room. If anything had happened this girl would call out immediately.
With what inexpressible comfort I saw her come down and go toward the
kitchen with the salver prepared for the tea!
Charlotte had not taken her life.
Hope returned to me then. Upon reflection, and her first feeling
of anger passed, perhaps she would interpret as a proof of love my
refusal to die and to let her die. I should know that also. It would be
sufficient to wait for her in her brother’s room. The little invalid
was at the end of his convalescence, and, though deprived of walks, he
displayed the gayety of a child about to be born again into life.
He received me with all sorts of pretty ways, and his gracious humor
redoubled my hope. He would break the ice between his sister and me.
The hands of a young man and of a young girl join so easily when they
touch around an innocent and curly head. But when Charlotte appeared,
so white in a dress which brought out her paleness still more,
pretending a headache to avoid the pranks of Lucien, the eyes burning
with fever, I understood that I had believed too readily in a possible
reconciliation.
I saluted her. She found a way to not even respond to my salutation. I
had known three persons in her already; the creature tender, delicate,
compassionate, the young girl easily startled, the lover impassioned
almost to ecstasy. I saw now upon this noble visage the coldest, the
most impenetrable mark of contempt.
Ah! the old and banal formula: the patrician pride--I was able to
account for it and that certain silences kill as surely as the
headman’s ax. This impression was so bitter that I could not resign
myself to it. This very day I watched to have a word with her, and,
at the moment when she was going to her room toward the close of the
afternoon, to dress herself for dinner, I went to her on the stairs.
She put me by with a gesture so haughty, with so cruel a “Monsieur,
I do not know you any longer!” upon her trembling lips, a look so
indignant in her eyes that I could not find a word to say to her.
She had judged me and I was condemned. Yes, condemned. She despised me
for my fear of death; and it was true, I had felt that cowardly chill
before the black hole, while she dared face the worst. I certainly had
the right to say to myself that this alone would not have arrested me
before the suicide of both, if pity for her had not been joined with
it and my ambition as a thinker. No matter. She had given herself to
me under one condition, and to this tragic condition I had responded
“yes” before, and “no” after. Ah, well. She scorned me, but she had
been mine. I had held her in my arms, these arms, and I was the first
to kiss those lips.
Yes, I suffered cruelly between this night and my definite departure
from the house. However, it was not the arid and conquered despair of
the summer, the total abdication in distress.
I retained at the bottom of my heart, I cannot say a happiness, but
a something of satisfaction which sustained me in this crisis. When
Charlotte passed me without noticing me any more than some object
forgotten there by a servant, I contemplated her response to my
declaration of love. For another experience of that happiness, perhaps,
I would have accepted anew the fatal compact, with the cold resolve to
keep it. But this happiness had none the less been true.
And was this love really, irremediably ended? In doing as she had done
Mlle, de Jussat had proved a very deep passion. Was it possible that
nothing remained of it in this romantic heart?
To-day and in the light of the tragedy which ended this lamentable
adventure, I comprehend that it was precisely this romantic character
which prevented any return of love into this heart. She had loved in
me a mirage, a being absolutely different from myself, and the sudden
vision of my true nature having at a blow dispelled her illusions, she
hated me with all the power of her old love.
Alas! with all my pretensions to the learned psychologist, I did not
see the evolution of this mind, then! I did not even suspect that she
would seek at any price the means of knowing me better, and that she
would go, in the distraction of her actual disgust, so far as to treat
me as judges treat the accused; in fine that she would read my papers
and would not recoil before any scruple.
I did not even know enough to guess that she was not the girl to
survive such a shock as the revelation of my cold-blooded resolutions
written in my notebook brought upon her, and I did not think to destroy
the bottle of poison which I had refused to give her.
I believed myself to be a great observer because I reflected a great
deal. The quibbles of my analysis concealed from me its falsity. It
was not necessary to reflect at this period, but to observe. Instead,
deceived by this reasoning which I have just gone over to you, and
persuaded that Charlotte loved me still in spite of her contempt,
I tried to recall this love by the most simple means, the most
ineffective at that moment.
