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_BY ROMAIN ROLLAND_
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE IN PARIS
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: JOURNEY'S END
COLAS BREUGNON, BURGUNDIAN
CLERAMBAULT
THE MUSICIANS OF TODAY
SOME MUSICIANS OF FORMER DAYS
BEETHOVEN
HANDEL
MUSICAL TOUR THROUGH THE LAND OF THE PAST
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY
THE PEOPLE'S THEATER
PIERRE AND LUCE
* * * * *
PIERRE AND LUCE
BY
ROMAIN ROLLAND
_Translated by_
CHARLES DE KAY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
_Printed in U.S.A._
THE ISLE OF CALMS
"_Just as the Gulf Stream embraces the Sargasso Sea into which gradually
drift the odds and ends that are carried away by the marine currents
into the regions of calm, so does our aerial current surround a region
where the air is still. It is called_ THE ISLE OF CALMS."
DURATION OF THE STORY
From Wednesday evening, January 30, to Good Friday, May 29, 1918.
PIERRE AND LUCE
PIERRE plunged into the subway. A feverish, a brutal crowd. On his feet
near the door, closely pressed in a bank of human bodies and sharing the
heavy atmosphere passing in and out of their mouths, he stared without
seeing them at the black and rumbling vaults over which flickered the
shining eyes of the train. The same heavy shadows lay in his mind, the
same gleams, hard and tremulous. Suffocating in the raised collar of his
overcoat, his arms jammed against his sides and his lips compressed, his
forehead damp with perspiration momentarily cooled by a current from
outside when the door opened, he tried hard not to see, he tried not to
breathe, he tried not to live. The heart of this young fellow of
eighteen, still almost a child, was full of a dull despair. Above his
head, above the shadows of these long vaulted ways, of this rat-run
through which the monster of metal whirled, all swarming with human
masks--was Paris, the snow, the cold January darkness, the nightmare of
life and of death--the war.
The war! Four years ago it was, the war had come to stay. It had weighed
heavily on his adolescent years. It had caught him by surprise in that
morally critical period when the growing boy, disquieted by the
awakening of his feelings, discovers with a shock the existence of
blind, bestial, crushing forces in life whose prey he is and that
without having asked to live at all. And if he happens to be delicate in
character, tender of heart and frail as to body in the way Pierre was,
he experiences a disgust and horror which he does not dare confide to
others for all these brutalities, these nastinesses, all this nonsense
of fruitful and devouring nature--this breeding sow that gobbles up her
litter of pigs.
In every growing youth between sixteen and eighteen there is a bit of
the soul of Hamlet. Don't ask him to understand the war! (All right for
you men, who have had your fill!) He has all he can do to understand
life and forgive its existence. As a rule he digs himself in with his
dream and with the arts, until the time comes when he has got used to
his incarnation, and the grub has achieved its agonizing passage from
larva to winged insect. What a need he has for peace and meditation
during these April days so full of the trouble of maturing life! But
they come after him to the bottom of his burrow, look him up, drag him
from the dark while still so tender in his new-made skin. They toss him
into the raw air amongst the hard human race whose follies and hatreds
he is expected at the very first moment to accept without understanding
them and, not understanding, to atone for them.
Pierre had been called to military service along with those of his own
class, boys of sixteen to eighteen. Within six months his country would
be needing his flesh. The war claimed him. Six months of respite. Six
months! Oh, if one could only stop thinking at all from this time to
that! Just to stay in this underground tunnel! Never see cruel daylight
any more!...
He plunged deeper into his gloom along with the flying train and closed
his eyes....
When he opened them again--a few steps away, but separated by the bodies
of two strangers, stood a young girl who had just entered. At first all
he saw of her was a delicate profile under the shadow of her hat, one
blonde curl on a somewhat thin cheek, a highlight perched upon the
smooth cheekbone, the fine line of nose and lifted upper lip, and her
mouth, slightly parted, still quivering a little from her sudden rush
into the car. Through the portals of his eyes into his heart she
entered, she entered all complete; and the door closed. Noises from
without fell to nothing. Silence. Peace. She was there.
She did not look at him. In fact she did not even know as yet of his
existence. And yet she was there inside him. He held her image there,
speechless, crushed in his arms, and he dared not breathe for fear that
his breath might ruffle her.
A jostling at the next station. Noisily talking, the crowd threw
themselves into the already packed carriage. Pierre found himself shoved
and carried along by the human wave. Above the tunnel vault, in the city
up there, certain dull reports. The train started up again. At that
moment a man quite out of his senses, who covered up his face with his
hands, came running down the stairway of the station and rolled down on
the floor at the bottom. There was just enough time to catch sight of
the blood that trickled through his fingers.... Then the tunnel and
darkness again. In the car frightened outcries: "The Gothas are at it
again!" During the general excitement which fused these closely packed
bodies into one, his hand had seized the hand that touched him. And
when he raised his eyes he saw it was She.
