“Dear Jerome,
“My heart melts with joy as I read you. I was just going to answer
your letter from Orvieto, when the one from Perugia and the one
from Assisi arrived together. My mind has turned traveller; it is
only my body that makes believe to stay behind here; in truth I
am with you on the white roads of Umbria. I set out with you in
the morning and watch the dawn with a fresh-created eye.... Did
you really call me on the terrace of Cortona? I heard you. We were
terribly thirsty on the hills above Assisi, but how good I thought
the Franciscan’s glass of water! Oh, my friend! It is through you
that I look at all things. How much I like what you write about St.
Francis! Yes, what we should seek for is indeed--is it not?--an
exaltation and not an emancipation of the mind. The latter goes
only with an abominable pride. Our ambition should lie not in
revolt but in service.
“The news from Nîmes is so good, that it seems to me I have God’s
permission to give way to joy. The only shadow this summer is my
poor father’s condition. In spite of all my care he still keeps
sad, or rather he relapses into sadness the moment I leave him to
himself, and it becomes less and less easy to get him out of it.
All the joys of nature that are about us, speak a language which
has become foreign to him; he no longer even makes any effort to
understand it. Miss Ashburton is well. I read your letters aloud
to them both; each one gives us enough to talk about for three
days, and then comes a fresh one.
“Robert left us the day before yesterday. He is going to spend the
rest of his holidays with his friend R----, whose father is at the
head of a model farm. Certainly the life we lead here is not very
amusing for him. I could only encourage him in his idea when he
spoke of leaving.
“... I have so much to say to you. I thirst for a talk, such
an endless talk! Sometimes I can find no words, no distinct
ideas--this evening I am writing as in a dream--and all I realise
is an almost oppressive sense of infinite riches to bestow and to
receive.
“How did we manage to be silent during so many long months? No
doubt we were hibernating. Oh! may that frightful winter of
our silence be for ever past! Now that I have found you again,
life, thought, our souls--everything seems beautiful, adorable,
inexhaustibly fertile.”
12th September.
“I have got your letter from Pisa. The weather is splendid here,
too. Never before have I thought Normandy so beautiful. The day
before yesterday I took an enormously long walk, going across
country at random. When I came in I was not so much tired as
excited, almost intoxicated with sun and joy. How beautiful the
hay-stacks were in the burning sun! There was no need to imagine
myself in Italy for me to think everything I saw wonderful.
* * * * *
“Yes, dear friend, it is as you say, an exhortation to joy which
I hear and understand in Nature’s ‘mingled hymn.’ I hear it in
every bird’s song; I breathe it in the scent of every flower, and
I have reached the point of conceiving adoration as the only form
of prayer, repeating over and over again with St. Francis: ‘My God!
My God! _e non altro_’--and nothing else--my heart filled with
_inexpressible_ love.
* * * * *
“Don’t be afraid, though, of my becoming an ignoramus. I have been
reading a great deal lately; with the help of a few rainy days I
have, as it were, folded my adoration up into my books. Finished
Malebranche and begun at once on Leibnitz’ _Letters to Clarke_.
Then, as a rest, read Shelley’s _Cenci_--without pleasure; read
_The Sensitive Plant_ too. I shall make you very indignant, but I
would give nearly all Shelley and all Byron for Keats’s four odes,
which we read together last summer; just as I would give all Hugo
for a few of Baudelaire’s sonnets. The words ‘great poet’ have no
meaning--what is important is to be a _pure_ poet. Oh, my brother!
thank you for having taught me to understand and love these things.
* * * * *
“No, don’t cut short your journey for the sake of a few days’
meeting. Seriously, it is better that we should not see each other
again just yet. Believe me, if you were with me I could not think
of you more. I should be sorry to give you pain, but I have come to
the point of no longer wanting your presence--now. Shall I confess?
If I knew you were coming this evening I should fly away.