I wrote to her.
I found my letter on my bureau the same day, unopened. I went to
her door at night and called to her. This door was locked and no
one replied. I tried to stop her again. She waved me off with more
authority than the first time, without looking at me.
Finally, the heartbreak of this continuous insult was stronger than the
ardors of passion which had begun to kindle in me. On the evening of
the day in which she had thus repulsed me, I wept much, then I resolved
upon a definite course. A little of my old energy had returned, for it
was needed for this part which I had undertaken.
The next week M. de Plane and Count André were coming. This would have
decided me if I had still hesitated. Their presence, in this double and
sinister disaster of my love and of my pride, no, I would not, I could
not endure it.
This, then, is what I had decided: The marquis had asked me to prolong
my stay until the 15th of November. It was now the 3d. I announced, on
the morning of this fatal 3d of November, that I had just received from
my mother a letter which made me a little uneasy; then in the forenoon,
I said that a dispatch had still further increased my anxiety. I asked
then of M. de Jussat permission to go to Clermont early the next day,
adding that if I did not return, would he be so good as to box the
articles I had left and send them to me. I held this conversation in
the presence of Charlotte, assured that she would interpret it in its
true significance: “He is going away not to return.” I expected that
the news of this separation would move her, and, wishing to profit by
this emotion, I had the audacity to write to her another note, these
two lines only:
“On the point of leaving you forever, I have the right to ask a last
interview. I will come to you at eleven o’clock.”
It was necessary that she should not return this note without reading
it. I placed it open upon her table, at the risk of losing all if the
chambermaid should see it. Ah! how my heart beat, when at five minutes
to eleven o’clock, I took my way to her room and tried the door.
It was not bolted. She was waiting for me. I saw at the first glance
that the struggle would be hard. Her somber countenance showed too
plainly that she had not permitted me to come that she might forgive
me. She wore a dark silk dress, and never had her eyes been more fixed,
more implacably fixed and cold.
“Monsieur,” said she as soon as I had shut the door, “I am ignorant
of what you intend to say to me--I am ignorant of it and I do not wish
to know. It is not to listen to you that I have allowed you to come. I
swear to you, and I know how to keep my word--if you take a step toward
me and if you try to speak to me without my permission, I will call and
you shall be thrown from the window like a thief.”
While speaking she had put her finger on the button of the electric
bell. Her brow, her mouth, her gestures, her voice showed such
resolution that I did not dare to speak. She continued: “You have,
monsieur, caused me to commit very unworthy actions. The first has
for excuse that I did not believe you capable of the infamy you have
employed. Beside I should have known how to expiate it,” she added, as
if speaking to herself. “The second. I do not look for any excuse.” And
her face became purple with shame. “It was too insupportable to think
that you had acted thus. I wished to be sure of what you are. I wished
to know. You had told me that you kept a journal. I desired to read it
and I have done so. I went into your room when you were not there, and
forced the lock of your notebook. Yes, yes, I did that! I have been
punished, since I have read your infamous plans. The third. In telling
you I acquit the debt which I have contracted with you by the second.
The third,” and she hesitated, in my indignation, “I wrote to my
brother. He knows everything!”
“Ah!” cried I, “then you are lost.”
“You know what I have sworn,” she interrupted; and she put her finger
again on the bell. “Be quiet. Nothing worse can befall me than has
already happened,” she continued, “and no one will do anything more
for or against me. My brother will know that also, and what I have
resolved. The letter will reach him to-morrow morning. I ought to warn
you since you hold your life so dear. And now, go away.”
“Charlotte,” I implored.
“If in one minute you have not gone out,” said she, looking at the
clock, “I will call.”
§ VII. CONCLUSION.
And I obeyed!
The next day, at six o’clock I left the château, a prey to the most
sinister presentiments, trying in vain to persuade myself that this
scene would not be followed by some terrible effect; that Count André
would arrive soon enough to save her from a desperate resolution; that
she would hesitate at the last moment; that some unexpected thing would
happen.
