CHAPTER IV. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR’S CONFESSION

“I was born in a little town in Languedoc,” the doctor resumed. “My

father had been settled there for many years, and there my early

childhood was spent. When I was eight years old I was sent to the school

of the Oratorians at Sorreze, and only left it to finish my studies

in Paris. My father had squandered his patrimony in the course of an

exceedingly wild and extravagant youth. He had retrieved his position

partly by a fortunate marriage, partly by the slow persistent thrift

characteristic of provincial life; for in the provinces people pride

themselves on accumulating rather than on spending, and all the ambition

in a man’s nature is either extinguished or directed to money-getting,

for want of any nobler end. So he had grown rich at last, and thought

to transmit to his only son all the cut-and-dried experience which he

himself had purchased at the price of his lost illusions; a noble last

illusion of age which fondly seeks to bequeath its virtues and its

wary prudence to heedless youth, intent only on the enjoyment of the

enchanted life that lies before it.

“This foresight on my father’s part led him to make plans for my

education for which I had to suffer. He sedulously concealed my

expectations of wealth from me, and during the fairest years of my

youth compelled me, for my own good, to endure the burden of anxiety and

hardship that presses upon a young man who has his own way to make in

the world. His idea in so doing was to instill the virtues of poverty

into me--patience, a thirst for learning, and a love of work for its own

sake. He hoped to teach me to set a proper value on my inheritance,

by letting me learn, in this way, all that it costs to make a fortune;

wherefore, as soon as I was old enough to understand his advice, he

urged me to choose a profession and to work steadily at it. My tastes

inclined me to the study of medicine.

“So I left Sorreze, after ten years of almost monastic discipline of

the Oratorians; and, fresh from the quiet life of a remote provincial

school, I was taken straight to the capital. My father went with me in

order to introduce me to the notice of a friend of his; and (all unknown

to me) my two elders took the most elaborate precautions against any

ebullitions of youth on my part, innocent lad though I was. My allowance

was rigidly computed on a scale based upon the absolute necessaries of

life, and I was obliged to produce my certificate of attendance at the

Ecole de Médecine before I was allowed to draw my quarter’s income. The

excuse for this sufficiently humiliating distrust was the necessity of

my acquiring methodical and business-like habits. My father, however,

was not sparing of money for all the necessary expenses of my education

and for the amusements of Parisian life.

“His old friend was delighted to have a young man to guide through

the labyrinth into which I had entered. He was one of those men whose

natures lead them to docket their thoughts, feelings, and opinions

every whit as carefully as their papers. He would turn up last year’s

memorandum book, and could tell in a moment what he had been doing a

twelvemonth since in this very month, day, and hour of the present year.

Life, for him, was a business enterprise, and he kept the books after

the most approved business methods. There was real worth in him though

he might be punctilious, shrewd, and suspicious, and though he never

lacked specious excuses for the precautionary measures that he took with

regard to me. He used to buy all my books; he paid for my lessons; and

once, when the fancy took me to learn to ride, the good soul himself

found me out a riding-school, went thither with me, and anticipated my

wishes by putting a horse at my disposal whenever I had a holiday. In

spite of all this cautious strategy, which I managed to defeat as soon

as I had any temptation to do so, the kind old man was a second father

to me.

“‘My friend,’ he said, as soon as he surmised that I should break away

altogether from my leading strings, unless he relaxed them, ‘young folk

are apt to commit follies which draw down the wrath of their elders upon

their heads, and you may happen to want money at some time or other;

if so, come to me. Your father helped me nobly once upon a time, and

I shall always have a few crowns to spare for you; but never tell any

lies, and do not be ashamed to own to your faults. I myself was young

once; we shall always get on well together, like two good comrades.’

“My father found lodgings for me with some quiet, middle-class people

in the Latin Quarter, and my room was furnished nicely enough; but this

first taste of independence, my father’s kindness, and the self-denial

which he seemed to be exercising for me, brought me but little

happiness. Perhaps the value of liberty cannot be known until it has

been experienced; and the memories of the freedom of my childhood had

been almost effaced by the irksome and dreary life at school, from which

my spirits had scarcely recovered. In addition to this, my father had

urged new tasks upon me, so that altogether Paris was an enigma. You

must acquire some knowledge of its pleasures before you can amuse

yourself in Paris.

“My real position, therefore, was quite unchanged, save that my

new _lycee_ was a much larger building, and was called the Ecole de

Médecine. Nevertheless, I studied away bravely at first; I attended

lectures diligently; I worked desperately hard and without relaxation,

so strongly was my imagination affected by the abundant treasures of

knowledge to be gained in the capital. But very soon I heedlessly

made acquaintances; danger lurks hidden beneath the rash confiding

friendships that have so strong a charm for youth, and gradually I was

drawn into the dissipated life of the capital. I became an enthusiastic

lover of the theatre; and with my craze for actors and the play, the

work of my demoralization began. The stage, in a great metropolis,

exerts a very deadly influence over the young; they never quit the

theatre save in a state of emotional excitement almost always beyond

their power to control; society and the law seem to me to be accessories

to the irregularities brought about in this way. Our legislation has

shut its eyes, so to speak, to the passions that torment a young man

between twenty and five-and-twenty years of age. In Paris he is assailed

by temptations of every kind. Religion may preach and Law may demand

that he should walk uprightly, but all his surroundings and the tone of

those about him are so many incitements to evil. Do not the best of men

and the most devout women there look upon continence as ridiculous? The

great city, in fact, seems to have set herself to give encouragement to

vice and to this alone; for a young man finds that the entrance to

every honorable career in which he might look for success is barred by

hindrances even more numerous than the snares that are continually set

for him, so that through his weaknesses he may be robbed of his money.

“For a long while I went every evening to some theatre, and little by

little I fell into idle ways. I grew more and more slack over my work;

even my most pressing tasks were apt to be put off till the morrow, and

before very long there was an end of my search after knowledge for its

own sake; I did nothing more than the work which was absolutely required

to enable me to get through the examinations that must be passed before

I could become a doctor. I attended the public lectures, but I no longer

paid any attention to the professors, who, in my opinion, were a set of

dotards. I had already broken my idols--I became a Parisian.

“To be brief, I led the aimless drifting life of a young, provincial

thrown into the heart of a great city; still retaining some good and

true feeling, still clinging more or less to the observance of certain

rules of conduct, still fighting in vain against the debasing

influence of evil examples, though I offered but a feeble, half-hearted

resistance, for the enemy had accomplices within me. Yes, sir, my face

is not misleading; past storms have plainly left their traces there.

Yet, since I had drunk so deeply of the pure fountain of religion in

my early youth, I was haunted in the depths of my soul, through all my

wanderings, by an ideal of moral perfection which could not fail one day

to bring me back to God by the paths of weariness and remorse. Is not he

who feels the pleasures of earth most keenly, sure to be attracted, soon

or late, by the fruits of heaven?

“At first I went through the experience, more or less vivid, that always

comes with youth--the countless moments of exultation, the unnumbered

transports of despair. Sometimes I took my vehement energy of feeling

for a resolute will, and over-estimated my powers; sometimes, at the

mere sight of some trifling obstacle with which I was about to come into

collision, I was far more cast down than I ought to have been. Then

I would devise vast plans, would dream of glory, and betake myself to

work; but a pleasure party would divert me from the noble projects based

on so infirm a purpose. Vague recollections of these great abortive

schemes of mine left a deceptive glow in my soul and fostered my belief

in myself, without giving me the energy to produce. In my indolent

self-sufficiency I was in a very fair way to become a fool, for what is

a fool but a man who fails to justify the excellent opinion which he has

formed of himself? My energy was directed towards no definite aims; I

wished for the flowers of life without the toil of cultivating them. I

had no idea of the obstacles, so I imagined that everything was easy;

luck, I thought, accounted for success in science and in business, and

genius was charlatanism. I took it for granted that I should be a

great man, because there was the power of becoming one within me; so I

discounted all my future glory, without giving a thought to the patience

required for the conception of a great work, nor of the execution, in

the course of which all the difficulties of the task appear.

“The sources of my amusements were soon exhausted. The charm of the

theatre does not last for very long; and, for a poor student, Paris

shortly became an empty wilderness. They were dull and uninteresting

people that I met with in the circle of the family with whom I lived;

but these, and an old man who had now lost touch with the world, were

all the society that I had.

“So, like every young man who takes a dislike to the career marked out

for him, I rambled about the streets for whole days together; I strolled

along the quays, through the museums and public gardens, making no

attempt to arrive at a clear understanding of my position, and without

a single definite idea in my head. The burden of unemployed energies is

more felt at that age than at any other; there is such an abundance of

vitality running to waste, so much activity without result. I had no

idea of the power that a resolute will puts into the hands of a man in

his youth; for when he has ideas and puts his whole heart and soul into

the work of carrying them out, his strength is yet further increased by

the undaunted courage of youthful convictions.

