In October Sylvie gave birth to a little girl. Joy for everybody.

Annette became as passionately attached to the child as if it had been

her own. It gave Sylvie no pleasure to see it in her arms, and she no

longer tried to conceal the hostility that she had hitherto repressed.

Annette, who, for a few weeks, had been listening to unkind words from

her sister, which she attributed to the passing illness, was no longer

able to doubt Sylvie's estrangement. She said nothing, avoiding any

occasion for annoying her. She hoped for a return of the old affection.

Sylvie was on her feet again. The relations between the two sisters

remained apparently the same, and an outsider would not have noticed any

change. But Annette observed in Sylvie a cold animosity that hurt her.

She would have liked to take her hands and ask her, "What's the matter?

What have you against me? Tell me, dear!"

But Sylvie's look froze her. She did not dare. She felt intuitively that

if Sylvie spoke she would say something irreparable. It was much better

to remain silent. Annette felt in her sister a wish to be unjust against

which she could do nothing.

One day Sylvie said to Annette that she wanted to have a talk with her.

Annette, with her heart beating, wondered, "What is she going to say to

me?"

Sylvie said nothing that could offend Annette, not a word of her

grievances. She talked to her about getting married.

Annette gently changed the subject. But Sylvie was insistent and

suggested a match: a friend of Leopold, a sort of business agent, a

journalist in some vague way, with a certain style, the manners of a man

of the world, and varied, too varied, resources, who sold automobiles

and wrote advertisements, acted as an intermediary between the

manufacturers and their customers in clubs and drawing-rooms, and

received commissions from both sides. It was a proof that Sylvie had

changed greatly in relation to her sister that she could offer her such

a choice, and Annette was aware of the lack of affection this deliberate

slight indicated. With a gesture she stopped the description of the

candidate. Sylvie took it in bad part, asking if Annette found the

suggested suitor beneath her pretensions. Annette said that she had no

pretensions except to live alone. Sylvie replied that this was easy to

say, that it was all very well to want to live alone, but that first one

had to have the power to do so.

"But do you think I can't?"

"You? I challenge you to do it!"

"You are unjust. I can earn my living."

"With the help of other people."

In the tone, even more than in the words, there was something

intentionally wounding. Annette blushed, but she did not take her up;

she did not want to bring about an open quarrel.

During the following weeks, Sylvie's ill-humor was very noticeable. Any

pretext served her, the least disagreement in conversation, a detail in

dress, Annette's lateness at dinner, the noise little Marc made on the

stairs. They never went out together any more. If they had arranged for

a walk on Sunday, she set out with Leopold, without saying anything to

Annette, using the latter's unpunctuality as an excuse. Or at the last

moment she would call off the party they had planned.

Annette saw that her presence was a burden. She spoke timidly of looking

for an apartment in some other quarter that would be less remote from

her pupils. She hoped they would protest, beg her to remain. They

pretended not to have heard her.

She was cowardly; she stayed on. She clung to this affection which she

felt was escaping her. It was not only Sylvie whom she did not want to

leave. She was attached to little Odette. She endured more than one

painful affront without seeming to notice it. She lengthened the

intervals between her visits.

Even so, they were too frequent for Sylvie. She certainly had not

returned to her normal state. An unwholesome jealousy was working in

her. Once when Annette was innocently playing with Odette, without

noticing a dry warning that Sylvie had given her to stop, the latter

rose, irritated, and snatched the little girl from her arms. "Go away!"

she said.

There was such animosity in her eyes that Annette, struck by it, said to

her, "But what have I done? Don't look at me that way! I can't bear it.

Do you want me to go away? Do you want me not to come back any more?"

"At last you understand," said Sylvie, cruelly.

Annette turned pale. "Sylvie!" she cried.

With a cold rage, Sylvie went on: "You are living at my expense. Very

well. That's all right. But that's enough. My husband and my daughter

are mine. Hands off!"

Annette, with white lips, repeated, in an agonized tone, "Sylvie,

Sylvie!"

Then suddenly a transport seized her too. "You wicked thing!" she cried.

"You will never see me again!"

She ran to the door and went out.

Ashamed of her violence, Sylvie pretended to laugh.

"We shall see her again this evening."

_SUMMER_

PART TWO

XXIII

Annette left Sylvie's apartment intending never to enter it again. She

was weeping. She was burning with shame and rage. These two passionate

natures could not cease to love each other without almost hating each

other.

Impossible for Annette to remain under the same roof with her! If she

had had the means she would have moved the next day. Happily for her,

she had to yield to practical necessities: to give notice, to look for

another apartment. In her first fury she would have preferred to place

her furniture in storage and camp out in a hotel. But this was not the

moment to squander her money. She had very little laid aside; what she

earned was spent as she went along; even when she had no recourse to her

sister's aid, the feeling that she could appeal to her in case of need

gave her a security that spared her any too keen anxieties over the

future. When she came to reckon up what she must have in order to live,

she was obliged to recognize, to her mortification, that if she were

thrown upon her own resources her actual work would not suffice to

support her. Living with her sister and taking some of their meals

together lightened her expenses. The child's clothes were given him by

Sylvie, and Annette paid only for the material of her own dresses. And

this was not to mention the things she borrowed or those which, while

they belonged to one, served for two, the small gifts, the Sunday

excursions, the little extra pleasures that brightened the daily

monotony. And then the credit which her sister enjoyed in the

neighborhood gave Annette the benefit of a certain latitude in paying

her bills. Now she would have to count upon paying cash for everything.

The beginning would be hard. The moving, the deposit, the expenses of

settling. And the great question, who was going to look after the child?

A contradictory question: for she had to earn money for the child, and

in order to earn it she had to leave home, and who would take care of

him? Annette had to admit that she would never have surmounted these

difficulties if they had come earlier, when Marc was very young. How did

other women manage? Annette was sorry for the unhappy souls, and she

felt humiliated.

Place the child in a boarding-school? He was old enough to go to school

now. But she was unwilling to shut him up in one of those menageries.

What she had heard about those old-time institutions (things have been

somewhat improved since then), what she instinctively surmised about

this physical and moral promiscuity, had led her to regard it as a crime

to put one's child into them. She wanted to believe that the boy would

be unhappy there. Who could say? Perhaps he would have been very glad to

get away from her. But what mother can believe that she is a burden to

her child? She was not even willing to leave him at one of these schools

for his meals. She told herself that this was because of Marc's delicate

health; he needed special food; she had to watch over his diet. But it

was extremely fatiguing to come home from lunch when her lessons obliged

her sometimes to run to the other end of Paris. Going, coming, always in

movement. And the lessons did not bring in enough money. Some urgent

expense was always turning up upon which she had not reckoned. The boy

was growing very large, and Annette regretted that he was not like those

little beans which never grow faster than their shells. She had to

clothe him. Nor could she permit herself to neglect her own appearance;

her occupation would have prevented this if her pride had not done so.

So she had to find new resources. Copying to be done at home, the work

of some foreigner or a translation to be revised (an ungrateful task,

poorly remunerated); secretarial work, one or two mornings in the week

(also poorly remunerated); but all these things, taken together, were

enough. To earn money by any means! Annette did many things at once. She

made herself hated by the hungry rivals whom she thrust out of her way

in her pursuit of bread. But this time the devil could take the

hindmost. No more sentimentality! She had no time for it. You cannot go

back and pick up those who have fallen. It was true that she sometimes

had the vision in passing of some strained face that stared at her with

hostile eyes, some evicted competitor whom she would gladly have helped

in other days. A pity, but she did not have the time. She had to get

there first. She knew now where to find work, and she knew the shortest

way to it. Her diplomas, her degree, gave her an assured superiority.

And she was not unaware that she had advantages on another side, the

personal side, her eyes, her voice, her way of dressing, her skill in

handling her clients. Between her and other applicants they rarely

hesitated. Those that were sacrificed could not forgive her.

Her new life was established on a healthily rigorous system. No empty

room for useless thoughts. From one day to another, every day was as

full as a nut, full and hard. After the trepidation of the first weeks,

when she did not know whether she could manage to live and keep her

child alive, she became used to it, she grew more confident, she even

ended by finding pleasure in the difficulties she had overcome. No

doubt, in the rare moments when the necessity of acting no longer held

her mind tense, when at night she laid her head on her pillow, there

were times before she went to sleep when her accounts, the thought of

her budget, weighed upon her. . . . If she dropped on the road? . . . If

she fell ill? . . . I won't. . . . Peace, I must sleep. . . . Happily,

she was tired; sleep did not keep her waiting And when the day returned,

there was no longer room for those "ifs" and apprehensions. No more room

for that which enervated, enfeebled, broke the soul. Penury and toil put

everything in its proper place--that which belonged to the necessary and

that which belonged to luxury.

The necessary: daily bread. Luxury: the problems of the heart. . . .

Could she have imagined it? These problems seemed to her now of

secondary importance. All very well for those who have too much time on

their hands! She had neither too much nor too little. Just enough. One

thought for each thing she did, and not one to spare. So, full of

strength, she felt like a well-trimmed ship that is launched on the

waves.

She was in her thirty-third year, and nothing had yet wasted her

energies. She perceived that she not only did not need protection but

that she was stronger without it. The difficulty of her life invigorated

her. And its first benefit was in liberating her from the obsession of

Julien, from the nostalgia of love, which, dull or violent, had poisoned

all her past years. She realized how satiated she was with sentimental

dreams, sweet things, tender things, hypocritical sensuality; merely to

think of them was repugnant to her. To be occupied with the rough facts

of life, to undergo its wounding contact, to be obliged to be hard

herself--that was good, it was vivifying. A whole part of herself, the

best part perhaps, certainly the healthiest, was born again.

She no longer dreamed. She no longer tormented herself, even about her

child's health. When he was ill she did what had to be done. She did not

think about it beforehand. She no longer thought about it, indefinitely,

afterwards. She was ready for everything, she was confident. And that

was the best medicine. Dining these first years of desperate toil she

was not ill a single day, and the child caused her no real anxiety.

Her intellectual life was no less curtailed than her emotional life. She

scarcely had time to read any longer. She might have suffered from this,

but she did not. Her mind made up the deficiency from its own resources.

She had enough to do to sort and arrange her new discoveries. For during

these first months she discovered a great deal; she discovered

everything. And yet in what respect had things changed? As for work, she

had been very familiar with that--or she had thought she was familiar

with it. And this city, these people were just the same to-day as

yesterday.

Between one day and the next, however, everything had changed. From the

moment she had begun to seek her bread she had made the real discovery.

It had not been love, not even maternity. She carried these things

within her, but her life had expressed only a small portion of herself.

Hardly had she passed into the camp of poverty, however, than she

discovered the world.

The world varies, according as one considers it from above or from

below. Annette was in the street now, between the rows of houses that

stretched away on both sides: she saw the asphalt, the mud, the menace

of the motor-cars and the flood of passers-by. She saw the sky above

(rarely luminous)--when she had the time! The space between vanished:

all that had formed the object of her life hitherto, society,

conversation, theatres, books, the luxury of pleasure and the

intelligence. She knew very well that they were there and she might have

enjoyed them, but she had other things to think about. Watching her

steps, looking out for herself, hurrying. . . . How all these people

ran! . . . From above one saw nothing but the meandering of the river:

it seemed calm, and one did not notice the strength of the current. The

race, the race for bread. . . .

A thousand times Annette had thought of the state in which she found

herself to-day, in the world of toil and poverty. But what she had

thought then bore no resemblance to what she thought now that she was

taking part in it.

Yesterday she had believed in the democratic axiom of the Rights of Man,

and it had seemed to her unjust that the masses should be deprived of

them. To-day, the injustice--if there remained any question of just and

unjust--was that rights existed for the privileged. There are no rights.

Man has no right to anything. Nothing belongs to him. He has to conquer

everything anew every day. That is the Law: "Thou shalt earn thy bread

in the sweat of thy brow." Rights are the deceitful invention of a

fallen combatant, to sanction the spoils of his past victory. Rights are

nothing but the strength of yesterday, heaping up its treasures. But the

living right, the only one, is work. The conquest of every day. . . .