As to fleeing from the possible vengeance of the brother, I did not for
a moment think of it. This time, I had resumed my character because I
had an idea to sustain me, that of allowing no person to humiliate me
any further. Yes, although I had faltered before a loving girl and in
the weakness of happy love, I would not do so before the threat of a
man.
I arrived at Clermont, devoured by an anxiety which did not last very
long, for I learned of the suicide of Mlle. de Jussat and was arrested
at the same moment.
From the first words of the Judge of Instruction I reconstructed all
the details of the suicide: Charlotte had taken from the flask which
I had bought as much as she thought sufficient to cause her death.
She had done that on the very day she had read my journal, whose lock
I found had been forced. I had not noticed it because my mind was so
filled with other things than these sterile notes.
She had been careful, in order to turn away my suspicions, to replace
with water the quantity of nux vomica thus taken. She had thrown
the flask out of the window because she did not wish her father and
mother to learn of her suicide excepting through her brother. And I,
who know the whole truth of this horrible drama, who could at least
give my journal as a presumption of my innocence, destroyed this
journal after my first examination; I have refused to speak, to defend
myself--because of this brother! I have told you, I have drained to
the bottom the cup of humiliation and I will do no more.
This man whom I so much envied from the first day, this man who
represents death to me now, and who, knowing the whole truth, must
consider me the lowest of the low. I do not wish that he should have
the right to quite despise me, and he has not the right. He does
not because we both are silent. But this for me, is to risk my life
in order to save the honor of the dead, and for him to sacrifice an
innocent person to this honor.
Of us two, of me who will not defend myself by taking shelter behind
the dead body of Charlotte, and of him who, having the letter which
proves her suicide, keeps it, to avenge himself on the lover of his
sister by allowing him to be condemned as an assassin, which is the
brave man? Which is the gentleman? All the shame of my weakness--if
there be any shame, I wipe out by not defending myself, and I feel
a proud pleasure, as a revenge for those terrible last days, at not
having killed myself, at not asking of death the oblivion of so many
tortures.
Count André must also reach the bottom of his infamy. If I am
condemned, he knowing me to be innocent, he having the proof of it,
he keeping silent, ah well! the Jussat-Randons will have nothing with
which to reproach me--we will be quits.
However, I have told all to you, my venerated, my dear master; I have
opened my soul to you, and in confiding this secret to your honor, I
know too well whom I am addressing even to insist upon the promise I
have taken the liberty to exact on the first page of this memoir.
But, you see, I am stifled by this silence; I stifle with the weight
which is always, always upon me. To say all in a word, and applied
to my sensation, it is legitimate, I stifle with remorse. I want to
be understood, consoled, loved; I want some one to pity me and say
words to me which shall dissipate the phantoms, the evil spirits, the
torturing phantoms.
I made out, when I began these pages, a list of questions which I
wished to ask you at the end. I flattered myself that I could recount
to you my history as you state your problems in psychology in your
books which I have read so much, and now I find nothing to say to you
only the word of despair: “_De profundis_!”
Write to me, my dear master, direct me. Strengthen me in the doctrine
which was, which is still mine, in the conviction of universal
necessity which wills that even our most detestable actions, even this
cold enterprise in which I embarked in the interest of science, even my
weakness before the compact of death, are a part of the laws of this
immense universe.
Tell me that I am not a monster, that there are no monsters, that you
will, if I emerge from this supreme crisis, have me for your disciple,
your friend. If you were a physician, and a sick man came to you,
you would heal him for humanity’s sake. You are a physician, a great
physician of souls. Ah! mine is badly hurt and bleeding. I pray you for
a word to comfort me, a word, a single word, and you will be forever
blessed by your faithful.
ROBERT GRESLON.
V.
TORMENT OF IDEAS.
