CHAPTER LI

_SUMMER_

PART ONE

I

On the half-light of the room, with its closed shutters, Annette was

sitting on her bed, smiling, with her white dressing-gown wrapped about

her. Her unbound hair, which she had just washed, covered her shoulders.

Through the open windows could be seen the motionless, golden warmth of

an August mid-afternoon; without observing it, one felt out there the

torpor of the Jardin de Boulogne sleeping in the sunlight. Annette

shared in this beatitude. She could rest there for hours, stretched out,

without stirring, without thinking, without needing to think. It was

enough for her to know that there were two of her; and she did not even

make an effort to talk with the "little one" who was inside her,

because--of this she was sure--he felt what she felt, they understood

one another without speaking. Waves of tenderness passed through the

happy somnolence of her body. And then she relapsed again into a happy

smile.

But if her mind was drowsy, her senses had retained a marvelous

clairvoyance; they followed from moment to moment the fine vibrations of

the air and the light. . . . A fragrant odor of strawberries in the

garden. . . . She enjoyed it with her nostrils and her tongue. Her

amused ear caught the slightest sound, the leaves brushed by a breeze, a

footstep on the gravel, a voice in the street, a bell ringing for

vespers. And the rumble ascending from the great crowds: Paris in

1900 . . . the summer of the Exposition. In the vat of the Champ de Mars

thousands of human grapes were fermenting in the sun. . . . Far enough

away, yet close enough to the monstrous bubbling to feel its presence

and to be safe from it, Annette rejoiced in the contrast of the peace

and the shade of her nest. Vain tumult! The truth dwells within

me. . . .

II

Her hearing, subtle and wandering like that of a cat, seized upon every

sound that passed, one after another, and idly let it fall again; from

the floor below she caught the ring of the door-bell and recognized the

little steps of Sylvie, who was always in a hurry. Annette would have

preferred to be left alone. But she was so solidly settled in her

happiness that, no matter who came, nothing could disturb her.

It was only eight days since Sylvie had received her news. Since last

spring she had heard nothing from her sister. A personal adventure that

had not affected her very much had yet been enough to fill her thoughts:

she had not realized how long the silence had been. But when the affair

was settled and she found her mind free again, with time to think of it,

she began to be troubled. She went to her aunt at the Boulogne house for

news. She was very much surprised to hear that Annette had come back

some time before. She was rather inclined to give the forgetful soul a

good snubbing, but Annette tactfully turned her to another subject that

surprised her; gently but feelingly, she had simply told her the whole

story. Sylvie found it very difficult to listen to the end. That

Annette, the sensible Annette, had done this mad thing and refused to

marry afterwards, no, it was unheard of, she simply wouldn't tolerate

it! . . . This little Lucretia was scandalized. She railed at Annette;

she called her an idiot. Annette remained calm. It was plain that

nothing could make her change her mind. Sylvie realized that she had no

hold on this obstinate soul: she would have liked to give her a good

whipping! . . . But how was it possible to remain angry with such a

lovable person who listened as you spoke with such a disarming smile!

And then the mysterious charm of this maternity. . . . Sylvie

anathematized it as a calamity, but she was too much a woman not to be

touched. . . .

And to-day she had come again, with her mind made up to give Annette a

good raking over the coals, to break down her stupid resistance, to

oblige her to insist on marriage. . . . "If you don't, if you don't, I

shall be furious! . . ." She came in like a gust of wind, smelling of

rice-powder and battle. And to make a start, without saying

good-morning, she began scolding about this mad way of passing one's

days, shut up in the dark. But catching sight of the happy eyes of

Annette, who stretched out her arms to her, she ran to her and hugged

her. She went on scolding: "Fool! Silly! Arch-fool! . . . With her

sweeping hair over her long white dressing-gown she looks like an

angel. . . . But what a mistake it would be to think she was! . . . The

sanctimonious wretch! The little scamp! . . ."

She shook her. Weariedly, contentedly, Annette let her have her way.

Sylvie stopped in the middle of her tirade, took her sister's forehead

between her hands and pushed back her hair. "She is fresh, she is pink,

never have I seen her with such beautiful color. And that look of

triumph! Good reason for it! Aren't you ashamed?"

"Not in the least!" said Annette. "I am happier than I have ever been

before. And so strong, so well. For the first time in my life I feel

complete, I desire nothing more. This longing that is going to be

fulfilled for a child goes back so far in my life! Ever since I was a

child myself. . . . Yes, when I was seven years old I was already

dreaming of it."

"That's a fib," said Sylvie. "Only six months ago you told me you had

never felt that maternity was your vocation."

"Do you really think that? Did I really say that?" said Annette,

disconcerted. "It's true, I did say it. But I haven't lied, just the

same, either now or then. . . . How explain it? I am not pretending. I

remember clearly."

"I know how it is," said Sylvie. "When I have a fancy for something, I

often immediately remember that I have never wanted anything but that

since the day I was born."

Annette frowned; she was not satisfied. "The nature I feel to-day is my

real nature. It always has been, but I didn't dare confess it to myself

before the time came; I was afraid I was mistaken. Now . . . Oh! now, I

see that it is even more beautiful than I had hoped. And it is my whole

self. I want nothing more."

"When you wanted Roger or Tullio," said Sylvie maliciously, "you wanted

nothing more."

"Oh, you don't understand anything! . . . Can the two things be

compared? When I was in love (what you call 'love'), it wasn't I who

wished it, I was forced. . . . How I suffered from that force that held

me, without being able to resist it! . . . And now you see how my little

one has come to my rescue when I was struggling in the bonds of the

misery they call love, how he came, how he has saved me. My little

liberator!"

Sylvie began to laugh. She had not in the least understood her sister's

reasons. But she did not need any reasons to understand her maternal

instinct: on that subject the two sisters would always be in accord.

They began to chat affectionately about the little unknown creature (was

it going to be a man or a woman?)--discussing a thousand nothings,

serious and foolish, about its coming, things about which a woman never

wearies of chattering.

They had been talking this way for a long time when Sylvie remembered

that she had come to administer her lesson, not to sing a duet.

"Annette," she said, "enough of this nonsense! There is a time for

everything. Roger owes you marriage, and you must insist on it."

Annette made a weary gesture. "Why go back to that? I have told you that

Roger offered it to me and that I refused."

"Well, when one has been stupid one should recognize it and change."

"I have no desire to change."

"Why don't you want to? You loved this man. I am sure you still love

him. What has happened?"

Annette was unwilling to reply. Sylvie insisted, tactlessly seeking for

the deep, personal reasons for their disagreement. Annette made an

impatient gesture. Sylvie looked at her, astonished. Annette's

expression was angry, her brows were knitted, her eyes full of

irritation.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," said Annette, turning aside hastily.

Sylvie had touched a wound that she wanted to forget. Through an

inconsistency she could not have explained, but which came from the

depths of her nature, she who rejoiced at the coming of the child bore a

grudge against the man who had given it to her; she could not forgive

herself because her senses had been taken by surprise, because of the

passion that had betrayed her in this way--she could not forgive the man

who had seized such an opportunity. This instinctive recoil had been the

true, hidden reason (hidden from her as from the others) for her flight

from Roger and her refusal to see him again. In the depths of her being

she hated him because she had loved him. But as her mind was

straightforward she repressed these instincts which she felt to be evil.

Why was Sylvie forcing her to become aware of them? . . .

Sylvie looked at her and insisted no more. Annette, calm again, ashamed

of what she had allowed to become visible, of what she had seen herself,

tried to change the subject and said quietly, "I don't want to marry. I

am not made for these exclusive bonds. You may tell me that millions of

women get used to them, that I exaggerate their seriousness. But I am

made in such a way that I take everything seriously. If I give myself, I

give myself, too much, and then I am smothered; I feel as if I were

drowning with a stone around my neck. Perhaps I am not strong enough. My

personality is not firmly established. Ties that are too close are

bind-weeds that drain my energy; and there is not enough left for me. I

try to please the 'other person,' to be like the image of what he wants

me to be, and this ends badly. For in renouncing too much of one's

nature one loses one's self-respect and cannot live any more; or one

revolts and causes suffering. No, I am an egoist, Sylvie. I was made to

live alone."

(Although she was not in any sense lying, she was uttering pretexts that

masked the truth from herself.)

"You amuse me," said Sylvie. "You are the last woman to live without

love."

"I hate it," said Annette. "But it will not catch me again now. I am

protected from it."

"Beautifully protected!" said Sylvie. "He won't protect you in the

least; you will have to protect him. You don't want to bind yourself,

but have you thought of the fetters this little bundle is going to mean

for you?"

"Happiness! With my arms filled, these arms that have been empty so

long!"

"You are talking without thinking. Who is going to bring him up?"

"I."

"What about the father? He has rights over his child."

A new cloud of irritation passed over Annette's brows. . . . Rights!

Rights over his child! . . . His child! The child of that man, that

blind moment which he has already forgotten and which binds me for

life! . . . Never! . . . My child is mine! . . . She said, "My child

belongs to me."

"He will belong to whom he likes."

"Oh, I know whom he's going to like!"

"Seducer! And suppose that, in spite of everything, he reproaches you

some day for depriving him of a father!"

"I shall fill his heart so full that there won't remain the tiniest

place for regrets for anyone else."

"You are a monster of egoism."

"I said I was."

"You will be punished."

"Well, so much the worse for me if I can't make him love me! What's to

prevent me from loving him and why shouldn't he love me?"

"If you really love him you should think first of his future. Plenty of

other people have been obliged to accept a disagreeable marriage for the

sake of the child."

"You revolt me," said Annette, "praising those women who condemn

themselves to a false marriage, sometimes one built on hatred, out of

love for the child. You remind me of that mother who told her daughter

she had endured hell for her sake by remaining married. The daughter

replied: 'Do you think hell is a good home for a child?'"

"The child needs a father."

"But how about the thousands of people who have gone without one? How

many have never known one at all! How many have lost their fathers in

early childhood and have been brought up by their mothers alone! Are

they inferior to other people? The child needs a protecting love. Why

should not mine be enough?"

"You overestimate your strength. Do you know what is awaiting you?"

"I know, I know! The little arms of a child about my neck."

"But do you know the price the world will make you pay for it? It would

be much better for you to be married and an adulteress four times over

than to have people brand you with the name of an unmarried mother. To

dare to assume the pains and responsibilities of motherhood without

having first accepted the stamp of their official marriage is something

for which a woman of their class is never pardoned. It would be all

right for me. What people like myself do is of no consequence. Your

bourgeois people even find that it pays to have things so. They are

ready enough to praise free love in the working-class, as they do in

_Louise_, but a girl of the bourgeoisie belongs in a private preserve.

You are their property. They can buy you by contract, before a lawyer;

you can't give yourself in the presence of heaven and say, 'It's my

right.' Good Lord, where would we end if property revolted against its

master and said, 'I am free! Let anyone who wishes come and cultivate

me.'"

Even when she was indignant Sylvie could not speak seriously.

Annette smiled and said, "Customs are made by man. I know. He condemns

the woman who dares to have her children outside of marriage without

dedicating herself for life to the father of her children. But for many

women this means slavery, for they do not love their husbands. Many a

woman would remain free and alone with her little ones if she had the

courage. I shall try to have it."

Sylvie said, with a touch of pity, "Poor innocent! Your life has been

shielded from hardships by the double windows of this bourgeoisie that

shuts you in with its prejudices--and its privileges also. Once you

leave it, you will never be allowed to enter it again, and you will have

a glimpse then of what life is!"

"Well, Sylvie, that's only fair; you are right in saying that I have

been privileged; it will be good for me to have my share in what you

suffer."

"Too late! One must learn that in childhood. At your age it's no longer

possible. Luckily you are rich, you will never know material suffering.

But the other, moral suffering . . . your class will cast you out,

public opinion will condemn you, every day you will have to endure some

little insult. . . . You have a proud and tender heart. It will bleed."

"It will bleed, but one enjoys happiness all the more if one has to pay

for it. I want nothing but health and an honest mind. Public opinion has

no terrors for me."

"But what if your child suffers from it?"

"Would they dare? Well, we shall fight together against the cowards."

Sitting upright again on her bed, she shook her hair like a lioness.

Sylvie studied her, did her best to preserve her look of severity, was

unable to do so, laughed, shrugged her shoulders and sighed, "Poor

little idiot!"

