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diff --git a/78975-0.txt b/78975-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..907fe93 --- /dev/null +++ b/78975-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4524 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78975 *** + + + + + THE + IMMORALIST + + _Translated from the French of_ + + ANDRÉ GIDE + + _by Dorothy Bussy_ + + 1930 + _New York_ · ALFRED · A · KNOPF · _London_ + + + + + _Copyright 1930_ BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. + + _All rights reserved + including the right to reproduce this book + or parts thereof in any form_ + + _Original title_ + L’IMMORALISTE + + _Copyright 1921 by + Mercure de France + Paris_ + + First and Second Printings before Publication + Published, March, 1930 + + MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + _To + My Comrade and Fellow-Traveller_ + + HENRI + GHEON + + + + + PREFACE + + +I present this book for what it is worth--a fruit filled with bitter +ashes, like those colocinths of the desert that grow in a parched and +burning soil. All they can offer to your thirst is a still more cruel +fierceness--yet lying on the golden sand they are not without a beauty +of their own. + +If I had held my hero up as an example, it must be admitted that my +success would have been small. The few readers who were disposed to +interest themselves in Michel’s adventure did so only to reprobate him +with all the superiority of their kind hearts. It was not in vain that +I had adorned Marceline with so many virtues; they could not forgive +Michel for not preferring her to himself. + +If I had intended this book to be an indictment of Michel, I should +have succeeded as little, for no-one was grateful to me for the +indignation he felt against my hero; it was as though he felt this +indignation in spite of me; it overflowed from Michel on to myself; I +seemed indeed within an ace of being confounded with him. + +But I intended to make this book as little an indictment as an apology +and took care to pass no judgment. The public now-a-days will not +forgive an author who, after relating an action, does not declare +himself either for or against it; more than this, during the very +course of the drama they want him to take sides, pronounce in favour +either of Alceste or Philinte, of Hamlet or Ophelia, of Faust or +Margaret, of Adam or Jehovah. I do not indeed claim that neutrality +(I was going to say ‘indecision’) is the certain mark of a great +mind; but I believe that many great minds have been very loath to ... +conclude--and that to state a problem clearly is not to suppose it +solved in advance. + +It is with reluctance that I use the word ‘problem’ here. To tell the +truth, in art there are no problems--that are not sufficiently solved +by the work of art itself. + +If by ‘problem’ one means ‘drama,’ shall I say that the one recounted +in this book, though the scene of it is laid in my hero’s soul, is +nevertheless too general to remain circumscribed in his individual +adventure. I do not pretend to have invented this ‘problem’; it +existed before my book; whether Michel triumph or succumb, the +‘problem’ will continue to exist, and the author has avoided taking +either triumph or defeat for granted. + +If certain distinguished minds have refused to see in this drama +anything but the exposition of a special case, and in its hero anything +but a sufferer from disease, if they have failed to recognize that +ideas of very urgent import and very general interest may nevertheless +be found in it--the fault lies neither in those ideas nor in that +drama, but in the author--in his lack of skill, I should say--though +he has put into this book all his passion and all his care, though he +has watered it with many tears. But the real interest of a work and +the interest taken in it by an ephemeral public are two very different +things. A man may, I think, without much conceit, take the risk of not +arousing immediate interest in interesting things--he may even prefer +this to exciting a momentary delight in a public greedy only for sweets +and trifles. + +For the rest, I have not tried to prove anything, but only to paint my +picture well and to set it in a good light. + + + + + I WILL PRAISE THEE; + FOR I AM FEARFULLY AND + WONDERFULLY MADE + + _Psalms, cxxxix, 14_ + + + + + (TO THE PRIME MINISTER, MR. D. R.) + + SIDI B. M. + + + _30th. July 189-_ + +Yes, my dear brother, _of course, as you supposed, Michel has confided +in us. Here is his story. You asked me to let you have it and I +promised to; but now at the last moment I hesitate to send it and the +oftener I re-read it the more dreadful it seems. Oh, what, I wonder, +will you think of our friend? What, for that matter, do I think of him +myself?... Are we simply to reprobate him and deny the possibility of +turning to good account faculties so manifestly cruel? But I fear there +are not a few among us today who would be bold enough to recognise +their own features in this tale. Will it be possible to invent some +way of employing all this intelligence and strength? Or must they be +altogether outlawed?_ + +_In what way can Michel serve society? I admit I cannot guess.... He +must have some occupation. Will the position and the power you have so +deservedly attained enable you to find one? Make haste. Michel is still +capable of devotion. Yes, he is so still. But it will soon be only to +himself._ + +_I am writing to you under a sky of flawless blue; during the twelve +days that Denis, Daniel and myself have been here, there has not been a +single cloud nor the slightest diminution of sunshine. Michel says the +weather has been of crystalline clearness for the last two months._ + +_I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills one with a kind of +vague excitement and induces a state as far removed from cheerfulness +as it is from sorrow; perhaps it is happiness._ + +_We are staying with Michel; we are anxious not to leave him; you will +understand why when you have read these pages; so we shall await your +reply here, in his house; lose no time about it._ + +_You know what ties of friendship bound Michel, Denis, Daniel and +myself together--a friendship which was strong even in our school +days, but which every year grew stronger. A kind of pact was concluded +between us four--at the first summons of any one of us the other three +were to hasten. So when I received that mysterious signal of alarm +from Michel, I immediately informed Daniel and Denis, and we all three +let everything go and set out._ + +_It is three years since we last saw Michel. He had married and gone +travelling with his wife, and at the time of his last stay in Paris, +Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia and I, as you know, looking after +our sick father. We were not, however, without news, though the account +given of him by Silas and Will, who saw him at that time, was, to say +the least, surprising. He was no longer the learned Puritan of old +days, whose behaviour was made awkward by his very earnestness, whose +clear and simple gaze had so often checked the looseness of our talk. +He was ... but why forestall what his story will tell you?_ + +_Here is his story then, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard it. Michel +told it us on his terrace, as we were lying beside him in the dark and +the starlight. At the end of his tale we saw day rising over the plain. +Michel’s house looks down on it and on the village which is not far +off. In the hot weather and with all its crops reaped, this plain looks +like the desert._ + +_Michel’s house, though poor and quaint-looking, is charming. In winter +it would be cold, for there is no glass in the windows--or rather, +there are no windows, but huge holes in the walls. It is so fine that +we sleep out of doors on mats._ + +_Let me add that we had a good journey out. We arrived here one +evening, gasping with heat, intoxicated with novelty, after having +barely stopped on the way, first at Algiers and then at Constantine. At +Constantine we took a second train to Sidi B. M., where a little cart +was waiting for us. The road comes to an end some way from the village, +which is perched on the top of a rock, like certain little hill-towns +in Umbria. We climbed up on foot; two mules took our luggage. +Approached by the road, Michel’s house is the first in the village. It +is surrounded by the low walls of a garden--or rather, an enclosure, in +which there grow three stunted pomegranate-trees and a superb oleander. +A little Kabyle boy ran away at sight of us and scrambled over the wall +without more ado._ + +_Michel showed no signs of pleasure as he welcomed us; he was very +simple and seemed afraid of any demonstrations of tenderness; but on +the threshold, he stopped and kissed each one of us gravely._ + +_Until night came we barely exchanged a dozen words. An almost +excessively frugal dinner was laid for us in a drawing room where the +decorations were so sumptuous that we were astonished by them, though +they were afterwards explained by Michel’s story. Then he served us +coffee, which he made a point of preparing himself; and afterwards we +went up on to the terrace, where the view stretched away into infinity, +and all three of us, like Job’s comforters, sat down and waited, +watching and admiring the day’s abrupt decline over the incandescent +plain._ + +_When it was night Michel said:_ + + + + + FIRST PART + + + + + i + + +My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. You have answered my summons +as quickly as I should have answered yours. And yet three years have +gone by without your seeing me. May your friendship, which has been so +proof against absence, be equally proof against the story I am going to +tell you. For it was solely to see you, solely that you might listen to +me, that I called upon you so suddenly and made you take this journey +to my distant abode. The only help I wish for is this--to talk to you. +For I have reached a point in my life beyond which I cannot go. Not +from weariness though. But I can no longer understand things. I want +... I want to talk, I tell you. To know how to free oneself is nothing; +the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom. Let me +speak of myself; I am going to tell you my life simply, without modesty +and without pride, more simply than if I were talking to myself. Listen: + +The last time we saw each other, I remember, was in the neighbourhood +of Angers, in the little country church in which I was married. There +were very few people at my wedding and the presence of real friends +turned this commonplace function into something touching. I felt that +others were moved and that in itself was enough to move me. After we +left the church you joined us at my bride’s house for a short meal, at +which there was neither noise nor laughter; then, she and I drove away +in a hired carriage, according to the custom by which we always have to +associate the idea of a wedding with the vision of a railway station. + +I knew my wife very little and thought, without being much distressed +by it, that she knew me no better. I had married her without being in +love, greatly in order to please my father who, as he lay dying, felt +anxious at leaving me alone. I loved my father dearly; engrossed by his +last illness, I had thought of nothing else all through that melancholy +time but how to make his end easier; and so I pledged my life before I +knew what the possibilities of life were. Our betrothal took place at +my dying father’s bedside, without laughter but not without a certain +grave joy, so great was the peace it brought him. If, as I say, I did +not love my betrothed, at any rate I had never loved any other woman. +This seemed to me sufficient to secure our happiness; and I thought I +was giving her the whole of myself, without having any knowledge of +what that self was. She was an orphan as I was, and lived with her two +brothers. Her name was Marceline; she was barely twenty; I was four +years older. + +I have said I did not love her--at any rate, I felt for her nothing +of what is generally known as love, but I loved her, if that word may +cover a feeling of tenderness, a sort of pity, and a considerable +measure of esteem. She was a Catholic and I a Protestant ... but, +thought I, so little of a Protestant! The priest accepted me; I +accepted the priest; it all went off without a hitch. + +My father was what is called an ‘atheist’--at least, I suppose so, for +a kind of invincible shyness, which I imagine he shared, had always +made it impossible for me to talk to him about his beliefs. The grave +Huguenot teaching which my mother had given me had slowly faded from my +mind together with the image of her beauty; you know I was young when +I lost her. I did not then suspect how great a hold the early moral +lessons of our childhood take of one, nor what marks they leave upon +the mind. That kind of austerity, a taste for which had been left me +by my mother’s bringing up, I now applied wholly to my studies. I was +fifteen when I lost her; my father took me in hand, looked after me +and instructed me himself with passionate eagerness. I already knew +Latin and Greek well; under him I quickly learnt Hebrew, Sanskrit, +and finally Persian and Arabic. When I was about twenty I had been +so intensively forced that he actually made me his collaborator. It +amused him to claim me as his equal and he wanted to show me he was +right. The _Essay on Phrygian Cults_ which appeared under his name was +in reality my work; he scarcely read it over; nothing he had written +ever brought him so much praise. He was delighted. As for me I was a +little abashed by the success of this deception. But my reputation was +made. The most learned scholars treated me as their colleague. I smile +now at all the honours that were paid me.... And so I reached the age +of twenty-five, having barely cast a glance at anything but books and +ruins, and knowing nothing of life; I spent all my fervour in my work. +I loved a few friends (you were among them), but it was not so much my +friends I loved as friendship--it was a craving for high-mindedness +that made my devotion to them so great; I cherished in myself each and +all of my fine feelings. For the rest, I knew my friends as little as I +knew myself. The idea that I might have lived a different existence or +that anyone could possibly live differently never for a moment crossed +my mind. + +My father and I were satisfied with simple things; we both of us spent +so little that I reached the age of twenty-five without knowing that +we were rich. I imagined, without giving it much thought, that we had +just enough to live on. And the habits of economy I had acquired with +my father were so great that I felt almost uncomfortable when I learnt +we had a great deal more. I was so careless about such matters that +even after my father’s death, though I was his sole heir, I failed +to realize the extent of my fortune; I did so only when our marriage +settlements were being drawn up and at the same time I learnt that +Marceline brought me next to nothing. + +And another thing I was ignorant of--even more important perhaps--was +that I had very delicate health. How should I have known this, when +I had never put it to the test? I had colds from time to time and +neglected them. The excessive tranquillity of the life I led weakened, +while at the same time it protected me. Marceline, on the contrary, +seemed strong--that she was stronger than I we were very soon to learn. + + * * * * * + +On our wedding-day, we went straight to Paris and slept in my apartment +where two rooms had been got ready for us. We stayed in Paris only +just long enough to do some necessary shopping, then took the train to +Marseilles and embarked at once for Tunis. + +So many urgent things to be done, so many bewildering events following +each other in too rapid succession, the unavoidable agitation of my +wedding coming so soon after the more genuine emotion caused by my +father’s death--all of this had left me exhausted. It was only on the +boat that I was able to realize how tired I was. Up till then, every +occupation, while increasing my fatigue, had distracted me from feeling +it. The enforced leisure on board ship at last enabled me to reflect. +For the first time, so it seemed to me. + +It was for the first time too that I had consented to forgo my work +for any length of time. Up till then I had only allowed myself short +holidays. A journey to Spain with my father shortly after my mother’s +death had, it is true, lasted over a month; another to Germany, +six weeks; there were others too, but they had all been student’s +journeys; my father was never to be distracted from his own particular +researches; when I was not accompanying him, I used to read. And +yet, we had hardly left Marseilles, when memories came back to me of +Granada and Seville, of a purer sky, of franker shadows, of dances, +of laughter, of songs. That is what we are going to find, I thought. +I went up on to the deck and watched Marseilles disappearing in the +distance. + +Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that I was leaving Marceline a little +too much to herself. + +She was sitting in the bows; I drew near, and for the first time really +looked at her. + +Marceline was very pretty. You saw her, so you know. I reproached +myself for not having noticed it sooner. I had known her too long to +see her with any freshness of vision; our families had been friends for +ages; I had seen her grow up; I was accustomed to her grace.... For the +first time now I was struck with astonishment, it seemed to me so great. + +She wore a big veil, floating from a simple black straw hat; she was +fair, but did not look delicate. Her bodice and skirt were made of the +same material--a Scotch plaid which we had chosen together. I had not +wanted the gloom of my mourning to overshadow her. + +She felt I was looking at her and turned towards me ... up till then I +had only paid her the necessary official attentions; I replaced love +as best I could by a kind of frigid gallantry, which I saw well enough +she found rather tiresome; perhaps at that moment Marceline felt I was +looking at her for the first time in a different way. She, in her turn +looked fixedly at me; then, very tenderly, smiled. I sat down beside +her without speaking. I had lived up till then for myself alone, or at +any rate in my own fashion; I had married without imagining I should +find in my wife anything different from a comrade, without thinking at +all definitely that my life might be changed by our union. And now at +last I realized that the monologue had come to an end. + +We were alone on deck. She held up her face and I gently pressed her to +me; she raised her eyes; I kissed her on the eyelids and suddenly felt +as I kissed her an unfamiliar kind of pity, which took hold of me so +violently that I could not restrain my tears. + +“What is it, dear?” said Marceline. + +We began to talk. What she said was so charming that it delighted me. +I had picked up in one way or another a few ideas on women’s silliness. +That evening, in her presence, it was myself I thought awkward and +stupid. + +So the being to whom I had attached my life had a real and individual +life of her own! The importance of this thought woke me up several +times during the night; several times I sat up in my berth in order to +look at Marceline, my wife, asleep in the berth below. + +The next morning the sky was splendid; the sea almost perfectly calm. +A few leisurely talks lessened our shyness still more. Marriage was +really beginning. On the morning of the last day of October we landed +in Tunis. + + * * * * * + +I intended to stay there only a few days. I will confess my folly; in +so new a country nothing attracted me except Carthage and a few Roman +ruins--Timgad, about which Octave had spoken to me, the mosaics of +Sousse, and above all the amphitheatre of El Djem, which I decided +we must visit without delay. We had first to get to Sousse, and from +Sousse take the mail diligence; between this and then I was determined +to think nothing worth my attention. + +And yet Tunis surprised me greatly. At the touch of new sensations, +certain portions of me awoke--certain sleeping faculties, which, from +not having as yet been used, had kept all their mysterious freshness. +But I was more astonished, more bewildered than amused, and what +pleased me most was Marceline’s delight. + +My fatigue in the meantime was growing greater every day; but I should +have thought it shameful to give in to it. I had a bad cough and a +curious feeling of discomfort in the upper part of my chest. We are +going towards the South, I thought; the heat will put me to rights +again. + +The Sfax diligence leaves Sousse at eight o’clock in the evening +and passes through El Djem at one o’clock in the morning. We had +engaged coupé places; I expected to find an uncomfortable shandrydan; +the seats, however, were fairly commodious. But oh, the cold!... +We were both lightly clad and, with a kind of childish confidence +in the warmth of southern climes, had taken no wrap with us but a +single shawl. As soon as we were out of Sousse and the shelter of +its hills, the wind began to blow. It leapt over the plain in great +bounds, howling, whistling, coming in by every chink of the door and +windows--impossible to protect oneself from it! We were both chilled +to the bone when we arrived and I exhausted as well by the jolting +of the carriage and by my horrible cough which shook me even worse. +What a night! When we got to El Djem, there was no inn, nothing but a +frightful native _bordj_. What was to be done? The diligence was going +on; the village was asleep; the lugubrious mass of the ruins lowered +dimly through the dark immensity of the night; dogs were howling. We +went into a room whose walls and floor were made of mud and in which +stood two wretched beds. Marceline was shivering with cold, but here at +any rate, we were out of the wind. + +The next day was a dismal one. We were surprised on going out to see +a sky that was one unrelieved grey. The wind was still blowing, but +less violently than the night before. The diligence only passed through +again in the evening.... It was a dismal day, I tell you. I went over +the amphitheatre in a few minutes and found it disappointing; I thought +it actually ugly under that dreary sky. Perhaps my fatigue added to my +feeling of tedium. Towards the middle of the day, as I had nothing else +to do, I went back to the ruins and searched in vain for inscriptions +on the stones. Marceline found a place that was sheltered from the +wind and sat reading an English book, which by good luck she had +brought with her. I went and sat beside her. + +“What a melancholy day!” I said. “Aren’t you bored?” + +“Not particularly. I am reading.” + +“What made us come to such a place? I hope you are not cold, are you?” + +“Not so very. And you? Oh, you must be. How pale you are!” + +“No, oh no!” + +At night, the wind began again as violently as ever.... At last the +diligence arrived. We started. + +No sooner did the jolting begin than I felt shattered. Marceline, who +was very tired, had gone to sleep almost at once on my shoulder. My +cough will wake her, I thought, and freeing myself very, very gently, +I propped her head against the side of the carriage. In the mean time +I had stopped coughing; yes; I had begun to spit instead; this was +something new; I brought it up without an effort; it came in little +jerks at regular intervals; the sensation was so odd that at first it +almost amused me, but I was soon disgusted by the peculiar taste it +left in my mouth. My handkerchief was very soon used up. My fingers +were covered with it. Should I wake up Marceline?... Fortunately I +thought of a large silk foulard she was wearing tucked into her belt. +I took possession of it quietly. The spitting, which I no longer tried +to keep back, came more abundantly and I was extraordinarily relieved +by it. It is the end of my cold, I thought. Then, there suddenly came +over me a feeling of extreme weakness; everything began to spin round +and I thought I was going to faint. Should I wake her up?... No, +shame!... (My puritanical childhood has left me, I think, a hatred of +any surrender to bodily weakness--cowardice, I call it.) I controlled +myself, made a desperate effort and finally conquered my giddiness.... +I felt as if I were at sea again, and the noise of the wheels turned +into the sound of the waves.... But I had stopped spitting. + +Then I sank, overpowered, into a sort of sleep. + +When I emerged from it, the sky was already filling with dawn. +Marceline was still asleep. We were just getting to Sousse. The foulard +I was holding in my hand was dark-coloured, so that at first I saw +nothing; but when I took out my handkerchief, I saw with stupefaction +that it was soaked with blood. + +My first thought was to hide the blood from Marceline. But how? +I was covered with it; it seemed to be everywhere; on my fingers +especially.... My nose might perhaps have been bleeding.... That’s it! +If she asks me, I shall say my nose has been bleeding. + +Marceline was still asleep. We drew up at the Sousse hotel. She had +to get down first and saw nothing. Our two rooms had been kept for +us. I was able to dart into mine and wash away every trace of blood. +Marceline had seen nothing. + +I was feeling very weak, however, and ordered some tea to be brought. +And as she was pouring it out, a little pale herself, but very calm +and smiling, a kind of irritation seized me to think she had not had +the sense to see anything. I felt indeed I was being unjust, and +said to myself that she only saw nothing, because I had hidden it +from her so cleverly; but I couldn’t help it--the feeling grew in me +like an instinct, filled me ... and at last it became too strong; +I could contain myself no longer; the words slipped out, as though +absent-mindedly: + +“I spat blood last night.” + +She did not utter a sound; she simply turned much paler, tottered, +tried to save herself and fell heavily to the ground. + +I sprang to her in a sort of fury: “Marceline! Marceline!” What on +earth had I done? Wasn’t it enough for _me_ to be ill? But, as I +have said, I was very weak; I was on the point of fainting myself. I +managed, however, to open the door and call. Someone hurried to our +help. + +I remembered I had a letter of introduction to an officer in the town, +and on the strength of this I sent for the regimental doctor. + +Marceline in the meantime had recovered herself and settled down at +my bedside, where I lay, shivering with fever. The doctor came and +examined us both; there was nothing the matter with Marceline, he +declared, and she had not been hurt by her fall; _I_ was seriously ill; +he refused to give a definite opinion and promised to come back before +evening. + +He came back, smiled at me, talked to me and prescribed various +remedies. I realized that he gave me up for lost. Shall I confess that +I felt not the least shock? I was very tired, I simply let myself go. +‘After all, what had life to offer? I had worked faithfully to the end, +resolutely and passionately done my duty. The rest ... oh! what did +it matter?’ thought I, with a certain admiration of my own stoicism. +What really pained me was the ugliness of my surroundings. ‘This hotel +room is frightful,’ I thought and looked at it. Suddenly it occurred +to me that in a like room next door was my wife, Marceline; and I +heard her speaking. The doctor had not gone; he was talking to her; he +was studiously lowering his voice. A little time went by--I must have +slept.... + +When I woke up, Marceline was there. I could see she had been crying. +I did not care for life enough to pity myself; but the ugliness of the +place vexed me; my eyes rested on her with a pleasure that was almost +voluptuous. + +She was sitting by me writing. I thought she looked very pretty. I saw +her fasten up several letters. Then she got up, drew near my bed and +took my hand tenderly. + +“How are you feeling now?” she asked. I smiled and said sadly: + +“Shall I get better?” But she answered at once, “You _shall_ get +better” with such passionate conviction that it almost brought +conviction to me too, and there came over me a kind of confused feeling +of all that life might mean, of Marceline’s own love--a vague vision +of such pathetic beauties that the tears started from my eyes and I +wept long and helplessly without trying or wanting to stop. + +With what loving violence she managed to get me away from Sousse! +How charmingly she protected me, helped me, nursed me! From Sousse +to Tunis, from Tunis to Constantine, Marceline was admirable. It was +at Biskra I was to get well. Her confidence was perfect; never for a +single moment did her zeal slacken. She settled everything, arranged +the starts, engaged the rooms. It was not in her power, alas! to make +the journey less horrible. Several times I thought I should have to +stop and give up. I sweated mortally; I gasped for breath; at times I +lost consciousness. At the end of the third day, I arrived at Biskra +more dead than alive. + + + + + ii + + +Why speak of those first days? What remains of them? Their frightful +memory has no tongue. I lost all knowledge of who or where I was. I +can only see Marceline, my wife, my life, bending over the bed where +I lay agonizing. I know that her passionate care, her love alone, +saved me. One day, at last, like a ship-wrecked mariner who catches +sight of land, I felt a gleam of life revisit me; I was able to smile +at Marceline. Why should I recall all this? What is important is that +Death had touched me, as people say, with its wing. What is important +is that I came to think it a very astonishing thing to be alive, that +every day shone for me, an unhoped-for light. Before, thought I, I did +not understand I was alive. The thrilling discovery of life was to be +mine. + +The day came when I was able to get up. I was utterly enchanted by our +home. It was almost nothing but a terrace. What a terrace! My room and +Marceline’s opened out on to it; at the further end it was continued +over roofs. From the highest part, one saw palm-trees above the houses; +and above the palm-trees, the desert. On the other side, the terrace +adjoined the public gardens and was shaded by the branches of the +nearest cassias; lastly, it ran along one side of the courtyard--a +small, regular courtyard, planted regularly with six palm-trees--and +came to an end with the staircase that led down to the courtyard. My +room was spacious and airy; the walls were bare and whitewashed; a +little door led to Marceline’s room; a large door with glass panes +opened on to the terrace. + +There the hourless days slipped by. How often in my solitude those +slow-slipping days come back to me!... Marceline sits beside me. She +is reading, or sewing, or writing. I am doing nothing--just looking +at her. O Marceline! Marceline!... I look. I see the sun; I see the +shadow; I see the line of shadow moving; I have so little to think +of that I watch it. I am still very weak; my breathing is very bad; +everything tires me--even reading; besides, what should I read? +Existing is occupation enough. + + * * * * * + +One morning Marceline came in laughing. + +“I have brought you a friend,” she said, and I saw come in behind her +a little dark-complexioned Arab. His name was Bachir and he had large +silent eyes that looked at me. They made me feel embarrassed, and that +was enough to tire me. I said nothing, only looked cross. The child, +disconcerted by the coldness of my reception, turned to Marceline and, +with the coaxing grace of a little animal, nestled up against her, took +her hand and kissed it, showing his bare arms as he did so. I noticed +that under his thin, white gandourah and patched burnous, he was naked. + +“Come, sit down there,” said Marceline, who had noticed my shyness. +“Amuse yourself quietly.” + +The little fellow sat down on the floor, took a knife and a piece of +djerid wood out of the hood of his burnous, and began to slice at it. I +think it was a whistle he was trying to make. + +After a little time, I ceased to feel uncomfortable. I looked at him; +he seemed to have forgotten where he was. His feet were bare; he had +charmingly turned ankles and wrists. He handled his wretched knife with +amusing dexterity.... Was this really going to interest me?... His hair +was shaved Arab fashion; he wore a shabby chechia on his head with a +hole in the place of the tassel. His gandourah, which had slipped down +a little, showed his delicate little shoulder. I wanted to touch it. I +bent down; he turned round and smiled at me. I signed to him to pass me +his whistle, took it and pretended to admire it. After a time he said +he must go. Marceline gave him a cake and I a penny. + +The next day, for the first time, I felt dull. I seemed to be expecting +something. Expecting what? I was listless, restless. At last I could +resist no longer. + +“Isn’t Bachir coming this morning, Marceline?” + +“If you like, I’ll fetch him.” + +She left me and went out; after a little she came back alone. What kind +of thing had illness made me that I should have felt inclined to cry at +seeing her return without Bachir? + +“It was too late,” she said, “the children had come out of school and +dispersed. Some of them are really charming. I think they all know me +now.” + +“Well, at any rate, try and get him to come tomorrow.” + +Next morning Bachir came back. He sat down in the same way he had done +two days before, took out his knife and tried to carve his bit of wood, +but it was too hard for him and he finally managed to stick the blade +into his thumb. I shuddered with horror, but he laughed, held out his +hand for me to see the glistening cut and looked amused at the sight +of his blood running. When he laughed, he showed very white teeth; he +licked his cut complacently and his tongue was as pink as a cat’s. +Ah! how well he looked! That was what I had fallen in love with--his +health. The health of that little body was a beautiful thing. + +The day after he brought some marbles. He wanted to make me play. +Marceline was out or she would have prevented me. I hesitated and +looked at Bachir; the little fellow seized my arm, put the marbles into +my hand, forced me. The attitude of stooping made me very breathless, +but I tried to play all the same. Bachir’s pleasure charmed me. At +last, however, it was too much for me. I was in a profuse perspiration. +I pushed aside the marbles and dropped into an armchair. Bachir, +somewhat disturbed, looked at me. + +“Ill?” said he sweetly; the quality of his voice was exquisite. +Marceline came back at that moment. + +“Take him away,” I said, “I am tired this morning.” + +A few hours later I had a hemorrhage. It was while I was taking a +laborious walk up and down the terrace; Marceline was busy in her room +and fortunately saw nothing. My breathlessness had made me take a +deeper respiration than usual and the thing had suddenly come. It had +filled my mouth.... But it was no longer bright, clear blood as on the +first occasion. It was a frightful great clot which I spat on to the +ground in disgust. + +I took a few tottering steps. I was horribly upset. I was frightened; I +was angry. For up till then I had thought that, step by step, recovery +was on the way, and that I had nothing to do but wait for it. This +brutal accident had thrown me back. The strange thing is that the first +hemorrhage had not affected me so much. I now remembered it had left me +almost calm. What was the reason of my fear, my horror now? Alas! it +was because I had begun to love life. + +I returned on my steps, bent down, found the clot, and with a piece +of straw picked it up and put it on my handkerchief. It was hideous, +almost black in colour, sticky, slimy, horrible.... I thought of +Bachir’s beautiful, brilliant flow of blood.... And suddenly I was +seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more +imperious than I had ever felt before--to live! I want to live! I +_will_ live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being +in this wild, grief-stricken endeavour after existence. + +The day before, I had received a letter from T..., written in answer +to Marceline’s anxious enquiries; it was full of medical advice; T... +had even accompanied his letter with one or two little popular medical +pamphlets and a book of a more technical nature, which for that reason +seemed to me more serious. I had read the letter carelessly and the +printed matter not at all; in the first place I was set against the +pamphlets because of their likeness to the moral tracts that used +to tease me in my childhood; and then too every kind of advice was +irksome to me; and besides, I did not think that _Advice to Tuberculous +Patients_ or _How to Cure Tuberculosis_ in any way concerned me. I +did not think I was tuberculous. I inclined to attribute my first +hemorrhage to a different cause; or rather, to tell the truth, I did +not attribute it to anything; I avoided thinking of it, hardly thought +of it at all, and considered myself, if not cured altogether, at +least very nearly so.... I read the letter; I devoured the book, the +pamphlets. Suddenly, with shocking clearness, it became evident to +me that I had not been treating myself properly. Hitherto, I had let +myself live passively, trusting to the vaguest of hopes; suddenly I +perceived my life was attacked--attacked in its very centre. An active +host of enemies was living within me. I listened to them; I spied +on them; I felt them. I should not vanquish them without a struggle +... and I added half aloud, as if better to convince myself, “It is a +matter of will.” + +I put myself in a state of hostility. + +Evening was closing in; I planned my strategy. For some time to come, +my recovery was to be my one and only concern; my duty was my health; +I must think good, I must call right everything that was salutary to +me, forget everything that did not contribute to my cure. Before the +evening meal, I had decided on my measures with regard to breathing, +exercise and nourishment. + +We used to take our meals in a sort of little kiosk that was surrounded +by the terrace on all sides. We were alone, quiet, far from everything, +and the intimacy of our meals was delightful. An old negro used to +bring us our food, which was tolerable, from a neighbouring hotel. +Marceline superintended the menus, ordered one dish or rejected +another.... Not having much appetite as a rule, I did not mind +particularly when the dishes were a failure or the menu insufficient. +Marceline, who was herself a small eater, did not know, did not realize +that I was not taking enough food. To eat a great deal was the first +of my new resolutions. I intended to put it into execution that very +evening. I was not able to. We had some sort of uneatable hash, and +then a bit of roast meat which was absurdly overdone. + +My irritation was so great that I vented it upon Marceline and let +myself go in a flood of intemperate words. I blamed her; to listen to +me, it was as though she were responsible for the badness of the food. +This slight delay in starting on the régime I had decided to adopt, +seemed of the gravest importance; I forgot the preceding days; the +failure of this one meal spoilt everything. I persisted obstinately. +Marceline had to go into the town to buy a tin or a jar of anything she +could find. + +She soon came back with a little terrine, of which I devoured almost +the whole contents, as though to prove to us both how much I was in +need of more food. + +That same evening we settled on the following plan: the meals were +to be much better and there were to be more of them--one every +three hours, beginning as early as half-past six in the morning. An +abundant provision of every kind of tinned food was to supplement the +deficiencies of the hotel menus. + +I could not sleep that night, so excited was I by the vision of my +future virtues. I was, I think, a little feverish; there was a bottle +of mineral water beside me; I drank a glass, two glasses; the third +time, I drank out of the bottle itself and emptied it at a draught. +I strengthened my will as one strengthens one’s memory by revising a +lesson; I instructed my hostility, directed it against all and sundry; +I was to fight with everything; my salvation depended on myself alone. + +At last I saw the night begin to pale, another day had dawned. + +It had been my night of vigil before the battle. + +The next day was Sunday. Must I confess that so far I had paid very +little attention to Marceline’s religious beliefs? Either from +indifference or delicacy, it seemed to me they were no business of +mine; and then I did not attach much importance to them. That morning +Marceline went to Mass. When she came back, she told me she had been +praying for me. I looked at her fixedly and then said as gently as I +could: + +“You mustn’t pray for me, Marceline.” + +“Why not?” she asked, a little troubled. + +“I don’t want favours.” + +“Do you reject the help of God?” + +“He would have a right to my gratitude afterwards. It entails +obligations. I don’t like them.” + +To all appearance we were trifling, but we made no mistake as to the +importance of our words. + +“You will not get well all by yourself, my poor dear,” she sighed. + +“If so, it can’t be helped.” Then, seeing how unhappy she looked, I +added less roughly: + +“You will help me.” + + + + + iii + + +I am going to speak at length of my body. I shall speak of it so much +you will think at first I have forgotten my soul. This omission, as I +tell you my story, is intentional; out there, it was a fact. I had not +strength enough to keep up a double life. “I will think of the spirit +and that side of things later,” I said to myself, “--when I get better.” + +I was still far from being well. The slightest thing put me into +a perspiration; the slightest thing gave me a cold; my breath was +short; sometimes I had a little fever, and often, from early morning, +oppressed by a dreadful feeling of lassitude, I remained prostrate in +an armchair, indifferent to everything, self-centred, solely occupied +in trying to breathe properly. I breathed laboriously, methodically, +carefully; my expiration came in two jerks which, with the greatest +effort of my will, I could only partially control; for a long time to +come, I still had need of all my attention to avoid this. + +But what troubled me most was my morbid sensibility to changes of +temperature. I think, when I come to reflect on it today, that, +in addition to my illness, I was suffering from a general nervous +derangement. I cannot otherwise explain a series of phenomena which +it seems to me impossible to attribute entirely to a simple condition +of tuberculosis. I was always either too hot or too cold; I put on a +ridiculous number of clothes, and only stopped shivering when I began +to perspire; then, directly I took anything off, I shivered as soon +as I stopped perspiring. Certain portions of my body would turn as +cold as ice and, in spite of perspiration, felt like marble to the +touch; nothing would warm them. I was so sensitive to cold that if +a little water dropped on my feet while I was washing, it gave me a +relapse; I was equally sensitive to heat.... This sensibility I kept +and still keep, but now it gives me exquisite enjoyment. Any very +keen sensibility may, I believe, according as the organism is robust +or weakly, become a source of delight or discomfort. Everything which +formerly distressed me is now a delicious pleasure. + +I do not know how I had managed to sleep up till then with my windows +shut; in accordance with T...’s advice, I now tried keeping them open +at night; a little at first; soon I flung them wide; soon it became +a habit, a need so great that directly the window was shut, I felt +stifled. Later on, with what rapture was I to feel the night wind blow, +the moon shine in upon me!... + +But I am anxious to have done with these first stammerings after +health. Indeed, thanks to constant attention, to pure air, to better +food, I soon began to improve. Up till then, my breathlessness had made +me dread the stairs and I had not dared to leave the terrace; in the +last days of January I at last went down and ventured into the garden. + +Marceline came with me, carrying a shawl. It was three o’clock in the +afternoon. The wind, which is often violent in those parts and which +I had found particularly unpleasant during the last few days, had +dropped. The air was soft and charming. + +The public gardens!... A very wide path runs through the middle of +them, shaded by two rows of that kind of very tall mimosa, that out +there is called cassia. Benches are placed in the shadow of the trees. +A canalized river--one, I mean, that is not wide so much as deep, and +almost straight--flows alongside the path; other smaller channels +take the water from the river and convey it through the gardens to +the plants; the thick, heavy-looking water is the same colour as the +earth--the colour of pinkish, greyish clay. Hardly any foreigners walk +here--only a few Arabs; as they pass out of the sunlight, their white +cloaks take on the colour of the shade. + +I felt an odd shiver come over me as I stepped into that strange shade; +I wrapped my shawl tighter about me; but it was not an unpleasant +sensation; on the contrary. We sat down on a bench. Marceline was +silent. Some Arabs passed by; then came a troop of children. Marceline +knew several of them; she signed to them and they came up to us. She +told me some of their names; questions and answers passed, smiles, +pouts, little jokes. It all rather irritated me and my feeling of +embarrassment returned. I was tired and perspiring. But, must I +confess that what made me most uncomfortable was not the children’s +presence--it was Marceline’s. Yes; however slightly, she was in my +way. If I had got up, she would have followed me; if I had taken off +my shawl, she would have wanted to carry it; if I had put it on again, +she would have said, “Are you cold?” And then, as to talking to the +children, I didn’t dare to before her; I saw she had her favourites; +I, in spite of myself, but deliberately, took more interest in the +others. + +“Let us go in,” I said at last. And I privately resolved to come back +to the gardens alone. + +The next day, she had to go out about ten o’clock; I took advantage of +this. Little Bachir, who rarely failed to come of a morning, carried my +shawl; I felt active, light-hearted. We were almost alone in the garden +path; I walked slowly, sometimes sat down for a moment, then started +off again. Bachir followed, chattering; as faithful and as obsequious +as a dog. I reached a part of the canal where the washerwomen come down +to wash; there was a flat stone placed in the middle of the stream, +and upon it lay a little girl, face downwards, dabbling with her hand +in the water; she was busy throwing little odds and ends of sticks +and grass into the water and picking them out again. Her bare feet +had dipped in the water; there were still traces of wet on them and +there her skin showed darker. Bachir went up and spoke to her; she +turned round, gave me a smile and answered Bachir in Arabic. “She is my +sister,” he explained; then he said his mother was coming to wash some +clothes and that his little sister was waiting for her. She was called +Rhadra in Arabic, which meant ‘Green.’ He said all this in a voice +that was as charming, as clear, as childlike, as the emotion I felt in +hearing it. + +“She wants you to give her two sous,” he added. + +I gave her fifty centimes and prepared to go on, when the mother, the +washerwoman, came up. She was a magnificent, heavily built woman, with +a high forehead tatooed in blue; she was carrying a basket of linen on +her head and was like a Greek caryatid, like a caryatid too, she was +simply draped in a wide piece of dark blue stuff, lifted at the girdle +and falling straight to the feet. + +As soon as she saw Bachir, she called out to him roughly. He made an +angry answer; the little girl joined in and the three of them started a +violent dispute. At last Bachir seemed defeated and explained that his +mother wanted him that morning; he handed me my shawl sadly and I was +obliged to go off by myself. + +I had not taken twenty paces when my shawl began to feel unendurably +heavy. I sat down, perspiring, on the first bench I came to. I hoped +some other boy would come along and relieve me of my burden. The one +who soon appeared and who offered to carry it of his own accord, was +a big boy about fourteen years old, as black as a Soudanese and not in +the least shy. His name was Ashour. I should have thought him handsome, +but that he was blind of one eye. He liked talking; told me where the +river came from, and that after running through the public gardens, +it flowed into the oasis, which it traversed from end to end. As I +listened to him, I forgot my fatigue. Charming as I thought Bachir, I +knew him too well by now, and I was glad of a change. I even promised +myself to come to the gardens all alone another day and sit on a bench +and wait for what some lucky chance might bring.... + +After a few more short rests, Ashour and I arrived at my door. I +wanted to invite him to come in, but I was afraid to, not knowing what +Marceline would say. + +I found her in the dining-room, busied over a very small boy, so frail +and sickly looking that my first feeling was one of disgust rather than +pity. Marceline said rather timidly: + +“The poor little thing is ill.” + +“It’s not infectious, I hope. What’s the matter with him?” + +“I don’t exactly know yet. He complains of feeling ill all over. He +speaks very little French. When Bachir comes tomorrow, he will be able +to interpret.... I am making him a little tea.” + +Then, as if in excuse, and because I stood there without saying +anything, “I’ve known him a long time,” she added. “I haven’t dared +bring him in before; I was afraid of tiring you, or perhaps vexing you.” + +“Why in the world!” I cried. “Bring in all the children you like, if it +amuses you!” And I thought, with a little irritation at not having done +so, that I might have perfectly well brought up Ashour. + +And yet, as I thought this, I looked at my wife; how maternal and +caressing she was! Her tenderness was so touching that the little +fellow went off warm and comforted. I spoke of my walk and gently +explained to Marceline why I preferred going out alone. + +At that time, my nights were generally disturbed by my constantly +waking with a start--either frozen with cold or bathed in sweat. +That night was a very good one. I hardly woke up at all. The next +morning, I was ready to go out by nine o’clock. It was fine; I felt +rested, not weak, happy--or rather, amused. The air was calm and warm, +but nevertheless, I took my shawl to serve as a pretext for making +acquaintance with the boy who might turn up to carry it. I have said +that the garden ran alongside our terrace, so that I reached it in +a moment. It was with rapture I passed into its shade. The air was +luminous. The cassias, whose flowers come very early, before their +leaves, gave out a delicious scent--or was it from all around me that +came the faint, strange perfume, which seemed to enter me by several +senses at once and which so uplifted me? I was breathing more easily +too, and so I walked more lightly; and yet at the first bench I sat +down, but it was because I was excited--dazzled--rather than tired. + +I looked. The shadows were transparent and mobile; they did not fall +upon the ground--seemed barely to rest on it. Light! Oh, light! + +I listened. What did I hear? Nothing; everything; every sound amused me. + +I remember a shrub some way off whose bark looked of such a curious +texture, that I felt obliged to go and feel it. My touch was a caress; +it gave me rapture. I remember.... Was that the morning that was at +last to give me birth? + +I had forgotten I was alone, and sat on, expecting nothing, waiting +for no-one, forgetting the time. Up till that day, so it seemed to me, +I had felt so little and thought so much, that now I was astonished to +find my sensations had become as strong as my thoughts. + +I say, “it _seemed_ to me,” for from the depths of my past childhood, +there now awoke in me the glimmerings of a thousand lost sensations. +The fact that I was once more aware of my senses enabled me to give +them a half fearful recognition. Yes; my reawakened senses now +remembered a whole ancient history of their own--recomposed for +themselves a vanished past. They were alive! Alive! They had never +ceased to live; they discovered that even during those early studious +years they had been living their own latent, cunning life. + +I met no-one that day, and I was glad of it; I took out of my pocket a +little Homer, which I had not opened since Marseilles, re-read three +lines of the Odyssey and learnt them by heart; then, finding in their +rhythm enough to satisfy me, I dwelt on them awhile with leisurely +delight, shut the book, and sat still, trembling, more alive than I had +thought it possible to be, my mind benumbed with happiness.... + + + + + iv + + +In the meantime, Marceline, who saw with delight that my health was +at last improving, had lately begun telling me about the marvellous +orchards of the oasis. She was fond of the open air and outdoor +exercise. My illness left her enough spare time for long walks, from +which she returned glowing with enthusiasm; so far she had not said +much about them, as she did not dare invite me to go with her and was +afraid of depressing me by an account of delights I was not yet fit +to enjoy. But now that I was better, she counted on their attraction +to complete my recovery. The pleasure I was again beginning to take +in walking and looking about me tempted me to join her. And the next +morning we set out together. + +She led the way along a path so odd that I have never in any country +seen its like. It meanders indolently between two fairly high mud +walls; the shape of the gardens they enclose directs its leisurely +course; sometimes it winds; sometimes it is broken; a sudden turning +as you enter it and you lose your bearings; you cease to know where +you came from or where you are going. The water of the river follows +the path faithfully and runs alongside one of the walls; the walls +are made of the same earth as the path--the same as that of the whole +oasis--a pinkish or soft grey clay, which is turned a little darker +by the water, which the burning sun crackles, which hardens in the +heat and softens with the first shower, so that it becomes a plastic +soil that keeps the imprint of every naked foot. Above the walls, show +palm-trees. Wood-pigeons went flying into them as we came up. Marceline +looked at me. + +I forgot my discomfort and fatigue. I walked on in a sort of ecstasy, +of silent joy, of elation of the senses and the flesh. At that moment +there came a gentle breath of wind; all the palms waved and we saw the +tallest of the trees bending; then the whole air grew calm again, and I +distinctly heard, coming from behind the wall, the song of a flute. A +breach in the wall; we went in. + +It was a place full of light and shade; tranquil; it seemed beyond the +touch of time; full of silence; full of rustlings--the soft noise of +running water that feeds the palms and slips from tree to tree, the +quiet call of the pigeons, the song of the flute the boy was playing. +He was sitting, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm-tree, +watching a herd of goats; our coming did not disturb him; he did not +move--stopped playing only for a moment. + +I noticed during this brief pause that another flute was answering in +the distance. We went on a little, then: + +“It’s no use going any further,” said Marceline; “these orchards are +all alike; possibly at the other end of the oasis they may be a little +larger....” + +She spread the shawl on the ground. “Sit down and rest,” she said. + +How long did we stay there? I cannot tell. What mattered time? +Marceline was near me; I lay down and put my head on her knees. The +song of the flute flowed on, stopped from time to time, went on again; +the sound of the water ... From time to time a goat baa’ed. I shut my +eyes; I felt Marceline lay her cool hand on my forehead; I felt the +burning sun, gently shaded by the palm-trees; I thought of nothing; +what mattered thoughts? I _felt_ extraordinarily.... + +And from time to time there was another noise; I opened my eyes; a +little wind was blowing in the palm-trees; it did not come down low +enough to reach us--stirred only the highest branches. + + * * * * * + +The next morning, I returned to the same garden with Marceline; on the +evening of the same day, I went back to it alone. The goatherd that +played the flute was there. I went up to him; spoke to him. He was +called Lassif, was only twelve years old, was a handsome boy. He told +me the names of his goats, told me that the little canals are called +‘seghias’; they do not all run every day, he explained; the water, +wisely and parsimoniously distributed, satisfies the thirst of the +plants, and is then at once withdrawn. At the foot of each palm the +ground is hollowed out into a small cup which holds water enough for +the tree’s needs; an ingenious system of sluices, which the boy worked +for me to see, controls the water, conducts it wherever the ground is +thirstiest. + +The next day I saw a brother of Lassif’s; he was a little older and not +so handsome; he was called Lachmi. By means of the kind of ladder made +in the trunk of the tree by the old stumps of excised palm leaves, he +climbed up to the top of a pollarded palm; then he came swiftly down +again, showing a golden nudity beneath his floating garment. He brought +down a little earthen gourd from the place where the head of the tree +had been severed; it had been hung up near the fresh cut in order to +collect the palm sap, from which the Arabs make a sweet wine they are +extremely fond of. At Lachmi’s invitation, I tasted it; but I did not +like its sickly, raw, syrupy taste. + +The following days I went further; I saw other gardens, other goatherds +and other goats. As Marceline had said, all these gardens were alike; +and yet they were all different. + +Sometimes Marceline would still come with me; but more often, as soon +as we reached the orchards, I would leave her, persuade her that I was +tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she must not wait for me, for +she needed more exercise; so that she would finish the walk without +me. I stayed behind with the children. I soon knew a great number of +them; I had long conversations with them; I learnt their games, taught +them others, lost all my pennies at pitch and toss. Some of them used +to come with me on my walks (every day I walked further), showed me +some new way home, took charge of my coat and my shawl when I happened +to have them both with me. Before leaving the children, I used to +distribute a handful of pennies among them; sometimes they would follow +me, playing all the way, as far as my own door; and finally, they would +sometimes come in. + +Then Marceline on her side brought in others. She brought the boys +who went to school and whom she encouraged to work; when school broke +up, the good little boys, the quiet little boys came in; those that +I brought were different; but they made friends over their games. We +took care always to have a store of syrups and sweetmeats on hand. Soon +other boys came of their own accord, even uninvited. I remember each +one of them; I can see them still.... + + * * * * * + +Towards the end of January, the weather changed suddenly; a cold wind +sprang up and my health immediately began to suffer. The great open +space that separates the oasis from the town again became impassable, +and I was obliged once more to content myself with the public gardens. +Then it began to rain--an icy rain, which covered the mountains on the +far Northern horizon with snow. + +I spent those melancholy days beside the