M. Jeannin removed his hand.

After a moment Olivier, still busy with his own thoughts, said:

"Are you tired, too, father?"

"Yes, my boy."

The boy replied affectionately:

"You must not tire yourself out so much, father."

M. Jeannin drew Olivier towards him, and held him to his breast and

murmured:

"My poor boy!..."

But already Olivier's thoughts had flown off on another tack. The church

clock chimed eight o'clock. He broke away, and said:

"I'm going to read."

On Thursdays he was allowed to read for an hour after dinner, until

bedtime: it was his greatest joy: and nothing in the world could induce him

to sacrifice a minute of it.

M. Jeannin let him go. He walked up and down the terrace for a little in

the dark. Then he, too, went in.

In the room his wife and the two children were sitting round the lamp.

Antoinette was sewing a ribbon on to a blouse, talking and humming the

while, to Olivier's obvious discomfort, for he was stopping his ears with

his fists so as not to hear, while he pored over his book with knitted

brows, and his elbows on the table. Madame Jeannin was mending stockings

and talking to the old nurse, who was standing by her side and giving an

account of her day's expenditure, and seizing the opportunity for a little

gossip: she always had some amusing tale to tell in her extraordinary

lingo, which used to make them roar with laughter, while Antoinette would

try to imitate her. M. Jeannin watched them silently. No one noticed him.

He wavered for a moment, sat down, took up a book, opened it at random,

shut it again, got up: he could not sit still. He lit a candle and said

good-night. He went up to the children and kissed them fondly: they

returned his kiss absently without looking up at him,--Antoinette being

absorbed in her work, and Olivier in his book. Olivier did not even

take his hands from his ears, and grunted "Good-night," and went on

reading:--(when he was reading even if one of his family had fallen into

the fire, he would not have looked up).--M. Jeannin left the room. He

lingered in the next room, for a moment. His wife came out soon, the old

nurse having gone to arrange the linen-cupboard. She pretended not to see

him. He hesitated, then came up to her, and said:

"I beg your pardon. I was rather rude just now."

She longed to say to him:

"My dear, my dear, that is nothing: but, tell me, what is the matter with

you? Tell me, what is hurting you so?"

But she jumped at the opportunity of taking her revenge, and said:

"Let me be! You have been behaving odiously. You treat me worse than you

would a servant."

And she went on in that strain, setting forth all her grievances volubly,

shrilly, rancorously.

He raised his hands wearily, smiled bitterly, and left her.

* * * * *

No one heard the report of the revolver. Only, next day, when it was known

what had happened, a few of the neighbors remembered that, in the middle of

the night, when the streets were quiet, they had noticed a sharp noise like

the cracking of a whip. They did not pay any attention to it. The silence

of the night fell once more upon the town, wrapping both living and dead

about with its mystery.

Madame Jeannin was asleep, but woke up an hour or two later. Not seeing her

husband by her side she got up and went anxiously through all the rooms,

and downstairs to the offices of the bank, which were in an annex of the

house: and there, sitting in his chair in his office, she found M. Jeannin

huddled forward on his desk in a pool of blood, which was still dripping

down on to the floor. She gave a scream, dropped her candle, and fainted.

She was heard in the house. The servants came running, picked her up, took

care of her, and laid the body of M. Jeannin on a bed. The door of the

children's room was locked. Antoinette was sleeping happily. Olivier heard

the sound of voices and footsteps: he wanted to go and see what it was all

about: but he was afraid of waking his sister, and presently he went to

sleep again.

Next morning the news was all over the town before they knew anything.

Their old nurse came sobbing and told them. Their mother was incapable of

thinking of anything: her condition was critical. The two children were

left alone in the presence of death. At first they were more fearful than

sorrowful. And they were not allowed to weep in peace. The cruel legal

formalities were begun the first thing in the morning. Antoinette hid

away in her room, and with all the force of her youthful egoism clung

to the only idea which could help her to thrust back the horror of the

overwhelming reality: the thought of her lover: all day long she waited for

him to come. Never had he been more ardent than the last time she had seen

him, and she had no doubt that, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe, he

would hasten to share her grief.--But nobody came, or wrote, or gave one

sign of sympathy. As soon as the news of the suicide was out, people who

had intrusted their money to the banker rushed to the Jeannins' house,

forced their way in, and, with merciless cruelty, stormed and screamed at

the widow and the two children.

In a few days they were faced with their utter ruin: the loss of a dear

one, the loss of their fortune, their position, their public esteem, and

the desertion of their friends. A total wreck. Nothing was left to provide

for them. They had all three an uncompromising feeling for moral purity,

which made their suffering all the greater from the dishonor of which they

were innocent. Of the three Antoinette was the most distraught by their

sorrow, because she had never really known suffering. Madame Jeannin

and Olivier, though they were racked by it, were more inured to it.

Instinctively pessimistic, they were overwhelmed but not surprised. The

idea of death had always been a refuge to them, as it was now, more than

ever: they longed for death. It is pitiful to be so resigned, but not so

terrible as the revolt of a young creature, confident and happy, loving

every moment of her life, who suddenly finds herself face to face with such

unfathomable, irremediable sorrow, and death which is horrible to her....

Antoinette discovered the ugliness of the world in a flash. Her eyes were

opened: she saw life and human beings as they are: she judged her father,

her mother, and her brother. While Olivier and Madame Jeannin wept

together, in her grief she drew into herself. Desperately she pondered the

past, the present, and the future: and she saw that there was nothing left

for her, no hope, nothing to support her: she could count on no one.

The funeral took place, grimly, shamefully. The Church refused to receive

the body of the suicide. The widow and orphans were deserted by the

cowardice of their former friends. One or two of them came for a moment:

and their embarrassment was even harder to bear than the absence of the

rest. They seemed to make a favor of it, and their silence was big with

reproach and pitying contempt. It was even worse with their relations:

not only did they receive no single word of sympathy, but they were

visited with bitter reproaches. The banker's suicide, far from removing

ill-feeling, seemed to be hardly less criminal than his failure.

Respectable people cannot forgive those who kill themselves. It seems to

them monstrous that a man should prefer death to life with dishonor: and

they would fain call down all the rigor of the law on him who seems to say:

"There is no misery so great as that of living with you."

The greatest cowards are not the least ready to accuse him of cowardice.

And when, in addition, the suicide, by ending his life, touches their

interests and their revenge, they lose all control.--Not for one moment did

they think of all that the wretched Jeannin must have suffered to come to

it. They would have had him suffer a thousand times more. And as he had

escaped them, they transferred their fury to his family. They did not admit

it to themselves: for they knew they were unjust. But they did it all the

same, for they needed a victim.

Madame Jeannin, who seemed to be able to do nothing but weep and moan,

recovered her energy when her husband was attacked. She discovered then how

much she had loved him: and she and her two children, who had no idea what

would become of them in the future, all agreed to renounce their claim to

her dowry, and to their own personal estate, in order, as far as possible,

to meet M. Jeannin's debts. And, since it had become impossible for them to

stay in the little town, they decided to go to Paris.

* * * * *

Their departure was something in the nature of a flight.

On the evening of the day before,--(a melancholy evening towards the end

of September: the fields were disappearing behind the white veil of mist,

out of which, as they walked along the road, on either side the fantastic

shapes of the dripping, shivering bushes started forth, looking like the

plants in an aquarium),--they went together to say farewell to the grave

where he lay. They all three knelt on the narrow curbstone which surrounded

the freshly turned patch of earth. They wept in silence; Olivier sobbed.

Madame Jeannin mopped her eyes mournfully. She augmented her grief and

tortured herself by saying to herself over and over again the words she had

spoken to her husband the last time she had seen him alive. Olivier thought

of that last conversation on the seat on the terrace. Antoinette wondered

dreamily what would become of them. None of them ever dreamed of

reproaching the wretched man who had dragged them down in his own ruin. But

Antoinette thought:

"Ah! dear father, how we shall suffer!"

The mist grew more dense, the cold damp pierced through to their bones. But

Madame Jeannin could not bring herself to go. Antoinette saw that Olivier

was shivering and she said to her mother:

"I am cold."

They got up. Just as they were going, Madame Jeannin turned once more

towards the grave, gazed at it for the last time, and said:

"My dear, my dear!"

They left the cemetery as night was falling. Antoinette held Olivier's icy

hand in hers.

They went back to the old house. It was their last night under the

roof-tree where they had always slept, where their lives and the lives of

their parents had been lived--the walls, the hearth, the little patch of

earth were so indissolubly linked with the family's joys and sorrows, as

almost themselves to be part of the family, part of their life, which they

could only leave to die.

Their boxes were packed. They were to take the first train next day before

the shops were opened: they wanted to escape their neighbors' curiosity and

malicious remarks.--They longed to cling to each other and stay together:

but they went instinctively to their rooms and stayed there: there they

remained standing, never moving, not even taking off their hats and cloaks,

touching the walls, the furniture, all the things they were going to leave,

pressing their faces against the window-panes, trying to take away with

them in memory the contact of the things they loved. At last they made an

effort to shake free from the absorption of their sorrowful thoughts and

met in Madame Jeannin's room,--the family room, with a great recess at the

back, where, in old days, they always used to foregather in the evening,

after dinner, when there were no visitors. In old days!... How far off they

seemed now!--They sat silently round the meager fire: then they all knelt

by the bed and said their prayers: and they went to bed very early, for

they had to be up before dawn. But it was long before they slept.

About four o'clock in the morning Madame Jeannin, who had looked at her

watch every hour or so to see whether it was not time to get ready, lit her

candle and got up. Antoinette, who had hardly slept at all, heard her and

got up too. Olivier was fast asleep. Madame Jeannin gazed at him tenderly

and could not bring herself to wake him. She stole away on tiptoe and said

to Antoinette:

"Don't make any noise: let the poor boy enjoy his last moments here!"

