I was born one evening in October at Saint-Michel-les-Hêtres, a small
town in the department of Orne, and I was immediately christened by the
name of Jean-François-Marie-Mintié. To celebrate in a fitting manner
my coming into this world, my godfather, who was my uncle, distributed
a lot of dainties, threw many coppers and other small coins to a crowd
of country boys gathered on the church steps. One of them, while
struggling with his comrades, fell so awkwardly on the sharp edge of
a stone that he broke his neck and died the following day. As for my
uncle, when he returned home he contracted typhoid fever and passed
away a few weeks later. My governess, old Marie, often related these
incidents to me with pride and admiration.
Saint-Michel-les-Hêtres is situated on the outskirts of a great
national forest, the Tourouvre forest. Although it counts fifteen
hundred inhabitants, it makes no more noise than is made in the fields
on a calm day by the trees, the grass, the corn. A grove of giant beech
trees, which turn purple in autumn, shields it from the northern winds,
and the houses with pentile roofs, descending the declivity of the
hill, extend far out until they meet the great valley, broad and always
green, where one can see straying herds of oxen. The Huisne River,
glittering under the sun, winds and loses itself in the meadows which
are separated by rows of tall poplars. Dilapidated tanneries, small
windmills scale its course, clearly visible among clumps of alders. On
the other side of the valley are cultivated fields with straight lines
of fences and apple trees scattered here and there. The horizon is
enlivened by small pink farms, by hamlets one can see here and there
in the midst of the verdure which appears almost black. Because of the
proximity of the woods, the sky is alive with crows and yellow-beaked
jackdaws coming and going at all seasons.
Our family lived on the outskirts of the town, opposite a church,
very old and tottering, an ancient and curious structure which was
called the Priory--an annex of an Abbey which was destroyed during the
Revolution and of which were left not more than two or three faces
of a crumbled wall covered with ivy. I recall clearly but without
tenderness the smallest details of the places where my childhood was
spent. I recall the iron gate in a neglected condition which opened
with a creaking sound into a large court adorned by a scurfy grass
plot, two shabby looking sorbs visited by blackbirds, some chestnut
trees, very old and with such large trunks that the arms of four men
could not reach around them--my father used to tell this with pride
to every visitor. I recall the house with its brick walls, grim and
crusty; its semi-circular steps beautified by geraniums; its irregular
windows which looked like holes; its roof, very steep, ending in a
weather-cock, which in a breeze made a sound like an owl. Behind the
house, I remember, was a basin where muddy wake-robins were bathing or
small carps with white scales were playing. I recall the sombre curtain
of fir trees which hid the commons from view, the back yard, the study
which my father built on the edge of the road skirting the property in
such a manner that the coming and going of clients and clerks did not
disturb the quiet of the household. I recall the park, its enormous
trees, strangely twisted, eaten up by polypes and moss, joined together
by tangled lianas, and the alleys never raked, where worn-out stone
benches rose up here and there like ancient tombs. And I also remember
myself, a sickly child, in a smock frock of lustring, running across
this gloom of forsaken things, lacerating myself in the blackberry
bush, torturing the animals in the backyard or for entire days sitting
in the kitchen and watching Felix who served as our gardener, valet,
and coachman.
Years and years have passed. Everything that I loved is now dead.
Everything that I knew has taken on a new appearance. The church has
been rebuilt. It now has an embellished doorway, arched windows, fancy
gutter-spouts representing flaming mouths of demons; its new brick
belfry laughs gaily into the blue; in place of the old house there now
rises an elaborate Swiss cottage built by the new proprietor who, in
the enclosure, has increased the number of colored glass balls, small
cascades and plaster statues of Love, soiled by rain. But things and
people are engraved so profoundly upon my memory that time could not
apply a burnisher hard enough to erase them.
I want, from now on, to speak of my parents not as I knew them when
I was a child, but such as they would appear to me now, completed by
memory, humanized, so to speak, by intimacy and revelation, in all
the crudity of life, in all the immediacy of impression which the
inexorable experiences of life lend to persons too unhesitatingly loved
and too closely known.
My father was a notary public. Since time immemorial it had been so
with the Mintié family. It would have appeared monstrous, almost
revolutionary, if a member of the Mintié family had dared to break
this family tradition and had renounced the scutcheons of gilt wood
which were transmitted religiously from one generation to another like
some title of nobility. At Saint-Michel-les-Hêtres and the surrounding
country, my father occupied a position which ancestral pride, his
dignified manners of a country gentleman, and, above all, his income
of twenty thousand francs rendered very important, almost unshakeable.
Mayor of Saint-Michel, member of the general council, acting justice
of the peace, vice president of the agricultural commission, member
of numerous agronomic and forestry societies, he did not overlook
any of the petty or ambitious honors which carry with them a sort
of prestige and influence. He was an excellent man, very honest and
very gentle,--with a mania for killing. He could not see a bird, a
cat, an insect--anything at all that was alive--without being seized
with a strange desire to kill it. He waged a relentless trapper's
war on blackbirds, goldfinches, chaffinches and bullfinches. Felix
was instructed to let my father know as soon as a bird appeared in
our garden, and my father would leave everything--clients, business,
his meal--to kill the bird. He would often lie in wait for hours,
motionless, behind a tree on which the gardener had pointed out a
little blueheaded titmouse. During his walks, every time he noticed a
bird on a branch and did not have his rifle with him, he would throw
his cane at it, never failing to say, "Oh, hang it! He was there this
morning!" or "Hang it! I must have missed him for sure, it's too far."
These were the only thoughts which birds ever inspired in him.
He was also greatly engrossed with cats. Whenever he recognized the
trail of a cat he could not rest until he discovered and killed it.
Sometimes on a moonlight night he would get up, go out with his gun and
stay outside till dawn. You should have seen him, musket on shoulder,
holding by the tail the cadaver of a cat, bleeding and motionless!
Never have I admired anything so heroic; and David on killing Goliath
must have had no more intoxicated an air of triumph! With a majestic
gesture he threw the cat at the feet of the cook who said, "Oh! the
nasty beast!" and thereupon started to cut it up, saving the meat for
the beggars, leaving the skin to dry on the end of a stick, later to
be sold at Auvergnats. If I dwell so much on details of a seemingly
unimportant character, it is because during all my life I was obsessed
with and haunted by these feline episodes of my childhood. There is
one among them which has left such an impression on my spirit that to
this very day, in spite of all the years that have gone by and all the
sorrows that I have experienced, not a day passes without my thinking
of it sadly.
