I pressed him. That was all I could get out of him. I know now that
these enigmatic words are in young Baptistin’s handwriting--the grand
master and professor of magic--and that these six words were the boys’
formula of incantation--the ‘Open Sesame’ of the shameful Paradise,
into which their pleasure plunged them. Boris called this bit of
parchment, his _talisman_. I had great difficulty in persuading
him to let me see it and still greater in persuading him to give it up
(it was at the beginning of our stay here); for I wanted him to give it
up, as I know now that he had already given up his bad habits. I had
hopes that the tics and manias from which he suffers would disappear
with the _talisman_. But he clung to it and his illness clung to
it as to a last refuge.”
“But you said he had already given up his bad habits....”
“His nervous illness only began after that. It arose no doubt from the
constraint Boris was obliged to exercise in order to get free from
them. I have just learnt from him that his mother caught him one day in
the act of ‘doing magic,’ as he says. Why did she never tell me?... out
of false shame?...”
“And no doubt because she knew he was cured.”
“Absurd!... And that is why I have been in the dark so long. I told you
that I thought Boris was perfectly pure.”
“You even told me that you were embarrassed by it.”
“You see how right I was!... The mother ought to have warned me. Boris
would be cured already if I had known this from the beginning.”
“You said these troubles only began later on....”
“I said they arose as a protestation. His mother, I imagine, scolded,
begged, preached. Then his father died. Boris was convinced that this
was the punishment of these secret practices he had been told were so
wicked; he held himself responsible for his father’s death; he thought
himself criminal, damned. He took fright; and it was then that his
weakly organism, like a tracked animal, invented all these little
subterfuges, by means of which he works off his secret sense of guilt,
and which are so many avowals.”
“If I understand you rightly, you think it would have been less
prejudicial to Boris if he had gone quietly on with his ‘magic’?”
“I think he might have been cured without being frightened. The change
of life which was made necessary by his father’s death would have
been enough, no doubt, to distract his attention, and when they left
Warsaw he would have been removed from his friend’s influence. No good
result is to be arrived at by terror. Once I knew the facts, I talked
the whole thing over with him, and made him ashamed of having preferred
the possession of imaginary goods to the real goods which are, I told
him, the reward of effort. Far from attempting to blacken his vice, I
represented it to him simply as one of the forms of laziness; and I
really believe it is--the most subtle--the most perfidious.”
These words brought back to my mind some lines of La Rochefoucauld,
which I thought I should like to show her, and, though I might have
quoted them by heart, I went to fetch the little book of _Maxims_,
without which I never travel. I read her the following:
“Of all the passions, the one about which we ourselves know least
is laziness, the fiercest and the most evil of them all, though its
violence goes unperceived and the havoc it causes lies hidden....
The repose of laziness has a secret charm for the soul, suddenly
suspending its most ardent pursuits and most obstinate resolutions.
To give, in fine, some idea of this passion, it should be said that
laziness is like a state of beatitude, in which the soul is consoled
for all its losses, and which stands in lieu to it of all its
possessions.”[5]
“Do you mean to say,” said Sophroniska then, “that La Rochefoucauld was
hinting at what we have been speaking of, when he wrote that?”
“Possibly; but I don’t think so. Our classical authors have a right to
all the interpretations they allow of. That is why they are so rich.
Their precision is all the more admirable in that it does not claim to
be exclusive.”
I asked her to show me this wonderful _talisman_ of Boris’s. She
told me it was no longer in her possession, as she had given it to a
person who was interested in Boris and who had asked her for it as a
souvenir. “A certain M. Strouvilhou, whom I met here some time before
your arrival.”
I told Sophroniska then, that I had seen the name in the visitors’
book, and that as I had formerly known a Strouvilhou, I was curious
to learn whether it was the same. From the description she gave of
him it was impossible to doubt it. But she could tell me nothing that
satisfied my curiosity. I merely learnt that he was very polite, very
attentive, that he seemed to her exceedingly intelligent, but a little
lazy, “if I dare still use the word,” she added, laughing. In my turn
I told her all I knew of Strouvilhou, and that led me to speak of the
boarding school where we had first met, of Laura’s parents (she too
had been confiding in her), and finally of old La Pérouse, of his
relationship with Boris, and of the promise I had made him to bring the
child back to Paris. As Sophroniska had previously said that it was not
desirable Boris should live with his mother, “Why don’t you send him to
Azaïs’s school?” I asked. In suggesting this, I was thinking especially
of his grandfather’s immense joy at having him so near, and staying
with friends where he could see him whenever he liked. Sophroniska said
she would think it over; extremely interested by everything I told her.
