I imagined what Count André would think, if he could, as in the old
legends, from the depths of his garrison town decipher the words which
I had traced with my pen.
At the same time, the idea alone of directing at will the subtle
movements of a woman’s brain, all this sentimental and intellectual
clockwork so complicated and so tenuous, made me compare myself
to Claude Bernard, to Pasteur and to their pupils. These savants
vivisected animals. Was not I going to vivisect at length, a human soul?
In order to draw from this pity which had been surprised rather than
provoked, all the result demanded, it must first be prolonged. To this
end, I resolved to keep up the comedy of sadness by preparing for the
day of an explanatory conversation, more or less distant, a long,
touching romance of false confidences.
I devoted myself, during the week following our walk, to feigning a
melancholy more or less absorbing, and to feigning it, not only in the
presence of Charlotte, but also during the hours in which I was alone
with my pupil, sure that the child would report to his sister the
impressions of our _tête-à-tête_.
You see here, my dear master, the proof of the useless machinery I was
preparing to employ. Was there any need of involving this boy, who had
been confided to me, in this sad intrigue, and why should I join this
ruse with the others, when Mlle. de Jussat did not for a moment doubt
my sincerity?
We had our lessons, Lucien and I, in a large room dignified by the
name of library, because of the shelves which furnished one side of
the wall. There, behind the gratings lined with green linen, were
innumerable volumes bound in sheepskin, notably all the volumes of the
Encyclopedia. This was a legacy from the founder of the château, a
great philosopher, who had built this habitation among the mountains
for the purpose of bringing up his children in the midst of nature and
after the precepts of Emile.
The portrait of this gentleman free-thinker, a mediocre painting in the
taste of the period, with its powder, and a smile both sceptical and
sensible, adorned one side of the door; on the other side was that of
his wife, quite coquettish under a high coiffure and with patches on
her cheeks.
In looking at these two paintings, while Lucien translated a bit from
Ovid or from Titus Livius, I asked myself what my ancestors were doing
for me during the century in which these two persons lived who were
represented in these portraits. I imagined, these rustics from whom I
am descended pushing the plow, pruning the vine, harrowing the ground
in the foggy plains of Lorraine, like the peasants who passed on the
road in front of the château, in all weathers, and who with boots to
their knees, dragged a metal-tipped stick fastened to the wrist by a
strap.
This mental picture gave the charm of a kind of lawful vengeance to the
care I took to compose my physiognomy. It is a singular thing, that
although I might detest in theory the doctrines of the Revolution and
the mediocre spiritualism which they conceal, I became again a plebeian
in my profound joy in thinking that I, the great-grandson of these
farmers, should perhaps by the force of my mind alone bring to disgrace
the great-granddaughter of this great lord and this great lady.
I leaned my chin upon my hand, I forced my brow and my eyes to look
sad, knowing that Lucien was watching the expression of my face, in
the hope of interrupting his task by a talk. When he had several times
observed that he did not see the welcoming smile, nor the indulgent
look, he himself became very anxious. As is natural, the poor boy took
my sadness for severity, my silence for displeasure One morning he
ventured to ask:
“Are you angry with me, monsieur?”
“No, my child,” I replied, patting his fresh cheek with my hand; and I
continued to preserve my troubled look, while contemplating the snow
which beat against the panes. It fell now from morning till evening in
large whirling stars, covering and putting to sleep the whole country,
and in the warm rooms of the château there was the silent charm of
intimacy, a distant death of all the noises of the mountains; while
through the window panes, covered with frost on the outside and a vapor
within, the light sifted languorously.
This gave a background of mystery to the figure of melancholy which
I made, and which I imposed on the observation of Charlotte whenever
we met. When the breakfast bell reunited us in the dining-room, I
surprised in the eyes with which she received me the same timid and
compassionate curiosity which I had noticed during our walk, whence
dated what I called in my journal my entrance into my laboratory.
She regarded me with the same look when we were all again together,
in the salon at tea, under the light of the early lamps, then at the
dinner table and again in the long solitude of the evening, unless,
under pretext of having work to finish, I retired to my room.