The two women dressed and finished their packing. About the house hovered

the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living

things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep.

Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was frozen body and soul.

The front door creaked upon the frozen air. The old nurse, who had the key

of the house, came for the last time to serve her employers. She was short

and fat, short-winded, and slow-moving from her portliness, but she was

remarkably active for her age: she appeared with her jolly face muffled

up, and her nose was red, and her eyes were wet with tears. She was

heart-broken when she saw that Madame Jeannin had got up without waiting

for her, and had herself lit the kitchen fire.--Olivier woke up as she came

in. His first impulse was to close his eyes, turn over, and go to sleep

again. Antoinette came and laid her hand gently on her brother's shoulder,

and she said in a low voice:

"Olivier, dear, it is time to get up."

He sighed, opened his eyes, saw his sister's face leaning over him: she

smiled sadly and caressed his face with her hand. She said:

"Come!"

He got up.

They crept out of the house, noiselessly, like thieves. They all had

parcels in their hands. The old nurse went in front of them trundling their

boxes in a wheelbarrow. They left behind almost all their possessions, and

took away, so to speak, only what they had on their backs and a change

of clothes. A few things for remembrance were to be sent after them by

goods-train: a few books, portraits, the old grandfather's clock, whose

tick-tock seemed to them to be the beating of their hearts.--The air was

keen. No one was stirring in the town: the shutters were closed and the

streets empty. They said nothing: only the old servant spoke. Madame

Jeannin was striving to fix in her memory all the images which told her of

all her past life.

At the station, out of vanity, Madame Jeannin took second-class tickets,

although she had vowed to travel third: but she had not the courage to face

the humiliation in the presence of the railway clerks who knew her. She

hurried into an empty compartment with her two children and shut the door.

Hiding behind the curtains they trembled lest they should see any one they

knew. But no one appeared: the town was hardly awake by the time they

left: the train was empty: there were only a few peasants traveling by

it, and some oxen, who hung their heads out of their trucks and bellowed

mournfully. After a long wait the engine gave a slow whistle, and the train

moved on through the mist. The fugitives drew the curtains and pressed

their faces against the windows to take a last long look at the little

town, with its Gothic tower just appearing through the mist, and the hill

covered with stubby fields, and the meadows white and steaming with the

frost; already it was a distant dream-landscape, fading out of existence.

And when the train turned a bend and passed into a cutting, and they could

no longer see it, and were sure there was no one to see them, they gave way

to their emotion. With her handkerchief pressed to her lips Madame Jeannin

sobbed. Olivier flung himself into her arms and with his head on her knees

he covered her hands with tears and kisses. Antoinette sat at the other end

of the compartment and looked out of the window and wept in silence. They

did not all weep for the same reason. Madame Jeannin and Olivier were

thinking only of what they had left behind them. Antoinette was thinking

rather of what they were going to meet: she was angry with herself: she,

too, would gladly have been absorbed in her memories....--She was right to

think of the future: she had a truer vision of the world than her mother

and brother. They were weaving dreams about Paris. Antoinette herself had

little notion of what awaited them there. They had never been there. Madame

Jeannin imagined that, though their position would be sad enough, there

would be no reason for anxiety. She had a sister in Paris, the wife of a

wealthy magistrate: and she counted on her assistance. She was convinced

also that with the education her children had received and their natural

gifts, which, like all mothers, she overestimated, they would have no

difficulty in earning an honest living.

* * * * *

Their first impressions were gloomy enough. As they left the station they

were bewildered by the jostling crowd of people in the luggage-room and the

confused uproar of the carriages outside. It was raining. They could not

find a cab, and had to walk a long way with their arms aching with their

heavy parcels, so that they had to stop every now and then in the middle

of the street at the risk of being run over or splashed by the carriages.

They could not make a single driver pay any attention to them. At last

they managed to stop a man who was driving an old and disgustingly dirty

barouche. As they were handing in the parcels they let a bundle of rugs

fall into the mud. The porter who carried the trunk and the cabman

traded on their ignorance, and made them pay double. Madame Jeannin gave

the address of one of those second-rate expensive hotels patronized by

provincials who go on going to them, in spite of their discomfort, because

their grandfathers went to them thirty years ago. They were fleeced there.

They were told that the hotel was full, and they were accommodated with one

small room for which they were charged the price of three. For dinner they

tried to economize by avoiding the table d'hôte: they ordered a modest

meal, which cost them just as much and left them famishing. Their illusions

concerning Paris had come toppling down as soon as they arrived. And,

during that first night in the hotel, when they were squeezed into one

little, ill-ventilated room, they could not sleep: they were hot and cold

by turns, and could not breathe, and started at every footstep in the

corridor, and the banging of the doors, and the furious ringing of the

electric bells: and their heads throbbed with the incessant roar of the

carriages and heavy drays: and altogether they felt terrified of the

monstrous city into which they had plunged to their utter bewilderment.

Next day Madame Jeannin went to see her sister, who lived in a luxurious

flat in the _Boulevard Hausmann_. She hoped, though she did not say so,

that they would be invited to stay there until they had found their feet.

The welcome she received was enough to undeceive her. The Poyet-Delormes

were furious at their relative's failure: especially Madame Delorme, who

was afraid that it would be set against her, and might injure her husband's

career, and she thought it shameless of the ruined family to come and

cling to them, and compromise them even more. The magistrate was of the

same opinion: but he was a kindly man: he would have been more inclined

to help, but for his wife's intervention--to which he knuckled under.

Madame Poyet-Delorme received her sister with icy coldness. It cut Madame

Jeannin to the heart: but she swallowed down her pride: she hinted at the

difficulty of her position and the assistance she hoped to receive from the

Poyets. Her sister pretended not to understand, and did not even ask her to

stay to dinner: they were ceremoniously invited to dine at the end of the

week. The invitation did not come from Madame Poyet either, but from the

magistrate, who was a little put out at his wife's treatment of her sister,

and tried to make amends for her curtness: he posed as the good-natured

man: but it was obvious that it did not come easily to him and that he was

really very selfish. The unhappy Jeannins returned to their hotel without

daring to say what they thought of their first visit.

They spent the following days in wandering about Paris, looking for a fiat:

they were worn out with going up stairs, and disheartened by the sight of

the great barracks crammed full of people, and the dirty stairs, and the

dark rooms, that seemed so depressing to them after their own big house in

the country. They grew more and more depressed. And they were always shy

and timid in the streets, and shops, and restaurants, so that they were

cheated at every turn. Everything they asked for cost an exorbitant sum: it

was as though they had the faculty of turning everything they touched into

gold: only, it was they who had to pay out the gold. They were incredibly

simple and absolutely incapable of looking after themselves.

Though there was little left to hope for from Madame Jeannin's sister, the

poor lady wove illusions about the dinner to which they were invited. They

dressed for it with fluttering hearts. They were received as guests, and

not as relations--though nothing more was expended on the dinner than the

ceremonious manner. The children met their cousins, who were almost the

same age as themselves, but they were not much more cordial than their

father and mother. The girl was very smart and coquettish, and spoke to

them with a lisp and a politely superior air, with affectedly honeyed

manners which disconcerted them. The boy was bored by this duty-dinner with

their poor relations: and he was as surly as could be. Madame Poyet-Delorme

sat up stiffly in her chair, and, even when she handed her a dish, seemed

to be reading her sister a lesson. Madame Poyet-Delorme talked trivialities

to keep the conversation from becoming serious. They never got beyond

talking of what they were eating for fear of touching upon any intimate

and dangerous topic. Madame Jeannin made an effort to bring them round to

the subject next her heart: Madame Poyet-Delorme cut her short with some

pointless remark, and she had not the courage to try again.

After dinner she made her daughter play the piano by way of showing off her

talents. The poor girl was embarrassed and unhappy and played execrably.

The Poyets were bored and anxious for her to finish. Madame Poyet exchanged

glances with her daughter, with an ironic curl of her lips: and as the

music went on too long she began to talk to Madame Jeannin about nothing in

particular. At last Antoinette, who had quite lost her place, and saw to

her horror that, instead of going on, she had begun again at the beginning,

and that there was no reason why she should ever stop, broke off suddenly,

and ended with two inaccurate chords and a third which was absolutely

dissonant. Monsieur Poyet said:

"Bravo!"

And he asked for coffee.

Madame Poyet said that her daughter was taking lessons with Pugno: and the

young lady "who was taking lessons with Pugno" said:

"Charming, my dear...."

And asked where Antoinette had studied.

The conversation dropped. They had exhausted the knick-knacks in the

drawing-room and the dresses of Madame and Mademoiselle Poyet. Madame

Jeannin said to herself:

"I must speak now. I must...."

And she fidgeted. Just as she had pulled herself together to begin, Madame

Poyet mentioned casually, without any attempt at an apology, that they were

very sorry but they had to go out at half-past nine: they had an invitation

which they had been unable to decline. The Jeannins were at a loss, and

got up at once to go. The Poyets made some show of detaining them. But

a quarter of an hour later there was a ring at the door: the footman

announced some friends of the Poyets, neighbors of theirs, who lived in the

flat below. Poyet and his wife exchanged glances, and there were hurried

whisperings with the servants. Poyet stammered some excuse, and hurried

the Jeannins into the next room. (He was trying to hide from his friends

the existence, and the presence in his house, of the compromising family.)