Annette coaxingly asked her, "Will you help us?"

Sylvie hugged her furiously. And she shook her fist at the wall.

"Beware, anyone who touches you!"

She left. Annette, fatigued by the discussion, fell back into her

reverie. This time she had won in the encounter with her sister. But one

disturbing thing remained from the conversation, one word uttered by

Sylvie . . . Would the child some day reproach her? . . .

Stretched out on her back, with her hands crossed over her breast, she

listened to what was within her. The tiny creature was beginning to

stir. Annette, with her lips closed, spoke to him as she had so often

done. She asked him if she was doing right in keeping him for herself

alone; she begged him instantly to tell her if she was right, if he was

satisfied: for she would do nothing for which he could blame her.

Whereupon the child, naturally enough, replied that she was doing right,

that he was satisfied. He said he wanted to be hers, hers alone, and

that in order to dedicate herself to him she should remain free and live

with him alone. She and he. . . .

Annette laughed with happiness. Her heart was so full that she could not

speak. And with her head heavy and intoxicated with her joy she fell

asleep. . . .

III

As soon as Annette's condition began to be visible, Sylvie obliged her

sister to move away from Paris. It was the beginning of autumn; before

long her friends would be coming back from their vacations. Surprisingly

enough, Annette offered no resistance. She was not afraid of public

opinion, but anything that might mean discord just now would have been

intolerable to her; nothing must disturb her harmony!

She allowed herself to be conducted by Sylvie to a place on the Côte

d'Azure, but she did not stay there. It offered her no peaceful

seclusion. The neighborhood of the sea made her feel uncomfortable.

Annette was a landswoman. She could marvel at the ocean, but she could

not live on familiar terms with it. She submitted to the powerful

fascination of its breath, but this breath was not beneficial to her. It

reawoke in her too many hidden anxieties; it aroused what she did not

wish to be conscious of . . . not yet, not now. . . . There are beings

whom we do not love because, they say, we are afraid to love them. (Does

that mean we do love them?) Annette fought against the sea because she

was fighting against herself, against a dangerous Annette from whom she

was trying to escape. . . .

She set out again northward, to the neighborhood of the Savoyard lakes,

and took quarters for the winter in a little town at the foot of the

mountains. Sylvie was only informed after she was settled. Kept in Paris

by her work, she could only make her sister brief, occasional visits,

and it troubled her to know that Annette was alone in this forsaken

spot. But Annette, during this time, could not be alone enough, nor

could the spot be sufficiently forsaken. She would have found a

hermitage delightful. The richer her inner life was, the more need she

felt for a clear, soundless atmosphere. She did not suffer, as Sylvie

supposed, from being abandoned to strange hands in her condition. In the

first place, she had so much affection to give that no one seemed to her

a stranger, and, as sympathy attracts sympathy, she did not long remain

a stranger to anyone else. It was not that the country-people, who had

little curiosity, put themselves out to know her. They bowed back and

forth, exchanged a few cordial words as they passed, or from their

doorsteps or over the hedges. They wished each other well. Probably in

case of need she could not have counted too far on this good will, but,

such as it was, it still meant a good deal in the daily round. The days

were lighter for it. Annette found the cool kindness of these good

souls, of whom she knew nothing and who left her alone, more to her

taste than the tyrannical exactions of relatives and friends who assume

over us the rights of heavy-handed guardians.

Mid-November. . . . Sitting by the window, sewing, she looked out at the

new-fallen snow over the fields and the white-capped trees. But her eyes

returned to a wedding announcement. . . . The marriage of Roger Brissot

to a young girl of the political world in Paris. (Annette knew

her.) . . . Roger had lost no time. The Brissot ladies, angered by

Annette's flight, had hastened to bring about another wedding before people

should begin to gossip about their son's discomfiture, and Roger, in his

resentment, had accepted their choice. Annette could feel no surprise,

nor could she complain. She forced herself to think that she was glad

for poor Roger's sake. But the news disturbed her more than she would

have wished. So many memories quivered in her soul and her flesh! And

there, in that flesh, was the life brought into being by him. . . . In

the depths of the shadow, the agitations of those former days were

stirring. . . . No, no, Annette would not allow them to come out into

the open! She felt an aversion for those fevers of the past. Everything

that was sensual wearied her. Disgust, revolt. And that animosity. (She

acknowledged it now.) The echo of the ancestral hatred of the female for

the male who has fertilized her.

She sewed; she sewed; she wanted to forget. Often when she was nervous

and saw a dangerous cloud gathering on the horizon, she had recourse to

the prayer-wheel of work. She sewed, and her thoughts slipped back into

their proper order.

So they slipped back to-day. After half an hour of silent application,

her anxiety had passed, her smile had reappeared. As Annette lifted the

forehead that was bent over her work, her eyes were peaceful and she

said, "So be it!"

The sun laughed over the snow. Annette left her work and dressed to go

out. Her ankles and her feet were a little swollen and she had to force

herself to walk; but once she was outside she found that she enjoyed it.

For her little companion was with her as she strolled along. He was

making his presence known now. In the evening especially he measured the

dimensions of his nest; he groped about in all directions.

"Heavens, how narrow this is!" he seemed to say. "Is it never going to

end?"

Then he went to sleep again. By day, when she was out walking, he was

well-behaved. But he seemed to be looking out through his mother's eyes,

for to these eyes everything appeared to be new. What fresh colors!

Nature had just placed them on the canvas. Annette's cheeks too had a

beautiful color. Her heart beat more vigorously and her blood ran. She

enjoyed every odor, every taste; when nobody was looking she would eat a

little snow by the roadside. Delicious! She remembered that as a child

she had done the same thing when her nurse's back was turned. And she

sucked the stems of the damp, frozen reeds. She had a shiver of

epicurean delight down the whole length of her throat; as the snowflakes

melted on her tongue, she too melted with the luxurious pleasure of it.

After she had walked for an hour or two in the country, along the snowy

roads, alone yet not alone, alone but with all the company in the world,

under the grey canopy of the winter sky, listening to the song of her

own springtime, she turned back towards the town, her cheeks whipped red

by the cold wind, her eyes shining. Before the baker's window she would

yield to the attraction of some dainty made of chocolate or honey. (What

a glutton the little fellow was!) Then she would go and sit down, at

nightfall, in the church, before an altar, dark and golden like the

honey. And she who had no practical religion, no religious faith--or

thought she had no faith--would remain there till they closed the doors,

dreaming, praying, loving. Night fell; the altar-lamps, faintly

swinging, collected the last gleams in the darkness. Annette became

stiff, chilly, a little numb in her woolen overcoat as she warmed

herself at her own sun. A holy calm was within her. She was dreaming for

the child of a life enveloped in sweetness, in silence--in her own

loving arms.

IV

On one of the first days of the year the child was born. A boy. Sylvie

arrived just in time to welcome him. In spite of her suffering, which

drew from her an occasional groan--no tears, Annette, interested,

absorbed, was a little disappointed to find, surprisingly, that she was

more present at the event than the cause of it. The great emotion she

had expected had not appeared. When travail begins, one is caught in a

trap. No means of escaping: one has to go through with it. One resigns

oneself and bends all one's strength to reach the end as quickly as

possible. One's mind is clear, but one's energy is entirely occupied in

enduring the pain. One scarcely thinks of the child at all. No room for

tender or exalted feelings. Those that have previously filled one's

heart vanish. It is truly hard, harsh "labor," a labor of the flesh and

the muscles, wholly physical, with nothing beautiful or beneficent about

it. Up to the very moment when one's liberation comes, when one feels

the little body slip from one's own body . . . At last!

Then, instantly, one's joy returns. With her teeth chattering, worn out,

almost collapsing at the bottom of an Arctic ocean, Annette stretched

out her cold hands to grasp and press to her own bruised limbs her

living fruit--her dearly beloved.

There were no longer two of her now. They were no longer two in one, as

before. A fragment of herself was detached in space like a little

satellite, drawn by gravity about a star, an additional tiny force the

effect of which was immense in the psychic atmosphere. A strange thing

that, in this new couple formed by the segmentation of a being, the

larger should depend more for support upon the smaller than the smaller

upon the larger. Its wailing cry, through its very weakness, was a

source of strength for Annette. Oh, the wealth that comes to us from a

loved one who cannot exist without us! Annette, with her stiffened

breasts, at which the little animal greedily tugged, eagerly poured into

the body of her son the flood of milk and hope with which she was

swollen.

Then began to unroll the first touching cycle of the _vita nuova_, that

discovery of the world, as old as the world, which every mother

experiences again as she bends over the cradle. The tireless watcher

awaiting with beating heart the awakening of her Sleeping Beauty. In his

sapphire eyes, with their violet depths, Annette found herself

reflected--they were so brilliant. What did it see, this gaze, as

indefinite and limitless as the great blue eye of heaven--empty or

profound, one couldn't say which? And what sudden shadows were cast upon

this pure mirror by those clouds of suffering, those invisible furies,

those unknown passions, come heaven knows whence! Was it from her past

or from his future? The face or the reverse of the same medal. . . .

"You are what I have been. I am what you will be. What will you be? What

am I?". . . Annette questioned herself in the eyes of her sphinx. And as

she observed this consciousness rising hourly from the depths, she lived

over again, without realizing it, in this homunculus, the birth of

humanity.

One by one little Marc opened his windows to the world. There began to

pass over the uniform surface of his liquid stare more definite gleams,

like a flock of birds seeking for a place to alight. After a few weeks

the flower of a smile appeared on the living shrub. And then the birds

that had settled there began to chirp. Forgotten was the tragic

nightmare of the first days, forgotten the terror of the unknown earth,

the cries of the being brutally dragged from the maternal shell, cast

naked and bruised into the cruel light. The little man was comforted and

took possession of life. And he found it good. He explored it, touched

and tasted it greedily with his mouth, his eyes, his feet, his hands,

his back. He gloried in his prize, playing in astonishment with the

sounds that emerged from his pipe. One prize more, his voice! He

listened to himself singing. But his singing did not give him more

delight than it gave his mother. Annette was intoxicated by it. This

little stream of a voice made her heart melt. The shrill cries that rose

from the instrument gave her an exquisite pleasure as they pierced her

ear.

"Cry louder, my darling! Yes, assert the life that is in you!"

He asserted it with an energy that had no need of encouragement. Joy,

anger, whims, he protested them loudly in every key. Annette, who was a

novice in motherhood and a scandalously bad educator, found it all

charming; she did not have the strength to resist these tyrannical

appeals. She would get up ten times during the night rather than hear

him groan. And from dawn to dark she let him cling to her breast like a

greedy leech. The child could not have been happier, but it was not very

good for her.

When she saw her sister again in the spring, Sylvie found her thinner,

and she was disturbed. Annette still seemed to be just as happy, but her

expression had become a little feverish; the tears came into her eyes at

any affectionate word. She admitted that she did not sleep enough, that

she did not know how to get proper help, and she felt inadequate before

the practical difficulties that arose in regard to the care and health

of the child. She said all this, affecting to laugh at her

faint-heartedness, but the fine assurance she had felt at the outset had

vanished. She was startled to discover that she was not as robust as she

had thought; as she had never been ill, she had not known the limits of

her strength, and she believed she could use it uncalculatingly. She

realized now that these limits were narrow and that she could not pass

them with impunity. What a fragile thing life is! At other times this

realization would not have affected her. But now that her life was

double, and someone else, even more fragile than herself, depended upon

this fragile thing. . . . Heavens, what would happen if she disappeared?

During her sleepless nights Annette turned this fear over in her mind

many a time. . . . She listened to her sleeping child, and at the least

change in its respiration, a slightly quicker breath, a cry or even a

silence, her own heart stopped beating. And as soon as this anxiety had

once entered it took up its abode in her. Annette no longer knew the

solemn, carefree calm of the night hours when the motionless body and

the thought-free mind, dreaming without sleeping, floated like

water-flowers, motionless, on the nocturnal pond. An Elysian quietude,

in which the grace that is granted one is only felt by the heart after

it has been lost. Henceforth, the watching soul is distrustful every

moment. In the most confident moments apprehension lies concealed.

Sylvie was not mistaken. Under Annette's valiant smile, as she joked

about her weakness, she perceived how physically disordered she was,

perceived her animal need of joining her own kind again. She decided

that Annette should leave her retreat and come back and settle in some

house in the country a few hours from Paris where Sylvie could see her

almost every day and the news of her return would not become known.