She did not pull her hand away. At the pressure of his fingers hers
replied in a sympathy of emotion, drawing together a bit, and then
letting themselves go, soft and burning, without budging. Thus the two
remained in the protective darkness, their hands like two birds hid in
the same nest; and the blood from their hearts ran in a single flood
through the warmth of their palms. They said no word to one another. His
mouth almost touched the curl on her cheek and the tip of her ear. They
did not make a gesture. She did not look at him. Two stations beyond,
she loosed her hand from his, which did not keep her, slipped between
the bodies and left without having looked at him.
When she had vanished it occurred to him to follow.... Too late. The
train was in motion. At the next stop he ran up to the surface. There he
found the nocturnal cold, the unseen touches of some flakes of snow and
the City, frightened and amused at its fright; above it very high in
the air circled the warlike birds. But he saw only her, the one who was
within him; and he reached home holding the hand of the unknown girl.
* * * * *
PIERRE AUBIER lived with his parents near Cluny Square. His father was a
municipal judge; his brother, older than he by six years, had
volunteered at the beginning of the war. A good sound family of the
_bourgeois_ class, excellent folks, affectionate and human, never having
dared to think for themselves and very probably never imagining that
such a thing could be. Profoundly honest and with a lofty sense of the
duties of his office, Judge Aubier would have rejected with indignation
as a supreme insult the suspicion even that the verdicts he announced
could have been dictated by any other considerations than those of
equity and his own conscience. But the voice of his conscience had never
spoken--let us better say whispered--against the government. For that
conscience was born a functionary. It registered thoughts as a State
function--variable but infallible. Established powers were invested by
him with a sacred truth. He admired sincerely those souls of iron, the
great free and unbending magistrates of the past; and perhaps secretly
believed himself to be of their stock. He was a very small edition of
Michel de l'Hospital over whom a century of republican slavery had
passed.
As to Madame Aubier she was as good a Christian as her husband was a
good republican. Just as sincerely and honestly as he made himself a
docile instrument of the government against any form of liberty which
was not official, so did she mingle her prayers, and that in perfect
purity of heart, with the homicidal vows which were made about the war
in every country of Europe by the Catholic priests, the Protestant
ministers, the rabbis and the popes, the newspapers and the right-minded
thinkers of the time. And both of them, father and mother, adored their
children and, like true French people, had for them only a profound,
essential affection, would have sacrificed everything for them, and yet,
in order to do as others, would sacrifice them without hesitation. To
whom? Why, to the unknown god. In every epoch Abraham has led Isaac to
the funeral pile. And his magnificent folly still remains an example for
poor human beings.
As often is the case, at this family hearth affection was great and
intimacy null. How should thoughts communicate freely from one to the
other when each one forbore a look into the bottom of his own mind?
Whatever one may feel, one knows that certain dogmas at any rate must be
blinked, set aside; and if it already amounts to an embarrassment when
the dogmas are discreet enough to stay within the limits traced for them
(that was the case, to sum all up, of those belonging to the beyond)
what is to be said when they pretend to mix themselves with life, to
rule life entirely as our laical and obligatory dogmas actually do? Just
you try to forget the dogma of your country! The new religion compelled
a return to the Old Testament. It was not to be made comfortable with
lip devotion and innocent rituals, hygienic and ridiculous, like
confession, Friday fasting, rest on Sunday, which once upon a time
incited the racy spirit of our "philosophers" during the period when the
people were free--under the kings. The new religion wanted all, was not
satisfied with less; all the man complete, his body, his blood, his life
and his thinking mind. Above all his blood. Since the time of the Aztecs
of Mexico never was there a divinity so gorged with blood. It would be
deeply unjust to say that the believers did not suffer from this. They
suffered, but they believed. Alas my poor brother men, for whom
suffering itself is a proof positive of the divine!...
Mr. and Mrs. Aubier suffered like the others, and like the others
adored. But from a growing boy one could not demand such abnegation of
heart, feeling and good sense. Pierre would have liked to comprehend at
least what it was that oppressed him. What a lot of questions burned
within which he could not utter! For the very first word of all was,
"But what if I don't believe in it at all!"--a blasphemy just to start
with. No, he could not speak out. They would have gazed at him in a
stupor, frightened, indignant--with sorrow and shame. And since he was
at that plastic age when the soul, with a bark still too tender,
wrinkles up at the slightest breeze that comes from outside and under
its furtive fingers molds its form shudderingly, he felt himself
beforehand sorrowful and ashamed. Ah! how they believed, all of them!
(But did they really all of them believe?) How was it they managed it
then?--One did not dare to ask. Not to believe, standing all alone among
all those who do believe, is like one who lacks some organ, superfluous
perchance, but one that all the others possess; and so, blushing, one
hides one's nudity from the public.
The only one who was able to comprehend the tortures of the young fellow
was his elder brother. Pierre had for Philip that adoration which the
younger ones often have (but which they jealously conceal) for the older
brother or sister, some stranger comrade, at times merely the vision of
an hour and lost again--who realizes in their eyes the dream at once of
what they could wish to be and of what they would like to love: chaste
ardors and troublesome, of the future, formed of mixing currents. The
big brother was aware of this naive homage and was flattered by it. Not
so long ago he had tried to read the heart of the little brother, and
explain things to him with discretion; for, although more robust, like
him he was molded of that fine clay which, among the better sort of men,
retains a little of the woman and does not blush to own it. But the war
had come and torn him away from his hard working career, from his study
of the sciences, from his twenty-year-old dream and from his intimacy
with his young brother. He had dropped everything in the intoxicating
idealism of the moment, like a big crazy bird that launches out into
space with the heroic and absurd illusion that his beak and his talons
will put an end to the war and restore to earth the reign of peace.