“Childhood in its simplicity knows nothing of the perils of life; youth

sees both its vastness and its difficulties, and at the prospect

the courage of youth sometimes flags. We are still serving our

apprenticeship to life; we are new to the business, a kind of

faint-heartedness overpowers us, and leaves us in an almost dazed

condition of mind. We feel that we are helpless aliens in a strange

country. At all ages we shrink back involuntarily from the unknown.

And a young man is very much like the soldier who will walk up to the

cannon’s mouth, and is put to flight by a ghost. He hesitates among the

maxims of the world. The rules of attack and of self-defence are alike

unknown to him; he can neither give nor take; he is attracted by women,

and stands in awe of them; his very good qualities tell against him,

he is all generosity and modesty, and completely innocent of mercenary

designs. Pleasure and not interest is his object when he tells a lie;

and among many dubious courses, the conscience, with which as yet he has

not juggled, points out to him the right way, which he is slow to take.

“There are men whose lives are destined to be shaped by the impulses of

their hearts, rather than by any reasoning process that takes place in

their heads, and such natures as these will remain for a long while in

the position that I have described. This was my own case. I became the

plaything of two contending impulses; the desires of youth were always

held in check by a faint-hearted sentimentality. Life in Paris is a

cruel ordeal for impressionable natures, the great inequalities of

fortune or of position inflame their souls and stir up bitter feelings.

In that world of magnificence and pettiness envy is more apt to be a

dagger than a spur. You are bound either to fall a victim or to become a

partisan in this incessant strife of ambitions, desires, and hatreds,

in the midst of which you are placed; and by slow degrees the picture

of vice triumphant and virtue made ridiculous produces its effect on

a young man, and he wavers; life in Paris soon rubs the bloom from

conscience, the infernal work of demoralization has begun, and is

soon accomplished. The first of pleasures, that which at the outset

comprehends all the others, is set about with such perils that it is

impossible not to reflect upon the least actions which it provokes,

impossible not to calculate all its consequences. These calculations

lead to selfishness. If some poor student, carried away by an

impassioned enthusiasm, is fain to rise above selfish considerations,

the suspicious attitude of those about him makes him pause and doubt;

it is so hard not to share their mistrust, so difficult not to be on

his guard against his own generous thoughts. His heart is seared and

contracted by this struggle, the current of life sets toward the brain,

and the callousness of the Parisian is the result--the condition of

things in which schemes for power and wealth are concealed by the most

charming frivolity, and lurk beneath the sentimental transports that

take the place of enthusiasm. The simplest-natured woman in Paris always

keeps a clear head even in the intoxication of happiness.

“This atmosphere was bound to affect my opinions and my conduct. The

errors that have poisoned my life would have lain lightly on many a

conscience, but we in the South have a religious faith that leads us to

believe in a future life, and in the truths set forth by the Catholic

Church. These beliefs give depth and gravity to every feeling, and to

remorse a terrible and lasting power.

“The army were masters of society at the time when I was studying

medicine. In order to shine in women’s eyes, one had to be a colonel at

the very least. A poor student counted for absolutely nothing. Goaded by

the strength of my desires, and finding no outlet for them; hampered at

every step and in every wish by the want of money; looking on study and

fame as too slow a means of arriving at the pleasures that tempted

me; drawn one way by my inward scruples, and another by evil examples;

meeting with every facility for low dissipation, and finding nothing

but hindrances barring the way to good society, I passed my days

in wretchedness, overwhelmed by a surging tumult of desires, and by

indolence of the most deadly kind, utterly cast down at times, only to

be as suddenly elated.

“The catastrophe which at length put an end to this crisis was

commonplace enough. The thought of troubling the peace of a household

has always been repugnant to me; and not only so, I could not dissemble

my feelings, the instinct of sincerity was too strong in me; I should

have found it a physical impossibility to lead a life of glaring

falsity. There is for me but little attraction in pleasures that must be

snatched. I wish for full consciousness of my happiness. I led a life

of solitude, for which there seemed to be no remedy; for I shrank

from openly vicious courses, and the many efforts that I made to enter

society were all in vain. There I might have met with some woman who

would have undertaken the task of teaching me the perils of every path,

who would have formed my manners, counseled me without wounding my

vanity, and introduced me everywhere where I was likely to make friends

who would be useful to me in my future career. In my despair, an

intrigue of the most dangerous kind would perhaps have had its

attractions for me; but even peril was out of my reach. My inexperience

sent me back again to my solitude, where I dwelt face to face with my

thwarted desires.

“At last I formed a connection, at first a secret one, with a girl, whom

I persuaded, half against her will, to share my life. Her people were

worthy folk, who had but small means. It was not very long before she

left her simple sheltered life, and fearlessly intrusted me with a

future that virtue would have made happy and fair; thinking, no doubt,

that my narrow income was the surest guarantee of my faithfulness to

her. From that moment the tempest that had raged within me ceased, and

happiness lulled my wild desires and ambitions to sleep. Such happiness

is only possible for a young man who is ignorant of the world, who knows

nothing as yet of its accepted codes nor of the strength of prejudice;

but while it lasts, his happiness is as all-absorbing as a child’s. Is

not first love like a return of childhood across the intervening years

of anxiety and toil?

“There are men who learn life at a glance, who see it for what it is at

once, who learn experience from the mistakes of others, who apply the

current maxims of worldly wisdom to their own case with signal success,

and make unerring forecasts at all times. Wise in their generation are

such cool heads as these! But there is also a luckless race endowed with

the impressionable, keenly-sensitive temperament of the poet; these are

the natures that fall into error, and to this latter class I belonged.

There was no great depth in the feeling that first drew me towards this

poor girl; I followed my instinct rather than my heart when I sacrificed

her to myself, and I found no lack of excellent reasons wherewith to

persuade myself that there was no harm whatever in what I had done. And

as for her--she was devotion itself, a noble soul with a clear, keen

intelligence and a heart of gold. She never counseled me other than

wisely. Her love put fresh heart into me from the first; she foretold a

splendid future of success and fortune for me, and gently constrained me

to take up my studies again by her belief in me. In these days there is

scarcely a branch of science that has no bearing upon medicine; it is a

difficult task to achieve distinction, but the reward is great, for in

Paris fame always means fortune. The unselfish girl devoted herself

to me, shared in every interest, even the slightest, of my life, and

managed so carefully and wisely that we lived in comfort on my narrow

income. I had more money to spare, now that there were two of us, than

I had ever had while I lived by myself. Those were my happiest days. I

worked with enthusiasm, I had a definite aim before me, I had found the

encouragement I needed. Everything I did or thought I carried to her,

who had not only found the way to gain my love, but above and beyond

this had filled me with sincere respect for her by the modest discretion

which she displayed in a position where discretion and modesty seemed

well-nigh impossible. But one day was like another, sir; and it is only

after our hears have passed through all the storms appointed for us that

we know the value of a monotonous happiness, and learn that life holds

nothing more sweet for us than this; a calm happiness in which the

fatigue of existence is felt no longer, and the inmost thoughts of

either find response in the other’s soul.

“My former dreams assailed me again. They were my own vehement longings

for the pleasures of wealth that awoke, though it was in love’s name

that I now asked for them. In the evenings I grew abstracted and moody,

rapt in imaginings of the pleasures I could enjoy if I were rich,

and thoughtlessly gave expression to my desires in answer to a tender

questioning voice. I must have drawn a painful sigh from her who had

devoted herself to my happiness; for she, sweet soul, felt nothing more

cruelly than the thought that I wished for something that she could not

give me immediately. Oh! sir, a woman’s devotion is sublime!”

There was a sharp distress in the doctor’s exclamation which seemed

prompted by some recollection of his own; he paused for a brief while,

and Genestas respected his musings.

“Well, sir,” Benassis resumed, “something happened which should have

concluded the marriage thus begun; but instead of that it put an end to

it, and was the cause of all my misfortunes. My father died and left

me a large fortune. The necessary business arrangements demanded my

presence in Languedoc for several months, and I went thither alone.

At last I had regained my freedom! Even the mildest yoke is galling

to youth; we do not see its necessity any more than we see the need to

work, until we have had some experience of life. I came and went without

giving an account of my actions to any one; there was no need to do so

now unless I wished, and I relished liberty with all the keen capacity

for enjoyment that we have in Languedoc. I did not absolutely forget the

ties that bound me; but I was so absorbed in other matters of interest,

that my mind was distracted from them, and little by little the

recollection of them faded away. Letters full of heartfelt tenderness

reached me; but at two-and-twenty a young man imagines that all women

are alike tender; he does not know love from a passing infatuation; all

things are confused in the sensations of pleasure which seem at first

to comprise everything. It was only later, when I came to a clearer

knowledge of men and of things as they are, that I could estimate those

noble letters at their just worth. No trace of selfishness was mingled

with the feeling expressed in them; there was nothing but gladness on

my account for my change of fortune, and regret on her own; it never

occurred to her that I could change towards her, for she felt that she

herself was incapable of change. But even then I had given myself up to

ambitious dreams; I thought of drinking deeply of all the delights that

wealth could give, of becoming a person of consequence, of making a

brilliant marriage. So I read the letters, and contented myself with

saying, ‘She is very fond of me,’ with the indifference of a coxcomb.

