days on which he had no lessons, Sundays and Thursdays, I went out
alone at the break of day, after having arranged the hour and the
place in which Lucien should join me with the carriage. I awoke at two
o’clock. I went out from the château, in the cold of the half-twilight
which precedes the dawn.
I went straight before me, frantically, choosing the worst paths,
ascending the nearest peaks by the most abrupt and almost inaccessible
sides. I risked breaking my limbs in descending the yielding sand of
the craters, or upon the crests of basalt. No matter.
The orange line of the aurora gained the border of the sky. The wind
of the new day beat against my face. The stars like precious stones
melted away, drowned in the flood of azure, now pale, now darker. The
sun lighted up, on the flowers, the trees and the grass a flashing of
sparkling dew.
Persuaded as I am, of the laws of prehistoric atavism, I aroused in
myself, by the sensation of the forced march and of the heights, the
rudimentary mind of the ancestral brute, of the man of the caves from
whom I, as well as the rest of mankind, am descended.
I attained in this way a sort of savage delirium, but it was neither
the dreamed-of joy nor peace, and it was interrupted by the smallest
reminiscence of my relations with Charlotte. The turn of a road which
we had followed together, the blue bosom of the lake seen from some
height, the outline of the slated roofs of the château, less than
that, even the trembling foliage of a birch and its silvery trunk, the
name of a village of which she had spoken, on an advertisement, was
sufficient, and this factitious frenzy gave place to the keen regret
that she was not near me.
I heard her say in her finely-toned voice: “Look then--” as she would
say when we wandered together, through this same region, which was then
covered with ice and snow--but the flower of her beauty was then in
bloom, now it was adorned with verdure, but the living flower was gone.
And this sensation became more intolerable still when I met Lucien, who
never failed to talk of her. He loved her, he admired her so lovingly,
and in his ingenuousness he gave me so many proofs that she was worthy
of being loved and admired. Then physical weariness resolved itself
into a worse enervation, and nights followed in which I suffered from
an excited insomnia, in which I would weep aloud, calling her name like
one deranged.
“It is through the mind that I suffer,” I said after having in vain
sought the remedy in great fatigue. “I will attack mind through mind.”
I undertook that study the most completely opposed to all feminine
preoccupation. I despoiled in less than a fortnight, pen in hand, two
hundred pages of that “Physiology” of Beaunis which I had brought in
my trunk and the hardest for me, those which treat of the chemistry of
living bodies.
My efforts to understand and to sum up these analyses which demand the
laboratory, were supremely in vain. I only succeeded in stupefying my
intellect and in making myself less capable of resisting a fixed idea.
I saw that I had again taken the wrong road. Was not the true method
rather that which Goethe professed--to apply the mind to that from
which we wish to be delivered? This great mind, who knew how to live,
thus put in practice the theory set up in the fifth book of Spinoza,
and which consists in evolving from the accidents of our personal life
the law which unites us to the great life of the universe.
M. Taine, in his eloquent pages on Byron, advises the same, “the
light of the mind produces in us serenity of the heart.” And you, my
dear master, what else say you in the preface to your “Theory of the
Passions.” “To consider one’s own destiny as a corollary in this living
geometry of nature, and as an inevitable consequence of this eternal
axiom whose infinite development is prolonged through time and space,
is the only principle of enfranchisement.”
And what else am I doing, at this hour, in writing out this memoir, but
conforming to these maxims? Can they serve me now any better than they
did then? I tried at that time to resume in a kind of new autobiography
the history of my feelings for Charlotte. I supposed--see how chance
sometimes strangely realizes our dreams--a great psychologist to be
consulted by a young man; and, toward the last, the psychologist
wrote out for the use of the moral invalid a passional diagnosis with
indication of causes.
I wrote this piece during the month of August and under the exhausting
influence of the most torrid heat. I devoted to it about fifteen
séances, lasting from ten o’clock in the evening to one o’clock in the
morning, all the windows open, with the space around my lamp brightened
by large night-moths, by these large velvet butterflies which bear on
their bodies the imprint of a death’s head.