Since then the big bird had returned two or three times to the nest;
each time, alas, a little more worn in plumage. He had come back
denuded of many of his illusions, but he found himself too much
mortified about them to acknowledge it. He was ashamed to have believed
in them. Folly, not to have known how to see life as it is! Now he set
his heart upon dissipating its enchantment and accepting it stoically,
whatsoever it might turn out. Not himself alone did he punish; a
wretched suffering urged him to punish his illusions in the heart of his
young brother, where he found that they held their own. At his first
coming back, when Pierre had run up to him burning in his walled-up
heart, he had been frozen at once by the welcome his elder gave him,
affectionate certainly, always affectionate, but with a certain harsh
irony in his tone hard to fathom. Questions that pressed forward to his
lips were pushed back on the instant. Philip had seen them coming and
cut them down with a word, with a look. After two or three attempts
Pierre drew back with an aching heart. He did not recognize his brother
any more. The other recognized him only too well. He perceived in him
what he himself had been not so long ago and what never he could be
again. He made him pay for it. It caused him regret afterward, but of
that he showed no sign and just began over again. Both of them suffered
and, through a too common misunderstanding, their suffering, so much
alike, so near, which ought to have brought them together, only
separated them. The sole difference between them was that the elder knew
that it was near while Pierre believed himself alone in his suffering
with nobody to whom he could open his soul.
Then why did he not turn toward those of his own age, his companions at
school? It might seem as if these growing youths ought to have come
close to one another and mutually given one another support. But nothing
of the kind. On the contrary, a sorrowful fatality kept them separate,
scattered in little groups, and even in the inner circle of these minim
groups kept them distant and reserved. The commoner sort had plunged,
eyes closed, head foremost into the current of the war. The larger
number drew themselves away and did not feel any connection with the
generations that preceded them; they did not partake in any way of their
passions, their hopes and their hatreds; they were bystanders beside all
the frantic goings-on like men who are sober looking on at those who are
drunk. But what could they do in opposition? Many had started little
magazines, reviews whose ephemeral lives were snuffed out after the
first numbers for lack of air; the censorship produced a vacuum; the
entire thought of France was under the pneumatic exhausting bell. Among
these young fellows the most distinguished ones, too feeble to rebel and
too proud to complain, knew beforehand that they were delivered up to
the sword of war. While they waited for their turn at the
slaughterhouse they looked on and made their judgments in silence, each
one by himself, with a little surprise and a great deal of irony.
Through a disdainful reaction against the mental condition of the herd
they fell back into a kind of egotism, intellectual and artistic
egotism, an idealistic sensualism, where the tracked and hunted ego
vindicated its rights against human fellowship. Laughable fellowship,
which made itself manifest to these adolescents only in the shape of
finished murder, one undergone in common! A precocious experience had
shriveled their illusions: they had seen how much those same illusions
were worth in their elders and how those who did not believe in them
paid for them with their lives. Even as to those of their own age and as
to man in general their confidence was shaken. And besides, at such a
time it cost something to confide in people! Every day one learned of
some denunciation of thoughts and intimate conversations by a patriotic
spy whose zeal the government honored and stimulated. So it was that
these young people, through discouragement, through disdain, through
prudence, through a stoical sense of their solitude in thought, gave
themselves very little indeed the one to the other.
Pierre could not find among them that Horatio whom little
eighteen-year-old Hamlets seek. If he had a horror of estranging his
thought from public opinion (that public woman) he did feel the need of
joining it freely with souls of his own choosing. He was too tender to
be able to content himself with himself. He suffered from the universal
suffering. That crushed him by the amount of its pain, which he
exaggerated:--for if humanity does support it in spite of everything,
that is because humanity has a harder hide than is the delicate skin of
a frail boy. But what he did not exaggerate and what weighed him down
much more than the suffering of the world was the imbecility of it all.
It is nothing to undergo pain, it is nothing to die, if only one can see
a reason for it. Sacrifice is a good thing when one understands why it
is made. But what is this why? What is the sense of this world and its
harrowings for a youth? If he be sincere and sound of mind, in what way
can he interest himself in the coarse medley of nations standing head to
head like stupid rams on the brink of an abyss, into which all are about
to tumble? And yet the road was broad enough for all. Why then this
madness to destroy oneself? Why these countries given over to pride,
these States devoted to rapine, these peoples to whom is taught murder,
as if murder were their duty? But wherefore this butchery everywhere
among living beings? Why this world that devours itself? To what purpose
the nightmare of that monstrous and endless chain of life, each one of
whose links sets its jaws into the neck of the other, feasts on its
flesh, delights in its suffering and lives through its death? Why the
conflict and why the pain? Why death? Why life? Why? Why?...
That night when the boy got home the why had ceased its cry.
