The days wore on. October began with magnificent weather—a sultry
autumn in which the fervid heat of summer was prolonged, with a
cloudless sky. Then the weather changed, fierce winds began to blow,
and a last storm channeled gullies in the hillsides. And to the
melancholy household at La Souleiade the approach of winter seemed to
have brought an infinite sadness.
It was a new hell. There were no more violent quarrels between Pascal
and Clotilde. The doors were no longer slammed. Voices raised in
dispute no longer obliged Martine to go continually upstairs to listen
outside the door. They scarcely spoke to each other now; and not a
single word had been exchanged between them regarding the midnight
scene, although weeks had passed since it had taken place. He, through
an inexplicable scruple, a strange delicacy of which he was not himself
conscious, did not wish to renew the conversation, and to demand the
answer which he expected—a promise of faith in him and of submission.
She, after the great moral shock which had completely transformed her,
still reflected, hesitated, struggled, fighting against herself,
putting off her decision in order not to surrender, in her instinctive
rebelliousness. And the misunderstanding continued, in the midst of the
mournful silence of the miserable house, where there was no longer any
happiness.
During all this time Pascal suffered terribly, without making any
complaint. He had sunk into a dull distrust, imagining that he was
still being watched, and that if they seemed to leave him at peace it
was only in order to concoct in secret the darkest plots. His
uneasiness increased, even, and he expected every day some catastrophe
to happen—the earth suddenly to open and swallow up his papers, La
Souleiade itself to be razed to the ground, carried away bodily,
scattered to the winds.
The persecution against his thought, against his moral and intellectual
life, in thus hiding itself, and so rendering him helpless to defend
himself, became so intolerable to him that he went to bed every night
in a fever. He would often start and turn round suddenly, thinking he
was going to surprise the enemy behind him engaged in some piece of
treachery, to find nothing there but the shadow of his own fears. At
other times, seized by some suspicion, he would remain on the watch for
hours together, hidden, behind his blinds, or lying in wait in a
passage; but not a soul stirred, he heard nothing but the violent
beating of his heart. His fears kept him in a state of constant
agitation; he never went to bed at night without visiting every room;
he no longer slept, or, if he did, he would waken with a start at the
slightest noise, ready to defend himself.
And what still further aggravated Pascal’s sufferings was the constant,
the ever more bitter thought that the wound was inflicted upon him by
the only creature he loved in the world, the adored Clotilde, whom for
twenty years he had seen grow in beauty and in grace, whose life had
hitherto bloomed like a beautiful flower, perfuming his. She, great
God! for whom his heart was full of affection, whom he had never
analyzed, she, who had become his joy, his courage, his hope, in whose
young life he lived over again. When she passed by, with her delicate
neck, so round, so fresh, he was invigorated, bathed in health and joy,
as at the coming of spring.
His whole life, besides, explained this invasion, this subjugation of
his being by the young girl who had entered into his heart while she
was still a little child, and who, as she grew up, had gradually taken
possession of the whole place. Since he had settled at Plassans, he had
led a blest existence, wrapped up in his books, far from women. The
only passion he was ever known to have had, was his love for the lady
who had died, whose finger tips he had never kissed. He had not lived;
he had within him a reserve of youthfulness, of vigor, whose surging
flood now clamored rebelliously at the menace of approaching age. He
would have become attached to an animal, a stray dog that he had
chanced to pick up in the street, and that had licked his hand. And it
was this child whom he loved, all at once become an adorable woman, who
now distracted him, who tortured him by her hostility.
Pascal, so gay, so kind, now became insupportably gloomy and harsh. He
grew angry at the slightest word; he would push aside the astonished
Martine, who would look up at him with the submissive eyes of a beaten
animal. From morning till night he went about the gloomy house,
carrying his misery about with him, with so forbidding a countenance
that no one ventured to speak to him.
He never took Clotilde with him now on his visits, but went alone. And
thus it was that he returned home one afternoon, his mind distracted
because of an accident which had happened; having on his conscience, as
a physician, the death of a man.
