a moment. If you’ll allow me I’ll stay and see you eat them; yes; it
will be a pleasure. I was very much distressed just now to hear you say
that you were of no good to anyone. You seem to forget your grandson.
Your friend, Monsieur Azaïs, proposes that you should go and live with
him, at the school. He commissioned me to tell you so. He thinks that
now that Madame de La Pérouse is no longer here, there’s nothing to
keep you.”
I expected some resistance, but he hardly enquired the conditions of
the new existence which was offered him.
“Though I didn’t kill myself, I am none the less dead. Here or there,
it doesn’t matter to me. You can take me away.”
It was settled I should come and fetch him the next day but one; and
that before then I should put at his disposal two trunks, for him to
pack his clothes in and anything else he might want to take with him.
“And besides,” I added, “as you will keep this apartment on till the
expiration of your lease, you will always be able to come and fetch
anything you need.”
The maid brought in the eggs, which he devoured hungrily. I ordered
dinner for him, greatly relieved to see that nature at last was getting
the upper hand.
“I give you a great deal of trouble,” he kept repeating. “You are very
kind.”
I should have liked him to hand over his pistols to me, and I told him
he had no use for them now; but he would not consent to part with them.
“There’s nothing to fear. What I didn’t do that day, I know I shall
never be able to do. But they are the only remembrances I have left of
my brother--and I need them too to remind me that I am nothing but a
plaything in God’s hands.”
IV
THE FIRST DAY OF THE TERM
THE day was very hot. Through the open windows of the Vedels’ school
could be seen the tree-tops of the Gardens, over which there still
floated an immense, unexhausted store of summer.
The first day of the term was an opportunity old Azaïs never missed of
making a speech. He stood at the foot of the master’s desk, upright and
facing the boys, as is proper. At the desk sat old La Pérouse. He had
risen as the boys came in; but Azaïs, with a friendly gesture, signed
to him to sit down again. His anxious eyes had gone straight to Boris,
and this look of his embarrassed Boris all the more because Azaïs,
in the speech in which he introduced the new master to his pupils,
thought fit to allude to his relationship to one of them. La Pérouse,
in the mean time was distressed at receiving no answering look from
Boris--indifference, he thought, coldness.
“Oh!” thought Boris, “if only he would leave me alone! If only he
wouldn’t make me ‘an object’!” His schoolfellows terrified him. On
coming out of the _lycée_, he had had to join them, and as he
walked with them from the _lycée_ to the Vedels’, he had listened
to their talk. He would have liked to fall in with it, for he had great
need of sympathy, but he was of too fastidious and sensitive a nature,
and he could not overcome his repugnance; the words froze on his lips;
he reproached himself for his foolishness and tried hard not to let
it show; tried hard even to laugh, so as not to be scoffed at; but it
was no good; he looked like a girl among the others, and realized it
sorrowfully.
They had broken up into groups almost immediately. A certain Léon
Ghéridanisol was a central figure and was already beginning to
take the lead. Rather older than the others, and more advanced in
his studies, of a dark complexion, with black hair and black eyes,
Ghéridanisol was neither very tall nor particularly strong--but he had
what is called “_lip_.” Really infernal lip! Even young George
Molinier admitted that Ghéridanisol had “made him sit up”; “and you
know, it takes a good deal to make me sit up!” Hadn’t he seen him
that very morning, with his own eyes, go up to a young woman who was
carrying a child in her arms:
“Is that kid yours, Madam?” (This with a low bow.) “It’s jolly ugly, I
must say. But don’t worry. It won’t live.”
George was still rocking.
“No? Honour bright?” said Philippe Adamanti, his friend, when George
told him the story.
This piece of insolence filled them with rapture; impossible to imagine
anything funnier. A stale enough joke. Léon had learnt it from his
cousin Strouvilhou, but that was no business of George’s.
At school, Molinier and Adamanti got leave to sit on the same bench as
Ghéridanisol--the fifth, so as not to be too near the usher. Molinier
had Adamanti on his left hand and Ghéridanisol (Ghéri for short) on his
right; at the end of the bench sat Boris. Behind him was Passavant.
