One would swear it was gold. I was taken in by it this morning, just as
the grocer who passed it on to me had been taken in himself, he told
me. It isn’t quite the same weight, I think; but it has the brightness
and the sound of a real piece; it is coated with gold, so that, all the
same, it is worth a little more than two sous; but it’s made of glass.
It’ll wear transparent. No; don’t rub it; you’ll spoil it. One can
almost see through it, as it is.”
Edouard had seized it and was considering it with the utmost curiosity.
“But where did the grocer get it from?”
“He didn’t know. He thinks he has had it in his drawer some days. He
amused himself by passing it off on me to see whether I should be taken
in. Upon my word, I was just going to accept it! But as he’s an honest
man, he undeceived me; then he let me have it for five francs. He
wanted to keep it to show to what he calls ‘amateurs.’ I thought there
couldn’t be a better one than the author of _The Counterfeiters_;
and it was to show you that I took it. But now that you have examined
it, give it back to me! I’m sorry that the reality doesn’t interest
you.”
“Yes, it does”; said Edouard, “but it disturbs me too.”
“That’s a pity,” rejoined Bernard.
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL
_Tuesday evening._--Sophroniska, Bernard and Laura have been
questioning me about my novel. Why did I let myself go to speak of it?
I said nothing but stupidities. Interrupted fortunately by the return
of the two children. They were red and out of breath, as if they had
been running. As soon as she came in, Bronja fell into her mother’s
arms; I thought she was going to burst into sobs.
“Mamma!” she cried, “do scold Boris. He wanted to undress and lie down
in the snow without any clothes on.”
Sophroniska looked at Boris, who was standing in the door-way, his head
down, his eyes with a look in them of almost hatred; she seemed not to
notice the little boy’s strange expression, but with admirable calm:
“Listen, Boris,” she said. “That’s a thing you mustn’t do in the
evening. If you like we’ll go there to-morrow morning; first of all you
must begin with bare feet....”
She was gently stroking her daughter’s forehead; but the little girl
suddenly fell on the ground and began rolling about in convulsions. It
was rather alarming. Sophroniska lifted her and laid her on the sofa.
Boris stood motionless, watching the scene with a dazed, bewildered
expression.
Sophroniska’s methods of education seem to me excellent in theory, but
perhaps she miscalculates the children’s powers of resistance.
“You behave,” said I, when I was alone with her a little later (after
the evening meal I had gone to enquire after Bronja, who was too
unwell to come downstairs), “as if good were always sure to triumph
over evil.”
“It is true,” she said, “I firmly believe that good must triumph. I
have confidence.”
“And yet, through excess of confidence you might make a mistake....”
“Every time I have made a mistake, it has been because my confidence
was not great enough. To-day, when I allowed the children to go out, I
couldn’t help showing them I was a little uneasy. They felt it. All the
rest followed from that.”
She had taken my hand.
“You don’t seem to believe in the virtue of convictions.... I mean in
their power as an active principle.”
“You are right,” I said laughing. “I am not a mystic.”
“Well, as for me,” she cried in an admirable burst of enthusiasm,
“I believe with my whole soul that without mysticism nothing great,
nothing fine can be accomplished in this world.”
Discovered the name of Victor Strouvilhou in the visitors’ book. From
what the hotel-keeper says, he must have left Saas-Fée two days before
our arrival, after staying here nearly a month. I should have been
curious to see him again. No doubt Sophroniska talked to him. I must
ask her about him.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: The state records of each individual citizen, in which are
noted the legal facts of his existence.]
IV
BERNARD AND LAURA
“I WANTED to ask you, Laura,” said Bernard, “whether you think there
exists anything in this world that mayn’t become a subject of doubt....
So much so, that I wonder whether one couldn’t take doubt itself as a
starting point; for that, at any rate, will never fail us. I may doubt
the reality of everything, but not the reality of my doubt. I should
like.... Forgive me if I express myself pedantically--I am not pedantic
by nature, but I have just left the _lycée_, and you have no idea
what a stamp is impressed on the mind by the philosophical training of
our last year; I will get rid of it I promise you.”
“Why this parenthesis? You would like...?”