Sophroniska goes on repeating that little Boris is cured--a cure
which is supposed to corroborate her method; but I am afraid she is
anticipating a little. Of course I don’t want to set my opinion against
hers, and I admit that his tics, his way of contradicting himself, his
hesitations of speech have almost entirely disappeared; but, to my
mind, the malady has simply taken refuge in some deeper recess of his
being, as though to escape the doctor’s inquisitorial glance, and now
it is his soul itself which is the seat of mischief. Just as onanism
was succeeded by nervous movements, so these movements have given place
to some strange undefinable, invisible state of terror. Sophroniska,
it is true, is uneasy at seeing Boris, following upon Bronja’s lead,
fling himself into a sort of puerile mysticism; she is too intelligent
not to understand that this new “beatitude” which Boris is now seeking,
is not very different after all from the one he at first provoked by
artifice, and that though it may be less wasteful, less ruinous to the
organism, it turns him aside quite as much from effort and realization.
But when I say this she replies that creatures like Boris and Bronja
cannot do without some idealistic food, and that if they were deprived
of it, they would succumb--Bronja to despair, and Boris to a vulgar
materialism; she thinks she has no right to destroy the children’s
confidence, and though she thinks their belief is untrue, she must
needs see in it a sublimation of low instincts, a higher postulation,
an incitement, a safeguard, a what-not.... Without herself believing in
the dogmas of the Church, she believes in the efficacy of faith. She
speaks with emotion of the two children’s piety, of how they read the
Apocalypse together, of their fervour, their talk with angels, their
white-robed souls. Like all women, she is full of contradictions. But
she was right--I am decidedly not a mystic ... any more than I am lazy.
I rely on the atmosphere of Azaïs’s school to turn Boris into a worker;
to cure him in a word of seeking after _imaginary goods_. That is
where his salvation lies. Sophroniska, I think, is coming round to the
idea of confiding him to my care; but she will no doubt accompany him
to Paris so as to be able to settle him into the school herself, and so
reassure his mother, whose consent she makes sure of obtaining.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: _De toutes les passions, celle qui est la plus inconnue
à nous-mêmes, c’est la paresse; elle est la plus ardente et la plus
maligne de toutes, quoique sa violence soit insensible et que les
dommages qu’elle cause soient très-cachés.... Le repos de la paresse
est un charme secret de l’âme qui suspend soudainement les plus
ardentes poursuites et les plus opiniâtres résolutions. Pour donner
enfin la véritable idée de cette passion, il faut dire que la paresse
est comme une béatitude de l’âme, qui la console de toutes ses pertes
et qui lui tient lieu de tous ses biens._
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.]
VI
FROM OLIVIER TO BERNARD
_Il y a de certains défauts qui, bien mis en œuvre brillent plus que
la vertu même_.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
DEAR OLD FELLOW--
I must first tell you that I have passed my _bachot_ all right.
But that’s of no importance. A unique opportunity came in my way of
travelling for a bit. I was still hesitating; but after reading your
letter, I jumped at it. My mother made some objections at first; but
Vincent soon got over them. He has been nicer than I could have hoped.
I cannot believe that in the circumstances you allude to, he can have
behaved like a cad. At our age, we have an unfortunate tendency to
judge people severely and condemn them without appeal. Many actions
appear to us reprehensible--odious even--simply because we don’t enter
sufficiently into their motives. Vincent didn’t ... but this would
take too long and I have too many things to say to you.
You must know that the writer of this letter is no less a person than
the editor-in-chief of the new review, _The Vanguard_. After some
reflection I agreed to take up this responsible position, as Comte
Robert de Passavant considered I should fill it worthily. It is he
who is financing the review, though he doesn’t care about its being
known just yet, and my name is to figure alone on the cover. We shall
come out in October; try to send me something for the first number;
I should be heart-broken if your name didn’t adorn the first list of
contents alongside of mine. Passavant would like the first number to
contain something rather shocking and spicy, for he thinks the most
appalling thing that can be said against a new review is that it is
mealy-mouthed. I’m inclined to agree with him. We discuss it a great
deal. He has asked me to write the thing in question and has provided
me with a rather risky subject for a short story; it worries me a
little because of my mother, who may be hurt by it. But it can’t be
helped. As Passavant says, the younger one is, the less compromising
the scandal.