He had gone to give a hypodermic injection to Lafouasse, the tavern
keeper, whose ataxia had within a short time made such rapid progress
that he regarded him as doomed. But, notwithstanding, Pascal still
fought obstinately against the disease, continuing the treatment, and
as ill luck would have it, on this day the little syringe had caught up
at the bottom of the vial an impure particle, which had escaped the
filter. Immediately a drop of blood appeared; to complete his
misfortune, he had punctured a vein. He was at once alarmed, seeing the
tavern keeper turn pale and gasp for breath, while large drops of cold
perspiration broke out upon his face. Then he understood; death came as
if by a stroke of lightning, the lips turning blue, the face black. It
was an embolism; he had nothing to blame but the insufficiency of his
preparations, his still rude method. No doubt Lafouasse had been
doomed. He could not, perhaps, have lived six months longer, and that
in the midst of atrocious sufferings, but the brutal fact of this
terrible death was none the less there, and what despairing regret,
what rage against impotent and murderous science, and what a shock to
his faith! He returned home, livid, and did not make his appearance
again until the following day, after having remained sixteen hours shut
up in his room, lying in a semi-stupor on the bed, across which he had
thrown himself, dressed as he was.
On the afternoon of this day Clotilde, who was sitting beside him in
the study, sewing, ventured to break the oppressive silence. She looked
up, and saw him turning over the leaves of a book wearily, searching
for some information which he was unable to find.
“Master, are you ill? Why do you not tell me, if you are. I would take
care of you.”
He kept his eyes bent upon the book, and muttered:
“What does it matter to you whether I am ill or not? I need no one to
take care of me.”
She resumed, in a conciliating voice:
“If you have troubles, and can tell them to me, it would perhaps be a
relief to you to do so. Yesterday you came in looking so sad. You must
not allow yourself to be cast down in that way. I have spent a very
anxious night. I came to your door three times to listen, tormented by
the idea that you were suffering.”
Gently as she spoke, her words were like the cut of a whip. In his weak
and nervous condition a sudden access of rage made him push away the
book and rise up trembling.
“So you spy upon me, then. I cannot even retire to my room without
people coming to glue their ears to the walls. Yes, you listen even to
the beatings of my heart. You watch for my death, to pillage and burn
everything here.”
His voice rose and all his unjust suffering vented itself in complaints
and threats.
“I forbid you to occupy yourself about me. Is there nothing else that
you have to say to me? Have you reflected? Can you put your hand in
mine loyally, and say to me that we are in accord?”
She did not answer. She only continued to look at him with her large
clear eyes, frankly declaring that she would not surrender yet, while
he, exasperated more and more by this attitude, lost all self-control.
“Go away, go away,” he stammered, pointing to the door. “I do not wish
you to remain near me. I do not wish to have enemies near me. I do not
wish you to remain near me to drive me mad!”
She rose, very pale, and went at once out of the room, without looking
behind, carrying her work with her.
During the month which followed, Pascal took refuge in furious and
incessant work. He now remained obstinately, for whole days at a time,
alone in the study, sometimes passing even the nights there, going over
old documents, to revise all his works on heredity. It seemed as if a
sort of frenzy had seized him to assure himself of the legitimacy of
his hopes, to force science to give him the certainty that humanity
could be remade—made a higher, a healthy humanity. He no longer left
the house, he abandoned his patients even, and lived among his papers,
without air or exercise. And after a month of this overwork, which
exhausted him without appeasing his domestic torments, he fell into
such a state of nervous exhaustion that illness, for some time latent,
declared itself at last with alarming violence.
Pascal, when he rose in the morning, felt worn out with fatigue,
wearier and less refreshed than he had been on going to bed the night
before. He constantly had pains all over his body; his limbs failed
him, after five minutes’ walk; the slightest exertion tired him; the
least movement caused him intense pain. At times the floor seemed
suddenly to sway beneath his feet. He had a constant buzzing in his
ears, flashes of light dazzled his eyes. He took a loathing for wine,
he had no longer any appetite, and his digestion was seriously
impaired. Then, in the midst of the apathy of his constantly increasing
idleness he would have sudden fits of aimless activity. The equilibrium
was destroyed, he had at times outbreaks of nervous irritability,
without any cause. The slightest emotion brought tears to his eyes.
Finally, he would shut himself up in his room, and give way to
paroxysms of despair so violent that he would sob for hours at a time,
without any immediate cause of grief, overwhelmed simply by the immense
sadness of things.
In the early part of December Pascal had a severe attack of neuralgia.
Violent pains in the bones of the skull made him feel at times as if
his head must split. Old Mme. Rougon, who had been informed of his
illness, came to inquire after her son. But she went straight to the
kitchen, wishing to have a talk with Martine first. The latter, with a
heart-broken and terrified air, said to her that monsieur must
certainly be going mad; and she told her of his singular behavior, the
continual tramping about in his room, the locking of all the drawers,
the rounds which he made from the top to the bottom of the house, until
two o’clock in the morning. Tears filled her eyes and she at last
hazarded the opinion that monsieur must be possessed with a devil, and
that it would be well to notify the curé of St. Saturnin.