The moon rose, inundating with its bluish light the lake over which ran
the pearly reflections; the woods whose mystery grew more profound, and
the line of the extinct volcanoes. I put down my pen to lose myself, in
presence of this mute landscape, in one of those cosmogonic reveries
to which I was accustomed. As at the time in which the words of my
poor father revealed to me the history of the world, I saw again the
primitive nebulousness, then the earth detached from it, and the moon
thrown off from the earth.
That moon was dead, and the earth would die also. She was becoming
chilled second by second; and the imperceptible consequence of
these seconds, added together during millions of years, had already
extinguished the fire of the volcanoes from which formerly flowed the
burning and devastating lava on which the château now stood.
In cooling this lava had raised a barrier to the course of the water
which spread into a lake, and the water of this lake was being
evaporated as the atmosphere diminished--these forty poor kilometers of
respirable air which surround the planet.
I closed my eyes, and I felt this mortal globe roll through the
infinite space, unconscious of the little worlds that come and go upon
it, as the immensity of space is unconscious of the suns, the moons
and the earths. The planet will roll on when it will be only a ball
without air and without water, from which man has disappeared, as well
as animals and plants.
Instead of bringing to me the serenity of contemplation, this
vision threw me back upon myself and made me feel with terror the
consciousness of my own person, the only reality that I could possess,
and for how long? Scarcely a point and a moment!
Then, in this irreparable flight of things, this point and this moment
of our consciousness remains our only good, we must exalt it by
increasing its intensity. I felt, with a frightful force, that this
sovereign intensity of emotion Charlotte alone could give me if she
were in this room, seated in this chair, uniting her condemned soul to
my condemned soul, her fleeting youth to my fleeting youth, and as all
the instruments of an orchestra harmonize to produce a single tone, all
the separate forces of my being, the intellectual, the sentimental, the
sensual united in a yearning for Charlotte.
Alas! The vision of the universe heightened the frenzy of the personal
life instead of calming it. I said to myself that without doubt I had
been deceived in believing myself a purely abstract and intellectual
being. During the months in which I had been entirely chaste had I not
lived contrary to my nature?
Under pretext of some family business to regulate I obtained of the
marquis a vacation of eight days. I went to Clermont and sought for
Marianne. I soon found her. She was no longer the simple working-woman.
A country proprietor had settled her, dressed her in fine clothes, and
coming to the city only one day in eight, left her a sort of liberty.
This re-entrance into the world affected me as a renewal of initiation.
I was desirous of knowing to what degree the memory of Charlotte
gangrened my soul. Ah! how the image of Mlle. de Jussat presented
itself at that moment with her Madonna-like profile and the delicacy
of her whole being. It was impossible for me to return to these base
idols. I passed the days which remained to me in walking with my
mother, who seeing me so melancholy became uneasy and increased my
sadness by her questions.
I saw the time of my return to the château approach with pleasure. At
least I could live there among my memories. But a terrible blow awaited
me, which was given me by the marquis on my arrival.
“Good news,” said he as soon as he saw me. “Charlotte is better. And
there is more just as good. She is going to be married. Yes, she
accepts M. de Plane. It is true, you do not know him, a friend of André
whom she refused once, and now she is willing.” And he continued, going
back to himself as usual: “Yes, it is very good news, for, you see, I
have not much longer to live. I am broken, very much broken.”
He might detail to me his imaginary ills, analyze his stomach as much
as he wished, his gout, his intestines, his heart, his head--I listened
no more than a condemned man to whom his sentence has been announced
listens to the words of his jailer. I saw only the fact so painful to
me. You who have written some admirable pages upon jealousy, my dear
master, and upon the ravages which the thought alone of the caress of a
rival produces in the imagination of a lover, can divine what smarting
poison this news poured into my wound.
May, June, July, August, September--nearly five months since Charlotte
had gone, and this wound instead of healing had become enlarged,
poisoned until this last stroke which finished me. This time I did not
have the cruel consolation that my suffering was shared. This marriage
proved to me that she was cured of her sentiment for me, while I was
agonized by mine for her.
