he was in behind.
“I will walk,” I answered.
The cart moved lightly on, in spite of its quadruple burden, while
Lucien waved me an adieu. I could see the hat of Mlle. de Jussat
immovable by the side of the shoulder of the coachman, who gave a “pull
up” to his horse, then the carriage disappeared and I walked along
alone, under the same blue sky, and between the same trees covered with
an impalpable verdure. But an extraordinary anguish had replaced the
cheerfulness and the happy ardor of the beginning of the walk.
This time the die had been thrown. I had given battle, I had lost; I
should be sent away from the château ignobly. It was less this prospect
which overcame me than a strange mingling of regret and of shame.
Behold whither my learned psychology had led me! Behold the result
of this siege _en règle_ undertaken against the heart of this
young girl! Not a word on her part in response to the most impassioned
declaration, and I, at the moment for action, what had I found to do
but recite some romantic phrases? And she, by a simple gesture, had
fixed me to my place!
I saw in imagination the face of Count André. I saw in a flash the
expression of contempt when they should tell him of this scene.
Finally, I was no longer the subtle psychologist or the excited young
man, I was a self-love humiliated to the dust by the time I reached the
gate of the château.
In recognizing the lake, the line of the mountains, the front of the
house, pride gave place to a frightful apprehension of what I was going
to suffer, and the project crossed my mind to flee, to go back directly
to Clermont, rather than experience anew the disdain of Mlle. de
Jussat, and the affront which her father would inflict upon me. It was
too late, the marquis himself came to meet me, in the principal avenue,
accompanied by Lucien who called me. This cry of the child had the
customary intonation of familiarity, and the reception of the father
proved that I had been wrong to feel myself lost so soon.
“They abandoned you,” said he, “and did not even think of sending
the carriage back for you. You must have walked a good stretch!” He
consulted his watch. “I am afraid that Charlotte has taken cold,” he
added, “she went to bed as soon as she came in. These spring suns are
so treacherous.”
“So Charlotte had said nothing yet. She is suffering this evening. That
will be for to-morrow,” thought I, and I began that evening to pack my
papers. I held to them with so ingenuous a confidence in my talent as a
philosopher!
The next day arrived. Nothing vet. I was again with Charlotte at
the breakfast table; she was pale, as if she had passed through a
crisis of violent pain. I saw that the sound of my voice made her
tremble slightly. Then this was all. Ah! what a strange week I
passed, expecting each morning that she had spoken, crucified by this
expectation and incapable of taking the first step myself or of going
away from the château! This was not alone for want of a pretext to
give. A burning curiosity held me there. I had wished to live as much
as to think. Well! I was living, and in what a fever!
At last, the eighth day, the marquis asked me to come into his study.
“This time,” said I to myself, “the hour has struck. I like this
better.”
I expected to see a terrible countenance, and to hear some almost
insulting words. I found, on the contrary, the hypochondriac smiling,
his eyes bright, his manner young again.
“My daughter,” said he, “continues to be very unwell. Nothing very
serious, but some odd nervous symptoms. She wishes positively to
consult a Paris physician. You know she has been very ill and was
cured by a physician in whom she has confidence. I shall not be sorry
to consult him also for myself. I am going with her the day after
to-morrow. It is possible that we shall take a little journey to amuse
her. I desired to give you some particular directions in regard to
Lucien during my absence, though I am very well pleased with you,
my dear Monsieur Greslon, very well pleased. I wrote so to Limasset
yesterday. It is a good thing for me that you are here.”
You will judge my dear master, by what I have shown you of my
character, that these compliments must have flattered me as evidence
of the perfection with which I had filled my rôle, and by reassuring
me after my fears of the last days. I saw this very clear and positive
fact: Charlotte had not wished to tell of my declaration, and I asked
at once: Why? Instead of interpreting this silence in a sense favorable
to me, I saw in it this idea: she did not wish through pity to take
away my means of making a living, but it was not the kind of pity which
I had wished to provoke.
I had no sooner imagined this explanation than it became evident and
insupportable.