“So good a man,” she said, “a man for whom one would let one’s self be
cut in pieces! How unfortunate it is that one cannot get him to go to
church, for that would certainly cure him at once.”
Clotilde, who had heard her grandmother’s voice, entered at this
moment. She, too, wandered through the empty rooms, spending most of
her time in the deserted apartment on the ground floor. She did not
speak, however, but only listened with her thoughtful and expectant
air.
“Ah, goodday! It is you, my dear. Martine tells me that Pascal is
possessed with a devil. That is indeed my opinion also; only the devil
is called pride. He thinks that he knows everything. He is Pope and
Emperor in one, and naturally it exasperates him when people don’t
agree with him.”
She shrugged her shoulders with supreme disdain.
“As for me, all that would only make me laugh if it were not so sad. A
fellow who knows nothing about anything; who has always been wrapped up
in his books; who has not lived. Put him in a drawing-room, and he
would know as little how to act as a new-born babe. And as for women,
he does not even know what they are.”
Forgetting to whom she was speaking, a young girl and a servant, she
lowered her voice, and said confidentially:
“Well, one pays for being too sensible, too. Neither a wife nor a
sweetheart nor anything. That is what has finally turned his brain.”
Clotilde did not move. She only lowered her eyelids slowly over her
large thoughtful eyes; then she raised them again, maintaining her
impenetrable countenance, unwilling, unable, perhaps, to give
expression to what was passing within her. This was no doubt all still
confused, a complete evolution, a great change which was taking place,
and which she herself did not clearly understand.
“He is upstairs, is he not?” resumed Félicité. “I have come to see him,
for this must end; it is too stupid.”
And she went upstairs, while Martine returned to her saucepans, and
Clotilde went to wander again through the empty house.
Upstairs in the study Pascal sat seemingly in a stupor, his face bent
over a large open book. He could no longer read, the words danced
before his eyes, conveying no meaning to his mind. But he persisted,
for it was death to him to lose his faculty for work, hitherto so
powerful. His mother at once began to scold him, snatching the book
from him, and flinging it upon a distant table, crying that when one
was sick one should take care of one’s self. He rose with a quick,
angry movement, about to order her away as he had ordered Clotilde.
Then, by a last effort of the will, he became again deferential.
“Mother, you know that I have never wished to dispute with you. Leave
me, I beg of you.”
She did not heed him, but began instead to take him to task about his
continual distrust. It was he himself who had given himself a fever,
always fancying that he was surrounded by enemies who were setting
traps for him, and watching him to rob him. Was there any common sense
in imagining that people were persecuting him in that way? And then she
accused him of allowing his head to be turned by his discovery, his
famous remedy for curing every disease. That was as much as to think
himself equal to the good God; which only made it all the more cruel
when he found out how mistaken he was. And she mentioned Lafouasse, the
man whom he had killed—naturally, she could understand that that had
not been very pleasant for him; indeed there was cause enough in it to
make him take to his bed.
Pascal, still controlling himself, very pale and with eyes cast on the
ground, contented himself with repeating:
“Mother, leave me, I beg of you.”
“No, I won’t leave you,” she cried with the impetuosity which was
natural to her, and which her great age had in no wise diminished. “I
have come precisely to stir you up a little, to rid you of this fever
which is consuming you. No, this cannot continue. I don’t wish that we
should again become the talk of the whole town on your account. I wish
you to take care of yourself.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and said in a low voice, as if speaking to
himself, with an uneasy look, half of conviction, half of doubt:
“I am not ill.”
But Félicité, beside herself, burst out, gesticulating violently:
“Not ill! not ill! Truly, there is no one like a physician for not
being able to see himself. Why, my poor boy, every one that comes near
you is shocked by your appearance. You are becoming insane through
pride and fear!”
This time Pascal raised his head quickly, and looked her straight in
the eyes, while she continued:
“This is what I had to tell you, since it seems that no one else would
undertake the task. You are old enough to know what you ought to do.
You should make an effort to shake off all this; you should think of
something else; you should not let a fixed idea take possession of you,
especially when you belong to a family like ours. You know it; have
sense, and take care of yourself.”
He grew paler than before, looking fixedly at her still, as if he were
sounding her, to know what there was of her in him. And he contented
himself with answering:
“You are right, mother. I thank you.”