fire, gloomily, obstinately, +fighting with my illness, which in this vile weather, gained upon me. +Lugubrious days! I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort +brought on the most troublesome perspiration; fixing my thoughts +exhausted me; directly I stopped paying attention to my breathing, I +suffocated. + +During those melancholy days the children were my only distraction. In +the rainy weather, only the most familiar came in; their clothes were +drenched; they sat round the fire in a circle. A long time would often +go by without anything being said. I was too tired, too unwell to do +anything but look at them; but the presence of their good health did +me good. Those that Marceline petted were weakly, sickly, and too well +behaved; I was irritated with her and with them and ended by keeping +them at arm’s length. To tell the truth, they frightened me. + +One morning I had a curious revelation as to my own character; Moktir, +the only one of my wife’s protégés who did not irritate me (because of +his good looks perhaps), was alone with me in my room; up till then, +I had not cared much about him, but there was something strange, I +thought, in the brilliant and sombre expression of his eyes. Some kind +of inexplicable curiosity made me watch his movements. I was standing +in front of the fire, my two elbows on the mantlepiece, apparently +absorbed in a book; but, though I had my back turned to him, I could +see what he was doing reflected in the glass. Moktir did not know I +was watching him and thought I was immersed in my reading. I saw him +go noiselessly up to a table where Marceline had laid her work and +a little pair of scissors beside it, seize them furtively, and in +a twinkling engulf them in the folds of his burnous. My heart beat +quickly for a moment, but neither reason nor reflection could arouse +in me the smallest feeling of indignation. More than that! I could not +manage to persuade myself that the feeling that filled me at the sight +was anything but joy. + +When I had allowed Moktir ample time for robbing me, I turned round +again and spoke to him as if nothing had happened. + +Marceline was very fond of this boy; but I do not think it was the fear +of grieving her that made me, rather than denounce Moktir, invent some +story or other to explain the loss of her scissors. + +From that day onwards, Moktir became my favourite. + + + + + v + + +Our stay at Biskra was not to last much longer. When the February rains +were over, the outburst of heat that succeeded them was too violent. +After several days of drenching downpour, one morning, suddenly, I woke +in an atmosphere of brilliant blue. As soon as I was up, I hurried to +the highest part of the terrace. The sky, from one horizon to the other +was cloudless. Mists were rising under the heat of the sun, which was +already fierce; the whole oasis was smoking; in the distance could be +heard the grumbling of the Oued in flood. The air was so pure and so +delicious that I felt better at once. Marceline joined me; we wanted to +go out, but that day the mud kept us at home. + +A few days later, we went back to Lassif’s orchard; the stems of the +plants looked heavy, sodden and swollen with water. This African land, +whose thirsty season of waiting was not then known to me, had lain +submerged for many long days and was now awaking from its winter sleep, +drunken with water, bursting with the fresh rise of sap; throughout +it rang the wild laughter of an exultant spring which found an echo, +a double, as it were, in my own heart. Ashour and Moktir came with us +at first; I still enjoyed their slight friendship, which cost me only +half a franc a day; but I soon grew tired of them; not now so weak as +to need the example of their health, and no longer finding in their +play the food necessary to keep my joy alive, I turned the elation of +my mind and senses to Marceline. Her gladness made me realize she had +been unhappy before. I excused myself like a child for having so often +left her to herself, set down my odd, elusive behaviour to the score of +weakness and declared that hitherto loving had been too much for me, +but that henceforward, as my health grew, so would my love. I spoke +truly, but no doubt I was still very weak, for it was not till more +than a month later that I desired Marceline. + +In the meantime, it was getting hotter every day. There was nothing to +keep us at Biskra--except the charm which afterwards brought me back +there. Our determination to leave was taken suddenly. In three hours +our things were packed. The train started next morning at daybreak. + +I remember that last night. The moon was nearly full; it streamed into +my room by the wide open window. Marceline was, I think, asleep. I had +gone to bed but could not sleep. I felt myself burning with a kind of +happy fever--the fever of life itself.... I got up, dipped my hands and +face in water, then, pushing open the glass doors, went out. + +It was already late; not a sound; not a breath; the air itself seemed +asleep. The Arab dogs which yelp all night like jackals, could only +just be heard in the distance. Facing me, lay the little courtyard; +the wall opposite cast a slanting band of shadow across it; the +regular palm-trees, bereft of colour and life, seemed struck for ever +motionless.... But in sleep there is still some palpitation of life; +here, nothing seemed asleep; everything seemed dead. The calm appalled +me; and suddenly there rose in me afresh the tragic realization of my +life; it came upon me as though to protest, to assert itself, to bewail +itself in the silence, so violent, so impetuous, so agonizing almost, +that I should have cried aloud, if I could have cried like an animal. +I took hold of my hand, I remember--my left hand in my right; I wanted +to lift it to my head and I did. What for? To assure myself that I +was alive and that I felt the wonder of it. I touched my forehead, my +eyelids. Then a shudder seized me. A day will come, thought I, a day +will come when I shall not even be strong enough to lift to my lips the +very water I most thirst for.... I went in, but did not lie down again +at once; I wanted to fix that night, to engrave its memory on my mind, +to hold and to keep it; undecided as to what I should do, I took a book +from my table--it was the Bible--and opened it at random; by stooping +over it in the moonlight, I could see to read; I read Christ’s words to +Peter--those words, alas, which I was never to forget: “When thou wast +young, thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but +when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands ...”--thou +shalt stretch forth thy hands.... + +The next morning at dawn, we left. + + + + + vi + + +I shall not speak of every stage of the journey. Some of them have left +me only a confused recollection; I was sometimes better and sometimes +worse in health, still at the mercy of a cold wind and made anxious by +the shadow of a cloud; the condition of my nerves too was the cause +of frequent trouble; but my lungs at any rate were recovering. Each +relapse was shorter and less serious; the attacks were as sharp, but my +body was better armed against them. + +From Tunis we went to Malta, and from there to Syracuse; I found myself +back again on the classic ground whose language and history were known +to me. Since the beginning of my illness I had lived without question +or rule, simply applying myself to the act of living as an animal +does or a child. Now that I was less absorbed by my malady, my life +became once more certain of itself and conscious. After that long and +almost mortal sickness, I had thought I should rise again the same as +before and be able without difficulty to reknit my present to my past; +in the newness of a strange country it had been possible to deceive +myself--but not here; everything brought home to me--though I still +thought it astonishing--that I was changed. + +When at Syracuse and later, I wanted to start my work again and immerse +myself once more in a minute study of the past, I discovered that +something had, if not destroyed, at any rate modified my pleasure in +it ... and this something was the feeling of the present. The history +of the past had now taken on for me the immobility, the terrifying +fixity of the nocturnal shadows in the little courtyard of Biskra--the +immobility of death. In old days, I had taken pleasure in this very +fixity which enabled my mind to work with precision; the facts of +history all appeared to me like specimens in a museum, or rather like +plants in a herbarium, permanently dried, so that it was easy to +forget they had once upon a time been juicy with sap and alive in the +sun. Now-a-days, if I still took any pleasure in history, it was by +imagining it in the present. Thus the great political events of the +past moved me less than the feeling that began to revive in me for the +poets or for a few men of action. At Syracuse, I re-read Theocritus and +reflected that his goatherds with the beautiful names were the very +same as those I had loved at Biskra. + +My erudition, which was aroused at every step, became an encumbrance +and hampered my joy. I could not see a Greek theatre or temple without +immediately reconstructing it in my mind. Every thought of the +festivals of antiquity made me grieve over the death of the ruin that +was left standing in their place; and I had a horror of death. + +I ended by avoiding ruins; the noblest monuments of the past were less +to me than those sunk gardens of the Latomie whose lemons have the +sharp sweetness of oranges--or the shores of the Cyane, still flowing +among the papyri as blue as on the day when it wept for Proserpine. + +I ended by despising the learning that had at first been my pride; +the studies, which up till then had been my whole life, now seemed to +me to have a mere accidental and conventional connection with myself. +I found out that I was something different and--O rapture!--that I +had a separate existence of my own. Inasmuch as I was a specialist, +I appeared to myself senseless; inasmuch as I was a man, did I know +myself at all? I had only just been born and could not as yet know +_what_ I had been born. It was that I had to find out. + +There is nothing more tragic for a man who has been expecting to die +than a long convalescence. After that touch from the wing of Death, +what seemed important is so no longer; other things become so which had +at first seemed unimportant, or which one did not even know existed. +The miscellaneous mass of acquired knowledge of every kind that has +overlain the mind gets peeled off in places like a mask of paint, +exposing the bare skin--the very flesh of the authentic creature that +had lain hidden beneath it. + +He it was whom I thenceforward set out to discover--that authentic +creature, ‘the old Adam,’ whom the Gospel had repudiated, whom +everything about me--books, masters, parents, and I myself had begun +by attempting to suppress. And he was already coming into view, still +in the rough and difficult of discovery, thanks to all that overlay +him, but so much the more worthy to be discovered, so much the more +valorous. Thenceforward I despised the secondary creature, the creature +who was due to teaching, whom education had painted on the surface. +These overlays had to be shaken off. + +And I compared myself to a palimpsest; I tasted the scholar’s joy when +he discovers under more recent writing, and on the same paper, a very +ancient and infinitely more precious text. What was this occult text? +In order to read it, was it not first of all necessary to efface the +more recent one? + +I was besides no longer the sickly, studious being to whom my early +morality, with all its rigidity and restrictions, had been suited. +There was more here than a convalescence; there was an increase, a +recrudescence of life, the influx of a richer, warmer blood which must +of necessity affect my thoughts, touch them one by one, inform them +all, stir and colour the most remote, delicate and secret fibres of +my being. For, either to strength or to weakness, the creature adapts +itself; it constitutes itself according to the powers it possesses; but +if these should increase, if they should permit a wider scope, then ... +I did not think all this at the time, and my description gives a false +idea of me. In reality, I did not think at all; I never questioned +myself; a happy fatalism guided me. I was afraid that too hasty an +investigation might disturb the mystery of my slow transformation. I +must allow time for the effaced characters to reappear, and not attempt +to re-form them. Not so much neglecting my mind therefore, as allowing +it to lie fallow, I gave myself up to the luxurious enjoyment of my +own self, of external things, of all existence, which seemed to me +divine. We had left Syracuse, and as I ran along the precipitous road +that connects Taormina with Mola, I remember shouting aloud, as if my +calling could bring him to me: “A new self! A new self!” + +My only effort then--an effort which was at that time +constant--consisted in systematically contemning and suppressing +everything which I believed I owed to my past education and early moral +beliefs. Deliberately disdainful of my learning, and in scorn of my +scholar’s tastes, I refused to visit Agrigentum, and a few days later, +on the road to Naples, I passed by the beautiful temple of Pæstum, in +which Greece still breathes, and where, two years later, I went to +worship some God or other--I no longer know which. + +Why do I say ‘my only effort’? How could I be interested in myself save +as a perfectible being? Never before had my will been so tensely strung +as in striving after this unknown and vaguely imagined perfection. I +employed the whole of my will indeed, in strengthening and bronzing my +body. We had left the coast near Salerno and reached Ravello. There, a +keener air, the charm of the rocks, their recesses, their surprises, +the unexplored depths of the valleys, all contributed to my strength +and enjoyment and gave impetus to my enthusiasm. + +Not far from the shore and very near the sky, Ravello lies on an +abrupt height facing the flat and distant coast of Pæstum. Under the +Norman domination, it was a city of no inconsiderable importance; it +is nothing now but a narrow village where I think we were the only +strangers. We were lodged in an ancient religious house which had +been turned into a hotel; it is situated on the extreme edge of the +rock, and its terraces and gardens seemed to hang suspended over an +abyss of azure. Over the wall, festooned with creeping vine, one +could at first see nothing but the sea; one had to go right up to the +wall in order to discover the steep cultivated slope that connects +Ravello with the shore by paths that seem more like staircases. Above +Ravello, the mountain continues. First come enormous olive and caroub +trees, with cyclamen growing in their shadow; then, higher up, Spanish +chestnuts in great quantities, cool air, northern plants; lower down +lemon trees near the sea. These are planted in small plots owing to +the slope of the ground; they are step gardens, nearly all alike; a +narrow path goes from end to end through the middle of each; one enters +noiselessly, like a thief; one dreams in their green shadow; their +foliage is thick and heavy; no direct ray of sunlight penetrates it; +the lemons, like drops of opaque wax, hang perfumed; they are white and +greenish in the shade; they are within reach of one’s hand, of one’s +thirst; they are sweet and sharp and refreshing. + +The shade was so dense beneath them that I did not dare linger in it +after my walk, for exercise still made me perspire. And yet I now +managed the steps without being exhausted; I practised climbing them +with my mouth shut; I put greater and greater intervals between my +halts; “I will go so far without giving in,” I used to say to myself; +then, the goal reached, I was rewarded by a glow of satisfied pride; +I would take a few long deep breaths, and feel as if the air entered +my lungs more thoroughly, more efficaciously. I brought all my old +assiduity to bear on the care of my body. I began to progress. + +I was sometimes astonished that my health came back so quickly. I began +to think I had exaggerated the gravity of my condition--to doubt that +I had been very ill--to laugh at my blood-spitting--to regret that my +recovery had not been more arduous. + +In my ignorance of my physical needs, my treatment of myself had at +first been very foolish. I now made a patient study of them and came +to regard my ingenious exercise of prudence and care as a kind of +game. What I still suffered from most was my morbid sensitiveness to +the slightest change of temperature. Now that my lungs were cured, I +attributed this hyperaesthesia to the nervous debility left me by my +illness and I determined to conquer it. The sight of the beautiful, +brown, sunburnt skins which some of the carelessly clad peasants at +work in the fields showed beneath their open shirts, made me long to be +like them. One morning, after I had stripped, I looked at myself; my +thin arms, my stooping shoulders, which no effort of mine could keep +straight, but above all the whiteness of my skin, or rather its entire +want of colour, shamed me to tears. I dressed quickly and, instead of +going down to Amalfi as usual, I turned my steps towards some mossy, +grass-grown rocks, in a place far from any habitation, far from any +road, where I knew no-one could see me. When I got there, I undressed +slowly. The air was almost sharp, but the sun was burning. I exposed my +whole body to its flame. I sat down, lay down, turned myself about. I +felt the ground hard beneath me; the waving grass brushed me. Though I +was sheltered from the wind, I shivered and thrilled at every breath. +Soon a delicious burning enveloped me; my whole being surged up into my +skin. + +We stayed at Ravello a fortnight; every morning I returned to the +same rocks and went on with my cure. I soon found I was wearing a +troublesome and unnecessary amount of clothing; my skin, having +recovered its tone, the constant perspiration ceased and I was able to +keep warm without superfluous protection. + +On one of the last mornings (we were in the middle of April), I was +bolder still. In a hollow of the rocks I have mentioned, there flowed +a spring of transparent water. At this very place it fell in a little +cascade--not a very abundant one to be sure, but the fall had hollowed +out a deeper basin at its foot in which the water lingered, exquisitely +pure and clear. Three times already I had been there, leant over it, +stretched myself along its bank, thirsty and longing; I had gazed at +the bottom of polished rock, where not a stain, not a weed was to be +seen, and where the sun shot its dancing and iridescent rays. On this +fourth day, I came to the spot with my mind already made up. The +water looked as bright and as clear as ever, and without pausing to +think, I plunged straight in. It struck an instant chill through me +and I jumped out again quickly and flung myself down on the grass in +the sun. There was some wild thyme growing near by; I picked some of +the sweet-smelling leaves, crushed them in my hands and rubbed my wet +but burning body with them. I looked at myself for a long while--with +no more shame now--with joy. Although not yet robust, I felt myself +capable of becoming so--harmonious, sensuous, almost beautiful. + + + + + vii + + +And so, in the place of all action and all work, I contented myself +with physical exercises, which certainly implied a change in my moral +outlook, but which I soon began to regard as mere training, as simply a +means to an end, and no longer satisfying in themselves. + +I will tell you, however, about one other action of mine, though +perhaps you will consider it ridiculous, for its very childishness +marks the need that then tormented me of showing by some outward sign +the change that had come over my inward self: at Amalfi I had my beard +and moustache shaved off. Up till that day I had worn them long and +my hair cropped close. It had never occurred to me that I could do +anything else. And suddenly, on the day when I first stripped myself +on the rock, my beard made me feel uncomfortable; it was like a last +piece of clothing I could not get rid of; I felt as if it were false; +it was carefully cut--not in a point, but square, and it then and +there struck me as very ugly and ridiculous. When I got back to my +hotel room, I looked at myself in the glass and was displeased with my +appearance; I looked like what I had hitherto been--an archaeologist--a +bookworm. Immediately after lunch, I went down to Amalfi with my mind +made up. The town is very small and I could find nothing better than +a vulgar little shop in the piazza. It was market day; the place was +full; I had to wait interminably; but nothing--neither the suspicious +looking razors, nor the dirty yellow shaving-brush, nor the smell, nor +the barber’s talk could put me off. When my beard fell beneath his +scissors, I felt as though I had taken off a mask. But oh! when I saw +myself, the emotion that filled me and which I tried to keep down, was +not pleasure, but fear. I do not criticize this feeling--I record it. I +thought myself quite good-looking ... no, the reason of my fear was a +feeling that my mind had been stripped of all disguise, and it suddenly +appeared to me redoubtable. + +On the other hand, I let my hair grow. + +That is all my new and still unoccupied self found to do. I expected +it eventually to give birth to actions that would astonish me--but +later--later, I said to myself, when it is more fully formed. In the +meantime, as I was obliged to live, I was reduced, like Descartes, +to a provisional mode of action. This was the reason Marceline did +not notice anything. The different look in my eyes, no doubt, and +the changed expression of my features, especially on the day when I +appeared without my beard, might perhaps have aroused her suspicions, +but she already loved me too much to see me as I was; and then I did +my best to reassure her. The important thing was that she should not +interfere with my renascent life, and to keep it from her eyes, I had +to dissemble. + +For that matter, the man Marceline loved, the man she had married, was +not my ‘new self.’ So I told myself again and again as an excuse for +hiding him. In this way I showed her an image of myself, which by the +very fact of its remaining constant and faithful to the past, became +every day falser and falser. + +For the time being, therefore, my relationship with Marceline remained +the same, though it was every day getting more intense by reason of +my growing love. My dissimulation (if that expression can be applied +to the need I felt of protecting my thoughts from her judgment), +my very dissimulation increased that love. I mean that it kept me +incessantly occupied with Marceline. At first, perhaps, this necessity +for falsehood cost me a little effort; but I soon came to understand +that the things that are reputed worst (lying, to mention only one) +are only difficult to do as long as one has never done them; but that +they become--and very quickly too--easy, pleasant and agreeable to do +over again, and soon even natural. So then, as is always the case when +one overcomes an initial disgust, I ended by taking pleasure in my +dissimulation itself, by protracting it, as if it afforded opportunity +for the play of my undiscovered faculties. And every day my life grew +richer and fuller, as I advanced towards a riper, more delicious +happiness. + + + + + viii + + +The road from Ravello to Sorrento is so beautiful that I had no desire +that morning to see anything more beautiful on earth. The sun-warmed +harshness of the rocks, the air’s abundance, the scents, the limpidity, +all filled me with the heavenly delight of living, and with such +contentment that there seemed to dwell in me nothing but a dancing +joy; memories and regrets, hope and desire, future and past were alike +silent; I was conscious of nothing in life but what the moment brought, +but what the moment carried away. + +“O joys of the body!” I exclaimed; “unerring rhythm of the muscles! +health!...” + +I had started early that morning, ahead of Marceline, for her calmer +pleasure would have cooled mine, just as her slower pace would have +kept me back. She was to join me by carriage at Positano, where we were +to lunch. + +I was nearing Positano, when a noise of wheels, which sounded like the +bass accompaniment to a curious kind of singing, made me look round +abruptly. At first I could see nothing because of a turn in the road, +which in that place follows the edge of the cliff; then a carriage +driven at a frantic pace dashed suddenly into view; it was Marceline’s. +The driver was singing at the top of his voice, standing up on the +box and gesticulating violently, while he ferociously whipped his +frightened horse. What a brute the fellow was! He passed me so quickly +that I only just had time to get out of the way and my shouts failed +to make him stop.... I rushed after him, but the carriage was going +too fast. I was terrified that Marceline would fling herself out of +the carriage, and equally so that she would stay in it; a single jolt +might have thrown her into the sea.... All of a sudden the horse fell +down. Marceline jumped out and started running, but I was beside her +in a moment.... The driver, as soon as he saw me, broke into horrible +oaths. I was furious with the man; at his first word of abuse, I rushed +at him and flung him brutally from his box. I rolled on the ground with +him, but did not lose my advantage; he seemed dazed by his fall and was +soon still more so by a blow on the face which I gave him, when I saw +he meant to bite me. I did not let go of him, however, and pressed with +my knee on his chest, while I tried to pinion his arms. I looked at his +ugly face, which my fist had made still uglier; he spat, foamed, bled, +swore; oh, what a horrible creature! He deserved strangling, I thought. +And perhaps I should have strangled him--at any rate, I felt capable +of it; and I really believe it was only the thought of the police that +prevented me. + +I succeeded, not without difficulty, in tying the madman up, and flung +him into the carriage like a sack. + +Ah! what looks, what kisses Marceline and I exchanged when it was all +over. The danger had not been great; but I had had to show my strength, +and that in order to protect her. At the moment I felt I could have +given my life for her ... and given it wholly with joy.... The horse +got up. We left the drunkard at the bottom of the carriage, got on to +the box together, and drove as best we could, first to Positano, and +then to Sorrento. + +It was that night that I first possessed Marceline. + +Have you really understood or must I tell you again that I was as it +were new to things of love? Perhaps it was to its novelty that our +wedding night owed its grace.... For it seems to me, when I recall it, +that that first night of ours was our only one, the expectation and +the surprise of love added so much deliciousness to its pleasures--so +sufficient is a single night for the expression of the greatest love, +and so obstinately does my memory recall that night alone. It was a +flashing moment that caught and mingled our souls in its laughter.... +But I believe there comes a point in love, once and no more, which +later on the soul seeks--yes, seeks in vain--to surpass; I believe that +happiness wears out in the effort made to recapture it; that nothing +is more fatal to happiness than the remembrance of happiness. Alas! I +remember that night.... + +Our hotel was outside the town and surrounded with gardens and +orchards; a very large balcony opened out from our room and the +branches of the trees brushed against it. Our wide open windows let in +the dawn freely. I got up and bent tenderly over Marceline. She was +asleep; she looked as though she were smiling in her sleep; my greater +strength seemed to make me feel her greater delicacy and that her grace +was all fragility. Tumultuous thoughts whirled in my brain. I reflected +that she was telling the truth when she said I was her all; then, +“What do I do for her happiness?” I thought. “Almost all day and every +day I abandon her; her every hope is in me and I neglect her!... oh, +poor, poor Marceline!” My eyes filled with tears. I tried in vain to +seek an excuse in my past weakness; what need had I now for so much +care and attention, for so much egoism? Was I not now the stronger of +the two? + +The smile had left her cheeks; daybreak, though it had touched +everything else with gold, suddenly showed her to me sad and pale; and +perhaps the approach of morning inclined me to be anxious. “Shall I in +my turn have to nurse you, fear for you, Marceline?” I inwardly cried. +I shuddered, and, overflowing with love, pity and tenderness, I placed +between her closed eyes the gentlest, the most lover-like, the most +pious of kisses. + + + + + ix + + +The few days we stayed at Sorrento were smiling days and very calm. Had +I ever enjoyed before such rest, such happiness? Should I ever enjoy +them again?... I spent almost all my time with Marceline; thinking +less of myself, I was able to think more of her, and now took as much +pleasure in talking to her as I had before taken in being silent. + +I was at first astonished to feel that she looked upon our wandering +life, with which I professed myself perfectly satisfied, only as +something temporary; but its idleness soon became obvious to me; I +agreed it must not last; for the first time, thanks to the leisure +left me by my recovered health, there awoke in me a desire for work, +and I began to speak seriously of going home; from Marceline’s joy, I +realized she herself had long been thinking of it. + +Meanwhile, when I again began to turn my attention to some of my old +historical studies, I found I no longer took the same pleasure in +them. As I have already told you, since my illness, I had come to +consider this abstract and neutral acquaintance with the past as mere +vanity. In other days I had worked at philological research, studying +more especially, for instance, the influence of the Goths on the +corruption of the Latin language, and had passed over and misunderstood +the figures of Theodoric, Cassiodorus and Amalasontha, and their +admirable and astonishing passions, in order to concentrate all my +enthusiasm on mere signs--the waste product of their lives. + +At present, however, these same signs, and indeed philology as a whole, +were nothing more to me than a means of penetrating further into things +whose savage grandeur and nobility had begun to dawn on me. I resolved +to study this period further, to limit myself for a time to the last +years of the empire of the Goths, and to turn to account our coming +stay at Ravenna, the scene of its closing agonies. + +But shall I confess that the figure of the young king Athalaric was +what attracted me most? I pictured to myself this fifteen-year-old +boy, worked on in secret by the Goths, in revolt against his mother +Amalasontha, rebelling against his Latin education and flinging aside +his culture, as a restive horse shakes off a troublesome harness; +I saw him preferring the society of the untutored Goths to that of +Cassiodorus--too old and too wise--plunging for a few years into a life +of violent and unbridled pleasures with rude companions of his own age, +and dying at eighteen, rotten and sodden with debauchery. I recognized +in this tragic impulse towards a wilder, more natural state, something +of what Marceline used to call my ‘crisis.’ I tried to find some +satisfaction in applying my mind to it, since it no longer occupied my +body; and in Athalaric’s horrible death, I did my best to read a lesson. + +So we settled to spend a fortnight at Ravenna, visit Rome and Florence +rapidly, then, giving up Venice and Verona, hurry over the end of our +journey and not stop again before reaching Paris. I found a pleasure +I had never felt before in talking to Marceline about the future; we +were still a little undecided as to how we should spend the summer; +we were both tired of travelling and I was in need of absolute quiet +for my work; then we thought of a place of mine, situated between +Lisieux and Pont-L’Evêque, in the greenest of green Normandy; it had +formerly belonged to my mother, and I had passed several summers there +with her in my childhood, though I had never gone back to it since +her death. My father had left it in charge of a bailiff, an old man +by now, who collected the rents and sent them to us regularly. I had +kept enchanting memories of a large and very pleasant house standing +in a garden watered by running streams; it was called La Morinière; I +thought it would be good to live there. + +I spoke of spending the following winter in Rome, but as a worker this +time, not a tourist.... But this last plan was soon upset. Amongst the +number of letters we found waiting for us at Naples, was one containing +an unexpected piece of information--a chair at the Collège de France +had fallen vacant and my name had been several times mentioned in +connection with it; it was only a temporary post which would leave me +free in the future; the friend who wrote advised me of the few steps to +be taken in case I should accept, which he strongly advised me to do. +I hesitated to bind myself to what at first seemed to me slavery; but +then I reflected that it might be interesting to put forward my ideas +on Cassiodorus in a course of lectures.... The pleasure I should be +giving Marceline finally decided me, and once my decision taken, I saw +only its advantages. + +My father had several connections in the learned world of Rome and +Florence, with whom I had myself been in correspondence. They gave +me every facility for making the necessary researches in Ravenna and +elsewhere; I had no thoughts now but for my work. Marceline, by her +constant consideration and in a thousand charming ways, did all she +could to help me. + +Our happiness during those last days of travel was so equable, so calm, +that there is nothing to say about it. Men’s finest works bear the +persistent marks of pain. What would there be in a story of happiness? +Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. I have now +told you what prepared it. + + + + + SECOND PART + + + + + i + + +We arrived at La Morinière in the first days of July, having stayed +in Paris only just long enough to do our shopping and pay a very few +visits. + +La Morinière is situated, as I have told you, between Lisieux and +Pont-L’Evêque in the shadiest, wettest country I know. Innumerable +narrow coombes and gently rounded hills terminate near the wide ‘Vallée +d’Auge,’ which then stretches in an uninterrupted plain as far as the +sea. There is no horizon; some few copse-woods, filled with mysterious +shade, some few fields of corn, but chiefly meadow land--softly +sloping pastures, where the lush grass is mown twice a year, where the +apple-trees, when the sun is low, join shadow to shadow, where flocks +and herds graze untended; in every hollow there is water--pond or pool +or river; from every side comes the continual murmur of streams. + +Oh, how well I remembered the house! its blue roofs, its walls of +stone and brick, its moat, the reflections in the still waters.... +It was an old house which would easily have lodged a dozen persons; +Marceline, three servants, and myself, who occasionally lent a helping +hand, found it all we could do to animate a part of it. Our old +bailiff, who was called Bocage, had already done his best to prepare +some of the rooms; the old furniture awoke from its twenty years’ +slumber; everything had remained just as I remembered it--the panelling +not too dilapidated, the rooms easy to live in. Bocage, to welcome +us, had put flowers in all the vases he could lay hands on. He had +had the large courtyard and the nearest paths in the park weeded and +raked. When we arrived, the sun’s last rays were falling on the house, +and from the valley facing it a mist had arisen which hovered there +motionless, masking and revealing the river. We had not well arrived, +when all at once I recognized the scent of the grass; and when I heard +the piercing cries of the swallows as they flew round the house, the +whole past suddenly rose up, as though it had been lying in wait for my +approach to close over and submerge me. + +In a few days the house was more or less comfortable; I might have +settled down to work; but I delayed, at first still listening to the +voice of my past as it recalled its slightest details to my memory, and +then too much absorbed by an unwonted emotion. Marceline, a week after +our arrival, confided to me that she was expecting a child. + +Thenceforward I thought I owed her redoubled care, and that she had a +right to greater tenderness than ever; at any rate during the first +weeks that followed her confidence, I spent almost every minute of the +day in her company. We used to go and sit near the wood, on a bench +where in old days I had been used to sit with my mother; there, each +moment brought us a richer pleasure, each hour passed with a smoother +flow. If no distinct memory of this period of my life stands out for +me, it is not because I am less deeply grateful for it--but because +everything in it melted and mingled into a state of changeless ease, in +which evening joined morning without a break, in which day passed into +day without a surprise. + +I gradually set to work again with a quiet mind, in possession of +itself, certain of its strength, looking calmly and confidently to the +future; with a will that seemed softened, as though by harkening to the +counsels of that temperate land. + +There can be no doubt, I thought, that the example of such a land, +where everything is ripening towards fruition and harvest, must +have the best of influences on me. I looked forward with admiring +wonder to the tranquil promise of the great oxen and fat cows that +grazed in those opulent meadows. The apple-trees, planted in order on +the sunniest slopes of the hill-sides, gave hopes this summer of a +magnificent crop. I saw in my mind’s eye the rich burden of fruit which +would soon bow down their branches. From this ordered abundance, this +joyous acceptance of service imposed, this smiling cultivation, had +arisen a harmony that was the result not of chance but of intention, +a rhythm, a beauty, at once human and natural, in which the teeming +fecundity of nature and the wise effort of man to regulate it, were +combined in such perfect agreement, that one no longer knew which was +most admirable. What would man’s effort be worth, thought I, without +the savagery of the power it controls? What would the wild rush of +these upwelling forces become without the intelligent effort that banks +it, curbs it, leads it by such pleasant ways to its outcome of luxury? +And I let myself go in a dream of lands where every force should be so +regulated, all expenditure so compensated, all exchanges so strict, +that the slightest waste would be appreciable; then I applied my +dream to life and imagined a code of ethics which should institute the +scientific and perfect utilization of a man’s self by a controlling +intelligence. + +Where had my rebelliousness vanished to? Where was it hiding itself? It +seemed never to have existed, so tranquil was I. The rising tide of my +love had swept it all away. + +Meanwhile old Bocage bustled round us; he gave directions, he +superintended, he advised; his need of feeling himself indispensable +was tiresome in the extreme. In order not to hurt his feelings I +had to go over his accounts and listen for hours to his endless +explanations. Even that was not enough; I had to visit the estate with +him. His sententious truisms, his continual speeches, his evident +self-satisfaction, the display he made of his honesty drove me to +exasperation; he became more and more persistent and there was nothing +I would not have done to recover my liberty, when an unexpected +occurrence brought about a change in my relations with him. One evening +Bocage announced that he was expecting his son Charles the next day. + +I said, “Oh!” rather casually, having so far troubled myself very +little as to any children Bocage might or might not have; then, seeing +my indifference offended him and that he expected some expression of +interest and surprise, “Where has he been?” I asked. + +“In a model farm near Alençon,” answered Bocage. + +“How old is he now? About...?” I went on, calculating the age of this +son, of whose existence I had so far been totally unaware, and leaving +him time enough to interrupt me.... + +“Past seventeen,” went on Bocage. “He was not much more than four when +your father’s good lady died. Ah! He’s a big lad now; he’ll know more +than his dad soon....” Once Bocage was started, nothing could stop him, +not even the boredom I very plainly showed. + +I had forgotten all about this, when the next evening, Charles, newly +arrived from his journey, came to pay his respects to Marceline and me. +He was a fine strong young fellow, so exuberantly healthy, so lissom, +so well-made, that not even the frightful town clothes he had put on +in our honour could make him look ridiculous; his shyness hardly added +anything to the fine natural red of his cheeks. He did not look more +than fifteen, his eyes were so bright and so childlike; he expressed +himself clearly, without embarrassment, and, unlike his father, did +not speak when he had nothing to say. I cannot remember what we talked +about that first evening; I was so busy looking at him that I found +nothing to say and let Marceline do all the talking. But next day, for +the first time, I did not wait for old Bocage to come and fetch me, in +order to go down to the farm, where I knew they were starting work on a +pond that had to be repaired. + +This pond--almost as big as a lake--was leaking. The leak had been +located and had to be cemented. In order to do this, the pond had first +to be drained, a thing that had not been done for fifteen years. It +was full of carp and tench, great creatures, some of them, that lay at +the bottom of the pond without ever coming up. I wanted to stock the +moat with some of these fish and give some to the labourers, so that +upon this occasion the pleasure of a fishing party was added to the +day’s work, as could be seen from the extraordinary animation of the +farm; some children from the neighbourhood had joined the workers and +Marceline herself had promised to come down later. + +The water had already been sinking for some time when I got there. +Every now and then a great ripple suddenly stirred its surface and +the brown backs of the disturbed fish came into sight. The children +paddling in the puddles round the edges, amused themselves with +catching gleaming handfuls of small fry, which they flung into pails +of clear water. The water in the pond was muddy and soon became more +and more thick and troubled owing to the agitation of the fish. Their +abundance was beyond all expectation; four farm labourers, dipping +into the water at random, pulled them out in handfuls. I was sorry +that Marceline had not arrived and decided to run and fetch her, when +a shout signalled the appearance of the first eels. But no-one could +succeed in catching them; they slipped between the men’s fingers. +Charles, who up till then had been standing beside his father on the +bank, could restrain himself no longer; he took off his shoes and socks +in a moment, flung aside his coat and waistcoat, then, tucking up his +trousers and shirtsleeves as high as they would go, stepped resolutely +into the mud. I immediately did the same. + +“Charles!” I cried, “it was a good thing you came back yesterday, +wasn’t it?” He was already too busy with his fishing to answer, but he +looked at me, laughing. I called him after a moment to help me catch a +big eel; we joined hands in trying to hold it.... Then came another and +another; our faces were splashed with mud; sometimes the ooze suddenly +gave way beneath us and we sank into it up to our waists; we were soon +drenched. In the ardour of the sport, we barely exchanged a shout or +two, a word or two; but at the end of the day, I became aware I was +saying ‘thou’ to Charles, without having any clear idea when I had +begun. Our work in common had taught us more about each other than a +long conversation. Marceline had not come yet; she did not come at all, +but I ceased to regret her absence; I felt as though she would have a +little spoilt our pleasure. + +Early next morning, I went down to the farm to look for Charles. We +took our way together to the woods. + +As I myself knew very little about my estate and was not much +distressed at knowing so little, I was astonished to find how much +Charles knew about it and about the way it was farmed; he told me what +I was barely aware of, namely, that I had six farmer-tenants, that +the rents might have amounted to sixteen or eighteen thousand francs, +and that if they actually amounted to barely half that sum, it was +because almost everything was eaten up by repairs of all sorts and +by the payment of middlemen. His way of smiling as he looked at the +fields in cultivation soon made me suspect that the management of the +estate was not quite so good as I had at first thought and as Bocage +had given me to understand; I pressed Charles further on this subject, +and the intelligence of practical affairs which had so exasperated me +in Bocage, amused me in a child like him. We continued our walks day +after day; the estate was large and when we had visited every corner +of it, we began again with more method. Charles did not hide his +irritation at the sight of certain fields, certain pieces of land that +were overgrown with gorse, thistles and weeds; he instilled into me his +hatred of fallow land and set me dreaming with him of a better mode of +agriculture. + +“But,” I said to him at first, “who is it that suffers from this lack +of cultivation? Isn’t it only the farmer himself? However much the +profits of his farm vary, his rent still remains the same.” + +Charles was a little annoyed: “You understand nothing about it,” he +ventured to say--and I smiled. “You think only of income and won’t +consider that the capital is deteriorating. Your land is slowly losing +its value by being badly cultivated.” + +“If it were to bring in more by being better cultivated, I expect the +farmers would set about it. They are too eager for gain not to make as +much profit as they can.” + +“You are not counting,” continued Charles, “the cost of increased +labour. These neglected bits of land are sometimes a long way from the +farms. True, if they were cultivated, they would bring in nothing or +next to nothing, but at any rate, they would keep from spoiling.” + +And so the conversation went on. Sometimes for an hour on end we seemed +to be interminably repeating the same things as we walked over the +fields; but I listened, and little by little gathered information. + +“After all, it’s your father’s business,” I said one day impatiently. +Charles blushed a little. + +“My father is old,” he said; “he has a great deal to do already, seeing +to the upkeep of the buildings, collecting the rents and so on. It’s +not his business to make reforms.” + +“And what reforms would _you_ make?” I asked. But at that he became +evasive and pretended he knew nothing about it; it was only by +insisting that I forced him to explain. + +“I should take away all the uncultivated fields from the tenants,” +he ended by advising. “If the farmers leave part of their land +uncultivated, it’s a proof they don’t need it all in order to pay you; +or if they say they must keep it all, I should raise their rents. All +the people hereabouts are idle,” he added. + +Of the six farms that belonged to me, the one I most liked visiting +was situated on a hill that overlooked La Morinière; it was called La +Valterie; the farmer who rented it was a pleasant enough fellow and I +used to like talking to him. Nearer La Morinière, was a farm called +the ‘home farm,’ which was let on a system that left Bocage, pending +the landlord’s absence, in possession of part of the cattle. Now that +my doubts had been awakened, I began to suspect honest Bocage himself, +if not of cheating me, at any rate, of allowing other people to cheat +me. One stable and one cow-house were, it is true, reserved to me, +but it soon dawned upon me that they had merely been invented so as +to allow the farmer to feed his cows and horses with my oats and hay. +So far, I had listened indulgently to the very unconvincing reports +which Bocage gave me from time to time of deaths, malformations and +diseases. I swallowed everything. It had not then occurred to me that +it was sufficient for one of the farmer’s cows to fall ill for it to +become one of my cows, nor that it was sufficient for one of my cows to +do well for it to become one of the farmer’s; but a few rash remarks of +Charles’s, a few observations of my own began to enlighten me, and my +mind once given the hint, worked quickly. + +Marceline, at my suggestion, went over the accounts minutely, but could +find nothing wrong with them; Bocage’s honesty was displayed on every +page. What was to be done? Let things be. At any rate, I now watched +the management of the cattle in a state of suppressed indignation, but +without letting it be too obvious. + +I had four horses and ten cows--quite enough to be a considerable +worry to me. Among my four horses was one which was still called ‘the +colt,’ though it was more than three years old; it was now being broken +in; I was beginning to take an interest in it, when one fine morning +I was informed that it was perfectly unmanageable, that it would be +impossible ever to do anything with it and that the best thing would +be to get rid of it. As if on purpose to convince me of this, in case I +had doubted it, it had been made to break the front of a small cart and +had cut its hocks in doing so. + +I had much ado that day to keep my temper, but what helped me was +Bocage’s obvious embarrassment. After all, thought I, he is more weak +than anything else; it is the men who are to blame, but they want a +guiding hand over them. + +I went into the yard to see the colt; one of the men who had been +beating it began to stroke it as soon as he heard me coming; I +pretended to have seen nothing. I did not know much about horses, but +this colt seemed to me a fine animal; it was half-bred, light bay in +colour and remarkably elegant in shape, with a very bright eye and a +very light mane and tail. I made sure it had not been injured, insisted +on its cuts being properly dressed and went away without another word. + +That evening, as soon as I saw Charles, I tried to find out what he +personally thought of the colt. + +“I think he’s a perfectly quiet beast,” he said, “but they don’t know +how to manage him; they’ll drive him wild.” + +“And how would _you_ manage him?” + +“Will you let me have him for a week, Sir? I’ll answer for him.” + +“And what will you do?” + +“You will see.” + +The next morning, Charles took the colt down to a corner of the field +that was shaded by a superb walnut-tree and bordered by the river; +I went too, together with Marceline. It is one of my most vivid +recollections. Charles had tied the colt with a rope a few yards long +to a stake firmly planted in the ground. The mettlesome creature had, +it seems, objected for some time with great spirit; but now, tired and +quieted, it was going round more calmly; the elasticity of its trot was +astonishing and as delightful and engaging to watch as a dance. Charles +stood in the centre of the circle and avoided the rope at every round +with a sudden leap, exciting or calming the beast with his voice; he +held a long whip in his hand, but I did not see him use it. Everything +about his look and movements--his youthfulness, his delight--gave his +work the fervent and beautiful aspect of pleasure. Suddenly--I have no +idea how--he was astride the animal; it had slackened its pace and then +stopped; he had patted it a little and then, all of a sudden, I saw he +was on horseback, sure of himself, barely holding its mane, laughing, +leaning forward, still patting and stroking its neck. The colt had +hardly resisted for a moment; then it began its even trot again, so +handsome, so easy, that I envied Charles and told him so. + +“A few days’ more training and the saddle won’t tickle him at all; in a +fortnight, Sir, your lady herself won’t be afraid to mount him; he’ll +be as quiet as a lamb.” + +It was quite true; a few days later, the horse allowed himself to +be stroked, harnessed, led, without any signs of restiveness; and +Marceline might really have ridden him if her state of health had +permitted. + +“You ought to try him yourself, Sir,” said Charles. + +I should never have done so alone; but Charles suggested saddling +another of the farm horses for himself, and the pleasure of +accompanying him proved irresistible. + +How grateful I was to my mother for having sent me to a riding-school +when I was a boy! The recollection of those long-ago lessons stood +me in good stead. The sensation of feeling myself on horseback was +not too strange; after the first few moments, I had no tremors and +felt perfectly at ease. Charles’s mount was heavier; it was not pure +bred, but far from bad-looking, and above all, Charles rode it well. +We got into the habit of going out every day; for choice, we started +in the early morning, through grass that was still bright with dew; +we rode to the limit of the woods; the dripping hazels, shaken by our +passage, drenched us with their showers; suddenly the horizon opened +out; there, in front of us, lay the vast Vallée d’Auge and far in the +distance could be divined the presence of the sea. We stayed a moment +without dismounting; the rising sun coloured the mists, parted them, +dispersed them; then, we set off again at a brisk trot; we lingered a +little at the farm, where the work was only just beginning; we enjoyed +for a moment the proud pleasure of being earlier than the labourers--of +looking down on them; then, abruptly, we left them; I was home again at +La Morinière just as Marceline was beginning to get up. + +I used to come in drunk with the open air, dazed with speed, my limbs +a little stiff with a delicious fatigue, all health and appetite and +freshness. Marceline approved, encouraged my fancy. I went straight to +her room, still in my gaiters, and found her lingering in bed, waiting +for me; I came bringing with me a scent of wet leaves, which she +said she liked. And she listened while I told her of our ride, of the +awakening of the fields, of the recommencing of the day’s labour.... +She took as much delight, it seemed, in feeling me live as in living +herself. Soon I trespassed on this delight too; our rides grew longer, +and sometimes I did not come in till nearly noon. + +I kept the afternoons and evenings, however, as much as possible for +the preparation of my lectures. My work on them made good progress; +I was satisfied with it and thought they might perhaps be worth +publishing later as a book. By a kind of natural reaction, the more +regular and orderly my life became and the more pleasure I took in +establishing order about me--the more attracted I felt by the rude +ethics of the Goths. With a boldness, for which I was afterwards +blamed, I took the line throughout my lectures of making the apology +and eulogy of non-culture; but, at the same time, in my private life, +I was laboriously doing all I could to control, if not to suppress, +everything about me and within me that in any way suggested it. How far +did I not push this wisdom--or this folly? + +Two of my tenants whose leases expired at Christmas time, came to me +with a request for renewal; it was a matter of signing the usual +preliminary agreement. Strong in Charles’s assurances and encouraged by +his daily conversations, I awaited the farmers with resolution. They +on the other hand, equally strong in the conviction that tenants are +hard to replace, began by asking for their rents to be lowered. Their +stupefaction was great when I read them the agreement I had myself +drawn up, in which I not only refused to lower the rents but also +withdrew from the farms certain portions of land, which I said they +were making no use of. They pretended at first to take it as a laughing +matter--I must be joking. What could I do with the land? It was worth +nothing; and if they made no use of it, it was because no use could be +made of it.... Then, seeing I was serious, they turned obstinate; I was +obstinate too. They thought they would frighten me by threatening to +leave. It was what I was waiting for: + +“All right! Go if you like! I won’t keep you,” I said, tearing the +agreement up before their eyes. + +So there I was, with more than two hundred acres left on my hands. +I had planned for some time past to give the chief management of +this land to Bocage, thinking that in this way I should be giving +it indirectly to Charles; my intention also was to look after it a +good deal myself; but in reality, I reflected very little about it; +the very risk of the undertaking tempted me. The tenants would not be +turning out before Christmas; between this and then we should have +time to look about us. I told Charles; his delight annoyed me; he +could not hide it; it made me feel more than ever that he was much +too young. We were already pressed for time; it was the season when +the reaping of the crops leaves the fields empty for early ploughing. +By an established custom, the outgoing tenant works side by side with +the incoming; the former quits the land bit by bit, as soon as he has +carried his crops. I was afraid the two farmers I had dismissed would +somehow revenge themselves on me; but, on the contrary, they made a +pretence of being perfectly amiable (I only learnt later how much they +benefited by this). I took advantage of their complaisance to go up to +their land--which was soon going to be mine--every morning and evening. +Autumn was beginning; more labourers had to be hired to get on with +the ploughing and sowing; we had bought harrows, rollers, ploughs; I +rode about on horseback, superintending and directing the work, taking +pleasure in ordering people about and in using my authority. + +Meanwhile, in the neighbouring meadows, the apples were being gathered; +they dropped from the trees and lay rolling in the thick grass; never +had there been a more abundant crop; there were not enough pickers; +they had to be brought in from the neighbouring villages and taken on +for a week; Charles and I sometimes amused ourselves by helping them. +Some of the men beat the branches with sticks to bring down the late +fruit; the fruit that fell of itself was gathered into separate heaps; +often the overripe apples lay bruised and crushed in the long grass so +that it was impossible to walk without stepping on them. The smell that +rose from the ground was acrid and sickly and mingled with the smell of +the ploughed land. + +Autumn was advancing. The mornings of the last fine days are +the freshest, the most limpid of all. There were times when the +moisture-laden atmosphere painted all the distances blue, made them +look more distant still, turned a short walk into a day’s journey; +and the whole country looked bigger; at times again the abnormal +transparency of the air brought the horizon closer; it seemed as though +it might be reached by one stroke of the wing; and I could not tell +which of the two states filled me with a heavier languor. My work was +almost finished--at least, so I told myself, as an encouragement to be +idle. The time I did not spend at the farm, I spent with Marceline. +Together we went out into the garden; we walked slowly, she languidly +hanging on my arm; the bench where we went to sit looked over the +valley, which the evening gradually filled with light. She had a tender +way of leaning against my shoulder; and we would stay so till evening, +motionless, speechless, letting the day sink and