“No,” said I, “that shall not be, I will not accept the alms of this
outraging indulgence. When Mlle. de Jussat returns, she will not find
me here. She shows me what I ought to do, what I will do. I have
desired to interest her, I have not even excited her anger. I will
leave at least some other remembrance than that of a vulgar pedant who
keeps his place in spite of the worst affronts.”
I was so baffled in my projects; the hope which had sustained me all
winter was so dead that I wrote out, on the night following this
conversation, a letter in the place of the one in which I had thought
to make her love me, again asking for pardon.
I comprehend, said I, that any relation is impossible between us, and I
added that on her return she would not have to endure the odiousness of
my presence. The next morning in the confusion of departure, I found a
moment when her mother having called her, I could slip into her room. I
hastened to put my letter on her bureau. There, among the books ready
to be put into her trunk, was her blotting case. I opened it and found
an envelope upon which were the words: May 12, 1886. This was the day
of the fatal declaration. I opened this envelope. It contained some
sprigs of dried lilies-of-the-valley, and I remember to have given her,
in this last walk, some sprigs more beautiful than the others and she
had put them in her corsage. She had preserved them then. She had kept
them in spite of what I had said to her--because of what I had said to
her.
I do not believe that I ever experienced an emotion comparable to that
which seized me there, before this simple envelope, to the flood of
pride which suddenly inundated my heart. Yes. Charlotte had repulsed
me. Yes, she had fled from me. But she loved me! I closed the case,
I went up to my room in haste, for fear that she would surprise me,
without leaving my letter, which I instantly destroyed. Ah! there was
no question of my going away now.
I must wait until she should return, and, this time, I would act, I
would conquer. She loved me!
§ V. THE SECOND CRISIS.
She loved me. The experience instituted by my pride and my curiosity
had succeeded. This evidence--for I did not for a moment doubt the
proof, rendered the departure of the young girl not only supportable,
but almost sweet. Her flight was explained by a fear of her own
emotions which proved to me their depth. And then, by going away for a
few weeks, she relieved me from a cruel embarrassment.
How should I act? By what politic safeguard should I push on to success
from this unhoped-for point? I was about to have leisure to think of
this during her absence, which could not last long, since the Jussats
had now no house except in Auvergne.
Deferring then until later the formation of a new plan, I gave myself
up to the intoxication of triumphant self-love which I witnessed in
the departure of Charlotte and of her father. I had taken leave of
them in the drawing-room in order not to embarrass the final adieus,
and returned to my room. The warm, cordial hand-shake of the marquis,
proved once more how strongly I was anchored in the house, and I had
divined behind the cool farewell of the girl the palpitation of a heart
which did not wish to yield.
I inhabited in the second story a corner room with a window on the
front of the château I placed myself behind the curtain so that I could
see them as they entered the carriage. It was a victoria encumbered
with wraps and drawn by the same light bay horse that had drawn the
English cart. There was also the same coachman on the seat, whip in
hand, and with the same immobility of countenance.
The marquis appeared, then Charlotte. Under the veil and from such
a height, I could not distinguish her features, and when she raised
the veil to dry her eyes, I could not have told whether it were the
last kisses of her mother and her brother which caused this access of
nervous emotion or despair at a too painful resolution. But, when the
carriage turned away toward the gate, I saw her turn her head; and as
the family had already gone in what could she be looking at so long, if
not at the window from whose shelter I was regarding her? Then a clump
of trees hid the carriage, which reappeared at the border of the lake
to disappear again and plunge into the road which crosses the wood of
Pradat--that road where a souvenir awaited her, which I was certain
would make her heart beat more quickly--that troubled, conquered heart.
This sentiment of pride satisfied me for an entire month, without
a minute’s interruption, and--proof that I was still entirely
intellectual and psychological in my relations with this young girl, my
mind was never more clear, more supple, more skillful in the handling
of ideas than at this period.
I wrote then my best pages, a treatise on the working of the will
during sleep. I put into it, with the delight of a savant which you
will understand, all the details which I had noted, for some months,
on the goings and comings, the heights and depths of my resolutions.