* * * * *
NEVERTHELESS nothing had changed. There he was in his own room littered
with papers and books. All about the familiar sounds. In the street the
trumpet sounding the close of the warning against air-bombs. On the
house stairs the reassured gossip of the tenants coming up from the
cellar. In the story overhead the crazy marching to and fro of the old
neighbor who for months had been waiting for his vanished son.
But here in his own chamber lay no longer those cares of his in ambush
which he had left there....
Sometimes it happens that an incomplete accord in music sounds raucous
in a way; it leaves the mind disquieted, up to the moment when some note
is added which procures a fusion of the hostile or coldly alien
elements, like visitors who do not know one another and wait to be
introduced. At once the ice is broken and harmony spreads from one
member of the group to another. This moral chemistry had just been put
in operation by a warm and furtive contact of hands. Pierre was not
conscious of the reason for the change; he never dreamed of analyzing.
But he felt that the habitual hostility of things in general had
suddenly softened. A shooting pain takes possession of your head for
hours; of a sudden you perceive it is no longer there: how was it that
it went? Scarcely a feeling of buzzing about the temples to recall
it.... Pierre was a bit suspicious of this new-found calm. He suspected
that it concealed under a passing truce a much worse return of the pain
which was merely taking breath. Already was he acquainted with the
respites that are obtained through the arts. When into our eyes
penetrate the divine proportions of lines and colors, or into the
voluptuous windings of the sonorous ear-shell the lovely, varied play of
accords which combine and interlock in obedience to the laws of
harmonious numbers, peace takes possession of us and joy inundates our
souls. But that is a radiance which comes from outside; one would say
from a sun, the distant fires of which hold us in suspense fascinated,
lifted high above our life. It endures only a moment and then one falls
again. Art is never more than a passing forgetfulness of the actual, the
real. Pierre was afraid and fully expected the same deception.--But this
time the radiation came from within. Nothing that belongs to life was
forgot. But everything fell into harmony. His recollections, his new
thoughts. Even to the familiar objects about him: the books and papers
in his chamber sprang alive and took on an interest which they had lost.
For months past his intellectual growth had been compressed like a young
tree which is struck in full blossoming by the "saints of the ice." He
did not belong to those practical boys who profit by the indulgence
offered at universities to the younger classes just about to be called
to the colors in order to pull out hastily a diploma from under the
indulgent eyes of the examiners. Nor was he one to feel the despairing
eagerness of the young man who sees death approaching and so takes
double mouthfuls and devours the arts and sciences which he will never
have a chance to test and verify in life. That perpetual feeling of
emptiness at the end, emptiness that is underneath and everywhere hidden
beneath the cruel and absurd illusion of the world--this it was that
swept aside all his enthusiasms. He would throw himself on a book, on a
thought--then he stopped, discouraged. Whither would that lead? What the
use of learning? What is the point of getting riches if it be necessary
to lose everything, leave everything, if nothing really belongs to you?
In order that activity, in order that science should have any sense, it
is necessary that life should have some. This sense no effort of the
mind, no supplication from the heart had been able to produce for
him.--And yet, lo and behold, all of itself, this sense had come....
Life had some sense....
What then?--And seeking to find whence came this inner smile--he beheld
the parted lips upon which his mouth was burning to press itself.
* * * * *
IN ordinary times, no doubt, this wordless fascination would not have
persisted. At that period of upgrowth when one is a lover of love, one
sees love in every eye; the greedy and uncertain heart gathers it
flitting from one to the other, and nothing forces it to settle down;
the heart is just beginning its day.
But the day at the present period will be a short one: it is necessary
to hurry up.
The heart of this young fellow was in a hurry all the greater because it
was so much behindhand. Great cities which from a distance appear like
the smoking solfataras of sensuality really harbor fresh souls and
ingenuous bodies. How many young men and young girls there are who
respect love and keep their senses virgin up to the marriage day! Even
in the refined circles where mental curiosity is precociously excited,
what singular ignorances conceal themselves under the free talk of some
young worldly girl or of some student who knows everything and
understands nothing! In the heart of Paris there are provinces most
naive, little gardens as of cloisters, pure existences as of springs.
Paris permits herself to be betrayed by her literature. Those who speak
in her name are the most soiled of all. And besides, one only knows too
well that a false human consideration often prevents the pure from
avowing their innocence.--Pierre did not yet understand love; and he was
delivered up to the first appeal love made.
This also added to the enchantment of his thought: that love had been
born under the wing of death. In that moment of emotion when they felt
the menace of the bombs pass over their heads, when the bloodstained
apparition of the wounded man contracted their hearts, then it was their
fingers groped toward each other; and both of them had read therein, at
the same time with the quivering of the flesh that was frightened, the
loving consolation of an unknown friend. Fleeting pressure! One of the
two hands, that of the man, says: "Lean upon me!" And the other, the
maternal one, pushes aside her own fear in order to say: "My little
dear!"
Nothing of all this was uttered or heard. But that inward murmur filled
the soul far better than words, that curtain of foliage which masks our
thought. Pierre allowed himself to be cradled by this humming. Such the
song of a golden wasp that floats through the chiaroscuro of one's
thought. His days became numb things in this new languor. That solitary
and naked heart dreamed of the warmth of a nest.
