I was going to see my friend Simon Radevin once more, for I had not
seen him for fifteen years. Formerly he was my most intimate friend,
and I used to spend long, quiet, and happy evenings with him. He was
one of those men to whom one tells the most intimate affairs of the
heart, and in whom one finds, when quietly talking, rare, clever,
ingenious, and refined thoughts--thoughts which stimulate and capture
the mind.
For years we had scarcely been separated: we had lived, traveled,
thought, and dreamed together; had liked the same things with the same
liking, admired the same books, comprehended the same works, shivered
with the same sensations, and very often laughed at the same
individuals, whom we understood completely, by merely exchanging a
glance.
Then he married--quite unexpectedly married a little girl from the
provinces, who had come to Paris in search of a husband. How ever could
that little, thin, insipidly fair girl, with her weak hands, her light,
vacant eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was exactly like a hundred
thousand marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent, clever
young fellow? Can anyone understand these things? No doubt he had hoped
for happiness, simple, quiet, and long-enduring happiness, in the arms
of a good, tender, and faithful woman; he had seen all that in the
transparent looks of that schoolgirl with light hair.
He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living, and vibrating
man grows tired as soon as he has comprehended the stupid reality of a
common-place life, unless indeed, he becomes so brutalized as to be
callous to externals.
What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty,
light-hearted, and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor through
provincial life? A man can change a great deal in the course of fifteen
years!
The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage,
a stout, a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up
to me with open arms, exclaiming: "George!"
I embraced him, but I had not recognized him, and then I said, in
astonishment: "By Jove! You have not grown thin!"
And he replied with a laugh: "What did you expect? Good living, a good
table, and good nights! Eating and sleeping, that is my existence!"
I looked at him closely, trying to find the features I held so dear in
that broad face. His eyes alone had not altered, but I no longer saw
the same looks in them, and I said to myself: "If looks be the
reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head are not what they
used to be--those thoughts which I knew so well."
Yet his eyes were bright, full of pleasure and friendship, but they had
not that clear, intelligent expression which tells better than do words
the value of the mind. Suddenly he said to me:
"Here are my two eldest children." A girl of fourteen, who was almost a
woman, and a boy of thirteen, in the dress of a pupil from a lycee,
came forward in a hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low
voice: "Are they yours?"
"Of course they are," he replied laughing.
"How many have you?"
"Five! There are three more indoors."
He said that in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and
I felt profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt for this
vainglorious and simple reproducer of his species, who spent his nights
in his country house in uxorious pleasures.
I got into a carriage, which he drove himself, and we set off through
the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the
streets save a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there a
shopkeeper standing at his door took off his hat, and Simon returned
the salute and told me the man's name--no doubt to show me that he knew
all the inhabitants personally. The thought struck me that he was
thinking of becoming a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, that
dream of all who have buried themselves in the provinces.
We were soon out of the town; the carriage turned into a garden which
had some pretensions to a park, and stopped in front of a turreted
house, which tried to pass for a chateau.
"That is my den," Simon said, so that he might be complimented on it,
and I replied that it was delightful.
A lady appeared on the steps, dressed up for a visitor, her hair done
for a visitor, and with phrases ready prepared for a visitor. She was
no longer the light-haired, insipid girl I had seen in church fifteen
years previously, but a stout lady in curls and flounces, one of those
ladies of uncertain age, without intellect, without any of those things
which constitute a woman. In short she was a mother, a stout,
commonplace mother, a human layer and brood mare, a machine of flesh
which procreates, without mental care save for her children and her
housekeeping book.
She welcomed me, and I went into the hall, where three children, ranged
according to their height, were ranked for review, like firemen before
a mayor. "Ah! ah! so there are the others?" said I. And Simon, who was
radiant with pleasure, named them: "Jean, Sophie, and Gontran."
The door of the drawing-room was open. I went in, and in the depths of
an easy-chair I saw something trembling, a man, an old, paralyzed man.
Madame Radevin came forward and said: "This is my grandfather,
Monsieur; he is eighty-seven." And then she shouted into the shaking
old man's ears: "This is a friend of Simon's, grandpapa."
The old gentleman tried to say "Good day" to me, and he muttered: "Oua,
oua, oua," and waved his hand.