My fury was exasperated at the thought that this love had been snatched
from me just at the moment I was about to be able to develop it in
its fullness, at the very time of decisive action. I saw Charlotte in
Paris, where M. de Plane was passing his leave of absence, receiving
her _fiancé_ in the partial _tête-à-tête_ with a familiarity
permitted under the indulgent eyes of the marquise. They were for this
man now, these smiles at once proud and timid, these tender and anxious
looks, these passages of paleness and modest red over her delicate
face, these gestures of a grace always a little wild.
Finally she loved him, since she was willing to marry him. And he
seemed to me like Count André whose detestable influence I found
even here, and whom I again hated in the _fiancé_ of his sister
confounding these two gentlemen, these two elders, these two officers,
in the same furious antipathy. Vain and puerile anger which I took with
me into the wood already reclothed with those vague tints which would
soon change to russet.
The swallows were assembling for their departure. As the hunting season
had begun there was firing all around them, and frightened, they rose
in a flight such as that by which the wild bird had escaped which I had
thought to bring down some day.
Toward Saint-Saturnin, the hills were planted with vines whose grapes
would soon be ripe for the vintage. I saw the stocks widowed of fruit,
those which the hailstorms of the spring had destroyed in their flower.
Thus had died on the spot, before being ripe, my vintage, vintage of
intoxicating emotions, of sweet felicities, of burning ecstasies.
I felt a gloomy and indefinable pleasure in seeking everywhere in the
country some symbol of my sentiment, since I was, for a short time,
purified from all calculation by the alchemy of grief.
If I was ever a true lover and given up to regrets, memories and
despairs, it was in those days which must be the last of my stay at
Aydat. In fact, the marquis announced his intention to hasten his
departure. He had abdicated his hypochondria, and he cheerfully said to
me:
“I adore my future son-in-law. I wish that you could know him. He is
loyal, he is brave, he is good, he is proud. True gentlemanly blood in
his veins. Do you understand the women? Here is one who is no sillier
than the rest, is it not so? Two years ago he offered himself to her.
She said no. Then my boy goes away to come back half-dead. And then
it is yes. Do you know, I have always thought that there was some
love-affair in her nervous malady. I knew it. I said to myself: she is
in love with some one. It was he. And what if he had not wanted her,
all the same?”
No, it was not M. de Plane whom Charlotte had loved that winter; but
she had loved, that was certain. Our existences had crossed at one
point, like the two roads which I saw from my window, the one which
descends the mountains and goes toward the fatal wood of Pradat, the
other which leads toward the Puy de la Rodde.
I happened to see, at the close of the day the carriages following
these two roads. After almost grazing each other, they were lost in
opposite directions. Thus were our destinies separated forever. The
Baroness de la Plane would live in the world, at Paris, and that
represented to me a whirlpool of unknown and fascinating sensations.
I knew too well my future life. In thought, I awoke again in the little
room of the Rue du Billard. In thought I followed the three streets
which it is necessary to take to go from there to the Faculty. I
entered the palace of the Academy, built in red brick, and I reached
the _salle des conférences_ with its bare walls garnished with
blackboards. I listened to the professor analyzing some author on
license or admission. That lasted an hour and a half, then I returned,
my serviette under my arm, through the cold streets of the old town,
for it was necessary for me to pass still another year, as I had not
studied hard enough to submit to my examination with success.
I should continue to go and come among these dark houses, with this
horizon of snowy mountains, to see the father and mother of Emile
sitting at their window and playing at cards, the old Limasset reading
his paper in the corner of the Café de Paris, the omnibuses of Royat at
the corner of Jande.
Yes, I come down to that, my dear master, to this misery of minds
without psychology which attach themselves to the external form of life
without penetrating its essence. I disregarded my old faith in the
superiority of science, to which only three square metres of room are
necessary in order that a Spinoza or an Adrien Sixte may there possess
the immense universe.
Ah! I was very mediocre in that period of powerless desires and
conquered love! I detested, and with what injustice, that life of
abstract study which I was about to resume! And how I wish to-day
that this might be my fate, and that I might awake a poor student
near the Faculty of Clermont, tenant of the father of Emile, pupil of
old Limasset, the morose traveler through those black streets--but an
innocent man! an innocent man! And not the man who has gone through
what I have gone through, and which he finds it a necessity to tell.
