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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII., by 
+Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Release Date: July 14, 2007 [EBook #22069]
+Last updated: January 18, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             The Works of
+
+                          Guy de Maupassant
+
+
+
+
+                             VOLUME VIII
+
+
+
+                            PIERRE ET JEAN
+
+                          AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+
+                            _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+
+                       NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY
+
+                               NEW YORK
+
+
+
+                         COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
+
+                         BIGELOW, SMITH & CO.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PIERRE ET JEAN.
+
+DREAMS
+
+MOONLIGHT
+
+THE CORSICAN BANDIT
+
+A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET
+
+THE CAKE
+
+A LIVELY FRIEND
+
+THE ORPHAN
+
+THE BLIND MAN
+
+A WIFE'S CONFESSION
+
+RELICS OF THE PAST
+
+THE PEDDLER
+
+THE AVENGER
+
+ALL OVER
+
+LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
+
+MOTHER AND SON
+
+THE SPASM
+
+A DUEL
+
+THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
+
+AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+
+A WARNING NOTE
+
+THE HORRIBLE
+
+A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
+
+BESIDE A DEAD MAN
+
+AFTER
+
+A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
+
+BOITELLE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+OF "THE NOVEL"
+
+
+I do not intend in these pages to put in a plea for this little novel.
+On the contrary, the ideas I shall try to set forth will rather
+involve a criticism of the class of psychological analysis which I
+have undertaken in _Pierre et Jean_. I propose to treat of novels in
+general.
+
+I am not the only writer who finds himself taken to task in the same
+terms each time he brings out a new book. Among many laudatory
+phrases, I invariably meet with this observation, penned by the same
+critics: "The greatest fault of this book is that it is not, strictly
+speaking, a novel."
+
+The same form might be adopted in reply:
+
+"The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor to review me
+is that he is not a critic."
+
+For what are, in fact, the essential characteristics of a critic?
+
+It is necessary that, without preconceived notions, prejudices of
+"School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should
+appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies
+and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the
+most varied efforts of art.
+
+Now the Critic who, after reading _Manon Lescaut_, _Paul and
+Virginia_, _Don Quixote_, _Les Liaisons dangereuses_, _Werther_,
+_Elective Affinities_ (_Wahlverwandschaften_), _Clarissa Harlowe_,
+_Émile_, _Candide_, _Cinq-Mars_, _René_, _Les Trois Mousquetaires_,
+_Mauprat_, _Le Père Goriot_, _La Cousine Bette_, _Colomba_, _Le Rouge
+et le Noir_, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, _Notre-Dame de Paris_,
+_Salammbo_, _Madame Bovary_, _Adolphe_, _M. de Camors_, _l'Assommoir_,
+_Sapho_, etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or
+is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity
+strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by
+a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated
+after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which
+the first contains the exposition, the second the action, and the
+third the catastrophe or _dénouement_.
+
+And this method of construction is perfectly admissible, but on
+condition that all others are accepted on equal terms.
+
+Are there any rules for the making of a novel, which, if we neglect,
+the tale must be called by another name? If _Don Quixote_ is a novel,
+then is _Le Rouge et le Noir_ a novel? If _Monte Christo_ is a novel,
+is _l'Assommoir_? Can any conclusive comparison be drawn between
+Goethe's _Elective Affinities_, _The Three Mousqueteers_, by Dumas,
+Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_, _M. de Camors_ by Octave Feuillet, and
+_Germinal_, by Zola? Which of them all is The Novel? What are these
+famous rules? Where did they originate? Who laid them down? And in
+virtue of what principle, of whose authority, and of what reasoning?
+
+And yet, as it would appear, these critics know in some positive and
+indisputable way what constitutes a novel, and what distinguishes it
+from other tales which are not novels. What this amounts to is that
+without being producers themselves they are enrolled under a School,
+and that, like the writers of novels, they reject all work which is
+conceived and executed outside the pale of their esthetics. An
+intelligent critic ought, on the contrary, to seek out everything
+which least resembles the novels already written, and urge young
+authors as much as possible to try fresh paths.
+
+All writers, Victor Hugo as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed
+the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose--that is to say, to
+imagine or observe--in accordance with their individual conception of
+originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing,
+understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the
+novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the
+novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules of construction
+can be laid down, will always find himself at war with the artistic
+temperament of a writer who introduces a new manner of work. A critic
+really worthy of the name ought to be an analyst, devoid of
+preferences or passions; like an expert in pictures, he should simply
+estimate the artistic value of the object of art submitted to him. His
+intelligence, open to everything, must so far supersede his
+individuality as to leave him free to discover and praise books which
+as a man he may not like, but which as a judge he must duly
+appreciate.
+
+But critics, for the most part, are only readers; whence it comes that
+they almost always find fault with us on wrong grounds, or compliment
+us without reserve or measure.
+
+The reader, who looks for no more in a book than that it should
+satisfy the natural tendencies of his own mind, wants the writer to
+respond to his predominant taste, and he invariably praises a work or
+a passage which appeals to his imagination, whether idealistic, gay,
+licentious, melancholy, dreamy, or positive, as "striking" or "well
+written."
+
+The public as a whole is composed of various groups, whose cry to us
+writers is:
+
+"Comfort me."
+
+"Amuse me."
+
+"Touch me."
+
+"Make me dream."
+
+"Make me laugh."
+
+"Make me shudder."
+
+"Make me weep."
+
+"Make me think."
+
+And only a few chosen spirits say to the artist:
+
+"Give me something fine in any form which may suit you best, according
+to your own temperament."
+
+The artist makes the attempt; succeeds or fails.
+
+The critic ought to judge the result only in relation to the nature of
+the attempt; he has no right to concern himself about tendencies. This
+has been said a thousand times already; it will always need repeating.
+
+Thus, after a succession of literary schools which have given us
+deformed, superhuman, poetical, pathetic, charming or magnificent
+pictures of life, a realistic or naturalistic school has arisen, which
+asserts that it shows us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth.
+
+All these theories of art must be recognized as of equal interest, and
+we must judge the works which are their outcome solely from the point
+of view of artistic value, with an _a priori_ acceptance of the
+general notions which gave birth to each. To dispute the author's
+right to produce a poetical work or a realistic work, is to endeavor
+to coerce his temperament, to take exception to his originality, to
+forbid his using the eyes and wits bestowed on him by Nature. To
+blame him for seeing things as beautiful or ugly, as mean or epic, as
+gracious or sinister, is to reproach him for not being made on this or
+that pattern, and for having eyes which do not see exactly as ours
+see.
+
+Let him be free by all means to conceive of things as he pleases,
+provided he is an artist. Let us rise to poetic heights to judge an
+idealist, and then prove to him that his dream is commonplace,
+ordinary, not mad or magnificent enough. But if we judge a
+materialistic writer, let us show him wherein the truth of life
+differs from the truth in his book.
+
+It is self-evident that schools so widely different must have adopted
+diametrically opposite processes in composition.
+
+The novelist who transforms truth--immutable, uncompromising, and
+displeasing as it is--to extract from it an exceptional and delightful
+plot, must necessarily manipulate events without an exaggerated
+respect for probability, molding them to his will, dressing and
+arranging them so as to attract, excite, or affect the reader. The
+scheme of his romance is no more than a series of ingenious
+combinations, skillfully leading to the issue. The incidents are
+planned and graduated up to the culminating point and effect of the
+conclusion, which is the crowning and fatal result, satisfying the
+curiosity aroused from the first, closing the interest, and ending the
+story so completely that we have no further wish to know what happened
+on the morrow to the most engaging actors in it.
+
+The novelist who, on the other hand, proposes to give us an accurate
+picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events
+which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse
+us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to
+understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing
+and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things
+in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of
+his studious observation. It is this personal view of the world which
+he strives to communicate to us by reproducing it in a book. To make
+the spectacle of life as moving to us as it has been to him, he must
+bring it before our eyes with scrupulous exactitude. Hence he must
+construct his work with such skill, it must be so artful under so
+simple a guise, that it is impossible to detect and sketch the plan,
+or discern the writer's purpose.
+
+Instead of manipulating an adventure and working it out in such a way
+as to make it interesting to the last, he will take his actor or
+actors at a certain period of their lives, and lead them by natural
+stages to the next. In this way he will show either how men's minds
+are modified by the influence of their environment, or how their
+passions and sentiments are evolved; how they love or hate, how they
+struggle in every sphere of society, and how their interests
+clash--social interests, pecuniary interests, family interests,
+political interests. The skill of his plan will not consist in
+emotional power or charm, in an attractive opening or a stirring
+catastrophe, but in the happy grouping of small but constant facts
+from which the final purpose of the work may be discerned. If within
+three hundred pages he depicts ten years of a life so as to show what
+its individual and characteristic significance may have been in the
+midst of all the other human beings which surrounded it, he ought to
+know how to eliminate from among the numberless trivial incidents of
+daily life all which do not serve his end, and how to set in a special
+light all those which might have remained invisible to less
+clear-sighted observers, and which give his book caliber and value as
+a whole.
+
+It is intelligible that this method of construction, so unlike the old
+manner which was patent to all, must often mislead the critics, and
+that they will not all detect the subtle and secret wires--almost
+invisibly fine--which certain modern artists use instead of the one
+string formerly known as the "plot."
+
+In a word, while the novelist of yesterday preferred to relate the
+crises of life, the acute phases of the mind and heart, the novelist
+of to-day writes the history of the heart, soul, and intellect in
+their normal condition. To achieve the effects he aims at--that is to
+say, the sense of simple reality, and to point the artistic lesson he
+endeavors to draw from it--that is to say, a revelation of what his
+contemporary man is before his very eyes, he must bring forward no
+facts that are not irrefragible and invariable.
+
+But even when we place ourselves at the same point of view as these
+realistic artists, we may discuss and dispute their theory, which
+seems to be comprehensively stated in these words: "The whole Truth
+and nothing but the Truth." Since the end they have in view is to
+bring out the philosophy of certain constant and current facts, they
+must often correct events in favor of probability and to the detriment
+of truth; for
+
+"Le vrai peut quelquefois, n'être pas le vraisemblable." (Truth may
+sometimes not seem probable.)
+
+The realist, if he is an artist, will endeavor not to show us a
+commonplace photograph of life, but to give us a presentment of it
+which shall be more complete, more striking, more cogent than reality
+itself. To tell everything is out of the question; it would require at
+least a volume for each day to enumerate the endless, insignificant
+incidents which crowd our existence. A choice must be made--and this
+is the first blow to the theory of "the whole truth."
+
+Life, moreover, is composed of the most dissimilar things, the most
+unforeseen, the most contradictory, the most incongruous; it is
+merciless, without sequence or connection, full of inexplicable,
+illogical, and contradictory catastrophes, such as can only be classed
+as miscellaneous facts. This is why the artist, having chosen his
+subject, can only select such characteristic details as are of use to
+it, from this life overladen with chances and trifles, and reject
+everything else, everything by the way.
+
+To give an instance from among a thousand. The number of persons who,
+every day, meet with an accidental death, all over the world, is very
+considerable. But how can we bring a tile onto the head of an
+important character, or fling him under the wheels of a vehicle in the
+middle of a story, under the pretext that accident must have its due?
+
+Again, in life there is no difference of foreground and distance, and
+events are sometimes hurried on, sometimes left to linger
+indefinitely. Art, on the contrary, consists in the employment of
+foresight, and elaboration in arranging skillful and ingenious
+transitions, in setting essential events in a strong light, simply by
+the craft of composition, and giving all else the degree of relief, in
+proportion to their importance, requisite to produce a convincing
+sense of the special truth to be conveyed.
+
+"Truth" in such work consists in producing a complete illusion by
+following the common logic of facts and not by transcribing them
+pell-mell, as they succeed each other.
+
+Whence I conclude that the higher order of Realists should rather call
+themselves Illusionists.
+
+How childish it is, indeed, to believe in this reality, since to each
+of us the truth is in his own mind, his own organs. Our own eyes and
+ears, taste and smell, create as many different truths as there are
+human beings on earth. And our brains, duly and differently informed
+by those organs, apprehend, analyze, and decide as differently as if
+each of us were a being of an alien race. Each of us, then, has simply
+his own illusion of the world--poetical, sentimental, cheerful,
+melancholy, foul, or gloomy, according to his nature. And the writer
+has no other mission than faithfully to reproduce this illusion, with
+all the elaborations of art which he may have learnt and have at his
+command. The illusion of beauty--which is merely a conventional term
+invented by man! The illusion of ugliness--which is a matter of
+varying opinion! The illusion of truth--never immutable! The illusion
+of depravity--which fascinates so many minds! All the great artists
+are those who can make other men see their own particular illusion.
+
+Then we must not be wroth with any theory, since each is simply the
+outcome, in generalizations, of a special temperament analyzing
+itself.
+
+Two of these theories have more particularly been the subject of
+discussion, and set up in opposition to each other instead of being
+admitted on an equal footing: that of the purely analytical novel,
+and that of the objective novel.
+
+The partisans of analysis require the writer to devote himself to
+indicating the smallest evolutions of a soul, and all the most secret
+motives of our every action, giving but a quite secondary importance
+to the act and fact in itself. It is but the goal, a simple milestone,
+the excuse for the book. According to them, these works, at once exact
+and visionary, in which imagination merges into observation, are to be
+written after the fashion in which a philosopher composes a treatise
+on psychology, seeking out causes in their remotest origin, telling
+the why and wherefore of every impulse, and detecting every reaction
+of the soul's movements under the promptings of interest, passion, or
+instinct.
+
+The partisans of objectivity--odious word--aiming, on the contrary, at
+giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully
+avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and
+confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In
+their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in
+reality, under the facts of existence.
+
+The novel as conceived of on these lines gains in interest; there is
+more movement in the narrative, more color, more of the stir of life.
+
+Hence, instead of giving long explanations of the state of mind of an
+actor in the tale, the objective writer tries to discover the action
+or gesture which that state of mind must inevitably lead to in that
+personage, under certain given circumstances. And he makes him so
+demean himself from one end of the volume to the other, that all his
+actions, all his movements shall be the expression of his inmost
+nature, of all his thoughts, and all his impulses or hesitancies. Thus
+they conceal psychology instead of flaunting it; they use it as the
+skeleton of the work, just as the invisible bony framework is the
+skeleton of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does
+not display our bones.
+
+To me it seems that the novel executed on this principle gains also in
+sincerity. It is, in the first place, more probable, for the persons
+we see moving about us do not divulge to us the motives from which
+they act.
+
+We must also take into account the fact that, even if by close
+observation of men and women we can so exactly ascertain their
+characters as to predict their behavior under almost any
+circumstances, if we can say decisively: "Such a man, of such a
+temperament, in such a case, will do this or that"; yet it does not
+follow that we could lay a finger, one by one, on all the secret
+evolutions of his mind--which is not our own; all the mysterious
+pleadings of his instincts--which are not the same as ours; all the
+mingled promptings of his nature--in which the organs, nerves, blood,
+and flesh are different from ours.
+
+However great the genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of
+passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely
+transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent
+man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every
+vice, as to understand and delineate the inmost impulses and
+sensations of a being so unlike himself, even though he may very
+adequately foresee and relate all the actions of his life.
+
+In short, the man who writes pure psychology can do no more than put
+himself in the place of all his puppets in the various situations in
+which he places them. It is impossible that he should change his
+organs, which are the sole intermediary between external life and
+ourselves, which constrain us by their perceptions, circumscribe our
+sensibilities, and create in each of us a soul essentially dissimilar
+to all those about us. Our purview and knowledge of the world, and our
+ideas of life, are acquired by the aid of our senses, and we cannot
+help transferring them, in some degree, to all the personages whose
+secret and unknown nature we propose to reveal. Thus, it is always
+ourselves that we disclose in the body of a king or an assassin, a
+robber or an honest man, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl, or a coarse
+market woman; for we are compelled to put the problem in this personal
+form: "If _I_ were a king, a murderer, a prostitute, a nun, or a
+market woman, what should _I_ do, what should _I_ think, how should
+_I_ act?" We can only vary our characters by altering the age, the
+sex, the social position, and all the circumstances of life, of that
+_ego_ which nature has in fact inclosed in an insurmountable barrier
+of organs of sense. Skill consists in not betraying this _ego_ to the
+reader, under the various masks which we employ to cover it.
+
+Still, though on the point of absolute exactitude, pure psychological
+analysis is impregnable, it can nevertheless produce works of art as
+fine as any other method of work.
+
+Here, for instance we have the _Symbolists_. And why not? Their
+artistic dream is a worthy one; and they have this especially
+interesting feature: that they know and proclaim the extreme
+difficulty of art.
+
+And, indeed, a man must be very daring or foolish to write at all
+nowadays. And so many and such various masters of the craft, of such
+multifarious genius, what remains to be done that has not been done,
+or what to say that has not been said? Which of us all can boast of
+having written a page, a phrase, which is not to be found--or
+something very like it--in some other book? When we read, we who are
+so soaked in (French) literature that our whole body seems as it were
+a mere compound of words, do we ever light on a line, a thought, which
+is not familiar to us, or of which we have not had at least some vague
+forecast?
+
+The man who only tries to amuse his public by familiar methods, writes
+confidently, in his candid mediocrity, works intended only for the
+ignorant and idle crowd. But those who are conscious of the weight of
+centuries of past literature, whom nothing satisfies, whom everything
+disgusts because they dream of something better, to whom the bloom is
+off everything, and who always are impressed with the uselessness, the
+commonness of their own achievements--these come to regard literary
+art as a thing unattainable and mysterious, scarcely to be detected
+save in a few pages by the greatest masters.
+
+A score of phrases suddenly discovered thrill us to the heart like a
+startling revelation; but the lines which follow are just like all
+other verse, the further flow of prose is like all other prose.
+
+Men of genius, no doubt, escape this anguish and torment because they
+bear within themselves an irresistible creative power. They do not sit
+in judgment on themselves. The rest of us, who are no more than
+persevering and conscientious workers, can only contend against
+invincible discouragement by unremitting effort.
+
+Two men by their simple and lucid teaching gave me the strength to try
+again and again: Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.
+
+If I here speak of myself in connection with them, it is because their
+counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young
+writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make
+their _début_ in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat
+intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert,
+by dint of telling me that a hundred lines--or less--if they are
+without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent and
+originality of even a second-rate man, are enough to establish an
+artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a
+thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of
+lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a
+subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the
+production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it.
+Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever
+left us more than one such volume; and that needful above all else is
+the good fortune which leads us to hit upon and discern, amid the
+multifarious matter which offers itself for selection, the subject
+which will absorb all our faculties, all that is of worth in us, all
+our artistic powers.
+
+At a later date, Flaubert, whom I had occasionally met, took a fancy
+to me. I ventured to show him a few attempts. He read them kindly and
+replied: "I cannot tell whether you will have any talent. What you
+have brought me proves a certain intelligence; but never forget this,
+young man: talent--as Chateaubriand[1] says--is nothing but long
+patience. Go and work."
+
+[Footnote 1: The idea did not originate with Chateaubriand.]
+
+I worked; and I often went to see him, feeling that he liked me, for
+he had taken to calling me, in jest, his disciple. For seven years I
+wrote verses, I wrote tales, I even wrote a villainous play. Nothing
+of all this remains. The master read it all; then, the next Sunday
+while we breakfasted together, he would give me his criticisms,
+driving into me by degrees two or three principles which sum up the
+drift of his long and patient exhortations: "If you have any
+originality," said he, "you must above all things bring it out; if you
+have not you must acquire it."
+
+Talent is long patience.
+
+Everything you want to express must be considered so long, and so
+attentively, as to enable you to find some aspect of it which no one
+has yet seen and expressed. There is an unexplored side to everything,
+because we are wont never to use our eyes but with the memory of what
+others before us have thought of the things we see. The smallest thing
+has something unknown in it; we must find it. To describe a blazing
+fire, a tree in a plain, we must stand face to face with that fire or
+that tree, till to us they are wholly unlike any other fire or tree.
+Thus we may become original.
+
+Then, having established the truth that there are not in the whole
+world two grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or two noses
+absolutely alike, he would make me describe in a few sentences some
+person or object, in such a way as to define it exactly, and
+distinguish it from every other of the same race or species.
+
+"When you pass a grocer sitting in his doorway," he would say, "a
+porter smoking his pipe, or a cab stand, show me that grocer and that
+porter, their attitude and their whole physical aspect, including, as
+indicated by the skill of the portrait, their whole moral nature, in
+such a way that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or
+porter; and by a single word give me to understand wherein one cab
+horse differs from fifty others before or behind it."
+
+I have explained his notions of style at greater length in another
+place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have
+just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one
+word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one
+adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this
+verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near
+it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have
+recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest
+things may be rendered and suggested by applying the hint conveyed in
+Boileau's line:
+
+"D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir." "He taught the power
+of a word put in the right place."
+
+There is no need for an eccentric vocabulary to formulate every shade
+of thought--the complicated, multifarious, and outlandish words which
+are put upon us nowadays in the name of artistic writing; but every
+modification of the value of a word by the place it fills must be
+distinguished with extreme clearness. Give us fewer nouns, verbs, and
+adjectives, with almost inscrutable shades of meaning, and let us have
+a greater variety of phrases, more variously constructed, ingeniously
+divided, full of sonority and learned rhythm. Let us strive to be
+admirable in style, rather than curious in collecting rare words.
+
+It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make
+it express everything--even what it does not say, to fill it full of
+implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new
+expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which
+have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are
+as a dead language.
+
+The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected
+writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the
+limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has
+remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and
+impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear,
+logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity,
+or corruption.
+
+Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make
+rain and hail fall on the _cleanliness_ of the window panes, may throw
+stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may
+indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never hurt
+simplicity--which has none.
+
+GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
+
+LA GUILLETTE, ETRETAT, September, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE ET JEAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
+motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water,
+while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.
+
+Madame Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Madame Rosémilly,
+who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning
+her head to look at her husband, said:
+
+"Well, well! Gérome."
+
+And the old fellow replied in a fury:
+
+"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
+should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
+late."
+
+His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
+forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
+Jean remarked:
+
+"You are not very polite to our guest, father."
+
+M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Madame Rosémilly, but that is just like me. I
+invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I
+feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."
+
+Madame Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at
+the wide horizon of cliff and sea.
+
+"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.
+
+But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
+glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
+men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
+scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
+the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
+it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
+might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became
+more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome
+reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old
+fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
+
+"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
+pull out, doctor?"
+
+His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
+square like a lawyer's, his moustache and beard shaved away, replied:
+
+"Oh, not many; three or four."
+
+The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.
+
+Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
+beard, smiled and murmured:
+
+"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."
+
+Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He
+had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he
+announced:
+
+"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning
+it is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their
+siesta in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with
+the satisfied air of a proprietor.
+
+He was a retired jeweler who had been led by an inordinate love of
+seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made
+enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.
+He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
+His two sons, Pierre et Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
+studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
+father's amusements.
+
+On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
+felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
+succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
+with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to
+work with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually
+short course of study, by a special remission of time from the
+minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate,
+full of Utopias and philosophical notions.
+
+Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
+brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
+quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
+diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
+medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
+looked forward to settling at Havre if they could find a satisfactory
+opening.
+
+But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
+between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
+occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
+one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
+non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true,
+but they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was
+born, had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other
+little animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and
+mother's arms and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his
+birth, had always been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good
+temper, and Pierre had by degrees begun to chafe at everlastingly
+hearing the praises of this great lad whose sweetness in his eyes was
+indolence, whose gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was
+blindness. His parents, whose dream for their sons was some
+respectable and undistinguished calling, blamed him for so often
+changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm, his abortive
+beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses toward generous ideas and
+the liberal professions.
+
+Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
+"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them
+say "Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and
+the hint the words conveyed.
+
+Their mother, an orderly soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
+of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
+constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to
+which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day.
+Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of
+mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of
+the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his
+own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Rosémilly,
+the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years
+before. The young widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a woman
+of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals do,
+as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighed every
+conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and
+benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat
+for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbors, who would
+give her a cup of tea.
+
+Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
+their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of
+him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation,
+like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects
+death.
+
+The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home
+in the house forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm
+her than from the desire to cut each other out.
+
+Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
+them might win the young widow, for she was rich; and then she would
+have liked that the other should not be grieved.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
+fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring,
+pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least answer to
+the sober method of her mind.
+
+She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
+affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by an
+almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
+occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's views
+would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably be
+different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
+philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
+he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
+indictment against woman--all women, poor weak things.
+
+Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
+fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to
+put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master
+mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and
+with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris,
+known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.
+
+But one evening of the week before, as Mme. Rosémilly, who had been
+dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing,"
+the jeweler, flattered on his passion, and suddenly fired with the
+wish to impart it, to make a convert after the manner of priests,
+exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"
+
+"To be sure I should."
+
+"Next Tuesday?"
+
+"Yes, next Tuesday."
+
+"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"
+
+She exclaimed in horror:
+
+"No, indeed: that is too much."
+
+He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
+However, he said:
+
+"At what hour can you be ready?"
+
+"Well--at nine?"
+
+"Not before?"
+
+"No, not before. Even that is very early."
+
+The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when
+the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers
+had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything
+there and then.
+
+So on the following Tuesday the _Pearl_ had dropped anchor under the
+white rocks of Cape la Héve; they had fished till mid-day, then they
+had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and
+then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that
+Mme. Rosémilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea,
+and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
+unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much
+to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
+
+Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
+miser; and seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting
+low: "Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."
+
+The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
+and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
+
+Roland stood up to look out like a captain:
+
+"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."
+
+And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
+
+"Here comes the packet from Southampton."
+
+Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and
+sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against
+the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they
+could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a
+distance. And to the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of
+them, could be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now
+scarcely visible as a white streak with the light-house, upright, like
+a horn, at the end of it.
+
+Roland asked: "Is not the _Normandie_ due to-day?" And Jean replied:
+
+"Yes, to-day."
+
+"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."
+
+The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
+the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
+
+"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to
+look, Mme. Rosémilly?"
+
+She took the telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon,
+without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
+distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a colored halo round it, a
+circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking
+eclipses which made her feel sick.
+
+She said as she returned the glass:
+
+"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite
+a rage; he would stand for hours at the window watching the ships
+pass."
+
+Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
+
+"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
+one."
+
+Then he offered it to his wife.
+
+"Would you like to look?"
+
+"No, thank you. I know beforehand that I could not see through it."
+
+Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty, but who did not look it,
+seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any
+of the party.
+
+Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white.
+She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which
+it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew
+the value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the
+delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels and poetry,
+not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender
+melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but
+a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she
+expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost
+realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a
+little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.
+
+Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
+figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.
+
+This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
+being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
+shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give
+an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of
+strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent,
+though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the
+turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never
+asked for anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask
+Roland to take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this
+opportunity, and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.
+
+From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely
+body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
+thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
+it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
+something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.
+
+When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
+the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
+their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.
+
+Pierre, who was the nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar,
+Jean the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say:
+"Give way!" For he insisted on everything being done according to
+strict rule.
+
+Both at once, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars and lay
+back, pulling with all their might, and then a struggle began to
+display their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the
+breeze had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was
+suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they
+went out alone with their father they plied the oars without any
+steering, for Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he
+kept a lookout in the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word:
+"Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say,
+"Now, then, number one; come, number two--a little elbow grease."
+Then the one who had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got
+excited eased down, and the boat's head came round.
+
+But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were
+hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy,
+and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.
+
+At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
+his legs rigid, his hands clenched on the oar, he made it bend from
+end to end at every stroke, and the _Pearl_ was veering landward.
+Father Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to
+the two women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull
+harder, number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number
+two" could not keep time with his wild stroke.
+
+At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
+simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
+a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
+eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and
+exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times
+running father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so
+as to get the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor
+humiliated and fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks
+white, stammered out:
+
+"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
+started very well, but it has pulled me up."
+
+Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"
+
+"No, thanks, it will go off."
+
+And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
+
+"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting in such a
+state. You are not a child."
+
+And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
+Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the
+boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her
+temples.
+
+But father Roland presently called out:
+
+"Look, the _Prince Albert_ is catching us up!"
+
+They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking
+funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the
+Southampton packet came plowing on at full steam, crowded with
+passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
+beating up the water, which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance
+of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut
+through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided
+off along the hull.
+
+When it had come quite near the _Pearl_, father Roland lifted his hat,
+the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols
+eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she
+went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the
+still and glassy surface of the sea.
+
+There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
+every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which
+swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
+barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
+across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster
+and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to
+have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
+steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their
+top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to
+the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing
+vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay
+motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in
+canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.
+
+Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
+beautiful the sea is!"
+
+And Mme. Rosémilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
+sadness in it:
+
+"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Look, there is the _Normandie_ just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"
+
+Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
+of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometers,
+said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
+Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
+make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
+question of the sand banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
+that the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey
+the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre
+divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped
+down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of
+Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined,
+cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to
+Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat,
+Fécamp, Saint-Valery, Tréport, Dieppe, and the rest.
+
+The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
+sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
+beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
+soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
+was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
+more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
+useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
+
+Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the
+_Pearl_ was making for the harbor, a tiny thing among those huge
+vessels.
+
+When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
+gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way
+into the town. A large crowd--the crowd which haunts the pier every
+day at high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme.
+Rosémilly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the
+rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or
+jeweler's shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making
+their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse
+Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of
+vessels--the _Bassin du Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the
+huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five
+deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometers of quays the
+endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great
+gap in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this
+leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like
+a falling stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a
+pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there
+bird's-nesting.
+
+"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
+end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
+
+"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
+It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
+
+Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
+young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
+taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
+her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean
+merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and
+offensive.
+
+The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold
+of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor
+and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Joséphine,
+a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted
+to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened
+the door, went upstairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room,
+which was on the first floor, and then said:
+
+"A gentleman called--three times."
+
+Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing,
+cried out:
+
+"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"
+
+She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:
+
+"A gentleman from the lawyer's."
+
+"What lawyer?"
+
+"Why M'sieu' Canu--who else?"
+
+"And what did this gentleman say?"
+
+"That M'sieu' Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."
+
+Maître Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend,
+managing his business for him. For him to send word that he would call
+in the evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind;
+and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the
+announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
+intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
+inheritance, law-suits--all sorts of desirable or formidable
+contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:
+
+"What on earth can it mean?"
+
+Mme. Rosémilly began to laugh.
+
+"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."
+
+But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
+anything.
+
+Mme. Roland who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
+over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
+trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousinship.
+
+Before even taking off her bonnet she said:
+
+"I say, father" (she called her husband "Father" at home, and
+sometimes "Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you
+remember who it was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"
+
+"Yes--a little girl named Dumenil, stationer's daughter."
+
+"Had they any children?"
+
+"I should think so! four or five at least."
+
+"Not from that quarter, then."
+
+She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
+some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond
+of his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she
+might be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news
+were bad instead of good, checked her:
+
+"Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my
+part I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean."
+
+Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little
+ruffled by his brother's having spoken of it before Madame Rosémilly.
+
+"And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very
+disputable. You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first to
+be thought of. Besides, I do not wish to marry."
+
+Pierre smiled sneeringly:
+
+"Are you in love, then?"
+
+And the other, much put out, retorted:
+
+"Is it necessary that a man should be in love because he does not care
+to marry yet?"
+
+"Ah, there you are! That 'yet' sets it right; you are waiting."
+
+"Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it so."
+
+But old Roland who had been listening and cogitating, suddenly hit
+upon the most probable solution.
+
+"Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains. Maître Lecanu
+is our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is looking out for a
+medical partnership and Jean for a lawyer's office, and he has found
+something to suit one of you."
+
+This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted it.
+
+"Dinner is ready," said the maid. And they all hurried off to their
+rooms to wash their hands before sitting down to table.
+
+Ten minutes after they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the
+ground-floor.
+
+At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in
+amazement at this lawyer's visit.
+
+"For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his
+clerk three times? Why is he coming himself?"
+
+Pierre thought it quite natural.
+
+"An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are
+certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into
+writing."
+
+Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having
+invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and
+deciding on what should be done.
+
+They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced.
+Roland flew to meet him:
+
+"Good-evening, my dear Maître," said he, giving his visitor the title
+which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly rose.
+
+"I am going," she said. "I am very tired."
+
+A faint attempt was made to detain her; but she would not consent, and
+went home without either of the three men offering to escort her as
+they always had done.
+
+Mme. Roland did the honors eagerly to their visitor.
+
+"A cup of coffee, Monsieur?"
+
+"No, thank you. I have this moment done dinner."
+
+"A cup of tea, then?"
+
+"Thank you, I will not refuse presently. First we must attend to
+business."
+
+The total silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the
+regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of
+saucepans which the girl was cleaning--too stupid even to listen at
+the door.
+
+The lawyer went on:
+
+"Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. Maréchal--Léon Maréchal?"
+
+M. and Mme. Roland both exclaimed at once: "I should think so!"
+
+"He was a friend of yours?"
+
+Roland replied: "Our best friend, monsieur, but a fanatic for Paris;
+never to be got away from the boulevard. He was head clerk in the
+exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and
+latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far
+apart, you know--"
+
+The lawyer gravely put in:
+
+"M. Maréchal is deceased."
+
+Both man and wife responded with the little movement of pained
+surprise, genuine or false, but always ready, with which such news is
+received.
+
+Maître Lecanu went on:
+
+"My colleague in Paris has just communicated to me the main item of
+his will, by which he makes your son Jean--Monsieur Jean Roland--his
+sole legatee."
+
+They were all too much amazed to utter a single word. Mme. Roland was
+the first to control her emotions and stammered out:
+
+"Good heavens! Poor Léon--our poor friend! Dear me! Dear me! Dead!"
+
+The tears started to her eyes, a woman's silent tears, drops of grief
+from her very soul, which trickle down her cheeks and seem so very
+sad, being so clear. But Roland was thinking less of the loss than of
+the prospect announced. Still, he dared not at once inquire into the
+clauses of the will and the amount of the fortune, so to work around
+to these interesting facts he asked.
+
+"And what did he die of, poor Maréchal?"
+
+Maître Lecanu did not know in the least.
+
+"All I know is," said he, "that, dying without any direct heirs, he
+has left the whole of his fortune--about twenty thousand francs a year
+($3,840) in three per cents--to your second son, whom he has known
+from his birth up, and judges worthy of the legacy. If M. Jean should
+refuse the money, it is to go to the foundling hospitals."
+
+Old Roland could not conceal his delight and exclaimed:
+
+"Sacristi! It is the thought of a kind heart. And if I had no heir I
+would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend."
+
+The lawyer smiled.
+
+"I was very glad," he said, "to announce the event to you myself. It
+is always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news."
+
+It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a
+friend, of Roland's best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly
+forgotten the intimacy he had just spoken of with so much conviction.
+
+Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was
+still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief,
+which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.
+
+The doctor murmured:
+
+"He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine
+with him--my brother and me."
+
+Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome
+fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it
+to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner.
+Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long
+meditation he could only say this:
+
+"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I
+went to see him."
+
+But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop--galloping round
+this inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking
+behind the door which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word
+of consent.
+
+"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
+lawsuit--no one to dispute it?"
+
+Maître Lecanu seemed quite easy.
+
+"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
+Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
+
+"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"
+
+"Perfectly clear."
+
+"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"
+
+"All."
+
+Suddenly the old jeweler had an impulse of shame--obscure,
+instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and
+he added:
+
+"You understand when I ask all these questions so immediately it is to
+save my son disagreeables which he might not foresee. Sometimes there
+are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
+himself in an inextricable thorn bush. After all, I am not the
+heir--but I think first of the little 'un."
+
+They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
+one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.
+
+Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some
+remote fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and
+of which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:
+
+"Were you not saying that our poor friend Maréchal had left his
+fortune to my little Jean?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+And she went on simply:
+
+"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."
+
+Roland had risen.
+
+"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
+acceptance?"
+
+"No--no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
+if that suits you."
+
+"Yes, to be sure--yes, indeed, I should think so."
+
+Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
+tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
+chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
+mother, she said:
+
+"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"
+
+"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."
+
+The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in
+deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have
+been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a
+voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen
+doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families
+never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and
+cups; then she departed to heat the water. They sat waiting.
+
+No one could talk; they had too much to think about and nothing to
+say. Mme. Roland alone attempted a few commonplace remarks. She gave
+an account of the fishing excursion, and sang the praises of the
+_Pearl_ and of Mme. Rosémilly.
+
+"Charming! charming!" the lawyer said again and again.
+
+Roland, leaning against the marble mantelshelf as if it were winter
+and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips
+puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the
+invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in
+two armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table,
+stared in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar
+expression.
+
+At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank
+it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to
+crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.
+
+"Then it is understood," repeated Roland. "To-morrow, at your place,
+at two?"
+
+"Quite so. To-morrow, at two."
+
+Jean had not spoken a word.
+
+When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland
+clapped his two hands on his younger son's shoulders, crying:
+
+"Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don't embrace me!"
+
+Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:
+
+"It had not struck me as indispensable."
+
+The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,
+strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his
+heels, and kept saying:
+
+"What luck! what luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!"
+
+Pierre asked:
+
+"Then you used to know this Maréchal well?"
+
+And his father replied:
+
+"I believe you! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house.
+Surely you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays,
+and often took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when
+Jean was born it was he who went for the doctor. He had been
+breakfasting with us when your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew
+at once what it meant, and he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took
+my hat instead of his own. I remember that because we had a good laugh
+over it afterward. It is very likely that he may have thought of that
+when he was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself:
+'I remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will
+leave him my savings.'"
+
+Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once
+more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:
+
+"Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in
+these days."
+
+Jean got up.
+
+"I shall go out for a little walk," he said.
+
+His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk
+about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man
+insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be
+time for settling everything before he came into possession of his
+inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.
+Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few
+minutes followed his brother.
+
+As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his
+arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and replying to a
+reproach she had often brought against him, said:
+
+"You see, my dearest, it would have been of no good to stay any longer
+in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of coming
+here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the skies."
+
+She was quite serious.
+
+"It drops from the skies on Jean," she said. "But Pierre?"
+
+"Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides,
+his brother will surely do something for him."
+
+"No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for
+Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage."
+
+The old fellow seemed perplexed: "Well, then, we will leave him rather
+more in our will."
+
+"No; that again would not be quite just."
+
+"Drat it all!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do in the matter?
+You always hit on a whole heap of disagreeable ideas. You must spoil
+all my pleasures. Well, I am going to bed. Good-night. All the same, I
+call it good luck, jolly good luck!"
+
+And he went off, delighted in spite of everything, and without a word
+of regret for the friend so generous in his death.
+
+Mme. Roland sat thinking again, in front of the lamp which was burning
+out.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+As soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the
+high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy. The
+rather sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked
+slowly, his stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. He was
+ill at ease, oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing
+unpleasant tidings. He was not distressed by any definite thought, and
+he would have been puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for
+this dejection of spirit and heaviness of limb. He was hurt somewhere,
+without knowing where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of
+pain--one of these almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a
+finger on, but which incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us--a
+slight and occult pang, as it were a small seed of distress.
+
+When he reached the square in front of the theater, he was attracted
+by the lights in the Café Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the
+dazzling façade; but just as he was going in he reflected that he
+would meet friends there and acquaintances--people he would be
+obliged to talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this
+commonplace good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses. So,
+retracing his steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the
+harbor.
+
+"Where shall I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he
+liked which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of
+one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to
+meet any one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more;
+then he turned toward the pier; he had chosen solitude.
+
+Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
+walking and out of humor with his stroll before he had taken it.
+
+He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening?" And he
+began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we
+question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.
+
+His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he
+reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive
+nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the
+upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had
+induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting
+anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from
+him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see
+and the things they might say to him.
+
+And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's
+inheritance?"
+
+Yes, it was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news
+he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not
+always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious
+emotions against which a man struggles in vain.
+
+He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression
+produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a
+current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to
+those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right
+and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the
+cultivation of his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame
+of mind of a son who has inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to
+that wealth, may now know many long-wished-for delights which the
+avarice of his father had prohibited--a father, nevertheless, beloved
+and regretted.
+
+He got up and walked on to the end of the pier. He felt better, and
+glad to have understood, to have detected himself, to have unmasked
+_the other_ which lurks in us.
+
+"Then I was jealous of Jean," thought he. "That is really vilely mean.
+And I am sure of it now, for the first idea which came into my head
+was that he would marry Madame Rosémilly. And yet I am not in love
+myself with that priggish little goose, who is just the woman to
+disgust a man with good sense and good conduct. So it is the most
+gratuitous jealousy, the very essence of jealousy, which is merely
+because it is! I must keep an eye on that!"
+
+By this time he was in front of the flagstaff, whence the depth of
+water in the harbor is signaled, and he struck a match to read the
+list of vessels signaled in the roadstead and coming in with the next
+high tide. Ships were due from Brazil, from La Plata, from Chili and
+Japan, two Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner, and a Turkish
+steamship--which startled Pierre as much as if it had read a Swiss
+steamship; and in a whimsical vision he pictured a great vessel
+crowded with men in turbans climbing the shrouds in loose trousers.
+
+"How absurd," thought he. "But the Turks are a maritime people, too."
+
+A few steps further on he stopped again, looking out at the roads. On
+the right, above Sainte-Adresse, the two electric lights of Cape la
+Hève, like monstrous twin Cyclops, shot their long and powerful beams
+across the sea. Starting from two neighboring centers, the two
+parallel shafts of light, like the colossal tails of two comets, fell
+in a straight and endless slope from the top of the cliff to the
+uttermost horizon. Then, on the two piers, two more lights, the
+children of these giants, marked the entrance to the harbor; and far
+away on the other side of the Seine others were in sight, many others,
+steady or winking, flashing or revolving, opening and shutting like
+eyes--the eyes of the ports--yellow, red, and green, watching the
+night-wrapped sea covered with ships; the living eyes of the
+hospitable shore saying, merely by the mechanical and regular movement
+of their eyelids: "I am here. I am Trouville; I am Honfleur; I am the
+Audemer River." And high above all the rest, so high that from this
+distance it might be taken for a planet, the airy light-house of
+Etouville showed the way to Rouen across the sand banks at the mouth
+of the great river.
+
+Out on the deep water, the limitless water, darker than the sky, stars
+seemed to have fallen here and there. They twinkled in the night haze,
+small, close to shore or far away--white, red, and green, too. Most
+of them were motionless; some, however, seemed to be scudding onward.
+These were the lights of the ships at anchor or moving about in search
+of moorings.
+
+Just at this moment the moon rose behind the town; and it, too, looked
+like some huge, divine pharos lighted up in the heavens to guide the
+countless fleet of stars in the sky. Pierre murmured, almost speaking
+aloud: "Look at that! And we let our bile rise for two-pence!"
+
+On a sudden, close to him, in the wide, dark ditch between the two
+piers, a shadow stole up, a large shadow of fantastic shape. Leaning
+over the granite parapet, he saw that a fishing-boat had glided in,
+without the sound of a voice or the splash of a ripple, or the plunge
+of an oar, softly borne in by its broad, tawny sail spread to the
+breeze from the open sea.
+
+He thought to himself: "If one could but live on board that boat, what
+peace it would be--perhaps!"
+
+And then a few steps further again, he saw a man sitting at the very
+end of the breakwater.
+
+A dreamer, a lover, a sage--a happy or a desperate man? Who was it? He
+went forward, curious to see the face of this lonely individual, and
+he recognized his brother.
+
+"What, is it you, Jean?"
+
+"Pierre! You? What has brought you here?"
+
+"I came out to get some fresh air. And you?"
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"I too came out for fresh air." And Pierre sat down by his brother's
+side.
+
+"Lovely--isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, lovely."
+
+He understood from the tone of voice that Jean had not looked at
+anything. He went on:
+
+"For my part, whenever I come here I am seized with a wild desire to
+be off with all those boats, to the north or the south. Only to think
+that all those little sparks out there have just come from the
+uttermost ends of the earth, from the lands of great flowers and
+beautiful olive or copper colored girls, the lands of humming-birds,
+of elephants, of roaming lions, of negro kings, from all the lands
+which are like fairy tales to us who no longer believe in the White
+Cat or the Sleeping Beauty. It would be awfully jolly to be able to
+treat one's self to an excursion out there; but, then, it would cost a
+great deal of money, no end--"
+
+He broke off abruptly, remembering that his brother had that money
+now; and released from care, released from laboring for his daily
+bread, free, unfettered, happy, and light-hearted, he might go whither
+he listed, to find the fair-haired Swedes or the brown damsels of
+Havana. And then one of those involuntary flashes which were common
+with him, so sudden and swift that he could neither anticipate them,
+nor stop them, nor qualify them, communicated, as it seemed to him,
+from some second, independent, and violent soul, shot through his
+brain.
+
+"Bah! He is too great a simpleton; he will marry that little
+Rosémilly." He was standing up now. "I will leave you to dream of the
+future. I want to be moving." He grasped his brother's hand and added
+in a heavy tone:
+
+"Well, my dear old boy, you are a rich man. I am very glad to have
+come upon you this evening to tell you how pleased I am about it, how
+truly I congratulate you, and how much I care for you."
+
+Jean, tender and soft-hearted, was deeply touched.
+
+"Thank you, my good brother--thank you!" he stammered.
+
+And Pierre turned away with his slow step, his stick under his arm,
+and his hands behind his back.
+
+Back in the town again, he once more wondered what he should do, being
+disappointed of his walk and deprived of the company of the sea by his
+brother's presence. He had an inspiration. "I will go and take a glass
+of liqueur with old Marowsko," and he went off toward the quarter of
+the town known as Ingouville.
+
+He had known old Marowsko--_le père Marowsko_, he called him--in the
+hospitals in Paris. He was a Pole, an old refugee, it was said, who
+had gone through terrible things out there, and who had come to ply
+his calling as a chemist and druggist in France after passing a fresh
+examination. Nothing was known of his early life, and all sorts of
+legends had been current among the indoor and outdoor patients and
+afterwards among his neighbors. This reputation as a terrible
+conspirator, a nihilist, a regicide, a patriot ready for anything and
+everything, who had escaped death by a miracle, had bewitched Pierre
+Roland's lively and bold imagination; he had made friends with the old
+Pole, without, however, having ever extracted from him any revelation
+as to his former career. It was owing to the young doctor that this
+worthy had come to settle at Havre, counting on the large custom which
+the rising practitioner would secure him. Meanwhile he lived very
+poorly in his little shop, selling medicines to the small tradesmen
+and workmen in his part of the town.
+
+Pierre often went to see him and chat with him for an hour after
+dinner, for he liked Marowsko's calm look and rare speech, and
+attributed great depth to his long spells of silence.
+
+A single gas-burner was alight over the counter crowded with phials.
+Those in the window were not lighted, from motives of economy. Behind
+the counter, sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and
+crossed, an old man, quite bald, with a large beak of a nose which, as
+a prolongation of his hairless forehead, gave him a melancholy
+likeness to a parrot, was sleeping soundly, his chin resting on his
+breast. He woke at the sound of the shop-bell, and recognizing the
+doctor, came forward to meet him, holding out both hands.
+
+His black frock coat, streaked with stains of acids and syrups, was
+much too wide for his lean little person, and looked like a shabby old
+cassock; and the man spoke with a strong Polish accent which gave a
+childlike character to his thin voice, the lisping note and
+intonations of a young thing learning to speak.
+
+Pierre sat down, and Marowsko asked him: "What news, dear doctor?"
+
+"None. Everything as usual, everywhere."
+
+"You do not look very gay this evening."
+
+"I am not often gay."
+
+"Come, come, you must shake that off. Will you try a glass of
+liqueur?"
+
+"Yes, I do not mind."
+
+"Then I will give you something new to try. For these two months I
+have been trying to extract something from currants, of which only a
+syrup has been made hitherto--well, and I have done it. I have
+invented a very good liqueur--very good indeed; very good."
+
+And quite delighted, he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out
+a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky
+gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor
+quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His
+ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them,
+sketched them, hinted at them, but never fully uttered them.
+
+And indeed, his great end in life seemed to be the concoction of
+syrups and liqueurs. "A good syrup or a good liqueur is enough to make
+a fortune," he would often say.
+
+He had compounded hundreds of these sweet mixtures without ever
+succeeding in floating one of them. Pierre declared that Marowsko
+always reminded him of Marat.
+
+Two little glasses were fetched out of the back shop and placed on the
+mixing-board. Then the two men scrutinized the color of the fluid by
+holding it up to the gas.
+
+"A fine ruby," Pierre declared.
+
+"Isn't it?" Marowsko's old parrot-face beamed with satisfaction.
+
+The doctor tasted, smacked his lips, meditated, tasted again,
+meditated again, and spoke:
+
+"Very good--capital; and quite new in flavor. It is a find, my dear
+fellow."
+
+"Ah, really? Well, I am very glad."
+
+Then Marowsko took counsel as to baptizing the new liqueur. He wanted
+to call it "Extract of currants," or else "_Fine Groseille_," or
+"_Grosélia_," or again "_Groséline_." Pierre did not approve of either
+of these names.
+
+Then the old man had an idea:
+
+"What you said just now would be very good, very good: 'Fine Ruby.'"
+But the doctor disputed the merit of this name, though it had
+originated with him. He recommended simply "Groseillette," which
+Marowsko thought admirable.
+
+Then they were silent, and sat for some minutes without a word under
+the solitary gas-lamp. At last Pierre began, almost in spite of
+himself: "A queer thing has happened at home this evening. A friend of
+my father's, who is lately dead, has left his fortune to my brother."
+
+The druggist did not at first seem to understand, but after thinking
+it over he hoped that the doctor had half the inheritance. When the
+matter was clearly explained to him he appeared surprised and vexed;
+and to express his dissatisfaction at finding that his young friend
+had been sacrificed, he said several times over:
+
+"It will not look well."
+
+Pierre, who was relapsing into nervous irritation, wanted to know what
+Marowsko meant by this phrase.
+
+Why would it not look well? What was there to look badly in the fact
+that his brother had come into the money of a friend of the family?
+
+But the cautious old man would not explain further.
+
+"In such a case the money is left equally to the two brothers, and I
+tell you, it will not look well."
+
+And the doctor, out of all patience, went away, returned to his
+father's house, and went to bed. For some time yet he could hear Jean
+moving softly about the adjoining room, and then, after drinking two
+glasses of water, he fell asleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The doctor awoke next morning firmly resolved to make his fortune.
+Several times already he had come to the same determination without
+following up the reality. At the outset of all his trials of some new
+career the hopes of rapidly acquired riches kept up his efforts and
+confidence, till the first obstacle, the first check, threw him into a
+fresh path. Snug in bed between the warm sheets, he lay meditating.
+How many medical men had become wealthy in quite a short time! All
+that was needed was a little knowledge of the world; for in the course
+of his studies he had learnt to estimate the most famous physicians,
+and he judged them all to be asses. He was certainly as good as they,
+if not better. If by any means he could secure a practice among the
+wealth and fashion of Havre, he could easily make a hundred thousand
+francs a year. And he calculated with great exactitude what his
+certain profits must be. He would go out in the mornings to visit his
+patients; at the very moderate average of ten a day, at twenty francs
+each, that would mount up to seventy-two thousand francs a year at
+least, or even seventy-five thousand; for ten patients was certainly
+below the mark. In the afternoon he would be at home to, say, another
+ten patients, at ten francs each--thirty-six thousand francs. Here,
+then, in round numbers, was an income of twenty thousand francs. Old
+patients, or friends whom he would charge only ten francs for a visit,
+or see at home for five, would perhaps make a slight reduction on
+this sum total, but consultations with other physicians and various
+incidental fees would make up for that.
+
+Nothing would be easier than to achieve this by skillful advertising
+remarks in the _Figaro_ to the effect that the scientific faculty of
+Paris had their eye on him, and were interested in the cures effected
+by the modest young practitioner of Havre! And he would be richer than
+his brother, richer and more famous; and satisfied with himself, for
+he would owe his fortune solely to his own exertions; and liberal to
+his old parents, who would be justly proud of his fame. He would not
+marry, would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way,
+but then he might make love. He felt so sure of success that he sprang
+out of bed as though to grasp it on the spot, and he dressed to go and
+search through the town for rooms to suit him.
+
+Then, as he wandered about the streets, he reflected how slight are
+the causes which determine our actions. Any time these three weeks he
+might and ought to have come to this decision, which, beyond a doubt,
+the news of his brother's inheritance had abruptly given rise to.
+
+He stopped before every door where a placard proclaimed that "fine
+apartments" or "handsome rooms" were to be let; announcements without
+an adjective he turned from with scorn. Then he inspected them with a
+lofty air, measuring the height of the rooms, sketching the plan in
+his note-book, with the passages, the arrangements of the exits,
+explaining that he was a medical man and had many visitors. He must
+have a broad and well-kept staircase; nor could he be any higher up
+than the first floor.
+
+After having written down seven or eight addresses and scribbled two
+hundred notes, he got home to breakfast a quarter of an hour too late.
+
+In the hall he heard the clatter of plates. Then they had begun
+without him! Why? They were never wont to be so punctual. He was
+nettled and put out, for he was somewhat thin-skinned. As he went in
+Roland said to him:
+
+"Come, Pierre, make haste, devil take you! You know we have to be at
+the lawyer's at two o'clock. This is not the day to be dawdling
+about."
+
+Pierre sat down without replying, after kissing his mother and shaking
+hands with his father and brother; and he helped himself from the deep
+dish in the middle of the table to the cutlet which had been kept for
+him. It was cold and dry, probably the least tempting of them all. He
+thought that they might have left it on the hot plate till he came in,
+and not lose their heads so completely as to have forgotten their
+other son, their eldest.
+
+The conversation, which his entrance had interrupted, was taken up
+again at the point where it had ceased.
+
+"In your place," Mme. Roland was saying to Jean, "I will tell you what
+I should do at once. I should settle in handsome rooms so as to
+attract attention; I should rise on horseback and select one or two
+interesting cases to defend and make a mark in court. I would be a
+sort of amateur lawyer, and very select. Thank God you are out of all
+danger of want, and if you pursue a profession, it is, after all, only
+that you may not lose the benefit of your studies, and because a man
+ought never to sit idle."
+
+Old Roland, who was peeling a pear, exclaimed:
+
+"Christi! In your place I should buy a nice yacht, a cutter on the
+build of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a
+boat as that."
+
+Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not
+his wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a
+man. To a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation,
+while in the hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to
+be sure, were rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he
+could never want he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred
+times harder than he would have done in other circumstances. His
+business now must be not to argue for or against the widow and the
+orphan, and pocket his fees for every case he gained, but to become a
+really eminent legal authority, a luminary of the law. And he added in
+conclusion:
+
+"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"
+
+Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to
+take it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born
+poor you must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But
+where you have dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to
+death."
+
+Pierre replied haughtily:
+
+"Our notions differ. For my part, I respect nothing on earth but
+learning and intellect; everything else is beneath contempt."
+
+Mme. Roland always tried to deaden the constant shocks between father
+and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder
+committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were
+immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been
+committed, and absorbed by the interesting horror, the attractive
+mystery of crime, which, however commonplace, shameful, and
+disgusting, exercises a strange and universal fascination over the
+curiosity of mankind. Now and again, however, old Roland looked at his
+watch. "Come," said he, "it is time to be going."
+
+Pierre sneered.
+
+"It is not yet one o'clock," he said. "It really was hardly worth
+while to condemn me to eat a cold cutlet."
+
+"Are you coming to the lawyer's?" his mother asked.
+
+"I? No. What for?" he replied dryly. "My presence is quite
+unnecessary."
+
+Jean sat silent, as though he had no concern in the matter. When they
+were discussing the murder at Bolbec he, as a legal authority, had put
+forward some opinions and uttered some reflections on crime and
+criminals. Now he spoke no more; but the sparkle in his eye, the
+bright color in his cheeks, the very gloss of his beard seemed to
+proclaim his happiness.
+
+When the family had gone, Pierre, alone once more, resumed his
+investigations in the apartments to let. After two or three hours
+spent in going up and down stairs, he at last found, in the Boulevard
+François, a pretty set of rooms; a spacious entresol with two doors on
+two different streets, two drawing-rooms, a glass corridor, where his
+patients while they waited, might walk among flowers, and a delightful
+dining-room with a bow-window looking out over the sea.
+
+When it came to taking it, the terms--three thousand francs--pulled
+him up; the first quarter must be paid in advance, and he had nothing,
+not a penny to call his own.
+
+The little fortune his father had saved brought him in about eight
+thousand francs a year, and Pierre had often blamed himself for having
+placed his parents in difficulties by his long delay in deciding on a
+profession, by forfeiting his attempts and beginning fresh courses of
+study. So he went away, promising to send his answer within two days,
+and it occurred to him to ask Jean to lend him the amount of this
+quarter's rent, or even of a half-year, fifteen hundred francs, as
+soon as Jean should have come into possession.
+
+"It will be a loan for a few months at most," he thought. "I shall
+repay him, very likely, before the end of the year. It is a simple
+matter, and he will be glad to do so much for me."
+
+As it was not yet four o'clock, and he had nothing to do, absolutely
+nothing, he went to sit in the public gardens; and he remained a long
+time on a bench, without an idea in his brain, his eyes fixed on the
+ground, crushed by weariness amounting to distress.
+
+And yet this was how he had been living all these days since his
+return home, without suffering so acutely from the vacuity of his
+existence and from inaction. How had he spent his time from rising in
+the morning till bed-time?
+
+He had loafed on the pier at high tide, loafed in the streets, loafed
+in the cafés, loafed at Marowsko's, loafed everywhere. And on a sudden
+this life, which he had endured till now, had become odious,
+intolerable. If he had had any pocket-money he would have taken a
+carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches
+shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost
+of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out
+of his ken. It suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past
+thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a
+twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored
+the gravel with the ferrule of his stick:
+
+"Christi, if I only had money!"
+
+And again the thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like
+the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to
+allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy.
+
+Some children were playing about in the dusty paths. They were fair
+little things with long hair, and they were making little mounds of
+sand with the greatest gravity and careful attention, to crush them at
+once by stamping on them.
+
+It was one of those gloomy days with Pierre when we pry into every
+corner of our souls and shake out every crease.
+
+"All our endeavors are like the labors of those babies," thought he.
+And then he wondered whether the wisest thing in life were not to
+beget two or three of these little creatures and watch them grow up
+with complacent curiosity. A longing for marriage breathed on his
+soul. A man is not so lost when he is not alone. At any rate, he hears
+some one stirring at his side in hours of trouble or of uncertainty;
+and it is something only to be able to speak on equal terms to a woman
+when one is suffering.
+
+Then he began thinking of women. He knew very little of them, never
+having had any but very transient connections as a medical student,
+broken off as soon as the month's allowance was spent, and renewed or
+replaced by another the following month. And yet there must be some
+very kind, gentle, and comforting creatures among them. Had not his
+mother been the good sense and saving grace of his own home? How glad
+he would be to know a woman, a true woman.
+
+He started up with a sudden determination to go and call on Mme.
+Rosémilly. But he promptly sat down again. He did not like that woman.
+Why not? She had too much vulgar and sordid common sense; besides, did
+she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too
+bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion
+of the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could
+not help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the
+superior. However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and
+as he had done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself:
+"What am I going to do?"
+
+At this moment he felt in his soul the need of a melting mood, of
+being embraced and comforted. Comforted--for what? He could not have
+put it into words; but he was in one of those hours of weakness and
+exhaustion when a woman's presence, a woman's kiss, the touch of a
+hand, the rustle of a petticoat, a soft look out of black or blue
+eyes, seem the one thing needful, there and then, to our heart. And
+the memory flashed upon him of a little barmaid at a beer-house, whom
+he had walked home with one evening, and seen again from time to time.
+
+So once more he rose, to go and drink a bock with the girl. What
+should he say to her? What would she say to him? Nothing, probably.
+But what did that matter? He would hold her hand for a few seconds.
+She seemed to have a fancy for him. Why, then, did he not go to see
+her oftener?
+
+He found her dozing on a chair in the beer-shop, which was almost
+deserted. Three men were drinking and smoking with their elbows on the
+oak tables; the book-keeper in her desk was reading a novel, while the
+master, in his shirt-sleeves, lay sound asleep on a bench.
+
+As soon as she saw him the girl rose eagerly, and coming to meet him,
+said:
+
+"Good-day, monsieur--how are you?"
+
+"Pretty well; and you?"
+
+"I--oh, very well. How scarce you make yourself."
+
+"Yes. I have very little time to myself. I am a doctor, you know."
+
+"Indeed! You never told me. If I had known that--I was out of sorts
+last week and I would have sent for you. What will you take?"
+
+"A bock. And you?"
+
+"I will have a bock too since you are game to treat me."
+
+She had addressed him with the familiar _tu_, and continued to use it,
+as if the offer of a drink had tacitly conveyed permission. Then,
+sitting down opposite each other, they talked for a while. Every now
+and then she took his hand with the light familiarity of girls whose
+kisses are for sale, and looking at him with inviting eyes, she said:
+
+"Why don't you come here oftener? I like you very much, sweetheart."
+
+He was already disgusted with her; he saw how stupid she was, and
+common, smacking of low life. A woman, he told himself, should appear
+to us in a dream, or such a glory as may poetize her vulgarity.
+
+Next she asked him:
+
+"You went by the other morning with a handsome fair man, wearing a big
+beard. Is he your brother?"
+
+"Yes, he is my brother."
+
+"Awfully good-looking."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too."
+
+What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this
+tavern-wench about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept
+at arm's-length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of
+the torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment?
+And why did he allow it to overflow them, as if he needed once more to
+empty out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?
+
+He crossed his legs and said:
+
+"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He has just come into a
+legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."
+
+She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.
+
+"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"
+
+"No. An old friend of my parents'."
+
+"Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?"
+
+"No. I knew him very slightly."
+
+She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips,
+she said:
+
+"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of
+that pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched
+lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"
+
+She had put on a stolid, innocent face.
+
+"O--h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."
+
+He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.
+
+Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those
+words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful
+in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was
+Maréchal's son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of
+this suspicion cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still,
+looking about him for some place where he might sit down. In front of
+him was another café. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came
+up, "A bock," he said.
+
+He felt his heart beating, his skin was goose-flesh. And then the
+recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening
+before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same
+suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched
+the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it
+possible that such a thing should be believed?"
+
+But the reasons which might give rise to this horrible doubt in other
+men's minds now struck him, one after another, as plain, obvious, and
+exasperating. That a childless old bachelor should leave his fortune
+to a friend's two sons was the most simple and natural thing in the
+world; but that he should leave the whole of it to one alone--of
+course people would wonder, and whisper, and end by smiling. How was
+it that he had not foreseen this, that his father had not felt it? How
+was it that his mother had not guessed it? No; they had been too
+delighted at this unhoped-for wealth for the idea to come near them.
+And besides, how should these worthy souls have ever dreamed of
+anything so ignominious?
+
+But the public--their neighbors, the shopkeepers, their own tradesmen,
+all who knew them--would not they repeat the abominable thing, laugh
+at it, enjoy it, make game of his father and despise his mother?
+
+And the barmaid's remark that Jean was fair and he dark, that they
+were not in the least alike in face, manner, figure, or intelligence,
+would now strike every eye and every mind. When any one spoke of
+Roland's son, the question would be: "Which, the real or the false?"
+
+He rose, firmly resolved to warn Jean, and put him on his guard
+against the frightful danger which threatened their mother's honor.
+
+But what could Jean do? The simplest thing, no doubt, would be to
+refuse the inheritance, which would then go to the poor, and to tell
+all friends or acquaintances who had heard of the bequest that the
+will contained clauses and conditions impossible to subscribe to,
+which would have made Jean not inheritor but merely a trustee.
+
+As he made his way home he was thinking that he must see his brother
+alone, so as not to speak of such a matter in the presence of his
+parents. On reaching the door he heard a great noise of voices and
+laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain
+Beausire and Mme. Rosémilly, whom his father had brought home and
+engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and
+absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had
+been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little
+man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea,
+and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles
+of a beach, while he laughed with his throat full of _r_'s, looked
+upon life as a capital thing, in which everything that might turn up
+was good to take. He clinked his glass against father Roland's, while
+Jean was offering two freshly filled glasses to the ladies. Mme.
+Rosémilly refused, till Captain Beausire, who had known her husband,
+cried:
+
+"Come, come, madame, _bis repetita placent_, as we say in the lingo,
+which is as much as to say two glasses of vermouth never hurt any one.
+Look at me; since I have left the sea, in this way I give myself an
+artificial roll or two every day before dinner; I add a little
+pitching after my coffee, and that keeps things lively for the rest of
+the evening. I never rise to a hurricane, mind you, never, never. I am
+too much afraid of damage."
+
+Roland, whose nautical mania was humored by the old mariner, laughed
+heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the
+absinthe. He had a burly shopkeeping stomach--nothing but stomach--in
+which the rest of his body seemed to have got stowed away; the flabby
+paunch of men who spend their lives sitting, and who have neither
+thighs, nor chest, nor arms, nor neck; the seat of their chairs having
+accumulated all their substance in one spot. Beausire, on the
+contrary, though short and stout, was as tight as an egg and as hard
+as a cannon-ball.
+
+Mme. Roland had not emptied her glass and was gazing at her son Jean
+with sparkling eyes, happiness had brought a color to her cheeks.
+
+In him too the fullness of joy had now blazed out. It was a settled
+thing, signed and sealed; he had twenty thousand francs a year. In the
+sound of his laugh, in the fuller voice with which he spoke, in his
+way of looking at the others, his more positive manners, his greater
+confidence, the assurance given by money was at once perceptible.
+
+Dinner was announced, and as the old man was about to offer his arm to
+Mme. Rosémilly, his wife exclaimed:
+
+"No, no, father. Everything is for Jean to-day."
+
+Unwonted luxury graced the table. In front of Jean, who sat in his
+father's place, an enormous bouquet of flowers intermingled with
+ribbon favors--a bouquet for a really great occasion--stood up like a
+cupola dressed with flags, and was flanked by four high dishes, one
+containing a pyramid of splendid peaches; the second, a monumental
+cake gorged with whipped cream and covered with pinnacles of sugar--a
+cathedral in confectionery; the third, slices of pine-apple floating
+in clear syrup; and the fourth unheard-of lavishness--black grapes
+brought from the warmer south.
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Pierre as he sat down. "We are celebrating the
+accession of Jean the Rich."
+
+After the soup, Madeira was passed round, and already every one was
+talking at once. Beausire was giving the history of a dinner he had
+eaten at San Domingo at the table of a negro general. Old Roland was
+listening, and at the same time trying to get in, between the
+sentences, his account of another dinner, given by a friend of his at
+Mendon, after which every guest was ill for a fortnight. Mme.
+Rosémilly, Jean, and his mother were planning an excursion to
+breakfast at Saint Jouin, from which they promised themselves the
+greatest pleasure; and Pierre was only sorry that he had not dined
+alone in some pot-house by the sea, so as to escape all this noise and
+laughter and glee which fretted him. He was wondering how he could now
+set to work to confide his fears to his brother, and induce him to
+renounce the fortune he had already accepted and of which he was
+enjoying the intoxicating foretaste. It would be hard on him, no
+doubt; but it must be done; he could not hesitate; their mother's
+reputation was at stake.
+
+The appearance of an enormous shade-fish threw Roland back on fishing
+stories. Beausire told some wonderful tales of adventure on the
+Gaboon, at Sainte-Marie, in Madagascar, and above all, off the coasts
+of China and Japan, where the fish are as queer-looking as the
+natives. And he described the appearance of these fishes--their goggle
+gold eyes, their blue or red bellies, their fantastic fins like fans,
+their eccentric crescent-shaped tails--with such droll gesticulation
+that they all laughed till they cried as they listened.
+
+Pierre alone seemed incredulous, muttering to himself: "True enough,
+the Normans are the Gascons of the north!"
+
+After the fish came a vol-au-vent; then a roast fowl, a salad, French
+beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Rosémilly's maid-servant helped
+to wait on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine
+they drank. When the cork of the first champagne bottle was drawn
+with a pop, father Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his
+tongue and then declared: "I like that noise better than a
+pistol-shot."
+
+Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:
+
+"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."
+
+Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on
+the table again, and asked:
+
+"Why?"
+
+He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness,
+giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:
+
+"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of
+wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the
+circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which
+always threatens a man of your build."
+
+The jeweler's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before
+the wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to
+discover whether he was making game of him.
+
+But Beausire exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune; eat
+nothing, drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all
+plays the devil with your precious health. Well, all I can say is I
+have done all these things, sir, in every quarter of the globe,
+wherever and as often as I have had the chance, and I am none the
+worse."
+
+Pierre answered with some asperity:
+
+"In the first place, captain, you are a stronger man than my father;
+and in the next, all free livers talk as you do till the day
+when--when they come back no more to say to the cautious doctor: 'You
+were right.' When I see my father doing what is worst and most
+dangerous for him, it is but natural that I should warn him. I should
+be a bad son if I did otherwise."
+
+Mme. Roland, much distressed, now put in her word: "Come, Pierre, what
+ails you? For once it cannot hurt him? Think of what an occasion it is
+for him, for all of us. You will spoil his pleasure and make us all
+unhappy. It is too bad of you to do such a thing."
+
+He muttered, as he shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"He can do as he pleases. I have warned him."
+
+But father Roland did not drink. He sat looking at his glass full of
+the clear and luminous liquor while its light soul, its intoxicating
+soul, flew off in tiny bubbles mounting from its depths in hurried
+succession to die on the surface. He looked at it with the suspicious
+eye of a fox smelling at a dead hen and suspecting a trap. He asked
+doubtfully: "Do you think it will really do me much harm?" Pierre had
+a pang of remorse and blamed himself for letting his ill-humor punish
+the rest:
+
+"No," said he. "Just for once you may drink it; but do not take too
+much, or get into the habit of it."
+
+Then old Roland raised his glass, but still he could not make up his
+mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with
+longing and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips,
+swallowing them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and
+greediness; and then, when he had drained the last drop, of regret.
+
+Pierre's eye suddenly met that of Mme. Rosémilly; it rested on him
+clear and blue, far-seeing and hard. And he read, he knew, the precise
+thought which lurked in that look, the indignant thought of this
+simple and right-minded little woman; for the look said: "You are
+jealous--that is what you are. Shameful!"
+
+He bent his head and went on with his dinner.
+
+He was not hungry and found nothing nice. A longing to be off harassed
+him, a craving to be away from these people, to hear no more of their
+talking, jests, and laughter.
+
+Father Roland meanwhile, to whose head the fumes of the wine were
+rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was
+eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly
+full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of
+being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he
+could possess himself of it without exciting Pierre's remark. A ruse
+occurred to him, the simplest possible. He took up the bottle with an
+air of indifference, and holding it by the neck, stretched his arm
+across the table to fill the doctor's glass, which was empty; then he
+filled up all the other glasses, and when he came to his own he began
+talking very loud, so that if he poured anything into it they might
+have sworn it was done inadvertently. And in fact no one took any
+notice.
+
+Pierre, without observing it, was drinking a good deal. Nervous and
+fretted, he every minute raised to his lips the tall crystal funnel
+where the bubbles were dancing in the living, translucent fluid. He
+let the wine slip very slowly over his tongue, that he might feel the
+little sugary sting of the fixed air as it evaporated.
+
+Gradually a pleasant warmth glowed in his frame. Starting from the
+stomach as from a focus, it spread to his chest, took possession of
+his limbs, and diffused itself throughout his flesh, like a warm and
+comforting tide, bringing pleasure with it. He felt better now, less
+impatient, less annoyed, and his determination to speak to his brother
+that very evening faded away; not that he thought for a moment of
+giving it up, but simply not to disturb the happy mood in which he
+found himself.
+
+Beausire presently arose to propose a toast. Having bowed to the
+company, he began:
+
+"Most gracious ladies and gentlemen, we have met to do honor to a
+happy event which has befallen one of our friends. It used to be said
+that Fortune was blind, but I believe that she is only short-sighted
+or tricksy, and that she has lately brought a good pair of glasses
+which enabled her to discover in the town of Havre the son of our
+worthy friend Roland, skipper of the _Pearl_."
+
+Every one cried bravo and clapped their hands, and the elder Roland
+rose to reply. After clearing his throat, for it felt thick and his
+tongue was heavy, he stammered out:
+
+"Thank you, captain, thank you--for myself and my son. I shall never
+forget your behavior on this occasion. Here's good luck to you!"
+
+His eyes and nose were full of tears, and he sat down, finding nothing
+more to say.
+
+Jean, who was laughing, spoke in his turn:
+
+"It is I," said he, "who ought to thank my friends here, my excellent
+friends," and he glanced at Mme. Rosémilly, "who have given me such a
+touching evidence of their affection. But it is not by words that I
+can prove my gratitude. I will prove it to-morrow, every hour of my
+life, always, for our friendship is not one of those which fade away."
+
+His mother, deeply moved, murmured: "Well said, my boy."
+
+But Beausire cried out:
+
+"Come, Mme. Rosémilly, speak on behalf of the fair sex."
+
+She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with
+sadness, she said: "I will pledge you to the memory of Monsieur
+Maréchal."
+
+There was a few moments' lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after
+prayer. Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked:
+
+"Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements." Then turning to
+father Roland: "And who was this Maréchal, after all? You must have
+been very intimate with him."
+
+The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken
+voice he said:
+
+"Like a brother, you know. Such a friend as one does not make
+twice--we were always together--he dined with us every evening--and
+would treat us to the play--I need say no more--no more--no more. A
+true friend--a real true friend--wasn't he, Louise?"
+
+His wife merely answered: "Yes; he was a faithful friend."
+
+Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the
+subject changed, he drank some more wine. He scarcely remembered the
+remainder of the evening. They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they
+laughed and joked a great deal. At about midnight he went to bed, his
+mind confused and his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine
+next morning.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+These slumbers, lapped in champagne and chartreuse, had soothed and
+calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of mind.
+While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the
+agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and
+fully their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well
+as those from outside.
+
+It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an
+evil suspicion--a suspicion worthy of such a hussy--on hearing that
+only one of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but
+have not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow
+of foundation, about every honest woman? Do they not, whenever they
+speak, vilify, calumniate, and abuse all whom they believe to be
+blameless? Whenever a woman who is above imputation is mentioned in
+their presence, they are as angry as if they were being insulted, and
+exclaim: "Ah, yes, I know your married women; a pretty sort they are!
+Why, they have more lovers than we have, only they conceal it because
+they are such hypocrites. Oh, yes, a pretty sort, indeed!"
+
+Under any other circumstances he would certainly not have understood,
+not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his
+poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit
+seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him.
+His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself,
+for all that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to
+the tavern barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It
+was possible that his imagination had, unaided, invented this dreadful
+doubt--his imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly
+evaded his will and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and
+stealthy, into the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then
+some which were shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him,
+in the depths of his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like
+something stolen. His heart, most certainly, his own heart had secrets
+from him; and had not that wounded heart discerned in this atrocious
+doubt a means of depriving his brother of the inheritance of which he
+was jealous? He suspected himself now, cross-examining all the
+mysteries of his mind as bigots search their consciences.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly, though her intelligence was limited, had certainly a
+woman's instinct, scent, and subtle intuitions. And this notion had
+never entered her head, since she had, with perfect simplicity, drunk
+the blessed memory of the deceased Maréchal. She was not the woman to
+have done this if she had had the faintest suspicion. Now he doubted
+no longer; his involuntary displeasure at his brother's windfall of
+fortune and his religious affection for his mother had magnified his
+scruples--very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he
+put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at
+the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one
+beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and
+vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a constant
+irritation to him.
+
+He came in not late for breakfast, and amused all the family by his
+fun and good-humor.
+
+His mother, quite delighted, said to him:
+
+"My little Pierre, you have no notion how humorous and clever you can
+be when you choose."
+
+And he talked, putting things in a witty way, and making them laugh by
+ingenious hits at their friends. Beausire was his butt, and Mme.
+Rosémilly a little, but in a very judicious way, not too spiteful. And
+he thought as he looked at his brother: "Stand up for her, you muff.
+You may be as rich as you please, I can always eclipse you when I take
+the trouble."
+
+As they drank their coffee he said to his father:
+
+"Are you going out in the _Pearl_ to-day?"
+
+"No, my boy."
+
+"May I have her with Jean Bart?"
+
+"To be sure, as long as you like."
+
+He bought a good cigar at the first tobacconist's and went down to the
+quay with a light step. He glanced up at the sky, which was clear and
+luminous, of a pale blue, freshly swept by the sea breeze.
+
+Papagris, the boatman, commonly called Jean Bart, was dozing in the
+bottom of the boat, which he was required to have in readiness every
+day at noon when they had not been out fishing in the morning.
+
+"You and I together, mate," cried Pierre. He went down the iron ladder
+of the quay and leaped into the vessel.
+
+"Which way is the wind?" he asked.
+
+"Due east still, M'sieu Pierre. A fine breeze out at sea."
+
+"Well, then, old man, off we go!"
+
+They hoisted the foresail and weighed anchor; and the boat, feeling
+herself free, glided slowly down toward the jetty on the still water
+of the harbor. The breath of wind that came down the street caught the
+top of the sail so lightly as to be imperceptible, and the _Pearl_
+seemed endowed with life--the life of a vessel driven on by a
+mysterious latent power. Pierre took the tiller, and, holding his
+cigar between his teeth, he stretched his legs on the bunk, and with
+his eyes half-shut in the blinding sunshine, he watched the great
+tarred timbers of the breakwater as they glided past.
+
+When they reached the open sea, round the nose of the north pier which
+had sheltered them, the fresher breeze puffed in the doctor's face and
+on his hands, like a somewhat icy caress, filled his chest, which rose
+with a long sigh to drink it in, and swelling the tawny sail, tilted
+the _Pearl_ on her beam and made her more lively. Jean Bart hastily
+hauled up the jib, and the triangle of canvas, full of wind, looked
+like a wing; then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the
+spanker, which was close-reefed against its mast.
+
+Then, along the hull of the boat, which suddenly heeled over and was
+running at top speed, there was a soft, crisp sound of water hissing
+and rushing past. The prow ripped up the sea like the share of a
+plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and
+fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and
+falls in a ridge. At each wave they met--and there was a short,
+chopping sea--the _Pearl_ shivered from the point of the bowsprit to
+the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew
+harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow
+into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting
+for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look at
+each of the vessels in the roads one after another; then they put
+further out to look at the unfolding line of coast.
+
+For three hours Pierre, easy, calm, and happy, wandered to and fro
+over the dancing waters, guiding the thing of wood and canvas, which
+came and went at his will, under the pressure of his hand, as if it
+were a swift and docile winged creature.
+
+He was lost in day-dreams, the dreams one has on horseback or on the
+deck of a boat; thinking of his future, which should be brilliant, and
+the joys of living intelligently. On the morrow he would ask his
+brother to lend him fifteen hundred francs for three months, that he
+might settle at once in the pretty rooms on the Boulevard François,
+1er.
+
+Suddenly the sailor said: "The fog is coming up, M'sieu Pierre. We
+must go in."
+
+He looked up and saw to the northward a gray shade, filmy but dense,
+blotting out the sky and covering the sea; it was sweeping down on
+them like a cloud fallen from above. He tacked for the land and made
+for the pier, scudding before the wind and followed by the flying fog,
+which gained upon them. When it reached the _Pearl_, wrapping her in
+its intangible density, a cold shudder ran over Pierre's limbs, and a
+smell of smoke and mold, the peculiar smell of a sea fog, made him
+close his mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapor. By the
+time the boat was at her usual moorings in the harbor the whole town
+was buried in this fine mist, which did not fall but yet wetted
+everything like rain, and glided and rolled along the roofs and
+streets like the flow of a river. Pierre, with his hands and feet
+frozen, made haste home and threw himself on his bed to take a nap
+till dinner-time. When he made his appearance in the dining-room his
+mother was saying to Jean:
+
+"The glass corridor will be lovely. We will fill it with flowers. You
+will see. I will undertake to care for them and renew them. When you
+give a party the effect will be quite fairy like."
+
+"What in the world are you talking about?" the doctor asked.
+
+"Of a delightful apartment I have just taken for your brother. It is
+quite a find; an entresol looking out on two streets. There are two
+drawing-rooms, a glass passage, and a little circular dining-room,
+perfectly charming for a bachelor's quarters."
+
+Pierre turned pale.
+
+"Where is it?" he asked.
+
+"Boulevard François, 1er."
+
+There was no possibility for doubt. He took his seat in such a state
+of exasperation that he longed to exclaim: "This is really too much!
+Is there nothing for any one but him?"
+
+His mother, beaming, went on talking: "And only fancy, I got it for
+two thousand eight hundred francs a year. They asked three thousand,
+but I got a reduction of two hundred francs on taking for three, six,
+or nine years. Your brother will be delightfully housed there. An
+elegant home is enough to make the fortune of a lawyer. It attracts
+clients, charms them, holds them fast, commands respect, and shows
+them that a man who lives in such good style expects a good price for
+his words."
+
+She was silent for a few seconds and then went on:
+
+"We must look out for something suitable for you; much less
+pretentious, since you have nothing, but nice and pretty all the same.
+I assure you it will be to your advantage."
+
+Pierre replied contemptuously:
+
+"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."
+
+But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I assure you that to be well lodged
+will be of use to you nevertheless."
+
+About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:
+
+"How did you first come to know this man Maréchal?"
+
+Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:
+
+"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah,
+yes, I remember. It was your mother who made acquaintance with him in
+the shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and
+then he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew
+him as a friend."
+
+Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one
+as if he were spitting them, went on:
+
+"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"
+
+Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed
+to his wife's better memory.
+
+"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who
+remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or
+fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."
+
+She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
+steady voice and with calm decision:
+
+"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am
+quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the
+child had scarlet fever, and Maréchal, whom we then knew but very
+little, was of the greatest service to us."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
+half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
+the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
+And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
+he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great
+friends."
+
+And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
+cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
+was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so
+much, since I--_I_ was the cause of this great intimacy with my
+parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to
+me?"
+
+He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
+than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined,
+the secret germ of a new pain.
+
+He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
+shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
+It was like a pestilential rock dropped on earth. It could be seen
+swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
+The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after a rain, and
+all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the
+houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to
+mingle with the horrible savor of this wandering fog.
+
+Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring
+to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The
+druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On
+recognizing Pierre, for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog,
+he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the
+_Groseillette_.
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"
+
+The Pole explained that four of the chief cafés in the town had agreed
+to have it on sale, and that two papers, the _Northcoast Pharos_ and
+the _Havre Semaphore_, would advertise it, in return for certain
+chemical preparations to be supplied to the editors.
+
+After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely
+into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other
+questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion
+to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though
+he could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his
+averted eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to
+his lips but were not spoken--which the druggist was too timid or too
+prudent and cautious to utter.
+
+At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not
+to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people
+speak ill of your mother."
+
+Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was Maréchal's son. Of
+course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing
+must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself,
+Pierre, her son--had not he been for these three days past fighting
+with all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting
+against this hideous suspicion?
+
+And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter
+with himself--to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this
+possible but monstrous thing--came upon him anew, and so imperative
+that he rose without even drinking his glass of _Groseillette_, shook
+hands with the astounded druggist and plunged out into the foggy
+streets again.
+
+He asked himself: "What made this Maréchal leave all his fortune to
+Jean?"
+
+It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the
+rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with
+which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an
+overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe Jean,
+his brother, was that man's son.
+
+No. He did not believe it; he could not even ask himself the question
+which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion,
+improbable as it was, utterly and for ever. He craved for light, for
+certainty--he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no
+one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the
+darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search
+that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end to
+the matter; he would not think of it again--never. He would go and
+sleep.
+
+He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the facts; then I will
+recall all I know about him, his behavior to my brother and to me. I
+will seek out the causes which might have given rise to this
+preference. He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me
+first. If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would
+surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet
+fever, that he became so intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he
+ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for
+me--unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and
+predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up."
+
+Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his
+intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this
+Maréchal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had
+seen pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in
+Paris.
+
+But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat
+disturbed his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their
+precision, clouded his recollection. To enable him to look at the past
+and at unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape
+it, he must be motionless in a vast and empty space. And he made up
+his mind to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night.
+As he approached the harbor he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and
+sinister wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and
+steady. It was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the
+fog. A shiver ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this
+cry of distress thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had
+uttered it himself. Another and a similar voice answered with such
+another moan, but further away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the
+pier gave out a fearful sound in answer. Pierre made for the jetty
+with long steps, thinking no more of anything, content to walk on into
+this ominous and bellowing darkness.
+
+When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his
+eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by
+the fog, which make the harbor accessible at night, and the red glare
+of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.
+Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his
+face in his hands.
+
+Though he did not pronounce the word with his lips, his mind kept
+repeating: "Maréchal--Maréchal," as if to raise and challenge the
+shade. And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly
+saw him as he had known him: a man of about sixty, with a white beard
+cut in a point and very thick eyebrows, also white. He was neither
+tall nor short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his
+movements gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple
+and kindly. He called Pierre et Jean "my dear children," and had never
+seemed to prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him.
+And then Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent,
+tried to recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had
+vanished from the world. By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his
+rooms in the rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself
+at dinner.
+
+He was waited on by two maids, both old women who had been in the
+habit--a very old one, no doubt--of saying "Monsieur Pierre" and
+"Monsieur Jean." Maréchal would hold out both hands, the right hand
+to one of the young men, the left to the other, as they happened to
+come in.
+
+"How are you, my children?" he would say. "Have you any news of your
+parents? As for me, they never write to me."
+
+The talk was quiet and intimate, of commonplace matters. There was
+nothing remarkable in the man's mind, but much that was winning,
+charming, and gracious. He had certainly been a good friend to them,
+one of those good friends of whom we think the less because we feel
+sure of them.
+
+Now, reminiscences came readily to Pierre's mind. Having seen him
+anxious from time to time, and suspecting his student's
+impecuniousness, Maréchal had of his own accord offered and lent him
+money, a few hundred francs perhaps, forgotten by both, and never
+repaid. Then this man must always have been fond of him, always have
+taken an interest in him, since he thought of his needs. Well
+then--well then--why leave his whole fortune to Jean? No, he had never
+shown any more marked affection for the younger than for the elder,
+had never been more interested in one than in the other, or seemed to
+care more tenderly for this one or that one. Well then--well then--he
+must have had some strong secret reason for leaving everything to
+Jean--everything--and nothing to Pierre.
+
+The more he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more
+extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made
+such a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable
+anguish piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a fluttering rag.
+Its springs seemed broken, and the blood rushed through in a flood,
+unchecked, tossing it with wild surges.
+
+Then in an undertone, as a man speaks in a nightmare, he muttered: "I
+must know. My God! I must know."
+
+He looked further back now, to an earlier time, when his parents had
+lived in Paris. But the faces escaped him, and this confused his
+recollections. He struggled above all to see Maréchal with light, or
+brown, or black hair. But he could not; the later image, his face as
+an old man, blotted out all others. However, he remembered that he had
+been slighter, and had a soft hand, and that he often brought flowers.
+Very often--for his father would constantly say: "What, another
+bouquet! But this is madness, my dear fellow; you will ruin yourself
+in roses." And Maréchal would say: "No matter; I like it."
+
+And suddenly his mother's voice and accent, his mother's as she smiled
+and said: "Thank you, my kind friend," flashed on his brain, so
+clearly that he could have believed he heard her. She must have spoken
+those words very often that they should remain thus graven on her
+son's memory.
+
+So Maréchal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the
+customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweler's wife. Had he loved
+her? Why should he have made friends with these tradespeople if he had
+not been in love with the wife? He was a man of education and fairly
+refined tastes. How many a time had he discussed poets and poetry with
+Pierre. He did not appreciate these writers from an artistic point of
+view, but with sympathetic and responsive feeling. The doctor had
+often smiled at his emotions which had struck him as rather silly; now
+he plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been
+the friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so
+heavy, to whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy.
+
+This Maréchal then, being young, free, rich, ready for any form of
+tenderness, went by chance into the shop one day, having perhaps
+observed its pretty mistress. He had bought something, had come again,
+had chatted, more intimately each time, paying by frequent purchases
+for the right of a seat in the family, of smiling at the young wife
+and shaking hands with the husband.
+
+And what next--what next--good God--what next?
+
+He had loved and petted the first child, the jeweler's child, till the
+second was born; then, till death, he had remained impenetrable; and
+when his grave was closed, his flesh dust, his name erased from the
+list of the living, when he himself was quiet and forever gone, having
+nothing to scheme for, to dread or to hide, he had given his whole
+fortune to the second child! Why?
+
+The man had all his wits; he must have understood and foreseen that he
+might, that he almost infallibly must, give grounds for the
+supposition that the child was his. He was casting obloquy on a woman.
+How could he have done this if Jean were not his son?
+
+And suddenly a clear and fearful recollection shot through his brain.
+Maréchal was fair--fair like Jean. He now remembered a little
+miniature portrait he had seen formerly in Paris, on the drawing-room
+chimney-shelf, and which had since disappeared. Where was it? Lost, or
+hidden away? Oh, if he could but have it in his hands for one minute!
+His mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed drawer where love-tokens
+were treasured.
+
+His misery at this thought was so intense that he uttered a groan, one
+of those brief moans wrung from the breast by a too intolerable pang.
+And immediately, as if it had heard him, as if it had understood and
+answered him, the fog-horn on the pier bellowed out close to him. Its
+voice, like that of a fiendish monster, more resonant than thunder--a
+savage and appalling roar contrived to drown the clamor of the wind
+and waves--spread through the darkness, across the sea, which was
+invisible under its shroud of fog. And again, through the mist, far
+and near, responsive cries went up to the night. They were terrifying,
+these calls given forth by the great blind steam-ships.
+
+Then all was silent once more.
+
+Pierre had opened his eyes and was looking about him, startled to find
+himself here, roused from his nightmare.
+
+"I am mad," thought he, "I suspect my mother." And a surge of love and
+emotion, of repentance and prayer and grief, welled up in his heart.
+His mother! Knowing her as he knew her, how could he ever have
+suspected her? Was not the soul, was not the life of this
+simple-minded, chaste, and loyal woman clearer than water? Could any
+one who had seen and known her ever think of her but as above
+suspicion? And he, her son, had doubted her! Oh, if he could but have
+taken her in his arms at that moment, how he would have kissed and
+caressed her, and gone on his knees to crave pardon.
+
+Would she have deceived his father--she?
+
+His father!--A very worthy man no doubt, upright and honest in
+business, but with a mind which had never gone beyond the horizon of
+his shop. How was it that this woman, who must have been very
+pretty--as he knew, and it could still be seen--gifted, too, with a
+delicate, tender, emotional soul, have accepted a man so unlike
+herself as a suitor and a husband? Why inquire? She had married, as
+young French girls do marry, the youth with a little fortune proposed
+to her by their relations. They had settled at once in their shop in
+the Rue Montmartre; and the young wife, ruling over the desk, inspired
+by the feeling of a new home, and the subtle and sacred sense of
+interests in common which fills the place of love, and even of regard,
+by the domestic hearth of most of the commercial houses of Paris, had
+set to work with all her superior and active intelligence, to make the
+fortune they hoped for. And so her life had flowed on, uniform,
+peaceful and respectable, but loveless.
+
+Loveless?--was it possible then that a woman should not love? That a
+young and pretty woman, living in Paris, reading books, applauding
+actresses for dying of passion on the stage, could live from youth to
+old age, without once feeling her heart touched? He would not believe
+it of any one else; why should she be different from all others,
+though she was his mother?
+
+She had been young, with all the poetic weaknesses which agitate the
+heart of a young creature. Shut up, imprisoned in the shop, by the
+side of a vulgar husband who always talked of trade, she had dreamed
+of moonlight nights, of voyages, of kisses exchanged in the shades of
+evening. And then, one day a man had come in, as lovers do in books,
+and had talked as they talk.
+
+She had loved him. Why not? She was his mother. What then? Must a man
+be blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it
+concerns his mother? And she had been frail. Why, yes, since this man
+had had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she
+was far away and growing old. Why yes, since he had left all his
+fortune to his son--their son!
+
+And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he
+longed to kill some one. With his arm outstretched, his hand wide
+open, he wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom?
+Everyone; his father, his brother, the dead man, his mother!
+
+He hurried off homeward. What was he going to do?
+
+As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of
+the fog-horn went off in his very face. He was so startled that he
+nearly fell, and shrank back as far as the granite parapet. The
+steamer which was the first to reply seemed to be quite near and was
+already at the entrance, the tide having risen.
+
+Pierre turned round and could discern its red eye dim through the fog.
+Then, in the broad light of the electric lanterns, a huge black shadow
+crept up between the piers. Behind him the voice of the lookout man,
+the hoarse voice of an old retired sea-captain, shouted:
+
+"What ship?" And out of the fog the voice of the pilot standing on
+deck--not less hoarse--replied:
+
+"The Santa Lucia."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"Italy."
+
+"What port?"
+
+"Naples."
+
+And before Pierre's bewildered eyes rose as he fancied, the fiery
+pennon of Vesuvius, while, at the foot of the volcano, fire-flies
+danced in the orange-groves of Sorrento or Castellamare. How often had
+he dreamed of these familiar names as if he knew the scenery. Oh, if
+he might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come
+back, never write, never let any one know what had become of him! But
+no, he must go home--home to his father's house, and go to bed.
+
+He would not. Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there
+till daybreak. He liked the roar of the fog-horns. He pulled himself
+together and began to walk up and down like an officer on watch.
+
+Another vessel was coming in behind the other, huge and mysterious. An
+English Indiaman, homeward bound.
+
+He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the
+impenetrable vapor. Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre
+set out toward the town. He was so cold that he went into a sailors'
+tavern to drink a glass of grog, and when the hot and pungent liquor
+had scorched his mouth and throat he felt a hope revive within him.
+
+Perhaps he was mistaken. He knew his own vagabond unreason so well! No
+doubt he was mistaken. He had piled up the evidence as a charge is
+drawn up against an innocent person, whom it is always so easy to
+convict when we wish to think him guilty. When he should have slept he
+would think differently.
+
+Then he went in and to bed, and by sheer force of will he at last
+dropped asleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+But the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
+torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his
+warm, closed room, he was aware, even before thought was awake in him,
+of the painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we
+have slept on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which
+the shock merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into
+our very flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory
+returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by
+one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart
+on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought
+the less he doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the
+inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.
+
+He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
+window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound
+fell on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and
+gently snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions!
+A man who had known their mother left him all his fortune; he took the
+money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
+contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
+distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
+sleeper.
+
+Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door, have gone in, and
+sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
+waking:
+
+"Jean, you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have
+brought suspicion and dishonor on our mother."
+
+But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did
+not believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury
+the shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
+had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
+brother--especially not his brother.
+
+He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He
+would have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if
+only he, he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live
+with her every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was
+the child of a stranger?
+
+And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
+always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
+and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and yet
+nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
+troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago
+in the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
+had surely bewailed her sin, and then, little by little, had almost
+forgotten it. Have not all women, all, this fault of prodigious
+forgetfulness which enables them, after a few years, hardly to
+recognize the man to whose kisses they have lent their lips? The kiss
+strikes like a thunder-bolt, the love passes away like a storm, and
+then life, like the sky, is calm once more, and begins again as it
+was before. Do you ever remember a cloud?
+
+Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his
+father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and
+the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his
+candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the
+kitchen.
+
+He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up
+again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his nightshirt, on
+a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a
+tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he
+ceased to move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then,
+one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was
+the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow
+louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore,
+short, labored and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at
+the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two
+men, sleeping under the same roof--father and son--were nothing to
+each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together,
+and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately,
+they embraced each other, they rejoiced and lamented together over the
+same things, just as if the same blood flowed in their veins. And two
+men born at opposite ends of the earth could not be more alien to each
+other than this father and son. They believed they loved each other,
+because a lie had grown up between them. This paternal love, this
+filial love, were the outcome of a lie--a lie which could not be
+unmasked, and which no one would ever know but he, the true son.
+
+But yet, but yet--if he were mistaken? How could he make sure? Oh, if
+only some likeness, however slight, could be traced between his father
+and Jean, one of those mysterious resemblances which run from an
+ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are
+the offspring of the same kiss. To him, a medical man, so little would
+suffice to enable him to discern this--the curve of a nostril, the
+space between the eyes, the character of the teeth or hair; nay
+less--a gesture, a trick, a habit, an inherited taste, any mark or
+token which a practiced eye might recognize as characteristic.
+
+He thought long, but could remember nothing; no, nothing. But he had
+looked carelessly, observed badly, having no reason for spying such
+imperceptible indications.
+
+He got up to go back to his room and mounted the stairs with a slow
+step, still lost in thought. As he passed the door of his brother's
+room he stood stock still, his hand put out to open it. An imperative
+need had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his
+leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and
+relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off.
+Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any
+appreciable likeness existed it would not escape him.
+
+But supposing Jean were to wake, what could he say? How could he
+explain this intrusion?
+
+He stood still, his fingers clenched on the door-handle, trying to
+devise a reason, an excuse. Then he remembered that a week ago he had
+lent his brother a phial of laudanum to relieve a fit of toothache.
+He might himself have been in pain this night and have come to find
+the drug. So he went in with a stealthy step, like a robber. Jean, his
+mouth open, was sunk in deep, animal slumbers. His beard and fair hair
+made a golden patch on the white linen; he did not wake, but he ceased
+snoring.
+
+Pierre, leaning over him, gazed at him with hungry eagerness. No, this
+youngster was not in the least like Roland; and for the second time
+the recollection of the little portrait of Maréchal, which had
+vanished, recurred to his mind. He must find it! When he should see it
+perhaps he should cease to doubt!
+
+His brother stirred, conscious no doubt of a presence, or disturbed by
+the light of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tiptoe to
+the door which he noiselessly closed; then he went back to his room,
+but not to bed again.
+
+Day was long in coming. The hours struck one after another on the
+dining-room clock, and its tone was a deep and solemn one, as though
+the little piece of clockwork had swallowed a cathedral bell. The
+sound rose through the empty staircase, penetrating through walls and
+doors, and dying away in the rooms where it fell on the torpid ears of
+the sleeping household. Pierre had taken to walking to and fro between
+his bed and the window. What was he going to do? He was too much upset
+to spend this day at home. He wanted still to be alone, at any rate
+till the next day, to reflect, to compose himself, to strengthen
+himself for the common every-day life which he must take up again.
+
+Well, he would go over to Trouville to see the swarming crowd on the
+sands. That would amuse him, change the air of his thoughts, and give
+him time to inure himself to the horrible thing he had discovered. As
+soon as morning dawned he made his toilet and dressed. The fog had
+vanished and it was fine, very fine. As the boat for Trouville did not
+start till nine, it struck the doctor that he must greet his mother
+before starting.
+
+He waited till the hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and
+then went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her
+door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was
+limp and tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning
+the handle to open it. He knocked. His mother's voice inquired:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"I--Pierre."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Only to say good morning, because I am going to spend the day at
+Trouville with some friends."
+
+"But I am still in bed."
+
+"Very well, do not disturb yourself. I shall see you this evening,
+when I come in."
+
+He hoped to get off without seeing her, without pressing on her cheek
+the false kiss which it made his heart sick to think of. But she
+replied:
+
+"No. Wait a moment. I will let you in. Wait till I get into bed
+again."
+
+He heard her bare feet on the floor and the sound of the bolt drawn
+back. Then she called out:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland,
+with a silk handkerchief by way of nightcap and his face to the wall,
+still lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to
+pull his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Joséphine,
+rung up by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his
+stubborn slumbers.
+
+Pierre as he went toward his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
+of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
+cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.
+
+"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, last evening."
+
+"Will you return to dinner?"
+
+"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."
+
+He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
+All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
+eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice--so well
+known, so familiar, abruptly struck him as new, different from what
+they had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving
+her, he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she,
+and he knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first
+time he clearly identified them all. His anxious attention,
+scrutinizing her face which he loved, recalled a difference, a
+physiognomy he had never before discerned.
+
+He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to
+know which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:
+
+"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
+little portrait of Maréchal, in the drawing-room."
+
+She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she
+hesitated; then she said:
+
+"To be sure."
+
+"What has become of the portrait?"
+
+She might have replied more readily:
+
+"That portrait--stay; I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk."
+
+"It would be kind of you to find it."
+
+"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"
+
+"Oh, it was not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to
+give it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."
+
+"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon
+as I am up."
+
+And he went out.
+
+It was a blue day, without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
+seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
+going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as
+they went, exhilarated by the bright weather.
+
+The passengers were already going on board the Trouville boat; Pierre
+took a seat aft on a wooden bench.
+
+He asked himself:
+
+"Now was she uneasy at my asking for the portrait or only surprised?
+Has she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she know where it is,
+or does she not? If she has hidden it--why?"
+
+And his mind, still following up the same line of thought from one
+deduction to another, came to this conclusion:
+
+That portrait--of a friend, of a lover, had remained in the
+drawing-room in a conspicuous place, till one day when the wife and
+mother perceived, first of all and before any one else, that it bore a
+likeness to her son. Without doubt she had for a long time been on the
+watch for this resemblance; then, having detected it, having noticed
+its beginnings, and understanding that any one might, any day, observe
+it too, she had one evening removed the perilous little picture and
+had hidden it, not daring to destroy it.
+
+Pierre recollected quite clearly now that it was long, long before
+they left Paris that the miniature had vanished. It had disappeared,
+he thought, about the time when Jean's beard was beginning to grow,
+which had made him suddenly and wonderfully like the fair young man
+who smiled from the picture frame.
+
+The motion of the boat as it put off disturbed and dissipated his
+meditations. He stood up and looked at the sea. The little steamer,
+once outside the piers, turned to the left, and puffing and snorting
+and quivering, made for a distant point visible through the morning
+haze. The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the
+level waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And
+the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two
+neighboring lands. They reached the harbor of Trouville in less than
+an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing,
+Pierre went to the shore.
+
+From a distance it looked like a garden full of gaudy flowers. All
+along the stretch of yellow sand, from the pier as far as the Roches
+Noires, sunshades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every
+color, in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin
+of the waves, or scattered here and there, really looked like immense
+bouquets on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds--voices near and
+far ringing thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children
+being bathed, clear laughter of women--all made a pleasant, continuous
+din, mingling with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air
+itself.
+
+Pierre walked on among all this throng, more lost, more remote from
+them, more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if
+he had been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles
+from shore. He passed by them and heard a few sentences without
+listening; and he saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the
+women, and the women smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had
+awoke, he perceived them all; and hatred of them all surged up in his
+soul, for they seemed happy and content.
+
+Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
+fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the
+sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the
+fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of
+fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the
+insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
+in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as
+stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened
+women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding some man. They had
+dressed themselves out for men--for all men--all excepting the husband
+whom they no longer needed to conquer. They had dressed themselves out
+for the lover of yesterday and the lover of to-morrow, for the
+stranger they might meet and notice or were perhaps on the lookout
+for.
+
+And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
+invited them, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
+that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
+then, no more than a love-market--some drove a hard bargain for their
+kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
+everywhere the same, all the world over.
+
+His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? No. For
+there were exceptions--many, very many. These women he saw about him,
+rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to the class of
+fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to the less
+respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the legion of
+idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to be seen.
+
+The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of visitors gradually
+landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
+chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
+a lacelike frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled
+up by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade
+running along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing
+flow, slow and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams
+elbowing and mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this
+bustle, made his escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast
+at a modest tavern on the skirts of the fields.
+
+When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his legs on a couple
+of chairs under a lime tree in front of the house, and as he had
+hardly slept the night before, he presently fell into a doze. After
+resting for some hours he shook himself, and finding that it was time
+to go on board again he set out, tormented by a sudden stiffness which
+had come upon him during his long nap. Now he was eager to be at home
+again; to know whether his mother had found the portrait of Maréchal.
+Would she be the first to speak of it, or would he be obliged to ask
+for it again? If she waited to be questioned further it must be
+because she had some secret reason for not showing the miniature.
+
+But when he was at home again, and in his room, he hesitated about
+going down to dinner. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not
+yet had time to calm down. However, he made up his mind to it, and
+appeared in the dining-room just as they were sitting down.
+
+All their faces were beaming.
+
+"Well," said Roland, "are you getting on with your purchases? I do not
+want to see anything till it is all in its place."
+
+And his wife replied: "Oh, yes. We are getting on. But it takes much
+consideration to avoid buying things that do not match. The furniture
+question is an absorbing one."
+
+She had spent the day in going with Jean to cabinet-makers and
+upholsterers. Her fancy was for rich materials, rather splendid, to
+strike the eye at once. Her son, on the contrary, wished for something
+simple and elegant. So in front of everything put before them they had
+each repeated their arguments. She declared that a client, a
+defendant, must be impressed; that as soon as he is shown into his
+counsel's waiting-room he should have a sense of wealth.
+
+Jean, on the other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and
+opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his
+quiet and perfect taste.
+
+And this discussion, which had gone on all day, began again with the
+soup.
+
+Roland had no opinion. He repeated: "I do not want to hear anything
+about it. I will go and see it when it is all finished."
+
+Mme. Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.
+
+"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter?"
+
+His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would
+have liked to reply with an oath. However, he only answered in a dry
+tone quivering with annoyance:
+
+"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind. I like nothing so well as simplicity,
+which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of
+conduct."
+
+His mother went on:
+
+"You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where
+good taste is not to be met with at every turn."
+
+Pierre replied:
+
+"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
+fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
+A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbor has a
+lover."
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
+maxims of a moralist."
+
+Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
+question of stuffs and armchairs.
+
+He sat looking at them, as he had looked at his mother in the morning
+before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
+study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
+family of which he knew nothing.
+
+His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind. That flabby, burly
+man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in
+the least like him.
+
+His family!
+
+Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a
+dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which
+had held these four human beings together. It was all over, all
+ruined. He had now no mother--for he could no longer love her now that
+he could not revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect
+which a son's love demands; no brother--since his brother was the
+child of a stranger; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse
+man whom he could not love in spite of himself.
+
+And he suddenly broke out:
+
+"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"
+
+She opened her eyes in surprise.
+
+"What portrait?"
+
+"The portrait of Maréchal."
+
+"No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I know
+where it is."
+
+"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:
+
+"A little likeness of Maréchal which used to be in the drawing-room in
+Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
+week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the
+papers. It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was
+shaving myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your
+side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
+it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three
+days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I
+should think that this was one."
+
+Mme. Roland calmly replied:
+
+"Yes, I know where it is. I will fetch it presently."
+
+Then she had lied! When she had said that very morning to her son, who
+had asked her what had become of the miniature: "I don't exactly
+know--perhaps it is in my desk"--it was a lie! She had seen it,
+touched it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she
+had hidden it away again in the secret drawer with those letters--his
+letters.
+
+Pierre looked at the mother who had lied to him; looked at her with
+the concentrated fury of a son who had been cheated, robbed of his
+most sacred affection, and with the jealous wrath of a man who, after
+long being blind, at last discovers a disgraceful betrayal. If he had
+been that woman's husband--and not her child--he would have gripped
+her by the wrists, seized her by the shoulders or the hair, have flung
+her on the ground, have hit her, hurt her, crushed her! And he might
+say nothing, do nothing, show nothing, reveal nothing. He was her son;
+he had no vengeance to take. And he had not been deceived.
+
+Nay, but she had deceived his tenderness, his pious respect. She owed
+to him to be without reproach, as all mothers owe it to their
+children. If the fury that boiled within him verged on hatred it was
+that he felt her to be even more guilty toward him than toward his
+father.
+
+The love of man and wife is a voluntary compact in which the one who
+proves weak is guilty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother
+her duty is a higher one, since nature has intrusted her with a race.
+If she fails then she is cowardly, worthless, infamous.
+
+"I do not care," said Roland suddenly, stretching out his legs under
+the table, as he did every evening while he sipped his glass of
+black-currant brandy, "You may do worse than live idle when you have a
+snug little income. I hope Jean will have us to dinner in style now.
+Hang it all! if I have an indigestion now and then I cannot help it."
+
+Then turning to his wife he added:
+
+"Go and fetch that portrait, little woman, as you have done your
+dinner. I should like to see it again myself."
+
+She rose, took a taper, and went. Then, after an absence which Pierre
+thought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme.
+Roland returned smiling, and holding an old-fashioned gilt frame by
+the ring.
+
+"Here it is," said she, "I found it at once."
+
+The doctor was the first to put forth his hand; he took the picture,
+and holding it a little away from him, he examined it. Then, fully
+aware that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes
+and fixed them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly
+refrain, in his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And
+though he dared not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought
+by his manner of comparing the living face with the painted one.
+
+They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
+but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is the
+father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
+relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But
+what to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the
+faces, was that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was
+pretending, too deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the
+liqueur bottle away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at
+any rate had his suspicions.
+
+"Hand it on to me," said Roland.
+
+Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle toward
+him to see it better; then he murmured in a pathetic tone:
+
+"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
+Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
+and with such a pleasant manner--was not he, Louise?"
+
+As his wife made no answer he went on:
+
+"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all
+at an end--nothing left of him--but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well,
+at any rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and
+faithful friend to the last. Even on his deathbed he did not forget
+us."
+
+Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it
+for a few minutes and then said regretfully:
+
+"I do not recognize it at all. I only remember him with white hair."
+
+He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
+it, looking away again as if she were frightened; then in her usual
+voice, she said:
+
+"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
+take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
+she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
+formerly stood.
+
+Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
+commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
+deep armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
+on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.
+
+Mme. Roland, on a low seat by a little table on which the lamp stood,
+embroidered, or knitted, or marked linen.
+
+This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended for
+Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and
+required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was
+counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little
+portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor,
+who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five
+steps, met his mother's look at each turn.
+
+It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness,
+intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to
+himself--at once tortured and glad:
+
+"She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And
+each time he reached the fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to
+look at Maréchal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was
+haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an
+opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening,
+suddenly brought into this house and this family.
+
+Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so
+self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the
+anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Rosémilly"; and
+her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf.
+
+Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A
+woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts
+suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature
+of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance
+discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know
+and understand everything.
+
+He was seized with a dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
+being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took
+the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen
+by his father and brother.
+
+When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim,
+and haggard.
+
+"Good evening," said Mme. Rosémilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
+of tea."
+
+But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
+Pierre made off, the door having been left open.
+
+When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
+for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
+bear!"
+
+Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
+well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."
+
+"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
+like a savage."
+
+Mme. Rosémilly tried to smooth matters by saying:
+
+"Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion;
+people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they
+want to leave early."
+
+"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man
+does not treat his family _à l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done
+nothing else for some time past."
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+For a week or two nothing occurred at the Rolands'. The father went
+fishing; Jean, with his mother's help, was furnishing and settling
+himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at mealtimes.
+
+His father having asked him one evening:
+
+"Why the deuce do you always come in with a face as cheerful as a
+funeral? This is not the first time I have remarked it"--the doctor
+replied:
+
+"The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden of life."
+
+The old man had not a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved
+look he went on: "It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good
+luck to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as
+though some accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for
+some one."
+
+"I am in mourning for some one," said Pierre.
+
+"You are? For whom?"
+
+"For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond."
+
+Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
+some love passages, and he said:
+
+"A woman, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, a woman."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"No. Worse. Ruined!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife's
+presence too, and by his son's strange tone about it, the old man made
+no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern
+a third person.
+
+Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
+Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if
+she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could
+not draw her breath, had said:
+
+"Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with
+helping Jean. Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi! The rascal is in
+no hurry, as he is a rich man."
+
+She shook her head without a word.
+
+But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "this will not do at all, my dear old woman.
+You must take care of yourself." Then, addressing his son, "You surely
+must see that your mother is ill. Have you questioned her, at any
+rate?"
+
+Pierre replied: "No; I had not noticed that there was anything the
+matter with her."
+
+At this Roland was angry.
+
+"But it stares you in the face, confound you! What on earth is the
+good of your being a doctor if you cannot even see that your mother is
+out of sorts? Why, look at her, just look at her. Really, a man might
+die under his very eyes and this doctor would never think there was
+anything the matter!"
+
+Mme. Roland was panting for breath, and so white that her husband
+exclaimed:
+
+"She is going to faint."
+
+"No, no, it is nothing--I shall get better directly--it is nothing."
+
+Pierre had gone up to her and was looking at her steadily.
+
+"What ails you?" he said. And she repeated in an undertone:
+
+"Nothing, nothing--I assure you, nothing."
+
+Roland had gone to fetch some vinegar; he now returned and handing the
+bottle to his son he said:
+
+"Here--do something to ease her. Have you felt her heart?"
+
+As Pierre bent over to feel her pulse she pulled away her hand so
+vehemently that she struck it against a chair which was standing by.
+
+"Come," said he in icy tones, "let me see what I can do for you, as
+you are ill."
+
+Then she raised her arm and held it out to him. Her skin was burning,
+the blood throbbing in short irregular leaps.
+
+"You are certainly ill," he murmured. "You must take something to
+quiet you. I will write you a prescription." And as he wrote, stooping
+over the paper, a low sound of choked sighs, smothered, quick
+breathing and suppressed sobs made him suddenly look round at her. She
+was weeping, her hands covering her face.
+
+Roland, quite distracted, asked her:
+
+"Louise, Louise, what is the matter with you? What on earth ails you?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed racked by some deep and dreadful grief.
+Her husband tried to take her hands from her face, but she resisted
+him, repeating:
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+He appealed to his son.
+
+"But what is the matter with her? I never saw her like this."
+
+"It is nothing," said Pierre, "she is a little hysterical."
+
+And he felt as if it were a comfort to him to see her suffering thus,
+as if this anguish mitigated his resentment and diminished his
+mother's load of opprobrium. He looked at her as a judge satisfied
+with his day's work.
+
+Suddenly she rose, rushed to the door with such a swift impulse that
+it was impossible to forestall or to stop her, and ran off to lock
+herself into her room.
+
+Roland and the doctor were left face to face.
+
+"Can you make head or tail of it?" said the father.
+
+"Oh, yes," said the other. "It is a little nervous disturbance, not
+alarming or surprising; such attacks may very likely recur from time
+to time."
+
+They did in fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring
+them on with a word, as if he had the clue to her strange and new
+disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and
+with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the
+anguish that had been lulled for a moment.
+
+But he, too, was suffering, as cruelly as she. It was dreadful pain to
+him that he could no longer love her nor respect her, that he must put
+her on the rack. When he had laid bare the bleeding wound which he had
+opened in her woman's, her mother's heart, when he felt how wretched
+and desperate she was, he would go out alone, wander about the town,
+so torn by remorse, so broken by pity, so grieved to have thus
+hammered her with his scorn as her son, that he longed to fling
+himself into the sea and put an end to it all by drowning himself.
+
+Ah! How gladly, now, would he have forgiven her. But he could not, for
+he was incapable of forgetting. If only he could have desisted from
+making her suffer; but this again he could not, suffering as he did
+himself. He went home to his meals, full of relenting resolutions;
+then, as soon as he saw her, as soon as he met her eye--formerly so
+clear and frank, now so evasive, frightened, and bewildered--he struck
+at her in spite of himself, unable to suppress the treacherous words
+which would rise to his lips.
+
+The disgraceful secret, known to them alone, goaded him up against
+her. It was as a poison flowing in his veins and giving him an impulse
+to bite like a mad dog.
+
+And there was no one in the way now to hinder his reading her; Jean
+lived almost entirely in his new apartments, and only came home to
+dinner and to sleep every night at his father's.
+
+He frequently observed his brother's bitterness and violence, and
+attributed them to jealousy. He promised himself that some day he
+would teach him his place and give him a lesson, for life at home was
+becoming very painful as a result of these constant scenes. But as he
+now lived apart he suffered less from this brutal conduct, and his
+love of peace prompted him to patience. His good fortune, too, had
+turned his head, and he scarcely paused to think of anything which had
+no direct interest for himself. He would come in full of fresh little
+anxieties, full of the cut of a morning-coat, of the shape of a felt
+hat, of the proper size for his visiting-cards. And he talked
+incessantly of all the details of his house--the shelves fixed in his
+bedroom cupboard to keep linen on, the pegs to be put up in the
+entrance hall, the electric bells contrived to prevent illicit
+visitors to his lodgings.
+
+It had been settled that on the day when he should take up his abode
+there they should make an excursion to Saint Jouin, and return after
+dining there, to drink tea in his rooms. Roland wanted to go by water,
+but the distance and the uncertainty of reaching it in a sailing-boat
+if there should be a head-wind, made them reject his plan, and a break
+was hired for the day.
+
+They started by ten to get there to breakfast. The dusty high road lay
+across the plain of Normandy, which, by its gentle undulations, dotted
+with farms embowered in trees, wears the aspect of an endless park. In
+the vehicle, as it jogged on at the slow trot of a pair of heavy
+horses, sat the four Rolands, Mme. Rosémilly, and Captain Beausire,
+all silent, deafened by the rumble of the wheels, and with their eyes
+shut to keep out the clouds of dust.
+
+It was harvest-time. Alternating with the dark hue of clover and the
+raw green of beetroot, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with
+gleams of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the
+sunshine which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at
+work, and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might
+be seen see-sawing as they swept the level soil with the broad,
+wing-shaped blade.
+
+After a two-hours' drive the break turned off to the left, past a
+windmill at work--a melancholy, gray wreck, half rotten and doomed,
+the last survivor of its ancient race; then it went into a pretty inn
+yard, and drew up at the door of a smart little house, a hostelry
+famous in those parts.
+
+The mistress, well known as "La belle Alphonsine," came smiling to the
+threshold, and held out her hand to the two ladies who hesitated to
+take the high step.
+
+Some strangers were already at breakfast under a tent by a grass plot
+shaded by apple trees--Parisians, who had come from Etretat; and from
+the house came sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of plates
+and pans.
+
+They were eating in a room, as the outer dining halls were all full.
+Roland suddenly caught sight of some shrimping nets hanging against
+the wall.
+
+"Ah! ha!" cried he, "you catch prawns here?"
+
+"Yes," replied Beausire. "Indeed it is the place on all the coast
+where most are taken."
+
+"First rate! Suppose we try to catch some after breakfast."
+
+As it happened it would be low tide at three o'clock, so it was
+settled that they should all spend the afternoon among the rocks,
+hunting prawns.
+
+They made a light breakfast, as a precaution against the tendency of
+blood to the head when they should have their feet in the water. They
+also wished to reserve an appetite for dinner, which had been ordered
+on a grand scale and to be ready at six o'clock, when they came in.
+
+Roland could not sit still for impatience. He wanted to buy the nets
+specially constructed for fishing prawns, not unlike those used for
+catching butterflies in the country. Their name on the French coast is
+_lanets_; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end
+of a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them.
+Then she helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet,
+so as not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse
+worsted stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and
+went to the shoemaker's to buy wooden shoes instead.
+
+Then they set out, the nets over their shoulders and creels on their
+backs. Mme. Rosémilly was quite sweet in this costume, with an
+unexpected charm of countrified audacity. The skirt which Alphonsine
+had lent her, coquettishly tucked up and firmly stitched so as to
+allow of her running and jumping fearlessly on the rocks, displayed
+her ankle and lower calf--the firm calf of a strong and agile little
+woman. Her dress was loose to give freedom to her movements, and to
+cover her head she had found an enormous garden hat of coarse yellow
+straw with an extravagantly broad brim; and to this, a bunch of
+tamarisk pinned in to cock it on one side, gave a very dashing and
+military effect.
+
+Jean, since he had come into his fortune, had asked himself every day
+whether or no he should marry her. Each time he saw her he made up his
+mind to ask her to be his wife, and then, as soon as he was alone
+again, he considered that by waiting he would have time to reflect.
+She was now less rich than he, for she had but twelve thousand francs
+a year; but it was in real estate, in farms and lands near the docks
+in Havre; and this by-and-by might be worth a great deal. Their
+fortunes were thus approximately equal, and certainly the young widow
+attracted him greatly.
+
+As he watched her walking in front of him that day he said to himself:
+
+"I must really decide; I cannot do better, I am sure."
+
+They went down a little ravine, sloping from the village to the cliff,
+and the cliff, at the end of this comb, rose about eighty meters above
+the sea. Framed between the green slopes to the right and left, a
+great triangle of silvery blue water could be seen in the distance,
+and a sail, scarcely visible, looked like an insect out there. The
+sky, pale with light, was so merged into one with the water that it
+was impossible to see where one ended and the other began; and the two
+women, walking in front of the men, stood out against this bright
+background, their shapes clearly defined in their closely-fitting
+dresses.
+
+Jean, with a sparkle in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat
+leg, the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Rosémilly
+as they fled away before him. And this flight fired his ardor, urging
+him on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid
+natures. The warm air, fragrant with seacoast odors--gorse, clover
+and thyme, mingling with the salt smell of the rocks at low
+tide--excited him still more, mounting to his brain; and every moment
+he felt a little more determined, at every step, at every glance he
+cast at the alert figure; he made up his mind to delay no longer, to
+tell her that he loved her and hoped to marry her. The prawn-fishing
+would favor him by affording him an opportunity; and it would be a
+pretty scene too, a pretty spot for love-making--their feet in a pool
+of limpid water while they watched the long feelers of the shrimps
+lurking under the wrack.
+
+When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of cliff, they
+saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below them,
+about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an
+amazing chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above
+the other on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as
+far as they could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip.
+On this long shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by
+the shocks of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great
+ruined city which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the
+long white wall of the overhanging cliff.
+
+"That is fine!" exclaimed Mme. Rosémilly, standing still. Jean had
+come up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help
+her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.
+
+They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
+legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
+her.
+
+The two young people who led the way, went fast till on a sudden they
+saw, by the side of a wooden bench which afforded a resting place
+about half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from
+a crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing
+basin which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade,
+hardly two feet high, it trickled across the footpath, which it had
+carpeted with cresses, and was lost among the briars and grass on the
+raised shelf where the boulders were piled.
+
+"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Rosémilly.
+
+But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
+it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a
+stone on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the
+spring itself, which was thus on the same level.
+
+When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops,
+sprinkled all over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, and her dress,
+Jean bent over her and murmured: "How pretty you look!"
+
+She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:
+
+"Will you be quiet!"
+
+These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.
+
+"Come," said Jean, much agitated. "Let us go on before they come up
+with us."
+
+For in fact they could see quite near them now, Captain Beausire's
+back as he came down, stern foremost, so as to give both hands to Mme.
+Roland; and further up, further off, Roland still letting himself
+slip, lowering himself on his hams and clinging on with both his hand
+and elbows at the speed of a tortoise, Pierre keeping in front of him
+to watch his movements.
+
+The path, now less steep, was here almost a road, zigzagging between
+the huge rocks which had at some former time rolled from the hilltop.
+Mme. Rosémilly and Jean set off at a run and they were soon on the
+beach. They crossed it and reached the rocks, which stretched in a
+long and flat expanse covered with seaweed, and broken by endless
+gleaming pools. The ebbed waters lay beyond, very far away, across
+this plain of slimy weed, of a black and shining olive-green.
+
+Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
+elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: "Forward!"
+he leaped boldly into the first tidepool they came to.
+
+The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too,
+presently, made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for
+she slipped on the grassy weed.
+
+"Do you see anything?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I see your face reflected in the water."
+
+"If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing."
+
+He murmured tenderly in reply:
+
+"Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in."
+
+She laughed: "Try; you will see how it will slip through your net."
+
+"But yet--if you will?"
+
+"I will see you catch prawns--and nothing else--for the moment."
+
+"You are cruel--let us go a little further; there are none here."
+
+He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned
+on him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by
+love and insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been
+incubating in him had waited till to-day to declare its presence.
+
+They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
+fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-colored hair, were
+swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant
+sea through some invisible crevice.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly cried out: "Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very
+big one, just there!" He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool
+though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
+whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it toward the
+seaweed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
+rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
+young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
+help exclaiming: "Oh! Clumsy!"
+
+He was vexed, and without a moment's thought dragged his net over a
+hole full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it
+three large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding
+place.
+
+He offered them in triumph to Mme. Rosémilly, who was afraid to touch
+them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
+However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tips of
+their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
+little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
+of water, she stepped in with some hesitation, for the cold plunge of
+her feet took her breath away, and began to fish on her own account.
+She was dextrous and artful, with the light hand and the hunter's
+instinct, which are indispensable. At almost every dip she caught up
+some prawns, beguiled and surprised by her ingeniously gentle
+pursuit.
+
+Jean now caught nothing; but he followed her, step by step, touched
+her now and again, bent over her, pretended great distress at his own
+awkwardness, and besought her to teach him.
+
+"Show me," he kept saying. "Show me how."
+
+And then, as their two faces were reflected side by side in water so
+clear that the black weeds at the bottom made a mirror, Jean smiled at
+the face which looked up at him from the depth, and now and then from
+his finger tips blew it a kiss which seemed to light upon it.
+
+"Oh! how tiresome you are!" she exclaimed. "My dear fellow, you should
+never do two things at once."
+
+He replied: "I am only doing one--loving you."
+
+She drew herself up and said gravely:
+
+"What has come over you these ten minutes; have you lost your wits?"
+
+"No, I have not lost my wits. I love you, and at last I dare to tell
+you so."
+
+They were at this moment both standing in the salt pool wet half-way
+up to their knees and with dripping hands, holding their nets. They
+looked into each other's eyes.
+
+She went on in a tone of amused annoyance.
+
+"How very ill-advised to tell me so here and now. Could you not wait
+till another day instead of spoiling my fishing?"
+
+"Forgive me," he murmured, "but I could not longer hold my peace. I
+have loved you a long time. To-day you have intoxicated me and I lost
+my reason."
+
+Then suddenly she seemed to have resigned herself to talk business and
+think no more of pleasure.
+
+"Let us sit down on that stone," said she, "we can talk more
+comfortably." They scrambled up a rather high boulder, and when they
+had settled themselves side by side in the bright sunshine, she began
+again:
+
+"My good friend, you are no longer a child, and I am not a young girl.
+We both know perfectly well what we are about and we can weigh the
+consequences of our actions. If you have made up your mind to make
+love to me to-day I must naturally infer that you wish to marry me."
+
+He was not prepared for this matter-of-fact statement of the case, and
+he answered blandly:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Have you mentioned it to your father and mother?"
+
+"No; I wanted to know first whether you would accept me."
+
+She held out her hand, which was still wet, and as he eagerly clasped
+it:
+
+"I am ready and willing," she said. "I believe you to be kind and
+true-hearted. But remember, I should not like to displease your
+parents."
+
+"Oh, do you think that my mother has never foreseen it, or that she
+would be as fond of you as she is if she did not hope that you and I
+should marry?"
+
+"That is true. I am a little disturbed."
+
+They said no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little
+disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways,
+refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered
+by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was
+pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it
+since they were agreed, and they now sat, both somewhat embarrassed by
+what had so swiftly passed between them; a little perplexed, indeed,
+not daring to speak, not daring to fish, not knowing what to do.
+
+Roland's voice rescued them.
+
+"This way, this way, children. Come and watch Beausire. The fellow is
+positively clearing out the sea!"
+
+The captain had, in fact, had a wonderful haul. Wet above his hips, he
+waded from pool to pool, recognizing the likeliest spots at a glance,
+and searching all the hollows hidden under seaweed, with a steady slow
+sweep of his net. And the beautiful transparent, sandy-gray prawns
+skipped in his palm as he picked them out of the net with a dry jerk
+and put them into his creel. Mme. Rosémilly, surprised and delighted,
+remained at his side, almost forgetful of her promise to Jean, who
+followed them in a dream, giving herself up entirely to the childish
+enjoyment of pulling the creatures out from among the waving
+seagrasses.
+
+Roland suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, here comes Mme. Roland to join us."
+
+She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had
+neither of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and
+paddling in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about
+staying together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her
+and of himself; afraid of his own cruelty, which he could not control.
+But they sat down side by side on the stones. And both of them, under
+the heat of the sun, mitigated by the sea breeze, gazing at the wide,
+fair horizon of blue water streaked and shot with silver, thought as
+if in unison: "How delightful this would have been--once."
+
+She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return
+some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that in
+spite of himself he should speak violently. He sat twitching the
+water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and
+turning them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up
+three or four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping
+them from one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering
+over the scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son
+Jean fishing with Mme. Rosémilly. She looked at them, watching their
+movements, dimly understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were
+talking as they did not talk every day. She saw them leaning over side
+by side when they looked into the water, standing face to face when
+they questioned their hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated
+themselves to come to an understanding. Their figures stood out very
+sharply, looking as if they were alone in the middle of the wide
+horizon, and assuming a sort of symbolic dignity in that vast expanse
+of sky and sea and cliff.
+
+Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke
+from his lips. Without turning to him Mme. Roland said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He spoke with a sneer.
+
+"I am learning. Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by
+his wife."
+
+She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was
+intended.
+
+"In whose name do you say that?"
+
+"In Jean's, by heaven! It is immensely funny to see those two."
+
+She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling: "O Pierre, how
+cruel you are. That woman is honesty itself. Your brother could not
+find a better."
+
+He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh:
+
+"Ha! hah! hah! Honesty itself! All wives are honesty itself,--and all
+husbands are--betrayed." And he shouted with laughter.
+
+She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and
+at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the seaweed,
+of breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging
+through the pools without looking, straight to her other son.
+
+Seeing her approach, Jean called out:
+
+"Well, mother? So you have made the effort?"
+
+Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say: "Save me,
+protect me!"
+
+He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said:
+
+"How pale you are; what is the matter?"
+
+She stammered out:
+
+"I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks."
+
+So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her
+that she might take an interest in it. But as she scarcely heeded him,
+and as he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led
+her away and in a low voice said to her:
+
+"Guess what I have done!"
+
+"But--what--I don't know."
+
+"Guess."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know."
+
+"Well, I have told Mme. Rosémilly that I wish to marry her."
+
+She did not answer, for her brain was buzzing, her mind in such
+distress that she could scarcely take it in. She echoed: "Marry her?"
+
+"Yes. Have I done well? She is charming, do not you think?"
+
+"Yes, charming. You have done very well."
+
+"Then you approve?"
+
+"Yes, I approve."
+
+"But how strangely you say so. I could fancy that--that you were not
+glad."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I am--very glad."
+
+"Really and truly?"
+
+"Really and truly."
+
+And to prove it she threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily
+with warm motherly kisses. Then, when she had wiped her eyes, which
+were full of tears, she observed upon the beach a man lying flat at
+full length like a dead body, his face hidden against the stones; it
+was the other one, Pierre, sunk in thought and desperation.
+
+At this she led her little Jean further away, quite to the edge of the
+waves, and there they talked for a long time of this marriage on which
+he had set his heart.
+
+The rising tide drove them back to rejoin the fishers, and then they
+all made their way to the shore. They roused Pierre, who pretended to
+be sleeping; and then came a long dinner washed down with many kinds
+of wine.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In the break, on their way home, all the men dozed excepting Jean.
+Beausire and Roland dropped every five minutes on to a neighbor's
+shoulder which repelled them with a shove. Then they sat up, ceased to
+snore, opened their eyes, muttered "a lovely evening!" and almost
+immediately fell over on the other side.
+
+By the time they reached Havre their drowsiness was so heavy that they
+had great difficulty in shaking it off, and Beausire even refused to
+go to Jean's rooms where tea was waiting for them. He had to be set
+down at his own door.
+
+The young lawyer was to sleep in his new abode for the first time; and
+he was full of rather puerile glee which had suddenly come over him,
+at being able, that very evening to show his betrothed the rooms she
+was so soon to inhabit.
+
+The maid had gone to bed, Mme. Roland having declared that she herself
+would boil the water and make the tea, for she did not like the
+servants to be kept up for fear of fire.
+
+No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
+workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
+pretty.
+
+Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
+light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Rosémilly in the dark
+with his father and brother; then he cried! "Come in!" opening the
+double door to its full width.
+
+The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little colored lamps
+hidden among palms, india-rubber plants and flowers, was first seen
+like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
+dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap
+his hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the
+first drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to
+match. The larger drawing-room--the lawyer's consulting-room, very
+simple, hung with light salmon-color, was dignified in style.
+
+Jean sat down in his armchair in front of his writing-table loaded
+with books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:
+
+"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
+consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the
+matter we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three
+months."
+
+He looked at Mme. Rosémilly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
+Roland. Madame Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high
+spirits, cut a caper like a schoolboy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the
+voice carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."
+
+And he declaimed:
+
+"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we
+feel toward all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect
+of you, I should appeal to your compassion, gentlemen of the jury, to
+your hearts as fathers and as men; but we have law on our side, and it
+is the point of law only which we shall submit to your judgment."
+
+Pierre was looking at this home which might have been his, and he was
+restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and
+witless.
+
+Mme. Roland opened a door on the right.
+
+"This is the bedroom," said she.
+
+She had devoted herself to its decoration with all her mother's love.
+The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and
+the Louis XV design--a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks
+of a pair of doves--gave the walls, curtains, bed, and armchairs a
+festive, rustic style that was extremely pretty!
+
+"Oh, how charming!" Mme. Rosémilly exclaimed, becoming a little
+serious as they entered the room.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked Jean.
+
+"Immensely."
+
+"You cannot imagine how glad I am."
+
+They looked at each other for a second, with confiding tenderness in
+the depths of their eyes.
+
+She had felt a little awkward, however, a little abashed, in this room
+which was to be hers. She noticed as she went in that the bed was a
+large one, quite a family bed, chosen by Mme. Roland, who had no doubt
+foreseen and hoped that her son should soon marry; and this motherly
+foresight pleased her, for it seemed to tell her that she was expected
+in the family.
+
+When they had returned to the drawing-room Jean abruptly threw open
+the door to the left, showing the circular dining-room with three
+windows, and decorated to imitate a Chinese lantern. Mother and son
+had here lavished all the fancy of which they were capable, and the
+room, with its bamboo furniture, its mandarins, jars, silk hangings
+glistening with gold, transparent blinds threaded with beads looking
+like drops of water, fans nailed to the wall to drape the hangings
+on, screens, swords, masks, cranes made of real feathers, and a myriad
+trifles in china, wood, paper, ivory, mother of pearl, and bronze, had
+the pretentious and extravagant aspect which unpracticed hands and
+uneducated eyes inevitably stamp on things which need the utmost tact,
+taste, and artistic education. Nevertheless it was the most admired;
+only Pierre made some observations with rather bitter irony which hurt
+his brother's feelings.
+
+Pyramids of fruit stood on the table and monuments of cakes. No one
+was hungry; they picked at the fruit and nibbled at the cakes rather
+than ate them. Then, at the end of about an hour, Mme. Rosémilly
+begged to take leave. It was decided that old Roland should accompany
+her home and set out with her forthwith; while Madame Roland, in the
+maid's absence, should cast a maternal eye over the house and see that
+her son had all he needed.
+
+"Shall I come back for you?" asked Roland.
+
+She hesitated a moment and then said: "No, dear old man; go to bed.
+Pierre will see me home."
+
+As soon as they were gone she blew out the candles, locked up the
+cakes, the sugar, and liqueurs in a cupboard of which she gave the key
+to Jean; then she went into the bedroom, turned down the bed, saw that
+there was fresh water in the water-bottle, and that the window was
+properly closed.
+
+Pierre and Jean had remained in the little outer drawing-room; the
+younger still sore under the criticism passed on his taste, and the
+elder chafing more and more at seeing his brother in this abode. They
+both sat smoking without a word. Pierre suddenly started to his feet.
+
+"Cristi!" he exclaimed. "The widow looked very jaded this evening.
+Long excursions do not improve her."
+
+Jean felt his spirit rising with one of those sudden and furious rages
+which boil up in easy-going natures when they are wounded to the
+quick. He could hardly find breath to speak, so fierce was his
+excitement, and he stammered out:
+
+"I forbid you ever again to say 'the widow' when you speak of Mme.
+Rosémilly."
+
+Pierre turned on him haughtily:
+
+"You are giving me an order, I believe. Are you gone mad by any
+chance?"
+
+Jean had pulled himself up.
+
+"I am not gone mad, but I have had enough of your manners to me."
+
+Pierre sneered: "To you? And are you any part of Mme. Rosémilly?"
+
+"You are to know that Mme. Rosémilly is about to become my wife."
+
+Pierre laughed the louder.
+
+"Ah! ha! Very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of
+her as 'the widow.' But you have taken a strange way of announcing
+your engagement."
+
+"I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it."
+
+Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with
+exasperation at this irony leveled at the woman he loved and had
+chosen.
+
+But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of
+impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for
+so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain,
+bewildering it like a fit.
+
+"How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue--do you
+hear? I order you."
+
+Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying
+in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the
+phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went
+on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to
+speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:
+
+"I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since
+the day when you first began to talk of 'the widow' because you knew
+it annoyed me."
+
+Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were
+common with him:
+
+"Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you? I? I? And of what? Good God! Of
+your person or your mind?"
+
+But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.
+
+"Yes, jealous of me--jealous from your childhood up. And it became
+fury when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing
+to say to you."
+
+Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out:
+
+"I? I? Jealous of you? And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that
+simpleton?"
+
+Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on:
+
+"And how about the day when you tried to pull me round in the
+_Pearl_? And all you said in her presence to show off? Why you are
+bursting with jealousy? And when this money was left to me you were
+maddened, you hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made
+every one suffer for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out
+the bile that is choking you."
+
+Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible
+impulse to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.
+
+"Hold your tongue," he cried. "At least say nothing about that money."
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore. You never say a word to my
+father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly. You pretend
+to despise me because you are jealous. You try to pick a quarrel with
+every one because you are jealous. And now that I am rich you can no
+longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our
+poor mother as if she were to blame!"
+
+Pierre had retired step by step as far as the fireplace, his mouth
+half open, his eyes glaring, a prey to one of those mad fits of
+passion in which crime is committed.
+
+He said again in a lower tone, gasping for breath: "Hold your
+tongue--for God's sake hold your tongue!"
+
+"No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind!
+you have given me an opening--so much the worse for you. I love the
+woman; you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence--so much the
+worse for you. But I will break your viper's fangs, I tell you. I
+will make you treat me with respect."
+
+"With respect--you?"
+
+"Yes--me."
+
+"Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed."
+
+"You say--? Say it again--again."
+
+"I say that it does not do to accept one man's fortune when another is
+reputed to be your father."
+
+Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he
+scented.
+
+"What? Repeat that once more."
+
+"I say--what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is
+blabbing--that you are the son of the man who left you his fortune.
+Well, then--a decent man does not take money which brings dishonor on
+his mother."
+
+"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? It is you who
+give utterance to this infamous thing?"
+
+"Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month
+past, spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of
+sight like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will
+become of me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for
+first I guessed--and now I know it."
+
+"Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may
+hear--she must hear."
+
+But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his
+suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the
+history of the portrait--which had again disappeared. He spoke in
+short broken sentences almost without coherence--the language of a
+sleep-walker.
+
+He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the
+adjoining room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must
+talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the
+wound too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had
+burst, splashing every one. He was pacing the room in the way he
+almost always did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a
+frenzy of despair, his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions
+of self-loathing; he spoke as if he were making a confession of his
+own misery and that of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his
+woes to the deaf, invisible winds which bore away his words.
+
+Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother's
+blind vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he
+guessed, their mother had heard them.
+
+She could not get out, she must come through this room. She had not
+come; then it was because she dared not.
+
+Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot:
+
+"I am a brute," he cried, "to have told you this."
+
+And he fled, bare-headed, down the stairs.
+
+The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the
+deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer
+than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He
+was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he
+would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear,
+weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put
+everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to come to a
+decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to gain a few
+minutes.
+
+But the perfect silence which now reigned, after Pierre's
+vociferations, the sudden stillness of walls and furniture, with the
+bright light of six wax candles and two lamps, terrified him so
+greatly that he suddenly longed to make his escape too.
+
+Then he roused his brain, roused his heart, and tried to reflect.
+
+Never in his life had he had to face a difficulty. There are men who
+let themselves glide onward like running water. He had been duteous
+over his tasks for fear of punishment, and had got through his legal
+studies with credit because his existence was tranquil. Everything in
+the world seemed to him quite natural and never aroused his particular
+attention. He loved order, steadiness, and peace, by temperament, his
+nature having no complications; and face to face with this
+catastrophe, he found himself like a man who has fallen into the water
+and cannot swim.
+
+At first he tried to be incredulous. His brother had told a lie, out
+of hatred and jealousy. But yet, how could he have been so vile as to
+say such a thing of their mother if he had not himself been distraught
+by despair? Besides, stamped on Jean's ear, on his sight, on his
+nerves, on the inmost fibers of his flesh, were certain words, certain
+tones of anguish, certain gestures of Pierre's, so full of suffering
+that they were irresistibly convincing; as incontrovertible as
+certainty itself.
+
+He was too much crushed to stir or even to will. His distress became
+unbearable; and he knew that behind the door was his mother who had
+heard everything and was waiting.
+
+What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a
+sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel.
+Could she have run away? But how? If she had run away--she must have
+jumped out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused
+him--so violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than
+opened it, and flung himself into the bedroom.
+
+It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the
+chest of drawers.
+
+Jean flew to the window, it was shut and the shutters bolted. He
+looked about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and
+he then noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and
+opened them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the
+pillow which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no
+more.
+
+At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then taking her by the
+shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow,
+which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep
+herself from crying out.
+
+But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively
+clenched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture.
+The strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case
+full of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and
+ears, that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an
+idea, by the turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise
+to, and his heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He was no
+judge, not he; not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of
+weakness and a son full of love. He remembered nothing of what his
+brother had told him; he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid
+his two hands on his mother's inert body, and not being able to pull
+the pillow away, he exclaimed, kissing her dress:
+
+"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me."
+
+She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible
+shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord.
+And he repeated:
+
+"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not
+true."
+
+A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she
+suddenly began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid
+muscles yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he
+uncovered her face.
+
+She was pale, quite colorless; and from under her closed lids tears
+were stealing. He threw his arms round her neck and kissed her eyes,
+slowly, with long heart-broken kisses, wet with her tears; and he said
+again and again:
+
+"Mother, my dear mother, I know it is not true. Do not cry; I know it.
+It is not true."
+
+She raised herself, she sat up, looked in his face, and with an effort
+of courage such as it must cost in some cases to kill one's self, she
+said:
+
+"No, my child; it is true."
+
+And they remained speechless, each in the presence of the other. For
+some minutes she seemed again to be suffocating, craning her throat
+and throwing back her head to get breath; then she once more mastered
+herself and went on:
+
+"It is true, my child. Why lie about it? It is true. You would not
+believe me if I denied it."
+
+She looked like a crazy creature. Overcome by alarm, he fell on his
+knees by the bedside murmuring:
+
+"Hush, mother, be silent." She stood up with terrible determination
+and energy.
+
+"I have nothing more to say, my child. Good-by." And she went toward
+the door.
+
+He threw his arms about her exclaiming:
+
+"What are you doing, mother; where are you going?"
+
+"I do not know. How should I know--There is nothing left for me to do,
+now that I am alone."
+
+She struggled to be released. Holding her firmly, he could find only
+words to say again and again:
+
+"Mother, mother, mother!" And through all her efforts to free herself
+she was saying:
+
+"No, no. I am not your mother now. I am nothing to you, to
+anybody--nothing, nothing. You have neither father nor mother now,
+poor boy--good-by."
+
+It struck him clearly that if he let her go now he should never see
+her again; lifting her up in his arms he carried her to an armchair,
+forced her into it, and kneeling down in front of her barred her in
+with his arms.
+
+"You shall not quit this spot, mother. I love you and I will keep you!
+I will keep you always--I love you and you are mine."
+
+She murmured in a dejected tone:
+
+"No, my poor boy, it is impossible. You weep to-night, but to-morrow
+you would turn me out of the house. You, even you, could not forgive
+me."
+
+He replied: "I? I? How little you know me!" with such a burst of
+genuine affection that with a cry, she seized his head by the hair
+with both hands, and dragging him violently to her kissed him
+distractedly all over the face.
+
+Then she sat still, her cheek against his, feeling the warmth of his
+skin through his beard, and she whispered in his ear: "No, my little
+Jean, you would not forgive me to-morrow. You think so, but you
+deceive yourself. You have forgiven me this evening, and that
+forgiveness has saved my life; but you must never see me again."
+
+And he repeated, clasping her in his arms:
+
+"Mother, do not say that."
+
+"Yes, my child, I must go away. I do not know where, nor how I shall
+set about it, nor what I shall do; but it must be done. I could never
+look at you, nor kiss you, do you understand?"
+
+Then he in his turn spoke into her ear:
+
+"My little mother, you are to stay, because I insist, because I want
+you. And you must pledge your word to obey me, now at once."
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Yes, mother, you must; do you hear? You must."
+
+"No, my child, it is impossible. It would be condemning us all to the
+tortures of hell. I know what that torment is; I have known it this
+month past. Your feelings are touched now, but when that is over, when
+you look on me as Pierre does, when you remember what I have told
+you--oh, my Jean, think--think--I am your mother!"
+
+"I will not let you leave me, mother. I have no one but you."
+
+"But think, my son, we can never see each other again without both of
+us blushing, without my feeling that I must die of shame, without my
+eyes falling before yours."
+
+"But it is not so mother."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, it is so! Oh, I have understood all your poor
+brother's struggles, believe me! All--from the very first day. Now
+when I hear his step in the house my heart beats as if it would burst,
+when I hear his voice I am ready to faint. I still had you; now I have
+you no longer. Oh, my little Jean! Do you think I could live between
+you two?"
+
+"Yes, I should love you so much that you would cease to think of it."
+
+"As if that were possible!"
+
+"But it is possible!"
+
+"How do you suppose that I could cease to think of it, with your
+brother and you on each hand? Would you cease to think of it, I ask
+you?"
+
+"I? I swear I should."
+
+"Why you would think of it at every hour of the day."
+
+"No, I swear it. Besides, listen, if you go away I will enlist and get
+killed."
+
+This boyish threat quite overcame her; she clasped Jean in a
+passionate and tender embrace. He went on:
+
+"I love you more than you think--ah much more, much more. Come, be
+reasonable. Try to stay for only one week. Will you promise me one
+week? You cannot refuse me that?"
+
+She laid her two hands on Jean's shoulders, and holding him at arm's
+length she said:
+
+"My child, let us try and be calm and not give way to emotions. First,
+listen to me. If I were ever to hear from your lips what I have heard
+for this month past from your brother, if I were once to see in your
+eyes what I read in his, if I could fancy from a word or a look that I
+was as odious to you as I am to him--within one hour, mark me--within
+one hour I should be gone forever."
+
+"Mother, I swear to you--"
+
+"Let me speak. For a month past I have suffered all that any creature
+can suffer. From the moment when I perceived that your brother, my
+other son, suspected me, that as the minutes went by, he guessed the
+truth, every moment of my life has been a martyrdom which no words
+could tell you."
+
+Her voice was so full of woe that the contagion of her misery brought
+the tears to Jean's eyes.
+
+He tried to kiss her, but she held him off.
+
+"Leave me--listen; I still have so much to say to make you understand.
+But you never can understand. You see, if I stayed--I must--no, no. I
+cannot."
+
+"Speak on, mother, speak."
+
+"Yes, indeed, for at least I shall not have deceived you. You want me to
+stay with you? For what--for us to be able to see each other, speak to
+each other, meet at any hour of the day at home, for I no longer dare
+open a door for fear of finding your brother behind it. If we are to do
+that, you must not forgive me--nothing is so wounding as
+forgiveness--but you must owe me no grudge for what I have done. You
+must feel yourself strong enough, and so far unlike the rest of the
+world, as to be able to say to yourself that you are not Roland's son
+without blushing for the fact or despising me. I have suffered enough--I
+have suffered too much; I can bear no more, no indeed, no more! And it
+is not a thing of yesterday, mind you, but of long, long years. But you
+could never understand that, how should you! If you and I are to live
+together and kiss each other, my little Jean, you must believe that
+though I was your father's mistress I was yet more truly his wife, his
+real wife; that at the bottom of my heart, I cannot be ashamed of it;
+that I have no regrets; that I love him still even in death; that I
+shall always love him and never loved any other man; that he was my
+life, my joy, my hope, my comfort, everything--everything in the world
+to me for so long! Listen, my boy, before God, who hears me, I should
+never have had a joy in my existence if I had not met him; never
+anything--not a touch of tenderness or kindness, not one of those hours
+which make us regret growing old,--nothing. I owe everything to him! I
+had but him in the world, and you two boys, your brother and you. But
+for you, all would have been empty, dark, and void as the night. I
+should never have loved, or known, or cared for anything--I should not
+even have wept--for I have wept, my little Jean; oh yes, and bitter
+tears, since we came to Havre. I was his wholly and forever; for ten
+years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created
+us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was
+always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was
+all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is!
+Nothing lasts. Then we came here--I never saw him again; he never came.
+He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never
+saw him again--and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he
+remembered you. I shall love him to my latest breath, and I never will
+deny him, and I love you because you are his child, and I could never be
+ashamed of him before you. Do you understand? I could not. So if you
+wish me to remain you must accept the situation as his son, and we will
+talk of him sometimes; and you must love him a little and we must think
+of him when we look at each other. If you will not do this--if you
+cannot--then good-by, my child; it is impossible that we should live
+together. Now, I will act by your decision."
+
+Jean replied gently:
+
+"Stay, mother."
+
+She clasped him in her arms, and her tears flowed again; then, with
+her face against his, she went on:
+
+"Well, but Pierre. What can we do about Pierre?"
+
+Jean murmured:
+
+"We will find some plan! You cannot live with him any longer."
+
+At the thought of her elder son she was convulsed with terror.
+
+"No, I cannot; no, no!" And throwing herself on Jean's breast she
+cried in distress of mind:
+
+"Save me from him, you my little one. Save me; do something--I don't
+know what. Think of something. Save me."
+
+"Yes, mother, I will think of something."
+
+"And at once. You must, this minute. Do not leave me. I am so afraid
+of him--so afraid."
+
+"Yes, yes; I will hit on some plan. I promise you I will."
+
+"But at once; quick, quick! You cannot imagine what I feel when I see
+him."
+
+Then she murmured softly in his ear: "Keep me here, with you."
+
+He paused, reflected, and with his blunt good-sense saw at once the
+dangers of such an arrangement. But he had to argue for a long time,
+combatting her scared, terror-stricken insistence.
+
+"Only for to-night," she said. "Only for to-night. And to-morrow
+morning you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill."
+
+"That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come take
+courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will
+be with you by nine o'clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you
+home."
+
+"I will do just what you desire," she said with a childlike impulse of
+timidity and gratitude.
+
+She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her, she could
+not stand.
+
+He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while he
+bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would,
+exhausted but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last
+she could walk and she took his arm. The town hall clock struck three
+as they went past.
+
+Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:
+
+"Good-night, mother, keep up your courage."
+
+She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room,
+undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a long-forgotten sense of
+guilt. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone was awake,
+and had heard her come in.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the
+sorrows and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to
+flee like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and
+broke the strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a
+finger, even to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and
+heart-broken. He had not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity
+of filial love, in the secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud
+heart; he was overwhelmed by the stroke of fate which, at the same
+time threatened his own nearest interests.
+
+When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled like
+water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
+situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of
+his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very
+wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother,
+after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
+agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of
+energy that he could not rebel. The shock to his feelings had been so
+great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all
+prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides,
+he was not a man made for resistance. He did not like contending
+against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself
+at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and
+of easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which
+must surge up around him and at once be his ruin. He foresaw that
+they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to
+superhuman efforts of energy and activity. The knot must be cut
+immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of that imperious
+demand for a swift solution which is the only strength of weak
+natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer's mind,
+accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated
+situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had
+got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of
+his brother's state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the
+issue from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to
+legislate for the future relations of certain clients after a moral
+disaster. Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become
+unendurable. He could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own
+lodgings; but even then it was not possible that their mother should
+live under the same roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat
+meditating, motionless, on the cushions, devising and rejecting
+various possibilities, and finding nothing that satisfied him.
+
+But suddenly an idea took him by storm. This fortune which had come to
+him. Would an honest man keep it?
+
+"No," was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it
+must go to the poor. It was hard, but it could not be helped. He would
+sell his furniture and work like any other man, like any other
+beginner. This manful and painful resolution spurred his courage; he
+rose and went to the window, leaning his forehead against the pane. He
+had been poor; he could become poor again. After all, he should not
+die of it. His eyes were fixed on the gas lamp burning at the
+opposite side of the street. A woman, much belated, happened to pass;
+suddenly he thought of Mme. Rosémilly with the pang at his heart, the
+shock of deep feeling which comes of a cruel suggestion. All the dire
+results of his decision rose up before him together. He would have to
+renounce his marriage, renounce happiness, renounce everything. Could
+he do such a thing after having pledged himself to her? She had
+accepted him knowing him to be rich. She would take him still if he
+were poor; but had he any right to demand such a sacrifice? Would it
+not be better to keep this money in trust, to be restored to the poor
+at some future date?
+
+And in his soul, where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all
+these specious interests were struggling and contending. His first
+scruples yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again,
+and again disappeared.
+
+He sat down again, seeking some decisive motive, some all-sufficient
+pretext to solve his hesitancy and convince his natural rectitude.
+Twenty times over had he asked himself this question: "Since I am this
+man's son, since I know and acknowledge it, is it not natural that I
+should also accept the inheritance?"
+
+But even this argument could not suppress the "No" murmured by his
+inmost conscience.
+
+Then came the thought: "Since I am not the son of the man I always
+believed to be my father, I can take nothing from him, neither during
+his lifetime nor after his death. It would be neither dignified nor
+equitable. It would be robbing my brother."
