"Oh! Monsieur Georges, you are not good. You are not behaving well. If
your grandmother were to come in and see you in this condition, you
would make her cry again."
Having raised himself a little on the cushions:
"In the first place, why do you call me 'Monsieur Georges'? You know
that I do not like it."
"But I cannot call you 'Monsieur Gaston'!"
"Call me 'Georges' for short, naughty girl."
"Oh! I could not; I could never do that!"
Then he had sighed:
"Is it not curious? Are you, then, still a poor little slave?"
Then he had lapsed into silence. And the rest of the day passed off,
half in enervation, half in silence, which was also an enervation, and
more painful.
In the evening, after dinner, the storm at last broke out. The wind
began to blow violently, the waves to beat against the embankment with
a heavy sullen sound. M. Georges would not go to bed. He felt that it
would be impossible for him to sleep, and in a bed sleepless nights
are so long! He on his long chair, I sitting near a little table on
which, veiled by a shade, was burning a lamp that shed a soft, pink
light about us, we said nothing. Although his eyes were more brilliant
than usual, M. Georges seemed calmer, and the pink reflection from the
lamp heightened his color, and outlined more clearly in the light the
features of his delicate and charming face. I was engaged in sewing.
Suddenly he said to me:
"Leave your work for a little while, Célestine, and sit beside me."
I always obeyed his desires, his caprices. At times he manifested an
effusive and enthusiastic friendship, which I attributed to gratitude.
This time I obeyed as usual.
"Nearer, still nearer," he exclaimed.
Then:
"Now give me your hand."
Without the slightest mistrust I allowed him to take my hand, which he
caressed.
"How pretty your hand is! And how pretty your eyes are! And how pretty
you are, altogether, altogether, altogether!"
He had often spoken to me of my kindness, but never had he told me
that I was pretty; at least, he had never told me so with such an air.
Surprised and, in reality, charmed by these words, which he uttered in
a grave and somewhat gasping voice, I instinctively drew back.
"No, no, do not go away; stay near me, close to me. You cannot know how
much good it does me to have you near me, how it warms me. See, I am
no longer nervous, agitated; I am no longer sick; I am content, happy,
very happy."
And, having chastely placed his arm about my waist, he obliged me to
sit down beside him on the long chair. And he asked:
"Are you uncomfortable so?"
I was not reassured. In his eyes burned a fire more ardent than ever.
His voice trembled more--with that trembling which I know,--oh! yes,
how I know it!--that trembling which is given to the voice of all men
by the violent desire of love. I was very much moved, and I was very
cowardly; my head was whirling a little. But, firmly resolved to defend
myself against him, and especially to energetically defend him against
himself, I answered in a childish way:
"Yes, Monsieur Georges, I am very uncomfortable; let me get up."
His arm did not leave my waist.
"No, no, I beg of you, be nice."
And in a tone the coaxing gentleness of which I cannot describe, he
added:
"You are very timid. What are you afraid of, then?"
At the same time he approached his face to mine, and I felt his warm
breath with its insipid odor,--something like an incense of death.
My heart seized with an inexpressible anguish, I cried:
"Monsieur Georges! Oh! Monsieur Georges, let me go. You will make
yourself sick. I beg of you! Let me go."
I did not dare to struggle, because of his weakness, out of respect for
the fragility of his members. I simply tried--and how carefully!--to
put away his hand, which, awkward, timid, trembling, was trying to
unhook my waist. And I repeated:
"Let me go! You are behaving very badly, Monsieur Georges. Let me go!"
His effort to hold me against him had tired him. His embrace soon
weakened. For a few seconds he breathed with greater difficulty, and
then a dry cough shook his chest.
"You see, Monsieur Georges," I said to him, with all the gentleness of
a maternal reproach, "you are wilfully making yourself sick. You will
listen to nothing. And all will have to be begun over again. Great
progress we shall make in this way! Be good, I beg of you! And, if you
were very nice, do you know what you would do? You would go to bed
directly."
