sacrificed herself, turned very white, and protested with trembling
lips:
“I can’t let you go to perdition.”
But Sarah sobbed and cried out:
“I don’t believe in your heaven. I don’t want to be saved.”
She decided on the spot to return to England, where she would go and
stay with her friend. For, after all, she was free and claimed the
right to live in any way she pleased. This melancholy quarrel left
Rachel shattered.
XVI
EDOUARD WARNS GEORGE
EDOUARD took care to arrive at the pension before the boys came in. He
had not seen La Pérouse since the beginning of the term and it was to
him that he wanted to speak first. The old music master carried out his
new duties as well as he could--that is to say, very badly. He had at
first tried to make himself liked, but he had no authority; the boys
took advantage of him; his indulgence passed for weakness, and they
began to take strange liberties. La Pérouse tried to be severe, but too
late; his exhortations, his threats, his reprimands finally set the
boys against him. If he raised his voice, they laughed; if he thumped
his fist resoundingly on his desk, they shrieked in pretended terror;
they mimicked him; they called him by absurd nicknames; caricatures
of him circulated from bench to bench; he--so kind and courteous--was
portrayed armed with a pistol (the pistol which Ghéridanisol,
George and Phiphi had found one day in the course of an indiscreet
investigation of his room), ferociously massacring the boys; or else on
his knees before them, with hands clasped, imploring, as he had done at
first, for “a little quiet, for pity’s sake.” He was like a poor old
stag at bay among a savage pack of hounds. Edouard knew nothing of all
this.
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL
La Pérouse received me in a small class-room on the ground floor,
which I recognized as the most uncomfortable one in the school. Its
only furniture consisted of four benches attached to four desks, a
blackboard and a straw chair, on which La Pérouse forced me to sit
down, while he screwed himself up slantwise on to one of the benches,
after vain endeavours to get his long legs under the desk.
“No, no. I’m perfectly comfortable, I assure you,” he declared, while
the tone of his voice and the expression of his face said:
“I am horribly uncomfortable, and I hope it’s obvious; but I prefer
to be so; and the more uncomfortable I am, the less you will hear me
complain.”
I tried to make a joke, but could not succeed in getting him to smile.
His manner was ceremonious and stiff, as if he wished to keep me at a
distance and imply: “I owe it to you that I am here.”
At the same time he declared himself perfectly satisfied with
everything, though all the while eluding my questions and seeming vexed
at my insisting. I asked him, however, where his room was.
“Rather too far from the kitchen,” he suddenly exclaimed; and as
I expressed my astonishment: “Sometimes during the night, I want
something to eat ... when I can’t sleep.”
I was near him; I came nearer still and put my hand gently on his arm.
He went on in a more natural tone:
“I must tell you that I sleep very badly. When I do go to sleep, I
never lose the feeling that I am asleep. That’s not proper sleep, is
it? A person who is properly asleep, doesn’t feel that he is asleep.
When he wakes up, he just knows that he has been asleep.”
Then, leaning towards me, he went on with a kind of finicky insistence:
“Sometimes I’m inclined to think that it’s an illusion and that, all
the same, I _am_ properly asleep, when I think I’m not asleep. But
the proof that I’m not properly asleep is that if I want to open my
eyes, I open them. As a rule, I don’t want to. You understand, don’t
you, that there’s no object in it? What’s the use of proving to myself
that I’m not asleep? I always go on hoping that I shall go to sleep by
persuading myself that I’m asleep already....”
He bent still nearer and went on in a whisper:
“And then there’s something that disturbs me. Don’t tell anyone.... I
haven’t complained, because there’s nothing to do about it; and if a
thing can’t be altered, there’s no good complaining, is there?... Well,
just imagine, in the wall, right against my bed and exactly on a level
with my head, there’s something that makes a noise.”
He had grown excited as he spoke. I suggested that he should take me to
his room.
“Yes! Yes!” he said getting up suddenly. “You might be able to tell me
what it is ... I can’t succeed in making out. Come along.”
We went up two stories and then down a longish passage. I had never
been into that part of the house before.
La Pérouse’s room looked on to the street. It was small but decent. On
the bedside table, I noticed, next a prayer book, the case of pistols,
which he had insisted on taking with him. He seized me by the arm, and
pushing aside the bed a little:
“There! Now!... Put your ear to the wall.... Can you hear it?”
