_October 6._
Decidedly, autumn is here. Frosts which were not expected so soon have
browned the last flowers of the garden. The dahlias, the poor dahlias,
witnesses of Monsieur's amorous timidity, are dried up; dried up also
are the big sunflowers that mounted guard at the kitchen-door. There
is nothing left in the devastated flower-beds,--nothing but a few
sorry-looking geraniums here and there, and five or six clusters of
asters, whose blue flowers--the dull blue of rottenness--are bending
toward the ground in anticipation of death. The garden-plots of
Captain Mauger, whom I saw just now over the hedge, present a scene of
veritable disaster, and everything is of the color of tobacco.
The trees, through the fields, are beginning to turn yellow and to lose
their foliage, and the sky is funereal. For four days we have been
living in a thick fog, a brown fog that smelt of soot and that did not
dissipate even in the afternoon. Now it is raining, an icy, beating
rain, which a fierce wind, blowing in squalls from the northwest,
occasionally intensifies.
Ah! I am not comfortably situated here. In my room it is bitter cold.
The wind blows into it, and the water penetrates the cracks in the
roof, principally around the two windows which stingily illuminate
this dark hole. And the noise of lifting slates, of shocks that shake
the roof, of creaking timbers and of squeaking hinges, is deafening.
In spite of the urgent need of repairs, I have had all the difficulty
in the world in getting Madame to order the plumber to come to-morrow
morning. And I do not dare yet to ask for a stove, although, being very
chilly, I feel that I shall not be able to live in this mortal room
through the winter. This evening, to stop the wind and the rain, I have
had to stuff old skirts into the cracks. And this weather-vane above my
head, never ceasing to turn on its rusty pivot, at times shrieks out so
sharply in the night that one would take it for Madame's voice in the
corridors, after a scene.
My first feelings of revolt having quieted down a little, my life
proceeds here monotonously and stupidly; and I am gradually getting
accustomed to it, without too great moral suffering. No one ever
comes here; one would take it for a cursed house. And, outside of the
petty domestic incidents that I have related, never does anything
happen. All the days are alike, and all the tasks, and all the faces.
It is ennui and death. But I am beginning to be so stupid that I am
accommodating myself to this ennui, as if it were a natural thing. Even
the deprivation of love does not cause me too much embarrassment, and
I endure without too painful struggles this chastity to which I am
condemned, or to which, rather, I have condemned myself,--for I have
abandoned Monsieur, I have dropped Monsieur finally. Monsieur bores me,
and I am angry with him for having, out of cowardice, disparaged me
so grossly in talking with Madame. Not that he is becoming resigned,
or ceasing to pay attention to me. On the contrary, he persists in
revolving about me, with eyes that grow rounder and rounder, and a
mouth that grows more and more frothy. According to an expression that
I have read in I have forgotten what book, it is always toward my
trough that he drives the pigs of his desire to drink.
Now that the days are shortening, Monsieur spends the afternoon at his
desk, where he does the devil knows what, occupying his time in moving
about old papers without reason, in checking off seed-catalogues and
medical advertisements, and in distractedly turning the leaves of old
hunting-books. You should see him when I go in at night to close the
blinds or attend to his fire. Then he rises, coughs, sneezes, clears
his throat, runs against the furniture, upsets objects, and tries in
all sorts of stupid ways to attract my attention. It is enough to make
one twist with laughter. I make a pretence of hearing nothing, of not
understanding his puerile tricks; and I go away, silent and haughty,
without looking at him any more than if he were not there.
Last evening, however, we exchanged the following brief remarks:
"Célestine!"
"Monsieur desires something?"
"Célestine, you are unkind to me; why are you unkind to me?"
"Why, Monsieur knows very well that I am a loose creature!...."
"Oh! come!"
"A dirty thing!...."
"Oh! come, come!"
"And possibly diseased."
"Oh! heavens! Célestine! Come, Célestine, listen to me!"
"Bah!"
Oh! I have enough of him. It no longer amuses me to upset his head and
his heart by my coquetries.
