IN THE FURNACE
My heart yearned to set out and yet I delayed; some secret influence
rooted me to the spot.
When Smith came I knew no repose from the time he entered the room. How
is it that sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness?
One day a word, a flush, a glance, made me shudder; another day, another
glance, another word, threw me into uncertainty. Why were they both so
sad? Why was I as motionless as a statue where I had formerly been
violent? Every evening in bed I said to myself: "Let me see; let me
think that over." Then I would spring up, crying: "Impossible!" The
next day I did the same thing.
In Smith's presence, Brigitte treated me with more tenderness than when
we were alone. It happened one evening that some hard words escaped us;
when she heard his voice in the hall she came and sat on my knees.
As for him, it seemed to me he was always making an effort to control
himself. His gestures were carefully regulated; he spoke slowly and
prudently, so that his occasional moments of forgetfulness seemed all the
more striking.
Was it curiosity that tormented me? I remember that one day I saw a man
drowning near the Pont Royal. It was midsummer and we were rowing on the
river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge, when
suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and
fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some
hours later the body was found under a raft.
I shall never forget my experience as I was diving for that man. I
opened my eyes under the water and searched painfully here and there in
the dark corners about the pier; then I returned to the surface for
breath, then resumed my horrible search. I was filled with hope and
terror; the thought that I might feel myself seized by convulsive arms
allured me, and at the same time thrilled me with horror; when I was
exhausted with fatigue, I climbed back into my boat.
Unless a man is brutalized by debauchery, eager curiosity is one of his
marked traits. I have already remarked that I felt it on the occasion of
my first visit to Desgenais. I will explain my meaning.
The truth, that skeleton of appearances, ordains that every man,
whatsoever he be, shall come, in his day and hour, to touch the bones
that lie forever at the bottom of some chance experience. It is called
"knowing the world," and experience is purchased at that price. Some
recoil in terror before that test; others, feeble and affrighted,
vacillate. like shadows. Some, the best perhaps, die at once. The
large number forget, and thus all float on to death.
But there are some men, who, at the fell stroke of chance, neither die
nor forget; when it comes their turn to touch misfortune, otherwise
called truth, they approach it with a firm step and outstretched hand,
and, horrible to say! they mistake love for the livid corpse they have
found at the bottom of the river. They seize it, feel it, clasp it in
their arms; they are drunk with the desire to know; they no longer look
with interest upon things, except to see them pass; they do nothing
except doubt and test; they ransack the world as though they were God's
spies; they sharpen their thoughts into arrows, and give birth to a
monster.
Roues, more than all others, are exposed to that fury, and the reason is
very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface, that of the roue is the
rapid current swirling over and over, and at times touching the bottom.
Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with a modest
girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the night in
riotous feasting. The last words they addressed to a beautiful and
virtuous woman are still on their lips; they repeat them and burst into
laughter. Shall I say it? Do they not raise, for some pieces of silver,
the vesture of chastity, that robe so full of mystery, which respects the
being it embellishes and engirds her without touching? What idea can
they have of the world? They are like comedians in the greenroom.
Who, more than they, is skilled in that delving to the bottom of things,
in that groping at once profound and impious? See how they speak of
everything; always in terms the most barren, crude, and abject;
such words appear true to them; the rest is only parade, convention,
prejudice. Let them tell a story, let them recount some experience,
they will always use the same dirty and material expressions. They do
not say "That woman loved me;" they say: "I betrayed that woman;" they do
not say: "I love;" they say, "I desire;" they never say: "If God wills;"
they say: "If I will." I do not know what they think of themselves and
of such monologues as these.
Hence, of a necessity, either from idleness or curiosity, while they
strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others
still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to
stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle
them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others
go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting.
But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has
taken place in him during an hour passed in the society of brutal
reality! He says to himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have
just left!" And from that day he is disturbed and uneasy.
Sinful curiosity is a vile malady born of impure contact. It is the
prowling instinct of phantoms who raise the lids of tombs; it is an
inexplicable torture with which God punishes those who have sinned;
they wish to believe that all sin as they have done, and would be
disappointed perhaps to find that it was not so. But they inquire,
they search, they dispute; they wag their heads from side to side as does
an architect who adjusts a column, and thus strive to find what they
desire to find. Given proof of evil, they laugh at it; doubtful of evil,
they swear that it exists; the good they refuse to recognize.
"Who knows?" Behold the grand formula, the first words that Satan spoke
when he saw heaven closing against him. Alas! for how many evils are
those words responsible? How many disasters and deaths, how many strokes
of fateful scythes in the ripening harvest of humanity! How many hearts,
how many families where there is naught but ruin, since that word was
first heard! "Who knows! Who knows!" Loathsome words! Rather than
pronounce them one should be as sheep who graze about the slaughter-house
and know it not. That is better than to be called a strong spirit, and
to read La Rochefoucauld.
What better illustration could I present than the one I have just given?