What a sudden vision of the human battlefield! It had no terrors for

Annette. The courageous soul accepted this combat as a necessity; and

she found it just because she was "in form," young and robust. If she

conquered, so much the better! If she was conquered, so much the worse!

(She would not be conquered. . . .) She had not given up pity, but she

had given up weakness. The first of her duties was "Don't be

pusillanimous!"

By the new light of this law of labor, everything became dear to her.

The old faiths were put to the test, and a new morality rose on the

ruins of the old, cemented on this heroic foundation. The morality of

freedom, the morality of strength, not of Pharisaism and debility. And

examining under this light the doubts that troubled her, especially that

which lay deepest in her heart, "Have I the right to my child?" she

answered, "Yes, if I can keep him alive, if I can make a man of him. If

I can do this, everything will be all right. If I cannot, everything

will be wrong. This is the only morality; everything else is

hypocritical."

This inflexible decision redoubled her vigor and her joy in the

struggle.

She was meditating in this fashion one day as she was walking about

Paris, going from one task to another. The walking excited her mind. Now

that her daily activity was methodically regulated, her dreams resumed

their rights. But they were waking dreams, clear, precise, dreams that

had nothing misty about them. The more limited her time was, the more

she made of these slight intervals; like ivy the hours climbed up,

covering the walls of the days. Annette brought her enlarged conceptions

of the true human morality face to face with the experiences of her day.

Work and poverty had opened her eyes. She had a new perception of the

untruthfulness of modern life which she had not seen when she was caught

in it. The monstrous futility of this life--nine-tenths of this

life--particularly for women. . . . Eating, sleeping, procreating. . . .

Yes, a tenth part had some use. But the rest? . . . This "civilization"?

What people call "thinking"? Is man--_vulgus umbrarum_--really made for

thought? He wants to persuade himself that he is, he puts himself into

the attitude for it, and he believes that he holds it, as by consecrated

exploits. But he does not think. He does not think over his newspaper,

or in his office, before the wheel on which his everyday activities

revolve. The wheel turns with him, turns empty. Did they think, those

young girls whom Annette had undertaken to teach? What was the meaning

of the words they heard, read, uttered? To what did their life reduce

itself? A few immense, depressing instincts brooding in their torpor

under a mass of playthings. Desire and enjoyment. . . . Thought was also

one of their playthings. Who was deceived by it? Themselves. The garment

of this civilization, its luxury, its art, its movement and its

noise--(that noise! one of its masks, to make itself believe that it was

hurrying toward some end! what end? It hurried in order to stupefy

itself)--what lay beneath it? Emptiness. People gloried in it. They

gloried in their tinsel, in their chatter, in their trinkets. How rare

were the men who revealed the shining light of Necessity! To the eternal

brute in man the voice of its gods and its sages says nothing or is only

one triviality the more. It never escapes from the confines of its

desire and boredom. Like man himself, human society is a meretricious

structure. Custom holds it together. A touch can lay it in ruins. . . .

Tragic thoughts. But they could not depress the ardent Annette. It is

the inspiration within that gives joy or sadness, not ideas. Under an

untroubled sky an anæmic soul perishes of melancholy. A vigorous soul,

exposed to storms, wraps itself as happily in shadows as in sunlight. It

knows quite well that they alternate. Annette came home sometimes

crushed with fatigue and the feeling of a dark future. She would go to

bed and sleep; in the middle of the night some ridiculous dream would

wake her up laughing. Or, more often, in the evening, as she sat with

her brow bent over her work and the fingers followed their path, her

brain, following its path in turn, would suddenly pick up some absurd

thought and she would be full of merriment. She had to take care not to

laugh too loudly in order not to awaken Marc. "I'm an idiot," she said,

as she dried her eyes. But her heart was lightened. These childish

relaxings, these sudden reactions, were a wholesome heritage that came

to her from her family. When the heart is full of clouds, the wind of

joy rises and drives them away.

No, she had no need of distractions, books. Annette had enough to read

in herself. And the most thrilling of books was her son.

XXIV

He was approaching his seventh year. He had adjusted himself to the

change of his surroundings much more readily than might have been

expected. Disagreeable or not, it was a change. He had cast his skin

like a little snake. Ungrateful childhood! All Sylvie's indulgences and

all her petting--she was so certain of her power over him!--were as if

they had never been. After forty-eight hours he no longer even thought

of them.

What pleases or displeases a child is never what you expect. The first

thing Marc appreciated in his new life was the school whither his mother

sent him pityingly--and the hours of solitude when there was nobody to

watch him.

Annette had established herself in a little apartment on the fifth floor

on the populous Rue Monge. A steep stairway, small rooms, noise from

without; but there was space above the roofs, and she needed this. The

noise did not disturb her; she was a Parisian, accustomed to movement;

it was almost necessary to her; she could think all the better in the

midst of the hurly-burly. Perhaps her nature had also been transformed

with maturity: the plenitude of physical life and regular work had given

her a poise, a nervous solidity, which she had never known, but which

would not endure forever.

The apartment consisted, on the street side, of Annette's bedroom, which

served as a sitting-room (the bed formed a divan), Marc's little room,

and a narrow recess, a sort of corner-closet. Across the passage, which

was dark at midday, was the dining-room over the court and a kitchen

that was practically filled by the stove and the sink.

Between the mother's room and that of the child the door remained open,

and Marc was too small to protest. He was at the undecided age that

floats between the sexlessness of early infancy and the first uncertain

awakening of the little man. He was no longer in the one stage and not

yet in the other. He would still run from his own bed to his mother's on

Sunday morning; and on great days he would allow her to dress him from

head to foot. On other days he would have fits of rudeness and shyness.

And he was full of curiosity also. Especially he had attacks of

secretiveness which he did not wish to have disturbed. He would slyly

shut his door. Annette would open it again. He could not make a movement

that she did not hear. It was unbearable! So he wouldn't move at all.

Then she would forget him for a little while. Not for long! . . .

Happily, Annette was not always there. She had to go out. Marc went to

his school, which was not far away. Annette took him there in the

morning, and when she was free (rarely) in the afternoon. But she could

not come for him to take him home again, for this was the hour of her

lessons. He had to come home alone, and this made her anxious. She had

tried to arrange with a neighboring family for the servant to bring Marc

home when she brought their child. But this did not suit Marc, and he

slipped away beforehand. So, proud and timorous, he would come back

alone and all alone shut himself up in the apartment. Good times till

his mother's return! Annette scolded him for his independence. But

although she would never have admitted to herself that she had this evil

feeling, she was not too sorry that he should be able to get along

without comrades. She distrusted comrades. She did not want anyone to

spoil her son. . . . Her son! Was she quite sure that he was hers? Of

course she made an effort to repress her egotistical love. No longer, as

in the days when he was very small, did she feel the blind, gluttonous

need of absorbing the little being in her passion. She saw in him now a

personality. But she persuaded herself that she had the key of this

personality, that she knew better than he its laws and its happiness;

she wanted to carve it in the image of her secret God. Believing, like

most mothers, that she was incapable of creating what she desired

herself, she dreamed of creating it through him who had sprung from her

blood. (That eternal dream, eternally frustrated, of Wotan!)

But in order to shape him, she had to catch him. Not let him escape! She

did everything to envelop him. Too much. Every day he escaped more. She

had the discouraging impression that every day she knew him less. One

thing she knew well: his body, his physical health, his illnesses, the

least symptoms. She had an intuition that never deceived her. She would

hold him before her, bathe him, touch him, care for him . . . this dear

fragile body of the little hermaphrodite. He looked transparent. But

what was inside him? She devoured him with her eyes and her hands; he

was entirely at her mercy.

"Heavens, how I love you, little monster! And do you love me?"

"Yes, Mamma," he replied politely.

But what was he thinking in his heart?

At seven Marc had scarcely a feature of his family. In vain had Annette

explored him, sought for some resemblance, tried to imagine one. . . .

No, he was not like her, either in the shape of his forehead, or in his

eyes, or in that swelling of the lips, so characteristic of the

Rivières, and especially of Annette, as if the will, the inner ardor,

had expanded them. The only point in common was the color of the iris,

and this was lost in a strange world. . . . What world? . . . The

father's? The Brissots'? Scarcely. At least, not yet. Jealously Annette

said, "Never!"

And yet would she have been so displeased to find some trace of Roger in

her son's features? Would it not have given her an obscure pleasure? She

remembered the man to whom she had given herself with a mixture of

bitterness and unconfessed attraction--an attraction less for the real

Roger than for him of whom she had dreamed. In fact, it was to this

dream that she had given herself. If she had seen him again in the image

of her son, she would have had a strange feeling of victory, the feeling

that she had wrested from him this form she loved in order to animate it

with her own soul. Yes, as long as Marc's spirit was like her own, she

would have been glad to find Roger's features in him.

But he resembled neither Roger nor herself. Roger's face, which lacked

the original expression of the Rivières, had a simple, regular beauty

of line: it was an easy book to read. But this child's face, the meaning

of this expression . . . how describe it? It was so fleeting. . . .

Pretty, delicate features, but not well proportioned, the narrow brow,

the effeminate chin, eyes a little aslant, the nose--whose did it

resemble, this long, tapering, finely arched nose?--and the wide, thin

mouth with pale, slightly crooked lips? . . . Even when he was motionless

he seemed to be moving; his air was uncertain and changing. . . . No

doubt he was seeking for his form: he was still fluctuating, but

in what direction would he decide to go? Or would he decide not to have

any direction?

Since his serious illness, he had been a child who at a first glance

would have been called nervous and impressionable (as perhaps he was).

But as you watched him, he disconcerted you with his calm ways, his air

of indifference, his reserved expression. Not disagreeable, not sulky,

not saying no. . . . "Yes, Mamma." . . . But you saw at once that he was

not paying any attention to what you said. He had not heard it. . . . Or

had he heard it? It was hard to be sure. . . . And he looked at his

mother to see what was going to happen next, and she looked at him. . . .

The little sphinx! . . . All the more a sphinx because he didn't know

that he was one. He knew no more about himself than Annette knew about

him, though this was the last thing to cause him any anxiety. When you

are seven you have ceased trying to understand yourself and have not yet

begun to do so again. On the other hand, he was trying to understand

her, his mistress and servant. And he had the time for this because she

shut him up with herself for days together. They observed one another

mutually. But she was no match for him.

Annette deceived herself in thinking that he did not resemble any one

she knew. There were astonishing similarities between his spirit and

that of his grandfather Rivière. But Annette, though this occurred to

her, had known very little about her father. He had charmed her so much

that she had never seen the real Raoul Rivière. She had merely had a

few suspicions, especially since she had read the famous correspondence.

She had not wanted to dwell on this. Even if she had to bolster them up,

she preferred to keep the pious and tender memories that had been

momentarily shaken. Besides, she had only known the Raoul of the last

phase. But if old Rivière had been able to return and inspect the

little love-child, as he would have known so well how to do, he would

have said, "I am beginning again."

He was not beginning again. Nothing ever begins again. He had merely

come back in certain details.

What mischievous tricks blood plays! Over Annette's head the two

confederates shook hands. And one of the most striking traits which the

frank Annette had transmitted from the grandfather to the grandchild was

a remarkable aptitude for dissembling. Not through any need to deceive.

Raoul Rivière had enough good-natured contempt for his contemporaries

and felt strong enough never to have any fear of showing himself, when

it pleased him, quite without disguise. (It had often pleased him, and

people would quote ferocious words of his that carried all before them.)

No, this was a gratuitous pleasure, a delight in the burlesque, a

theatrical tendency, a malicious taste for concealing his moral identity

in order to mystify people. The child, innocently of course, had

inherited this. His soul, which was still full of inconsistencies and

very heterogeneous, with nothing of the buffoon in its depths, had

slipped at birth into this malicious attitude, and it used the organs

that Nature had made for it. Just as it would have tried its beak, its

claws or its wings if it had passed into the body of a woolly or

feathered animal, so, enveloped as it were in a fold of one of old

Rivière's coats, it revealed once more the wiles of the grandfather.