The Jeannins were left alone in a room without a fire. The children were

furious at the affront. Antoinette had tears in her eyes and insisted on

their going. Her mother resisted for a little: but then, after they had

waited for some time, she agreed. They went out. In the hall they were

caught by Poyet, who had been told by a servant, and he muttered excuses:

he pretended that he wanted them to stay: but it was obvious that he was

only eager for them to go. He helped them on with their cloaks, and hurried

them to the door with smiles and handshakes and whispered pleasantries, and

closed the door on them. When they reached their hotel the children burst

into angry tears. Antoinette stamped her foot, and swore that she would

never enter their house again.

Madame Jeannin took a flat on the fourth floor near the _Jardin des

Plantes_. The bedrooms looked on to the filthy walls of a gloomy courtyard:

the dining-room and the drawing-room--(for Madame Jeannin insisted on

having a drawing-room)--on to a busy street. All day long steam-trams went

by and hearses crawling along to the Ivry Cemetery. Filthy Italians, with a

horde of children, loafed about on the seats, or spent their time in shrill

argument. The noise made it impossible to have the windows open: and in the

evening, on their way home, they had to force their way through crowds of

bustling, evil-smelling people, cross the thronged and muddy streets, pass

a horrible pothouse, that was on the ground floor of the next house, in

the door of which there were always fat, frowsy women with yellow hair and

painted faces, eying the passers-by.

Their small supply of money soon gave out. Every evening with sinking

hearts they took stock of the widening hole in their purse. They tried

to stint themselves: but they did not know how to set about it: that is

a science which can only be learned by years of experimenting, unless it

has been practised from childhood. Those who are not naturally economical

merely waste their time in trying to be so: as soon as a fresh opportunity

of spending money crops up, they succumb to the temptation: they are always

going to economize next time: and when they do happen to make a little

money, or to think they have made it, they rush out and spend ten times the

amount on the strength of it.

At the end of a few weeks the Jeannins' resources were exhausted. Madame

Jeannin had to gulp down what was left of her pride, and, unknown to her

children, she went and asked Poyet for money. She contrived to see him

alone at his office, and begged him to advance her a small sum until they

had found work to keep them alive. Poyet, who was weak and human enough,

tried at first to postpone the matter, but finally acceded to her request.

He gave her two hundred francs in a moment of emotion, which mastered him,

and he repented of it immediately afterwards,--when he had to make his

peace with Madame Poyet, who was furious with her husband's weakness, and

her sister's slyness.

* * * * *

All day and every day the Jeannins were out and about in Paris, looking

for work. Madame Jeannin, true to the prejudices of her class, would not

hear of their engaging in any other profession than those which are called

"liberal"--no doubt because they leave their devotees free to starve. She

would even have gone so far as to forbid her daughter to take a post as

a family governess. Only the official professions, in the service of the

State, were not degrading in her eyes. They had to discover a means of

letting Olivier finish his education so that he might become a teacher. As

for Antoinette, Madame Jeannin's idea was that she should go to a school

to teach, or to the Conservatoire to win the prize for piano playing. But

the schools at which she applied already had teachers enough, who were

much better qualified than her daughter with her poor little elementary

certificate: and, as for music, she had to recognize that Antoinette's

talent was quite ordinary compared with that of so many others who did not

get on at all. They came face to face with the terrible struggle for life,

and the blind waste of talent, great and small, for which Paris can find no

use.

The two children lost heart and exaggerated their uselessness: they

believed that they were mediocre, and did their best to convince themselves

and their mother that it was so. Olivier, who had had no difficulty in

shining at his provincial school, was crushed by his various rebuffs: he

seemed to have lost possession of all his gifts. At the school for which he

won a scholarship, the results of his first examinations were so disastrous

that his scholarship was taken away from him. He thought himself utterly

stupid. At the same time he had a horror of Paris, and its swarming

inhabitants, and the disgusting immorality of his schoolfellows, and their

shameful conversation, and the bestiality of a few of them who did not

spare him from their abominable proposals. He was not even strong enough to

show his contempt for them. He felt degraded by the mere thought of their

degradation. With his mother and sister, he took refuge in the heartfelt

prayers which they used to say every evening after the day of deceptions

and private humiliations, which to their innocence seemed to be a taint,

of which they dared not tell each other. But, in contact with the latent

spirit of atheism which is in the air of Paris, Olivier's faith was

beginning to crumble away, without his knowledge, like whitewash trickling

down a wall under the beating of the rain. He went on believing: but all

about him God was dying.

His mother and sister pursued their futile quest. Madame Jeannin turned

once more to the Poyets, who were anxious to be quit of them, and offered

them work. Madame Jeannin was to go as reader to an old lady who was

spending the winter in the South of France. A post was found for Antoinette

as governess in a family in the West, who lived all the year round in the

country. The terms were not bad, but Madame Jeannin refused. It was not

so much for herself that she objected to a menial position, but she was

determined that Antoinette should not be reduced to it, and unwilling

to part with her. However unhappy they might be, just because they were

unhappy, they wished to be together.--Madame Poyet took it very badly. She

said that people who had no means of living had no business to be proud.

Madame Jeannin could not refrain from crying out upon her heartlessness.

Madame Poyet spoke bitterly of the bankruptcy and of the money that Madame

Jeannin owed her. They parted, and the breach between them was final. All

relationship between them was broken off. Madame Jeannin had only one

desire left: to pay back the money she had borrowed. But she was unable to

do that.

They resumed their vain search for work. Madame Jeannin went to see the

deputy and the senator of her department, men whom Monsieur Jeannin had

often helped. Everywhere she was brought face to face with ingratitude

and selfishness. The deputy did not even answer her letters, and when she

called on him he sent down word that he was out. The senator commiserated

her ponderously on her unhappy position, which he attributed to "the

wretched Jeannin," whose suicide he stigmatized harshly. Madame Jeannin

defended her husband. The senator said that of course he knew that the

banker had acted, not from dishonesty, but from stupidity, and that he was

a fool, a poor gull, who knew nothing, and would go his own way without

asking anybody's advice or taking a warning from any one. If he had only

ruined himself, there would have been nothing to say: that would have

been his own affair. But--not to mention the ruin that he had brought on

others,--that he should have reduced his wife and children to poverty and

deserted them and left them to get out of it as best they could ... it was

Madame Jeannin's own business if she chose to forgive him, if she were a

saint, but for his part, he, the senator, not being a saint--(s, a, i, n,

t),--but, he flattered himself, just a plain man--(s, a, i, n),--a plain,

sensible, reasonable human being,--he could find no reason for forgiveness:

a man who, in such circumstances, could kill himself, was a wretch. The

only extenuating circumstance he could find in Jeannin's case was that he

was not responsible for his actions. With that he begged Madame Jeannin's

pardon for having expressed himself a little emphatically about her

husband: he pleaded the sympathy that he felt for her: and he opened his

drawer and offered her a fifty-franc note,--charity--which she refused.

She applied for a post in the offices of a great Government department. She

set about it clumsily and inconsequently, and all her courage oozed out at

the first attempt. She returned home so demoralized that for several days

she could not stir. And, when she resumed her efforts, it was too late. She

did not find help either with the church-people, either because they saw

there was nothing to gain by it, or because they took no interest in a

ruined family, the head of which had been notoriously anti-clerical. After

days and days of hunting for work Madame Jeannin could find nothing better

than a post as music-teacher in a convent--an ungrateful task, ridiculously

ill-paid. To eke out her earnings she copied music in the evenings for an

agency. They were very hard on her. She was severely called to task for

omitting words and whole lines, as she did in spite of her application,

for she was always thinking of so many other things and her wits were

wool-gathering. And so, after she had stayed up through the night till

her eyes and her back ached, her copy was rejected. She would return home

utterly downcast. She would spend days together moaning, unable to stir

a finger. For a long time she had been suffering from heart trouble,

which had been aggravated by her hard struggles, and filled her with dark

forebodings. Sometimes she would have pains, and difficulty in breathing

as though she were on the point of death. She never went out without her

name and address written on a piece of paper in her pocket in case she

should collapse in the street. What would happen if she were to disappear?

Antoinette comforted her as best she could by affecting a confidence which

she did not possess: she begged her to be careful and to let her go and

work in her stead. But the little that was left of Madame Jeannin's pride

stirred in her, and she vowed that at least her daughter should not know

the humiliation she had to undergo.

In vain did she wear herself out and cut down their expenses: what she

earned was not enough to keep them alive. They had to sell the few jewels

which they had kept. And the worst blow of all came when the money, of

which they were in such sore need, was stolen from Madame Jeannin the very

day it came into her hands. The poor flustered creature took it into her

head while she was out to go into the _Bon Marché_, which was on her way:

it was Antoinette's birthday next day, and she wanted to give her a little

present. She was carrying her purse in her hand so as not to lose it. She

put it down mechanically on the counter for a moment while she looked at

something. When she put out her hand for it the purse was gone. It was the

last blow for her.

A few days later, on a stifling evening at the end of August,--a hot

steaming mist hung over the town,--Madame Jeannin came in from her copying

agency, whither she had been to deliver a piece of work that was wanted in

a hurry. She was late for dinner, and had saved her three sous' bus fare

by hurrying home on foot to prevent her children being anxious. When she

reached the fourth floor she could neither speak nor breathe. It was not

the first time she had returned home in that condition: the children took

no notice of it. She forced herself to sit down at table with them. They

were both suffering from the heat and did not eat anything: they had to

make an effort to gulp down a few morsels of food, and a sip or two of

stale water. To give their mother time to recover they did not talk--(they

had no desire to talk)--and looked out of the window.

Suddenly Madame Jeannin waved her hands in the air, clutched at the table,

looked at her children, moaned, and collapsed. Antoinette and Olivier

sprang to their feet just in time to catch her in their arms. They were

beside themselves, and screamed and cried to her:

"Mother! Mother! Dear, dear mother!"