My mistress was ready to set out and I had but to say the word. Why did
I delay? What would have been the result if I had started at once on our
trip? Nothing but a moment of apprehension that would have been
forgotten after travelling three days. When with me, she had no thought
but of me; why should I care to solve a mystery that did not threaten my
happiness?
She would have consented, and that would have been the end of it. A kiss
on her lips and all would be well; instead of that, see what I did.
One evening when Smith had dined with us, I retired at an early hour and
left them together. As I closed my door I heard Brigitte order some tea.
In the morning I happened to approach her table, and, sitting beside the
teapot, I saw but one cup. No one had been in that room before me that
morning, so the servant could not have carried away anything that had
been used the night before. I searched everywhere for a second cup but
could find none.
"Did Smith stay late?" I asked of Brigitte.
"He left about midnight."
"Did you retire alone or did you call some one to assist you?"
"I retired alone; every one in the house was asleep."
I continued my search and my hands trembled. In what burlesque comedy is
there a jealous lover so stupid as to inquire what has become of a cup?
Why seek to discover whether Smith and Madame Pierson had drunk from the
same cup? What a brilliant idea that!
Nevertheless I found the cup and I burst into laughter, and threw it on
the floor with such violence that it broke into a thousand pieces.
I ground the pieces under my feet.
Brigitte looked at me without saying a word. During the two succeeding
days she treated me with a coldness that had something of contempt in it,
and I saw that she treated Smith with more deference and kindness than
usual. She called him Henri and smiled on him sweetly.
"I feel that the air would do me good," she said after dinner; "shall we
go to the opera, Octave? I would enjoy walking that far."
"No, I will stay here; go without me." She took Smith's arm and went
out. I remained alone all evening; I had paper before me, and was trying
to collect my thoughts in order to write, but in vain.
As a lonely lover draws from his bosom a letter from his mistress, and
loses himself in delightful revery, thus I shut myself up in solitude and
yielded to the sweet allurement of doubt. Before me were the two empty
seats which Brigitte and Smith had just occupied; I scrutinized them
anxiously as if they could tell me something. I revolved in my mind all
the things I had heard and seen; from time to time I went to the door and
cast my eyes over our trunks which had been piled against the wall for a
month; I opened them and examined the contents so carefully packed away
by those delicate little hands; I listened to the sound of passing
carriages; the slightest noise made me tremble. I spread out on the
table our map of Europe, and there, in the very presence of all my hopes,
in that room where I had conceived and had so nearly realized them, I
abandoned myself to the most frightful presentiments.
But, strange as it may seem, I felt neither anger nor jealousy, but a
terrible sense of sorrow and foreboding. I did not suspect, and yet I
doubted. The mind of man is so strangely formed that, with what he sees
and in spite of what he sees, he can conjure up a hundred objects of woe.
In truth his brain resembles the dungeons of the Inquisition, where the
walls are covered with so many instruments of torture that one is dazed,
and asks whether these horrible contrivances he sees before him are
pincers or playthings. Tell me, I say, what difference is there in
saying to my mistress: "All women deceive," or, "You deceive me?"
What passed through my mind was perhaps as subtle as the finest
sophistry; it was a sort of dialogue between the mind and the conscience.
"If I should lose Brigitte?" I said to the mind." She departs with
you," said the conscience." If she deceives me?"--"How can she deceive
you? Has she not made out her will asking for prayers for you?"--"If
Smith loves her?"--"Fool! What does it matter so long as you know that
she loves you?"--"If she loves me why is she sad?"--"That is her secret,
respect it."--"If I take her away with me, will she be happy?"--"Love her
and she will be."--" Why, when that man looks at her, does she seem to
fear to meet his glance?"--" Because she is a woman and he is young."--
"Why does that young man turn pale when she looks at him?"--"Because he
is a man and she is beautiful."--"Why, when I went to see him did he
throw himself into my arms, and why did he weep and beat his head with
his hands?"--"Do not seek to know what you must remain ignorant of."--
"Why can I not know these things?"--" Because you are miserable and weak,
and all mystery is of God."
"But why is it that I suffer? Why is it that my soul recoils in terror?"
--"Think of your father and do good."--"But why am I unable to do as he
did? Why does evil attract me to itself?"--"Get down on your knees and
confess; if you believe in evil it is because your ways have been evil."
--"If my ways were evil, was it my fault? Why did the good betray me?"--
"Because you are in the shadow, would you deny the existence of light?
If there are traitors, why are you one of them?"--"Because I am afraid of
becoming the dupe."--"Why do you spend your nights in watching? Why are
you alone now?"--"Because I think, I doubt, and I fear."--"When will you
offer your prayer?"--"When I believe. Why have they lied to me?"--
"Why do you lie, coward! at this very moment? Why not die if you can not
suffer?"
Thus spoke and groaned within me two voices, voices that were defiant and
terrible; and then a third voice cried out! "Alas! Alas! my innocence!
Alas! Alas! the days that were!"