One afternoon father and I were walking in the garden. My father
carried a long stick ending in an iron skewer, by means of which he
unearthed snails and limaxes that were eating up the plants. Suddenly
on the edge of the basin we noticed a little kitten drinking. We hid
behind a thick shrub.
"Child," my father said in a low voice, "go quickly, fetch my musket
and come back. Be careful the cat does not see you."
And squatting down, he moved apart the twigs of the shrub so that
he might observe every movement of the kitten which, resting on its
forelegs, its neck drawn out and wagging its tail, was lapping the
water in the basin and turning its head from time to time to lick its
mouth and scratch its neck.
"Come on," repeated my father, "be off!" I pitied the little kitten. It
was so pretty with its tawny fur striped with silky black, its supple
and graceful movements and its tongue, like the petal of a rose, which
pumped water! I would have liked to disobey my father, I even thought
of making a noise, I wanted to cough, to brush the twigs apart rudely
in order to warn the poor animal of the danger ahead. But my father
looked at me with eyes so severe that I walked away in the direction
of the house. Pretty soon I came back with the musket. The kitten was
still there, confident and gay. It had finished drinking. Sitting on
its back, its ears pricked up and eyes shining, it was following the
flight of a butterfly in the air. Oh, what a moment of unspeakable
anguish that was for me! My heart was beating so powerfully that I
feared I was going to faint.
"Papa! Papa!" I shouted. At the same time a sharp report was heard,
which sounded like the crack of a whip.
"Damned rascal!" my father swore.
He aimed again. I saw his finger pull the trigger; quickly I shut my
eyes and stopped my ears. Bang!! .... and I heard a mewing, at first
plaintive and then sorrowful, oh, so sorrowful that one might have said
it was the cry of a child. And the little kitten jumped, writhed, pawed
the grass and did not stir any more.
Of an absolutely mediocre mind, tender hearted, though he seemed
indifferent to everything which did not appeal to his vanity or did
not affect his professional interests, lavish of counsel, ready to
render aid, conservative, of graceful carriage and gay, my father
justly enjoyed the respect of everybody. My mother, a young woman of
the nobility, had brought no fortune with her as a dowry; instead, she
had brought with her powerful connections, a closer alliance with the
petty aristocracy of the country, which was considered just as useful
as an increment in cash or an acquisition of land. Although his powers
of observation were very limited and he did not boast of any ability
to read souls as well as he could read a marriage contract or explain
the legal points of a testament, my father very soon realized the
difference of birth, education and temperament which separated him
from his wife.
Whether or not in the beginning he felt hurt on that score, I do not
know; at any rate he never showed it. He resigned himself to it.
Between him, who was rather awkward, ignorant and indifferent,--and
her, who was educated, refined and emotional, there was a chasm which
he never for a moment tried to bridge, having neither the desire nor
the ability to do so. This moral situation of two beings united for all
time, whom no community of thought and aspiration ever brought in close
contact with each other, did not in the least trouble my father who
considered himself satisfied if he found the house well managed, the
meals well regulated, his habits and idiosyncrasies well respected. To
my mother, on the other hand, this condition was very painful and made
her heart heavy.
My mother was not beautiful, not even good looking, but there was so
much simple dignity in her carriage, so much natural gracefulness
in her movements, an expression of such broad kindness on her lips,
somewhat pale, and in her eyes which by turns changed their color like
the skies in April and shone like a sapphire, a smile so caressing, so
sad, so humble, that one overlooked her forehead which was a little
too high, swelling out under spots of hair irregularly planted, her
nose all too large and her skin which was ash-colored and metal-like
in appearance and which at times had an eruption of pimples on it.
In her presence, as one of her old friends often told me, and as
since then I sorrowfully realized myself, one felt at first slightly
affected, then gradually carried away and finally violently possessed
by a strange feeling of sympathy in which there was mingled a sort of
affectionate respect, a vague desire, pity, and a longing to offer
oneself as a sacrifice for her. Despite her physical imperfections or
rather because of these very imperfections, she possessed the sad and
irresistible charm which is given to certain creatures privileged by
misfortune, and around whom there floats an atmosphere of something
irreparable. Her childhood and her early youth were periods of illness
and were marked by some disquieting nervous fits. But it was hoped
that marriage, in modifying the conditions of her existence, would
restore her health which the physicians believed was suffering only
from an excessive sensitiveness. It was not so at all. Marriage, on the
contrary, only developed the morbid tendencies that were in her, and
her sensitiveness was heightened to such a degree that, among other
alarming symptoms, my poor mother could not stand the slightest odor,
without being thrown into a fit, which always ended in a swoon. Of
what did she suffer? Why these melancholic fits, these prostrations,
which left her huddled up on the lounge for entire days, motionless
and sullen like an old paralytic? Why these tears which would suddenly
choke her throat to suffocation and for hours roll from her eyes in
burning streams? Why this disgust with everything, which nothing could
overcome: neither distractions nor prayers? She could not tell, for she
herself did not know... Of the causes of her physical ailments, her
mental tortures, her hallucinations which filled her heart and brains
with a passionate desire to die, she knew nothing. She knew not why one
evening as she sat in front of the glowing fireplace, she was suddenly
seized with a horrible temptation to roll on the fire grate, to deliver
her body over to the kisses of the flame which called her, fascinated
her, sang to her hymns of unknown love. Nor did she know why on another
day, while taking a stroll in the country and noticing a man walking in
a half-mowed meadow with his scythe on the shoulder, she ran towards
him with outstretched arms, shouting "Death, O blessed death, take me,
carry me away!" No, she knew not the cause or reason for all that. What
she did know was that at such moments the image of her mother, her
dead mother, was always before her, the image of her mother whom she
herself, one Sunday morning, had found hanging from the chandelier in
the parlor. And she again beheld the dead body which oscillated slowly
in the air, she saw the face all black, the eyes all white and without
pupils, she saw everything up to the sunbeam which, penetrating through
the closed shutters, illuminated with a tragic light the tongue, stuck
out, and the swollen lips. This anguish, these frenzies, this yearning
for death, her mother had no doubt transmitted to her when she gave
life to her; it is from her mother's side that she drew, it is from her
mother's breast that she drank the poison, this poison which now filled
her veins, with which her flesh was permeated, which fuddled her brain,
which gnawed at her soul. During the intervals of calm which grew less
frequent as the days, months and years passed by, she often thought
of these things; and brooding over her life, recalling its remotest
incidents and comparing the physical resemblances between the mother
who died voluntarily and the daughter who wished to die, she felt more
and more upon her the crushing weight of this lugubrious inheritance.