Annette had no objection, but she insisted upon returning boldly to her

own house in Paris. She would not hear of any opposition to this. In

vain Sylvie pointed out to her that it would be most unwise, that her

peace of mind would be endangered. Annette was immovable. Her pride

would not endure anything that looked like running away in the face of

public opinion. During the happy year when she had been brooding over

the child, she had not thought of public opinion. She had lived alone

with her happiness; there was no room for a third person. For several

months her happiness had not diminished; she would have liked the world

to know of it, and it was painful to her to admit to herself that she

must hide it. The constant thought of this had hurt her. What, did she

have to conceal as something shameful this jewel that was all her pride?

She would seem to be denying it!

"Deny you, my treasure!" She kissed him passionately. "I should not have

run away. I should have forced people to accept you from the very

beginning. But no more of this secrecy! I shall show you to people and

say, 'Look at my beautiful baby! You other mothers haven't anything like

him, have you?'"

V

She returned to Paris and settled there. The daughter of Raoul Rivière

knew very well that it would not be so easy to induce people to accept

her situation. But although she had inherited her father's contemptuous

attitude towards the world, she had not acquired from him the habit of

yielding outwardly to its prejudices in order to escape from it all the

more effectively. She meant to face it down and get the better of it.

Her first experience was favorable enough. In Annette's absence her old

Aunt Victorine had remained in charge of the house, as she had done now

for many years. This diminutive person of more than sixty had a fresh

complexion, unwrinkled cheeks and tight little ringlets close about her

face. Calm, gentle, inoffensive, excessively timid, she had kept herself

sheltered from everything that might have disturbed her. From her

childhood Annette had always seen this Dame Trot of an aunt about the

house, looking after all the bothersome domestic duties, seeing that

everything was clean and comfortable and watching over the kitchen (for

she was an epicure), playing the part of an old family servant for whom,

just because she was part of the household furniture, nobody put himself

out. Her opinions had no weight; as a matter of fact, she had none. In

the course of the thirty years she had passed under her brother's roof

Aunt Victorine might have seen and heard strange things. But she had

seen nothing, heard nothing. It would have required force to make her

see what she did not wish to see. Raoul had taken no precautions. In his

circle of intimates he called her the deaf-mute of his seraglio. He made

fun of her to her face, fooled her, was rude to her, called her a

blockhead, made her cry, and then coaxed her back into a good humor,

gave her a noisy smack on both cheeks and induced her to coddle him as

if he had been a big boy. She had remembered him as a man with a heart

of gold, indeed as a saint--which would have amused him very much in his

grave if, for a Raoul Rivière, a tireless lover of the superficial

things of this world, anything that lay beneath had been worth so much

as a smile.

It would not have been difficult for Annette to impress upon Aunt

Victorine's eyes an equally advantageous image of her personality. She

had inherited, along with the house, the worship which the old family

tabby rendered to the master. The only thing that was necessary was not

to disturb her illusions. Annette hesitated a long time before making up

her mind to do so. She had kept her aunt in ignorance of her adventure.

In leaving Paris she had used her health and her desire to travel as a

pretext. Far as this was from corresponding with the facts, her aunt had

appeared to believe it; she was not inquisitive and shrank from hearing

anything that might upset her. But, sooner or later, she had to know the

truth. Sylvie, after the child's birth, undertook to inform her. The

poor woman was completely taken aback. It was very hard for her to

understand the situation; she had never been brought face to face with

anything of the kind. She sent Annette several frantic letters, so

incoherent that Annette might have thought--at her age people have no

pity--that Aunt Victorine herself had just had the baby. She consoled

her as best she could. Sylvie was convinced that the old lady would

leave the house. But to leave the house was the last thought that could

have entered Aunt Victorine's head. For the rest, her mind was thrown

into the most inextricable confusion. She was quite incapable of giving

any advice, for advice was what she herself needed. The only thing she

could do was to lament. But one does not live by lamentation, and, as

one has to live in spite of everything, she ended by discovering in

Annette's misfortune a trial sent by heaven. She was beginning to get

used to it, in the absence of her niece, whose removal kept the

disgraceful occurrence at a distance, when Annette announced that she

was coming back.

Annette was deeply moved on her return home. Sylvie had come to the

station to meet her. Aunt Victorine could not make up her mind to do

this; and, when she heard the house-door opening, she precipitately

mounted the stairs which she had half descended and ran and shut herself

up in her room. There Annette found her in tears. Her aunt, throwing her

arms about her, repeated, "My poor child! How is it possible? How is it

possible?"

Annette, more disturbed than she wished to appear, assumed an air of

assurance and said bluntly, with a laugh, "There will be time enough to

explain it all. Let's go down to dinner now."

The old lady allowed herself to be led downstairs. She continued to

whimper. Annette said to her, "Hush, hush, dear aunt! You mustn't cry."

Her aunt tried to remember what she had wanted to say. There were a good

many things, lamentations, rebukes, questions, exclamations. But out of

them all she could extract nothing: nothing emerged but one great sigh

after another. Annette took her at once into the presence of the baby,

who was sleeping blissfully, its whole little body relaxed and plump,

its head thrown back. She fell into an ecstasy and clasped her hands:

the old retainer's heart instantly swore fealty to the new head of the

house. From this moment, young once more, she attached herself to the

chariot of the little god. At times she remembered that, in spite of

all, he was an object of scandal, and she found herself in confusion

again. Annette, talking with an affected indifference, watched with the

corner of her eye the good old face that was growing so long. "Come,

what's the matter?" she asked. "You must give some reason."

Once more Aunt Victorine began her confused lamentations.

"Yes," said Annette, drumming with her fingers. "Yes . . . But, after

all, what's to be done? Would you like to have us lose our dear little

boy?"

(She knew very well what she was doing in making a point of this coaxing

"our.")

Her superstitious aunt, quite upset, protested, "Annette, don't say

that. It's dangerous. How can you say such things?"

"Well, then, you mustn't look that way. As long as our little one is

here, as long as he has come, what are we going to do about it? What

better can we do than to love him and be happy?"

Her aunt might have replied, "Yes, but why should he have come?" But she

no longer had the strength to wish him away. Morality might have wished

it. The world and religion. Dignity and peace of mind. Peace of mind,

above all, perhaps. Her innermost thought, which she did not confess to

herself, was, "Heaven help us! If only that unhappy child had not told

me anything about it!"

In the end, as it was impossible to reconcile contradictory thoughts,

Aunt Victorine ceased to think at all. Abandoning herself to instinct,

she became the old hen that has spent her life bringing up the chicks of

others. She accepted it.

But Annette had no particular reason to congratulate herself. There are

allies who bring more trouble than help. Through her aunt, annoyances

from outside speedily began to reach Annette. Madame Victorine was a

gossip, and she lent her ear to everything the neighborhood had to say

about her niece's return. She would come running home, bathed in tears,

to repeat it to Annette. Annette would scold her affectionately, but she

could not help being affected by this stupid tittle-tattle. When the old

woman came in she would wonder now with a shiver, "What is she going to

tell me this time?"

She forbade her to talk. But when her aunt was silent, it was even

worse, thanks to what she did not say, her sighs, her look of distress.

And Annette was storing up an increasing irritation against this

poisonous public opinion which she pretended to ignore.

If she had been prudent she would at least have avoided occasions for

coming in contact with it. But she was too much alive to be prudent.

People are only prudent when they have suffered from not being so. Human

nature is so made that Annette, who contemptuously turned her back on

the judgment of the world, burned to know what people were saying behind

her back. And, dreading every morning that the day would not pass

without bringing her the echo of some disturbing remark, she was ready

to go out in search of them when no such remarks came. She was spared

the trouble. From her family, from her cousins of both sexes, with whom

she maintained only the most distant connection, she received

scandalized letters and lectures that she could hardly endure. Their

claim to pose as judges of her conduct and champions of the family honor

should have seemed less irritating than grotesque to one who, like

Annette, had been only too well informed by her father about the secret

history of the family and knew how to take the measure of these

Aristarchuses. But Annette was in no laughing mood: she would seize her

pen and send off a biting reply, which added spite to their other

motives for condemning her and rendered the latter implacable.

These austere censors could invoke as an excuse for their intervention

the much abused but still customary rights of relationship. But what

rights did strangers have to be severe with her, strangers who were not

harmed in any way because she did as she chose with herself? Meeting in

the street some amiable society woman in whose drawing-room she had once

been received, she would stop to exchange a few civil words. The other,

looking her over curiously and letting her talk, scarcely answering

herself, would presently pass on with a cold politeness. One woman, to

whom Annette had written asking for some information, did not reply.

Pursuing her inquiry, Annette wrote to a friend of her mother's, an old

lady whom she respected and who had shown some affectionate feeling for

herself; she suggested going to see her. In reply came an embarrassed

letter, expressing regret that the latter was unable to receive her: she

was leaving Paris. These little constantly repeated affronts wounded

Annette's sensibility. She was afraid of other rebuffs, but the strange

thing was that this fear led her nervously to provoke them.

For example, in the case of her friend Lucile Cordier. The two young

women had known each other for a long time. In the society where they

moved Lucile was the person whom Annette liked best; and without being

very intimate they had always enjoyed seeing each other. Annette learned

from her aunt that Lucile's sister was going to be married. She had had

no word of this from Lucile. She wrote to congratulate her. Lucile

remained silent. Annette knew she ought not to insist. And yet she did

insist, through a strange need of being sure, of suffering.

She went to Lucile's house. There was a sound of voices in the

drawing-room. It was her day at home. Annette remembered this just as

she entered the room. It was too late to turn back. The conversation was

animated. A dozen persons, almost all known to Annette. At her

appearance the voices stopped point-blank. Only for a few seconds.

Annette, anxious, but feeling that she was committed to a fight,

entered. With a smile on her lips, without looking to right or left, she

went up to Lucile. Lucile rose, embarrassed. Small and blonde, with

half-open, caressing, gentle and yet shrewd eyes, a tired little smile,

a mouse-like expression and rather prominent teeth, lively, indifferent

to people and ideas while appearing to be devoted to the former and

attached to the latter, she was cautious, weak, and not very frank; she

liked to please; she was anxious not to fall out with anyone and to get

along with everyone. So far as she was concerned, Annette's conduct had

not troubled her at all. Her sharp, inquisitive nose, always on the

alert, was amused by scandal. The adventure struck her as absurd and

would merely have diverted her if, from the worldly point of view, it

had not been embarrassing. When Annette wrote to her that she was coming

back, Lucile had thought, "What bad luck! How am I going to answer her?"

She did not want to hurt Annette. On the other hand, she did not wish to

run the risk of being misjudged. Not being able to think of anything to

say in reply, she had put it off from day to day. She expected to see

Annette, but later (there was no hurry about it!)--when people would not

know about it. This did not prevent her from talking at Annette's

expense and assuming a scandalized air when she was with others.

And now Annette's sudden appearance placed her--("This is too

much!")--under the obligation of making an immediate choice. Lucile was

much more angry with Annette for playing this mean trick on her than for

having had a child. ("Two, if she likes, if she would only leave me

alone!")

With a furious little light in her eyes that was quickly extinguished,

she took the hand that Annette held out to her, answering her smile with

that honeyed smile of her own which Annette knew so well. (No one could

resist its tender seductiveness.) It lasted only for a moment. With all

those eyes flashing about her, with every ear alert, Lucile at once

perceived the irony of the company. Instantly her expression froze;

after a few words of welcome she affectedly resumed the interrupted

conversation, and with an unexpressed understanding everyone began to

talk again.

Annette, left outside the conversation, realized that she was rejected.

But she did not accept this at all. She knew the weakness of Lucile's

character. Armed with her proud smile, seated in the midst of a group

which, without appearing to see her, seemed to be wholly occupied in

exchanging words that were as empty as they were lively, she glanced

about with her calm eyes at everybody in the room. The glances of the

others, meeting hers, turned aside to avoid her. One pair of eyes,

however, did not have time to escape. They remained fixed upon her, full

of annoyance and spite. Annette recognized the large doll-like face of

Marie-Louise de Baudru, the daughter of a rich lawyer, the wife of a

judge, whose family had always remained socially on cordial terms with

the Rivières while cherishing towards them a deep-seated antipathy.