But she made no sound. They were at their wit's end. Antoinette clung

wildly to her mother's body, kissed her, called to her. Olivier ran to the

door of the flat and yelled:

"Help! Help!"

The housekeeper came running upstairs, and when she saw what had happened

she ran for a doctor. But when the doctor arrived, he could only say that

the end had come. Death had been instantaneous--happily for Madame

Jeannin--although it was impossible to know what thoughts might have been

hers during the last moments when she knew that she was dying and leaving

her children alone in such misery.

They were alone to bear the horror of the catastrophe, alone to weep, alone

to perform the dreadful duties that follow upon death. The porter's wife, a

kindly soul, helped them a little: and people came from the convent where

Madame Jeannin had taught: but they were given no real sympathy.

The first moments brought inexpressible despair. The only thing that saved

them was the very excess of that despair, which made Olivier really ill.

Antoinette's thoughts were distracted from her own suffering, and her one

idea was to save her brother: and her great, deep love filled Olivier and

plucked him back from the violent torment of his grief. Locked in her arms,

near the bed where their mother was lying in the glimmer of a candle,

Olivier said over and over again that they must die, that they must both

die, at once: and he pointed to the window. In Antoinette, too, there was

the dark desire: but she fought it down: she wished to live....

"Why? Why?"

"For her sake," said Antoinette--(she pointed to her mother).--"She is

still with us. Think ... after all that she has suffered for our sake, we

must spare her the crowning sorrow, that of seeing us die in misery....

Ah!" (she went on emphatically).... "And then, we must not give way. I will

not! I refuse to give in. You must, you shall be happy, some day!"

"Never!"

"Yes. You shall be happy. We have had too much unhappiness. A change will

come: it must. You shall live your life. You shall have children, you shall

be happy, you shall, you shall!"

"How are we to live? We cannot do it...."

"We can. What is it, after all? We have to live somehow until you can earn

your living. I will see to that. You will see: I'll do it. Ah! If only

mother had let me do it, as I could have done...."

"What will you do? I will not have you degrading yourself. You could not do

it."

"I can.... And there is nothing humiliating in working for one's

living--provided it be honest work. Don't you worry about it, please. You

will see, everything will come right. You shall be happy, we shall be

happy: dear Olivier, _she_ will be happy through us...."

The two children were the only mourners at their mother's grave. By common

consent they agreed not to tell the Poyets: the Poyets had ceased to exist

for them: they had been too cruel to their mother: they had helped her

to her death. And, when the housekeeper asked them if they had no other

relations, they replied:

"No. Nobody."

By the bare grave they prayed hand in hand. They set their teeth in

desperate resolve and pride and preferred their solitude to the presence of

their callous and hypocritical relations.--They returned on foot through

the throng of people who were strangers to their grief, strangers to their

thoughts, strangers to their lives, and shared nothing with them but their

common language. Antoinette had to support Olivier.

They took a tiny flat in the same house on the top floor--two little

attics, a narrow hall, which had to serve as a dining-room, and a kitchen

that was more like a cupboard. They could have found better rooms in

another neighborhood: but it seemed to them that they were still with their

mother in that house. The housekeeper took an interest in them for a time:

but she was soon absorbed in her own affairs and nobody bothered about

them. They did not know a single one of the other tenants: and they did not

even know who lived next door.

Antoinette obtained her mother's post as music-teacher at the convent. She

procured other pupils. She had only one idea: to educate her brother until

he was ready for the _École Normale_. It was her own idea, and she had

decided upon it after mature reflection: she had studied the syllabus and

asked about it, and had also tried to find out what Olivier thought:--but

he had no ideas, and she chose for him. Once at the _École Normale_ he

would be sure of a living for the rest of his life, and his future would

be assured. He must get in, somehow; whatever it cost, they would have to

keep alive till then. It meant five or six terrible years: they would win

through. The idea possessed Antoinette, absorbed her whole life. The poor

solitary existence which she must lead, which she saw clearly mapped out

in front of her, was only made bearable through the passionate exaltation

which filled her, her determination, by all means in her power, to save her

brother and make him happy. The light-hearted, gentle girl of seventeen or

eighteen was transfigured by her heroic resolution: there was in her an

ardent quality of devotion, a pride of battle, which no one had suspected,

herself least of all. In that critical period of a woman's life, during

the first fevered days of spring, when love fills all her being, and like

a hidden stream murmuring beneath the earth, laves her soul, envelops

it, floods it with tenderness, and fills it with sweet obsessions, love

appears in divers shapes: demanding that she should give herself, and

yield herself up to be its prey: for love the least excuse is enough, and

for its profound yet innocent sensuality any sacrifice is easy. Love made

Antoinette the prey of sisterly devotion.

Her brother was less passionate and had no such stay. Besides, the

sacrifice was made for him, it was not he who was sacrificed--which is so

much easier and sweeter when one loves. He was weighed down with remorse at

seeing his sister wearing herself out for him. He would tell her so, and

she would reply:

"Ah! My dear!... But don't you see that that is what keeps me going?

Without you to trouble me, what should I have to live for?"

He understood. He, too, in Antoinette's position, would have been jealous

of the trouble he caused her: but to be the cause of it!... That hurt his

pride and his affection. And what a burden it was for so weak a creature to

bear such a responsibility, to be bound to succeed, since on his success

his sister had staked her whole life! The thought of it was intolerable to

him, and, instead of spurring him on, there were times when it robbed him

of all energy. And yet she forced him to struggle on, to work, to live, as

he never would have done without her aid and insistence. He had a natural

predisposition towards depression,--perhaps even towards suicide:--perhaps

he would have succumbed to it had not his sister wished him to be ambitious

and happy. He suffered from the contradiction of his nature: and yet it

worked his salvation. He, too, was passing through a critical age, that

fearful period when thousands of young men succumb, and give themselves up

to the aberrations of their minds and senses, and for two or three years'

folly spoil their lives beyond repair. If he had had time to yield to his

thoughts he would have fallen into discouragement or perhaps taken to

dissipation: always when he turned in upon himself he became a prey to his

morbid dreams, and disgust with life, and Paris, and the impure

fermentation of all those millions of human beings mingling and rotting

together. But the sight of his sister's face was enough to dispel the

nightmare: and since she was living only that he might live, he would live,

yes, he would be happy, in spite of himself.

So their lives were built on an ardent faith fashioned of stoicism,

religion, and noble ambition. All their endeavor was directed towards the

one end: Olivier's success. Antoinette accepted every kind of work, every

humiliation that was offered her: she went as a governess to houses where

she was treated almost as a servant: she had to take her pupils out for

walks, like a nurse, wandering about the streets with them for hours

together under pretext of teaching them German. In her love for her brother

and her pride she found pleasure even in such moral suffering and

weariness.

She would return home worn out to look after Olivier, who was a day-boarder

at his school and only came home in the evening. She would cook their

dinner--a wretched dinner--on the gas-stove or over a spirit-lamp. Olivier

had never any appetite and everything disgusted him, and his gorge would

rise at the food: and she would have to force him to eat, or cudgel her

brains to invent some dish that would catch his fancy, and poor Antoinette

was by no means a good cook. And when she had taken a great deal of

trouble she would have the mortification of hearing him declare that

her cooking was uneatable. It was only after moments of despair at her

cooking-stove,--those moments of silent despair which come to inexperienced

young housekeepers and poison their lives and sometimes their sleep,

unknown to everybody--that she began to understand it a little.

After dinner, when she had washed up the dishes--(he would offer to help

her, but she would never let him),--she would take a motherly interest in

her brother's work. She would hear him his lessons, read his exercises, and

even look up certain words in the dictionary for him, always taking care

not to ruffle up his sensitive little soul. They would spend the evening at

their one table at which they had both to eat and write. He would do his

homework, she would sew or do some copying. When he had gone to bed she

would sit mending his clothes or doing some work of her own.

Although they had difficulty in making both ends meet, they were both

agreed that every penny they could put by should be used in the first place

to settle the debt which their mother owed to the Poyets. It was not that

the Poyets were importunate creditors: they had given no sign of life: they

never gave a thought to the money, which they counted as lost: they thought

themselves very lucky to have got rid of their undesirable relatives so

cheaply. But it hurt the pride and filial piety of the young Jeannins to

think that their mother should have owed anything to these people whom they

despised. They pinched and scraped: they economized on their amusements, on

their clothes, on their food, in order to amass the two hundred francs--an

enormous sum for them. Antoinette would have liked to have done the saving

by herself. But when her brother found out what she was up to, nothing

could keep him from doing likewise. They wore themselves out in the effort,

and were delighted when they could set aside a few sous a day.

In three years, by screwing and scraping, sou by sou, they had succeeded in

getting the sum together. It was a great joy to them. Antoinette went to

the Poyets one evening. She was coldly received, for they thought she had

come to ask for help. They thought it advisable to take the initiative: and

reproached her for not letting them have any news of them: and not having

even told them of the death of her mother, and not coming to them when

she wanted help. She cut them short calmly by telling them that she had

no intention of incommoding them: she had come merely to return the money

which had been borrowed from them: and she laid two banknotes on the table

and asked for a receipt. They changed their tone at once, and pretended to

be unwilling to accept it: they were feeling for her that sudden affection

which comes to the creditor for the debtor, who, after many years, returns

the loan which he had ceased to reckon upon. They inquired where she was

living with her brother, and how they lived. She did not reply, asked once

more for the receipt, said that she was in a hurry, bowed coldly, and went

away. The Poyets were horrified at the girl's ingratitude.

