without paying us; we never saw him again.”
“I wonder what has become of him.”
“Poor grandfather!” Laura went on rather sadly. “How I admired him that
day! He’s very fond of you, you know. You ought to go up and pay him a
little visit in his study. I am sure you would give him a great deal of
pleasure.”
I write down the whole of this at once, as I know by experience how
difficult it is to recall the tone of a dialogue after any interval.
But from that moment I began to listen to Laura less attentively. I had
just noticed--some way off, it is true--Olivier, whom I had lost sight
of when Laura drew me into her father’s study. His eyes were shining
and his face extraordinarily animated. I heard afterwards that Sarah
had been amusing herself by making him drink six glasses of champagne,
in succession. Armand was with him, and they were both following Sarah
and an English girl of the same age as Sarah, who has been boarding
with the family for over a year--pursuing them from group to group.
At last Sarah and her friend left the room, and through the open door
I saw the two boys rush upstairs after them. In my turn, I was on the
point of leaving the room in response to Laura’s request, when she made
a movement towards me:
“Wait, Edouard, there’s one thing more ...” and her voice suddenly
became very grave. “It’ll probably be a long time before we see each
other again. I should like you to say ... I should like to know whether
I may still count on you ... as a friend.”
Never did I feel more inclined to embrace her than at that moment--but
I contented myself with kissing her hand tenderly and impetuously, and
with murmuring: “Come what come may.” And then, to hide the tears which
I felt rising to my eyes, I hurried off to find Olivier.
He was sitting on the stairs with Armand, watching for me to come out.
He was certainly a little tipsy. He got up and pulled me by the arm:
“Come along,” he said. “We’re going to have a cigarette in Sarah’s
room. She’s expecting you.”
“In a moment. I must first go up and see Monsieur Azaïs. But I shall
never be able to find the room.”
“Oh, yes. You know it very well. It’s Laura’s old room,” cried Armand.
“As it was one of the best rooms in the house, it was given to the
parlour-boarder, but as she doesn’t pay much, she shares it with Sarah.
They put in two beds for form’s sake--not that there was much need....”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Olivier, laughing and giving him a shove,
“he’s drunk.”
“And what about you?” answered Armand. “Well then, you’ll come, won’t
you? We shall expect you.”
I promised to rejoin them.
Now that he has cut his hair _en brosse_, old Azaïs doesn’t
look like Walt Whitman any more. He has handed over the first and
second floors of the house to his son-in-law. From the windows of his
study (mahogany, rep and horse-hair furniture) he can look over the
play-ground and keep an eye on the pupils’ goings and comings.
“You see how spoilt I am,” he said, pointing to a huge bouquet of
chrysanthemums which was standing on the table, and which a mother of
one of the pupils--an old friend of the family’s--had just left for
him. The atmosphere of the room was so austere that it seemed as if any
flower must wither in it at once. “I have left the party for a moment.
I’m getting old and all this noisy talk tires me. But these flowers
will keep me company. They have their own way of talking and tell the
glory of God better than men” (or some such stuff).
The worthy man has no conception how much he bores his pupils with
remarks of this kind; he is so sincere in making them, that one hasn’t
the heart to be ironical. Simple souls like his are certainly the ones
I find it most difficult to understand. If one is a little less simple
oneself, one is forced into a kind of pretence; not very honest, but
what is one to do? It is impossible either to argue or to say what one
thinks; one can only acquiesce. If one’s opinions are the least bit
different from his, Azaïs forces one to be hypocritical. When I first
used to frequent the family, the way in which his grandchildren lied to
him made me indignant. I soon found myself obliged to follow suit.
Pastor Prosper Vedel is too busy; Madame Vedel, who is rather foolish,
lives plunged in a religio-poetico day-dream, in which she loses all
sense of reality; the young people’s moral bringing-up, as well as
their education, has been taken in hand by their grandfather. Once a
month at the time when I lived with them, I used to assist at a stormy
scene of explanations, which would end up by effusive and pathetic
appeals of this kind:
“Henceforth we will be perfectly frank and open with one another.” (He
likes using several words to say the same thing--an odd habit, left him
from the time of his pastorship.) “There shall be no more concealments,
we won’t keep anything back in the future, will we? Everything is to be
above board. We shall be able to look each other straight in the face.