In fact, nothing amuses me here. And the worst of it is that nothing
bores me, either. Is it the air of this dirty country, the silence of
the fields, the heavy, coarse food that I eat? A feeling of torpor is
taking possession of me,--a feeling, moreover, which is not without
charm. At any rate, it dulls my sensibility, deadens my dreams, and
helps me to endure Madame's insolence and scolding. Thanks to it also,
I feel a certain content in chattering, at night, for hours, with
Marianne and Joseph,--this strange Joseph who does not go out any more,
and seems to find pleasure in remaining with us. The idea that Joseph
perhaps is in love with me,--well, that flatters me. Yes, indeed, I
have got to that point. And then I read, and read,--novels, novels, and
more novels. I have reread Paul Bourget. His books do not excite my
enthusiasm as they used to. In fact, they tire me, and I consider them
false and superficial. They are conceived in that state of soul which
I know well from having experienced it when, dazzled and fascinated, I
came in contact with wealth and luxury. I am all over it to-day, and
these things no longer astonish me. They still astonish Paul Bourget.
Oh! I would not be so silly now as to go to him for psychological
explanations, for I know better than he what there is behind a parlor
portière and under a lace dress.
A thing to which I cannot get accustomed is the receiving of no
letters from Paris. Every morning, when the carrier comes, I feel a
sort of laceration in my heart at realizing that I am so abandoned by
everybody; and it is in this way that I can best measure the extent of
my solitude. In vain have I written to my old comrades, and especially
to Monsieur Jean, urgent and disconsolate letters; in vain have I
implored them to pay some attention to me, to take me out of my hell,
to find me a place in Paris, however humble it may be. Not one of them
answers me. I would never have believed in so much indifference, in so
much ingratitude.
And this forces me to cling more tightly to what I have left,--my
memories and the past. Memories in which, in spite of everything,
joy dominates suffering; a past which renews my hope that all is
not over with me, and that it is not true that an accidental fall
means irreparable ruin. That is why, alone in my room, while, on the
other side of my partition, Marianne's snoring represents to me the
distressing present, I try to drown this ridiculous sound in the sound
of my old-time joys, and I passionately scrutinize this past, in order
to reconstruct from its scattered bits the illusion of a future.
This very day, October 6, is a date full of recollections. During the
five years that have elapsed since the tragedy which I now desire to
relate, all the details have remained deep-rooted within me. There is
a dead boy in this tragedy, a poor little dead boy, sweet and pretty,
whom I killed by giving him too many caresses and too many joys,
by giving him too much of life. And during the five years since he
died,--died of me,--this will be the first time that I have not gone,
on the sixth of October, to cover his grave with the usual flowers.
But of these flowers, which I shall not carry to his grave, I will
make a more durable bouquet, which will adorn and perfume his beloved
memory better than the graveyard flowers adorn and perfume the bit of
earth in which he sleeps. For the flowers of which the bouquet that I
shall make will be composed I will gather, one by one, in the garden of
my heart,--in the garden of my heart, where not only grow the mortal
flowers of debauchery, but where bloom also the great white lilies of
love.
I remember that it was on a Saturday. At the employment-bureau in the
Rue du Colisée, which I had visited regularly every morning for a week
in search of a place, I was introduced to an old lady in mourning.
Never had I met a face more engaging, a look more gentle, manners more
simple; never had I heard more winning words. She received me with a
great politeness that warmed my heart.
"My child," she said to me, "Mme. Paulhat-Durand [that was the name of
the woman who kept the employment-bureau] has spoken to me of you in
terms of the highest praise. I believe that you deserve it, for you
have an intelligent face, frank and gay, which pleases me greatly. I am
in need of a person worthy of trust and capable of devotion. Devotion!
Ah! I know that I am asking a thing that it is not easy to give; for,
after all, you do not know me, and you have no reason to be devoted to
me. Let me explain to you my situation. But do not remain standing, my
child; come and sit down beside me."