“I should like to write a story of a person who starts by listening to
everyone, who consults everyone like Panurge, before deciding to do
anything; after having discovered that the opinions of all these people
are contradictory in every point, he makes up his mind to consult no
one but himself, and thereupon becomes a person of great capacity.”
“It’s the idea of an old man,” said Laura.
“I am more mature than you think. A few days ago I began to keep a
note-book, like Edouard; I write down an opinion on the right hand
page, whenever I can write the opposite opinion, facing it, on the left
hand page. For instance, the other evening Sophroniska told us that
she made Bronja and Boris sleep with their windows open. Everything
she said in support of this régime seemed to us perfectly reasonable
and convincing, didn’t it? Well, yesterday in the smoking-room, I
heard that German professor who has just arrived maintain the contrary
theory, which seemed to me, I must admit, more reasonable still and
better grounded. The important thing during sleep, said he, is to
restrict as much as possible all expenditure and the traffic of
exchanges in which life consists--carburation, he called it; it is only
then that sleep becomes really restorative. He gave as example the
birds who sleep with their heads under their wings, and the animals who
snuggle down when they go to sleep, so as to be hardly able to breathe
at all; in the same way, he said, the races that are nearest to nature,
the peasants who are least cultivated, stuff themselves up at night in
little closets; and Arabs, who are forced to sleep in the open, at any
rate cover their faces up with the hood of their burnous. But to return
to Sophroniska and the two children she is bringing up, I come round to
thinking she is not wrong after all, and that what is good for others
would be harmful for these two, because, if I understand rightly, they
have the germs of tubercle in them. In short, I said to myself.... But
I’m boring you.”
“Never mind about that. You said to yourself...?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“Now, now, that’s naughty. You mustn’t be ashamed of your thoughts.”
“I said to myself that nothing is good for everyone, but only
relatively to some people; that nothing is true for everyone, but only
relatively to the person who believes it is; that there is no method
and no theory which can be applied indifferently to all alike; that
if, in order to act, we must make a choice, at any rate we are free
to choose; and that if we aren’t free to choose, the thing is simpler
still; the belief that becomes truth for me (not absolutely, no doubt,
but relatively to me) is that which allows me the best use of my
strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action. For I can’t
prevent myself from doubting, and at the same time I loathe indecision.
The soft and comfortable pillow Montaigne talks of, is not for my
head, for I’m not sleepy yet and I don’t want to rest. It’s a long way
that leads from what I thought I was to what perhaps I really am. I am
afraid sometimes that I got up too early in the morning.”
“Afraid?”
“No; I’m afraid of nothing. But, d’you know, I have already changed a
great deal; that is, my mind’s landscape is not at all what it was the
day I left home; since then I have met you. As soon as I did that I
stopped putting my freedom first. Perhaps you haven’t realized that I
am at your service.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, you know quite well. Why do you want to make me say it? Do you
expect a declaration?... No, no; please don’t cloud your smile, or I
shall catch cold.”
“Come now, my dear boy, you are not going to pretend that you are
beginning to love me.”
“Oh, I’m not beginning,” said Bernard. “It’s you who are beginning to
feel it, perhaps; but you can’t prevent me.”
“It was so delightful for me not to have to be on my guard with you.
And now, if I’ve got to treat you like inflammable matter and not dare
go near you without taking precautions.... But think of the deformed,
swollen creature I shall soon be. The mere look of me will be enough to
cure you.”
“Yes, if it were only your looks that I loved. And then, in the first
place, I’m not ill; or if it is being ill to love you, I prefer not to
be cured.”
He said all this gravely, almost sadly; he looked at her more tenderly
than ever Edouard had done, or Douviers, but so respectfully that she
could not take umbrage. She was holding an English book they had been
reading, on her lap, and was turning over its pages absently; she
seemed not to be listening, so that Bernard went on without too much
embarrassment:
“I used to imagine love as something volcanic--at all events the love
I was destined to feel. Yes; I really thought I should only be able to
love in a savage, devastating way, à la Byron. How ill I knew myself!
