler than
moonshine at night. It flowed about us like a stream of inexhaustible
refreshment. And from the bank where we were sitting, we could see the
plain aflame in the setting sun. That night Marceline could not sleep,
disturbed as she was by the strange silence or the tiniest of noises.
I was afraid she was feverish. I heard her tossing in the night. Next
morning I thought she looked paler. We went on again.
Biskra! That then was my goal.... Yes; there are the public gardens;
the bench ... I recognize the bench on which I used to sit in the first
days of my convalescence. What was it I read there?... Homer; I have
not opened the book since. There is the tree with the curious bark
I got up to go and feel. How weak I was then! Look! there come some
children!... No; I recognize none of them. How grave Marceline is! She
is as changed as I. Why does she cough so in this fine weather? There
is the hotel! There are our rooms, our terrace! What is Marceline
thinking? She has not said a word. As soon as she gets to her room
she lies down on the bed; she is tired and says she wants to sleep a
little. I go out.
I do not recognize the children, but the children recognize me. They
have heard of my arrival and come running to meet me. Can it really
be they? What a shock! What has happened? They have grown out of all
knowledge--hideously. In barely two years! It seems impossible....
What fatigues, what vices, what sloth have put their ugly mark on
faces that were once so bright with youth? What vile labours can so
soon have stunted those beautiful young limbs? What a bankruptcy of
hope!... I ask a few questions. Bachir is scullion in a café; Ashour
is laboriously earning a few pennies by breaking stones on the roads;
Hammatar has lost an eye. And who would believe it? Sadek has settled
down! He helps an elder brother sell loaves in the market; he looks
idiotic. Agib has set up as a butcher with his father; he is getting
fat; he is ugly; he is rich; he refuses to speak to his low-class
companions.... How stupid honorable careers make people! What! Am
I going to find here the same things I hated so at home? Boubakir?
Married. He is not fifteen yet. It is grotesque. Not altogether though.
When I see him that evening he explains that his marriage is a mere
farce. He is, I expect, an utter waster; he has taken to drink and lost
his looks.... So that is all that remains, is it? That is what life has
made of them? My intolerable depression makes me feel it was largely to
see them that I came here. Ménalque was right. Memory is an accursed
invention.
And Moktir? Ah! Moktir has just come out of prison. He is lying low.
The others will have nothing to do with him. I want to see him. He
used to be the handsomest of them all. Is he to be a disappointment
too?... Someone finds him out and brings him to me. No; Moktir has not
failed. Even my memory had not painted him as superb as he now is. His
strength, his beauty are flawless.... He smiles as he recognizes me.
“And what did you do before you went to prison?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you steal?”
He protests.
“And what are you doing now?”
He smiles.
“Well, Moktir, if you have nothing to do, you must come with us to
Touggourt.” And I suddenly feel seized with a desire to go to Touggourt.
Marceline is not well; I do not know what is going on in her mind. When
I go back to the hotel that evening, she presses up against me without
saying a word and without opening her eyes. Her wide sleeve has slipped
up and shows how thin she has grown. I take her in my arms, as if she
were a sleepy child, and rock and soothe her. Is it love, or anguish
or fever that makes her tremble so?... Oh! perhaps there might still
be time.... Will nothing make me stop?... I know now--I have found
out at last what gives me my special value. It is a kind of stubborn
perseverance in evil. But how do I bring myself to tell Marceline that
next day we are to leave again for Touggourt?...
She is asleep now in the room next mine. The moon has been up some time
and is flooding the terrace. The brightness is almost terrifying.
There is no hiding from it. The floor of my room is tiled with white,
and there the light is brightest. It streams through the wide-open
window. I recognize the way it shines into the room and the shadow
made by the door. Two years ago, it came in still further.... Yes; it
is almost at the same spot it had reached that night I got up because
I could not sleep.... It was against that very door-jamb I leant my
shoulder. I recognize the stillness of the palm-trees. What was the
sentence I read that night?... Oh, yes; Christ’s words to Peter: “Now
thou girdest thyself and goest where thou wouldest....” Where am I
going? Where would I go?... I did not tell you that the last time I was
at Naples, I went to Pæstum one day by myself. Oh, I could have wept
at the sight of those ruined stones. The ancient beauty shone out from
them, simple, perfect, smiling--deserted. Art is leaving me, I feel
it. To make room for what else? The smiling harmony once mine is mine
no longer.... No longer do I know what dark mysterious God I serve. O
great new God! grant me the knowledge of other newer races, unimagined
types of beauty.
The next morning at daybreak, we left in the diligence and Moktir came
with us. Moktir was as happy as a king.
Chegga; Kefeldorh’; M’reyer ... dreary stages of a still more dreary
road--an interminable road. I confess I had expected these oases to be
more smiling. But there is nothing here but stone and sand; at times
a few shrubs with queer flowers; at times an attempt at palm-trees,
watered by some hidden spring.... Now, to any oasis, I prefer the
desert--land of mortal glory and intolerable splendour! Man’s effort
here seems ugly and miserable. All other lands now are weariness to me.