The monotony of life and of conversation was so complete that there was
nothing to help her to shake off the impression of mournful mystery
which I had inflicted upon her.
The marquis, a prey to the contrasts of his character, cursed his fatal
resolution to remain in this isolation. He announced for the next clear
day a departure which he knew would be impossible. It would cost too
much now, and beside, where could he go? He calculated the chances of
seeing his Clermont friends who had several times breakfasted with him,
but it was before the four hours between Aydat and the city had been
doubled by the bad weather.
Then he installed himself at the card table, while the marquise,
the governess and the _religieuse_ applied themselves to their
unending work.
It was my duty to look after Lucien who turned the leaves of a book
of engravings or played at patience. I placed myself so that when
she raised her eyes from the cards which she held in her hands while
playing with her father, the young girl was obliged to see me. I had
been interested in hypnotism, and I had in particular studied in all
its details, in your “Anatomy of the Will,” the chapter devoted to the
singular phenomena of certain moral denominations, which you have
entitled: “Some demi-suggestions.” I depended on taking possession
of this unoccupied mind, until the propitious moment in which, to
complete this work of daily intercourse, I should decide to relate to
her my story which, justifying my sadness, should end by engrossing her
imagination.
This story I had manufactured upon two principles which you lay down,
my dear master, in your beautiful chapter on Love. This chapter, the
theories of the Ethics on the passions, and M. Ribot’s book on the
“Maladies of the Will,” had become my breviaries. Permit me to recall
these two principles, at least in their essence.
The first is that the majority of beings have sentiment only by
imitation; abandoned to simple nature, love, for example, would be for
them as for the animals, only a sensual instinct, dissipated as soon as
satiated.
The second is that jealously may exist before love; consequently it
may sometimes create it, and may often survive it. Much struck by the
justness of this double remark, I argued that the romance which I
should relate to Mlle. de Jussat ought to excite her imagination and
irritate her vanity. I had succeeded in touching the cord of pity, I
wished to touch that of sentimental emulation and that of self-love.
I had then, founded my story on this idea, that every woman interested
in a man, is wounded in her vanity if this man shows that he is
thinking of another woman. But twenty pages would be necessary to show
you how I studied over the problem of the invention of this fable.
The occasion to relate it to her was furnished by the victim herself,
fifteen days after I had begun to put at work what I proudly called
my experience. The marquis had been told that one volume of the
Encyclopedia was devoted to cards. He wished to find there how to play
some old games such as Imperiale, Ombre, and Manilla. This brilliant
idea had come to him after breakfast, on seeing in a journal a report
of a new game called Poker, apropos of which the journalist gave a list
of old-fashioned games.
When this maniac had conceived a fancy he could not wait, and his
daughter was obliged to go at once to the library, where I was occupied
in taking notes. I laid aside Helvétius upon the “Mind,” which I had
discovered among some other books of the eighteenth century. I placed
myself at the disposition of Mlle. de Jussat to take down the volume
which she desired, and, when she took it from my hands, she said with
her habitual grace:
“I hope that we shall find here some game in which you can take a hand
with us. We are so afraid that you do not feel at home here, you are
always so sad.”
She said these words as if asking pardon for an indelicacy, which had
impressed me before, and escaping the familiarity of her remark by a
“we” which I too well knew to be untruthful. Her voice was so gentle,
we were so alone that the time seemed to have come to explain my
feigned sadness.
“Ah! mademoiselle,” I answered, “if you only knew my history.”
If Charlotte had not been the credulous creature, the romantic child
that she was, in spite of her two or three seasons in Paris, she would
have seen that I was beginning a tale prepared beforehand, by this
introduction, by the turn of the sentences with which I continued. I
was too clumsy, too awkwardly affected.
I told her then that I had been betrothed at Clermont to a young girl,
but secretly. I thought to make this adventure more poetical in her
eyes by insinuating that this girl was a foreigner, a Russian visiting
one of her relations. I added that this girl had allowed me to tell her
that I loved her, and she had also told me that she loved me. We had
exchanged vows, then she had gone away. A rich marriage offered, and
she had betrayed me for money.