He withdrew his hand, stretched out on the long chair, and, as I
replaced beneath his head the cushions that had slipped down, he sadly
sighed:
"After all, you are right; I ask your pardon."
"You have not to ask my pardon, Monsieur Georges; you have to be quiet."
"Yes, yes," he exclaimed, his eyes fixed on the spot in the ceiling
where the lamp made a circle of moving light. "I was a little mad ...
to have dreamed for a moment that you could love me,--me who have never
had love,--me who have never had anything but suffering. Why should
you love me? It would cure me to love you. Since you have been here
beside me, and since the beginning of my desire for you; since you have
been here with your youth, and your freshness, and your eyes, and your
hands,--your little silky hands, whose attentions are the gentlest of
caresses; since the time I began to dream of you alone,--I have felt
boiling within me, in my soul and in my body, new vigor, a wholly
unknown life. That is to say, I did feel that,--for now ... In short,
what do you expect? I was mad! And you, you are right."
I was greatly embarrassed. I knew not what to say; I knew not what
to do. Powerful and opposite feelings pulled me in all directions.
An impulse rushed me toward him, a sacred duty held me back. And in
a silly fashion, because I was not sincere, because I could not be
sincere in a struggle where these desires and this duty combatted with
equal force, I stammered:
"Monsieur Georges, be good. Do not think of these ugly things. It makes
you sick. Come, Monsieur Georges, be very nice."
But he repeated:
"Why should you love me? Truly, you are right in not loving me. You
think me ill. You fear to poison your mouth with the poisons of mine;
you are afraid of contracting my disease--the disease of which I am
dying, am I not?--from one of my kisses. You are right."
The cruel injustice of these words struck me to the heart.
"Do not say that, Monsieur Georges," I cried, wildly; "what you say is
horrible and wicked. And you really give me too much pain, too much
pain."
I seized his hands; they were moist and burning. I bent over him; his
breath had the raucous ardor of a forge.
"It is horrible, horrible!"
He continued:
"A kiss from you,---why! that meant my resurrection, my complete
restoration to life. Oh! you have believed seriously in your baths, in
your port wine, in your hair-glove. Poor little one! It is in your love
that I have bathed, it is the wine of your love that I have drunk, it
is the revulsion of your life that has set a new blood flowing beneath
my skin. It is because I have so hoped and longed and waited for your
kiss that I have begun to live again, to be strong,--for I am strong
now. But I am not angry with you for refusing me; you are right in
refusing. I understand; I understand. You are a timid little soul,
without courage; a little bird that sings on one branch, and then on
another, and flies away at the slightest noise ... frroutt!"
"These are frightful things which you are saying, Monsieur Georges."
He still went on, while I wrung my hands:
"Why are they frightful? No, indeed, they are not frightful; they
are true. You think me sick. You think that one is sick when one has
love. You do not know that love is life,--eternal life. Yes, yes, I
understand, since your kiss, which is life for me, might, you fancy, be
death for you. Let us say no more about it."
I could not listen further. Was it pity? Was it the bleeding reproach
and bitter challenge that these atrocious and sacrilegious words
conveyed? Was it simply the impulsive and savage love that suddenly
took possession of me? I do not know. Perhaps it was all of these
together. What I know is that I allowed myself to fall, like a mass,
on the long chair, and that, lifting in my hands the child's adorable
head, I wildly cried:
"There, naughty boy, see how afraid I am of you! See, then, how afraid
I am of you!"
I glued my lips to his lips, I pressed my teeth against his, with such
quivering fury that my tongue seemed to penetrate the deepest sores of
his chest, to lick them, to drink from them, to draw out of them all
the poisoned blood and all the mortal pus. His arms opened, and closed
again about me, in an embrace.
And what was to happen happened.