Then, when she was rid of that obsession, Antoinette went on with the same

sparing existence, but now it was entirely for her brother's sake. Only she

concealed it more to prevent his knowing it: she economized on her clothes

and sometimes on her food, to keep her brother well-dressed and amused,

and to make his life pleasanter and gayer, and to let him go every now and

then to a concert, or to the opera, which was Olivier's greatest joy. He

was unwilling to go without her, but she would always make excuses for not

going so that he should feel no remorse: she would pretend that she was too

tired and did not want to go out: she would even go so far as to say that

music bored her. Her fond quibbles would not deceive him: but his boyish

selfishness would be too strong for him. He would go to the theater: once

inside, he would be filled with remorse, and it would haunt him all through

the piece, and spoil his pleasure. One Sunday, when she had packed him

off to the _Châtelet_ concert, he returned half an hour later, and told

Antoinette that when he reached the Saint Michel Bridge he had not the

heart to go any farther: the concert did not interest him: it hurt him too

much to have any pleasure without her. Nothing was sweeter to Antoinette,

although she was sorry that her brother should be deprived of his Sunday

entertainment because of her. But Olivier never regretted it: when he saw

the joy that lit up his sister's face as he came in, a joy that she tried

in vain to conceal, he felt happier than the most lovely music in the world

could ever have made him. They spent the afternoon sitting together by the

window, he with a book in his hand, she with her work, hardly reading at

all, hardly sewing at all, talking idly of things that interested neither

of them. Never had they had so delightful a Sunday. They agreed that they

would never go alone to a concert again: they could never enjoy anything

alone.

She managed secretly to save enough money to surprise and delight Olivier

with a hired piano, which, on the hire-purchase system became their

property at the end of a certain number of months. The payments for it were

a heavy burden for her to shoulder! It often haunted her dreams, and she

ruined her health in screwing together the necessary money. But, folly as

it was, it did assure them both so much happiness. Music was their Paradise

in their hard life. It filled an enormous place in their existence. They

steeped themselves in music so as to forget the rest of the world. There

was danger in it too. Music is one of the great modern dissolvents. Its

languorous warmth, like the heat of a stove, or the enervating air of

autumn, excites the senses and destroys the will. But it was a relaxation

for a creature forced into excessive, joyless activity as was Antoinette.

The Sunday concert was the only ray of light that shone through the week of

unceasing toil. They lived in the memory of the last concert and the eager

anticipation of the next, in those few hours spent outside Paris and out of

the vile weather. After a long wait outside in the rain, or the snow, or

the wind and the cold, clinging together, and trembling lest all the places

should be taken, they would pass into the theater, where they were lost in

the throng, and sit on dark uncomfortable benches. They were crushed and

stifling, and often on the point of fainting from the heat and discomfort

of it all:--but they were happy, happy in their own and in each other's

pleasure, happy to feel coursing through their veins the flood of kindness,

light, and strength, that surged forth from the great souls of Beethoven

and Wagner, happy, each of them, to see the dear, dear face light up--the

poor, pale face worn by suffering and premature anxieties. Antoinette would

feel so tired and as though loving arms were about her, holding her to a

motherly breast! She would nestle in its softness and warmth: and she would

weep quietly. Olivier would press her hand. No one noticed them in the

dimness of the vast hall, where they were not the only suffering souls

taking refuge under the motherly wing of Music.

Antoinette had her religion to support her. She was very pious, and every

day never missed saying her prayers fervently and at length, and every

Sunday she never missed going to Mass. Even in the injustice of her

wretched life she could not help believing in the love of the divine

Friend, who suffers with you, and, some day, will console you. Even more

than with God, she was in close communion with the beloved dead, and she

used secretly to share all her trials with them. But she was of an

independent spirit and a clear intelligence: she stood apart from other

Catholics, who did not regard her altogether favorably: they thought her

possessed of an evil spirit: they were not far from regarding her as a Free

Thinker, or on the way to it, because, like the honest little Frenchwoman

she was, she had no intention of renouncing her own independent judgment:

she believed not from obedience, like the base rabble, but from love.

Olivier no longer believed. The slow disintegration of his faith, which

had set in during his first months in Paris, had ended in its complete

destruction. He had suffered cruelly: for he was not of those who are

strong enough or commonplace enough to dispense with faith: and so he had

passed through crises of mental agony. But he was at heart a mystic: and,

though he had lost his belief, yet no ideas could be closer to his own than

those of his sister. They both lived in a religious atmosphere. When they

came home in the evening after the day's parting their little flat was to

them a haven, an inviolable refuge, poor, bitterly cold, but pure. How far

removed they felt there from the noise and the corrupt thoughts of

Paris!...

They never talked much of their doings: for when one comes home tired one

has hardly the heart to revive the memory of a painful day by the tale of

its happenings. Instinctively they set themselves to forget it. Especially

during the first hour when they met again for dinner they avoided questions

of all kinds. They would greet each other with their eyes: and sometimes

they would not speak a word all through the meal. Antoinette would look at

her brother as he sat dreaming, just as he used to do when he was a little

boy. She would gently touch his hand:

"Come!" she would say, with a smile. "Courage!"

He would smile too and go on eating. So dinner would pass without their

trying to talk. They were hungry for silence. Only when they had done would

their tongues be loosed a little, when they felt rested, and when each of

them in the comfort of the understanding love of the other had wiped out

the impure traces of the day.

Olivier would sit down at the piano. Antoinette was out of practice from

letting him play always: for it was the only relaxation that he had: and he

would give himself up to it wholeheartedly. He had a fine temperament for

music: his feminine nature, more suited to love than to action, with loving

sympathy could catch the thoughts of the musicians whose works he played,

and merge itself in them and with passionate fidelity render the finest

shades,--at least, within the limitations of his physical strength, which

gave out before the Titanic effort of _Tristan_, or the later sonatas of

Beethoven. He loved best to take refuge in Mozart or Gluck, and theirs was

the music that Antoinette preferred.

Sometimes she would sing too, but only very simple songs, old melodies. She

had a light mezzo voice, plaintive and delicate. She was so shy that she

could never sing in company, and hardly even before Olivier: her throat

used to contract. There was an air of Beethoven set to some Scotch words,

of which she was particularly fond: _Faithful Johnnie_: it was calm, so

calm ... and with what a depth of tenderness!... It was like herself.

Olivier could never hear her sing it without the tears coming to his eyes.

But she preferred listening to her brother. She would hurry through her

housework and leave the door of the kitchen open the better to hear

Olivier: but in spite of all her care he would complain impatiently of the

noise she made with her pots and pans. Then she would close the door; and,

when she had finished, she would come and sit in a low chair, not near the

piano--(for he could not bear any one near him when he was playing),--but

near the fireplace: and there she would sit curled up like a cat, with her

back to the piano, and her eyes fixed on the golden eyes of the fire, in

which a lump of coal was smoldering, and muse over her memories of the

past. When nine o'clock rang she would have to pull herself together to

remind Olivier that it was time to stop. It would be hard to drag him, and

to drag herself, away from dreams: but Olivier would still have some work

to do. And he must not go to bed too late. He would not obey her at once:

he always needed a certain time in which to shake free of the music before

he could apply himself seriously to his work. His thoughts would be off

wandering. Often it would be half-past nine before he could shake free of

his misty dreams. Antoinette, bending over her work at the other side of

the table, would know that he was doing nothing: but she dared not look

in his direction too often for fear of irritating him by seeming to be

watching him.

He was at the ungrateful age--the happy age--when a boy saunters dreamily

through his days. He had a clear forehead, girlish eyes, deep and trustful,

often with dark circles round them, a wide mouth with rather thick pouting

lips, a rather crooked smile, vague, absent, taking: he wore his hair long

so that it hung down almost to his eyes, and made a great bunch at the back

of his neck, while one rebellious lock stuck up at the back: a neckerchief

loosely tied round his neck--(his sister used to tie it carefully in a bow

every morning):--a waistcoat which was always buttonless, although she was

for ever sewing them on: no cuffs: large hands with bony wrists. He had a

heavy, sleepy, bantering expression, and he was always wool-gathering. His

eyes would blink and wander round Antoinette's room:--(his work-table was

in her room):--they would light on the little iron bed, above which hung an

ivory crucifix, with a sprig of box,--on the portraits of his father and

mother,--on an old photograph of the little provincial town with its tower

mirrored in its waters. And when they reached his sister's pallid face,

bending in silence over her work, he would be filled with an immense pity

for her and his own indolence: and he would work furiously to make up for

lost time.

He spent his holidays in reading. They would read together each with a

separate book. In spite of their love for each other they could not read

aloud. That hurt them as an offense against modesty. A fine book was to

them as a secret which should only be murmured in the silence of the heart.

When a passage delighted them, instead of reading it aloud, they would hand

the book over, with a finger marking the place: and they would say:

"Read that."

Then, while the other was reading, the one who had already read would with

shining eyes gaze into the dear face to see what emotions were roused and

to share the enjoyment of it.

But often with their books open in front of them they would not read: they

would talk. Especially towards the end of the evening they would feel

the need of opening their hearts, and they would have less difficulty

in talking. Olivier had sad thoughts: and in his weakness he had to rid

himself of all that tortured him by pouring out his troubles to some one

else. He was a prey to doubt. Antoinette had to give him courage, to defend

him against himself: it was an unceasing struggle, which began anew each

day. Olivier would say bitter, gloomy things: and when he had said them he

would be relieved: but he never troubled to think how they might hurt his

sister. Only very late in the day did he see how he was exhausting her: he

was sapping her strength and infecting her with his own doubts. Antoinette

never let it appear how she suffered. She was by nature valiant and gay,

and she forced herself to maintain a show of gaiety, even when that

gracious quality was long since dead in her. She had moments of utter

weariness, and revolt against the life of perpetual sacrifice to which she

had pledged herself. But she condemned such thoughts and would not analyze

them: they came to her in spite of herself, and she would not accept

them. She found help in prayer, except when her heart could not pray--(as

sometimes happens)--when it was, as it were, withered and dry. Then she

could only wait in silence, feverish and ashamed, for the return of grace.