She exalted in and completely abandoned herself to the idea that it was
impossible for her to resist the fate of her ancestors who appeared to
her as a long chain of suicides emerging from the depth of night, far
in the past, and extending over ages to terminate ... where? At this
question her eyes became troubled, her temples grew moist with a cold
sweat and her hands gripped her throat as if striving to grasp the
imaginary cord, the loop of which she felt was bruising her neck and
choking her. Every object seemed to her an instrument of fatal death;
everything reminded her of the image of death, decomposed and bleeding;
the branches of the trees appeared to her as so many sinister gibbets,
and in the green water of the fish pond, among the reeds and water
lilies, in the river shaded by tall herbage, she distinguished the
floating form covered with slime.
In the meantime my father, squatted behind some thick shrub, musket in
hand, was watching a cat or bombarding some vocalizing warbler hidden
in the branches. In the evening, by way of consolation he would gently
say to mother, "Well, dearie, your health is not always good. You
see, what you need is some bitters, take some bitters. A glass in the
morning, a glass in the evening.... That's all that's needed." He did
not complain of anything, he never got excited over anything. Seating
himself at his desk, he would go over the papers which were brought to
him by the city clerk during the day and sign them rapidly with an air
of disdain. "Here!" he would exclaim, "it is just like this corrupt
administration; it would do a whole lot better if it occupied itself
with the farmer instead of pestering us with these small matters....
Here is some more silly stuff!"... Then he would go to bed, repeating
in a calm voice: "Bitters, take some bitters."
This resignation hurt my mother like a reproach. Although my father's
education was rather limited and though she did not find in him any
trace of that masculine tenderness or fanciful romanticism of which
she had dreamed, she nevertheless could not deny his physical energy
and a sort of moral vigor which she envied in him, despising as she
did its application to things which she considered petty and sordid.
She felt guilty toward herself, guilty toward life so uselessly
wasted in tears. Not only did she not meddle in the affairs of her
husband, but little by little she lost her interest even in household
duties, leaving them to the whims of the servants. She took so little
care of herself that her chambermaid, good old Marie, who was present
at her birth, often had to nurse and feed her, while scolding her
affectionately, as one does a little infant in the cradle. In her
desire for isolation she came to a point where she could no longer
stand the presence of her parents, of her friends who, discomfited
and repelled by her countenance more and more morose, by this mouth
whence no word ever came, by this forced smile which was immediately
shrivelled by an involuntary trembling of her lips,--called, less and
less frequently and ended by forgetting altogether the path leading to
the Priory. Religion, like everything else, became a burden to her. She
no longer put in an appearance in the church, did not pray any more,
and two Easters passed without anyone seeing her approach the holy
table.
Then my mother began to lock herself up in her room, the shutters
of which she closed, and drew the curtains together, deepening the
darkness about her. She used to spend entire days there, sometimes
stretched out on a lounge, sometimes kneeling in a corner, her head
touching the wall. And she was annoyed by the least noise from outside;
the slamming of the door, the creaking of old shoes along the corridor,
the neighing of a horse in the court came to disturb her novitiate of
non-existence. Alas! What could be done about it! For a long time she
had struggled against an unknown disease, and the disease, stronger
than she was, had felled her to the ground. Now her will-power was
paralyzed. She was no longer free to rise or act. Some mysterious force
held her in chains, rendering her arms inert, her brain muddled, her
heart vacillating like a little smoky flame beaten by the wind; and far
from resisting, she looked for added opportunities to plunge deeper
into suffering, relishing with a sort of perverted exultation the
frightful delights of her self-annihilation.
Dissatisfied with the management of his domestic affairs, my father
at length decided to take an interest in the progress of my mother's
illness, which passed his understanding. He had the hardest time in the
world to make mother accept the idea of going to Paris to consult the
"princes of science" as he put it. It was a sorry trip. Of the three
celebrated physicians to whom he took her, the first declared that
my mother was anæmic and prescribed a strengthening diet; the second
diagnosed that she was affected with nervous rheumatism and prescribed
a debilitating regimen; the third one found that "it was nothing" and
recommended mental tranquility.
No one saw clearly into her soul. She herself did not know it. Obsessed
with the cruel memory to which she attributed all her misfortunes, she
could not unravel with clearness all that stirred obscurely in the
innermost depths of her being, nor understand the vague passions, the
imprisoned aspirations, the captive dreams which had accumulated in her
since childhood. She was like a nestling bird that, without realizing
the obscure and nostalgic forces which drew it toward heaven of which
it has no knowledge, crushes its head and maims its wings against the
cage bars. Instead of craving death as she thought she was, her soul
within her, just like that bird that hungered for the unknown skies,
hungered for life radiant with tenderness, filled with love; and just
like that bird, was dying from this unassuaged hunger. As a child, she
gave herself entirely, with all the exaggerations of her fervid nature,
to the love for material things and animals; as a young girl she was
given to love of dreams of the impossible, but material objects never
brought her peace, nor did her dreams assume a precise and soothing
form. She had no one to guide her, no one to set right this youthful
mind already shaken by internal shocks, no one to open the door of this
heart to wholesome reality, a door already guarded by chimeric shadows
in her vacant state; no one to whom she could pour out the exuberance
of her thoughts, her tenderness, her desires, which finding no outlet
for expansion, accumulated, boiled within her, ready to burst the
fragile mould poorly protected by nerves too jaded.