When he was again alone, he dropped into his seat before the table, and
tried once more to read his book. But he could not succeed, any more
than before, in fixing his attention sufficiently to understand the
words, whose letters mingled confusedly together before his eyes. And
his mother’s words buzzed in his ears; a vague terror, which had some
time before sprung up within him, grew and took shape, haunting him now
as an immediate and clearly defined danger. He who two months before
had boasted triumphantly of not belonging to the family, was he about
to receive the most terrible of contradictions? Ah, this egotistic joy,
this intense joy of not belonging to it, was it to give place to the
terrible anguish of being struck in his turn? Was he to have the
humiliation of seeing the taint revive in him? Was he to be dragged
down to the horror of feeling himself in the clutches of the monster of
heredity? The sublime idea, the lofty certitude which he had of
abolishing suffering, of strengthening man’s will, of making a new and
a higher humanity, a healthy humanity, was assuredly only the beginning
of the monomania of vanity. And in his bitter complaint of being
watched, in his desire to watch the enemies who, he thought, were
obstinately bent on his destruction, were easily to be recognized the
symptoms of the monomania of suspicion. So then all the diseases of the
race were to end in this terrible case—madness within a brief space,
then general paralysis, and a dreadful death.
From this day forth Pascal was as if possessed. The state of nervous
exhaustion into which overwork and anxiety had thrown him left him an
unresisting prey to this haunting fear of madness and death. All the
morbid sensations which he felt, his excessive fatigue on rising, the
buzzing in his ears, the flashes of light before his eyes, even his
attacks of indigestion and his paroxysms of tears, were so many
infallible symptoms of the near insanity with which he believed himself
threatened. He had completely lost, in his own case, the keen power of
diagnosis of the observant physician, and if he still continued to
reason about it, it was only to confound and pervert symptoms, under
the influence of the moral and physical depression into which he had
fallen. He was no longer master of himself; he was mad, so to say, to
convince himself hour by hour that he must become so.
All the days of this pale December were spent by him in going deeper
and deeper into his malady. Every morning he tried to escape from the
haunting subject, but he invariably ended by shutting himself in the
study to take up again, in spite of himself, the tangled skein of the
day before.
The long study which he had made of heredity, his important researches,
his works, completed the poisoning of his peace, furnishing him with
ever renewed causes of disquietude. To the question which he put to
himself continually as to his own hereditary case, the documents were
there to answer it by all possible combinations. They were so numerous
that he lost himself among them now. If he had deceived himself, if he
could not set himself apart, as a remarkable case of variation, should
he place himself under the head of reversional heredity, passing over
one, two, or even three generations? Or was his case rather a
manifestation of larvated heredity, which would bring anew proof to the
support of his theory of the germ plasm, or was it simply a singular
case of hereditary resemblance, the sudden apparition of some unknown
ancestor at the very decline of life?
From this moment he never rested, giving himself up completely to the
investigation of his case, searching his notes, rereading his books.
And he studied himself, watching the least of his sensations, to deduce
from them the facts on which he might judge himself. On the days when
his mind was most sluggish, or when he thought he experienced
particular phenomena of vision, he inclined to a predominance of the
original nervous lesion; while, if he felt that his limbs were
affected, his feet heavy and painful, he imagined he was suffering the
indirect influence of some ancestor come from outside. Everything
became confused, until at last he could recognize himself no longer, in
the midst of the imaginary troubles which agitated his disturbed
organism. And every evening the conclusion was the same, the same knell
sounded in his brain—heredity, appalling heredity, the fear of becoming
mad.
In the early part of January Clotilde was an involuntary spectator of a
scene which wrung her heart. She was sitting before one of the windows
of the study, reading, concealed by the high back of her chair, when
she saw Pascal, who had been shut up in his room since the day before,
entering. He held open before his eyes with both hands a sheet of
yellow paper, in which she recognized the genealogical tree. He was so
completely absorbed, his gaze was so fixed, that she might have come
forward without his observing her. He spread the tree upon the table,
continuing to look at it for a long time, with the terrified expression
of interrogation which had become habitual to him, which gradually
changed to one of supplication, the tears coursing down his cheeks.
Why, great God! would not the tree answer him, and tell him what
ancestor he resembled, in order that he might inscribe his case on his
own leaf, beside the others? If he was to become mad, why did not the
tree tell him so clearly, which would have calmed him, for he believed
that his suffering came only from his uncertainty? Tears clouded his
vision, yet still he looked, he exhausted himself in this longing to
know, in which his reason must finally give way.