Even then I was perplexed as to how to extricate myself from this

entanglement; I was ashamed of it, and this fact as well as my

perplexity led me to be cruel. We begin by wounding the victim, and then

we kill it, that the sight of our cruelty may no longer put us to the

blush. Late reflections upon those days of error have unveiled for me

many a dark depth in the human heart. Yes, believe me, those who best

have fathomed the good and evil in human nature have honestly examined

themselves in the first instance. Conscience is the starting-point of

our investigations; we proceed from ourselves to others, never from

others to ourselves.

“When I returned to Paris I took up my abode in a large house which,

in pursuance with my orders, had been taken for me, and the one person

interested in my return and change of address was not informed of it. I

wished to cut a figure among young men of fashion. I waited a few

days to taste the first delights of wealth; and when, flushed with the

excitement of my new position, I felt that I could trust myself to do

so, I went to see the poor girl whom I meant to cast off. With a woman’s

quickness she saw what was passing in my mind, and hid her tears from

me. She could not but have despised me; but it was her nature to be

gentle and kindly, and she never showed her scorn. Her forbearance was a

cruel punishment. An unresisting victim is not a pleasant thing; whether

the murder is done decorously in the drawing-room, or brutally on the

highway, there should be a struggle to give some plausible excuse for

taking a life. I renewed my visits very affectionately at first, making

efforts to be gracious, if not tender; by slow degrees I became politely

civil; and one day, by a sort of tacit agreement between us, she allowed

me to treat her as a stranger, and I thought that I had done all that

could be expected of me. Nevertheless I abandoned myself to my new life

with almost frenzied eagerness, and sought to drown in gaiety any vague

lingering remorse that I felt. A man who has lost his self-respect

cannot endure his own society, so I led the dissipated life that wealthy

young men lead in Paris. Owing to a good education and an excellent

memory, I seemed cleverer than I really was, forthwith I looked down

upon other people; and those who, for their own purposes, wished to

prove to me that I was possessed of extraordinary abilities, found

me quite convinced on that head. Praise is the most insidious of all

methods of treachery known to the world; and this is nowhere better

understood than in Paris, where intriguing schemers know how to stifle

every kind of talent at its birth by heaping laurels on its cradle. So

I did nothing worthy of my reputation; I reaped no advantages from the

golden opinions entertained of me, and made no acquaintances likely

to be useful in my future career. I wasted my energies in numberless

frivolous pursuits, and in the short-lived love intrigues that are the

disgrace of salons in Paris, where every one seeks for love, grows blase

in the pursuit, falls into the libertinism sanctioned by polite society,

and ends by feeling as much astonished at real passion as the world is

over a heroic action. I did as others did. Often I dealt to generous and

candid souls the deadly wound from which I myself was slowly perishing.

Yet though deceptive appearances might lead others to misjudge me, I

could never overcome my scrupulous delicacy. Many times I have been

duped, and should have blushed for myself had it been otherwise; I

secretly prided myself on acting in good faith, although this lowered me

in the eyes of others. As a matter of fact the world has a considerable

respect for cleverness, whatever form it takes, and success justifies

everything. So the world was pleased to attribute to me all the good

qualities and evil propensities, all the victories and defeats which had

never been mine; credited me with conquests of which I knew nothing, and

sat in judgment upon actions of which I had never been guilty. I scorned

to contradict the slanders, and self-love led me to regard the more

flattering rumors with a certain complacence. Outwardly my existence was

pleasant enough, but in reality I was miserable. If it had not been for

the tempest of misfortunes that very soon burst over my head, all

good impulses must have perished, and evil would have triumphed in the

struggle that went on within me; enervating self-indulgence would have

destroyed the body, as the detestable habits of egotism exhausted the

springs of the soul. But I was ruined financially. This was how it came

about.

“No matter how large his fortune may be, a man is sure to find some one

else in Paris possessed of yet greater wealth, whom he must needs aim at

surpassing. In this unequal conquest I was vanquished at the end of four

years; and, like many another harebrained youngster, I was obliged to

sell part of my property and to mortgage the remainder to satisfy my

creditors. Then a terrible blow suddenly struck me down.

“Two years had passed since I had last seen the woman whom I had

deserted. The turn that my affairs were taking would no doubt have

brought me back to her once more; but one evening, in the midst of a gay

circle of acquaintances, I received a note written in a trembling hand.

It only contained these few words:

“‘I have only a very little while to live, and I should like to see

you, my friend, so that I may know what will become of my child--whether

henceforward he will be yours; and also to soften the regret that some

day you might perhaps feel for my death.’

“The letter made me shudder. It was a revelation of secret anguish in

the past, while it contained a whole unknown future. I set out on

foot, I would not wait for my carriage, I went across Paris, goaded by

remorse, and gnawed by a dreadful fear that was confirmed by the first

sight of my victim. In the extreme neatness and cleanliness beneath

which she had striven to hid her poverty I read all the terrible

sufferings of her life; she was nobly reticent about them in her effort

to spare my feelings, and only alluded to them after I had solemnly

promised to adopt our child. She died, sir, in spite of all the care

lavished upon her, and all that science could suggest was done for her

in vain. The care and devotion that had come too late only served to

render her last moments less bitter.

“To support her little one she had worked incessantly with her needle.

Love for her child had given her strength to endure her life of

hardship; but it had not enabled her to bear my desertion, the keenest

of all her griefs. Many times she had thought of trying to see me, but

her woman’s pride had always prevented this. While I squandered floods

of gold upon my caprices, no memory of the past had ever bidden a single

drop to fall in her home to help mother and child to live; but she had

been content to weep, and had not cursed me; she had looked upon her

evil fortune as the natural punishment of her error. With the aid of a

good priest of Saint Sulpice, whose kindly voice had restored peace to

her soul, she had sought for hope in the shadow of the altar, whither

she had gone to dry her tears. The bitter flood that I had poured into

her heart gradually abated; and one day, when she heard her child say

‘Father,’ a word that she had not taught him, she forgave my crime. But

sorrow and weeping and days and nights of ceaseless toil injured her

health. Religion had brought its consolations and the courage to bear

the ills of life, but all too late. She fell ill of a heart complaint

brought on by grief and by the strain of expectation, for she always

thought that I should return, and her hopes always sprang up afresh

after every disappointment. Her health grew worse; and at last, as she

was lying on her deathbed, she wrote those few lines, containing no word

of reproach, prompted by religion, and by a belief in the goodness in my

nature. She knew, she said, that I was blinded rather than bent on doing

wrong. She even accused herself of carrying her womanly pride too far.

‘If I had only written sooner,’ she said, ‘perhaps there might have been

time for a marriage which would have legitimated our child.’

“It was only on her child’s account that she wished for the

solemnization of the ties that bound us, nor would she have sought for

this if she had not felt that death was at hand to unloose them. But

it was too late; even then she had only a few hours to live. By her

bedside, where I learned to know the worth of a devoted heart, my nature

underwent a final change. I was still at an age when tears are shed.

During those last days, while the precious life yet lingered, my

tears, my words, and everything I did bore witness to my heartstricken

repentance. The meanness and pettiness of the society in which I had

moved, the emptiness and selfishness of women of fashion, had taught me

to wish for and to seek an elect soul, and now I had found it--too late.

I was weary of lying words and of masked faces; counterfeit passion

had set me dreaming; I had called on love; and now I beheld love lying

before me, slain by my own hands, and had no power to keep it beside me,

no power to keep what was so wholly mine.

“The experience of four years had taught me to know my own real

character. My temperament, the nature of my imagination, my religious

principles, which had not been eradicated, but had rather lain

dormant; my turn of mind, my heart that only now began to make itself

felt--everything within me led me to resolve to fill my life with

the pleasures of affection, to replace a lawless love by family

happiness--the truest happiness on earth. Visions of close and dear

companionship appealed to me but the more strongly for my wanderings

in the wilderness, my grasping at pleasures unennobled by thought or

feeling. So though the revolution within me was rapidly effected, it

was permanent. With my southern temperament, warped by the life I led in

Paris, I should certainly have come to look without pity on an unhappy

girl betrayed by her lover; I should have laughed at the story if it

had been told me by some wag in merry company (for with us in France

a clever bon mot dispels all feelings of horror at a crime), but all

sophistries were silenced in the presence of this angelic creature,

against whom I could bring no least word of reproach. There stood her

coffin, and my child, who did not know that I had murdered his mother,

and smiled at me.

“She died. She died happy when she saw that I loved her, and that this

new love was due neither to pity nor to the ties that bound us together.

Never shall I forget her last hours. Love had been won back, her mind

was at rest about her child, and happiness triumphed over suffering.

The comfort and luxury about her, the merriment of her child, who looked

prettier still in the dainty garb that had replaced his baby-clothes,

were pledges of a happy future for the little one, in whom she saw her

own life renewed.

“The curate of Saint Sulpice witnessed my terrible distress. His words

well-nigh made me despair. He did not attempt to offer conventional

consolation, and put the gravity of my responsibilities unsparingly

before me, but I had no need of a spur. The conscience within me spoke

loudly enough already. A woman had placed a generous confidence in me.