Marc was guarded in the presence of grown-ups, and he could read in them

everything that concerned him. On that side his faculty of attention was

keen. When he saw what they imagined he was, he became it--at least

unless they irritated him or he wanted to amuse himself and was seized

with the whim of being contrary.

One of his occupations was to take apart the mechanism of these living

playthings, look for their hidden springs, their weak points, try them,

play with them, make them go. This was not very difficult, for they were

stupid and unsuspicious. And first of all, his mother.

She puzzled him. There was something enigmatic about her. He had heard

allusions to this subject in Sylvie's workshop, when he was sitting

under the feet of the working-girls, who were not thinking of him. He

did not understand much of it. But this added to the mystery, and he

interpreted it. Divining, discovering. In this alert little ferret-like

body, motionless, with shining eyes, the mind was always working.

Now that he was shut up with her, often for days, because of his

ill-health, his winter colds and the greedy affection of his mother, she

was his principal resource. He watched her curiously while he sang to

himself, moving about, pursuing his other occupations--for a child's

intelligence, like its body, is lithe and hard to hold. No matter if he

is facing the other way, he sees you with eyes in the back of his head,

and his cat's ears turn like weathercocks at the sound of your voice. If

this all-observing attention chases three or four hares at a time, it

never loses the trail, it amuses itself, it knows very well that

to-morrow it will begin again. . . . The hare allowed herself to be

caught. Expansive, easily carried away, prodigal in her feelings,

Annette was never niggardly. She spent herself without calculation.

At one moment she spoke to him as to a very little child, and she hurt

his feelings: he thought her ridiculous. Again she would speak to him as

to a companion of her thoughts, too old for his age, and she wearied

him: he thought her a bore. Sometimes she let herself think out loud,

carried on a monologue before him, as if he could understand it. Then he

thought her queer, and he watched her with a severe, mocking look. He

did not understand her; but people who do not understand never surrender

their right to judge.

He had adopted an artificial attitude that was convenient for him

because he could apply it to all cases: the impertinent, absent-minded

politeness of a well-brought-up child who appears to listen because he

must, but who is not in the least interested in all these things, who

has his own concerns and, when you speak to him, waits till you have

finished. At other times he amused himself playing at kissing her so as

to give her pleasure. He knew that his mother was nearly bursting with

happiness. The foolish woman responded with all her heart. When she fell

into his snares, he had a sort of affectionate contempt for her. When

she busied herself in a way that he had not foreseen, he was annoyed,

but he had more respect for her.

He was incapable of playing one part very long. A child is too yielding

and is always jumping from one thing to another. A moment after he had

pretended to be so warm-hearted and had enchanted her with his

effusions, he unblushingly betrayed his indifference in the harshest

way. Annette was completely upset.

There came a time when she ceased to be deceived or provoked any longer,

especially at the rare moments when a vague suspicion warned her that

Marc was obstinately posing. Then, nervously and violently--we ask

modern pedagogues to forgive us--she spanked him. Truly she was going

against all good principles and affronting the dignity of her child!

From the point of view of an Anglo-Saxon, poor Annette dishonored

herself forever. But we old French people don't go quite so far as that.

_Qui bene amat_. . . . The maxim still flourishes in bourgeois families

that have preserved some tincture of Latin. We have all been "well

loved." And at bottom we believe, three-quarters of the time, like

Annette's boy, that we are getting more than our deserts. But it is also

true that if, like him, we continue to love those who spank us, the

spanking results in their losing a little of their prestige. Let us

admit that perhaps it is for this reason that we--Marc and we--provoke

them!

He had a fine time afterwards playing the part of the outraged victim.

And Annette reproached herself for abusing her power. She felt that she

was at fault. She would try to find a way back into his good graces. He

would wait for her to come to him. . . .

The triumph of weakness! It is a weapon that women are expert in

handling. But the most feminine of the two in this case was the child.

This young morsel of flesh, still all bathed in the maternal milk, was

more than half feminine, and it had all the wiles and tricks of a girl.

Annette was disarmed. Beside the little rogue she was the strong sex.

The stupid strong sex, which is ashamed of its strength and tries to win

forgiveness for itself. The contest was not equal. The child made a fool

of her.

XXV

But he was no artful comedian amusing himself. Like his grandfather, he

had more than one nature. Very few had been able to see what lay hidden

beneath the mocking mask of old Rivière, the drama concealed by that

jesting cynicism, that appetite for play-acting which is sometimes

characteristic of conquering spirits. Raoul had had his dark depths

which he never revealed. They exist more often than one might suppose

under the Gallic laugh. One keeps them to oneself. Annette, who had her

own secrets, had never told them to her father, and his secrets she had

known no more than she knew those of her son. They all remained walled

up in their own inner lives. A strange reserve. People blush less at

exposing their vices and their appetites--Raoul had fairly paraded

his--than the tragedy of the soul.

Of this latter Marc had his share. A child who lives alone, without

brothers or companions, has time to wander about these caves of life.

Very deep and vast were the caves of the Rivières. The mother and the

child might have met in them. But they did not see each other; they

passed very close to each other more than once, imagining that they were

very far apart. Both of them, with eyes bandaged, Annette's by the demon

of passion that still held her, the child by the egoism that was natural

to his age--both were in the dark. But Marc as yet was only at the

entrance of the cavern; he was not, like Annette, seeking for the Way

out, bruising himself against the walls; he was crouching on one of the

first steps, dreaming of the future. Incapable of explaining it to

himself, he was building his life.

He had not had to go far to find the redoubtable wall before which the

terrified ego recoils. Death. The wall rose on all sides. Illness

skirted it like an encircling road. It was vain to seek for a passage

through it. The wall was massive and had no breach. It had not been

necessary for any one to tell Marc that the wall was there. Instantly,

in the shadow, he had scented it, like a horse with his mane rising. He

had spoken to no one about it. No one had spoken to him. The whole world

was in agreement on the subject.

Annette, like the young women of to-day, was a bad teacher who, as a

girl, had heard a great deal of talk about teaching, and was not

unwilling to talk about it as a matter of conscience. She attached more

importance to the method of bringing up children than the mothers of

former days who had gone about it blindly. But once the child was there,

she had found herself helpless before the thousand and one surprises of

life, incapable of playing her part, making up theories which she did

not apply, or which she abandoned at the first attempt. In the end she

had let them all go and fallen back upon instinct.

The religious problem was one of those that had troubled her, and she

had not been able to reach any practical solution of it for the child.

Most of the friends of her youth, in the rich, republican bourgeoisie,

had been brought up with religion by their mothers, without religion by

their fathers. They did not even feel the clash of the two conceptions.

(The two get along together very well in the world, like many other

contradictory facts, for neither feeling has a third dimension.) She

herself had gone to church, as she had gone to school: she had taken her

first communion, as she had taken her diploma, conscientiously, without

emotion. The ceremonies at which she had been present in her wealthy

parish seemed to her to belong to the order of the world. She had

separated from them when she separated from the world.

Modern society--and the Church is one of its pillars--has succeeded so

well in denaturing and weakening the great human forces that Annette,

who bore within her a richer faith than that of a hundred devotees,

imagined she was not religious. For she confounded religion with

prayer-wheels and the ceremonies of an obsolete exoticism, a luxury of

soul for the rich, a snare for the eyes and that consolation for the

heart of the poor which assures the foundations of their poverty and of

society.

Since she had given up her religious observances, she had never felt the

need for them. It did not occur to her that when she had her fiery

transports of conscience, her passionate monologues, she was really

saying mass.

She did not think of giving her son what she had gone without herself.

Perhaps the question would not even have occurred to her if,

paradoxically, Sylvie had not brought it up. Sylvie, who had no more

religion than a Parisian sparrow, would not have considered herself

married without the concurrence of the Church; and it seemed to her

indecent that Annette should not have her son baptised. Annette had not

thought of this. But she had it done so that Sylvie might be the

godmother. Then she thought no more of the matter, and things remained

where they were until Julien's arrival. That Julien had a practical

faith did not give Annette one, but it rendered the faith worthy of

respect in her eyes and brought her attention back to the problem she

had neglected. What was she to do for Marc? Send him to church? Teach

him a religion in which she did not believe? She asked Julien, who was

scandalized; he affirmed emphatically that the child had to be

instructed in the divine truths.

"But if they are not truths for me? Must I tell lies when Marc asks me

questions?"

"No, don't tell lies, but allow him to believe. It's for his good."

"No, it couldn't be for his good for me to be dishonest. And what

authority would I have when he found it out? Wouldn't he have the right

to reproach me for it? He would not believe in me any longer. And how do

I know whether this faith he would learn would not thwart his real

development later?"

Here Julien's brow darkened, and Annette hastened to change the subject.

But what was she to do? She could not, as her Protestant friends

advised, give her son a course in all the religions and leave him to

choose for himself when he was sixteen years old. . . . Annette burst

out laughing at this idea. What a strange conception of religion, as if

it were a subject for an examination!

In the end Annette had done nothing. She walked about with Marc, went

into churches, sat down in a corner, marvelled with him at the

upspringing forest of these lofty trunks of stone, the underwood gleams

that filtered through the stained-glass windows, enjoyed the flight of

the vaults, the distant chanting, the vague accompaniment of the organ.

It was a veritable bath of reverie and self-communion.

Marc did not dislike going about in this way, with his hand in his

mother's, listening, whispering. It was sweet, it was warm, it was

delightful. . . . Yes, if it didn't last too long. This sentimental

somnolence bored him. He needed to move about and think of definite

things. His little mind worked away, observed, noticed this crowd of

praying people, watched his mother, who did not pray. And without

expressing them he made his own reflexions. He asked few questions, much

fewer than most children would have asked, for he was very proud and he

was afraid of saying something naïve.

But he did ask, "Mother, who is God?"

"I don't know, my dear," she replied.

"Then what do you know?"

She smiled and pressed him against her. "I know that I love you."

Yes, the old story. He knew this, but it was not worth coming to church

for.

He was not very sensitive and he had no taste for the vague soulfulness

in which "these women" delighted. Annette, when she had her child beside

her, when she was without too many material cares, during an hour of

relaxation earned amid the tasks that pursued her, was happy. She did

not have to go very far to find God: he was in her heart. But Marc had

found in his heart nothing but himself, Marc: everything else was mere

foolishness. He had to be clear about things. Just what was this God?

The man up there over the altar, with his girlish petticoat and his

gilded shell? The verger with his staff and his exposed calves? Those

painted-up images--one in each chapel--that grinned at you with their

sickly smiles like embarrassed ladies whom he didn't like?

"Mamma, let's go on."

"But isn't this beautiful?"

"Yes, it's beautiful enough. Let's go home."

What was God? . . . He no longer insisted on asking his mother. When

grown-ups confess that they do not know something, it is because they

are not interested in it. . . . He continued his rather impatient

inquiry alone. He heard prayers, "Our Father who art in heaven"--a

localization that excited the scepticism of the more wide-awake of these

modern cubs for whom heaven was on the point of becoming a new field of

sport. He thumbed the Bible, along with other old stories, with a bored

curiosity, asked a few questions, caught a few replies, here and there,

with a negligent air--"God, some invisible person who created the

world." That was what they said. It was too far off. And not clear. He

was like his mother: God did not interest him. One king more or

less. . . .

But what did interest him was his own existence, and what threatened it,

and what was going to happen to it afterwards. Some dull conversations

with Sylvie that had taken place in his presence had very early aroused

his attention. The shivering pleasure with which these girls spoke of

accidents, sudden deaths, sicknesses, burials, chattering all the

time! . . . Death excited them. The animal instinct of the child bristled

at this word. He would have liked to question his mother about it. But

Annette, who was very healthy, never spoke of death and never thought

about it, at this period of her life. She had plenty of other things to

do! Earning the little boy's living. When, from morning till evening,

she had to think of the here and now, the beyond seemed a luxury. It

only becomes essential when those one loves have passed to the other

side. Her son was here. For the rest, if she lost him neither life nor

death would have had any value for her. She was too passionate to be

satisfied with an immaterial world, a world without a beloved body.