Clotilde hastily concealed herself as she saw him walk over to the
press, which he opened wide. He seized the envelopes, threw them on the
table, and searched among them feverishly. It was the scene of the
terrible night of the storm that was beginning over again, the gallop
of nightmares, the procession of phantoms, rising at his call from this
heap of old papers. As they passed by, he addressed to each of them a
question, an ardent prayer, demanding the origin of his malady, hoping
for a word, a whisper which should set his doubts at rest. First, it
was only an indistinct murmur, then came words and fragments of
phrases.
“Is it you—is it you—is it you—oh, old mother, the mother of us all—who
are to give me your madness? Is it you, inebriate uncle, old scoundrel
of an uncle, whose drunkenness I am to pay for? Is it you, ataxic
nephew, or you, mystic nephew, or yet you, idiot niece, who are to
reveal to me the truth, showing me one of the forms of the lesion from
which I suffer? Or is it rather you, second cousin, who hanged
yourself; or you, second cousin, who committed murder; or you, second
cousin, who died of rottenness, whose tragic ends announce to me
mine—death in a cell, the horrible decomposition of being?”
And the gallop continued, they rose and passed by with the speed of the
wind. The papers became animate, incarnate, they jostled one another,
they trampled on one another, in a wild rush of suffering humanity.
“Ah, who will tell me, who will tell me, who will tell me?—Is it he who
died mad? he who was carried off by phthisis? he who was killed by
paralysis? she whose constitutional feebleness caused her to die in
early youth?—Whose is the poison of which I am to die? What is it,
hysteria, alcoholism, tuberculosis, scrofula? And what is it going to
make of me, an ataxic or a madman? A madman. Who was it said a madman?
They all say it—a madman, a madman, a madman!”
Sobs choked Pascal. He let his dejected head fall among the papers, he
wept endlessly, shaken by shuddering sobs. And Clotilde, seized by a
sort of awe, feeling the presence of the fate which rules over races,
left the room softly, holding her breath; for she knew that it would
mortify him exceedingly if he knew that she had been present.
Long periods of prostration followed. January was very cold. But the
sky remained wonderfully clear, a brilliant sun shone in the limpid
blue; and at La Souleiade, the windows of the study facing south formed
a sort of hothouse, preserving there a delightfully mild temperature.
They did not even light a fire, for the room was always filled with a
flood of sunshine, in which the flies that had survived the winter flew
about lazily. The only sound to be heard was the buzzing of their
wings. It was a close and drowsy warmth, like a breath of spring that
had lingered in the old house baked by the heat of summer.
Pascal, still gloomy, dragged through the days there, and it was there,
too, that he overheard one day the closing words of a conversation
which aggravated his suffering. As he never left his room now before
breakfast, Clotilde had received Dr. Ramond this morning in the study,
and they were talking there together in an undertone, sitting beside
each other in the bright sunshine.
It was the third visit which Ramond had made during the last week.
Personal reasons, the necessity, especially, of establishing definitely
his position as a physician at Plassans, made it expedient for him not
to defer his marriage much longer: and he wished to obtain from
Clotilde a decisive answer. On each of his former visits the presence
of a third person had prevented him from speaking. As he desired to
receive her answer from herself directly he had resolved to declare
himself to her in a frank conversation. Their intimate friendship, and
the discretion and good sense of both, justified him in taking this
step. And he ended, smiling, looking into her eyes:
“I assure you, Clotilde, that it is the most reasonable of
_dénouements_. You know that I have loved you for a long time. I have a
profound affection and esteem for you. That alone might perhaps not be
sufficient, but, in addition, we understand each other perfectly, and
we should be very happy together, I am convinced of it.”
She did not cast down her eyes; she, too, looked at him frankly, with a
friendly smile. He was, in truth, very handsome, in his vigorous young
manhood.
“Why do you not marry Mlle. Leveque, the lawyer’s daughter?” she asked.
“She is prettier and richer than I am, and I know that she would gladly
accept you. My dear friend, I fear that you are committing a folly in
choosing me.”
He did not grow impatient, seeming still convinced of the wisdom of his
determination.
“But I do not love Mlle. Leveque, and I do love you. Besides, I have
considered everything, and I repeat that I know very well what I am
about. Say yes; you can take no better course.”
Then she grew very serious, and a shadow passed over her face, the
shadow of those reflections, of those almost unconscious inward
struggles, which kept her silent for days at a time. She did not see
clearly yet, she still struggled against herself, and she wished to
wait.