I had kept, as I have told you, a most precise journal, analyzing, in
the evening before going to sleep, and in the morning, as soon as I was
awake, the least shades of every state of mind.
Yes, these were days of a singular fullness. I was very free. Mlle.
Largeyx and Sister Anaclet kept the marquise company. My pupil and I
took advantage of the beautiful and mild days for walking. Under the
pretext of teaching I had cultivated in him a love of butterflies.
Armed with a long cane and a net of green gauze, he constantly ran
after the Auroras with wings bordered with orange, the blue Arguses,
the brown Morio’s, the mottled Vulcans and the gold-colored Citrons. He
left me alone with my thoughts.
Sometimes we took the Pradat road which was now adorned with all the
verdure of spring, sometimes we went toward Verneuge, toward the valley
of Saint-Genès-Champanelle, which is as gracefully pretty as its name.
I would seat myself upon a block of lava, some small fragment of the
enormous stream poured out by the Puy de la Vache, and there, without
troubling my head about Lucien, I abandoned myself to this strange
disposition which has always appeared to me in the midst of this savage
nature, as a striking symbol of my doctrines, a type of implacable
fatality, a council of absolute indifference to good or ill.
I looked at the leaves of the trees as they unfolded in the sunlight,
and I recalled the known laws of vegetable respiration, and how, by a
simple modification of light, the life of the plant can be changed. In
the same way, one ought to be able at will to direct the life of the
soul, if he could exactly know its laws.
I had already succeeded in creating the commencement of a passion in
the soul of a young girl, separated from me by an abyss. What new
procedures applied with rigor would permit me to increase the intensity
of this passion?
I forgot the magnificence of the heavens, the freshness of the wood,
the majesty of the volcanoes, the vast landscape spread out before
me, in seeing only the formulas of moral algebra. I hesitated between
diverse solutions for the next day on which I should have Mlle. de
Jussat face to face with me in the solitude of the château.
Ought I on her return to feign indifference, to disconcert her, to
subdue her, first by astonishment and then by self-love and grief?
Should I pique her jealousy by insinuating that the foreigner of my
_soi-disant_ romance had returned to Clermont and had written to
me? Should I, on the contrary, continue the burning declarations, the
audacities which surround, the follies which intoxicate?
I replaced these hypotheses successively by still others. I pleased
myself by saying that I was not in love, that the philosopher ruled the
lover, that myself, this dear self of whom I had constituted myself the
priest, remained superior and lucid. I branded as unworthy weaknesses
the reveries which at other times replaced these subtle calculations.
It was in the house that these reveries took hold upon me, when I
looked at the portraits of Charlotte which were scattered about
everywhere on the walls of the salon, on the tables and in Lucien’s
room. Photographs of all sizes represented her at six years, at ten
years, at fifteen, and I could trace the growth of her beauty from
the _mignonne_ grace of her first years to the delicate charm of
to-day.
The features of these photographs changed, but the expression never.
It was the same in the eyes of the child and in those of the young
girl, with something of seriousness, of tenderness and of fixedness
which revealed profound sensibility. It was impressed upon me, and the
remembrance of it agitates me with a confused emotion. Ah! Why did I
not give myself up to it entirely.
But why was Charlotte, in so many of these portraits by the side of her
brother André? What secret fibre of hate had this man, by his existence
alone, touched in my heart, that simply to see his image near that of
his sister dried up my tenderness and left in me only one wish?
I dared to formulate it, now that I believed I had taken this heart
in my snare. Yes, I wished to be Charlotte’s lover. And after? After?
I forced myself not to think of that, as I forced myself to destroy
the instinctive scruples of violated hospitality. I collected the
most masculine energies of my mind and I plunged more deeply into my
theories upon the cultivation of self.
I would go out of this experience enriched by emotions and
remembrances. Such would be the moral issue of the adventure. The
material issue would be the return to my mother’s house when my
preceptorate was ended.
When scruples became aroused, and a voice said: “And Charlotte? Have
you the right to treat her as a simple object of experience?” I took my
Spinoza, and I read there the theorem in which it is written that our
right is only limited by our power.