That’s a bargain, isn’t it?”
After which they sank deeper than ever into their bog--he of
blindness--and the children of deceit.
These remarks were chiefly addressed to a brother of Laura’s, a year
younger than she; the sap of youth was working in him and he was making
his first essays of love. (He went out to the colonies and I have
lost sight of him.) One evening when the old man had been talking in
this way, I went to speak to him in his study; I tried to make him
understand that the sincerity which he demanded from his grandson was
made impossible by his own severity. Azaïs almost lost his temper:
“He has only to do nothing of which he need be ashamed,” he exclaimed
in a tone of voice which allowed of no reply.
All the same he is an excellent man--a paragon of virtue, and what
people call a heart of gold; but his judgments are childish. His great
esteem for me comes from the fact that, as far as he knows, I have no
mistress. He did not conceal from me that he had hoped to see me marry
Laura; he is afraid Douviers may not be the right husband for her,
and he repeated several times: “I am surprised at her choice”; then
he added, “Still he seems to me an excellent fellow.... What do you
think?...”
To which I answered, “Certainly.”
The deeper the soul plunges into religious devotion, the more it loses
all sense of reality, all need, all desire, all love for reality. I
have observed the same thing in Vedel upon the few occasions that I
have spoken to him. The dazzling light of their faith blinds them to
the surrounding world and to their own selves. As for me, who care for
nothing so much as to see the world and myself clearly, I am amazed at
the coils of falsehood in which devout persons take delight.
I tried to get Azaïs to speak of Olivier, but he takes more interest in
George.
“Don’t let him see that you know what I am going to tell you,” he
began; “for that matter, it’s entirely to his credit. Just fancy! your
nephew with a few of his schoolfellows has started a kind of little
society--a little mutual emulation league; the ones who are allowed
into it must show themselves worthy and furnish proofs of their
virtue--a kind of children’s Legion of Honour. Isn’t it charming? They
all wear a little ribbon in their button hole--not very noticeable,
certainly, but all the same I noticed it. I sent for the boy to my
study and when I asked him the meaning of this badge, he began by being
very much embarrassed. The dear little chap thought I was going to
reprove him. Then with a great deal of confusion and many blushes, he
told me about the starting of this little club. It’s the kind of thing,
you see, one must be very careful not to smile at; one might hurt all
sorts of delicate feelings.... I asked him why he and his friends
didn’t do it openly, in the light of day? I told him what a wonderful
power of propaganda, or proselytism, they would have, what fine things
they might do!... But at that age, one likes mysteries.... To encourage
his confidence, I told him that in my time--that’s to say, when I was
his age--I had been a member of a society of the same kind, and that we
went by the grand name of Knights of Duty; the President of the society
gave us each a note-book, in which we set down with absolute frankness
our failures and our shortcomings. He smiled and I could see that the
story of the note-books had given him an idea; I didn’t insist, but I
shouldn’t be surprised if he introduced the system of note-books among
his companions. You see, these children must be taken in the right way;
and in the first place, they must see that one understands them. I
promised him not to breathe a word of all this to his parents; though,
at the same time, I advised him to tell his mother all about it, as it
would make her so happy. But it seems that the boys had given their
word of honour to say nothing about it. It would have been a mistake to
insist. But before he left me we joined together in a prayer for God to
bless their society.”
Poor, dear old Azaïs! I am convinced the little rascal was pulling his
leg and that there wasn’t a word of truth in the whole thing. But what
else could he have said?... I must try and find out what it’s all about.
I did not at first recognize Laura’s room. It has been repapered; its
whole atmosphere is changed. And Sarah too seemed to me unrecognizable.
Yet I thought I knew her. She has always been exceedingly confidential
with me. All her life I have been a person to whom one could say
anything. But I had let a great many months go by without seeing the
Vedels. Her neck and arms were bare. She seemed taller, bolder. She
was sitting on one of the two beds beside Olivier and right up against
him; he was lying down at full length and seemed to be asleep. He was
certainly drunk; and as certainly I suffered at seeing him so, but I
thought him more beautiful than ever. In fact they were all four of
them more or less drunk. The English girl was bursting with laughter
at Armand’s ridiculous remarks--a shrill laughter which hurt my ears.
