While apparently thinking of something else, Dr. Sorbier had been
listening quietly to those amazing accounts of burglaries and
daring deeds that might have been taken from the trial of Cartouche.
“Assuredly,” he exclaimed, “assuredly, I know of no viler fault nor
any meaner action than to attack a girl's innocence, to corrupt her,
to profit by a moment of unconscious weakness and of madness, when her
heart is beating like that of a frightened fawn, and her pure lips seek
those of her tempter; when she abandons herself without thinking of the
irremediable stain, nor of her fall, nor of the morrow.
“The man who has brought this about slowly, viciously, who can tell with
what science of evil, and who, in such a case, has not steadiness and
self-restraint enough to quench that flame by some icy words, who has
not sense enough for two, who cannot recover his self-possession and
master the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge
of the precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as
any man who breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the lookout for a
house left defenceless and unprotected or for some easy and dishonest
stroke of business, or as that thief whose various exploits you have
just related to us.
“I, for my part, utterly refuse to absolve him, even when extenuating
circumstances plead in his favor, even when he is carrying on a
dangerous flirtation, in which a man tries in vain to keep his balance,
not to exceed the limits of the game, any more than at lawn tennis; even
when the parts are inverted and a man's adversary is some precocious,
curious, seductive girl, who shows you immediately that she has nothing
to learn and nothing to experience, except the last chapter of love, one
of those girls from whom may fate always preserve our sons, and whom a
psychological novel writer has christened 'The Semi-Virgins.'
“It is, of course, difficult and painful for that coarse and
unfathomable vanity which is characteristic of every man, and which
might be called 'malism', not to stir such a charming fire, difficult to
act the Joseph and the fool, to turn away his eyes, and, as it were,
to put wax into his ears, like the companions of Ulysses when they were
attracted by the divine, seductive songs of the Sirens, difficult only
to touch that pretty table covered with a perfectly new cloth, at which
you are invited to take a seat before any one else, in such a suggestive
voice, and are requested to quench your thirst and to taste that new
wine, whose fresh and strange flavor you will never forget. But who
would hesitate to exercise such self-restraint if, when he rapidly
examines his conscience, in one of those instinctive returns to his
sober self in which a man thinks clearly and recovers his head, he
were to measure the gravity of his fault, consider it, think of its
consequences, of the reprisals, of the uneasiness which he would always
feel in the future, and which would destroy the repose and happiness of
his life?
“You may guess that behind all these moral reflections, such as a
graybeard like myself may indulge in, there is a story hidden, and,
sad as it is, I am sure it will interest you on account of the strange
heroism it shows.”
He was silent for a few moments, as if to classify his recollections,
and, with his elbows resting on the arms of his easy-chair and his
eyes looking into space, he continued in the slow voice of a hospital
professor who is explaining a case to his class of medical students, at
a bedside:
“He was one of those men who, as our grandfathers used to say, never met
with a cruel woman, the type of the adventurous knight who was always
foraging, who had something of the scamp about him, but who despised
danger and was bold even to rashness. He was ardent in the pursuit of
pleasure, and had an irresistible charm about him, one of those men in
whom we excuse the greatest excesses as the most natural things in the
world. He had run through all his money at gambling and with pretty
girls, and so became, as it were, a soldier of fortune. He amused
himself whenever and however he could, and was at that time quartered at
Versailles.
“I knew him to the very depths of his childlike heart, which was
only too easily seen through and sounded, and I loved him as some old
bachelor uncle loves a nephew who plays him tricks, but who knows how to
coax him. He had made me his confidant rather than his adviser, kept
me informed of his slightest pranks, though he always pretended to be
speaking about one of his friends, and not about himself; and I must
confess that his youthful impetuosity, his careless gaiety, and his
amorous ardor sometimes distracted my thoughts and made me envy the
handsome, vigorous young fellow who was so happy at being alive, that
I had not the courage to check him, to show him the right road, and to
call out to him: 'Take care!' as children do at blind man's buff.
“And one day, after one of those interminable cotillons, where the
couples do not leave each other for hours, and can disappear together
without anybody thinking of noticing them, the poor fellow at last
discovered what love was, that real love which takes up its abode in the
very centre of the heart and in the brain, and is proud of being there,
and which rules like a sovereign and a tyrannous master, and he became
desperately enamored of a pretty but badly brought up girl, who was as
disquieting and wayward as she was pretty.
“She loved him, however, or rather she idolized him despotically,
madly, with all her enraptured soul and all her being. Left to do as she
pleased by imprudent and frivolous parents, suffering from neurosis, in
consequence of the unwholesome friendships which she contracted at the
convent school, instructed by what she saw and heard and knew was going
on around her, in spite of her deceitful and artificial conduct, knowing
that neither her father nor her mother, who were very proud of their
race as well as avaricious, would ever agree to let her marry the man
whom she had taken a liking to, that handsome fellow who had little
besides vision, ideas and debts, and who belonged to the middle-class,
she laid aside all scruples, thought of nothing but of becoming his, no
matter what might be the cost.
“By degrees, the unfortunate man's strength gave way, his heart
softened, and he allowed himself to be carried away by that current
which buffeted him, surrounded him, and left him on the shore like a
waif and a stray.
“They wrote letters full of madness to each other, and not a day passed
without their meeting, either accidentally, as it seemed, or at parties
and balls. She had yielded her lips to him in long, ardent caresses,
which had sealed their compact of mutual passion.”
The doctor stopped, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears, as these
former troubles came back to his mind; and then, in a hoarse voice, he
went on, full of the horror of what he was going to relate:
“For months he scaled the garden wall, and, holding his breath and
listening for the slightest noise, like a burglar who is going to break
into a house, he went in by the servants' entrance, which she had left
open, slunk barefoot down a long passage and up the broad staircase,
which creaked occasionally, to the second story, where his sweetheart's
room was, and stayed there for hours.
“One night, when it was darker than usual, and he was hurrying lest he
should be later than the time agreed on, he knocked up against a piece
of furniture in the anteroom and upset it. It so happened that the
girl's mother had not gone to sleep, either because she had a sick
headache, or else be cause she had sat up late over some novel, and,
frightened at that unusual noise which disturbed the silence of the
house, she jumped out of bed, opened the door, saw some one indistinctly
running away and keeping close to the wall, and, immediately thinking
that there were burglars in the house, she aroused her husband and the
servants by her frantic screams. The unfortunate man understood the
situation; and, seeing what a terrible fix he was in, and preferring to
be taken for a common thief to dishonoring his adored one's name, he
ran into the drawing-room, felt on the tables and what-nots, filled
his pockets at random with valuable bric-a-brac, and then cowered down
behind the grand piano, which barred the corner of a large room.
“The servants, who had run in with lighted candles, found him, and,
overwhelming him with abuse, seized him by the collar and dragged him,
panting and apparently half dead with shame and terror, to the nearest
police station. He defended himself with intentional awkwardness when
he was brought up for trial, kept up his part with the most perfect
self-possession and without any signs of the despair and anguish that
he felt in his heart, and, condemned and degraded and made to suffer
martyrdom in his honor as a man and a soldier--he was an officer--he did
not protest, but went to prison as one of those criminals whom society
gets rid of like noxious vermin.
“He died there of misery and of bitterness of spirit, with the name of
the fair-haired idol, for whom he had sacrificed himself, on his lips,
as if it had been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his will 'to the
priest who administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to
give it to me. In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the
least lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma, and cleared
himself of those accusations the terrible burden of which he had borne
until his last breath.
“I have always thought myself, though I do not know why, that the girl
married and had several charming children, whom she brought up with the
austere strictness and in the serious piety of former days!”