I listened for a long time with the greatest attention. But
notwithstanding the best will in the world, I could not succeed in
hearing anything. La Pérouse grew vexed. Just then a van drove by,
shaking the house and making the windows rattle.
“At this time of day,” I said, in the hopes of pacifying him, “the
little noise that irritates you is drowned by the noise of the
street....”
“Drowned for you, because you can’t distinguish it from the other
noises,” he exclaimed with vehemence. “As for me, I hear it all the
same. In spite of everything, I go on hearing it. Sometimes I am so
exasperated by it that I make up my mind to speak to Azaïs or to the
landlord.... Oh, I don’t suppose I shall get it to stop.... But, at any
rate, I should like to know what it is.”
He seemed to reflect for a few moments, then went on: “It sounds
something like a nibbling. I’ve done everything I can think of not to
hear it. I pull my bed away from the wall. I put cotton wool in my
ears. I hang my watch (you see, I’ve put a little nail there) just
at the place where the pipe (I suppose) passes, so that its ticking
may prevent my hearing the other noise.... But then it’s even more
fatiguing, because I have to make an effort to distinguish it. Absurd,
isn’t it? But I really prefer to hear it without any disguise, since I
know it’s there all the same.... Oh! I oughtn’t to talk to you in this
way. You see, I’m nothing but an old man now.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and stayed for some time, as though
sunk in a kind of dull misery. The sinister degradation of age is not
so much attacking La Pérouse’s intelligence as the innermost depths of
his nature. The worm lodges itself in the fruit’s core, I thought, as I
saw him give way to his childish despair, and remembered him as he used
to be, so firm--so proud. I tried to rouse him by speaking of Boris.
“Yes, his room is near mine,” said he, raising his head. “I’ll show it
to you. Come along.”
He preceded me along the passage and opened a neighbouring door.
“The other bed you see there is young Bernard Profitendieu’s.” (I
judged it useless to tell him that Bernard had left that very day, and
would not be coming back to sleep in it.) He went on: “Boris likes
having him as a companion and I think he gets on with him. But, you
know, he doesn’t talk to me much. He’s very reserved.... I am afraid
the child is rather unfeeling.”
He said this so sadly that I took upon myself to protest and to say
that I could answer for his grandson’s warmheartedness.
“In that case, he might show it a little more,” went on La Pérouse.
“For instance, in the mornings, when he goes off to the _lycée_
with the others, I lean out of my window to see him go by. He knows I
do.... Well, he never turns round.”
I wanted to explain to him that no doubt Boris was afraid of making a
spectacle of himself before his schoolfellows and dreaded being laughed
at; but at that moment a clamour arose from the courtyard below.
La Pérouse seized me by the arm and, in an altered, agitated voice:
“Listen! Listen!” he cried, “they are coming in.”
I looked at him. He had begun to tremble all over.
“Do the little wretches frighten you?” I asked.
“No, no,” he said in some confusion; “how could you think such a
thing?...” Then, very quickly: “I must go down. Recreation only lasts a
few minutes and you know I take preparation. Good-bye. Good-bye.”
He darted into the passage, without even shaking my hand. A moment
later I heard him stumbling downstairs. I stayed for a few moments
to listen, as I had no wish to go past the boys. I could hear them
shouting, laughing and singing. Then a bell rang and silence was
abruptly restored.
I went to see Azaïs and obtained permission for George to leave school
in order to come and speak to me. He soon joined me in the same small
room in which La Pérouse had received me a little while before.
As soon as he was in my presence, George thought fit to assume a
jocular air. It was his way of concealing his embarrassment. But I
wouldn’t swear that he was the more embarrassed of the two. He was on
the defensive; for no doubt he expected to be sermonized. He seemed
trying as hastily as possible to lay hold of anything he could use as a
weapon against me, for, before I had opened my mouth, he enquired after
Olivier, in such a bantering tone of voice, that I should have had the
greatest pleasure in boxing his ears. He was in a position to score off
me. His ironical eyes, the mocking curl of his lips all seemed to say:
“I’m not afraid of you, you know.” I at once lost all my self-assurance
and my one anxiety was to conceal the fact. The speech I had prepared
suddenly struck me as inappropriate. I had not the prestige necessary
to play the censor. At bottom, George amused me too much.
“I have not come to scold you,” I said at last; “I only want to warn
you.” (And, in spite of myself, my whole face was smiling.)
