MY TWENTY-FIVE DAYS

I had just taken possession of my room in the hotel, a narrow den

between two papered partitions, through which I could hear every sound

made by my neighbors; and I was beginning to arrange my clothes and

linen in the wardrobe with a long mirror, when I opened the drawer which

is in this piece of furniture. I immediately noticed a roll of paper.

Having opened it, I spread it out before me, and read this title:

My Twenty-five Days.

It was the diary of a guest at the watering place, of the last occupant

of my room, and had been forgotten at the moment of departure.

These notes may be of some interest to sensible and healthy persons who

never leave their own homes. It is for their benefit that I transcribe

them without altering a letter.

“CHATEL-GUYON, July 15th.

“At the first glance it is not lively, this country. However, I am going

to spend twenty-five days here, to have my liver and stomach treated,

and to get thin. The twenty-five days of any one taking the baths are

very like the twenty-eight days of the reserves; they are all devoted to

fatigue duty, severe fatigue duty. To-day I have done nothing as yet; I

have been getting settled. I have made the acquaintance of the locality

and of the doctor. Chatel-Guyon consists of a stream in which flows

yellow water, in the midst of several hillocks on which are a casino,

some houses, and some stone crosses. On the bank of the stream, at the

end of the valley, may be seen a square building surrounded by a little

garden; this is the bathing establishment. Sad people wander around this

building--the invalids. A great silence reigns in the walks shaded by

trees, for this is not a pleasure resort, but a true health resort;

one takes care of one's health as a business, and one gets well, so it

seems.

“Those who know affirm, even, that the mineral springs perform true

miracles here. However, no votive offering is hung around the cashier's

office.

“From time to time a gentleman or a lady comes over to a kiosk with a

slate roof, which shelters a woman of smiling and gentle aspect, and a

spring boiling in a basin of cement: Not a word is exchanged between

the invalid and the female custodian of the healing water. She hands the

newcomer a little glass in which air bubbles sparkle in the transparent

liquid. The guest drinks and goes off with a grave step to resume his

interrupted walk beneath the trees.

“No noise in the little park, no breath of air in the leaves; no voice

passes through this silence. One ought to write at the entrance to this

district: 'No one laughs here; they take care of their health.'

“The people who chat resemble mutes who merely open their mouths to

simulate sounds, so afraid are they that their voices might escape.

“In the hotel, the same silence. It is a big hotel, where you dine

solemnly with people of good position, who have nothing to say to each

other. Their manners bespeak good breeding, and their faces reflect the

conviction of a superiority of which it might be difficult for some to

give actual proofs.

“At two o'clock I made my way up to the Casino, a little wooden but

perched on a hillock, which one reaches by a goat path. But the view

from that height is admirable. Chatel-Guyon is situated in a very narrow

valley, exactly between the plain and the mountain. I perceive, at the

left, the first great billows of the mountains of Auvergne, covered with

woods, and here and there big gray patches, hard masses of lava, for

we are at the foot of the extinct volcanoes. At the right, through

the narrow cut of the valley, I discover a plain, infinite as the sea,

steeped in a bluish fog which lets one only dimly discern the villages,

the towns, the yellow fields of ripe grain, and the green squares of

meadowland shaded with apple trees. It is the Limagne, an immense level,

always enveloped in a light veil of vapor.

“The night has come. And now, after having dined alone, I write these

lines beside my open window. I hear, over there, in front of me, the

little orchestra of the Casino, which plays airs just as a foolish bird

might sing all alone in the desert.

“A dog barks at intervals. This great calm does one good. Goodnight.

“July 16th.--Nothing new. I have taken a bath and then a shower bath. I

have swallowed three glasses of water, and I have walked along the paths

in the park, a quarter of an hour between each glass, then half an hour

after the last. I have begun my twenty-five days.

“July 17th.--Remarked two mysterious, pretty women who are taking their

baths and their meals after every one else has finished.

“July 18th.--Nothing new.

“July 19th.--Saw the two pretty women again. They have style and a

little indescribable air which I like very much.