Marc saw her, vigorous, intrepid, busy, heedless of these fears; and he

would have been ashamed to betray his weakness. So he was obliged to

help himself alone. This was not easy. But, as one may suppose, the

child did not embarrass himself with problems of complicated thought. He

reduced the question to its proper dimensions. Death meant the

disappearance of others. Let them disappear: that was their affair. But

was it possible that he might disappear?

Once he overheard Sylvie say, "Oh, well, we're all going to die. . . ."

He asked, "I too?"

"Oh," she laughed, "you have time enough."

"How much?"

"Till you are old."

But he knew very well that they buried children too. Besides, even if he

were old he would still be himself. Some day Marc would die. . . . It

was terrifying. Was there no possible means of escaping it? Somewhere he

must find something like a nail in a wall, something he could cling to,

a hand he could grasp. "I don't want to disappear."

The need of this hand might have led him to God, as it leads so many

others, this outstretched hand that men in their anguish see projected

into the night. But that his mother did not seem to be looking for this

support was enough to drive away his thought. Even while criticising

Annette, he felt the influence of her attitude. That in spite of what

was awaiting her she could remain calm did not reassure him, but it

obliged him to stand as straight as she did. No matter if he was a

nervous, puny little boy, rather stubborn, he was not Annette's child

for nothing. . . . Since she, a woman, is not afraid, I must not be

afraid.

But it was not given to him, as it was given to these grown-ups, not to

think about it. Thought comes and goes; you cannot keep it down,

especially at night, when you cannot sleep. Well, then, he had to think

of it and not be afraid: "What is it like to be dead?"

Naturally he had no means of knowing. Save for a few pictures in the

museum, he had been spared every kind of funereal spectacle. Stiff in

his little bed, he felt the walls of his body. How could he find out? An

imprudent word revealed to him, quite close by, a window that opened on

the abyss into which he burned to look.

One summer day he was dawdling by the window. He caught some flies and

was pulling off their wings. It amused him to see them floundering

about. It did not occur to him that he was doing them any harm; he was

playing a game. They were living toys, and it made no difference if he

broke them. . . . His mother surprised him at this occupation. With the

violence that she was unable to repress, she seized him by the shoulders

and shook him, exclaiming that he was a disgusting little coward.

"What would you say if someone broke your arms? Don't you know that

these creatures suffer just as you do?"

He pretended to laugh, but he was astounded by this. It had not occurred

to him. These creatures were like him! He did not feel the least pity

for them. But he looked at them now with other eyes, troubled,

attentive, hostile. . . . A fallen horse in the street. . . . A howling

dog that had been run over. . . . He watched. . . . The need of knowing

was too strong for his pity to be awakened. . . .

At Easter, as the child, after a gray, damp winter that had been neither

cold nor sunny, had suffered from a mild, but insidious, attack of

influenza that had drained all the color from his cheeks, Annette rented

for a fortnight a room in a farmhouse in the valley of Bièvres. It

contained only one big bed for herself and the child. He did not like

this very much: but she had not asked for his advice. Happily, he was

alone during the day; Annette went back to Paris for her work, and she

left him in the care of the landlady, who paid very little attention to

him. Marc would quickly vanish into the fields. He looked around him,

rummaged about, tried to grasp, from animals and things, some secret

that concerned him; for everything in nature he related to himself.

Wandering through the woods, he heard some boys making a noise in the

distance. He was not looking for the company of other children; he was

not strong enough, and he would have wanted to dominate them. But he was

attracted just the same. He approached and saw that there were four or

five of them forming a circle about a wounded cat. The animal's back was

broken, and the children were amusing themselves poking it, tormenting

it, prodding it with the ends of their sticks. Without stopping to

think, Marc threw himself into the group and struck about him with his

fists. When the surprise was over, the band fell upon him shouting. He

beat a retreat, but he remained a few steps away, hidden behind some

bushes, and stopped his ears. He could not make up his mind to

leave. . . . He returned. The young scoundrels hailed him with jeers,

"Hello, skinny! Are you afraid? Come over here and see him croak!"

He came. He did not want to seem a milksop. Besides, he wanted to see.

The animal, with its eyes glazed and half torn away, was lying on its

side, its hindquarters rigid, already dead; its chest was panting and

its head trying to lift itself while it moaned in distress. It could not

die. The children were convulsed with laughter. Marc looked at it,

petrified. Then suddenly he seized a stone and struck with it furiously

at the creature's head. A raucous cry broke from him. He struck, struck

harder, like a madman. He was still striking when all was over. . . .

The boys looked at him, embarrassed. One of them tried to make a joke.

With blood on the fingers that were still grasping the stone, Marc,

pale, with knitted brows, a wicked look in his eye and a trembling lip,

stared at them. They went away. He heard them laughing and singing in

the distance. Setting his teeth, he walked home, and once at home he

said nothing about it. But at night, in bed, he cried. Annette took him

into her arms. The soft body was trembling.

"What is this wicked dream? My angel, it's nothing."

He was thinking, "I killed it. I know what death is."

The terrifying pride of knowing, of having seen and destroyed! And

another feeling, which he could not comprehend, a feeling of horror and

attraction. . . . The strange bond that unites the slayer and the slain,

the fingers daubed with blood and the broken head. . . . To which

of the two did the blood belong? . . . The animal was no longer

suffering. . . . He still felt its last agonies. . . .

Happily, at this age, the mind cannot cling very long to the same

thought. It would have been dangerous if this had become a fixed idea.

But other images passed and their current refreshed his brain. The idea

remained, however, in the depths of him: its presence betrayed itself,

from time to time, in sombre gleams, bubbles of air that slowly mounted

from the mud of the brook. Under the soft crust of his nature a hard

core was hidden: death, the force that kills. . . . I am killed and I

kill. . . . I will not let myself be killed! Victory to the strongest!

I shall fight!

Pride, an obscure pride that sustains its weakness, like a suit of

armor. Whence did this steel come if not from his mother--the mother for

whom he felt contempt nevertheless because of her effusiveness and

because he wound her around his finger? He was not unaware of it. Even

in the days when his preference had been all for Sylvie, who petted him,

he had recognized Annette's superiority. And he may have imitated her.

But he had to defend himself against the encroachments of this

personality who loved him too much, who got in his way and threatened

his life. He remained in arms against her, and held her at a distance.

She too was the enemy.

XXVI

Sylvie had disappeared from the horizon. When the first months of

resentment were past, she had a certain feeling of remorse as she

thought of the difficulties against which her sister was struggling. She

was waiting for Annette to come and ask her for help: she would not have

refused it, but she was not going to offer it. But rather than ask for

it Annette would have allowed herself to be cut to pieces. The two

sisters were at swords' points. They had seen each other in the street

and avoided each other. But once when Annette had met little Odette with

one of the workers, she had not resisted an affectionate impulse; she

had taken the child in her arms and devoured her with kisses. On her

side, Sylvie, seeing Marc passing one day on his way home from

school--he appeared not to see her--stopped him and said, "Well, don't

you recognize me any more?"

One can imagine the high and mighty manner this little animal assumed as

he said, "Good afternoon, aunt."

All by himself he had made his little reflexions, and, just or unjust,

he had thought it best to identify himself with his mother's cause. "My

country, right or wrong." Sylvie was completely taken aback. She asked,

"Well, are things going as they should?"

He replied coldly, "Everything is going very well."

She watched him as he walked stiffly off, blushing from the effort he

had imposed on himself. He was neat and nicely dressed. . . . The mean

little thing! "Everything is going very well." She could have boxed his

ears.

That Annette could manage her own affairs without her added to Sylvie's

indignation. But she lost no opportunity to hear about her, and she did

not give up the idea of lording it over her some day. If she could not

do so actually, she could at least do so in thought. She was not unaware

of the austere life which her sister led; and she did not understand why

Annette condemned herself to it. She knew her well enough to be aware

that a woman of her type was not made for this moral restraint, this

joyless life. How could she force her nature in this way? What obliged

her to live like a widow? In the absence of a husband she had no lack of

friends who would be happy to lighten her troubles. If she had agreed to

this, Sylvie would perhaps have respected her sister less, but she would

have felt closer to her.

She was not the only one who did not understand Annette. Annette

understood hardly any better herself the reasons for her monastic life,

the fierce dread that led her to draw back, not merely from the

possibility, but from the mere idea of one of those natural pleasures

that no religious or social law could have prevented her from enjoying.

(She did not believe in the morality of the Church, and was she not

mistress of herself?)

"What am I afraid of?"

"Of myself."

Her instinct did not deceive her. For such a nature, filled with

passions, desires, blind sensuality, there is no such thing as innocent

pleasure, there is no play without consequences. The least shock would

deliver her over to forces of which she was no longer the mistress. She

had known long before the moral perturbation caused by her brief,

passing encounters with love. The dangers would be very different to-day!

She would no longer resist. If she gave herself up to pleasure, she

would be utterly swept away by it; she would lose the faith she

needed. . . . What faith? Faith in herself. Pride? No. Faith in that

inexplicable, that divine something that was within her and that she

wanted to transmit unsullied to her son. Such a woman has no choice,

outside the strict discipline of marriage, between an absolute moral

restraint and the frankest abandonment to her passionate instincts.

Everything or nothing. . . . Nothing!

And yet, at moments--in spite of her transports of proud fervor--for

several months this agonizing thought gripped her by the throat:

"I am wasting my life."

Marcel Franck reappeared. Chance threw him in Annette's path; he had

ceased to think of her, but he had not forgotten her. He had had a

number of amorous adventures. They had not left too many marks on his

flexible heart--only a few lines, like fine scratches, about his clever

eyes. But they had left him with a certain fatigue, a good-natured

contempt for his easy conquests and for the conqueror. Scarcely had he

caught sight of Annette than he felt again the old sensation of

freshness and certitude that strangely attracted this blasé sceptic. He

explored her eyes; she too had seen life! In the depths of her glance

there were submerged lights, paths where vessels had been, shipwrecks.

But she seemed calmer and more assured. And he again regretted this

wholesome companion who had already escaped him twice. He was not too

late! Never had they seemed more ready to understand each other.

Without questioning her, he was able to find out in his own circumspect

way about her resources and her occupations. A little later he offered

her some work that was very well remunerated: it consisted in arranging

notes for the catalogue of a private collection of works of art of which

he had charge. A natural excuse for spending a few hours each week with

her. They were able to work and talk at the same time. The intimacy of

the past was soon reëstablished.

Marcel never asked Annette about her life, but he talked about himself.

This was the best way of finding out what she thought. The comic side of

his love affairs offered a variety of subjects in which he delighted. He

enjoyed making Annette his amused confidante, although she scolded him a

little. He was the first to make fun of himself, as he made fun of

everything; and she laughingly listened to his free confessions, for she

was very tolerant where she herself was not concerned. He understood

this to mean something else, and it gave him pleasure to see this gay

intelligence that was so indulgent to life. He no longer found in her

any trace of the moral pedantry, the intolerance of the young girl who

is rather circumscribed by her virtue. While they exchanged their

ironical reflexions, it occurred to him that it would be charming to

form an attachment with this witty friend, to share with her the

adventure of life. How? In any way she chose. Mistress, wife, as she

wished. He had no prejudices. Just as he had attached no importance to

Annette's "blossoming maternity," so he was not concerned with any

encounters she might have had since then. He would never torment her

with any exacting surveillance; he had no curiosity about her secret

life. Let every one have his own secrets and his share of liberty! He

only asked that in their life together she should be laughing and

intelligent, a good comrade of his interests and pleasures. (And in

pleasure he included everything, intelligence, affection and the rest.)

He thought so well of this that he spoke to her about it one evening in

the library when they had finished their work and the sun, through the

trees of an old garden, was gilding the tawny bindings of the books.