“Oh! don’t ask me to explain this feeling, please. I only know that
I think of you unceasingly (which ought to be enough for _your_
happiness) and that I am happy so.”
A short time after this last letter, and immediately after my return
from Italy, I was called up for my military service and sent to Nancy.
I did not know a living soul there, but I was glad to be alone, for
it was thus more clearly apparent to my lover’s pride and to Alissa
herself, that her letters were my only refuge, and that the thought of
her was, as Ronsard would have said, “my only entelechy.”
To tell the truth I bore the pretty severe discipline to which we were
subjected, very cheerily. I stiffened myself to endurance, and in my
letters to Alissa complained only of absence. We even found in this
long separation a trial worthy of our valour. “You who never complain,”
wrote Alissa; “you whom I cannot imagine faltering.” What would I not
have endured to prove the truth of her words?
* * * * *
Almost a year had gone by since our last meeting. She seemed not to
consider this, but to count her time of waiting only from now onwards.
I reproached her with it.
* * * * *
“Was I not with you in Italy?” she replied. “Ungrateful! I never left
you for a single day. You must understand that now, for a time, I
can’t follow you any longer, and it is that, only that, which I call
separation. I try hard, it is true, to imagine you as a soldier. I
can’t succeed. At best I see you in the evening in your little room
in the Rue Gambetta, writing or reading--but no, not even that! In
reality it is only at Fongueusemare or Le Havre that I can see you, in
a year from now.
“A year! I don’t count the days that have already gone by; my hope
fastens its gaze on that point in the future, which is slowly, slowly,
drawing nearer. Do you remember the low wall that shelters the
chrysanthemums, at the end of the garden, and how sometimes we used to
venture along the top of it? Juliette and you walked on it as boldly as
though you were Mussulmans going straight to Paradise; as for me, I was
seized with giddiness after the first step or two, and you used to call
to me from below, ‘Don’t look at your feet! Eyes front! Don’t stop!
Look at the goal!’ And then, at last--and it was more of a help than
your words--you would climb on to the wall at the other end and wait
for me. Then I no longer trembled; I no longer felt giddy; I no longer
saw anything but you; I ran until I reached your open arms.
“Without faith in you, Jerome, what would become of me? I have need to
feel you strong; need to lean on you. Don’t weaken.”
* * * * *
Out of a sort of spirit of defiance, which made us deliberately
prolong our time of waiting--out of fear, too, of an unsatisfactory
meeting--we agreed that I should spend my few days’ leave at Christmas
with Miss Ashburton, in Paris.
* * * * *
I have already told you that I do not give all her letters. Here is one
I received about the middle of February:--
“Great excitement the day before yesterday in passing along the
Rue de Paris to see Abel’s book, very ostentatiously displayed in
M----’s shop window. You had indeed announced its appearance, but I
could not believe in its _reality_. I wasn’t able to resist going
in; but the title seemed to me so ridiculous that I hesitated to
name it to the shopman; I was, in fact, on the point of going out
again with any other book, no matter what. Fortunately a little
pile of _Wantonness_ was set out for customers near the counter,
and I took a copy and put down my money, without having had to
speak.
“I am grateful to Abel for not having sent me his book! I have not
been able to look through it without shame; shame, not so much
because of the book itself--in which, after all, I see more folly
than indecency--but shame to think that Abel, Abel Vautier, your
friend, should have written it. I searched in vain, from page
to page, for the ‘great talent’ which the _Temps_ reviewer has
discovered in it. In our little society of Le Havre, where Abel
is often mentioned, people say that the book is very successful.
I hear his incurable futility of mind called ‘lightness’ and
‘grace’; of course, I keep prudently silent, and have told no one
but you that I have read it. Poor Pasteur Vautier, who at first
looked deeply grieved--and very rightly--is now beginning to wonder
whether, instead, he hasn’t cause to feel proud; and all his
acquaintance are doing their best to persuade him so. Yesterday,
at Aunt Plantier’s, when Mm. V---- said to him abruptly: ‘You must
be very happy, Pasteur, over your son’s wonderful success!’ he
answered, rather abashed, ‘Oh! I haven’t got as far as that yet!’