melt within us.... In +what a cloak of silence our love had already learnt to wrap itself! +For already Marceline’s love was stronger than words--for sometimes +her love was almost an anguish to me. As a breath of wind sometimes +ripples the surface of a tranquil pool, the slightest emotion was +visible in her face; she was listening now to the new life mysteriously +quivering within her, and I leant over her as over deep transparent +waters where, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but +love. Ah! if this was still happiness, I know I did my best to hold +it, as one tries--in vain--to hold the water that slips between one’s +joined hands; but already I felt, close beside my happiness, something +not happiness, something indeed that coloured my love, but with the +colours of autumn. + +Autumn was passing. Every morning the grass was wetter, till it no +longer dried in the fringe of the woods on the shady side of the +valley; at the first streak of dawn, it was white. The ducks on the +waters of the moat fluttered and flapped their wings; they grew +fiercely agitated; sometimes they rose together, calling loudly, and +flew in a noisy flight right round La Morinière. One morning we missed +them. Bocage had shut them up. Charles told me that every autumn at +migration time they had to be shut up in this way. And a few days later +the weather changed. One evening, suddenly, there came a great blast, +a breath from the sea, stormy, steady, bringing with it cold and rain, +carrying off the birds of passage. Marceline’s condition, the business +of settling into a new apartment, the work entailed by my lectures, +would in any case have soon called us back to town. The bad weather, +which began early, drove us away at once. + +It is true that the farm affairs were to bring me back in November. I +was greatly vexed to hear of Bocage’s plans for the winter; he told +me he wished to send Charles back to his model farm where, so he +declared, he had still a great deal to learn; I talked to him long, +used all the arguments I could think of, but I could not make him +budge; at the outside, he consented to shorten Charles’s training by +a trifle, so as to allow him to come back a little sooner. Bocage did +not conceal from me that the running of the two farms would be a matter +of no small difficulty; but he had in view, so he said, two highly +trustworthy peasants whom he intended to employ; they would be partly +farmers, partly tenants, partly labourers; the thing was too unusual in +these parts for him to hope much good would come of it; but, he said, +it was my own wish. This conversation took place towards the end of +October. In the first days of November, we moved to Paris. + + + + + ii + + +It was in S... Street, near Passy, that we took up our residence. The +apartment, which had been found for us by one of Marceline’s brothers, +and which we had visited when we had last passed through Paris, was +much bigger than the one my father had left me, and Marceline was a +little uneasy, not only at the increased rent, but at all the other +expenses we should certainly be led into. I countered all her fears by +pretending I had a horror of anything temporary; I forced myself to +believe in this feeling and deliberately exaggerated it. Certainly, the +cost of furnishing and arranging the apartment would exceed our income +for the present year, but our fortune, which was already large, was +sure to increase still further; I counted on my lectures for this, on +the publication of my book and, such was my folly, on the profits from +my new farms. In consequence, I stopped short at no expense, telling +myself at each new one that here was another tie and thinking also +that by these means I should suppress every vagabond inclination I +felt--or feared I might feel--within me. + +For the first few days, our time was taken up from morning to night +by shopping and other business of the sort; and though eventually, +Marceline’s brother very obligingly offered to do as much as he +could for us, it was not long before Marceline felt thoroughly tired +out. Then, as soon as we were settled in, instead of resting as she +should have done, she felt obliged to receive visitors; they flocked +to see us now because we had been absent from Paris during the +first days of our marriage, and Marceline, who had become unused to +society, was incapable of getting rid of them quickly or of shutting +her doors altogether. When I came home in the evening, I found her +exhausted, and, though her fatigue, which seemed only natural, caused +me no anxiety, I did my best to lessen it; often receiving visits in +her stead, which was very little to my taste, and sometimes paying +them--which was still less so. + +I have never been a brilliant talker; the frivolity, the wit, the +spirit of fashionable drawing-rooms, were things in which I could +take no pleasure; yet in old days I had frequented some of these +salons--but how long ago that seemed! What had happened since then? +In other people’s company, I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at +once bored and boring.... By a singular piece of ill-luck, you, whom +I considered my only real friends, were absent from Paris and not +expected back for long. Should I have been able to speak to you more +openly? Would you have perhaps understood me better than I did myself? +But what did I know at that time of all that was growing up within me, +of all I am now telling you about? The future seemed to me absolutely +assured and I had never thought myself more master of it. + +And even if I had been more perspicacious, what help against myself +should I have found in Hubert, Didier or Maurice, or in all the +others whom you know and judge as I do? I very soon discovered, +alas, the impossibility of their understanding me. In our very first +conversations, I found myself forced to impersonate a false character, +to resemble the man they imagined I still was; and for convenience’ +sake, I pretended to have the thoughts and tastes with which they +credited me. One cannot both be sincere and seem so. + +I was rather more willing to renew my acquaintance with the people of +my own profession--archaeologists and philologists--but I found very +little more pleasure and no more emotion in talking to them than in +consulting a good dictionary. I hoped at first to find a rather more +direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poets; but if +they really had such a comprehension, it must be confessed they did +not show it; most of them, I thought, did not really live--contented +themselves with appearing to live, and were on the verge of considering +life merely as a vexatious hindrance to writing. I could not blame +them for it; and I do not affirm that the mistake was not mine.... As +to that, what did I mean by ‘living’? That is exactly what I wanted to +find out. One and another talked cleverly of the different events of +life--never of what is at the back of them. + +As for the few philosophers whose business it should have been to +instruct me, I had long known, what to expect of them; whether +mathematicians or neo-Kantians, they kept as far away as possible +from the disturbing reality and had no more concern for it than the +algebraist has for the existence of the quantities he measures. + +When I got back to Marceline, I did not conceal from her how tedious I +found all these acquaintances. + +“They are all alike,” I said to her. “When I talk to one, I feel as if +I were talking to the whole lot.” + +“But, my dear,” said Marceline, “you can’t expect each of them to be +different from all the others.” + +“The greater their likeness to each other, the more unlike they are to +me.” + +And then I went on with a sigh, “Not one of them has managed to be +ill. They are alive--they seem to be alive, and yet not to know they +are alive. For that matter, since I have been in their company, I have +ceased to be alive myself. Today, amongst other days, what have I done? +I had to leave you about nine o’clock. I had just a bare moment for a +little reading before I went out; it was the only satisfactory moment +of the day. Your brother was waiting for me at the solicitor’s, and +after the solicitor’s, he insisted on sticking to me; I had to see the +upholsterer with him; he was really a nuisance at the cabinet-maker’s +and I only got rid of him at Gaston’s; I had lunch in the neighbourhood +with Philip and then I met Louis at a café and went with him to +Theodore’s absurd lecture, and paid him compliments when it was over; +then, in order to get out of his invitation for Sunday, I had to go +with him to Arthur’s; then to a water-colour exhibition with Arthur; +then left cards on Albertine and Julie.... I came in thoroughly +exhausted and found you as tired as myself, after visits from Adeline, +Marthe, Jeanne and Sophie.... And now, in the evening, as I look back +on my day, it seems to me so vain and so empty, that I long to have it +back and live it over again hour by hour--and the thought of it makes +me inclined to weep.” + +And yet I should not have been able to say what I meant by ‘living,’ +nor whether the very simple secret of my trouble was not that I had +acquired a taste for a more spacious, breezier life, one that was +less hemmed in, less regardful of others; the secret seemed to me +much more mysterious than that; it was the secret, I thought, of one +who has known death; for I moved a stranger among ordinary people, +like a man who has risen from the grave. And at first I merely felt +rather painfully out of my element; but soon I became aware of a very +different feeling. I had known no pride, I repeat, when the publication +of my Essay had brought me such praise. Was it pride now? Perhaps; but +at any rate there was no trace of vanity mixed with it. It was rather, +for the first time, the consciousness of my own worth. What separated +me--distinguished me--from other people was crucial; what no-one said, +what no-one could say but myself, _that_ it was my task to say. + +My lectures began soon after; the subject was congenial and I poured +into the first of them all my newly born passion. Speaking of the later +Latin civilization, I depicted artistic culture as welling up in a +whole people, like a secretion, which is at first a sign of plethora, +of a superabundance of health, but which afterwards stiffens, hardens, +forbids the perfect contact of the mind with nature, hides under the +persistent appearance of life a diminution of life, turns into an +outside sheath, in which the cramped mind languishes and pines, in +which at last it dies. Finally, pushing my thought to its logical +conclusion, I showed Culture, born of life, as the destroyer of life. + +The historians blamed a tendency, as they phrased it, to too rapid +generalization. Other people blamed my method; and those who +complimented me were those who understood me least. + + * * * * * + +It was at the end of my lecture that I came across Ménalque again for +the first time. I had never seen much of him, and shortly before my +marriage, he had started on one of those distant voyages of discovery +which sometimes kept him from us for over a year. In the old days, I +had never much liked him; he seemed proud and he took no interest in my +existence. I was therefore astonished to see him at my first lecture. +His very insolence, which had at first held me aloof from him, pleased +me, and I thought the smile he gave me all the more charming because +I knew he smiled rarely. Recently, an absurd--a shameful--lawsuit had +caused a scandal and given the newspapers a convenient occasion to +drag him through the mud; those whom he had offended by his disdain +and superiority seized this pretext to revenge themselves; and what +irritated them most was that he appeared not to care. + +“One must allow other people to be right,” he used to say when he was +insulted, “it consoles them for not being anything else.” + +But ‘good society’ was indignant and people who, as they say, ‘respect +themselves,’ thought it their duty to turn their backs on him, and +so pay him back his contempt. This was an extra encouragement to me; +feeling myself attracted by a secret influence, I went up to him and +embraced him before everyone. + +When they saw to whom I was talking, the last intruders withdrew; I was +left alone with Ménalque. + +After the irritating criticisms and inept compliments I had been +listening to, his few words on the subject of my lecture were very +soothing. + +“You are burning what you used to adore,” said he. “Very good. It is a +little late in the day, but never mind, the fire is all the fiercer. I +am not sure whether I altogether understand you. You make me curious. I +don’t much care about talking, but I should like to talk to you. Come +and dine with me tonight.” + +“Dear Ménalque,” I answered, “you seem to forget that I am married.” + +“Yes,” he answered, “quite true. The frank cordiality with which you +were not afraid to greet me made me think you might be free.” + +I was afraid I might have wounded him; still more so of seeming weak, +and I told him I would join him after dinner. + + * * * * * + +Ménalque never did more than pass through Paris on his way to somewhere +else; he always stayed in a hotel. On this occasion he had had several +rooms fitted up for him as a private apartment; he had his own +servants, took his meals apart, lived apart; stuffs and hangings of +great value which he had brought back from Nepal had been hung on the +walls and thrown over the furniture, whose commonplace ugliness was an +offence to him. He was dirtying them out, he said, before presenting +them to a museum. My haste to rejoin him had been so great, that I +found him still at table when I came in; as I excused myself for +disturbing his meal: + +“But I have no intention of letting you disturb it,” he said, “and I +expect you to let me finish it. If you had come to dinner, I should +have given you some Chiraz--the wine that Hafiz celebrated--but it is +too late now; one must only drink it fasting; but you’ll take some +liqueur, won’t you?” + +I accepted, thinking he would take some too, and when only one glass +was brought in, I expressed astonishment. + +“Forgive me,” he said, “but I hardly ever drink such things.” + +“Are you afraid of getting drunk?” + +“Oh!” replied he, “on the contrary! But I consider sobriety a more +powerful intoxication--in which I keep my lucidity.” + +“And you pour the drink out for others?” + +He smiled. + +“I cannot,” said he, “expect everyone to have my virtues. It’s good +enough to meet with my vices....” + +“You smoke, at any rate?” + +“No, not even that. Smoking is an impersonal, negative, too easily +achieved kind of drunkenness; what I want from drunkenness is an +enhancement not a diminution of life. But that’s enough. Do you know +where I have just come from? Biskra. I heard you had been staying +there, and I thought I would like to follow up your tracks. What +could the blindfolded scholar, the learned bookworm have come to do +at Biskra? It’s my habit to be discreet only about things that are +confided to me; for things that I find out myself, I’ll admit that I +have an unbounded curiosity. So I searched, poked about, questioned +wherever I could. My indiscretion was rewarded, since it has made me +wish to meet you again; since instead of the learned man of habit you +seemed to be in the old days, I know now that you are ... it’s for you +to tell me what.” + +I felt myself blushing. + +“What did you find out about me, Ménalque?” + +“Do you want to know? But there’s no need to be alarmed! You know your +friends and mine well enough to be sure there is no-one I can talk to +about you. You saw how well your lecture was understood?” + +“But,” said I, a little impatiently, “there’s nothing yet to prove that +I can talk to you better than to them. Come on then! What is it you +found out about me?” + +“First of all, that you had been ill.” + +“But there’s nothing in that to ...” + +“Oh, yes! That in itself is very important. Then I was told you liked +going out alone, without a book (that’s what started me wondering), or, +when you were not alone, you preferred the company of children to that +of your wife ... Don’t blush like that, or I shan’t go on.” + +“Go on without looking at me.” + +“One of the children--his name was Moktir, if I remember right--(I +have scarcely ever seen a handsomer boy, and never a greater little +swindler) seemed to have a good deal to say about you. I enticed him--I +bribed him to confide in me ... not an easy thing to do, as you know, +for I think it was only another lie, when he said he was not lying that +time.... Tell me whether what he told me about you is true.” + +In the meantime, Ménalque had got up and taken a little box out of a +drawer. + +“Are these scissors yours?” he said, opening the box and taking out +a shapeless, twisted, rusty object, which, however, I had little +difficulty in recognizing as the pair of scissors Moktir had purloined. + +“Yes, they are; they were my wife’s scissors.” + +“He pretends he took them when your head was turned away one day he +was alone in the room with you; but that’s not the point; he pretends +that at the moment he was hiding them in his burnous, he saw you were +watching him in the glass and caught the reflection of your eyes +looking at him. You saw the theft and said nothing! Moktir was very +much astonished at this silence--and so was I.” + +“And I am too at what you have just said. What! Do you mean to say he +knew I had caught him at it?” + +“It isn’t that that matters; you were trying to be more cunning than +he; it’s a game at which children like that will always get the better +of us. You thought you had him, and in reality, it was he who had +you.... But that’s not what matters. I should like an explanation of +your silence.” + +“I should like one myself.” + +Some time passed without a word from either of us. Ménalque, who was +pacing up and down the room, lighted a cigarette absent-mindedly and +then immediately threw it away. + +“The fact is,” said he, “there’s a ‘sense,’ as people say, ‘a sense’ +which seems to be lacking in you, my dear Michel.” + +“The ‘moral sense,’” said I, forcing myself to smile. + +“Oh, no! simply the sense of property.” + +“You don’t seem to have much of it yourself.” + +“I have so little of it that, as you see, nothing in this place is +mine; not even--or rather, especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have +a horror of rest; possessions encourage one to indulge in it, and +there’s nothing like security for making one fall asleep; I like life +well enough to want to live it awake, and so, in the very midst of my +riches, I maintain the sensation of a state of precariousness, by which +means I aggravate, or at any rate intensify my life. I will not say I +like danger, but I like life to be hazardous, and I want it to demand +at every moment the whole of my courage, my happiness, my health....” + +“Then what do you blame me for?” I interrupted. + +“Oh, how little you understand me, my dear Michel; for once that I am +foolish enough to try and make a profession of faith!... If I care +little for the approbation or disapprobation of men, Michel, it is not +in order to approve or disapprove in my turn; those words have very +little sense for me. I spoke of myself too much just now.... I was +carried away by thinking you understood me.... I simply meant to say +that, for a person who has not got the sense of property, you seem to +possess a great deal. Isn’t that rather serious?” + +“And what is this great deal I possess?” + +“Nothing, if you take it in that way.... But are you not beginning a +course of lectures? Have you not an estate in Normandy? Have you not +just settled yourself--and luxuriously too--in an apartment at Passy? +You are married? Are you not expecting a child?” + +“Well!” said I, impatiently, “it merely proves that I have succeeded in +making my life more dangerous than yours.” + +“Yes, merely,” repeated Ménalque ironically; then, turning abruptly, he +put out his hand: + +“Well, good-bye now; I don’t think any more talk tonight would be of +much use. But I shall see you again soon.” + +Some time went by before I saw him again. + +Fresh work, fresh preoccupations took up my time; an Italian scholar +brought to my notice some new documents he had discovered which were +important for my lectures and which I had to study at some length. +The feeling that my first lesson had been misunderstood stimulated me +to shed a different and more powerful light on the succeeding ones; +I was thus led to enounce as a doctrine what I had at first only +tentatively suggested as an ingenious hypothesis. How many assertions +owe their strength to the lucky circumstance that as suggestions they +were not understood? In my own case, I admit I cannot distinguish what +proportion of obstinacy may have mingled with my natural propensity +for asserting my opinions. The new things I had to say seemed to me +especially urgent because of the difficulty of saying them, and above +all of getting them understood. + +But, alas, how pale words become when compared with deeds! Was not +Ménalque’s life, Ménalque’s slightest action a thousand times more +eloquent than my lectures? How well I understood now that the great +philosophers of antiquity, whose teaching was almost wholly moral, +worked by example as much--even more than by precept! + +The next time I saw Ménalque was in my own house, nearly three weeks +after our first meeting. We had been giving a crowded evening party, +and he came in almost at the end of it. In order to avoid being +continually disturbed, Marceline and I had settled to be at home on +Thursdays; in this way it was easier to keep our doors shut for the +rest of the week. Every Thursday evening then, those people who called +themselves our friends used to come and see us; our rooms were large +enough to hold a good many guests and they used to stay late. I think +that what attracted them most was Marceline’s exquisite charm and the +pleasure of talking to each other, for as to myself, from the very +beginning of these parties, there was nothing I could find either to +say or to listen to, and it was with difficulty I concealed my boredom. + +That evening, I was wandering aimlessly from the drawing-room to the +smoking-room, from the antechamber to the library, caught by a sentence +here and there, observing very little but looking about me more or less +vaguely. + +Antoine, Etienne and Godefroi were discussing the last vote in the +Chamber, as they lolled on my wife’s elegant armchairs. Hubert and +Louis were carelessly turning over some fine etchings from my father’s +collection, entirely regardless of how they were creasing them. In the +smoking-room, Mathias, the better to listen to Leonard, had put his +red-hot cigar down on a rosewood table. A glass of curaçoa had been +spilt on the carpet. Albert was sprawling impudently on a sofa, with +his muddy boots dirtying the cover. And the very dust of the air one +breathed came from the horrible wear and tear of material objects.... +A frantic desire seized me to send all my guests packing. Furniture, +stuffs, prints, lost all their value for me at the first stain; things +stained were things touched by disease, with the mark of death on them. +I wanted to save them, to lock them up in a cupboard for my own use +alone. How lucky Ménalque is, thought I, to have no possessions! The +reason I puffer is that I want to preserve things. But after all, what +does it really matter to me?... + +There was a small, less brilliantly lighted drawing-room, partitioned +off by a transparent glass door, and there Marceline was receiving +some of her more intimate friends; she was half reclining on a pile +of cushions and looked so fearfully pale and tired that I suddenly +took fright and vowed that this reception should be the last. It was +already late. I was beginning to take out my watch, when I suddenly +felt Moktir’s little scissors in my pocket. + +“Why did the little wretch steal them,” thought I, “if it was only to +spoil and destroy them at once?” + +At that moment someone touched me on the shoulder; I turned quickly; it +was Ménalque. + +He was almost the only person in evening dress. He had just arrived. He +asked me to present him to my wife; I should certainly not have done so +of my own accord. Ménalque was distinguished looking--almost handsome; +his face was like a pirate’s, barred by an enormous drooping moustache, +already quite grey; his eyes shone with a cold flame that denoted +courage and decision rather than kindness. He was no sooner standing +before Marceline than I knew she had taken a dislike to him. After he +had exchanged a few banal words of courtesy with her, I carried him off +to the smoking-room. + +I had heard that very morning of the new mission on which the +Colonial Office was sending him; the newspapers, as they recalled his +adventurous career, seemed to have forgotten their recent base insults +and now could find no words fine enough to praise him with. Each was +more eager than the other to extol and exaggerate his services to his +country, to the whole of humanity, as if he never undertook anything +but with a humanitarian purpose; and they quoted examples of his +abnegation, his devotion, his courage, as if such encomiums might be +considered a reward. + +I began to congratulate him, but he interrupted me at the first words. + +“What! You too, my dear Michel! But _you_ didn’t begin by insulting +me,” said he. “Leave all that nonsense to the papers. They seem to +be surprised that a man with a certain reputation can still have any +virtues at all. They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot +apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be +natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I +ought to do it.” + +“That may lead far,” I said. + +“Indeed I hope so,” answered Ménalque. “If only the people we know +could persuade themselves of the truth of this! But most of them +believe that it is only by constraint they can get any good out of +themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It +is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each +of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn’t even choose the +pattern he imitates; he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for +him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in +man. But people don’t dare to--they don’t dare to turn the page. Laws +of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself +alone--that is what they suffer from--and so they don’t find themselves +at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia--the most odious cowardice I +call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything--but they +don’t want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is +different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part +that makes our special value--and that is the very thing people try to +suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.” + +I let Ménalque speak on; he was saying exactly what I myself had said +the month before to Marceline; I ought to have approved him. For what +reason, through what moral cowardice did I interrupt him and say, in +imitation of Marceline, the very sentence word for word with which she +had interrupted me then? + +“But, my dear Ménalque, you can’t expect each one of them to be +different from all the others.”