+
+This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his
+conscience, he went to the window again.
+
+"Yes," he said to himself, "I must give up my share of the family
+inheritance. I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not
+his father's son. That is but just. Then is it not just that I should
+keep my father's money?"
+
+Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland's savings,
+having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he
+resigned himself to keeping Maréchal's; for if he rejected both he
+would find himself reduced to beggary.
+
+This delicate question being thus disposed of, he came back to that of
+Pierre's presence in the family. How was he to be got rid of? He was
+giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a
+steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by
+suggesting a scheme.
+
+Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and
+dreamed until daybreak.
+
+At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans
+were feasible. Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went
+to his old home. His mother was waiting for him in her room.
+
+"If you had not come," she said, "I should never have dared to go
+down."
+
+In a minute Roland's voice was heard on the stairs: "Are we to have
+nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"
+
+There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this
+time: "Joséphine, what the devil are you about?"
+
+The girl's voice came up from the depths of the basement:
+
+"Yes, m'sieu--what is it?"
+
+"Where is your Miss'es?"
+
+"Madame is upstairs with M'sieu Jean."
+
+Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor: "Louise!"
+
+Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered:
+
+"What is it, my dear?"
+
+"Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I am coming."
+
+And she went down, followed by Jean.
+
+Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed:
+
+"Hallo! There you are! Sick of your home already?"
+
+"No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this
+morning."
+
+Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers
+in the old man's fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion
+thrilled through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without
+return.
+
+Mme. Roland asked:
+
+"Pierre is not come down?"
+
+Her husband shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"No, but never mind him; he is always behind hand. We will begin
+without him."
+
+She turned to Jean:
+
+"You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we
+do not wait for him."
+
+"Yes, mother. I will go."
+
+And the young man went. He mounted the stairs with the fevered
+determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a
+fright. When he knocked at the door Pierre said:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. The elder was writing, leaning over his table.
+
+"Good morning," said Jean.
+
+Pierre rose.
+
+"Good morning," and they shook hands as if nothing had occurred.
+
+"Are you not coming down to breakfast?"
+
+"Well--you see--I have a good deal to do." The elder brother's voice
+was tremulous, and his anxious eye asked his younger brother what he
+meant to do.
+
+"They are waiting for you."
+
+"Oh! There is--is my mother down?"
+
+"Yes, it was she who sent me to fetch you."
+
+"Ah, very well; then I will come."
+
+At the door of the dining-room he paused, doubtful about going in
+first; then he abruptly opened the door and saw his father and mother
+seated at the table opposite each other.
+
+He went straight up to her without looking at her or saying a word,
+and bending over her offered his forehead for her to kiss, as he had
+done for some time past, instead of kissing her on both cheeks as of
+old. He supposed that she put her lips near, but he did not feel them
+on his brow, and he straightened himself with a throbbing heart after
+this feint of a caress. And he wondered:
+
+"What did they say to each other after I had left?"
+
+Jean constantly addressed her tenderly as "mother," or "dear mother,"
+took care of her, waited on her, and poured out her wine.
+
+Then Pierre understood that they had wept together, but he could not
+read their minds. Did Jean believe in his mother's guilt, or think his
+brother a base wretch?
+
+And all his self-reproach for having uttered the horrible thing came
+upon him again, choking his throat and his tongue, and preventing his
+either eating or speaking.
+
+He was now a prey to an intolerable desire to fly, to leave the house
+which was his home no longer, and these persons who were bound to him
+by such imperceptible ties. He would gladly have been off that moment,
+no matter whither, feeling that everything was over, that he could not
+endure to stay with them, that his presence was torture to them, and
+that they would bring on him incessant suffering too great to endure.
+Jean was talking, chatting with Roland. Pierre, as he did not listen,
+did not hear. But he presently was aware of a pointed tone in his
+brother's voice and paid more attention to his words. Jean was saying:
+
+"She will be the finest ship in their fleet. They say she is of 6,500
+tons. She is to make her first trip next month."
+
+Roland was amazed.
+
+"So soon? I thought she was not to be ready for sea this summer."
+
+"Yes. The work has been pushed forward very vigorously, to get her
+through her first voyage before the autumn. I looked in at the
+Company's office this morning, and was talking with one of the
+directors."
+
+"Indeed! Which of them?"
+
+"M. Marchand, who is a great friend of the Chairman of the Board."
+
+"Oh! Do you know him?"
+
+"Yes. And I wanted to ask him a favor."
+
+"Then you will get me leave to go over every part of the _Lorraine_ as
+soon as she comes into port?"
+
+"To be sure, nothing can be easier."
+
+Then Jean seemed to hesitate, to be weighing his words, and to want
+to lead up to a difficult subject. He went on:
+
+"On the whole, life is very endurable on board those great
+Transatlantic liners. More than half the time is spent on shore in two
+splendid cities--New York and Havre; and the remainder at sea with
+delightful company. In fact, very pleasant acquaintances are sometimes
+made among the passengers, and very useful in after-life--yes, really
+very useful. Only think, the captain, with his perquisites on coal,
+can make as much as twenty-five thousand francs a year or more."
+
+Roland muttered an oath followed by a whistle, which testified to his
+deep respect both for the sum and the captain.
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"The purser makes as much as ten thousand, and the doctor has a fixed
+salary of five thousand, with lodgings, keep, light, firing, service,
+and everything, which makes it up to ten thousand at least. That is
+very good pay."
+
+Pierre, raising his eyes, met his brother's and understood.
+
+Then, after some hesitation, he asked:
+
+"Is it very hard to get a place as medical man on board a
+Transatlantic liner?"
+
+"Yes--and no. It all depends on circumstances and recommendation."
+
+There was a long pause; then the doctor began again.
+
+"Next month, you say, the _Lorraine_ is to sail?"
+
+"Yes. On the 7th."
+
+And they said no more.
+
+Pierre was considering. It certainly would be a way out of many
+difficulties if he could embark as medical officer on board the
+steamship. By-and-by he could see; he might perhaps give it up.
+Meanwhile he would be gaining a living, and asking for nothing from
+his parents. Only two days since he had been forced to sell his watch,
+for he would no longer hold out his hand to beg of his mother. So he
+had no other resource left, no opening to enable him to eat the bread
+of any house but this which had become uninhabitable, or sleep in any
+other bed, or under any other roof. He presently said with some little
+hesitation:
+
+"If I could, I would very gladly sail in her."
+
+Jean asked:
+
+"What should hinder you?"
+
+"I know no one in the Transatlantic Shipping Company."
+
+Roland was astounded:
+
+"And what has become of all your fine schemes for getting on?"
+
+Pierre replied in a low voice:
+
+"There are times when we must bring ourselves to sacrifice everything
+and renounce our fondest hopes. And after all it is only to make a
+beginning, a way of saving a few thousand francs to start fair with
+afterward."
+
+His father was promptly convinced.
+
+"That is very true. In a couple of years you can put by six or seven
+thousand francs, and that well laid out, will go a long way. What do
+you think of the matter, Louise?"
+
+She replied in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible:
+
+"I think Pierre is right."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"I will go and talk it over with M. Poulin; I know him very well. He
+is assessor of the Chamber of Commerce and takes an interest in the
+affairs of the Company. There is M. Lenient, too, the ship-owner, who
+is intimate with one of the vice-chairmen."
+
+Jean asked his brother:
+
+"Would you like me to feel my way with M. Marchand at once?"
+
+"Yes, I should be very glad."
+
+After thinking a few minutes, Pierre added:
+
+"The best thing I can do, perhaps, will be to write to my professors
+at the College of Medicine who had a great regard for me. Very
+inferior men are sometimes shipped on board those vessels. Letters of
+strong recommendation from such professors as Mas-Roussel, Rémusot,
+Flache, and Borriquel would do more for me in an hour than all the
+doubtful introductions in the world. It would be enough if your friend
+M. Marchand would lay them before the board."
+
+Jean approved heartily.
+
+"Your idea is really capital." And he smiled, quite reassured, almost
+happy, sure of success and incapable of allowing himself to be unhappy
+for long.
+
+"You will write to-day?" he said.
+
+"Directly. Now; at once. I will go and do so. I do not care for any
+coffee this morning; I am too nervous."
+
+He rose and left the room.
+
+Then Jean turned to his mother:
+
+"And you, mother, what are you going to do?"
+
+"Nothing. I do not know."
+
+"Will you come with me to call on Mme. Rosémilly?"
+
+"Why, yes--yes."
+
+"You know I must positively go to see her to-day."
+
+"Yes, yes. To be sure."
+
+"Why must you positively?" asked Roland, whose habit it was never to
+understand what was said in his presence.
+
+"Because I promised her I would."
+
+"Oh, very well. That alters the case." And he began to fill his pipe,
+while the mother and son went upstairs to make ready.
+
+When they were in the street Jean said:
+
+"Will you take my arm, mother?"
+
+He was never accustomed to offer it, for they were in the habit of
+walking side by side. She accepted, and leaned on him.
+
+For some time they did not speak; then he said:
+
+"You see that Pierre is quite ready and willing to go away."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"Poor boy."
+
+"But why 'poor boy'? He will not be in the least unhappy on board the
+_Lorraine_!"
+
+"No--I know. But I was thinking of so many things."
+
+And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step
+to her son's; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes give
+utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness
+in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it
+afterward."
+
+He said in a whisper:
+
+"Do not speak of that any more, mother."
+
+"Is that possible? I think of nothing else."
+
+"You will forget it."
+
+Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said:
+
+"How happy I might have been, married to another man."
+
+She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of
+her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness
+of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that
+it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to
+desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most
+agonizing confession that can make a mother's heart bleed. She
+muttered: "It is so frightful for a young girl to have to marry such a
+husband as mine."
+
+Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto
+believed to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long
+since conceived, of that father's inferiority, with his brother's
+constant irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very
+maid-servant's contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for
+his mother's terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him
+to find that he was another man's son; and if, after the great shock
+and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the
+reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had
+feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under
+the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout.
+
+They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Rosémilly.
+
+She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a
+large tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the
+whole roadstead.
+
+On seeing Mme. Roland, who entered first, instead of merely holding
+out her hands as usual, she put her arms round her and kissed her, for
+she divined the purpose of her visit.
+
+The furniture of this drawing-room, all in stamped velvet, was always
+shrouded in chair-covers. The walls, hung with flowered paper, were
+graced by four engravings, the purchase of her late husband, the
+captain. They represented sentimental scenes of seafaring life. In the
+first, a fisherman's wife was seen, waving a handkerchief on shore,
+while the vessel which bore away her husband vanished on the horizon.
+In the second, the same woman on her knees on the same shore, under a
+sky shot with lightning, wrung her arms as she gazed into the distance
+at her husband's boat, which was going to the bottom amid impossible
+waves.
+
+The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A
+young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the edge of a large
+steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with
+eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?
+
+Then the same young lady sitting by an open window with a view of the
+sea, had fainted in an armchair; a letter she had dropped lay at her
+feet. So he is dead! What despair!
+
+Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace
+pathos of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once
+intelligible without question or explanation, and the poor women were
+to be pitied, though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of
+the two was not precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to
+the sentiment. She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room
+the eye was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted
+as if fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate
+the four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like
+each other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their
+shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance
+of a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety
+which was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always
+in precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the
+circular center-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such
+straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little;
+and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt
+clock, in the taste of the first empire--a terrestrial globe supported
+by Atlas on his knees--looked like a melon left there to ripen.
+
+The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of
+their chairs.
+
+"You have not been out this morning?" asked Mme. Roland.
+
+"No. I must own to being rather tired."
+
+And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the
+pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.
+
+"I ate my prawns this morning," she added, "and they were excellent.
+If you felt inclined we might go again one of these days."
+
+The young man interrupted her:
+
+"Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete
+the first?"
+
+"Complete it? It seems to me quite finished."
+
+"Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint
+Jouin which I am anxious to carry home with me."
+
+She put on an innocent and knowing look.
+
+"You? What can it be? What can you have found?"
+
+"A wife. And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she has
+changed her mind this morning."
+
+She smiled: "No, monsieur. I never change my mind."
+
+And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it
+with a quick, determined movement. Then he said: "As soon as possible,
+I hope."
+
+"As soon as you like."
+
+"In six weeks?"
+
+"I have no opinion. What does my future mother-in-law say?"
+
+Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile:
+
+"I? Oh, I can say nothing. I can only thank you for having accepted
+Jean, for you will make him very happy."
+
+"We will do our best, mamma."
+
+Somewhat overcome, for the first time, Mme. Rosémilly rose, and
+throwing her arms round Mme. Roland, kissed her a long time as a child
+of her own might have done; and under this new embrace the poor
+woman's sick heart swelled with deep emotion. She could not have
+expressed the feeling; it was at once sad and sweet. She had lost her
+son, her big boy, but in return she had found a daughter, a grown-up
+daughter.
+
+When they faced each other again, and were seated, they took hands and
+remained so, looking at each other and smiling, while they seemed to
+have forgotten Jean.
+
+Then they discussed a number of things which had to be thought of in
+view of an early marriage, and when everything was settled and decided
+Mme. Rosémilly seemed suddenly to remember a further detail and asked:
+"You have consulted M. Roland, I suppose?"
+
+A flush of color mounted at the same instant to the face of both
+mother and son. It was the mother who replied:
+
+"Oh, no, it is quite unnecessary!" Then she hesitated, feeling that
+some explanation was needed, and added: "We do everything without
+saying anything to him. It is enough to tell him what we have decided
+on."
+
+Mme. Rosémilly, not in the least surprised, only smiled, taking it as
+a matter of course, for the good man counted for so little.
+
+When Mme. Roland was in the street again with her son she said:
+
+"Suppose we go to your rooms for a little while. I should be glad to
+rest."
+
+She felt herself homeless, shelterless, her own house being a terror
+to her.
+
+They went into Jean's apartments.
+
+As soon as the door was closed upon her she heaved a deep sigh, as if
+that bolt had placed her in safety, but then, instead of resting as
+she had said, she began to open the cupboards, to count the piles of
+linen, the pocket handkerchiefs, and socks. She changed the
+arrangement to place them in more harmonious order, more pleasing to
+her housekeeper's eye; and when she had put everything to her mind,
+laying out the towels, the shirts, and the drawers on their several
+shelves and dividing all the linen into three principal classes,
+body-linen, household linen, and table-linen, she drew back and
+contemplated the results, and called out:
+
+"Come here, Jean, and see how nice it looks."
+
+He went and admired it to please her.
+
+On a sudden, when he had sat down again, she came softly up behind his
+armchair, and putting her right arm round his neck she kissed him,
+while she laid on the chimney shelf a small packet wrapped in white
+paper which she held in the other hand.
+
+"What is that?" he asked. Then, as she made no reply, he understood,
+recognizing the shape of the frame.
+
+"Give it to me!" he said.
+
+She pretended not to hear him, and went back to the linen cupboards.
+He got up hastily, took the melancholy relic, and going across the
+room, put it in the drawer of his writing table which he locked and
+doubled locked. She wiped away a tear with the tip of her finger, and
+said in a rather quavering voice: "Now I am going to see whether your
+new servant keeps the kitchen in good order. As she is out I can look
+into everything and make sure."
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Letters of recommendation from Professors Mas-Roussel, Rémusot,
+Flache, and Borriquel, written in the most flattering terms with
+regard to Doctor Pierre Roland, their pupil, had been submitted by
+Monsieur Marchand to the directors of the Transatlantic Shipping
+Company, seconded by M. Poulin, judge of the Chamber of Commerce, M.
+Lenient, a great ship-owner, and M. Marival, deputy to the Mayor of
+Havre, and a particular friend of Captain Beausire's. It proved that
+no medical officer had yet been appointed to the _Lorraine_, and
+Pierre was lucky enough to be nominated within a few days.
+
+The letter announcing it was handed to him one morning by Joséphine,
+just as he was dressed. His first feeling was that of a man condemned
+to death who is told that his sentence is commuted; he had an
+immediate sense of relief at the thought of his early departure and of
+the peaceful life on board, cradled by the rolling waves, always
+wandering, always moving. His life under his father's roof was now
+that of a stranger, silent and reserved. Ever since the evening when
+he allowed the shameful secret he had discovered to escape him in his
+brother's presence, he had felt that the last ties to his kindred were
+broken. He was harassed by remorse for having told this thing to Jean.
+He felt that it was odious, indecent, and brutal, and yet it was a
+relief to him to have uttered it.
+
+He never met the eyes either of his mother or his brother; to avoid
+his gaze theirs had become surprisingly alert, with the cunning of
+foes who fear to cross each other. He was always wondering: "What can
+she have said to Jean? Did she confess or deny it? What does my
+brother believe? What does he think of her--what does he think of me?"
+He could not guess, and it drove him to frenzy. And he scarcely ever
+spoke to them, excepting when Roland was by, to avoid his questioning.
+
+As soon as he received the letter announcing his appointment he showed
+it at once to his family. His father, who was prone to rejoicing over
+everything, clapped his hands. Jean spoke seriously, though his heart
+was full of gladness: "I congratulate you with all my heart, for I
+know there were several other candidates. You certainly owe it to your
+professors' letters."
+
+His mother bent her head and murmured:
+
+"I am very glad you have been successful."
+
+After breakfast he went to the Company's offices to obtain information
+on various particulars, and he asked the name of the doctor on board
+the _Picardie_, which was to sail next day, to inquire of him as to
+the details of his new life and any details he might think useful.
+
+Doctor Pirette having gone on board, Pierre went to the ship, where he
+was received in a little stateroom by a young man with a fair beard,
+not unlike his brother. They talked together a long time.
+
+In the hollow depths of the huge ship they could hear a confused and
+continuous commotion; the noise of bales and cases pitched down into
+the hold mingling with footsteps, voices, the creaking of the
+machinery lowering the freight, the boatswain's whistle, and the
+clatter of chains dragged or wound onto capstans by the snorting and
+panting engine which sent a slight vibration from end to end of the
+great vessel.
+
+But when Pierre had left his colleague and found himself in the street
+once more, a new form of melancholy came down on him, enveloping him
+like the fogs which roll over the sea, coming up from the ends of the
+world and holding in their intangible density something mysteriously
+impure, as it were the pestilential breath of a far-away, unhealthy
+land.
+
+In his hours of greatest suffering he had never felt himself so sunk
+in a foul pit of misery. It was as though he had given the last
+wrench; there was no fiber of attachment left. In tearing up the
+roots of every affection he had not hitherto had the distressful
+feeling which now came over him, like that of a lost dog. It was no
+longer a torturing mortal pain, but the frenzy of a forlorn and
+homeless animal, the physical anguish of a vagabond creature without a
+roof for shelter, lashed by the rain, the wind, the storm, all the
+brutal forces of the universe. As he set foot on the vessel, as he
+went into the cabin rocked by the waves, the very flesh of the man,
+who had always slept in a motionless and steady bed, had risen up
+against the insecurity henceforth of all his morrows. Till now that
+flesh had been protected by a solid wall built into the earth which
+held it, by the certainty of resting in the same spot, under a roof
+which could resist the gale. Now all that, which it was a pleasure to
+defy in the warmth of home, must become a peril and a constant
+discomfort. No earth under foot, only the greedy, heaving, complaining
+sea; no space around for walking, running, losing the way, only a few
+yards of planks to pace like a convict among other prisoners; no
+trees, no gardens, no streets, no houses; nothing but water and
+clouds. And the ceaseless motion of the ship beneath his feet. On
+stormy days he must lean against the wainscot, hold on to the doors,
+cling to the edge of the narrow berth to save himself from rolling
+out. On calm days he would hear the snorting throb of the screw, and
+feel the swift flight of the ship, bearing him on in its unpausing,
+regular, exasperating race.
+
+And he was a prey to this vagabond convict's life solely because his
+mother had sinned.
+
+He walked on, his heart sinking with the despairing sorrow of those
+who are doomed to exile. He no longer felt a haughty disdain and
+scornful hatred of the strangers he met, but a woeful impulse to speak
+to them, to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened
+to and comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the
+shamefaced need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand--a timid
+but urgent need to feel that some one would grieve at his departing.
+
+He thought of Marowsko. The old Pole was the only person who loved him
+well enough to feel true and keen emotion, and the doctor at once
+determined to go and see him.
+
+When he entered the shop, the druggist, who was pounding powders in a
+marble mortar, started and left his work:
+
+"You are never to be seen nowadays," said he.
+
+Pierre explained that he had had a great many serious matters to
+attend to, but without giving the reason, and he took a seat, asking:
+
+"Well, and how is business doing?"
+
+Business was not doing at all. Competition was fearful, and rich folks
+rare in that workman's quarter. Nothing would sell but cheap drugs,
+and the doctors did not prescribe the costlier and more complicated
+remedies on which a profit is made of five hundred per cent. The old
+fellow ended by saying: "If this goes on for three months I shall shut
+up shop. If I did not count on you, dear good doctor, I should have
+turned shoeblack by this time."
+
+Pierre felt a pang, and made up his mind to deal the blow at once,
+since it must be done.
+
+"I--oh, I cannot be of any use to you. I am leaving Havre early next
+month."
+
+Marowsko took off his spectacles, so great was his agitation.
+
+"You! You! What are you saying?"
+
+"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."
+
+The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under
+him, and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed,
+whom he loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him
+thus.
+
+He stammered out:
+
+"You are surely not going to play me false--you?"
+
+Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old
+fellow.
+
+"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and
+I am going as medical officer on board a transatlantic passenger
+boat."
+
+"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make
+a living!"
+
+"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in
+the world."
+
+Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There
+is nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of
+all things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came
+here to be with you. It is wrong."
+
+Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give reasons, to prove that he
+could not have done otherwise; the Pole, enraged by his desertion,
+would not listen to him, and he ended by saying, with an allusion no
+doubt to political events:
+
+"You French--you never keep your word!"
+
+At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high
+tone he said:
+
+"You are unjust, père Marowsko; a man must have very strong motives to
+act as I have done, and you ought to understand that. Au revoir--I
+hope I may find you more reasonable." And he went away.
+
+"Well, well," he thought, "not a soul will feel a sincere regret for
+me."
+
+His mind sought through all the people he knew or had known, and among
+the faces which crossed his memory he saw that of the girl at the
+tavern who led him to doubt his mother.
+
+He hesitated, having still an instinctive grudge against her, then
+suddenly reflected on the other hand: "After all, she was right." And
+he looked about him to find the turning.
+
+The beer-shop, as it happened, was full of people, and also full of
+smoke. The customers, tradesmen, and laborers, for it was a holiday,
+were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting
+on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and
+returning them crowned with froth.
+
+When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping
+that the girl would see him and recognize him. But she passed him
+again and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her
+skirts with a smart little strut. At last he rapped a coin on the
+table, and she hurried up.
+
+"What will you take, sir?"
+
+She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the
+liquor she had served.
+
+"Well," said he, "this is a pretty way of greeting a friend."
+
+She fixed her eyes on his face: "Ah!" said she hurriedly. "Is it you?
+You are pretty well? But I have not a minute to-day. A bock did you
+wish for?"
+
+"Yes, a bock!"
+
+When she brought it he said:
+
+"I have come to say good-by. I am going away."
+
+And she replied indifferently:
+
+"Indeed. Where are you going?"
+
+"To America."
+
+"A very fine country, they say."
+
+And that was all!
+
+Really he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day;
+there were too many people in the café.
+
+Pierre went down to the sea. As he reached the jetty he descried the
+_Pearl_; his father and Beausire were coming in. Papagris was pulling,
+and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look
+of perfect happiness. As they went past, the doctor said to himself:
+"Blessed are the simple-minded!" And he sat down on one of the benches
+on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.
+
+When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to
+lift her eyes to his face:
+
+"You will want a heap of things to take with you. I have ordered your
+underlinen, and I went into the tailor shop about cloth clothes; but
+is there nothing else you need--things which I, perhaps, know nothing
+about?"
+
+His lips parted to say, "No, nothing." But he reflected that he must
+accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and he replied in a very
+calm voice: "I hardly know myself, yet. I will make inquiries at the
+office."
+
+He inquired, and they gave him a list of indispensable necessaries.
+His mother, as she took it from his hand, looked up at him for the
+first time for very long, and in the depths of her eyes there was the
+humble expression, gentle, sad, and beseeching, of a dog that has been
+beaten and begs forgiveness.
+
+On the 1st of October the _Lorraine_ from Saint-Nazaire, came into the
+harbor of Havre to sail on the 7th, bound for New York, and Pierre
+Roland was to take possession of the little floating cabin in which
+henceforth his life was to be confined.
+
+Next day as he was going out, he met his mother on the stairs waiting
+for him, to murmur in an almost inaudible voice:
+
+"You would not like me to help you to put things to rights on board?"
+
+"No, thank you. Everything is done."
+
+Then she said:
+
+"I should have liked to see your cabin."
+
+"There is nothing to see. It is very small and very ugly."
+
+And he went downstairs, leaving her stricken, leaning against the wall
+with a wan face.
+
+Now Roland, who had gone over the _Lorraine_ that very day, could talk
+of nothing all dinner time but this splendid vessel, and wondered that
+his wife should not care to see it as their son was to sail on board.
+
+Pierre had scarcely any intercourse with his family during the days
+which followed. He was nervous, irritable, hard, and his rough speech
+seemed to lash every one indiscriminately. But the day before he left
+he was suddenly quite changed, and much softened. As he embraced his
+parents before going to sleep on board for the first time he said:
+
+"You will come to say good-by to me on board, will you not?"
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, of course--of course, Louise?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," she said in a low voice.
+
+Pierre went on: "We sail at eleven precisely. You must be there by
+half-past nine at the latest."
+
+"Hah!" cried his father. "A good idea! As soon as we have bid you
+good-bye, we will make haste on board the _Pearl_, and look out for
+you beyond the jetty, so as to see you once more. What do you say,
+Louise?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Roland went on: "And in that way you will not lose sight of us among
+the crowd which throngs the breakwater when the great liners sail. It
+is impossible to distinguish your own friends in the mob. Does that
+meet your views?"
+
+"Yes, to be sure; that is settled."
+
+An hour later he was lying in his berth--a little crib as long and
+narrow as a coffin. There he remained with his eyes wide open for a
+long time, thinking over all that had happened during the last two
+months of his life, especially in his own soul. By dint of suffering
+and making others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had
+lost its edge, like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in
+him to owe any one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath
+float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of
+wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything,
+that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart with
+forgetfulness as he dropped asleep. He heard vaguely, all about him,
+the unwonted noises of the ship, slight noises, and scarcely audible
+on this calm night in port; and he felt no more of the dreadful wound
+which had tortured him hitherto but the discomfort and strain of its
+healing.
+
+He had been sleeping soundly when the stir of the crew roused him. It
+was day; the tidal train had come down to the pier bringing the
+passengers from Paris. Then he wandered about the vessel among all
+these busy, bustling folks inquiring for their cabins, questioning and
+answering each other at random, in the scare and fuss of a voyage
+already begun. After greeting the captain and shaking hands with his
+comrade the purser, he went into the saloon where some Englishmen were
+already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white
+marble panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with
+looking-glasses, which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long
+tables flanked by pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit,
+indeed, to be the vast floating cosmopolitan dining hall, where the
+rich natives of two continents might eat in common. Its magnificent
+luxury was that of great hotels, and theaters, and public rooms; the
+imposing and commonplace luxury which appeals to the eye of the
+millionaire.
+
+The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon,
+when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board
+the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. There, in a sort
+of basement, low and dark, like a gallery in a mine, Pierre could
+discern some hundreds of men, women, and children, stretched on
+shelves fixed one above another, or lying on the floor in heaps. He
+could not see their faces, but could dimly make out this squalid,
+ragged crowd of wretches, beaten in the struggle for life, worn out
+and crushed, setting forth, each with a starving wife and weakly
+children, for an unknown land where they hoped, perhaps, not to die
+of hunger. And as he thought of their past labor--wasted labor, and
+barren effort--of the mortal struggle taken up afresh and in vain each
+day, of the energy expended by this tattered crew who were going to
+begin again, not knowing where, this life of hideous misery, he longed
+to cry out to them:
+
+"Tumble yourselves overboard, rather, with your women and your little
+ones." And his heart ached so with pity that he went away unable to
+endure the sight.
+
+He found his father, his mother, Jean, and Mme. Rosémilly waiting for
+him in his cabin.
+
+"So early!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said Mme. Roland in a trembling voice. "We wanted to have a
+little time to see you."
+
+He looked at her. She was dressed all in black as if she were in
+mourning, and he noticed that her hair, which only a month ago had
+been gray, was now almost white. It was very difficult to find space
+for four persons to sit down in the little room, and he himself got
+onto his bed. The door was left open, and they could see a great crowd
+hurrying by, as if it were a street on a holiday, for all the friends
+of the passengers and a host of inquisitive visitors had invaded the
+huge vessel. They pervaded the passages, the saloons, every corner of
+the ship; and heads peered in at the doorway while a voice murmured
+outside: "That is the doctor's cabin."
+
+Then Pierre shut the door; but no sooner was he shut in with his own
+party than he longed to open it again, for the bustle outside covered
+their agitation and want of words.
+
+Mme. Rosémilly at last felt she must speak.
+
+"Very little air comes in through those little windows."
+
+"Portholes," said Pierre. He showed her how thick the glass was, to
+enable it to resist the most violent shocks, and took a long time
+explaining the fastening. Roland presently asked: "And you have your
+doctor's shop here?"
+
+The doctor opened a cupboard and displayed an array of phials ticketed
+with Latin names on white paper labels. He took one out and enumerated
+the properties of its contents; then a second and a third, a perfect
+lecture on therapeutics, to which they all listened with great
+attention. Roland, shaking his head, said again and again: "How very
+interesting." There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Pierre, and Captain Beausire appeared.
+
+"I am late," he said as he shook hands, "I did not want to be in the
+way." He too sat down on the bed and silence fell once more.
+
+Suddenly the captain pricked his ears. He could hear orders being
+given, and he said:
+
+"It is time for us to be off if we mean to get on board the _Pearl_ to
+see you once more outside, and bid you good-by out on the open sea."
+
+Old Roland was very eager about this, to impress the voyagers on board
+the _Lorraine_, no doubt, and he rose in haste.
+
+"Good-by, my boy." He kissed Pierre on the whiskers and then opened
+the door.
+
+Mme. Roland had not stirred, but sat with downcast eyes, very pale.
+Her husband touched her arm:
+
+"Come," he said, "we must make haste, we have not a minute to spare."
+
+She pulled herself up, went to her son and offered him first one and
+then another cheek of white wax which he kissed without saying a word.
+Then he shook hands with Mme. Rosémilly and his brother, asking:
+
+"And when is the wedding to be?"
+
+"I do not know yet exactly. We will make it fit in with one of your
+return voyages."
+
+At last they were all out of the cabin, and up on deck among the crowd
+of visitors, porters and sailors. The steam was snorting in the huge
+belly of the vessel which seemed to quiver with impatience.
+
+"Good-by," said Roland in a great bustle.
+
+"Good-by," replied Pierre, standing on one of the landing-planks lying
+between the deck of the _Lorraine_ and the quay. He shook hands all
+round once more, and they were gone.
+
+"Make haste, jump into the carriage," cried the father.
+
+A fly was waiting for them and took them to the outer harbor, where
+Papagris had the _Pearl_ in readiness to put out to sea.
+
+There was not a breath of air; it was one of those crisp, still autumn
+days, when the sheeny sea looks as cold and hard as polished steel.
+
+Jean took one oar, the sailor seized the other and they pulled off. On
+the breakwater, on the piers, even on the granite parapets, a crowd
+stood packed, hustling and noisy, to see the _Lorraine_ come out. The
+_Pearl_ glided down between these two waves of humanity and was soon
+outside the mole.
+
+Captain Beausire, seated between the two women, held the tiller, and
+he said:
+
+"You will see, we shall be close in her way ---- close."
+
+And the two oarsmen pulled with all their might to get out as far as
+possible. Suddenly Roland cried out:
+
+"Here she comes! I see her masts and her two funnels! She is coming
+out of the inner harbor."
+
+"Cheerily, lads!" cried Beausire.
+
+Mme. Roland took out her handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
+
+Roland stood up, clinging to the mast, and answered:
+
+"At this minute she is working round in the outer harbor. She is
+standing still--now she moves again! She was taking the tow-rope on
+board, no doubt. There she goes. Bravo! She is between the piers! Do
+you hear the crowd shouting? Bravo! The _Neptune_ has her in tow. Now
+I see her bows--here she comes--here she is! Gracious heavens, what a
+ship! Look! look!"
+
+Mme. Rosémilly and Beausire looked up behind them, the oarsmen ceased
+pulling; only Mme. Roland did not stir.
+
+The immense steamship, towed by a powerful tug, which, in front of
+her, looked like a caterpillar, came slowly and majestically out of
+the harbor. And the good people of Havre, who crowded the piers, the
+beach, and the windows, carried away by a burst of patriotic
+enthusiasm, cried: "_Vive la Lorraine!_" with acclamations and
+applause for this magnificent beginning, this birth of the beautiful
+daughter given to the sea by the great maritime town.
+
+She, as soon as she had passed beyond the narrow channel between the
+two granite walls, feeling herself free at last, cast off the
+tow-ropes and went off alone, like a monstrous creature walking on the
+waters.
+
+"Here she is--here she comes, straight down on us!" Roland kept
+shouting; and Beausire, beaming, exclaimed: "What did I promise you!
+Heh! Do I know the way?"
+
+Jean in a low tone said to his mother: "Look, mother, she is close
+upon us!" And Mme. Roland uncovered her eyes, blinded by tears.
+
+The _Lorraine_ came on, still under the impetus of her swift exit from
+the harbor, in the brilliant, calm weather. Beausire, with his glass
+to his eye, called out:
+
+"Look out! M. Pierre is at the stern, all alone, plainly to be seen!
+Look out!"
+
+The ship was almost touching the _Pearl_ now, as tall as a mountain
+and as swift as a train. Mme. Roland, distraught and desperate, held
+out her arms toward it; and she saw her son, her Pierre, with his
+officer's cap on, throwing kisses to her with both hands.
+
+But he was going away, flying, vanishing, a tiny speck already, no
+more than an imperceptible spot on the enormous vessel. She tried
+still to distinguish him, but she could not.
+
+Jean took her hand:
+
+"You saw?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I saw. How good he is!"
+
+And they turned to go home.
+
+"Cristi! How fast she goes!" exclaimed Roland with enthusiastic
+conviction.
+
+The steamer, in fact, was shrinking every second, as though she were
+melting away in the ocean. Mme. Roland, turning back to look at her,
+watched her disappearing on the horizon, on her way to an unknown land
+at the other side of the world.
+
+In that vessel which nothing could stay, that vessel which she soon
+would see no more, was her son, her poor son. And she felt as though
+half her heart had gone with him; she felt, too, as if her life were
+ended; yes, and she felt as though she would never see the child
+again.
+
+"Why are you crying?" asked her husband, "when you know he will be
+back again within a month."
+
+She stammered out: "I don't know, I cry because I am hurt."
+
+When they had landed, Beausire at once took leave of them to go to
+breakfast with a friend. Then Jean led the way with Mme. Rosémilly,
+and Roland said to his wife:
+
+"A very fine fellow, all the same, is our Jean."
+
+"Yes," replied the mother.
+
+And her mind being too much bewildered to think of what she was
+saying, she went on:
+
+"I am very glad that he is to marry Mme. Rosémilly."
+
+The worthy man was astounded.
+
+"Heh? What? He is to marry Mme. Rosémilly?"
+
+"Yes, we meant to ask your opinion about it this very day."
+
+"Bless me. And has this engagement been long in the wind?"
+
+"Oh, no, only a very few days. Jean wished to make sure that she would
+accept him before consulting you."
+
+Roland rubbed his hands.
+
+"Very good. Very good. It is capital. I entirely approve."
+
+As they were about to turn off from the quay down the Boulevard
+François 1er, his wife once more looked back to cast a last look at
+the high seas, but she could see nothing now but a puff of gray smoke,
+so far away, so faint that it looked like a film of haze.
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+
+It was after a dinner of friends, of old friends. There were five of
+them, a writer, a doctor, and three rich bachelors without any
+profession.
+
+They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came on,
+that feeling of lassitude which precedes and leads to the departure of
+guests after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the
+last five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard
+starred with gas-lamps, and rattling with vehicles, said suddenly:
+
+"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are
+long."
+
+"And the nights, too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I
+sleep very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous.
+Never do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to
+anyone, a violent longing to say nothing and listen to nothing. I
+don't know what to do with my evenings."
+
+And the third idler remarked:
+
+"I would pay a great deal for anything that would enable me to pass
+merely two pleasant hours every day."
+
+Then the writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm,
+turned round to them and said:
+
+"The man who could discover a new vice, and introduce it among his
+fellow-creatures, even though it were to shorten their lives, would
+render a greater service to humanity than the man who found the means
+of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth."
+
+The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he
+said:
+
+"Yes, but 'tis not so easy as that to discover it. Men have, however
+crudely, been seeking for and working for the object you refer to
+since the beginning of the world. The men who came first reached
+perfection at once in this way. We are hardly equal to them."
+
+One of the three idlers murmured:
+
+"'Tis a pity!"
+
+Then, after a minute's pause, he added:
+
+"If we could only sleep, sleep well without feeling hot or cold, sleep
+with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
+thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams."
+
+"Why without dreams?" asked the guest sitting next to him.
+
+The other replied:
+
+"Because dreams are not always pleasant, and they are always
+fantastic, improbable, disconnected, and because when we are asleep we
+cannot have the sort of dreams we like. We require to be awake when we
+dream."
+
+"And what's to prevent you from being so?" asked the writer.
+
+The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.
+
+"My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake you need great
+power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
+weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our
+thoughts through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest
+experience in the world; but it must come naturally, it must not be
+provoked in a painful manner, and must be accompanied by absolute
+bodily comfort. This power of dreaming I can give you provided you
+promise that you will not abuse it."
+
+The writer shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"Ah! yes, I know--haschich, opium, green tea--artificial paradises. I
+have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me
+very sick."
+
+But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:
+
+"No: ether, nothing but ether, and I would suggest that you literary
+men ought to use it sometimes."
+
+The three rich men drew closer to the doctor.
+
+One of them said:
+
+"Explain to us the effects of it."
+
+And the doctor replied:
+
+"Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of
+medicine or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up
+every day to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to
+you a new sensation, only possible to intelligent men, let us say even
+very intelligent men, dangerous, like everything that overexcites our
+organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
+preparation, that is to say, a practice, to feel in all their
+completeness the singular effects of ether.
+
+"They are different from the effects of haschich, from the effects of
+opium and morphia, and they cease as soon as the absorption of the
+drug is interrupted, while the other generators of day dreams continue
+their action for hours.
+
+"I am now going to try to analyze as clearly as possible the way one
+feels. But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
+imperceptible, are these sensations.
+
+"It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of
+this remedy, which perhaps I have since slightly abused.
+
+"I had in my head and in my neck acute pains, and an intolerable heat
+of the skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large flagon of
+ether, and lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.
+
+"At the end of some minutes, I thought I heard a vague murmur, which
+ere long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the
+interior of my body had become light, light as air, that it was
+dissolving into vapor.
+
+"Then came a sort of torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort
+in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had
+ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which
+we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches
+against which our tortured body protests.
+
+"Soon, the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in
+my chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as
+light as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only
+were left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of
+living, of bathing in this well-being. Then I perceived that I was no
+longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted also, evaporated. And I
+heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding what
+was said. At one time, there were only indistinct sounds, at another
+time a word reached my ear. But I recognized that this was only the
+humming I had heard before, accentuated. I was not asleep; I was not
+awake; I comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the utmost clearness
+and depth, with extraordinary energy and intellectual pleasure, with a
+singular intoxication arising from this separation of my mental
+faculties.
+
+"It was not like the dreams caused by haschich or the somewhat sickly
+visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of
+reasoning, a new way of seeing, judging, and appreciating the things
+of life, and with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that this
+was the true way.
+
+"And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
+seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
+mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a
+new, strange, and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings,
+proofs, rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately
+displaced by some stronger proof, reasoning, argument. My head had in
+fact, become a battle-ground of ideas. I was a superior being, armed
+with invincible intelligence, and I experienced a huge delight at the
+manifestation of my power.
+
+"It lasted a long, long time. I still kept inhaling the ether from the
+opening of my flagon. Suddenly I perceived that it was empty."
+
+The four men exclaimed at the same time:
+
+"Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!"
+
+But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied:
+
+"As for that, certainly not; go and get poisoned by others!"
+
+And he left them.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, what is your idea on the subject?
+
+
+
+
+MOONLIGHT
+
+
+Madame Julie Roubere was awaiting her elder sister, Madame Henriette
+Letore, who had just returned after a trip to Switzerland.
+
+The Letore household had left nearly five weeks ago. Madame Henriette
+had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados,
+where some matters of business required his attention, and come to
+spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet
+parlor, darkened by twilight shadows, Madame Roubere was reading, in
+an absent-minded fashion, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.
+
+At last, she heard a ring at the door, and presently her sister
+appeared, wrapped in a traveling cloak. And immediately without any
+formal greeting, they clasped each other ardently, only desisting for
+a moment to begin embracing each other over again. Then they talked,
+asking questions about each other's health, about their respective
+families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried,
+broken sentences and rushing about while Madame Henriette was removing
+her hat and veil.
+
+It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as
+it was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point
+of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished
+at the other's appearance. Around her temples, Madame Letore had two
+long locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy,
+raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran as it
+were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black
+mass surrounding them. She was nevertheless only twenty-four years
+old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for
+Switzerland.
+
+Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
+to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity
+must have fallen on her sister. She asked:
+
+"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"
+
+Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
+replied:
+
+"Why nothing I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"
+
+But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
+searching glance at her repeated:
+
+"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And
+if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."
+
+They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who became so pale
+that she was near fainting, had two pearly tears at each corner of her
+drooping eyes.
+
+Her sister went on asking:
+
+"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"
+
+Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:
+
+"I have--I have a lover."
+
+And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
+sobbed.
+
+Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her
+breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast
+forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a
+sympathetic heart.
+
+Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly grasped, the two women
+went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they
+sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's
+neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh! I recognize that there was no excuse for one; I do not understand
+myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful my
+child, about yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are,
+how quickly we yield, we fall. All it needs is a nothing, so little,
+so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of
+melancholy which steal into your soul, one of those longings to open
+your arms, to love, to embrace, which we all have at certain moments.
+
+"You know my husband, and you know how fond of him I am; but he is
+mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations
+of a woman's heart. He is always, always the same, always good, always
+smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished
+that he would roughly clasp me in his arms, that he would embrace me
+with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which
+are like mute confidences! How I wished that he was self-abandoned and
+even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my caress, of my
+tears!
+
+"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can
+we help it?
+
+"And yet the thought of deceiving never came near me. To-day, it has
+happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply
+because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.
+
+"During the month when we were traveling together, my husband, with
+his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic
+ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sun-rise, when as
+the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the
+transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I
+clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'What a beautiful
+scene, darling! Kiss me now!' He only answered with a smile of
+chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should kiss each other
+because you like the landscape.'
+
+"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
+love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever in
+the presence of beautiful scenes.
+
+"Indeed he prevented the effervescent poetry that bubbled up within me
+from gushing out. How can I express it? I was almost like a boiler,
+filled with steam and hermetically sealed.
+
+"One evening (we had been for four days staying in the Hotel de
+Fluelen), Robert, having got one of his sick headaches, went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along
+the edge of the lake.
+
+"It was a night such as one might read of in a fairy tale. The full
+moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with
+their snowy crests seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the
+lake glittered with tiny rippling motions. The air was mild, with that
+kind of penetrating freshness which softens us till we seem to be
+swooning, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how
+sensitive, how vibrating, the heart is at such moments! How quickly it
+leaps up, and how intense are its emotions!
+
+"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast lake so melancholy
+and so fascinating, and a strange thing passed into me; I became
+possessed with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy
+dullness of my life. What! Would it never be my fate to be clasped in
+the arms of a man whom I loved on a bank like this under the glowing
+moonlight? Was I never then, to feel on my lips those kisses so deep,
+delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem
+to have been made by God for passionate embraces? Was I never to know
+such ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?
+
+"And I burst out weeping like a woman who has lost her reason. I heard
+some person stirring behind me. A man was intently gazing at me. When
+I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:
+
+"'You are weeping, Madame?'
+
+"It was a young barrister who was traveling with his mother, and whom
+we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.
+
+"I was so much confused that I did not know what answer to give or
+what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.
+
+"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectable fashion, and
+began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
+had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
+understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden
+he recited some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking,
+seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains
+themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things
+ineffably sweet.
+
+"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
+hallucination.
+
+"As for him I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.
+
+"He gave me his card!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore, broke into
+groans--almost into shrieks.
+
+Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
+gently:
+
+"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love.
+And your real lover that night was the moonlight."
+
+
+
+
+THE CORSICAN BANDIT
+
+
+The road with a gentle winding reached the middle of the forest. The
+huge pine-trees spread above our heads a mournful-looking vault, and
+gave forth a kind of long, sad wail, while at either side their
+straight slender trunks formed, as it were, an army of organ-pipes,
+from which seemed to issue that monotonous music of the wind through
+the tree-tops.
+
+After three hours' walking there was an opening in this row of tangled
+branches. Here and there an enormous pine-parasol, separated from the
+others, opening like an immense umbrella, displayed its dome of dark
+green; then, all of a sudden, we gained the boundary of the forest,
+some hundreds of meters below the defile which leads into the wild
+valley of Niolo.
+
+On the two projecting heights which commanded a view of this pass,
+some old trees grotesquely twisted, seemed to have mounted with
+painful efforts, like scouts who had started in advance of the
+multitude heaped together in the rear. When we turned round, we saw
+the entire forest stretched beneath our feet, like a gigantic basin of
+verdure, whose edges, which seemed to reach the sky, were composed of
+bare rocks shutting in on every side.
+
+We resumed our walk, and, ten minutes later, we found ourselves in the
+defile.
+
+Then I beheld an astonishing landscape. Beyond another forest, a
+valley, but a valley such as I had never seen before, a solitude of
+stone ten leagues long, hollowed out between two high mountains,
+without a field or a tree to be seen. This was the Niolo valley, the
+fatherland of Corsican liberty, the inaccessible citadel, from which
+the invaders had never been able to drive out the mountaineers.
+
+My companion said to me: "Is it here, too, that all our bandits have
+taken refuge?"
+
+Ere long we were at the further end of this chasm so wild, so
+inconceivably beautiful.
+
+Not a blade of grass, not a plant--nothing but granite. As far as our
+eyes could reach, we saw in front of us a desert of glittering stone,
+heated like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that
+very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards
+the crests, we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked
+red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made
+of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by
+the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of
+scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we
+were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and
+irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And
+we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning,
+arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which
+seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize
+these rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up without
+being penetrated or refreshed by it.
+
+But suddenly there was visible at our right a little wooden cross sunk
+in a little heap of stones. A man had been killed there; and I said
+to my companion:
+
+"Tell me about your bandits."
+
+He replied:
+
+"I knew the most celebrated of them, the terrible St. Lucia. I will
+tell you his history.
+
+"His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the same
+district, it is said; and St. Lucia was left alone with his sister. He
+was a weak and timid youth, small, often ill, without any energy. He
+did not proclaim the vendetta against the assassin of his father. All
+his relatives came to see him, and implored of him to take vengeance;
+he remained deaf to their menaces and their supplications.
+
+"Then, following the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her
+indignation, carried away his black clothes, in order that he might
+not wear mourning for a dead man who had not been avenged. He was
+insensible to even this outrage, and rather than take down from the
+rack his father's gun, which was still loaded, he shut himself up, not
+daring to brave the looks of the young men of the district.
+
+"He seemed to have even forgotten the crime and he lived with his
+sister in the obscurity of their dwelling.
+
+"But, one day, the man who was suspected of having committed the
+murder, was about to get married. St. Lucia did not appear to be moved
+by this news, but, no doubt, out of sheer bravado, the bridegroom, on
+his way to the church, passed before the two orphans' house.
+
+"The brother and the sister, at their window, were eating little fried
+cakes when the young man saw the bridal procession moving past the
+house. Suddenly he began to tremble, rose up without uttering a word,
+made the sign of the cross, took the gun which was hanging over the
+fireplace, and he went out.
+
+"When he spoke of this later on, he said: 'I don't know what was the
+matter with me; it was like fire in my blood; I felt that I should do
+it, that in spite of everything I could not resist, and I concealed
+the gun in a cave on the road to Corte.'
+
+"An hour later, he came back, with nothing in his hand, and with his
+habitual air of sad weariness. His sister believed that there was
+nothing further in his thoughts.
+
+"But when night fell he disappeared.
+
+"His enemy had, the same evening, to repair to Corte on foot,
+accompanied by his two bridesmen.
+
+"He was pursuing his way, singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood
+before him, and looking straight in the murderer's face, exclaimed:
+'Now is the time!' and shot him point-blank in the chest.
+
+"One of the bridesmen fled; the other stared at the young man saying:
+
+"'What have you done, St. Lucia?'
+
+"Then he was going to hasten to Corte for help, but St. Lucia said in
+stern tone:
+
+"'If you move another step, I'll shoot you through the legs.'
+
+"The other, aware that till now he had always appeared timid, said to
+him: 'You would not dare to do it!' and he was hurrying off when he
+fell instantaneously, his thigh shattered by a bullet.
+
+"And St. Lucia, coming over to where he lay, said:
+
+"'I am going to look at your wound; if it is not serious, I'll leave
+you there; if it is mortal I'll finish you off.'
+
+"He inspected the wound, considered it mortal, and slowly re-loading
+his gun, told the wounded man to say a prayer, and shot him through
+the head.
+
+"Next day he was in the mountains.
+
+"And do you know what this St. Lucia did after this?
+
+"All his family were arrested by the gendarmes. His uncle, the curé,
+who was suspected of having incited him to this deed of vengeance, was
+himself put into prison, and accused by the dead man's relatives. But
+he escaped, took a gun in his turn, and went to join his nephew in the
+cave.
+
+"Next, St. Lucia killed, one after the other, his uncle's accusers,
+and tore out their eyes to teach the others never to state what they
+had seen with their eyes.
+
+"He killed all the relatives, all the connections of his enemy's
+family. He massacred during his life fourteen gendarmes, burned down
+the houses of his adversaries, and was up to the day of his death the
+most terrible of the bandits, whose memory we have preserved."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun disappeared behind Monte Cinto and the tall shadow of the
+granite mountain went to sleep on the granite of the valley. We
+quickened our pace in order to reach before night the little village
+of Albertaccio, nothing better than a heap of stones welded beside the
+stone flanks of a wild gorge. And I said as I thought of the bandit:
+
+"What a terrible custom your vendetta is!"
+
+My companion answered with an air of resignation:
+
+"What, would you have? A man must do his duty!"
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET
+
+
+She had died painlessly, tranquilly, like a woman whose life was
+irreproachable, and she now lay on her back in bed, with closed eyes,
+calm features, her long white hair carefully arranged as if she had
+again made her toilet ten minutes before her death, all her pale
+physiognomy so composed, now that she had passed away, so resigned
+that one felt sure a sweet soul had dwelt in that body, that this
+serene grandmother had spent an untroubled existence, that this
+virtuous woman had ended her life without any shock, without any
+remorse.
+
+On his knees, beside the bed, her son, a magistrate of inflexible
+principles, and her daughter Marguerite, in religion, Sister Eulalie,
+were weeping distractedly. She had from the time of their infancy
+armed them with an inflexible code of morality, teaching them a
+religion without weakness and a sense of duty without any compromise.
+He, the son, had become a magistrate, and, wielding the weapon of the
+law, he struck down without pity the feeble and the erring. She, the
+daughter, quite penetrated with the virtue that had bathed her in this
+austere family, had become the spouse of God through disgust with men.
+
+They had scarcely known their father; all they knew was that he had
+made their mother unhappy without learning any further details. The
+nun passionately kissed one hand of her dead mother, which hung down,
+a hand of ivory like that of Christ in the large crucifix which lay
+on the bed. At the opposite side of the prostrate body, the other hand
+seemed still to grasp the rumpled sheet with that wandering movement
+which is called the fold of the dying, and the lines had retained
+little wavy creases as a memento of those last motions which precede
+the eternal motionlessness. A few light taps at the door caused the
+two sobbing heads to rise up, and the priest who had just dined,
+entered the apartment. He was flushed, a little puffed, from the
+effects of the process of digestion which had just commenced; for he
+had put a good dash of brandy into his coffee in order to counteract
+the fatigue caused by the last nights he had remained up and that
+which he anticipated from the night that was still in store for him.
+He had put on a look of sadness, that simulated sadness of the priest
+to whom death is a means of livelihood. He made the sign of the cross,
+and coming over to them with his professional gesture said:
+
+"Well, my poor children, I have come to help you to pass these
+mournful hours."
+
+But Sister Eulalie suddenly rose up.
+
+"Thanks, father, but my brother and I would like to be left alone with
+her. These are the last moments that we now have for seeing her; so we
+want to feel ourselves once more, the three of us, just as we were
+years ago when we--we--we were only children, and our poor--poor
+mother--"
+
+She was unable to finish with the flood of tears that gushed from her
+eyes, and the sobs that were choking her.
+
+But the priest bowed, with a more serene look on his face, for he was
+thinking of his bed. "Just as you please, my children."
+
+Then, he knelt down, again crossed himself, prayed, rose up, and
+softly stole away murmuring as he went: "She was a saint."
+
+They were left alone, the dead woman and her children. A hidden
+timepiece kept regularly ticking in its dark corner, and through the
+open window the soft odors of hay and of woods penetrated with faint
+gleams of moonlight. No sound in the fields outside, save the
+wandering notes of toads and now and then the humming of some
+nocturnal insect darting into like a ball, and knocking itself against
+the wall.
+
+An infinite peace, a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded
+this dead woman, seemed to emanate from her, to evaporate from her
+into the atmosphere outside and to calm Nature itself.
+
+Then the magistrate, still on his knees, his head pressed against the
+bed-clothes, in a far-off, heart-broken voice that pierced through the
+sheets and the coverlet, exclaimed:
+
+"Mamma, mamma, mamma!" And the sister, sinking down on the floor,
+striking the wood with her forehead fanatically, twisting herself
+about and quivering like a person in an epileptic fit, groaned:
+"Jesus, Jesus--mamma--Jesus!"
+
+And both of them shaken by a hurricane of grief panted with a rattling
+in their throats.
+
+Then the fit gradually subsided, and they now wept in a less violent
+fashion, like the rainy calm that follows a squall on a storm-beaten
+sea. Then, after some time, they rose, and fixed their glances on the
+beloved corpse. And memories, those memories of the past, so sweet, so
+torturing to-day, came back to their minds with all those little
+forgotten details, those little details so intimate and familiar,
+which make the being who is no more live over again. They recalled
+circumstances, words, smiles, certain intonations of voice which
+belonged to one whom they should hear speaking to them again. They saw
+her once more happy and calm, and phrases she used in ordinary
+conversation rose to their lips. They even remembered a little
+movement of the hand peculiar to her, as if she were keeping time when
+she was saying something of importance.
+
+And they loved her as they had never before loved her. And by the
+depth of their despair they realized how strongly they had been
+attached to her, and how desolate they would find themselves now.
+
+She had been their mainstay, their guide, the best part of their
+youth, of that happy portion of their lives which had vanished; she
+had been the bond that united them to existence, the mother, the
+mamma, the creative flesh, the tie that bound them to their ancestors.
+They would henceforth be solitary, isolated; they would have nothing
+on earth to look back upon.
+
+The nun said to her brother:
+
+"You know how mamma used always to read over her old letters. They are
+all there in her drawer. Suppose we read them in our turn, and so
+revive all her life this night by her side? It would be like a kind of
+road of the cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of
+grandparents whom we never knew, whose letters are there, and of whom
+she has so often talked to us, you remember?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And they drew forth from the drawer a dozen little packets of yellow
+paper, carefully tied up and placed close to one another. They flung
+these relics on the bed, and selecting one of them on which the word
+"Father" was written, they opened and read what was in it.
+
+It consisted of those very old letters which are to be found in old
+family writing-desks, those letters which have the flavor of another
+century. The first said, "My darling," another "My beautiful little
+girl," then others "My dear child," and then again "My dear daughter."
+And suddenly the nun began reading aloud, reading for the dead her own
+history, all her tender souvenirs. And the magistrate listened, while
+he leaned on the bed, with his eyes on his mother's face. And the
+motionless corpse seemed happy.
+
+Sister Eulalie, interrupting herself, said: "We ought to put them into
+the grave with her, to make a winding-sheet of them, and bury them
+with her."
+
+And then she took up another packet, on which the descriptive word did
+not appear.
+
+And in a loud tone she began: "My adored one, I love you to
+distraction. Since yesterday I have been suffering like a damned soul
+burned by the recollection of you. I feel your lips on mine, your eyes
+under my eyes, your flesh under my flesh. I love you! I love you! You
+have made me mad! My arms open! I pant with an immense desire to
+possess you again. My whole body calls out to you, wants you. I have
+kept in my mouth the taste of your kisses."
+
+The magistrate rose up; the nun stopped reading. He snatched the
+letter from her, and sought for the signature. There was none, save
+under the words, "He who adores you," the name "Henry." Their father's
+name was René. So then he was not the man.
+
+Then, the son, with rapid fingers, fumbled in the packet of letters
+took another of them, and read: "I can do without your caresses no
+longer."
+
+And, standing up, with the severity of a judge passing sentence, he
+gazed at the impassive face of the dead woman.
+
+The nun, straight as a statue, with teardrops standing at each corner
+of her eyes, looked at her brother, waiting to see what he meant to
+do. Then he crossed the room, slowly reached the window, and looked
+out thoughtfully into the night.
+
+When he turned back, Sister Eulalie, her eyes now quite dry, still
+remained standing near the bed, with a downcast look.
+
+He went over to the drawer and flung in the letters which he had
+picked up from the floor. Then he drew the curtains round the bed.
+
+And when the dawn made the candles on the table look pale, the son
+rose from his armchair, and without even a parting glance at the
+mother whom he had separated from them and condemned, he said slowly:
+
+"Now, my sister, let us leave the room."
+
+
+
+
+THE CAKE
+
+
+Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her
+real name.
+
+She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail
+of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic
+heart, and was ravishingly beautiful. She opened her doors to very
+few--only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as
+princes of something or other.
+
+To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim of
+intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations.
+
+Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband
+of a star is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original
+idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit
+of his own, a merit of the second order; it is true; but he did, in
+fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions, hold
+receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who
+appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention
+than they did on his brilliant partner.
+
+He had devoted himself to agriculture--to agriculture in the Chamber.
+There are in the same way generals in the Chamber--those who are born,
+who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office,
+are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chambers--viz., in
+the Admiralty--Colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied
+agriculture, indeed he had studied it deeply, in its relations with
+the other sciences, with political economy, with the Fine Arts--we
+dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of science, since we even call
+the horrible railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the
+point when it was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted
+in the Technical Reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him
+appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.
+
+This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.
+
+Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations
+to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they
+associated together, or rather they did not--they formed two groups.
+Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and Ministers,
+occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of
+the Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a
+smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically
+described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.
+
+The two camps were clearly separated. Monsieur, without jealousy,
+moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial
+handshakings were exchanged, but the Academy entertained infinite
+contempt for the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of
+the princes of science, of thought, or of anything else mingled with
+the agriculturists.
+
+These receptions occasioned little expense--a cup of tea, a cake, that
+was all. Monsieur, at an earlier period, had claimed two cakes, one
+for the academy, and one for the agriculturists, but Madame having
+rightly suggested that this way of acting seemed to indicate two
+camps, two receptions, two parties, Monsieur did not press the matter,
+so that they used only one cake, of which Madame Anserre did the
+honors at the Academy, and which then passed into the Salon de
+Agriculture.
+
+Now, this cake was soon, for the Academy, a subject of observation
+well calculated to arouse curiosity. Madame Anserre never cut it
+herself. That function always fell to the lot of one or other of the
+illustrious guests. The particular duty, which was supposed to carry
+with it honorable distinction, was performed by each person for a
+pretty long period, in one case for three months, scarcely ever for
+more; and it was noticed that the privilege of "cutting the cake"
+carried with it a heap of other marks of superiority--a sort of
+royalty, or rather very accentuated vice-royalty.
+
+The reigning cutter spoke in a haughty tone, with an air of marked
+command; and all the favors of the mistress of the house were for him
+alone.
+
+These happy individuals were in moments of intimacy described in
+hushed tones behind doors as the "favorites of the cake," and every
+change of favorite introduced into the Academy a sort of revolution.
+The knife was a scepter, the pastry an emblem; the chosen ones were
+congratulated. The agriculturists never cut the cake. Monsieur himself
+was always excluded, although he ate his share.
+
+The cake was cut in succession by poets, by painters, and by
+novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the
+portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him.
+Sometimes a man less well-known, but elegant and sought after, one of
+those who are called according to the different epochs, "true
+gentleman," or "perfect knight," or "dandy," or something else, seated
+himself, in his turn, before the symbolic cake. Each of them, during
+his ephemeral reign, exhibited greater consideration towards the
+husband; then, when the hour of his fall had arrived, he passed on the
+knife towards the other and mingled once more with the crowd of
+followers and admirers of the "beautiful Madame Anserre."
+
+This state of things lasted a long time, but comets do not always
+shine with the same brilliance. Everything gets worn out in society.
+One would have said that gradually the eagerness of the cutters grew
+feebler; they seemed to hesitate at times when the tray was held out
+to them; this office, once so much coveted, became less and less
+desired. It was retained for a shorter time; they appeared to be less
+proud of it.
+
+Madame Anserre was prodigal of smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was
+found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to
+decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like
+dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power.
+Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!)
+M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting
+tired of it; and one evening Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame
+Anserre, was seen cutting it herself. But this appeared to be very
+wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged one of her guests so
+strongly to do it that he did not dare to refuse.
+
+The symbol was too well-known, however; the guests stared at one
+another with scared anxious faces. To cut the cake was nothing, but
+the privileges to which this favor had always given a claim now
+frightened people; therefore, the moment the dish made its appearance
+the academicians rushed pell-mell into the Salon of Agriculture, as if
+to shelter themselves behind the husband, who was perpetually smiling.
+And when Madame Anserre, in a state of anxiety, presented herself at
+the door with a cake in one hand and the knife in the other, they all
+seemed to form a circle around her husband as if to appeal to him for
+protection.
+
+Some years more passed. Nobody cut the cake now; but yielding to an
+old inveterate habit, the lady who had always been gallantly called
+"the beautiful Madame Anserre" looked out each evening for some
+devotee to take the knife, and each time the same movement took place
+around her, a general flight, skillfully arranged, and full of
+combined maneuvers that showed great cleverness, in order to avoid the
+offer that was rising to her lips.
+
+But, one evening, a young man presented himself at her reception--an
+innocent, unsophisticated youth. He knew nothing about the mystery of
+the cake; accordingly, when it appeared, and when all the rest ran
+away, when Madame Anserre took from the man-servant's hands the dish
+and the pastry, he remained quietly by her side.
+
+She thought that perhaps he knew about the matter; she smiled, and in
+a tone which showed some emotion, said:
+
+"Will you be kind enough, dear Monsieur, to cut this cake?"
+
+He displayed the utmost readiness, and took off his gloves, flattered
+at such an honor being conferred on him.
+
+"Oh, to be sure Madame, with the greatest pleasure."
+
+Some distance away in the corner of the gallery, in the frame of the
+door which led into the Salon of the Agriculturists, faces which
+expressed utter amazement were staring at him. Then, when the
+spectators saw the new comer cutting without any hesitation, they
+quickly came forward.
+
+An old poet jocosely slapped the neophyte on the shoulder.
+
+"Bravo, young man!" he whispered in his ear.
+
+The others gazed at him with curiosity. Even the husband appeared to
+be surprised. As for the young man, he was astonished at the
+consideration which they suddenly seemed to show towards him; above
+all, he failed to comprehend the marked attentions, the manifest
+favor, and the species of mute gratitude which the mistress of the
+house bestowed on him.
+
+It appears, however, that he eventually found out.
+
+At what moment, in what place, was the revelation made to him? Nobody
+could tell; but, when he again presented himself at the reception, he
+had a preoccupied air, almost a shamefaced look, and he cast around
+him a glance of uneasiness.
+
+The bell rang for tea. The man-servant appeared. Madame Anserre, with
+a smile, seized the dish, casting a look about her for her young
+friend; but he had fled so precipitately that no trace of him could be
+seen any longer. Then, she went looking everywhere for him, and ere
+long she discovered him in the Salon of the Agriculturists. With his
+arm locked in that of the husband, he was consulting that gentleman as
+to the means employed for destroying phylloxera.
+
+"My dear Monsieur," she said to him, "will you be so kind as to cut
+this cake for me?"
+
+He reddened to the roots of his hair, and hanging down his head,
+stammered out some excuses. Thereupon M. Anserre took pity on him, and
+turning towards his wife, said:
+
+"My dear, you might have the goodness not to disturb us. We are
+talking about agriculture. So get your cake cut by Baptiste."
+
+And since that day nobody has ever cut Madame Anserre's cake.
+
+
+
+
+A LIVELY FRIEND
+
+
+They had been constantly in each other's society for a whole winter in
+Paris. After having lost sight of each other, as generally happens in
+such cases, after leaving college, the two friends met again one
+night, long years after, already old and white-haired, the one a
+bachelor, the other married.
+
+M. de Meroul lived six months in Paris and six months in his little
+chateau of Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a gentleman in
+the district, he had lived a peaceful, happy life with the indolence
+of a man who has nothing to do. With a calm temperament and a sedate
+mind, without any intellectual audacity or tendency towards
+revolutionary independence of thought, he passed his time in mildly
+regretting the past, in deploring the morals and the institutions of
+to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised her eyes
+to Heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic assent:
+
+"Under what a government do we live, great God!"
+
+Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had
+been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first
+of all, to reverence the Pope and the King!
+
+And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart,
+without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary
+devotion, with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was
+kindly in every fold of her soul. She had no child, and was
+incessantly regretting it.
+
+When M. de Meroul came across his old school fellow Joseph Mouradour
+at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine
+delight, for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.
+
+After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in
+their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of
+questions as to their respective careers.
+
+Joseph Mouradour, a native of the South of France, had become a
+Councilor General in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he
+spoke briskly and without any circumspection telling all his thoughts
+with sheer indifference to prudential considerations. He was a
+Republican, of that race of good-natured Republicans who make their
+own ease the law of their existence, and who carry freedom of speech
+to the verge of brutality.
+
+He called at his friend's address in Paris, and was immediately a
+favorite, on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced
+opinions. Madame de Meroul exclaimed:
+
+"What a pity! such a charming man!"
+
+M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone:
+"You cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country." He was
+attached to his friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than
+those of childhood renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the
+husband and wife, called them "my loving turtles," and occasionally
+gave vent to loud declarations against people who were behind the age,
+against all sorts of prejudices and traditions.
+
+When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the
+married pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of
+propriety and good-breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the
+conversation, in order to avoid any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not
+want to know anyone unless he was free to say what he liked.
+
+Summer came round. The Merouls knew no greater pleasure than to
+receive their old friends in their country house at Tourbeville. It
+was an intimate and healthy pleasure, the pleasure of homely
+gentlefolk who had spent most of their lives in the country. They used
+to go to the nearest railway station to meet some of their guests, and
+drove them to the house in their carriage, watching for compliments on
+their district, on the rapid vegetation, on the condition of the roads
+in the department, on the cleanliness of the peasants' houses, on the
+bigness of the cattle they saw in the fields, on everything that met
+the eye as far as the edge of the horizon.
+
+They liked to have it noticed that their horse trotted in a wonderful
+manner for an animal employed a part of the year in field-work; and
+they awaited, with anxiety the newcomer's opinion on their family
+estate, sensitive to the slightest word, grateful for the slightest
+gracious attention.
+
+Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he announced his arrival.
+
+The wife and the husband came to meet the train, delighted to have the
+opportunity of doing the honors of their house.
+
+As soon as he perceived them, Joseph Mouradour jumped out of his
+carriage with a vivacity which increased their satisfaction. He
+grasped their hands warmly, congratulated them, and intoxicated them
+with compliments.
+
+He was quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to
+the house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the
+excellence of the crops, and the quickness of the horse.
+
+When he placed his foot on the steps in front of the chateau, M. de
+Meroul said to him with a certain friendly solemnity:
+
+"Now you are at home."
+
+Joseph Mouradour answered: "Thanks old fellow; I counted on that. For
+my part, besides, I never put myself out with my friends. That's the
+only hospitality I understand."
+
+Then, he went up to his own room, where he put on the costume of a
+peasant, as he was pleased to describe it, and he came down again not
+very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the
+careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too to
+have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed
+along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he
+thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M.
+and Madame de Meroul who even at home on their estate always remained
+serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name
+exacted a certain amount of ceremonial even with their intimate
+friends.
+
+After lunch, they went to visit the farms; and the Parisian stupefied
+the respectable peasants by talking to them as if he were a comrade of
+theirs.
+
+In the evening, the curé dined at the house--a fat old priest,
+wearing his Sunday suit, who had been specially asked that day in
+order to meet the newcomer.
+
+When Joseph saw him he made a grimace, then he stared at the priest in
+astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the
+like of which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told
+a few smutty stories allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but
+apparently somewhat out of place in the presence of an ecclesiastic.
+He did not say, "Monsieur l'Abbe," but merely "Monsieur"; and he
+embarrassed the priest with philosophical views as to the various
+superstitions that prevailed on the surface of the globe.
+
+He remarked:
+
+"Your God, monsieur, is one of those persons whom we must respect, but
+also one of those who must be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has
+from time immemorial been the enemy of yours."
+
+The Merouls, greatly put out, attempted to divert his thoughts.
+
+The curé left very early.
+
+Then the husband gently remarked:
+
+"You went a little too far with that priest."
+
+But Joseph immediately replied:
+
+"That's a very good joke, too! Am I to bother my brains about a
+devil-dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having
+such an old fogy to dinner. Curses on his impudence!"
+
+"But, my friend, remember his sacred character."
+
+Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
+
+"Yes, I know. We must treat them like girls, who get roses for being
+well behaved! That's all right, my boy! When these people respect my
+convictions, I will respect theirs!"
+
+This was all that happened that day.
+
+Next morning, Madame de Meroul, on entering her drawing-room, saw
+lying on the table three newspapers which made her draw back in
+horror. "Le Voltaire," "Le Republique Francaise," and "La Justice."
+
+Presently, Joseph Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the
+threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. He exclaimed:
+
+"There is a splendid article by Rochefort. This fellow is marvelous."
+
+He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most
+striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.
+
+M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand. "Le Gaulois" for himself and
+"Le Clarion" for his wife.
+
+The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire,
+violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the South, rang through
+the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid
+folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the
+solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with
+a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical and crushing.
+
+The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened
+in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured
+to make a gesture. Mouradour launched out the concluding passage in
+the article as one lets forth a jet of fireworks, then in an emphatic
+tone remarked:
+
+"That's a stinger, eh?"
+
+But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and
+he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then, he
+came across to his host with great strides, demanding in angry tone:
+
+"What do you want to do with these papers?" M. de Meroul replied in a
+hesitating voice:
+
+"Why, these--these are my--my newspapers."
+
+"Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You
+will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new
+ideas, and, as for yours--this is what I do with them--"
+
+And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he
+seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then
+he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and
+"Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, and he sank into an armchair to
+finish "L'Intransigeant."
+
+The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of
+reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers,
+which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been
+poisoned.
+
+Then he burst out laughing, and said:
+
+"A week of this sort of nourishment, and I'll have you converted to my
+ideas."
+
+At the end of the week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the
+door on the curé, whom Madame Meroul went to see in secret. He gave
+orders that neither the "Gaulois" nor the "Clarion" were to be
+admitted into the house, which a man-servant went to get in a
+mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance,
+were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything
+just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and
+all powerful tyrant.
+
+Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with
+Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered
+it would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and, not
+knowing what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that
+they were obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little
+matter of business, and they begged of him to remain in the house
+alone.
+
+He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:
+
+"Very well; 'tis all the same to me; I'll wait here for you as long as
+you like. What I say is this--there need be no ceremony between
+friends. You're quite right to look after your own affairs--why the
+devil shouldn't you? I'll not take offense at your doing that, quite
+the contrary. It only makes me feel quite at my ease with you. Go, my
+friends--I'll wait for you."
+
+M. and Madame Meroul started next morning.
+
+He is waiting for them.
+
+
+
+
+THE ORPHAN
+
+
+Mademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
+She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was deformed, having in
+her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and
+getting her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterwards
+presented a frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve
+not to marry, for she did not want any man to marry her for her money.
+
+A female neighbor of hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy,
+died in child-birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took
+the new-born child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a
+boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in
+order to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who
+would look after her, who would make her old age pleasant.
+
+She resided on a little property four leagues away from Rennes, and
+she now dispensed with a servant. The expenses having increased to
+more than double what they had been since this orphan's arrival, her
+income of three thousand francs was no longer sufficient to support
+three persons.
+
+She attended to the housekeeping and the cooking herself, and she sent
+out the boy on errands, letting him further occupy himself with
+cultivating the garden. He was gentle, timid, silent, and caressing.
+And she experienced a deep joy, a fresh joy at being embraced by him,
+without any apparent surprise or repugnance being exhibited by him on
+account of her ugliness. He called her "Aunt" and treated her as a
+mother.
+
+In the evening they both sat down at the fireside, and she got nice
+things ready for him. She heated some wine and toasted a slice of
+bread, and it made a charming little meal before going to bed. She
+often took him on her knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring in
+his ear with passionate tenderness. She called him: "My little flower,
+my cherub, my adored angel, my divine jewel." He softly accepted her
+caresses, concealing his head on the old maid's shoulder. Although he
+was now nearly fifteen years old, he had remained small and weak, and
+had a rather sickly appearance.
+
+Sometimes Mademoiselle Source brought him to the city, to see two
+married female relatives of hers, distant cousins, who were living in
+the suburbs, and who were the only members of her family in existence.
+The two women had always found fault with her for having adopted this
+boy on account of the inheritance; but for all that they gave her a
+cordial welcome, having still hopes of getting a share for themselves,
+a third, no doubt, if what she possessed were only equally divided.
+
+She was happy, very happy, always taken up with her adopted child. She
+bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself
+ardently to reading.
+
+He no longer now climbed on her knees to fondle her as he had formerly
+done; but instead would go and sit down in his little chair in the
+chimney-corner and open a volume. The lamp placed at the edge of the
+little table, above his head, shone on his curly hair, and on a
+portion of his forehead; he did not move, he did not raise his eyes,
+he did not make any gesture. He read on, interested, entirely absorbed
+in the adventures which formed the subject of the book.
+
+She, seated opposite to him, gazed at him with an eager, steady look,
+astonished at his studiousness, often on the point of bursting into
+tears.
+
+She said to him now and then: "You will fatigue yourself, my
+treasure!" in the hope that he would raise his head, and come across
+to embrace her; but he did not even answer her; he had not heard or
+understood what she was saying; he paid no attention to anything save
+what he read in these pages.
+
+For two years he devoured an incalculable number of volumes. His
+character changed.
+
+After this, he asked Mademoiselle Source many times for money, which
+she gave him. As he always wanted more, she ended by refusing, for she
+was both regular and energetic, and knew how to act rationally when it
+was necessary to do so. By dint of entreaties he obtained a large sum
+one night from her; but when he urged her to give him another sum a
+few days later, she showed herself inflexible, and did not give way to
+him further, in fact.
+
+He appeared to be satisfied with her decision.
+
+He again became quiet, as he had formerly been, loving to remain
+seated for entire hours, without moving, plunged in deep reverie. He
+now did not even talk to Madame Source, merely answering her remarks
+with short, formal words. Nevertheless, he was agreeable and attentive
+in his manner towards her; but he never embraced her now.
+
+She had by this time grown slightly afraid of him when they sat facing
+one another at night at opposite sides of the chimney-piece. She
+wanted to wake him up, to make him say something, no matter what, that
+would break this dreadful silence, which was like the darkness of a
+wood. But he did not appear to listen to her, and she shuddered with
+the terror of a poor feeble woman when she had spoken to him five or
+six times successively without being able to get a word out of him.
+
+What was the matter with him? What was going on in that closed up
+head? When she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him,
+she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape
+into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal
+companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define,
+but of which she had a presentiment.
+
+She frequently shed tears when she was alone. What was the matter with
+him? When she gave expression to a desire, he unmurmuringly carried it
+into execution. When she wanted to have anything brought to her from
+the city, he immediately went there to procure it. She had no
+complaint to make of him; no, indeed! And yet....
+
+Another year flitted by, and it seemed to her that a new modification
+had taken place in the mind of the young man. She perceived it; she
+felt it; she divined it. How? No matter! She was sure she was not
+mistaken; but she could not have explained in what the unknown
+thoughts of this strange youth had changed.
+
+It seemed to her that till now he had been like a person in a
+hesitating frame of mind who had suddenly arrived at a determination.
+This idea came to her one evening as she met his glance, a fixed
+singular glance which she had not seen in his face before.
+
+Then, he commenced to watch her incessantly and she wished she could
+hide herself in order to avoid that cold eye, riveted on her.
+
+He kept staring at her, evening after evening for hours together, only
+averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:
+
+"Do not look at me like that, my child!"
+
+Then he hung down his head.
+
+But, the moment her back was turned, she once more felt that his eyes
+were upon her. Wherever she went he pursued her with his persistent
+gaze.
+
+Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly
+noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in
+wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending
+stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her,
+as he worked, in a sly, continuous fashion.
+
+It was in vain that she asked him:
+
+"What's the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years you have
+become very different. I don't find you the same. Tell me what ails
+you, and what you are thinking of, I beg of you."
+
+He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:
+
+"Why, nothing ails me, Aunt!"
+
+And when she persisted, appealing to him thus:
+
+"Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew
+what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not
+look at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I'll console you!"
+
+He went away with a tired air, murmuring:
+
+"But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you."
+
+He had not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the
+features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and
+badly-cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half-finished, and
+disquieting as a mystery. He was a close, impenetrable being, in whom
+there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking
+place.
+
+Mademoiselle Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not
+from that time forth, sleep at night, so great was her anxiety.
+Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She shut herself
+up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.
+
+What was she afraid of? She could not tell.
+
+Fear of everything, of the night, of the walls, of the shadows thrown
+by the moon on the white curtains of the windows, and above all, fear
+of him.
+
+Why?
+
+What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?
+
+She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune
+threatened her, a frightful misfortune.
+
+She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her
+relatives. She told them about the matter in a gasping voice. The two
+women thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her.
+
+She said:
+
+"If you knew the way he looks at me from morning till night. He never
+takes his eyes off me! At times, I feel a longing to cry for help, to
+call in the neighbors, so much am I afraid. But what could I say to
+them? He does nothing to me except to keep looking at me."
+
+The two female cousins asked:
+
+"Is he ever brutal to you? Does he give you sharp answers?"
+
+She replied:
+
+"No, never; he does everything I wish; he works hard; he is steady;
+but I am so frightened I don't mind that much. He has something in his
+head, I am certain of that--quite certain. I don't care to remain all
+alone like that with him in the country."
+
+The relatives, scared by her words, declared to her that they were
+astonished, and could not understand her; and they advised her to keep
+silent about her fears and her plans, without, however, dissuading her
+from coming to reside in the city, hoping in that way that the entire
+inheritance would eventually fall into their hands.
+
+They even promised to assist her in selling her house and in finding
+another near them.
+
+Mademoiselle Source returned home. But her mind was so much upset that
+she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any
+trifling disturbance agitated her.
+
+Twice she went again to consult her relatives, quite determined now
+not to remain any longer in this way in her lonely dwelling. At last,
+she found a little cottage in the suburbs, which suited her, and she
+privately bought it.
+
+The signature of the contract took place on a Tuesday morning, and
+Mademoiselle Source devoted the rest of the day to the preparations
+for her change of residence.
+
+At eight o'clock in the evening she got into the diligence which
+passed within a few hundred yards of her house, and she told the
+conductor to let her down in the place where it was his custom to stop
+for her. The man called out to her as he whipped his horses:
+
+"Good evening, Mademoiselle Source--good night!"
+
+She replied as she walked on:
+
+"Good evening, Pere Joseph." Next morning, at half-past seven, the
+postman who conveyed letters to the village, noticed at the
+cross-road, not far from the high road, a large splash of blood not
+yet dry. He said to himself: "Hallo! some boozer must have got a
+bleeding in the nose."
+
+But he perceived ten paces farther on a pocket-handkerchief also
+stained with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the
+postman in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he
+saw a strange object.
+
+Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat
+cut open with a knife.
+
+An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other
+authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.
+
+The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old
+maid's fears and her last plans.
+
+The orphan was arrested. Since the death of the woman who had adopted
+him, he wept from morning till night, plunged at least to all
+appearance, in the most violent grief.
+
+He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o'clock in a
+café. Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his
+departure.
+
+Now the driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the
+murdered woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o'clock.
+
+The accused was acquitted. A will, a long time made, which had been
+left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him universal legatee.
+So he inherited everything.
+
+For a long time, the people of the country put him into a quarantine,
+as they still suspected him. His house, which was that of the dead
+woman, was looked upon as accursed. People avoided him in the street.
+
+But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that
+gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous,
+obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they
+cared to talk to him.
+
+The notary, Maitre Rameay, was one of the first to take his part,
+attracted by his smiling loquacity. He said one evening at a dinner at
+the tax-collector's house:
+
+"A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor
+could not have such a crime on his conscience."
+
+Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and
+they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made
+them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas
+to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were
+passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the
+lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious
+gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them,
+they could not keep from always laughing in his company.
+
+All doors were opened to him, after a time.
+
+He is, to-day, the mayor of his own township.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLIND MAN
+
+
+How is it that the sunlight gives us such joy? Why does this radiance
+when it falls on the earth fill us with so much delight of living? The
+sky is all blue, the fields are all green, the houses all white; and
+our ravished eyes drink in those bright colors which bring
+mirthfulness to our souls. And then there springs up in our hearts a
+desire to dance, a desire to run, a desire to sing, a happy lightness
+of thought, a sort of enlarged tenderness; we feel a longing to
+embrace the sun.
+
+The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal
+darkness, remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gayety,
+and, not comprehending what is taking place around them, they keep
+every moment stopping their dogs from gamboling.
+
+When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a
+young brother or a little sister, if the child says: "It was a very
+fine day!" the other answers: "I could notice that 'twas fine. Loulou
+wouldn't keep quiet."
+
+I have known one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel
+martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived.
+
+He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father
+and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered
+little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people
+were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A dependent
+on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar
+who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he
+swallowed was made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a
+drone, a clown; and although his brother-in-law had taken possession
+of his portion of the inheritance, the soup was given to him
+grudgingly--just enough to save him from dying.
+
+His face was very pale, and his two big white eyes were like wafers;
+and he remained unmoved in spite of the insults inflicted upon him, so
+shut up in himself that one could not tell whether he felt them at
+all.
+
+Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always
+treated him unkindly, and caring scarcely at all for him; for in
+country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be
+glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species.
+
+As soon as the soup had been gulped down, he went to the door in
+summer-time and sat down, to the chimney-corner in winter time, and,
+after that, never stirred all night. He made no gesture, no movement;
+only his eyelids, quivering from some nervous affection, fell down
+sometimes over his white, sightless orbs. Had he any intellect, any
+thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own existence? Nobody cared
+to inquire as to whether he had or no.
+
+For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for
+doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his
+relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon,
+a prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the
+brutes who surrounded him.
+
+It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes inspired by his
+blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him,
+they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors
+and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.
+
+The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it
+was talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the
+farmhouse was full of people. Sometimes they put on the table, in
+front of his plate, when he was beginning to take the soup, some cat
+or some dog. The animal instinctively scented out the man's infirmity,
+and, softly approaching, commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the
+soup daintily; and, when a rather loud licking of the tongue awakened
+the poor fellow's attention, it would prudently scamper away to avoid
+the blow of the spoon directed at it by the blind man at random!
+
+Then the spectators huddled against the walls burst out laughing,
+nudged each other, and stamped their feet on the floor. And he,
+without ever uttering a word, would continue eating with the aid of
+his right hand, while stretching out his left to protect and defend
+his plate.
+
+At another time they made him chew corks, bits of wood, leaves, or
+even filth, which he was unable to distinguish.
+
+After this, they got tired even of these practical jokes; and the
+brother-in-law, mad at having to support him always, struck him,
+cuffed him incessantly, laughing at the useless efforts of the other
+to ward off or return the blows. Then came a new pleasure--the
+pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls,
+and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs,
+which caused his eyelashes to twitch spasmodically. He did not know
+where to hide himself, and remained with his arms always held out to
+guard against people coming too close to him.
+
+At last he was forced to beg.
+
+He was placed somewhere on the high-road on market-days, and as soon
+as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he
+reached out his hat, stammering:--
+
+"Charity, if you please!"
+
+But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring
+back a sou.
+
+Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how
+he died.
+
+One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it froze horribly.
+Now his brother-in-law led him one morning at this season a great
+distance along the high-road in order that he might solicit alms. The
+blind man was left there all day, and when night came on, the
+brother-in-law told the people of his house that he could find no
+trace of the mendicant. Then he added:
+
+"Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold, and got someone to take
+him away. Never fear! he's not lost. He'll turn up soon enough
+to-morrow to eat the soup."
+
+Next day, he did not come back.
+
+After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he
+was dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way
+along the road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at
+random, falling into dykes, getting up again, without uttering a
+sound, his sole object being to find some house where he could take
+shelter.
+
+But by degrees the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and
+his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to
+sit down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.
+
+The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that
+his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant
+accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer
+indicated the place where the corpse was lying.
+
+His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for
+him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.
+
+The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
+Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of
+crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then,
+like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot,
+ever going and coming.
+
+The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
+crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners
+of the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the
+shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and
+in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see
+what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man,
+already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked
+out by the long, voracious beaks.
+
+And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly
+remembering and gloomily pondering over the fate of the beggar so
+disinherited in life that his horrible death was a relief for all
+those who had known him.
+
+
+
+
+A WIFE'S CONFESSION
+
+
+My friend, you have asked me to relate to you the liveliest
+recollections of my life. I am very old, without relatives, without
+children; so I am free to make a confession to you. Promise me one
+thing--never to reveal my name.
+
+I have been much loved, as you know; I have often myself loved. I was
+very beautiful; I may say this to-day, when my beauty is gone. Love
+was for me the life of the soul, just as the air is the life of the
+body. I would have preferred to die rather than exist without
+affection, without having somebody always to care for me. Women often
+pretend to love only once with all the strength of their hearts; it
+has often happened to be so violent in one of my attachments that I
+thought it would be impossible for my transports ever to end. However,
+they always died out in a natural fashion, like a fire when it has no
+more fuel.
+
+I will tell you to-day the first of my adventures, in which I was very
+innocent, but which led to the others. The horrible vengeance of that
+dreadful chemist of Pecq recalls to me the shocking drama of which I
+was, in spite of myself, a spectator.
+
+I had been a year married to a rich man, Comte Herve de Ker---- a
+Breton of ancient family, whom I did not love, you understand. True
+love needs, I believe at any rate, freedom and impediments at the same
+time. The love which is imposed, sanctioned by law, and blessed by the
+priest--can we really call that love? A legal kiss is never as good
+as a stolen kiss. My husband was tall in stature, elegant, and a
+really fine gentleman in his manners. But he lacked intelligence. He
+spoke in a downright fashion, and uttered opinions that cut like the
+blade of a knife. He created the impression that his mind was full of
+ready-made views instilled into him by his father and mother, who had
+themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated, but on
+every subject immediately made narrow-minded suggestions, without
+showing any embarrassment and without realizing that there might be
+other ways of looking at things. One felt that his head was closed up,
+that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a
+man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh air passing
+through an open window into a house.
+
+The chateau in which we lived was situated in the midst of a desolate
+tract of country. It was a large, melancholy structure, surrounded by
+enormous trees, with tufts of moss on it resembling old men's white
+beards. The park, a real forest, was enclosed in a deep trench called
+the ha-ha; and at its extremity, near the moorland, we had big ponds
+full of reeds and floating grass. Between the two, at the edge of a
+stream which connected them, my husband had got a little hut built for
+shooting wild ducks.
+
+We had, in addition to our ordinary servants, a keeper, a sort of
+brute devoted to my husband to the death, and a chambermaid, almost a
+friend, passionately attached to me. I had brought her back from Spain
+with me five years before. She was a deserted child. She might have
+been taken for a gipsy with her dusky skin, her dark eyes, her hair
+thick as a wood and always clustering around her forehead. She was at
+the time sixteen years old, but she looked twenty.
+
+The autumn was beginning. We hunted much, sometimes on neighboring
+estates, sometimes on our own; and I noticed a young man, the Baron de
+C----, whose visits at the chateau became singularly frequent. Then he
+ceased to come; I thought no more about it; but I perceived that my
+husband changed in his demeanor towards me.
+
+He seemed taciturn and preoccupied; he did not kiss me; and, in spite
+of the fact that he did not come into my room, as I insisted on
+separate apartments in order to live a little alone, I often at night
+heard a furtive step drawing near my door, and withdrawing a few
+minutes after.
+
+As my window was on the ground-floor I thought I had also often heard
+someone prowling in the shadow around the chateau. I told my husband
+about it, and, having looked at me intently for some seconds, he
+answered:
+
+"It is nothing--it is the keeper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, one evening, just after dinner, Herve, who appeared to be
+extraordinarily gay, with a sly sort of gaiety, said to me:
+
+"Would you like to spend three hours out with the guns, in order to
+shoot a fox who comes every evening to eat my hens?"
+
+I was surprised. I hesitated; but, as he kept staring at me with
+singular persistency, I ended by replying:
+
+"Why, certainly, my friend." I must tell you that I hunted like a man
+the wolf and the wild boar. So it was quite natural that he should
+suggest this shooting expedition to me.
+
+But my husband, all of a sudden, had a curiously nervous look; and all
+the evening he seemed agitated, rising up and sitting down feverishly.
+
+About ten o'clock, he suddenly said to me:
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+I rose; and, as he was bringing me my gun himself, I asked:
+
+"Are we to load with bullets or with deershot?"
+
+He showed some astonishment; then he rejoined:
+
+"Oh! only with deershot; make your mind easy! that will be enough."
+
+Then, after some seconds, he added in a peculiar tone:
+
+"You may boast of having splendid coolness."
+
+I burst out laughing.
+
+"I? Why, pray? Coolness because I went to kill a fox? But what are you
+thinking of, my friend?"
+
+And we quietly made our way across the park. All the household slept.
+The full moon seemed to give a yellow tint to the old gloomy building,
+whose slate roof glittered brightly. The two turrets that flanked it
+had two plates of light on their summits, and no noise disturbed the
+silence of this clear, sad night, sweet and still, which seemed in a
+death-trance. Not a breath of air, not a shriek from a toad, not a
+hoot from an owl; a melancholy numbness lay heavy on everything. When
+we were under the trees in the park, a sense of freshness stole over
+me, together with the odor of fallen leaves. My husband said nothing;
+but he was listening, he was watching, he seemed to be smelling about
+in the shadows, possessed from head to foot by the passion for the
+chase.
+
+We soon reached the edges of the ponds.
+
+Their tufts of rushes remained motionless; not a breath of air
+caressed it; but movements which were scarcely perceptible ran through
+the water. Sometimes the surface was stirred by something, and light
+circles gathered around, like luminous wrinkles enlarging
+indefinitely.
+
+When we reached the hut where we were to lie in wait, my husband made
+me go in first; then he slowly loaded his gun, and the dry cracking of
+the powder produced a strange effect on me. He saw that I was
+shuddering, and asked:
+
+"Does this trial happen to be quite enough for you? If so, go back."
+
+I was much surprised, and I replied:
+
+"Not at all. I did not come to go back without doing anything. You
+seem queer this evening."
+
+He murmured, "As you wish," and we remained there without moving.
+
+At the end of about half-an-hour, as nothing broke the oppressive
+stillness of this bright autumn night, I said, in a low tone:
+
+"Are you quite sure he is passing this way?"
+
+Herve winced as if I had bitten him, and with his mouth close to my
+ear, he said:
+
+"Make no mistake about it. I am quite sure."
+
+And once more there was silence.
+
+I believe I was beginning to get drowsy when my husband pressed my
+arm, and his voice, changed to a hiss, said:
+
+"Do you see him over there under the trees?"
+
+I looked in vain; I could distinguish nothing. And slowly Herve now
+cocked his gun, all the time fixing his eyes on my face.
+
+I was myself making ready to fire, and suddenly, thirty paces in front
+of us, appeared in the full light of the moon a man who was hurrying
+forward with rapid movements, his body bent, as if he were trying to
+escape.
+
+I was so stupefied that I uttered a loud cry; but, before I could turn
+round, there was a flash before my eyes; I heard a deafening report,
+and I saw the man rolling on the ground, like a wolf hit by a bullet.
+
+I burst into dreadful shrieks, terrified, almost going mad; then a
+furious hand--it was Herve's--seized me by the throat. I was flung
+down on the ground, then carried off by his strong arms. He ran,
+holding me up, till we reached the body lying on the grass, and he
+threw me on top of it violently, as if he wanted to break my head.
+
+I thought I was lost; he was going to kill me; and he had just raised
+his heel up to my forehead when, in his turn, he was gripped, knocked
+down before I could yet realize what had happened.
+
+I rose up abruptly, and I saw kneeling on top of him Porquita, my
+maid, clinging like a wild cat to him with desperate energy, tearing
+off his beard, his moustache, and the skin of his face.
+
+Then, as if another idea had suddenly taken hold of her mind, she rose
+up, and, flinging herself on the corpse, she threw her arms around the
+dead man, kissing his eyes and his mouth, opening the dead lips with
+her own lips, trying to find in them a breath and a long, long kiss of
+lovers.
+
+My husband, picking himself up, gazed at me. He understood, and
+falling at my feet, said:
+
+"Oh! forgive me, my darling, I suspected you, and I killed this girl's
+lover. It was my keeper that deceived me."
+
+But I was watching the strange kisses of that dead man and that living
+woman, and her sobs and her writhings of sorrowing love--
+
+And at that moment I understood that I might be unfaithful to my
+husband.
+
+
+
+
+RELICS OF THE PAST
+
+
+My dear Colette,--I do not know whether you remember a verse of M.
+Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed
+in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very
+often reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it
+is:
+
+"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
+
+I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I have lived,
+and where I hope to die. It is not gay every day, but it is pleasant;
+for there I have souvenirs all around me.
+
+My son Henri is a barrister; he comes to see me twice a year. Jeanne
+is living with her husband at the other end of France, and it is I who
+go to see her each autumn. So here I am, all, all alone, but
+surrounded by familiar objects which incessantly speak to me about my
+own people, the dead, and the living separated from me by distance.
+
+I no longer read much; I am too old for that; but I am constantly
+thinking, or rather dreaming. I do not dream as I used to do long ago.
+You may recall to mind any wild fancies, the adventures our brains
+concocted when we were twenty, and all the horizons of happiness that
+dawned upon us!
+
+Nothing out of all our dreaming has been realized, or rather it is
+quite a different thing that has happened, less charming, less poetic,
+but sufficient for those who know how to accept their lot in this
+world bravely.
+
+Do you know why we women are so often unhappy? It is because we are
+taught in our youth to believe too much in happiness! We are never
+brought up with the idea of fighting, of striving, of suffering. And,
+at the first shock, our hearts are broken; we look forward, with blind
+faith, to cascades of fortunate events. What does happen is at best
+but a partial happiness, and thereupon we burst out sobbing.
+Happiness, the real happiness that we dream of, I have come to know
+what that is. It does not consist in the arrival of great bliss, for
+any great bliss that falls to our share is to be found in the infinite
+expectation of a succession of joys to which we never attain.
+Happiness is happy expectation; it is the horizon of hope; it is,
+therefore, endless illusion; and, old as I am, I create illusions for
+myself still, in fact, every day I live; only their object is changed,
+my desires being no longer the same. I have told you that I spend my
+brightest hours in dreaming. What else should I do?
+
+I have two ways of doing this. I am going to tell you what they are;
+they may perhaps prove useful to you.
+
+Oh! the first is very simple; it consists in sitting down before my
+fire in a low armchair made soft for my old bones, and looking back at
+the things that have been put aside.
+
+One life is so short, especially a life entirely spent in the same
+spot:
+
+"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
+
+The things that bring back the past to our recollection are heaped,
+pressed together; and, we are old, it sometimes seems no more than ten
+days since we were young. Yes; everything slips away from us, as if
+life itself were but a single day: morning, evening, and then comes
+night--a night without a dawn!
+
+When I gaze into the fire, for hours and hours, the past rises up
+before me as though it were but yesterday. I no longer think of my
+present existence; reverie carries me away; once more I pass through
+all the changes of my life.
+
+And I often am possessed by the illusion that I am a young girl, so
+many breaths of bygone days are wafted back to me, so many youthful
+sensations and even impulses, so many throbbings of my young
+heart--all the passionate ardor of eighteen; and I have clear, as
+fresh realities, visions of forgotten things. Oh! how vividly, above
+all, do the memories of my walks as a young girl come back to me!
+There, in the armchair of mine, before the fire, I saw once more, a
+few nights since, a sunset on Mont Saint-Michel, and immediately
+afterwards I was riding on horseback through the forest of Uville with
+the odors of the damp sand and of the flowers steeped in dew, and the
+evening star sending its burning reflection through the water and
+bathing my face in its rays as I galloped through the copse. And all I
+thought of then, my poetic enthusiasm at the sight of the boundless
+sea, my keen delight at the rustling of the branches as I passed, my
+most trivial impressions, every fragment of thought, desire, or
+feeling, all, all came back to me as if I were there still, as if
+fifty years had not glided by since then, to chill my blood and
+moderate my hopes. But my other way of reviving the long ago is much
+better.
+
+You know, or you do not know, my dear Colette, that we destroy nothing
+in the house. We have upstairs, under the roof, a large room for
+cast-off things which we call "the lumber-room." Everything which is
+no longer used is thrown there. I often go up there, and gaze around
+me. Then I find once more a heap of nothings that I had ceased to
+think about, and that recalled a heap of things to my mind. They are
+not those beloved articles of furniture which we have known since our
+childhood and to which are attached recollections of events of joys or
+sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being
+intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a
+physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house,
+the only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones
+that will not die, like the others--those whose features, whose loving
+eyes, whose lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find
+instead among the medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old
+insignificant objects which have hung on by our side for forty years
+without ever having been noticed by us, and which, when we suddenly
+lay eyes on them again, have somehow the importance, the significance
+of relics of the past. They produce on my mind the effect of those
+people--whom we have known for a very long time without ever having
+seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden, some evening,
+quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable talk, and
+tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of
+which we had never even suspected the existence.
+
+And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in
+my heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself:
+"See there! I broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;" or else,
+"Ah! there is mamma's little lantern, which she used to carry with
+her going to her evening devotions on dark winter nights." There are
+even things in this room which have no story to tell me, which have
+come down from my grandparents, things therefore, whose history and
+adventures are utterly unknown to those who are living to-day, and
+whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen the hands that
+used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These are
+the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my
+mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear
+Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my
+simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and
+you Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal
+echoes of one's own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your
+thoughts in the open. Living alone as I do, I can only speak about
+myself. When you are answering this letter, tell me a little about
+yourself, that I may also be able to put myself in your place, as you
+will be able to put yourself in mine to-morrow.
+
+But you will never completely understand M. de Sainte Beuve's verse:
+
+    "To be born, to live, and to die in one house."
+
+A thousand kisses, my old friend,
+
+ADELAIDE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEDDLER
+
+
+How many trifling occurrences, things which have left only a passing
+impression on our minds, humble dramas of which we have got a mere
+glimpse so that we have to guess at or suspect their real nature, are,
+while we are still young and inexperienced, threads, so to speak,
+guiding us, step by step, towards a knowledge of the painful truth!
+
+Every moment, when I am retracing my steps during the long wandering
+reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I
+saunter at random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little
+incidents of a gay or sinister character which, emerging from the
+shades of the past, flit before my memory as the birds flit through
+the bushes before my eyes.
+
+This summer, I wandered along a road in Savoy which commands a view of
+the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, and, while my glance floated
+over that mass of water, mirror-like and blue, with a unique blue,
+pale, tinted with glittering beams by the setting sun, I felt my heart
+stirred by that attachment which I have had since my childhood for the
+surface of lakes, for rivers, and for the sea. On the opposite bank of
+the vast liquid plate, so wide that you did not see the ends of it,
+one vanishing in the Rhone, and the other in the Bourget, rose the
+high mountain, jagged like a crest up to the topmast peak of the
+"Cats's Tooth." On either side of the road, vines, trailing from tree
+to tree, choked under their leaves their slender supporting branches,
+and they extended in garlands through the fields, green, yellow, and
+red garlands, festooning from one trunk to the other, and spotted with
+clusters of dark grapes.
+
+The road was deserted, white, and dusty. All of a sudden, a man
+emerged out of the thicket of large trees which shuts in the village
+of Saint-Innocent, and, bending under a load, he came towards me,
+leaning on a stick.
+
+When he had come closer to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one
+of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door,
+selling paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long
+ago arose up in my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection
+simply of an accidental meeting I had one night between Argenteuil and
+Paris when I was twenty-one.
+
+All the happiness of my life, at this period, was derived from
+boating. I had taken a room in an obscure inn at Argenteuil, and,
+every evening, I took the Government clerks' train, that long slow
+train which, in its course, sets down at different stations a crowd of
+men with little parcels, fat and heavy, for they scarcely walk at all,
+so that their trousers are always baggy owing to their constant
+occupation of the office-stool. This train, in which it seemed to me I
+could even sniff the odor of the writing-desk, of official documents
+and boxes, deposited me at Argenteuil. My boat was waiting for me,
+ready to glide over the water. And I rapidly plied my oar so that I
+might get out and dine at Bezons or Chatou or Epinay or Saint-Ouen.
+Then I came back, put up my boat, and made my way back on foot to
+Paris with the moon shining down on me.
+
+Well, one night on the white road I perceived just in front of me a
+man walking. Oh! I was constantly meeting those night travelers of the
+Parisian suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went on
+slowly before me with a heavy load on his shoulders.
+
+I came right up to him by quickening my pace so much that my footsteps
+rang on the road. He stopped and turned round; then, as I kept
+approaching nearer and nearer, he crossed to the opposite side of the
+road.
+
+As I rapidly passed him, he called out to me:
+
+"Hallo! good evening, monsieur."
+
+I responded:
+
+"Good evening, mate."
+
+He went on:
+
+"Are you going far?"
+
+"I am going to Paris."
+
+"You won't be long getting there; you're going at a good pace. As for
+me, I have too big a load on my shoulders to walk so quickly."
+
+I slackened my pace. Why had this man spoken to me? What was he
+carrying in this big pack? Vague suspicions of crime sprang up in my
+mind, and rendered me curious. The columns of the newspapers every
+morning contain so many accounts of crimes committed in this place,
+the peninsula of Gennevilliers, that some of them must be true. Such
+things are not invented merely to amuse readers--all this catalogue of
+arrests and varied misdeeds with which the reports of the law courts
+are filled.
+
+However, this man's voice seemed rather timid than bold, and up to the
+present his manner had been more discreet than aggressive.
+
+In my turn I began to question him:
+
+"And you--are you going far?"
+
+"Not farther than Asnieres."
+
+"Is Asnieres your place of abode?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres."
+
+He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the
+daytime under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle
+of the road. I followed his example. We kept staring at each other
+suspiciously, each of us holding his stick in his hand. When I was
+sufficiently close to him, I felt less distrustful. He evidently was
+disposed to assume the same attitude towards me, for he asked:
+
+"Would you mind going a little more slowly?"
+
+"Why do you say this?"
+
+"Because I don't care for this road by night. I have goods on my back,
+and two are always better than one. When two men are together, people
+don't attack them."
+
+I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I
+yielded to his wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side,
+this stranger and I, at one o'clock in the morning, along the road
+leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.
+
+"Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?" I asked my
+companion.
+
+He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this
+evening, as he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods
+to last him three or four days. But he had been so fortunate in
+disposing of them that he found it necessary to get back to his abode
+without delay in order to deliver next day a number of things which
+had been bought on credit.
+
+He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the
+business very well, having a tendency to talk confidentially, and
+that the knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid,
+while gossiping, of other things which he could not easily sell.
+
+He added:
+
+"I have a shop in Asnieres. 'Tis my wife keeps it."
+
+"Ah! So you're married?"
+
+"Yes, m'sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice
+wife. She'll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night."
+
+He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this
+young girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.
+
+She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a
+street, where she sold all sorts of things--ribbons, flowers in
+summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other
+gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a
+speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." This name
+was given to her because she often dressed in blue. And she made
+money, as she was very skillful in everything she did. His impression
+was that she was not very well at the present moment; he believed she
+was in the family way, but he was not quite sure. Their business was
+prospering; and he traveled about exhibiting samples to all the small
+traders in the adjoining districts. He had become a sort of traveling
+commission-agent for some of the manufacturers, working at the same
+time for them and for himself.
+
+"And you--what are you," he said.
+
+I answered him with an air of embarrassment. I explained that I had a
+sailing-boat and two yawls in Argenteuil, that I came for a row every
+evening, and that, as I was fond of exercise, I sometimes walked back
+to Paris, where I had a profession, which--I led him to infer--was a
+lucrative one.
+
+He remarked:
+
+"Faith, if I had spondulics like you, I wouldn't amuse myself by
+trudging that way along the roads at night--'Tisn't safe along here."
+
+He gave me a sidelong glance, and I asked myself whether he might not
+all the same, be a criminal of the sneaking type who did not want to
+run any fruitless risk.
+
+Then he restored my confidence when he murmured:
+
+"A little less quickly, if you please. This pack of mine is heavy."
+
+The sight of a group of houses showed that we had reached Asnieres.
+
+"I am nearly at home," he said. "We don't sleep in the shop; it is
+watched at night by a dog, but a dog who is worth four men. And then
+it costs too much to live in the center of the town. But listen to me,
+monsieur! You have rendered me a precious service, for I don't feel my
+mind at ease when I'm traveling with my pack along the roads. Well,
+now you must come in with me, and drink a glass of mulled wine with my
+wife if she hasn't gone to bed, for she is a sound sleeper, and
+doesn't like to be waked up. Besides, I'm not a bit afraid without my
+pack, and so I'll see you to the gates of the city with a cudgel in my
+hand."
+
+I declined the invitation; he insisted on my coming in; I still held
+back; he pressed me with so much eagerness, with such an air of real
+disappointment, such expressions of deep regret--for he had the art of
+expressing himself very forcibly--asking me in the tone of one who
+felt wounded "whether I objected to have a drink with a man like
+him," that I finally gave way and followed him up a lonely road
+towards one of those big dilapidated houses which are to be found on
+the outskirts of suburbs.
+
+In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster
+looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands.
+But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go
+in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound
+darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands
+and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some
+gaping cellar.
+
+When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis
+the sixth story."
+
+I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted
+the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack,
+repeating:
+
+"Tis high! 'tis high!"
+
+When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his
+inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he
+made me enter.
+
+It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six
+chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.
+
+"I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the
+cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here."
+
+He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment,
+and exclaimed:
+
+"Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder
+tone: "Bluette! Bluette!"
+
+Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you
+wake up in God's name?"
+
+He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer
+tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get
+the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me."
+
+He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.
+
+What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start,
+for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly,
+almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.
+
+Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this
+woman--this Bluette--not been awakened by the loud knocking of her
+husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been
+merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the
+trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to
+do the rest!"
+
+Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I
+heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated
+towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must
+make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with
+both hands, I prepared for a desperate struggle.
+
+The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a
+head, a man's head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the
+folding-doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly
+that I had not time to make a single movement by way of defense, the
+individual, the supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare
+feet with his shoes in his hands, a good looking chap, I must
+admit--half a gentleman, in fact, made a dash for the outer door, and
+rushed down the stairs.
+
+I resumed my seat. The adventure was assuming a humorous aspect. And I
+waited for the husband, who took a long time fetching the wine. At
+last I heard him coming up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps
+made me laugh, with one of those solitary laughs which it is hard to
+restrain.
+
+He entered with two bottles in his hands. Then he asked me:
+
+"Is my wife still asleep? You didn't hear her stirring--did you?"
+
+I knew instinctively that there was an ear pasted against the other
+side of the partition-door, and I said: "No, not at all."
+
+And now he again called out:
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+She made no reply, and did not even move.
+
+He came back to me, and explained:
+
+"You see, she doesn't like me to come home at night, and take a drop
+with a friend."
+
+"So then you believe she was not asleep?"
+
+He wore an air of dissatisfaction.
+
+"Well, at any rate," he said, "let us have a drink together."
+
+And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one
+after the other without more ado.
+
+This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I
+rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a
+sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of
+a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his
+wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:
+
+"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."
+
+I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage
+without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the
+instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had
+talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going
+to beat her.
+
+He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from
+behind the partition:
+
+"Eh! what?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me coming in?"
+
+"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."
+
+"Open the door!"
+
+"Yes, when you're alone. I don't like you to be bringing home fellows
+at night to drink with you."
+
+Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man,
+of whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my
+journey toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that
+wretched abode a scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every
+day, under every form, and among every class.
+
+
+
+
+THE AVENGER
+
+
+When M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had
+been in love with her for nearly ten years.
+
+M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very
+fond of him, but found him rather a muff. He often used to say: "That
+poor Souris will never set the Seine on fire."
+
+When Souris married Mdlle. Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was surprised and
+somewhat vexed, for he had a slight weakness for her. She was the
+daughter of a neighbor of his, a retired haberdasher with a good bit
+of money. She was pretty, well-mannered, and intelligent. She accepted
+Souris on account of his money.
+
+Then Leuillet cherished hopes of another sort. He began paying
+attentions to his friend's wife. He was a handsome man, not at all
+stupid, and also well off. He was confident that he would succeed; he
+failed. Then he fell really in love with her, and he was the sort of
+lover who is rendered timid, prudent, and embarrassed by intimacy with
+the husband. Mme. Souris fancied that he no longer meant anything
+serious by his attentions to her, and she became simply his friend.
+This state of affairs lasted nine years.
+
+Now, one morning, Leuillet received a startling communication from the
+poor woman. Souris had died suddenly of aneurism of the heart.
+
+He got a terrible shock, for they were of the same age; but the very
+next moment, a sensation of profound joy, of infinite relief of
+deliverance, penetrated his body and soul. Mme. Souris was free.
+
+He had the tact, however, to make such a display of grief as the
+occasion required; he waited for the proper time to elapse, and
+attended to all the conventional usages. At the end of fifteen months
+he married the widow.
+
+His conduct was regarded as not only natural but generous. He had
+acted like a good friend and an honest man. In short he was happy,
+quite happy.
+
+They lived on terms of the closest confidence, having from the first
+understood and appreciated each other. One kept nothing secret from
+the other, and they told each other their inmost thoughts. Leuillet
+now loved his wife with a calm trustful affection; he loved her as a
+tender, devoted partner, who is an equal and a confidante. But there
+still lingered in his soul a singular and unaccountable grudge against
+the deceased Souris, who had been the first to possess this woman, who
+had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and who had even
+robbed her of her poetic attributes. The memory of the dead husband
+spoiled the happiness of the living husband; and this posthumous
+jealousy now began to torment Leuillet's heart day and night.
+
+The result was that he was incessantly talking about Souris, asking a
+thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for
+information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he
+pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb,
+recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his
+absurdities, and pointing out his defects.
+
+Every minute he kept calling out to his wife from one end to the other
+of the house:
+
+"Hallo, Mathilde!"
+
+"Here am I, dear."
+
+"Come and let us have a chat."
+
+She always came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be
+the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's
+harmless fad.
+
+"I say! do you remember how Souris wanted, one day, to prove to me
+that small men are always better loved than big men?"
+
+And he launched out into reflections unfavorable to the defunct
+husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he
+happened to be tall.
+
+And Mme. Leuillet let him think that he was quite right; and she
+laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a
+playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, who always ended
+by remarking:
+
+"Never mind! Souris was a muff!"
+
+They were happy, quite happy. And Leuillet never ceased to testify his
+unabated attachment to his wife by all the usual manifestations.
+
+Now, one night when they happened to be both kept awake by the renewal
+of youthful ardor, Leuillet, who held his wife clasped tightly in his
+arms, and had his lips glued to hers, said:
+
+"Tell me this, darling."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Souris--'tisn't easy to put the question--was he very--very amorous?"
+
+She gave him a warm kiss, as she murmured:
+
+"Not so much as you, my duck."
+
+His male vanity was flattered, and he went on:
+
+"He must have been--rather a flat--eh?"
+
+She did not answer. There was merely a sly little laugh on her face,
+which she pressed close to her husband's neck.
+
+He persisted in his questions:
+
+"Come now! Don't deny that he was a flat--well, I mean, rather an
+awkward sort of fellow?"
+
+She nodded slightly.
+
+"Well, yes, rather awkward."
+
+He went on:
+
+"I'm sure he used to weary you many a night--isn't that so?"
+
+This time, she had an access of frankness, and she replied:
+
+"Oh! yes."
+
+He embraced her once more when she made this acknowledgment, and
+murmured:
+
+"What an ass he was! You were not happy with him?"
+
+She answered:
+
+"No. He was not always jolly."
+
+Leuillet felt quite delighted, making a comparison in his own mind
+between his wife's former situation and her present one.
+
+He remained silent for some time: then, with a fresh outburst of
+merit, he said:
+
+"Tell me this!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you be quite candid--quite candid with me?"
+
+"Certainly, dear."
+
+"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to--to deceive this
+imbecile, Souris?"
+
+Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shamefaced way, and again
+cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that
+she was laughing.
+
+He persisted:
+
+"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this
+blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling,
+you might tell it to me--only to me!"
+
+He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to
+show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have
+been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this
+avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he
+could have had her then.
+
+But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection
+of something infinitely comic.
+
+Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might
+have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of
+fun, to be sure!
+
+He exclaimed in a voice broken by convulsions of laughter.
+
+"Oh! poor Souris! poor Souris! Ah! yes, he had that sort of head--oh,
+certainly he had!"
+
+And Mme. Leuillet now twisted herself under the sheets, laughing till
+the tears almost came into her eyes.
+
+And Leuillet repeated: "Come, confess it! confess it! Be candid. You
+must know that it cannot be unpleasant to me to hear such a thing."
+
+Then she stammered, still choking with laughter.
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Her husband pressed her for an answer.
+
+"Yes, what? Look here! tell me everything."
+
+She was now laughing in a more subdued fashion, and, raising her mouth
+up to Leuillet's ear, which was held towards her in anticipation of
+some pleasant piece of confidence, she whispered--"Yes, I did deceive
+him!"
+
+He felt a cold shiver down his back, and utterly dumbfounded, he
+gasped.
+
+"You--you--did--really--deceive him?"
+
+She was still under the impression that he thought the thing
+infinitely pleasant, and replied.
+
+"Yes--really--really."
+
+He was obliged to sit up in bed so great was the shock he received,
+holding his breath, just as overwhelmed as if he had just been told
+that he was a cuckold himself. At first, he was unable to articulate
+properly; then after the lapse of a minute or so, he merely
+ejaculated.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+She, too, had stopped laughing now, realizing her mistake too late.
+
+Leuillet, at length asked.
+
+"And with whom?"
+
+She kept silent, cudgeling her brain to find some excuse.
+
+He repeated his question.
+
+"With whom?"
+
+At last, she said.
+
+"With a young man."
+
+He turned towards her abruptly, and in a dry tone, said.
+
+"Well, I suppose it wasn't with some kitchen wench. I ask you who was
+the young man--do you understand?"
+
+She did not answer. He tore away the sheet which she had drawn over
+her head, and pushed her into the middle of the bed, repeating.
+
+"I want to know with what young man--do you understand?"
+
+Then, she replied with some difficulty in uttering the words.
+
+"I only wanted to laugh." But he fairly shook with rage: "What? How is
+that? You only wanted to laugh? So then you were making game of me?
+I'm not going to be satisfied with these evasions, let me tell you! I
+ask you what was the young man's name?"
+
+She did not reply, but lay motionless on her back.
+
+He caught hold of her arm and pressed it tightly.
+
+"Do you hear me, I say? I want you to give me an answer when I speak
+to you."
+
+Then, she said, in nervous tones.
+
+"I think you must be going mad! Let me alone!"
+
+He trembled with fury, so exasperated that he scarcely knew what he
+was saying, and, shaking her with all his strength, he repeated.
+
+"Do you hear me? do you hear me?"
+
+She wrenched herself out of his grasp with a sudden movement, and with
+the tips of her fingers slapped her husband on the nose. He entirely
+lost his temper, feeling that he had been struck, and angrily pounced
+down on her.
+
+He now held her under him, boxing her ears in a most violent manner,
+and exclaiming:
+
+"Take that--and that--and that--there you are, you trollop!"
+
+Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got
+up, and went over to the chest of drawers to get himself a glass of
+sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his
+exertion.
+
+And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling
+that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own
+fault.
+
+Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:
+
+"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie--listen! I'll explain it
+to you."
+
+And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and
+subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her
+crumpled nightcap.
+
+And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having
+whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a
+husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived
+his predecessor, Souris.
+
+
+
+
+ALL OVER
+
+
+The Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a
+parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of
+his dressing-room, and smiled.
+
+He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray.
+Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty
+moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather
+than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable
+something which establishes between two men more difference than
+millions.
+
+He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"
+
+And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence
+awaited him.
+
+On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the
+gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside
+three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the
+finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the
+choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each
+morning before tearing open the envelopes.
+
+It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
+anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did
+they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
+with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that
+wrote them, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to
+what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he
+was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him
+a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced
+those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?
+
+This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple
+nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he regarded it
+with disquietude, with a sort of internal shiver.
+
+He thought: "From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and
+yet I can't identify it."
+
+He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between
+two fingers, striving to read through the envelope without making up
+his mind to open it.
+
+Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying
+glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He
+suddenly felt unnerved. "Who is it from? This hand is familiar to me,
+very familiar. I must have often read its prosings, yes, very often.
+But this must have been a long, long time ago. Who the deuce can it be
+from? Pooh! 'tis only from somebody asking for money."
+
+And he tore open the letter. Then he read.
+
+     "My dear Friend,--You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for
+     it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was
+     young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris
+     in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old
+     husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you
+     remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am
+     returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
+     daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never
+     seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but
+     you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an
+     event.
+
+     "You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been
+     told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you
+     used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her,
+     with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful
+     friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you,
+     without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you
+     must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
+
+     "Lise de Vance."
+
+Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair,
+with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by
+poignant feelings that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
+
+If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise,
+Lise de Vance, whom he called "Cinder-Flower" on account of the
+strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a
+fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife
+of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the
+provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through
+jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
+
+Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly
+loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to
+pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.
+
+A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off
+and sweet and melancholy now. One evening, she called on him on her
+way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de
+Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was
+springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed
+the warm air--the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of
+her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the
+moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to
+weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
+
+She replied:
+
+"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me.
+Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I
+have to cry."
+
+He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion
+charming--the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation
+overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
+
+"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
+
+What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and
+all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this
+old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown
+her afterwards to anyone!
+
+Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three
+months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is
+a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his
+heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this
+was so.
+
+He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
+evening!"
+
+And instinctively he turned round towards the glass in order to
+inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown
+old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the
+thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of
+astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her
+regret those bygone days so far, far distant!
+
+He turned his attention to the other letters. They were not of
+importance.
+
+The whole day, he kept thinking of this phantom. What was she like
+now? How funny it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years!
+Would he alone recognize her?
+
+He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
+which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to
+give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved
+his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see
+her.
+
+The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room freshly
+furnished, was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from
+the days of his good-fortune, hanging on the wall in an antique silk
+frame.
+
+He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
+and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended
+both hands towards him.
+
+He seized them, kissed them one after the other with long, long
+kisses, then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
+
+Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and
+who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
+
+He could not abstain from murmuring:
+
+"It is you, Lise?"
+
+She replied:
+
+"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, isn't
+that so? I have had so much sorrow--so much sorrow. Sorrow has
+consumed my life. Look at me now--or rather don't look at me! But how
+handsome you have kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the
+street, I would have cried, 'Jaquelet!' Now sit down and let us, first
+of all, have a chat. And then I'll show you my daughter, my grown-up
+daughter. You'll see how she resembles me--or rather how I resemble
+her--no, it is not quite that: she is just like the 'me' of former
+days--you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared
+that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now
+it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."
+
+He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
+say; he did not know this woman--it seemed to him that he had never
+seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could
+he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and
+her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of
+this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the
+nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart,
+some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the
+dainty Cinder-Flower. What then had become of her, the former one, the
+one he had loved? that woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray
+eyes, the young one who used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?
+
+They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
+profoundly ill at ease.
+
+As they only talked in commonplace phrases, broken and slow, she rose
+up, and pressed the button of the bell.
+
+"I am going to call Renee," she said.
+
+There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; next, a young
+voice exclaimed:
+
+"Here I am, mamma!"
+
+Lormerin remained scared, as if at the sight of an apparition.
+
+He stammered:
+
+"Good-day, Mademoiselle."
+
+Then, turning towards the mother:
+
+"Oh! it is you!..."
+
+In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise
+who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won
+twenty-five years before. This one was even younger still, fresher,
+more childlike.
+
+He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart
+again, murmuring in her ear:
+
+"Good-day, Lison!"
+
+A man-servant announced:
+
+"Dinner is ready, Madame."
+
+And they proceeded towards the dining-room.
+
+What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could
+he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange
+dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a
+fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
+
+"Which is the real one?"
+
+The mother smiled, repeating over and over again:
+
+"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eye of the young girl that
+he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his
+mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?--" forgetting this
+white-haired lady who was regarding him with looks of tenderness.
+
+And yet there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost
+his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the
+woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in
+her glance, in her entire being, something which he did not find
+again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love,
+to seize again what had escaped from her to him, what this
+resuscitated one did not possess.
+
+The Baronne said:
+
+"You have lost your old sprightliness, my poor friend."
+
+He murmured:
+
+"There are many other things that I have lost!"
+
+But in his heart touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing
+to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
+
+The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some
+familiar phrase of her mother which she had borrowed, a certain style
+of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which
+people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot.
+All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his
+passion bleed anew.
+
+He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image
+of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart,
+inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a
+young one, the one of former days returned, and he loved her as he had
+loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an
+interval of twenty-five years.
+
+He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to
+think on what he should do.
+
+But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the
+glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and
+admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly,
+gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden
+days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and
+handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light
+nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange
+thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those
+frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
+
+And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
+lamentable image, murmuring:
+
+"All over, Lormerin!"
+
+
+
+
+LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
+
+
+You ask me, madame, whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe
+that a man has never been smitten with love. Well, no, I have never
+loved, never!
+
+What is the cause of this? I really cannot tell. Never have I been
+under the influence of that sort of intoxication of the heart which we
+call love! Never have I lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in
+that state of madness into which the image of a woman casts us. I have
+never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever-heat, lifted up to
+Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being
+who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune,
+more beautiful than any other creature, more important than the whole
+world! I have never wept, I have never suffered, on account of any of
+you. I have not passed my nights thinking of one woman without closing
+my eyes. I have no experience of waking up with the thought and the
+memory of her shedding their illumination on me. I have never known
+the wild desperation of hope when she was about to come, or the divine
+sadness of regret when she parted with me, leaving behind her in the
+room a delicate odor of violet powder and flesh.
+
+I have never been in love.
+
+I, too, have often asked myself why is this. And truly I can scarcely
+tell. Nevertheless, I have found some reasons for it; but they are of
+a metaphysical character, and perhaps you will not be able to
+appreciate them.
+
+I suppose I sit too much in judgment on women to submit much to their
+fascination. I ask you to forgive me for this remark. I am going to
+explain what I mean. In every creature there is a moral being and a
+physical being. In order to love, it would be necessary for me to find
+a harmony between these two beings which I have never found. One has
+always too great a predominance over the other, sometimes the moral,
+sometimes the physical.
+
+The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to
+love her, is not the same as virile intellect. It is more and it is
+less. A woman must have a mind open, delicate, sensitive, refined,
+impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in
+thought, but she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry,
+and that faculty of assimilation which, in a little while, raises her
+to an equality with him who shared her life. Her greatest quality must
+be tact, that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch is to the
+body. It reveals to her a thousand little things, contours, angles,
+and forms in the intellectual order.
+
+Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to correspond with
+their personal charms. Now the slightest lack of harmony strikes me
+and pains me at the first glance. In friendship, this is not of
+importance. Friendship is a compact in which one fairly divides
+defects and merits. We may judge of friends, whether man or woman,
+take into account the good they possess, neglect the evil that is in
+them, and appreciate their value exactly, while giving ourselves up to
+an intimate sympathy of a deep and fascinating character.
+
+In order to love, one must be blind, surrender oneself absolutely, see
+nothing, reason on nothing, understand nothing. One must adorn the
+weakness as well as the beauty of the beloved object, renounce all
+judgment, all reflection, all perspicacity.
+
+I am incapable of such blindness, and rebel against a seductiveness
+not founded on reason. This is not all. I have such a high and subtle
+idea of harmony, that nothing can ever realize my ideal. But you will
+call me a madman. Listen to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an
+exquisite soul and a charming body, without that body and that soul
+being in perfect accord with one another. I mean that persons who have
+noses made in a certain shape are not to be expected to think in a
+certain fashion. The fat have no right to make use of the same words
+and phrases as the thin. You, who have blue eyes, madame, cannot look
+at life, and judge of things and events as if you had black eyes. The
+shades of your eyes should correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the
+shades of your thought. In perceiving these things I have the scent of
+a bloodhound. Laugh if you like, but it is so.
+
+And yet I imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I had
+foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I
+allowed myself to be beguiled by the mirage of an aurora. Would you
+like me to relate for you this short history?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I met, one evening, a pretty enthusiastic woman who wanted, for the
+purpose of humoring a poetic fancy, to spend a night with me in a boat
+on a river. I would have preferred a room and a bed; however, I
+consented to take instead the river and the boat.
+
+It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a moonlight night
+in order to excite her imagination all the better.
+
+We had dined at a riverside inn, and then we set out in the boat about
+ten o'clock. I thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure; but as
+my companion pleased me I did not bother myself too much about this. I
+sat down on the seat facing her; I seized the oars, and off we
+started.
+
+I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We glided past a
+wooded isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us rapidly
+over the river covered with silvery ripples. The toads uttered their
+shrill, monotonous cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river's
+bank, and the lapping of the water as it flowed on made around us a
+kind of confused murmur almost imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us
+a vague sensation of mysterious fear.
+
+The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams glittering in the
+moonlight penetrated us. It seemed bliss to live and to float thus,
+and to dream and to feel by one's side a young woman sympathetic and
+beautiful.
+
+I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat intoxicated by
+the pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my proximity
+to a lovely woman.
+
+"Come and sit beside me," she said.
+
+I obeyed.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Recite some verses for me."
+
+This appeared to be rather too much. I declined; she persisted. She
+certainly wanted to have the utmost pleasure, the whole orchestra of
+sentiment, from the moon to the rhymes of poets. In the end, I had to
+yield, and, as if in mockery, I recited for her a charming little poem
+by Louis Bouilbet, of which the following are a few strophes:
+
+    "I hate the poet who with tearful eye
+      Murmurs some name while gazing tow'rds a star,
+    Who sees no magic in the earth or sky,
+      Unless Lizette or Ninon be not far.
+
+    "The bard who in all Nature nothing sees
+      Divine, unless a petticoat he ties
+    Amorously to the branches of the trees
+      Or nightcap to the grass, is scarcely wise.
+
+    "He has not heard the eternal's thunder tone,
+      The voice of Nature in her various moods,
+    Who cannot tread the dim ravines alone,
+      And of no woman dream 'mid whispering woods."
+
+I expected some reproaches. Nothing of the sort. She murmured:
+
+"How true it is!"
+
+I remained stupefied. Had she understood?
+
+Our boat was gradually drawing nearer to the bank, and got entangled
+under a willow which impeded its progress. I drew my arm around my
+companion's waist, and very gently moved my lips towards her neck. But
+she repulsed me with an abrupt, angry movement:
+
+"Have done, pray! You are rude!"
+
+I tried to draw her towards me. She resisted, caught hold of the tree,
+and was near flinging us both into the water. I deemed it the prudent
+course to cease my importunities.
+
+She said:
+
+"I would rather have you capsized. I feel so happy. I want to
+dream--that is so nice." Then, in a slightly malicious tone, she
+added:
+
+"Have you, then, already forgotten the verses you recited for me just
+now?"
+
+She was right. I became silent.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Come! row!"
+
+And I plied the oars once more.
+
+I began to find the night long and to see the absurdity of my conduct.
+
+My companion said to me:
+
+"Will you make me a promise?"
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"To remain quiet, well-behaved, and discreet, if I permit you--"
+
+"What? Say what you mean!"
+
+"Here is what I mean! I want to lie down on my back at the bottom of
+the boat with you by my side. But I forbid you to touch me, to embrace
+me--in short to--to caress me."
+
+I promised. She warned me:
+
+"If you move, I'll capsize the boat."
+
+And then we lay down side by side, our eyes turned towards the sky,
+while the boat glided slowly through the water. We were rocked by the
+gentle movements of the shallop. The light sounds of the night came to
+us more distinctly in the bottom of the boat, sometimes causing us to
+start. And I felt springing up within me a strange, poignant emotion,
+an infinite tenderness, something like an irresistible impulse to open
+my arms in order to embrace, to open my heart in order to love, to
+give myself, to give my thoughts, my body, my life, my entire being to
+someone.
+
+My companion murmured, like one in a dream:
+
+"Where are we? Where are we going? It seems to me that I am quitting
+the earth. How sweet it is! Ah! if you loved me--a little!!!"
+
+My heart began to throb. I had no answer to give. It seemed to me that
+I loved her. I had no longer any violent desire. I felt happy there by
+her side, and that was enough for me.
+
+And thus we remained for a long, long time without stirring. We caught
+each other's hands; some delightful force rendered us motionless, an
+unknown force stronger than ourselves, an alliance, chaste, intimate,
+absolute of our persons lying there side by side which belonged to
+each other without touching. What was this? How do I know. Love,
+perhaps?
+
+Little by little, the dawn appeared. It was three o'clock in the
+morning. Slowly, a great brightness spread over the sky. The boat
+knocked against something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny
+islet.
+
+But I remained ravished, in a state of ecstasy. In front of us
+stretched the shining firmament, red, rosy, violet, spotted with fiery
+clouds resembling golden vapors. The river was glowing with purple,
+and three houses on one side of it seemed to be burning.
+
+I bent towards my companion. I was going to say: "Oh! look!" But I
+held my tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer see anything except
+her. She, too, was rosy, with the rosy flesh tints with which must
+have mingled a little the hue of the sky. Her tresses were rosy; her
+eyes were rosy; her teeth were rosy; here dress, her laces, her
+smile, all were rosy. And in truth I believed, so overpowering was the
+illusion, that the aurora was there before me.
+
+She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to me; and I moved
+towards her, trembling, delirious, feeling indeed that I was going to
+kiss Heaven, to kiss happiness, to kiss a dream which had become a
+woman, to kiss the ideal which had descended into human flesh.
+
+She said to me: "You have a caterpillar in your hair." And suddenly I
+felt myself becoming as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.
+
+That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that
+since that day it would be impossible for me to love. And yet--who can
+tell?
+
+[The young man upon whom this letter was found was yesterday taken out
+of the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging bargeman, who had
+searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the deceased,
+brought this paper to the author.]
+
+
+
+
+MOTHER AND SON!!!
+
+
+We were chatting in the smoking-room after a dinner at which only men
+were present. We talked about unexpected legacies, strange
+inheritances. Then M. le Brument, who was sometimes called "the
+illustrious master" and at other times the "illustrious advocate,"
+came and stood with his back to the fire.
+
+"I have," he said, "just now to search for an heir who disappeared
+under peculiarly terrible circumstances. It is one of those simple and
+ferocious dramas of ordinary life, a thing which possibly happens
+every day, and which is nevertheless one of the most dreadful things I
+know. Here are the facts:
+
+"Nearly six months ago I got a message to come to the side of a dying
+woman. She said to me:
+
+"'Monsieur, I want to entrust to you the most delicate, the most
+difficult, and the most wearisome mission that can be conceived. Be
+good enough to take cognizance of my will, which is there on the
+table. A sum of five thousand francs is left to you as a fee if you do
+not succeed, and of a hundred thousand francs if you do succeed. I
+want to have my son found after my death.'
+
+"She asked me to assist her to sit up in the bed, in order that she
+might be able to speak with greater ease, for her voice, broken and
+gasping, was gurgling in her throat.
+
+"I saw that I was in the house of a very rich person. The luxurious
+apartment, with a certain simplicity in its luxury, was upholstered
+with materials solid as the walls, and their soft surface imparted a
+caressing sensation, so that every word uttered seemed to penetrate
+their silent depths and to disappear and die there.
+
+"The dying woman went on:
+
+"'You are the first to hear my horrible story. I will try to have
+strength enough to go on to the end of it. You must know everything so
+that you, whom I know to be a kind-hearted man as well as a man of the
+world, should have a sincere desire to aid me with all your power.
+
+"'Listen to me.
+
+"'Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by
+my family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterwards, I
+married a man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance,
+through obedience, through indifference, as young girls do marry.
+
+"'I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.
+
+"'He whom I had loved had got married, in his turn. When he saw that I
+was a widow, he was crushed by horrible grief at knowing he was not
+free. He came to see me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly before my eyes
+that it was enough to break my heart. He at first came to see me as a
+friend. Perhaps I ought not to have seen him. What would you have? I
+was alone, so sad, so solitary, so hopeless! And I loved him still.
+What sufferings we women have sometimes to endure!
+
+"'I had only him in the world, my parents also being dead. He came
+frequently; he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him
+come so often, seeing that he was married. But I had not enough of
+will-power to prevent him from coming.
+
+"'How am I to tell you what next happened?... He became my lover. How
+did this come about? Can I explain it? Can anyone explain such things?
+Do you think it could be otherwise when two human beings are drawn
+towards each other by the irresistible force of a passion by which
+each of them is possessed? Do you believe, monsieur, that it is always
+in our power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle for ever, and
+refuse to yield to the prayers, the supplications, the tears, the
+frenzied words, the appeals on bended knees, the transports of
+passion, with which we are pursued by the man we adore, whom we want
+to gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom we desire to crown with
+every possible happiness, and whom, if we are to be guided by a
+worldly code of honor, we must drive to despair. What strength would
+it not require? What a renunciation of happiness? what self-denial?
+and even what virtuous selfishness?
+
+"'In short, monsieur, I was his mistress; and I was happy. I
+became--and this was my greatest weakness and my greatest piece of
+cowardice--I became his wife's friend.
+
+"'We brought up my son together; we made a man of him, a thorough man,
+intelligent, full of sense and resolution, of large and generous
+ideas. The boy reached the age of seventeen.
+
+"'He, the young man, was fond of my--my lover, almost as fond of him
+as I was myself, for he had been equally cherished and cared for by
+both of us. He used to call him his "dear friend," and respected him
+immensely, having never received from him anything but wise counsels,
+and a good example of rectitude, honor, and probity. He looked upon
+him as an old, loyal and devoted comrade of his mother, as a sort of
+moral father, tutor, protector--how am I to describe it?
+
+"'Perhaps the reason why he never asked any questions was that he had
+been accustomed from his earliest years to see this man in the house,
+by his side, and by my side, always concerned about us both.
+
+"'One evening the three of us were to dine together (these were my
+principal festive occasions), and I waited for the two of them, asking
+myself which of them would be the first to arrive. The door opened; it
+was my old friend. I went towards him, with outstretched arms; and he
+drew his lips towards mine in a long, delicious kiss.
+
+"'All of a sudden, a sound, a rustling which was barely audible, that
+mysterious sensation which indicates the presence of another person,
+made us start and turn round with a quick movement. Jean, my son,
+stood there, livid, staring at us.
+
+"'There was a moment of atrocious confusion. I drew back, holding out
+my hand towards my son as if in supplication; but I could see him no
+longer. He had gone.
+
+"'We remained facing each other--my lover and I--crushed, unable to
+utter a word. I sank down on an armchair, and I felt a desire, a
+vague, powerful desire to fly, to go out into the night, and to
+disappear for ever. Then, convulsive sobs rose up in my throat, and I
+wept, shaken with spasms, with my heart torn asunder, all my nerves
+writhing with the horrible sensation of an irremediable misfortune,
+and with that dreadful sense of shame which, in such moments as this,
+falls on a mother's heart.
+
+"'He looked at me in a scared fashion, not venturing to approach me or
+to speak to me or to touch me, for fear of the boy's return. At last
+he said:
+
+"'"I am going to follow him--to talk to him--to explain matters to
+him. In short, I must see him and let him know--"
+
+"'And he hurried away.
+
+"'I waited--I waited in a distracted frame of mind, trembling at the
+least sound, convulsed with terror, and filled with some unutterably
+strange and intolerable emotion by every slight crackling of the fire
+in the grate.
+
+"'I waited for an hour, for two hours, feeling my heart swell with a
+dread I had never before experienced, such an anguish that I would not
+wish the greatest of criminals to have ten minutes of such misery.
+Where was my son? What was he doing?
+
+"'About midnight, a messenger brought me a note from my lover. I still
+know its contents by heart:
+
+"'"Has your son returned? I did not find him. I am down here. I do not
+want to go up at this hour."
+
+"'I wrote in pencil on the same slip of paper:
+
+"'"Jean has not returned. You must go and find him."
+
+"'And I remained all night in the armchair, waiting for him.
+
+"'I felt as if I were going mad. I longed to have to run wildly about,
+to roll myself on the ground. And yet I did not even stir, but kept
+waiting hour after hour. What was going to happen? I tried to imagine,
+to guess. But I could form no conception, in spite of my efforts, in
+spite of the tortures of my soul!
+
+"'And now my apprehension was lest they might meet. What would they do
+in that case? What would my son do? My mind was lacerated by fearful
+doubts, by terrible suppositions.
+
+"'You understand what I mean, do you not, monsieur?
+
+"'My chambermaid, who knew nothing, who understood nothing, was coming
+in every moment, believing, naturally, that I had lost my reason. I
+sent her away with a word or a movement of the hand. She went for the
+doctor, who found me in the throes of a nervous fit.
+
+"'I was put to bed. I got an attack of brain-fever.
+
+"'When I regained consciousness, after a long illness, I saw beside my
+bed my--lover--alone.
+
+"'I exclaimed:
+
+"'"My son? Where is my son?"
+
+"'He replied:
+
+"'"No, no, I assure you every effort has been made by me to find him,
+but I have failed!"
+
+"'Then, becoming suddenly exasperated and even indignant--for women
+are subject to such outbursts of unaccountable and unreasoning
+anger--I said:
+
+"'"I forbid you to come near me or to see me again unless you find
+him. Go away!"
+
+"'He did go away.
+
+"'I have never seen one or the other of them since, monsieur, and thus
+I have lived for the last twenty years.
+
+"'Can you imagine what all this meant to me? Can you understand this
+monstrous punishment, this slow perpetual laceration of a mother's
+heart, this abominable, endless waiting? Endless, did I say? No: it is
+about to end, for I am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing
+either of them--either one or the other!
+
+"'He--the man I loved--has written to me every day for the last twenty
+years; and I--I have never consented to see him, even for one second;
+for I had a strange feeling that, if he came back here, it would be at
+that very moment my son would again make his appearance! Ah! my son!
+my son! Is he dead? Is he living? Where is he hiding? Over there,
+perhaps, at the other side of the ocean, in some country so far away
+that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he ever think of me?
+Ah! if he only knew! How cruel children are! Did he understand to what
+frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of despair, into
+what tortures, he cast me while I was still in the prime of life,
+leaving me to suffer like this even to this moment, when I am going to
+die--me, his mother, who loved him with all the violence of a mother's
+love! Oh! isn't it cruel, cruel?
+
+"'You will tell him all this, monsieur--will you not? You will repeat
+for him my last words:
+
+"'My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh towards poor women!
+Life is already brutal and savage enough in its dealings with them. My
+dear son, think of what the existence of your poor mother has been
+ever since the day when you left her. My dear child, forgive her, and
+love her, now that she is dead, for she has had to endure the most
+frightful penance ever inflicted on a woman.'
+
+"She gasped for breath, shuddering, as if she had addressed the last
+words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.
+
+"Then she added:
+
+"'You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw--the
+other.'
+
+"Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice she said:
+
+"'Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are
+not with me.'"
+
+Maitre Le Brument added:
+
+"And I left the house, messieurs, crying like a fool, so vehemently,
+indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me.
+
+"And to think that, every day, heaps of dramas like this are being
+enacted all around us!
+
+"I have not found the son--that son--well, say what you like about
+him, but I call him that criminal son!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SPASM
+
+
+The hotel-guests slowly entered the dining-room, and sat down in their
+places. The waiters began to attend on them in a leisurely fashion so
+as to enable those who were late to arrive, and so as to avoid
+bringing back the dishes; and the old bathers, the _habitués_, those
+whose season was advancing, gazed with interest towards the door,
+whenever it opened, with a desire to see new faces appearing.
+
+This is the principal distraction of health-resorts. People look
+forward to the dinner-hour in order to inspect each day's new
+arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think.
+A vague longing springs up in the mind, a longing for agreeable
+meetings, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures. In
+this life of elbowings, not only those with whom we have come into
+daily contact, but strangers, assume an extreme importance. Curiosity
+is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is
+the order of the day.
+
+We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see
+other people with different eyes when we view them through the medium
+of the acquaintanceship that is brought about at health-resorts. We
+discover in men suddenly, after an hour's chat, in the evening after
+dinner, under the trees in the park where the generous spring bubbles
+up, a high intelligence and astonishing merits, and a month
+afterwards, we have completely forgotten these new friends, so
+fascinating when we first met them.
+
+There also are formed lasting and serious ties more quickly than
+anywhere else. People see each other every day; they become acquainted
+very quickly; and with the affection thus originated is mingled
+something of the sweetness and self-abandonment of long-standing
+intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories of
+those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first
+conversations through which we have been able to unveil a soul, of
+those first glances which interrogate and respond to the questions and
+secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of
+that first cordial confidence, the memory of that delightful sensation
+of opening our hearts to those who are willing to open theirs to us.
+
+And the melancholy of health-resorts, the monotony of days that are
+all alike, help from hour to hour in this rapid development of
+affection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the
+appearance of strange faces.
+
+Only two appeared, but very remarkable-looking, a man and a
+woman--father and daughter. They immediately produced the same effect
+on my mind as some of Edgar Poe's characters; and yet there was about
+them a charm, the charm associated with misfortune. I looked upon them
+as the victims of fatality. The man was very tall and thin, rather
+stooping, with hair perfectly white, too white for his comparatively
+youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing, and in his person
+that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter, who was
+probably twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was
+also very thin, very pale, and she had the air of one who was worn out
+with utter lassitude. We meet people like this from time to time who
+seem too weak for the tasks and the needs of daily life, too weak to
+move about, to walk, to do all that we do every day. This young girl
+was very pretty, with the diaphanous beauty of a phantom; and she ate
+with extreme slowness, as if she were almost incapable of moving her
+arms.
+
+It must have been she assuredly who had come to take the waters.
+
+They found themselves facing me at the opposite side of the table; and
+I at once noticed that the father had a very singular nervous spasm.
+
+Every time he wanted to reach an object, his hand made a hook-like
+movement, a sort of irregular zigzig, before it succeeded in touching
+what it was in search of; and, after a little while, this action was
+so wearisome to me that I turned aside my head in order not to see it.
+
+I noticed, too, that the young girl, during meals, wore a glove on her
+left hand.
+
+After dinner, I went for a stroll in the park of the thermal
+establishment. This led towards the little Auvergnese station of
+Chatel Guyot, hidden in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, of
+that mountain from which flow so many boiling springs, arising from
+the deep bed of extinct volcanoes. Over there, above us, the domes,
+which had once been craters, raised their mutilated heads on the
+summit of the long chain. For Chatel Guyot is situated at the spot
+where the region of domes begins.
+
+Beyond it, stretches out the region of peaks, and further on again the
+region of precipices.
+
+The "Puy de Dome" is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is
+the loftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of these
+mountain-heights.
+
+This evening it was very warm. I walked up and down a shady path, on
+the side of the mountain overlooking the park, listening to the
+opening strains of the Casino band.
+
+And I saw the father and the daughter advancing slowly in my
+direction. I saluted them, as we are accustomed to salute our
+hotel-companions at health resorts; and the man, coming to a sudden
+halt, said to me,
+
+"Could you not, monsieur, point out to us a short walk, nice and easy,
+if that is possible? and excuse my intrusion on you."
+
+I offered to show them the way towards the valley through which the
+little river flowed, a deep valley forming a gorge between two tall
+craggy, wooded slopes.
+
+They gladly accepted my offer.
+
+And we talked naturally about the virtues of the waters.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "My daughter has a strange malady, the seat of which is
+unknown. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous disorders. At one
+time, the doctors think she has an attack of heart disease, at another
+time, they imagine it is some affection of the liver, and at another
+time they declare it to be a disease of the spine. To-day, her
+condition is attributed to the stomach, which is the great caldron and
+regulator of the body, that Protean source of diseases with a thousand
+forms and a thousand susceptibilities to attack. This is why we have
+come here. For my part, I am rather inclined to think it is the
+nerves. In any case it is very sad."
+
+Immediately the remembrance of the violent spasmodic movement of his
+hand came back to my mind, and I asked him.
+
+"But is this not the result of heredity? Are not your own nerves
+somewhat affected?"
+
+He replied calmly:
+
+"Mine? Oh! no--my nerves have always been very steady."
+
+Then suddenly, after a pause, he went on:
+
+"Ah! You were alluding to the spasm in my hand every time I want to
+reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I
+had. Just imagine! this daughter of mine was actually buried alive?"
+
+I could only give utterance to the word "Ah!" so great were my
+astonishment and emotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He continued:
+
+"Here is the story. It is simple. Juliette had been subject for some
+time to serious attacks of the heart. We believed that she had disease
+of that organ, and we were prepared for the worst.
+
+"One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had
+fallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life
+was extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid
+her with my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the
+cemetery, where she was deposited in the family vault. It is situated
+in the very heart of Lorraine.
+
+"I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces,
+rings, all presents which she had got from me, and with her first
+ball-dress on.
+
+"You may easily imagine the state of mind in which I was when I
+returned home. She was the only one I had, for my wife has been dead
+for many years. I found my way to my own apartment in a half
+distracted condition, utterly exhausted, and I sank into my
+easy-chair, without the capacity to think or the strength to move. I
+was nothing better now than a suffering, vibrating machine, a human
+being who had, as it were, been flayed alive; my soul was like a
+living wound.
+
+"My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in her
+coffin, and preparing her for her last sleep, entered the room
+noiselessly, and asked:
+
+"'Does monsieur want anything?'
+
+"I merely shook my head, by way of answering 'No.'
+
+"He urged, 'Monsieur is wrong. He will bring some illness on himself.
+Would monsieur like me to put him to bed?'
+
+"I answered, 'No! let me alone!'
+
+"And he left the room.
+
+"I know not how many hours slipped away. Oh! what a night, what a
+night! It was cold. My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the
+wind, the winter wind, an icy wind, a hurricane accompanied by frost
+and snow, kept blowing against the window with a sinister and regular
+noise.
+
+"How many hours slipped away? There I was without sleeping, powerless,
+crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body limp,
+inanimate, and my mind torpid with despair. Suddenly, the great bell
+of the entrance gate, the great bell of the vestibule, rang out.
+
+"I got such a shock that my chair cracked under me. The solemn,
+ponderous sound vibrated through the empty chateau as if through a
+vault. I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was
+just two in the morning. Who could be coming at such an hour!
+
+"And abruptly the bell again rang twice. The servants, without doubt,
+were afraid to get up. I took a wax-candle and descended the stairs. I
+was on the point of asking, 'Who is there?'
+
+"Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly opened the huge
+door. My heart was throbbing wildly; I was frightened; I hurriedly
+drew back the door, and in the darkness I distinguished a white
+figure, standing erect, something that resembled an apparition.
+
+"I recoiled, petrified with horror, faltering:
+
+"'Who--who--who are you?'
+
+"A voice replied:
+
+"'It is I, father.'
+
+"It was my daughter.
+
+"I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backwards before this
+advancing specter. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand, as
+if to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have
+noticed--that gesture of which since then I have never got rid.
+
+"'Do not be afraid, papa; I was not dead. Somebody tried to steal my
+rings, and cut one of my fingers, the blood began to flow, and this
+reanimated me.'
+
+"And, in fact, I could see that her hand was covered with blood.
+
+"I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and with a rattling in my
+throat.
+
+"Then, when I had somewhat collected my thoughts, though I was still
+so much dismayed that I scarcely realized the gruesome good-fortune
+that had fallen to my lot, I made her go up to my room, and sit down
+in my easy-chair; then I ran excitedly for Prosper to get him to light
+up the fire again and to get her some wine and summon the rest of the
+servants to her assistance.
+
+"The man entered, stared at my daughter, opened his mouth with a gasp
+of alarm and stupefaction, and then fell back insensible.
+
+"It was he who had opened the vault, and who had mutilated, and then
+abandoned, my daughter, for he could not efface the traces of the
+theft. He had not even taken the trouble to put back the coffin into
+its place, feeling sure, besides, that he would not be suspected by
+me, as I completely trusted him.
+
+"You see, Monsieur, that we are very unhappy people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stopped.
+
+The night had fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournful
+vale, and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by
+the side of those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back
+from the tomb and this father with his uncanny spasm.
+
+I found it impossible to make any comment on this dreadful story. I
+only murmured:
+
+"What a horrible thing!"
+
+Then, after a minute's silence, I added:
+
+"Suppose we go back. I think it is getting cold."
+
+And we made our way back to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+A DUEL
+
+
+The war was over. The Germans occupied France. The country was panting
+like a wrestler lying under the knee of his successful opponent.
+
+The first trains from Paris, after the city's long agony of famine and
+despair, were making their way to the new frontiers, slowly passing
+through the country districts and the villages. The passengers gazed
+through the windows at the ravaged fields and burnt hamlets. Prussian
+soldiers, in their black helmets with brass spikes, were smoking their
+pipes on horseback or sitting on chairs in front of the houses which
+were still left standing. Others were working or talking just as if
+they were members of the families. As you passed through the different
+towns you saw entire regiments drilling in the squares, and, in spite
+of the rumble of the carriage-wheels, you could every moment hear the
+hoarse words of command.
+
+M. Dubuis, who during the entire siege, had served as one of the
+National Guard in Paris, was going to join his wife and daughter, whom
+he had prudently sent away to Switzerland before the invasion.
+
+Famine and hardship had not diminished his big paunch so
+characteristic of the rich, peace-loving merchant. He had gone through
+the terrible events of the past year with sorrowful resignation and
+bitter complaints at the savagery of men. Now that he was journeying
+to the frontier at the close of the war, he saw the Prussians for the
+first time, although he had done his duty at the ramparts, and
+staunchly mounted guard on cold nights.
+
+He stared with mingled fear and anger at those bearded, armed men,
+installed all over French soil as if in their own homes, and he felt
+in his soul a kind of fever of impotent patriotism even while he
+yielded to that other instinct of discretion and self-preservation
+which never leaves us. In the same compartment, two Englishmen, who
+had come to the country as sight-seers, were gazing around with looks
+of stolid curiosity. They were both also stout, and kept chattering in
+their own language, sometimes referring to their guide-book, and
+reading in loud tones the names of the places indicated.
+
+Suddenly, the train stopped at a little village station, and a
+Prussian officer jumped up with a great clatter of his saber on the
+double footboard of the railway-carriage. He was tall, wore a
+tight-fitting uniform, and his face had a very shaggy aspect. His red
+hair seemed to be on fire, and his long moustache, of a paler color,
+was stuck out on both sides of his face, which it seemed to cut in
+two.
+
+The Englishmen at once began staring at him with smiles of
+newly-awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a
+newspaper. He sat crouched in a corner, like a thief in the presence
+of a gendarme.
+
+The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting, and looking
+out for the exact scene of different battles, and, all of a sudden, as
+one of them stretched out his arm towards the horizon to indicate a
+village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long
+legs and lolling backwards:
+
+"We killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village, and took more than a
+hundred prisoners."
+
+The Englishman, quite interested, immediately asked:
+
+"Ha! and what is the name of this village?"
+
+The Prussian replied:
+
+"Pharsbourg."
+
+He added: "We caught these French blackguards by the ears."
+
+And he glanced towards M. Dubuis, laughing into his moustache in an
+insulting fashion.
+
+The train rolled on, always passing through hamlets occupied by the
+victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the
+edges of fields, standing in front of gates, or chatting outside
+_cafés_. They covered the soil like African locusts.
+
+The officer said, with a wave of his hand:
+
+"If I were in command, I'd take Paris, burn everything, kill
+everybody. No more France!"
+
+The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:
+
+"Ah! yes."