During these first weeks of February, Paris was counting her ruins from
the last raid and licking her wounds. The press, locked up in its
kennel, was barking for reprisals. And, according to the statement of
"the Man who put the fetters on," the government was making war on the
French. The open season for suits at law for treasonable acts commenced.
The spectacle of a wretched creature who was defending his own head,
bitterly demanded by the public accuser, was a matter of amusement for
_Tout-Paris_, whose appetite for the theatre had not yet been satisfied
by four years of war and ten millions of dead men dissolving behind the
flies.
But the youth remained completely and solely absorbed in the mysterious
guest who had just come to make him a visit. Strange intensity of these
visions of love printed on the very floor of his thought and
nevertheless lacking in contour! Pierre would have been incapable of
saying what was the form of her features or what the color of her eyes
or the modeling of her lips. All he could bring back was the emotion
already in himself. All his attempts to give precision to the image
merely ended in deforming it. He was no more successful when he went to
work to find her in the streets of Paris. At every turn he believed he
had seen her. It was either a smile or a white young neck or a gleam in
some eyes. And then the blood shook in his heart. There was no
resemblance, none whatever, between these flying images and the real
image which he sought and which he believed he loved. Well, then, he did
not love her? Surely he loved her; and that is why he saw her everywhere
and under every shape. For she just is every smile, each radiance, all
life. And the exact form would be a limitation.--But one longs for that
limitation in order to clasp love and to possess it.
Though he might never see her again he knew that she existed, she
existed, and that she was the nest. In the hurricane a port. A
lighthouse in the night. _Stella Maris, Amor._ Oh, Love, watch over us
at the hour of death!...
* * * * *
ALONG the quay of the Seine beside the Institute he wandered, looking
with little attention at the shelves of the few _bouquinistes_ who had
stuck to their posts. He found himself at the foot of the steps of the
Pont des Arts. Raising his eyes he perceived her for whom he had waited.
A portfolio of drawings under her arm, she came down the steps like a
little doe. He did not reflect for the shadow of a second; he rushed
forward to meet her and while he ascended toward her who was coming
down, for the first time their gaze rested the one on the other and
entered. Arrived in front of her and stopping short, he began to blush.
Surprised, seeing that he blushed, she reddened too. Before he could get
his breath again the little deerlike step had already gone beyond him.
When strength returned and he was able to turn about her skirt was
disappearing at the turning of the arcade which looks upon the Rue de
Seine. He did not try to follow her. Leaning against the balustrade of
the bridge, he saw _her own_ look in the stream that flowed below. For
some time his heart had a pasture new.... (Oh, dear, stupid children!)....
A week later he was loafing in the Luxembourg Gardens which the sun was
filling with a golden softness. Such a radiant February in that funereal
year! Dreaming with his eyes open and hardly knowing well whether he was
dreaming what he saw, or saw what he was dreaming, steeped in a greedy
languor obscurely happy, unhappy, in love, as much filled full of
tenderness as with the sun, he smiled as he strolled with inattentive
eyes, and without his knowing it his lips moved, reciting words without
connection, a song of some kind. He looked down at the sandy path and,
like the wingtip of a dove that passes, he had an impression that a
smile had just passed along. He whirled about and saw that he had just
crossed her path. And just at that moment, without stopping in her
walk, she turned her head with a smile in order to observe him. Then he
hesitated no longer and went toward her, his hands almost extended in so
juvenile and naive a rush that naively she waited for him. He made no
excuses for himself. There was no awkwardness between them. It seemed to
them they were continuing an interview already begun.
"You are laughing at me," said he; "you are quite right!"
"I'm not laughing at you"--(her voice like her step was lively and
supple)--"you were laughing all to yourself; I merely laughed at seeing
you."
"Was I laughing, really?"
"You are still laughing now."
"Now I know why."
She did not ask him what he meant. They walked side by side. They were
happy.
"What a jolly little sun!" said she.
"Newly born springtide!"
"Was it to him just now you were sending that little smile?"
"Not to him alone. Perhaps to you, too."
"Little liar! Bad boy. You don't even know me."
"As if one could say such a thing! We have seen each other I don't know
how often!"
"Thrice, counting this time."
"Ah--you remember, then? You see that we are old acquaintances!"
"Let's talk about it."
"I'm agreed. That's all I want!... Oh, come, let us sit there! Just an
instant, won't you please? It's so nice at the edge of the water!"
(They were near the Galathea Fountain, which the masons had covered over
with tarpaulins to protect it from the bombs.)
"I really can not, I shall miss my train."
She gave him the hour. He showed her that she had more than twenty-five
minutes.
Yes, but she wanted first to buy her lunch at the corner of Rue Racine,
where they keep good little buns. He hauled one out of his pocket.
"No better than this one.... Don't you really want to take it?..."
She laughed and hesitated. He put it in her hand and kept hold of her
hand.
"You would give me such pleasure!... Come now, come and sit down...."
He led her to a bench in the middle of the walk that runs about the
basin.