Gontran de Passavant’s life has been a sad one since his father’s
death--not that it had been very lively before it. He had long ago
understood that he could expect no sympathy from his brother, no
support. He had spent his holidays in Brittany, where his old nurse,
the faithful Séraphine, had taken him to stay with her people. All
his qualities are folded inwards; he devotes himself to his work. A
secret desire spurs him on to prove to his brother that he is worth
more than he. It is by his own choice that he is at school; out of a
wish too not to go on living with his brother in the big house in the
Rue de Babylone, which has nothing but melancholy recollections for
him. Séraphine has taken a lodging in Paris so as not to leave him
alone; she is able to do this with the little pension specially left
her by the late Count’s will and served her by his two sons. Gontran
has one of her rooms, and it is here that he spends his free time.
He has furnished it to his own taste. He takes two meals a week with
Séraphine; she looks after him and sees that he wants for nothing.
When he is with her, Gontran chatters freely enough, though he can
speak to her of hardly any of the things he has most at heart. At
school he keeps his independence; he listens absent-mindedly to his
schoolfellows’ nonsense, and often refuses to join in their games. He
prefers reading to any but out-of-door games. He likes sports--all
kinds of sports--but preferably those that are solitary. For he is
proud and will not associate with everyone. On Sundays, according to
the season, he skates or swims, or boats, or takes immense walks in the
country. He has repugnances and does not try to overcome them; nor does
he try to widen his mind so much as to strengthen it. He is perhaps not
so simple as he thinks--as he tries to make himself become; we have
seen him at his father’s death-bed; but he does not like mysteries
and whenever he is unlike himself, he is disgusted. If he succeeds
in remaining at the top of his class, it is through application, not
through facility. Boris would find a protector in him, if he were only
to look towards him, but it is his neighbour George who attracts him.
As for George, he has eyes for no one but Ghéri, who has eyes for no
one.
George had some important news to communicate to Philippe Adamanti,
which he had judged it more prudent not to write.
That morning he had arrived at the _lycée_ doors a quarter of an
hour before the opening and had waited for him in vain. It was while he
was waiting that he had heard Léon Ghéridanisol apostrophize the young
woman so brilliantly, after which incident the two urchins had entered
into conversation and had discovered to George’s great joy that they
were going to be schoolfellows.
On coming out of the _lycée_, George and Phiphi had at last
succeeded in meeting. They walked to the Pension Azaïs in company with
the other boys, but a little apart, so as to be able to talk freely.
“You had better hide that thing,” George had begun, pointing to the
yellow rosette which Phiphi was still sporting in his buttonhole.
“Why?” asked Philippe, noticing that George was no longer wearing his.
“You run the risk of getting collared. I wanted to tell you before
school, my boy; why didn’t you turn up earlier? I was waiting outside
the doors to warn you.”
“But I didn’t know,” Phiphi had answered.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t know,” George repeated, mimicking him. “You
might have guessed that there would be things to tell you when I didn’t
see you again at Houlgate.”
The perpetual aim and object of these two boys is to get the better of
each other. His father’s situation and fortune give Philippe certain
advantages, but George is greatly superior in audacity and cynicism.
Phiphi has to make an effort to keep up with him. He isn’t a bad boy;
but lacking in back bone.
“Well then, out with your things!” he had said.
Léon Ghéridanisol, who had come up, was listening to them. George was
not ill pleased that he should overhear him; if Ghéri had filled him
with admiration just now, George had a little surprise in store for
Ghéri; he therefore answered Phiphi quite calmly:
“That girl Praline has got run in.”
“Praline!” cried Phiphi, thunderstruck by George’s coolness. And Léon
showed signs of being interested. Phiphi said to George:
“Can one tell him?”
“As you please,” said George, shrugging his shoulders. Then Phiphi,
pointing to George:
“She’s his tart.” Then to George:
“How do you know?”
“I met Germaine and she told me.”
And he went on to tell Phiphi how, when he had come up to Paris a
fortnight before, he had wanted to visit the apartment which the
procureur Molinier had once called “the scene of the orgies,” and had
found the doors closed; that a little later as he was strolling about
the neighbourhood, he had met Germaine (Phiphi’s tart) and she had
given him the news: the place had been raided by the police at the
beginning of the holidays. What neither the women nor the boys knew,
was that Profitendieu had taken good care to wait before taking this
action until the younger delinquents should have left Paris, so that
their parents might be spared the scandal of their being caught.
“Oh, Lord!...” repeated Phiphi without comments. “Oh Lord!...” It had
been a narrow squeak, thought he, for George and him.