... + +Ménalque stopped speaking abruptly, looked at me oddly and then, as +at that very moment Eusèbe came up to take leave, he unceremoniously +turned his back on me and went off to talk about some trifle or other +to Hector. + +The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I realized not only that +they were stupid, but worse still, that they might have given Ménalque +the impression that I thought his remarks had been pointed at me. It +was late; my guests were leaving. When the drawing-room was nearly +empty, Ménalque came back to me. + +“I can’t leave you like this,” he said. “No doubt, I misunderstood what +you said. Let me at least hope so.” + +“No,” I answered, “you did not misunderstand it ... but it was +senseless, and I had no sooner said it than I knew it was foolish. I +was sorry, and especially sorry to think it would make you place me +among the very people you were attacking and who, I assure you, are as +odious to me as to you. I hate people of principle.” + +“Yes,” answered Ménalque, laughing, “there is nothing more detestable +in the world. It is impossible to expect any sort of sincerity from +them; for they never do anything but what their principles have +decreed they should do; or if they do, they think they have done wrong. +At the mere suspicion you might be one of them, the words froze on my +lips. I felt by my distress what a great affection I have for you; I +hoped I was mistaken--not in my affection, but in the conclusion I had +drawn.” + +“Yes, really; your conclusion was wrong.” + +“Oh! it was, I am sure,” said he, suddenly taking my hand. “Listen a +moment; I shall soon be going away, but I should like to see you again. +My expedition this time will be a longer one and more risky than any +of the others; I don’t know when I shall come back. I must start in a +fortnight’s time; no-one knows I am leaving so soon; I tell you so in +confidence. I start at daybreak. The night before leaving is always a +night of terrible heart-ache for me. Give me a proof that you are not a +man of principle; may I count on it that you will spend that last night +with me?” + +“But we shall see each other again before then,” I said, a little +astonished. + +“No; during the next fortnight I shall be at home to no-one. I shall +not even be in Paris. Tomorrow I leave for Buda-Pesth; in six days’ +time I must be in Rome. I have friends dotted here and there to whom I +must say good-bye before leaving. There is one expecting me in Madrid.” + +“Very well then, I will pass your night of vigil with you.” + +“And we will have some Chiraz to drink,” said Ménalque. + + * * * * * + +A few days after this party, Marceline began to feel less well. I have +already said she was easily tired; but she did not complain, and as +I attributed her fatigue to her condition, I thought it natural and +felt no particular anxiety. A rather foolish--or rather ignorant--old +doctor had at first been over reassuring. Some fresh symptoms, +however, accompanied by fever, decided me to send for Dr. Tr... who +was considered at that time the cleverest specialist in Paris for +such cases. He expressed astonishment that I had not called him in +sooner and prescribed a strict régime which she ought to have begun +to follow some time ago. Marceline had been very courageous, but not +very prudent, and had overtired herself. She was told she must now lie +up till the date of her confinement, which was expected about the end +of January. Feeling no doubt a little anxious and more unwell than +she would admit, Marceline consented very meekly to the most tiresome +orders. She had a moment’s rebellion, however, when Tr... prescribed +quinine in such heavy doses that she knew it might endanger the child. +For three days she obstinately refused to take it; then as her fever +increased she was obliged to submit to that too; but this time it was +with deep sadness and as if she were mournfully giving up all hope of +the future; the resolution which had hitherto sustained her seemed +broken down by a kind of religious resignation, and her condition grew +suddenly worse in the days that followed. + +I tended her with greater care than ever, did my best to reassure +her and repeated the very words Dr. Tr... had used, that he could +see nothing very serious in her case; but her extreme anxiety ended +by alarming me too. Alas! our happiness was already resting on the +dangerous foundations of hope--and hope of what an uncertain future! +I, who at first had taken pleasure only in the past, may have one day +felt, thought I, the sudden and intoxicating sweetness of a fugitive +moment, but the future disenchants the present even more than the +present then disenchanted the past; and since our night at Sorrento my +whole love, my whole life have been projected into the future. + + * * * * * + +In the meantime the evening I had promised Ménalque came round; and +notwithstanding the reluctance I felt at abandoning Marceline for a +whole winter’s night, I got her, as best I could, to acknowledge the +solemnity of the occasion and the gravity of my promise. Marceline was +a little better that evening and yet I was anxious; a nurse took my +place beside her. But as soon as I was in the street, my anxiety gained +ground; I shook it off, struggled against it, was angry with myself +for not being better able to get rid of it; thus I gradually reached a +state of excessive tension, of singular excitement, both very unlike +and very like the painful uneasiness from which it sprang, but liker +still to happiness. It was late and I strode along rapidly; the snow +began to fall in thick flakes; I was glad to be breathing a keener air, +to be struggling with the cold; I was happy with the wind, the night, +the snow against me; I rejoiced in my strength. + +Ménalque had heard me coming and came out on to the landing to welcome +me. He was waiting for me not without impatience. His face was pale +and he looked overwrought. He helped me off with my overcoat and forced +me to change my wet boots for some soft Persian slippers. Sweets and +cakes were standing on a small table by the fire. There were two +lamps, but the light in the room came chiefly from the fire on the +hearth. Ménalque immediately enquired after Marceline; for the sake of +simplicity I answered that she was very well. + +“Are you expecting your child soon?” he went on. + +“In a month.” + +Ménalque bent down towards the fire as if he wished to hide his face. +He remained silent. He remained silent so long that at last I felt +embarrassed, and as I myself could think of nothing to say either, I +got up, took a few steps, and then went up to him and put my hand on +his shoulder. Presently, as though he were pursuing his thoughts aloud: + +“One must choose,” he murmured. “The chief thing is to know what one +wants....” + +“Don’t you want to go?” I asked, in some uncertainty as to what he +meant. + +“It looks like it.” + +“Are you hesitating then?” + +“What is the use? You have a wife and child, so stay at home.... Of +the thousand forms of life, each of us can know but one. It is madness +to envy other people’s happiness; one would not know what to do with +it. Happiness won’t come to one ready-made; it has to be made to +measure. I am going away tomorrow; yes, I know; I have tried to cut +out my happiness to fit me ... keep your calm happiness of hearth and +home....” + +“_I_ cut out my happiness to fit me too,” I said, “but I have grown; I +am not at ease in my happiness now; sometimes I think it is strangling +me....” + +“Pooh! you’ll get accustomed to it!” said Ménalque. Then he planted +himself in front of me and looked deep into my eyes; as I found nothing +to say, he smiled rather sadly. + +“One imagines one possesses and in reality one is possessed,” he went +on. “Pour yourself out a glass of Chiraz, dear Michel; you won’t +often taste it; and eat some of those rose-coloured sweets which the +Persians take with it. I shall drink with you this evening, forget that +I am leaving tomorrow, and talk as if the night were long.... Do you +know the reason why poetry and philosophy are nothing but dead letter +now-a-days? It is because they have severed themselves from life. In +Greece, ideas went hand in hand with life; so that the artist’s life +itself was already a poetic realization, the philosopher’s life a +putting into action of his philosophy; in this way, as both philosophy +and poetry took part in life, instead of remaining unacquainted with +each other, philosophy provided food for poetry, and poetry gave +expression to philosophy--and the result was admirably persuasive. +Now-a-days beauty no longer acts; action no longer desires to be +beautiful; and wisdom works in a sphere apart.” + +“But _you_ live your wisdom,” said I; “why do you not write your +memoirs? Or simply,” I added, seeing him smile, “recollections of your +travels?” + +“Because I do not want to recollect,” he replied. “I should be afraid +of preventing the future and of allowing the past to encroach on me. It +is out of the utter forgetfulness of yesterday that I create every new +hour’s freshness. It is never enough for me to have been happy. I do +not believe in dead things and cannot distinguish between being no more +and never having been.” + +These words were too far in advance of my thoughts not to end by +irritating me; I should have liked to hang back, to stop him; but I +tried in vain to contradict, and besides I was more irritated with +myself than with Ménalque. I remained silent therefore, while he, +sometimes pacing up and down like a wild beast in a cage, sometimes +stooping over the fire, kept up a long and moody silence, or again +broke abruptly into words: + +“If only our paltry minds,” he said, “were able to embalm our memories! +But memories keep badly. The most delicate fade and shrivel; the most +voluptuous decay; the most delicious are the most dangerous in the end. +The things one repents of were at first delicious.” + +Again a long silence; and then he went on: + +“Regrets, remorse, repentance, are past joys seen from behind. I don’t +like looking backwards and I leave my past behind me as the bird leaves +his shade to fly away. Oh, Michel! every joy is always awaiting us, but +it must always be the only one; it insists on finding the bed empty +and demands from us a widower’s welcome. Oh, Michel! every joy is like +the manna of the desert which corrupts from one day to the next; it is +like the fountain of Ameles, whose waters, says Plato, could never be +kept in any vase.... Let every moment carry away with it all that it +brought.” + +Ménalque went on speaking for long; I cannot repeat all his words; +but many of them were imprinted on my mind the more deeply, the more +anxious I was to forget them; not that they taught me much that was +new--but they suddenly laid bare my thoughts--thoughts I had shrouded +in so many coverings that I had almost hoped to smother them. + +And so the night of watching passed. + +The next morning, after I had seen Ménalque into the train that carried +him away, as I was walking home on my way back to Marceline, I felt +horribly sad and full of hatred of his cynical joy; I wanted to believe +it was a sham; I tried to deny it. I was angry with myself for not +having found anything to say to him in reply; for having said words +that might make him doubt my happiness, my love. And I clung to my +doubtful happiness--my “calm happiness,” as Ménalque had called it; +I could not, it was true, banish uneasiness from it, but I assured +myself that uneasiness was the very food of love. I imagined the future +and saw my child smiling at me; for his sake I would strengthen my +character, I would build it up anew.... Yes, I walked with a confident +step. + +Alas! when I got in that morning, I was struck by a sight of +unaccustomed disorder. The nurse met me and told me guardedly that my +wife had been seized in the night with bad sickness and pains, though +she did not think the term of her confinement was at hand; feeling very +ill, she had sent for the doctor; he had arrived post-haste in the +night and had not yet left the patient; then, seeing me change colour, +I suppose, she tried to reassure me, said that things were going much +better now, that ... I rushed to Marceline’s room. + +The room was darkened and at first I could make out nothing but the +doctor, who signed to me to be quiet; then I saw a figure in the dark I +did not know. Anxiously, noiselessly, I drew near the bed. Marceline’s +eyes were shut; she was so terribly pale that at first I thought she +was dead; but she turned her head towards me, though without opening +her eyes. The unknown figure was in a dark corner of the room, +arranging, hiding, various objects; I saw shining instruments, cotton +wool; I saw, I thought I saw a cloth stained with blood.... I felt I +was tottering. I almost fell into the doctor’s arms; he held me up. I +understood; I was afraid of understanding.... + +“The child?” I asked anxiously. + +He shrugged his shoulders sadly. I lost all sense of what I was doing +and flung myself sobbing against the bed. Oh! how suddenly the +future had come upon me! The ground had given way abruptly beneath my +feet; there was nothing there but an empty hole into which I stumbled +headlong. + + * * * * * + +My recollections here are lost in dark confusion. Marceline, however, +seemed at first to recover fairly quickly. The Christmas holidays +allowed me a little respite and I was able to spend nearly the +whole day with her. I read or wrote in her room, or read aloud to +her quietly. I never went out without bringing her back flowers. I +remembered the tenderness with which she had nursed me when I was ill, +and surrounded her with so much love that sometimes she smiled as +though it made her happy. Not a word was exchanged about the melancholy +accident that had shattered our hopes.... + +Then phlebitis declared itself; and when that got better, a clot +of blood suddenly set her hovering between life and death. It was +night time; I remember leaning over her, feeling my heart stop and +go on again with hers. How many nights I watched by her bedside, my +eyes obstinately fixed on her, hoping by the strength of my love to +instil some of my own life into hers. I no longer thought much about +happiness; my single melancholy pleasure was sometimes seeing Marceline +smile. + +My lectures had begun again. How did I find strength to prepare them, +to deliver them?... My memory of this time is blurred; I have forgotten +how the weeks passed. And yet there was a little incident I must tell +you about. + +It was one morning, a little after the embolism; I was sitting with +Marceline; she seemed a little better, but she was still ordered to +keep absolutely motionless; she was not allowed to move even her arms. +I bent over her to give her some drink and after she had drunk, and as +I was still stooping over her, she begged me, in a voice made weaker +still by her emotion, to open a little box, which she showed me by +the direction of her glance; it was close by, on the table; I opened +it and found it full of ribbons, bits of lace, little ornaments of no +value.... I wondered what she wanted. I brought the box to her bedside +and took out every object one by one. Was it this? That?... No, not +yet; and I felt her getting agitated “Oh, Marceline, is it this little +rosary you want?” + +She tried to smile. + +“Are you afraid then that I shan’t nurse you properly?” + +“Oh, my dear,” she murmured. And I remembered our conversation at +Biskra, and her timid reproaches when she heard me refuse what she +called “the help of God.” I went on a little roughly: + +“_I_ got well alone all right.” + +“I prayed for you so much,” she answered. + +She said the words tenderly, sadly. There was something anxious and +imploring in her look.... I took the rosary and slipped it into her +weak hand as it lay on the sheet beside her. A tearful, love-laden +glance rewarded me--but I could not answer it; I waited another moment +or two, feeling awkward and embarrassed; finally not knowing what to +do, “Goodbye,” I said, and left the room, with a feeling of hostility, +and as though I had been turned out of it. + + * * * * * + +Meanwhile the horrible clot had brought on serious trouble; after +her heart had escaped, it attacked her lungs, brought on congestion, +impeded her breathing, made it short and laborious. I thought she would +never get well. Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to +leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing +that had been spoilt. + + + + + iii + + +The weather was now becoming warmer. As soon as my lectures were over, +I took Marceline to La Morinière, the doctor having told me that all +immediate danger was past and that nothing would be more likely to +complete her cure than a change to purer air. I myself was in great +need of rest. The nights I had spent nursing her, almost entirely by +myself, the prolonged anxiety, and especially the kind of physical +sympathy which had made me at the time of her attack feel the fearful +throbbing of her heart in my own breast--all this had exhausted me as +much as if I myself had been ill. + +I should have preferred to take Marceline to the mountains, but she +expressed the strongest desire to return to Normandy, declared that no +climate could be better for her and reminded me that I must not neglect +the two farms of which I had rather rashly assumed the charge. She +insisted that as I had made myself responsible for them, it was my +business to make them succeed. No sooner had we arrived therefore, than +she urged me to visit the estate immediately.... I am not sure that her +friendly insistence did not go with a good deal of abnegation; she was +afraid perhaps, that as she still required assistance, I might think +myself bound to stay with her and not feel as free as I might wish +to.... Marceline was better however; the colour had returned to her +cheeks, and nothing gave me greater comfort than to feel her smile was +less sad; I was able to leave her without uneasiness. + +I went then to the farms. The first hay was being made. The scented +air, heavy with pollen, at first went to my head like a strong +drink. I felt that I had hardly breathed at all since last year, or +breathed nothing but dust, so drowned was I in the honied sweetness +of the atmosphere. The bank, on which I seated myself in a kind of +intoxication, overlooked the house; I saw its blue roofs; I saw the +still waters of the moat; all around were fields, some newly mown, +others rich with grass; further on, the curve of the brook; further +again, the woods where last autumn I had so often gone riding with +Charles. A sound of singing, which I had been listening to for the last +moment or two, drew near; it was the haymakers going home, with a fork +or a rake on their shoulders. I recognized nearly all of them, and the +unpleasant recollection came to me that I was not there as an enchanted +traveller, but as their master. I went up to them, smiled, spoke to +them, enquired after each of them in turn. Bocage that morning had +already given me a report of the crops; he had indeed kept me regularly +informed by letter of everything that went on in the farms. They were +not doing so badly--much better than Bocage had led me to expect. But +my arrival was being awaited in order to take some important decisions, +and during the next few days I devoted myself to farm business to the +best of my ability--not taking much pleasure in it, but hoping by this +semblance of work to give some stability to my disintegrated life. + +As soon as Marceline was well enough to receive visitors, a few +friends came to stay with us. They were affectionate, quiet people and +Marceline liked their society, but it had the effect of making me leave +the house with more pleasure than usual. I preferred the society of +the farm hands; I felt that with them there was more to be learnt--not +that I questioned them--no; and I hardly know how to express the kind +of rapture I felt when I was with them; I seemed to feel things with +their senses rather than with my own--and while I knew what our friends +were going to say before they opened their mouths, the mere sight of +these poor fellows filled me with perpetual amazement. + +If at first they appeared as condescending in their answers as I tried +to avoid being in my questions, they soon became more tolerant of +my presence. I came into closer contact with them. Not content with +following them at their work, I wanted to see them at their play; their +obtuse thoughts had little interest for me, but I shared their meals, +listened to their jokes, fondly watched their pleasures. By a kind of +sympathy similar to that which had made my heart throb at the throbs +of Marceline’s, their alien sensations immediately awoke the echo of +my own--no vague echo, but a sharp and precise one. I felt my own arms +grow stiff with the mower’s stiffness; I was weary with his weariness; +the mouthful of cider he drank quenched my thirst; I felt it slip down +his throat; one day, one of them, while sharpening his scythe, cut his +thumb badly; his pain hurt me to the bone. + +And it seemed to me that it was no longer with my sight alone that I +became aware of the landscape, but that I _felt_ it as well by some +sense of touch, which my curious power of sympathy inimitably enlarged. + +Bocage’s presence was now a nuisance to me; when he came I had to play +the master, which I had no longer the least inclination to do. I still +gave orders--I had to--still superintended the labourers; but I no +longer went on horseback, for fear of looking down on them from too +great a height. But notwithstanding the precautions I took to accustom +them to my presence and prevent them from feeling ill at ease in it, +in theirs I was still filled as before with an evil curiosity. There +was a mystery about the existence of each one of them. I always felt +that a part of their lives was concealed. What did they do when I +was not there? I refused to believe that they had not better ways of +amusing themselves. And I credited each of them with a secret which I +pertinaciously tried to discover. I went about prowling, following, +spying. For preference I fastened on the rudest and roughest among +them, as if I expected to find a guiding light shine from their +darkness. + +One in particular attracted me; he was fairly good-looking, tall, not +in the least stupid, but wholly guided by instinct, never acting but +on the spur of the moment, blown hither and thither by every passing +impulse. He did not belong to the place, and had been taken on by +some chance. An excellent worker for two days--and on the third dead +drunk. One night I crept furtively down to the barn to see him; he lay +sprawling in a heavy, drunken sleep. I stayed looking at him a long +time.... One fine day, he went as he had come. How much I should have +liked to know along what roads!... I learnt that same evening that +Bocage had dismissed him. + +I was furious with Bocage and sent for him. + +“It seems you have dismissed Pierre,” I began. “Will you kindly tell me +why?” + +He was a little taken aback by my anger, though I tried to moderate it. + +“You didn’t want to keep a dirty drunkard, did you, Sir? A fellow who +led all our best men into mischief!” + +“It’s my business to know the men I want to keep, not yours.” + +“A regular waster! No-one knew where he came from. It gave the place +a bad name.... If he had set fire to the barn one night, you mightn’t +have been so pleased, Sir.” + +“That’s my affair, I tell you. It’s my farm, isn’t it? I mean to manage +it in my own way. In future, be so good as to give me your reasons +before dismissing people.” + +Bocage, as I have told you, had known me since my childhood. However +wounding my tone, he was too much attached to me to be much offended. +He did not, in fact, take me sufficiently seriously. The Normandy +peasant is too often disinclined to believe anything of which he cannot +fathom the motive--that is to say, anything not prompted by interest. +Bocage simply considered this quarrel as a piece of absurdity. + +I did not want, however, to break off the conversation on a note +of blame; feeling I had been too sharp with him, I cast about for +something pleasant to add. + +“Isn’t your son Charles coming back soon?” I ended by asking after a +moment’s silence. + +“I thought you had quite forgotten him, Sir; you seemed to trouble your +head about him so little,” said Bocage, still rather hurt. + +“Forget him, Bocage! How could I, after all we did together last year? +I’m counting on him in fact to help me with the farms....” + +“You’re very good, Sir. Charles is coming home in a week’s time.” + +“Well, I’m glad to hear it, Bocage,” and I dismissed him. + +Bocage was not far wrong; I had not of course forgotten Charles, but +I now cared very little about him. How can I explain that after such +vehement camaraderie, my feeling for him now should be so flat and +spiritless? The fact is my occupations and tastes were no longer the +same as last year. My two farms, I must admit, did not interest me so +much as the people employed on them; and if I wanted to foregather with +them, Charles would be very much in the way. He was far too reasonable +and too respectable. So notwithstanding the vivid and delightful +memories I kept of him, I looked forward with some apprehension to his +return. + +He returned. Oh, how right I had been to be apprehensive--and how +right Ménalque was to repudiate all memories! There entered the room +in Charles’s place an absurd individual with a bowler hat. Heavens! +how changed he was! Embarrassed and constrained though I felt, I tried +not to respond too frigidly to the joy he showed at seeing me again; +but even his joy was disagreeable to me; it was awkward, and I thought +insincere. I received him in the drawing-room, and as it was late +and dark, I could hardly distinguish his face; but when the lamp was +brought in, I saw with disgust he had let his whiskers grow. + +The conversation that evening was more or less dreary; then, as I knew +he would be continually at the farms, I avoided going down to them +for almost a week, and fell back on my studies and the society of my +guests. And as soon as I began to go out again, I was absorbed by a +totally new occupation. + +Wood-cutters had invaded the woods. Every year a part of the timber on +the estate was sold; the woods were marked off into twelve equal lots +which were cut in rotation and every year furnished, besides a few +fully grown trees, a certain amount of twelve-year-old copse wood for +faggots. + +This work was done in the winter, and the wood-cutters were obliged by +contract to have the ground cleared before spring. But old Heurtevent, +the timber-merchant who directed operations, was so slack that +sometimes spring came upon the copses while the wood was still lying on +the ground; fresh, delicate shoots could then be seen forcing their way +upwards through the dead branches, and when at last the wood-cutters +cleared the ground, it was not without destroying many of the young +saplings. + +That year old Heurtevent’s remissness was even greater than we had +looked for. In the absence of any other bidder, I had been obliged to +let him have the copse wood exceedingly cheap; so that being assured in +any case of a handsome profit, he took very little pains to dispose of +the timber which had cost him so little. And from week to week he put +off the work with various excuses--a lack of labourers, or bad weather, +or a sick horse, or an urgent call for work elsewhere, etc. etc.--with +the result that as late as the middle of summer, none of it had been +removed. + +The year before, this would have irritated me to the highest degree; +this year it left me fairly calm; I saw well enough the damage +Heurtevent was causing me; but the devastated woods were beautiful; it +gave me pleasure to wander in them, tracking and watching the game, +startling the vipers, and sometimes sitting by the hour together on one +of the fallen trunks which still seemed to be living on, with green +shoots springing from its wounds. + +Then suddenly, about the middle of the last fortnight in August, +Heurtevent made up his mind to send his men. Six of them came with +orders to finish the work in ten days. The part of the woods that had +been cut was that bordering on La Valterie; it was arranged that the +wood-cutters should have their food brought them from the farm, in +order to expedite the work. The labourer chosen for this task was a +curious young rascal called Bute; he had just come back from a term of +military service which had utterly demoralized him; but physically, he +was in admirable condition; he was one of the farm hands I most enjoyed +talking to. By this arrangement I was able to see him without going +down to the farm. For it was just at that time that I began going out +again. For a few days I hardly left the woods except for my meals at +La Morinière, and I was very often late for them. I pretended I had to +superintend the work, though in reality, I only went to see the workers. + +Sometimes two of Heurtevent’s sons joined the batch of six men; one was +about twenty, the other about fifteen years old, long-limbed, wiry, +hard-featured young fellows. They had a foreign look about them, and +I learnt later that their mother was actually a Spanish woman. I was +astonished at first that she should have travelled to such distant +parts, but Heurtevent had been a rolling stone in his youth and had, +it appears, married her in Spain. For this reason he was rather looked +askance at in the neighbourhood. The first time I saw the younger +of the sons was, I remember, on a rainy day; he was alone, sitting +on a very high cart, on the top of a great pile of faggots. He was +lolling back among the branches, and singing, or rather shouting, a +kind of extraordinary song, which was like nothing I had ever heard +in our parts. The cart-horses knew the road and followed it without +any guidance from him. I cannot tell you the effect this song had on +me; for I had never heard its like except in Africa.... The boy looked +excited--drunk; when I passed, he did not even glance at me. The next +day, I learnt he was a son of Heurtevent’s. It was in order to see him, +or rather in the hopes of seeing him, that I spent so much time in the +copse. The men by now had very nearly finished clearing it. The young +Heurtevents came only three times. They seemed proud and I could not +get a word out of them. + +Bute, on the other hand, liked talking; I soon managed to make him +understand that there was nothing it was not safe to say to me. Upon +this he let himself go and soon stripped the countryside of every rag +of respectability. I lapped up his mysterious secrets with avidity. +They surpassed my expectation and yet at the same time failed to +satisfy me. Was this what was really grumbling below the surface of +appearances or was it merely another kind of hypocrisy? No matter! +I questioned Bute as I had questioned the uncouth chronicles of the +Goths. Fumes of the abyss rose darkly from his stories and as I +breathed them uneasily and fearfully, my head began to turn. He told me +to begin with that Heurtevent had relations with his daughter. I was +afraid if I showed the slightest disapprobation I should put an end to +his confidences; curiosity spurred me on. + +“And the mother? Doesn’t she object?” + +“The mother! She has been dead full twelve years.... He used to beat +her.” + +“How many are there in the family?” + +“Five children. You’ve seen the eldest son and the youngest. There’s +another of sixteen who’s delicate and wants to turn priest. And then +the eldest daughter has already had two children by the father.” + +And little by little, I learnt a good deal more, so that do what I +would, my imagination began to circle round the lurid attractions of +Heurtevent’s house like a blow-fly round a putrid piece of meat. One +night the eldest son had tried to rape a young servant girl, and as +she struggled, the father had intervened to help his son and had held +her with his huge hands; while the second son went piously on with his +prayers on the floor above, and the youngest looked on at the drama as +an amused spectator. As far as the rape is concerned, I imagine it was +not very difficult, for Bute went on to say that not long after, the +servant girl, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing, had tried +to seduce the young priest. + +“And hasn’t she succeeded?” I asked. + +“He hasn’t given in so far, but he’s a bit wobbly,” answered Bute. + +“Didn’t you say there was another daughter?” + +“Yes; she picks up as many fellows as she can lay hold of. And all for +nothing too. When she’s set on it, she wouldn’t mind paying herself. +But you mustn’t carry