+
+He went on:
+
+"In twenty years, all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is
+more than a match for all of them."
+
+The Englishmen, getting uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their
+faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their
+long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still,
+lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France,
+insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been
+recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of
+the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless
+artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to build a city of
+iron with the captured cannon. And suddenly he pushed his boots
+against the thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned his eyes round, reddening
+to the roots of his hair.
+
+The Englishmen seemed to have assumed an air of complete indifference,
+as if they had found themselves all at once shut up in their own
+island, far from the din of the world.
+
+The officer took out his pipe, and looking fixedly at the Frenchman,
+said:
+
+"You haven't any tobacco--have you?"
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+The German said:
+
+"You might go and buy some for me when the train stops next."
+
+And he began laughing afresh, as he added:
+
+"I'll let you have the price of a drink."
+
+The train whistled, and slackened its pace. They had reached the
+station which had been burnt down; and here there was a regular stop.
+
+The German opened the carriage-door, and, catching M. Dubuis by the
+arm, said:
+
+"Go and do what I told you--quick, quick!"
+
+A Prussian detachment occupied the station. Other soldiers were
+looking on from behind wooden gratings. The engine was already getting
+up steam in order to start off again. Then M. Dubuis hurriedly jumped
+on the platform, and, in spite of the warnings of the station master,
+dashed into the adjoining compartment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was alone! He tore open his waistcoat, so rapidly did his heart
+beat, and, panting for breath, he wiped the perspiration off his
+forehead.
+
+The train drew up at another station. And suddenly the officer
+appeared at the carriage-door, and jumped in, followed close behind by
+the two Englishmen, who were impelled by curiosity. The German sat
+facing the Frenchman, and, laughing still, said:
+
+"You did not want to do what I asked you?"
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+The train had just left the station.
+
+The officer said:
+
+"I'll cut off your moustache to fill my pipe with."
+
+And he put out his hand towards the Frenchman's face.
+
+The Englishmen kept staring in the same impassive fashion with fixed
+glances.
+
+Already the German had caught hold of the moustache and was tugging at
+it, when M. Dubuis, with a back stroke of his hand, threw back the
+officer's arm, and, seizing him by the collar, flung him down on the
+seat. Then, excited to a pitch of fury, with his temples swollen and
+his eyes glaring, he kept throttling the officer with one hand, while
+with the other clenched, he began to strike him violent blows in the
+face. The Prussian struggled, tried to draw his saber, and to get a
+grip, while lying back, of his adversary. But M. Dubuis crushed him
+with the enormous weight of his stomach, and kept hitting him without
+taking breath or knowing where his blows fell. Blood flowed down the
+face of the German, who, choking and with a rattling in his throat,
+spat forth his broken teeth, and vainly strove to shake off this
+infuriated man who was killing him.
+
+The Englishmen had got on their feet and came closer in order to see
+better. They remained standing, full of mirth and curiosity, ready to
+bet for or against each of the combatants.
+
+And suddenly M. Dubuis, exhausted by his violent efforts, went and
+resumed his seat without uttering a word.
+
+The Prussian did not attack him, for the savage assault had scared and
+terrified the officer. When he was able to breathe freely, he said:
+
+"Unless you give me satisfaction with pistols, I will kill you."
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"Whenever you like. I'm quite ready."
+
+The German said:
+
+"Here is the town of Strasbourg. I'll get two officers to be my
+seconds, and there will be time before the train leaves the station."
+
+M. Dubuis, who was puffing as much as the engine, said to the
+Englishmen:
+
+"Will you be my seconds?" They both answered together:
+
+"Ah! yes."
+
+And the train stopped.
+
+In a minute, the Prussian had found two comrades who carried pistols,
+and they made their way towards the ramparts.
+
+The Englishmen were continually looking at their watches, shuffling
+their feet, and hurrying on with the preparations, uneasy lest they
+should be too late for the train.
+
+M. Dubuis had never fired a pistol in his life.
+
+They made him stand twenty paces away from his enemy. He was asked:
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+While he was answering: "Yes, monsieur," he noticed that one of the
+Englishmen had opened his umbrella in order to keep off the rays of
+the sun.
+
+A voice gave the word of command:
+
+"Fire!"
+
+M. Dubuis fired at random without minding what he was doing, and he
+was amazed to see the Prussian staggering in front of him, lifting up
+his arms, and immediately afterwards, falling straight on his face. He
+had killed the officer.
+
+One of the Englishmen ejaculated: "Ah!" quivering with delight,
+satisfied curiosity, and joyous impatience. The other, who still kept
+the watch in his hand, seized M. Dubuis's arm, and hurried him in
+double-quick time towards the station, his fellow-countryman counting
+their steps, with his arms pressed close to his sides--"One! two! one!
+two!"
+
+And all three marching abreast they rapidly made their way to the
+station like three grotesque figures in a comic newspaper.
+
+The train was on the point of starting. They sprang into their
+carriage. Then, the Englishmen, taking off their traveling-caps, waved
+them three times over their heads, exclaiming:
+
+"Hip! hip! hip! hurrah!"
+
+Then gravely, one after the other, they stretched out the right hand
+to M. Dubuis, and they went back and sat in their own corner.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
+
+
+The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded height. Tall trees
+surrounded it with dark greenery; and the vast park extended its
+vistas here over a deep forest and there over an open plain. Some
+little distance from the front of the mansion stood a huge stone basin
+in which marble nymphs were bathing. Other basins arranged in order
+succeeded each other down as far as the foot of the slope, and a
+hidden fountain sent cascades dancing from one to the other.
+
+From the manor-house which preserved the grace of a superannuated
+coquette down to the grottos encrusted with shell-work, where
+slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique
+demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed
+to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of
+faded gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our
+grandmothers.
+
+In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with
+shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in
+hoop-petticoats, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman who
+seemed dead as soon as she ceased to move was almost lying down in a
+large easy-chair, while her thin, mummy-like hands hung down, one at
+each side of her.
+
+Her eyes were gazing languidly towards the distant horizon as if they
+sought to follow through the park visions of her youth. Through the
+open window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the
+scent of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks
+flutter around her wrinkled forehead and old memories, through her
+brain.
+
+Beside her on a tapestried stool, a young girl with long, fair hair
+hanging in plaits over her neck, was embroidering an altar-cloth.
+There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see
+that, while her agile fingers worked, her brain was busy with
+thoughts.
+
+But the old lady suddenly turned round her head.
+
+"Berthe," she said, "read something out of the newspapers for me, so
+that I may still know sometimes what is happening in the world."
+
+The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.
+
+"There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; am I to pass it
+by?"
+
+"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no accounts of love affairs? Is
+gallantry, then, dead in France, that they no longer talk about
+abductions or adventures as they did formerly?"
+
+The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.
+
+"Here is one," she said. "It is entitled: 'A Love-Drama!'"
+
+The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. "Read that for me," she
+said.
+
+And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol-throwing. A wife, in
+order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face
+and eyes. She had left the Assize Court acquitted, declared to be
+innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.
+
+The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:
+
+"This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible! See whether you can
+find anything else to read for me, darling."
+
+Berthe again made a search; and further down in the reports of
+criminal cases at which her attention was still directed. She read:
+
+"'Gloomy Drama.--A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to
+yield to the embraces of a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her
+lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The
+unhappy man is maimed for life. The Jury, consisting of men of moral
+character, took the part of the murderess--regarding her as the victim
+of illicit love, and honorably acquitted her.'"
+
+This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a
+trembling voice, she said.
+
+"Why, you are mad, then, nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
+you love, the only allurement in life. Man has added to this
+gallantry, the only distraction of our dull hours, and here are you
+mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud
+into a flagon of Spanish wine."
+
+Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.
+
+"But grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
+and her husband deceived her."
+
+The grandmother gave a start.
+
+"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
+to-day?"
+
+Berthe replied:
+
+"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."
+
+The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
+gallantry, gave a sudden leap.
+
+"It is love that is sacred," she said, "Listen, child, to an old woman
+who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long
+experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common.
+We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to
+constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society
+is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld
+those links, we always seek for metals of the same kind. When we
+marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine
+fortunes, unite similar races, and aim at the common interest, which
+is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the
+world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one
+lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is
+law, and love is an instinct, which impels us sometimes along a
+straight and sometimes along a crooked path. The world has made laws
+to combat our instincts--it was necessary to make them; but our
+instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too
+much, because they come from God, while the laws only come from men.
+If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,
+darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to
+take it just as it is."
+
+Berthe opened her eyes widely in astonishment. She murmured:
+
+"Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once."
+
+The grandmother raised her trembling hands towards Heaven, as if
+again to invoke the defunct God of gallantries. She exclaimed
+indignantly:
+
+"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
+Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
+attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every
+corner of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion.
+People have written verses telling you that people have died of love.
+In my time verses were written to teach men to love every woman. And
+we! when we liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when
+a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid
+of the last lover--unless we kept both of them."
+
+The old woman smiled with a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery
+twinkled in her gray eye, the sprightly, skeptical roguery of those
+people who did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the
+others, and who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not
+made.
+
+The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:
+
+"So then women have no honor?"
+
+The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of
+Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean-Jaques's glowing
+philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even
+boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies
+in France, were to live without a lover, she would have the entire
+court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only
+to enter a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will
+love you alone all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case.
+I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that Society
+should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you
+understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
+And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as
+something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a
+dress."
+
+The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.
+
+"Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"
+
+And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to
+bestow on her a great passion, one eternal passion alone, in
+accordance with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother,
+kissing her on the forehead, quite penetrated still by that charming,
+healthy logic by which the philosophers of gallantry sprinkled salt
+with the life of the eighteenth century, murmured:
+
+"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such follies as this,
+you will be very unhappy."
+
+
+
+
+AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+
+
+One autumn I went to stay for the hunting-season with some friends in
+a chateau in Picardy.
+
+My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do
+not care to know any other sort of people.
+
+When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once
+aroused distrust in my breast. We had some capital shooting. They
+embraced me, they cajoled me, as if they expected to have great fun at
+my expense.
+
+I said to myself:
+
+"Look out, old ferret! They have something in preparation for you."
+
+During the dinner, the mirth was excessive, far too great, in fact. I
+thought: "Here are people who take a double share of amusement, and
+apparently without reason. They must be looking out in their own minds
+for some good bit of fun. Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke.
+Attention!"
+
+During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion.
+I smelled a practical joke in the air, as a dog smells game. But what
+was it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word or a meaning or
+a gesture escape me. Everyone seemed to me an object of suspicion, and
+I even looked distrustfully at the faces of the servants.
+
+The hour rang for going to bed, and the whole household came to escort
+me to my room. Why? They called to me: "Good night." I entered the
+apartment, shut the door, and remained standing, without moving a
+single step, holding the wax candle in my hand.
+
+I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they
+were spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture,
+the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify
+suspicion. I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no
+doubt they were looking through the key-hole.
+
+An idea came into my head: "My candle may suddenly go out, and leave
+me in darkness."
+
+Then I went across to the mantelpiece, and lighted all the wax candles
+that were on it. After that, I cast another glance around me without
+discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining
+the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article one after the other.
+Still nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden
+shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the
+curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and I placed a chair in front of
+them, so as to have nothing to fear from without.
+
+Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture
+to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming
+to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as
+I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they
+had been preparing for me, have been laughing enormously at my terror.
+So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly
+suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be
+secure. All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to
+receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I
+stretched myself out, to find myself sinking under the floor with my
+mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which
+I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly
+not! certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution
+which I consider one of extreme efficacy: I caught hold of the side of
+the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it towards me. It came
+away, followed by the sheet and the rest of the bed-clothes. I dragged
+all these objects into the very middle of the room, facing the
+entrance-door. I made my bed over again as best I could at some
+distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner which had filled
+me with such anxiety. Then, I extinguished all the candles, and,
+groping my way, I slipped under the bed-clothes.
+
+For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest
+sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.
+
+I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden,
+I was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right
+on top of my own body, and, at the same time, I received on my face,
+on my neck, and on my chest, a burning liquid which made me utter a
+howl of pain. And a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with
+plates and dishes had fallen down, penetrated my ears.
+
+I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and
+preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what
+was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers.
+Then with all my strength I launched out a blow over this face. But I
+immediately received a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight
+out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my night shirt into the
+corridor, the door of which I found open.
+
+O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
+into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed,
+the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had
+tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on
+his stomach, spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast over my face.
+
+The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep
+in the middle of the room had only brought about the interlude I had
+been striving to avoid.
+
+Ah! how they all laughed that day!
+
+
+
+
+A WARNING NOTE
+
+
+I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be
+profitable to many readers, I make it my business to communicate it to
+them:
+
+"Paris, November 15th, 1886.
+
+"Monsieur,--You often treat either in the shape of short stories or
+chronicles, of subjects which have relation to what I may describe as
+'current morals.' I am going to submit to you some reflections which
+ought, it seems to me, to furnish you with the materials for one of
+your tales.
+
+"I am not married; I am a bachelor, and, as it seems to me, a rather
+simple man. But I fancy that many men, the greater part of men, are
+simple in the way that I am. As I am always, or nearly always, a plain
+dealer, I am not well able to see through the natural cunning of my
+neighbors, and I go straight ahead, with my eyes open, without
+sufficiently looking out for what is behind things and behind people's
+external behavior.
+
+"We are nearly all accustomed, as a rule, to take appearances for
+realities, and to look on people as what they pretend to be; and very
+few possess that scent which enables certain men to divine the real
+and hidden nature of others. From this peculiar and conventional
+method of regarding life come the result that we pass, like moles,
+through the midst of events; and that we never believe in what is, but
+in what seems to be, that we declare a thing to be improbable as soon
+as we are shown the fact behind the veil, and that everything which
+displeases our idealistic morality is classed by us an exception,
+without taking into account that these exceptions all brought together
+constitute nearly the total number of cases. There further results
+from it that credulous good people like me are deceived by everybody
+and especially by women, who have a talent in this direction.
+
+"I have started far afield in order to come to the particular fact
+which interests me. I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many
+others, I imagined (do you understand?) that I had chanced on an
+exception, on an unhappy little woman who was deceiving her husband
+for the first time. I had paid attentions to her, or rather I had
+looked on myself as having paid attention to her for a long time, as
+having overcome her virtue by dint of kindness and love, and as having
+triumphed by the sheer force of perseverance. In fact, I had made use
+of a thousand precautions, a thousand devices, and a thousand subtle
+dallyings in order to succeed in getting the better of her.
+
+"Now here is what happened last week: Her husband being absent for
+some days, she suggested that we should both dine together, and that I
+should attend on myself so as to avoid the presence of a man-servant.
+She had a fixed idea which had haunted her for the last four or five
+months: She wanted to get tipsy, but to get tipsy altogether without
+being afraid of consequences, without having to go back home, speak to
+her chambermaid, and walk before witnesses. She had often obtained
+what she called 'a gay agitation' without going farther, and she had
+found it delightful. So then she promised herself that she would get
+tipsy once, only once, but thoroughly so. She pretended at her own
+house that she was going to spend twenty-four hours with some friends
+near Paris, and she reached my abode just about dinner-hour.
+
+"A woman naturally ought not to get fuddled except when she has had
+too much champagne. She drinks a big glass of it fasting, and before
+the oysters arrive, she begins to ramble in her talk.
+
+"We had a cold dinner prepared on a table behind me. It was enough for
+me to stretch out my arms to take the dishes or the plates, and I
+attended on myself as best I could while I listened to her chattering.
+
+"She kept swallowing glass after glass, haunted by her fixed idea. She
+began by making me the recipient of meaningless and interminable
+confidences with regard to her sensations as a young girl. She went on
+and on, her eyes rather wandering, brilliant, her tongue untied, and
+her light ideas rolling themselves out endlessly like the blue
+telegraph-paper which is moved on without stopping by the bobbin and
+which keeps extending its length to the click of the electric
+apparatus which covers it with unknown words.
+
+"From time to time she asked me:
+
+"'Am I tipsy?'
+
+"'No, not yet.'
+
+"And she went on drinking.
+
+"She was so in a little while, not so tipsy as to lose her senses, but
+tipsy enough to tell the truth, as it seemed to me.
+
+"To her confidences as to her emotions while a young girl succeeded
+more intimate confidences as to her relations with her husband. She
+made them to me without restraint till she wearied me with them, under
+this pretext, which she repeated a hundred times: 'I can surely tell
+everything to you. To whom could I tell everything if it were not to
+you?' So I was made acquainted with all the habits, all the defects,
+all the fads and the most secret fancies of her husband.
+
+"And by way of claiming my approval she asked: 'Isn't he a flat? Do
+you think he has taken a feather out of me? eh? So, the first time I
+saw you, I said to myself: "Let me see! I like him, and I'll take him
+for my lover." It was then you began mashing me.'
+
+"I must have presented an odd face to her eyes at that moment, for she
+could see it, tipsy though she was; and with great outbursts of
+laughter, she exclaimed: 'Ah! you big simpleton, you did go about it
+cautiously; but, when men pay attention to us, you dear blockhead, you
+see we like it, and then they must make quick work of it, and not keep
+us waiting. A man must be a ninny not to understand, by a mere glance
+at us, that we mean "Yes." Ah! I believe I was waiting for you, you
+stupid! I did not know what to do in order to make you see that I was
+in a hurry. Oh! yes, flowers, verses, compliments, more verses, and
+nothing else at all! I was very near letting you go, my fine fellow,
+you were so long in making up your mind. And only to think that half
+the men in the world are like you, while the other half, ha! ha! ha!'
+
+"This laugh of hers sent a cold shiver down my back. I stammered: 'The
+other half--what about the other half?'
+
+"She still went on drinking, her eyes steeped in the fumes of
+sparkling wine, her mind impelled by the imperious necessity for
+telling the truth which sometimes takes possession of drunkards.
+
+"She replied: 'Ah! the other half makes quick work of it--too quick;
+but, all the same, they are right. There are days when we don't hit it
+off with them; but there are days, too, when it all goes right, in
+spite of everything.... My dear, if you only knew how funny it is--the
+way the two kinds of men act! You see, the timid ones, such as you,
+you never could imagine what sort the others are and what they do,
+immediately, as soon as they find themselves alone with us. They are
+regular dare-devils! They get many a slap in the face from us, no
+doubt of that, but what does that matter? They know we're the sort
+that kiss and don't tell! They know us well, they do!'
+
+"I stared at her with the eyes of an Inquisitor, and with a mad desire
+to make her speak, to learn everything from her. How often had I put
+this question to myself: 'How do the other men behave towards the
+women who belong to us?' I was fully conscious of the fact that, from
+the way I saw two men talking to the same woman publicly in a
+drawing-room, these two men, if they found themselves, one after the
+other, all alone with her, would conduct themselves quite differently,
+although they were both equally well acquainted with her. We can guess
+at the first glance of the eye that certain beings, naturally endowed
+with the power of seduction, or only more lively, more daring than we
+are, reach after an hour's chat with a woman who pleases them, to a
+degree of intimacy to which we would not attain in a year. Well, do
+these men, these seducers, these bold adventurers, take, when the
+occasion presents itself to them, liberties with their hands and lips
+which to us, the timid ones, would appear odious outrages, but which
+women perhaps look on merely as pardonable effrontery, as indecent
+homages to their irresistible grace!
+
+"So I asked her: 'There are women, though, who think these men very
+improper?'
+
+"She threw herself back on her chair in order to laugh more at her
+ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which
+ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha!
+ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at
+once, all, you understand, and many other things, too.'
+
+"I felt myself horrified as if she had just revealed to me a monstrous
+thing.
+
+"'And you permit this, you women?'
+
+"'No, we don't permit it; we slap them in the face, but, for all that,
+they amuse us! And then with them one is always afraid, one is never
+easy. You must keep watching them the whole time; it is like fighting
+a duel. You have to keep staring into their eyes to see what they are
+thinking of or where they are putting their hands. They are
+blackguards, if you like, but they love us better than you do.'
+
+"A singular and unexpected sensation stole over me. Although a
+bachelor, and determined to remain a bachelor, I suddenly felt in my
+breast the spirit of a husband in the face of this impudent
+confidence. I felt myself the friend, the ally, the brother of all
+these confiding men who are, if not robbed, at least defrauded by all
+the rufflers of woman's waists.
+
+"It is this strange emotion, monsieur, that I am obeying at this
+moment, in writing to you, and in begging of you to address a warning
+note to the great army of easy-going husbands.
+
+"However, I had still some lingering doubts. This woman was drunk and
+must be lying.
+
+"I went on to inquire: 'How is it that you never relate these
+adventures to anyone, you women?'
+
+"She gazed at me with profound pity, and with such an air of sincerity
+that, for the moment, I thought she had been soberized by
+astonishment.
+
+"'We--But, my dear fellow, you are very foolish. Why do we never talk
+to you about these things? Ha! ha! ha! Does your valet tell you about
+his tips, his odd sous? Well, this is our little tip. The husband
+ought not to complain when we don't go farther. But how dull you are!
+To talk of these things would be to give the alarm to all ninnies! Ah!
+how dull you are!... And then what harm does it do as long as we don't
+yield?'
+
+"I felt myself in a great state of great confusion as I put this
+question to her:
+
+"'So then you have often been embraced by men?'
+
+"She answered, with an air of sovereign contempt for the man who could
+have any doubt on the subject:
+
+"'Faith!--Why, every woman has been often embraced.... Try it on with
+any of them, no matter whom, in order to see for yourself, you great
+goose! Look here! embrace Mme. de X! She is quite young, and quite
+virtuous. Embrace, my friend--embrace, and touch, you shall see. Ha!
+ha! ha!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All of a sudden she flung her glass straight at the chandelier. The
+champagne fell down in a shower, extinguished three wax-candles,
+stained the hangings, and deluged the table, while the broken glass
+was scattered about the dining-room. Then, she made an effort to seize
+the bottle to do the same with it, but I prevented her. After that,
+she burst out crying in a very loud tone--the nervous fit had come on,
+as I had anticipated....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some days later, I had almost forgotten this avowal of a tipsy woman
+when I chanced to find myself at an evening party with this Mme. de
+X---- whom my mistress had advised me to embrace. As I lived in the
+same direction as she did, I offered to drive her to her own door, for
+she was alone this evening. She accepted my offer.
+
+"As soon as we were in the carriage, I said to myself: 'Come! I must
+try it on!' But I had not the courage. I did not know how to make a
+start, how to begin the attack.
+
+"Then suddenly, the desperate courage of cowards came to my aid. I
+said to her: 'How pretty you were, this evening.'
+
+"She replied with a laugh: 'So then, this evening was an exception,
+since you only remarked it for the first time.'
+
+"I did not know what rejoinder to make. Certainly my gallantry was not
+making progress. After a little reflection, however, I managed to say:
+
+"'No, but I never dared to tell you.'
+
+"She was astonished:
+
+"'Why?'
+
+"'Because it is--it is a little difficult.'
+
+"'Difficult to tell a woman that she's pretty? Why, where did you
+come from? You should always tell us so, even when you only half think
+it ... because it always gives us pleasure to hear."...
+
+"I felt myself suddenly animated by a fantastic audacity, and,
+catching her round the waist, I raised my lips towards her mouth.
+
+"Nevertheless I seemed to be rather nervous about it, and not to
+appear so terrible to her. I must also have arranged and executed my
+movement very badly, for she managed to turn her head aside so as to
+avoid contact with my face, saying:
+
+"'Oh no--this is rather too much--too much.... You are too quick! Take
+care of my hair. You cannot embrace a woman who has her hair dressed
+like mine!'...
+
+"I resumed my former position in the carriage, disconcerted, unnerved
+by this repulse. But the carriage drew up before her gate; and she, as
+she stepped out of it, held out her hand to me, saying in her most
+gracious tones:
+
+"'Thanks, dear monsieur, for having seen me home ... and don't forget
+my advice!'
+
+"I saw her three days later. She had forgotten everything.
+
+"And I, monsieur, I am incessantly thinking of the other sort of
+men--the sort of men to whom a lady's hair is no obstacle, and who
+know how to seize every opportunity."...
+
+
+
+
+THE HORRIBLE
+
+
+The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained
+in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated or astride on
+garden-chairs, were smoking in front of the door, forming a circle
+round a table laden with cups and wineglasses.
+
+Their cigars shone like eyes in the darkness which, minute by minute,
+was growing thicker. They had been talking about a frightful accident
+which had occurred the night before--two men and three women drowned
+before the eyes of the guests in the river opposite.
+
+General de G---- remarked:
+
+"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.
+
+"The horrible, that well-known word, means much more than the
+terrible. A frightful accident like this moves, upsets, scares; it
+does not horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something
+more is needed than the excitation of the soul, something more than
+the spectacle of the dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense
+of mystery or a sensation of abnormal terror beyond the limits of
+nature. A man who dies, even in the most dramatic conditions, does not
+excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible, blood is not
+horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.
+
+"Hold on! here are two personal examples, which have shown me what is
+the meaning of horror:
+
+"It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating towards
+Pont-Audemer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting
+of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand men in disorder,
+disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to re-form at Havre.
+
+"The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
+eaten anything since the day before. They were flying rapidly, the
+Prussians not being far off.
+
+"All the Norman country, livid, dotted with the shadows of the trees
+surrounding the farms, extended under a black sky, heavy and sinister.
+
+"Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight save the confused
+sound, soft and undefined, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,
+mingled with the vague clink of pottingers or sabers. The men, bent,
+round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged
+themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed
+stride.
+
+"The skin of their hands stuck to the steel of their muskets'
+butt-ends, for it was freezing dreadfully that night. I frequently saw
+a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefooted, so
+much did his foot-gear bruise him; and with every step he left a
+little track of blood. Then, after some time, he sat down in a field
+for a few minutes' rest, and he never got up again. Every man who sat
+down was a dead man.
+
+"Should we have left behind us those poor exhausted soldiers, who
+fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had
+somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? Now, scarcely had they ceased
+to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their
+veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to
+the ground, closed their eyes, and in one second collapsed this
+overworked human mechanism. And they gradually sank down, their heads
+falling towards their knees, without, however, quite tumbling over,
+for their loins and their limbs lost their capacity for moving, and
+became as hard as wood, impossible to bend or to set upright.
+
+"And the rest of us, more robust, kept still straggling on, chilled to
+the marrow of our bones, advancing by dint of forced movement through
+that night, through that snow, through that cold and deadly country,
+crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the
+abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of death, of
+nothingness.
+
+"I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,
+old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.
+
+"They were looking out for an officer, believing that they had caught
+a spy. The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the
+stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice
+exclaimed: 'He must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling
+from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by
+leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and
+bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.
+
+"I wanted to speak! I was at that time in command of a battalion; but
+they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;
+they would have shot myself.
+
+"One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the last
+three days. He has been asking information from everyone about the
+artillery.'
+
+"I took it on myself to question this person.
+
+"'What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the
+army?'
+
+"He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,
+indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such
+an agitated air in my presence that I had no longer any real doubt
+that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept staring at
+me from under his eyes with humble, stupid, and crafty air.
+
+The men all round us exclaimed:
+
+"'To the wall! to the wall!'
+
+"I said to the gendarmes:
+
+"'Do you answer for the prisoner?'
+
+"I had not ceased speaking when a terrible push threw me on my back,
+and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown
+down, struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a
+tree. He fell in the snow, nearly dead already.
+
+"And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, re-loaded
+their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They
+fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of
+the corpse, and kept firing on at him, as people at a funeral keep
+sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.
+
+"But suddenly a cry arose of: 'The Prussians! the Prussians!'
+
+"And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this
+panic-stricken army in full flight.
+
+"The panic, generated by these shots fired at this vagabond, had
+filled his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that
+they were themselves the originators of the scare, rushed away and
+disappeared in the darkness.
+
+"I remained alone in front of the corpse with the two gendarmes whom
+their duty had compelled to stay with me.
+
+"They lifted up the riddled piece of flesh, bruised and bleeding.
+
+"'He must be examined,' said I to them.
+
+"And I handed them a box of vestas which I had in my pocket. One of
+the soldiers had another box. I was standing between the two.
+
+"The gendarme, who was feeling the body, called out:
+
+"'Clothed in a blue blouse, a trousers, and a pair of shoes.'
+
+"The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man went on, as he
+turned out his pockets:
+
+"'A horn knife, check handkerchief, a snuff-box, a bit of packthread,
+a piece of bread.'
+
+"The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after
+having handled the corpse for a long time, said:
+
+"'That is all.'
+
+"I said:
+
+"'Strip him. We shall perhaps find something near the skin.'
+
+"And, in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this
+task, I stood between them to give them light. I saw them, by the
+rapid and speedily extinguished flash of the match, take off the
+garments one by one, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh
+still warm, though lifeless.
+
+"And suddenly one of them exclaimed:
+
+"'Good God, General, it is a woman!'
+
+"I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain
+that moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the
+snow before this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a
+woman.
+
+"The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my
+opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory
+to adopt.
+
+"Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:
+
+"'Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom
+she had not heard from.'
+
+"And the other chimed in:
+
+"'Perhaps indeed that is so.'
+
+"And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to
+cry. And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, in that icy cold
+night, the midst of that gloomy pain, at the sight of this mystery, at
+the sight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word
+'Horror.'
+
+"Now I had the same sensation last year while interrogating one of the
+survivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter.
+
+"You know the details of this atrocious drama. It is possible,
+however, that you are unacquainted with them.
+
+"The Colonel traveled through the desert into the Soudan, and passed
+through the immense territory of the Touaregs, who are, in that great
+ocean of sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the
+Soudan to Algeria, a kind of pirates resembling those who ravaged the
+seas in former days.
+
+"The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of
+Chambaa, of Ouargla.
+
+"Now, one day, they pitched their camp in the middle of the desert,
+and the Arabs declared that, as the spring was a little farther away,
+they would go with all their camels to look for water.
+
+"Only one man warned the Colonel that he had been betrayed: Flatters
+did not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers,
+the doctors, and nearly all his officers.
+
+"They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels captured.
+
+"The Captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who had
+remained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis and
+sharpshooters, and they commenced the retreat, leaving behind the
+baggage and the provisions for want of camels to carry them.
+
+"Then they started on their journey through this solitude without
+shade and without limits, under the devouring sun which burned them
+from morning till night.
+
+"One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a
+tribute. They were poisoned. Nearly all the French died, and, among
+them, the last officer.
+
+"There now only remained a few spahis with their quartermaster,
+Pobequin, and some native sharpshooters of the Chambaa tribe. They had
+still two camels left. They disappeared one night along with two
+Arabs.
+
+"Then, the survivors understood that they were going to eat each other
+up, and, as soon as they discovered the flight of the two men with the
+two beasts, those who remained separated, and proceeded to march, one
+by one, through the soft sand, under the glare of a scorching sun, at
+a distance of more than a gunshot from each other.
+
+"So they went on all day, and, when they reached a spring, each of
+them came to drink at it in turn as soon as each solitary marcher had
+moved forward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they
+continued marching the whole day, raising, everywhere they passed, in
+that level burnt-up expanse, those little columns of dust which, at a
+distance, indicate those who are trudging through the desert.
+
+"But, one morning, one of the travelers made a sudden turn, and drew
+nearer to his neighbor. And they all stopped to look.
+
+"The man toward whom the famished soldier drew near did not fly, but
+lay flat on the ground, and took aim at the one who was coming on.
+When he believed he was within gunshot, he fired. The other was not
+hit, and he continued then to advance, and cocking his gun in turn,
+killed his comrade.
+
+"Then from the entire horizon, the others rushed to seek their share.
+And he who had killed the fallen man, cutting the corpse into pieces,
+distributed it.
+
+"And they once more placed themselves at fixed distances, these
+irreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which would bring
+them together.
+
+"For two days, they lived on this human flesh which they divided
+amongst each other. Then, the famine came back, and he who had killed
+the first man began killing afresh. And again, like a butcher, he cut
+up the corpse, and offered it to his comrades, keeping only his own
+portion of it.
+
+"And so this retreat of cannibals continued.
+
+"The last Frenchman, Pobequin, was massacred at the side of a well,
+the very night before the supplies arrived.
+
+"Do you understand now what I mean by the Horrible?"
+
+This was the story told us a few nights ago by General de G----.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
+
+
+Jacques de Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might
+go, and then he sat down at a table to write his letters.
+
+He thus finished every year by writing and dreaming. He made for
+himself a sort of review of things that had happened since last New
+Year's Day, things that were now all over and dead; and, in proportion
+as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a
+few lines, a cordial "Good morning" on the 1st of January.
+
+So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman's photograph,
+gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside
+a sheet of note-paper, he began:
+
+"My dear Irene.--You must have by this time the little souvenir which
+I sent you. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you."
+
+The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and
+down the room.
+
+For the last six months he had a mistress, not a mistress like the
+others, a woman with whom one engages in a passing intrigue, of the
+theatrical world or the "demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and
+won. He was no longer a young man, although he was still comparatively
+young for a man, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and
+practical spirit.
+
+Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew
+up every year the balance sheet of friendships that were ended or
+freshly contracted, of circumstances and persons that had entered into
+his life.
+
+His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the
+precision of a merchant making a calculation, what was the state of
+his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it
+would be in the future.
+
+He found there a great and deep affection, made up of tenderness,
+gratitude, and the thousand subtle ties which give birth to long and
+powerful attachments.
+
+A ring of the bell made him start. He hesitated. Would he open? But he
+said to himself that it was his duty to open on this New Year's night,
+to open to the Unknown who knocks while passing, no matter whom it may
+be.
+
+So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, removed the
+bolts, turned the key, drew the door back, and saw his mistress
+standing pale as a corpse, leaning against the wall.
+
+He stammered.
+
+"What is the matter with you?"
+
+She replied,
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without servants?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not going out?"
+
+"No."
+
+She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she
+was in the drawing-room, she sank into the sofa, and, covering her
+face with her hands, began to weep dreadfully.
+
+He knelt down at her feet, seized hold of her hands to remove them
+from her eyes, so that he might look at them, and exclaim,
+
+"Irene, Irene, what is the matter with you? I implore of you to tell
+me what is the matter with you?"
+
+Then, in the midst of her sobs she murmured,
+
+"I can no longer live like this."
+
+He did not understand.
+
+"Live like this? What do you mean?"...
+
+"Yes. I can no longer live like this.... I have endured so much.... He
+struck me this afternoon."
+
+"Who, your husband?"
+
+"Yes, my husband."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+He was astonished, having never suspected that her husband could be
+brutal. He was a man of the world, of the better class, a clubman, a
+lover of horses, a theater goer, and an expert swordsman; he was
+known, talked about, appreciated everywhere, having very courteous
+manners, a very mediocre intellect, an absence of education and of the
+real culture needed in order to think like all well-bred people, and
+finally a respect for all conventional prejudices.
+
+He appeared to devote himself to his wife, as a man ought to do in the
+case of wealthy and well-bred people. He displayed enough of anxiety
+about her wishes, her health, her dresses, and, beyond that, left her
+perfectly free.
+
+Randal, having become Irene's friend, had a right to the affectionate
+hand-clasp which every husband endowed with good manners owes to his
+wife's intimate acquaintances. Then, when Jacques, after having been
+for some time the friend, became the lover, his relations with the
+husband were more cordial, as is fitting.
+
+Jacques had never dreamed that there were storms in this household,
+and he was scared at this unexpected revelation.
+
+He asked,
+
+"How did it happen? tell me."
+
+Thereupon she related a long history, the entire history of her life
+since the day of her marriage, the first discussion arising out of a
+mere nothing, then accentuating itself with all the estrangement which
+grows up each day between two opposite types of character.
+
+Then came quarrels, a complete separation, not apparent, but real;
+next, her husband showed himself aggressive, suspicious, violent. Now,
+he was jealous, jealous of Jacques, and this day even, after a scene,
+he had struck her.
+
+She added with decision, "I will not go back to him. Do with me what
+you like."
+
+Jacques sat down opposite to her, their knees touching each other. He
+caught hold of her hands.
+
+"My dear love, you are going to commit a gross, an irreparable folly.
+If you want to quit your husband, put wrongs on one side, so that your
+situation as a woman of the world may be saved."
+
+She asked, as she cast at him a restless glance:
+
+"Then, what do you advise me?"
+
+"To go back home and to put up with your life there till the day when
+you can obtain either a separation or a divorce, with the honors of
+war."
+
+"Is not this thing which you advise me to do a little cowardly?"
+
+"No; it is wise and reasonable. You have a high position, a reputation
+to safeguard, friends to preserve, and relations to deal with. You
+must not lose all these through a mere caprice."
+
+She rose up and said with violence,
+
+"Well, no! I cannot have any more of it! It is at an end! it is at an
+end!"
+
+Then, placing her two hands on her lover's shoulders, and looking at
+him straight in the face, she asked,
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Really and truly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then keep me."
+
+He exclaimed,
+
+"Keep you? In my own house? Here? Why you are mad. It would mean
+losing you for ever; losing you beyond hope of recall! You are mad!"
+
+She replied slowly and seriously, like a woman who feels the weight of
+her words,
+
+"Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not
+play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either
+lose me or take me."
+
+"My dear Irene, in that case, obtain your divorce, and I will marry
+you."
+
+"Yes, you will marry me in--two years at the soonest. Yours is a
+patient love."
+
+"Look here! Reflect! If you remain here, he'll come to-morrow to take
+you away, and seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has right
+and law on his side."
+
+"I did not ask you to keep me in your own house, Jacques, but to take
+me anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have
+made a mistake. Good-bye!"
+
+She turned round and went towards the door so quickly that he was only
+able to catch hold of her when she was outside the room.
+
+"Listen, Irene."
+
+She struggled and did not want to listen to him any longer, her eyes
+full of tears, and with these words only on her lips,
+
+"Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!"
+
+He made her sit down by force, and falling once more on his knees at
+her feet, he now brought forward a number of arguments and counsels to
+make her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He
+omitted nothing which he deemed it necessary to say to convince her,
+finding even in his very affection for her motives of persuasion.
+
+As she remained silent and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to
+listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.
+
+When he had finished speaking, she only replied:
+
+"Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that
+I may rise up."
+
+"Look here, Irene."
+
+"Will you let me go?"
+
+"Irene ... is your resolution irrevocable?"
+
+"Do let me go."
+
+"Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of
+yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?"
+
+"Yes ... let me go!"
+
+"Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away
+to-morrow morning."
+
+She rose up in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:
+
+"No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion."
+
+"Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to
+say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is
+at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey."
+
+She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked,
+in a very calm voice:
+
+"Explain, then."
+
+"How is that? What do you wish me to explain?"
+
+"Everything--everything that you have thought about before coming to
+this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do."
+
+"But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you
+are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to
+share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it."
+
+"It is not natural to change one's opinion so quickly."
+
+"Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or
+devotion. On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said this to
+myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case:
+'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets
+her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far
+as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question
+of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive
+and yielding disposition.
+
+"Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value,
+possesses in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into
+account the conditions under which it generally takes place.
+
+"Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no
+attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart
+is free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him,
+when a man who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that
+they pledge themselves towards each other by this mutual and free
+agreement much more than by the 'Yes' uttered in the presence of the
+Mayor's sash.
+
+"I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be
+more intimate, more real, more healthy, than if all the sacraments had
+consecrated it.
+
+"This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it,
+because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her
+honor, her life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers,
+all catastrophies, because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid
+act, because she is prepared, determined to brave everything--her
+husband who might kill her, and society which may cast her out. This
+is why she is respectable in her conjugal infidelity, this is why her
+lover, in taking her, must also have foreseen everything, and
+preferred her to everything whatever may happen. I have nothing more
+to say. I spoke in the beginning like a man of sense whose duty it was
+to warn you; and now there is left in me only one man--the man who
+loves you. Say, then, what am I to do!"
+
+Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips; she said to him in a low
+tone:
+
+"It is not true, darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does
+not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you
+would do. I wished for a New Year's gift--the gift of your
+heart--another gift besides the necklace you have sent me. You have
+given it to me. Thanks! Thanks!... God be thanked for the happiness
+you have given me!"
+
+
+
+
+BESIDE A DEAD MAN
+
+
+He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him sitting down every
+day at two o'clock under the windows of the hotel, facing the tranquil
+sea on an open-air bench. He remained for some time without moving, in
+the heat of the sun gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now
+and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with vaporous
+summits which shuts in Mentone: then, with a very slow movement, he
+crossed his long legs, so thin that they seemed two bones, around
+which fluttered the cloth of his trousers, and he opened a book, which
+was always the same. And then he did not stir any more, but read on,
+read on with his eye and his mind; all his expiring body seemed to
+read, all his soul plunged, lost itself, disappeared, in this book, up
+to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up
+and re-entered the hotel.
+
+He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in
+his own room, and spoke to nobody.
+
+A vague curiosity attracted me to him. One day I sat down by his side,
+having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of De
+Musset's poems.
+
+And I began to run through "Rolla."
+
+Suddenly my neighbor said to me, in good French:
+
+"Do you know German, monsieur?"
+
+"Not at all, monsieur."
+
+"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I
+could have lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable
+thing--this book which I hold in my hand."
+
+"What is it pray?"
+
+"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand.
+All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."
+
+I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at those forms
+incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of
+the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.
+
+And De Musset's verses arose in my memory:
+
+    "Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
+    Or does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"
+
+And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious
+sarcasm, of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German
+philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.
+
+Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant or let us be
+enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his
+disdain and of his disenchantment.
+
+A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic
+ideal, and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence
+of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women,
+crushed the illusions of hearts and accomplished the most gigantic
+talk ever attempted by skepticism. He passed over everything with his
+mocking spirit, and left everything empty. And even to-day those who
+execrate him seem to carry portions of his thought, in spite of
+themselves, in their own souls.
+
+"So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?" I said
+to the German.
+
+He smiled sadly.
+
+"Up to the time of his death, monsieur."
+
+And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
+supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came
+near him.
+
+He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
+French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a
+glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the
+midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable
+laugh, eating and tearing ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a
+dog tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.
+
+He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
+scared and terrified:--"I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."
+
+Then he added,
+
+"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even
+after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it not generally
+known, if it has any interest for you."
+
+And he began, in a tired voice, interrupted by frequent fits of
+coughing.
+
+"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch,
+in turn, two by two, till morning.
+
+"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast, and gloomy. Two
+wax candles were burning on the bedside stand.
+
+"It was midnight when I took up my task of watching along with one of
+our comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment,
+and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.
+
+"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew
+so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed
+to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move, and to speak. His
+thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more
+than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him.
+His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead.
+A sense of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable
+spirit.
+
+"The bodies of these men disappear, but they remain themselves; and in
+the night which follows the stoppage of their heart's beatings, I
+assure you, monsieur, they are terrifying.
+
+"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
+sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are
+like jets of flame flung, by means of some words, into the darkness of
+the Unknown Life.
+
+"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we
+stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face with
+its eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed,
+on the point of fainting. I faltered:
+
+"'I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you, I am not
+well.'
+
+"And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from
+the corpse.
+
+"Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining
+room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.
+
+"I took one of the wax candles which burned on the bedside stand, and
+I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end
+of the adjoining apartment, so as to be able to see from where we were
+the bed and the corpse, clearly revealed by the light.
+
+"But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his
+immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was
+flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful smell of the
+decomposed body came towards us and penetrated us, sickening and
+indefinable.
+
+"Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound,
+came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him,
+and we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something
+white flying over the bed, falling on the carpet, and vanishing under
+an armchair.
+
+"We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything,
+distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at
+each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed so fiercely
+that our clothes swelled over our chests. I was the first to speak.
+
+"'You saw?'
+
+"'Yes, I saw.'
+
+"'Can it be that he is not dead?'
+
+"'Why not, when the body is putrefying?'
+
+"'What are we to do?'
+
+"My companion said in a hesitating tone:
+
+"'We must go and look.'
+
+"I took our wax candle and I entered first, searching with my eye
+through all the large apartment with its dark corners. There was not
+the least movement now, and I approached the bed. But I stood
+transfixed with stupor and fright: Schopenhauer was no longer
+laughing! He was grinning in a horrible fashion, with his lips pressed
+together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out:
+
+"'He is not dead!'
+
+"But the terrible odor rose up to my nose and stifled me. And I no
+longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, scared as if in the
+presence of the apparition.
+
+"Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
+Then, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his
+glance, and I saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the
+bed, all white on the dark carpet, open as if to bite, Schopenhauer's
+set of artificial teeth.
+
+"The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out
+of his mouth.
+
+"I was really frightened that day, monsieur."
+
+And as the sun was sinking towards the glittering sea, the consumptive
+German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the
+hotel.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER
+
+
+"My darlings," said the Comtesse, "you must go to bed."
+
+The three children, two girls and a boy, rose up, and went to kiss
+their grandmother.
+
+Then, they came to say "Good night" to M. le Curé, who had dined at
+the chateau, as he did every Thursday.
+
+The Abbé Mauduit put two of the young ones sitting on his knees,
+passing his long arms clad in black behind the children's necks; and,
+drawing their heads towards him with a paternal movement, he kissed
+each of them on the forehead with a long, tender kiss.
+
+Then, he again set them down on the ground, and the little beings went
+off, the boy in front, and the girls behind.
+
+"You are fond of children, M. le Curé," said the Comtesse.
+
+"Very fond, Madame."
+
+The old woman raised her bright eyes towards the priest.
+
+"And--has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes."
+
+He became silent, hesitated, and then added: "But I was never made for
+ordinary life."
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest: I followed my own
+path."
+
+The Comtesse kept staring at him:
+
+"Look here, M. le Curé, tell me this--tell me how it was you resolved
+to renounce for ever what makes us love life--the rest of us--all that
+consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to
+separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the
+family. You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy
+person nor a sad person. Was it some strange occurrence, some sorrow,
+that led you to take life-long vows?"
+
+The Abbé Mauduit rose up and advanced towards the fire, then drew
+towards the flames the big shoes such as country priests generally
+wear. He seemed still hesitating as to what reply he should make.
+
+He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years
+he had been the pastor of the parish of Sainte-Antoine-du-Rocher. The
+peasants said of him: "There's a good man for you!" And indeed he was
+a good man, benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all,
+generous. Like Saint Martin, he had cut his cloak in two. He freely
+laughed, and wept too for very little, just like a woman,--a thing
+that prejudiced him more or less in the hard minds of the country
+people.
+
+The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of
+Rocher, in order to bring up her grand-children, after the successive
+deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to
+her curé, and used to say of him: "He has a kind heart!"
+
+He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the chateau, and they
+were close friends, with the open and honest friendship of old people.
+
+She persisted:
+
+"Look here M. le Curé! 'tis your turn now to make a confession!"
+
+He repeated: "I was not made for a life like everybody else. I saw it
+myself fortunately in time, and I have had many proofs since that I
+had made no mistake on the point.
+
+"My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and rather rich, had much
+ambition on my account. They sent me to a boarding-school while I was
+very young. You cannot conceive what a boy may suffer at college, by
+the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life
+without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young
+people have often hearts more sensitive than one supposes, and by
+shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may
+develop to an excessive extent a sensibility which is of an overstrung
+kind, and which becomes sickly and dangerous.
+
+"I scarcely ever played; I never had companions; I passed my hours in
+looking back to my home with regret; I spent the whole night weeping
+in my bed. I sought to bring up before my mind recollections of my own
+home, trifling recollections of little things, little events. I
+thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost
+imperceptibly an over sensitive youth to whom the slightest annoyances
+were dreadful griefs.
+
+"Together with this I remained taciturn, self-absorbed without
+expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was
+brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly
+excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a
+state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost complete
+development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, an
+unjust imposition can be as great a pang as the death of a friend
+afterwards? Does anyone render an exact account to himself of the fact
+that certain young souls have with very little cause, terrible
+emotions, and are in a very short time diseased and incurable souls?
+
+"This was my case. This faculty of regret developed itself in me in
+such a fashion that my existence became a martyrdom.
+
+"I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
+acquired a sensibility, or rather a sensitivity so lively that my soul
+resembled a living wound. Everything that touched it produced in it
+twitchings of pain, frightful vibrations, and consequently true
+ravages. Happy are the men whom nature has buttressed with
+indifference and armed with stoicism.
+
+"I reached my sixteenth year. An excessive timidity had come to me
+from this aptitude to suffer on account of everything. Feeling myself
+unprotected against all the attacks of chance or fate, I feared every
+contact, every approach, every event. I lived on the watch as if under
+the constant threat of an unknown and always expected misfortune. I
+did not feel enough of boldness either to speak or to act publicly. I
+had, indeed, the sensation that life is a battle, a dreadful conflict
+in which one receives terrible blows, grievous, mortal wounds. In
+place of cherishing, like all men, the hope of good-fortune on the
+morrow, I only kept a confused fear of it, and I felt in my own mind a
+desire to conceal myself to avoid that combat in which I would be
+vanquished and slain.
+
+"As soon as my studies were finished, they gave me six months' time
+to choose a career. A very simple event made me see clearly all of a
+sudden into myself, showed me the diseased condition of my mind, made
+me understand the danger, and caused me to make up my mind to fly from
+it.
+
+"Verdiers is a little town surrounded with plains and woods. In the
+central streets stands my parents' house. I now passed my days far
+from this dwelling which I had so much regretted, so much desired.
+Dreams were awakened in me, and I walked all alone in the fields in
+order to let them escape and fly away. My father and my mother, quite
+occupied with business, and anxious about my future, talked to me only
+about their profits or about my possible plans. They were fond of me
+in the way that hard-headed, practical people are; they had more
+reason than heart in their affection for me. I lived imprisoned in my
+thoughts, and trembling with my eternal uneasiness.
+
+"Now, one evening, after a long walk, I saw, as I was making my way
+home with great strides so as not to be late, a dog trotting towards
+me. He was a species of red spaniel, very lean, with long curly ears.
+
+"When he was ten paces away from me he stopped. I did the same. Then
+he began wagging his tail, and came over to me with short steps and
+nervous movements of his whole body, going down on his paws as if
+appealing to me, and softly shaking his head. He then made a show of
+crawling with an air so humble, so sad, so suppliant, that I felt the
+tears coming into my eyes. I came near him; he ran away, then he came
+back again; and I bent down, trying to coax him to approach me with
+soft words. At last, he was within reach of my hands, and I gently
+caressed him with the most careful touch.
+
+"He grew bold, rose up bit by bit, laid his paws on my shoulders, and
+began to lick my face. He followed me into the house.
+
+"This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because he
+returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
+exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way
+that we were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated
+and without defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted
+my side. He slept at the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of
+the objections of my parents, and he followed me in my solitary walks.
+
+"I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass.
+Sam immediately rushed up, fell asleep on my knees, and lifted up my
+hand with the end of his snout so that I might caress him.
+
+"One day towards the end of June, as we were on the road from
+Saint-Pierre-de-Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming
+along. Its four horses were going at a gallop with its yellow box
+seat, and imperial crowned with black leather. The coachman cracked
+his whip; a cloud of dust rose up under the wheels of the heavy
+vehicle, then floated behind, just as a cloud would do.
+
+"And, all of a sudden, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps
+frightened by the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it.
+A horse's foot knocked him down. I saw him rolling over, turning
+round, falling back again on all fours, and then the entire coach
+gave two big shakes, and behind it I saw something quivering in the
+dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were
+hanging through his stomach, which had been ripped open, and fell in
+spurts of blood to the ground. He tried to get up, to walk, but he
+could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them,
+as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he howled
+dreadfully, mad with pain.
+
+"He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and
+suffered. I was confined to my own room for a month.
+
+"Now, one night, my father, enraged at seeing me in such a state for
+so little, exclaimed:
+
+"'How then will it be when you have real griefs--if you lose your wife
+or children?'
+
+"And I began to see clearly into myself. I understood why all the
+small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the importance of a
+catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a way that I suffered
+dreadfully from everything, that every painful impression was
+multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious fear of life
+took possession of me. I was without passions, without ambitions; I
+resolved to sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure sorrows.
+Existence is short, but I made up my mind to spend it in the service
+of others, in relieving their troubles and enjoying their happiness.
+By having no direct experience of either one or the other, I would
+only be conscious of passionless emotions.
+
+"And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me,
+ravages me! But what would be for me an intolerable affliction has
+become commiseration, pity.
+
+"These sorrows which I have every day to concern myself about I could
+not endure if they fell on my own heart. I could not have seen one of
+my children die without dying myself. And I have, in spite of
+everything, preserved such an obscure and penetrating fear of
+circumstances, that the sight of the postman entering my house makes a
+shiver pass every day through my veins, and yet I have nothing to be
+afraid of now."
+
+The Abbé Mauduit ceased speaking. He stared into the fire in the huge
+grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown portion
+of existence which he would have been able to live if he had been more
+fearless in the face of suffering.
+
+He added, then, in a subdued tone:
+
+"I was right. I was not made for this world."
+
+The Comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long
+silence, she remarked:
+
+"For my part, if I had not my grand-children, I believe I would not
+have the courage to live."
+
+And the curé rose up without saying another word.
+
+As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she conducted him herself
+to the door which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall
+shadow lit up by the reflection of the lamp disappearing through the
+gloom of night.
+
+Then she came back and sat down before the fire, and she pondered over
+many things on which we never think when we are young.
+
+
+
+
+A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
+
+
+Maitre Saval, notary at Vernon, was passionately fond of music. Still
+young, though already bald, always carefully shaved, a little
+corpulent, as it was fitting, wearing a gold pince-nez instead of
+old-fashioned spectacles, active, gallant, and joyous, he passed in
+Vernon for an artist. He thrummed on the piano and played on the
+violin, and gave musical evenings where interpretations were given of
+new operas.
+
+He had even what is called a bit of a voice; nothing but a bit, a very
+little bit of a voice; but he managed it with so much taste that cries
+of "Bravo!" "Exquisite!" "Surprising!" "Adorable!" issued from every
+throat as soon as he had murmured the last note.
+
+He was a subscriber to a music-publisher in Paris, who addressed new
+pieces to him, and he sent from time to time to the high society of
+the town, little notes something in this style:
+
+"You are invited to be present on Monday evening at the house of M.
+Saval, notary, Vernon, at the first production of 'Sais.'"
+
+A few officers, gifted with good voices, formed the chorus. Two or
+three of the vinedressers' families also sang. The notary filled the
+part of leader of the orchestra with so much correctness that the
+bandmaster of the 190th regiment of the line said to him, one day, at
+the _Café_ de l'Europe:
+
+"Oh! M. Saval is a master. It is a great pity that he did not adopt
+the career of an artist."
+
+When his name was mentioned in a drawing-room, there was always
+somebody found to declare: "He is not an amateur; he is an artist, a
+genuine artist."
+
+And two or three persons repeated, in a tone of profound conviction:
+
+"Oh! yes, a genuine artist," laying particular stress on the word
+"genuine."
+
+Every time that a new work was interpreted at a big Parisian theater,
+M. Saval paid a visit to the capital.
+
+Now, last year, according to his custom, he went to hear "Henry VIII."
+He then took the express which arrives in Paris at 4:30 p.m.,
+intending to return by the 12:35 a.m. train so as not to have to sleep
+at a hotel. He had put on evening dress, a black coat and white tie,
+which he concealed under his overcoat with the collar turned up.
+
+As soon as he had planted his foot on the Rue d' Amsterdam, he felt
+himself in quite a jovial mood. He said to himself:
+
+"Decidedly the air of Paris does not resemble any other air. It has in
+it something indescribably stimulating, exciting, intoxicating, which
+fills you with a strange longing to gambol and to do many other
+things. As soon as I arrive here, it seems to me, all of a sudden,
+that I have taken a bottle of champagne. What a life one can lead in
+this city in the midst of artists! Happy are the elect, the great men
+who enjoy renown in such a city! What an existence is theirs!"
+
+And he made plans; he would have liked to know some of those
+celebrated men, to talk about them in Vernon, and to spend an evening
+with them from time to time in Paris.
+
+But suddenly an idea struck him. He had heard allusions to little
+_cafés_ in the outer boulevards at which well-known painters, men of
+letters, and even musicians gathered, and he proceeded to go up to
+Montmartre at a slow pace.
+
+He had two hours before him. He wanted to have a look-round. He passed
+in front of taverns frequented by belated Bohemians gazing at the
+different faces, seeking to discover the artists. Finally, he came to
+the sign of "The Dead Rat," and allured by the name, he entered.
+
+Five or six women, with their elbows resting on the marble tables,
+were talking in low tones about their love affairs, the quarrels of
+Lucie and Hortense, and the scoundrelism of Octave. They were no
+longer young, too fat or too thin, tired out, used up. You could see
+that they were almost bald; and they drank bocks like men.
+
+M. Saval sat down at some distance from them, and waited, for the hour
+for taking absinthe was at hand.
+
+A tall young man soon came in and took a seat beside him. The landlady
+called him M. "Romantin." The notary quivered. Was this the Romantin
+who had taken a medal at the last Salon?
+
+The young man made a sign to the waiter:
+
+"You will bring up my dinner at once, and then carry to my new studio,
+15, Boulevard de Clinchy, thirty bottles of beer and the ham I ordered
+this morning. We are going to have housewarming."
+
+M. Saval immediately ordered dinner. Then, he took off his overcoat,
+so that his dress coat and his white tie could be seen. His neighbor
+did not seem to notice him. He had taken up a newspaper, and was
+reading it. M. Saval glanced sideways at him, burning with the desire
+to speak to him.
+
+Two young men entered, in red vests, and peaked beards in the fashion
+of Henry III. They sat down opposite Romantin.
+
+The first of the pair said:
+
+"It is for this evening?"
+
+Romantin pressed his hand.
+
+"T believe you, old chap, and everyone will be there, I have Bonnat,
+Guillemet, Gervex, Beraud, Hebert, Duez, Clairin, and Jean-Paul
+Laurens. It will be a glorious blow out! And women too! Wait till you
+see! Every actress without exception--of course I mean, you know, all
+those who have nothing to do this evening."
+
+The landlord of the establishment came across.
+
+"Do you often have this housewarming?"
+
+The painter replied:
+
+"I believe you, every three months, each quarter."
+
+M. Saval could not restrain himself any longer, and in a hesitating
+voice said:
+
+"I beg your pardon for intruding on you, monsieur, but I heard your
+name pronounced, and I would be very glad to know if you really are M.
+Romantin, whose work in the last Salon I have so much admired?"
+
+The painter answered:
+
+"I am the very person, monsieur."
+
+The notary then paid the artist a very well-turned compliment, showing
+that he was a man of culture.
+
+The painter, gratified, thanked him politely in reply.
+
+Then they chatted. Romantin returned to the subject of his
+housewarming, going into details as to the magnificence of the
+forthcoming entertainment.
+
+M. Saval questioned him as to all the men he was going to receive,
+adding:
+
+"It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune for a stranger to
+meet at one time so many celebrities assembled in the studio of an
+artist of your rank."
+
+Romantin, overcome, answered:
+
+"If it would be agreeable to you, come."
+
+M. Saval accepted the invitation with enthusiasm, reflecting:
+
+"I'll always have time enough to see 'Henri VIII.'"
+
+Both of them had finished their meal. The notary insisted on paying
+the two bills, wishing to repay his neighbor's civilities. He also
+paid for the drinks of the young fellows in red velvet; then he left
+the establishment with the painter.
+
+They stopped in front of a very long house, by no means high, of which
+all the first story had the appearance of an interminable
+conservatory. Six studios stood in a row with their fronts facing the
+boulevards.
+
+Romantin was the first to enter, and, ascending the stairs, he opened
+a door, and lighted a match and then a candle.
+
+They found themselves in an immense apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted of three chairs, two easels, and a few sketches lying on the
+ground along the walls. M. Saval remained standing at the door in a
+stupefied state of mind.
+
+The painter remarked:
+
+"Here you are! we've got to the spot; but everything has yet to be
+done."
+
+Then, examining the high, bare apartment, whose ceiling was veiled in
+shadows, he said:
+
+"We might make a great deal out of this studio."
+
+He walked round it, surveying it with the utmost attention, then went
+on:
+
+"I have a mistress who might easily give a helping hand. Women are
+incomparable for hanging drapery. But I sent her to the country for
+to-day in order to get her off my hands this evening. It is not that
+she bores me, but she is too much lacking in the ways of good society.
+It would be embarrassing to my guests."
+
+He reflected for a few seconds, and then added:
+
+"She is a good girl, but not easy to deal with. If she knew that I was
+holding a reception, she would tear out my eyes."
+
+M. Saval had not even moved; he did not understand.
+
+The artist came over to him.
+
+"Since I have invited you, you are going to give me some help."
+
+The notary said emphatically:
+
+"Make any use of me you please. I am at your disposal."
+
+Romantin took off his jacket.
+
+"Well, citizen, to work! We are first going to clean up."
+
+He went to the back of the easel, on which there was a canvas
+representing a cat, and seized a very worn-out broom.
+
+"I say! Just brush up while I look after the lighting."
+
+M. Saval took the broom, inspected it, and then began to sweep the
+floor very awkwardly, raising a whirlwind of dust.
+
+Romantin, disgusted, stopped him: "Deuce take it! you don't know how
+to sweep the floor! Look at me!"
+
+And he began to roll before him a heap of grayish sweepings, as if he
+had done nothing else all his life. Then, he gave back the broom to
+the notary, who imitated him.
+
+In five minutes, such a cloud of dust filled the studio that Romantin
+asked:
+
+"Where are you? I can't see you any longer."
+
+M. Saval, who was coughing, came near to him. The painter said to him:
+
+"How are you going to manage to get up a chandelier?"
+
+The other, stunned, asked:
+
+"What chandelier?"
+
+"Why, a chandelier to light--a chandelier with wax candles."
+
+The notary did not understand.
+
+He answered: "I don't know."
+
+The painter began to jump about, cracking his fingers.
+
+"Well, monseigneur, I have found out a way."
+
+Then he went more calmly:
+
+"Have you got five francs about you?"
+
+M. Saval replied:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+The artist said:
+
+"Well! you'll go and buy for me five francs' worth of wax candles
+while I go and see the cooper."
+
+And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into the street. At the
+end of five minutes, they had returned one of them with the wax
+candles, and the other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged
+his hand into a cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which
+he fixed in the form of a crown around the hoop.
+
+He then came down, and went to borrow a ladder from the door-keeper,
+after having explained that he had obtained the favors of the old
+woman by painting the portrait of her cat exhibited on the easel.
+
+When he mounted the ladder, he said to M. Saval:
+
+"Are you active?"
+
+The other, without understanding, answered:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to
+the ring of the ceiling. Then, you must put a wax candle in each
+bottle, and light it. I tell you I have a genius for lighting up. But
+off with your coat, damn it! You are just like a Jeames."
+
+The door was opened brutally. A woman appeared, with her eyes
+flashing, and remained standing on the threshold.
+
+Romantin gazed at her with a look of terror.
+
+She waited some seconds, crossing her arms over her breast, and then,
+in a shrill, vibrating, exasperated voice, said:
+
+"Ha! you sniveler, is this the way you leave me?"
+
+Romantin made no reply. She went on:
+
+"Ha! you scoundrel! You are again doing the swell, while you pack me
+off to the country. You'll soon see the way I'll settle your
+jollification. Yes, I'm going to receive your friends."
+
+She grew warmer:
+
+"I'm going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax
+candles...."
+
+Romantin uttered one soft word:
+
+"Mathilde...."
+
+But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on:
+
+"Wait a little my fine fellow! wait a little!"
+
+Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands:
+
+"Mathilde...."
+
+But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials
+of her wrath with strong words and reproaches. They flowed out of her
+mouth, like a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it. The words
+hurled out, seemed struggling for exit. She stuttered, stammered,
+yelled, suddenly recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a
+curse.
+
+He seized her hands without her having even noticed it. She did not
+seem to see anything, so much occupied was she in holding forth and
+relieving her heart. And suddenly she began to weep. The tears flowed
+from her eyes without making her stem the tide of her complaints. But
+her words had taken a howling, shrieking tone; they were a continuous
+cry interrupted by sobbings. She commenced afresh twice or three
+times, till she stopped as if something were choking her, and at last
+she ceased with a regular flood of tears.
+
+Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.
+
+"Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen. You must be reasonable. You
+know, if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these
+gentlemen for the medal I got at the Salon. I cannot receive women.
+You ought to understand that. It is not the same with artists as with
+other people."
+
+She stammered in the midst of her tears:
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this?"
+
+He replied:
+
+"It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I'm
+going to see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will
+remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I'll come back as soon as
+it's over."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"Yes, but you will not begin over again?"
+
+"No, I swear to you!"
+
+He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:
+
+"My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If any one arrives
+in my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?"
+
+And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her
+handkerchief as she went along.
+
+Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him
+in order. Then he lighted the wax candles, and waited.
+
+He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin
+did not return. Then, suddenly, there was a dreadful noise on the
+stairs, a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular
+march like that of a Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by
+the steady tramp of feet. The door flew open, and a motley throng
+appeared--men and women in a row, holding one another arm in arm, in
+pairs, and kicking their heels on the ground, in proper time, advanced
+into the studio like a snake uncoiling itself. They howled:
+
+    "Come, and let us all be merry,
+    Pretty maids and soldiers gay!"
+
+M. Saval, thunderstruck, remained standing in evening dress under the
+chandelier. The procession of revelers caught sight of him, and
+uttered a shout:
+
+"A Jeames! A Jeames!"
+
+And they began whirling round him, surrounding him with a circle of
+vociferations. Then they took each other by the hand and went dancing
+about madly.
+
+He attempted to explain:
+
+"Messieurs--messieurs--mesdames--"
+
+But they did not listen to him. They whirled about, they jumped, they
+brawled.
+
+At last, the dancing ceased. M. Saval uttered the word:
+
+"Messieurs--"
+
+A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted
+him:
+
+"What's your name, my friend?"
+
+The notary, quite scared, said:
+
+"I am M. Saval."
+
+A voice exclaimed:
+
+"You mean Baptiste."
+
+A woman said:
+
+"Let the poor waiter alone! You'll end by making him get angry. He's
+paid to attend on us, and not to be laughed at by us."
+
+Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
+One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf
+of bread, and one a ham.
+
+The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage,
+and gave orders:
+
+"I say! Go and settle up the sideboard in the corner over there. You
+are to put the bottles at the left and the provisions at the right."
+
+Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: "But messieurs, I am a
+notary!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, and then a wild outburst of laughter.
+One suspicious gentleman asked:
+
+"How are you here?"
+
+He explained, telling about his project of going to the Opera, his
+departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he
+had spent the evening.
+
+They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
+applause, and called him Scheherazade.
+
+Romantin did not come back. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was
+presented to them so that he might begin his story over again. He
+declined; they forced him to relate it. They fixed him on one of the
+three chairs between two women who kept constantly filling his glass.
+He drank; he laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with
+his chair, and fell on the ground.
+
+From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however,
+that they undressed him, put him to bed, and that his stomach got
+sick.
+
+When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his
+feet against a cupboard, in a strange bed.
+
+An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
+last, she said:
+
+"Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get
+drunk like this?"
+
+He sat up in the bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten
+carcass out of here as quick as you can,--and lose no time about it!"
+
+He wanted to get up. He found that he was naked in the bed. His
+clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:
+
+"Madame, I--"
+
+Then he remembered.... What was he to do? He asked:
+
+"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"
+
+The door-keeper shouted:
+
+"Will you take your dirty carcass out of this so that he at any rate
+may not catch you here?"
+
+M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:
+
+"I haven't got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."
+
+He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends,
+and borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till
+evening.
+
+And, when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room
+in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a
+very inferior art.
+
+
+
+
+BOITELLE
+
+
+Pere Boitelle (Antoine) had the reputation through the whole county of
+a specialist in dirty jobs. Every time a pit, a dunghill, or a
+cesspool required to be cleared away, or a dirt-hole to be cleansed
+out he was the person employed to do it.
+
+He would come there with his nightman's tools and his wooden shoes
+covered with muck, and would set to work, whining incessantly about
+the nature of his occupation. When people asked him, then, why he did
+this loathsome work, he would reply resignedly:
+
+"Faith, 'tis for my children whom I must support. This brings me in
+more than anything else."
+
+He had, indeed, fourteen children. If anyone asked him what had become
+of them, he would say with an air of indifference:
+
+"There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at
+service, and five are married."
+
+When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he
+replied vivaciously:
+
+"I did not cross them. I crossed them in nothing. They married just as
+they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns out
+badly. I am a night-cart-man because my parents went against my
+likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others."
+
+Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:
+
+He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than
+another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, in truth. During
+his hours of freedom his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay,
+where the bird-dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a
+soldier from his own part of the country, he would slowly saunter
+along by cages where the parrots with green backs and yellow heads
+from the banks of the Amazon, the parrots with gray backs and red
+heads from Senegal, enormous macaws, which look like birds brought up
+in conservatories, with their flower-like feathers, their plumes and
+their tufts, the paroquets of every shape, who seem painted with
+minute care by that excellent miniaturist, God Almighty, and the
+little ones, all the little young birds, hopping about, yellow, blue,
+and variegated, mingling their cries with the noise of the quay, add
+to the din caused by the unloading of the vessels, as well as by
+passengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill, and
+deafening, as if from some distant, monstrous forest.
+
+Boitelle would stop with stained eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing and
+enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive cockatoos, who kept
+nodding their white or yellow top-knots towards the glaring red of his
+breeches and the copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that
+could talk, he put questions to it, and if it happened at the time to
+be disposed to reply and to hold a conversation with him, he would
+remain there till nightfall, filled with gayety and contentment. He
+also found heaps of fun in looking at the monkeys, and could conceive
+no greater luxury for a rich man than to possess these animals, just
+like cats and dogs. This kind of taste for the exotic he had in his
+blood, as people have a taste for the chase, or for medicine, or for
+the priesthood. He could not keep himself, every time the gates of the
+barracks opened, from going back to the quay, as if he felt himself
+drawn towards it by an irresistible longing.
+
+Now, on one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstacy before an
+enormous araruna, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward,
+and bridling up again as if making the court-curtseys of parrot-land,
+he saw the door of a little tavern adjoining the bird-dealer's shop
+opening, and his attention was attracted by a young negress, with a
+silk kerchief tied round her head, sweeping into the street the
+rubbish and the sand of the establishment.
+
+Boitelle's attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman,
+and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated
+with the greater astonishment and delight.
+
+The negress, having got rid of the sweepings of the tavern, raised her
+eyes, and, in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier's uniform. There
+she stood facing him with her broom in her hands as if she were
+carrying arms for him, while the araruna continued making curtseys.
+Now at the end of a few seconds the soldier began to get embarrassed
+by this attention, and he walked away gingerly so as not to present
+the appearance of beating a retreat.
+
+But he came back. Almost every day he passed in front of the Colonial
+tavern, and often he could distinguish through the window-panes the
+figure of the little black-skinned maid filling out "bocks" or glasses
+of brandy for the sailors of the port. Frequently, too, she would come
+out to the door on seeing him; soon, without even having exchanged a
+word they smiled at one another like acquaintances; and Boitelle felt
+his heart moved when he saw suddenly glittering between the dark lips
+of the girl her shining row of white teeth. At length he ventured one
+day to enter and was quite surprised to find that she could speak
+French like everyone else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she was
+good enough to accept a glassful, remained in the soldier's
+recollection, memorably delicious; and it grew into custom with him to
+come and absorb in this little tavern on the quay all the agreeable
+drinks which he could afford.
+
+For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts were
+constantly dwelling, to watch the black hand of the little maid
+pouring out something into his glass whilst her teeth, brighter than
+her eyes, showed themselves as she laughed. When they had kept company
+in this way for two months they became fast friends, and Boitelle,
+after his first astonishment at discovering that this negress was in
+her excellent principles as good as the best girls in the country,
+that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry, religion, and good
+conduct, loved her more on that account, and became so much smitten
+with her that he wanted to marry her.
+
+He told her about his intentions, which made her dance with joy.
+Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer,
+who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by
+an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only
+about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship,
+some hours after his departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre,
+he there abandoned to the care of this compassionate oyster-dealer
+the little black creature, who had been hidden on board his vessel, he
+could not tell how or why.
+
+The oyster-woman having died, the young negress became a servant at
+the Colonial tavern.
+
+Antoine Boitelle added: "This will be all right if the parents don't
+go against it. I will never go against them, you understand never! I'm
+going to say a word or two to them the first time I go back to the
+country."
+
+On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours'
+leave, he went to see his family, who cultivate a little farm at
+Tourteville near Yvetot.
+
+He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee
+baptized with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing
+his parents that he had found a girl answering so well to his likings
+in every way that there could not exist any other in all the world so
+perfectly suited to him.
+
+The old people, at this observation, immediately assumed a circumspect
+air, and wanted explanations. Besides he had concealed nothing from
+them except the color of her skin.
+
+She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean,
+well-conducted, and sensible. All these things were better than money
+would be in the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few
+sous, left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous,
+almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings' bank.
+The old people, overcome by his talk, and relying, too, on their own
+judgment, were gradually giving way, when he came to the delicate
+point. Laughing in rather a constrained fashion, he said:
+
+"There is only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip."
+
+They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very
+cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky
+race of which they had only seen samples amongst figures exhibited at
+Epinal. Then, they became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had
+proposed a union with the Devil.
+
+The mother said. "Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of
+her?"
+
+He replied, "Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere."
+
+The father interposed, "Black? Is it as black as the pot?"
+
+The son answered "Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but
+not disgustingly black. The Curé's cassock is black; but it is not
+uglier than a surplice, which is white."
+
+The father said, "Are there more black people besides her in her
+country?"
+
+And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed, "Certainly!"
+
+But the old man shook his head.
+
+"This must be disagreeable?"
+
+And the son:
+
+"It isn't more disagreeable than anything else, seeing that you get
+used to it in no time."
+
+The mother asked:
+
+"It doesn't soil linen more than other skins, this black skin?"
+
+"Not more than your own, as it is her proper color."
+
+Then after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should
+see this girl before coming to any decision and that the young
+fellow, whose period of services was coming to an end in the course of
+a month, should bring her to the house in order that they might
+examine her, and decide by talking the matter over whether or not she
+was too dark to enter the Boitelle family.
+
+Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22nd of May, the day
+of his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.
+
+She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover's parents,
+her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red, and
+blue were the prevailing colors, so that she had the appearance of one
+adorned for a national fete.
+
+At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her very
+much, and Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who
+commanded so much attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in
+which she took a seat by his side, she excited so much astonishment
+among the peasants that the people in the adjoining compartments got
+up on their benches to get a look at her, over the wooden partition,
+which divided the different portions of the carriage from one another.
+A child, at sight of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed
+his face in his mother's apron. Everything went off well, however, up
+to their arrival at their destination. But, when the train slackened
+its rate of motion as they drew near Yvetot, Antoine felt ill at ease,
+as he would have done at an inspection when he did not know his
+drill-practice. Then, as he put his head out through the carriage
+door, he recognized, some distance away, his father who was holding
+the bridle of the horse yoked to a car, and his mother who had made
+her way to the railed portion of the platform where a number of
+spectators had gathered.
+
+He stepped out first, gave his hand to his sweetheart, and holding
+himself erect, as if he were escorting a general, he advanced towards
+his family.
+
+The mother, on seeing this black lady, in variegated costume in her
+son's company, remained so stupefied that she could not open her
+mouth; and the father found it hard to hold the horse, which the
+engine or the negress caused to rear for some time without stopping.
+But Antoine, suddenly seized with the unmingled joy of seeing once
+more the old people, rushed forward with open arms, embraced his
+mother, embraced his father, in spite of the nag's fright, and then
+turning towards his companion, at whom the passengers on the platform
+stopped to stare with amazement, he proceeded to explain:
+
+"Here she is! I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece;
+but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort
+in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother
+about it."
+
+Thereupon Mere Boitelle, herself nearly frightened out of her wits,
+made a sort of curtsey, while the father took off his cap, murmuring:
+
+"I wish you good-luck!"
+
+Then, without further delay, they climbed up on the car, the two women
+at the lower end on seats, which made them jump up and down, as the
+vehicle went jolting along the road, and the two men outside on the
+front seat.
+
+Nobody spoke. Antoine, ill at ease, whistled a barrack-room air; his
+father lashed the nag; and his mother, from where she sat in the
+corner, kept casting sly glances at the negress, whose forehead and
+cheek-bones shone in the sunlight, like well-blacked shoes.
+
+Wishing to break the ice, Antoine turned round.
+
+"Well," said he, "we don't seem inclined to talk."
+
+"We must get time," replied the old woman.
+
+He went on:
+
+"Come! tell us the little story about that hen of yours that laid
+eight eggs."
+
+It was a funny anecdote of long standing in the family. But, as his
+mother still remained silent, paralyzed by emotion, he started the
+talking himself, and narrated, with much laughter on his own part,
+this memorable adventure. The father, who knew it by heart, brightened
+at the opening words of the narrative; his wife soon followed his
+example; and the negress herself, when he reached the drollest part of
+it, suddenly gave vent to a laugh so noisy, rolling, and torrent-like
+that the horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a little
+while.
+
+This served as the introduction to their acquaintanceship. The company
+at length began to chat.
+
+On reaching the house when they had all alighted, and he had conducted
+his sweetheart to a room, so that she might take off her dress, to
+avoid staining it, while she would be preparing a good dish intended
+to win the old people's affections while appealing to their stomachs,
+he drew aside his parents, near the door, and with beating heart,
+asked:
+
+"Well, what do you say now?"
+
+The father said nothing. The mother, less timid, exclaimed:
+
+"She is too black. No, indeed, this is too much for me. It turns my
+blood."
+
+"That may be, but it is only for the moment."
+
+Then they made their way into the interior of the house, where the
+good woman was somewhat affected at the spectacle of the negress
+engaged in cooking. She at once proceeded to assist her, with
+petticoats tucked up, active in spite of her age.
+
+The meal was an excellent one, very long, very enjoyable. When they
+had afterwards taken a turn together, Antoine said to his father:
+
+"Well dad, what do you say to this?"
+
+The peasant took care never to compromise himself.
+
+"I have no opinion about it. Ask your mother."
+
+So Antoine went back to his mother, and leading her to the end of the
+room, said:
+
+"Well mother, what do you think of her?"
+
+"My poor lad, she is really too black. If she were only a little less
+black, I would not go against you, but this is too much. One would
+think it was Satan!"
+
+He did not press her, knowing how obstinate the old woman had always
+been, but he felt a tempest of disappointment sweeping over his heart.
+He was turning over his mind what he ought to do, what plan he could
+devise, surprised, moreover, that she had not conquered them already
+as she had captivated himself. And they, all four, set out with slow
+steps through the cornfields, having again relapsed into silence.
+Whenever they passed a fence they saw a countryman sitting on the
+stile, and a group of brats climbed up to stare at them and everyone
+rushed out into the road to see the "black" whom young Boitelle had
+brought home with him. At a distance they noticed people scampering
+across the fields just as when the drum beats to draw public attention
+to some living phenomenon. Pere and Mere Boitelle, scared by this
+curiosity, which was exhibited everywhere through the country at their
+approach, quickened their pace, walking side by side, and leaving far
+behind their son, when his dark companion asked what his parents
+thought of her.
+
+He hesitatingly replied that they had not yet made up their minds.
+
+But, on the village-green, people rushed out of all the houses in a
+flutter of excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering rabble, old
+Boitelle took to his heels and regained his abode, whilst Antoine,
+swelling with rage, his sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically
+under the staring eyes which opened wide in amazement.
+
+He understood that it was at an end, and there was no hope for him,
+that he could not marry his negress, she also understood it; and as
+they drew near the farmhouse they both began to weep. As soon as they
+had got back to the house, she once more took off her dress to aid the
+mother in the household duties, and followed her everywhere to the
+dairy, to the stable, to the hen-house, taking on herself the hardest
+part of the work, repeating always, "Let me do it Madame Boitelle," so
+that, when night came on, the old woman, touched but inexorable, said
+to her son: "She is a good, all the same. 'Tis a pity she is so black;
+but indeed she is too much so. I couldn't get used to it. She must go
+back again. She is too, too black!"
+
+And young Boitelle said to his sweetheart:
+
+"She will not consent. She thinks you are too black. You must go back
+again. I will go with you to the train. No matter--don't fret. I am
+going to talk to them after you are started."
+
+He then conducted her to the railway-station, still cheering her with
+hope, and, when he had kissed her, he put her into the train, which he
+watched as it passed out of sight, his eyes swollen with tears.
+
+In vain did he appeal to the old people. They would never give their
+consent.
+
+And when he had told this story, which was known all over the country,
+Antoine Boitelle would always add:
+
+"From that time forward I have had no heart for anything--for anything
+at all. No trade suited me any longer, and so I became what I am--a
+nightcart-man."
+
+People would say to him:
+
+"Yet you got married."
+
+"Yes, and I can't say that my wife didn't please me, seeing that I've
+got fourteen children; but she is not the other one, oh no--certainly
+not! The other one, mark you, my negress, she had only to give me one
+glance, and I felt as if I were in Heaven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume
+VIII., by Guy de Maupassant
+
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII, by Guy de Maupassant
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII., by 
+Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Release Date: July 14, 2007 [EBook #22069]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>The Works of<br />
+
+Guy de Maupassant</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>VOLUME VIII</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>PIERRE ET JEAN</h2>
+
+<h3>AND OTHER STORIES</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY</h3>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1909, <span class="smcap">By</span></h5>
+<h4>BIGELOW, SMITH &amp; CO.</h4>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td></td><td class="tocpg f1">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#OF_THE_NOVEL">Pierre Et Jean</a></span>.</td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#DREAMS">Dreams</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#MOONLIGHT">Moonlight</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_CORSICAN_BANDIT">The Corsican Bandit</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_DEAD_WOMANS_SECRET">A Dead Woman's Secret</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_CAKE">The Cake</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_LIVELY_FRIEND">A Lively Friend</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_ORPHAN">The Orphan</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_BLIND_MAN">The Blind Man</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_WIFES_CONFESSION">A Wife's Confession</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#RELICS_OF_THE_PAST">Relics of the Past</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_PEDDLER">The Peddler</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_AVENGER">The Avenger</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#ALL_OVER">All Over</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#LETTER_FOUND_ON_A_DROWNED_MAN">Letter Found on a Drowned Man</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#MOTHER_AND_SON">Mother and Son</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_SPASM">The Spasm</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_DUEL">A Duel</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_LOVE_OF_LONG_AGO">The Love of Long Ago</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#AN_UNCOMFORTABLE_BED">An Uncomfortable Bed</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_WARNING_NOTE">A Warning Note</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#THE_HORRIBLE">The Horrible</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_NEW_YEARS_GIFT">A New Year's Gift</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#BESIDE_A_DEAD_MAN">Beside a Dead Man</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#AFTER">After</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#A_QUEER_NIGHT_IN_PARIS">A Queer Night in Paris</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap"><a href="#BOITELLE">Boitelle</a></span></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="OF_THE_NOVEL" id="OF_THE_NOVEL"></a>OF "THE NOVEL"</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;do not intend in these pages to put in a plea for this little novel.
+On the contrary, the ideas I shall try to set forth will rather
+involve a criticism of the class of psychological analysis which I
+have undertaken in <i>Pierre et Jean</i>. I propose to treat of novels in
+general.</p>
+
+<p>I am not the only writer who finds himself taken to task in the same
+terms each time he brings out a new book. Among many laudatory
+phrases, I invariably meet with this observation, penned by the same
+critics: "The greatest fault of this book is that it is not, strictly
+speaking, a novel."</p>
+
+<p>The same form might be adopted in reply:</p>
+
+<p>"The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor to review me
+is that he is not a critic."</p>
+
+<p>For what are, in fact, the essential characteristics of a critic?</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary that, without preconceived notions, prejudices of
+"School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should
+appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies
+and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the
+most varied efforts of art.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Critic who, after reading <i>Manon Lescaut</i>, <i>Paul and
+Virginia</i>, <i>Don Quixote</i>, <i>Les Liaisons dangereuses</i>, <i>Werther</i>,
+<i>Elective Affinities</i> (<i>Wahlverwandschaften</i>), <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>,
+<i>&Eacute;mile</i>, <i>Candide</i>, <i>Cinq-Mars</i>, <i>Ren&eacute;</i>, <i>Les Trois Mousquetaires</i>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><i>Mauprat</i>, <i>Le P&egrave;re Goriot</i>, <i>La Cousine Bette</i>, <i>Colomba</i>, <i>Le Rouge
+et le Noir</i>, <i>Mademoiselle de Maupin</i>, <i>Notre-Dame de Paris</i>,
+<i>Salammbo</i>, <i>Madame Bovary</i>, <i>Adolphe</i>, <i>M. de Camors</i>, <i>l'Assommoir</i>,
+<i>Sapho</i>, etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or
+is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity
+strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by
+a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated
+after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which
+the first contains the exposition, the second the action, and the
+third the catastrophe or <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And this method of construction is perfectly admissible, but on
+condition that all others are accepted on equal terms.</p>
+
+<p>Are there any rules for the making of a novel, which, if we neglect,
+the tale must be called by another name? If <i>Don Quixote</i> is a novel,
+then is <i>Le Rouge et le Noir</i> a novel? If <i>Monte Christo</i> is a novel,
+is <i>l'Assommoir</i>? Can any conclusive comparison be drawn between
+Goethe's <i>Elective Affinities</i>, <i>The Three Mousqueteers</i>, by Dumas,
+Flaubert's <i>Madame Bovary</i>, <i>M. de Camors</i> by Octave Feuillet, and
+<i>Germinal</i>, by Zola? Which of them all is The Novel? What are these
+famous rules? Where did they originate? Who laid them down? And in
+virtue of what principle, of whose authority, and of what reasoning?</p>
+
+<p>And yet, as it would appear, these critics know in some positive and
+indisputable way what constitutes a novel, and what distinguishes it
+from other tales which are not novels. What this amounts to is that
+without being producers themselves they are enrolled under a School,
+and that, like the writers of novels, they reject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> all work which is
+conceived and executed outside the pale of their esthetics. An
+intelligent critic ought, on the contrary, to seek out everything
+which least resembles the novels already written, and urge young
+authors as much as possible to try fresh paths.</p>
+
+<p>All writers, Victor Hugo as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed
+the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose&mdash;that is to say, to
+imagine or observe&mdash;in accordance with their individual conception of
+originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing,
+understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the
+novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the
+novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules of construction
+can be laid down, will always find himself at war with the artistic
+temperament of a writer who introduces a new manner of work. A critic
+really worthy of the name ought to be an analyst, devoid of
+preferences or passions; like an expert in pictures, he should simply
+estimate the artistic value of the object of art submitted to him. His
+intelligence, open to everything, must so far supersede his
+individuality as to leave him free to discover and praise books which
+as a man he may not like, but which as a judge he must duly
+appreciate.</p>
+
+<p>But critics, for the most part, are only readers; whence it comes that
+they almost always find fault with us on wrong grounds, or compliment
+us without reserve or measure.</p>
+
+<p>The reader, who looks for no more in a book than that it should
+satisfy the natural tendencies of his own mind, wants the writer to
+respond to his predominant taste, and he invariably praises a work or
+a passage which appeals to his imagination, whether idealistic,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> gay,
+licentious, melancholy, dreamy, or positive, as "striking" or "well
+written."</p>
+
+<p>The public as a whole is composed of various groups, whose cry to us
+writers is:</p>
+
+<p>"Comfort me."</p>
+
+<p>"Amuse me."</p>
+
+<p>"Touch me."</p>
+
+<p>"Make me dream."</p>
+
+<p>"Make me laugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Make me shudder."</p>
+
+<p>"Make me weep."</p>
+
+<p>"Make me think."</p>
+
+<p>And only a few chosen spirits say to the artist:</p>
+
+<p>"Give me something fine in any form which may suit you best, according
+to your own temperament."</p>
+
+<p>The artist makes the attempt; succeeds or fails.</p>
+
+<p>The critic ought to judge the result only in relation to the nature of
+the attempt; he has no right to concern himself about tendencies. This
+has been said a thousand times already; it will always need repeating.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, after a succession of literary schools which have given us
+deformed, superhuman, poetical, pathetic, charming or magnificent
+pictures of life, a realistic or naturalistic school has arisen, which
+asserts that it shows us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth.</p>
+
+<p>All these theories of art must be recognized as of equal interest, and
+we must judge the works which are their outcome solely from the point
+of view of artistic value, with an <i>a priori</i> acceptance of the
+general notions which gave birth to each. To dispute the author's
+right to produce a poetical work or a realistic work, is to endeavor
+to coerce his temperament, to take exception to his originality, to
+forbid his using the eyes and wits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> bestowed on him by Nature. To
+blame him for seeing things as beautiful or ugly, as mean or epic, as
+gracious or sinister, is to reproach him for not being made on this or
+that pattern, and for having eyes which do not see exactly as ours
+see.</p>
+
+<p>Let him be free by all means to conceive of things as he pleases,
+provided he is an artist. Let us rise to poetic heights to judge an
+idealist, and then prove to him that his dream is commonplace,
+ordinary, not mad or magnificent enough. But if we judge a
+materialistic writer, let us show him wherein the truth of life
+differs from the truth in his book.</p>
+
+<p>It is self-evident that schools so widely different must have adopted
+diametrically opposite processes in composition.</p>
+
+<p>The novelist who transforms truth&mdash;immutable, uncompromising, and
+displeasing as it is&mdash;to extract from it an exceptional and delightful
+plot, must necessarily manipulate events without an exaggerated
+respect for probability, molding them to his will, dressing and
+arranging them so as to attract, excite, or affect the reader. The
+scheme of his romance is no more than a series of ingenious
+combinations, skillfully leading to the issue. The incidents are
+planned and graduated up to the culminating point and effect of the
+conclusion, which is the crowning and fatal result, satisfying the
+curiosity aroused from the first, closing the interest, and ending the
+story so completely that we have no further wish to know what happened
+on the morrow to the most engaging actors in it.</p>
+
+<p>The novelist who, on the other hand, proposes to give us an accurate
+picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events
+which might seem excep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>tional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse
+us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to
+understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing
+and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things
+in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of
+his studious observation. It is this personal view of the world which
+he strives to communicate to us by reproducing it in a book. To make
+the spectacle of life as moving to us as it has been to him, he must
+bring it before our eyes with scrupulous exactitude. Hence he must
+construct his work with such skill, it must be so artful under so
+simple a guise, that it is impossible to detect and sketch the plan,
+or discern the writer's purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of manipulating an adventure and working it out in such a way
+as to make it interesting to the last, he will take his actor or
+actors at a certain period of their lives, and lead them by natural
+stages to the next. In this way he will show either how men's minds
+are modified by the influence of their environment, or how their
+passions and sentiments are evolved; how they love or hate, how they
+struggle in every sphere of society, and how their interests
+clash&mdash;social interests, pecuniary interests, family interests,
+political interests. The skill of his plan will not consist in
+emotional power or charm, in an attractive opening or a stirring
+catastrophe, but in the happy grouping of small but constant facts
+from which the final purpose of the work may be discerned. If within
+three hundred pages he depicts ten years of a life so as to show what
+its individual and characteristic significance may have been in the
+midst of all the other human beings which surrounded it, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> ought to
+know how to eliminate from among the numberless trivial incidents of
+daily life all which do not serve his end, and how to set in a special
+light all those which might have remained invisible to less
+clear-sighted observers, and which give his book caliber and value as
+a whole.</p>
+
+<p>It is intelligible that this method of construction, so unlike the old
+manner which was patent to all, must often mislead the critics, and
+that they will not all detect the subtle and secret wires&mdash;almost
+invisibly fine&mdash;which certain modern artists use instead of the one
+string formerly known as the "plot."</p>
+
+<p>In a word, while the novelist of yesterday preferred to relate the
+crises of life, the acute phases of the mind and heart, the novelist
+of to-day writes the history of the heart, soul, and intellect in
+their normal condition. To achieve the effects he aims at&mdash;that is to
+say, the sense of simple reality, and to point the artistic lesson he
+endeavors to draw from it&mdash;that is to say, a revelation of what his
+contemporary man is before his very eyes, he must bring forward no
+facts that are not irrefragible and invariable.</p>
+
+<p>But even when we place ourselves at the same point of view as these
+realistic artists, we may discuss and dispute their theory, which
+seems to be comprehensively stated in these words: "The whole Truth
+and nothing but the Truth." Since the end they have in view is to
+bring out the philosophy of certain constant and current facts, they
+must often correct events in favor of probability and to the detriment
+of truth; for</p>
+
+<p>"Le vrai peut quelquefois, n'&ecirc;tre pas le vraisemblable." (Truth may
+sometimes not seem probable.)</p>
+
+<p>The realist, if he is an artist, will endeavor not to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> show us a
+commonplace photograph of life, but to give us a presentment of it
+which shall be more complete, more striking, more cogent than reality
+itself. To tell everything is out of the question; it would require at
+least a volume for each day to enumerate the endless, insignificant
+incidents which crowd our existence. A choice must be made&mdash;and this
+is the first blow to the theory of "the whole truth."</p>
+
+<p>Life, moreover, is composed of the most dissimilar things, the most
+unforeseen, the most contradictory, the most incongruous; it is
+merciless, without sequence or connection, full of inexplicable,
+illogical, and contradictory catastrophes, such as can only be classed
+as miscellaneous facts. This is why the artist, having chosen his
+subject, can only select such characteristic details as are of use to
+it, from this life overladen with chances and trifles, and reject
+everything else, everything by the way.</p>
+
+<p>To give an instance from among a thousand. The number of persons who,
+every day, meet with an accidental death, all over the world, is very
+considerable. But how can we bring a tile onto the head of an
+important character, or fling him under the wheels of a vehicle in the
+middle of a story, under the pretext that accident must have its due?</p>
+
+<p>Again, in life there is no difference of foreground and distance, and
+events are sometimes hurried on, sometimes left to linger
+indefinitely. Art, on the contrary, consists in the employment of
+foresight, and elaboration in arranging skillful and ingenious
+transitions, in setting essential events in a strong light, simply by
+the craft of composition, and giving all else the degree of relief, in
+proportion to their importance, requisite to produce a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> convincing
+sense of the special truth to be conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Truth" in such work consists in producing a complete illusion by
+following the common logic of facts and not by transcribing them
+pell-mell, as they succeed each other.</p>
+
+<p>Whence I conclude that the higher order of Realists should rather call
+themselves Illusionists.</p>
+
+<p>How childish it is, indeed, to believe in this reality, since to each
+of us the truth is in his own mind, his own organs. Our own eyes and
+ears, taste and smell, create as many different truths as there are
+human beings on earth. And our brains, duly and differently informed
+by those organs, apprehend, analyze, and decide as differently as if
+each of us were a being of an alien race. Each of us, then, has simply
+his own illusion of the world&mdash;poetical, sentimental, cheerful,
+melancholy, foul, or gloomy, according to his nature. And the writer
+has no other mission than faithfully to reproduce this illusion, with
+all the elaborations of art which he may have learnt and have at his
+command. The illusion of beauty&mdash;which is merely a conventional term
+invented by man! The illusion of ugliness&mdash;which is a matter of
+varying opinion! The illusion of truth&mdash;never immutable! The illusion
+of depravity&mdash;which fascinates so many minds! All the great artists
+are those who can make other men see their own particular illusion.</p>
+
+<p>Then we must not be wroth with any theory, since each is simply the
+outcome, in generalizations, of a special temperament analyzing
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Two of these theories have more particularly been the subject of
+discussion, and set up in opposition to each other instead of being
+admitted on an equal foot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>ing: that of the purely analytical novel,
+and that of the objective novel.</p>
+
+<p>The partisans of analysis require the writer to devote himself to
+indicating the smallest evolutions of a soul, and all the most secret
+motives of our every action, giving but a quite secondary importance
+to the act and fact in itself. It is but the goal, a simple milestone,
+the excuse for the book. According to them, these works, at once exact
+and visionary, in which imagination merges into observation, are to be
+written after the fashion in which a philosopher composes a treatise
+on psychology, seeking out causes in their remotest origin, telling
+the why and wherefore of every impulse, and detecting every reaction
+of the soul's movements under the promptings of interest, passion, or
+instinct.</p>
+
+<p>The partisans of objectivity&mdash;odious word&mdash;aiming, on the contrary, at
+giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully
+avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and
+confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In
+their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in
+reality, under the facts of existence.</p>
+
+<p>The novel as conceived of on these lines gains in interest; there is
+more movement in the narrative, more color, more of the stir of life.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, instead of giving long explanations of the state of mind of an
+actor in the tale, the objective writer tries to discover the action
+or gesture which that state of mind must inevitably lead to in that
+personage, under certain given circumstances. And he makes him so
+demean himself from one end of the volume to the other, that all his
+actions, all his movements shall be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> the expression of his inmost
+nature, of all his thoughts, and all his impulses or hesitancies. Thus
+they conceal psychology instead of flaunting it; they use it as the
+skeleton of the work, just as the invisible bony framework is the
+skeleton of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does
+not display our bones.</p>
+
+<p>To me it seems that the novel executed on this principle gains also in
+sincerity. It is, in the first place, more probable, for the persons
+we see moving about us do not divulge to us the motives from which
+they act.</p>
+
+<p>We must also take into account the fact that, even if by close
+observation of men and women we can so exactly ascertain their
+characters as to predict their behavior under almost any
+circumstances, if we can say decisively: "Such a man, of such a
+temperament, in such a case, will do this or that"; yet it does not
+follow that we could lay a finger, one by one, on all the secret
+evolutions of his mind&mdash;which is not our own; all the mysterious
+pleadings of his instincts&mdash;which are not the same as ours; all the
+mingled promptings of his nature&mdash;in which the organs, nerves, blood,
+and flesh are different from ours.</p>
+
+<p>However great the genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of
+passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely
+transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent
+man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every
+vice, as to understand and delineate the inmost impulses and
+sensations of a being so unlike himself, even though he may very
+adequately foresee and relate all the actions of his life.</p>
+
+<p>In short, the man who writes pure psychology can do no more than put
+himself in the place of all his pup<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>pets in the various situations in
+which he places them. It is impossible that he should change his
+organs, which are the sole intermediary between external life and
+ourselves, which constrain us by their perceptions, circumscribe our
+sensibilities, and create in each of us a soul essentially dissimilar
+to all those about us. Our purview and knowledge of the world, and our
+ideas of life, are acquired by the aid of our senses, and we cannot
+help transferring them, in some degree, to all the personages whose
+secret and unknown nature we propose to reveal. Thus, it is always
+ourselves that we disclose in the body of a king or an assassin, a
+robber or an honest man, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl, or a coarse
+market woman; for we are compelled to put the problem in this personal
+form: "If <i>I</i> were a king, a murderer, a prostitute, a nun, or a
+market woman, what should <i>I</i> do, what should <i>I</i> think, how should
+<i>I</i> act?" We can only vary our characters by altering the age, the
+sex, the social position, and all the circumstances of life, of that
+<i>ego</i> which nature has in fact inclosed in an insurmountable barrier
+of organs of sense. Skill consists in not betraying this <i>ego</i> to the
+reader, under the various masks which we employ to cover it.</p>
+
+<p>Still, though on the point of absolute exactitude, pure psychological
+analysis is impregnable, it can nevertheless produce works of art as
+fine as any other method of work.</p>
+
+<p>Here, for instance we have the <i>Symbolists</i>. And why not? Their
+artistic dream is a worthy one; and they have this especially
+interesting feature: that they know and proclaim the extreme
+difficulty of art.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, a man must be very daring or foolish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> to write at all
+nowadays. And so many and such various masters of the craft, of such
+multifarious genius, what remains to be done that has not been done,
+or what to say that has not been said? Which of us all can boast of
+having written a page, a phrase, which is not to be found&mdash;or
+something very like it&mdash;in some other book? When we read, we who are
+so soaked in (French) literature that our whole body seems as it were
+a mere compound of words, do we ever light on a line, a thought, which
+is not familiar to us, or of which we have not had at least some vague
+forecast?</p>
+
+<p>The man who only tries to amuse his public by familiar methods, writes
+confidently, in his candid mediocrity, works intended only for the
+ignorant and idle crowd. But those who are conscious of the weight of
+centuries of past literature, whom nothing satisfies, whom everything
+disgusts because they dream of something better, to whom the bloom is
+off everything, and who always are impressed with the uselessness, the
+commonness of their own achievements&mdash;these come to regard literary
+art as a thing unattainable and mysterious, scarcely to be detected
+save in a few pages by the greatest masters.</p>
+
+<p>A score of phrases suddenly discovered thrill us to the heart like a
+startling revelation; but the lines which follow are just like all
+other verse, the further flow of prose is like all other prose.</p>
+
+<p>Men of genius, no doubt, escape this anguish and torment because they
+bear within themselves an irresistible creative power. They do not sit
+in judgment on themselves. The rest of us, who are no more than
+persevering and conscientious workers, can only contend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> against
+invincible discouragement by unremitting effort.</p>
+
+<p>Two men by their simple and lucid teaching gave me the strength to try
+again and again: Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.</p>
+
+<p>If I here speak of myself in connection with them, it is because their
+counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young
+writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make
+their <i>d&eacute;but</i> in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat
+intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert,
+by dint of telling me that a hundred lines&mdash;or less&mdash;if they are
+without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent and
+originality of even a second-rate man, are enough to establish an
+artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a
+thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of
+lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a
+subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the
+production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it.
+Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever
+left us more than one such volume; and that needful above all else is
+the good fortune which leads us to hit upon and discern, amid the
+multifarious matter which offers itself for selection, the subject
+which will absorb all our faculties, all that is of worth in us, all
+our artistic powers.</p>
+
+<p>At a later date, Flaubert, whom I had occasionally met, took a fancy
+to me. I ventured to show him a few attempts. He read them kindly and
+replied: "I cannot tell whether you will have any talent. What you
+have brought me proves a certain intelligence; but never forget this,
+young man: talent&mdash;as Chateau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>briand<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> says&mdash;is nothing but long
+patience. Go and work."</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The idea did not originate with Chateaubriand.</p></div>
+
+<p>I worked; and I often went to see him, feeling that he liked me, for
+he had taken to calling me, in jest, his disciple. For seven years I
+wrote verses, I wrote tales, I even wrote a villainous play. Nothing
+of all this remains. The master read it all; then, the next Sunday
+while we breakfasted together, he would give me his criticisms,
+driving into me by degrees two or three principles which sum up the
+drift of his long and patient exhortations: "If you have any
+originality," said he, "you must above all things bring it out; if you
+have not you must acquire it."</p>
+
+<p>Talent is long patience.</p>
+
+<p>Everything you want to express must be considered so long, and so
+attentively, as to enable you to find some aspect of it which no one
+has yet seen and expressed. There is an unexplored side to everything,
+because we are wont never to use our eyes but with the memory of what
+others before us have thought of the things we see. The smallest thing
+has something unknown in it; we must find it. To describe a blazing
+fire, a tree in a plain, we must stand face to face with that fire or
+that tree, till to us they are wholly unlike any other fire or tree.
+Thus we may become original.</p>
+
+<p>Then, having established the truth that there are not in the whole
+world two grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or two noses
+absolutely alike, he would make me describe in a few sentences some
+person or object, in such a way as to define it exactly, and
+distinguish it from every other of the same race or species.</p>
+
+<p>"When you pass a grocer sitting in his doorway," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>he would say, "a
+porter smoking his pipe, or a cab stand, show me that grocer and that
+porter, their attitude and their whole physical aspect, including, as
+indicated by the skill of the portrait, their whole moral nature, in
+such a way that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or
+porter; and by a single word give me to understand wherein one cab
+horse differs from fifty others before or behind it."</p>
+
+<p>I have explained his notions of style at greater length in another
+place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have
+just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one
+word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one
+adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this
+verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near
+it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have
+recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest
+things may be rendered and suggested by applying the hint conveyed in
+Boileau's line:</p>
+
+<p>"D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir." "He taught the power
+of a word put in the right place."</p>
+
+<p>There is no need for an eccentric vocabulary to formulate every shade
+of thought&mdash;the complicated, multifarious, and outlandish words which
+are put upon us nowadays in the name of artistic writing; but every
+modification of the value of a word by the place it fills must be
+distinguished with extreme clearness. Give us fewer nouns, verbs, and
+adjectives, with almost inscrutable shades of meaning, and let us have
+a greater variety of phrases, more variously constructed, ingeniously
+divided, full of sonority and learned rhythm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> Let us strive to be
+admirable in style, rather than curious in collecting rare words.</p>
+
+<p>It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make
+it express everything&mdash;even what it does not say, to fill it full of
+implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new
+expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which
+have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are
+as a dead language.</p>
+
+<p>The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected
+writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the
+limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has
+remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and
+impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear,
+logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity,
+or corruption.</p>
+
+<p>Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make
+rain and hail fall on the <i>cleanliness</i> of the window panes, may throw
+stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may
+indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never hurt
+simplicity&mdash;which has none.</p>
+
+<p class="sig"><span class="smcap">Guy de Maupassant</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="sig1"><span class="smcap">La Guillette, Etretat</span>, September, 1887.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PIERRE ET JEAN</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>schah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
+motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water,
+while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Madame Ros&eacute;milly,
+who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning
+her head to look at her husband, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! G&eacute;rome."</p>
+
+<p>And the old fellow replied in a fury:</p>
+
+<p>"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
+should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
+late."</p>
+
+<p>His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
+forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
+Jean remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"You are not very polite to our guest, father."</p>
+
+<p>M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Madame Ros&eacute;milly, but that is just like me. I
+invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I
+feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."</p>
+
+<p>Madame Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at
+the wide horizon of cliff and sea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
+glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
+men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
+scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
+the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
+it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
+might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became
+more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome
+reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old
+fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
+pull out, doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
+square like a lawyer's, his moustache and beard shaved away, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not many; three or four."</p>
+
+<p>The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
+beard, smiled and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Much the same as Pierre&mdash;four or five."</p>
+
+<p>Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He
+had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he
+announced:</p>
+
+<p>"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning
+it is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their
+siesta in the sun." And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> he looked round at the sea on all sides, with
+the satisfied air of a proprietor.</p>
+
+<p>He was a retired jeweler who had been led by an inordinate love of
+seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made
+enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.
+He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
+His two sons, Pierre et Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
+studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
+father's amusements.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
+felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
+succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
+with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to
+work with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually
+short course of study, by a special remission of time from the
+minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate,
+full of Utopias and philosophical notions.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
+brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
+quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
+diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
+medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
+looked forward to settling at Havre if they could find a satisfactory
+opening.</p>
+
+<p>But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
+between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
+occasion of a marriage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
+one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
+non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true,
+but they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was
+born, had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other
+little animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and
+mother's arms and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his
+birth, had always been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good
+temper, and Pierre had by degrees begun to chafe at everlastingly
+hearing the praises of this great lad whose sweetness in his eyes was
+indolence, whose gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was
+blindness. His parents, whose dream for their sons was some
+respectable and undistinguished calling, blamed him for so often
+changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm, his abortive
+beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses toward generous ideas and
+the liberal professions.</p>
+
+<p>Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
+"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them
+say "Jean did this&mdash;Jean does that," he understood their meaning and
+the hint the words conveyed.</p>
+
+<p>Their mother, an orderly soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
+of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
+constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to
+which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day.
+Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of
+mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of
+the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> his
+own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly,
+the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years
+before. The young widow&mdash;quite young, only three-and-twenty&mdash;a woman
+of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals do,
+as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighed every
+conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and
+benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat
+for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbors, who would
+give her a cup of tea.</p>
+
+<p>Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
+their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of
+him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation,
+like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home
+in the house forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm
+her than from the desire to cut each other out.</p>
+
+<p>Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
+them might win the young widow, for she was rich; and then she would
+have liked that the other should not be grieved.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
+fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring,
+pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least answer to
+the sober method of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
+affinity of nature. This preference, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>ever, she betrayed only by an
+almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
+occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's views
+would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably be
+different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
+philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
+he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
+indictment against woman&mdash;all women, poor weak things.</p>
+
+<p>Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
+fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to
+put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master
+mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and
+with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris,
+known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.</p>
+
+<p>But one evening of the week before, as Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, who had been
+dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing,"
+the jeweler, flattered on his passion, and suddenly fired with the
+wish to impart it, to make a convert after the manner of priests,
+exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Next Tuesday?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, next Tuesday."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"</p>
+
+<p>She exclaimed in horror:</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed: that is too much."</p>
+
+<p>He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
+However, he said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At what hour can you be ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;at nine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not before. Even that is very early."</p>
+
+<p>The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when
+the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers
+had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything
+there and then.</p>
+
+<p>So on the following Tuesday the <i>Pearl</i> had dropped anchor under the
+white rocks of Cape la H&eacute;ve; they had fished till mid-day, then they
+had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and
+then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that
+Mme. Ros&eacute;milly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea,
+and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
+unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much
+to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.</p>
+
+<p>Now he contemplated the spoil&mdash;his fish&mdash;with the joyful thrill of a
+miser; and seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting
+low: "Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."</p>
+
+<p>The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
+and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Roland stood up to look out like a captain:</p>
+
+<p>"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes the packet from Southampton."</p>
+
+<p>Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> vast and
+sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against
+the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they
+could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a
+distance. And to the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of
+them, could be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now
+scarcely visible as a white streak with the light-house, upright, like
+a horn, at the end of it.</p>
+
+<p>Roland asked: "Is not the <i>Normandie</i> due to-day?" And Jean replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."</p>
+
+<p>The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
+the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to
+look, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly?"</p>
+
+<p>She took the telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon,
+without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
+distinguish nothing&mdash;nothing but blue, with a colored halo round it, a
+circular rainbow&mdash;and then all manner of queer things, winking
+eclipses which made her feel sick.</p>
+
+<p>She said as she returned the glass:</p>
+
+<p>"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite
+a rage; he would stand for hours at the window watching the ships
+pass."</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland, much put out, retorted:</p>
+
+<p>"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
+one."</p>
+
+<p>Then he offered it to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to look?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. I know beforehand that I could not see through it."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty, but who did not look it,
+seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any
+of the party.</p>
+
+<p>Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white.
+She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which
+it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew
+the value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the
+delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels and poetry,
+not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender
+melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but
+a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she
+expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost
+realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a
+little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.</p>
+
+<p>Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
+figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.</p>
+
+<p>This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
+being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
+shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give
+an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of
+strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent,
+though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the
+turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never
+asked for anything; for a very long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> time she had not ventured to ask
+Roland to take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this
+opportunity, and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely
+body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
+thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
+it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
+something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.</p>
+
+<p>When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
+the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
+their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, who was the nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar,
+Jean the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say:
+"Give way!" For he insisted on everything being done according to
+strict rule.</p>
+
+<p>Both at once, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars and lay
+back, pulling with all their might, and then a struggle began to
+display their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the
+breeze had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was
+suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they
+went out alone with their father they plied the oars without any
+steering, for Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he
+kept a lookout in the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word:
+"Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say,
+"Now, then, number one; come, number two&mdash;a little elbow grease."
+Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> the one who had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got
+excited eased down, and the boat's head came round.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were
+hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy,
+and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.</p>
+
+<p>At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
+his legs rigid, his hands clenched on the oar, he made it bend from
+end to end at every stroke, and the <i>Pearl</i> was veering landward.
+Father Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to
+the two women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull
+harder, number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number
+two" could not keep time with his wild stroke.</p>
+
+<p>At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
+simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
+a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
+eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and
+exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times
+running father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so
+as to get the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor
+humiliated and fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks
+white, stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
+started very well, but it has pulled me up."</p>
+
+<p>Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks, it will go off."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting in such a
+state. You are not a child."</p>
+
+<p>And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
+Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the
+boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her
+temples.</p>
+
+<p>But father Roland presently called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Look, the <i>Prince Albert</i> is catching us up!"</p>
+
+<p>They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking
+funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the
+Southampton packet came plowing on at full steam, crowded with
+passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
+beating up the water, which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance
+of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut
+through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided
+off along the hull.</p>
+
+<p>When it had come quite near the <i>Pearl</i>, father Roland lifted his hat,
+the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols
+eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she
+went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the
+still and glassy surface of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
+every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which
+swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
+barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
+across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> coming in, faster
+and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to
+have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
+steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their
+top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to
+the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing
+vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay
+motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in
+canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
+beautiful the sea is!"</p>
+
+<p>And Mme. Ros&eacute;milly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
+sadness in it:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."</p>
+
+<p>Roland exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Look, there is the <i>Normandie</i> just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
+of the mouth of the Seine&mdash;that mouth extended over twenty kilometers,
+said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
+Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
+make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
+question of the sand banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
+that the pilots of Quilleb&oelig;uf are at fault if they do not survey
+the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre
+divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped
+down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of
+Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> ravined,
+cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to
+Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat,
+F&eacute;camp, Saint-Valery, Tr&eacute;port, Dieppe, and the rest.</p>
+
+<p>The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
+sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
+beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
+soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
+was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
+more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
+useless speech is as irritating as an insult.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the
+<i>Pearl</i> was making for the harbor, a tiny thing among those huge
+vessels.</p>
+
+<p>When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
+gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way
+into the town. A large crowd&mdash;the crowd which haunts the pier every
+day at high tide&mdash;was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the
+rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or
+jeweler's shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making
+their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse
+Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of
+vessels&mdash;the <i>Bassin du Commerce</i>, with other docks beyond, where the
+huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five
+deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometers of quays the
+endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great
+gap in the heart of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> the town the look of a dead forest. Above this
+leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like
+a falling stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a
+pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there
+bird's-nesting.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
+end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
+It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
+young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
+taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
+her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean
+merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and
+offensive.</p>
+
+<p>The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold
+of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor
+and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Jos&eacute;phine,
+a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted
+to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened
+the door, went upstairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room,
+which was on the first floor, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman called&mdash;three times."</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing,
+cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"</p>
+
+<p>She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman from the lawyer's."</p>
+
+<p>"What lawyer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why M'sieu' Canu&mdash;who else?"</p>
+
+<p>"And what did this gentleman say?"</p>
+
+<p>"That M'sieu' Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."</p>
+
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend,
+managing his business for him. For him to send word that he would call
+in the evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind;
+and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the
+announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
+intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
+inheritance, law-suits&mdash;all sorts of desirable or formidable
+contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth can it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."</p>
+
+<p>But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
+over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
+trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousinship.</p>
+
+<p>Before even taking off her bonnet she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, father" (she called her husband "Father" at home, and
+sometimes "Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you
+remember who it was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;a little girl named Dumenil, stationer's daughter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Had they any children?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so! four or five at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Not from that quarter, then."</p>
+
+<p>She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
+some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond
+of his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she
+might be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news
+were bad instead of good, checked her:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my
+part I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean."</p>
+
+<p>Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little
+ruffled by his brother's having spoken of it before Madame Ros&eacute;milly.</p>
+
+<p>"And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very
+disputable. You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first to
+be thought of. Besides, I do not wish to marry."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre smiled sneeringly:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in love, then?"</p>
+
+<p>And the other, much put out, retorted:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it necessary that a man should be in love because he does not care
+to marry yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there you are! That 'yet' sets it right; you are waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it so."</p>
+
+<p>But old Roland who had been listening and cogitating, suddenly hit
+upon the most probable solution.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains. Ma&icirc;tre Lecanu
+is our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is looking out for a
+medical partner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>ship and Jean for a lawyer's office, and he has found
+something to suit one of you."</p>
+
+<p>This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner is ready," said the maid. And they all hurried off to their
+rooms to wash their hands before sitting down to table.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes after they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the
+ground-floor.</p>
+
+<p>At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in
+amazement at this lawyer's visit.</p>
+
+<p>"For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his
+clerk three times? Why is he coming himself?"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre thought it quite natural.</p>
+
+<p>"An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are
+certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into
+writing."</p>
+
+<p>Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having
+invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and
+deciding on what should be done.</p>
+
+<p>They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced.
+Roland flew to meet him:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-evening, my dear Ma&icirc;tre," said he, giving his visitor the title
+which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going," she said. "I am very tired."</p>
+
+<p>A faint attempt was made to detain her; but she would not consent, and
+went home without either of the three men offering to escort her as
+they always had done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland did the honors eagerly to their visitor.</p>
+
+<p>"A cup of coffee, Monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. I have this moment done dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"A cup of tea, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I will not refuse presently. First we must attend to
+business."</p>
+
+<p>The total silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the
+regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of
+saucepans which the girl was cleaning&mdash;too stupid even to listen at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. Mar&eacute;chal&mdash;L&eacute;on Mar&eacute;chal?"</p>
+
+<p>M. and Mme. Roland both exclaimed at once: "I should think so!"</p>
+
+<p>"He was a friend of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>Roland replied: "Our best friend, monsieur, but a fanatic for Paris;
+never to be got away from the boulevard. He was head clerk in the
+exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and
+latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far
+apart, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer gravely put in:</p>
+
+<p>"M. Mar&eacute;chal is deceased."</p>
+
+<p>Both man and wife responded with the little movement of pained
+surprise, genuine or false, but always ready, with which such news is
+received.</p>
+
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Lecanu went on:</p>
+
+<p>"My colleague in Paris has just communicated to me the main item of
+his will, by which he makes your son Jean&mdash;Monsieur Jean Roland&mdash;his
+sole legatee."</p>
+
+<p>They were all too much amazed to utter a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> word. Mme. Roland was
+the first to control her emotions and stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens! Poor L&eacute;on&mdash;our poor friend! Dear me! Dear me! Dead!"</p>
+
+<p>The tears started to her eyes, a woman's silent tears, drops of grief
+from her very soul, which trickle down her cheeks and seem so very
+sad, being so clear. But Roland was thinking less of the loss than of
+the prospect announced. Still, he dared not at once inquire into the
+clauses of the will and the amount of the fortune, so to work around
+to these interesting facts he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"And what did he die of, poor Mar&eacute;chal?"</p>
+
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Lecanu did not know in the least.</p>
+
+<p>"All I know is," said he, "that, dying without any direct heirs, he
+has left the whole of his fortune&mdash;about twenty thousand francs a year
+($3,840) in three per cents&mdash;to your second son, whom he has known
+from his birth up, and judges worthy of the legacy. If M. Jean should
+refuse the money, it is to go to the foundling hospitals."</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland could not conceal his delight and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Sacristi! It is the thought of a kind heart. And if I had no heir I
+would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend."</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I was very glad," he said, "to announce the event to you myself. It
+is always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news."</p>
+
+<p>It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a
+friend, of Roland's best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly
+forgotten the intimacy he had just spoken of with so much conviction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was
+still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief,
+which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine
+with him&mdash;my brother and me."</p>
+
+<p>Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome
+fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it
+to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner.
+Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long
+meditation he could only say this:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I
+went to see him."</p>
+
+<p>But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop&mdash;galloping round
+this inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking
+behind the door which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word
+of consent.</p>
+
+<p>"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
+lawsuit&mdash;no one to dispute it?"</p>
+
+<p>Ma&icirc;tre Lecanu seemed quite easy.</p>
+
+<p>"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
+Jean has only to sign his acceptance."</p>
+
+<p>"Good. Then&mdash;then the fortune is quite clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly clear."</p>
+
+<p>"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"</p>
+
+<p>"All."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the old jeweler had an impulse of shame&mdash;obscure,
+instinctive, and fleeting; shame <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>of his eagerness to be informed, and
+he added:</p>
+
+<p>"You understand when I ask all these questions so immediately it is to
+save my son disagreeables which he might not foresee. Sometimes there
+are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
+himself in an inextricable thorn bush. After all, I am not the
+heir&mdash;but I think first of the little 'un."</p>
+
+<p>They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
+one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some
+remote fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and
+of which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Were you not saying that our poor friend Mar&eacute;chal had left his
+fortune to my little Jean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame."</p>
+
+<p>And she went on simply:</p>
+
+<p>"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."</p>
+
+<p>Roland had risen.</p>
+
+<p>"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
+acceptance?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
+if that suits you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure&mdash;yes, indeed, I should think so."</p>
+
+<p>Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
+tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
+chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
+mother, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."</p>
+
+<p>The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in
+deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have
+been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a
+voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen
+doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families
+never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and
+cups; then she departed to heat the water. They sat waiting.</p>
+
+<p>No one could talk; they had too much to think about and nothing to
+say. Mme. Roland alone attempted a few commonplace remarks. She gave
+an account of the fishing excursion, and sang the praises of the
+<i>Pearl</i> and of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly.</p>
+
+<p>"Charming! charming!" the lawyer said again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Roland, leaning against the marble mantelshelf as if it were winter
+and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips
+puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the
+invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in
+two armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table,
+stared in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank
+it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to
+crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is understood," repeated Roland. "To-morrow, at your place,
+at two?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite so. To-morrow, at two."</p>
+
+<p>Jean had not spoken a word.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland
+clapped his two hands on his younger son's shoulders, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don't embrace me!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"It had not struck me as indispensable."</p>
+
+<p>The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,
+strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his
+heels, and kept saying:</p>
+
+<p>"What luck! what luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Then you used to know this Mar&eacute;chal well?"</p>
+
+<p>And his father replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house.
+Surely you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays,
+and often took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when
+Jean was born it was he who went for the doctor. He had been
+breakfasting with us when your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew
+at once what it meant, and he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took
+my hat instead of his own. I remember that because we had a good laugh
+over it afterward. It is very likely that he may have thought of that
+when he was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself:
+'I remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will
+leave him my savings.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once
+more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in
+these days."</p>
+
+<p>Jean got up.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go out for a little walk," he said.</p>
+
+<p>His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk
+about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man
+insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be
+time for settling everything before he came into possession of his
+inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.
+Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few
+minutes followed his brother.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his
+arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and replying to a
+reproach she had often brought against him, said:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, my dearest, it would have been of no good to stay any longer
+in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of coming
+here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the skies."</p>
+
+<p>She was quite serious.</p>
+
+<p>"It drops from the skies on Jean," she said. "But Pierre?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides,
+his brother will surely do something for him."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for
+Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage."</p>
+
+<p>The old fellow seemed perplexed: "Well, then, we will leave him rather
+more in our will."</p>
+
+<p>"No; that again would not be quite just."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Drat it all!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do in the matter?
+You always hit on a whole heap of disagreeable ideas. You must spoil
+all my pleasures. Well, I am going to bed. Good-night. All the same, I
+call it good luck, jolly good luck!"</p>
+
+<p>And he went off, delighted in spite of everything, and without a word
+of regret for the friend so generous in his death.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland sat thinking again, in front of the lamp which was burning
+out.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_a.jpg" alt="A" width="51" height="50" /></div>
+<p>s soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the
+high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy. The
+rather sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked
+slowly, his stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. He was
+ill at ease, oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing
+unpleasant tidings. He was not distressed by any definite thought, and
+he would have been puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for
+this dejection of spirit and heaviness of limb. He was hurt somewhere,
+without knowing where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of
+pain&mdash;one of these almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a
+finger on, but which incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us&mdash;a
+slight and occult pang, as it were a small seed of distress.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the square in front of the theater, he was attracted
+by the lights in the Caf&eacute; Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the
+dazzling fa&ccedil;ade; but just as he was going in he reflected that he
+would meet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> friends there and acquaintances&mdash;people he would be
+obliged to talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this
+commonplace good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses. So,
+retracing his steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the
+harbor.</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he
+liked which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of
+one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to
+meet any one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more;
+then he turned toward the pier; he had chosen solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
+walking and out of humor with his stroll before he had taken it.</p>
+
+<p>He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening?" And he
+began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we
+question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.</p>
+
+<p>His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he
+reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive
+nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the
+upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had
+induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting
+anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from
+him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see
+and the things they might say to him.</p>
+
+<p>And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's
+inheritance?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news
+he had felt his heart beat a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> faster. For, indeed, one is not
+always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious
+emotions against which a man struggles in vain.</p>
+
+<p>He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression
+produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a
+current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to
+those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right
+and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the
+cultivation of his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame
+of mind of a son who has inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to
+that wealth, may now know many long-wished-for delights which the
+avarice of his father had prohibited&mdash;a father, nevertheless, beloved
+and regretted.</p>
+
+<p>He got up and walked on to the end of the pier. He felt better, and
+glad to have understood, to have detected himself, to have unmasked
+<i>the other</i> which lurks in us.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I was jealous of Jean," thought he. "That is really vilely mean.
+And I am sure of it now, for the first idea which came into my head
+was that he would marry Madame Ros&eacute;milly. And yet I am not in love
+myself with that priggish little goose, who is just the woman to
+disgust a man with good sense and good conduct. So it is the most
+gratuitous jealousy, the very essence of jealousy, which is merely
+because it is! I must keep an eye on that!"</p>
+
+<p>By this time he was in front of the flagstaff, whence the depth of
+water in the harbor is signaled, and he struck a match to read the
+list of vessels signaled in the roadstead and coming in with the next
+high tide. Ships were due from Brazil, from La Plata, from Chili and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+Japan, two Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner, and a Turkish
+steamship&mdash;which startled Pierre as much as if it had read a Swiss
+steamship; and in a whimsical vision he pictured a great vessel
+crowded with men in turbans climbing the shrouds in loose trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"How absurd," thought he. "But the Turks are a maritime people, too."</p>
+
+<p>A few steps further on he stopped again, looking out at the roads. On
+the right, above Sainte-Adresse, the two electric lights of Cape la
+H&egrave;ve, like monstrous twin Cyclops, shot their long and powerful beams
+across the sea. Starting from two neighboring centers, the two
+parallel shafts of light, like the colossal tails of two comets, fell
+in a straight and endless slope from the top of the cliff to the
+uttermost horizon. Then, on the two piers, two more lights, the
+children of these giants, marked the entrance to the harbor; and far
+away on the other side of the Seine others were in sight, many others,
+steady or winking, flashing or revolving, opening and shutting like
+eyes&mdash;the eyes of the ports&mdash;yellow, red, and green, watching the
+night-wrapped sea covered with ships; the living eyes of the
+hospitable shore saying, merely by the mechanical and regular movement
+of their eyelids: "I am here. I am Trouville; I am Honfleur; I am the
+Audemer River." And high above all the rest, so high that from this
+distance it might be taken for a planet, the airy light-house of
+Etouville showed the way to Rouen across the sand banks at the mouth
+of the great river.</p>
+
+<p>Out on the deep water, the limitless water, darker than the sky, stars
+seemed to have fallen here and there. They twinkled in the night haze,
+small, close to shore or far away&mdash;white, red, and green, too. Most
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> them were motionless; some, however, seemed to be scudding onward.
+These were the lights of the ships at anchor or moving about in search
+of moorings.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this moment the moon rose behind the town; and it, too, looked
+like some huge, divine pharos lighted up in the heavens to guide the
+countless fleet of stars in the sky. Pierre murmured, almost speaking
+aloud: "Look at that! And we let our bile rise for two-pence!"</p>
+
+<p>On a sudden, close to him, in the wide, dark ditch between the two
+piers, a shadow stole up, a large shadow of fantastic shape. Leaning
+over the granite parapet, he saw that a fishing-boat had glided in,
+without the sound of a voice or the splash of a ripple, or the plunge
+of an oar, softly borne in by its broad, tawny sail spread to the
+breeze from the open sea.</p>
+
+<p>He thought to himself: "If one could but live on board that boat, what
+peace it would be&mdash;perhaps!"</p>
+
+<p>And then a few steps further again, he saw a man sitting at the very
+end of the breakwater.</p>
+
+<p>A dreamer, a lover, a sage&mdash;a happy or a desperate man? Who was it? He
+went forward, curious to see the face of this lonely individual, and
+he recognized his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"What, is it you, Jean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre! You? What has brought you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came out to get some fresh air. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I too came out for fresh air." And Pierre sat down by his brother's
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Lovely&mdash;isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, lovely."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He understood from the tone of voice that Jean had not looked at
+anything. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, whenever I come here I am seized with a wild desire to
+be off with all those boats, to the north or the south. Only to think
+that all those little sparks out there have just come from the
+uttermost ends of the earth, from the lands of great flowers and
+beautiful olive or copper colored girls, the lands of humming-birds,
+of elephants, of roaming lions, of negro kings, from all the lands
+which are like fairy tales to us who no longer believe in the White
+Cat or the Sleeping Beauty. It would be awfully jolly to be able to
+treat one's self to an excursion out there; but, then, it would cost a
+great deal of money, no end&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He broke off abruptly, remembering that his brother had that money
+now; and released from care, released from laboring for his daily
+bread, free, unfettered, happy, and light-hearted, he might go whither
+he listed, to find the fair-haired Swedes or the brown damsels of
+Havana. And then one of those involuntary flashes which were common
+with him, so sudden and swift that he could neither anticipate them,
+nor stop them, nor qualify them, communicated, as it seemed to him,
+from some second, independent, and violent soul, shot through his
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! He is too great a simpleton; he will marry that little
+Ros&eacute;milly." He was standing up now. "I will leave you to dream of the
+future. I want to be moving." He grasped his brother's hand and added
+in a heavy tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear old boy, you are a rich man. I am very glad to have
+come upon you this evening to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> tell you how pleased I am about it, how
+truly I congratulate you, and how much I care for you."</p>
+
+<p>Jean, tender and soft-hearted, was deeply touched.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, my good brother&mdash;thank you!" he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>And Pierre turned away with his slow step, his stick under his arm,
+and his hands behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>Back in the town again, he once more wondered what he should do, being
+disappointed of his walk and deprived of the company of the sea by his
+brother's presence. He had an inspiration. "I will go and take a glass
+of liqueur with old Marowsko," and he went off toward the quarter of
+the town known as Ingouville.</p>
+
+<p>He had known old Marowsko&mdash;<i>le p&egrave;re Marowsko</i>, he called him&mdash;in the
+hospitals in Paris. He was a Pole, an old refugee, it was said, who
+had gone through terrible things out there, and who had come to ply
+his calling as a chemist and druggist in France after passing a fresh
+examination. Nothing was known of his early life, and all sorts of
+legends had been current among the indoor and outdoor patients and
+afterwards among his neighbors. This reputation as a terrible
+conspirator, a nihilist, a regicide, a patriot ready for anything and
+everything, who had escaped death by a miracle, had bewitched Pierre
+Roland's lively and bold imagination; he had made friends with the old
+Pole, without, however, having ever extracted from him any revelation
+as to his former career. It was owing to the young doctor that this
+worthy had come to settle at Havre, counting on the large custom which
+the rising practitioner would secure him. Meanwhile he lived very
+poorly in his little shop, selling medicines to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> small tradesmen
+and workmen in his part of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre often went to see him and chat with him for an hour after
+dinner, for he liked Marowsko's calm look and rare speech, and
+attributed great depth to his long spells of silence.</p>
+
+<p>A single gas-burner was alight over the counter crowded with phials.
+Those in the window were not lighted, from motives of economy. Behind
+the counter, sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and
+crossed, an old man, quite bald, with a large beak of a nose which, as
+a prolongation of his hairless forehead, gave him a melancholy
+likeness to a parrot, was sleeping soundly, his chin resting on his
+breast. He woke at the sound of the shop-bell, and recognizing the
+doctor, came forward to meet him, holding out both hands.</p>
+
+<p>His black frock coat, streaked with stains of acids and syrups, was
+much too wide for his lean little person, and looked like a shabby old
+cassock; and the man spoke with a strong Polish accent which gave a
+childlike character to his thin voice, the lisping note and
+intonations of a young thing learning to speak.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre sat down, and Marowsko asked him: "What news, dear doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"None. Everything as usual, everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not look very gay this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not often gay."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, you must shake that off. Will you try a glass of
+liqueur?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I do not mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will give you something new to try. For these two months I
+have been trying to extract something from currants, of which only a
+syrup has been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> made hitherto&mdash;well, and I have done it. I have
+invented a very good liqueur&mdash;very good indeed; very good."</p>
+
+<p>And quite delighted, he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out
+a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky
+gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor
+quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His
+ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them,
+sketched them, hinted at them, but never fully uttered them.</p>
+
+<p>And indeed, his great end in life seemed to be the concoction of
+syrups and liqueurs. "A good syrup or a good liqueur is enough to make
+a fortune," he would often say.</p>
+
+<p>He had compounded hundreds of these sweet mixtures without ever
+succeeding in floating one of them. Pierre declared that Marowsko
+always reminded him of Marat.</p>
+
+<p>Two little glasses were fetched out of the back shop and placed on the
+mixing-board. Then the two men scrutinized the color of the fluid by
+holding it up to the gas.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine ruby," Pierre declared.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it?" Marowsko's old parrot-face beamed with satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor tasted, smacked his lips, meditated, tasted again,
+meditated again, and spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Very good&mdash;capital; and quite new in flavor. It is a find, my dear
+fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, really? Well, I am very glad."</p>
+
+<p>Then Marowsko took counsel as to baptizing the new liqueur. He wanted
+to call it "Extract of currants,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> or else "<i>Fine Groseille</i>," or
+"<i>Gros&eacute;lia</i>," or again "<i>Gros&eacute;line</i>." Pierre did not approve of either
+of these names.</p>
+
+<p>Then the old man had an idea:</p>
+
+<p>"What you said just now would be very good, very good: 'Fine Ruby.'"
+But the doctor disputed the merit of this name, though it had
+originated with him. He recommended simply "Groseillette," which
+Marowsko thought admirable.</p>
+
+<p>Then they were silent, and sat for some minutes without a word under
+the solitary gas-lamp. At last Pierre began, almost in spite of
+himself: "A queer thing has happened at home this evening. A friend of
+my father's, who is lately dead, has left his fortune to my brother."</p>
+
+<p>The druggist did not at first seem to understand, but after thinking
+it over he hoped that the doctor had half the inheritance. When the
+matter was clearly explained to him he appeared surprised and vexed;
+and to express his dissatisfaction at finding that his young friend
+had been sacrificed, he said several times over:</p>
+
+<p>"It will not look well."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, who was relapsing into nervous irritation, wanted to know what
+Marowsko meant by this phrase.</p>
+
+<p>Why would it not look well? What was there to look badly in the fact
+that his brother had come into the money of a friend of the family?</p>
+
+<p>But the cautious old man would not explain further.</p>
+
+<p>"In such a case the money is left equally to the two brothers, and I
+tell you, it will not look well."</p>
+
+<p>And the doctor, out of all patience, went away, returned to his
+father's house, and went to bed. For some time yet he could hear Jean
+moving softly about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> the adjoining room, and then, after drinking two
+glasses of water, he fell asleep.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he doctor awoke next morning firmly resolved to make his fortune.
+Several times already he had come to the same determination without
+following up the reality. At the outset of all his trials of some new
+career the hopes of rapidly acquired riches kept up his efforts and
+confidence, till the first obstacle, the first check, threw him into a
+fresh path. Snug in bed between the warm sheets, he lay meditating.
+How many medical men had become wealthy in quite a short time! All
+that was needed was a little knowledge of the world; for in the course
+of his studies he had learnt to estimate the most famous physicians,
+and he judged them all to be asses. He was certainly as good as they,
+if not better. If by any means he could secure a practice among the
+wealth and fashion of Havre, he could easily make a hundred thousand
+francs a year. And he calculated with great exactitude what his
+certain profits must be. He would go out in the mornings to visit his
+patients; at the very moderate average of ten a day, at twenty francs
+each, that would mount up to seventy-two thousand francs a year at
+least, or even seventy-five thousand; for ten patients was certainly
+below the mark. In the afternoon he would be at home to, say, another
+ten patients, at ten francs each&mdash;thirty-six thousand francs. Here,
+then, in round numbers, was an income of twenty thousand francs. Old
+patients, or friends whom he would charge only ten francs for a visit,
+or see at home for five, would perhaps make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> a slight reduction on
+this sum total, but consultations with other physicians and various
+incidental fees would make up for that.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing would be easier than to achieve this by skillful advertising
+remarks in the <i>Figaro</i> to the effect that the scientific faculty of
+Paris had their eye on him, and were interested in the cures effected
+by the modest young practitioner of Havre! And he would be richer than
+his brother, richer and more famous; and satisfied with himself, for
+he would owe his fortune solely to his own exertions; and liberal to
+his old parents, who would be justly proud of his fame. He would not
+marry, would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way,
+but then he might make love. He felt so sure of success that he sprang
+out of bed as though to grasp it on the spot, and he dressed to go and
+search through the town for rooms to suit him.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he wandered about the streets, he reflected how slight are
+the causes which determine our actions. Any time these three weeks he
+might and ought to have come to this decision, which, beyond a doubt,
+the news of his brother's inheritance had abruptly given rise to.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped before every door where a placard proclaimed that "fine
+apartments" or "handsome rooms" were to be let; announcements without
+an adjective he turned from with scorn. Then he inspected them with a
+lofty air, measuring the height of the rooms, sketching the plan in
+his note-book, with the passages, the arrangements of the exits,
+explaining that he was a medical man and had many visitors. He must
+have a broad and well-kept staircase; nor could he be any higher up
+than the first floor.</p>
+
+<p>After having written down seven or eight addresses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> and scribbled two
+hundred notes, he got home to breakfast a quarter of an hour too late.</p>
+
+<p>In the hall he heard the clatter of plates. Then they had begun
+without him! Why? They were never wont to be so punctual. He was
+nettled and put out, for he was somewhat thin-skinned. As he went in
+Roland said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Pierre, make haste, devil take you! You know we have to be at
+the lawyer's at two o'clock. This is not the day to be dawdling
+about."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre sat down without replying, after kissing his mother and shaking
+hands with his father and brother; and he helped himself from the deep
+dish in the middle of the table to the cutlet which had been kept for
+him. It was cold and dry, probably the least tempting of them all. He
+thought that they might have left it on the hot plate till he came in,
+and not lose their heads so completely as to have forgotten their
+other son, their eldest.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation, which his entrance had interrupted, was taken up
+again at the point where it had ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"In your place," Mme. Roland was saying to Jean, "I will tell you what
+I should do at once. I should settle in handsome rooms so as to
+attract attention; I should rise on horseback and select one or two
+interesting cases to defend and make a mark in court. I would be a
+sort of amateur lawyer, and very select. Thank God you are out of all
+danger of want, and if you pursue a profession, it is, after all, only
+that you may not lose the benefit of your studies, and because a man
+ought never to sit idle."</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland, who was peeling a pear, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Christi! In your place I should buy a nice yacht,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> a cutter on the
+build of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a
+boat as that."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not
+his wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a
+man. To a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation,
+while in the hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to
+be sure, were rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he
+could never want he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred
+times harder than he would have done in other circumstances. His
+business now must be not to argue for or against the widow and the
+orphan, and pocket his fees for every case he gained, but to become a
+really eminent legal authority, a luminary of the law. And he added in
+conclusion:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"</p>
+
+<p>Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to
+take it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born
+poor you must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But
+where you have dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to
+death."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre replied haughtily:</p>
+
+<p>"Our notions differ. For my part, I respect nothing on earth but
+learning and intellect; everything else is beneath contempt."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland always tried to deaden the constant shocks between father
+and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder
+committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were
+immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been
+committed, and absorbed by the interesting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> horror, the attractive
+mystery of crime, which, however commonplace, shameful, and
+disgusting, exercises a strange and universal fascination over the
+curiosity of mankind. Now and again, however, old Roland looked at his
+watch. "Come," said he, "it is time to be going."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre sneered.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not yet one o'clock," he said. "It really was hardly worth
+while to condemn me to eat a cold cutlet."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you coming to the lawyer's?" his mother asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I? No. What for?" he replied dryly. "My presence is quite
+unnecessary."</p>
+
+<p>Jean sat silent, as though he had no concern in the matter. When they
+were discussing the murder at Bolbec he, as a legal authority, had put
+forward some opinions and uttered some reflections on crime and
+criminals. Now he spoke no more; but the sparkle in his eye, the
+bright color in his cheeks, the very gloss of his beard seemed to
+proclaim his happiness.</p>
+
+<p>When the family had gone, Pierre, alone once more, resumed his
+investigations in the apartments to let. After two or three hours
+spent in going up and down stairs, he at last found, in the Boulevard
+Fran&ccedil;ois, a pretty set of rooms; a spacious entresol with two doors on
+two different streets, two drawing-rooms, a glass corridor, where his
+patients while they waited, might walk among flowers, and a delightful
+dining-room with a bow-window looking out over the sea.</p>
+
+<p>When it came to taking it, the terms&mdash;three thousand francs&mdash;pulled
+him up; the first quarter must be paid in advance, and he had nothing,
+not a penny to call his own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The little fortune his father had saved brought him in about eight
+thousand francs a year, and Pierre had often blamed himself for having
+placed his parents in difficulties by his long delay in deciding on a
+profession, by forfeiting his attempts and beginning fresh courses of
+study. So he went away, promising to send his answer within two days,
+and it occurred to him to ask Jean to lend him the amount of this
+quarter's rent, or even of a half-year, fifteen hundred francs, as
+soon as Jean should have come into possession.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a loan for a few months at most," he thought. "I shall
+repay him, very likely, before the end of the year. It is a simple
+matter, and he will be glad to do so much for me."</p>
+
+<p>As it was not yet four o'clock, and he had nothing to do, absolutely
+nothing, he went to sit in the public gardens; and he remained a long
+time on a bench, without an idea in his brain, his eyes fixed on the
+ground, crushed by weariness amounting to distress.</p>
+
+<p>And yet this was how he had been living all these days since his
+return home, without suffering so acutely from the vacuity of his
+existence and from inaction. How had he spent his time from rising in
+the morning till bed-time?</p>
+
+<p>He had loafed on the pier at high tide, loafed in the streets, loafed
+in the caf&eacute;s, loafed at Marowsko's, loafed everywhere. And on a sudden
+this life, which he had endured till now, had become odious,
+intolerable. If he had had any pocket-money he would have taken a
+carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches
+shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost
+of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out
+of his ken. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past
+thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a
+twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored
+the gravel with the ferrule of his stick:</p>
+
+<p>"Christi, if I only had money!"</p>
+
+<p>And again the thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like
+the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to
+allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>Some children were playing about in the dusty paths. They were fair
+little things with long hair, and they were making little mounds of
+sand with the greatest gravity and careful attention, to crush them at
+once by stamping on them.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those gloomy days with Pierre when we pry into every
+corner of our souls and shake out every crease.</p>
+
+<p>"All our endeavors are like the labors of those babies," thought he.
+And then he wondered whether the wisest thing in life were not to
+beget two or three of these little creatures and watch them grow up
+with complacent curiosity. A longing for marriage breathed on his
+soul. A man is not so lost when he is not alone. At any rate, he hears
+some one stirring at his side in hours of trouble or of uncertainty;
+and it is something only to be able to speak on equal terms to a woman
+when one is suffering.</p>
+
+<p>Then he began thinking of women. He knew very little of them, never
+having had any but very transient connections as a medical student,
+broken off as soon as the month's allowance was spent, and renewed or
+re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>placed by another the following month. And yet there must be some
+very kind, gentle, and comforting creatures among them. Had not his
+mother been the good sense and saving grace of his own home? How glad
+he would be to know a woman, a true woman.</p>
+
+<p>He started up with a sudden determination to go and call on Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly. But he promptly sat down again. He did not like that woman.
+Why not? She had too much vulgar and sordid common sense; besides, did
+she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too
+bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion
+of the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could
+not help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the
+superior. However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and
+as he had done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself:
+"What am I going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment he felt in his soul the need of a melting mood, of
+being embraced and comforted. Comforted&mdash;for what? He could not have
+put it into words; but he was in one of those hours of weakness and
+exhaustion when a woman's presence, a woman's kiss, the touch of a
+hand, the rustle of a petticoat, a soft look out of black or blue
+eyes, seem the one thing needful, there and then, to our heart. And
+the memory flashed upon him of a little barmaid at a beer-house, whom
+he had walked home with one evening, and seen again from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>So once more he rose, to go and drink a bock with the girl. What
+should he say to her? What would she say to him? Nothing, probably.
+But what did that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> matter? He would hold her hand for a few seconds.
+She seemed to have a fancy for him. Why, then, did he not go to see
+her oftener?</p>
+
+<p>He found her dozing on a chair in the beer-shop, which was almost
+deserted. Three men were drinking and smoking with their elbows on the
+oak tables; the book-keeper in her desk was reading a novel, while the
+master, in his shirt-sleeves, lay sound asleep on a bench.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she saw him the girl rose eagerly, and coming to meet him,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-day, monsieur&mdash;how are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well; and you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;oh, very well. How scarce you make yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I have very little time to myself. I am a doctor, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! You never told me. If I had known that&mdash;I was out of sorts
+last week and I would have sent for you. What will you take?"</p>
+
+<p>"A bock. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will have a bock too since you are game to treat me."</p>
+
+<p>She had addressed him with the familiar <i>tu</i>, and continued to use it,
+as if the offer of a drink had tacitly conveyed permission. Then,
+sitting down opposite each other, they talked for a while. Every now
+and then she took his hand with the light familiarity of girls whose
+kisses are for sale, and looking at him with inviting eyes, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you come here oftener? I like you very much, sweetheart."</p>
+
+<p>He was already disgusted with her; he saw how stupid she was, and
+common, smacking of low life. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> woman, he told himself, should appear
+to us in a dream, or such a glory as may poetize her vulgarity.</p>
+
+<p>Next she asked him:</p>
+
+<p>"You went by the other morning with a handsome fair man, wearing a big
+beard. Is he your brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he is my brother."</p>
+
+<p>"Awfully good-looking."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too."</p>
+
+<p>What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this
+tavern-wench about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept
+at arm's-length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of
+the torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment?
+And why did he allow it to overflow them, as if he needed once more to
+empty out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?</p>
+
+<p>He crossed his legs and said:</p>
+
+<p>"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He has just come into a
+legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."</p>
+
+<p>She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. An old friend of my parents'."</p>
+
+<p>"Only a friend! Impossible! And you&mdash;did he leave you nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I knew him very slightly."</p>
+
+<p>She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips,
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> have friends of
+that pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."</p>
+
+<p>He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched
+lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"</p>
+
+<p>She had put on a stolid, innocent face.</p>
+
+<p>"O&mdash;h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."</p>
+
+<p>He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.</p>
+
+<p>Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."</p>
+
+<p>What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those
+words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful
+in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was
+Mar&eacute;chal's son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of
+this suspicion cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still,
+looking about him for some place where he might sit down. In front of
+him was another caf&eacute;. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came
+up, "A bock," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He felt his heart beating, his skin was goose-flesh. And then the
+recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening
+before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same
+suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched
+the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it
+possible that such a thing should be believed?"</p>
+
+<p>But the reasons which might give rise to this horrible doubt in other
+men's minds now struck him, one after another, as plain, obvious, and
+exasperating. That a childless old bachelor should leave his fortune
+to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> friend's two sons was the most simple and natural thing in the
+world; but that he should leave the whole of it to one alone&mdash;of
+course people would wonder, and whisper, and end by smiling. How was
+it that he had not foreseen this, that his father had not felt it? How
+was it that his mother had not guessed it? No; they had been too
+delighted at this unhoped-for wealth for the idea to come near them.
+And besides, how should these worthy souls have ever dreamed of
+anything so ignominious?</p>
+
+<p>But the public&mdash;their neighbors, the shopkeepers, their own tradesmen,
+all who knew them&mdash;would not they repeat the abominable thing, laugh
+at it, enjoy it, make game of his father and despise his mother?</p>
+
+<p>And the barmaid's remark that Jean was fair and he dark, that they
+were not in the least alike in face, manner, figure, or intelligence,
+would now strike every eye and every mind. When any one spoke of
+Roland's son, the question would be: "Which, the real or the false?"</p>
+
+<p>He rose, firmly resolved to warn Jean, and put him on his guard
+against the frightful danger which threatened their mother's honor.</p>
+
+<p>But what could Jean do? The simplest thing, no doubt, would be to
+refuse the inheritance, which would then go to the poor, and to tell
+all friends or acquaintances who had heard of the bequest that the
+will contained clauses and conditions impossible to subscribe to,
+which would have made Jean not inheritor but merely a trustee.</p>
+
+<p>As he made his way home he was thinking that he must see his brother
+alone, so as not to speak of such a matter in the presence of his
+parents. On reaching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> the door he heard a great noise of voices and
+laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain
+Beausire and Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, whom his father had brought home and
+engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and
+absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had
+been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little
+man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea,
+and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles
+of a beach, while he laughed with his throat full of <i>r</i>'s, looked
+upon life as a capital thing, in which everything that might turn up
+was good to take. He clinked his glass against father Roland's, while
+Jean was offering two freshly filled glasses to the ladies. Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly refused, till Captain Beausire, who had known her husband,
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, madame, <i>bis repetita placent</i>, as we say in the lingo,
+which is as much as to say two glasses of vermouth never hurt any one.
+Look at me; since I have left the sea, in this way I give myself an
+artificial roll or two every day before dinner; I add a little
+pitching after my coffee, and that keeps things lively for the rest of
+the evening. I never rise to a hurricane, mind you, never, never. I am
+too much afraid of damage."</p>
+
+<p>Roland, whose nautical mania was humored by the old mariner, laughed
+heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the
+absinthe. He had a burly shopkeeping stomach&mdash;nothing but stomach&mdash;in
+which the rest of his body seemed to have got stowed away; the flabby
+paunch of men who spend their lives sitting, and who have neither
+thighs, nor chest, nor arms, nor neck; the seat of their chairs having
+accumu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>lated all their substance in one spot. Beausire, on the
+contrary, though short and stout, was as tight as an egg and as hard
+as a cannon-ball.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland had not emptied her glass and was gazing at her son Jean
+with sparkling eyes, happiness had brought a color to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>In him too the fullness of joy had now blazed out. It was a settled
+thing, signed and sealed; he had twenty thousand francs a year. In the
+sound of his laugh, in the fuller voice with which he spoke, in his
+way of looking at the others, his more positive manners, his greater
+confidence, the assurance given by money was at once perceptible.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was announced, and as the old man was about to offer his arm to
+Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, his wife exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, father. Everything is for Jean to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Unwonted luxury graced the table. In front of Jean, who sat in his
+father's place, an enormous bouquet of flowers intermingled with
+ribbon favors&mdash;a bouquet for a really great occasion&mdash;stood up like a
+cupola dressed with flags, and was flanked by four high dishes, one
+containing a pyramid of splendid peaches; the second, a monumental
+cake gorged with whipped cream and covered with pinnacles of sugar&mdash;a
+cathedral in confectionery; the third, slices of pine-apple floating
+in clear syrup; and the fourth unheard-of lavishness&mdash;black grapes
+brought from the warmer south.</p>
+
+<p>"The devil!" exclaimed Pierre as he sat down. "We are celebrating the
+accession of Jean the Rich."</p>
+
+<p>After the soup, Madeira was passed round, and already every one was
+talking at once. Beausire was giving the history of a dinner he had
+eaten at San Domingo at the table of a negro general. Old Roland<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> was
+listening, and at the same time trying to get in, between the
+sentences, his account of another dinner, given by a friend of his at
+Mendon, after which every guest was ill for a fortnight. Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly, Jean, and his mother were planning an excursion to
+breakfast at Saint Jouin, from which they promised themselves the
+greatest pleasure; and Pierre was only sorry that he had not dined
+alone in some pot-house by the sea, so as to escape all this noise and
+laughter and glee which fretted him. He was wondering how he could now
+set to work to confide his fears to his brother, and induce him to
+renounce the fortune he had already accepted and of which he was
+enjoying the intoxicating foretaste. It would be hard on him, no
+doubt; but it must be done; he could not hesitate; their mother's
+reputation was at stake.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of an enormous shade-fish threw Roland back on fishing
+stories. Beausire told some wonderful tales of adventure on the
+Gaboon, at Sainte-Marie, in Madagascar, and above all, off the coasts
+of China and Japan, where the fish are as queer-looking as the
+natives. And he described the appearance of these fishes&mdash;their goggle
+gold eyes, their blue or red bellies, their fantastic fins like fans,
+their eccentric crescent-shaped tails&mdash;with such droll gesticulation
+that they all laughed till they cried as they listened.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre alone seemed incredulous, muttering to himself: "True enough,
+the Normans are the Gascons of the north!"</p>
+
+<p>After the fish came a vol-au-vent; then a roast fowl, a salad, French
+beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Ros&eacute;milly's maid-servant helped
+to wait on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> drank. When the cork of the first champagne bottle was drawn
+with a pop, father Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his
+tongue and then declared: "I like that noise better than a
+pistol-shot."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:</p>
+
+<p>"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."</p>
+
+<p>Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on
+the table again, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness,
+giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of
+wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the
+circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which
+always threatens a man of your build."</p>
+
+<p>The jeweler's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before
+the wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to
+discover whether he was making game of him.</p>
+
+<p>But Beausire exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune; eat
+nothing, drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all
+plays the devil with your precious health. Well, all I can say is I
+have done all these things, sir, in every quarter of the globe,
+wherever and as often as I have had the chance, and I am none the
+worse."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pierre answered with some asperity:</p>
+
+<p>"In the first place, captain, you are a stronger man than my father;
+and in the next, all free livers talk as you do till the day
+when&mdash;when they come back no more to say to the cautious doctor: 'You
+were right.' When I see my father doing what is worst and most
+dangerous for him, it is but natural that I should warn him. I should
+be a bad son if I did otherwise."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland, much distressed, now put in her word: "Come, Pierre, what
+ails you? For once it cannot hurt him? Think of what an occasion it is
+for him, for all of us. You will spoil his pleasure and make us all
+unhappy. It is too bad of you to do such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>He muttered, as he shrugged his shoulders:</p>
+
+<p>"He can do as he pleases. I have warned him."</p>
+
+<p>But father Roland did not drink. He sat looking at his glass full of
+the clear and luminous liquor while its light soul, its intoxicating
+soul, flew off in tiny bubbles mounting from its depths in hurried
+succession to die on the surface. He looked at it with the suspicious
+eye of a fox smelling at a dead hen and suspecting a trap. He asked
+doubtfully: "Do you think it will really do me much harm?" Pierre had
+a pang of remorse and blamed himself for letting his ill-humor punish
+the rest:</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he. "Just for once you may drink it; but do not take too
+much, or get into the habit of it."</p>
+
+<p>Then old Roland raised his glass, but still he could not make up his
+mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with
+longing and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips,
+swallowing them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+greediness; and then, when he had drained the last drop, of regret.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre's eye suddenly met that of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly; it rested on him
+clear and blue, far-seeing and hard. And he read, he knew, the precise
+thought which lurked in that look, the indignant thought of this
+simple and right-minded little woman; for the look said: "You are
+jealous&mdash;that is what you are. Shameful!"</p>
+
+<p>He bent his head and went on with his dinner.</p>
+
+<p>He was not hungry and found nothing nice. A longing to be off harassed
+him, a craving to be away from these people, to hear no more of their
+talking, jests, and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Father Roland meanwhile, to whose head the fumes of the wine were
+rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was
+eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly
+full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of
+being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he
+could possess himself of it without exciting Pierre's remark. A ruse
+occurred to him, the simplest possible. He took up the bottle with an
+air of indifference, and holding it by the neck, stretched his arm
+across the table to fill the doctor's glass, which was empty; then he
+filled up all the other glasses, and when he came to his own he began
+talking very loud, so that if he poured anything into it they might
+have sworn it was done inadvertently. And in fact no one took any
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, without observing it, was drinking a good deal. Nervous and
+fretted, he every minute raised to his lips the tall crystal funnel
+where the bubbles were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> dancing in the living, translucent fluid. He
+let the wine slip very slowly over his tongue, that he might feel the
+little sugary sting of the fixed air as it evaporated.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually a pleasant warmth glowed in his frame. Starting from the
+stomach as from a focus, it spread to his chest, took possession of
+his limbs, and diffused itself throughout his flesh, like a warm and
+comforting tide, bringing pleasure with it. He felt better now, less
+impatient, less annoyed, and his determination to speak to his brother
+that very evening faded away; not that he thought for a moment of
+giving it up, but simply not to disturb the happy mood in which he
+found himself.</p>
+
+<p>Beausire presently arose to propose a toast. Having bowed to the
+company, he began:</p>
+
+<p>"Most gracious ladies and gentlemen, we have met to do honor to a
+happy event which has befallen one of our friends. It used to be said
+that Fortune was blind, but I believe that she is only short-sighted
+or tricksy, and that she has lately brought a good pair of glasses
+which enabled her to discover in the town of Havre the son of our
+worthy friend Roland, skipper of the <i>Pearl</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Every one cried bravo and clapped their hands, and the elder Roland
+rose to reply. After clearing his throat, for it felt thick and his
+tongue was heavy, he stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, captain, thank you&mdash;for myself and my son. I shall never
+forget your behavior on this occasion. Here's good luck to you!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes and nose were full of tears, and he sat down, finding nothing
+more to say.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, who was laughing, spoke in his turn:</p>
+
+<p>"It is I," said he, "who ought to thank my friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> here, my excellent
+friends," and he glanced at Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, "who have given me such a
+touching evidence of their affection. But it is not by words that I
+can prove my gratitude. I will prove it to-morrow, every hour of my
+life, always, for our friendship is not one of those which fade away."</p>
+
+<p>His mother, deeply moved, murmured: "Well said, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>But Beausire cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, speak on behalf of the fair sex."</p>
+
+<p>She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with
+sadness, she said: "I will pledge you to the memory of Monsieur
+Mar&eacute;chal."</p>
+
+<p>There was a few moments' lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after
+prayer. Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements." Then turning to
+father Roland: "And who was this Mar&eacute;chal, after all? You must have
+been very intimate with him."</p>
+
+<p>The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken
+voice he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Like a brother, you know. Such a friend as one does not make
+twice&mdash;we were always together&mdash;he dined with us every evening&mdash;and
+would treat us to the play&mdash;I need say no more&mdash;no more&mdash;no more. A
+true friend&mdash;a real true friend&mdash;wasn't he, Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>His wife merely answered: "Yes; he was a faithful friend."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the
+subject changed, he drank some more wine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> He scarcely remembered the
+remainder of the evening. They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they
+laughed and joked a great deal. At about midnight he went to bed, his
+mind confused and his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine
+next morning.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hese slumbers, lapped in champagne and chartreuse, had soothed and
+calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of mind.