“Makes your marrow freeze, eh?” said George, with a grin. He considered
it perfectly useless to confess--especially before Ghéridanisol, that
he had himself been terrified.
From the dialogue here recorded, these children might be thought more
depraved than they actually are. I feel convinced that it is chiefly to
show off that they talk in this way. There is a good deal of bravado in
their case. No matter: Ghéridanisol is listening to them. He listens
and leads them on. His cousin Strouvilhou will be greatly amused when
he reports the conversation to him this evening.
That same evening Bernard went to see Edouard.
“Well? Did the first day go off all right?”
“Pretty well.” And then as he said no more:
“Master Bernard, if you are not in the humour to talk of your own
accord, don’t expect me to pump you. There’s nothing I dislike so much.
But allow me to remind you that you offered me your services and that I
have a right to expect a few stories....”
“What do you want to know?” rejoined Bernard, with no very good
grace. “That old Azaïs made a solemn speech and exhorted the boys ‘to
press forward in a common endeavour and with the impetuous ardour
of youth...’? I remember those words because they occurred three
times. Armand declares the old boy regularly puts them into all his
pi-jaws. He and I were sitting on the last bench at the back of the
class-room, watching the boys come into school--like Noah, watching the
animals come into the Ark. There were every kind and sort--ruminants,
pachiderms, molluscs and other invertebrates. When they began to talk
to each other after the speech, Armand and I calculated that four
sentences out of ten began with: ‘I bet you won’t....’”
“And the other six?”
“‘As for me, _I_....’”
“Not badly observed, I’m afraid. What else?”
“Some of them seem to me to have a _fabricated_ personality.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Edouard.
“I am thinking particularly of a boy who sat beside young Passavant.
(Passavant himself just seems to me a good boy.) His neighbour, whom
I watched for a long time, appears to have adopted the ‘_Ne quid
nimis_’ of the ancients as his rule of life. Doesn’t that strike you
as an absurd device at his age? His clothes are meagre; his neck-tie
exiguous; even his bootlaces are only just long enough to tie. In the
course of a few moments, energies, and to repeat, like a refrain:
‘Let’s have no useless efforts!’”
“A plague upon the economical!” said Edouard. “In art they turn into
the prolix.”
“Why?”
“Because they can’t bear to lose anything. What else? You have said
nothing about Armand.”
“He’s an odd chap. To tell you the truth, I don’t much care for him.
I don’t like contortionists. He’s by no means stupid; but he uses
his intelligence for mere destruction; for that matter, it’s against
himself that he’s the most ferocious; everything that’s good in him,
that’s generous, or noble, or tender, he’s ashamed of. He ought to go
in for sport--take the air. Being shut up indoors all day is turning
him sour. He seems to like my company. I don’t avoid him; but I can’t
get accustomed to his cast of mind.”
“Don’t you think that his sarcasm and his irony are the veil of
excessive sensitiveness--and perhaps of great suffering? Olivier thinks
so.”
“It may be. I have sometimes wondered. I don’t know him well enough
to say yet. The rest of my reflections are not ripe. I must think them
over. I’ll tell you about them--but later. This evening, forgive me if
I leave you. I’ve got my examination in two days; and besides, I may as
well own up to it ... I’m feeling sad.”
V
OLIVIER MEETS BERNARD
_Il ne faut prendre, si je ne me trompe, que la fleur de chaque
objet_....
FÉNELON.
OLIVIER, who had returned to Paris the day before, arose that morning
fresh and rested. The air was warm, the sky pure. When he went out,
after his shave and his shower-bath, elegantly dressed, conscious of
his strength, his youth, his beauty, Passavant was still sleeping.
Olivier hastened to the Sorbonne. This was the morning that Bernard had
to go up for his examination. How did Olivier know that? But perhaps he
didn’t know it. He was going to find out.
He quickened his step. He had not seen his friend since the night that
Bernard came to take refuge in his room. What changes since then! Who
knows whether he was not more anxious to show himself to his friend
than to see him. A pity that Bernard cared so little about elegance.
But it’s a taste that sometimes comes with affluence. Olivier knew that
by experience, thanks to the Comte de Passavant.
Bernard was doing his written examination this morning. He wouldn’t
be out before twelve. Olivier waited for him in the quadrangle. He
recognized a few of his schoolfellows, shook a few hands. He felt
slightly embarrassed by his clothes. He felt still more so when
Bernard, free at last, came up to him in the quadrangle and exclaimed,
with outstretched hand:
“Oh, dear! how lovely he is!”