on at her father’s. He would give you what for. +He says you can do as you like in your own house, but don’t let other +people come nosing round! Pierre the farm hand you sent away, got a +nasty knock on the head one night, though he held his tongue about it. +Since then, she has her chaps in the home woods.” + +“Have you had a go yourself?” I asked with an encouraging look. + +He dropped his eyes for form’s sake and said, chuckling: + +“Every now and then.” Then, raising his eyes quickly, “So has old +Bocage’s boy,” he added. + +“What boy is that?” + +“Alcide, the one who sleeps in the farm. Surely you know him, Sir?” + +I was simply astounded to hear Bocage had another son. + +“It is true,” went on Bute, “that last year he was still at his +uncle’s. But it’s very odd you’ve never met him in the woods, Sir; he +poaches in them nearly every night.” + +Bute said these last words in a lower voice. He looked at me and I saw +it was essential to smile. Then Bute seemed satisfied and went on: + +“Good Lord, Sir, of course you know your woods are poached. They’re so +big it doesn’t do much harm to anyone.” + +I looked so far from being displeased that Bute was emboldened to go +on, and I think now he was glad to do Bocage an ill turn. He pointed +out one or two hollows in the ground in which Alcide had set his +snares, and then showed me a place in the hedge where I should be +almost certain of catching him. It was a boundary hedge and ran along +the top of a bank; there was a narrow opening in it through which +Alcide was in the habit of coming about six o’clock in the evening. At +this place Bute and I amused ourselves by stretching a copper wire +which we very neatly concealed. Then, having made me swear not to give +him away, Bute departed. + +For three evenings I waited in vain. I began to think Bute had played +me a trick.... At last on the fourth evening, I heard a light step +approaching. My heart began to beat and I had a sudden revelation of +the horrible allurement of the poacher’s life.... The snare was so well +set that Alcide walked straight into it. I saw him suddenly fall flat, +with his ankle caught in the wire. He tried to save himself, fell down +again, and began struggling like a trapped rabbit. But I had hold of +him in an instant. He was a wicked looking youngster, with green eyes, +tow-coloured hair and a ferrety expression. He started kicking; then, +as I held him so tight that he was unable to move, he tried to bite; +and when that failed, he spat out the most extraordinary volley of +abuse I have ever heard. In the end I could resist no longer and burst +out laughing. At this, he stopped abruptly, looked at me, and went on +in a lower tone: + +“You brute, you! You’ve hurt me something horrible.” + +“Show me where.” + +He slipped his stocking down over his boot and showed me his ankle, +where a slight pink mark was just visible. + +“It’s nothing at all.” + +He smiled a little; then, “I shall tell Father,” he said in a cunning +voice, “that it’s _you_ who set snares.” + +“Why, good Heavens, it’s one of your own!” + +“Sure enough, you never set that one.” + +“Why do you say that?” + +“You would never know how to set them as well as that. Just show me how +you did it.” + +“Give me a lesson....” + +That evening I came in very late for dinner; no-one knew where I was +and Marceline had been anxious. But I did not tell her I had set six +snares and so far from scolding Alcide had given him ten sous. + +The next evening when I went with him to visit the snares, much to +my entertainment I found two rabbits caught in them. Of course I let +him take them. The shooting season had not yet begun. I wondered what +became of the game, as it was impossible to dispose of it openly +without the risk of getting into trouble. Alcide refused to tell me. +Finally, I learnt, through Bute again, that Heurtevent was the receiver +and his youngest son the go-between between Alcide and him. Was this +going to give me an opportunity of a deeper insight into the secrets of +that mysterious, unapproachable family? With what passionate eagerness +I set about poaching! + +I met Alcide every evening; we caught great numbers of rabbits and once +even a young roe-deer which still showed some faint signs of life; I +cannot recall without horror the delight Alcide took in killing it. We +put the deer in a place of safety from which young Heurtevent could +take it away at night. + +From that moment I no longer cared for going out in the day, when +there was so little to attract me in the emptied woods. I even tried +to work--melancholy, purposeless work, for I had resigned my temporary +lectureship--thankless, dreary work, from which I would be suddenly +distracted by the slightest song, the slightest sound coming from the +country outside; in every passing cry I heard an invitation. How often +I have leapt from my reading and run to the window to see--nothing pass +by! How often I have hurried out of doors.... The only attention I +found possible was that of my five senses. + +But when night fell--and it was the season now when night falls +early--that was our hour. I had never before guessed its beauty; and I +stole out of doors as a thief steals in. I had trained my eyes to be +like a night-bird’s. I wondered to see the grass taller and more easily +stirred, the trees denser. The dark gave everything fresh dimensions, +made the ground look distant, lent every surface the quality of depth. +The smoothest path looked dangerous. Everywhere one felt the awakening +of creatures that lead a life of darkness. + +“Where does your father think you are now?” + +“In the stables looking after the cattle.” + +Alcide slept there, I knew, close to the pigeons and the hens; as he +was locked in at night, he used to creep out by a hole in the roof. +There still hung about his clothes a steamy odour of fowls. + +Then, as soon as the game had been collected, he would disappear +abruptly into the dark, as if down a trap-door--without a sign of +farewell, without a word of tomorrow’s rendezvous. I knew that before +returning to the farm, where the dogs recognized him and kept silent, +he used to meet the Heurtevent boy and deliver his goods. But where? +Try as I might, I was never able to find out; threats, bribes, +cunning--all failed; the Heurtevents remained inaccessible. I cannot +say where my folly showed more triumphantly. Was it in this pursuit of +a trivial mystery, which constantly eluded me--or had I even invented +the mystery by the mere force of my curiosity? But what did Alcide do +when he left me? Did he really sleep at the farm? Or did he simply +make the farmer think so? My compromising myself was utterly useless; +I merely succeeded in lessening his respect without increasing his +confidence--and it both infuriated and distressed me. + +After he had disappeared, I suddenly felt myself horribly alone; I +went back across the fields, through the dew-drenched grass, my head +reeling with darkness, with lawlessness, with anarchy; dripping, muddy, +covered with leaves. In the distance there shone from the sleeping +house, guiding me like a peaceful beacon, the lamp I had left alight +in my study, where Marceline thought I was working, or the lamp of +Marceline’s own bedroom. I had persuaded her that I should not have +been able to sleep without first going out in this way. It was true; I +had taken a loathing to my bed. How greatly I should have preferred the +barn! + + * * * * * + +Game was plentiful that year; rabbits, hares, pheasants succeeded each +other. After three evenings, Bute, seeing that everything was going so +well, took it into his head to join us. + +On the sixth of our poaching expeditions, we found only two of the +twelve snares we had set; somebody had made a clearance during the +daytime. Bute asked me for five francs to buy some more copper wire, as +ordinary wire was no use. + +The next morning I had the gratification of seeing my ten snares at +Bocage’s house and I was obliged to compliment him on his zeal. What +annoyed me most was that the year before I had foolishly offered fifty +centimes for every snare that was brought in; I had therefore to give +Bocage five francs. In the meantime Bute had bought some more wire with +the five francs I had given him. Four days later, the same story! Ten +fresh snares were brought in; another five francs to Bute; another five +francs to Bocage. And as I congratulated him: + +“It’s not me you must congratulate, Sir, it’s Alcide,” he said. + +“No, really?” said I. Too much astonishment might have given me away. I +controlled myself. + +“Yes,” went on Bocage; “it can’t be helped, Sir, I’m growing old. The +lad looks around the woods instead of me; he knows them very well; he +can tell better than I can where to look out for the snares.” “I’m +sure he can, Bocage.” + +“So out of the fifty centimes you give me, I let him have twenty-five.” + +“He certainly deserves it. What! Twenty snares in five days! Excellent +work! The poachers had better be careful. I wager they’ll lie low now.” + +“Oh, no, Sir. The more one takes, the more one finds. Game is very dear +this year, and for the few pence it costs them ...” + +I had been so completely diddled that I felt almost inclined to suspect +old Bocage himself of having a hand in the game. And what specially +vexed me in the business was not so much Alcide’s threefold traffic as +his deceitfulness. And then what did he and Bute do with the money? I +didn’t know. I should never know anything about creatures like them. +They would always lie; they would go on deceiving me for the sake of +deceiving. That evening I gave Bute ten francs instead of five and +warned him it was for the last time, that if the snares were taken +again, so much the worse, but I should not go on. + +The next day up came Bocage; he looked embarrassed--which at once made +me feel even more so. What had happened? Bocage told me that Bute had +been out all night and had only come in at cockcrow. The fellow was as +drunk as a fiddler; at Bocage’s first words, he had grossly insulted +him and then flown at him and struck him.... + +“And I’ve come to ask, Sir,” said Bocage, “whether you authorize me,” +(he accented the word a little) “whether you _authorize_ me to dismiss +him?” + +“I’ll think about it, Bocage. I’m extremely sorry he should have been +disrespectful. I’ll see ... Let me reflect a little and come again in +two hours’ time.” + +Bocage went out. + +To keep Bute was to be painfully lacking in consideration for Bocage; +to dismiss Bute was to ask for trouble. Well! there was nothing to be +done about it. Let come what come might! I had only myself to blame.... +And as soon as Bocage came back: + +“You can tell Bute we have no further use for him here,” I said. + +Then I waited. What would Bocage do? What would Bute say? It was +not till evening that I heard rumours of scandal. Bute had spoken. +I guessed it at first from the shrieks I heard coming from Bocage’s +house; it was Alcide being beaten. Bocage would soon be coming up to +see me; here he was; I heard his old footstep approaching and my heart +beat even faster than when I was poaching. It was an intolerable +moment. I should have to trot out a lot of fine sentiments. I should be +obliged to take him seriously. What could I invent to explain things? +How badly I should act! I would have given anything to throw up my +part! Bocage came in. I understood absolutely nothing of what he was +saying. It was absurd; I had to make him begin all over again. In the +end, this is what I made out. He thought that Bute was the only guilty +party; the inconceivable truth had escaped him--that I could have given +Bute ten francs! What for? He was too much of a Normandy peasant to +admit the possibility of such a thing. Bute must have stolen those ten +francs. Not a doubt of it! When he said I had given them to him, he +was merely adding a lie to a theft; it was a mere invention to explain +away his theft; Bocage wasn’t the man to believe a trumped up story +like that.... There was no more talk of poaching. If Bocage had beaten +Alcide, it was only because the boy had spent the night out. + +So then, I am saved! In Bocage’s eyes, at any rate, everything is all +right. What a fool that fellow Bute is! This evening, I must say, I +don’t feel much inclined to go out poaching. + +I thought that everything was all over, when an hour later in came +Charles. He looked far from amiable; the bare sight of him was enough; +he struck me as even more tedious than his father. To think that last +year!... + +“Well, Charles! I haven’t seen you for ever so long!” + +“If you had wanted to see me, Sir, you had only to come down to the +farm. You won’t find _me_ gallivanting about the woods at nights.” + +“Oh, your father has told you ...” + +“My father has told me nothing, because my father knows nothing. What’s +the use of telling him at his age that his master is making a fool of +him?” + +“Take care, Charles, you’re going too far....” + +“Oh, all right! You’re the master--you can do as you please.” + +“Charles, you know perfectly well I’ve made a fool of no-one, and if I +do as I please, it’s because it does no-one any harm but myself.” + +He shrugged his shoulders slightly. + +“How can one defend your interests when you attack them yourself? You +can’t protect both the keeper and the poacher at the same time.” + +“Why not?” + +“Because ... Oh, you’re a bit too clever for me, Sir. I just don’t like +to see my master joining up with rogues and undoing the work that other +people do for him.” + +Charles spoke with more and more confidence as he went on. He held +himself almost with dignity. I noticed he had cut off his whiskers. For +that matter, what he said was sensible enough, and as I kept silence +(what could I have said?), he went on: + +“You taught me last year, Sir, that one has duties to one’s +possessions. One ought to take one’s duties seriously and not play with +them ... or else one doesn’t deserve to have possessions.” + +Silence. + +“Is that all you have to say?” + +“For this evening, yes, Sir; but if you ask me some other time, Sir, I +may perhaps tell you that my father and I are leaving La Morinière.” + +And he went out, bowing very low. I hardly took time to reflect: + +“Charles!... He’s right, by Jove!... Oh, if that’s what’s meant by +possessions ... Charles!...” And I ran after him, caught him up in +the dark and called out hastily, as if in a hurry to clinch my sudden +determination: + +“You can tell your father that I am putting La Morinière up for sale.” + +Charles bowed again gravely and went away without a word. + +The whole thing is absurd! Absurd! + + * * * * * + +That evening, Marceline was not able to come down to dinner and sent +word to say she was unwell. Full of anxiety, I hurried up to her room. +She reassured me quickly. “It’s nothing but a cold,” she said. She +thought she had caught a chill. + +“Couldn’t you have put on something warmer?” + +“I put my shawl on the first moment I felt a shiver.” + +“You should have put it on before you felt a shiver, not after.” + +She looked at me and tried to smile.... Oh, perhaps it was because the +day had begun so badly that I felt so anguished. If she had said aloud, +“Do you really care whether I live or not?” I should not have heard the +words more clearly. + +“Oh,” I thought, “without a doubt, everything in my life is falling to +pieces. Nothing that my hand grasps, can my hand hold.” + +I sprang to Marceline and covered her pale face with kisses. At that, +she broke down and fell sobbing on my shoulder.... + +“Oh, Marceline! Marceline! Let us go away. Anywhere else but here I +shall love you as I did at Sorrento.... You have thought me changed, +perhaps? But anywhere else, you will feel that there is nothing altered +in our love.” + +I had not cured her unhappiness, but how eagerly she clutched at +hope!... + +It was not late in the year, but the weather was cold and damp, and the +last rosebuds were rotting unopened on the bushes. Our guests had long +since left us. Marceline was not too unwell to see to the shutting up +of the house, and five days later we left. + + + + + THIRD PART + + + + + i + + +And so I tried, yet once more, to close my hand over my love. But what +did I want with peaceful happiness? What Marceline gave me, what she +stood for in my eyes, was like rest to a man who is not tired. But as +I felt she was weary and needed my love, I showered it upon her and +pretended that the need was mine. I felt her sufferings unbearably; it +was to cure her that I loved her. + +O days and nights of passionate tender care! As others stimulate their +faith by exaggerating the observance of its practices, so I fanned my +love. And Marceline, as I tell you, began forthwith to recover hope. In +her there was still so much youth; in me, she thought, so much promise. + +We fled from Paris, as though for another honeymoon. But on the very +first day of the journey, she got much worse and we had to break it at +Neuchâtel. + +I loved this lake, which has nothing Alpine about it, with its +grey-green shores, and its waters mingling for a long space, +marsh-like, with the land, and filtering through the rushes. I found +a very comfortable hotel, with a room looking on to the lake for +Marceline. I stayed with her the whole day. + +She was so far from well the next day, that I sent for a doctor from +Lausanne. He wanted to know, quite uselessly, whether there were any +other cases of tuberculosis in my wife’s family. I said there were, +though, as a matter of fact, I knew of none; but I disliked saying that +I myself had been almost given up on account of it, and that Marceline +had never been ill before she nursed me. I put the whole thing down to +the score of the clot, though the doctor declared that this was merely +a contributory cause and that the trouble dated from further back. He +strongly recommended the air of the high Alps, which he assured me +would cure her; and as just what I myself wished was to spend the whole +winter in the Engadine, we started as soon as she was able to bear the +journey. + +I remember every sensation of that journey as vividly as if they +had been events. The weather was limpid and cold; we had taken our +warmest furs with us.... At Coire, the incessant din in the hotel +almost entirely prevented us from sleeping. I myself should have put +up cheerfully with a sleepless night and not found it tiring; but +Marceline ... And it was not so much the noise that irritated me as the +fact that she was not able to sleep in spite of it. Her need of sleep +was so great! The next morning we started before daybreak; we had taken +places in the coupé of the Coire diligence; the relays were so arranged +that St. Moritz could be reached in one day. + +Tiefenkasten, the Julier, Samaden ... I remember it all, hour by hour; +I remember the strange, inclement feeling of the air; the sound of +the horses’ bells; my hunger; the midday halt at the inn; the raw egg +that I broke into my soup; the brown bread and the sour wine that +was so cold. This coarse fare did not suit Marceline; she could eat +hardly anything but a few dry biscuits, which I had had the forethought +to bring with me. I can recall the closing in of the daylight; the +swiftness with which the shade climbs up the wooded mountain side; +then another halt. And now the air becomes keener, rawer. When the +coach stops, we plunge into the heart of darkness, into a silence that +is limpid--limpid--there is no other word for it. The quality, the +sonority of the slightest sound acquire perfection and fullness in +that strange transparency. Another start--in the night, this time. +Marceline coughs ... Oh, will she never have done coughing? I think of +the Sousse diligence; I feel as if I had coughed better than that. She +makes too great an effort.... How weak and changed she looks! In the +shadow there, I should hardly recognize her. How drawn her features +are! Used those two black holes of her nostrils always to be so +visible?... Oh, how horribly she is coughing! Is that the best she can +do? I have a horror of sympathy. It is the lurking place of every kind +of contagion; one ought only to sympathize with the strong. Oh! she +seems really at the last gasp. Shall we never arrive? What is she doing +now? She takes her handkerchief out, puts it to her lips, turns aside +... Horror! Is she going to spit blood too? I snatch the handkerchief +roughly from her hand, and in the half light of the lantern look at +it.... Nothing. But my anxiety has been too visible. Marceline attempts +a melancholy smile and murmurs: + +“No; not yet.” + +At last we arrived. It was time, for she could hardly stand. I did not +like the rooms that had been prepared for us; we spent the night in +them, however, and changed them next day. Nothing seemed fine enough +for me nor too expensive. And as the winter season had not yet begun, +the vast hotel was almost empty and I was able to choose. I took two +spacious rooms, bright, and simply furnished; there was a large sitting +room adjoining, with a big bow-window, from which could be seen the +hideous blue lake and a crude mountain, whose name I have forgotten +and whose slopes were either too wooded or too bare. We had our meals +served separately. The rooms were extravagantly dear. But what do I +care? thought I. It is true I no longer have my lectures, but I am +selling La Morinière. And then we shall see.... Besides, what need +have I of money? What need have I of all this?... I am strong now.... +A complete change of fortune, I think, must be as instructive as a +complete change of health.... Marceline, of course, requires luxury; +she is weak ... oh, for her sake, I will spend so much, so much that +... And I felt at one and the same time a horror of luxury, and a +craving for it. I bathed, I steeped my sensuality in it, and then again +it was a vagabond joy that I longed for. + +In the meanwhile Marceline was getting better and my constant care was +having good results. As she had a difficulty in eating, I ordered the +most dainty and delicious food to stimulate her appetite; we drank the +best wines. The foreign brands we experimented on every day amused me +so much that I persuaded myself she had a great fancy for them; sharp +Rhine wines, almost syrupy Tokays, that filled me with their heady +virtue. I remember too an extraordinary Barba-grisca, of which only one +bottle was left, so that I never knew whether the others would have had +the same bizarre taste. + +Every day we went for a drive, first in a carriage, and later on, when +the snow had fallen, in a sledge, wrapped up to our eyes in fur. I came +in with glowing cheeks, hungry and then sleepy. I had not, however, +given up all idea of work, and every day I found an hour or so in which +to meditate on the things I felt it was my duty to say. There was no +question of history now; I had long since ceased to take any interest +in historical studies except as a means of psychological investigation. +I have told you how I had been attracted afresh to the past when I +thought I could see in it a disquieting resemblance to the present; I +had actually dared to think that by questioning the dead I should be +able to extort from them some secret information about life.... But +now the youthful Athalaric himself might have risen from the grave to +speak to me, I should not have listened to him. How could the ancient +past have answered my present question?--What can man do more? that is +what seemed to me important to know. Is what man has hitherto said all +that he _could_ say? Is there nothing in himself he has overlooked? Can +he do nothing but repeat himself?... And every day there grew stronger +in me a confused consciousness of untouched treasures somewhere lying +covered up, hidden, smothered, by culture and decency and morality. + +It seemed to me then that I had been born to make discoveries of a kind +hitherto undreamed of; and I grew strangely and passionately eager +in the pursuit of my dark and mysterious researches, for the sake of +which, I well knew, the searcher must abjure and repudiate culture and +decency and morality. + +I soon went to the length of sympathizing only with the wildest +outbreaks of conduct in other people, and of regretting that such +manifestations were subject to any control whatever. I came very +near thinking that honesty was merely the result of restrictions or +conventions or fear. I should have liked to cherish it as something +rare and difficult; but our manners had turned it into a form of +mutual advantage and commonplace contract. In Switzerland, it is just +a part of one’s comfort. I understood that Marceline required it; but +I did not conceal from her the new trend of my thoughts; as early as +Neuchâtel, when she was praising the honesty that is so visible in the +faces of the people and the walls of the houses. + +“I prefer my own,” I retorted. “I have a horror of honest folk. I may +have nothing to fear from them, but I have nothing to learn either. And +besides, they have nothing to say.... Honest Swiss nation! What does +their health do for them? They have neither crimes, nor history, nor +literature, nor arts ... a hardy rose-tree, without thorns or flowers.” + +That I should be bored by this honest country was a foregone +conclusion, but at the end of two months, my boredom became a kind of +frenzy and my one thought was to fly. + +We were in the middle of January. Marceline was better--much better; +the continual low fever that was undermining her had disappeared; a +brighter colour had returned to her cheeks; she once more enjoyed +walking, though not for long, and was not continually tired as she +used to be. I did not have much difficulty in persuading her that the +bracing air had done her all the good that could be expected and that +the best thing for her now would be to go down into Italy, where the +kindly warmth of spring would completely restore her ... and above all, +I had not much difficulty in persuading myself--so utterly sick was I +of those mountain heights. + +And yet now, when in my idleness the detested past once more asserts +its strength, those are the very memories that haunt me. Swift sledge +drives; joy of the dry and stinging air, spattering of the snow, +appetite; walks in the baffling fog, curious sonority of voices, abrupt +appearance of objects; readings in the snug warmth of the sitting-room, +view of the landscape through the windows, view of the icy landscape; +tragic waiting for the snow; vanishing of the outer world, soft +brooding of one’s thoughts.... Oh, to skate with her alone once more on +the little lake, lying lost among the larches, pure and peaceful--oh, +to come home with her once more at night!... + +That descent into Italy gave me all the dizzy sensations of a fall. The +weather was fine. As we dropped into a warmer and denser air, the rigid +trees of the highlands--the larches and symmetrical fir-trees--gave +way to the softness, the grace and ease of a luxuriant vegetation. I +felt I was leaving abstraction for life, and though it was winter, I +imagined perfumes in every breath. Oh, for long--too long, our only +smiles had been for shadows! My abstemiousness had gone to my head and +I was drunk with thirst as others are with wine. My thrift of life +had been admirable; on the threshold of this land of tolerance and +promise, all my appetites broke out with sudden vehemence. I was full +to bursting with an immense reserve of love; sometimes it surged from +the obscure depths of my senses up into my head and turned my thoughts +to shamelessness. + +This illusion of spring did not last long. The sudden change of +altitude may have deceived me for a moment, but as soon as we left the +sheltered shores of the lakes, Bellagio and Como, where we lingered +for a day or two, we came into winter and rain. We now suffered from +the cold which we had borne well enough in the Engadine; it was not +dry and exhilarating here as it had been in the mountains, but damp +and heavy, and Marceline began to cough again. In order to escape it, +we pursued our way still further south; we left Milan for Florence, +Florence for Rome, Rome for Naples, which in the winter rain is really +the most lugubrious town I know. I dragged along in unspeakable ennui. +We went back to Rome in the hopes of finding, if not warmth, at least a +semblance of comfort. We rented an apartment on the Pincio, much too +vast, but marvellously situated. Already, at Florence, disgusted with +hotels, we had rented a lovely villa on the Viale dei Colli, for three +months. Anybody else would have wished to spend a lifetime in it.... We +stayed barely three weeks. And yet at every fresh stage, I made a point +of arranging everything as if we were never going to leave.... Some +irresistible demon goaded me on.... And add to this that we travelled +with no fewer than eight trunks. There was one I never opened during +the whole journey, entirely filled with books. + +I did not allow Marceline to have any say in our expenses nor attempt +to moderate them. I knew of course that they were excessive and that +they could not last. I could no longer count on any money from La +Morinière. It had ceased to bring in anything and Bocage wrote that he +could not find a purchaser. But all thoughts of the future only ended +in making me spend the more. What need should I have of so much money, +once I was alone, thought I; and sick at heart, I watched Marceline’s +frail life as it ebbed away more quickly still than my fortune. + +Although she depended on me for all the arrangements, these perpetual +and hurried moves tired her; but what tired her still more (I do not +hesitate now to acknowledge it) was the fear of what was in my mind. + +“I understand,” she said to me one day, “I quite understand your +doctrine--for now it has become a doctrine. A fine one perhaps,” and +then she added sadly, dropping her voice, “but it does away with the +weak.” + +“And so it should!” was the answer that burst from me in spite of +myself. + +In my heart then, I felt the sensitive creature shiver and shrivel +up at the shock of my dreadful words.... Oh, perhaps you will think +I did not love Marceline. I swear I loved her passionately. She +had never been--I had never thought her--so beautiful. Illness had +refined--etherealized her features. I hardly ever left her, surrounded +her with every care, watched over her every moment of the night and +day. If she slept lightly, I trained myself to sleep more lightly +still; I watched her as she fell asleep and I was the first to wake. +When sometimes I left her for an hour to take a solitary walk in the +country or streets, a kind of loving anxiety, a fear of her feeling the +time long, made me hurry back to her; and sometimes I rebelled against +this obsession, called upon my will to help me against it, said to +myself, “Are you worth no more than this, you make-believe great man?” +And I forced myself to prolong my absence; but then I would come in, my +arms laden with flowers, early garden flowers, or hothouse blooms.... +Yes, I say; I cared for her tenderly. But how can I express this--that +in proportion as I respected myself less, I revered her more? And who +shall say how many passions and how many hostile thoughts may live +together in the mind of man?... + +The bad weather had long since ceased; the season was advancing; +and suddenly the almond trees were in bloom. The day was the first +of March. I went down in the morning to the Piazza di Spagna. The +peasants had stripped the campagna of its white branches, and the +flower-sellers’ baskets were full of almond blossom. I was so enchanted +that I bought a whole grove of it. Three men carried it for me. I +went home with all this flowering spring. The branches caught in +the doorways and petals snowed upon the carpet. I put the blossoms +everywhere, filled all the vases, and, while Marceline was absent from +the drawing-room for a moment, made it a bower of whiteness. I was +already picturing her delight, when I heard her step...! She opened the +door. Oh, what was wrong with her?... She tottered.... She burst out +sobbing. + +“What is it, my poor Marceline?”