PROJECTS
After M. de Cernay had gone, I felt grieved to think of his friendly
advances and how I had repulsed them. But what he said about my great
attractiveness seemed a ridiculous untruth, and made me distrust him.
Then the bitter hatred with which he pursued Madame de Pënâfiel gave
me but a poor idea of the kind of a friend he would make.
Perhaps I was mistaken, for women, in men's eyes, are outside of the
law, if that can be; and the unkind things they say about women to each
other, and which they say with a certain self-glorification, in no way
injure their reputation as men of honour. M. de Cernay might then have
possessed all the good qualities of a warm and steadfast friend; but it
was impossible for me to receive him as such, or to behave to him in any
other way.
I took great satisfaction, too, in having been able to conceal my real
nature from him, and to have given him an absolutely false idea, or a
singularly indefinite one, of myself.
It was always hateful to me to be understood or divined by people I
cared nothing about; and for an enemy to do so was dangerous. Indeed, I
liked to have even a friend kept out of my secret thoughts.
If there is in our moral organisation a culminating point, the source
and termination of all our thoughts, our longings, our desires, if we
are conscious that any one idea, whether good or evil, is steadily
throbbing with every beat of our heart, this palpitating spot is the one
that must be most sedulously hidden, most carefully defended from sudden
attack, for there is the weak, the sore place, the infallibly vulnerable
spot in our nature.
If envy, pride, or covetousness are your predominating characteristics,
you should attempt to appear modest, kind, and disinterested, as
compassionate and generous persons sometimes hide their kindliness under
a rough exterior; for through education we instinctively conceal our
vices and our virtues, as nature gives to certain animals the means of
protecting themselves when attacked in their weakest place.
I had therefore pretended to the count that I was a terrible egotist and
cynic, simply because I still felt an unconquerable yearning towards
virtue and generosity. But, alas! it was only a yearning. The terrible
lessons my father had taught me, besides filling my mind with distrust
of all good motives, had developed to the highest degree my vanity and
susceptibility. In fact, what I most dreaded, was to be taken for a
fool, should I follow the enthusiastic instincts of my nature.
But though day by day suspicion and vanity were drying up the germs of
these noble instincts, their souvenir still remained with me, and, like
fallen man, I remembered the lost Eden. I could understand, though I
felt it not, all the divine ravishment there must be in self-sacrifice
and confidence.
On my part there was a continual aspiration towards an ethereal, radiant
sphere, from the midst of which the most devoted friendships, the most
passionate loves, smiled on me.
But, alas! my implacable, shameful, distrusting spirit would whisper in
my ear that all these adorable apparitions were but deceitful
appearances, and his icy breath would dispel in an instant the
enchanting visions.
I knew that I did not deceive myself as to my own nature. What was mean,
selfish, and weak in it, was stronger than what still remained of noble
and generous sentiments.
My conduct towards Hélène had proved this to be the case. The man who
can calculate and meanly weigh the result of his impulses, who refuses a
generous feeling of attraction, for fear of being repulsed, is devoid of
strength of purpose, liberality, and kindness.
Distrust is the next thing to cowardice. From cowardice to cruelty there
is only one more step. I was to suffer miserably for my distrust of
others, and to cause others to suffer as well.
And yet I was not of a hateful or spiteful disposition. I was filled
with the most pleasurable sensations when I had secretly rendered any
one a service that I was not afraid of having to blush for. Then I loved
to contemplate the beauties of nature, which is a sentiment that
thoroughly wicked and perverse souls are not capable of. The sight of a
magnificent sunset gave me intense delight. I was happy when I found the
description of noble and generous actions in the books I read, and the
deep sympathy I felt proved that all the noble cords of my heart were
not yet broken. As much as I admired Walter Scott, that sublime
benefactor of unhappy minds, whose genius leaves one so refreshed and
purified, just so much did I detest Byron, whose sterile and desolating
scepticism only leaves a taste of gall and bitterness.
I had so just an appreciation of every kind of trouble or affliction
that I carried my delicacy and fear of wounding the feelings of the
unfortunate or lonely to a ridiculous length. I was seized with pity and
tenderness for no apparent reason. I felt sometimes an immense need of
loving some one, of devoting my life to some one. My first impulses were
always sincere and unselfish; but then came reflections and second
thoughts to blight everything. There was a perpetual struggle going on
in my mind and heart. One said: Believe, love, hope; and the other said;
Doubt, despise, fear.
I was in this way constantly impelled by two opposite forces. I seemed
to feel with my mother's heart and think with my father's mind; but the
intellect was always stronger than the affections.
I also possessed the terrible faculty of comparing myself with others,
by the aid of which I found a thousand reasons why I was not lovable,
consequently I considered every one in the light of a flatterer.