“July 20th.--Long walk in a charming wooded valley, as far as the

Hermitage of Sans-Souci. This country is delightful, although sad; but

so calm; so sweet, so green. One meets along the mountain roads long

wagons loaded with hay, drawn by two cows at a slow pace or held back by

them in going down the slopes with a great effort of their heads, which

are yoked together. A man with a big black hat on his head is driving

them with a slender stick, tipping them on the side or on the forehead;

and often with a simple gesture, an energetic and serious gesture, he

suddenly halts them when the excessive load precipitates their journey

down the too rugged descents.

“The air is good to inhale in these valleys. And, if it is very warm,

the dust bears with it a light odor of vanilla and of the stable, for so

many cows pass over these routes that they leave reminders everywhere.

And this odor is a perfume, when it would be a stench if it came from

other animals.

“July 21st.--Excursion to the valley of the Enval. It is a narrow gorge

inclosed by superb rocks at the very foot of the mountain. A stream

flows amid the heaped-up boulders.

“As I reached the bottom of this ravine I heard women's voices, and I

soon perceived the two mysterious ladies of my hotel, who were chatting,

seated on a stone.

“The occasion appeared to me a good one, and I introduced myself without

hesitation. My overtures were received without embarrassment. We walked

back together to the hotel. And we talked about Paris. They knew, it

seemed, many people whom I knew, too. Who can they be?

“I shall see them to-morrow. There is nothing more amusing than such

meetings as this.

“July 22d.--Day passed almost entirely with the two unknown ladies. They

are very pretty, by Jove!--one a brunette and the other a blonde. They

say they are widows. H'm?

“I offered to accompany them to Royat tomorrow, and they accepted my

offer.

“Chatel-Guyon is less sad than I thought on my arrival.

“July 23d.--Day spent at Royat. Royat is a little patch of hotels at the

bottom of a valley, at the gate of Clermont-Ferrand. A great many people

there. A large park full of life. Superb view of the Puyde-Dome, seen at

the end of a perspective of valleys.

“My fair companions are very popular, which is flattering to me. The

man who escorts a pretty woman always believes himself crowned with an

aureole; with much more reason, the man who is accompanied by one on

each side of him. Nothing is so pleasant as to dine in a fashionable

restaurant with a female companion at whom everybody stares, and there

is nothing better calculated to exalt a man in the estimation of his

neighbors.

“To go to the Bois, in a trap drawn by a sorry nag, or to go out into

the boulevard escorted by a plain woman, are the two most humiliating

things that could happen to a sensitive heart that values the opinion of

others. Of all luxuries, woman is the rarest and the most distinguished;

she is the one that costs most and which we desire most; she is,

therefore the one that we should seek by preference to exhibit to the

jealous eyes of the world.

“To exhibit to the world a pretty woman leaning on your arm is to

excite, all at once, every kind of jealousy. It is as much as to say:

'Look here! I am rich, since I possess this rare and costly object;

I have taste, since I have known how to discover this pearl; perhaps,

even, I am loved by her, unless I am deceived by her, which would still

prove that others also consider her charming.

“But, what a disgrace it is to walk about town with an ugly woman!

“And how many humiliating things this gives people to understand!

“In the first place, they assume she must be your wife, for how could it

be supposed that you would have an unattractive sweetheart? A true

woman may be ungraceful; but then, her ugliness implies a thousand

disagreeable things for you. One supposes you must be a notary or a

magistrate, as these two professions have a monopoly of grotesque and

well-dowered spouses. Now, is this not distressing to a man? And then,

it seems to proclaim to the public that you have the odious courage, and

are even under a legal obligation, to caress that ridiculous face and

that ill-shaped body, and that you will, without doubt, be shameless

enough to make a mother of this by no means desirable being--which is

the very height of the ridiculous.

“July 24th.--I never leave the side of the two unknown widows, whom I am

beginning to know quite well. This country is delightful and our hotel

is excellent. Good season. The treatment is doing me an immense amount

of good.

“July 25th.--Drive in a landau to the lake of Tazenat. An exquisite

and unexpected jaunt decided on at luncheon. We started immediately

on rising from table. After a long journey through the mountains we

suddenly perceived an admirable little lake, quite round, very blue,

clear as glass, and situated at the bottom of an extinct crater. One

side of this immense basin is barren, the other is wooded. In the midst

of the trees is a small house where sleeps a good-natured, intellectual

man, a sage who passes his days in this Virgilian region. He opens his

dwelling for us. An idea comes into my head. I exclaim:

“'Supposing we bathe?'