Her mother, always ill, singularly absorbed in that hypochondria
which was soon to kill her, was incapable of intelligent and firm
direction in the matter of her daughter's education. Her father, all
but ruined, put to his last shift, struggled hard to save for his
family its ancestral home which was threatened; and among the young
people about her--shiftless noblemen, vainglorious burghers, greedy
peasants, none bore upon his brow the magic star which could lead her
to her God. Everything she heard, everything she saw seemed to be in
disagreement with her own manner of understanding and feeling. To her,
the sun did not appear red enough, the nights pale enough, the skies
deep enough. Her fleeting conception of things and beings condemned her
fatally to a perversion of her senses, to vagaries of the spirit and
left her nothing but the torment of an unachieved longing, the torture
of unfulfilled desires. And later her marriage which had been more
than a sacrifice--a business transaction, a compromise to improve the
straitened circumstances of her father!... And her disgust, her revolt
at feeling herself a piece of dishonored flesh, a prey, an instrument
of man's pleasure! To have soared so high and to fall so low! To have
dreamed of celestial kisses, of mystic caresses and divine possessions
and then ... the end of it!... Instead of wide expanses, ablaze with
light, where her imagination felt at home among the soaring flights
of angels in a trance of joy and affrighted doves--there came night,
thick, sinister and haunted by the spectre of her mother, stumbling
over tombs and crosses with a piece of cord on her neck.
The Priory soon grew silent. On the gravel of its alleys one no
longer heard the trundle of carts and carriages bringing friends of
the neighborhood to the front entrance decorated with geraniums. The
front gate was bolted in order to make the carnages go through the
back yard. In the kitchen the servants talked among themselves in low
voices, moving about on tiptoe as is done in a house where some one
has died. The gardener, by order of my mother who could not stand the
noise of wheelbarrows and the scraping of rakes on the ground, allowed
the wild stock to suck up the sap of the rose bushes turned yellow,
allowed the weeds to choke the flowers in the baskets and to cover up
the walks. And the house with its dark curtain of fir trees resembling
a funeral canopy which sheltered it from the west, with its windows
always closed, with its living corpse which it guarded buried behind
its square walls of old brick looked like a burial vault. The country
folk who on Sunday used to take a stroll in the woods, no longer passed
by the Priory without some sort of superstitious terror, as if that
dwelling were an evil place haunted by ghosts. Pretty soon a legend
grew about the place: a wood cutter told how one night, going back from
work, he saw Madame Mintié all in white, her hair disheveled, crossing
the sky high above and beating her chest with the crucifix.
My father locked himself up in his study more than ever, avoiding as
much as possible staying in the house where he was hardly seen at times
other than meal hours. He also took to making distant trips, increased
the number of committees and societies over which he presided, found
means to create for himself new distractions and business affairs far
away from home. The Council General, the Agricultural Commission,
the jury of the Court of Assizes were of great help to him for that
purpose. When some one spoke to him of his wife he answered, shaking
his head:
"Ah, I am very uneasy, very much wrought up over it. How will it end? I
must confess I fear she may become insane...."
And when some one expressed his unbelief:
"No, no, I am not joking.... You know well that it runs in her family,
their heads don't seem to be very strong!"
Nevertheless reproach never came from his lips, although he realized
the embarrassing condition in which this situation placed his business
affairs and which he ascribed to nothing but the irritating obduracy of
my mother in not wanting to try anything that might cure her.
It was in these sad surroundings that I grew up. I came to this world
a tiny, sickly child. What cares, what fierce tenderness, what deadly
anguishes I brought with me! In the presence of the puny creature that
I was, sustained by a breath of life so feeble that it could be guessed
at only by a rattling sound in my throat, my mother forgot her own
sorrows. Maternity revived her worn-out energy, awakened her conscience
to new duties, to new sacred responsibilities which now devolved
upon her. What ardent nights, what feverish days she spent bent over
the cradle where lay something born of her own flesh and soul, and
palpitating!... Ah! yes!... I belonged to her, to her only; it was not
at all of this conjugal submission that I was born; I was not the fatal
consequence of the original sin as other children of men are; no! she
had always carried me in her womb, and like Christ I was conceived in a
long cry for love. All her troubles, her terrors, her past sufferings
she understood now; it was because a great mystery of creation was
being enacted in her being.
She had great difficulty in bringing me up, and if I outlived all that
had threatened me one might say it was accomplished by a miracle of
love. More than twenty times my mother snatched me from the clutches
of death.... And then what a joy and what a recompense it was to
her to see the little wrinkled body fill itself with the sap of
health, the rumpled face take on the color of shiny pink, the little
eyes open gaily into a smile, the lips, greedy and searching, move
and gluttonously pump the life-giving liquid from her nourishing
breast! My mother now tasted a few moments of complete and wholesome
happiness. A desire to act, to be good and useful, to occupy her
hands, heart and spirit, to live at last took hold of her, and even
in the most commonplace duties of her household she found a new, a
passionate interest which was doubled by a feeling of profound peace.
Her gayety came back to her, a natural and gentle gayety without
violent outbursts. She made plans, pictured the future to herself with
confidence, and many a time she was astonished to discover that she no
longer thought of her past--that evil dream which vanished.
I grew. "One can see him getting bigger every day," the nurse used to
say. And with rapturous emotions my mother watched the hidden labor
of nature which polished the rough places of flesh, giving it more
pliant form, more definite features, better regulated movements and
poured into the dimness of the brain just emerged from nothingness
the primitive glimmer of instinct. Oh, how everything seemed to her
now clothed in bright and entrancing colors! It was music of welcome
itself, the benediction of love, and even the trees, formerly so full
of dread and menace, were stretching out their branches above like so
many protecting arms. One was led to hope that the mother had saved the
woman. Alas! That hope was of short duration.
One day she noticed in me a certain predisposition to nervous fits,
to a diseased contraction of muscles, and she became alarmed. When I
was about one year old I had convulsions which came short of finishing
me. The fits were so violent that my mouth, even long after the attack
was over, remained twisted into an ugly grimace as if paralyzed. My
mother would not admit that at periods of rapid growth the majority of
children were subject to such fits. She saw in that something which
she thought was characteristic of her and her ancestors, she saw in
that the first symptoms of a hereditary illness, of a terrible disease
which she thought was going to continue in her son. She battled hard,
however, against these thoughts which came in hives; she used every bit
of energy and vigor she could command to dissipate them, taking refuge
in me as if in an inviolable asylum for protection against phantoms and
evil spirits. She held me pressed against her bosom, covering me with
kisses and saying:
"My little Jean, it is not true, is it? You will live and be happy,
won't you?... Answer me!... Alas! You can't talk, my poor little
angel.... Oh, don't cry, never cry, Jean, my Jean, my dear little
Jean!..."