Olivier never had the least suspicion of the agony she suffered. At such

times Antoinette would make some excuse and go away and lock herself in her

room: and she would not appear again until the crisis was over: then she

would be smiling, sorrowful, more tender than ever, and, as it were,

remorseful for having suffered.

Their rooms were adjoining. Their beds were placed on either side of the

same wall: they could talk to each other through it in whispers: and when

they could not sleep they would tap gently on the wall to say:

"Are you asleep? I can't sleep."

The partition was so thin that it was almost as though they shared the same

room. But the door between their rooms was always locked at night, in

obedience to an instinctive and profound modesty,--a sacred feeling:--it

was only left open when Olivier was ill, as too often happened.

He did not gain in health. Rather he seemed to grow weaker. He was always

ailing: throat, chest, head or heart: if he caught the slightest cold there

was always the danger of its turning to bronchitis: he caught scarlatina

and almost died of it: but even when he was not ill he would betray strange

symptoms of serious illnesses, which fortunately did not come to anything:

he would have pains in his lungs or his heart. One day the doctor who

examined him diagnosed pericarditis, or peripneumonia, and the great

specialist who was then consulted confirmed his fears. But it came to

nothing. It was his nerves that were wrong, and it is common knowledge that

disorders of the nerves take the most unaccountable shapes: they are got

rid of at the cost of days of anxiety. But such days were terrible for

Antoinette, and they gave her sleepless nights. She would lie in a state of

terror in her bed, getting up every now and then to listen to her brother's

breathing. She would think that perhaps he was dying, she would feel sure,

convinced of it: she would get up, trembling, and clasp her hands, and hold

them fast against her lips to keep herself from crying out.

"Oh! God! Oh! God!" she would moan. "Take him not from me! Not that ... not

that. You have no right!... Not that, oh! God, I beg!... Oh, mother,

mother! Come to my aid! Save him: let him live!..."

She would lie at full stretch.

"Ah! To die by the way, when so much has been done, when we were nearly

there, when he was going to be happy ... no: that could not be: it would be

too cruel!..."

* * * * *

It was not long before Olivier gave her other reasons for anxiety.

He was profoundly honest, like herself, but he was weak of will and too

open-minded and too complex not to be uneasy, skeptical, indulgent towards

what he knew to be evil, and attracted by pleasure. Antoinette was so pure

that it was some time before she understood what was going on in her

brother's mind. She discovered it suddenly, one day.

Olivier thought she was out. She usually had a lesson at that hour: but at

the last moment she had received word from her pupil, telling her that she

could not have her that day. She was secretly pleased, although it meant

a few francs less in that week's earnings: but she was very tired and she

lay down on her bed: she was very glad to be able to rest for once without

reproaching herself. Olivier came in from school bringing another boy with

him. They sat down in the next room and began to talk. She could hear

everything they said: they thought they were alone and did not restrain

themselves. Antoinette smiled as she heard her brother's merry voice. But

soon she ceased to smile, and her blood ran cold. They were talking of

dirty things with an abominable crudity of expression: they seemed to revel

in it. She heard Olivier, her boy Olivier, laughing: and from his lips,

which she had thought so innocent, there came words so obscene that the

horror of it chilled her. Keen anguish stabbed her to the heart. It went on

and on: they could not stop talking, and she could not help listening. At

last they went out, and Antoinette was left alone. Then she wept: something

had died in her: the ideal image that she had fashioned of her brother--of

her boy--was plastered with mud: it was a mortal agony to her. She did not

say anything to him when they met again in the evening. He saw that she had

been weeping and he could not think why. He could not understand why she

had changed her manner towards him. It was some time before she was able to

recover herself.

But the worst blow of all for her was one evening when he did not come

home. She did not go to bed, but sat up waiting for him. It was not only

her moral purity that was hurt: her suffering went down to the most

mysterious inner depths of her heart--those same depths where there lurked

the most awful feelings of the human heart, feelings over which she cast a

veil, to hide them from her sight.

Olivier's first aim had been the declaration of his independence. He

returned in the morning, casting about for the proper attitude and quite

prepared to fling some insolent remark at his sister if she had said

anything to him. He stole into the flat on tiptoe so as not to waken her.

But when he saw her standing there, waiting for him, pale, red-eyed from

weeping, when he saw that, instead of making any effort to reproach him,

she only set about silently cooking his breakfast, before he left for

school, and that she had nothing to say to him, but was overwhelmed, so

that she was, in herself, a living reproach, he could hold out no longer:

he flung himself down before her, buried his face in her lap, and they both

wept. He was ashamed of himself, sick at the thought of what he had done:

he felt degraded. He tried to speak, but she would not let him and laid

her hand on his lips: and he kissed her hand. They said no more: they

understood each other. Olivier vowed that he would never again do anything

to hurt Antoinette, and that he would be in all things what she wanted him

to be. But though she tried bravely she could not so easily forget so sharp

a wound: she recovered from it slowly. There was a certain awkwardness

between them. Her love for him was just the same: but in her brother's soul

she had seen something that was foreign to herself, and she was fearful of

it.

* * * * *

She was the more overwhelmed by the glimpse she had had into Olivier's

inmost heart, in that, about the same time, she had to put up with the

unwelcome attentions of certain men. When she came home in the evening at

nightfall, and especially when she had to go out after dinner to take or

fetch her copying, she suffered agonies from her fear of being accosted,

and followed (as sometimes happened) and forced to listen to insulting

advances. She took her brother with her whenever she could under pretext of

making him take a walk: but he only consented grudgingly and she dared not

insist: she did not like to interrupt his work. She was so provincial and

so pure that she could not get used to such ways. Paris at night was to

her like a dark forest in which she felt that she was being tracked by

dreadful, savage beasts: and she was afraid to leave the house. But she had

to go out. She would put off going out as long as possible: she was always

fearful. And when she thought that her Olivier would be--was perhaps--like

one of those men who pursued her, she could hardly hold out her hand to him

when she came in. He could not think what he had done to change her so, and

she was angry with herself.

She was not very pretty, but she had charm, and attracted attention though

she did nothing to do so. She was always very simply dressed, almost always

in black: she was not very tall, graceful, frail-looking; she rarely spoke:

she tripped quietly through the crowded streets, avoiding attention,

which, however, she attracted in spite of herself by the sweetness of the

expression of her tired eyes and her pure young lips. Sometimes she saw

that she had attracted notice: and though it put her to confusion she was

pleased all the same. Who can say what gentle and chaste pleasure in itself

there may be in so innocent a creature at feeling herself in sympathy

with others? All that she felt was shown in a slight awkwardness in her

movements, a timid, sidelong glance: and it was sweet to see and very

touching. And her uneasiness added to her attraction. She excited interest,

and, as she was a poor girl, with none to protect her, men did not hesitate

to tell her so.

Sometimes she used to go to the house of some rich Jews, the Nathans, who

took an interest in her because they had met her at the house of some

friends of theirs where she gave lessons: and, in spite of her shyness,

she had not been able to avoid accepting invitations to their parties.

M. Alfred Nathan was a well-known professor in Paris, a distinguished

scientist, and at the same time he was very fond of society, with that

strange mixture of learning and frivolity which is so common among the

Jews. Madame Nathan was a mixture in equal proportions of real kindliness

and excessive worldliness. They were both generous, with loud-voiced,

sincere, but intermittent sympathy for Antoinette.--Generally speaking

Antoinette had found more kindness among the Jews than among the

members of her own sect. They have many faults: but they have one great

quality--perhaps the greatest of all: they are alive, and human: nothing

human is foreign to them and they are interested in every living being.

Even when they lack real, warm sympathy they feel a perpetual curiosity

which makes them seek out men and ideas that are of worth, however

different from themselves they may be. Not that, generally speaking, they

do anything much to help them, for they are interested in too many things

at once and much more a prey to the vanities of the world than other

people, while they pretend to be immune from them. But at least they

do something: and that is saying a great deal in the present apathetic

condition of society. They are an active balm in society, the very leaven

of life.--Antoinette who, among the Catholics, had been brought sharp up

against a wall of icy indifference, was keenly alive to the worth of the

interest, however superficial it might be, which the Nathans took in her.

Madame Nathan had marked Antoinette's life of devoted sacrifice: she was

sensible of her physical and moral charm: and she made a show of taking her

under her protection. She had no children: but she loved young people and

often had gatherings of them in her house: and she insisted on Antoinette's

coming also, and breaking away from her solitude, and having some amusement

in her life. And as she had no difficulty in guessing that Antoinette's

shyness was in part the result of her poverty, she even went so far as to

offer to give her a pretty frock or two, which Antoinette refused proudly:

but her kindly patroness found a way of forcing her to accept a few of

those little presents which are so dear to a woman's innocent vanity.

Antoinette was both grateful and embarrassed. She forced herself to go to

Madame Nathan's parties from time to time: and being young she managed to

enjoy herself in spite of everything.

But in that rather mixed society of all sorts of young people Madame

Nathan's protégée, being poor and pretty, became at once the mark of two or

three young gentlemen, who with perfect confidence in themselves picked her

out for their attentions. They calculated how far her timidity would go:

they even made bets about her.

One day she received certain anonymous letters--or rather letters signed

with a noble pseudonym--which conveyed a declaration of love: at first

they were love-letters, flattering, ardent, appointing a rendezvous: then

they quickly became bolder, threatening, and soon insulting and basely

slanderous: they stripped her, exposed her, besmirched her with their

coarse expressions of desire: they tried to play upon Antoinette's

simplicity by making her fearful of a public insult if she did not go to

the appointed rendezvous. She wept bitterly at the thought of having called

down on herself such base proposals: and these insults scorched her pride.

