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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
+Volume 13, by Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Original Short Stories, Volume 13 (of 13)
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #3089]
+Last Updated: February 23, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAUPASSANT SHORT STORIES ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES
+
+
+By Guy De Maupassant
+
+
+Translated by:
+
+     ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
+     A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
+     MME. QUESADA and Others
+
+
+
+VOLUME XIII.
+
+     OLD JUDAS
+     THE LITTLE CASK
+     BOITELLE
+     A WIDOW
+     THE ENGLISHMEN OF ETRETAT
+     MAGNETISM
+     A FATHERS CONFESSION
+     A MOTHER OF MONSTERS
+     AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+     A PORTRAIT
+     THE DRUNKARD
+     THE WARDROBE
+     THE MOUNTAIN POOL
+     A CREMATION
+     MISTI
+     MADAME HERMET
+     THE MAGIC COUCH
+
+
+
+
+OLD JUDAS
+
+This entire stretch of country was amazing; it was characterized by a
+grandeur that was almost religious, and yet it had an air of sinister
+desolation.
+
+A great, wild lake, filled with stagnant, black water, in which
+thousands of reeds were waving to and fro, lay in the midst of a vast
+circle of naked hills, where nothing grew but broom, or here and there
+an oak curiously twisted by the wind.
+
+Just one house stood on the banks of that dark lake, a small, low house
+inhabited by Uncle Joseph, an old boatman, who lived on what he could
+make by his fishing. Once a week he carried the fish he caught into the
+surrounding villages, returning with the few provisions that he needed
+for his sustenance.
+
+I went to see this old hermit, who offered to take me with him to his
+nets, and I accepted.
+
+His boat was old, worm-eaten and clumsy, and the skinny old man rowed
+with a gentle and monotonous stroke that was soothing to the soul,
+already oppressed by the sadness of the land round about.
+
+It seemed to me as if I were transported to olden times, in the midst of
+that ancient country, in that primitive boat, which was propelled by a
+man of another age.
+
+He took up his nets and threw the fish into the bottom of the boat, as
+the fishermen of the Bible might have done. Then he took me down to the
+end of the lake, where I suddenly perceived a ruin on the other side of
+the bank a dilapidated hut, with an enormous red cross on the wall that
+looked as if it might have been traced with blood, as it gleamed in the
+last rays of the setting sun.
+
+“What is that?” I asked.
+
+“That is where Judas died,” the man replied, crossing himself.
+
+I was not surprised, being almost prepared for this strange answer.
+
+Still I asked:
+
+“Judas? What Judas?”
+
+“The Wandering Jew, monsieur,” he added.
+
+I asked him to tell me this legend.
+
+But it was better than a legend, being a true story, and quite a recent
+one, since Uncle Joseph had known the man.
+
+This hut had formerly been occupied by a large woman, a kind of beggar,
+who lived on public charity.
+
+Uncle Joseph did not remember from whom she had this hut. One evening an
+old man with a white beard, who seemed to be at least two hundred years
+old, and who could hardly drag himself along, asked alms of this forlorn
+woman, as he passed her dwelling.
+
+“Sit down, father,” she replied; “everything here belongs to all the
+world, since it comes from all the world.”
+
+He sat down on a stone before the door. He shared the woman's bread, her
+bed of leaves, and her house.
+
+He did not leave her again, for he had come to the end of his travels.
+
+“It was Our Lady the Virgin who permitted this, monsieur,” Joseph added,
+“it being a woman who had opened her door to a Judas, for this old
+vagabond was the Wandering Jew. It was not known at first in the
+country, but the people suspected it very soon, because he was always
+walking; it had become a sort of second nature to him.”
+
+And suspicion had been aroused by still another thing. This woman, who
+kept that stranger with her, was thought to be a Jewess, for no one had
+ever seen her at church. For ten miles around no one ever called her
+anything else but the Jewess.
+
+When the little country children saw her come to beg they cried out:
+“Mamma, mamma, here is the Jewess!”
+
+The old man and she began to go out together into the neighboring
+districts, holding out their hands at all the doors, stammering
+supplications into the ears of all the passers. They could be seen at
+all hours of the day, on by-paths, in the villages, or again eating
+bread, sitting in the noon heat under the shadow of some solitary tree.
+And the country people began to call the beggar Old Judas.
+
+One day he brought home in his sack two little live pigs, which a farmer
+had given him after he had cured the farmer of some sickness.
+
+Soon he stopped begging, and devoted himself entirely to his pigs. He
+took them out to feed by the lake, or under isolated oaks, or in the
+near-by valleys. The woman, however, went about all day begging, but she
+always came back to him in the evening.
+
+He also did not go to church, and no one ever had seen him cross himself
+before the wayside crucifixes. All this gave rise to much gossip:
+
+One night his companion was attacked by a fever and began to tremble
+like a leaf in the wind. He went to the nearest town to get some
+medicine, and then he shut himself up with her, and was not seen for six
+days.
+
+The priest, having heard that the “Jewess” was about to die, came to
+offer the consolation of his religion and administer the last sacrament.
+Was she a Jewess? He did not know. But in any case, he wished to try to
+save her soul.
+
+Hardly had he knocked at the door when old Judas appeared on the
+threshold, breathing hard, his eyes aflame, his long beard agitated,
+like rippling water, and he hurled blasphemies in an unknown language,
+extending his skinny arms in order to prevent the priest from entering.
+
+The priest attempted to speak, offered his purse and his aid, but
+the old man kept on abusing him, making gestures with his hands as if
+throwing; stones at him.
+
+Then the priest retired, followed by the curses of the beggar.
+
+The companion of old Judas died the following day. He buried her
+himself, in front of her door. They were people of so little account
+that no one took any interest in them.
+
+Then they saw the man take his pigs out again to the lake and up the
+hillsides. And he also began begging again to get food. But the people
+gave him hardly anything, as there was so much gossip about him. Every
+one knew, moreover, how he had treated the priest.
+
+Then he disappeared. That was during Holy Week, but no one paid any
+attention to him.
+
+But on Easter Sunday the boys and girls who had gone walking out to the
+lake heard a great noise in the hut. The door was locked; but the boys
+broke it in, and the two pigs ran out, jumping like gnats. No one ever
+saw them again.
+
+The whole crowd went in; they saw some old rags on the floor, the
+beggar's hat, some bones, clots of dried blood and bits of flesh in the
+hollows of the skull.
+
+His pigs had devoured him.
+
+“This happened on Good Friday, monsieur.” Joseph concluded his story,
+“three hours after noon.”
+
+“How do you know that?” I asked him.
+
+“There is no doubt about that,” he replied.
+
+I did not attempt to make him understand that it could easily happen
+that the famished animals had eaten their master, after he had died
+suddenly in his hut.
+
+As for the cross on the wall, it had appeared one morning, and no one
+knew what hand traced it in that strange color.
+
+Since then no one doubted any longer that the Wandering Jew had died on
+this spot.
+
+I myself believed it for one hour.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE CASK
+
+He was a tall man of forty or thereabout, this Jules Chicot, the
+innkeeper of Spreville, with a red face and a round stomach, and said by
+those who knew him to be a smart business man. He stopped his buggy in
+front of Mother Magloire's farmhouse, and, hitching the horse to the
+gatepost, went in at the gate.
+
+Chicot owned some land adjoining that of the old woman, which he had
+been coveting for a long while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of
+times, but she had always obstinately refused to part with it.
+
+“I was born here, and here I mean to die,” was all she said.
+
+He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a
+woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost
+dried up in fact and much bent but as active and untiring as a girl.
+Chicot patted her on the back in a friendly fashion and then sat down by
+her on a stool.
+
+“Well mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see.”
+
+“Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you,
+Monsieur Chicot?”
+
+“Oh, pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally;
+otherwise I have nothing to complain of.”
+
+“So much the better.”
+
+And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.
+Her crooked, knotted fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the
+tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of
+pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of
+skin with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the
+potatoes into the water as they were done. Three daring fowls jumped one
+after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel and then ran away as
+fast as their legs would carry them with it in their beak.
+
+Chicot seemed embarrassed, anxious, with something on the tip of his
+tongue which he could not say. At last he said hurriedly:
+
+“Listen, Mother Magloire--”
+
+“Well, what is it?”
+
+“You are quite sure that you do not want to sell your land?”
+
+“Certainly not; you may make up your mind to that. What I have said I
+have said, so don't refer to it again.”
+
+“Very well; only I think I know of an arrangement that might suit us
+both very well.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“Just this. You shall sell it to me and keep it all the same. You don't
+understand? Very well, then follow me in what I am going to say.”
+
+The old woman left off peeling potatoes and looked at the innkeeper
+attentively from under her heavy eyebrows, and he went on:
+
+“Let me explain myself. Every month I will give you a hundred and fifty
+francs. You understand me! suppose! Every month I will come and bring
+you thirty crowns, and it will not make the slightest difference in your
+life--not the very slightest. You will have your own home just as you
+have now, need not trouble yourself about me, and will owe me nothing;
+all you will have to do will be to take my money. Will that arrangement
+suit you?”
+
+He looked at her good-humoredly, one might almost have said
+benevolently, and the old woman returned his looks distrustfully, as if
+she suspected a trap, and said:
+
+“It seems all right as far as I am concerned, but it will not give you
+the farm.”
+
+“Never mind about that,” he said; “you may remain here as long as it
+pleases God Almighty to let you live; it will be your home. Only you
+will sign a deed before a lawyer making it over to me; after your death.
+You have no children, only nephews and nieces for whom you don't care
+a straw. Will that suit you? You will keep everything during your life,
+and I will give you the thirty crowns a month. It is pure gain as far as
+you are concerned.”
+
+The old woman was surprised, rather uneasy, but, nevertheless, very much
+tempted to agree, and answered:
+
+“I don't say that I will not agree to it, but I must think about it.
+Come back in a week, and we will talk it over again, and I will then
+give you my definite answer.”
+
+And Chicot went off as happy as a king who had conquered an empire.
+
+Mother Magloire was thoughtful, and did not sleep at all that night; in
+fact, for four days she was in a fever of hesitation. She suspected that
+there was something underneath the offer which was not to her advantage;
+but then the thought of thirty crowns a month, of all those coins
+clinking in her apron, falling to her, as it were, from the skies,
+without her doing anything for it, aroused her covetousness.
+
+She went to the notary and told him about it. He advised her to accept
+Chicot's offer, but said she ought to ask for an annuity of fifty
+instead of thirty, as her farm was worth sixty thousand francs at the
+lowest calculation.
+
+“If you live for fifteen years longer,” he said, “even then he will only
+have paid forty-five thousand francs for it.”
+
+The old woman trembled with joy at this prospect of getting fifty crowns
+a month, but she was still suspicious, fearing some trick, and she
+remained a long time with the lawyer asking questions without being able
+to make up her mind to go. At last she gave him instructions to draw up
+the deed and returned home with her head in a whirl, just as if she had
+drunk four jugs of new cider.
+
+When Chicot came again to receive her answer she declared, after a
+lot of persuading, that she could not make up her mind to agree to
+his proposal, though she was all the time trembling lest he should not
+consent to give the fifty crowns, but at last, when he grew urgent, she
+told him what she expected for her farm.
+
+He looked surprised and disappointed and refused.
+
+Then, in order to convince him, she began to talk about the probable
+duration of her life.
+
+“I am certainly not likely to live more than five or six years longer.
+I am nearly seventy-three, and far from strong, even considering my age.
+The other evening I thought I was going to die, and could hardly manage
+to crawl into bed.”
+
+But Chicot was not going to be taken in.
+
+“Come, come, old lady, you are as strong as the church tower, and will
+live till you are a hundred at least; you will no doubt see me put under
+ground first.”
+
+The whole day was spent in discussing the money, and as the old woman
+would not give in, the innkeeper consented to give the fifty crowns,
+and she insisted upon having ten crowns over and above to strike the
+bargain.
+
+Three years passed and the old dame did not seem to have grown a day
+older. Chicot was in despair, and it seemed to him as if he had been
+paying that annuity for fifty years, that he had been taken in, done,
+ruined. From time to time he went to see the old lady, just as one goes
+in July to see when the harvest is likely to begin. She always met
+him with a cunning look, and one might have supposed that she was
+congratulating herself on the trick she had played him. Seeing how well
+and hearty she seemed he very soon got into his buggy again, growling to
+himself:
+
+“Will you never die, you old hag?”
+
+He did not know what to do, and he felt inclined to strangle her when he
+saw her. He hated her with a ferocious, cunning hatred, the hatred of a
+peasant who has been robbed, and began to cast about for some means of
+getting rid of her.
+
+One day he came to see her again, rubbing his hands as he did the
+first time he proposed the bargain, and, after having chatted for a few
+minutes, he said:
+
+“Why do you never come and have a bit of dinner at my place when you are
+in Spreville? The people are talking about it, and saying we are not on
+friendly terms, and that pains me. You know it will cost you nothing if
+you come, for I don't look at the price of a dinner. Come whenever you
+feel inclined; I shall be very glad to see you.”
+
+Old Mother Magloire did not need to be asked twice, and the next day but
+one, as she had to go to the town in any case, it being market day, she
+let her man drive her to Chicot's place, where the buggy was put in the
+barn while she went into the house to get her dinner.
+
+The innkeeper was delighted and treated her like a lady, giving her
+roast fowl, black pudding, leg of mutton and bacon and cabbage. But
+she ate next to nothing. She had always been a small eater, and had
+generally lived on a little soup and a crust of bread and butter.
+
+Chicot was disappointed and pressed her to eat more, but she refused,
+and she would drink little, and declined coffee, so he asked her:
+
+“But surely you will take a little drop of brandy or liqueur?”
+
+“Well, as to that, I don't know that I will refuse.” Whereupon he
+shouted out:
+
+“Rosalie, bring the superfine brandy--the special--you know.”
+
+The servant appeared, carrying a long bottle ornamented with a paper
+vine-leaf, and he filled two liqueur glasses.
+
+“Just try that; you will find it first rate.”
+
+The good woman drank it slowly in sips, so as to make the pleasure last
+all the longer, and when she had finished her glass, she said:
+
+“Yes, that is first rate!”
+
+Almost before she had said it Chicot had poured her out another
+glassful. She wished to refuse, but it was too late, and she drank
+it very slowly, as she had done the first, and he asked her to have a
+third. She objected, but he persisted.
+
+“It is as mild as milk, you know; I can drink ten or a dozen glasses
+without any ill effects; it goes down like sugar and does not go to the
+head; one would think that it evaporated on the tongue: It is the most
+wholesome thing you can drink.”
+
+She took it, for she really enjoyed it, but she left half the glass.
+
+Then Chicot, in an excess of generosity, said:
+
+“Look here, as it is so much to your taste, I will give you a small keg
+of it, just to show that you and I are still excellent friends.” So she
+took one away with her, feeling slightly overcome by the effects of what
+she had drunk.
+
+The next day the innkeeper drove into her yard and took a little
+iron-hooped keg out of his gig. He insisted on her tasting the contents,
+to make sure it was the same delicious article, and, when they had each
+of them drunk three more glasses, he said as he was going away:
+
+“Well, you know when it is all gone there is more left; don't be modest,
+for I shall not mind. The sooner it is finished the better pleased I
+shall be.”
+
+Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door
+cutting up the bread for her soup.
+
+He went up to her and put his face close to hers, so that he might smell
+her breath; and when he smelt the alcohol he felt pleased.
+
+“I suppose you will give me a glass of the Special?” he said. And they
+had three glasses each.
+
+Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire was
+in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up in her
+kitchen, then in her yard, then in the roads in the neighborhood, and
+she was often brought home like a log.
+
+The innkeeper did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to
+him about her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:
+
+“It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age, but
+when people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in
+the long run.”
+
+And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter. About
+Christmas time she fell down, unconscious, in the snow, and was found
+dead the next morning.
+
+And when Chicot came in for the farm, he said:
+
+“It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she would
+probably have lived ten years longer.”
+
+
+
+
+BOITELLE
+
+Father Boitelle (Antoine) made a specialty of undertaking dirty jobs all
+through the countryside. Whenever there was a ditch or a cesspool to
+be cleaned out, a dunghill removed, a sewer cleansed, or any dirt hole
+whatever, he way always employed to do it.
+
+He would come with the instruments of his trade, his sabots covered with
+dirt, and set to work, complaining incessantly about his occupation.
+When people asked him then why he did this loathsome work, he would
+reply resignedly:
+
+“Faith, 'tis for my children, whom I must support. This brings me in
+more than anything else.”
+
+He had, indeed, fourteen children. If any one asked him what had become
+of them, he would say with an air of indifference:
+
+“There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at service
+and five are married.”
+
+When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he
+replied vivaciously:
+
+“I did not oppose them. I opposed them in nothing. They married just
+as they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns
+out badly. I am a night scavenger because my parents went against my
+likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others.”
+
+Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:
+
+He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than
+another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, however. When he was
+not on duty, his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay, where the
+bird dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a soldier from
+his own part of the country, he would slowly saunter along by cages
+containing parrots with green backs and yellow heads from the banks of
+the Amazon, or parrots with gray backs and red heads from Senegal, or
+enormous macaws, which look like birds reared in hot-houses, with their
+flower-like feathers, their plumes and their tufts. Parrots of every
+size, who seem painted with minute care by the miniaturist, God
+Almighty, and the little birds, all the smaller birds hopped about,
+yellow, blue and variegated, mingling their cries with the noise of the
+quay; and adding to the din caused by unloading the vessels, as well
+as by passengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill and
+deafening, as if from some distant forest of monsters.
+
+Boitelle would pause, with wondering eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing and
+enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive cockatoos, who kept nodding
+their white or yellow topknots toward the glaring red of his breeches
+and the copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that could talk
+he put questions to it, and if it happened at the time to be disposed
+to reply and to hold a conversation with him he would carry away enough
+amusement to last him till evening. He also found heaps of amusement in
+looking at the monkeys, and could conceive no greater luxury for a rich
+man than to own these animals as one owns cats and dogs. This kind of
+taste for the exotic he had in his blood, as people have a taste for
+the chase, or for medicine, or for the priesthood. He could not help
+returning to the quay every time the gates of the barracks opened, drawn
+toward it by an irresistible longing.
+
+On one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstasy before an enormous
+macaw, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward and bridling
+up again as if making the court curtseys of parrot-land, he saw the
+door of a little cafe adjoining the bird dealer's shop open, and a young
+negress appeared, wearing on her head a red silk handkerchief. She was
+sweeping into the street the corks and sand of the establishment.
+
+Boitelle's attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman,
+and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated
+with the greater astonishment and delight.
+
+The negress, having swept the rubbish into the street, raised her eyes,
+and, in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier's uniform. There she stood
+facing him with her broom in her hands as if she were bringing him a
+rifle, while the macaw continued bowing. But at the end of a few seconds
+the soldier began to feel embarrassed at this attention, and he walked
+away quietly so as not to look as if he were beating a retreat.