+While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the
+agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and
+fully their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well
+as those from outside.</p>
+
+<p>It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an
+evil suspicion&mdash;a suspicion worthy of such a hussy&mdash;on hearing that
+only one of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but
+have not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow
+of foundation, about every honest woman? Do they not, whenever they
+speak, vilify, calumniate, and abuse all whom they believe to be
+blameless? Whenever a woman who is above imputation is mentioned in
+their presence, they are as angry as if they were being insulted, and
+exclaim: "Ah, yes, I know your married women; a pretty sort they are!
+Why, they have more lovers than we have, only they conceal it because
+they are such hypocrites. Oh, yes, a pretty sort, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>Under any other circumstances he would certainly not have understood,
+not have imagined the possibility<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> of such an insinuation against his
+poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit
+seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him.
+His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself,
+for all that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to
+the tavern barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It
+was possible that his imagination had, unaided, invented this dreadful
+doubt&mdash;his imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly
+evaded his will and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and
+stealthy, into the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then
+some which were shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him,
+in the depths of his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like
+something stolen. His heart, most certainly, his own heart had secrets
+from him; and had not that wounded heart discerned in this atrocious
+doubt a means of depriving his brother of the inheritance of which he
+was jealous? He suspected himself now, cross-examining all the
+mysteries of his mind as bigots search their consciences.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, though her intelligence was limited, had certainly a
+woman's instinct, scent, and subtle intuitions. And this notion had
+never entered her head, since she had, with perfect simplicity, drunk
+the blessed memory of the deceased Mar&eacute;chal. She was not the woman to
+have done this if she had had the faintest suspicion. Now he doubted
+no longer; his involuntary displeasure at his brother's windfall of
+fortune and his religious affection for his mother had magnified his
+scruples&mdash;very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he
+put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at
+the doing of a good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> action; and he resolved to be nice to every one
+beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and
+vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a constant
+irritation to him.</p>
+
+<p>He came in not late for breakfast, and amused all the family by his
+fun and good-humor.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, quite delighted, said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"My little Pierre, you have no notion how humorous and clever you can
+be when you choose."</p>
+
+<p>And he talked, putting things in a witty way, and making them laugh by
+ingenious hits at their friends. Beausire was his butt, and Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly a little, but in a very judicious way, not too spiteful. And
+he thought as he looked at his brother: "Stand up for her, you muff.
+You may be as rich as you please, I can always eclipse you when I take
+the trouble."</p>
+
+<p>As they drank their coffee he said to his father:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going out in the <i>Pearl</i> to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my boy."</p>
+
+<p>"May I have her with Jean Bart?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, as long as you like."</p>
+
+<p>He bought a good cigar at the first tobacconist's and went down to the
+quay with a light step. He glanced up at the sky, which was clear and
+luminous, of a pale blue, freshly swept by the sea breeze.</p>
+
+<p>Papagris, the boatman, commonly called Jean Bart, was dozing in the
+bottom of the boat, which he was required to have in readiness every
+day at noon when they had not been out fishing in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"You and I together, mate," cried Pierre. He went down the iron ladder
+of the quay and leaped into the vessel.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way is the wind?" he asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Due east still, M'sieu Pierre. A fine breeze out at sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, old man, off we go!"</p>
+
+<p>They hoisted the foresail and weighed anchor; and the boat, feeling
+herself free, glided slowly down toward the jetty on the still water
+of the harbor. The breath of wind that came down the street caught the
+top of the sail so lightly as to be imperceptible, and the <i>Pearl</i>
+seemed endowed with life&mdash;the life of a vessel driven on by a
+mysterious latent power. Pierre took the tiller, and, holding his
+cigar between his teeth, he stretched his legs on the bunk, and with
+his eyes half-shut in the blinding sunshine, he watched the great
+tarred timbers of the breakwater as they glided past.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the open sea, round the nose of the north pier which
+had sheltered them, the fresher breeze puffed in the doctor's face and
+on his hands, like a somewhat icy caress, filled his chest, which rose
+with a long sigh to drink it in, and swelling the tawny sail, tilted
+the <i>Pearl</i> on her beam and made her more lively. Jean Bart hastily
+hauled up the jib, and the triangle of canvas, full of wind, looked
+like a wing; then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the
+spanker, which was close-reefed against its mast.</p>
+
+<p>Then, along the hull of the boat, which suddenly heeled over and was
+running at top speed, there was a soft, crisp sound of water hissing
+and rushing past. The prow ripped up the sea like the share of a
+plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and
+fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and
+falls in a ridge. At each wave they met&mdash;and there was a short,
+chopping sea&mdash;the <i>Pearl</i> shivered from the point of the bowsprit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> to
+the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew
+harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow
+into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting
+for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look at
+each of the vessels in the roads one after another; then they put
+further out to look at the unfolding line of coast.</p>
+
+<p>For three hours Pierre, easy, calm, and happy, wandered to and fro
+over the dancing waters, guiding the thing of wood and canvas, which
+came and went at his will, under the pressure of his hand, as if it
+were a swift and docile winged creature.</p>
+
+<p>He was lost in day-dreams, the dreams one has on horseback or on the
+deck of a boat; thinking of his future, which should be brilliant, and
+the joys of living intelligently. On the morrow he would ask his
+brother to lend him fifteen hundred francs for three months, that he
+might settle at once in the pretty rooms on the Boulevard Fran&ccedil;ois,
+1er.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the sailor said: "The fog is coming up, M'sieu Pierre. We
+must go in."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up and saw to the northward a gray shade, filmy but dense,
+blotting out the sky and covering the sea; it was sweeping down on
+them like a cloud fallen from above. He tacked for the land and made
+for the pier, scudding before the wind and followed by the flying fog,
+which gained upon them. When it reached the <i>Pearl</i>, wrapping her in
+its intangible density, a cold shudder ran over Pierre's limbs, and a
+smell of smoke and mold, the peculiar smell of a sea fog, made him
+close his mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapor. By the
+time the boat was at her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> usual moorings in the harbor the whole town
+was buried in this fine mist, which did not fall but yet wetted
+everything like rain, and glided and rolled along the roofs and
+streets like the flow of a river. Pierre, with his hands and feet
+frozen, made haste home and threw himself on his bed to take a nap
+till dinner-time. When he made his appearance in the dining-room his
+mother was saying to Jean:</p>
+
+<p>"The glass corridor will be lovely. We will fill it with flowers. You
+will see. I will undertake to care for them and renew them. When you
+give a party the effect will be quite fairy like."</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world are you talking about?" the doctor asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Of a delightful apartment I have just taken for your brother. It is
+quite a find; an entresol looking out on two streets. There are two
+drawing-rooms, a glass passage, and a little circular dining-room,
+perfectly charming for a bachelor's quarters."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Boulevard Fran&ccedil;ois, 1er."</p>
+
+<p>There was no possibility for doubt. He took his seat in such a state
+of exasperation that he longed to exclaim: "This is really too much!
+Is there nothing for any one but him?"</p>
+
+<p>His mother, beaming, went on talking: "And only fancy, I got it for
+two thousand eight hundred francs a year. They asked three thousand,
+but I got a reduction of two hundred francs on taking for three, six,
+or nine years. Your brother will be delightfully housed there. An
+elegant home is enough to make the fortune of a lawyer. It attracts
+clients, charms them, holds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> them fast, commands respect, and shows
+them that a man who lives in such good style expects a good price for
+his words."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a few seconds and then went on:</p>
+
+<p>"We must look out for something suitable for you; much less
+pretentious, since you have nothing, but nice and pretty all the same.
+I assure you it will be to your advantage."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre replied contemptuously:</p>
+
+<p>"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."</p>
+
+<p>But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I assure you that to be well lodged
+will be of use to you nevertheless."</p>
+
+<p>About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How did you first come to know this man Mar&eacute;chal?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah,
+yes, I remember. It was your mother who made acquaintance with him in
+the shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and
+then he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew
+him as a friend."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one
+as if he were spitting them, went on:</p>
+
+<p>"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"</p>
+
+<p>Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed
+to his wife's better memory.</p>
+
+<p>"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who
+remember everything. Let me see&mdash;it was in&mdash;in&mdash;in fifty-five or
+fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
+steady voice and with calm decision:</p>
+
+<p>"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am
+quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the
+child had scarlet fever, and Mar&eacute;chal, whom we then knew but very
+little, was of the greatest service to us."</p>
+
+<p>Roland exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure&mdash;very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
+half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
+the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
+And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
+he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great
+friends."</p>
+
+<p>And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
+cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
+was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so
+much, since I&mdash;<i>I</i> was the cause of this great intimacy with my
+parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
+than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined,
+the secret germ of a new pain.</p>
+
+<p>He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
+shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
+It was like a pestilential rock dropped on earth. It could be seen
+swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
+The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after a rain, and
+all sorts of evil smells<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> seemed to come up from the bowels of the
+houses&mdash;the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens&mdash;to
+mingle with the horrible savor of this wandering fog.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring
+to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The
+druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On
+recognizing Pierre, for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog,
+he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the
+<i>Groseillette</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>The Pole explained that four of the chief caf&eacute;s in the town had agreed
+to have it on sale, and that two papers, the <i>Northcoast Pharos</i> and
+the <i>Havre Semaphore</i>, would advertise it, in return for certain
+chemical preparations to be supplied to the editors.</p>
+
+<p>After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely
+into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other
+questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion
+to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though
+he could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his
+averted eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to
+his lips but were not spoken&mdash;which the druggist was too timid or too
+prudent and cautious to utter.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not
+to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people
+speak ill of your mother."</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> Mar&eacute;chal's son. Of
+course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing
+must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself,
+Pierre, her son&mdash;had not he been for these three days past fighting
+with all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting
+against this hideous suspicion?</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter
+with himself&mdash;to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this
+possible but monstrous thing&mdash;came upon him anew, and so imperative
+that he rose without even drinking his glass of <i>Groseillette</i>, shook
+hands with the astounded druggist and plunged out into the foggy
+streets again.</p>
+
+<p>He asked himself: "What made this Mar&eacute;chal leave all his fortune to
+Jean?"</p>
+
+<p>It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the
+rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with
+which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an
+overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe Jean,
+his brother, was that man's son.</p>
+
+<p>No. He did not believe it; he could not even ask himself the question
+which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion,
+improbable as it was, utterly and for ever. He craved for light, for
+certainty&mdash;he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no
+one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the
+darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search
+that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end to
+the matter; he would not think of it again&mdash;never. He would go and
+sleep.</p>
+
+<p>He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> facts; then I will
+recall all I know about him, his behavior to my brother and to me. I
+will seek out the causes which might have given rise to this
+preference. He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me
+first. If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would
+surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet
+fever, that he became so intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he
+ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for
+me&mdash;unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and
+predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up."</p>
+
+<p>Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his
+intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this
+Mar&eacute;chal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had
+seen pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in
+Paris.</p>
+
+<p>But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat
+disturbed his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their
+precision, clouded his recollection. To enable him to look at the past
+and at unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape
+it, he must be motionless in a vast and empty space. And he made up
+his mind to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night.
+As he approached the harbor he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and
+sinister wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and
+steady. It was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the
+fog. A shiver ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this
+cry of distress thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had
+uttered it himself. Another and a similar voice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> answered with such
+another moan, but further away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the
+pier gave out a fearful sound in answer. Pierre made for the jetty
+with long steps, thinking no more of anything, content to walk on into
+this ominous and bellowing darkness.</p>
+
+<p>When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his
+eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by
+the fog, which make the harbor accessible at night, and the red glare
+of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.
+Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his
+face in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Though he did not pronounce the word with his lips, his mind kept
+repeating: "Mar&eacute;chal&mdash;Mar&eacute;chal," as if to raise and challenge the
+shade. And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly
+saw him as he had known him: a man of about sixty, with a white beard
+cut in a point and very thick eyebrows, also white. He was neither
+tall nor short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his
+movements gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple
+and kindly. He called Pierre et Jean "my dear children," and had never
+seemed to prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him.
+And then Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent,
+tried to recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had
+vanished from the world. By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his
+rooms in the rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself
+at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>He was waited on by two maids, both old women who had been in the
+habit&mdash;a very old one, no doubt&mdash;of saying "Monsieur Pierre" and
+"Monsieur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> Jean." Mar&eacute;chal would hold out both hands, the right hand
+to one of the young men, the left to the other, as they happened to
+come in.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, my children?" he would say. "Have you any news of your
+parents? As for me, they never write to me."</p>
+
+<p>The talk was quiet and intimate, of commonplace matters. There was
+nothing remarkable in the man's mind, but much that was winning,
+charming, and gracious. He had certainly been a good friend to them,
+one of those good friends of whom we think the less because we feel
+sure of them.</p>
+
+<p>Now, reminiscences came readily to Pierre's mind. Having seen him
+anxious from time to time, and suspecting his student's
+impecuniousness, Mar&eacute;chal had of his own accord offered and lent him
+money, a few hundred francs perhaps, forgotten by both, and never
+repaid. Then this man must always have been fond of him, always have
+taken an interest in him, since he thought of his needs. Well
+then&mdash;well then&mdash;why leave his whole fortune to Jean? No, he had never
+shown any more marked affection for the younger than for the elder,
+had never been more interested in one than in the other, or seemed to
+care more tenderly for this one or that one. Well then&mdash;well then&mdash;he
+must have had some strong secret reason for leaving everything to
+Jean&mdash;everything&mdash;and nothing to Pierre.</p>
+
+<p>The more he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more
+extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made
+such a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable
+anguish piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> fluttering rag.
+Its springs seemed broken, and the blood rushed through in a flood,
+unchecked, tossing it with wild surges.</p>
+
+<p>Then in an undertone, as a man speaks in a nightmare, he muttered: "I
+must know. My God! I must know."</p>
+
+<p>He looked further back now, to an earlier time, when his parents had
+lived in Paris. But the faces escaped him, and this confused his
+recollections. He struggled above all to see Mar&eacute;chal with light, or
+brown, or black hair. But he could not; the later image, his face as
+an old man, blotted out all others. However, he remembered that he had
+been slighter, and had a soft hand, and that he often brought flowers.
+Very often&mdash;for his father would constantly say: "What, another
+bouquet! But this is madness, my dear fellow; you will ruin yourself
+in roses." And Mar&eacute;chal would say: "No matter; I like it."</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly his mother's voice and accent, his mother's as she smiled
+and said: "Thank you, my kind friend," flashed on his brain, so
+clearly that he could have believed he heard her. She must have spoken
+those words very often that they should remain thus graven on her
+son's memory.</p>
+
+<p>So Mar&eacute;chal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the
+customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweler's wife. Had he loved
+her? Why should he have made friends with these tradespeople if he had
+not been in love with the wife? He was a man of education and fairly
+refined tastes. How many a time had he discussed poets and poetry with
+Pierre. He did not appreciate these writers from an artistic point of
+view, but with sympathetic and responsive feeling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> The doctor had
+often smiled at his emotions which had struck him as rather silly; now
+he plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been
+the friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so
+heavy, to whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy.</p>
+
+<p>This Mar&eacute;chal then, being young, free, rich, ready for any form of
+tenderness, went by chance into the shop one day, having perhaps
+observed its pretty mistress. He had bought something, had come again,
+had chatted, more intimately each time, paying by frequent purchases
+for the right of a seat in the family, of smiling at the young wife
+and shaking hands with the husband.</p>
+
+<p>And what next&mdash;what next&mdash;good God&mdash;what next?</p>
+
+<p>He had loved and petted the first child, the jeweler's child, till the
+second was born; then, till death, he had remained impenetrable; and
+when his grave was closed, his flesh dust, his name erased from the
+list of the living, when he himself was quiet and forever gone, having
+nothing to scheme for, to dread or to hide, he had given his whole
+fortune to the second child! Why?</p>
+
+<p>The man had all his wits; he must have understood and foreseen that he
+might, that he almost infallibly must, give grounds for the
+supposition that the child was his. He was casting obloquy on a woman.
+How could he have done this if Jean were not his son?</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly a clear and fearful recollection shot through his brain.
+Mar&eacute;chal was fair&mdash;fair like Jean. He now remembered a little
+miniature portrait he had seen formerly in Paris, on the drawing-room
+chimney-shelf, and which had since disappeared. Where was it? Lost, or
+hidden away? Oh, if he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> could but have it in his hands for one minute!
+His mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed drawer where love-tokens
+were treasured.</p>
+
+<p>His misery at this thought was so intense that he uttered a groan, one
+of those brief moans wrung from the breast by a too intolerable pang.
+And immediately, as if it had heard him, as if it had understood and
+answered him, the fog-horn on the pier bellowed out close to him. Its
+voice, like that of a fiendish monster, more resonant than thunder&mdash;a
+savage and appalling roar contrived to drown the clamor of the wind
+and waves&mdash;spread through the darkness, across the sea, which was
+invisible under its shroud of fog. And again, through the mist, far
+and near, responsive cries went up to the night. They were terrifying,
+these calls given forth by the great blind steam-ships.</p>
+
+<p>Then all was silent once more.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre had opened his eyes and was looking about him, startled to find
+himself here, roused from his nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>"I am mad," thought he, "I suspect my mother." And a surge of love and
+emotion, of repentance and prayer and grief, welled up in his heart.
+His mother! Knowing her as he knew her, how could he ever have
+suspected her? Was not the soul, was not the life of this
+simple-minded, chaste, and loyal woman clearer than water? Could any
+one who had seen and known her ever think of her but as above
+suspicion? And he, her son, had doubted her! Oh, if he could but have
+taken her in his arms at that moment, how he would have kissed and
+caressed her, and gone on his knees to crave pardon.</p>
+
+<p>Would she have deceived his father&mdash;she?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His father!&mdash;A very worthy man no doubt, upright and honest in
+business, but with a mind which had never gone beyond the horizon of
+his shop. How was it that this woman, who must have been very
+pretty&mdash;as he knew, and it could still be seen&mdash;gifted, too, with a
+delicate, tender, emotional soul, have accepted a man so unlike
+herself as a suitor and a husband? Why inquire? She had married, as
+young French girls do marry, the youth with a little fortune proposed
+to her by their relations. They had settled at once in their shop in
+the Rue Montmartre; and the young wife, ruling over the desk, inspired
+by the feeling of a new home, and the subtle and sacred sense of
+interests in common which fills the place of love, and even of regard,
+by the domestic hearth of most of the commercial houses of Paris, had
+set to work with all her superior and active intelligence, to make the
+fortune they hoped for. And so her life had flowed on, uniform,
+peaceful and respectable, but loveless.</p>
+
+<p>Loveless?&mdash;was it possible then that a woman should not love? That a
+young and pretty woman, living in Paris, reading books, applauding
+actresses for dying of passion on the stage, could live from youth to
+old age, without once feeling her heart touched? He would not believe
+it of any one else; why should she be different from all others,
+though she was his mother?</p>
+
+<p>She had been young, with all the poetic weaknesses which agitate the
+heart of a young creature. Shut up, imprisoned in the shop, by the
+side of a vulgar husband who always talked of trade, she had dreamed
+of moonlight nights, of voyages, of kisses exchanged in the shades of
+evening. And then, one day a man had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> come in, as lovers do in books,
+and had talked as they talk.</p>
+
+<p>She had loved him. Why not? She was his mother. What then? Must a man
+be blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it
+concerns his mother? And she had been frail. Why, yes, since this man
+had had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she
+was far away and growing old. Why yes, since he had left all his
+fortune to his son&mdash;their son!</p>
+
+<p>And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he
+longed to kill some one. With his arm outstretched, his hand wide
+open, he wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom?
+Everyone; his father, his brother, the dead man, his mother!</p>
+
+<p>He hurried off homeward. What was he going to do?</p>
+
+<p>As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of
+the fog-horn went off in his very face. He was so startled that he
+nearly fell, and shrank back as far as the granite parapet. The
+steamer which was the first to reply seemed to be quite near and was
+already at the entrance, the tide having risen.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre turned round and could discern its red eye dim through the fog.
+Then, in the broad light of the electric lanterns, a huge black shadow
+crept up between the piers. Behind him the voice of the lookout man,
+the hoarse voice of an old retired sea-captain, shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"What ship?" And out of the fog the voice of the pilot standing on
+deck&mdash;not less hoarse&mdash;replied:</p>
+
+<p>"The Santa Lucia."</p>
+
+<p>"Where from?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Italy."</p>
+
+<p>"What port?"</p>
+
+<p>"Naples."</p>
+
+<p>And before Pierre's bewildered eyes rose as he fancied, the fiery
+pennon of Vesuvius, while, at the foot of the volcano, fire-flies
+danced in the orange-groves of Sorrento or Castellamare. How often had
+he dreamed of these familiar names as if he knew the scenery. Oh, if
+he might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come
+back, never write, never let any one know what had become of him! But
+no, he must go home&mdash;home to his father's house, and go to bed.</p>
+
+<p>He would not. Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there
+till daybreak. He liked the roar of the fog-horns. He pulled himself
+together and began to walk up and down like an officer on watch.</p>
+
+<p>Another vessel was coming in behind the other, huge and mysterious. An
+English Indiaman, homeward bound.</p>
+
+<p>He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the
+impenetrable vapor. Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre
+set out toward the town. He was so cold that he went into a sailors'
+tavern to drink a glass of grog, and when the hot and pungent liquor
+had scorched his mouth and throat he felt a hope revive within him.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he was mistaken. He knew his own vagabond unreason so well! No
+doubt he was mistaken. He had piled up the evidence as a charge is
+drawn up against an innocent person, whom it is always so easy to
+convict when we wish to think him guilty. When he should have slept he
+would think differently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then he went in and to bed, and by sheer force of will he at last
+dropped asleep.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_b.jpg" alt="B" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ut the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
+torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his
+warm, closed room, he was aware, even before thought was awake in him,
+of the painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we
+have slept on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which
+the shock merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into
+our very flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory
+returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by
+one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart
+on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought
+the less he doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the
+inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.</p>
+
+<p>He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
+window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound
+fell on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and
+gently snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions!
+A man who had known their mother left him all his fortune; he took the
+money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
+contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
+distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
+sleeper.</p>
+
+<p>Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> have gone in, and
+sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
+waking:</p>
+
+<p>"Jean, you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have
+brought suspicion and dishonor on our mother."</p>
+
+<p>But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did
+not believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury
+the shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
+had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
+brother&mdash;especially not his brother.</p>
+
+<p>He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He
+would have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if
+only he, he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live
+with her every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was
+the child of a stranger?</p>
+
+<p>And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
+always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
+and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and yet
+nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
+troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago
+in the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
+had surely bewailed her sin, and then, little by little, had almost
+forgotten it. Have not all women, all, this fault of prodigious
+forgetfulness which enables them, after a few years, hardly to
+recognize the man to whose kisses they have lent their lips? The kiss
+strikes like a thunder-bolt, the love passes away like a storm, and
+then life, like the sky, is calm once more, and begins<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> again as it
+was before. Do you ever remember a cloud?</p>
+
+<p>Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his
+father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and
+the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his
+candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the
+kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up
+again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his nightshirt, on
+a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a
+tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he
+ceased to move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then,
+one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was
+the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow
+louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore,
+short, labored and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at
+the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two
+men, sleeping under the same roof&mdash;father and son&mdash;were nothing to
+each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together,
+and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately,
+they embraced each other, they rejoiced and lamented together over the
+same things, just as if the same blood flowed in their veins. And two
+men born at opposite ends of the earth could not be more alien to each
+other than this father and son. They believed they loved each other,
+because a lie had grown up between them. This paternal love, this
+filial love, were the outcome of a lie&mdash;a lie which could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> not be
+unmasked, and which no one would ever know but he, the true son.</p>
+
+<p>But yet, but yet&mdash;if he were mistaken? How could he make sure? Oh, if
+only some likeness, however slight, could be traced between his father
+and Jean, one of those mysterious resemblances which run from an
+ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are
+the offspring of the same kiss. To him, a medical man, so little would
+suffice to enable him to discern this&mdash;the curve of a nostril, the
+space between the eyes, the character of the teeth or hair; nay
+less&mdash;a gesture, a trick, a habit, an inherited taste, any mark or
+token which a practiced eye might recognize as characteristic.</p>
+
+<p>He thought long, but could remember nothing; no, nothing. But he had
+looked carelessly, observed badly, having no reason for spying such
+imperceptible indications.</p>
+
+<p>He got up to go back to his room and mounted the stairs with a slow
+step, still lost in thought. As he passed the door of his brother's
+room he stood stock still, his hand put out to open it. An imperative
+need had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his
+leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and
+relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off.
+Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any
+appreciable likeness existed it would not escape him.</p>
+
+<p>But supposing Jean were to wake, what could he say? How could he
+explain this intrusion?</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, his fingers clenched on the door-handle, trying to
+devise a reason, an excuse. Then he remembered that a week ago he had
+lent his brother a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> phial of laudanum to relieve a fit of toothache.
+He might himself have been in pain this night and have come to find
+the drug. So he went in with a stealthy step, like a robber. Jean, his
+mouth open, was sunk in deep, animal slumbers. His beard and fair hair
+made a golden patch on the white linen; he did not wake, but he ceased
+snoring.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, leaning over him, gazed at him with hungry eagerness. No, this
+youngster was not in the least like Roland; and for the second time
+the recollection of the little portrait of Mar&eacute;chal, which had
+vanished, recurred to his mind. He must find it! When he should see it
+perhaps he should cease to doubt!</p>
+
+<p>His brother stirred, conscious no doubt of a presence, or disturbed by
+the light of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tiptoe to
+the door which he noiselessly closed; then he went back to his room,
+but not to bed again.</p>
+
+<p>Day was long in coming. The hours struck one after another on the
+dining-room clock, and its tone was a deep and solemn one, as though
+the little piece of clockwork had swallowed a cathedral bell. The
+sound rose through the empty staircase, penetrating through walls and
+doors, and dying away in the rooms where it fell on the torpid ears of
+the sleeping household. Pierre had taken to walking to and fro between
+his bed and the window. What was he going to do? He was too much upset
+to spend this day at home. He wanted still to be alone, at any rate
+till the next day, to reflect, to compose himself, to strengthen
+himself for the common every-day life which he must take up again.</p>
+
+<p>Well, he would go over to Trouville to see the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> swarming crowd on the
+sands. That would amuse him, change the air of his thoughts, and give
+him time to inure himself to the horrible thing he had discovered. As
+soon as morning dawned he made his toilet and dressed. The fog had
+vanished and it was fine, very fine. As the boat for Trouville did not
+start till nine, it struck the doctor that he must greet his mother
+before starting.</p>
+
+<p>He waited till the hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and
+then went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her
+door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was
+limp and tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning
+the handle to open it. He knocked. His mother's voice inquired:</p>
+
+<p>"Who is there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;Pierre."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only to say good morning, because I am going to spend the day at
+Trouville with some friends."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am still in bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, do not disturb yourself. I shall see you this evening,
+when I come in."</p>
+
+<p>He hoped to get off without seeing her, without pressing on her cheek
+the false kiss which it made his heart sick to think of. But she
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"No. Wait a moment. I will let you in. Wait till I get into bed
+again."</p>
+
+<p>He heard her bare feet on the floor and the sound of the bolt drawn
+back. Then she called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in."</p>
+
+<p>He went in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland,
+with a silk handkerchief by way of night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>cap and his face to the wall,
+still lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to
+pull his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Jos&eacute;phine,
+rung up by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his
+stubborn slumbers.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre as he went toward his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
+of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
+cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.</p>
+
+<p>"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, last evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you return to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
+All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
+eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice&mdash;so well
+known, so familiar, abruptly struck him as new, different from what
+they had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving
+her, he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she,
+and he knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first
+time he clearly identified them all. His anxious attention,
+scrutinizing her face which he loved, recalled a difference, a
+physiognomy he had never before discerned.</p>
+
+<p>He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to
+know which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
+little portrait of Mar&eacute;chal, in the drawing-room."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she
+hesitated; then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"What has become of the portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>She might have replied more readily:</p>
+
+<p>"That portrait&mdash;stay; I don't exactly know&mdash;perhaps it is in my desk."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be kind of you to find it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to
+give it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon
+as I am up."</p>
+
+<p>And he went out.</p>
+
+<p>It was a blue day, without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
+seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
+going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as
+they went, exhilarated by the bright weather.</p>
+
+<p>The passengers were already going on board the Trouville boat; Pierre
+took a seat aft on a wooden bench.</p>
+
+<p>He asked himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Now was she uneasy at my asking for the portrait or only surprised?
+Has she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she know where it is,
+or does she not? If she has hidden it&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>And his mind, still following up the same line of thought from one
+deduction to another, came to this conclusion:</p>
+
+<p>That portrait&mdash;of a friend, of a lover, had re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>mained in the
+drawing-room in a conspicuous place, till one day when the wife and
+mother perceived, first of all and before any one else, that it bore a
+likeness to her son. Without doubt she had for a long time been on the
+watch for this resemblance; then, having detected it, having noticed
+its beginnings, and understanding that any one might, any day, observe
+it too, she had one evening removed the perilous little picture and
+had hidden it, not daring to destroy it.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre recollected quite clearly now that it was long, long before
+they left Paris that the miniature had vanished. It had disappeared,
+he thought, about the time when Jean's beard was beginning to grow,
+which had made him suddenly and wonderfully like the fair young man
+who smiled from the picture frame.</p>
+
+<p>The motion of the boat as it put off disturbed and dissipated his
+meditations. He stood up and looked at the sea. The little steamer,
+once outside the piers, turned to the left, and puffing and snorting
+and quivering, made for a distant point visible through the morning
+haze. The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the
+level waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And
+the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two
+neighboring lands. They reached the harbor of Trouville in less than
+an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing,
+Pierre went to the shore.</p>
+
+<p>From a distance it looked like a garden full of gaudy flowers. All
+along the stretch of yellow sand, from the pier as far as the Roches
+Noires, sunshades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every
+color, in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin
+of the waves, or scattered here and there, really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> looked like immense
+bouquets on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds&mdash;voices near and
+far ringing thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children
+being bathed, clear laughter of women&mdash;all made a pleasant, continuous
+din, mingling with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre walked on among all this throng, more lost, more remote from
+them, more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if
+he had been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles
+from shore. He passed by them and heard a few sentences without
+listening; and he saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the
+women, and the women smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had
+awoke, he perceived them all; and hatred of them all surged up in his
+soul, for they seemed happy and content.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
+fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the
+sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the
+fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of
+fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the
+insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
+in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as
+stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened
+women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding some man. They had
+dressed themselves out for men&mdash;for all men&mdash;all excepting the husband
+whom they no longer needed to conquer. They had dressed themselves out
+for the lover of yesterday and the lover of to-morrow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> for the
+stranger they might meet and notice or were perhaps on the lookout
+for.</p>
+
+<p>And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
+invited them, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
+that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
+then, no more than a love-market&mdash;some drove a hard bargain for their
+kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
+everywhere the same, all the world over.</p>
+
+<p>His mother had done what others did&mdash;that was all. Others? No. For
+there were exceptions&mdash;many, very many. These women he saw about him,
+rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to the class of
+fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to the less
+respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the legion of
+idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of visitors gradually
+landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
+chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
+a lacelike frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled
+up by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade
+running along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing
+flow, slow and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams
+elbowing and mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this
+bustle, made his escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast
+at a modest tavern on the skirts of the fields.</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> legs on a couple
+of chairs under a lime tree in front of the house, and as he had
+hardly slept the night before, he presently fell into a doze. After
+resting for some hours he shook himself, and finding that it was time
+to go on board again he set out, tormented by a sudden stiffness which
+had come upon him during his long nap. Now he was eager to be at home
+again; to know whether his mother had found the portrait of Mar&eacute;chal.
+Would she be the first to speak of it, or would he be obliged to ask
+for it again? If she waited to be questioned further it must be
+because she had some secret reason for not showing the miniature.</p>
+
+<p>But when he was at home again, and in his room, he hesitated about
+going down to dinner. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not
+yet had time to calm down. However, he made up his mind to it, and
+appeared in the dining-room just as they were sitting down.</p>
+
+<p>All their faces were beaming.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Roland, "are you getting on with your purchases? I do not
+want to see anything till it is all in its place."</p>
+
+<p>And his wife replied: "Oh, yes. We are getting on. But it takes much
+consideration to avoid buying things that do not match. The furniture
+question is an absorbing one."</p>
+
+<p>She had spent the day in going with Jean to cabinet-makers and
+upholsterers. Her fancy was for rich materials, rather splendid, to
+strike the eye at once. Her son, on the contrary, wished for something
+simple and elegant. So in front of everything put before them they had
+each repeated their arguments. She de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>clared that a client, a
+defendant, must be impressed; that as soon as he is shown into his
+counsel's waiting-room he should have a sense of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, on the other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and
+opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his
+quiet and perfect taste.</p>
+
+<p>And this discussion, which had gone on all day, began again with the
+soup.</p>
+
+<p>Roland had no opinion. He repeated: "I do not want to hear anything
+about it. I will go and see it when it is all finished."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would
+have liked to reply with an oath. However, he only answered in a dry
+tone quivering with annoyance:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind. I like nothing so well as simplicity,
+which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of
+conduct."</p>
+
+<p>His mother went on:</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where
+good taste is not to be met with at every turn."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre replied:</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
+fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
+A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbor has a
+lover."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jean began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
+maxims of a moralist."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
+question of stuffs and armchairs.</p>
+
+<p>He sat looking at them, as he had looked at his mother in the morning
+before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
+study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
+family of which he knew nothing.</p>
+
+<p>His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind. That flabby, burly
+man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in
+the least like him.</p>
+
+<p>His family!</p>
+
+<p>Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a
+dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which
+had held these four human beings together. It was all over, all
+ruined. He had now no mother&mdash;for he could no longer love her now that
+he could not revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect
+which a son's love demands; no brother&mdash;since his brother was the
+child of a stranger; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse
+man whom he could not love in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>And he suddenly broke out:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>"The portrait of Mar&eacute;chal."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;that is to say&mdash;yes&mdash;I have not found it, but I think I know
+where it is."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:</p>
+
+<p>"A little likeness of Mar&eacute;chal which used to be in the drawing-room in
+Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."</p>
+
+<p>Roland exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
+week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the
+papers. It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was
+shaving myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your
+side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
+it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three
+days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I
+should think that this was one."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland calmly replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know where it is. I will fetch it presently."</p>
+
+<p>Then she had lied! When she had said that very morning to her son, who
+had asked her what had become of the miniature: "I don't exactly
+know&mdash;perhaps it is in my desk"&mdash;it was a lie! She had seen it,
+touched it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she
+had hidden it away again in the secret drawer with those letters&mdash;his
+letters.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre looked at the mother who had lied to him; looked at her with
+the concentrated fury of a son who had been cheated, robbed of his
+most sacred affection, and with the jealous wrath of a man who, after
+long being blind, at last discovers a disgraceful betrayal. If he had
+been that woman's husband&mdash;and not her child&mdash;he would have gripped
+her by the wrists, seized her by the shoulders or the hair, have flung
+her on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> ground, have hit her, hurt her, crushed her! And he might
+say nothing, do nothing, show nothing, reveal nothing. He was her son;
+he had no vengeance to take. And he had not been deceived.</p>
+
+<p>Nay, but she had deceived his tenderness, his pious respect. She owed
+to him to be without reproach, as all mothers owe it to their
+children. If the fury that boiled within him verged on hatred it was
+that he felt her to be even more guilty toward him than toward his
+father.</p>
+
+<p>The love of man and wife is a voluntary compact in which the one who
+proves weak is guilty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother
+her duty is a higher one, since nature has intrusted her with a race.
+If she fails then she is cowardly, worthless, infamous.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not care," said Roland suddenly, stretching out his legs under
+the table, as he did every evening while he sipped his glass of
+black-currant brandy, "You may do worse than live idle when you have a
+snug little income. I hope Jean will have us to dinner in style now.
+Hang it all! if I have an indigestion now and then I cannot help it."</p>
+
+<p>Then turning to his wife he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Go and fetch that portrait, little woman, as you have done your
+dinner. I should like to see it again myself."</p>
+
+<p>She rose, took a taper, and went. Then, after an absence which Pierre
+thought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme.
+Roland returned smiling, and holding an old-fashioned gilt frame by
+the ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," said she, "I found it at once."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The doctor was the first to put forth his hand; he took the picture,
+and holding it a little away from him, he examined it. Then, fully
+aware that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes
+and fixed them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly
+refrain, in his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And
+though he dared not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought
+by his manner of comparing the living face with the painted one.</p>
+
+<p>They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
+but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is the
+father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
+relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But
+what to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the
+faces, was that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was
+pretending, too deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the
+liqueur bottle away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at
+any rate had his suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it on to me," said Roland.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle toward
+him to see it better; then he murmured in a pathetic tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
+Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
+and with such a pleasant manner&mdash;was not he, Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>As his wife made no answer he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all
+at an end&mdash;nothing left of him&mdash;but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well,
+at any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and
+faithful friend to the last. Even on his deathbed he did not forget
+us."</p>
+
+<p>Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it
+for a few minutes and then said regretfully:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not recognize it at all. I only remember him with white hair."</p>
+
+<p>He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
+it, looking away again as if she were frightened; then in her usual
+voice, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
+take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
+she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
+formerly stood.</p>
+
+<p>Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
+commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
+deep armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
+on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland, on a low seat by a little table on which the lamp stood,
+embroidered, or knitted, or marked linen.</p>
+
+<p>This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended for
+Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and
+required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was
+counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little
+portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor,
+who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five
+steps, met his mother's look at each turn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness,
+intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to
+himself&mdash;at once tortured and glad:</p>
+
+<p>"She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And
+each time he reached the fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to
+look at Mar&eacute;chal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was
+haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an
+opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening,
+suddenly brought into this house and this family.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so
+self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the
+anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Ros&eacute;milly"; and
+her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A
+woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts
+suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature
+of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance
+discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know
+and understand everything.</p>
+
+<p>He was seized with a dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
+being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took
+the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen
+by his father and brother.</p>
+
+<p>When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim,
+and haggard.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening," said Mme. Ros&eacute;milly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
+of tea."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
+Pierre made off, the door having been left open.</p>
+
+<p>When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
+for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
+bear!"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
+well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
+like a savage."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly tried to smooth matters by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion;
+people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they
+want to leave early."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man
+does not treat his family <i>&agrave; l'Anglaise</i>, and my brother has done
+nothing else for some time past."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_f.jpg" alt="F" width="43" height="50" /></div>
+<p>or a week or two nothing occurred at the Rolands'. The father went
+fishing; Jean, with his mother's help, was furnishing and settling
+himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at mealtimes.</p>
+
+<p>His father having asked him one evening:</p>
+
+<p>"Why the deuce do you always come in with a face as cheerful as a
+funeral? This is not the first time I have remarked it"&mdash;the doctor
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden of life."</p>
+
+<p>The old man had not a notion what he meant, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> with an aggrieved
+look he went on: "It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good
+luck to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as
+though some accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for
+some one."</p>
+
+<p>"I am in mourning for some one," said Pierre.</p>
+
+<p>"You are? For whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond."</p>
+
+<p>Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
+some love passages, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"A woman, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Worse. Ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife's
+presence too, and by his son's strange tone about it, the old man made
+no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern
+a third person.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
+Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if
+she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could
+not draw her breath, had said:</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with
+helping Jean. Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi! The rascal is in
+no hurry, as he is a rich man."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head without a word.</p>
+
+<p>But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come," said he, "this will not do at all, my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> dear old woman.
+You must take care of yourself." Then, addressing his son, "You surely
+must see that your mother is ill. Have you questioned her, at any
+rate?"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre replied: "No; I had not noticed that there was anything the
+matter with her."</p>
+
+<p>At this Roland was angry.</p>
+
+<p>"But it stares you in the face, confound you! What on earth is the
+good of your being a doctor if you cannot even see that your mother is
+out of sorts? Why, look at her, just look at her. Really, a man might
+die under his very eyes and this doctor would never think there was
+anything the matter!"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland was panting for breath, and so white that her husband
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"She is going to faint."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, it is nothing&mdash;I shall get better directly&mdash;it is nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre had gone up to her and was looking at her steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"What ails you?" he said. And she repeated in an undertone:</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, nothing&mdash;I assure you, nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Roland had gone to fetch some vinegar; he now returned and handing the
+bottle to his son he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here&mdash;do something to ease her. Have you felt her heart?"</p>
+
+<p>As Pierre bent over to feel her pulse she pulled away her hand so
+vehemently that she struck it against a chair which was standing by.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said he in icy tones, "let me see what I can do for you, as
+you are ill."</p>
+
+<p>Then she raised her arm and held it out to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> Her skin was burning,
+the blood throbbing in short irregular leaps.</p>
+
+<p>"You are certainly ill," he murmured. "You must take something to
+quiet you. I will write you a prescription." And as he wrote, stooping
+over the paper, a low sound of choked sighs, smothered, quick
+breathing and suppressed sobs made him suddenly look round at her. She
+was weeping, her hands covering her face.</p>
+
+<p>Roland, quite distracted, asked her:</p>
+
+<p>"Louise, Louise, what is the matter with you? What on earth ails you?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer, but seemed racked by some deep and dreadful grief.
+Her husband tried to take her hands from her face, but she resisted
+him, repeating:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no."</p>
+
+<p>He appealed to his son.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is the matter with her? I never saw her like this."</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing," said Pierre, "she is a little hysterical."</p>
+
+<p>And he felt as if it were a comfort to him to see her suffering thus,
+as if this anguish mitigated his resentment and diminished his
+mother's load of opprobrium. He looked at her as a judge satisfied
+with his day's work.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she rose, rushed to the door with such a swift impulse that
+it was impossible to forestall or to stop her, and ran off to lock
+herself into her room.</p>
+
+<p>Roland and the doctor were left face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you make head or tail of it?" said the father.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said the other. "It is a little nervous disturbance, not
+alarming or surprising; such attacks may very likely recur from time
+to time."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They did in fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring
+them on with a word, as if he had the clue to her strange and new
+disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and
+with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the
+anguish that had been lulled for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>But he, too, was suffering, as cruelly as she. It was dreadful pain to
+him that he could no longer love her nor respect her, that he must put
+her on the rack. When he had laid bare the bleeding wound which he had
+opened in her woman's, her mother's heart, when he felt how wretched
+and desperate she was, he would go out alone, wander about the town,
+so torn by remorse, so broken by pity, so grieved to have thus
+hammered her with his scorn as her son, that he longed to fling
+himself into the sea and put an end to it all by drowning himself.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! How gladly, now, would he have forgiven her. But he could not, for
+he was incapable of forgetting. If only he could have desisted from
+making her suffer; but this again he could not, suffering as he did
+himself. He went home to his meals, full of relenting resolutions;
+then, as soon as he saw her, as soon as he met her eye&mdash;formerly so
+clear and frank, now so evasive, frightened, and bewildered&mdash;he struck
+at her in spite of himself, unable to suppress the treacherous words
+which would rise to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>The disgraceful secret, known to them alone, goaded him up against
+her. It was as a poison flowing in his veins and giving him an impulse
+to bite like a mad dog.</p>
+
+<p>And there was no one in the way now to hinder his reading her; Jean
+lived almost entirely in his new apart<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>ments, and only came home to
+dinner and to sleep every night at his father's.</p>
+
+<p>He frequently observed his brother's bitterness and violence, and
+attributed them to jealousy. He promised himself that some day he
+would teach him his place and give him a lesson, for life at home was
+becoming very painful as a result of these constant scenes. But as he
+now lived apart he suffered less from this brutal conduct, and his
+love of peace prompted him to patience. His good fortune, too, had
+turned his head, and he scarcely paused to think of anything which had
+no direct interest for himself. He would come in full of fresh little
+anxieties, full of the cut of a morning-coat, of the shape of a felt
+hat, of the proper size for his visiting-cards. And he talked
+incessantly of all the details of his house&mdash;the shelves fixed in his
+bedroom cupboard to keep linen on, the pegs to be put up in the
+entrance hall, the electric bells contrived to prevent illicit
+visitors to his lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>It had been settled that on the day when he should take up his abode
+there they should make an excursion to Saint Jouin, and return after
+dining there, to drink tea in his rooms. Roland wanted to go by water,
+but the distance and the uncertainty of reaching it in a sailing-boat
+if there should be a head-wind, made them reject his plan, and a break
+was hired for the day.</p>
+
+<p>They started by ten to get there to breakfast. The dusty high road lay
+across the plain of Normandy, which, by its gentle undulations, dotted
+with farms embowered in trees, wears the aspect of an endless park. In
+the vehicle, as it jogged on at the slow trot of a pair of heavy
+horses, sat the four Rolands, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> and Captain Beausire,
+all silent, deafened by the rumble of the wheels, and with their eyes
+shut to keep out the clouds of dust.</p>
+
+<p>It was harvest-time. Alternating with the dark hue of clover and the
+raw green of beetroot, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with
+gleams of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the
+sunshine which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at
+work, and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might
+be seen see-sawing as they swept the level soil with the broad,
+wing-shaped blade.</p>
+
+<p>After a two-hours' drive the break turned off to the left, past a
+windmill at work&mdash;a melancholy, gray wreck, half rotten and doomed,
+the last survivor of its ancient race; then it went into a pretty inn
+yard, and drew up at the door of a smart little house, a hostelry
+famous in those parts.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress, well known as "La belle Alphonsine," came smiling to the
+threshold, and held out her hand to the two ladies who hesitated to
+take the high step.</p>
+
+<p>Some strangers were already at breakfast under a tent by a grass plot
+shaded by apple trees&mdash;Parisians, who had come from Etretat; and from
+the house came sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of plates
+and pans.</p>
+
+<p>They were eating in a room, as the outer dining halls were all full.
+Roland suddenly caught sight of some shrimping nets hanging against
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! ha!" cried he, "you catch prawns here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied Beausire. "Indeed it is the place on all the coast
+where most are taken."</p>
+
+<p>"First rate! Suppose we try to catch some after breakfast."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As it happened it would be low tide at three o'clock, so it was
+settled that they should all spend the afternoon among the rocks,
+hunting prawns.</p>
+
+<p>They made a light breakfast, as a precaution against the tendency of
+blood to the head when they should have their feet in the water. They
+also wished to reserve an appetite for dinner, which had been ordered
+on a grand scale and to be ready at six o'clock, when they came in.</p>
+
+<p>Roland could not sit still for impatience. He wanted to buy the nets
+specially constructed for fishing prawns, not unlike those used for
+catching butterflies in the country. Their name on the French coast is
+<i>lanets</i>; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end
+of a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them.
+Then she helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet,
+so as not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse
+worsted stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and
+went to the shoemaker's to buy wooden shoes instead.</p>
+
+<p>Then they set out, the nets over their shoulders and creels on their
+backs. Mme. Ros&eacute;milly was quite sweet in this costume, with an
+unexpected charm of countrified audacity. The skirt which Alphonsine
+had lent her, coquettishly tucked up and firmly stitched so as to
+allow of her running and jumping fearlessly on the rocks, displayed
+her ankle and lower calf&mdash;the firm calf of a strong and agile little
+woman. Her dress was loose to give freedom to her movements, and to
+cover her head she had found an enormous garden hat of coarse yellow
+straw with an extravagantly broad brim; and to this, a bunch of
+tamarisk pinned in to cock it on one side, gave a very dashing and
+military effect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jean, since he had come into his fortune, had asked himself every day
+whether or no he should marry her. Each time he saw her he made up his
+mind to ask her to be his wife, and then, as soon as he was alone
+again, he considered that by waiting he would have time to reflect.
+She was now less rich than he, for she had but twelve thousand francs
+a year; but it was in real estate, in farms and lands near the docks
+in Havre; and this by-and-by might be worth a great deal. Their
+fortunes were thus approximately equal, and certainly the young widow
+attracted him greatly.</p>
+
+<p>As he watched her walking in front of him that day he said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"I must really decide; I cannot do better, I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>They went down a little ravine, sloping from the village to the cliff,
+and the cliff, at the end of this comb, rose about eighty meters above
+the sea. Framed between the green slopes to the right and left, a
+great triangle of silvery blue water could be seen in the distance,
+and a sail, scarcely visible, looked like an insect out there. The
+sky, pale with light, was so merged into one with the water that it
+was impossible to see where one ended and the other began; and the two
+women, walking in front of the men, stood out against this bright
+background, their shapes clearly defined in their closely-fitting
+dresses.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, with a sparkle in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat
+leg, the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly
+as they fled away before him. And this flight fired his ardor, urging
+him on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid
+natures. The warm air, fragrant with seacoast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> odors&mdash;gorse, clover
+and thyme, mingling with the salt smell of the rocks at low
+tide&mdash;excited him still more, mounting to his brain; and every moment
+he felt a little more determined, at every step, at every glance he
+cast at the alert figure; he made up his mind to delay no longer, to
+tell her that he loved her and hoped to marry her. The prawn-fishing
+would favor him by affording him an opportunity; and it would be a
+pretty scene too, a pretty spot for love-making&mdash;their feet in a pool
+of limpid water while they watched the long feelers of the shrimps
+lurking under the wrack.</p>
+
+<p>When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of cliff, they
+saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below them,
+about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an
+amazing chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above
+the other on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as
+far as they could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip.
+On this long shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by
+the shocks of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great
+ruined city which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the
+long white wall of the overhanging cliff.</p>
+
+<p>"That is fine!" exclaimed Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, standing still. Jean had
+come up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help
+her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.</p>
+
+<p>They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
+legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The two young people who led the way, went fast till on a sudden they
+saw, by the side of a wooden bench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> which afforded a resting place
+about half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from
+a crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing
+basin which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade,
+hardly two feet high, it trickled across the footpath, which it had
+carpeted with cresses, and was lost among the briars and grass on the
+raised shelf where the boulders were piled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Ros&eacute;milly.</p>
+
+<p>But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
+it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a
+stone on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the
+spring itself, which was thus on the same level.</p>
+
+<p>When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops,
+sprinkled all over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, and her dress,
+Jean bent over her and murmured: "How pretty you look!"</p>
+
+<p>She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be quiet!"</p>
+
+<p>These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said Jean, much agitated. "Let us go on before they come up
+with us."</p>
+
+<p>For in fact they could see quite near them now, Captain Beausire's
+back as he came down, stern foremost, so as to give both hands to Mme.
+Roland; and further up, further off, Roland still letting himself
+slip, lowering himself on his hams and clinging on with both his hand
+and elbows at the speed of a tortoise, Pierre keeping in front of him
+to watch his movements.</p>
+
+<p>The path, now less steep, was here almost a road,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> zigzagging between
+the huge rocks which had at some former time rolled from the hilltop.
+Mme. Ros&eacute;milly and Jean set off at a run and they were soon on the
+beach. They crossed it and reached the rocks, which stretched in a
+long and flat expanse covered with seaweed, and broken by endless
+gleaming pools. The ebbed waters lay beyond, very far away, across
+this plain of slimy weed, of a black and shining olive-green.</p>
+
+<p>Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
+elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: "Forward!"
+he leaped boldly into the first tidepool they came to.</p>
+
+<p>The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too,
+presently, made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for
+she slipped on the grassy weed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see anything?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I see your face reflected in the water."</p>
+
+<p>"If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing."</p>
+
+<p>He murmured tenderly in reply:</p>
+
+<p>"Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed: "Try; you will see how it will slip through your net."</p>
+
+<p>"But yet&mdash;if you will?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will see you catch prawns&mdash;and nothing else&mdash;for the moment."</p>
+
+<p>"You are cruel&mdash;let us go a little further; there are none here."</p>
+
+<p>He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned
+on him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by
+love and insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been
+incubating in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> him had waited till to-day to declare its presence.</p>
+
+<p>They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
+fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-colored hair, were
+swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant
+sea through some invisible crevice.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly cried out: "Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very
+big one, just there!" He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool
+though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
+whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it toward the
+seaweed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
+rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
+young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
+help exclaiming: "Oh! Clumsy!"</p>
+
+<p>He was vexed, and without a moment's thought dragged his net over a
+hole full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it
+three large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding
+place.</p>
+
+<p>He offered them in triumph to Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, who was afraid to touch
+them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
+However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tips of
+their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
+little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
+of water, she stepped in with some hesitation, for the cold plunge of
+her feet took her breath away, and began to fish on her own account.
+She was dextrous and artful, with the light hand and the hunter's
+instinct, which are indispensable. At almost every dip she caught up
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> prawns, beguiled and surprised by her ingeniously gentle
+pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Jean now caught nothing; but he followed her, step by step, touched
+her now and again, bent over her, pretended great distress at his own
+awkwardness, and besought her to teach him.</p>
+
+<p>"Show me," he kept saying. "Show me how."</p>
+
+<p>And then, as their two faces were reflected side by side in water so
+clear that the black weeds at the bottom made a mirror, Jean smiled at
+the face which looked up at him from the depth, and now and then from
+his finger tips blew it a kiss which seemed to light upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! how tiresome you are!" she exclaimed. "My dear fellow, you should
+never do two things at once."</p>
+
+<p>He replied: "I am only doing one&mdash;loving you."</p>
+
+<p>She drew herself up and said gravely:</p>
+
+<p>"What has come over you these ten minutes; have you lost your wits?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have not lost my wits. I love you, and at last I dare to tell
+you so."</p>
+
+<p>They were at this moment both standing in the salt pool wet half-way
+up to their knees and with dripping hands, holding their nets. They
+looked into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She went on in a tone of amused annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>"How very ill-advised to tell me so here and now. Could you not wait
+till another day instead of spoiling my fishing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," he murmured, "but I could not longer hold my peace. I
+have loved you a long time. To-day you have intoxicated me and I lost
+my reason."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly she seemed to have resigned herself to talk business and
+think no more of pleasure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let us sit down on that stone," said she, "we can talk more
+comfortably." They scrambled up a rather high boulder, and when they
+had settled themselves side by side in the bright sunshine, she began
+again:</p>
+
+<p>"My good friend, you are no longer a child, and I am not a young girl.
+We both know perfectly well what we are about and we can weigh the
+consequences of our actions. If you have made up your mind to make
+love to me to-day I must naturally infer that you wish to marry me."</p>
+
+<p>He was not prepared for this matter-of-fact statement of the case, and
+he answered blandly:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you mentioned it to your father and mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I wanted to know first whether you would accept me."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand, which was still wet, and as he eagerly clasped
+it:</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready and willing," she said. "I believe you to be kind and
+true-hearted. But remember, I should not like to displease your
+parents."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you think that my mother has never foreseen it, or that she
+would be as fond of you as she is if she did not hope that you and I
+should marry?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. I am a little disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>They said no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little
+disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways,
+refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered
+by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was
+pledged, married with twenty words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> They had no more to say about it
+since they were agreed, and they now sat, both somewhat embarrassed by
+what had so swiftly passed between them; a little perplexed, indeed,
+not daring to speak, not daring to fish, not knowing what to do.</p>
+
+<p>Roland's voice rescued them.</p>
+
+<p>"This way, this way, children. Come and watch Beausire. The fellow is
+positively clearing out the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>The captain had, in fact, had a wonderful haul. Wet above his hips, he
+waded from pool to pool, recognizing the likeliest spots at a glance,
+and searching all the hollows hidden under seaweed, with a steady slow
+sweep of his net. And the beautiful transparent, sandy-gray prawns
+skipped in his palm as he picked them out of the net with a dry jerk
+and put them into his creel. Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, surprised and delighted,
+remained at his side, almost forgetful of her promise to Jean, who
+followed them in a dream, giving herself up entirely to the childish
+enjoyment of pulling the creatures out from among the waving
+seagrasses.</p>
+
+<p>Roland suddenly exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, here comes Mme. Roland to join us."</p>
+
+<p>She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had
+neither of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and
+paddling in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about
+staying together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her
+and of himself; afraid of his own cruelty, which he could not control.
+But they sat down side by side on the stones. And both of them, under
+the heat of the sun, mitigated by the sea breeze, gazing at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> wide,
+fair horizon of blue water streaked and shot with silver, thought as
+if in unison: "How delightful this would have been&mdash;once."</p>
+
+<p>She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return
+some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that in
+spite of himself he should speak violently. He sat twitching the
+water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and
+turning them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up
+three or four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping
+them from one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering
+over the scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son
+Jean fishing with Mme. Ros&eacute;milly. She looked at them, watching their
+movements, dimly understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were
+talking as they did not talk every day. She saw them leaning over side
+by side when they looked into the water, standing face to face when
+they questioned their hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated
+themselves to come to an understanding. Their figures stood out very
+sharply, looking as if they were alone in the middle of the wide
+horizon, and assuming a sort of symbolic dignity in that vast expanse
+of sky and sea and cliff.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke
+from his lips. Without turning to him Mme. Roland said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a sneer.</p>
+
+<p>"I am learning. Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by
+his wife."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was
+intended.</p>
+
+<p>"In whose name do you say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"In Jean's, by heaven! It is immensely funny to see those two."</p>
+
+<p>She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling: "O Pierre, how
+cruel you are. That woman is honesty itself. Your brother could not
+find a better."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh:</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! hah! hah! Honesty itself! All wives are honesty itself,&mdash;and all
+husbands are&mdash;betrayed." And he shouted with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and
+at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the seaweed,
+of breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging
+through the pools without looking, straight to her other son.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing her approach, Jean called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother? So you have made the effort?"</p>
+
+<p>Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say: "Save me,
+protect me!"</p>
+
+<p>He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said:</p>
+
+<p>"How pale you are; what is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>She stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks."</p>
+
+<p>So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her
+that she might take an interest in it. But as she scarcely heeded him,
+and as he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led
+her away and in a low voice said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Guess what I have done!"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;what&mdash;I don't know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Guess."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot. I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I have told Mme. Ros&eacute;milly that I wish to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer, for her brain was buzzing, her mind in such
+distress that she could scarcely take it in. She echoed: "Marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Have I done well? She is charming, do not you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, charming. You have done very well."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you approve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I approve."</p>
+
+<p>"But how strangely you say so. I could fancy that&mdash;that you were not
+glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, I am&mdash;very glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Really and truly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Really and truly."</p>
+
+<p>And to prove it she threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily
+with warm motherly kisses. Then, when she had wiped her eyes, which
+were full of tears, she observed upon the beach a man lying flat at
+full length like a dead body, his face hidden against the stones; it
+was the other one, Pierre, sunk in thought and desperation.</p>
+
+<p>At this she led her little Jean further away, quite to the edge of the
+waves, and there they talked for a long time of this marriage on which
+he had set his heart.</p>
+
+<p>The rising tide drove them back to rejoin the fishers, and then they
+all made their way to the shore. They roused Pierre, who pretended to
+be sleeping; and then came a long dinner washed down with many kinds
+of wine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>n the break, on their way home, all the men dozed excepting Jean.
+Beausire and Roland dropped every five minutes on to a neighbor's
+shoulder which repelled them with a shove. Then they sat up, ceased to
+snore, opened their eyes, muttered "a lovely evening!" and almost
+immediately fell over on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>By the time they reached Havre their drowsiness was so heavy that they
+had great difficulty in shaking it off, and Beausire even refused to
+go to Jean's rooms where tea was waiting for them. He had to be set
+down at his own door.</p>
+
+<p>The young lawyer was to sleep in his new abode for the first time; and
+he was full of rather puerile glee which had suddenly come over him,
+at being able, that very evening to show his betrothed the rooms she
+was so soon to inhabit.</p>
+
+<p>The maid had gone to bed, Mme. Roland having declared that she herself
+would boil the water and make the tea, for she did not like the
+servants to be kept up for fear of fire.</p>
+
+<p>No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
+workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
+pretty.</p>
+
+<p>Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
+light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Ros&eacute;milly in the dark
+with his father and brother; then he cried! "Come in!" opening the
+double door to its full width.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little colored lamps
+hidden among palms, india-rubber plants and flowers, was first seen
+like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
+dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap
+his hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the
+first drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to
+match. The larger drawing-room&mdash;the lawyer's consulting-room, very
+simple, hung with light salmon-color, was dignified in style.</p>
+
+<p>Jean sat down in his armchair in front of his writing-table loaded
+with books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
+consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the
+matter we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three
+months."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
+Roland. Madame Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high
+spirits, cut a caper like a schoolboy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the
+voice carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."</p>
+
+<p>And he declaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we
+feel toward all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect
+of you, I should appeal to your compassion, gentlemen of the jury, to
+your hearts as fathers and as men; but we have law on our side, and it
+is the point of law only which we shall submit to your judgment."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre was looking at this home which might have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> been his, and he was
+restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and
+witless.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland opened a door on the right.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the bedroom," said she.</p>
+
+<p>She had devoted herself to its decoration with all her mother's love.
+The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and
+the Louis XV design&mdash;a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks
+of a pair of doves&mdash;gave the walls, curtains, bed, and armchairs a
+festive, rustic style that was extremely pretty!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how charming!" Mme. Ros&eacute;milly exclaimed, becoming a little
+serious as they entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it?" asked Jean.</p>
+
+<p>"Immensely."</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot imagine how glad I am."</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other for a second, with confiding tenderness in
+the depths of their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She had felt a little awkward, however, a little abashed, in this room
+which was to be hers. She noticed as she went in that the bed was a
+large one, quite a family bed, chosen by Mme. Roland, who had no doubt
+foreseen and hoped that her son should soon marry; and this motherly
+foresight pleased her, for it seemed to tell her that she was expected
+in the family.</p>
+
+<p>When they had returned to the drawing-room Jean abruptly threw open
+the door to the left, showing the circular dining-room with three
+windows, and decorated to imitate a Chinese lantern. Mother and son
+had here lavished all the fancy of which they were capable, and the
+room, with its bamboo furniture, its mandarins, jars, silk hangings
+glistening with gold, transparent blinds threaded with beads looking
+like drops<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> of water, fans nailed to the wall to drape the hangings
+on, screens, swords, masks, cranes made of real feathers, and a myriad
+trifles in china, wood, paper, ivory, mother of pearl, and bronze, had
+the pretentious and extravagant aspect which unpracticed hands and
+uneducated eyes inevitably stamp on things which need the utmost tact,
+taste, and artistic education. Nevertheless it was the most admired;
+only Pierre made some observations with rather bitter irony which hurt
+his brother's feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Pyramids of fruit stood on the table and monuments of cakes. No one
+was hungry; they picked at the fruit and nibbled at the cakes rather
+than ate them. Then, at the end of about an hour, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly
+begged to take leave. It was decided that old Roland should accompany
+her home and set out with her forthwith; while Madame Roland, in the
+maid's absence, should cast a maternal eye over the house and see that
+her son had all he needed.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I come back for you?" asked Roland.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated a moment and then said: "No, dear old man; go to bed.
+Pierre will see me home."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as they were gone she blew out the candles, locked up the
+cakes, the sugar, and liqueurs in a cupboard of which she gave the key
+to Jean; then she went into the bedroom, turned down the bed, saw that
+there was fresh water in the water-bottle, and that the window was
+properly closed.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre and Jean had remained in the little outer drawing-room; the
+younger still sore under the criticism passed on his taste, and the
+elder chafing more and more at seeing his brother in this abode. They
+both sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> smoking without a word. Pierre suddenly started to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi!" he exclaimed. "The widow looked very jaded this evening.
+Long excursions do not improve her."</p>
+
+<p>Jean felt his spirit rising with one of those sudden and furious rages
+which boil up in easy-going natures when they are wounded to the
+quick. He could hardly find breath to speak, so fierce was his
+excitement, and he stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"I forbid you ever again to say 'the widow' when you speak of Mme.
+Ros&eacute;milly."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre turned on him haughtily:</p>
+
+<p>"You are giving me an order, I believe. Are you gone mad by any
+chance?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean had pulled himself up.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not gone mad, but I have had enough of your manners to me."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre sneered: "To you? And are you any part of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are to know that Mme. Ros&eacute;milly is about to become my wife."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre laughed the louder.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! ha! Very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of
+her as 'the widow.' But you have taken a strange way of announcing
+your engagement."</p>
+
+<p>"I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it."</p>
+
+<p>Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with
+exasperation at this irony leveled at the woman he loved and had
+chosen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of
+impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for
+so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain,
+bewildering it like a fit.</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue&mdash;do you
+hear? I order you."</p>
+
+<p>Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying
+in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the
+phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went
+on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to
+speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:</p>
+
+<p>"I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since
+the day when you first began to talk of 'the widow' because you knew
+it annoyed me."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were
+common with him:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you? I? I? And of what? Good God! Of
+your person or your mind?"</p>
+
+<p>But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, jealous of me&mdash;jealous from your childhood up. And it became
+fury when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing
+to say to you."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out:</p>
+
+<p>"I? I? Jealous of you? And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that
+simpleton?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on:</p>
+
+<p>"And how about the day when you tried to pull me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> round in the
+<i>Pearl</i>? And all you said in her presence to show off? Why you are
+bursting with jealousy? And when this money was left to me you were
+maddened, you hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made
+every one suffer for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out
+the bile that is choking you."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible
+impulse to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue," he cried. "At least say nothing about that money."</p>
+
+<p>Jean went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore. You never say a word to my
+father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly. You pretend
+to despise me because you are jealous. You try to pick a quarrel with
+every one because you are jealous. And now that I am rich you can no
+longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our
+poor mother as if she were to blame!"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre had retired step by step as far as the fireplace, his mouth
+half open, his eyes glaring, a prey to one of those mad fits of
+passion in which crime is committed.</p>
+
+<p>He said again in a lower tone, gasping for breath: "Hold your
+tongue&mdash;for God's sake hold your tongue!"</p>
+
+<p>"No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind!
+you have given me an opening&mdash;so much the worse for you. I love the
+woman; you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence&mdash;so much the
+worse for you. But I will break your viper's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> fangs, I tell you. I
+will make you treat me with respect."</p>
+
+<p>"With respect&mdash;you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;me."</p>
+
+<p>"Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed."</p>
+
+<p>"You say&mdash;? Say it again&mdash;again."</p>
+
+<p>"I say that it does not do to accept one man's fortune when another is
+reputed to be your father."</p>
+
+<p>Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he
+scented.</p>
+
+<p>"What? Repeat that once more."</p>
+
+<p>"I say&mdash;what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is
+blabbing&mdash;that you are the son of the man who left you his fortune.
+Well, then&mdash;a decent man does not take money which brings dishonor on
+his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? It is you who
+give utterance to this infamous thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month
+past, spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of
+sight like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will
+become of me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for
+first I guessed&mdash;and now I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may
+hear&mdash;she must hear."</p>
+
+<p>But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his
+suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the
+history of the portrait&mdash;which had again disappeared. He spoke in
+short broken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> sentences almost without coherence&mdash;the language of a
+sleep-walker.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the
+adjoining room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must
+talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the
+wound too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had
+burst, splashing every one. He was pacing the room in the way he
+almost always did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a
+frenzy of despair, his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions
+of self-loathing; he spoke as if he were making a confession of his
+own misery and that of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his
+woes to the deaf, invisible winds which bore away his words.</p>
+
+<p>Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother's
+blind vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he
+guessed, their mother had heard them.</p>
+
+<p>She could not get out, she must come through this room. She had not
+come; then it was because she dared not.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot:</p>
+
+<p>"I am a brute," he cried, "to have told you this."</p>
+
+<p>And he fled, bare-headed, down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the
+deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer
+than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He
+was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he
+would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear,
+weakness, cowardice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> He was one of those procrastinators who put
+everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to come to a
+decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to gain a few
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>But the perfect silence which now reigned, after Pierre's
+vociferations, the sudden stillness of walls and furniture, with the
+bright light of six wax candles and two lamps, terrified him so
+greatly that he suddenly longed to make his escape too.</p>
+
+<p>Then he roused his brain, roused his heart, and tried to reflect.</p>
+
+<p>Never in his life had he had to face a difficulty. There are men who
+let themselves glide onward like running water. He had been duteous
+over his tasks for fear of punishment, and had got through his legal
+studies with credit because his existence was tranquil. Everything in
+the world seemed to him quite natural and never aroused his particular
+attention. He loved order, steadiness, and peace, by temperament, his
+nature having no complications; and face to face with this
+catastrophe, he found himself like a man who has fallen into the water
+and cannot swim.</p>
+
+<p>At first he tried to be incredulous. His brother had told a lie, out
+of hatred and jealousy. But yet, how could he have been so vile as to
+say such a thing of their mother if he had not himself been distraught
+by despair? Besides, stamped on Jean's ear, on his sight, on his
+nerves, on the inmost fibers of his flesh, were certain words, certain
+tones of anguish, certain gestures of Pierre's, so full of suffering
+that they were irresistibly convincing; as incontrovertible as
+certainty itself.</p>
+
+<p>He was too much crushed to stir or even to will. His distress became
+unbearable; and he knew that be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>hind the door was his mother who had
+heard everything and was waiting.</p>
+
+<p>What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a
+sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel.
+Could she have run away? But how? If she had run away&mdash;she must have
+jumped out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused
+him&mdash;so violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than
+opened it, and flung himself into the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the
+chest of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>Jean flew to the window, it was shut and the shutters bolted. He
+looked about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and
+he then noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and
+opened them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the
+pillow which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no
+more.</p>
+
+<p>At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then taking her by the
+shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow,
+which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep
+herself from crying out.</p>
+
+<p>But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively
+clenched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture.
+The strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case
+full of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and
+ears, that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an
+idea, by the turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise
+to, and his heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> was no
+judge, not he; not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of
+weakness and a son full of love. He remembered nothing of what his
+brother had told him; he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid
+his two hands on his mother's inert body, and not being able to pull
+the pillow away, he exclaimed, kissing her dress:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me."</p>
+
+<p>She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible
+shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord.
+And he repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not
+true."</p>
+
+<p>A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she
+suddenly began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid
+muscles yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he
+uncovered her face.</p>
+
+<p>She was pale, quite colorless; and from under her closed lids tears
+were stealing. He threw his arms round her neck and kissed her eyes,
+slowly, with long heart-broken kisses, wet with her tears; and he said
+again and again:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, my dear mother, I know it is not true. Do not cry; I know it.
+It is not true."</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself, she sat up, looked in his face, and with an effort
+of courage such as it must cost in some cases to kill one's self, she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"No, my child; it is true."</p>
+
+<p>And they remained speechless, each in the presence of the other. For
+some minutes she seemed again to be suffocating, craning her throat
+and throwing back her head to get breath; then she once more mastered
+herself and went on:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is true, my child. Why lie about it? It is true. You would not
+believe me if I denied it."</p>
+
+<p>She looked like a crazy creature. Overcome by alarm, he fell on his
+knees by the bedside murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, mother, be silent." She stood up with terrible determination
+and energy.</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing more to say, my child. Good-by." And she went toward
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>He threw his arms about her exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing, mother; where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. How should I know&mdash;There is nothing left for me to do,
+now that I am alone."</p>
+
+<p>She struggled to be released. Holding her firmly, he could find only
+words to say again and again:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, mother!" And through all her efforts to free herself
+she was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. I am not your mother now. I am nothing to you, to
+anybody&mdash;nothing, nothing. You have neither father nor mother now,
+poor boy&mdash;good-by."</p>
+
+<p>It struck him clearly that if he let her go now he should never see
+her again; lifting her up in his arms he carried her to an armchair,
+forced her into it, and kneeling down in front of her barred her in
+with his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not quit this spot, mother. I love you and I will keep you!
+I will keep you always&mdash;I love you and you are mine."</p>
+
+<p>She murmured in a dejected tone:</p>
+
+<p>"No, my poor boy, it is impossible. You weep to-night, but to-morrow
+you would turn me out of the house. You, even you, could not forgive
+me."</p>
+
+<p>He replied: "I? I? How little you know me!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> with such a burst of
+genuine affection that with a cry, she seized his head by the hair
+with both hands, and dragging him violently to her kissed him
+distractedly all over the face.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat still, her cheek against his, feeling the warmth of his
+skin through his beard, and she whispered in his ear: "No, my little
+Jean, you would not forgive me to-morrow. You think so, but you
+deceive yourself. You have forgiven me this evening, and that
+forgiveness has saved my life; but you must never see me again."</p>
+
+<p>And he repeated, clasping her in his arms:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, do not say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my child, I must go away. I do not know where, nor how I shall
+set about it, nor what I shall do; but it must be done. I could never
+look at you, nor kiss you, do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he in his turn spoke into her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"My little mother, you are to stay, because I insist, because I want
+you. And you must pledge your word to obey me, now at once."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother, you must; do you hear? You must."</p>
+
+<p>"No, my child, it is impossible. It would be condemning us all to the
+tortures of hell. I know what that torment is; I have known it this
+month past. Your feelings are touched now, but when that is over, when
+you look on me as Pierre does, when you remember what I have told
+you&mdash;oh, my Jean, think&mdash;think&mdash;I am your mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not let you leave me, mother. I have no one but you."</p>
+
+<p>"But think, my son, we can never see each other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> again without both of
+us blushing, without my feeling that I must die of shame, without my
+eyes falling before yours."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is not so mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, yes, it is so! Oh, I have understood all your poor
+brother's struggles, believe me! All&mdash;from the very first day. Now
+when I hear his step in the house my heart beats as if it would burst,
+when I hear his voice I am ready to faint. I still had you; now I have
+you no longer. Oh, my little Jean! Do you think I could live between
+you two?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I should love you so much that you would cease to think of it."</p>
+
+<p>"As if that were possible!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is possible!"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you suppose that I could cease to think of it, with your
+brother and you on each hand? Would you cease to think of it, I ask
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I? I swear I should."</p>
+
+<p>"Why you would think of it at every hour of the day."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I swear it. Besides, listen, if you go away I will enlist and get
+killed."</p>
+
+<p>This boyish threat quite overcame her; she clasped Jean in a
+passionate and tender embrace. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I love you more than you think&mdash;ah much more, much more. Come, be
+reasonable. Try to stay for only one week. Will you promise me one
+week? You cannot refuse me that?"</p>
+
+<p>She laid her two hands on Jean's shoulders, and holding him at arm's
+length she said:</p>
+
+<p>"My child, let us try and be calm and not give way to emotions. First,
+listen to me. If I were ever to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> hear from your lips what I have heard
+for this month past from your brother, if I were once to see in your
+eyes what I read in his, if I could fancy from a word or a look that I
+was as odious to you as I am to him&mdash;within one hour, mark me&mdash;within
+one hour I should be gone forever."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I swear to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me speak. For a month past I have suffered all that any creature
+can suffer. From the moment when I perceived that your brother, my
+other son, suspected me, that as the minutes went by, he guessed the
+truth, every moment of my life has been a martyrdom which no words
+could tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was so full of woe that the contagion of her misery brought
+the tears to Jean's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to kiss her, but she held him off.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me&mdash;listen; I still have so much to say to make you understand.
+But you never can understand. You see, if I stayed&mdash;I must&mdash;no, no. I
+cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak on, mother, speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed, for at least I shall not have deceived you. You want me
+to stay with you? For what&mdash;for us to be able to see each other, speak
+to each other, meet at any hour of the day at home, for I no longer
+dare open a door for fear of finding your brother behind it. If we are
+to do that, you must not forgive me&mdash;nothing is so wounding as
+forgiveness&mdash;but you must owe me no grudge for what I have done. You
+must feel yourself strong enough, and so far unlike the rest of the
+world, as to be able to say to yourself that you are not Roland's son
+without blushing for the fact or despising me. I have suffered
+enough&mdash;I have suffered too much; I can bear no more, no indeed, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+more! And it is not a thing of yesterday, mind you, but of long, long
+years. But you could never understand that, how should you! If you and
+I are to live together and kiss each other, my little Jean, you must
+believe that though I was your father's mistress I was yet more truly
+his wife, his real wife; that at the bottom of my heart, I cannot be
+ashamed of it; that I have no regrets; that I love him still even in
+death; that I shall always love him and never loved any other man;
+that he was my life, my joy, my hope, my comfort,
+everything&mdash;everything in the world to me for so long! Listen, my boy,
+before God, who hears me, I should never have had a joy in my
+existence if I had not met him; never anything&mdash;not a touch of
+tenderness or kindness, not one of those hours which make us regret
+growing old,&mdash;nothing. I owe everything to him! I had but him in the
+world, and you two boys, your brother and you. But for you, all would
+have been empty, dark, and void as the night. I should never have
+loved, or known, or cared for anything&mdash;I should not even have
+wept&mdash;for I have wept, my little Jean; oh yes, and bitter tears, since
+we came to Havre. I was his wholly and forever; for ten years I was as
+much his wife as he was my husband before God who created us for each
+other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was always
+kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was all
+over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is! Nothing
+lasts. Then we came here&mdash;I never saw him again; he never came. He
+promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never
+saw him again&mdash;and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he
+remembered you. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> shall love him to my latest breath, and I never
+will deny him, and I love you because you are his child, and I could
+never be ashamed of him before you. Do you understand? I could not. So
+if you wish me to remain you must accept the situation as his son, and
+we will talk of him sometimes; and you must love him a little and we
+must think of him when we look at each other. If you will not do
+this&mdash;if you cannot&mdash;then good-by, my child; it is impossible that we
+should live together. Now, I will act by your decision."</p>
+
+<p>Jean replied gently:</p>
+
+<p>"Stay, mother."</p>
+
+<p>She clasped him in her arms, and her tears flowed again; then, with
+her face against his, she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but Pierre. What can we do about Pierre?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"We will find some plan! You cannot live with him any longer."</p>
+
+<p>At the thought of her elder son she was convulsed with terror.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I cannot; no, no!" And throwing herself on Jean's breast she
+cried in distress of mind:</p>
+
+<p>"Save me from him, you my little one. Save me; do something&mdash;I don't
+know what. Think of something. Save me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother, I will think of something."</p>
+
+<p>"And at once. You must, this minute. Do not leave me. I am so afraid
+of him&mdash;so afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; I will hit on some plan. I promise you I will."</p>
+
+<p>"But at once; quick, quick! You cannot imagine what I feel when I see
+him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then she murmured softly in his ear: "Keep me here, with you."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, reflected, and with his blunt good-sense saw at once the
+dangers of such an arrangement. But he had to argue for a long time,
+combatting her scared, terror-stricken insistence.</p>
+
+<p>"Only for to-night," she said. "Only for to-night. And to-morrow
+morning you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill."</p>
+
+<p>"That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come take
+courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will
+be with you by nine o'clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"I will do just what you desire," she said with a childlike impulse of
+timidity and gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her, she could
+not stand.</p>
+
+<p>He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while he
+bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would,
+exhausted but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last
+she could walk and she took his arm. The town hall clock struck three
+as they went past.</p>
+
+<p>Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, mother, keep up your courage."</p>
+
+<p>She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room,
+undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a long-forgotten sense of
+guilt. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone was awake,
+and had heard her come in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hen he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the
+sorrows and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to
+flee like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and
+broke the strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a
+finger, even to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and
+heart-broken. He had not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity
+of filial love, in the secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud
+heart; he was overwhelmed by the stroke of fate which, at the same
+time threatened his own nearest interests.</p>
+
+<p>When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled like
+water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
+situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of
+his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very
+wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother,
+after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
+agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of
+energy that he could not rebel. The shock to his feelings had been so
+great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all
+prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides,
+he was not a man made for resistance. He did not like contending
+against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself
+at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and
+of easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which
+must surge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> up around him and at once be his ruin. He foresaw that
+they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to
+superhuman efforts of energy and activity. The knot must be cut
+immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of that imperious
+demand for a swift solution which is the only strength of weak
+natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer's mind,
+accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated
+situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had
+got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of
+his brother's state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the
+issue from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to
+legislate for the future relations of certain clients after a moral
+disaster. Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become
+unendurable. He could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own
+lodgings; but even then it was not possible that their mother should
+live under the same roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat
+meditating, motionless, on the cushions, devising and rejecting
+various possibilities, and finding nothing that satisfied him.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly an idea took him by storm. This fortune which had come to
+him. Would an honest man keep it?</p>
+
+<p>"No," was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it
+must go to the poor. It was hard, but it could not be helped. He would
+sell his furniture and work like any other man, like any other
+beginner. This manful and painful resolution spurred his courage; he
+rose and went to the window, leaning his forehead against the pane. He
+had been poor; he could become poor again. After all, he should not
+die of it. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> eyes were fixed on the gas lamp burning at the
+opposite side of the street. A woman, much belated, happened to pass;
+suddenly he thought of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly with the pang at his heart, the
+shock of deep feeling which comes of a cruel suggestion. All the dire
+results of his decision rose up before him together. He would have to
+renounce his marriage, renounce happiness, renounce everything. Could
+he do such a thing after having pledged himself to her? She had
+accepted him knowing him to be rich. She would take him still if he
+were poor; but had he any right to demand such a sacrifice? Would it
+not be better to keep this money in trust, to be restored to the poor
+at some future date?</p>
+
+<p>And in his soul, where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all
+these specious interests were struggling and contending. His first
+scruples yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again,
+and again disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down again, seeking some decisive motive, some all-sufficient
+pretext to solve his hesitancy and convince his natural rectitude.
+Twenty times over had he asked himself this question: "Since I am this
+man's son, since I know and acknowledge it, is it not natural that I
+should also accept the inheritance?"</p>
+
+<p>But even this argument could not suppress the "No" murmured by his
+inmost conscience.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the thought: "Since I am not the son of the man I always
+believed to be my father, I can take nothing from him, neither during
+his lifetime nor after his death. It would be neither dignified nor
+equitable. It would be robbing my brother."</p>
+
+<p>This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his
+conscience, he went to the window again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said to himself, "I must give up my share of the family
+inheritance. I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not
+his father's son. That is but just. Then is it not just that I should
+keep my father's money?"</p>
+
+<p>Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland's savings,
+having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he
+resigned himself to keeping Mar&eacute;chal's; for if he rejected both he
+would find himself reduced to beggary.</p>
+
+<p>This delicate question being thus disposed of, he came back to that of
+Pierre's presence in the family. How was he to be got rid of? He was
+giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a
+steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by
+suggesting a scheme.</p>
+
+<p>Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and
+dreamed until daybreak.</p>
+
+<p>At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans
+were feasible. Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went
+to his old home. His mother was waiting for him in her room.</p>
+
+<p>"If you had not come," she said, "I should never have dared to go
+down."</p>
+
+<p>In a minute Roland's voice was heard on the stairs: "Are we to have
+nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this
+time: "Jos&eacute;phine, what the devil are you about?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl's voice came up from the depths of the basement:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, m'sieu&mdash;what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is your Miss'es?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Madame is upstairs with M'sieu Jean."</p>
+
+<p>Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor: "Louise!"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear, I am coming."</p>
+
+<p>And she went down, followed by Jean.</p>
+
+<p>Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo! There you are! Sick of your home already?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers
+in the old man's fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion
+thrilled through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without
+return.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Pierre is not come down?"</p>
+
+<p>Her husband shrugged his shoulders:</p>
+
+<p>"No, but never mind him; he is always behind hand. We will begin
+without him."</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Jean:</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we
+do not wait for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother. I will go."</p>
+
+<p>And the young man went. He mounted the stairs with the fevered
+determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a
+fright. When he knocked at the door Pierre said:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in."</p>
+
+<p>He went in. The elder was writing, leaning over his table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good morning," said Jean.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning," and they shook hands as if nothing had occurred.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you not coming down to breakfast?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;you see&mdash;I have a good deal to do." The elder brother's voice
+was tremulous, and his anxious eye asked his younger brother what he
+meant to do.</p>
+
+<p>"They are waiting for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! There is&mdash;is my mother down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was she who sent me to fetch you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, very well; then I will come."</p>
+
+<p>At the door of the dining-room he paused, doubtful about going in
+first; then he abruptly opened the door and saw his father and mother
+seated at the table opposite each other.</p>
+
+<p>He went straight up to her without looking at her or saying a word,
+and bending over her offered his forehead for her to kiss, as he had
+done for some time past, instead of kissing her on both cheeks as of
+old. He supposed that she put her lips near, but he did not feel them
+on his brow, and he straightened himself with a throbbing heart after
+this feint of a caress. And he wondered:</p>
+
+<p>"What did they say to each other after I had left?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean constantly addressed her tenderly as "mother," or "dear mother,"
+took care of her, waited on her, and poured out her wine.</p>
+
+<p>Then Pierre understood that they had wept together, but he could not
+read their minds. Did Jean believe in his mother's guilt, or think his
+brother a base wretch?</p>
+
+<p>And all his self-reproach for having uttered the horrible thing came
+upon him again, choking his throat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> and his tongue, and preventing his
+either eating or speaking.</p>
+
+<p>He was now a prey to an intolerable desire to fly, to leave the house
+which was his home no longer, and these persons who were bound to him
+by such imperceptible ties. He would gladly have been off that moment,
+no matter whither, feeling that everything was over, that he could not
+endure to stay with them, that his presence was torture to them, and
+that they would bring on him incessant suffering too great to endure.
+Jean was talking, chatting with Roland. Pierre, as he did not listen,
+did not hear. But he presently was aware of a pointed tone in his
+brother's voice and paid more attention to his words. Jean was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"She will be the finest ship in their fleet. They say she is of 6,500
+tons. She is to make her first trip next month."</p>
+
+<p>Roland was amazed.</p>
+
+<p>"So soon? I thought she was not to be ready for sea this summer."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The work has been pushed forward very vigorously, to get her
+through her first voyage before the autumn. I looked in at the
+Company's office this morning, and was talking with one of the
+directors."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! Which of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"M. Marchand, who is a great friend of the Chairman of the Board."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Do you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And I wanted to ask him a favor."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you will get me leave to go over every part of the <i>Lorraine</i> as
+soon as she comes into port?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, nothing can be easier."</p>
+
+<p>Then Jean seemed to hesitate, to be weighing his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> words, and to want
+to lead up to a difficult subject. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"On the whole, life is very endurable on board those great
+Transatlantic liners. More than half the time is spent on shore in two
+splendid cities&mdash;New York and Havre; and the remainder at sea with
+delightful company. In fact, very pleasant acquaintances are sometimes
+made among the passengers, and very useful in after-life&mdash;yes, really
+very useful. Only think, the captain, with his perquisites on coal,
+can make as much as twenty-five thousand francs a year or more."</p>
+
+<p>Roland muttered an oath followed by a whistle, which testified to his
+deep respect both for the sum and the captain.</p>
+
+<p>Jean went on:</p>
+
+<p>"The purser makes as much as ten thousand, and the doctor has a fixed
+salary of five thousand, with lodgings, keep, light, firing, service,
+and everything, which makes it up to ten thousand at least. That is
+very good pay."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre, raising his eyes, met his brother's and understood.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after some hesitation, he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it very hard to get a place as medical man on board a
+Transatlantic liner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and no. It all depends on circumstances and recommendation."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause; then the doctor began again.</p>
+
+<p>"Next month, you say, the <i>Lorraine</i> is to sail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. On the 7th."</p>
+
+<p>And they said no more.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre was considering. It certainly would be a way out of many
+difficulties if he could embark as medical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> officer on board the
+steamship. By-and-by he could see; he might perhaps give it up.
+Meanwhile he would be gaining a living, and asking for nothing from
+his parents. Only two days since he had been forced to sell his watch,
+for he would no longer hold out his hand to beg of his mother. So he
+had no other resource left, no opening to enable him to eat the bread
+of any house but this which had become uninhabitable, or sleep in any
+other bed, or under any other roof. He presently said with some little
+hesitation:</p>
+
+<p>"If I could, I would very gladly sail in her."</p>
+
+<p>Jean asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What should hinder you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know no one in the Transatlantic Shipping Company."</p>
+
+<p>Roland was astounded:</p>
+
+<p>"And what has become of all your fine schemes for getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre replied in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"There are times when we must bring ourselves to sacrifice everything
+and renounce our fondest hopes. And after all it is only to make a
+beginning, a way of saving a few thousand francs to start fair with
+afterward."</p>
+
+<p>His father was promptly convinced.</p>
+
+<p>"That is very true. In a couple of years you can put by six or seven
+thousand francs, and that well laid out, will go a long way. What do
+you think of the matter, Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>She replied in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible:</p>
+
+<p>"I think Pierre is right."</p>
+
+<p>Roland exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"I will go and talk it over with M. Poulin; I know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> him very well. He
+is assessor of the Chamber of Commerce and takes an interest in the
+affairs of the Company. There is M. Lenient, too, the ship-owner, who
+is intimate with one of the vice-chairmen."</p>
+
+<p>Jean asked his brother:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like me to feel my way with M. Marchand at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I should be very glad."</p>
+
+<p>After thinking a few minutes, Pierre added:</p>
+
+<p>"The best thing I can do, perhaps, will be to write to my professors
+at the College of Medicine who had a great regard for me. Very
+inferior men are sometimes shipped on board those vessels. Letters of
+strong recommendation from such professors as Mas-Roussel, R&eacute;musot,
+Flache, and Borriquel would do more for me in an hour than all the
+doubtful introductions in the world. It would be enough if your friend
+M. Marchand would lay them before the board."</p>
+
+<p>Jean approved heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Your idea is really capital." And he smiled, quite reassured, almost
+happy, sure of success and incapable of allowing himself to be unhappy
+for long.</p>
+
+<p>"You will write to-day?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Directly. Now; at once. I will go and do so. I do not care for any
+coffee this morning; I am too nervous."</p>
+
+<p>He rose and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Then Jean turned to his mother:</p>
+
+<p>"And you, mother, what are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing. I do not know."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come with me to call on Mme. Ros&eacute;milly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes&mdash;yes."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You know I must positively go to see her to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes. To be sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Why must you positively?" asked Roland, whose habit it was never to
+understand what was said in his presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I promised her I would."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well. That alters the case." And he began to fill his pipe,
+while the mother and son went upstairs to make ready.</p>
+
+<p>When they were in the street Jean said:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take my arm, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>He was never accustomed to offer it, for they were in the habit of
+walking side by side. She accepted, and leaned on him.</p>
+
+<p>For some time they did not speak; then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You see that Pierre is quite ready and willing to go away."</p>
+
+<p>She murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy."</p>
+
+<p>"But why 'poor boy'? He will not be in the least unhappy on board the
+<i>Lorraine</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I know. But I was thinking of so many things."</p>
+
+<p>And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step
+to her son's; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes give
+utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness
+in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it
+afterward."</p>
+
+<p>He said in a whisper:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not speak of that any more, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that possible? I think of nothing else."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You will forget it."</p>
+
+<p>Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said:</p>
+
+<p>"How happy I might have been, married to another man."</p>
+
+<p>She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of
+her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness
+of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that
+it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to
+desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most
+agonizing confession that can make a mother's heart bleed. She
+muttered: "It is so frightful for a young girl to have to marry such a
+husband as mine."</p>
+
+<p>Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto
+believed to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long
+since conceived, of that father's inferiority, with his brother's
+constant irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very
+maid-servant's contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for
+his mother's terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him
+to find that he was another man's son; and if, after the great shock
+and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the
+reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had
+feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under
+the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout.</p>
+
+<p>They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Ros&eacute;milly.</p>
+
+<p>She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a
+large tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the
+whole roadstead.</p>
+
+<p>On seeing Mme. Roland, who entered first, instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> of merely holding
+out her hands as usual, she put her arms round her and kissed her, for
+she divined the purpose of her visit.</p>
+
+<p>The furniture of this drawing-room, all in stamped velvet, was always
+shrouded in chair-covers. The walls, hung with flowered paper, were
+graced by four engravings, the purchase of her late husband, the
+captain. They represented sentimental scenes of seafaring life. In the
+first, a fisherman's wife was seen, waving a handkerchief on shore,
+while the vessel which bore away her husband vanished on the horizon.
+In the second, the same woman on her knees on the same shore, under a
+sky shot with lightning, wrung her arms as she gazed into the distance
+at her husband's boat, which was going to the bottom amid impossible
+waves.</p>
+
+<p>The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A
+young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the edge of a large
+steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with
+eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?</p>
+
+<p>Then the same young lady sitting by an open window with a view of the
+sea, had fainted in an armchair; a letter she had dropped lay at her
+feet. So he is dead! What despair!</p>
+
+<p>Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace
+pathos of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once
+intelligible without question or explanation, and the poor women were
+to be pitied, though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of
+the two was not precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to
+the sentiment. She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room
+the eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted
+as if fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate
+the four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like
+each other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their
+shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance
+of a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety
+which was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always
+in precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the
+circular center-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such
+straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little;
+and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt
+clock, in the taste of the first empire&mdash;a terrestrial globe supported
+by Atlas on his knees&mdash;looked like a melon left there to ripen.</p>
+
+<p>The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of
+their chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not been out this morning?" asked Mme. Roland.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I must own to being rather tired."</p>
+
+<p>And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the
+pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.</p>
+
+<p>"I ate my prawns this morning," she added, "and they were excellent.
+If you felt inclined we might go again one of these days."</p>
+
+<p>The young man interrupted her:</p>
+
+<p>"Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete
+the first?"</p>
+
+<p>"Complete it? It seems to me quite finished."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint
+Jouin which I am anxious to carry home with me."</p>
+
+<p>She put on an innocent and knowing look.</p>
+
+<p>"You? What can it be? What can you have found?"</p>
+
+<p>"A wife. And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she has
+changed her mind this morning."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled: "No, monsieur. I never change my mind."</p>
+
+<p>And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it
+with a quick, determined movement. Then he said: "As soon as possible,
+I hope."</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as you like."</p>
+
+<p>"In six weeks?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no opinion. What does my future mother-in-law say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile:</p>
+
+<p>"I? Oh, I can say nothing. I can only thank you for having accepted
+Jean, for you will make him very happy."</p>
+
+<p>"We will do our best, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat overcome, for the first time, Mme. Ros&eacute;milly rose, and
+throwing her arms round Mme. Roland, kissed her a long time as a child
+of her own might have done; and under this new embrace the poor
+woman's sick heart swelled with deep emotion. She could not have
+expressed the feeling; it was at once sad and sweet. She had lost her
+son, her big boy, but in return she had found a daughter, a grown-up
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>When they faced each other again, and were seated, they took hands and
+remained so, looking at each other and smiling, while they seemed to
+have forgotten Jean.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then they discussed a number of things which had to be thought of in
+view of an early marriage, and when everything was settled and decided
+Mme. Ros&eacute;milly seemed suddenly to remember a further detail and asked:
+"You have consulted M. Roland, I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>A flush of color mounted at the same instant to the face of both
+mother and son. It was the mother who replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, it is quite unnecessary!" Then she hesitated, feeling that
+some explanation was needed, and added: "We do everything without
+saying anything to him. It is enough to tell him what we have decided
+on."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly, not in the least surprised, only smiled, taking it as
+a matter of course, for the good man counted for so little.</p>
+
+<p>When Mme. Roland was in the street again with her son she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we go to your rooms for a little while. I should be glad to
+rest."</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself homeless, shelterless, her own house being a terror
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>They went into Jean's apartments.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the door was closed upon her she heaved a deep sigh, as if
+that bolt had placed her in safety, but then, instead of resting as
+she had said, she began to open the cupboards, to count the piles of
+linen, the pocket handkerchiefs, and socks. She changed the
+arrangement to place them in more harmonious order, more pleasing to
+her housekeeper's eye; and when she had put everything to her mind,
+laying out the towels, the shirts, and the drawers on their several
+shelves and dividing all the linen into three principal classes,
+body-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>linen, household linen, and table-linen, she drew back and
+contemplated the results, and called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, Jean, and see how nice it looks."</p>
+
+<p>He went and admired it to please her.</p>
+
+<p>On a sudden, when he had sat down again, she came softly up behind his
+armchair, and putting her right arm round his neck she kissed him,
+while she laid on the chimney shelf a small packet wrapped in white
+paper which she held in the other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" he asked. Then, as she made no reply, he understood,
+recognizing the shape of the frame.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it to me!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She pretended not to hear him, and went back to the linen cupboards.
+He got up hastily, took the melancholy relic, and going across the
+room, put it in the drawer of his writing table which he locked and
+doubled locked. She wiped away a tear with the tip of her finger, and
+said in a rather quavering voice: "Now I am going to see whether your
+new servant keeps the kitchen in good order. As she is out I can look
+into everything and make sure."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX</h3>
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+<p>etters of recommendation from Professors Mas-Roussel, R&eacute;musot,
+Flache, and Borriquel, written in the most flattering terms with
+regard to Doctor Pierre Roland, their pupil, had been submitted by
+Monsieur Marchand to the directors of the Transatlantic Shipping
+Company, seconded by M. Poulin, judge of the Chamber of Commerce, M.
+Lenient, a great ship-owner, and M. Marival, deputy to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> Mayor of
+Havre, and a particular friend of Captain Beausire's. It proved that
+no medical officer had yet been appointed to the <i>Lorraine</i>, and
+Pierre was lucky enough to be nominated within a few days.</p>
+
+<p>The letter announcing it was handed to him one morning by Jos&eacute;phine,
+just as he was dressed. His first feeling was that of a man condemned
+to death who is told that his sentence is commuted; he had an
+immediate sense of relief at the thought of his early departure and of
+the peaceful life on board, cradled by the rolling waves, always
+wandering, always moving. His life under his father's roof was now
+that of a stranger, silent and reserved. Ever since the evening when
+he allowed the shameful secret he had discovered to escape him in his
+brother's presence, he had felt that the last ties to his kindred were
+broken. He was harassed by remorse for having told this thing to Jean.
+He felt that it was odious, indecent, and brutal, and yet it was a
+relief to him to have uttered it.</p>
+
+<p>He never met the eyes either of his mother or his brother; to avoid
+his gaze theirs had become surprisingly alert, with the cunning of
+foes who fear to cross each other. He was always wondering: "What can
+she have said to Jean? Did she confess or deny it? What does my
+brother believe? What does he think of her&mdash;what does he think of me?"
+He could not guess, and it drove him to frenzy. And he scarcely ever
+spoke to them, excepting when Roland was by, to avoid his questioning.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he received the letter announcing his appointment he showed
+it at once to his family. His father, who was prone to rejoicing over
+everything, clapped his hands. Jean spoke seriously, though his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> heart
+was full of gladness: "I congratulate you with all my heart, for I
+know there were several other candidates. You certainly owe it to your
+professors' letters."</p>
+
+<p>His mother bent her head and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad you have been successful."</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast he went to the Company's offices to obtain information
+on various particulars, and he asked the name of the doctor on board
+the <i>Picardie</i>, which was to sail next day, to inquire of him as to
+the details of his new life and any details he might think useful.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Pirette having gone on board, Pierre went to the ship, where he
+was received in a little stateroom by a young man with a fair beard,
+not unlike his brother. They talked together a long time.</p>
+
+<p>In the hollow depths of the huge ship they could hear a confused and
+continuous commotion; the noise of bales and cases pitched down into
+the hold mingling with footsteps, voices, the creaking of the
+machinery lowering the freight, the boatswain's whistle, and the
+clatter of chains dragged or wound onto capstans by the snorting and
+panting engine which sent a slight vibration from end to end of the
+great vessel.</p>
+
+<p>But when Pierre had left his colleague and found himself in the street
+once more, a new form of melancholy came down on him, enveloping him
+like the fogs which roll over the sea, coming up from the ends of the
+world and holding in their intangible density something mysteriously
+impure, as it were the pestilential breath of a far-away, unhealthy
+land.</p>
+
+<p>In his hours of greatest suffering he had never felt himself so sunk
+in a foul pit of misery. It was as though he had given the last
+wrench; there was no fiber of attach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>ment left. In tearing up the
+roots of every affection he had not hitherto had the distressful
+feeling which now came over him, like that of a lost dog. It was no
+longer a torturing mortal pain, but the frenzy of a forlorn and
+homeless animal, the physical anguish of a vagabond creature without a
+roof for shelter, lashed by the rain, the wind, the storm, all the
+brutal forces of the universe. As he set foot on the vessel, as he
+went into the cabin rocked by the waves, the very flesh of the man,
+who had always slept in a motionless and steady bed, had risen up
+against the insecurity henceforth of all his morrows. Till now that
+flesh had been protected by a solid wall built into the earth which
+held it, by the certainty of resting in the same spot, under a roof
+which could resist the gale. Now all that, which it was a pleasure to
+defy in the warmth of home, must become a peril and a constant
+discomfort. No earth under foot, only the greedy, heaving, complaining
+sea; no space around for walking, running, losing the way, only a few
+yards of planks to pace like a convict among other prisoners; no
+trees, no gardens, no streets, no houses; nothing but water and
+clouds. And the ceaseless motion of the ship beneath his feet. On
+stormy days he must lean against the wainscot, hold on to the doors,
+cling to the edge of the narrow berth to save himself from rolling
+out. On calm days he would hear the snorting throb of the screw, and
+feel the swift flight of the ship, bearing him on in its unpausing,
+regular, exasperating race.</p>
+
+<p>And he was a prey to this vagabond convict's life solely because his
+mother had sinned.</p>
+
+<p>He walked on, his heart sinking with the despairing sorrow of those
+who are doomed to exile. He no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> longer felt a haughty disdain and
+scornful hatred of the strangers he met, but a woeful impulse to speak
+to them, to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened
+to and comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the
+shamefaced need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand&mdash;a timid
+but urgent need to feel that some one would grieve at his departing.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of Marowsko. The old Pole was the only person who loved him
+well enough to feel true and keen emotion, and the doctor at once
+determined to go and see him.</p>
+
+<p>When he entered the shop, the druggist, who was pounding powders in a
+marble mortar, started and left his work:</p>
+
+<p>"You are never to be seen nowadays," said he.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre explained that he had had a great many serious matters to
+attend to, but without giving the reason, and he took a seat, asking:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and how is business doing?"</p>
+
+<p>Business was not doing at all. Competition was fearful, and rich folks
+rare in that workman's quarter. Nothing would sell but cheap drugs,
+and the doctors did not prescribe the costlier and more complicated
+remedies on which a profit is made of five hundred per cent. The old
+fellow ended by saying: "If this goes on for three months I shall shut
+up shop. If I did not count on you, dear good doctor, I should have
+turned shoeblack by this time."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre felt a pang, and made up his mind to deal the blow at once,
+since it must be done.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;oh, I cannot be of any use to you. I am leaving Havre early next
+month."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Marowsko took off his spectacles, so great was his agitation.</p>
+
+<p>"You! You! What are you saying?"</p>
+
+<p>"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."</p>
+
+<p>The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under
+him, and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed,
+whom he loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him
+thus.</p>
+
+<p>He stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"You are surely not going to play me false&mdash;you?"</p>
+
+<p>Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old
+fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and
+I am going as medical officer on board a transatlantic passenger
+boat."</p>
+
+<p>"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make
+a living!"</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in
+the world."</p>
+
+<p>Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There
+is nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of
+all things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came
+here to be with you. It is wrong."</p>
+
+<p>Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give reasons, to prove that he
+could not have done otherwise; the Pole, enraged by his desertion,
+would not listen to him, and he ended by saying, with an allusion no
+doubt to political events:</p>
+
+<p>"You French&mdash;you never keep your word!"</p>
+
+<p>At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high
+tone he said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are unjust, p&egrave;re Marowsko; a man must have very strong motives to
+act as I have done, and you ought to understand that. Au revoir&mdash;I
+hope I may find you more reasonable." And he went away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well," he thought, "not a soul will feel a sincere regret for
+me."</p>
+
+<p>His mind sought through all the people he knew or had known, and among
+the faces which crossed his memory he saw that of the girl at the
+tavern who led him to doubt his mother.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, having still an instinctive grudge against her, then
+suddenly reflected on the other hand: "After all, she was right." And
+he looked about him to find the turning.</p>
+
+<p>The beer-shop, as it happened, was full of people, and also full of
+smoke. The customers, tradesmen, and laborers, for it was a holiday,
+were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting
+on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and
+returning them crowned with froth.</p>
+
+<p>When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping
+that the girl would see him and recognize him. But she passed him
+again and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her
+skirts with a smart little strut. At last he rapped a coin on the
+table, and she hurried up.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you take, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the
+liquor she had served.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "this is a pretty way of greeting a friend."</p>
+
+<p>She fixed her eyes on his face: "Ah!" said she hurriedly. "Is it you?
+You are pretty well? But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> I have not a minute to-day. A bock did you
+wish for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a bock!"</p>
+
+<p>When she brought it he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I have come to say good-by. I am going away."</p>
+
+<p>And she replied indifferently:</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed. Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To America."</p>
+
+<p>"A very fine country, they say."</p>
+
+<p>And that was all!</p>
+
+<p>Really he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day;
+there were too many people in the caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre went down to the sea. As he reached the jetty he descried the
+<i>Pearl</i>; his father and Beausire were coming in. Papagris was pulling,
+and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look
+of perfect happiness. As they went past, the doctor said to himself:
+"Blessed are the simple-minded!" And he sat down on one of the benches
+on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.</p>
+
+<p>When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to
+lift her eyes to his face:</p>
+
+<p>"You will want a heap of things to take with you. I have ordered your
+underlinen, and I went into the tailor shop about cloth clothes; but
+is there nothing else you need&mdash;things which I, perhaps, know nothing
+about?"</p>
+
+<p>His lips parted to say, "No, nothing." But he reflected that he must
+accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and he replied in a very
+calm voice: "I hardly know myself, yet. I will make inquiries at the
+office."</p>
+
+<p>He inquired, and they gave him a list of indispensable necessaries.
+His mother, as she took it from his hand, looked up at him for the
+first time for very long, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> the depths of her eyes there was the
+humble expression, gentle, sad, and beseeching, of a dog that has been
+beaten and begs forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>On the 1st of October the <i>Lorraine</i> from Saint-Nazaire, came into the
+harbor of Havre to sail on the 7th, bound for New York, and Pierre
+Roland was to take possession of the little floating cabin in which
+henceforth his life was to be confined.</p>
+
+<p>Next day as he was going out, he met his mother on the stairs waiting
+for him, to murmur in an almost inaudible voice:</p>
+
+<p>"You would not like me to help you to put things to rights on board?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. Everything is done."</p>
+
+<p>Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"I should have liked to see your cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to see. It is very small and very ugly."</p>
+
+<p>And he went downstairs, leaving her stricken, leaning against the wall
+with a wan face.</p>
+
+<p>Now Roland, who had gone over the <i>Lorraine</i> that very day, could talk
+of nothing all dinner time but this splendid vessel, and wondered that
+his wife should not care to see it as their son was to sail on board.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre had scarcely any intercourse with his family during the days
+which followed. He was nervous, irritable, hard, and his rough speech
+seemed to lash every one indiscriminately. But the day before he left
+he was suddenly quite changed, and much softened. As he embraced his
+parents before going to sleep on board for the first time he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You will come to say good-by to me on board, will you not?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Roland exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, of course&mdash;of course, Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, certainly," she said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre went on: "We sail at eleven precisely. You must be there by
+half-past nine at the latest."</p>
+
+<p>"Hah!" cried his father. "A good idea! As soon as we have bid you
+good-bye, we will make haste on board the <i>Pearl</i>, and look out for
+you beyond the jetty, so as to see you once more. What do you say,
+Louise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>Roland went on: "And in that way you will not lose sight of us among
+the crowd which throngs the breakwater when the great liners sail. It
+is impossible to distinguish your own friends in the mob. Does that
+meet your views?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to be sure; that is settled."</p>
+
+<p>An hour later he was lying in his berth&mdash;a little crib as long and
+narrow as a coffin. There he remained with his eyes wide open for a
+long time, thinking over all that had happened during the last two
+months of his life, especially in his own soul. By dint of suffering
+and making others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had
+lost its edge, like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in
+him to owe any one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath
+float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of
+wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything,
+that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart with
+forgetfulness as he dropped asleep. He heard vaguely, all about him,
+the unwonted noises of the ship, slight noises, and scarcely audible
+on this calm night in port; and he felt no more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> of the dreadful wound
+which had tortured him hitherto but the discomfort and strain of its
+healing.</p>
+
+<p>He had been sleeping soundly when the stir of the crew roused him. It
+was day; the tidal train had come down to the pier bringing the
+passengers from Paris. Then he wandered about the vessel among all
+these busy, bustling folks inquiring for their cabins, questioning and
+answering each other at random, in the scare and fuss of a voyage
+already begun. After greeting the captain and shaking hands with his
+comrade the purser, he went into the saloon where some Englishmen were
+already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white
+marble panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with
+looking-glasses, which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long
+tables flanked by pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit,
+indeed, to be the vast floating cosmopolitan dining hall, where the
+rich natives of two continents might eat in common. Its magnificent
+luxury was that of great hotels, and theaters, and public rooms; the
+imposing and commonplace luxury which appeals to the eye of the
+millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon,
+when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board
+the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. There, in a sort
+of basement, low and dark, like a gallery in a mine, Pierre could
+discern some hundreds of men, women, and children, stretched on
+shelves fixed one above another, or lying on the floor in heaps. He
+could not see their faces, but could dimly make out this squalid,
+ragged crowd of wretches, beaten in the struggle for life, worn out
+and crushed, setting forth, each with a starving wife and weakly
+children, for an unknown land where they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> hoped, perhaps, not to die
+of hunger. And as he thought of their past labor&mdash;wasted labor, and
+barren effort&mdash;of the mortal struggle taken up afresh and in vain each
+day, of the energy expended by this tattered crew who were going to
+begin again, not knowing where, this life of hideous misery, he longed
+to cry out to them:</p>
+
+<p>"Tumble yourselves overboard, rather, with your women and your little
+ones." And his heart ached so with pity that he went away unable to
+endure the sight.</p>
+
+<p>He found his father, his mother, Jean, and Mme. Ros&eacute;milly waiting for
+him in his cabin.</p>
+
+<p>"So early!" he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mme. Roland in a trembling voice. "We wanted to have a
+little time to see you."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her. She was dressed all in black as if she were in
+mourning, and he noticed that her hair, which only a month ago had
+been gray, was now almost white. It was very difficult to find space
+for four persons to sit down in the little room, and he himself got
+onto his bed. The door was left open, and they could see a great crowd
+hurrying by, as if it were a street on a holiday, for all the friends
+of the passengers and a host of inquisitive visitors had invaded the
+huge vessel. They pervaded the passages, the saloons, every corner of
+the ship; and heads peered in at the doorway while a voice murmured
+outside: "That is the doctor's cabin."</p>
+
+<p>Then Pierre shut the door; but no sooner was he shut in with his own
+party than he longed to open it again, for the bustle outside covered
+their agitation and want of words.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly at last felt she must speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Very little air comes in through those little windows."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Portholes," said Pierre. He showed her how thick the glass was, to
+enable it to resist the most violent shocks, and took a long time
+explaining the fastening. Roland presently asked: "And you have your
+doctor's shop here?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor opened a cupboard and displayed an array of phials ticketed
+with Latin names on white paper labels. He took one out and enumerated
+the properties of its contents; then a second and a third, a perfect
+lecture on therapeutics, to which they all listened with great
+attention. Roland, shaking his head, said again and again: "How very
+interesting." There was a tap at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said Pierre, and Captain Beausire appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"I am late," he said as he shook hands, "I did not want to be in the
+way." He too sat down on the bed and silence fell once more.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the captain pricked his ears. He could hear orders being
+given, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is time for us to be off if we mean to get on board the <i>Pearl</i> to
+see you once more outside, and bid you good-by out on the open sea."</p>
+
+<p>Old Roland was very eager about this, to impress the voyagers on board
+the <i>Lorraine</i>, no doubt, and he rose in haste.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, my boy." He kissed Pierre on the whiskers and then opened
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland had not stirred, but sat with downcast eyes, very pale.
+Her husband touched her arm:</p>
+
+<p>"Come," he said, "we must make haste, we have not a minute to spare."</p>
+
+<p>She pulled herself up, went to her son and offered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> him first one and
+then another cheek of white wax which he kissed without saying a word.
+Then he shook hands with Mme. Ros&eacute;milly and his brother, asking:</p>
+
+<p>"And when is the wedding to be?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know yet exactly. We will make it fit in with one of your
+return voyages."</p>
+
+<p>At last they were all out of the cabin, and up on deck among the crowd
+of visitors, porters and sailors. The steam was snorting in the huge
+belly of the vessel which seemed to quiver with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," said Roland in a great bustle.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," replied Pierre, standing on one of the landing-planks lying
+between the deck of the <i>Lorraine</i> and the quay. He shook hands all
+round once more, and they were gone.</p>
+
+<p>"Make haste, jump into the carriage," cried the father.</p>
+
+<p>A fly was waiting for them and took them to the outer harbor, where
+Papagris had the <i>Pearl</i> in readiness to put out to sea.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a breath of air; it was one of those crisp, still autumn
+days, when the sheeny sea looks as cold and hard as polished steel.</p>
+
+<p>Jean took one oar, the sailor seized the other and they pulled off. On
+the breakwater, on the piers, even on the granite parapets, a crowd
+stood packed, hustling and noisy, to see the <i>Lorraine</i> come out. The
+<i>Pearl</i> glided down between these two waves of humanity and was soon
+outside the mole.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Beausire, seated between the two women, held the tiller, and
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>"You will see, we shall be close in her way &mdash;&mdash; close."</p>
+
+<p>And the two oarsmen pulled with all their might to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> get out as far as
+possible. Suddenly Roland cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Here she comes! I see her masts and her two funnels! She is coming
+out of the inner harbor."</p>
+
+<p>"Cheerily, lads!" cried Beausire.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Roland took out her handkerchief and held it to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Roland stood up, clinging to the mast, and answered:</p>
+
+<p>"At this minute she is working round in the outer harbor. She is
+standing still&mdash;now she moves again! She was taking the tow-rope on
+board, no doubt. There she goes. Bravo! She is between the piers! Do
+you hear the crowd shouting? Bravo! The <i>Neptune</i> has her in tow. Now
+I see her bows&mdash;here she comes&mdash;here she is! Gracious heavens, what a
+ship! Look! look!"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Ros&eacute;milly and Beausire looked up behind them, the oarsmen ceased
+pulling; only Mme. Roland did not stir.</p>
+
+<p>The immense steamship, towed by a powerful tug, which, in front of
+her, looked like a caterpillar, came slowly and majestically out of
+the harbor. And the good people of Havre, who crowded the piers, the
+beach, and the windows, carried away by a burst of patriotic
+enthusiasm, cried: "<i>Vive la Lorraine!</i>" with acclamations and
+applause for this magnificent beginning, this birth of the beautiful
+daughter given to the sea by the great maritime town.</p>
+
+<p>She, as soon as she had passed beyond the narrow channel between the
+two granite walls, feeling herself free at last, cast off the
+tow-ropes and went off alone, like a monstrous creature walking on the
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is&mdash;here she comes, straight down on us!" Roland kept
+shouting; and Beausire, beaming,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> exclaimed: "What did I promise you!
+Heh! Do I know the way?"</p>
+
+<p>Jean in a low tone said to his mother: "Look, mother, she is close
+upon us!" And Mme. Roland uncovered her eyes, blinded by tears.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Lorraine</i> came on, still under the impetus of her swift exit from
+the harbor, in the brilliant, calm weather. Beausire, with his glass
+to his eye, called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Look out! M. Pierre is at the stern, all alone, plainly to be seen!
+Look out!"</p>
+
+<p>The ship was almost touching the <i>Pearl</i> now, as tall as a mountain
+and as swift as a train. Mme. Roland, distraught and desperate, held
+out her arms toward it; and she saw her son, her Pierre, with his
+officer's cap on, throwing kisses to her with both hands.</p>
+
+<p>But he was going away, flying, vanishing, a tiny speck already, no
+more than an imperceptible spot on the enormous vessel. She tried
+still to distinguish him, but she could not.</p>
+
+<p>Jean took her hand:</p>
+
+<p>"You saw?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I saw. How good he is!"</p>
+
+<p>And they turned to go home.</p>
+
+<p>"Cristi! How fast she goes!" exclaimed Roland with enthusiastic
+conviction.</p>
+
+<p>The steamer, in fact, was shrinking every second, as though she were
+melting away in the ocean. Mme. Roland, turning back to look at her,
+watched her disappearing on the horizon, on her way to an unknown land
+at the other side of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In that vessel which nothing could stay, that vessel which she soon
+would see no more, was her son, her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> poor son. And she felt as though
+half her heart had gone with him; she felt, too, as if her life were
+ended; yes, and she felt as though she would never see the child
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you crying?" asked her husband, "when you know he will be
+back again within a month."</p>
+
+<p>She stammered out: "I don't know, I cry because I am hurt."</p>
+
+<p>When they had landed, Beausire at once took leave of them to go to
+breakfast with a friend. Then Jean led the way with Mme. Ros&eacute;milly,
+and Roland said to his wife:</p>
+
+<p>"A very fine fellow, all the same, is our Jean."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," replied the mother.</p>
+
+<p>And her mind being too much bewildered to think of what she was
+saying, she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad that he is to marry Mme. Ros&eacute;milly."</p>
+
+<p>The worthy man was astounded.</p>
+
+<p>"Heh? What? He is to marry Mme. Ros&eacute;milly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we meant to ask your opinion about it this very day."</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me. And has this engagement been long in the wind?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, only a very few days. Jean wished to make sure that she would
+accept him before consulting you."</p>
+
+<p>Roland rubbed his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Very good. Very good. It is capital. I entirely approve."</p>
+
+<p>As they were about to turn off from the quay down the Boulevard
+Fran&ccedil;ois 1er, his wife once more looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> back to cast a last look at
+the high seas, but she could see nothing now but a puff of gray smoke,
+so far away, so faint that it looked like a film of haze.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="DREAMS" id="DREAMS"></a>DREAMS</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>t was after a dinner of friends, of old friends. There were five of
+them, a writer, a doctor, and three rich bachelors without any
+profession.</p>
+
+<p>They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came on,
+that feeling of lassitude which precedes and leads to the departure of
+guests after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the
+last five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard
+starred with gas-lamps, and rattling with vehicles, said suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are
+long."</p>
+
+<p>"And the nights, too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I
+sleep very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous.
+Never do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to
+anyone, a violent longing to say nothing and listen to nothing. I
+don't know what to do with my evenings."</p>
+
+<p>And the third idler remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"I would pay a great deal for anything that would enable me to pass
+merely two pleasant hours every day."</p>
+
+<p>Then the writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm,
+turned round to them and said:</p>
+
+<p>"The man who could discover a new vice, and introduce it among his
+fellow-creatures, even though it were to shorten their lives, would
+render a greater service to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> humanity than the man who found the means
+of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but 'tis not so easy as that to discover it. Men have, however
+crudely, been seeking for and working for the object you refer to
+since the beginning of the world. The men who came first reached
+perfection at once in this way. We are hardly equal to them."</p>
+
+<p>One of the three idlers murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis a pity!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a minute's pause, he added:</p>
+
+<p>"If we could only sleep, sleep well without feeling hot or cold, sleep
+with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
+thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams."</p>
+
+<p>"Why without dreams?" asked the guest sitting next to him.</p>
+
+<p>The other replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Because dreams are not always pleasant, and they are always
+fantastic, improbable, disconnected, and because when we are asleep we
+cannot have the sort of dreams we like. We require to be awake when we
+dream."</p>
+
+<p>"And what's to prevent you from being so?" asked the writer.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake you need great
+power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
+weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our
+thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest
+experience in the world; but it must come naturally, it must not be
+provoked in a painful manner, and must be accompanied by absolute
+bodily comfort. This power of dreaming I can give you provided you
+promise that you will not abuse it."</p>
+
+<p>The writer shrugged his shoulders:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes, I know&mdash;haschich, opium, green tea&mdash;artificial paradises. I
+have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me
+very sick."</p>
+
+<p>But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:</p>
+
+<p>"No: ether, nothing but ether, and I would suggest that you literary
+men ought to use it sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>The three rich men drew closer to the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>One of them said:</p>
+
+<p>"Explain to us the effects of it."</p>
+
+<p>And the doctor replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of
+medicine or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up
+every day to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to
+you a new sensation, only possible to intelligent men, let us say even
+very intelligent men, dangerous, like everything that overexcites our
+organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
+preparation, that is to say, a practice, to feel in all their
+completeness the singular effects of ether.</p>
+
+<p>"They are different from the effects of haschich, from the effects of
+opium and morphia, and they cease as soon as the absorption of the
+drug is interrupted, while the other generators of day dreams continue
+their action for hours.</p>
+
+<p>"I am now going to try to analyze as clearly as possi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>ble the way one
+feels. But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
+imperceptible, are these sensations.</p>
+
+<p>"It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of
+this remedy, which perhaps I have since slightly abused.</p>
+
+<p>"I had in my head and in my neck acute pains, and an intolerable heat
+of the skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large flagon of
+ether, and lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"At the end of some minutes, I thought I heard a vague murmur, which
+ere long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the
+interior of my body had become light, light as air, that it was
+dissolving into vapor.</p>
+
+<p>"Then came a sort of torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort
+in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had
+ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which
+we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches
+against which our tortured body protests.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon, the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in
+my chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as
+light as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only
+were left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of
+living, of bathing in this well-being. Then I perceived that I was no
+longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted also, evaporated. And I
+heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding what
+was said. At one time, there were only indistinct sounds, at another
+time a word reached my ear. But I recognized that this was only the
+humming I had heard be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>fore, accentuated. I was not asleep; I was not
+awake; I comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the utmost clearness
+and depth, with extraordinary energy and intellectual pleasure, with a
+singular intoxication arising from this separation of my mental
+faculties.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not like the dreams caused by haschich or the somewhat sickly
+visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of
+reasoning, a new way of seeing, judging, and appreciating the things
+of life, and with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that this
+was the true way.</p>
+
+<p>"And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
+seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
+mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a
+new, strange, and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings,
+proofs, rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately
+displaced by some stronger proof, reasoning, argument. My head had in
+fact, become a battle-ground of ideas. I was a superior being, armed
+with invincible intelligence, and I experienced a huge delight at the
+manifestation of my power.</p>
+
+<p>"It lasted a long, long time. I still kept inhaling the ether from the
+opening of my flagon. Suddenly I perceived that it was empty."</p>
+
+<p>The four men exclaimed at the same time:</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!"</p>
+
+<p>But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"As for that, certainly not; go and get poisoned by others!"</p>
+
+<p>And he left them.</p>
+
+<p>Ladies and gentlemen, what is your idea on the subject?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MOONLIGHT" id="MOONLIGHT"></a>MOONLIGHT</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>adame Julie Roubere was awaiting her elder sister, Madame Henriette
+Letore, who had just returned after a trip to Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>The Letore household had left nearly five weeks ago. Madame Henriette
+had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados,
+where some matters of business required his attention, and come to
+spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet
+parlor, darkened by twilight shadows, Madame Roubere was reading, in
+an absent-minded fashion, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.</p>
+
+<p>At last, she heard a ring at the door, and presently her sister
+appeared, wrapped in a traveling cloak. And immediately without any
+formal greeting, they clasped each other ardently, only desisting for
+a moment to begin embracing each other over again. Then they talked,
+asking questions about each other's health, about their respective
+families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried,
+broken sentences and rushing about while Madame Henriette was removing
+her hat and veil.</p>
+
+<p>It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as
+it was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point
+of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished
+at the other's appearance. Around her temples, Madame Letore had two
+long locks of white hair. All the rest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> her hair was of a glossy,
+raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran as it
+were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black
+mass surrounding them. She was nevertheless only twenty-four years
+old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for
+Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
+to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity
+must have fallen on her sister. She asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"</p>
+
+<p>Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
+replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Why nothing I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"</p>
+
+<p>But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
+searching glance at her repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And
+if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."</p>
+
+<p>They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who became so pale
+that she was near fainting, had two pearly tears at each corner of her
+drooping eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her sister went on asking:</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"I have&mdash;I have a lover."</p>
+
+<p>And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
+sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her
+breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast
+forth this secret from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a
+sympathetic heart.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly grasped, the two women
+went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they
+sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's
+neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Oh! I recognize that there was no excuse for one; I do not understand
+myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful my
+child, about yourself&mdash;be careful! If you only knew how weak we are,
+how quickly we yield, we fall. All it needs is a nothing, so little,
+so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of
+melancholy which steal into your soul, one of those longings to open
+your arms, to love, to embrace, which we all have at certain moments.</p>
+
+<p>"You know my husband, and you know how fond of him I am; but he is
+mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations
+of a woman's heart. He is always, always the same, always good, always
+smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished
+that he would roughly clasp me in his arms, that he would embrace me
+with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which
+are like mute confidences! How I wished that he was self-abandoned and
+even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my caress, of my
+tears!</p>
+
+<p>"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can
+we help it?</p>
+
+<p>"And yet the thought of deceiving never came near me. To-day, it has
+happened, without love, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> reason, without anything, simply
+because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.</p>
+
+<p>"During the month when we were traveling together, my husband, with
+his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic
+ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sun-rise, when as
+the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the
+transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I
+clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'What a beautiful
+scene, darling! Kiss me now!' He only answered with a smile of
+chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should kiss each other
+because you like the landscape.'</p>
+
+<p>"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
+love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever in
+the presence of beautiful scenes.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed he prevented the effervescent poetry that bubbled up within me
+from gushing out. How can I express it? I was almost like a boiler,
+filled with steam and hermetically sealed.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening (we had been for four days staying in the Hotel de
+Fluelen), Robert, having got one of his sick headaches, went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along
+the edge of the lake.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a night such as one might read of in a fairy tale. The full
+moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with
+their snowy crests seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the
+lake glittered with tiny rippling motions. The air was mild, with that
+kind of penetrating freshness which softens us till we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> seem to be
+swooning, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how
+sensitive, how vibrating, the heart is at such moments! How quickly it
+leaps up, and how intense are its emotions!</p>
+
+<p>"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast lake so melancholy
+and so fascinating, and a strange thing passed into me; I became
+possessed with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy
+dullness of my life. What! Would it never be my fate to be clasped in
+the arms of a man whom I loved on a bank like this under the glowing
+moonlight? Was I never then, to feel on my lips those kisses so deep,
+delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem
+to have been made by God for passionate embraces? Was I never to know
+such ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?</p>
+
+<p>"And I burst out weeping like a woman who has lost her reason. I heard
+some person stirring behind me. A man was intently gazing at me. When
+I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'You are weeping, Madame?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was a young barrister who was traveling with his mother, and whom
+we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so much confused that I did not know what answer to give or
+what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.</p>
+
+<p>"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectable fashion, and
+began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
+had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
+understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> all of a sudden
+he recited some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking,
+seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains
+themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things
+ineffably sweet.</p>
+
+<p>"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
+hallucination.</p>
+
+<p>"As for him I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.</p>
+
+<p>"He gave me his card!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore, broke into
+groans&mdash;almost into shrieks.</p>
+
+<p>Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
+gently:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love.
+And your real lover that night was the moonlight."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_CORSICAN_BANDIT" id="THE_CORSICAN_BANDIT"></a>THE CORSICAN BANDIT</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he road with a gentle winding reached the middle of the forest. The
+huge pine-trees spread above our heads a mournful-looking vault, and
+gave forth a kind of long, sad wail, while at either side their
+straight slender trunks formed, as it were, an army of organ-pipes,
+from which seemed to issue that monotonous music of the wind through
+the tree-tops.</p>
+
+<p>After three hours' walking there was an opening in this row of tangled
+branches. Here and there an enormous pine-parasol, separated from the
+others, opening like an immense umbrella, displayed its dome of dark
+green; then, all of a sudden, we gained the boundary of the forest,
+some hundreds of meters below the defile which leads into the wild
+valley of Niolo.</p>
+
+<p>On the two projecting heights which commanded a view of this pass,
+some old trees grotesquely twisted, seemed to have mounted with
+painful efforts, like scouts who had started in advance of the
+multitude heaped together in the rear. When we turned round, we saw
+the entire forest stretched beneath our feet, like a gigantic basin of
+verdure, whose edges, which seemed to reach the sky, were composed of
+bare rocks shutting in on every side.</p>
+
+<p>We resumed our walk, and, ten minutes later, we found ourselves in the
+defile.</p>
+
+<p>Then I beheld an astonishing landscape. Beyond another forest, a
+valley, but a valley such as I had never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> seen before, a solitude of
+stone ten leagues long, hollowed out between two high mountains,
+without a field or a tree to be seen. This was the Niolo valley, the
+fatherland of Corsican liberty, the inaccessible citadel, from which
+the invaders had never been able to drive out the mountaineers.</p>
+
+<p>My companion said to me: "Is it here, too, that all our bandits have
+taken refuge?"</p>
+
+<p>Ere long we were at the further end of this chasm so wild, so
+inconceivably beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Not a blade of grass, not a plant&mdash;nothing but granite. As far as our
+eyes could reach, we saw in front of us a desert of glittering stone,
+heated like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that
+very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards
+the crests, we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked
+red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made
+of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by
+the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of
+scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we
+were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and
+irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And
+we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning,
+arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which
+seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize
+these rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up without
+being penetrated or refreshed by it.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly there was visible at our right a little wooden cross sunk
+in a little heap of stones. A man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> had been killed there; and I said
+to my companion:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me about your bandits."</p>
+
+<p>He replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I knew the most celebrated of them, the terrible St. Lucia. I will
+tell you his history.</p>
+
+<p>"His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the same
+district, it is said; and St. Lucia was left alone with his sister. He
+was a weak and timid youth, small, often ill, without any energy. He
+did not proclaim the vendetta against the assassin of his father. All
+his relatives came to see him, and implored of him to take vengeance;
+he remained deaf to their menaces and their supplications.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, following the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her
+indignation, carried away his black clothes, in order that he might
+not wear mourning for a dead man who had not been avenged. He was
+insensible to even this outrage, and rather than take down from the
+rack his father's gun, which was still loaded, he shut himself up, not
+daring to brave the looks of the young men of the district.</p>
+
+<p>"He seemed to have even forgotten the crime and he lived with his
+sister in the obscurity of their dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>"But, one day, the man who was suspected of having committed the
+murder, was about to get married. St. Lucia did not appear to be moved
+by this news, but, no doubt, out of sheer bravado, the bridegroom, on
+his way to the church, passed before the two orphans' house.</p>
+
+<p>"The brother and the sister, at their window, were eating little fried
+cakes when the young man saw the bridal procession moving past the
+house. Suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> he began to tremble, rose up without uttering a word,
+made the sign of the cross, took the gun which was hanging over the
+fireplace, and he went out.</p>
+
+<p>"When he spoke of this later on, he said: 'I don't know what was the
+matter with me; it was like fire in my blood; I felt that I should do
+it, that in spite of everything I could not resist, and I concealed
+the gun in a cave on the road to Corte.'</p>
+
+<p>"An hour later, he came back, with nothing in his hand, and with his
+habitual air of sad weariness. His sister believed that there was
+nothing further in his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"But when night fell he disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"His enemy had, the same evening, to repair to Corte on foot,
+accompanied by his two bridesmen.</p>
+
+<p>"He was pursuing his way, singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood
+before him, and looking straight in the murderer's face, exclaimed:
+'Now is the time!' and shot him point-blank in the chest.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the bridesmen fled; the other stared at the young man saying:</p>
+
+<p>"'What have you done, St. Lucia?'</p>
+
+<p>"Then he was going to hasten to Corte for help, but St. Lucia said in
+stern tone:</p>
+
+<p>"'If you move another step, I'll shoot you through the legs.'</p>
+
+<p>"The other, aware that till now he had always appeared timid, said to
+him: 'You would not dare to do it!' and he was hurrying off when he
+fell instantaneously, his thigh shattered by a bullet.</p>
+
+<p>"And St. Lucia, coming over to where he lay, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am going to look at your wound; if it is not serious, I'll leave
+you there; if it is mortal I'll finish you off.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He inspected the wound, considered it mortal, and slowly re-loading
+his gun, told the wounded man to say a prayer, and shot him through
+the head.</p>
+
+<p>"Next day he was in the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>"And do you know what this St. Lucia did after this?</p>
+
+<p>"All his family were arrested by the gendarmes. His uncle, the cur&eacute;,
+who was suspected of having incited him to this deed of vengeance, was
+himself put into prison, and accused by the dead man's relatives. But
+he escaped, took a gun in his turn, and went to join his nephew in the
+cave.</p>
+
+<p>"Next, St. Lucia killed, one after the other, his uncle's accusers,
+and tore out their eyes to teach the others never to state what they
+had seen with their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He killed all the relatives, all the connections of his enemy's
+family. He massacred during his life fourteen gendarmes, burned down
+the houses of his adversaries, and was up to the day of his death the
+most terrible of the bandits, whose memory we have preserved."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The sun disappeared behind Monte Cinto and the tall shadow of the
+granite mountain went to sleep on the granite of the valley. We
+quickened our pace in order to reach before night the little village
+of Albertaccio, nothing better than a heap of stones welded beside the
+stone flanks of a wild gorge. And I said as I thought of the bandit:</p>
+
+<p>"What a terrible custom your vendetta is!"</p>
+
+<p>My companion answered with an air of resignation:</p>
+
+<p>"What, would you have? A man must do his duty!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_DEAD_WOMANS_SECRET" id="A_DEAD_WOMANS_SECRET"></a>A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_s.jpg" alt="S" width="36" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he had died painlessly, tranquilly, like a woman whose life was
+irreproachable, and she now lay on her back in bed, with closed eyes,
+calm features, her long white hair carefully arranged as if she had
+again made her toilet ten minutes before her death, all her pale
+physiognomy so composed, now that she had passed away, so resigned
+that one felt sure a sweet soul had dwelt in that body, that this
+serene grandmother had spent an untroubled existence, that this
+virtuous woman had ended her life without any shock, without any
+remorse.</p>
+
+<p>On his knees, beside the bed, her son, a magistrate of inflexible
+principles, and her daughter Marguerite, in religion, Sister Eulalie,
+were weeping distractedly. She had from the time of their infancy
+armed them with an inflexible code of morality, teaching them a
+religion without weakness and a sense of duty without any compromise.
+He, the son, had become a magistrate, and, wielding the weapon of the
+law, he struck down without pity the feeble and the erring. She, the
+daughter, quite penetrated with the virtue that had bathed her in this
+austere family, had become the spouse of God through disgust with men.</p>
+
+<p>They had scarcely known their father; all they knew was that he had
+made their mother unhappy without learning any further details. The
+nun passionately kissed one hand of her dead mother, which hung down,
+a hand of ivory like that of Christ in the large crucifix<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> which lay
+on the bed. At the opposite side of the prostrate body, the other hand
+seemed still to grasp the rumpled sheet with that wandering movement
+which is called the fold of the dying, and the lines had retained
+little wavy creases as a memento of those last motions which precede
+the eternal motionlessness. A few light taps at the door caused the
+two sobbing heads to rise up, and the priest who had just dined,
+entered the apartment. He was flushed, a little puffed, from the
+effects of the process of digestion which had just commenced; for he
+had put a good dash of brandy into his coffee in order to counteract
+the fatigue caused by the last nights he had remained up and that
+which he anticipated from the night that was still in store for him.
+He had put on a look of sadness, that simulated sadness of the priest
+to whom death is a means of livelihood. He made the sign of the cross,
+and coming over to them with his professional gesture said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my poor children, I have come to help you to pass these
+mournful hours."</p>
+
+<p>But Sister Eulalie suddenly rose up.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, father, but my brother and I would like to be left alone with
+her. These are the last moments that we now have for seeing her; so we
+want to feel ourselves once more, the three of us, just as we were
+years ago when we&mdash;we&mdash;we were only children, and our poor&mdash;poor
+mother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was unable to finish with the flood of tears that gushed from her
+eyes, and the sobs that were choking her.</p>
+
+<p>But the priest bowed, with a more serene look on his face, for he was
+thinking of his bed. "Just as you please, my children."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, he knelt down, again crossed himself, prayed, rose up, and
+softly stole away murmuring as he went: "She was a saint."</p>
+
+<p>They were left alone, the dead woman and her children. A hidden
+timepiece kept regularly ticking in its dark corner, and through the
+open window the soft odors of hay and of woods penetrated with faint
+gleams of moonlight. No sound in the fields outside, save the
+wandering notes of toads and now and then the humming of some
+nocturnal insect darting into like a ball, and knocking itself against
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>An infinite peace, a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded
+this dead woman, seemed to emanate from her, to evaporate from her
+into the atmosphere outside and to calm Nature itself.</p>
+
+<p>Then the magistrate, still on his knees, his head pressed against the
+bed-clothes, in a far-off, heart-broken voice that pierced through the
+sheets and the coverlet, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, mamma, mamma!" And the sister, sinking down on the floor,
+striking the wood with her forehead fanatically, twisting herself
+about and quivering like a person in an epileptic fit, groaned:
+"Jesus, Jesus&mdash;mamma&mdash;Jesus!"</p>
+
+<p>And both of them shaken by a hurricane of grief panted with a rattling
+in their throats.</p>
+
+<p>Then the fit gradually subsided, and they now wept in a less violent
+fashion, like the rainy calm that follows a squall on a storm-beaten
+sea. Then, after some time, they rose, and fixed their glances on the
+beloved corpse. And memories, those memories of the past, so sweet, so
+torturing to-day, came back to their minds with all those little
+forgotten details, those little details<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> so intimate and familiar,
+which make the being who is no more live over again. They recalled
+circumstances, words, smiles, certain intonations of voice which
+belonged to one whom they should hear speaking to them again. They saw
+her once more happy and calm, and phrases she used in ordinary
+conversation rose to their lips. They even remembered a little
+movement of the hand peculiar to her, as if she were keeping time when
+she was saying something of importance.</p>
+
+<p>And they loved her as they had never before loved her. And by the
+depth of their despair they realized how strongly they had been
+attached to her, and how desolate they would find themselves now.</p>
+
+<p>She had been their mainstay, their guide, the best part of their
+youth, of that happy portion of their lives which had vanished; she
+had been the bond that united them to existence, the mother, the
+mamma, the creative flesh, the tie that bound them to their ancestors.
+They would henceforth be solitary, isolated; they would have nothing
+on earth to look back upon.</p>
+
+<p>The nun said to her brother:</p>
+
+<p>"You know how mamma used always to read over her old letters. They are
+all there in her drawer. Suppose we read them in our turn, and so
+revive all her life this night by her side? It would be like a kind of
+road of the cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of
+grandparents whom we never knew, whose letters are there, and of whom
+she has so often talked to us, you remember?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And they drew forth from the drawer a dozen little packets of yellow
+paper, carefully tied up and placed close to one another. They flung
+these relics on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> bed, and selecting one of them on which the word
+"Father" was written, they opened and read what was in it.</p>
+
+<p>It consisted of those very old letters which are to be found in old
+family writing-desks, those letters which have the flavor of another
+century. The first said, "My darling," another "My beautiful little
+girl," then others "My dear child," and then again "My dear daughter."
+And suddenly the nun began reading aloud, reading for the dead her own
+history, all her tender souvenirs. And the magistrate listened, while
+he leaned on the bed, with his eyes on his mother's face. And the
+motionless corpse seemed happy.</p>
+
+<p>Sister Eulalie, interrupting herself, said: "We ought to put them into
+the grave with her, to make a winding-sheet of them, and bury them
+with her."</p>
+
+<p>And then she took up another packet, on which the descriptive word did
+not appear.</p>
+
+<p>And in a loud tone she began: "My adored one, I love you to
+distraction. Since yesterday I have been suffering like a damned soul
+burned by the recollection of you. I feel your lips on mine, your eyes
+under my eyes, your flesh under my flesh. I love you! I love you! You
+have made me mad! My arms open! I pant with an immense desire to
+possess you again. My whole body calls out to you, wants you. I have
+kept in my mouth the taste of your kisses."</p>
+
+<p>The magistrate rose up; the nun stopped reading. He snatched the
+letter from her, and sought for the signature. There was none, save
+under the words, "He who adores you," the name "Henry." Their father's
+name was Ren&eacute;. So then he was not the man.</p>
+
+<p>Then, the son, with rapid fingers, fumbled in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> packet of letters
+took another of them, and read: "I can do without your caresses no
+longer."</p>
+
+<p>And, standing up, with the severity of a judge passing sentence, he
+gazed at the impassive face of the dead woman.</p>
+
+<p>The nun, straight as a statue, with teardrops standing at each corner
+of her eyes, looked at her brother, waiting to see what he meant to
+do. Then he crossed the room, slowly reached the window, and looked
+out thoughtfully into the night.</p>
+
+<p>When he turned back, Sister Eulalie, her eyes now quite dry, still
+remained standing near the bed, with a downcast look.</p>
+
+<p>He went over to the drawer and flung in the letters which he had
+picked up from the floor. Then he drew the curtains round the bed.</p>
+
+<p>And when the dawn made the candles on the table look pale, the son
+rose from his armchair, and without even a parting glance at the
+mother whom he had separated from them and condemned, he said slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my sister, let us leave the room."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_CAKE" id="THE_CAKE"></a>THE CAKE</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_l.jpg" alt="L" width="42" height="50" /></div>
+<p>et us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her
+real name.</p>
+
+<p>She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail
+of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic
+heart, and was ravishingly beautiful. She opened her doors to very
+few&mdash;only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as
+princes of something or other.</p>
+
+<p>To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim of
+intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband
+of a star is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original
+idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit
+of his own, a merit of the second order; it is true; but he did, in
+fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions, hold
+receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who
+appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention
+than they did on his brilliant partner.</p>
+
+<p>He had devoted himself to agriculture&mdash;to agriculture in the Chamber.
+There are in the same way generals in the Chamber&mdash;those who are born,
+who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office,
+are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chambers&mdash;viz., in
+the Admiralty&mdash;Colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied
+agri<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>culture, indeed he had studied it deeply, in its relations with
+the other sciences, with political economy, with the Fine Arts&mdash;we
+dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of science, since we even call
+the horrible railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the
+point when it was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted
+in the Technical Reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him
+appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.</p>
+
+<p>Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations
+to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they
+associated together, or rather they did not&mdash;they formed two groups.
+Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and Ministers,
+occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of
+the Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a
+smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically
+described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>The two camps were clearly separated. Monsieur, without jealousy,
+moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial
+handshakings were exchanged, but the Academy entertained infinite
+contempt for the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of
+the princes of science, of thought, or of anything else mingled with
+the agriculturists.</p>
+
+<p>These receptions occasioned little expense&mdash;a cup of tea, a cake, that
+was all. Monsieur, at an earlier period, had claimed two cakes, one
+for the academy, and one for the agriculturists, but Madame having
+rightly suggested that this way of acting seemed to in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>dicate two
+camps, two receptions, two parties, Monsieur did not press the matter,
+so that they used only one cake, of which Madame Anserre did the
+honors at the Academy, and which then passed into the Salon de
+Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>Now, this cake was soon, for the Academy, a subject of observation
+well calculated to arouse curiosity. Madame Anserre never cut it
+herself. That function always fell to the lot of one or other of the
+illustrious guests. The particular duty, which was supposed to carry
+with it honorable distinction, was performed by each person for a
+pretty long period, in one case for three months, scarcely ever for
+more; and it was noticed that the privilege of "cutting the cake"
+carried with it a heap of other marks of superiority&mdash;a sort of
+royalty, or rather very accentuated vice-royalty.</p>
+
+<p>The reigning cutter spoke in a haughty tone, with an air of marked
+command; and all the favors of the mistress of the house were for him
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>These happy individuals were in moments of intimacy described in
+hushed tones behind doors as the "favorites of the cake," and every
+change of favorite introduced into the Academy a sort of revolution.
+The knife was a scepter, the pastry an emblem; the chosen ones were
+congratulated. The agriculturists never cut the cake. Monsieur himself
+was always excluded, although he ate his share.</p>
+
+<p>The cake was cut in succession by poets, by painters, and by
+novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the
+portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him.
+Sometimes a man less well-known, but elegant and sought after, one of
+those who are called according to the different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> epochs, "true
+gentleman," or "perfect knight," or "dandy," or something else, seated
+himself, in his turn, before the symbolic cake. Each of them, during
+his ephemeral reign, exhibited greater consideration towards the
+husband; then, when the hour of his fall had arrived, he passed on the
+knife towards the other and mingled once more with the crowd of
+followers and admirers of the "beautiful Madame Anserre."</p>
+
+<p>This state of things lasted a long time, but comets do not always
+shine with the same brilliance. Everything gets worn out in society.
+One would have said that gradually the eagerness of the cutters grew
+feebler; they seemed to hesitate at times when the tray was held out
+to them; this office, once so much coveted, became less and less
+desired. It was retained for a shorter time; they appeared to be less
+proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Anserre was prodigal of smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was
+found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to
+decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like
+dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power.
+Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!)
+M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting
+tired of it; and one evening Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame
+Anserre, was seen cutting it herself. But this appeared to be very
+wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged one of her guests so
+strongly to do it that he did not dare to refuse.</p>
+
+<p>The symbol was too well-known, however; the guests stared at one
+another with scared anxious faces. To cut the cake was nothing, but
+the privileges to which this favor had always given a claim now
+frightened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> people; therefore, the moment the dish made its appearance
+the academicians rushed pell-mell into the Salon of Agriculture, as if
+to shelter themselves behind the husband, who was perpetually smiling.
+And when Madame Anserre, in a state of anxiety, presented herself at
+the door with a cake in one hand and the knife in the other, they all
+seemed to form a circle around her husband as if to appeal to him for
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>Some years more passed. Nobody cut the cake now; but yielding to an
+old inveterate habit, the lady who had always been gallantly called
+"the beautiful Madame Anserre" looked out each evening for some
+devotee to take the knife, and each time the same movement took place
+around her, a general flight, skillfully arranged, and full of
+combined maneuvers that showed great cleverness, in order to avoid the
+offer that was rising to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>But, one evening, a young man presented himself at her reception&mdash;an
+innocent, unsophisticated youth. He knew nothing about the mystery of
+the cake; accordingly, when it appeared, and when all the rest ran
+away, when Madame Anserre took from the man-servant's hands the dish
+and the pastry, he remained quietly by her side.</p>
+
+<p>She thought that perhaps he knew about the matter; she smiled, and in
+a tone which showed some emotion, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be kind enough, dear Monsieur, to cut this cake?"</p>
+
+<p>He displayed the utmost readiness, and took off his gloves, flattered
+at such an honor being conferred on him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to be sure Madame, with the greatest pleasure."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Some distance away in the corner of the gallery, in the frame of the
+door which led into the Salon of the Agriculturists, faces which
+expressed utter amazement were staring at him. Then, when the
+spectators saw the new comer cutting without any hesitation, they
+quickly came forward.</p>
+
+<p>An old poet jocosely slapped the neophyte on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo, young man!" he whispered in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>The others gazed at him with curiosity. Even the husband appeared to
+be surprised. As for the young man, he was astonished at the
+consideration which they suddenly seemed to show towards him; above
+all, he failed to comprehend the marked attentions, the manifest
+favor, and the species of mute gratitude which the mistress of the
+house bestowed on him.</p>
+
+<p>It appears, however, that he eventually found out.</p>
+
+<p>At what moment, in what place, was the revelation made to him? Nobody
+could tell; but, when he again presented himself at the reception, he
+had a preoccupied air, almost a shamefaced look, and he cast around
+him a glance of uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang for tea. The man-servant appeared. Madame Anserre, with
+a smile, seized the dish, casting a look about her for her young
+friend; but he had fled so precipitately that no trace of him could be
+seen any longer. Then, she went looking everywhere for him, and ere
+long she discovered him in the Salon of the Agriculturists. With his
+arm locked in that of the husband, he was consulting that gentleman as
+to the means employed for destroying phylloxera.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Monsieur," she said to him, "will you be so kind as to cut
+this cake for me?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He reddened to the roots of his hair, and hanging down his head,
+stammered out some excuses. Thereupon M. Anserre took pity on him, and
+turning towards his wife, said:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, you might have the goodness not to disturb us. We are
+talking about agriculture. So get your cake cut by Baptiste."</p>
+
+<p>And since that day nobody has ever cut Madame Anserre's cake.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_LIVELY_FRIEND" id="A_LIVELY_FRIEND"></a>A LIVELY FRIEND</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hey had been constantly in each other's society for a whole winter in
+Paris. After having lost sight of each other, as generally happens in
+such cases, after leaving college, the two friends met again one
+night, long years after, already old and white-haired, the one a
+bachelor, the other married.</p>
+
+<p>M. de Meroul lived six months in Paris and six months in his little
+chateau of Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a gentleman in
+the district, he had lived a peaceful, happy life with the indolence
+of a man who has nothing to do. With a calm temperament and a sedate
+mind, without any intellectual audacity or tendency towards
+revolutionary independence of thought, he passed his time in mildly
+regretting the past, in deploring the morals and the institutions of
+to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised her eyes
+to Heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic assent:</p>
+
+<p>"Under what a government do we live, great God!"</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had
+been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first
+of all, to reverence the Pope and the King!</p>
+
+<p>And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart,
+without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary
+devotion, with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was
+kindly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> in every fold of her soul. She had no child, and was
+incessantly regretting it.</p>
+
+<p>When M. de Meroul came across his old school fellow Joseph Mouradour
+at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine
+delight, for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.</p>
+
+<p>After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in
+their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of
+questions as to their respective careers.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Mouradour, a native of the South of France, had become a
+Councilor General in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he
+spoke briskly and without any circumspection telling all his thoughts
+with sheer indifference to prudential considerations. He was a
+Republican, of that race of good-natured Republicans who make their
+own ease the law of their existence, and who carry freedom of speech
+to the verge of brutality.</p>
+
+<p>He called at his friend's address in Paris, and was immediately a
+favorite, on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced
+opinions. Madame de Meroul exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity! such a charming man!"</p>
+
+<p>M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone:
+"You cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country." He was
+attached to his friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than
+those of childhood renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the
+husband and wife, called them "my loving turtles," and occasionally
+gave vent to loud declarations against people who were behind the age,
+against all sorts of prejudices and traditions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the
+married pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of
+propriety and good-breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the
+conversation, in order to avoid any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not
+want to know anyone unless he was free to say what he liked.</p>
+
+<p>Summer came round. The Merouls knew no greater pleasure than to
+receive their old friends in their country house at Tourbeville. It
+was an intimate and healthy pleasure, the pleasure of homely
+gentlefolk who had spent most of their lives in the country. They used
+to go to the nearest railway station to meet some of their guests, and
+drove them to the house in their carriage, watching for compliments on
+their district, on the rapid vegetation, on the condition of the roads
+in the department, on the cleanliness of the peasants' houses, on the
+bigness of the cattle they saw in the fields, on everything that met
+the eye as far as the edge of the horizon.</p>
+
+<p>They liked to have it noticed that their horse trotted in a wonderful
+manner for an animal employed a part of the year in field-work; and
+they awaited, with anxiety the newcomer's opinion on their family
+estate, sensitive to the slightest word, grateful for the slightest
+gracious attention.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he announced his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>The wife and the husband came to meet the train, delighted to have the
+opportunity of doing the honors of their house.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he perceived them, Joseph Mouradour jumped out of his
+carriage with a vivacity which in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>creased their satisfaction. He
+grasped their hands warmly, congratulated them, and intoxicated them
+with compliments.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to
+the house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the
+excellence of the crops, and the quickness of the horse.</p>
+
+<p>When he placed his foot on the steps in front of the chateau, M. de
+Meroul said to him with a certain friendly solemnity:</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are at home."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Mouradour answered: "Thanks old fellow; I counted on that. For
+my part, besides, I never put myself out with my friends. That's the
+only hospitality I understand."</p>
+
+<p>Then, he went up to his own room, where he put on the costume of a
+peasant, as he was pleased to describe it, and he came down again not
+very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the
+careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too to
+have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed
+along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he
+thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M.