But question as she might, feel as she might my heart beating against
her own, my awkward hands gripping her breasts, my legs dangling from
under the loosed swaddling cloth--her confidence was gone, doubts
gained the upper hand. An incident which was related to me time and
again with a sort of religious terror served to bring consternation
into my mother's soul.
One day she was taking a bath. In the hall of the bathroom laid out
with black and white square slabs, Marie, bent over me, was watching my
first uncertain steps. Suddenly, fixing my gaze on a black square, I
appeared to be very much frightened. I uttered a cry and, trembling all
over as if I had seen something terrible, I hid my head in my nurse's
apron.
"What's the matter?" my mother anxiously asked.
"I don't know," answered old Marie. It seemed as though Master Jean had
been frightened by a paving block.
She brought me to the spot where my countenance so suddenly changed its
expression. But at the sight of the paving slab, I cried out again. My
whole body shuddered.
"There must be something!" cried my mother. "Marie, quick, quick, my
underwear!... My God!--What did he see?"
Having come out of the bathroom, she did not want to wait to be wiped,
and scarcely covered by her peignoir she stooped over the stone and
examined it.
"That's strange," she murmured. "And yet he saw something....but
what?... There isn't anything...."
She took me in her arms, swayed me. I smiled now, uttering inarticulate
sounds and playing with the ribbons of her peignoir. She put me down on
the floor. Moving with short, unsteady steps, both arms outstretched,
I purred like a kitten. None of the blocks before which I stopped
frightened me in the least. Arrived at the fatal block, my face again
assumed the expression of horror, and frightened and crying I returned
quickly to my mother.
"I tell you there must be something!" she cried. "Call Felix. Let him
come with tools ... a hammer, quick, quick! Tell Monsieur also!"
"It seems strange all the same," assented Marie who, with gaping mouth
and eyes wide open, was looking at the mysterious slab. "He must be a
sorcerer then!"
Felix lifted one stone, examined it carefully, dug into the mortar
below.
"Dig up another one!" my mother commanded. "And that one also ...
another one ... all of them ... dig them all up! I want to find out....
And Monsieur is not coming!"
In the excitement of her gestures, forgetting that there was a man
around, she uncovered herself and revealed her nude body. Kneeling on
the blocks, Felix continued digging them up. He took each one out with
his brawny hands and shook his head.
"If Madame wants me to tell her.... For the rest, Monsieur is way out
in the park, busy sharpening the pick-axe.... And besides, there is
nothing to it ... the stone blocks are like stone blocks, seemingly of
the pavement. That's all!... Madame may be sure.... Only it might be
that that was only in Master Jean's imagination.... Madame knows that
children are like grown-up folks and that they see things! But as to
these slabs, they are just slabs, neither more nor less."
My mother became pale, haggard.
"Shut up!" she ordered, "and get out of here, all of you!"
And without waiting for the execution of her order she carried me
out of the room. Her cries, interrupted by the slamming of the door,
resounded on the stairway and in the hall.
She never thought, however, poor dear creature that she was, of
giving to the bathroom incident a natural explanation. One could
have demonstrated to her that what had frightened me so badly might
have been a moving reflection of a towel upon the humid surface of
the floor, or perhaps the shadow of a leaf projected from outside
across the window, which of course she would not have admitted as
likely to have taken place. Her spirit, fed on dreams, tormented by
lurid exaggerations and instinctively drawn to the mysterious and the
fantastic, accepted with dangerous credulity the vaguest explanation
and yielded to the most troubling suggestions. She imagined that her
caresses, her kisses, her lulling me to sleep communicated to me
the germs of her disease, that the nervous fits which almost caused
my death, the hallucinations which shone in my eyes with the sombre
radiance of madness, were to her a divine warning, and as soon as she
conceived that, the last hope died in her heart.
Marie found her mistress half naked, stretched out on the bed.
"My God! My God!" she moaned, "that's the end of it.... My poor little
Jean!... You, too, they will take away from me!... Oh, God, have pity
on him!... Could that be possible!... So little, so weak!..."
And while Marie was putting back her clothes which slipped to the
ground, trying to quiet her:
"My good Marie," she stammered, "listen to me. Promise me, yes promise
me to do as I tell you.... You have seen it just now, you have seen it,
haven't you?... Well, take Jean, and bring him up because I--you see
... he must not.... I'll kill him.... Here, you'll stay in this room
with him, right near me.... You shall take good care of him and tell
me all about him.... I'll feel his presence there, I'll hear him....
But you understand, he must not see me.... It is I who make him that
way!..."
Marie held me in her arms.
"Madame, there is no sense in that at all," she said, "and you really
deserve a good scolding as a lesson. ... Why just look at your little
Jean!... He is just like a little quail. Now tell her, tell her,
my little Jean, that you are well and brave!... Look, look at him
laughing, the little creature.... Put your arms around him, Madame."
"No, no!" my mother cried out wildly. "I must not.... Later.... Take
him away!..."
It was impossible to make her abandon this idea. Marie well understood
that if her mistress had any chance at all to come back to normal life,
to cure herself of her "black moods," it was not in being separated
from her child. In the sad state in which my mother found herself, she
had but one means of recovery and now she rejected it, impelled to
do so by some new and unknown fit of madness. All that a little baby
brings of joy, uneasiness, activity, anxiety, forgetfulness of self to
the heart of a mother was exactly what she needed and yet she said:
"No, no.... I must not.... Later.... Take him away!..."
In her own language, familiar and rude, to which her long devotions
entitled her, the old servant maid brought forward all the reasoning
and arguments dictated by her common sense and by her simple peasant
heart. She even reproached my mother for neglecting her duties, she
spoke of her selfishness and declared that a good mother who had any
religion at all or even a savage beast wouldn't act as she did.
"Yes," she ended, "that is bad! ... you have already been so unkind to
your husband, poor fellow. Must you now make your child unhappy?"
But mother, always sobbing, could but repeat:
"No, no.... I must not.... Later.... Take him away!..."
