A SUMMARY
The workmen manifest mistrust and even dislike towards me. Why? I
don't know; but my good intentions have gradually got weary.
One after another, sundry women have occupied my life. Antonia Véron
was first. Her marriage and mine, their hindrance and restriction,
threw us back upon each other as of yore. We found ourselves alone one
day in my house--where nothing ever used to happen, and she offered me
her lips, irresistibly. The appeal of her sensuality was answered by
mine, then, and often later. But the pleasure constantly restored,
which impelled me towards her, always ended in dismal enlightenments.
She remained a capricious and baffling egotist, and when I came away
from her house across the dark suburb among a host of beings vanishing,
like myself, I only brought away the memory of her nervous and
irritating laugh, and that new wrinkle which clung to her mouth like an
implement.
Then younger desires destroyed the old, and gallant adventures begot
one another. It is all over with this one and that one whom I adored.
When I see them again, I wonder that I can say, at one and the same
time, of a being who has not changed, "How I loved her!" and, "How I
have ceased to love her!"
All the while performing as a duty my daily task, all the while taking
suitable precautions so that Marie may not know and may not suffer, I
am looking for the happiness which lives. And truly, when I have a
sense of some new assent wavering and making ready, or when I am on the
way to a first rendezvous, I feel myself gloriously uplifted, and equal
to everything!
This fills my life. Desire wears the brain as much as thought wears
it. All my being is agog for chances to shine and to be shared. When
they say in my presence of some young woman that, "she is not happy," a
thrill of joy tears through me.
On Sundays, among the crowds, I have often felt my heart tighten with
distress as I watch the unknown women. Reverie has often held me all
day because of one who has gone by and disappeared, leaving me a clear
vision of her curtained room, and of herself, vibrating like a harp.
She, perhaps, was the one I should have always loved; she whom I seek
gropingly, desperately, from each to the next. Ah, what a delightful
thing to see and to think of a distant woman always is, whoever she may
be!
There are moments when I suffer, and am to be pitied. Assuredly, if
one could read me really, no one would pity me. And yet all men are
like me. If they are gifted with acceptable physique they dream of
headlong adventures, they attempt them, and our heart never stands
still. But no one acknowledges that, no one, ever.
Then, there were the women who turned me a cold shoulder; and among
them all Madame Pierron, a beautiful and genteel woman of twenty-five
years, with her black fillets and her marble profile, who still
retained the obvious awkwardness and vacant eye of young married women.
Tranquil, staid and silent, she came and went and lived, totally blind
to my looks of admiration.
This perfect unconcern aggravated my passion. I remember my pangs one
morning in June, when I saw some feminine linen spread upon the green
hedge within her garden. The delicate white things marshaled there
were waiting, stirred by the leaves and the breeze; so that Spring lent
them frail shape and sweetness--and life. I remember, too, a gaunt
house, scorching in the sun, and a window which flashed and then shut!
The window stayed shut, like a slab. All the world was silent; and
that splendid living being was walled up there. And last, I have
recollection of an evening when, in the bluish and dark green and
chalky landscape of the town and its rounded gardens, I saw that window
lighted up. A narrow glimmer of rose and gold was enframed there, and
I could distinguish, leaning on the sill that overhung the town, in the
heart of that resplendence, a feminine form which stirred before my
eyes in inaccessible forbearance. Long did I watch with shaking knees
that window dawning upon space, as the shepherd watches the rising of
Venus. That evening, when I had come in and was alone for a
moment--Marie was busy below in the kitchen--alone in our unattractive
room, I retired to the starry window, beset by immense thoughts. These
spaces, these separations, these incalculable durations--they all
reduce us to dust, they all have a sort of fearful splendor from which
we seek defense in our hiding.