+
+But he came back. Almost every day he passed before the Cafe des
+Colonies, and often he could distinguish through the window the figure
+of the little black-skinned maid serving “bocks” or glasses of brandy to
+the sailors of the port. Frequently, too, she would come out to the door
+on seeing him; soon, without even having exchanged a word, they smiled
+at one another like acquaintances; and Boitelle felt his heart touched
+when he suddenly saw, glittering between the dark lips of the girl, a
+shining row of white teeth. At length, one day he ventured to enter, and
+was quite surprised to find that she could speak French like every one
+else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she was good enough to accept a
+glassful, remained in the soldier's recollection memorably delicious,
+and it became a custom with him to come and absorb in this little tavern
+on the quay all the agreeable drinks which he could afford.
+
+For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts dwelt
+constantly, to watch the black hand of the little maid pouring something
+into his glass while her teeth laughed more than her eyes. At the end
+of two months they became fast friends, and Boitelle, after his first
+astonishment at discovering that this negress had as good principles as
+honest French girls, that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry,
+religion and good conduct, loved her more on that account, and was so
+charmed with her that he wanted to marry her.
+
+He told her his intentions, which made her dance with joy. She had also
+a little money, left her by, a female oyster dealer, who had picked her
+up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain.
+This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old,
+lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship, some hours after his
+departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre he abandoned to the
+care of this compassionate oyster dealer the little black creature, who
+had been hidden on board his vessel, he knew not why or by whom.
+
+The oyster woman having died, the young negress became a servant at the
+Colonial Tavern.
+
+Antoine Boitelle added: “This will be all right if my parents don't
+oppose it. I will never go against them, you understand, never! I'm
+going to say a word or two to them the first time I go back to the
+country.”
+
+On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours'
+leave, he went to see his family, who cultivated a little farm at
+Tourteville, near Yvetot.
+
+He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee baptized
+with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing his parents
+that he had found a girl who satisfied his tastes, all his tastes, so
+completely that there could not exist any other in all the world so
+perfectly suited to him.
+
+The old people, on hearing this, immediately assumed a cautious manner
+and wanted explanations. He had concealed nothing from them except the
+color of her skin.
+
+She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean,
+well-conducted and sensible. All these things were better than money
+would be in the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few sous,
+left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous, almost
+a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings bank. The old
+people, persuaded by his talk, and relying also on their own judgment,
+were gradually weakening, when he came to the delicate point. Laughing
+in rather a constrained fashion, he said:
+
+“There's only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip.”
+
+They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very
+cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky race
+of which they had only seen samples in pictures at Epinal. Then they
+became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had proposed a union with
+the devil.
+
+The mother said: “Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of her?”
+
+He replied: “Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere.”
+
+The father interposed: “Black? Is it as black as the pot?”
+
+The son answered: “Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but
+not disgustingly black. The cure's cassock is black, but it is not
+uglier than a surplice which is white.”
+
+The father said: “Are there more black people besides her in her
+country?”
+
+And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed: “Certainly!”
+
+But the old man shook his head.
+
+“That must be unpleasant.”
+
+And the son:
+
+“It isn't more disagreeable than anything else when you get accustomed
+to it.”
+
+The mother asked:
+
+“It doesn't soil the underwear more than other skins, this black skin?”
+
+“Not more than your own, as it is her proper color.”
+
+Then, after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should
+see this girl before coming; to any decision, and that the young fellow,
+whose term of military service would be over in a month, should bring
+her to the house in order that they might examine her and decide by
+talking the matter over whether or not she was too dark to enter the
+Boitelle family.
+
+Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22d of May, the day of
+his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.
+
+She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover's parents,
+her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red and blue
+were the prevailing colors, so that she looked as if she were adorned
+for a national festival.
+
+At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her, and
+Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who commanded so much
+attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in which she took a seat
+by his side, she aroused so much astonishment among the country folks
+that the people in the adjoining compartments stood up on their benches
+to look at her over the wooden partition which divides the compartments.
+A child, at sight of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed
+his face in his mother's apron. Everything went off well, however, up
+to their arrival at their destination. But when the train slackened its
+rate of motion as they drew near Yvetot, Antoine felt: ill at ease, as
+he would have done at a review when; he did not know his drill practice.
+Then, as he; leaned his head out, he recognized in the distance: his
+father, holding the bridle of the horse harnessed to a carryall, and his
+mother, who had come forward to the grating, behind which stood those
+who were expecting friends.
+
+He alighted first, gave his hand to his sweetheart, and holding himself
+erect, as if he were escorting a general, he went to meet his family.
+
+The mother, on seeing this black lady in variegated costume in her son's
+company, remained so stupefied that she could not open her mouth; and
+the father found it hard to hold the horse, which the engine or the
+negress caused to rear continuously. But Antoine, suddenly filled with
+unmixed joy at seeing once more the old people, rushed forward with open
+arms, embraced his mother, embraced his father, in spite of the nag's
+fright, and then turning toward his companion, at whom the passengers on
+the platform stopped to stare with amazement, he proceeded to explain:
+
+“Here she is! I told you that, at first sight, she is not attractive;
+but as soon as you know her, I can assure you there's not a better sort
+in the whole world. Say good-morning to her so that she may not feel
+badly.”
+
+Thereupon Mere Boitelle, almost frightened out of her wits, made a sort
+of curtsy, while the father took off his cap, murmuring:
+
+“I wish you good luck!”
+
+Then, without further delay, they climbed into the carryall, the two
+women at the back, on seats which made them jump up and down as the
+vehicle went jolting along the road, and the two men in front on the
+front seat.
+
+Nobody spoke. Antoine, ill at ease, whistled a barrack-room air; his
+father whipped the nag; and his mother, from where she sat in the
+corner, kept casting sly glances at the negress, whose forehead and
+cheekbones shone in the sunlight like well-polished shoes.
+
+Wishing to break the ice, Antoine turned round.
+
+“Well,” said he, “we don't seem inclined to talk.”
+
+“We must have time,” replied the old woman.
+
+He went on:
+
+“Come! Tell us the little story about that hen of yours that laid eight
+eggs.”
+
+It was a funny anecdote of long standing in the family. But, as his
+mother still remained silent, paralyzed by her emotion, he undertook
+himself to tell the story, laughing as he did so at the memorable
+incident. The father, who knew it by heart brightened at the opening
+words of the narrative; his wife soon followed his example; and the
+negress herself, when he reached the drollest part of it, suddenly
+gave vent to a laugh, such a loud, rolling torrent of laughter that the
+horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a while.
+
+This served to cement their acquaintance. They all began to chat.
+
+They had scarcely reached the house and had all alighted, when Antoine
+conducted his sweetheart to a room, so that she might take off her
+dress, to avoid staining it, as she was going to prepare a nice dish,
+intended to win the old people's affections through their stomachs. He
+drew his parents outside the house, and, with beating heart, asked:
+
+“Well, what do you say now?”
+
+The father said nothing. The mother, less timid, exclaimed:
+
+“She is too black. No, indeed, this is too much for me. It turns my
+blood.”
+
+“You will get used to it,” said Antoine.
+
+“Perhaps so, but not at first.”
+
+They went into the house, where the good woman was somewhat affected at
+the spectacle of the negress engaged in cooking. She at once proceeded
+to assist her, with petticoats tucked up, active in spite of her age.
+
+The meal was an excellent one, very long, very enjoyable. When they were
+taking a turn after dinner, Antoine took his father aside.
+
+“Well, dad, what do you say about it?”
+
+The peasant took care never to compromise himself.
+
+“I have no opinion about it. Ask your mother.”
+
+So Antoine went back to his mother, and, detaining her behind the rest,
+said:
+
+“Well, mother, what do you think of her?”
+
+“My poor lad, she is really too black. If she were only a little less
+black, I would not go against you, but this is too much. One would think
+it was Satan!”
+
+He did not press her, knowing how obstinate the old woman had always
+been, but he felt a tempest of disappointment sweeping over his heart.
+He was turning over in his mind what he ought to do, what plan he could
+devise, surprised, moreover, that she had not conquered them already as
+she had captivated himself. And they, all four, walked along through
+the wheat fields, having gradually relapsed into silence. Whenever they
+passed a fence they saw a countryman sitting on the stile, and a group
+of brats climbed up to stare at them, and every one rushed out into the
+road to see the “black” whore young Boitelle had brought home with him.
+At a distance they noticed people scampering across the fields just as
+when the drum beats to draw public attention to some living phenomenon.
+Pere and Mere Boitelle, alarmed at this curiosity, which was exhibited
+everywhere through the country at their approach, quickened their
+pace, walking side by side, and leaving their son far behind. His dark
+companion asked what his parents thought of her.
+
+He hesitatingly replied that they had not yet made up their minds.
+
+But on the village green people rushed out of all the houses in a
+flutter of excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering crowd, old
+Boitelle took to his heels, and regained his abode, while Antoine;
+swelling with rage, his sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically
+under the staring eyes, which opened wide in amazement.
+
+He understood that it was at an end, and there was no hope for him, that
+he could not marry his negress. She also understood it; and as they drew
+near the farmhouse they both began to weep. As soon as they had got back
+to the house, she once more took off her dress to aid the mother in
+the household duties, and followed her everywhere, to the dairy, to
+the stable, to the hen house, taking on herself the hardest part of the
+work, repeating always: “Let me do it, Madame Boitelle,” so that, when
+night came on, the old woman, touched but inexorable, said to her son:
+“She is a good girl, all the same. It's a pity she is so black; but
+indeed she is too black. I could not get used to it. She must go back
+again. She is too, too black!”
+
+And young Boitelle said to his sweetheart:
+
+“She will not consent. She thinks you are too black. You must go back
+again. I will go with you to the train. No matter--don't fret. I am
+going to talk to them after you have started.”
+
+He then took her to the railway station, still cheering her with hope,
+and, when he had kissed her, he put her into the train, which he watched
+as it passed out of sight, his eyes swollen with tears.
+
+In vain did he appeal to the old people. They would never give their
+consent.
+
+And when he had told this story, which was known all over the country,
+Antoine Boitelle would always add:
+
+“From that time forward I have had no heart for anything--for anything
+at all. No trade suited me any longer, and so I became what I am--a
+night scavenger.”
+
+People would say to him:
+
+“Yet you got married.”
+
+“Yes, and I can't say that my wife didn't please me, seeing that I have
+fourteen children; but she is not the other one, oh, no--certainly not!
+The other one, mark you, my negress, she had only to give me one glance,
+and I felt as if I were in Heaven.”
+
+
+
+
+A WIDOW
+
+This story was told during the hunting season at the Chateau Baneville.
+The autumn had been rainy and sad. The red leaves, instead of rustling
+under the feet, were rotting under the heavy downfalls.
+
+The forest was as damp as it could be. From it came an odor of must,
+of rain, of soaked grass and wet earth; and the sportsmen, their backs
+hunched under the downpour, mournful dogs, with tails between their
+legs and hairs sticking to their sides, and the young women, with their
+clothes drenched, returned every evening, tired in body and in mind.
+
+After dinner, in the large drawing-room, everybody played lotto, without
+enjoyment, while the wind whistled madly around the house. Then they
+tried telling stories like those they read in books, but no one was able
+to invent anything amusing. The hunters told tales of wonderful shots
+and of the butchery of rabbits; and the women racked their brains for
+ideas without revealing the imagination of Scheherezade. They were about
+to give up this diversion when a young woman, who was idly caressing the
+hand of an old maiden aunt, noticed a little ring made of blond hair,
+which she had often seen, without paying any attention to it.
+
+She fingered it gently and asked, “Auntie, what is this ring? It looks
+as if it were made from the hair of a child.”
+
+The old lady blushed, grew pale, then answered in a trembling voice: “It
+is sad, so sad that I never wish to speak of it. All the unhappiness
+of my life comes from that. I was very young then, and the memory has
+remained so painful that I weep every time I think of it.”
+
+Immediately everybody wished to know the story, but the old lady refused
+to tell it. Finally, after they had coaxed her for a long time, she
+yielded. Here is the story:
+
+“You have often heard me speak of the Santeze family, now extinct. I
+knew the last three male members of this family. They all died in the
+same manner; this hair belongs to the last one. He was thirteen when he
+killed himself for me. That seems strange to you, doesn't it?
+
+“Oh! it was a strange family--mad, if you will, but a charming madness,
+the madness of love. From father to son, all had violent passions which
+filled their whole being, which impelled them to do wild things, drove
+them to frantic enthusiasm, even to crime. This was born in them, just
+as burning devotion is in certain souls. Trappers have not the
+same nature as minions of the drawing-room. There was a saying: 'As
+passionate as a Santeze.' This could be noticed by looking at them. They
+all had wavy hair, falling over their brows, curly beards and large eyes
+whose glance pierced and moved one, though one could not say why.
+
+“The grandfather of the owner of this hair, of whom it is the last
+souvenir, after many adventures, duels and elopements, at about
+sixty-five fell madly in love with his farmer's daughter. I knew them
+both. She was blond, pale, distinguished-looking, with a slow manner of
+talking, a quiet voice and a look so gentle that one might have taken
+her for a Madonna. The old nobleman took her to his home and was soon so
+captivated with her that he could not live without her for a minute.
+His daughter and daughter-in-law, who lived in the chateau, found this
+perfectly natural, love was such a tradition in the family. Nothing
+in regard to a passion surprised them, and if one spoke before them of
+parted lovers, even of vengeance after treachery, both said in the same
+sad tone: 'Oh, how he must have suffered to come to that point!' That
+was all. They grew sad over tragedies of love, but never indignant, even
+when they were criminal.
+
+“Now, one day a young man named Monsieur de Gradelle, who had been
+invited for the shooting, eloped with the young girl.
+
+“Monsieur de Santeze remained calm as if nothing had happened, but one
+morning he was found hanging in the kennels, among his dogs.
+
+“His son died in the same manner in a hotel in Paris during a journey
+which he made there in 1841, after being deceived by a singer from the
+opera.
+
+“He left a twelve-year-old child and a widow, my mother's sister.
+She came to my father's house with the boy, while we were living at
+Bertillon. I was then seventeen.
+
+“You have no idea how wonderful and precocious this Santeze child was.
+One might have thought that all the tenderness and exaltation of the
+whole race had been stored up in this last one. He was always dreaming
+and walking about alone in a great alley of elms leading from the
+chateau to the forest. I watched from my window this sentimental boy,
+who walked with thoughtful steps, his hands behind his back, his head
+bent, and at times stopping to raise his eyes as if he could see and
+understand things that were not comprehensible at his age.
+
+“Often, after dinner on clear evenings, he would say to me: 'Let us
+go outside and dream, cousin.' And we would go outside together in the
+park. He would stop quickly before a clearing where the white vapor of
+the moon lights the woods, and he would press my hand, saying: 'Look!
+look! but you don't understand me; I feel it. If you understood me, we
+should be happy. One must love to know! I would laugh and then kiss this
+child, who loved me madly.
+
+“Often, after dinner, he would sit on my mother's knees. 'Come, auntie,'
+he would say, 'tell me some love-stories.' And my mother, as a joke,
+would tell him all the old legends of the family, all the passionate
+adventures of his forefathers, for thousands of them were current, some
+true and some false. It was their reputation for love and gallantry
+which was the ruin of every one of these-men; they gloried in it and
+then thought that they had to live up to the renown of their house.
+
+“The little fellow became exalted by these tender or terrible stories,
+and at times he would clap his hands, crying: 'I, too, I, too, know how
+to love, better than all of them!'
+
+“Then, he began to court me in a timid and tender manner, at which every
+one laughed, it was, so amusing. Every morning I had some flowers picked
+by him, and every evening before going to his room he would kiss my hand
+and murmur: 'I love you!'
+
+“I was guilty, very guilty, and I grieved continually about it, and I
+have been doing penance all my life; I have remained an old maid--or,
+rather, I have lived as a widowed fiancee, his widow.
+
+“I was amused at this childish tenderness, and I even encouraged him.
+I was coquettish, as charming as with a man, alternately caressing
+and severe. I maddened this child. It was a game for me and a joyous
+diversion for his mother and mine. He was twelve! think of it! Who would
+have taken this atom's passion seriously? I kissed him as often as he
+wished; I even wrote him little notes, which were read by our respective
+mothers; and he answered me by passionate letters, which I have kept.
+Judging himself as a man, he thought that our loving intimacy was
+secret. We had forgotten that he was a Santeze.
+
+“This lasted for about a year. One evening in the park he fell at my
+feet and, as he madly kissed the hem of my dress, he kept repeating: 'I
+love you! I love you! I love you! If ever you deceive me, if ever you
+leave me for another, I'll do as my father did.' And he added in a
+hoarse voice, which gave me a shiver: 'You know what he did!'
+
+“I stood there astonished. He arose, and standing on the tips of his
+toes in order to reach my ear, for I was taller than he, he pronounced
+my first name: 'Genevieve!' in such a gentle, sweet, tender tone that I
+trembled all over. I stammered: 'Let us return! let us return!' He said
+no more and followed me; but as we were going up the steps of the
+porch, he stopped me, saying: 'You know, if ever you leave me, I'll kill
+myself.'
+
+“This time I understood that I had gone too far, and I became quite
+reserved. One day, as he was reproaching me for this, I answered: 'You
+are now too old for jesting and too young for serious love. I'll wait.'
+
+“I thought that this would end the matter. In the autumn he was sent to
+a boarding-school. When he returned the following summer I was engaged
+to be married. He understood immediately, and for a week he became so
+pensive that I was quite anxious.
+
+“On the morning of the ninth day I saw a little paper under my door as
+I got up. I seized it, opened it and read: 'You have deserted me and you
+know what I said. It is death to which you have condemned me. As I do
+not wish to be found by another than you, come to the park just where I
+told you last year that I loved you and look in the air.'
+
+“I thought that I should go mad. I dressed as quickly as I could and
+ran wildly to the place that he had mentioned. His little cap was on the
+ground in the mud. It had been raining all night. I raised my eyes and
+saw something swinging among the leaves, for the wind was blowing a
+gale.
+
+“I don't know what I did after that. I must have screamed at first, then
+fainted and fallen, and finally have run to the chateau. The next thing
+that I remember I was in bed, with my mother sitting beside me.
+
+“I thought that I had dreamed all this in a frightful nightmare. I
+stammered: 'And what of him, what of him, Gontran?' There was no answer.
+It was true!
+
+“I did not dare see him again, but I asked for a lock of his blond hair.
+Here--here it is!”
+
+And the old maid stretched out her trembling hand in a despairing
+gesture. Then she blew her nose several times, wiped her eyes and
+continued:
+
+“I broke off my marriage--without saying why. And I--I always have
+remained the--the widow of this thirteen-year-old boy.” Then her head
+fell on her breast and she wept for a long time.
+
+As the guests were retiring for the night a large man, whose quiet she
+had disturbed, whispered in his neighbor's ear: “Isn't it unfortunate
+to, be so sentimental?”
+
+
+
+
+THE ENGLISHMAN OF ETRETAT
+
+A great English poet has just crossed over to France in order to greet
+Victor Hugo. All the newspapers are full of his name and he is the great
+topic of conversation in all drawing-rooms. Fifteen years ago I had
+occasion several times to meet Algernon Charles Swinburne. I will
+attempt to show him just as I saw him and to give an idea of the strange
+impression he made on me, which will remain with me throughout time.
+
+I believe it was in 1867 or in 1868 that an unknown young Englishman
+came to Etretat and bought a little but hidden under great trees. It
+was said that he lived there, always alone, in a strange manner; and he
+aroused the inimical surprise of the natives, for the inhabitants were
+sullen and foolishly malicious, as they always are in little towns.