Armand was saying anything that came into his head; he was excited and
flattered by the girl’s laughter and trying to be as stupid and vulgar
as she was; he pretended to light his cigarette at the fire of his
sister’s and Olivier’s flaming cheeks, and to burn his fingers, when
he had the effrontery to seize their heads and pull them together by
force. Olivier and Sarah lent themselves to his tomfoolery, and it was
extremely painful to me. But I am anticipating....
Olivier was still pretending to be asleep when Armand abruptly asked me
what I thought of Douviers. I had sat down in a low arm-chair, and was
feeling amused, excited and, at the same time, embarrassed to see their
tipsiness and their want of restraint; and for that matter, flattered
too, that they had invited me to join them, when it seemed so evident
that it was not my place to be there.
“The young ladies here present ...” he continued, as I found nothing to
answer and contented myself with smiling blandly, so as to appear up to
the mark. Just then, the English girl tried to prevent him from going
on and ran after him to put her hand over his mouth. He wriggled away
from her and called out: “The young ladies are indignant at the idea
of Laura’s going to bed with him.”
The English girl let go of him and exclaimed in pretended fury:
“Oh, you mustn’t believe what he says. He’s a liar!”
“I have tried to make them understand,” went on Armand, more calmly,
“that with only twenty thousand francs for a dot, one could hardly look
for anything better, and that, as a true Christian, she ought first of
all to take into account his spiritual qualities, as our father the
pastor would say. Yes, my children. And then, what would happen to the
population, if nobody was allowed to marry who wasn’t an Adonis ... or
an Olivier, shall we say? to refer to a more recent period?”
“What an idiot!” murmured Sarah. “Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know
what he is saying.”
“I’m saying the truth.”
I had never heard Armand speak in this way before. I thought him--I
still think him--a delicate, sensitive nature; his vulgarity seemed to
me entirely put on--due in part to his being drunk, and still more to
his desire to amuse the English girl. She was pretty enough, but must
have been exceedingly silly to take any pleasure in such fooling; what
kind of interest could Olivier find in all this?... I determined not to
hide my disgust, as soon as we should be alone.
“But you,” went on Armand, turning suddenly towards me, “you, who don’t
care about money and who have enough to indulge in fine sentiments,
will you consent to tell us why you didn’t marry Laura?--when it
appears you were in love with her, and when, to common knowledge, she
was pining away for you?”
Olivier, who up to that moment had been pretending to be asleep, opened
his eyes; they met mine and if I did not blush, it must certainly have
been that not one of the others was in a fit state to observe me.
“Armand, you’re unbearable,” said Sarah, as though to put me at my
ease, for I found nothing to answer. She had hitherto been sitting on
the bed, but at that point she lay down at full length beside Olivier,
so that their two heads were touching. Upon which, Armand leapt up,
seized a large screen which was standing folded against the wall, and
with the antics of a clown spread it out so as to hide the couple;
then, still clowning, he leant towards me and said without lowering his
voice:
“Perhaps you didn’t know that my sister was a whore?”
It was too much. I got up and pushed the screen roughly aside. Olivier
and Sarah immediately sat up. Her hair had come down. Olivier rose,
went to the washhand stand and bathed his face.
“Come here,” said Sarah, taking me by the arm, “I want to show you
something.”
She opened the door of the room and drew me out on to the landing.
“I thought it might be interesting to a novelist. It’s a note-book I
found accidentally--Papa’s private diary. I can’t think how he came to
leave it lying about. Anybody might have read it. I took it to prevent
Armand from seeing it. Don’t tell him about it. It’s not very long. You
can read it in ten minutes and give it back to me before you go.”
“But, Sarah,” said I, looking at her fixedly, “it’s most frightfully
indiscreet.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, if that’s what you think, you’ll be
disappointed. There’s only one place in which it gets interesting--and
even that--Look here; I’ll show it you.”
She had taken out of her bodice a very small memorandum book, about
four years old. She turned over its pages for a moment, and then gave
it to me, pointing to a passage as she did so.
“Read it quickly.”
Under the date and in quotation marks, I first of all saw the Scripture
text: “He who is faithful in small things will be faithful also in
great.” Then followed: “Why do I always put off till to-morrow my
resolution to stop smoking? If only not to grieve Mélanie” (the
pastor’s wife). “Oh, Lord! give me strength to shake off the yoke of
this shameful slavery.” (I quote it, I think exactly.) Then came notes
of struggles, beseeching, prayers, efforts--which were evidently all
in vain, as they were repeated day after day. Then I turned another
page and there was no more mention of the subject.