I had lied to her from the first; I had told her that I loved her, and

then I had cast her off; I had brought all this sorrow upon an unhappy

girl who had braved the opinion of the world for me, and who therefore

should have been sacred in my eyes. She had died forgiving me. Her

implicit trust in the word of a man who had once before broken his

promise to her effaced the memory of all her pain and grief, and she

slept in peace. Agatha, who had given me her girlish faith, had found in

her heart another faith to give me--the faith of a mother. Oh! sir, the

child, _her_ child! God alone can know all that he was to me! The dear

little one was like his mother; he had her winning grace in his little

ways, his talk and ideas; but for me, my child was not only a child, but

something more; was he not the token of my forgiveness, my honor?

“He should have more than a father’s affection. He should be loved as

his mother would have loved him. My remorse might change to happiness if

I could only make him feel that his mother’s arms were still about him.

I clung to him with all the force of human love and the hope of heaven,

with all the tenderness in my heart that God has given to mothers. The

sound of the child’s voice made me tremble. I used to watch him while

he slept with a sense of gladness that was always new, albeit a tear

sometimes fell on his forehead; I taught him to come to say his prayer

upon my bed as soon as he awoke. How sweet and touching were the simple

words of the _Pater noster_ in the innocent childish mouth! Ah! and at

times how terrible! ‘_Our Father which art in heaven_,’ he began one

morning; then he paused--‘Why is it not _our mother_?’ he asked, and my

heart sank at his words.

“From the very first I had sown the seeds of future misfortune in

the life of the son whom I idolized. Although the law has almost

countenanced errors of youth by conceding to tardy regret a legal status

to natural children, the insurmountable prejudices of society bring a

strong force to the support of the reluctance of the law. All serious

reflection on my part as to the foundations and mechanism of society, on

the duties of man, and vital questions of morality date from this period

of my life. Genius comprehends at first sight the connection between a

man’s principles and the fate of the society of which he forms a part;

devout souls are inspired by religion with the sentiments necessary for

their happiness; but vehement and impulsive natures can only be schooled

by repentance. With repentance came new light for me; and I, who only

lived for my child, came through that child to think over great social

questions.

“I determined from the first that he should have all possible means of

success within himself, and that he should be thoroughly prepared to

take the high position for which I destined him. He learned English,

German, Italian, and Spanish in succession; and, that he might speak

these languages correctly, tutors belonging to each of these various

nationalities were successively placed about him from his earliest

childhood. His aptitude delighted me. I took advantage of it to give

him lessons in the guise of play. I wished to keep his mind free from

fallacies, and strove before all things to accustom him from childhood

to exert his intellectual powers, to make a rapid and accurate general

survey of a matter, and then, by a careful study of every least

particular, to master his subject in detail. Lastly, I taught him to

submit to discipline without murmuring. I never allowed an impure or

improper word to be spoken in his hearing. I was careful that all his

surroundings, and the men with whom he came in contact, should conduce

to one end--to ennoble his nature, to set lofty ideals before him, to

give him a love of truth and a horror of lies, to make him simple and

natural in manner, as in word and deed. His natural aptitude had made

his other studies easy to him, and his imagination made him quick to

grasp these lessons that lay outside the province of the schoolroom.

What a fair flower to tend! How great are the joys that mothers know!

In those days I began to understand how his own mother had been able to

live and to bear her sorrow. This, sir, was the great event of my life;

and now I am coming to the tragedy which drove me hither.

“It is the most ordinary commonplace story imaginable; but to me it

meant the most terrible pain. For some years I had thought of nothing

but my child, and how to make a man of him; then, when my son was

growing up and about to leave me, I grew afraid of my loneliness. Love

was a necessity of my existence; this need for affection had never been

satisfied, and only grew stronger with years. I was in every way capable

of a real attachment; I had been tried and proved. I knew all that

a steadfast love means, the love that delights to find a pleasure in

self-sacrifice; in everything I did my first thought would always be

for the woman I loved. In imagination I was fain to dwell on the serene

heights far above doubt and uncertainty, where love so fills two beings

that happiness flows quietly and evenly into their life, their looks,

and words. Such love is to a life what religion is to the soul; a vital

force, a power that enlightens and upholds. I understood the love of

husband and wife in nowise as most people do; for me its full beauty and

magnificence began precisely at the point where love perishes in many a

household. I deeply felt the moral grandeur of a life so closely shared

by two souls that the trivialities of everyday existence should be

powerless against such lasting love as theirs. But where will the hearts

be found whose beats are so nearly _isochronous_ (let the scientific

term pass) that they may attain to this beatific union? If they exist,

nature and chance have set them far apart, so that they cannot come

together; they find each other too late, or death comes too soon to

separate them. There must be some good reasons for these dispensations

of fate, but I have never sought to discover them. I cannot make a

study of my wound, because I suffer too much from it. Perhaps perfect

happiness is a monster which our species should not perpetuate. There

were other causes for my fervent desire for such a marriage as this. I

had no friends, the world for me was a desert. There is something in me

that repels friendship. More than one person has sought me out, but, in

spite of efforts on my part, it came to nothing. With many men I have

been careful to show no sign of something that is called ‘superiority;’

I have adapted my mind to theirs; I have placed myself at their point of

view, joined in their laughter, and overlooked their defects; any fame I

might have gained, I would have bartered for a little kindly affection.

They parted from me without regret. If you seek for real feeling in

Paris, snares await you everywhere, and the end is sorrow. Wherever I

set my foot, the ground round about me seemed to burn. My readiness to

acquiesce was considered weakness though if I unsheathed my talons, like

a man conscious that he may some day wield the thunderbolts of power, I

was thought ill-natured; to others, the delightful laughter that

ceases with youth, and in which in later years we are almost ashamed to

indulge, seemed absurd, and they amused themselves at my expense. People

may be bored nowadays, but none the less they expect you to treat every

trivial topic with befitting seriousness.

“A hateful era! You must bow down before mediocrity, frigidly polite

mediocrity which you despise--and obey. On more mature reflection, I

have discovered the reasons of these glaring inconsistencies. Mediocrity

is never out of fashion, it is the daily wear of society; genius and

eccentricity are ornaments that are locked away and only brought out on

certain days. Everything that ventures forth beyond the protection of

the grateful shadow of mediocrity has something startling about it.

“So, in the midst of Paris, I led a solitary life. I had given up

everything to society, but it had given me nothing in return; and my

child was not enough to satisfy my heart, because I was not a woman. My

life seemed to be growing cold within me; I was bending under a load of

secret misery when I met the woman who was to make me know the might of

love, the reverence of an acknowledged love, love with its teeming hopes

of happiness--in one word--love.

“I had renewed my acquaintance with that old friend of my father’s who

had once taken charge of my affairs. It was in his house that I first

met her whom I must love as long as life shall last. The longer we live,

sir, the more clearly we see the enormous influence of ideas upon the

events of life. Prejudices, worthy of all respect, and bred by noble

religious ideas, occasioned my misfortunes. This young girl belonged to

an exceeding devout family, whose views of Catholicism were due to the

spirit of a sect improperly styled Jansenists, which, in former times,

caused troubles in France. You know why?”

“No,” said Genestas.

“Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, once wrote a book which was believed to

contain propositions at variance with the doctrines of the Holy See.

When examined at a later date, there appeared to be nothing heretical in

the wording of the text, some authors even went so far as to deny that

the heretical propositions had any real existence. However it was,

these insignificant disputes gave rise to two parties in the Gallican

Church--the Jansenists and the Jesuits. Great men were found in either

camp, and a struggle began between two powerful bodies. The Jansenists

affected an excessive purity of morals and of doctrine, and accused the

Jesuits of preaching a relaxed morality. The Jansenists, in fact, were

Catholic Puritans, if two contradictory terms can be combined. During

the Revolution, the Concordat occasioned an unimportant schism, a little

segregation of ultra-catholics who refused to recognize the Bishops

appointed by the authorities with the consent of the Pope. This little

body of the faithful was called the Little Church; and those within its

fold, like the Jansenists, led the strictly ordered lives that appear

to be a first necessity of existence in all proscribed and persecuted

sects. Many Jansenist families had joined the Little Church. The

family to which this young girl belonged had embraced the equally rigid

doctrines of both these Puritanisms, tenets which impart a stern dignity

to the character and mien of those who hold them. It is the nature of

positive doctrine to exaggerate the importance of the most ordinary

actions of life by connecting them with ideas of a future existence.

This is the source of a splendid and delicate purity of heart, a respect

for others and for self, of an indescribably keen sense of right and

wrong, a wide charity, together with a justice so stern that it might

well be called inexorable, and lastly, a perfect hatred of lies and of

all the vices comprised by falsehood.