“Well, my friend, since you are really serious, do not ask me to give
you an answer to-day; grant me a few weeks longer. Master is indeed
very ill. I am greatly troubled about him; and you would not like to
owe my consent to a hasty impulse. I assure you, for my part, that I
have a great deal of affection for you, but it would be wrong to decide
at this moment; the house is too unhappy. It is agreed, is it not? I
will not make you wait long.”
And to change the conversation she added:
“Yes, I am uneasy about master. I wished to see you, in order to tell
you so. The other day I surprised him weeping violently, and I am
certain the fear of becoming mad haunts him. The day before yesterday,
when you were talking to him, I saw that you were examining him. Tell
me frankly, what do you think of his condition? Is he in any danger?”
“Not the slightest!” exclaimed Dr. Ramond. “His system is a little out
of order, that is all. How can a man of his ability, who has made so
close a study of nervous diseases, deceive himself to such an extent?
It is discouraging, indeed, if the clearest and most vigorous minds can
go so far astray. In his case his own discovery of hypodermic
injections would be excellent. Why does he not use them with himself?”
And as the young girl replied, with a despairing gesture, that he would
not listen to her, that he would not even allow her to speak to him
now, Ramond said:
“Well, then, I will speak to him.”
It was at this moment that Pascal came out of his room, attracted by
the sound of voices. But on seeing them both so close to each other, so
animated, so youthful, and so handsome in the sunshine—clothed with
sunshine, as it were—he stood still in the doorway. He looked fixedly
at them, and his pale face altered.
Ramond had a moment before taken Clotilde’s hand, and he was holding it
in his.
“It is a promise, is it not? I should like the marriage to take place
this summer. You know how much I love you, and I shall eagerly await
your answer.”
“Very well,” she answered. “Before a month all will be settled.”
A sudden giddiness made Pascal stagger. Here now was this boy, his
friend, his pupil, who had introduced himself into his house to rob him
of his treasure! He ought to have expected this _denouement_, yet the
sudden news of a possible marriage surprised him, overwhelmed him like
an unforeseen catastrophe that had forever ruined his life. This girl
whom he had fashioned, whom he had believed his own, she would leave
him, then, without regret, she would leave him to die alone in his
solitude. Only the day before she had made him suffer so intensely that
he had asked himself whether he should not part from her and send her
to her brother, who was always writing for her. For an instant he had
even decided on this separation, for the good of both. Yet to find her
here suddenly, with this man, to hear her promise to give him an
answer, to think that she would marry, that she would soon leave him,
this stabbed him to the heart.
At the sound of his heavy step as he came forward, the two young people
turned round in some embarrassment.
“Why, master, we were just talking about you,” said Ramond gaily. “Yes,
to be frank with you, we were conspiring. Come, why do you not take
care of yourself? There is nothing serious the matter with you; you
would be on your feet again in a fortnight if you did.”
Pascal, who had dropped into a chair, continued to look at them. He had
still the power to control himself, and his countenance gave no
evidence of the wound which he had just received. He would assuredly
die of it, and no one would suspect the malady which had carried him
off. But it was a relief to him to be able to give vent to his
feelings, and he declared violently that he would not take even so much
as a glass of tisane.
“Take care of myself!” he cried; “what for? Is it not all over with my
old carcass?”
Ramond insisted, with a good-tempered smile.
“You are sounder than any of us. This is a trifling disturbance, and
you know that you have the remedy in your own hands. Use your
hypodermic injection.”
Pascal did not allow him to finish. This filled the measure of his
rage. He angrily asked if they wished him to kill himself, as he had
killed Lafouasse. His injections! A pretty invention, of which he had
good reason to be proud. He abjured medicine, and he swore that he
would never again go near a patient. When people were no longer good
for anything they ought to die; that would be the best thing for
everybody. And that was what he was going to try to do, so as to have
done with it all.
“Bah! bah!” said Ramond at last, resolving to take his leave, through
fear of exciting him still further; “I will leave you with Clotilde; I
am not at all uneasy, Clotilde will take care of you.”
But Pascal had on this morning received the final blow. He took to his
bed toward evening, and remained for two whole days without opening the
door of his room. It was in vain that Clotilde, at last becoming
alarmed, knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer. Martine went
in her turn and begged monsieur, through the keyhole, at least to tell
her if he needed anything. A deathlike silence reigned; the room seemed
to be empty.