A MONTH had passed since the mother of Robert Greslon had brought
into the hermitage of the Rue Guy de la Brosse the strange manuscript
which Adrien Sixte had hesitated to read. And the philosopher, after
these four weeks, was still the slave of the trouble inflicted by the
reading, to such an extent that even his humble neighbors noticed it.
There were continual consultations between Mlle. Trapenard and the
Carbonnets, in the lodging filled with its odor of leather, where the
faithful servant and the judicious _concierges_ discussed the
cause of the strange change in the manners of the celebrated analyst.
The admirable, automatic regularity of his goings out and comings in,
which had made him a living chronometer for the whole quarter, had been
suddenly transformed into a febrile and inexplicable anxiety.
The philosopher, since the visit of Mme. Greslon, went and came, like
one who cannot stay in any place, who, as soon as he goes out thinks
he will return, and as soon as he has come in, cannot endure his room.
In the street, instead of walking along with the methodical step
which reveals a nervous machine perfectly balanced, he hurried on, he
stopped, he gesticulated, as if disputing with himself. This enervation
was betrayed by signs still more strange. Mlle. Trapenard had told to
the Carbonnets that her master did not go to bed now, before two or
three o’clock in the morning:
“And it is not because he is writing,” insisted the good woman, “for he
walks and walks. The first time I thought he was ill. I got up to ask
him if he wished some infusion. He, who is always so polite, so gentle,
that you would not suspect him to be a man who knows so much, he sent
me away in a brutal manner.”
“And I who saw him the other day,” responded Mother Carbonnet, “as I
was returning from a course at the _café_! I would not believe my
eyes. He was there, behind the window reading a paper. If I had not
known him I should have been afraid. You ought to have seen him--that
knit brow and that mouth.”
“At the _café_!” cried Mlle. Trapenard. “For the fifteen years I
have been with him I have never seen him open a paper but once.”
“That man,” concluded Father Carbonnet, “has some trouble which
overheats his blood. And trouble you see, Mlle. Mariette, is, so to
speak, like the tun of Adelaide, it has no bottom. For a fact, it
commenced with the summons of the judge and the visit of the lady in
black. And do you know what I think? Perhaps it is about a son of his
who is doing badly.”
“_Mon Dieu_!” exclaimed Mariette, “he have a son?”
“And why not?” continued the _concierge_, winking one eye behind
his spectacles; “don’t you think he gallivanted around like other folks
when he was young?”
Then he communicated to Mlle. Trapenard the frightful reports which
were going about in the _rez-de-chaussées_ concerning poor M.
Sixte, since his visible change of habits. All the malicious tongues
agreed in attributing the trouble of the philosopher to the citation
of the judge. The washerwoman pretended to have it from a countryman
of M. Sixte, that his fortune proceeded from a trust which his father
had abused, and that he would have to return it. The butcher told those
who would listen that the savant was married, and that his wife had
made a terrible scene and was going to bring a suit against him. The
coal merchant had insinuated, that the worthy man was the brother of an
assassin whose execution under the false name of Campi still tormented
the popular mind.
“I will never go to their houses again,” moaned Mlle. Trapenard; “is it
possible to imagine such horrors!”
And the poor girl left the lodge completely heartbroken. This great
creature, high in color, strong as an ox in spite of her fifty-five
years, with her big shoulders, her blue wool stockings which she had
herself knit, and her cap fitting closely over her compact chignon,
felt a strong affection for her master because all the different
elements of her frank and simple nature were involved in it.
She respected the gentleman, the educated man who was often mentioned
in the papers. She cherished, in the old bachelor who never examined
his accounts, and left her mistress of the house, an assured source
of comfort for her old age. Finally, this solid and robust creature
protected the man, feeble in body and so _simplet_, as she said,
that a child ten years old might have cheated him.
Such words mortified her pride at the same time that the sudden
change of humor of the philosopher rendered their residence together
uncomfortable. From genuine affection she became anxious because her
master did not eat or sleep. She saw that he was sad, anxious, and ill,
but she could do nothing to make him cheerful, nor even guess the cause
of his melancholy and agitation.