“I can recall no more delightful moments than those of our first meeting

at my old friend’s house. I beheld for the first time this shy young

girl with her sincere nature, her habits of ready obedience. All the

virtues peculiar to the sect to which she belonged shone in her, but

she seemed to be unconscious of her merit. There was a grace, which no

austerity could diminish, about every movement of her lissome, slender

form; her quiet brow, the delicate grave outlines of her face, and her

clearly cut features indicated noble birth; her expression was gentle

and proud; her thick hair had been simply braided, the coronet of plaits

about her head served, all unknown to her, as an adornment. Captain, she

was for me the ideal type that is always made real for us in the woman

with whom we fall in love; for when we love, is it not because we

recognize beauty that we have dreamed of, the beauty that has existed

in idea for us is realized? When I spoke to her, she answered simply,

without shyness or eagerness; she did not know the pleasure it was to

me to see her, to hear the musical sounds of her voice. All these angels

are revealed to our hearts by the same signs; by the sweetness of their

tongues, the tenderness in their eyes, by their fair, pale faces, and

their gracious ways. All these things are so blended and mingled that

we feel the charm of their presence, yet cannot tell in what that charm

consists, and every movement is an expression of a divine soul within.

I loved passionately. This newly awakened love satisfied all my restless

longings, all my ambitious dreams. She was beautiful, wealthy, and nobly

born; she had been carefully brought up; she had all the qualifications

which the world positively demands of a woman placed in the high

position which I desired to reach; she had been well educated, she

expressed herself with a sprightly facility at once rare and common

in France; where the most prettily worded phrases of many women are

emptiness itself, while her bright talk was full of sense. Above all,

she had a deep consciousness of her own dignity which made others

respect her; I know of no more excellent thing in a wife. I must stop,

captain; no one can describe the woman he loves save very imperfectly,

preexistent mysteries which defy analysis lie between them.

“I very soon took my old friend into my confidence. He introduced me to

her family, and gave me the countenance of his honorable character. I

was received at first with the frigid politeness characteristic of those

exclusive people who never forsake those whom they have once admitted to

their friendship. As time went on they welcomed me almost as one of the

family; this mark of their esteem was won by my behavior in the matter.

In spite of my passionate love, I did nothing that could lower me in my

own eyes; I did not cringe, I paid no court to those upon whom my fate

depended, before all things I showed myself a man, and not other than

I really was. When I was well known to them, my old friend, who was as

desirous as I myself that my life of melancholy loneliness should come

to an end, spoke of my hopes and met with a favorable reception; but

with the diplomatic shrewdness which is almost a second nature with men

of the world, he was silent with regard to an error of my youth, as he

termed it. He was anxious to bring about a ‘satisfactory marriage’ for

me, an expression that makes of so solemn an act a business transaction

in which husband and wife endeavor to cheat each other. In his opinion,

the existence of my child would excite a moral repugnance, in comparison

with which the question of money would be as nought, and the whole

affair would be broken off at once, and he was right.

“‘It is a matter which will be very easily settled between you and your

wife; it will be easy to obtain her full and free forgiveness,’ he said.

“In short, he tried to silence my scruples, and all the insidious

arguments that worldly wisdom could suggest were brought to bear upon me

to this end. I will confess to you, sir, that in spite of my promise, my

first impulse was to act straightforwardly and to make everything

known to the head of the family, but the thought of his uncompromising

sternness made me pause, and the probable consequences of the confession

appalled me; my courage failed, I temporized with my conscience, I

determined to wait until I was sufficiently sure of the affection of

the girl I hoped to win, before hazarding my happiness by the terrible

confession. My resolution to acknowledge everything openly, at a

convenient season, vindicated the sophistries of worldly wisdom and the

sagacity of my old friend. So the young girl’s parents received me as

their future son-in-law without, as yet, taking their friends into their

confidence.

“An infinite discretion is the distinguishing quality of pious families;

they are reticent about everything, even about matters of no importance.

You would not believe, sir, how this sedate gravity and reserve,

pervading every least action, deepens the current of feeling and

thought. Everything in that house was done with some useful end in view;

the women spent their leisure time in making garments for the poor;

their conversation was never frivolous; laughter was not banished, but

there was a kindly simplicity about their merriment. Their talk had

none of the piquancy which scandal and ill-natured gossip give to the

conversation of society; only the father and uncle read the newspapers,

even the most harmless journal contains references to crimes or to

public evils, and she whom I hoped to win had never cast her eyes over

their sheets. How strange it was, at first, to listen to these orthodox

people! But in a little while, the pure atmosphere left the same

impression upon the soul that subdued colors give to the eyes, a sense

of serene repose and of tranquil peace.

“To a superficial observer, their life would have seemed terribly

monotonous. There was something chilling about the appearance of the

interior of the house. Day after day I used to see everything, even the

furniture in constant use, always standing in the same place, and this

uniform tidiness pervaded the smallest details. Yet there was something

very attractive about their household ways. I had been used to the

pleasures of variety, to the luxury and stir of life in Paris; it was

only when I had overcome my first repugnance that I saw the advantages

of this existence; how it lent itself to continuity of thought and to

involuntary meditation; how a life in which the heart has undisturbed

sway seems to widen and grow vast as the sea. It is like the life of the

cloister, where the outward surroundings never vary, and thought is

thus compelled to detach itself from outward things and to turn to the

infinite that lies within the soul!

“For a man as sincerely in love as I was, the silence and simplicity of

the life, the almost conventual regularity with which the same things

are done daily at the same hours, only deepened and strengthened love.

In that profound calm the interest attaching to the least action, word,

or gesture became immense. I learned to know that, in the interchange of

glances and in answering smiles, there lies an eloquence and a variety

of language far beyond the possibilities of the most magnificent of

spoken phrases; that when the expression of the feelings is spontaneous

and unforced, there is no idea, no joy nor sorrow that cannot thus be

communicated by hearts that understand each other. How many times I have

tried to set forth my soul in my eyes or on my lips, compelled at once

to speak and to be silent concerning my passion; for the young girl who,

in my presence, was always serene and unconscious had not been informed

of the reason of my constant visits; her parents were determined that

the most important decision of her life should rest entirely with her.

But does not the presence of our beloved satisfy the utmost desire of

passionate love? In that presence do we not know the happiness of the

Christian who stands before God? If for me more than for any other it

was torture to have no right to give expression to the impulses of

my heart, to force back into its depths the burning words that

treacherously wrong the yet more ardent emotions which strive to find

an utterance in speech; I found, nevertheless, in the merest trifles

a channel through which my passionate love poured itself forth but the

more vehemently for this constraint, till every least occurrence came to

have an excessive importance.

“I beheld her, not for brief moments, but for whole hours. There were

pauses between my question and her answer, and long musings, when, with

the tones of her voice lingering in my ears, I sought to divine from

them the secret of her inmost thoughts; perhaps her fingers would

tremble as I gave her some object of which she had been in search, or

I would devise pretexts to lightly touch her dress or her hair, to take

her hand in mine, to compel her to speak more than she wished; all these

nothings were great events for me. Eyes and voice and gestures were

freighted with mysterious messages of love in hours of ecstasy like

these, and this was the only language permitted me by the quiet maidenly

reserve of the young girl before me. Her manner towards me underwent no

change; with me she was always as a sister with a brother; yet, as my

passion grew, and the contrast between her glances and mine, her words

and my utterance, became more striking, I felt at last that this timid

silence was the only means by which she could express her feelings.

Was she not always in the salon whenever I came? Did she not stay there

until my visit, expected and perhaps foreseen, was over? Did not this

mute tryst betray the secret of her innocent soul? Nay, whilst I spoke,

did she not listen with a pleasure which she could not hide?

“At last, no doubt, her parents grew impatient with this artless

behavior and sober love-making. I was almost as timid as their daughter,

and perhaps on this account found favor in their eyes. They regarded

me as a man worthy of their esteem. My old friend was taken into their

confidence; both father and mother spoke of me in the most flattering

terms; I had become their adopted son, and more especially they singled

out my moral principles for praise. In truth, I had found my youth

again; among these pure and religious surroundings early beliefs and

early faith came back to the man of thirty-two.

“The summer was drawing to a close. Affairs of some importance had

detained the family in Paris longer than their wont; but when September

came, and they were able to leave town at last for an estate in

Auvergne, her father entreated me to spend a couple of months with them

in an old chateau hidden away among the mountains of Cantal. I paused

before accepting this friendly invitation. My hesitation brought me the

sweetest and most delightful unconscious confession, a revelation of the

mysteries of a girlish heart. Evelina... _Dieu!_” exclaimed Benassis;

and he said no more for a time, wrapped in his own thoughts.

“Pardon me, Captain Bluteau,” he resumed, after a long pause. “For

twelve years I have not uttered the name that is always hovering in my

thoughts, that a voice calls in my hearing even when I sleep. Evelina

(since I have named her) raised her head with a strange quickness and

abruptness, for about all her movements there was an instinctive grace

and gentleness, and looked at me. There was no pride in her face, but

rather a wistful anxiety. Then her color rose, and her eyelids fell;

it gave me an indescribable pleasure never felt before that they should

fall so slowly; I could only stammer out my reply in a faltering voice.

The emotion of my own heart made swift answer to hers. She thanked me by

a happy look, and I almost thought that there were tears in her eyes.

