HE?

My dear friend, you can hardly believe it? I can see why. You think I

have gone mad? It may be so, but not for the reasons which you suppose.

Yes, I am going to get married. That's true.

My ideas and my convictions have not changed at all. I look upon all

legalized co-habitation as utterly stupid, for I am certain that nine

husbands out of ten are cuckolds; and they get no more than their deserts

for having been idiotic enough to fetter their lives and renounce their

freedom in love, the only happy and good thing in the world, and for

having clipped the wings of fancy which continually drives us on toward

all women. You know what I mean. More than ever I feel that I am incapable

of loving one woman alone, because I shall always adore all the others too

much. I should like to have a thousand arms, a thousand mouths, and a

thousand--temperaments, to be able to strain an army of these charming

creatures in my embrace at the same moment.

And yet I am going to get married!

I may add that I know very little of the girl who is going to become

my wife to-morrow; I have only seen her four or five times. I know that

she is not distasteful to me, and that is enough for my purpose. She is

small, fair, and stout; so of course the day after to-morrow I shall

ardently wish for a tall, dark, thin, woman.

She is not rich, and belongs to the middle classes. She is a girl such

as you may find by the gross, well adapted for matrimony, without any

apparent faults, and with no particularly striking qualities. People say

of her: "Mlle Lajolle is a very nice girl," and to-morrow they will say:

"What a very nice woman Madame Raymon is." She belongs, in a word, to that

immense number of girls who make very good wives for us till the moment

comes when we discover that we happen to prefer all other women to that

particular woman we have married.

"Well," you will say to me, "what on earth do you get married for?"

I hardly like to tell you the strange and seemingly improbable reason

that urged me on to this mad action. I am getting married in order not to

be alone.

I don't know how to tell you or to make you understand me, but my state

of mind is so wretched that you will pity me and despise me.

I do not want to be alone any longer at night; I want to feel that there

is some one close to me touching me, a being who can speak and say

something, no matter what it be.

I wish to be able to awaken somebody by my side, so that I may be able

to ask some sudden question, a stupid question even, if I feel inclined,

so that I may hear a human voice, to have somebody living in my house and

feel that there is some waking soul close to me, some one whose reason is

at work--so that when I hastily light the candle I may see some human face

by my side--because--because--I am ashamed to confess it--because when I

am alone, I am afraid.

Oh! you don't understand me yet.

I am not afraid of any danger; if a man were to come into the room I

should kill him without trembling. I am not afraid of ghosts, nor do I

believe in the supernatural. I am not afraid of dead people, for I believe

in the total annihilation of every being that disappears from the face of

this earth.

Well,--yes, well, then... I am afraid of myself, afraid of that

horrible sensation of incomprehensible fear, afraid of the spasms of my

terrified mind.

You may laugh, if you like. It is terrible and incurable. I am afraid

of the walls, of the furniture, of the familiar objects, which are

animated, as far as I am concerned, by a kind of animal life. Above

all, I am afraid of my own dreadful thoughts, of my reason, which seems

as if it were about to leave me, driven away by a mysterious and invisible

anguish.

At first I feel a vague uneasiness in my mind which causes a cold shiver

to run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to be seen, and

I wish there were something there, no matter what, as long as it were

something tangible: I am frightened, merely because I cannot understand my

own terror.

If I speak, I am afraid of my own voice. 'If I walk, I am afraid of I

know not what, behind the door, behind the curtains, in the cupboard, or

under my bed, and yet all the time I know there is nothing anywhere, and

I turn round suddenly because I am afraid of what is behind me, although

there is nothing there, and I know it.

I get agitated; I feel that my fear increases, and so I shut myself up

in my own room, get into bed, and hide under the clothes, and there,

cowering down, _rolled into a ball_, I close my eyes in despair and

remain thus for a long time, remembering that my candle is alight on the

table by my bedside, and that I ought to put it out, and yet--I dare not

do it!

It is very terrible, is it not, to be like that?

Formerly I felt nothing of all that; I came home quite comfortably, and

went up and down in my rooms without anything disturbing my calmness of

mind. Had anyone told me that I should be attacked by a malady--for I can

call it nothing else--of most improbable fear, such a stupid and terrible

malady as it is, I should have laughed outright. I was certainly never

afraid of opening the door in the dark; I used to go to bed slowly without

locking it, and never got up in the middle of the night to make sure that

everything was firmly closed.