“Tell me first whether it’s Mamma who has sent you?”
“Yes and no. I have spoken about you to your mother; but that was some
days ago. Yesterday I had a very important conversation about you with
a very important person, whom you don’t know. He came to see me on
purpose to talk about you. A _juge d’instruction_. It’s from him
I’ve come. Do you know what a _juge d’instruction_ is?”
George had turned suddenly pale, and no doubt his heart had stopped
beating for a moment. He shrugged his shoulders, it is true, but his
voice trembled a little:
“Oh! all right! Out with it! What did old Profitendieu say?”
The youngster’s coolness took me aback. No doubt it would have been
simpler to go straight to the point; but going straight to the point is
a thing particularly foreign to my nature, whose irresistible bent is
towards moving obliquely. In order to explain my conduct, which, though
it afterwards appeared absurd to me, was quite spontaneous at the time,
I must say that my last conversation with Pauline had greatly exercised
me. I had immediately inserted the reflections it had suggested to me
into my novel, putting them into the form of a dialogue, which exactly
fitted in with certain of my characters. It very rarely happens that I
make direct use of what occurs to me in real life, but for once I was
able to take advantage of this affair of George’s; it was as though my
book had been waiting for it, it came in so pat; I hardly had to alter
one or two details.
But I did not give a direct account of this affair (I mean his
stealing). I merely showed it--with its consequences--by glimpses,
in the course of conversations. I had put down some of these in a
note-book, which I had at that very moment in my pocket. On the
contrary, the story of the false coins, as related by Profitendieu, did
not seem to me capable of being turned to account. And no doubt that is
why, instead of making immediately for this particular point, which was
the main object of my visit, I tacked about.
“I first want you to read these few lines,” I said. “You will see why.”
And I held him out my note-book, which I had opened at the page I
thought might interest him.
I repeat it--this behaviour of mine now seems to me absurd. But in my
novel, it is precisely by a similar reading that I thought of giving
the youngest of my heroes a warning. I wanted to know what George’s
reaction would be; I hoped it might instruct me ... and even as to the
value of what I had written.
I transcribe the passage in question:
There was a whole obscure region in the boy’s character which
attracted Audibert’s affectionate curiosity. It was not enough for
him to know that young Eudolfe had committed thefts; he would have
liked Eudolfe to tell him what had made him begin, and what he had
felt on the occasion of his first theft. But the boy, even if he had
been willing to confide in him, would no doubt have been incapable
of explaining. And Audibert did not dare question him, for fear of
inducing him to tell lies in self-defence.
One evening when Audibert was dining with Hildebrant, he spoke to him
about Eudolfe--without naming him and altering the circumstances so
that Hildebrant should not recognize him.
“Have you ever observed,” said Hildebrant, “that the most decisive
actions of our life--I mean those that are most likely to decide the
whole course of our future--are, more often than not, unconsidered?”
“I easily believe it,” replied Audibert. “Like a train into which one
jumps without thinking, and without asking oneself where it is going.
And more often than not, one does not even realize that the train is
carrying one off, till it is too late to get down.”
“But perhaps the boy you are talking of has no wish to get down?”
“Not so far, doubtless. For the moment he is being carried along
unresisting. The scenery amuses him, and he cares very little where he
is going.”
“Do you mean to talk morals to him?”
“No indeed! It would be useless. He has been overdosed with morals
till he is sick.”
“Why did he steal?”
“I don’t exactly know. Certainly not from real need. But to
get certain advantages--not to be outdone by his wealthier
companions--Heaven knows what all! Innate propensity--sheer pleasure
of stealing.”
“That’s the worst.”
“Of course! Because he’ll begin again.”
“Is he intelligent?”
“I thought for a long time that he was less so than his brothers. But
I wonder now whether I wasn’t mistaken, and whether my unfavourable
impression was not caused by the fact that he does not as yet
understand what his capabilities are. His curiosity has gone off the
tracks--or rather, it is still in the embryonic state--still at the
stage of indiscretion.”
“Will you speak to him?”
“I propose making him put in the scales, on the one hand the little
profit his thefts bring him, and on the other what his dishonesty
loses him: the confidence of his friends and relations, their esteem,
mine amongst others ... things which can’t be measured and the value
of which can be calculated only by the enormousness of the effort
needed later to regain them. There are men who have spent their
whole lives over it. I shall tell him, what he is still too young to
realize--that henceforth if anything doubtful or unpleasant happens
in his neighbourhood, it will always be laid to his door. He may find
himself accused wrongfully of serious misdeeds and be unable to defend
himself. His past actions point to him. He is marked. And lastly what
I should like to say.... But I am afraid of his protestations.”