I was careful to insist on my poverty, and let her understand that
my mother lived almost entirely on what I earned. This was a detail
invented on the spot, for hypocrisy doubles itself in expression. In
truth this was a scene of a childish and rascally comedy, which I
played with very little skill. But the reasons which determined me to
lie in this fashion were so special that they exacted an extraordinary
penetration to be comprehended, a total attention of my mind, almost
your genius, my dear master. The visible embarrassment of my position
could so easily be attributed to the trouble inseparable from such
remembrances. As I was perfectly cool while I was telling this fable,
I could observe Charlotte. She listened without any sign of emotion,
her eyes lowered on the big book which supported her hand. She took the
book when I had finished, and replied in a blank voice, as they say,
one of those voices which betrays no sentiment of the speaker:
“I do not understand how you could have had any confidence in this
young girl, since she listened to you without the knowledge of her
parents.”
And she went away with a simple inclination of her graceful head,
carrying the book with her. How pretty she was in her dress of fine,
light cloth, with her slender form, her small waist, her face quite
long and lighted up by her thoughtful gray eyes! She was like a Madonna
engraved after Memling, whose profile I had formerly so much admired,
fervent, lovely and mournful, on the first page of a large copy of the
“Imitation,” belonging to the Abbé Martel.
Explain to me this other enigma of the heart, you, the great
psychologist; never have I felt more the charm of this pure and gentle
being than at the moment when I had just lied to her, and lied so
uselessly as I imagined from her response.
Yes, I took this response literally, which, on the contrary, should
have encouraged me to hope. I did not guess that to have only listened
to a confidence so intimate was for a being so proud and so reserved,
so far above me, a proof of a very powerful sympathy. I did not
consider that this almost severe remark was dictated in part by the
secret jealousy which I had desired to arouse in her, in part by a need
to strengthen herself in her own principles so as to justify to herself
her excessive familiarity.
As she had not been able to read the falsehood in my story, so I had
not seen the truth behind her reply.
I felt all the hopes which I had been building up for the past
fortnight crumble before me. No. She was not interested in me with a
genuine interest which I could transform into passion. I drew up the
balance sheet of our relations. What proof had I of this interest? The
delicacy of the material cares with which she had surrounded me? This
was a simple effect of her goodness. Her attempt to find out the cause
of my melancholy? Ah, well! she had been curious, that was all. The
timid accent of her voice when she questioned me? I had been a fool
not to recognize the habitual modesty of a delicate girl. Conclusion:
my comedy of these two weeks, my grimaces _à la_ Chatterton, the
falsehood of my so-called drama, so many ridiculous maneuvers, had not
advanced me a line in the heart I wished to conquer.
I turned again to my book, but I was no longer capable of fixing
my attention on the abstract text of Helvétius. I recall this
childishness, my dear master, that you may the better perceive what a
strange mixture of innocence and depravity was elaborated in my mind.
What did this unexpected deception prove, if not that I had imagined I
could direct the thought of Charlotte, by applying to her the laws of
psychology borrowed from the philosophers, as absolutely as her brother
directed the billiard balls? The white touches the red a little to the
left, goes on the cushions, and returns to the other white. That is
outlined by the hand on the paper, that is explained by a formula, that
is foreseen and is done ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, ten
thousand times.
In spite of my enormous reading, perhaps because of it, I saw the play
of the passions in this state of ideal simplicity. I did not comprehend
till later how much I was deceived. In order to define the phenomena
of the heart we must go to the vegetable, and not to the mechanical
world for analogies, and to direct these phenomena we must employ the
methods of the botanist, patient graftings, long waiting, careful
training.
A sentiment is born, grows, expands, withers like a plant, by an
evolution sometimes retarded, sometimes rapid, but always unconscious.