My mother had adored me, and I had forgotten my mother; or, rather, I
only thought of her when I was in desperate trouble. But when I was
completely happy, when my vanity was satisfied, and I was dazzled with
my own importance, all such pious recollections as I had momentarily
evoked vanished into the shade of the maternal tomb.
I owed everything to my father, and I only remembered him to curse the
fatal experience he had given me. Hélène had loved me with the truest
and purest affection, and I had returned her innocent love by insult and
suspicion.
Thus being always ungrateful, suspicious, and forgetful, what right had
I to expect from others love and devotion?
In vain I would say to myself: "My father, my mother, and Hélène loved
me just as I was; why, then, should not others do the same?" But my
father was my father, my mother was my mother, and Hélène was Hélène
(for I very properly placed Hélène's love for me among the innate,
natural family affections). And yet the aversion with which I had
inspired her had been so great that the love she had borne me in her
heart from her earliest childhood was destroyed in a day.
Ah, that was a fearful and useless punishment, and I had been both the
victim and the executioner; but all my useless grief had made me no
better, nor more useful to myself or my fellow men.
I will return to Madame de Pënâfiel. I had not told my plans to M. de
Cernay, because his intervention might be useful to me, and I knew that
the best of all accomplices is one who is unconscious and perfectly
honest. I felt the greatest desire to become acquainted with this
strange woman, in spite of all the ill things that were said of her, or,
perhaps, because, in at least one instance, I had known that they were
slanderous exaggerations; but my defiant and proud nature saw an
insurmountable obstacle in this very desire.
When I had undertaken to defend Madame de Pënâfiel against the attacks
of De Pommerive, that night at the Opéra, when he was telling his story
about Ismaël, she might have heard me. Now if this were the case, I
thought that to ask to be presented to her would be the height of bad
taste, as my discussion with De Pommerive might appear simply a prelude
to such a request.
My scruples may have been exaggerated, but they were real, and I had
firmly resolved to make no attempt to be admitted to the circle of
Madame de Pënâfiel's acquaintances. I hoped, however, that if she knew
that I had defended her she would appreciate my reserve, and, with the
tact of a well-bred woman, would find some very simple way of having me
presented to her, for she would frequently meet me in society. In this
way my self-respect would not suffer.
What made it all the easier for me to reason in this way, and wait for
developments, was the fact that, on the whole, my desire to meet Madame
de Pënâfiel was not strong enough to preoccupy my mind so as to
exclude all other interests. If I should receive a refusal, it would not
greatly disappoint me.
Neither did I fear in any sense (except in the improbable possibility of
my falling very much in love with Madame de Pënâfiel) that danger with
which M. de Cernay had threatened me. I did not believe there could be
any danger for me, because I was certainly able to hide any wounds my
vanity might receive, and was surely able (so wise and suspicious did I
think myself) to see through any of her attempts at deception, in case
she meant to play me false. Only I felt that, in case I meant to range
myself among the number of her adorers, so many and so invisible though
they appeared to be, it would be well that, on her return from her
voyage to Brittany, I should be, or at least seem to be, interested in
some one, so as to appear to sacrifice another to Madame de Pënâfiel,
for a woman is always the most pleased when, in addition to doing her
homage, a man sacrifices a former affection for her sake. Then there is
not only triumph, but triumph over another woman.
I therefore resolved, that before Madame de Pënâfiel returned, I would
become assiduous in my attentions to some well-known woman of fashion,
to one who had some officially recognised admirer.
I insisted on both of these conditions, for, in this way, my supposed
interest would be talked about all the more and the sooner.
This was a very simple calculation, inasmuch as, when my pretended
admiration should be noticed, rumour would, with its usual charity and
veracity, instantly proclaim the downfall of the former admirer, and my
promotion to his place.
I decided, then, to persuade some fashionable lady to receive my
attentions.
What really saddened me was that, as I coldly calculated such a series
of lies and deceptions, I perfectly understood their meanness. I had not
the excuse of passion, not even any very great desire of pleasing Madame
de Pënâfiel. It was simply as a means of distraction, and the
necessity of occupying my restless and discontented spirit, that I
forced myself to seek, in the miserable chances and changes of mundane
life, some unforeseen event that might save me from the mournful and
deadening apathy that was crushing my life out.
Strange enough, when I was once in for it, I recovered my spirits, my
youthfulness, my gaiety, and many joyful hours of contented vanity. It
seemed as if there were two of me, so astonished was I to hear myself
talk in this extravagant way, and then, as soon as I was left alone with
my reflections, my mind became agitated by my old painful, baseless
worries, and by a thousand uncertainties as to myself, every one, and
everything.