* * * * * *
I have not retained a definite recollection of a period of jealousy
from which I suffered for a year. From certain facts, certain profound
changes of mood in Marie, it seemed to me that there was some one
between her and me. But beyond vague symptoms and these terrible
reflections on her, I never knew anything. The truth, everywhere
around me, was only a phantom of truth. I experienced acute internal
wounds of humiliation and shame, of rebellion! I struggled feebly, as
well as I could, against a mystery too great for me, and then my
suspicions wore themselves out. I fled from the nightmare, and by a
strong effort I forgot it. Perhaps my imputations had no basis; but it
is curious how one ends in only believing what one wants to believe.
* * * * * *
Something which had been plotting a long while among the Socialist
extremists suddenly produced a stoppage of work at the factory, and
this was followed by demonstrations which rolled through the terrified
town. Everywhere the shutters went up. The business people blotted
out their shops, and the town looked like a tragic Sunday.
"It's a revolution!" said Marie to me, turning pale, as Benoît cried to
us from the step of our porch the news that the workmen were marching.
"How does it come about that you knew nothing at the factory?"
An hour later we learned that a delegation composed of the most
dangerous ringleaders was preceding the army of demonstrators,
commissioned to extort outrageous advantages, with threats, from
Messrs. Gozlan.
Our quarter had a loose and dejected look. People went furtively,
seeking news, and doors half opened regretfully. Here and there groups
formed and lamented in undertones the public authority's lack of
foresight, the insufficient measures for preserving order.
Rumors were peddled about on the progress of the demonstration.
"They're crossing the river."
"They're at the Calvary cross-roads."
"It's a march against the castle!"
I went into Fontan's. He was not there, and some men were talking in
the twilight of the closed shutters.
"The Baroness is in a dreadful way. She's seen a dark mass in the
distance. Some young men of the aristocracy have armed themselves and
are guarding her. She says it's another Jacquerie[1] rising!"
[Footnote 1: A terrible insurrection of the French peasantry in
1358.--Tr.]
"Ah, my God! What a mess!" said Crillon.
"It's the beginning of the end!" asserted old Daddy Ponce, shaking his
grayish-yellow forehead, all plaited with wrinkles.
Time went by--still no news. What are they doing yonder? What shall
we hear next?
At last, towards three o'clock Postaire is framed in the doorway,
sweating and exultant. "It's over! It's all right, my lad!" he gasps;
"I can vouch for it that they all arrived together at the Gozlans'
villa. Messrs. Gozlan were there. The delegates, I can vouch for it
that they started shouting and threatening, my lad! 'Never mind that!'
says one of the Messrs. Gozlan, 'let's have a drink first; I'll vouch
for it we'll talk better after!' There was a table and champagne, I'll
vouch for it. They gave 'em it to drink, and then some more and then
some more. I'll vouch for it they sent themselves something down, my
lad, into their waistcoats. I can vouch for it that the bottles of
champagne came like magic out of the ground. Fontan kept always
bringing them as though he was coining them. Got to admit it was an
extra-double-special guaranteed champagne, that you want to go cautious
with. So then, after three-quarters of an hour, nearly all the
deputation were drunk. They spun round, tongue-tied, and embraced each
other,--I can vouch for it. There were some that stuck it, but they
didn't count, my lad! The others didn't even know what they'd come
for. And the bosses; they'd had a fright, and they didn't half wriggle
and roar with laughing--I'll vouch for it, my lad! An' then,
to-morrow, if they want to start again, there'll be troops here!"
Joyful astonishment--the strike had been drowned in wine! And we
repeated to each other, "To-morrow there'll be the military!"
"Ah!" gaped Crillon, rolling wonder-struck eyes, "That's clever! Good;
that's clever, that is! Good, old chap----"
He laughed a heavy, vengeful laugh, and repeated his familiar refrain
full-throated: "The sovereign people that can't stand on its own
legs!"