+
+They declared that this whimsical Englishman ate nothing but boiled.
+roasted or stewed monkey; that he would see no one; that he talked
+to himself hours at a time and many other surprising things that made
+people think that he was different from other men. They were surprised
+that he should live alone with a monkey. Had it been a cat or a dog
+they would have said nothing. But a monkey! Was that not frightful? What
+savage tastes the man must have!
+
+I knew this young man only from seeing him in the streets. He was short,
+plump, without being fat, mild-looking, and he wore a little blond
+mustache, which was almost invisible.
+
+Chance brought us together. This savage had amiable and pleasing
+manners, but he was one of those strange Englishmen that one meets here
+and there throughout the world.
+
+Endowed with remarkable intelligence, he seemed to live in a fantastic
+dream, as Edgar Poe must have lived. He had translated into English a
+volume of strange Icelandic legends, which I ardently desired to see
+translated into French. He loved the supernatural, the dismal and
+grewsome, but he spoke of the most marvellous things with a calmness
+that was typically English, to which his gentle and quiet voice gave a
+semblance of reality that was maddening.
+
+Full of a haughty disdain for the world, with its conventions,
+prejudices and code of morality, he had nailed to his house a name that
+was boldly impudent. The keeper of a lonely inn who should write on his
+door: “Travellers murdered here!” could not make a more sinister jest. I
+never had entered his dwelling, when one day I received an invitation to
+luncheon, following an accident that had occurred to one of his friends,
+who had been almost drowned and whom I had attempted to rescue.
+
+Although I was unable to reach the man until he had already been
+rescued, I received the hearty thanks of the two Englishmen, and the
+following day I called upon them.
+
+The friend was a man about thirty years old. He bore an enormous head on
+a child's body--a body without chest or shoulders. An immense forehead,
+which seemed to have engulfed the rest of the man, expanded like a dome
+above a thin face which ended in a little pointed beard. Two sharp eyes
+and a peculiar mouth gave one the impression of the head of a reptile,
+while the magnificent brow suggested a genius.
+
+A nervous twitching shook this peculiar being, who walked, moved, acted
+by jerks like a broken spring.
+
+This was Algernon Charles Swinburne, son of an English admiral and
+grandson, on the maternal side, of the Earl of Ashburnham.
+
+He strange countenance was transfigured when he spoke. I have seldom
+seen a man more impressive, more eloquent, incisive or charming in
+conversation. His rapid, clear, piercing and fantastic imagination
+seemed to creep into his voice and to lend life to his words. His
+brusque gestures enlivened his speech, which penetrated one like a
+dagger, and he had bursts of thought, just as lighthouses throw out
+flashes of fire, great, genial lights that seemed to illuminate a whole
+world of ideas.
+
+The home of the two friends was pretty and by no means commonplace.
+Everywhere were paintings, some superb, some strange, representing
+different conceptions of insanity. Unless I am mistaken, there was
+a water-color which represented the head of a dead man floating in a
+rose-colored shell on a boundless ocean, under a moon with a human face.
+
+Here and there I came across bones. I clearly remember a flayed hand
+on which was hanging some dried skin and black muscles, and on the
+snow-white bones could be seen the traces of dried blood.
+
+The food was a riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad?
+I could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady
+diet of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at
+large and playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink
+cured me of any desire I might have to take one of his brothers as a
+companion for the rest of my days.
+
+As for the two men, they gave me the impression of two strange,
+original, remarkable minds, belonging to that peculiar race of talented
+madmen from among whom have arisen Poe, Hoffmann and many others.
+
+If genius is, as is commonly believed, a sort of aberration of great
+minds, then Algernon Charles Swinburne is undoubtedly a genius.
+
+Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this
+sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but
+are slightly touched by madness.
+
+At any rate, this poet remains one of the first of his time, through
+his originality and polished form. He is an exalted lyrical singer who
+seldom bothers about the good and humble truth, which French poets
+are now seeking so persistently and patiently. He strives to set down
+dreams, subtle thoughts, sometimes great, sometimes visibly forced, but
+sometimes magnificent.
+
+Two years later I found the house closed and its tenants gone. The
+furniture was being sold. In memory of them I bought the hideous flayed
+hand. On the grass an enormous square block of granite bore this simple
+word: “Nip.” Above this a hollow stone offered water to the birds. It
+was the grave of the monkey, who had been hanged by a young, vindictive
+negro servant. It was said that this violent domestic had been forced to
+flee at the point of his exasperated master's revolver. After wandering
+about without home or food for several days, he returned and began to
+peddle barley-sugar in the streets. He was expelled from the country
+after he had almost strangled a displeased customer.
+
+The world would be gayer if one could often meet homes like that.
+
+   This story appeared in the “Gaulois,” November 29, 1882. It was the
+   original sketch for the introductory study of Swinburne, written by
+   Maupassant for the French translation by Gabriel Mourey of “Poems
+   and Ballads.”
+
+
+
+
+MAGNETISM
+
+It was a men's dinner party, and they were sitting over their cigars
+and brandy and discussing magnetism. Donato's tricks and Charcot's
+experiments. Presently, the sceptical, easy-going men, who cared nothing
+for religion of any sort, began telling stories of strange occurrences,
+incredible things which, nevertheless, had really occurred, so they
+said, falling back into superstitious beliefs, clinging to these
+last remnants of the marvellous, becoming devotees of this mystery
+of magnetism, defending it in the name of science. There was only one
+person who smiled, a vigorous young fellow, a great ladies' man who was
+so incredulous that he would not even enter upon a discussion of such
+matters.
+
+He repeated with a sneer:
+
+“Humbug! humbug! humbug! We need not discuss Donato, who is merely a
+very smart juggler. As for M. Charcot, who is said to be a remarkable
+man of science, he produces on me the effect of those story-tellers
+of the school of Edgar Poe, who end by going mad through constantly
+reflecting on queer cases of insanity. He has authenticated some cases
+of unexplained and inexplicable nervous phenomena; he makes his way into
+that unknown region which men are exploring every day, and unable always
+to understand what he sees, he recalls, perhaps, the ecclesiastical
+interpretation of these mysteries. I should like to hear what he says
+himself.”
+
+The words of the unbeliever were listened to with a kind of pity, as if
+he had blasphemed in an assembly of monks.
+
+One of these gentlemen exclaimed:
+
+“And yet miracles were performed in olden times.”
+
+“I deny it,” replied the other: “Why cannot they be performed now?”
+
+Then, each mentioned some fact, some fantastic presentiment some
+instance of souls communicating with each other across space, or some
+case of the secret influence of one being over another. They asserted
+and maintained that these things had actually occurred, while the
+sceptic angrily repeated:
+
+“Humbug! humbug! humbug!”
+
+At last he rose, threw away his cigar, and with his hands in his
+pockets, said: “Well, I also have two stories to tell you, which I will
+afterwards explain. Here they are:
+
+“In the little village of Etretat, the men, who are all seafaring folk,
+go every year to Newfoundland to fish for cod. One night the little
+son of one of these fishermen woke up with a start, crying out that his
+father was dead. The child was quieted, and again he woke up exclaiming
+that his father was drowned. A month later the news came that his father
+had, in fact, been swept off the deck of his smack by a billow. The
+widow then remembered how her son had woke up and spoken of his father's
+death. Everyone said it was a miracle, and the affair caused a great
+sensation. The dates were compared, and it was found that the accident
+and the dream were almost coincident, whence they concluded that they
+had happened on the same night and at the same hour. And there is a
+mystery of magnetism.”
+
+The story-teller stopped suddenly.
+
+Thereupon, one of those who had heard him, much affected by the
+narrative, asked:
+
+“And can you explain this?”
+
+“Perfectly, monsieur. I have discovered the secret. The circumstance
+surprised me and even perplexed me very much; but you see, I do not
+believe on principle. Just as others begin by believing, I begin by
+doubting; and when I cannot understand, I continue to deny that there
+can be any telepathic communication between souls; certain that my own
+intelligence will be able to explain it. Well, I kept on inquiring
+into the matter, and by dint of questioning all the wives of the absent
+seamen, I was convinced that not a week passed without one of them, or
+one of their children dreaming and declaring when they woke up that the
+father was drowned. The horrible and continual fear of this accident
+makes them always talk about it. Now, if one of these frequent
+predictions coincides, by a very simple chance, with the death of the
+person referred to, people at once declare it to be a miracle; for they
+suddenly lose sight of all the other predictions of misfortune that have
+remained unfulfilled. I have myself known fifty cases where the persons
+who made the prediction forgot all about it a week after wards. But,
+if, then one happens to die, then the recollection of the thing is
+immediately revived, and people are ready to believe in the intervention
+of God, according to some, and magnetism, according to others.”
+
+One of the smokers remarked:
+
+“What you say is right enough; but what about your second story?”
+
+“Oh! my second story is a very delicate matter to relate. It happened
+to myself, and so I don't place any great value on my own view of
+the matter. An interested party can never give an impartial opinion.
+However, here it is:
+
+“Among my acquaintances was a young woman on whom I had never bestowed
+a thought, whom I had never even looked at attentively, never taken any
+notice of.
+
+“I classed her among the women of no importance, though she was not
+bad-looking; she appeared, in fact, to possess eyes, a nose, a mouth,
+some sort of hair--just a colorless type of countenance. She was one of
+those beings who awaken only a chance, passing thought, but no special
+interest, no desire.
+
+“Well, one night, as I was writing some letters by my fireside before
+going to bed, I was conscious, in the midst of that train of sensuous
+visions that sometimes pass through one's brain in moments of idle
+reverie, of a kind of slight influence, passing over me, a little
+flutter of the heart, and immediately, without any cause, without any
+logical connection of thought, I saw distinctly, as if I were touching
+her, saw from head to foot, and disrobed, this young woman to whom I
+had never given more that three seconds' thought at a time. I suddenly
+discovered in her a number of qualities which I had never before
+observed, a sweet charm, a languorous fascination; she awakened in me
+that sort of restless emotion that causes one to pursue a woman. But
+I did not think of her long. I went to bed and was soon asleep. And I
+dreamed.
+
+“You have all had these strange dreams which make you overcome the
+impossible, which open to you double-locked doors, unexpected joys,
+tightly folded arms?
+
+“Which of us in these troubled, excising, breathless slumbers, has
+not held, clasped, embraced with rapture, the woman who occupied his
+thoughts? And have you ever noticed what superhuman delight these happy
+dreams give us? Into what mad intoxication they cast you! with what
+passionate spasms they shake you! and with what infinite, caressing,
+penetrating tenderness they fill your heart for her whom you hold
+clasped in your arms in that adorable illusion that is so like reality!
+
+“All this I felt with unforgettable violence. This woman was mine, so
+much mine that the pleasant warmth of her skin remained in my fingers,
+the odor of her skin, in my brain, the taste of her kisses, on my lips,
+the sound of her voice lingered in my ears, the touch of her clasp still
+clung to me, and the burning charm of her tenderness still gratified my
+senses long after the delight but disillusion of my awakening.
+
+“And three times that night I had the same dream.
+
+“When the day dawned she haunted me, possessed me, filled my senses to
+such an extent that I was not one second without thinking of her.
+
+“At last, not knowing what to do, I dressed myself and went to call on
+her. As I went upstairs to her apartment, I was so overcome by emotion
+that I trembled, and my heart beat rapidly.
+
+“I entered the apartment. She rose the moment she heard my name
+mentioned; and suddenly our eyes met in a peculiar fixed gaze.
+
+“I sat down. I stammered out some commonplaces which she seemed not to
+hear. I did not know what to say or do. Then, abruptly, clasping my
+arms round her, my dream was realized so suddenly that I began to doubt
+whether I was really awake. We were friends after this for two years.”
+
+“What conclusion do you draw from it?” said a voice.
+
+The story-teller seemed to hesitate.
+
+“The conclusion I draw from it--well, by Jove, the conclusion is that
+it was just a coincidence! And then--who can tell? Perhaps it was some
+glance of hers which I had not noticed and which came back that night to
+me through one of those mysterious and unconscious--recollections
+that often bring before us things ignored by our own consciousness,
+unperceived by our minds!”
+
+“Call it whatever you like,” said one of his table companions, when the
+story was finished; “but if you don't believe in magnetism after that,
+my dear boy, you are an ungrateful fellow!”
+
+
+
+
+A FATHER'S CONFESSION
+
+All Veziers-le-Rethel had followed the funeral procession of M.
+Badon-Leremince to the grave, and the last words of the funeral oration
+pronounced by the delegate of the district remained in the minds of all:
+“He was an honest man, at least!”
+
+An honest man he had been in all the known acts of his life, in his
+words, in his examples, his attitude, his behavior, his enterprises, in
+the cut of his beard and the shape of his hats. He never had said a word
+that did not set an example, never had given an alms without adding a
+word of advice, never had extended his hand without appearing to bestow
+a benediction.
+
+He left two children, a boy and a girl. His son was counselor general,
+and his daughter, having married a lawyer, M. Poirel de la Voulte, moved
+in the best society of Veziers.
+
+They were inconsolable at the death of their father, for they loved him
+sincerely.
+
+As soon as the ceremony was over, the son, daughter and son-in-law
+returned to the house of mourning, and, shutting themselves in the
+library, they opened the will, the seals of which were to be broken by
+them alone and only after the coffin had been placed in the ground. This
+wish was expressed by a notice on the envelope.
+
+M. Poirel de la Voulte tore open the envelope, in his character of a
+lawyer used to such operations, and having adjusted his spectacles, he
+read in a monotonous voice, made for reading the details of contracts:
+
+   My children, my dear children, I could not sleep the eternal sleep
+   in peace if I did not make to you from the tomb a confession, the
+   confession of a crime, remorse for which has ruined my life. Yes,
+   I committed a crime, a frightful, abominable crime.
+
+   I was twenty-six years old, and I had just been called to the bar in
+   Paris, and was living the life off young men from the provinces who
+   are stranded in this town without acquaintances, relatives, or
+   friends.
+
+   I took a sweetheart. There are beings who cannot live alone. I was
+   one of those. Solitude fills me with horrible anguish, the solitude
+   of my room beside my fire in the evening. I feel then as if I were
+   alone on earth, alone, but surrounded by vague dangers, unknown and
+   terrible things; and the partition that separates me from my
+   neighbor, my neighbor whom I do not know, keeps me at as great a
+   distance from him as the stars that I see through my window. A sort
+   of fever pervades me, a fever of impatience and of fear, and the
+   silence of the walls terrifies me. The silence of a room where one
+   lives alone is so intense and so melancholy It is not only a silence
+   of the mind; when a piece of furniture cracks a shudder goes through
+   you for you expect no noise in this melancholy abode.
+
+   How many times, nervous and timid from this motionless silence, I
+   have begun to talk, to repeat words without rhyme or reason, only to
+   make some sound. My voice at those times sounds so strange that I
+   am afraid of that, too. Is there anything more dreadful than
+   talking to one's self in an empty house? One's voice sounds like
+   that of another, an unknown voice talking aimlessly, to no one, into
+   the empty air, with no ear to listen to it, for one knows before
+   they escape into the solitude of the room exactly what words will be
+   uttered. And when they resound lugubriously in the silence, they
+   seem no more than an echo, the peculiar echo of words whispered by
+   ones thought.
+
+   My sweetheart was a young girl like other young girls who live in
+   Paris on wages that are insufficient to keep them. She was gentle,
+   good, simple. Her parents lived at Poissy. She went to spend
+   several days with them from time to time.
+
+   For a year I lived quietly with her, fully decided to leave her when
+   I should find some one whom I liked well enough to marry. I would
+   make a little provision for this one, for it is an understood thing
+   in our social set that a woman's love should be paid for, in money
+   if she is poor, in presents if she is rich.
+
+   But one day she told me she was enceinte. I was thunderstruck, and
+   saw in a second that my life would be ruined. I saw the fetter that
+   I should wear until my death, everywhere, in my future family life,
+   in my old age, forever; the fetter of a woman bound to my life
+   through a child; the fetter of the child whom I must bring up, watch
+   over, protect, while keeping myself unknown to him, and keeping him
+   hidden from the world.
+
+   I was greatly disturbed at this news, and a confused longing, a
+   criminal desire, surged through my mind; I did not formulate it, but
+   I felt it in my heart, ready to come to the surface, as if some one
+   hidden behind a portiere should await the signal to come out. If
+   some accident might only happen! So many of these little beings die
+   before they are born!
+
+   Oh! I did not wish my sweetheart to die! The poor girl, I loved
+   her very much! But I wished, possibly, that the child might die
+   before I saw it.
+
+   He was born. I set up housekeeping in my little bachelor apartment,
+   an imitation home, with a horrible child. He looked like all
+   children; I did not care for him. Fathers, you see, do not show
+   affection until later. They have not the instinctive and passionate
+   tenderness of mothers; their affection has to be awakened gradually,
+   their mind must become attached by bonds formed each day between
+   beings that live in each other's society.
+
+   A year passed. I now avoided my home, which was too small, where
+   soiled linen, baby-clothes and stockings the size of gloves were
+   lying round, where a thousand articles of all descriptions lay on
+   the furniture, on the arm of an easy-chair, everywhere. I went out
+   chiefly that I might not hear the child cry, for he cried on the
+   slightest pretext, when he was bathed, when he was touched, when he
+   was put to bed, when he was taken up in the morning, incessantly.
+
+   I had made a few acquaintances, and I met at a reception the woman
+   who was to be your mother. I fell in love with her and became
+   desirous to marry her. I courted her; I asked her parents' consent
+   to our marriage and it was granted.
+
+   I found myself in this dilemma: I must either marry this young girl
+   whom I adored, having a child already, or else tell the truth and
+   renounce her, and happiness, my future, everything; for her parents,
+   who were people of rigid principles, would not give her to me if
+   they knew.
+
+   I passed a month of horrible anguish, of mortal torture, a month
+   haunted by a thousand frightful thoughts; and I felt developing in
+   me a hatred toward my son, toward that little morsel of living,
+   screaming flesh, who blocked my path, interrupted my life, condemned
+   me to an existence without hope, without all those vague
+   expectations that make the charm of youth.
+
+   But just then my companion's mother became ill, and I was left alone
+   with the child.
+
+   It was in December, and the weather was terribly cold. What a
+   night!
+
+   My companion had just left. I had dined alone in my little
+   dining-room and I went gently into the room where the little one was
+   asleep.
+
+   I sat down in an armchair before the fire. The wind was blowing,
+   making the windows rattle, a dry, frosty wind; and I saw trough the
+   window the stars shining with that piercing brightness that they
+   have on frosty nights.
+
+   Then the idea that had obsessed me for a month rose again to the
+   surface. As soon as I was quiet it came to me and harassed me. It
+   ate into my mind like a fixed idea, just as cancers must eat into
+   the flesh. It was there, in my head, in my heart, in my whole body,
+   it seemed to me; and it swallowed me up as a wild beast might have.
+   I endeavored to drive it away, to repulse it, to open my mind to
+   other thoughts, as one opens a window to the fresh morning breeze to
+   drive out the vitiated air; but I could not drive it from my brain,
+   not even for a second. I do not know how to express this torture.
+   It gnawed at my soul, and I felt a frightful pain, a real physical
+   and moral pain.