It was you, Laura, who taught me to know myself; so different from
what I thought I was! I was playing the part of a dreadful person
and making desperate efforts to resemble him. When I think of the
letter I wrote my supposed father before I left home, I feel very
much ashamed, I assure you. I took myself for a rebel, an outlaw, who
tramples underfoot everything that opposes his desire; and now here I
find that when I am with you I have no desires. I longed for liberty
as the supreme good, and no sooner was I free, than I bowed myself to
your.... Oh, if you only knew how maddening it is to have in one’s head
quantities of phrases from great authors, which come irresistibly to
one’s lips when one wants to express a sincere feeling. This feeling of
mine is so new to me that I haven’t yet been able to invent a language
for it. Let’s say it isn’t love, since you dislike that word; let’s
call it devotion. It’s as though this liberty which seemed to me so
infinite, had had limits set to it by your laws. It’s as though all
the turbulent and unformed things that were stirring within me, were
dancing an harmonious round, with you for their centre. If one of my
thoughts happens to stray from you, I leave it.... Laura, I don’t ask
you to love me--I’m nothing but a schoolboy; I’m not worth your notice;
but everything I want to do now is in order to deserve your ... (oh!
the word is frightful!) ... your esteem....”
He had gone down on his knees before her, and though she had at first
drawn her chair away a little, Bernard’s forehead was on her dress, and
his arms thrown back behind him, in sign of adoration; but when he felt
Laura’s hand laid upon his forehead, he seized the hand and pressed his
lips to it.
“What a child you are, Bernard! I am not free, either,” she said,
taking away her hand. “Here! Read this.”
She took from her bodice a crumpled piece of paper, which she held out
to Bernard.
Bernard saw the signature first of all. As he feared, it was Felix
Douviers’. One moment he kept the letter in his hand without reading
it; he raised his eyes to look at Laura. She was crying. Then Bernard
felt one more bond burst in his heart--one of the secret ties which
bind each one of us to himself, to his selfish past. Then he read:
MY BELOVED LAURA,
In the name of the little child who is to be born, and whom I swear
to love as if I were its father, I beseech you to come back. Don’t
think that any reproaches will meet you here. Don’t blame yourself too
much--that is what hurts me most. Don’t delay. My whole soul awaits
you, adores you, is laid humbly at your feet.
Bernard was sitting on the floor in front of Laura, but it was without
looking at her that he asked:
“When did you get this?”
“This morning.”
“I thought he knew nothing about it. Did you write and tell him?”
“Yes; I told him everything.”
“Does Edouard know this?”
“He knows nothing about it.”
Bernard remained silent a little while with downcast head; then turning
towards her once more:
“And ... what do you mean to do now?”
“Do you really ask?... Return to him. It is with him that my place
is--with him that I ought to live. You know it.”
“Yes,” said Bernard.
There was a very long silence. Bernard broke it:
“Do you believe one can love someone else’s child as much as one’s own,
really?”
“I don’t know if I believe it, but I hope it.”
“For my part, I believe one can. And, on the contrary, I don’t believe
in what people call so foolishly ‘the blood speaking.’ I believe this
idea that the blood speaks is a mere myth. I have read somewhere that
among certain tribes of South Sea Islanders, it is the custom to adopt
other people’s children, and that these adopted children are often
preferred to the others. The book said--I remember it quite well--‘made
more of.’ Do you know what I think now?... I think that my supposed
father, who stood in my father’s place, never said or did anything that
could let it be suspected that I was not his real son; that in writing
to him as I did, that I had always felt the difference, I was lying;
that, on the contrary, he showed a kind of predilection for me, which
I felt perfectly, so that my ingratitude towards him was all the more
abominable; and that I behaved very ill to him. Laura, my friend, I
should like to ask you.... Do you think I ought to beg his pardon and
go back to him?”
“No,” said Laura.
“Why not? Since you are going back to Douviers?”
“You were telling me just now, that what was true for one is not true
for another. I feel I am weak; you are strong. Monsieur Profitendieu
may love you; but from what you have told me, you are not of the kind
to understand each other.... Or, at any rate, wait a little. Don’t go
back to him worsted. Do you want to know what I really think?--that it
is for me and not for him that you are proposing it--to get what you
called ‘my esteem.’ You will only get it, Bernard, if I feel you are
not seeking for it. I can only care for you as you are naturally. Leave
repentance to me. It is not for you, Bernard.”