What was my childhood? A long torpor. Separated from my mother whom I
saw but rarely, avoiding my father whom I did not love at all, living
almost in seclusion, a miserable orphan between old Marie and Felix
in this grand lugubrious house, the silence and neglect of which
weighed down upon me like a night of death--I was bored. Yes, I was
that rare and wretched specimen of a child who is bored. Always sad
and grave, hardly speaking at all, I had none of the inquisitiveness
and mischievousness of my age, one might have said that my intellect
had been slumbering forever in the numbness of maternal gestation. I
am trying to recall, I am trying to bring to life again my feelings of
childhood; verily I believe I had none. I was dragging on, all wasted
and stultified, without knowing what to do with my legs, my arms, my
eyes, my poor little body which annoyed me like a tiresome companion
whom one wishes to get rid of. There is not one recollection, not one
single impression that has been retained by me even in part. I always
wished to be where I was not, and the toys exhaling the wholesome odor
of fir trees were lying in heaps around me, without inducing me even to
think of touching them. Never did I dream about a knife or wooden horse
or picture book. Today, when I see little children running, jumping,
chasing one another on the garden lawns, the sandy beaches, I recall
with sadness the first mournful years of my life, and while listening
to the clear laughter which sounds like the ringing of the angelus of
human dawn, I say to myself that all my misfortunes have come from this
childhood, lonely and lifeless, unbroken by a single bright event.
I was not quite twelve years old when my mother died. The day on which
this misfortune happened the good curé Blanchetière, who liked us very
much, pressed me to his breast, then he looked at me for some time and
with eyes full of tears murmured several times: "Poor little devil!"
I burst into uncontrollable tears when I saw the good curé cry, for I
did not want to reconcile myself to the thought that my mother was dead
and never again would come back. During her illness I was forbidden to
go into her room, and now she was gone without having let me embrace
her!... Could she have really deserted me that way?... When I was about
seven years old and was well she had agreed to re-admit me into her
life. It was from this time on that I understood that I had a mother
and that I adored her. My sorrowing mother was represented to me by her
two eyes, her two large round eyes, fixed, with rings of red around
them, which always shed tears without moving the eyelids, which shed
tears as does a rain cloud or a fountain. All at once I felt a keen
sorrow at the grief of my mother, and it is through this grief that I
awoke to life. I did not know what she suffered from, but I knew that
her malady must have been horrible; I knew that from the way she used
to embrace me. She had fits of tenderness which used to frighten me and
which inspire me with fear even now. As she clasped my head, squeezed
my neck and moved her lips over my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth, her
frenzied kisses often passed into bites, similar to the caresses of a
beast; into her embraces she put all the true passion of a lover, as if
I had been the adored chimerical being of her dreams, the being that
never came, the being whom her soul and her body so ardently desired.
Was it possible then that she was dead?
Every evening, before going to bed, I fervently entreated the beautiful
image of the Virgin to whom I addressed my prayers: "Holy Virgin,
please grant my dear mother good health and a long life." But one
morning my father, silent and pale, accompanied the physician to the
gate, and the countenances of both were so grave that it was easy to
surmise that something irreparable had happened. Then the servants were
crying. What else could they have cried about, if not the loss of their
mistress?... And then did not the curé come up to me and say "poor
little devil!" in a tone of irremediable pity? I remember the smallest
details of that frightful day as if it were yesterday. From the room
where I was shut in with old Marie I could hear the coming and going of
people and other strange noises, and with my forehead pressed against
the window pane, I could see through the window blinds women beggars
squatted on the lawn, waxpaper in hand, muttering prayers. I saw people
enter the courtyard, the men in black, the women with long black veils.
"Ah! here is Monsieur Bacoup!..." "Why, that's Madame Provost!" I
noticed that all of them looked sad, while at the gate which was wide
open the children of the choir, the choristers uncomfortable in their
black vestments, the Brothers of Charity with their red tunics, one of
whom carried a banner and another a heavy silver cross, were laughing
aloud and amusing themselves by pushing and jostling one another. The
beadle, tinkling his bell, was driving back inquisitive mendicants, and
a wagon loaded with hay which had come up on the road was compelled
to stop and wait. In vain did I look for the eyes of little Sorieul,
a crippled child of my age whom I used to give a small loaf of bread
every Saturday; I could not find him anywhere, and that made me feel
uneasy. Then suddenly the bells on the church belfry began to toll.
Ding! Ding! Dong! The sky was of deep blue, the sun was ablaze. Slowly
the funeral procession started out, first the Brothers of Charity and
the choristers, the cross which glittered, the banner which fluttered
in the air, the curé in a white surplice, shielding his head with the
psalm-book, then something heavy and long covered with flowers and
wreaths which some men carried shaking at their knees, then the crowd,
a crawling crowd which filled the courtyard, wound itself out on the
road, a crowd in which I could distinguish no one except my cousin
Merel who was mopping his head with a checkered handkerchief. Ding!
Dong! Dong! The church bell tolled for a long, long time; ah! the sad
knell! Ding! Dong! Dong! And while the bells were tolling, tolling,
three white pigeons continuously fluttered about, pursuing one another
around the church right opposite me which projected its warped roof and
its slate steeple out of plumb above a clump of acacia and chestnut
trees.
The ceremony ended, my father entered my room. He walked back and forth
for some time without speaking, his arms crossed on his back.
"Ah! my poor Monsieur," lamented old Marie, "what a terrible
misfortune!"
"Yes; yes," replied my father, "it is a great, a terrible misfortune!"
He sank into an armchair, heaving a sigh. I can see him right now with
his swollen eyelids, his dejected look, his hanging arms. He had a
handkerchief in his hand, and from time to time brought it to his eyes,
red from tears.
"Perhaps I did not take good care of her, Marie.... She did not like to
have me around.... Yet I did what I could, everything I could.... How
frightful she looked, all rigid on the bed!... Ah, God! I shall always
see her that way. The day after tomorrow she would be thirty-one, would
she not?"
My father drew me toward him and seated me on his knees.
"You love me all the same, don't you, my little Jean?" he asked,
rocking me. "Tell me, do you love me? I have no one but you!..."
Speaking to himself he said:
"Perhaps it is better that it is so. Who knows what the outcome would
be later on!... Yes, perhaps it is better this way.... Ah! poor little
one, look at me straight!..."