“You would like to say?...”
“That what he has done has created a precedent, and that if some
resolution is required for a first theft, for the ensuing ones nothing
is needed but to drift with the current. All that follows is mere
_laisser aller_.... What I should like to say is, that a first
movement, which one makes almost without thinking, often begins to
trace a line which irrevocably draws our figure, and which our after
effort will never be able to efface. I should like ... but no, I
shan’t know how to speak to him.”
“Why don’t you write down our conversation of this evening? You could
give it him to read.”
“That’s an idea,” said Audibert. “Why not?”
I did not take my eyes off George while he was reading; but his face
showed no signs of what he was thinking.
“Am I to go on?” he asked, preparing to turn the page.
“There’s no need. The conversation ends there.”
“A great pity.”
He gave me back the note-book, and in a tone of voice that was almost
playful:
“I should have liked to know what Eudolfe says when he has read the
note-book.”
“Exactly. I want to know myself.”
“Eudolfe is a ridiculous name. Couldn’t you have christened him
something else?”
“It’s of no importance.”
“Nor what he answers either. And what becomes of him afterwards?”
“I don’t know yet. It depends upon you. We shall see.”
“Then if I understand right, _I_ am to help you go on with your
book. No, really, you must admit that....”
He stopped as if he had some difficulty in expressing his ideas.
“That what?” I said to encourage him.
“You must admit that you’d be pretty well sold,” he went on, “if
Eudolfe....”
He stopped again. I thought I understood what he meant and finished his
sentence for him:
“If he became an honest boy?... No, my dear.” And suddenly the tears
rose to my eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder. But he shook it off:
“For after all, if he hadn’t been a thief, you wouldn’t have written
all that.”
It was only then that I understood my mistake. In reality, George
was flattered at having occupied my thoughts for so long. He felt
interesting. I had forgotten Profitendieu; it was George who reminded
me of him.
“And what did your _juge d’instruction_ say to you?”
“He commissioned me to warn you that he knew you were circulating false
coins....”
George changed colour again. He understood denials would be useless,
but he muttered indistinctly:
“I’m not the only one.”
“... and that if you and your pals don’t stop your traffickings at
once, he’ll be obliged to arrest you.”
George had begun by turning very pale. Now his cheeks were burning.
He stared fixedly in front of him and his knitted brows drew two deep
wrinkles on his forehead.
“Good-bye,” I said, holding out my hand. “I advise you to warn your
companions as well. As for you, you won’t be offered a second chance.”
He shook my hand silently and left the room without looking round.
On re-reading the pages of _The Counterfeiters_ which I showed
George, I thought them on the whole rather bad. I transcribe them as
George read them, but all this chapter must be rewritten. It would be
better decidedly to speak to the child. I must discover how to touch
him. Certainly, at the point he has reached, it would be difficult to
bring Eudolfe (George is right; I must change his name) back into the
path of honesty. But I mean to bring him back; and whatever George may
think, this is what is most interesting, because it is most difficult.
(Here am I reasoning like Douviers!) Let us leave realistic novelists
to deal with the stories of those who drift.
As soon as he got back to the class-room, George told his two friends
of Edouard’s warnings. Everything his uncle had said about his
pilferings slipped off the child’s mind, without causing him the
slightest emotion; but, when it came to the false coins, which ran the
risk of getting them into trouble, he saw the importance of getting rid
of them as quickly as possible. Each of the three boys had on him a
certain number which he intended disposing of the next free afternoon.
Ghéridanisol collected them and hurried off to throw them down the
drains. That same evening he warned Strouvilhou, who immediately took
his precautions.
XVII
ARMAND AND OLIVIER
THAT same evening, while Edouard was talking to his nephew George,
Olivier, after Bernard had left him, received a visit from Armand.
Armand Vedel was unrecognizable; shaved, smiling, carrying his head
high; he was dressed in a new suit, which was rather too smart and
looked perhaps a trifle ridiculous; he felt it and showed that he felt
it.
“I should have come to see you before, but I’ve had so much to do
lately!... Do you know that I’ve actually become Passavant’s secretary?
or, if you prefer it, the editor of his new review. I won’t ask you
to contribute, because Passavant seems rather worked up against you.