+
+   My life was ruined! How could I escape from this situation? How
+   could I draw back, and how could I confess?
+
+   And I loved the one who was to become your mother with a mad
+   passion, which this insurmountable obstacle only aggravated.
+
+   A terrible rage was taking possession of me, choking me, a rage that
+   verged on madness! Surely I was crazy that evening!
+
+   The child was sleeping. I got up and looked at it as it slept. It
+   was he, this abortion, this spawn, this nothing, that condemned me
+   to irremediable unhappiness!
+
+   He was asleep, his mouth open, wrapped in his bed-clothes in a crib
+   beside my bed, where I could not sleep.
+
+   How did I ever do what I did? How do I know? What force urged me
+   on? What malevolent power took possession of me? Oh! the
+   temptation to crime came to me without any forewarning. All I
+   recall is that my heart beat tumultuously. It beat so hard that I
+   could hear it, as one hears the strokes of a hammer behind a
+   partition. That is all I can recall--the beating of my heart!
+   In my head there was a strange confusion, a tumult, a senseless
+   disorder, a lack of presence of mind. It was one of those hours of
+   bewilderment and hallucination when a man is neither conscious of
+   his actions nor able to guide his will.
+
+   I gently raised the coverings from the body of the child; I turned
+   them down to the foot of the crib, and he lay there uncovered and
+   naked.
+
+   He did not wake. Then I went toward the window, softly, quite
+   softly, and I opened it.
+
+   A breath of icy air glided in like an assassin; it was so cold that
+   I drew aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing
+   near the window, not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing
+   what was doing on behind me, and feeling the icy air continually
+   across my forehead, my cheeks, my hands, the deadly air which kept
+   streaming in. I stood there a long time.
+
+   I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once a little
+   cough caused me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder
+   that I feel still to the roots of my hair. And with a frantic
+   movement I abruptly closed both sides of the window and, turning
+   round, ran over to the crib.
+
+   He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I touched his
+   legs; they were icy cold and I covered them up.
+
+   My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with pity,
+   tenderness, love for this poor innocent being that I had wished to
+   kill. I kissed his fine, soft hair long and tenderly; then I went
+   and sat down before the fire.
+
+   I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had done, asking
+   myself whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses
+   all perspective of things, all command over himself and acts as in a
+   condition of mad intoxication, not knowing whither he is
+   going--like a vessel in a hurricane.
+
+   The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a wrench. Suppose it
+   should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?
+
+   I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my
+   hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt
+   reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock
+   tat I started backward, just as one does at sight of something
+   horrible, and let my candle fall.
+
+   As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that my temples were
+   bathed in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of
+   anguish of soul. And I remained until daylight bending over my son,
+   becoming calm when he remained quiet for some time, and filled with
+   atrocious pain when a weak cough came from his mouth.
+
+   He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and with an air of
+   suffering.
+
+   When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her at once for a
+   doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining
+   the child:
+
+   “Did he not catch cold?”
+
+   I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I faltered:
+
+   “No, I do not think so.”
+
+   And then I said:
+
+   “What is the matter? Is it serious?”
+
+   “I do not know yet,” he replied. “I will come again this evening.”
+
+   He came that evening. My son had remained almost all day in a
+   condition of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the
+   night inflammation of the lungs set in.
+
+   That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered in those
+   interminable hours that divide morning from night, right from
+   morning.
+
+   He died.
+
+   And since--since that moment, I have not passed one hour, not a
+   single hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing
+   recollection, a memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me
+   like a savage beast imprisoned in the depth of my soul.
+
+   Oh! if I could have gone mad!
+
+M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a motion that was
+peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and the three
+heirs of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and
+motionless.
+
+At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:
+
+“That must be destroyed.”
+
+The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He lighted a candle,
+carefully separated the pages containing the damaging confession from
+those relating to the disposition of money, then he held them over the
+candle and threw them into the fireplace.
+
+And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till they were
+presently reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words
+were still visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes
+of the toe of her shoe, crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the
+old ashes in the fireplace.
+
+Then all three stood there watching it for some time, as if they feared
+that the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.
+
+
+
+
+A MOTHER OF MONSTERS
+
+I recalled this horrible story, the events of which occurred long ago,
+and this horrible woman, the other day at a fashionable seaside resort,
+where I saw on the beach a well-known young, elegant and charming
+Parisienne, adored and respected by everyone.
+
+I had been invited by a friend to pay him a visit in a little provincial
+town. He took me about in all directions to do the honors of the place,
+showed me noted scenes, chateaux, industries, ruins. He pointed out
+monuments, churches, old carved doorways, enormous or distorted trees,
+the oak of St. Andrew, and the yew tree of Roqueboise.
+
+When I had exhausted my admiration and enthusiasm over all the sights,
+my friend said with a distressed expression on his face, that there was
+nothing left to look at. I breathed freely. I would now be able to
+rest under the shade of the trees. But, all at once, he uttered an
+exclamation:
+
+“Oh, yes! We have the 'Mother of Monsters'; I must take you to see her.”
+
+“Who is that, the 'Mother of Monsters'?” I asked.
+
+“She is an abominable woman,” he replied, “a regular demon, a being who
+voluntarily brings into the world deformed, hideous, frightful children,
+monstrosities, in fact, and then sells them to showmen who exhibit such
+things.
+
+“These exploiters of freaks come from time to time to find out if she
+has any fresh monstrosity, and if it meets with their approval they
+carry it away with them, paying the mother a compensation.
+
+“She has eleven of this description. She is rich.
+
+“You think I am joking, romancing, exaggerating. No, my friend; I am
+telling you the truth, the exact truth.
+
+“Let us go and see this woman. Then I will tell you her history.”
+
+He took me into one of the suburbs. The woman lived in a pretty little
+house by the side of the road. It was attractive and well kept. The
+garden was filled with fragrant flowers. One might have supposed it to
+be the residence of a retired lawyer.
+
+A maid ushered us into a sort of little country parlor, and the wretch
+appeared. She was about forty. She was a tall, big woman with hard
+features, but well formed, vigorous and healthy, the true type of a
+robust peasant woman, half animal, and half woman.
+
+She was aware of her reputation and received everyone with a humility
+that smacked of hatred.
+
+“What do the gentlemen wish?” she asked.
+
+“They tell me that your last child is just like an ordinary child, that
+he does not resemble his brothers at all,” replied my friend. “I wanted
+to be sure of that. Is it true?”
+
+She cast on us a malicious and furious look as she said:
+
+“Oh, no, oh, no, my poor sir! He is perhaps even uglier than the rest. I
+have no luck, no luck!
+
+“They are all like that, it is heartbreaking! How can the good God be
+so hard on a poor woman who is all alone in the world, how can He?” She
+spoke hurriedly, her eyes cast down, with a deprecating air as of a wild
+beast who is afraid. Her harsh voice became soft, and it seemed strange
+to hear those tearful falsetto tones issuing from that big, bony frame,
+of unusual strength and with coarse outlines, which seemed fitted for
+violent action, and made to utter howls like a wolf.
+
+“We should like to see your little one,” said my friend.
+
+I fancied she colored up. I may have been deceived. After a few moments
+of silence, she said in a louder tone:
+
+“What good will that do you?”
+
+“Why do you not wish to show it to us?” replied my friend. “There are
+many people to whom you will show it; you know whom I mean.”
+
+She gave a start, and resuming her natural voice, and giving free play
+to her anger, she screamed:
+
+“Was that why you came here? To insult me? Because my children are like
+animals, tell me? You shall not see him, no, no, you shall not see
+him! Go away, go away! I do not know why you all try to torment me like
+that.”
+
+She walked over toward us, her hands on her hips. At the brutal tone of
+her voice, a sort of moaning, or rather a mewing, the lamentable cry of
+an idiot, came from the adjoining room. I shivered to the marrow of my
+bones. We retreated before her.
+
+“Take care, Devil,” (they called her the Devil), said my friend, “take
+care; some day you will get yourself into trouble through this.”
+
+She began to tremble, beside herself with fury, shaking her fist and
+roaring:
+
+“Be off with you! What will get me into trouble? Be off with you,
+miscreants!”
+
+She was about to attack us, but we fled, saddened at what we had seen.
+When we got outside, my friend said:
+
+“Well, you have seen her, what do you think of her?”
+
+“Tell me the story of this brute,” I replied.
+
+And this is what he told me as we walked along the white high road, with
+ripe crops on either side of it which rippled like the sea in the light
+breeze that passed over them.
+
+“This woman was one a servant on a farm. She was an honest girl, steady
+and economical. She was never known to have an admirer, and never
+suspected of any frailty. But she went astray, as so many do.
+
+“She soon found herself in trouble, and was tortured with fear and
+shame. Wishing to conceal her misfortune, she bound her body tightly
+with a corset of her own invention, made of boards and cord. The more
+she developed, the more she bound herself with this instrument of
+torture, suffering martyrdom, but brave in her sorrow, not allowing
+anyone to see, or suspect, anything. She maimed the little unborn being,
+cramping it with that frightful corset, and made a monster of it. Its
+head was squeezed and elongated to a point, and its large eyes seemed
+popping out of its head. Its limbs, exaggeratedly long, and twisted like
+the stalk of a vine, terminated in fingers like the claws of a spider.
+Its trunk was tiny, and round as a nut.
+
+“The child was born in an open field, and when the weeders saw it, they
+fled away, screaming, and the report spread that she had given birth to
+a demon. From that time on, she was called 'the Devil.'
+
+“She was driven from the farm, and lived on charity, under a cloud. She
+brought up the monster, whom she hated with a savage hatred, and would
+have strangled, perhaps, if the priest had not threatened her with
+arrest.
+
+“One day some travelling showmen heard about the frightful creature,
+and asked to see it, so that if it pleased them they might take it away.
+They were pleased, and counted out five hundred francs to the mother.
+At first, she had refused to let them see the little animal, as she was
+ashamed; but when she discovered it had a money value, and that these
+people were anxious to get it, she began to haggle with them, raising
+her price with all a peasant's persistence.
+
+“She made them draw up a paper, in which they promised to pay her four
+hundred francs a year besides, as though they had taken this deformity
+into their employ.
+
+“Incited by the greed of gain, she continued to produce these phenomena,
+so as to have an assured income like a bourgeoise.
+
+“Some of them were long, some short, some like crabs-all bodies-others
+like lizards. Several died, and she was heartbroken.
+
+“The law tried to interfere, but as they had no proof they let her
+continue to produce her freaks.
+
+“She has at this moment eleven alive, and they bring in, on an average,
+counting good and bad years, from five to six thousand francs a year.
+One, alone, is not placed, the one she was unwilling to show us. But she
+will not keep it long, for she is known to all the showmen in the world,
+who come from time to time to see if she has anything new.
+
+“She even gets bids from them when the monster is valuable.”
+
+My friend was silent. A profound disgust stirred my heart, and a feeling
+of rage, of regret, to think that I had not strangled this brute when I
+had the opportunity.
+
+I had forgotten this story, when I saw on the beach of a fashionable
+resort the other day, an elegant, charming, dainty woman, surrounded by
+men who paid her respect as well as admiration.
+
+I was walking along the beach, arm in arm with a friend, the resident
+physician. Ten minutes later, I saw a nursemaid with three children, who
+were rolling in the sand. A pair of little crutches lay on the ground,
+and touched my sympathy. I then noticed that these three children were
+all deformed, humpbacked, or crooked; and hideous.
+
+“Those are the offspring of that charming woman you saw just now,” said
+the doctor.
+
+I was filled with pity for her, as well as for them, and exclaimed: “Oh,
+the poor mother! How can she ever laugh!”
+
+“Do not pity her, my friend. Pity the poor children,” replied the
+doctor. “This is the consequence of preserving a slender figure up to
+the last. These little deformities were made by the corset. She knows
+very well that she is risking her life at this game. But what does she
+care, as long as he can be beautiful and have admirers!”
+
+And then I recalled that other woman, the peasant, the “Devil,” who sold
+her children, her monsters.
+
+
+
+
+AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+
+One autumn I went to spend the hunting season with some friends in a
+chateau in Picardy.
+
+My friends were fond of practical jokes. I do not care to know people
+who are not.
+
+When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once
+awakened suspicion in my mind. They fired off rifles, embraced me, made
+much of me, as if they expected to have great fun at my expense.
+
+I said to myself:
+
+“Look out, old ferret! They have something in store for you.”
+
+During the dinner the mirth was excessive, exaggerated, in fact. I
+thought: “Here are people who have more than their share of amusement,
+and apparently without reason. They must have planned some good joke.
+Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke. Attention!”
+
+During the entire evening every one laughed in an exaggerated fashion. I
+scented a practical joke in the air, as a dog scents game. But what was
+it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word, or a meaning, or a
+gesture escape me. Every one seemed to me an object of suspicion, and I
+even looked distrustfully at the faces of the servants.
+
+The hour struck for retiring; and the whole household came to escort me
+to my room. Why?
+
+They called to me: “Good-night.” I entered the apartment, shut the door,
+and remained standing, without moving a single step, holding the wax
+candle in my hand.
+
+I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they
+were spying on me. I cast a glance round the walls, the furniture, the
+ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify suspicion.
+I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no doubt they were
+looking through the keyhole.
+
+An idea came into my head: “My candle may suddenly go out and leave me
+in darkness.”
+
+Then I went across to the mantelpiece and lighted all the wax candles
+that were on it. After that I cast another glance around me without
+discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining
+the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article, one after the other.
+Still nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden
+shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the
+curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and placed a chair in front of them,
+so as to have nothing to fear from outside.
+
+Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture
+to get into the bed. However, the night was advancing; and I ended by
+coming to the conclusion that I was foolish. If they were spying on me,
+as I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they
+had been preparing for me, have been laughing immoderately at my
+terror. So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly
+suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be secure.
+
+All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to receive a cold
+shower both from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I stretched myself
+out, to find myself sinking to the floor with my mattress. I searched
+in my memory for all the practical jokes of which I ever had experience.
+And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly not! certainly not! Then
+I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution which I considered insured
+safety. I caught hold of the side of the mattress gingerly, and very
+slowly drew it toward me. It came away, followed by the sheet and the
+rest of the bedclothes. I dragged all these objects into the very middle
+of the room, facing the entrance door. I made my bed over again as best
+I could at some distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner
+which had filled me with such anxiety. Then I extinguished all the
+candles, and, groping my way, I slipped under the bed clothes.
+
+For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest
+sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.
+
+I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden I
+was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right on
+top of my own, and, at the same time, I received on my face, on my neck,
+and on my chest a burning liquid which made me utter a howl of pain.
+And a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with plates and dishes had
+fallen down, almost deafened me.
+
+I was smothering beneath the weight that was crushing me and preventing
+me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what was the nature
+of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers. Then, with all my
+strength, I launched out a blow at this face. But I immediately received
+a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight out of the soaked sheets,
+and rush in my nightshirt into the corridor, the door of which I found
+open.
+
+Oh, heavens! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends
+hurrying into my apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised
+bed, the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea,
+had tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor and fallen on
+his stomach, spilling my breakfast over my face in spite of himself.
+
+The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep
+in the middle of the room had only brought about the practical joke I
+had been trying to avoid.
+
+Oh, how they all laughed that day!
+
+
+
+
+A PORTRAIT
+
+“Hello! there's Milial!” said somebody near me. I looked at the man who
+had been pointed out as I had been wishing for a long time to meet this
+Don Juan.
+
+He was no longer young. His gray hair looked a little like those fur
+bonnets worn by certain Northern peoples, and his long beard, which fell
+down over his chest, had also somewhat the appearance of fur. He was
+talking to a lady, leaning toward her, speaking in a low voice and
+looking at her with an expression full of respect and tenderness.
+
+I knew his life, or at least as much as was known of it. He had loved
+madly several times, and there had been certain tragedies with which his
+name had been connected. When I spoke to women who were the loudest in
+his praise, and asked them whence came this power, they always answered,
+after thinking for a while: “I don't know--he has a certain charm about
+him.”
+
+He was certainly not handsome. He had none of the elegance that we
+ascribe to conquerors of feminine hearts. I wondered what might be his
+hid den charm. Was it mental? I never had heard of a clever saying of
+his. In his glance? Perhaps. Or in his voice? The voices of some beings
+have a certain irresistible attraction, almost suggesting the flavor of
+things good to eat. One is hungry for them, and the sound of their words
+penetrates us like a dainty morsel. A friend was passing. I asked him:
+“Do you know Monsieur Milial?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Introduce us.”
+
+A minute later we were shaking hands and talking in the doorway. What he
+said was correct, agreeable to hear; it contained no irritable thought.
+The voice was sweet, soft, caressing, musical; but I had heard others
+much more attractive, much more moving. One listened to him with
+pleasure, just as one would look at a pretty little brook. No tension of
+the mind was necessary in order to follow him, no hidden meaning aroused
+curiosity, no expectation awoke interest. His conversation was rather
+restful, but it did not awaken in one either a desire to answer, to
+contradict or to approve, and it was as easy to answer him as it was to
+listen to him. The response came to the lips of its own accord, as soon
+as he had finished talking, and phrases turned toward him as if he had
+naturally aroused them.
+
+One thought soon struck me. I had known him for a quarter of an hour,
+and it seemed as if he were already one of my old friends, that I had
+known all about him for a long time; his face, his gestures, his voice,
+his ideas. Suddenly, after a few minutes of conversation, he seemed
+already to be installed in my intimacy. All constraint disappeared
+between us, and, had he so desired, I might have confided in him as one
+confides only in old friends.
+
+Certainly there was some mystery about him. Those barriers that are
+closed between most people and that are lowered with time when sympathy,
+similar tastes, equal intellectual culture and constant intercourse
+remove constraint--those barriers seemed not to exist between him and
+me, and no doubt this was the case between him and all people, both men
+and women, whom fate threw in his path.
+
+After half an hour we parted, promising to see each other often, and he
+gave me his address after inviting me to take luncheon with him in two
+days.
+
+I forgot what hour he had stated, and I arrived too soon; he was not yet
+home. A correct and silent domestic showed me into a beautiful, quiet,
+softly lighted parlor. I felt comfortable there, at home. How often I
+have noticed the influence of apartments on the character and on the
+mind! There are some which make one feel foolish; in others, on the
+contrary, one always feels lively. Some make us sad, although well
+lighted and decorated in light-colored furniture; others cheer us up,
+although hung with sombre material. Our eye, like our heart, has
+its likes and dislikes, of which it does not inform us, and which it
+secretly imposes on our temperament. The harmony of furniture, walls,
+the style of an ensemble, act immediately on our mental state, just as
+the air from the woods, the sea or the mountains modifies our physical
+natures.
+
+I sat down on a cushion-covered divan and felt myself suddenly carried
+and supported by these little silk bags of feathers, as if the outline
+of my body had been marked out beforehand on this couch.