§ VI. THIRD CRISIS.
Toward the end of this severe month of September, Lucien complained of
not being quite well, which the doctor attributed at first to a simple
cold. Two days after the symptoms became aggravated. Two physicians
of Clermont, called in haste, diagnosed scarlet fever, but of a mild
character.
If my mind had not been entirely absorbed by the fixed idea which
made of me at this period a veritable monomaniac, I should have
found material enough to fill my notebook. I had only to follow the
evolutions of the mind of the marquis and the struggle in his heart
between hypochondria and paternal love.
Sometimes, in spite of the reassuring words of the doctors, he became
so uneasy about his son that he passed the night in watching him.
Sometimes he was seized with the fear of contagion; he went to bed,
complained of imaginary pains, and counted the hours until the visit of
the physician. Sometimes, so grave did his symptoms seem to himself,
that the marquis must have the first visit. Then he would be ashamed of
his panic. He arose, he chastised himself for his terrors with bitter
phrases on the feebleness which age brings, and returned to the bedside
of his son. His first intention was to conceal from the marquise and
Charlotte and André the illness of the child; but after two weeks,
these alternations of zeal and of terror having exhausted his energy,
he felt the need of having his wife with him to sustain him, and the
incoherence of his ideas was so great that he consulted me:
“Do you not think it is my duty?”
There are some lying souls, my dear master, who excel in excusing by
fine motives their most villainous actions. If I were of this number
I could make a merit of having insisted that the marquis should not
recall his wife. Surely I knew the full import of my response and of
the resolution that M. de Jussat was about to take. I knew that, if he
informed the marquise, she would arrive by the first train, and I also
knew Charlotte well enough to be assured that she would come with her
mother. I should see her again, I should have a supreme opportunity to
reawaken in her the love of which I had surprised the proof. I could
say that it was loyalty on my part, the advice to leave Mme. de Jussat
in Paris. I should have the appearance of loyalty. Why? If I were
not convinced that there is no effect without a cause and no loyalty
without a secret egoism, I should recognize a horror in using to the
profit of a culpable passion the noblest of sentiments, that of a
sister for a brother.
Here is the naked truth: in trying to dissuade M. de Jussat, I was
convinced that all effort to regain the heart of Charlotte would be
useless. I foresaw in this return only certain humiliation. Worn out by
these long months of internal struggle, I no longer felt the strength
to maneuver. There was then no virtue in representing to the marquis
the inconveniences, the dangers even, of the stay of these two women in
the château, near an invalid who might communicate to them his disease.
“And how about me?” responded he ingenuously, “am I not exposed every
day? But you are right for Charlotte; I will write that I do not want
her.”
“Ah! Greslon,” said he two days after, on the receipt of a telegram,
“see what they do--read.” He handed me the dispatch which announced
the arrival of Mlle. de Jussat and her mother. “Naturally,” moaned the
hypochondriac, “she wanted to come, without thinking that I should be
spared such emotions.”
The marquis spoke to me in this way at two o’clock in the afternoon.
I knew that the train left Paris at nine o’clock in the evening and
arrived at Clermont toward five in the morning. Mme. de Jussat and
Charlotte would be at the château before ten o’clock. I passed a
fearful evening and night, deprived now of that philosophic tension,
outside of which I float, a creature without energy, the sport of
nervous and irresistible impressions.
Good sense, however, indicated a very simple solution. My engagement
would end the 15th of October. It was now the 5th. The child was
convalescent. He had his mother and his sister with him. I could return
home without any scruple and under any pretext. I could do it and I
must--for the sake of my dignity as well as for my repose.
In the morning, I had taken this resolution and I was going to speak
about it to the marquis immediately; he did not let me say a word, he
was so agitated by the arrival of his daughter: “Very well,” said he,
“by and by, I have no head for anything now. This willfulness! That is
why I have grown old so fast. Always new shocks!”