“You like what is inhuman,” says Marceline.
But she herself, how greedily she looks!
Next day it was not so fine; that is, a wind sprang up and the horizon
became dull and grey.
Marceline is suffering; the sand in the air bums and irritates her
throat; the overabundance of light tires her eyes; the hostile
landscape crushes her. But it is too late now to turn back. In a few
hours we shall be at Touggourt.
It is this last part of the journey, though it is still so near me,
that I remember least. I find it impossible to recall the scenery of
the second day, nor what I did when we first got to Touggourt. But
what I do still remember are my impatience and my haste.
It had been very cold that morning. Towards evening a burning simoon
sprang up. Marceline, exhausted by the journey, went to bed as soon
as we arrived. I had hoped to find a rather more comfortable hotel,
but our room is hideous; the sand, the sun, the flies have tarnished,
dirtied, discoloured everything. As we have eaten scarcely anything
since daybreak, I order a meal to be served at once; but Marceline
finds everything uneatable and I cannot persuade her to touch a morsel.
We have with us arrangements for making our own tea. I attend to this
trifling business, and for dinner we content ourselves with a few
biscuits and the tea, made with the brackish water of the country and
tasting horrible in consequence.
By a last semblance of virtue, I stay with her till evening. And all of
a sudden I feel that I myself have come to the end of my strength. O
taste of ashes! O deadly lassitude! O the sadness of superhuman effort!
I hardly dare look at her; I am too certain that my eyes, instead of
seeking hers, will fasten horribly on the black holes of her nostrils;
the suffering expression of her face is agonizing. Nor does she look
at me either. I feel her anguish as if I could touch it. She coughs a
great deal and then falls asleep. From time to time, she is shaken by a
sudden shudder.
Perhaps the night will be bad, and before it is too late I must find
out where I can get help. I go out.
Outside the hotel, the Touggourt square, the streets, the very
atmosphere, are so strange that I can hardly believe it is I who see
them. After a little I go in again. Marceline is sleeping quietly.
I need not have been so frightened; in this peculiar country, one
suspects peril everywhere. Absurd! And more or less reassured, I again
go out.
There is a strange nocturnal animation in the square--a silent flitting
to and fro--a stealthy gliding of white burnouses. The wind at times
tears off a shred of strange music and brings it from I know not
where. Someone comes up to me.... Moktir! He was waiting for me, he
says--expected me to come out again. He laughs. He knows Touggourt,
comes here often, knows where to take me. I let myself be guided by him.
We walk along in the dark and go into a Moorish café; this is where
the music came from. Some Arab women are dancing--if such a monotonous
glide can be called dancing. One of them takes me by the hand; I
follow her; she is Moktir’s mistress; he comes too.... We all three
go into the deep, narrow room where the only piece of furniture is a
bed.... A very low bed on which we sit down. A white rabbit which has
been shut up in the room is scared at first but afterwards grows tamer
and comes to feed out of Moktir’s hand. Coffee is brought. Then, while
Moktir is playing with the rabbit, the woman draws me towards her, and
I let myself go to her as one lets oneself sink into sleep....
Oh, here I might deceive you or be silent--but what use can this story
be to me, if it ceases to be truthful?
I go back alone to the hotel, for Moktir remains behind in the café. It
is late. A parching sirocco is blowing; the wind is laden with sand,
and, in spite of the night, torrid. After three or four steps, I am
bathed in sweat; but I suddenly feel I must hurry and I reach the hotel
almost at a run. She is awake perhaps.... Perhaps she wants me?... No;
the window of her room is dark. I wait for a short lull in the wind
before opening the door; I go into the room very softly in the dark.
What is that noise?... I do not recognize her cough.... Is it really
Marceline?... I light the light.
She is half sitting on the bed, one of her thin arms clutching the
bars and supporting her in an upright position; her sheets, her hands,
her nightdress are flooded with a stream of blood; her face is soiled
with it; her eyes have grown hideously big; and no cry of agony could
be more appalling than her silence. Her face is bathed in sweat; I try
to find a little place on it where I can put a horrible kiss; I feel
the taste of her sweat on my lips. I wash and refresh her forehead
and cheeks.... What is that hard thing I feel under my foot near the
bed? I stoop down and pick up the little rosary that she once asked
for in Paris and which she has dropped on the ground. I slip it over
her open hand, but immediately she lowers her hand and drops the
rosary again.... What am I to do? I wish I could get help.... Her hand
clutches me desperately, holds me tight; oh, can she think I want to
leave her? She says:
“Oh, you can wait a little longer, can’t you?” Then, as she sees I want
to say something,
“Don’t speak,” she adds; “everything is all right.”