"I've something else...."
He brought out of his pocket a chocolate tablet.
"_Gourmand!_ ... And what besides?..."
"Only--I'm ashamed. It's not in its wrapper."
"Give it me, give it! It's just the war."
He looked on as she nibbled.
"It's the first time," said he, "that I've thought the war had any good
in it."
"Oh, let's not talk of it! It is so completely overwhelming!"
"Yes," he said, enthusiastic, "we shall never speak of it."
(All of a sudden the atmosphere began to grow lighter.)
"Look at those pierrots who are taking their tub."
(She pointed to the sparrows that were attending to their toilets on the
edge of the basin.)
"But, then--the other night" (he followed her thought) "the other night
in the subway--tell me now, you did see me then?"
"Sure."
"But you never looked my way. All the time you stayed turned in the
other direction.... See now, just as at present...."
He gazed at her profile as she nibbled at her bun, looking straight
ahead of her with roguish eyes.
"Do look at me a moment!... What are you gazing at off there?"
She did not turn her head. He took her right hand, the glove of which
was torn at the index, and showed the end of the finger.
"What are you looking at?"
"And you examining my glove!... Will you be so kind as not to tear it
more!"
[In a distracted fashion he was engaged in making the hole larger.]
"Oh, forgive me!... But how were you able to see?"
She did not answer; but in that mocking profile he could see the corner
of her eye and that was laughing.
"Oh, you slyboots!"
"It's very simple. Everybody can do that."
"I never could."
"Just try.... You simply squint."
"I never could, never. In order to see it's necessary for me to look
right to the front, stupidly."
"Oh, no, not so stupidly!"
"At last! I see your eyes."
They looked at each other, gently laughing.
"What's your name?"
"Luce."
"That's a lovely name, lovely as this day!"
"And yours?"
"Pierre--rather worn out."
"A fine name--that has honest and clear eyes."
"Like mine."
"Well, yes, so far as clear goes they are."
"That's because they're looking at Luce."
"Luce?... People say 'Mademoiselle.'"
"No."
"No?"
(He shook his head.)
"You are not 'Mademoiselle.' You are just Luce and I am Pierre."
They were holding hands; and without looking at one another, their eyes
fixed upon the tender blue of the sky between the branches of the
leafless trees, they kept silence. The flood of their thoughts
intermingled by way of their hands.
She said:
"The other night both of us were afraid."
"Yes," said he, "how good it was."
(Only later they smiled at having expressed, each one, what the other
was dreaming of.)
She tore her hand away and suddenly sprang up, having heard the clock
strike.
"Oh, I have scarcely more than time left...."
Together they marched at that little quick-step the Parisian women take
so prettily, so that seeing them trot, one scarcely thinks of their
swiftness, so easy appears the gait.
"Do you pass here often?"
"Every day. But oftener on the other side of the terrace." (She pointed
to the garden with its Watteau trees.) "I am just back from the Museum."
(He looked at the portfolio she carried.)
"Painter?" he asked.
"No," she replied, "that's too big a word. A little dauberette."
"Why? For your own pleasure?"
"Oh, no indeed! For money."
"For money?"
"It's horrid, isn't it? to make art for money?"
"It's particularly astonishing to make money if one cannot paint."
"It's just for that reason, you see. I'll explain it to you another
time."
"Another time, by the fountain, we'll have lunch again."
"We shall see. If it's good weather."
"But you will come earlier? Will you not? Say yes ... Luce...."
(They were come to the station. She jumped on the running board of the
tram car.)
"Answer, say yes, little light!..."
She did not answer; but when the tram was in motion she made a "yes"
with her eyelids and he read on her lips without her having spoken:
"Yes, Pierre."
Both of them thought, as they went their way:
"It's amazing, this evening, what a happy look everybody has!"
And they kept smiling without taking heed of what had occurred. They
knew only that they had _it_, that they possessed _it_ and that _it
belonged_ to them. It? What? Nothing. We feel rich this evening!... On
getting home they looked at themselves carefully in the mirror just as
one looks at a friend, with loving eyes. They said to themselves: "That
gaze of his, of hers, was fixed on _you_." They went to bed early,
overcome--but wherefore?--by a delicious weariness. While they undressed
they kept thinking:
"What's best of all at present is, that there's a tomorrow."
* * * * *
TOMORROW!... Those who come after us will have some difficulty in
understanding what silent despair and weariness of spirit without
grounds that word evoked during the fourth year of the war.... Oh, such
a weariness! So many times had hopes been destroyed! Hundreds of
tomorrows just like yesterday and today followed on, each similarly
devoted to emptiness and waiting--to waiting for emptiness. Time no
longer ran. The year was like a river Styx which encircles life with the
circuit of its black and greasy waters, with its somber, watery, silky
flood that seems no longer to move. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is dead.
In the hearts of these children Tomorrow was resuscitated from the
grave.