Annette was completely surprised. What, he had come back to that; it was

not finished? "Oh, my friend," she said, "how kind you are! But it can't

be thought of any more."

"Oh, yes, it can be thought of," he said. "Why shouldn't it be?"

"Well, really, why not?" Annette said to herself. "I'm glad to talk to

him, to see him. But, no, it's impossible! It cannot even be discussed."

Franck sat facing her on the other side of the table, his blond beard in

the sunlight. With his two arms on the table, he took Annette's hands

and said, "Think about it for five minutes! . . . There . . . I shall

say nothing. . . . We have known each other for how many years? . . .

Twelve? . . . Fifteen? . . . I don't need to explain myself. Everything

I can say you know."

She did not try to disengage her hands; she smiled and looked at him.

Her clear eyes were fixed upon him and yet did not see him because they

had already gone beyond him. She was looking into herself. She thought,

"This is not even to be discussed? Everything should be discussed! Why

is it impossible? He doesn't displease me. He is a handsome fellow,

attractive, good enough, intelligent, agreeable. How easy life would

be! . . . But I could not live his life with him. He is pleasant, and

everything pleases him. But he respects nothing, men, women, love or

Annette. . . ." (It was she who was speaking, for she saw herself from

outside.) "He is certainly not ungenerous so far as delicate attentions

and social respect are concerned. He gives them to me in good measure.

Perhaps he even treats me with special favor. . . . But what a complete

sceptic! Is there anything he takes seriously? He delights in his

absolute lack of faith in human nature. He discounts its weaknesses with

a complacent and sympathetic curiosity. I think he would be disappointed

if the day came when he was obliged to respect it. A good soul! Yes,

life would be easy with him--so easy that I should no longer have any

reason to live."

Beyond that she no longer put her thought into words. But the thought

pursued her, and her mind was made up.

Franck had let her hands drop. He felt that his cause was lost. He got

up and walked to the window, and with his back to the window-pane he

philosophically lighted a cigarette. He was behind Annette; he saw her

motionless, her arms stretched over the table, as if he were still in

front of her. Her beautiful blond neck and her round shoulders. . . .

Lost! . . . For whom, for what, was she keeping herself? Some new

Brissot-foolishness? No, he knew that Annette's heart was free. Well,

then? She was not cold. She needed to love and be loved!

Above all, she needed to believe. . . . To believe in what she did, in

what she wanted, in what she was seeking, in what she was dreaming, to

believe in what she was, in spite of all disgusts and disappointments,

to believe in herself and in life! Franck destroyed respect. Annette

could more easily endure not being respected than losing respect--her

own--for life. For this is the source of energy. And without the

strength to act, Annette would have been nothing. For her the passivity

of happiness was death. The essential distinction between human beings

consists in this, that some are active, the rest passive. And of all the

forms of passivity, the most mortal for Annette would have been that of

a mind tranquilly established, like Franck's, in the comfort of a doubt

that no longer recognized doubt, but voluptuously surrendered itself to

the indifferent stream of nothingness. Suicide! No, she refused that.

Then what did she think her life would be? Perhaps nothing very happy or

very complete. Perhaps it would utterly miss fire. But whether it missed

or not, it would be an effort towards an end. . . . Unknown? Illusory?

Perhaps. No matter! The effort was not illusory. . . . And let me fall

by the wayside so long as it is _my_ wayside!

She became aware of the long silence and realized that Franck was no

longer there. She turned, saw him, smiled, rose and said, "Forgive me,

my friend! Let us remain as we are. It is so good to be friends!"

"And not better otherwise?"

She shook her head. "No!"

"Well," he said, "here I am blackballed at the third examination!"

She laughed and, going to him, said mischievously: "Would you like at

least to have what I refused you at the second examination?" And putting

her arm about his neck she kissed him. An affectionate kiss. But there

was no mistaking it--the kiss of a friend.

Franck was not deceived by it. "Well," he said, "let me hope that in

twenty years I shall be admitted."

"No," said Annette, laughing. "There's an age-limit! Marry, my friend.

You have only to choose. All the women are waiting for you."

"But not you."

"I'm going to remain a bachelor-girl."

"You'll see, you'll see. For your punishment you will marry when you are

over fifty."

"_Frère, il faut mourir._' Before then."

"Until then, the life of a nun."

"You don't know what delights it has."

XXVII

Annette was bragging. It was not all delightful. She often felt cramped

in her cloistered life. She was the kind of nun who would not have found

it too much to have an abbey to manage and a God to love. The abbey was

reduced to a fifth-floor apartment and God to her child. This was very

little and yet it was immense. It was not what she was meant for, but

she made a great deal of it. All her dreams turned round it, and with

this sort of treasure she was well provided. If her everyday life was

apparently puritanical and poor, she had her revenge in the life of her

imagination. There, soundlessly and without friction, the eternal

"enchantment" continued to flow.

But how enter these retreats of the soul? The inner dream is not woven

of words. And to make oneself understand, to understand oneself, one

must use words. . . . That heavy, sticky paste which dries on the tips

of the fingers! To understand herself, Annette sometimes felt the need

of securing her dreams by telling them over to herself in a soft voice.

But these recitals were not faithful transcriptions--scarcely

transmutations; they took the place of the dreams without really

resembling them. Lacking the power to seize the spirit in its flight,

the brain makes up stories for itself that keep it busy and deceive it

about the great fairyland, the inner drama.

An immense liquid plain, a flooded valley brimming over, a shoreless

river of fire, water and clouds. All the elements were still mingled

there, a thousand currents as confused as hair on a head; but there was

a force that curled these long dark locks that were spangled with

gleaming lights. It was the countless-faceted Spirit and its troop of

dreams, led by the silent shepherd to the shadowy pastures of Hope:

Desire, the king of the worlds. A resistless gravitation drove them to

the greedy slope, now gentle, now abrupt, that drew them down.

Annette felt the enchanted river flowing; she rolled and unrolled on her

distaff the skein of the entwined currents; she abandoned herself to it

and played with the feline force that carried her on. . . . But when the

reasoning powers were suddenly aroused and wished to control the play,

they found that Annette, torn from her dream, was merely seeking for

another that she might enter. So she soberly invented one out of the

elements of her disciplined days--her memories, figures from the past,

the romance of the life she had already lived or was still to live

perhaps. . . . And Annette tried to make herself believe that the great

dream was pursuing her. She knew it had fled, but she was not troubled.

Like the bridegroom in the Gospel, it would return at an hour that no

man knew.

How many feminine souls there are whose hidden genius expresses itself

like hers in this inner stream! If one could read below the surface one

would often find there dark passions, ecstasies, visions of the abyss.

Yet all one sees is the correct middle-class woman, tranquilly going on

from day to day, attending to her affairs, coolly and sensibly, mistress

of herself and sometimes even, by reaction, assuming as Annette did

before her pupils and her son (though he was never deceived), an almost

excessive appearance of cold, moralistic reasonableness.

No, she did not deceive the child. He had sharp eyes. He was able to

read between the lines. He too knew what dreams were. Every day he had

hours when he was like a king, entirely alone with his dreams, alone in

the apartment. Annette, who was always imprudent, carelessly left at the

disposal of the child a quantity of books, debris from the shipwreck of

her library and that of the grandfather. They were of every sort. For

several years she had not had the leisure to hunt through them. The

little boy took charge of that. Every day, on his return from school,

when his mother was not there, he would set out on the chase. He read at

haphazard. Quite early he had learned to read quickly, very quickly; he

galloped down the slope of the pages, pursuing his quarry. His

school-work suffered from this; he was classed as a poor,

scatter-brained student who never knew his lessons and skimped his

duties. The teacher would have been very much surprised if the little

poacher had recited what his eyes had caught in his game-preserve. He

had even caught the "classics" in his snare, and what a different scent

they had! Everything he gathered freely in this way, in the unknown, had

for him the taste of beautiful forbidden fruit. There was nothing that

could soil him yet in these encounters, nothing that could even

enlighten him too brutally. His eyes passed merrily round dangerous

corners without even seeing the carnal bait in the trap. But, happy and

carefree, he felt the breath of warm life in his face; in this forest of

books his nostrils caught the adventure and the eternal struggle of

love.

Love, what is love for a child of ten? All the happiness one does not

possess, that one will possess--that one is going to seize. . . . What

will it look like? With a few scraps of what he has seen and heard, he

tries to construct its image. He sees nothing. He sees everything. He

desires everything. To possess everything. To love everything. (To be

loved! For him that is the real meaning of love. . . . "I love myself. I

must be loved. . . . But by whom?") His memories give him no aid. They

are too close for him to be able to see them well. At his age there is

no past, or so little of a past. The present is the theme with its

thousand variations.

The present? The child lifts its eyes and sees its mother. About the

round table, under the warm light of the oil lamp, they are sitting

together. Evening, after dinner. Marc is studying--supposed to be

studying--his lessons for to-morrow; Annette is mending a dress. Neither

of them is thinking of what he is doing. They are trusting to their

machines, their willing servants. The dream rolls on. Annette follows

the current. The child observes her as she dreams. . . . That is a more

interesting spectacle than the lessons his lips are repeating.

Marc seemed never to have noticed what was going on about him during

these years; he could not have explained any of his mother's

occupations. Yet nothing had escaped him. Julien's love. Her love for

Julien. He had been obscurely aware of it. And a jealousy of which he

was not conscious made him rejoice, like a little cannibal who dances

about the stake, in the disastrous climax. His mother remained his. His

property! Did he care so much about her? He had only appreciated her

when someone else had wanted her. He looked at her--those eyes, that

mouth, those hands. In the manner of children who lose themselves in a

detail as in a world--and they are not always wrong--he studied each of

her features. One shadow of an eyelid, the curling of a lip, are

mysterious and vast landscapes. They fascinate the mind of the child.

His glance hovered like a bee up and down the half-open mouth. . . . The

red door. . . . It plunged into the depths, it emerged again. Searching

so closely, he forgot what he was looking at, the woman herself. . . .

A stupor full of affection. . . . He roused himself to remember (ugh)

to-morrow's lesson, a boy he disliked, a bad mark he had hidden from his

mother. . . . And then his attention was caught again by the gleam of

the lamp in the shadow of the room, by the silence of the chamber amid

the rumbling of Paris--that sense of a little island, of a ship at sea,

and the expectation of shore, of what he was going to find, what he was

going to carry away on the ship that would be full of his treasures, his

hopes, the spoils of life he was going to capture. Among these he counted

his mother, her beautiful blond hair and her arched eyebrows. . . . The

little Viking! How much he suddenly loved her! With the ardor of

a lover, but one who had kept the gift of divine ignorance! And at

night, lying awake, he listened to her breathing. . . . All this

mysterious life troubled him, absorbed him. . . .

So they both dreamed; but she was in mid-ocean and accustomed to the

long voyage. He was just setting out, and everything was a discovery for

him. And as everything was new to him, he saw with a keener eye, and

often he saw further. He had moments of astonishing seriousness. They

did not last. He was like an animal: suddenly this penetrating glance

would waver. He would not be there any more! But in the moments when he

fastened on his comrade-mother his young new force of attention and

love, shut up with her in a burning silence, his whole being was

impregnated with the odor of this soul: he divined without comprehending

them her faintest tremors, and he touched as if by lightning the secrets

of her heart.

Soon he would lose the key. He would no longer be interested. He would

no longer be able to see. There were two beings in him: the light from

within and the shadow from without. As the body of the child develops,

the shadow increases with it and covers the light. As he climbs, he

turns his back on the sun; he seems most a child when he is least one;

and when he is grown-up, his view is more limited. For the moment Marc

still enjoyed a magic clairvoyance of which he was completely unaware.

Never had he been closer to Annette; not for many years would he be so

close again.

Towards the end of this period the attraction she had for him became

stronger than his distrust. He no longer resisted the impulse that flung

him suddenly, face, eyes and mouth, against his mother's breast. Annette

discovered with rapture that her child loved her. She had given up hope

of this.