I pick up the rosary again and put it back on her hand, but again she
lets it drop--yes, deliberately--lets it drop. I kneel down beside her,
take her hand and press it to me.
She lets herself go, partly against the pillow, partly against my
shoulder, seems to sleep a little, but her eyes are still wide open.
An hour later, she raises herself, disengages her hand from mine,
clutches at her nightdress and tears the lace. She is choking.
Towards morning she has another hemorrhage....
* * * * *
I have finished telling you my story. What more should I say?
The French cemetery at Touggourt is a hideous place, half devoured by
the sand.... What little energy I had left I spent in carrying her away
from that miserable spot. She rests at El Kantara, in the shade of a
private garden she liked. It all happened barely three months ago.
Those three months have put a distance of ten years between that time
and this.
* * * * *
Michel remained silent for a long time. We did not speak either, for
we each of us had a strange feeling of uneasiness. We felt, alas, that
by telling his story, Michel had made his action more legitimate. Our
not having known at what point to condemn it in the course of his long
explanation seemed almost to make us his accomplices. We felt, as it
were, involved. He finished his story without a quaver in his voice,
without an inflexion or a gesture to show that he was feeling any
emotion whatever; he might have had a cynical pride in not appearing
moved, or a kind of shyness that made him afraid of arousing emotion
in us by his tears, or he might not in fact have been moved. Even now
I cannot guess in what proportions pride, strength, reserve or want of
feeling were combined in him. After a pause he went on:
“What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems
to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from
here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I have
freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless
liberty is a burden to me. It is not, believe me, that I am tired of my
crime--if you choose to call it that--but I must prove to myself that I
have not overstepped my rights.
“When you knew me first, I had great stability of thought, and I know
that that is what makes real men. I have it no longer. But I think it
is the fault of this climate. Nothing is more discouraging to thought
than this persistent azure. Enjoyment here follows so closely upon
desire that effort is impossible. Here, in the midst of splendour and
death, I feel the presence of happiness too close, the yielding to it
too uniform. In the middle of the day, I go and lie down on my bed to
while away the long dreary hours and their intolerable leisure.
“Look! I have here a number of white pebbles. I let them soak in the
shade, then hold them in the hollow of my hand and wait until their
soothing coolness is exhausted. Then I begin once more, changing the
pebbles and putting back those that have lost their coolness to soak
in the shade again.... Time passes and the evening comes on.... Take
me away; I cannot move of myself. Something in my will is broken; I
don’t even know how I had the strength to leave El Kantara. Sometimes
I am afraid that what I have suppressed will take vengeance on me.
I should like to begin over again. I should like to get rid of the
remains of my fortune; you see the walls here are still covered with
it.... I live for next to nothing in this place. A half-caste innkeeper
prepares what little food I need. The boy who ran away at your approach
brings it to me in the evening and morning, in exchange for a few sous
and a caress or two. He turns shy with strangers, but with me he is
as affectionate and faithful as a dog. His sister is an Ouled-Naïl
and in the winter goes back to Constantine to sell her body to the
passers-by. She is very beautiful and in the first weeks I sometimes
allowed her to pass the night with me. But one morning, her brother,
little Ali, surprised us together. He showed great annoyance and
refused to come back for five days. And yet he knows perfectly well how
and on what his sister lives; he used to speak of it before without the
slightest embarrassment.... Can he be jealous? Be that as it may, the
little rascal has succeeded in his object; for, partly from distaste,
partly because I was afraid of losing Ali, I have given the woman up
since this incident. She has not taken offence; but every time I meet
her, she laughs and declares that I prefer the boy to her. She makes
out that it is he who keeps me here. Perhaps she is not altogether
wrong....”
* * * * *
_No writer living today has caused such storms of
discussion as André Gide, and few have reached such
eminence. In the course of an active career which
reached back into the last century he has always
managed to be a step ahead of the succeeding sets of
moderns, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about
his books is that not one of them dates. There are
few surer tests of genius. His first great success
in America came in 1927 with the publication of
The Counterfeiters, and since then there has been
an ever-growing interest here in a writer whose
distinguished and versatile gifts were long ago
recognised throughout Europe._
SET ON THE LINOTYPE IN ELZEVIR, ELECTROTYPED,
PRINTED AND BOUND BY VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC.,
BINGHAMTON, N. Y. PAPER MADE BY
S. D. WARREN CO., BOSTON
Transcriber’s note
The 1948 Knopf reprint of this translation makes numerous small
changes, including simple copy-edits for idiom, and a reduction in the
use of commas. One wording change with semantic significance is noted
inline in {curly braces}. This transcription otherwise follows the 1930
printing for technical and procedural reasons. The use of both single
and double quotation marks is retained.
The final section of the book, beginning “Michel remained silent for
a long time”, starts on a new page but lacks any heading, a stylistic
choice not seen until that point. Thus, a thought break symbol has been
placed there _along with_ extra white space.
Italic text is indicated with _underscores_.
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