By the side of a few faint-hearted citizens who had already, since the
morning, modified their political opinions, a great figure rises before
my eyes--Fontan. I remember that night, already long ago, when a
chance glimpse through the vent-hole of his cellar showed me shiploads
of bottles of champagne heaped together, and pointed like shells. For
some future day he foresaw to-day's victory. He is really clever, he
sees clearly and he sees far. He has rescued law and order by a sort
of genius.
The constraint which has weighed all day on our gestures and words
explodes in delight. Noisily we cast off that demeanor of conspirators
which has bent our shoulders since morning. The windows that were
closed during the weighty hours of the insurrection are opened wide;
the houses breathe again.
"We're saved from that gang!" people say, when they approach each
other.
This feeling of deliverance pervades the most lowly. On the step of
the little blood-red restaurant I spy Monsieur Mielvaque, hopping for
joy. He is shivering, too, in his thin gray coat, cracked with
wrinkles, that looks like wrapping paper; and one would say that his
dwindled face had at long last caught the hue of the folios he
desperately copies among his long days and his short nights, to pick up
some sprigs of extra pay. There he stands, not daring to enter the
restaurant (for a reason he knows too well); but how delighted he is
with the day's triumph for society! And Mademoiselle Constantine, the
dressmaker, incurably poor and worn away by her sewing-machine, is
overjoyed. She opens wide the eyes which seem eternally full of tears,
and in the grayish abiding half-mourning of imperfect cleanliness, in
pallid excitement, she claps her hands.
Marie and I can hear the furious desperate hammering of Brisbille in
his forge, and we begin to laugh as we have not laughed for a long
time.
At night, before going to sleep, I recall my former democratic fancies.
Thank God, I have escaped from a great peril! I can see it clearly by
the terror which the workmen's menace spread in decent circles, and by
the universal joy which greeted their recoil! My deepest tendencies
take hold of me again for good, and everything settles down as before.
* * * * * *
Much time has gone by. It is ten years now since I was married, and in
that lapse of time there is hardly a happening that I remember, unless
it be the disillusion of the death of Marie's rich godmother, who left
us nothing. There was the failure of the Pocard scheme, which was only
a swindle and ruined many small people. Politics pervaded the scandal,
while certain people hurried with their money to Monsieur Boulaque,
whose scheme was much more safe and substantial. There was also my
father-in-law's illness and his death, which was a great shock to
Marie, and put us into black clothes.
I have not changed. Marie _has_ somewhat. She has got stouter; her
eyelids look tired and red, and she buries herself in silences. We are
no longer quite in accord in details of our life. She who once always
said "Yes," is now primarily disposed to say "No." If I insist she
defends her opinion, obstinately, sourly; and sometimes dishonestly.
For example, in the matter of pulling down the partition downstairs, if
people had heard our high voices they would have thought there was a
quarrel. Following some of our discussions, she keeps her face
contracted and spiteful, or assumes the martyr's air, and sometimes
there are moments of hatred between us.
Often she says, while talking of something else, "Ah, if we had had a
child, all would have been different!"
I am becoming personally negligent, through a sort of idleness, against
which I have not sufficient grounds for reaction. When we are by
ourselves, at meal times, my hands are sometimes questionable. From
day to day, and from month to month, I defer going to the dentist and
postpone the attention required. I am allowing my molars to get
jagged.
Marie never shows any jealousy, nor even suspicion about my personal
adventures. Her trust is almost excessive! She is not very
far-seeing, or else I am nothing very much to her, and I have a grudge
against her for this indifference.
And now I see around me women who are too young to love me. That most
positive of obstacles, the age difference, begins to separate me from
the amorous. And yet I am not surfeited with love, and I yearn towards
youth! Marthe, my little sister-in-law, said to me one day, "Now that
you're old----" That a child of fifteen years, so freshly dawned and
really new, can bring herself to pass this artless judgment on a man of
thirty-five--that is fate's first warning, the first sad day which
tells us at midsummer that winter will come.