Several months passed, as delicious as a mutual first love. The

honeymoon of the child and the mother. The ravishing purity of this

love, carnal as all love is, but carnal without sin. A living rose.

XXVIII

It passes. It passes, the matchless hour. They pass, these years of

close intimacy, severe discipline, a crowded life. These rich years.

Annette, with all her strength intact, unimpaired. The child with all

the flower of his little universe.

But a mere vibration of the air will be enough to throw this harmony of

souls into confusion. Is the door shut?

XXIX

One Sunday morning Annette was at home alone. Marc was playing ball with

a friend in the Luxembourg Gardens. Annette was doing nothing; she

enjoyed being able to rest without talking, without moving, sitting in

her armchair on this day of rest; the flood of her thoughts followed its

meandering course. A little stiff with weariness, she let herself float

along. Someone knocked. She hesitated to open the door. Disturb this

hour of silence? . . . She did not move. The knock came again; there was

an insistent ring. She rose regretfully. She opened the door. . . .

Sylvie! For months they had not seen each other. . . . Annette's first

movement was one of joy, and Sylvie's face responded to her cordial

expression. Then the memory of their grievances, their strained

relations returned, and they were embarrassed. They exchanged polite

questions, asked about each other's health. They spoke to each other

without any formality, and in both their questions and their replies the

forms of their language were familiar, but their hearts remained cold.

Annette was thinking, "What has she come for?" And Sylvie, if she knew,

did not seem to be in any hurry to say. All the time, while speaking of

this and that, she showed that she was preoccupied with some thought she

was trying to defer, but which at last came out. "Annette," she said

suddenly, "let's put an end to this! There have been mistakes on both

sides."

Annette, in her pride, would not admit that there were any on hers.

Strong, too strong, in her right, and not forgetting the injustice that

had been done her, she said, "There were none on my side."

Sylvie did not like to go halfway and have no one come to meet her. In a

tone of vexation she said, "When you have made mistakes, you should at

least have the courage to recognize them."

"I recognize yours," said Annette, obstinately.

Sylvie was offended and she poured out all her old accumulated

reproaches. Annette replied haughtily. They were on the point of saying

the harshest things to each other. Sylvie impatiently rose to leave, but

she sat down again, saying, "Stupid thing! Nothing will ever make her

admit that she was wrong."

"When it isn't true," said Annette, not budging an inch.

"At least, for politeness' sake, don't make me the only one who has done

wrong!"

They laughed.

They looked at each other now with softened, twinkling eyes. Sylvie made

a wry face at Annette. Annette's eyes were full of amusement. But they

did not lay down their arms.

"Vixen!" said Sylvie.

"I don't admit it," said Annette. "It was you who--"

"Well, let's not begin again. Listen, I am frank; wrong or right, I

would not have come back here just for myself. I can't forget either--"

In spite of what she had just said, she had again begun to remember

jealously, half in fun, half seriously, with a mixture of bitterness and

humor, that Annette had tried to turn her husband's head. Annette

shrugged her shoulders.

"Well," Sylvie ended by saying, "you may be sure that if it had been

only on my own account I should not have come!"

Annette studied her curiously. Her sister said, "It was Odette who sent

me."

"Odette?"

"Yes. She asked why we never saw Aunt Annette any longer."

"Really? She thought of me?" said Annette, astonished. "Who reminded her

of me?"

"I don't know. She saw your photograph in my room. And then you must

have made an impression on her when she met you, I don't know where, on

the street, or in your house perhaps. . . . Intriguer! Looking as if you

weren't interested, with that secretive manner of yours! You know very

well you carry away people's hearts."

(She was only half joking.)

Annette remembered the tender little body she had caught up as she

passed, on that chance encounter, and lifted in her arms, the little

dewy mouth that clung to her cheek.

"Well," Sylvie went on, "I told her that we had quarrelled. She asked

why. I told her to hold her tongue. This morning, in bed, when I came in

to kiss her, she said to me, 'Mamma, I wish you wouldn't be angry with

Aunt Annette.' I said, 'Let me alone.' But she was unhappy. So I kissed

her and said, 'Do you care as much as all that for your aunt? What

difference can it make to you? What an idea! Well, if you care so much

about it, I shan't be angry any more.' She clapped her hands and said,

When will she come?' 'When she wishes.' 'No, I want you to go straight

away now and tell her to come.' So I started out. The little wretch! She

does what she likes with me. . . . Now you must come. We are expecting

you for dinner."

Annette, with lowered eyes, said neither yes nor no. Sylvie was

indignant: "I hope very much you won't have the heart to make me beg

you."

"No," said Annette, lifting radiant eyes that were filled with tears.

They kissed each other passionately, half lovingly, half angrily. Sylvie

bit Annette's ear. Annette cried out, "So you are biting now! Suppose it

were I whom you call crazy. But it's you. Are you angry?"

"Yes, I am," said Sylvie. "How can you expect me not to hate you? You

steal from me everything I have, my husband, my daughter. . . ."

Annette burst out laughing. "Keep your husband. He means nothing to me."

"Nor to me either," said Sylvie. "But he is mine. I forbid anyone to

touch him."

"Why not put a sign on him?"

"You are the one I should like to put it on, you ugly old thing! . . .

What is it about you that attracts them? They all fall in love with

you."

"Oh, no."

"Yes, they do. All of them, Odette, that silly Leopold. . . . Other

people. . . . Everybody. . . . And I too! I detest you! I wish I could

get rid of you. But it can't be done. There's no way of shaking you

off!"

They held each other's hands and laughed as they looked at each other,

this time as sisters.

"You silly old thing!"

"You don't realize what a true word that is!"

It was a fact. They had both aged, and they both noticed it. Sylvie

stealthily exhibited a false tooth which she had had made without saying

anything about it. And Annette had a lock of white hair on her temple.

But she did not hide this.

"You poseur!" said Sylvie.

So they were on the best of terms again, just as in the old days. And to

think that without the little girl they would never have seen each other

again!

That evening Annette, with Marc, went to dinner. Odette had hidden

herself: they could not find her. Annette set about looking for her; she

discovered her behind a big curtain. Stooping to pick her up, as she

crouched on her heels, calling her pet names, she held out her arms to

the child. The little girl turned her head to one side, unwilling to

look at her; then there was an explosion; she threw herself on Annette's

neck. At table, where she had the happiness to be placed beside her

aunt, she remained tongue-tied: she was overcome by what had happened.

At the very end she took an interest in the dessert. They drank to their

restored friendship, and as a joke Leopold offered a toast to the future

marriage of Marc and Odette. Marc was annoyed by this; his ambitions

were loftier. But Odette took it seriously. After dinner the two

children tried to play together, but they did not understand each other.

Marc was contemptuous, Odette was mortified. The parents, as they

talked, heard slaps and tears. They separated the combatants. Both were

sulking. Odette was unnerved by the emotions of the day. She had to go

to bed, and she crossly refused to do so. But Annette suggested carrying

her in her arms, and the child allowed herself to be taken. Annette

undressed her and put her in bed, kissing her plump little legs. Odette

was in ecstasy. Annette stayed by her till she was asleep--which was not

long. Then, finding Marc on Sylvie's knees, she said to her sister, "How

would you like to make an exchange of the children?"

"All right!" said Sylvie.

In the bottom of their hearts neither of them would have exchanged. Marc

might have suited Sylvie better, and Odette might have suited Annette.

But neither would have been "her own."

The children were much more ready to accommodate themselves to an

exchange. They had heard it spoken of jokingly and they clamored for it.

To please them it was arranged. On Saturday evening the exchange took

place between the two mothers. Odette spent Saturday night and all day

Sunday at Annette's, and Marc at Sylvie's; on Sunday evening they were

restored to their rightful owners. In the interregnum they were

scandalously spoiled, and naturally enough they returned home grumbling.

Their tenderest affections they had reserved for the one who was not

their everyday mother.

Odette enchanted Annette by her fondling ways, her little confidences,

her endless prattle. Annette had been deprived of this. Marc had the

passionate temperament of his mother, but he knew better how to repress

it; he did not like to surrender himself, especially to those who were

closest to him, for they abused his confidence. With strangers it was

less dangerous, for they misunderstood you anyway. Odette, like Sylvie,

had endearing, expansive ways, but she had a very loving heart; she said

out loud what Annette longed to hear. When the sly little creature

perceived this, she doubled the dose; she awakened the echo of what

Annette had thought as a child. At least, Annette imagined this, and she

loved her partly because of this suggestion. Listening to her, she

dreamed of her own early years which she unconsciously falsified, for

she threw into them the burning clearness of her thoughts of to-day.

These blessed Sunday mornings! The little girl lay in the big bed. (It

was a holiday for her to spend the night nestling in the arms of her

aunt, who received the thumps from her feet without flinching and was

afraid to breathe lest she should awaken her.) She watched Annette

dressing; she chattered like a sparrow. She was sole mistress of the

bed, and, having affirmed her possession of it, she stretched across it

and carried on while her aunt's back was turned. But Annette, arranging

her hair before the mirror, laughed as she saw in its depths the little

bare legs in the air and the rough brown head on the pillow. This

attitude did not prevent Odette from following each of her gestures and

making comic observations on her toilet. Amid her prattle the child made

grave reflexions that were most unexpected and irrelevant and made

Annette prick up her ears: "What did you say? Say it again."

She could not remember. . . . So she made up something else, not as good

as the first thing she had said. Or, more often, she was seized with a

sudden transport of affection.

"Aunt Annette! Aunt Annette!"

"Yes, what is it?"

"I love you. . . . Heavens and earth, how I love you!"

Annette laughed at the energy she put into it.

"Impossible!"

"Oh, I love you madly!"

(For, sincere as she was, she was also a born actress.)

"Nonsense! I like it better without the madness."

"Aunt Annette, I want to hug you!"

"Just a minute."

"Right away. I want to. Come here, come here!"

"Yes."

She calmly finished combing her hair.

Odette turned over in bed in a pet, throwing the bedclothes in all

directions.

"Ah, that woman has no heart."

Annette burst out laughing, dropped her comb, ran to the bed.

"Little masquerader, where did you pick that up?"

Odette hugged her furiously.

"Come, come, you're suffocating me. See, you've pulled my hair down

again. I shall never manage to get dressed to-day. You monster, I don't

want to have anything more to do with you!"

The little girl's voice became anxious; she was on the point of crying.

"Aunt Annette! Love me! . . . I want you to love me! I implore you to

love me!"

Annette pressed her in her arms.

"Ah," said Odette, with a pathetic accent, "I would give my blood for

you!" (A phrase from some newspaper serial she had heard read in the

workroom.)

When Marc was a witness of these effusions, he pouted disdainfully; and,

with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders raised, he marched off,

assuming a superior air. He despised this babbling, this feminine

sentimentality that poured everything out. As he declared to one of his

small friends, "These women are silly."

At bottom, he was annoyed by the signs of affection that his mother

lavished on Odette. When he was the object of them, he repulsed them;

but it did not please him to have someone else get the benefit of them.

Of course, he had his aunt, and with her he could take his revenge. In

fact, he did take it. To punish his mother's ingratitude he was ten

times more lovable with Sylvie than Annette had ever seen him. But it

must be admitted that, although Sylvie petted him, he was disappointed.

Sylvie treated him as a child, and he could not endure it. He did not

like her to imagine that she gave him pleasure by taking him every

Sunday to the cake-shop. He was certainly not indifferent to the cake,

but he did not like to have anyone insult him by believing that he

attached any importance to it. Besides, he felt too much that his aunt

regarded him as a personage of no importance: she was entirely

unreserved with him, and, while Marc's curiosity was satisfied, his

self-esteem was not. For he noticed the difference. It would have

pleased him if Sylvie had taken him into her private life, not as a boy,

but as a real man. In short, although he would not have admitted it to

himself, he lost his illusions when he saw Sylvie at close range. The

careless girl never suspected for a moment what was going on in the pure

and troubled brain of the ten-year-old boy, the fabulous image he had

manufactured of woman, and the shock of his first discoveries. Sylvie

took no more account of her acts and her talk in his presence than she

would have done before some pet animal. (We have no evidence, after all,

that a pet animal is not often shocked.) Through an instinct of defence

against the disillusionments which the damaging of his idol caused him,

there unfortunately developed in him certain precocious ideas that were

quite naïvely cynical, ideas upon which it is better not to dwell. He

tried to appear (in his own eyes; for the present he did not think of

appearing so in the eyes of others) a blasé man. But with all the blind

senses of an eager and innocent child, he uneasily breathed in the

enigmatical charm, the animality, of the feminine being. He felt for

woman a disgusted attraction.