Well, no. The more I think about it, the surer I am that what threw
me into Georges's arms, what fastened my lips to his, was, first and
only, an imperative, spontaneous movement of protest against the base
sentiments that Georges--through strategy, perhaps--attributed to my
refusal. It was, above all, an act of fervent, disinterested, and very
pure piety, which meant to say:
"No, I do not think that you are sick; no, you are not sick. And
the proof is that I do not hesitate to mingle my breath with yours,
to breathe it, to drink it in, to impregnate my lungs with it, to
saturate with it all my flesh. And, even though you were really
sick, even though your disease were contagious and fatal to any one
approaching it, I do not wish you to entertain concerning me this
monstrous idea that I am afraid of contracting it, of suffering from
it, and of dying from it."
Nor had I foreseen and calculated the inevitable result of this kiss,
and that I would not have the strength, once in my friend's arms, once
my lips on his, to tear myself from this embrace and put away this
kiss. But there it is, you see! When a man holds me in his arms, my
skin at once begins to burn, and my head to turn and turn. I become
drunk; I become mad; I become savage. I have no other will than that of
my desire. I see only him; I think only of him; and I suffer myself to
be led by him, docile and terrible, even to crime!
Oh! that first kiss of M. Georges, his awkward and delicious caresses,
the passionate artlessness of all his movements, and the wondering
expression of his eyes in presence of the mystery, at last unveiled,
of woman and of love! But, the intoxication passed, when I saw the
poor and fragile child, panting, almost swooning in my arms, I felt a
frightful remorse,--at least the terrifying sensation that I had just
committed a murder.
"Monsieur Georges! Monsieur Georges! I have made you ill. Oh! poor
little one!"
But he,--with what feline, tender, and trusting grace, with what
dazzled gratitude, he rolled against me, as if in search of protection.
And he said to me, his eyes filled with ecstasy:
"I am happy. Now I can die."
And, as I cursed my weakness in my despair, he repeated:
"I am happy. Oh! stay with me; do not leave me. It seems to me, you
see, that, if I were left alone, I could not endure the violence of my
happiness, although it is so sweet."
While I was helping him to go to bed, he had a fit of coughing.
Fortunately it was short. But, short though it was, it lacerated my
soul. After having relieved and cured him, was I going to kill him
now? I thought that I should be unable to keep the tears back. And I
detested myself.
"It is nothing; it is nothing," he exclaimed, with a smile; "you must
not grieve, since I am so happy. And besides, I am not sick, I am not
sick. You will see how soundly I shall sleep against you. For I wish to
sleep upon your breast, as if I were your little child,--my head upon
your breast."
"And if your grandmother should ring for me to-night, Monsieur Georges?"
"Oh no! Oh no! Grandmother will not ring. I wish to sleep against you."
During the fortnight that followed that memorable night, that delicious
and tragic night, a sort of fury took possession of us, mingling our
kisses, our bodies, our souls, in an embrace, in an endless possession.
We were in haste to enjoy, in compensation for the lost past; we
desired to live, almost without rest, the love of which we felt that
death, now near at hand, was to be the climax.
A sudden change had taken place in me. In my kiss there was something
sinister and madly criminal. Knowing that I was killing Georges, I
was furiously bent upon killing myself also, of the same joy and of
the same disease. Deliberately I sacrificed his life and mine. With
a wild and bitter exaltation I breathed and drank in death, all the
death, from his mouth; and I besmeared my lips with his poison. Once,
when he was coughing, seized, in my arms, with a more violent attack
than usual, I saw, foaming on his lips, a huge and unclean clot of
blood-streaked phlegm.
"Give! give! give!"
And I swallowed the phlegm with murderous avidity, as I would have
swallowed a life-giving cordial.
Monsieur Georges was not slow in wasting away. His crises became
more frequent, more painful. He spat blood, and had long periods
of swooning, during which he was thought to be dead. His body grew
thin, hollow, and emaciated, until it really resembled an anatomical
specimen. And the joy that had regained possession of the house
changed very speedily into dismal sorrow. The grandmother began again
to pass her days in the _salon_, crying, praying, on the alert for
sounds, and, with her ear glued to the door that separated her from
her child, undergoing the frightful and continual anguish of hearing
a cry,--a rattle,--a sigh, the last,--the end of everything dear and
still living that was left to her here below. When I went out of the
room, she followed me, step by step, about the house, wailing:
"Why, my God, why? And what then has happened?"