+and Madame de Meroul who even at home on their estate always remained
+serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name
+exacted a certain amount of ceremonial even with their intimate
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch, they went to visit the farms; and the Parisian stupefied
+the respectable peasants by talking to them as if he were a comrade of
+theirs.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, the cur&eacute; dined at the house&mdash;a fat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> old priest,
+wearing his Sunday suit, who had been specially asked that day in
+order to meet the newcomer.</p>
+
+<p>When Joseph saw him he made a grimace, then he stared at the priest in
+astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the
+like of which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told
+a few smutty stories allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but
+apparently somewhat out of place in the presence of an ecclesiastic.
+He did not say, "Monsieur l'Abbe," but merely "Monsieur"; and he
+embarrassed the priest with philosophical views as to the various
+superstitions that prevailed on the surface of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>He remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Your God, monsieur, is one of those persons whom we must respect, but
+also one of those who must be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has
+from time immemorial been the enemy of yours."</p>
+
+<p>The Merouls, greatly put out, attempted to divert his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>The cur&eacute; left very early.</p>
+
+<p>Then the husband gently remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"You went a little too far with that priest."</p>
+
+<p>But Joseph immediately replied:</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very good joke, too! Am I to bother my brains about a
+devil-dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having
+such an old fogy to dinner. Curses on his impudence!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, my friend, remember his sacred character."</p>
+
+<p>Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. We must treat them like girls, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> get roses for being
+well behaved! That's all right, my boy! When these people respect my
+convictions, I will respect theirs!"</p>
+
+<p>This was all that happened that day.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, Madame de Meroul, on entering her drawing-room, saw
+lying on the table three newspapers which made her draw back in
+horror. "Le Voltaire," "Le Republique Francaise," and "La Justice."</p>
+
+<p>Presently, Joseph Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the
+threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. He exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"There is a splendid article by Rochefort. This fellow is marvelous."</p>
+
+<p>He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most
+striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.</p>
+
+<p>M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand. "Le Gaulois" for himself and
+"Le Clarion" for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire,
+violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the South, rang through
+the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid
+folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the
+solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with
+a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical and crushing.</p>
+
+<p>The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened
+in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured
+to make a gesture. Mouradour launched out the concluding passage in
+the article as one lets forth a jet of fireworks, then in an emphatic
+tone remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"That's a stinger, eh?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and
+he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then, he
+came across to his host with great strides, demanding in angry tone:</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to do with these papers?" M. de Meroul replied in a
+hesitating voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, these&mdash;these are my&mdash;my newspapers."</p>
+
+<p>"Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You
+will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new
+ideas, and, as for yours&mdash;this is what I do with them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he
+seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then
+he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and
+"Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, and he sank into an armchair to
+finish "L'Intransigeant."</p>
+
+<p>The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of
+reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers,
+which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been
+poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>Then he burst out laughing, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"A week of this sort of nourishment, and I'll have you converted to my
+ideas."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the
+door on the cur&eacute;, whom Madame Meroul went to see in secret. He gave
+orders that neither the "Gaulois" nor the "Clarion" were to be
+admitted into the house, which a man-servant went to get in a
+mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance,
+were hidden away under the sofa cush<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>ions. He regulated everything
+just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and
+all powerful tyrant.</p>
+
+<p>Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with
+Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered
+it would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and, not
+knowing what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that
+they were obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little
+matter of business, and they begged of him to remain in the house
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Very well; 'tis all the same to me; I'll wait here for you as long as
+you like. What I say is this&mdash;there need be no ceremony between
+friends. You're quite right to look after your own affairs&mdash;why the
+devil shouldn't you? I'll not take offense at your doing that, quite
+the contrary. It only makes me feel quite at my ease with you. Go, my
+friends&mdash;I'll wait for you."</p>
+
+<p>M. and Madame Meroul started next morning.</p>
+
+<p>He is waiting for them.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_ORPHAN" id="THE_ORPHAN"></a>THE ORPHAN</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
+She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was deformed, having in
+her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and
+getting her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterwards
+presented a frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve
+not to marry, for she did not want any man to marry her for her money.</p>
+
+<p>A female neighbor of hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy,
+died in child-birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took
+the new-born child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a
+boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in
+order to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who
+would look after her, who would make her old age pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>She resided on a little property four leagues away from Rennes, and
+she now dispensed with a servant. The expenses having increased to
+more than double what they had been since this orphan's arrival, her
+income of three thousand francs was no longer sufficient to support
+three persons.</p>
+
+<p>She attended to the housekeeping and the cooking herself, and she sent
+out the boy on errands, letting him further occupy himself with
+cultivating the garden. He was gentle, timid, silent, and caressing.
+And she experienced a deep joy, a fresh joy at being embraced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> by him,
+without any apparent surprise or repugnance being exhibited by him on
+account of her ugliness. He called her "Aunt" and treated her as a
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening they both sat down at the fireside, and she got nice
+things ready for him. She heated some wine and toasted a slice of
+bread, and it made a charming little meal before going to bed. She
+often took him on her knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring in
+his ear with passionate tenderness. She called him: "My little flower,
+my cherub, my adored angel, my divine jewel." He softly accepted her
+caresses, concealing his head on the old maid's shoulder. Although he
+was now nearly fifteen years old, he had remained small and weak, and
+had a rather sickly appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Mademoiselle Source brought him to the city, to see two
+married female relatives of hers, distant cousins, who were living in
+the suburbs, and who were the only members of her family in existence.
+The two women had always found fault with her for having adopted this
+boy on account of the inheritance; but for all that they gave her a
+cordial welcome, having still hopes of getting a share for themselves,
+a third, no doubt, if what she possessed were only equally divided.</p>
+
+<p>She was happy, very happy, always taken up with her adopted child. She
+bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself
+ardently to reading.</p>
+
+<p>He no longer now climbed on her knees to fondle her as he had formerly
+done; but instead would go and sit down in his little chair in the
+chimney-corner and open a volume. The lamp placed at the edge of the
+little table, above his head, shone on his curly hair, and on a
+portion of his forehead; he did not move, he did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> raise his eyes,
+he did not make any gesture. He read on, interested, entirely absorbed
+in the adventures which formed the subject of the book.</p>
+
+<p>She, seated opposite to him, gazed at him with an eager, steady look,
+astonished at his studiousness, often on the point of bursting into
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>She said to him now and then: "You will fatigue yourself, my
+treasure!" in the hope that he would raise his head, and come across
+to embrace her; but he did not even answer her; he had not heard or
+understood what she was saying; he paid no attention to anything save
+what he read in these pages.</p>
+
+<p>For two years he devoured an incalculable number of volumes. His
+character changed.</p>
+
+<p>After this, he asked Mademoiselle Source many times for money, which
+she gave him. As he always wanted more, she ended by refusing, for she
+was both regular and energetic, and knew how to act rationally when it
+was necessary to do so. By dint of entreaties he obtained a large sum
+one night from her; but when he urged her to give him another sum a
+few days later, she showed herself inflexible, and did not give way to
+him further, in fact.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to be satisfied with her decision.</p>
+
+<p>He again became quiet, as he had formerly been, loving to remain
+seated for entire hours, without moving, plunged in deep reverie. He
+now did not even talk to Madame Source, merely answering her remarks
+with short, formal words. Nevertheless, he was agreeable and attentive
+in his manner towards her; but he never embraced her now.</p>
+
+<p>She had by this time grown slightly afraid of him when they sat facing
+one another at night at opposite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> sides of the chimney-piece. She
+wanted to wake him up, to make him say something, no matter what, that
+would break this dreadful silence, which was like the darkness of a
+wood. But he did not appear to listen to her, and she shuddered with
+the terror of a poor feeble woman when she had spoken to him five or
+six times successively without being able to get a word out of him.</p>
+
+<p>What was the matter with him? What was going on in that closed up
+head? When she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him,
+she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape
+into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal
+companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define,
+but of which she had a presentiment.</p>
+
+<p>She frequently shed tears when she was alone. What was the matter with
+him? When she gave expression to a desire, he unmurmuringly carried it
+into execution. When she wanted to have anything brought to her from
+the city, he immediately went there to procure it. She had no
+complaint to make of him; no, indeed! And yet....</p>
+
+<p>Another year flitted by, and it seemed to her that a new modification
+had taken place in the mind of the young man. She perceived it; she
+felt it; she divined it. How? No matter! She was sure she was not
+mistaken; but she could not have explained in what the unknown
+thoughts of this strange youth had changed.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that till now he had been like a person in a
+hesitating frame of mind who had suddenly arrived at a determination.
+This idea came to her one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> evening as she met his glance, a fixed
+singular glance which she had not seen in his face before.</p>
+
+<p>Then, he commenced to watch her incessantly and she wished she could
+hide herself in order to avoid that cold eye, riveted on her.</p>
+
+<p>He kept staring at her, evening after evening for hours together, only
+averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not look at me like that, my child!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he hung down his head.</p>
+
+<p>But, the moment her back was turned, she once more felt that his eyes
+were upon her. Wherever she went he pursued her with his persistent
+gaze.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly
+noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in
+wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending
+stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her,
+as he worked, in a sly, continuous fashion.</p>
+
+<p>It was in vain that she asked him:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years you have
+become very different. I don't find you the same. Tell me what ails
+you, and what you are thinking of, I beg of you."</p>
+
+<p>He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, nothing ails me, Aunt!"</p>
+
+<p>And when she persisted, appealing to him thus:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew
+what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not
+look at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I'll console you!"</p>
+
+<p>He went away with a tired air, murmuring:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>He had not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the
+features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and
+badly-cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half-finished, and
+disquieting as a mystery. He was a close, impenetrable being, in whom
+there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not
+from that time forth, sleep at night, so great was her anxiety.
+Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She shut herself
+up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.</p>
+
+<p>What was she afraid of? She could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>Fear of everything, of the night, of the walls, of the shadows thrown
+by the moon on the white curtains of the windows, and above all, fear
+of him.</p>
+
+<p>Why?</p>
+
+<p>What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?</p>
+
+<p>She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune
+threatened her, a frightful misfortune.</p>
+
+<p>She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her
+relatives. She told them about the matter in a gasping voice. The two
+women thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her.</p>
+
+<p>She said:</p>
+
+<p>"If you knew the way he looks at me from morning till night. He never
+takes his eyes off me! At times, I feel a longing to cry for help, to
+call in the neighbors, so much am I afraid. But what could I say to
+them? He does nothing to me except to keep looking at me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The two female cousins asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Is he ever brutal to you? Does he give you sharp answers?"</p>
+
+<p>She replied:</p>
+
+<p>"No, never; he does everything I wish; he works hard; he is steady;
+but I am so frightened I don't mind that much. He has something in his
+head, I am certain of that&mdash;quite certain. I don't care to remain all
+alone like that with him in the country."</p>
+
+<p>The relatives, scared by her words, declared to her that they were
+astonished, and could not understand her; and they advised her to keep
+silent about her fears and her plans, without, however, dissuading her
+from coming to reside in the city, hoping in that way that the entire
+inheritance would eventually fall into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>They even promised to assist her in selling her house and in finding
+another near them.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Source returned home. But her mind was so much upset that
+she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any
+trifling disturbance agitated her.</p>
+
+<p>Twice she went again to consult her relatives, quite determined now
+not to remain any longer in this way in her lonely dwelling. At last,
+she found a little cottage in the suburbs, which suited her, and she
+privately bought it.</p>
+
+<p>The signature of the contract took place on a Tuesday morning, and
+Mademoiselle Source devoted the rest of the day to the preparations
+for her change of residence.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock in the evening she got into the diligence which
+passed within a few hundred yards of her house, and she told the
+conductor to let her down in the place where it was his custom to stop
+for her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> The man called out to her as he whipped his horses:</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Mademoiselle Source&mdash;good night!"</p>
+
+<p>She replied as she walked on:</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Pere Joseph." Next morning, at half-past seven, the
+postman who conveyed letters to the village, noticed at the
+cross-road, not far from the high road, a large splash of blood not
+yet dry. He said to himself: "Hallo! some boozer must have got a
+bleeding in the nose."</p>
+
+<p>But he perceived ten paces farther on a pocket-handkerchief also
+stained with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the
+postman in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he
+saw a strange object.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat
+cut open with a knife.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other
+authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.</p>
+
+<p>The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old
+maid's fears and her last plans.</p>
+
+<p>The orphan was arrested. Since the death of the woman who had adopted
+him, he wept from morning till night, plunged at least to all
+appearance, in the most violent grief.</p>
+
+<p>He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o'clock in a
+caf&eacute;. Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his
+departure.</p>
+
+<p>Now the driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the
+murdered woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The accused was acquitted. A will, a long time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> made, which had been
+left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him universal legatee.
+So he inherited everything.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time, the people of the country put him into a quarantine,
+as they still suspected him. His house, which was that of the dead
+woman, was looked upon as accursed. People avoided him in the street.</p>
+
+<p>But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that
+gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous,
+obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they
+cared to talk to him.</p>
+
+<p>The notary, Maitre Rameay, was one of the first to take his part,
+attracted by his smiling loquacity. He said one evening at a dinner at
+the tax-collector's house:</p>
+
+<p>"A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor
+could not have such a crime on his conscience."</p>
+
+<p>Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and
+they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made
+them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas
+to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were
+passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the
+lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious
+gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them,
+they could not keep from always laughing in his company.</p>
+
+<p>All doors were opened to him, after a time.</p>
+
+<p>He is, to-day, the mayor of his own township.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_BLIND_MAN" id="THE_BLIND_MAN"></a>THE BLIND MAN</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="54" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ow is it that the sunlight gives us such joy? Why does this radiance
+when it falls on the earth fill us with so much delight of living? The
+sky is all blue, the fields are all green, the houses all white; and
+our ravished eyes drink in those bright colors which bring
+mirthfulness to our souls. And then there springs up in our hearts a
+desire to dance, a desire to run, a desire to sing, a happy lightness
+of thought, a sort of enlarged tenderness; we feel a longing to
+embrace the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal
+darkness, remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gayety,
+and, not comprehending what is taking place around them, they keep
+every moment stopping their dogs from gamboling.</p>
+
+<p>When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a
+young brother or a little sister, if the child says: "It was a very
+fine day!" the other answers: "I could notice that 'twas fine. Loulou
+wouldn't keep quiet."</p>
+
+<p>I have known one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel
+martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived.</p>
+
+<p>He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father
+and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered
+little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people
+were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> dependent
+on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar
+who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he
+swallowed was made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a
+drone, a clown; and although his brother-in-law had taken possession
+of his portion of the inheritance, the soup was given to him
+grudgingly&mdash;just enough to save him from dying.</p>
+
+<p>His face was very pale, and his two big white eyes were like wafers;
+and he remained unmoved in spite of the insults inflicted upon him, so
+shut up in himself that one could not tell whether he felt them at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always
+treated him unkindly, and caring scarcely at all for him; for in
+country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be
+glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the soup had been gulped down, he went to the door in
+summer-time and sat down, to the chimney-corner in winter time, and,
+after that, never stirred all night. He made no gesture, no movement;
+only his eyelids, quivering from some nervous affection, fell down
+sometimes over his white, sightless orbs. Had he any intellect, any
+thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own existence? Nobody cared
+to inquire as to whether he had or no.</p>
+
+<p>For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for
+doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his
+relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon,
+a prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the
+brutes who surrounded him.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> inspired by his
+blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him,
+they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors
+and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.</p>
+
+<p>The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it
+was talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the
+farmhouse was full of people. Sometimes they put on the table, in
+front of his plate, when he was beginning to take the soup, some cat
+or some dog. The animal instinctively scented out the man's infirmity,
+and, softly approaching, commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the
+soup daintily; and, when a rather loud licking of the tongue awakened
+the poor fellow's attention, it would prudently scamper away to avoid
+the blow of the spoon directed at it by the blind man at random!</p>
+
+<p>Then the spectators huddled against the walls burst out laughing,
+nudged each other, and stamped their feet on the floor. And he,
+without ever uttering a word, would continue eating with the aid of
+his right hand, while stretching out his left to protect and defend
+his plate.</p>
+
+<p>At another time they made him chew corks, bits of wood, leaves, or
+even filth, which he was unable to distinguish.</p>
+
+<p>After this, they got tired even of these practical jokes; and the
+brother-in-law, mad at having to support him always, struck him,
+cuffed him incessantly, laughing at the useless efforts of the other
+to ward off or return the blows. Then came a new pleasure&mdash;the
+pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls,
+and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs,
+which caused his eyelashes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> to twitch spasmodically. He did not know
+where to hide himself, and remained with his arms always held out to
+guard against people coming too close to him.</p>
+
+<p>At last he was forced to beg.</p>
+
+<p>He was placed somewhere on the high-road on market-days, and as soon
+as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he
+reached out his hat, stammering:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Charity, if you please!"</p>
+
+<p>But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring
+back a sou.</p>
+
+<p>Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how
+he died.</p>
+
+<p>One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it froze horribly.
+Now his brother-in-law led him one morning at this season a great
+distance along the high-road in order that he might solicit alms. The
+blind man was left there all day, and when night came on, the
+brother-in-law told the people of his house that he could find no
+trace of the mendicant. Then he added:</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold, and got someone to take
+him away. Never fear! he's not lost. He'll turn up soon enough
+to-morrow to eat the soup."</p>
+
+<p>Next day, he did not come back.</p>
+
+<p>After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he
+was dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way
+along the road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at
+random, falling into dykes, getting up again, without uttering a
+sound, his sole object being to find some house where he could take
+shelter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But by degrees the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and
+his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to
+sit down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.</p>
+
+<p>The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that
+his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant
+accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer
+indicated the place where the corpse was lying.</p>
+
+<p>His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for
+him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
+Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of
+crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then,
+like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot,
+ever going and coming.</p>
+
+<p>The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
+crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners
+of the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the
+shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and
+in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see
+what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man,
+already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked
+out by the long, voracious beaks.</p>
+
+<p>And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly
+remembering and gloomily pondering over the fate of the beggar so
+disinherited in life that his horrible death was a relief for all
+those who had known him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_WIFES_CONFESSION" id="A_WIFES_CONFESSION"></a>A WIFE'S CONFESSION</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y friend, you have asked me to relate to you the liveliest
+recollections of my life. I am very old, without relatives, without
+children; so I am free to make a confession to you. Promise me one
+thing&mdash;never to reveal my name.</p>
+
+<p>I have been much loved, as you know; I have often myself loved. I was
+very beautiful; I may say this to-day, when my beauty is gone. Love
+was for me the life of the soul, just as the air is the life of the
+body. I would have preferred to die rather than exist without
+affection, without having somebody always to care for me. Women often
+pretend to love only once with all the strength of their hearts; it
+has often happened to be so violent in one of my attachments that I
+thought it would be impossible for my transports ever to end. However,
+they always died out in a natural fashion, like a fire when it has no
+more fuel.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you to-day the first of my adventures, in which I was very
+innocent, but which led to the others. The horrible vengeance of that
+dreadful chemist of Pecq recalls to me the shocking drama of which I
+was, in spite of myself, a spectator.</p>
+
+<p>I had been a year married to a rich man, Comte Herve de Ker&mdash;&mdash; a
+Breton of ancient family, whom I did not love, you understand. True
+love needs, I believe at any rate, freedom and impediments at the same
+time. The love which is imposed, sanctioned by law, and blessed by the
+priest&mdash;can we really call that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> love? A legal kiss is never as good
+as a stolen kiss. My husband was tall in stature, elegant, and a
+really fine gentleman in his manners. But he lacked intelligence. He
+spoke in a downright fashion, and uttered opinions that cut like the
+blade of a knife. He created the impression that his mind was full of
+ready-made views instilled into him by his father and mother, who had
+themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated, but on
+every subject immediately made narrow-minded suggestions, without
+showing any embarrassment and without realizing that there might be
+other ways of looking at things. One felt that his head was closed up,
+that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a
+man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh air passing
+through an open window into a house.</p>
+
+<p>The chateau in which we lived was situated in the midst of a desolate
+tract of country. It was a large, melancholy structure, surrounded by
+enormous trees, with tufts of moss on it resembling old men's white
+beards. The park, a real forest, was enclosed in a deep trench called
+the ha-ha; and at its extremity, near the moorland, we had big ponds
+full of reeds and floating grass. Between the two, at the edge of a
+stream which connected them, my husband had got a little hut built for
+shooting wild ducks.</p>
+
+<p>We had, in addition to our ordinary servants, a keeper, a sort of
+brute devoted to my husband to the death, and a chambermaid, almost a
+friend, passionately attached to me. I had brought her back from Spain
+with me five years before. She was a deserted child. She might have
+been taken for a gipsy with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> her dusky skin, her dark eyes, her hair
+thick as a wood and always clustering around her forehead. She was at
+the time sixteen years old, but she looked twenty.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn was beginning. We hunted much, sometimes on neighboring
+estates, sometimes on our own; and I noticed a young man, the Baron de
+C&mdash;&mdash;, whose visits at the chateau became singularly frequent. Then he
+ceased to come; I thought no more about it; but I perceived that my
+husband changed in his demeanor towards me.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed taciturn and preoccupied; he did not kiss me; and, in spite
+of the fact that he did not come into my room, as I insisted on
+separate apartments in order to live a little alone, I often at night
+heard a furtive step drawing near my door, and withdrawing a few
+minutes after.</p>
+
+<p>As my window was on the ground-floor I thought I had also often heard
+someone prowling in the shadow around the chateau. I told my husband
+about it, and, having looked at me intently for some seconds, he
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing&mdash;it is the keeper."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Now, one evening, just after dinner, Herve, who appeared to be
+extraordinarily gay, with a sly sort of gaiety, said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to spend three hours out with the guns, in order to
+shoot a fox who comes every evening to eat my hens?"</p>
+
+<p>I was surprised. I hesitated; but, as he kept staring at me with
+singular persistency, I ended by replying:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly, my friend." I must tell you that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> I hunted like a man
+the wolf and the wild boar. So it was quite natural that he should
+suggest this shooting expedition to me.</p>
+
+<p>But my husband, all of a sudden, had a curiously nervous look; and all
+the evening he seemed agitated, rising up and sitting down feverishly.</p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock, he suddenly said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready?"</p>
+
+<p>I rose; and, as he was bringing me my gun himself, I asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Are we to load with bullets or with deershot?"</p>
+
+<p>He showed some astonishment; then he rejoined:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! only with deershot; make your mind easy! that will be enough."</p>
+
+<p>Then, after some seconds, he added in a peculiar tone:</p>
+
+<p>"You may boast of having splendid coolness."</p>
+
+<p>I burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"I? Why, pray? Coolness because I went to kill a fox? But what are you
+thinking of, my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>And we quietly made our way across the park. All the household slept.
+The full moon seemed to give a yellow tint to the old gloomy building,
+whose slate roof glittered brightly. The two turrets that flanked it
+had two plates of light on their summits, and no noise disturbed the
+silence of this clear, sad night, sweet and still, which seemed in a
+death-trance. Not a breath of air, not a shriek from a toad, not a
+hoot from an owl; a melancholy numbness lay heavy on everything. When
+we were under the trees in the park, a sense of freshness stole over
+me, together with the odor of fallen leaves. My husband said nothing;
+but he was listening, he was watching, he seemed to be smelling about
+in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> shadows, possessed from head to foot by the passion for the
+chase.</p>
+
+<p>We soon reached the edges of the ponds.</p>
+
+<p>Their tufts of rushes remained motionless; not a breath of air
+caressed it; but movements which were scarcely perceptible ran through
+the water. Sometimes the surface was stirred by something, and light
+circles gathered around, like luminous wrinkles enlarging
+indefinitely.</p>
+
+<p>When we reached the hut where we were to lie in wait, my husband made
+me go in first; then he slowly loaded his gun, and the dry cracking of
+the powder produced a strange effect on me. He saw that I was
+shuddering, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Does this trial happen to be quite enough for you? If so, go back."</p>
+
+<p>I was much surprised, and I replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I did not come to go back without doing anything. You
+seem queer this evening."</p>
+
+<p>He murmured, "As you wish," and we remained there without moving.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of about half-an-hour, as nothing broke the oppressive
+stillness of this bright autumn night, I said, in a low tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure he is passing this way?"</p>
+
+<p>Herve winced as if I had bitten him, and with his mouth close to my
+ear, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Make no mistake about it. I am quite sure."</p>
+
+<p>And once more there was silence.</p>
+
+<p>I believe I was beginning to get drowsy when my husband pressed my
+arm, and his voice, changed to a hiss, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see him over there under the trees?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I looked in vain; I could distinguish nothing. And slowly Herve now
+cocked his gun, all the time fixing his eyes on my face.</p>
+
+<p>I was myself making ready to fire, and suddenly, thirty paces in front
+of us, appeared in the full light of the moon a man who was hurrying
+forward with rapid movements, his body bent, as if he were trying to
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>I was so stupefied that I uttered a loud cry; but, before I could turn
+round, there was a flash before my eyes; I heard a deafening report,
+and I saw the man rolling on the ground, like a wolf hit by a bullet.</p>
+
+<p>I burst into dreadful shrieks, terrified, almost going mad; then a
+furious hand&mdash;it was Herve's&mdash;seized me by the throat. I was flung
+down on the ground, then carried off by his strong arms. He ran,
+holding me up, till we reached the body lying on the grass, and he
+threw me on top of it violently, as if he wanted to break my head.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I was lost; he was going to kill me; and he had just raised
+his heel up to my forehead when, in his turn, he was gripped, knocked
+down before I could yet realize what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>I rose up abruptly, and I saw kneeling on top of him Porquita, my
+maid, clinging like a wild cat to him with desperate energy, tearing
+off his beard, his moustache, and the skin of his face.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if another idea had suddenly taken hold of her mind, she rose
+up, and, flinging herself on the corpse, she threw her arms around the
+dead man, kissing his eyes and his mouth, opening the dead lips with
+her own lips, trying to find in them a breath and a long, long kiss of
+lovers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My husband, picking himself up, gazed at me. He understood, and
+falling at my feet, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! forgive me, my darling, I suspected you, and I killed this girl's
+lover. It was my keeper that deceived me."</p>
+
+<p>But I was watching the strange kisses of that dead man and that living
+woman, and her sobs and her writhings of sorrowing love&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment I understood that I might be unfaithful to my
+husband.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="RELICS_OF_THE_PAST" id="RELICS_OF_THE_PAST"></a>RELICS OF THE PAST</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y dear Colette,&mdash;I do not know whether you remember a verse of M.
+Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed
+in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very
+often reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it
+is:</p>
+
+<p>"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."</p>
+
+<p>I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I have lived,
+and where I hope to die. It is not gay every day, but it is pleasant;
+for there I have souvenirs all around me.</p>
+
+<p>My son Henri is a barrister; he comes to see me twice a year. Jeanne
+is living with her husband at the other end of France, and it is I who
+go to see her each autumn. So here I am, all, all alone, but
+surrounded by familiar objects which incessantly speak to me about my
+own people, the dead, and the living separated from me by distance.</p>
+
+<p>I no longer read much; I am too old for that; but I am constantly
+thinking, or rather dreaming. I do not dream as I used to do long ago.
+You may recall to mind any wild fancies, the adventures our brains
+concocted when we were twenty, and all the horizons of happiness that
+dawned upon us!</p>
+
+<p>Nothing out of all our dreaming has been realized, or rather it is
+quite a different thing that has happened, less charming, less poetic,
+but sufficient for those who know how to accept their lot in this
+world bravely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Do you know why we women are so often unhappy? It is because we are
+taught in our youth to believe too much in happiness! We are never
+brought up with the idea of fighting, of striving, of suffering. And,
+at the first shock, our hearts are broken; we look forward, with blind
+faith, to cascades of fortunate events. What does happen is at best
+but a partial happiness, and thereupon we burst out sobbing.
+Happiness, the real happiness that we dream of, I have come to know
+what that is. It does not consist in the arrival of great bliss, for
+any great bliss that falls to our share is to be found in the infinite
+expectation of a succession of joys to which we never attain.
+Happiness is happy expectation; it is the horizon of hope; it is,
+therefore, endless illusion; and, old as I am, I create illusions for
+myself still, in fact, every day I live; only their object is changed,
+my desires being no longer the same. I have told you that I spend my
+brightest hours in dreaming. What else should I do?</p>
+
+<p>I have two ways of doing this. I am going to tell you what they are;
+they may perhaps prove useful to you.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! the first is very simple; it consists in sitting down before my
+fire in a low armchair made soft for my old bones, and looking back at
+the things that have been put aside.</p>
+
+<p>One life is so short, especially a life entirely spent in the same
+spot:</p>
+
+<p>"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."</p>
+
+<p>The things that bring back the past to our recollection are heaped,
+pressed together; and, we are old, it sometimes seems no more than ten
+days since we were young. Yes; everything slips away from us, as if
+life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> itself were but a single day: morning, evening, and then comes
+night&mdash;a night without a dawn!</p>
+
+<p>When I gaze into the fire, for hours and hours, the past rises up
+before me as though it were but yesterday. I no longer think of my
+present existence; reverie carries me away; once more I pass through
+all the changes of my life.</p>
+
+<p>And I often am possessed by the illusion that I am a young girl, so
+many breaths of bygone days are wafted back to me, so many youthful
+sensations and even impulses, so many throbbings of my young
+heart&mdash;all the passionate ardor of eighteen; and I have clear, as
+fresh realities, visions of forgotten things. Oh! how vividly, above
+all, do the memories of my walks as a young girl come back to me!
+There, in the armchair of mine, before the fire, I saw once more, a
+few nights since, a sunset on Mont Saint-Michel, and immediately
+afterwards I was riding on horseback through the forest of Uville with
+the odors of the damp sand and of the flowers steeped in dew, and the
+evening star sending its burning reflection through the water and
+bathing my face in its rays as I galloped through the copse. And all I
+thought of then, my poetic enthusiasm at the sight of the boundless
+sea, my keen delight at the rustling of the branches as I passed, my
+most trivial impressions, every fragment of thought, desire, or
+feeling, all, all came back to me as if I were there still, as if
+fifty years had not glided by since then, to chill my blood and
+moderate my hopes. But my other way of reviving the long ago is much
+better.</p>
+
+<p>You know, or you do not know, my dear Colette, that we destroy nothing
+in the house. We have upstairs, under the roof, a large room for
+cast-off things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> which we call "the lumber-room." Everything which is
+no longer used is thrown there. I often go up there, and gaze around
+me. Then I find once more a heap of nothings that I had ceased to
+think about, and that recalled a heap of things to my mind. They are
+not those beloved articles of furniture which we have known since our
+childhood and to which are attached recollections of events of joys or
+sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being
+intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a
+physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house,
+the only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones
+that will not die, like the others&mdash;those whose features, whose loving
+eyes, whose lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find
+instead among the medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old
+insignificant objects which have hung on by our side for forty years
+without ever having been noticed by us, and which, when we suddenly
+lay eyes on them again, have somehow the importance, the significance
+of relics of the past. They produce on my mind the effect of those
+people&mdash;whom we have known for a very long time without ever having
+seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden, some evening,
+quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable talk, and
+tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of
+which we had never even suspected the existence.</p>
+
+<p>And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in
+my heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself:
+"See there! I broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;" or else,
+"Ah! there is mamma's little lantern, which she used to carry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> with
+her going to her evening devotions on dark winter nights." There are
+even things in this room which have no story to tell me, which have
+come down from my grandparents, things therefore, whose history and
+adventures are utterly unknown to those who are living to-day, and
+whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen the hands that
+used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These are
+the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my
+mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear
+Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my
+simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and
+you Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal
+echoes of one's own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your
+thoughts in the open. Living alone as I do, I can only speak about
+myself. When you are answering this letter, tell me a little about
+yourself, that I may also be able to put myself in your place, as you
+will be able to put yourself in mine to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>But you will never completely understand M. de Sainte Beuve's verse:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To be born, to live, and to die in one house."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="sig1">A thousand kisses, my old friend,</p>
+
+<p class="sig"><span class="smcap">Adelaide</span>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_PEDDLER" id="THE_PEDDLER"></a>THE PEDDLER</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="54" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ow many trifling occurrences, things which have left only a passing
+impression on our minds, humble dramas of which we have got a mere
+glimpse so that we have to guess at or suspect their real nature, are,
+while we are still young and inexperienced, threads, so to speak,
+guiding us, step by step, towards a knowledge of the painful truth!</p>
+
+<p>Every moment, when I am retracing my steps during the long wandering
+reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I
+saunter at random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little
+incidents of a gay or sinister character which, emerging from the
+shades of the past, flit before my memory as the birds flit through
+the bushes before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This summer, I wandered along a road in Savoy which commands a view of
+the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, and, while my glance floated
+over that mass of water, mirror-like and blue, with a unique blue,
+pale, tinted with glittering beams by the setting sun, I felt my heart
+stirred by that attachment which I have had since my childhood for the
+surface of lakes, for rivers, and for the sea. On the opposite bank of
+the vast liquid plate, so wide that you did not see the ends of it,
+one vanishing in the Rhone, and the other in the Bourget, rose the
+high mountain, jagged like a crest up to the topmast peak of the
+"Cats's Tooth." On either side of the road, vines, trailing from tree
+to tree, choked under their leaves their slender supporting branches,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+and they extended in garlands through the fields, green, yellow, and
+red garlands, festooning from one trunk to the other, and spotted with
+clusters of dark grapes.</p>
+
+<p>The road was deserted, white, and dusty. All of a sudden, a man
+emerged out of the thicket of large trees which shuts in the village
+of Saint-Innocent, and, bending under a load, he came towards me,
+leaning on a stick.</p>
+
+<p>When he had come closer to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one
+of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door,
+selling paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long
+ago arose up in my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection
+simply of an accidental meeting I had one night between Argenteuil and
+Paris when I was twenty-one.</p>
+
+<p>All the happiness of my life, at this period, was derived from
+boating. I had taken a room in an obscure inn at Argenteuil, and,
+every evening, I took the Government clerks' train, that long slow
+train which, in its course, sets down at different stations a crowd of
+men with little parcels, fat and heavy, for they scarcely walk at all,
+so that their trousers are always baggy owing to their constant
+occupation of the office-stool. This train, in which it seemed to me I
+could even sniff the odor of the writing-desk, of official documents
+and boxes, deposited me at Argenteuil. My boat was waiting for me,
+ready to glide over the water. And I rapidly plied my oar so that I
+might get out and dine at Bezons or Chatou or Epinay or Saint-Ouen.
+Then I came back, put up my boat, and made my way back on foot to
+Paris with the moon shining down on me.</p>
+
+<p>Well, one night on the white road I perceived just in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> front of me a
+man walking. Oh! I was constantly meeting those night travelers of the
+Parisian suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went on
+slowly before me with a heavy load on his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>I came right up to him by quickening my pace so much that my footsteps
+rang on the road. He stopped and turned round; then, as I kept
+approaching nearer and nearer, he crossed to the opposite side of the
+road.</p>
+
+<p>As I rapidly passed him, he called out to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Hallo! good evening, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>I responded:</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, mate."</p>
+
+<p>He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going far?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to Paris."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be long getting there; you're going at a good pace. As for
+me, I have too big a load on my shoulders to walk so quickly."</p>
+
+<p>I slackened my pace. Why had this man spoken to me? What was he
+carrying in this big pack? Vague suspicions of crime sprang up in my
+mind, and rendered me curious. The columns of the newspapers every
+morning contain so many accounts of crimes committed in this place,
+the peninsula of Gennevilliers, that some of them must be true. Such
+things are not invented merely to amuse readers&mdash;all this catalogue of
+arrests and varied misdeeds with which the reports of the law courts
+are filled.</p>
+
+<p>However, this man's voice seemed rather timid than bold, and up to the
+present his manner had been more discreet than aggressive.</p>
+
+<p>In my turn I began to question him:</p>
+
+<p>"And you&mdash;are you going far?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not farther than Asnieres."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Asnieres your place of abode?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres."</p>
+
+<p>He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the
+daytime under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle
+of the road. I followed his example. We kept staring at each other
+suspiciously, each of us holding his stick in his hand. When I was
+sufficiently close to him, I felt less distrustful. He evidently was
+disposed to assume the same attitude towards me, for he asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Would you mind going a little more slowly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't care for this road by night. I have goods on my back,
+and two are always better than one. When two men are together, people
+don't attack them."</p>
+
+<p>I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I
+yielded to his wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side,
+this stranger and I, at one o'clock in the morning, along the road
+leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?" I asked my
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this
+evening, as he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods
+to last him three or four days. But he had been so fortunate in
+disposing of them that he found it necessary to get back to his abode
+without delay in order to deliver next day a number of things which
+had been bought on credit.</p>
+
+<p>He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the
+business very well, having a tendency<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> to talk confidentially, and
+that the knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid,
+while gossiping, of other things which he could not easily sell.</p>
+
+<p>He added:</p>
+
+<p>"I have a shop in Asnieres. 'Tis my wife keeps it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! So you're married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, m'sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice
+wife. She'll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night."</p>
+
+<p>He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this
+young girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.</p>
+
+<p>She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a
+street, where she sold all sorts of things&mdash;ribbons, flowers in
+summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other
+gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a
+speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." This name
+was given to her because she often dressed in blue. And she made
+money, as she was very skillful in everything she did. His impression
+was that she was not very well at the present moment; he believed she
+was in the family way, but he was not quite sure. Their business was
+prospering; and he traveled about exhibiting samples to all the small
+traders in the adjoining districts. He had become a sort of traveling
+commission-agent for some of the manufacturers, working at the same
+time for them and for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"And you&mdash;what are you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>I answered him with an air of embarrassment. I explained that I had a
+sailing-boat and two yawls in Argenteuil, that I came for a row every
+evening, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> that, as I was fond of exercise, I sometimes walked back
+to Paris, where I had a profession, which&mdash;I led him to infer&mdash;was a
+lucrative one.</p>
+
+<p>He remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, if I had spondulics like you, I wouldn't amuse myself by
+trudging that way along the roads at night&mdash;'Tisn't safe along here."</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a sidelong glance, and I asked myself whether he might not
+all the same, be a criminal of the sneaking type who did not want to
+run any fruitless risk.</p>
+
+<p>Then he restored my confidence when he murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"A little less quickly, if you please. This pack of mine is heavy."</p>
+
+<p>The sight of a group of houses showed that we had reached Asnieres.</p>
+
+<p>"I am nearly at home," he said. "We don't sleep in the shop; it is
+watched at night by a dog, but a dog who is worth four men. And then
+it costs too much to live in the center of the town. But listen to me,
+monsieur! You have rendered me a precious service, for I don't feel my
+mind at ease when I'm traveling with my pack along the roads. Well,
+now you must come in with me, and drink a glass of mulled wine with my
+wife if she hasn't gone to bed, for she is a sound sleeper, and
+doesn't like to be waked up. Besides, I'm not a bit afraid without my
+pack, and so I'll see you to the gates of the city with a cudgel in my
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>I declined the invitation; he insisted on my coming in; I still held
+back; he pressed me with so much eagerness, with such an air of real
+disappointment, such expressions of deep regret&mdash;for he had the art of
+expressing himself very forcibly&mdash;asking me in the tone of one who
+felt wounded "whether I objected to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> have a drink with a man like
+him," that I finally gave way and followed him up a lonely road
+towards one of those big dilapidated houses which are to be found on
+the outskirts of suburbs.</p>
+
+<p>In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster
+looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands.
+But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go
+in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound
+darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands
+and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some
+gaping cellar.</p>
+
+<p>When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis
+the sixth story."</p>
+
+<p>I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted
+the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack,
+repeating:</p>
+
+<p>"Tis high! 'tis high!"</p>
+
+<p>When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his
+inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he
+made me enter.</p>
+
+<p>It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six
+chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the
+cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here."</p>
+
+<p>He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment,
+and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder
+tone: "Bluette! Bluette!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you
+wake up in God's name?"</p>
+
+<p>He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer
+tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get
+the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me."</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.</p>
+
+<p>What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start,
+for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly,
+almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.</p>
+
+<p>Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this
+woman&mdash;this Bluette&mdash;not been awakened by the loud knocking of her
+husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been
+merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the
+trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to
+do the rest!"</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I
+heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated
+towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must
+make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with
+both hands, I prepared for a desperate struggle.</p>
+
+<p>The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a
+head, a man's head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the
+folding-doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly
+that I had not time to make a single movement by way of defense, the
+individual, the supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare
+feet with his shoes in his hands, a good looking chap, I must
+admit&mdash;half a gentleman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> in fact, made a dash for the outer door, and
+rushed down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>I resumed my seat. The adventure was assuming a humorous aspect. And I
+waited for the husband, who took a long time fetching the wine. At
+last I heard him coming up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps
+made me laugh, with one of those solitary laughs which it is hard to
+restrain.</p>
+
+<p>He entered with two bottles in his hands. Then he asked me:</p>
+
+<p>"Is my wife still asleep? You didn't hear her stirring&mdash;did you?"</p>
+
+<p>I knew instinctively that there was an ear pasted against the other
+side of the partition-door, and I said: "No, not at all."</p>
+
+<p>And now he again called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, and did not even move.</p>
+
+<p>He came back to me, and explained:</p>
+
+<p>"You see, she doesn't like me to come home at night, and take a drop
+with a friend."</p>
+
+<p>"So then you believe she was not asleep?"</p>
+
+<p>He wore an air of dissatisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, at any rate," he said, "let us have a drink together."</p>
+
+<p>And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one
+after the other without more ado.</p>
+
+<p>This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I
+rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a
+sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of
+a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his
+wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage
+without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the
+instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had
+talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going
+to beat her.</p>
+
+<p>He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from
+behind the partition:</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you hear me coming in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Open the door!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, when you're alone. I don't like you to be bringing home fellows
+at night to drink with you."</p>
+
+<p>Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man,
+of whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my
+journey toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that
+wretched abode a scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every
+day, under every form, and among every class.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_AVENGER" id="THE_AVENGER"></a>THE AVENGER</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>hen M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had
+been in love with her for nearly ten years.</p>
+
+<p>M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very
+fond of him, but found him rather a muff. He often used to say: "That
+poor Souris will never set the Seine on fire."</p>
+
+<p>When Souris married Mdlle. Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was surprised and
+somewhat vexed, for he had a slight weakness for her. She was the
+daughter of a neighbor of his, a retired haberdasher with a good bit
+of money. She was pretty, well-mannered, and intelligent. She accepted
+Souris on account of his money.</p>
+
+<p>Then Leuillet cherished hopes of another sort. He began paying
+attentions to his friend's wife. He was a handsome man, not at all
+stupid, and also well off. He was confident that he would succeed; he
+failed. Then he fell really in love with her, and he was the sort of
+lover who is rendered timid, prudent, and embarrassed by intimacy with
+the husband. Mme. Souris fancied that he no longer meant anything
+serious by his attentions to her, and she became simply his friend.
+This state of affairs lasted nine years.</p>
+
+<p>Now, one morning, Leuillet received a startling communication from the
+poor woman. Souris had died suddenly of aneurism of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>He got a terrible shock, for they were of the same age; but the very
+next moment, a sensation of profound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> joy, of infinite relief of
+deliverance, penetrated his body and soul. Mme. Souris was free.</p>
+
+<p>He had the tact, however, to make such a display of grief as the
+occasion required; he waited for the proper time to elapse, and
+attended to all the conventional usages. At the end of fifteen months
+he married the widow.</p>
+
+<p>His conduct was regarded as not only natural but generous. He had
+acted like a good friend and an honest man. In short he was happy,
+quite happy.</p>
+
+<p>They lived on terms of the closest confidence, having from the first
+understood and appreciated each other. One kept nothing secret from
+the other, and they told each other their inmost thoughts. Leuillet
+now loved his wife with a calm trustful affection; he loved her as a
+tender, devoted partner, who is an equal and a confidante. But there
+still lingered in his soul a singular and unaccountable grudge against
+the deceased Souris, who had been the first to possess this woman, who
+had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and who had even
+robbed her of her poetic attributes. The memory of the dead husband
+spoiled the happiness of the living husband; and this posthumous
+jealousy now began to torment Leuillet's heart day and night.</p>
+
+<p>The result was that he was incessantly talking about Souris, asking a
+thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for
+information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he
+pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb,
+recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his
+absurdities, and pointing out his defects.</p>
+
+<p>Every minute he kept calling out to his wife from one end to the other
+of the house:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hallo, Mathilde!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here am I, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Come and let us have a chat."</p>
+
+<p>She always came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be
+the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's
+harmless fad.</p>
+
+<p>"I say! do you remember how Souris wanted, one day, to prove to me
+that small men are always better loved than big men?"</p>
+
+<p>And he launched out into reflections unfavorable to the defunct
+husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he
+happened to be tall.</p>
+
+<p>And Mme. Leuillet let him think that he was quite right; and she
+laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a
+playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, who always ended
+by remarking:</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind! Souris was a muff!"</p>
+
+<p>They were happy, quite happy. And Leuillet never ceased to testify his
+unabated attachment to his wife by all the usual manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>Now, one night when they happened to be both kept awake by the renewal
+of youthful ardor, Leuillet, who held his wife clasped tightly in his
+arms, and had his lips glued to hers, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me this, darling."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Souris&mdash;'tisn't easy to put the question&mdash;was he very&mdash;very amorous?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a warm kiss, as she murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much as you, my duck."</p>
+
+<p>His male vanity was flattered, and he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"He must have been&mdash;rather a flat&mdash;eh?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She did not answer. There was merely a sly little laugh on her face,
+which she pressed close to her husband's neck.</p>
+
+<p>He persisted in his questions:</p>
+
+<p>"Come now! Don't deny that he was a flat&mdash;well, I mean, rather an
+awkward sort of fellow?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, rather awkward."</p>
+
+<p>He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure he used to weary you many a night&mdash;isn't that so?"</p>
+
+<p>This time, she had an access of frankness, and she replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes."</p>
+
+<p>He embraced her once more when she made this acknowledgment, and
+murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"What an ass he was! You were not happy with him?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered:</p>
+
+<p>"No. He was not always jolly."</p>
+
+<p>Leuillet felt quite delighted, making a comparison in his own mind
+between his wife's former situation and her present one.</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent for some time: then, with a fresh outburst of
+merit, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me this!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be quite candid&mdash;quite candid with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to&mdash;to deceive this
+imbecile, Souris?"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shame<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>faced way, and again
+cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that
+she was laughing.</p>
+
+<p>He persisted:</p>
+
+<p>"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this
+blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling,
+you might tell it to me&mdash;only to me!"</p>
+
+<p>He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to
+show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have
+been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this
+avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he
+could have had her then.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection
+of something infinitely comic.</p>
+
+<p>Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might
+have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of
+fun, to be sure!</p>
+
+<p>He exclaimed in a voice broken by convulsions of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! poor Souris! poor Souris! Ah! yes, he had that sort of head&mdash;oh,
+certainly he had!"</p>
+
+<p>And Mme. Leuillet now twisted herself under the sheets, laughing till
+the tears almost came into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And Leuillet repeated: "Come, confess it! confess it! Be candid. You
+must know that it cannot be unpleasant to me to hear such a thing."</p>
+
+<p>Then she stammered, still choking with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband pressed her for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, what? Look here! tell me everything."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was now laughing in a more subdued fashion, and, raising her mouth
+up to Leuillet's ear, which was held towards her in anticipation of
+some pleasant piece of confidence, she whispered&mdash;"Yes, I did deceive
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>He felt a cold shiver down his back, and utterly dumbfounded, he
+gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you&mdash;did&mdash;really&mdash;deceive him?"</p>
+
+<p>She was still under the impression that he thought the thing
+infinitely pleasant, and replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;really&mdash;really."</p>
+
+<p>He was obliged to sit up in bed so great was the shock he received,
+holding his breath, just as overwhelmed as if he had just been told
+that he was a cuckold himself. At first, he was unable to articulate
+properly; then after the lapse of a minute or so, he merely
+ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>She, too, had stopped laughing now, realizing her mistake too late.</p>
+
+<p>Leuillet, at length asked.</p>
+
+<p>"And with whom?"</p>
+
+<p>She kept silent, cudgeling her brain to find some excuse.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated his question.</p>
+
+<p>"With whom?"</p>
+
+<p>At last, she said.</p>
+
+<p>"With a young man."</p>
+
+<p>He turned towards her abruptly, and in a dry tone, said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose it wasn't with some kitchen wench. I ask you who was
+the young man&mdash;do you understand?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She did not answer. He tore away the sheet which she had drawn over
+her head, and pushed her into the middle of the bed, repeating.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know with what young man&mdash;do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, she replied with some difficulty in uttering the words.</p>
+
+<p>"I only wanted to laugh." But he fairly shook with rage: "What? How is
+that? You only wanted to laugh? So then you were making game of me?
+I'm not going to be satisfied with these evasions, let me tell you! I
+ask you what was the young man's name?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply, but lay motionless on her back.</p>
+
+<p>He caught hold of her arm and pressed it tightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear me, I say? I want you to give me an answer when I speak
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>Then, she said, in nervous tones.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you must be going mad! Let me alone!"</p>
+
+<p>He trembled with fury, so exasperated that he scarcely knew what he
+was saying, and, shaking her with all his strength, he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear me? do you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>She wrenched herself out of his grasp with a sudden movement, and with
+the tips of her fingers slapped her husband on the nose. He entirely
+lost his temper, feeling that he had been struck, and angrily pounced
+down on her.</p>
+
+<p>He now held her under him, boxing her ears in a most violent manner,
+and exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"Take that&mdash;and that&mdash;and that&mdash;there you are, you trollop!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got
+up, and went over to the chest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> drawers to get himself a glass of
+sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his
+exertion.</p>
+
+<p>And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling
+that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own
+fault.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie&mdash;listen! I'll explain it
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and
+subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her
+crumpled nightcap.</p>
+
+<p>And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having
+whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a
+husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived
+his predecessor, Souris.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="ALL_OVER" id="ALL_OVER"></a>ALL OVER</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a
+parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of
+his dressing-room, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray.
+Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty
+moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather
+than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable
+something which establishes between two men more difference than
+millions.</p>
+
+<p>He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"</p>
+
+<p>And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence
+awaited him.</p>
+
+<p>On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the
+gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside
+three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the
+finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the
+choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each
+morning before tearing open the envelopes.</p>
+
+<p>It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
+anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did
+they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
+with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that
+wrote them, selecting them, making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> two or three lots, according to
+what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he
+was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him
+a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced
+those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?</p>
+
+<p>This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple
+nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he regarded it
+with disquietude, with a sort of internal shiver.</p>
+
+<p>He thought: "From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and
+yet I can't identify it."</p>
+
+<p>He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between
+two fingers, striving to read through the envelope without making up
+his mind to open it.</p>
+
+<p>Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying
+glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He
+suddenly felt unnerved. "Who is it from? This hand is familiar to me,
+very familiar. I must have often read its prosings, yes, very often.
+But this must have been a long, long time ago. Who the deuce can it be
+from? Pooh! 'tis only from somebody asking for money."</p>
+
+<p>And he tore open the letter. Then he read.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My dear Friend,&mdash;You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for
+it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was
+young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris
+in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old
+husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you
+remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am
+returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
+daughter, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span> beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never
+seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but
+you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an
+event.</p>
+
+<p>"You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been
+told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you
+used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her,
+with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful
+friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you,
+without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you
+must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet. </p></div>
+
+<p class="sig">"Lise de Vance."</p>
+
+<p>Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair,
+with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by
+poignant feelings that made the tears mount up to his eyes!</p>
+
+<p>If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise,
+Lise de Vance, whom he called "Cinder-Flower" on account of the
+strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a
+fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife
+of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the
+provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through
+jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly
+loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to
+pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off
+and sweet and melancholy now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> One evening, she called on him on her
+way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de
+Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was
+springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed
+the warm air&mdash;the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of
+her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the
+moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to
+weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.</p>
+
+<p>She replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me.
+Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I
+have to cry."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion
+charming&mdash;the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation
+overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:</p>
+
+<p>"My little Lise, you are exquisite."</p>
+
+<p>What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and
+all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this
+old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown
+her afterwards to anyone!</p>
+
+<p>Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three
+months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is
+a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his
+heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this
+was so.</p>
+
+<p>He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
+evening!"</p>
+
+<p>And instinctively he turned round towards the glass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> in order to
+inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown
+old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the
+thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of
+astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her
+regret those bygone days so far, far distant!</p>
+
+<p>He turned his attention to the other letters. They were not of
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>The whole day, he kept thinking of this phantom. What was she like
+now? How funny it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years!
+Would he alone recognize her?</p>
+
+<p>He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
+which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to
+give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved
+his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room freshly
+furnished, was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from
+the days of his good-fortune, hanging on the wall in an antique silk
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
+and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended
+both hands towards him.</p>
+
+<p>He seized them, kissed them one after the other with long, long
+kisses, then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and
+who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He could not abstain from murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"It is you, Lise?"</p>
+
+<p>She replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, isn't
+that so? I have had so much sorrow&mdash;so much sorrow. Sorrow has
+consumed my life. Look at me now&mdash;or rather don't look at me! But how
+handsome you have kept&mdash;and young! If I had by chance met you in the
+street, I would have cried, 'Jaquelet!' Now sit down and let us, first
+of all, have a chat. And then I'll show you my daughter, my grown-up
+daughter. You'll see how she resembles me&mdash;or rather how I resemble
+her&mdash;no, it is not quite that: she is just like the 'me' of former
+days&mdash;you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared
+that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now
+it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
+say; he did not know this woman&mdash;it seemed to him that he had never
+seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could
+he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and
+her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of
+this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the
+nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart,
+some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the
+dainty Cinder-Flower. What then had become of her, the former one, the
+one he had loved? that woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray
+eyes, the young one who used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
+profoundly ill at ease.</p>
+
+<p>As they only talked in commonplace phrases, broken and slow, she rose
+up, and pressed the button of the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to call Renee," she said.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; next, a young
+voice exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am, mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>Lormerin remained scared, as if at the sight of an apparition.</p>
+
+<p>He stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-day, Mademoiselle."</p>
+
+<p>Then, turning towards the mother:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it is you!..."</p>
+
+<p>In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise
+who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won
+twenty-five years before. This one was even younger still, fresher,
+more childlike.</p>
+
+<p>He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart
+again, murmuring in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-day, Lison!"</p>
+
+<p>A man-servant announced:</p>
+
+<p>"Dinner is ready, Madame."</p>
+
+<p>And they proceeded towards the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could
+he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange
+dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a
+fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:</p>
+
+<p>"Which is the real one?"</p>
+
+<p>The mother smiled, repeating over and over again:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eye of the young girl that
+he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his
+mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?&mdash;" forgetting this
+white-haired lady who was regarding him with looks of tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>And yet there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost
+his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the
+woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in
+her glance, in her entire being, something which he did not find
+again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love,
+to seize again what had escaped from her to him, what this
+resuscitated one did not possess.</p>
+
+<p>The Baronne said:</p>
+
+<p>"You have lost your old sprightliness, my poor friend."</p>
+
+<p>He murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"There are many other things that I have lost!"</p>
+
+<p>But in his heart touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing
+to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.</p>
+
+<p>The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some
+familiar phrase of her mother which she had borrowed, a certain style
+of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which
+people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot.
+All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his
+passion bleed anew.</p>
+
+<p>He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image
+of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart,
+inflamed his blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a
+young one, the one of former days returned, and he loved her as he had
+loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an
+interval of twenty-five years.</p>
+
+<p>He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to
+think on what he should do.</p>
+
+<p>But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the
+glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and
+admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly,
+gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden
+days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and
+handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light
+nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange
+thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those
+frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.</p>
+
+<p>And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
+lamentable image, murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"All over, Lormerin!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LETTER_FOUND_ON_A_DROWNED_MAN" id="LETTER_FOUND_ON_A_DROWNED_MAN"></a>LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_y.jpg" alt="Y" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ou ask me, madame, whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe
+that a man has never been smitten with love. Well, no, I have never
+loved, never!</p>
+
+<p>What is the cause of this? I really cannot tell. Never have I been
+under the influence of that sort of intoxication of the heart which we
+call love! Never have I lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in
+that state of madness into which the image of a woman casts us. I have
+never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever-heat, lifted up to
+Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being
+who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune,
+more beautiful than any other creature, more important than the whole
+world! I have never wept, I have never suffered, on account of any of
+you. I have not passed my nights thinking of one woman without closing
+my eyes. I have no experience of waking up with the thought and the
+memory of her shedding their illumination on me. I have never known
+the wild desperation of hope when she was about to come, or the divine
+sadness of regret when she parted with me, leaving behind her in the
+room a delicate odor of violet powder and flesh.</p>
+
+<p>I have never been in love.</p>
+
+<p>I, too, have often asked myself why is this. And truly I can scarcely
+tell. Nevertheless, I have found some reasons for it; but they are of
+a metaphysical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> character, and perhaps you will not be able to
+appreciate them.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I sit too much in judgment on women to submit much to their
+fascination. I ask you to forgive me for this remark. I am going to
+explain what I mean. In every creature there is a moral being and a
+physical being. In order to love, it would be necessary for me to find
+a harmony between these two beings which I have never found. One has
+always too great a predominance over the other, sometimes the moral,
+sometimes the physical.</p>
+
+<p>The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to
+love her, is not the same as virile intellect. It is more and it is
+less. A woman must have a mind open, delicate, sensitive, refined,
+impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in
+thought, but she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry,
+and that faculty of assimilation which, in a little while, raises her
+to an equality with him who shared her life. Her greatest quality must
+be tact, that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch is to the
+body. It reveals to her a thousand little things, contours, angles,
+and forms in the intellectual order.</p>
+
+<p>Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to correspond with
+their personal charms. Now the slightest lack of harmony strikes me
+and pains me at the first glance. In friendship, this is not of
+importance. Friendship is a compact in which one fairly divides
+defects and merits. We may judge of friends, whether man or woman,
+take into account the good they possess, neglect the evil that is in
+them, and appreciate their value exactly, while giving ourselves up to
+an inti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>mate sympathy of a deep and fascinating character.</p>
+
+<p>In order to love, one must be blind, surrender oneself absolutely, see
+nothing, reason on nothing, understand nothing. One must adorn the
+weakness as well as the beauty of the beloved object, renounce all
+judgment, all reflection, all perspicacity.</p>
+
+<p>I am incapable of such blindness, and rebel against a seductiveness
+not founded on reason. This is not all. I have such a high and subtle
+idea of harmony, that nothing can ever realize my ideal. But you will
+call me a madman. Listen to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an
+exquisite soul and a charming body, without that body and that soul
+being in perfect accord with one another. I mean that persons who have
+noses made in a certain shape are not to be expected to think in a
+certain fashion. The fat have no right to make use of the same words
+and phrases as the thin. You, who have blue eyes, madame, cannot look
+at life, and judge of things and events as if you had black eyes. The
+shades of your eyes should correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the
+shades of your thought. In perceiving these things I have the scent of
+a bloodhound. Laugh if you like, but it is so.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I had
+foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I
+allowed myself to be beguiled by the mirage of an aurora. Would you
+like me to relate for you this short history?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I met, one evening, a pretty enthusiastic woman who wanted, for the
+purpose of humoring a poetic fancy, to spend a night with me in a boat
+on a river. I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span> have preferred a room and a bed; however, I
+consented to take instead the river and the boat.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a moonlight night
+in order to excite her imagination all the better.</p>
+
+<p>We had dined at a riverside inn, and then we set out in the boat about
+ten o'clock. I thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure; but as
+my companion pleased me I did not bother myself too much about this. I
+sat down on the seat facing her; I seized the oars, and off we
+started.</p>
+
+<p>I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We glided past a
+wooded isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us rapidly
+over the river covered with silvery ripples. The toads uttered their
+shrill, monotonous cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river's
+bank, and the lapping of the water as it flowed on made around us a
+kind of confused murmur almost imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us
+a vague sensation of mysterious fear.</p>
+
+<p>The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams glittering in the
+moonlight penetrated us. It seemed bliss to live and to float thus,
+and to dream and to feel by one's side a young woman sympathetic and
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat intoxicated by
+the pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my proximity
+to a lovely woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and sit beside me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>I obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>She went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Recite some verses for me."</p>
+
+<p>This appeared to be rather too much. I declined; she persisted. She
+certainly wanted to have the utmost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> pleasure, the whole orchestra of
+sentiment, from the moon to the rhymes of poets. In the end, I had to
+yield, and, as if in mockery, I recited for her a charming little poem
+by Louis Bouilbet, of which the following are a few strophes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I hate the poet who with tearful eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Murmurs some name while gazing tow'rds a star,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who sees no magic in the earth or sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unless Lizette or Ninon be not far.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The bard who in all Nature nothing sees<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Divine, unless a petticoat he ties<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amorously to the branches of the trees<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or nightcap to the grass, is scarcely wise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He has not heard the eternal's thunder tone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The voice of Nature in her various moods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who cannot tread the dim ravines alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And of no woman dream 'mid whispering woods."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I expected some reproaches. Nothing of the sort. She murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"How true it is!"</p>
+
+<p>I remained stupefied. Had she understood?</p>
+
+<p>Our boat was gradually drawing nearer to the bank, and got entangled
+under a willow which impeded its progress. I drew my arm around my
+companion's waist, and very gently moved my lips towards her neck. But
+she repulsed me with an abrupt, angry movement:</p>
+
+<p>"Have done, pray! You are rude!"</p>
+
+<p>I tried to draw her towards me. She resisted, caught hold of the tree,
+and was near flinging us both into the water. I deemed it the prudent
+course to cease my importunities.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She said:</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather have you capsized. I feel so happy. I want to
+dream&mdash;that is so nice." Then, in a slightly malicious tone, she
+added:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you, then, already forgotten the verses you recited for me just
+now?"</p>
+
+<p>She was right. I became silent.</p>
+
+<p>She went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Come! row!"</p>
+
+<p>And I plied the oars once more.</p>
+
+<p>I began to find the night long and to see the absurdity of my conduct.</p>
+
+<p>My companion said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you make me a promise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"To remain quiet, well-behaved, and discreet, if I permit you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What? Say what you mean!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here is what I mean! I want to lie down on my back at the bottom of
+the boat with you by my side. But I forbid you to touch me, to embrace
+me&mdash;in short to&mdash;to caress me."</p>
+
+<p>I promised. She warned me:</p>
+
+<p>"If you move, I'll capsize the boat."</p>
+
+<p>And then we lay down side by side, our eyes turned towards the sky,
+while the boat glided slowly through the water. We were rocked by the
+gentle movements of the shallop. The light sounds of the night came to
+us more distinctly in the bottom of the boat, sometimes causing us to
+start. And I felt springing up within me a strange, poignant emotion,
+an infinite tenderness, something like an irresistible impulse to open
+my arms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> in order to embrace, to open my heart in order to love, to
+give myself, to give my thoughts, my body, my life, my entire being to
+someone.</p>
+
+<p>My companion murmured, like one in a dream:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we? Where are we going? It seems to me that I am quitting
+the earth. How sweet it is! Ah! if you loved me&mdash;a little!!!"</p>
+
+<p>My heart began to throb. I had no answer to give. It seemed to me that
+I loved her. I had no longer any violent desire. I felt happy there by
+her side, and that was enough for me.</p>
+
+<p>And thus we remained for a long, long time without stirring. We caught
+each other's hands; some delightful force rendered us motionless, an
+unknown force stronger than ourselves, an alliance, chaste, intimate,
+absolute of our persons lying there side by side which belonged to
+each other without touching. What was this? How do I know. Love,
+perhaps?</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, the dawn appeared. It was three o'clock in the
+morning. Slowly, a great brightness spread over the sky. The boat
+knocked against something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny
+islet.</p>
+
+<p>But I remained ravished, in a state of ecstasy. In front of us
+stretched the shining firmament, red, rosy, violet, spotted with fiery
+clouds resembling golden vapors. The river was glowing with purple,
+and three houses on one side of it seemed to be burning.</p>
+
+<p>I bent towards my companion. I was going to say: "Oh! look!" But I
+held my tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer see anything except
+her. She, too, was rosy, with the rosy flesh tints with which must
+have mingled a little the hue of the sky. Her tresses were rosy; her
+eyes were rosy; her teeth were rosy; here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> dress, her laces, her
+smile, all were rosy. And in truth I believed, so overpowering was the
+illusion, that the aurora was there before me.</p>
+
+<p>She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to me; and I moved
+towards her, trembling, delirious, feeling indeed that I was going to
+kiss Heaven, to kiss happiness, to kiss a dream which had become a
+woman, to kiss the ideal which had descended into human flesh.</p>
+
+<p>She said to me: "You have a caterpillar in your hair." And suddenly I
+felt myself becoming as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.</p>
+
+<p>That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that
+since that day it would be impossible for me to love. And yet&mdash;who can
+tell?</p>
+
+<p>[The young man upon whom this letter was found was yesterday taken out
+of the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging bargeman, who had
+searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the deceased,
+brought this paper to the author.]</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MOTHER_AND_SON" id="MOTHER_AND_SON"></a>MOTHER AND SON!!!</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_w.jpg" alt="W" width="65" height="50" /></div>
+<p>e were chatting in the smoking-room after a dinner at which only men
+were present. We talked about unexpected legacies, strange
+inheritances. Then M. le Brument, who was sometimes called "the
+illustrious master" and at other times the "illustrious advocate,"
+came and stood with his back to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I have," he said, "just now to search for an heir who disappeared
+under peculiarly terrible circumstances. It is one of those simple and
+ferocious dramas of ordinary life, a thing which possibly happens
+every day, and which is nevertheless one of the most dreadful things I
+know. Here are the facts:</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly six months ago I got a message to come to the side of a dying
+woman. She said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"'Monsieur, I want to entrust to you the most delicate, the most
+difficult, and the most wearisome mission that can be conceived. Be
+good enough to take cognizance of my will, which is there on the
+table. A sum of five thousand francs is left to you as a fee if you do
+not succeed, and of a hundred thousand francs if you do succeed. I
+want to have my son found after my death.'</p>
+
+<p>"She asked me to assist her to sit up in the bed, in order that she
+might be able to speak with greater ease, for her voice, broken and
+gasping, was gurgling in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw that I was in the house of a very rich person.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> The luxurious
+apartment, with a certain simplicity in its luxury, was upholstered
+with materials solid as the walls, and their soft surface imparted a
+caressing sensation, so that every word uttered seemed to penetrate
+their silent depths and to disappear and die there.</p>
+
+<p>"The dying woman went on:</p>
+
+<p>"'You are the first to hear my horrible story. I will try to have
+strength enough to go on to the end of it. You must know everything so
+that you, whom I know to be a kind-hearted man as well as a man of the
+world, should have a sincere desire to aid me with all your power.</p>
+
+<p>"'Listen to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by
+my family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterwards, I
+married a man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance,
+through obedience, through indifference, as young girls do marry.</p>
+
+<p>"'I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.</p>
+
+<p>"'He whom I had loved had got married, in his turn. When he saw that I
+was a widow, he was crushed by horrible grief at knowing he was not
+free. He came to see me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly before my eyes
+that it was enough to break my heart. He at first came to see me as a
+friend. Perhaps I ought not to have seen him. What would you have? I
+was alone, so sad, so solitary, so hopeless! And I loved him still.
+What sufferings we women have sometimes to endure!</p>
+
+<p>"'I had only him in the world, my parents also being dead. He came
+frequently; he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him
+come so often,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> seeing that he was married. But I had not enough of
+will-power to prevent him from coming.</p>
+
+<p>"'How am I to tell you what next happened?... He became my lover. How
+did this come about? Can I explain it? Can anyone explain such things?
+Do you think it could be otherwise when two human beings are drawn
+towards each other by the irresistible force of a passion by which
+each of them is possessed? Do you believe, monsieur, that it is always
+in our power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle for ever, and
+refuse to yield to the prayers, the supplications, the tears, the
+frenzied words, the appeals on bended knees, the transports of
+passion, with which we are pursued by the man we adore, whom we want
+to gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom we desire to crown with
+every possible happiness, and whom, if we are to be guided by a
+worldly code of honor, we must drive to despair. What strength would
+it not require? What a renunciation of happiness? what self-denial?
+and even what virtuous selfishness?</p>
+
+<p>"'In short, monsieur, I was his mistress; and I was happy. I
+became&mdash;and this was my greatest weakness and my greatest piece of
+cowardice&mdash;I became his wife's friend.</p>
+
+<p>"'We brought up my son together; we made a man of him, a thorough man,
+intelligent, full of sense and resolution, of large and generous
+ideas. The boy reached the age of seventeen.</p>
+
+<p>"'He, the young man, was fond of my&mdash;my lover, almost as fond of him
+as I was myself, for he had been equally cherished and cared for by
+both of us. He used to call him his "dear friend," and respected him
+immensely, having never received from him anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> but wise counsels,
+and a good example of rectitude, honor, and probity. He looked upon
+him as an old, loyal and devoted comrade of his mother, as a sort of
+moral father, tutor, protector&mdash;how am I to describe it?</p>
+
+<p>"'Perhaps the reason why he never asked any questions was that he had
+been accustomed from his earliest years to see this man in the house,
+by his side, and by my side, always concerned about us both.</p>
+
+<p>"'One evening the three of us were to dine together (these were my
+principal festive occasions), and I waited for the two of them, asking
+myself which of them would be the first to arrive. The door opened; it
+was my old friend. I went towards him, with outstretched arms; and he
+drew his lips towards mine in a long, delicious kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"'All of a sudden, a sound, a rustling which was barely audible, that
+mysterious sensation which indicates the presence of another person,
+made us start and turn round with a quick movement. Jean, my son,
+stood there, livid, staring at us.</p>
+
+<p>"'There was a moment of atrocious confusion. I drew back, holding out
+my hand towards my son as if in supplication; but I could see him no
+longer. He had gone.</p>
+
+<p>"'We remained facing each other&mdash;my lover and I&mdash;crushed, unable to
+utter a word. I sank down on an armchair, and I felt a desire, a
+vague, powerful desire to fly, to go out into the night, and to
+disappear for ever. Then, convulsive sobs rose up in my throat, and I
+wept, shaken with spasms, with my heart torn asunder, all my nerves
+writhing with the horrible sensation of an irremediable misfortune,
+and with that dreadful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> sense of shame which, in such moments as this,
+falls on a mother's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"'He looked at me in a scared fashion, not venturing to approach me or
+to speak to me or to touch me, for fear of the boy's return. At last
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>"'"I am going to follow him&mdash;to talk to him&mdash;to explain matters to
+him. In short, I must see him and let him know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'And he hurried away.</p>
+
+<p>"'I waited&mdash;I waited in a distracted frame of mind, trembling at the
+least sound, convulsed with terror, and filled with some unutterably
+strange and intolerable emotion by every slight crackling of the fire
+in the grate.</p>
+
+<p>"'I waited for an hour, for two hours, feeling my heart swell with a
+dread I had never before experienced, such an anguish that I would not
+wish the greatest of criminals to have ten minutes of such misery.
+Where was my son? What was he doing?</p>
+
+<p>"'About midnight, a messenger brought me a note from my lover. I still
+know its contents by heart:</p>
+
+<p>"'"Has your son returned? I did not find him. I am down here. I do not
+want to go up at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>"'I wrote in pencil on the same slip of paper:</p>
+
+<p>"'"Jean has not returned. You must go and find him."</p>
+
+<p>"'And I remained all night in the armchair, waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I felt as if I were going mad. I longed to have to run wildly about,
+to roll myself on the ground. And yet I did not even stir, but kept
+waiting hour after hour. What was going to happen? I tried to imagine,
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> guess. But I could form no conception, in spite of my efforts, in
+spite of the tortures of my soul!</p>
+
+<p>"'And now my apprehension was lest they might meet. What would they do
+in that case? What would my son do? My mind was lacerated by fearful
+doubts, by terrible suppositions.</p>
+
+<p>"'You understand what I mean, do you not, monsieur?</p>
+
+<p>"'My chambermaid, who knew nothing, who understood nothing, was coming
+in every moment, believing, naturally, that I had lost my reason. I
+sent her away with a word or a movement of the hand. She went for the
+doctor, who found me in the throes of a nervous fit.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was put to bed. I got an attack of brain-fever.</p>
+
+<p>"'When I regained consciousness, after a long illness, I saw beside my
+bed my&mdash;lover&mdash;alone.</p>
+
+<p>"'I exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"'"My son? Where is my son?"</p>
+
+<p>"'He replied:</p>
+
+<p>"'"No, no, I assure you every effort has been made by me to find him,
+but I have failed!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Then, becoming suddenly exasperated and even indignant&mdash;for women
+are subject to such outbursts of unaccountable and unreasoning
+anger&mdash;I said:</p>
+
+<p>"'"I forbid you to come near me or to see me again unless you find
+him. Go away!"</p>
+
+<p>"'He did go away.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have never seen one or the other of them since, monsieur, and thus
+I have lived for the last twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>"'Can you imagine what all this meant to me? Can you understand this
+monstrous punishment, this slow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> perpetual laceration of a mother's
+heart, this abominable, endless waiting? Endless, did I say? No: it is
+about to end, for I am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing
+either of them&mdash;either one or the other!</p>
+
+<p>"'He&mdash;the man I loved&mdash;has written to me every day for the last twenty
+years; and I&mdash;I have never consented to see him, even for one second;
+for I had a strange feeling that, if he came back here, it would be at
+that very moment my son would again make his appearance! Ah! my son!
+my son! Is he dead? Is he living? Where is he hiding? Over there,
+perhaps, at the other side of the ocean, in some country so far away
+that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he ever think of me?
+Ah! if he only knew! How cruel children are! Did he understand to what
+frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of despair, into
+what tortures, he cast me while I was still in the prime of life,
+leaving me to suffer like this even to this moment, when I am going to
+die&mdash;me, his mother, who loved him with all the violence of a mother's
+love! Oh! isn't it cruel, cruel?</p>
+
+<p>"'You will tell him all this, monsieur&mdash;will you not? You will repeat
+for him my last words:</p>
+
+<p>"'My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh towards poor women!
+Life is already brutal and savage enough in its dealings with them. My
+dear son, think of what the existence of your poor mother has been
+ever since the day when you left her. My dear child, forgive her, and
+love her, now that she is dead, for she has had to endure the most
+frightful penance ever inflicted on a woman.'</p>
+
+<p>"She gasped for breath, shuddering, as if she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> addressed the last
+words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"Then she added:</p>
+
+<p>"'You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw&mdash;the
+other.'</p>
+
+<p>"Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice she said:</p>
+
+<p>"'Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are
+not with me.'"</p>
+
+<p>Maitre Le Brument added:</p>
+
+<p>"And I left the house, messieurs, crying like a fool, so vehemently,
+indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think that, every day, heaps of dramas like this are being
+enacted all around us!</p>
+
+<p>"I have not found the son&mdash;that son&mdash;well, say what you like about
+him, but I call him that criminal son!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_SPASM" id="THE_SPASM"></a>THE SPASM</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he hotel-guests slowly entered the dining-room, and sat down in their
+places. The waiters began to attend on them in a leisurely fashion so
+as to enable those who were late to arrive, and so as to avoid
+bringing back the dishes; and the old bathers, the <i>habitu&eacute;s</i>, those
+whose season was advancing, gazed with interest towards the door,
+whenever it opened, with a desire to see new faces appearing.</p>
+
+<p>This is the principal distraction of health-resorts. People look
+forward to the dinner-hour in order to inspect each day's new
+arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think.
+A vague longing springs up in the mind, a longing for agreeable
+meetings, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures. In
+this life of elbowings, not only those with whom we have come into
+daily contact, but strangers, assume an extreme importance. Curiosity
+is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is
+the order of the day.</p>
+
+<p>We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see
+other people with different eyes when we view them through the medium
+of the acquaintanceship that is brought about at health-resorts. We
+discover in men suddenly, after an hour's chat, in the evening after
+dinner, under the trees in the park where the generous spring bubbles
+up, a high intelligence and astonishing merits, and a month
+afterwards,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> we have completely forgotten these new friends, so
+fascinating when we first met them.</p>
+
+<p>There also are formed lasting and serious ties more quickly than
+anywhere else. People see each other every day; they become acquainted
+very quickly; and with the affection thus originated is mingled
+something of the sweetness and self-abandonment of long-standing
+intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories of
+those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first
+conversations through which we have been able to unveil a soul, of
+those first glances which interrogate and respond to the questions and
+secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of
+that first cordial confidence, the memory of that delightful sensation
+of opening our hearts to those who are willing to open theirs to us.</p>
+
+<p>And the melancholy of health-resorts, the monotony of days that are
+all alike, help from hour to hour in this rapid development of
+affection.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the
+appearance of strange faces.</p>
+
+<p>Only two appeared, but very remarkable-looking, a man and a
+woman&mdash;father and daughter. They immediately produced the same effect
+on my mind as some of Edgar Poe's characters; and yet there was about
+them a charm, the charm associated with misfortune. I looked upon them
+as the victims of fatality. The man was very tall and thin, rather
+stooping, with hair perfectly white, too white for his comparatively
+youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing, and in his person
+that austerity peculiar to Protestants.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> The daughter, who was
+probably twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was
+also very thin, very pale, and she had the air of one who was worn out
+with utter lassitude. We meet people like this from time to time who
+seem too weak for the tasks and the needs of daily life, too weak to
+move about, to walk, to do all that we do every day. This young girl
+was very pretty, with the diaphanous beauty of a phantom; and she ate
+with extreme slowness, as if she were almost incapable of moving her
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been she assuredly who had come to take the waters.</p>
+
+<p>They found themselves facing me at the opposite side of the table; and
+I at once noticed that the father had a very singular nervous spasm.</p>
+
+<p>Every time he wanted to reach an object, his hand made a hook-like
+movement, a sort of irregular zigzig, before it succeeded in touching
+what it was in search of; and, after a little while, this action was
+so wearisome to me that I turned aside my head in order not to see it.</p>
+
+<p>I noticed, too, that the young girl, during meals, wore a glove on her
+left hand.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner, I went for a stroll in the park of the thermal
+establishment. This led towards the little Auvergnese station of
+Chatel Guyot, hidden in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, of
+that mountain from which flow so many boiling springs, arising from
+the deep bed of extinct volcanoes. Over there, above us, the domes,
+which had once been craters, raised their mutilated heads on the
+summit of the long chain. For Chatel Guyot is situated at the spot
+where the region of domes begins.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beyond it, stretches out the region of peaks, and further on again the
+region of precipices.</p>
+
+<p>The "Puy de Dome" is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is
+the loftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of these
+mountain-heights.</p>
+
+<p>This evening it was very warm. I walked up and down a shady path, on
+the side of the mountain overlooking the park, listening to the
+opening strains of the Casino band.</p>
+
+<p>And I saw the father and the daughter advancing slowly in my
+direction. I saluted them, as we are accustomed to salute our
+hotel-companions at health resorts; and the man, coming to a sudden
+halt, said to me,</p>
+
+<p>"Could you not, monsieur, point out to us a short walk, nice and easy,
+if that is possible? and excuse my intrusion on you."</p>
+
+<p>I offered to show them the way towards the valley through which the
+little river flowed, a deep valley forming a gorge between two tall
+craggy, wooded slopes.</p>
+
+<p>They gladly accepted my offer.</p>
+
+<p>And we talked naturally about the virtues of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he said, "My daughter has a strange malady, the seat of which is
+unknown. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous disorders. At one
+time, the doctors think she has an attack of heart disease, at another
+time, they imagine it is some affection of the liver, and at another
+time they declare it to be a disease of the spine. To-day, her
+condition is attributed to the stomach, which is the great caldron and
+regulator of the body, that Protean source of diseases with a thousand
+forms and a thousand susceptibilities to attack.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span> This is why we have
+come here. For my part, I am rather inclined to think it is the
+nerves. In any case it is very sad."</p>
+
+<p>Immediately the remembrance of the violent spasmodic movement of his
+hand came back to my mind, and I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"But is this not the result of heredity? Are not your own nerves
+somewhat affected?"</p>
+
+<p>He replied calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"Mine? Oh! no&mdash;my nerves have always been very steady."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly, after a pause, he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! You were alluding to the spasm in my hand every time I want to
+reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I
+had. Just imagine! this daughter of mine was actually buried alive?"</p>
+
+<p>I could only give utterance to the word "Ah!" so great were my
+astonishment and emotion.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He continued:</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the story. It is simple. Juliette had been subject for some
+time to serious attacks of the heart. We believed that she had disease
+of that organ, and we were prepared for the worst.</p>
+
+<p>"One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had
+fallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life
+was extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid
+her with my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the
+cemetery, where she was deposited in the family vault. It is situated
+in the very heart of Lorraine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces,
+rings, all presents which she had got from me, and with her first
+ball-dress on.</p>
+
+<p>"You may easily imagine the state of mind in which I was when I
+returned home. She was the only one I had, for my wife has been dead
+for many years. I found my way to my own apartment in a half
+distracted condition, utterly exhausted, and I sank into my
+easy-chair, without the capacity to think or the strength to move. I
+was nothing better now than a suffering, vibrating machine, a human
+being who had, as it were, been flayed alive; my soul was like a
+living wound.</p>
+
+<p>"My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in her
+coffin, and preparing her for her last sleep, entered the room
+noiselessly, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>"'Does monsieur want anything?'</p>
+
+<p>"I merely shook my head, by way of answering 'No.'</p>
+
+<p>"He urged, 'Monsieur is wrong. He will bring some illness on himself.
+Would monsieur like me to put him to bed?'</p>
+
+<p>"I answered, 'No! let me alone!'</p>
+
+<p>"And he left the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I know not how many hours slipped away. Oh! what a night, what a
+night! It was cold. My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the
+wind, the winter wind, an icy wind, a hurricane accompanied by frost
+and snow, kept blowing against the window with a sinister and regular
+noise.</p>
+
+<p>"How many hours slipped away? There I was without sleeping, powerless,
+crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body limp,
+inanimate, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> my mind torpid with despair. Suddenly, the great bell
+of the entrance gate, the great bell of the vestibule, rang out.</p>
+
+<p>"I got such a shock that my chair cracked under me. The solemn,
+ponderous sound vibrated through the empty chateau as if through a
+vault. I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was
+just two in the morning. Who could be coming at such an hour!</p>
+
+<p>"And abruptly the bell again rang twice. The servants, without doubt,
+were afraid to get up. I took a wax-candle and descended the stairs. I
+was on the point of asking, 'Who is there?'</p>
+
+<p>"Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly opened the huge
+door. My heart was throbbing wildly; I was frightened; I hurriedly
+drew back the door, and in the darkness I distinguished a white
+figure, standing erect, something that resembled an apparition.</p>
+
+<p>"I recoiled, petrified with horror, faltering:</p>
+
+<p>"'Who&mdash;who&mdash;who are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"A voice replied:</p>
+
+<p>"'It is I, father.'</p>
+
+<p>"It was my daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backwards before this
+advancing specter. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand, as
+if to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have
+noticed&mdash;that gesture of which since then I have never got rid.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do not be afraid, papa; I was not dead. Somebody tried to steal my
+rings, and cut one of my fingers, the blood began to flow, and this
+reanimated me.'</p>
+
+<p>"And, in fact, I could see that her hand was covered with blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and with a rattling in my
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, when I had somewhat collected my thoughts, though I was still
+so much dismayed that I scarcely realized the gruesome good-fortune
+that had fallen to my lot, I made her go up to my room, and sit down
+in my easy-chair; then I ran excitedly for Prosper to get him to light
+up the fire again and to get her some wine and summon the rest of the
+servants to her assistance.</p>
+
+<p>"The man entered, stared at my daughter, opened his mouth with a gasp
+of alarm and stupefaction, and then fell back insensible.</p>
+
+<p>"It was he who had opened the vault, and who had mutilated, and then
+abandoned, my daughter, for he could not efface the traces of the
+theft. He had not even taken the trouble to put back the coffin into
+its place, feeling sure, besides, that he would not be suspected by
+me, as I completely trusted him.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Monsieur, that we are very unhappy people."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He stopped.</p>
+
+<p>The night had fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournful
+vale, and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by
+the side of those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back
+from the tomb and this father with his uncanny spasm.</p>
+
+<p>I found it impossible to make any comment on this dreadful story. I
+only murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"What a horrible thing!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, after a minute's silence, I added:</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we go back. I think it is getting cold."</p>
+
+<p>And we made our way back to the hotel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_DUEL" id="A_DUEL"></a>A DUEL</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he war was over. The Germans occupied France. The country was panting
+like a wrestler lying under the knee of his successful opponent.</p>
+
+<p>The first trains from Paris, after the city's long agony of famine and
+despair, were making their way to the new frontiers, slowly passing
+through the country districts and the villages. The passengers gazed
+through the windows at the ravaged fields and burnt hamlets. Prussian
+soldiers, in their black helmets with brass spikes, were smoking their
+pipes on horseback or sitting on chairs in front of the houses which
+were still left standing. Others were working or talking just as if
+they were members of the families. As you passed through the different
+towns you saw entire regiments drilling in the squares, and, in spite
+of the rumble of the carriage-wheels, you could every moment hear the
+hoarse words of command.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis, who during the entire siege, had served as one of the
+National Guard in Paris, was going to join his wife and daughter, whom
+he had prudently sent away to Switzerland before the invasion.</p>
+
+<p>Famine and hardship had not diminished his big paunch so
+characteristic of the rich, peace-loving merchant. He had gone through
+the terrible events of the past year with sorrowful resignation and
+bitter complaints at the savagery of men. Now that he was journeying
+to the frontier at the close of the war, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> saw the Prussians for the
+first time, although he had done his duty at the ramparts, and
+staunchly mounted guard on cold nights.</p>
+
+<p>He stared with mingled fear and anger at those bearded, armed men,
+installed all over French soil as if in their own homes, and he felt
+in his soul a kind of fever of impotent patriotism even while he
+yielded to that other instinct of discretion and self-preservation
+which never leaves us. In the same compartment, two Englishmen, who
+had come to the country as sight-seers, were gazing around with looks
+of stolid curiosity. They were both also stout, and kept chattering in
+their own language, sometimes referring to their guide-book, and
+reading in loud tones the names of the places indicated.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, the train stopped at a little village station, and a
+Prussian officer jumped up with a great clatter of his saber on the
+double footboard of the railway-carriage. He was tall, wore a
+tight-fitting uniform, and his face had a very shaggy aspect. His red
+hair seemed to be on fire, and his long moustache, of a paler color,
+was stuck out on both sides of his face, which it seemed to cut in
+two.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen at once began staring at him with smiles of
+newly-awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a
+newspaper. He sat crouched in a corner, like a thief in the presence
+of a gendarme.</p>
+
+<p>The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting, and looking
+out for the exact scene of different battles, and, all of a sudden, as
+one of them stretched out his arm towards the horizon to indicate a
+village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long
+legs and lolling backwards:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village, and took more than a
+hundred prisoners."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman, quite interested, immediately asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! and what is the name of this village?"</p>
+
+<p>The Prussian replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Pharsbourg."</p>
+
+<p>He added: "We caught these French blackguards by the ears."</p>
+
+<p>And he glanced towards M. Dubuis, laughing into his moustache in an
+insulting fashion.</p>
+
+<p>The train rolled on, always passing through hamlets occupied by the
+victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the
+edges of fields, standing in front of gates, or chatting outside
+<i>caf&eacute;s</i>. They covered the soil like African locusts.</p>
+
+<p>The officer said, with a wave of his hand:</p>
+
+<p>"If I were in command, I'd take Paris, burn everything, kill
+everybody. No more France!"</p>
+
+<p>The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes."</p>
+
+<p>He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"In twenty years, all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is
+more than a match for all of them."</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen, getting uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their
+faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their
+long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still,
+lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France,
+insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been
+recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of
+the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> the useless
+artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to build a city of
+iron with the captured cannon. And suddenly he pushed his boots
+against the thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned his eyes round, reddening
+to the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen seemed to have assumed an air of complete indifference,
+as if they had found themselves all at once shut up in their own
+island, far from the din of the world.</p>
+
+<p>The officer took out his pipe, and looking fixedly at the Frenchman,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't any tobacco&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis replied:</p>
+
+<p>"No, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>The German said:</p>
+
+<p>"You might go and buy some for me when the train stops next."</p>
+
+<p>And he began laughing afresh, as he added:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you have the price of a drink."</p>
+
+<p>The train whistled, and slackened its pace. They had reached the
+station which had been burnt down; and here there was a regular stop.</p>
+
+<p>The German opened the carriage-door, and, catching M. Dubuis by the
+arm, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Go and do what I told you&mdash;quick, quick!"</p>
+
+<p>A Prussian detachment occupied the station. Other soldiers were
+looking on from behind wooden gratings. The engine was already getting
+up steam in order to start off again. Then M. Dubuis hurriedly jumped
+on the platform, and, in spite of the warnings of the station master,
+dashed into the adjoining compartment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He was alone! He tore open his waistcoat, so rapidly did his heart
+beat, and, panting for breath, he wiped the perspiration off his
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>The train drew up at another station. And suddenly the officer
+appeared at the carriage-door, and jumped in, followed close behind by
+the two Englishmen, who were impelled by curiosity. The German sat
+facing the Frenchman, and, laughing still, said:</p>
+
+<p>"You did not want to do what I asked you?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis replied:</p>
+
+<p>"No, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>The train had just left the station.</p>
+
+<p>The officer said:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll cut off your moustache to fill my pipe with."</p>
+
+<p>And he put out his hand towards the Frenchman's face.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen kept staring in the same impassive fashion with fixed
+glances.</p>
+
+<p>Already the German had caught hold of the moustache and was tugging at
+it, when M. Dubuis, with a back stroke of his hand, threw back the
+officer's arm, and, seizing him by the collar, flung him down on the
+seat. Then, excited to a pitch of fury, with his temples swollen and
+his eyes glaring, he kept throttling the officer with one hand, while
+with the other clenched, he began to strike him violent blows in the
+face. The Prussian struggled, tried to draw his saber, and to get a
+grip, while lying back, of his adversary. But M. Dubuis crushed him
+with the enormous weight of his stomach, and kept hitting him without
+taking breath or knowing where his blows fell. Blood flowed down the
+face of the German, who, choking and with a rattling in his throat,
+spat forth his broken teeth, and vainly strove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> to shake off this
+infuriated man who was killing him.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen had got on their feet and came closer in order to see
+better. They remained standing, full of mirth and curiosity, ready to
+bet for or against each of the combatants.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly M. Dubuis, exhausted by his violent efforts, went and
+resumed his seat without uttering a word.</p>
+
+<p>The Prussian did not attack him, for the savage assault had scared and
+terrified the officer. When he was able to breathe freely, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you give me satisfaction with pistols, I will kill you."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Whenever you like. I'm quite ready."</p>
+
+<p>The German said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the town of Strasbourg. I'll get two officers to be my
+seconds, and there will be time before the train leaves the station."</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis, who was puffing as much as the engine, said to the
+Englishmen:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be my seconds?" They both answered together:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes."</p>
+
+<p>And the train stopped.</p>
+
+<p>In a minute, the Prussian had found two comrades who carried pistols,
+and they made their way towards the ramparts.</p>
+
+<p>The Englishmen were continually looking at their watches, shuffling
+their feet, and hurrying on with the preparations, uneasy lest they
+should be too late for the train.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis had never fired a pistol in his life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They made him stand twenty paces away from his enemy. He was asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ready?"</p>
+
+<p>While he was answering: "Yes, monsieur," he noticed that one of the
+Englishmen had opened his umbrella in order to keep off the rays of
+the sun.</p>
+
+<p>A voice gave the word of command:</p>
+
+<p>"Fire!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Dubuis fired at random without minding what he was doing, and he
+was amazed to see the Prussian staggering in front of him, lifting up
+his arms, and immediately afterwards, falling straight on his face. He
+had killed the officer.</p>
+
+<p>One of the Englishmen ejaculated: "Ah!" quivering with delight,
+satisfied curiosity, and joyous impatience. The other, who still kept
+the watch in his hand, seized M. Dubuis's arm, and hurried him in
+double-quick time towards the station, his fellow-countryman counting
+their steps, with his arms pressed close to his sides&mdash;"One! two! one!
+two!"</p>
+
+<p>And all three marching abreast they rapidly made their way to the
+station like three grotesque figures in a comic newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>The train was on the point of starting. They sprang into their
+carriage. Then, the Englishmen, taking off their traveling-caps, waved
+them three times over their heads, exclaiming:</p>
+
+<p>"Hip! hip! hip! hurrah!"</p>
+
+<p>Then gravely, one after the other, they stretched out the right hand
+to M. Dubuis, and they went back and sat in their own corner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_LOVE_OF_LONG_AGO" id="THE_LOVE_OF_LONG_AGO"></a>THE LOVE OF LONG AGO</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded height. Tall trees
+surrounded it with dark greenery; and the vast park extended its
+vistas here over a deep forest and there over an open plain. Some
+little distance from the front of the mansion stood a huge stone basin
+in which marble nymphs were bathing. Other basins arranged in order
+succeeded each other down as far as the foot of the slope, and a
+hidden fountain sent cascades dancing from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>From the manor-house which preserved the grace of a superannuated
+coquette down to the grottos encrusted with shell-work, where
+slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique
+demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed
+to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of
+faded gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our
+grandmothers.</p>
+
+<p>In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with
+shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in
+hoop-petticoats, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman who
+seemed dead as soon as she ceased to move was almost lying down in a
+large easy-chair, while her thin, mummy-like hands hung down, one at
+each side of her.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were gazing languidly towards the distant horizon as if they
+sought to follow through the park visions of her youth. Through the
+open window<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> every now and then came a breath of air laden with the
+scent of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks
+flutter around her wrinkled forehead and old memories, through her
+brain.</p>
+
+<p>Beside her on a tapestried stool, a young girl with long, fair hair
+hanging in plaits over her neck, was embroidering an altar-cloth.
+There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see
+that, while her agile fingers worked, her brain was busy with
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>But the old lady suddenly turned round her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Berthe," she said, "read something out of the newspapers for me, so
+that I may still know sometimes what is happening in the world."</p>
+
+<p>The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; am I to pass it
+by?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no accounts of love affairs? Is
+gallantry, then, dead in France, that they no longer talk about
+abductions or adventures as they did formerly?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is one," she said. "It is entitled: 'A Love-Drama!'"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. "Read that for me," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol-throwing. A wife, in
+order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face
+and eyes. She had left the Assize Court acquitted, declared to be
+innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"This is horrible&mdash;why, it is perfectly horrible! See whether you can
+find anything else to read for me, darling."</p>
+
+<p>Berthe again made a search; and further down in the reports of
+criminal cases at which her attention was still directed. She read:</p>
+
+<p>"'Gloomy Drama.&mdash;A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to
+yield to the embraces of a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her
+lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The
+unhappy man is maimed for life. The Jury, consisting of men of moral
+character, took the part of the murderess&mdash;regarding her as the victim
+of illicit love, and honorably acquitted her.'"</p>
+
+<p>This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a
+trembling voice, she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you are mad, then, nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
+you love, the only allurement in life. Man has added to this
+gallantry, the only distraction of our dull hours, and here are you
+mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud
+into a flagon of Spanish wine."</p>
+
+<p>Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"But grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
+and her husband deceived her."</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother gave a start.</p>
+
+<p>"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
+to-day?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Berthe replied:</p>
+
+<p>"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
+gallantry, gave a sudden leap.</p>
+
+<p>"It is love that is sacred," she said, "Listen, child, to an old woman
+who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long
+experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common.
+We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to
+constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society
+is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld
+those links, we always seek for metals of the same kind. When we
+marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine
+fortunes, unite similar races, and aim at the common interest, which
+is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the
+world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one
+lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is
+law, and love is an instinct, which impels us sometimes along a
+straight and sometimes along a crooked path. The world has made laws
+to combat our instincts&mdash;it was necessary to make them; but our
+instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too
+much, because they come from God, while the laws only come from men.
+If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,
+darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to
+take it just as it is."</p>
+
+<p>Berthe opened her eyes widely in astonishment. She murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once."</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother raised her trembling hands towards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> Heaven, as if
+again to invoke the defunct God of gallantries. She exclaimed
+indignantly:</p>
+
+<p>"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
+Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
+attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every
+corner of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion.
+People have written verses telling you that people have died of love.
+In my time verses were written to teach men to love every woman. And
+we! when we liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when
+a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid
+of the last lover&mdash;unless we kept both of them."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman smiled with a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery
+twinkled in her gray eye, the sprightly, skeptical roguery of those
+people who did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the
+others, and who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not
+made.</p>
+
+<p>The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:</p>
+
+<p>"So then women have no honor?"</p>
+
+<p>The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of
+Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean-Jaques's glowing
+philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even
+boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies
+in France, were to live without a lover, she would have the entire
+court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only
+to enter a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will
+love you alone all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case.
+I tell you that marriage is a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> necessary in order that Society
+should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you
+understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
+And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as
+something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a
+dress."</p>
+
+<p>The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"</p>
+
+<p>And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to
+bestow on her a great passion, one eternal passion alone, in
+accordance with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother,
+kissing her on the forehead, quite penetrated still by that charming,
+healthy logic by which the philosophers of gallantry sprinkled salt
+with the life of the eighteenth century, murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such follies as this,
+you will be very unhappy."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="AN_UNCOMFORTABLE_BED" id="AN_UNCOMFORTABLE_BED"></a>AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_o.jpg" alt="O" width="50" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ne autumn I went to stay for the hunting-season with some friends in
+a chateau in Picardy.</p>
+
+<p>My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do
+not care to know any other sort of people.</p>
+
+<p>When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once
+aroused distrust in my breast. We had some capital shooting. They
+embraced me, they cajoled me, as if they expected to have great fun at
+my expense.</p>
+
+<p>I said to myself:</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, old ferret! They have something in preparation for you."</p>
+
+<p>During the dinner, the mirth was excessive, far too great, in fact. I
+thought: "Here are people who take a double share of amusement, and
+apparently without reason. They must be looking out in their own minds
+for some good bit of fun. Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke.
+Attention!"</p>
+
+<p>During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion.
+I smelled a practical joke in the air, as a dog smells game. But what
+was it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word or a meaning or
+a gesture escape me. Everyone seemed to me an object of suspicion, and
+I even looked distrustfully at the faces of the servants.</p>
+
+<p>The hour rang for going to bed, and the whole household came to escort
+me to my room. Why? They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> called to me: "Good night." I entered the
+apartment, shut the door, and remained standing, without moving a
+single step, holding the wax candle in my hand.</p>
+
+<p>I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they
+were spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture,
+the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify
+suspicion. I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no
+doubt they were looking through the key-hole.</p>
+
+<p>An idea came into my head: "My candle may suddenly go out, and leave
+me in darkness."</p>
+
+<p>Then I went across to the mantelpiece, and lighted all the wax candles
+that were on it. After that, I cast another glance around me without
+discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining
+the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article one after the other.
+Still nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden
+shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the
+curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and I placed a chair in front of
+them, so as to have nothing to fear from without.</p>
+
+<p>Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture
+to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming
+to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as
+I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they
+had been preparing for me, have been laughing enormously at my terror.
+So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly
+suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be
+secure. All the same, there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> danger. I was going perhaps to
+receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I
+stretched myself out, to find myself sinking under the floor with my
+mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which
+I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly
+not! certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution
+which I consider one of extreme efficacy: I caught hold of the side of
+the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it towards me. It came
+away, followed by the sheet and the rest of the bed-clothes. I dragged
+all these objects into the very middle of the room, facing the
+entrance-door. I made my bed over again as best I could at some
+distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner which had filled
+me with such anxiety. Then, I extinguished all the candles, and,
+groping my way, I slipped under the bed-clothes.</p>
+
+<p>For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest
+sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden,
+I was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right
+on top of my own body, and, at the same time, I received on my face,
+on my neck, and on my chest, a burning liquid which made me utter a
+howl of pain. And a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with
+plates and dishes had fallen down, penetrated my ears.</p>
+
+<p>I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and
+preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what
+was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers.
+Then with all my strength I launched out a blow over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> this face. But I
+immediately received a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight
+out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my night shirt into the
+corridor, the door of which I found open.</p>
+
+<p>O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
+into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed,
+the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had
+tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on
+his stomach, spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast over my face.</p>
+
+<p>The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep
+in the middle of the room had only brought about the interlude I had
+been striving to avoid.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! how they all laughed that day!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_WARNING_NOTE" id="A_WARNING_NOTE"></a>A WARNING NOTE</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_i.jpg" alt="I" width="25" height="50" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be
+profitable to many readers, I make it my business to communicate it to
+them:</p>
+
+<p class="sig2">"Paris, November 15th, 1886.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur,&mdash;You often treat either in the shape of short stories or
+chronicles, of subjects which have relation to what I may describe as
+'current morals.' I am going to submit to you some reflections which
+ought, it seems to me, to furnish you with the materials for one of
+your tales.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not married; I am a bachelor, and, as it seems to me, a rather
+simple man. But I fancy that many men, the greater part of men, are
+simple in the way that I am. As I am always, or nearly always, a plain
+dealer, I am not well able to see through the natural cunning of my
+neighbors, and I go straight ahead, with my eyes open, without
+sufficiently looking out for what is behind things and behind people's
+external behavior.</p>
+
+<p>"We are nearly all accustomed, as a rule, to take appearances for
+realities, and to look on people as what they pretend to be; and very
+few possess that scent which enables certain men to divine the real
+and hidden nature of others. From this peculiar and conventional
+method of regarding life come the result that we pass, like moles,
+through the midst of events; and that we never believe in what is, but
+in what seems to be, that we declare a thing to be improbable as soon
+as we are shown the fact behind the veil, and that everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> which
+displeases our idealistic morality is classed by us an exception,
+without taking into account that these exceptions all brought together
+constitute nearly the total number of cases. There further results
+from it that credulous good people like me are deceived by everybody
+and especially by women, who have a talent in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>"I have started far afield in order to come to the particular fact
+which interests me. I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many
+others, I imagined (do you understand?) that I had chanced on an
+exception, on an unhappy little woman who was deceiving her husband
+for the first time. I had paid attentions to her, or rather I had
+looked on myself as having paid attention to her for a long time, as
+having overcome her virtue by dint of kindness and love, and as having
+triumphed by the sheer force of perseverance. In fact, I had made use
+of a thousand precautions, a thousand devices, and a thousand subtle
+dallyings in order to succeed in getting the better of her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now here is what happened last week: Her husband being absent for
+some days, she suggested that we should both dine together, and that I
+should attend on myself so as to avoid the presence of a man-servant.
+She had a fixed idea which had haunted her for the last four or five
+months: She wanted to get tipsy, but to get tipsy altogether without
+being afraid of consequences, without having to go back home, speak to
+her chambermaid, and walk before witnesses. She had often obtained
+what she called 'a gay agitation' without going farther, and she had
+found it delightful. So then she promised herself that she would get
+tipsy once, only once, but thoroughly so. She pretended at her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> own
+house that she was going to spend twenty-four hours with some friends
+near Paris, and she reached my abode just about dinner-hour.</p>
+
+<p>"A woman naturally ought not to get fuddled except when she has had
+too much champagne. She drinks a big glass of it fasting, and before
+the oysters arrive, she begins to ramble in her talk.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a cold dinner prepared on a table behind me. It was enough for
+me to stretch out my arms to take the dishes or the plates, and I
+attended on myself as best I could while I listened to her chattering.</p>
+
+<p>"She kept swallowing glass after glass, haunted by her fixed idea. She
+began by making me the recipient of meaningless and interminable
+confidences with regard to her sensations as a young girl. She went on
+and on, her eyes rather wandering, brilliant, her tongue untied, and
+her light ideas rolling themselves out endlessly like the blue
+telegraph-paper which is moved on without stopping by the bobbin and
+which keeps extending its length to the click of the electric
+apparatus which covers it with unknown words.</p>
+
+<p>"From time to time she asked me:</p>
+
+<p>"'Am I tipsy?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, not yet.'</p>
+
+<p>"And she went on drinking.</p>
+
+<p>"She was so in a little while, not so tipsy as to lose her senses, but
+tipsy enough to tell the truth, as it seemed to me.</p>
+
+<p>"To her confidences as to her emotions while a young girl succeeded
+more intimate confidences as to her relations with her husband. She
+made them to me without restraint till she wearied me with them, under
+this pretext, which she repeated a hundred times: 'I can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> surely tell
+everything to you. To whom could I tell everything if it were not to
+you?' So I was made acquainted with all the habits, all the defects,
+all the fads and the most secret fancies of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"And by way of claiming my approval she asked: 'Isn't he a flat? Do
+you think he has taken a feather out of me? eh? So, the first time I
+saw you, I said to myself: "Let me see! I like him, and I'll take him
+for my lover." It was then you began mashing me.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must have presented an odd face to her eyes at that moment, for she
+could see it, tipsy though she was; and with great outbursts of
+laughter, she exclaimed: 'Ah! you big simpleton, you did go about it
+cautiously; but, when men pay attention to us, you dear blockhead, you
+see we like it, and then they must make quick work of it, and not keep
+us waiting. A man must be a ninny not to understand, by a mere glance
+at us, that we mean "Yes." Ah! I believe I was waiting for you, you
+stupid! I did not know what to do in order to make you see that I was
+in a hurry. Oh! yes, flowers, verses, compliments, more verses, and
+nothing else at all! I was very near letting you go, my fine fellow,
+you were so long in making up your mind. And only to think that half
+the men in the world are like you, while the other half, ha! ha! ha!'</p>
+
+<p>"This laugh of hers sent a cold shiver down my back. I stammered: 'The
+other half&mdash;what about the other half?'</p>
+
+<p>"She still went on drinking, her eyes steeped in the fumes of
+sparkling wine, her mind impelled by the imperious necessity for
+telling the truth which sometimes takes possession of drunkards.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She replied: 'Ah! the other half makes quick work of it&mdash;too quick;
+but, all the same, they are right. There are days when we don't hit it
+off with them; but there are days, too, when it all goes right, in
+spite of everything.... My dear, if you only knew how funny it is&mdash;the
+way the two kinds of men act! You see, the timid ones, such as you,
+you never could imagine what sort the others are and what they do,
+immediately, as soon as they find themselves alone with us. They are
+regular dare-devils! They get many a slap in the face from us, no
+doubt of that, but what does that matter? They know we're the sort
+that kiss and don't tell! They know us well, they do!'</p>
+
+<p>"I stared at her with the eyes of an Inquisitor, and with a mad desire
+to make her speak, to learn everything from her. How often had I put
+this question to myself: 'How do the other men behave towards the
+women who belong to us?' I was fully conscious of the fact that, from
+the way I saw two men talking to the same woman publicly in a
+drawing-room, these two men, if they found themselves, one after the
+other, all alone with her, would conduct themselves quite differently,
+although they were both equally well acquainted with her. We can guess
+at the first glance of the eye that certain beings, naturally endowed
+with the power of seduction, or only more lively, more daring than we
+are, reach after an hour's chat with a woman who pleases them, to a
+degree of intimacy to which we would not attain in a year. Well, do
+these men, these seducers, these bold adventurers, take, when the
+occasion presents itself to them, liberties with their hands and lips
+which to us, the timid ones, would appear odious out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>rages, but which
+women perhaps look on merely as pardonable effrontery, as indecent
+homages to their irresistible grace!</p>
+
+<p>"So I asked her: 'There are women, though, who think these men very
+improper?'</p>
+
+<p>"She threw herself back on her chair in order to laugh more at her
+ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which
+ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha!
+ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at
+once, all, you understand, and many other things, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"I felt myself horrified as if she had just revealed to me a monstrous
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>"'And you permit this, you women?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, we don't permit it; we slap them in the face, but, for all that,
+they amuse us! And then with them one is always afraid, one is never
+easy. You must keep watching them the whole time; it is like fighting
+a duel. You have to keep staring into their eyes to see what they are
+thinking of or where they are putting their hands. They are
+blackguards, if you like, but they love us better than you do.'</p>
+
+<p>"A singular and unexpected sensation stole over me. Although a
+bachelor, and determined to remain a bachelor, I suddenly felt in my
+breast the spirit of a husband in the face of this impudent
+confidence. I felt myself the friend, the ally, the brother of all
+these confiding men who are, if not robbed, at least defrauded by all
+the rufflers of woman's waists.</p>
+
+<p>"It is this strange emotion, monsieur, that I am obeying at this
+moment, in writing to you, and in beg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>ging of you to address a warning
+note to the great army of easy-going husbands.</p>
+
+<p>"However, I had still some lingering doubts. This woman was drunk and
+must be lying.</p>
+
+<p>"I went on to inquire: 'How is it that you never relate these
+adventures to anyone, you women?'</p>
+
+<p>"She gazed at me with profound pity, and with such an air of sincerity
+that, for the moment, I thought she had been soberized by
+astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"'We&mdash;But, my dear fellow, you are very foolish. Why do we never talk
+to you about these things? Ha! ha! ha! Does your valet tell you about
+his tips, his odd sous? Well, this is our little tip. The husband
+ought not to complain when we don't go farther. But how dull you are!
+To talk of these things would be to give the alarm to all ninnies! Ah!
+how dull you are!... And then what harm does it do as long as we don't
+yield?'</p>
+
+<p>"I felt myself in a great state of great confusion as I put this
+question to her:</p>
+
+<p>"'So then you have often been embraced by men?'</p>
+
+<p>"She answered, with an air of sovereign contempt for the man who could
+have any doubt on the subject:</p>
+
+<p>"'Faith!&mdash;Why, every woman has been often embraced.... Try it on with
+any of them, no matter whom, in order to see for yourself, you great
+goose! Look here! embrace Mme. de X! She is quite young, and quite
+virtuous. Embrace, my friend&mdash;embrace, and touch, you shall see. Ha!
+ha! ha!'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"All of a sudden she flung her glass straight at the chandelier. The
+champagne fell down in a shower,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> extinguished three wax-candles,
+stained the hangings, and deluged the table, while the broken glass
+was scattered about the dining-room. Then, she made an effort to seize
+the bottle to do the same with it, but I prevented her. After that,
+she burst out crying in a very loud tone&mdash;the nervous fit had come on,
+as I had anticipated....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Some days later, I had almost forgotten this avowal of a tipsy woman
+when I chanced to find myself at an evening party with this Mme. de
+X&mdash;&mdash; whom my mistress had advised me to embrace. As I lived in the
+same direction as she did, I offered to drive her to her own door, for
+she was alone this evening. She accepted my offer.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as we were in the carriage, I said to myself: 'Come! I must
+try it on!' But I had not the courage. I did not know how to make a
+start, how to begin the attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Then suddenly, the desperate courage of cowards came to my aid. I
+said to her: 'How pretty you were, this evening.'</p>
+
+<p>"She replied with a laugh: 'So then, this evening was an exception,
+since you only remarked it for the first time.'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know what rejoinder to make. Certainly my gallantry was not
+making progress. After a little reflection, however, I managed to say:</p>
+
+<p>"'No, but I never dared to tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"She was astonished:</p>
+
+<p>"'Why?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Because it is&mdash;it is a little difficult.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Difficult to tell a woman that she's pretty? Why,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> where did you
+come from? You should always tell us so, even when you only half think
+it ... because it always gives us pleasure to hear."...</p>
+
+<p>"I felt myself suddenly animated by a fantastic audacity, and,
+catching her round the waist, I raised my lips towards her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless I seemed to be rather nervous about it, and not to
+appear so terrible to her. I must also have arranged and executed my
+movement very badly, for she managed to turn her head aside so as to
+avoid contact with my face, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh no&mdash;this is rather too much&mdash;too much.... You are too quick! Take
+care of my hair. You cannot embrace a woman who has her hair dressed
+like mine!'...</p>
+
+<p>"I resumed my former position in the carriage, disconcerted, unnerved
+by this repulse. But the carriage drew up before her gate; and she, as
+she stepped out of it, held out her hand to me, saying in her most
+gracious tones:</p>
+
+<p>"'Thanks, dear monsieur, for having seen me home ... and don't forget
+my advice!'</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her three days later. She had forgotten everything.</p>
+
+<p>"And I, monsieur, I am incessantly thinking of the other sort of
+men&mdash;the sort of men to whom a lady's hair is no obstacle, and who
+know how to seize every opportunity."...</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_HORRIBLE" id="THE_HORRIBLE"></a>THE HORRIBLE</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width="55" height="50" /></div>
+<p>he shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained
+in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated or astride on
+garden-chairs, were smoking in front of the door, forming a circle
+round a table laden with cups and wineglasses.</p>
+
+<p>Their cigars shone like eyes in the darkness which, minute by minute,
+was growing thicker. They had been talking about a frightful accident
+which had occurred the night before&mdash;two men and three women drowned
+before the eyes of the guests in the river opposite.</p>
+
+<p>General de G&mdash;&mdash; remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.</p>
+
+<p>"The horrible, that well-known word, means much more than the
+terrible. A frightful accident like this moves, upsets, scares; it
+does not horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something
+more is needed than the excitation of the soul, something more than
+the spectacle of the dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense
+of mystery or a sensation of abnormal terror beyond the limits of
+nature. A man who dies, even in the most dramatic conditions, does not
+excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible, blood is not
+horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on! here are two personal examples, which have shown me what is
+the meaning of horror:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating towards
+Pont-Audemer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting
+of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand men in disorder,
+disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to re-form at Havre.</p>
+
+<p>"The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
+eaten anything since the day before. They were flying rapidly, the
+Prussians not being far off.</p>
+
+<p>"All the Norman country, livid, dotted with the shadows of the trees
+surrounding the farms, extended under a black sky, heavy and sinister.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight save the confused
+sound, soft and undefined, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,
+mingled with the vague clink of pottingers or sabers. The men, bent,
+round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged
+themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed
+stride.</p>
+
+<p>"The skin of their hands stuck to the steel of their muskets'
+butt-ends, for it was freezing dreadfully that night. I frequently saw
+a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefooted, so
+much did his foot-gear bruise him; and with every step he left a
+little track of blood. Then, after some time, he sat down in a field
+for a few minutes' rest, and he never got up again. Every man who sat
+down was a dead man.</p>
+
+<p>"Should we have left behind us those poor exhausted soldiers, who
+fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had
+somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? Now, scarcely had they ceased
+to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their
+veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> nailed them to
+the ground, closed their eyes, and in one second collapsed this
+overworked human mechanism. And they gradually sank down, their heads
+falling towards their knees, without, however, quite tumbling over,
+for their loins and their limbs lost their capacity for moving, and
+became as hard as wood, impossible to bend or to set upright.</p>
+
+<p>"And the rest of us, more robust, kept still straggling on, chilled to
+the marrow of our bones, advancing by dint of forced movement through
+that night, through that snow, through that cold and deadly country,
+crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the
+abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of death, of
+nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,
+old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.</p>
+
+<p>"They were looking out for an officer, believing that they had caught
+a spy. The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the
+stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice
+exclaimed: 'He must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling
+from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by
+leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and
+bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to speak! I was at that time in command of a battalion; but
+they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;
+they would have shot myself.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the last
+three days. He has been asking information from everyone about the
+artillery.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I took it on myself to question this person.</p>
+
+<p>"'What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the
+army?'</p>
+
+<p>"He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,
+indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such
+an agitated air in my presence that I had no longer any real doubt
+that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept staring at
+me from under his eyes with humble, stupid, and crafty air.</p>
+
+<p>The men all round us exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"'To the wall! to the wall!'</p>
+
+<p>"I said to the gendarmes:</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you answer for the prisoner?'</p>
+
+<p>"I had not ceased speaking when a terrible push threw me on my back,
+and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown
+down, struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a
+tree. He fell in the snow, nearly dead already.</p>
+
+<p>"And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, re-loaded
+their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They
+fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of
+the corpse, and kept firing on at him, as people at a funeral keep
+sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.</p>
+
+<p>"But suddenly a cry arose of: 'The Prussians! the Prussians!'</p>
+
+<p>"And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this
+panic-stricken army in full flight.</p>
+
+<p>"The panic, generated by these shots fired at this vagabond, had
+filled his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that
+they were themselves the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> originators of the scare, rushed away and
+disappeared in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"I remained alone in front of the corpse with the two gendarmes whom
+their duty had compelled to stay with me.</p>
+
+<p>"They lifted up the riddled piece of flesh, bruised and bleeding.</p>
+
+<p>"'He must be examined,' said I to them.</p>
+
+<p>"And I handed them a box of vestas which I had in my pocket. One of
+the soldiers had another box. I was standing between the two.</p>
+
+<p>"The gendarme, who was feeling the body, called out:</p>
+
+<p>"'Clothed in a blue blouse, a trousers, and a pair of shoes.'</p>
+
+<p>"The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man went on, as he
+turned out his pockets:</p>
+
+<p>"'A horn knife, check handkerchief, a snuff-box, a bit of packthread,
+a piece of bread.'</p>
+
+<p>"The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after
+having handled the corpse for a long time, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'That is all.'</p>
+
+<p>"I said:</p>
+
+<p>"'Strip him. We shall perhaps find something near the skin.'</p>
+
+<p>"And, in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this
+task, I stood between them to give them light. I saw them, by the
+rapid and speedily extinguished flash of the match, take off the
+garments one by one, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh
+still warm, though lifeless.</p>
+
+<p>"And suddenly one of them exclaimed:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Good God, General, it is a woman!'</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain
+that moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the
+snow before this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>"The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my
+opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory
+to adopt.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:</p>
+
+<p>"'Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom
+she had not heard from.'</p>
+
+<p>"And the other chimed in:</p>
+
+<p>"'Perhaps indeed that is so.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to
+cry. And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, in that icy cold
+night, the midst of that gloomy pain, at the sight of this mystery, at
+the sight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word
+'Horror.'</p>
+
+<p>"Now I had the same sensation last year while interrogating one of the
+survivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter.</p>
+
+<p>"You know the details of this atrocious drama. It is possible,
+however, that you are unacquainted with them.</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel traveled through the desert into the Soudan, and passed
+through the immense territory of the Touaregs, who are, in that great
+ocean of sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the
+Soudan to Algeria, a kind of pirates resembling those who ravaged the
+seas in former days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of
+Chambaa, of Ouargla.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, one day, they pitched their camp in the middle of the desert,
+and the Arabs declared that, as the spring was a little farther away,
+they would go with all their camels to look for water.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one man warned the Colonel that he had been betrayed: Flatters
+did not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers,
+the doctors, and nearly all his officers.</p>
+
+<p>"They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels captured.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who had
+remained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis and
+sharpshooters, and they commenced the retreat, leaving behind the
+baggage and the provisions for want of camels to carry them.</p>
+
+<p>"Then they started on their journey through this solitude without
+shade and without limits, under the devouring sun which burned them
+from morning till night.</p>
+
+<p>"One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a
+tribute. They were poisoned. Nearly all the French died, and, among
+them, the last officer.</p>
+
+<p>"There now only remained a few spahis with their quartermaster,
+Pobequin, and some native sharpshooters of the Chambaa tribe. They had
+still two camels left. They disappeared one night along with two
+Arabs.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, the survivors understood that they were going to eat each other
+up, and, as soon as they discovered the flight of the two men with the
+two beasts, those who remained separated, and proceeded to march, one
+by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> one, through the soft sand, under the glare of a scorching sun, at
+a distance of more than a gunshot from each other.</p>
+
+<p>"So they went on all day, and, when they reached a spring, each of
+them came to drink at it in turn as soon as each solitary marcher had
+moved forward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they
+continued marching the whole day, raising, everywhere they passed, in
+that level burnt-up expanse, those little columns of dust which, at a
+distance, indicate those who are trudging through the desert.</p>
+
+<p>"But, one morning, one of the travelers made a sudden turn, and drew
+nearer to his neighbor. And they all stopped to look.</p>
+
+<p>"The man toward whom the famished soldier drew near did not fly, but
+lay flat on the ground, and took aim at the one who was coming on.
+When he believed he was within gunshot, he fired. The other was not
+hit, and he continued then to advance, and cocking his gun in turn,
+killed his comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"Then from the entire horizon, the others rushed to seek their share.
+And he who had killed the fallen man, cutting the corpse into pieces,
+distributed it.</p>
+
+<p>"And they once more placed themselves at fixed distances, these
+irreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which would bring
+them together.</p>
+
+<p>"For two days, they lived on this human flesh which they divided
+amongst each other. Then, the famine came back, and he who had killed
+the first man began killing afresh. And again, like a butcher, he cut
+up the corpse, and offered it to his comrades, keeping only his own
+portion of it.</p>
+
+<p>"And so this retreat of cannibals continued.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The last Frenchman, Pobequin, was massacred at the side of a well,
+the very night before the supplies arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you understand now what I mean by the Horrible?"</p>
+
+<p>This was the story told us a few nights ago by General de G&mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_NEW_YEARS_GIFT" id="A_NEW_YEARS_GIFT"></a>A NEW YEAR'S GIFT</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_j.jpg" alt="J" width="33" height="50" /></div>
+<p>acques de Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might
+go, and then he sat down at a table to write his letters.</p>
+
+<p>He thus finished every year by writing and dreaming. He made for
+himself a sort of review of things that had happened since last New
+Year's Day, things that were now all over and dead; and, in proportion
+as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a
+few lines, a cordial "Good morning" on the 1st of January.</p>
+
+<p>So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman's photograph,
+gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside
+a sheet of note-paper, he began:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Irene.&mdash;You must have by this time the little souvenir which
+I sent you. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and
+down the room.</p>
+
+<p>For the last six months he had a mistress, not a mistress like the
+others, a woman with whom one engages in a passing intrigue, of the
+theatrical world or the "demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and
+won. He was no longer a young man, although he was still comparatively
+young for a man, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and
+practical spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew
+up every year the balance sheet of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> friendships that were ended or
+freshly contracted, of circumstances and persons that had entered into
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the
+precision of a merchant making a calculation, what was the state of
+his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it
+would be in the future.</p>
+
+<p>He found there a great and deep affection, made up of tenderness,
+gratitude, and the thousand subtle ties which give birth to long and
+powerful attachments.</p>
+
+<p>A ring of the bell made him start. He hesitated. Would he open? But he
+said to himself that it was his duty to open on this New Year's night,
+to open to the Unknown who knocks while passing, no matter whom it may
+be.</p>
+
+<p>So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, removed the
+bolts, turned the key, drew the door back, and saw his mistress
+standing pale as a corpse, leaning against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>He stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>She replied,</p>
+
+<p>"Are you alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Without servants?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not going out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she
+was in the drawing-room, she sank into the sofa, and, covering her
+face with her hands, began to weep dreadfully.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He knelt down at her feet, seized hold of her hands to remove them
+from her eyes, so that he might look at them, and exclaim,</p>
+
+<p>"Irene, Irene, what is the matter with you? I implore of you to tell
+me what is the matter with you?"</p>
+
+<p>Then, in the midst of her sobs she murmured,</p>
+
+<p>"I can no longer live like this."</p>
+
+<p>He did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Live like this? What do you mean?"...</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can no longer live like this.... I have endured so much.... He
+struck me this afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Who, your husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!"</p>
+
+<p>He was astonished, having never suspected that her husband could be
+brutal. He was a man of the world, of the better class, a clubman, a
+lover of horses, a theater goer, and an expert swordsman; he was
+known, talked about, appreciated everywhere, having very courteous
+manners, a very mediocre intellect, an absence of education and of the
+real culture needed in order to think like all well-bred people, and
+finally a respect for all conventional prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to devote himself to his wife, as a man ought to do in the
+case of wealthy and well-bred people. He displayed enough of anxiety
+about her wishes, her health, her dresses, and, beyond that, left her
+perfectly free.</p>
+
+<p>Randal, having become Irene's friend, had a right to the affectionate
+hand-clasp which every husband endowed with good manners owes to his
+wife's intimate acquaintances. Then, when Jacques, after having been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+for some time the friend, became the lover, his relations with the
+husband were more cordial, as is fitting.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques had never dreamed that there were storms in this household,
+and he was scared at this unexpected revelation.</p>
+
+<p>He asked,</p>
+
+<p>"How did it happen? tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon she related a long history, the entire history of her life
+since the day of her marriage, the first discussion arising out of a
+mere nothing, then accentuating itself with all the estrangement which
+grows up each day between two opposite types of character.</p>
+
+<p>Then came quarrels, a complete separation, not apparent, but real;
+next, her husband showed himself aggressive, suspicious, violent. Now,
+he was jealous, jealous of Jacques, and this day even, after a scene,
+he had struck her.</p>
+
+<p>She added with decision, "I will not go back to him. Do with me what
+you like."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques sat down opposite to her, their knees touching each other. He
+caught hold of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear love, you are going to commit a gross, an irreparable folly.
+If you want to quit your husband, put wrongs on one side, so that your
+situation as a woman of the world may be saved."</p>
+
+<p>She asked, as she cast at him a restless glance:</p>
+
+<p>"Then, what do you advise me?"</p>
+
+<p>"To go back home and to put up with your life there till the day when
+you can obtain either a separation or a divorce, with the honors of
+war."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not this thing which you advise me to do a little cowardly?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No; it is wise and reasonable. You have a high position, a reputation
+to safeguard, friends to preserve, and relations to deal with. You
+must not lose all these through a mere caprice."</p>
+
+<p>She rose up and said with violence,</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no! I cannot have any more of it! It is at an end! it is at an
+end!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, placing her two hands on her lover's shoulders, and looking at
+him straight in the face, she asked,</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Really and truly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then keep me."</p>
+
+<p>He exclaimed,</p>
+
+<p>"Keep you? In my own house? Here? Why you are mad. It would mean
+losing you for ever; losing you beyond hope of recall! You are mad!"</p>
+
+<p>She replied slowly and seriously, like a woman who feels the weight of
+her words,</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not
+play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either
+lose me or take me."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Irene, in that case, obtain your divorce, and I will marry
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you will marry me in&mdash;two years at the soonest. Yours is a
+patient love."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here! Reflect! If you remain here, he'll come to-morrow to take
+you away, and seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has right
+and law on his side."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not ask you to keep me in your own house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> Jacques, but to take
+me anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have
+made a mistake. Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned round and went towards the door so quickly that he was only
+able to catch hold of her when she was outside the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, Irene."</p>
+
+<p>She struggled and did not want to listen to him any longer, her eyes
+full of tears, and with these words only on her lips,</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!"</p>
+
+<p>He made her sit down by force, and falling once more on his knees at
+her feet, he now brought forward a number of arguments and counsels to
+make her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He
+omitted nothing which he deemed it necessary to say to convince her,
+finding even in his very affection for her motives of persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>As she remained silent and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to
+listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.</p>
+
+<p>When he had finished speaking, she only replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that
+I may rise up."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Irene."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you let me go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Irene ... is your resolution irrevocable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of
+yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes ... let me go!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away
+to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>She rose up in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:</p>
+
+<p>"No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion."</p>
+
+<p>"Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to
+say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is
+at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey."</p>
+
+<p>She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked,
+in a very calm voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Explain, then."</p>
+
+<p>"How is that? What do you wish me to explain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything&mdash;everything that you have thought about before coming to
+this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you
+are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to
+share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not natural to change one's opinion so quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or
+devotion. On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said this to
+myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case:
+'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets
+her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far
+as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question
+of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive
+and yielding disposition.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value,
+possesses in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into
+account the conditions under which it generally takes place.</p>
+
+<p>"Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no
+attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart
+is free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him,
+when a man who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that
+they pledge themselves towards each other by this mutual and free
+agreement much more than by the 'Yes' uttered in the presence of the
+Mayor's sash.</p>
+
+<p>"I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be
+more intimate, more real, more healthy, than if all the sacraments had
+consecrated it.</p>
+
+<p>"This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it,
+because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her
+honor, her life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers,
+all catastrophies, because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid
+act, because she is prepared, determined to brave everything&mdash;her
+husband who might kill her, and society which may cast her out. This
+is why she is respectable in her conjugal infidelity, this is why her
+lover, in taking her, must also have foreseen everything, and
+preferred her to everything whatever may happen. I have nothing more
+to say. I spoke in the beginning like a man of sense whose duty it was
+to warn you; and now there is left in me only one man&mdash;the man who
+loves you. Say, then, what am I to do!"</p>
+
+<p>Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips; she said to him in a low
+tone:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is not true, darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does
+not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you
+would do. I wished for a New Year's gift&mdash;the gift of your
+heart&mdash;another gift besides the necklace you have sent me. You have
+given it to me. Thanks! Thanks!... God be thanked for the happiness
+you have given me!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BESIDE_A_DEAD_MAN" id="BESIDE_A_DEAD_MAN"></a>BESIDE A DEAD MAN</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_h.jpg" alt="H" width="54" height="50" /></div>
+<p>e was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him sitting down every
+day at two o'clock under the windows of the hotel, facing the tranquil
+sea on an open-air bench. He remained for some time without moving, in
+the heat of the sun gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now
+and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with vaporous
+summits which shuts in Mentone: then, with a very slow movement, he
+crossed his long legs, so thin that they seemed two bones, around
+which fluttered the cloth of his trousers, and he opened a book, which
+was always the same. And then he did not stir any more, but read on,
+read on with his eye and his mind; all his expiring body seemed to
+read, all his soul plunged, lost itself, disappeared, in this book, up
+to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up
+and re-entered the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in
+his own room, and spoke to nobody.</p>
+
+<p>A vague curiosity attracted me to him. One day I sat down by his side,
+having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of De
+Musset's poems.</p>
+
+<p>And I began to run through "Rolla."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly my neighbor said to me, in good French:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know German, monsieur?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> side by side, I
+could have lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable
+thing&mdash;this book which I hold in my hand."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it pray?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand.
+All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."</p>
+
+<p>I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at those forms
+incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of
+the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.</p>
+
+<p>And De Musset's verses arose in my memory:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious
+sarcasm, of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German
+philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.</p>
+
+<p>Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant or let us be
+enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his
+disdain and of his disenchantment.</p>
+
+<p>A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic
+ideal, and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence
+of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women,
+crushed the illusions of hearts and accomplished the most gigantic
+talk ever attempted by skepticism. He passed over everything with his
+mocking spirit, and left everything empty. And even to-day those who
+exe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>crate him seem to carry portions of his thought, in spite of
+themselves, in their own souls.</p>
+
+<p>"So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?" I said
+to the German.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the time of his death, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
+supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came
+near him.</p>
+
+<p>He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
+French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a
+glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the
+midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable
+laugh, eating and tearing ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a
+dog tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
+scared and terrified:&mdash;"I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."</p>
+
+<p>Then he added,</p>
+
+<p>"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even
+after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it not generally
+known, if it has any interest for you."</p>
+
+<p>And he began, in a tired voice, interrupted by frequent fits of
+coughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch,
+in turn, two by two, till morning.</p>
+
+<p>"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast, and gloomy. Two
+wax candles were burning on the bedside stand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was midnight when I took up my task of watching along with one of
+our comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment,
+and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew
+so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed
+to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move, and to speak. His
+thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more
+than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him.
+His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead.
+A sense of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"The bodies of these men disappear, but they remain themselves; and in
+the night which follows the stoppage of their heart's beatings, I
+assure you, monsieur, they are terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
+sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are
+like jets of flame flung, by means of some words, into the darkness of
+the Unknown Life.</p>
+
+<p>"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we
+stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face with
+its eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed,
+on the point of fainting. I faltered:</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you, I am not
+well.'</p>
+
+<p>"And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from
+the corpse.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> the adjoining
+room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.</p>
+
+<p>"I took one of the wax candles which burned on the bedside stand, and
+I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end
+of the adjoining apartment, so as to be able to see from where we were
+the bed and the corpse, clearly revealed by the light.</p>
+
+<p>"But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his
+immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was
+flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful smell of the
+decomposed body came towards us and penetrated us, sickening and
+indefinable.</p>
+
+<p>"Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound,
+came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him,
+and we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something
+white flying over the bed, falling on the carpet, and vanishing under
+an armchair.</p>
+
+<p>"We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything,
+distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at
+each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed so fiercely
+that our clothes swelled over our chests. I was the first to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"'You saw?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I saw.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Can it be that he is not dead?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not, when the body is putrefying?'</p>
+
+<p>"'What are we to do?'</p>
+
+<p>"My companion said in a hesitating tone:</p>
+
+<p>"'We must go and look.'</p>
+
+<p>"I took our wax candle and I entered first, searching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> with my eye
+through all the large apartment with its dark corners. There was not
+the least movement now, and I approached the bed. But I stood
+transfixed with stupor and fright: Schopenhauer was no longer
+laughing! He was grinning in a horrible fashion, with his lips pressed
+together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out:</p>
+
+<p>"'He is not dead!'</p>
+
+<p>"But the terrible odor rose up to my nose and stifled me. And I no
+longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, scared as if in the
+presence of the apparition.</p>
+
+<p>"Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
+Then, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his
+glance, and I saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the
+bed, all white on the dark carpet, open as if to bite, Schopenhauer's
+set of artificial teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out
+of his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I was really frightened that day, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>And as the sun was sinking towards the glittering sea, the consumptive
+German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the
+hotel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="AFTER" id="AFTER"></a>AFTER</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>y darlings," said the Comtesse, "you must go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>The three children, two girls and a boy, rose up, and went to kiss
+their grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Then, they came to say "Good night" to M. le Cur&eacute;, who had dined at
+the chateau, as he did every Thursday.</p>
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; Mauduit put two of the young ones sitting on his knees,
+passing his long arms clad in black behind the children's necks; and,
+drawing their heads towards him with a paternal movement, he kissed
+each of them on the forehead with a long, tender kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Then, he again set them down on the ground, and the little beings went
+off, the boy in front, and the girls behind.</p>
+
+<p>"You are fond of children, M. le Cur&eacute;," said the Comtesse.</p>
+
+<p>"Very fond, Madame."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman raised her bright eyes towards the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>He became silent, hesitated, and then added: "But I was never made for
+ordinary life."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest: I followed my own
+path."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Comtesse kept staring at him:</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, M. le Cur&eacute;, tell me this&mdash;tell me how it was you resolved
+to renounce for ever what makes us love life&mdash;the rest of us&mdash;all that
+consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to
+separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the
+family. You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy
+person nor a sad person. Was it some strange occurrence, some sorrow,
+that led you to take life-long vows?"</p>
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; Mauduit rose up and advanced towards the fire, then drew
+towards the flames the big shoes such as country priests generally
+wear. He seemed still hesitating as to what reply he should make.</p>
+
+<p>He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years
+he had been the pastor of the parish of Sainte-Antoine-du-Rocher. The
+peasants said of him: "There's a good man for you!" And indeed he was
+a good man, benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all,
+generous. Like Saint Martin, he had cut his cloak in two. He freely
+laughed, and wept too for very little, just like a woman,&mdash;a thing
+that prejudiced him more or less in the hard minds of the country
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of
+Rocher, in order to bring up her grand-children, after the successive
+deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to
+her cur&eacute;, and used to say of him: "He has a kind heart!"</p>
+
+<p>He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the chateau, and they
+were close friends, with the open and honest friendship of old people.</p>
+
+<p>She persisted:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look here M. le Cur&eacute;! 'tis your turn now to make a confession!"</p>
+
+<p>He repeated: "I was not made for a life like everybody else. I saw it
+myself fortunately in time, and I have had many proofs since that I
+had made no mistake on the point.</p>
+
+<p>"My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and rather rich, had much
+ambition on my account. They sent me to a boarding-school while I was
+very young. You cannot conceive what a boy may suffer at college, by
+the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life
+without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young
+people have often hearts more sensitive than one supposes, and by
+shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may
+develop to an excessive extent a sensibility which is of an overstrung
+kind, and which becomes sickly and dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>"I scarcely ever played; I never had companions; I passed my hours in
+looking back to my home with regret; I spent the whole night weeping
+in my bed. I sought to bring up before my mind recollections of my own
+home, trifling recollections of little things, little events. I
+thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost
+imperceptibly an over sensitive youth to whom the slightest annoyances
+were dreadful griefs.</p>
+
+<p>"Together with this I remained taciturn, self-absorbed without
+expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was
+brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly
+excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a
+state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> complete
+development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, an
+unjust imposition can be as great a pang as the death of a friend
+afterwards? Does anyone render an exact account to himself of the fact
+that certain young souls have with very little cause, terrible
+emotions, and are in a very short time diseased and incurable souls?</p>
+
+<p>"This was my case. This faculty of regret developed itself in me in
+such a fashion that my existence became a martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
+acquired a sensibility, or rather a sensitivity so lively that my soul
+resembled a living wound. Everything that touched it produced in it
+twitchings of pain, frightful vibrations, and consequently true
+ravages. Happy are the men whom nature has buttressed with
+indifference and armed with stoicism.</p>
+
+<p>"I reached my sixteenth year. An excessive timidity had come to me
+from this aptitude to suffer on account of everything. Feeling myself
+unprotected against all the attacks of chance or fate, I feared every
+contact, every approach, every event. I lived on the watch as if under
+the constant threat of an unknown and always expected misfortune. I
+did not feel enough of boldness either to speak or to act publicly. I
+had, indeed, the sensation that life is a battle, a dreadful conflict
+in which one receives terrible blows, grievous, mortal wounds. In
+place of cherishing, like all men, the hope of good-fortune on the
+morrow, I only kept a confused fear of it, and I felt in my own mind a
+desire to conceal myself to avoid that combat in which I would be
+vanquished and slain.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as my studies were finished, they gave me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> six months' time
+to choose a career. A very simple event made me see clearly all of a
+sudden into myself, showed me the diseased condition of my mind, made
+me understand the danger, and caused me to make up my mind to fly from
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Verdiers is a little town surrounded with plains and woods. In the
+central streets stands my parents' house. I now passed my days far
+from this dwelling which I had so much regretted, so much desired.
+Dreams were awakened in me, and I walked all alone in the fields in
+order to let them escape and fly away. My father and my mother, quite
+occupied with business, and anxious about my future, talked to me only
+about their profits or about my possible plans. They were fond of me
+in the way that hard-headed, practical people are; they had more
+reason than heart in their affection for me. I lived imprisoned in my
+thoughts, and trembling with my eternal uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, one evening, after a long walk, I saw, as I was making my way
+home with great strides so as not to be late, a dog trotting towards
+me. He was a species of red spaniel, very lean, with long curly ears.</p>
+
+<p>"When he was ten paces away from me he stopped. I did the same. Then
+he began wagging his tail, and came over to me with short steps and
+nervous movements of his whole body, going down on his paws as if
+appealing to me, and softly shaking his head. He then made a show of
+crawling with an air so humble, so sad, so suppliant, that I felt the
+tears coming into my eyes. I came near him; he ran away, then he came
+back again; and I bent down, trying to coax him to approach me with
+soft words. At last, he was within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> reach of my hands, and I gently
+caressed him with the most careful touch.</p>
+
+<p>"He grew bold, rose up bit by bit, laid his paws on my shoulders, and
+began to lick my face. He followed me into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because he
+returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
+exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way
+that we were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated
+and without defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted
+my side. He slept at the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of
+the objections of my parents, and he followed me in my solitary walks.</p>
+
+<p>"I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass.
+Sam immediately rushed up, fell asleep on my knees, and lifted up my
+hand with the end of his snout so that I might caress him.</p>
+
+<p>"One day towards the end of June, as we were on the road from
+Saint-Pierre-de-Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming
+along. Its four horses were going at a gallop with its yellow box
+seat, and imperial crowned with black leather. The coachman cracked
+his whip; a cloud of dust rose up under the wheels of the heavy
+vehicle, then floated behind, just as a cloud would do.</p>
+
+<p>"And, all of a sudden, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps
+frightened by the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it.
+A horse's foot knocked him down. I saw him rolling over, turning
+round, falling back again on all fours, and then the en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>tire coach
+gave two big shakes, and behind it I saw something quivering in the
+dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were
+hanging through his stomach, which had been ripped open, and fell in
+spurts of blood to the ground. He tried to get up, to walk, but he
+could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them,
+as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he howled
+dreadfully, mad with pain.</p>
+
+<p>"He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and
+suffered. I was confined to my own room for a month.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, one night, my father, enraged at seeing me in such a state for
+so little, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"'How then will it be when you have real griefs&mdash;if you lose your wife
+or children?'</p>
+
+<p>"And I began to see clearly into myself. I understood why all the
+small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the importance of a
+catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a way that I suffered
+dreadfully from everything, that every painful impression was
+multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious fear of life
+took possession of me. I was without passions, without ambitions; I
+resolved to sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure sorrows.
+Existence is short, but I made up my mind to spend it in the service
+of others, in relieving their troubles and enjoying their happiness.
+By having no direct experience of either one or the other, I would
+only be conscious of passionless emotions.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me,
+ravages me! But what would be for me an intolerable affliction has
+become commiseration, pity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"These sorrows which I have every day to concern myself about I could
+not endure if they fell on my own heart. I could not have seen one of
+my children die without dying myself. And I have, in spite of
+everything, preserved such an obscure and penetrating fear of
+circumstances, that the sight of the postman entering my house makes a
+shiver pass every day through my veins, and yet I have nothing to be
+afraid of now."</p>
+
+<p>The Abb&eacute; Mauduit ceased speaking. He stared into the fire in the huge
+grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown portion
+of existence which he would have been able to live if he had been more
+fearless in the face of suffering.</p>
+
+<p>He added, then, in a subdued tone:</p>
+
+<p>"I was right. I was not made for this world."</p>
+
+<p>The Comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long
+silence, she remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"For my part, if I had not my grand-children, I believe I would not
+have the courage to live."</p>
+
+<p>And the cur&eacute; rose up without saying another word.</p>
+
+<p>As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she conducted him herself
+to the door which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall
+shadow lit up by the reflection of the lamp disappearing through the
+gloom of night.</p>
+
+<p>Then she came back and sat down before the fire, and she pondered over
+many things on which we never think when we are young.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_QUEER_NIGHT_IN_PARIS" id="A_QUEER_NIGHT_IN_PARIS"></a>A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_m.jpg" alt="M" width="60" height="50" /></div>
+<p>aitre Saval, notary at Vernon, was passionately fond of music. Still
+young, though already bald, always carefully shaved, a little
+corpulent, as it was fitting, wearing a gold pince-nez instead of
+old-fashioned spectacles, active, gallant, and joyous, he passed in
+Vernon for an artist. He thrummed on the piano and played on the
+violin, and gave musical evenings where interpretations were given of
+new operas.</p>
+
+<p>He had even what is called a bit of a voice; nothing but a bit, a very
+little bit of a voice; but he managed it with so much taste that cries
+of "Bravo!" "Exquisite!" "Surprising!" "Adorable!" issued from every
+throat as soon as he had murmured the last note.</p>
+
+<p>He was a subscriber to a music-publisher in Paris, who addressed new
+pieces to him, and he sent from time to time to the high society of
+the town, little notes something in this style:</p>
+
+<p>"You are invited to be present on Monday evening at the house of M.
+Saval, notary, Vernon, at the first production of 'Sais.'"</p>
+
+<p>A few officers, gifted with good voices, formed the chorus. Two or
+three of the vinedressers' families also sang. The notary filled the
+part of leader of the orchestra with so much correctness that the
+bandmaster of the 190th regiment of the line said to him, one day, at
+the <i>Caf&eacute;</i> de l'Europe:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! M. Saval is a master. It is a great pity that he did not adopt
+the career of an artist."</p>
+
+<p>When his name was mentioned in a drawing-room, there was always
+somebody found to declare: "He is not an amateur; he is an artist, a
+genuine artist."</p>
+
+<p>And two or three persons repeated, in a tone of profound conviction:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! yes, a genuine artist," laying particular stress on the word
+"genuine."</p>
+
+<p>Every time that a new work was interpreted at a big Parisian theater,
+M. Saval paid a visit to the capital.</p>
+
+<p>Now, last year, according to his custom, he went to hear "Henry VIII."
+He then took the express which arrives in Paris at 4:30 p.m.,
+intending to return by the 12:35 a.m. train so as not to have to sleep
+at a hotel. He had put on evening dress, a black coat and white tie,
+which he concealed under his overcoat with the collar turned up.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had planted his foot on the Rue d' Amsterdam, he felt
+himself in quite a jovial mood. He said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Decidedly the air of Paris does not resemble any other air. It has in
+it something indescribably stimulating, exciting, intoxicating, which
+fills you with a strange longing to gambol and to do many other
+things. As soon as I arrive here, it seems to me, all of a sudden,
+that I have taken a bottle of champagne. What a life one can lead in
+this city in the midst of artists! Happy are the elect, the great men
+who enjoy renown in such a city! What an existence is theirs!"</p>
+
+<p>And he made plans; he would have liked to know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> some of those
+celebrated men, to talk about them in Vernon, and to spend an evening
+with them from time to time in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly an idea struck him. He had heard allusions to little
+<i>caf&eacute;s</i> in the outer boulevards at which well-known painters, men of
+letters, and even musicians gathered, and he proceeded to go up to
+Montmartre at a slow pace.</p>
+
+<p>He had two hours before him. He wanted to have a look-round. He passed
+in front of taverns frequented by belated Bohemians gazing at the
+different faces, seeking to discover the artists. Finally, he came to
+the sign of "The Dead Rat," and allured by the name, he entered.</p>
+
+<p>Five or six women, with their elbows resting on the marble tables,
+were talking in low tones about their love affairs, the quarrels of
+Lucie and Hortense, and the scoundrelism of Octave. They were no
+longer young, too fat or too thin, tired out, used up. You could see
+that they were almost bald; and they drank bocks like men.</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval sat down at some distance from them, and waited, for the hour
+for taking absinthe was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>A tall young man soon came in and took a seat beside him. The landlady
+called him M. "Romantin." The notary quivered. Was this the Romantin
+who had taken a medal at the last Salon?</p>
+
+<p>The young man made a sign to the waiter:</p>
+
+<p>"You will bring up my dinner at once, and then carry to my new studio,
+15, Boulevard de Clinchy, thirty bottles of beer and the ham I ordered
+this morning. We are going to have housewarming."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval immediately ordered dinner. Then, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span> took off his overcoat,
+so that his dress coat and his white tie could be seen. His neighbor
+did not seem to notice him. He had taken up a newspaper, and was
+reading it. M. Saval glanced sideways at him, burning with the desire
+to speak to him.</p>
+
+<p>Two young men entered, in red vests, and peaked beards in the fashion
+of Henry III. They sat down opposite Romantin.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the pair said:</p>
+
+<p>"It is for this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>Romantin pressed his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"T believe you, old chap, and everyone will be there, I have Bonnat,
+Guillemet, Gervex, Beraud, Hebert, Duez, Clairin, and Jean-Paul
+Laurens. It will be a glorious blow out! And women too! Wait till you
+see! Every actress without exception&mdash;of course I mean, you know, all
+those who have nothing to do this evening."</p>
+
+<p>The landlord of the establishment came across.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you often have this housewarming?"</p>
+
+<p>The painter replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you, every three months, each quarter."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval could not restrain himself any longer, and in a hesitating
+voice said:</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon for intruding on you, monsieur, but I heard your
+name pronounced, and I would be very glad to know if you really are M.
+Romantin, whose work in the last Salon I have so much admired?"</p>
+
+<p>The painter answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I am the very person, monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>The notary then paid the artist a very well-turned compliment, showing
+that he was a man of culture.</p>
+
+<p>The painter, gratified, thanked him politely in reply.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then they chatted. Romantin returned to the subject of his
+housewarming, going into details as to the magnificence of the
+forthcoming entertainment.</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval questioned him as to all the men he was going to receive,
+adding:</p>
+
+<p>"It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune for a stranger to
+meet at one time so many celebrities assembled in the studio of an
+artist of your rank."</p>
+
+<p>Romantin, overcome, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"If it would be agreeable to you, come."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval accepted the invitation with enthusiasm, reflecting:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll always have time enough to see 'Henri VIII.'"</p>
+
+<p>Both of them had finished their meal. The notary insisted on paying
+the two bills, wishing to repay his neighbor's civilities. He also
+paid for the drinks of the young fellows in red velvet; then he left
+the establishment with the painter.</p>
+
+<p>They stopped in front of a very long house, by no means high, of which
+all the first story had the appearance of an interminable
+conservatory. Six studios stood in a row with their fronts facing the
+boulevards.</p>
+
+<p>Romantin was the first to enter, and, ascending the stairs, he opened
+a door, and lighted a match and then a candle.</p>
+
+<p>They found themselves in an immense apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted of three chairs, two easels, and a few sketches lying on the
+ground along the walls. M. Saval remained standing at the door in a
+stupefied state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>The painter remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are! we've got to the spot; but everything has yet to be
+done."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then, examining the high, bare apartment, whose ceiling was veiled in
+shadows, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"We might make a great deal out of this studio."</p>
+
+<p>He walked round it, surveying it with the utmost attention, then went
+on:</p>
+
+<p>"I have a mistress who might easily give a helping hand. Women are
+incomparable for hanging drapery. But I sent her to the country for
+to-day in order to get her off my hands this evening. It is not that
+she bores me, but she is too much lacking in the ways of good society.