And as if at that very moment he had divined in my eyes which resembled
the eyes of my mother a whole destiny of suffering, he pressed me close
to his breast and burst into tears.
"My little Jean!--Ah! my poor little Jean!"
Worn out by the emotion and fatigue of the night before, he fell
asleep, holding me in his arms. And I, seized suddenly with a feeling
of great pity, listened to this unknown heart which for the first time
was beating close to mine.
It had been decided a few months previous to this that I should not
be sent to college, but that I should have a private tutor. My father
did not approve of this method of education. But he had met with such
opposition that he thought best not to interfere, and just as he had
sacrificed his domination of husband over wife, he also gave up his
right of a father over me. Now I was to have a tutor, for my father
wanted to remain faithful to the wishes of my mother even when she was
dead.
One fine morning I saw him arrive, a very grave-looking gentleman, very
blond, very close shaven, who wore blue spectacles. Monsieur Jules
Rigard had very obsolete ideas on education, he carried himself with
the stiffness of a servant, and bore a sacerdotal air which, far from
encouraging me to learn, made all study disgusting to me. He had been
told without a doubt that my mentality was slow and sluggish and, as
I understood nothing from his first lesson, he took that judgment
for granted and treated me like an idiot. It never occurred to him to
penetrate into my young mind, to hold converse with my heart; never did
he ask himself whether under this sad mask of a lonesome child there
were not hidden ardent aspirations quite beyond my age, an all too
passionate and restless nature eager to know, which introspectively and
morbidly unfolded itself in the silence of secret thoughts and mute
ecstasies.
Monsieur Rigard stupefied me with Greek and Latin, and that was all.
Ah! how many children understood and guided properly, might have become
great if they had not been permanently deformed by this frightful
crushing of their brains by an imbecile father or an ignorant teacher.
Is it all, then, to have lustfully begotten you on an evening of
passion, and must not one continue the work of one's life forces by
giving you intellectual nourishment as well, in order that it may
strengthen your life and provide you with weapons to defend it. The
truth was that my soul felt even lonelier with my father than with my
teacher! Yet he did everything he could to please me. He consciously,
though stupidly, strove to show his love for me. But when I was with
him, he could never find anything to tell me outside of foolish,
idle tales, bogey man stories, terrifying legends of the revolution
of 1848 which had left in him an invincible fear, or else a tale of
the brigandage of one Lebecq, a great republican who scandalized the
country by his passionate opposition to the curé and his obduracy in
refusing to hang red bunting on the walls on national holidays.
Often he would take me along in his cabriolet, on his business trips
in the country and, when perplexed as I was by the mystery of nature
which every day unfolded itself around me, I asked him questions, he
would not know how or what to answer and would dodge the answer thus:
"You are too young to be told that! Wait till you grow up." And feeling
miserable by the side of the large body of my father which swayed
with the jolts of the road, I huddled up inside the cabriolet, while
my father was killing with the stick of his whip the gad flies which
swarmed on our mare's croup. Every now and then he would say: "I have
never seen such pestering things; we'll have storm, that's sure."
In the church of Saint-Michel, inside a small chapel, illumined by
the red glimmer of a window, upon an altar ornamented with embroidery
and vases full of flowers, stood a statue of the Virgin. She had a
pink body, a blue cloak bespangled with silver stars, a lilac-colored
robe whose folds fell modestly upon gilt sandals.... In her arms she
held a child, rosy and nude with a golden halo around its head, and
the eyes of the mother rested rapturously upon the child. For several
months this plaster Virgin was my sole friend, and the entire time
which I could steal from my lessons I used to spend before this image,
contemplating its tender colors. She appeared to me so beautiful, so
kind and sweet that no human creature could rival in beauty, kindness
and sweetness this painted piece of statuary which spoke to me in
an unknown and delightful language and from which there came to me
something like the intoxicating odor of incense and myrrh. When near
her I was in truth a different child; I felt how rosier my cheeks were
getting, how my blood was flowing more vigorously in my veins, how my
thoughts disentangled themselves more easily and quickly; it seemed to
me that the black veil which hung over my mentality was gradually being
lifted, revealing new lights to me.
Marie was made an accomplice in my stealthy flights to the church; she
often led me to the chapel where I remained for hours conversing with
the Virgin, while the old nurse fervently recited her Rosary, kneeling
before the altar. She had to get me out of my state of ecstasy by
force, because otherwise, absorbed as I had been in the dreams which
transported me to heaven, I would never have thought of returning home.
My passion for this Virgin became so strong that away from her I was
miserable and wished I had never left her at all. "Monsieur Jean will
surely become a priest," old Marie used to say. It was like a yearning
for possession, like a violent desire to take her, to entwine her, to
cover her with kisses.
I took a notion to make a sketch of her: with what love, it would be
impossible for you to imagine. When the statue had taken on a semblance
of crude form on the paper, it gave me joy without end. All the energy
in me that I could put forward I employed in this work, which I
thought admirable and superhuman. More than twenty times I started the
drawing over again, incensed with the crayon for not conforming to the
delicacy of the lines, incensed with the paper upon which the image
would not appear as live and real as I should have liked to see it. I
was rabid on this point. My will was bent upon this unique goal. At
length I succeeded in giving more or less exact substance to my idea
of the plaster Virgin--but how naïve an idea it was. And immediately
thereafter I stopped thinking of it. An inner voice had told me that
nature was more beautiful, more moving, more splendid, and I began to
notice the sun which caressed the trees, which played upon the pentiles
of the roof, covered the grass with gold, illumined the rivers; and
I began to listen to all the palpitations of life, whose puffed up
creatures scourge the earth like a body of flesh.
The years rolled by, wearisome and void. I remained gloomy, wild,
always shut up within myself, fond of running about in the fields,
penetrating into the very heart of the forest. It seemed to me that at
least there, lulled by the grand voices of things, I was less alone and
I felt more alive. Without being endowed with that terrible gift which
certain natures have of analyzing themselves, questioning themselves,
searching without end for the reason of their actions, I often asked
myself who I was and what I wanted. Alas! I was nobody and did not want
anything.