“'Yes,' they said, 'but costumes.'

“'Bah! we are in the wilderness.'

“And we did bathe!

“If I were a poet, how I would describe this unforgettable vision of

those lissome young forms in the transparency of the water! The high,

sloping sides shut in the lake, motionless, gleaming and round, as a

silver coin; the sun pours into it a flood of warm light; and along the

rocks the fair forms move in the almost invisible water in which the

swimmers seemed suspended. On the sand at the bottom of the lake one

could see their shadows as they moved along.

“July 26th.--Some persons seem to look with shocked and disapproving

eyes at my rapid intimacy with the two fair widows. There are some

people, then, who imagine that life consists in being bored. Everything

that appears to be amusing becomes immediately a breach of good breeding

or morality. For them duty has inflexible and mortally tedious rules.

“I would draw their attention, with all respect, to the fact that

duty is not the same for Mormons, Arabs Zulus, Turks, Englishmen, and

Frenchmen, and that there are very virtuous people among all these

nations.

“I will cite a single example. As regards women, duty begins in England

at nine years of age; in France at fifteen. As for me, I take a little

of each people's notion of duty, and of the whole I make a result

comparable to the morality of good King Solomon.

“July 27th.--Good news. I have lost 620 grams in weight. Excellent, this

water of Chatel-Guyon! I am taking the widows to dine at Riom. A sad

town whose anagram constitutes it an objectionable neighbor to healing

springs: Riom, Mori.

“July 28th.--Hello, how's this! My two widows have been visited by two

gentlemen who came to look for them. Two widowers, without doubt. They

are leaving this evening. They have written to me on fancy notepaper.

“July 29th.--Alone! Long excursion on foot to the extinct crater of

Nachere. Splendid view.

“July 30th.--Nothing. I am taking the treatment.

“July 31st.--Ditto. Ditto. This pretty country is full of polluted

streams. I am drawing the notice of the municipality to the abominable

sewer which poisons the road in front of the hotel. All the kitchen

refuse of the establishment is thrown into it. This is a good way to

breed cholera.

“August 1st.--Nothing. The treatment.

“August 2d.--Admirable walk to Chateauneuf, a place of sojourn for

rheumatic patients, where everybody is lame. Nothing can be queerer than

this population of cripples!

“August 3d.--Nothing. The treatment.

“August 4th.--Ditto. Ditto.

“August 5th.--Ditto. Ditto.

“August 6th.--Despair! I have just weighed myself. I have gained 310

grams. But then?

“August 7th.--Drove sixty-six kilometres in a carriage on the mountain.

I will not mention the name of the country through respect for its

women.

“This excursion had been pointed out to me as a beautiful one, and

one that was rarely made. After four hours on the road, I arrived at

a rather pretty village on the banks of a river in the midst of an

admirable wood of walnut trees. I had not yet seen a forest of walnut

trees of such dimensions in Auvergne. It constitutes, moreover, all the

wealth of the district, for it is planted on the village common.

This common was formerly only a hillside covered with brushwood. The

authorities had tried in vain to get it cultivated. There was scarcely

enough pasture on it to feed a few sheep.

“To-day it is a superb wood, thanks to the women, and it has a curious

name: it is called the Sins of the Cure.

“Now I must say that the women of the mountain districts have the

reputation of being light, lighter than in the plain. A bachelor who

meets them owes them at least a kiss; and if he does not take more he is

only a blockhead. If we consider this fairly, this way of looking at the

matter is the only one that is logical and reasonable. As woman, whether

she be of the town or the country, has her natural mission to please

man, man should always show her that she pleases him. If he abstains

from every sort of demonstration, this means that he considers her ugly;

it is almost an insult to her. If I were a woman, I would not receive,

a second time, a man who failed to show me respect at our first meeting,

for I would consider that he had failed in appreciation of my beauty, my

charm, and my feminine qualities.

“So the bachelors of the village X often proved to the women of the

district that they found them to their taste, and, as the cure was

unable to prevent these demonstrations, as gallant as they were natural,

he resolved to utilize them for the benefit of the general prosperity.

So he imposed as a penance on every woman who had gone wrong that she

should plant a walnut tree on the common. And every night lanterns were

seen moving about like will-o'-the-wisps on the hillock, for the erring

ones scarcely like to perform their penance in broad daylight.