In that moment we had told each other everything. So I went into the

country with her family. Since the day when our hearts had understood

each other, nothing seemed to be as it had been before; everything about

us had acquired a fresh significance.

“Love, indeed, is always the same, though our imagination determines

the shape that love must assume; like and unlike, therefore, is love

in every soul in which he dwells, and passion becomes a unique work in

which the soul expresses its sympathies. In the old trite saying that

love is a projection of self--an _egoisme a deux_--lies a profound

meaning known only to philosopher and poet; for it is ourself in truth

that we love in that other. Yet, though love manifests itself in such

different ways that no pair of lovers since the world began is like any

other pair before or since, they all express themselves after the same

fashion, and the same words are on the lips of every girl, even of the

most innocent, convent-bred maiden--the only difference lies in the

degree of imaginative charm in their ideas. But between Evelina and

other girls there was this difference, that where another would have

poured out her feelings quite naturally, Evelina regarded these innocent

confidences as a concession made to the stormy emotions which had

invaded the quiet sanctuary of her girlish soul. The constant struggle

between her heart and her principles gave to the least event of her

life, so peaceful in appearance, in reality so profoundly agitated, a

character of force very superior to the exaggerations of young girls

whose manners are early rendered false by the world about them. All

through the journey Evelina discovered beauty in the scenery through

which we passed, and spoke of it with admiration. When we think that

we may not give expression to the happiness which is given to us by the

presence of one we love, we pour out the secret gladness that overflows

our hearts upon inanimate things, investing them with beauty in our

happiness. The charm of the scenery which passed before our eyes

became in this way an interpreter between us, for in our praises of the

landscape we revealed to each other the secrets of our love. Evelina’s

mother sometimes took a mischievous pleasure in disconcerting her

daughter.

“‘My dear child, you have been through this valley a score of times

without seeming to admire it!’ she remarked after a somewhat too

enthusiastic phrase from Evelina.

“‘No doubt it was because I was not old enough to understand beauty of

this kind, mother.’

“Forgive me for dwelling on this trifle, which can have no charm for

you, captain; but the simple words brought me an indescribable joy,

which had its source in the glance directed towards me as she spoke. So

some village lighted by sunrise, some ivy-covered ruin which we had seen

together, memories of outward and visible things, served to deepen and

strengthen the impressions of our happiness; they seemed to be landmarks

on the way through which we were passing towards a bright future that

lay before us.

“We reached the chateau belonging to her family, where I spent about

six weeks, the only time in my life during which Heaven has

vouchsafed complete happiness to me. I enjoyed pleasures unknown to

town-dwellers--all the happiness which two lovers find in living beneath

the same roof, an anticipation of the life they will spend together. To

stroll through the fields, to be alone together at times if we wished

it, to look over an old water-mill, to sit beneath a tree in some lovely

glen among the hills, the lovers’ talks, the sweet confidences drawn

forth by which each made some progress day by day in the other’s heart.

Ah! sir, the out-of-door life, the beauty of earth and heaven, is a

perfect accompaniment to the perfect happiness of the soul! To mingle

our careless talk with the song of the birds among the dewy leaves, to

smile at each other as we gazed on the sky, to turn our steps slowly

homewards at the sound of the bell that always rings too soon, to

admire together some little detail in the landscape, to watch the

fitful movements of an insect, to look closely at a gleaming demoiselle

fly--the delicate creature that resembles an innocent and loving girl;

in such ways as these are not one’s thoughts drawn daily a little

higher? The memories of my forty days of happiness have in a manner

colored all the rest of my life, memories that are all the fairer and

fill the greater space in my thoughts because since then it has been my

fate never to be understood. To this day there are scenes of no special

interest for a casual observer, but full of bitter significance for a

broken heart, which recall those vanished days, and the love that is not

forgotten yet.

“I do not know whether you noticed the effect of the sunset light on the

cottage where little Jacques lives? Everything shone so brightly in the

fiery rays of the sun, and then all at once the whole landscape grew

dark and dreary. That sudden change was like the change in my own life

at this time. I received from her the first, the sole and sublime token

of love that an innocent girl may give; the more secretly it is given,

the closer is the bond it forms, the sweet promise of love, a fragment

of the language spoken in a fairer world than this. Sure, therefore, of

being beloved, I vowed that I would confess everything at once, that

I would have no secrets from her; I felt ashamed that I had so long

delayed to tell her about the sorrows that I had brought upon myself.

“Unluckily, with the morrow of this happy day a letter came from my

son’s tutor, the life of the child so dear to me was in danger. I went

away without confiding my secret to Evelina, merely telling her family

that I was urgently required in Paris. Her parents took alarm during my

absence. They feared that there I was entangled in some way, and wrote

to Paris to make inquiries about me. It was scarcely consistent with

their religious principles; but they suspected me, and did not even give

me an opportunity of clearing myself.

“One of their friends, without my knowledge, gave them the whole history

of my youth, blackening my errors, laying stress upon the existence of

my child, which (said they) I intended to conceal. I wrote to my future

parents, but I received no answers to my letters; and when they came

back to Paris, and I called at their house, I was not admitted. Much

alarmed, I sent to my old friend to learn the reason of this conduct on

their part, which I did not in the least understand. As soon as the good

soul knew the real cause of it all, he sacrificed himself generously,

took upon himself all the blame of my reserve, and tried to exculpate

me, but all to no purpose. Questions of interest and morality were

regarded so seriously by the family, their prejudices were so firmly and

deeply rooted, that they never swerved from their resolution. My despair

was overwhelming. At first I tried to deprecate their wrath, but my

letters were sent back to me unopened. When every possible means had

been tried in vain; when her father and mother had plainly told my old

friend (the cause of my misfortune) that they would never consent to

their daughter’s marriage with a man who had upon his conscience the

death of a woman and the life of a natural son, even though Evelina

herself should implore them upon her knees; then, sir, there only

remained to me one last hope, a hope as slender and fragile as the

willow-branch at which a drowning wretch catches to save himself.

“I ventured to think that Evelina’s love would be stronger than her

father’s scruples, that her inflexible parents might yield to her

entreaties. Perhaps, who knows, her father had kept from her the reasons

of the refusal, which was so fatal to our love. I determined to acquaint

her with all the circumstances, and to make a final appeal to her; and

in fear and trembling, in grief and tears, my first and last love-letter

was written. To-day I can only dimly remember the words dictated to

me by my despair; but I must have told Evelina that if she had dealt

sincerely with me she could not and ought not to love another, or how

could her whole life be anything but a lie? she must be false either to

her future husband or to me. Could she refuse to the lover, who had been

so misjudged and hardly entreated, the devotion which she would have

shown him as her husband, if the marriage which had already taken place

in our hearts had been outwardly solemnized? Was not this to fall from

the ideal of womanly virtue? What woman would not love to feel that

the promises of the heart were more sacred and binding than the chains

forged by the law? I defended my errors; and in my appeal to the

purity of innocence, I left nothing unsaid that could touch a noble and

generous nature. But as I am telling you everything, I will look for

her answer and my farewell letter,” said Benassis, and he went up to his

room in search of it.

He returned in a few moments with a worn pocketbook; his hands trembled

with emotion as he drew from it some loose sheets.

“Here is the fatal letter,” he said. “The girl who wrote those lines

little knew the value that I should set upon the scrap of paper that

holds her thoughts. This is the last cry that pain wrung from me,” he

added, taking up a second letter; “I will lay it before you directly.

My old friend was the bearer of my letter of entreaty; he gave it to

her without her parents’ knowledge, humbling his white hair to implore

Evelina to read and to reply to my appeal. This was her answer:

“‘Monsieur...’ But lately I had been her ‘beloved,’ the innocent name

she had found by which to express her innocent love, and now she called

me _Monsieur_!... That one word told me everything. But listen to the

rest of the letter:

“‘Treachery on the part of one to whom her life was to be intrusted is a

bitter thing for a girl to discover; and yet I could not but excuse you,

we are so weak! Your letter touched me, but you must not write to me

again, the sight of your handwriting gives me such unbearable pain.

We are parted for ever. I was carried away by your reasoning; it

extinguished all the harsh feelings that had risen up against you in my

soul. I had been so proud of your truth! But both of us have found my

father’s reasoning irresistible. Yes, monsieur, I ventured to plead

for you. I did for you what I have never done before, I overcame the

greatest fears that I have ever known, and acted almost against my

nature. Even now I am yielding to your entreaties, and doing wrong for

your sake, in writing to you without my father’s knowledge. My mother

knows that I am writing to you; her indulgence in leaving me at liberty

to be alone with you for a moment has taught me the depth of her love

for me, and strengthened my determination to bow to the decree of my

family, against which I had almost rebelled. So I am writing to you,

monsieur, for the first and last time. You have my full and entire

forgiveness for the troubles that you have brought into my life. Yes,

you are right; a first love can never be forgotten. I am no longer an

innocent girl; and, as an honest woman, I can never marry another. What

my future will be, I know not therefore. Only you see, monsieur, that

echoes of this year that you have filled will never die away in my life.