+
+Then I looked about. There was nothing striking about the room;
+every-where were beautiful and modest things, simple and rare furniture,
+Oriental curtains which did not seem to come from a department store but
+from the interior of a harem; and exactly opposite me hung the portrait
+of a woman. It was a portrait of medium size, showing the head and the
+upper part of the body, and the hands, which were holding a book. She
+was young, bareheaded; ribbons were woven in her hair; she was smiling
+sadly. Was it because she was bareheaded, was it merely her natural
+expression? I never have seen a portrait of a lady which seemed so much
+in its place as that one in that dwelling. Of all those I knew I have
+seen nothing like that one. All those that I know are on exhibition,
+whether the lady be dressed in her gaudiest gown, with an attractive
+headdress and a look which shows that she is posing first of all before
+the artist and then before those who will look at her or whether they
+have taken a comfortable attitude in an ordinary gown. Some are standing
+majestically in all their beauty, which is not at all natural to them in
+life. All of them have something, a flower or, a jewel, a crease in the
+dress or a curve of the lip, which one feels to have been placed there
+for effect by the artist. Whether they wear a hat or merely their hair
+one can immediately notice that they are not entirely natural. Why? One
+cannot say without knowing them, but the effect is there. They seem to
+be calling somewhere, on people whom they wish to please and to whom
+they wish to appear at their best advantage; and they have studied their
+attitudes, sometimes modest, Sometimes haughty.
+
+What could one say about this one? She was at home and alone. Yes, she
+was alone, for she was smiling as one smiles when thinking in solitude
+of something sad or sweet, and not as one smiles when one is being
+watched. She seemed so much alone and so much at home that she made
+the whole large apartment seem absolutely empty. She alone lived in it,
+filled it, gave it life. Many people might come in and converse, laugh,
+even sing; she would still be alone with a solitary smile, and she alone
+would give it life with her pictured gaze.
+
+That look also was unique. It fell directly on me, fixed and caressing,
+without seeing me. All portraits know that they are being watched, and
+they answer with their eyes, which see, think, follow us without leaving
+us, from the very moment we enter the apartment they inhabit. This one
+did not see me; it saw nothing, although its look was fixed directly on
+me. I remembered the surprising verse of Baudelaire:
+
+And your eyes, attractive as those of a portrait.
+
+They did indeed attract me in an irresistible manner; those painted eyes
+which had lived, or which were perhaps still living, threw over me a
+strange, powerful spell. Oh, what an infinite and tender charm, like a
+passing breeze, like a dying sunset of lilac rose and blue, a little sad
+like the approaching night, which comes behind the sombre frame and out
+of those impenetrable eyes! Those eyes, created by a few strokes from a
+brush, hide behind them the mystery of that which seems to be and which
+does not exist, which can appear in the eyes of a woman, which can make
+love blossom within us.
+
+The door opened and M. Milial entered. He excused himself for being
+late. I excused myself for being ahead of time. Then I said: “Might I
+ask you who is this lady?”
+
+He answered: “That is my mother. She died very young.”
+
+Then I understood whence came the inexplicable attraction of this man.
+
+
+
+
+THE DRUNKARD
+
+The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through the sky big,
+black, heavy clouds from which the rain poured down on the earth with
+terrific violence.
+
+A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the
+coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other
+close, rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam as they
+broke.
+
+The storm engulfed itself in the little valley of Yport, whistling and
+moaning, tearing the shingles from the roofs, smashing the shutters,
+knocking down the chimneys, rushing through the narrow streets in such
+gusts that one could walk only by holding on to the walls, and children
+would have been lifted up like leaves and carried over the houses into
+the fields.
+
+The fishing smacks had been hauled high up on land, because at high tide
+the sea would sweep the beach. Several sailors, sheltered behind the
+curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and
+the sea.
+
+Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm,
+wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.
+
+Just two men remained, their hands plunged deep into their pockets,
+bending their backs beneath the squall, their woolen caps pulled down
+over their ears; two big Normandy fishermen, bearded, their skin tanned
+through exposure, with the piercing black eyes of the sailor who looks
+over the horizon like a bird of prey.
+
+One of them was saying:
+
+“Come on, Jeremie, let's go play dominoes. It's my treat.”
+
+The other hesitated a while, tempted on one hand by the game and the
+thought of brandy, knowing well that, if he went to Paumelle's, he would
+return home drunk; held back, on the other hand, by the idea of his wife
+remaining alone in the house.
+
+He asked:
+
+“Any one might think that you had made a bet to get me drunk every
+night. Say, what good is it doing you, since it's always you that's
+treating?”
+
+Nevertheless he was smiling at the idea of all this brandy drunk at the
+expense of another. He was smiling the contented smirk of an avaricious
+Norman.
+
+Mathurin, his friend, kept pulling him by the sleeve.
+
+“Come on, Jeremie. This isn't the kind of a night to go home without
+anything to warm you up. What are you afraid of? Isn't your wife going
+to warm your bed for you?”
+
+Jeremie answered:
+
+“The other night I couldn't find the door--I had to be fished out of the
+ditch in front of the house!”
+
+He was still laughing at this drunkard's recollection, and he was
+unconsciously going toward Paumelle's Cafe, where a light was shining
+in the window; he was going, pulled by Mathurin and pushed by the wind,
+unable to resist these combined forces.
+
+The low room was full of sailors, smoke and noise. All these men, clad
+in woolens, their elbows on the tables, were shouting to make themselves
+heard. The more people came in, the more one had to shout in order to
+overcome the noise of voices and the rattling of dominoes on the marble
+tables.
+
+Jeremie and Mathurin sat down in a corner and began a game, and the
+glasses were emptied in rapid succession into their thirsty throats.
+
+Then they played more games and drank more glasses. Mathurin kept
+pouring and winking to the saloon keeper, a big, red-faced man, who
+chuckled as though at the thought of some fine joke; and Jeremie
+kept absorbing alcohol and wagging his head, giving vent to a roar
+of laughter and looking at his comrade with a stupid and contented
+expression.
+
+All the customers were going away. Every time that one of them would
+open the door to leave a gust of wind would blow into the cafe, making
+the tobacco smoke swirl around, swinging the lamps at the end of their
+chains and making their flames flicker, and suddenly one could hear the
+deep booming of a breaking wave and the moaning of the wind.
+
+Jeremie, his collar unbuttoned, was taking drunkard's poses, one leg
+outstretched, one arm hanging down and in the other hand holding a
+domino.
+
+They were alone now with the owner, who had come up to them, interested.
+
+He asked:
+
+“Well, Jeremie, how goes it inside? Feel less thirsty after wetting your
+throat?”
+
+Jeremie muttered:
+
+“The more I wet it, the drier it gets inside.”
+
+The innkeeper cast a sly glance at Mathurin. He said:
+
+“And your brother, Mathurin, where's he now?”
+
+The sailor laughed silently:
+
+“Don't worry; he's warm, all right.”
+
+And both of them looked toward Jeremie, who was triumphantly putting
+down the double six and announcing:
+
+“Game!”
+
+Then the owner declared:
+
+“Well, boys, I'm goin' to bed. I will leave you the lamp and the bottle;
+there's twenty cents' worth in it. Lock the door when you go, Mathurin,
+and slip the key under the mat the way you did the other night.”
+
+Mathurin answered:
+
+“Don't worry; it'll be all right.”
+
+Paumelle shook hands with his two customers and slowly went up the
+wooden stairs. For several minutes his heavy step echoed through the
+little house. Then a loud creaking announced that he had got into bed.
+
+The two men continued to play. From time to time a more violent gust of
+wind would shake the whole house, and the two drinkers would look up, as
+though some one were about to enter. Then Mathurin would take the bottle
+and fill Jeremie's glass. But suddenly the clock over the bar struck
+twelve. Its hoarse clang sounded like the rattling of saucepans. Then
+Mathurin got up like a sailor whose watch is over.
+
+“Come on, Jeremie, we've got to get out.”
+
+The other man rose to his feet with difficulty, got his balance by
+leaning on the table, reached the door and opened it while his companion
+was putting out the light.
+
+As soon as they were in the street Mathurin locked the door and then
+said:
+
+“Well, so long. See you to-morrow night!”
+
+And he disappeared in the darkness.
+
+Jeremie took a few steps, staggered, stretched out his hands, met a wall
+which supported him and began to stumble along. From time to time a gust
+of wind would sweep through the street, pushing him forward, making him
+run for a few steps; then, when the wind would die down, he would stop
+short, having lost his impetus, and once more he would begin to stagger
+on his unsteady drunkard's legs.
+
+He went instinctively toward his home, just as birds go to their nests.
+Finally he recognized his door, and began to feel about for the keyhole
+and tried to put the key in it. Not finding the hole, he began to swear.
+Then he began to beat on the door with his fists, calling for his wife
+to come and help him:
+
+“Melina! Oh, Melina!”
+
+As he leaned against the door for support, it gave way and opened, and
+Jeremie, losing his prop, fell inside, rolling on his face into the
+middle of his room, and he felt something heavy pass over him and escape
+in the night.
+
+He was no longer moving, dazed by fright, bewildered, fearing the devil,
+ghosts, all the mysterious beings of darkness, and he waited a long
+time without daring to move. But when he found out that nothing else was
+moving, a little reason returned to him, the reason of a drunkard.
+
+Gently he sat up. Again he waited a long time, and at last, growing
+bolder, he called:
+
+“Melina!”
+
+His wife did not answer.
+
+Then, suddenly, a suspicion crossed his darkened mind, an indistinct,
+vague suspicion. He was not moving; he was sitting there in the dark,
+trying to gather together his scattered wits, his mind stumbling over
+incomplete ideas, just as his feet stumbled along.
+
+Once more he asked:
+
+“Who was it, Melina? Tell me who it was. I won't hurt you!”
+
+He waited, no voice was raised in the darkness. He was now reasoning
+with himself out loud.
+
+“I'm drunk, all right! I'm drunk! And he filled me up, the dog; he did
+it, to stop my goin' home. I'm drunk!”
+
+And he would continue:
+
+“Tell me who it was, Melina, or somethin'll happen to you.”
+
+After having waited again, he went on with the slow and obstinate logic
+of a drunkard:
+
+“He's been keeping me at that loafer Paumelle's place every night, so as
+to stop my going home. It's some trick. Oh, you damned carrion!”
+
+Slowly he got on his knees. A blind fury was gaining possession of him,
+mingling with the fumes of alcohol.
+
+He continued:
+
+“Tell me who it was, Melina, or you'll get a licking--I warn you!”
+
+He was now standing, trembling with a wild fury, as though the alcohol
+had set his blood on fire. He took a step, knocked against a chair,
+seized it, went on, reached the bed, ran his hands over it and felt the
+warm body of his wife.
+
+Then, maddened, he roared:
+
+“So! You were there, you piece of dirt, and you wouldn't answer!”
+
+And, lifting the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's
+grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst
+from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around
+like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was
+broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away with it,
+panting.
+
+At last he stopped to ask:
+
+“Well, are you ready to tell me who it was?”
+
+Melina did not answer.
+
+Then tired out, stupefied from his exertion, he stretched himself out on
+the ground and slept.
+
+When day came a neighbor, seeing the door open, entered. He saw Jeremie
+snoring on the floor, amid the broken pieces of a chair, and on the bed
+a pulp of flesh and blood.
+
+
+
+
+THE WARDROBE
+
+As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned
+on women, for lack of something else.
+
+One of us said:
+
+“Here's a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject.” And he
+told us the following story:
+
+One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering
+sense of misery and languor that takes possession of one from time to
+time. I was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if
+I gave in to my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia,
+one of those attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often.
+
+I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I
+was going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to
+wander along by the almost empty cafes. It was raining, a fine rain
+that affects your mind as it does your clothing, not one of those good
+downpours which come down in torrents, driving breathless passers-by
+into doorways, but a rain without drops that deposits on your clothing
+an imperceptible spray and soon covers you with a sort of iced foam that
+chills you through.
+
+What should I do? I walked in one direction and then came back, looking
+for some place where I could spend two hours, and discovering for the
+first time that there is no place of amusement in Paris in the evening.
+At last I decided to go to the Folies-Bergere, that entertaining resort
+for gay women.
+
+There were very few people in the main hall. In the long horseshoe curve
+there were only a few ordinary looking people, whose plebeian origin
+was apparent in their manners, their clothes, the cut of their hair and
+beard, their hats, their complexion. It was rarely that one saw
+from time to time a man whom you suspected of having washed himself
+thoroughly, and his whole make-up seemed to match. As for the women,
+they were always the same, those frightful women you all know, ugly,
+tired looking, drooping, and walking along in their lackadaisical
+manner, with that air of foolish superciliousness which they assume, I
+do not know why.
+
+I thought to myself that, in truth, not one of those languid creatures,
+greasy rather than fat, puffed out here and thin there, with the contour
+of a monk and the lower extremities of a bow-legged snipe, was worth the
+louis that they would get with great difficulty after asking five.
+
+But all at once I saw a little creature whom I thought attractive, not
+in her first youth, but fresh, comical and tantalizing. I stopped her,
+and stupidly, without thinking, I made an appointment with her for that
+night. I did not want to go back to my own home alone, all alone; I
+preferred the company and the caresses of this hussy.
+
+And I followed her. She lived in a great big house in the Rue des
+Martyrs. The gas was already extinguished on the stairway. I ascended
+the steps slowly, lighting a candle match every few seconds, stubbing my
+foot against the steps, stumbling and angry as I followed the rustle of
+the skirt ahead of me.
+
+She stopped on the fourth floor, and having closed the outer door she
+said:
+
+“Then you will stay till to-morrow?”
+
+“Why, yes. You know that that was the agreement.”
+
+“All right, my dear, I just wanted to know. Wait for me here a minute, I
+will be right back.”
+
+And she left me in the darkness. I heard her shutting two doors and then
+I thought I heard her talking. I was surprised and uneasy. The thought
+that she had a protector staggered me. But I have good fists and a solid
+back. “We shall see,” I said to myself.
+
+I listened attentively with ear and mind. Some one was stirring about,
+walking quietly and very carefully. Then another door was opened and I
+thought I again heard some one talking, but in a very low tone.
+
+She came back carrying a lighted candle.
+
+“You may come in,” she said.
+
+She said “thou” in speaking to me, which was an indication of
+possession. I went in and after passing through a dining room in which
+it was very evident that no one ever ate, I entered a typical room
+of all these women, a furnished room with red curtains and a soiled
+eiderdown bed covering.
+
+“Make yourself at home, 'mon chat',” she said.
+
+I gave a suspicious glance at the room, but there seemed no reason for
+uneasiness.
+
+As she took off her wraps she began to laugh.
+
+“Well, what ails you? Are you changed into a pillar of salt? Come, hurry
+up.”
+
+I did as she suggested.
+
+Five minutes later I longed to put on my things and get away. But this
+terrible languor that had overcome me at home took possession of me
+again, and deprived me of energy enough to move and I stayed in spite of
+the disgust that I felt for this association. The unusual attractiveness
+that I supposed I had discovered in this creature over there under
+the chandeliers of the theater had altogether vanished on closer
+acquaintance, and she was nothing more to me now than a common woman,
+like all the others, whose indifferent and complaisant kiss smacked of
+garlic.
+
+I thought I would say something.
+
+“Have you lived here long?” I asked.
+
+“Over six months on the fifteenth of January.”
+
+“Where were you before that?”
+
+“In the Rue Clauzel. But the janitor made me very uncomfortable and I
+left.”
+
+And she began to tell me an interminable story of a janitor who had
+talked scandal about her.
+
+But, suddenly, I heard something moving quite close to us. First there
+was a sigh, then a slight, but distinct, sound as if some one had turned
+round on a chair.
+
+I sat up abruptly and asked.
+
+“What was that noise?”
+
+She answered quietly and confidently:
+
+“Do not be uneasy, my dear boy, it is my neighbor. The partition is so
+thin that one can hear everything as if it were in the room. These are
+wretched rooms, just like pasteboard.”
+
+I felt so lazy that I paid no further attention to it. We resumed our
+conversation. Driven by the stupid curiosity that prompts all men to
+question these creatures about their first experiences, to attempt to
+lift the veil of their first folly, as though to find in them a trace
+of pristine innocence, to love them, possibly, in a fleeting memory of
+their candor and modesty of former days, evoked by a word, I insistently
+asked her about her earlier lovers.
+
+I knew she was telling me lies. What did it matter? Among all these lies
+I might, perhaps, discover something sincere and pathetic.
+
+“Come,” said I, “tell me who he was.”
+
+“He was a boating man, my dear.”
+
+“Ah! Tell me about it. Where were you?”
+
+“I was at Argenteuil.”
+
+“What were you doing?”
+
+“I was waitress in a restaurant.”
+
+“What restaurant?”
+
+“'The Freshwater Sailor.' Do you know it?”
+
+“I should say so, kept by Bonanfan.”
+
+“Yes, that's it.”
+
+“And how did he make love to you, this boating man?”
+
+“While I was doing his room. He took advantage of me.”
+
+But I suddenly recalled the theory of a friend of mine, an observant
+and philosophical physician whom constant attendance in hospitals has
+brought into daily contact with girl-mothers and prostitutes, with all
+the shame and all the misery of women, of those poor women who have
+become the frightful prey of the wandering male with money in his
+pocket.
+
+“A woman,” he said, “is always debauched by a man of her own class and
+position. I have volumes of statistics on that subject. We accuse the
+rich of plucking the flower of innocence among the girls of the people.
+This is not correct. The rich pay for what they want. They may gather
+some, but never for the first time.”
+
+Then, turning to my companion, I began to laugh.
+
+“You know that I am aware of your history. The boating man was not the
+first.”
+
+“Oh, yes, my dear, I swear it:”
+
+“You are lying, my dear.”
+
+“Oh, no, I assure you.”
+
+“You are lying; come, tell me all.”
+
+She seemed to hesitate in astonishment. I continued:
+
+“I am a sorcerer, my dear girl, I am a clairvoyant. If you do not tell
+me the truth, I will go into a trance sleep and then I can find out.”
+
+She was afraid, being as stupid as all her kind. She faltered:
+
+“How did you guess?”
+
+“Come, go on telling me,” I said.
+
+“Oh, the first time didn't amount to anything.
+
+“There was a festival in the country. They had sent for a special chef,
+M. Alexandre. As soon as he came he did just as he pleased in the house.
+He bossed every one, even the proprietor and his wife, as if he had
+been a king. He was a big handsome man, who did not seem fitted to stand
+beside a kitchen range. He was always calling out, 'Come, some butter
+--some eggs--some Madeira!' And it had to be brought to him at once in a
+hurry, or he would get cross and say things that would make us blush all
+over.
+
+“When the day was over he would smoke a pipe outside the door. And as
+I was passing by him with a pile of plates he said to me, like that:
+'Come, girlie, come down to the water with me and show me the country.'
+I went with him like a fool, and we had hardly got down to the bank of
+the river when he took advantage of me so suddenly that I did not even
+know what he was doing. And then he went away on the nine o'clock train.
+I never saw him again.”
+
+“Is that all?” I asked.
+
+She hesitated.
+
+“Oh, I think Florentin belongs to him.”
+
+“Who is Florentin?”
+
+“My little boy.”
+
+“Oh! Well, then, you made the boating man believe that he was the
+father, did you not?”
+
+“You bet!”
+
+“Did he have any money, this boating man?”
+
+“Yes, he left me an income of three hundred francs, settled on
+Florentin.”
+
+I was beginning to be amused and resumed:
+
+“All right, my girl, all right. You are all of you less stupid than one
+would imagine, all the same. And how old is he now, Florentin?”
+
+She replied:
+
+“He is now twelve. He will make his first communion in the spring.”