Marie-Louise de Baudru incarnated in her stout person the most

substantial qualities of the upper bourgeoisie: order, probity, the lack

of curiosity, of charity, especially of intelligence, all the legal

virtues, a firm verbal faith, empty as a butcher's shop of doubts and

thought, and the religious worship of propriety, all the proprieties,

her family, her property, her country, her Church, her moral code, her

tradition and her negations. In short, a massive and compact ego like a

block obstructing the sun. No room, near her, for the tub of Diogenes!

Nothing was so repugnant to the Baudrus as independence of any kind,

religious, moral, intellectual, political or social. A natural aversion!

They confounded all its forms under the common taunt of "anarchism."

This anarchism they had always suspected in the Rivières. And

instinctively Marie-Louise, like the rest of her family, had distrusted

Annette. She could not pardon the liberty which Annette had enjoyed in

her education and her life as a young girl. There may have been a touch

of envy in these unkind judgments. One sole consideration kept her from

expressing them, the Rivières' fortune. Wealth commands esteem: it is

one of the pillars--the firmest--of the social order. But this is on

condition that it does not disturb the basis of everything, the legally

established family. The supporters of society are on the watch there:

hands off! Annette had struck at the cardinal principles. The watch-dog

had awakened, though it held its peace, for it does not bark in society.

But its look spoke for it, Annette perceived the bitterest scorn in that

of Marie-Louise de Baudru. Her eyes rested calmly on those of her plump

judge; and, addressing her with a little familiar bow, she forced her to

respond. Marie-Louise, choking with anger at not being able to resist

the injunction, bowed also, avenging herself by giving her coldest look.

Annette had already turned indifferently away, and her eyes, which were

making the tour of the drawing-room, returned to Lucile.

Quite unembarrassed, she threw herself into the conversation that had

begun. She cut into the story Lucile was telling with a general remark

and obliged her to reply. They had to make room for her. They could not

help listening to her politely, with interest and even pleasure, for she

was so witty. But they did not reply, their minds wandered, they talked

about other things. The conversation died away, started up again in

little bursts, jumping from subject to subject. In the silence Annette

heard herself talking in a detached tone, and she listened to her own

voice as if it were that of a stranger: true woman that she was, fine,

sensitive and proud, she missed none of these little humiliations.

Accustomed from childhood to understand and use the equivocal language

of drawing-rooms, she could divine, under the veil of deliberate

inattentiveness, dubious smiles, disingenuous politeness, the wounds

that were intended for her. She was hurt, but she laughed, and she went

on talking. The others were thinking, "What poise that girl has!"

Lucile took advantage of the departure of one of the guests to accompany

her to the door and escape from Annette. The latter found herself

abandoned to a group that had made up its mind to ignore her. Giving up

any attempt to prolong the ordeal, she was on the point of rising to

leave in turn when, crossing the drawing-room, Marcel Franck approached

her. He had come in some time before, though she had not noticed him,

for all her attention was occupied by her effort not to yield to the

discouragement that was overcoming her. And as, with a humorous pity, he

watched her talking, he admired her pride. He said to himself, "What

made you come here and brave these idiots? Crazy little thing! It's

enough to wring one's heart."

He decided to lend her a helping hand. He bowed to her pleasantly.

Annette's grateful eyes lighted up. Everybody about them became silent,

all those hard, watching faces. "Well," he said, "so the globe-trotter

is back again. Have you had enough of '_contemplé son azur, ô

Méditerranée'_?"

He wanted to turn the conversation to some harmless subject. But what

demon drove her on? Pride, the instinct of bravado, or simply frankness?

She replied gaily, "So far as the azure is concerned, I have scarcely

contemplated anything for months but my baby's eyes."

A little breeze of irony passed over those who were near them. Smiles

and glances were discreetly exchanged. But Marie-Louise de Baudru rose

indignantly; red, with her stout breast swollen with enough angry

contempt to burst her gown, she pushed back her chair and, without

bowing to anyone, started for the door and went out. The temperature of

the drawing-room fell several degrees. Annette remained alone in her

corner with Marcel Franck. He looked at her, sorry for her, half

banteringly, and murmured, "You are imprudent."

"How imprudent?" she asked in a clear voice.

She seemed to be looking for something at her feet. Then she rose,

without haste, and, coldly bowing and bowed to, went out.

No one who saw her in the street, walking along with her rhythmic step,

her head high, her cool, correct, indifferent air, would have suspected

the storm of contempt that was making her wounded heart leap. But, once

in the Boulogne house, she shut herself up in her room with the child

and pressed him to her with bitter tears. And she laughed defiantly.

VI

There were plenty of interesting houses in Paris where Annette would

have been honorably received--especially in the society that should have

been familiar to the daughter of Rivière the architect, among those

artists who live on the fringe of social Philistia, who, though they are

endowed with the traditional family spirit, have no prejudices and carry

the bourgeois virtues even into free unions. But Annette had little

acquaintance among the women of the artistic world. With a very orderly

mind and reserved manners that were anything but Bohemian, she had

little taste for their habits and conversation, though she had plenty of

respect for their great qualities of courage, good nature and endurance.

For it is certainly true that in ordinary life relations are founded

much less on respect than on a community of instincts and habits.

Besides, Raoul Rivière had long ago dropped his old companions. As soon

as his success had permitted him to enter the sphere of wealth and

official honors, this man of strong appetites had broken with the _haud

aurea mediocritas_. He had been too intelligent not to appreciate the

society of men who worked more than that of the Parisian drawing-rooms

which he criticized among his intimates with cruel irony, but he had

established himself in the latter because it gave him a wider pasturage.

He had managed to escape secretly into other and very mixed circles,

where he was able to satisfy his passion for pleasure and his need of

unrestrained independence, for he led a double or triple life. But few

were aware of this, and his daughter had had no knowledge of anything

but his outward and business life.

Annette's social circle was virtually limited to this rich and more or

less distinguished upper bourgeoisie which, as a new reigning class, has

ended by diligent effort in creating for itself a shadow of tradition.

Indeed, along with the other attributes of power, it has purchased the

lamp of enlightenment--a lamp, however, that only shines from under a

heavy shade and dreads nothing so much as being moved, nothing so much

as the enlarging of the illumined circle on the table; for the least

change of position threatens to destroy its certitudes. Annette, who

instinctively loved the light, had sought for it where she could, in

those university studies which in her set were regarded as pretentious.

But the light she had found there had been much filtered; it was the

light of lecture-rooms and libraries, refracted, never direct. There

Annette had acquired a certain boldness of thought that was entirely

abstract and did not prevent the best of her comrades from being timid

and completely chaotic in the face of reality. Another film was

interposed between her eyes and the daylight outside, her fortune. In

spite of all she could do, this barrier separated her from the general

community. Annette did not suspect how shut in she was. That is the

other side of wealth: it is a privileged enclosure, but an enclosure

none the less, a garden that is walled in.

And this was not all. Now that she had to leave her circle, Annette,

who, for a long time, had fearlessly considered what was awaiting her,

did not want to do so. Let him who disapproves of the illogical condemn

her! Man--woman still less--is not all of a piece, especially at those

transitional ages when the instincts of revolt and rebirth are mingled

with the conservative habits that paralyze them. One cannot at a stroke

liberate oneself from the prejudices of one's environment and the needs

one has acquired. Even the freest souls cannot do so. One has regrets,

doubts, one wants to lose nothing, one wants to have everything.

Annette, in her sincerity, with her need of love, with her need of being

free, with her desire not to be false, was still anxious not to

sacrifice her acquired advantages. She was willing to withdraw from her

social set; she could not endure being rejected by it; she could not

accept the idea of forfeiting it. And her youthful pride, which life had

not yet forced to lower its crest, refused to seek asylum in another

environment that was socially more humble, even if she respected it

more. This, in the eyes of the world, would have been to admit that she

was conquered. It was better to be isolated than _déclassée_.

Trifling as these considerations were, they were not unreasonable. In

the struggle between the conventions of a class and one of its revolting

members who braves them, the class, which forms a solid block against

the imprudent soul as it casts him forth, drives him elsewhere and

watches for his weaknesses in order to justify its interdiction.

In the world of Nature as soon as a symptom of weakness appears, and

some creature reveals itself as an object of prey, spider-webs are

stretched about it. There is nothing unfair about this, nothing

sinister. It is merely the natural law. Nature is always hunting.

Everyone in turn is hunter or hunted. Annette was the hunted.

The hunters made their appearance. All unsuspecting, Annette received a

call from her friend Marcel Franck.

She was alone in the house. The baby had gone out for his daily airing;

her aunt was with him. Annette, who was rather tired, was resting in her

room. She was not expecting to see anyone, but when Marcel's card was

brought to her she gladly sent word for him to come in. She was grateful

to him for having taken her part at Lucile's. Not that he had

compromised himself. But she had not expected that.

Stretched out in her _chaise longue_, she received him unceremoniously

as an old friend. She was still in her morning négligé. Since she had

become a mother, she had lost her devotion to order and the meticulous

correctness that Sylvie had teased her about. Marcel was the last person

to mind this. He found her prettier than ever, with a fresh, attractive

plumpness, a gentle languor, a dewy look in her eyes which were softened

with happiness. Annette talked quite without reserve; she was pleased to

see once more the discerning confidant of her old hesitations. She liked

his intelligence, his intellectual tact; he inspired confidence in her.

Franck revealed all his old cordiality and fine comprehension, but from

the beginning of the conversation she was struck by the suggestion of a

new familiarity in his manner.

They recalled their last meeting before Annette's unfortunate visit at

the Brissots' in Burgundy, and Annette agreed that Marcel had seen all

too clearly what was going to happen. She was anxious to speak of the

impossibility of her marriage to Roger, but a blush spread over her face

as it occurred to her that Marcel looked at the whole matter in quite a

different way and considered it a joke. Marcel remarked mischievously,

"You saw it as well as I." And he laughed at the turn the adventure had

taken.

He had the air of being a sort of accomplice. Annette was confused, and

she concealed her feeling with a touch of irony. Marcel went a step

further: "You saw it much better than I did. We men are absurd enough to

believe that we can teach women out of our own precious wisdom, and we

get caught instead when, with their insidious voices, their big,

beautiful eyes, they anxiously ask us what they ought to do. They know

very well. They flatter our folly. We love to teach, but they can give

us cards and spades. When I foretold that you would not be caught in the

Brissots' net, I never suspected that you would escape from its meshes

in such a masterly way. It was a wonderful stroke. Well done! What can't

you do when you set your mind on it! I compliment you on your courage."

Annette listened to this with a feeling of embarrassment. How strange it

was! She had undertaken to vindicate her right to behave as she had

done; the other day, at Lucile's, she had been ready to affirm it

against the whole universe. But it made her uncomfortable to hear

herself praised in this tone by Marcel. Her modesty and her dignity were

hurt. "Don't compliment me," she said. "I have less courage than you

think. I didn't desire in advance what has happened. I never thought of

it."

Then, seized with a scruple and too proud to lie, she continued, "I am

mistaken. Yes, I did think of it. But only to fear it, not to desire it.

And that is what remains incomprehensible to me. How could I have let it

happen, the thing I feared, that I didn't want?"

"Quite natural," said Marcel. "What we fear hypnotizes us. After all, it

doesn't follow that because we fear a thing we don't desire it. But

everyone does not dare to do what he is afraid to do. You did dare. You

dared to make a mistake. One has to make mistakes in life. We learn

through our mistakes, and we must learn. Only, while you were daring, I

do think, my friend, that you might have taken precautions. Your partner

seems to me very much to blame for having left you with this burden to

bear."

Annette, a little shocked, said, "It is not a burden to me."

Marcel supposed that Annette in her generosity wanted to excuse Roger.

"You still love him?" he asked.

"Whom?" Annette asked.

"Good!" said Marcel, laughing. "Evidently you don't still love him."

"I love my baby," said Annette. "The rest belongs to the past. And, as

for the past, one no longer feels sure that it ever existed. One doesn't

understand it any more. It's sad."

"That has its charm too," said Marcel.

"Not for me," said Annette. "I am not a dilettante. But my son is the

present, and it is a present that will last longer than I."

"The present that repulses us, the present to which we in turn shall be

the past some day."

"So much the worse for me!" said Annette. "Even so, it will be good to

be trampled on by his little feet."