But I am in no way accusing you.... “I shall always be beloved!” Why did

you write those words? Can they bring peace to the troubled soul of

a lonely and unhappy girl? Have you not already laid waste my future,

giving me memories which will never cease to revisit me? Henceforth I

can only give myself to God, but will He accept a broken heart? He has

had some purpose to fulfil in sending these afflictions to me; doubtless

it was His will that I should turn to Him, my only refuge here below.

Nothing remains to me here upon this earth. You have all a man’s

ambitions wherewith to beguile your sorrows. I do not say this as a

reproach; it is a sort of religious consolation. If we both bear a

grievous burden at this moment, I think that my share of it is the

heavier. He in whom I have put my trust, and of whom you can feel

no jealousy, has joined our lives together, and He puts them asunder

according to His will. I have seen that your religious beliefs were not

founded upon the pure and living faith which alone enables us to bear

our woes here below. Monsieur, if God will vouchsafe to hear my fervent

and ceaseless prayers, He will cause His light to shine in your soul.

Farewell, you who should have been my guide, you whom once I had the

right to call “my beloved,” no one can reproach me if I pray for you

still. God orders our days as it pleases Him. Perhaps you may be the

first whom He will call to himself; but if I am left alone in the world,

then, monsieur, intrust the care of the child to me.’

“This letter, so full of generous sentiments, disappointed my hopes,”

Benassis resumed, “so that at first I could think of nothing but my

misery; afterwards I welcomed the balm which, in her forgetfulness of

self, she had tried to pour into my wounds, but in my first despair I

wrote to her somewhat bitterly:

“Mademoiselle--that word alone will tell you that at your bidding I

renounce you. There is something indescribably sweet in obeying one

we love, who puts us to the torture. You are right. I acquiesce in

my condemnation. Once I slighted a girl’s devotion; it is fitting,

therefore, that my love should be rejected to-day. But I little thought

that my punishment was to be dealt to me by the woman at whose feet I

had laid my life. I never expected that such harshness, perhaps I should

say, such rigid virtue, lurked in a heart that seemed to be so loving

and so tender. At this moment the full strength of my love is revealed

to me; it has survived the most terrible of all trials, the scorn you

have shown for me by severing without regret the ties that bound us.

Farewell for ever. There still remains to me the proud humility of

repentance; I will find some sphere of life where I can expiate the

errors to which you, the mediator between Heaven and me, have shown no

mercy. Perhaps God may be less inexorable. My sufferings, sufferings

full of the thought of you, shall be the penance of a heart which

will never be healed, which will bleed in solitude. For a wounded

heart--shadow and silence.

“‘No other image of love shall be engraven on my heart. Though I am not

a woman, I feel as you felt that when I said “I love you,” it was a vow

for life. Yes, the words then spoken in the ear of “my beloved” were

not a lie; you would have a right to scorn me if I could change. I shall

never cease to worship you in my solitude. In spite of the gulf set

between us, you will still be the mainspring of all my actions, and all

the virtues are inspired by penitence and love. Though you have filled

my heart with bitterness, I shall never have bitter thoughts of you;

would it not be an ill beginning of the new tasks that I have set myself

if I did not purge out all the evil leaven from my soul? Farewell, then,

to the one heart that I love in the world, a heart from which I am cast

out. Never has more feeling and more tenderness been expressed in a

farewell, for is it not fraught with the life and soul of one who can

never hope again, and must be henceforth as one dead?... Farewell. May

peace be with you, and may all the sorrow of our lot fall to me!’”

Benassis and Genestas looked at each other for a moment after reading

the two letters, each full of sad thoughts, of which neither spoke.

“As you see, this is only a rough copy of my last letter,” said

Benassis; “it is all that remains to me to-day of my blighted hopes.

When I had sent the letter, I fell into an indescribable state of

depression. All the ties that hold one to life were bound together in

the hope of wedded happiness, which was henceforth lost to me for ever.

I had to bid farewell to the joys of a permitted and acknowledged love,

to all the generous ideas that had thronged up from the depths of my

heart. The prayers of a penitent soul that thirsted for righteousness

and for all things lovely and of good report, had been rejected by these

religious people. At first, the wildest resolutions and most frantic

thoughts surged through my mind, but happily for me the sight of my son

brought self-control. I felt all the more strongly drawn towards him for

the misfortunes of which he was the innocent cause, and for which I had

in reality only myself to blame. In him I found all my consolation.

“At the age of thirty-four I might still hope to do my country noble

service. I determined to make a name for myself, a name so illustrious

that no one should remember the stain on the birth of my son. How many

noble thoughts I owe to him! How full a life I led in those days while

I was absorbed in planning out his future! I feel stifled,” cried

Benassis. “All this happened eleven years ago, and yet to this day, I

cannot bear to think of that fatal year.... My child died, sir; I lost

him!”

The doctor was silent, and hid his face in his hands; when he was

somewhat calmer he raised his head again, and Genestas saw that his eyes

were full of tears.

“At first it seemed as if this thunderbolt had uprooted me,” Benassis

resumed. “It was a blow from which I could only expect to recover after

I had been transplanted into a different soil from that of the social

world in which I lived. It was not till some time afterwards that I saw

the finger of God in my misfortunes, and later still that I learned to

submit to His will and to hearken to His voice. It was impossible that

resignation should come to me all at once. My impetuous and fiery nature

broke out in a final storm of rebellion.

“It was long before I brought myself to take the only step befitting

a Catholic; indeed, my thoughts ran on suicide. This succession of

misfortunes had contributed to develop melancholy feelings in me, and I

deliberately determined to take my own life. It seemed to me that it was

permissible to take leave of life when life was ebbing fast. There

was nothing unnatural, I thought about suicide. The ravages of mental

distress affected the soul of man in the same way that acute physical

anguish affected the body; and an intelligent being, suffering from a

moral malady, had surely a right to destroy himself, a right he shares

with the sheep, that, fallen a victim to the ‘staggers,’ beats its head

against a tree. Were the soul’s diseases in truth more readily cured

than those of the body? I scarcely think so, to this day. Nor do I know

which is the more craven soul--he who hopes even when hope is no longer

possible, or he who despairs. Death is the natural termination of a

physical malady, and it seemed to me that suicide was the final crisis

in the sufferings of a mind diseased, for it was in the power of the

will to end them when reason showed that death was preferable to

life. So it is not the pistol, but a thought that puts an end to our

existence. Again, when fate may suddenly lay us low in the midst of a

happy life, can we be blamed for ourselves refusing to bear a life of

misery?

“But my reflections during that time of mourning turned on loftier

themes. The grandeur of pagan philosophy attracted me, and for a while

I became a convert. In my efforts to discover new rights for man, I

thought that with the aid of modern thought I could penetrate further

into the questions to which those old-world systems of philosophy had

furnished solutions.

“Epicurus permitted suicide. Was it not the natural outcome of his

system of ethics? The gratification of the senses was to be obtained at

any cost; and when this became impossible, the easiest and best course

was for the animate being to return to the repose of inanimate nature.

Happiness, or the hope of happiness, was the one end for which man

existed, for one who suffered, and who suffered without hope, death

ceased to be an evil, and became a good, and suicide became a final act

of wisdom. This act Epicurus neither blamed nor praised; he was content

to say as he poured a libation to Bacchus, ‘_As for death, there is

nothing in death to move our laughter or our tears._’

“With a loftier morality than that of the Epicureans, and a sterner

sense of man’s duties, Zeno and the Stoic philosophers prescribed

suicide in certain cases to their followers. They reasoned thus: Man

differs from the brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose of

his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and

he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly

understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise

for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another,

upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power

whatever unless he has unlimited freedom of action. Suppose that he has

been guilty of some irreparable error, from the shameful consequences of

which there is no escape; a sordid nature swallows down the disgrace and

survives it, the wise man drinks the hemlock and dies. Suppose that the

remainder of life is to be one constant struggle with the gout which

racks our bones, or with a gnawing and disfiguring cancer, the wise man

dismisses quacks, and at the proper moment bids a last farewell to the

friends whom he only saddens by his presence. Or another perhaps has

fallen alive into the hands of the tyrant against whom he fought. What

shall he do? The oath of allegiance is tendered to him; he must either

subscribe or stretch out his neck to the executioner; the fool takes the

latter course, the coward subscribes, the wise man strikes a last blow

for liberty--in his own heart. ‘You who are free,’ the Stoic was wont to

say, ‘know then how to preserve your freedom! Find freedom from your

own passions by sacrificing them to duty, freedom from the tyranny of

mankind by pointing to the sword or the poison which will put you beyond

their reach, freedom from the bondage of fate by determining the point

beyond which you will endure it no longer, freedom from physical fear by

learning how to subdue the gross instinct which causes so many wretches

to cling to life.’