“I almost get to like my name when I hear it on your lips. Do you
know what my chief horror was at home? The luxury. So much comfort,
so many facilities.... I felt myself becoming an anarchist. Now, on
the contrary, I think I’m veering toward conservatism. I realized that
the other day because of the indignation that seized me when I heard
the tourist at the frontier speak of his pleasure in cheating the
customs. ‘Robbing the State is robbing no one,’ he said. My feeling of
antagonism made me suddenly understand what the State was. And I began
to have an affection for it, simply because it was being injured. I had
never thought about it before. ‘The State is nothing but a convention,’
he said, too. What a fine thing a convention would be that rested on
the bona fides of every individual! ... if only there were nothing
but honest folk. Why, if anyone were to ask me to-day what virtue I
considered the finest, I should answer without hesitation--honesty. Oh,
Laura! I should like all my life long, at the very smallest shock, to
ring true, with a pure, authentic sound. Nearly all the people I have
known ring false. To be worth exactly what one seems to be worth--not
to try to seem to be worth more.... One wants to deceive people, and
one is so much occupied with seeming, that one ends by not knowing what
one really is.... Forgive me for talking like this. They are my last
night’s reflections.”
“You were thinking of the little coin you showed us yesterday. When I
go away....”
She could not finish her sentence; the tears rose to her eyes and in
the effort she made to keep them back, Bernard saw her lips tremble.
“Then you are going away, Laura ...” he went on sadly. “I am afraid
that when I no longer feel you near me, I shall be worth nothing at
all--or hardly anything.... But, tell me--I should like to ask you
... would you be going away--would you have made this confession, if
Edouard ... I don’t know how to say it ...” (and as Laura blushed), “if
Edouard had been worth more? Oh, don’t protest. I know so well what you
think of him.”
“You say that, because yesterday you caught me smiling at what he said;
you immediately jumped to the conclusion that we were judging him in
the same way. But it’s not so. Don’t deceive yourself. In reality I
don’t know what I think of him. He is never the same for long together.
He is attached to nothing, but nothing is more attractive than his
elusiveness. He is perpetually forming, unforming, re-forming himself.
One thinks one has grasped him.... Proteus! He takes the shape of what
he loves, and oneself must love him to understand him.”
“You love him. Oh, Laura! it’s not of Douviers I feel jealous, nor of
Vincent; it’s of Edouard.”
“Why jealous? I love Douviers; I love Edouard, but differently. If I am
to love you, it must be with yet another love.”
“Laura, Laura, you don’t love Douviers. You feel affection for him,
pity, esteem; but that’s not love. I think the secret of your sadness
(for you are sad, Laura) is that life has divided you; love has only
consented to take you, incomplete; you distribute among several what
you would have liked to give to one only. As for me, I feel I am
indivisible; I can only give the whole of myself.”
“You are too young to speak so. You cannot tell yet whether life will
not ‘divide’ you too, as you call it. I can only accept from you the
... devotion which you offer me. The rest will have its exigencies and
will have to be satisfied elsewhere.”
“Can it be true? Do you want to disgust me beforehand with myself and
with life, too?”
“You know nothing of life. Everything is before you. Do you know
what my mistake was? To think there was nothing more for me. It was
when I thought, alas! that there was nothing more for me, that I let
myself go. I lived that last spring at Pau as if I were never to see
another--as if nothing mattered any more. I can tell you now, Bernard,
now that I’ve been punished for it--Never despair of life!”
Of what use is it to speak so to a young creature full of fire? And
indeed Laura was hardly speaking to Bernard. Touched by his sympathy,
and almost in spite of herself, she was thinking aloud in his presence.
She was unapt at feigning, unapt at self-control. As she had yielded a
moment ago to the impulsive feeling which carried her away whenever she
thought of Edouard, and which betrayed her love for him, so now she had
given way to a certain tendency to sermonize, which she had no doubt
inherited from her father. But Bernard had a horror of recommendations
and advice, even if they should come from Laura; his smile told her as
much and she went on more calmly:
“Are you thinking of keeping on as Edouard’s secretary when you go back
to Paris?”
“Yes, if he is willing to employ me; but he gives me nothing to do.