She said to me also:
"You are killing yourself, my poor little one. But you cannot pass all
your nights by Georges's side. I am going to send for a sister to take
your place."
But I refused. And she cherished me all the more for this refusal,
seeming to think that, having already worked one miracle, I could now
work another. Is it not frightful? I was her last hope.
As for the doctors, summoned from Paris, they were astonished at the
progress of the disease, and that it had worked such ravages in so
short a time. Not for a moment did they or anyone suspect the terrible
truth. Their intervention was confined to the prescribing of quieting
potions.
Monsieur Georges alone remained gay, happy,--steadily gay, unalterably
happy. Not only did he never complain, but his soul continually poured
itself out in effusions of gratitude. He spoke only to express his joy.
Sometimes, at night, in his room, after terrible crises, he said to me:
"I am happy. Why grieve and weep? Your tears do something to spoil my
joy, the ardent joy with which I am filled. Oh! I assure you that death
is not a high price to pay for the superhuman happiness which you have
given me. I was lost; death was in me; nothing could prevent it from
being in me. You have rendered it radiant and pleasant. Then do not
weep, dear little one. I adore you, and I thank you."
My fever of destruction had entirely vanished now. I lived in a
condition of frightful disgust with myself, in an unspeakable horror
of my crime, of my murder. There was nothing left me but the hope, the
consolation, or the excuse that I had contracted my friend's disease,
and would die with him, and at the same time.
And what was to happen happened.
We were then in the month of October, precisely the sixth of October.
The autumn having remained mild and warm that year, the doctors had
counselled a prolongation of the patient's stay at the seaside, pending
the time when he could be taken to the south. All day long, on that
sixth of October, Monsieur Georges had been quieter. I had opened wide
the large bay-window in his room, and there, lying on his long chair,
beside the window, protected from the air by warm coverings, he had
breathed for at least four hours, and deliciously, the iodic emanations
from the offing. The life-giving sun, the good sea odors, the deserted
beach, now occupied again by the shell-fishermen, delighted him. Never
had I seen him gayer. And this gaiety on his emaciated face, where
the skin, growing thinner from week to week, covered the bones like a
transparent film, had something funereal about it, and so painful to
witness that several times I had to leave the room in order to weep
freely. He refused to let me read poetry to him. When I opened the
book, he said:
"No; you are my poem; you are all my poems, and far the most beautiful
of all."
He was forbidden to talk. The slightest conversation fatigued him, and
often brought on a fit of coughing. Moreover, he had hardly strength
enough to talk. What was left to him of life, of thought, of will to
express, of sensibility, was concentrated in his gaze, which had become
a glowing fireplace, in which the soul continually kindled a flame of
surprising and supernatural intensity. That evening, the evening of
the sixth of October, he seemed no longer to be suffering. Oh! I see
him still, stretched upon his bed, his head high upon his pillow, his
long thin hands playing tranquilly with the blue fringe of the curtain,
his lips smiling at me, and his eyes, which, in the shade of the bed,
shone and burned like a lamp, following all my goings and comings.
They had placed a couch in the room for me, a nurse's couch and--oh!
irony, in order doubtless to spare his modesty and mine--a screen
behind which I could, undress. But often I did not lie upon the
couch; Monsieur Georges wanted me always by his side. He was really
comfortable, really happy, only when I was near him.
After having slept two hours, almost peacefully, he awoke toward
midnight. He was a little feverish; the spots at the points of his
cheek-bones were a little redder. Seeing me sitting at the head of his
bed, my cheeks damp with tears, he said to me, in a tone of gentle
reproach:
"What, weeping again? You wish, then, to make me sad, and to give me
pain? Why do you not lie down? Come and lie down beside me."