+It would be embarrassing to my guests."</p>
+
+<p>He reflected for a few seconds, and then added:</p>
+
+<p>"She is a good girl, but not easy to deal with. If she knew that I was
+holding a reception, she would tear out my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval had not even moved; he did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>The artist came over to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Since I have invited you, you are going to give me some help."</p>
+
+<p>The notary said emphatically:</p>
+
+<p>"Make any use of me you please. I am at your disposal."</p>
+
+<p>Romantin took off his jacket.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, citizen, to work! We are first going to clean up."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the back of the easel, on which there was a canvas
+representing a cat, and seized a very worn-out broom.</p>
+
+<p>"I say! Just brush up while I look after the lighting."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval took the broom, inspected it, and then be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span>gan to sweep the
+floor very awkwardly, raising a whirlwind of dust.</p>
+
+<p>Romantin, disgusted, stopped him: "Deuce take it! you don't know how
+to sweep the floor! Look at me!"</p>
+
+<p>And he began to roll before him a heap of grayish sweepings, as if he
+had done nothing else all his life. Then, he gave back the broom to
+the notary, who imitated him.</p>
+
+<p>In five minutes, such a cloud of dust filled the studio that Romantin
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you? I can't see you any longer."</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval, who was coughing, came near to him. The painter said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"How are you going to manage to get up a chandelier?"</p>
+
+<p>The other, stunned, asked:</p>
+
+<p>"What chandelier?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, a chandelier to light&mdash;a chandelier with wax candles."</p>
+
+<p>The notary did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>He answered: "I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>The painter began to jump about, cracking his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, monseigneur, I have found out a way."</p>
+
+<p>Then he went more calmly:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got five francs about you?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes."</p>
+
+<p>The artist said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well! you'll go and buy for me five francs' worth of wax candles
+while I go and see the cooper."</p>
+
+<p>And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> the street. At the
+end of five minutes, they had returned one of them with the wax
+candles, and the other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged
+his hand into a cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which
+he fixed in the form of a crown around the hoop.</p>
+
+<p>He then came down, and went to borrow a ladder from the door-keeper,
+after having explained that he had obtained the favors of the old
+woman by painting the portrait of her cat exhibited on the easel.</p>
+
+<p>When he mounted the ladder, he said to M. Saval:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you active?"</p>
+
+<p>The other, without understanding, answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to
+the ring of the ceiling. Then, you must put a wax candle in each
+bottle, and light it. I tell you I have a genius for lighting up. But
+off with your coat, damn it! You are just like a Jeames."</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened brutally. A woman appeared, with her eyes
+flashing, and remained standing on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>Romantin gazed at her with a look of terror.</p>
+
+<p>She waited some seconds, crossing her arms over her breast, and then,
+in a shrill, vibrating, exasperated voice, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! you sniveler, is this the way you leave me?"</p>
+
+<p>Romantin made no reply. She went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! you scoundrel! You are again doing the swell, while you pack me
+off to the country. You'll soon see the way I'll settle your
+jollification. Yes, I'm going to receive your friends."</p>
+
+<p>She grew warmer:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax
+candles...."</p>
+
+<p>Romantin uttered one soft word:</p>
+
+<p>"Mathilde...."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a little my fine fellow! wait a little!"</p>
+
+<p>Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands:</p>
+
+<p>"Mathilde...."</p>
+
+<p>But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials
+of her wrath with strong words and reproaches. They flowed out of her
+mouth, like a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it. The words
+hurled out, seemed struggling for exit. She stuttered, stammered,
+yelled, suddenly recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a
+curse.</p>
+
+<p>He seized her hands without her having even noticed it. She did not
+seem to see anything, so much occupied was she in holding forth and
+relieving her heart. And suddenly she began to weep. The tears flowed
+from her eyes without making her stem the tide of her complaints. But
+her words had taken a howling, shrieking tone; they were a continuous
+cry interrupted by sobbings. She commenced afresh twice or three
+times, till she stopped as if something were choking her, and at last
+she ceased with a regular flood of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen. You must be reasonable. You
+know, if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these
+gentlemen for the medal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> I got at the Salon. I cannot receive women.
+You ought to understand that. It is not the same with artists as with
+other people."</p>
+
+<p>She stammered in the midst of her tears:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me this?"</p>
+
+<p>He replied:</p>
+
+<p>"It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I'm
+going to see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will
+remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I'll come back as soon as
+it's over."</p>
+
+<p>She murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but you will not begin over again?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I swear to you!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If any one arrives
+in my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?"</p>
+
+<p>And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her
+handkerchief as she went along.</p>
+
+<p>Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him
+in order. Then he lighted the wax candles, and waited.</p>
+
+<p>He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin
+did not return. Then, suddenly, there was a dreadful noise on the
+stairs, a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular
+march like that of a Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by
+the steady tramp of feet. The door flew open, and a motley throng
+appeared&mdash;men and women in a row, holding one another arm in arm, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
+pairs, and kicking their heels on the ground, in proper time, advanced
+into the studio like a snake uncoiling itself. They howled:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Come, and let us all be merry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pretty maids and soldiers gay!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>M. Saval, thunderstruck, remained standing in evening dress under the
+chandelier. The procession of revelers caught sight of him, and
+uttered a shout:</p>
+
+<p>"A Jeames! A Jeames!"</p>
+
+<p>And they began whirling round him, surrounding him with a circle of
+vociferations. Then they took each other by the hand and went dancing
+about madly.</p>
+
+<p>He attempted to explain:</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs&mdash;messieurs&mdash;mesdames&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But they did not listen to him. They whirled about, they jumped, they
+brawled.</p>
+
+<p>At last, the dancing ceased. M. Saval uttered the word:</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name, my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>The notary, quite scared, said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am M. Saval."</p>
+
+<p>A voice exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"You mean Baptiste."</p>
+
+<p>A woman said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let the poor waiter alone! You'll end by making him get angry. He's
+paid to attend on us, and not to be laughed at by us."</p>
+
+<p>Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
+One held a bottle of wine, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> other a pie. This one had a loaf
+of bread, and one a ham.</p>
+
+<p>The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage,
+and gave orders:</p>
+
+<p>"I say! Go and settle up the sideboard in the corner over there. You
+are to put the bottles at the left and the provisions at the right."</p>
+
+<p>Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: "But messieurs, I am a
+notary!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, and then a wild outburst of laughter.
+One suspicious gentleman asked:</p>
+
+<p>"How are you here?"</p>
+
+<p>He explained, telling about his project of going to the Opera, his
+departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he
+had spent the evening.</p>
+
+<p>They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
+applause, and called him Scheherazade.</p>
+
+<p>Romantin did not come back. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was
+presented to them so that he might begin his story over again. He
+declined; they forced him to relate it. They fixed him on one of the
+three chairs between two women who kept constantly filling his glass.
+He drank; he laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with
+his chair, and fell on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however,
+that they undressed him, put him to bed, and that his stomach got
+sick.</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his
+feet against a cupboard, in a strange bed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
+last, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get
+drunk like this?"</p>
+
+<p>He sat up in the bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten
+carcass out of here as quick as you can,&mdash;and lose no time about it!"</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to get up. He found that he was naked in the bed. His
+clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:</p>
+
+<p>"Madame, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then he remembered.... What was he to do? He asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"</p>
+
+<p>The door-keeper shouted:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you take your dirty carcass out of this so that he at any rate
+may not catch you here?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."</p>
+
+<p>He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends,
+and borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>And, when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room
+in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a
+very inferior art.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BOITELLE" id="BOITELLE"></a>BOITELLE</h2>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/image_p.jpg" alt="P" width="40" height="50" /></div>
+<p>ere Boitelle (Antoine) had the reputation through the whole county of
+a specialist in dirty jobs. Every time a pit, a dunghill, or a
+cesspool required to be cleared away, or a dirt-hole to be cleansed
+out he was the person employed to do it.</p>
+
+<p>He would come there with his nightman's tools and his wooden shoes
+covered with muck, and would set to work, whining incessantly about
+the nature of his occupation. When people asked him, then, why he did
+this loathsome work, he would reply resignedly:</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, 'tis for my children whom I must support. This brings me in
+more than anything else."</p>
+
+<p>He had, indeed, fourteen children. If anyone asked him what had become
+of them, he would say with an air of indifference:</p>
+
+<p>"There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at
+service, and five are married."</p>
+
+<p>When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he
+replied vivaciously:</p>
+
+<p>"I did not cross them. I crossed them in nothing. They married just as
+they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns out
+badly. I am a night-cart-man because my parents went against my
+likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others."</p>
+
+<p>Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than
+another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, in truth. During
+his hours of freedom his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay,
+where the bird-dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a
+soldier from his own part of the country, he would slowly saunter
+along by cages where the parrots with green backs and yellow heads
+from the banks of the Amazon, the parrots with gray backs and red
+heads from Senegal, enormous macaws, which look like birds brought up
+in conservatories, with their flower-like feathers, their plumes and
+their tufts, the paroquets of every shape, who seem painted with
+minute care by that excellent miniaturist, God Almighty, and the
+little ones, all the little young birds, hopping about, yellow, blue,
+and variegated, mingling their cries with the noise of the quay, add
+to the din caused by the unloading of the vessels, as well as by
+passengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill, and
+deafening, as if from some distant, monstrous forest.</p>
+
+<p>Boitelle would stop with stained eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing and
+enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive cockatoos, who kept
+nodding their white or yellow top-knots towards the glaring red of his
+breeches and the copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that
+could talk, he put questions to it, and if it happened at the time to
+be disposed to reply and to hold a conversation with him, he would
+remain there till nightfall, filled with gayety and contentment. He
+also found heaps of fun in looking at the monkeys, and could conceive
+no greater luxury for a rich man than to possess these animals, just
+like cats and dogs. This kind of taste for the exotic he had in his
+blood, as people have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> taste for the chase, or for medicine, or for
+the priesthood. He could not keep himself, every time the gates of the
+barracks opened, from going back to the quay, as if he felt himself
+drawn towards it by an irresistible longing.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstacy before an
+enormous araruna, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward,
+and bridling up again as if making the court-curtseys of parrot-land,
+he saw the door of a little tavern adjoining the bird-dealer's shop
+opening, and his attention was attracted by a young negress, with a
+silk kerchief tied round her head, sweeping into the street the
+rubbish and the sand of the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>Boitelle's attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman,
+and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated
+with the greater astonishment and delight.</p>
+
+<p>The negress, having got rid of the sweepings of the tavern, raised her
+eyes, and, in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier's uniform. There
+she stood facing him with her broom in her hands as if she were
+carrying arms for him, while the araruna continued making curtseys.
+Now at the end of a few seconds the soldier began to get embarrassed
+by this attention, and he walked away gingerly so as not to present
+the appearance of beating a retreat.</p>
+
+<p>But he came back. Almost every day he passed in front of the Colonial
+tavern, and often he could distinguish through the window-panes the
+figure of the little black-skinned maid filling out "bocks" or glasses
+of brandy for the sailors of the port. Frequently, too, she would come
+out to the door on seeing him; soon, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>out even having exchanged a
+word they smiled at one another like acquaintances; and Boitelle felt
+his heart moved when he saw suddenly glittering between the dark lips
+of the girl her shining row of white teeth. At length he ventured one
+day to enter and was quite surprised to find that she could speak
+French like everyone else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she was
+good enough to accept a glassful, remained in the soldier's
+recollection, memorably delicious; and it grew into custom with him to
+come and absorb in this little tavern on the quay all the agreeable
+drinks which he could afford.</p>
+
+<p>For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts were
+constantly dwelling, to watch the black hand of the little maid
+pouring out something into his glass whilst her teeth, brighter than
+her eyes, showed themselves as she laughed. When they had kept company
+in this way for two months they became fast friends, and Boitelle,
+after his first astonishment at discovering that this negress was in
+her excellent principles as good as the best girls in the country,
+that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry, religion, and good
+conduct, loved her more on that account, and became so much smitten
+with her that he wanted to marry her.</p>
+
+<p>He told her about his intentions, which made her dance with joy.
+Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer,
+who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by
+an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only
+about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship,
+some hours after his departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre,
+he there aban<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>doned to the care of this compassionate oyster-dealer
+the little black creature, who had been hidden on board his vessel, he
+could not tell how or why.</p>
+
+<p>The oyster-woman having died, the young negress became a servant at
+the Colonial tavern.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine Boitelle added: "This will be all right if the parents don't
+go against it. I will never go against them, you understand never! I'm
+going to say a word or two to them the first time I go back to the
+country."</p>
+
+<p>On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours'
+leave, he went to see his family, who cultivate a little farm at
+Tourteville near Yvetot.</p>
+
+<p>He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee
+baptized with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing
+his parents that he had found a girl answering so well to his likings
+in every way that there could not exist any other in all the world so
+perfectly suited to him.</p>
+
+<p>The old people, at this observation, immediately assumed a circumspect
+air, and wanted explanations. Besides he had concealed nothing from
+them except the color of her skin.</p>
+
+<p>She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean,
+well-conducted, and sensible. All these things were better than money
+would be in the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few
+sous, left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous,
+almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings' bank.
+The old people, overcome by his talk, and relying, too, on their own
+judgment, were gradually giving way, when he came to the delicate
+point. Laughing in rather a constrained fashion, he said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There is only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip."</p>
+
+<p>They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very
+cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky
+race of which they had only seen samples amongst figures exhibited at
+Epinal. Then, they became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had
+proposed a union with the Devil.</p>
+
+<p>The mother said. "Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>He replied, "Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>The father interposed, "Black? Is it as black as the pot?"</p>
+
+<p>The son answered "Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but
+not disgustingly black. The Cur&eacute;'s cassock is black; but it is not
+uglier than a surplice, which is white."</p>
+
+<p>The father said, "Are there more black people besides her in her
+country?"</p>
+
+<p>And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed, "Certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>But the old man shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"This must be disagreeable?"</p>
+
+<p>And the son:</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't more disagreeable than anything else, seeing that you get
+used to it in no time."</p>
+
+<p>The mother asked:</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't soil linen more than other skins, this black skin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not more than your own, as it is her proper color."</p>
+
+<p>Then after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should
+see this girl before coming to any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> decision and that the young
+fellow, whose period of services was coming to an end in the course of
+a month, should bring her to the house in order that they might
+examine her, and decide by talking the matter over whether or not she
+was too dark to enter the Boitelle family.</p>
+
+<p>Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22nd of May, the day
+of his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover's parents,
+her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red, and
+blue were the prevailing colors, so that she had the appearance of one
+adorned for a national fete.</p>
+
+<p>At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her very
+much, and Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who
+commanded so much attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in
+which she took a seat by his side, she excited so much astonishment
+among the peasants that the people in the adjoining compartments got
+up on their benches to get a look at her, over the wooden partition,
+which divided the different portions of the carriage from one another.
+A child, at sight of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed
+his face in his mother's apron. Everything went off well, however, up
+to their arrival at their destination. But, when the train slackened
+its rate of motion as they drew near Yvetot, Antoine felt ill at ease,
+as he would have done at an inspection when he did not know his
+drill-practice. Then, as he put his head out through the carriage
+door, he recognized, some distance away, his father who was holding
+the bridle of the horse yoked to a car, and his mother who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> had made
+her way to the railed portion of the platform where a number of
+spectators had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped out first, gave his hand to his sweetheart, and holding
+himself erect, as if he were escorting a general, he advanced towards
+his family.</p>
+
+<p>The mother, on seeing this black lady, in variegated costume in her
+son's company, remained so stupefied that she could not open her
+mouth; and the father found it hard to hold the horse, which the
+engine or the negress caused to rear for some time without stopping.
+But Antoine, suddenly seized with the unmingled joy of seeing once
+more the old people, rushed forward with open arms, embraced his
+mother, embraced his father, in spite of the nag's fright, and then
+turning towards his companion, at whom the passengers on the platform
+stopped to stare with amazement, he proceeded to explain:</p>
+
+<p>"Here she is! I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece;
+but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort
+in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Mere Boitelle, herself nearly frightened out of her wits,
+made a sort of curtsey, while the father took off his cap, murmuring:</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you good-luck!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, without further delay, they climbed up on the car, the two women
+at the lower end on seats, which made them jump up and down, as the
+vehicle went jolting along the road, and the two men outside on the
+front seat.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody spoke. Antoine, ill at ease, whistled a barrack-room air; his
+father lashed the nag; and his mother, from where she sat in the
+corner, kept casting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> sly glances at the negress, whose forehead and
+cheek-bones shone in the sunlight, like well-blacked shoes.</p>
+
+<p>Wishing to break the ice, Antoine turned round.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "we don't seem inclined to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"We must get time," replied the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Come! tell us the little story about that hen of yours that laid
+eight eggs."</p>
+
+<p>It was a funny anecdote of long standing in the family. But, as his
+mother still remained silent, paralyzed by emotion, he started the
+talking himself, and narrated, with much laughter on his own part,
+this memorable adventure. The father, who knew it by heart, brightened
+at the opening words of the narrative; his wife soon followed his
+example; and the negress herself, when he reached the drollest part of
+it, suddenly gave vent to a laugh so noisy, rolling, and torrent-like
+that the horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a little
+while.</p>
+
+<p>This served as the introduction to their acquaintanceship. The company
+at length began to chat.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the house when they had all alighted, and he had conducted
+his sweetheart to a room, so that she might take off her dress, to
+avoid staining it, while she would be preparing a good dish intended
+to win the old people's affections while appealing to their stomachs,
+he drew aside his parents, near the door, and with beating heart,
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you say now?"</p>
+
+<p>The father said nothing. The mother, less timid, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"She is too black. No, indeed, this is too much for me. It turns my
+blood."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That may be, but it is only for the moment."</p>
+
+<p>Then they made their way into the interior of the house, where the
+good woman was somewhat affected at the spectacle of the negress
+engaged in cooking. She at once proceeded to assist her, with
+petticoats tucked up, active in spite of her age.</p>
+
+<p>The meal was an excellent one, very long, very enjoyable. When they
+had afterwards taken a turn together, Antoine said to his father:</p>
+
+<p>"Well dad, what do you say to this?"</p>
+
+<p>The peasant took care never to compromise himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no opinion about it. Ask your mother."</p>
+
+<p>So Antoine went back to his mother, and leading her to the end of the
+room, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Well mother, what do you think of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"My poor lad, she is really too black. If she were only a little less
+black, I would not go against you, but this is too much. One would
+think it was Satan!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not press her, knowing how obstinate the old woman had always
+been, but he felt a tempest of disappointment sweeping over his heart.
+He was turning over his mind what he ought to do, what plan he could
+devise, surprised, moreover, that she had not conquered them already
+as she had captivated himself. And they, all four, set out with slow
+steps through the cornfields, having again relapsed into silence.
+Whenever they passed a fence they saw a countryman sitting on the
+stile, and a group of brats climbed up to stare at them and everyone
+rushed out into the road to see the "black" whom young Boitelle had
+brought home with him. At a distance they noticed people scampering
+across the fields just as when the drum beats to draw public attention
+to some living phenomenon. Pere and Mere Boi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>telle, scared by this
+curiosity, which was exhibited everywhere through the country at their
+approach, quickened their pace, walking side by side, and leaving far
+behind their son, when his dark companion asked what his parents
+thought of her.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitatingly replied that they had not yet made up their minds.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the village-green, people rushed out of all the houses in a
+flutter of excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering rabble, old
+Boitelle took to his heels and regained his abode, whilst Antoine,
+swelling with rage, his sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically
+under the staring eyes which opened wide in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>He understood that it was at an end, and there was no hope for him,
+that he could not marry his negress, she also understood it; and as
+they drew near the farmhouse they both began to weep. As soon as they
+had got back to the house, she once more took off her dress to aid the
+mother in the household duties, and followed her everywhere to the
+dairy, to the stable, to the hen-house, taking on herself the hardest
+part of the work, repeating always, "Let me do it Madame Boitelle," so
+that, when night came on, the old woman, touched but inexorable, said
+to her son: "She is a good, all the same. 'Tis a pity she is so black;
+but indeed she is too much so. I couldn't get used to it. She must go
+back again. She is too, too black!"</p>
+
+<p>And young Boitelle said to his sweetheart:</p>
+
+<p>"She will not consent. She thinks you are too black. You must go back
+again. I will go with you to the train. No matter&mdash;don't fret. I am
+going to talk to them after you are started."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He then conducted her to the railway-station, still cheering her with
+hope, and, when he had kissed her, he put her into the train, which he
+watched as it passed out of sight, his eyes swollen with tears.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did he appeal to the old people. They would never give their
+consent.</p>
+
+<p>And when he had told this story, which was known all over the country,
+Antoine Boitelle would always add:</p>
+
+<p>"From that time forward I have had no heart for anything&mdash;for anything
+at all. No trade suited me any longer, and so I became what I am&mdash;a
+nightcart-man."</p>
+
+<p>People would say to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you got married."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I can't say that my wife didn't please me, seeing that I've
+got fourteen children; but she is not the other one, oh no&mdash;certainly
+not! The other one, mark you, my negress, she had only to give me one
+glance, and I felt as if I were in Heaven!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume
+VIII., by Guy de Maupassant
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII., by
+Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Release Date: July 14, 2007 [EBook #22069]
+Last updated: January 18, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             The Works of
+
+                          Guy de Maupassant
+
+
+
+
+                             VOLUME VIII
+
+
+
+                            PIERRE ET JEAN
+
+                          AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+
+                            _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+
+                       NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY
+
+                               NEW YORK
+
+
+
+                         COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
+
+                         BIGELOW, SMITH & CO.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PIERRE ET JEAN.
+
+DREAMS
+
+MOONLIGHT
+
+THE CORSICAN BANDIT
+
+A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET
+
+THE CAKE
+
+A LIVELY FRIEND
+
+THE ORPHAN
+
+THE BLIND MAN
+
+A WIFE'S CONFESSION
+
+RELICS OF THE PAST
+
+THE PEDDLER
+
+THE AVENGER
+
+ALL OVER
+
+LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
+
+MOTHER AND SON
+
+THE SPASM
+
+A DUEL
+
+THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
+
+AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+
+A WARNING NOTE
+
+THE HORRIBLE
+
+A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
+
+BESIDE A DEAD MAN
+
+AFTER
+
+A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
+
+BOITELLE
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+OF "THE NOVEL"
+
+
+I do not intend in these pages to put in a plea for this little novel.
+On the contrary, the ideas I shall try to set forth will rather
+involve a criticism of the class of psychological analysis which I
+have undertaken in _Pierre et Jean_. I propose to treat of novels in
+general.
+
+I am not the only writer who finds himself taken to task in the same
+terms each time he brings out a new book. Among many laudatory
+phrases, I invariably meet with this observation, penned by the same
+critics: "The greatest fault of this book is that it is not, strictly
+speaking, a novel."
+
+The same form might be adopted in reply:
+
+"The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor to review me
+is that he is not a critic."
+
+For what are, in fact, the essential characteristics of a critic?
+
+It is necessary that, without preconceived notions, prejudices of
+"School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should
+appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies
+and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the
+most varied efforts of art.
+
+Now the Critic who, after reading _Manon Lescaut_, _Paul and
+Virginia_, _Don Quixote_, _Les Liaisons dangereuses_, _Werther_,
+_Elective Affinities_ (_Wahlverwandschaften_), _Clarissa Harlowe_,
+_Emile_, _Candide_, _Cinq-Mars_, _Rene_, _Les Trois Mousquetaires_,
+_Mauprat_, _Le Pere Goriot_, _La Cousine Bette_, _Colomba_, _Le Rouge
+et le Noir_, _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, _Notre-Dame de Paris_,
+_Salammbo_, _Madame Bovary_, _Adolphe_, _M. de Camors_, _l'Assommoir_,
+_Sapho_, etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or
+is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity
+strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by
+a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated
+after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which
+the first contains the exposition, the second the action, and the
+third the catastrophe or _denouement_.
+
+And this method of construction is perfectly admissible, but on
+condition that all others are accepted on equal terms.
+
+Are there any rules for the making of a novel, which, if we neglect,
+the tale must be called by another name? If _Don Quixote_ is a novel,
+then is _Le Rouge et le Noir_ a novel? If _Monte Christo_ is a novel,
+is _l'Assommoir_? Can any conclusive comparison be drawn between
+Goethe's _Elective Affinities_, _The Three Mousqueteers_, by Dumas,
+Flaubert's _Madame Bovary_, _M. de Camors_ by Octave Feuillet, and
+_Germinal_, by Zola? Which of them all is The Novel? What are these
+famous rules? Where did they originate? Who laid them down? And in
+virtue of what principle, of whose authority, and of what reasoning?
+
+And yet, as it would appear, these critics know in some positive and
+indisputable way what constitutes a novel, and what distinguishes it
+from other tales which are not novels. What this amounts to is that
+without being producers themselves they are enrolled under a School,
+and that, like the writers of novels, they reject all work which is
+conceived and executed outside the pale of their esthetics. An
+intelligent critic ought, on the contrary, to seek out everything
+which least resembles the novels already written, and urge young
+authors as much as possible to try fresh paths.
+
+All writers, Victor Hugo as much as M. Zola, have insistently claimed
+the absolute and incontrovertible right to compose--that is to say, to
+imagine or observe--in accordance with their individual conception of
+originality, and that is a special manner of thinking, seeing,
+understanding, and judging. Now the critic who assumes that "the
+novel" can be defined in conformity with the ideas he has based on the
+novels he prefers, and that certain immutable rules of construction
+can be laid down, will always find himself at war with the artistic
+temperament of a writer who introduces a new manner of work. A critic
+really worthy of the name ought to be an analyst, devoid of
+preferences or passions; like an expert in pictures, he should simply
+estimate the artistic value of the object of art submitted to him. His
+intelligence, open to everything, must so far supersede his
+individuality as to leave him free to discover and praise books which
+as a man he may not like, but which as a judge he must duly
+appreciate.
+
+But critics, for the most part, are only readers; whence it comes that
+they almost always find fault with us on wrong grounds, or compliment
+us without reserve or measure.
+
+The reader, who looks for no more in a book than that it should
+satisfy the natural tendencies of his own mind, wants the writer to
+respond to his predominant taste, and he invariably praises a work or
+a passage which appeals to his imagination, whether idealistic, gay,
+licentious, melancholy, dreamy, or positive, as "striking" or "well
+written."
+
+The public as a whole is composed of various groups, whose cry to us
+writers is:
+
+"Comfort me."
+
+"Amuse me."
+
+"Touch me."
+
+"Make me dream."
+
+"Make me laugh."
+
+"Make me shudder."
+
+"Make me weep."
+
+"Make me think."
+
+And only a few chosen spirits say to the artist:
+
+"Give me something fine in any form which may suit you best, according
+to your own temperament."
+
+The artist makes the attempt; succeeds or fails.
+
+The critic ought to judge the result only in relation to the nature of
+the attempt; he has no right to concern himself about tendencies. This
+has been said a thousand times already; it will always need repeating.
+
+Thus, after a succession of literary schools which have given us
+deformed, superhuman, poetical, pathetic, charming or magnificent
+pictures of life, a realistic or naturalistic school has arisen, which
+asserts that it shows us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth.
+
+All these theories of art must be recognized as of equal interest, and
+we must judge the works which are their outcome solely from the point
+of view of artistic value, with an _a priori_ acceptance of the
+general notions which gave birth to each. To dispute the author's
+right to produce a poetical work or a realistic work, is to endeavor
+to coerce his temperament, to take exception to his originality, to
+forbid his using the eyes and wits bestowed on him by Nature. To
+blame him for seeing things as beautiful or ugly, as mean or epic, as
+gracious or sinister, is to reproach him for not being made on this or
+that pattern, and for having eyes which do not see exactly as ours
+see.
+
+Let him be free by all means to conceive of things as he pleases,
+provided he is an artist. Let us rise to poetic heights to judge an
+idealist, and then prove to him that his dream is commonplace,
+ordinary, not mad or magnificent enough. But if we judge a
+materialistic writer, let us show him wherein the truth of life
+differs from the truth in his book.
+
+It is self-evident that schools so widely different must have adopted
+diametrically opposite processes in composition.
+
+The novelist who transforms truth--immutable, uncompromising, and
+displeasing as it is--to extract from it an exceptional and delightful
+plot, must necessarily manipulate events without an exaggerated
+respect for probability, molding them to his will, dressing and
+arranging them so as to attract, excite, or affect the reader. The
+scheme of his romance is no more than a series of ingenious
+combinations, skillfully leading to the issue. The incidents are
+planned and graduated up to the culminating point and effect of the
+conclusion, which is the crowning and fatal result, satisfying the
+curiosity aroused from the first, closing the interest, and ending the
+story so completely that we have no further wish to know what happened
+on the morrow to the most engaging actors in it.
+
+The novelist who, on the other hand, proposes to give us an accurate
+picture of life, must carefully eschew any concatenation of events
+which might seem exceptional. His aim is not to tell a story to amuse
+us, or to appeal to our feelings, but to compel us to reflect, and to
+understand the occult and deeper meaning of events. By dint of seeing
+and meditating he has come to regard the world, facts, men, and things
+in a way peculiar to himself, which is the outcome of the sum total of
+his studious observation. It is this personal view of the world which
+he strives to communicate to us by reproducing it in a book. To make
+the spectacle of life as moving to us as it has been to him, he must
+bring it before our eyes with scrupulous exactitude. Hence he must
+construct his work with such skill, it must be so artful under so
+simple a guise, that it is impossible to detect and sketch the plan,
+or discern the writer's purpose.
+
+Instead of manipulating an adventure and working it out in such a way
+as to make it interesting to the last, he will take his actor or
+actors at a certain period of their lives, and lead them by natural
+stages to the next. In this way he will show either how men's minds
+are modified by the influence of their environment, or how their
+passions and sentiments are evolved; how they love or hate, how they
+struggle in every sphere of society, and how their interests
+clash--social interests, pecuniary interests, family interests,
+political interests. The skill of his plan will not consist in
+emotional power or charm, in an attractive opening or a stirring
+catastrophe, but in the happy grouping of small but constant facts
+from which the final purpose of the work may be discerned. If within
+three hundred pages he depicts ten years of a life so as to show what
+its individual and characteristic significance may have been in the
+midst of all the other human beings which surrounded it, he ought to
+know how to eliminate from among the numberless trivial incidents of
+daily life all which do not serve his end, and how to set in a special
+light all those which might have remained invisible to less
+clear-sighted observers, and which give his book caliber and value as
+a whole.
+
+It is intelligible that this method of construction, so unlike the old
+manner which was patent to all, must often mislead the critics, and
+that they will not all detect the subtle and secret wires--almost
+invisibly fine--which certain modern artists use instead of the one
+string formerly known as the "plot."
+
+In a word, while the novelist of yesterday preferred to relate the
+crises of life, the acute phases of the mind and heart, the novelist
+of to-day writes the history of the heart, soul, and intellect in
+their normal condition. To achieve the effects he aims at--that is to
+say, the sense of simple reality, and to point the artistic lesson he
+endeavors to draw from it--that is to say, a revelation of what his
+contemporary man is before his very eyes, he must bring forward no
+facts that are not irrefragible and invariable.
+
+But even when we place ourselves at the same point of view as these
+realistic artists, we may discuss and dispute their theory, which
+seems to be comprehensively stated in these words: "The whole Truth
+and nothing but the Truth." Since the end they have in view is to
+bring out the philosophy of certain constant and current facts, they
+must often correct events in favor of probability and to the detriment
+of truth; for
+
+"Le vrai peut quelquefois, n'etre pas le vraisemblable." (Truth may
+sometimes not seem probable.)
+
+The realist, if he is an artist, will endeavor not to show us a
+commonplace photograph of life, but to give us a presentment of it
+which shall be more complete, more striking, more cogent than reality
+itself. To tell everything is out of the question; it would require at
+least a volume for each day to enumerate the endless, insignificant
+incidents which crowd our existence. A choice must be made--and this
+is the first blow to the theory of "the whole truth."
+
+Life, moreover, is composed of the most dissimilar things, the most
+unforeseen, the most contradictory, the most incongruous; it is
+merciless, without sequence or connection, full of inexplicable,
+illogical, and contradictory catastrophes, such as can only be classed
+as miscellaneous facts. This is why the artist, having chosen his
+subject, can only select such characteristic details as are of use to
+it, from this life overladen with chances and trifles, and reject
+everything else, everything by the way.
+
+To give an instance from among a thousand. The number of persons who,
+every day, meet with an accidental death, all over the world, is very
+considerable. But how can we bring a tile onto the head of an
+important character, or fling him under the wheels of a vehicle in the
+middle of a story, under the pretext that accident must have its due?
+
+Again, in life there is no difference of foreground and distance, and
+events are sometimes hurried on, sometimes left to linger
+indefinitely. Art, on the contrary, consists in the employment of
+foresight, and elaboration in arranging skillful and ingenious
+transitions, in setting essential events in a strong light, simply by
+the craft of composition, and giving all else the degree of relief, in
+proportion to their importance, requisite to produce a convincing
+sense of the special truth to be conveyed.
+
+"Truth" in such work consists in producing a complete illusion by
+following the common logic of facts and not by transcribing them
+pell-mell, as they succeed each other.
+
+Whence I conclude that the higher order of Realists should rather call
+themselves Illusionists.
+
+How childish it is, indeed, to believe in this reality, since to each
+of us the truth is in his own mind, his own organs. Our own eyes and
+ears, taste and smell, create as many different truths as there are
+human beings on earth. And our brains, duly and differently informed
+by those organs, apprehend, analyze, and decide as differently as if
+each of us were a being of an alien race. Each of us, then, has simply
+his own illusion of the world--poetical, sentimental, cheerful,
+melancholy, foul, or gloomy, according to his nature. And the writer
+has no other mission than faithfully to reproduce this illusion, with
+all the elaborations of art which he may have learnt and have at his
+command. The illusion of beauty--which is merely a conventional term
+invented by man! The illusion of ugliness--which is a matter of
+varying opinion! The illusion of truth--never immutable! The illusion
+of depravity--which fascinates so many minds! All the great artists
+are those who can make other men see their own particular illusion.
+
+Then we must not be wroth with any theory, since each is simply the
+outcome, in generalizations, of a special temperament analyzing
+itself.
+
+Two of these theories have more particularly been the subject of
+discussion, and set up in opposition to each other instead of being
+admitted on an equal footing: that of the purely analytical novel,
+and that of the objective novel.
+
+The partisans of analysis require the writer to devote himself to
+indicating the smallest evolutions of a soul, and all the most secret
+motives of our every action, giving but a quite secondary importance
+to the act and fact in itself. It is but the goal, a simple milestone,
+the excuse for the book. According to them, these works, at once exact
+and visionary, in which imagination merges into observation, are to be
+written after the fashion in which a philosopher composes a treatise
+on psychology, seeking out causes in their remotest origin, telling
+the why and wherefore of every impulse, and detecting every reaction
+of the soul's movements under the promptings of interest, passion, or
+instinct.
+
+The partisans of objectivity--odious word--aiming, on the contrary, at
+giving us an exact presentment of all that happens in life, carefully
+avoid all complicated explanations, all disquisitions on motive, and
+confine themselves to let persons and events pass before our eyes. In
+their opinion, psychology should be concealed in the book, as it is in
+reality, under the facts of existence.
+
+The novel as conceived of on these lines gains in interest; there is
+more movement in the narrative, more color, more of the stir of life.
+
+Hence, instead of giving long explanations of the state of mind of an
+actor in the tale, the objective writer tries to discover the action
+or gesture which that state of mind must inevitably lead to in that
+personage, under certain given circumstances. And he makes him so
+demean himself from one end of the volume to the other, that all his
+actions, all his movements shall be the expression of his inmost
+nature, of all his thoughts, and all his impulses or hesitancies. Thus
+they conceal psychology instead of flaunting it; they use it as the
+skeleton of the work, just as the invisible bony framework is the
+skeleton of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does
+not display our bones.
+
+To me it seems that the novel executed on this principle gains also in
+sincerity. It is, in the first place, more probable, for the persons
+we see moving about us do not divulge to us the motives from which
+they act.
+
+We must also take into account the fact that, even if by close
+observation of men and women we can so exactly ascertain their
+characters as to predict their behavior under almost any
+circumstances, if we can say decisively: "Such a man, of such a
+temperament, in such a case, will do this or that"; yet it does not
+follow that we could lay a finger, one by one, on all the secret
+evolutions of his mind--which is not our own; all the mysterious
+pleadings of his instincts--which are not the same as ours; all the
+mingled promptings of his nature--in which the organs, nerves, blood,
+and flesh are different from ours.
+
+However great the genius of a gentle, delicate man, guileless of
+passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely
+transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent
+man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every
+vice, as to understand and delineate the inmost impulses and
+sensations of a being so unlike himself, even though he may very
+adequately foresee and relate all the actions of his life.
+
+In short, the man who writes pure psychology can do no more than put
+himself in the place of all his puppets in the various situations in
+which he places them. It is impossible that he should change his
+organs, which are the sole intermediary between external life and
+ourselves, which constrain us by their perceptions, circumscribe our
+sensibilities, and create in each of us a soul essentially dissimilar
+to all those about us. Our purview and knowledge of the world, and our
+ideas of life, are acquired by the aid of our senses, and we cannot
+help transferring them, in some degree, to all the personages whose
+secret and unknown nature we propose to reveal. Thus, it is always
+ourselves that we disclose in the body of a king or an assassin, a
+robber or an honest man, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl, or a coarse
+market woman; for we are compelled to put the problem in this personal
+form: "If _I_ were a king, a murderer, a prostitute, a nun, or a
+market woman, what should _I_ do, what should _I_ think, how should
+_I_ act?" We can only vary our characters by altering the age, the
+sex, the social position, and all the circumstances of life, of that
+_ego_ which nature has in fact inclosed in an insurmountable barrier
+of organs of sense. Skill consists in not betraying this _ego_ to the
+reader, under the various masks which we employ to cover it.
+
+Still, though on the point of absolute exactitude, pure psychological
+analysis is impregnable, it can nevertheless produce works of art as
+fine as any other method of work.
+
+Here, for instance we have the _Symbolists_. And why not? Their
+artistic dream is a worthy one; and they have this especially
+interesting feature: that they know and proclaim the extreme
+difficulty of art.
+
+And, indeed, a man must be very daring or foolish to write at all
+nowadays. And so many and such various masters of the craft, of such
+multifarious genius, what remains to be done that has not been done,
+or what to say that has not been said? Which of us all can boast of
+having written a page, a phrase, which is not to be found--or
+something very like it--in some other book? When we read, we who are
+so soaked in (French) literature that our whole body seems as it were
+a mere compound of words, do we ever light on a line, a thought, which
+is not familiar to us, or of which we have not had at least some vague
+forecast?
+
+The man who only tries to amuse his public by familiar methods, writes
+confidently, in his candid mediocrity, works intended only for the
+ignorant and idle crowd. But those who are conscious of the weight of
+centuries of past literature, whom nothing satisfies, whom everything
+disgusts because they dream of something better, to whom the bloom is
+off everything, and who always are impressed with the uselessness, the
+commonness of their own achievements--these come to regard literary
+art as a thing unattainable and mysterious, scarcely to be detected
+save in a few pages by the greatest masters.
+
+A score of phrases suddenly discovered thrill us to the heart like a
+startling revelation; but the lines which follow are just like all
+other verse, the further flow of prose is like all other prose.
+
+Men of genius, no doubt, escape this anguish and torment because they
+bear within themselves an irresistible creative power. They do not sit
+in judgment on themselves. The rest of us, who are no more than
+persevering and conscientious workers, can only contend against
+invincible discouragement by unremitting effort.
+
+Two men by their simple and lucid teaching gave me the strength to try
+again and again: Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.
+
+If I here speak of myself in connection with them, it is because their
+counsels, as summed up in a few lines, may prove useful to some young
+writers who may be less self-confident than most are when they make
+their _debut_ in print. Bouilhet, whom I first came to know somewhat
+intimately about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert,
+by dint of telling me that a hundred lines--or less--if they are
+without a flaw and contain the very essence of the talent and
+originality of even a second-rate man, are enough to establish an
+artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a
+thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of
+lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a
+subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the
+production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it.
+Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever
+left us more than one such volume; and that needful above all else is
+the good fortune which leads us to hit upon and discern, amid the
+multifarious matter which offers itself for selection, the subject
+which will absorb all our faculties, all that is of worth in us, all
+our artistic powers.
+
+At a later date, Flaubert, whom I had occasionally met, took a fancy
+to me. I ventured to show him a few attempts. He read them kindly and
+replied: "I cannot tell whether you will have any talent. What you
+have brought me proves a certain intelligence; but never forget this,
+young man: talent--as Chateaubriand[1] says--is nothing but long
+patience. Go and work."
+
+[Footnote 1: The idea did not originate with Chateaubriand.]
+
+I worked; and I often went to see him, feeling that he liked me, for
+he had taken to calling me, in jest, his disciple. For seven years I
+wrote verses, I wrote tales, I even wrote a villainous play. Nothing
+of all this remains. The master read it all; then, the next Sunday
+while we breakfasted together, he would give me his criticisms,
+driving into me by degrees two or three principles which sum up the
+drift of his long and patient exhortations: "If you have any
+originality," said he, "you must above all things bring it out; if you
+have not you must acquire it."
+
+Talent is long patience.
+
+Everything you want to express must be considered so long, and so
+attentively, as to enable you to find some aspect of it which no one
+has yet seen and expressed. There is an unexplored side to everything,
+because we are wont never to use our eyes but with the memory of what
+others before us have thought of the things we see. The smallest thing
+has something unknown in it; we must find it. To describe a blazing
+fire, a tree in a plain, we must stand face to face with that fire or
+that tree, till to us they are wholly unlike any other fire or tree.
+Thus we may become original.
+
+Then, having established the truth that there are not in the whole
+world two grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or two noses
+absolutely alike, he would make me describe in a few sentences some
+person or object, in such a way as to define it exactly, and
+distinguish it from every other of the same race or species.
+
+"When you pass a grocer sitting in his doorway," he would say, "a
+porter smoking his pipe, or a cab stand, show me that grocer and that
+porter, their attitude and their whole physical aspect, including, as
+indicated by the skill of the portrait, their whole moral nature, in
+such a way that I could never mistake them for any other grocer or
+porter; and by a single word give me to understand wherein one cab
+horse differs from fifty others before or behind it."
+
+I have explained his notions of style at greater length in another
+place; they bear a marked relation to the theory of observation I have
+just laid down. Whatever the thing we wish to say, there is but one
+word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one
+adjective to qualify it. We must seek till we find this noun, this
+verb, and this adjective, and never be content with getting very near
+it, never allow ourselves to play tricks, even happy ones, or have
+recourse to sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The subtlest
+things may be rendered and suggested by applying the hint conveyed in
+Boileau's line:
+
+"D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir." "He taught the power
+of a word put in the right place."
+
+There is no need for an eccentric vocabulary to formulate every shade
+of thought--the complicated, multifarious, and outlandish words which
+are put upon us nowadays in the name of artistic writing; but every
+modification of the value of a word by the place it fills must be
+distinguished with extreme clearness. Give us fewer nouns, verbs, and
+adjectives, with almost inscrutable shades of meaning, and let us have
+a greater variety of phrases, more variously constructed, ingeniously
+divided, full of sonority and learned rhythm. Let us strive to be
+admirable in style, rather than curious in collecting rare words.
+
+It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make
+it express everything--even what it does not say, to fill it full of
+implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new
+expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which
+have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are
+as a dead language.
+
+The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected
+writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the
+limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has
+remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and
+impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear,
+logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity,
+or corruption.
+
+Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make
+rain and hail fall on the _cleanliness_ of the window panes, may throw
+stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may
+indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never hurt
+simplicity--which has none.
+
+GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
+
+LA GUILLETTE, ETRETAT, September, 1887.
+
+
+
+
+PIERRE ET JEAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained
+motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water,
+while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea.
+
+Madame Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Madame Rosemilly,
+who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning
+her head to look at her husband, said:
+
+"Well, well! Gerome."
+
+And the old fellow replied in a fury:
+
+"They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men
+should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too
+late."
+
+His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his
+forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and
+Jean remarked:
+
+"You are not very polite to our guest, father."
+
+M. Roland was abashed, and apologized.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Madame Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I
+invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I
+feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish."
+
+Madame Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at
+the wide horizon of cliff and sea.
+
+"You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.
+
+But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he
+glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three
+men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy
+scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in
+the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted
+it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he
+might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became
+more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome
+reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old
+fisherman sniffed it eagerly, as we smell at roses, and exclaimed:
+
+"Cristi! But they are fresh enough!" and he went on: "How many did you
+pull out, doctor?"
+
+His eldest son, Pierre, a man of thirty, with black whiskers trimmed
+square like a lawyer's, his moustache and beard shaved away, replied:
+
+"Oh, not many; three or four."
+
+The father turned to the younger. "And you, Jean?" said he.
+
+Jean, a tall fellow, much younger than his brother, fair, with a full
+beard, smiled and murmured:
+
+"Much the same as Pierre--four or five."
+
+Every time they told the same fib, which delighted father Roland. He
+had hitched his line round a row-lock, and folding his arms he
+announced:
+
+"I will never again try to fish after noon. After ten in the morning
+it is all over. The lazy brutes will not bite; they are taking their
+siesta in the sun." And he looked round at the sea on all sides, with
+the satisfied air of a proprietor.
+
+He was a retired jeweler who had been led by an inordinate love of
+seafaring and fishing to fly from the shop as soon as he had made
+enough money to live in modest comfort on the interest of his savings.
+He retired to le Havre, bought a boat, and became an amateur skipper.
+His two sons, Pierre et Jean, had remained at Paris to continue their
+studies, and came for the holidays from time to time to share their
+father's amusements.
+
+On leaving school, Pierre, the elder, five years older than Jean, had
+felt a vocation to various professions and had tried half a dozen in
+succession, but, soon disgusted with each in turn, he started afresh
+with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to
+work with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually
+short course of study, by a special remission of time from the
+minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate,
+full of Utopias and philosophical notions.
+
+Jean, who was as fair as his brother was dark, as deliberate as his
+brother was vehement, as gentle as his brother was unforgiving, had
+quietly gone through his studies for the law and had just taken his
+diploma as a licentiate, at the time when Pierre had taken his in
+medicine. So they were now having a little rest at home, and both
+looked forward to settling at Havre if they could find a satisfactory
+opening.
+
+But a vague jealousy, one of those dormant jealousies which grow up
+between brothers or sisters and slowly ripen till they burst, on the
+occasion of a marriage perhaps, or of some good fortune happening to
+one of them, kept them on the alert in a sort of brotherly and
+non-aggressive animosity. They were fond of each other, it is true,
+but they watched each other. Pierre, five years old when Jean was
+born, had looked with the eyes of a little petted animal at that other
+little animal which had suddenly come to lie in his father's and
+mother's arms and to be loved and fondled by them. Jean, from his
+birth, had always been a pattern of sweetness, gentleness, and good
+temper, and Pierre had by degrees begun to chafe at everlastingly
+hearing the praises of this great lad whose sweetness in his eyes was
+indolence, whose gentleness was stupidity, and whose kindliness was
+blindness. His parents, whose dream for their sons was some
+respectable and undistinguished calling, blamed him for so often
+changing his mind, for his fits of enthusiasm, his abortive
+beginnings, and all his ineffectual impulses toward generous ideas and
+the liberal professions.
+
+Since he had grown to manhood they no longer said in so many words:
+"Look at Jean and follow his example," but every time he heard them
+say "Jean did this--Jean does that," he understood their meaning and
+the hint the words conveyed.
+
+Their mother, an orderly soul, a thrifty and rather sentimental woman
+of the middle class, with the soul of a soft-hearted book-keeper, was
+constantly quenching the little rivalries between her two big sons to
+which the petty events of their life in common gave rise day by day.
+Another little circumstance, too, just now disturbed her peace of
+mind, and she was in fear of some complication; for in the course of
+the winter, while her boys were finishing their studies, each in his
+own line, she had made the acquaintance of a neighbor, Mme. Rosemilly,
+the widow of a captain of a merchantman who had died at sea two years
+before. The young widow--quite young, only three-and-twenty--a woman
+of strong intellect who knew life by instinct as the free animals do,
+as though she had seen, gone through, understood, and weighed every
+conceivable contingency, and judged them with a wholesome, strict, and
+benevolent mind, had fallen into the habit of calling to work or chat
+for an hour in the evening with these friendly neighbors, who would
+give her a cup of tea.
+
+Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question
+their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of
+him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation,
+like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects
+death.
+
+The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home
+in the house forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm
+her than from the desire to cut each other out.
+
+Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of
+them might win the young widow, for she was rich; and then she would
+have liked that the other should not be grieved.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair,
+fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring,
+pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least answer to
+the sober method of her mind.
+
+She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an
+affinity of nature. This preference, however, she betrayed only by an
+almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by
+occasionally asking his opinion. She seemed to guess that Jean's views
+would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably be
+different. When she spoke of the doctor's ideas on politics, art,
+philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say: "Your crotchets." Then
+he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an
+indictment against woman--all women, poor weak things.
+
+Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his
+fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to
+put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master
+mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and
+with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris,
+known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.
+
+But one evening of the week before, as Mme. Rosemilly, who had been
+dining with them, remarked, "It must be great fun to go out fishing,"
+the jeweler, flattered on his passion, and suddenly fired with the
+wish to impart it, to make a convert after the manner of priests,
+exclaimed: "Would you like to come?"
+
+"To be sure I should."
+
+"Next Tuesday?"
+
+"Yes, next Tuesday."
+
+"Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?"
+
+She exclaimed in horror:
+
+"No, indeed: that is too much."
+
+He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
+However, he said:
+
+"At what hour can you be ready?"
+
+"Well--at nine?"
+
+"Not before?"
+
+"No, not before. Even that is very early."
+
+The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when
+the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers
+had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything
+there and then.
+
+So on the following Tuesday the _Pearl_ had dropped anchor under the
+white rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till mid-day, then they
+had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and
+then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that
+Mme. Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea,
+and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of
+unreasonable annoyance, that vehement "Tschah!" which applied as much
+to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
+
+Now he contemplated the spoil--his fish--with the joyful thrill of a
+miser; and seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting
+low: "Well, boys," said he, "suppose we turn homeward."
+
+The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks
+and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
+
+Roland stood up to look out like a captain:
+
+"No wind," said he. "You will have to pull, young 'uns."
+
+And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
+
+"Here comes the packet from Southampton."
+
+Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and
+sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against
+the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they
+could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a
+distance. And to the southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of
+them, could be seen, all converging toward the Havre pier, now
+scarcely visible as a white streak with the light-house, upright, like
+a horn, at the end of it.
+
+Roland asked: "Is not the _Normandie_ due to-day?" And Jean replied:
+
+"Yes, to-day."
+
+"Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there."
+
+The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought
+the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
+
+"Yes, yes, there she is. I know her two funnels. Would you like to
+look, Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+She took the telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon,
+without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could
+distinguish nothing--nothing but blue, with a colored halo round it, a
+circular rainbow--and then all manner of queer things, winking
+eclipses which made her feel sick.
+
+She said as she returned the glass:
+
+"I never could see with that thing. It used to put my husband in quite
+a rage; he would stand for hours at the window watching the ships
+pass."
+
+Old Roland, much put out, retorted:
+
+"Then it must be some defect in your eye, for my glass is a very good
+one."
+
+Then he offered it to his wife.
+
+"Would you like to look?"
+
+"No, thank you. I know beforehand that I could not see through it."
+
+Mme. Roland, a woman of eight-and-forty, but who did not look it,
+seemed to be enjoying this excursion and this waning day more than any
+of the party.
+
+Her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show streaks of white.
+She had a calm, reasonable face, a kind and happy way with her which
+it was a pleasure to see. Her son Pierre was wont to say that she knew
+the value of money, but this did not hinder her from enjoying the
+delights of dreaming. She was fond of reading, of novels and poetry,
+not for their value as works of art, but for the sake of the tender
+melancholy mood they would induce in her. A line of poetry, often but
+a poor one, often a bad one, would touch the little chord, as she
+expressed it, and give her the sense of some mysterious desire almost
+realized. And she delighted in these faint emotions which brought a
+little flutter to her soul, otherwise as strictly kept as a ledger.
+
+Since settling at Havre she had become perceptibly stouter, and her
+figure, which had been very supple and slight, had grown heavier.
+
+This day on the sea had been delightful to her. Her husband, without
+being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his
+shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give
+an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of
+strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent,
+though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the
+turmoil, of scenes, of useless explanations, always gave way and never
+asked for anything; for a very long time she had not ventured to ask
+Roland to take her out in the boat. So she had joyfully hailed this
+opportunity, and was keenly enjoying the rare and new pleasure.
+
+From the moment when they started she surrendered herself completely
+body and soul, to the soft, gliding motion over the waves. She was not
+thinking; her mind was not wandering through either memories or hopes;
+it seemed to her as though her heart, like her body, was floating on
+something soft and liquid and delicious which rocked and lulled it.
+
+When their father gave the word to return, "Come, take your places at
+the oars!" she smiled to see her sons, her two great boys, take off
+their jackets and roll up their shirt-sleeves on their bare arms.
+
+Pierre, who was the nearest to the two women, took the stroke oar,
+Jean the other, and they sat waiting till the skipper should say:
+"Give way!" For he insisted on everything being done according to
+strict rule.
+
+Both at once, as if by a single effort, they dipped the oars and lay
+back, pulling with all their might, and then a struggle began to
+display their strength. They had come out easily, under sail, but the
+breeze had died away, and the masculine pride of the two brothers was
+suddenly aroused by the prospect of measuring their powers. When they
+went out alone with their father they plied the oars without any
+steering, for Roland would be busy getting the lines ready, while he
+kept a lookout in the boat's course, guiding it by a sign or a word:
+"Easy, Jean, and you, Pierre, put your back into it." Or he would say,
+"Now, then, number one; come, number two--a little elbow grease."
+Then the one who had been dreaming pulled harder, the one who had got
+excited eased down, and the boat's head came round.
+
+But to-day they meant to display their biceps. Pierre's arms were
+hairy, somewhat lean but sinewy; Jean's were round and white and rosy,
+and the knot of muscles moved under the skin.
+
+At first Pierre had the advantage. With his teeth set, his brow knit,
+his legs rigid, his hands clenched on the oar, he made it bend from
+end to end at every stroke, and the _Pearl_ was veering landward.
+Father Roland, sitting in the bows, so as to leave the stern seat to
+the two women, wasted his breath shouting, "Easy, number one; pull
+harder, number two!" Pierre pulled harder in his frenzy, and "number
+two" could not keep time with his wild stroke.
+
+At last the skipper cried: "Stop her!" The two oars were lifted
+simultaneously, and then by his father's orders Jean pulled alone for
+a few minutes. But from that moment he had it all his own way; he grew
+eager and warmed to his work, while Pierre, out of breath and
+exhausted by his first vigorous spurt, was lax and panting. Four times
+running father Roland made them stop while the elder took breath, so
+as to get the boat into her right course again. Then the doctor
+humiliated and fuming, his forehead dropping with sweat, his cheeks
+white, stammered out:
+
+"I cannot think what has come over me; I have a stitch in my side. I
+started very well, but it has pulled me up."
+
+Jean asked: "Shall I pull alone with both oars for a time?"
+
+"No, thanks, it will go off."
+
+And their mother, somewhat vexed, said:
+
+"Why, Pierre, what rhyme or reason is there in getting in such a
+state. You are not a child."
+
+And he shrugged his shoulders and set to once more.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly pretended not to see, not to understand, not to hear.
+Her fair head went back with an engaging little jerk every time the
+boat moved forward, making the fine wayward hairs flutter about her
+temples.
+
+But father Roland presently called out:
+
+"Look, the _Prince Albert_ is catching us up!"
+
+They all looked round. Long and low in the water, with her two raking
+funnels and two yellow paddle-boxes like two round cheeks, the
+Southampton packet came plowing on at full steam, crowded with
+passengers under open parasols. Its hurrying, noisy paddle-wheels
+beating up the water, which fell again in foam, gave it an appearance
+of haste as of a courier pressed for time, and the upright stem cut
+through the water, throwing up two thin translucent waves which glided
+off along the hull.
+
+When it had come quite near the _Pearl_, father Roland lifted his hat,
+the ladies shook their handkerchiefs, and half a dozen parasols
+eagerly waved on board the steamboat responded to this salute as she
+went on her way, leaving behind her a few broad undulations on the
+still and glassy surface of the sea.
+
+There were other vessels, each with its smoky cap, coming in from
+every part of the horizon toward the short white jetty, which
+swallowed them up, one after another, like a mouth. And the fishing
+barks and lighter craft with broad sails and slender masts, stealing
+across the sky in tow of inconspicuous tugs, were coming in, faster
+and slower, toward the devouring ogre, who from time to time seemed to
+have had a surfeit, and spewed out to the open sea another fleet of
+steamers, brigs, schooners, and three-masted vessels with their
+top-weight of tangled antlers. The hurrying steam-ships flew off to
+the right and left over the smooth bosom of the ocean, while sailing
+vessels, cast off by the pilot-tugs which had hauled them out, lay
+motionless, dressing themselves from the mainmast to the fore-top in
+canvas, white or brown, and ruddy in the setting sun.
+
+Mme. Roland, with her eyes half-shut, murmured: "Good heavens, how
+beautiful the sea is!"
+
+And Mme. Rosemilly replied with a long sigh, which, however, had no
+sadness in it:
+
+"Yes, but it is sometimes very cruel, all the same."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Look, there is the _Normandie_ just going in. A big ship, isn't she?"
+
+Then he described the coast opposite, far, far away, on the other side
+of the mouth of the Seine--that mouth extended over twenty kilometers,
+said he. He pointed out Villerville, Trouville, Houlgate, Luc,
+Arromanches, the little river of Caen, and the rocks of Calvados which
+make the coast unsafe as far as Cherbourg. Then he enlarged on the
+question of the sand banks in the Seine, which shift at every tide so
+that the pilots of Quilleboeuf are at fault if they do not survey
+the channel every day. He bid them notice how the town of Havre
+divided Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped
+down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of
+Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined,
+cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to
+Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat,
+Fecamp, Saint-Valery, Treport, Dieppe, and the rest.
+
+The two women did not listen. Torpid with comfort and impressed by the
+sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild
+beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the
+soothing and gorgeous sunset. Roland alone talked on without end; he
+was one of those whom nothing can disturb. Women, whose nerves are
+more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of
+useless speech is as irritating as an insult.
+
+Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the
+_Pearl_ was making for the harbor, a tiny thing among those huge
+vessels.
+
+When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there,
+gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way
+into the town. A large crowd--the crowd which haunts the pier every
+day at high tide--was also drifting homeward. Mme. Roland and Mme.
+Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three men. As they went up the
+rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner's or
+jeweler's shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making
+their comments they went on again. In front of the Place de la Bourse
+Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of
+vessels--the _Bassin du Commerce_, with other docks beyond, where the
+huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five
+deep. And masts innumerable; along several kilometers of quays the
+endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great
+gap in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest. Above this
+leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like
+a falling stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a
+pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there
+bird's-nesting.
+
+"Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may
+end the day together?" said Mme. Roland to her friend.
+
+"To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.
+It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening."
+
+Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the
+young woman's indifference, muttered to himself: "Well, the widow is
+taking root now, it would seem." For some days past he had spoken of
+her as "the widow." The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean
+merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and
+offensive.
+
+The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold
+of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor
+and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine,
+a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted
+to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened
+the door, went upstairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room,
+which was on the first floor, and then said:
+
+"A gentleman called--three times."
+
+Old Roland, who never spoke to her without shouting and swearing,
+cried out:
+
+"Who do you say called, in the devil's name?"
+
+She never winced at her master's roaring voice, and replied:
+
+"A gentleman from the lawyer's."
+
+"What lawyer?"
+
+"Why M'sieu' Canu--who else?"
+
+"And what did this gentleman say?"
+
+"That M'sieu' Canu will call in himself in the course of the evening."
+
+Maitre Lecanu was M. Roland's lawyer, and in a way his friend,
+managing his business for him. For him to send word that he would call
+in the evening, something urgent and important must be in the wind;
+and the four Rolands looked at each other, disturbed by the
+announcement as folks of small fortune are wont to be at any
+intervention of a lawyer, with its suggestions of contracts,
+inheritance, law-suits--all sorts of desirable or formidable
+contingencies. The father, after a few moments of silence, muttered:
+
+"What on earth can it mean?"
+
+Mme. Rosemilly began to laugh.
+
+"Why, a legacy, of course. I am sure of it. I bring good luck."
+
+But they did not expect the death of any one who might leave them
+anything.
+
+Mme. Roland who had a good memory for relationships, began to think
+over all their connections on her husband's side and on her own, to
+trace up pedigrees and the ramifications of cousinship.
+
+Before even taking off her bonnet she said:
+
+"I say, father" (she called her husband "Father" at home, and
+sometimes "Monsieur Roland" before strangers), "tell me, do you
+remember who it was that Joseph Lebru married for the second time?"
+
+"Yes--a little girl named Dumenil, stationer's daughter."
+
+"Had they any children?"
+
+"I should think so! four or five at least."
+
+"Not from that quarter, then."
+
+She was quite eager already in her search; she caught at the hope of
+some added ease dropping from the sky. But Pierre, who was very fond
+of his mother, who knew her to be somewhat visionary and feared she
+might be disappointed, a little grieved, a little saddened if the news
+were bad instead of good, checked her:
+
+"Do not get excited, mother; there is no rich American uncle. For my
+part I should sooner fancy that it is about a marriage for Jean."
+
+Every one was surprised at the suggestion, and Jean was a little
+ruffled by his brother's having spoken of it before Madame Rosemilly.
+
+"And why for me rather than for you? The hypothesis is very
+disputable. You are the elder; you, therefore, would be the first to
+be thought of. Besides, I do not wish to marry."
+
+Pierre smiled sneeringly:
+
+"Are you in love, then?"
+
+And the other, much put out, retorted:
+
+"Is it necessary that a man should be in love because he does not care
+to marry yet?"
+
+"Ah, there you are! That 'yet' sets it right; you are waiting."
+
+"Granted that I am waiting, if you will have it so."
+
+But old Roland who had been listening and cogitating, suddenly hit
+upon the most probable solution.
+
+"Bless me! what fools we are to be racking our brains. Maitre Lecanu
+is our very good friend; he knows that Pierre is looking out for a
+medical partnership and Jean for a lawyer's office, and he has found
+something to suit one of you."
+
+This was so obvious and likely that every one accepted it.
+
+"Dinner is ready," said the maid. And they all hurried off to their
+rooms to wash their hands before sitting down to table.
+
+Ten minutes after they were at dinner in the little dining-room on the
+ground-floor.
+
+At first they were silent; but presently Roland began again in
+amazement at this lawyer's visit.
+
+"For after all, why did he not write? Why should he have sent his
+clerk three times? Why is he coming himself?"
+
+Pierre thought it quite natural.
+
+"An immediate decision is required, no doubt; and perhaps there are
+certain confidential conditions which it does not do to put into
+writing."
+
+Still, they were all puzzled, and all four a little annoyed at having
+invited a stranger, who would be in the way of their discussing and
+deciding on what should be done.
+
+They had just gone upstairs again when the lawyer was announced.
+Roland flew to meet him:
+
+"Good-evening, my dear Maitre," said he, giving his visitor the title
+which in France is the official prefix to the name of every lawyer.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly rose.
+
+"I am going," she said. "I am very tired."
+
+A faint attempt was made to detain her; but she would not consent, and
+went home without either of the three men offering to escort her as
+they always had done.
+
+Mme. Roland did the honors eagerly to their visitor.
+
+"A cup of coffee, Monsieur?"
+
+"No, thank you. I have this moment done dinner."
+
+"A cup of tea, then?"
+
+"Thank you, I will not refuse presently. First we must attend to
+business."
+
+The total silence which succeeded this remark was broken only by the
+regular ticking of the clock, and below stairs the clatter of
+saucepans which the girl was cleaning--too stupid even to listen at
+the door.
+
+The lawyer went on:
+
+"Did you, in Paris, know a certain M. Marechal--Leon Marechal?"
+
+M. and Mme. Roland both exclaimed at once: "I should think so!"
+
+"He was a friend of yours?"
+
+Roland replied: "Our best friend, monsieur, but a fanatic for Paris;
+never to be got away from the boulevard. He was head clerk in the
+exchequer office. I have never seen him since I left the capital, and
+latterly we had ceased writing to each other. When people are far
+apart, you know--"
+
+The lawyer gravely put in:
+
+"M. Marechal is deceased."
+
+Both man and wife responded with the little movement of pained
+surprise, genuine or false, but always ready, with which such news is
+received.
+
+Maitre Lecanu went on:
+
+"My colleague in Paris has just communicated to me the main item of
+his will, by which he makes your son Jean--Monsieur Jean Roland--his
+sole legatee."
+
+They were all too much amazed to utter a single word. Mme. Roland was
+the first to control her emotions and stammered out:
+
+"Good heavens! Poor Leon--our poor friend! Dear me! Dear me! Dead!"
+
+The tears started to her eyes, a woman's silent tears, drops of grief
+from her very soul, which trickle down her cheeks and seem so very
+sad, being so clear. But Roland was thinking less of the loss than of
+the prospect announced. Still, he dared not at once inquire into the
+clauses of the will and the amount of the fortune, so to work around
+to these interesting facts he asked.
+
+"And what did he die of, poor Marechal?"
+
+Maitre Lecanu did not know in the least.
+
+"All I know is," said he, "that, dying without any direct heirs, he
+has left the whole of his fortune--about twenty thousand francs a year
+($3,840) in three per cents--to your second son, whom he has known
+from his birth up, and judges worthy of the legacy. If M. Jean should
+refuse the money, it is to go to the foundling hospitals."
+
+Old Roland could not conceal his delight and exclaimed:
+
+"Sacristi! It is the thought of a kind heart. And if I had no heir I
+would not have forgotten him; he was a true friend."
+
+The lawyer smiled.
+
+"I was very glad," he said, "to announce the event to you myself. It
+is always a pleasure to be the bearer of good news."
+
+It had not struck him that this good news was that of the death of a
+friend, of Roland's best friend; and the old man himself had suddenly
+forgotten the intimacy he had just spoken of with so much conviction.
+
+Only Mme. Roland and her sons still looked mournful. She, indeed, was
+still shedding a few tears, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief,
+which she then pressed to her lips to smother her deep sobs.
+
+The doctor murmured:
+
+"He was a good fellow, very affectionate. He often invited us to dine
+with him--my brother and me."
+
+Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome
+fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it
+to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner.
+Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long
+meditation he could only say this:
+
+"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I
+went to see him."
+
+But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop--galloping round
+this inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking
+behind the door which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word
+of consent.
+
+"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
+lawsuit--no one to dispute it?"
+
+Maitre Lecanu seemed quite easy.
+
+"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
+Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
+
+"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"
+
+"Perfectly clear."
+
+"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"
+
+"All."
+
+Suddenly the old jeweler had an impulse of shame--obscure,
+instinctive, and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and
+he added:
+
+"You understand when I ask all these questions so immediately it is to
+save my son disagreeables which he might not foresee. Sometimes there
+are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
+himself in an inextricable thorn bush. After all, I am not the
+heir--but I think first of the little 'un."
+
+They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
+one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.
+
+Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some
+remote fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and
+of which she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:
+
+"Were you not saying that our poor friend Marechal had left his
+fortune to my little Jean?"
+
+"Yes, madame."
+
+And she went on simply:
+
+"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."
+
+Roland had risen.
+
+"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
+acceptance?"
+
+"No--no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
+if that suits you."
+
+"Yes, to be sure--yes, indeed, I should think so."
+
+Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
+tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
+chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
+mother, she said:
+
+"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"
+
+"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."
+
+The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in
+deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have
+been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a
+voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen
+doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families
+never get washed. A third time she came in with the sugar basin and
+cups; then she departed to heat the water. They sat waiting.
+
+No one could talk; they had too much to think about and nothing to
+say. Mme. Roland alone attempted a few commonplace remarks. She gave
+an account of the fishing excursion, and sang the praises of the
+_Pearl_ and of Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+"Charming! charming!" the lawyer said again and again.
+
+Roland, leaning against the marble mantelshelf as if it were winter
+and the fire burning, with his hands in his pockets and his lips
+puckered for a whistle, could not keep still, tortured by the
+invincible desire to give vent to his delight. The two brothers, in
+two armchairs that matched, one on each side of the center-table,
+stared in front of them, in similar attitudes full of dissimilar
+expression.
+
+At last the tea appeared. The lawyer took a cup, sugared it, and drank
+it, after having crumbled into it a little cake which was too hard to
+crunch. Then he rose, shook hands, and departed.
+
+"Then it is understood," repeated Roland. "To-morrow, at your place,
+at two?"
+
+"Quite so. To-morrow, at two."
+
+Jean had not spoken a word.
+
+When their guest had gone, silence fell again till father Roland
+clapped his two hands on his younger son's shoulders, crying:
+
+"Well, you devilish lucky dog! You don't embrace me!"
+
+Then Jean smiled. He embraced his father, saying:
+
+"It had not struck me as indispensable."
+
+The old man was beside himself with glee. He walked about the room,
+strummed on the furniture with his clumsy nails, turned about on his
+heels, and kept saying:
+
+"What luck! what luck! Now, that is really what I call luck!"
+
+Pierre asked:
+
+"Then you used to know this Marechal well?"
+
+And his father replied:
+
+"I believe you! Why, he used to spend every evening at our house.
+Surely you remember he used to fetch you from school on half-holidays,
+and often took you back again after dinner. Why, the very day when
+Jean was born it was he who went for the doctor. He had been
+breakfasting with us when your mother was taken ill. Of course we knew
+at once what it meant, and he set off post-haste. In his hurry he took
+my hat instead of his own. I remember that because we had a good laugh
+over it afterward. It is very likely that he may have thought of that
+when he was dying, and as he had no heir he may have said to himself:
+'I remember helping to bring that youngster into the world, so I will
+leave him my savings.'"
+
+Mme. Roland, sunk in a deep chair, seemed lost in reminiscences once
+more. She murmured, as though she were thinking aloud:
+
+"Ah, he was a good friend, very devoted, very faithful, a rare soul in
+these days."
+
+Jean got up.
+
+"I shall go out for a little walk," he said.
+
+His father was surprised and tried to keep him; they had much to talk
+about, plans to be made, decisions to be formed. But the young man
+insisted, declaring that he had an engagement. Besides, there would be
+time for settling everything before he came into possession of his
+inheritance. So he went away, for he wished to be alone to reflect.
+Pierre, on his part, said that he too was going out, and after a few
+minutes followed his brother.
+
+As soon as he was alone with his wife, father Roland took her in his
+arms, kissed her a dozen times on each cheek, and replying to a
+reproach she had often brought against him, said:
+
+"You see, my dearest, it would have been of no good to stay any longer
+in Paris and work for the children till I dropped, instead of coming
+here to recruit my health, since fortune drops on us from the skies."
+
+She was quite serious.
+
+"It drops from the skies on Jean," she said. "But Pierre?"
+
+"Pierre? But he is a doctor; he will make plenty of money; besides,
+his brother will surely do something for him."
+
+"No, he would not take it. Besides, this legacy is for Jean, only for
+Jean. Pierre will find himself at a great disadvantage."
+
+The old fellow seemed perplexed: "Well, then, we will leave him rather
+more in our will."
+
+"No; that again would not be quite just."
+
+"Drat it all!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do in the matter?
+You always hit on a whole heap of disagreeable ideas. You must spoil
+all my pleasures. Well, I am going to bed. Good-night. All the same, I
+call it good luck, jolly good luck!"
+
+And he went off, delighted in spite of everything, and without a word
+of regret for the friend so generous in his death.
+
+Mme. Roland sat thinking again, in front of the lamp which was burning
+out.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+As soon as he got out, Pierre made his way to the Rue de Paris, the
+high-street of Havre, brightly lighted up, lively and noisy. The
+rather sharp air of the seacoast kissed his face, and he walked
+slowly, his stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. He was
+ill at ease, oppressed, out of heart, as one is after hearing
+unpleasant tidings. He was not distressed by any definite thought, and
+he would have been puzzled to account, on the spur of the moment, for
+this dejection of spirit and heaviness of limb. He was hurt somewhere,
+without knowing where; somewhere within him there was a pin-point of
+pain--one of these almost imperceptible wounds which we cannot lay a
+finger on, but which incommode us, tire us, depress us, irritate us--a
+slight and occult pang, as it were a small seed of distress.
+
+When he reached the square in front of the theater, he was attracted
+by the lights in the Cafe Tortoni, and slowly bent his steps to the
+dazzling facade; but just as he was going in he reflected that he
+would meet friends there and acquaintances--people he would be
+obliged to talk to; and fierce repugnance surged up in him for this
+commonplace good-fellowship over coffee cups and liqueur glasses. So,
+retracing his steps, he went back to the high-street leading to the
+harbor.
+
+"Where shall I go?" he asked himself, trying to think of a spot he
+liked which would agree with his frame of mind. He could not think of
+one, for being alone made him feel fractious, yet he could not bear to
+meet any one. As he came out on the Grand Quay he hesitated once more;
+then he turned toward the pier; he had chosen solitude.
+
+Going close by a bench on the breakwater he sat down, tired already of
+walking and out of humor with his stroll before he had taken it.
+
+He said to himself: "What is the matter with me this evening?" And he
+began to search in his memory for what vexation had crossed him, as we
+question a sick man to discover the cause of his fever.
+
+His mind was at once irritable and sober; he got excited, then he
+reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive
+nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the
+upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had
+induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting
+anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from
+him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see
+and the things they might say to him.
+
+And then he put the question to himself, "Can it be Jean's
+inheritance?"
+
+Yes, it was certainly possible. When the lawyer had announced the news
+he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not
+always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious
+emotions against which a man struggles in vain.
+
+He fell into meditation on the physiological problem of the impression
+produced on the instinctive element in man, and giving rise to a
+current of painful or pleasurable sensations diametrically opposed to
+those which the thinking man desires, aims at, and regards as right
+and wholesome, when he has risen superior to himself by the
+cultivation of his intellect. He tried to picture to himself the frame
+of mind of a son who has inherited a vast fortune, and who, thanks to
+that wealth, may now know many long-wished-for delights which the
+avarice of his father had prohibited--a father, nevertheless, beloved
+and regretted.
+
+He got up and walked on to the end of the pier. He felt better, and
+glad to have understood, to have detected himself, to have unmasked
+_the other_ which lurks in us.
+
+"Then I was jealous of Jean," thought he. "That is really vilely mean.
+And I am sure of it now, for the first idea which came into my head
+was that he would marry Madame Rosemilly. And yet I am not in love
+myself with that priggish little goose, who is just the woman to
+disgust a man with good sense and good conduct. So it is the most
+gratuitous jealousy, the very essence of jealousy, which is merely
+because it is! I must keep an eye on that!"
+
+By this time he was in front of the flagstaff, whence the depth of
+water in the harbor is signaled, and he struck a match to read the
+list of vessels signaled in the roadstead and coming in with the next
+high tide. Ships were due from Brazil, from La Plata, from Chili and
+Japan, two Danish brigs, a Norwegian schooner, and a Turkish
+steamship--which startled Pierre as much as if it had read a Swiss
+steamship; and in a whimsical vision he pictured a great vessel
+crowded with men in turbans climbing the shrouds in loose trousers.
+
+"How absurd," thought he. "But the Turks are a maritime people, too."
+
+A few steps further on he stopped again, looking out at the roads. On
+the right, above Sainte-Adresse, the two electric lights of Cape la
+Heve, like monstrous twin Cyclops, shot their long and powerful beams
+across the sea. Starting from two neighboring centers, the two
+parallel shafts of light, like the colossal tails of two comets, fell
+in a straight and endless slope from the top of the cliff to the
+uttermost horizon. Then, on the two piers, two more lights, the
+children of these giants, marked the entrance to the harbor; and far
+away on the other side of the Seine others were in sight, many others,
+steady or winking, flashing or revolving, opening and shutting like
+eyes--the eyes of the ports--yellow, red, and green, watching the
+night-wrapped sea covered with ships; the living eyes of the
+hospitable shore saying, merely by the mechanical and regular movement
+of their eyelids: "I am here. I am Trouville; I am Honfleur; I am the
+Audemer River." And high above all the rest, so high that from this
+distance it might be taken for a planet, the airy light-house of
+Etouville showed the way to Rouen across the sand banks at the mouth
+of the great river.
+
+Out on the deep water, the limitless water, darker than the sky, stars
+seemed to have fallen here and there. They twinkled in the night haze,
+small, close to shore or far away--white, red, and green, too. Most
+of them were motionless; some, however, seemed to be scudding onward.
+These were the lights of the ships at anchor or moving about in search
+of moorings.
+
+Just at this moment the moon rose behind the town; and it, too, looked
+like some huge, divine pharos lighted up in the heavens to guide the
+countless fleet of stars in the sky. Pierre murmured, almost speaking
+aloud: "Look at that! And we let our bile rise for two-pence!"
+
+On a sudden, close to him, in the wide, dark ditch between the two
+piers, a shadow stole up, a large shadow of fantastic shape. Leaning
+over the granite parapet, he saw that a fishing-boat had glided in,
+without the sound of a voice or the splash of a ripple, or the plunge
+of an oar, softly borne in by its broad, tawny sail spread to the
+breeze from the open sea.
+
+He thought to himself: "If one could but live on board that boat, what
+peace it would be--perhaps!"
+
+And then a few steps further again, he saw a man sitting at the very
+end of the breakwater.
+
+A dreamer, a lover, a sage--a happy or a desperate man? Who was it? He
+went forward, curious to see the face of this lonely individual, and
+he recognized his brother.
+
+"What, is it you, Jean?"
+
+"Pierre! You? What has brought you here?"
+
+"I came out to get some fresh air. And you?"
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"I too came out for fresh air." And Pierre sat down by his brother's
+side.
+
+"Lovely--isn't it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, lovely."
+
+He understood from the tone of voice that Jean had not looked at
+anything. He went on:
+
+"For my part, whenever I come here I am seized with a wild desire to
+be off with all those boats, to the north or the south. Only to think
+that all those little sparks out there have just come from the
+uttermost ends of the earth, from the lands of great flowers and
+beautiful olive or copper colored girls, the lands of humming-birds,
+of elephants, of roaming lions, of negro kings, from all the lands
+which are like fairy tales to us who no longer believe in the White
+Cat or the Sleeping Beauty. It would be awfully jolly to be able to
+treat one's self to an excursion out there; but, then, it would cost a
+great deal of money, no end--"
+
+He broke off abruptly, remembering that his brother had that money
+now; and released from care, released from laboring for his daily
+bread, free, unfettered, happy, and light-hearted, he might go whither
+he listed, to find the fair-haired Swedes or the brown damsels of
+Havana. And then one of those involuntary flashes which were common
+with him, so sudden and swift that he could neither anticipate them,
+nor stop them, nor qualify them, communicated, as it seemed to him,
+from some second, independent, and violent soul, shot through his
+brain.
+
+"Bah! He is too great a simpleton; he will marry that little
+Rosemilly." He was standing up now. "I will leave you to dream of the
+future. I want to be moving." He grasped his brother's hand and added
+in a heavy tone:
+
+"Well, my dear old boy, you are a rich man. I am very glad to have
+come upon you this evening to tell you how pleased I am about it, how
+truly I congratulate you, and how much I care for you."
+
+Jean, tender and soft-hearted, was deeply touched.
+
+"Thank you, my good brother--thank you!" he stammered.
+
+And Pierre turned away with his slow step, his stick under his arm,
+and his hands behind his back.
+
+Back in the town again, he once more wondered what he should do, being
+disappointed of his walk and deprived of the company of the sea by his
+brother's presence. He had an inspiration. "I will go and take a glass
+of liqueur with old Marowsko," and he went off toward the quarter of
+the town known as Ingouville.
+
+He had known old Marowsko--_le pere Marowsko_, he called him--in the
+hospitals in Paris. He was a Pole, an old refugee, it was said, who
+had gone through terrible things out there, and who had come to ply
+his calling as a chemist and druggist in France after passing a fresh
+examination. Nothing was known of his early life, and all sorts of
+legends had been current among the indoor and outdoor patients and
+afterwards among his neighbors. This reputation as a terrible
+conspirator, a nihilist, a regicide, a patriot ready for anything and
+everything, who had escaped death by a miracle, had bewitched Pierre
+Roland's lively and bold imagination; he had made friends with the old
+Pole, without, however, having ever extracted from him any revelation
+as to his former career. It was owing to the young doctor that this
+worthy had come to settle at Havre, counting on the large custom which
+the rising practitioner would secure him. Meanwhile he lived very
+poorly in his little shop, selling medicines to the small tradesmen
+and workmen in his part of the town.
+
+Pierre often went to see him and chat with him for an hour after
+dinner, for he liked Marowsko's calm look and rare speech, and
+attributed great depth to his long spells of silence.
+
+A single gas-burner was alight over the counter crowded with phials.
+Those in the window were not lighted, from motives of economy. Behind
+the counter, sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and
+crossed, an old man, quite bald, with a large beak of a nose which, as
+a prolongation of his hairless forehead, gave him a melancholy
+likeness to a parrot, was sleeping soundly, his chin resting on his
+breast. He woke at the sound of the shop-bell, and recognizing the
+doctor, came forward to meet him, holding out both hands.
+
+His black frock coat, streaked with stains of acids and syrups, was
+much too wide for his lean little person, and looked like a shabby old
+cassock; and the man spoke with a strong Polish accent which gave a
+childlike character to his thin voice, the lisping note and
+intonations of a young thing learning to speak.
+
+Pierre sat down, and Marowsko asked him: "What news, dear doctor?"
+
+"None. Everything as usual, everywhere."
+
+"You do not look very gay this evening."
+
+"I am not often gay."
+
+"Come, come, you must shake that off. Will you try a glass of
+liqueur?"
+
+"Yes, I do not mind."
+
+"Then I will give you something new to try. For these two months I
+have been trying to extract something from currants, of which only a
+syrup has been made hitherto--well, and I have done it. I have
+invented a very good liqueur--very good indeed; very good."
+
+And quite delighted, he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out
+a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky
+gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor
+quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His
+ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them,
+sketched them, hinted at them, but never fully uttered them.
+
+And indeed, his great end in life seemed to be the concoction of
+syrups and liqueurs. "A good syrup or a good liqueur is enough to make
+a fortune," he would often say.
+
+He had compounded hundreds of these sweet mixtures without ever
+succeeding in floating one of them. Pierre declared that Marowsko
+always reminded him of Marat.
+
+Two little glasses were fetched out of the back shop and placed on the
+mixing-board. Then the two men scrutinized the color of the fluid by
+holding it up to the gas.
+
+"A fine ruby," Pierre declared.
+
+"Isn't it?" Marowsko's old parrot-face beamed with satisfaction.
+
+The doctor tasted, smacked his lips, meditated, tasted again,
+meditated again, and spoke:
+
+"Very good--capital; and quite new in flavor. It is a find, my dear
+fellow."
+
+"Ah, really? Well, I am very glad."
+
+Then Marowsko took counsel as to baptizing the new liqueur. He wanted
+to call it "Extract of currants," or else "_Fine Groseille_," or
+"_Groselia_," or again "_Groseline_." Pierre did not approve of either
+of these names.
+
+Then the old man had an idea:
+
+"What you said just now would be very good, very good: 'Fine Ruby.'"
+But the doctor disputed the merit of this name, though it had
+originated with him. He recommended simply "Groseillette," which
+Marowsko thought admirable.
+
+Then they were silent, and sat for some minutes without a word under
+the solitary gas-lamp. At last Pierre began, almost in spite of
+himself: "A queer thing has happened at home this evening. A friend of
+my father's, who is lately dead, has left his fortune to my brother."
+
+The druggist did not at first seem to understand, but after thinking
+it over he hoped that the doctor had half the inheritance. When the
+matter was clearly explained to him he appeared surprised and vexed;
+and to express his dissatisfaction at finding that his young friend
+had been sacrificed, he said several times over:
+
+"It will not look well."
+
+Pierre, who was relapsing into nervous irritation, wanted to know what
+Marowsko meant by this phrase.
+
+Why would it not look well? What was there to look badly in the fact
+that his brother had come into the money of a friend of the family?
+
+But the cautious old man would not explain further.
+
+"In such a case the money is left equally to the two brothers, and I
+tell you, it will not look well."
+
+And the doctor, out of all patience, went away, returned to his
+father's house, and went to bed. For some time yet he could hear Jean
+moving softly about the adjoining room, and then, after drinking two
+glasses of water, he fell asleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The doctor awoke next morning firmly resolved to make his fortune.
+Several times already he had come to the same determination without
+following up the reality. At the outset of all his trials of some new
+career the hopes of rapidly acquired riches kept up his efforts and
+confidence, till the first obstacle, the first check, threw him into a
+fresh path. Snug in bed between the warm sheets, he lay meditating.
+How many medical men had become wealthy in quite a short time! All
+that was needed was a little knowledge of the world; for in the course
+of his studies he had learnt to estimate the most famous physicians,
+and he judged them all to be asses. He was certainly as good as they,
+if not better. If by any means he could secure a practice among the
+wealth and fashion of Havre, he could easily make a hundred thousand
+francs a year. And he calculated with great exactitude what his
+certain profits must be. He would go out in the mornings to visit his
+patients; at the very moderate average of ten a day, at twenty francs
+each, that would mount up to seventy-two thousand francs a year at
+least, or even seventy-five thousand; for ten patients was certainly
+below the mark. In the afternoon he would be at home to, say, another
+ten patients, at ten francs each--thirty-six thousand francs. Here,
+then, in round numbers, was an income of twenty thousand francs. Old
+patients, or friends whom he would charge only ten francs for a visit,
+or see at home for five, would perhaps make a slight reduction on
+this sum total, but consultations with other physicians and various
+incidental fees would make up for that.
+
+Nothing would be easier than to achieve this by skillful advertising
+remarks in the _Figaro_ to the effect that the scientific faculty of
+Paris had their eye on him, and were interested in the cures effected
+by the modest young practitioner of Havre! And he would be richer than
+his brother, richer and more famous; and satisfied with himself, for
+he would owe his fortune solely to his own exertions; and liberal to
+his old parents, who would be justly proud of his fame. He would not
+marry, would not burden his life with a wife who would be in his way,
+but then he might make love. He felt so sure of success that he sprang
+out of bed as though to grasp it on the spot, and he dressed to go and
+search through the town for rooms to suit him.
+
+Then, as he wandered about the streets, he reflected how slight are
+the causes which determine our actions. Any time these three weeks he
+might and ought to have come to this decision, which, beyond a doubt,
+the news of his brother's inheritance had abruptly given rise to.
+
+He stopped before every door where a placard proclaimed that "fine
+apartments" or "handsome rooms" were to be let; announcements without
+an adjective he turned from with scorn. Then he inspected them with a
+lofty air, measuring the height of the rooms, sketching the plan in
+his note-book, with the passages, the arrangements of the exits,
+explaining that he was a medical man and had many visitors. He must
+have a broad and well-kept staircase; nor could he be any higher up
+than the first floor.
+
+After having written down seven or eight addresses and scribbled two
+hundred notes, he got home to breakfast a quarter of an hour too late.
+
+In the hall he heard the clatter of plates. Then they had begun
+without him! Why? They were never wont to be so punctual. He was
+nettled and put out, for he was somewhat thin-skinned. As he went in
+Roland said to him:
+
+"Come, Pierre, make haste, devil take you! You know we have to be at
+the lawyer's at two o'clock. This is not the day to be dawdling
+about."
+
+Pierre sat down without replying, after kissing his mother and shaking
+hands with his father and brother; and he helped himself from the deep
+dish in the middle of the table to the cutlet which had been kept for
+him. It was cold and dry, probably the least tempting of them all. He
+thought that they might have left it on the hot plate till he came in,
+and not lose their heads so completely as to have forgotten their
+other son, their eldest.
+
+The conversation, which his entrance had interrupted, was taken up
+again at the point where it had ceased.
+
+"In your place," Mme. Roland was saying to Jean, "I will tell you what
+I should do at once. I should settle in handsome rooms so as to
+attract attention; I should rise on horseback and select one or two
+interesting cases to defend and make a mark in court. I would be a
+sort of amateur lawyer, and very select. Thank God you are out of all
+danger of want, and if you pursue a profession, it is, after all, only
+that you may not lose the benefit of your studies, and because a man
+ought never to sit idle."
+
+Old Roland, who was peeling a pear, exclaimed:
+
+"Christi! In your place I should buy a nice yacht, a cutter on the
+build of our pilot-boats. I would sail as far as Senegal in such a
+boat as that."
+
+Pierre, in his turn, spoke his views. After all, said he, it was not
+his wealth which made the moral worth, the intellectual worth of a
+man. To a man of inferior mind it was only a means of degradation,
+while in the hands of a strong man it was a powerful lever. They, to
+be sure, were rare. If Jean were a really superior man, now that he
+could never want he might prove it. But then he must work a hundred
+times harder than he would have done in other circumstances. His
+business now must be not to argue for or against the widow and the
+orphan, and pocket his fees for every case he gained, but to become a
+really eminent legal authority, a luminary of the law. And he added in
+conclusion:
+
+"If I were rich wouldn't I dissect no end of bodies!"
+
+Father Roland shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That is all very fine," he said. "But the wisest way of life is to
+take it easy. We are not beasts of burden, but men. If you are born
+poor you must work; well, so much the worse; and you do work. But
+where you have dividends! You must be a flat if you grind yourself to
+death."
+
+Pierre replied haughtily:
+
+"Our notions differ. For my part, I respect nothing on earth but
+learning and intellect; everything else is beneath contempt."
+
+Mme. Roland always tried to deaden the constant shocks between father
+and son; she turned the conversation, and began talking of a murder
+committed the week before at Bolbec Nointot. Their minds were
+immediately full of the circumstances under which the crime had been
+committed, and absorbed by the interesting horror, the attractive
+mystery of crime, which, however commonplace, shameful, and
+disgusting, exercises a strange and universal fascination over the
+curiosity of mankind. Now and again, however, old Roland looked at his
+watch. "Come," said he, "it is time to be going."
+
+Pierre sneered.
+
+"It is not yet one o'clock," he said. "It really was hardly worth
+while to condemn me to eat a cold cutlet."
+
+"Are you coming to the lawyer's?" his mother asked.
+
+"I? No. What for?" he replied dryly. "My presence is quite
+unnecessary."
+
+Jean sat silent, as though he had no concern in the matter. When they
+were discussing the murder at Bolbec he, as a legal authority, had put
+forward some opinions and uttered some reflections on crime and
+criminals. Now he spoke no more; but the sparkle in his eye, the
+bright color in his cheeks, the very gloss of his beard seemed to
+proclaim his happiness.
+
+When the family had gone, Pierre, alone once more, resumed his
+investigations in the apartments to let. After two or three hours
+spent in going up and down stairs, he at last found, in the Boulevard
+Francois, a pretty set of rooms; a spacious entresol with two doors on
+two different streets, two drawing-rooms, a glass corridor, where his
+patients while they waited, might walk among flowers, and a delightful
+dining-room with a bow-window looking out over the sea.
+
+When it came to taking it, the terms--three thousand francs--pulled
+him up; the first quarter must be paid in advance, and he had nothing,
+not a penny to call his own.
+
+The little fortune his father had saved brought him in about eight
+thousand francs a year, and Pierre had often blamed himself for having
+placed his parents in difficulties by his long delay in deciding on a
+profession, by forfeiting his attempts and beginning fresh courses of
+study. So he went away, promising to send his answer within two days,
+and it occurred to him to ask Jean to lend him the amount of this
+quarter's rent, or even of a half-year, fifteen hundred francs, as
+soon as Jean should have come into possession.
+
+"It will be a loan for a few months at most," he thought. "I shall
+repay him, very likely, before the end of the year. It is a simple
+matter, and he will be glad to do so much for me."
+
+As it was not yet four o'clock, and he had nothing to do, absolutely
+nothing, he went to sit in the public gardens; and he remained a long
+time on a bench, without an idea in his brain, his eyes fixed on the
+ground, crushed by weariness amounting to distress.
+
+And yet this was how he had been living all these days since his
+return home, without suffering so acutely from the vacuity of his
+existence and from inaction. How had he spent his time from rising in
+the morning till bed-time?
+
+He had loafed on the pier at high tide, loafed in the streets, loafed
+in the cafes, loafed at Marowsko's, loafed everywhere. And on a sudden
+this life, which he had endured till now, had become odious,
+intolerable. If he had had any pocket-money he would have taken a
+carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches
+shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost
+of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out
+of his ken. It suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past
+thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a
+twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored
+the gravel with the ferrule of his stick:
+
+"Christi, if I only had money!"
+
+And again the thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like
+the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to
+allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy.
+
+Some children were playing about in the dusty paths. They were fair
+little things with long hair, and they were making little mounds of
+sand with the greatest gravity and careful attention, to crush them at
+once by stamping on them.
+
+It was one of those gloomy days with Pierre when we pry into every
+corner of our souls and shake out every crease.
+
+"All our endeavors are like the labors of those babies," thought he.
+And then he wondered whether the wisest thing in life were not to
+beget two or three of these little creatures and watch them grow up
+with complacent curiosity. A longing for marriage breathed on his
+soul. A man is not so lost when he is not alone. At any rate, he hears
+some one stirring at his side in hours of trouble or of uncertainty;
+and it is something only to be able to speak on equal terms to a woman
+when one is suffering.
+
+Then he began thinking of women. He knew very little of them, never
+having had any but very transient connections as a medical student,
+broken off as soon as the month's allowance was spent, and renewed or
+replaced by another the following month. And yet there must be some
+very kind, gentle, and comforting creatures among them. Had not his
+mother been the good sense and saving grace of his own home? How glad
+he would be to know a woman, a true woman.
+
+He started up with a sudden determination to go and call on Mme.
+Rosemilly. But he promptly sat down again. He did not like that woman.
+Why not? She had too much vulgar and sordid common sense; besides, did
+she not seem to prefer Jean? Without confessing it to himself too
+bluntly, this preference had a great deal to do with his low opinion
+of the widow's intellect; for, though he loved his brother, he could
+not help thinking him somewhat mediocre and believing himself the
+superior. However, he was not going to sit there till nightfall; and
+as he had done on the previous evening, he anxiously asked himself:
+"What am I going to do?"
+
+At this moment he felt in his soul the need of a melting mood, of
+being embraced and comforted. Comforted--for what? He could not have
+put it into words; but he was in one of those hours of weakness and
+exhaustion when a woman's presence, a woman's kiss, the touch of a
+hand, the rustle of a petticoat, a soft look out of black or blue
+eyes, seem the one thing needful, there and then, to our heart. And
+the memory flashed upon him of a little barmaid at a beer-house, whom
+he had walked home with one evening, and seen again from time to time.
+
+So once more he rose, to go and drink a bock with the girl. What
+should he say to her? What would she say to him? Nothing, probably.
+But what did that matter? He would hold her hand for a few seconds.
+She seemed to have a fancy for him. Why, then, did he not go to see
+her oftener?
+
+He found her dozing on a chair in the beer-shop, which was almost
+deserted. Three men were drinking and smoking with their elbows on the
+oak tables; the book-keeper in her desk was reading a novel, while the
+master, in his shirt-sleeves, lay sound asleep on a bench.
+
+As soon as she saw him the girl rose eagerly, and coming to meet him,
+said:
+
+"Good-day, monsieur--how are you?"
+
+"Pretty well; and you?"
+
+"I--oh, very well. How scarce you make yourself."
+
+"Yes. I have very little time to myself. I am a doctor, you know."
+
+"Indeed! You never told me. If I had known that--I was out of sorts
+last week and I would have sent for you. What will you take?"
+
+"A bock. And you?"
+
+"I will have a bock too since you are game to treat me."
+
+She had addressed him with the familiar _tu_, and continued to use it,
+as if the offer of a drink had tacitly conveyed permission. Then,
+sitting down opposite each other, they talked for a while. Every now
+and then she took his hand with the light familiarity of girls whose
+kisses are for sale, and looking at him with inviting eyes, she said:
+
+"Why don't you come here oftener? I like you very much, sweetheart."
+
+He was already disgusted with her; he saw how stupid she was, and
+common, smacking of low life. A woman, he told himself, should appear
+to us in a dream, or such a glory as may poetize her vulgarity.
+
+Next she asked him:
+
+"You went by the other morning with a handsome fair man, wearing a big
+beard. Is he your brother?"
+
+"Yes, he is my brother."
+
+"Awfully good-looking."
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"Yes, indeed; and he looks like a man who enjoys life, too."
+
+What strange craving impelled him on a sudden to tell this
+tavern-wench about Jean's legacy? Why should this thing, which he kept
+at arm's-length when he was alone, which he drove from him for fear of
+the torment it brought upon his soul, rise to his lips at this moment?
+And why did he allow it to overflow them, as if he needed once more to
+empty out his heart to some one, gorged as it was with bitterness?
+
+He crossed his legs and said:
+
+"He has wonderful luck, that brother of mine. He has just come into a
+legacy of twenty thousand francs a year."
+
+She opened those covetous blue eyes of hers very wide.
+
+"Oh! and who left him that? His grandmother or his aunt?"
+
+"No. An old friend of my parents'."
+
+"Only a friend! Impossible! And you--did he leave you nothing?"
+
+"No. I knew him very slightly."
+
+She sat thinking some minutes; then, with an odd smile on her lips,
+she said:
+
+"Well, he is a lucky dog, that brother of yours, to have friends of
+that pattern. My word! and no wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+He longed to slap her, without knowing why; and he asked with pinched
+lips: "And what do you mean by saying that?"
+
+She had put on a stolid, innocent face.
+
+"O--h, nothing. I mean he has better luck than you."
+
+He tossed a franc piece on the table and went out.
+
+Now he kept repeating the phrase: "No wonder he is so unlike you."
+
+What had her thought been, what had been her meaning under those
+words? There was certainly some malice, some spite, something shameful
+in it. Yes, that hussy must have fancied, no doubt, that Jean was
+Marechal's son. The agitation which came over him at the notion of
+this suspicion cast at his mother was so violent that he stood still,
+looking about him for some place where he might sit down. In front of
+him was another cafe. He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came
+up, "A bock," he said.
+
+He felt his heart beating, his skin was goose-flesh. And then the
+recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening
+before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same
+suspicion as this baggage? Hanging his head over the glass, he watched
+the white froth as the bubbles rose and burst, asking himself: "Is it
+possible that such a thing should be believed?"
+
+But the reasons which might give rise to this horrible doubt in other
+men's minds now struck him, one after another, as plain, obvious, and
+exasperating. That a childless old bachelor should leave his fortune
+to a friend's two sons was the most simple and natural thing in the
+world; but that he should leave the whole of it to one alone--of
+course people would wonder, and whisper, and end by smiling. How was
+it that he had not foreseen this, that his father had not felt it? How
+was it that his mother had not guessed it? No; they had been too
+delighted at this unhoped-for wealth for the idea to come near them.
+And besides, how should these worthy souls have ever dreamed of
+anything so ignominious?
+
+But the public--their neighbors, the shopkeepers, their own tradesmen,
+all who knew them--would not they repeat the abominable thing, laugh
+at it, enjoy it, make game of his father and despise his mother?
+
+And the barmaid's remark that Jean was fair and he dark, that they
+were not in the least alike in face, manner, figure, or intelligence,
+would now strike every eye and every mind. When any one spoke of
+Roland's son, the question would be: "Which, the real or the false?"
+
+He rose, firmly resolved to warn Jean, and put him on his guard
+against the frightful danger which threatened their mother's honor.
+
+But what could Jean do? The simplest thing, no doubt, would be to
+refuse the inheritance, which would then go to the poor, and to tell
+all friends or acquaintances who had heard of the bequest that the
+will contained clauses and conditions impossible to subscribe to,
+which would have made Jean not inheritor but merely a trustee.
+
+As he made his way home he was thinking that he must see his brother
+alone, so as not to speak of such a matter in the presence of his
+parents. On reaching the door he heard a great noise of voices and
+laughter in the drawing-room, and when he went in he found Captain
+Beausire and Mme. Rosemilly, whom his father had brought home and
+engaged to dine with them in honor of the good news. Vermouth and
+absinthe had been served to whet their appetites, and every one had
+been at once put into good spirits. Captain Beausire, a funny little
+man who had become quite round by dint of being rolled about at sea,
+and whose ideas also seemed to have been worn round, like the pebbles
+of a beach, while he laughed with his throat full of _r_'s, looked
+upon life as a capital thing, in which everything that might turn up
+was good to take. He clinked his glass against father Roland's, while
+Jean was offering two freshly filled glasses to the ladies. Mme.
+Rosemilly refused, till Captain Beausire, who had known her husband,
+cried:
+
+"Come, come, madame, _bis repetita placent_, as we say in the lingo,
+which is as much as to say two glasses of vermouth never hurt any one.
+Look at me; since I have left the sea, in this way I give myself an
+artificial roll or two every day before dinner; I add a little
+pitching after my coffee, and that keeps things lively for the rest of
+the evening. I never rise to a hurricane, mind you, never, never. I am
+too much afraid of damage."
+
+Roland, whose nautical mania was humored by the old mariner, laughed
+heartily, his face flushed already and his eye watery from the
+absinthe. He had a burly shopkeeping stomach--nothing but stomach--in
+which the rest of his body seemed to have got stowed away; the flabby
+paunch of men who spend their lives sitting, and who have neither
+thighs, nor chest, nor arms, nor neck; the seat of their chairs having
+accumulated all their substance in one spot. Beausire, on the
+contrary, though short and stout, was as tight as an egg and as hard
+as a cannon-ball.
+
+Mme. Roland had not emptied her glass and was gazing at her son Jean
+with sparkling eyes, happiness had brought a color to her cheeks.
+
+In him too the fullness of joy had now blazed out. It was a settled
+thing, signed and sealed; he had twenty thousand francs a year. In the
+sound of his laugh, in the fuller voice with which he spoke, in his
+way of looking at the others, his more positive manners, his greater
+confidence, the assurance given by money was at once perceptible.
+
+Dinner was announced, and as the old man was about to offer his arm to
+Mme. Rosemilly, his wife exclaimed:
+
+"No, no, father. Everything is for Jean to-day."
+
+Unwonted luxury graced the table. In front of Jean, who sat in his
+father's place, an enormous bouquet of flowers intermingled with
+ribbon favors--a bouquet for a really great occasion--stood up like a
+cupola dressed with flags, and was flanked by four high dishes, one
+containing a pyramid of splendid peaches; the second, a monumental
+cake gorged with whipped cream and covered with pinnacles of sugar--a
+cathedral in confectionery; the third, slices of pine-apple floating
+in clear syrup; and the fourth unheard-of lavishness--black grapes
+brought from the warmer south.
+
+"The devil!" exclaimed Pierre as he sat down. "We are celebrating the
+accession of Jean the Rich."
+
+After the soup, Madeira was passed round, and already every one was
+talking at once. Beausire was giving the history of a dinner he had
+eaten at San Domingo at the table of a negro general. Old Roland was
+listening, and at the same time trying to get in, between the
+sentences, his account of another dinner, given by a friend of his at
+Mendon, after which every guest was ill for a fortnight. Mme.
+Rosemilly, Jean, and his mother were planning an excursion to
+breakfast at Saint Jouin, from which they promised themselves the
+greatest pleasure; and Pierre was only sorry that he had not dined
+alone in some pot-house by the sea, so as to escape all this noise and
+laughter and glee which fretted him. He was wondering how he could now
+set to work to confide his fears to his brother, and induce him to
+renounce the fortune he had already accepted and of which he was
+enjoying the intoxicating foretaste. It would be hard on him, no
+doubt; but it must be done; he could not hesitate; their mother's
+reputation was at stake.
+
+The appearance of an enormous shade-fish threw Roland back on fishing
+stories. Beausire told some wonderful tales of adventure on the
+Gaboon, at Sainte-Marie, in Madagascar, and above all, off the coasts
+of China and Japan, where the fish are as queer-looking as the
+natives. And he described the appearance of these fishes--their goggle
+gold eyes, their blue or red bellies, their fantastic fins like fans,
+their eccentric crescent-shaped tails--with such droll gesticulation
+that they all laughed till they cried as they listened.
+
+Pierre alone seemed incredulous, muttering to himself: "True enough,
+the Normans are the Gascons of the north!"
+
+After the fish came a vol-au-vent; then a roast fowl, a salad, French
+beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Rosemilly's maid-servant helped
+to wait on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine
+they drank. When the cork of the first champagne bottle was drawn
+with a pop, father Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his
+tongue and then declared: "I like that noise better than a
+pistol-shot."
+
+Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:
+
+"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."
+
+Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on
+the table again, and asked:
+
+"Why?"
+
+He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness,
+giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:
+
+"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of
+wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the
+circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which
+always threatens a man of your build."
+
+The jeweler's incipient intoxication had vanished like smoke before
+the wind. He looked at his son with fixed, uneasy eyes, trying to
+discover whether he was making game of him.
+
+But Beausire exclaimed:
+
+"Oh, these confounded doctors! They all sing the same tune; eat
+nothing, drink nothing, never make love or enjoy yourself; it all
+plays the devil with your precious health. Well, all I can say is I
+have done all these things, sir, in every quarter of the globe,
+wherever and as often as I have had the chance, and I am none the
+worse."
+
+Pierre answered with some asperity:
+
+"In the first place, captain, you are a stronger man than my father;
+and in the next, all free livers talk as you do till the day
+when--when they come back no more to say to the cautious doctor: 'You
+were right.' When I see my father doing what is worst and most
+dangerous for him, it is but natural that I should warn him. I should
+be a bad son if I did otherwise."
+
+Mme. Roland, much distressed, now put in her word: "Come, Pierre, what
+ails you? For once it cannot hurt him? Think of what an occasion it is
+for him, for all of us. You will spoil his pleasure and make us all
+unhappy. It is too bad of you to do such a thing."
+
+He muttered, as he shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"He can do as he pleases. I have warned him."
+
+But father Roland did not drink. He sat looking at his glass full of
+the clear and luminous liquor while its light soul, its intoxicating
+soul, flew off in tiny bubbles mounting from its depths in hurried
+succession to die on the surface. He looked at it with the suspicious
+eye of a fox smelling at a dead hen and suspecting a trap. He asked
+doubtfully: "Do you think it will really do me much harm?" Pierre had
+a pang of remorse and blamed himself for letting his ill-humor punish
+the rest:
+
+"No," said he. "Just for once you may drink it; but do not take too
+much, or get into the habit of it."
+
+Then old Roland raised his glass, but still he could not make up his
+mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with
+longing and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips,
+swallowing them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and
+greediness; and then, when he had drained the last drop, of regret.
+
+Pierre's eye suddenly met that of Mme. Rosemilly; it rested on him
+clear and blue, far-seeing and hard. And he read, he knew, the precise
+thought which lurked in that look, the indignant thought of this
+simple and right-minded little woman; for the look said: "You are
+jealous--that is what you are. Shameful!"
+
+He bent his head and went on with his dinner.
+
+He was not hungry and found nothing nice. A longing to be off harassed
+him, a craving to be away from these people, to hear no more of their
+talking, jests, and laughter.
+
+Father Roland meanwhile, to whose head the fumes of the wine were
+rising once more, had already forgotten his son's advice and was
+eyeing a champagne-bottle with a tender leer as it stood, still nearly
+full, by the side of his plate. He dared not touch it for fear of
+being lectured again, and he was wondering by what device or trick he
+could possess himself of it without exciting Pierre's remark. A ruse
+occurred to him, the simplest possible. He took up the bottle with an
+air of indifference, and holding it by the neck, stretched his arm
+across the table to fill the doctor's glass, which was empty; then he
+filled up all the other glasses, and when he came to his own he began
+talking very loud, so that if he poured anything into it they might
+have sworn it was done inadvertently. And in fact no one took any
+notice.
+
+Pierre, without observing it, was drinking a good deal. Nervous and
+fretted, he every minute raised to his lips the tall crystal funnel
+where the bubbles were dancing in the living, translucent fluid. He
+let the wine slip very slowly over his tongue, that he might feel the
+little sugary sting of the fixed air as it evaporated.
+
+Gradually a pleasant warmth glowed in his frame. Starting from the
+stomach as from a focus, it spread to his chest, took possession of
+his limbs, and diffused itself throughout his flesh, like a warm and
+comforting tide, bringing pleasure with it. He felt better now, less
+impatient, less annoyed, and his determination to speak to his brother
+that very evening faded away; not that he thought for a moment of
+giving it up, but simply not to disturb the happy mood in which he
+found himself.
+
+Beausire presently arose to propose a toast. Having bowed to the
+company, he began:
+
+"Most gracious ladies and gentlemen, we have met to do honor to a
+happy event which has befallen one of our friends. It used to be said
+that Fortune was blind, but I believe that she is only short-sighted
+or tricksy, and that she has lately brought a good pair of glasses
+which enabled her to discover in the town of Havre the son of our
+worthy friend Roland, skipper of the _Pearl_."
+
+Every one cried bravo and clapped their hands, and the elder Roland
+rose to reply. After clearing his throat, for it felt thick and his
+tongue was heavy, he stammered out:
+
+"Thank you, captain, thank you--for myself and my son. I shall never
+forget your behavior on this occasion. Here's good luck to you!"
+
+His eyes and nose were full of tears, and he sat down, finding nothing
+more to say.
+
+Jean, who was laughing, spoke in his turn:
+
+"It is I," said he, "who ought to thank my friends here, my excellent
+friends," and he glanced at Mme. Rosemilly, "who have given me such a
+touching evidence of their affection. But it is not by words that I
+can prove my gratitude. I will prove it to-morrow, every hour of my
+life, always, for our friendship is not one of those which fade away."
+
+His mother, deeply moved, murmured: "Well said, my boy."
+
+But Beausire cried out:
+
+"Come, Mme. Rosemilly, speak on behalf of the fair sex."
+
+She raised her glass, and in a pretty voice, slightly touched with
+sadness, she said: "I will pledge you to the memory of Monsieur
+Marechal."
+
+There was a few moments' lull, a pause for decent meditation, as after
+prayer. Beausire, who always had a flow of compliment, remarked:
+
+"Only a woman ever thinks of these refinements." Then turning to
+father Roland: "And who was this Marechal, after all? You must have
+been very intimate with him."
+
+The old man, emotional with drink, began to whimper, and in a broken
+voice he said:
+
+"Like a brother, you know. Such a friend as one does not make
+twice--we were always together--he dined with us every evening--and
+would treat us to the play--I need say no more--no more--no more. A
+true friend--a real true friend--wasn't he, Louise?"
+
+His wife merely answered: "Yes; he was a faithful friend."
+
+Pierre looked at his father and then at his mother, then, as the
+subject changed, he drank some more wine. He scarcely remembered the
+remainder of the evening. They had coffee, then liqueurs, and they
+laughed and joked a great deal. At about midnight he went to bed, his
+mind confused and his head heavy; and he slept like a brute till nine
+next morning.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+These slumbers, lapped in champagne and chartreuse, had soothed and
+calmed him, no doubt, for he awoke in a very benevolent frame of mind.
+While he was dressing he appraised, weighed, and summed up the
+agitations of the past day, trying to bring out quite clearly and
+fully their real and occult causes, those personal to himself as well
+as those from outside.
+
+It was, in fact, possible that the girl at the beer-shop had had an
+evil suspicion--a suspicion worthy of such a hussy--on hearing that
+only one of the Roland brothers had been made heir to a stranger; but
+have not such natures as she always similar notions, without a shadow
+of foundation, about every honest woman? Do they not, whenever they
+speak, vilify, calumniate, and abuse all whom they believe to be
+blameless? Whenever a woman who is above imputation is mentioned in
+their presence, they are as angry as if they were being insulted, and
+exclaim: "Ah, yes, I know your married women; a pretty sort they are!
+Why, they have more lovers than we have, only they conceal it because
+they are such hypocrites. Oh, yes, a pretty sort, indeed!"
+
+Under any other circumstances he would certainly not have understood,
+not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his
+poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit
+seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him.
+His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself,
+for all that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to
+the tavern barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It
+was possible that his imagination had, unaided, invented this dreadful
+doubt--his imagination, which he never controlled, which constantly
+evaded his will and went off, unfettered, audacious, adventurous, and
+stealthy, into the infinite world of ideas, bringing back now and then
+some which were shameless and repulsive, and which it buried in him,
+in the depths of his soul, in its most fathomless recesses, like
+something stolen. His heart, most certainly, his own heart had secrets
+from him; and had not that wounded heart discerned in this atrocious
+doubt a means of depriving his brother of the inheritance of which he
+was jealous? He suspected himself now, cross-examining all the
+mysteries of his mind as bigots search their consciences.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly, though her intelligence was limited, had certainly a
+woman's instinct, scent, and subtle intuitions. And this notion had
+never entered her head, since she had, with perfect simplicity, drunk
+the blessed memory of the deceased Marechal. She was not the woman to
+have done this if she had had the faintest suspicion. Now he doubted
+no longer; his involuntary displeasure at his brother's windfall of
+fortune and his religious affection for his mother had magnified his
+scruples--very pious and respectable scruples, but exaggerated. As he
+put this conclusion into words in his own mind he felt happy, as at
+the doing of a good action; and he resolved to be nice to every one
+beginning with his father, whose manias, and silly statements, and
+vulgar opinions, and too conspicuous mediocrity were a constant
+irritation to him.
+
+He came in not late for breakfast, and amused all the family by his
+fun and good-humor.
+
+His mother, quite delighted, said to him:
+
+"My little Pierre, you have no notion how humorous and clever you can
+be when you choose."
+
+And he talked, putting things in a witty way, and making them laugh by
+ingenious hits at their friends. Beausire was his butt, and Mme.
+Rosemilly a little, but in a very judicious way, not too spiteful. And
+he thought as he looked at his brother: "Stand up for her, you muff.
+You may be as rich as you please, I can always eclipse you when I take
+the trouble."
+
+As they drank their coffee he said to his father:
+
+"Are you going out in the _Pearl_ to-day?"
+
+"No, my boy."
+
+"May I have her with Jean Bart?"
+
+"To be sure, as long as you like."
+
+He bought a good cigar at the first tobacconist's and went down to the
+quay with a light step. He glanced up at the sky, which was clear and
+luminous, of a pale blue, freshly swept by the sea breeze.
+
+Papagris, the boatman, commonly called Jean Bart, was dozing in the
+bottom of the boat, which he was required to have in readiness every
+day at noon when they had not been out fishing in the morning.
+
+"You and I together, mate," cried Pierre. He went down the iron ladder
+of the quay and leaped into the vessel.
+
+"Which way is the wind?" he asked.
+
+"Due east still, M'sieu Pierre. A fine breeze out at sea."
+
+"Well, then, old man, off we go!"
+
+They hoisted the foresail and weighed anchor; and the boat, feeling
+herself free, glided slowly down toward the jetty on the still water
+of the harbor. The breath of wind that came down the street caught the
+top of the sail so lightly as to be imperceptible, and the _Pearl_
+seemed endowed with life--the life of a vessel driven on by a
+mysterious latent power. Pierre took the tiller, and, holding his
+cigar between his teeth, he stretched his legs on the bunk, and with
+his eyes half-shut in the blinding sunshine, he watched the great
+tarred timbers of the breakwater as they glided past.
+
+When they reached the open sea, round the nose of the north pier which
+had sheltered them, the fresher breeze puffed in the doctor's face and
+on his hands, like a somewhat icy caress, filled his chest, which rose
+with a long sigh to drink it in, and swelling the tawny sail, tilted
+the _Pearl_ on her beam and made her more lively. Jean Bart hastily
+hauled up the jib, and the triangle of canvas, full of wind, looked
+like a wing; then, with two strides to the stern, he let out the
+spanker, which was close-reefed against its mast.
+
+Then, along the hull of the boat, which suddenly heeled over and was
+running at top speed, there was a soft, crisp sound of water hissing
+and rushing past. The prow ripped up the sea like the share of a
+plough gone mad, and the yielding water it turned up curled over and
+fell white with foam, as the ploughed soil, heavy and brown, rolls and
+falls in a ridge. At each wave they met--and there was a short,
+chopping sea--the _Pearl_ shivered from the point of the bowsprit to
+the rudder, which trembled under Pierre's hand; when the wind blew
+harder in gusts, the swell rose to the gunwale as if it would overflow
+into the boat. A coal brig from Liverpool was lying at anchor, waiting
+for the tide; they made a sweep round her stern and went to look at
+each of the vessels in the roads one after another; then they put
+further out to look at the unfolding line of coast.
+
+For three hours Pierre, easy, calm, and happy, wandered to and fro
+over the dancing waters, guiding the thing of wood and canvas, which
+came and went at his will, under the pressure of his hand, as if it
+were a swift and docile winged creature.
+
+He was lost in day-dreams, the dreams one has on horseback or on the
+deck of a boat; thinking of his future, which should be brilliant, and
+the joys of living intelligently. On the morrow he would ask his
+brother to lend him fifteen hundred francs for three months, that he
+might settle at once in the pretty rooms on the Boulevard Francois,
+1er.
+
+Suddenly the sailor said: "The fog is coming up, M'sieu Pierre. We
+must go in."
+
+He looked up and saw to the northward a gray shade, filmy but dense,
+blotting out the sky and covering the sea; it was sweeping down on
+them like a cloud fallen from above. He tacked for the land and made
+for the pier, scudding before the wind and followed by the flying fog,
+which gained upon them. When it reached the _Pearl_, wrapping her in
+its intangible density, a cold shudder ran over Pierre's limbs, and a
+smell of smoke and mold, the peculiar smell of a sea fog, made him
+close his mouth that he might not taste the cold, wet vapor. By the
+time the boat was at her usual moorings in the harbor the whole town
+was buried in this fine mist, which did not fall but yet wetted
+everything like rain, and glided and rolled along the roofs and
+streets like the flow of a river. Pierre, with his hands and feet
+frozen, made haste home and threw himself on his bed to take a nap
+till dinner-time. When he made his appearance in the dining-room his
+mother was saying to Jean:
+
+"The glass corridor will be lovely. We will fill it with flowers. You
+will see. I will undertake to care for them and renew them. When you
+give a party the effect will be quite fairy like."
+
+"What in the world are you talking about?" the doctor asked.
+
+"Of a delightful apartment I have just taken for your brother. It is
+quite a find; an entresol looking out on two streets. There are two
+drawing-rooms, a glass passage, and a little circular dining-room,
+perfectly charming for a bachelor's quarters."
+
+Pierre turned pale.
+
+"Where is it?" he asked.
+
+"Boulevard Francois, 1er."
+
+There was no possibility for doubt. He took his seat in such a state
+of exasperation that he longed to exclaim: "This is really too much!
+Is there nothing for any one but him?"
+
+His mother, beaming, went on talking: "And only fancy, I got it for
+two thousand eight hundred francs a year. They asked three thousand,
+but I got a reduction of two hundred francs on taking for three, six,
+or nine years. Your brother will be delightfully housed there. An
+elegant home is enough to make the fortune of a lawyer. It attracts
+clients, charms them, holds them fast, commands respect, and shows
+them that a man who lives in such good style expects a good price for
+his words."
+
+She was silent for a few seconds and then went on:
+
+"We must look out for something suitable for you; much less
+pretentious, since you have nothing, but nice and pretty all the same.
+I assure you it will be to your advantage."
+
+Pierre replied contemptuously:
+
+"For me! Oh, I shall make my way by hard work and learning."
+
+But his mother insisted: "Yes, but I assure you that to be well lodged
+will be of use to you nevertheless."
+
+About half-way through the meal he suddenly asked:
+
+"How did you first come to know this man Marechal?"
+
+Old Roland looked up and racked his memory:
+
+"Wait a bit; I scarcely recollect. It is such an old story now. Ah,
+yes, I remember. It was your mother who made acquaintance with him in
+the shop, was it not, Louise? He first came to order something, and
+then he called frequently. We knew him as a customer before we knew
+him as a friend."
+
+Pierre, who was eating beans, sticking his fork into them one by one
+as if he were spitting them, went on:
+
+"And when was it that you made his acquaintance?"
+
+Again Roland sat thinking, but he could remember no more and appealed
+to his wife's better memory.
+
+"In what year was it, Louise? You surely have not forgotten, you who
+remember everything. Let me see--it was in--in--in fifty-five or
+fifty-six? Try to remember. You ought to know better than I."
+
+She did in fact think it over for some minutes, and then replied in a
+steady voice and with calm decision:
+
+"It was in fifty-eight, old man. Pierre was three years old. I am
+quite sure that I am not mistaken, for it was in that year that the
+child had scarlet fever, and Marechal, whom we then knew but very
+little, was of the greatest service to us."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"To be sure--very true; he was really invaluable. When your mother was
+half-dead with fatigue and I had to attend to the shop, he would go to
+the chemist's to fetch your medicine. He really had the kindest heart!
+And when you were well again, you cannot think how glad he was and how
+he petted you. It was from that time that we became such great
+friends."
+
+And this thought rushed into Pierre's soul, as abrupt and violent as a
+cannon-ball rending and piercing it: "Since he knew me first, since he
+was so devoted to me, since he was so fond of me and petted me so
+much, since I--_I_ was the cause of this great intimacy with my
+parents, why did he leave all his money to my brother and nothing to
+me?"
+
+He asked no more questions and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather
+than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined,
+the secret germ of a new pain.
+
+He went out early, wandering about the streets once more. They were
+shrouded in the fog which made the night heavy, opaque, and nauseous.
+It was like a pestilential rock dropped on earth. It could be seen
+swirling past the gas-lights, which it seemed to put out at intervals.
+The pavement was as slippery as on a frosty night after a rain, and
+all sorts of evil smells seemed to come up from the bowels of the
+houses--the stench of cellars, drains, sewers, squalid kitchens--to
+mingle with the horrible savor of this wandering fog.
+
+Pierre, with his shoulders up and his hands in his pockets, not caring
+to remain out of doors in the cold, turned into Marowsko's. The
+druggist was asleep as usual under the gas-light, which kept watch. On
+recognizing Pierre, for whom he had the affection of a faithful dog,
+he shook off his drowsiness, went for two glasses, and brought out the
+_Groseillette_.
+
+"Well," said the doctor, "how is the liqueur getting on?"
+
+The Pole explained that four of the chief cafes in the town had agreed
+to have it on sale, and that two papers, the _Northcoast Pharos_ and
+the _Havre Semaphore_, would advertise it, in return for certain
+chemical preparations to be supplied to the editors.
+
+After a long silence Marowsko asked whether Jean had come definitely
+into possession of his fortune; and then he put two or three other
+questions vaguely referring to the same subject. His jealous devotion
+to Pierre rebelled against this preference. And Pierre felt as though
+he could hear him thinking; he guessed and understood, read in his
+averted eyes and in the hesitancy of his tone, the words which rose to
+his lips but were not spoken--which the druggist was too timid or too
+prudent and cautious to utter.
+
+At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not
+to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people
+speak ill of your mother."
+
+Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was Marechal's son. Of
+course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing
+must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident? Why, he himself,
+Pierre, her son--had not he been for these three days past fighting
+with all the subtlety at his command to cheat his reason, fighting
+against this hideous suspicion?
+
+And suddenly the need to be alone, to reflect, to discuss the matter
+with himself--to face boldly, without scruple or weakness, this
+possible but monstrous thing--came upon him anew, and so imperative
+that he rose without even drinking his glass of _Groseillette_, shook
+hands with the astounded druggist and plunged out into the foggy
+streets again.
+
+He asked himself: "What made this Marechal leave all his fortune to
+Jean?"
+
+It was not jealousy now which made him dwell on this question, not the
+rather mean but natural envy which he knew lurked within him, and with
+which he had been struggling these three days, but the dread of an
+overpowering horror; the dread that he himself should believe Jean,
+his brother, was that man's son.
+
+No. He did not believe it; he could not even ask himself the question
+which was a crime! Meanwhile he must get rid of this faint suspicion,
+improbable as it was, utterly and for ever. He craved for light, for
+certainty--he must win absolute security in his heart, for he loved no
+one in the world but his mother. And as he wandered alone through the
+darkness he would rack his memory and his reason with a minute search
+that should bring out the blazing truth. Then there would be an end to
+the matter; he would not think of it again--never. He would go and
+sleep.
+
+He argued thus: "Let me see: first to examine the facts; then I will
+recall all I know about him, his behavior to my brother and to me. I
+will seek out the causes which might have given rise to this
+preference. He knew Jean from his birth? Yes, but he had known me
+first. If he had loved my mother silently, unselfishly, he would
+surely have chosen me, since it was through me, through my scarlet
+fever, that he became so intimate with my parents. Logically, then, he
+ought to have preferred me, to have had a keener affection for
+me--unless it were that he felt an instinctive attraction and
+predilection for my brother as he watched him grow up."
+
+Then, with desperate tension of brain and of all the powers of his
+intellect, he strove to reconstitute from memory the image of this
+Marechal, to see him, to know him, to penetrate the man whom he had
+seen pass by him, indifferent to his heart during all those years in
+Paris.
+
+But he perceived that the slight exertion of walking somewhat
+disturbed his ideas, dislocated their continuity, weakened their
+precision, clouded his recollection. To enable him to look at the past
+and at unknown events with so keen an eye that nothing should escape
+it, he must be motionless in a vast and empty space. And he made up
+his mind to go and sit on the jetty as he had done that other night.
+As he approached the harbor he heard, out at sea, a lugubrious and
+sinister wail like the bellowing of a bull, but more long-drawn and
+steady. It was the roar of a fog-horn, the cry of a ship lost in the
+fog. A shiver ran through him, chilling his heart; so deeply did this
+cry of distress thrill his soul and nerves that he felt as if he had
+uttered it himself. Another and a similar voice answered with such
+another moan, but further away; then, close by, the fog-horn on the
+pier gave out a fearful sound in answer. Pierre made for the jetty
+with long steps, thinking no more of anything, content to walk on into
+this ominous and bellowing darkness.
+
+When he had seated himself at the end of the breakwater he closed his
+eyes, that he might not see the two electric lights, now blurred by
+the fog, which make the harbor accessible at night, and the red glare
+of the light on the south pier, which was, however, scarcely visible.
+Turning half-round, he rested his elbows on the granite and hid his
+face in his hands.
+
+Though he did not pronounce the word with his lips, his mind kept
+repeating: "Marechal--Marechal," as if to raise and challenge the
+shade. And on the black background of his closed eyelids, he suddenly
+saw him as he had known him: a man of about sixty, with a white beard
+cut in a point and very thick eyebrows, also white. He was neither
+tall nor short, his manner was pleasant, his eyes gray and soft, his
+movements gentle, his whole appearance that of a good fellow, simple
+and kindly. He called Pierre et Jean "my dear children," and had never
+seemed to prefer either, asking them both together to dine with him.
+And then Pierre, with the pertinacity of a dog seeking a lost scent,
+tried to recall the words, gestures, tones, looks, of this man who had
+vanished from the world. By degrees he saw him quite clearly in his
+rooms in the rue Tronchet, where he received his brother and himself
+at dinner.
+
+He was waited on by two maids, both old women who had been in the
+habit--a very old one, no doubt--of saying "Monsieur Pierre" and
+"Monsieur Jean." Marechal would hold out both hands, the right hand
+to one of the young men, the left to the other, as they happened to
+come in.
+
+"How are you, my children?" he would say. "Have you any news of your
+parents? As for me, they never write to me."
+
+The talk was quiet and intimate, of commonplace matters. There was
+nothing remarkable in the man's mind, but much that was winning,
+charming, and gracious. He had certainly been a good friend to them,
+one of those good friends of whom we think the less because we feel
+sure of them.
+
+Now, reminiscences came readily to Pierre's mind. Having seen him
+anxious from time to time, and suspecting his student's
+impecuniousness, Marechal had of his own accord offered and lent him
+money, a few hundred francs perhaps, forgotten by both, and never
+repaid. Then this man must always have been fond of him, always have
+taken an interest in him, since he thought of his needs. Well
+then--well then--why leave his whole fortune to Jean? No, he had never
+shown any more marked affection for the younger than for the elder,
+had never been more interested in one than in the other, or seemed to
+care more tenderly for this one or that one. Well then--well then--he
+must have had some strong secret reason for leaving everything to
+Jean--everything--and nothing to Pierre.
+
+The more he thought, the more he recalled the past few years, the more
+extraordinary, the more incredible was it that he should have made
+such a difference between them. And an agonizing pang of unspeakable
+anguish piercing his bosom made his heart beat like a fluttering rag.
+Its springs seemed broken, and the blood rushed through in a flood,
+unchecked, tossing it with wild surges.
+
+Then in an undertone, as a man speaks in a nightmare, he muttered: "I
+must know. My God! I must know."
+
+He looked further back now, to an earlier time, when his parents had
+lived in Paris. But the faces escaped him, and this confused his
+recollections. He struggled above all to see Marechal with light, or
+brown, or black hair. But he could not; the later image, his face as
+an old man, blotted out all others. However, he remembered that he had
+been slighter, and had a soft hand, and that he often brought flowers.
+Very often--for his father would constantly say: "What, another
+bouquet! But this is madness, my dear fellow; you will ruin yourself
+in roses." And Marechal would say: "No matter; I like it."
+
+And suddenly his mother's voice and accent, his mother's as she smiled
+and said: "Thank you, my kind friend," flashed on his brain, so
+clearly that he could have believed he heard her. She must have spoken
+those words very often that they should remain thus graven on her
+son's memory.
+
+So Marechal brought flowers; he, the gentleman, the rich man, the
+customer, to the humble shop-keeper, the jeweler's wife. Had he loved
+her? Why should he have made friends with these tradespeople if he had
+not been in love with the wife? He was a man of education and fairly
+refined tastes. How many a time had he discussed poets and poetry with
+Pierre. He did not appreciate these writers from an artistic point of
+view, but with sympathetic and responsive feeling. The doctor had
+often smiled at his emotions which had struck him as rather silly; now
+he plainly saw that this sentimental soul could never, never have been
+the friend of his father, who was so matter-of-fact, so narrow, so
+heavy, to whom the word "Poetry" meant idiocy.
+
+This Marechal then, being young, free, rich, ready for any form of
+tenderness, went by chance into the shop one day, having perhaps
+observed its pretty mistress. He had bought something, had come again,
+had chatted, more intimately each time, paying by frequent purchases
+for the right of a seat in the family, of smiling at the young wife
+and shaking hands with the husband.
+
+And what next--what next--good God--what next?
+
+He had loved and petted the first child, the jeweler's child, till the
+second was born; then, till death, he had remained impenetrable; and
+when his grave was closed, his flesh dust, his name erased from the
+list of the living, when he himself was quiet and forever gone, having
+nothing to scheme for, to dread or to hide, he had given his whole
+fortune to the second child! Why?
+
+The man had all his wits; he must have understood and foreseen that he
+might, that he almost infallibly must, give grounds for the
+supposition that the child was his. He was casting obloquy on a woman.
+How could he have done this if Jean were not his son?
+
+And suddenly a clear and fearful recollection shot through his brain.
+Marechal was fair--fair like Jean. He now remembered a little
+miniature portrait he had seen formerly in Paris, on the drawing-room
+chimney-shelf, and which had since disappeared. Where was it? Lost, or
+hidden away? Oh, if he could but have it in his hands for one minute!
+His mother kept it perhaps in the unconfessed drawer where love-tokens
+were treasured.
+
+His misery at this thought was so intense that he uttered a groan, one
+of those brief moans wrung from the breast by a too intolerable pang.
+And immediately, as if it had heard him, as if it had understood and
+answered him, the fog-horn on the pier bellowed out close to him. Its
+voice, like that of a fiendish monster, more resonant than thunder--a
+savage and appalling roar contrived to drown the clamor of the wind
+and waves--spread through the darkness, across the sea, which was
+invisible under its shroud of fog. And again, through the mist, far
+and near, responsive cries went up to the night. They were terrifying,
+these calls given forth by the great blind steam-ships.
+
+Then all was silent once more.
+
+Pierre had opened his eyes and was looking about him, startled to find
+himself here, roused from his nightmare.
+
+"I am mad," thought he, "I suspect my mother." And a surge of love and
+emotion, of repentance and prayer and grief, welled up in his heart.
+His mother! Knowing her as he knew her, how could he ever have
+suspected her? Was not the soul, was not the life of this
+simple-minded, chaste, and loyal woman clearer than water? Could any
+one who had seen and known her ever think of her but as above
+suspicion? And he, her son, had doubted her! Oh, if he could but have
+taken her in his arms at that moment, how he would have kissed and
+caressed her, and gone on his knees to crave pardon.
+
+Would she have deceived his father--she?
+
+His father!--A very worthy man no doubt, upright and honest in
+business, but with a mind which had never gone beyond the horizon of
+his shop. How was it that this woman, who must have been very
+pretty--as he knew, and it could still be seen--gifted, too, with a
+delicate, tender, emotional soul, have accepted a man so unlike
+herself as a suitor and a husband? Why inquire? She had married, as
+young French girls do marry, the youth with a little fortune proposed
+to her by their relations. They had settled at once in their shop in
+the Rue Montmartre; and the young wife, ruling over the desk, inspired
+by the feeling of a new home, and the subtle and sacred sense of
+interests in common which fills the place of love, and even of regard,
+by the domestic hearth of most of the commercial houses of Paris, had
+set to work with all her superior and active intelligence, to make the
+fortune they hoped for. And so her life had flowed on, uniform,
+peaceful and respectable, but loveless.
+
+Loveless?--was it possible then that a woman should not love? That a
+young and pretty woman, living in Paris, reading books, applauding
+actresses for dying of passion on the stage, could live from youth to
+old age, without once feeling her heart touched? He would not believe
+it of any one else; why should she be different from all others,
+though she was his mother?
+
+She had been young, with all the poetic weaknesses which agitate the
+heart of a young creature. Shut up, imprisoned in the shop, by the
+side of a vulgar husband who always talked of trade, she had dreamed
+of moonlight nights, of voyages, of kisses exchanged in the shades of
+evening. And then, one day a man had come in, as lovers do in books,
+and had talked as they talk.
+
+She had loved him. Why not? She was his mother. What then? Must a man
+be blind and stupid to the point of rejecting evidence because it
+concerns his mother? And she had been frail. Why, yes, since this man
+had had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she
+was far away and growing old. Why yes, since he had left all his
+fortune to his son--their son!
+
+And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he
+longed to kill some one. With his arm outstretched, his hand wide
+open, he wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom?
+Everyone; his father, his brother, the dead man, his mother!
+
+He hurried off homeward. What was he going to do?
+
+As he passed a turret close to the signal mast the strident howl of
+the fog-horn went off in his very face. He was so startled that he
+nearly fell, and shrank back as far as the granite parapet. The
+steamer which was the first to reply seemed to be quite near and was
+already at the entrance, the tide having risen.
+
+Pierre turned round and could discern its red eye dim through the fog.
+Then, in the broad light of the electric lanterns, a huge black shadow
+crept up between the piers. Behind him the voice of the lookout man,
+the hoarse voice of an old retired sea-captain, shouted:
+
+"What ship?" And out of the fog the voice of the pilot standing on
+deck--not less hoarse--replied:
+
+"The Santa Lucia."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"Italy."
+
+"What port?"
+
+"Naples."
+
+And before Pierre's bewildered eyes rose as he fancied, the fiery
+pennon of Vesuvius, while, at the foot of the volcano, fire-flies
+danced in the orange-groves of Sorrento or Castellamare. How often had
+he dreamed of these familiar names as if he knew the scenery. Oh, if
+he might but go away, now at once, never mind whither, and never come
+back, never write, never let any one know what had become of him! But
+no, he must go home--home to his father's house, and go to bed.
+
+He would not. Come what might he would not go in; he would stay there
+till daybreak. He liked the roar of the fog-horns. He pulled himself
+together and began to walk up and down like an officer on watch.
+
+Another vessel was coming in behind the other, huge and mysterious. An
+English Indiaman, homeward bound.
+
+He saw several more come in, one after another, out of the
+impenetrable vapor. Then, as the damp became quite intolerable, Pierre
+set out toward the town. He was so cold that he went into a sailors'
+tavern to drink a glass of grog, and when the hot and pungent liquor
+had scorched his mouth and throat he felt a hope revive within him.
+
+Perhaps he was mistaken. He knew his own vagabond unreason so well! No
+doubt he was mistaken. He had piled up the evidence as a charge is
+drawn up against an innocent person, whom it is always so easy to
+convict when we wish to think him guilty. When he should have slept he
+would think differently.
+
+Then he went in and to bed, and by sheer force of will he at last
+dropped asleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+But the doctor's frame lay scarcely more than an hour or two in the
+torpor of troubled slumbers. When he awoke in the darkness of his
+warm, closed room, he was aware, even before thought was awake in him,
+of the painful oppression, the sickness of heart which the sorrow we
+have slept on leaves behind it. It is as though the disaster of which
+the shock merely jarred us at first, had, during sleep, stolen into
+our very flesh, bruising and exhausting it like a fever. Memory
+returned to him like a blow, and he sat up in bed. Then slowly, one by
+one, he again went through all the arguments which had wrung his heart
+on the jetty while the fog-horns were bellowing. The more he thought
+the less he doubted. He felt himself dragged along by his logic to the
+inevitable certainty, as by a clutching, strangling hand.
+
+He was thirsty and hot, his heart beat wildly. He got up to open his
+window and breathe the fresh air, and as he stood there a low sound
+fell on his ear through the wall. Jean was sleeping peacefully, and
+gently snoring. He could sleep! He had no presentiment, no suspicions!
+A man who had known their mother left him all his fortune; he took the
+money and thought it quite fair and natural! He was sleeping, rich and
+contented, not knowing that his brother was gasping with anguish and
+distress. And rage boiled up in him against this heedless and happy
+sleeper.
+
+Only yesterday he would have knocked at his door, have gone in, and
+sitting by the bed, would have said to Jean, scared by the sudden
+waking:
+
+"Jean, you must not keep this legacy which by to-morrow may have
+brought suspicion and dishonor on our mother."
+
+But to-day he could say nothing; he could not tell Jean that he did
+not believe him to be their father's son. Now he must guard, must bury
+the shame he had discovered, hide from every eye the stain which he
+had detected and which no one must perceive, not even his
+brother--especially not his brother.
+
+He no longer thought about the vain respect of public opinion. He
+would have been glad that all the world should accuse his mother if
+only he, he alone, knew her to be innocent! How could he bear to live
+with her every day, believing as he looked at her that his brother was
+the child of a stranger?
+
+And how calm and serene she was, nevertheless, how sure of herself she
+always seemed! Was it possible that such a woman as she, pure of soul
+and upright in heart, should fall, dragged astray by passion, and yet
+nothing ever appear afterward of her remorse and the stings of a
+troubled conscience? Ah, but remorse must have tortured her, long ago
+in the earlier days, and then have faded out, as everything fades. She
+had surely bewailed her sin, and then, little by little, had almost
+forgotten it. Have not all women, all, this fault of prodigious
+forgetfulness which enables them, after a few years, hardly to
+recognize the man to whose kisses they have lent their lips? The kiss
+strikes like a thunder-bolt, the love passes away like a storm, and
+then life, like the sky, is calm once more, and begins again as it
+was before. Do you ever remember a cloud?
+
+Pierre could no longer endure to stay in the room! This house, his
+father's house, crushed him. He felt the roof weigh on his head, and
+the walls suffocate him. And as he was very thirsty he lighted his
+candle to go to drink a glass of fresh water from the filter in the
+kitchen.
+
+He went down the two flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up
+again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his nightshirt, on
+a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a
+tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he
+ceased to move the silence of the house touched his feelings; then,
+one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was
+the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow
+louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore,
+short, labored and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at
+the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two
+men, sleeping under the same roof--father and son--were nothing to
+each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together,
+and they did not know it! They spoke to each other affectionately,
+they embraced each other, they rejoiced and lamented together over the
+same things, just as if the same blood flowed in their veins. And two
+men born at opposite ends of the earth could not be more alien to each
+other than this father and son. They believed they loved each other,
+because a lie had grown up between them. This paternal love, this
+filial love, were the outcome of a lie--a lie which could not be
+unmasked, and which no one would ever know but he, the true son.
+
+But yet, but yet--if he were mistaken? How could he make sure? Oh, if
+only some likeness, however slight, could be traced between his father
+and Jean, one of those mysterious resemblances which run from an
+ancestor to the great-great-grandson, showing that the whole race are
+the offspring of the same kiss. To him, a medical man, so little would
+suffice to enable him to discern this--the curve of a nostril, the
+space between the eyes, the character of the teeth or hair; nay
+less--a gesture, a trick, a habit, an inherited taste, any mark or
+token which a practiced eye might recognize as characteristic.
+
+He thought long, but could remember nothing; no, nothing. But he had
+looked carelessly, observed badly, having no reason for spying such
+imperceptible indications.
+
+He got up to go back to his room and mounted the stairs with a slow
+step, still lost in thought. As he passed the door of his brother's
+room he stood stock still, his hand put out to open it. An imperative
+need had just come over him to see Jean at once, to look at him at his
+leisure, to surprise him in his sleep, while the calm countenance and
+relaxed features were at rest and all the grimace of life put off.
+Thus he might catch the dormant secret of his physiognomy, and if any
+appreciable likeness existed it would not escape him.
+
+But supposing Jean were to wake, what could he say? How could he
+explain this intrusion?
+
+He stood still, his fingers clenched on the door-handle, trying to
+devise a reason, an excuse. Then he remembered that a week ago he had
+lent his brother a phial of laudanum to relieve a fit of toothache.
+He might himself have been in pain this night and have come to find
+the drug. So he went in with a stealthy step, like a robber. Jean, his
+mouth open, was sunk in deep, animal slumbers. His beard and fair hair
+made a golden patch on the white linen; he did not wake, but he ceased
+snoring.
+
+Pierre, leaning over him, gazed at him with hungry eagerness. No, this
+youngster was not in the least like Roland; and for the second time
+the recollection of the little portrait of Marechal, which had
+vanished, recurred to his mind. He must find it! When he should see it
+perhaps he should cease to doubt!
+
+His brother stirred, conscious no doubt of a presence, or disturbed by
+the light of the taper on his eyelids. The doctor retired on tiptoe to
+the door which he noiselessly closed; then he went back to his room,
+but not to bed again.
+
+Day was long in coming. The hours struck one after another on the
+dining-room clock, and its tone was a deep and solemn one, as though
+the little piece of clockwork had swallowed a cathedral bell. The
+sound rose through the empty staircase, penetrating through walls and
+doors, and dying away in the rooms where it fell on the torpid ears of
+the sleeping household. Pierre had taken to walking to and fro between
+his bed and the window. What was he going to do? He was too much upset
+to spend this day at home. He wanted still to be alone, at any rate
+till the next day, to reflect, to compose himself, to strengthen
+himself for the common every-day life which he must take up again.
+
+Well, he would go over to Trouville to see the swarming crowd on the
+sands. That would amuse him, change the air of his thoughts, and give
+him time to inure himself to the horrible thing he had discovered. As
+soon as morning dawned he made his toilet and dressed. The fog had
+vanished and it was fine, very fine. As the boat for Trouville did not
+start till nine, it struck the doctor that he must greet his mother
+before starting.
+
+He waited till the hour at which she was accustomed to get up, and
+then went downstairs. His heart beat so violently as he touched her
+door that he paused for breath. His hand as it lay on the lock was
+limp and tremulous, almost incapable of the slight effort of turning
+the handle to open it. He knocked. His mother's voice inquired:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"I--Pierre."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Only to say good morning, because I am going to spend the day at
+Trouville with some friends."
+
+"But I am still in bed."
+
+"Very well, do not disturb yourself. I shall see you this evening,
+when I come in."
+
+He hoped to get off without seeing her, without pressing on her cheek
+the false kiss which it made his heart sick to think of. But she
+replied:
+
+"No. Wait a moment. I will let you in. Wait till I get into bed
+again."
+
+He heard her bare feet on the floor and the sound of the bolt drawn
+back. Then she called out:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. She was sitting up in bed, while, by her side, Roland,
+with a silk handkerchief by way of nightcap and his face to the wall,
+still lay sleeping. Nothing ever woke him but a shaking hard enough to
+pull his arm off. On the days when he went fishing it was Josephine,
+rung up by Papagris at the hour fixed, who roused her master from his
+stubborn slumbers.
+
+Pierre as he went toward his mother, looked at her with a sudden sense
+of never having seen her before. She held up her face, he kissed each
+cheek, and then sat down in a low chair.
+
+"It was last evening that you decided on this excursion?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, last evening."
+
+"Will you return to dinner?"
+
+"I do not know. At any rate do not wait for me."
+
+He looked at her with stupefied curiosity. This woman was his mother!
+All those features, seen daily from childhood, from the time when his
+eye could first distinguish things, that smile, that voice--so well
+known, so familiar, abruptly struck him as new, different from what
+they had always been to him hitherto. He understood now that, loving
+her, he had never looked at her. All the same it was very really she,
+and he knew every little detail of her face; still, it was the first
+time he clearly identified them all. His anxious attention,
+scrutinizing her face which he loved, recalled a difference, a
+physiognomy he had never before discerned.
+
+He rose to go; then, suddenly yielding to the invincible longing to
+know which had been gnawing at him since yesterday, he said:
+
+"By the way, I fancy I remember that you used to have, in Paris, a
+little portrait of Marechal, in the drawing-room."
+
+She hesitated for a second or two, or at least he fancied she
+hesitated; then she said:
+
+"To be sure."
+
+"What has become of the portrait?"
+
+She might have replied more readily:
+
+"That portrait--stay; I don't exactly know--perhaps it is in my desk."
+
+"It would be kind of you to find it."
+
+"Yes, I will look for it. What do you want it for?"
+
+"Oh, it was not for myself. I thought it would be a natural thing to
+give it to Jean, and that he would be pleased to have it."
+
+"Yes, you are right; that is a good idea. I will look for it, as soon
+as I am up."
+
+And he went out.
+
+It was a blue day, without a breath of wind. The folks in the streets
+seemed in good spirits, the merchants going to business, the clerks
+going to their office, the girls going to their shop. Some sang as
+they went, exhilarated by the bright weather.
+
+The passengers were already going on board the Trouville boat; Pierre
+took a seat aft on a wooden bench.
+
+He asked himself:
+
+"Now was she uneasy at my asking for the portrait or only surprised?
+Has she mislaid it, or has she hidden it? Does she know where it is,
+or does she not? If she has hidden it--why?"
+
+And his mind, still following up the same line of thought from one
+deduction to another, came to this conclusion:
+
+That portrait--of a friend, of a lover, had remained in the
+drawing-room in a conspicuous place, till one day when the wife and
+mother perceived, first of all and before any one else, that it bore a
+likeness to her son. Without doubt she had for a long time been on the
+watch for this resemblance; then, having detected it, having noticed
+its beginnings, and understanding that any one might, any day, observe
+it too, she had one evening removed the perilous little picture and
+had hidden it, not daring to destroy it.
+
+Pierre recollected quite clearly now that it was long, long before
+they left Paris that the miniature had vanished. It had disappeared,
+he thought, about the time when Jean's beard was beginning to grow,
+which had made him suddenly and wonderfully like the fair young man
+who smiled from the picture frame.
+
+The motion of the boat as it put off disturbed and dissipated his
+meditations. He stood up and looked at the sea. The little steamer,
+once outside the piers, turned to the left, and puffing and snorting
+and quivering, made for a distant point visible through the morning
+haze. The red sail of a heavy fishing-bark, lying motionless on the
+level waters, looked like a large rock standing up out of the sea. And
+the Seine, rolling down from Rouen, seemed a wide inlet dividing two
+neighboring lands. They reached the harbor of Trouville in less than
+an hour, and as it was the time of day when the world was bathing,
+Pierre went to the shore.
+
+From a distance it looked like a garden full of gaudy flowers. All
+along the stretch of yellow sand, from the pier as far as the Roches
+Noires, sunshades of every hue, hats of every shape, dresses of every
+color, in groups outside the bathing huts, in long rows by the margin
+of the waves, or scattered here and there, really looked like immense
+bouquets on a vast meadow. And the Babel of sounds--voices near and
+far ringing thin in the light atmosphere, shouts and cries of children
+being bathed, clear laughter of women--all made a pleasant, continuous
+din, mingling with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air
+itself.
+
+Pierre walked on among all this throng, more lost, more remote from
+them, more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if
+he had been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles
+from shore. He passed by them and heard a few sentences without
+listening; and he saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the
+women, and the women smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had
+awoke, he perceived them all; and hatred of them all surged up in his
+soul, for they seemed happy and content.
+
+Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
+fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the
+sands like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the
+fictitious grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of
+fashion from the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the
+insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
+in short displayed on this sea-shore, suddenly struck him as
+stupendous efflorescences of female depravity. All these bedizened
+women aimed at pleasing, bewitching, and deluding some man. They had
+dressed themselves out for men--for all men--all excepting the husband
+whom they no longer needed to conquer. They had dressed themselves out
+for the lover of yesterday and the lover of to-morrow, for the
+stranger they might meet and notice or were perhaps on the lookout
+for.
+
+And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
+invited them, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
+that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
+then, no more than a love-market--some drove a hard bargain for their
+kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
+everywhere the same, all the world over.
+
+His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? No. For
+there were exceptions--many, very many. These women he saw about him,
+rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to the class of
+fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to the less
+respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the legion of
+idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to be seen.
+
+The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of visitors gradually
+landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
+chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
+a lacelike frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled
+up by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade
+running along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing
+flow, slow and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams
+elbowing and mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this
+bustle, made his escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast
+at a modest tavern on the skirts of the fields.
+
+When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his legs on a couple
+of chairs under a lime tree in front of the house, and as he had
+hardly slept the night before, he presently fell into a doze. After
+resting for some hours he shook himself, and finding that it was time
+to go on board again he set out, tormented by a sudden stiffness which
+had come upon him during his long nap. Now he was eager to be at home
+again; to know whether his mother had found the portrait of Marechal.
+Would she be the first to speak of it, or would he be obliged to ask
+for it again? If she waited to be questioned further it must be
+because she had some secret reason for not showing the miniature.
+
+But when he was at home again, and in his room, he hesitated about
+going down to dinner. He was too wretched. His revolted soul had not
+yet had time to calm down. However, he made up his mind to it, and
+appeared in the dining-room just as they were sitting down.
+
+All their faces were beaming.
+
+"Well," said Roland, "are you getting on with your purchases? I do not
+want to see anything till it is all in its place."
+
+And his wife replied: "Oh, yes. We are getting on. But it takes much
+consideration to avoid buying things that do not match. The furniture
+question is an absorbing one."
+
+She had spent the day in going with Jean to cabinet-makers and
+upholsterers. Her fancy was for rich materials, rather splendid, to
+strike the eye at once. Her son, on the contrary, wished for something
+simple and elegant. So in front of everything put before them they had
+each repeated their arguments. She declared that a client, a
+defendant, must be impressed; that as soon as he is shown into his
+counsel's waiting-room he should have a sense of wealth.
+
+Jean, on the other hand, wishing to attract only an elegant and
+opulent class, was anxious to captivate persons of refinement by his
+quiet and perfect taste.
+
+And this discussion, which had gone on all day, began again with the
+soup.
+
+Roland had no opinion. He repeated: "I do not want to hear anything
+about it. I will go and see it when it is all finished."
+
+Mme. Roland appealed to the judgment of her elder son.
+
+"And you, Pierre, what do you think of the matter?"
+
+His nerves were in a state of such intense excitement that he would
+have liked to reply with an oath. However, he only answered in a dry
+tone quivering with annoyance:
+
+"Oh, I am quite of Jean's mind. I like nothing so well as simplicity,
+which, in matters of taste, is equivalent to rectitude in matters of
+conduct."
+
+His mother went on:
+
+"You must remember that we live in a city of commercial men, where
+good taste is not to be met with at every turn."
+
+Pierre replied:
+
+"What does that matter? Is that a reason for living as fools do? If my
+fellow-townsmen are stupid and ill-bred, need I follow their example?
+A woman does not misconduct herself because her neighbor has a
+lover."
+
+Jean began to laugh.
+
+"You argue by comparisons which seem to have been borrowed from the
+maxims of a moralist."
+
+Pierre made no reply. His mother and his brother reverted to the
+question of stuffs and armchairs.
+
+He sat looking at them, as he had looked at his mother in the morning
+before starting for Trouville; looking at them as a stranger who would
+study them, and he felt as though he had really suddenly come into a
+family of which he knew nothing.
+
+His father, above all, amazed his eye and his mind. That flabby, burly
+man, happy and besotted, was his own father! No, no; Jean was not in
+the least like him.
+
+His family!
+
+Within these two days an unknown and malignant hand, the hand of a
+dead man, had torn asunder and broken, one by one, all the ties which
+had held these four human beings together. It was all over, all
+ruined. He had now no mother--for he could no longer love her now that
+he could not revere her with that perfect, tender, and pious respect
+which a son's love demands; no brother--since his brother was the
+child of a stranger; nothing was left him but his father, that coarse
+man whom he could not love in spite of himself.
+
+And he suddenly broke out:
+
+"I say, mother, have you found that portrait?"
+
+She opened her eyes in surprise.
+
+"What portrait?"
+
+"The portrait of Marechal."
+
+"No--that is to say--yes--I have not found it, but I think I know
+where it is."
+
+"What is that?" asked Roland. And Pierre answered:
+
+"A little likeness of Marechal which used to be in the drawing-room in
+Paris. I thought that Jean might be glad to have it."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, to be sure; I remember it perfectly. I saw it again last
+week. Your mother found it in her desk when she was tidying the
+papers. It was on Thursday or Friday. Do you remember, Louise? I was
+shaving myself when you took it out and laid it on a chair by your
+side with a pile of letters of which you burnt half. Strange, isn't
+it, that you should have come across that portrait only two or three
+days before Jean heard of his legacy? If I believed in presentiments I
+should think that this was one."
+
+Mme. Roland calmly replied:
+
+"Yes, I know where it is. I will fetch it presently."
+
+Then she had lied! When she had said that very morning to her son, who
+had asked her what had become of the miniature: "I don't exactly
+know--perhaps it is in my desk"--it was a lie! She had seen it,
+touched it, handled it, gazed at it but a few days since; and then she
+had hidden it away again in the secret drawer with those letters--his
+letters.
+
+Pierre looked at the mother who had lied to him; looked at her with
+the concentrated fury of a son who had been cheated, robbed of his
+most sacred affection, and with the jealous wrath of a man who, after
+long being blind, at last discovers a disgraceful betrayal. If he had
+been that woman's husband--and not her child--he would have gripped
+her by the wrists, seized her by the shoulders or the hair, have flung
+her on the ground, have hit her, hurt her, crushed her! And he might
+say nothing, do nothing, show nothing, reveal nothing. He was her son;
+he had no vengeance to take. And he had not been deceived.