Do you know what would amuse me? To write that book of his with him;
for he’ll never write it alone; you told him so yesterday. That method
of working he described to us seemed to me absurd. A good novel gets
itself written more naïvely than that. And first of all, one must
believe in one’s own story--don’t you think so--and tell it quite
simply? I thought at one time I might help him. If he had wanted a
detective, I might perhaps have done the job. He could have worked on
the facts that my police work would have furnished him.... But with
an idea-monger there’s nothing doing. When I’m with him, I feel that
I have the soul of a reporter. If he sticks to his mistaken ways, I
shall work on my own account. I must earn my living. I shall offer my
services to a newspaper. Between times I shall write verses.”
“For when you are with reporters, you’ll certainly feel yourself the
soul of a poet.”
“Oh! don’t laugh at me. I know I’m ridiculous. Don’t rub it in too
much.”
“Stay with Edouard; you’ll help him; and let him help you. He is very
good.”
The luncheon bell rang. Bernard rose. Laura took his hand:
“Just one thing--that little coin you showed us yesterday ... in
remembrance of you, when I go away”--she pulled herself together and
this time was able to finish her sentence--“would you give it me?”
“Here it is,” said Bernard, “take it.”
V
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL: CONVERSATION WITH SOPHRONISKA
_C’est ce qui arrive de presque toutes les maladies de l’esprit
humain qu’on se flatte d’avoir guéries. On les répercute seulement,
comme on dit en médecine, et on leur en substitue d’autres._
SAINTE-BEUVE (_Lundis_, I, p. 19)
I AM beginning to catch sight of what I might call the “deep-lying
subject” of my book. It is--it will be--no doubt, the rivalry between
the real world and the representation of it which we make to ourselves.
The manner in which the world of appearances imposes itself upon us,
and the manner in which we try to impose on the outside world our own
interpretation--this is the drama of our lives. The resistance of
facts invites us to transport our ideal construction into the realm of
dreams, of hope, of belief in a future life, which is fed by all the
disappointments and disillusions of our present one. Realists start
from facts--fit their ideas to suit the facts. Bernard is a realist. I
am afraid we shall never understand each other.
How could I agree when Sophroniska told me I had nothing of the mystic
in me? I am quite ready to recognize, as she does, that without
mysticism man can achieve nothing great. But is it not precisely my
mysticism which Laura incriminates when I speak of my book?... Well,
let them settle the argument as they please.
Sophroniska has been speaking to me again about Boris, from whom she
thinks she has succeeded in obtaining a full confession. The poor child
has not got the smallest covert, the smallest tuft left in him, where
he can take shelter from the doctor’s scrutiny. He has been driven into
the open. Sophroniska takes to bits the innermost wheels of his mental
organism and spreads them out in the broad daylight, like a watchmaker
cleaning the works of a clock. If after that he does not keep good
time, it’s a hopeless job. This is what Sophroniska told me:
When Boris was about nine years old, he was sent to school at Warsaw.
He there made friends with a schoolfellow one or two years older
than himself--one Baptistin Kraft, who initiated him into certain
clandestine practices, which the children in their ignorance and
astonishment believed to be “magic.” This is the name they bestowed
upon their vice, from having heard or read that magic enables one in
some mysterious way to gain possession of what one wishes for, that
it gives unlimited powers and so forth.... They believed in all good
faith that they had discovered a secret which made up for real absence
by illusory presence, and they freely put themselves in a state of
hallucination and ecstasy, gloating over an empty void, which their
heated imagination, stimulated by their desire for pleasure, filled
to overflowing with marvels. Needless to say, Sophroniska did not
make use of these terms; I should have liked her to repeat exactly
what Boris said, but she declares she only succeeded in making out
the above--though she certified its accuracy--through a tangle of
pretences, reticence and vagueness.
“I have at last found out the explanation of something I have been
trying to discover for a long time past,” she added, “--of a bit of
parchment which Boris used always to wear hanging round his neck in a
little sachet, along with the religious medallions his mother forces
him to wear. There were six words on it, written in capital letters in
a childish, painstaking hand--six words whose meaning he never would
tell me.
“GAS. TELEPHONE ... ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND ROUBLES