I am writing this from Vizzavone. Vizzavone is a little place half
way up one of the highest mountains in Corsica, buried in a thick
forest. The hotel in which we are staying is some way off the village
and is used by tourists as a starting place for their excursions. We
have been here only a few days. We began by staying in an inn not far
from the beautiful bay of Porto, where we bathed every morning; it is
absolutely deserted and one can spend the whole day without a stitch
on one. It was marvellous; but the weather turned too hot and we had
to go up to the mountains.
Passavant is a delightful companion; he isn’t at all stuck up about
his title; he likes me to call him Robert; and the name he has
invented for me is Olive--isn’t it charming? He does all he can
to make me forget his age and I assure you he does. My mother was
rather alarmed at the idea of my going away with him, for she hardly
knows him at all. I hesitated at first for fear of distressing her.
Before your letter came I had almost given it up. Vincent persuaded
her, however, and your letter suddenly gave me courage. We spent the
last days before starting in doing a round of shops. Passavant is so
generous that he is always wanting to give me things and I had to stop
him all the time. But he thought my wretched rags frightful; shirts,
ties, socks--nothing I had pleased him; he kept repeating that if we
were to spend some time together, it would be too painful to him not
to see me properly dressed--that is to say, as he likes. Naturally
everything we bought was sent to his house, for fear of making my
mother uncomfortable. He himself is exquisitely elegant; but above all
his taste is very good, and a great many things which I used to think
quite bearable now seem odious to me. You can’t imagine how amusing he
was in the shops. He is really very witty. I should like to give you
an idea of it. One day, we were at Brentano’s, where he was having a
fountain pen mended. There was a huge Englishman just behind him who
wanted to be served before his turn, and as Robert pushed him away
rather roughly, he began to jabber something or other in his lingo;
Robert turned round very calmly and said:
“It’s not a bit of use. I don’t understand English.”
The Englishman was in a rage and answered back in the purest French:
“Then you ought to.”
To which Robert answered with a polite smile:
“I told you it wasn’t a bit of use.”
The Englishman was boiling over, but he hadn’t another word to say. It
was killing.
Another day we were at the Olympia. During the _entr’acte_ we
were in the promenade with a lot of prostitutes walking round. Two of
them--rather decayed looking creatures--accosted him:
“Stand us a glass of beer, dearie?”
We sat down at a table with them.
“Waiter! A glass of beer for these ladies.”
“And for you and the young gentleman, sir?”
“Oh, for us? We’ll take champagne,” he said carelessly. He ordered a
bottle of Moët, and we blew it all to ourselves. You should have seen
the poor things’ faces!... I think he has a loathing for prostitutes.
He confided to me that he has never been inside a brothel, and gave me
to understand that he would be very angry with me if I ever went. So
you see he’s perfectly all right in spite of his airs and his cynical
talk--as, for instance, when he says he calls it a “dull day” if he
hasn’t met at least five people before lunch, with whom he wants to go
to bed. (I must tell you by the way, that I haven’t tried again ...
you know what.)
He has a particularly odd and amusing way of moralizing. The other day
he said to me:
“You see, my dear boy, the important thing in life is not to step on
to the downward path. One thing leads on to another and one never
can tell how it will end. For instance, I once knew a very worthy
young man who was engaged to marry my cook’s daughter. One night he
chanced to go into a small jeweller’s shop; he killed the owner; then
he robbed; after that he dissembled. You see where it leads. The last
time I saw him he had taken to lying. So do be careful.”
“He’s like that the whole time. So there’s no chance of being bored.
We left with the idea of getting through a lot of work, but so
far we’ve done nothing but bathe, dry in the sun and talk. He has
extremely original ideas and opinions about everything. I am trying
to persuade him all I can to write about some new theories he has
on deep-sea fishes and what he calls their “private lights,” which
enables them to do without the light of the sun--which he compares to
grace and revelation. Told baldly like that it doesn’t sound anything,
but I assure you that when he talks about it, it’s as interesting as
a novel. People don’t know that he’s extremely well up in natural
history; but he kind of prides himself on hiding his knowledge--what
he calls his secret jewels. He says it’s only snobs who like showing
off all their possessions--especially if they’re imitation.