Attraction. Repulsion. Every real man knows them. At this period of life

the dominating sentiment of the two in Marc was repulsion. But even this

repulsion had a sharp savor that made the other sentiments and the

children of his own age seem tasteless to him. He despised Odette and

regarded this little girl as beneath his dignity.

She was a very little girl in reality, and yet, strangely, a woman. In

spite of the theories of those illustrious pedagogues who divide

childhood into chambered compartments, one for each faculty, everything

already exists in the young child from its earliest infancy, everything

that one is and will be, the double Being of the present and the future

(to say nothing of the immense, impenetrable past that determines both).

Only, to catch a glimpse of it, one must have one's eye open. In the

half-light of dawn it appears only in gleams.

These gleams were more frequent in Odette than in most children. A

precocious fruit. Very healthy physically, she carried within her a

little world of passions that were too great for her. Whence had they

come? From some region that lay behind Annette and Sylvie? Annette was

reminded of herself at Odette's age. But she was mistaken; she had been

much less precocious; and when, observing Odette, she recalled the

forgotten passions of her own childhood, she antedated, in all good

faith, the feelings that belonged to her fourteenth and fifteenth years.

Odette was an aviary, filled with a sound of restless wings. Little

invisible loves passed through her; their flight left lights and shadows

behind it. She was placid and hysterical by turns; without any reason

she would begin to sob, then burst out laughing; then she would have a

feeling of lassitude, of indifference to everything; then again, no one

knew why, at a word, at a gesture, interpreted to suit herself, she

would be happy again, so happy! . . . Overwhelmed with happiness, drunk

with it, like a thrush that is gorged with grapes, she would talk, she

would talk. And then, in the twinkling of an eye, she would vanish; no

one knew what had become of her; they would find her again in a corner

of the store-room, hiding, enjoying the inexplicable happiness she

hardly understood herself. This flock of birds came and went in her

soul; they succeeded one another in a flash.

One never knows how far children are entirely sincere in their emotions:

as they come to them from far away, much further back than themselves,

they are at first astonished to witness them, and they become actors who

play with them experimentally. This power of unconsciously dividing

their emotions is an intuitive process of self-preservation, permitting

them to carry a burden which, without this, would crush their frail

shoulders.

Odette felt, for this person or that, and sometimes for nobody,

transports of passion to which she spontaneously gave a theatrical

expression, not always out loud, but in a whispered monologue for her

own relief; in simulating the feeling she deadened the shock. These

impulses were directed most frequently towards Annette or Marc--towards

the two together; and she often said Annette when she meant Marc,

because Marc made fun of her, Marc despised her, and she hated him. Then

she would have a paroxysm of humiliated and jealous suffering, a desire

for vengeance. . . . Why? What harm could she do him? The worst harm of

all. How could she reach him? . . . Alas, she had only the claws of a

child. It was exasperating. Since she could do nothing (for the moment)

she would pretend to be indifferent. But it was hard to be able to do

nothing; and it was hard also to be indifferent when one always had a

desire to laugh or weep. Such a constraint was against nature: Odette

was in despair over it. She was prostrated till suddenly a peremptory

reawakening of her childish gaiety and the need of movement threw her

back again into her play.

Annette watched, divined, sometimes imagined, these miniature despairs,

and she pityingly remembered her own. How she too had consumed herself

with the fever of loving, desiring, tormenting herself, and for whom,

for what? What purpose could this all serve? It was so out of proportion

with the object, which was limited by the nature of things! What a

squanderer of energy! And what a force of love she spent at random! Some

people had too much, others not enough. Annette, like Odette, was one of

those who had too much, and her son was one of those who did not have

enough. He was the lucky one, poor little fellow!

He was not so poor! The life of his affections was not less rich than

Odette's, nor were the struggles of his mind less lively--though he said

nothing about them. Nor were his feelings less violent, though their

ardor tended in another direction. Yes, he was indifferent to the things

that occupied these women. His spirit was agitated, however, by very

different passions. Intellectually richer and much less absorbed by the

more backward life of his senses, this little man, who felt the obscure

flood of desire rising in him, was turning his energies, like a true

man, towards action and domination. He dreamed of conquests beside which

that of a feminine heart would have seemed to him very paltry--if at

this time of his childhood he had thought of such a thing. The boys of

the preceding generations had dreamed of soldiers, savages, pirates,

Napoleon, adventures on the sea. Marc dreamed of aeroplanes, automobiles

and wireless. About him the thought of the world danced a giddy round; a

delirious movement made the planet vibrate; everything was running and

flying, cleaving the air and the waters, revolving, whirling. A magic of

mad invention was transmuting the elements. No more limits to power;

consequently, no more to the will. Space and time--pass the juggler's

ball!--were volatilized, spirited away by the swiftness of things. They

did not count any more. And men still less. What counted was will,

limitless will. Marc scarcely knew the rudiments of modern science. He

read, without understanding it, a scientific review to which his mother

subscribed; but without realizing it he had been bathed from his birth

in the miracles of science. Annette did not perceive this, for she had

learned science in the scholastic way; she had not breathed it in as a

living thing. She saw the figures written in chalk and the numbers on

the blackboard, the arguments. Marc's imagination was filled with

fabulous forces. Just because he was not embarrassed by his reason he

was carried away by a poetic enthusiasm as vague and ardent as that

which filled the sails of the Argonauts. He dreamed of extraordinary

exploits: piercing the globe with a tunnel from one side to the other,

rising without motor-power into the air, connecting Mars with the earth,

pressing a button and jumping over to Germany--or some other country (he

had no particular preference). With such mysterious words as volts,

amperes, radium, carburator, which he used at random, very coolly, he

conjured up the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. How the devil

could his mind stoop from such a height to a silly little girl?

But body and mind are twin brothers that do not keep step. In their

double growth there is always one of the two--it is not always the same

one--that loiters on the road while the other gallops on ahead. Marc's

body remained that of a child; and while the spirit roamed about aloft a

cord held him by the foot and brought him down again where it was

pleasant to amuse himself. Then, for want of anything better, he would

condescend to play--he would even play with his whole heart, without

condescension, with the silly little girl. These were happy interludes.

They did not last long. There were too many inequalities between the two

children, not only in their age, nor because she was a girl. Their

temperaments were too different. Odette, who was not pretty, and rather

suggested her father, though she had Annette's eyes and a chubby,

well-rounded figure, with her flattish nose, was a robust, healthy child

whose warmth of feeling did not disturb her physical equilibrium but

seemed the natural overflow of an abounding vitality. She had escaped

all the little ailments of childhood. Marc, on the contrary, had been

stamped by the illness of his first year; and although later the

soundness of his constitution was to come out on top, this struggle of

the organism, in which he was often beaten, had spoiled part of his

childhood. He had remained susceptible to the least chill and was often

checked by slight returns of bronchitis or fever. His self-respect

suffered from this, for all his instincts were those of pride and

strength.

Towards the end of 1911, one year after the reconciliation of the two

sisters, Marc had one of those winter illnesses, complicated by

influenza, that caused a passing anxiety. Odette went to see him when he

was in bed. She had been forbidden to do so for fear of infection, but

she had found a way of slipping into the room one evening when the two

mothers were busy in the next room. She was full of sympathy, and Marc,

who was a little feverish, let himself go as he had never done before.

He was restless.

"What are they saying, Odette?" (He imagined they were hiding from him

the gravity of his illness.)

"I don't know. They don't say anything."

"What does the doctor say?"

"He says it isn't anything."

He was somewhat relieved, but he was still suspicious.

"Is that true? No, it isn't true. They're concealing it from me. . . . I

know very well what I've got."

"What have you got?"

He was silent.

"Marc, what have you got?"

He retreated into a proud and hostile silence. Odette was in agony. She

ended by believing that he was very ill, and her anxiety communicated

itself to him. With that passionate exaggeration of hers which assumed

melodramatic forms she clasped her hands.

"Oh, Marc, I implore you, don't be so ill. I don't want you to die."

Nor had he the least desire to do so. He liked to be condoled with, but

he had not wanted as much as all this! Hearing uttered what he feared

himself, he was frozen with fright. He did not want to show this, but he

did show it.

"You see, you're hiding it from me. You know. I am very ill."

"No, no, I don't want it to be so. I don't know. I don't want you to be

very ill. . . . Oh, Marc, don't die! If you die, I want to die with

you!"

She flung herself on his neck, weeping. He was very much moved, and he

too wept; he did not know whether it was because of her or himself. At

the sound the mothers ran in scolding and separating them. They felt

very close together at that moment.

By the following morning, however, Marc had thought things over. He was

no longer anxious; he was even annoyed--for to drive away his fears

they had made fun of him--to have shown himself a coward; he blamed

Odette for having led him, by her stupid anxiety, into betraying these

signs of weakness. And then he heard her laughing and saw her passing

his door, overflowing with health. He was angry with her because of this

health. She had too much of it. He envied her and he was humiliated.

After he was well again, he continued for a long time to feel mortified

for having betrayed himself before his cousin's eyes. He was the more so

because he had really been afraid and she had seen it. Once her emotion

had passed, Odette maliciously remembered it all. She had seen him off

his high horse, a timid little boy. She only liked him better for this.

But he could not forgive her.

XXX

Marc was well again. Odette was flourishing. The previous summer she had

proudly made her first communion. (It was about this date that the

Church, like Joconda in search of innocence, had sniffed with its great

distrustful nose the air of the time and made up its mind that there was

no such thing as real innocence after the age of seven.) Odette

considered herself a woman and tried to appear one by toning down her

impetuosity, the impetuosity of a young tethered goat--though at any

moment, with a caper, the little horned creature would escape from one's

hands. . . . Sylvie was happy; her business was going well. And Annette,

who found in her sister's household nourishment for the need of

affection which her age and her ordeal had somewhat tempered, seemed to

have reached a haven of peace. Everything was hopeful.

One warm afternoon, between three and four o'clock, at the end of

October, one of those radiant days when the unveiled light seems as

naked as the stripped trees, the windows were open to let in the rays of

an autumn sun as mild and golden as honey. It was the day after Odette's

eighth birthday. Annette was at Sylvie's. In the room over the court,

they were looking out together and examining materials, gossiping and

gravely occupied with their investigation. Odette was on the other side

of the passage, in the room at the end that overlooked the street. Just

a few minutes before, the inquisitive child had peeped through the

half-open door to see what they were doing. They had pretended to scold

her and had sent her back again to finish a little piece of work before

they all had tea together. Marc was at school; they were expecting him

home again in half an hour.

The moments were flowing along smoothly, without a ripple, without a

wave, unhastingly, as if they were to flow this way for the rest of

their lives. They felt so calm that they did not even think of enjoying

it. It was natural! In the ivy on the wall of the court the happy

sparrows were chirping. The last flies of autumn were humming their

content, warming their torpid wings in the lingering rays of

sunlight. . . .

They heard nothing, nothing. Yet they both became silent at the same

moment, as if the fragile thread on which their happiness was suspended

had broken.

There was a ring at the door.

"Marc, so soon? No, it's too soon."

A ring. Someone was knocking again. What a hurry some people are in!

We're coming!

Sylvie went and opened the door, and Annette followed her a few steps

behind.

At the door the concierge, out of breath, was shouting and waving her

arms. At first they did not understand.

"Madame doesn't know . . . the terrible thing that's happened. The

little girl . . ."

"Who?"