Marcel laughed at this passionate outburst. "You can't understand me,"

said Annette. "You have not seen Marc, my little masterpiece. And even

if you saw him, you wouldn't know how to look at him. You are a good

judge of pictures, statues, useless knick-knacks. You couldn't judge

that unique marvel, the body of a little child. It would do no good for

me to describe him to you."

She did describe him, however, lovingly and at length. She laughed at

her own ardent, exaggerated expressions, but she could not keep them

back. She broke off as she saw Marcel's indulgent, bantering look. "I am

boring you. Excuse me! You don't understand, do you?"

"Of course." Marcel understood. Marcel understood everything. Everyone

to his own taste. He would not dispute that.

"In short," he said, "to sum it up, you have blossomed out into

maternity. You have flown in the face of public order and the family as

established by law. And, far from regretting it, you defy authority."

"What authority?" Annette asked. "I defy nothing."

"Well, then, public opinion, tradition, the Code Napoléon."

"I have nothing to do with all these things."

"That's the worst kind of defiance, the kind people will never pardon.

But so be it! You have broken with everything, you have rid yourself of

the whole clan. What are you going to do now?"

"Just what I did before."

Marcel looked sceptical.

"What, do you think I can't live as I used to do?"

"It would hardly be worth while. And besides . . ."

Marcel unhappily recalled the call at Lucile's: if she wished to resume

her old place in society Annette would meet with little success. She

knew this: it was unnecessary for anyone to tell her, and in her wounded

pride she had no desire to repeat the experience. But she was surprised

by Marcel's insistence in pointing this out to her; he was usually more

tactful.

"Well," she said, "it matters very little now that I have my child."

"But you can't reduce your existence merely to him."

"I don't think that would be reducing it. Enlarging it, I should say. I

see a world in him, a world that is going to grow. I shall grow with

it."

With much solicitude and no less irony, Marcel set to work to prove to

her that this world would not be enough for a nature as eager and

exacting as hers. With knitted brows and a pang at her heart Annette

listened to him. Mentally, in her irritation, she protested, "No, no!"

She could not help being anxious, however, when she remembered that once

before Marcel had had such clear foresight. But why was he so bent upon

convincing her of it? Why should he take so much trouble to prove to her

that she should profit by the liberty she had won, that she should not

be afraid of living on the fringe of society? (He called it "outside and

above the bourgeois conventions.")

There were in Annette two or three Annettes who always bore one another

company. As a general thing, only one spoke while the others listened.

Just now two of them were speaking at once: the passionate, sentimental

Annette who was the victim of her impressions and their willing dupe,

and another who observed and was amused at the hidden motives of the

heart. She had good eyes. She saw through Marcel. They had changed

places. Formerly it had been he who read her secret thoughts. To-day,

to-day there had come to Annette (just when?--exactly from the moment of

her 'metamorphosis') an insight into souls and their secret

movements--intermittent, to be sure--the novelty of which surprised and

amused her in the midst of her anxieties.

Stretched out in her chair, with her head thrown back, her arms behind

her neck and her mouth slightly open, she studied the ceiling; but out

of the corner of her half-closed eyes she watched Marcel as he talked.

She could have uttered in advance the words he was about to say; she

could have sworn what was going to happen. With an amused curiosity that

was a little sarcastic, for which she reproached herself, she let him go

on.

(One must see and know, as he said just now, one must learn . . .

learn. . . .)

She was learning to understand a friend.

(Yes, I understand you. . . . An Annette fallen from the tree would be

good to pick up again. He is gently shaking the tree to make her tumble

off. He is speculating on Annette's confusion. And yet he is in love

with her. Yes, he is certainly in love with her. Not very bright,

brother man! His voice begins to have a coaxing sound. See how tender he

is growing. And now, look out! I wager he is going to bend over me.)

Several seconds in advance she foresaw Marcel's blond beard leaning

towards her; she foresaw the caressing mouth that was about to alight on

hers. She wanted to spare him the humiliation. And just at the exact

moment she rose, and, with her outstretched hands, gently pushed

Marcel's shoulders away.

"Good-bye, my friend," she said.

Marcel looked into those penetrating eyes that were scrutinizing him

with a little malice in their depths. He smiled. He had been mistaken.

But it had been a good battle. He was perfectly aware that, with all the

calmness in the world, he had been given his dismissal. And yet, of this

he was sure, Annette's feeling towards him was not one of indifference.

Let whoever could understand it! The strange girl was escaping him.

VII

Marcel did not reappear, and Annette took no steps to bring him back.

They were still friends, but each was angry with the other. Just because

Annette's feeling towards Marcel was not one of indifference, she was

touched by what she had seen in him. She was not offended by this; it

was the old story . . . Too old a story! . . . No, Annette had no

grievance against Marcel. Only, only she could not forget what had

happened! That is the way it is with forgivenesses granted by the mind

which the heart does not ratify. Secretly bitter, she was forced to

recognize, even more through Marcel's too free attempt than through the

harsh welcome she had encountered in Lucile's drawing-room, that her

situation was changed. She realized that she was no longer protected by

the conventional consideration that society accords to those of its

members who appear to submit to its laws. She would have to defend

herself alone. She was exposed.

She closed her door to the world. She took care not to tell Sylvie of

the experiences she had had; Sylvie had predicted them and she would be

triumphant. She kept her secret and shut herself up with her child. She

had decided henceforth to live only for him.

When little Marc came back from his airing in the evening, after

Marcel's call, she welcomed him with transports. He laughed when he saw

her and stretched out to her his four wriggling paws. She fell on him as

a starved wolf falls on its prey; she devoured him with kisses; she

pretended to eat every morsel of his body; she thrust his little feet

into her mouth; and as she undressed him she tickled him from head to

foot with her lips. "Yum-yum! I'm going to eat you up! That fool!" she

exclaimed, calling him to witness. "That fool who had the impudence to

tell me that you would not be enough for me! What insolence! You not

enough for me, my king, my little god! Tell me that you are my little

god! And what am I then? The little god's mother! The world belongs to

us! All the things we are going to do together! See everything, have

everything, try everything, taste everything, create everything!"

And indeed they did create everything. To discover and to create, are

they not the same thing? To invent is to find. One finds what one

invents, one discovers what one creates, what one dreams of, what one

draws up from the fish-pond of one's musings. For the two of them,

mother and child, it was the hour of great discoveries. The first words

of the little boy, the game of exploration, when one measures the world

with one's arms and legs. Every morning Annette, with her child, set out

for conquest. She enjoyed it as much as he, perhaps more. It seemed to

her that she was reliving her own childhood, but with complete

consciousness and complete joy. He, the gay little soul, was full of joy

too. He was a beautiful child, healthy, chubby all over, a little pink

pig just ready for the spit. ("What else could you expect?" as Sylvie

said.) In his plump, elastic body there was too much compressed force;

he was like a rubber ball that insists upon bouncing. Every new contact

with life threw him into a clamorous delight. The enormous power of

dreaming that belongs to every baby amplified his discoveries and

prolonged the vibrations of happiness into veritable chimes of bells.

Annette was never behind him; it was as if they were having a contest as

to who should be the happiest and make the most noise. Sylvie said that

Annette was crazy, but she would have behaved the same way herself. And

after this tumult they would both have hours of absolute, delicious,

exhausted silence. The little one, tired out after so much movement,

slept obliviously. Annette was dropping with fatigue, but for a long

time she would refuse to go to sleep in order to enjoy the other's

slumber; and the fire of her love, driven back into her heart, hidden

like the light of a candle behind one's hand so as not to awaken the

little sleeper, burned with a long silent flame that rose upward to

heaven. She prayed . . . Mary beside the manger . . . She prayed to the

child.

These months were still beautiful and shining. But they were not as pure

as those of the previous year. Less limpid. They were full of an

exalted, excessive joy that was a little exaggerated.

A vigorous, healthy nature like Annette's must create, perpetually

create, create with its whole being, body and spirit. Create, or else

brood over the creation that is to be. It is a necessity, and happiness

comes only through satisfying it. Every creative period has its own

limited field, and its rising force follows a trajectory that descends

again sharply. Annette had passed the summit of the curve. Nevertheless,

the transport of creation persists in the mother for a very long time

after childbirth. Suckling prolongs the transfusion of the blood, and

invisible bonds keep the two bodies in communication. The creative

abundance of the spirit of the infant compensates for the impoverishment

of the spirit of the mother. The river that is running out tries to

replenish itself from the stream that is flowing over. It becomes a

torrent so as to merge with the little torrent. But strive as it may,

the little one outruns it. The child was already withdrawing into the

distance. Annette had difficulty in following him.

Before he was able to frame a complete sentence he already had his

little hidden thoughts, cupboards of which he kept the keys. Heaven knew

what he concealed there: his reflexions on people, his scraps of

reasoning, odds and ends of images, sensations, play-words the sound of

which amused him, though he did not know what they meant, a singing

monologue that had no sequence, no end, no beginning. He was perfectly

well aware, perhaps not of what he was hiding, but that he was hiding

something. For the more one tried to find out what he was thinking, the

more mischievously he refused to let one know. He even amused himself

sometimes putting one off the track; with his little tongue, which was

as clumsy as his hands, as it stumbled about among the syllables, he was

already trying to lie, to mystify people. It was a pleasure to prove his

own importance to others and to himself by making fun of those who tried

to penetrate into his private domain. This scrap of a being, scarcely

born, had the fundamental instinct of the _mine_ that is not yours--of

"You shan't have any of my peanuts." His whole wealth lay in fragments

of thoughts: he built walls to hide them from his mother's eyes. And

she, with that lack of foresight which is common to all mothers, was

proud that he knew so well how to say the No with which he so early

manifested his personality. She haughtily proclaimed, "He has a will of

iron."

She thought she had forged this iron herself. But against whom?

Against herself, to begin with; for, in the eyes of this little ego, she

was the not-I, the external world, a habitable external world, of

course, warm, soft and milky, that one could exploit, that one wanted to

dominate. External to the I . . . I am not it. I possess it. But it does

not possess me!

No, she did not possess him! She began to feel it; this Lilliputian

intended to belong to no one but himself. He needed her, but she needed

him: the child's instinct told him so. In all probability, this

instinct, guarded by his egocentricity, told him that she needed him

much more and that it was therefore quite fair for him to abuse it. And,

heaven knows, this was true: she did need him much more.

"Well, fair or not, abuse me, little monster! Just the same, it's no

use, you can't get along without me for a long time yet. I hold you.

There, I plunge you into your bath. Protest, young carp! . . . He looks

insulted; his mouth is open, as if this little personage were choking

with indignation at being treated like a bundle. . . . And I turn you

and turn you again! Heavens, what music! You are going to be a singer,

my son. Well, cry out your do-re-me. Bravo! You do the singing, but it's

I who make you dance. . . . Isn't it a shame for me to abuse your

weakness in this way? Oh, how mean this mother is! Poor midget! Well,

you'll avenge yourself on her when you are grown up. Meanwhile, protest!

In spite of your dignity, look, I'm going to kiss you on your little

behind."

He kicked. She laughed. But it was in vain she held him; she held only

the shell. The animal within escaped into his burrow. Every day he

became more difficult to grasp. It was a loving chase, a passionate

struggle. But it was a struggle, a chase. One had to keep one's wind.

The thousand little regular attentions that a baby demands fill the

days. Simple, monotonous as they are, they do not allow one to think of

anything else. Aside from _him_, always _him_, one's mind is in shivers.

The swiftest thought is interrupted ten times over. The child invades

everything; this little mass of flesh blocks one's horizon. Annette did

not complain. She did not even have time to regret it. She lived in a

plenitude of busy fatigue that was a blessing to her at first, but that

gradually became an obscure weariness. One's strength is used up, one's

soul wanders aimlessly: it does not stay where one has left it. It

follows its way like a sleep-walker, and when it awakens it does not

know where it is. Annette woke up one day conscious of a load of fatigue

that had been accumulating for months, and an indefinable shadow mingled

with the joy that dwelt in her.

She was unwilling to attribute this to anything but physical exhaustion;

and to prove to herself that her happiness was in no way altered she

manifested it in more clamorous effusions than were necessary.