The germ of pity, of jealousy, and of dangerous example planted by my
ruse in the soul of Charlotte must develop its action, but only after
days and days, and this action would be the more irresistible as she
believed me to be in love with another and that in consequence she
would not think to defend herself against me.
But to account in advance for this work and to discount the hope of it,
one would have to be a Ribot, a Horwicz, an Adrien Sixte, that is, a
connoisseur of souls, instead of one like me, ignorant that the plain
over which he is walking will be covered with grain and not suspecting
the approaching harvest.
The conviction that I had definitely failed in my first effort
increased during the days which followed this false confidence. For
Charlotte scarcely spoke to me.
I know now, from her own confession, that she concealed under this
coldness a growing agitation which disconcerted her by its novelty, its
force and its depth. In the meantime she appeared absorbed in the game
of backgammon which the marquis had discovered in the Encyclopedia.
Recollecting that this had been the favorite pastime of his
grandfather, the _emigré_, he had given up all other games. A
merchant of Clermont had been able to send him the necessary articles
with which to satisfy this caprice.
The backgammon table was installed in the salon and father and daughter
passed their evenings in throwing the dice, which made a dry noise
against the wooden ledge. The cabalistic terms of little table,
big table, outer table, double ace, double threes, two fives, were
intermingled now with the words of the marquise and her two companions.
Sometimes the curé of Aydat, the Abbé Barthomeuf, an old priest who
said mass in the chapel of the château on Thursdays when the weather
was very severe, would relieve Charlotte by playing with the marquis.
Although the marquis treated me with irreproachable politeness, he had
never asked me if I wished to learn to play. The difference which he
established between the abbé and myself humiliated me, by the oddest
contradiction, for I much preferred to remain in my low chair reading
a book, or observing the character of the different persons from their
physiognomies.
Is it not always so when one is in a position which is thought to be
inferior? Any inequality of treatment wounds the self-love. I took my
revenge in observing the ridiculousness of the abbé, who professed,
for the château in general and the marquis in particular, an almost
idolatrous admiration. His face which was always red became apoplectic
when he took his seat opposite the marquis, and the prospect of winning
the silver coins designed to make the game more interesting made the
dice-cup tremble in his hand at the decisive throws.
This observation did not occupy me long, and I turned to follow the
young girl, who seated herself at her work near her mother.
The failure of my attempt to win her love had made me more cruel, in
proportion to the admiration I had before felt for the innocent grace
of this child. To confess all, I began to feel, in her atmosphere,
emotions of an order more sensual than psychological. I was a young
man, and I had in my flesh, in spite of my philosophical resolutions,
the memory of sex of which you have so authoritatively analyzed the
persistent fatality and the invincible reviviscence.
How long this period of inertia at once impassioned and discouraged,
might have lasted, I do not know. We were, Mlle. de Jussat and I, in
a very peculiar situation, impelled one toward the other, she by a
budding love of which she was ignorant, I by all the confused reasons
which I have analyzed.
Although we were together so many hours of the day, neither of us then
suspected the sentiments of the other. In such circumstances, one does
not consider whether the events which mark a new crisis are effects or
causes, whether their importance resides in themselves or whether they
simply serve to manifest the latent conditions of the soul. But may we
not put this question apropos of each destiny taken in its whole? How
many times, above all since I consume my hours in this cell between
these four whitewashed walls, seeing only the empty sky through four
openings at the edge of the roof, in searching and searching again into
my short history, have I asked myself if our fate creates our mind, or
if it is not our mind which creates our fate, even our external destiny?
It happened one evening that the marquis, seated with his back to the
fire in the _robe-de-chambre_, which he sometimes wore all day,
spoke at length to his wife of an article in the morning paper. I was
holding this paper at the time, and M. de Jussat said to me quite
suddenly:
“Would you read this article, Monsieur Greslon?”
I admired, once more, the art with which this grand seigneur rendered
the most trifling demands insolent. His tone alone was sufficient to
chill me. I obeyed however, and began to read this chronicle, more
finely written than such articles usually are, and in which were
revived all the picturesqueness and coloring of a fancy ball, with a
curious mixture of reporting and poetry.