“After I had unearthed this reasoning from among a heap of ancient

philosophical writings, I sought to reconcile it with Christian

teachings. God has bestowed free-will upon us in order to require of

us an account hereafter before the Throne of Judgment. ‘I will plead

my cause there!’ I said to myself. But such thoughts as these led me to

think of a life after death, and my old shaken beliefs rose up before

me. Human life grows solemn when all eternity hangs upon the slightest

of our decisions. When the full meaning of this thought is realized, the

soul becomes conscious of something vast and mysterious within itself,

by which it is drawn towards the Infinite; the aspect of all things

alters strangely. From this point of view life is something infinitely

great and infinitely little. The consciousness of my sins had never made

me think of heaven so long as hope remained to me on earth, so long as I

could find a relief for my woes in work and in the society of other men.

I had meant to make the happiness of a woman’s life, to love, to be the

head of a family, and in this way my need of expiation would have been

satisfied to the full. This design had been thwarted, but yet another

way had remained to me,--I would devote myself henceforward to my child.

But after these two efforts had failed, and scorn and death had darkened

my soul for ever, when all my feelings had been wounded and nothing was

left to me here on earth, I raised my eyes to heaven, and beheld God.

“Yet still I tried to obtain the sanction of religion for my death.

I went carefully through the Gospels, and found no passage in which

suicide was forbidden; but during the reading, the divine thought of

Christ, the Saviour of men dawned in me. Certainly He had said nothing

about the immortality of the soul, but He had spoken of the glorious

kingdom of His Father; He had nowhere forbidden parricide, but He

condemned all that was evil. The glory of His evangelists, and the proof

of their divine mission, is not so much that they made laws for the

world, but that they spread a new spirit abroad, and the new laws were

filled with this new spirit. The very courage which a man displays in

taking his own life seemed to me to be his condemnation; so long as he

felt that he had within himself sufficient strength to die by his own

hands, he ought to have had strength enough to continue the struggle.

To refuse to suffer is a sign of weakness rather than of courage,

and, moreover, was it not a sort of recusance to take leave of life in

despondency, an abjuration of the Christian faith which is based upon

the sublime words of Jesus Christ: ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’

“So, in any case, suicide seemed to me to be an unpardonable error, even

in the man who, through a false conception of greatness of soul, takes

his life a few moments before the executioner’s axe falls. In humbling

himself to the death of the cross, did not Jesus Christ set for us an

example of obedience to all human laws, even when carried out unjustly?

The word _resignation_ engraved upon the cross, so clear to the eyes of

those who can read the sacred characters in which it is traced, shone

for me with divine brightness.

“I still had eighty thousand francs in my possession, and at first I

meant to live a remote and solitary life, to vegetate in some country

district for the rest of my days; but misanthropy is no Catholic virtue,

and there is a certain vanity lurking beneath the hedgehog’s skin of the

misanthrope. His heart does not bleed, it shrivels, and my heart bled

from every vein. I thought of the discipline of the Church, the refuge

that she affords to sorrowing souls, understood at last the beauty of

a life of prayer in solitude, and was fully determined to ‘enter

religion,’ in the grand old phrase. So far my intentions were firmly

fixed, but I had not yet decided on the best means of carrying them out.

I realized the remains of my fortune, and set forth on my journey with

an almost tranquil mind. _Peace in God_ was a hope that could never fail

me.

“I felt drawn to the rule of Saint Bruno, and made the journey to the

Grande Chartreuse on foot, absorbed in solemn thoughts. That was a

memorable day. I was not prepared for the grandeur of the scenery; the

workings of an unknown Power greater than that of man were visible at

every step; the overhanging crags, the precipices on either hand,

the stillness only broken by the voices of the mountain streams, the

sternness and wildness of the landscape, relieved here and there by

Nature’s fairest creations, pine trees that have stood for centuries

and delicate rock plants at their feet, all combine to produce sober

musings. There seemed to be no end to this waste solitude, shut in by

its lofty mountain barriers. The idle curiosity of man could scarcely

penetrate there. It would be difficult to cross this melancholy desert

of Saint Bruno’s with a light heart.

“I saw the Grand Chartreuse. I walked beneath the vaulted roofs of the

ancient cloisters, and heard in the silence the sound of the water from

the spring, falling drop by drop. I entered a cell that I might the

better realize my own utter nothingness, something of the peace that my

predecessor had found there seemed to pass into my soul. An inscription,

which in accordance with the custom of the monastery he had written

above his door, impressed and touched me; all the precepts of the

life that I had meant to lead were there, summed up in three Latin

words--_Fuge, late, tace_.”

Genestas bent his head as if he understood.

“My decision was made,” Benassis resumed. “The cell with its deal

wainscot, the hard bed, the solitude, all appealed to my soul. The

Carthusians were in the chapel, I went thither to join in their prayers,

and there my resolutions vanished. I do not wish to criticise the

Catholic Church, I am perfectly orthodox, I believe in its laws and in

the works it prescribes. But when I heard the chanting and the prayers

of those old men, dead to the world and forgotten by the world, I

discerned an undercurrent of sublime egoism in the life of the cloister.

This withdrawal from the world could only benefit the individual soul,

and after all what was it but a protracted suicide? I do not condemn it.

The Church has opened these tombs in which life is buried; no doubt they

are needful for those few Christians who are absolutely useless to

the world; but for me, it would be better, I thought, to live among my

fellows, to devote my life of expiation to their service.

“As I returned I thought long and carefully over the various ways in

which I could carry out my vow of renunciation. Already I began, in

fancy, to lead the life of a common sailor, condemning myself to serve

our country in the lowest ranks, and giving up all my intellectual

ambitions; but though it was a life of toil and of self-abnegation, it

seemed to me that I ought to do more than this. Should I not thwart the

designs of God by leading such a life? If He had given me intellectual

ability, was it not my duty to employ it for the good of my fellow-men?

Then, besides, if I am to speak frankly, I felt within me a need of my

fellow-men, an indescribable wish to help them. The round of mechanical

duties and the routine tasks of the sailor afforded no scope for this

desire, which is as much an outcome of my nature as the characteristic

scent that a flower breathes forth.

“I was obliged to spend the night here, as I have already told you.

The wretched condition of the countryside had filled me with pity, and

during the night it seemed as if these thoughts had been sent to me by

God, and that thus He had revealed His will to me. I had known something

of the joys that pierce the heart, the happiness and the sorrow of

motherhood; I determined that henceforth my life should be filled with

these, but that mine should be a wider sphere than a mother’s. I would

expend her care and kindness on the whole district; I would be a

sister of charity, and bind the wounds of all the suffering poor in a

countryside. It seemed to me that the finger of God unmistakably pointed

out my destiny; and when I remembered that my first serious thoughts

in youth had inclined me to the study of medicine, I resolved to

settle here as a doctor. Besides, I had another reason. _For a wounded

heart--shadow and silence_; so I had written in my letter; and I meant

to fulfil the vow which I had made to myself.

“So I have entered into the paths of silence and submission. The _fuge,

late, tace_ of the Carthusian brother is my motto here, my death to the

world is the life of this canton, my prayer takes the form of the active

work to which I have set my hand, and which I love--the work of sowing

the seeds of happiness and joy, of giving to others what I myself have

not.

“I have grown so used to this life, completely out of the world and

among the peasants, that I am thoroughly transformed. Even my face is

altered; it has been so continually exposed to the sun, that it has

grown wrinkled and weather-beaten. I have fallen into the habits of the

peasants; I have assumed their dress, their ways of talking, their gait,

their easy-going negligence, their utter indifference to appearances. My

old acquaintances in Paris, or the she-coxcombs on whom I used to

dance attendance, would be puzzled to recognize in me the man who had a

certain vogue in his day, the sybarite accustomed to all the splendor,

luxury, and finery of Paris. I have come to be absolutely indifferent

to my surroundings, like all those who are possessed by one thought, and

have only one object in view; for I have but one aim in life--to take

leave of it as soon as possible. I do not want to hasten my end in any

way; but some day, when illness comes, I shall lie down to die without

regret.

“There, sir, you have the whole story of my life until I came here--told

in all sincerity. I have not attempted to conceal any of my errors;

they have been great, though others have erred as I have erred. I have

suffered greatly, and I am suffering still, but I look beyond this life

to a happy future which can only be reached through sorrow. And yet--for

all my resignation, there are moments when my courage fails me. This

very day I was almost overcome in your presence by inward anguish; you

did not notice it but----”

Genestas started in his chair.

“Yes, Captain Bluteau, you were with me at the time. Do you remember

how, while we were putting little Jacques to bed, you pointed to the

mattress on which Mother Colas sleeps? Well, you can imagine how painful

it all was; I can never see any child without thinking of the dear child

I have lost, and this little one was doomed to die! I can never see a

child with indifferent eyes----”

Genestas turned pale.

“Yes, the sight of the little golden heads, the innocent beauty of

children’s faces always awakens memories of my sorrows, and the old

anguish returns afresh. Now and then, too, there comes the intolerable

thought that so many people here should thank me for what little I can

do for them, when all that I have done has been prompted by remorse. You

alone, captain, know the secret of my life. If I had drawn my will to

serve them from some purer source than the memory of my errors, I should

be happy indeed! But then, too, there would have been nothing to tell

you, and no story about myself.”