‘But you will! But you will!’ said Aunt, innocently no doubt, but
in such an encouraging voice that everyone began to laugh, even he.
“What will it be when _The New Abelard_ is brought out? I hear it
is going to be acted at some theatre or other on the Boulevards,
and that the papers are beginning to talk of it already! Poor Abel!
Is that really the success he wants? Will he be satisfied with that?
“Yesterday in the _Interior Consolation_ I read these words: ‘All
human glory, indeed all temporal honour, all worldly grandeur,
compared with Thy eternal glory, is vanity and foolishness.’ And I
thought, ‘Oh, God! I thank Thee that Thou hast chosen Jerome for
Thy eternal glory, compared with which the other is vanity and
foolishness.’”
The weeks and months went by in monotonous occupations; but as there
was nothing on which I could fasten my thoughts but memories or hopes,
I hardly noticed how slow the time was, how long the hours.
My uncle and Alissa were to go in June to the neighbourhood of Nîmes on
a visit to Juliette, who was expecting her baby about that time. Less
favourable news of her health made them hasten their departure.
“Your last letter, addressed to Le Havre,” wrote Alissa, “arrived
after we had left. I cannot explain by what accident it reached
me here only a week later. During all that week I went about
with a soul that was only half a soul, a shivering, pitiful,
beggarly soul. Oh, my brother! I am only truly myself--more than
myself--when I am with you.
“Juliette is better again. We are daily expecting her confinement,
without undue anxiety. She knows that I am writing to you this
morning. The day after our arrival at Aigues-Vives, she said to me:
‘And Jerome? What has become of him? Does he write to you still?’
And as I couldn’t but tell her the truth: ‘When you write to him,’
she said, ‘tell him that ...’ she hesitated a moment, and then,
smiling very sweetly, went on: ‘that I am cured.’ I was rather
afraid that in her letters, which are always so gay, she might be
acting a part and taking herself in by it. The things she makes her
happiness out of nowadays are so different from the things she had
dreamt of, the things on which it seemed her happiness ought to
have depended!... Ah! this, that we call _happiness_, how intimate
a part of the soul it is, and of what little importance are the
outside elements which seem to go to its making! I spare you all
the reflections I make during my walks along the _garigue_, when
what astonishes me most is that I don’t feel happier; Juliette’s
happiness ought to fill me with joy ... why does my heart give way
to an incomprehensible melancholy against which I am unable to
fight? The very beauty of the country, which I feel, which at any
rate I recognise, adds still further to this inexplicable sadness.
When you wrote to me from Italy, I was able to see everything
through you; now I feel as if I were depriving you of whatever I
look at without you. And then at Fongueusemare or at Le Havre I
had made myself a kind of rough-weather virtue, for use on rainy
days; here, this virtue seems out of place, and I feel uneasily
that there is no occasion for it. The laughter of the people and
the country jars upon me; perhaps what I call being sad is simply
not being so noisy as they. No doubt there was some pride in my joy
formerly, for at present, in the midst of this alien gaiety, what I
feel is not unlike humiliation.
“I have scarcely been able to pray since I have been here: I have
the childish feeling that God is no longer in the same place.
Good-bye; I must stop now. I am ashamed of this blasphemy, and of
my weakness, and of my sadness, and of confessing them, and of
writing you all this which I should tear up to-morrow if it were
not posted to-night....”
The next letter spoke only of the birth of her niece, whose godmother
she was to be, of Juliette’s joy and of my uncle’s, but of her own
feelings there was no further question.
Then there were letters dated from Fongueusemare again, where Juliette
came to stay with her in July.