The moment I am spoken to gently, the moment that I am not looked
upon as a being outside of others and on the fringe of life, as
something between a dog and a parrot, in that moment I am touched,
and at once I feel the soul of my childhood reborn within me. All my
spite, all my hatred, all my spirit of rebellion, I forget as by a
miracle, and toward the people who speak to me in a human fashion I
feel no sentiments save those of sacrifice and love. I know also, from
experience, that it is only the unfortunate who place the suffering of
the humble on a footing with their own. There is always insolence and
distance in the kindness of the fortunate.
When I had taken my seat beside this venerable lady in mourning, I
already loved her; I really loved her.
She sighed:
"It is not a very gay place that I offer you, my child."
With a sincerity of enthusiasm that did not escape her, I earnestly
protested:
"That does not matter, Madame. Anything that Madame may ask of me I
will do."
And it was true. I was ready for anything.
She thanked me with a kind and tender look, and continued:
"Well, this is it. I have had many trials in my life. I have lost all
of my family, with the exception of a grandson, who now, he also, is
threatened with death from the terrible disease of which the others
have died."
Fearing to pronounce the name of this terrible disease, she indicated
it to me by placing upon her chest her old hand, gloved in black, and
then, with a more painful expression, continued:
"Poor little fellow! He is a charming child, an adorable being, in
whom I have placed my last hopes. For, when he is gone, I shall be all
alone. And, my God! what shall I do upon earth?"
Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with her handkerchief,
and went on:
"The doctors assure me that they can save him,--that the disease is
not yet deep-seated. They have prescribed a _régime_ from which they
expect very good results. Every afternoon Georges must take a sea-bath,
or, rather, he must dip himself for a second in the sea. Then his
whole body must be rubbed vigorously with a hair-glove, to stimulate
the circulation; then he must be obliged to drink a glass of old port;
and then he must lie stretched for at least an hour in a very warm
bed. That is what I want of you in the first place, my child. But
understand me well; what I specially want is youth, grace, gaiety,
life. In my house it is these things that are most lacking. I have
two very devoted servants, but they are old and sad, and possessed
of manias. Georges cannot endure them. And I myself, with my old
white head and my perpetual wearing of mourning,--I feel that I am an
affliction to him. And, what is worse still, I feel also that I often
am unable to hide from him my apprehensions. Oh! I know that this,
perhaps, is not exactly the _role_ for a young girl like you, beside so
young a boy as Georges; for he is only nineteen! The world undoubtedly
will find something to say about it. But I care not for the world; I
care only for my sick grandchild, and I have confidence in you. You are
a good woman, I suppose?"
"Oh! yes, Madame," I cried, certain in advance of being the sort of
saint of whom this disconsolate grandmother was in search, for the
salvation of her child.
"And he, the poor little one, my God! In his condition! In his
condition, you see, he needs, more than sea-baths perhaps, the
continual companionship of a pretty face, a fresh young laugh,
something to drive from his mind the idea of death, some one to give
him confidence in life. Will you undertake it?"
"I accept, Madame," I answered, moved to the depths of my being. "And
Madame may be sure that I will take good care of M. Georges."
It was agreed that I should enter upon my duties that very evening, and
that we should start on the next day but one for Houlgate, where the
lady in mourning had rented a beautiful villa near the beach.
The grandmother had not lied. M. Georges was a charming, an adorable
child. His beardless face had the loveliness of that of a beautiful
woman; womanly also were his indolent movements, and his long, white,
supple hands, through which could be seen the network of his veins.
But what ardent eyes! Pupils consumed by a dull fire, beneath eyelids
ringed with blue, and seemingly burned by the flaming gaze! What an
intense focus of thought, of passion, of sensibility, of intelligence,
of inner life! And to what an extent already had the red flowers of
death invaded his cheeks! It seemed as if it were not of disease,
as if it were not of death, that he was dying, but of an excess of
life, of the fever of life that was in him, gnawing at his organs and
withering his flesh. Oh! how pretty and how painful a spectacle! When
his grandmother took me to him, he was stretched on a long chair, and
holding in his long white hands an odorless rose. He received me, not
as a servant, but almost as a friend whom he expected. And from the
first moment I became attached to him with all the strength of my soul.
