One morning on going to see Renée, who had had a bad night, M. Mauperin
found her in a doze. At the sound of his footstep she half opened her
eyes and turned slightly towards him.
"Oh, it's you, papa," she said, and then she murmured something vaguely,
of which M. Mauperin only caught the word "journey."
"What are you saying about a journey?" he asked.
"Yes, it's as though I had just come back from far away--from very far
away--from countries I can't remember." And opening her eyes wide, with
her two hands flat out on the sheet, she seemed to be trying to recall
where she had been, and from whence she had just come. A confused
recollection, an indistinct memory remained to her of stretches and
spaces of country, of vague places, of those worlds and limbos to which
sick people go during those last nights which are detaching them from
earth, and from whence they return, surprised, with the dizziness and
stupor of the Infinite still upon them, as if in the dream they have
forgotten they had heard the first flapping of the wings of Death.
"Oh, it's nothing," she said after a minute's silence, "it's just the
effect of the opium--they gave me some last night to make me sleep." And
moving as though to shake off her thoughts, she said to her father,
"Hold the little glass for me, will you, so that I can make myself look
nice? Higher up--oh, these men--how awkward they are, to be sure."
She put her thin hands through her hair to fluff it up and pulled her
lace into its place again.
"There now," she said, "talk to me. I want to be talked to," and she
half closed her eyes while her father talked.
"You are tired, Renée; I'll leave you," said M. Mauperin, seeing that
she did not appear to be listening.
"No, I have a touch of pain. Talk to me, though; it makes me forget it."
"But you are not listening to me. Come now, what are you thinking about,
my dear little girl?"
"I'm not thinking about anything. I was trying to remember. Dreams, you
know--it isn't really like that--it was--I don't remember. Ah!"
She broke off suddenly, with a pang of sharp pain.
"Does it hurt you, Renée?"
She did not answer, and M. Mauperin could not help his lips moving, as
he looked up with an expression of revolt.
"Poor father," said Renée, after a few minutes. "You see I'm resigned.
No, we ought not to be so angry with pain. It is sent to us for some
reason. We are not made to suffer simply for the sake of suffering."
And in a broken voice, stopping continually to get breath, she began
talking to him of all the good sides of suffering, of the wells of
tenderness it opens up in us, of the delicacy of heart, and the
gentleness of character that it gives to those who accept its bitterness
without allowing themselves to get soured by it.
She spoke to him of all the meannesses and the pettinesses that go away
from us when we suffer; of the tendency to sarcasm which leaves us, and
the unkind laughter which we restrain; of the way in which we give up
finding pleasure in other people's little miseries, and of the
indulgence that we have for every one.
"If you only knew," she said, "what a stupid thing wit seems to me now."
And M. Mauperin heard her expressing her gratitude to suffering as a
proof of election. She spoke of selfishness and of all the materiality
in which robust health wraps us up; of that hardness of heart which is
the result of the well-being of the body; and she told him what ease and
deliverance come with sickness; how light she felt inwardly and what
aspirations it brings with it for something outside ourselves.
She spoke, too, of suffering as an ill which takes our pride away, which
reminds us of our infirmity, which makes us humane, causes us to feel
with all those who suffer, and which instils charity into us.
"And then, too," she added with a smile, "without it there would be
something wanting for us; we should never be sad, you know----"