“Edouard and Juliette left us this morning. It is my little niece
whom I regret most; when I see her again in six months’ time I
shall no longer recognise every one of her movements; she had
scarcely one which I hadn’t seen her invent. Growth is always so
mysterious and surprising; it is through failure of attention that
we are not oftener astonished at it. How many hours I have spent,
bending over the little cradle, where so many hopes lie centred.
By what selfishness, by what conceit, by what lack of desire for
improvement is it that development ceases so soon, and that every
creature becomes definitive, when still so far from God? Oh! if
we could, if we would but approach nearer to Him ... think, what
emulation!
“Juliette seems very happy. I was grieved at first to find that
she had given up her piano and her reading; but Edouard Teissières
doesn’t like music and hasn’t much taste for books; no doubt
Juliette is acting wisely in not seeking her pleasure where he
cannot follow her. On the other hand, she takes an interest in her
husband’s occupations and he tells her all about his business.
It has developed greatly this year; it pleases him to say that
it is because of his marriage, which has brought him an important
_clientèle_ at Le Havre. Robert accompanied him the last time he
went on a business journey. Edouard is very kind to him, declares
he understands his character and doesn’t despair of seeing him take
seriously to this kind of work.
“Father is much better; the sight of his daughter’s happiness
has made him young again; he is interesting himself again in the
farm and the garden, and has just asked me to go on with our
reading aloud, which we had begun with Miss Ashburton and which
was interrupted by the Teissières’ visit. I am reading them Baron
Hübner’s travels, and enjoy them very much myself. I shall have
more time now for my own reading too; but I want some advice from
you; this morning I took up several books, one after the other,
without feeling a taste for any of them!”
Alissa’s letters, henceforward, became more troubled, more pressing.
“The fear of troubling you prevents me from telling you how much
I want you,” she wrote towards the end of the summer. “Every day
that has to be got through before I see you again weighs on me,
oppresses me. Another two months! It seems longer than all the
rest of the time which has already gone by without you! Everything
I take up to while away the hours, seems nothing but an absurd
stop-gap, and I cannot set myself to anything. My books are without
virtue and without charm; my walks have no attraction; Nature has
lost her glamour; the garden is emptied of colour, of scent. I
envy you your fatigue-parties and your compulsory drills which
are constantly dragging you out of yourself, tiring you, hurrying
along your days, and, at night, flinging you, wearied out, to your
sleep. The stirring description you gave me of the manœuvres,
haunts me. For the last few nights I have been sleeping badly,
and several times I have been woken up with a start by the bugles
sounding reveille ... I actually heard them. I can so well imagine
the intoxication of which you speak, the morning rapture, the
light-headedness almost ... How beautiful the plateau of Malzéville
must have been in the icy radiance of dawn!
“I have not been quite so well lately; oh! nothing serious. I think
I am just looking forward to your coming a little too much.”
And six weeks later:
“This is my last letter, my friend. However uncertain the date
of your return may be, it cannot be delayed much longer. I shall
not be able to write to you any more. I should have preferred our
meeting to have been at Fongueusemare, but the weather has broken;
it is very cold, and father talks of nothing but going back to
town. Now that Juliette and Robert are no longer with us we could
easily take you in, but it is better that you should go to Aunt
Félicie’s, who will be glad, too, to have you.
“As the day of our meeting comes near, I look forward to it with
growing anxiety, almost with apprehension. I seem now to dread your
coming that I so longed for; I try not to think of it; I imagine
your ring at the bell, your step on the stairs, and my heart stops
beating or hurts me ... And whatever you do, don’t expect me to be
able to speak to you. I feel my past comes to an end here; I see
nothing beyond; my life stops....”
Four days later, however--a week, that is, before I was liberated from
my military service--I received one more letter, a very short one:
“My friend, I entirely approve of your not wanting to prolong
beyond measure your stay at Le Havre and the time of our first
meeting. What should we have to say to each other that we have not
already written? So if the business connected with your examination
calls you to Paris as early as the 28th, don’t hesitate, don’t even
regret that you are not able to give us more than two days. Shall
we not have all our lives?”