She did not know what to do. She did not like to speak to her brother about

it: she knew that he would feel it too keenly and that he would make the

affair even more serious than it was. She had no friends. The police? She

would not do that for fear of scandal. But somehow she had to make an end

of it. She felt that her silence would not sufficiently defend her, that

the blackguard who was pursuing her would hold to the chase and that he

would go on until to go farther would be dangerous.

He had just sent her a sort of ultimatum commanding her to meet him next

day at the Luxembourg. She went.--By racking her brains she had come to the

conclusion that her persecutor must have met her at Madame Nathan's. In one

of his letters he had alluded to something which could only have happened

there. She begged Madame Nathan to do her a great favor and to drive her to

the door of the gallery and to wait for her outside. She went in. In front

of the appointed picture her tormentor accosted her triumphantly and began

to talk to her with affected politeness. She stared straight at him without

a word. When he had finished his remark he asked her jokingly why she was

staring at him. She replied:

"You are a coward."

He was not put out by such a trifle as that, and became familiar in his

manner. She said:

"You have tried to threaten me with a scandal. Very well, I have come to

give you your scandal. You have asked for it!"

She was trembling all over, and she spoke in a loud voice to show him that

she was quite equal to attracting attention to themselves. People had

already begun to watch them. He felt that she would stick at nothing. He

lowered his voice. She said once more, for the last time:

"You are a coward," and turned her back on him.

Not wishing to seem to have given in he followed her. She left the gallery

with the fellow following hard on her heels. She walked straight to the

carriage waiting there, wrenched the door open, and her pursuer found

himself face to face with Madame Nathan, who recognized him and greeted him

by name. His face fell and he bolted.

Antoinette had to tell the whole story to her companion. She was unwilling

to do so, and only hinted roughly at the facts. It was painful to her to

reveal to a stranger the intimate secrets of her life, and the sufferings

of her injured modesty. Madame Nathan scolded her for not having told her

before. Antoinette begged her not to tell anybody. That was the end of it:

and Madame Nathan did not even need to strike the fellow off her visiting

list: for he was careful not to appear again.

About the same time another sorrow of a very different kind came to

Antoinette.

At the Nathans' she met a man of forty, a very good fellow, who was in

the Consular service in the Far East, and had come home on a few months'

leave. He fell in love with her. The meeting had been planned unknown to

Antoinette, by Madame Nathan, who had taken it into her head that she must

find a husband for her little friend. He was a Jew. He was not good-looking

and he was no longer young. He was rather bald, and round-shouldered: but

he had kind eyes, an affectionate way with him, and he could feel for and

understand suffering, for he had suffered himself. Antoinette was no longer

the romantic girl, the spoiled child, dreaming of life as a lovely day's

walk on her lover's arm: now she saw the hard struggle of life, which began

again, every day, allowing no time for rest, or, if rest were taken, it

might be to lose in one moment all the ground that had been gained, inch

by inch, through years of striving: and she thought it would be very sweet

to be able to lean on the arm of a friend, and share his sorrows with him,

and be able to close her eyes for a little, while he watched over her. She

knew that it was a dream: but she had not had the courage to renounce her

dream altogether. In her heart she knew quite well that a dowerless girl

had nothing to hope for in the world in which she lived. The old French

middle-classes are known throughout the world for the spirit of sordid

interest in which they conduct their marriages. The Jews are far less

grasping with money. Among the Jews it is no uncommon thing for a rich

young man to choose a poor girl, or a young woman of fortune to set herself

passionately to win a man of intellect. But in the French middle-classes,

Catholic and provincial in their outlook, almost always money woos money.

And to what end? Poor wretches, they have none but dull commonplace

desires: they can do nothing but eat, yawn, sleep--save. Antoinette knew

them. She had observed their ways from her childhood on. She had seen them

with the eyes of wealth and the eyes of poverty. She had no illusions left

about them, nor about the treatment she had to expect from them. And so the

attentions of this man who had asked her to marry him came as an unhoped

for treasure in her life. At first she did not think of him as a lover, but

gradually she was filled with gratitude and tenderness towards him. She

would have accepted his proposal if it had not meant following him to the

colonies and consequently leaving her brother. She refused: and though her

lover understood the magnanimity of her reason for doing so, he could not

forgive her: love is so selfish, that the lover will not hear of being

sacrificed even to those virtues which are dearest to him in the beloved.

He gave up seeing her: when he went away he never wrote: she had no news

of him at all until, five or six months later, she received a printed

intimation, addressed in his hand, that he had married another woman.

Antoinette felt it deeply. She was broken-hearted, and she offered up her

suffering to God: she tried to persuade herself that she was justly

punished for having for one moment lost sight of her one duty, to devote

herself to her brother: and she grew more and more wrapped up in it.

She withdrew from the world altogether. She even dropped going to the

Nathans', for they were a little cold towards her after she refused

the marriage which they had arranged for her: they too refused to see

any justification for her. Madame Nathan had decided that the marriage

should take place, and her vanity was hurt at its missing fire through

Antoinette's fault. She thought her scruples certainly quite praiseworthy,

but exaggerated and sentimental: and thereafter she lost interest in the

silly little goose. It was necessary for her always to be helping people,

with or without their consent, and she quickly found another protégée to

absorb, for the time being, all the interest and devotion which she had to

expend.

Olivier knew nothing of his sister's sad little romance. He was a

sentimental, irresponsible boy, living in his dreams and fancies. It was

impossible to depend on him in spite of his intelligence and charm and

his very real tenderheartedness. Often he would fling away the results of

months of work by his irresponsibility, or in a fit of discouragement, or

by some boyish freak, or some fancied love affair, in which he would waste

all his time and energy. He would fall in love with a pretty face, that

he had seen once, with coquettish little girls, whom perhaps he once met

out somewhere, though they never paid any attention to him. He would be

infatuated with something he had read, a poet, or a musician: he would

steep himself in their works for months together, to the exclusion of

everything else and the detriment of his studies. He had to be watched

always, though great care had to be taken that he did not know it, for he

was easily wounded. There was always a danger of a seizure. He had the

feverish excitement, the want of balance, the uneasy trepidation, that are

often found in those who have a consumptive tendency. The doctor had not

concealed the danger from Antoinette. The sickly plant, transplanted from

the provinces to Paris, needed fresh air and light. Antoinette could not

provide them. They had not enough money to be able to go away from Paris

during the holidays. All the rest of their year every day in the week was

full, and on Sundays they were so tired that they never wanted to go out,

except to a concert.

There were Sundays in the summer when Antoinette would make an effort and

drag Olivier off to the woods outside Paris, near Chaville or Saint-Cloud.

But the woods were full of noisy couples, singing music-hall songs, and

littering the place with greasy bits of paper: they did not find the divine

solitude which purifies and gives rest. And in the evening when they turned

homewards they had to suffer the roar and clatter of the trains, the dirty,

crowded, low, narrow, dark carriages of the suburban lines, the coarseness

of certain things they saw, the noisy, singing, shouting, smelly

people, and the reek of tobacco smoke. Neither Antoinette nor Olivier

could understand the people, and they would return home disgusted and

demoralized. Olivier would beg Antoinette not to go for Sunday walks again;

and for some time Antoinette would not have the heart to go again. And

then she would insist, though it was even more disagreeable to her than to

Olivier: but she thought it necessary for her brother's health. She would

force him to go out once more. But their new experience would be no better

than the last, and Olivier would protest bitterly. So they stayed shut up

in the stifling town, and, in their prison-yard, they sighed for the open

fields.

* * * * *

Olivier had reached the end of his schooldays. The examinations for the

_École Normale_ were over. It was quite time. Antoinette was very tired.

She was counting on his success: her brother had everything in his favor.

At school he was regarded as one of the best pupils: and all his masters

were agreed in praising his industry and intelligence, except for a certain

want of mental discipline which made it difficult for him to bend to any

sort of plan. But the responsibility of it weighed on Olivier so heavily

that he lost his head as the examination came near. He was worn out, and

paralyzed by the fear of failure, and a morbid shyness that crept over him.

He trembled at the thought of appearing before the examiners in public. He

had always suffered from shyness: in class he would blush and choke when he

had to speak: at first he could hardly do more than answer his name. And it

was much more easy for him to reply impromptu than when he knew that he was

going to be questioned: the thought of it made him ill: his mind rushed

ahead picturing every detail of the ordeal as it would happen: and the

longer he had to wait, the more he was obsessed by it. It might be said

that he passed every examination at least twice: for he passed it in his

dreams on the night before and expended all his energy, so that he had none

left for the real examination.

But he did not even reach the _viva voce_, the very thought of which had

sent him into a cold sweat the night before. In the written examination on

a philosophical subject, which at any ordinary time would have sent him

flying off, he could not even manage to squeeze out a couple of pages in

six hours. For the first few hours his brain was empty; he could think of

nothing, nothing. It was like a blank wall against which he hurled himself

in vain. Then, an hour before the end, the wall was rent and a few rays of

light shone through the crevices. He wrote an excellent short essay, but it

was not enough to place him. When Antoinette saw the despair on his face as

he came out, she foresaw the inevitable blow, and she was as despairing as

he: but she did not show it. Even in the most desperate situations she had

always an inexhaustible capacity for hope.

Olivier was rejected.

He was crushed by it. Antoinette pretended to smile as though it were

nothing of any importance: but her lips trembled. She consoled her brother,

and told him that it was an easily remedied misfortune, and that he would

be certain to pass next year, and win a better place. She did not tell

him how vital it was to her that he should have passed, that year, or how

utterly worn out she felt in soul and body, or how uneasy she felt about

fighting through another year like that. But she had to go on. If she were

to go away before Olivier had passed he would never have the courage to go

on fighting alone: he would succumb.