Then, on the morning of the third day, as the young girl by chance
turned the knob, the door yielded; perhaps it had been unlocked for
hours. And she might enter freely this room in which she had never set
foot: a large room, rendered cold by its northern exposure, in which
she saw a small iron bed without curtains, a shower bath in a corner, a
long black wooden table, a few chairs, and on the table, on the floor,
along the walls, an array of chemical apparatus, mortars, furnaces,
machines, instrument cases. Pascal, up and dressed, was sitting on the
edge of his bed, in trying to arrange which he had exhausted himself.
“Don’t you want me to nurse you, then?” she asked with anxious
tenderness, without venturing to advance into the room.
“Oh, you can come in,” he said with a dejected gesture. “I won’t beat
you. I have not the strength to do that now.”
And from this day on he tolerated her about him, and allowed her to
wait on him. But he had caprices still. He would not let her enter the
room when he was in bed, possessed by a sort of morbid shame; then he
made her send him Martine. But he seldom remained in bed, dragging
himself about from chair to chair, in his utter inability to do any
kind of work. His malady continued to grow worse, until at last he was
reduced to utter despair, tortured by sick headaches, and without the
strength, as he said, to put one foot before the other, convinced every
morning that he would spend the night at the Tulettes, a raving maniac.
He grew thin; his face, under its crown of white hair—which he still
cared for through a last remnant of vanity—acquired a look of
suffering, of tragic beauty. And although he allowed himself to be
waited on, he refused roughly all remedies, in the distrust of medicine
into which he had fallen.
Clotilde now devoted herself to him entirely. She gave up everything
else; at first she attended low mass, then she left off going to church
altogether. In her impatience for some certain happiness, she felt as
if she were taking a step toward that end by thus devoting all her
moments to the service of a beloved being whom she wished to see once
more well and happy. She made a complete sacrifice of herself, she
sought to find happiness in the happiness of another; and all this
unconsciously, solely at the impulse of her woman’s heart, in the midst
of the crisis through which she was still passing, and which was
modifying her character profoundly, without her knowledge. She remained
silent regarding the disagreement which separated them. The idea did
not again occur to her to throw herself on his neck, crying that she
was his, that he might return to life, since she gave herself to him.
In her thoughts she grieved to see him suffer; she was only an
affectionate girl, who took care of him, as any female relative would
have done. And her attentions were very pure, very delicate, occupying
her life so completely that her days now passed swiftly, exempt from
tormenting thoughts of the Beyond, filled with the one wish of curing
him.
But where she had a hard battle to fight was in prevailing upon him to
use his hypodermic injections upon himself. He flew into a passion,
disowned his discovery, and called himself an imbecile. She too cried
out. It was she now who had faith in science, who grew indignant at
seeing him doubt his own genius. He resisted for a long time; then
yielding to the empire which she had acquired over him, he consented,
simply to avoid the affectionate dispute which she renewed with him
every morning. From the very first he experienced great relief from the
injections, although he refused to acknowledge it. His mind became
clearer, and he gradually gained strength. Then she was exultant,
filled with enthusiastic pride in him. She vaunted his treatment, and
became indignant because he did not admire himself, as an example of
the miracles which he was able to work. He smiled; he was now beginning
to see clearly into his own condition. Ramond had spoken truly, his
illness had been nothing but nervous exhaustion. Perhaps he would get
over it after all.
“Ah, it is you who are curing me, little girl,” he would say, not
wishing to confess his hopes. “Medicines, you see, act according to the
hand that gives them.”
The convalescence was slow, lasting through the whole of February. The
weather remained clear and cold; there was not a single day in which
the study was not flooded with warm, pale sunshine. There were hours of
relapse, however, hours of the blackest melancholy, in which all the
patient’s terrors returned; when his guardian, disconsolate, was
obliged to sit at the other end of the room, in order not to irritate
him still more. He despaired anew of his recovery. He became again
bitter and aggressively ironical.
It was on one of those bad days that Pascal, approaching a window, saw
his neighbor, M. Bellombre, the retired professor, making the round of
his garden to see if his fruit trees were well covered with blossoms.
The sight of the old man, so neat and so erect, with the fine placidity
of the egoist, on whom illness had apparently never laid hold, suddenly
put Pascal beside himself.
“Ah!” he growled, “there is one who will never overwork himself, who
will never endanger his health by worrying!”
And he launched forth into an ironical eulogy on selfishness. To be
alone in the world, not to have a friend, to have neither wife nor
child, what happiness! That hard-hearted miser, who for forty years had
had only other people’s children to cuff, who lived aloof from the
world, without even a dog, with a deaf and dumb gardener older than
himself, was he not an example of the greatest happiness possible on
earth? Without a responsibility, without a duty, without an anxiety,
other than that of taking care of his dear health! He was a wise man,
he would live a hundred years.