I took your “Theory of the Passions” and I studied there your phrases
on the duel between the sexes in love.
“It is the law of the world,” I reasoned, “that all existence should
be a conquest, executed and maintained by the strongest at the expense
of the feeblest. That is as true of the moral universe as of the
physical. There are some souls of prey as there are wolves, tigers and
hawks.”
This formula seemed to me strong, new and just. I applied it to myself,
and I repeated:
“I am a soul of prey, a soul of prey,” with a furious attack of what
the mystics call the pride of life, among the fresh verdure, under the
blue sky, on the bank of the clear river which flows from the mountains
to the lake. This exhilaration at my victorious pride was dissipated by
a very simple fact. The marquis wrote that he would return, but alone.
Mlle. de Jussat, who was still unwell, would remain with a sister of
her mother. When the marquise communicated this news to us we were at
table. I felt a spasm of anger so violent that it astonished myself,
and on the plea of sudden indisposition I left the dinner table.
I should like to have cried out, broken something or manifested in
some foolish way the rage which shook my soul. In the fever of vanity
which had exalted me since the departure of Charlotte, I had foreseen
everything, except that this girl would have character enough not
to return to Aydat. The way which she had found to escape from her
sentiment was so simple, but so sovereign, so complete.
The marvelous tactics of my psychology became as vain as the mechanism
of the best cannon against an enemy out of reach of its shot.
What could I do if she were not there? The vision of my weakness
rose up so strong, so painful, that it excited my nervous system so
profoundly that I neither ate nor slept until the arrival of the
marquis. I should then learn if this resolution excluded all hope of
a counter order--if there were any chance that the young girl would
return by the end of July, or in August, or in September. My engagement
would last until the middle of October.
My heart beat, my throat was choked while we walked, Lucien and I, in
the railroad station of Clermont, waiting for the train from Paris. In
the excess of my impatience I had obtained permission to come to meet
the father. The locomotive entered the station. M. de Jussat put his
head through a doorway. I said at the risk of revealing my feelings:
“And Mlle. Charlotte?”
“Thank you, thank you,” he answered, pressing my hand with feeling,
“the physician says that she has a very serious nervous trouble. It
seems that the mountains are not good for her. And I am well only high
up! Ah! This is painful, very painful. We shall try for a time, the
cold-water cure at Paris, and then at Néris perhaps.”
She would not return!
If ever I have regretted, my dear master, the notebook which I burned,
it is assuredly now, and this daily record of my thoughts from the
evening on which the marquis thus announced the definite absence of
his daughter. This record continued until October, when a circumstance
brusquely changed the probable course of things.
You would have found there, as in an atlas of moral anatomy, an
illustration of your beautiful analysis of love, desire, regret,
jealousy, and hate. Yes, during those four months I went through all
these phases. It was an insane attempt, but quite natural, persuaded as
I was that Charlotte’s absence only proved her passion.
I wrote to her. In that letter, deliberately composed, I began by
asking her pardon for my audacity in the Pradat wood, and I renewed
this audacity in a worse manner, by drawing a burning picture of my
despair away from her.
This letter was a wilder declaration than the other, and so bold that
once the envelope had disappeared in the box at the village post-office
whither I had carried it myself, my fears were renewed. Two days, three
days, and there was no reply. The letter at least was not returned, as
I had feared, without even being opened.
At this time the marquise had finished her preparations to join her
daughter. Her sister occupied at Paris in the Rue de Chanaleilles, a
house large enough to give to these ladies all the rooms they needed.
Hôtel de Sermoises, Rue de Chanaleilles, Paris, what emotions I have
had in writing this address, not only once, but five or six times.
I calculated that the aunt would not watch the correspondence of the
young girl very strictly, while the mother would watch her. It was
necessary to take advantage of the time the latter still remained at
Aydat, to strengthen the impression certainly produced by my letter. I
wrote every day, until the departure of the marquise, letters like the
first, and I found no trouble in playing the lover.