During the reading the marquis regarded me in astonishment. I must tell
you, my dear master, that at the time of my friendship with Emile, I
had acquired a real talent for diction. During his illness my little
comrade had no greater pleasure than to hear me read.
“You read very well, very well!” cried M. de Jussat when I had finished.
His astonishment made his eulogy a new wound to my self-esteem. It
was too plain that he did not expect to find much talent in a silent
and timid young man of Clermont, who had come to the château on the
recommendation of old Limasset, to be a _valet de lettres_. Then,
following as usual, the impulse of his caprice, he continued:
“That is an idea. You shall read for us in the evening. That will amuse
us a little better than this _trictrac_. Little _jan_, big
_jan_, it is always the same thing, and then the noise of the dice
sets my teeth on edge. This beastly country! If the snow ever stops
again, we will not stay here eight days. And what book are you going to
begin with?”
Thus I found myself promoted to a new service, without even being
allowed to consider whether it would interfere with my studies or not,
for I often brought into the salon some of my books that I might study
a little without leaving Lucien. But I did not for a moment think of
evading this task. First the brusqueness of the marquis had brought me
a glance almost supplicating from Charlotte, one of those glances by
which a woman knows how to ask pardon, for the error of some one whom
she loves. Then, a new project took form in my mind. Might not this
task be utilized to the profit of the enterprise commenced, abandoned,
and which the look of Mlle. de Jussat made me think was still possible?
To the question of the marquis upon the choice of the book, I responded
that I would consider. And I looked for a work which would permit me to
approach the prey around which I turned, as I once saw, near the Puy du
Dôme, a kite wheel around and above a poor little bird.
Was not this an opportunity to try by another method this influence of
imitation, which I had vainly hoped from my false confidence? It is to
you, my dear master, that we owe the strongest pages which have been
written upon that which you so justly call the Literary Mind, upon this
unconscious modeling of our heart to the resemblance of the passions
painted by the poets.
I saw in this then, a means of acting upon Charlotte which I reproached
myself for not having thought of before. But how was I to find a
romance which was passionate enough to excite her, and outwardly
correct enough to be read before the assembled family? I literally
ransacked the library. Its incoherent and contrasted composition,
reflected the residence of its successive masters and the chances of
their taste.
There were all the principal works of the eighteenth century of which
I have spoken--then a hiatus. During the emigration the château had
remained unoccupied. Then a lot of romantic books in their first
editions attested the literary aspirations of the father of the
marquis, who had been the friend of Lamartine. Then came the worst
of contemporaneous romances, those which are bought on the railway,
half-bound, cut sometimes with the finger, or a page lost, and some
treatises on political economy, an abandoned hobby of M. de Jussat.
At last I discovered amid all this rubbish a “Eugénie Grandet,” which
appeared to me to fill the conditions desired. There is nothing more
attractive to a fresh imagination than these idyls at once chaste and
fervid in which innocence envelops passion in a penumbra of poesy. But
the marquis must have known this celebrated romance by heart, and I
apprehended that he would refuse to listen to it.
“Bravo!” he replied when I submitted my idea to him, “that is one of
the books that one reads once, talks about always and entirely forgets.
I saw this Balzac once in Paris, at the Castries. It is more than forty
years ago. I was a youngster then. But I remember him well, fat, short
and stubby, noisy, important, with beautiful bright eyes and a common
air.”
The fact is that after the first pages, he fell asleep, while the
marquise. Mlle. Largeyx and the _religieuse_ knit, and Lucien, who
had recently come into possession of a box of colors conscientiously
illuminated the illustrations of a large volume.
While reading I observed Charlotte, and it was not difficult to see
that this time my calculation had been correct, and that she vibrated
under the phrases of the romance as a violin under a skillful bow.
Everything was prepared to receive this impression, from her feelings
already stirred to her nerves strained by an influence of a physical
kind. One cannot live with impunity for weeks in such an atmosphere as
that of the château, always warm, nearly stifling.