One evening, as I entered the room, I indistinctly saw Marie, sitting
and musing by the window. As I came in she got up--it was Marthe! The
light from the sky, pale as a dawn, had blenched the young girl's
golden hair and turned the trace of a smile on her cheek into something
like a wrinkle. Cruelly, the play of the light showed her face faded
and her neck flabby; and because she had been yawning, even her eyes
were watery, and for some seconds the lids were sunk and reddened.
The resemblance of the two sisters tortured me. This little Marthe,
with her luxurious and appetizing color, her warm pink cheeks and moist
lips; this plump adolescent whose short skirt shows her curving calves,
is an affecting picture of what Marie was. It is a sort of terrible
revelation. In truth Marthe resembles, more than the Marie of to-day
does, the Marie whom I formerly loved; the Marie who came out of the
unknown, whom I saw one evening sitting on the rose-tree seat, shining,
silent--in the presence of love.
It required a great effort on my part not to try, weakly and vainly, to
approach Marthe--the impossible dream, the dream of dreams! She has a
little love affair with a youngster hardly molted into adolescence, and
rather absurd, whom one catches sight of now and again as he slips away
from her side; and that day when she sang so much in spite of herself,
it was because a little rival was ill. I am as much a stranger to her
girlish growing triumph and to her thoughts as if I were her enemy!
One morning when she was capering and laughing, flower-crowned, at the
doorstep, she looked to me like a being from another world.
* * * * * *
One winter's day, when Marie had gone out and I was arranging my
papers, I found a letter I had written not long before, but had not
posted, and I threw the useless document on the fire. When Marie came
back in the evening, she settled herself in front of the fire to dry
herself, and to revive it for the room's twilight; and the letter,
which had been only in part consumed, took fire again. And suddenly
there gleamed in the night a shred of paper with a shred of my
writing--"_I love you as much as you love me_!"
And it was so clear, the inscription that flamed in the darkness, that
it was not worth while even to attempt an explanation.
We could not speak, nor even look at each other! In the fatal
communion of thought which seized us just then, we turned aside from
each other, even shadow-veiled as we were. We fled from the truth! In
these great happenings we become strangers to each other for the reason
that we never knew each other profoundly. We are vaguely separated on
earth from everybody else, but we are mightily distant from our
nearest.
* * * * * *
After all these things, my former life resumed its indifferent course.
Certainly I am not so unhappy as they who have the bleeding wound of a
bereavement or remorse, but I am not so delighted with life as I once
hoped to be. Ah, men's love and women's beauty are too short-lived in
this world; and yet, is it not only thereby that we and they exist? It
might be said that love, so pure a thing, the only one worth while in
life, is a crime, since it is always punished sooner or later. I do
not understand. We are a pitiful lot; and everywhere about us--in our
movements, within our walls, and from hour to hour, there is a stifling
mediocrity. Fate's face is gray.
Notwithstanding, my personal position has established itself and
progressively improved. I am getting three hundred and sixty francs a
month, and besides, I have a share in the profits of the litigation
office--about fifty francs a month. It is a year and a half since I
was stagnating in the little glass office, to which Monsieur Mielvaque
has been promoted, succeeding me. Nowadays they say to me, "You're
lucky!" They envy me--who once envied so many people. It astonishes
me at first, then I get used to it.
I have restored my political plans, but this time I have a rational and
normal policy in view. I am nominated to succeed Crillon in the Town
Council. There, no doubt, I shall arrive sooner or later. I continue
to become a personality by the force of circumstances, without my
noticing it, and without any real interest in me on the part of those
around me.
Quite a piece of my life has now gone by. When sometimes I think of
that, I am surprised at the length of the time elapsed; at the number
of the days and the years that are dead. It has come quickly, and
without much change in myself on the other hand; and I turn away from
that vision, at once real and supernatural. And yet, in spite of
myself, my future appears before my eyes--and its end. My future will
resemble my past; it does so already. I can dimly see all my life,
from one end to the other, all that I am, all that I shall have been.