She concealed her weariness from him, and even redoubled her efforts.

She wore herself to skin and bone to let him have amusement and change

during the holidays so that he might resume work with greater energy and

confidence. But at the very outset her small savings had to be broken into,

and, to make matters worse, she lost some of her most profitable pupils.

Another year!... Within sight of the final ordeal they were almost at

breaking-point. Above all, they had to live, and discover some other means

of scraping along. Antoinette accepted a situation as a governess in

Germany which had been offered her through the Nathans. It was the very

last thing she would have thought of, but nothing else offered at the time,

and she could not wait. She had never left her brother for a single day

during the last six years: and she could not imagine what life would be

like without seeing and hearing him from day to day. Olivier was terrified

when he thought of it: but he dared not say anything: it was he who had

brought it about: if he had passed Antoinette would not have been reduced

to such an extremity: he had no right to say anything, or to take into

account his own grief at the parting: it was for her to decide.

They spent the last days together in dumb anguish, as though one of them

were about to die: they hid away from each other when their sorrow was too

much for them. Antoinette gazed into Olivier's eyes for counsel. If he had

said to her: "Don't go!" she would have stayed, although she had to go. Up

to the very last moment, in the cab in which they drove to the station,

she was prepared to break her resolution: she felt that she could never go

through with it. At a word from him one word!... But he said nothing. Like

her, he set his teeth and would not budge.--She made him promise to write

to her every day, and to conceal nothing from her, and to send for her if

he were ever in the least danger.

* * * * *

They parted. While Olivier returned with a heavy heart to his school, where

it had been agreed that he should board, the train carried Antoinette,

crushed and sorrowful, towards Germany. Lying awake and staring through the

night they felt the minutes dragging them farther and farther apart, and

they called to each other in whispering voices.

Antoinette was fearful of the new world to which she was going. She had

changed much in six years. She who had once been so bold and afraid of

nothing had grown so used to silence and isolation that it hurt her to

go out into the world again. The laughing, gay, chattering Antoinette of

the old happy times had passed away with them. Unhappiness had made her

sensitive and shy. No doubt living with Olivier had infected her with his

timidity. She had had hardly anybody to talk to except her brother. She was

scared by the least little thing, and was really in a panic when she had to

pay a call. And so it was a nervous torture to her to think that she was

now going to live among strangers, to have to talk to them, to be always

with them. The poor girl had no more real vocation for teaching than her

brother: she did her work conscientiously, but her heart was not in it, and

she had not the support of feeling that there was any use in it. She was

made to love and not to teach. And no one cared for her love.

* * * * *

Nowhere was her capacity for love less in demand than in her new situation

in Germany. The Grünebaums, whose children she was engaged to teach French,

took not the slightest interest in her. They were haughty and familiar,

indifferent and indiscreet: they paid fairly well: and, as a result, they

regarded everybody in their payment as being under an obligation to them,

and thought they could do just as they liked. They treated Antoinette as a

superior sort of servant and allowed her hardly any liberty. She did not

even have a room to herself: she slept in a room adjoining that of the

children and had to leave the door open all night. She was never alone.

They had no respect for her need of taking refuge every now and then

within herself--the sacred right of every human being to preserve an inner

sanctuary of solitude. The only happiness she had lay in correspondence and

communion with her brother: she made use of every moment of liberty she

could snatch. But even that was encroached upon. As soon as she began to

write they would prowl about in her room and ask her what she was writing.

When she was reading a letter they would ask her what was in it: by their

persistent impertinent curiosity they found out about her "little brother."

She had to hide from them. Too shameful sometimes were the expedients to

which she had to resort, and the holes and crannies in which she had to

hide, in order to be able to read Olivier's letters unobserved. If she left

a letter lying in her room she was sure it would be read: and as she had

nothing she could lock except her box, she had to carry any papers she did

not want to have read about with her: they were always prying into her

business and her intimate affairs, and they were always fishing for her

secret thoughts. It was not that the Grünebaums were really interested in

her, only they thought that, as they paid her, she was their property. They

were not malicious about it: indiscretion was with them an incurable habit:

they were never offended with each other.

Nothing could have been more intolerable to Antoinette than such espionage,

such a lack of moral modesty, which made it impossible for her to escape

even for an hour a day from their curiosity. The Grünebaums were hurt by

the haughty reserve with which she treated them. Naturally they found

highly moral reasons to justify their vulgar curiosity, and to condemn

Antoinette's desire to be immune from it.

"It was their duty," they thought, "to know the private life of a girl

living under their roof, as a member of their household, to whom they

had intrusted the education of their children: they were responsible for

her."--(That is the sort of thing that so many mistresses say of their

servants, mistresses whose "responsibility" does not go so far as to

spare the unhappy girls any fatigue or work that must revolt them, but

is entirely limited to denying them every sort of pleasure.)--"And that

Antoinette should refuse to acknowledge that duty, imposed on them by

conscience, could only show," they concluded, "that she was conscious

of being not altogether beyond reproach: an honest girl has nothing to

conceal."

So Antoinette lived under a perpetual persecution, against which she was

always on her guard, so that it made her seem even more cold and reserved

than she was.

Every day her brother wrote her a twelve-page letter: and she contrived to

write to him every day even if it were only a few lines. Olivier tried hard

to be brave and not to show his grief too clearly. But he was bored and

dull. His life had always been so bound up with his sister's that, now that

she was torn from him, he seemed to have lost part of himself: he could

not use his arms, or his legs, or his brains, he could not walk, or play

the piano, or work, or do anything, not even dream--except through her. He

slaved away at his books from morning to night: but it was no good: his

thoughts were elsewhere: he would be suffering, or thinking of her, or of

the morrow's letter: he would sit staring at the clock, waiting for the

day's letter: and when it arrived his fingers would tremble with joy--with

fear, too--as he tore open the envelope. Never did lover tremble with more

tenderness and anxiety at a letter from his mistress. He would hide away,

like Antoinette, to read his letters: he would carry them about with him:

and at night he always had the last letter under his pillow, and he would

touch it from time to time to make sure that it was still there, during

the long, sleepless nights when he lay awake dreaming of his dear sister.

How far removed from her he felt! He felt that most dreadfully when

Antoinette's letters were delayed by the post and came a day late. Two

days, two nights, between them!... He exaggerated the time and the distance

because he had never traveled. His imagination would take fire:

"Heavens! If she were to fall ill! There would be time for her to die

before he could see her ... Why had she not written to him, just a line or

two, the day before?... Was she ill?... Yes. She was surely ill ..." He

would choke.--More often still he would be terrified of dying away from

her, dying alone, among people who did not care, in the horrible school,

in grim, gray Paris. He would make himself ill with the thought of it....

"Should he write and tell her to come back?"--But then he would be ashamed

of his cowardice. Besides, as soon as he began to write to her it gave him

such joy to be in communion with her that for a moment he would forget

his suffering. It seemed to him that he could see her, hear her voice: he

would tell her everything: never had he spoken to her so intimately, so

passionately, when they had been together: he would call her "my true,

brave, dear, kind, beloved, little sister," and say, "I love you so."

Indeed they were real love-letters.

Their tenderness was sweet and comforting to Antoinette: they were all the

air she had to breathe. If they did not come in the morning at the usual

time she would be miserable. Once or twice it happened that the Grünebaums,

from carelessness, or--who knows?--from a wicked desire to tease, forgot to

give them to her until the evening, and once even until the next morning:

and she worked herself into a fever.--On New Year's Day they had the same

idea, without telling each other: they planned a surprise, and each sent a

long telegram--(at vast expense)--and their messages arrived at the same

time.--Olivier always consulted Antoinette about his work and his troubles:

Antoinette gave him advice, and encouragement, and fortified him with her

strength, though indeed she had not really enough for herself.

She was stifled in the foreign country, where she knew nobody, and nobody

was interested in her, except the wife of a professor, lately come to

the town, who also felt out of her element. The good creature was kind

and motherly, and sympathetic with the brother and sister who loved each

other so and had to live apart--(for she had dragged part of her story

out of Antoinette):--but she was so noisy, so commonplace, she was so

lacking--though quite innocently--in tact and discretion that aristocratic

little Antoinette was irritated and drew back. She had no one in whom she

could confide and so all her troubles were pent up, and weighed heavily

upon her: sometimes she thought she must give way under them: but she set

her teeth and struggled on. Her health suffered: she grew very thin. Her

brother's letters became more and more downhearted. In a fit of depression

he wrote:

"Come back, come back, come back!..."

But he had hardly sent the letter off than he was ashamed of it and wrote

another begging Antoinette to tear up the first and give no further thought

to it. He even pretended to be in good spirits and not to be wanting his

sister. It hurt his umbrageous vanity to think that he might seem incapable

of doing without her.

Antoinette was not deceived: she read his every thought: but she did not

know what to do. One day she almost went to him: she went to the station to

find out what time the train left for Paris. And then she said to herself

that it was madness: the money she was earning was enough to pay for

Olivier's board: they must hold on as long as they could. She was not

strong enough to make up her mind: in the morning her courage would spring

forth again: but as the day dragged towards evening her strength would fail

her and she would think of flying to him. She was homesick,--longing for

the country that had treated her so hardly, the country that enshrined all

the relics of her past life,--and she was aching to hear the language that

her brother spoke, the language in which she told her love for him.

Then it was that a company of French actors passed through the little

German town. Antoinette, who rarely visited the theater--(she had neither

time nor taste for it)--was seized with an irresistible longing to hear her

own language spoken, to take refuge in France.