Our establishment at Houlgate was effected without incident, as our
journey had been also. Everything was ready, when we arrived. We
had only to take possession of the villa,--a roomy, elegant villa,
full of life and gaiety, and separated from the beach by a broad
terrace covered with wicker-chairs and tents of many colors. A stone
stairway, cut in the embankment, led to the sea, and against its lower
steps sounded the music of the waves when the tide was coming in. M.
Georges's room, on the ground floor, commanded an admirable view of the
sea from large bay-windows. My own room--not the room of a servant, but
that of a master--was opposite M. Georges's, across a passage-way, and
was hung with light cretonne. From its windows one looked out into a
little garden, where were growing some sorry-looking spindle-trees and
some sorrier-looking rose-bushes. To express in words my joy, my pride,
my emotion, and the pure and new elevation of mind that I felt at being
thus treated and petted, admitted, like a lady, to comfort, to luxury,
and to a share in that thing so vainly coveted which is called the
family; to explain how, by a simple wave of the wand of that miraculous
fairy, kindness, there came instantly an end to the recollection of
my past humiliations and a conception of all the duties laid upon me
by the dignity that belongs to a human being, and at last vouchsafed
to me,--is quite beyond me. But I can say at least that I really
perceived the magic of the transfiguration. Not only did the mirror
testify that I had suddenly become more beautiful, but my heart assured
me that I was really better. I discovered within me sources, sources,
sources,--inexhaustible sources, ever-flowing sources, of devotion,
of sacrifice, of heroism; and I had but one thought,--to save, by
intelligent care, by watchful fidelity, and by marvellous skill,--to
save M. Georges from death.
With a robust faith in my power of cure, I said in positive tones to
the poor grandmother, who was in a state of perpetual despair, and
often spent her days in weeping in the adjoining room:
"Do not weep, Madame. We will save him. I swear to you that we will
save him."
And, in fact, at the end of a fortnight's time, M. Georges was much
improved. A great change in his condition had taken place. The fits
of coughing had diminished in number and intensity; his sleep and
appetite were becoming more regular. He no longer had, in the night,
those copious and terrible sweats that left him gasping and exhausted
in the morning. His strength was so far recovered that we could take
long drives and short walks, without serious fatigue. It was a sort
of resurrection. As the weather was very fine, and the air very warm,
but tempered by the sea-breeze, on days when we did not leave the
premises we spent most of the time on the terrace, in the shelter of
the tents, awaiting the bathing hour,--the hour of "the little dip in
the sea," as M. Georges gaily called it. For he was gay, always gay;
never did he speak of his illness, never of death. I really believe
that in all those days he never once uttered the terrible word death.
On the other hand, he was much amused by my chatter, provoking it if
necessary; and I, confiding in his eyes, reassured by his heart, won
by his indulgence and his grace, told him everything that came into
my mind,--farces, follies, and songs. My little childhood, my little
desires, my little misfortunes, and my dreams, and my rebellions,
and my various experiences with ludicrous or infamous masters,--I
told him all, without much masking of the truth, for, young though he
was, and separated from the world, and shut up as he had always been,
he nevertheless, by a sort of prescience, by a marvelous divination
which the sick possess, understood life thoroughly. A real friendship,
that his nature surely facilitated, and that his solitude caused him
to desire, and, above all, that the intimate and constant care with
which I delighted his poor moribund flesh brought about, so to speak,
automatically, sprang up between us. I was happy to a degree that I
cannot picture, and my mind gained in refinement by incessant contact
with his.
M. Georges adored poetry. For entire hours, on the terrace, to the
music of the waves, or else at night in his room, he asked me to
read him the poems of Victor Hugo, of Baudelaire, of Verlaine, of
Mæterlinck. Often he closed his eyes, and lay motionless, with his
hands folded on his breast, and I, thinking that he was asleep, stopped
reading; but he smiled, and said:
"Go on, little one; I am not asleep. I can listen better so. I hear
your voice better. And your voice is charming."