He knows admirably well how to make use of ideas, images, people,
things; that is, he gets something out of everything. He says the
great art of life is not so much to enjoy things as to make the most
of them.
I have written a few verses, but I don’t care enough about them to
send them to you.
Good-bye, old boy. Till October. You will find me changed, too. Every
day I get a little more self-confidence. I am glad to hear you are in
Switzerland, but you see that I have no cause to envy you.
OLIVIER.
Bernard held this letter out to Edouard, who read it without showing
any sign of the feelings that agitated him.
Everything that Olivier said of Robert with such complacency filled
him with indignation and put the final touch to his detestation. What
hurt him more than anything was that Olivier had not even mentioned him
in his letter and seemed to have forgotten him. He tried in vain to
decipher three lines of postscript, which had been heavily inked over
and which had run as follows:
“Tell Uncle E. that I think of him constantly; that I cannot forgive
him for having chucked me and that my heart has been mortally wounded.”
These lines were the only sincere ones in a letter which had been
written for show and inspired by pique. Olivier had crossed them out.
Edouard gave the horrible letter back to Bernard without breathing
a word; without breathing a word, Bernard took it. I have said
before that they didn’t speak to each other much--a kind of strange,
inexplicable constraint weighed upon them when they were alone
together. (I confess I don’t like the word “inexplicable” and use it
only because I am momentarily at a loss.) But that evening, when they
were alone in their room and getting ready to go to bed, Bernard, with
a great effort and the words sticking in his throat a little, asked:
“I suppose Laura has shown you Douviers’ letter?”
“I never doubted that Douviers would take it properly,” said Edouard,
getting into bed. “He’s an excellent fellow--a little weak, perhaps,
but still excellent. He’ll adore the child, I’m sure. And it’ll
certainly be more robust than if it were his own. For he doesn’t strike
me as being much of a Hercules.”
Bernard was much too fond of Laura not to be shocked by Edouard’s cool
way of talking; but he did not let it be seen.
“So!” went on Edouard, putting out his candle, “I am glad to see that
after all there is to be a satisfactory ending to this affair, which at
one time seemed as if it could only lead to despair. Anybody may make a
false start; the important thing is not to persist in....”
“Evidently,” interrupted Bernard, who wanted to change the subject.
“I must confess, Bernard, that I am afraid I have made one with you.”
“A false start?”
“Yes; I’m afraid so. In spite of all the affection I have for you, I
have been thinking for the last few days that we aren’t the sort to
understand each other and that ...” (he hesitated a few seconds to
find his words) “... staying with me longer would set you on the wrong
track.”
Bernard had been thinking the same till Edouard spoke; but Edouard
could certainly have said nothing more likely to bring Bernard back.
The instinct of contradiction carried the day and he protested.
“You don’t know me yet, and I don’t know myself. You haven’t put me to
the test. If you have no complaint against me, mayn’t I ask you to wait
a little longer? I admit that we aren’t at all like each other: but my
idea was precisely that it was better for each of us that we shouldn’t
be too much alike. I think that if I can help you, it’ll be above all
by being different and by the new things I may be able to bring you.
If I am wrong, it will be always time enough to tell me so. I am not
the kind of person to complain or recriminate. See here--this is what
I propose--it may be idiotic.... Little Boris, I understand, is to go
to the Vedel-Azaïs school. Wasn’t Sophroniska telling you that she was
afraid he would feel a little lost there? Supposing I were to go there
myself, with a recommendation from Laura; couldn’t I get some kind of
place--under-master--usher--something or other? I have got to earn my
living. I shouldn’t ask much--just my board and lodging.... Sophroniska
seems to trust me and I get on very well with Boris. I would look after
him, help him, tutor him, be his friend and protector. But at the same
time I should remain at your disposition, work for you in the intervals
and be at hand at your smallest sign. Tell me what you say to that?”
And as if to give “that” greater weight, he added:
“I have been thinking of it for the last two days.”
Which wasn’t true. If he hadn’t invented it on the spur of the moment,
he would have already spoken to Laura about it. But what was true,
and what he didn’t say, was that ever since his indiscreet reading
of Edouard’s journal, and since his meeting with Laura, his thoughts
often turned to the Vedels’ boarding school; he wanted to know Armand,
Olivier’s friend, of whom he never spoke; he wanted still more to know
Sarah, the younger sister; but his curiosity remained a secret one; out
of consideration for Laura, he did not even own it to himself.