Besides the review is decidedly going more and more to the left. That’s
the reason it has begun by dropping Bercail and his pastorals....”
“I’m sorry for the review,” said Olivier.
“And that’s why, on the other hand, it has accepted my _Nocturnal
Vase_, which, by the bye, is, without your permission, to be
dedicated to you.”
“I’m sorry for me.”
“Passavant even wished my work of genius to open the first number; but
my natural modesty, which was severely tried by his encomiums, was
opposed to this. If I were not afraid of fatiguing a convalescent’s
ears, I would give you an account of my first interview with the
illustrious author of _The Horizontal Bar_, whom I had only known
up till then through you.”
“I have nothing better to do than to listen.”
“You don’t mind smoke?”
“I’ll smoke myself to show you.”
“I must tell you,” began Armand, lighting a cigarette, “that your
desertion left our beloved Count somewhat in a fix. Let it be said,
without flattery, that it isn’t easy to replace such a bundle of gifts,
virtues, qualities as are united in your....”
“Get on,” interrupted Olivier, exasperated by this heavy-footed irony.
“Well, to get on, Passavant wanted a secretary. He happened to know a
certain Strouvilhou, whom I happen to know myself, because he is the
uncle of a certain individual in the school, who happened to know Jean
Cob-Lafleur, whom you know.”
“Whom I don’t know,” said Olivier.
“Well, my boy, you ought to know him. He’s an extraordinary fellow;
a kind of faded, wrinkled, painted baby, who lives on cocktails
and writes charming verses when he’s drunk. You’ll see some in our
first number. So Strouvilhou had the brilliant idea of sending him
to Passavant, to take your place. You can imagine his entry into the
Rue de Babylone mansion. I must tell you that Cob-Lafleur’s clothes
are covered with stains; that he has flowing flaxen locks, which fall
upon his shoulders; and that he looks as if he hadn’t washed for a
week. Passavant, who always wants to be master of the situation,
declares that he took a great fancy to Cob-Lafleur. Cob-Lafleur has
a gentle, smiling, timid way with him. When he chooses he can look
like Banville’s Gringoire. In a word, Passavant was taken by him and
was on the point of engaging him. I must tell you that Lafleur hasn’t
got a penny piece.... So he gets up to take leave:--‘Before leaving,
Monsieur le Comte, I think it’s only right to inform you that I have
a few faults.’--‘Which of us has not?’--‘And a few vices. I smoke
opium.’--‘Is that all?’ says Passavant, who isn’t to be put off by a
little thing of that kind; ‘I’ve got some excellent stuff to offer
you.’--‘Yes, but when I smoke it, I completely lose every notion of
spelling.’ Passavant took this for a joke, forced a laugh and held
out his hand. Lafleur goes on:--‘And then I take hasheesh.’--‘I have
sometimes taken it myself,’ says Passavant.--‘Yes, but when I am under
the influence of hasheesh, I can’t keep from stealing.’ Passavant began
to see then that he was being made a fool of; and Lafleur, who was set
going by now, rattled on, impulsively:--‘And besides, I drink ether;
and then I tear everything to bits--I smash everything I can lay my
hands on,’ and he seizes a glass vase and makes as if he were going to
throw it into the fire. Passavant just had time to snatch it out of his
hands.--‘Much obliged to you for warning me.’”
“And he chucked him out?”
“Yes; and watched out of the window to see Lafleur didn’t drop a bomb
into the cellar as he left.”
“But why did Lafleur behave so? From what you say, he was really in
need of the place.”
“All the same, my dear fellow, you must admit that there are people who
feel impelled to act against their interest. And then, if you want to
know, Lafleur ... well, Passavant’s luxury disgusted him--his elegance,
his amiable manners, his condescension, his affectation of superiority.
Yes; it turned his stomach. And I add that I perfectly understand
him.... At bottom, your Passavant makes one’s gorge rise.”
“Why do you say ‘your Passavant’? You know quite well that I’ve given
him up. And then why have you accepted his place, if you think him so
disgusting?”
“For the very reason that I like things that disgust me ... to start
with my own delightful--or disgusting--self. And then, in reality,
Cob-Lafleur suffers from shyness; he wouldn’t have said any of all that
if he hadn’t felt ill at ease.”
“Oh! come now!”