+
+Nay, but she had deceived his tenderness, his pious respect. She owed
+to him to be without reproach, as all mothers owe it to their
+children. If the fury that boiled within him verged on hatred it was
+that he felt her to be even more guilty toward him than toward his
+father.
+
+The love of man and wife is a voluntary compact in which the one who
+proves weak is guilty only of perfidy; but when the wife is a mother
+her duty is a higher one, since nature has intrusted her with a race.
+If she fails then she is cowardly, worthless, infamous.
+
+"I do not care," said Roland suddenly, stretching out his legs under
+the table, as he did every evening while he sipped his glass of
+black-currant brandy, "You may do worse than live idle when you have a
+snug little income. I hope Jean will have us to dinner in style now.
+Hang it all! if I have an indigestion now and then I cannot help it."
+
+Then turning to his wife he added:
+
+"Go and fetch that portrait, little woman, as you have done your
+dinner. I should like to see it again myself."
+
+She rose, took a taper, and went. Then, after an absence which Pierre
+thought long, though she was not away more than three minutes, Mme.
+Roland returned smiling, and holding an old-fashioned gilt frame by
+the ring.
+
+"Here it is," said she, "I found it at once."
+
+The doctor was the first to put forth his hand; he took the picture,
+and holding it a little away from him, he examined it. Then, fully
+aware that his mother was looking at him, he slowly raised his eyes
+and fixed them on his brother to compare the faces. He could hardly
+refrain, in his violence, from saying: "Dear me! How like Jean!" And
+though he dared not utter the terrible words, he betrayed his thought
+by his manner of comparing the living face with the painted one.
+
+They had, no doubt, details in common; the same beard, the same brow;
+but nothing sufficiently marked to justify the assertion: "This is the
+father and that the son." It was rather a family likeness, a
+relationship of physiognomies in which the same blood courses. But
+what to Pierre was far more decisive than the common aspect of the
+faces, was that his mother had risen, had turned her back, and was
+pretending, too deliberately, to be putting the sugar basin and the
+liqueur bottle away in a cupboard. She understood that he knew, or at
+any rate had his suspicions.
+
+"Hand it on to me," said Roland.
+
+Pierre held out the miniature and his father drew the candle toward
+him to see it better; then he murmured in a pathetic tone:
+
+"Poor fellow! To think that he was like that when we first knew him!
+Cristi! How time flies! He was a good-looking man, too, in those days,
+and with such a pleasant manner--was not he, Louise?"
+
+As his wife made no answer he went on:
+
+"And what an even temper! I never saw him put out. And now it is all
+at an end--nothing left of him--but what he bequeathed to Jean. Well,
+at any rate you may take your oath that that man was a good and
+faithful friend to the last. Even on his deathbed he did not forget
+us."
+
+Jean, in his turn, held out his hand for the picture. He gazed at it
+for a few minutes and then said regretfully:
+
+"I do not recognize it at all. I only remember him with white hair."
+
+He returned the miniature to his mother. She cast a hasty glance at
+it, looking away again as if she were frightened; then in her usual
+voice, she said:
+
+"It belongs to you now, my little Jean, as you are his heir. We will
+take it to your new rooms." And when they went into the drawing-room
+she placed the picture on the chimney-shelf by the clock, where it had
+formerly stood.
+
+Roland filled his pipe; Pierre and Jean lighted cigarettes. They
+commonly smoked them, Pierre while he paced the room, Jean, sunk in a
+deep armchair, with his legs crossed. Their father always sat astride
+on a chair and spit from afar into the fireplace.
+
+Mme. Roland, on a low seat by a little table on which the lamp stood,
+embroidered, or knitted, or marked linen.
+
+This evening she was beginning a piece of worsted work, intended for
+Jean's lodgings. It was a difficult and complicated pattern, and
+required all her attention. Still, now and again, her eye, which was
+counting the stitches, glanced up swiftly and furtively at the little
+portrait of the dead as it leaned against the clock. And the doctor,
+who was striding to and fro across the little room in four or five
+steps, met his mother's look at each turn.
+
+It was as though they were spying on each other; and acute uneasiness,
+intolerable to be borne, clutched at Pierre's heart. He was saying to
+himself--at once tortured and glad:
+
+"She must be in misery at this moment if she knows that I guess!" And
+each time he reached the fireplace he stopped for a few seconds to
+look at Marechal's fair hair, and show quite plainly that he was
+haunted by a fixed idea. So that this little portrait, smaller than an
+opened palm, was like a living being, malignant and threatening,
+suddenly brought into this house and this family.
+
+Presently the street-door bell rang. Mme. Roland, always so
+self-possessed, started violently, betraying to her doctor son the
+anguish of her nerves. Then she said: "It must be Mme. Rosemilly"; and
+her eye again anxiously turned to the mantelshelf.
+
+Pierre understood, or thought he understood, her fears and misery. A
+woman's eye is keen, a woman's wit is nimble, and her instincts
+suspicious. When this woman who was coming in should see the miniature
+of a man she did not know, she might perhaps at the first glance
+discover the likeness between this face and Jean. Then she would know
+and understand everything.
+
+He was seized with a dread, a sudden and horrible dread of this shame
+being unveiled, and, turning about just as the door opened, he took
+the little painting and slipped it under the clock without being seen
+by his father and brother.
+
+When he met his mother's eyes again they seemed to him altered, dim,
+and haggard.
+
+"Good evening," said Mme. Rosemilly. "I have come to ask you for a cup
+of tea."
+
+But while they were bustling about her and asking after her health,
+Pierre made off, the door having been left open.
+
+When his absence was perceived they were all surprised. Jean, annoyed
+for the young widow, who, he thought, would be hurt, muttered: "What a
+bear!"
+
+Mme. Roland replied: "You must not be vexed with him; he is not very
+well to-day and tired with his excursion to Trouville."
+
+"Never mind," said Roland, "that is no reason for taking himself off
+like a savage."
+
+Mme. Rosemilly tried to smooth matters by saying:
+
+"Not at all, not at all. He has gone away in the English fashion;
+people always disappear in that way in fashionable circles if they
+want to leave early."
+
+"Oh, in fashionable circles, I dare say," replied Jean. "But a man
+does not treat his family _a l'Anglaise_, and my brother has done
+nothing else for some time past."
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+For a week or two nothing occurred at the Rolands'. The father went
+fishing; Jean, with his mother's help, was furnishing and settling
+himself; Pierre, very gloomy, never was seen excepting at mealtimes.
+
+His father having asked him one evening:
+
+"Why the deuce do you always come in with a face as cheerful as a
+funeral? This is not the first time I have remarked it"--the doctor
+replied:
+
+"The fact is I am terribly conscious of the burden of life."
+
+The old man had not a notion what he meant, and with an aggrieved
+look he went on: "It really is too bad. Ever since we had the good
+luck to come into this legacy, every one seems unhappy. It is as
+though some accident had befallen us, as if we were in mourning for
+some one."
+
+"I am in mourning for some one," said Pierre.
+
+"You are? For whom?"
+
+"For some one you never knew, and of whom I was too fond."
+
+Roland imagined that his son alluded to some girl with whom he had had
+some love passages, and he said:
+
+"A woman, I suppose."
+
+"Yes, a woman."
+
+"Dead?"
+
+"No. Worse. Ruined!"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Though he was startled by this unexpected confidence, in his wife's
+presence too, and by his son's strange tone about it, the old man made
+no further inquiries, for in his opinion such affairs did not concern
+a third person.
+
+Mme. Roland affected not to hear; she seemed ill and was very pale.
+Several times already her husband, surprised to see her sit down as if
+she were dropping into her chair, and to hear her gasp as if she could
+not draw her breath, had said:
+
+"Really, Louise, you look very ill; you tire yourself too much with
+helping Jean. Give yourself a little rest. Sacristi! The rascal is in
+no hurry, as he is a rich man."
+
+She shook her head without a word.
+
+But to-day her pallor was so great that Roland remarked on it again.
+
+"Come, come," said he, "this will not do at all, my dear old woman.
+You must take care of yourself." Then, addressing his son, "You surely
+must see that your mother is ill. Have you questioned her, at any
+rate?"
+
+Pierre replied: "No; I had not noticed that there was anything the
+matter with her."
+
+At this Roland was angry.
+
+"But it stares you in the face, confound you! What on earth is the
+good of your being a doctor if you cannot even see that your mother is
+out of sorts? Why, look at her, just look at her. Really, a man might
+die under his very eyes and this doctor would never think there was
+anything the matter!"
+
+Mme. Roland was panting for breath, and so white that her husband
+exclaimed:
+
+"She is going to faint."
+
+"No, no, it is nothing--I shall get better directly--it is nothing."
+
+Pierre had gone up to her and was looking at her steadily.
+
+"What ails you?" he said. And she repeated in an undertone:
+
+"Nothing, nothing--I assure you, nothing."
+
+Roland had gone to fetch some vinegar; he now returned and handing the
+bottle to his son he said:
+
+"Here--do something to ease her. Have you felt her heart?"
+
+As Pierre bent over to feel her pulse she pulled away her hand so
+vehemently that she struck it against a chair which was standing by.
+
+"Come," said he in icy tones, "let me see what I can do for you, as
+you are ill."
+
+Then she raised her arm and held it out to him. Her skin was burning,
+the blood throbbing in short irregular leaps.
+
+"You are certainly ill," he murmured. "You must take something to
+quiet you. I will write you a prescription." And as he wrote, stooping
+over the paper, a low sound of choked sighs, smothered, quick
+breathing and suppressed sobs made him suddenly look round at her. She
+was weeping, her hands covering her face.
+
+Roland, quite distracted, asked her:
+
+"Louise, Louise, what is the matter with you? What on earth ails you?"
+
+She did not answer, but seemed racked by some deep and dreadful grief.
+Her husband tried to take her hands from her face, but she resisted
+him, repeating:
+
+"No, no, no."
+
+He appealed to his son.
+
+"But what is the matter with her? I never saw her like this."
+
+"It is nothing," said Pierre, "she is a little hysterical."
+
+And he felt as if it were a comfort to him to see her suffering thus,
+as if this anguish mitigated his resentment and diminished his
+mother's load of opprobrium. He looked at her as a judge satisfied
+with his day's work.
+
+Suddenly she rose, rushed to the door with such a swift impulse that
+it was impossible to forestall or to stop her, and ran off to lock
+herself into her room.
+
+Roland and the doctor were left face to face.
+
+"Can you make head or tail of it?" said the father.
+
+"Oh, yes," said the other. "It is a little nervous disturbance, not
+alarming or surprising; such attacks may very likely recur from time
+to time."
+
+They did in fact recur, almost every day; and Pierre seemed to bring
+them on with a word, as if he had the clue to her strange and new
+disorder. He would discern in her face a lucid interval of peace and
+with the willingness of a torturer would, with a word, revive the
+anguish that had been lulled for a moment.
+
+But he, too, was suffering, as cruelly as she. It was dreadful pain to
+him that he could no longer love her nor respect her, that he must put
+her on the rack. When he had laid bare the bleeding wound which he had
+opened in her woman's, her mother's heart, when he felt how wretched
+and desperate she was, he would go out alone, wander about the town,
+so torn by remorse, so broken by pity, so grieved to have thus
+hammered her with his scorn as her son, that he longed to fling
+himself into the sea and put an end to it all by drowning himself.
+
+Ah! How gladly, now, would he have forgiven her. But he could not, for
+he was incapable of forgetting. If only he could have desisted from
+making her suffer; but this again he could not, suffering as he did
+himself. He went home to his meals, full of relenting resolutions;
+then, as soon as he saw her, as soon as he met her eye--formerly so
+clear and frank, now so evasive, frightened, and bewildered--he struck
+at her in spite of himself, unable to suppress the treacherous words
+which would rise to his lips.
+
+The disgraceful secret, known to them alone, goaded him up against
+her. It was as a poison flowing in his veins and giving him an impulse
+to bite like a mad dog.
+
+And there was no one in the way now to hinder his reading her; Jean
+lived almost entirely in his new apartments, and only came home to
+dinner and to sleep every night at his father's.
+
+He frequently observed his brother's bitterness and violence, and
+attributed them to jealousy. He promised himself that some day he
+would teach him his place and give him a lesson, for life at home was
+becoming very painful as a result of these constant scenes. But as he
+now lived apart he suffered less from this brutal conduct, and his
+love of peace prompted him to patience. His good fortune, too, had
+turned his head, and he scarcely paused to think of anything which had
+no direct interest for himself. He would come in full of fresh little
+anxieties, full of the cut of a morning-coat, of the shape of a felt
+hat, of the proper size for his visiting-cards. And he talked
+incessantly of all the details of his house--the shelves fixed in his
+bedroom cupboard to keep linen on, the pegs to be put up in the
+entrance hall, the electric bells contrived to prevent illicit
+visitors to his lodgings.
+
+It had been settled that on the day when he should take up his abode
+there they should make an excursion to Saint Jouin, and return after
+dining there, to drink tea in his rooms. Roland wanted to go by water,
+but the distance and the uncertainty of reaching it in a sailing-boat
+if there should be a head-wind, made them reject his plan, and a break
+was hired for the day.
+
+They started by ten to get there to breakfast. The dusty high road lay
+across the plain of Normandy, which, by its gentle undulations, dotted
+with farms embowered in trees, wears the aspect of an endless park. In
+the vehicle, as it jogged on at the slow trot of a pair of heavy
+horses, sat the four Rolands, Mme. Rosemilly, and Captain Beausire,
+all silent, deafened by the rumble of the wheels, and with their eyes
+shut to keep out the clouds of dust.
+
+It was harvest-time. Alternating with the dark hue of clover and the
+raw green of beetroot, the yellow corn lighted up the landscape with
+gleams of pale gold; the fields looked as if they had drunk in the
+sunshine which poured down on them. Here and there the reapers were at
+work, and in the plots where the scythe had been put in the men might
+be seen see-sawing as they swept the level soil with the broad,
+wing-shaped blade.
+
+After a two-hours' drive the break turned off to the left, past a
+windmill at work--a melancholy, gray wreck, half rotten and doomed,
+the last survivor of its ancient race; then it went into a pretty inn
+yard, and drew up at the door of a smart little house, a hostelry
+famous in those parts.
+
+The mistress, well known as "La belle Alphonsine," came smiling to the
+threshold, and held out her hand to the two ladies who hesitated to
+take the high step.
+
+Some strangers were already at breakfast under a tent by a grass plot
+shaded by apple trees--Parisians, who had come from Etretat; and from
+the house came sounds of voices, laughter, and the clatter of plates
+and pans.
+
+They were eating in a room, as the outer dining halls were all full.
+Roland suddenly caught sight of some shrimping nets hanging against
+the wall.
+
+"Ah! ha!" cried he, "you catch prawns here?"
+
+"Yes," replied Beausire. "Indeed it is the place on all the coast
+where most are taken."
+
+"First rate! Suppose we try to catch some after breakfast."
+
+As it happened it would be low tide at three o'clock, so it was
+settled that they should all spend the afternoon among the rocks,
+hunting prawns.
+
+They made a light breakfast, as a precaution against the tendency of
+blood to the head when they should have their feet in the water. They
+also wished to reserve an appetite for dinner, which had been ordered
+on a grand scale and to be ready at six o'clock, when they came in.
+
+Roland could not sit still for impatience. He wanted to buy the nets
+specially constructed for fishing prawns, not unlike those used for
+catching butterflies in the country. Their name on the French coast is
+_lanets_; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end
+of a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them.
+Then she helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet,
+so as not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse
+worsted stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and
+went to the shoemaker's to buy wooden shoes instead.
+
+Then they set out, the nets over their shoulders and creels on their
+backs. Mme. Rosemilly was quite sweet in this costume, with an
+unexpected charm of countrified audacity. The skirt which Alphonsine
+had lent her, coquettishly tucked up and firmly stitched so as to
+allow of her running and jumping fearlessly on the rocks, displayed
+her ankle and lower calf--the firm calf of a strong and agile little
+woman. Her dress was loose to give freedom to her movements, and to
+cover her head she had found an enormous garden hat of coarse yellow
+straw with an extravagantly broad brim; and to this, a bunch of
+tamarisk pinned in to cock it on one side, gave a very dashing and
+military effect.
+
+Jean, since he had come into his fortune, had asked himself every day
+whether or no he should marry her. Each time he saw her he made up his
+mind to ask her to be his wife, and then, as soon as he was alone
+again, he considered that by waiting he would have time to reflect.
+She was now less rich than he, for she had but twelve thousand francs
+a year; but it was in real estate, in farms and lands near the docks
+in Havre; and this by-and-by might be worth a great deal. Their
+fortunes were thus approximately equal, and certainly the young widow
+attracted him greatly.
+
+As he watched her walking in front of him that day he said to himself:
+
+"I must really decide; I cannot do better, I am sure."
+
+They went down a little ravine, sloping from the village to the cliff,
+and the cliff, at the end of this comb, rose about eighty meters above
+the sea. Framed between the green slopes to the right and left, a
+great triangle of silvery blue water could be seen in the distance,
+and a sail, scarcely visible, looked like an insect out there. The
+sky, pale with light, was so merged into one with the water that it
+was impossible to see where one ended and the other began; and the two
+women, walking in front of the men, stood out against this bright
+background, their shapes clearly defined in their closely-fitting
+dresses.
+
+Jean, with a sparkle in his eye, watched the smart ankle, the neat
+leg, the supple waist, and the coquettish broad hat of Mme. Rosemilly
+as they fled away before him. And this flight fired his ardor, urging
+him on to the sudden determination which comes to hesitating and timid
+natures. The warm air, fragrant with seacoast odors--gorse, clover
+and thyme, mingling with the salt smell of the rocks at low
+tide--excited him still more, mounting to his brain; and every moment
+he felt a little more determined, at every step, at every glance he
+cast at the alert figure; he made up his mind to delay no longer, to
+tell her that he loved her and hoped to marry her. The prawn-fishing
+would favor him by affording him an opportunity; and it would be a
+pretty scene too, a pretty spot for love-making--their feet in a pool
+of limpid water while they watched the long feelers of the shrimps
+lurking under the wrack.
+
+When they had reached the end of the comb and the edge of cliff, they
+saw a little footpath slanting down the face of it; and below them,
+about half-way between the sea and the foot of the precipice, an
+amazing chaos of enormous boulders tumbled over and piled one above
+the other on a sort of grassy and undulating plain which extended as
+far as they could see to the southward, formed by an ancient landslip.
+On this long shelf of brushwood and grass, disrupted, as it seemed, by
+the shocks of a volcano, the fallen rocks seemed the wreck of a great
+ruined city which had once looked out on the ocean, sheltered by the
+long white wall of the overhanging cliff.
+
+"That is fine!" exclaimed Mme. Rosemilly, standing still. Jean had
+come up with her, and with a beating heart offered his hand to help
+her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.
+
+They went on in front, while Beausire, squaring himself on his little
+legs, gave his arm to Mme. Roland, who felt giddy at the gulf before
+her.
+
+The two young people who led the way, went fast till on a sudden they
+saw, by the side of a wooden bench which afforded a resting place
+about half-way down the slope, a thread of clear water, springing from
+a crevice in the cliff. It fell into a hollow as large as a washing
+basin which it had worn in the stone; then, falling in a cascade,
+hardly two feet high, it trickled across the footpath, which it had
+carpeted with cresses, and was lost among the briars and grass on the
+raised shelf where the boulders were piled.
+
+"Oh, I am so thirsty!" cried Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+But how could she drink? She tried to catch the water in her hand, but
+it slipped away between her fingers. Jean had an idea; he placed a
+stone on the path and on this she knelt down to put her lips to the
+spring itself, which was thus on the same level.
+
+When she raised her head, covered with myriads of tiny drops,
+sprinkled all over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, and her dress,
+Jean bent over her and murmured: "How pretty you look!"
+
+She answered in the tone in which she might have scolded a child:
+
+"Will you be quiet!"
+
+These were the first words of flirtation they had ever exchanged.
+
+"Come," said Jean, much agitated. "Let us go on before they come up
+with us."
+
+For in fact they could see quite near them now, Captain Beausire's
+back as he came down, stern foremost, so as to give both hands to Mme.
+Roland; and further up, further off, Roland still letting himself
+slip, lowering himself on his hams and clinging on with both his hand
+and elbows at the speed of a tortoise, Pierre keeping in front of him
+to watch his movements.
+
+The path, now less steep, was here almost a road, zigzagging between
+the huge rocks which had at some former time rolled from the hilltop.
+Mme. Rosemilly and Jean set off at a run and they were soon on the
+beach. They crossed it and reached the rocks, which stretched in a
+long and flat expanse covered with seaweed, and broken by endless
+gleaming pools. The ebbed waters lay beyond, very far away, across
+this plain of slimy weed, of a black and shining olive-green.
+
+Jean rolled up his trousers above his calf, and his sleeves to his
+elbows, that he might get wet without caring; then saying: "Forward!"
+he leaped boldly into the first tidepool they came to.
+
+The lady, more cautious, though fully intending to go in too,
+presently, made her way round the little pond, stepping timidly, for
+she slipped on the grassy weed.
+
+"Do you see anything?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I see your face reflected in the water."
+
+"If that is all you see, you will not have good fishing."
+
+He murmured tenderly in reply:
+
+"Of all fishing it is that I should like best to succeed in."
+
+She laughed: "Try; you will see how it will slip through your net."
+
+"But yet--if you will?"
+
+"I will see you catch prawns--and nothing else--for the moment."
+
+"You are cruel--let us go a little further; there are none here."
+
+He gave her his hand to steady her on the slippery rocks. She leaned
+on him rather timidly, and he suddenly felt himself overpowered by
+love and insurgent with passion, as if the fever that had been
+incubating in him had waited till to-day to declare its presence.
+
+They soon came to a deeper rift, in which long slender weeds,
+fantastically tinted, like floating green and rose-colored hair, were
+swaying under the quivering water as it trickled off to the distant
+sea through some invisible crevice.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly cried out: "Look, look, I see one, a big one. A very
+big one, just there!" He saw it too, and stepped boldly into the pool
+though he got wet up to the waist. But the creature, waving its long
+whiskers, gently retired in front of the net. Jean drove it toward the
+seaweed, making sure of his prey. When it found itself blockaded it
+rose with a dart over the net, shot across the mere, and was gone. The
+young woman, who was watching the chase in great excitement, could not
+help exclaiming: "Oh! Clumsy!"
+
+He was vexed, and without a moment's thought dragged his net over a
+hole full of weed. As he brought it to the surface again he saw in it
+three large transparent prawns, caught blindfold in their hiding
+place.
+
+He offered them in triumph to Mme. Rosemilly, who was afraid to touch
+them, for fear of the sharp, serrated crest which arms their heads.
+However, she made up her mind to it, and taking them up by the tips of
+their long whiskers she dropped them one by one into her creel, with a
+little seaweed to keep them alive. Then, having found a shallower pool
+of water, she stepped in with some hesitation, for the cold plunge of
+her feet took her breath away, and began to fish on her own account.
+She was dextrous and artful, with the light hand and the hunter's
+instinct, which are indispensable. At almost every dip she caught up
+some prawns, beguiled and surprised by her ingeniously gentle
+pursuit.
+
+Jean now caught nothing; but he followed her, step by step, touched
+her now and again, bent over her, pretended great distress at his own
+awkwardness, and besought her to teach him.
+
+"Show me," he kept saying. "Show me how."
+
+And then, as their two faces were reflected side by side in water so
+clear that the black weeds at the bottom made a mirror, Jean smiled at
+the face which looked up at him from the depth, and now and then from
+his finger tips blew it a kiss which seemed to light upon it.
+
+"Oh! how tiresome you are!" she exclaimed. "My dear fellow, you should
+never do two things at once."
+
+He replied: "I am only doing one--loving you."
+
+She drew herself up and said gravely:
+
+"What has come over you these ten minutes; have you lost your wits?"
+
+"No, I have not lost my wits. I love you, and at last I dare to tell
+you so."
+
+They were at this moment both standing in the salt pool wet half-way
+up to their knees and with dripping hands, holding their nets. They
+looked into each other's eyes.
+
+She went on in a tone of amused annoyance.
+
+"How very ill-advised to tell me so here and now. Could you not wait
+till another day instead of spoiling my fishing?"
+
+"Forgive me," he murmured, "but I could not longer hold my peace. I
+have loved you a long time. To-day you have intoxicated me and I lost
+my reason."
+
+Then suddenly she seemed to have resigned herself to talk business and
+think no more of pleasure.
+
+"Let us sit down on that stone," said she, "we can talk more
+comfortably." They scrambled up a rather high boulder, and when they
+had settled themselves side by side in the bright sunshine, she began
+again:
+
+"My good friend, you are no longer a child, and I am not a young girl.
+We both know perfectly well what we are about and we can weigh the
+consequences of our actions. If you have made up your mind to make
+love to me to-day I must naturally infer that you wish to marry me."
+
+He was not prepared for this matter-of-fact statement of the case, and
+he answered blandly:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Have you mentioned it to your father and mother?"
+
+"No; I wanted to know first whether you would accept me."
+
+She held out her hand, which was still wet, and as he eagerly clasped
+it:
+
+"I am ready and willing," she said. "I believe you to be kind and
+true-hearted. But remember, I should not like to displease your
+parents."
+
+"Oh, do you think that my mother has never foreseen it, or that she
+would be as fond of you as she is if she did not hope that you and I
+should marry?"
+
+"That is true. I am a little disturbed."
+
+They said no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little
+disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways,
+refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered
+by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was
+pledged, married with twenty words. They had no more to say about it
+since they were agreed, and they now sat, both somewhat embarrassed by
+what had so swiftly passed between them; a little perplexed, indeed,
+not daring to speak, not daring to fish, not knowing what to do.
+
+Roland's voice rescued them.
+
+"This way, this way, children. Come and watch Beausire. The fellow is
+positively clearing out the sea!"
+
+The captain had, in fact, had a wonderful haul. Wet above his hips, he
+waded from pool to pool, recognizing the likeliest spots at a glance,
+and searching all the hollows hidden under seaweed, with a steady slow
+sweep of his net. And the beautiful transparent, sandy-gray prawns
+skipped in his palm as he picked them out of the net with a dry jerk
+and put them into his creel. Mme. Rosemilly, surprised and delighted,
+remained at his side, almost forgetful of her promise to Jean, who
+followed them in a dream, giving herself up entirely to the childish
+enjoyment of pulling the creatures out from among the waving
+seagrasses.
+
+Roland suddenly exclaimed:
+
+"Ah, here comes Mme. Roland to join us."
+
+She had remained at first on the beach with Pierre, for they had
+neither of them any wish to play at running about among the rocks and
+paddling in the tide-pools; and yet they had felt doubtful about
+staying together. She was afraid of him, and her son was afraid of her
+and of himself; afraid of his own cruelty, which he could not control.
+But they sat down side by side on the stones. And both of them, under
+the heat of the sun, mitigated by the sea breeze, gazing at the wide,
+fair horizon of blue water streaked and shot with silver, thought as
+if in unison: "How delightful this would have been--once."
+
+She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return
+some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that in
+spite of himself he should speak violently. He sat twitching the
+water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and
+turning them over. She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up
+three or four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping
+them from one hand into the other. Then her unsettled gaze, wandering
+over the scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son
+Jean fishing with Mme. Rosemilly. She looked at them, watching their
+movements, dimly understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were
+talking as they did not talk every day. She saw them leaning over side
+by side when they looked into the water, standing face to face when
+they questioned their hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated
+themselves to come to an understanding. Their figures stood out very
+sharply, looking as if they were alone in the middle of the wide
+horizon, and assuming a sort of symbolic dignity in that vast expanse
+of sky and sea and cliff.
+
+Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke
+from his lips. Without turning to him Mme. Roland said:
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He spoke with a sneer.
+
+"I am learning. Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by
+his wife."
+
+She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was
+intended.
+
+"In whose name do you say that?"
+
+"In Jean's, by heaven! It is immensely funny to see those two."
+
+She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling: "O Pierre, how
+cruel you are. That woman is honesty itself. Your brother could not
+find a better."
+
+He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh:
+
+"Ha! hah! hah! Honesty itself! All wives are honesty itself,--and all
+husbands are--betrayed." And he shouted with laughter.
+
+She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and
+at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the seaweed,
+of breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging
+through the pools without looking, straight to her other son.
+
+Seeing her approach, Jean called out:
+
+"Well, mother? So you have made the effort?"
+
+Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say: "Save me,
+protect me!"
+
+He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said:
+
+"How pale you are; what is the matter?"
+
+She stammered out:
+
+"I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks."
+
+So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her
+that she might take an interest in it. But as she scarcely heeded him,
+and as he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led
+her away and in a low voice said to her:
+
+"Guess what I have done!"
+
+"But--what--I don't know."
+
+"Guess."
+
+"I cannot. I don't know."
+
+"Well, I have told Mme. Rosemilly that I wish to marry her."
+
+She did not answer, for her brain was buzzing, her mind in such
+distress that she could scarcely take it in. She echoed: "Marry her?"
+
+"Yes. Have I done well? She is charming, do not you think?"
+
+"Yes, charming. You have done very well."
+
+"Then you approve?"
+
+"Yes, I approve."
+
+"But how strangely you say so. I could fancy that--that you were not
+glad."
+
+"Yes, indeed, I am--very glad."
+
+"Really and truly?"
+
+"Really and truly."
+
+And to prove it she threw her arms round him and kissed him heartily
+with warm motherly kisses. Then, when she had wiped her eyes, which
+were full of tears, she observed upon the beach a man lying flat at
+full length like a dead body, his face hidden against the stones; it
+was the other one, Pierre, sunk in thought and desperation.
+
+At this she led her little Jean further away, quite to the edge of the
+waves, and there they talked for a long time of this marriage on which
+he had set his heart.
+
+The rising tide drove them back to rejoin the fishers, and then they
+all made their way to the shore. They roused Pierre, who pretended to
+be sleeping; and then came a long dinner washed down with many kinds
+of wine.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+In the break, on their way home, all the men dozed excepting Jean.
+Beausire and Roland dropped every five minutes on to a neighbor's
+shoulder which repelled them with a shove. Then they sat up, ceased to
+snore, opened their eyes, muttered "a lovely evening!" and almost
+immediately fell over on the other side.
+
+By the time they reached Havre their drowsiness was so heavy that they
+had great difficulty in shaking it off, and Beausire even refused to
+go to Jean's rooms where tea was waiting for them. He had to be set
+down at his own door.
+
+The young lawyer was to sleep in his new abode for the first time; and
+he was full of rather puerile glee which had suddenly come over him,
+at being able, that very evening to show his betrothed the rooms she
+was so soon to inhabit.
+
+The maid had gone to bed, Mme. Roland having declared that she herself
+would boil the water and make the tea, for she did not like the
+servants to be kept up for fear of fire.
+
+No one had yet been into the lodgings but herself, Jean, and the
+workmen, that the surprise might be the greater at their being so
+pretty.
+
+Jean begged them all to wait a moment in the ante-room. He wanted to
+light the lamps and candles, and he left Mme. Rosemilly in the dark
+with his father and brother; then he cried! "Come in!" opening the
+double door to its full width.
+
+The glass gallery, lighted by a chandelier and little colored lamps
+hidden among palms, india-rubber plants and flowers, was first seen
+like a scene on the stage. There was a spasm of surprise. Roland,
+dazzled by such luxury, muttered an oath, and felt inclined to clap
+his hands as if it were a pantomime scene. They then went into the
+first drawing-room, a small room hung with dead gold and furnished to
+match. The larger drawing-room--the lawyer's consulting-room, very
+simple, hung with light salmon-color, was dignified in style.
+
+Jean sat down in his armchair in front of his writing-table loaded
+with books, and in a solemn, rather stilted tone, he began:
+
+"Yes, madame, the letter of the law is explicit, and, assuming the
+consent I promised you, it affords me absolute certainty that the
+matter we discussed will come to a happy conclusion within three
+months."
+
+He looked at Mme. Rosemilly, who began to smile and glanced at Mme.
+Roland. Madame Roland took her hand and pressed it. Jean, in high
+spirits, cut a caper like a schoolboy, exclaiming: "Hah! How well the
+voice carries in this room; it would be capital for speaking in."
+
+And he declaimed:
+
+"If humanity alone, if the instinct of natural benevolence which we
+feel toward all who suffer, were the motive of the acquittal we expect
+of you, I should appeal to your compassion, gentlemen of the jury, to
+your hearts as fathers and as men; but we have law on our side, and it
+is the point of law only which we shall submit to your judgment."
+
+Pierre was looking at this home which might have been his, and he was
+restive under his brother's frolics, thinking him really too silly and
+witless.
+
+Mme. Roland opened a door on the right.
+
+"This is the bedroom," said she.
+
+She had devoted herself to its decoration with all her mother's love.
+The hangings were of Rouen cretonne imitating old Normandy chintz, and
+the Louis XV design--a shepherdess, in a medallion held in the beaks
+of a pair of doves--gave the walls, curtains, bed, and armchairs a
+festive, rustic style that was extremely pretty!
+
+"Oh, how charming!" Mme. Rosemilly exclaimed, becoming a little
+serious as they entered the room.
+
+"Do you like it?" asked Jean.
+
+"Immensely."
+
+"You cannot imagine how glad I am."
+
+They looked at each other for a second, with confiding tenderness in
+the depths of their eyes.
+
+She had felt a little awkward, however, a little abashed, in this room
+which was to be hers. She noticed as she went in that the bed was a
+large one, quite a family bed, chosen by Mme. Roland, who had no doubt
+foreseen and hoped that her son should soon marry; and this motherly
+foresight pleased her, for it seemed to tell her that she was expected
+in the family.
+
+When they had returned to the drawing-room Jean abruptly threw open
+the door to the left, showing the circular dining-room with three
+windows, and decorated to imitate a Chinese lantern. Mother and son
+had here lavished all the fancy of which they were capable, and the
+room, with its bamboo furniture, its mandarins, jars, silk hangings
+glistening with gold, transparent blinds threaded with beads looking
+like drops of water, fans nailed to the wall to drape the hangings
+on, screens, swords, masks, cranes made of real feathers, and a myriad
+trifles in china, wood, paper, ivory, mother of pearl, and bronze, had
+the pretentious and extravagant aspect which unpracticed hands and
+uneducated eyes inevitably stamp on things which need the utmost tact,
+taste, and artistic education. Nevertheless it was the most admired;
+only Pierre made some observations with rather bitter irony which hurt
+his brother's feelings.
+
+Pyramids of fruit stood on the table and monuments of cakes. No one
+was hungry; they picked at the fruit and nibbled at the cakes rather
+than ate them. Then, at the end of about an hour, Mme. Rosemilly
+begged to take leave. It was decided that old Roland should accompany
+her home and set out with her forthwith; while Madame Roland, in the
+maid's absence, should cast a maternal eye over the house and see that
+her son had all he needed.
+
+"Shall I come back for you?" asked Roland.
+
+She hesitated a moment and then said: "No, dear old man; go to bed.
+Pierre will see me home."
+
+As soon as they were gone she blew out the candles, locked up the
+cakes, the sugar, and liqueurs in a cupboard of which she gave the key
+to Jean; then she went into the bedroom, turned down the bed, saw that
+there was fresh water in the water-bottle, and that the window was
+properly closed.
+
+Pierre and Jean had remained in the little outer drawing-room; the
+younger still sore under the criticism passed on his taste, and the
+elder chafing more and more at seeing his brother in this abode. They
+both sat smoking without a word. Pierre suddenly started to his feet.
+
+"Cristi!" he exclaimed. "The widow looked very jaded this evening.
+Long excursions do not improve her."
+
+Jean felt his spirit rising with one of those sudden and furious rages
+which boil up in easy-going natures when they are wounded to the
+quick. He could hardly find breath to speak, so fierce was his
+excitement, and he stammered out:
+
+"I forbid you ever again to say 'the widow' when you speak of Mme.
+Rosemilly."
+
+Pierre turned on him haughtily:
+
+"You are giving me an order, I believe. Are you gone mad by any
+chance?"
+
+Jean had pulled himself up.
+
+"I am not gone mad, but I have had enough of your manners to me."
+
+Pierre sneered: "To you? And are you any part of Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"You are to know that Mme. Rosemilly is about to become my wife."
+
+Pierre laughed the louder.
+
+"Ah! ha! Very good. I understand now why I should no longer speak of
+her as 'the widow.' But you have taken a strange way of announcing
+your engagement."
+
+"I forbid any jesting about it. Do you hear? I forbid it."
+
+Jean had come close up to him, pale, and his voice quivering with
+exasperation at this irony leveled at the woman he loved and had
+chosen.
+
+But on a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of
+impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for
+so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain,
+bewildering it like a fit.
+
+"How dare you? How dare you? I order you to hold your tongue--do you
+hear? I order you."
+
+Jean, startled by his violence, was silent for a few seconds, trying
+in the confusion of mind which comes of rage to hit on the thing, the
+phrase, the word, which might stab his brother to the heart. He went
+on, with an effort to control himself that he might aim true, and to
+speak slowly that the words might hit more keenly:
+
+"I have known for a long time that you were jealous of me, ever since
+the day when you first began to talk of 'the widow' because you knew
+it annoyed me."
+
+Pierre broke into one of those strident and scornful laughs which were
+common with him:
+
+"Ah! ah! Good Heavens! Jealous of you? I? I? And of what? Good God! Of
+your person or your mind?"
+
+But Jean knew full well that he had touched the wound in his soul.
+
+"Yes, jealous of me--jealous from your childhood up. And it became
+fury when you saw that this woman liked me best and would have nothing
+to say to you."
+
+Pierre, stung to the quick by this assumption, stuttered out:
+
+"I? I? Jealous of you? And for the sake of that goose, that gaby, that
+simpleton?"
+
+Jean, seeing that he was aiming true, went on:
+
+"And how about the day when you tried to pull me round in the
+_Pearl_? And all you said in her presence to show off? Why you are
+bursting with jealousy? And when this money was left to me you were
+maddened, you hated me, you showed it in every possible way, and made
+every one suffer for it; not an hour passes that you do not spit out
+the bile that is choking you."
+
+Pierre clenched his fist in his fury with an almost irresistible
+impulse to fly at his brother and seize him by the throat.
+
+"Hold your tongue," he cried. "At least say nothing about that money."
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"Why your jealousy oozes out at every pore. You never say a word to my
+father, my mother, or me that does not declare it plainly. You pretend
+to despise me because you are jealous. You try to pick a quarrel with
+every one because you are jealous. And now that I am rich you can no
+longer contain yourself; you have become venomous, you torture our
+poor mother as if she were to blame!"
+
+Pierre had retired step by step as far as the fireplace, his mouth
+half open, his eyes glaring, a prey to one of those mad fits of
+passion in which crime is committed.
+
+He said again in a lower tone, gasping for breath: "Hold your
+tongue--for God's sake hold your tongue!"
+
+"No! For a long time I have been wanting to give you my whole mind!
+you have given me an opening--so much the worse for you. I love the
+woman; you know it, and laugh her to scorn in my presence--so much the
+worse for you. But I will break your viper's fangs, I tell you. I
+will make you treat me with respect."
+
+"With respect--you?"
+
+"Yes--me."
+
+"Respect you? You who have brought shame on us all by your greed."
+
+"You say--? Say it again--again."
+
+"I say that it does not do to accept one man's fortune when another is
+reputed to be your father."
+
+Jean stood rigid, not understanding, dazed by the insinuation he
+scented.
+
+"What? Repeat that once more."
+
+"I say--what everybody is muttering, what every gossip is
+blabbing--that you are the son of the man who left you his fortune.
+Well, then--a decent man does not take money which brings dishonor on
+his mother."
+
+"Pierre! Pierre! Pierre! Think what you are saying. You? It is you who
+give utterance to this infamous thing?"
+
+"Yes, I. It is I. Have you not seen me crushed with woe this month
+past, spending my nights without sleep and my days in lurking out of
+sight like an animal? I hardly know what I am doing or what will
+become of me, so miserable am I, so crazed with shame and grief; for
+first I guessed--and now I know it."
+
+"Pierre! Be silent. Mother is in the next room. Remember she may
+hear--she must hear."
+
+But Pierre felt that he must unburden his heart. He told Jean all his
+suspicions, his arguments, his struggles, his assurance, and the
+history of the portrait--which had again disappeared. He spoke in
+short broken sentences almost without coherence--the language of a
+sleep-walker.
+
+He seemed to have quite forgotten Jean, and his mother in the
+adjoining room. He talked as if no one were listening, because he must
+talk, because he had suffered too much and smothered and closed the
+wound too tightly. It had festered like an abscess and the abscess had
+burst, splashing every one. He was pacing the room in the way he
+almost always did, his eyes fixed on vacancy, gesticulating in a
+frenzy of despair, his voice choked with tearless sobs and revulsions
+of self-loathing; he spoke as if he were making a confession of his
+own misery and that of his nearest kin, as though he were casting his
+woes to the deaf, invisible winds which bore away his words.
+
+Jean, distracted and almost convinced on a sudden by his brother's
+blind vehemence, was leaning against the door behind which, as he
+guessed, their mother had heard them.
+
+She could not get out, she must come through this room. She had not
+come; then it was because she dared not.
+
+Suddenly Pierre stamped his foot:
+
+"I am a brute," he cried, "to have told you this."
+
+And he fled, bare-headed, down the stairs.
+
+The noise of the front-door closing with a slam roused Jean from the
+deep stupor into which he had fallen. Some seconds had elapsed, longer
+than hours, and his spirit had sunk into the numb torpor of idiocy. He
+was conscious, indeed, that he must presently think and act, but he
+would wait, refusing to understand, to know, to remember, out of fear,
+weakness, cowardice. He was one of those procrastinators who put
+everything off till the morrow; and when he was compelled to come to a
+decision then and there, still he instinctively tried to gain a few
+minutes.
+
+But the perfect silence which now reigned, after Pierre's
+vociferations, the sudden stillness of walls and furniture, with the
+bright light of six wax candles and two lamps, terrified him so
+greatly that he suddenly longed to make his escape too.
+
+Then he roused his brain, roused his heart, and tried to reflect.
+
+Never in his life had he had to face a difficulty. There are men who
+let themselves glide onward like running water. He had been duteous
+over his tasks for fear of punishment, and had got through his legal
+studies with credit because his existence was tranquil. Everything in
+the world seemed to him quite natural and never aroused his particular
+attention. He loved order, steadiness, and peace, by temperament, his
+nature having no complications; and face to face with this
+catastrophe, he found himself like a man who has fallen into the water
+and cannot swim.
+
+At first he tried to be incredulous. His brother had told a lie, out
+of hatred and jealousy. But yet, how could he have been so vile as to
+say such a thing of their mother if he had not himself been distraught
+by despair? Besides, stamped on Jean's ear, on his sight, on his
+nerves, on the inmost fibers of his flesh, were certain words, certain
+tones of anguish, certain gestures of Pierre's, so full of suffering
+that they were irresistibly convincing; as incontrovertible as
+certainty itself.
+
+He was too much crushed to stir or even to will. His distress became
+unbearable; and he knew that behind the door was his mother who had
+heard everything and was waiting.
+
+What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a
+sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel.
+Could she have run away? But how? If she had run away--she must have
+jumped out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused
+him--so violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than
+opened it, and flung himself into the bedroom.
+
+It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the
+chest of drawers.
+
+Jean flew to the window, it was shut and the shutters bolted. He
+looked about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and
+he then noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and
+opened them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the
+pillow which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no
+more.
+
+At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then taking her by the
+shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow,
+which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep
+herself from crying out.
+
+But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively
+clenched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture.
+The strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case
+full of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and
+ears, that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an
+idea, by the turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise
+to, and his heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He was no
+judge, not he; not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of
+weakness and a son full of love. He remembered nothing of what his
+brother had told him; he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid
+his two hands on his mother's inert body, and not being able to pull
+the pillow away, he exclaimed, kissing her dress:
+
+"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me."
+
+She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible
+shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord.
+And he repeated:
+
+"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not
+true."
+
+A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she
+suddenly began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid
+muscles yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he
+uncovered her face.
+
+She was pale, quite colorless; and from under her closed lids tears
+were stealing. He threw his arms round her neck and kissed her eyes,
+slowly, with long heart-broken kisses, wet with her tears; and he said
+again and again:
+
+"Mother, my dear mother, I know it is not true. Do not cry; I know it.
+It is not true."
+
+She raised herself, she sat up, looked in his face, and with an effort
+of courage such as it must cost in some cases to kill one's self, she
+said:
+
+"No, my child; it is true."
+
+And they remained speechless, each in the presence of the other. For
+some minutes she seemed again to be suffocating, craning her throat
+and throwing back her head to get breath; then she once more mastered
+herself and went on:
+
+"It is true, my child. Why lie about it? It is true. You would not
+believe me if I denied it."
+
+She looked like a crazy creature. Overcome by alarm, he fell on his
+knees by the bedside murmuring:
+
+"Hush, mother, be silent." She stood up with terrible determination
+and energy.
+
+"I have nothing more to say, my child. Good-by." And she went toward
+the door.
+
+He threw his arms about her exclaiming:
+
+"What are you doing, mother; where are you going?"
+
+"I do not know. How should I know--There is nothing left for me to do,
+now that I am alone."
+
+She struggled to be released. Holding her firmly, he could find only
+words to say again and again:
+
+"Mother, mother, mother!" And through all her efforts to free herself
+she was saying:
+
+"No, no. I am not your mother now. I am nothing to you, to
+anybody--nothing, nothing. You have neither father nor mother now,
+poor boy--good-by."
+
+It struck him clearly that if he let her go now he should never see
+her again; lifting her up in his arms he carried her to an armchair,
+forced her into it, and kneeling down in front of her barred her in
+with his arms.
+
+"You shall not quit this spot, mother. I love you and I will keep you!
+I will keep you always--I love you and you are mine."
+
+She murmured in a dejected tone:
+
+"No, my poor boy, it is impossible. You weep to-night, but to-morrow
+you would turn me out of the house. You, even you, could not forgive
+me."
+
+He replied: "I? I? How little you know me!" with such a burst of
+genuine affection that with a cry, she seized his head by the hair
+with both hands, and dragging him violently to her kissed him
+distractedly all over the face.
+
+Then she sat still, her cheek against his, feeling the warmth of his
+skin through his beard, and she whispered in his ear: "No, my little
+Jean, you would not forgive me to-morrow. You think so, but you
+deceive yourself. You have forgiven me this evening, and that
+forgiveness has saved my life; but you must never see me again."
+
+And he repeated, clasping her in his arms:
+
+"Mother, do not say that."
+
+"Yes, my child, I must go away. I do not know where, nor how I shall
+set about it, nor what I shall do; but it must be done. I could never
+look at you, nor kiss you, do you understand?"
+
+Then he in his turn spoke into her ear:
+
+"My little mother, you are to stay, because I insist, because I want
+you. And you must pledge your word to obey me, now at once."
+
+"No, my child."
+
+"Yes, mother, you must; do you hear? You must."
+
+"No, my child, it is impossible. It would be condemning us all to the
+tortures of hell. I know what that torment is; I have known it this
+month past. Your feelings are touched now, but when that is over, when
+you look on me as Pierre does, when you remember what I have told
+you--oh, my Jean, think--think--I am your mother!"
+
+"I will not let you leave me, mother. I have no one but you."
+
+"But think, my son, we can never see each other again without both of
+us blushing, without my feeling that I must die of shame, without my
+eyes falling before yours."
+
+"But it is not so mother."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, it is so! Oh, I have understood all your poor
+brother's struggles, believe me! All--from the very first day. Now
+when I hear his step in the house my heart beats as if it would burst,
+when I hear his voice I am ready to faint. I still had you; now I have
+you no longer. Oh, my little Jean! Do you think I could live between
+you two?"
+
+"Yes, I should love you so much that you would cease to think of it."
+
+"As if that were possible!"
+
+"But it is possible!"
+
+"How do you suppose that I could cease to think of it, with your
+brother and you on each hand? Would you cease to think of it, I ask
+you?"
+
+"I? I swear I should."
+
+"Why you would think of it at every hour of the day."
+
+"No, I swear it. Besides, listen, if you go away I will enlist and get
+killed."
+
+This boyish threat quite overcame her; she clasped Jean in a
+passionate and tender embrace. He went on:
+
+"I love you more than you think--ah much more, much more. Come, be
+reasonable. Try to stay for only one week. Will you promise me one
+week? You cannot refuse me that?"
+
+She laid her two hands on Jean's shoulders, and holding him at arm's
+length she said:
+
+"My child, let us try and be calm and not give way to emotions. First,
+listen to me. If I were ever to hear from your lips what I have heard
+for this month past from your brother, if I were once to see in your
+eyes what I read in his, if I could fancy from a word or a look that I
+was as odious to you as I am to him--within one hour, mark me--within
+one hour I should be gone forever."
+
+"Mother, I swear to you--"
+
+"Let me speak. For a month past I have suffered all that any creature
+can suffer. From the moment when I perceived that your brother, my
+other son, suspected me, that as the minutes went by, he guessed the
+truth, every moment of my life has been a martyrdom which no words
+could tell you."
+
+Her voice was so full of woe that the contagion of her misery brought
+the tears to Jean's eyes.
+
+He tried to kiss her, but she held him off.
+
+"Leave me--listen; I still have so much to say to make you understand.
+But you never can understand. You see, if I stayed--I must--no, no. I
+cannot."
+
+"Speak on, mother, speak."
+
+"Yes, indeed, for at least I shall not have deceived you. You want me to
+stay with you? For what--for us to be able to see each other, speak to
+each other, meet at any hour of the day at home, for I no longer dare
+open a door for fear of finding your brother behind it. If we are to do
+that, you must not forgive me--nothing is so wounding as
+forgiveness--but you must owe me no grudge for what I have done. You
+must feel yourself strong enough, and so far unlike the rest of the
+world, as to be able to say to yourself that you are not Roland's son
+without blushing for the fact or despising me. I have suffered enough--I
+have suffered too much; I can bear no more, no indeed, no more! And it
+is not a thing of yesterday, mind you, but of long, long years. But you
+could never understand that, how should you! If you and I are to live
+together and kiss each other, my little Jean, you must believe that
+though I was your father's mistress I was yet more truly his wife, his
+real wife; that at the bottom of my heart, I cannot be ashamed of it;
+that I have no regrets; that I love him still even in death; that I
+shall always love him and never loved any other man; that he was my
+life, my joy, my hope, my comfort, everything--everything in the world
+to me for so long! Listen, my boy, before God, who hears me, I should
+never have had a joy in my existence if I had not met him; never
+anything--not a touch of tenderness or kindness, not one of those hours
+which make us regret growing old,--nothing. I owe everything to him! I
+had but him in the world, and you two boys, your brother and you. But
+for you, all would have been empty, dark, and void as the night. I
+should never have loved, or known, or cared for anything--I should not
+even have wept--for I have wept, my little Jean; oh yes, and bitter
+tears, since we came to Havre. I was his wholly and forever; for ten
+years I was as much his wife as he was my husband before God who created
+us for each other. And then I began to see that he loved me less. He was
+always kind and courteous, but I was not what I had been to him. It was
+all over! Oh, how I have cried! How dreadful and delusive life is!
+Nothing lasts. Then we came here--I never saw him again; he never came.
+He promised it in every letter. I was always expecting him, and I never
+saw him again--and now he is dead! But he still cared for us since he
+remembered you. I shall love him to my latest breath, and I never will
+deny him, and I love you because you are his child, and I could never be
+ashamed of him before you. Do you understand? I could not. So if you
+wish me to remain you must accept the situation as his son, and we will
+talk of him sometimes; and you must love him a little and we must think
+of him when we look at each other. If you will not do this--if you
+cannot--then good-by, my child; it is impossible that we should live
+together. Now, I will act by your decision."
+
+Jean replied gently:
+
+"Stay, mother."
+
+She clasped him in her arms, and her tears flowed again; then, with
+her face against his, she went on:
+
+"Well, but Pierre. What can we do about Pierre?"
+
+Jean murmured:
+
+"We will find some plan! You cannot live with him any longer."
+
+At the thought of her elder son she was convulsed with terror.
+
+"No, I cannot; no, no!" And throwing herself on Jean's breast she
+cried in distress of mind:
+
+"Save me from him, you my little one. Save me; do something--I don't
+know what. Think of something. Save me."
+
+"Yes, mother, I will think of something."
+
+"And at once. You must, this minute. Do not leave me. I am so afraid
+of him--so afraid."
+
+"Yes, yes; I will hit on some plan. I promise you I will."
+
+"But at once; quick, quick! You cannot imagine what I feel when I see
+him."
+
+Then she murmured softly in his ear: "Keep me here, with you."
+
+He paused, reflected, and with his blunt good-sense saw at once the
+dangers of such an arrangement. But he had to argue for a long time,
+combatting her scared, terror-stricken insistence.
+
+"Only for to-night," she said. "Only for to-night. And to-morrow
+morning you can send word to Roland that I was taken ill."
+
+"That is out of the question, as Pierre left you here. Come take
+courage. I will arrange everything, I promise you, to-morrow; I will
+be with you by nine o'clock. Come, put on your bonnet. I will take you
+home."
+
+"I will do just what you desire," she said with a childlike impulse of
+timidity and gratitude.
+
+She tried to rise, but the shock had been too much for her, she could
+not stand.
+
+He made her drink some sugared water and smell at some salts, while he
+bathed her temples with vinegar. She let him do what he would,
+exhausted but comforted, as after the pains of child-birth. At last
+she could walk and she took his arm. The town hall clock struck three
+as they went past.
+
+Outside their own door Jean kissed her, saying:
+
+"Good-night, mother, keep up your courage."
+
+She stealthily crept up the silent stairs, and into her room,
+undressed quickly, and slipped into bed with a long-forgotten sense of
+guilt. Roland was snoring. In all the house Pierre alone was awake,
+and had heard her come in.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+When he got back to his lodgings Jean dropped on a sofa; for the
+sorrows and anxieties which made his brother long to be moving, and to
+flee like a hunted prey, acted differently on his torpid nature and
+broke the strength of his arms and legs. He felt too limp to stir a
+finger, even to get to bed; limp body and soul, crushed and
+heart-broken. He had not been hit, as Pierre had been, in the purity
+of filial love, in the secret dignity which is the refuge of a proud
+heart; he was overwhelmed by the stroke of fate which, at the same
+time threatened his own nearest interests.
+
+When at last his spirit was calmer, when his thoughts had settled like
+water that has been stirred and lashed, he could contemplate the
+situation which had come before him. If he had learned the secret of
+his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very
+wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother,
+after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the
+agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of
+energy that he could not rebel. The shock to his feelings had been so
+great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all
+prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides,
+he was not a man made for resistance. He did not like contending
+against any one, least of all against himself, so he resigned himself
+at once; and by instinctive tendency, a congenital love of peace, and
+of easy and tranquil life, he began to anticipate the agitations which
+must surge up around him and at once be his ruin. He foresaw that
+they were inevitable, and to avert them he made up his mind to
+superhuman efforts of energy and activity. The knot must be cut
+immediately, this very day; for even he had fits of that imperious
+demand for a swift solution which is the only strength of weak
+natures, incapable of a prolonged effort of will. His lawyer's mind,
+accustomed as it was to disentangling and studying complicated
+situations and questions of domestic difficulties in families that had
+got out of gear, at once foresaw the more immediate consequences of
+his brother's state of mind. In spite of himself, he looked at the
+issue from an almost professional point of view, as though he had to
+legislate for the future relations of certain clients after a moral
+disaster. Constant friction against Pierre had certainly become
+unendurable. He could easily evade it, no doubt, by living in his own
+lodgings; but even then it was not possible that their mother should
+live under the same roof with her elder son. For a long time he sat
+meditating, motionless, on the cushions, devising and rejecting
+various possibilities, and finding nothing that satisfied him.
+
+But suddenly an idea took him by storm. This fortune which had come to
+him. Would an honest man keep it?
+
+"No," was the first immediate answer, and he made up his mind that it
+must go to the poor. It was hard, but it could not be helped. He would
+sell his furniture and work like any other man, like any other
+beginner. This manful and painful resolution spurred his courage; he
+rose and went to the window, leaning his forehead against the pane. He
+had been poor; he could become poor again. After all, he should not
+die of it. His eyes were fixed on the gas lamp burning at the
+opposite side of the street. A woman, much belated, happened to pass;
+suddenly he thought of Mme. Rosemilly with the pang at his heart, the
+shock of deep feeling which comes of a cruel suggestion. All the dire
+results of his decision rose up before him together. He would have to
+renounce his marriage, renounce happiness, renounce everything. Could
+he do such a thing after having pledged himself to her? She had
+accepted him knowing him to be rich. She would take him still if he
+were poor; but had he any right to demand such a sacrifice? Would it
+not be better to keep this money in trust, to be restored to the poor
+at some future date?
+
+And in his soul, where selfishness put on a guise of honesty, all
+these specious interests were struggling and contending. His first
+scruples yielded to ingenious reasoning, then came to the top again,
+and again disappeared.
+
+He sat down again, seeking some decisive motive, some all-sufficient
+pretext to solve his hesitancy and convince his natural rectitude.
+Twenty times over had he asked himself this question: "Since I am this
+man's son, since I know and acknowledge it, is it not natural that I
+should also accept the inheritance?"
+
+But even this argument could not suppress the "No" murmured by his
+inmost conscience.
+
+Then came the thought: "Since I am not the son of the man I always
+believed to be my father, I can take nothing from him, neither during
+his lifetime nor after his death. It would be neither dignified nor
+equitable. It would be robbing my brother."
+
+This new view of the matter having relieved him and quieted his
+conscience, he went to the window again.
+
+"Yes," he said to himself, "I must give up my share of the family
+inheritance. I must let Pierre have the whole of it, since I am not
+his father's son. That is but just. Then is it not just that I should
+keep my father's money?"
+
+Having discerned that he could take nothing of Roland's savings,
+having decided on giving up the whole of this money, he agreed; he
+resigned himself to keeping Marechal's; for if he rejected both he
+would find himself reduced to beggary.
+
+This delicate question being thus disposed of, he came back to that of
+Pierre's presence in the family. How was he to be got rid of? He was
+giving up his search for any practical solution when the whistle of a
+steam-vessel coming into port seemed to blow him an answer by
+suggesting a scheme.
+
+Then he threw himself on his bed without undressing, and dozed and
+dreamed until daybreak.
+
+At a little before nine he went out to ascertain whether his plans
+were feasible. Then, after making sundry inquiries and calls, he went
+to his old home. His mother was waiting for him in her room.
+
+"If you had not come," she said, "I should never have dared to go
+down."
+
+In a minute Roland's voice was heard on the stairs: "Are we to have
+nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"
+
+There was no answer, and he roared out, with a thundering oath this
+time: "Josephine, what the devil are you about?"
+
+The girl's voice came up from the depths of the basement:
+
+"Yes, m'sieu--what is it?"
+
+"Where is your Miss'es?"
+
+"Madame is upstairs with M'sieu Jean."
+
+Then he shouted, looking up at the higher floor: "Louise!"
+
+Mme. Roland half opened her door and answered:
+
+"What is it, my dear?"
+
+"Are we to have nothing to eat to-day, hang it all!"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I am coming."
+
+And she went down, followed by Jean.
+
+Roland, as soon as he saw him, exclaimed:
+
+"Hallo! There you are! Sick of your home already?"
+
+"No, father, but I had something to talk over with mother this
+morning."
+
+Jean went forward holding out his hand, and when he felt his fingers
+in the old man's fatherly clasp, a strange, unforeseen emotion
+thrilled through him, and a sense as of parting and farewell without
+return.
+
+Mme. Roland asked:
+
+"Pierre is not come down?"
+
+Her husband shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"No, but never mind him; he is always behind hand. We will begin
+without him."
+
+She turned to Jean:
+
+"You had better go to call him, my child; it hurts his feelings if we
+do not wait for him."
+
+"Yes, mother. I will go."
+
+And the young man went. He mounted the stairs with the fevered
+determination of a man who is about to fight a duel and who is in a
+fright. When he knocked at the door Pierre said:
+
+"Come in."
+
+He went in. The elder was writing, leaning over his table.
+
+"Good morning," said Jean.
+
+Pierre rose.
+
+"Good morning," and they shook hands as if nothing had occurred.
+
+"Are you not coming down to breakfast?"
+
+"Well--you see--I have a good deal to do." The elder brother's voice
+was tremulous, and his anxious eye asked his younger brother what he
+meant to do.
+
+"They are waiting for you."
+
+"Oh! There is--is my mother down?"
+
+"Yes, it was she who sent me to fetch you."
+
+"Ah, very well; then I will come."
+
+At the door of the dining-room he paused, doubtful about going in
+first; then he abruptly opened the door and saw his father and mother
+seated at the table opposite each other.
+
+He went straight up to her without looking at her or saying a word,
+and bending over her offered his forehead for her to kiss, as he had
+done for some time past, instead of kissing her on both cheeks as of
+old. He supposed that she put her lips near, but he did not feel them
+on his brow, and he straightened himself with a throbbing heart after
+this feint of a caress. And he wondered:
+
+"What did they say to each other after I had left?"
+
+Jean constantly addressed her tenderly as "mother," or "dear mother,"
+took care of her, waited on her, and poured out her wine.
+
+Then Pierre understood that they had wept together, but he could not
+read their minds. Did Jean believe in his mother's guilt, or think his
+brother a base wretch?
+
+And all his self-reproach for having uttered the horrible thing came
+upon him again, choking his throat and his tongue, and preventing his
+either eating or speaking.
+
+He was now a prey to an intolerable desire to fly, to leave the house
+which was his home no longer, and these persons who were bound to him
+by such imperceptible ties. He would gladly have been off that moment,
+no matter whither, feeling that everything was over, that he could not
+endure to stay with them, that his presence was torture to them, and
+that they would bring on him incessant suffering too great to endure.
+Jean was talking, chatting with Roland. Pierre, as he did not listen,
+did not hear. But he presently was aware of a pointed tone in his
+brother's voice and paid more attention to his words. Jean was saying:
+
+"She will be the finest ship in their fleet. They say she is of 6,500
+tons. She is to make her first trip next month."
+
+Roland was amazed.
+
+"So soon? I thought she was not to be ready for sea this summer."
+
+"Yes. The work has been pushed forward very vigorously, to get her
+through her first voyage before the autumn. I looked in at the
+Company's office this morning, and was talking with one of the
+directors."
+
+"Indeed! Which of them?"
+
+"M. Marchand, who is a great friend of the Chairman of the Board."
+
+"Oh! Do you know him?"
+
+"Yes. And I wanted to ask him a favor."
+
+"Then you will get me leave to go over every part of the _Lorraine_ as
+soon as she comes into port?"
+
+"To be sure, nothing can be easier."
+
+Then Jean seemed to hesitate, to be weighing his words, and to want
+to lead up to a difficult subject. He went on:
+
+"On the whole, life is very endurable on board those great
+Transatlantic liners. More than half the time is spent on shore in two
+splendid cities--New York and Havre; and the remainder at sea with
+delightful company. In fact, very pleasant acquaintances are sometimes
+made among the passengers, and very useful in after-life--yes, really
+very useful. Only think, the captain, with his perquisites on coal,
+can make as much as twenty-five thousand francs a year or more."
+
+Roland muttered an oath followed by a whistle, which testified to his
+deep respect both for the sum and the captain.
+
+Jean went on:
+
+"The purser makes as much as ten thousand, and the doctor has a fixed
+salary of five thousand, with lodgings, keep, light, firing, service,
+and everything, which makes it up to ten thousand at least. That is
+very good pay."
+
+Pierre, raising his eyes, met his brother's and understood.
+
+Then, after some hesitation, he asked:
+
+"Is it very hard to get a place as medical man on board a
+Transatlantic liner?"
+
+"Yes--and no. It all depends on circumstances and recommendation."
+
+There was a long pause; then the doctor began again.
+
+"Next month, you say, the _Lorraine_ is to sail?"
+
+"Yes. On the 7th."
+
+And they said no more.
+
+Pierre was considering. It certainly would be a way out of many
+difficulties if he could embark as medical officer on board the
+steamship. By-and-by he could see; he might perhaps give it up.
+Meanwhile he would be gaining a living, and asking for nothing from
+his parents. Only two days since he had been forced to sell his watch,
+for he would no longer hold out his hand to beg of his mother. So he
+had no other resource left, no opening to enable him to eat the bread
+of any house but this which had become uninhabitable, or sleep in any
+other bed, or under any other roof. He presently said with some little
+hesitation:
+
+"If I could, I would very gladly sail in her."
+
+Jean asked:
+
+"What should hinder you?"
+
+"I know no one in the Transatlantic Shipping Company."
+
+Roland was astounded:
+
+"And what has become of all your fine schemes for getting on?"
+
+Pierre replied in a low voice:
+
+"There are times when we must bring ourselves to sacrifice everything
+and renounce our fondest hopes. And after all it is only to make a
+beginning, a way of saving a few thousand francs to start fair with
+afterward."
+
+His father was promptly convinced.
+
+"That is very true. In a couple of years you can put by six or seven
+thousand francs, and that well laid out, will go a long way. What do
+you think of the matter, Louise?"
+
+She replied in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible:
+
+"I think Pierre is right."
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"I will go and talk it over with M. Poulin; I know him very well. He
+is assessor of the Chamber of Commerce and takes an interest in the
+affairs of the Company. There is M. Lenient, too, the ship-owner, who
+is intimate with one of the vice-chairmen."
+
+Jean asked his brother:
+
+"Would you like me to feel my way with M. Marchand at once?"
+
+"Yes, I should be very glad."
+
+After thinking a few minutes, Pierre added:
+
+"The best thing I can do, perhaps, will be to write to my professors
+at the College of Medicine who had a great regard for me. Very
+inferior men are sometimes shipped on board those vessels. Letters of
+strong recommendation from such professors as Mas-Roussel, Remusot,
+Flache, and Borriquel would do more for me in an hour than all the
+doubtful introductions in the world. It would be enough if your friend
+M. Marchand would lay them before the board."
+
+Jean approved heartily.
+
+"Your idea is really capital." And he smiled, quite reassured, almost
+happy, sure of success and incapable of allowing himself to be unhappy
+for long.
+
+"You will write to-day?" he said.
+
+"Directly. Now; at once. I will go and do so. I do not care for any
+coffee this morning; I am too nervous."
+
+He rose and left the room.
+
+Then Jean turned to his mother:
+
+"And you, mother, what are you going to do?"
+
+"Nothing. I do not know."
+
+"Will you come with me to call on Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"Why, yes--yes."
+
+"You know I must positively go to see her to-day."
+
+"Yes, yes. To be sure."
+
+"Why must you positively?" asked Roland, whose habit it was never to
+understand what was said in his presence.
+
+"Because I promised her I would."
+
+"Oh, very well. That alters the case." And he began to fill his pipe,
+while the mother and son went upstairs to make ready.
+
+When they were in the street Jean said:
+
+"Will you take my arm, mother?"
+
+He was never accustomed to offer it, for they were in the habit of
+walking side by side. She accepted, and leaned on him.
+
+For some time they did not speak; then he said:
+
+"You see that Pierre is quite ready and willing to go away."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"Poor boy."
+
+"But why 'poor boy'? He will not be in the least unhappy on board the
+_Lorraine_!"
+
+"No--I know. But I was thinking of so many things."
+
+And she thought for a long time, her head bent, accommodating her step
+to her son's; then, in the peculiar voice in which we sometimes give
+utterance to the conclusion of long and secret meditations, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"How horrible life is! If by any chance we come across any sweetness
+in it, we sin in letting ourselves be happy, and pay dearly for it
+afterward."
+
+He said in a whisper:
+
+"Do not speak of that any more, mother."
+
+"Is that possible? I think of nothing else."
+
+"You will forget it."
+
+Again she was silent; then with deep regret she said:
+
+"How happy I might have been, married to another man."
+
+She was visiting it on Roland now, throwing all the responsibility of
+her sin on his ugliness, his stupidity, his clumsiness, the heaviness
+of his intellect, and the vulgarity of his person. It was to this that
+it was owing that she had betrayed him, had driven one son to
+desperation, and had been forced to utter to the other the most
+agonizing confession that can make a mother's heart bleed. She
+muttered: "It is so frightful for a young girl to have to marry such a
+husband as mine."
+
+Jean made no reply. He was thinking of the man he had hitherto
+believed to be his father; and possibly the vague notion he had long
+since conceived, of that father's inferiority, with his brother's
+constant irony, the scornful indifference of others, and the very
+maid-servant's contempt for Roland, had somewhat prepared his mind for
+his mother's terrible avowal. It had all made it less dreadful to him
+to find that he was another man's son; and if, after the great shock
+and agitation of the previous evening, he had not suffered the
+reaction of rage, indignation, and rebellion which Mme. Roland had
+feared, it was because he had long been unconsciously chafing under
+the sense of being the child of this well-meaning lout.
+
+They had now reached the dwelling of Mme. Rosemilly.
+
+She lived on the road to Sainte-Adresse, on the second floor of a
+large tenement which she owned. The windows commanded a view of the
+whole roadstead.
+
+On seeing Mme. Roland, who entered first, instead of merely holding
+out her hands as usual, she put her arms round her and kissed her, for
+she divined the purpose of her visit.
+
+The furniture of this drawing-room, all in stamped velvet, was always
+shrouded in chair-covers. The walls, hung with flowered paper, were
+graced by four engravings, the purchase of her late husband, the
+captain. They represented sentimental scenes of seafaring life. In the
+first, a fisherman's wife was seen, waving a handkerchief on shore,
+while the vessel which bore away her husband vanished on the horizon.
+In the second, the same woman on her knees on the same shore, under a
+sky shot with lightning, wrung her arms as she gazed into the distance
+at her husband's boat, which was going to the bottom amid impossible
+waves.
+
+The others represented similar scenes in a higher rank of society. A
+young lady with fair hair, resting her elbows on the edge of a large
+steamship quitting the shore, gazed at the already distant coast with
+eyes full of tears and regret. Whom is she leaving behind?
+
+Then the same young lady sitting by an open window with a view of the
+sea, had fainted in an armchair; a letter she had dropped lay at her
+feet. So he is dead! What despair!
+
+Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace
+pathos of these obvious and sentimental works. They were at once
+intelligible without question or explanation, and the poor women were
+to be pitied, though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of
+the two was not precisely known. But this very doubt contributed to
+the sentiment. She had, no doubt, lost her lover. On entering the room
+the eye was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted
+as if fascinated. If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate
+the four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like
+each other as two sisters. And the very style of these works, in their
+shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance
+of a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety
+which was confirmed by the rest of the fittings. The seats were always
+in precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the
+circular center-table. The immaculately white curtains hung in such
+straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little;
+and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt
+clock, in the taste of the first empire--a terrestrial globe supported
+by Atlas on his knees--looked like a melon left there to ripen.
+
+The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of
+their chairs.
+
+"You have not been out this morning?" asked Mme. Roland.
+
+"No. I must own to being rather tired."
+
+And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the
+pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.
+
+"I ate my prawns this morning," she added, "and they were excellent.
+If you felt inclined we might go again one of these days."
+
+The young man interrupted her:
+
+"Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete
+the first?"
+
+"Complete it? It seems to me quite finished."
+
+"Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint
+Jouin which I am anxious to carry home with me."
+
+She put on an innocent and knowing look.
+
+"You? What can it be? What can you have found?"
+
+"A wife. And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she has
+changed her mind this morning."
+
+She smiled: "No, monsieur. I never change my mind."
+
+And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it
+with a quick, determined movement. Then he said: "As soon as possible,
+I hope."
+
+"As soon as you like."
+
+"In six weeks?"
+
+"I have no opinion. What does my future mother-in-law say?"
+
+Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile:
+
+"I? Oh, I can say nothing. I can only thank you for having accepted
+Jean, for you will make him very happy."
+
+"We will do our best, mamma."
+
+Somewhat overcome, for the first time, Mme. Rosemilly rose, and
+throwing her arms round Mme. Roland, kissed her a long time as a child
+of her own might have done; and under this new embrace the poor
+woman's sick heart swelled with deep emotion. She could not have
+expressed the feeling; it was at once sad and sweet. She had lost her
+son, her big boy, but in return she had found a daughter, a grown-up
+daughter.
+
+When they faced each other again, and were seated, they took hands and
+remained so, looking at each other and smiling, while they seemed to
+have forgotten Jean.
+
+Then they discussed a number of things which had to be thought of in
+view of an early marriage, and when everything was settled and decided
+Mme. Rosemilly seemed suddenly to remember a further detail and asked:
+"You have consulted M. Roland, I suppose?"
+
+A flush of color mounted at the same instant to the face of both
+mother and son. It was the mother who replied:
+
+"Oh, no, it is quite unnecessary!" Then she hesitated, feeling that
+some explanation was needed, and added: "We do everything without
+saying anything to him. It is enough to tell him what we have decided
+on."
+
+Mme. Rosemilly, not in the least surprised, only smiled, taking it as
+a matter of course, for the good man counted for so little.
+
+When Mme. Roland was in the street again with her son she said:
+
+"Suppose we go to your rooms for a little while. I should be glad to
+rest."
+
+She felt herself homeless, shelterless, her own house being a terror
+to her.
+
+They went into Jean's apartments.
+
+As soon as the door was closed upon her she heaved a deep sigh, as if
+that bolt had placed her in safety, but then, instead of resting as
+she had said, she began to open the cupboards, to count the piles of
+linen, the pocket handkerchiefs, and socks. She changed the
+arrangement to place them in more harmonious order, more pleasing to
+her housekeeper's eye; and when she had put everything to her mind,
+laying out the towels, the shirts, and the drawers on their several
+shelves and dividing all the linen into three principal classes,
+body-linen, household linen, and table-linen, she drew back and
+contemplated the results, and called out:
+
+"Come here, Jean, and see how nice it looks."
+
+He went and admired it to please her.
+
+On a sudden, when he had sat down again, she came softly up behind his
+armchair, and putting her right arm round his neck she kissed him,
+while she laid on the chimney shelf a small packet wrapped in white
+paper which she held in the other hand.
+
+"What is that?" he asked. Then, as she made no reply, he understood,
+recognizing the shape of the frame.
+
+"Give it to me!" he said.
+
+She pretended not to hear him, and went back to the linen cupboards.
+He got up hastily, took the melancholy relic, and going across the
+room, put it in the drawer of his writing table which he locked and
+doubled locked. She wiped away a tear with the tip of her finger, and
+said in a rather quavering voice: "Now I am going to see whether your
+new servant keeps the kitchen in good order. As she is out I can look
+into everything and make sure."
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Letters of recommendation from Professors Mas-Roussel, Remusot,
+Flache, and Borriquel, written in the most flattering terms with
+regard to Doctor Pierre Roland, their pupil, had been submitted by
+Monsieur Marchand to the directors of the Transatlantic Shipping
+Company, seconded by M. Poulin, judge of the Chamber of Commerce, M.
+Lenient, a great ship-owner, and M. Marival, deputy to the Mayor of
+Havre, and a particular friend of Captain Beausire's. It proved that
+no medical officer had yet been appointed to the _Lorraine_, and
+Pierre was lucky enough to be nominated within a few days.
+
+The letter announcing it was handed to him one morning by Josephine,
+just as he was dressed. His first feeling was that of a man condemned
+to death who is told that his sentence is commuted; he had an
+immediate sense of relief at the thought of his early departure and of
+the peaceful life on board, cradled by the rolling waves, always
+wandering, always moving. His life under his father's roof was now
+that of a stranger, silent and reserved. Ever since the evening when
+he allowed the shameful secret he had discovered to escape him in his
+brother's presence, he had felt that the last ties to his kindred were
+broken. He was harassed by remorse for having told this thing to Jean.
+He felt that it was odious, indecent, and brutal, and yet it was a
+relief to him to have uttered it.
+
+He never met the eyes either of his mother or his brother; to avoid
+his gaze theirs had become surprisingly alert, with the cunning of
+foes who fear to cross each other. He was always wondering: "What can
+she have said to Jean? Did she confess or deny it? What does my
+brother believe? What does he think of her--what does he think of me?"
+He could not guess, and it drove him to frenzy. And he scarcely ever
+spoke to them, excepting when Roland was by, to avoid his questioning.
+
+As soon as he received the letter announcing his appointment he showed
+it at once to his family. His father, who was prone to rejoicing over
+everything, clapped his hands. Jean spoke seriously, though his heart
+was full of gladness: "I congratulate you with all my heart, for I
+know there were several other candidates. You certainly owe it to your
+professors' letters."
+
+His mother bent her head and murmured:
+
+"I am very glad you have been successful."
+
+After breakfast he went to the Company's offices to obtain information
+on various particulars, and he asked the name of the doctor on board
+the _Picardie_, which was to sail next day, to inquire of him as to
+the details of his new life and any details he might think useful.
+
+Doctor Pirette having gone on board, Pierre went to the ship, where he
+was received in a little stateroom by a young man with a fair beard,
+not unlike his brother. They talked together a long time.
+
+In the hollow depths of the huge ship they could hear a confused and
+continuous commotion; the noise of bales and cases pitched down into
+the hold mingling with footsteps, voices, the creaking of the
+machinery lowering the freight, the boatswain's whistle, and the
+clatter of chains dragged or wound onto capstans by the snorting and
+panting engine which sent a slight vibration from end to end of the
+great vessel.
+
+But when Pierre had left his colleague and found himself in the street
+once more, a new form of melancholy came down on him, enveloping him
+like the fogs which roll over the sea, coming up from the ends of the
+world and holding in their intangible density something mysteriously
+impure, as it were the pestilential breath of a far-away, unhealthy
+land.
+
+In his hours of greatest suffering he had never felt himself so sunk
+in a foul pit of misery. It was as though he had given the last
+wrench; there was no fiber of attachment left. In tearing up the
+roots of every affection he had not hitherto had the distressful
+feeling which now came over him, like that of a lost dog. It was no
+longer a torturing mortal pain, but the frenzy of a forlorn and
+homeless animal, the physical anguish of a vagabond creature without a
+roof for shelter, lashed by the rain, the wind, the storm, all the
+brutal forces of the universe. As he set foot on the vessel, as he
+went into the cabin rocked by the waves, the very flesh of the man,
+who had always slept in a motionless and steady bed, had risen up
+against the insecurity henceforth of all his morrows. Till now that
+flesh had been protected by a solid wall built into the earth which
+held it, by the certainty of resting in the same spot, under a roof
+which could resist the gale. Now all that, which it was a pleasure to
+defy in the warmth of home, must become a peril and a constant
+discomfort. No earth under foot, only the greedy, heaving, complaining
+sea; no space around for walking, running, losing the way, only a few
+yards of planks to pace like a convict among other prisoners; no
+trees, no gardens, no streets, no houses; nothing but water and
+clouds. And the ceaseless motion of the ship beneath his feet. On
+stormy days he must lean against the wainscot, hold on to the doors,
+cling to the edge of the narrow berth to save himself from rolling
+out. On calm days he would hear the snorting throb of the screw, and
+feel the swift flight of the ship, bearing him on in its unpausing,
+regular, exasperating race.
+
+And he was a prey to this vagabond convict's life solely because his
+mother had sinned.
+
+He walked on, his heart sinking with the despairing sorrow of those
+who are doomed to exile. He no longer felt a haughty disdain and
+scornful hatred of the strangers he met, but a woeful impulse to speak
+to them, to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened
+to and comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the
+shamefaced need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand--a timid
+but urgent need to feel that some one would grieve at his departing.
+
+He thought of Marowsko. The old Pole was the only person who loved him
+well enough to feel true and keen emotion, and the doctor at once
+determined to go and see him.
+
+When he entered the shop, the druggist, who was pounding powders in a
+marble mortar, started and left his work:
+
+"You are never to be seen nowadays," said he.
+
+Pierre explained that he had had a great many serious matters to
+attend to, but without giving the reason, and he took a seat, asking:
+
+"Well, and how is business doing?"
+
+Business was not doing at all. Competition was fearful, and rich folks
+rare in that workman's quarter. Nothing would sell but cheap drugs,
+and the doctors did not prescribe the costlier and more complicated
+remedies on which a profit is made of five hundred per cent. The old
+fellow ended by saying: "If this goes on for three months I shall shut
+up shop. If I did not count on you, dear good doctor, I should have
+turned shoeblack by this time."
+
+Pierre felt a pang, and made up his mind to deal the blow at once,
+since it must be done.
+
+"I--oh, I cannot be of any use to you. I am leaving Havre early next
+month."
+
+Marowsko took off his spectacles, so great was his agitation.
+
+"You! You! What are you saying?"
+
+"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."
+
+The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under
+him, and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed,
+whom he loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him
+thus.
+
+He stammered out:
+
+"You are surely not going to play me false--you?"
+
+Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old
+fellow.
+
+"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and
+I am going as medical officer on board a transatlantic passenger
+boat."
+
+"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make
+a living!"
+
+"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in
+the world."
+
+Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There
+is nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of
+all things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came
+here to be with you. It is wrong."
+
+Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give reasons, to prove that he
+could not have done otherwise; the Pole, enraged by his desertion,
+would not listen to him, and he ended by saying, with an allusion no
+doubt to political events:
+
+"You French--you never keep your word!"
+
+At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high
+tone he said:
+
+"You are unjust, pere Marowsko; a man must have very strong motives to
+act as I have done, and you ought to understand that. Au revoir--I
+hope I may find you more reasonable." And he went away.
+
+"Well, well," he thought, "not a soul will feel a sincere regret for
+me."
+
+His mind sought through all the people he knew or had known, and among
+the faces which crossed his memory he saw that of the girl at the
+tavern who led him to doubt his mother.
+
+He hesitated, having still an instinctive grudge against her, then
+suddenly reflected on the other hand: "After all, she was right." And
+he looked about him to find the turning.
+
+The beer-shop, as it happened, was full of people, and also full of
+smoke. The customers, tradesmen, and laborers, for it was a holiday,
+were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting
+on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and
+returning them crowned with froth.
+
+When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping
+that the girl would see him and recognize him. But she passed him
+again and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her
+skirts with a smart little strut. At last he rapped a coin on the
+table, and she hurried up.
+
+"What will you take, sir?"
+
+She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the
+liquor she had served.
+
+"Well," said he, "this is a pretty way of greeting a friend."
+
+She fixed her eyes on his face: "Ah!" said she hurriedly. "Is it you?
+You are pretty well? But I have not a minute to-day. A bock did you
+wish for?"
+
+"Yes, a bock!"
+
+When she brought it he said:
+
+"I have come to say good-by. I am going away."
+
+And she replied indifferently:
+
+"Indeed. Where are you going?"
+
+"To America."
+
+"A very fine country, they say."
+
+And that was all!
+
+Really he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day;
+there were too many people in the cafe.
+
+Pierre went down to the sea. As he reached the jetty he descried the
+_Pearl_; his father and Beausire were coming in. Papagris was pulling,
+and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look
+of perfect happiness. As they went past, the doctor said to himself:
+"Blessed are the simple-minded!" And he sat down on one of the benches
+on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.
+
+When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to
+lift her eyes to his face:
+
+"You will want a heap of things to take with you. I have ordered your
+underlinen, and I went into the tailor shop about cloth clothes; but
+is there nothing else you need--things which I, perhaps, know nothing
+about?"
+
+His lips parted to say, "No, nothing." But he reflected that he must
+accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and he replied in a very
+calm voice: "I hardly know myself, yet. I will make inquiries at the
+office."
+
+He inquired, and they gave him a list of indispensable necessaries.
+His mother, as she took it from his hand, looked up at him for the
+first time for very long, and in the depths of her eyes there was the
+humble expression, gentle, sad, and beseeching, of a dog that has been
+beaten and begs forgiveness.
+
+On the 1st of October the _Lorraine_ from Saint-Nazaire, came into the
+harbor of Havre to sail on the 7th, bound for New York, and Pierre
+Roland was to take possession of the little floating cabin in which
+henceforth his life was to be confined.
+
+Next day as he was going out, he met his mother on the stairs waiting
+for him, to murmur in an almost inaudible voice:
+
+"You would not like me to help you to put things to rights on board?"
+
+"No, thank you. Everything is done."
+
+Then she said:
+
+"I should have liked to see your cabin."
+
+"There is nothing to see. It is very small and very ugly."
+
+And he went downstairs, leaving her stricken, leaning against the wall
+with a wan face.
+
+Now Roland, who had gone over the _Lorraine_ that very day, could talk
+of nothing all dinner time but this splendid vessel, and wondered that
+his wife should not care to see it as their son was to sail on board.
+
+Pierre had scarcely any intercourse with his family during the days
+which followed. He was nervous, irritable, hard, and his rough speech
+seemed to lash every one indiscriminately. But the day before he left
+he was suddenly quite changed, and much softened. As he embraced his
+parents before going to sleep on board for the first time he said:
+
+"You will come to say good-by to me on board, will you not?"
+
+Roland exclaimed:
+
+"Why, yes, of course--of course, Louise?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," she said in a low voice.
+
+Pierre went on: "We sail at eleven precisely. You must be there by
+half-past nine at the latest."
+
+"Hah!" cried his father. "A good idea! As soon as we have bid you
+good-bye, we will make haste on board the _Pearl_, and look out for
+you beyond the jetty, so as to see you once more. What do you say,
+Louise?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Roland went on: "And in that way you will not lose sight of us among
+the crowd which throngs the breakwater when the great liners sail. It
+is impossible to distinguish your own friends in the mob. Does that
+meet your views?"
+
+"Yes, to be sure; that is settled."
+
+An hour later he was lying in his berth--a little crib as long and
+narrow as a coffin. There he remained with his eyes wide open for a
+long time, thinking over all that had happened during the last two
+months of his life, especially in his own soul. By dint of suffering
+and making others suffer, his aggressive and revengeful anguish had
+lost its edge, like a blunted sword. He scarcely had the heart left in
+him to owe any one or anything a grudge; he let his rebellious wrath
+float away down stream, as his life must. He was so weary of
+wrestling, weary of fighting, weary of hating, weary of everything,
+that he was quite worn out; and tried to stupefy his heart with
+forgetfulness as he dropped asleep. He heard vaguely, all about him,
+the unwonted noises of the ship, slight noises, and scarcely audible
+on this calm night in port; and he felt no more of the dreadful wound
+which had tortured him hitherto but the discomfort and strain of its
+healing.
+
+He had been sleeping soundly when the stir of the crew roused him. It
+was day; the tidal train had come down to the pier bringing the
+passengers from Paris. Then he wandered about the vessel among all
+these busy, bustling folks inquiring for their cabins, questioning and
+answering each other at random, in the scare and fuss of a voyage
+already begun. After greeting the captain and shaking hands with his
+comrade the purser, he went into the saloon where some Englishmen were
+already asleep in the corners. The large low room, with its white
+marble panels framed in gilt beading, was furnished with
+looking-glasses, which prolonged, in endless perspective, the long
+tables flanked by pivot-seats covered with red velvet. It was fit,
+indeed, to be the vast floating cosmopolitan dining hall, where the
+rich natives of two continents might eat in common. Its magnificent
+luxury was that of great hotels, and theaters, and public rooms; the
+imposing and commonplace luxury which appeals to the eye of the
+millionaire.
+
+The doctor was on the point of turning into the second-class saloon,
+when he remembered that a large cargo of emigrants had come on board
+the night before, and he went down to the lower deck. There, in a sort
+of basement, low and dark, like a gallery in a mine, Pierre could
+discern some hundreds of men, women, and children, stretched on
+shelves fixed one above another, or lying on the floor in heaps. He
+could not see their faces, but could dimly make out this squalid,
+ragged crowd of wretches, beaten in the struggle for life, worn out
+and crushed, setting forth, each with a starving wife and weakly
+children, for an unknown land where they hoped, perhaps, not to die
+of hunger. And as he thought of their past labor--wasted labor, and
+barren effort--of the mortal struggle taken up afresh and in vain each
+day, of the energy expended by this tattered crew who were going to
+begin again, not knowing where, this life of hideous misery, he longed
+to cry out to them:
+
+"Tumble yourselves overboard, rather, with your women and your little
+ones." And his heart ached so with pity that he went away unable to
+endure the sight.
+
+He found his father, his mother, Jean, and Mme. Rosemilly waiting for
+him in his cabin.
+
+"So early!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said Mme. Roland in a trembling voice. "We wanted to have a
+little time to see you."
+
+He looked at her. She was dressed all in black as if she were in
+mourning, and he noticed that her hair, which only a month ago had
+been gray, was now almost white. It was very difficult to find space
+for four persons to sit down in the little room, and he himself got
+onto his bed. The door was left open, and they could see a great crowd
+hurrying by, as if it were a street on a holiday, for all the friends
+of the passengers and a host of inquisitive visitors had invaded the
+huge vessel. They pervaded the passages, the saloons, every corner of
+the ship; and heads peered in at the doorway while a voice murmured
+outside: "That is the doctor's cabin."
+
+Then Pierre shut the door; but no sooner was he shut in with his own
+party than he longed to open it again, for the bustle outside covered
+their agitation and want of words.
+
+Mme. Rosemilly at last felt she must speak.
+
+"Very little air comes in through those little windows."
+
+"Portholes," said Pierre. He showed her how thick the glass was, to
+enable it to resist the most violent shocks, and took a long time
+explaining the fastening. Roland presently asked: "And you have your
+doctor's shop here?"
+
+The doctor opened a cupboard and displayed an array of phials ticketed
+with Latin names on white paper labels. He took one out and enumerated
+the properties of its contents; then a second and a third, a perfect
+lecture on therapeutics, to which they all listened with great
+attention. Roland, shaking his head, said again and again: "How very
+interesting." There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in," said Pierre, and Captain Beausire appeared.
+
+"I am late," he said as he shook hands, "I did not want to be in the
+way." He too sat down on the bed and silence fell once more.
+
+Suddenly the captain pricked his ears. He could hear orders being
+given, and he said:
+
+"It is time for us to be off if we mean to get on board the _Pearl_ to
+see you once more outside, and bid you good-by out on the open sea."
+
+Old Roland was very eager about this, to impress the voyagers on board
+the _Lorraine_, no doubt, and he rose in haste.
+
+"Good-by, my boy." He kissed Pierre on the whiskers and then opened
+the door.
+
+Mme. Roland had not stirred, but sat with downcast eyes, very pale.
+Her husband touched her arm:
+
+"Come," he said, "we must make haste, we have not a minute to spare."
+
+She pulled herself up, went to her son and offered him first one and
+then another cheek of white wax which he kissed without saying a word.
+Then he shook hands with Mme. Rosemilly and his brother, asking:
+
+"And when is the wedding to be?"
+
+"I do not know yet exactly. We will make it fit in with one of your
+return voyages."
+
+At last they were all out of the cabin, and up on deck among the crowd
+of visitors, porters and sailors. The steam was snorting in the huge
+belly of the vessel which seemed to quiver with impatience.
+
+"Good-by," said Roland in a great bustle.
+
+"Good-by," replied Pierre, standing on one of the landing-planks lying
+between the deck of the _Lorraine_ and the quay. He shook hands all
+round once more, and they were gone.
+
+"Make haste, jump into the carriage," cried the father.
+
+A fly was waiting for them and took them to the outer harbor, where
+Papagris had the _Pearl_ in readiness to put out to sea.
+
+There was not a breath of air; it was one of those crisp, still autumn
+days, when the sheeny sea looks as cold and hard as polished steel.
+
+Jean took one oar, the sailor seized the other and they pulled off. On
+the breakwater, on the piers, even on the granite parapets, a crowd
+stood packed, hustling and noisy, to see the _Lorraine_ come out. The
+_Pearl_ glided down between these two waves of humanity and was soon
+outside the mole.
+
+Captain Beausire, seated between the two women, held the tiller, and
+he said:
+
+"You will see, we shall be close in her way ---- close."
+
+And the two oarsmen pulled with all their might to get out as far as
+possible. Suddenly Roland cried out:
+
+"Here she comes! I see her masts and her two funnels! She is coming
+out of the inner harbor."
+
+"Cheerily, lads!" cried Beausire.
+
+Mme. Roland took out her handkerchief and held it to her eyes.
+
+Roland stood up, clinging to the mast, and answered:
+
+"At this minute she is working round in the outer harbor. She is
+standing still--now she moves again! She was taking the tow-rope on
+board, no doubt. There she goes. Bravo! She is between the piers! Do
+you hear the crowd shouting? Bravo! The _Neptune_ has her in tow. Now
+I see her bows--here she comes--here she is! Gracious heavens, what a
+ship! Look! look!"
+
+Mme. Rosemilly and Beausire looked up behind them, the oarsmen ceased
+pulling; only Mme. Roland did not stir.
+
+The immense steamship, towed by a powerful tug, which, in front of
+her, looked like a caterpillar, came slowly and majestically out of
+the harbor. And the good people of Havre, who crowded the piers, the
+beach, and the windows, carried away by a burst of patriotic
+enthusiasm, cried: "_Vive la Lorraine!_" with acclamations and
+applause for this magnificent beginning, this birth of the beautiful
+daughter given to the sea by the great maritime town.
+
+She, as soon as she had passed beyond the narrow channel between the
+two granite walls, feeling herself free at last, cast off the
+tow-ropes and went off alone, like a monstrous creature walking on the
+waters.
+
+"Here she is--here she comes, straight down on us!" Roland kept
+shouting; and Beausire, beaming, exclaimed: "What did I promise you!
+Heh! Do I know the way?"
+
+Jean in a low tone said to his mother: "Look, mother, she is close
+upon us!" And Mme. Roland uncovered her eyes, blinded by tears.
+
+The _Lorraine_ came on, still under the impetus of her swift exit from
+the harbor, in the brilliant, calm weather. Beausire, with his glass
+to his eye, called out:
+
+"Look out! M. Pierre is at the stern, all alone, plainly to be seen!
+Look out!"
+
+The ship was almost touching the _Pearl_ now, as tall as a mountain
+and as swift as a train. Mme. Roland, distraught and desperate, held
+out her arms toward it; and she saw her son, her Pierre, with his
+officer's cap on, throwing kisses to her with both hands.
+
+But he was going away, flying, vanishing, a tiny speck already, no
+more than an imperceptible spot on the enormous vessel. She tried
+still to distinguish him, but she could not.
+
+Jean took her hand:
+
+"You saw?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I saw. How good he is!"
+
+And they turned to go home.
+
+"Cristi! How fast she goes!" exclaimed Roland with enthusiastic
+conviction.
+
+The steamer, in fact, was shrinking every second, as though she were
+melting away in the ocean. Mme. Roland, turning back to look at her,
+watched her disappearing on the horizon, on her way to an unknown land
+at the other side of the world.
+
+In that vessel which nothing could stay, that vessel which she soon
+would see no more, was her son, her poor son. And she felt as though
+half her heart had gone with him; she felt, too, as if her life were
+ended; yes, and she felt as though she would never see the child
+again.
+
+"Why are you crying?" asked her husband, "when you know he will be
+back again within a month."
+
+She stammered out: "I don't know, I cry because I am hurt."
+
+When they had landed, Beausire at once took leave of them to go to
+breakfast with a friend. Then Jean led the way with Mme. Rosemilly,
+and Roland said to his wife:
+
+"A very fine fellow, all the same, is our Jean."
+
+"Yes," replied the mother.
+
+And her mind being too much bewildered to think of what she was
+saying, she went on:
+
+"I am very glad that he is to marry Mme. Rosemilly."
+
+The worthy man was astounded.
+
+"Heh? What? He is to marry Mme. Rosemilly?"
+
+"Yes, we meant to ask your opinion about it this very day."
+
+"Bless me. And has this engagement been long in the wind?"
+
+"Oh, no, only a very few days. Jean wished to make sure that she would
+accept him before consulting you."
+
+Roland rubbed his hands.
+
+"Very good. Very good. It is capital. I entirely approve."
+
+As they were about to turn off from the quay down the Boulevard
+Francois 1er, his wife once more looked back to cast a last look at
+the high seas, but she could see nothing now but a puff of gray smoke,
+so far away, so faint that it looked like a film of haze.
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+
+It was after a dinner of friends, of old friends. There were five of
+them, a writer, a doctor, and three rich bachelors without any
+profession.
+
+They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came on,
+that feeling of lassitude which precedes and leads to the departure of
+guests after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the
+last five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard
+starred with gas-lamps, and rattling with vehicles, said suddenly:
+
+"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are
+long."
+
+"And the nights, too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I
+sleep very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous.
+Never do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to
+anyone, a violent longing to say nothing and listen to nothing. I
+don't know what to do with my evenings."
+
+And the third idler remarked:
+
+"I would pay a great deal for anything that would enable me to pass
+merely two pleasant hours every day."
+
+Then the writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm,
+turned round to them and said:
+
+"The man who could discover a new vice, and introduce it among his
+fellow-creatures, even though it were to shorten their lives, would
+render a greater service to humanity than the man who found the means
+of securing to them eternal salvation and eternal youth."
+
+The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he
+said:
+
+"Yes, but 'tis not so easy as that to discover it. Men have, however
+crudely, been seeking for and working for the object you refer to
+since the beginning of the world. The men who came first reached
+perfection at once in this way. We are hardly equal to them."
+
+One of the three idlers murmured:
+
+"'Tis a pity!"
+
+Then, after a minute's pause, he added:
+
+"If we could only sleep, sleep well without feeling hot or cold, sleep
+with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
+thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams."
+
+"Why without dreams?" asked the guest sitting next to him.
+
+The other replied:
+
+"Because dreams are not always pleasant, and they are always
+fantastic, improbable, disconnected, and because when we are asleep we
+cannot have the sort of dreams we like. We require to be awake when we
+dream."
+
+"And what's to prevent you from being so?" asked the writer.
+
+The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.
+
+"My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake you need great
+power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
+weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our
+thoughts through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest
+experience in the world; but it must come naturally, it must not be
+provoked in a painful manner, and must be accompanied by absolute
+bodily comfort. This power of dreaming I can give you provided you
+promise that you will not abuse it."
+
+The writer shrugged his shoulders:
+
+"Ah! yes, I know--haschich, opium, green tea--artificial paradises. I
+have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me
+very sick."
+
+But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:
+
+"No: ether, nothing but ether, and I would suggest that you literary
+men ought to use it sometimes."
+
+The three rich men drew closer to the doctor.
+
+One of them said:
+
+"Explain to us the effects of it."
+
+And the doctor replied:
+
+"Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of
+medicine or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up
+every day to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to
+you a new sensation, only possible to intelligent men, let us say even
+very intelligent men, dangerous, like everything that overexcites our
+organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
+preparation, that is to say, a practice, to feel in all their
+completeness the singular effects of ether.
+
+"They are different from the effects of haschich, from the effects of
+opium and morphia, and they cease as soon as the absorption of the
+drug is interrupted, while the other generators of day dreams continue
+their action for hours.
+
+"I am now going to try to analyze as clearly as possible the way one
+feels. But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
+imperceptible, are these sensations.
+
+"It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of
+this remedy, which perhaps I have since slightly abused.
+
+"I had in my head and in my neck acute pains, and an intolerable heat
+of the skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large flagon of
+ether, and lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.
+
+"At the end of some minutes, I thought I heard a vague murmur, which
+ere long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the
+interior of my body had become light, light as air, that it was
+dissolving into vapor.
+
+"Then came a sort of torpor of the soul, a somnolent sense of comfort
+in spite of the pains which still continued, but which, however, had
+ceased to make themselves felt. It was one of those sensations which
+we are willing to endure and not any of those frightful wrenches
+against which our tortured body protests.
+
+"Soon, the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in
+my chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as
+light as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only
+were left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of
+living, of bathing in this well-being. Then I perceived that I was no
+longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted also, evaporated. And I
+heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding what
+was said. At one time, there were only indistinct sounds, at another
+time a word reached my ear. But I recognized that this was only the
+humming I had heard before, accentuated. I was not asleep; I was not
+awake; I comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the utmost clearness
+and depth, with extraordinary energy and intellectual pleasure, with a
+singular intoxication arising from this separation of my mental
+faculties.
+
+"It was not like the dreams caused by haschich or the somewhat sickly
+visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of
+reasoning, a new way of seeing, judging, and appreciating the things
+of life, and with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that this
+was the true way.
+
+"And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
+seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
+mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a
+new, strange, and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings,
+proofs, rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately
+displaced by some stronger proof, reasoning, argument. My head had in
+fact, become a battle-ground of ideas. I was a superior being, armed
+with invincible intelligence, and I experienced a huge delight at the
+manifestation of my power.
+
+"It lasted a long, long time. I still kept inhaling the ether from the
+opening of my flagon. Suddenly I perceived that it was empty."
+
+The four men exclaimed at the same time:
+
+"Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!"
+
+But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied:
+
+"As for that, certainly not; go and get poisoned by others!"
+
+And he left them.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, what is your idea on the subject?
+
+
+
+
+MOONLIGHT
+
+
+Madame Julie Roubere was awaiting her elder sister, Madame Henriette
+Letore, who had just returned after a trip to Switzerland.
+
+The Letore household had left nearly five weeks ago. Madame Henriette
+had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados,
+where some matters of business required his attention, and come to
+spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet
+parlor, darkened by twilight shadows, Madame Roubere was reading, in
+an absent-minded fashion, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.
+
+At last, she heard a ring at the door, and presently her sister
+appeared, wrapped in a traveling cloak. And immediately without any
+formal greeting, they clasped each other ardently, only desisting for
+a moment to begin embracing each other over again. Then they talked,
+asking questions about each other's health, about their respective
+families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried,
+broken sentences and rushing about while Madame Henriette was removing
+her hat and veil.
+
+It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as
+it was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point
+of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished
+at the other's appearance. Around her temples, Madame Letore had two
+long locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy,
+raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran as it
+were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black
+mass surrounding them. She was nevertheless only twenty-four years
+old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure for
+Switzerland.
+
+Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising
+to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity
+must have fallen on her sister. She asked:
+
+"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"
+
+Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other
+replied:
+
+"Why nothing I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"
+
+But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a
+searching glance at her repeated:
+
+"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And
+if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."
+
+They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who became so pale
+that she was near fainting, had two pearly tears at each corner of her
+drooping eyes.
+
+Her sister went on asking:
+
+"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"
+
+Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:
+
+"I have--I have a lover."
+
+And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she
+sobbed.
+
+Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her
+breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast
+forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a
+sympathetic heart.
+
+Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly grasped, the two women
+went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they
+sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's
+neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Oh! I recognize that there was no excuse for one; I do not understand
+myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful my
+child, about yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are,
+how quickly we yield, we fall. All it needs is a nothing, so little,
+so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of
+melancholy which steal into your soul, one of those longings to open
+your arms, to love, to embrace, which we all have at certain moments.
+
+"You know my husband, and you know how fond of him I am; but he is
+mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations
+of a woman's heart. He is always, always the same, always good, always
+smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished
+that he would roughly clasp me in his arms, that he would embrace me
+with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which
+are like mute confidences! How I wished that he was self-abandoned and
+even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my caress, of my
+tears!
+
+"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can
+we help it?
+
+"And yet the thought of deceiving never came near me. To-day, it has
+happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply
+because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.
+
+"During the month when we were traveling together, my husband, with
+his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic
+ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sun-rise, when as
+the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the
+transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I
+clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'What a beautiful
+scene, darling! Kiss me now!' He only answered with a smile of
+chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should kiss each other
+because you like the landscape.'
+
+"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people
+love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever in
+the presence of beautiful scenes.
+
+"Indeed he prevented the effervescent poetry that bubbled up within me
+from gushing out. How can I express it? I was almost like a boiler,
+filled with steam and hermetically sealed.
+
+"One evening (we had been for four days staying in the Hotel de
+Fluelen), Robert, having got one of his sick headaches, went to bed
+immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along
+the edge of the lake.
+
+"It was a night such as one might read of in a fairy tale. The full
+moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with
+their snowy crests seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the
+lake glittered with tiny rippling motions. The air was mild, with that
+kind of penetrating freshness which softens us till we seem to be
+swooning, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how
+sensitive, how vibrating, the heart is at such moments! How quickly it
+leaps up, and how intense are its emotions!
+
+"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast lake so melancholy
+and so fascinating, and a strange thing passed into me; I became
+possessed with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy
+dullness of my life. What! Would it never be my fate to be clasped in
+the arms of a man whom I loved on a bank like this under the glowing
+moonlight? Was I never then, to feel on my lips those kisses so deep,
+delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem
+to have been made by God for passionate embraces? Was I never to know
+such ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?
+
+"And I burst out weeping like a woman who has lost her reason. I heard
+some person stirring behind me. A man was intently gazing at me. When
+I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:
+
+"'You are weeping, Madame?'
+
+"It was a young barrister who was traveling with his mother, and whom
+we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.
+
+"I was so much confused that I did not know what answer to give or
+what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.
+
+"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectable fashion, and
+began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I
+had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he
+understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden
+he recited some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking,
+seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains
+themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things
+ineffably sweet.
+
+"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of
+hallucination.
+
+"As for him I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.
+
+"He gave me his card!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore, broke into
+groans--almost into shrieks.
+
+Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very
+gently:
+
+"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love.
+And your real lover that night was the moonlight."
+
+
+
+
+THE CORSICAN BANDIT
+
+
+The road with a gentle winding reached the middle of the forest. The
+huge pine-trees spread above our heads a mournful-looking vault, and
+gave forth a kind of long, sad wail, while at either side their
+straight slender trunks formed, as it were, an army of organ-pipes,
+from which seemed to issue that monotonous music of the wind through
+the tree-tops.
+
+After three hours' walking there was an opening in this row of tangled
+branches. Here and there an enormous pine-parasol, separated from the
+others, opening like an immense umbrella, displayed its dome of dark
+green; then, all of a sudden, we gained the boundary of the forest,
+some hundreds of meters below the defile which leads into the wild
+valley of Niolo.
+
+On the two projecting heights which commanded a view of this pass,
+some old trees grotesquely twisted, seemed to have mounted with
+painful efforts, like scouts who had started in advance of the
+multitude heaped together in the rear. When we turned round, we saw
+the entire forest stretched beneath our feet, like a gigantic basin of
+verdure, whose edges, which seemed to reach the sky, were composed of
+bare rocks shutting in on every side.
+
+We resumed our walk, and, ten minutes later, we found ourselves in the
+defile.
+
+Then I beheld an astonishing landscape. Beyond another forest, a
+valley, but a valley such as I had never seen before, a solitude of
+stone ten leagues long, hollowed out between two high mountains,
+without a field or a tree to be seen. This was the Niolo valley, the
+fatherland of Corsican liberty, the inaccessible citadel, from which
+the invaders had never been able to drive out the mountaineers.
+
+My companion said to me: "Is it here, too, that all our bandits have
+taken refuge?"
+
+Ere long we were at the further end of this chasm so wild, so
+inconceivably beautiful.
+
+Not a blade of grass, not a plant--nothing but granite. As far as our
+eyes could reach, we saw in front of us a desert of glittering stone,
+heated like an oven by a burning sun, which seemed to hang for that
+very purpose right above the gorge. When we raised our eyes towards
+the crests, we stood dazzled and stupefied by what we saw. They looked
+red and notched like festoons of coral, for all the summits are made
+of porphyry; and the sky overhead seemed violet, lilac, discolored by
+the vicinity of these strange mountains. Lower down the granite was of
+scintillating gray, and under our feet it seemed rasped, pounded; we
+were walking over shining powder. At our right, along a long and
+irregular course, a tumultuous torrent ran with a continuous roar. And
+we staggered along under this heat, in this light, in this burning,
+arid, desolate valley cut by this ravine of turbulent water which
+seemed to be ever hurrying onward, without being able to fertilize
+these rocks, lost in this furnace which greedily drank it up without
+being penetrated or refreshed by it.
+
+But suddenly there was visible at our right a little wooden cross sunk
+in a little heap of stones. A man had been killed there; and I said
+to my companion:
+
+"Tell me about your bandits."
+
+He replied:
+
+"I knew the most celebrated of them, the terrible St. Lucia. I will
+tell you his history.
+
+"His father was killed in a quarrel by a young man of the same
+district, it is said; and St. Lucia was left alone with his sister. He
+was a weak and timid youth, small, often ill, without any energy. He
+did not proclaim the vendetta against the assassin of his father. All
+his relatives came to see him, and implored of him to take vengeance;
+he remained deaf to their menaces and their supplications.
+
+"Then, following the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her
+indignation, carried away his black clothes, in order that he might
+not wear mourning for a dead man who had not been avenged. He was
+insensible to even this outrage, and rather than take down from the
+rack his father's gun, which was still loaded, he shut himself up, not
+daring to brave the looks of the young men of the district.
+
+"He seemed to have even forgotten the crime and he lived with his
+sister in the obscurity of their dwelling.
+
+"But, one day, the man who was suspected of having committed the
+murder, was about to get married. St. Lucia did not appear to be moved
+by this news, but, no doubt, out of sheer bravado, the bridegroom, on
+his way to the church, passed before the two orphans' house.
+
+"The brother and the sister, at their window, were eating little fried
+cakes when the young man saw the bridal procession moving past the
+house. Suddenly he began to tremble, rose up without uttering a word,
+made the sign of the cross, took the gun which was hanging over the
+fireplace, and he went out.
+
+"When he spoke of this later on, he said: 'I don't know what was the
+matter with me; it was like fire in my blood; I felt that I should do
+it, that in spite of everything I could not resist, and I concealed
+the gun in a cave on the road to Corte.'
+
+"An hour later, he came back, with nothing in his hand, and with his
+habitual air of sad weariness. His sister believed that there was
+nothing further in his thoughts.
+
+"But when night fell he disappeared.
+
+"His enemy had, the same evening, to repair to Corte on foot,
+accompanied by his two bridesmen.
+
+"He was pursuing his way, singing as he went, when St. Lucia stood
+before him, and looking straight in the murderer's face, exclaimed:
+'Now is the time!' and shot him point-blank in the chest.
+
+"One of the bridesmen fled; the other stared at the young man saying:
+
+"'What have you done, St. Lucia?'
+
+"Then he was going to hasten to Corte for help, but St. Lucia said in
+stern tone:
+
+"'If you move another step, I'll shoot you through the legs.'
+
+"The other, aware that till now he had always appeared timid, said to
+him: 'You would not dare to do it!' and he was hurrying off when he
+fell instantaneously, his thigh shattered by a bullet.
+
+"And St. Lucia, coming over to where he lay, said:
+
+"'I am going to look at your wound; if it is not serious, I'll leave
+you there; if it is mortal I'll finish you off.'
+
+"He inspected the wound, considered it mortal, and slowly re-loading
+his gun, told the wounded man to say a prayer, and shot him through
+the head.
+
+"Next day he was in the mountains.
+
+"And do you know what this St. Lucia did after this?
+
+"All his family were arrested by the gendarmes. His uncle, the cure,
+who was suspected of having incited him to this deed of vengeance, was
+himself put into prison, and accused by the dead man's relatives. But
+he escaped, took a gun in his turn, and went to join his nephew in the
+cave.
+
+"Next, St. Lucia killed, one after the other, his uncle's accusers,
+and tore out their eyes to teach the others never to state what they
+had seen with their eyes.
+
+"He killed all the relatives, all the connections of his enemy's
+family. He massacred during his life fourteen gendarmes, burned down
+the houses of his adversaries, and was up to the day of his death the
+most terrible of the bandits, whose memory we have preserved."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun disappeared behind Monte Cinto and the tall shadow of the
+granite mountain went to sleep on the granite of the valley. We
+quickened our pace in order to reach before night the little village
+of Albertaccio, nothing better than a heap of stones welded beside the
+stone flanks of a wild gorge. And I said as I thought of the bandit:
+
+"What a terrible custom your vendetta is!"
+
+My companion answered with an air of resignation:
+
+"What, would you have? A man must do his duty!"
+
+
+
+
+A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET
+
+
+She had died painlessly, tranquilly, like a woman whose life was
+irreproachable, and she now lay on her back in bed, with closed eyes,
+calm features, her long white hair carefully arranged as if she had
+again made her toilet ten minutes before her death, all her pale
+physiognomy so composed, now that she had passed away, so resigned
+that one felt sure a sweet soul had dwelt in that body, that this
+serene grandmother had spent an untroubled existence, that this
+virtuous woman had ended her life without any shock, without any
+remorse.
+
+On his knees, beside the bed, her son, a magistrate of inflexible
+principles, and her daughter Marguerite, in religion, Sister Eulalie,
+were weeping distractedly. She had from the time of their infancy
+armed them with an inflexible code of morality, teaching them a
+religion without weakness and a sense of duty without any compromise.
+He, the son, had become a magistrate, and, wielding the weapon of the
+law, he struck down without pity the feeble and the erring. She, the
+daughter, quite penetrated with the virtue that had bathed her in this
+austere family, had become the spouse of God through disgust with men.
+
+They had scarcely known their father; all they knew was that he had
+made their mother unhappy without learning any further details. The
+nun passionately kissed one hand of her dead mother, which hung down,
+a hand of ivory like that of Christ in the large crucifix which lay
+on the bed. At the opposite side of the prostrate body, the other hand
+seemed still to grasp the rumpled sheet with that wandering movement
+which is called the fold of the dying, and the lines had retained
+little wavy creases as a memento of those last motions which precede
+the eternal motionlessness. A few light taps at the door caused the
+two sobbing heads to rise up, and the priest who had just dined,
+entered the apartment. He was flushed, a little puffed, from the
+effects of the process of digestion which had just commenced; for he
+had put a good dash of brandy into his coffee in order to counteract
+the fatigue caused by the last nights he had remained up and that
+which he anticipated from the night that was still in store for him.
+He had put on a look of sadness, that simulated sadness of the priest
+to whom death is a means of livelihood. He made the sign of the cross,
+and coming over to them with his professional gesture said:
+
+"Well, my poor children, I have come to help you to pass these
+mournful hours."
+
+But Sister Eulalie suddenly rose up.
+
+"Thanks, father, but my brother and I would like to be left alone with
+her. These are the last moments that we now have for seeing her; so we
+want to feel ourselves once more, the three of us, just as we were
+years ago when we--we--we were only children, and our poor--poor
+mother--"
+
+She was unable to finish with the flood of tears that gushed from her
+eyes, and the sobs that were choking her.
+
+But the priest bowed, with a more serene look on his face, for he was
+thinking of his bed. "Just as you please, my children."
+
+Then, he knelt down, again crossed himself, prayed, rose up, and
+softly stole away murmuring as he went: "She was a saint."
+
+They were left alone, the dead woman and her children. A hidden
+timepiece kept regularly ticking in its dark corner, and through the
+open window the soft odors of hay and of woods penetrated with faint
+gleams of moonlight. No sound in the fields outside, save the
+wandering notes of toads and now and then the humming of some
+nocturnal insect darting into like a ball, and knocking itself against
+the wall.
+
+An infinite peace, a divine melancholy, a silent serenity surrounded
+this dead woman, seemed to emanate from her, to evaporate from her
+into the atmosphere outside and to calm Nature itself.
+
+Then the magistrate, still on his knees, his head pressed against the
+bed-clothes, in a far-off, heart-broken voice that pierced through the
+sheets and the coverlet, exclaimed:
+
+"Mamma, mamma, mamma!" And the sister, sinking down on the floor,
+striking the wood with her forehead fanatically, twisting herself
+about and quivering like a person in an epileptic fit, groaned:
+"Jesus, Jesus--mamma--Jesus!"
+
+And both of them shaken by a hurricane of grief panted with a rattling
+in their throats.
+
+Then the fit gradually subsided, and they now wept in a less violent
+fashion, like the rainy calm that follows a squall on a storm-beaten
+sea. Then, after some time, they rose, and fixed their glances on the
+beloved corpse. And memories, those memories of the past, so sweet, so
+torturing to-day, came back to their minds with all those little
+forgotten details, those little details so intimate and familiar,
+which make the being who is no more live over again. They recalled
+circumstances, words, smiles, certain intonations of voice which
+belonged to one whom they should hear speaking to them again. They saw
+her once more happy and calm, and phrases she used in ordinary
+conversation rose to their lips. They even remembered a little
+movement of the hand peculiar to her, as if she were keeping time when
+she was saying something of importance.
+
+And they loved her as they had never before loved her. And by the
+depth of their despair they realized how strongly they had been
+attached to her, and how desolate they would find themselves now.
+
+She had been their mainstay, their guide, the best part of their
+youth, of that happy portion of their lives which had vanished; she
+had been the bond that united them to existence, the mother, the
+mamma, the creative flesh, the tie that bound them to their ancestors.
+They would henceforth be solitary, isolated; they would have nothing
+on earth to look back upon.
+
+The nun said to her brother:
+
+"You know how mamma used always to read over her old letters. They are
+all there in her drawer. Suppose we read them in our turn, and so
+revive all her life this night by her side? It would be like a kind of
+road of the cross, like making the acquaintance of her mother, of
+grandparents whom we never knew, whose letters are there, and of whom
+she has so often talked to us, you remember?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And they drew forth from the drawer a dozen little packets of yellow
+paper, carefully tied up and placed close to one another. They flung
+these relics on the bed, and selecting one of them on which the word
+"Father" was written, they opened and read what was in it.
+
+It consisted of those very old letters which are to be found in old
+family writing-desks, those letters which have the flavor of another
+century. The first said, "My darling," another "My beautiful little
+girl," then others "My dear child," and then again "My dear daughter."
+And suddenly the nun began reading aloud, reading for the dead her own
+history, all her tender souvenirs. And the magistrate listened, while
+he leaned on the bed, with his eyes on his mother's face. And the
+motionless corpse seemed happy.
+
+Sister Eulalie, interrupting herself, said: "We ought to put them into
+the grave with her, to make a winding-sheet of them, and bury them
+with her."
+
+And then she took up another packet, on which the descriptive word did
+not appear.
+
+And in a loud tone she began: "My adored one, I love you to
+distraction. Since yesterday I have been suffering like a damned soul
+burned by the recollection of you. I feel your lips on mine, your eyes
+under my eyes, your flesh under my flesh. I love you! I love you! You
+have made me mad! My arms open! I pant with an immense desire to
+possess you again. My whole body calls out to you, wants you. I have
+kept in my mouth the taste of your kisses."
+
+The magistrate rose up; the nun stopped reading. He snatched the
+letter from her, and sought for the signature. There was none, save
+under the words, "He who adores you," the name "Henry." Their father's
+name was Rene. So then he was not the man.
+
+Then, the son, with rapid fingers, fumbled in the packet of letters
+took another of them, and read: "I can do without your caresses no
+longer."
+
+And, standing up, with the severity of a judge passing sentence, he
+gazed at the impassive face of the dead woman.
+
+The nun, straight as a statue, with teardrops standing at each corner
+of her eyes, looked at her brother, waiting to see what he meant to
+do. Then he crossed the room, slowly reached the window, and looked
+out thoughtfully into the night.
+
+When he turned back, Sister Eulalie, her eyes now quite dry, still
+remained standing near the bed, with a downcast look.
+
+He went over to the drawer and flung in the letters which he had
+picked up from the floor. Then he drew the curtains round the bed.
+
+And when the dawn made the candles on the table look pale, the son
+rose from his armchair, and without even a parting glance at the
+mother whom he had separated from them and condemned, he said slowly:
+
+"Now, my sister, let us leave the room."
+
+
+
+
+THE CAKE
+
+
+Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her
+real name.
+
+She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail
+of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic
+heart, and was ravishingly beautiful. She opened her doors to very
+few--only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as
+princes of something or other.
+
+To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim of
+intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations.
+
+Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband
+of a star is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original
+idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit
+of his own, a merit of the second order; it is true; but he did, in
+fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions, hold
+receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who
+appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention
+than they did on his brilliant partner.
+
+He had devoted himself to agriculture--to agriculture in the Chamber.
+There are in the same way generals in the Chamber--those who are born,
+who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office,
+are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chambers--viz., in
+the Admiralty--Colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied
+agriculture, indeed he had studied it deeply, in its relations with
+the other sciences, with political economy, with the Fine Arts--we
+dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of science, since we even call
+the horrible railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the
+point when it was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted
+in the Technical Reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him
+appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.
+
+This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.
+
+Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations
+to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they
+associated together, or rather they did not--they formed two groups.
+Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and Ministers,
+occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of
+the Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a
+smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically
+described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.
+
+The two camps were clearly separated. Monsieur, without jealousy,
+moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial
+handshakings were exchanged, but the Academy entertained infinite
+contempt for the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of
+the princes of science, of thought, or of anything else mingled with
+the agriculturists.
+
+These receptions occasioned little expense--a cup of tea, a cake, that
+was all. Monsieur, at an earlier period, had claimed two cakes, one
+for the academy, and one for the agriculturists, but Madame having
+rightly suggested that this way of acting seemed to indicate two
+camps, two receptions, two parties, Monsieur did not press the matter,
+so that they used only one cake, of which Madame Anserre did the
+honors at the Academy, and which then passed into the Salon de
+Agriculture.
+
+Now, this cake was soon, for the Academy, a subject of observation
+well calculated to arouse curiosity. Madame Anserre never cut it
+herself. That function always fell to the lot of one or other of the
+illustrious guests. The particular duty, which was supposed to carry
+with it honorable distinction, was performed by each person for a
+pretty long period, in one case for three months, scarcely ever for
+more; and it was noticed that the privilege of "cutting the cake"
+carried with it a heap of other marks of superiority--a sort of
+royalty, or rather very accentuated vice-royalty.
+
+The reigning cutter spoke in a haughty tone, with an air of marked
+command; and all the favors of the mistress of the house were for him
+alone.
+
+These happy individuals were in moments of intimacy described in
+hushed tones behind doors as the "favorites of the cake," and every
+change of favorite introduced into the Academy a sort of revolution.
+The knife was a scepter, the pastry an emblem; the chosen ones were
+congratulated. The agriculturists never cut the cake. Monsieur himself
+was always excluded, although he ate his share.
+
+The cake was cut in succession by poets, by painters, and by
+novelists. A great musician had the privilege of measuring the
+portions of the cake for some time; an ambassador succeeded him.
+Sometimes a man less well-known, but elegant and sought after, one of
+those who are called according to the different epochs, "true
+gentleman," or "perfect knight," or "dandy," or something else, seated
+himself, in his turn, before the symbolic cake. Each of them, during
+his ephemeral reign, exhibited greater consideration towards the
+husband; then, when the hour of his fall had arrived, he passed on the
+knife towards the other and mingled once more with the crowd of
+followers and admirers of the "beautiful Madame Anserre."
+
+This state of things lasted a long time, but comets do not always
+shine with the same brilliance. Everything gets worn out in society.
+One would have said that gradually the eagerness of the cutters grew
+feebler; they seemed to hesitate at times when the tray was held out
+to them; this office, once so much coveted, became less and less
+desired. It was retained for a shorter time; they appeared to be less
+proud of it.
+
+Madame Anserre was prodigal of smiles and civilities. Alas! no one was
+found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to
+decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like
+dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power.
+Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!)
+M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting
+tired of it; and one evening Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame
+Anserre, was seen cutting it herself. But this appeared to be very
+wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged one of her guests so
+strongly to do it that he did not dare to refuse.
+
+The symbol was too well-known, however; the guests stared at one
+another with scared anxious faces. To cut the cake was nothing, but
+the privileges to which this favor had always given a claim now
+frightened people; therefore, the moment the dish made its appearance
+the academicians rushed pell-mell into the Salon of Agriculture, as if
+to shelter themselves behind the husband, who was perpetually smiling.
+And when Madame Anserre, in a state of anxiety, presented herself at
+the door with a cake in one hand and the knife in the other, they all
+seemed to form a circle around her husband as if to appeal to him for
+protection.
+
+Some years more passed. Nobody cut the cake now; but yielding to an
+old inveterate habit, the lady who had always been gallantly called
+"the beautiful Madame Anserre" looked out each evening for some
+devotee to take the knife, and each time the same movement took place
+around her, a general flight, skillfully arranged, and full of
+combined maneuvers that showed great cleverness, in order to avoid the
+offer that was rising to her lips.
+
+But, one evening, a young man presented himself at her reception--an
+innocent, unsophisticated youth. He knew nothing about the mystery of
+the cake; accordingly, when it appeared, and when all the rest ran
+away, when Madame Anserre took from the man-servant's hands the dish
+and the pastry, he remained quietly by her side.
+
+She thought that perhaps he knew about the matter; she smiled, and in
+a tone which showed some emotion, said:
+
+"Will you be kind enough, dear Monsieur, to cut this cake?"
+
+He displayed the utmost readiness, and took off his gloves, flattered
+at such an honor being conferred on him.
+
+"Oh, to be sure Madame, with the greatest pleasure."
+
+Some distance away in the corner of the gallery, in the frame of the
+door which led into the Salon of the Agriculturists, faces which
+expressed utter amazement were staring at him. Then, when the
+spectators saw the new comer cutting without any hesitation, they
+quickly came forward.
+
+An old poet jocosely slapped the neophyte on the shoulder.
+
+"Bravo, young man!" he whispered in his ear.
+
+The others gazed at him with curiosity. Even the husband appeared to
+be surprised. As for the young man, he was astonished at the
+consideration which they suddenly seemed to show towards him; above
+all, he failed to comprehend the marked attentions, the manifest
+favor, and the species of mute gratitude which the mistress of the
+house bestowed on him.
+
+It appears, however, that he eventually found out.
+
+At what moment, in what place, was the revelation made to him? Nobody
+could tell; but, when he again presented himself at the reception, he
+had a preoccupied air, almost a shamefaced look, and he cast around
+him a glance of uneasiness.
+
+The bell rang for tea. The man-servant appeared. Madame Anserre, with
+a smile, seized the dish, casting a look about her for her young
+friend; but he had fled so precipitately that no trace of him could be
+seen any longer. Then, she went looking everywhere for him, and ere
+long she discovered him in the Salon of the Agriculturists. With his
+arm locked in that of the husband, he was consulting that gentleman as
+to the means employed for destroying phylloxera.
+
+"My dear Monsieur," she said to him, "will you be so kind as to cut
+this cake for me?"
+
+He reddened to the roots of his hair, and hanging down his head,
+stammered out some excuses. Thereupon M. Anserre took pity on him, and
+turning towards his wife, said:
+
+"My dear, you might have the goodness not to disturb us. We are
+talking about agriculture. So get your cake cut by Baptiste."
+
+And since that day nobody has ever cut Madame Anserre's cake.
+
+
+
+
+A LIVELY FRIEND
+
+
+They had been constantly in each other's society for a whole winter in
+Paris. After having lost sight of each other, as generally happens in
+such cases, after leaving college, the two friends met again one
+night, long years after, already old and white-haired, the one a
+bachelor, the other married.
+
+M. de Meroul lived six months in Paris and six months in his little
+chateau of Tourbeville. Having married the daughter of a gentleman in
+the district, he had lived a peaceful, happy life with the indolence
+of a man who has nothing to do. With a calm temperament and a sedate
+mind, without any intellectual audacity or tendency towards
+revolutionary independence of thought, he passed his time in mildly
+regretting the past, in deploring the morals and the institutions of
+to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised her eyes
+to Heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic assent:
+
+"Under what a government do we live, great God!"
+
+Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had
+been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first
+of all, to reverence the Pope and the King!
+
+And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart,
+without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary
+devotion, with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was
+kindly in every fold of her soul. She had no child, and was
+incessantly regretting it.
+
+When M. de Meroul came across his old school fellow Joseph Mouradour
+at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine
+delight, for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.
+
+After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in
+their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of
+questions as to their respective careers.
+
+Joseph Mouradour, a native of the South of France, had become a
+Councilor General in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he
+spoke briskly and without any circumspection telling all his thoughts
+with sheer indifference to prudential considerations. He was a
+Republican, of that race of good-natured Republicans who make their
+own ease the law of their existence, and who carry freedom of speech
+to the verge of brutality.
+
+He called at his friend's address in Paris, and was immediately a
+favorite, on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced
+opinions. Madame de Meroul exclaimed:
+
+"What a pity! such a charming man!"
+
+M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone:
+"You cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country." He was
+attached to his friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than
+those of childhood renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the
+husband and wife, called them "my loving turtles," and occasionally
+gave vent to loud declarations against people who were behind the age,
+against all sorts of prejudices and traditions.
+
+When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the
+married pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of
+propriety and good-breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the
+conversation, in order to avoid any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not
+want to know anyone unless he was free to say what he liked.
+
+Summer came round. The Merouls knew no greater pleasure than to
+receive their old friends in their country house at Tourbeville. It
+was an intimate and healthy pleasure, the pleasure of homely
+gentlefolk who had spent most of their lives in the country. They used
+to go to the nearest railway station to meet some of their guests, and
+drove them to the house in their carriage, watching for compliments on
+their district, on the rapid vegetation, on the condition of the roads
+in the department, on the cleanliness of the peasants' houses, on the
+bigness of the cattle they saw in the fields, on everything that met
+the eye as far as the edge of the horizon.
+
+They liked to have it noticed that their horse trotted in a wonderful
+manner for an animal employed a part of the year in field-work; and
+they awaited, with anxiety the newcomer's opinion on their family
+estate, sensitive to the slightest word, grateful for the slightest
+gracious attention.
+
+Joseph Mouradour was invited, and he announced his arrival.
+
+The wife and the husband came to meet the train, delighted to have the
+opportunity of doing the honors of their house.
+
+As soon as he perceived them, Joseph Mouradour jumped out of his
+carriage with a vivacity which increased their satisfaction. He
+grasped their hands warmly, congratulated them, and intoxicated them
+with compliments.
+
+He was quite charming in his manner as they drove along the road to
+the house; he expressed astonishment at the height of the trees, the
+excellence of the crops, and the quickness of the horse.
+
+When he placed his foot on the steps in front of the chateau, M. de
+Meroul said to him with a certain friendly solemnity:
+
+"Now you are at home."
+
+Joseph Mouradour answered: "Thanks old fellow; I counted on that. For
+my part, besides, I never put myself out with my friends. That's the
+only hospitality I understand."
+
+Then, he went up to his own room, where he put on the costume of a
+peasant, as he was pleased to describe it, and he came down again not
+very long after, attired in blue linen, with yellow boots, in the
+careless rig-out of a Parisian out for a holiday. He seemed, too to
+have become more common, more jolly, more familiar, having assumed
+along with his would-be rustic garb a free and easy swagger which he
+thought suited the style of dress. His new apparel somewhat shocked M.
+and Madame de Meroul who even at home on their estate always remained
+serious and respectable, as the particle "de" before their name
+exacted a certain amount of ceremonial even with their intimate
+friends.
+
+After lunch, they went to visit the farms; and the Parisian stupefied
+the respectable peasants by talking to them as if he were a comrade of
+theirs.
+
+In the evening, the cure dined at the house--a fat old priest,
+wearing his Sunday suit, who had been specially asked that day in
+order to meet the newcomer.
+
+When Joseph saw him he made a grimace, then he stared at the priest in
+astonishment as if he belonged to some peculiar race of beings, the
+like of which he had never seen before at such close quarters. He told
+a few smutty stories allowable enough with a friend after dinner, but
+apparently somewhat out of place in the presence of an ecclesiastic.
+He did not say, "Monsieur l'Abbe," but merely "Monsieur"; and he
+embarrassed the priest with philosophical views as to the various
+superstitions that prevailed on the surface of the globe.
+
+He remarked:
+
+"Your God, monsieur, is one of those persons whom we must respect, but
+also one of those who must be discussed. Mine is called Reason; he has
+from time immemorial been the enemy of yours."
+
+The Merouls, greatly put out, attempted to divert his thoughts.
+
+The cure left very early.
+
+Then the husband gently remarked:
+
+"You went a little too far with that priest."
+
+But Joseph immediately replied:
+
+"That's a very good joke, too! Am I to bother my brains about a
+devil-dodger? At any rate, do me the favor of not ever again having
+such an old fogy to dinner. Curses on his impudence!"
+
+"But, my friend, remember his sacred character."
+
+Joseph Mouradour interrupted him:
+
+"Yes, I know. We must treat them like girls, who get roses for being
+well behaved! That's all right, my boy! When these people respect my
+convictions, I will respect theirs!"
+
+This was all that happened that day.
+
+Next morning, Madame de Meroul, on entering her drawing-room, saw
+lying on the table three newspapers which made her draw back in
+horror. "Le Voltaire," "Le Republique Francaise," and "La Justice."
+
+Presently, Joseph Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the
+threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. He exclaimed:
+
+"There is a splendid article by Rochefort. This fellow is marvelous."
+
+He read the article in a loud voice, laying so much stress on its most
+striking passages that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.
+
+M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand. "Le Gaulois" for himself and
+"Le Clarion" for his wife.
+
+The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire,
+violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the South, rang through
+the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid
+folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the
+solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with
+a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical and crushing.
+
+The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened
+in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured
+to make a gesture. Mouradour launched out the concluding passage in
+the article as one lets forth a jet of fireworks, then in an emphatic
+tone remarked:
+
+"That's a stinger, eh?"
+
+But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and
+he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then, he
+came across to his host with great strides, demanding in angry tone:
+
+"What do you want to do with these papers?" M. de Meroul replied in a
+hesitating voice:
+
+"Why, these--these are my--my newspapers."
+
+"Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You
+will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new
+ideas, and, as for yours--this is what I do with them--"
+
+And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he
+seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then
+he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and
+"Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, and he sank into an armchair to
+finish "L'Intransigeant."
+
+The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of
+reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers,
+which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been
+poisoned.
+
+Then he burst out laughing, and said:
+
+"A week of this sort of nourishment, and I'll have you converted to my
+ideas."
+
+At the end of the week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the
+door on the cure, whom Madame Meroul went to see in secret. He gave
+orders that neither the "Gaulois" nor the "Clarion" were to be
+admitted into the house, which a man-servant went to get in a
+mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance,
+were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything
+just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jovial and
+all powerful tyrant.
+
+Other friends were about to come on a visit, religious people with
+Legitimist opinions. The master and mistress of the chateau considered
+it would be impossible to let them meet their lively guest, and, not
+knowing what to do, announced to Joseph Mouradour one evening that
+they were obliged to go away from home for a few days about a little
+matter of business, and they begged of him to remain in the house
+alone.
+
+He showed no trace of emotion, and replied:
+
+"Very well; 'tis all the same to me; I'll wait here for you as long as
+you like. What I say is this--there need be no ceremony between
+friends. You're quite right to look after your own affairs--why the
+devil shouldn't you? I'll not take offense at your doing that, quite
+the contrary. It only makes me feel quite at my ease with you. Go, my
+friends--I'll wait for you."
+
+M. and Madame Meroul started next morning.
+
+He is waiting for them.
+
+
+
+
+THE ORPHAN
+
+
+Mademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
+She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was deformed, having in
+her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and
+getting her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterwards
+presented a frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve
+not to marry, for she did not want any man to marry her for her money.
+
+A female neighbor of hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy,
+died in child-birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took
+the new-born child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a
+boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in
+order to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who
+would look after her, who would make her old age pleasant.
+
+She resided on a little property four leagues away from Rennes, and
+she now dispensed with a servant. The expenses having increased to
+more than double what they had been since this orphan's arrival, her
+income of three thousand francs was no longer sufficient to support
+three persons.
+
+She attended to the housekeeping and the cooking herself, and she sent
+out the boy on errands, letting him further occupy himself with
+cultivating the garden. He was gentle, timid, silent, and caressing.
+And she experienced a deep joy, a fresh joy at being embraced by him,
+without any apparent surprise or repugnance being exhibited by him on
+account of her ugliness. He called her "Aunt" and treated her as a
+mother.
+
+In the evening they both sat down at the fireside, and she got nice
+things ready for him. She heated some wine and toasted a slice of
+bread, and it made a charming little meal before going to bed. She
+often took him on her knees and covered him with kisses, murmuring in
+his ear with passionate tenderness. She called him: "My little flower,
+my cherub, my adored angel, my divine jewel." He softly accepted her
+caresses, concealing his head on the old maid's shoulder. Although he
+was now nearly fifteen years old, he had remained small and weak, and
+had a rather sickly appearance.
+
+Sometimes Mademoiselle Source brought him to the city, to see two
+married female relatives of hers, distant cousins, who were living in
+the suburbs, and who were the only members of her family in existence.
+The two women had always found fault with her for having adopted this
+boy on account of the inheritance; but for all that they gave her a
+cordial welcome, having still hopes of getting a share for themselves,
+a third, no doubt, if what she possessed were only equally divided.
+
+She was happy, very happy, always taken up with her adopted child. She
+bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself
+ardently to reading.
+
+He no longer now climbed on her knees to fondle her as he had formerly
+done; but instead would go and sit down in his little chair in the
+chimney-corner and open a volume. The lamp placed at the edge of the
+little table, above his head, shone on his curly hair, and on a
+portion of his forehead; he did not move, he did not raise his eyes,
+he did not make any gesture. He read on, interested, entirely absorbed
+in the adventures which formed the subject of the book.
+
+She, seated opposite to him, gazed at him with an eager, steady look,
+astonished at his studiousness, often on the point of bursting into
+tears.
+
+She said to him now and then: "You will fatigue yourself, my
+treasure!" in the hope that he would raise his head, and come across
+to embrace her; but he did not even answer her; he had not heard or
+understood what she was saying; he paid no attention to anything save
+what he read in these pages.
+
+For two years he devoured an incalculable number of volumes. His
+character changed.
+
+After this, he asked Mademoiselle Source many times for money, which
+she gave him. As he always wanted more, she ended by refusing, for she
+was both regular and energetic, and knew how to act rationally when it
+was necessary to do so. By dint of entreaties he obtained a large sum
+one night from her; but when he urged her to give him another sum a
+few days later, she showed herself inflexible, and did not give way to
+him further, in fact.
+
+He appeared to be satisfied with her decision.
+
+He again became quiet, as he had formerly been, loving to remain
+seated for entire hours, without moving, plunged in deep reverie. He
+now did not even talk to Madame Source, merely answering her remarks
+with short, formal words. Nevertheless, he was agreeable and attentive
+in his manner towards her; but he never embraced her now.
+
+She had by this time grown slightly afraid of him when they sat facing
+one another at night at opposite sides of the chimney-piece. She
+wanted to wake him up, to make him say something, no matter what, that
+would break this dreadful silence, which was like the darkness of a
+wood. But he did not appear to listen to her, and she shuddered with
+the terror of a poor feeble woman when she had spoken to him five or
+six times successively without being able to get a word out of him.
+
+What was the matter with him? What was going on in that closed up
+head? When she had been thus two or three hours sitting opposite him,
+she felt herself getting daft, and longed to rush away and to escape
+into the open country in order to avoid that mute, eternal
+companionship and also some vague danger, which she could not define,
+but of which she had a presentiment.
+
+She frequently shed tears when she was alone. What was the matter with
+him? When she gave expression to a desire, he unmurmuringly carried it
+into execution. When she wanted to have anything brought to her from
+the city, he immediately went there to procure it. She had no
+complaint to make of him; no, indeed! And yet....
+
+Another year flitted by, and it seemed to her that a new modification
+had taken place in the mind of the young man. She perceived it; she
+felt it; she divined it. How? No matter! She was sure she was not
+mistaken; but she could not have explained in what the unknown
+thoughts of this strange youth had changed.
+
+It seemed to her that till now he had been like a person in a
+hesitating frame of mind who had suddenly arrived at a determination.
+This idea came to her one evening as she met his glance, a fixed
+singular glance which she had not seen in his face before.
+
+Then, he commenced to watch her incessantly and she wished she could
+hide herself in order to avoid that cold eye, riveted on her.
+
+He kept staring at her, evening after evening for hours together, only
+averting his eyes when she said, utterly unnerved:
+
+"Do not look at me like that, my child!"
+
+Then he hung down his head.
+
+But, the moment her back was turned, she once more felt that his eyes
+were upon her. Wherever she went he pursued her with his persistent
+gaze.
+
+Sometimes, when she was walking in her little garden, she suddenly
+noticed him squatted on the stump of a tree as if he were lying in
+wait for her; and again when she sat in front of the house mending
+stockings while he was digging some cabbage-bed, he kept watching her,
+as he worked, in a sly, continuous fashion.
+
+It was in vain that she asked him:
+
+"What's the matter with you, my boy? For the last three years you have
+become very different. I don't find you the same. Tell me what ails
+you, and what you are thinking of, I beg of you."
+
+He invariably replied, in a quiet, weary tone:
+
+"Why, nothing ails me, Aunt!"
+
+And when she persisted, appealing to him thus:
+
+"Ah! my child, answer me, answer me when I speak to you. If you knew
+what grief you caused me, you would always answer, and you would not
+look at me that way. Have you any trouble? Tell me! I'll console you!"
+
+He went away with a tired air, murmuring:
+
+"But there is nothing the matter with me, I assure you."
+
+He had not grown much, having always a childish aspect, although the
+features of his face were those of a man. They were, however, hard and
+badly-cut. He seemed incomplete, abortive, only half-finished, and
+disquieting as a mystery. He was a close, impenetrable being, in whom
+there seemed always to be some active, dangerous mental travail taking
+place.
+
+Mademoiselle Source was quite conscious of all this, and she could not
+from that time forth, sleep at night, so great was her anxiety.
+Frightful terrors, dreadful nightmares assailed her. She shut herself
+up in her own room, and barricaded the door, tortured by fear.
+
+What was she afraid of? She could not tell.
+
+Fear of everything, of the night, of the walls, of the shadows thrown
+by the moon on the white curtains of the windows, and above all, fear
+of him.
+
+Why?
+
+What had she to fear? Did she know what it was?
+
+She could live this way no longer! She felt certain that a misfortune
+threatened her, a frightful misfortune.
+
+She set forth secretly one morning, and went into the city to see her
+relatives. She told them about the matter in a gasping voice. The two
+women thought she was going mad and tried to reassure her.
+
+She said:
+
+"If you knew the way he looks at me from morning till night. He never
+takes his eyes off me! At times, I feel a longing to cry for help, to
+call in the neighbors, so much am I afraid. But what could I say to
+them? He does nothing to me except to keep looking at me."
+
+The two female cousins asked:
+
+"Is he ever brutal to you? Does he give you sharp answers?"
+
+She replied:
+
+"No, never; he does everything I wish; he works hard; he is steady;
+but I am so frightened I don't mind that much. He has something in his
+head, I am certain of that--quite certain. I don't care to remain all
+alone like that with him in the country."
+
+The relatives, scared by her words, declared to her that they were
+astonished, and could not understand her; and they advised her to keep
+silent about her fears and her plans, without, however, dissuading her
+from coming to reside in the city, hoping in that way that the entire
+inheritance would eventually fall into their hands.
+
+They even promised to assist her in selling her house and in finding
+another near them.
+
+Mademoiselle Source returned home. But her mind was so much upset that
+she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any
+trifling disturbance agitated her.
+
+Twice she went again to consult her relatives, quite determined now
+not to remain any longer in this way in her lonely dwelling. At last,
+she found a little cottage in the suburbs, which suited her, and she
+privately bought it.
+
+The signature of the contract took place on a Tuesday morning, and
+Mademoiselle Source devoted the rest of the day to the preparations
+for her change of residence.
+
+At eight o'clock in the evening she got into the diligence which
+passed within a few hundred yards of her house, and she told the
+conductor to let her down in the place where it was his custom to stop
+for her. The man called out to her as he whipped his horses:
+
+"Good evening, Mademoiselle Source--good night!"
+
+She replied as she walked on:
+
+"Good evening, Pere Joseph." Next morning, at half-past seven, the
+postman who conveyed letters to the village, noticed at the
+cross-road, not far from the high road, a large splash of blood not
+yet dry. He said to himself: "Hallo! some boozer must have got a
+bleeding in the nose."
+
+But he perceived ten paces farther on a pocket-handkerchief also
+stained with blood. He picked it up. The linen was fine, and the
+postman in alarm, made his way over to the dike, where he fancied he
+saw a strange object.
+
+Mademoiselle Source was lying at the bottom on the grass, her throat
+cut open with a knife.
+
+An hour later, the gendarmes, the examining magistrate, and other
+authorities made an inquiry as to the cause of death.
+
+The two female relatives, called as witnesses, told all about the old
+maid's fears and her last plans.
+
+The orphan was arrested. Since the death of the woman who had adopted
+him, he wept from morning till night, plunged at least to all
+appearance, in the most violent grief.
+
+He proved that he had spent the evening up to eleven o'clock in a
+cafe. Ten persons had seen him, having remained there till his
+departure.
+
+Now the driver of the diligence stated that he had set down the
+murdered woman on the road between half-past nine and ten o'clock.
+
+The accused was acquitted. A will, a long time made, which had been
+left in the hands of a notary in Rennes, made him universal legatee.
+So he inherited everything.
+
+For a long time, the people of the country put him into a quarantine,
+as they still suspected him. His house, which was that of the dead
+woman, was looked upon as accursed. People avoided him in the street.
+
+But he showed himself so good-natured, so open, so familiar, that
+gradually these horrible doubts were forgotten. He was generous,
+obliging, ready to talk to the humblest about anything as long as they
+cared to talk to him.
+
+The notary, Maitre Rameay, was one of the first to take his part,
+attracted by his smiling loquacity. He said one evening at a dinner at
+the tax-collector's house:
+
+"A man who speaks with such facility and who is always in good humor
+could not have such a crime on his conscience."
+
+Touched by his argument, the others who were present reflected, and
+they recalled to mind the long conversations with this man who made
+them stop almost by force at the road corners to communicate his ideas
+to them, who insisted on their going into his house when they were
+passing by his garden, who could crack a joke better than the
+lieutenant of the gendarmes himself, and who possessed such contagious
+gayety that, in spite of the repugnance with which he inspired them,
+they could not keep from always laughing in his company.
+
+All doors were opened to him, after a time.
+
+He is, to-day, the mayor of his own township.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLIND MAN
+
+
+How is it that the sunlight gives us such joy? Why does this radiance
+when it falls on the earth fill us with so much delight of living? The
+sky is all blue, the fields are all green, the houses all white; and
+our ravished eyes drink in those bright colors which bring
+mirthfulness to our souls. And then there springs up in our hearts a
+desire to dance, a desire to run, a desire to sing, a happy lightness
+of thought, a sort of enlarged tenderness; we feel a longing to
+embrace the sun.
+
+The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal
+darkness, remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gayety,
+and, not comprehending what is taking place around them, they keep
+every moment stopping their dogs from gamboling.
+
+When, at the close of the day, they are returning home on the arm of a
+young brother or a little sister, if the child says: "It was a very
+fine day!" the other answers: "I could notice that 'twas fine. Loulou
+wouldn't keep quiet."
+
+I have known one of these men whose life was one of the most cruel
+martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived.
+
+He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father
+and mother lived, he was more or less taken care of; he suffered
+little save from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people
+were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. A dependent
+on a sister of his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar
+who is eating the bread of others. At every meal the very food he
+swallowed was made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a
+drone, a clown; and although his brother-in-law had taken possession
+of his portion of the inheritance, the soup was given to him
+grudgingly--just enough to save him from dying.
+
+His face was very pale, and his two big white eyes were like wafers;
+and he remained unmoved in spite of the insults inflicted upon him, so
+shut up in himself that one could not tell whether he felt them at
+all.
+
+Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always
+treated him unkindly, and caring scarcely at all for him; for in
+country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be
+glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species.
+
+As soon as the soup had been gulped down, he went to the door in
+summer-time and sat down, to the chimney-corner in winter time, and,
+after that, never stirred all night. He made no gesture, no movement;
+only his eyelids, quivering from some nervous affection, fell down
+sometimes over his white, sightless orbs. Had he any intellect, any
+thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own existence? Nobody cared
+to inquire as to whether he had or no.
+
+For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for
+doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his
+relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon,
+a prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the
+brutes who surrounded him.
+
+It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes inspired by his
+blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him,
+they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors
+and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.
+
+The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it
+was talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the
+farmhouse was full of people. Sometimes they put on the table, in
+front of his plate, when he was beginning to take the soup, some cat
+or some dog. The animal instinctively scented out the man's infirmity,
+and, softly approaching, commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the
+soup daintily; and, when a rather loud licking of the tongue awakened
+the poor fellow's attention, it would prudently scamper away to avoid
+the blow of the spoon directed at it by the blind man at random!
+
+Then the spectators huddled against the walls burst out laughing,
+nudged each other, and stamped their feet on the floor. And he,
+without ever uttering a word, would continue eating with the aid of
+his right hand, while stretching out his left to protect and defend
+his plate.
+
+At another time they made him chew corks, bits of wood, leaves, or
+even filth, which he was unable to distinguish.
+
+After this, they got tired even of these practical jokes; and the
+brother-in-law, mad at having to support him always, struck him,
+cuffed him incessantly, laughing at the useless efforts of the other
+to ward off or return the blows. Then came a new pleasure--the
+pleasure of smacking his face. And the plough-men, the servant girls,
+and even every passing vagabond were every moment giving him cuffs,
+which caused his eyelashes to twitch spasmodically. He did not know
+where to hide himself, and remained with his arms always held out to
+guard against people coming too close to him.
+
+At last he was forced to beg.
+
+He was placed somewhere on the high-road on market-days, and as soon
+as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he
+reached out his hat, stammering:--
+
+"Charity, if you please!"
+
+But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring
+back a sou.
+
+Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how
+he died.
+
+One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it froze horribly.
+Now his brother-in-law led him one morning at this season a great
+distance along the high-road in order that he might solicit alms. The
+blind man was left there all day, and when night came on, the
+brother-in-law told the people of his house that he could find no
+trace of the mendicant. Then he added:
+
+"Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold, and got someone to take
+him away. Never fear! he's not lost. He'll turn up soon enough
+to-morrow to eat the soup."
+
+Next day, he did not come back.
+
+After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he
+was dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way
+along the road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at
+random, falling into dykes, getting up again, without uttering a
+sound, his sole object being to find some house where he could take
+shelter.
+
+But by degrees the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and
+his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to
+sit down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.
+
+The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that
+his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant
+accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer
+indicated the place where the corpse was lying.
+
+His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for
+him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.
+
+The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
+Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of
+crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then,
+like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot,
+ever going and coming.
+
+The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
+crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners
+of the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the
+shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and
+in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see
+what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man,
+already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked
+out by the long, voracious beaks.
+
+And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly
+remembering and gloomily pondering over the fate of the beggar so
+disinherited in life that his horrible death was a relief for all
+those who had known him.
+
+
+
+
+A WIFE'S CONFESSION
+
+
+My friend, you have asked me to relate to you the liveliest
+recollections of my life. I am very old, without relatives, without
+children; so I am free to make a confession to you. Promise me one
+thing--never to reveal my name.
+
+I have been much loved, as you know; I have often myself loved. I was
+very beautiful; I may say this to-day, when my beauty is gone. Love
+was for me the life of the soul, just as the air is the life of the
+body. I would have preferred to die rather than exist without
+affection, without having somebody always to care for me. Women often
+pretend to love only once with all the strength of their hearts; it
+has often happened to be so violent in one of my attachments that I
+thought it would be impossible for my transports ever to end. However,
+they always died out in a natural fashion, like a fire when it has no
+more fuel.
+
+I will tell you to-day the first of my adventures, in which I was very
+innocent, but which led to the others. The horrible vengeance of that
+dreadful chemist of Pecq recalls to me the shocking drama of which I
+was, in spite of myself, a spectator.
+
+I had been a year married to a rich man, Comte Herve de Ker---- a
+Breton of ancient family, whom I did not love, you understand. True
+love needs, I believe at any rate, freedom and impediments at the same
+time. The love which is imposed, sanctioned by law, and blessed by the
+priest--can we really call that love? A legal kiss is never as good
+as a stolen kiss. My husband was tall in stature, elegant, and a
+really fine gentleman in his manners. But he lacked intelligence. He
+spoke in a downright fashion, and uttered opinions that cut like the
+blade of a knife. He created the impression that his mind was full of
+ready-made views instilled into him by his father and mother, who had
+themselves got them from their ancestors. He never hesitated, but on
+every subject immediately made narrow-minded suggestions, without
+showing any embarrassment and without realizing that there might be
+other ways of looking at things. One felt that his head was closed up,
+that no ideas circulated in it, none of those ideas which renew a
+man's mind and make it sound, like a breath of fresh air passing
+through an open window into a house.
+
+The chateau in which we lived was situated in the midst of a desolate
+tract of country. It was a large, melancholy structure, surrounded by
+enormous trees, with tufts of moss on it resembling old men's white
+beards. The park, a real forest, was enclosed in a deep trench called
+the ha-ha; and at its extremity, near the moorland, we had big ponds
+full of reeds and floating grass. Between the two, at the edge of a
+stream which connected them, my husband had got a little hut built for
+shooting wild ducks.
+
+We had, in addition to our ordinary servants, a keeper, a sort of
+brute devoted to my husband to the death, and a chambermaid, almost a
+friend, passionately attached to me. I had brought her back from Spain
+with me five years before. She was a deserted child. She might have
+been taken for a gipsy with her dusky skin, her dark eyes, her hair
+thick as a wood and always clustering around her forehead. She was at
+the time sixteen years old, but she looked twenty.
+
+The autumn was beginning. We hunted much, sometimes on neighboring
+estates, sometimes on our own; and I noticed a young man, the Baron de
+C----, whose visits at the chateau became singularly frequent. Then he
+ceased to come; I thought no more about it; but I perceived that my
+husband changed in his demeanor towards me.
+
+He seemed taciturn and preoccupied; he did not kiss me; and, in spite
+of the fact that he did not come into my room, as I insisted on
+separate apartments in order to live a little alone, I often at night
+heard a furtive step drawing near my door, and withdrawing a few
+minutes after.