+
+“That is splendid. And since then you have carried on your business
+conscientiously?”
+
+She sighed in a resigned manner.
+
+“I must do what I can.”
+
+But a loud noise just then coming from the room itself made me start up
+with a bound. It sounded like some one falling and picking themselves up
+again by feeling along the wall with their hands.
+
+I had seized the candle and was looking about me, terrified and furious.
+She had risen also and was trying to hold me back to stop me, murmuring:
+
+“That's nothing, my dear, I assure you it's nothing.”
+
+But I had discovered what direction the strange noise came from. I
+walked straight towards a door hidden at the head of the bed and I
+opened it abruptly and saw before me, trembling, his bright, terrified
+eyes opened wide at sight of me, a little pale, thin boy seated beside a
+large wicker chair off which he had fallen.
+
+As soon as he saw me he began to cry. Stretching out his arms to his
+mother, he cried:
+
+“It was not my fault, mamma, it was not my fault. I was asleep, and I
+fell off. Do not scold me, it was not my fault.”
+
+I turned to the woman and said:
+
+“What does this mean?”
+
+She seemed confused and worried, and said in a broken voice:
+
+“What do you want me to do? I do not earn enough to put him to school!
+I have to keep him with me, and I cannot afford to pay for another room,
+by heavens! He sleeps with me when I am alone. If any one comes for one
+hour or two he can stay in the wardrobe; he keeps quiet, he understands
+it. But when people stay all night, as you have done, it tires the poor
+child to sleep on a chair.
+
+“It is not his fault. I should like to see you sleep all night on a
+chair--you would have something to say.”
+
+She was getting angry and excited and was talking loud.
+
+The child was still crying. A poor delicate timid little fellow, a
+veritable child of the wardrobe, of the cold, dark closet, a child who
+from time to time was allowed to get a little warmth in the bed if it
+chanced to be unoccupied.
+
+I also felt inclined to cry.
+
+And I went home to my own bed.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAIN POOL
+
+                  Saint Agnes, May 6.
+MY DEAR FRIEND: You asked me to write to you often and to tell you in
+particular about the things I might see. You also begged me to rummage
+among my recollections of travels for some of those little anecdotes
+gathered from a chance peasant, from an innkeeper, from some strange
+traveling acquaintance, which remain as landmarks in the memory. With
+a landscape depicted in a few lines, and a little story told in a few
+sentences you think one can give the true characteristics of a country,
+make it living, visible, dramatic. I will try to do as you wish. I will,
+therefore, send you from time to time letters in which I will mention
+neither you nor myself, but only the landscape and the people who move
+about in it. And now I will begin.
+
+Spring is a season in which one ought, it seems to me, to drink and eat
+the landscape. It is the season of chills, just as autumn is the season
+of reflection. In spring the country rouses the physical senses, in
+autumn it enters into the soul.
+
+I desired this year to breathe the odor of orange blossoms and I set
+out for the South of France just at the time that every one else was
+returning home. I visited Monaco, the shrine of pilgrims, rival of Mecca
+and Jerusalem, without leaving any gold in any one else's pockets, and I
+climbed the high mountain beneath a covering of lemon, orange and olive
+branches.
+
+Have you ever slept, my friend, in a grove of orange trees in flower?
+The air that one inhales with delight is a quintessence of perfumes. The
+strong yet sweet odor, delicious as some dainty, seems to blend with our
+being, to saturate us, to intoxicate us, to enervate us, to plunge us
+into a sleepy, dreamy torpor. As though it were an opium prepared by the
+hands of fairies and not by those of druggists.
+
+This is a country of ravines. The surface of the mountains is cleft,
+hollowed out in all directions, and in these sinuous crevices grow
+veritable forests of lemon trees. Here and there where the steep gorge
+is interrupted by a sort of step, a kind of reservoir has been built
+which holds the water of the rain storms.
+
+They are large holes with slippery walls with nothing for any one to
+grasp hold of should they fall in.
+
+I was walking slowly in one of these ascending valleys or gorges,
+glancing through the foliage at the vivid-hued fruit that remained on
+the branches. The narrow gorge made the heavy odor of the flowers still
+more penetrating; the air seemed to be dense with it. A feeling of
+lassitude came over me and I looked for a place to sit down. A few drops
+of water glistened in the grass. I thought that there was a spring near
+by and I climbed a little further to look for it. But I only reached the
+edge of one of these large, deep reservoirs.
+
+I sat down tailor fashion, with my legs crossed under me, and remained
+there in a reverie before this hole, which looked as if it were filled
+with ink, so black and stagnant was the liquid it contained. Down
+yonder, through the branches, I saw, like patches, bits of the
+Mediterranean gleaming so that they fairly dazzled my eyes. But my
+glance always returned to the immense somber well that appeared to be
+inhabited by no aquatic animals, so motionless was its surface. Suddenly
+a voice made me tremble. An old gentleman who was picking flowers--this
+country is the richest in Europe for herbalists--asked me:
+
+“Are you a relation of those poor children, monsieur?”
+
+I looked at him in astonishment.
+
+“What children, monsieur?”
+
+He seemed embarrassed and answered with a bow:
+
+“I beg your pardon. On seeing you sitting thus absorbed in front of
+this reservoir I thought you were recalling the frightful tragedy that
+occurred here.”
+
+Now I wanted to know about it, and I begged him to tell me the story.
+
+It is very dismal and very heart-rending, my dear friend, and very
+trivial at the same time. It is a simple news item. I do not know
+whether to attribute my emotion to the dramatic manner in which the
+story was told to me, to the setting of the mountains, to the contrast
+between the joy of the sunlight and the flowers and this black,
+murderous hole, but my heart was wrung, all my nerves unstrung by this
+tale which, perhaps, may not appear so terribly harrowing to you as you
+read it in your room without having the scene of the tragedy before your
+eyes.
+
+It was one spring in recent years. Two little boys frequently came to
+play on the edge of this cistern while their tutor lay under a tree
+reading a book. One warm afternoon a piercing cry awoke the tutor who
+was dozing and the sound of splashing caused by something falling
+into the water made him jump to his feet abruptly. The younger of the
+children, eight years of age, was shouting, as he stood beside the
+reservoir, the surface of which was stirred and eddying at the spot
+where the older boy had fallen in as he ran along the stone coping.
+
+Distracted, without waiting or stopping to think what was best to do,
+the tutor jumped into the black water and did not rise again, having
+struck his head at the bottom of the cistern.
+
+At the same moment the young boy who had risen to the surface was waving
+his stretched-out arms toward his brother. The little fellow on land lay
+down full length, while the other tried to swim, to approach the wall,
+and presently the four little hands clasped each other, tightened in
+each other's grasp, contracted as though they were fastened together.
+They both felt the intense joy of an escape from death, a shudder at the
+danger past.
+
+The older boy tried to climb up to the edge, but could not manage it,
+as the wall was perpendicular, and his brother, who was too weak, was
+sliding slowly towards the hole.
+
+Then they remained motionless, filled anew with terror. And they waited.
+
+The little fellow squeezed his brother's hands with all his might and
+wept from nervousness as he repeated: “I cannot drag you out, I cannot
+drag you out.” And all at once he began to shout, “Help! Help!” But his
+light voice scarcely penetrated beyond the dome of foliage above their
+heads.
+
+They remained thus a long time, hours and hours, facing each other,
+these two children, with one thought, one anguish of heart and the
+horrible dread that one of them, exhausted, might let go the hands of
+the other. And they kept on calling, but all in vain.
+
+At length the older boy, who was shivering with cold, said to the little
+one: “I cannot hold out any longer. I am going to fall. Good-by, little
+brother.” And the other, gasping, replied: “Not yet, not yet, wait.”
+
+Evening came on, the still evening with its stars mirrored in the water.
+The older lad, his endurance giving out, said: “Let go my hand, I am
+going to give you my watch.” He had received it as a present a few days
+before, and ever since it had been his chief amusement. He was able to
+get hold of it, and held it out to the little fellow who was sobbing and
+who laid it down on the grass beside him.
+
+It was night now. The two unhappy beings, exhausted, had almost loosened
+their grasp. The elder, at last, feeling that he was lost, murmured once
+more: “Good-by, little brother, kiss mamma and papa.” And his numbed
+fingers relaxed their hold. He sank and did not rise again.... The
+little fellow, left alone, began to shout wildly: “Paul! Paul!” But the
+other did not come to the surface.
+
+Then he darted across the mountain, falling among the stones, overcome
+by the most frightful anguish that can wring a child's heart, and with
+a face like death reached the sitting-room, where his parents were
+waiting. He became bewildered again as he led them to the gloomy
+reservoir. He could not find his way. At last he reached the spot. “It
+is there; yes, it is there!”
+
+But the cistern had to be emptied, and the proprietor would not permit
+it as he needed the water for his lemon trees.
+
+The two bodies were found, however, but not until the next day.
+
+You see, my dear friend, that this is a simple news item. But if you had
+seen the hole itself your heart would have been wrung, as mine was, at
+the thought of the agony of that child hanging to his brother's hands,
+of the long suspense of those little chaps who were accustomed only
+to laugh and to play, and at the simple incident of the giving of the
+watch.
+
+I said to myself: “May Fate preserve me from ever receiving a similar
+relic!” I know of nothing more terrible than such a recollection
+connected with a familiar object that one cannot dispose of. Only think
+of it; each time that he handles this sacred watch the survivor will
+picture once more the horrible scene; the pool, the wall, the still
+water, and the distracted face of his brother-alive, and yet as lost as
+though he were already dead. And all through his life, at any moment,
+the vision will be there, awakened the instant even the tip of his
+finger touches his watch pocket.
+
+And I was sad until evening. I left the spot and kept on climbing,
+leaving the region of orange trees for the region of olive trees, and
+the region of olive trees for the region of pines; then I came to a
+valley of stones, and finally reached the ruins of an ancient castle,
+built, they say, in the tenth century by a Saracen chief, a good man,
+who was baptized a Christian through love for a young girl. Everywhere
+around me were mountains, and before me the sea, the sea with an almost
+imperceptible patch on it: Corsica, or, rather, the shadow of Corsica.
+But on the mountain summits, blood-red in the glow of the sunset, in the
+boundless sky and on the sea, in all this superb landscape that I had
+come here to admire I saw only two poor children, one lying prone on the
+edge of a hole filled with black water, the other submerged to his neck,
+their hands intertwined, weeping opposite each other, in despair. And
+it seemed as though I continually heard a weak, exhausted voice saying:
+“Good-by, little brother, I am going to give you my watch.”
+
+This letter may seem rather melancholy, dear friend. I will try to be
+more cheerful some other day.
+
+
+
+
+A CREMATION
+
+Last Monday an Indian prince died at Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao
+Ghatay, a relation of His Highness, the Maharajah Gaikwar, prince of
+Baroda, in the province of Guzerat, Presidency of Bombay.
+
+For about three weeks there had been seen walking in the streets about
+ten young East Indians, small, lithe, with dark skins, dressed all in
+gray and wearing on their heads caps such as English grooms wear. They
+were men of high rank who had come to Europe to study the military
+institutions of the principal Western nations. The little band consisted
+of three princes, a nobleman, an interpreter and three servants.
+
+The head of the commission had just died, an old man of forty-two and
+father-in-law of Sampatro Kashivao Gaikwar, brother of His Highness, the
+Gaikwar of Baroda.
+
+The son-in-law accompanied his father-in-law.
+
+The other East Indians were called Ganpatrao Shravanrao Gaikwar, cousin
+of His Highness Khasherao Gadhav; Vasudev Madhav Samarth, interpreter
+and secretary; the slaves: Ramchandra Bajaji, Ganu bin Pukiram Kokate,
+Rhambhaji bin Fabji.
+
+On leaving his native land the one who died recently was overcome with
+terrible grief, and feeling convinced that he would never return he
+wished to give up the journey, but he had to obey the wishes of his
+noble relative, the Prince of Baroda, and he set out.
+
+They came to spend the latter part of the summer at Etretat, and people
+would go out of curiosity every morning to see them taking their bath at
+the Etablissment des Roches-Blanches.
+
+Five or six days ago Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatay was taken with pains
+in his gums; then the inflammation spread to the throat and became
+ulceration. Gangrene set in and, on Monday, the doctors told his young
+friends that their relative was dying. The final struggle was already
+beginning, and the breath had almost left the unfortunate man's body
+when his friends seized him, snatched him from his bed and laid him on
+the stone floor of the room, so that, stretched out on the earth, our
+mother, he should yield up his soul, according to the command of Brahma.
+
+They then sent to ask the mayor, M. Boissaye, for a permit to burn the
+body that very day so as to fulfill the prescribed ceremonial of the
+Hindoo religion. The mayor hesitated, telegraphed to the prefecture to
+demand instructions, at the same time sending word that a failure to
+reply would be considered by him tantamount to a consent. As he had
+received no reply at 9 o'clock that evening, he decided, in view of the
+infectious character of the disease of which the East Indian had died,
+that the cremation of the body should take place that very night,
+beneath the cliff, on the beach, at ebb tide.
+
+The mayor is being criticized now for this decision, though he acted as
+an intelligent, liberal and determined man, and was upheld and advised
+by the three physicians who had watched the case and reported the death.
+
+They were dancing at the Casino that evening. It was an early autumn
+evening, rather chilly. A pretty strong wind was blowing from the ocean,
+although as yet there was no sea on, and swift, light, ragged clouds
+were driving across the sky. They came from the edge of the horizon,
+looking dark against the background of the sky, but as they approached
+the moon they grew whiter and passed hurriedly across her face, veiling
+it for a few seconds without completely hiding it.
+
+The tall straight cliffs that inclose the rounded beach of Etretat and
+terminate in two celebrated arches, called “the Gates,” lay in shadow,
+and made two great black patches in the softly lighted landscape.
+
+It had rained all day.
+
+The Casino orchestra was playing waltzes, polkas and quadrilles. A rumor
+was presently circulated among the groups of dancers. It was said that
+an East Indian prince had just died at the Hotel des Bains and that the
+ministry had been approached for permission to burn the body. No one
+believed it, or at least no one supposed that such a thing could occur
+so foreign was the custom as yet to our customs, and as the night was
+far advanced every one went home.
+
+At midnight, the lamplighter, running from street to street,
+extinguished, one after another, the yellow jets of flame that lighted
+up the sleeping houses, the mud and the puddles of water. We waited,
+watching for the hour when the little town should be quiet and deserted.
+
+Ever since noon a carpenter had been cutting up wood and asking himself
+with amazement what was going to be done with all these planks sawn up
+into little bits, and why one should destroy so much good merchandise.
+This wood was piled up in a cart which went along through side streets
+as far as the beach, without arousing the suspicion of belated persons
+who might meet it. It went along on the shingle at the foot of the
+cliff, and having dumped its contents on the beach the three Indian
+servants began to build a funeral pile, a little longer than it was
+wide. They worked alone, for no profane hand must aid in this solemn
+duty.
+
+It was one o'clock in the morning when the relations of the deceased
+were informed that they might accomplish their part of the work.
+
+The door of the little house they occupied was open, and we perceived,
+lying on a stretcher in the small, dimly lighted vestibule the corpse
+covered with white silk. We could see him plainly as he lay stretched
+out on his back, his outline clearly defined beneath this white veil.
+
+The East Indians, standing at his feet, remained motionless, while one
+of them performed the prescribed rites, murmuring unfamiliar words in a
+low, monotonous tone. He walked round and round the corpse; touching it
+occasionally, then, taking an urn suspended from three slender chains,
+he sprinkled it for some time with the sacred water of the Ganges, that
+East Indians must always carry with them wherever they go.
+
+Then the stretcher was lifted by four of them who started off at a slow
+march. The moon had gone down, leaving the muddy, deserted streets in
+darkness, but the body on the stretcher appeared to be luminous, so
+dazzlingly white was the silk, and it was a weird sight to see, passing
+along through the night, the semi-luminous form of this corpse, borne
+by those men, the dusky skin of whose faces and hands could scarcely be
+distinguished from their clothing in the darkness.
+
+Behind the corpse came three Indians, and then, a full head taller than
+themselves and wrapped in an ample traveling coat of a soft gray color,
+appeared the outline of an Englishman, a kind and superior man, a friend
+of theirs, who was their guide and counselor in their European travels.
+
+Beneath the cold, misty sky of this little northern beach I felt as if
+I were taking part in a sort of symbolical drama. It seemed to me that
+they were carrying there, before me, the conquered genius of India,
+followed, as in a funeral procession, by the victorious genius of
+England robed in a gray ulster.
+
+On the shingly beach the four bearers halted a few moments to take
+breath, and then proceeded on their way. They now walked quickly,
+bending beneath the weight of their burden. At length they reached the
+funeral pile. It was erected in an indentation, at the very foot of
+the cliff, which rose above it perpendicularly a hundred meters high,
+perfectly white but looking gray in the night.
+
+The funeral pile was about three and a half feet high. The corpse was
+placed on it and then one of the Indians asked to have the pole star
+pointed out to him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his
+feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene
+were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs
+of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept
+piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood
+that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the
+contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag
+of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering in a
+little bronze brazier, which had remained lighted since the arrival of
+the corpse.
+
+The moment had arrived. The relations went to fetch the fire. As it was
+barely alight, some oil was poured on it, and suddenly a flame arose
+lighting up the great wall of rock from summit to base. An Indian who
+was leaning over the brazier rose upright, his two hands in the air, his
+elbows bent, and all at once we saw arising, all black on the immense
+white cliff, a colossal shadow, the shadow of Buddha in his hieratic
+posture. And the little pointed toque that the man wore on his head even
+looked like the head-dress of the god.
+
+The effect was so striking and unexpected that I felt my heart beat as
+though some supernatural apparition had risen up before me.
+
+That was just what it was--the ancient and sacred image, come from the
+heart of the East to the ends of Europe, and watching over its son whom
+they were going to cremate there.
+
+It vanished. They brought fire. The shavings on top of the pyre were
+lighted and then the wood caught fire and a brilliant light illumined
+the cliff, the shingle and the foam of the waves as they broke on the
+beach.
+
+It grew brighter from second to second, lighting up on the sea in the
+distance the dancing crest of the waves.
+
+The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the
+flame which flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out
+millions of sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and
+were lost in the sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number.
+Some sea birds who had awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and,
+describing long curves, flew, with their white wings extended, through
+the gleam from the funeral pyre and then disappeared in the night.
+
+Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not
+red but yellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And,
+suddenly, beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as
+it leaned towards the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length,
+blackened on his couch of flame and burning with long blue flames:
+
+The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turned
+over as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh wood
+and the fire started up again more furiously than ever.
+
+The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out
+with sad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had
+drawn nearer to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces.
+There was no odor save that of burning pine and petroleum.
+
+Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o'clock in the morning
+nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up,
+cast some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a
+brass vase that they had brought from India. They then retired to their
+home to give utterance to lamentations.
+
+These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the most
+inadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of their
+relation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkable
+dignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigid
+ordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.
+
+The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion
+in Etretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others that
+they were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put
+in jail, others that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of
+cholera.
+
+The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent the
+day on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of bone in
+the shingle that was still warm. They found enough bones to reconstruct
+ten skeletons, for the farmers on shore frequently throw their dead
+sheep into the sea. The finders carefully placed these various fragments
+in their pocketbooks. But not one of them possesses a true particle of
+the Indian prince.