“Ah, the fear of life! that is cowardice which is truly the best
wisdom. To think that I should ever have regretted not having a child
of my own! Has any one a right to bring miserable creatures into the
world? Bad heredity should be ended, life should be ended. The only
honest man is that old coward there!”
M. Bellombre continued peacefully making the round of his pear trees in
the March sunshine. He did not risk a too hasty movement; he economized
his fresh old age. If he met a stone in his path, he pushed it aside
with the end of his cane, and then walked tranquilly on.
“Look at him! Is he not well preserved; is he not handsome? Have not
all the blessings of heaven been showered down upon him? He is the
happiest man I know.”
Clotilde, who had listened in silence, suffered from the irony of
Pascal, the full bitterness of which she divined. She, who usually took
M. Bellombre’s part, felt a protest rise up within her. Tears came to
her eyes, and she answered simply in a low voice:
“Yes; but he is not loved.”
These words put a sudden end to the painful scene. Pascal, as if he had
received an electric shock, turned and looked at her. A sudden rush of
tenderness brought tears to his eyes also, and he left the room to keep
from weeping.
The days wore on in the midst of these alternations of good and bad
hours. He recovered his strength but slowly, and what put him in
despair was that whenever he attempted to work he was seized by a
profuse perspiration. If he had persisted, he would assuredly have
fainted. So long as he did not work he felt that his convalescence was
making little progress. He began to take an interest again, however, in
his accustomed investigations. He read over again the last pages that
he had written, and, with this reawakening of the scientist in him, his
former anxieties returned. At one time he fell into a state of such
depression, that the house and all it contained ceased to exist for
him. He might have been robbed, everything he possessed might have been
taken and destroyed, without his even being conscious of the disaster.
Now he became again watchful, from time to time he would feel his
pocket, to assure himself that the key of the press was there.
But one morning when he had overslept himself, and did not leave his
room until eleven o’clock, he saw Clotilde in the study, quietly
occupied in copying with great exactness in pastel a branch of
flowering almond. She looked up, smiling; and taking a key that was
lying beside her on the desk, she offered it to him, saying:
“Here, master.”
Surprised, not yet comprehending, he looked at the object which she
held toward him.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It is the key of the press, which you must have dropped from your
pocket yesterday, and which I picked up here this morning.”
Pascal took it with extraordinary emotion. He looked at it, and then at
Clotilde. Was it ended, then? She would persecute him no more. She was
no longer eager to rob everything, to burn everything. And seeing her
still smiling, she also looking moved, an immense joy filled his heart.
He caught her in his arms, crying:
“Ah, little girl, if we might only not be too unhappy!”
Then he opened a drawer of his table and threw the key into it, as he
used to do formerly.
From this time on he gained strength, and his convalescence progressed
more rapidly. Relapses were still possible, for he was still very weak.
But he was able to write, and this made the days less heavy. The sun,
too, shone more brightly, the study being so warm at times that it
became necessary to half close the shutters. He refused to see
visitors, barely tolerated Martine, and had his mother told that he was
sleeping, when she came at long intervals to inquire for him. He was
happy only in this delightful solitude, nursed by the rebel, the enemy
of yesterday, the docile pupil of to-day. They would often sit together
in silence for a long time, without feeling any constraint. They
meditated, or lost themselves in infinitely sweet reveries.
One day, however, Pascal seemed very grave. He was now convinced that
his illness had resulted from purely accidental causes, and that
heredity had had no part in it. But this filled him none the less with
humility.
“My God!” he murmured, “how insignificant we are! I who thought myself
so strong, who was so proud of my sane reason! And here have I barely
escaped being made insane by a little trouble and overwork!”
He was silent, and sank again into thought. After a time his eyes
brightened, he had conquered himself. And in a moment of reason and
courage, he came to a resolution.
“If I am getting better,” he said, “it is especially for your sake that
I am glad.”
Clotilde, not understanding, looked up and said:
“How is that?”
“Yes, on account of your marriage. Now you will be able to fix the
day.”
She still seemed surprised.
“Ah, true—my marriage!”
“Shall we decide at once upon the second week in June?”
“Yes, the second week in June; that will do very well.”
They spoke no more; she fixed her eyes again on the piece of sewing on
which she was engaged, while he, motionless, and with a grave face, sat
looking into space.