Edouard said nothing; and yet Bernard’s plan in so far as it provided
him with a domicile, pleased him. He didn’t at all care for the idea of
taking him in himself. Bernard blew out his candle, and then went on:
“Don’t think that I didn’t understand what you said about your book and
about the conflict you imagine between brute reality and....”
“I don’t imagine it,” said Edouard, “it exists.”
“But for that very reason, wouldn’t it be a good thing if I were to
beat in a few facts for you, so as to give you something to fight with?
I could do your observing for you.”
Edouard had a suspicion that he was laughing at him a little. The truth
is he felt humiliated by Bernard. He expressed himself too well....
“We’ll think it over,” said Edouard.
A long time went by. Bernard tried in vain to sleep. Olivier’s letter
kept tormenting him. Finally, unable to hold out any longer, and
hearing Edouard tossing in his bed, he murmured:
“If you aren’t asleep, I should like to ask you one thing more.... What
do you think of the Comte de Passavant?”
“I should think you could pretty well imagine,” said Edouard. Then,
after a moment: “Are you?”
“I?” said Bernard savagely, “... I could kill him.”
VII
THE AUTHOR REVIEWS HIS CHARACTERS
THE traveller, having reached the top of the hill, sits down and looks
about him before continuing his journey, which henceforward lies
all downhill. He seeks to distinguish in the darkness--for night is
falling--where the winding path he has chosen is leading him. So the
undiscerning author stops awhile to regain his breath, and wonders with
some anxiety where his tale will take him.
I am afraid that Edouard, in confiding little Boris to Azaïs’s care,
is committing an imprudence. Every creature acts according to his own
law and Edouard’s leads him to constant experimentalizing. He has a
kind heart, no doubt, but for the sake of others I should prefer to
see him act out of self-interest; for the generosity which impels him
is often merely the accompaniment of a curiosity which is liable to
turn into cruelty. He knows Azaïs’s school; he knows the poisonous air
that reigns in it, under the stifling cover of morality and religion.
He knows Boris--how tender he is--how fragile. He ought to foresee the
rubs to which he is exposing him. But he refuses to consider anything
but the protection, the help, the support, which old Azaïs’s austerity
will afford the little boy’s precarious purity. To what sophisms does
he not lend an ear? They must be the promptings of the devil, for if
they came from anyone else, he would not listen to them.
Edouard has irritated me more than once (when he speaks of Douviers,
for instance)--enraged me even; I hope I haven’t shown it too much; but
now I may be allowed to say so. His behaviour to Laura--at times so
generous--has at times seemed to me revolting.
What I dislike about Edouard are the reasons he gives himself. Why does
he try and persuade himself that he is conspiring for Boris’s good?
Does the torrent which drowns a child pretend that it is giving him
drink?... I do not deny that there are actions in the world that are
noble, generous and even disinterested; I only say that there often
lies hidden behind the good motive a devil who is clever enough to find
his profit in the very thing one thought one was wresting from him.
Let us make use of this summer season which disperses our characters
to examine them at leisure. And besides, we have reached that middle
point of our story, when its pace seems to slacken, in order to gather
a new impetus and rush on again with swifter speed to its end. Bernard
is assuredly much too young to take direction of an intrigue. He is
convinced he will be able to guard Boris; but the very utmost he will
be able to do is to observe him. We have already seen Bernard change;
passions may come which will modify him still more. I find in a
note-book a sentence or two in which I have written down what I thought
of him some time ago:
“I ought to have been mistrustful of behaviour as excessive as
Bernard’s at the beginning of his story. It seems to me, to judge by
his subsequent state, that this behaviour exhausted all his reserves
of anarchy, which would no doubt have been kept replenished if he had
continued to vegetate, as is fitting, in the midst of his family’s
oppression. And from that time onwards his life was, so to speak, a
reaction and a protest against this original action. The habit he had
formed of rebellion and opposition incited him to rebel against his
very rebellion. Without a doubt not one of my heroes has disappointed
me more than he, for perhaps there was not one who had given me greater
hopes. Perhaps he gave way too early to his own bent.”