Tomorrow saw them seated again near the fountain. And tomorrows followed
one another. The fine weather favored these very brief meetings, every
day a little less brief. Each one brought a lunch in order to have the
pleasure of exchanging. Pierre now waited at the door of the Museum. He
wanted to see her art works. Although she was not proud of them she did
not make him beg at all before showing them. They were reproductions of
famous paintings in miniature, or portions of paintings, a group, a
figure, a bust. Not too disagreeable at the first glance but extremely
loose in drawing. Here and there quite true and pretty touches; but
right alongside the mistakes of a pupil, exhibiting not merely the most
elementary ignorance but a reckless ease perfectly careless of what
anyone might think.--"Enough! Good enough the way they are!"--Luce
recited the names of the pictures copied. Pierre knew them too well. His
face was quite drawn from his discomfiture. Luce felt that he was not
pleased; but she summoned all her courage to show him everything--and
this one too.... Woof!... it was the ugliest one she had! She kept up
her mocking smile which was directed to her own address as well as to
Pierre's; but she would not confess to herself a pinch of vexation.
Pierre hardened his lips in order not to speak. But at last it was too
much for him. She showed him a copy of a Florentine Raphael.
"But these are not its colors!" said he.
"Oh, well, that wouldn't be surprising," said she. "I didn't go and look
at it. I took a photo."
"And didn't anybody object?"
"Who? My clients? They haven't been to look at it either.... And
besides, even if they had seen it, they don't look so narrowly! The red,
the green, the blue--they only see the fire in it. Sometimes I copy the
original in colors, but I change the colors.... See here, for instance,
this one...." (An angel by Murillo).
"Do you find it's better?"
"No, but it amused me.... And then, it's easier.... And besides, it's
all the same to me. The essential thing is that this will sell...."
At this last piece of boasting she stopped, took the color sketches
from him and burst out laughing.
"Ha! So they're even uglier than you had expected?"
He said, greatly annoyed:
"But why, why do you make things like these?"
She examined his upset visage with a kindly smile of maternal irony;
this dear little _bourgeois_ for whom everything had been so easy and
who could not conceive that one must make concessions for....
He asked once more:
"Why? Tell me, why?"
(He was quite crestfallen, as if it was he who was the botcher in
paint!... Dear little boy! She would have liked to kiss him ... very
properly, on his forehead!)
She answered gently:
"Why, in order to live."
He was quite overcome. He had never dreamed of it.
"Life is complicated," she went on in a light and mocking tone. "In the
first place it is necessary to eat, and then to eat every day. In the
evening one has dined. It's necessary to begin again the next day. And
then it's necessary to dress oneself. Dress oneself completely, body,
head, hands, feet. That's so far as clothing is concerned! And then pay
for it all. For everything. Life, it's just paying."
For the first time he saw what had escaped the shortsightedness of his
love: the modest fur in some places worn, the shoes somewhat the worse
for wear, the traces of embarrassed means which the natural elegance of
a little Parisian woman makes one forget. And his heart contracted
within him.
"Ah! couldn't I be allowed, couldn't I be permitted to help you?"
She moved away from him a bit and reddened:
"No, no," she returned, much upset, "there's no question of that....
Never!... I have no need...."
"But it would make me so happy!"
"No.... Nothing more to be said about that. Or we shall not be friends
any more...."
"We are friends, then?"
"Yes. That's to say, if you are so still after you have seen these
horrible daubs?"
"Surely, surely! It isn't your fault."
"But do they trouble you?"
"Oh, yes."
She laughed out contentedly.
"That makes you laugh, naughty girl!"
"No, it's not being naughty. You do not understand."
"Then why do you laugh?"
"I shan't tell you."
(She was thinking: "Love! how kind you are to be troubled because I have
done something that is ugly!")
She went on:
"You are so kind. Thank you."
(He looked at her with astonished eyes.)
"Don't try to understand," said she, tapping him softly on his hand....
"There, let's talk of something else...."
"Yes. But one word more.... Still, I could wish to know.... Tell me
(and don't be hurt).... Are you at the present moment a bit strapped?"
"No, no, I told you that just now, because there have been now and then
hard times. But now it goes much better. Mama has found a situation
where she is well paid."
"Your mother is at work?"
"Yes, in a munitions factory. She gets twelve francs a day. It's a
fortune."
"In a factory! A war factory!"
"Yes."
"Why, it's frightful!"
"Oh, well! One takes what offers!"
"Luce! but if you, you should have such an offer?..."
"Oh, me? You see yourself, I just daub. Ah! You perceive now that I have
good reason to make my smears!"
"But if it were necessary to have money and there were no other way than
to work in one of those factories that produce bomb-shells, would you
go?"
"If it were necessary to make money and no other means?... Why, surely!
I would run for it."
"Luce! Do you realize what it is they're doing in there?"
"No, I don't think about it."
"Everything that will make people suffer, die, that tears them to
pieces, that burns, that tortures beings like you, like me...."
She put her hand on her mouth to signal to him to hush.
"I know, I know all that, but I don't want to think of it."
"You don't want to think about it?"
"No," said she.
And a moment after:
"One must live.... If one thinks about it, one cannot live any more. For
myself I want to live, I want to live. If they compel me to do that in
order to live, shall I torment myself on this account or on that? That's
no business of mine; it isn't I that wants it. If it is wrong it is not
my fault, not my own. As for me, what I want is nothing bad."