“Rather touching, isn’t it?” asked Sarah with the faintest touch of
irony, when I had done reading.
“It’s much odder than you think,” I couldn’t help saying, though I
reproached myself for it. “Just think, I asked your father only ten
days ago if he had ever tried to give up smoking. I thought I was
smoking a good deal too much myself and.... Anyway, do you know what
he answered? First of all he said that the evil effects of tobacco
were very much exaggerated, and that as far as he was concerned he had
never felt any; and as I insisted: ‘Yes,’ said he, at last. ‘I have
made up my mind once or twice to give it up for a time.’ ‘And did you
succeed?’ ‘Naturally,’ he answered, as if it followed as a matter of
course--‘since I made up my mind to.’--It’s extraordinary! Perhaps,
after all, he didn’t remember,” I added, not wishing to let Sarah see
the depths of hypocrisy I suspected.
“Or perhaps,” rejoined Sarah, “it proves that ‘smoking’ stood for
something else.”
Was it really Sarah who spoke in this way? I was struck dumb. I looked
at her, hardly daring to understand.... At that moment Olivier came out
of the room. He had combed his hair, arranged his collar and seemed
calmer.
“Suppose we go,” he said, paying no attention to Sarah, “it’s late.”
“I am afraid you may mistake me,” he said, as soon as we were in the
street. “You might think that I’m in love with Sarah. But I’m not....
Oh! I don’t detest her ... only I don’t love her.”
I had taken his arm and pressed it without speaking.
“You mustn’t judge Armand either from what he said to-day,” he went on.
“It’s a kind of part he acts ... in spite of himself. In reality he’s
not in the least like that.... I can’t explain. He has a kind of desire
to spoil everything he most cares for. He hasn’t been like that long.
I think he’s very unhappy and that he jokes in order to hide it. He’s
very proud. His parents don’t understand him at all. They wanted to
make a pastor of him.”
Memo.--Motto for a chapter of _The Counterfeiters_:
“_La famille ... cette cellule sociale._”
PAUL BOURGET (_passim_).
Title of the chapter: THE CELLULAR SYSTEM.
True, there exists no prison (intellectual, that is) from which a
vigorous mind cannot escape; and nothing that incites to rebellion is
definitively dangerous--although rebellion may in certain cases distort
a character--driving it in upon itself, turning it to contradiction and
stubbornness, and impiously prompting it to deceit; moreover the child
who resists the influence of his family, wears out the first freshness
of his energy in the attempt to free himself. But also the education
which thwarts a child strengthens him by the very fact of hampering.
The most lamentable victims of all are the victims of adulation. What
force of character is needed to detest the things that flatter us!
How many parents I have seen (the mother in especial) who delight
in encouraging their children’s silliest repugnances, their most
unjust prejudices, their failures to understand, their unreasonable
antipathies.... At table: “You’d better leave that; can’t you see, it’s
a bit of fat? Don’t eat that skin. That’s not cooked enough....” Out of
doors, at night: “Oh, a bat!... Cover your head quickly; it’ll get into
your hair.” Etc., etc.... According to them, beetles bite, grasshoppers
sting, earthworms give spots ... and such-like absurdities in every
domain, intellectual, moral, etc.
In the suburban train the day before yesterday, as I was coming back
from Auteuil, I heard a young mother whispering to a little girl of
ten, whom she was petting:
“You and me, darling, me and you--the others may go hang!”
(Oh, yes! I knew they were working people, but the people too have a
right to our indignation. The husband was sitting in the corner of the
carriage reading the paper--quiet, resigned, not even a cuckold, I dare
say.)
Is it possible to conceive a more insidious poison?
It is to bastards that the future belongs. How full of meaning is the
expression “a natural child”! The bastard alone has the right to be
natural.
Family egoism ... hardly less hideous than personal egoism.