"Mademoiselle Odette. . . . That poor little darling."

"What? What?"

"She's fallen."

"Fallen!"

"She's down below."

Sylvie screamed. She pushed the concierge aside and dashed downstairs.

Annette would have followed her, but her legs failed her; she had to

wait till her heart would allow her to walk. She was still upstairs,

leaning over the baluster, when from the street the wild cries of Sylvie

came to her.

What had happened? Probably Odette, who did not like to work and was

dawdling and rummaging about, had leaned out of the window to see if

Marc was coming and had fallen. The poor little thing had not even had

the time to understand. . . . When Annette, tottering, at last reached

the street, she saw a great crowd gathered. Sylvie, like a madwoman, was

holding in her arms the little broken body, with its legs and head

hanging like a slaughtered lamb. The brown hair veiled the fractured

skull; nothing was to be seen but a little blood at the nose. The eyes

were still open and seemed to be asking. Death had replied.

Annette would have thrown herself on the ground, screaming with horror,

if Sylvie's wild fury had not absorbed all the misery of the world. She

had fallen on her knees on the sidewalk, almost lying on the child, whom

she lifted up and shook with mad cries. She called to her, she called to

her, she denounced . . . Whom? What? Heaven, the earth. . . . She was

foaming with despair and hatred.

For the first time Annette saw in her sister the frantic passions that

Sylvie bore without knowing it in the depths of her nature, passions

that her life till then had spared her from expressing. And she

recognized them as those of her own blood.

The wildness of this grief prevented her from yielding to her own. She

was obliged, by reaction, to remain strong and calm, and she did so. She

took Sylvie by the shoulders. The screaming woman struggled with her;

but Annette, leaning over her, lifted her up; and Sylvie, submitting to

this commanding gentleness, became silent, raised her head, saw the

circle about her, threw a fierce glance towards it and, with the child

in her arms, reentered the house without a word.

She had crossed the threshold. Annette was going in after her when she

saw Marc at the corner of the street on his way home; and, in spite of

her lacerated love for the poor little girl, her heart bounded in her

breast. What a joy that it wasn't he!

She ran to Marc to prevent him from seeing. At her first words, Marc

turned pale and clenched his teeth. She led him away from the scene; she

told him that Odette was seriously hurt. But he, with the distrustful

intuition of a child, knew that she was dead; and with his clenched

fists he tried to drive the terrible thought away. In spite of his

agitation, he was still thinking of himself, his own attitude and the

people who were passing. He noticed that his mother was walking

bareheaded beside him in the street and that people were looking at

them, and this embarrassed him. His annoyance contributed to calm him.

When they had gone halfway, Annette, seeing that he was steadier, told

him to go home alone. She returned hastily to Sylvie. She found her

prostrated, sitting in a state of collapse in a corner, near the bed of

the little dead girl, unable to hear or understand, breathing noisily

like a wounded animal. Her workers were busy with the child. Annette

bathed the little body, dressed it again in white linen, laid it back in

the bed, just as on those faraway evenings--yesterday--eternally far

away, when she had listened to the whispered confidences of the child.

When this was finished, she went over to Sylvie and took her hand. Moist

and cold, the hand lay limply in hers. Annette pressed these fingers

from which the life seemed to have withdrawn, but she did not have the

courage to whisper a tender word, for it could not have penetrated

through the wall of despair. Nothing but the sisterly contact of their

bodies could make her pity slowly find its way through. She wrapped her

arms about her, her forehead resting on Sylvie's cheek; and her tears

dropped on her sister's neck as if to melt the ice that enveloped her

heart. Sylvie was mute and did not stir; but her fingers were feebly

beginning to respond to the sisterly hand when her husband arrived.

Annette went away.

She returned to Marc and told him the truth. It was not news to him. He

did not seem very much moved; he was afraid of his emotion and was

anxious to keep his air of assurance. He should not have been obliged to

speak, for as soon as he opened his mouth his voice began to tremble; he

ran and hid himself in his room to cry. Annette perceived with a

mother's insight the anguish of this childish heart in its first

encounter with death, and she avoided speaking of the redoubtable

subject; but she took him on her knees as she had done when he was a

baby. And he, with no thought of complaining at being treated as a baby,

took refuge in the warmth of her breast. After they had calmed each

other, lulling their fear to sleep and feeling that there were two of

them to protect each other, she put him to bed and begged him to be a

brave little man, not to be frightened if she had to go out and leave

him alone for a part of the night. He understood and promised.

She set out through the dark for the house of tragedy. She wanted to

watch by the dead child. Sylvie had emerged from her dejected

insensibility. She had not returned to her first furious despair, but

the spectacle was not less painful. Her mind was a little unbalanced.

Annette saw a smile on her lips. Sylvie raised her eyes as she heard her

coming in, looked at her, went to her and said, "She is sleeping."

She took her hand and drew her over to the bed. "See how beautiful she

is!"

Her face lighted up, but Annette saw a shadow of anxiety passing over

her brow; and when, after a moment, Sylvie repeated in an undertone,

"She is sleeping well, isn't she?" Annette met the feverish glance that

was waiting for her to say, "She is sleeping. Yes." She said it.

They went and sat down in the adjoining room. The husband was there with

one of the workers. They forced themselves to talk in order to occupy

their attention. But Sylvie's wounded mind was running away from itself,

leaping from one subject to another, without stopping. She had taken up

some work which at every moment she threw down again; she took it up and

threw it down to listen for sounds from the sleeper's room. Again she

said, "How she sleeps!"--her eye wandering over the others in order to

convince them, to convince herself. Once she returned to the little bed,

and, leaning over the child, uttered endearing words to it. This was

cruel for Annette. She wished Sylvie would be silent. Leopold, in a low

voice, implored her not to disturb the illusion.

The illusion fell of itself. Sylvie, coming back to her place, took up

her work and did not speak again. The others were talking around her,

but she no longer heard them. They in turn became silent. A sombre hush

hovered over them. Suddenly Sylvie cried out. Without words. A long cry.

Throwing herself down on the table, she struck her head against it.

Hurriedly they removed the needles and the scissors. When her speech

came back to her, it was to curse God: she did not believe in Him, but

she had to have someone against whom to avenge herself! Her eyes blazed,

and she hurled vulgar oaths at him.

Exhaustion followed. They carried her to bed. She did not stir again.

Annette remained beside her until she was unconscious.

Then she went home again, utterly worn out. The streets were pale with

early dawn. Marc had not slept. She lay down shivering. But just as she

was about to get into bed--it was too much, all she had suffered and had

to repress during the last twelve hours!--she ran in her nightgown and

bare feet into her son's room and passionately kissed his mouth, his

eyes, his ears, his neck, his arms, his hands. "My dear, my dear little

boy," she said. "You, you are not going to leave me?"

He was very much upset, disturbed, frightened. He wept with her, more

for himself than for the others, though he wept for the others too. He

realized now what he had lost; he wept over the affection he had never

desired. He remembered the evening when he had been ill and Odette had

come in to see him. He was stricken with affection and sorrow. But he

thought, "I'm still alive anyway!"

Annette trembled at the thought of beginning another day like the last.

Her strength was not equal to it. But the day that followed did not have

the terrifying violence of the previous hours. Human suffering, when it

reaches its zenith, must descend again. One dies or becomes used to it.

Sylvie had recovered her self-possession. She was livid, with hard lines

about her nostrils and lips which later, as they grew fainter, left

scars behind. But she was calm, active, busy, with her workers, cutting

and sewing her mourning clothes. She gave orders, oversaw things,

worked; and her hands, like her expression, were sure and precise. She

fitted Annette's dress. Annette was afraid to utter a word that would

recall the funeral. But Sylvie spoke of it coldly. She would not leave

the details to anyone else. She decided everything. She preserved her

unnatural calm to the very end of the ceremony, but with a cold and

concentrated rage she had set herself against any religious service. She

could not forgive! . . . Till then she had been vaguely sceptical,

indifferent, not hostile; and while she laughed at it a little, she had

been moved without confessing it on the day when she had seen her

beautiful little girl dressed in white for her first communion. . . .

Exactly! She had been tricked. . . . That dastardly God! She could never

forgive him.

Annette was expecting that the inhuman constraint which Sylvie had

imposed upon herself would be paid for by a fresh crisis when they

returned to the house. But she was not allowed to stay with her sister.

Sylvie harshly forbade it. Annette's presence was intolerable to

her. . . . Annette had her son!

On the following day the anxious husband came to tell Annette that

Sylvie had not gone to bed. She had not wept, she had not groaned, she

was eating her heart out in silence. She had relentlessly resumed her

work in the shop, a mechanical duty that was more imperative than life.

No one would have perceived her state of mind except for certain

accidents, errors that had never happened before. She cut a gown wrongly

and afterwards destroyed it without a word, and she hurt her fingers

with her scissors. They induced her to go to bed at night, but she

remained sitting upright without sleeping, and she did not reply when

they spoke to her. And every morning, before appearing in the workroom,

she made a visit to the cemetery.

This went on for fifteen days. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, she

disappeared. Customers came in and waited. At supper-time she had not

returned. Ten, eleven o'clock passed. Her husband feared that something

desperate had happened. Towards one o'clock she came in, and that night

she slept. No one could find out anything from her. But the next evening

she vanished again, and on the two following days she did the same

thing. She talked now; she seemed to have relaxed. But she did not say

where she had gone. The workers gossiped. Her good husband shrugged his

shoulders with pity and said to Annette, "If she is deceiving me I can't

be angry with her. She has suffered too much. . . . And besides, if it

can only save her from her obsession, well, all right!"

Annette succeeded in catching Sylvie as she was going out, and she

tactfully made her understand the anxiety, the suspicion, the pain,

which her wanderings caused. Sylvie, who did not want to be stopped at

first, seemed to be indifferent to what people might think, but she was

touched by her husband's kindness; and, as if she felt a sudden need of

unbosoming herself, she led Annette into her room and shut the door. She

sat down close beside her and in a low, mysterious voice, with shining

eyes, confessed that she went every evening to a circle of initiates who

gathered about a table in order to talk with her little girl. Annette

listened, horrified, without daring to betray her feelings, while

Sylvie, in a soft voice, recounted the child's replies. There was no

longer any need to urge her to talk; she delighted in the joy of

repeating to herself out loud the puerile words into which she had

transfused all the blood of her heart. Annette could not destroy an

illusion that gave her sister life. Leopold was ready to encourage her:

for his sound common sense this was as good as any other religion.

Annette asked the advice of the doctor, who told her to let the sorrow

wear itself out.

Sylvie was radiant now. Annette asked herself if she would not have

preferred a noble despair to this preposterous joy that profaned death.

In the workroom Sylvie no longer concealed her relations with the world

beyond the grave; the workers made her describe the séances; it gave

them all the shivering pleasure of a popular novel. When Annette came

in, she heard them mingling their lively reflexions with the account of

the last conversation Sylvie had had with Odette; one apprentice was

laughing at it behind the material she was folding up; and Sylvie, so

lately an expert in the handling of irony, saw nothing as she babbled

away, absorbed in her phantasmagory.

She did not stop there. One evening, without saying anything to Annette,

she took Marc with her. She had come to feel once more an exalted

affection for him. The moment she saw him her face lighted up. Annette,

not finding Marc in the house, guessed what had happened. But she took

care not to make him tell her about it when he came in, very late,

depressed and unnerved. The child cried in his dreams. Annette lifted

him up, calmed him, stroked his head with her tender hands.

In the morning she severely demanded an explanation from Sylvie. Her son

was involved, and she spoke directly to the point. This time she did not

conceal her disgust and aversion for these dangerous follies, and she

angrily forbade her sister to mix the little boy up in them. Sylvie,

who, at other times, would have replied in the same tone, bowed her head

with an equivocal smile, avoiding Annette's furious look; she did not

feel instinctively sure enough of her revelations to expose them to her

sister's passionate criticism. She would discuss nothing, she promised

nothing; she had a sly, wheedling manner, like that of a scolded cat

that still means to do just what it chooses.