Especially before others, as if she were afraid that they would discover

in her what she did not wish to be seen. This exaggerated gaiety was

followed later, when she was alone, by depression. Sadness? No. An

obscure uneasiness, a vague restlessness, the feeling, which she

repressed, of a partial dissatisfaction. Not that she expected anything

from outside (she could still get along without that), but she suffered

from the unemployment of a part of her nature. Certain forces of the

mind had been at a standstill for a long time; the economy of her being

had undergone a disturbance. Annette, deprived of society, driven back

upon herself alone and feeling the sting of a nostalgia that she tried

to stifle, tried to find a resource in the company of books. But the

volumes remained open at the same page; the brain had become

unaccustomed to the effort of following the unfolding chain of the

words; the continual breaks which the constant preoccupation with the

child made in her thought dislocated her attention and shook it,

somnolent and enervated as it was, as a moored ship dances on the

current without the power either to advance or to remain still. Instead

of reacting, Annette remained shut up in herself, musing drowsily over

the open book; or she tried to divert herself in a flood of passionate

nonsense with the child. Sylvie, who saw that she could not find

expression for her multiple energy with the little one, said to her,

"You should go out more, take exercise, walk as you used to do."

For the sake of peace, Annette said she would go out, but she did not

budge. She had a reason which she kept to herself: she was afraid of

meeting her old friends and exposing herself to some slight, some coldly

distant greeting. A superficial reason which she gave herself. In former

times she would have ignored these petty offences, but now she had a

neurasthenic tendency to avoid all contacts. Then why not leave Paris

and live in the country, as Sylvie advised? She did not say she would

not, but she did nothing; it involved making a decision, and she was not

willing to stir from her torpor.

So she allowed her motionless days to float along, without a wave, like

a becalmed sea that is preparing to ebb. An interlude, an apparent

arrest in the eternal rhythm of respiration: the breath is suspended.

Joy is tiptoeing away. Trouble is approaching on muffled feet. The

trouble has not yet come. But a _nescio quid_ warns one: "Do not move!"

It is waiting outside the door.

VIII

It entered. But it was not what she had expected. It is useless to

attempt to foresee happiness or trouble. When they arrive they are never

what we have looked for.

One night when, suspended between sky and sea, on the borders of

happiness and melancholy, Annette was skirting the cape of sleep,

without knowing whether she was on this side of it or that, she became

aware of a danger. Unaware whence it was coming or what it was, she

collected her strength to fly to the help of the child who was sleeping

near her. For already her consciousness, which never slept without one

ear open, had realized that he was threatened. She forced herself to

awaken and listened anxiously. She was not mistaken. Even when she was

sound asleep the slightest alteration in the breathing of the dear

little creature reached her. The respiration of the child was hurried;

by a mysterious osmosis, Annette felt the oppression in her own chest.

She turned on the light and leaned over the cradle. The little one was

not awake; he was sleeping uneasily; his face was not red, which seemed

to the mother a reassuring symptom; she touched his body, found the skin

dry, the extremities cold; she covered him more warmly. This seemed to

quiet him. She watched him for a few minutes, then turned out the light,

trying to persuade herself that the alarm would not be repeated. But

after a brief respite the hoarse breathing began again. Annette deceived

herself as long as she possibly could. "No, he is not breathing harder

or more quickly. It's only that I am agitated."

As if her will could impose itself upon the child, she forced herself to

remain motionless. But it was no longer possible to doubt. The

oppression was increasing, the breath came more quickly. And with a fit

of coughing the child woke up and began to cry. Annette leaped out of

bed. She took the child in her arms. He was burning, his face was pale,

his lips were blue. Annette was distracted. She called Aunt Victorine,

who only added her own agitation to the scene. That very day the

telephone had been disconnected for repairs, and there was no way of

communicating with the doctor. There was no druggist in the

neighborhood. The Boulogne house was isolated; the maid was unwilling to

run through the deserted streets at this hour of the night. They would

have to wait for morning. And the sickness was growing worse. It was

enough to make one lose one's head. Annette very nearly did so; but

knowing that she must not she did not. Her aunt, whimpering, fluttered

like a fly about the globe of a lamp. Annette said to her harshly, "It

does no good to groan. Help me! Or, if you can't do anything, go to

sleep and leave me alone. I will save him by myself."

Her aunt, petrified by this, recovered her composure; her long

experience as a watcher at sickbeds dispelled Annette's most terrible

apprehension, that of diphtheria. Annette retained an unspoken doubt; so

did her aunt. One may always be mistaken. And even if it was not

diphtheria, there were so many other mortal disorders. Not to know what

it was added still more to their fright. But whether or not Annette's

heart was frozen with terror, her movements were calm and just what they

should have been. Without knowing it, moved by the maternal instinct

alone, she did exactly the right thing for the child. (So the doctor

told her the next day.) She did not leave him lying on his back for

long, she changed his position, she struggled against his fits of

suffocation. What neither experience nor science could have taught her

the love within her dictated, for she suffered what he suffered. She

suffered more. She regarded herself as responsible for it.

Responsible! The tension of an ordeal, especially of an illness that

strikes a beloved being, often creates a superstitious state of mind in

which one needs to accuse oneself for the suffering of the innocent one.

Annette not only reproached herself for not having watched over the

child, for having been imprudent with him, but she discovered that she

had criminal thoughts in the back of her mind: a passing weariness of

the child, the shadow of an unconfessed regret that her life should have

been swamped in his. Was it quite certain that she had really felt and

repressed this regret, this weariness? No doubt, since they emerged at

this moment. But who could say whether she had not invented them through

this need she felt, when she was powerless to act in a practical way, to

act in thought, even if it meant turning her desperate energies against

herself?

She turned them also against the great Enemy, against the unknown God.

As she saw the little swollen face, as she breathed her breath into him,

softly raising him in her hands with careful movements, she passionately

asked his pardon for having brought him into the world, stolen him away

from peace, thrown him into this life a prey to suffering, to mischance,

to the evil hazards of heaven knew what blind master! And with her flesh

creeping, like an animal at the entrance of his burrow, she growled, she

sniffed the approach of the great murderous deities; she prepared to

fight with them for her child, she bared her teeth. Like every mother

whose child is threatened, she was the eternal Niobe who, in order to

turn the mortal shaft against herself, hurls her furious defiance at the

Murderer.

But no one in Annette's household divined this silent battle.

In the morning the doctor came; he complimented her on her presence of

mind and the first steps she had taken--so different from what sometimes

happens when an anxious affection spoils everything by its awkwardness.

But she only grasped from his words what he said about the epidemics of

grippe and measles that were raging in Paris and the possibility that

her child had caught the germs of bronchial pneumonia. In refusing to

leave Paris, as she had promised to do, she had thus been guilty towards

the child. She judged herself pitilessly. This sentence she passed on

herself had at least the advantage of limiting the field of her

responsibility, for it dispelled any other remorse.

At the first news, Sylvie had arrived hastily, and the little patient

had plenty of attention. But Annette, refusing to leave her place, took

hardly any rest and remained in the breach during the days, the nights,

the days. The perspiration on the little body and its burning

suffocation melted her own being. The illness kneaded them into one

mass. The child seemed to be aware of this, for in the moments when the

fear of an attack of coughing contracted his sides his eyes rested,

heavy with reproaches and an appeal for help, on the eyes of the mother.

He seemed to be saying, "It's going to hurt me again! There it is coming

back! Save me!"

And, pressing him to her, she would reply, "Yes, I shall save you! Don't

be afraid, it's not going to get you!"

The attack came, and the child strangled. But he was not alone. She

stiffened with him in order to break the noose. He felt that she was

struggling, that she, the great protectress, would not abandon him; and

the reassuring sound of her gentle voice and the pressure of her fingers

gave him confidence, said to him, "I am here."

As he cried and struck the air with his little arms, he knew she would

fight it.

And she did fight it, the nameless thing. The illness yielded. The noose

relaxed. And the little birdlike body of the child, still palpitating,

abandoned itself to the hands that had saved it. How good it was to

breathe, the two of them, after that plunge into the depths! The wave of

air that streamed through the mouth of the child bathed the throat of

the mother and swelled her breasts with an icy pleasure.

These respites were of short duration. The struggle continued,

alternating with periods of exhaustion. His condition was improving when

the child had a sudden relapse from some unknown cause. His faithful

watchers naturally tormented themselves all the more, accusing

themselves of some moment of forgetfulness that had threatened his

recovery. Annette said to herself, "If he dies, I shall kill myself."

For many nights she had been used to going without sleep; she kept it up

as long as the child needed her aid, but during the hours when he slept

and her own mind, reassured, might have made the most of this and

relaxed, her spirit was more uneasy than ever. It vibrated like a

telegraph-wire in the wind. Impossible to close her eyes. It was

dangerous for her to lie there facing her distracted brain. Annette

would turn on the light again and try to fix her mind upon some definite

line of thought in order to escape from this vertigo. But it was only to

turn over and over all sorts of superstitious, childish, extravagant

ideas--or so they appeared to a mind that was accustomed to rational

methods. She told herself that if calamity hung over her it was because

she had been too completely happy, and it seemed to her that if her son

was to recover she must suffer in some other direction. An obscure,

powerful belief in some painful compensation, mounting up from the

depths of time. Primitive peoples, in order to placate the ferocious

bargaining god, the god who never gives something for nothing and

demands cash payments, used to sacrifice their first-born: they

purchased with this ransom the safety of the rest of their fortunes. And

for her first-born Annette would gladly have given her life and all her

wealth.

"Take my all," she said, "but let him live!"

Then at once she thought, "This is absurd. Nobody is listening to me."

It was no use. The old atavistic instinct continued to scent, somewhere

about her, the presence of the jealous God. And, holding on, bargaining

bitterly, she said, "Let us make an agreement. I am willing to pay on

the spot. The child is mine. Take your choice of the rest!"

As if to justify her superstition, events took Annette at her word. One

morning, when Aunt Victorine had gone to the lawyer's to get some money

that he should have sent them some time before, she came back in tears.

That very morning Annette had had the joy of being finally reassured

about her child's health. The doctor had just left: this time he had

announced that the child was definitely convalescent. Annette, in a

transport of happiness, but still trembling, hardly dared to believe in

her newly recovered happiness. At this moment she saw the door opening

and at the first glance perceived her aunt's broken look. Her heart

throbbed as she thought, "What new misfortune has befallen us?"

The old lady could hardly speak. At last she said, "The office is

closed. M. Grenu has disappeared."

Annette's whole fortune was in his charge. For a moment she did not

understand. Then--explain it if you can--her face cleared. She was

relieved. She thought, "Is that all?"

So there it was, the saving calamity! The enemy had taken his portion.

A moment afterward she shrugged her shoulders at her silliness. But in

spite of her irony she continued to say to it, "Was that enough? Are you

satisfied? Now that I have paid, I owe you nothing more."

She smiled. Poor humanity, clutching at its morsel of happiness and

seeing it unceasingly, unceasingly escaping, tries to conclude a pact

with blind nature, which it creates in its own image.

"In my image? This envious, rapacious, cruel nature. Is it posable that

I resemble it? Who knows? Who can say, 'I am not that'?"

IX

Annette was ruined. She could not yet estimate the extent of her ruin.

But when the first moment of aberration had passed, when she coldly

examined the situation, she had to admit that she thoroughly deserved

it.

She was quite capable of attending to her affairs. Like her father, she

had a good hard head; figures had no terrors for her. When one comes of

a line of peasants and shrewd, energetic tradesfolk, one must make an

actual effort to lose one's assurance in practical matters. But she had

been spared all thought about material things as long as her father was

alive; and since then she had passed through a long crisis in which the

inner travail of her emotional life had held her captive. In this rather

abnormal state, maintained by the idleness made possible by her fortune,

she had felt a rather unhealthy disgust at paying any attention to her

property. It should be said boldly that the idealism of the inner life

which despises money as parasitical forgets that it has the right to do

so only when it gives up money. The idealism that grows out of a soil of

wealth and professes to have no interest in it is the worst form of

parasitism.

To escape from the boredom of managing her fortune, she had turned the

whole administration of it over to the excellent M. Grenu, her lawyer.

An old family friend, a respected man whose honor and professional

standing were well known, M. Grenu had for thirty years overseen all the

Rivières' affairs as they passed through his office. It was true that

Raoul had not allowed any one to manage them without consulting him.