My passionate desire to have Charlotte return was sincere--as sincere
as unreasonable. I have known since that, at every arrival of these
dangerous missives, she struggled for hours against the temptation to
open the envelope. At last she opened it. She read and reread the pages
and their poison acted surely. As she was ignorant of the discovery I
had made of her secret, she did not think to defend herself against the
opinion that I could have conceived of her.
These letters affected her so much that she preserved them. The ashes
were found in the chimney of her room where she had burned them the
night of her death. I much suspected the troubling effect of these
pages which I scratched off in the night, excited by the thought that
I was firing my last cartridges, which resembled shots in a fog, since
no sign gave notice that every time I aimed I struck right into her
heart.
This absolute uncertainty I at first interpreted to my advantage; then,
when the mother had left the château and I saw the impossibility of
writing, I found in Charlotte’s silence the most evident proof, not
that she loved me, but that she was using her whole will to conquer
this love and that she would succeed.
“Ah, well!” I thought, “I shall have to give her up, since I cannot
reach her, and all is over.” I pronounced these words aloud alone in
my room as I heard the carriage which took the marquise roll away. M.
de Jussat and Lucien accompanied her as far as Martris-de-Veyre, where
she went to take the train. “Yes,” I repeated, “all is ended. What
difference does it make since I do not love her?”
At the moment this thought left me relatively tranquil and with no
other trouble than a vague feeling of uneasiness in the chest, as
happens when we are annoyed. I went out for the purpose of shaking off
even this uneasiness, and, in one of those fits of bravado, by which I
was pleased to prove my strength, I went to the place in which I had
dared to speak to Charlotte of my love.
In order the better to attest my liberty of soul, I had taken under my
arm a new book which I had just received, a translation of Darwin’s
letters.
The day was misty, but almost scorching. A kind of simoon of wind
from the south parched the branches of the trees with its breath. As
I went on this wind affected my nerves. I desired to attribute to its
influence the increase of my uneasiness. After some fruitless search in
the wood of Pradat, I at last found the clearing where we had been--the
stone--the birch.
It trembled constantly in the breath of the wind, with its dentated
foliage which was now much thicker. I had intended to read my book
here. I sat down and opened the book. I could not get beyond a half
page. The memories overcame me, took possession of me, showing me this
girl upon this same stone, arranging the sprays of her lilies, then
standing, leaning against this tree, then frightened and fleeing over
the grass of the path.
An indefinable grief took possession of me, oppressing my heart,
stifling my respiration, filling my eyes with scalding tears, and I
felt, with terror, that through so any complications of analysis and of
subtleties, I was desperately in love with the child who was not there,
who would never be there again.
This discovery, so strangely unexpected, and of a sentiment so
contrary to the programme I had arranged, was accompanied almost
immediately by a revulsion against this sentiment and against the image
of her who had caused me this pain. There was not a day during the long
weeks that followed that I did not struggle against the shame of having
been taken in my own snare and without feeling a bitter spite against
the absent one.
I recognized the depth of his spite at the infamous joy which filled
my heart when the marquis received a letter from Paris, which he read
with a frown and sighed as he said: “Charlotte is still unwell.” I felt
a consolation, a miserable one, but a consolation all the same, in
saying to myself that I had wounded her with a poisonous wound and one
which would be slow to heal. It seemed to me that this would be my true
revenge, if she should continue to suffer, and I should be the first to
cure her.
I appealed to the philosopher that I was so proud of being to drive out
the lover. I resumed my old reasoning. “There are laws of life and of
mind and I know them. I cannot apply them to Charlotte, since she has
fled from me. Shall I be incapable of applying them to myself?” And I
meditated on this new question: “Are there remedies against love? Yes,
there are, and I have found them.”
My quasi-mathematical habits of analysis were at my service in my
project of healing, and I resolved the problem into its elements, after
the manner of geometricians.
I reduced this question to this other: “What is love?” to which I
answered brutally by your definition: “Love is the obsession of sex.”
Now, how is this combated? By physical fatigue, which suspends, or at
least lessens, the action of the mind.