... + +I ran up to her, showered the tenderest caresses upon her. Then as if +to excuse her tears: + +“The flowers smell too strong,” she said.... + +And it was a faint, faint, exquisite scent of honey.... Without a +word, I seized the innocent fragile branches, broke them to pieces, +carried them out of the room and flung them away, my temples throbbing +with exasperation, my nerves ajar. Oh, if she finds this little bit of +spring too much for her!... + +I have often thought over those tears of hers and I believe now that +she already felt herself condemned and was crying for the loss of other +springs.... I think too that there are strong joys for the strong and +weak joys for the weak who would be hurt by strong joys. She was sated +by the merest trifle of pleasure; one shade brighter and it was more +than she could bear. What she called happiness, I called rest, and I +was unwilling, unable to rest. + +Four days later we left again for Sorrento. I was disappointed not to +find it warmer. The whole country seemed shivering with cold. The wind, +which never ceased blowing, was a severe trial to Marceline. Our plan +was to go to the same hotel we had been to at the time of our first +journey, and we were given the same room.... But how astonished we +were to see that the grey sky had robbed the whole scene of its magic, +and that the place we had thought so charming when we had walked in it +as lovers was nothing but a dreary hotel garden! + +We settled then to go by sea to Palermo, whose climate we had heard +praised; we returned therefore to Naples, where we were to take +the boat and where we stayed on for a few days longer. But at any +rate, I was not dull at Naples. Naples is alive--a town that is not +overshadowed by the past. + +I spent nearly every moment of the day with Marceline. At night she was +tired and went to bed early; I watched by her until she went to sleep +and sometimes went to bed myself; then, when her more regular breathing +told me she was asleep, I got up again noiselessly, dressed in the +dark, slipped out of doors like a thief. + +Out of doors! Oh, I could have shouted with joy! What was I bent on? +I cannot tell. The sky that had been dark all day, was cleared of its +clouds; the moon was nearly full. I walked at random, without object, +without desire, without constraint. I looked at everything with a fresh +eye; I listened to every noise with an attentive ear; I breathed the +dampness of the night; I touched things with my hand; I went prowling. + +The last night we spent at Naples I stayed out later than usual on +this vagabond debauch. When I came in, I found Marceline in tears. She +had woken up suddenly, she said, and been frightened at not feeling +me there. I calmed her, explained my absence as well as I could, and +resolved not to leave her again. But the first night we spent at +Palermo was too much for me--I went out. The orange trees were in +flower; the slightest breath of air came laden with their scent.... + +We only stayed five days at Palermo; then, by a long detour, we made +our way to Taormina, which we both wanted to see again. I think I have +told you that the village is perched high on the mountain side; the +station is on the sea-shore. The carriage that drove us to the hotel +took me back again to the station for me to get our trunks. I stood up +in the carriage in order to talk to the driver. He was a Sicilian boy +from Catania, as beautiful as a line of Theocritus, full of colour and +odour and savour, like a fruit. + +“Com’è bella, la Signora!” said he, in a charming voice, as he watched +Marceline go into the hotel. + +“Anche tu sei bello, ragazzo,” I replied; then, as I was standing so +near him, I could not resist, but drew him to me and kissed him. He +allowed it laughingly. + +“I Francesi sono tutti amanti,” he said. + +“Ma non tutti gli Italiani amati,” I answered, laughing too.... I +looked for him on the following days, but never succeeded in finding +him. + +We left Taormina for Syracuse. Step by step we went over the ground we +had covered in our first journey, making our way back to the starting +point of our love. And as during our first journey I had week by week +progressed towards recovery, so week by week as we went southwards, +Marceline’s health grew worse. + +By what aberration, what obstinate blindness, what deliberate folly +did I persuade myself, did I above all try and persuade her that what +she wanted was still more light and warmth? Why did I remind her of +my convalescence at Biskra?... And yet the air had become warmer; the +climate of Palermo is mild and pleasant; Marceline liked it. There, +perhaps, she might have ... But had I the power to choose what I should +determine--to decide what I should desire? The state of the sea and +the irregular boat-service delayed us a week at Syracuse. All the time +I did not spend with Marceline I spent in the old port. O little port +of Syracuse! smells of sour wine, muddy alleys, stinking booths, +where dockers and vagabonds and wine-bibbing sailors loaf and jostle! +The society of the lowest dregs of humanity was delectable company to +me. And what need had I to understand their language, when I felt it +in my whole body? Even the brutality of their passion assumed in my +eyes a hypocritical appearance of health and vigour. In vain I told +myself that their wretched life could not have the same flavour for +them that it had for me.... Oh, I wished I could have rolled under the +table with them to wake up only with the first grey shiver of dawn. +And their company whetted my growing horror of luxury, of comfort, of +all the things I was wrapped round with, of the protection that my +newly restored health had made unnecessary, of all the precautions +one takes to preserve one’s body from the perilous contact of life. I +imagined their existence in other surroundings. I should have liked +to follow them elsewhere, to probe deeper into their drunken life.... +Then suddenly I thought of Marceline. What was she doing at this very +moment? Suffering, crying, perhaps.... I got up hastily and hurried +back to the hotel; there, over the door, seemed written the words: No +poor admitted here. + +Marceline always received me in the same way, without a word of +reproach or suspicion, and struggling, in spite of everything, to +smile. We took our meals in private; I ordered for her the best our +very second-rate hotel could provide. And all through the meal, I +kept thinking, “A piece of bread, a bit of cheese, a head of fennel +is enough for _them_ and would be enough for _me_ too. And perhaps +out there, close by, some of them are hungry and have not even that +wretched pittance. And here on my table is enough to fill them for +three days.” I should have liked to break down the walls and let the +guests flock in.... For to feel there were people suffering from hunger +was dreadful. And I went back again to the port and scattered about at +random the small coin with which my pockets were filled. + +Poverty is a slave-driver; in return for food, men give their grudging +labour; all work that is not joyous is wretched, I thought, and I +paid many of them to rest. “Don’t work,” I said, “you hate it.” In +imagination, I bestowed on each of them that leisure without which +nothing can blossom--neither vice nor art. + +Marceline did not mistake my thoughts; when I came back from the +port, I did not conceal from her what sort of wretches I had been +frequenting. Every kind of thing goes to the making of man. Marceline +knew well enough what I was trying so furiously to discover; and as +I reproached her for being too apt to credit everyone she knew with +special virtues of her own invention, “You,” said she, “are never +satisfied until you have made people exhibit some vice. Don’t you +understand that by looking at any particular trait, we develop and +exaggerate it? And that we make a man become what we think him?” + +I could have wished she were wrong, but I had to admit that the worst +instinct of every human being appeared to me the sincerest. But then +what did I mean by sincere? + +We left Syracuse at last. I was haunted by the desire and the memory +of the past. At sea, Marceline’s health improved.... I can still see +the colour of the sea. It is so calm that the ship’s track in it +seems permanent. I can still hear the noises of dripping and dropping +water--liquid noises; the swabbing of the deck and the slapping of the +sailors’ bare feet on the boards. I can see Malta shining white in the +sun--the approach to Tunis.... How changed I am! + +It was hot; it was fine; everything was glorious. Oh, how I wish +that every one of my sentences here could distill a quintessence of +voluptuous delight!... I cannot hope to tell my story now with more +order than I lived my life. I have been long enough trying to explain +how I became what I am. Oh, if only I could rid my mind of all this +intolerable logic!... I feel I have nothing in me that is not noble. + +Tunis! The quality of the light here is not strength but abundance. The +shade is still full of it. The air itself is like a luminous fluid in +which everything is steeped; one bathes, one swims in it. This land of +pleasure satisfies desire without appeasing it and desire is sharpened +by satisfaction. + +A land free from works of art; I despise those who cannot recognize +beauty until it has been transcribed and interpreted. The Arabs have +this admirable quality, that they live their art, sing it, dissipate +it from day to day; it is not fixed, not embalmed in any work. This is +the cause and effect of the absence of great artists.... I have always +thought that great artists were those who dared to confer the right of +beauty on things so natural that people say on seeing them, “Why did I +never realize before that that was beautiful too?” + +At Kairouan, which I had not seen before, and which I visited without +Marceline, the night was very fine. As I was going back to sleep at the +hotel, I remember a group of Arabs I had seen lying out of doors on +mats, outside a little café. I went and lay down to sleep beside them. +I came away covered with vermin. + +Marceline found the damp of the coast very relaxing {“enfeebling” in 1948 +ed.} and I persuaded her that we ought to go on to Biskra as quickly as +possible. We were now at the beginning of April. + +The journey to Biskra is a very long one. The first day we went to +Constantine without a break; the second day, Marceline was very tired +and we only got as far as El Kantara. I remember seeking there, and +towards evening finding, shade that was more delicious and cooler than +moonshine at night. It flowed about us like a stream of inexhaustible +refreshment. And from the bank where we were sitting, we could see the +plain aflame in the setting sun. That night Marceline could not sleep, +disturbed as she was by the strange silence or the tiniest of noises. +I was afraid she was feverish. I heard her tossing in the night. Next +morning I thought she looked paler. We went on again. + +Biskra! That then was my goal.... Yes; there are the public gardens; +the bench ... I recognize the bench on which I used to sit in the first +days of my convalescence. What was it I read there?... Homer; I have +not opened the book since. There is the tree with the curious bark +I got up to go and feel. How weak I was then! Look! there come some +children!... No; I recognize none of them. How grave Marceline is! She +is as changed as I. Why does she cough so in this fine weather? There +is the hotel! There are our rooms, our terrace! What is Marceline +thinking? She has not said a word. As soon as she gets to her room +she lies down on the bed; she is tired and says she wants to sleep a +little. I go out. + +I do not recognize the children, but the children recognize me. They +have heard of my arrival and come running to meet me. Can it really +be they? What a shock! What has happened? They have grown out of all +knowledge--hideously. In barely two years! It seems impossible.... +What fatigues, what vices, what sloth have put their ugly mark on +faces that were once so bright with youth? What vile labours can so +soon have stunted those beautiful young limbs? What a bankruptcy of +hope!... I ask a few questions. Bachir is scullion in a café; Ashour +is laboriously earning a few pennies by breaking stones on the roads; +Hammatar has lost an eye. And who would believe it? Sadek has settled +down! He helps an elder brother sell loaves in the market; he looks +idiotic. Agib has set up as a butcher with his father; he is getting +fat; he is ugly; he is rich; he refuses to speak to his low-class +companions.... How stupid honorable careers make people! What! Am +I going to find here the same things I hated so at home? Boubakir? +Married. He is not fifteen yet. It is grotesque. Not altogether though. +When I see him that evening he explains that his marriage is a mere +farce. He is, I expect, an utter waster; he has taken to drink and lost +his looks.... So that is all that remains, is it? That is what life has +made of them? My intolerable depression makes me feel it was largely to +see them that I came here. Ménalque was right. Memory is an accursed +invention. + +And Moktir? Ah! Moktir has just come out of prison. He is lying low. +The others will have nothing to do with him. I want to see him. He +used to be the handsomest of them all. Is he to be a disappointment +too?... Someone finds him out and brings him to me. No; Moktir has not +failed. Even my memory had not painted him as superb as he now is. His +strength, his beauty are flawless.... He smiles as he recognizes me. + +“And what did you do before you went to prison?” + +“Nothing.” + +“Did you steal?” + +He protests. + +“And what are you doing now?” + +He smiles. + +“Well, Moktir, if you have nothing to do, you must come with us to +Touggourt.” And I suddenly feel seized with a desire to go to Touggourt. + +Marceline is not well; I do not know what is going on in her mind. When +I go back to the hotel that evening, she presses up against me without +saying a word and without opening her eyes. Her wide sleeve has slipped +up and shows how thin she has grown. I take her in my arms, as if she +were a sleepy child, and rock and soothe her. Is it love, or anguish +or fever that makes her tremble so?... Oh! perhaps there might still +be time.... Will nothing make me stop?... I know now--I have found +out at last what gives me my special value. It is a kind of stubborn +perseverance in evil. But how do I bring myself to tell Marceline that +next day we are to leave again for Touggourt?... + +She is asleep now in the room next mine. The moon has been up some time +and is flooding the terrace. The brightness is almost terrifying. +There is no hiding from it. The floor of my room is tiled with white, +and there the light is brightest. It streams through the wide-open +window. I recognize the way it shines into the room and the shadow +made by the door. Two years ago, it came in still further.... Yes; it +is almost at the same spot it had reached that night I got up because +I could not sleep.... It was against that very door-jamb I leant my +shoulder. I recognize the stillness of the palm-trees. What was the +sentence I read that night?... Oh, yes; Christ’s words to Peter: “Now +thou girdest thyself and goest where thou wouldest....” Where am I +going? Where would I go?... I did not tell you that the last time I was +at Naples, I went to Pæstum one day by myself. Oh, I could have wept +at the sight of those ruined stones. The ancient beauty shone out from +them, simple, perfect, smiling--deserted. Art is leaving me, I feel +it. To make room for what else? The smiling harmony once mine is mine +no longer.... No longer do I know what dark mysterious God I serve. O +great new God! grant me the knowledge of other newer races, unimagined +types of beauty. + +The next morning at daybreak, we left in the diligence and Moktir came +with us. Moktir was as happy as a king. + +Chegga; Kefeldorh’; M’reyer ... dreary stages of a still more dreary +road--an interminable road. I confess I had expected these oases to be +more smiling. But there is nothing here but stone and sand; at times +a few shrubs with queer flowers; at times an attempt at palm-trees, +watered by some hidden spring.... Now, to any oasis, I prefer the +desert--land of mortal glory and intolerable splendour! Man’s effort +here seems ugly and miserable. All other lands now are weariness to me. + +“You like what is inhuman,” says Marceline. + +But she herself, how greedily she looks! + +Next day it was not so fine; that is, a wind sprang up and the horizon +became dull and grey. + +Marceline is suffering; the sand in the air bums and irritates her +throat; the overabundance of light tires her eyes; the hostile +landscape crushes her. But it is too late now to turn back. In a few +hours we shall be at Touggourt. + +It is this last part of the journey, though it is still so near me, +that I remember least. I find it impossible to recall the scenery of +the second day, nor what I did when we first got to Touggourt. But +what I do still remember are my impatience and my haste. + +It had been very cold that morning. Towards evening a burning simoon +sprang up. Marceline, exhausted by the journey, went to bed as soon +as we arrived. I had hoped to find a rather more comfortable hotel, +but our room is hideous; the sand, the sun, the flies have tarnished, +dirtied, discoloured everything. As we have eaten scarcely anything +since daybreak, I order a meal to be served at once; but Marceline +finds everything uneatable and I cannot persuade her to touch a morsel. +We have with us arrangements for making our own tea. I attend to this +trifling business, and for dinner we content ourselves with a few +biscuits and the tea, made with the brackish water of the country and +tasting horrible in consequence. + +By a last semblance of virtue, I stay with her till evening. And all of +a sudden I feel that I myself have come to the end of my strength. O +taste of ashes! O deadly lassitude! O the sadness of superhuman effort! +I hardly dare look at her; I am too certain that my eyes, instead of +seeking hers, will fasten horribly on the black holes of her nostrils; +the suffering expression of her face is agonizing. Nor does she look +at me either. I feel her anguish as if I could touch it. She coughs a +great deal and then falls asleep. From time to time, she is shaken by a +sudden shudder. + +Perhaps the night will be bad, and before it is too late I must find +out where I can get help. I go out. + +Outside the hotel, the Touggourt square, the streets, the very +atmosphere, are so strange that I can hardly believe it is I who see +them. After a little I go in again. Marceline is sleeping quietly. +I need not have been so frightened; in this peculiar country, one +suspects peril everywhere. Absurd! And more or less reassured, I again +go out. + +There is a strange nocturnal animation in the square--a silent flitting +to and fro--a stealthy gliding of white burnouses. The wind at times +tears off a shred of strange music and brings it from I know not +where. Someone comes up to me.... Moktir! He was waiting for me, he +says--expected me to come out again. He laughs. He knows Touggourt, +comes here often, knows where to take me. I let myself be guided by him. + +We walk along in the dark and go into a Moorish café; this is where +the music came from. Some Arab women are dancing--if such a monotonous +glide can be called dancing. One of them takes me by the hand; I +follow her; she is Moktir’s mistress; he comes too.... We all three +go into the deep, narrow room where the only piece of furniture is a +bed.... A very low bed on which we sit down. A white rabbit which has +been shut up in the room is scared at first but afterwards grows tamer +and comes to feed out of Moktir’s hand. Coffee is brought. Then, while +Moktir is playing with the rabbit, the woman draws me towards her, and +I let myself go to her as one lets oneself sink into sleep.... + +Oh, here I might deceive you or be silent--but what use can this story +be to me, if it ceases to be truthful? + +I go back alone to the hotel, for Moktir remains behind in the café. It +is late. A parching sirocco is blowing; the wind is laden with sand, +and, in spite of the night, torrid. After three or four steps, I am +bathed in sweat; but I suddenly feel I must hurry and I reach the hotel +almost at a run. She is awake perhaps.... Perhaps she wants me?... No; +the window of her room is dark. I wait for a short lull in the wind +before opening the door; I go into the room very softly in the dark. +What is that noise?... I do not recognize her cough.... Is it really +Marceline?... I light the light. + +She is half sitting on the bed, one of her thin arms clutching the +bars and supporting her in an upright position; her sheets, her hands, +her nightdress are flooded with a stream of blood; her face is soiled +with it; her eyes have grown hideously big; and no cry of agony could +be more appalling than her silence. Her face is bathed in sweat; I try +to find a little place on it where I can put a horrible kiss; I feel +the taste of her sweat on my lips. I wash and refresh her forehead +and cheeks.... What is that hard thing I feel under my foot near the +bed? I stoop down and pick up the little rosary that she once asked +for in Paris and which she has dropped on the ground. I slip it over +her open hand, but immediately she lowers her hand and drops the +rosary again.... What am I to do? I wish I could get help.... Her hand +clutches me desperately, holds me tight; oh, can she think I want to +leave her? She says: + +“Oh, you can wait a little longer, can’t you?” Then, as she sees I want +to say something, + +“Don’t speak,” she adds; “everything is all right.” + +I pick up the rosary again and put it back on her hand, but again she +lets it drop--yes, deliberately--lets it drop. I kneel down beside her, +take her hand and press it to me. + +She lets herself go, partly against the pillow, partly against my +shoulder, seems to sleep a little, but her eyes are still wide open. + +An hour later, she raises herself, disengages her hand from mine, +clutches at her nightdress and tears the lace. She is choking. + +Towards morning she has another hemorrhage.... + + * * * * * + +I have finished telling you my story. What more should I say? + +The French cemetery at Touggourt is a hideous place, half devoured by +the sand.... What little energy I had left I spent in carrying her away +from that miserable spot. She rests at El Kantara, in the shade of a +private garden she liked. It all happened barely three months ago. +Those three months have put a distance of ten years between that time +and this. + + * * * * * + + + + +Michel remained silent for a long time. We did not speak either, for +we each of us had a strange feeling of uneasiness. We felt, alas, that +by telling his story, Michel had made his action more legitimate. Our +not having known at what point to condemn it in the course of his long +explanation seemed almost to make us his accomplices. We felt, as it +were, involved. He finished his story without a quaver in his voice, +without an inflexion or a gesture to show that he was feeling any +emotion whatever; he might have had a cynical pride in not appearing +moved, or a kind of shyness that made him afraid of arousing emotion +in us by his tears, or he might not in fact have been moved. Even now +I cannot guess in what proportions pride, strength, reserve or want of +feeling were combined in him. After a pause he went on: + +“What frightens me, I admit, is that I am still very young. It seems +to me sometimes that my real life has not begun. Take me away from +here and give me some reason for living. I have none left. I have +freed myself. That may be. But what does it signify? This objectless +liberty is a burden to me. It is not, believe me, that I am tired of my +crime--if you choose to call it that--but I must prove to myself that I +have not overstepped my rights. + +“When you knew me first, I had great stability of thought, and I know +that that is what makes real men. I have it no longer. But I think it +is the fault of this climate. Nothing is more discouraging to thought +than this persistent azure. Enjoyment here follows so closely upon +desire that effort is impossible. Here, in the midst of splendour and +death, I feel the presence of happiness too close, the yielding to it +too uniform. In the middle of the day, I go and lie down on my bed to +while away the long dreary hours and their intolerable leisure. + +“Look! I have here a number of white pebbles. I let them soak in the +shade, then hold them in the hollow of my hand and wait until their +soothing coolness is exhausted. Then I begin once more, changing the +pebbles and putting back those that have lost their coolness to soak +in the shade again.... Time passes and the evening comes on.... Take +me away; I cannot move of myself. Something in my will is broken; I +don’t even know how I had the strength to leave El Kantara. Sometimes +I am afraid that what I have suppressed will take vengeance on me. +I should like to begin over again. I should like to get rid of the +remains of my fortune; you see the walls here are still covered with +it.... I live for next to nothing in this place. A half-caste innkeeper +prepares what little food I need. The boy who ran away at your approach +brings it to me in the evening and morning, in exchange for a few sous +and a caress or two. He turns shy with strangers, but with me he is +as affectionate and faithful as a dog. His sister is an Ouled-Naïl +and in the winter goes back to Constantine to sell her body to the +passers-by. She is very beautiful and in the first weeks I sometimes +allowed her to pass the night with me. But one morning, her brother, +little Ali, surprised us together. He showed great annoyance and +refused to come back for five days. And yet he knows perfectly well how +and on what his sister lives; he used to speak of it before without the +slightest embarrassment.... Can he be jealous? Be that as it may, the +little rascal has succeeded in his object; for, partly from distaste, +partly because I was afraid of losing Ali, I have given the woman up +since this incident. She has not taken offence; but every time I meet +her, she laughs and declares that I prefer the boy to her. She makes +out that it is he who keeps me here. Perhaps she is not altogether +wrong....” + + * * * * * + + _No writer living today has caused such storms of + discussion as André Gide, and few have reached such + eminence. In the course of an active career which + reached back into the last century he has always + managed to be a step ahead of the succeeding sets of + moderns, and perhaps the most remarkable thing about + his books is that not one of them dates. There are + few surer tests of genius. His first great success + in America came in 1927 with the publication of + The Counterfeiters, and since then there has been + an ever-growing interest here in a writer whose + distinguished and versatile gifts were long ago + recognised throughout Europe._ + + + SET ON THE LINOTYPE IN ELZEVIR, ELECTROTYPED, + PRINTED AND BOUND BY VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., + BINGHAMTON, N. Y. PAPER MADE BY + S. D. WARREN CO., BOSTON + + + + + Transcriber’s note + + +The 1948 Knopf reprint of this translation makes numerous small +changes, including simple copy-edits for idiom, and a reduction in the +use of commas. One wording change with semantic significance is noted +inline in {curly braces}. This transcription otherwise follows the 1930 +printing for technical and procedural reasons. The use of both single +and double quotation marks is retained. + +The final section of the book, beginning “Michel remained silent for +a long time”, starts on a new page but lacks any heading, a stylistic +choice not seen until that point. Thus, a thought break symbol has been +placed there _along with_ extra white space. + +Italic text is indicated with _underscores_. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78975 *** |