However much confidence he may have placed in his lawyer, he never

allowed him to make out a deed without verifying every period and comma

himself. But after taking all precautions, he did have confidence in

him, and when a man of his shrewdness has confidence in another the

other must deserve it. M. Grenu did deserve it. As much as anybody in

the world (when the precautions were taken) . . .

The rôle of lay confessor, which the lawyer is called upon to play in a

family, had placed M. Grenu in possession of many of the Rivières'

household secrets. He had been unaware of very few of Raoul's escapades

or Mme. Rivière's sorrows. To the former he had lent a sympathetic ear,

to the latter an ear equally complacent. As an advisor of the wife he

appreciated her virtues; as the companion of Raoul, he appreciated the

latter's vices (they were virtues too, Gallic virtues); and it was said

that he was not above joining in some of Raoul's select parties. M.

Grenu was a little grizzled man in his sixties, delicate in appearance,

with a fresh complexion, excessively correct, malicious and

smooth-tongued, a good fellow, an amusing actor; he liked to tell

stories and would begin in a low, faint voice so that people would take

pains to listen to him, a voice so soft that it seemed to be dying;

then, when he had won from the audience a pitying silence, he would

gradually spread out into a sonorous volume of sound that a big clarinet

might have envied, and he would not abandon the stop till the final note

when he had finished his song. He was a lawyer of the old school, but a

weak man, attracted by the new ways, a good paterfamilias, an

old-fashioned bourgeois, proud of being able to count a number of

actresses, high livers and light women among his clientele, and it was

his hobby to speak of himself as old and even to act so, exaggeratedly;

but he was very much afraid of being taken at his word and in secret

applied himself ardently to showing that he was livelier than all these

young folks and could leave them far behind.

He had known Annette since her childhood, and he had taken her affairs

very sincerely to heart. It seemed to him natural that she should

confide in him after the death of her parents. With professional

correctness, at first, he had scrupulously kept her posted; he was

unwilling to do anything without her consent--which only bored Annette.

Then he induced her to give him a special power of attorney for this or

that transaction of which Annette heard (scarcely heard) a very vague

account. And finally it was taken for granted that, since Annette made

frequent trips away from Paris, often without leaving her address, M.

Grenu would look out for her interests as best he could without

consulting her. Thus everything went well: the lawyer took charge of

everything, collected Annette's income and provided her with money as

she needed it. At last, in order to regularize the situation, he caused

her to give him a general power of attorney. . . . Water flowed under

the bridges. . . . It was more than a year since Annette had seen M.

Grenu, who, punctually, at the beginning of each quarter, turned over to

her the amount that was due. Living alone, away from Parisian society,

no longer reading the newspapers, she did not hear of events until long

after they had happened. Old M. Grenu had tried to be too clever.

Without any personal spirit of greed, he had allowed himself to be

caught by his fondness for speculation; to increase the funds of his

clients, he involved them in risky enterprises in which they were

capsized. Then in his attempts to make up their losses he ruined them.

Without warning Annette, he had not only disposed of all her ready money

and the personal property of which he had charge, but, by certain

subterfuges that were permitted by the elastic form of the power of

attorney, he had mortgaged the Boulogne house and the house in Burgundy.

When all was lost he fled before the ridicule which he knew would follow

his downfall and which would perhaps have been more intolerable to him

than dishonor.

To crown the misfortune, Annette, entirely absorbed in the child's

illness, had not opened her correspondence for several weeks. She had

not replied to the letters of the mortgage-holders or the court summons

that followed. It was during the days of the child's relapse. Annette

had lost her head. Not realizing that they were addressed to her and not

to her agent, she sent the papers off without reading them to the

lawyer, who did not read them either--for a good reason. He was on the

run. When at last the recovery of her child left her mind free enough to

examine the situation, the judicial procedure had advanced so far that,

in Annette's failure to satisfy the demands of the creditors, the latter

had won the right to have the mortgaged property put up for sale.

Annette, awakened from her torpor, had to face this stunning blow; with

the energy that was restored in an instant and the practical

intelligence, inherited from her father, that made up for her

inexperience, she fought with a vigor and a clearness of mind which the

judge admired even while he decided against her: for her good excuses

did not alter the fact that before the law her case was bad. Annette

herself saw at once that she had lost in advance, but her fighting

instinct, which coolly admitted her defeat, unjust as it was, could not

admit it without resistance. Besides, she was concerned now for her

child's property. She defended it, step by step, with the tenacity of a

rude, shrewd peasant who, bracing her legs at the gate of her field,

bars the road to intruders, trying to gain time even though she knows

they are coming in. But what could she do? In her inability to pay the

sum that was demanded, and not wishing to ask aid from her relatives or

from the old friends who would probably have refused it in some

humiliating way, she could not stop the sale. Her ingenious, stubborn

energy only succeeded in obtaining the suspension, for a limited time,

of the proceedings of expropriation, without any hope of preventing

their execution after a brief delay.

Annette would have had some excuse if she had been overwhelmed by this

catastrophe. Sylvie, who had not been personally injured by it, now

burst into lamentations, now angrily talked of nothing but law-suits,

law-suits, law-suits. Annette, on the contrary, seemed to have recovered

her equilibrium through this very event. The ordeal had cleared the air.

The soft, sentimental atmosphere that for two or three years had been

cloying her heart was dissipated. When Annette was certain that the

situation could not be changed, she accepted it. Without useless

recriminations. Unlike Sylvie, who heaped the harshest maledictions on

the lawyer's head, she found no comfort in blaming M. Grenu. The old man

was in the water. So was she. But she had her youthful arms, and she

could swim. Perhaps this thought was not even entirely unpleasant to

her. Strange as it may seem, along with the distress of her ruin she had

at bottom an inquisitive desire for adventure and even a secret pleasure

in putting her unused energies to the test. Raoul would have understood

her, Raoul who, at the height of his success, had been seized at moments

with a fancy for destroying his life's work just to have the pleasure of

rebuilding it.

She prepared now to leave the Boulogne house. The property in Burgundy

had already been sold, hastily, on absurd terms. It was certain that the

total sale would scarcely cover the debt and the costs, and that, if

there remained an available surplus, it would not be enough for the

maintenance of Annette and her family; she would have to look for new

resources. For the moment, the main thing was to reduce expenses and

settle in some very modest establishment. Annette set out to look for an

apartment. Sylvie found one for her on the fourth floor of her own

house. (She lived on the _entresol_.) The rooms were small and opened on

the court, but they were clean and quiet. It was impossible to bring all

the furniture from the Boulogne house here. Annette wanted to keep only

what was absolutely necessary. But Aunt Victorine, weeping, begged her

to preserve everything. Annette remonstrated that it was not reasonable,

in their present situation, to assume the expense of a store-room. They

must make a choice, and the old lady begged for each object. Annette

firmly chose; aside from the furniture that was to follow them to the

new apartment, she kept a few pieces that were particularly dear to her

aunt, and the rest were sold.

Sylvie was struck by Annette's insensibility. But it was impossible to

suppose that the courageous girl did not feel a little sad. She loved

this house which she had to leave. . . . How many memories she had! How

many dreams! But she repressed them. She well knew that she could not

entertain them with impunity. They were too much, they would have taken

everything; she needed all her strength at this moment.

Just once, taken by surprise, she gave way before their assault. It was

one afternoon, shortly before the movers were to come. Her aunt was at

church and Marc was at Sylvie's. Annette, alone in the Boulogne house,

where everything spoke of their approaching departure, was kneeling on a

half-rolled rug, folding up a tapestry that had been taken down.

Occupied with her task, while her active hands came and went, her head

was busy calculating about the new arrangements. But she still had room

for dreams; for her eye, floating for an instant far from the present

vision, fastened in its mistiness upon a design in the tapestry which

her hands were rolling up: it recognized this design. A motif of pale

flowers, almost worn away; butterflies' wings, detached petals? It

mattered little; but Annette's eyes as a child had fallen there, and on

this canvas they had embroidered the tapestry of the days that had fled.

And this tapestry had suddenly emerged from the night. Annette's hands

ceased to wander; her mind, for one moment more, persisted in repeating

the figures of which it had lost the thread, then was still. And

Annette, letting herself slip down upon the floor, with her forehead on

the roll of the rug and her face in her hands, lay there with her knees

drawn up, abandoned herself to the wind and the flood, set sail. . . .

She did not voyage towards any particular country. . . . Such a mass of

memories--lived? dreamed?--how distinguish between them? Dizzy symphony

of a moment of silence! It contained much more than the substance of a

life. In active thought, the consciousness, when it believes it takes

possession of our inner world, only seizes the crest of the wave at the

moment when the sun-ray gilds it. Reverie alone perceives the moving

abyss and its torrential rhythm, those innumerable drops, scudding along

on the wind of the ages, seeds of thought of the beings from whom we

spring and who will spring from us, that formidable chorus of hopes and

regrets whose trembling hands stretch out towards the past or the

future. Indefinable harmony that forms the tissue of an illuminated

second, and that sometimes a shock is enough to awaken. A bouquet of

pale flowers had just evoked it in Annette.

When she pulled herself together, after a long silence, she rose

hastily, and with hands that were suddenly awkward, hasty, trembling,

she finished folding up the tapestry without looking at it. She did not

quite finish it, she threw it into a box, incompletely rolled, and fled

from the room. . . . No, she did not want to stay with these thoughts!

It was better to escape from them. Later she would have time enough to

regret the past, when she would herself belong to the past . . . later,

in the twilight of her life. For the moment, she was too full of the

future, she must see it through. Her dreams lay ahead of her. "I don't

want to know what is behind me; I must not turn around."

She walked down the street, hastening her steps, tense, looking neither

to right nor left . . . the years, the years, the life that was

coming . . . that of her child, her own, the new life, the Annette of

to-morrow.

X

She had this vision in her eyes on the evening when she established

herself in Sylvie's house. Sylvie, as soon as her shop was closed,

hastened to climb up to her sister's apartment to distract her from the

regrets she supposed the latter must be feeling. She found her walking

back and forth in her narrow room, not at all tired after the exhausting

day, trying to make her too diminutive cupboards hold her clothes and

her linen. Unsuccessful in this, perched on a stool, with her arms full

of sheets, looking at the filled shelves, she was meditating another

plan, whistling like a boy a Wagnerian fanfare that she absent-mindedly

travestied, giving it a burlesque turn. Sylvie looked at her and said,

"Annette, I admire you." (She did not mean quite as much as this.)

"Why?" asked Annette.

"If I were in your place, how I should rage!"

Annette began to laugh. Absorbed in her work, she made a sign to her

sister to be silent.

"I think I've got it," she said.

She buried her head and her arms in the cupboard, arranging,

disarranging, rummaging.

"I said so," she remarked, "and I have."

(She was addressing a cupboard that was full, arranged, conquered.)

She descended, victorious, from the stool.

"Rage, Sylvie?" she said. (She was holding her by the chin.) "When you

were a child you played at building houses with dominoes. When the house

fell, did you get angry?"

"I banged the dominoes on the floor," said Sylvie.

"And I said, Biff! I'll build another."

"You'll have to admit that you shook the table!"

"Well, I wouldn't swear I didn't," said Annette.

Sylvie called her an anarchist.

"What!" said Annette. "Isn't that just what you are?"

Sylvie was not. She could laugh at order and authority when she wanted

to do so, but she felt the need of order and authority. Even if it was

only to apply them to other people. For her, as for others, there was no

pleasure in revolting unless it was against some authority. And as for

order, Sylvie was well supplied with it. She did not cavil at the

established order except in so far as it was not her own. She did not

reproach it for being established. An order should be established. Since

she too was established, as an employer, directing her own business, she

was all for a stable order. Annette made this discovery with surprise.

Nor was this the only discovery she made. You do not know another human

being unless you see him in that everyday activity which brings his

energies to a head and reveals his natural movements and gestures.

Annette had never seen Sylvie except during her idle times, her times of

relaxation. Who can judge of a cat stretched out on a soft cushion? You

must see it on the warpath with its back arched and the green fire in

its eyes.

Annette was now seeing Sylvie in her own field, the portion of earth she

had cleared for herself in the Parisian jungle. The little business

woman had taken her trade seriously, and she was second to no one in the

art of managing her affairs. Annette could observe her at leisure and

close by; for, during the first weeks that followed her moving, she took

her meals with Sylvie; it had been agreed that they should keep house

together until the settling was entirely finished. Annette, to keep her

own end up, tried to make herself useful, sharing in some of the tasks

of the workshop. Thus she saw Sylvie at all hours of the day, now with

the customers, now with the workers, now alone for a private talk, and

she observed in her sister traits she had not known, or which had become

accentuated in the last two or three years.