My childhood had been spent in darkness, my adolescence was passed
in a void; not having been a child I could no more be a young man. I
lived in a sort of fog. A thousand thoughts were agitating me, but they
were so confused that I could not seize upon their form; none of them
detached itself clearly from this depth of opaque mist. I had some
aspirations; some exalted notions, but it would have been impossible
for me to formulate them, to explain their cause or reason. It would
have been impossible for me to say into which world of reality or dream
they transplanted me; I had fits of infinite tenderness, in which my
whole being would lose itself, but for whom or for what this feeling
was intended, I did not know. Sometimes, all of a sudden, I would
abandon myself to tears, but the reason for these tears? In truth, I
knew not. What was certain was that nothing was to my liking, that I
did not see any purpose in living, that I felt myself incapable of any
effort.
Children usually say: "I'll be a general, priest, physician,
innkeeper." I never said anything of the kind, never; never did I
tear myself loose from the present; never did I venture a glimpse
into the future. Man appeared to me like a tree which spread out its
foliage and stretched out its limbs into the stormy skies, without
knowing which flower would bloom at its foot, which birds would sing
at its top, or which thunderbolt would fell it to the ground. And
notwithstanding that, the feeling of moral solitude in which I found
myself oppressed and frightened me. I could not open my heart to my
father, to my teacher or to anybody else. I had no friend, not a living
soul who could understand, guide or love me. My father and preceptor
were disheartened by my waywardness, and in the country I passed for a
feebleminded maniac. In spite of everything, however, I was permitted
to take my college entrance examinations, and though neither my father
nor myself had any idea as to what I should take up, I went to Paris to
study law. "Law will get you anywhere," my father used to say.
Paris amazed me. It struck me like a place of tempestuous uproar and
raving madness. Individuals and throngs were passing by, strange,
incoherent, hurrying to work which I imagined terrible and monstrous.
Knocked down by horses, jostled by men, deafened by the roar of the
city always in motion like some colossal and hellish factory, blinded
by the glare of lights to which I was not accustomed, I roamed about
the city in the strange dream of a demented one. I was very much
surprised to find trees there. How could they grow there, in that soil
of pavements, how could they shoot upwards in the forest of stone,
amidst the rumbling noise of men, their branches lashed by evil winds?
It took me a long time to get used to this life which seemed to me
the reverse of nature; and from the depths of this boiling hell my
thoughts would often wander back to the peaceful fields way yonder
which brought to my nostrils the delicious odor of dug up and fertile
soil; back to the green retreats of the woods, where I heard only the
light rustling of the leaves, and from time to time in the resonant
depths, the dull blows of the ax and the almost human groans of the old
oak trees. Nevertheless, curiosity often drove me out of my small room
which I occupied on Rue Oudinot, and I sauntered along the streets,
the boulevards, the river banks impelled by a feverish desire for
walking, my fingers twitching from nervousness, my brains squashed, as
it were, by the gigantic and intense activity of Paris, my senses in
some way thrown out of balance by all these colors, odors, sounds, by
the perversion and strangeness of the contact so new to me. The more
I mingled with the crowds, the more intoxicated I became with this
uproar, the more I saw multitudes of human lives pass by, brushing
one another, indifferent to one another, without apparent attachment,
and saw others surge forward, disappear and emerge again and so
on forever--the more I felt the overwhelming sense of inexorable
loneliness.
At Saint-Michel, although I was lonely, I at least knew some human
beings and objects. Everywhere I had points of reference by which my
spirit was guided; the back of a peasant bent over his glebe, the ruins
of a building at the turn of the road, a ditch, a dog, a clay pit,
a charming face--everything there was familiar to me, if not dear.
At Paris everything was strange and unknown to me. In this frightful
haste with which all seemed to be moving about, in the profound
selfishness, in this giddy obliviousness to one another into which they
were all precipitated, how could one retain even for a single moment
the attention of these people, these phantoms; I don't speak of the
attention of tenderness or pity, but of that of simple notice!... One
day I saw a man who killed another: he was admired and his name was
soon on everybody's lips; the next morning I saw a woman who lifted
her skirt going through obscene motions: the crowd followed her.
Being awkward, ignorant of the ways of the world, very timid, I found
it hard to make friends. I never even set foot in the homes where I was
recommended, for fear of appearing ridiculous. I had been invited for
dinner to the home of a cousin of my mother's who was rich and kept a
large retinue. The sight of the mansion, the footmen in the vestibule,
the lights, the carpets, the heavy perfume of smothered flowers--all
this frightened me and I fled, knocking down on the stairway a woman in
a red cloak who got up and started to laugh at my bewildered look.
The noisy gayety of the young men, my school comrades, whom I had met
at the lectures, at the restaurants, in the cafés, was not to my liking
either. The coarseness of their pleasures hurt me, and the women,
with their eyes colored with bistre, their overpainted lips, their
cynicism and shameless speech and behavior did not tempt me at all. One
evening, however, when my nerves were all wrought up, and I was driven
by a sudden rutting of the flesh, I went into a house of ill-fame and
left it burning with shame, despising myself, remorseful and with
the sensation of filth on my skin. What! Was it from this slimy and
loathsome act that men were born! From this time on I looked at women
more frequently, but my look was no longer chaste, and fixed upon them
as upon some impure images, it was searching for sex and stripping them
under the folds of their clothes. I came to know their secret vices,
which rendered me still more dejected, restless and out of sorts.
A kind of crapulous torpor settled down upon me. I used to stay in
bed several days at a stretch, sunk in the brutishness of obscene
dreams, awakened now and then by sudden nightmares, by painful attacks
of heartache which caused my skin to perspire. In my room, behind
drawn curtains, I was thus living like a corpse which was conscious
of its death and which from the depth of its grave in the frightful
night could hear the stamping of many feet and the rumble of the city
about it. Sometimes, tearing myself loose from this dejection, I went
out. But what was I going to do? Where could I go? I was indifferent
to everything, and I had not a single desire or curiosity. With fixed
gaze, with heavy drooping head and listless, I used to walk straight
ahead, without purpose, and I would end by flinging myself on a bench
in the Luxembourg, senilely shrunk into myself, lying motionless for
many hours, without seeing anything, without hearing anything, without
asking myself why there were children about me, why there were birds
singing, why young couples passed.... Naturally I was not working and
did not think of anything....
Then war came, then defeat.... Despite the opposition of my father,
despite the entreaties of old Marie, I enlisted.