+
+That very night a deputy sent by the government came to hold an inquest.
+He, however, formed an estimate of this singular case like a man of
+intelligence and good sense. But what should he say in his report?
+
+The East Indians declared that if they had been prevented in France from
+cremating their dead they would have taken him to a freer country where
+they could have carried out their customs.
+
+Thus, I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me
+a wish to disappear in the same manner.
+
+In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work of
+nature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which one
+decomposes for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Fire
+which purifies disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; it
+casts it to the winds, converting it into air and ashes, and not into
+ignominious corruption.
+
+This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closed
+box where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has
+about it something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as
+it descends into this muddy hole wrings one's heart with anguish. But
+the funeral pyre which flames up beneath the sky has about it something
+grand, beautiful and solemn.
+
+
+
+
+MISTI
+
+I was very much interested at that time in a droll little woman. She
+was married, of course, as I have a horror of unmarried flirts. What
+enjoyment is there in making love to a woman who belongs to nobody
+and yet belongs to any one? And, besides, morality aside, I do not
+understand love as a trade. That disgusts me somewhat.
+
+The especial attraction in a married woman to a bachelor is that she
+gives him a home, a sweet, pleasant home where every one takes care
+of you and spoils you, from the husband to the servants. One finds
+everything combined there, love, friendship, even fatherly interest, bed
+and board, all, in fact, that constitutes the happiness of life, with
+this incalculable advantage, that one can change one's family from time
+to time, take up one's abode in all kinds of society in turn: in summer,
+in the country with the workman who rents you a room in his house;
+in winter with the townsfolk, or even with the nobility, if one is
+ambitious.
+
+I have another weakness; it is that I become attached to the husband
+as well as the wife. I acknowledge even that some husbands, ordinary
+or coarse as they may be, give me a feeling of disgust for their wives,
+however charming they may be. But when the husband is intellectual or
+charming I invariably become very much attached to him. I am careful if
+I quarrel with the wife not to quarrel with the husband. In this way I
+have made some of my best friends, and have also proved in many cases
+the incontestable superiority of the male over the female in the human
+species. The latter makes all sorts of trouble-scenes, reproaches, etc.;
+while the former, who has just as good a right to complain, treats
+you, on the contrary, as though you were the special Providence of his
+hearth.
+
+Well, my friend was a quaint little woman, a brunette, fanciful,
+capricious, pious, superstitious, credulous as a monk, but charming. She
+had a way of kissing one that I never saw in any one else--but that was
+not the attraction--and such a soft skin! It gave me intense delight
+merely to hold her hands. And an eye--her glance was like a slow caress,
+delicious and unending. Sometimes I would lean my head on her knee
+and we would remain motionless, she leaning over me with that subtle,
+enigmatic, disturbing smile that women have, while my eyes would be
+raised to hers, drinking sweetly and deliciously into my heart, like
+a form of intoxication, the glance of her limpid blue eyes, limpid as
+though they were full of thoughts of love, and blue as though they were
+a heaven of delights.
+
+Her husband, inspector of some large public works, was frequently away
+from home and left us our evenings free. Sometimes I spent them with her
+lounging on the divan with my forehead on one of her knees; while on
+the other lay an enormous black cat called “Misti,” whom she adored. Our
+fingers would meet on the cat's back and would intertwine in her soft
+silky fur. I felt its warm body against my cheek, trembling with its
+eternal purring, and occasionally a paw would reach out and place on my
+mouth, or my eyelid, five unsheathed claws which would prick my eyelids,
+and then be immediately withdrawn.
+
+Sometimes we would go out on what we called our escapades. They were
+very innocent, however. They consisted in taking supper at some inn in
+the suburbs, or else, after dining at her house or at mine, in making
+the round of the cheap cafes, like students out for a lark.
+
+We would go into the common drinking places and take our seats at the
+end of the smoky den on two rickety chairs, at an old wooden table. A
+cloud of pungent smoke, with which blended an odor of fried fish from
+dinner, filled the room. Men in smocks were talking in loud tones as
+they drank their petits verres, and the astonished waiter placed before
+us two cherry brandies.
+
+She, trembling, charmingly afraid, would raise her double black veil as
+far as her nose, and then take up her glass with the enjoyment that one
+feels at doing something delightfully naughty. Each cherry she swallowed
+made her feel as if she had done something wrong, each swallow of
+the burning liquor had on her the affect of a delicate and forbidden
+enjoyment.
+
+Then she would say to me in a low tone: “Let us go.” And we would leave,
+she walking quickly with lowered head between the drinkers who watched
+her going by with a look of displeasure. And as soon as we got into the
+street she would give a great sigh of relief, as if we had escaped some
+terrible danger.
+
+Sometimes she would ask me with a shudder:
+
+“Suppose they, should say something rude to me in those places, what
+would you do?” “Why, I would defend you, parbleu!” I would reply in a
+resolute manner. And she would squeeze my arm for happiness, perhaps
+with a vague wish that she might be insulted and protected, that she
+might see men fight on her account, even those men, with me!
+
+One evening as we sat at a table in a tavern at Montmartre, we saw an
+old woman in tattered garments come in, holding in her hand a pack of
+dirty cards. Perceiving a lady, the old woman at once approached us and
+offered to tell my friend's fortune. Emma, who in her heart believed in
+everything, was trembling with longing and anxiety, and she made a place
+beside her for the old woman.
+
+The latter, old, wrinkled, her eyes with red inflamed rings round them,
+and her mouth without a single tooth in it, began to deal her dirty
+cards on the table. She dealt them in piles, then gathered them up,
+and then dealt them out again, murmuring indistinguishable words. Emma,
+turning pale, listened with bated breath, gasping with anxiety and
+curiosity.
+
+The fortune-teller broke silence. She predicted vague happenings:
+happiness and children, a fair young man, a voyage, money, a lawsuit, a
+dark man, the return of some one, success, a death. The mention of this
+death attracted the younger woman's attention. “Whose death? When? In
+what manner?”
+
+The old woman replied: “Oh, as to that, these cards are not certain
+enough. You must come to my place to-morrow; I will tell you about it
+with coffee grounds which never make a mistake.”
+
+Emma turned anxiously to me:
+
+“Say, let us go there to-morrow. Oh, please say yes. If not, you cannot
+imagine how worried I shall be.”
+
+I began to laugh.
+
+“We will go if you wish it, dearie.”
+
+The old woman gave us her address. She lived on the sixth floor, in a
+wretched house behind the Buttes-Chaumont. We went there the following
+day.
+
+Her room, an attic containing two chairs and a bed, was filled with
+strange objects, bunches of herbs hanging from nails, skins of animals,
+flasks and phials containing liquids of various colors. On the table a
+stuffed black cat looked out of eyes of glass. He seemed like the demon
+of this sinister dwelling.
+
+Emma, almost fainting with emotion, sat down on a chair and exclaimed:
+
+“Oh, dear, look at that cat; how like it is to Misti.”
+
+And she explained to the old woman that she had a cat “exactly like
+that, exactly like that!”
+
+The old woman replied gravely:
+
+“If you are in love with a man, you must not keep it.”
+
+Emma, suddenly filled with fear, asked:
+
+“Why not?”
+
+The old woman sat down familiarly beside her and took her hand.
+
+“It was the undoing of my life,” she said.
+
+My friend wanted to hear about it. She leaned against the old woman,
+questioned her, begged her to tell. At length the woman agreed to do so.
+
+“I loved that cat,” she said, “as one would love a brother. I was young
+then and all alone, a seamstress. I had only him, Mouton. One of the
+tenants had given it to me. He was as intelligent as a child, and gentle
+as well, and he worshiped me, my dear lady, he worshiped me more than
+one does a fetish. All day long he would sit on my lap purring, and all
+night long on my pillow; I could feel his heart beating, in fact.
+
+“Well, I happened to make an acquaintance, a fine young man who was
+working in a white-goods house. That went on for about three months on a
+footing of mere friendship. But you know one is liable to weaken, it may
+happen to any one, and, besides, I had really begun to love him. He
+was so nice, so nice, and so good. He wanted us to live together, for
+economy's sake. I finally allowed him to come and see me one evening. I
+had not made up my mind to anything definite; oh, no! But I was pleased
+at the idea that we should spend an hour together.
+
+“At first he behaved very well, said nice things to me that made my
+heart go pit-a-pat. And then he kissed me, madame, kissed me as one does
+when they love. I remained motionless, my eyes closed, in a paroxysm
+of happiness. But, suddenly, I felt him start violently and he gave a
+scream, a scream that I shall never forget. I opened my eyes and saw
+that Mouton had sprung at his face and was tearing the skin with his
+claws as if it had been a linen rag. And the blood was streaming down
+like rain, madame.
+
+“I tried to take the cat away, but he held on tight, scratching all the
+time; and he bit me, he was so crazy. I finally got him and threw him
+out of the window, which was open, for it was summer.
+
+“When I began to bathe my poor friend's face, I noticed that his eyes
+were destroyed, both his eyes!
+
+“He had to go to the hospital. He died of grief at the end of a year. I
+wanted to keep him with me and provide for him, but he would not agree
+to it. One would have supposed that he hated me after the occurrence.
+
+“As for Mouton, his back was broken by the fall, The janitor picked up
+his body. I had him stuffed, for in spite of all I was fond of him. If
+he acted as he did it was because he loved me, was it not?”
+
+The old woman was silent and began to stroke the lifeless animal whose
+body trembled on its iron framework.
+
+Emma, with sorrowful heart, had forgotten about the predicted death--or,
+at least, she did not allude to it again, and she left, giving the woman
+five francs.
+
+As her husband was to return the following day, I did not go to the
+house for several days. When I did go I was surprised at not seeing
+Misti. I asked where he was.
+
+She blushed and replied:
+
+“I gave him away. I was uneasy.”
+
+I was astonished.
+
+“Uneasy? Uneasy? What about?”
+
+She gave me a long kiss and said in a low tone:
+
+“I was uneasy about your eyes, my dear.”
+
+   Misti appeared in. Gil Blas of January 22, 1884, over the signature
+   of “MAUFRIGNEUSE.”
+
+
+
+
+MADAME HERMET
+
+Crazy people attract me. They live in a mysterious land of weird
+dreams, in that impenetrable cloud of dementia where all that they have
+witnessed in their previous life, all they have loved, is reproduced
+for them in an imaginary existence, outside of all laws that govern the
+things of this life and control human thought.
+
+For them there is no such thing as the impossible, nothing is
+improbable; fairyland is a constant quantity and the supernatural quite
+familiar. The old rampart, logic; the old wall, reason; the old main
+stay of thought, good sense, break down, fall and crumble before their
+imagination, set free and escaped into the limitless realm of fancy,
+and advancing with fabulous bounds, and nothing can check it. For them
+everything happens, and anything may happen. They make no effort to
+conquer events, to overcome resistance, to overturn obstacles. By
+a sudden caprice of their flighty imagination they become princes,
+emperors, or gods, are possessed of all the wealth of the world, all
+the delightful things of life, enjoy all pleasures, are always strong,
+always beautiful, always young, always beloved! They, alone, can be
+happy in this world; for, as far as they are concerned, reality does
+not exist. I love to look into their wandering intelligence as one leans
+over an abyss at the bottom of which seethes a foaming torrent whose
+source and destination are both unknown.
+
+But it is in vain that we lean over these abysses, for we shall never
+discover the source nor the destination of this water. After all, it
+is only water, just like what is flowing in the sunlight, and we shall
+learn nothing by looking at it.
+
+It is likewise of no use to ponder over the intelligence of crazy
+people, for their most weird notions are, in fact, only ideas that are
+already known, which appear strange simply because they are no longer
+under the restraint of reason. Their whimsical source surprises us
+because we do not see it bubbling up. Doubtless the dropping of a
+little stone into the current was sufficient to cause these ebullitions.
+Nevertheless crazy people attract me and I always return to them, drawn
+in spite of myself by this trivial mystery of dementia.
+
+One day as I was visiting one of the asylums the physician who was my
+guide said:
+
+“Come, I will show you an interesting case.”
+
+And he opened the door of a cell where a woman of about forty, still
+handsome, was seated in a large armchair, looking persistently at her
+face in a little hand mirror.
+
+As soon as she saw us she rose to her feet, ran to the other end of the
+room, picked up a veil that lay on a chair, wrapped it carefully round
+her face, then came back, nodding her head in reply to our greeting.
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, “how are you this morning?”
+
+She gave a deep sigh.
+
+“Oh, ill, monsieur, very ill. The marks are increasing every day.”
+
+He replied in a tone of conviction:
+
+“Oh, no; oh, no; I assure you that you are mistaken.”
+
+She drew near to him and murmured:
+
+“No. I am certain of it. I counted ten pittings more this morning, three
+on the right cheek, four on the left cheek, and three on the forehead.
+It is frightful, frightful! I shall never dare to let any one see me,
+not even my son; no, not even him! I am lost, I am disfigured forever.”
+
+She fell back in her armchair and began to sob.
+
+The doctor took a chair, sat down beside her, and said soothingly in a
+gentle tone:
+
+“Come, let me see; I assure you it is nothing. With a slight
+cauterization I will make it all disappear.”
+
+She shook her head in denial, without speaking. He tried to touch her
+veil, but she seized it with both hands so violently that her fingers
+went through it.
+
+He continued to reason with her and reassure her.
+
+“Come, you know very well that I remove those horrid pits every time and
+that there is no trace of them after I have treated them. If you do not
+let me see them I cannot cure you.”
+
+“I do not mind your seeing them,” she murmured, “but I do not know that
+gentleman who is with you.”
+
+“He is a doctor also, who can give you better care than I can.”
+
+She then allowed her face to be uncovered, but her dread, her emotion,
+her shame at being seen brought a rosy flush to her face and her neck,
+down to the collar of her dress. She cast down her eyes, turned her
+face aside, first to the right; then to the left, to avoid our gaze and
+stammered out:
+
+“Oh, it is torture to me to let myself be seen like this! It is
+horrible, is it not? Is it not horrible?”
+
+I looked at her in much surprise, for there was nothing on her face, not
+a mark, not a spot, not a sign of one, nor a scar.
+
+She turned towards me, her eyes still lowered, and said:
+
+“It was while taking care of my son that I caught this fearful disease,
+monsieur. I saved him, but I am disfigured. I sacrificed my beauty to
+him, to my poor child. However, I did my duty, my conscience is at rest.
+If I suffer it is known only to God.”
+
+The doctor had drawn from his coat pocket a fine water-color paint
+brush.
+
+“Let me attend to it,” he said, “I will put it all right.”
+
+She held out her right cheek, and he began by touching it lightly with
+the brush here and there, as though he were putting little points of
+paint on it. He did the same with the left cheek, then with the chin,
+and the forehead, and then exclaimed:
+
+“See, there is nothing there now, nothing at all!”
+
+She took up the mirror, gazed at her reflection with profound, eager
+attention, with a strong mental effort to discover something, then she
+sighed:
+
+“No. It hardly shows at all. I am infinitely obliged to you.”
+
+The doctor had risen. He bowed to her, ushered me out and followed me,
+and, as soon as he had locked the door, said:
+
+“Here is the history of this unhappy woman.”
+
+Her name is Mme. Hermet. She was once very beautiful, a great coquette,
+very much beloved and very much in-love with life.
+
+She was one of those women who have nothing but their beauty and their
+love of admiration to sustain, guide or comfort them in this life. The
+constant anxiety to retain her freshness, the care of her complexion,
+of her hands, her teeth, of every portion of body that was visible,
+occupied all her time and all her attention.
+
+She became a widow, with one son. The boy was brought up as are all
+children of society beauties. She was, however, very fond of him.
+
+He grew up, and she grew older. Whether she saw the fatal crisis
+approaching, I cannot say. Did she, like so many others, gaze for
+hours and hours at her skin, once so fine, so transparent and free
+from blemish, now beginning to shrivel slightly, to be crossed with a
+thousand little lines, as yet imperceptible, that will grow deeper day
+by day, month by month? Did she also see slowly, but surely, increasing
+traces of those long wrinkles on the forehead, those slender serpents
+that nothing can check? Did she suffer the torture, the abominable
+torture of the mirror, the little mirror with the silver handle which
+one cannot make up one's mind to lay down on the table, but then throws
+down in disgust only to take it up again in order to look more closely,
+and still more closely at the hateful and insidious approaches of old
+age? Did she shut herself up ten times, twenty times a day, leaving her
+friends chatting in the drawing-room, and go up to her room where, under
+the protection of bolts and bars, she would again contemplate the work
+of time on her ripe beauty, now beginning to wither, and recognize with
+despair the gradual progress of the process which no one else had as yet
+seemed to perceive, but of which she, herself, was well aware. She
+knows where to seek the most serious, the gravest traces of age. And the
+mirror, the little round hand-glass in its carved silver frame, tells
+her horrible things; for it speaks, it seems to laugh, it jeers and
+tells her all that is going to occur, all the physical discomforts and
+the atrocious mental anguish she will suffer until the day of her death,
+which will be the day of her deliverance.
+
+Did she weep, distractedly, on her knees, her forehead to the ground,
+and pray, pray, pray to Him who thus slays his creatures and gives them
+youth only that he may render old age more unendurable, and lends them
+beauty only that he may withdraw it almost immediately? Did she pray to
+Him, imploring Him to do for her what He has never yet done for any one,
+to let her retain until her last day her charm, her freshness and her
+gracefulness? Then, finding that she was imploring in vain an inflexible
+Unknown who drives on the years, one after another, did she roll on the
+carpet in her room, knocking her head against the furniture and stifling
+in her throat shrieks of despair?
+
+Doubtless she suffered these tortures, for this is what occurred:
+
+One day (she was then thirty-five) her son aged fifteen, fell ill.
+
+He took to his bed without any one being able to determine the cause or
+nature of his illness.
+
+His tutor, a priest, watched beside him and hardly ever left him, while
+Mme. Hermet came morning and evening to inquire how he was.
+
+She would come into the room in the morning in her night wrapper,
+smiling, all powdered and perfumed, and would ask as she entered the
+door:
+
+“Well, George, are you better?”
+
+The big boy, his face red, swollen and showing the ravages of fever,
+would reply:
+
+“Yes, little mother, a little better.”
+
+She would stay in the room a few seconds, look at the bottles of
+medicine, and purse her lips as if she were saying “phew,” and then
+would suddenly exclaim: “Oh, I forgot something very important,” and
+would run out of the room leaving behind her a fragrance of choice
+toilet perfumes.
+
+In the evening she would appear in a decollete dress, in a still greater
+hurry, for she was always late, and she had just time to inquire:
+
+“Well, what does the doctor say?”
+
+The priest would reply:
+
+“He has not yet given an opinion, madame.”
+
+But one evening the abbe replied: “Madame, your son has got the
+small-pox.”
+
+She uttered a scream of terror and fled from the room.
+
+When her maid came to her room the following morning she noticed at once
+a strong odor of burnt sugar, and she found her mistress, with wide-open
+eyes, her face pale from lack of sleep, and shivering with terror in her
+bed.
+
+As soon as the shutters were opened Mme. Herrnet asked:
+
+“How is George?”
+
+“Oh, not at all well to-day, madame.”