The coaxing Sylvie, under her charming smile, no longer concealed from

the penetrating eyes of Annette a rather cold nature which, amid all its

entanglements, knew where it was going. She had a small personnel of

working-girls whom she managed with superlative skill. With her keen

observation and her winning ways, she had chosen and drawn to herself

hearts that had no other attachments. Such, for instance, was her chief

assistant, Olympe, who was much older than she, more expert in the

craft, an excellent worker, but entirely without ideas, and unable to

take care of herself. She had come from the country and was lost in

Paris, victimized and laughed at by men, women, her employers and her

fellow-workers. She was intelligent enough to see this, but she did not

have the strength to resist it, and she had been looking for some one

who, without taking advantage of her, would make use of her work and

free her from the responsibility of managing herself. It had needed no

effort on Sylvie's part to bring her into line. Sylvie was merely

obliged to take care that there should be a good understanding among the

rival devotions that she had aroused in her personnel, making skilful

use of their antagonisms in order to stimulate their zeal and, like a

wise government, uniting competitors in the patriotism of the common

work. The pride of the little establishment and the desire to

distinguish themselves in the eyes of the young mistress delivered them

over to her cunning domination, which often made them work till they

were exhausted. She set the example, and no one complained. Her

affectionate taunts, the droll mockery at which they would burst out

laughing, would reinvigorate the weary team and make them hold out to

the end. Proud of their employer, they loved her jealously; while she,

who stimulated their enthusiasm, remained indifferent to them herself.

In the evening, after they had left, she talked about them to her sister

in a tone of cold detachment that shocked Annette. For the rest, she was

ready to do them a good turn in case of need, and she never left them in

the lurch if she found them ill or in difficulties. But whether they

were ill or not, if she did not see them she forgot them. She had no

time to think of the absent. She had no time to love very long. A

perpetual activity occupied all her moments: the care of her person,

housekeeping, meals, business, trying on dresses, gossip, love affairs,

amusements. And everything--even to the (never very long) periods of

silence, when, between the bustle of the day and her sleep at night, she

found herself alone face to face with herself--everything about her was

precise. Not a cranny for dreams. When she observed herself, it was with

the clear and curious eye that watches others and looks upon oneself as

a passer-by. A minimum of inner life: everything projected into acts and

words. The need that Annette felt for moral confession found no

consideration here. Annette was embarrassed in this perpetual midday. No

shadow. Or, if it existed--and it exists in every soul--the door was

closed tight upon it. Sylvie was not interested in what might be behind

the door. Her only concern was to administer her little domain

punctiliously, enjoying everything, her work and her pleasures, but

everything at its own time so that nothing should be lost; consequently,

she was without passions or any great excesses, for this activity, this

perpetual going from one thing to another, not only did not lend itself

to anything of the kind, but even destroyed its possibility in advance.

No danger that her lovers would make her lose her head.

The truth was that she did not love anything very much. She loved

whole-heartedly only one soul, Annette. And how strange this was! Why in

the world did she love this big girl who had nothing, or virtually

nothing, in common with her?

Ah, that "virtually nothing" was a great deal; who knows but that it was

the most important thing of all?--the tie of blood. This does not always

count for much between people of the same family. But when it does

count, what a mysterious strength it has! It is a voice that whispers to

us, "That other person is a part of me. Moulded in another shape, the

substance is the same. I recognize myself in a different form and

possessed by an alien soul."

And one wants to capture oneself in this usurper double attraction, a

triple attraction: the attraction of resemblance, the attraction of

opposition, of the war of conquest, which is not the least of the three.

What forces there were binding Annette and Sylvie together! Pride,

independence, orderliness, will, the life of the senses! Of these two

spirits, the one turned inward, the other outward--the two hemispheres

of the soul. They were constituted of almost the same elements, but

each, for deep, obscure reasons that sprang from the essence of their

personality, repressed one half, wished only to see one half, that which

emerged or that which was submerged. The uniting of the two sisters in a

common life disturbed the habitual consciousness that each had of

herself. Their mutual affection was tinged with hostility. And the

warmer the affection was, the keener was the hidden hostility, for they

realized how hopelessly unlike they were. Annette was more expert in

reading her buried thoughts, and she was also more sincere: she was able

to judge them and repress them. The time had passed when she had wished

to absorb Sylvie in her imperious love. But Sylvie still had a secret

desire to dominate her elder sister, and she was not displeased that

circumstances had given her an opportunity to affirm her superiority. It

was a sort of revenge for the inequalities of their lot during the

girlhood of the two sisters. This unconfessed feeling, together with her

real affection, gave her a sense of satisfaction which she concealed as

she saw Annette working under her direction in the shop. She would have

liked to have her on her pay roll. She put her in charge of receiving

her customers and making charcoal designs for embroidered trimmings; she

tried to persuade her that she could look forward to some important

position and even to being her partner later on in the business.

Annette, who saw what Sylvie was driving at, had no intention of tying

herself down. She let the offer drop, and when Sylvie pressed her she

replied that she was not fitted for this work. Upon this Sylvie asked

her ironically for what work she was fitted. This was a tender point

with her. When one has never had to work for a living and necessity

drives one to do so, it is painful not to know what work one is fitted

for, not even to know whether, in spite of one's education, one is

fitted for any work. But she had to face the question. Annette did not

want to remain dependent on Sylvie. Of course Sylvie would never have

shown that she felt this dependence: she enjoyed helping her sister. But

if she was happy in spending for Annette, she knew what she was

spending; her right hand was never unaware of what her left hand gave.

Annette was still less unaware of it. She could not endure the thought

that Sylvie, as she made up her accounts, mentally wrote her down as her

debtor. . . . The devil take all money! Should it be considered between

two hearts that love each other? Annette and Sylvie did not consider it

in their hearts. But it was a consideration in their life. People do not

live by love alone. They live by money too.

XI

This was a truth which Annette had ignored a little too much. She was to

lose no time in learning it.

She started out in search of a position, saying nothing about it to

Sylvie. Her first idea was to go to see the principal of the school for

young girls where she had studied. As an intelligent student who was

rich and the daughter of an influential father, she had been a favorite

of Mme. Abraham, and she felt certain of her sympathy. This remarkable

woman--one of the first to organize the teaching of women in France--had

rare qualities of energy and judgment that were complemented--or

mitigated, according to the case--by a very cold political sense which

many men might have envied. She was disinterested personally, but she

was far from being so where her school was concerned. She was a

freethinker, and, although she did not parade the fact, she was not

without a certain contemptuous anti-clericalism that could do her no

harm with her clientele, the daughters of the radical bourgeoisie and

young Jewesses. But in place of the dogmas she rejected she had

established a civic morality which, although it lacked basis and

certitude, was no less strict and commanding. (It was even more so, for

the more arbitrary a rule is the more rigid it becomes.) Annette, thanks

to her position in society, was intimate with the principal and had her

confidence. It amused her to tease the latter about her famous official

morality, and Mme. Abraham, who was sceptical by nature, found no

difficulty in smiling at the whims of this saucy young thing. She smiled

at them, yes, indeed, when they talked together behind her closed door.

But as soon as the door was open and Mme. Abraham was reinstated in her

title and her official rank, she was as firm as iron in her belief in

the Tables of the laic Law, the product of the highly reasonable

morality of a few republican pedagogues. It was enough to say that, if

her naked conscience was indifferent to conventional morality, her

clothed conscience--her usual conscience--severely blamed Annette's

behavior. For she knew about it; the adventure had gone the rounds of

society.

But she did not yet know of her ruin. And when Annette called, she took

care not to reveal her thoughts: her first business was to find out the

reasons for this call and whether the school might reap any advantage

from it. She therefore gave her a pleasant though rather reserved

greeting. But scarcely had she learned that Annette had come to ask a

favor than she remembered the scandal and her smile froze. One can

easily accept money from a person of whom one doesn't approve, but one

cannot decently give it to such a person. It was easy for Mme. Abraham

to find compelling reasons for averting a candidacy that was so

impolitic. There was no position in the school; and, when Annette asked

for a recommendation to other institutions, Mme. Abraham did not even

take the trouble to make vague promises. She was very diplomatic when

she was negotiating with anyone who was on top of the wheel of fortune,

but she instantly ceased to be so when the wheel had flung them down. A

serious mistake in diplomacy! For sometimes those who are down to-day are

on top to-morrow, and good diplomacy looks out for the future. Mme.

Abraham considered nothing but the present. At present Annette was

drowning; it was a pity, but Mme. Abraham was not in the habit of

fishing out those who were in the water. She did not disguise her

coldness, and, when Annette failed to abandon her tone of calm

self-possession and henceforth misplaced equality, Mme. Abraham, in

order to bring her back to a more exact sense of her distance, declared

that she could not conscientiously recommend her. Annette, who was

burning with indignation, was on the point of expressing it. A flash of

anger passed over her, but it was extinguished in contempt. She was

seized by one of those rather diabolical whims of her younger days, an

itching desire to mock. She rose, saying, "Well, think of me if you

establish a course in the new morality."

Mme. Abraham looked at her, taken aback; the impertinence was all too

evident. She replied dryly, "The old one is good enough for us."

"But it might not be a bad thing to enlarge it a little."

"What would you like to add to it?"

"Nothing very much," said Annette, calmly. "Freedom and humanity."

Mme. Abraham, hurt, said: "The right to love, no doubt?"

"No," said Annette, "the right to have a child."

As she went out she shrugged her shoulders at her useless bravado. . . .

Stupid! . . . What was the use of making an enemy? . . . She laughed

just the same as she thought of the vexed expression of her antagonist.

A woman cannot resist the pleasure of slighting another. Bah! The

Abraham woman would remain her enemy only until Annette had reconquered

her position. And she would reconquer it!

Annette visited other institutions, but there were no positions. There

were none for women. The Latin democracies are only made for men; they

sometimes put feminism on their programmes, but they distrust it; they

are in no hurry to furnish arms to what still remains, at the dawn of

the twentieth century, the enslaved rival, a rival that will not long so

remain, thanks to the tenacity of the Nordic woman. Pressure will have

to be brought by the public opinion of the rest of the world to oblige

them to offer a crabbed welcome to the woman who works and wishes to

exercise her rights.

Annette might have been admitted, however, to two or three positions if

her susceptibility had not caused her to lose them. They would have been

ready to shut their eyes to her irregular situation if she herself had

been willing to give them some specious explanation--that she was a

widow or divorced by her own choice. But when she was questioned her

absurd pride drove her to tell the facts as they were. After two or

three rebuffs, she approached no more institutions, not even the

University, although in the latter she had left sympathetic friends

behind her and would have found minds large enough to help her without

censuring her. But she was afraid of being wounded. She was still

inexperienced in the country of the poor. The hands of her pride had not

had time to become callous.

She looked about for a chance to give private lessons. She did not wish

to seek them among the friends of her own class; she preferred to

conceal her steps. She turned to those clandestine employment--those

exploitative--agencies that still exist in Paris. She was not skilful

enough to appear well from their point of view. She had too much

disdain. They resented her fastidiousness. Instead of accepting whatever

offered, like so many unhappy souls who are fortified with very few

recommendations, who will teach anything that is asked of them at famine

prices and work from dawn till dark, she presumed to pick and choose.

At last, through the mediation of Sylvie's customers, she found a few

foreigners. She gave lessons in conversation to some Americans who

treated her kindly and occasionally invited her to drive in their

carriages, though they offered her an absurd remuneration, never even

thinking that they ought to have paid her more. They did not hesitate to

give a hundred francs for a pair of shoes, while for an hour of French

they would pay a franc. (It was not impossible in those days to find

people who would give lessons for fifty centimes!) Annette, who did not

have the right to be exacting as yet, refused to accept this shameful

treatment. But after having sought far and wide, she could find nothing

better. The well-to-do bourgeoisie who, under the eye of public opinion,

are willing to spend whatever is demanded for the education of their

children when the teaching is public, sordidly exploit instructors in

their own households. There no one sees you. You are dealing with people

who are too humble to resist: for one who refuses there are ten who beg

you to accept them!