Olivier, who _had_ thought he would never blush again, blushed.
He could not but feel the irony of these words, notwithstanding the
cordiality of their tone. As for Bernard, he was still wearing the same
suit he had on the evening of his flight. He had not been expecting to
see Olivier. With his arm in his, he drew him along, questioning as
they went. He felt a sudden shock of joy at seeing him. If at first he
smiled a little at the refinement of his dress, it was with no malice;
his heart was good; he was without bitterness.
“You’ll lunch with me, won’t you? Yes; I have got to go back at one
thirty for Latin. This morning it was French.”
“Pleased?”
“_I_ am, yes; but I don’t know whether the examiners will be. We
had to discuss these lines from La Fontaine:
‘_Papillon du Parnasse, et semblable aux abeilles_
_A qui le bon Platon compare nos merveilles,_
_Je suis chose légère et vole à tout sujet,_
_Je vais de fleur en fleur et d’objet en objet._’
How would you have done it?”
Olivier could not resist a desire to shine:
“I should have said that La Fontaine, in painting himself, had painted
the portrait of the artist--of the man who consents to take merely
the outside of things, their surface, their bloom. Then I should have
contrasted with that the portrait of the scholar, the seeker, the man
who goes deep into things, and I should have shown that while the
scholar seeks, the artist finds; that the man who goes deep, gets
stuck, the man who gets stuck, gets sunk--up to his eyes and over them;
that the truth is the appearance of things, that their secret is their
form and that what is deepest in man is his skin.”
This last phrase Olivier had stolen from Passavant, who himself had
gathered it from the lips of Paul-Ambroise, as he was discoursing one
day in a lady’s drawing-room. Everything that was not printed was fish
for Passavant’s net; what he called “ideas in the air”--that is to
say--other people’s.
Something or other in Olivier’s tone showed Bernard that this phrase
was not his own. Olivier’s voice did not seem at home in it. Bernard
was on the point of asking: “Whose?” But besides not wishing to hurt
his friend, he was afraid of hearing Passavant’s name, which up till
now had not been pronounced. Bernard contented himself with giving his
friend a searching look; and Olivier, for the second time, blushed.
Bernard’s surprise at hearing the sentimental Olivier give voice to
ideas which were entirely different from those which he had once known
him to have, immediately gave place to violent indignation; he was
overwhelmed by something as sudden and surprising and irresistible
as a cyclone. And it was not precisely against the ideas themselves
that he was angry--though they struck him as absurd. And even perhaps,
after all, they were not as absurd as all that. In his collection of
contradictory opinions, he might have written them down on the page
facing his own. Had they been genuinely Olivier’s ideas, he would not
have been angry either with him or with them; but he felt there was
someone hidden behind them; it was with Passavant that he was angry.
“It’s with ideas like those that France is being poisoned!” he cried in
a muffled, vehement voice. He took a high stand. He wished to outsoar
Passavant. And he was himself surprised at what he said--as if his
words had preceded his thoughts; and yet it was these very thoughts
he had developed that morning in his essay; but he felt shamefaced at
expressing what he called “fine sentiments,” particularly when he was
talking to Olivier. As soon as they were put into words, they seemed to
him less sincere. So that Olivier had never heard his friend speak of
the interests of “France”; it was his turn to be surprised. He opened
his eyes wide, without even thinking of smiling. Was it really Bernard?
He repeated stupidly:
“France?...” Then, so as to disengage his responsibility--for Bernard
was decidedly not joking:
“But, old boy, it isn’t _I_ who think so, it’s La Fontaine.”
Bernard became almost aggressive:
“By Jove, I know well enough it isn’t you who think so. But, my
dear fellow, it isn’t La Fontaine either. If he had only had that
lightness, which, for that matter, he regretted and apologized for at
the end of his life, he would never have been the artist we admire.
That’s just what I said in my essay this morning, and I brought a
great many quotations in support of my theory--for you know I’ve a
fairly good memory. But I soon left La Fontaine, and taking as my
text the justification these lines might afford to a certain class
of superficial minds, I just let myself go in a tirade against the
spirit of carelessness, of flippancy, of irony, of what is called
‘French wit,’ which some people think is the spirit of France, and
which sometimes gives us such a deplorable reputation among foreigners.