+
+As my window was on the ground-floor I thought I had also often heard
+someone prowling in the shadow around the chateau. I told my husband
+about it, and, having looked at me intently for some seconds, he
+answered:
+
+"It is nothing--it is the keeper."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, one evening, just after dinner, Herve, who appeared to be
+extraordinarily gay, with a sly sort of gaiety, said to me:
+
+"Would you like to spend three hours out with the guns, in order to
+shoot a fox who comes every evening to eat my hens?"
+
+I was surprised. I hesitated; but, as he kept staring at me with
+singular persistency, I ended by replying:
+
+"Why, certainly, my friend." I must tell you that I hunted like a man
+the wolf and the wild boar. So it was quite natural that he should
+suggest this shooting expedition to me.
+
+But my husband, all of a sudden, had a curiously nervous look; and all
+the evening he seemed agitated, rising up and sitting down feverishly.
+
+About ten o'clock, he suddenly said to me:
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+I rose; and, as he was bringing me my gun himself, I asked:
+
+"Are we to load with bullets or with deershot?"
+
+He showed some astonishment; then he rejoined:
+
+"Oh! only with deershot; make your mind easy! that will be enough."
+
+Then, after some seconds, he added in a peculiar tone:
+
+"You may boast of having splendid coolness."
+
+I burst out laughing.
+
+"I? Why, pray? Coolness because I went to kill a fox? But what are you
+thinking of, my friend?"
+
+And we quietly made our way across the park. All the household slept.
+The full moon seemed to give a yellow tint to the old gloomy building,
+whose slate roof glittered brightly. The two turrets that flanked it
+had two plates of light on their summits, and no noise disturbed the
+silence of this clear, sad night, sweet and still, which seemed in a
+death-trance. Not a breath of air, not a shriek from a toad, not a
+hoot from an owl; a melancholy numbness lay heavy on everything. When
+we were under the trees in the park, a sense of freshness stole over
+me, together with the odor of fallen leaves. My husband said nothing;
+but he was listening, he was watching, he seemed to be smelling about
+in the shadows, possessed from head to foot by the passion for the
+chase.
+
+We soon reached the edges of the ponds.
+
+Their tufts of rushes remained motionless; not a breath of air
+caressed it; but movements which were scarcely perceptible ran through
+the water. Sometimes the surface was stirred by something, and light
+circles gathered around, like luminous wrinkles enlarging
+indefinitely.
+
+When we reached the hut where we were to lie in wait, my husband made
+me go in first; then he slowly loaded his gun, and the dry cracking of
+the powder produced a strange effect on me. He saw that I was
+shuddering, and asked:
+
+"Does this trial happen to be quite enough for you? If so, go back."
+
+I was much surprised, and I replied:
+
+"Not at all. I did not come to go back without doing anything. You
+seem queer this evening."
+
+He murmured, "As you wish," and we remained there without moving.
+
+At the end of about half-an-hour, as nothing broke the oppressive
+stillness of this bright autumn night, I said, in a low tone:
+
+"Are you quite sure he is passing this way?"
+
+Herve winced as if I had bitten him, and with his mouth close to my
+ear, he said:
+
+"Make no mistake about it. I am quite sure."
+
+And once more there was silence.
+
+I believe I was beginning to get drowsy when my husband pressed my
+arm, and his voice, changed to a hiss, said:
+
+"Do you see him over there under the trees?"
+
+I looked in vain; I could distinguish nothing. And slowly Herve now
+cocked his gun, all the time fixing his eyes on my face.
+
+I was myself making ready to fire, and suddenly, thirty paces in front
+of us, appeared in the full light of the moon a man who was hurrying
+forward with rapid movements, his body bent, as if he were trying to
+escape.
+
+I was so stupefied that I uttered a loud cry; but, before I could turn
+round, there was a flash before my eyes; I heard a deafening report,
+and I saw the man rolling on the ground, like a wolf hit by a bullet.
+
+I burst into dreadful shrieks, terrified, almost going mad; then a
+furious hand--it was Herve's--seized me by the throat. I was flung
+down on the ground, then carried off by his strong arms. He ran,
+holding me up, till we reached the body lying on the grass, and he
+threw me on top of it violently, as if he wanted to break my head.
+
+I thought I was lost; he was going to kill me; and he had just raised
+his heel up to my forehead when, in his turn, he was gripped, knocked
+down before I could yet realize what had happened.
+
+I rose up abruptly, and I saw kneeling on top of him Porquita, my
+maid, clinging like a wild cat to him with desperate energy, tearing
+off his beard, his moustache, and the skin of his face.
+
+Then, as if another idea had suddenly taken hold of her mind, she rose
+up, and, flinging herself on the corpse, she threw her arms around the
+dead man, kissing his eyes and his mouth, opening the dead lips with
+her own lips, trying to find in them a breath and a long, long kiss of
+lovers.
+
+My husband, picking himself up, gazed at me. He understood, and
+falling at my feet, said:
+
+"Oh! forgive me, my darling, I suspected you, and I killed this girl's
+lover. It was my keeper that deceived me."
+
+But I was watching the strange kisses of that dead man and that living
+woman, and her sobs and her writhings of sorrowing love--
+
+And at that moment I understood that I might be unfaithful to my
+husband.
+
+
+
+
+RELICS OF THE PAST
+
+
+My dear Colette,--I do not know whether you remember a verse of M.
+Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed
+in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very
+often reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it
+is:
+
+"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
+
+I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I have lived,
+and where I hope to die. It is not gay every day, but it is pleasant;
+for there I have souvenirs all around me.
+
+My son Henri is a barrister; he comes to see me twice a year. Jeanne
+is living with her husband at the other end of France, and it is I who
+go to see her each autumn. So here I am, all, all alone, but
+surrounded by familiar objects which incessantly speak to me about my
+own people, the dead, and the living separated from me by distance.
+
+I no longer read much; I am too old for that; but I am constantly
+thinking, or rather dreaming. I do not dream as I used to do long ago.
+You may recall to mind any wild fancies, the adventures our brains
+concocted when we were twenty, and all the horizons of happiness that
+dawned upon us!
+
+Nothing out of all our dreaming has been realized, or rather it is
+quite a different thing that has happened, less charming, less poetic,
+but sufficient for those who know how to accept their lot in this
+world bravely.
+
+Do you know why we women are so often unhappy? It is because we are
+taught in our youth to believe too much in happiness! We are never
+brought up with the idea of fighting, of striving, of suffering. And,
+at the first shock, our hearts are broken; we look forward, with blind
+faith, to cascades of fortunate events. What does happen is at best
+but a partial happiness, and thereupon we burst out sobbing.
+Happiness, the real happiness that we dream of, I have come to know
+what that is. It does not consist in the arrival of great bliss, for
+any great bliss that falls to our share is to be found in the infinite
+expectation of a succession of joys to which we never attain.
+Happiness is happy expectation; it is the horizon of hope; it is,
+therefore, endless illusion; and, old as I am, I create illusions for
+myself still, in fact, every day I live; only their object is changed,
+my desires being no longer the same. I have told you that I spend my
+brightest hours in dreaming. What else should I do?
+
+I have two ways of doing this. I am going to tell you what they are;
+they may perhaps prove useful to you.
+
+Oh! the first is very simple; it consists in sitting down before my
+fire in a low armchair made soft for my old bones, and looking back at
+the things that have been put aside.
+
+One life is so short, especially a life entirely spent in the same
+spot:
+
+"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
+
+The things that bring back the past to our recollection are heaped,
+pressed together; and, we are old, it sometimes seems no more than ten
+days since we were young. Yes; everything slips away from us, as if
+life itself were but a single day: morning, evening, and then comes
+night--a night without a dawn!
+
+When I gaze into the fire, for hours and hours, the past rises up
+before me as though it were but yesterday. I no longer think of my
+present existence; reverie carries me away; once more I pass through
+all the changes of my life.
+
+And I often am possessed by the illusion that I am a young girl, so
+many breaths of bygone days are wafted back to me, so many youthful
+sensations and even impulses, so many throbbings of my young
+heart--all the passionate ardor of eighteen; and I have clear, as
+fresh realities, visions of forgotten things. Oh! how vividly, above
+all, do the memories of my walks as a young girl come back to me!
+There, in the armchair of mine, before the fire, I saw once more, a
+few nights since, a sunset on Mont Saint-Michel, and immediately
+afterwards I was riding on horseback through the forest of Uville with
+the odors of the damp sand and of the flowers steeped in dew, and the
+evening star sending its burning reflection through the water and
+bathing my face in its rays as I galloped through the copse. And all I
+thought of then, my poetic enthusiasm at the sight of the boundless
+sea, my keen delight at the rustling of the branches as I passed, my
+most trivial impressions, every fragment of thought, desire, or
+feeling, all, all came back to me as if I were there still, as if
+fifty years had not glided by since then, to chill my blood and
+moderate my hopes. But my other way of reviving the long ago is much
+better.
+
+You know, or you do not know, my dear Colette, that we destroy nothing
+in the house. We have upstairs, under the roof, a large room for
+cast-off things which we call "the lumber-room." Everything which is
+no longer used is thrown there. I often go up there, and gaze around
+me. Then I find once more a heap of nothings that I had ceased to
+think about, and that recalled a heap of things to my mind. They are
+not those beloved articles of furniture which we have known since our
+childhood and to which are attached recollections of events of joys or
+sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being
+intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a
+physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house,
+the only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones
+that will not die, like the others--those whose features, whose loving
+eyes, whose lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find
+instead among the medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old
+insignificant objects which have hung on by our side for forty years
+without ever having been noticed by us, and which, when we suddenly
+lay eyes on them again, have somehow the importance, the significance
+of relics of the past. They produce on my mind the effect of those
+people--whom we have known for a very long time without ever having
+seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden, some evening,
+quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable talk, and
+tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of
+which we had never even suspected the existence.
+
+And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in
+my heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself:
+"See there! I broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;" or else,
+"Ah! there is mamma's little lantern, which she used to carry with
+her going to her evening devotions on dark winter nights." There are
+even things in this room which have no story to tell me, which have
+come down from my grandparents, things therefore, whose history and
+adventures are utterly unknown to those who are living to-day, and
+whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen the hands that
+used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These are
+the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my
+mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear
+Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my
+simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and
+you Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal
+echoes of one's own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your
+thoughts in the open. Living alone as I do, I can only speak about
+myself. When you are answering this letter, tell me a little about
+yourself, that I may also be able to put myself in your place, as you
+will be able to put yourself in mine to-morrow.
+
+But you will never completely understand M. de Sainte Beuve's verse:
+
+    "To be born, to live, and to die in one house."
+
+A thousand kisses, my old friend,
+
+ADELAIDE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PEDDLER
+
+
+How many trifling occurrences, things which have left only a passing
+impression on our minds, humble dramas of which we have got a mere
+glimpse so that we have to guess at or suspect their real nature, are,
+while we are still young and inexperienced, threads, so to speak,
+guiding us, step by step, towards a knowledge of the painful truth!
+
+Every moment, when I am retracing my steps during the long wandering
+reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I
+saunter at random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little
+incidents of a gay or sinister character which, emerging from the
+shades of the past, flit before my memory as the birds flit through
+the bushes before my eyes.
+
+This summer, I wandered along a road in Savoy which commands a view of
+the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, and, while my glance floated
+over that mass of water, mirror-like and blue, with a unique blue,
+pale, tinted with glittering beams by the setting sun, I felt my heart
+stirred by that attachment which I have had since my childhood for the
+surface of lakes, for rivers, and for the sea. On the opposite bank of
+the vast liquid plate, so wide that you did not see the ends of it,
+one vanishing in the Rhone, and the other in the Bourget, rose the
+high mountain, jagged like a crest up to the topmast peak of the
+"Cats's Tooth." On either side of the road, vines, trailing from tree
+to tree, choked under their leaves their slender supporting branches,
+and they extended in garlands through the fields, green, yellow, and
+red garlands, festooning from one trunk to the other, and spotted with
+clusters of dark grapes.
+
+The road was deserted, white, and dusty. All of a sudden, a man
+emerged out of the thicket of large trees which shuts in the village
+of Saint-Innocent, and, bending under a load, he came towards me,
+leaning on a stick.
+
+When he had come closer to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one
+of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door,
+selling paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long
+ago arose up in my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection
+simply of an accidental meeting I had one night between Argenteuil and
+Paris when I was twenty-one.
+
+All the happiness of my life, at this period, was derived from
+boating. I had taken a room in an obscure inn at Argenteuil, and,
+every evening, I took the Government clerks' train, that long slow
+train which, in its course, sets down at different stations a crowd of
+men with little parcels, fat and heavy, for they scarcely walk at all,
+so that their trousers are always baggy owing to their constant
+occupation of the office-stool. This train, in which it seemed to me I
+could even sniff the odor of the writing-desk, of official documents
+and boxes, deposited me at Argenteuil. My boat was waiting for me,
+ready to glide over the water. And I rapidly plied my oar so that I
+might get out and dine at Bezons or Chatou or Epinay or Saint-Ouen.
+Then I came back, put up my boat, and made my way back on foot to
+Paris with the moon shining down on me.
+
+Well, one night on the white road I perceived just in front of me a
+man walking. Oh! I was constantly meeting those night travelers of the
+Parisian suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went on
+slowly before me with a heavy load on his shoulders.
+
+I came right up to him by quickening my pace so much that my footsteps
+rang on the road. He stopped and turned round; then, as I kept
+approaching nearer and nearer, he crossed to the opposite side of the
+road.
+
+As I rapidly passed him, he called out to me:
+
+"Hallo! good evening, monsieur."
+
+I responded:
+
+"Good evening, mate."
+
+He went on:
+
+"Are you going far?"
+
+"I am going to Paris."
+
+"You won't be long getting there; you're going at a good pace. As for
+me, I have too big a load on my shoulders to walk so quickly."
+
+I slackened my pace. Why had this man spoken to me? What was he
+carrying in this big pack? Vague suspicions of crime sprang up in my
+mind, and rendered me curious. The columns of the newspapers every
+morning contain so many accounts of crimes committed in this place,
+the peninsula of Gennevilliers, that some of them must be true. Such
+things are not invented merely to amuse readers--all this catalogue of
+arrests and varied misdeeds with which the reports of the law courts
+are filled.
+
+However, this man's voice seemed rather timid than bold, and up to the
+present his manner had been more discreet than aggressive.
+
+In my turn I began to question him:
+
+"And you--are you going far?"
+
+"Not farther than Asnieres."
+
+"Is Asnieres your place of abode?"
+
+"Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres."
+
+He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the
+daytime under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle
+of the road. I followed his example. We kept staring at each other
+suspiciously, each of us holding his stick in his hand. When I was
+sufficiently close to him, I felt less distrustful. He evidently was
+disposed to assume the same attitude towards me, for he asked:
+
+"Would you mind going a little more slowly?"
+
+"Why do you say this?"
+
+"Because I don't care for this road by night. I have goods on my back,
+and two are always better than one. When two men are together, people
+don't attack them."
+
+I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I
+yielded to his wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side,
+this stranger and I, at one o'clock in the morning, along the road
+leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.
+
+"Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?" I asked my
+companion.
+
+He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this
+evening, as he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods
+to last him three or four days. But he had been so fortunate in
+disposing of them that he found it necessary to get back to his abode
+without delay in order to deliver next day a number of things which
+had been bought on credit.
+
+He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the
+business very well, having a tendency to talk confidentially, and
+that the knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid,
+while gossiping, of other things which he could not easily sell.
+
+He added:
+
+"I have a shop in Asnieres. 'Tis my wife keeps it."
+
+"Ah! So you're married?"
+
+"Yes, m'sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice
+wife. She'll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night."
+
+He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this
+young girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.
+
+She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a
+street, where she sold all sorts of things--ribbons, flowers in
+summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other
+gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a
+speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." This name
+was given to her because she often dressed in blue. And she made
+money, as she was very skillful in everything she did. His impression
+was that she was not very well at the present moment; he believed she
+was in the family way, but he was not quite sure. Their business was
+prospering; and he traveled about exhibiting samples to all the small
+traders in the adjoining districts. He had become a sort of traveling
+commission-agent for some of the manufacturers, working at the same
+time for them and for himself.
+
+"And you--what are you," he said.
+
+I answered him with an air of embarrassment. I explained that I had a
+sailing-boat and two yawls in Argenteuil, that I came for a row every
+evening, and that, as I was fond of exercise, I sometimes walked back
+to Paris, where I had a profession, which--I led him to infer--was a
+lucrative one.
+
+He remarked:
+
+"Faith, if I had spondulics like you, I wouldn't amuse myself by
+trudging that way along the roads at night--'Tisn't safe along here."
+
+He gave me a sidelong glance, and I asked myself whether he might not
+all the same, be a criminal of the sneaking type who did not want to
+run any fruitless risk.
+
+Then he restored my confidence when he murmured:
+
+"A little less quickly, if you please. This pack of mine is heavy."
+
+The sight of a group of houses showed that we had reached Asnieres.
+
+"I am nearly at home," he said. "We don't sleep in the shop; it is
+watched at night by a dog, but a dog who is worth four men. And then
+it costs too much to live in the center of the town. But listen to me,
+monsieur! You have rendered me a precious service, for I don't feel my
+mind at ease when I'm traveling with my pack along the roads. Well,
+now you must come in with me, and drink a glass of mulled wine with my
+wife if she hasn't gone to bed, for she is a sound sleeper, and
+doesn't like to be waked up. Besides, I'm not a bit afraid without my
+pack, and so I'll see you to the gates of the city with a cudgel in my
+hand."
+
+I declined the invitation; he insisted on my coming in; I still held
+back; he pressed me with so much eagerness, with such an air of real
+disappointment, such expressions of deep regret--for he had the art of
+expressing himself very forcibly--asking me in the tone of one who
+felt wounded "whether I objected to have a drink with a man like
+him," that I finally gave way and followed him up a lonely road
+towards one of those big dilapidated houses which are to be found on
+the outskirts of suburbs.
+
+In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster
+looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands.
+But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go
+in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound
+darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands
+and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some
+gaping cellar.
+
+When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis
+the sixth story."
+
+I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted
+the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack,
+repeating:
+
+"Tis high! 'tis high!"
+
+When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his
+inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he
+made me enter.
+
+It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six
+chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.
+
+"I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the
+cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here."
+
+He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment,
+and exclaimed:
+
+"Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder
+tone: "Bluette! Bluette!"
+
+Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you
+wake up in God's name?"
+
+He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer
+tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get
+the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me."
+
+He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.
+
+What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start,
+for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly,
+almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.
+
+Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this
+woman--this Bluette--not been awakened by the loud knocking of her
+husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been
+merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the
+trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to
+do the rest!"
+
+Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I
+heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated
+towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must
+make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with
+both hands, I prepared for a desperate struggle.
+
+The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a
+head, a man's head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the
+folding-doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly
+that I had not time to make a single movement by way of defense, the
+individual, the supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare
+feet with his shoes in his hands, a good looking chap, I must
+admit--half a gentleman, in fact, made a dash for the outer door, and
+rushed down the stairs.
+
+I resumed my seat. The adventure was assuming a humorous aspect. And I
+waited for the husband, who took a long time fetching the wine. At
+last I heard him coming up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps
+made me laugh, with one of those solitary laughs which it is hard to
+restrain.
+
+He entered with two bottles in his hands. Then he asked me:
+
+"Is my wife still asleep? You didn't hear her stirring--did you?"
+
+I knew instinctively that there was an ear pasted against the other
+side of the partition-door, and I said: "No, not at all."
+
+And now he again called out:
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+She made no reply, and did not even move.
+
+He came back to me, and explained:
+
+"You see, she doesn't like me to come home at night, and take a drop
+with a friend."
+
+"So then you believe she was not asleep?"
+
+He wore an air of dissatisfaction.
+
+"Well, at any rate," he said, "let us have a drink together."
+
+And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one
+after the other without more ado.
+
+This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I
+rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a
+sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of
+a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his
+wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:
+
+"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."
+
+I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage
+without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the
+instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had
+talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going
+to beat her.
+
+He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
+
+"Pauline!"
+
+A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from
+behind the partition:
+
+"Eh! what?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me coming in?"
+
+"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."
+
+"Open the door!"
+
+"Yes, when you're alone. I don't like you to be bringing home fellows
+at night to drink with you."
+
+Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man,
+of whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my
+journey toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that
+wretched abode a scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every
+day, under every form, and among every class.
+
+
+
+
+THE AVENGER
+
+
+When M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had
+been in love with her for nearly ten years.
+
+M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very
+fond of him, but found him rather a muff. He often used to say: "That
+poor Souris will never set the Seine on fire."
+
+When Souris married Mdlle. Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was surprised and
+somewhat vexed, for he had a slight weakness for her. She was the
+daughter of a neighbor of his, a retired haberdasher with a good bit
+of money. She was pretty, well-mannered, and intelligent. She accepted
+Souris on account of his money.
+
+Then Leuillet cherished hopes of another sort. He began paying
+attentions to his friend's wife. He was a handsome man, not at all
+stupid, and also well off. He was confident that he would succeed; he
+failed. Then he fell really in love with her, and he was the sort of
+lover who is rendered timid, prudent, and embarrassed by intimacy with
+the husband. Mme. Souris fancied that he no longer meant anything
+serious by his attentions to her, and she became simply his friend.
+This state of affairs lasted nine years.
+
+Now, one morning, Leuillet received a startling communication from the
+poor woman. Souris had died suddenly of aneurism of the heart.
+
+He got a terrible shock, for they were of the same age; but the very
+next moment, a sensation of profound joy, of infinite relief of
+deliverance, penetrated his body and soul. Mme. Souris was free.
+
+He had the tact, however, to make such a display of grief as the
+occasion required; he waited for the proper time to elapse, and
+attended to all the conventional usages. At the end of fifteen months
+he married the widow.
+
+His conduct was regarded as not only natural but generous. He had
+acted like a good friend and an honest man. In short he was happy,
+quite happy.
+
+They lived on terms of the closest confidence, having from the first
+understood and appreciated each other. One kept nothing secret from
+the other, and they told each other their inmost thoughts. Leuillet
+now loved his wife with a calm trustful affection; he loved her as a
+tender, devoted partner, who is an equal and a confidante. But there
+still lingered in his soul a singular and unaccountable grudge against
+the deceased Souris, who had been the first to possess this woman, who
+had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and who had even
+robbed her of her poetic attributes. The memory of the dead husband
+spoiled the happiness of the living husband; and this posthumous
+jealousy now began to torment Leuillet's heart day and night.
+
+The result was that he was incessantly talking about Souris, asking a
+thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for
+information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he
+pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb,
+recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his
+absurdities, and pointing out his defects.
+
+Every minute he kept calling out to his wife from one end to the other
+of the house:
+
+"Hallo, Mathilde!"
+
+"Here am I, dear."
+
+"Come and let us have a chat."
+
+She always came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be
+the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's
+harmless fad.
+
+"I say! do you remember how Souris wanted, one day, to prove to me
+that small men are always better loved than big men?"
+
+And he launched out into reflections unfavorable to the defunct
+husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he
+happened to be tall.
+
+And Mme. Leuillet let him think that he was quite right; and she
+laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a
+playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, who always ended
+by remarking:
+
+"Never mind! Souris was a muff!"
+
+They were happy, quite happy. And Leuillet never ceased to testify his
+unabated attachment to his wife by all the usual manifestations.
+
+Now, one night when they happened to be both kept awake by the renewal
+of youthful ardor, Leuillet, who held his wife clasped tightly in his
+arms, and had his lips glued to hers, said:
+
+"Tell me this, darling."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Souris--'tisn't easy to put the question--was he very--very amorous?"
+
+She gave him a warm kiss, as she murmured:
+
+"Not so much as you, my duck."
+
+His male vanity was flattered, and he went on:
+
+"He must have been--rather a flat--eh?"
+
+She did not answer. There was merely a sly little laugh on her face,
+which she pressed close to her husband's neck.
+
+He persisted in his questions:
+
+"Come now! Don't deny that he was a flat--well, I mean, rather an
+awkward sort of fellow?"
+
+She nodded slightly.
+
+"Well, yes, rather awkward."
+
+He went on:
+
+"I'm sure he used to weary you many a night--isn't that so?"
+
+This time, she had an access of frankness, and she replied:
+
+"Oh! yes."
+
+He embraced her once more when she made this acknowledgment, and
+murmured:
+
+"What an ass he was! You were not happy with him?"
+
+She answered:
+
+"No. He was not always jolly."
+
+Leuillet felt quite delighted, making a comparison in his own mind
+between his wife's former situation and her present one.
+
+He remained silent for some time: then, with a fresh outburst of
+merit, he said:
+
+"Tell me this!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Will you be quite candid--quite candid with me?"
+
+"Certainly, dear."
+
+"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to--to deceive this
+imbecile, Souris?"
+
+Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shamefaced way, and again
+cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that
+she was laughing.
+
+He persisted:
+
+"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this
+blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling,
+you might tell it to me--only to me!"
+
+He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to
+show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have
+been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this
+avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he
+could have had her then.
+
+But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection
+of something infinitely comic.
+
+Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might
+have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of
+fun, to be sure!
+
+He exclaimed in a voice broken by convulsions of laughter.
+
+"Oh! poor Souris! poor Souris! Ah! yes, he had that sort of head--oh,
+certainly he had!"
+
+And Mme. Leuillet now twisted herself under the sheets, laughing till
+the tears almost came into her eyes.
+
+And Leuillet repeated: "Come, confess it! confess it! Be candid. You
+must know that it cannot be unpleasant to me to hear such a thing."
+
+Then she stammered, still choking with laughter.
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+Her husband pressed her for an answer.
+
+"Yes, what? Look here! tell me everything."
+
+She was now laughing in a more subdued fashion, and, raising her mouth
+up to Leuillet's ear, which was held towards her in anticipation of
+some pleasant piece of confidence, she whispered--"Yes, I did deceive
+him!"
+
+He felt a cold shiver down his back, and utterly dumbfounded, he
+gasped.
+
+"You--you--did--really--deceive him?"
+
+She was still under the impression that he thought the thing
+infinitely pleasant, and replied.
+
+"Yes--really--really."
+
+He was obliged to sit up in bed so great was the shock he received,
+holding his breath, just as overwhelmed as if he had just been told
+that he was a cuckold himself. At first, he was unable to articulate
+properly; then after the lapse of a minute or so, he merely
+ejaculated.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+She, too, had stopped laughing now, realizing her mistake too late.
+
+Leuillet, at length asked.
+
+"And with whom?"
+
+She kept silent, cudgeling her brain to find some excuse.
+
+He repeated his question.
+
+"With whom?"
+
+At last, she said.
+
+"With a young man."
+
+He turned towards her abruptly, and in a dry tone, said.
+
+"Well, I suppose it wasn't with some kitchen wench. I ask you who was
+the young man--do you understand?"
+
+She did not answer. He tore away the sheet which she had drawn over
+her head, and pushed her into the middle of the bed, repeating.
+
+"I want to know with what young man--do you understand?"
+
+Then, she replied with some difficulty in uttering the words.
+
+"I only wanted to laugh." But he fairly shook with rage: "What? How is
+that? You only wanted to laugh? So then you were making game of me?
+I'm not going to be satisfied with these evasions, let me tell you! I
+ask you what was the young man's name?"
+
+She did not reply, but lay motionless on her back.
+
+He caught hold of her arm and pressed it tightly.
+
+"Do you hear me, I say? I want you to give me an answer when I speak
+to you."
+
+Then, she said, in nervous tones.
+
+"I think you must be going mad! Let me alone!"
+
+He trembled with fury, so exasperated that he scarcely knew what he
+was saying, and, shaking her with all his strength, he repeated.
+
+"Do you hear me? do you hear me?"
+
+She wrenched herself out of his grasp with a sudden movement, and with
+the tips of her fingers slapped her husband on the nose. He entirely
+lost his temper, feeling that he had been struck, and angrily pounced
+down on her.
+
+He now held her under him, boxing her ears in a most violent manner,
+and exclaiming:
+
+"Take that--and that--and that--there you are, you trollop!"
+
+Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got
+up, and went over to the chest of drawers to get himself a glass of
+sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his
+exertion.
+
+And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling
+that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own
+fault.
+
+Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:
+
+"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie--listen! I'll explain it
+to you."
+
+And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and
+subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her
+crumpled nightcap.
+
+And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having
+whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a
+husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived
+his predecessor, Souris.
+
+
+
+
+ALL OVER
+
+
+The Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a
+parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of
+his dressing-room, and smiled.
+
+He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray.
+Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty
+moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather
+than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable
+something which establishes between two men more difference than
+millions.
+
+He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"
+
+And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence
+awaited him.
+
+On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the
+gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside
+three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the
+finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the
+choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each
+morning before tearing open the envelopes.
+
+It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague
+anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did
+they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them
+with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that
+wrote them, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to
+what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he
+was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him
+a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced
+those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?
+
+This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple
+nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he regarded it
+with disquietude, with a sort of internal shiver.
+
+He thought: "From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and
+yet I can't identify it."
+
+He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between
+two fingers, striving to read through the envelope without making up
+his mind to open it.
+
+Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying
+glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He
+suddenly felt unnerved. "Who is it from? This hand is familiar to me,
+very familiar. I must have often read its prosings, yes, very often.
+But this must have been a long, long time ago. Who the deuce can it be
+from? Pooh! 'tis only from somebody asking for money."
+
+And he tore open the letter. Then he read.
+
+     "My dear Friend,--You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for
+     it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was
+     young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris
+     in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old
+     husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you
+     remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am
+     returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
+     daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never
+     seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but
+     you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an
+     event.
+
+     "You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been
+     told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you
+     used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her,
+     with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful
+     friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you,
+     without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you
+     must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
+
+     "Lise de Vance."
+
+Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair,
+with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by
+poignant feelings that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
+
+If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise,
+Lise de Vance, whom he called "Cinder-Flower" on account of the
+strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a
+fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife
+of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the
+provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through
+jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
+
+Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly
+loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to
+pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.
+
+A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off
+and sweet and melancholy now. One evening, she called on him on her
+way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de
+Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was
+springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed
+the warm air--the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of
+her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the
+moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to
+weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
+
+She replied:
+
+"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me.
+Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I
+have to cry."
+
+He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion
+charming--the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation
+overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
+
+"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
+
+What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and
+all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this
+old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown
+her afterwards to anyone!
+
+Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three
+months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is
+a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his
+heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this
+was so.
+
+He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this
+evening!"
+
+And instinctively he turned round towards the glass in order to
+inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown
+old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the
+thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of
+astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her
+regret those bygone days so far, far distant!
+
+He turned his attention to the other letters. They were not of
+importance.
+
+The whole day, he kept thinking of this phantom. What was she like
+now? How funny it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years!
+Would he alone recognize her?
+
+He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat,
+which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to
+give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved
+his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see
+her.
+
+The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room freshly
+furnished, was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from
+the days of his good-fortune, hanging on the wall in an antique silk
+frame.
+
+He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly,
+and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended
+both hands towards him.
+
+He seized them, kissed them one after the other with long, long
+kisses, then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
+
+Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and
+who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
+
+He could not abstain from murmuring:
+
+"It is you, Lise?"
+
+She replied:
+
+"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, isn't
+that so? I have had so much sorrow--so much sorrow. Sorrow has
+consumed my life. Look at me now--or rather don't look at me! But how
+handsome you have kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the
+street, I would have cried, 'Jaquelet!' Now sit down and let us, first
+of all, have a chat. And then I'll show you my daughter, my grown-up
+daughter. You'll see how she resembles me--or rather how I resemble
+her--no, it is not quite that: she is just like the 'me' of former
+days--you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared
+that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now
+it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."
+
+He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to
+say; he did not know this woman--it seemed to him that he had never
+seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could
+he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and
+her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of
+this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the
+nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart,
+some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the
+dainty Cinder-Flower. What then had become of her, the former one, the
+one he had loved? that woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray
+eyes, the young one who used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?
+
+They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled,
+profoundly ill at ease.
+
+As they only talked in commonplace phrases, broken and slow, she rose
+up, and pressed the button of the bell.
+
+"I am going to call Renee," she said.
+
+There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; next, a young
+voice exclaimed:
+
+"Here I am, mamma!"
+
+Lormerin remained scared, as if at the sight of an apparition.
+
+He stammered:
+
+"Good-day, Mademoiselle."
+
+Then, turning towards the mother:
+
+"Oh! it is you!..."
+
+In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise
+who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won
+twenty-five years before. This one was even younger still, fresher,
+more childlike.
+
+He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart
+again, murmuring in her ear:
+
+"Good-day, Lison!"
+
+A man-servant announced:
+
+"Dinner is ready, Madame."
+
+And they proceeded towards the dining-room.
+
+What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could
+he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange
+dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a
+fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
+
+"Which is the real one?"
+
+The mother smiled, repeating over and over again:
+
+"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eye of the young girl that
+he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his
+mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?--" forgetting this
+white-haired lady who was regarding him with looks of tenderness.
+
+And yet there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost
+his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the
+woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in
+her glance, in her entire being, something which he did not find
+again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love,
+to seize again what had escaped from her to him, what this
+resuscitated one did not possess.
+
+The Baronne said:
+
+"You have lost your old sprightliness, my poor friend."
+
+He murmured:
+
+"There are many other things that I have lost!"
+
+But in his heart touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing
+to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
+
+The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some
+familiar phrase of her mother which she had borrowed, a certain style
+of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which
+people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot.
+All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his
+passion bleed anew.
+
+He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image
+of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart,
+inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a
+young one, the one of former days returned, and he loved her as he had
+loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an
+interval of twenty-five years.
+
+He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to
+think on what he should do.
+
+But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the
+glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and
+admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly,
+gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden
+days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and
+handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light
+nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange
+thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those
+frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
+
+And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his
+lamentable image, murmuring:
+
+"All over, Lormerin!"
+
+
+
+
+LETTER FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
+
+
+You ask me, madame, whether I am laughing at you? You cannot believe
+that a man has never been smitten with love. Well, no, I have never
+loved, never!
+
+What is the cause of this? I really cannot tell. Never have I been
+under the influence of that sort of intoxication of the heart which we
+call love! Never have I lived in that dream, in that exaltation, in
+that state of madness into which the image of a woman casts us. I have
+never been pursued, haunted, roused to fever-heat, lifted up to
+Paradise by the thought of meeting, or by the possession of, a being
+who had suddenly become for me more desirable than any good fortune,
+more beautiful than any other creature, more important than the whole
+world! I have never wept, I have never suffered, on account of any of
+you. I have not passed my nights thinking of one woman without closing
+my eyes. I have no experience of waking up with the thought and the
+memory of her shedding their illumination on me. I have never known
+the wild desperation of hope when she was about to come, or the divine
+sadness of regret when she parted with me, leaving behind her in the
+room a delicate odor of violet powder and flesh.
+
+I have never been in love.
+
+I, too, have often asked myself why is this. And truly I can scarcely
+tell. Nevertheless, I have found some reasons for it; but they are of
+a metaphysical character, and perhaps you will not be able to
+appreciate them.
+
+I suppose I sit too much in judgment on women to submit much to their
+fascination. I ask you to forgive me for this remark. I am going to
+explain what I mean. In every creature there is a moral being and a
+physical being. In order to love, it would be necessary for me to find
+a harmony between these two beings which I have never found. One has
+always too great a predominance over the other, sometimes the moral,
+sometimes the physical.
+
+The intellect which we have a right to require in a woman, in order to
+love her, is not the same as virile intellect. It is more and it is
+less. A woman must have a mind open, delicate, sensitive, refined,
+impressionable. She has no need of either power or initiative in
+thought, but she must have kindness, elegance, tenderness, coquetry,
+and that faculty of assimilation which, in a little while, raises her
+to an equality with him who shared her life. Her greatest quality must
+be tact, that subtle sense which is to the mind what touch is to the
+body. It reveals to her a thousand little things, contours, angles,
+and forms in the intellectual order.
+
+Very frequently pretty women have not intellect to correspond with
+their personal charms. Now the slightest lack of harmony strikes me
+and pains me at the first glance. In friendship, this is not of
+importance. Friendship is a compact in which one fairly divides
+defects and merits. We may judge of friends, whether man or woman,
+take into account the good they possess, neglect the evil that is in
+them, and appreciate their value exactly, while giving ourselves up to
+an intimate sympathy of a deep and fascinating character.
+
+In order to love, one must be blind, surrender oneself absolutely, see
+nothing, reason on nothing, understand nothing. One must adorn the
+weakness as well as the beauty of the beloved object, renounce all
+judgment, all reflection, all perspicacity.
+
+I am incapable of such blindness, and rebel against a seductiveness
+not founded on reason. This is not all. I have such a high and subtle
+idea of harmony, that nothing can ever realize my ideal. But you will
+call me a madman. Listen to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an
+exquisite soul and a charming body, without that body and that soul
+being in perfect accord with one another. I mean that persons who have
+noses made in a certain shape are not to be expected to think in a
+certain fashion. The fat have no right to make use of the same words
+and phrases as the thin. You, who have blue eyes, madame, cannot look
+at life, and judge of things and events as if you had black eyes. The
+shades of your eyes should correspond, by a sort of fatality, with the
+shades of your thought. In perceiving these things I have the scent of
+a bloodhound. Laugh if you like, but it is so.
+
+And yet I imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I had
+foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I
+allowed myself to be beguiled by the mirage of an aurora. Would you
+like me to relate for you this short history?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I met, one evening, a pretty enthusiastic woman who wanted, for the
+purpose of humoring a poetic fancy, to spend a night with me in a boat
+on a river. I would have preferred a room and a bed; however, I
+consented to take instead the river and the boat.
+
+It was in the month of June. My fair companion chose a moonlight night
+in order to excite her imagination all the better.
+
+We had dined at a riverside inn, and then we set out in the boat about
+ten o'clock. I thought it a rather foolish kind of adventure; but as
+my companion pleased me I did not bother myself too much about this. I
+sat down on the seat facing her; I seized the oars, and off we
+started.
+
+I could not deny that the scene was picturesque. We glided past a
+wooded isle full of nightingales, and the current carried us rapidly
+over the river covered with silvery ripples. The toads uttered their
+shrill, monotonous cry; the frogs croaked in the grass by the river's
+bank, and the lapping of the water as it flowed on made around us a
+kind of confused murmur almost imperceptible, disquieting, and gave us
+a vague sensation of mysterious fear.
+
+The sweet charm of warm nights and of streams glittering in the
+moonlight penetrated us. It seemed bliss to live and to float thus,
+and to dream and to feel by one's side a young woman sympathetic and
+beautiful.
+
+I was somewhat affected, somewhat agitated, somewhat intoxicated by
+the pale brightness of the night and the consciousness of my proximity
+to a lovely woman.
+
+"Come and sit beside me," she said.
+
+I obeyed.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Recite some verses for me."
+
+This appeared to be rather too much. I declined; she persisted. She
+certainly wanted to have the utmost pleasure, the whole orchestra of
+sentiment, from the moon to the rhymes of poets. In the end, I had to
+yield, and, as if in mockery, I recited for her a charming little poem
+by Louis Bouilbet, of which the following are a few strophes:
+
+    "I hate the poet who with tearful eye
+      Murmurs some name while gazing tow'rds a star,
+    Who sees no magic in the earth or sky,
+      Unless Lizette or Ninon be not far.
+
+    "The bard who in all Nature nothing sees
+      Divine, unless a petticoat he ties
+    Amorously to the branches of the trees
+      Or nightcap to the grass, is scarcely wise.
+
+    "He has not heard the eternal's thunder tone,
+      The voice of Nature in her various moods,
+    Who cannot tread the dim ravines alone,
+      And of no woman dream 'mid whispering woods."
+
+I expected some reproaches. Nothing of the sort. She murmured:
+
+"How true it is!"
+
+I remained stupefied. Had she understood?
+
+Our boat was gradually drawing nearer to the bank, and got entangled
+under a willow which impeded its progress. I drew my arm around my
+companion's waist, and very gently moved my lips towards her neck. But
+she repulsed me with an abrupt, angry movement:
+
+"Have done, pray! You are rude!"
+
+I tried to draw her towards me. She resisted, caught hold of the tree,
+and was near flinging us both into the water. I deemed it the prudent
+course to cease my importunities.
+
+She said:
+
+"I would rather have you capsized. I feel so happy. I want to
+dream--that is so nice." Then, in a slightly malicious tone, she
+added:
+
+"Have you, then, already forgotten the verses you recited for me just
+now?"
+
+She was right. I became silent.
+
+She went on:
+
+"Come! row!"
+
+And I plied the oars once more.
+
+I began to find the night long and to see the absurdity of my conduct.
+
+My companion said to me:
+
+"Will you make me a promise?"
+
+"Yes. What is it?"
+
+"To remain quiet, well-behaved, and discreet, if I permit you--"
+
+"What? Say what you mean!"
+
+"Here is what I mean! I want to lie down on my back at the bottom of
+the boat with you by my side. But I forbid you to touch me, to embrace
+me--in short to--to caress me."
+
+I promised. She warned me:
+
+"If you move, I'll capsize the boat."
+
+And then we lay down side by side, our eyes turned towards the sky,
+while the boat glided slowly through the water. We were rocked by the
+gentle movements of the shallop. The light sounds of the night came to
+us more distinctly in the bottom of the boat, sometimes causing us to
+start. And I felt springing up within me a strange, poignant emotion,
+an infinite tenderness, something like an irresistible impulse to open
+my arms in order to embrace, to open my heart in order to love, to
+give myself, to give my thoughts, my body, my life, my entire being to
+someone.
+
+My companion murmured, like one in a dream:
+
+"Where are we? Where are we going? It seems to me that I am quitting
+the earth. How sweet it is! Ah! if you loved me--a little!!!"
+
+My heart began to throb. I had no answer to give. It seemed to me that
+I loved her. I had no longer any violent desire. I felt happy there by
+her side, and that was enough for me.
+
+And thus we remained for a long, long time without stirring. We caught
+each other's hands; some delightful force rendered us motionless, an
+unknown force stronger than ourselves, an alliance, chaste, intimate,
+absolute of our persons lying there side by side which belonged to
+each other without touching. What was this? How do I know. Love,
+perhaps?
+
+Little by little, the dawn appeared. It was three o'clock in the
+morning. Slowly, a great brightness spread over the sky. The boat
+knocked against something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny
+islet.
+
+But I remained ravished, in a state of ecstasy. In front of us
+stretched the shining firmament, red, rosy, violet, spotted with fiery
+clouds resembling golden vapors. The river was glowing with purple,
+and three houses on one side of it seemed to be burning.
+
+I bent towards my companion. I was going to say: "Oh! look!" But I
+held my tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer see anything except
+her. She, too, was rosy, with the rosy flesh tints with which must
+have mingled a little the hue of the sky. Her tresses were rosy; her
+eyes were rosy; her teeth were rosy; here dress, her laces, her
+smile, all were rosy. And in truth I believed, so overpowering was the
+illusion, that the aurora was there before me.
+
+She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to me; and I moved
+towards her, trembling, delirious, feeling indeed that I was going to
+kiss Heaven, to kiss happiness, to kiss a dream which had become a
+woman, to kiss the ideal which had descended into human flesh.
+
+She said to me: "You have a caterpillar in your hair." And suddenly I
+felt myself becoming as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.
+
+That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that
+since that day it would be impossible for me to love. And yet--who can
+tell?
+
+[The young man upon whom this letter was found was yesterday taken out
+of the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging bargeman, who had
+searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the deceased,
+brought this paper to the author.]
+
+
+
+
+MOTHER AND SON!!!
+
+
+We were chatting in the smoking-room after a dinner at which only men
+were present. We talked about unexpected legacies, strange
+inheritances. Then M. le Brument, who was sometimes called "the
+illustrious master" and at other times the "illustrious advocate,"
+came and stood with his back to the fire.
+
+"I have," he said, "just now to search for an heir who disappeared
+under peculiarly terrible circumstances. It is one of those simple and
+ferocious dramas of ordinary life, a thing which possibly happens
+every day, and which is nevertheless one of the most dreadful things I
+know. Here are the facts:
+
+"Nearly six months ago I got a message to come to the side of a dying
+woman. She said to me:
+
+"'Monsieur, I want to entrust to you the most delicate, the most
+difficult, and the most wearisome mission that can be conceived. Be
+good enough to take cognizance of my will, which is there on the
+table. A sum of five thousand francs is left to you as a fee if you do
+not succeed, and of a hundred thousand francs if you do succeed. I
+want to have my son found after my death.'
+
+"She asked me to assist her to sit up in the bed, in order that she
+might be able to speak with greater ease, for her voice, broken and
+gasping, was gurgling in her throat.
+
+"I saw that I was in the house of a very rich person. The luxurious
+apartment, with a certain simplicity in its luxury, was upholstered
+with materials solid as the walls, and their soft surface imparted a
+caressing sensation, so that every word uttered seemed to penetrate
+their silent depths and to disappear and die there.
+
+"The dying woman went on:
+
+"'You are the first to hear my horrible story. I will try to have
+strength enough to go on to the end of it. You must know everything so
+that you, whom I know to be a kind-hearted man as well as a man of the
+world, should have a sincere desire to aid me with all your power.
+
+"'Listen to me.
+
+"'Before my marriage, I loved a young man, whose suit was rejected by
+my family because he was not rich enough. Not long afterwards, I
+married a man of great wealth. I married him through ignorance,
+through obedience, through indifference, as young girls do marry.
+
+"'I had a child, a boy. My husband died in the course of a few years.
+
+"'He whom I had loved had got married, in his turn. When he saw that I
+was a widow, he was crushed by horrible grief at knowing he was not
+free. He came to see me; he wept and sobbed so bitterly before my eyes
+that it was enough to break my heart. He at first came to see me as a
+friend. Perhaps I ought not to have seen him. What would you have? I
+was alone, so sad, so solitary, so hopeless! And I loved him still.
+What sufferings we women have sometimes to endure!
+
+"'I had only him in the world, my parents also being dead. He came
+frequently; he spent whole evenings with me. I should not have let him
+come so often, seeing that he was married. But I had not enough of
+will-power to prevent him from coming.
+
+"'How am I to tell you what next happened?... He became my lover. How
+did this come about? Can I explain it? Can anyone explain such things?
+Do you think it could be otherwise when two human beings are drawn
+towards each other by the irresistible force of a passion by which
+each of them is possessed? Do you believe, monsieur, that it is always
+in our power to resist, that we can keep up the struggle for ever, and
+refuse to yield to the prayers, the supplications, the tears, the
+frenzied words, the appeals on bended knees, the transports of
+passion, with which we are pursued by the man we adore, whom we want
+to gratify even in his slightest wishes, whom we desire to crown with
+every possible happiness, and whom, if we are to be guided by a
+worldly code of honor, we must drive to despair. What strength would
+it not require? What a renunciation of happiness? what self-denial?
+and even what virtuous selfishness?
+
+"'In short, monsieur, I was his mistress; and I was happy. I
+became--and this was my greatest weakness and my greatest piece of
+cowardice--I became his wife's friend.
+
+"'We brought up my son together; we made a man of him, a thorough man,
+intelligent, full of sense and resolution, of large and generous
+ideas. The boy reached the age of seventeen.
+
+"'He, the young man, was fond of my--my lover, almost as fond of him
+as I was myself, for he had been equally cherished and cared for by
+both of us. He used to call him his "dear friend," and respected him
+immensely, having never received from him anything but wise counsels,
+and a good example of rectitude, honor, and probity. He looked upon
+him as an old, loyal and devoted comrade of his mother, as a sort of
+moral father, tutor, protector--how am I to describe it?
+
+"'Perhaps the reason why he never asked any questions was that he had
+been accustomed from his earliest years to see this man in the house,
+by his side, and by my side, always concerned about us both.
+
+"'One evening the three of us were to dine together (these were my
+principal festive occasions), and I waited for the two of them, asking
+myself which of them would be the first to arrive. The door opened; it
+was my old friend. I went towards him, with outstretched arms; and he
+drew his lips towards mine in a long, delicious kiss.
+
+"'All of a sudden, a sound, a rustling which was barely audible, that
+mysterious sensation which indicates the presence of another person,
+made us start and turn round with a quick movement. Jean, my son,
+stood there, livid, staring at us.
+
+"'There was a moment of atrocious confusion. I drew back, holding out
+my hand towards my son as if in supplication; but I could see him no
+longer. He had gone.
+
+"'We remained facing each other--my lover and I--crushed, unable to
+utter a word. I sank down on an armchair, and I felt a desire, a
+vague, powerful desire to fly, to go out into the night, and to
+disappear for ever. Then, convulsive sobs rose up in my throat, and I
+wept, shaken with spasms, with my heart torn asunder, all my nerves
+writhing with the horrible sensation of an irremediable misfortune,
+and with that dreadful sense of shame which, in such moments as this,
+falls on a mother's heart.
+
+"'He looked at me in a scared fashion, not venturing to approach me or
+to speak to me or to touch me, for fear of the boy's return. At last
+he said:
+
+"'"I am going to follow him--to talk to him--to explain matters to
+him. In short, I must see him and let him know--"
+
+"'And he hurried away.
+
+"'I waited--I waited in a distracted frame of mind, trembling at the
+least sound, convulsed with terror, and filled with some unutterably
+strange and intolerable emotion by every slight crackling of the fire
+in the grate.
+
+"'I waited for an hour, for two hours, feeling my heart swell with a
+dread I had never before experienced, such an anguish that I would not
+wish the greatest of criminals to have ten minutes of such misery.
+Where was my son? What was he doing?
+
+"'About midnight, a messenger brought me a note from my lover. I still
+know its contents by heart:
+
+"'"Has your son returned? I did not find him. I am down here. I do not
+want to go up at this hour."
+
+"'I wrote in pencil on the same slip of paper:
+
+"'"Jean has not returned. You must go and find him."
+
+"'And I remained all night in the armchair, waiting for him.
+
+"'I felt as if I were going mad. I longed to have to run wildly about,
+to roll myself on the ground. And yet I did not even stir, but kept
+waiting hour after hour. What was going to happen? I tried to imagine,
+to guess. But I could form no conception, in spite of my efforts, in
+spite of the tortures of my soul!
+
+"'And now my apprehension was lest they might meet. What would they do
+in that case? What would my son do? My mind was lacerated by fearful
+doubts, by terrible suppositions.
+
+"'You understand what I mean, do you not, monsieur?
+
+"'My chambermaid, who knew nothing, who understood nothing, was coming
+in every moment, believing, naturally, that I had lost my reason. I
+sent her away with a word or a movement of the hand. She went for the
+doctor, who found me in the throes of a nervous fit.
+
+"'I was put to bed. I got an attack of brain-fever.
+
+"'When I regained consciousness, after a long illness, I saw beside my
+bed my--lover--alone.
+
+"'I exclaimed:
+
+"'"My son? Where is my son?"
+
+"'He replied:
+
+"'"No, no, I assure you every effort has been made by me to find him,
+but I have failed!"
+
+"'Then, becoming suddenly exasperated and even indignant--for women
+are subject to such outbursts of unaccountable and unreasoning
+anger--I said:
+
+"'"I forbid you to come near me or to see me again unless you find
+him. Go away!"
+
+"'He did go away.
+
+"'I have never seen one or the other of them since, monsieur, and thus
+I have lived for the last twenty years.
+
+"'Can you imagine what all this meant to me? Can you understand this
+monstrous punishment, this slow perpetual laceration of a mother's
+heart, this abominable, endless waiting? Endless, did I say? No: it is
+about to end, for I am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing
+either of them--either one or the other!
+
+"'He--the man I loved--has written to me every day for the last twenty
+years; and I--I have never consented to see him, even for one second;
+for I had a strange feeling that, if he came back here, it would be at
+that very moment my son would again make his appearance! Ah! my son!
+my son! Is he dead? Is he living? Where is he hiding? Over there,
+perhaps, at the other side of the ocean, in some country so far away
+that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he ever think of me?
+Ah! if he only knew! How cruel children are! Did he understand to what
+frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of despair, into
+what tortures, he cast me while I was still in the prime of life,
+leaving me to suffer like this even to this moment, when I am going to
+die--me, his mother, who loved him with all the violence of a mother's
+love! Oh! isn't it cruel, cruel?
+
+"'You will tell him all this, monsieur--will you not? You will repeat
+for him my last words:
+
+"'My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh towards poor women!
+Life is already brutal and savage enough in its dealings with them. My
+dear son, think of what the existence of your poor mother has been
+ever since the day when you left her. My dear child, forgive her, and
+love her, now that she is dead, for she has had to endure the most
+frightful penance ever inflicted on a woman.'
+
+"She gasped for breath, shuddering, as if she had addressed the last
+words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.
+
+"Then she added:
+
+"'You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw--the
+other.'
+
+"Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice she said:
+
+"'Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are
+not with me.'"
+
+Maitre Le Brument added:
+
+"And I left the house, messieurs, crying like a fool, so vehemently,
+indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me.
+
+"And to think that, every day, heaps of dramas like this are being
+enacted all around us!
+
+"I have not found the son--that son--well, say what you like about
+him, but I call him that criminal son!"
+
+
+
+
+THE SPASM
+
+
+The hotel-guests slowly entered the dining-room, and sat down in their
+places. The waiters began to attend on them in a leisurely fashion so
+as to enable those who were late to arrive, and so as to avoid
+bringing back the dishes; and the old bathers, the _habitues_, those
+whose season was advancing, gazed with interest towards the door,
+whenever it opened, with a desire to see new faces appearing.
+
+This is the principal distraction of health-resorts. People look
+forward to the dinner-hour in order to inspect each day's new
+arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think.
+A vague longing springs up in the mind, a longing for agreeable
+meetings, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures. In
+this life of elbowings, not only those with whom we have come into
+daily contact, but strangers, assume an extreme importance. Curiosity
+is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is
+the order of the day.
+
+We cherish antipathies for a week and friendships for a month; we see
+other people with different eyes when we view them through the medium
+of the acquaintanceship that is brought about at health-resorts. We
+discover in men suddenly, after an hour's chat, in the evening after
+dinner, under the trees in the park where the generous spring bubbles
+up, a high intelligence and astonishing merits, and a month
+afterwards, we have completely forgotten these new friends, so
+fascinating when we first met them.
+
+There also are formed lasting and serious ties more quickly than
+anywhere else. People see each other every day; they become acquainted
+very quickly; and with the affection thus originated is mingled
+something of the sweetness and self-abandonment of long-standing
+intimacies. We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories of
+those first hours of friendship, the memory of those first
+conversations through which we have been able to unveil a soul, of
+those first glances which interrogate and respond to the questions and
+secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of
+that first cordial confidence, the memory of that delightful sensation
+of opening our hearts to those who are willing to open theirs to us.
+
+And the melancholy of health-resorts, the monotony of days that are
+all alike, help from hour to hour in this rapid development of
+affection.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, this evening, as on every other evening, we awaited the
+appearance of strange faces.
+
+Only two appeared, but very remarkable-looking, a man and a
+woman--father and daughter. They immediately produced the same effect
+on my mind as some of Edgar Poe's characters; and yet there was about
+them a charm, the charm associated with misfortune. I looked upon them
+as the victims of fatality. The man was very tall and thin, rather
+stooping, with hair perfectly white, too white for his comparatively
+youthful physiognomy; and there was in his bearing, and in his person
+that austerity peculiar to Protestants. The daughter, who was
+probably twenty-four or twenty-five, was small in stature, and was
+also very thin, very pale, and she had the air of one who was worn out
+with utter lassitude. We meet people like this from time to time who
+seem too weak for the tasks and the needs of daily life, too weak to
+move about, to walk, to do all that we do every day. This young girl
+was very pretty, with the diaphanous beauty of a phantom; and she ate
+with extreme slowness, as if she were almost incapable of moving her
+arms.
+
+It must have been she assuredly who had come to take the waters.
+
+They found themselves facing me at the opposite side of the table; and
+I at once noticed that the father had a very singular nervous spasm.
+
+Every time he wanted to reach an object, his hand made a hook-like
+movement, a sort of irregular zigzig, before it succeeded in touching
+what it was in search of; and, after a little while, this action was
+so wearisome to me that I turned aside my head in order not to see it.
+
+I noticed, too, that the young girl, during meals, wore a glove on her
+left hand.
+
+After dinner, I went for a stroll in the park of the thermal
+establishment. This led towards the little Auvergnese station of
+Chatel Guyot, hidden in a gorge at the foot of the high mountain, of
+that mountain from which flow so many boiling springs, arising from
+the deep bed of extinct volcanoes. Over there, above us, the domes,
+which had once been craters, raised their mutilated heads on the
+summit of the long chain. For Chatel Guyot is situated at the spot
+where the region of domes begins.
+
+Beyond it, stretches out the region of peaks, and further on again the
+region of precipices.
+
+The "Puy de Dome" is the highest of the domes, the Peak of Sancy is
+the loftiest of the peaks, and Cantal is the most precipitous of these
+mountain-heights.
+
+This evening it was very warm. I walked up and down a shady path, on
+the side of the mountain overlooking the park, listening to the
+opening strains of the Casino band.
+
+And I saw the father and the daughter advancing slowly in my
+direction. I saluted them, as we are accustomed to salute our
+hotel-companions at health resorts; and the man, coming to a sudden
+halt, said to me,
+
+"Could you not, monsieur, point out to us a short walk, nice and easy,
+if that is possible? and excuse my intrusion on you."
+
+I offered to show them the way towards the valley through which the
+little river flowed, a deep valley forming a gorge between two tall
+craggy, wooded slopes.
+
+They gladly accepted my offer.
+
+And we talked naturally about the virtues of the waters.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "My daughter has a strange malady, the seat of which is
+unknown. She suffers from incomprehensible nervous disorders. At one
+time, the doctors think she has an attack of heart disease, at another
+time, they imagine it is some affection of the liver, and at another
+time they declare it to be a disease of the spine. To-day, her
+condition is attributed to the stomach, which is the great caldron and
+regulator of the body, that Protean source of diseases with a thousand
+forms and a thousand susceptibilities to attack. This is why we have
+come here. For my part, I am rather inclined to think it is the
+nerves. In any case it is very sad."
+
+Immediately the remembrance of the violent spasmodic movement of his
+hand came back to my mind, and I asked him.
+
+"But is this not the result of heredity? Are not your own nerves
+somewhat affected?"
+
+He replied calmly:
+
+"Mine? Oh! no--my nerves have always been very steady."
+
+Then suddenly, after a pause, he went on:
+
+"Ah! You were alluding to the spasm in my hand every time I want to
+reach for anything? This arises from a terrible experience which I
+had. Just imagine! this daughter of mine was actually buried alive?"
+
+I could only give utterance to the word "Ah!" so great were my
+astonishment and emotion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He continued:
+
+"Here is the story. It is simple. Juliette had been subject for some
+time to serious attacks of the heart. We believed that she had disease
+of that organ, and we were prepared for the worst.
+
+"One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had
+fallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life
+was extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid
+her with my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the
+cemetery, where she was deposited in the family vault. It is situated
+in the very heart of Lorraine.
+
+"I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces,
+rings, all presents which she had got from me, and with her first
+ball-dress on.
+
+"You may easily imagine the state of mind in which I was when I
+returned home. She was the only one I had, for my wife has been dead
+for many years. I found my way to my own apartment in a half
+distracted condition, utterly exhausted, and I sank into my
+easy-chair, without the capacity to think or the strength to move. I
+was nothing better now than a suffering, vibrating machine, a human
+being who had, as it were, been flayed alive; my soul was like a
+living wound.
+
+"My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in her
+coffin, and preparing her for her last sleep, entered the room
+noiselessly, and asked:
+
+"'Does monsieur want anything?'
+
+"I merely shook my head, by way of answering 'No.'
+
+"He urged, 'Monsieur is wrong. He will bring some illness on himself.
+Would monsieur like me to put him to bed?'
+
+"I answered, 'No! let me alone!'
+
+"And he left the room.
+
+"I know not how many hours slipped away. Oh! what a night, what a
+night! It was cold. My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the
+wind, the winter wind, an icy wind, a hurricane accompanied by frost
+and snow, kept blowing against the window with a sinister and regular
+noise.
+
+"How many hours slipped away? There I was without sleeping, powerless,
+crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body limp,
+inanimate, and my mind torpid with despair. Suddenly, the great bell
+of the entrance gate, the great bell of the vestibule, rang out.
+
+"I got such a shock that my chair cracked under me. The solemn,
+ponderous sound vibrated through the empty chateau as if through a
+vault. I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock. It was
+just two in the morning. Who could be coming at such an hour!
+
+"And abruptly the bell again rang twice. The servants, without doubt,
+were afraid to get up. I took a wax-candle and descended the stairs. I
+was on the point of asking, 'Who is there?'
+
+"Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly opened the huge
+door. My heart was throbbing wildly; I was frightened; I hurriedly
+drew back the door, and in the darkness I distinguished a white
+figure, standing erect, something that resembled an apparition.
+
+"I recoiled, petrified with horror, faltering:
+
+"'Who--who--who are you?'
+
+"A voice replied:
+
+"'It is I, father.'
+
+"It was my daughter.
+
+"I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backwards before this
+advancing specter. I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand, as
+if to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have
+noticed--that gesture of which since then I have never got rid.
+
+"'Do not be afraid, papa; I was not dead. Somebody tried to steal my
+rings, and cut one of my fingers, the blood began to flow, and this
+reanimated me.'
+
+"And, in fact, I could see that her hand was covered with blood.
+
+"I fell on my knees, choking with sobs and with a rattling in my
+throat.
+
+"Then, when I had somewhat collected my thoughts, though I was still
+so much dismayed that I scarcely realized the gruesome good-fortune
+that had fallen to my lot, I made her go up to my room, and sit down
+in my easy-chair; then I ran excitedly for Prosper to get him to light
+up the fire again and to get her some wine and summon the rest of the
+servants to her assistance.
+
+"The man entered, stared at my daughter, opened his mouth with a gasp
+of alarm and stupefaction, and then fell back insensible.
+
+"It was he who had opened the vault, and who had mutilated, and then
+abandoned, my daughter, for he could not efface the traces of the
+theft. He had not even taken the trouble to put back the coffin into
+its place, feeling sure, besides, that he would not be suspected by
+me, as I completely trusted him.
+
+"You see, Monsieur, that we are very unhappy people."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stopped.
+
+The night had fallen, casting its shadows over the desolate, mournful
+vale, and a sort of mysterious fear possessed me at finding myself by
+the side of those strange beings, of this young girl who had come back
+from the tomb and this father with his uncanny spasm.
+
+I found it impossible to make any comment on this dreadful story. I
+only murmured:
+
+"What a horrible thing!"
+
+Then, after a minute's silence, I added:
+
+"Suppose we go back. I think it is getting cold."
+
+And we made our way back to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+A DUEL
+
+
+The war was over. The Germans occupied France. The country was panting
+like a wrestler lying under the knee of his successful opponent.
+
+The first trains from Paris, after the city's long agony of famine and
+despair, were making their way to the new frontiers, slowly passing
+through the country districts and the villages. The passengers gazed
+through the windows at the ravaged fields and burnt hamlets. Prussian
+soldiers, in their black helmets with brass spikes, were smoking their
+pipes on horseback or sitting on chairs in front of the houses which
+were still left standing. Others were working or talking just as if
+they were members of the families. As you passed through the different
+towns you saw entire regiments drilling in the squares, and, in spite
+of the rumble of the carriage-wheels, you could every moment hear the
+hoarse words of command.
+
+M. Dubuis, who during the entire siege, had served as one of the
+National Guard in Paris, was going to join his wife and daughter, whom
+he had prudently sent away to Switzerland before the invasion.
+
+Famine and hardship had not diminished his big paunch so
+characteristic of the rich, peace-loving merchant. He had gone through
+the terrible events of the past year with sorrowful resignation and
+bitter complaints at the savagery of men. Now that he was journeying
+to the frontier at the close of the war, he saw the Prussians for the
+first time, although he had done his duty at the ramparts, and
+staunchly mounted guard on cold nights.
+
+He stared with mingled fear and anger at those bearded, armed men,
+installed all over French soil as if in their own homes, and he felt
+in his soul a kind of fever of impotent patriotism even while he
+yielded to that other instinct of discretion and self-preservation
+which never leaves us. In the same compartment, two Englishmen, who
+had come to the country as sight-seers, were gazing around with looks
+of stolid curiosity. They were both also stout, and kept chattering in
+their own language, sometimes referring to their guide-book, and
+reading in loud tones the names of the places indicated.
+
+Suddenly, the train stopped at a little village station, and a
+Prussian officer jumped up with a great clatter of his saber on the
+double footboard of the railway-carriage. He was tall, wore a
+tight-fitting uniform, and his face had a very shaggy aspect. His red
+hair seemed to be on fire, and his long moustache, of a paler color,
+was stuck out on both sides of his face, which it seemed to cut in
+two.
+
+The Englishmen at once began staring at him with smiles of
+newly-awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a
+newspaper. He sat crouched in a corner, like a thief in the presence
+of a gendarme.
+
+The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting, and looking
+out for the exact scene of different battles, and, all of a sudden, as
+one of them stretched out his arm towards the horizon to indicate a
+village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long
+legs and lolling backwards:
+
+"We killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village, and took more than a
+hundred prisoners."
+
+The Englishman, quite interested, immediately asked:
+
+"Ha! and what is the name of this village?"
+
+The Prussian replied:
+
+"Pharsbourg."
+
+He added: "We caught these French blackguards by the ears."
+
+And he glanced towards M. Dubuis, laughing into his moustache in an
+insulting fashion.
+
+The train rolled on, always passing through hamlets occupied by the
+victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the
+edges of fields, standing in front of gates, or chatting outside
+_cafes_. They covered the soil like African locusts.
+
+The officer said, with a wave of his hand:
+
+"If I were in command, I'd take Paris, burn everything, kill
+everybody. No more France!"
+
+The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:
+
+"Ah! yes."
+
+He went on:
+
+"In twenty years, all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is
+more than a match for all of them."
+
+The Englishmen, getting uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their
+faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their
+long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still,
+lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France,
+insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been
+recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of
+the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless
+artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to build a city of
+iron with the captured cannon. And suddenly he pushed his boots
+against the thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned his eyes round, reddening
+to the roots of his hair.
+
+The Englishmen seemed to have assumed an air of complete indifference,
+as if they had found themselves all at once shut up in their own
+island, far from the din of the world.
+
+The officer took out his pipe, and looking fixedly at the Frenchman,
+said:
+
+"You haven't any tobacco--have you?"
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+The German said:
+
+"You might go and buy some for me when the train stops next."
+
+And he began laughing afresh, as he added:
+
+"I'll let you have the price of a drink."
+
+The train whistled, and slackened its pace. They had reached the
+station which had been burnt down; and here there was a regular stop.
+
+The German opened the carriage-door, and, catching M. Dubuis by the
+arm, said:
+
+"Go and do what I told you--quick, quick!"
+
+A Prussian detachment occupied the station. Other soldiers were
+looking on from behind wooden gratings. The engine was already getting
+up steam in order to start off again. Then M. Dubuis hurriedly jumped
+on the platform, and, in spite of the warnings of the station master,
+dashed into the adjoining compartment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was alone! He tore open his waistcoat, so rapidly did his heart
+beat, and, panting for breath, he wiped the perspiration off his
+forehead.
+
+The train drew up at another station. And suddenly the officer
+appeared at the carriage-door, and jumped in, followed close behind by
+the two Englishmen, who were impelled by curiosity. The German sat
+facing the Frenchman, and, laughing still, said:
+
+"You did not want to do what I asked you?"
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+The train had just left the station.
+
+The officer said:
+
+"I'll cut off your moustache to fill my pipe with."
+
+And he put out his hand towards the Frenchman's face.
+
+The Englishmen kept staring in the same impassive fashion with fixed
+glances.
+
+Already the German had caught hold of the moustache and was tugging at
+it, when M. Dubuis, with a back stroke of his hand, threw back the
+officer's arm, and, seizing him by the collar, flung him down on the
+seat. Then, excited to a pitch of fury, with his temples swollen and
+his eyes glaring, he kept throttling the officer with one hand, while
+with the other clenched, he began to strike him violent blows in the
+face. The Prussian struggled, tried to draw his saber, and to get a
+grip, while lying back, of his adversary. But M. Dubuis crushed him
+with the enormous weight of his stomach, and kept hitting him without
+taking breath or knowing where his blows fell. Blood flowed down the
+face of the German, who, choking and with a rattling in his throat,
+spat forth his broken teeth, and vainly strove to shake off this
+infuriated man who was killing him.
+
+The Englishmen had got on their feet and came closer in order to see
+better. They remained standing, full of mirth and curiosity, ready to
+bet for or against each of the combatants.
+
+And suddenly M. Dubuis, exhausted by his violent efforts, went and
+resumed his seat without uttering a word.
+
+The Prussian did not attack him, for the savage assault had scared and
+terrified the officer. When he was able to breathe freely, he said:
+
+"Unless you give me satisfaction with pistols, I will kill you."
+
+M. Dubuis replied:
+
+"Whenever you like. I'm quite ready."
+
+The German said:
+
+"Here is the town of Strasbourg. I'll get two officers to be my
+seconds, and there will be time before the train leaves the station."
+
+M. Dubuis, who was puffing as much as the engine, said to the
+Englishmen:
+
+"Will you be my seconds?" They both answered together:
+
+"Ah! yes."
+
+And the train stopped.
+
+In a minute, the Prussian had found two comrades who carried pistols,
+and they made their way towards the ramparts.
+
+The Englishmen were continually looking at their watches, shuffling
+their feet, and hurrying on with the preparations, uneasy lest they
+should be too late for the train.
+
+M. Dubuis had never fired a pistol in his life.
+
+They made him stand twenty paces away from his enemy. He was asked:
+
+"Are you ready?"
+
+While he was answering: "Yes, monsieur," he noticed that one of the
+Englishmen had opened his umbrella in order to keep off the rays of
+the sun.
+
+A voice gave the word of command:
+
+"Fire!"
+
+M. Dubuis fired at random without minding what he was doing, and he
+was amazed to see the Prussian staggering in front of him, lifting up
+his arms, and immediately afterwards, falling straight on his face. He
+had killed the officer.
+
+One of the Englishmen ejaculated: "Ah!" quivering with delight,
+satisfied curiosity, and joyous impatience. The other, who still kept
+the watch in his hand, seized M. Dubuis's arm, and hurried him in
+double-quick time towards the station, his fellow-countryman counting
+their steps, with his arms pressed close to his sides--"One! two! one!
+two!"
+
+And all three marching abreast they rapidly made their way to the
+station like three grotesque figures in a comic newspaper.
+
+The train was on the point of starting. They sprang into their
+carriage. Then, the Englishmen, taking off their traveling-caps, waved
+them three times over their heads, exclaiming:
+
+"Hip! hip! hip! hurrah!"
+
+Then gravely, one after the other, they stretched out the right hand
+to M. Dubuis, and they went back and sat in their own corner.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOVE OF LONG AGO
+
+
+The old-fashioned chateau was built on a wooded height. Tall trees
+surrounded it with dark greenery; and the vast park extended its
+vistas here over a deep forest and there over an open plain. Some
+little distance from the front of the mansion stood a huge stone basin
+in which marble nymphs were bathing. Other basins arranged in order
+succeeded each other down as far as the foot of the slope, and a
+hidden fountain sent cascades dancing from one to the other.
+
+From the manor-house which preserved the grace of a superannuated
+coquette down to the grottos encrusted with shell-work, where
+slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique
+demesne had retained the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed
+to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long ago, of
+faded gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our
+grandmothers.
+
+In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with
+shepherds paying court to shepherdesses, beautiful ladies in
+hoop-petticoats, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman who
+seemed dead as soon as she ceased to move was almost lying down in a
+large easy-chair, while her thin, mummy-like hands hung down, one at
+each side of her.
+
+Her eyes were gazing languidly towards the distant horizon as if they
+sought to follow through the park visions of her youth. Through the
+open window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the
+scent of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks
+flutter around her wrinkled forehead and old memories, through her
+brain.
+
+Beside her on a tapestried stool, a young girl with long, fair hair
+hanging in plaits over her neck, was embroidering an altar-cloth.
+There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see
+that, while her agile fingers worked, her brain was busy with
+thoughts.
+
+But the old lady suddenly turned round her head.
+
+"Berthe," she said, "read something out of the newspapers for me, so
+that I may still know sometimes what is happening in the world."
+
+The young girl took up a newspaper, and cast a rapid glance over it.
+
+"There is a great deal about politics, grandmamma; am I to pass it
+by?"
+
+"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no accounts of love affairs? Is
+gallantry, then, dead in France, that they no longer talk about
+abductions or adventures as they did formerly?"
+
+The girl made a long search through the columns of the newspaper.
+
+"Here is one," she said. "It is entitled: 'A Love-Drama!'"
+
+The old woman smiled through her wrinkles. "Read that for me," she
+said.
+
+And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol-throwing. A wife, in
+order to avenge herself on her husband's mistress, had burned her face
+and eyes. She had left the Assize Court acquitted, declared to be
+innocent, amid the applause of the crowd.
+
+The grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:
+
+"This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible! See whether you can
+find anything else to read for me, darling."
+
+Berthe again made a search; and further down in the reports of
+criminal cases at which her attention was still directed. She read:
+
+"'Gloomy Drama.--A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to
+yield to the embraces of a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her
+lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The
+unhappy man is maimed for life. The Jury, consisting of men of moral
+character, took the part of the murderess--regarding her as the victim
+of illicit love, and honorably acquitted her.'"
+
+This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a
+trembling voice, she said.
+
+"Why, you are mad, then, nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
+you love, the only allurement in life. Man has added to this
+gallantry, the only distraction of our dull hours, and here are you
+mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud
+into a flagon of Spanish wine."
+
+Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.
+
+"But grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
+and her husband deceived her."
+
+The grandmother gave a start.
+
+"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
+to-day?"
+
+Berthe replied:
+
+"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."
+
+The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
+gallantry, gave a sudden leap.
+
+"It is love that is sacred," she said, "Listen, child, to an old woman
+who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long
+experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common.
+We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to
+constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society
+is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld
+those links, we always seek for metals of the same kind. When we
+marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine
+fortunes, unite similar races, and aim at the common interest, which
+is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the
+world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one
+lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is
+law, and love is an instinct, which impels us sometimes along a
+straight and sometimes along a crooked path. The world has made laws
+to combat our instincts--it was necessary to make them; but our
+instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too
+much, because they come from God, while the laws only come from men.
+If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible,
+darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to
+take it just as it is."
+
+Berthe opened her eyes widely in astonishment. She murmured:
+
+"Oh! grandmamma, we can only love once."
+
+The grandmother raised her trembling hands towards Heaven, as if
+again to invoke the defunct God of gallantries. She exclaimed
+indignantly:
+
+"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the
+Revolution, it is impossible any longer to recognize society. You have
+attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every
+corner of existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion.
+People have written verses telling you that people have died of love.
+In my time verses were written to teach men to love every woman. And
+we! when we liked a gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when
+a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in getting rid
+of the last lover--unless we kept both of them."
+
+The old woman smiled with a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery
+twinkled in her gray eye, the sprightly, skeptical roguery of those
+people who did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the
+others, and who lived as masters for whom common beliefs were not
+made.
+
+The young girl, turning very pale, faltered out:
+
+"So then women have no honor?"
+
+The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of
+Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of Jean-Jaques's glowing
+philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even
+boasted of it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies
+in France, were to live without a lover, she would have the entire
+court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only
+to enter a convent. And you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will
+love you alone all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be the case.
+I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that Society
+should exist, but it is not in the nature of our race, do you
+understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
+And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as
+something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a
+dress."
+
+The young girl caught the old woman's trembling hands in her own.
+
+"Hold your tongue, I beg of you, grandmamma!"
+
+And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to
+bestow on her a great passion, one eternal passion alone, in
+accordance with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother,
+kissing her on the forehead, quite penetrated still by that charming,
+healthy logic by which the philosophers of gallantry sprinkled salt
+with the life of the eighteenth century, murmured:
+
+"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such follies as this,
+you will be very unhappy."
+
+
+
+
+AN UNCOMFORTABLE BED
+
+
+One autumn I went to stay for the hunting-season with some friends in
+a chateau in Picardy.
+
+My friends were fond of practical joking, as all my friends are. I do
+not care to know any other sort of people.
+
+When I arrived, they gave me a princely reception, which at once
+aroused distrust in my breast. We had some capital shooting. They
+embraced me, they cajoled me, as if they expected to have great fun at
+my expense.
+
+I said to myself:
+
+"Look out, old ferret! They have something in preparation for you."
+
+During the dinner, the mirth was excessive, far too great, in fact. I
+thought: "Here are people who take a double share of amusement, and
+apparently without reason. They must be looking out in their own minds
+for some good bit of fun. Assuredly I am to be the victim of the joke.
+Attention!"
+
+During the entire evening, everyone laughed in an exaggerated fashion.
+I smelled a practical joke in the air, as a dog smells game. But what
+was it? I was watchful, restless. I did not let a word or a meaning or
+a gesture escape me. Everyone seemed to me an object of suspicion, and
+I even looked distrustfully at the faces of the servants.
+
+The hour rang for going to bed, and the whole household came to escort
+me to my room. Why? They called to me: "Good night." I entered the
+apartment, shut the door, and remained standing, without moving a
+single step, holding the wax candle in my hand.
+
+I heard laughter and whispering in the corridor. Without doubt they
+were spying on me. I cast a glance around the walls, the furniture,
+the ceiling, the hangings, the floor. I saw nothing to justify
+suspicion. I heard persons moving about outside my door. I had no
+doubt they were looking through the key-hole.
+
+An idea came into my head: "My candle may suddenly go out, and leave
+me in darkness."
+
+Then I went across to the mantelpiece, and lighted all the wax candles
+that were on it. After that, I cast another glance around me without
+discovering anything. I advanced with short steps, carefully examining
+the apartment. Nothing. I inspected every article one after the other.
+Still nothing. I went over to the window. The shutters, large wooden
+shutters, were open. I shut them with great care, and then drew the
+curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and I placed a chair in front of
+them, so as to have nothing to fear from without.
+
+Then I cautiously sat down. The armchair was solid. I did not venture
+to get into the bed. However, time was flying; and I ended by coming
+to the conclusion that I was ridiculous. If they were spying on me, as
+I supposed, they must, while waiting for the success of the joke they
+had been preparing for me, have been laughing enormously at my terror.
+So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed was particularly
+suspicious-looking. I pulled at the curtains. They seemed to be
+secure. All the same, there was danger. I was going perhaps to
+receive a cold shower-bath from overhead, or perhaps, the moment I
+stretched myself out, to find myself sinking under the floor with my
+mattress. I searched in my memory for all the practical jokes of which
+I ever had experience. And I did not want to be caught. Ah! certainly
+not! certainly not! Then I suddenly bethought myself of a precaution
+which I consider one of extreme efficacy: I caught hold of the side of
+the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it towards me. It came
+away, followed by the sheet and the rest of the bed-clothes. I dragged
+all these objects into the very middle of the room, facing the
+entrance-door. I made my bed over again as best I could at some
+distance from the suspected bedstead and the corner which had filled
+me with such anxiety. Then, I extinguished all the candles, and,
+groping my way, I slipped under the bed-clothes.
+
+For at least another hour I remained awake, starting at the slightest
+sound. Everything seemed quiet in the chateau. I fell asleep.
+
+I must have been in a deep sleep for a long time, but all of a sudden,
+I was awakened with a start by the fall of a heavy body tumbling right
+on top of my own body, and, at the same time, I received on my face,
+on my neck, and on my chest, a burning liquid which made me utter a
+howl of pain. And a dreadful noise, as if a sideboard laden with
+plates and dishes had fallen down, penetrated my ears.
+
+I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and
+preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what
+was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers.
+Then with all my strength I launched out a blow over this face. But I
+immediately received a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight
+out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my night shirt into the
+corridor, the door of which I found open.
+
+O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
+into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed,
+the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had
+tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on
+his stomach, spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast over my face.
+
+The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep
+in the middle of the room had only brought about the interlude I had
+been striving to avoid.
+
+Ah! how they all laughed that day!
+
+
+
+
+A WARNING NOTE
+
+
+I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be
+profitable to many readers, I make it my business to communicate it to
+them:
+
+"Paris, November 15th, 1886.
+
+"Monsieur,--You often treat either in the shape of short stories or
+chronicles, of subjects which have relation to what I may describe as
+'current morals.' I am going to submit to you some reflections which
+ought, it seems to me, to furnish you with the materials for one of
+your tales.
+
+"I am not married; I am a bachelor, and, as it seems to me, a rather
+simple man. But I fancy that many men, the greater part of men, are
+simple in the way that I am. As I am always, or nearly always, a plain
+dealer, I am not well able to see through the natural cunning of my
+neighbors, and I go straight ahead, with my eyes open, without
+sufficiently looking out for what is behind things and behind people's
+external behavior.
+
+"We are nearly all accustomed, as a rule, to take appearances for
+realities, and to look on people as what they pretend to be; and very
+few possess that scent which enables certain men to divine the real
+and hidden nature of others. From this peculiar and conventional
+method of regarding life come the result that we pass, like moles,
+through the midst of events; and that we never believe in what is, but
+in what seems to be, that we declare a thing to be improbable as soon
+as we are shown the fact behind the veil, and that everything which
+displeases our idealistic morality is classed by us an exception,
+without taking into account that these exceptions all brought together
+constitute nearly the total number of cases. There further results
+from it that credulous good people like me are deceived by everybody
+and especially by women, who have a talent in this direction.
+
+"I have started far afield in order to come to the particular fact
+which interests me. I have a mistress, a married woman. Like many
+others, I imagined (do you understand?) that I had chanced on an
+exception, on an unhappy little woman who was deceiving her husband
+for the first time. I had paid attentions to her, or rather I had
+looked on myself as having paid attention to her for a long time, as
+having overcome her virtue by dint of kindness and love, and as having
+triumphed by the sheer force of perseverance. In fact, I had made use
+of a thousand precautions, a thousand devices, and a thousand subtle
+dallyings in order to succeed in getting the better of her.
+
+"Now here is what happened last week: Her husband being absent for
+some days, she suggested that we should both dine together, and that I
+should attend on myself so as to avoid the presence of a man-servant.
+She had a fixed idea which had haunted her for the last four or five
+months: She wanted to get tipsy, but to get tipsy altogether without
+being afraid of consequences, without having to go back home, speak to
+her chambermaid, and walk before witnesses. She had often obtained
+what she called 'a gay agitation' without going farther, and she had
+found it delightful. So then she promised herself that she would get
+tipsy once, only once, but thoroughly so. She pretended at her own
+house that she was going to spend twenty-four hours with some friends
+near Paris, and she reached my abode just about dinner-hour.
+
+"A woman naturally ought not to get fuddled except when she has had
+too much champagne. She drinks a big glass of it fasting, and before
+the oysters arrive, she begins to ramble in her talk.
+
+"We had a cold dinner prepared on a table behind me. It was enough for
+me to stretch out my arms to take the dishes or the plates, and I
+attended on myself as best I could while I listened to her chattering.
+
+"She kept swallowing glass after glass, haunted by her fixed idea. She
+began by making me the recipient of meaningless and interminable
+confidences with regard to her sensations as a young girl. She went on
+and on, her eyes rather wandering, brilliant, her tongue untied, and
+her light ideas rolling themselves out endlessly like the blue
+telegraph-paper which is moved on without stopping by the bobbin and
+which keeps extending its length to the click of the electric
+apparatus which covers it with unknown words.
+
+"From time to time she asked me:
+
+"'Am I tipsy?'
+
+"'No, not yet.'
+
+"And she went on drinking.
+
+"She was so in a little while, not so tipsy as to lose her senses, but
+tipsy enough to tell the truth, as it seemed to me.
+
+"To her confidences as to her emotions while a young girl succeeded
+more intimate confidences as to her relations with her husband. She
+made them to me without restraint till she wearied me with them, under
+this pretext, which she repeated a hundred times: 'I can surely tell
+everything to you. To whom could I tell everything if it were not to
+you?' So I was made acquainted with all the habits, all the defects,
+all the fads and the most secret fancies of her husband.
+
+"And by way of claiming my approval she asked: 'Isn't he a flat? Do
+you think he has taken a feather out of me? eh? So, the first time I
+saw you, I said to myself: "Let me see! I like him, and I'll take him
+for my lover." It was then you began mashing me.'
+
+"I must have presented an odd face to her eyes at that moment, for she
+could see it, tipsy though she was; and with great outbursts of
+laughter, she exclaimed: 'Ah! you big simpleton, you did go about it
+cautiously; but, when men pay attention to us, you dear blockhead, you
+see we like it, and then they must make quick work of it, and not keep
+us waiting. A man must be a ninny not to understand, by a mere glance
+at us, that we mean "Yes." Ah! I believe I was waiting for you, you
+stupid! I did not know what to do in order to make you see that I was
+in a hurry. Oh! yes, flowers, verses, compliments, more verses, and
+nothing else at all! I was very near letting you go, my fine fellow,
+you were so long in making up your mind. And only to think that half
+the men in the world are like you, while the other half, ha! ha! ha!'
+
+"This laugh of hers sent a cold shiver down my back. I stammered: 'The
+other half--what about the other half?'
+
+"She still went on drinking, her eyes steeped in the fumes of
+sparkling wine, her mind impelled by the imperious necessity for
+telling the truth which sometimes takes possession of drunkards.
+
+"She replied: 'Ah! the other half makes quick work of it--too quick;
+but, all the same, they are right. There are days when we don't hit it
+off with them; but there are days, too, when it all goes right, in
+spite of everything.... My dear, if you only knew how funny it is--the
+way the two kinds of men act! You see, the timid ones, such as you,
+you never could imagine what sort the others are and what they do,
+immediately, as soon as they find themselves alone with us. They are
+regular dare-devils! They get many a slap in the face from us, no
+doubt of that, but what does that matter? They know we're the sort
+that kiss and don't tell! They know us well, they do!'
+
+"I stared at her with the eyes of an Inquisitor, and with a mad desire
+to make her speak, to learn everything from her. How often had I put
+this question to myself: 'How do the other men behave towards the
+women who belong to us?' I was fully conscious of the fact that, from
+the way I saw two men talking to the same woman publicly in a
+drawing-room, these two men, if they found themselves, one after the
+other, all alone with her, would conduct themselves quite differently,
+although they were both equally well acquainted with her. We can guess
+at the first glance of the eye that certain beings, naturally endowed
+with the power of seduction, or only more lively, more daring than we
+are, reach after an hour's chat with a woman who pleases them, to a
+degree of intimacy to which we would not attain in a year. Well, do
+these men, these seducers, these bold adventurers, take, when the
+occasion presents itself to them, liberties with their hands and lips
+which to us, the timid ones, would appear odious outrages, but which
+women perhaps look on merely as pardonable effrontery, as indecent
+homages to their irresistible grace!
+
+"So I asked her: 'There are women, though, who think these men very
+improper?'
+
+"She threw herself back on her chair in order to laugh more at her
+ease, but with a nerveless, unhealthy laugh, one of those laughs which
+ends in nervous fits, then, a little more calmly, she replied: 'Ha!
+ha! my dear, improper? that is to say, that they dare everything, at
+once, all, you understand, and many other things, too.'
+
+"I felt myself horrified as if she had just revealed to me a monstrous
+thing.
+
+"'And you permit this, you women?'
+
+"'No, we don't permit it; we slap them in the face, but, for all that,
+they amuse us! And then with them one is always afraid, one is never
+easy. You must keep watching them the whole time; it is like fighting
+a duel. You have to keep staring into their eyes to see what they are
+thinking of or where they are putting their hands. They are
+blackguards, if you like, but they love us better than you do.'
+
+"A singular and unexpected sensation stole over me. Although a
+bachelor, and determined to remain a bachelor, I suddenly felt in my
+breast the spirit of a husband in the face of this impudent
+confidence. I felt myself the friend, the ally, the brother of all
+these confiding men who are, if not robbed, at least defrauded by all
+the rufflers of woman's waists.
+
+"It is this strange emotion, monsieur, that I am obeying at this
+moment, in writing to you, and in begging of you to address a warning
+note to the great army of easy-going husbands.
+
+"However, I had still some lingering doubts. This woman was drunk and
+must be lying.
+
+"I went on to inquire: 'How is it that you never relate these
+adventures to anyone, you women?'
+
+"She gazed at me with profound pity, and with such an air of sincerity
+that, for the moment, I thought she had been soberized by
+astonishment.
+
+"'We--But, my dear fellow, you are very foolish. Why do we never talk
+to you about these things? Ha! ha! ha! Does your valet tell you about
+his tips, his odd sous? Well, this is our little tip. The husband
+ought not to complain when we don't go farther. But how dull you are!
+To talk of these things would be to give the alarm to all ninnies! Ah!
+how dull you are!... And then what harm does it do as long as we don't
+yield?'
+
+"I felt myself in a great state of great confusion as I put this
+question to her:
+
+"'So then you have often been embraced by men?'
+
+"She answered, with an air of sovereign contempt for the man who could
+have any doubt on the subject:
+
+"'Faith!--Why, every woman has been often embraced.... Try it on with
+any of them, no matter whom, in order to see for yourself, you great
+goose! Look here! embrace Mme. de X! She is quite young, and quite
+virtuous. Embrace, my friend--embrace, and touch, you shall see. Ha!
+ha! ha!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"All of a sudden she flung her glass straight at the chandelier. The
+champagne fell down in a shower, extinguished three wax-candles,
+stained the hangings, and deluged the table, while the broken glass
+was scattered about the dining-room. Then, she made an effort to seize
+the bottle to do the same with it, but I prevented her. After that,
+she burst out crying in a very loud tone--the nervous fit had come on,
+as I had anticipated....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Some days later, I had almost forgotten this avowal of a tipsy woman
+when I chanced to find myself at an evening party with this Mme. de
+X---- whom my mistress had advised me to embrace. As I lived in the
+same direction as she did, I offered to drive her to her own door, for
+she was alone this evening. She accepted my offer.
+
+"As soon as we were in the carriage, I said to myself: 'Come! I must
+try it on!' But I had not the courage. I did not know how to make a
+start, how to begin the attack.
+
+"Then suddenly, the desperate courage of cowards came to my aid. I
+said to her: 'How pretty you were, this evening.'
+
+"She replied with a laugh: 'So then, this evening was an exception,
+since you only remarked it for the first time.'
+
+"I did not know what rejoinder to make. Certainly my gallantry was not
+making progress. After a little reflection, however, I managed to say:
+
+"'No, but I never dared to tell you.'
+
+"She was astonished:
+
+"'Why?'
+
+"'Because it is--it is a little difficult.'
+
+"'Difficult to tell a woman that she's pretty? Why, where did you
+come from? You should always tell us so, even when you only half think
+it ... because it always gives us pleasure to hear."...
+
+"I felt myself suddenly animated by a fantastic audacity, and,
+catching her round the waist, I raised my lips towards her mouth.
+
+"Nevertheless I seemed to be rather nervous about it, and not to
+appear so terrible to her. I must also have arranged and executed my
+movement very badly, for she managed to turn her head aside so as to
+avoid contact with my face, saying:
+
+"'Oh no--this is rather too much--too much.... You are too quick! Take
+care of my hair. You cannot embrace a woman who has her hair dressed
+like mine!'...
+
+"I resumed my former position in the carriage, disconcerted, unnerved
+by this repulse. But the carriage drew up before her gate; and she, as
+she stepped out of it, held out her hand to me, saying in her most
+gracious tones:
+
+"'Thanks, dear monsieur, for having seen me home ... and don't forget
+my advice!'
+
+"I saw her three days later. She had forgotten everything.
+
+"And I, monsieur, I am incessantly thinking of the other sort of
+men--the sort of men to whom a lady's hair is no obstacle, and who
+know how to seize every opportunity."...
+
+
+
+
+THE HORRIBLE
+
+
+The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained
+in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated or astride on
+garden-chairs, were smoking in front of the door, forming a circle
+round a table laden with cups and wineglasses.
+
+Their cigars shone like eyes in the darkness which, minute by minute,
+was growing thicker. They had been talking about a frightful accident
+which had occurred the night before--two men and three women drowned
+before the eyes of the guests in the river opposite.
+
+General de G---- remarked:
+
+"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.
+
+"The horrible, that well-known word, means much more than the
+terrible. A frightful accident like this moves, upsets, scares; it
+does not horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something
+more is needed than the excitation of the soul, something more than
+the spectacle of the dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense
+of mystery or a sensation of abnormal terror beyond the limits of
+nature. A man who dies, even in the most dramatic conditions, does not
+excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible, blood is not
+horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.
+
+"Hold on! here are two personal examples, which have shown me what is
+the meaning of horror:
+
+"It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating towards
+Pont-Audemer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting
+of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand men in disorder,
+disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to re-form at Havre.
+
+"The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
+eaten anything since the day before. They were flying rapidly, the
+Prussians not being far off.
+
+"All the Norman country, livid, dotted with the shadows of the trees
+surrounding the farms, extended under a black sky, heavy and sinister.
+
+"Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight save the confused
+sound, soft and undefined, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,
+mingled with the vague clink of pottingers or sabers. The men, bent,
+round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged
+themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed
+stride.
+
+"The skin of their hands stuck to the steel of their muskets'
+butt-ends, for it was freezing dreadfully that night. I frequently saw
+a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefooted, so
+much did his foot-gear bruise him; and with every step he left a
+little track of blood. Then, after some time, he sat down in a field
+for a few minutes' rest, and he never got up again. Every man who sat
+down was a dead man.
+
+"Should we have left behind us those poor exhausted soldiers, who
+fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had
+somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? Now, scarcely had they ceased
+to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their
+veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to
+the ground, closed their eyes, and in one second collapsed this
+overworked human mechanism. And they gradually sank down, their heads
+falling towards their knees, without, however, quite tumbling over,
+for their loins and their limbs lost their capacity for moving, and
+became as hard as wood, impossible to bend or to set upright.
+
+"And the rest of us, more robust, kept still straggling on, chilled to
+the marrow of our bones, advancing by dint of forced movement through
+that night, through that snow, through that cold and deadly country,
+crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the
+abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of death, of
+nothingness.
+
+"I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,
+old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.
+
+"They were looking out for an officer, believing that they had caught
+a spy. The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the
+stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice
+exclaimed: 'He must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling
+from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by
+leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and
+bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.
+
+"I wanted to speak! I was at that time in command of a battalion; but
+they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;
+they would have shot myself.
+
+"One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the last
+three days. He has been asking information from everyone about the
+artillery.'
+
+"I took it on myself to question this person.
+
+"'What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the
+army?'
+
+"He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,
+indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such
+an agitated air in my presence that I had no longer any real doubt
+that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept staring at
+me from under his eyes with humble, stupid, and crafty air.
+
+The men all round us exclaimed:
+
+"'To the wall! to the wall!'
+
+"I said to the gendarmes:
+
+"'Do you answer for the prisoner?'
+
+"I had not ceased speaking when a terrible push threw me on my back,
+and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown
+down, struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a
+tree. He fell in the snow, nearly dead already.
+
+"And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, re-loaded
+their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They
+fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of
+the corpse, and kept firing on at him, as people at a funeral keep
+sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.
+
+"But suddenly a cry arose of: 'The Prussians! the Prussians!'
+
+"And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this
+panic-stricken army in full flight.
+
+"The panic, generated by these shots fired at this vagabond, had
+filled his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that
+they were themselves the originators of the scare, rushed away and
+disappeared in the darkness.
+
+"I remained alone in front of the corpse with the two gendarmes whom
+their duty had compelled to stay with me.
+
+"They lifted up the riddled piece of flesh, bruised and bleeding.
+
+"'He must be examined,' said I to them.
+
+"And I handed them a box of vestas which I had in my pocket. One of
+the soldiers had another box. I was standing between the two.
+
+"The gendarme, who was feeling the body, called out:
+
+"'Clothed in a blue blouse, a trousers, and a pair of shoes.'
+
+"The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man went on, as he
+turned out his pockets:
+
+"'A horn knife, check handkerchief, a snuff-box, a bit of packthread,
+a piece of bread.'
+
+"The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after
+having handled the corpse for a long time, said:
+
+"'That is all.'
+
+"I said:
+
+"'Strip him. We shall perhaps find something near the skin.'
+
+"And, in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this
+task, I stood between them to give them light. I saw them, by the
+rapid and speedily extinguished flash of the match, take off the
+garments one by one, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh
+still warm, though lifeless.
+
+"And suddenly one of them exclaimed:
+
+"'Good God, General, it is a woman!'
+
+"I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain
+that moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the
+snow before this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a
+woman.
+
+"The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my
+opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory
+to adopt.
+
+"Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:
+
+"'Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom
+she had not heard from.'
+
+"And the other chimed in:
+
+"'Perhaps indeed that is so.'
+
+"And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to
+cry. And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, in that icy cold
+night, the midst of that gloomy pain, at the sight of this mystery, at
+the sight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word
+'Horror.'
+
+"Now I had the same sensation last year while interrogating one of the
+survivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter.
+
+"You know the details of this atrocious drama. It is possible,
+however, that you are unacquainted with them.
+
+"The Colonel traveled through the desert into the Soudan, and passed
+through the immense territory of the Touaregs, who are, in that great
+ocean of sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the
+Soudan to Algeria, a kind of pirates resembling those who ravaged the
+seas in former days.
+
+"The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of
+Chambaa, of Ouargla.
+
+"Now, one day, they pitched their camp in the middle of the desert,
+and the Arabs declared that, as the spring was a little farther away,
+they would go with all their camels to look for water.
+
+"Only one man warned the Colonel that he had been betrayed: Flatters
+did not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers,
+the doctors, and nearly all his officers.
+
+"They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels captured.
+
+"The Captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who had
+remained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis and
+sharpshooters, and they commenced the retreat, leaving behind the
+baggage and the provisions for want of camels to carry them.
+
+"Then they started on their journey through this solitude without
+shade and without limits, under the devouring sun which burned them
+from morning till night.
+
+"One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a
+tribute. They were poisoned. Nearly all the French died, and, among
+them, the last officer.
+
+"There now only remained a few spahis with their quartermaster,
+Pobequin, and some native sharpshooters of the Chambaa tribe. They had
+still two camels left. They disappeared one night along with two
+Arabs.
+
+"Then, the survivors understood that they were going to eat each other
+up, and, as soon as they discovered the flight of the two men with the
+two beasts, those who remained separated, and proceeded to march, one
+by one, through the soft sand, under the glare of a scorching sun, at
+a distance of more than a gunshot from each other.
+
+"So they went on all day, and, when they reached a spring, each of
+them came to drink at it in turn as soon as each solitary marcher had
+moved forward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they
+continued marching the whole day, raising, everywhere they passed, in
+that level burnt-up expanse, those little columns of dust which, at a
+distance, indicate those who are trudging through the desert.
+
+"But, one morning, one of the travelers made a sudden turn, and drew
+nearer to his neighbor. And they all stopped to look.
+
+"The man toward whom the famished soldier drew near did not fly, but
+lay flat on the ground, and took aim at the one who was coming on.
+When he believed he was within gunshot, he fired. The other was not
+hit, and he continued then to advance, and cocking his gun in turn,
+killed his comrade.
+
+"Then from the entire horizon, the others rushed to seek their share.
+And he who had killed the fallen man, cutting the corpse into pieces,
+distributed it.
+
+"And they once more placed themselves at fixed distances, these
+irreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which would bring
+them together.
+
+"For two days, they lived on this human flesh which they divided
+amongst each other. Then, the famine came back, and he who had killed
+the first man began killing afresh. And again, like a butcher, he cut
+up the corpse, and offered it to his comrades, keeping only his own
+portion of it.
+
+"And so this retreat of cannibals continued.
+
+"The last Frenchman, Pobequin, was massacred at the side of a well,
+the very night before the supplies arrived.
+
+"Do you understand now what I mean by the Horrible?"
+
+This was the story told us a few nights ago by General de G----.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW YEAR'S GIFT
+
+
+Jacques de Randal, having dined at home alone, told his valet he might
+go, and then he sat down at a table to write his letters.
+
+He thus finished every year by writing and dreaming. He made for
+himself a sort of review of things that had happened since last New
+Year's Day, things that were now all over and dead; and, in proportion
+as the faces of his friends rose up before his eyes, he wrote them a
+few lines, a cordial "Good morning" on the 1st of January.
+
+So he sat down, opened a drawer, took out of it a woman's photograph,
+gazed at it a few moments, and kissed it. Then, having laid it beside
+a sheet of note-paper, he began:
+
+"My dear Irene.--You must have by this time the little souvenir which
+I sent you. I have shut myself up this evening in order to tell you."
+
+The pen here ceased to move. Jacques rose up and began walking up and
+down the room.
+
+For the last six months he had a mistress, not a mistress like the
+others, a woman with whom one engages in a passing intrigue, of the
+theatrical world or the "demi-monde, but a woman whom he loved and
+won. He was no longer a young man, although he was still comparatively
+young for a man, and he looked on life seriously in a positive and
+practical spirit.
+
+Accordingly, he drew up the balance sheet of his passion, as he drew
+up every year the balance sheet of friendships that were ended or
+freshly contracted, of circumstances and persons that had entered into
+his life.
+
+His first ardor of love having grown calmer, he asked himself with the
+precision of a merchant making a calculation, what was the state of
+his heart with regard to her, and he tried to form an idea of what it
+would be in the future.
+
+He found there a great and deep affection, made up of tenderness,
+gratitude, and the thousand subtle ties which give birth to long and
+powerful attachments.
+
+A ring of the bell made him start. He hesitated. Would he open? But he
+said to himself that it was his duty to open on this New Year's night,
+to open to the Unknown who knocks while passing, no matter whom it may
+be.
+
+So he took a wax candle, passed through the antechamber, removed the
+bolts, turned the key, drew the door back, and saw his mistress
+standing pale as a corpse, leaning against the wall.
+
+He stammered.
+
+"What is the matter with you?"
+
+She replied,
+
+"Are you alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Without servants?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are not going out?"
+
+"No."
+
+She entered with the air of a woman who knew the house. As soon as she
+was in the drawing-room, she sank into the sofa, and, covering her
+face with her hands, began to weep dreadfully.
+
+He knelt down at her feet, seized hold of her hands to remove them
+from her eyes, so that he might look at them, and exclaim,
+
+"Irene, Irene, what is the matter with you? I implore of you to tell
+me what is the matter with you?"
+
+Then, in the midst of her sobs she murmured,
+
+"I can no longer live like this."
+
+He did not understand.
+
+"Live like this? What do you mean?"...
+
+"Yes. I can no longer live like this.... I have endured so much.... He
+struck me this afternoon."
+
+"Who, your husband?"
+
+"Yes, my husband."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+He was astonished, having never suspected that her husband could be
+brutal. He was a man of the world, of the better class, a clubman, a
+lover of horses, a theater goer, and an expert swordsman; he was
+known, talked about, appreciated everywhere, having very courteous
+manners, a very mediocre intellect, an absence of education and of the
+real culture needed in order to think like all well-bred people, and
+finally a respect for all conventional prejudices.
+
+He appeared to devote himself to his wife, as a man ought to do in the
+case of wealthy and well-bred people. He displayed enough of anxiety
+about her wishes, her health, her dresses, and, beyond that, left her
+perfectly free.
+
+Randal, having become Irene's friend, had a right to the affectionate
+hand-clasp which every husband endowed with good manners owes to his
+wife's intimate acquaintances. Then, when Jacques, after having been
+for some time the friend, became the lover, his relations with the
+husband were more cordial, as is fitting.
+
+Jacques had never dreamed that there were storms in this household,
+and he was scared at this unexpected revelation.
+
+He asked,
+
+"How did it happen? tell me."
+
+Thereupon she related a long history, the entire history of her life
+since the day of her marriage, the first discussion arising out of a
+mere nothing, then accentuating itself with all the estrangement which
+grows up each day between two opposite types of character.
+
+Then came quarrels, a complete separation, not apparent, but real;
+next, her husband showed himself aggressive, suspicious, violent. Now,
+he was jealous, jealous of Jacques, and this day even, after a scene,
+he had struck her.
+
+She added with decision, "I will not go back to him. Do with me what
+you like."
+
+Jacques sat down opposite to her, their knees touching each other. He
+caught hold of her hands.
+
+"My dear love, you are going to commit a gross, an irreparable folly.
+If you want to quit your husband, put wrongs on one side, so that your
+situation as a woman of the world may be saved."
+
+She asked, as she cast at him a restless glance:
+
+"Then, what do you advise me?"
+
+"To go back home and to put up with your life there till the day when
+you can obtain either a separation or a divorce, with the honors of
+war."
+
+"Is not this thing which you advise me to do a little cowardly?"
+
+"No; it is wise and reasonable. You have a high position, a reputation
+to safeguard, friends to preserve, and relations to deal with. You
+must not lose all these through a mere caprice."
+
+She rose up and said with violence,
+
+"Well, no! I cannot have any more of it! It is at an end! it is at an
+end!"
+
+Then, placing her two hands on her lover's shoulders, and looking at
+him straight in the face, she asked,
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Really and truly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then keep me."
+
+He exclaimed,
+
+"Keep you? In my own house? Here? Why you are mad. It would mean
+losing you for ever; losing you beyond hope of recall! You are mad!"
+
+She replied slowly and seriously, like a woman who feels the weight of
+her words,
+
+"Listen, Jacques. He has forbidden me to see you again, and I will not
+play this comedy of coming secretly to your house. You must either
+lose me or take me."
+
+"My dear Irene, in that case, obtain your divorce, and I will marry
+you."
+
+"Yes, you will marry me in--two years at the soonest. Yours is a
+patient love."
+
+"Look here! Reflect! If you remain here, he'll come to-morrow to take
+you away, and seeing that he is your husband, seeing that he has right
+and law on his side."
+
+"I did not ask you to keep me in your own house, Jacques, but to take
+me anywhere you like. I thought you loved me enough to do that. I have
+made a mistake. Good-bye!"
+
+She turned round and went towards the door so quickly that he was only
+able to catch hold of her when she was outside the room.
+
+"Listen, Irene."
+
+She struggled and did not want to listen to him any longer, her eyes
+full of tears, and with these words only on her lips,
+
+"Let me alone! let me alone! let me alone!"
+
+He made her sit down by force, and falling once more on his knees at
+her feet, he now brought forward a number of arguments and counsels to
+make her understand the folly and terrible risk of her project. He
+omitted nothing which he deemed it necessary to say to convince her,
+finding even in his very affection for her motives of persuasion.
+
+As she remained silent and cold, he begged of her, implored of her to
+listen to him, to trust him, to follow his advice.
+
+When he had finished speaking, she only replied:
+
+"Are you disposed to let me go away now? Take away your hands, so that
+I may rise up."
+
+"Look here, Irene."
+
+"Will you let me go?"
+
+"Irene ... is your resolution irrevocable?"
+
+"Do let me go."
+
+"Tell me only whether this resolution, this foolish resolution of
+yours, which you will bitterly regret, is irrevocable?"
+
+"Yes ... let me go!"
+
+"Then stay. You know well that you are at home here. We shall go away
+to-morrow morning."
+
+She rose up in spite of him, and said in a hard tone:
+
+"No. It is too late. I do not want sacrifice; I do not want devotion."
+
+"Stay! I have done what I ought to do; I have said what I ought to
+say. I have no further responsibility on your behalf. My conscience is
+at peace. Tell me what you want me to do, and I will obey."
+
+She resumed her seat, looked at him for a long time, and then asked,
+in a very calm voice:
+
+"Explain, then."
+
+"How is that? What do you wish me to explain?"
+
+"Everything--everything that you have thought about before coming to
+this resolution. Then I will see what I ought to do."
+
+"But I have thought about nothing at all. I ought to warn you that you
+are going to accomplish an act of folly. You persist; then I ask to
+share in this act of folly, and I even insist on it."
+
+"It is not natural to change one's opinion so quickly."
+
+"Listen, my dear love. It is not a question here of sacrifice or
+devotion. On the day when I realized that I loved you, I said this to
+myself, which every lover ought to say to himself in the same case:
+'The man who loves a woman, who makes an effort to win her, who gets
+her, and who takes her, contracts so far as he is himself, and so far
+as she is concerned, a sacred engagement. It is, mark you, a question
+of dealing with a woman like you, and not with a woman of an impulsive
+and yielding disposition.
+
+"Marriage which has a great social value, a great legal value,
+possesses in my eyes only a very slight moral value, taking into
+account the conditions under which it generally takes place.
+
+"Therefore, when a woman, united by this lawful bond, but having no
+attachment to her husband, whom she cannot love, a woman whose heart
+is free, meets a man whom she cares for, and gives herself to him,
+when a man who has no other tie, takes a woman in this way, I say that
+they pledge themselves towards each other by this mutual and free
+agreement much more than by the 'Yes' uttered in the presence of the
+Mayor's sash.
+
+"I say that, if they are both honorable persons, their union must be
+more intimate, more real, more healthy, than if all the sacraments had
+consecrated it.
+
+"This woman risks everything. And it is exactly because she knows it,
+because she gives everything, her heart, her body, her soul, her
+honor, her life, because she has foreseen all miseries, all dangers,
+all catastrophies, because she dares to do a bold act, an intrepid
+act, because she is prepared, determined to brave everything--her
+husband who might kill her, and society which may cast her out. This
+is why she is respectable in her conjugal infidelity, this is why her
+lover, in taking her, must also have foreseen everything, and
+preferred her to everything whatever may happen. I have nothing more
+to say. I spoke in the beginning like a man of sense whose duty it was
+to warn you; and now there is left in me only one man--the man who
+loves you. Say, then, what am I to do!"
+
+Radiant, she closed his mouth with her lips; she said to him in a low
+tone:
+
+"It is not true, darling! There is nothing the matter! My husband does
+not suspect anything. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know, what you
+would do. I wished for a New Year's gift--the gift of your
+heart--another gift besides the necklace you have sent me. You have
+given it to me. Thanks! Thanks!... God be thanked for the happiness
+you have given me!"
+
+
+
+
+BESIDE A DEAD MAN
+
+
+He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him sitting down every
+day at two o'clock under the windows of the hotel, facing the tranquil
+sea on an open-air bench. He remained for some time without moving, in
+the heat of the sun gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every now
+and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with vaporous
+summits which shuts in Mentone: then, with a very slow movement, he
+crossed his long legs, so thin that they seemed two bones, around
+which fluttered the cloth of his trousers, and he opened a book, which
+was always the same. And then he did not stir any more, but read on,
+read on with his eye and his mind; all his expiring body seemed to
+read, all his soul plunged, lost itself, disappeared, in this book, up
+to the hour when the cool air made him cough a little. Then, he got up
+and re-entered the hotel.
+
+He was a tall German, with fair beard, who breakfasted and dined in
+his own room, and spoke to nobody.
+
+A vague curiosity attracted me to him. One day I sat down by his side,
+having taken up a book, too, to keep up appearances, a volume of De
+Musset's poems.
+
+And I began to run through "Rolla."
+
+Suddenly my neighbor said to me, in good French:
+
+"Do you know German, monsieur?"
+
+"Not at all, monsieur."
+
+"I am sorry for that. Since chance has thrown us side by side, I
+could have lent you, I could have shown you, an inestimable
+thing--this book which I hold in my hand."
+
+"What is it pray?"
+
+"It is a copy of my master, Schopenhauer, annotated with his own hand.
+All the margins, as you may see, are covered with his handwriting."
+
+I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at those forms
+incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of
+the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth.
+
+And De Musset's verses arose in my memory:
+
+    "Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
+    Or does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?"
+
+And involuntarily I compared the childish sarcasm, the religious
+sarcasm, of Voltaire with the irresistible irony of the German
+philosopher whose influence is henceforth ineffaceable.
+
+Let us protest and let us be angry, let us be indignant or let us be
+enthusiastic, Schopenhauer has marked humanity with the seal of his
+disdain and of his disenchantment.
+
+A disabused pleasure-seeker, he overthrew beliefs, hopes, poetic
+ideal, and chimeras, destroyed the aspirations, ravaged the confidence
+of souls, killed love, dragged down the chivalrous worship of women,
+crushed the illusions of hearts and accomplished the most gigantic
+talk ever attempted by skepticism. He passed over everything with his
+mocking spirit, and left everything empty. And even to-day those who
+execrate him seem to carry portions of his thought, in spite of
+themselves, in their own souls.
+
+"So, then, you were intimately acquainted with Schopenhauer?" I said
+to the German.
+
+He smiled sadly.
+
+"Up to the time of his death, monsieur."
+
+And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
+supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came
+near him.
+
+He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
+French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a
+glimpse of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the
+midst of his disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable
+laugh, eating and tearing ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a
+dog tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.
+
+He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
+scared and terrified:--"I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."
+
+Then he added,
+
+"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even
+after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it not generally
+known, if it has any interest for you."
+
+And he began, in a tired voice, interrupted by frequent fits of
+coughing.
+
+"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch,
+in turn, two by two, till morning.
+
+"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast, and gloomy. Two
+wax candles were burning on the bedside stand.
+
+"It was midnight when I took up my task of watching along with one of
+our comrades. The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment,
+and we came and sat down at the foot of the bed.
+
+"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew
+so well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed
+to us that he was about to open his eyes, to move, and to speak. His
+thought, or rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more
+than ever in the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him.
+His domination seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead.
+A sense of mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable
+spirit.
+
+"The bodies of these men disappear, but they remain themselves; and in
+the night which follows the stoppage of their heart's beatings, I
+assure you, monsieur, they are terrifying.
+
+"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
+sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are
+like jets of flame flung, by means of some words, into the darkness of
+the Unknown Life.
+
+"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we
+stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face with
+its eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed,
+on the point of fainting. I faltered:
+
+"'I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you, I am not
+well.'
+
+"And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from
+the corpse.
+
+"Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining
+room, and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.
+
+"I took one of the wax candles which burned on the bedside stand, and
+I left the second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end
+of the adjoining apartment, so as to be able to see from where we were
+the bed and the corpse, clearly revealed by the light.
+
+"But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his
+immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was
+flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful smell of the
+decomposed body came towards us and penetrated us, sickening and
+indefinable.
+
+"Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound,
+came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him,
+and we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something
+white flying over the bed, falling on the carpet, and vanishing under
+an armchair.
+
+"We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything,
+distracted by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at
+each other. We were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed so fiercely
+that our clothes swelled over our chests. I was the first to speak.
+
+"'You saw?'
+
+"'Yes, I saw.'
+
+"'Can it be that he is not dead?'
+
+"'Why not, when the body is putrefying?'
+
+"'What are we to do?'
+
+"My companion said in a hesitating tone:
+
+"'We must go and look.'
+
+"I took our wax candle and I entered first, searching with my eye
+through all the large apartment with its dark corners. There was not
+the least movement now, and I approached the bed. But I stood
+transfixed with stupor and fright: Schopenhauer was no longer
+laughing! He was grinning in a horrible fashion, with his lips pressed
+together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I stammered out:
+
+"'He is not dead!'
+
+"But the terrible odor rose up to my nose and stifled me. And I no
+longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, scared as if in the
+presence of the apparition.
+
+"Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
+Then, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his
+glance, and I saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the
+bed, all white on the dark carpet, open as if to bite, Schopenhauer's
+set of artificial teeth.
+
+"The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out
+of his mouth.
+
+"I was really frightened that day, monsieur."
+
+And as the sun was sinking towards the glittering sea, the consumptive
+German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the
+hotel.
+
+
+
+
+AFTER
+
+
+"My darlings," said the Comtesse, "you must go to bed."
+
+The three children, two girls and a boy, rose up, and went to kiss
+their grandmother.
+
+Then, they came to say "Good night" to M. le Cure, who had dined at
+the chateau, as he did every Thursday.
+
+The Abbe Mauduit put two of the young ones sitting on his knees,
+passing his long arms clad in black behind the children's necks; and,
+drawing their heads towards him with a paternal movement, he kissed
+each of them on the forehead with a long, tender kiss.
+
+Then, he again set them down on the ground, and the little beings went
+off, the boy in front, and the girls behind.
+
+"You are fond of children, M. le Cure," said the Comtesse.
+
+"Very fond, Madame."
+
+The old woman raised her bright eyes towards the priest.
+
+"And--has your solitude never weighed too heavily on you?"
+
+"Yes, sometimes."
+
+He became silent, hesitated, and then added: "But I was never made for
+ordinary life."
+
+"What do you know about it?"
+
+"Oh! I know very well. I was made to be a priest: I followed my own
+path."
+
+The Comtesse kept staring at him:
+
+"Look here, M. le Cure, tell me this--tell me how it was you resolved
+to renounce for ever what makes us love life--the rest of us--all that
+consoles and sustains us? What is it that drove you, impelled you, to
+separate yourself from the great natural path of marriage and the
+family. You are neither an enthusiast nor a fanatic, neither a gloomy
+person nor a sad person. Was it some strange occurrence, some sorrow,
+that led you to take life-long vows?"
+
+The Abbe Mauduit rose up and advanced towards the fire, then drew
+towards the flames the big shoes such as country priests generally
+wear. He seemed still hesitating as to what reply he should make.
+
+He was a tall old man with white hair, and for the last twenty years
+he had been the pastor of the parish of Sainte-Antoine-du-Rocher. The
+peasants said of him: "There's a good man for you!" And indeed he was
+a good man, benevolent, friendly to all, gentle, and, to crown all,
+generous. Like Saint Martin, he had cut his cloak in two. He freely
+laughed, and wept too for very little, just like a woman,--a thing
+that prejudiced him more or less in the hard minds of the country
+people.
+
+The old Comtesse de Saville, living in retirement in her chateau of
+Rocher, in order to bring up her grand-children, after the successive
+deaths of her son and her daughter-in-law, was very much attached to
+her cure, and used to say of him: "He has a kind heart!"
+
+He came every Thursday to spend the evening at the chateau, and they
+were close friends, with the open and honest friendship of old people.
+
+She persisted:
+
+"Look here M. le Cure! 'tis your turn now to make a confession!"
+
+He repeated: "I was not made for a life like everybody else. I saw it
+myself fortunately in time, and I have had many proofs since that I
+had made no mistake on the point.
+
+"My parents, who were mercers in Verdiers, and rather rich, had much
+ambition on my account. They sent me to a boarding-school while I was
+very young. You cannot conceive what a boy may suffer at college, by
+the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life
+without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young
+people have often hearts more sensitive than one supposes, and by
+shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may
+develop to an excessive extent a sensibility which is of an overstrung
+kind, and which becomes sickly and dangerous.
+
+"I scarcely ever played; I never had companions; I passed my hours in
+looking back to my home with regret; I spent the whole night weeping
+in my bed. I sought to bring up before my mind recollections of my own
+home, trifling recollections of little things, little events. I
+thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost
+imperceptibly an over sensitive youth to whom the slightest annoyances
+were dreadful griefs.
+
+"Together with this I remained taciturn, self-absorbed without
+expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was
+brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly
+excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a
+state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost complete
+development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, an
+unjust imposition can be as great a pang as the death of a friend
+afterwards? Does anyone render an exact account to himself of the fact
+that certain young souls have with very little cause, terrible
+emotions, and are in a very short time diseased and incurable souls?
+
+"This was my case. This faculty of regret developed itself in me in
+such a fashion that my existence became a martyrdom.
+
+"I did not speak about it; I said nothing about it; but gradually I
+acquired a sensibility, or rather a sensitivity so lively that my soul
+resembled a living wound. Everything that touched it produced in it
+twitchings of pain, frightful vibrations, and consequently true
+ravages. Happy are the men whom nature has buttressed with
+indifference and armed with stoicism.
+
+"I reached my sixteenth year. An excessive timidity had come to me
+from this aptitude to suffer on account of everything. Feeling myself
+unprotected against all the attacks of chance or fate, I feared every
+contact, every approach, every event. I lived on the watch as if under
+the constant threat of an unknown and always expected misfortune. I
+did not feel enough of boldness either to speak or to act publicly. I
+had, indeed, the sensation that life is a battle, a dreadful conflict
+in which one receives terrible blows, grievous, mortal wounds. In
+place of cherishing, like all men, the hope of good-fortune on the
+morrow, I only kept a confused fear of it, and I felt in my own mind a
+desire to conceal myself to avoid that combat in which I would be
+vanquished and slain.
+
+"As soon as my studies were finished, they gave me six months' time
+to choose a career. A very simple event made me see clearly all of a
+sudden into myself, showed me the diseased condition of my mind, made
+me understand the danger, and caused me to make up my mind to fly from
+it.
+
+"Verdiers is a little town surrounded with plains and woods. In the
+central streets stands my parents' house. I now passed my days far
+from this dwelling which I had so much regretted, so much desired.
+Dreams were awakened in me, and I walked all alone in the fields in
+order to let them escape and fly away. My father and my mother, quite
+occupied with business, and anxious about my future, talked to me only
+about their profits or about my possible plans. They were fond of me
+in the way that hard-headed, practical people are; they had more
+reason than heart in their affection for me. I lived imprisoned in my
+thoughts, and trembling with my eternal uneasiness.
+
+"Now, one evening, after a long walk, I saw, as I was making my way
+home with great strides so as not to be late, a dog trotting towards
+me. He was a species of red spaniel, very lean, with long curly ears.
+
+"When he was ten paces away from me he stopped. I did the same. Then
+he began wagging his tail, and came over to me with short steps and
+nervous movements of his whole body, going down on his paws as if
+appealing to me, and softly shaking his head. He then made a show of
+crawling with an air so humble, so sad, so suppliant, that I felt the
+tears coming into my eyes. I came near him; he ran away, then he came
+back again; and I bent down, trying to coax him to approach me with
+soft words. At last, he was within reach of my hands, and I gently
+caressed him with the most careful touch.
+
+"He grew bold, rose up bit by bit, laid his paws on my shoulders, and
+began to lick my face. He followed me into the house.
+
+"This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because he
+returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
+exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way
+that we were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated
+and without defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted
+my side. He slept at the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of
+the objections of my parents, and he followed me in my solitary walks.
+
+"I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass.
+Sam immediately rushed up, fell asleep on my knees, and lifted up my
+hand with the end of his snout so that I might caress him.
+
+"One day towards the end of June, as we were on the road from
+Saint-Pierre-de-Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming
+along. Its four horses were going at a gallop with its yellow box
+seat, and imperial crowned with black leather. The coachman cracked
+his whip; a cloud of dust rose up under the wheels of the heavy
+vehicle, then floated behind, just as a cloud would do.
+
+"And, all of a sudden, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps
+frightened by the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it.
+A horse's foot knocked him down. I saw him rolling over, turning
+round, falling back again on all fours, and then the entire coach
+gave two big shakes, and behind it I saw something quivering in the
+dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were
+hanging through his stomach, which had been ripped open, and fell in
+spurts of blood to the ground. He tried to get up, to walk, but he
+could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them,
+as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he howled
+dreadfully, mad with pain.
+
+"He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and
+suffered. I was confined to my own room for a month.
+
+"Now, one night, my father, enraged at seeing me in such a state for
+so little, exclaimed:
+
+"'How then will it be when you have real griefs--if you lose your wife
+or children?'
+
+"And I began to see clearly into myself. I understood why all the
+small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the importance of a
+catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a way that I suffered
+dreadfully from everything, that every painful impression was
+multiplied by my diseased sensibility, and an atrocious fear of life
+took possession of me. I was without passions, without ambitions; I
+resolved to sacrifice possible joys in order to avoid sure sorrows.
+Existence is short, but I made up my mind to spend it in the service
+of others, in relieving their troubles and enjoying their happiness.
+By having no direct experience of either one or the other, I would
+only be conscious of passionless emotions.
+
+"And if you only knew how, in spite of this, misery tortures me,
+ravages me! But what would be for me an intolerable affliction has
+become commiseration, pity.
+
+"These sorrows which I have every day to concern myself about I could
+not endure if they fell on my own heart. I could not have seen one of
+my children die without dying myself. And I have, in spite of
+everything, preserved such an obscure and penetrating fear of
+circumstances, that the sight of the postman entering my house makes a
+shiver pass every day through my veins, and yet I have nothing to be
+afraid of now."
+
+The Abbe Mauduit ceased speaking. He stared into the fire in the huge
+grate, as if he saw there mysterious things, all the unknown portion
+of existence which he would have been able to live if he had been more
+fearless in the face of suffering.
+
+He added, then, in a subdued tone:
+
+"I was right. I was not made for this world."
+
+The Comtesse said nothing at first; but at length, after a long
+silence, she remarked:
+
+"For my part, if I had not my grand-children, I believe I would not
+have the courage to live."
+
+And the cure rose up without saying another word.
+
+As the servants were asleep in the kitchen, she conducted him herself
+to the door which looked out on the garden, and she saw his tall
+shadow lit up by the reflection of the lamp disappearing through the
+gloom of night.
+
+Then she came back and sat down before the fire, and she pondered over
+many things on which we never think when we are young.
+
+
+
+
+A QUEER NIGHT IN PARIS
+
+
+Maitre Saval, notary at Vernon, was passionately fond of music. Still
+young, though already bald, always carefully shaved, a little
+corpulent, as it was fitting, wearing a gold pince-nez instead of
+old-fashioned spectacles, active, gallant, and joyous, he passed in
+Vernon for an artist. He thrummed on the piano and played on the
+violin, and gave musical evenings where interpretations were given of
+new operas.
+
+He had even what is called a bit of a voice; nothing but a bit, a very
+little bit of a voice; but he managed it with so much taste that cries
+of "Bravo!" "Exquisite!" "Surprising!" "Adorable!" issued from every
+throat as soon as he had murmured the last note.
+
+He was a subscriber to a music-publisher in Paris, who addressed new
+pieces to him, and he sent from time to time to the high society of
+the town, little notes something in this style:
+
+"You are invited to be present on Monday evening at the house of M.
+Saval, notary, Vernon, at the first production of 'Sais.'"
+
+A few officers, gifted with good voices, formed the chorus. Two or
+three of the vinedressers' families also sang. The notary filled the
+part of leader of the orchestra with so much correctness that the
+bandmaster of the 190th regiment of the line said to him, one day, at
+the _Cafe_ de l'Europe:
+
+"Oh! M. Saval is a master. It is a great pity that he did not adopt
+the career of an artist."
+
+When his name was mentioned in a drawing-room, there was always
+somebody found to declare: "He is not an amateur; he is an artist, a
+genuine artist."
+
+And two or three persons repeated, in a tone of profound conviction:
+
+"Oh! yes, a genuine artist," laying particular stress on the word
+"genuine."
+
+Every time that a new work was interpreted at a big Parisian theater,
+M. Saval paid a visit to the capital.
+
+Now, last year, according to his custom, he went to hear "Henry VIII."
+He then took the express which arrives in Paris at 4:30 p.m.,
+intending to return by the 12:35 a.m. train so as not to have to sleep
+at a hotel. He had put on evening dress, a black coat and white tie,
+which he concealed under his overcoat with the collar turned up.
+
+As soon as he had planted his foot on the Rue d' Amsterdam, he felt
+himself in quite a jovial mood. He said to himself:
+
+"Decidedly the air of Paris does not resemble any other air. It has in
+it something indescribably stimulating, exciting, intoxicating, which
+fills you with a strange longing to gambol and to do many other
+things. As soon as I arrive here, it seems to me, all of a sudden,
+that I have taken a bottle of champagne. What a life one can lead in
+this city in the midst of artists! Happy are the elect, the great men
+who enjoy renown in such a city! What an existence is theirs!"
+
+And he made plans; he would have liked to know some of those
+celebrated men, to talk about them in Vernon, and to spend an evening
+with them from time to time in Paris.
+
+But suddenly an idea struck him. He had heard allusions to little
+_cafes_ in the outer boulevards at which well-known painters, men of
+letters, and even musicians gathered, and he proceeded to go up to
+Montmartre at a slow pace.
+
+He had two hours before him. He wanted to have a look-round. He passed
+in front of taverns frequented by belated Bohemians gazing at the
+different faces, seeking to discover the artists. Finally, he came to
+the sign of "The Dead Rat," and allured by the name, he entered.
+
+Five or six women, with their elbows resting on the marble tables,
+were talking in low tones about their love affairs, the quarrels of
+Lucie and Hortense, and the scoundrelism of Octave. They were no
+longer young, too fat or too thin, tired out, used up. You could see
+that they were almost bald; and they drank bocks like men.
+
+M. Saval sat down at some distance from them, and waited, for the hour
+for taking absinthe was at hand.
+
+A tall young man soon came in and took a seat beside him. The landlady
+called him M. "Romantin." The notary quivered. Was this the Romantin
+who had taken a medal at the last Salon?
+
+The young man made a sign to the waiter:
+
+"You will bring up my dinner at once, and then carry to my new studio,
+15, Boulevard de Clinchy, thirty bottles of beer and the ham I ordered
+this morning. We are going to have housewarming."
+
+M. Saval immediately ordered dinner. Then, he took off his overcoat,
+so that his dress coat and his white tie could be seen. His neighbor
+did not seem to notice him. He had taken up a newspaper, and was
+reading it. M. Saval glanced sideways at him, burning with the desire
+to speak to him.
+
+Two young men entered, in red vests, and peaked beards in the fashion
+of Henry III. They sat down opposite Romantin.
+
+The first of the pair said:
+
+"It is for this evening?"
+
+Romantin pressed his hand.
+
+"T believe you, old chap, and everyone will be there, I have Bonnat,
+Guillemet, Gervex, Beraud, Hebert, Duez, Clairin, and Jean-Paul
+Laurens. It will be a glorious blow out! And women too! Wait till you
+see! Every actress without exception--of course I mean, you know, all
+those who have nothing to do this evening."
+
+The landlord of the establishment came across.
+
+"Do you often have this housewarming?"
+
+The painter replied:
+
+"I believe you, every three months, each quarter."
+
+M. Saval could not restrain himself any longer, and in a hesitating
+voice said:
+
+"I beg your pardon for intruding on you, monsieur, but I heard your
+name pronounced, and I would be very glad to know if you really are M.
+Romantin, whose work in the last Salon I have so much admired?"
+
+The painter answered:
+
+"I am the very person, monsieur."
+
+The notary then paid the artist a very well-turned compliment, showing
+that he was a man of culture.
+
+The painter, gratified, thanked him politely in reply.
+
+Then they chatted. Romantin returned to the subject of his
+housewarming, going into details as to the magnificence of the
+forthcoming entertainment.
+
+M. Saval questioned him as to all the men he was going to receive,
+adding:
+
+"It would be an extraordinary piece of good fortune for a stranger to
+meet at one time so many celebrities assembled in the studio of an
+artist of your rank."
+
+Romantin, overcome, answered:
+
+"If it would be agreeable to you, come."
+
+M. Saval accepted the invitation with enthusiasm, reflecting:
+
+"I'll always have time enough to see 'Henri VIII.'"
+
+Both of them had finished their meal. The notary insisted on paying
+the two bills, wishing to repay his neighbor's civilities. He also
+paid for the drinks of the young fellows in red velvet; then he left
+the establishment with the painter.
+
+They stopped in front of a very long house, by no means high, of which
+all the first story had the appearance of an interminable
+conservatory. Six studios stood in a row with their fronts facing the
+boulevards.
+
+Romantin was the first to enter, and, ascending the stairs, he opened
+a door, and lighted a match and then a candle.
+
+They found themselves in an immense apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted of three chairs, two easels, and a few sketches lying on the
+ground along the walls. M. Saval remained standing at the door in a
+stupefied state of mind.
+
+The painter remarked:
+
+"Here you are! we've got to the spot; but everything has yet to be
+done."
+
+Then, examining the high, bare apartment, whose ceiling was veiled in
+shadows, he said:
+
+"We might make a great deal out of this studio."
+
+He walked round it, surveying it with the utmost attention, then went
+on:
+
+"I have a mistress who might easily give a helping hand. Women are
+incomparable for hanging drapery. But I sent her to the country for
+to-day in order to get her off my hands this evening. It is not that
+she bores me, but she is too much lacking in the ways of good society.
+It would be embarrassing to my guests."
+
+He reflected for a few seconds, and then added:
+
+"She is a good girl, but not easy to deal with. If she knew that I was
+holding a reception, she would tear out my eyes."
+
+M. Saval had not even moved; he did not understand.
+
+The artist came over to him.
+
+"Since I have invited you, you are going to give me some help."
+
+The notary said emphatically:
+
+"Make any use of me you please. I am at your disposal."
+
+Romantin took off his jacket.
+
+"Well, citizen, to work! We are first going to clean up."
+
+He went to the back of the easel, on which there was a canvas
+representing a cat, and seized a very worn-out broom.
+
+"I say! Just brush up while I look after the lighting."
+
+M. Saval took the broom, inspected it, and then began to sweep the
+floor very awkwardly, raising a whirlwind of dust.
+
+Romantin, disgusted, stopped him: "Deuce take it! you don't know how
+to sweep the floor! Look at me!"
+
+And he began to roll before him a heap of grayish sweepings, as if he
+had done nothing else all his life. Then, he gave back the broom to
+the notary, who imitated him.
+
+In five minutes, such a cloud of dust filled the studio that Romantin
+asked:
+
+"Where are you? I can't see you any longer."
+
+M. Saval, who was coughing, came near to him. The painter said to him:
+
+"How are you going to manage to get up a chandelier?"
+
+The other, stunned, asked:
+
+"What chandelier?"
+
+"Why, a chandelier to light--a chandelier with wax candles."
+
+The notary did not understand.
+
+He answered: "I don't know."
+
+The painter began to jump about, cracking his fingers.
+
+"Well, monseigneur, I have found out a way."
+
+Then he went more calmly:
+
+"Have you got five francs about you?"
+
+M. Saval replied:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+The artist said:
+
+"Well! you'll go and buy for me five francs' worth of wax candles
+while I go and see the cooper."
+
+And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into the street. At the
+end of five minutes, they had returned one of them with the wax
+candles, and the other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged
+his hand into a cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which
+he fixed in the form of a crown around the hoop.
+
+He then came down, and went to borrow a ladder from the door-keeper,
+after having explained that he had obtained the favors of the old
+woman by painting the portrait of her cat exhibited on the easel.
+
+When he mounted the ladder, he said to M. Saval:
+
+"Are you active?"
+
+The other, without understanding, answered:
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to
+the ring of the ceiling. Then, you must put a wax candle in each
+bottle, and light it. I tell you I have a genius for lighting up. But
+off with your coat, damn it! You are just like a Jeames."
+
+The door was opened brutally. A woman appeared, with her eyes
+flashing, and remained standing on the threshold.
+
+Romantin gazed at her with a look of terror.
+
+She waited some seconds, crossing her arms over her breast, and then,
+in a shrill, vibrating, exasperated voice, said:
+
+"Ha! you sniveler, is this the way you leave me?"
+
+Romantin made no reply. She went on:
+
+"Ha! you scoundrel! You are again doing the swell, while you pack me
+off to the country. You'll soon see the way I'll settle your
+jollification. Yes, I'm going to receive your friends."
+
+She grew warmer:
+
+"I'm going to slap their faces with the bottles and the wax
+candles...."
+
+Romantin uttered one soft word:
+
+"Mathilde...."
+
+But she did not pay any attention to him; she went on:
+
+"Wait a little my fine fellow! wait a little!"
+
+Romantin went over to her, and tried to take her by the hands:
+
+"Mathilde...."
+
+But she was now fairly under way; and on she went, emptying the vials
+of her wrath with strong words and reproaches. They flowed out of her
+mouth, like a stream sweeping a heap of filth along with it. The words
+hurled out, seemed struggling for exit. She stuttered, stammered,
+yelled, suddenly recovering her voice to cast forth an insult or a
+curse.
+
+He seized her hands without her having even noticed it. She did not
+seem to see anything, so much occupied was she in holding forth and
+relieving her heart. And suddenly she began to weep. The tears flowed
+from her eyes without making her stem the tide of her complaints. But
+her words had taken a howling, shrieking tone; they were a continuous
+cry interrupted by sobbings. She commenced afresh twice or three
+times, till she stopped as if something were choking her, and at last
+she ceased with a regular flood of tears.
+
+Then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her hair, affected himself.
+
+"Mathilde, my little Mathilde, listen. You must be reasonable. You
+know, if I give a supper-party to my friends, it is to thank these
+gentlemen for the medal I got at the Salon. I cannot receive women.
+You ought to understand that. It is not the same with artists as with
+other people."
+
+She stammered in the midst of her tears:
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this?"
+
+He replied:
+
+"It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I'm
+going to see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will
+remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I'll come back as soon as
+it's over."
+
+She murmured:
+
+"Yes, but you will not begin over again?"
+
+"No, I swear to you!"
+
+He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:
+
+"My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If any one arrives
+in my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?"
+
+And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her
+handkerchief as she went along.
+
+Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him
+in order. Then he lighted the wax candles, and waited.
+
+He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin
+did not return. Then, suddenly, there was a dreadful noise on the
+stairs, a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular
+march like that of a Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by
+the steady tramp of feet. The door flew open, and a motley throng
+appeared--men and women in a row, holding one another arm in arm, in
+pairs, and kicking their heels on the ground, in proper time, advanced
+into the studio like a snake uncoiling itself. They howled:
+
+    "Come, and let us all be merry,
+    Pretty maids and soldiers gay!"
+
+M. Saval, thunderstruck, remained standing in evening dress under the
+chandelier. The procession of revelers caught sight of him, and
+uttered a shout:
+
+"A Jeames! A Jeames!"
+
+And they began whirling round him, surrounding him with a circle of
+vociferations. Then they took each other by the hand and went dancing
+about madly.
+
+He attempted to explain:
+
+"Messieurs--messieurs--mesdames--"
+
+But they did not listen to him. They whirled about, they jumped, they
+brawled.
+
+At last, the dancing ceased. M. Saval uttered the word:
+
+"Messieurs--"
+
+A tall young fellow, fair-haired and bearded to the nose, interrupted
+him:
+
+"What's your name, my friend?"
+
+The notary, quite scared, said:
+
+"I am M. Saval."
+
+A voice exclaimed:
+
+"You mean Baptiste."
+
+A woman said:
+
+"Let the poor waiter alone! You'll end by making him get angry. He's
+paid to attend on us, and not to be laughed at by us."
+
+Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
+One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf
+of bread, and one a ham.
+
+The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage,
+and gave orders:
+
+"I say! Go and settle up the sideboard in the corner over there. You
+are to put the bottles at the left and the provisions at the right."
+
+Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: "But messieurs, I am a
+notary!"
+
+There was a moment's silence, and then a wild outburst of laughter.
+One suspicious gentleman asked:
+
+"How are you here?"
+
+He explained, telling about his project of going to the Opera, his
+departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he
+had spent the evening.
+
+They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
+applause, and called him Scheherazade.
+
+Romantin did not come back. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was
+presented to them so that he might begin his story over again. He
+declined; they forced him to relate it. They fixed him on one of the
+three chairs between two women who kept constantly filling his glass.
+He drank; he laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with
+his chair, and fell on the ground.
+
+From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however,
+that they undressed him, put him to bed, and that his stomach got
+sick.
+
+When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his
+feet against a cupboard, in a strange bed.
+
+An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
+last, she said:
+
+"Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get
+drunk like this?"
+
+He sat up in the bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten
+carcass out of here as quick as you can,--and lose no time about it!"
+
+He wanted to get up. He found that he was naked in the bed. His
+clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:
+
+"Madame, I--"
+
+Then he remembered.... What was he to do? He asked:
+
+"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"
+
+The door-keeper shouted:
+
+"Will you take your dirty carcass out of this so that he at any rate
+may not catch you here?"
+
+M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:
+
+"I haven't got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."
+
+He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends,
+and borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till
+evening.
+
+And, when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room
+in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a
+very inferior art.
+
+
+
+
+BOITELLE
+
+
+Pere Boitelle (Antoine) had the reputation through the whole county of
+a specialist in dirty jobs. Every time a pit, a dunghill, or a
+cesspool required to be cleared away, or a dirt-hole to be cleansed
+out he was the person employed to do it.
+
+He would come there with his nightman's tools and his wooden shoes
+covered with muck, and would set to work, whining incessantly about
+the nature of his occupation. When people asked him, then, why he did
+this loathsome work, he would reply resignedly:
+
+"Faith, 'tis for my children whom I must support. This brings me in
+more than anything else."
+
+He had, indeed, fourteen children. If anyone asked him what had become
+of them, he would say with an air of indifference:
+
+"There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at
+service, and five are married."
+
+When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he
+replied vivaciously:
+
+"I did not cross them. I crossed them in nothing. They married just as
+they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns out
+badly. I am a night-cart-man because my parents went against my
+likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others."
+
+Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:
+
+He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than
+another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, in truth. During
+his hours of freedom his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay,
+where the bird-dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a
+soldier from his own part of the country, he would slowly saunter
+along by cages where the parrots with green backs and yellow heads
+from the banks of the Amazon, the parrots with gray backs and red
+heads from Senegal, enormous macaws, which look like birds brought up
+in conservatories, with their flower-like feathers, their plumes and
+their tufts, the paroquets of every shape, who seem painted with
+minute care by that excellent miniaturist, God Almighty, and the
+little ones, all the little young birds, hopping about, yellow, blue,
+and variegated, mingling their cries with the noise of the quay, add
+to the din caused by the unloading of the vessels, as well as by
+passengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill, and
+deafening, as if from some distant, monstrous forest.
+
+Boitelle would stop with stained eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing and
+enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive cockatoos, who kept
+nodding their white or yellow top-knots towards the glaring red of his
+breeches and the copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that
+could talk, he put questions to it, and if it happened at the time to
+be disposed to reply and to hold a conversation with him, he would
+remain there till nightfall, filled with gayety and contentment. He
+also found heaps of fun in looking at the monkeys, and could conceive
+no greater luxury for a rich man than to possess these animals, just
+like cats and dogs. This kind of taste for the exotic he had in his
+blood, as people have a taste for the chase, or for medicine, or for
+the priesthood. He could not keep himself, every time the gates of the
+barracks opened, from going back to the quay, as if he felt himself
+drawn towards it by an irresistible longing.
+
+Now, on one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstacy before an
+enormous araruna, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward,
+and bridling up again as if making the court-curtseys of parrot-land,
+he saw the door of a little tavern adjoining the bird-dealer's shop
+opening, and his attention was attracted by a young negress, with a
+silk kerchief tied round her head, sweeping into the street the
+rubbish and the sand of the establishment.
+
+Boitelle's attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman,
+and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated
+with the greater astonishment and delight.
+
+The negress, having got rid of the sweepings of the tavern, raised her
+eyes, and, in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier's uniform. There
+she stood facing him with her broom in her hands as if she were
+carrying arms for him, while the araruna continued making curtseys.
+Now at the end of a few seconds the soldier began to get embarrassed
+by this attention, and he walked away gingerly so as not to present
+the appearance of beating a retreat.
+
+But he came back. Almost every day he passed in front of the Colonial
+tavern, and often he could distinguish through the window-panes the
+figure of the little black-skinned maid filling out "bocks" or glasses
+of brandy for the sailors of the port. Frequently, too, she would come
+out to the door on seeing him; soon, without even having exchanged a
+word they smiled at one another like acquaintances; and Boitelle felt
+his heart moved when he saw suddenly glittering between the dark lips
+of the girl her shining row of white teeth. At length he ventured one
+day to enter and was quite surprised to find that she could speak
+French like everyone else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she was
+good enough to accept a glassful, remained in the soldier's
+recollection, memorably delicious; and it grew into custom with him to
+come and absorb in this little tavern on the quay all the agreeable
+drinks which he could afford.
+
+For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts were
+constantly dwelling, to watch the black hand of the little maid
+pouring out something into his glass whilst her teeth, brighter than
+her eyes, showed themselves as she laughed. When they had kept company
+in this way for two months they became fast friends, and Boitelle,
+after his first astonishment at discovering that this negress was in
+her excellent principles as good as the best girls in the country,
+that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry, religion, and good
+conduct, loved her more on that account, and became so much smitten
+with her that he wanted to marry her.
+
+He told her about his intentions, which made her dance with joy.
+Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer,
+who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by
+an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only
+about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his ship,
+some hours after his departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre,
+he there abandoned to the care of this compassionate oyster-dealer
+the little black creature, who had been hidden on board his vessel, he
+could not tell how or why.
+
+The oyster-woman having died, the young negress became a servant at
+the Colonial tavern.
+
+Antoine Boitelle added: "This will be all right if the parents don't
+go against it. I will never go against them, you understand never! I'm
+going to say a word or two to them the first time I go back to the
+country."
+
+On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours'
+leave, he went to see his family, who cultivate a little farm at
+Tourteville near Yvetot.
+
+He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee
+baptized with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing
+his parents that he had found a girl answering so well to his likings
+in every way that there could not exist any other in all the world so
+perfectly suited to him.
+
+The old people, at this observation, immediately assumed a circumspect
+air, and wanted explanations. Besides he had concealed nothing from
+them except the color of her skin.
+
+She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean,
+well-conducted, and sensible. All these things were better than money
+would be in the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few
+sous, left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous,
+almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings' bank.
+The old people, overcome by his talk, and relying, too, on their own
+judgment, were gradually giving way, when he came to the delicate
+point. Laughing in rather a constrained fashion, he said:
+
+"There is only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip."
+
+They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very
+cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky
+race of which they had only seen samples amongst figures exhibited at
+Epinal. Then, they became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had
+proposed a union with the Devil.
+
+The mother said. "Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of
+her?"
+
+He replied, "Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere."
+
+The father interposed, "Black? Is it as black as the pot?"
+
+The son answered "Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but
+not disgustingly black. The Cure's cassock is black; but it is not
+uglier than a surplice, which is white."
+
+The father said, "Are there more black people besides her in her
+country?"
+
+And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed, "Certainly!"
+
+But the old man shook his head.
+
+"This must be disagreeable?"
+
+And the son:
+
+"It isn't more disagreeable than anything else, seeing that you get
+used to it in no time."
+
+The mother asked:
+
+"It doesn't soil linen more than other skins, this black skin?"
+
+"Not more than your own, as it is her proper color."
+
+Then after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should
+see this girl before coming to any decision and that the young
+fellow, whose period of services was coming to an end in the course of
+a month, should bring her to the house in order that they might
+examine her, and decide by talking the matter over whether or not she
+was too dark to enter the Boitelle family.
+
+Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22nd of May, the day
+of his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.
+
+She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover's parents,
+her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red, and
+blue were the prevailing colors, so that she had the appearance of one
+adorned for a national fete.
+
+At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her very
+much, and Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who
+commanded so much attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in
+which she took a seat by his side, she excited so much astonishment
+among the peasants that the people in the adjoining compartments got
+up on their benches to get a look at her, over the wooden partition,
+which divided the different portions of the carriage from one another.
+A child, at sight of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed
+his face in his mother's apron. Everything went off well, however, up
+to their arrival at their destination. But, when the train slackened
+its rate of motion as they drew near Yvetot, Antoine felt ill at ease,
+as he would have done at an inspection when he did not know his
+drill-practice. Then, as he put his head out through the carriage
+door, he recognized, some distance away, his father who was holding
+the bridle of the horse yoked to a car, and his mother who had made
+her way to the railed portion of the platform where a number of
+spectators had gathered.
+
+He stepped out first, gave his hand to his sweetheart, and holding
+himself erect, as if he were escorting a general, he advanced towards
+his family.
+
+The mother, on seeing this black lady, in variegated costume in her
+son's company, remained so stupefied that she could not open her
+mouth; and the father found it hard to hold the horse, which the
+engine or the negress caused to rear for some time without stopping.
+But Antoine, suddenly seized with the unmingled joy of seeing once
+more the old people, rushed forward with open arms, embraced his
+mother, embraced his father, in spite of the nag's fright, and then
+turning towards his companion, at whom the passengers on the platform
+stopped to stare with amazement, he proceeded to explain:
+
+"Here she is! I told you that, at first sight, she is an odd piece;
+but as soon as you know her, in very truth, there's not a better sort
+in the whole world. Say good-morrow to her without making any pother
+about it."
+
+Thereupon Mere Boitelle, herself nearly frightened out of her wits,
+made a sort of curtsey, while the father took off his cap, murmuring:
+
+"I wish you good-luck!"
+
+Then, without further delay, they climbed up on the car, the two women
+at the lower end on seats, which made them jump up and down, as the
+vehicle went jolting along the road, and the two men outside on the
+front seat.
+
+Nobody spoke. Antoine, ill at ease, whistled a barrack-room air; his
+father lashed the nag; and his mother, from where she sat in the
+corner, kept casting sly glances at the negress, whose forehead and
+cheek-bones shone in the sunlight, like well-blacked shoes.
+
+Wishing to break the ice, Antoine turned round.
+
+"Well," said he, "we don't seem inclined to talk."
+
+"We must get time," replied the old woman.
+
+He went on:
+
+"Come! tell us the little story about that hen of yours that laid
+eight eggs."
+
+It was a funny anecdote of long standing in the family. But, as his
+mother still remained silent, paralyzed by emotion, he started the
+talking himself, and narrated, with much laughter on his own part,
+this memorable adventure. The father, who knew it by heart, brightened
+at the opening words of the narrative; his wife soon followed his
+example; and the negress herself, when he reached the drollest part of
+it, suddenly gave vent to a laugh so noisy, rolling, and torrent-like
+that the horse, becoming excited, broke into a gallop for a little
+while.
+
+This served as the introduction to their acquaintanceship. The company
+at length began to chat.
+
+On reaching the house when they had all alighted, and he had conducted
+his sweetheart to a room, so that she might take off her dress, to
+avoid staining it, while she would be preparing a good dish intended
+to win the old people's affections while appealing to their stomachs,
+he drew aside his parents, near the door, and with beating heart,
+asked:
+
+"Well, what do you say now?"
+
+The father said nothing. The mother, less timid, exclaimed:
+
+"She is too black. No, indeed, this is too much for me. It turns my
+blood."
+
+"That may be, but it is only for the moment."
+
+Then they made their way into the interior of the house, where the
+good woman was somewhat affected at the spectacle of the negress
+engaged in cooking. She at once proceeded to assist her, with
+petticoats tucked up, active in spite of her age.
+
+The meal was an excellent one, very long, very enjoyable. When they
+had afterwards taken a turn together, Antoine said to his father:
+
+"Well dad, what do you say to this?"
+
+The peasant took care never to compromise himself.
+
+"I have no opinion about it. Ask your mother."
+
+So Antoine went back to his mother, and leading her to the end of the
+room, said:
+
+"Well mother, what do you think of her?"
+
+"My poor lad, she is really too black. If she were only a little less
+black, I would not go against you, but this is too much. One would
+think it was Satan!"
+
+He did not press her, knowing how obstinate the old woman had always
+been, but he felt a tempest of disappointment sweeping over his heart.
+He was turning over his mind what he ought to do, what plan he could
+devise, surprised, moreover, that she had not conquered them already
+as she had captivated himself. And they, all four, set out with slow
+steps through the cornfields, having again relapsed into silence.
+Whenever they passed a fence they saw a countryman sitting on the
+stile, and a group of brats climbed up to stare at them and everyone
+rushed out into the road to see the "black" whom young Boitelle had
+brought home with him. At a distance they noticed people scampering
+across the fields just as when the drum beats to draw public attention
+to some living phenomenon. Pere and Mere Boitelle, scared by this
+curiosity, which was exhibited everywhere through the country at their
+approach, quickened their pace, walking side by side, and leaving far
+behind their son, when his dark companion asked what his parents
+thought of her.
+
+He hesitatingly replied that they had not yet made up their minds.
+
+But, on the village-green, people rushed out of all the houses in a
+flutter of excitement; and, at the sight of the gathering rabble, old
+Boitelle took to his heels and regained his abode, whilst Antoine,
+swelling with rage, his sweetheart on his arm, advanced majestically
+under the staring eyes which opened wide in amazement.
+
+He understood that it was at an end, and there was no hope for him,
+that he could not marry his negress, she also understood it; and as
+they drew near the farmhouse they both began to weep. As soon as they
+had got back to the house, she once more took off her dress to aid the
+mother in the household duties, and followed her everywhere to the
+dairy, to the stable, to the hen-house, taking on herself the hardest
+part of the work, repeating always, "Let me do it Madame Boitelle," so
+that, when night came on, the old woman, touched but inexorable, said
+to her son: "She is a good, all the same. 'Tis a pity she is so black;
+but indeed she is too much so. I couldn't get used to it. She must go
+back again. She is too, too black!"
+
+And young Boitelle said to his sweetheart:
+
+"She will not consent. She thinks you are too black. You must go back
+again. I will go with you to the train. No matter--don't fret. I am
+going to talk to them after you are started."
+
+He then conducted her to the railway-station, still cheering her with
+hope, and, when he had kissed her, he put her into the train, which he
+watched as it passed out of sight, his eyes swollen with tears.
+
+In vain did he appeal to the old people. They would never give their
+consent.
+
+And when he had told this story, which was known all over the country,
+Antoine Boitelle would always add:
+
+"From that time forward I have had no heart for anything--for anything
+at all. No trade suited me any longer, and so I became what I am--a
+nightcart-man."
+
+People would say to him:
+
+"Yet you got married."
+
+"Yes, and I can't say that my wife didn't please me, seeing that I've
+got fourteen children; but she is not the other one, oh no--certainly
+not! The other one, mark you, my negress, she had only to give me one
+glance, and I felt as if I were in Heaven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume
+VIII., by Guy de Maupassant
+
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