“In two years there was no longer any room on the lands belonging to

the village, and to-day they calculate that there are more than three

thousand trees around the belfry which rings out the services amid their

foliage. These are the Sins of the Cure.

“Since we have been seeking for so many ways of rewooding France, the

Administration of Forests might surely enter into some arrangement with

the clergy to employ a method so simple as that employed by this humble

cure.

“August 7th.--Treatment.

“August 8th.--I am packing up my trunks and saying good-by to the

charming little district so calm and silent, to the green mountain,

to the quiet valleys, to the deserted Casino, from which you can see,

almost veiled by its light, bluish mist, the immense plain of the

Limagne.

“I shall leave to-morrow.”

Here the manuscript stopped. I will add nothing to it, my impressions of

the country not having been exactly the same as those of my predecessor.

For I did not find the two widows!

“THE TERROR”

You say you cannot possibly understand it, and I believe you. You think

I am losing my mind? Perhaps I am, but for other reasons than those you

imagine, my dear friend.

Yes, I am going to be married, and will tell you what has led me to take

that step.

I may add that I know very little of the girl who is going to become

my wife to-morrow; I have only seen her four or five times. I know

that there is nothing unpleasing about her, and that is enough for my

purpose. She is small, fair, and stout; so, of course, the day after

to-morrow I shall ardently wish for a tall, dark, thin woman.

She is not rich, and belongs to the middle classes. She is a girl such

as you may find by the gross, well adapted for matrimony, without any

apparent faults, and with no particularly striking qualities. People say

of her:

“Mlle. Lajolle is a very nice girl,” and tomorrow they will say: “What

a very nice woman Madame Raymon is.” She belongs, in a word, to that

immense number of girls whom one is glad to have for one's wife, till

the moment comes when one discovers that one happens to prefer all other

women to that particular woman whom one has married.

“Well,” you will say to me, “what on earth did you get married for?”

I hardly like to tell you the strange and seemingly improbable reason

that urged me on to this senseless act; the fact, however, is that I am

afraid of being alone.

I don't know how to tell you or to make you understand me, but my state

of mind is so wretched that you will pity me and despise me.

I do not want to be alone any longer at night. I want to feel that there

is some one close to me, touching me, a being who can speak and say

something, no matter what it be.

I wish to be able to awaken somebody by my side, so that I may be able

to ask some sudden question, a stupid question even, if I feel inclined,

so that I may hear a human voice, and feel that there is some waking

soul close to me, some one whose reason is at work; so that when

I hastily light the candle I may see some human face by my

side--because--because--I am ashamed to confess it--because I am afraid

of being alone.

Oh, you don't understand me yet.

I am not afraid of any danger; if a man were to come into the room, I

should kill him without trembling. I am not afraid of ghosts, nor do

I believe in the supernatural. I am not afraid of dead people, for I

believe in the total annihilation of every being that disappears from

the face of this earth.

Well--yes, well, it must be told: I am afraid of myself, afraid of that

horrible sensation of incomprehensible fear.

You may laugh, if you like. It is terrible, and I cannot get over it. I

am afraid of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar objects; which

are animated, as far as I am concerned, by a kind of animal life. Above

all, I am afraid of my own dreadful thoughts, of my reason, which

seems as if it were about to leave me, driven away by a mysterious and

invisible agony.

At first I feel a vague uneasiness in my mind, which causes a cold

shiver to run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to

be seen, and I wish that there were something there, no matter what,

as long as it were something tangible. I am frightened merely because I

cannot understand my own terror.

If I speak, I am afraid of my own voice. If I walk, I am afraid of I

know not what, behind the door, behind the curtains, in the cupboard, or

under my bed, and yet all the time I know there is nothing anywhere, and

I turn round suddenly because I am afraid of what is behind me, although

there is nothing there, and I know it.

I become agitated. I feel that my fear increases, and so I shut myself

up in my own room, get into bed, and hide under the clothes; and there,

cowering down, rolled into a ball, I close my eyes in despair, and

remain thus for an indefinite time, remembering that my candle is alight

on the table by my bedside, and that I ought to put it out, and yet--I

dare not do it.