What did she think when, one afternoon in the month of March, M. Sixte
came in about five o’clock, after having had his breakfast outside, and
said to her: “Is the valise in good order, Mariette?”
“I do not know, monsieur. Monsieur has not used it since I came into
the house.”
“Go and get it,” said the philosopher. Mariette obeyed. She brought
from a loft which served as lumber-room and woodhouse together a small,
dusty leather trunk, with rusty locks and keys entirely lacking.
“Very well,” said M. Sixte, “you may go and buy a little one like
that, immediately, and you may put into it whatever is necessary for a
journey.”
“Is monsieur going away?” asked Mariette.
“Yes,” said the philosopher, “for a few days.”
“But monsieur has nothing that he needs,” insisted the old servant,
“monsieur cannot go away like that, without any traveling rugs,
without----”
“Procure what is needed,” interrupted the philosopher, “and hasten--I
take the train at nine o’clock.”
“And is it necessary that I accompany monsieur.”
“No, that is useless,” said M. Sixte, “come, you have no time to lose.”
“Oh! if he only does not think of killing himself,” said Carbonnet when
Mariette had told of this new move, almost as extraordinary in this
little corner of the world as if the philosopher had announced his
marriage.
“Ah!” said the servant, following up his idea, “if he only would take
me with him! If I have to pay out of my own pocket, I will go.”
This sublime cry, in the mouth of a creature who had come from Péaugres
in Ardèche, to be a servant and who carried economy so far as to
make her home dresses from the old redingotes of the savant, will
demonstrate better than any analysis what uneasiness the metamorphosis
of this man who was passing through a moral crisis, which was terrible
for him, inspired in these humble people.
Not realizing that he was observed, he showed the intensity of it in
his slightest gestures as well as in the features of his face. Since
the death of his mother he had not known such unhappy hours, and
the suffering inflicted by the irreparable separation was entirely
sentimental; but the reading of Robert Greslon’s memoir had attacked
him in the center of his being, his intellectual life, his sole reason
for living.
At the moment he gave Mariette the order to prepare his valise, he was
as much overcome by fright as on the night he turned over the pages of
the notebook of confidences. This fright began from the first pages of
this narrative in which a criminal aberration of mind was studied, as
if spread out for display, with such a mixture of pride and of shame,
of cynicism and of candor, of infamy and of superiority.
At meeting the phrase in which Robert Greslon had declared himself
united to him by a cord as close as it was unbreakable, the great
psychologist had trembled, and he had trembled at every repetition of
his name in this singular analysis, at every citation of one of his
works, which proved the right of this abominable libertine to call
himself his pupil.
A fascination made up of horror and curiosity had constrained him to go
straight through to the end of this fragment of biography in which his
ideas, his cherished ideas, his science, his beloved science, appeared
united with acts so shameful.
Ah! if they had been united! But no, these ideas, this science,
the accused claimed them as the excuse, as the cause of the most
monstrous, the most complaisant depravity! As he advanced into the
manuscript he felt that a little of his inmost person became soiled,
corrupted, gangrened; he found so much of himself in this young man,
but a “himself” made up of sentiments which he detested the most in
the world. For in this illustrious philosopher the holy virginities of
conscience remained intact, and, behind the bold nihilism of mind, the
noble heart of an ingenuous man was hidden.
It was in this inviolate conscience, in this irreproachable honesty,
that the master of this felon preceptor felt himself suddenly
lacerated. This sinister history of a love affair, so basely carried
on, of a treason so black, of a suicide so melancholy, brought him
face to face with the most frightful vision; that of his mind acting
and corrupting, his, who had lived in voluntary renunciation, in daily
purity.
The whole adventure of Robert Greslon showed to him the complexities
of a hideous pride and of an abject sensuality, to him who had labored
only to serve psychology, to him a modest worker in a labor which he
believed beneficent, and in the most severe asceticism, in order that
the enemies of his doctrines could not argue from his example against
his principles.