Sometimes it was he who interrupted me. After concentrating his
thoughts, he slowly recited, with a prolongation of the rhythms,
the lines that had excited in him the greatest enthusiasm, and he
tried--oh! how I loved him for that!--to make me understand them, to
make me feel their beauty. One day he said to me,--and I have kept
these words as a relic:
"The sublimity of poetry, you see, lies in the fact that it does
not take an educated person to understand it and to love it. On the
contrary. The educated do not understand it, and generally they despise
it, because they have too much pride. To love poetry it is enough to
have a soul,--a little soul, naked, like a flower. Poets speak to the
souls of the simple, of the sad, of the sick. And that is why they are
eternal. Do you know that, when one has sensibility, one is always
something of a poet? And you yourself, little Célestine, have often
said to me things that are as beautiful as poetry."
"Oh! Monsieur Georges, you are making fun of me."
"Not in the least. And you are unaware that you have said these
beautiful things. And that is the delightful part of it."
For me those were unique hours; whatever destiny may bring me, they
will sing in my heart as long as I may live. I felt that indescribably
sweet sensation of becoming a new being, of witnessing, so to speak,
from minute to minute, the revelation of something unknown in me,
and which yet was I. And to-day, in spite of worse falls, thoroughly
reconquered as I am by all that is bad and embittered in me, if I have
kept this passionate fondness for reading, and sometimes that impulse
toward things superior to my social environment and to myself; if,
trying to regain confidence in the spontaneity of my nature, I have
dared--I who am so ignorant--to write this diary,--it is to M. Georges
that I owe it.
Oh! yes, I was happy,--happy especially at seeing the pretty patient
gradually reborn, his flesh swelling out and his face blooming again,
through the flow of a new sap; happy at the joy, and the hopes, and the
certainties, that the rapidity of this resurrection gave to the entire
house, of which I was now the queen and the fairy. They attributed to
me, they attributed to the intelligence of my care, to the vigilance
of my devotion, and, more still perhaps, to my constant gaiety, to my
youth so full of charm, to my surprising influence over Georges, this
incomparable miracle. And the poor grandmother thanked me, overwhelmed
me with gratitude and blessings, and also with presents, like a nurse
to whom has been confided a baby almost dead, and who, with her pure
and healthy milk, reconstructs his organs, brings back his smile, and
restores him to life.
Sometimes, forgetful of her station, she took my hands, caressed them,
kissed them, and, with tears of joy, said to me:
"I knew very well ... I ... when I saw you ... I knew very well!"
And already projects were being formed,--journeys to the land of
sunshine, fields full of roses!
"You shall never leave us; never more, my child."
Her enthusiasm often embarrassed me, but I finally came to believe that
I deserved it. If, as many others would have done in my place, I had
chosen to abuse her generosity ... Oh, misfortune!
And what was to happen happened.
On the day of which I speak, the weather had been very warm, very
heavy, and very threatening. Across the sky, above the leaden and
perfectly flat sea, rolled stifling clouds, thick red clouds, through
which the storm could not break. M. Georges had not gone out, even to
the terrace, and we had remained in his room. More nervous than usual,
a nervousness due undoubtedly to the electricity in the atmosphere, he
had even refused to let me read poetry to him.
"That would tire me," he said. "And, besides, I feel that you would
read very badly to-day."
He had gone into the _salon_, where he had tried to play a little on
the piano. The piano having plagued him, he had at once come back
into the room, where he had sought to divert himself for a moment by
drawing, as it seemed to me, some feminine profiles. But he had not
been slow in abandoning paper and pencil, fuming with some impatience:
"I cannot; I am not in the mood. My hand trembles. I don't know what is
the matter with me. And you,--there is something the matter with you,
too. You are restless."
Finally he had stretched himself on his long chair, near the large
bay-window, through which one could see a vast expanse of water.
Fishing-boats in the distance, fleeing from the ever-threatening storm,
were re-entering the port of Trouville. With a distracted look he
followed their manoeuvres and their grey sails.
As M. Georges had said, I was restless; I could not keep still; I
was continually moving about, to find something with which to occupy
his mind. Of course I found nothing, and my agitation did not have a
quieting influence on his.
"Why do you move about so? Why do you enervate yourself? Stay beside
me."