+
+She did not rise until noon, when she ate two eggs with a cup of tea,
+as if she herself had been ill, and then she went out to a druggist's to
+inquire about prophylactic measures against the contagion of small-pox.
+
+She did not come home until dinner time, laden with medicine bottles,
+and shut herself up at once in her room, where she saturated herself
+with disinfectants.
+
+The priest was waiting for her in the dining-room. As soon as she saw
+him she exclaimed in a voice full of emotion:
+
+“Well?”
+
+“No improvement. The doctor is very anxious:”
+
+She began to cry and could eat nothing, she was so worried.
+
+The next day, as soon as it was light, she sent to inquire for her son,
+but there was no improvement and she spent the whole day in her room,
+where little braziers were giving out pungent odors. Her maid said also
+that you could hear her sighing all the evening.
+
+She spent a whole week in this manner, only going out for an hour or two
+during the afternoon to breathe the air.
+
+She now sent to make inquiries every hour, and would sob when the
+reports were unfavorable.
+
+On the morning of the eleventh day the priest, having been announced,
+entered her room, his face grave and pale, and said, without taking the
+chair she offered him:
+
+“Madame, your son is very ill and wishes to see you.”
+
+She fell on her knees, exclaiming:
+
+“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I would never dare! My God! My God! Help me!”
+
+The priest continued:
+
+“The doctor holds out little hope, madame, and George is expecting you!”
+
+And he left the room.
+
+Two hours later as the young lad, feeling himself dying, again asked for
+his mother, the abbe went to her again and found her still on her knees,
+still weeping and repeating:
+
+“I will not.... I will not.... I am too much afraid.... I will not....”
+
+He tried to persuade her, to strengthen her, to lead her. He only
+succeeded in bringing on an attack of “nerves” that lasted some time and
+caused her to shriek.
+
+The doctor when he came in the evening was told of this cowardice and
+declared that he would bring her in himself, of her own volition, or by
+force. But after trying all manner of argument and just as he seized her
+round the waist to carry her into her son's room, she caught hold of the
+door and clung to it so firmly that they could not drag her away. Then
+when they let go of her she fell at the feet of the doctor, begging his
+forgiveness and acknowledging that she was a wretched creature. And then
+she exclaimed: “Oh, he is not going to die; tell me that he is not going
+to die, I beg of you; tell him that I love him, that I worship him...”
+
+The young lad was dying. Feeling that he had only a few moments more to
+live, he entreated that his mother be persuaded to come and bid him a
+last farewell. With that sort of presentiment that the dying sometimes
+have, he had understood, had guessed all, and he said: “If she is afraid
+to come into the room, beg her just to come on the balcony as far as my
+window so that I may see her, at least, so that I may take a farewell
+look at her, as I cannot kiss her.”
+
+The doctor and the abbe, once more, went together to this woman and
+assured her: “You will run no risk, for there will be a pane of glass
+between you and him.”
+
+She consented, covered up her head, and took with her a bottle of
+smelling salts. She took three steps on the balcony; then, all at once,
+hiding her face in her hands, she moaned: “No... no... I would never
+dare to look at him... never.... I am too much ashamed... too much
+afraid.... No... I cannot.”
+
+They endeavored to drag her along, but she held on with both hands to
+the railings and uttered such plaints that the passers-by in the street
+raised their heads. And the dying boy waited, his eyes turned towards
+that window, waited to die until he could see for the last time the
+sweet, beloved face, the worshiped face of his mother.
+
+He waited long, and night came on. Then he turned over with his face to
+the wall and was silent.
+
+When day broke he was dead. The day following she was crazy.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAGIC COUCH
+
+The Seine flowed past my house, without a ripple on its surface, and
+gleaming in the bright morning sunlight. It was a beautiful, broad,
+indolent silver stream, with crimson lights here and there; and on the
+opposite side of the river were rows of tall trees that covered all the
+bank with an immense wall of verdure.
+
+The sensation of life which is renewed each day, of fresh, happy, loving
+life trembled in the leaves, palpitated in the air, was mirrored in the
+water.
+
+The postman had just brought my papers, which were handed to me, and I
+walked slowly to the river bank in order to read them.
+
+In the first paper I opened I noticed this headline, “Statistics of
+Suicides,” and I read that more than 8,500 persons had killed themselves
+in that year.
+
+In a moment I seemed to see them! I saw this voluntary and hideous
+massacre of the despairing who were weary of life. I saw men bleeding,
+their jaws fractured, their skulls cloven, their breasts pierced by
+a bullet, slowly dying, alone in a little room in a hotel, giving no
+thought to their wound, but thinking only of their misfortunes.
+
+I saw others seated before a tumbler in which some matches were soaking,
+or before a little bottle with a red label.
+
+They would look at it fixedly without moving; then they would drink
+and await the result; then a spasm would convulse their cheeks and draw
+their lips together; their eyes would grow wild with terror, for they
+did not know that the end would be preceded by so much suffering.
+
+They rose to their feet, paused, fell over and with their hands pressed
+to their stomachs they felt their internal organs on fire, their
+entrails devoured by the fiery liquid, before their minds began to grow
+dim.
+
+I saw others hanging from a nail in the wall, from the fastening of the
+window, from a hook in the ceiling, from a beam in the garret, from
+a branch of a tree amid the evening rain. And I surmised all that had
+happened before they hung there motionless, their tongues hanging out
+of their mouths. I imagined the anguish of their heart, their final
+hesitation, their attempts to fasten the rope, to determine that it was
+secure, then to pass the noose round their neck and to let themselves
+fall.
+
+I saw others lying on wretched beds, mothers with their little children,
+old men dying of hunger, young girls dying for love, all rigid,
+suffocated, asphyxiated, while in the center of the room the brasier
+still gave forth the fumes of charcoal.
+
+And I saw others walking at night along the deserted bridges. These were
+the most sinister. The water flowed under the arches with a low sound.
+They did not see it... they guessed at it from its cool breath! They
+longed for it and they feared it. They dared not do it! And yet, they
+must. A distant clock sounded the hour and, suddenly, in the vast
+silence of the night, there was heard the splash of a body falling into
+the river, a scream or two, the sound of hands beating the water, and
+all was still. Sometimes, even, there was only the sound of the falling
+body when they had tied their arms down or fastened a stone to their
+feet. Oh, the poor things, the poor things, the poor things, how I
+felt their anguish, how I died in their death! I went through all their
+wretchedness; I endured in one hour all their tortures. I knew all the
+sorrows that had led them to this, for I know the deceitful infamy of
+life, and no one has felt it more than I have.
+
+How I understood them, these who weak, harassed by misfortune, having
+lost those they loved, awakened from the dream of a tardy compensation,
+from the illusion of another existence where God will finally be just,
+after having been ferocious, and their minds disabused of the mirages
+of happiness, have given up the fight and desire to put an end to this
+ceaseless tragedy, or this shameful comedy.
+
+Suicide! Why, it is the strength of those whose strength is exhausted,
+the hope of those who no longer believe, the sublime courage of the
+conquered! Yes, there is at least one door to this life we can always
+open and pass through to the other side. Nature had an impulse of pity;
+she did not shut us up in prison. Mercy for the despairing!
+
+As for those who are simply disillusioned, let them march ahead with
+free soul and quiet heart. They have nothing to fear since they may take
+their leave; for behind them there is always this door that the gods of
+our illusions cannot even lock.
+
+I thought of this crowd of suicides: more than eight thousand five
+hundred in one year. And it seemed to me that they had combined to send
+to the world a prayer, to utter a cry of appeal, to demand something
+that should come into effect later when we understood things better. It
+seemed to me that all these victims, their throats cut, poisoned, hung,
+asphyxiated, or drowned, all came together, a frightful horde, like
+citizens to the polls, to say to society:
+
+“Grant us, at least, a gentle death! Help us to die, you who will not
+help us to live! See, we are numerous, we have the right to speak
+in these days of freedom, of philosophic independence and of popular
+suffrage. Give to those who renounce life the charity of a death that
+will not be repugnant nor terrible.”
+
+I began to dream, allowing my fancy to roam at will in weird and
+mysterious fashion on this subject.
+
+I seemed to be all at once in a beautiful city. It was Paris; but at
+what period? I walked about the streets, looking at the houses, the
+theaters, the public buildings, and presently found myself in a square
+where I remarked a large building; very handsome, dainty and attractive.
+I was surprised on reading on the facade this inscription in letters of
+gold, “Suicide Bureau.”
+
+Oh, the weirdness of waking dreams where the spirit soars into a world
+of unrealities and possibilities! Nothing astonishes one, nothing shocks
+one; and the unbridled fancy makes no distinction between the comic and
+the tragic.
+
+I approached the building where footmen in knee-breeches were seated in
+the vestibule in front of a cloak-room as they do at the entrance of a
+club.
+
+I entered out of curiosity. One of the men rose and said:
+
+“What does monsieur wish?”
+
+“I wish to know what building this is.”
+
+“Nothing more?”
+
+“Why, no.”
+
+“Then would monsieur like me to take him to the Secretary of the
+Bureau?”
+
+I hesitated, and asked:
+
+“But will not that disturb him?”
+
+“Oh, no, monsieur, he is here to receive those who desire information.”
+
+“Well, lead the way.”
+
+He took me through corridors where old gentlemen were chatting, and
+finally led me into a beautiful office, somewhat somber, furnished
+throughout in black wood. A stout young man with a corporation was
+writing a letter as he smoked a cigar, the fragrance of which gave
+evidence of its quality.
+
+He rose. We bowed to each other, and as soon as the footman had retired
+he asked:
+
+“What can I do for you?”
+
+“Monsieur,” I replied, “pardon my curiosity. I had never seen this
+establishment. The few words inscribed on the facade filled me with
+astonishment, and I wanted to know what was going on here.”
+
+He smiled before replying, then said in a low tone with a complacent
+air:
+
+“Mon Dieu, monsieur, we put to death in a cleanly and gentle--I do not
+venture to say agreeable manner those persons who desire to die.”
+
+I did not feel very shocked, for it really seemed to me natural and
+right. What particularly surprised me was that on this planet, with its
+low, utilitarian, humanitarian ideals, selfish and coercive of all true
+freedom, any one should venture on a similar enterprise, worthy of an
+emancipated humanity.
+
+“How did you get the idea?” I asked.
+
+“Monsieur,” he replied, “the number of suicides increased so enormously
+during the five years succeeding the world exposition of 1889 that some
+measures were urgently needed. People killed themselves in the streets,
+at fetes, in restaurants, at the theater, in railway carriages, at the
+receptions held by the President of the Republic, everywhere. It was
+not only a horrid sight for those who love life, as I do, but also a bad
+example for children. Hence it became necessary to centralize suicides.”
+
+“What caused this suicidal epidemic?”
+
+“I do not know. The fact is, I believe, the world is growing old. People
+begin to see things clearly and they are getting disgruntled. It is the
+same to-day with destiny as with the government, we have found out what
+it is; people find that they are swindled in every direction, and they
+just get out of it all. When one discovers that Providence lies,
+cheats, robs, deceives human beings just as a plain Deputy deceives
+his constituents, one gets angry, and as one cannot nominate a
+fresh Providence every three months as we do with our privileged
+representatives, one just gets out of the whole thing, which is
+decidedly bad.”
+
+“Really!”
+
+“Oh, as for me, I am not complaining.”
+
+“Will you inform me how you carry on this establishment?”
+
+“With pleasure. You may become a member when you please. It is a club.”
+
+“A club!”
+
+“Yes, monsieur, founded by the most eminent men in the country, by men
+of the highest intellect and brightest intelligence. And,” he added,
+laughing heartily, “I swear to you that every one gets a great deal of
+enjoyment out of it.”
+
+“In this place?”
+
+“Yes, in this place.”
+
+“You surprise me.”
+
+“Mon Dieu, they enjoy themselves because they have not that fear of
+death which is the great killjoy in all our earthly pleasures.”
+
+“But why should they be members of this club if they do not kill
+themselves?”
+
+“One may be a member of the club without being obliged for that reason
+to commit suicide.”
+
+“But then?”
+
+“I will explain. In view of the enormous increase in suicides, and of
+the hideous spectacle they presented, a purely benevolent society was
+formed for the protection of those in despair, which placed at their
+disposal the facilities for a peaceful, painless, if not unforeseen
+death.”
+
+“Who can have authorized such an institution?”
+
+“General Boulanger during his brief tenure of power. He could never
+refuse anything. However, that was the only good thing he did. Hence, a
+society was formed of clear-sighted, disillusioned skeptics who desired
+to erect in the heart of Paris a kind of temple dedicated to the
+contempt for death. This place was formerly a dreaded spot that no one
+ventured to approach. Then its founders, who met together here, gave a
+grand inaugural entertainment with Mmes. Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo,
+Granier, and twenty others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully,
+Paulus, etc., present, followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of
+Meilhac, Halevy and Sardon. We had only one thing to mar it, one drama
+by Becque which seemed sad, but which subsequently had a great success
+at the Comedie-Francaise. In fact all Paris came. The enterprise was
+launched.”
+
+“In the midst of the festivities! What a funereal joke!”
+
+“Not at all. Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of
+indifference. We made death cheerful, crowned it with flowers, covered
+it with perfume, made it easy. One learns to aid others through example;
+one can see that it is nothing.”
+
+“I can well understand that they should come to the entertainments; but
+did they come to... Death?”
+
+“Not at first; they were afraid.”
+
+“And later?”
+
+“They came.”
+
+“Many of them?”
+
+“In crowds. We have had more than forty in a day. One finds hardly any
+more drowned bodies in the Seine.”
+
+“Who was the first?”
+
+“A club member.”
+
+“As a sacrifice to the cause?”
+
+“I don't think so. A man who was sick of everything, a 'down and out'
+who had lost heavily at baccarat for three months.”
+
+“Indeed?”
+
+“The second was an Englishman, an eccentric. We then advertised in the
+papers, we gave an account of our methods, we invented some attractive
+instances. But the great impetus was given by poor people.”
+
+“How do you go to work?”
+
+“Would you like to see? I can explain at the same time.”
+
+“Yes, indeed.”
+
+He took his hat, opened the door, allowed me to precede him, and we
+entered a card room, where men sat playing as they, play in all gambling
+places. They were chatting cheerfully, eagerly. I have seldom seen such
+a jolly, lively, mirthful club.
+
+As I seemed surprised, the secretary said:
+
+“Oh, the establishment has an unheard of prestige. All the smart people
+all over the world belong to it so as to appear as though they held
+death in scorn. Then, once they get here, they feel obliged to be
+cheerful that they may not appear to be afraid. So they joke and laugh
+and talk flippantly, they are witty and they become so. At present it is
+certainly the most frequented and the most entertaining place in Paris.
+The women are even thinking of building an annex for themselves.”
+
+“And, in spite of all this, you have many suicides in the house?”
+
+“As I said, about forty or fifty a day. Society people are rare, but
+poor devils abound. The middle class has also a large contingent.
+
+“And how... do they do?”
+
+“They are asphyxiated... very slowly.”
+
+“In what manner?”
+
+“A gas of our own invention. We have the patent. On the other side of
+the building are the public entrances--three little doors opening
+on small streets. When a man or a woman present themselves they are
+interrogated. Then they are offered assistance, aid, protection. If a
+client accepts, inquiries are made; and sometimes we have saved their
+lives.”
+
+“Where do you get your money?”
+
+“We have a great deal. There are a large number of shareholders. Besides
+it is fashionable to contribute to the establishment. The names of the
+donors are published in Figaro. Then the suicide of every rich man costs
+a thousand francs. And they look as if they were lying in state. It
+costs the poor nothing.”
+
+“How can you tell who is poor?”
+
+“Oh, oh, monsieur, we can guess! And, besides, they must bring a
+certificate of indigency from the commissary of police of their
+district. If you knew how distressing it is to see them come in! I
+visited their part of our building once only, and I will never go again.
+The place itself is almost as good as this part, almost as luxurious and
+comfortable; but they themselves... they themselves!!! If you could see
+them arriving, the old men in rags coming to die; persons who have been
+dying of misery for months, picking up their food at the edges of the
+curbstone like dogs in the street; women in rags, emaciated, sick,
+paralyzed, incapable of making a living, who say to us after they have
+told us their story: 'You see that things cannot go on like that, as
+I cannot work any longer or earn anything.' I saw one woman of
+eighty-seven who had lost all her children and grandchildren, and who
+for the last six weeks had been sleeping out of doors. It made me ill to
+hear of it. Then we have so many different cases, without counting those
+who say nothing, but simply ask: 'Where is it?' These are admitted at
+once and it is all over in a minute.”
+
+With a pang at my heart I repeated:
+
+“And... where is it?”
+
+“Here,” and he opened a door, adding:
+
+“Go in; this is the part specially reserved for club members, and the
+one least used. We have so far had only eleven annihilations here.”
+
+“Ah! You call that an... annihilation!”
+
+“Yes, monsieur. Go in.”
+
+I hesitated. At length I went in. It was a wide corridor, a sort
+of greenhouse in which panes of glass of pale blue, tender pink and
+delicate green gave the poetic charm of landscapes to the inclosing
+walls. In this pretty salon there were divans, magnificent palms,
+flowers, especially roses of balmy fragrance, books on the tables, the
+Revue des Deuxmondes, cigars in government boxes, and, what surprised
+me, Vichy pastilles in a bonbonniere.
+
+As I expressed my surprise, my guide said:
+
+“Oh, they often come here to chat.” He continued: “The public corridors
+are similar, but more simply furnished.”
+
+In reply to a question of mine, he pointed to a couch covered with
+creamy crepe de Chine with white embroidery, beneath a large shrub of
+unknown variety at the foot of which was a circular bed of mignonette.
+
+The secretary added in a lower tone:
+
+“We change the flower and the perfume at will, for our gas, which is
+quite imperceptible, gives death the fragrance of the suicide's favorite
+flower. It is volatilized with essences. Would you like to inhale it for
+a second?”
+
+“'No, thank you,” I said hastily, “not yet....”
+
+He began to laugh.
+
+“Oh, monsieur, there is no danger. I have tried it myself several
+times.”
+
+I was afraid he would think me a coward, and I said:
+
+“Well, I'll try it.”
+
+“Stretch yourself out on the 'endormeuse.”'
+
+A little uneasy I seated myself on the low couch covered with crepe
+de Chine and stretched myself full length, and was at once bathed in a
+delicious odor of mignonette. I opened my mouth in order to breathe it
+in, for my mind had already become stupefied and forgetful of the past
+and was a prey, in the first stages of asphyxia, to the enchanting
+intoxication of a destroying and magic opium.
+
+Some one shook me by the arm.
+
+“Oh, oh, monsieur,” said the secretary, laughing, “it looks to me as if
+you were almost caught.”
+
+But a voice, a real voice, and no longer a dream voice, greeted me with
+the peasant intonation:
+
+“Good morning, m'sieu. How goes it?”
+
+My dream was over. I saw the Seine distinctly in the sunlight, and,
+coming along a path, the garde champetre of the district, who with his
+right hand touched his kepi braided in silver. I replied:
+
+“Good morning, Marinel. Where are you going?”
+
+“I am going to look at a drowned man whom they fished up near the
+Morillons. Another who has thrown himself into the soup. He even took
+off his trousers in order to tie his legs together with them.”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
+Volume 13, by Guy de Maupassant
+
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