"And what is it you do want?"
"First of all I want to live."
"You love life?"
"Why, of course. Am I wrong in that?"
"Oh, no! It is so jolly that you do live...."
"And you, you don't love it also?"
"I did not, up to the time...."
"Up to the time?"
(This question did not call for an answer. Both of them knew it.)
Following up his thought, Pierre:
"You just said 'first of all.' ... 'I want to live, first of all.' ...
And what then? What else do you wish?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do know...."
"You are very indiscreet."
"Yes, very."
"It embarrasses me to tell you...."
"Tell me in my ear. No one will overhear."
She smiled:
"I would like ..." (she hesitated).
"I would like just a _little bit_ of happiness...."
(They were quite close the one to the other.)
She went on:
"Is that too much to ask?... They have often told me that I'm an
egotist; and as for me, I sometimes say to myself: What has one a right
to? When one sees so many wretchednesses, so much pain about one, you
hardly dare to ask.... But in spite of all my heart does insist and
cries out: Yes, I have the right, I have the right to a very little
portion of happiness.... Tell me very frankly, is that being an egotist?
Do you think that wrong?"
He was overcome by an infinite pity. That cry of the heart, that poor
little naive cry stirred him down to his soul. Tears came to his eyes.
Side by side on the bench, leaning one against the other, they felt the
warmth of their legs. He would have liked to turn toward her and take
her in his arms. He did not dare move for fear of not remaining in
control of his emotion. Immovable, they looked straight forward at the
ground before their feet. Very swiftly, in a low ardent voice, almost
without moving his lips, he said:
"Oh, my darling little body! Oh, my heart! Would I could hold your
little feet in my hands, upon my mouth.... I would like to eat you
all...."
Without budging and very low and very quickly, just as he had spoken,
she replied full of trouble: "Crazy! Foolish boy! Silence! I beg of
you...."
A stroller-by of a certain age limped slowly past them. They felt their
two bodies melt together with tenderness....
Nobody left on the walk. A sparrow with ruffled feathers was dusting
itself in the sand. The fountain shed its lucent droplets. Timidly their
faces turned one toward the other; and scarcely had their eyes met each
other, when like the rush of birds their mouths met, frightened and
closely pressed--and then they flew apart. Luce sprang up, departed. He
also had risen. She said to him: "Stay here."
They did not dare to look at one another any longer. He murmured:
"Luce! That little bit ... that little bit of happiness ... say, now we
have it!"
* * * * *
THE weather caused an interruption to the lunches by the fountain of the
sparrows. Fogs came to obscure the February sun. But they could not
snuff out the one they carried in their hearts. Ah! all the bad weather
you could wish might be on hand: cold, hot, rain, wind, snow or sun!
Everything would be well, always. And even, things would be better. For
when happiness is in its period of growth the very finest of all the
days is always today.
The fog offered them a benevolent pretext not to separate during a
portion of the day. Less risk that way of being observed. In the morning
he went to wait for her at the arrival of the train and he accompanied
her in her walks about Paris. He had the collar of his overcoat turned
up. She wore a fur toque, her boa rolled in a chilly way up to her chin,
her little veil tightly tied on, which her lips pushed out and made in
it a small round relief. But the best veil was the moist network of the
protective mist. The mist was like a curtain of ashes, dense, grayish,
with phosphorescent spots. One could not see farther than ten yards. It
became thicker and thicker as they passed down the old streets
perpendicular to the Seine. Friendly fog, in which a dream stretches
itself between ice-cold linen and shudders with delight! They were like
the almond in the shell of the nut, like a flame enclosed in a dark
lantern. Pierre held the left arm of Luce closely pressed to him; they
walked with the same step, almost of the same stature, she a trifle
taller, twittering in a halfvoice, their figures quite close together;
he would have liked to kiss the little moist round on her veil.
She was going to the shopman who sold "false antiques"--who had ordered
them--to dispose of her "turnips," her "little beets" as she called
them. They were never in a great hurry to reach the place and without
doing so on purpose (at least that is what they insisted) took the
longest way about, putting their mistake to the debit of the fog. When
at last, nevertheless, the place came to meet them despite all the
efforts made to get it off the track, Pierre stayed at a distance. She
entered the shop. He waited at the corner of the street. He waited a
long time and he was not very warm. But he was glad to wait and not to
be warm and even to be bored, because it was all for her. At last she
came out again and quick, quick she skipped up to him, smiling, tender,
in great disquiet lest he be frozen. He saw in her eyes when she had
succeeded and then he rejoiced over it as if it were he who had made the
money. But most often she came back to him empty handed; it was
necessary to return to the shop two or three days in succession in order
to obtain her pay. Very happy she, if they did not give her back the
object ordered accompanied by rebukes! Today for instance they had made
a great fuss on account of a miniature painted from the photograph of an
honest fellow deceased, whom she had never seen. The family was
indignant because she had not given him the exact colors of his eyes
and hair. It was necessary to do it all over again. Since she was
disposed rather to look at the comic side of her misadventures, she
laughed courageously about it. But Pierre did not laugh. He was furious.
"Idiots! Triple idiots!"