It began last year in a very strange manner, on a damp autumn evening.

When my servant had left the room, after I had dined, I asked myself what

I was going to do. I walked up and down my room for some time, feeling

tired without any reason for it, unable to work, and without enough energy

to read. A fine rain was falling, and I felt unhappy, a prey to one of

those fits of casual despondency which make us feel inclined to cry, or to

talk, no matter to whom, so as to shake off our depressing thoughts.

I felt that I was alone and that my rooms seemed to me to be more

empty that they had ever been before. I was surrounded by a sensation of

infinite and overwhelming solitude. What was I to do? I sat down, but then

a kind of nervous impatience seized my legs, so that I got up and began to

walk about again. I was feverish, for I noticed my hands, which I had

clasped behind me, as one often does when walking slowly, almost seemed

to burn one another. Then suddenly a cold shiver ran down my back, and I

thought the damp air might have penetrated into my room, so I lit the fire

for the first time that year, and [sat down again and looked at the

flames. But soon I felt that I could not possibly remain quiet. So I got

up again and determined to go out, to pull myself together, and to seek a

friend to bear me company. I went out. I looked up three friends who were

not at home, then I went on to the boulevards to try and meet some

acquaintance or other there.

It was wretched everywhere. The wet pavement glistened in the gaslight,

and a moist warmth, that kind of warmth that chills you with sudden

shivers, the oppressive heat of impalpable rain, lay heavily over the

streets and seemed to obscure the light from the lamps.

I went on slowly, saying to myself, "I shall not find a soul to talk

to."

I glanced into several cafés from the Madeleine as far as the Faubourg

Poissonnière, and saw many unhappy-looking individuals sitting at the

tables, who did not seem even to have enough energy left to finish the

refreshments they had ordered.

For a long time I wandered aimlessly up and down, and about midnight I

started off for home; I was very calm and very tired. My concierge,

who goes to bed before eleven o'clock, opened the door at once, which was

quite unusual for him, and I thought that another lodger had no doubt

just come in.

When I go out I always turn the key twice. Now I found it merely closed,

which surprised me; but I supposed that some letters had been brought

up for me in the course of the evening.

I went in, and found my fire still burning so that it lighted up the

room a little. I took up a candle to fight it at the fire when looking in

front of me I noticed somebody sitting in my armchair by the fire, warming

his feet, with his back toward me.

I was not in the slightest degree frightened. I thought very naturally

that some friend or other had come to see me. No doubt the concierge, who

knew I had gone out, had said I was coming back and had lend him his own

key. In a moment I remembered all the circumstances of my return, how the

street door had been opened immediately and that my own door was only

latched and not locked.

I could see nothing of my friend but his head. He had evidently gone

to sleep while waiting for me, so I went up to him to rouse him. I saw him

quite clearly; his right arm was hanging down and his feet were crossed,

while his head, which was somewhat inclined to the left of the armchair,

seemed to indicate that he was asleep. "Who can it be?" I asked myself. I

could not see clearly, as the room was rather dark, so I put out my hand

to touch him on the shoulder, and it came in contact with the back of the

chair. There was nobody there; the armchair was empty.

Merciful heaven, what a start I gave! For a moment I drew back as if

some terrible danger had suddenly appeared in my way; then I turned round

again feeling there was somebody behind me, then, impelled by some

imperious desire to look at the armchair again, I turned round once more.

I remained standing up panting with fear, so upset that I could not

collect my thoughts, and ready to drop.

But I am naturally a cool man, and soon recovered myself. I thought:

"It is a mere hallucination, that is all," and I immediately began to

reflect about this phenomenon. Thoughts fly very quickly at such moments.

I had been suffering from a hallucination, that was an incontestable

fact. My mind had been perfectly lucid and had acted regularly and

logically, so there was nothing the matter with the brain. It was only

my eyes that had been deceived; they had had a vision, one of those

visions which lead simple folk to believe in miracles. It was a nervous

accident to the optical apparatus, nothing more; the eyes were rather

overwrought, perhaps.

I lit my candle, and when I stooped down to the fire in so doing, I

noticed that I was trembling, and I raised myself up with a jump, as if

somebody had touched me from behind.