I said that we ought not to consider all this as even the smile of
France, but as her grimace; that the real spirit of France was a spirit
of investigation, of logic, of devotedness, of patient thoroughness;
and if La Fontaine had not been animated by that spirit, he might have
written his tales, but never his fables nor the admirable epistle (I
showed that I knew it) from which the lines we had to comment upon were
taken. Yes, old boy, a violent attack--perhaps I shall get ploughed for
it. But I don’t care two straws; I had to say it.”
Olivier had not particularly meant what he had said just before. He
had yielded to his desire to be brilliant and to bring out, as it were
carelessly, a sentence which he thought would tremendously impress his
friend. But now that Bernard took it in this way, there was nothing
for him to do but to beat a retreat. But his great weakness lay in the
fact that he was in much more need of Bernard’s affection than Bernard
of his. Bernard’s speech had humiliated, mortified him. He was vexed
with himself for having spoken too soon. It was too late now to go back
on it--to agree with Bernard, as he certainly would have done if he
had let him speak first. But how could he have foreseen that Bernard,
whom he remembered so scathingly subversive, would set up as a defender
of feelings and ideas which Passavant had taught him could not be
considered without a smile? But he really had no desire to smile now;
he was ashamed. And as he could neither retract nor contradict Bernard,
whose genuine emotion he couldn’t help respecting, his one idea was to
protect himself--to slip out of it.
“Oh! well, if you put that in your essay, it wasn’t against me that you
were saying it.... I’m glad of that.”
He spoke as though he were vexed--not at all in the tone he would have
liked.
“But it _is_ against you that I am saying it now,” retorted
Bernard.
These words cut straight at Olivier’s heart. Bernard had certainly not
said them with a hostile intention, but how else could they be taken?
Olivier was silent. Between Bernard and him a gulf was yawning. He
tried to think of some question to fling from one side of the gulf
to the other which might re-establish the contact. He tried, without
much hope of succeeding. “Doesn’t he understand how miserable I am?”
he said to himself, and he grew more miserable still. He did not have
to force back his tears, perhaps, but he said to himself that it was
enough to make anyone cry. It was his own fault, too; his meeting
with Bernard would have seemed less sad if he had looked forward to
it with less joy. When two months before he had hurried off to meet
Edouard, it had been the same thing. It would always be the same thing,
he said to himself. He wanted to go away--anywhere--by himself--to
chuck Bernard--to forget Passavant, Edouard.... An unexpected meeting
suddenly interrupted these melancholy thoughts.
A few steps in front of them, going up the Boulevard Saint-Michel,
along which he and Bernard were walking, Olivier caught sight of his
young brother George. He seized Bernard’s arm, and, turning sharply on
his heel, drew him hurriedly along with him.
“Do you think he saw us?... My people don’t know I’m back.”
Young George was not alone. Léon Ghéridanisol and Philippe Adamanti
were with him. The conversation of the three boys was exceedingly
animated; but George’s interest in it did not prevent him from keeping
“his eyes skinned,” as he said. In order to listen to the children’s
talk we will leave Olivier and Bernard for a moment; especially since
our two friends have gone into a restaurant, and are for the moment
more occupied in eating than in talking--to Olivier’s great relief.
“Well then, _you_ do it,” says Phiphi to George.
“Oh, he’s got the dithers! He’s got the dithers!” retorts George,
putting what cold contempt he can into his voice, so as to goad
Philippe to action. Then says Ghéridanisol with calm superiority:
“Look here, my lambs, if you aren’t game, you had better say so at
once. I shan’t have any difficulty in finding fellows with a little
more pluck than you. Here! Give it back!”
He turns to George, who is holding a small coin in his tight-shut hand.
“I’ll do it!” cries George, in a sudden burst of courage. “Won’t I
just! Come on!” (They are opposite a tobacco shop.)
“No,” says Léon; “we’ll wait for you at the corner. Come along, Phiphi.”
A moment later George comes out of the shop; he has a packet of
so-called “de luxe” cigarettes in his hand and offers them to his
friends.
“Well?” asks Phiphi anxiously.
“Well, what?” replies George with an air of affected indifference, as
if what he has just done has suddenly become so natural that it wasn’t
worth mentioning.
But Philippe insists:
“Did you pass it?”
“Good Lord! Didn’t I?”
“And nobody said anything?”