_Nov. 6th._--I have never been able to invent anything. But I
set myself in front of reality like a painter, who should say to his
model: “Take up such and such an attitude; put on such and such an
expression.” I can make the models which society furnishes me act as I
please, if I am acquainted with their springs; or at any rate I can put
such and such problems before them to solve in their own way, so that
I learn my lesson from their reactions. It is my novelist’s instinct
that is constantly pricking me on to intervene--to influence the course
of their destiny. If I had more imagination, I should be able to spin
invention intrigues; as it is, I provoke them, observe the actors, and
then work at their dictation.
_Nov. 7th._--Nothing that I wrote yesterday is true. Only this
remains--that reality interests me inasmuch as it is plastic, and that
I care more--infinitely more--for what may be than for what has been.
I lean with a fearful attraction over the depths of each creature’s
possibilities and weep for all that lies atrophied under the heavy lid
of custom and morality.
* * * * *
Here Bernard was obliged to pause. His eyes were blurred. He was
gasping as if the eagerness with which he read had made him forget
to breathe. He opened the window and filled his lungs before taking
another plunge. His friendship for Olivier was no doubt very great;
he had no better friend and there was no one in the world he loved so
much, now that he could no longer love his parents; and indeed he clung
to this affection in a manner that was almost excessive; but Olivier
and he did not understand friendship quite in the same way. Bernard,
as he progressed in his reading, felt with more and more astonishment
and admiration, though with a little pain too, what diversity this
friend he thought he knew so well, was capable of showing. Olivier
had never told him anything of what the journal recounted. He hardly
knew of the existence of Armand and Sarah. How different Olivier was
with them to what he was with him!... In that room of Sarah’s, on that
bed, would Bernard have recognized his friend? There mingled with the
immense curiosity which drove him on to read so precipitately, a queer
feeling of discomfort--disgust or pique. He had felt a little of this
pique a moment before, when he had seen Olivier on Edouard’s arm--pique
at being out of it. This kind of pique may lead very far and may make
one commit all sorts of follies--like every kind of pique for that
matter.
Well, we must go on. All this that I have been saying is only to put a
little air between the pages of this journal. Now that Bernard has got
his breath back again, we will return to it. He dives once more into
its pages.
XIII
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: FIRST VISIT TO LA PÉROUSE
_On tire peu de service des vieillards._
VAUVENARGUES.
_Nov. 8th._--Old Monsieur and Madame de la Pérouse have changed
houses again. Their new apartment, which I had never seen so far, is
an _entresol_ in the part of the Faubourg St. Honoré which makes
a little recess before it cuts across the Boulevard Haussmann. I rang
the bell. La Pérouse opened the door. He was in his shirt sleeves and
was wearing a sort of yellowish whitish night-cap on his head, which
I finally made out to be an old stocking (Madame de La Pérouse’s no
doubt) tied in a knot, so that the foot dangled on his cheek like a
tassel. He was holding a bent poker in his hand. I had evidently caught
him at some domestic job, and as he seemed rather confused:
“Would you like me to come back later?” I asked.
“No, no.... Come in here.” And he pushed me into a long, narrow room
with two windows looking on to the street, just on a level with the
street lamp. “I was expecting a pupil at this very moment” (it was six
o’clock); “but she has telegraphed to say she can’t come. I am so glad
to see you.”
He laid his poker down on a small table, and, as though apologizing for
his appearance:
“Madame de La Pérouse’s maid-servant has let the stove go out. She only
comes in the morning; I’ve been obliged to empty it.”
“Shall I help you light it?”
“No, no; it’s dirty work.... Will you excuse me while I go and put my
coat on?”
He trotted out of the room and came back almost immediately dressed in
an alpaca coat, with its buttons torn off, its elbows in holes, and its
general appearance so threadbare, that one wouldn’t have dared give it
to a beggar. We sat down.
“You think I’m changed, don’t you?”
I wanted to protest, but could hardly find anything to say, I was so
painfully affected by the harassed expression of his face, which had
once been so beautiful. He went on:
“Yes, I’ve grown very old lately. I’m beginning to lose my memory. When
I want to go over one of Bach’s fugues, I am obliged to refer to the
book....”
“There are many young people who would be glad to have a memory like
yours.”
He replied with a shrug: “Oh, it’s not only my memory that’s failing.
For instance, I think I still walk pretty quickly; but all the same
everybody in the street passes me.”
“Oh,” said I, “people walk much quicker nowadays.”