Who knows? my destiny may have entirely depended on the humor by which
this old fool refused to hear me. If I had spoken to him at that
moment, and if we had fixed my departure, I should have been obliged
to have gone; instead, the sole presence of Charlotte changed the
project of going into a project of remaining, as a lamp carried into a
room immediately changes this darkness into light. I repeat it, I was
convinced that she had absolutely ceased to be interested in me on the
one hand, and, on the other, that I was passing through a crisis, not
of genuine love, but of wounded vanity, and of morbid brooding.
Ah, well! To see her descend from the carriage before the
_perron_, to see that my presence overcame her, as hers affected
me, I understood two things: first, that it would be physically
impossible for me to leave the château while she should be there; then
that she had passed through trouble similar to mine, if not worse.
She must have fled from me with the most sincere courage, not to have
replied to my letters, not to have read them, to have become betrothed
in order to place an insurmountable barrier between us, to have
believed even that she no longer loved me, and to have returned to the
château with this persuasion.
She loved me!
I had no need of a detailed analysis like those in which I was too
complaisant and in which I was so much deceived, to recognize this
fact. It was an intuition, sudden, unreasoning, invincible, one to make
me believe that the theories on the double life, so much discussed by
Science, are absolutely true.
I read it, this unhoped for love, in the troubled eyes of this child,
as your read the words by which I am trying to reproduce here the
lightning and the thunderbolt of this evidence.
She was before me in her traveling costume, and white, white as this
sheet of paper. I should have explained this pallor by the fatigue
of the night passed in the carriage, and by her uneasiness at her
brother’s illness. Her eyes, in meeting mine, trembled with emotion.
That might be offended modesty? She had fallen away, and when she took
off her cloak I saw that her dress, a dress which I recognized, was
wrinkled around the shoulders.
Ah! I, who had believed so strongly in the method, the inductions, and
the complications of reasoning, how I felt the omnipotence of instinct
against which nothing could provide.
She had loved me all the time. She loved me more than ever. What matter
that she had not given me her hand at our first meeting; that she had
scarcely spoken to me in the vestibule; that she went up the grand
staircase with her mother without turning her head?
She loved me. This certainty, after so long a period of doubt and
anxiety, inundated my heart with a flood of joy, so that I was almost
overcome, there, on the carpet of the staircase which I must also climb
to go to my room. What was I to do? With my elbows on the table and
pressing my hands against my forehead to repress the throbbing of my
temples I put this question without finding any other answer than that
I could not go away; that absence and silence could not end all between
Charlotte and myself; finally that we were approaching an hour in which
so many reciprocal efforts, hidden struggles, combated desires on the
part of both, was precipitating us toward a supreme scene, and this, I
could feel was near, tragic, decisive, inevitable.
At first Charlotte was constrained to submit to my presence. We must
meet at the bedside of her brother, and the very morning of her
arrival, when it was my turn to keep the invalid company, toward
eleven o’clock, I found her there talking with him, while the marquise
questioned Sister Anaclet, both speaking in low tones and standing
near the window.
Lucien, from whom the coming of his mother and sister had been
concealed, showed in his face and in his gestures the excited and
almost feverish joy which is seen in convalescents; he saluted me with
his gayest smile, and taking my hand said to his sister:
“If you only knew how good M. Greslon has been to me all these days!”
She did not reply, but I saw that her hand, which lay on the pillow
near her brother’s cheek, shook as with a chill. She made an effort to
look at me without betraying herself. Without doubt my face expressed
an emotion that touched her. She felt that to leave unnoticed the
innocent remark of her brother would make me feel badly, and, in the
voice of past days, her sweet and living voice, she said, without
addressing me directly:
“Yes, I know it and I thank him for it. We all thank him very much.”
She did not add another word. I am sure that if I had taken her hand at
that moment she would have fainted before me, she was so moved by this
simple conversation.
I stammered a vague response: “It is quite natural,” or something
similar. I was not very collected myself. Lucien, however, who had
noticed neither the altered tone of his sister, nor my embarrassment,
continued:
“And isn’t André coming to see me?”