It is very terrible, is it not, to be like that?

Formerly I felt nothing of all that. I came home quite calm, and went up

and down my apartment without anything disturbing my peace of mind. Had

any one told me that I should be attacked by a malady--for I can call it

nothing else--of most improbable fear, such a stupid and terrible malady

as it is, I should have laughed outright. I was certainly never afraid

of opening the door in the dark. I went to bed slowly, without locking

it, and never got up in the middle of the night to make sure that

everything was firmly closed.

It began last year in a very strange manner on a damp autumn evening.

When my servant had left the room, after I had dined, I asked myself

what I was going to do. I walked up and down my room for some time,

feeling tired without any reason for it, unable to work, and even

without energy to read. A fine rain was falling, and I felt unhappy, a

prey to one of those fits of despondency, without any apparent cause,

which make us feel inclined to cry, or to talk, no matter to whom, so as

to shake off our depressing thoughts.

I felt that I was alone, and my rooms seemed to me to be more empty

than they had ever been before. I was in the midst of infinite and

overwhelming solitude. What was I to do? I sat down, but a kind of

nervous impatience seemed to affect my legs, so I got up and began to

walk about again. I was, perhaps, rather feverish, for my hands, which

I had clasped behind me, as one often does when walking slowly, almost

seemed to burn one another. Then suddenly a cold shiver ran down my

back, and I thought the damp air might have penetrated into my rooms,

so I lit the fire for the first time that year, and sat down again and

looked at the flames. But soon I felt that I could not possibly remain

quiet, and so I got up again and determined to go out, to pull myself

together, and to find a friend to bear me company.

I could not find anyone, so I walked to the boulevard to try and meet

some acquaintance or other there.

It was wretched everywhere, and the wet pavement glistened in the

gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay

heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the light of the lamps.

I went on slowly, saying to myself: “I shall not find a soul to talk

to.”

I glanced into several cafes, from the Madeleine as far as the Faubourg

Poissoniere, and saw many unhappy-looking individuals sitting at the

tables who did not seem even to have enough energy left to finish the

refreshments they had ordered.

For a long time I wandered aimlessly up and down, and about midnight I

started for home. I was very calm and very tired. My janitor opened

the door at once, which was quite unusual for him, and I thought that

another lodger had probably just come in.

When I go out I always double-lock the door of my room, and I found it

merely closed, which surprised me; but I supposed that some letters had

been brought up for me in the course of the evening.

I went in, and found my fire still burning so that it lighted up the

room a little, and, while in the act of taking up a candle, I noticed

somebody sitting in my armchair by the fire, warming his feet, with his

back toward me.

I was not in the slightest degree frightened. I thought, very naturally,

that some friend or other had come to see me. No doubt the porter, to

whom I had said I was going out, had lent him his own key. In a moment

I remembered all the circumstances of my return, how the street door had

been opened immediately, and that my own door was only latched and not

locked.

I could see nothing of my friend but his head, and he had evidently gone

to sleep while waiting for me, so I went up to him to rouse him. I saw

him quite distinctly; his right arm was hanging down and his legs were

crossed; the position of his head, which was somewhat inclined to the

left of the armchair, seemed to indicate that he was asleep. “Who can

it be?” I asked myself. I could not see clearly, as the room was rather

dark, so I put out my hand to touch him on the shoulder, and it came in

contact with the back of the chair. There was nobody there; the seat was

empty.

I fairly jumped with fright. For a moment I drew back as if confronted

by some terrible danger; then I turned round again, impelled by an

imperious standing upright, panting with fear, so upset that I could not

collect my thoughts, and ready to faint.

But I am a cool man, and soon recovered myself. I thought: “It is a mere

hallucination, that is all,” and I immediately began to reflect on this

phenomenon. Thoughts fly quickly at such moments.

I had been suffering from an hallucination, that was an incontestable

fact. My mind had been perfectly lucid and had acted regularly and

logically, so there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only

my eyes that had been deceived; they had had a vision, one of those

visions which lead simple folk to believe in miracles. It was a nervous

seizure of the optical apparatus, nothing more; the eyes were rather

congested, perhaps.

I lit my candle, and when I stooped down to the fire in doing so I

noticed that I was trembling, and I raised myself up with a jump, as if

somebody had touched me from behind.